A week or so ago I tuned in to listen to Aung San Suu Kyi, the Burmese democratic activist, as she gave her choices for Desert Island Discs.  Her life in opposition to the appalling military dictatorship of her homeland is utterly admirable, but I know from talking to friends that the programme was more than a bit disappointing, really, giving some evidence for the old cliché about ‘never meet your heroes’.  There was no recognition of the contribution of the kids and husband she left behind in England to carry on without her, rather too much (including a record) about her father, and pretty evasive answer to a question about her refusal to condemn violence against Myanmar’s Muslim minority. “Had I done so it would have been divisive” was, I think, the answer.  Well, if only Churchill had been as wise in 1940.

And – I know this shouldn’t matter – what a boring choice of music.  Dvorak’s New World Symphony, for goodness sake – if I wanted to hear that again I could look at a Hovis advert or ring my local call centre and listen between messages telling me that my call is important to them.  Pachalbal’s Canon (also featured in TV adverts from Coca-Cola to Pantene) also made an appearance.  We also got Tom Jones and the Green, Green Grass of Home.  Now, an earlier blog (Sep 22^nd 2012) revealed my admiration for Mr. Jones’ vocal talents, but this song is actually not about going back to your roots, but about the night before an execution.   And then – I think I could see it coming, but the horror, the horror was undiminished – the appalling drivel that is John Lennon’s “Imagine”.   To be fair, Dr. Suu Kyi is not the only castaway to select this dirge, as a millionaire tax exile yearns for a world without possessions.  25 people from Billy Connolly to Neil Kinnock, Raymond Blanc to Natalie Wood have been happy to place it amongst the only eight pieces of music they would ever hear, for the rest of their lives.  But, dear me, dear me.

I suppose what one can say is that it is good for someone not to pretend a profundity or love of music that isn’t there.  Sometimes you can listen to Desert Island Discs, or similar programmes asking celebrities for favourite books, music or films, and feel a whiff of over-preparation as some dunderhead sobs at the thought of a life without Beethoven’s Late Quartets or the unabridged Don Quixote.   And we were warned: Dr Suu Kyi confessed on release from house arrest to loving Dave Lee Travis’s BBC World Service music show.

The conversation with my former school friends that I reported earlier showed a great deal of disagreement.  A good number – I guess a majority – could not believe that the rising GCSE and “A” level grades could be the result of improving practice, which was my theory.  I didn’t say that kids were getting better at physics or economics, just that they are getting better at achieving high grades in physics or economics exams, for a number of reasons.

The analogy I used was climbing Everest.  I said that just because more people can climb Everest these days doesn’t mean the mountain is any lower.  This caused particular spluttering.  One guy decided it was time to inform me that the reason people find it easier to climb Everest was due to better equipment and training. Which, I think, was exactly my point.  Another correspondent told me it stretched credulity to think that results could improve every year for thirty years.  I then made the mistake of pointing out a number of areas where results have improved consistently.  The number of road deaths in the UK, for example, which have fallen from 7,900 in 1966 to 1,900 last year – itself, about half the number of deaths in 1926.  We know also that survival rates from many forms of illness have risen. In the 1960s, the survival rate for childhood leukaemia was less than 10%: it’s now around 90%.  Why is it so hard to think that clever and hard-working people don’t get better at doing things ?  It would stretch my credulity (itself a pretty elastic material) if teachers got no better at doing something after thirty years practice.

So I thought I’d consider what has got better.  Obviously, athletic performance is one.  Hicham El Garrouj – 1500m in 3’26” –  is much faster than Sebastian Coe, who was faster than Emil Zatopek, who was faster than Paavo Nurmi (3’52” in 1924).  Does that make him a better athlete than the others ?  Hmm, depends on definition. I don’t think the worst of Nurmi, or believe he would be lapped by the modern generation.  My favourite game is cricket.  The very first limited overs final in England was won by Sussex, who scored 168 runs from 60 overs – not even 3 runs an over.  India scored at 5.7 runs an over to win the last World Cup.

But many other things have improved – like cars.  I gave my dad a book about family cars of the 1950s: it revealed his proud Standard Vanguard went from 0-60 in 22.2 seconds, and obtained 25 miles per gallon. Today, the cheapest Ford Focus goes from 0-69 in 12 seconds and gets 58 mpg.  This could be replicated in a thousand other technical areas.  The good old days were not that good if you wanted to drive from Leeds to London without breaking down.

One thread was to ask about the politics of the ‘things can only get worse’ debate on examinations.  The consensus was that it wasn’t political at all, yet in the distant past it would have been.  A central part of Conservative belief in the past was that progress was an illusion.  Generally, right wingers support reform only as long as it took place 100 years ago – see child labour, Irish freedom, slave emancipation, votes for women and so on.  Nowadays, though, we have a strand of neo-liberalism, believing that a particular kind of change – namely to institute profit-based market solutions to all areas of life – will yield great social improvement.  This is in fact a form of utopianism, and probably just as dopey as William Morris’s idea.  Well, rather more.  And it has been tried before, in the mid 19^th century, as you will find from Karl Polanyi’s masterpiece, The Great Transformation. And what a cock-up that was.

Now, this business of improving “A” level and GCSE scores.  What could account for them ?  It is a real conundrum, because many fewer people took “A” levels in the past, so you’d expect, if anything, results today to be worse*.  Let us start with the understanding that it could not possibly be that things are being done better – after all, this is the public sector and so any recorded improvement must be the result of fraud or declining standards (Question – what would the Daily Mail say about educational standards if pass rates fell year on year ?).  This leaves the following possibilities:

• Possibility 1: Kids are getting brighter. Now, this is not as stupid as it sounds.  There is a long term effect – known as the Flynn effect – which notes that IQ scores are improving decade by decade. The decade improvement is about 3 percentage points, so kids taking “A” levels now are, on average, 12 points brighter than, er, us.  Why does this happen ? No-one knows.  Could be less lead in the atmosphere, or too much lead in our pencils.  However, the broad IQ effect is unlikely to be a great explanation for improving “A” level scores, because the entry is not made up of the whole population but selected by ability – if you don’t get 5 good GCSEs, you’re not allowed on the course.  Also, the biggest rise in IQ is at the low ability level, where people don’t take academic education post 16.I do think, though, that kids work harder today.  I cannot remember ‘study buddy’ groups in my sixth form, whereas today it is common to see classmates meeting outside lesson hours to go over new or difficult topics.  For what it’s worth, I had a girlfriend who went to university in the 1980s, and her cohort worked very, very much harder than I did over my degree. Remember, the number of first class honours degrees has risen at least as sharply as good “A” level results.
• Possibility 2: Teaching is getting better, as all teachers have to be teacher trained (not true in 1960 grammar schools) and inspection is more austere, eliminating the worst performers. Years ago I can recall working in colleges where there were some classes in which almost everyone passed, and other subjects almost no-one passed, due to teacher incompetence.  One guy I observed when doing my own teaching practice was a total disgrace.  Problem with this as a general explanation – there is a weak relationship between teacher training and classroom quality as observed by inspectors
• Possibility 3 – the exams are getting easier. If by this we mean ‘the curriculum is narrower and the concepts less complex and demanding’ this probably isn’t true.  I haven’t done objective comparisons with past papers, but people who have (and have no axe to grind) say the standard is comparable though there remain some doubts in hard science areas.  I think it probably is true that some boards were more austere than others – at economics, I had the feeling that JMB was maybe half a grade more difficult than AEB, though most students who entered in a number of boards – don’t know if it’s still allowed – on the basis that buying more lottery tickets increased chances of success, got the exact same score in each.   I taught “A” level economics from 1969 to 1981 and my impression was that it did not get easier, but I got better at teaching it: see below.

• Possibility 4 – the way that students and teachers approach the exams is more focused. This is, I believe, the answer.  Examinations are nowadays presented in a way which is much more precise about what is expected, questions are less ambivalent, mark schemes make clear how much is awarded for each section of the question.  Teachers coach classes in study skills and revision effectiveness.  Lessons have specified learning goals, which are shared with the class and tested.  Students are more demanding.  Extra classes are put on where students can drop in for additional help.  This is the “Mount Everest” explanation – the reason there are more climbers now is not that the mountain is lower, but we have much more of a clue about how to climb it successfully.

Oh, one last thing. I am usually in France when the bac results come out. They are getting better each year, and the press wonder whether standards are falling.

*It is this difference in staying on rates that explains why employers say skills of school leavers are poorer than in the past.  In the past, when few people stayed on beyond 16 and only 3% went to university, there were many more bright competent people entering the labour market at 16 and 18 than today

There is currently a debate about the worth of the jury system, following the collapse of the trial of Vicky Pryce, a politician’s wife accused of lying to prevent his being disqualified from driving.

The concern comes from questions which the jury foreman asked the judge.  For example, he enquired what was meant by “reasonable doubt”: the irascible justice replied ‘doubt that is reasonable’, which strikes me as a poor response.  Ooops, contempt of court ??  When I served as a juror, our judge explained carefully that we needed to be sure of our conclusions, but must not invent any fanciful reasons why the accused might just be innocent.  The Pryce foreman also asked if the jury could take into account matters not tested in court: the answer is ‘of course not’, but I would guess he was trying to control a wayward member of his jury, not overturn British legal principles.  The press has also expressed outrage that another jury asked for a whiteboard and marker pens, when this seems to me an entirely reasonable request: it’s equipment available at the most humble of management meetings.

I have done jury service twice.  I understand the reasons why I cannot give details that could identify the cases, but an outline should help the current debate.  A useful video explained what would happen, and how our job worked.  Then we were sent off to our work.  My jury members were a diverse bunch – black and white, male and female, a carpenter and a stockbroker.  It’s worth saying that, against the hints that the problem with the Pryce jury was that they were a little too, what shall we say, ethnic.  We did four cases, and each time I was impressed with their commitment, honesty, and common sense. The dress sense – something the press seemed to think was crucial – may have been awry (the foreman’s Hawaiian shorts and flip-flops would not have been my choice) but I don’t believe the verdicts were.

What was common to the cases was the incompetence of the lawyers, who took hours to establish simple points and tried to befuddle straightforward cases.  In one instance, they alleged police brutality had taken place after the offence we were trying: so, it might have been true but it was clearly irrelevant to whether or not the defendant committed the offence.  In another case, the defence claimed mistaken identity for an assailant plainly caught on camera and grabbed by bouncers to be handed over to the police.  And an accusation of shoplifting fell because someone – whether the prosecuting authorities or the retailer, I don’t know – could not produce the security guard or the manager from the day of the offence, and ignored compelling medical evidence of innocence.  Now we are told we need lawyers to guide juries.  Lawks a mercy.  We don’t want lawyers on juries – the whole point is to get a lay person’s view. The fact that a judge could not answer a sensible question about the meaning of reasonable doubt was shows how much this is needed.

Also noticeable was the inefficiency of the system: my wife later served for two weeks without hearing a single case. It seems that this is often the effect of a defendant pleading guilty on the day: making this option available only up to 24 hours before the start of proceedings might concentrate minds as well as save time and money.

Max Boyce was given to end a rambling story about incidents at a Welsh international rugby match with the deeply felt words – “I know, because I was there”.  Recently, the magnificent Danny Baker gave over part of his Saturday morning radio show to a phone-in on the same topic, which made me consider where I stood on this topic.  I think I am less nostalgic than many people of my age –  when it came to the sixties, for example, I remember a decade with poor central heating, no drugs and precious little sex or rock’n’roll.

However, I do have some “I was there” stories to claim.   My father used to take me and my brothers to see Charlton Athletic, and we were there on the 27^th December 1957 when they beat Huddersfield 7-6 having been 1-5 down, only ten men on the pitch and twenty minutes to go.  Exciting ?  My dad was surprised that people didn’t die of heart failure.  The attendance was (I read now) 12,535, but you’d never know it from the number of grey-beards who lean against the saloon bars from Catford to Bexley, from Erith to Lewisham, and give their memories on the great day.  The other historic event I attended was the fabled 1966 Bob Dylan concert at the Albert Hall, when he played a set with electric guitars.  The first half of the concert was played acoustically, with Dylan alone on stage singing the protest songs from the first couple of albums, which greatly pleased the crowd in duffel coats.  The second half was the controversial one, with what became later The Band backing the great man: the hum from the amplifiers as they walked on stage was louder than most bands we’d heard.  The incident when a folkie shouted “Judas” took place in Manchester, not London, but at the Albert Hall I do remember one pompous prat in a voluminous sweater asking “What would Woody say ?” as he – well, not exactly stormed out, but shambled to the exit.  I was there, and I have witnesses who also crammed in to Rick Watson’s red Austin A35 van.

Now, though, one must confess the times when I wasn’t there.  I was sitting in a bar after playing rugby when a friend came up and said he had a spare ticket to see The Who play live at Leeds. Like an idiot I said I was a bit tired and missed one of Keith Moon’s last gigs.  And a few years ago, a friend encouraged me to see a band he really liked at Sheffield’s Boardwalk.  Down we went, and heard the set, which I didn’t like very much at all, so we finished our drinks and went home, missing the next band of promising locals who my son-in-law had come to watch – the Arctic Monkeys.  Ho hum.

The recent debate about the anti-Semitic (or not) Scarfe cartoon made me think about the increased fashion for public apologies.  I have to thank a friend for clarifying my mind on this issue, which does need some discussion.  Now, discussion of the matter of apologies and forgiveness is not new.  It has been part of Christian practice, for example, for a long time.  I’m not a Roman Catholic (believe me, I really am not) but the idea of confession has some psychological depth.  When one has offended against the moral code one hopes to live by, one should face up to that fact, express genuine contrition, and make amends.  Otherwise you can live in a fog of guilt.   I think the Rupert Murdoch apology about the Scarfe cartoon – which essentially says we were wrong and won’t do it again – is a decent response.  The idea of truth and reconciliation, originating in South Africa but used to allow other fractured states to move on, requires penitence and recompense.

The modern politicians’ apology is not, however, like that.  My mate has suggested that apologies can be categorized into a number of groups.  Here goes:

• “I am sorry that you were upset” This implies there is nothing wrong with what I said or did, and it’s really sad that you are so petty minded that you took umbrage.
• “Oops, you caught me out. How can I get out of this with least damage ?”  David Ward, the Liberal Democrat MP for a Bradford constituency (code – lots of Pakistani heritage voters) said (again on Holocaust Memorial Day) he felt that “the suffering by the Jews has not transformed their views on how others should be treated”.   He now says that he “never for a moment intended to criticise or offend the Jewish people as a whole, either as a race or as a people of faith, and apologises sincerely for the unintended offence which my words caused”.  Note that he is not sorry that he conflated Jews with Israel, or equated a foreign policy stance he dislikes with planned mass murder: Daniel Finkelstein has destroyed his position in a brief but delicious rejoinder.  And as far as Mr. Ward’s apology goes, penitence, the essential component of the confessional, is absent.
• Suggest your action is a bizarre exception from your normal standards. This is what companies do – key phrase “we are sorry that on this occasion our service did not meet your expectations” – translation, we would like you to think that it is really odd that we were not as utterly wonderful as we usually are.  See also John Galliano racist rant when drunk: ‘completely out of character’.  Oh, yeah ? In vino bloody veritas, in my view.
• Look at Nick Clegg’s apology for raising university tuition fees after he said he would abolish them.  What is he actually saying ?  That the policy was wrong, because it was unaffordable – i.e. I apologise for recommending  policies I now see were ill-advised (i.e. I was bad at what a politician should be good at) ?  That he now realises he shouldn’t make promises unless he can be sure he is able to keep them ?  (er, yes)  I suspect the truth is somewhere between the two – and that the Liberals were taken aback to be in government after 70 years, where all the undeliverable ‘pledges’ they have made to gain easy popularity now have to be faced.  On the other hand, he does look very penitent indeed.
• “If I was wrong, then so were all the other people who did just the same”. This assumes that the rest of the world is picking on you, when your behaviour was no different from everyone else’s.  See Lance Armstrong, see MP expense accounts.
• Put things off for a long time – see slavery apologies. Establish an enquiry, ideally one that will go on for years.  This is the line used regarding treatment of Mau Mau detainees, Hillsborough, Bloody Sunday
• Don’t apologise at all. This is the line used by the IRA for their actions during the Emergency in Northern Ireland.  The explanation for killing Protestants (or Catholics who disagreed with them) is now “how regrettable that such things happen in war”.  Contrast with Bloody Sunday above (14 dead in Bogside massacre, 21 dead in Birmingham bombing).  Don’t recall any apology by anyone for shooting a school kid on a bus for wanting female education, either. Or a call for an independent public enquiry.

And after you’ve made your weasel apology, you wait while and say the time has come to “draw a line under” the incident and “move on”.  See David Laws MP.  Took the Chief Executive of Barclays Bank about two years after the crash (in fact, before the LIBOR scandal broke) to come up with the ‘let’s move on and stop being beastly to bankers’ line.  Shall we have a sweep on how many months it will take for Chris Huhne to use it ?  What is unlikely is that he will reveal the class of John Profumo, who, after being exposed for his part in denying an affair when Minister of Defence,  apologised, resigned and spent the remainder of his life working for charity in the East End of London.

Footnote 1: BBC2’s Mash Report has posted a version of non-apologies here https://youtu.be/c_ZgqpGB9iI

Footnote 2: the appalling errors of the Johnson government of the 2020s led to a plethora of apologies, most of the “I’m sorry you felt that way” variety explained above.  It got to the stage of Matthew Parris, a decent Tory, suggesting we could just do with fewer apologies.

This entry is a bit Facebooky – apologies for that but the occasional personal flippancy lightens the gloom of talking about our disastrous government, intellectual dishonesty and the national debt. I attended a wonderful dinner party last night when conversation turned to the idea of six degrees of separation – the idea that we are all just six contacts or conversations away from anyone else in the world. Now, working as a college Principal in London gives you a bit of a head start here. I’ve ‘met’ (i.e. been in a line of introductions involving) the Queen, Prince Charles, Tony Blair and John Major. This opens up very short lines of separation from Princess Diana, Nicolas Ceaucescu, Presidents Mugabe and Gorbachev, King George VI, Bill Clinton, the Beatles and various other notables, worthies and scoundrels. But Nelson Mandela once visited Brixton when I was there, and I really regret I haven’t got any photograph of my handshake with him. When I went back to the college office, most of the admin staff wanted to shake my hand just to get a few microns of Mr Mandela’s DNA to tell their kids and partners about.

But Nelson Mandela opens up a new range of one-leap-away contacts, which one malicious diner last night pointed out included the Spice Girls. Oh, well, you can’t win ’em all.

 

(This was written four years ago)

David Cameron has recently announced his intention, if re-elected, to hold a referendum on UK membership of the European Union.  This post isn’t me selling a line one way or the other, but a way of clearing my own head that I hope others might find helpful.  I was tempted to start this post by saying “I would count myself a European, but …”, except that this sounds very much like “I’m no racist, but …”.   It’s a difficult topic.  Liz and I have a house in France, where we live for some of the year.  We enjoy Italy, Germany and Spain, have had a great time in Denmark, and are shortly off to visit friends who spend much of their year in Andalucía.  It would be easy to take an uncritically pro-EU line on the basis of the sad and unpleasant people who are lined up against continued membership, including the appalling UKIP.  But I’d like time and help to chew the whole thing over.

There are a number of issues that this proposal raises, most of which have been poorly covered in public discussion.  Some of the stuff is simply inaccurate – like a letter in the last Sunday Times ranting about the European Court of Human Rights, which is nothing to do with the EU.  What is our net budgetary contribution ?  What are the gains from trade ?  Where do these estimates of the vast cost of EU regulation come from, and how are they calculated ?  Which EU regulations would have to be replaced by national ones if we withdrew ?  Whilst there are some good resources – like the Financial Times – often the best you can hope for is summaries of what politicians are saying.  And what they say is a curious combination of vacuous and threatening.  Look at this article by Joschka Fischer, for example, and see if you’re any the wiser.  This may be because, as I said in an earlier blog, I think I am the only person in the country who does not want to extend Britain’s influence in the world. What does ‘punching above our weight’ mean, anyway ?  Asking people to do what we say even though we have a weak economy and undersized military ? Why would they do that ?

The first question is why we submit things to a referendum, rather than leaving it to elected representatives.  The answer that is usually given is that the British people must give consent to changes in our constitution, for it is from them that legitimacy flows.  This explains why we don’t have referenda on hanging or immigration or whatever else, but we do have them on regional government or voting systems.  Doesn’t explain why we had a referendum on police commissioners, but let that pass.   We have already had a referendum on EEC membership, in 1975, and the vote was two-thirds to stay in.  The reason given for another referendum on Europe is that things have changed, that what was sold as a trading bloc has become an ‘ever closer union’ covering a wide range of social and political issues.  Well, actually the phrase ‘ever closer union’ was in the Treaty of Rome in 1956.  There were proposals at the time for a unified currency – I remember writing an article pointing this out at the time, and attacking it.  I actually took part in the “No” campaign, writing articles in journals and sharing a stage as the warm-up act for Michael Meacher MP.  Curiously for the current viewer, the objection then was that the EEC was a capitalist club in which no respectable socialist could find a place.  Ho hum; times change, don’t they.

The second problem requires some thought about what is meant by a single market.  The government’s line is that we are happy to be part of a trading bloc with a single internal market, free of tariffs and quotas.  What we don’t want, we are told, is the raft of regulations and political initiatives that are now being forced on us.  This sounds awfully plausible, but it really isn’t.  Firstly, if you want to be part of a trading bloc, you have to agree a common basis of trade.  You cannot expect firms in France or Germany to be willing to open their markets to competitors with laxer health or personnel rules.  Common regulations actually help competition in an open market: you wouldn’t expect one butcher at Sheffield market to have different hygiene standards to another, would you ?  If we do not have (e.g.) common rules on electrical safety of household devices, we open up the opportunity for home nations to refuse to accept our exports on health and safety grounds.  Think how long it took for the French to accept British beef (on grounds of public safety, of course) after the mad cow disease outbreak.  I was talking to a chemical engineer recently who welcomed EU regulation of the Italian chemical industry, making them follow the same formulations and safety checks as the rest of Europe.

In passing, economic theory does indeed suggest that welfare would be improved by having free trade internationally. The basic theory goes back to David Ricardo in the 19th century, but is subject to a number of reservations. You could, in any case, argue that the EU does not help freer international trade because it interferes with trade with non-members, for example in agriculture. In any case, the actual size of the ‘gains from trade’ may not be enormous – for nerds, here’s a lecture by Paul Krugman to that effect.

A free market also involves free movement of labour.  It’s interesting that the lack of immigration control, which I guess are at the heart of much public objection to the current EU policies, is not part of the government’s ‘bottom lines’ for renegotiation.  When will this news be broken to Essex man ?

Tories say they like the idea of free markets, but two areas where free markets do not work are agriculture and fisheries.  European agricultural policy has involved consistent intervention in the market to assure the stability of farming communities, and as part of this there are extensive transfers of money from countries with small agricultural sectors to those that have larger ones (and from people who aren’t farmers to those that are).  A cynic could say that the EEC started as a deal where France gave Germany access to its industrial markets in exchange for support for French farmers.  Fisheries suffer from the ‘tragedy of the commons’ and it’s not really being fixed, mostly due to the fact that the fishing industry has more votes than herrings.  The economist in me says that a better definition of property rights – who owns this particular part of the Dogger Bank etc – would go a long way to solving this problem.  However, although considerable benefits could arise from reforming  both of these policy areas, the assumption that an independent UK policy will sort out the farming and fishing industry lobby is optimistic indeed.

So why are we here, apart from Mr Cameron’s desire to placate his anti-European wing and stop votes slipping away to UKIP ?  Well, there is a reasonable  argument that says that the euro currency bloc will, after all its travails, have to get closer in financial and budgetary matters, and that this creates a two-track Europe where relationships need to be clarified.  Not sure why this needs an in-out referendum, for it will be an exercise that involves other countries inn the outer ring, and that will be an enduring piece of work rather than a one-off task.

There is another major problem with an in-out referendum, which is this.  Taking any serious decision in life involves assessing the advantages and disadvantages of alternatives.  That’s how businesses work, and it is how families work: hell, it’s how Darwin decided whether or not to get married.  I can accept that it will be possible to lay out clearly the advantages and costs of staying a member of the EU, though I’d like a clearer accounting of the advantages of a single market rather than vacuous allegations or denials of how many jobs depend on it.  However, the costs and benefits of being out are altogether foggier.  If the electorate decides to vote “No”, there will then need to be a series of negotiations to see what the deal is when we withdraw.  We cannot know beforehand what this will lead to.  There is no reason why the French and Germans should broker a generous deal, is there – apart from the fact that the UK has a large negative trade balance with them ?  What, anyway, would a generous – or niggardly – deal look like ?   In other words, we are asked to choose between two alternatives without knowing the costs and benefits of one of them.

And finally – is it all just a matter of regulation and finance, or is the idea of a European Union more noble and broader than that.  Isn’t it a good idea that, in return for freer trade, richer countries contribute to bringing poorer ones up to speed with decent infrastructure ?  Isn’t in inevitable that looking after the environment means going beyond national boundaries ?  Don’t new countries benefit from a shared understanding of democracy and civil liberties ?  Don’t the EU institutions we never hear of, the ones that sponsor artistic and educational exchanges, contribute to a richer understanding ?  Shouldn’t we welcome the way that young people can travel abroad and try different jobs in different cultures without too much fuss ?  How much weight should we place on sixty years of European peace, and to what extent can we attribute it to European institutions (rather than NATO or sheer common sense) ?

There’s a very good introduction to this area of debate on Alistair Campbell’s blog site called, Monty Python style, “What Have the Romans Ever Done For Us ?” – but other contributions would be very welcome. Mind you, I guess one argument against the referendum is that a “Yes” vote will not placate the antis, who will push for another referendum in five or ten years, or whenever the next treaty comes up to be ratified. The Canadians, tired of Quebec’s endless debate about whether to be an independent Francophone country, have a word for this – Neverendum.

Just a few bits about the economy from today’s news.

• In today’s Times, the chief economist of HSBC points out that productivity in manufacturing industry fell by 5% in the third quarter of 2012. There are explanations for this (it is much easier to reduce unit costs when output is rising than when it is stagnant or falling) but one wonders what the right wing press would have said if the public sector had experienced such a fall in efficiency.  Privatise ‘em all, I guess.
• The UK economy is not increasing in wealth at all – in fact we are poorer now than we were in 2008. Output fell in the last quarter, and real household incomes are falling.  Everyone knows this, but do they know that this outcome is predicted by economic theory, and just about every respectable economist.
• The IMF says that the government’s austerity policies are not working, and suggests some easing. The Deputy Prime Minister now feels that cutting capital spending was damaging.  Even Boris Johnson, the Tory Mayor of London, thinks the presentation of austerity has been overblown.
• The main argument being given for the perverse policy of reducing public spending just when private spending was falling is that it keeps interest rates low by retaining the confidence of international lenders. But the interest rate on the bonds of the French government, who are disapproved of by these same international gnomes, is falling.  There is a heap of savings about, and nowhere to put it.
• Eurozone countries with major unemployment problems were encouraged in the recent past to leave the Euro, re-adopt their own currencies, and increase exports on the basis of devaluation (even by me). But devaluation means lowering the value of your own currency in relation to other currencies.  By definition, not everyone can do it.  If I devalue, you can’t.  This is now being stated at the Davos

So not only does the evidence show the government is wrong, even its friends are saying it is wrong.  In fact, even its members are saying it got it wrong.

I’m a great addict of tv quiz shows. My early evening goes from Pointless to Eggheads, and on Monday we can then proceed smoothly to University Challenge and Only Connect. I’ve got a dongle that allows me to watch from France, where we are spending a holiday at the moment. Which means I can watch them alongside the French quiz-shows, my favourite being Questions Pour Un Champion.

One thing that has struck me is how few questions there are about Europe in UK quizzes, and it is particularly striking in relation to the wealth of questions about the USA. Contestants are expected to know more about the American Civil War than the Franco-Prussian War, more about the US constitution than the Edict of Nantes. An example: it seems that the average pub-quizzer needs to know the capitals of all the US states, but is never asked about the capitals of European regions. Which, if the recent celebrity version of University Challenge is any evidence, probably avoids a lot of embarrassment. A panel of four high achievers were asked to name a German region beginning with ‘Sw’, a question that should be about as difficult as asking which English county begins with Yo. Embarrassed silence ensued. This fits with a recent column by Matthew Parris in the Times, which asked readers to name the Irish Prime Minister: if that’s too tough, who is your own MEP ? I live in France for two or three months of the year and would be pushed to name the French Prime Minister (Jean-Marc Ayrault, by the way, if you’re off to the quiz at the Dog and Duck tonight). By contrast, the French quiz contestant is regularly asked questions about British cinema, geography or literature.

Is this a sign of Euroscepticism ? A general feeling that foreigners aren’t that significant ? Our traditional weakness with languages ? Or maybe, the continuing fascination with all things American. One person wounded in a California school is more newsworthy than three Kurdish activists shot dead in Paris, to take this week’s example. I’m not immune. I love to visit the USA and am as open to its seductions as the next Brit. But I do remember when travelling round the USA as a 21 year old student, going to St Louis, and being disappointed that (despite the classic jazz songs) it was like Coventry only hot. Maybe we should find out as much about our close neighbours as our distant cousins.