Geoff Coupe's Blog

Reflections on life at “De Witte Wand”…

Category: Society

  • Who is the Guilty Party Here?

    A very perceptive piece by Joris Luyendijk in the Guardian today. His thesis is that

    The UK now seems to be the country whose government lies about nonexistent negotiations with the EU while threatening to renege on its outstanding financial obligations – often misrepresented as the “divorce bill”.

    and:

    The dominant four newspapers in Britain by circulation are the Sun, the Daily Mail, the Sun on Sunday and the Mail on Sunday, with the more measured but equally pro-Brexit Sunday Times coming in fifth. Each of these publications has been brainwashing its readers with fake news about the EU for years – in some cases, decades – while building up pro-Brexit politicians and stoking divisions. Terms such as “betrayal”, “surrender”, “plots by traitors” and “enemies of the people” are on the front pages routinely. The top 10 British papers by paid circulation does not feature any pro-European newspaper, unless you count the Daily Mirror. It does feature Boris Johnson’s mouthpiece, the Daily Telegraph, and the triumphantly nasty Daily Star. It is a depressing tally, scarcely improved by knowing how many people rely on social media for their news.

    Depressing is not the half of it. It’s the realisation that my fellow Britons swallow these lies from Boris Johnson, his colleagues and the Tory press, and believe them wholeheartedly. I feel ashamed to be British and fear for the future of the UK. My touchstone is that I also hold Dutch nationality, and hence I am also a citizen of the EU. It is the lifeline to which I can cling. It remains to be seen whether UK citizens will be able to do the same.

     

  • Unfit

    Boris Johnson continues to demonstrate why he is totally unfit to be Prime Minister of Britain.

    As a friend said: “He’s a completely and utterly self-serving bastard for using her death to promote his political agenda.  We have come to expect nothing less from him.”

    The real horror was the realisation that he was being cheered on by his Conservative party colleagues. Have they no decency? Well, rhetorical question, I suppose. Clearly they have not.

  • Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now

    That’s the title of a book by Jaron Lanier. He poses the question:

    How can you remain autonomous in a world where you are under constant surveillance and are constantly prodded by algorithms run by some of the richest corporations in history, which have no way of making money except by being paid to manipulate your behavior?

    He wrote the book during the final months of 2017 – before the explosive events of the Cambridge Analytica scandal proved his thesis that we are the product of platforms such as Facebook and Google – not the customers – and that the real customers include bad actors who certainly do not have your, or society’s, best interests at heart.

    As the title suggests, he presents ten (very persuasive) arguments as to why you should stop using these platforms. And as he says:

    …being able to quit is a privilege; many genuinely can’t. But if you have the latitude to quit and don’t, you are not supporting the less fortunate; you are only reinforcing the system in which many people are trapped. I am living proof that you can have a public life in media without social media accounts. Those of us with options must explore those options or they will remain only theoretical. Business follows money, so we who have options have power and responsibility.

    I have long loathed and detested Facebook, so when the Cambridge Analytica scandal broke, it provided the impetus to delete my Facebook account, and I’ve never regretted it for an instant. I confess that I still have a WhatsApp account (WhatsApp is owned by Facebook), but this is only because our neighbourhood and community council have  group accounts. I would much prefer to stick to SMS, but alas, that ship has sailed.

    I read (and have monetary subscriptions to) newspaper websites directly instead of getting news through personalised feeds – Lanier writes that when “Facebook announced that it will deemphasize news in its feed: the journalism world celebrated, for the most part, because now it might become freer to connect to audiences on its own terms”.

    I use Pi-hole as our home network-wide Ad blocker, which has the added advantage of preventing Ad services from spying on us.

    I avoid using Google services as much as I can (for example I use DuckDuckGo as my search provider, and refuse to use Gmail). Nonetheless, my smartphone runs Android – thanks to Microsoft not having the guts to persevere with Windows Phone, so Google probably know more about me and my habits than I do myself.

    Instagram and Twitter have never appealed to me; I have never used them.

    Here’s an interview with Lanier on the subject of his book. I heartily recommend that you read Lanier’s book for yourself – it is likely to be an eye-opener. Hopefully it may also help some social media addicts to kick their habit.

  • Last Night of the Proms 2019

    So, it’s over for another year – we will have to wait until the 17th July 2020 for the next season of the BBC Proms to start.

    Meanwhile, I’ll remember the Last Night of the Proms for 2019 (last night…) with joy and affection. Some stunning music: the world premiere of a new piece, Woke, by Daniel Kidane, an arrangement of Laura Mvula’s Sing to the Moon, Elisabeth Maconchy’s Proud Thames, and all the old favourites.

    And we all fell instantly in love with the mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton. What a woman, what a voice! And when she produced the Rainbow flag during the second chorus of Rule Britannia and waved it proudly for all the world to see, we were overjoyed…

    Of course, the elephant in the room was Brexit, but we all managed to avoid mentioning it, and instead we simply enjoyed the music, waving Union Jacks and European flags together.

  • Wise Words and Sad Leaves

    Raoni Metuktire, chief of the indigenous Brazilian Kayapó people, has a few words of advice for us. Unfortunately, I doubt that we will listen.

  • Homage to Humanity

    While I was in Deventer at the book market, I popped into Deventer’s largest bookshop to check out the new book by photographer Jimmy Nelson: Homage to Humanity.

    I already have a copy of his previous book Before They Pass Away in the library, which has the same theme: photographs of indigenous peoples and tribal cultures that are in danger of vanishing from the world.

    I freely admit to being in somewhat of two minds about the books. The photographs themselves are stunning, but also carefully posed; almost theatrical. A sort of National Geographic crossed with Vogue. And yet, and yet – they are undoubtedly a record of sorts:  aspects of human cultures that are undeniably in danger of being swept away.

    So I wanted to take a look at the new book to see whether I should stump up the cost of adding it to the library – at €125, it’s not exactly the cost of a paperback…

    And, well, I was persuaded. It is a gorgeous book, printed by Rizzoli.

    I’ve ordered it via our local village bookshop. Now I’ve got to find space in the bookshelves to put it.

    JimmyNelsonJimmyNelson23247_f  BeforeTheyPassAwayJimmy20798_f

  • Mierenneuken writ large

    The Dutch have an expression: mierenneuken. Literally, it means “ant-fucking” (the Dutch are nothing if not straightforward).  The English translate this as “nitpicking”, that is, the practice of meticulously searching for minor, even trivial errors in detail.

    And now, the full weight of the Dutch governmental process has brought into being a ban on the wearing of the burka in public places that seems to me to be the very epitome of fucking ants.

    Thankfully, some manifestations of public life in the Netherlands have recognised this law for being what it is, a pernicious waste of time, money and energy over 150 religious women in a population of 17 million.

  • An Offensive Clown in a Polka-dot Dress

    I’ve never had time for Ann Widdicombe. Her callousness and stupidity have been self-evident for years. Now she has re-invented herself as an MEP. And she’s still spouting stupidity. She and Farage make a pretty pair. They are in Brussels simply to wreck the EU in any way they can, and pocket the pay and pension from the EU whilst doing it. I despair.

    Addendum: Marina Hyde sums up the Widdicombe spectacle better than I could. Read and despair.

  • What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

    So Facebook wants us all to use their new cryptocurrency Libra? I loathe and detest Facebook enough already without this being thrust upon us. As Kenan Malik writes: Libra cryptocurrency won’t set us free, it will further enslave us to Facebook. Count me out.

    The truly terrifying thing is that apparently:

    More than two dozen entities have signed on to be founding members of the Libra organization, including Visa and MasterCard, Uber and Lyft, eBay, and Spotify.

    So Visa and Mastercard have already cast their lot with Facebook? We’re doomed.

  • The Bigger Picture

    Jonathan Cook discusses the the assault by Mark Field on a climate change activist this week, and points out the bigger picture. He states that we are in danger of getting sidetracked. Worth reading.

  • All animals are equal…

    But clearly, some are still more equal than others…

    A walk from the Westerbork Nazi transit camp to Groningen as part of the “Night of the Refugee” fundraising activities has been cancelled after the organisers faced death threats and intimidation.

    What really galls is that Thierry Baudet described the sponsored walk as “scandalous”, and Esther Voet, the editor of the Jewish newspaper Nieuw Israelietische Weekblad said it was “Tasteless”.

    Perhaps Baudet and Voet should be reminded of the poem written by Martin Niemöller: “First they came…”

  • “A Special Place In Hell”

    Donald Tusk hits the nail on the head. The Nigel Farages, Jacob Rees-Moggs and Boris Johnsons of this world deserve nothing less. It is they who have betrayed the British people, not the EU.

  • “A Terrible Failure of Common Sense”

    In recent years, the UK Home Office has increasingly seemed to be driven by checklists, rather than any understanding of the people they are dealing with.

    Here’s just the latest example in a very long list: a man, 90 years old, is being told to fly to the US to get a visa so that he can stay in the UK with his wife.

    Apparently, a Home Office spokesperson has said:

    “All UK visa applications are considered on their individual merits, on the basis of the evidence available and in line with UK immigration rules.”

    As a good friend of mine has said on many an occasion: “Just what is wrong with these people?”.

     

  • Half and Half

    Someone asked me last night how long I had been living here in the Netherlands, and I replied: “35 years”.

    “So, for half your life?” he asked. And up until that moment I had not thought about it, but he’s right: for the first 35 years of my life, I lived in the UK (even though, technically speaking, the country of my birth, the Isle of Man is a Crown Dependency and not part of the UK) and now I’ve been living for 35 years in the Netherlands.

    It gave me pause.

  • Nine Lessons of Brexit

    Ivan Rogers, the former UK ambassador to the EU, delivered a speech this week on the nine lessons of Brexit. The full 10,000+ words transcript is here, but if you prefer a précis, then this will do nicely.

    The basic message is that the choice for Brexit and, in particular, the process of Brexit have both been fucking disasters, although Ivan Rogers is too much of a gentleman to use such words. The blame for this trainwreck, he argues, cannot rest on the shoulders of the Brexiters or the Remainers alone – both sides have contributed to the dishonesty and the confusion that today reigns supreme.

    One might almost say “A plague on both their houses…”

  • Selfie Deaths

    Selfie deaths – a report. But I disagree strongly with the conclusion. It would only serve to affect the number of Darwin Award winners in a negative fashion.

  • Here was a Plague

    That’s the title of an excellent article by Tom Crewe in the London Review of Books about the history of the Aids crisis.

    It seems so long ago now, and I count myself amongst the lucky survivors, but we lost so many friends and lovers in that dark period. It should not be forgotten.

  • Typically Dutch

    The Dutch have a reputation for being straightforward, bordering on rude, in their interactions with other people. I had a prime example of this in an encounter yesterday.

    My Lenovo wireless keyboard and mouse has been giving trouble over the past month or two. The keyboard and mouse become unresponsive at random intervals – and no, it’s not because the batteries are dead. When this happens, the only thing that will cure it is a reboot of the PC. The fault definitely seems to lie in the Lenovo devices, since plugging in a spare mouse and keyboard will immediately work without the need of a reboot. My spare keyboard has one non-working key, and was the reason why I swapped it for the Lenovo keyboard in the first place.

    At any rate, when the Lenovo keyboard and mouse froze again yesterday, I thought enough was enough, and resolved to get a replacement keyboard (I already had a spare mouse). I jumped in the car and sped off to the local computer shop in town. Unfortunately, this being a Saturday, the shop closes at 16:00 – as I saw, with a sinking feeling, on the door as I opened it at 15:59.

    “Am I too late to buy something?” I asked. “I’ve just cashed up – what do you want?” came the reply. “I need a new keyboard, because my old one has just died”, I said. “I can’t help, I’ve cashed up”, came the rejoinder. No “Sorry”, no sympathy for my plight, just “I can’t help, I’ve cashed up”. I knew that he wouldn’t help, but could he not have softened the blow with a simple “sorry”? That’s so typically Dutch…

    Oh well, his loss – I ordered a new keyboard from CoolBlue, and it will be delivered today (on a Sunday!)…

  • Pride Badges

    The LGBTQ+ Pride season is upon us. Today was the London Pride march, with 30,000 marchers. The Guardian also had a story about a treasure trove of LGBTQ+ badges being found in an attic.

    That reminded me that I must still have a box containing a small collection of my own. Sure enough, a rummage in a cupboard produced:

    20180707-1856-49

    A few of these come from the 1970’s. The Campaign for Homosexual Equality badge may well date from 1974, when I helped organise the second annual CHE conference, which was held in Malvern, Worcestershire. I suspect the GLF badge will date from the mid 1970’s, whilst the Heaven badge was produced to celebrate the opening of the Heaven nightclub in 1979.

    I attended a number of marches in those days. The early Pride marches, of course, but also anti-Fascist marches and Women’s Rights marches. This photo of me and my mother was taken in June 1975, shortly after I had finished marching (along with 20,000 others) in the demonstration organised by the National Abortion Campaign.

    Mum & Geoff 1975

    Heady days…

  • Jaron Lanier and Social Media

    An interview of Jaron Lanier, and why he thinks that Facebook and its ilk are bad for us both as individuals and as society.

    He’s absolutely right, of course, but the damage has probably already been done. The one false note in this interview comes right at the end with a truly insulting observation from the interviewer, Krisnan Guru Murphy. Fortunately, Lanier is too much of a gentleman to rise to the bait.