Marxism 2025

After attending Marxism 2024 I wrote, "Overall it was a lot of fun, if tiring at times, and I am tempted to go again next year.", and I did indeed go the next year.

Thanks to universities shying away from anything remotely looking like support for Palestine the venue had to change to something commercial and so I got to spend a few days in trendy Shoreditch in a venue called Protein Studios.

Shoreditch is not the easiest commute for me and a 10am start counts as early start these days but I managed it using a couple of different routes.

Shoreditch did have the advantage of being full of cafes and restaurants and the one in the same complex, Oat Coffee, was my first port of call each morning.

The format was the same as last year with multiple sessions run in parallel on a variety of national and international topics. That meant quite a lot of moving around the complex and that is when the reduced space really hurt. We also had standard general purpose rooms rather than lecture halls which was not ideal but it just about worked thanks to careful organisation and lots of helpers.

Just to give a flavour of the event, this is the Lenin Room before it got really busy.

This year I found myself doing several theory type sessions which were useful but tiring as there was a lot of content and it was delivered at pace.

A general impression I got was that there were diehard Marxists who though that things like Facebook could be squeezed into a Victorian view of production and others who thought that the original theories needed to be extended or added to.

I am in the second camp, Einstein did not invalidate Newton and Born did not invalidate Einstein.

I also found the idea of a Labour Theory of Value difficult to deal with as in my working life value has always been determined by the end-customer rather that the effort and resources used to produce it.

That said, I was never interested in that minutiae of (any) economic theory but am very happy with the basic Labour v Capital analysis and the need to significantly redress the balance between them so that the wealth is shared a lot more with those that provide labour at the expense of those that provide capital.

A few different views was to be expected, indeed that is the purpose of debates, and that did nothing to diminish the sense of camaraderie that pervaded the event, and that camaraderie was very welcome in a world that had somehow managed to get some much worse (Trump, Gaza, Starmer, Iran, etc.) over the last year. Let's hope there are some good things to talk about next year.

SWLH: Democracy Under Threat?

I go to most of the South West London Humanists (SWLH) discussion meetings but I remain bad at writing them up afterwards, despite always taking notes. 

The exception this time is more an attempt to get back into the habit of posting something that a response to this particular topic; though democracy is something I think and talk about a lot so I was particularly interested in this opportunity to discuss it further.

Oddly, despite my interest in this topic I took no notes during the discussion. I will try to explain why.

The discussion was seeded by a short presentation on the history and status of democracy and we were then asked to consider the threats and opportunities for it. What I felt was missing was any definition of democracy or any argument for why it is necessarily a good thing and without that foundation the conversations were very superficial. 

There was also the false assumption that democracy is ok now but is threatened by people like Trump. Whereas we already have a system where a lot of people do not register to vote, even more do not vote at all, the Government frequently breaks its own laws, media is controlled by a few billionaires with very firm agendas and the judicial system is ineffective because it is swamped.

Yes, we should consider things like maximum terms for elected officials, people's panels and other voting systems but they are all just minor tweaks to a failed system. 

For me, the bottom line is the world is in a nasty state (global warming, poverty, oppression, etc. etc.) and democracy has no answer to any of these and may well have caused most of them. We should judge democracy on the results it achieves for society and not on whether we like the people who get elected or not.

Marxism 2024

I was alerted to the Marxism 2024 four day event by my two sons who both attended the 2023 event (without telling me until afterwards). I like politics, discussions and am left-wing so it was an easy decision to sign up for this year's event.

It was held at UCL in Bloomsbury which is not far from one of my former work places so I know the area well and also various good ways of getting there. This was useful with the relatively early starts; now that I am retired a 9:30am start counts as unusually early!

The event was a collection of sessions of 75 minutes with up to nine sessions running in parallel so there were plenty to choose from. The 75 minutes were organises as 30 minutes presentation, 30 minutes discussion and 15 minutes speaker's response to the points raised. That worked reasonably well and the contributors from the floor often brought in their own specific experiences which helped to explain the topic. I attended 17 sessions over the four days.

There was a half hour gap between sessions giving time to move between them and to grab the occasional coffee. You had to arrive promptly at each session as several got full and had to turn people away; I missed one on a Workers' Revolution in c21 because of this. The days were hectic but not frantic.

There were pub sessions in the evenings and I had a couple of long days and a few interesting meals at interesting times.

Overall it was a lot of fun, if tiring at times, and I am tempted to go again next year.

I took a few notes throughout and this is them, unedited and unfiltered. These notes are a mix of what was said by the speakers and the contributors from the floor and also my thoughts at the time. They're bit of a mess but give a reasonable idea of what the sessions were about.

Return of fascism? 

Germany and Italy fascism arose from failed mass movements 

Suggest we fight fascism and the causes of fascism. Not sure that works, it failed before and fighting fascism gives focus to those issues, e.g. racism, rather then, e.g. the failures of capitalism. Also marks us as mindless militants. 

Easier to agree an anti-fascist message across groups than specific progressive policies. 

30s fascists had lots of street thugs, they don’t have that now. Not yet.  But they do have the police.  

Fascists are not just racist, they are directly anti working class. 

Lots of talk about Tommy Robinson but he’s just a lone grifter. 

ACAB

8 to abolition 

To get completely rid of the Police we need to remove the need for them

An interim state is to remove suppressive legislation, e.g. anti demonstration laws

We outsource things like dealing with antisocial behaviour to the Police

Post Marxism

Do we know really how society works and changes?

Post Marxists wrong, Marx right. Apparently. 

Marxists oppose all oppression, e.g. BLM, feminism, LGTBQ+, not just of working class

Need to understand the ideas behind other theories to argue against them but also to use their perspectives and terminology to produce a Marxist version where applicable 

The case for revolutionary socialism 

Capitalism has always been indefensible 

Climate change is the best example of why capitalism itself is the problem, not the way it’s implemented 

Is reform possible? Can we get socialism without revolution?

Socialism is not just the state running things

If capitalism can crush a conservative PM in 44 days, what chance does a truly socialist government have?

The SWP’s role is to lead the working class despite not being in it?!

When workers strike for more pay and they get it then they are happy with the system again

If Labour make things slightly better, e.g. stronger trade union rights and/or wealth taxes, then the demand for bigger change will reduce 

Need to understand where power really lies and be positioned to take it, e.g. ex-communists in East Europe 

Conspiracy Theories 

Conspiracies can be singular JFK or enduring Illuminati 

Conspiracies give human agency to the capitalist system 

Are religions conspiracy theories?

CTs have no logic behind them so you cannot offer disproving facts

If the antidote is Marxism then won’t that be seen as a CT led by mysterious groups like SWP

Is Gender a social construct 

When does gender matter, and why?

With equalities acts etc  why do we need to ask people what their gender is?

When do we need to treat genders differently, e.g. prisons, sport, toilets?!

When it matters, how do we measure it?

If we don’t count genders how do we ensure they are treated equally?

The world has changed for the better, still things to do, some of which are easy, e.g. stop using gendered pronouns, gender neutral toilets, gender neutral changing rooms

Greens

Better than Labour but not by much

Imperialism 

Heavy theory, e.g. Lenin v Luxembourg 

Some liberation movements, e.g. Ukraine, are better sees as inter imperialist conflicts (USA v Russia)

But how do we categorise soft imperial wars, e.g. USA support for Taliban against Russia?

Marxist economics

Economics is not neutral, it’s political 

Dead Labour has a fixed cost, cannot make a profit from that

Living Labour is where profit is made

Capitalism is explorative because of this

Capitalists must complete in the market to survive 

FX etc generates profit but not value

There is not one market, e.g. city pubs

Where do non profits and cooperatives fit?

Party and Class

Not an easy jump from a single issue campaign, e.g. a strike, to convincing them on revolutionary socialism 

Will also find ourselves alongside other groups with very different ideas 

Is joining picket lines really the best way to get the message across and build membership? 

Housing 

Grenfell was a disaster of regulation, not of housing, e.g. it could have been a train crash 

Grenfell was not an accident, it’s what capitalism does, I.e. profit before safety, environment, etc. 

Landlordism creates natural conflict between owner (profit) and user (quality)

Organised tenants have had some success but limited in scope

Rent controls!!!

Private renting is c20%

Thatcher! At last!

Empty homes, AirB&B, ….

The public sector must be involved in a major public service 

University housing is a particular case

Take properties from bad/expensive landlords 

Also take empty properties 

Revolutionaries and elections 

Labour is not offering very much and will struggle to deliver that

The Left already has a significant base to build on

For Reformists, elections are the strategy, for Revolutionaries they are just one of many tools

Reformist Governments have limited ability to reform things as power lies outside of the state

Elections give a measure of public concerns 

Elections are also a place for political debate

The struggle from the base implies that we should be fighting in local elections, especially on local issues, e.g. specific peace camps or strikes

Polycrisis 

The crises are leading to conflicts between major nations, e.g. rival Covid vaccines 

All these crises arise from capitalism 

Competitive accumulation of capital 

Isn’t the demonstrable crisis of capitalism something that revolutionaries have been waiting for?

How late will it be before the crisis is recognised? Can we stop the full catastrophe and do we want to?

The End of the World will not actually be The End of the World, some people will survive 

Revolution is not a solution it’s a process, need to say what the new world might look like 

Dialectics

Dialectics deals with changing systems, most philosophy is static seeking universal truths 

Dialectics is about seeing the totality of things, e.g. the context 

Philosophy, economics , history, etc. are all part of the same thing 

As things change we get new oppositions and contradictions 

People are shaped by society and change as society changes 

Stopping the Far Right

Low-level Islamophobia is rampant, e.g. ripping hijabs off

Racism exists in many places and forms, different tactics needs for each

Are “we” in the places where racist discussions are happening, e.g. Twitter 

How do we build prominent anti racist voices to counter Oakenshot Brewer etc. 

Planning a demonstration at next Reform conference 

Where’s the mass online response to things like Starmer’s comments on Bangladesh

Physical rallies against Farage etc. may help with silencing him but do little to grow support 

Farage/Robinson supporters are also victims of capitalism, they’ve just come to the wrong conclusion as to the cause, led there by F/R

We’re not the only group fighting these battles, how/if do SWP work with them

Degrowth

Over production of things like fast fashion but under production of things like housing 

Use Credit Guidance to control what banks can invest in, e.g. nor destructive industries 

Democratic Economists is possible and can solve most problems , but no political party wants to do this (why?)

Growth is a necessary feature of capitalism 

There is good growth, e.g. swimming pools and libraries, which can still happen alongside overall degrowth 

It’s not a question of making the pie bigger, we need to make it better

China

Book is a Marxist analysis of modern China

Book is comprehensive because Marxist analysis is comprehensive, need to see totality of China and its place in the world system. Most books focus on just one aspect. 

96% of housing is private, very little public housing 

Welfare also mostly private

Very high savings rate, reduces household spend needed for growth 

Youth unemployment is 22%

Territorial disputes in South China Sea but not all China’s fault, e.g. Philippines sea borders very close to Indonesia 

Overall, not particularly convincing 

Not a very in context view, e.g. treatment of Muslims and mosques in UK, Palestine, India, …

No mention of international activities or imperialist tendencies 

Felt like lots of examples picked to give the right answer, e.g. no mention of dominance in new patents 

Or Belt and Road 

South West London Humanists: Discussion on Climate Change

Despite what the lack of postngs to this blog suggests, I have continued to be a good attender at South West London Humanists monthly discussions and it is only a lack of time that has stopped me from writing them up.

It was all a lot easier before I retired because then I could do things in the office and the activity I was displacing was work but now I have to give up something nice, like walking, to make time to do these write-ups.

It was made easier for me this month as we split into three sub-groups for the main discussion and as I was asked to feedback on one group and I had to take some sensible notes! What follows is a summary of the discussion that uses those notes and also my subsequent thoughts. It is a write up of my thoughts on the topic rather than a report on the meeting.

The question we were asked to conjure with was: How can countries do enough to tackle climate change if it makes today's citizens poorer?

Before the discussion the scene was set with a short presentation on climate change. This probably helped to level the understanding but I think that we all already believed that climate change is a significant threat and needed a significant response, one that is lacking so far.

In our group we spent sometime disputing the framing of the question, yes we need to tackle climate change but why should this make us poorer?

What needs to be done and how it is paid for are two different questions and there are plenty of ways to pay for tackling climate changes apart from raising general taxation, e.g. wealth and windfall taxes.

Also some of the measures we should take will actually make most people richer, e.g. renewable energy is cheaper that gas/oil so was can expect energy prices to fall in future. Similarly if we Reduce and Reuse what we buy then we are spending less and Right to Repair will enable us to keep devices for longer.

We also queried the meaning of "poorer". Is someone who wears a jumper rather than switching the central heating poorer? Or someone choosing to cycle to work rather than driving?

And even if we do become poorer we will still be richer than we were, say, twenty years ago (which felt pretty good at that time) and richer than most people on the planet.

We veered slightly off topic (as good conversations often do) to discuss how to make the changes. We thought that changes should be introduced to make it easier for people to move to greener lifestyles, e.g. have more public transport (free!) before banning cars. 

We also felt that any changes should not penalise people who had made what seemed like reasonable decisions at that time and the ULEZ car scrappage scheme is an example of how to do this.

It was a good discussion in which everyone in our group participated enthusiastically and which reached a broad consensus. That does not always happen!

South West London Humanists: Discussion on Far Right Terror

I love intelligent discussions on interesting subjects and that is why I try to get to the South West London Humanists (SWLH) monthly meetings.

This month we were really luck to get Simon Murdoch, from Hope Not Hate, talking about 'Hate in Britain: anti-Semitism, anti-Muslim bigotry and the Far Right threat' and were doubly lucky in that it coincided with their just published report State of Hate 2020.

I found the presentation before the talk fascinating. I had come across some of this before the breadth and depth of the information was exceptional. It is always good when a talker is fully on top of their subject like that.

My main takes from this part of the evening were:

Far Right organisations (BNP, NF, etc.) are in decline but the Far Right is still very able to get people out for demonstrations and protests. Some of this is built around "personalities" like Tommy Robinson and fuelled by social media.

The rhetoric and arguments of the Far Right have been mainstreamed by the Centre Right including major figures like Nigel Farage, Theres May ("Go home or face arrest") and Boris Johnson ("piccaninnies").

Conspiracy theories are a good way in for recruits; the report gives examples like a gunman who attacked a restaurant because he thought that it was being used by a child sex-trafficking ring led by Hillary Clinton. Conspiracy theorists tend to believe lots of strange things and from there it is a short step to blaming immigrants (or women) for all sorts of things.

There was far more to the talk than that (writing notes while listening is still a skill that I have not mastered) and the report is worth a read to get more details.

The following discussion was less good. There were a couple of people there who wanted to talk about Islamic terrorism despite that not being the subject of the meeting and a couple more who asked questions beyond the expertise of a researcher who contributed to a report - as he tried to explain more than one, the report outlines the current situation and it is up to other people to decide how to respond.

There were some good questions too, and I hope that mine was one of them! I was interested in the mechanisms of the mainstreaming of Far Right memes and mentioned the many appearances of Nigel Farage on BBC Question Time and the way that the programme had highlighted strongly racists comments by a NF Parliamentary Candidate on a recent show. I was pleased that the speaker agreed with me.

The disappointing discussion did not diminish from the presentation and I was glad to learn more about the subject and even gladder that organisations like Hope Not Hate are peering analytically into these dark places.

Gurteen Knowledge Cafe: The University of the Future

It is great news that David Gurteen is planning to run several Knowledge Cafes in London this year and good news that I was able to make the first one.

Keeping with the good news, it was held at Regent's University, in Regent's Park funnily enough, and it is always nice to have an excuse to go there. The travel worked reasonably well (Richmond to Hammersmith to Baker Street and then walk) and I got there around 6:15pm which gave me plenty of time to have a few veggie sarnies and a cup of coffee before the event started at 6:30pm. I also had the chance to say "hello" to a few of the other regulars.

The reason we were there was to discuss The University of the Future.

At first glance this is of little interest to me but, on the other hand, I was involved with schools for several years, I like to go out of my comfort zone and I love Gurteen events.

The session was expertly introduced by Peter Sharp who, amongst many other things, has a PhD in Knowledge Management and has worked in the field of business management and professional skills at Regent's University.

In a few drawings (a welcome change from the usual slide format) he explained some of the pressures that universities were under in several areas including money, expectations on all sides, and competition.

That set the conversations rolling. As usual we did these in three rounds of small table discussions (with people moving to different tables in each round) before having a group discussion at the end. Also as usual I took very few notes at the time because the conversations got in the way and what follows is a mix of these notes, additional memories and subsequent analysis in a desperate attempt to produce something coherent.

I do not usually comment on the conversations themselves but it is worth doing so this time because they had a different feel. Having universities as the theme attracted a lot of people from universities which tended to restrict the scope of some of the conversations and they were restricted even further, in my experience, as they seemed to have come with their answers prepared rather than waiting for the conversations to provide some. They were still good conversations, perhaps I felt that because I was an exception to the universities rule (there were others), and I both enjoyed the evening and learned from it.

Peter Sharp opened by contrasting Balir father (50% to go to university) to son (apprenticeships are better) but we never addressed that argument directly as the argument for apprenticeships was not in the room. I think that was a shame as there are clear issues with the universities model and I would have liked to hear how outsiders playing in the same area feel.

If we look at a cube (sorry, I cannot draw this) with numbers of people along one axis (say 0-6 million), their ages along another (say 0-100) and then all the things that universities might provide to students (academic teaching, clubs and sports, social interaction, etc.) then universities fill a very small part of that cube in that they provide some of those services to only 50% of the population for only 3 or 4 years.

There are many other providers of all of these services and the cube is fully populated. The big question for universities, I feel, is deciding where to be in that cube. For example, it may make sense for them to be more engaged in life-long learning so that they can use their skills, knowledge and facilities to provide formal education after graduation instead of leaving this to professional bodies (e.g. Institute of Chartered Accountants) and probably the easiest way to do this would be to absorb such bodies.

Michael Porter famously said, "The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do" and I think that applies here. There are lots of things that universities do (e.g. sports) and/or are interested in doing (e.g. teaching life skills like critical thinking) that may be best left to others with universities commission these services for their students for the period that the have them.

Part of this is to ensure that useful skills, like critical thinking, are not exclusively the property of the 50% or so who go to university but are available to all. Someone ranted in the final whole-group session on how this focussing reasoning skills on just the elite had enabled Brexit and Trump. It was me.

There are a lot of players and potential customers in the university world, in its broadest sense, and I think university will operate better if they become part of the community rather than just a campus.

[The photo from the event was copied from cooperativelearning.works who also wrote a blog about it.]

HUG workshop: What does sustainability mean for you?

Ham United Group (HUG) is one of the two local groups that I belong to. It is an umbrella organisation and in recent years my main involvement with it has been through the Friends of Ham Lands (FoHL) sub-group.

One of the reasons that I have not been as involved in recent years is simply the lack of free evenings with HUG meetings clashing with other things, notably theatre dates. Then things fell into place and I was able to get to a meeting and it was a good one to get to.

Previous meetings had been fairly formal round-the-table affairs with updates on each of the projects HUG manages and little conversation on each of them. This was a back-to-basics workshop, the first in a series to identify projects that HUG and individuals can undertake to improve sustainability locally.

In three rounds of discussion in small groups we covered sustainability from the perspective of ourselves, our community and our planet.

While some of this was obvious and some of it had been though about in depth by others before, e.g. the UN Development Goals, there were some new ideas and some specific things that we can develop in future meetings.

I was talking a lot, always a good sign (for me, at least) but I did manage to take a few scrambled notes. What follows is my attempt to make sense of them after the event.

There were common themes of what three things we would look for as individuals when moving to a new area, i.e. into a new community. There were the survival basics (shops, healthcare, schools,...), places to go (cafes, pubs, parks,...), things to do (churches, sport, clubs, allotments,...) and good transport (especially walking and cycling) to get to them. Meeting people was the big driver in finding things to do.

In looking at changing behaviours to make them more sustainably we could consider barriers, perceived and real; e.g. why do I drive?

Once we go beyond the individual we need organisations and rules to enable sustainability, e.g. someone needs to maintain the parks, provide the jobs and police the cars.

Already we are starting to find gaps that HUG could help to fill, e.g. to encourage more cycling by providing bicycle repairs, training, safe routes and a market for used bikes.

With meeting people identify as being a key requirement we could look to organise regular meet-ups in one or more of the local cafes (a moveable feast, sadly) or even help to support a community pub given that Ham will soon only have one having lost five or six in recent years.

Tree planting and better gardens were other ideas. Here HUG could provide advise and guidance to residents and potentially promote participation through competitions.

It was an encouraging start and I look forward to the next workshop.

South West London Humanists: Discussion on Overseas Aid

I like to go to the South West London Humanists monthly meetings because the debates there are interesting and cover an unusual range of topics.

This month the topic was "Why spend so much on overseas aid?" and we were very lucky to have the discussion led by Matthew Rycroft CBE, Permanent Secretary at the Department for International Development, and former British Permanent Representative to the UN.

Matthew Rycroft started his talk with the very good news that the number of people in extreme poverty had halved in the last ten years. But that still meant that 10% of people, that is 700,000 persons, are living in extreme poverty today.

asking us three multiple choice questions on the improvements made in recent years on things like girls' education. In all three cases the most positive answer was the correct one and all three times few, or very few, of us knew that.

The point here is that one of the reasons that Overseas Aid is criticised is that its success is not generally known.

While the picture was positive overall not all countries had made the same progress in all areas and, in particular, progress in sub-Saharan Africa has been lagging.

Matthew then gave us more details of the UN's 17 Sustainable Development Goals which he explained could be summarised as People, Planet, Prosperity, Peace and Partnership.

Having explained what Overseas Aid is for, how it is delivered and what it has achieved, Matthew then opened the floor to questions which led to an interesting discussions. What follows are my views of what various people said.

Corruption is in the eye of the beholder and there is a big difference between government officials siphoning large amounts out of aid projects and poor people having to pay other poor people to get simple things done, like get an appointment with a doctor.

There were various questions suggesting that aid recipient should behave as we tell them and not as we do, e.g. introduce population controls or divert spending from other areas (space programmes were mentioned but are not relevant; India and China do not get any aid from DfID). I think that is a modern form of imperialism, we know what is best for you, and said so. My passion was noted.

The spending of 0.7% of Gross National Income (GNI )is an historical number with no hard science behind it, e.g. it is not the right answer but it is a good one. It may have come from a starting point of 1% with the other 0.3% meant to come from other sectors, notably charities, within the donating countries.

That 0.7% equates to circa £14bn for the UK. To compare, our defence spending target set by NATO is 2% of GDP (a slightly smaller number) which makes that almost three times as big.

Several countries match or exceed that target headed by Sweden who give 1.4%. Given the success story we heard earlier I think that this is clearly money well spend and I would rather the UK was planning to increase the percentage donated rather than spending effort trying to justify what is already spent.

It was a very interesting discussion on an important subject and Matthew Rycroft was a very able and knowledgeable speaker.

Democracy for the many, not just the few

I was invited to this event my a Facebook friend and being interested in democracy I was glad that it was on a theatre-free evening so I could attend. The location suited me too though the 7pm start was bit of a challenge (theatres normally start at 7:30pm), luckily the staff at Wagamama were up to the challenge and I was in and out of there within twenty minutes.

I liked the format of the evening, which was not unlike Gurteen and LIKE events that I go to. We started with four speakers limited to just five minutes each (I'm not sure they all managed that) on why they thought Proportional Representation (PR) is a good think for democracy and for Labour. We then collected in four self-selecting groups to address four different questions. We did this for about half an hour before regrouping for a brief summary session.

As usual at these sort of events I talked a lot and struggled to keep notes while doing so. What follows is some highlights from those notes and some subsequent expansion of those ideas made after the event.

It was not clear whether democracy was seen as a good thing in itself, even though it can lead to the German stand-off situation, or whether it is the outcomes it is assumed to produce, like less inequality, that are important. This is very important as if we do not know what it is that we are trying to achieve and what the principles are that drive this, then we lack purpose and direction.

Everybody seems to agree that First Past The Post is deeply flawed not least because it creates many cases, such as Labour voters like me in Richmond Park, where my vote does not count as my party has no realistic hope of ever winning the seat. The problem is what system to replace it with as every system has strengths and weaknesses, e.g. they may balance proportionality with local accountability. At times it felt like we were saying PR means PR and were scared to go into what PR really means when we know that is a bad approach from the Brexit shambles.

The mood in the meeting was mixed on whether Labour should commit to one form of PR before the next General Election or not. My view is that we should. We should have a clear idea of what system is best and try to get other parties to agree to this before the election so that it can be implemented afterwards having already achieved majority support from the electorate. I also think that to be vague on this issues opens Labour open to the suggestion that they are looking to change the voting system just to suit them, much as the Lib Dems (probably rightly) were blamed for supporting AV.

If PR is a principle that we, Labour, believe in then we should insist that it applies to every election, particularly local elections. Most, if not all, of the regional assembly elections already use some form of PR.

There is a lot more that Labour could, and should do, to reinforce democracy than just change the voting system. We should address issues like voter registration, party funding (particularly by corporates) and also when we vote, Thursday evening does not suit everybody. It is good that we have committed to reducing the voting age to 16 and we should do more things like that.

There was some discussion about the Lib Dems and whether they should be included as a progressive party, particularly when on the one chance they had they put the Conservatives in power. I think of Lib Dems as Tories but the meeting was split on that.

We only discussed different PR schemes in passing but I think that I hardened towards the idea of top-up lists where most MPs/Councillors/etc. are elected as they are now with a few additional people  then appointed from party lists to make the overall totals roughly proportional. This is not straightforward, none of the system are, as, for example, it would create two classes of representatives and those from the lists would be seen by some as getting "jobs for the boys".

It is good that people are talking seriously about improving our democracy but I would like those debates to be more clearly driven by principle than opportunity, to cover all aspects of democracy and to be more detailed.

South West London Humanists: Discussion on Effective Altruism

I go to the monthly South West London Humanists monthly meetings for intelligent conversations on topics that interest me and in February that was Effective Altruism.

The conversations were seeded by a TED talk given by Peter Singer.

In this he made three main points:

1. We should give more money away than we do
2. We should give it where it has most impact, and that means saving lives in underdeveloped countries
3. We should check that our money is spent wisely.

In his talk he gave several examples to make his point, such as for the cost of rearing and training one guide dog to help one blind person in the USA we could do 2,000 simple eye operations to restore sight to people in Africa.

He also cited the Gates Foundation several times for the amount that they had given and the effectiveness of how it was being spent, e.g. in tackling malaria which kills thousands each year (an estimated 438,000 in 2015).

The arguments having been made we split into small groups and started the conversations. As is my rule, what follows is a mix of comments made by various people and edited by me after the event; it is my summary of the topic and not a record of the evening.

I was not convinced by the praise heaped on the Gates. Despite giving a vast fortune away they still had a fortune left. They had only given away money that they could not spend. Jesus got that right with the Widow's Mite.

While it is easy to say that we should give away all the money that we do not need the problem is we do not know how much money we may need in the future, particularly if we, or somebody else in the immediate family, has a long term illness. Most of us in the room were saving money just in case and would die relatively rich.

I was also concerned about the democratic aspect. Why should the Gateses get to decide where large sum of money should be spent? If we had more taxation and more foreign aid then the process would be both more democratic and more inclusive, i.e. we would catch all the very rich people who are not doing what the Gateses are.

I was interested in the politics behind the initial assumptions. Rather than address altruism I was more interested in addressing the inequality that makes it an issue, i.e. why are we rich while they are poor?

Most, if not all, of the people in the room gave to charities that deal with quality of life issues, e.g. the arts, as well as those that deal with health and well being. While one person said at the end that they might change their mix of giving to spend less on arts most of us felt that quality of life is as important as quantity of life and that we should remain members of the National Trust, Kew Gardens, etc.

In talking about the efficiency of charities Peter Singer wanted as much money as possible to go to the needy but I deliberately give to charities that also do political campaigning, e.g. Shelter, as we need to fix the problems not just help the people caught up in them.

I also felt that charities were under more scrutiny to be efficient than most organisations. I can see waste all around me at work but nobody is monitoring us.

It was an interesting and lively set of conversations but I left with the view that Effective Altruism while much better than no altruism at all fails to address the real point which is the inequality of wealth and health.

Ham and Petersham Neighbourhood Forum: Sustainability workshop

The third Ham and Petersham Neighbourhood Forum Drop In Draft Policy Workshop was on Sustainability and asked residents for their views on issues relating to energy and water.

In some ways this was a difficult subject to cover because not many people are against sustainability and those that are have a problem making a convincing argument for that viewpoint. Consequently I spent most of the hour posting thumbs-up stickers on the questionnaires though I did find a couple of points to argue against.

The first table considered domestic energy. The obvious proposal was that the Neighbourhood Plan should have policies that demand local generation, e.g. solar panels, and strong measures to control energy loss, e.g. insulation. Obviously I agreed with all that.

There were more controversial policies to retrofit these standards on to existing buildings and I agreed with those too.

Drainage was the next issue and there were several suggestions for ways that rain water could be held or slowed down rather than being allowed to run straight into drains. These include things like water butts and permeable hard surfaces and I agreed with all those suggestions too.

Flooding was the final topic and this time I had something to disagree with. I supported all the ideas to let Ham Lands flood and to look at ways at introducing vibrant wetlands while doing so but I disagreed with the suggestions that dry routes should be built through the flooded areas. There already are dry routes, e.g. along Riverside Drive, and I saw no need to build more. If the tow path is flooded then either take another route or wear wellies. Flooding is one of the things that I like about Ham, it is an attraction to promote not a problem to solve.

My final comment is on what was missing from the debate. We had micro and macro discussions on water but energy was only considered at the micro level, e.g. what individual houses could do. We are (hopefully) getting a small hydro-electric generator at Teddington Weir and I would like the Forum to consider other local generation schemes, such as managing Ham Common Woods for biomass or using local waste to feed anaerobic digestion.

Ham and Petersham Neighbourhood Forum: Opportunity Areas workshop

The second Ham and Petersham Neighbourhood Forum Drop In Draft Policy Workshop was on Opportunity Areas and asked residents for their views on issues relating new development.

The questions posed got to the heart of what defines Ham and, unsurprisingly, I had lots of comments to make on various forms provided for that purpose.

I said that I think that Ham Lands should remain sacrosanct with, just possibly, some minor exceptions for small sensitive buildings on the edges, such as a sports pavilion on St George's Field.

On some of the bigger potential sites, e.g. Cassel Hospital and St Michael's Convent, I was prepared to be more adventurous that most people. These are prominent brick-built buildings facing onto Ham Common with lots of open space behind them and there is an obvious temptation to try and leave things much as they are but I would be willing to see striking modern buildings take their place (apart from the section of Cassel that is listed) and to have more building behind them, subject to sufficient provision being made for wildlife habitats and corridors.

There are many examples of modern buildings sitting alongside old ones and I would much rather see a sensational new building that a bland old one or, even worse, a bland new one trying to look like an old one. We have enough of those on Ham Common already. Similarly, while the large gardens are attractive, or have the potential to be so, they cannot be seen from the road and are rarely open to the public. Ham has accepted and come to love new buildings in the past and can do so again.

I was was happy to support the suggestion of more social housing and would like this to look attractive and modern too. A display board showed some examples of what could be achieved.

Irrespective of the type of housing I wanted the character of the area maintained and that means good landscaping in the spaces between the buildings and lots of paths to make the area permeable. There are a couple of land-locked areas in Ham and I find these deeply frustrating.

Another area where I disagreed to some extent on the proposals was on building heights. This was related to the many small sites, often housing disused garages today, where it was suggested that low-rise buildings would be appropriate. I made that comment that mid-rise, say five storey, could also be suitable. There are taller buildings around, there is nothing wrong with a little height per se and we need to make the best use of the spaces that are available otherwise the pressure will be there to intrude into some of the green spaces.

I also wanted our existing good buildings recognised and protected and that includes some examples from the 20th Century, such as 59 Ham Street, and not just the historical hunting lodges.

Ham United Group Meeting: January 2016

I have been going to Ham United Group (HUG) meetings fairly regularly but have been much less good at writing them up afterwards and it is this tardiness that means my last post on HUG was two years ago, not my enthusiasm for the organisation.

I was keen to get to this meeting as it was discussing the proposed redevelopment of the Ham Close site and lots of other people were keen to discuss it too as the meeting room at Ham Library was full. I was not counting but there must have been around thirty of use there which is a good turn-out for a HUG meeting.

The main stakeholders in the Ham Close Uplift Programme are the landlord, Richmond Housing Partnership, and the other major land owner, Richmond Council, both of whom were represented at the meeting.

They opened by saying that the revised plans expected in early 2016 would not now be ready until the Summer and went on to say that almost everything in those plans was open for discussion. That was good news for residents who did not like the old plan but it made the discussion rather open ended.

For information only, this is what the previous scheme looked like. It redeveloped the whole site, encroaching on to the Village Green as it did so and it approximately doubled the number of units from around 200 to 400.

Current residents of the blocks in Ham Close (understandably) raised several issues of direct concern to them from the affordability of the new units and their size compared to the current accommodation. I am in no position to comment on the details of this but I think that securing the support of the current residents, leaseholders and tenants, is important.

Traffic was mentioned a few times by residents concerned about both the main Petersham Road that is the only way in/out of Ham and also the roads within Ham that already struggle with cars parked on narrow streets. There was a request that people be encouraged to walk, cycle or use public transport but not much in the way of ideas for how this could be achieved.

Design was the other main issue with comments like, "This is not Ham, this is just a land-grab." It was pointed out that Ham is rich with architects and one of them spoke about the architectural heritage which includes a lot of notable twentieth century development such as Parkleys and Langham Close. Several of us, including me, called for an iconic development rather than something bland like we had seen so far. It was suggested that the scheme should go out to architectural contest and that many imaginative firms would be keen to go in for this. I was reminded of a recent exhibition by Karakusevic Carson Architects at RIBA. Social housing can be exciting and I want that for Ham Close.

There were several comments made about the types of accommodation to be provided with calls for lots of social housing that is genuinely affordable and a mix of sizes to suit different families and also sharers.

It was a constructive and (generally) well-tempered discussion but while I generally support the idea of rebuild I was left with the feeling that there is a long way to go to get to a good scheme.

We ran through the other HUG news quite quickly. The Ham Hydro scheme has gone to appeal. This is an appeal against the Council so there is nothing we can do except sit back and wait. A Forest School was proposing to build a structure on Ham Lands. Not much information was known and views varied from it would only be a shed to there should be no more building on Ham Lands. St. Michael's Convent on Ham Common had been sold to a developer of retirement homes. While this suggested its new use but it was pointed out that in planning terms residential is residential so it could be any residential use, or mix of uses.

I left the meeting enlivened by the engagement with things that impact where I live and heartened that so many other people care about these things too.

Ham and Petersham Neighbourhood Forum: Travel and Streets workshop

The first Ham and Petersham Neighbourhood Forum Drop In Draft Policy Workshop was on Travel and Streets and asked residents for their views on issues relating to cars, public transport, cycling and walking.

These are topics that I have strong opinions on and I made sure that they were known. Other views were expressed that opposed mine and most of these seemed to be from people who used cars complaining that other people were using cars and so were filling up the roads and parking spaces. I very rarely drive and had no sympathy with that view.

As we were talking about streets and paths there were lots of maps. I love maps.

I'll start with the topic that everybody seemed to agree with. The Thames rolls in a large S around Ham and Petersham and there is a large gap between the footbridge at Teddington Lock and the road bridge at Richmond. There was a strong consensus that we needed another foot/cycle bridge and that the obvious place to put this was somewhere near the end of Ham Street. A bridge there would open up Twickenham and beyond to those on the Ham side and give those on the Twickenham side easy access to the wild areas of Ham Lands and Richmond Park.

I was generally supportive of the plans for improving the streets for walkers but with two exceptions. I though that they were somewhat limited in scope, e.g. walk to school, and I was against any idea of "improving" the tow path to make it passable during flooding.

I love walking through Ham and exploring the little alleyways and twittens as I do so. I suspect that nobody has explored them as much as I have. This knowledge needs to be shared so that other people can make use of these routes. One of the things that I am doing is updating Open Street Map which is a better map than most for showing paths (Google is useless) but still has some significant gaps.

Once I have got the map right I want to work with the Forum on maintaining and publicising these routes. I think that we can do a lot of simple things quickly and easily which would all make a noticeable difference.

All my walking has also made me aware of places where the paths disappear or are unsuitable. For example, the route down Ham Street to the river and Ham House means taking to the road for about 50m. This is one of the main routes that should be made more pedestrian friendly, especially if a bridge is to be built at the end of the road.

I have spent many an happy hour on the tow path while it is flooding, often through deliberate planning and sometimes by accident. The rising and falling tide is a fascinating thing to watch, even if it means standing on a bench to do so. The tide and associated flooding is a nice feature of the area and I am against any plans to raise it or to make it more substantial during the short high tides.

One of Ham's problems is easy to see from the map above, the only way in or out of the area by road means using the main Kingston to Richmond Road that has a significant bottleneck as it goes through Petersham (turning sharply past the house where Tommy Steele used to live). We are not going to solve that problem so the only answer is to discourage car use and, preferably, take a few off the road.

Personally I would make it a one-way road, except for buses, and let cars find other routes, or have them left behind in the garage while the owner takes a bus or walks. We should assume that cars are a bad idea whose day has gone and plan for a future without them.

Humanist Debate on the Refugee Crisis

I had not managed to get to a South West London Humanists discussion meeting for a few months mainly because the move from Mondays to Tuesday gave me a clash with Big Ideas but that had gone dormant (or had finished) so the SWLH meetings came into the reckoning again. That did not mean that I was certain to go, it needed a reasonable topic too.

The refugee/migrant crisis was a topic I was keen to discuss having done so many times on Twitter while listening to Any Questions on Radio 4. It's a subject I feel passionate about for the same reason that I am a Humanist. These are real people dying and suffering severe hardship and they have as much right to a decent life as anybody else. They are not numbers and being foreign does not make them less important.

The logistics should have been good as Richmond is easy to get to from home and easy to get back to from working in London or Reading. Unfortunately on the day I was working in Leatherhead which means a long walk to the station to catch a train to Clapham Junction and then another one out again to Richmond. I got to The Cricketers soon after 7pm and while the others started to troop upstairs for the socialising I stayed down to have a spicy bean burger and my first pint. Both were good.

I got myself a second pint and went upstairs to join the others. Just in time it transpired as, with fifteen minutes or so to go until the start of the discussion almost all of the chairs was taken and I gratefully grabbed one of the last ones.

The debate was kicked-off by our chairman, Jeremy Rodell, who presented a few slides of numbers taken from the ONS etc. The introduction finished with some more numbers, this time from the Radio 4 programme More or Less. The technology failed so I stepped in and found the programme using my iPad (connected to the pub's wifi) and we plugged it into the speakers to listen.

We then took to table groups to have the discussion before coming together at the end to swap our main points. What follows is a mix of my notes from the time and some subsequent comments mostly things I tweeted during Any Questions a few days later when this topic came up again.

There was consensus that governments should work together both to try and resolve the situations in Syria etc. and to address the refugee problems arising from these conflicts. We do not help these countries or their people by building barbed wire fences in Calais.

But this will take time and I suspect that some countries (ours?) are hiding behind the need for mulit-country agreement as an excuse not to act now.

There was less consensus on what we should do about the immediate problem of the boats crossing the Mediterranean and refugees walking through Turkey. The UK is taking far fewer refugees than most European countries, especially when taking into account our relative population and wealth, and we should take more immediately.

Much as we have with foreign aid, I would like us to commit to being in the top-quartile of refugee takers in Europe. That would be leadership, which is sadly lacking at the moment. We claim to be a compassionate and rich country, now is a good time to prove it.

I was a little surprised, and somewhat disappointed, that a lot of the discussion was about the impact on us and largely ignored that refugees are dying in large numbers. Even if taking in a few refugees made things a little worse for a few people here, and I am not sure that it would, then surely that is a fair exchange for saving lives and giving people a second chance at a decent lives. Surely that is what Humanism means.

The headline from all this is I am deeply ashamed that so many people in this country, including the Government, are willing to watch many people die rather than have the possibility of suffering any discomfort themselves.

Accelerating change at Gurteen Knowledge Cafe with cultureQs

I had missed a Gurteen Knowledge Cafe or two thanks to my poor organisation and work commitments (I really must give up work soon!) so I was even keener than usual to get to this one. I even cut my holiday in York short to do so. The main attraction was that this was a Gurteen Knowledge Cafe, and all that means (i.e. process and people), with the secondary attraction that it was about Change Management.

One of the possibly over-simplistic statements that I often repeat is that the technology is the easy part and the difficult bit is the people. Change Management is often overlooked, especially by IT companies. I work for an IT company.

Being on holiday meant that I was travelling there from home instead of the London office only a mile away. I had had a quiet morning, walking very few steps, so I decided to leave the Waterloo train at Clapham Junction and to walk up to Westminster Business School from there. It was only 8km.

The walk was pretty uneventful, i.e. dull, apart from the Serpentine Pavilion that I took a quick detour into as I walked through Hyde Park. Despite having little to look at the walk was a success in that I got lots of steps in (around 10k) and was able to catch up on lots of podcasts.

This Gurteen Knowledge Cafe was slightly different in that we did not swap tables or form a circle at the end but it was essentially the same in that we had a facilitator, Eric Lynn, introduce the subject and then we carried on the conversation at our tables before summarising as a group at the end.

Eric introduced us to his invention, cultureQs, which he had developed over a number of years as a way of accelerating cultural change by getting people to share things about themselves. The game like format produced a neutral environment in which to ask and discuss some difficult topics.

I'll call cultureQs a game just because it is a short easy word and it looks like a game. In practice it is a technique with a tool.

Eric started by showing us his idea of the seven components of culture, e.g. ethnic, beliefs and organisation. I was surprised to see that he had age and gender in there but not class. Perhaps that is an English thing, but I doubt it.

After a brief introduction to the game we were left to play it on our tables. We had four people on ours only two of whom, Conrad and myself, knew each other beforehand.

The point of cultureQs is that the game format decides which questions to ask. We moved around the board using a die, as in Ludo or Snakes and Ladders, and the places we landed on determined which question was asked. The person whose go it was answered the question first and then the other three of us did.

There was lots of agreement on the first question about good managers, and so we learned little from this. There was less agreement on how to work with business partners and I was the odd one out here as my company has a very formal approach to this, partially dictated by fairness and anti-bribery legislation.

I felt that some of the questions were too formulaic, like answering a Prince2 exam. and others were on generic topics, like equal rights, and so did not reveal much about us as people.

I wondered why the questions were set as a game when they could, for example, have been asked randomly just by shuffling the pack and each person taking the next card. I also wondered what the point of the game was, i.e. how it ended. I was able to ask Eric this in the group session at the end and he said that the game format with the board gave the players a focus and that the game had no end, it would just be stopped after a set period of time, around 70 minutes, but being a game meant that the players stepped into game mode and were more prepared to answer the questions.

We decided that the point was to get us to find our more about each other and that the blue rootQs were best for those so we ignored the board and the die and just answered those instead.

The other tables liked the game more than we did which may have been due to the way that we worked as a group or to the questions that came up in the short time that we played the game.

As a way of learning about people, I was reminded of two questions that Robert Elms asks his Listed Londoners, You have a day off, what do you do? and Where would you take a visitor? If I was setting the questions then I would include these two.

I was not convinced by the implementation of cultureQs but I could see the merit of asking these sorts of questions when getting teams to try and understand each other better and of asking them in a controlled manner in a neutral space. It is also fair to point out that I played the game for about half an hour in an artificial situation (we were not colleagues who had to work together), that the game was developed over several years of use with clients and has been used hundreds of times since being published.

The Gurteen Knowledge Cafe again proved itself to be a good way to explore these ideas and it was also good to catch up with some Gurteen regulars (e.g. Keith, Conrad, Sally-Ann and Noeleen) as well as meeting some new people too. It was another good evening spent stimulating new ideas with interesting people, and that is what Gurteen Knowledge Cafes are all about.

Big Ideas on the politics of personal debt

Some judicious planning meant that I was able to get a good run at attending Big Ideas discussions and at this time I was getting to most of them, mostly by arranging to work in London on the last Tuesday of the month.

The serious talking starts at 8pm, though I like to arrive well before that to secure a decent seat, and that allows plenty of time beforehand to grab some food, almost always a Large Thali at Govinda's just off Soho Square, and I sometimes get time to visit a gallery too.

Our topic this month was "What are the politics of personal debt?" and our leader in the discussion was Johnna Montgomerie, a lecturer at Goldsmiths, University of London, and a member of the newly formed Political Economy Research Centre. She has published widely on financialisation and household debt. She also managed to get more safely the previous month despite being taken to the wrong tube station initially by some fool (me).

As always these are my notes relating to the discussion, none of the words are attributable to anybody and all the mistakes are mine.

While there has been an awful lot of discussion about the deficit, the Government's increasing debt, little attention has been paid to household debt which is growing rapidly.

Part of this is a deliberate move by the Government, e.g. in moving some services from the public to the private sectors so we pay for what used to be covered by taxes (university education and prescriptions, etc.) and also by cutting benefits so that people are encouraged to borrow more to maintain their standards of living.

This is creating a personal debt problem that we have no answer to. Johnna's main hypothesis is that we should adopt debt forgiveness programmes, much as we had for many developing countries in the seventies and eighties when it became clear that either they could not pay the loans pack or to do so would cripple them.

I had some sympathy for this idea but the case for debt forgiveness lacked a compelling argument. In order to take action it has to be clear why this is necessary, i.e. it has to be shown that the household debt problem will become a crisis for us all, of the kind of the 2008 banking crisis, rather than just a problem for those individuals in debt.

A lot of the discussion that followed was on the "fairness" aspect of this, such as the fairness of letting somebody off their debt when other people had managed to live within their means. I made the point that I had played by the current rules and had paid for my two sons to go through university without any debt so if all student debt were to be forgiven (written off) then I would be tens of thousands of pounds worse off than if they had taken loans out.

If debt forgiveness is unacceptable then are there things that we can do to stop people getting to this extreme stage? Curtailing the maximum interest rates charged by pay-day lenders might be a help but there are many ways to get into debt, in particular it is very easy to get new credit and store cards.

Giving people more money through, for example, raising the minimum wage significantly, could be another way to reduce the debt problem.

I found the phrase "debt forgiveness" something of an issue. I have no problem with helping people who need help, that is what I hope my taxes and charitable donations do, but "forgiveness" suggests that those in need have knowingly done something wrong.

We spent some time talking about the role of banks in all this, in issuing the loans in the first place, but this strand got somewhat confused as few people there understood how banks work well enough to make meaningful contributions. For example, it was suggested that banks could create loans (assets) without hindrance or risk but this is not the case; if it was then they would be issuing even more loans and not worrying if some were not paid back.

Overall the discussion lacked some direction and faltered on some of the detail but the time spent in the middle territory, the politics of personal debt, was useful and thought provoking. There were definitely some good ideas trying to get out in there somewhere.

Big Ideas on Making the economy fairer

The economy is always a hot political topic ("It's the economy, stupid") and fairness is a term that politicians love to throw around to justify whatever it is that they propose to do so, as somebody who is politically interested, a Big Ideas discussion on making the economy fairer was obviously an attractive prospect for me.

To be fair, a Big Ideas discussion on the economy or on fairness would have been good enough for me, so good is my experience of Big Ideas discussions, so getting the two together was like getting two slices of cake.

Our guide for the evening was Sukhdev Johal who lectured at Queen Mary, University of London. His research interests included how local authorities can promote economic democracy and rebuild local supply chains, which was one of the sources for the discussion. His main hypothesis was that Local Authorities could do more (if allowed by Central Government) to boost local economies and so help to counteract national trends.

Some of the following words are Sukhdev's,  most are mine, some are from the other people there, and any foolish errors are mine alone.

The problem is not economic growth, that is robust enough, the problem is the distribution of the benefits of this growth. For example, 40% of working households get more in benefits than they pay in tax, i.e. we have to subsidise work as many are not reaping the benefits of growth.

Labour raised the safety net for workers and business responded by lowering wages.

Also the majority of growth has been in the South East so there are large parts of the country that are losing out.

Some elements of the local economy remain strong because they are service we use every day and they need to be local, there is a limit how far somebody will go to get a pizza, shoe repaired or a newspaper.

If Local Authorities are to do more then they will need (some) more resources to do so. Land value taxes, e.g. a reform of the Council Tax or some form of a Mansion Tax, could be one source but there is an unwillingness to consider this for some reason. Another option is to leverage the power that LA's have through planning, e.g. if a new housing development is approved then a charge could be made against the local businesses that would benefit from this.

We struggled to identify other levers that LAs could pull and that may be a problem with the idea. And if those levers exist then why are they not being used?

The LAs do not have an unsullied history of meeting the needs of their citizens. They have been better at finding new ways of introducing charges and collecting fees than they have at providing new services. Similarly they have led the way on outsourcing and so devolving things like Health to LAs could be a short-cut to getting them privatised.

If LAs are going to take a greater role in locally then we need to think the democratic implications of this. Who defines what it is a locality needs.

A problem with localism is defining what we mean by local. For example, is it the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames, the town of Surbiton or the village (?) of Tolworth.

This was a somewhat looser Big Ideas discussion in usual in that we covered a broad theme, the role of localism in the economy, which produced a range of ideas from hippy to Stalinist without settling on any sort of framework to assess these against. I believe in frameworks so, while I enjoyed discussing the ideas, I found the debate lacked direction. Of course, pub discussions do not have to have a direction or purpose, other than to air the issue, so I cannot really hold that against it.

Big Ideas on Mathematical Logic

My knowledge of Mathematics has dwindled substantially since I got my degree in 1978 but it is still a topic that interests me and I love the Big Ideas events so it was no surprise that I spent the evening of my birthday considering Big Ideas on Mathematical Logic.

Our guide for the evening was Brendan Larvor from the University of Hertfordshire where he specialises in the history and philosophy of mathematics and science.

Over a couple of hours we had an entertaining and thoughtful discussion on mathematical proof (discussion is the whole point of Big Ideas) during which I tried to take some notes while also trying to work out why I did not quite agree with the hypothesis presented. That is my excuse for why the following notes are unstructured and probably inaccurate.

Ancient Greeks first looked at methods of proof. Mathematics was proved using pictures as the use of mathematical notation did not start until around 1630.

Some pictorial proofs are easy and Brendan used the small panes in the windows behind him to prove the that the numbers in the sequence 1+3+5+7+.. are always square numbers (1+3 = 4 which is 2**2 and 1+3+5 = 9 which is 3**2). In pictures this can be seen by adding one more block to two sides of a square to make a slightly bigger square.

Similarly, it's is visibly obvious that 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 + ... = 1 as each additional step, 1/2**n, finishes half way between the previous step and 1. Drawing this on a number line makes it obvious.

The invention of mathematical notation made other proofs possible. It is easy to prove that 1/2 + 1/3 + 1/4 + 1/5 + ... is infinite as the sequence can be grouped into an infinite number of segments each of which adds up to more that 1/2, i.e. 1/3 + 1/4 and 1/5 + 1/6 + 1/7 + 1/8.

Mathematical notation is still not always capable of finding proofs. It is fairly easy to see physically that one knot on a line can pass by another (simply by loosening one of them) but there is no formal proof for this. Of course it may be that a proof is not possible because the question is badly formed, and that in itself would be interesting if we could prove it.

There are various standard ways of proving things. Mathematicians like to find other ways to prove things that have already been proved (we may have a proof for Fermat's Last Theorem but it is not the proof that Fermat had, if he had one) and to find other generic ways of proving things. Proof is very important in Mathematics.

The realm of Logic introduced words into Mathematics and, therefore into mathematical proofs. For example, if A implies B and B implies C then A implies C.

This logic is not generally well understood and people still use arguments like you are a man, men play golf therefore you play golf.

Using words to describe mathematics lets linguists into the game and that was the part of the discussion that I had problems with. Just because linguists have rules it does not mean that it makes sense to extend them to the use of language in mathematics. I think that Mathematics is supreme here and if there are any conflicts then it is the upstart linguists that have got a problem to solve.

Some proofs come without insight or meaning. For example computers have solved the four colour map problem by number crunching all possibilities that does not help us to understand why it is true.

It is often said, and I would tend to agree, that the best solutions are simple and elegant but it this just pretension (quite possibly!) or is there something more right about a simple proof than a complex proof. If Fermat did have a proof for his Last Theorem then it was a lot simpler than the one we have now.

We also touched on the world of proof in other areas where proving something absolutely is much harder. For example, Climate Change is accepted by most scientifically minded people, myself included, but without a parallel world that does not have Man on it it is impossible to say absolutely what the impact of Man is. Similarly economists do not have another global economic system to compare ours with.

Big Ideas on Mathematical Logic was two hours of brain stimulating talk with a group of intelligent and interested people in a room above a pub. It was a happy birthday!

Informative but directionless Compass debate on immigration

I go to far fewer political meetings than I would like, which I think says more about the lack of political discussion in this country at the moment than it does about me, so I was pleased to be able to go to a Compass event on EU Immigration fears: Who is to blame?

The timing, 5pm, was a little awkward because they had to meet the needs of the various presenters but the location was close to Victoria station and I was able to work in London that day and to get away at 4:30pm to make it on time.

The event was supported by Friedrich Ebert Foundation, a German think-tank. This meant that there was a decent menu, mince pies to go with the coffees on arrival and some refreshments afterwards.

I sat at a table at the back. I like to sit at the back of meetings as that gives me a view of the other people there so it is easier to judge the meeting overall and also to decide when to join in.

I was pleasantly surprised to be joined there by Alf Dubbs (now Baron Dubbs) who I had campaigned for when between jobs in 1992 and who I had met only the year before at the BCSA Annual Dinner. We had a short conversation and I was pleased that he remembered me.

The discussion on immigration was introduced by Neal Lawson then we had short talks from Michael Orton Senior Research Fellow Institute for Employment Research at University of Warwick, Martin Seeleib-Kaiser Barnett Professor of Comparative Social Policy and Politics Oxford University and (arriving a little late because of divisions in the House) Lisa Nandy MP Shadow Minister for Civil Society and Compass regular.

The usual disclaimer; these are my notes taken from the speakers, the other people at the meeting, my notes at the time and my subsequent thoughts.

We can see immigration through the lens of insecurity; insecurity through zero hours contracts, high rents, etc. leads to fear, and this leads to scapegoating.

About half the population are in the anxious middle, not opposed to immigration but wary of it.

Pro-immigration arguments only reach the liberal left (me!) who are already convinced and it scares the anxious middle. By arguing for immigration we raise the subject and make things worse.

We need a simple and different argument to change the game (the same is true for the economy). We have not been able to do this so far (why is this?, a serious philosophical question that may suggest a significant problem with the way that politics is framed in favour of the right-wing).

The (suggested) answer at the meeting was to oppose neoliberalism directly, i.e. attack the root cause of the problem and not the symptoms. I am happy with that but the problem remains that the riposte needs to be simple, understandable and convincing. The facts and figures are on our side but not the narrative.

One simple message might be We Are All Immigrants, It Is Just A Question Of How Many Generations You Go Back. But that in itself is insufficient, that fact that immigration was good for us in the past is no guarantee that it will be in the future. Blame The Bankers Not The Bulgarians was also suggested but this assumes that there is something wrong that needs to blamed on somebody/something rather than celebrating immigration in its own right.

The UK is not good at providing the data required to support pro-immigration arguments and is at odds with the EU on the conclusions it draws. EU funding is available to help communities most hit by immigration but the UK is not using this, on some bizarre principle.

Enforcing regulations, like minimum wage, would help locals and make jobs more open to other locals. The benefit changes proposed by the Tories would require a treaty change, and that would need an unanimous vote, which it would not get.

Not only is the UK's view on immigration shared across Europe but other countries have recently made moves to support immigration. The Swiss said yes to immigration on economic grounds and the USA recently admitted 5m illegal immigrants.

Immigration has some general flows, eg. south to North in EU. Climate change will exacerbate this. The free flow of capital should be supported by free flow of people.

The debate on immigration is too focussed on the economy, i.e. arguments over whether we have lost or gained financially through recent immigrations, when there is far more to consider, especially culture. This is a battle about values and we cannot afford to lose it.

The language used is a problem, e.g. immigration is tightly coupled with migration and emigration but these aspects are rarely spoken about. "Immigration" is a bogey problem that each person can interpret their own way, e.g. Lithuanians taking low-paid jobs here, some ethnic groups keeping to their own communities rather than integrating to the wider society or Russian oligarchs pushing up London house prices.

While some interesting facts and ideas were shared, I felt that the scope of the discussion was far too wide to reach any meaningful conclusions, particularly as we learnt during the evening that talks like this just preach to the converted.

What was a lot more successful was the informal discussions over drinks and nibbles after the main session. Lisa could not stay, they were voting in the House, but I managed to grab quite a few words with both Michael and Martin and several other people there. That was my favourite part of the meeting and a good end to the evening.