O-turning

The trouble with the Budget is it’s mired in show business - it’s made into a pivotal event. And it is, politically, but not to the extent as the BBC covered it, with a pre-show followed by a four hour long pre- and post- speech analysis which included a tracking aerial shot of Mr. Hammond’s Jaguar as he made his way to parliament. Now, I’m not criticising the BBC, in part because I adore the absurdity of it all. I’m just setting the scene.

Of course, almost as much show business and performance went into the address itself as did go into the coverage of it. A jokey Budget is how many newspapers are describing Mr. Hammond’s hour-long delivery in the Commons. Some will argue it shows confidence and gives the government a much-needed sense of swagger; some that it shows Mr. Hammond fighting for his corner; some will say it shows a government and a Chancellor who is already sinking, so why bother to be bothered about further perceptions?

From my point of view, and what is almost a defence of the Chancellor, though the jokes were awful, when we all know the content of whatever is said will be reduced to a half-dozen bullet points by the commentators covering it, why not give them more cheesy content to sift through? But this, nor the other reasons suggested, are really the reason the Chancellor put on a show.

Though more jovial than most, Mr. Hammond’s tone and turn of phrase was just mimicry of what is seen in that chamber every week, and indeed what was seen immediately before during PMQ’s. Politicians speak in such a way as to embed their real politicking within a defensible question or statement. Many see it as annoying, or sycophantic. Yet that is the reality, and one the Chancellor cannot shy away from.

When he speaks about his decision to, “choose the future,” as if he had a choice, or about his desire for his children to live in a country where people have good jobs, as if this were somehow a new revelation, surely the intention is to paint himself as some political visionary. Yet it says something about the orator, I suggest, when the entirety of a speech’s punch is found in the rhetoric. Indeed, those same words could have come out of Michael Gove’s mouth and they would have had the same impact. In a profession based on candidacy, this is a problem.

Now it is unfair to say this is the exact problem that faces this government, not because it’s untrue, but because such a statement implies this is the only government that is forced to hide behind vapid statements, bluster and stage lights. Indeed, much of Labour’s high and mighty tone invokes such methods. But it is this government, distinguished with a nightmare (bureaucratically and logistically, if not actually) in the form of Brexit on the one hand and a failed yet crucial economic policy on the other that mean it seems to consist almost entirely of empty phrases spoken by interchangeable and frankly forgettable characters.

This is of course the sign of a dying government - one with an obvious lack of vision and too much time spent in office to suddenly decide to find a new one. The fact such a government remains in power demonstrates the priority is not serving, but sustaining.

Brexit remains its own animal, yet the rhetoric spouted by the government of full sail ahead whilst fires break out left right and centre shows they are, somehow, also drowning. A stronger government might be honest with the public that there are challenges in the process, some of which were unforeseen and some which stubbornly persist. Yet this government cannot for fear of upsetting the balance of power and collapsing into civil war.

On the economy, we see a similar story. Seven years into an austerity policy and government debt to GDP (this week’s favourite statistic for citation) will only soon begin to peak. Meanwhile, Andrew Neil of the BBC questioned whether the promise to eliminate the deficit has been abandoned, and Norman Smith (also of the BBC) asked whether Britain just needed to accept we are a poorer country? Yet Mrs. May and Mr. Hammond will continue to refer to Britain’s, “strong economy,” and their party’s economic credentials.

This is the equivalent of closing one’s eyes and putting fingers in one’s ears and shouting, “la la la!” into the aether. A strong government would, at the very least, address these concerns and debate the effectiveness of their choices. Yet for the Conservatives to abandon austerity, they would also have to abandon their legacy of the past seven years. They would have to accept they were consistently wrong, and would have to acknowledge the sense of stagnation (at best) that is gripping the country. They’d self-destruct, shooting themselves with their own silver bullet - economic credibility.

The Budget serves as a fine example of all of this. Immediately after, buoyed by the announcement on stamp duty abolition, the Chancellor may have believed he’d done what many thought was impossible - delivered a good Budget. Yet within hours the maths had been run, and the projection looks an awful lot grimmer and problematic. Mr. Hammond had to U-turn on his previous budget. This is also a sign of weak government, as the Conservatives should most certainly know. But it is much more concerning when a government is so fragile they cannot even risk changing their mind.

Suffocation

In the song, ‘Suffocation,’ by the band Against Me! there is the line, “Suffocation, Modern life in the Western world.” I suspect 21^st century world is more accurate, but I also acknowledge maybe that’s implied by the word modern.

In recent weeks as talk of Brexit has been building and the actual act of giving notice completed I have felt myself becoming disengaged with the issue, a feeling I hypothesise is not uncommon. The reason for this I think is quite simple; information bombardment. Though, even that is a misnomer.

In the film Anchorman 2 (a film I do not recommend, mostly because it’s shit) Ron Burgundy, relegated to the graveyard slot on a new 24-hour news channel, begins to report of the ‘emerging’ story of a police chase. The humour is two-fold, firstly in how it clearly is meant to mock modern daytime cable news, but secondly in how the ominous narrator explains how this absurd character and scenario was the origin of modern news today.

What Burgundy does in this scene is genius, and really, it’s fundamentally opposed to the modus operandi of a news station; he exploits the unknown. Now, from a viewer perspective we watch the news because we are ignorant of the day’s events, and the news anchors can inform us of the information we are missing. Burgundy, in this scene, flips this paradigm on its head by saying the news organisation themselves are ignorant of all the facts. Suddenly this becomes exciting, and engaging, and problematic.

It’s problematic because information only flows so fast, and doesn’t flow at all when there is nothing to know. In the modern 24-hour news cycle, there’s a lot of moments when there’s nothing to know. The solution to this problem is the aforementioned, ‘information bombardment’, and perhaps now you can see why it’s a misnomer; there’s no information to be bombarded with. Instead, the time is filled with analysis, and cross analysis and predictions and historical perspectives and counter perspectives and info-graphics and timelines and so on and so on, until something happens. All the while we, the viewer, sit there in a whirlwind of confusion and frustration and to an extent hysteria as we come to realise nothing, absolutely nothing, is being said.

In some ways, it’s just a supply and demand problem – there’s so much demand (air time) but so little supply (relevant news).

As an aside, if I were to suggest a reason for the rise in ‘fake news’ and clickbait, I would suggest it is from a desire to capitalise on this vacuous information environment, but that’s another discussion for another day.

This problem isn’t just a 24-hour news problem. Anywhere that we have access to information faster than that information can be provided this problem festers. Your phone and your computer are as much at fault as the 24-hour news channels. I suggest if you’ve ever felt yourself with a deep feeling of depression and self-loathing from a continuous pressing of that refresh button, this might be the reason. I know I have.

This is what I mean when I quote ‘Suffocation;’ we are suffocating in an information overload. Of course, this is maybe another misnomer – we’re actually drowning. The term ‘information diet’ is one I’m hearing more often and it’s taken the form as something hip and cool, but I do think there is a darker side to it, namely escaping the depression and self-loathing of information addiction. Cutting yourself off to make a change is one thing; cutting yourself off because you need to is quite another.

Here, then, we find the real problem emerging out of it all. The feeling of wanting to escape the info-sphere, to switch everything off, to go on an ‘information diet’ – this is the realm of disengagement. Sometimes we need to disengage our brains and do something different – it can be very liberating, spiritually and intellectually – but some issues are too important for us to willingly, and with exhaustion, disengage from.

I cited Brexit previously. This is a massive issue for my country right now. Trump if you are American, Le Pen if you are French, and countless other things I am – ironically – ignorant of, these are all important issues we as citizens need to be engaged in. In these past few weeks I have wanted to disengage, to stop reading articles and listening to commentary and talking to colleagues, but I’ve desperately tried not to. Most of what I read and hear and so on I consider meaningless, copious noise, but I still listen.

Sometimes it’s good to get away from it all – especially if you feel like you’re drowning – but sometimes you’ve got to suck it up (pardon the pun) and try to keep going.

Prosthetic Head

Amazon Go may represent an event horizon. The idea of a cashier-less supermarket does sound wonderful to some. Though there will be nay-sayers who, I suspect, will suffer the same fate as all who stand in the way of technology’s relentless march. That is to say they will be branded backwards and fearful.

Amazon’s idea should not have been a surprise; I doubt it was for many. The inherent cannibalising nature of cities has enabled, in what really is a very short period of time, the digitisation of the Western world (if not the East also). It is easy to forget that Amazon Go falls apart if consumers do not have an internet capable device and access, whilst on the go, to the internet. Both of these limitations seem like old concerns; alas, looking back on great leaps we might confuse them with barely lifting our feet.

The technology involved in Amazon Go cannot be denied its commercial use. Indeed, it’s already here. Similar advances will come along very soon (I am not foolish enough to put a date on it, equally I am not going to underestimate its timeline). Driverless cars, for example, have the capacity to save the world by reducing personal vehicle ownership and thus emissions.

The issue, of which I cannot be the first to point out, is that such advances impact on peoples’ employment, not merely their convenience. The arguments surrounding barriers to entry are real, though I do believe ultimately futile; it is the cost to human labour that we must remember.

It is easy for us to forget the role people play within systems once they have been removed from the system. For those who benefited – often the majority – the pain of this separation is an acceptable trade-off for the efficient gains. Amazon Go is not the first example of this separation, nor will it be the last, but when that majority become a minority and gains become, in a way, losses, conflicts will arise.

Such conflicts are emerging already. And as much as I take issue with the phrase ‘metropolitan elite’, such a brand exists for a reason; there’s a disconnect between those we call ‘professional’ and those who inhabit the ‘WalMart economy’ (though perhaps that needs a rebrand). Technology has not necessarily caused this divide, but as screens replace faces and faces become redundant, this divide will grow.

Mark Carney of the Bank of England has spoken recently about the risk to jobs from automation. This threat would imbue rage amongst many if only we were not part of the automated paradigm already. We cannot go backwards, and as such we must redefine the economy and the role of people in it. Or, should I say, we must remember there are people in it.

This sounds like a sound bite, in many ways because it is. To substantiate it requires almost existential questioning. Amazon Go, or something similar, will one day rule the high street. The question for our digital world is can we evolve with technology, or can we only adopt and become reduced to ones and zeros?