An Enemy of the People

Spolier alert

The Crucible Theatre has re-opened with a production of Ibsen's An Enemy of the People, a battle between truth, freedom and justice on the one hand, and politics, the media and the solid majority of public opinion on the other.

Dr Stockman knows he is right - he has the evidence, and initially he has supporters, but when the cost to the town in money and reputation is understood his supporters desert him. Driven close to madness by his unwillingness to deny the truth in the face of public opinion and financial ruin, he makes what he calls a remarkable - and to our ears disturbing - discovery. A society that would lie to protect its interests is utterly rotten. The common man, the radical press and the political establishment are not the backbone of society but its chief ill. They would suffocate superior free-thinking people like himself. Were they to succeed in this suppression of their moral superiors, they would deserve to be exterminated: the whole town, the whole country if necessary. And yes there was a bit of dalek voice for this line.

Yes, the fighter for truth and justice (in this adaptation, if not in Arthur Miller's) is not just called an enemy of the people by the authorities, he really is one. And perhaps the people deserve to have enemies such as him.

The majority is not always right. (Stockman says 'never right'). And while Stockman's descent into quasi-fascist elitism is disturbing, it is perhaps a salutory reminder that if we regard democracy merely as a device for fulfilling our desires, without regard to truth or justice as higher authorities, then we will deserve to have enemies like Stockman. Instead, bringers of uncomfortable news, back up by evidence, should be respected not vilified.

I've not touched on the bumbling and self-importance of the mayor, or the faux radicalism of the press, but both are frighteningly relevant comments on our society, for a play written in 1882.

Do we still shoot the messenger today? I fully expect many crusaders for truth to identify with Stockman, even if most of them actually have their facts wrong - the pattern is much the same. I'm sure the chiropractics and homoeopaths are smarting a little at the moment. Global warming deniers and global warming hysterics are widely ridiculed.

But mostly we ignore uncomfortable truths. Proportionate science-based action on climate change just isn't getting off the ground. Drug policy seems determined (to fail) to build compelling myths to fight the drug culture.

So while we still prefer to live in denial, since Ibsen's time we have introduced the new crime of not really caring what is true and what is not. Stockman would I think have been even more horrified at that.

An Enemy of the People runs until 20th March 2010.

Is the bag for life an improvement?

I've been wondering for some time whether the 'bag for life' that you can buy from many retailers is, environmentally speaking, actually an improvement on the disposable bag. This would seem to depend on how they are actually used - as opposed to the intention that they will actually be used 'for life'.

Rather than guesstimate away as usual, I thought I would be a little more scientific and try to gather some evidence. So please fill in my survey: 5 quick questions on your baggage habits.

Tories beg for more recession

What makes my day is the sweet sound of Tory fury on the economy. It may only be 0.001% growth, but it is too early dammit. "We are badly prepared for recovery" grimaces Osborne. Too right you are, the last thing you want is any recovery before the election.

Now Osborne may have a point that this government deserves no credit. Governments don't fix recessions, they sit them out. It wasn't exactly a grand achievement of Brown to inject a fiscal stimulus - it is no hardship for a government to spend all of the next government's money as well as your own. It is some hardship for the rest of us of course, carrying that extra debt, but that has to be balanced against the benefits of the stimulus.

There is a fine economic judgement to the question of how much a government should borrow during a recession to keep the economy going. But this is swamped by the crude political judgement - spend the money now on Labour priorities: ID cards, dodgy IT, tax credit fiascos, harassing photographers, etc, so there is less for the Tories to spend later on their political priorities: rich, married, dead people.

Let's face it, the public sector deficit is breathtaking, and Labour is to blame. Gordon Brown way before the credit crunch had become less like, er, Gordon "prudence" Brown and more like Ken Clarke. The Tories are quite justifiably furious about it, as we all should be. But they'd rather we didn't think too hard about the difference between the state of the public finances and the state of the economy.

New Labour New Highs

In a masterful and courageous move, Labour has decreed that you do indeed get higher on cannabis than you do on mere class C drugs. Not as high as you would on a class A drug, of course, that is some serious shit, but if you find you only get a class C high, then I think you can report your dealer to trading standards.

At least that is, presumably the message Gordon Brown is trying to send. This is all about message after all, rather than inconvenient reality.

Unfortunately the message actually sent is that government drugs policy is arbitrary and not to be trusted. Science, it turns out, has a higher duty to the truth than it has to the tabloids, which makes it unsuitable as a guide to policy.

It gets worse. Had the message worked as intended, it would have implied that class C drugs are all broadly safer than cannabis and class B drugs about as dangerous as cannabis. That is to say the government wanted to send a message that it was soft on all drugs but cannabis - and softer indeed than the evidence would demand.

I am genuinely suprised that they do not reclassify all class C drugs as class B, all class B as class A, and all class A drugs as class A*. Grade inflation does the job in education, why not here. And it would prove that they are being tougher than ever on drugs.

Sign the petition.

Strange angle on road deaths

In the news today is a report showing that children in deprived areas are four times more likely to die in road accidents than those in wealthier locations, and that therefore deprived areas should get priority in funding for speed bumps, cameras etc.

On the face of it that sounds fair enough, but actually it is deeply confused and offensive. Funding for traffic calming should go to where it has the greatest benefit. If this correlates with poverty, then more of it will go to poor areas, as it should. But where there are accident hotspots in prosperous areas these should be dealt with on an equal basis.

The idea that poor areas should get priority just because poverty correlates with risk, is a bit like saying you should hire tall people when you want smart employees because height correlates with intelligence. (You shouldn't, you should test your applicants' intelligence.)

The suggestion here is that the life of a richer child is worth less than the life of a poor child, and that is grossly offensive. The implication is that reducing child deaths is not the policy goal, but rather equalising child deaths across the social divide, as if this were a front in the class war.