This afternoon the European Economic and Social Committee’s thirty-nine member Bureau discussed the Citizens’ Initiative. If the sheer quantity of comment about it is any indication, then the initiative is one of the most significant democratic innovations of the Lisbon Treaty. Yet, as several speakers in the discussion pointed out citizens, who will have to wait a while yet, could get a bit disillusioned. The European Commission had hoped that this right could be a reality already on 1 December 2010, exactly one year after the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty itself. But the Treaty foresaw an implementing regulation which, following intricate negotiations, was finally adopted by the Council only yesterday. And actual entry into force will take another month. Beyond that, however, the EU’s citizens will have to wait another year because the Member States have requested twelve months in order to implement the legislation at national level…

In anticipation of the True Grit maelstrom (yet to descend on Brussels), this evening we watched a Coen brothers golden oldie – Fargo (1996). Frances McDormand, playing the seventh-month pregnant chief of police, Marge Olmstead Gunderson, definitely deserved her Academy Award for Best Actress. But she surely owed her success in some part to the collective contribution of the rest of the cast who, with deceptive simplicity, gave a wonderful portrayal of mass stupidity. The car dealer who has his wife falsely kidnapped so that he can share the ransom (played by William H. Macy) is stupid. The two low-lifers who kidnap her (played by Steve Buscemi and Peter Stormare) are stupid. The kidnapped woman’s curmudgeonly father who decides to take the ransom to the rendezvous himself and then has ‘a go’ is stupid. Everybody is unremittingly stupid, including Gunderson’s husband and her would-be lover, but though this is a black comedy and the characters talk with the singsong ‘Minnesota nice’ accent, there is little condescension. And Gunderson, waddling from atrocity to atrocity, radiates solid decency and an unflappable belief in humanity despite it all (that all including a body being disposed of in a wood chipper). I am not sure whether I believe that, as one review put it, the wintry Minnesota landscape is redemptive and incubates life, but there is a tacit human understanding that if we must go through such a winter, spring and summer will surely follow.

I read an interesting and worrying ‘comment’ article by Will Hutton in my Sunday newspaper. The article was based around a review of a Kindle book by an American economist, Tyler Cowen, entitled The Great Stagnation: How America Ate All the Low-Hanging Fruit of Modern History… Since I don’t possess a Kindle, this is one book I will not read in the near future. The basic argument, if I have understood it correctly, is that, although technologies are incrementally advancing, there are no longer any step-change revolutionary innovations (for example, electricity, the internal combustion engine, television and radio, the transistor, the refrigerator, the washing machine) to be industrialised and hence provide employment and wage increases and life changes; we have plucked all the low-hanging fruit. As a result, productivity advances in the ‘West’ are being made primarily through unemployment and the shifting of production to low labour cost countries in the East. Our recoveries are, increasingly, jobless. The other drivers – land and education – are drying up. Yes, the vision is Malthusian and surely exaggerated, but Hutton’s concluding observation is surely spot-on; the importance of innovation as a driver of growth and the imperative to exploit it. Enter the European Union’s Europe 2020 Strategy…

The real Dillinger

Tonight we watched Public Enemies (2009), with Johnny Depp starring as notorious bank robber John Dillinger and Christian Bale as his obsessive FBI pursuer, Melvin Purvis. Depp and Bale are good in that strange sort of way that has become their trademark, but I have two gripes about this film. The first is the lousy editing – at least, in the version we saw – or is it the writing? The first third of the film jumps and jerks about as the director tries to squeeze all the plot lines in, like fitting objects into an already overstuffed drawer. The second gripe is the absence of any attempt to explain why Dillinger behaved the way he did. For a start, the film gives very little sense at all that America was living through the Great Depression. As a youth and young man Dillinger was a hothead and a petty criminal who had great difficulty in holding down a steady job. But what surely turned him into a careful planner of bank robberies and ultimately a cynical killer was an absurdly lengthy prison sentence – a minimum of ten years for stealing $ 50 – after his disciplinarian father had misguidedly convinced him to confess to his crime. Indiana State Prison was a finishing school for bank robbers and Dillinger was an attentive pupil. How much stronger this film would have been if it had given us a sense of all that! It’s a shame, because in many ways the film was faithful to the real story and Depp at times looks uncannily like the real Dillinger…

A star is born?

There have been many false dawns before, I know, but could it just be that England are at the start of a roll? We’ve seen two matches so far and both were significant. I think I am right in saying that the last time England won in Cardiff they went on to win the Grand Slam and the World Cup. But their massive victory earlier today against Italy was, I think, just as much of an omen. As their match against Ireland in Rome showed last week, Italy are no walkover. Everybody expected a tough first half, ground out between the forwards, before England might start to impose themselves, but in the end they put Italy to the knife from the outset. This had more than a little to do with the dynamic coupling of Toby Flood and the exuberant Chris Ashton.  Perhaps the most encouraging aspect of this renaissance – if that is what it is – is that England’s game is fun to watch. With two more home matches before them, they must fancy their chances. Tomorrow’s match in Dublin will tell them who their rivals at the top of the table are most likely to be.

John Adams

It’s staff report time again. That means interviews and it means writing up reports which, in turn, means squeezing additional work into the mornings and evenings. My companion this time around has been the music of John Adams. Indeed, I have thoroughly splurged on him. This evening, for example, I have just finished listening to Nixon in China. I adore The Dharma at Big Sur, but my absolute fave rave is, I think, I was staring at the ceiling and then I saw the sky. I have been listening to Adams because a friend, a musician, has proposed a collaborative project to me involving music and words. This ‘song play in two acts’ is precisely that. The blurb on the CD describes it as follows: ‘Scored for a ‘rock band’ of voices, clarinet, saxophone, keyboards, guitar, bass and percussion, (it) ranges in style from gospel and jazz to rock and pop. A combination of social criticism and love story, it chronicles the life of seven young Los Angeleans of different social and ethnic backgrounds, whose everyday speech patterns have been skilfully woven into a lyrical libretto by the late writer and civil rights champion June Jordan. John Adams’ post-minimalist musical language shines through the popular music disguise.’ Brilliant stuff!

Today the EESC’s Liaison Group with European civil society organisations met, under the joint chairmanship of President Staffan Nilsson and Jean-Marc Roirant, President of the European Civil Forum. The EESC is composed of representatives of national civil society organisations. The Liaison Group is a conscious effort to embrace the European dimension of civil society organisations by providing a joint chamber in which topics of mutual concern may be discussed. Revitalising work in the Liaison Group is one of a series of priorities in Staffan Nilsson’s work programme and today’s meeting was a sort of re-launch. High on the agenda was the European Citizens’ Initiative. The implementing legislation is on its way. Afterwards, how will civil society organisations behave towards it? Will they seek to capture it, to use it as a vehicle for their aims, to support initiatives with which they sympathise? So long flagged up as a democratic innovation of the Lisbon Treaty, it will not be long now before this new kid on the block makes its entry.

Tonight, thanks to N° 1 sprog, we watched a DVD of Akram Kahn’s Sacred Monsters. It is brilliantly danced (by Kahn and Sylvie Guillem). Perhaps the most beautiful part is here. With a view to a forthcoming project I am studying words and music at the moment (I hope to post a piece about John Adams shortly) but here was a piece about words and dance. Just as fascinating as the piece itself, therefore, were the ‘extras’ on the DVD and, in particular, an extended interview with Kahn. As Judith Mackrell has written, what he and Guillem do in this piece is no less and no more than ‘evoke the emotional and intellectual journeys that made them unleash their monsters and try to escape their respective traditions.’ It is a fascinating project; two beautiful beings from two very different cultures inviting us into their intimacy and vulnerability.

This afternoon the EESC’s President, Staffan Nilsson, met the President of the European Council, Herman Van Rompuy. Obviously, I can’t release the contents of their very amicable and productive conversation, but I can say that Van Rompuy is an institutionalist. By this I mean that he would surely agree with Jean Monnet’s famous observation that ‘nothing can be done without citizens but nothing can last without institutions.’ Van Rompuy would surely agree with another saying, this one by one-time British Prime Minister Harold MacMillan who, when asked what a statesman should fear most, replied ‘Events, dear boy, events.’  With the media thick with coverage of the emergence of economic governance at EU level and Van Rompuy’s role in brokering such a development it is easy to forget that this was not in the job description when he was appointed.

A man with a difficult job

The EESC’s Budget Group met all day today and I spent much of my day in what was a very productive meeting. On the agenda was the draft 2012 budget. On the eve of the meeting the European Commission member with responsibility for the budget, Janusz Lewandowski, wrote to the Presidents of all of the EU institutions, encouraging them to ‘make all possible efforts towards limiting expenditure.’ Journalists quite understandably wanted to know whether and how the institutions would respond. After clearance from my authorities, I released a statement which was picked up in the European Voice and Agence Europe: ‘ The Lewandowski letter was timely, as it arrived on the eve of a meeting of the Committee’s Budget Group at which the draft 2012 budget was to be under discussion. At that meeting the Committee’s President, Staffan Nilsson, and its Vice-President with responsibility for the Budget Group, Jacek Krawczyk, stressed the current situation in the member states and the need for the Committee, as the EU body representing organised civil society, to be exemplary. Many other members of the Budget Group echoed these sentiments. The Budget Group will adopt a proposal on 8 March. The Bureau of the Committee will take a final decision at its meeting on 15 March. It would be inappropriate to give any figure for the time being but I can already say with certainty that the proposal will definitely be below the estimated rate of inflation and will therefore represent a decrease in real terms.’ Encouraged by Jon Worth, I have recently read a fascinating book by George Lakoff, Don’t think of an elephant! Know your values and frame the debate’, which is all about value-laden vocabulary – how to avoid it (if it is your ideological enemy’s), and also how to use it. The budgetary sphere provides good examples. Do you say ‘cuts’, ‘economies’ or ‘savings’? Do you say ‘reducing the budget’ or ‘deferring investment’? Do you say ‘zero growth’ or ‘adjusted for inflation only’? Thank you, Jon!