Disqus - Latest Comments for Metatone

Re: Will Hutton on Multiculturalism

Metatone — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 09:54:01 -0000

halima - I'm glad to find someone else who sees some value in the "fudging" process...

Sorry if I sounded like I was picking on the "community of communities" phrase unduly. It's that issue of "linking to common civic values" is not integral to the phrase linguistically, which makes it easily misinterpreted. We should start a new thread on that one perhaps.

What I mean to say is that there are extremes... one of total integration and another of absolute laissez faire and they both attract people because they are easy to convert to and from clear philosophies. However, I'm more in the middle, because I think the imperfections of real society mean you can't start from those philosophic assumptions.

Re: Will Hutton on Multiculturalism

Metatone — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 07:53:59 -0000

Have to agree with halima and also sonia@3. One of the problems is that multiculturalism has come to mean "community of communities" (often lacking that base civic community.)

This isn't what multiculturalism means to me, so we probably need a new word as right now we get bullied into a false dichotomy between "community of communities" and "everyone should learn to be thoroughly English" aka "properly integrated" (whatever that might mean.)

Context: I was born in the UK, lived here for school and worked here a bit. I've also lived and worked extensively in various countries in Europe. I'm half-Indian, half-white.

My observation is that (unsatisfingly for some) the great philosophical principles involved do not provide a solution on their own.

For example: In France they go the whole hog with the concept Hutton presents. They don't even take statistics on various racial composition issues.

Arguably, despite their being a normal quantity of racism in various individuals, this has contributed to the existence of a more meritocratic education system. If you're poor of any race in France, there's more chance for your children to work their way up to a good university place than in the UK.

But... what's not clear (and it's difficult to discuss in part because there are no stats kept) is that France actually provides better outcomes for immigrants. It's really hard to compare because so much depends on timing and size of immigration waves, but there just seems (both from anecdote and the sketchy stats that are available) that there are more ethnic kids who actually make good in the UK than in France.

Despite the meritocratic possibilities in France, the reality is that racism does exist (just like everywhere) and it does have impacts. The effective denial of racial identity works to deny political collective action by a racial group that is discriminated against. My model of the biggest causal impact is that it's just a lot more socially unacceptable to be a randomly racist public figure in the UK than in France.

What all this suggests to me is that the UK's success is because it's been a fudge. (I'd argue that we're slipping now too far towards "community of communities" perhaps.) The principle (as espoused in France) that people exist only as citizen in official identity is appealing and it does provide a philosophical buttress for redistributive policies. However, humans deal in much more than just the official identity and a rigid system like France just, in the end, pretends the consequences of that don't exist.

As such, being "ethnic" won't stop you getting into a good school, because schools are better funded than in the UK, so if you pass the test, you can go. But when it comes to getting a job... well good jobs (as in the UK) are in shorter supply, they get to sit down with your resume and choose. Hence as the famous study showed, the same resume in France with an Arabic name and a French name get very different receptions.

Of course, the French started out (years ago) by solving this the full on "integration" way by mandating legal names that were all French. But whilst it's a philosophically consistent approach, it again doesn't work for real humans that well. I wouldn't want to be forced to be Victor or Jean-Paul and I suspect Shariq wouldn't either...

This is not to pick on France and suggest that "oh we're so much better than them" but to just use them as an example of the philosophy in action. After all, because they have a larger state sector and the state sector does adhere to the principle that all citizens are equal, then the French state has arguably made as much progress as the British one in integration. (And god knows the police forces on both sides of the Channel both have some horrific pockets of intolerance.)

Re: Policy Exchange’s unanswered questions

Metatone — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 15:27:05 -0000

Actually, swaraj, the whole point of being a think-tank is that you can publish whatever you like and never have to say you're sorry.

Re: Sajjad Karim

Metatone — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 11:37:00 -0000

I think he's motivated by thoughts of moving into Westminster politics. Let's face it, if you're interested in European politics, Cameron's Tories (allied to the right of the right of the right in Europe) are hardly a good place to be.

But, equally, if you want to get a Westminster seat, the Tories are streets ahead of the Lib Dems.

And, yes I'm assessing him as an unprincipled opportunist, because that's what he looks like.

Re: Will Kabaddi encourage you to join the Army?

Metatone — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 06:04:46 -0000

Society works in strange ways. Back when I were a lad, I was sent to a school that played rugby. Rugby was still in the midst of "shamateurism" in those days and if you felt it was your vocation, one way to make a living and be guaranteed time to pursue your sport was to join the forces. Throw in the skills training and possibly a scholarship and there's the beginnings of something that attracted three or four lads who (IMO) hadn't quite thought through the implications of being a soldier. But that's how Army recruiting works...

Also, strangely, it's a massively progressive move by the Army, can you imagine 20 years ago that they'd have a team playing some "ethnic" game?

Re: Is the Brown Premiership coming to an end?

Metatone — Sun, 25 Nov 2007 05:49:53 -0000

It's partly an inevitable consequence of some political realities and some choices:

1) The reality is that 10 years of government is the point where people get tired of the incumbents. You can go on longer, but the more the opposition get their act together, your days are numbered.

2) The choice to become a very centrist party puts a premium on the "theatrical display of competence." If you're not good at PMQs then you're already under pressure, a few PR disasters like the lost CDs and you are sunk.

[Of course, if there were obvious policy reasons to vote Labour rather than Party of Dave, Gordon would be in better shape, but the all that pandering to Tory press and supporters now makes Gordo look like Dave-lite...]

Of course, the sadness is that for our democracy we do need a change of government. One party rule is not a good thing and 10 years is long enough. Problem is that Cameron is going to send us off on at least five years of more lunatic privatisation projects, neo-liberal voodoo economics and anti-European posturing. Time for me to move abroad I think...

Re: Waiting for… TreeView + Title Change + Move and more

Metatone — Sat, 20 Oct 2007 10:48:11 -0000

I don't know about others, but I for one tend to keep a lot of stuff all on one level, because there isn't an easy way to navigate around deep tree structures in OneNote. Sadly I don't have the coding talent to help out with this projectm but I rather think it could be a boon to a lot of people.

Re: Social Models in Europe

Metatone — Mon, 14 May 2007 14:43:44 -0000

I think the conclusion lacks a little perspective. At this moment in economic history, the social model in Germany (for example) looks to be more problematic, but we are in a particular period of benign economic indicators like general inflation, energy supply etc.

This is not guaranteed to continue. The UK model is particularly vulnerable (on past evidence) to swings in these economic environmental variables.

Professors of Political Economy in particular should be embarassed to write articles that draw such broad conclusion from the evidence of the 1999-2006 period alone.