Graham Stewart

Writing to discover what I think and believe in increasingly fractured times

Politics

Good information needs hard work

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Information that is too easy to come by is usually a sign that a lot of money has gone into making it available to you. Money is what removes the friction. Money is the grease that oils the cogs of message production.

Things work so well for the manipulators of the message — those who ‘manufacture consent’ — because they have full control of the media that is consumed with so little friction. Both TV and the newspapers are controlled by and for the interests of those who rule. And by ‘rule’, don’t think I’m talking simply of those in government. We no longer have a democracy (because money skews and distorts votes, policies, and management of the economy as a whole) so government tends to be simply the most amenable representatives of the dominant corporate interests. So, those in charge of government policy are also in charge of the media that presents those policies as ‘best for Britain’. What could possibly go wrong? Well, not much for them but a lot for the rest of us.

Alternative voices are available. Much of the writing and journalism on alternative media sites far outshines the stenography, repetition, and relentlessly on-message output available across corporate media. The friction in consuming this media takes the form of the effort involved in hunting it down. It’s not going to drop onto your doormat or shout loudly at you from the newsstands. It’s not going to be represented on political news shows on TV or radio. For all the mass penetration of social media and the internet in general, alternative media still struggles to penetrate the consciousness of many. This is not surprising. For people my age — and even a decade or so younger — we’ve been brought up on media that was both trusted and always readily available. That, of course, was the problem. May god forgive me, I used to read The Guardian. I may even have believed at some time in that distant past — and whisper this — that The Guardian was a paper of the left. I know, I know.

Thank god for RSS and feed readers. I used to use Google’s feed reader until they suddenly decide dto end its life. Now I use Newsblur. Whatever the reader, it works the same: I get a range of news articles — and other things, too; all work and no play etc — sent straight to my reader and I can scroll through the news in the morning. It’s my own personal newspaper but free of corporate cant, evasions, and propaganda. The friction is minimal now for me. In fact, the friction of finding the sites to read becomes both informative and fun. As with most people, I followed clues here and recommendations there and cross-references where I found them and have ended up with the beginnings of a comprehensive list that lets me feel confident that I can ignore what the corporate media spews out and I’m missing nothing of value.

For what it’s worth, here’s a list of some of the sites whose feeds I rely on:

2020 — Gratitude and Anger

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It’s too early to make a call about whether we’ll look back on 2020 as the year from hell or as the year in which things started to become even worse and what we thought was hell was merely hell’s reception area.

And was what befell us this year completely unforeseen? Well, yes, in some ways. But a pandemic was becoming increasingly likely as ecological damage continued, and its effects could be — and were — fairly accurately modelled both at the economic and health levels by large numbers of both national and international health organisations. In other words, the scale of the detrimental effects of this particular pandemic are a result of political decisions. And if we look especially at the UK and the USA — where the death toll and the economic impact for anyone already living on benefits or one pay check away from eviction and food banks — we can see that it is more than political. The profits-led, private-industry-focused, and corruption-riddled responses to the pandemic have been driven by ideology.

When the Tories and other parties of the neoliberal death cult talk of the economy they don’t mean the health of the nation as a whole. Their idea of economy is the profit-gobbling transnational corporations that destroy the planet, shatter communities when they shift production in search of smaller overheads, seek to continually depress wages, and campaign feverishly against the rights — and safety — of workers.

Living in the UK now means living in a country that is likely to see one of the world’s highest death rates from Covid-19 — and that was before the onset of new, apparently more aggressive strains of the virus began popping up like unwelcome molehills in the immaculate lawn of our self-regard. And, of course, to add that little extra irony, a major health crisis hit these shores after the Tories had spent the previous decade seeking the best ways to undermine, underfund, and ultimately sell off the NHS. Hospitals were hugely understaffed before the pandemic hit. NHS staff were already working over one million hours of unpaid overtime every week before the pandemic arrived in the UK. One million hours. Every week. Nurses and midwives account for over 400,000 of those hours. You know, those nurses that have lost their bursaries and been refused a pay rise by the Tories?

Add to all this a Tory government led by ministers both corrupt and incompetent — and with a majority in parliament that makes them almost untouchable — and it is hard to see what anyone could be grateful for. It hasn’t helped, of course, that the so-called leader of the opposition is not much of a leader and seems to believe that the best way to oppose austerity, corruption, and incompetence is to abstain in crucial votes or, when he is particularly exercised by the blatant lies engaged in by the Tory front bench, to tut.

So much for anger. Or, at least, the fertile ground on which my anger is laying its ever stronger foundations.

But gratitude I do have. It may be a short list but it’s full of important things. Here it is:

  • My health and that of my family. My wife, my three adult children, and I have all escaped illness so far this year.

  • I have a built-in support network in my — for now — Zoom-based twelve-step meetings. The humour in the rooms and the ability to right-size problems and put things in perspective has been, if not exactly a life saver, a balm for my sanity.

  • The love of my wife. She shows me how to love and be loved. After twenty-nine years of marriage, our marriage grows stronger every year. We have faced this year together.

  • I love reading and I love books and this year I have found in the books I’ve read worlds of hope and joy and knowledge. Not escapism, perhaps, so much as a source of strength for all the best that we can be. Turning from a news report containing the flippant evil of a Boris Johnston or a Donald Trump (or any of their toadying, self-serving acolytes) to the essays in My Seditious Heart by Arundhati Roy or a novel like Anne Patchett’s The Dutch House, for instance, is to inhale hope like fresh air in a world that seemed enmeshed in the smoke of a billion fires.

The danger is that I let my gratitude crowd out my anger. That way lies silence and silence is fatal to us all at this time. I hope, therefore, I will have the strength throughout this year to add my voice to those who are agitating for change, for an end to free-market capitalism — of any sort of capitalism, to be honest — and for saving the planet for our children.

Happy New Year.

Until recently, Bollywood had a serious make-up problem

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Indian Institue of technology, Mumbai by Aman Ravi
Photo Credit: Ravi Aman via Unsplash
The last time I was in Mumbai it was still called Bombay. I stayed at the Taj Hotel, which is close to the Gateway to India. It’s easy to feel like an extra in a Bollywood film in such surroundings.

On leaving the hotel in the morning I would hail a taxi for the short ride across town to the Reuters office on Nariman Point. I wasn’t particularly lazy but the taxis – Indian built and perfectly sized for the crowded and anarchic roads of the city – gave me an almost armchair view of the city. This sense was emphasised by the fact that the taxis appeared to be carpeted from floor to ceiling.

Nariman Point is a stubby peninsula that by 2006 was estimated to be the 7th most expensive location in the world for office space. It was an architectural paradox. On one side of the road leading onto the peninsula stood the office blocks aspiring to be high rises. The opposite side was occupied by a decidedly low rise shanty town.

Bombay presented such contrasts wherever I walked. Street food stalls across the pavement from fancy new hotel restaurants. Cattle strolling unconcerned – and unmolested – across busy traffic intersections. Businessmen in suits pursued along the uneven paving by legless beggars on wheeled boards.

But there was a hidden contrast at work in the city at the same time. The glamorous face that Bollywood showed to its devoted fans across the world had a problem with its make-up.

The problem was nothing technical. It was a simple matter of sexism. The Cine Costume, Make-up Artists and Hair Dressers Association (the CCMAA) refused to grant membership to women make-up artists. And as the CCMAA were a closed shop in the Bollywood studio system, it was their rules or no film for the most part.

When women worked on set, they had to be prepared to hide when union officials toured the studio. And, of course, they never received credit for the work they did. The result was that few women saw make-up as a potential career. That was until a campaign started by Charu Khurana, a make-up artist trained in LA who experienced the fines and prejudice of the CCMAA first hand and took legal proceedings against them.

Finally, in late 2014, the Supreme Court of India ruled the CCMAA’s restrictions illegal and demanded that they allow women to become members and work as make-up artists on film sets.

Another make-up artist with an international reputation who has previously stood up to union bullying and refused to pay the fines imposed is IIFA award-winner Namrata Soni. Namrata, who studied at Delamar Academy in Ealing Studios and worked on the record-breaking Om Shanti Om, at first worried that the CCMAA would renege on their promises as soon as the glare of publicity over the Supreme Court decision faded away.

Luckily, this has not happened so far and the number of women working as make-up artists in Bollywood continues to grow. At the same time, the standard of work is steadily increasing. Namrata believes this is down to the way the women themselves approach the work. “Women are perfectionists,” she says. “This pushes the standard higher and it is now finally inching towards that seen in the rest of the world.”

Women who see the potential for a rewarding career are now looking to travel to find the best available training. “Women are willing to pay to get trained because they see the benefits of that training,” says Namrata. “It gives them the confidence and knowledge to go out there and face the challenges that the industry throws their way.”

Those who ask Namrata’s advice about where to train are recommended to try to follow her own path to London. “I’ve met a lot of naturally gifted professionals but training is an important aspect of growth. I feel it’s important to go where you have the opportunity to be trained by the best in the business. I believe Delamar is the best school because it has the best teachers and you leave there prepared for world class achievement.” In fact, Leda Shawyer, Delamar’s Managing Director, reports a large upturn in applications from India since the start of 2015.

Things change. The shanty town that kept in check the hubris of the office dwellers on Nariman Point remains but the rental value of those same offices has plummeted. Business has moved to newer and more central locations within Mumbai. In Bollywood itself, meanwhile, women remain, for the most part, second class citizens but at least when it comes to using their talents as make-up artists, they can now start to compete with their male counterparts on what is rapidly becoming an equal footing.

Disclaimer: I work as an occasional freelance consultant with Delamar Academy and came across this story while talking to Delamar’s Managing Director, Leda Shawyer.

The No Offence Intended Gambit

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And so 2016 has arrived. On time, too, and with no announced rise in fares. While the going is good, therefore, Happy New Year.

The publication of government papers from 1985 under the thirty year rule saw Oliver Letwin reveal himself in a memo for Thatcher’s policy unit as a racist and a snob. The fact that snobbery and racism was rife among Tories in 1985 is hardly surprising. That he could write the things he did in a memo that was supposed to offer thoughts on government response to inner city poverty, unemployment, and police abuse simply confirms that such beliefs were, if not the norm, at least widely accepted and met with some approval. That Letwin retains his current job implies that such racism and snobbery are still tolerated among leading Tories today. Again, hardly surprising.

The most startling thing to emerge from this episode, however, is surely Letwin’s proffered apology on being confronted with the damning evidence of his bigotry. In short, he claims that no offence ‘was intended’. Apparently, what he wrote was ‘badly worded’. As Private Eye would say, that’s all right then.

It comes down to this: either Letwin is a racist and should have no role in government; or he is an ignorant ass and should have no role in government.

My view is that what Oliver Letwin wrote suggests he is a racist, an elitist snob, and an ignorant jerk.

No offence intended, Oliver.