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...it is the economy (stupid), or at least the political economy.

James Graham comes out for Clegg today in his piece at Comment is Free, Ich bin ein Clegghead:

Lesson one from the latest (and hopefully last for a good long while) Liberal Democrat leadership contest is that everything I thought I knew about the candidates was wrong. Chris "master strategist" Huhne has ended up making some appalling tactical blunders, while Nick "great communicator" Clegg, it emerges, can be a bit rubbish on the telly. They both have feet of clay. Despite this, I remain as sure as I was a month ago that both are better potential leaders than either of their two predecessors.

Leaving aside the superficial similarities, what emerges are two very different personalities coming at this campaign at a very different point in their lives and focusing on very different priorities. Huhne invokes Bill Clinton when he states that it's the economy (stupid); Clegg talks about how the economy-focused politics of the 1970s and 80s are now long dead and buried. Huhne talks about devolution, of bringing government closer to people; Clegg talks about empowerment, of giving people more direct control over the public services they use.

It's not his choice I particularly object to, though I disagree with him on that too naturally, but one particular part of the assessment he goes through to arrive at that choice. It's mentioned twice, one of them in the part of his article I quote above, that "the economy-focused politics of the 1970s and 80s are now long dead and buried". This leads to the conclusion, later, that whilst Nick "isn't an economist and notwithstanding his observation that the political debate has largely moved on from such matters" he could "wing it" if he is "surrounded [by] people who can talk with authority on the subject."

See personally I don't think that the focus on the economy in politics should be dead. As I've argued before, I do think the "cosy consensus" between Labour and Tory makes it appear that way - that we are in an era of managerial politics, but that the job of liberals is to put it back on the agenda. Or at least, and it is different, to revive the study and promotion of "political economy". For too long now "economics", the pseudo-science that divorced itself from "political economy" in the nineteenth century, has sought to position itself as a set of inviolable laws, as if they are to society what Newtonian laws are to the universe. That economics somehow trumps politics, is master of the system rather than just a part of the system of how people and resources get on together.

Only a certain amount of politics deals with how things currently are, which is necessarily bound by the parameters of the contemporary economic orthodoxy, because that's how economists tell us the world, markets, property, wealth accumulation and so on works, and that it's inviolable. But the real visionaries are those who can subjugate economics to political principles, who can see ways to change the contemporary orthodoxy to achieve real political priorities. And, whilst I have a healthy skepticism of "schooled" economists, educated with that orthodoxy ingrained into them such that few of them ever dare to challenge it, I believe what we do need is an economist first who can think out of the box, instinctively and be able to defend an unorthodox economic idea spontaneously and with authority.

I think that's what Chris means when he says, as quoted by John Abrams at Liberal Revolution when he asks "Is Chris pitching for the Shadow Chancellors job?"

`Well I think we all have our strong suits, I’m simply saying that my strong suit, clearly having been in those areas is being able to take Gordon Brown on on the Economy, which is going to be dominant issue as Bill Clinton said.`

And I think he's right. Which is why, whatever I may disagree with in the way he has promoted himself as a staunch defender of public provision of public services, I will still be voting for the economist. He may not be as radical as I would like, but neither of them are, but I really think the one with the greater potential for radicalism is the one who stands a chance of understanding how changing the economic rules can feed through into great social change for the better.

There's a story doing the rounds on the BBC today about teenage sexual health. One thing that keeps being mentioned is that you can't advertise condoms on TV. I'm sure I've seen such adverts in other countries on UK TV programs about funny overseas adverts.

But it set me wondering - if you were advertising condoms wouldn't you want a different name for them? It's not the connotation that irks me, it's the word...con-dom. For some reason it just sounds odd and unappealing. So I wanted to know where it came from and looked it up in the OED. They don't record an etymology, but note that there is an unconfirmed suggestion that there was a Dr Condom, or Conton, or similar in the 18th century.

But the historical quotes are more interesting:

1744 The Machine 10 Let not the Joy she proffers be Essay'd, Without the well-try'd Cundum's friendly Aid.
1936 D. V. GLASS Struggle for Population iii. 35 [In Italy] condoms are listed as preventatives of disease and not as birth-control appliances, and are thus easily available.

The message has been the same for 250 years!  Particularly interesting that second one, as it implies that the Vatican were less concerned about them then as a means of preventing disease than they are now.

Technorati Tags: advertising rules, sexual health, condom

Again, (much) closer to home, the Oxford Mail/Times reports that:

Residents near Plater College in Headington, Oxford, have expressed concern about a

new influx of students after the college was sold



for £5.6m to an international language school.

Though I know and respect all those mentioned in the story, I am a little perplexed by this "fear". Plater College was, as the name suggests, a place of learning with students in residence and an ambition to expand, already taking in weekend residential courses and the like before they collapsed.

The site was protected for residential educational use, and indeed when Plater themselves sought to build some flats on a piece of spare land last year planning was turned down because housing use would intensify the pressures on traffic in a narrow private lane. They did however get permission a few years back, not yet acted upon, to increase the number of student rooms from, I think, about 75 to just over 100.

Plater accommodated students. EF will accommodate students. EF's main business throughout most of the year, like many international language schools, is not the hordes of Euro-teens that descend on the city each summer but young adults from overseas mainly spending several months getting their English language skills up to a standard at which they can study at degree levels in English speaking universities.

They are the least likely to bring additional traffic to the area for example. Yet they also tend to save to come here and have disposable money while they are here.

They will hopefully feed much needed overseas student fees into Brookes at the end of their courses with, perhaps, less effort on Brookes's part because they can be recruited locally.

I'm not sure I see the problem. Though it would have been nice (I have to say this bit I suppose) if Brookes themselves had managed to buy the place. Mind you, that outcome would also have involved students staying there.

Technorati Tags: oxford, plater