Twitteretter

I grew up in a poor corner of Western Europe, especially then, the Santiago de Compostela of the 1970s. I remember, as a child, watching with wide eyed fascination Wimbledon, the Tour de France, the World Cup, the Olympics, the ATP Masters, the V Nations, the chess World Champs or Vienna’s New Year’s concert. Events I grew up in love with, which, from my provincial perspective, seemed out of reach, confined to the realm of distant television voyeurism. Today, half a life later, I have been, in person, to all of them, at locations all over the World, except the last. Some, several times. And I just bought the tickets for the New Year’s concert. This got me musing about how much smaller the World has become, certainly for me, throughout my life. What seemed impossible in the 70s is now real life. Completely unbeknown to me, of course, this was already reality then for Spanish elites, those of ‘high breeding’, who will, I guess, never experience quite the wonderment that 1970s child does ...

This is a latin expression, attributed to a I Century Roman poet, Juvenal, referring to how easily the crowds were appeased by ensuring that they had enough to eat and could go to the circus. Marx made the same observation about religion, another means of appeasement, when he coined the phrase, ‘Religion, the opium of the people’. Today, these have been replaced by sports and social media, still fulfilling the same purpose. Can you imagine the power our citizens would have to improve society if they deployed the same passion to say, fixing climate change, or homelessness, than they do to a Real Madrid – Barcelona or a Liverpool – Man United derby? Or if great social reformers like Rutger Bregman, Noam Chomsky or Freada Kapor Klein had the same number of followers on Instagram as Cristiano Ronaldo, Ariana Grande or The Rock? Alas, we are still more passionate about entertainment and distraction than about improving our lot, and I am afraid our lot will not improve whilst this is the cas...

In terms of morality, it is not difficult to talk a good game, to take the moral high ground when decisions are theoretical. But, as they become real, and as the stakes get high, we soon find talk is cheap and not many who talk the talk will walk the walk. We are seeing a startling example of this with coronavirus vaccination. I was offered to vaccinate, well before my turn is due, a couple of days ago, in that grey area of unclaimed vaccines. The temptation to yield, to give in, to lower the bar and walk from the moral high ground to the valley of convenience was certainly there. The decision, should I have taken it, not that hard to justify to myself. Surely my importance to economic activity and my efforts to develop solutions to coronavirus itself making me deserving of early vaccination, a win for society should I take the chance offered. A duty, almost, to jump the queue. But also false, a theft of a vaccine from someone who needs it more than me. My turn will come, in due course...

Poverty is not as easy to define as you may think prima face . For me, the best definition is probably not having enough financial resources to cover one’s basic needs, which, if we use Maxwell’s pyramid, are physiological and safety needs, the resources necessary to live with dignity and security, without constant worry of running out of funds. So understood, poverty can affect both people and businesses, and it is a trap, a situation in which you are pushed to make bad decisions, worsening your prospects by trying to stay afloat. You may take out short term, abusive lending, paying today’s bills but further undermining your precarious position. You may take on the wrong investor, if you are a business, or abandon an interesting course, if you are a person. Our system has perfected the poverty trap, with a range of benefits which prevent unsightly starvation but also financial recovery. Best way to avoid it? Don’t enter it in the first place, little consolation for those already in it...

You may think the title is misspelled, but it is not. We live in difficult times, when the pace of technological change is threatening the livelihood and place in the World of many, sending them adrift, victims of the system, devoid of agency. It is easy to feel that this is unprecedented, that humanity has never found itself at such a perilous and precarious crossroads. Andrew Keen, in his excellent and well researched ‘How to fix the future’, however, draws an interesting analogy with the early XVI century, when medieval man’s World was collapsing under the drive of Copernicus and Luther and their demolition of the belief system of the Middle Ages. At this other perilous time, Thomas More’s ‘Utopia’, a must read, reminded humanity that we are the pilots of our destiny, that we can achieve almost anything, use circumstance to our benefit, when we choose to collectively steer, rather than drift. This More’s Law is crucial and relevant to understanding how to navigate our World today Le...

This post stems from a combination of experiences I have had of late with the courts and my observation of how people like Donald Trump go about their business, or life (not sure they see a difference between these two concepts). These days, justice is not only blind (as it should, in the sense that it does not see status, class, education, faith or any other grounds on which to treat those it judges unequally) but also very slow. To the point that, quite often, when it rules, it may be too late for justice. Mr. Trump relies on this, throwing money at delaying court rulings, appealing continuously, pretending to seek all avenues for justice to be done, in reality looking for justice to not be done, not because of an unjust ruling but the lack of one. Many deserving plaintiffs find that, by the time the ruling comes, it is too late to matter. This is fundamentally unjust. As a society, we must ensure we resource and protect justice enough so that it is not only blind, but also timely Le...

The title sentence is probably the best known in the outstanding bibliography of George Orwell. I have borrowed it from him to reflect on recent events at the Capitol. An angry, aggressive mob forced its way into the seat of the country’s legislative chambers, aiming to, at least, protest, at best, from their perspective, overturn the outcome of the democratic elections held in their country a couple of months before. The act they engaged in is clearly typified in law as terrorism and rebellion, two very serious crimes. However, they did so with impunity, with little consequence, for the great majority of perpetrators. Their race and political views protected them from police violence. Had their race and views been different and their actions the same, the consequences to them and the violence of the security forces reaction would have been much graver. This difference is Orwellian, an adjective we have come to use to describe oppressive, dystopic, unequal and unjust societies  Len...

The XXI century has witnessed the birth and spread of a series of computer programs and environments for unmediated, simple communication which have self-abrogated the common moniker ‘social media’. Few appellatives are as inept to describe their subject. The name implies, for a start, that other media, whether it is traditional printed media, broadcasting, literature, etc., are somehow not social. Further, it ignores the fact that these technologies are used as much for asocial or antisocial behaviour as they are for social behaviour. Social media, or social networks, may have been, as a name, an aspiration. But it is one that not only has not been fulfilled, but that is unlikely by its design, by its innate briefness and the ease with which messaging can be uncritically repeated and amplified. I do understand that, from a marketing view point, the much more apt ‘dumb media’ or ‘lazy media’ would not have quite the same effect, but they would at least show honesty and self-awareness L...

An announcement of new lockdown restrictions yesterday by the UK government in light of a novel coronavirus strain which is out of control in the London and South East area was immediately followed, predictably but still disappointingly, by news of full trains and jammed roads, as many in the capital tossed themselves to the four winds, in direct contravention of the advice, abandoning the about to be locked down area for others less restricted. With them, they will take the virus. Given the current prevalence in London, an average of at least two people in each one of those carriages would have been infected, and now many more will take the new strain to their extended families and friends all over the UK. Society and democracy are based on a balance between citizen freedom and civic responsibility. When we demand the first but relinquish the second, we abandon democracy and functioning society for dysfunctional individualism with ultimately dire consequences we are about to witness...

When you start the journey of life your pockets are full of a currency, time, which you can trade for anything else. As you skip along the life Monopoly board, your time reserves slowly deplete, as you trade them for experience, activities, relationships, knowledge and even wealth. The analogy is not perfect. When you spend time, you cannot earn more, at least not yet, even though as a species we are working in that direction, or trade back, buying time with for example experience. You cannot accumulate it, or unequally redistribute it, taking it from others. At the end of the journey, your pockets are full of the things you traded for, and empty of time. When you think about it this way, time is a unique asset, it cannot be grown, only spent. It is its absolute limitation, its inflexible scarcity, that make it the most valuable thing we have. From this perspective, it is bemusing to watch many waste it with a profligacy they would never show with that much more flexible asset, money...

A debate is raging about personal data, their value and their protection. Businesses earn staggering profits by selling or exploiting personal data which does not belong to them and which they have not been given explicit informed consent by the rightful owners to use in such way. The result is often exploitative marketing and political misdirection. This is a serious issue most citizens do not take seriously. The right use of data can have huge social value. For example, in the understanding of disease and the development of treatments or diagnostics which fundamentally change the outcomes for patients. But consent must be considered, reflective and explicit, given carefully and taken solemnly. This is one of the great modern challenges. If we can solve it successfully, if we can educate citizens to grant and withhold this consent on the basis of the real value they and society will derive from their data, we will build a better society. If we don’t, our dystopic journey will continue...

I went out in town yesterday, food shopping, one of the few activities available in UK during the just finished second lockdown. The streets were full, to the brim. People everywhere, long queues to enter the shops and cafés. This is not surprising, considering that yesterday was the first Saturday after the end of the lockdown and therefore the first full day of unrestricted consumer freedom. I was surprised, however, by my reaction to it. Seeing these agglomerations made me uneasy. My love of buzzing streets and activity flurries seems to have been replaced by a mild case of enochlophobia, not consciously elicited by my rational mind, but primally subconscious. This is just temporary, I expect. But it highlights how quickly we, humans, adapt. How rapidly our expectation and understanding of what is normal changes. This, of course, works both ways. I expect that, after a few weeks of resumed activity, normality will be restored to my perception in line to its restoration to society...

In fact, off all babies. Our generation may be guilty of the biggest theft in human history, which we seem to be perpetrating with little compunction. We have built wealth on a recipe of low taxation, dressed with unaffordable pensions and garnished with energy gluttony. We cap it all off with unsustainable natural resource exploitation and suicidal environment destruction. We are well off, live comfortably, but are creating a World in which our children will be poorer than we are. A World in which they will have to pay the taxes we did not, to fund services not only them, but also us will need. A World in which they will have to work longer to cover our pensions. And where only their ingenuity and self-restraint may repair, or mitigate, the abuses we are mindlessly perpetrating on the nature that sustains us. They will inherit the Earth from us, a bankrupt estate besieged by impatient creditors and devoid of value. Do we have the will to change our will, while it is not too late? ...

We live in dangerous times, at least in a precarious equilibrium. It is easy to dismiss warnings about current terminal threats to democracy and the nihilist autocratic attack on the institutions of many countries as exaggerated and over dramatic. To those who may be flippantly of this opinion, I recommend reading Hannah Arendt, witness to the rise of totalitarianism in the 1930s. When you read her naked analysis of the totalitarian takeover, you are shocked by how relevant it is to current times. Practically any Arendt quote you choose can be applied, unedited, to today’s politics. This is a warning. Even though very few of us were alive in the 30s, we don’t need reminding of how they ended and how close to an existential cliff edge our species was. The aftermath of a great recession and fast geopolitical change conflated, as they do today, with overconfidence by the media and our institutions to allow a monster to rise which took all the will of humanity, and many lives, to defeat...

I found myself imbued in a conversation about patriotism this morning, in particular about the brand of patriotism which, in some countries, resents those who emigrate, who leave, as they see it as a slight to the fatherland (I use father rather than motherland only because father, pater , is the original etymological root of patriot). Patriotism is defined as love for one’s country and the defence of its interests. Emigrants often act not only in their own interest, but also that of their country. By leaving when there may be little opportunity to develop and work, they release pressure on services and on their families. Whilst away, they send money back, contributing to the development of the local economy. And they often return, to invest and spend their hard earnt wealth in what they still see, despite many years abroad, as their home country. You could, in fact, think of the love of emigrants for their country as unrequited, unwavering, faithful love, the most generous kind  L...

On reading some of my Twitteretters, some friends have described me as an idealist. This, by the way, was not meant negatively, and I did not take it that way. I do in fact take it as a compliment. You see, there is a connotation in many people’s thinking that idealism is not realistic, that wishing for an ideal society (in the context of this specific discussion, idealism can of course be deployed in many other areas) is nice but ultimately futile for unfeasible. This is a line peddled by those with less lofty aims. If idealism can be discarded as well intentioned but useless, it is acceptable to not be an idealist, and be instead individualistic, egotistic or just realistic, someone who likes and wants to maintain the status quo. The thing is, the only condition needed for idealism to become eminently achievable would be for the great majority to believe. If we did, we would achieve whichever Utopia we choose to seek. You may say I am a dreamer, but I am not the only one. Join us Len...

I don’t actually know whether conspiracy theories are a modern ailment or whether they’ve always existed but have found in social media a fertile ground in which to thrive. They are fascinating. Even when there is an easily experimentally proven, incontrovertible consensus on a subject, say for example the non-flatness of Earth, an alternative view, fuelled by nothing other than the mild sexiness its contrarian veneer imbues it with, arises and spreads, a highly contagious stupidity virus. The logic paraphrases that of one of my favourite heroes, Sherlock Holmes: ‘When all sensible looking explanations have been disproven, the remaining, however unlikely, must be true’. Just substitute disproven by wilfully ignored. Conspiracy theories serve two valuable purposes for their acolytes. They allow those who never stood out to do just that, feel special, more in the know than others. And they provide a sense of belonging, a community, to those who feel left out in our modern, isolated times...

I’ve been listening to Trump in the aftermath of the US Presidential Election, whilst ballot counts in battleground states proceed at glacial pace. This is a dangerous exercise one needs to be well prepared psychologically for, but it is important. I am struck by his latest complaint, that his strategy to challenge ballot counts in the courts is failing not because of a lack of evidence or basis, which he does not see as the weakness of his position, but because his legal team is not good enough. This assessment is borne from his experience of the US legal system, and let’s face it, few outside the legal profession have more than him. Trump is, inadvertently, highlighting and denouncing a worrying evolution of US justice: The fact that those with the better legal team, i.e., those better resourced, have an expectation of victory, regardless of their claims’ merit. Let us remember one of the maxims at the centre of democracy, ‘All citizens are equal in the eyes of the law’, and reflect...

George Orwell’s brilliantly sharp political allegory, Animal Farm, is memorable, amongst many other things, for the sentence in the title of this post. In the dystopian society Orwell depicts, one of the fundamental pillars of democracy, the principle that all citizens are equal in the eyes of the law, falls apart, with ultimately dire consequences. This principle is one of the main differences between democracy and other political systems, such as autocracies or absolute monarchies, where the leaders, and sometimes their courts, are above the law and can act with impunity without concern for the consequences that would rein in their subjects. Donald Trump’s political interference with investigations of his affairs with the support of the US Senate, or the flouting of coronavirus lockdown restrictions by a number of members of the UK government inner circle, just to name a couple, are examples of a ruling class in our modern democracies which is dangerously drifting towards Animal Farm...

The last 25 years have shown a concerning political trend. For most, politics have become about the economy, and not much else. This was first realised (or instrumented) by Reagan and Thatcher, and ultimately enunciated by Bill Clinton’s ‘It’s the economy, stupid’. The trend is logical, we seemed to be entering a post-political period. With the USSR gone, there were no great political questions, or struggles, left. Capitalism was victorious, its politics widely accepted and democracies rose unchallenged. But this is no longer. Populism, fuelled by inequality and social problems, is waging war on democracy. Citizens are asked to choose between GDP and climate, jobs and minority rights, protectionism and international order. Still lulled into a false sense of security, they are, half sleep, choosing economy, when the battleground is on democracy. We are defending income and property when society and liberties are at risk. Wake up or kiss goodbye to democracy and, with it, to your economy...