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David Timoney Profile picture
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9 Oct, 4 tweets, 1 min read
One the reasons why state conspiracies are less likely (or more inept when attempted) is that the state has an aversion to knowledge, which in practical terms means a contempt for data & a suspicion of theory (the attempt to substitute for the limitations of data).
This is why the state habitually loses records - i.e. it really is more cockup than conspiracy, though deliberate suppression is obviously a factor on occasions. Kafka remains a better analyst of the state than most because he understood its institutional will to forgetting.
Orwell's 1984 is a fascinating book because it extrapolated, in a reasonable way, the technological capabilities & potential of the late-40s. But it completely misunderstood the psychology of the state & its agents. O'Brien is a Grand Inquisitor, not a realistic bureaucrat.
The future is not "a boot stamping on a human face—forever" but some drone saying "we haven't got any record of that".

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More from @fromarsetoelbow

David Timoney Profile picture
11 Oct
The appointment of Katharine Birbalsingh as "Social Mobility Tsar" won't address social mobility. That she will remain in her job as a school head while being "a loud champion" tells you that new her role will largely be played out in the comment pages of the press. Image
The phrase "the soft bigotry of low expectations" originates with George W Bush's No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, which implemented the standardised testing & school grading pioneered in the UK by New Labour, with similar results: narrow teaching, system gaming, stress etc.
The phrase was lifted wholesale by Michael Gove as Education Secretary, along with the above average fallacy (the idea that all schools should produce above average results). The claim was that disadvantaged kids were being held back by progressive condescension.
Read 8 tweets
David Timoney Profile picture
7 Oct
The focus here is on the retired, but the interesting stat is that the chief objectors to a return are the 25-49 cohort. This probably reflects that younger workers are more likely to be in jobs that can't be done remotely, & that 50+ have fewer outside demands (i.e. young kids).
What this means is that the revolutionary cohort may not be the unattached young but families with young kids struggling with housing costs, child care & diminishing promotion opportunities at work.
If I were the Labour Party, I'd drop the twin track strategy of seducing bigoted OAPs & marginalising radical young singletons & would instead champion young families. It worked for Thatcher in 1979, which should surely impress the current leadership.
Read 5 tweets
David Timoney Profile picture
6 Oct
There are two ways of affording higher wages. You can increase the size of the pie (growth &/or higher productivity) or you can more equally divide the pie (distribution of returns between capital & labour). Danny is blissfully oblivious to the latter.
thetimes.co.uk/article/high-w…
This is problematic because the Thatcherite revolution actually led to lower trend growth. In time, her let-it-rip approach to industrial strategy led away from high productivity/high wage manufacturing to a low-wage service economy, which the Tories are now blaming on the EU.
Though he filters it through the business-friendly neoliberal pabulum of David Sainsbury, Danny is really acknowledging the case put forward by Mariana Mazzucato et al, which is actually a return to a pre-Thatcher industrial strategy.
Read 5 tweets
David Timoney Profile picture
6 Oct
Priti Patel's promise to crackdown on protests is perhaps best read as a distraction from her obvious problems over immigration, but her definition of "our free press" as part of the country's key infrastructure, on a par with roads & railways, is genuinely disturbing.
Like Oliver Dowden's "war on woke" & Nadine Dorries' "Nice BBC you've got there; shame if anything were to happen to it", this goes beyond indulging Murdoch. The press is in decline & the commercial encroachment on public service broadcasting is focused on C4, not the BBC.
The Leveson Inquiry didn't terrify the press as much as it did the Tory party, which realised its informal privilege was in jeopardy. They're now trying to institutionalise it by more fully integrating the media & potential sites of dissent into the state apparatus.
Read 5 tweets
David Timoney Profile picture
5 Oct
My theory is that over the historiographical longue durée, the role of Iraq as a contributory factor in Brexit will increase, while the role of 80s deindustrialisation & the 2008 crisis will decrease. The populist backlash will be traced more to issues of trust than economics.
For example, I think it's now more recognised that a major factor in the growing anti-immigrant sentiment before 2016 wasn't just crude xenophobia but the feeling that Blair had misled the country on the likely number of East European migrants after the 2004 accession.
Likewise, the management of New Labour, with Peter Mandelson & Alistair Campbell to the fore, led to a belief that you simply couldn't trust a word any of them said. People expected the Tories to lie, but Labour not so much, hence the bitterness over the expenses scandal.
Read 5 tweets
David Timoney Profile picture
2 Oct
The fundamental problem with the police is that it employs the wrong people. This is evident not just in its prejudice & abuse of power against the working class, minorities, activists & women, but in the general attitude of contempt towards the population at large.
This contempt is not just directed outwards, it also festers internally, hence the racism, sexism & classism (often inverted, e.g. contempt for graduates) reported by many who have ended up leaving the police. The question is, where does this spring from?
Given its consistency over time & geography (see the recent news about the ex-French policeman now identified as a serial killer), this milieu has been extensively studied from the political, sociological & psychosexual angles (e.g. Theweleit's 'Male Fantasies').
Read 6 tweets

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