Weekly news - Osborne's Budget / Missing Flight MH370

So Gideon unveiled his (hopefully) final Budget as Chancellor of the Exchequer, and as ever the media spasmed into analytical overdrive over this perennial fixture in the calender of largely artificial parliamentary charades.

What we got from this annual farrago, was a custom-built budget for the elderly and the soon-to-be-elderly baby boomer generation, with pension reforms and savings being overhauled; the thinking being that if enough property-rich pensioners can be prevented from sailing off into the arms of UKIP then a Tory victory in 2015 will be notably secure.

The prime laughing point of the whole event was the publicity campaign and Grant Shapp's comments that the budget's relaxation of tax duty on beer and bingo allowed working class people more freedom to indulge in the recreations they enjoy most; a statement so hilariously misjudged that it would lead one to assume the Tories have now decided to bring their own spoofing in-house.

All this though was a helpful distraction from the glaring omissions in Osborne's Budget: silence on rising societal inequality, the cost of living crisis facing millions after 4 years of austerity - a point Labour are sure to flog to death even more ferociously now their lead in the polls is slimming fast - and absolutely no mention of the fact that in 21st century Britain almost 350,000 people became dependent on food banks over the last 12 months.

No, this was a Budget intended, in a way spuriously analogous to Putin's land-grabbing of Crimea, to annex that core 35% of the electorate back under Conservative sovereignty, shrugging off the deadwood of the Liberal Democrats and away from the dubious temptations of UKIP or Labour.

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On rumbles the Flight MH370 mystery, at the time of writing now appearing to have been resolved as a fatal crash into the Southern Indian Ocean. Yet despite this finality for the victims' families, there is still no clearing of likely theory amidst the jungle of speculation and theorising.

On Newsnight a week or so ago, Alain de Botton expostulated the idea that the overriding ambiguity of the event was antithetical to the nature of news consumption in which both providers and consumers demand 'fast food' news to be devoured quickly and easily with all the relevant facts and figures neatly arranged and ordered. I agree with this hypothesis as a prevailing trend but only up to a point.

I think conversely, when the news focuses on events that are detached from the public (i.e. have no direct impact or influence on them), they have a dramatic potency to which we are able to vicariously harness our intrigue.

This can be seen presently manifesting itself in a number of different stories - from the ongoing Oscar Pistorius trial, a daily televised soap opera in which we are obliged to formulate our own interpretations on his guilt or innocence like a mass international jury.

The same could also be said of the lurid contemplation of the provocation behind L'Wren Scott's suicide, a glamorous successful woman who, relatively speaking, would appear to have little cause for self-destruction (except that despair and anguish are seldom held at the border controls of wealth and achievement).

Why I hate this 'YOLO' nonsense

On leaving my apartment each morning I traverse the 3 or 4 metres across the corridor from my door leading out onto the stairwell. This is a micro-journey that lasts around 5 or 6 seconds, and yet, each morning my line of sight is ignominously jousted by the apartment directly ahead. Upon the door in black tape has been rendered the abbreviation 'YOLO'. Every morning, the fractional cognition I have of this is like a thorn bush of irritation that I cannot pass without brushing against.

Who is this person or persons, I habitually wonder, that would seek to personalise their habitational facade with so bland and generic an inscription? Is this then the new 'mantra of cool' that symbolises an attitude of rebellion and vivacity? This neologism has been spewed out all over the place in recent months - probably meaning that its slang currency has already defaulted - slapped onto social media flotsam like the carpe diem for the Twitter generation.

Ordinarily, such a non-statement as 'You Only Live Once' could be tuned out by selective deafness like other dead phrases that infest our common discourse - "whatever", "to be honest", "at the end of the day" - merely acting as verbal sandbags we subconsciously pile up as a preventative measure against the encroachment of awkward silence, interruption or faltering diction.

But there's something more persistently facile and revealing at work when it comes to the deployment of 'YOLO' that fills me with acerbity by each exposure to it and which I think warrants more forensic scrutiny. So I started wondering to myself; what is meant by the phrase and what lies pathologically behind people's usage of it?

1. The way in which it is utilised is predominantly as an apologia for things that would ordinarily provoke guilt. As a facetious example - 'I was going to go to gym but instead sat at home and stuffed my face with doughnuts until I vomited all over myself. YOLO'.

I find it a very odd symptom of our still-neanderthal online existance that some people choose to affix a statement affirming one's own mortality as a means of assuaging personal culpability or justifying a decision made on one course of action over another.

I ponder over what sinful exploits might be taking place inside that apartment, so horrendous in nature that the inhabitants feel the need to publically proclaim that this is an area quarantined by the ethos of 'YOLO', and hence anything occuring within is beyond the realms of conscience or retributive shame. Perhaps it is some kind of wild sex dungeon inspired by Pauline Reage's 'The Story of O', or perhaps it doubles as the London syndicate for international enthusiasts of origami?

2. At its core, this rank little statement symbolises the endemic short-termism and individualist attitudes that stand as the underlying cause for so much of the world's ills.

It may only be a crass catchphrase, but it speaks to me at least of the same brand of consequentially blind, slash 'n' burn insouciance, and the fuck-you-I'll-do-what-I-want mentality that lies at the heart of crony capitalism that fuels boom and bust economies, inspires corruption in all systemic arena, and causes irreparable damage to the environment and the natural wonders of our planet. It is the same fundamental psychology at work just on more reduced and pithy a scale.

3. It is also a remarkably assertive statement in favour of atheism; so much so that it could have been coined by Richard Dawkins' teenage offspring. It raises the enduring conundrum that if we really do 'only live once' and if, as Neitszche said, 'god is dead', then surely that leaves us entirely free sentient beings? If there are no divine consequences for our earthbound actions then what is actually preventing us from acting in any way we choose, beyond the vagaries of criminal punishment?

The fact is that, as Rousseau said, 'man is born free and is everywhere in chains'; bound by expectations and conformities that are promoted by society which, in most cases, stands as a not-entirely benevolent cage. For certain, we rely on society's general order of things for our security and well-being, and for the fact that any alternative is far too radical to be considered objectively; but nonetheless it is still a cage.

It seems bizarre to me, the idea that someone could spend 8 or 9 hours subordinating themselves to a fickle employer for a meagre return, taxed by a state in which they place little trust or interest and vice versa the state to them save the continued extraction of said taxes, only to promote the 'YOLO' maxim in relation to some trivial derivation of free will.

Besides all else on the subject of only living once, how the fuck do you know?! Existence might be nothing more than an eternal return as in traditional Indian philosophy and the Stoics (the constant replaying of one's own life into infinity), or the paganist reincarnation tradition which could find you reanimated after death as a hammerhead shark. The only thing we know for certain is that we don't know anything with any absolute certainty.

I'm sure you may say, for god's sake get a grip and stop thinking so deep into such a vacuous buzzword that is likely already forgotten by the perpetrators of its use. But no, I won't; if nothing else it allows me to translate ire into wry amusement, and you only live once after all...

Weekly news - Bob Crow & Tony Benn / UCAS data scandal / Labour's youth job plan

Well, what a mortal week it was for left wing politics, with RMT trade union leader Bob Crow dying of a sudden heart attack on Tuesday, and Old Labour stalwart and all-round inspiration Tony Benn dying on Friday morning. In a way, the week serves as a sombre reflection of the negligible footprint of socialist values and influences on 2014’s market capitalist beach.

Whenever anyone refers to trade unions nowadays, it is always seared through with caustic reference to the chaotic power they wielded during the 1970s, bringing about the ‘Winter of Discontent’; together with just how primed they were for someone like Thatcher to arrive on the scene and smash them to irrelevant obscurity with the heavy mallet of privatisation. Which is a shame, since trade unions, if operated conscientiously and to the traditional syndicalist ethos, could still play a very valuable role in British society.

It’s worth noting, my banker flatmate remarked, that despite Bob Crow’s Marxist credentials, the belligerent way in which he ran the RMT, effectively cornering the market on public sector pay in London, exerting pressure to push his members’ salaries ever higher with scant regard for the rest of the public sector, was not far removed at all from the world of finance and banking.

This aside, there can be no denying the success with which he performed his duties; and in a week in which nurses and NHS staff are livid at news of miniscule pay increases, the value of his tenacity and commitment to workers can scarcely be exaggerated.

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In other news there was yet another data scandal, this time the university admissions board UCAS who, it has been found, have been selling personal details of students and parents to companies such as Red Bull and Vodafone to use for marketing purposes.

Aside from the ethically moribund nature of, for all intents and purposes, a monopolistic organisation trading in the details of (to a large extent) children; this revelation raises all kinds of troubling indicators as to the full-scale commercial revolution of the higher education system, now content to treat students as little more than consumers to flog products to.

The group Big Brother Watch note that UCAS are operating within the boundaries of data legality, but it is the devious and underhand manner in which such activity has been largely concealed from students and parents that is most perverse. Why should they only be able to opt out of the database at the cost of being excluded from mailings relating to jobs, university courses and other relevant information?

It is yet further proof that in Britain today, anything about everybody is up for sale. And where exactly is the National Union of Students (NUS) on this issue? Incredibly, there appears to be nothing at all about the scandal on their website, when on the contrary they should be leading the outraged charge, demanding of UCAS explanations, justification and reform.

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The Labour Party finally appear to be mobilising themselves, trying to shoehorn their way off the sweaty sole of the centre ground on which they've been squirming since the last election.

In the approach to Osborne's final Budget announcement before the General Election, Ed Balls unveiled Labour's youth unemployment initiative, that 18-24s unemployed for over a year would be assigned minimum wage work for 6 months with an 80% likelihood of companies taking them on permanently thereafter. This would be funded by a one-off levy on bankers' bonuses and restrictions on higher rate pension tax relief.

At face value this would appear to be a very populist policy, tackling the twin evils at either end of the zeitgeist see-saw; siphoning off from the obscene bonuses in the banking sector and funding much-needed employment for the disenfranchised young. In fact, policy-wise it seems almost too good to be true, and therefore will probably prove far more complex and unwieldy to affect in reality.

For a start, where are these job placements supposed to magically appear from? Will they in fact be merely employment mirages that once companies have taken the government subsidies on offer will swiftly dissolve into thin air? And will a swipe on bonuses actually be enough to securely fund the plans anyway? Especially given the unscrupulous conniving of financial institutions who are already trying to circumvent the media backlash around 'bonus season' by stealthily rewarding employees through salary remuneration schemes.

Of course, cynicism is often too comfortable a divan on which to recline.

With this in mind I'm determined to try and pay heed to the late Tony Benn's apposite words that remaining idealistic and determined to affect change (on however minor a scale), is the surest way in which to live your life.

After all, to surrender to disillusionment and disaffection in the face of perceived hopelessness is to achieve nothing more than the maintenance of the status quo, and by the nature of your apathy strengthen the position of the powerful who continue to exert their will on the powerless.

Masterworks of Cinema #2 - 'If...' (1968)

Satire, when done successfully, is a dual representation of the surface level subject matter (capable of standing alone on its own merits), and the external levels on which the work seeks to operate and inform. Lindsey Anderson’s ‘If…’, released in 1968, is a perfect encapsulation of the British satirical ideal that still resonates as a reflection of our society today.

Principally, ‘If…’ is an allegory, in the tradition of George Orwell’s ‘Animal Farm’, utilising the private boarding school as the mise en scene to provide a wider commentary on structural hierarchies, class systems, and the nature of disaffected and disenfranchised youth.

The structure of the school is swiftly established; the wide-eyed juniors (or ‘scum’ as they are referred to), the more cynical seniors, and the elder prefects, or ‘Whips’, who are the de facto agents of enforcement, patrolling the corridors canes in hand, revelling in their authority over the younger boys and cosying up to ambivalent staff over dinner and brandies. The overriding maxim of the establishment is ‘Work hard. Play hard. But don’t mix the two’, whilst extolling the virtues of discipline as a means ‘allowing you to help yourselves’.

Into this cloistered and regimented environment is thrust the enigmatic Travis (played by a young Malcolm McDowell); a senior student who refuses to allow himself to be compressed into the strict form and ethos mandated for him by the system. He is imbued with nihilism and existential preponderance, a glorious contagion that infects so many of a certain age. He pins up pictures of revolutionaries, mercenary soldiers, Munch’s ‘Scream’; and as he sardonically asks “when do we live, that’s what I want to know?”, his disaffected eyes reflect all the stuffy hypocrisy and banal conformity that he recognises the system as aspiring to.

McDowell plays the character of Travis with a real and expressive maturity, and indeed it is little wonder that, having seen the film, Stanley Kubrick decided to cast him as Alex in ‘A Clockwork Orange’ only a couple of years later.

The cinematography of the film lends a rather dehydrated gravitas, from the wide-angled shots of the college and playing fields framed by pastel-coloured skies, to the monochrome interiors. Nowhere is this more apparent than during the sequence in which a young boy, singled out for his Dorian good looks, is spellbound watching a gymnast's high bar routine; a scene of highly-charged homoeroticism, which is remarkably brave for the time.

The film at times thrives on its more surrealistic overtones, most notably the café scene in which Travis and a waitress engage in an animalistic tribal play-fight.

Surpassing these qualities though, the strength of the social commentary elucidating the nature of state coercion, the militaristic pomp and ceremony, and the yearning towards the sanctuary of assimilation, is the film’s true success.

The public school setting, being such an archetypal British institution firmly embedded in the hegemony of ‘heritage’ and parochialism, is the ideal backdrop on which to exemplify the oppressive tyranny that has as its mandate the desire to control and constrain, and which inevitably fuels the fire of radical ideals to fight against the system whatever penalties may be incurred.

Travis and his ‘comrades’ sit around nursing a bottle of vodka and extolling apothegms like “violence and revolution are the only pure acts”. Whilst, the priggish whips drink tea and eat toasted muffins, discuss “the lunatic fringe” that they demand face discipline, and encourage immature homosexual flirtations with the younger boys; deluding themselves as to their exclusive monopoly on subversive individuality.

The grinding levers of discipline, when they are exercised, are harsh and desperate in their attempt at crushing the simmering manifestation of dissent; starting with the meting out of cold showers and culminating in Travis’ prolonged lashing at the behest of chief whip Rowntree.

It is the point at which Travis shakes the proffered hand of Rowntree that crystallises the critical juncture elevated to the fore as an intrinsic by-product of oppression.

By enforcing discipline – in this instance for dubious attitudinal rather than enacted offences – the state represses rebellious intent, enervating the will and resilience of the individual to the paradoxical point at which they assert gratitude, appreciation and even respect towards their oppressor (in the same way in which Winston is taught to love Big Brother). Of course, this is a volatile junction that as much as it can lead to servitude and acceptance of inferiority, can equally lead to further radicalisation.

In the end, Travis and his clique are only able to take one course of action, leading to the surreal insurrection which is both cathartic and bizarre; its weight being sharpened at the grindstone of retrospective atrocities such as Columbine and Newtown.

Vladimir Nabokov said that ‘satire is a lesson, parody is a game’, and with that in mind ‘If…’ stands as an invaluable lesson in how power, discipline and dissent are the unavoidable scaffolding rigged up around every structural system of organised society. In the UK, where nepotism very often triumphs over merit, and the Front Bench Cabinet has seemingly been recruited straight from the Old Etonian Bullingdon Club, ‘If…’ still offers an uncomfortably familiar lesson indeed.

For still today, the education system resembles an assembly line of highly subjective learning and personal development; schooling by replication, devoid of interpretation or diversion from the formulaic strictures set down nationwide. Individuality and creativity being components that are liberally encouraged so long as they conform to the conservative and unmalleable templates already chosen and laid out ready to be ascribed to.

Weekly news - Missing Flight MH370

The most extraordinary news of the last week was undoubtedly that of the (still) missing Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 that vanished without warning or indication over the sea between Kuala Lumper and Beijing.

The whole story has all the components of a genuinely inexplicable puzzle of the kind that in our increasingly information-heavy, demystified world, is stark by its very opacity.

Opinions and theories on anything and everything are deafeningly expounded, even if cynicism and apathy are often set at the loudest volume, so an event of this baffling magnitude provides a jarring jolt of silence amidst the general tinnitus of views.

In the vacuum of easy explanation there are of course all kinds of frenzied speculation, most notably revolving around the two passengers travelling with false passports (which, reputedly, isn't all that uncommon in Southern Asia), who, it now transpires, purchased them through a shady Iranian associate. Reports of oil slicks and floating 'life rafts' have been explored and discounted, and notions as to the Boeing 777's safety performance resoundly debunked.

All we can really take from the incident at this conjectural stage is a revitalised perspective on our psychological relationship with flying itself. Everything about the experience of flight has been carefully stage-managed to sedate and mollify those flying; we are encouraged to think little more about the whole event than what inflight movies might be available, or whether we'll have enough spare time, money or luggage space to cram in any duty free goods.

Whereas, an event such as this, whether the plane did disintegrate mid-air, suffer some kind of terrorist hijacking, or fall victim to pilot error (as was found to be predominantly the case in the Air France Flight 447 incident in 2009), really should throw cold water onto the lethargic faces of all those to whom the activity of flying has become as passe and ambivalent as walking to the local shop to buy milk.

For truly, flying is an incredibly overwhelming experience; the phenomenal upthrust and velocity propelling you and several hundred tons of steel skywards to soar above the clouds at incomprehensible speeds. It is as close as we are very often likely to to get to transcendence, and tragic events such as the last week's should serve as a healthy reminder as to the fragility of the human condition alongside the superlative heights of human achievement.

REVIEW - United Visual Artists - 'Momentum' (at the Curve, Barbican Centre)

http://www.barbican.org.uk/artgallery/event-detail.asp?ID=15620

On a Friday afternoon free from work I decided to head across London to the Barbican Centre to visit the Curve's latest installation 'Momentum'. I decided the most appropriate approach to such a work was to take a convoluted walking route there, one that would mean, upon my arrival, I would be suitably saturated by the high-octane motion and intensity of the city.

At times when out and about, I feel it worthwhile stopping and for just a few moments revelling in the intoxicating headiness of the built environment that surrounds and at times oppresses. The staggering sensation of pure momentum can only really be intuited from a quiescent poise; from the rapid elevation of modern construction, to the ceaseless traffic flow (both on the ground and in the sky), to the pace of fashions, trends and styles, and the frenetic movements of the people who cultivate and chase them.

With this urban condition in mind, stepping inside the crepuscular enclosure of the Curve feels like the equivalent of standing in the middle of a crowded space and extinguishing your senses - jamming fingers into ears and clenching eyes closed so that only the fragmentary stains of light dapple the insides of your eyelids.

The installation takes the form of a series of 12 pendulum light sources that swing with a dissonant synchronicity, aiming to force a readjustment of the orthodox perceptions of space and time as so often mandated through the movement of light. As you move through the open space, the hypnotic rhythms of the luminaries begin to assert their almost meditative quality; compressing the sensory cacophony of external reality into this metronomic day-dream state in which you can do nothing but drift.

The overriding effect is best observed from near the exit point, where your perspective on the anfractious shape is most pronounced, and the beams cast luminescent ribs onto the skin of the curve. The luster alternates, being at times faint like fireflies chasing each other around a flickering flame, at other times ominous like searchlights roving across a sea surface looking for shipwreck survivors.

Whilst the nascent ataraxy of the work suffers somewhat from the unavoidable presence of other attendees moving through the same space, and falls short of the reputedly trascendental heights of the visual artist James Turrel's light experiments; there is still much to be said for the theraputic qualities that this work can bestow, if only momentarily.

By working to dampen down the intensified sensory cognition demanded by the manuveuring through city space with all its incandescent stimuli and peripheral distractions, 'Momentum' seeks to peel away the multifarious appendages that clutter the conscious mind to engender, temporarily at least, a chance for order amongst chaos, quiet amongst commotion, and meditative reflection amidst the maelstrom of modern life.

Culture - February

Books read:

George Orwell - 'Homage to Catalonia'
Rudolf Rocker - 'Anarchism and Anarcho-Syndicalism' (non-fiction)
Kingsley Amis - 'Lucky Jim'
Bruce Robinson - 'Withnail & I' (screenplay)
J.G. Ballard - 'The Drowned World'
Glenn Greenwald - 'How Would a Patriot Act?: Defending American values from a President run amok' (non-fiction)

Whilst large swathes of Southern England reclined beneath parasols of floodwater this month, I thought the timing too opportune to miss to dive into J.G. Ballard's debut novel 'The Drowned World'.

Written in 1962, Ballard sets out his prescient stall with eerie accuracy, telling of a world in which global warming has caused a melting of the ice caps and a catastrophic rise in sea levels, leaving the cities of the West submerged as a new aquamarine seascape in which the few survivors find themselves gradually reverting back to a kind of savage primacy.

It is fascinating, the way in which Ballard expostulates on the notion that this marine environment, the endless lagoons, archipelagos, and the feverish sun, serves as the psychological trigger for the return to deeply sublimated motives and desires within the psyche of humankind as the modern age revolves around again to a second Triassic period.

Ballard's truly exceptional prose style bursts with the effervescent imagery that would enrich all his subsequent work, and certainly you get a very definite sense that here is a fresh literary voice bursting out of the gates, teeming with an imagination that would sustain such a long and prolific writing career.


Films Watched:

'The Thin Red Line' (Terrence Malick)
'My Beautiful Laundrette' (Stephen Friers)
'Groundhog Day' (Harold Ramis)
'Annie Hall' (Woody Allen)


Albums Played:

Mark McGuire - 'Along the Way'
Eluvium - 'Nightmare Ending'
Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds - 'Let Love In'
Led Zeppelin - 'Led Zeppelin II'
Portishead - 'Third'
St. Vincent - 'St. Vincent'


Exhibitions:

David Lynch / William S. Burroughs / Andy Warhol (at Photographer's Gallery, London)

Read the review here


Gigs:

Fuck Buttons at The Forum, Kentish Town

Standing at opposite ends of an equipment-laden table, facing one another as though they would at any moment break into a game of ping-pong, the two components of electronic act Fuck Buttons delivered a consummate and quite often hypnotic headline set.

Their choice of opener was the astonishing 'Stalker' from 2013's 'Slow Focus', a track with an expansive, almost cinematic scope that spans an epic 10 minutes and yet could comfortably last double that. The rest of the set does well to try and maintain such early heights, but the duo's accomplished amalgam of influences from Aphex Twin to Mogwai to Squarepusher has resulted in a dense and mesmerising sound that is uniquely their own, as captivating in a live setting as on record, and holds them in place as one of the most interesting electronic acts of recent years.

Weekly news - The Russians in Ukraine / Yahoo webcam surveillance / New gambling controls

The situation in Ukraine edged further into sinister climes this week as armed Russian forces, shorn of any nationalist insignia as though this might serve as some kind of stateless camouflage, made moves on the Southern Crimea region.

Like a waking octopus, Russia's imperialist tentacles are slowly unfurling with a similar dearth of efficient stealth. Now that the curling brooms and skeleton bobs have been packed back into the closet, Putin's Russia can get back to flaunting their land-grabbing might. His facetious argument is that, since Crimea comprises nearly 60% ethnic Russians, he is merely exercising Russia's right to protect their interests, regardless of the flagrant disregard to the sovereignty of the territory.

To an outsider (who may soon be a temporary insider - watch this space), it very much appears that all the initiative now rests with the Kremlin and just precisely how far they feel capable of pushing the so-far ineffectual international community. Putin knows that the last thing the other G7 countries want is to become entangled in an overseas conflict trying to protect the autonomy of a former Russian state. So far he correctly feels he can call their bluff.

Meanwhile, the danger is that the aggrieved Ukrainians who rose up and ousted Yanukovych so valiently will secede the momentum to the newly-operational Russian forces, or begin turning on each other as happened in the Reign of Terror following the French Revolution.

The Ukrainians need to mobilise again sooner rather than later to avoid the possibility of a power vacuum giving the Russians room to capitalise and make gains. They need to stay strong, unite together and be ready to continue the fight as and when it is necessary.

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(Uncomfortably) closer to home, the latest data surveillance revelation blundered into the public eye regarding the GCHQ, together with the gleeful encouragement of the NSA, intercepting and storing the webcam images of millions of internet users, through a program codenamed Optic Nerve.

Apparently in one 6-month period in 2008 alone, more than 1.8 million Yahoo user accounts utilising webcam technology were collected and stored. Quite predictably, an estimated 3-11% of the harvested imagery contained 'undesirable nudity', being as it were a platform for amateur pornography. Perhaps, steps are being taken to create a genitalia recognition system for optimum foolproof identity security. Who knows?!

Frankly, this latest infringement would be hilarious were it not so utterly condemnable. Rather than feebly trying to justify these measures by pointing out their apparent legality or their necessity in the maintenance of a safe terrorism-free society, I would quite like security chiefs of staff to put a number on the precise amount of real and actual terrorist plots that have been foiled through spying on this Yahoo webcam imagery.

Call me cynical, but I would suspect the figure to be so negligible that it would demand the question to be answered as to whether or not investing vast sums of time, effort and taxpayer's money on the viewing of people in their bedrooms masturbating at each other over webcams is anything other than a deplorable and wasteful invasion of privacy.

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In other news, the Association of British Bookmakers (ABB) launched a new initiative to try and curb problem gambling in England & Wales. These take the form of allowing gamblers to set their own cash and time limits and imposing alerts to bookmaker staff when these limits are reached.

Despite being well-intentioned, if you consider them for a moment, these new steps can be seen to be largely ineffectual; a desperate reactionary stab at a solution to the explosion of problem gambling, predominantly in poorer communities, in the wake of the recession.

Like any addiction, the urge to gamble becomes a compulsion, it being axiomatic that the addict is not using logical reasoning in controlling their own actions. Therefore, these measures to install a modicum of control, which can in any case be circumvented by the gambler if they so choose, is the same as someone with an alcohol problem going out declaring that they will have a certain amount to drink and nothing more.

The problem is, that once the addictive agency has triggered off those neurons there is very little chance that they will be able to compel themselves to respect their own controls. Just one more, just a little longer - this is the mantra of the addict who mistakenly believes themselves able to exercise control and follow the correct course of action.

Views on progress

It is a commonly held truism that the future will be a better place than the past. That the march of human progress into the citadel of epistemological positivism is the intrinsic mechanism that propels history onwards. That progress is evident all around us all of the time, from the heating that prevents pneumonia in winter, to the transport networks that shuttle us to and from work, to the agony of choosing between the different varients of vinaegrette dressing on sale in the supermarket.

It is my belief, however (and I make no claim on any overwhelmingly original thesis here), that the nature of progress is a fallacy. The finest book I have read on this theme is the contemporary philosopher John Gray's 'Straw Dogs' in which he makes the claim that 'progress is a fact. Even so, faith in progress is a superstition.'

It is this faith in the efficacy of the future that has been inculcated in the collective psyche through centuries of religious conviction; principally, that the future (or afterlife) will be a worthy reward for a virtuous life lived in the present. As science and technology superseded religion (in the West at least) from the Industrial Revolution onwards, this faith in progress has manifested itself through the physical and material entities that adorn our lives.

Progress and human nature

Gray goes on to state that, 'science enables humans to satisfy their needs. It does nothing to change them. They are no different from what they have always been. There is progress in knowledge but not in ethics'.

Human nature is an accumulus of the same animal strengths and weaknesses, the same needs and wants, the same propensity towards good and evil. Whilst the aggregated wealth of civilised thought and reasoning banks up like a beach of collective wisdom, how we traverse across it is as much a slow struggle as wading through wet sand.

Any gains that are made can also be lost later on. The scales of progression and regression are held in a precarious and volatile balance. A key example relates to the use of torture in civilised society. The banning and deploring the implementation of torture was a progressive step for society. Subsequently, when the Bush administration decided to interrogate Muslim suspects using waterboarding techniques, this was a regressive move in terms of the United States returning to the state of legitimising torture.

It is progress that a black man could be elected President of the world's largest superpower. Regression though is the fact that the endemic socio-economic inequalities within the same nation are still predominantly split across racial boundary lines. Whilst in one country there might be pioneering heart surgery performed, in another, a sectarian fighter kills an enemy and eats his heart in front of the camera as a statement of conviction to a cause.

As many Western countries embrace gay marriage, Russia take steps to further ostracise homosexuals. After a century in which 'failed utopias' bound up with the 'fear of the other' gave rise to so many horrors to progress away from, anti-semitism is on the incline again in Europe, and North Korea continue to decline down the sorry slope to a Stalin-esque genocide.

Progress and the creative arts

For me though, one need only look to the creative arts and the influence of technology on our lives to witness a profound counter-weight to the notion of progress in perpetuity.

Recently, I attended a discussion on whether the app was cultivating or cannabalising published content. The room was filled with techies each trying to stand on the vanguard's surfboard and catch the prime technological wave.

Listening to them hold forth on the exigencies of such and such an app for engaging storytelling and the imperative of harnessing the full potential of publishable content into another app's form, swiftly wore me down into a frustrated malaise. None of this 'digital fluff' has any real intrinsic value, it cannot compete with the artistic heights of Proust's 'Swann's Way' or Dante's 'Divine Comedy'; the medium has, in this context, well and truly become the message, and as such is antithetical to the notion of progress.

This can be extrapolated to the internet as a whole. Undoubtedly, the internet is a hallmark of progress, the interconnectibility, the limitless informational opportunities, the instant satiation of any intrigue or desire. And yet, the internet thrives on ephemera; the very nature of its use demands that this be so. Whilst the 'Mona Lisa' and 'The Last Supper' are still esconced in mystery and awe, the internet so far appears capable only of propagating viral vignettes featuring prison inmates' sychronised dance routines and sneezing babies.

Progress and Work

As technological progression is signified by anorexic television screens and devices shrinking on the surface of the palm, the more fundamental ramifications can be seen to rest in the rendering of ever more fields of work superfluous and redundant.

This has its roots going way back to the Industrial Revolution as the latest machinery made the traditional skills of those like the Luddites obsolete, and now manifests itself in the proliferation of automated services, driverless modes of transport, security recognition systems, and so on. With a large, and ever increasing, population, new forms of employment will need to be created principally as a means of keeping people busy. Undoubtedly, this will take the form of large scale, and probably largely meaningless, data analysis (perhaps then all these 'Big Data' scandals are to be encouraged since they could provide a vast amount of future labour?!)

Any system of production necessarily strives to achieve maximum utility, efficiency and perfection, and the eradication, as far as possible, of error. This iron law in itself woould not be so damaging were it not for the late-20th century economic models that have worked so well to subjugate people to capital and relegate any notion of the worth of an asset or skill to its fungible potential.

Ultimately, this is the crux of the problem facing the human labour force; humans being prone to error and inconsistency, it makes perfect business sense to invest instead in the development of technology, and in the process, celebrate the virtues of progress.

Progress and human emotions

The most persuasive idea that I can deduce arguing, if not against progress in and of itself, but of its primacy, relates to human emotions. To this I take a dubious lead from David Hume's assertion that 'reason alone cannot be a motive to the will, but rather is the slave of the passions'.

It is my conviction that emotionally and perhaps spiritually, individuals are embroiled in a continuum of cyclical highs and lows that on a primal level have far more in common with the true nature of human progress than a naive conviction in a linear upward trajectory to higher and ever more reified plains.

Despite this, the formulaic compartments into which people are encouraged to view and plan their own lives plays into this naive iidea of continual betterment (which again plays into the religious tradition). We are encouraged to believe that if we knuckle down and work hard life will arrange itself as an assembly line onwards to a better job, better prospects, better relationships, a better house, more possessions, a fulfilling retirement, a pain-free death.

Life seldom unfolds in this uni-directional manipulating of sliplanes onto highways of our own determinism, but instead resembles a Gordian spaghetti junction of chance events and accidental circumstance.

Real emotions, universally experienced, such as love and loss, compose the most potent psychological terrain. The emotional framework through which we conduct our lives is all that really matters, since invariably it serves to obliterate or distort the peripheral apparatus of physical reality that we might normally see described as evidence of progress.