OPINION The Sceptic
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Republican circles of allowing some form of technical default in order to shock the political system into drastic cuts in government spending. China is getting worried.
Play out the Spratly dispute against that backdrop and all of a sudden a rather grim picture starts to emerge.
Close all hatches.
Very much against my will and better judgement, I was dragged to something called a vintage tea party the other day. All frou-frou tea sets and cucumber sandwiches (with crusts cut off). There is apparently an explosion in nostalgia going on, a yearning perhaps for simpler times because we can’t afford more complex ones.
I know every decade or so style changes to reflect the national mood - which right now feels pretty late 1940s. Bring on rationing.
Dive! Dive! Dive! S
ome years ago, I helped ghost-write a script that became part of a Tom Clancy video game for PCs called SSN. The player was the commander of a US nuclear submarine called the USS Cheyenne. The theme was an escalating row between the United States and China over the sovereignty of the Spratly Islands, a resource-rich cluster of reefs in the South China Sea. The script was a mildly tongue- in-cheek take on how a CNN-like news organisation would handle the growing row that soon turned into a war, with the Cheyenne and its cruise missiles playing a central role.
The sovereignty of the Spratlys is claimed by Vietnam, the Philippines and China. Both Vietnam and China are currently playing a game of naval chicken in the South China Sea, while the USA is very publicly strengthening its military alliance with Vietnam. (If that’s not sufficiently laden with irony for you, the warship that recently docked in Hanoi to underscore the strength of this pact is the USS John McCain, named after the erstwhile presidential candidate and Vietnam War hero.)
Should we worry? Fifteen years ago, this dispute was already bubbling away but everyone knew that kicking it up a few notches into conflict just wasn’t sensible. What has changed, however, is that today the United States is an economic basket case with a vast amount of its debt, over $1.14 trillion, held by China. Throughout history, states that are terminally in debt have either chosen to default and let their creditors go hang or find a bellicose excuse not to pay. There is a talk in
24 // JULY/AUGUST 2011
But I think it’s even more deep-rooted than that. Style as a reflector is one thing but this harking back to another era carries with it a desire to avoid the despair and frustration at the ghastly mess that we have all conspired to make of things. Unimagined prosperity for a very large proportion of our population has resulted in gritty misery: greater pressure at work and at home, broken communities, crime, cynicism and little if any improvement in educational standards (arguably they have plummeted). Health care has improved, for sure, but at a massive cost to our national wealth. And all we can hear is the cacophony of selfish vested interests screaming for preferment.
Politicians on all sides have tried to harness the desire for something simpler. David Cameron’s Big Society is supposed to lead us to a future built on once-cherished values, on local pride, local community action, free from the bossiness of central government. Sounds great but he is patently incapable of articulating his idea effectively. Even Labour are at it with the Blue Labour initiative appealing to working class voters who are innately conservative but not necessarily Tory.
So retro, vintage, call it what you will is very much in and won’t change till once again we start to feel more confident, dynamic, ready-for-anything. Rather like the 80s. God help us.
The sensational revelations about the News of the World’s abhorrent behaviour have caused panic in Number 10, the Metropolitan Police and of course in News International itself. Quite how much further this panic will spread remains to be seen. When a scab like this is pulled off, the depth of the festering wound beneath can often take time to reveal itself.
But at the risk of reading too much into this, I believe the scandal represents a great deal more than just morally corrupt journalists, coppers on the take and weak-minded politicians with a poor choice of friends. My colleague Tim Price quotes the great 19th century American
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