This afternoon I attended a meeting of the EESC’s Budget Group at the invitation of its President, Jacek Krawczyk (Employers’ Group/Poland), for the discussion around the drafting of the Committee’s draft 2013 budget. I have written about the difficulties of this process before. The rapporteur, Madi Sharma (Employers’ Group/United Kingdom) and her fellow members of the drafting sub-group have had a complex task, making allowance for ‘known unknowns’ (next year’s inflation rate, for example) whilst being sure to budget responsibly so as to meet the Committee’s legal obligations, and all the while presenting a reasonable, rational, but also austere budget in a consensual fashion. My task was, for once, an easy one: I sincerely congratulated everyone!

To the writers’ workshop this evening, where many a glass was raised to the memory of John Hellon (see previous post). I am reproducing my ‘exercise’ tonight here because it is a graphic illustration of what budding writers are always told at workshops and the like: if at first you don’t succeed (and you almost certainly won’t) then try and try again. “In December 2010 I fell ill with flu. Instead of going to Tunis, I went to bed. But once the initial fever had passed I found it impossible to do nothing and so I wrote a short story, The Garden of Eden, which brought together a few ideas I had had. It was an experiment in a genre, sci fi, that I wouldn’t normally touch. Because I was ill, I had the time to finish it and was not unhappy with the result, so I submitted it to the writers’ workshop. They liked it. So, with the workshop’s encouragement ringing in my ears, I did a google search and came up with a list of the ‘top ten science fiction magazines’. Interzone (number one on the list) rejected it on 4 January. Asimov’s Science Fiction (number two) rejected it on 16 February. The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (number three) rejected it on 26 April. Analog Science Fiction and Fact (number four) rejected it on 16 June. Not One of Us rejected it on 9 July. Clarkesworld Magazine rejected it on 16 July. Our World and Another Realm no longer existed. Strange Horizons rejected it on 26 September and Challenger rejected it the same day. However, some kind soul at that particular magazine told me that the story, though not quite right for them, was the sort of thing a friend liked. This friend was the short fiction editor at another magazine. So I submitted it to that other magazine on 14 October last year and heard nothing. I wrote in December. The short story editor wrote back apologetically to tell me that they had a long backlog. And then, just last Friday, I received the following e-mail: “Please review the attached HTML-formatted and slightly-edited version of the story and let me know if any changes are required, including expansion of the minimalist author biography at the end. The story will go online within the next week or so as one of a handful of new items in our “Best of 2011″ edition.” Bingo! When the story is published I’ll provide the name of the magazine and the link.

Shortly after landing at Zaventum I learned of the sudden and unexpected death early the previous day of John Hellon, a founder member of my writers’ workshop and a good friend. In a long life, John had seen most of the world and lived in many parts of it. After (active) military service in the Korean War he had worked as a Swiss-based tour guide, a London-based advertising man and a Brussels-based business man. In between, there had been trips to Africa and the Caribbean and the Far East and a house in Mexico and an Italian wife and son before realising his true sexuality and ‘coming out’. John had a passion for cooking. He wrote a number of cookbooks, including a big hit with The Blue Elephant Cookbook: Royal Thai Cuisine. For many years he wrote an authoritative restaurant column for a local magazine, The Bulletin. (His guacamole, last tasted by me just before Christmas, was simply delicious!) A tall man, with erect stature,a booming voice and his tell-tale ‘ooh-la-la!’ (delivered ironically), John always told things as they were – or as he thought they were. His fortnightly exercises for the workshop would often involve wistful reminiscences about buildings and places that had known better times, combined with a choice quotation based on his compendious knowledge of Hollywood films, tunes and lyrics. He had a wide circle of friends and acquaintances. Here’s what John Boyle (another founder workshop member) said on Facebook: “Farewell John Hellon. One of the few who really was ‘larger than life’ in every way. Outspoken, often outrageous, gregarious, generous – a marvellous host. One thing is sure: ‘il n’est pas passé inapercu.'” Just last year John completed a manuscript, entitled The Paper Museum, made up of autobiographical reminiscences triggered by particular objects or images. We must now make sure he lives on through the publication of his museum.

Last week the British media was full of the story of how the former boss of Royal Bank of Scotland, Sir Fred Goodwin, was to be stripped of his knighthood for having ‘brought the honours system into disrepute.’  He had been knighted in 2004 ‘for services to banking’ but a series of ill-judged acquisitions led to the collapse of the bank and, amid the chaos that followed, he was thought to have behaved insensitively and inappropriately with regard to his pension. Amid all the discussions about fairness, unfortunate comparisons were made with Anthony Blunt (discovered to have been a spy), Robert Mugabe and even Nicolas Ceaucescu, all of whom had also had their knighthoods stripped away but were surely in altogether different categories of wrongdoing. I’d have forgotten about this but on the long flight home a throwaway remark by ‘Taki’, read in the Spectator , got me curious. So whilst waiting at Heathrow I Googled honorary British knighthoods and discovered that quite a lot of stripping has gone on. Those stripped of their knighthoods include Franz Joseph I (awarded 1867, annulled 1915), Wilhelm II (awarded 1861, annulled 1915), and Benito Mussolini (awarded 1923, annulled 1940). Spot the pattern? Indeed, the strangest of the lot is Emperor Hirohito of Japan (picture), who was made a knight in 1921, saw his knighthood stripped away in 1941 and was made a knight again in 1971. I post this useless information in case anybody out there is making a political anoraks’ version of Trivial Pursuits.

My flight back to Europe wasn’t until the evening and so this afternoon I made the most of the balmy conditions and walked the Freedom Trail in the beautiful city of Boston. This was of particular resonance for me because a fellow member of my writers’ workshop is writing a screenplay about the events leading up to the Boston Tea Party and all of the buildings and places I visited are, of necessity, in the script. I love the way these old historic buildings and burial sites nestle away amid the skyscrapers and I found visiting the graves of my friend’s characters (Samuel Adams in the picture) particularly poignant. My friend’s script is good in highlighting the inanity of the Stamp Act and the way it fanned fear and resentment for, as Adams put it, ‘if our Trade may be taxed why not our Lands? Why not the Produce of our Lands & every thing we possess or make use of? This we apprehend annihilates our Charter Right to govern & tax ourselves – It strikes our British Privileges, which as we have never forfeited them, we hold in common with our Fellow Subjects who are Natives of Britain: If Taxes are laid upon us in any shape without our having a legal Representation where they are laid, are we not reduced from the Character of free Subjects to the miserable State of tributary Slaves?’

All good things must come to an end and it is already the last day of the course.  It has been hard work and good fun and very interesting. There has been a lot of interactive work with peers, bouncing ideas off of one another, interspersed with lectures and discussions with visiting professors. It’s always slightly invidious to single out speakers but for me there have been two highlights this week. One was Amy Cuddy, a psychologist by training, who spoke to us about the significance and the power of non-verbal behaviour. She was particularly fascinating on how brief non-verbal expressions of competence and power and warmth can alter levels of testosterone and cortisol. The other was Ron Ferguson (picture) an economist by training, who spoke to us eloquently about inclusion and ‘movements’ and how to progress through any process involving others. It sounds dry on the page but his exposition was equally fascinating.

My former Bruges students will recall how I always warned against the inherent bias in empirical analyses of the European Parliament’s voting behaviour. This was because most of the time the Parliament simply votes by hand, or electronically, but roll call votes are only more occasionally used (by the political groups) for three main reasons (I am quoting Corbett et al, eighth edition, p.199): ‘to put a Group’s position on an issue firmly on the record; to embarrass another Group by forcing the latter to take a publicly recorded stance on an issue; and to keep a check on their own members’ participation in a vote, and the position they take.’ In other words, roll call votes are not necessarily the most important or the most significant and, in any case, tell only part of a story that cannot be fully told (because it’s impossible to make accurate empirical analyses of shows of hands). In similar vein, today I read a fascinating short article in Bloomberg Businessweek about legislative bills in Congress. In 2011, 5,929 bills were introduced, of which just 80 became law. The explanation is that ‘House members have been working on measures intended not to become law, but to score election-year points by forcing the other side to vote for or against them.’ In other words, these bills, many crafted deliberately to fail, are the equivalent in Congress to many roll call votes in the European Parliament. So now you know.

Of course, the media over here are full of comment and analysis following Rick Santorum’s wins in Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri and what these might portend for the November contest. But my eye was caught by a thought-provoking article in last Sunday’s New York Times entitled ‘The 2016 Election, Already Upon Us.’ It carried the startling subtitle ‘After November, Obama will no longer be the future of his party.’ And, of course, that must be right. If Obama wins, it will be his last term, and if he loses, he surely won’t get another chance. So whilst most attention is on the Republican primaries at the moment, a quieter, but just as significant, campaign is getting under way in the Democratic Party, and bets are already being staked, with the potential future candidates fashioning soundbites in anticipation of the win and the lose scenarios. Hillary Clinton has declared that she will be retiring after November but if the polls start going pear-shaped for Obama attention will inevitably start to focus on her. And if they don’t, the media will focus on the next generation. What a fascinating country!

I am sharing a flat with a Dutch Senator, Joris Paul Backer. Like me, he’s a jogger, so we’ve been getting up at six to jog along the river. Also like me, he’s something of a political anorak and we have a number of common acquaintances so the early morning conversations have been good fun. Through my research work into the antecedents of the European Economic and Social Committee I am becoming interested in Senates, or second chambers. In particular, the composition of appointed or indirectly-elected senates can, it seems to me, be very similar to the composition of advisory economic and social councils. Of course, in the Netherlands there is also a Social and Economic Council. What these bodies frequently have in common is the representation of organised interests rather than (or in addition to) political parties.

This evening the Kennedy School hosted the Harvard University John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum, a televised debate. I found a vantage point and listened in. The guest speaker on this occasion was Peter Thiel, founding Chief Executive Officer of PayPal and a member of the Board of Directors of Facebook. Fabulously rich, Thiel, because of the stock market flotation of Facebook, is about to become fabulously fabulously rich (or maybe that’s fabulously to the power of three). The staging was a ‘conversation’ with Niall Ferguson, Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History and William Ziegler Professor at Harvard Business School. Now Thiel, improbably young and already wise beyond his years, was not without piercing observations. The best, I thought, was his realisation that ‘the tournament just goes on and on’. When he got on to policy, he was very soon out of his depth, though he never floundered. But the star of the show in my opinion was his affable interlocuteur, Niall Ferguson. Let’s face it; the Americans like the occasional Brit grit in their media oysters: Harold Evans, Tina Brown, Piers Morgan, Chris Hitchens… I’ll quote just one Ferguson phrase, summing up a long and complicated question from a member of the audience to enable Thiel to reply: ‘Peace produces welfare but you need warfare for progress.’ Maybe the phrase has been coined before but he slotted it in with consummate ease and timing.