Books

Kate Womersley is a doctor and academic specialising in psychiatry

Seven Children: Inequality and Britain’s Next Generation by Danny Dorling is published by Hurst & Co (£14.99). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com

So a psychiatrist is used to review a book on economics by a geographer.

He cleaves to his theme on economic income, explaining that “none of the eight ‘protected characteristics’ enshrined in UK law matter even a fraction as much as income and wealth” when it comes to inequality: whether or not you can afford a winter coat, internet access, heating, holidays, a new kettle if the old one breaks, or a school friend over for tea are what segregates us. Through these windows on each child’s life, Dorling exposes how financial inequity affects housing, education, health, employment, tech access, social care, rent and food. The stress for families of securing these necessities hums through the chapters.

The doctor fails to spot the geographer’s trick about economics. What is being described is poverty, not inequity. “Npot having enough” is poverty. “Having less than others” is inequty. If lots of people don;t have enough then what we require is a richer nation – more economic growth. Which isn;t the answer the geographer reaches about economics. Amazin’ly.

Undercover as a hotel cleaner in Ireland: ‘Lifting the heavy mattress, I cry tears of rage and exhaustion’
Saša Uhlová

Some American bird did it in “Nickled and Dimed”. Then Polly T did it here. I’m sure I’ve seen an update here of Polly’s attempt. And now this?

Can we not gain originality in telling us all how terrible capitalism is?

It’s a truly dreadful irony: for many of the 400 million people in sub-Saharan Africa who lack access to even a basic water supply, there is likely to be a significant reserve in aquifers sitting just a few metres below their feet.

Groundwater – the water stored in small spaces and fractures in rocks – makes up nearly 99% of all of the unfrozen fresh water on the planet. Across the African continent, the volume of water stored underground is estimated to be 20 times the amount held in lakes and reservoirs.

The opportunity that groundwater presents for increasing access to water is widely recognised, with more than half of the global population already believed to be relying on it for drinking water.

When you add the ability of solar energy to power the necessary infrastructure and the fact that groundwater supplies are much more resilient than surface water during drought, the potential for harnessing this water source to provide a clean and regular supply to communities in chronic need comes into focus.

So, that’s another problem advamncing tech has solved. Aren’t we the lucky ones.

but it must be sustainable and fair

Typical bleedin’ Guardian.

There’s a bit in one of the Reacher novels. He’s down by the Tx/Mx border. Land’s dried out. Old V8 engines (the old 5.7 litre hemis I guess) appear regularly along the roadside. Used to be used – back in the days of fixed and low oil prices – to pump up the groundwater to irrigate. Rising oil prices stopped that decades back now it’s just scrub, near desert.

I realise that I am weird but reading that bit of it – while waiting for the next punch up in the story – my thought was, well, wouldn’t solar powered pumps solve that? And put that land back into agricultural production?

You know, buy southern TX land?

It has also been a shock for some that an ardent socialist such as Reimann and her story Siblings received a euphoric review last year in the New Yorker.

Shocker, eh? Who would have thought that such a magazine might praise socialism?

Research from BookTrust found that only half of children aged 1-2 from low-income families are read to daily. Furthermore, children from low-income families who do well at the end of primary school are twice as likely to have been read to early in their lives.

“Reading isn’t a silver bullet to solve world poverty, I know that. But it is a major way to improve equality and bring fairness. To dramatically improve the quality of family life and open up possibilities, opportunities. We know children who read have tools for life at their disposal,” Cottrell-Boyce said.

“It is not right and not fair that children who could benefit the most are deprived of a life that is rich in reading.”

I think there’s a truth there but that’s not the point. So, what do we do about it?

Second hand kiddies books are what, 50p each? So each household with a kid in it gets £10 to create a library. We’re done. Or, at least, we’re as done as government policy can make it.

That is, even if there is a real point here there’s not a grand amount that the state can do about it…..

Yep, Kinky is now straightened out.

Way back when, in that new freedom of Russia and the end of censorship, a friend decided that he would translate the novels into Russia. Didn’t bother with rights and copyright and so on, just went ahead. “Elvis, Jesus and Coca Cola” perhaps? The market reaction was, odd. So much so that Kinky actually came on a publicity tour. Friend was most pleased to meet him too.

The Guardian is, of course, wrong:

Friedman referred to himself as the “Jewish cowboy” after his song “My Governor Is a Jewish Cowboy”, a nod to his unsuccessful attempt at a political career in 2006 when he ran for governor of Texas against Republican incumbent Rick Perry.

Other way around, idiots. The band from the 70s was called the Texas Jewboys. Sheesh.

So Monbiot’s new book is a bestseller.

It also has a number of errors, of fact, of logic etc. So, I’m going to do a quickie response to it. Up on Amazon in 10 days to 2 weeks, about. Also run it as the paid part of the Substack.

OK. So, what do I call it?

Their title is “The Invisible Doctrine. The Secret History of Neoliberalism (& How It Came To Control Your Life)”.

What should I call mine? “Monbiot Talks Toss” would not quite work while being usefully descriptive.

Any ideas?

In a blistering new book, Monbiot and the filmmaker Peter Hutchison define the deep impact of a doctrine which began as a fringe philosophy in the 1930s. Adopted by a wealthy elite, it has played a profound role in transforming our economics, politics, environment: from soaring inequality, to the rise of modern day demagogues such as Viktor Orban, Narendra Modi and Donald Trump, to our ecological crises and environmental disasters.

They’re, umm, describing Orban, Modi and Trump as neoliberals.

I’ve asked for a review copy but whether I get one in time to give it the write up it deserves is uncertain….

Rebel Wilson claims British royal invited her to drug-fuelled orgy
Writing in her memoir Rebel Rising, the Australian actress says that the party was held in 2014 and hosted by a tech billionaire

What was last week’s advertisement for her new book? She was a virgin until 35 or whatever? This week…..

Property value assessment may not sound like the most thrilling of topics, but according to historian Andrew W Kahrl’s new book The Black Tax, it represents a hugely important piece of structural inequality in the US, one that implicates a wide range of topics, including the process of gentrification, the quality of public schools and other amenities, and maintenance of local infrastructure.

Kahrl argues that for decades now the assessment process for homes has been used prejudicially against African Americans, leading them to pay more than their fair share in property tax despite receiving fewer benefits than those living in white-dominated areas. These unequal taxes have had all sorts of downline repercussions, making them a “missing piece” of the puzzle when it comes to inequality in the US.

Not sure even about the thesis. Property tax system means blacks get hard done by. Hmm – can’t see a simple explanation of the mechanism anywhere so as to be able to evaluate the idea.

Then we get this:

There are solutions to this problem: according to Kahrl, the US is the only federated nation in the world without a system to ensure fiscal equity at the local level. “Germany, Canada, India and Australia, have fiscal equity programs. In those nations, the federal government ensures there’s a baseline, where federal dollars are delivered to localities based on need. That at least would be a good first step.” He pointed the finger at the Reagan administration, which began the defunding of local governments that has continued to snowball since the 1980s, resulting in things like unclean water, the resurgence of formerly controlled diseases, and the use of fines and fees to bolster local budgets.

Ah, more redistribution then, eh? Doesn’t really matter about the mechanism any more…..

There has always been respect for Disher, but not always recognition outside the crime cognoscenti. “He’s the crime writer’s crime writer,” says author Michael Robotham, who has sold 8.5m books. “He’s the crime writer that other crime writers read. He’s incredibly influential.”

“It has always puzzled me as to why he wasn’t recognised more widely,” says Sue Turnbull, crime fiction expert and senior professor of communication and media at the University of Wollongong. “He’s always been a brilliant writer. He’s certainly in the same league as Peter Temple and Peter Corris.”

Those last two household names ’round my way.

Naomi Klein and Laura Cumming shortlisted for inaugural Women’s prize for nonfiction

No, not just giving a prize to Naomi Klein – a good enough sign of bullshot, obviously – but one for non-fiction?

Over the years Babar attracted both fans and enemies who read all kinds of allegory into the stories. Charles de Gaulle was among the former and believed the Babar books promoted “a certain idea of France’’. Others called the series elitist, racist and colonialist, denouncing the symbolism of Babar travelling to Europe to be educated and “civilised” and then returning to the jungle to be crowned king over the uneducated herd he had left behind.

In the 1960s the writer Toni Morrison objected that the Africans in Laurent’s second book, Babar’s Picnic (1949), were depicted as “savages”. De Brunhoff concluded that she was right and asked for the title to be taken out of print. It was “a little embarrassing to see Babar fighting with black people in Africa”, he admitted.

Hmm.

the judge who presided perhaps summed up the appeal of Babar better than even de Brunhoff himself could have put it. “In the world of Babar, all colours are pastel, all rainstorms are brief, and all foes are more or less benign,’’ he said in his ruling. “The storylines celebrate the persistence of goodness, work, patience and perseverance in the face of ignorance, discouragement, indolence and misfortune.’’

Ah, yes, no wonder the usual cunts hated it. Can’t have children learning any of that now, can we?

William Shatner: ‘Good science fiction is humanity, moved into a different milieu’

This probably isn’t original but I liken it to jazz.

In music you’ve the three, rhythm, harmony and melody. Play all three straight and it’s not jazz. Hold two constant and play with one – say Dave Brubeck with rhythm or Jaques Loussier with melody – and it’s jazz. Yes, yes, that’s very simplistic and so much so that it’s wrong but it works for me as an analogy. And when you try to play with two holding one constant it’s often very odd and sometimes just wondrous. Playing with all three at the same time gives you freeform which is just noise.

So too with sci-fi. Having humans acting humanly in a weird environment is sci-fi. Having humans acting like a fairy story in a weird environment is probably sci-fantasy. As is also non-humans in a normal one and so on.

Playing with all three – one story I recall had non-humans in another universe tryinmg to break through into this one (no, not following Rincewind) because theirs was dying and that was just a word salad – freeform.

Appealing to Sir Pterry also works here. We’re Pan Narrans. But it’s stories about us that interest. So, good stories are going to be about us – perhaps in a weird environment.

All this weirdness, Swisher says, was there, whether consciously or not, to smooth over the fact that the new tech industry was not the big-hearted humanitarian project its founders often talked about, but something much more straightforward: the latest iteration of rapacious capitalism.

How’s that for long term insight, eh?

I have, very vaguely, come across Swisher in my own working life. Not impressed is one way to put it.

Does she think he ever feels any fear about the huge responsibilities that ought to come with what he has built? She answers emphatically. “Yes. I think every now and then you see that he knows he’s in over his head.” She mentions an interview she did with Zuckerberg in 2018, for her Recode Decode Podcast, in which he expressed the somewhat startling opinion not only that Facebook (since folded into the giant company that Zuckerberg named Meta) should host content put up by Holocaust deniers, but that such people were “not intentionally getting it wrong”.

“He was so out of his depth, and you could see that he kind of knew it,” she says. “But he kind of walked into it: like: ‘I can handle this.’ I’m like: ‘You cannot handle hundreds of years of antisemitism – I’m telling you that you can’t. You need some real experience.’ And that was my issue: someone who was so ill-prepared was making decisions that affected all kinds of people and unleashed an enormous amount of toxic waste.”

Man doesn’t share my opinion. Man Bad.

Now to be really unkind. Swisher was married to a senior, long term and early Google engineer. Those stock options were going to be worth something. So, what was the divorce settlement? It still work as joint property in a lesbian marriage?

Fear of a Labour government is driving down mansion prices as ultra-rich buyers cite a potential tax grab by Sir Keir Starmer when haggling with sellers.

Wealthy buyers in the market for properties worth at least £15m have started using Labour policies as a bargaining chip in negotiations, according to Beauchamp Estates.

Markets are forward looking, are they? Someone should study this, write a book about it maybe.

As a starting point this is clearly true:

By Rick Teller, a long term follower of mine across different platforms and magazines. Not read it in full but as I say, that’s a good start. Must be – it agrees with PJ O’Rourke on the point.

‘I repeatedly failed to win any awards’: my doomed career as a North Korean novelist

No, that’s not me. But this next is. I was once offered a job sorting out the memoirs of Kim Il Sung. When I was in Moscow. They had an “English” translation and wanted it turned into an English translation. They knew I was doing some writing back then. So, would I take on the job?

“Maybe. How much?”

“$100”.

“$100 per what?”

“$100 for the book, about a thousand pages”.

“Err, no.”

Killing Eve ended with Villanelle’s death. This is why I’m bringing her back to life

That Conan Doyle thing…..

Arthur Conan Doyle secretly resented his Sherlock Holmes creation, says historian

He killed him off so that he could stop writing about him after all.

Author blamed literary success of the fictional detective for his highbrow historical novels ‘lying unread’

Then brought him back as no one read his other guff anyway…..