Potholes in my lawn

When I get to the end of my life, one of the only concrete achievements I will be able to point to is the fact that I was once in a band that released an album. We even got a single of the week in the NME the week of my 21st birthday, which was back when the NME was still cool. I know, right! Occasionally, when I'm worried people see nothing but the middle aged professional systems geek me, I wheel out these facts to prove that I was once marginally cool. If my guests are particularly (un)lucky I'll wheel out the album at a dinner party, or at least queue it up on Spotify (I don't actually own a physical copy).
It was on just such an occasion that I went searching for our album on Spotify and came up blank. It wasn't there. It had disappeared. I looked in a playlist where it had been (not that I listen to it all the time mind you) and found that it wasn't there. Some time later I found an option in Spotify that shows or hides 'unplayable' tracks and when I changed this setting, the album reappeared although only as a set of greyed-out tracks that were no longer playable. As the days went past, I noticed a whole bunch of tracks by other (more significant) artists were also greyed out. For whatever reason some music had simply been removed from Spotify. I had no way of knowing if that is because of licensing issues, artist refusal, administrative incompetence or some other reason entirely; all I knew was it was no longer available. I only knew this because I went looking and changed the default settings on my account, had I not been such a vain tosser I might never have noticed that music disappears off my playlist all the time. In effect Spotify has final say over what music I listen to. Obviously with music, there is a simple solution to this: buy CDs or at least mp3s that are not then at the mercy of the whims or licensing negotiations of an Internet music provider. With other things it is not so easy. In the 19 years that it has been in existence, we have become very reliant on Google; we trust it to tell us everything that is out there, but how can we be sure that what google tells us is everything is everything. The truth is that we can't.
One of my favourite albums growing up was De La Soul's '3ft High and Rising'. I know every word of that album because I practically wore out a tape copy I'd borrowed off a neighbour when I was 13. I have a vinyl copy, but I never listen to it because my record player has been unplugged for 3 years (and also because I am extremely precious about it). This means that I never listen to that album, because it does not exist in the digital world. I have looked: it is not on Spotify, Apple Music or any other digital service that I am aware of. I'm reliably informed that this is because it doesn't have clearance for the myriad famous samples that appear on the album, samples that if you love that album are an instant hook into the original the first time you hear it: a pre-vetting of some great music, expanding the horizons of young hip hop fans the world over. Unfortunately the shortsighted commercial imperative of absolute copyright enforcement overrides any consideration of longer term financial gain through association and '3ft High and Rising' remains unavailable in any digital form. This means to all intents and purposes it no longer exists; as how much of our reality is defined by its online identity? The kids could go looking for it in record shops, but they're unlikely to do so in any numbers as there is no awareness of it. Some might see the vinyl revival as a sign that the kids are turning away form the digital world, but mainly they are buying novelty vinyl versions of digital tracks, or popular classics on reissue. Vinyl records look retro cool above all else; an instagram fad for a generation of image collectors.
 In the pre-digital world there was always a popular version of the cultural truth that was occasionally contradictory to, and occasionally complimented by subcultures. Now there is no 'subculture' that can exist without the validation of the popular cultural truth, as this is defined. Really there is no subculture, because all culture is validated and defined by the framework of the digital hegemony. Furthermore, cultural history is filtered through that same framework: there are many albums from my youth that I cannot find online and so do not really exist in cultural fact any more. Whilst some people will fight for the right to be forgotten online, there will be vast chunks of late 20th and very early 21st century culture that will be forgotten simply because they never existed online in the first place. Im sure it was always the case that chunks of cultural history just disappeared, but at least in the past they would have been forgotten due to any number of random factors, not just the binary dead hand of digital commerce.
 This week Google and Microsoft announced that they will put illegal file sharing sites further down the rankings of their search results. We should note this, because this is how your reality is now defined: extreme right wing organisations can make up anything and remain right at the top of search engine rankings, but if someone wants to share music without paying for it, that's too morally repugnant for us to be exposed to. I am not a defender of music piracy in particular, but its singling out for banishment from search engines certainly speaks to the priorities of the companies who govern what form of truth we are exposed to. Unfortunately, we don't know what else we are being 'protected' from. We don't know what reality they have decided for us.

Pelican

I'm forever amazed by people who stand at pelican crossings waiting for the lights to change, but not pressing the button. They appear genuinely ignorant to the fact that the lights will not change if they do not press the button. Eventually, many just cross the road in exasperation,  tired of waiting for lights that appear to be never going to change. I find this astounding because it hints at a lack of understanding of the world that I couldn't bear to live with. I realised the other day that I know the phases of all my local traffic lights. I imagine that this is not unusual, but maybe it is. Possibly many more people know the phases of their local traffic lights without realising it, but I'm not sure how many people actively consider this knowledge to be something that contributes to their sense of place or identification with their local area. It is entirely possible that I am what would these days be described as 'a little bit on the spectrum', that this would account for some of how I familiarise myself with an area being about a high level familiarity with the basic mechanics of that area. I'm not saying I stand at road junctions and learn the phases of the traffic lights, I too am barely consciously aware of the process of gaining this knowledge. I just realised it for the first time the other day. I guess the difference comes at the point when one is assessing an unfamiliar road junction, which one does based on an accumulated knowledge of all similar or comparable road junctions. However, if we assume this approach is common to all, there are a startling number of people who have not yet established that where a set of pedestrian lights are not at a road junction, they will not change to favour the pedestrian until the button is pushed. There are a startling number of people who don't press the button when it's there, just in case. There are a startling number of people who have no active or intuitive understanding of even the most basic technology in their environment. I personally find this worrying.
 As we increasingly rely on technology to make decisions for us, the idea that we may not have even a cursory understanding of how those decisions are made is deeply troubling. I'm not saying that I am fully aware of the intricate workings of the Google algorithms, but I understand the broad principles behind them and I think about the rules that they operate by. Not all the time, not when I'm looking for a single piece of information that I am in little doubt will have a single answer (or am aware of the context that will confirm that piece of information for me). But when I am looking for more subjective information, I will know to filter the results, which I will do based on my own bias rather than any knowledge of how to account for algorithmic bias. Quite often I'll filter based on a single news agency, sometimes before I even search, so I'm not necessarily even exposing myself to all the options before limiting them. This is possibly because I am a old enough to approach information on the World Wide Web with with the pre-web view of single source news from a trusted source. Of course this allows for an understanding of the bias at work; I often find the opinions in the Guardian infuriating, but at least I understand the context in which they are generated; if I were to read a piece in the Times about the BBC I would understand the context that it is only ever viewed as a limit to potential revenue for News International. I know that the facts presented will be as accurate as they can be, accounting for the omissions of each bias, because a newspaper trades on its reputation as a purveyor of truth and so must be wary of straying too far from it. Google and Facebook actively avoid any claims to be a source of truth, yet that is how we think of them and they certainly don't discourage that view. As consumers of news, information or facts we need to be aware of the source; the 'delivery platforms' - the new intermediaries of news - can obfuscate source whilst fooling us into ascribing the trust that we would normally reserve for a news agency to the information that they deliver unvalidated, unverified and seemingly unfiltered. Of course we should also be aware that this last is not true: in an attempt to tailor our experience, to make the data we receive 'more relevant' (mainly in order to determine what advertising we will respond to best) the delivery platforms do filter our data, heavily. They give us the information they think we want, regardless of its source or veracity. This distinction is important: the delivery platforms tell us what they think we want to know, whereas a traditional news agency will tell us what they think we ought to know. When approaching information from each of these sources we don't need to know anything more about the process involved in delivering that information as long as we are aware of the principle that underpins it.
We don't need to know the details of the wiring of our local traffic lights, but it helps to know when to push the button.

Protest

Living in London and working in Surrey (mainly), I have the dubious honour of getting stuffed by both the train and tube strikes. As a hangover from my 'radical' youth, I default to unfettered support for anyone sticking it to The Man, even when they are making my life measurably more shit in the process. However, after several months of this fun and games, I am still not entirely sure what it is all about. I mean I understand the fundamental beef is about doing away with certain roles: manned ticket offices in the case of the tube and guards on trains opening and closing doors in the case of the trains. I think in both cases, the unions see these changes as the start of the process of getting rid of the staff associated with those jobs entirely. They're probably right: the companies involved will swear blind that they want to keep all the jobs, but if they make the job so meaningless that no one wants to do it, they will probably be able to get rid of the staff without firing most of them. This is a variation of the approach to privatising public services, where you starve it of cash, then complain that it's failing before selling it off to a company who can miraculously make a profit out of it with increased investment. However in this context the company are already making a profit, they just want to make more of a profit by getting rid of costly people. Helpfully, in the case of Southern Rail, they don't even need to risk their profits, as the government underwrites the franchise and pays all their fines. Fundamentally, the rail companies' mates in the government are using taxpayer money to break the unions on the this 'test case' so that when it happens on other franchises that they don't bankroll, the precedent has already been set and the unions have no support. Next time a Tory tells you they're all about competition and free markets, maybe explain this little bit of government intervention to prop up monopolies at the expense of the taxpayer.
However, whilst the process is unquestionably wrong and indefensible (unless you think that the purpose of government is to siphon taxpayers money straight to shareholders), I am less sure about the rectitude or otherwise of the outcome. In this instance probably only a little uncertain: having more human beings on trains and in stations is clearly preferable, as people are helpful in a range of situations. Also removing people from the service will not result in a cost saving to the consumer, as nothing ever does: train fares seem to be the one product that have an automatic increase built in, so cost savings are simply passed on to the shareholders as profits, along with a whole bunch of your taxes. So as a commuter, there is clearly no benefit to me in the changes that the unions are resisting.  Of course the train operators will argue that the changes are merely a result of progress, of new technology etc. That may be so, but it doesn't necessarily equate to something better. It is not like there is a clear environmental impact of sacking railway workers. It's not like there being job losses in North Sea oil because the energy companies had finally decided to take renewables seriously. It would be hard to argue against that, although doubtless some unions would. The problem for the left is that increasingly  workers' rights to remain in their jobs might well conflict with other concerns that impact humanity.
The labour movement was built on the assumption that, whilst the power structures that ruled heavy industry were wrong, the existence of that industry itself was unquestionable. Now that there is so much more to question about the industrial process and its impact on our world, a movement that defends employment at all costs no longer rules the moral high-ground. The automation of increasing numbers of jobs raises questions about labour as a concept, let alone as a movement. The left must think about how it protects workers' rights when traditional concepts of work are being deconstructed. Our value as data points in the information system will gradually overtake our value as more physical cogs in the machine. As companies look to exploit our data instead of our labour, we need to consider how we take back ownership of that means of production. At the moment there is no union defending those rights.

Piority

The I'm of an age where a lot of my friends have small children. Some of them are learning to share right now, which is an odd thought: that we need to learn to share. Although I suppose it's not that odd. When a child is born it knows only that it is awake, hungry or uncomfortable. The solution to each of these states is provided by the child's carer (usually a parent) quite often at the expense of the carer (monetary or otherwise). A baby has no concept that its need for comfort or sustenance in the middle of the night has a detrimental impact on the health of its parent, it simply knows that it is hungry or uncomfortable. It is utterly selfish, but we forgive it because it is also ignorant to the impacts of its selfishness. By and large as a child gradually becomes aware of the world around it, then of itself and finally of others, it learns of the consequences of its actions. As its needs are augmented by a plethora of wants, it discovers that there is a finite limit to the provision of those wants. It may not understand the logic or rationale behind that limit, but it eventually comes to understand that there is a limit (even if that understanding comes after many tantrums). The understanding of the logic and rationale behind those limits is pretty much the whole of the process of growing up, from learning to understand the impact of sharing, to understanding the ways in which all our wants and needs are satisfied, to understanding the complex consequences of attempting to satisfy all those wants and needs. The latter, of course, taking up basically a lifetime, assuming we ever get out of the first stage. Some people never really get to understanding sharing, seeing it as something they simply had to do as a child, and they certainly never get to attempting to understand the consequences of satisfying their needs and wants. They effectively remain in a state of arrested development, but because they are full size, we assume that they are adults. We often give credence to their demands because people have given credence to them in the past and they have been successful in accumulating credibility for their demands. Do we ever question whether demanding people understand their high expectations, their requirements and consequences, or are just massive babies in suits*? 

*with no tie because they demanded that too 

Polar

The social media have been full of witticisms concerning the pace of news of late. Starting with a seemingly unusually high number of celebrity deaths at the beginning of the year, we do appear to have crammed an awful lot of (mainly bad) news into 2016 so far, culminating in the few weeks that followed the referendum on whether the UK should leave Europe. The odd thing about the major news items in that period was, that although they seem wildly different, they all point to a world moving in the same direction: away from each other. 

The attempted coup in Turkey was perhaps the most extreme example, but it is really no different than the leave vote or the popular support for Donald Trump. President Erdogan has massive popular support in Turkey, with over 50% of the vote in the last presidential election. However, given Turkey has locked up more journalists than any other country in the world, you might expect that the odds have been stacked slightly in Erdogan's favour. When the only voices you hear are affirming a single viewpoint, why would you consider any other? Unfortunately it would appear that the coup attempt demonstrates that not everyone in Turkey believes what they're told in the news. Worse than that, it shows that some people felt so divorced form the message they were presented, so detached from Erdogan's status quo that they felt the need to take violent action to overturn it. I am not saying that a military coup against an ostensibly democratic government is right, I am just saying that you need pretty good motivation to want to stage one in the first place, especially if you're not even top brass; this was effectively a mutiny. Anyway, it failed, and rather than see it as a worrying indicator of the deep divisions within his country, Erdogan has taken it as an excuse to get rid of everyone in public life who might disagree with him. Going on the numbers so far dismissed or detained, this is quite a lot of people, which is as it should be in a healthy democracy. Unfortunately despite what he says, Erdogan isn't massively interested in democracy, but rather appears to be on the verge of going full Pinochet, which is something neither his country or nor either of the continents it straddles needs right now. 

Of course Erdogan creates his echo chamber of opinion by removing opportunities for contradiction in the mass media, but with no conventional means for expressing their opinions, his opponents must have found other outlets. Such outlets most likely coalesced around social media which as we all know (theoretically) assist in creating their own echo chambers. Many of the mutineers must have been surprised to find that many of the Turkish people did not exactly welcome them with open arms. They probably had months of convincing each other that theirs was the only reasonable cause of action and that its justification was as plain as day to any idiot, only to find out that most of the idiots still bought the line fed to them every day by a cowed media. In the aftermath of the attempted coup Erdogan and his supporters are even more convinced of the rectitude of their cause and course: the enemies of democracy have shown themselves, so more can be done to rid the world of them. Anyone questioning the actions of Erdogan can be shown to be wrong, because such people have been shown to be enemies of democracy, willing to kill civilians. It is an absolutist outlook that gives one a simple way to discredit all dissent. 

We in the west can comfort ourselves that we are not so blinkered as all that; we understand democracy, we are measured and reasonable, yet we are as polarised as we have been at any time since the Second World War. After the war, there was an understanding that  extremes had led to destruction and death on a scale that severely traumatised those it did not kill. The response was a kind of truce, an agreement, not to agree, but to respect each other's point of view; this may have been easier with the USSR as a constant reminder of the alternative. However, after failure of the radical movements of the 60s, the world gradually began to drift away from this compromise: the right wing elites, paranoid about what popular support for any left wing ideology could do for their wealth and power base, started the campaign to label anything vaguely progressive as dangerously revolutionary and therefore just dangerous. This worked well for them whilst they had broad control of the popular press and therefore public opinion, and whilst the dismantling of the state had some demonstrable financial benefit for those who bought shares or council houses. However, the advent of the social media complicated matters: the temporary rage that the popular press whips up to push a particular agenda (or just to sell more newspapers can get caught in little social media eddies that turn into whirlpools of discontent. Currently, the perception is that this can be to the advantage of these press organisations, especially as they no longer have to rely on anything approaching factual journalism, but can allow entirely made up headlines create a furore (and click-through) based on nothing more than their own momentum. The danger for the popular press is that the credulous who form these waves of wrath find some other source for their outrage - social justice for example - so in order to retain their interest, ever more sources for 'moral' outrage must be sought, or the same groups of 'culprits' must be targeted repeatedly, reinforcing dangerous stereotypes. 

I saw a tweet in response to some new Trump nonsense that was simply this: "DONT BELIVE THE MEDIA LIES, REAL AMERICANS SUPPORT TRUMP." What struck me most about this was not the fact that its writer felt the media (presumably all of them) lie, but the idea that somehow those who don't vote for Trump are not true Americans. This in itself is not a new concept, Americans love to call each other names and claim that only they and not their opponents understand the true nature of what it is to be American, but the fact that it was shouted made it feel like it was a conviction rather than a belief. 

Jeremy Corbin is very much presented as a conviction politician, a man who sticks by his dogma in the face of the grubby compromise of modern politics. This is presented as very noble, and I'm sure it is, it's just not very practical. I agree with many of Corbyn's principles, but I am beginning to understand that he has no idea how to enact them. Principles and beliefs can be good, but they are not the same thing as policies. Where principles have the advantage is that they are easier to articulate and delineate. It is easier to define a person by their principles than by their actions; easier to label them. This labelling works well for creating binaries: this is what/who I am for and this is what/who not. Hence why so many of Corbyn's supporters see enemies everywhere and every criticism as a personal attack on their principles. Like everyone else, their beliefs in these matters are simply amplified by the agreement of everyone around them; everyone in their social echo chamber sees the world as they do, that is how they first came to be connected, so it is no surprise that these people reinforce the view that the dogma is right, indeed unquestionable. Perhaps more worryingly though, they reinforce the idea that anyone else is universally wrong. 

Donald Trump has no obvious ideology, but he does offer principles. The fact that these principles are based in the reality of neither his life, nor America, nor the world is immaterial; he offers principles unsullied by the dirty compromise of politics. There is no argument against this because all alternatives are establishment lies, created by a shady elite who serve only their own interests. The truth can only lie in the hands of Trump and his supporters. 

It is not surprising that this concept of a monopoly of truth works so well for Trump, Corbyn and Erdogan alike: in a society where we use hashtagged words or phases to define whole concepts, it is not hard to define all others as #wrong, especially when the algorithms associated with those hashtags will tend to seek out only those who agree with us or the most deranged of those who don't. In each case, there is a kernel of truth to the messages presented: the Turkish coup was essentially anti-democratic; Erdogan is essentially anti-democratic; the right wing media and establishment do have it in for anyone who runs the Labour Party; the vested interests of a moneyed elite do damage American democracy. Unfortunately in each of these cases, the observers of these facts have taken them and made them the tennent of an anti-ideology that only their principles can overcome. By reinforcing and amplifying the messages from their personal echo chambers, each moves the world a bit further away from the messy compromise it needs in order not to slip into chaos. Unyielding ideologies cannot coexist and yet they seem increasingly to be the only thing we are wiling to consider. 

I had an argument with a friend recently* where I accused him of spouting empty rhetoric (because he refused to be drawn on the practicalities of realising his ideals). He retorted that only politicians can spout empty rhetoric, people like him just have opinions. This is fine, we are all entitled to our opinions, as we are entitled to be disappointed when the actions of our politicians don't coincide with those opinions. What we should perhaps be more wary of is when the rhetoric of our politicians simply echoes the opinions of everyone else in our little echo chamber: it is then that we need to take a look outside. 

*we're old fashioned enough to be able to argue about politics and still remain friends

Paradigm

I didn't realise it till I got off the train at London Bridge. I wasn't even meant going to London Bridge, but Southern Trains are so messed up at the moment that the one to London Bridge was the first one going to any part of London that had actually run in an hour and a half. So from a whole day of suburban depression and acquiescence, knowing that I must logically be in a minority (even though no one around me all day would proudly admit having voted leave), I emerged from London Bridge to an unusually large police presence. After a few more seconds, I was aware of the reason for this profusion of law enforcement: there was a rally outside News International: hundreds of people shouting their love for humanity, their compassion for refugees and their passionate desire not to give into the hatred, fear and xenophobia peddled by that organisation and others. It was the first thing that I encountered on the day of the referendum result that made me feel alive or positive about anything in any way. It was invigorating. I am not a joiner in, I am definitely not a protester, but I have been around protests before (I worked round the corner from the G7 protests in the city) and I understand that they have they have a compelling energy just from being, but this felt different. This was unmitigated. 

I am one of those who before and after the referendum decried the fact that such a complex question was put to a referendum at all. We are and have always been a representative democracy, relying on the people we elect to make the best decisions on our behalf. This is their job: they are paid to devote their time to this task because the rest of us are busy doing the other things that need to happen in order to keep capitalism going. In devolving responsibility for the most important decision about our country in the last 40 years, the politicians that we elected failed in their duties to us. I am not joking when I say that each time a government decides to hold a referendum, the costs of that referendum should be met out of their salaries. 

As if to emphasise their lack of effort and their half-arsed attitude to their jobs, most of the major players in the referendum have decided that now the easy part is over (the bit where the public did their jobs for them) they're going to give up being involved at all. Contrary to his pre-referendum promises David Cameron has resigned, making sure he abdicates all responsibility for dealing with the consequences of his thoughtless attempt to avoid the schism within his party. Boris Johnson, the face of Leave whilst he thought it would make him prime minister, has now decided to return to a life of punditry, scoring easy points from his comments as a journalist without having to take any responsibility for them. Indeed in a recent Telegraph article, Johnson had the audacity to call on the prime minister to make the positive case for Brexit, when the rest of us are still waiting for Johnson to do that. I'm talking about a real reasoned case, rather than some empty waffle about taking back control. In many ways only Nigel Farrage cannot be seen to be shirking his duties, he was never more than an single issue protester, with one empty aim and seemingly no care for the consequences of his actions. His record as an MEP was a clear indicator that he had no interest in actually engaging in the business of a serious politician, but rather was happy to take money and votes off anyone foolish enough to give them to him. Like many of the most feckless and useless members of our society, he managed to convince us that others were a drain on our resources whilst personally being a much bigger drain than many of his favoured scapegoats put together. If you really want to make a principled stand, it always looks better if you don't profit greatly from it. 

Of course, if any of these people genuinely cared about the state of our democracy or indeed our country, they may have thought about the other consequences of their abdication of responsibility. The feeling that led to that protest, the feeling that many of the 17 million people who voted to remain in the EU probably felt in some form or another, the feeling that 'leave' voters would have felt if the result had gone the other way, that feeling was different to how one feels about any other kind of defeat. It was personal, we knew that 18 million of our countrymen had changed the future of our country in a way that we fundamentally disagree with. They did it to us; it was personal. Almost anyone we encountered could have been partially responsible and could be blamed. If the politicians had taken us out of Europe without implicating the rest of us in their decision, we could have blamed them. That would be fine, it is their job to be blamed for stuff; we elect them to take decisions on our behalf and take responsibility for those decisions. Nigel Farage never wanted this, he never wanted to take responsibility for anything, he just wanted to be popular, so he offered an easy answer with no concern for the consequences. He didn't need to care about the consequences, he could just blame them on the elites that he detests so much (presumably because they invite him to so many lunches). Of course the most hopelessly vain of our politicians saw what popularity Farage got from the easy answer and wanted some of it for themselves, so they let us take responsibility for the consequences of the easy answer and now we resent each other for it. 

I've been fascinated by the Spanish civil war for a number of years, fascinated by a society that can become so utterly entrenched in an ideological schism that it sees no solution but war. Of course, it also required a hard line element in the military, and a lot more mediaterran passion than the Brits could muster, but I couldn't help but think I sensed its echo in the protest I encountered the evening after the referendum. I hear it when everyone I speak to says they can't help speculating on whether each person they encounter voted leave or remain and judging them accordingly. I see it in the vitriolic tweets of the hardened Brexiteers laughing at the losers, stopping short of calling them gay, but only because the implications of modern language paint a broad spectrum of society with the same weak/fey/degenerate bully-fodder inference*. They feel validated by the democratic process - some even seeing the result of what became a vote against immigrants as an endorsement of racial hatred. The other half (or 48% to be precise) feel entirely cheated by the democratic process, cheated not only by the politicians who forced the most important decision about our country's future on lies, but cheated by our fellow citizens. The faintly patronising liberal mantra since the referendum that people voted leave because of a lack of education attempts to hide the fact that plenty of perfectly well educated people voted leave. Indeed I heard a senior colleague with a good degree declare that he would vote leave because he wanted to give his sons a better chance of getting a job. People voted based on the same shortsighted misguided selfishness that governs most of the rest of their lives. That is the reality of modern Britain that this vote has only served to emphasise: we are no longer the reasonable moderate types we like to present ourselves as to the rest of the world. David Cameron gambled on the reasonable nature of the British people and lost, this was the final confirmation of the passing of the 'traditional' British character of moderation. We are left with a country divided by an unspoken antagonism that will fester and genuinely has the potential to spill over. More so when many of those who voted leave realise that their protest vote solved none of their problems and addressed none of their concerns. We may not have the Mediterranean passion (or hopefully the overtly politicised military) that catalysed the Spanish civil war, but we no longer have the moderating force of, well, moderation. 

The recent Tory leadership coronation aims to paper over the cracks and carry on as if it's business as usual, but it isn't. Our country will probably never be the same again, not because it it will no longer physically be a United Kingdom (which it may well also not be) but because we have realised we think as two different countries, and that is an attitude that it is hard to change. 

* perhaps a small victory for equal rights: a broader spectrum of people are now discriminated against. 

Poultry

At the battle of Hastings in 1066 Harold Godwinson's troops had a commanding position over the battlefield. From the top of the hill that they occupied, they could repel the attacking Norman army to great effect. Indeed it looked for a time like in the space of two weeks Harold Godwinson would have repelled two invasions at the opposite ends of his country with a 500 mile march in between. 

Then the Normans retreated; this was not a rout, but a ruse, a tactical move by William of Normandy to draw the Saxons off the hill. Harold's tired troops, believing the battle to be won, ignored the orders of their commanders and pursued the retreating Normans; their ranks were broken and they were slaughtered by a counterattack. This is one of the only times in history that retreat has been a good idea, and even then it was a sneaky French good idea. The victors of that battle went on to form the rump of the elite that still govern our country today, many of whom have decided that once again retreat is a good idea. Of course for them it is: they have seen their power eroded and dissipated across the continent of Europe by a partially elected political body over which they can have limited influence. Obviously, they don't like that very much, so they have designed a process to take back control: convince the people of Great Britain that they would be better off giving power back to the English elite. Of course it's an easy message to sell: finding and highlighting inefficiencies in an imperfect political institution, or simply making up stories about the current situation and how that could change if only we would walk away. When you own much of the popular press, it is easier to spread an unquestioned version of your made up stories. I have spoken before about how much we are willing to accept made-up realities when they are repeated to us by the media and our superiors over and over again. Just to be clear, these people do consider themselves our superiors and they do think they can fool us into doing their bidding because, despite what they are trying to tell you, they have utter contempt for the people and for democracy. So next time someone tries to justify their proposed retreat from Europe by talking about "taking back control", think about who is going to get that control and why they are so keen to get it. Please don't be deluded enough to think it will be you. 

In the 'debate' around the referendum both sides have evoked the Second World War, and I can't help thinking of that war's most famous retreat - the evacuation from the beaches of Dunkirk - when I think of our current situation. That event marked the symbolic low point in the war for Britain, but it defined us as a people, we got the Dunkirk spirit and muddled through, we regrouped with our allies and went back to the continent. In Europe's darkest hour we planned a way to free it from the spectre of extreme nationalism. We increasingly find ourselves in a comparable situation: this is not a war, but make no mistake, it is a battle for the soul of Europe. We have retreated as far as we should and it's got us nowhere. It's time to regroup and return to the beaches. We have to fight for the Europe that we want and we can't do that if we walk away.