Helmintholog

Parked here for later use (I have to write and record a half-hour radio programme on children’s happiness by Wednesday afternoon; it will be Thursday evening’s Analysis for anyone who is interested.)

There are two huge problems facing Europe, and the West generally. One is the threat of “Islam” — not, that is to say, the religion so much as the appearance of an unemployed, unemployable, underclass, racially or socially distinct from the rest of us, and hostile. The other is climate change.

The third problem is that the cure for each threatens to make the other worse.

The only way to absorb and integrate all these people is through economic growth. Useful, productive employment is the motor from which all else is driven. But it is precisely this growth which makes worse the problem of global warming, something which will in the end make economic contraction inevitable. I suspect that a sustainable society will have a lot less paid employment — or a very much smaller population. We know that our present model of exploiting the earth is unsustainable.

I suspect that the answer will involve the rediscovery of nation states, and a fresh interest in war as a means of policy.

There is of course a more sinister interpretation of the kind of drivel referenced in the post before this. The abstract nouns — framework, integration, hallmark, strategy, etc. — may not all mean meetings or may not just mean that.

If one take Henry Porter seriously — and why not? — they will also refer to government databases. I think this is a much more helpful way of thinking about the seemingly inexorable totalitarian creep of British and American government than supposing that they are all power-mad and want to control everything. It is that they fear they don’t control anything, and that outside of the world of ritual meetings and spreadsheet voodoo, all is chaos.

There is nothing like a database to give the illusion of control. The government is faffing around with IT for the same reason that I have wasted years of my life thinking about software and faffing around with it: because it supplies a little world where it can feel in control.

In some ways, I find the fact that this control is quite illusory just as frightening as the fact that quite a lot of it is real.

I was talking the other day to a politician who is, for all I know, a perfectly nice, competent person, doing their best at a difficult and important job. I have to take this on faith, though, because their minders insisted that the interview be done with both of us in different studios so it was quite impossible to establish any kind of human contact.

I could only imagine the scene at the far end: perhaps the advisers wore funny masks, in order to desensitise the minister to the ridiculous. I contemplated a PR droid in a shiny suit wearing a large, strapped on red nose, and projecting powerpoint onto a wall from which the minister read, very fast, sentences like this:

"The programme in defining those five outcomes is not prescriptive. It is a framework within which we expect services, both at national level and particularly at local level, to start to identify what are the issues in their area in the context of that framework that should be priorities and how they can allocate resources and a development of services to meet those priorities, but it also gives us importantly a benchmark against which we can assess how well services are being provided to address the needs … because it’s been derived from wide-scale consultation … around which there’s a huge consensus and indeed you know a great deal of recognition now, I’m pleased to say, from other European countries who are coming here to see how this framework and the programme around it is really transforming services because the key to that, the key to these five outcomes is saying, look, you know we’ve got to think of [my responsibility] holistically, not in accordance with just the way we choose to organise services … It’s that integration that’s the hallmark of the framework itself and the way we want services to be transformed to work together to meet those needs properly."

Some people might say that this is all completely meaningless verbiage. It is not. Everything the minister had to say in this passage could be summed up in six words, perhaps five. They were important words, which would change the lives of many subordinates. But let’s not spoil the suspense just yet, for it took me some time to crack the code.

While I was doing so, I grumbled to a friend who has to deal with computer companies. He had just come off an interview with a Microsoft product manager, who could only talk down the telephone, in a conference call with two PR minders and a transcriber also listening and able to interrupt. "Wow! yours said ‘holistic’ too", he said.

"It’s that integration that’s the hallmark of the framework itself" what is the meaning of that phrase, which seems to defy lexical analysis? It is really simple enough: it means "We must have more meetings." In fact the whole of the minister’s policy is that we must have more meetings. All those mysterious words like "hallmark", "services", "framework", and, of course, "programme" all mean the same thing: meetings, probably wth powerpoint.

So if we translate, for a martian, what the minister is actually saying, it is something like this:

"The meeting, in defining those meetings is not prescriptive. It is a meeting within which we expect meetings both at national level and particularly at local level, to start to identify what are the issues in their area in the context of that meeting that should be meetings and how they can allocate meetings and a development of meetings to meet those priorities, but it also gives us importantly a meeting against which we can assess how well meetings are being provided to address the meetings … because it’s been derived from wide-scale meeting … around which there’s a huge meeting and indeed you know a great deal of recognition now, I’m pleased to say, from other European countries who are coming here to see how this meeting and the meeting around it is really transforming meetings because the key to that, the key to these five outcomes is saying, look, you know we’ve got to think of [my responsibility] holistically, not in accordance with just the way we choose to organise committee meetings, with powerpoint … It’s that sort of meeting that’s the hallmark of the meeting itself and the way we want meetings to be transformed to work together to meet those meetings properly."

One quite sees how this could not be said face to face.