I note that one of the “Seven Seals of Dacre” written in February 2006 is No 2: “House prices are about to crash due to the economic mismanagement of this government.”

Well, I bet those Dacreites must feel pretty stupid now eh!?

Well, I bet those Dacreites must feel pretty stupid now eh!?

The point isn’t about falling house prices, its about whether “the economic mismanagement of this government” is to blame.

(clue: if you think it is, you have literally no idea what the hell you’re talking about…)

I think once again we’re talking false dichotomies here.

It’s not “is the economic mismanagement of the Government to blame”, it’s “could the situation be better if the Government had been more astute”?

John, such a font of received wisdom!

Having said that, it is not as if the Tories have the balls to resolve the underlying problems with housing in the UK.

“Liberal middle class English people are among the most anti-Semitic bigots in the world” seems to be a key one since it enables the construction of what would otherwise be a totally inexplicable world view and some really crazy conspiracy theories.

QT: it’s “could the situation be better if the Government had been more astute”?

Let me get this straight – you’re arguing for more govt interference in financial markets now? Because I agree it could have been more astute – by making it more difficult for these companies to take on those bad loans, easily financed, in the first place.

But I’m interested in how a self-confessed libertarian is going to argue for more govt intervention before or after the credit crunch. Gwaan – tell us.

Didn’t Sir Salman Rushdie also criticise Random House (His publishers). I stand behind him. Didn’t know the journalist but the article on Islam has resonance as they see more pandering to religious irrationality.

I think that’s wrong. Hari’s article about Islam was part of a totally consistent pattern of criticising all religions. He was condemning the pulping of a book – which is appalling – and a big religious taboo about Mohammed. He is even more harsh on Christianity and Judaism.

If you think he’s becoming Daily Mail, look at the articles he wrote inbetween the two you cite:

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-dont-let-the-games-blind-us-to-the-plight-of-chinas-workers-887136.html
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-do-you-want-free-trade-ndash-or-fair-trade-that-helps-the-poor-882551.html
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-the-wmd-that-really-should-be-worrying-us-884253.html
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-the-hard-cash-that-wins-the-vicepresidency-878713.html
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-we-have-everything-to-fear-from-mccain-869681.html

Arguing – for trade unions, against John McCain, saying the US political system is corrupt, warning that global warming is causing “catastrophe”, that our policy of building more systems is “mad”… some Daily Mailery.

You also say: “Hari confesses that one reason he was worried about writing the column was that he feared for his physical safety. ”

That may be because making exactly the same point about Mohammed got Theo Van Gough, a Dutch columnist, stabbed to death, and because Hari has received death threats in the past, as he has written about. He’s right to be frightened.

Also, could you shouw me an article anywhere else in the maoinstream press making the point Hari made about Mohammed?

Could you show me an article by Mad Mel in which she says anything comparable to this, from Hari’s column which you condemn:

“There is very real and rising prejudice against Muslims across the West. The BBC recently sent out identically-qualified CVs to hundreds of employers. Those with Muslim names were 50 per cent less likely to get interviews. Criticisms of Islamic texts are sometimes used to justify US or Israeli military atrocities. Some critics of Muslims – Geert Wilders or Martin Amis – moot mass human rights abuses here in Europe. So some secularists reason: I have plenty of criticisms of Judaism, but I wouldn’t choose to articulate them in Germany in 1933. Why try to question Islam now, when Muslims are being attacked by bigots?”

Sorry, that should say ‘building more prisons’, not ‘;systems’… need caffeine…

Re: points 2 and 7,Sunny better management- how about this
1. No mortgages over 95%.
2.Self certified mortgages to be verified by accountant . Income based on average of income over 3 yrs.
3. No mortgages over 4 x income.
4. Directors of companies offering mortgages to be questioned on exposure by Bank of England every 3 months. I expect many directors did not understand their exposure.
5. Directors of companies to put up bonds which can be sold if company has to call in cash from B of E.
6. Directors of companies to place their own capital at risk. If share price collapses, say 3 years from start of their employment , then a proprtion of director’s capital is confiscated. The problem was that investment bankers risked other peoples money but did not risk their own capital. A bankers may have lost £Bs of the banks capital and therefore the shareholders ( often the pension funds in the UK , which means the average person). Consequently most of the bankers responsible probably still have assets of £10M-£50M which means they can retire and still live comfortably.

More regulation does not mean good regulation. Good regulations means the directors of companies Bof E, Treasury and FSA knowing what is happening and actually understanding how money can be lost and not just the potential profit. If engineers were as negligent with figures then people would die.

Andy is right – Hari’s article would still be considered as dangerous lily-livered liberal nonsense by Mad Mel and her ilk. Although I think Hari does over egg his argument in places he does make some fair points – the pulping of Jones’s book is disgraceful and we should be raising a stink about this. There are some people who who throw around accusations of “Islamophobia” as lightly as others do with “Islamofascism”. I certainly don’t think that Hari’s article should be dismissed in the way Don does above. he is a serious writer who deserves more consideration than that.

Andy and Andrew – Hari’s only on 2 out of 7 Seals of Dacre at the moment, and I quite agree that some of his other stuff is much better and that even the two articles I cited aren’t into proper Mad Mel territory. I still think the article is a horrible mess, though (there is probably quite a good article to be written about the Jewel of Medina and the decision not to publish it, but this wasn’t it).

“Also, could you shouw me an article anywhere else in the maoinstream press making the point Hari made about Mohammed?”

The one minute google comes up with one from the Daily Telegraph in 2004 – http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2004/12/11/do1101.xml

and one from 2007
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/damian_thompson/blog/2007/08/03/marriage_and_mohammed

It is a subject extensively discussed on t’internet, particularly though not exclusively by Nazis.

“making exactly the same point about Mohammed got Theo Van Gough, a Dutch columnist, stabbed to death”

No, making a film in which Koranic verses were written on a naked girl’s body as a way of slating Muslim society was what got Theo van Gogh, a Dutch film-maker, stabbed to death. That wasn’t deserved, it was evil, and we should stand up for everyone’s right to make the most offensive films they can – but it’s absolutely nothing like Hari’s piece. It’s ridiculous pseudo-macho hubri of Hari to suggest that anyone would give a fuck what he had to say, much less kill him.

If the column had instead said “Fuck Mohammed, he’s a thick paedo and all his supporters are pigfuckers”, *then* Hari might have had a point.

“The problem was that investment bankers risked other peoples money but did not risk their own capital.”

Not quite. Take Northern Rock – Adam Applegarth thought he had a brilliant business model that would show the London mob a thing or too, put large amounts of his own money into bank shares, and would doubtless have done the same under your scheme. And Bear Stearns was 50%-owned by its employees.

The problem is that psychologically, everyone overstates their own abilities and fails to understand how much of their success is down to luck. Bosses do the same for people on their side / people they like – and they understate the abilities of those on the wrong side / people they dislike and fail to understand how much of /their/ lack of success is due to bad luck. No trader in the City thinks ‘fuck it, I’ll probably fail but at least I’ll get my bonus’ – rather, they believe just as much as their clients that what they’re doing is the right thing.

…and this actually brings us to:

“It’s not “is the economic mismanagement of the Government to blame”, it’s “could the situation be better if the Government had been more astute”?”

…since for reasons almost entirely unconnected to the economy (the collapse in Brown’s ratings started long before there was any serious sign of a downturn), our illustrious PM managed to move from being someone people liked to someone people disliked just at the time the economy’s 10-year run of mildly good luck turned into a patch of mildly bad luck. Hence current received wisdom is “fools! can’t trust Labour with an economy! winter of discontent! etc”.

However, both during the good bits and the current bad bits, the government has – talking exclusively in terms of economic policy – made pretty much the right decisions on everything. Almost any other policy would most likely have been worse, and none of their decisions can sensibly be classed as wrong given the facts known at the time.

(the only exception is not running a larger deficit at an earlier date to pay for infrastructure spending in energy and transport, given the long lead times and lack of any chance of the market delivering such projects…)

I’ll third Andy and Andrew. This article is very unfair. Johann gets people’s backs up a lot, and I certainly find him annoying at times. He’s a far sight to my right, and has been too light on Blair and Brown both.

But he is also one of the best highlighters of modern injustice in modern British journalism, and a very consistent social-libertarian-economic-social-democrat-militant-atheist. This is a perfectly honourable position to hold, and hold it he does with this article not being in any way incompatible with that. Everything is in context. Yes, when Phillips, Steyn, Littlejohn etc. boldly criticise the “intolerance of Islam” we are quite to see it as a symptom of a wider prejudice, due to the rest of the writings of these individuals. Johann’s writings on the subject are many, and, unlike the others, he is extremely consistent in condemning the bigots and understanding the importance of sociological despair first.

Its particularly unfair to compare him to Nick Cohen – as they are moving in precisely opposite directions. Not so long ago Nick was saying that Blairism was Fascism by another name, and even I thought he was laying it on with a trowel, that that was a “bit steep”. . Seven years on and his “bold truth-seeking” has turned him into a straightforward right-winger :- a torture-defending, Wolfowitz cheerleading, “wasteful public services” decrying, secondary-modern supporting, Boris Johnson backing…………twat.

Johann has on the other hand moved from a position of pretty slavishly supporting of the Labour leadership to a far more challenging vision, always with the interests of the downtrodden at his core. Yes, he supported the Iraq invasion. He is also just about the only left-wing commentator to do so who has not only unreservedly apologised for doing so, but has also offered one of the best left-critiques of this position as someone who never shared the more obvious flaws of the Stop-The-War tendency in the first place.

In short…………myeerr. You got the wrong bloke this time. Pick on Aaronovitch instead, Hari’s okay, okay?

Conor Foley: “Liberal middle class English people are among the most anti-Semitic bigots in the world” seems to be a key one since it enables the construction of what would otherwise be a totally inexplicable world view and some really crazy conspiracy theories.

Or not. Liberal middle class English people are often overly generous to the Palestinian cause. Wearing a T-shirt with the logo “We are all Hezbullah now” identifies the owner as a person who supports an anti-semitic organisation.

Indeed, many Liberal middle class English people have lost the plot completely. When Israel attacked Lebanon, we *should* have critisied Israel more strongly. Hezbullah and their mates *must* be told to F*** Off. As a liberal, the argument is very simple: Israel is a liberal democracy, possibly failing; Hezbullah would cut my head off.

Conor Foley: “…since it enables the construction of what would otherwise be a totally inexplicable world view and some really crazy conspiracy theories.”

Have you not thought, Conor, that you might be propogating the other crazy conspiracy theory?

I doubt he has, since “there isn’t a sinister conspiracy of hate” is, oddly enough, the opposite of a crazy conspiracy theory.

John B: Cheers, mate.

For clarification I am a social democrat but always a liberal, which comes first, I could not find a mail link to John B, hence this pot.

Indeed and nor would I deny that anti-zionism sometimes is a cover for, or conflates too easily with, antisemitism. I think that some sections of the British left do need to be reminded of this, unfortunately.

But the accusations that people who marched against the invasion of Iraq were “opposing the overthrow of a fascist regime” or people who marched against Israel’s incursion into Lebanon were “allying themselves to an antisemitic organisation” or Jewish people who call for dialogue with Hamas are “Jews for genocide” are lazy, cheap and stupid.

Nick Cohen and Melanie Phillips have both indulged in this type of gutter politics, but I don’t think the same charges could be laid against Johann Hari.

I think it is unfair to say that about him. He is a labour supporter he did support the iraq war (I did not). He has never been a pure pure left winger who gave it up for money. He is more complicated, he is loyal;ist to the party of the left, and we ont the left wing need some journalists who speak up for the party.

Is he “loyalist”? He can be pretty critical of Labour when it goes wrong, and votes Green in some elections:

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-our-cry-for-cheap-oil-is-crude-and-deadly-866899.html

Conor Foley: “…But the accusations that people who marched against the invasion of Iraq were “opposing the overthrow of a fascist regime” or people who marched against Israel’s incursion into Lebanon were “allying themselves to an antisemitic organisation”…” I agree absolutely that most marchers were not anti-semites.

But the “We are all Hezbullah now” T-shirt wearers need to understand the stupidity of their acts. Hezbullah’s politics are about as far as you can get from liberalism.

Hari is a decent man who recanted his support for the Iraq war. Occasionally he gets his facts completely wrong, but that is at least partly a consequence of working for an understaffed newspaper like the Independent.

Were their people wearing those T-shirts? I wasn’t there and so haven’t a clue.

I have seen some pictures of a few young Asian kids carrying placards which said that, but I thought they were fairly isolated.

Having said which it is just the kind of nutcase thing that I imagine some British Trots would do. I just saw that SWP petition about the BNP which completely ommitted to mention that six million Jews died in the holocaust.

Staggeringly stupid whatever the reason.

You are correct, Conor. Not wearing T-shirts, but carrying pro-Hezbullah plackards. My memory was faulty and thus I apologise.