Owen Smith, the anti-immigration candidate who has risen without trace to challenge Jeremy Corbyn for the Labour Party leadership, has been making hay with this apparent contradiction between Corbyn’s current and past statements:

Confusion over Article 50https://t.co/hVPnt6QOpc …

— Owen Smith 2016 (@owensmith2016) August 6, 2016

I think I’ve made it clear that I am not a Corbyn fan. However, it’s clear to me that when he said “Article 50 has to be invoked now” on 24 June, he meant “We are now in a situation where Article 50 has to be invoked at some point”, and did not think that he was calling for the immediate invocation of Article 50.

It was incompetent of him to express himself in the way that he did, and incompetent not to clarify as rapidly as possible with his real view (whatever that may be) when it became clear that his words were being interpreted in the form that they came out of his mouth rather than the form they had had in his head before he spoke. He expressed himself poorly on the morning after a sleepless night, and failed to absorb any speaking points which might or might not have been prepared for him by party staff. A competent leader would not have made that mistake in the first place, or would have rapidly corrected by scheduling a major interview to set the record straight (and journalists would have been cutting each others’ throats to get that interview). But it’s a mistake rather than equivocation.

It was a very big mistake, because both the MPs who I linked to in my previous post saw this very statement as effectively the final straw. (Thangam Debbonnaire: “On the day after the referendum he asked for an early Brexit… That was the tipping point for me”. Lilian Greenwood: “we heard Jeremy calling for the immediate triggering of Article 50. Without any discussion with the Shadow Cabinet or the Leader of the European Parliamentary Labour Party… How can that be right?”)

For those who had worked closely with him, and who would theoretically have been among those populating the ministerial benches of a Corbyn-led government, it seemed entirely in character for Corbyn to have suddenly adopted a new policy position on a crucial issue of national importance without preparing colleagues for it (never mind consulting them), rather than considering the possibility that he might have misspoken – a possibility that I haven’t even seen his supporters raising. It seems that Corbyn’s poorly chosen “now” triggered the mass resignations from the shadow cabinet of the following couple of days, and thus was the spark that exploded the current leadership crisis (which looks likely to continue for at least twelve months after Corbyn trounces Smith in the coming ballot).

Needless to say, my analysis doesn’t change my view about the urgency for Labour to get a competent leader. For me this isn’t about policy at all (there seems little to choose between the two candidates, and where I can discern a difference I generally feel closer to Corbyn’s position), it’s about two of the most basic political leadership skills: communicating clearly and consistently, and building a good team around you which may well include those who have not always supported you. Corbyn is deeply incompetent on both counts, and the Labour Party and the British political system need and deserve better. The problem is, I’m not convinced that a better option is currently available.

Saturday Reading

Posted on 6 August 2016 by fromtheheartofeurope

Current
Watership Down, by Richard Adams (a chapter a week)
Merchanter’s Luck, by C.J. Cherryh
The Beggar Maid, by Alice Munro

Last books finished
Doctor Dolittle in the Moon, by Hugh Lofting
Drama and Delight: The Life of Verity Lambert, by Richard Marson
The Host, by Peter Emshwiller
Ghastly Beyond Belief, eds. Neil Gaiman and Kim Newman
Short Trips: Seven Deadly Sins, ed. David Bailey

Last week’s audios
The Black Hole, by Simon Guerrier
The Isos Network, by Nicholas Briggs

Next books
The Last Theorem, by Arthur C. Clarke and Frederik Pohl
Alice in Sunderland: An Entertainment, by Bryan Talbot
Atom Bomb Blues, by Andrew Cartmel

Books acquired in last week
SPQR, by Mary Beard
To Lie with Lions, by Dorothy Dunnett
The Most Dangerous Book: The Battle for James Joyce’s Ulysses, by Kevin Birmingham
City of Soldiers: A Year of Life, Death and Survival in Afghanistan, by Kate Fearon
Galactic Girl, by Fiona Richmond

Three Arthur C. Clarke novels

Posted on 6 August 2016 by fromtheheartofeurope

I picked these up as an omnibus dubbed The Space Trilogy, though in fact they are not even slightly linked narratives which take place in different versions of the near future. They are a good reminder of the strengths and also the limitations of the Good Old Days. As I’ve said before, Clarke was one of my formative influences as a teenager, and it’s nice to report that his work holds up reasonably well under a more sceptical adult gaze, despite the scarcity of women and the complete lack of non-white characters (which Clarke corrected later in his career).

Islands in the Sky

Second paragraph of third chapter:

For the first time, I turned to see what Commander Doyle had been doing during the crisis. To my astonishment, he was still sitting quietly at his desk. What was more, there was a smile on his face, and a stop-watch in his hand. A dreadful suspicion began to creep into my mind, a suspicion that became a certainty in the next few moments. The others were also staring at him, and there was a long, icy silence. Then Norman coughed, and very ostentatiously rubbed his elbow where he had bruised it against the wall. If he could have managed a limp under zero gravity, I’m sure he’d have done so as he went back to his desk. When he reached there, he relieved his feelings by grabbing the elastic band that held his writing pad in place, pulling it away and letting it go with a “Twack!” The commander continued to grin.

I had read this before, long ago, and it remains good wholesome stuff, with boys becoming men in space: our protagonist gets to stay in the big low-orbit space station, where the entire crew appear to be English and male, and experience a few other adventures but also learn some important lessons about life and about engineering (though nothing much about other matters, the only women in space being an actor making a movie in orbit and the members of a friendly family of Mars colonists). The most striking difference for me between Clarke’s 1952 future and what has actually happened is that the cost of space flight has proven to be so high that economies of scale have pushed us much more to unmanned spacecraft and also to international collaboration than he anticipated, though I am sure he approved of both developments. It’s interesting that Clarke’s Wikipedia entry has forgotten this novel completely; I hadn’t.

The Sands of Mars

Second paragraph of third chapter:

It was very disconcerting, at least to an inhabitant of Earth, to see two moons in the sky at once. But there they were, side by side, both in their first quarter, and one about twice as large as the other. It was several seconds before Gibson realized that he was looking at Moon and Earth together – and several seconds more before he finally grasped that the smaller and more distant crescent was his own world.

Now this, slightly to my surprise, was a Clarke novel that I definitely had not read before – and I thought I had raided the Belfast library system of its entire stock of his works when I was a teenager. Though bound second in my omnibus volume, it was Clarke’s first published novel, dating from 1951. It’s set a few years after the establishment of a Mars colony; the journalist protagonist (who is also an sf novelist) is being sent as what we’d now call an embedded member of the team, to write up what is going on in humanity’s new outpost; the details of how journalism is technically done have dated far more than the rest of the book – there is a loving detailed description of a fax machine, an unimaginable technological advance in 1951, archaic for us in 2016. It’s also a rare case of Clarke attempting to inject some emotional energy into his story, with one of the crew members turning out to be the protagonist’s long-lost biological son, who then falls in love with the only girl on Mars; characteristically, having laid out the situation, the author doesn’t dwell on it (and didn’t really try this kind of narrative trick again in his career). He’s on much more comfortable political ground when the discovery of a new form of Martian life upsets the balance of relations between the Martian base and its Earth master’s, though here again his viewpoint is firmly rooted in what’s good for the human colonists rather than the indigenous Martians. Still, I enjoyed it, and I’m surprised that this took me decades to track down.

Earthlight

Second paragraph of third chapter:

He had made mistakes before—but this time, surely, there could be no doubt. The facts were undisputed, the calculation trivial—the answer awe-inspiring. Far out in the depths of space, a star had exploded with unimaginable violence. Wheeler looked at the figures he had jotted down, checked them for the tenth time, and reached for the phone.

This 1955 novel did disappoint me a bit. It’s the story of a counterespionage accountant on a lunar observatory at a moment of interplanetary conflict between Earth and The Rest Of The Solar System; obviously the Moon becomes a critical location in that conflict (and equally obviously there are Cold War parallels in the author’s mind). There are some vivid observations of base life in the observatory (where again all the staff are white men) and the high-tech battle at the climax of the plot is well described. But otherwise the whole thing is a bit subdued, and the framing narrative of the protagonist’s mission gets a particularly unconvincing resolution.

This was both the top unread book that I acquired in 2014, and my top unread sf book. Next on the former list is The Collected Stories Of Arthur C. ClarkeMerchanters Luck, by C.J. Cherryh.

Interesting Links for 06-08-2016

Posted on 6 August 2016 by fromtheheartofeurope

Love in Translation: A hilarious and moving piece about learning your spouse’s language. #fb
(tags: languages )
Why Don’t We Trust Our Leaders? by Ngaire Woods: What leadership is, and isn’t.
(tags: politics )
The only way to save the American dream: Be like Denmark.
(tags: economics USA denmark )
The secret origin of the Salisbury steak: Eat meat!
(tags: historyofscience )

Interesting Links for 04-08-2016

Posted on 4 August 2016 by fromtheheartofeurope

Robert McLiam Wilson on Belfast and Paris: As you would expect.
(tags: writing waronterror northernireland france )
Thangam Debbonaire: ‘If Jeremy had rung, it would have been a conversation I remembered’: More detail.
(tags: ukpolitics )
I’ll take a united Ireland seriously when I hear Irish politicians tell us what they’ll concede.: Yup.
(tags: ireland northernireland )

Bétélgeuse v.5: L’Autre, by Leo

Posted on 3 August 2016 by fromtheheartofeurope

Two for the price of one: since the first panels of page 3 are wordless, I’m giving you both the second panel and the second panel with words:

Kim: “You’re a bit quiet, Hector. What’s up?”
Hector: “Er, well…”

What’s up with Hector is that he’s in love with Kim, as are many people in the world of Bétélgeuse; this is the climax of the second of the Aldébaran cycles of graphic stories by Leo, and though it starts somewhat unpromisingly with Kim and two other female characters discussing the size of their breasts on the first first page, actually it then settles down into a rather satisfying conclusion for the series, with the peculiar behaviour of human technology and settlers and of the indigenous inhabitants all explained just enough to make you want to buy the next volume, and Kim established as a competent kick-ass heroine ready to lead the rest of us onwards.

This came handily to the top of the pile when I was looking for a non-English language graphic story to read. Next in that pile might be De Mexicaan met twee hoofden, the Dutch translation of Le Mexicain à deux têtes, the first of the Professor bell series by Joann Sfar. Or it might not.

Interesting Links for 03-08-2016

Posted on 3 August 2016 by fromtheheartofeurope

WFC 2016: Programming Thoughts: Another major screw-up.
(tags: Sf sexandgenderandsexuality )
Policy or Project? France, Germany, and EU Defense: A reality check on the mythical EU army. #fb
(tags: eu germany france )
Putin’s ‘Human Rights Council’ Accidentally Posts Real Crimean Election Results: Oops.
(tags: ukraine russia )
7 Things I Did To Reboot My Life: Wil Wheaton writes.
(tags: lifehacking )
Dark Ages royal palace discovered in Cornwall – in area closely linked to the legend of King Arthur: Wow.
(tags: archaeology )

Between structure and No-thing, ed. Patrick J. Devlieger

Posted on 2 August 2016 by fromtheheartofeurope

Second paragraph of third essay (“On Social Structure”, by A.R. Radcliffe-Browne):

I hope you will pardon me if I begin with a note of personal explanation. I have been described on more than one occasion as belonging to something called the “Functional School of Social Anthropology” and even as being its leader, or one of its leaders. This Functional School does not really exist; it is a myth invented by Professor Malinowski. He has explained how, to quote his own words, “the magnificent title of the Functional School of Anthropology has been bestowed by myself, in a way on myself, and to a large extent out of my own sense of irresponsibility.” Professor Malinowski’s irresponsibility has had unfortunate results, since it has spread over anthropology a dense fog of discussion about “functionalism.” Professor Lowie has announced that the leading, though not the only, exponent of functionalism in the nineteenth century was Professor Franz Boas. I do not think that there is any special sense, other than the purely chronological one, in which I can be said to be either the follower of Professor Boas or the predecessor of Professor Malinowski. The statement that I am a “functionalist,” or equally the statement that I am not, would seem to me to convey no definite meaning.

As stated previously, I’ve been a big fan of anthropology for many years, without ever having formally studied it; this is quite a decent selection of classic essays on the discipline, of which my favourite were the Radcliffe-Browne piece cited above, Lévi-Strauss’ “The Structural Study of Myth”, Clifford Geertz’ “Think Description”, Sherry Ortner’s “Is Female to Male as Nature is to Culture?”, and Lila Abu-Lughod’s “The Interpretation of Culture(s) after Television”. I still don’t feel I know as much as I’d like about anthropology, but my ignorance has been elevated to a new level.

Unfortunately the editorial structure provided by Devlieger is very poor to the point of being unprofessional. The essays appear to have been processed by OCR, and very inadequately proof-read; Devlieger’s own foreword is in very poor English, as are many of his footnotes. It’s a shame that the editor did not seek some editorial assistance himself.

This was the non-fiction book which had lingered longest on my unread shelf. Next in order is The Other Islam: Sufism and the Road to Global Harmony, by Stephen Schwartz, but I’m going to wait until I’ve cleared my sf acquisitions of 2009 before starting seriously on the 2010 pile.

Corona, by Greg Bear

Posted on 1 August 2016 by fromtheheartofeurope

Second paragraph of third chapter:

Lieutenant Uhura’s quarters were a notable exception. They were richly, tastefully decorated with hanging fabrics, a non-regulation assortment of pillow-couches and a chair made especially for the extremely sensitive skin of a Deltan – a chair which was sheer heaven for a human. Sculpture ranging in size from a few centimetres to one meter betrayed Uhura’s particular obsession, collecting surrealistic and totemistic modern African ebony carvings.

I have read few Star Trek books, but back in 2012 on a Loncon 3 site visit I picked up three of them and have now finally got around to looking at them. It’s a book that is great on incidental detail, but a bit light on plot (and the back cover of my edition spoilered the important question of Who Is Behind It All, a point not revealed in the book until more than half way through). Still, I’ve read enough Doctor Who books to know that the point is sometimes to renew acquaintance with old friends rather than necessarily to push the literary envelope, and in fairness we do learn more here about the Vulcans (and indeed Uhura) which fills out the Trek universe nicely. Also mercifully short.

This was my top unread book acquired in 2012. The next on that pile is another of the Star Trek spinoffs acquired on the same occasion, Planet of Judgement by Joe Haldeman.