• Gods

Having one small area of the world being the birthplace of, and sacred to, the world’s three largest monotheistic religions has long been problematic. Like members of a fractious family, they have enough in common to give them plentiful grounds for disagreeing with each other. The Prophet Mohammed arrived at an elegant solution by regarding Christians and Jews as being “people of the book” who had strayed from the true path but were none the less accorded a measure of toleration, even protection. Matters have gone downhill since then. The trouble with monotheistic faiths is that they have intolerance built in. If you’re a Christian, you believe that Jesus was the son of God. There’s no wiggle room on this. Anyone who doesn’t believe this must therefore be wrong.

Polytheistic religions were far more pragmatic. Every time you conquered another country, you just added a few of their gods to your pantheon: or, in the case of the Romans, adopted all the Greek ones wholesale and changed their names. They were also a much better reflection of the world’s manifest imperfections. In Greek Mythology, Zeus was notionally top dog but the other gods could, and did, subvert his plans in shifting alliances. A bad harvest, a military defeat or a deadly plague could all be ascribed to the displeasure or capricious malice of a particular deity, which could in turn be adjusted by prayer or sacrifice. The divine world was a reflection of the chaos of the one down below and so made a good deal of sense. Come to think to it, it still does.

Religion remains a central aspect of so many lives because it was, for centuries, used as a cultural glue by the emerging nation states and because it provided the main source of education, almost always by men. Hand-in-hand with patriotism and class or caste, religion became something you were born into and could only with difficulty escape. The monotheistic aspect left you with no choice in your favoured deity and no option but to accept that those who believed otherwise were in error.

None of this greatly mattered as long as the religions were physically distant from each other. In the Middle East, however, by a hideous accident of geography and cultural history, the world’s three monotheistic religions were in each other’s faces. For many centuries the Muslims were in control but the conquest of Jerusalem after the First Crusade in 1100 changed that for good. Imperialism, capitalism, nationalism, fundamentalism, socialism and other -isms besides have since been added to the mix. The upshot is that the area that was known as the cradle of civilisation is, and has been for centuries, one of the world’s major geo-political fault lines. The conflicts don’t always resolve around religious lines but they do often enough to make it clear to me that this is something we could well do without. Except, it seems, we can’t. It’s been part of us for too long.

• Federalism

The BBC reports that, according to information that’s come to light in the Covid enquiry, Boris Johnson “thought it was “wrong” for the prime minister to hold regular meetings with Mark Drakeford and Nicola Sturgeon during the pandemic.” His concern was that it “could make the UK look like a “mini-EU of four nations”.”

Sorry to burst your bubble on this one, BoJo, but that’s exactly what the UK is. Each of the four parts of the UK has its own government which has control over a wide range of matters including health policy and, then at least, lockdown rules. Not to discuss matters with them was kind of dim and divisive.

In fact, if you were looking for an example of a country which in many ways mirrors what many Brexiteers felt were the worst aspects of the EU, one could do worse than choose the UK. Here we will find the dominance of one entity over the others, a series of confusions about areas of jurisdiction, an unelected head of state, a very peculiar legislature, different legal systems and one country which is on a knife-edge about whether it wants to leave the union altogether.

Not that the UK government did much better with communicating with its local councils, which it seems to distrust even more than it does the devolved regions. When responsibility for test and trace was belatedly passed down to the local organisations that actually knew the area, there was a distinct improvement in response and communication (certainly here in West Berkshire). We may yet have cause to test this proposition again.

• Houses

Kier Starmer has said that he wants to stop the block on homes being built and has promised that in the first five years of a Labour administration, 1.5m net new dwellings will be built. This is exactly the same as the government’s target of 300,000 homes a year, a figure that was last hit in 1977. Promises have also been made to “get tough with developers who tried to wriggle out of their social obligations” and to “free up funds for councils and housing associations to build more homes for rent.” This would also include, as reported in The Guardian, “ignoring local opponents of development.” A new generation of new towns was also pledged.

This is in many ways a return to the socialist ideals forged in Atlee’s post-war government and which persisted as a consensus until Thatcher drove a tank through it. The country’s housing needs in those decades were certainly considerable and many have argued that they are scarcely less so now. The fragmentation of the traditional family and increased social mobility have probably contributed as much to this as rising population: as has the fact that, although necessary and good at the time, a lot of the stuff built in the late 20th century was a bit rubbish. Much of it is also in the wrong place or the wrong size. Nor is most of our existing housing stock in a condition that could be called environmentally sustainable, or capable of easily being converted to this. One of the new government’s first tasks in late 2024 or early 2025, of whatever complexion it is, is to get a grip on the Future Homes Standard and establish some rules that can be followed.

There are two big problems here. First, as matters stand pretty much the entire government housebuilding programme has been outsourced to the private sector which dances to the tune of profit rather than government policy. Second, local planning authorities have been financially impoverished for years and are often unable to enforce conditions that are imposed. They also have to meet centrally-set housing targets.

The whole system also operates against the backdrop of speculative land banking which has turned potential housing sites effectively into a trade-able commodity. All in all, the connection between social need and actual supply has been severed. It could therefore be argued, as some have done, that the planning system and the hosing system are both broken.

It’s certainly hard to see how the current system can provide enough “affordable” or social-rent homes. I’ve lost count of the number of planning applications where the developer has tried to reduce or eliminate this demand, sometimes successfully simply because affordable homes aren’t as profitable. Nor is it easy to see how homebuilders will construct dwellings that have the extra costs of sustainable features until the day comes – and it hasn’t come yet – when purchasers refuse to pay top-dollar for ones that don’t: much like, about forty years ago, we all expected homes to have central heating.

State intervention has a useful role to play in dealing with a crisis or redressing the naked instincts of capitalism. I’ve long thought that if the government wants to have more affordable and sustainable homes it needs to build them itself, or empower its councils to do so. It’s too early to say if Labour’s rhetoric is any more than that. There are a lot of vested interests that these days legislation cannot overcome. The test will be not so much what is promised in a year or so’s time but what, if elected, his government will be able to provide.

• Isolation

On the theme of buildings put up in the late twentieth century sometimes being a bit rubbish, in mid-october there are still stories of kids who are having to have lessons on-line at home because RAAC has caused all or part of their schools to close. It’s Covid all over again.

We’re so lucky in that the pandemic only affected the last couple terms of our youngest son’s A-levels. Humans are intensely social animals and we learn pathways through relationships and the moods and needs of others by example. There’s plenty of evidence to suggest that Covid babies are still struggling with social skills.

I can offer a personal perspective on this. I was the only surviving offspring of parents who were, being in their early 40s, then regarded as elderly. I lived much of my childhood in my own head, full of Winnie-the-Pooh, train sets and the wolves who lived under my bed. One day when I was about six, my parents set up a tent in the local park in an effort to get me to interact with some children of my own age. They were intrigued and clustered round. I interacted all right: I went in with a sharp stick and poked it at any face that I saw coming through the opening.

I don’t feel too bad about this now (though I’m not proud of it). A part of me is still poking sticks at people who want to get too close. My parents dealt with their appalling son by packing him off to boarding school: although one was a nest of paedophiles, I managed to escape that and become moderately socialised (with a few strange incidents along the way). None the less, I’m aware that half a century later I still regard many aspects of the world with distrust and my own company as something to be guarded against intrusions.

For many kids less fortunate than me, Covid and RAAC and other forms of social disruption like dysfunctional families, abuse or neglect leave lasting scars that, for the victim, take a lifetime to recover from and, for the state, take a lifetime to repay. In the past, early-years intervention was often callous and counter-productive. Now it is in general not. There are a lot of wonderful organisations like the Hungerford Nursery School and Centre for Children and Families that can help avoid a lifetime of problems. For reasons which escape me, this and the country’s other maintained nursery schools have been under a funding axe for as long as I can remember. Address any issue early and you’re OK. Leave it too late and it becomes really expensive, or can’t be dealt with at all.

So, Kier Starmer, housing is important: but early-age care is even more so.

• And finally…

• One of the strangest things about the Cricket World Cup so far has been seeing the Australians completely crumble not once but twice: so much so, indeed, that against South Africa they effectively gave up the run chase half way through and started trying to play test-match cricket to protect their net run rate (which is used to determine placings when teams are level on points). Oddest of all is that they don’t seem to have any fight, which is not something I’d expected to write about them. They don’t play England until 4 November by which them they might have got their mojo back (or hopefully not).

• The Conversation covers the recent Nobel peace prize, won by Narges Mohammadi “on behalf of thousands of Iranian women struggling for human rights.” The article adds that the award comes as women across Iran and around the world “continue to protest the treatment of women in Iran after the death of Mahsa Amini in the custody of morality police, for allegedly violating the Islamic Republic’s dress code for women.” It’s hard to think of a more idiotic thing than a mandatory dress code for women, unless it’s all the other injustices that are visited upon females in that part of the world.

• The arguments continue as to whether artificial intelligence is (a) the best thing since the last best thing (b) going to kill us all. Another tick on the credit side of the balance sheet was added this week with the news that it seems to be able to help decipher some words on ancient scrolls burned in AD79 when Herculaneum and Pompeii had a little bit of trouble with that naughty volcano. Mind you, is it such a good thing that things can be read which are tightly sealed up or completely carbonised? I don’t know what to think any more. Maybe I can ask ChatGPT to tell me…