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Get more women into tech? My colleagues never got the memo

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Forget the motivational media campaigns - Tina Amirtha explains what it's really like to be a female engineer in a male-dominated profession.

In the engineering world, male colleagues are quick to make sure you know your place. Wanting to make a good impression on the first day of my first internship ever at a medical device company, I showed up in a pressed shirt, knee-length skirt and sensible heels. I felt ready to enter the professional world for the first time; I felt good. On a lab tour, my new manager acquainted me with the equipment that I imagined I would very soon start to use. As my head filled with possibilities, another engineer looked at my ensemble and shouted in front of everyone, “We’re not secretaries here!” All my 20-year-old self could do was reply “OK” and continue with the tour. No one ever brought it up after that.

I didn’t break any dress codes, but apparently, there was another code altogether that I had to follow, where men were men and women had to dress like men. Maybe my colleague thought he was helping me, but I knew he meant to intimidate me. Instead of giving in, I wore a skirt and heels for the rest of the summer - and the summer after that when the company invited me back.

On the cusp of turning 30, I look back at the discouraging years I’ve spent as a female engineer in the male-dominated STEM field and wonder whether doing something more traditionally feminine would suit me better. Media campaigns, like WISE in the UK, might mean to encourage women like me, but they glorify these professions, as though becoming an engineer would garner a female graduate instant respect and riches. The truth is, male colleagues put up impenetrable fortresses in the workplace, women are not entirely encouraging, and to make things worse, the popular media comes out with a ground-breaking feature every six months, telling me that I can't have it all, and I'm beginning to think so. Maybe the world is telling me that I have to downgrade my ambition to the hearth and home, or at least something more suited for ladies.

According to today’s media, if you become a woman in tech, then you get to be in Vogue, the New York TimesStyle section, make lots of money and sail to the top. They lead you to believe that the tech world expects you to show up in a Calvin Klein sheath dress and an Oscar de la Renta cardigan. Believe me; that is really not the case when you feel displaced for wearing a simple skirt. It’s not so pretty when you’re not in the boardroom.

Almost as much as the media love glorifying female CEOs, they scramble to entice young girls to study STEM subjects through various programs. You’ve read about them – ones that aim to get more girls into coding, study technical subjects and attract them into the field. They do this with reason: A Forbes career survey rated software developer as the fifth-best paying job for women in the US, but only 20 per cent of these positions are held by women. In the UK, women hold 13 per cent of STEM jobs, but the government aims to bridge a labor gap by increasing this figure by 17 percentage points by 2020. Many times, these programs spotlight the lives of female engineers, which could effectively inspire young girls to follow in these women’s footsteps. But then I remind myself that I’ve already taken these steps – I’ve obtained a bachelors and masters degree in engineering and work professionally as one – and these women’s testimonies could not seem more foreign to me.

Even though I’ve done all the things I was supposed to do, I feel abandoned by this movement. In the face of growing female concern over women exiting the workforce, the only messages for young, female professionals are vague appeals to lean in, heed the warnings of the Opt-Out Generation, have it all some of the time or settle for some of those things most of the time. It’s depressing. What I really want to know is how to survive in the male-dominated engineering world, and no one seems to want to talk about that.

Here’s something those campaigns will never tell you. Your higher-ups might still view you as an administrative assistant. In my first role out of college, as a research and development engineer, the only other woman in the office was the secretary. When she went away on medical leave, a project manager asked me to book a car for him. The next week, he asked me to make copies. While working as a product manager in another office, my boss needed to fill a gap in the serving staff at a trade show. For one week, I served beer, wine and soda to potential clients, parading around in a uniform; while the other equally qualified marketing people did their work. Aside from these setbacks, I did manage to find some sponsors and fought for good projects, but otherwise, I surrendered to menial tasks.

Truly shining in a technical profession is a political game if you’re a woman. As the lead on a pilot test in a new city, I interpreted the results with an older male engineer. To explain the anomalies in the data plot, I said, “This is coming from the 50 Hertz noise, from the power outlet.” He said that no, it wasn’t. A few minutes later, our boss said, “This is the 50 Hertz noise that is coming from the power outlet.” To that, he agreed. On another business trip, my job was to set up and demonstrate the capability of the systems that my managers and I had designed for our client. By the third day, they were having secret technical meetings with the customer in the break room, sharing a bag of potato chips from the vending machine. Those chips could have been caviar to me. I realised that no man wants a woman to explain to him a technical concept, but they would rather do the explaining and keep you out of the detailed discussions.

Forget trying to be an average engineer as a woman. You must be extraordinary. Sometimes, campaigns go nuts with statistics that show how much better girls test than boys in school. For example, A-level class results in the UK show that girls were 1.7 per cent more likely to earn an A* in Physics than their male counterparts. Trying to live up such lofty standards, I ran myself into the ground saying yes all the time. Once, I agreed to build a central nervous system for an industrial heating and cooling chamber on top of my regular work. Even though I didn’t finish within the irrational timeframe, it was an incredible feat of engineering. All I got was a mean look from my boss. What’s horrible is that guys don’t have to work as hard to get a pat on the back from their bosses. Take for instance a group of mechanical engineers I worked with. All they did was flex their muscles and talk about their girlfriends all day, while their work was always respected. I had to work twice as hard to have the same recognition.

Other women that I have met in field have been uninspiring. At the end of my internship phase, two women pulled me into their project. I quickly saw that their jobs were vastly less technical than the stuff I was doing with the all-men’s group. Whereas I was previously free to invent moving machines in my male manager’s team, I was given the most painless job ever by these women: logging observations in a lab notebook. Unfortunately, these would the first and last female engineering managers that I would ever encounter in my career. During that time, the female interns who were hired after graduation were the ones who gave the office something to gossip about at the water cooler every morning. They were all sleeping with the much older men on the team. I didn’t want to be a part of that culture.

Even so, the attention to sex never ceased, even after I became a full-time professional. One of the major privileges of the graduate training scheme I took part in was meeting the CEO of the company, an alumnus of our program and scion of the group. Gracing the trainees with his presence was an initiation rite into the company’s veritable royal family that would one day welcome us into its highest ranks. I watched as he circled the table, silently shaking each person’s hand. What would my turn be like? Maybe he had heard about the project I was working on. Or, he was going to tell me how he had been waiting for the perfect person to come along to build the company’s US business. He approached my chair. This was my moment.

“Tina,” I offered, as he took my hand.

“Very nice to meet you,” he said to my chest.

Meeting the other upper management wasn’t any more promising. One time, when I was introduced to a vice president, two of his associates circled around me like vultures and gave me the once-over. Again, at an informal interview, people who should have been impressed with the insight I gave to them gave me the once-over. First day in a new office, the once-over again! Sometimes, you feel cheapened by the way some men in the industry perceive you. Other times, you just feel like you sat on something.

After all of my travails, I’ve ended up in something called quality engineering. Well, my title is Quality and Development Engineer, but I keep being pushed out of the development part. The most engineer-y part of my job is coming up with innovative systems to nag people to keep their standards high. The most technical part of the software we develop is hashed out among the men, and I standby, but I choose my battles now. I’m willing to let it slide because I cannot ask for better people to work with; they treat me like family, and I feel valued. There are no avenues for progression, and I my salary has stagnated for years, but I’ll let it go, at least for this year. It’s hard to put value on respect, but lately, I’ve been thinking about re-calculating my professional options. It is likely that I’ll become another statistic, yet another woman who has left the STEM field.

Ten years since I first stepped foot in the engineering world, I feel like dropping out. Perhaps I was naïve to have tried to break out of a gender stereotype by becoming a female engineer, and the best thing for me to do now is put away my computing software for good. For this movement to work, our culture needs to change. Women should keep networking. Or maybe more women should just start their own tech companies. Or move to Asia. Out of all of the places in the world where I have worked, Asia is the most respectful. As for me, maybe I’ve done my duty by just getting my story out there. I’ve learned that the industry wasn’t ready for me, but now I can say that I’ve been there.  


Gove attacks Labour MPs for "celebrating as children had been killed"

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The Education Secretary explains his "heated" response to last week's parliamentary defeat on Syria.

Of all those MPs dismayed at the outcome of last Thursday's parliamentary vote on Syria, it was Michael Gove who reacted most vehemently. The Education Secretary shouted, "A disgrace, you're a disgrace!", at Conservative and Lib Dem rebels and reportedly told shadow defence secretary Jim Murphy: "you are appeasing Assad" (prompting the alleged retort: "Fuck off you bully. You’re angry because you lost.")

At the weekend, Labour MP Dai Havard said that Gove called him a "National Socialist" prompting him to tell his party's whips: "Michael Gove just called me a National Socialist. Tell him if he does it again I’ll deck him." Tory MP Gavin Barwell, a parliamentary aide to Gove, who witnessed the row, responded by saying there had been a "misunderstanding". 

"Michael was calling Assad a National Socialist. Dai was still angry later on when I talked to him in the Members’ Smoking Room to try to sort it out. We ended up having a civilised conversation about whether or not Assad was a National Socialist."

In his first comments on the incidents, Gove told BBC Breakfast this morning: 

I did become heated last week, that is absolutely right. At the moment that the government lost the vote on the motion, there were Labour MPs cheering as though it were a sort of football match and they had just won.

At the same time on the news, we were hearing about an attack on a school in Syria and the death toll there rising - and the incongruity of Labour MPs celebrating as children had been killed by a ruthless dictator, I am afraid got to me and I did feel incredibly emotional. I do feel emotional about this subject.

The prime minister explained about the vote and that is all I want to say.

Gove's comments are inevitably being misconstrued (he did not suggest that Labour MPs were cheering the deaths of Syrian children, rather that their cheers coincided with further massacres) and on one point he is certainly right. However they voted on Thursday night, MPs should have been sober in their response. In choosing whether or not to take military action in Syria (this week's NS leader put the case against intervention), no one should forget that we are choosing between a bad outcome and an even worse one. 

Ethiopia and Kenya help dismember Somalia

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A new deal has recognised Jubaland, a strip of land in southern Somalia and bordering on Kenya and Ethiopia, as yet another quasi-independent entity in the region.

After nine days of late night meetings and plenty of arm-twisting, the fragile government of Somalia was finally forced to accept that a further slice of its territory had slipped beyond its control. The deal, signed in Addis Ababa, recognised Jubaland as yet another quasi-independent entity. This strip of land in southern Somalia and bordering on Kenya and Ethiopia, it is the illegitimate heir of both of these countries.

Jubaland is of critical importance to the whole of southern Somalia. Trade through the port and airport of Kismaayo is a lifeline for the region. In theory Jubaland will be the ‘Interim Juba Administration’ and last for just two years, while Somalia re-forms itself into a Federation. In reality it is now outside Mogadishu’s control – just like those other fragments of Somalia, including Puntland, Galmadug and the self-declared independent state of Somaliland.

President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, who was only sworn in as Somali president a year ago, was unable to resist the intense pressure of his neighbours and agreed to the deal. The entire sorry saga was witnessed by Nicholas Kay, the UN’s Special Representative in Somalia; welcomed by Catherine Ashton for the European Union and supported by the African Union. Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma, the South African chair of African Union described the agreement as “historic”, declaring that it was “a further illustration of the capacity of the Somalis to triumph over their differences.” 

It is hard to see what there was to welcome. 

The deal officially recognises Ahmed Mohamed Islam (known, like all Somalis by a nickname - ‘Madobe’) as the ‘leader’ of Jubaland. Yet only a month earlier Sheikh Madobe was described in a major UN report as a “spoiler” and one of the chief threats to Somali stability.

The Sheikh was said to be “subverting the efforts of the Federal Government leadership and its partners to extend the reach of Government authority and stabilise the country, particularly in Kismaayo.”

What the Baroness Ashton and her colleagues have done is anoint a man who has been roundly denounced by the Monitoring Group, established by the UN Security Council. Its July report pointed out that the Sheikh had been a member of the short-lived Union of Islamic Courts, which was ousted by Ethiopia during its 2006 invasion of Somalia. What happened next is interesting. As the report puts it: “Madobe’s forces returned to Kismayo in August 2008, when Al-Shabaab and Hizbul Islam recaptured the city following the withdrawal of Ethiopian troops from Somalia.” At this time the Sheikh Madobe was a key player in the al-Qaeda linked network.  But, as is ever the case in Somalia, clan and inter-clan rivalry came into play and the Sheikh fell out with his former allies. He threw in his lot with the African peacekeepers and the Federal Government.  But Sheikh Madobe did not cut his ties with al-Sabaab altogether and the UN report accuses him of continuing the export of charcoal from territory controlled by the Islamists – a trade long since outlawed by the UN because of its catastrophic impact on the Somali environment.

Under the new arrangement the Sheikh retains the port and the airport, although he is required to hand control to the Federal Government within six months. Since this would cut his income and hence his power, there seems little chance of the handover ever taking place.

The outcome has been a triumph for Somalia’s neighbours, even though Kenya and Ethiopia will continue to vie for influence in this critical part of the country.

The Kenyan foreign ministry has long seen the establishment of a buffer state along its northern border as vital to its security interests. Thanks to Wikileaks, we know that Kenya’s Foreign Minister, Moses Wetangula, practically begged the United States for its support when he saw Johnnie Carsons, President Obama’s most senior US Africa official, in January 2010.  The Kenyans were requesting backing for an invasion of Somalia to create Jubaland, but the Americans were far from keen.

As the confidential embassy telex puts it: “Carson tactfully, but categorically refused the Kenyan delegation’s attempts to enlist US Government support for their effort.” It was, said the telex, the third time Wetangula had made the appeal, but Carsons resisted, pointing out – rightly – that “the initiative could backfire.” Critically, Carsons warned that: “if successful, a Lower Juba entity could emerge as a rival to the TFG” (Somalia’s Transitional Federal Government). This is exactly what has now come about.

Brushing these concerns aside, Kenya sent its troops into Somalia in October 2011. As predicted, they found it very heavy going and it was to take almost a year before al-Shabaab were driven from Kismaayo.

For the Ethiopians, the establishment of Jubaland is a further fragmentation of Somalia, its sworn enemy since the Somalis invaded their country in 1977. It was an attack that is imprinted on Ethiopian memories, fuelling a determination to see the end of a powerful, centralised Somali state.

As if the situation was not complicated enough, newly created Jubaland could be sitting on reserves of oil. Several fields have been detected in the waters along the Kenya-Somali border, but, like many African frontiers, the location of the border is a matter of dispute.  The Somali government refuses to recognise oil licenses granted to multinational companies by Kenya, and has persuaded several oil-majors, including Total and the Norwegian state owned Statoil, to withdraw their claims. But, said the UN in July, the Italian firm, ENI, was still pressing ahead with its claims.

As Jonnie Carsons remarked in 2010, Jubaland “raises more questions than it answers.”

Wonga announces record profits – but should they have them?

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Carl Packman asks if we can be comfortable living in a country where Wonga makes millions.

Wonga – the controversial payday lender – has today announced record profits of £63m for 2012, or roughly £1m per week. More evidence that as financial hardship tears through many families in the UK, selling expensive loans to hard-up people is a growth industry.

Last year PwC noted in a report that between 2008 and 2010 mainstream banks lent around 50 per cent of the total stock of consumer credit. This represented a drastic cut back, despite the fact that wages were declining in this period and the small occurrence of a financial collapse.

These years were not good for borrowers on two counts: firstly it was harder to obtain credit, and second more people were unable to see their wages out to the end of the month.

While Bank of England data reveals that consumer credit has risen in recent times by 3.5 per cent, it does not follow that mainstream banks have returned to providing for local communities again. Another report by CityWire shows that some 52 per cent of the total stock of credit lent comes from "other" financial institutions – the main one being payday lenders.

It is no wonder Wonga have recorded massive profits – we live in the Wonga age.

But is it their fault? Certainly we cannot blame the company for bank failings, the rising cost of living, and declining wages, things over which they can have no effect. But they do control the way in which they sell their loans.

Reports abound of Wonga selling loans to people whose financial situation means that the last thing they need is high cost credit. I wrote in these pages about Susan, the unemployed nurse who was granted several loans by the company to pay for bills and food. At no point was she signposted more affordable alternatives or given debt advice by the payday lender.

Wonga themselves point out that they use a very sophisticated algorithm to determine who it is reasonable to lend to. But it seems there are some deep flaws with this system. This is Money earlier this year reported having spoke to 50 people who had had loans taken out of their accounts – despite those people not having applied for loans themselves. 

To illustrate how much of a problem this could be, aside from potentially losing money and the hassle, This is Money spoke to Adrian Anderson, director of mortgage broker Anderson Harris, who pointed out that: “if [a] loan is taken out fraudulently and subsequently not repaid, this will be seen as a black mark on your credit file and could affect your ability to get a mortgage.”

The image that Wonga present of themselves is different to that of independent pollsters. The company boast that they have a great customer satisfaction record, however YouGov recently surveyed some of its borrowers and found that they scored worse than Ryanair.

Interviewing at random 89 borrowers, 24 per cent were satisfied, 41 per cent dissatisfied, and 35 per cent neutral.

Wonga are, indeed, a consequence of the deleterious financial situation in the UK, rather than a cause of it. No one would deny this. But their loans don't help the personal finances of many vulnerable today. They say they turn many people away. Perhaps true, but should they warn more people of the dangers of using their product? I say yes. In addition to financial health warnings being put on their adverts, I'd like to see Wonga advertising the services of ethical lenders such as credit unions – who are better placed to serve those financially vulnerable people in hock to them.

So now Wonga have made all that money, should they keep it? Far be it from me to tell a private company what to do with its money, but maybe they could offer some to the Church of England who, along with the archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, are busy making the case and building up the presence of credit unions. Though really I would prefer to see the company make less money in the future – after all, nobody should be comfortable with the idea of firms profiting from poverty. It may be legal, but is it right?

Hasn't Microsoft come a little late to the mobile party?

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Microsoft/Nokia deal

News this morning that Microsoft have bought Nokia’s mobile phone unit for £4.6bn is a natural step for the two companies, who have already been working together very closely on smartphones since originally signing a strategic partnership in February 2011. But the question of whether two companies which have both have been accused of falling behind in the smartphone race and resting on their laurels can really regain lost ground, is one that seems too little too late.

The deal, which will see Microsoft license Nokia’s brand to use on its products for a 10-year period, was hailed by Microsoft chief executive, Steve Ballmer, as: "…a bold step into the future — a win-win for employees, shareholders and consumers of both companies… We are excited and honored to be bringing Nokia’s incredible people, technologies and assets into our Microsoft family."

Nokia’s shares rose an incredible 45 per cent on the news and on first glance, it seems like Microsoft have made a canny move in purchasing the second-largest mobile phone maker in the world, who managed to ship 60.9 million units in the second quarter of 2013. However, the truth is that the lion’s share of these sales were feature phones, less powerful than their smartphone brethren, and a shrinking market sector, which actually resulted in Nokia’s sales dropping by 27 per cent from the same quarter in 2012.

But where Microsoft is really hoping to make some waves is with Nokia’s Lumia range of smartphones, which run Microsoft’s Windows Phone 8 operating system and have seen robust growth of 78 per cent year-on-year. In their announcement to the media, Microsoft made a big splash of the fact that the Lumia range was outselling Blackberry smartphones in 34 markets. This seems like a great achievement, but hides the fact that shipments are a country mile behind the likes of Apple’s iPhone and Samsung’s devices running Google’s Android operating system, of which more than 100m were sold in Q2 this year.

With such well developed competitors, it’s going to be a long hard road to fight their way back to the top, especially given the nature of the smartphone market today. It is not just the hardware and the operating system that informs a consumer’s decision on which phone to purchase, it is also the range of apps on offer. Apple and Google’s Android launched their app stores as far back as 2008 and have stolen a march on the Microsoft alternative. By July 2013, both Apple and Google celebrated app downloads in excess of 50 billion.

Microsoft’s Windows Phone Store, on the other hand, has yet to reach such dizzying heights, and this was one of the biggest criticisms of Nokia’s decision to embrace Microsoft’s operating system for its Lumia range. The first product to be launched in November 2011, the Lumia 800, was lauded as a compelling alternative to the duopoly of Apple iOS and Android powered phones, but many critics voiced concerns over the relatively limited range of apps available for the Windows platform. Although the situation has been constantly improving since then, it still lags a long way behind.

To make matters worse, Microsoft has something of an uneven track record as a hardware manufacturer. Traditionally a software developer, it has only had limited exposure in the hardware sector, most recently with the launch of its Surface tablet last year, which has failed to live up to expectations. The company was recently forced to slash the price of the tablet, after writing down $900m because of unsold stock of the Surface RT, more than the $853m it had earned for sales of the device.

Hopefully some of Nokia’s expertise in this area will rub off on the software giant, otherwise things could go from bad to worse in the mobile phone sector for both companies.

Why Left Unity could become Labour's UKIP

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Undominated by a central charismatic figure, and uncontrolled by a single far-left group, Left Unity is a movement that is being built from the bottom up.

"There is a spectre haunting Britain," Ken Loach warned a packed conference hall at the first national meeting of a political movement in its genesis. "It’s called Nigel Farage."

There will be few more haunted by the spectre of Farage’s UKIP than David Cameron as he heads into conference season. With the European Parliament elections looming – traditional high ground for UKIP – the Prime Minister will not be able to ignore a boisterous Tory right, both nervous and emboldened by Farage’s forward march and all the more dangerous for it.

Ed Miliband, by comparison, has had a relatively easy ride from the Labour left, comfortable in the assumption that there is no alternative. Miliband matches Conservative spending plans and where is the left? He refuses to pledge to repeal the bedroom tax and where is the left? He turns his back on the trade unionists who supported his leadership bid and where is the left?

Unfortunately for the working class people most devastated by the cuts, and for democracy as a whole, we now have three main parties fully signed up to an austerity agenda, while UKIP’s rise tugs the national debate even further to the right.

The left, divided and weak, has not yet been able to change the course of that debate, to make the case that it was not welfare spending that wrecked the economy, but a crisis of unfettered capitalism. But things are beginning to change.

In response to an appeal by Loach, almost 10,000 people have signed up to the Left Unity campaign to form a new party of the left, with around 100 local groups springing up organically across the country.

While for many this is not their first shot at uniting a fractured left and the painful experiences of the Socialist Alliance and George Galloway’s Respect are still fresh in their mind, there is a sense that there is something different about Left Unity. Undominated by a central charismatic figure, and uncontrolled by a single Trot group such as the SWP, Left Unity is a movement that is genuinely being built from the bottom up by local activists sick of austerity and fearful of the future of the NHS.

As Left Unity moves towards its founding conference at London’s Royal National Hotel on 30 November, the task of harmonising such a large choir of angry voices will not be easy. But the space is certainly there for a left-wing party to fill.

At the beginning of this year, when Cameron was attempting to see off the UKIP threat and blindside Labour by promising a referendum on Britain’s EU membership, Miliband tacked to the left with a 10p tax rate funded by a mansion tax. The result of failed austerity and Labour offering the glimmer of an alternative was an 11-point poll lead for Miliband’s party. Since Labour’s capitulation to the Tory agenda and a summer of silence, that poll lead has collapsed.
 
The space is there to the left, the votes are there, and if Labour will not fill it, then Left Unity will. 
 
Under first-past-the-post, parties to the left of Labour face an uphill struggle to gain electoral representation. But if Left Unity achieves what Loach and 10,000 others hope it will – struggling every day among the communities most affected by the cuts, defending public services, making a difference to the lives of the most vulnerable people in society and making the case for a more equal society – then it will make Labour fight hard for every single working class vote. 
 
Labour may soon face the threat of its own UKIP. And if the left can just hold it together, then it will no longer go ignored. 
 
Salman Shaheen is a journalist who has written for the Times of India, New Statesman, New Internationalist, Liberal Conspiracy and Left Foot Forward

Reviews Round-up: Badinter, Moran, Dikötter and de la Pava

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The critics' verdicts on new book about TV viewing habits and the Chinese Revolution, as well as the reception of Sergio de la Pava's self-published debut "A Naked Singularity".

The Conflict: How Modern Motherhood Undermines the Status of Women, by Elizabeth Badinter

First published in 2010 by French historian and philosopher Elizabeth Badinter, The Conflict describes the author’s issues with contemporary maternal culture. Badinter not only disputes the ‘nature-is-best’ attitude at the core of modern parenting advice, but holds that this approach actually has a significantly negative impact on the women who are affected by its fundamental tenets.

Claudia Casper, for The Globe and Mail, gives a good overview of the ‘new maternalism’ that Badinter is so opposed to. Studies from biology, psychology and anthropology converged on the view that mothers should: “breastfeed on demand, be responsive to the child's feelings and every need, and put their own need to succeed, to socialize and have passionate sex lives a distant second to the needs of their children”. Casper draws attention to Badinter’s conclusion that it is “the overwhelmingly intensive demands of this new mothering” that is the “reason women are delaying having children, having fewer, or choosing to have none”.

According to Rachel Hewitt of The Guardian, the book “shows that naturalism is a philosophy, not an objective truth”. Hewitt highlights the domination of the modern maternal culture by naturalism; specifically, the impact that this has on mothers through the mechanism of guilt. This situation “can generate extreme guilt in those who do not, or cannot, live up to its high standards”. The danger is that this “encourages women to equate the extent of their self-sacrifice to their success as mothers”.

Diane Johnson, for the New York Review of Books, notes that part of the naturalism advocated involves: making women feel guilty for choosing work over motherhood; for returning to work post-birth; for using child-care; and for choosing to not breastfeed. These ‘attendant strictures’ have “the effect of controlling women and seeking to reconcile them to their lack of independence and worldly influence, binding them to their place (the home), keeping them economically disadvantaged (out of the workplace), and frustrating their individual talents and ambitions”.

Armchair Nation: An Intimate History of Britain in Front of the TV, by Joe Moran

Armchair Nation is a small encyclopaedia of television. It covers a vast range of material and milestones in limited depth, but maintains the reader’s attention. The author, Joe Moran, is a newspaper journalist and professor of English and Cultural History. The depth of research brought from his academic background shows through, but without being overbearing.

Dominic Sandbrook of The Sunday Times, highlights the effort made by Moran to give a balanced view of the impact that television has had on society. Everyone is familiar with the accusations against television. One of the most common of these is it stupefying effect. “Almost from the very first broadcast, high-minded types rushed to dismiss it as the opium of the masses, dulling the senses and debasing the intellect”. However, Sandbrook also notes the positive societal effects of television, such as cultural enrichment. “In rural Worcestershire, one writer overheard farm labourers chatting about Margot Fonteyn and Shakespeare, having come across them by accident after switching on for the boxing”.

Phil Hogan from The Guardian, summarises a variety of anecdotes from the first audibly transmitted airing of the word ‘fuck’ to the reinvention of snooker “with black tie and absurd new rituals”. The rebirth of snooker displays, according to Hogan, the power of television in “its repetition and reach, in its restless urge to replace one novelty with the next – to normalise the unusual and reshape a nation's conventions and tolerances”.

John Van der Kiste, writing for thebookbag.com, applauds Moran’s selection skills: “the author has done a sterling job in paring it down to the essentials”. Kiste highlights the section in which reality television is “castigated”, refering particularly to The X Factor: “a programme which claimed to be empowering but was actually infantilising, and one which flattered viewers by reminding them constantly that the result was in their hands, while getting them to pay to provide free product testing on new artists”.

The Tragedy of Liberation, by Frank Dikötter

After winning the Samuel Johnson Prize for his 2011 book Mao’s Great Famine, a study of the Great Leap Forward, Frank Dikötter tackles the foundation of the People’s Republic of China in his new work The Tragedy of Liberation. Contrary to many historians, Dikötter argues that the foundations of the society were just as disturbing as the subsequent decades, in a system characterised by unrelenting violence and state force.

Rana Mitter, writing for the Guardian, is impressed by this “angry” book, detailing the “violence and used coercion, both psychological and physical” employed by the state during its foundation. He is pleased by the emphasis placed on the rural population, commenting that “the history of China’s urban population has attracted more attention over the years, but Dikötter forces the gaze back to China's peasants, who were promised much from the revolution and often betrayed.” Despite his slight disappointment that “his analysis does leave space for a continuing debate on the reasons for the new regime's stability”, Mitter concludes that “this excellent book is horrific but essential reading for all who want to understand the darkness that lies at the heart of one of the world's most important revolutions.”

TH Barrett of the Independent, however, laments the source difficulties inherent in any research on this period, as “after most foreigners had been removed from China following Liberation, the only English-language commentators left were the handful of "foreign friends" nurtured by the new regime, whose knowledge of events was at best limited.” As such, Barrett notes that “not every detail in this book seems spot-on” and “time and again the footnotes lead back to official Chinese archives, often not readily accessible to foreign historians. The picture is therefore technically only ‘partial’”.

For Michael Sheridan in the Sunday Times, the work is “groundbreaking”, “exhaustive” and “revelatory” as he deems it “unsparing in its detail, relentless in its research, unforgiving in its judgements”. Although the sheer wealth of detail “sometimes becomes overwhelming”, Sheridan concludes that “mainstream academic scholarship must be revised in the light of Dikötter’s work”

A Naked Singularity, by Sergio de la Pava

Sergio de la Pava originally self-published his debut novel A Naked Singularity in 2008, but has only just come to mainstream attention, winning the PEN prize for debut fiction this month. The ambitious novel follows the nervous breakdown of an overworked 24-year-old public defender, Casi, rendered predominantly in dialogue and characterised by long digressions.

The Guardian’s Stuart Kelly gave the debut a positive review, saying he had “yearned for this kind of exuberant, precise fiction”. He calls it a “compelling” but doesn’t by any means claim that it is without fault. But although de la Pava’s “ambition might outweigh execution” and “the shifts in tone between appear awkward”, in the end, Kelly would “rather have the raggedy brilliance of A Naked Singularity over the pursed and smirking lips of much contemporary British fiction any day of the week.” He concludes “A Naked Singularity poses moral questions far more thorny and vexing than most.” Nevertheless, he wished de la Pava “had an editor”.

The Wall Street Journal was similarly taken in by this debut’s raw appeal. Not put off by the lack imperfections, the reviewer declares that “The weird, restless, ungainly structure is the book's greatest asset ... Whatever the book loses in polish it amply repays in its uncompromising originality.” To sum up, the reviewer quotes a line from the book itself, to declare it “beautiful and ugly simultaneously.”

In SlateMagazine,Paul Ford echoes comments about ambition and is also charmed by de la Pava’s humour. He comments that “even while the lives it describes are often bleak, the book is funny, consistently so”. All in all, Ford deems it to be “an explication on the quality of perfection, and more broadly, on the nature of talent.”

Penny Arcade reopens the "dickwolves" controversy

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Mike Krahulik: "I think that pulling the dickwolves merchandise was a mistake".

Penny Arcade, the gaming webcomic which has expanded into a multinational brand covering everything from journalism to conventions, yesterday plunged itself back into controversy by re-opening a wound from long ago.

In 2010, the "Sixth Slave" comic ran on the site, with a pretty blunt gag about being "raped to sleep by the dickwolves". That sparked a small amount of protest, if nothing else showing that 2010 was, in some ways, a surprisingly different time to 2013. Penny Arcade's response was another comic, a blog post and comments making many of the same arguments that still occur in disputes over rape jokes today: that rape jokes are no different from bestiality jokes, that no-one rapes because of a joke, and that it's just comedy anyway.

As is the nature of massively-distributed online arguments, the whole thing spiralled out of any one person's control. It's now far too big to summarise, but if you're interested in what went down from then on, a comprehensive – if obviously subjective – timeline has been compiled.

But perhaps the most questionable response of Penny Arcade themselves was to start selling "Team Dickwolves" t-shirts. Even taking the pair's defence, that there's no problem because the comic features "an imaginary person… raped imaginarily by a mythological creature whose every limb was an erect phallus", at face value, selling merchandise putting that creature front and centre was a needlessly provocative move.

A month and a half later (this now six months after the original strip), the merchandise was pulled from the store. That wasn't the end of the matter, not by a long shot. In fact, search traffic for "dickwolves" peaked a month later as Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins, the artist and writer of the comic respectively, continued to defend their initial reaction. The discussion bubbled on for months, but as a mark of contrition it was important. The issue eventually faded away rather than coming to any natural ending, until yesterday, when it returned with a vengeance.

Yesterday, during the closing stages of PAX, Penny Arcade's convention in Seattle, Krahulik told a panel that he thought "that pulling the dickwolves merchandise was a mistake," to cheers from the audience. Robert Khoo, the company's President of Business Development, who was acting as chair for the discussion and had been behind the decision to stop selling in the first place, agreed, saying that doing so was "a way of engaging", which they now try not to do "in these type of things".

For many gamers, the dickwolves debate three years ago was the first time they had been introduced to a number of concepts, from the ideas of triggering material and rape culture. Some reacted defensively, as people being exposed to these ideas still do today; but others examined the opposition and saw where it was coming from.

Today, that excuse is not available. These ideas have been mainstreamed to the extent that Krahulik and Holkins cannot get away with pretending that it's only a vocal minority who see problems with using rape as a punchline which don't extend to problems with using murder in the same way. But the last three years have not seen the pair toning down the rhetoric. From Holkins writing about the "censorship" of criticising a game's exaggerated female characters to Krahulik being dismissive of trans people (leading to a $20,000 donation to the Trevor project), there have been no end of sub-dickwolves controversies, causing one prominent indie developer to pull out of their shows entirely. The Financial Post's Daniel Kaszor summed them up in an article titled "Penny Arcade needs to fix its Krahulik problem".

But by reopening the wound that first suggested that all was not well at Penny Arcade, Krahulik has also firmly reopened the debate about whether the pair can be trusted with the power they have in gaming. The contagion of the rest of their properties starts at the top, and it's looking less and less likely that they can avoid getting part of the taint. The PA report is a good news organisation; PAX conventions seem like genuinely good fun; and Child's Play raised over $5m to buy games for children's hospitals last year. All three started with a boost from the PA brand, but will it become a millstone dragging them down instead?


It's About Time again: What happened when a film critic discussed ill-considered sex in a Richard Curtis movie

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Last week Ryan Gilbey expressed discomfort at a scene in Richard Curtis's new time travel rom-com About Time, and was astonished by the responses he received.

When I blogged last week about a scene in Richard Curtis’s time-travel rom-com About Time which I found morally dubious, it prompted the sort of stimulating online back-and-forth that’s useful in reminding one that internet exchanges aren’t entirely combative and disparaging in nature. (That said, I was accused of “mansplaining” and of writing “a terrible article” that should never have been published. My mother, there, supportive as ever…)

The scene with which I took issue featured Tim, the time-travelling hero played by Domhnall Gleeson, revising repeatedly his first night with Mary (Rachel McAdams) in order to emerge from the encounter with his sexual confidence intact. He has sex with her multiple times, rewinding the evening each time in order to do so, and improving immeasurably on his first rather brief attempt. However, she remains oblivious to the fact that he has effectively used her as a glorified blow-up doll on which to practice his technique. They marry halfway through the picture, but she never discovers what he did to her, and it certainly isn’t an issue to the filmmakers.

On the NS site, Mukkinese felt the point was all a bit right-on: “Good grief, talk about middle-class sensibilities run wild. Get a grip. It would only be rape if she did not consent each time she had intercourse, not each time he did.” This, though, was my problem with the film. Mary is given no such opportunity to consent to those multiple revisions. The privileged knowledge rests entirely with Tim. He gets one—no, several—over on her. Rather than focusing on the man, who has all the power in this situation, I thought we should consider the woman, who has none. It’s comparable to a man having sex repeatedly with a woman suffering from short-term memory loss, only for him to present each time as the first. If she gave her consent on every occasion, it could only be without full possession of the facts.

Still on the NS site, Graham said that Tim’s behaviour “could … be construed as him wanting to do better for her benefit.” Ron responded insightfully: “I don’t think this is entirely the case … This sequence maps onto a more general cultural discourse in which sex is something men ‘do’ to women, female pleasure is something men ‘give’ to women, and female orgasm stands as ‘proof’ of men’s sexual prowess.”

On Twitter, @amuchmoreexotic pointed out that “each version of her does know what’s being done to her” since Tim is “travelling in between realities, but in each one she consents,” though he did concede that this was “arguably under a mistaken assumption.” In other words, while she consents to each individual act of intercourse, she has no access to the bigger picture. The audience does have that access, though, which makes us complicit in Tim’s deception and increases the sleaziness of the scene. @amuchmoreexotic had a question: “so what happens to the version of her he prematurely ejaculates in? When he time travels is that one destroyed?” The answer is yes. Each new version of reality that Tim creates by time-travelling over-writes the previous one. “So he’s killing alternative versions of the woman every time he travels,” @amuchmoreexotic continued. “Murder, not rape, is the problem here.”

I liked the procedural coolness brought to bear on the whole conundrum by @StephenTHughes: “The complainant needs to have had the capacity (in this case the understanding) to make a choice about whether or not to take part in the sexual activity *at the time in question*. Tricky with two timelines! I guess with time travel you ought to need capacity to consent in both timelines. And one could argue that she didn’t have capacity to consent in his timeline because of the deception as to nature of the act. Perhaps not enough case law involving time travel to decide if rape or not?” Let’s say the jury’s out.

About Time is released 4 September.

How will the Tories justify Farage's exclusion from the leaders' debates?

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Andy Coulson's warning that the UKIP leader has a "bit of a point" when he demands to be included highlights Cameron's dilemma.

Ahead of his phone-hacking trial on 28 October, Andy Coulson has taken to the pages of GQ again to offer David Cameron some free (and no doubt welcome) advice on the Tories' UKIP problem. Despite a slump in support over the summer, Farage's party is still polling at around 12 per cent, a level more than high enough to give Conservative strategists sleepless nights. 

Among other things, Coulson warns that Farage may have a "bit of a point" when he argues that a UKIP win in next year's European elections would justify his inclusion in the leaders' debates in 2015, predicting a Twitter campaign to ensure his participation. A recent ComRes poll found that 54 per cent of people believe Farage "should be offered the opportunity to take part alongside the other main party leaders".

The question of how the Tories should respond to the UKIP leader's inevitable demand to be included (even if his party fails to win the EU contest) is already prompting much discussion. Conservative commentators have long argued that one of the reasons the Tories failed to win a majority at the last election was the inclusion of Nick Clegg, the "none of the above" candidate, in the TV debates and Cameron is understandably keen to avoid a repeat in the case of Farage. 

In an attempt to maximise the PM's discomfort, Labour has consciously avoided opposing the inclusion of the UKIP leader in the debates. "We don't him to be in them [the debates] but we want Cameron to be the one who says 'no'", one senior strategist explained to me recently. 

Cameron has already moved to try and pre-emptively exclude Farage from the debates, telling the House magazine earlier this year: "Obviously, we have to decide on this nearer the time, but the TV debates should be about, you know, the parties that are going to form the government, in my view."

The PM makes a reasonable point. Though casually described as the UK's "third largest party" after outpolling the Lib Dems in recent months, UKIP still have no MPs and will be lucky to improve on this performance at the next election. But it is likely to prove harder to justify the exclusion of Farage than it was to justify the absence of Alex Salmond in 2010. In the case of the SNP, the three main parties could at least argue that only those parties competing to form the next Westminster government should be included, but this argument doesn't apply to UKIP. If the party is polling at least five per cent in 2015 (the threshold normally required for representation under a proportional system) then momentum will grow for Farage to be included, not least because it would make for good TV. 

The most likely outcome is that Cameron will veto Farage's inclusion on the basis that UKIP, unlike the Lib Dems, has no prospect of being in government after 2015. Tory strategist rightly calculate that the political cost of excluding him is less than the cost of including him.

But an alternative argument that some Tory MPs are likely to make is that the debates should only feature those leaders who could become prime minister. In an intriguing tweet during last Sunday's German leaders' debate, Conservative whip Greg Hands noted: "Interesting that German TV debate only has the leaders of the two parties who could conceivably be the Chancellor. No FDP, Greens, etc". 

After the precedent set in 2010, it's unlikely that Cameron would have the chutzpah to exclude Clegg, but that won't stop a significant number in his party attempting to do so. 

Girls shouldn't feel like they have to "perform like pornstars"

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A problem which affects all of society has its roots in classrooms and on the internet, writes Frances Ryan.

When I was 15, I bought a t-shirt with the words "Porn star" on it. I remember there was choice, in the shop at least. Multiple t-shirts with multiple wordings, all drawn with silver glitter that said this was somehow fun. Did I want to be a playboy bunny or a porn star? I decided porn star. It was light pink, I recall. As if feminine and sweet.

That was 2000. Before Facebook, before mobiles let someone from school send someone else a porn link, before social media and news sites showed pictures of women who seemed to want to be sexually exposed and those who didn't but were anyway

In 2013, girls in Britain feel like they have to “look and perform like porn stars” to be “liked and valued by boys”, research from the NSPCC has said today.

There are a lot of words said about porn and the sexualisation of young people nowadays. In some ways, too many. We can drown ourselves in ‘pornification’ and other terms that, to the average teenage girl, are nothing when it comes down to it. Girls feel an expectation to “look” and “perform” like porn stars in order to please boys. I think for a minute we can just pause on that. 

This isn't just an issue for girls (“just” – as if a problem for girls isn't a problem at all). Almost a third surveyed believed porn dictated how young people had to behave in a relationship. In the film, the one with the penis may be the one in control, but back in the teenage bedroom, I doubt anyone could claim it’s any less harmful for a boy to see himself as the one who has to dominate than for a girl to see herself as the one to be dominated. 

And that’s what they see. “Performing like a porn star” would, technically, be having sex and being paid to have it filmed. I think we all know this is not what young girls mean when they say they feel they have to behave this way. “Performing like a porn star”, in the context of what the majority of porn shows, is passively conforming to whatever desires the man (or men) in the room want to use you for. 

You don’t have to watch (misogynistic) porn to see this. Miley Cyrus, 20, at an award ceremony, “twerking” her seemingly naked arse against the groin of a self-satisfied, fully clothed thirtysomething man. Women’s magazines that offer sex tips that make sex seem like an ordeal women have to go through, and will get right or wrong. National newspapers including a page for breasts, whilst casually describing other women as meat. Bad porn exacerbates a culture that says a woman’s sexuality is whatever a man wants it to be. It didn’t create it or suddenly become the only outlet for it. 

Put it like this and it's less young girls feeling like they have to act like a porn star and more “young girls feeling like they have to act like all the girls flooding through the media who feel like they have to act like a porn star.' Not to get a boyfriend, of course. Just to have a job or even get a mention. I'm not sure which aspect is more depressing. But I do know that attempting to separate them – as if what young people see in porn exists in a vacuum, apart from Page 3 and MTV – is going to help no one. 

Teenagers should be having compulsory sex education that talks about consent and mutual desire, and yes, porn. Compulsory sex education that’s updated to acknowledge the Internet exists. The rest of society, whilst we’re at it, might want to start addressing the cultural framework that informs it all. Where the women used in porn are just one end of a spectrum that silently, busily filters through schools, living rooms, and shops.

I never did wear the t-shirt. I was an impostor in a role I wasn't sure I even wanted to inhabit. The glitter loses its shine in the end. Quicker than you can imagine. 

Twelve steps to stop tax avoidance

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Tax avoidance is now endemic, with companies and the wealthy often paying derisory amounts of tax. Public anger has so far met with hollow rhetoric, handwringing and vested interest rationalisations. Robust steps to stamp it out are needed.

Today's tax avoidance goes far beyond loopholes and clever schemes. An elaborate, interlocking system for "legitimately" not paying tax allows vast amounts of money to trample over "official" tax and the economy.  

Tax revenues are being cored out. Britain is losing out on £60-85bn in company and personal taxes across the spectrum from "legitimate" avoidance, through "offshore" wealth, to outright evasion. Each £10bn lost is equivalent to the income taxes from two million average households.

Meanwhile taxes on company profits and returns from wealth (unearned income, capital gains etc) make disproportionately small contributions to the public purse. 

Avoidance gives larger, multi-national and "offshore" companies illegitimate market and competitive advantages. And gives overseas companies and offshore/avoidance "finance" all the cards in acquiring, running or asset stripping companies and markets. The effects feed down the entire tax, supply and value chains, distorting the economy and compounding the coring out of British jobs and businesses.  

And it's corrosive. Companies and people succeed for detrimental reasons, and everyone else comes under pressure to do the same. Those avoiding tax wrap themselves in the letter of the law and their "duty” to take advantage, even while, under threat of even more disappearing down the rabbit-hole, governments are pressured into reducing taxes even further. 

Endemic avoidance relies on means legitimated by the tax system:

  • Using companies, trusts and partnerships to shelter earnings or assets.
  • Overseas residency of people or companies, particularly in tax havens. 
  • Exploiting tax differences within the tax regime and between jurisdictions.
  • "Offshore" supply, production or ownership of companies or trade.
  • Transfer pricing; moving sales, costs or profits between subsidiaries or jurisdictions.

Criteria, rules and enforcement are then permissive. Nominal compliance requirements work hand-in-glove with opaque, fragmented financial reporting to subvert any rationale or constraints. And we permit, even encourage, a network of banks, tax havens, secrecy regimes, accountants and lawyers acting as the systems pro-active facilitators and cheerleaders. 

The Government's present “biggest ever crackdown” continues the tradition of curbing loopholes and avoidance only in the narrow "abuse" sense. Legitimated avoidance has been reaffirmed and extended (in parallel to cutting official corporation tax for large companies by a third). Indeed, changes to taxing earnings from overseas subsidiaries are an open license.

But international consensus that action is urgently needed is growing. In July all G20 countries, including Britain, endorsed the OECD's preliminary plan for tackling avoidance. This identified key problems but needs translating into concrete policies and action on the ground by national governments.

Curtailing British avoidance needs to simultaneously cut away its legitimating means, limit its advantages, make it harder to disguise and significantly strengthen enforcement. Specifically:

  1. Limit or remove the legal standing of – blacklist – companies or ownership from jurisdictions with cannibalistic tax and secrecy regimes (with "restricted" and "banned" categories).
  2. Restrict qualifying criteria for offshore and residency statuses.  Overseas ("offshore") ownership should be substantive not nominal; "non-domicile" status limited and finite in time; and "non-resident" status exclude those with lives, businesses or wealth in essence in or derived from the UK.  
  3. Curtail the benefits and permissiveness of offshore, ownership and residency statuses.  Non-domicile, non-resident, trusts and partnership advantages all need cutting back. Similarly, reverse the preferential treatment of "overseas" profits and firewall between remitted and non-remitted earnings.   
  4. Increase the costs and disadvantages of ownership or residency statuses. Tax charges can be increased, in particular made more progressive. Possibly (re)introduce an exit tax for British companies or citizens taking overseas residency, relocating or emigrating. 
  5. Require companies (and appropriate individuals) to provide transparent country-by-country accounts. Furthermore, the accounting and tax presumption for the assessment and validity of inter-group or cross-border charges would be strict apportionment of national sales and actual costs.
  6. If it exists, happens or is owned here, it's taxed here and taxed the same. For instance, tax UK on-line/remote sales where the sale is made; rather than as at present often "supplied" from "overseas" to avoid VAT and/or "booked" in another country to avoid company taxes.   
  7. Inhibit cross-jurisdiction costs, charges and tax exemptions that can be deducted for tax purposes, particularly between associated companies. These must be necessary, substantive and proportionate; with specific limitations on inter-group costs, debt, intellectual property and goodwill charges.
  8. Automatic information exchanges with other countries; not just existing by-request arrangements (where the number of UK requests is miniscule). Joining the existing European network is a good start.  
  9. Confront avoidance facilitators and promoters. Bar banks licensed or operating in Britain from operating in or providing facilities to British citizens or companies from "restricted jurisdictions". Require UK financial companies to automatically disclose all offshore accounts and holdings. And make advisory firms directly liable for tax penalties from avoidance they have promoted or facilitated. 
  10. Vigorous, properly empowered enforcement. Enact robust general anti-avoidance provisions. Significantly enhance HMRC's assessment powers, resources and personnel. And increase tax avoidance penalties, with both principals and intermediaries liable.  
  11. Major tax reform. Avoidance inducing disparities of tax treatment join improving economic performance, major fiscal problems and greater fairness in making reform long overdue. Today's complexity of taxes and rates needs replacing with consistent, equal treatment of all types of earnings – employment, unearned incomes, company profits and capital gains – while rebalancing between over-taxing of work and under-taxing big companies, wealth and "finance".
  12. Change the permissive and fatalistic culture. Given the corrosive damage being done, leaders and government can and should be taking vigorous action. Not paying proper taxes and mediating avoidance should cause explicit censure and sanctions. This includes recognising the City's complicity in wholesale tax avoidance from other countries as well as Britain.

But needed most is the political will and determination to take on the powerful vested interests that influence and lobby remorselessly to protect and extend today"s pernicious system. 

Does anyone support the coalition's lobbying bill?

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The coalition has succeeded in uniting the TUC, the Taxpayers' Alliance, Labour List, ConservativeHome, Caroline Lucas and Zac Goldsmith against the legislation.

With remarkable ineptitude, the government has succeeded in uniting an extraordinary coalition of political interests against its lobbying bill. Both the left and the right are concerned that the bill (which covers just 1% of lobbying activity) will gag charities, NGOs, think-tanks, trade unions, blogs and other groups by imposing new spending limits on political campaigning in the year before a general election and redefining as electoral activity anything that could affect the outcome of an election (such as criticism of government policy) even if it not intended to do so.

Any organisation that spends more than £5,000 and that engages in political campaigning will be forced to register with the Electoral Commission (with all the accompanying bureaucracy) or or face being shut down. 

As I explain in my politics column in this week's NS, the bill is primarily intended as an assault on trade union funding (Unison was the largest third-party spender in 2010).

 Masterminded by George Osborne, the legislation is designed as a pre-election gift to Tory candidates who have long complained about the union-funded phone banks, leaflets and adverts enjoyed by their Labour counterparts. The bill will reduce the total cap on third-party expenditure in the year before a general election from £989,000 to £390,000 and the cap on constituency spending to £9,750 and broaden the definition of spending to include staff time and office costs, rather than merely the "marginal cost" of leaflets and other materials.

Behind the legalese, the implications are dramatic. The TUC has warned that it could be forced to cancel its 2014 annual congress and any national demonstrations in the 12 months before the next election to avoid breaching the spending limit. 

But so sloppy was the drafting of the bill (ominously for the coalition, it is being piloted by former health secretary Andrew Lansley) that it's far from just trade unions that are concerned. While the government is still likely to pass the legislation in time for the 2015 election, it will now likely only do so by making significant amendments.

Here are some members of the eclectic coalition demanding immediate changes. 

Zac Goldsmith

Douglas Carswell

Ed Miliband 

Caroline Lucas

Guido Fawkes

Labour List

"This whole bill is a brutal attack on free speech and the ability of any group that isn’t a political party to campaign. It utterly destroys any argument that Cameron truly wants to see a Big Society – and it’ll crush those who want to see a real political debate about issues that matter at election time."

ConservativeHome

"The Bill is so loose in its language and so vague in its drafting that anyone who spends over £5,000 on anything that can be in any way said to potentially affect an election will be caught up in the rules it lays out."

The Taxpayers' Alliance

"The bill is a serious threat to independent politics that will stifle free and open democratic debate."

38 Degrees

"The proposed gagging law would have a chilling effect on British democracy and our right to speak up on issues that matter to us."

Greenpeace

"The most pernicious assault on campaign groups in living memory."

TUC general secretary Frances O'Grady

"It's an open secret at Westminster that this rushed Bill has nothing to do with cleaning up lobbying or getting big money out of politics. Instead it is a crude and politically partisan attack on trade unions, particularly those who affiliate to the Labour Party.

"But it has been drawn so widely that its chilling effect will be to shut down dissent for the year before an election. No organisation that criticises a government policy will be able to overdraw their limited ration of dissent without fearing a visit from the police.

"Of course not everyone agrees with TUC views and policies, but I expect there to be wide revulsion at this attack on free speech worthy of an authoritarian dictatorship. This will not just gag unions, but any group or organisation that disagrees with government - or opposition - policies."

The British Medical Association

"The new rules are complicated and will create uncertainty for organisations trying to comply. Worryingly, there are fears the Bill could affect the ability of organisations to speak out. Given all the recent reviews that have taken place in the NHS about patient safety, it would be very regressive if organisations were unable speak out about poor care in the run-up to an election.

"Needless to say, if the Bill is passed, its impact could be deeply disturbing, especially as it raises concerns about what this would mean for freedom of expression — and it is hard to see how that would benefit democracy."

Helen Mountfield QC, Matrix legal chambers 

"This uncertainty about what the law requires is likely to have a chilling effect on freedom of expression, by putting small organisations and their trustees/directors in fear of criminal penalty if they speak out on matters of public interest and concern."

National Council for Voluntary Organisations

"At the moment you have to intend to influence an election to be in trouble. But the wording is being changed to ‘if you have the effect’ of influencing an election. What is really dangerous about this is that you may not intend to influence the outcome of a local election — yet the punishment is you could go to prison. We think this legislation will make people frightened of speaking out."

The Electoral Commission

"The Bill both widens the scope of the current rules on non-party campaigning that affects parties and groups of candidates, and imposes some additional controls on such campaigning. In our view, as drafted, the Bill raises some significant issues of workability that you may wish to explore at Second Reading.

Areas that you may wish to focus on in particular include that:

• the Bill creates significant regulatory uncertainty for large and small organisations that campaign on, or even discuss, public policy issues in the year before the next general election, and imposes significant new burdens on such organisations 

• the Bill effectively gives the Electoral Commission a wide discretion to interpret what activity will be regulated as political campaigning. It is likely that some of our readings of the law will be contentious and challenged, creating more uncertainty for those affected. While we as the independent regulator should be free to decide when the rules have been broken, and how to deal with breaches of the rules, we do not think it is appropriate for us to have a wide discretion over what activity is covered by the rules

• some of the new controls in the Bill may in practice be impossible to enforce, and it is important that Parliament considers what the changes will achieve in reality, and balances this against the new burdens imposed by the Bill on campaigners."

Watch: Terry Pratchett, A S Byatt and Terry Eagleton on fantasy, fiction and desire

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What can fantasy tell us about the ways in which we perceive reality? Terry Pratchett, A S Byatt and Terry Eagleton discuss fantasy as a vast and powerful mode of thought.

Fantasy is often seen as existing outside higher culture, with little to contribute to our lives. It is considered by many as little more than throwaway entertainment, but is this an error? Might our creation of fantasies be central to how we perceive the world, and even gesture towards the limits of our understanding?

Booker Prize-winning author A S Byatt has drawn heavily on fantasy, sci-fi and myth in her fiction and essays, writing that "fantasy is something we can’t do without. It is an essential aspect of reality."

Sharing Byatt’s view of fantasy as "a way of thinking about things", Terry Pratchett believes "fantasy makes a new world from which we can see this one" while acknowledging that "it can be dangerous". Pratchett has sold over 85 million fantasy novels around the world, and is loved by adults and children alike.

Terry Eagleton is not only a Pratchett fan but also this country’s foremost literary theorist and critic. A Marxist thinker, he is opposed to the notion that the left has always favoured realist fiction, highlighting the prominence of fantasy and utopianism at historical moments when societies have most needed to imagine new ways of operating.

But are their fantasies the same? Can they agree on what the essential point of fantasy is, or where the distinction lies between fantasy and fiction – and reality?

In this debate above chaired by journalist and broadcaster Mary Ann Sieghart, held at this year’s How The Light Gets In festival at Hay, these three brilliant thinkers ask why it is we crave fantastical worlds. They ponder what makes good fantasy writing. Does it provide writers and readers with incomparable freedom, they ask, or does liberty from the logic of the "real world" simply mean new rules must be invented and followed?

Byatt compares the "truth" of fiction with historical and scientific truths, while Pratchett examines the transformation of science fiction into science fact, and the pattern of news stories informing fantasy writing. Eagleton explores the Freudian necessity of fantasy and fiction in our perception of the world, claiming that they are economically woven into our society.

Patrick Driver

Amazon offers free ebooks to owners of print books

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Keeping up the fire metaphors, the programme is called "MatchBook".

Amazon has announced a new programme offering free and cut-price eBooks to people who have previously purchased print editions from the site. In keeping with the company's literally inflammatory naming convention for their eBook brand, the program will be called "Kindle Matchbook". The company's announcement reads:

For thousands of qualifying books, your past, present, and future print-edition purchases will soon allow you to buy the Kindle edition for $2.99, $1.99, $0.99, or free… going all the way back to 1995 when Amazon first opened its online bookstore.

It is not yet clear whether or when the company will roll out the programme to countries outside the US, but it assuming it can get publishers elsewhere on board, it can only be a matter of time. And as TechCrunch's Darrell Etherington writes:

Amazon is pushing this not only as a great value-add service for users… but also as a way for publishers to get renewed revenue out of a previous sale – making it possible for someone who bought a book up to 8 years ago over again, who might otherwise have been happy to settle for just owning the paper copy could be a source of considerable additional windfall revenue for bookmakers.

In that reading of the service, it occupies a similar niche in the book ecosystem as iTunes Match does for music, encouraging publishers to lift restrictions they would never contemplate in return for an entirely new revenue source.

But it's also a good partner to Amazon's Kindle service overall. One of the stumbling blocks of eBooks has always been that a major potential benefit – not having to store hundreds of books all around your home – takes years to accrue. Even if you go all-digital from the moment you purchase an ereader, there are still all the books you've already bought lying around. Amazon's pitch is that you can use your "Matchbook" to get rid of all of those in one fell swoop. (If the book-burning metaphors make you feel uncomfortable, just imagine what they do to publishers.)

Of course, at another level, it falls into that increasingly full category of "Amazon loss leaders", just like the Kindles themselves do. Amazon's quest to become the biggest company in the world which doesn't make a profit continues.


Labour would look at banning HGVs from city centres in peak times to protect cyclists

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Maria Eagle lays out the party's cycling manifesto.

Following on from her New Statesman piece in which she hinted at support for measures to force HGV drivers to take care of cyclists, Labour's Maria Eagle has laid out Labour's cycling manifesto in full. At a debate to mark the launch of the All Party Parliamentary Cycling Group's report "Get Britain Cycling", she announced seven major points which the party support:

  1. "Ending the stop-start approach to supporting cycling" by funding the cycling plan on a national, long-term basis.
  2. Ensuring that cycle safety assessments are included in all new transport schemes.
  3. The restoration of national targets to cut deaths and serious injuries, as well as new targets to increase levels of cycling.
  4. Extend to England the Welsh legislation setting out "clear duties on local authorities to support cycling".
  5. Supporting cycling amongst children and young people.
  6. "Ensure that justice is done and seen to be done in cases where collisions lead to the death of cyclists and serious injuries."
  7. Looking at the case for taking HGVs out of cities at the busiest times, and requiring safety measures such as sensors, extra mirrors and safety bars on all heavy goods vehicles.

Her full contribution to the debate can be found at Road.cc.

Even a promise to look at the case for restricting HGV traffic will be music to the ears of cyclists in crowded city centres. As Hayley Campbell wrote last month, finding yourself next to a massive lorry as it turns the corner isn't something which ever feels safe. Eagle ended her speech calling for cross-party support for the proposals, and that's a call cyclists should be echoing.

The Telegraph needs a non-sexist approach to promoting sex-ed

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Clare Perry's campaign for a porn filter might undermine her support for better sex ed, writes Zoe Margolis.

The Daily Telegraph has today announced a campaign for better sex education in schools. Fronted by Conservative MP Claire Perry, the Prime Minister’s advisor on children, who argues that sex education needs to challenge the “negative impact of online pornography”, the campaign’s objectives are to push for an overhaul of sex education in schools.

As an advocate of mandatory sex education and an ambassador for Brook the young people’s sexual health charity, I support any demands for improvement of sex education.

However, the problem is not porn, it’s the lack of consistent, decent sex and relationships education (SRE) in all schools. Ms Perry states: “…the Education Secretary Michael Gove’s changes to the national curriculum that aim to teach children from primary school upwards how to behave safely and responsibly in a digital world are so sensible and welcome.” It’s utterly insincere of Ms Perry to focus on the supposed threat of online pornography, whilst ignoring that her own party, the Conservatives, in June of this year, actually voted against making personal, social, health and economic (PSHE) education, including sex and relationships education (SRE), statutory in state schools.

The Department for Education states: “Our recent PSHE review found that the existing guidance offers a sound framework for sex and relationship education in school.” But by voting against Clause 20, which included teaching young people about consent – arguably the most important aspect of SRE – the government has shown that it does not take seriously the need to support young people, or help them make informed choices about their lives.

Given this, David Cameron and the Conservatives pushing for an internet "porn filter" to protect children is totally disingenuous; undermining sex education on the one hand, and limiting young people’s online access to information on the other is not just illogical, but actually harmful.

Of course sex education should be updated to include digital content, and I agree with the NSPCC that it is currently “woefully inadequate”, but we can’t blame pornography for all the misinformation that young people receive: the damage has been done by the vacuum of inadequate, non-statutory SRE in schools and the blame lies squarely with the government.

Responsibility lies elsewhere too. It’s great that the Telegraph placed this story on the front page of the paper and website, where it could achieve maximum exposure, but positioning it in the "Women" section, and then in the sub-section "Sex" immediately ghettoises it and highlights a society-wide sexism and double-standard when it comes to issues of sex and also of children. It’s hard to imagine a "Men" section of the Telegraph (cue jokes that it’s everything bar the "Women" section) which has a sub-section titled "Sex" – and if it did, it would surely be tongue-in-cheek, given men and sex/sexuality are rarely taken seriously by the media; men often get painted as dirty, offensive or seedy when it comes to sex and are rarely seen to be interested in talking about it (as opposed to just doing it, which clearly women don’t partake in).

In addition, by consigning the campaign to the "Women" section (and not, say, "Education") it’s clear that when it comes to any issues involving children (sex education in schools), it’s always assumed that the default interest will be from "mothers" as opposed to "fathers", or even "parents". This is insulting to both men and women and shows just how accepted these sexist gender norms are. But, more importantly, it undermines this particular campaign as a "women’s" issue – because, hey, men don’t really care about sex, right? And if the issue involves kids? Crikey, let’s steer clear of men entirely – and reinforces the disparity between what young people learn (inconsistent information, combined with falsehoods) and what they need to know (consistent informed guidance to help them navigate sex and relationships). We need equality in both the sex education content and also in how we advocate providing it. These things are important.

So, overall I do support the Telegraph’s aims of improving sex education but I would like to see a consistent, non-sexist approach to ensuring this happens. And whilst the Conservatives are bending over backwards to pay lip service on sex education, we can help young people right now, by sending them to this fantastic website (if they’ve not seen it already).

Forty years until we get "personal nanofactories"?

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A prominent futurist has predicted that in just forty years, we'll be able to produce anything from the basic building-blocks of matter itself.

Forty years ago the historian & broadcaster James Burke predicted the widespread use of personal computers, collection and storage of sensitive information and a political struggle against the introduction of identity cards. With astounding accuracy, Burke forecasted the omniscience of technology in homes, schools and businesses.

On Friday's Radio 4 PM programme, he was asked to once again to speculate as to what the future might hold. 

Burke talked with confidence about the increasing importance of nanotechnology – the science of manipulating matter at an atomic and molecular scale. The most significant development of the next forty years will be the invention of the "personal nanofactory"; a 3D printer for atoms which will allow anyone to manufacture almost anything, for virtually nothing.

The late Richard Feynmann first envisaged these factories in the 1950s and they have continued to  elude scientists ever since. However, researchers now have more tools at their disposal than ever before. In the past, building structures on a nanoscale has been precarious; any background noise at all can drown out experimental readings. New labs in Sweden have just been built that are protected from external noises, vibrations, temperature fluctuations and electromagnetic fields. These could provide the ideal conditions for experiments that contribute towards the construction of personal nanofactories.

Burke firmly believes personal nanofactories will become a reality. This development will represent a significant shift in the existing global political and economic order. Put simply, it will collapse. Using air, water, dirt and acetylene gas to manufacture anything from “a bottle of Chardonnay” to “a house”, Burke thinks these machines will allow us to become “entirely autonomous”. The institutions that we have built are, in one way or another, concerned with solving the problem of scarcity. Governments have been installed to protect citizens and redistribute wealth. Once the personal nanofactory, “does it's thing”, Burke says, there will be “no point” to any of these.

So what will become of us – freed from the shackles of work and authority? Burke believes that we will significantly change the way we interact with others. He thinks we will give up living in overpopulated cities as the economies of scale that make these important, will simply disappear. Those who want to live isolated lives 'atop mountains' will be able to do so with ease. Many will live in small communities reminiscent of the medieval period. Contact at a distance will be covered by "3D holography", also made possible through nanotechnology.

Although he recognises we will have to face up to the "problem of abundance", his vision is ultimately an optimistic one. In Burke's utopian anarchy, people use their nanofactories to lead happy, healthy lives. The relative ease with which people could manufacture weaponry – and use it without fear of reproach - is overlooked. But perhaps they would have less reason to. Resource wars and economically motivated homicide would surely become a thing of the past.

Moreover, Burke does not consider that elites who stand to lose out might wish to repress such technology, or use it to their own, less harmonious ends. Perhaps, as has been the case for the internet, a settlement will be reached with governments who will maintain varying levels of control. You can use your nanofactory to build the most wonderful things – but only the things we say you can build.

Burke's vision is still a long way off and some are sceptical it well ever come to fruition. However, there are indeed developments being made that are moving the personal nanofactory, otherwise known as a 'molecular assembler' in the scientific community, out of the realm of science fiction and into the real world. In January this year, a working assembler was unveiled at the University of Manchester by Professor David Leigh. He now has plans to modify to machine to make it capable of producing penicillin. It's not yet building homes and is yet to render any government obsolete, but it is perhaps a step in the right direction.

If you haven't heard Eddie Mair's excellent interview with James Burke, you can listen to it here.

Morning Wrap: today's top business stories

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News stories from around the web.

Steep hill to climb for Microsoft-Nokia (FT)

For Steve Ballmer, outgoing chief executive of Microsoft, there was probably no alternative but to risk one final roll of the dice. But the odds are long on his successor wielding the rump of Nokia’s handset business to turn Microsoft into a real contender in what has become the dominant market for personal computing.

LinkedIn plans to sell $1bn in stock (FT)

LinkedIn plans to sell $1bn worth of stock in a secondary offering, two years after one of the most successful social-media initial public offerings to date and having seen its valuation more than double so far in 2013.

Lloyds boss promises 'seamless' launch of TSB (BBC)

Millions of customers who are being moved from Lloyds to a new TSB Bank are being promised a "seamless transition" by the banking group's boss.

Antonio Horta-Osorio, chief executive of Lloyds Banking Group, told the BBC that the only change they would notice would be a change of name.

Vodafone deal concerns weigh on Verizon shares (FT)

Verizon Communications executives have dismissed suggestions that the company’s stock could be depressed in the wake of the US group’s $130bn deal to buy Vodafone’s 45 per cent stake in Verizon Wireless.

FCA swap mis-selling scheme pays out just £500,000 in compensation (Telegraph)

Banks have paid out just £500,000 in compensation to businesses mis-sold swaps out of a potential bill of £2.5bn more than a year after regulators set up a redress scheme for victims of the scandal, figures published by the FCA show.

Morning Call: pick of the papers

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The ten must-read comment pieces from this morning's papers.

1. Enough of playing Hamlet: Obama needs to act now (Guardian)

The indecisive US president has shown that he is as torn as the rest of us over intervention in Syria, writes Jonathan Freedland. But his credibility is at stake.

2. Not even IDS faced the venom confronting Ed Miliband (Daily Telegraph)

Labour’s leader may be reviled, but David Cameron’s arrogance is to blame for the botched Syria vote, says Mary Riddell. 

3. Syria is following Afghanistan’s path (Financial Times)

While international engagement is ever less popular, it is increasingly necessary, writes David Miliband.

4. ‘Lessons from Iraq’ are not lessons at all (Times)

When it comes to Syria we cannot look back to 2003 and be certain what the endgame should be, writes Daniel Finkelstein.

5. Two quarters of growth don't mean George Osborne's policy has worked (Guardian)

Talk of an economic recovery rings hollow to ordinary families in Britain, who are still seeing their living standards fall, says Ed Balls.

6. Export obsession is crushing Germany (Financial Times)

The country’s recent success has been based on cutting wages, writes Adam Posen.

7. Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange: our new heroes (Guardian)

As the NSA revelations have shown, whistleblowing is now an essential art, writes Slavoj Žižek. It is our means of keeping 'public reason' alive.

8. 'Scotland versus Salmond' could be the way to win (Daily Telegraph)

The SNP's programme shows the First Minister's focus on independence ignores his country's problems, writes Alan Cochrane. 

9. Here’s how a ‘good’ bank could operate (Independent)

The near-bankruptcy of the Co-op bank is an awful warning of what can go wrong, writes Andreas Whittam Smith. 

10. Merkel may not be the friend Cameron thinks (Times)

The German leader is sure to be re-elected but Britain cannot count on her, says Roger Boyes.

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