The Filter^

The Cathedral of Learning

I've spent the weekend presenting at a conference, and learnt that Eastern European fantasies of salvation must be put into context. Firstly, the victory of anti-communism should never be diminished by the struggles of post-communism. Of the many broken eggs, omelette's (and chocolate cakes) have been eaten. I've seen it.

Secondly, the nationalism that's since emerged is not intrinsically bad. The development of self-identity and self-governance is something profound, but we should lament the fine line between patriotism and nationalism - the difference being the collectivist mindset.

Like Matthew below, I too like the Czech Republic and perhaps his history of Eva Jiricna within the context of architectual  modernism can be assimilated with dissident dramatist (and future President) Vaclav Havel (pictured) - the champion behind the Magic Lantern which lit the Velvet Revolution.

We wonder if these were revolutions at all, (wanting more bloodshed?) and all-too-easily claim it was a Pandora's Box. But to do so belies the cathedrals of learning - serious academic scholarship must declare victory for freedom over oppression. Amidst Post-Soviet uncertainty and the necessary thirst for truth we shouldn't lose sight of black and white. The Wall came down, and buried the intellectual left.
 

Eva Jiricna and the modernism of the Pet Shop Boys

I love the Czech Republic, I really do.  Please don’t gain the impression from my enthusiasm that I’ve actually been there, as I haven’t.  This is a passion by proxy, or rather a theoretical knowledge that what the former Czechoslovakia has given the world in aesthetic terms is a fascinating reflection of a nation buffeted and abused by the competing ideologies and power structures of 20th Century Europe.  This interview with famous Czech émigré Eva Jiricna in The Guardian was therefore virtually guaranteed to prick my interest, but I was still surprised by just how much I gained from it.  Firstly, before reading it I had no idea who Eva Jiricna actually was, so that was a valuable lesson learned.  Secondly, the work of this mainly interior architect over the last 25 years is, it appears to me, a vital case study in understanding the shifting forms that modernism has taken since its postwar heyday to the best contemporary designs we see around us today.   

Arriving in London in 1968 for a work placement with the Greater London Council, Jiricna was unable to return to Prague after Soviet forces had invaded the country in August, crushing political dissent and effectively sealing off Czechoslovakia to free movement for the following 30 years.  Even before this involuntary exile from her homeland, Jiricna was a restless modernist who had refused to join the communist party and was committed, against the popular grain, to the kind of avant-garde architecture passed on to her by her father.  Eva was in every way the product of her hometown of Zlin, an amazing place that had been almost totally recast as a modernist utopia in the 1920s and 30s (in part by her architect father) to serve the needs of the local shoe manufacturer, Tomas Bata.  This website tells the story in more detail. 

What marks out Jiricna’s work is the detailed passion with which she took her own practise through the 1970s and 80s.  These were dark days indeed for pioneering modernism, and, as a woman in a deeply misogynistic profession, Jiricna found it difficult to find work at all.  The way forward came through niche projects, interior work found through personal contacts. In 1979 Joseph Ettedgui of the Joseph fashion chain saw her design potential, and it was Eva’s minimalist detailing and chic sense of modernity in her Joseph shops that secured her place in the celebrity merry-go-round of the 1980s.  What followed was something akin to the drafting of a pattern-book from which contemporary designers of bars, shops and hotels still draw their inspiration.  The Jiricna style reached its 80s apogee with designs for two nightclubs, Legends and Browns.  The photographs show a style which was at once modern, ahead of the field, and yet so deeply rooted in its time that the zeitgeist seeps from every fitment, form and texture used.  I lived through the entire 1980s (too young for nightclubs, admittedly) ignorant of any sense of the excitement and modernism explicit in these designs. 

The modernism of today is, thankfully, rather more ubiquitous, confident and everyday.  The iPod is an amazing example of how quality modern design has become mainstream; Norman Foster is a household name who has realized in built-form many people’s image of the future.  Back in the 1980s, under the philistine cosh of the Thatcher government, there was a dearth of contemporary imagination as the state sought to recapture something lost rather than seek out something new.  Jiricna’s work, amongst others, bucked this trend in the murky cultural milieu of that decade.  There is a real, pulsing sense in her creations of a belief in the time in which it was conceived, a belief in contemporary materials, in modern lighting and slick, unfussy textures, but also in electronic music, new forms of expression and the art of the future.  A stainless-steel-and-glass cantilevered staircase floating through space and bathed in coloured light is as convincing a cultural riposte to Thatcherism that I’ve ever come across.

Of course these interiors look overtly futuristic, imagining a technological age that barely existed at their conception, but that is where their art lies; partly in a glamorous escape from the divisive realities of the 80s, and partly as a statement of faith in modern design and the continuing possibilities of the future.  You will no doubt see in these images familiar themes that have infiltrated today’s design culture – I imagine you’d loose count if you attempted to tally the use of back-lit translucent counters/bars and steel paneling in the modern high street and night spots.  This fact need not make Jiricna’s ideas mundane, but rather worth celebrating as contributing to the higher standards of design we all enjoy today in some areas of the public realm. 

It’s not hard to evoke the spirit in which these admirable designs were conceived.  Picture a person with rather larger hair than is acceptable today, clad in something black with an unnecessarily chunky and low slung belt, standing on one of those staircases whilst clutching a primary coloured cocktail and feeling the music…

In a west end town, a dead end world
The east end boys and west end girls
West end girls

on Watermelons

A Watermelon: green on the outside... but red on the inside

Just as many free-marketeers are tax dodgers, many environmentalists are socialists. That's life. It's up to me to dissassociate myself from knobhead libertarians, and it's up to environmentalists to shun socialists. I'm here to help!

Here are four suggestions on how to scratch an environmentalist, to see what's lurking beneath the surface:

• Do you think a minimum wage is an effective way to help the poor?

This is the quick & easy way to gage someone's basic economic competency. Distinguished economic writers on the left and on the right agree (as do I) that minimum wages harm low-skilled workers.

• Do you think wealth accumulation is the result of exploitation?

It can be, but only if you've got excessive power - and i'm yet to see a firm that has managed to exploit people without the help of government. Only a collectivist view of economics fails to understand the mutual gains from trade (that make it win-win), and therefore conclude that wealth accumulation implies exploitation.

• Do you see profit-seeking business as a hindrence to ethical consumerism?

Times were, most people did. Hopefully we can all proceed with the agreement that profit-seeking business is a natural, important social phenomena capable of championing ethical consumer behaviour.

• Do you lament the tastes of others?

Typically this is embodied in the elitist distinction between high and low culture, but is generally found wherever "experts" pour scorn on the tastes of others. (Note: this is different from saying that people have had varying degrees of education, or that we have a right to persuade others to change their preferences).

Applying this watermelon to the case of my recent fairtrade shenanigans, despite their rhetoric I know that Green LA Girl supports the minimum wage, thinks coffee profits come from exploitation, and supports the Fairtrade foundation - who's very being is to promote high quality coffee and elimate (via incineration) low quality beans.

Chelsea vs Barca

Best pre-match headline: The Bridge Under Troubled Water (The Mirror)

Best pre-match quote:

Sometimes you see beautiful people with no brains. Sometimes you have ugly people who are intelligent, like scientists... Our pitch is a bit like that. From the top it's a disgrace but the ball rolls at normal speed

(Jose Mourinho, on BBC Football)

Exporting Central Planning - why Development Economics is often an oxymoron

This picture shows economist John Maynard Keynes with Harry Dexter (US Treasury) at the inaugural meeting of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in 1946.

It's a well known -- yet rarely acknowledged -- fact that Keynes was instrumental in the formation of the World Bank and the IMF - meta government institutions founded on the principle that
a committee of intelligent and well-intentioned men possess the wisdom and information necessary to "steer" an economy.

Despite the free-trade, capitalist rhetoric that is attached to the Washington consensus, there should be no mistake that the IMF and World Bank are built upon the principles of central planning, and government intervention.

Despite the vast gains in computer processing technology, the dream of those men has largely failed. Macroeconomics arose as a discipline to compare aggregate variables in a mechanistic fashion, amassing a slew of statistics with which to perform econometric analysis. Measurement and manipulation was the aim.

But it didn't work. The stagflation of the 1970s irreparably damaged "Keynesian economics" resulting in a situation now where the sole aim of most central banks is to keep inflation low. Labour and Tory alike agree upon the importance of individual choice - regarding where to work and what to buy - as being the foundation of a prosperous society. For sure, subsidies and market distortions abound, but by and large the Fatal Conceit has been curbed and no party believes it can and should run an economy. As Tim Garton-Ash says:

the left now seems no longer to be about the best way to produce wealth, only about the best way to distribute it

So lament the fact that we don't apply this lesson abroad.

The field of Development Economics is little more than an exportation of the Keynesian system that we've rejected at home. The DFiD is far from being a plum ministerial job, and their lagging economic competence still maintains that large-scale planning is the best way to produce wealth. The culture of aid necessitates measurement - a bank won't release funds without means to assess the way it's being spent, so similarly the IMF and World Bank seek observable returns. This propagates the statistics and measurements that are irrelevant for prosperity.

In the GI's Intellectual Revolution in Development Economics (discussed by Owen and Jim), the emphasis is on enterprise solutions to poverty - the role of microcredit and other bottom up initiatives. Perhaps an even bigger revolution concerns the methodology being used - a movement away from econometrics toward case studies. Planners need computers and formulae. They see the economy as being akin to a giant machine with systems of levers that can be fine tuned to achieve particular goals. A genuine bottom-up approach looks at emergent phenomena and spontaneous order - things only observable via smaller studies that can incorporate culture, local knowledge, and individual choice. The policy proposals that emerge from such an endeavor are what we already know - the rule of law, a competant and transparent government, private property rights, freer trade etc.

The great irony is that we use the label "developing country" to describe places that aren't developing - they're stagnant. We call the countries that are actually developing  "developed". This is symptomatic of the static thinking that pervades Keynesian thought. You're either one thing or another, there's nothing in between. Only a theory of market process (i.e. Austrian economics) treats dynamic time and uncertainty seriously.

Development isn't something to be achieved, it's a process.

Obviously I exaggerate slightly, and in many ways the World Bank and IMF are unrecognizable from their founding principles. Perhaps my complaint is more to do with the acknowledgment of past errors than the propagation of current ones. But regardless, my claim is simple: development economics needn't be about planning. When I claimed that PT Bauer (pictured) had been vindicated, Owen said: Nothing could be further from the truth.

I'll leave you with the words of Amartya Sen - eminent development economist and former critic of Bauer:

Peter Bauer is in a class of his own as an outstanding economist. The originality, force, and extensive bearing of his writings have been quite astonishing. He is a real pioneer of modern development economics…Many of Bauer’s claims, while resisted at the time, have become a part of the new "establishment" of ideas. Like the old lady who went to see Hamlet and felt it was full of quotation, a young reader of Bauer’s early books may find his arguments rather familiar. This is, to a great extent, evidence of his triumph, though the new enthusiasts for Bauer’s ideas often do not give him enough credit.

Nathanial Bacon

BACON, Nathanial
Cookmaid with Still Life of Vegetables and Fruit
(1585-1627)
Click here for Tate Britain's current collection

the Flat Tax and British mentality

According to Allister Heath:

Remarkably, the UK Treasury’s model of the economy, as well as those operated by private think-tanks, assume that if the top tax rate were to double from the current 40% to 80%, revenues would also double and taxpayers would not modify their lives in any way, choosing to work almost for free for Brown.

Unlike the Treasury, you and I wonder how a change in tax will alter our incentives - we know that our behaviour changes in response to stimuli.

Boston, 1773, after the Tea Tax | London, 1990, after The Poll Tax

In the US individuals have to file their own tax returns, therebye calculating for ourselves the exact amount of income tax we're required to pay. In the UK, by contrast, since employees withhold income tax directly we only start dealing with amounts if we request a rebate.

Sales tax has a similar level of transparency. Does anyone in the UK know how much VAT they pay a year? Obviously it's 17.5% of consumption (albeit only for luxury goods such as tampons), but we never really see it. In the US the price on a label is net, so you only see the full price (including sales tax) at the till. Initially this is annoying for Brits - we don't know how much something costs! But this very system makes consumers keenly aware of the level of tax we pay.

Although it's true that America was founded on a tax revolt, I don't think that American's are fundamentally more tax-averse than Brits. Rather the ways in which they pay tax make them more tax aware.

We too have a tradition of tax revolt, in fact it's a contemporary issue - from the Poll Tax in the early 90s, through the Fuel Protests in 2000 and up to the current groundswell over Council Tax. It's important to realise that Council Tax is a far lower outlay than many other forms of taxation, but it is a bill we receive, and is therefore transparent. Like gas, electricity or phone service we're conscientious about how much we're spending and want value for money. Unlike income tax or VAT we write a cheque and know the full amount.

Although tax protest is typically portrayed as a middle-class issue (and therefore unimportant), tax reform should be high on the public agenda. If you currently think that our present system is "fair" because the richest pay more, then i'll make two points:

1. If Mr A earns 10 times as much as Mr B, how much more tax is a fair amount to pay? To me, "10 times as much" is the only answer that doesn't seem arbitrary.

2. If you've ever been to Jersey, Guernsey, the Bahamas, the Cayman Islands (etc...) then do you think that those exemptions and loopholes keep people within the system, or do they allow those (who can afford expensive accountants) to escape it?

These issues arose at a dinner I attended last night, and underline an important lesson in politics: nothings impossible, and frames matter.

Terraces and English football - beyond the tabloids

The Government and FLA have so manipulated Hillsborough and pandered to
the idea that standing automatically equates to football violence that they
refuse to listen to reason and continually use feeble arguments against us that
do little more than suit their own agenda

In Hiding in the Shadow of Hillsborough, Stand Up Sit Down quite rightly challenge the assumption that "Hillsborough" is reason enough to prevent an open discussion about the introduction of standing areas at football stadia.

Racism and English football - beyond the tabloids

Colour has nothing to do with recruitment: clubs want talent from the widest pool possible. And if these outdated allegations of 'closed-shop' institutional racism put them off even trying, it becomes a stupid, self-fulfilling prophecy.

Simon Jordan's Observer column

The Iconography of Wembley

Some may call me a killjoy, well probably most people would, yet I have absolutely no hesistation about being perturbed about Norman Foster’s design for the new Wembley stadium.  As this excellent audio slideshow from the BBC shows us, Foster began with a perfectly wonderful functionalist device – a series of masts to hold up the roof from above in order to avoid visual obstructions from pillars below – and then made the limp intellectual leap from practical masterstroke to egotistical icon-making by joining up the struts of the masts to form an arch.  This is an arch which has already been commandeered as Wembley’s new identity but which forms no genuinely practical use, as far as I can see.  The iconic features of the original 1930s stadium were of course the twin concrete towers at the main entrance, evoking the Byzantine and pseudo-classical influences that so informed the work of Britain’s master of colonial architecture, Edwin Lutyens.  I’m the first to admit that these towers served no practical use, either; aside from their internal stair their external form and decoration were surely conceived principally as a visual signifier for the whole stadium development. 

Nevertheless, the unnecessary demolition of the towers in 2003 represented the self-conscious putting-away of a well-established icon in favour of a new idea.  With this idea in the hands of Norman Foster, a committed modernist with an impeccable record of beautiful buildings forged from high-tech solutions, one might have expected something less overt in the finished product.  The subtext for Foster’s design must have been an overwhelming desire to replace the visual familiarity of the old stadium with a new iconography.  So, we are given an instant icon, we are even told it is an icon.  The new arch may well be an innovative structure, but it’s philosophically lazy and raises questions about the selfish and wasteful desire to destroy in its totality the heritage of the old stadium.  This is a building in thrall to the concept of the makeover and is squarely part of that culture of newness at all costs which globalised capitalism has fashioned in its own image.  I only hope that football fans attending the first match at the new stadium grant at least some thought for the memory of the towers now lost forever as they gawp at the wonder of their new icon.