Robert Sharp

Pupil Barrister

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The Numbers Game

9 October 2007 / / 4 Comments

Gordon Brown mentioned the Iraqi employees of the British Forces in his speech yesterday.

Existing staff who have been employed by us for more than twelve months and have completed their work will be able to apply for a package of financial payments to aid resettlement in Iraq or elsewhere in the region, or – in agreed circumstances – for admission to the UK.

(via P/P).
Dan explains that the “12 months” criteria is unfair and arbitrary. People who have served for less time are still being threatened with death.
The argument from the government is presumably that these measures are harsh but necessary, to avoid “opening the floodgates” to asylum claims from Iraqis who have a tenuous, temporary link to the British Forces. I guess this is an argument that has some traction in the media… but it is a dangerous cliche. It first assumes the worst motives of those who would seek work with our troops. It assumes that they are merely mercenaries, with no sense of home or belonging in Iraq. But this is a mistake. Most of the Iraqis who have worked with the British have done so in order to help rebuild their own country. Ties to their home are strong and patriotic. Given the risks involved in taking on this kind of work, it is hardly going to be a fast-track or short-cut to a life in the West. Nor will it be percieved as such in Iraq.
Second, asylum claims should be considered on the basis of need, not length of service. Asylum is not the same as granting citizenship. It is not like a knighthood or a gold watch, to be presented as some kind of long-service award. The militias who roam Basra do not ask for a P60 form before deciding whether or not to beat you up. “Oh, well, you’ve only been working for the British for eleven months, so we’ll be back at the beginning of next month to terrorise your family.” A cleaner who is threatened on the way to his first day of work has as much right to asylum as someone who has been translating for our squaddies since March 2003.
Nick Cohen complains that campaigners fail to mention that it is Islamist militias who are causing the violence. Indeed they are – but this is a moot point. Asylum should be blind to the cause of the danger – and necessarily so. If it was limited to cases where the British has somehow caused, or simply exacerbated the violence, then the process would be even more ugly and opaque than it is now. Of course, others might say that Britain has caused the violence, by invading Iraq in the first place. This is a hydra of a debate at the best of times… but in this case, thankfully, a moot point too.

Update

Tim Ireland links the issue to Brown’s leadership:

Brown’s senior advisers should know their history, not just what they can remember from media studies; if they’ve fought more than one local election campaign, they should be aware that the echoes of the miner’s strike pale into insignificance next to the memories of the 1991 uprisings in Iraq, and this decisive moment will have an impact far beyond local activism. These people need to be looked after immediately.

The Age of the Remix

3 October 2007 / / 7 Comments

I mentioned ‘mash-ups’ last week. It’s a term that seems to have only gained traction in the past year. To me it seems to mean something halfway between ‘collaboration’ and ‘remix’. I don’t know what it means to other people.
We live in the age of the Remix. Sure, sampling and cover versions have been around for decades. Simple, honest plagarism has been around even longer. But it is the current era, one of cheap recording technology and limitless storage space for content, that the Remix and the mash-up will come to dominate.
The most popular video clip on the Internet is not a famous speech, a TV moment, or even One Night In Paris. Instead, it is footage of a plump kid wielding a broom, pretending it is a light-sabre. In one sense, he was not really pretending – The clip is so ubiquitous because thousands of people have added special effects to the footage, giving the anonymous hero a proper Jedi weapon (one suspects that the video was originally made for just such a purpose). Filming something and adding special effects is technically a remix. When we see unadulterated video, we call it “raw” footage, which suggests the idea that it is incomplete and un-evolved. Only when it has been mixed does it take on a clear and proper meaning.
I think one of the reasons I enjoy the music of Will Oldham is his propensity to remix his own songs. Hearing an old tune sung in a new style forces you to think about how the original was put together. The differences between the two renditions bring out the best of both. This is also true of artist Tommy Perman’s project Chinese Whispers, where the mix that was remixed was remixed was remixed, by an ever-expanding group of producers. Real World Records run a similar ongoing project too, again facilitated by the Internet and accessible production software that simply was not available five or six years ago.
Tommy Perman is a member of the FOUND collective. A couple of years ago, they thought up an excellent tag-line to promote their ‘Stop Look Listen’ exhibition at the Royal Scottish Academy: Remix Our Poster. The results were quirky and highly entertaining. What the FOUND exhibition shows us is that an initial thought can take different people on very different journeys. The pleasure lies not in seeing one aesthetically pleasing image… but in seeing dozens. It is delightful to see how varied are the thought processes of our fellow human beings. When it comes to lateral thinking, human imagination expands into infinite dimesions. The idea of the remix gets better with each new pathway.
A more recent example is the Layer Tennis Tournament, currently in progress over at the Coudal Partners site. One artist remixes another artist’s work. The remix is then remixed once more by the first player (using Photoshop layers)… and so the ‘volleys’ continue. Last week, illustrator Kevin Cornell took on designer Shaun Inman. The individual images they created are very pretty, but it is the juxtaposition of two different minds that makes it entertaining.
The Remix allows dialogue between many minds, not the monologue of a single person sharing their experience with us. Technologies, which we humans have invented and perfected over the past generation, increasingly allow this kind of art to arise and develop. And why not? Human thoughts overlap, and our art should too.

Update

From a good review of Waves (and British Theatre in general), courtesy of Ben Brantley in the New York Times.

At a time when the theater is often regarded as the quaint elderly relation of the art forms, it’s a pleasure to the see this alleged invalid flexing its muscles, turning cartwheels and generally showing off to the tune of “Anything you can do, I can do better.” Adaptation, at its best, is not mimicry; it’s rejuvenation.

Interested in the Public Interest

2 October 2007 / / 5 Comments

A letter in The Independent, from one Sam Butler who hails from my home town of Fleet:

Sir: Pundits have been analysing the factors that the Prime Minister might take into account when deciding whether to go for an early general election. Predictably they focus on his party’s electability: poll findings, the opinions of MPs in marginal constituencies, public perceptions of his financial record and so on. It is a pity that the question of when it would be in the public interest to hold an election seems to figure so far down the list.

Well, yes, but I hardly think we can blame the politicians for this. If someone has pretensions to run the country, then it is not unusual for them to hold the belief that they are the best person to do so. Speaking in realpolitik terms, one might say that it is a prerequisite for the job. Certainly, if a Leader or Leader-in-waiting claimed otherwise, they would come in for some severe criticism from both sides of the political divide. This is why the Tories say they are happy to fight an election whenever Gordon is ready.
So, when making the decision of whether or not to go to the polls, Sam Butler’s question is a moot point. The Prime Minister (whoever he or she may be) already assumes that “in the public interest” is synonymous with “in the interests of my career”. This is certainly true of the current and previous incumbents of the post, and I assume for Margaret Thatcher too. I don’t know whether John Major always thought that he was the best person to run the country. Sometimes it seemed that this wasn’t the case. After all, he waited for as long as was constitutionally possible before calling an election in 1997. Perhaps his apparent lack of self-belief was one reason why he lost support of the public that year.
Having confidence that you are the Best Thing To Happen to the Country might be a little irritating, and not a little alienating to the rest of us. But it is not necessarily a bad trait that we should wish away. Nor is it the same thing as faking confidence that you will get any votes, which is the saddest kind of spin.
As to the question itself: The current administration has spent much of its short life responding to crises, and with Parliament in recess. It feels a little like an interregnum, or a phoney-war, before the real business of governing begins. A new, strong, full term mandate for Gordon Brown will bring a degree of stability to the country, which is surely good for the economy, and for the efficent implementation of policy. Alternatively, a Labour government with a smaller majority, or a coalition government led by either Labour or the Conservatives, would farm uncertainty. And the current speculation-without-confirmation is surely a distraction for everyone. So, even those who reject the Labour ideology might agree that, in the practical sense, the country’s interests are indeed linked to that of the Prime Minister.

'Carmen' Review Round-up

2 October 2007 / / 0 Comments

Fifty Nine have been working with director Sally Potter, on the video design for Carmen at the ENO. As with Attempts on Her Life, a micro-site has been created, presenting trailers and blogs which chart the creative process from start to finish. Its an interesting method of engaging with audiences, and by-passing the traditional “gate-keepers” in the press.
In this case, the show has divided critics. Writing in the Independent, Edward Seckerson enjoys the dystopian setting:

Potter’s big metaphor for her Carmen is civil liberty under threat. She and her designer use the scrim to superimpose the jerky CCTV images over actuality. Surveillance is the new reality. Carmen’s entrance is pre-empted by her grainy monochrome image blown up to fill the entire screen. She pouts knowingly for the camera, as if to say: “I know you’re watching.”

Later, Carmen angrily asserts her freedom, her right to choose her own path, in the face of Don Jose’s frenzied passion. She gets a knife in the belly for her troubles.
In The Times, Richard Morrisson is less impressed with the chosen themes… but is still complimentary about the video work:

Forbidding walls topped with razor wire; an oppressed populace spied on by CCTV; menacing cops and booted tarts; desultory, neon-lit bars; bodyhoppers and hoodies; dreary airport transit corridors – where have we seen this before? The answer is in most ENO productions since the 1980s. Potter should get out more.
What is saddest is that the staging’s most interesting aspect – real-time video (by Fifty Nine Productions) projected on to a gauze to suggest a society under constant surveillance – is abandoned after one act.

Rupert Christiansen in The Telegraph also had mixed feelings about the setting, but still enjoyed the music.

Es Devlin’s sets are sparely beautiful and evocative, and Potter generates more intensity and atmosphere than Francesca Zambello did in her drearily conventional version for the Royal Opera. But I feel that Potter has been in two, or even three minds as to what she wants to do. Some scenes, including the final confrontation, catch fire. Others, such as Carmen’s arrest, remain inert.
…
The biggest applause was rightly reserved for Edward Gardner, conducting a vivacious orchestra in a sparkling, colourful and clean-textured account of the score which never becomes hysterical or heavy-handed.

Andrew Clements in The Guardian was unfortunately not at all impressed, and thinks that “one of the most ambiguous heroines in operas is reduced to a mere cipher”. Ouch.

US leads, UK loiters

2 October 2007 / / 0 Comments

While the British Government fails to make up its mind on the fate of Iraqi asylum seekers, the US sentate has done the decent thing. An ammendment to a defense bill by Senator Ted Kennedy (D, Mass) means Iraqis who have worked for US forces can rely on a speedy asylum process (via Norm):

The amendment raises the number of Iraqi interpreters and U.S. government employees (with at least one year of service) who can be admitted under a special immigrant visa program from five hundred to five thousand each year for the next five years. It creates a special category (“Priority 2”) of persecuted Iraqis—including U.S. employees, people working for American news and nongovernmental organizations, contractors, and members of religious minorities, and their families—whose refugee applications can be heard directly by the U.S. government without a United Nations referral, which should speed up and streamline an extremely sluggish process.

There’s a campaign to introduce similar measures here in the UK. Dan reminds us about the meeting next week at Portcullis House, and how you can invite your MP.
Meanwhile, in the week after Gordon Brown said “Human Rights are Universal”, the Independent interviews asylum seekers from Darfur, Zimbabwe and Burma who are about to be deported back to their countries of origin, where they will be in grave danger. This confusion is testimony to how poisoned the immigration debate has become, with “illegal immigrants” confused with economic migrants, asylum seekers, and legal refugees. The fact that government departments and agencies are so slow to adopt the morally decent policy on these issues is, I think, a failure of leadership. They need political cover from Ministers.

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