All Bulgarians and Romanians will be free to travel to Britain without a visa – but only a minority will be able to obtain legal employment. Highly qualified workers and those with specific skills deemed to be in short supply will be allowed to work, as will students (albeit only part-time). So too will the self-employed: builders and plumbers, for instance. But low-skilled workers will only be allowed to seek employment in food processing or farming – and then only until a quota of 19,750 places has been filled. A new Migration Advisory Council will try to second-guess companies’ employment needs – sorry, advise the government on whether more low-skilled workers are needed, and whether they could benefit other sectors.

My powers of constructive criticism are low, but I think I can help out here. A while back, the government proposed that Chinese restaurants no longer be allowed to bring in staff from China and Hong Kong. Instead, their jobs should be filled by Poles. But these Poles also need to eat. So why not get all these Bulgarians and Romanians to open Polish restaurants? It makes about as much sense as designating them by diktat to any other section of the economy. Their catering needs could be met in turn by Croatians or Serbs when they join the EU.

M. Legrain adds that enforcing the regulations would require an “expensive and highly intrusive army of inspectors”. Philippe, come on. This is New Labour. This is John Reid. This is the land of community support fedayeen; litter militia; parking ruritanians, each with a pointy hat to call his own. Establishing an expensive and highly intrusive army of inspectors is becoming the whole point of legislation. There is, I bet, an inspectorate somewhere whose sole job is to ensure that all new laws either require an expensive and highly intrusive army of inspectors or increase the expense and intrusiveness of our existing inspectocracy. I suppose that such misunderstandings of the British way of life are what you get when you only allow French people into Britain if they take jobs writing commentaries on immigration policy.

And anyway, an expensive and intrusive army of inspectors will provide jobs for all those Turks when they eventually join the EU and start flooding our properties, reducing the value of our women, claiming our shores…

Young Dave struck a mildly chiding tone with business. Profits are great and wonderful things, he said, but there’s also the matter of neighbourliness, along with the implication that neighbourly behaviour by business was something in the remit of government to enforce. The government, after all, seems to have become everybody’s neighbour, and a remarkably nosy one at that.

We’ve already seen this government use the Private Finance Initiative to create a class of client businesses. We’ve also seen the government dangle peerages in front of any entrepreneur with a fetish for school uniform design and a couple of million quid to flog on the government’s academy programme. As the private sector advances into public provision, the state doesn’t retreat. Instead, it forms “partnerships”. Perhaps young Dave wishes to extend this sort of clientism into the world of business in general.

If so, it would be the logical outcome of the politics of the past thirty odd years. Thatcherism might have been serious about rolling back the state. But that was in an era when there was a firm distinction between the two. What’s happened is that as the state continues to abandon responsibilities, it gathers new powers to itself in compensation. And now we’re in a situation where it’s increasingly difficult to distinguish between the private and public spheres. Rather than being rolled back, the state has become a kind of ambient phenomenon.

How does this work in practice? The government accepts that society at large must conform to the demands of the market. It therefore demands the right to micromanage education, ostensibly to meet these demands. That’s one way. Likewise, cities must become “world class” to attract investment. So teenagers who drop their lolly sticks have to be fined, and a special force of comedy cops is created for just this job. And it’s somehow characteristic of the current government to put a measure that would remove changes in legislation from parliamentary scrutiny within a Bill designed to reduce regulation on business. And in the Health Service, the micromanagerial frenzy grows along with private sector involvement.

It seems to me that when young Dave wags his finger at your friendly, neighbourhood retail behemoth, he’s taking the Tories in the same direction. It’s not an actual curtailment of Tesco were talking about; more an expansion of Dave, and, perhaps, a further move towards a society where the state is never entirely absent from any transaction. As the man himself says:

I want to explore the potential for a new understanding between business and Government.

With this new understanding, businesses that have publicly signed up to a commitment to responsible business practices would enjoy a lighter touch regulatory enforcement regime.

Let’s say you happen to live in a marginal seat which is also the proposed site of a landfill. Once you are aware of the government’s power to reward its friends and punish its enemies, then you’ll have clear guidance on how to vote. How neighbourly!

The cause of, or pretext for, the magazine’s closure was an article by academic Yuan Weishi on distortions of 19th century history in official Chinese textbooks. You can find that article translated through the link, along with various reports of the magazine’s suppression. Needless to say, it’s well worth reading on its own account.

Freezing Point also got into trouble after publishing Lung Ying-Tai’s The Chairman Bowed Three Times, an account of the Kuomintang’s attempts to apologise and make amends for the white terror it inflicted on Taiwan from the late 1940’s onward. There’s an obvious – though, obviously, unstated – parallel here with how the mainland has dealt with this issue.

Typically, the government has not only shut down the magazine, but banned any reporting within China of Freezing Point’s suppression, not only in print and audiovisual media but also on the Chinese internet. References to the affair on bulletin boards in China will likely be deleted as soon as they appear.

Freezing Point’s editor Li Datong has also had his personal blog wiped, after he published an open letter condemning the decision. An open letter from Lung Ying-tai to Hu Jintao about the closure is reproduced here.

As I understand it, the value of Freezing Point for its readers didn’t lie in any overt oppositional stance, dedication to controversy or formal endorsement of the principle of free speech. What it did was speak as freely as it could, week after week, and in doing so set an example and gave hundreds of thousands of readers across China information they may not have got anywhere else. The closure of the magazine also follows the “re-organisation” of the Beijing Evening News, and the jailing of the editor of the Southern Metropolis Daily and appears to be part of a general campaign to suppress China’s more outspoken media outlets.

So, what is to be done? Li Datong has described the decision as illegal and may appeal against it. It may well be that he and his colleagues have sympathizers within parts of the government apparat. After all, they’ve managed to tweak a lot of noses and survive for a good many years. Lots of embarrassing publicity abroad about the closure of Freezing Point may give them the leverage they need to reinstate the magazine. So, let’s get it round the blogs and forums. If you know of any interested party who might like to receive Li Datong’s letter by e-mail, then that would be good too.

“We need to change the way we feel. No more grumbling about modern Britain, I love this country – as it is, not as it was – and I believe our best days lie ahead.”

On the other hand…

“I want to set free the voluntary sector and social enterprises to deal with the linked problems that blight so many of our communities – of drug abuse, family breakdown, poor public space, chaotic home environments, high crime. We can deal with these issues, we can mend our broken society,” the well-connected Old Etonian insisted.

Modern Britain is broken, but I love it. Well, never mind what he says. The message is “I’m like you”.

I’m comfortably off. I have in the past had business relations with Colombian paramilitary groups, but that’s no concern of the hoi polloi. I can make a pretty impressive pitch without too much preparation. I like to go shopping, but sometimes, y’know, I forget things and have to nip back into town to pick them up.

Along with economic competitiveness, better run and funded public services, quality of life issues and security at home and abroad, social justice was one of six priorities identified in Mr Cameron’s victory speech. Despite its polished delivery, without text or autocue, he accidentally omitted the sixth which aides later said was the fight against global poverty.

Gosh. Ain’t I just folks. Dave was, briefly, a government relations manager for a media company. Now the press office guy has stepped up to the purple. This in itself seems to be revealing. Way back when, Margaret Thatcher broke the power of the unions and so earned the undying loyalty of the Murdoch press. This was a transaction from high to low. Blair famously went to Australia to pitch for Murdoch’s support. This was a subordinate, contracting relationship, but still one between separate and independent powers, and what Old Labour types have been doing since then can be characterized as a struggle to maintain that independence.

But Dave’s apotheosis doesn’t seem to involve anyone higher than middle management. He’s a creation of op ed writers, departmental heads, message drivers in inter-corporate communications. Maybe not so much a creation, more of a kind of avatar. Media and politics are merging, and there’s no need to involve the boss in the day to day process of managing the commodities produced by this merger. This is the legacy of Blair to the Tories. The only way they can outflank him is to shut up shop as an independent institution and merge, as a junior partner, with the communications industry. With the end of that independence so ends a set of perspectives, ideas, understandings, traditions and particular ways of looking at Britain and the world. Now we have a kind of callow, aesthetic vision of politics, a sort of politics of comfort.

In return, the Tories will get a lot of equity. I’m sure Dave’s first appearance at PMQs will be hailed as a triumph and every brain bubble that passes his lips will be greeted with shock and awe. Yet Cameron will be simply running through capital, having lost the means to generate more. Nothing gets old like newness and eventually, media cycles accelerate constantly and sometime his handlers will get bored with him. It’s a long time till 2009. The parallel here is with the Royal Family. They started by controlling access and expecting deference. Now they’re simply a branch of light entertainment.

When I say sales conference soul, that doesn’t mean it isn’t dead classy, like. It’s definitely for senior team, brainstorming away that their country house hotel. Over at the Novotel off the airport strip road, the junior reps are getting “reach for the stars” and waving their arms about and going wooo!

That wretched woman’s wretched voice really gets on my tits. People say it’s soulful, but it sounds to me like a woman who’s been married far too long obviously faking an orgasm to humiliate the husband she’s grown to hate. And the songs?

What have you done today to make me feel proud

People say that’s inspiring and challenging, but I think it’s just fucking cheeky. Funny how the people you know who think that stuff like that is inspiring and challenging are also the people you know who never, ever read, except that every six months they’ll come up to you with that moonie look on their faces and push a book on you with their damp greasy hands and say have you read this yet it’s fascinating.

And you look at this thing they’ve given you and it’s always some piece of middlebrow total crap by Simon Winchester or Ian McEwan or Sebastian Faulks or Tony Parsons or Louis-de-fucking-Berniers. And you say, no thanks I don’t fancy it and she – and honestly, it is a she more often than not – says go on, you should be more adventurous and you think for fuck’s sake, you lot never read anything and then you go off in a great big mob down to the bookshop and come back with this pathetic thing and start waving it about like a head on a stick …

…and somehow she reads your thoughts and says it was a present and you say ah that explains it. The reason book sales have gone up so much is because they’re rectangular and easy to wrap and so they make great gifts for people you don’t really care about and the booker prize tells the people in te gift buying market that this is the book they can buy for their nephew who’s just going to college and the Orange prize is for the niece who’s just going to college and there’s something about adultery and shoes for the sister in law and there’s the ghosted autobiography of the highly paid suspected rapist, sorry footballer, for the sister in law’s kid to while away the time with while he serves out his ASBO and there’s stuff like Ian McEwen and Simon Winchester and Louis-de-Fucking-Berniers for people who don’t make any impression at all they just lie there like suet in the consciousness but they have to be bought gifts at Christmas …

…and you say, honestly, why do you fucking well bother with this? Why not stick to magazines like Heat and Closer and Point and Grunt and Dribble? Why not stick to bondage clown pornography? There’s more honest value there, and exciting colour pictures…

and she says: that’s not very nice. What have you done today to make me feel proud?

And you say: I’ve wagged my dick at a cripple. Now fuck off.

And yet, this was an example of government failure at every level, from the Republican White House to the Democratic State House. Could you really say that Katrina’s aftermath justifies giving more powers to the old gang?

What seems to be lacking is a sense of institutional solidarity. For the past twenty five years, the dominant theory of government has been that the state is essentially parasitic rather than representative. It’s a haven for the lazy, the cynical, the indifferent, the bureaucratic, the unqualified and the meddlesome. Eventually this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy and the lazy, cynical, bureaucratic, meddlesome and unqualified are attracted to government. And since they exist and are tolerated, they also set an example within society at large. Add to that a society that valorises commercial transactions above all others and you have an environment in which the impulse towards voluntarism and mutual aid necessarily withers – precisely the reverse of what free market theories of social organisation predict.

You could see this going on in a smaller way in the persecution of the Hall family by animal rights activists. As well as targeting the family itself, the animal rights nutters picked off their suppliers and investors one by one. It targeted their local pub, their golf club, even their newsagent. Instead of being at the heart of a social network that protected its members, it seems that the halls were simply at the heart of a commercial network whose members protected themselves. It’s the logical outcome of the dominance of a line of thought that states that there is no such thing as society, just individual men and women and their families.

What does institutional solidarity look like? The following is from Simon Kuper’s Ajax, the Dutch, the War, citing Hannah Arendt on Danish resistance to the Nazis, which succeeded in saving all but fifty of Denmark’s 7800 Jews during World War 2:

…it seems the Danes were brave because their leaders were. The King made a public commitment to the Jews, Danish political leaders refused to take even the mildest measures against them, pastors read letters in church opposing their persecution, and so an atmosphere was created in which ambulance drivers and fishermen saved their lives.

The point is about leadership, but the leaders cited were leaders of institutions, and these institutions brought Danes together and helped give them the courage to act as individuals.

So how do we get there? You can’t just say we should have more faith in our actually existing political institutions. Personally I have no faith at all in ours. Right now, more government would just mean more bad government. One thing that may help is if we insist on a strict line being drawn between business and government. Lenin’s tomb has a couple of good posts here and here on how the pseudo-privatisation of disaster relief contributed to the whole mess in New Orleans. And here we learn that the head of FEMA brought to his position all the relevant expertise acquired as an attorney for the Arabian Horse Breeders Association – a job from which he was sacked for incompetence.

More generally, the privatisation of public services has done nothing to shrink the size of government. On the contrary, it has extended its reach. There’s now a whole penumbra of private sector government clients eager to take a crack at getting swag off the taxpayer on easy terms. At the same time it’s becoming hard to determine exactly what government is responsible for and therefore how its members should be punished for failing to live up to those responsibilities. It’s hard to establish just what the public sphere is in which people can act voluntarily. You may think that the government should have greater or lesser responsibilities. That’s the proper subject of political organisation and debate. But what it takes on it should take on openly, publicly and completely.

The events of last week demonstrated that we can’t afford the idea that there’s no such thing as good government. But as a first step towards getting it we need to define its responsibilities, to drag it into the light. That might encourage it to behave more responsibly. And if we feel that our formal institutions can be trusted, we may trust ourselves to create stronger informal, voluntary and mutualist networks.

leftwingers who rush too quickly to embrace their new friends on the right should meditate upon the malign example of Henry Kissinger, and the implications of Realpolitik for the causes and issues that they’re committed to.

Well yes, except that the past two years have given interested observers of an idealistic bent a horribly detailed tour through that fine old conservative principle, the law of unintended consequences. This in particular applies to those who took the stated principles behind the invasion of Iraq at face value. Despite this, many found themselves unable to believe the government over the WMD issue and so unable to support what was therefore simply a war of aggression. A general, maybe rather fluffy belief in intervention foundered against a basic principle in foreign affairs. Many found themselves on the othercside of that issue. But over WMD this constituency learned that the government cannot be trusted even or especially in important matters. It has watched the brutal progress of the insurgency and counter-insurgency and learned that acting with good intentions does not guarantee good outcomes. It has seen the Iraqi government slide gradually under the control of Shia’ theocrats and the horrible possibility occurs that there might be no good outcomes whatever you do because some problems are simply insoluble by political agency. It surveys the general slaughter and wonders, in the dark of night, whether it really does have the right to impose its good intentions on others. It reads the columns of Matthew Parrish and Max Hastings and finds itself nodding along in tremulous agreement.

It looks ahead to Darfur, which presents a seemingly unanswerable case for international action. Yet while the spirit remains willing, the events of the past two years makes the will shrivel like a well salted slug. When hearing calls to action, it starts wondering about the small print. When listening to idealists, it begins to wonder what exactly they have to sell and what the price might actually be. It finds itself judging policies less on whether they’re right, and more on whether they’re reckless. Feeling ill-used because of its ideals, it begins to gravitate to people whose outlook concentrates on the material and the particular – to what are generally termed realists.

I suppose what I’m really talking about here is the mainstream of the great “do-somethingist” coalition that originally grew up around intervening in the Balkans conflict in the nineties, stretching from Margaret Thatcher on the right across the great, herbivorous plain of the centre and liberal left, not including national interest conservatives or people whose general political outlook necessitated radical distrust of actually existing government – Marxists and others on the far left, for instance, or full throated libertarians. This coalition split over the initial Iraq invasion and now appears to be undergoing a general crisis of faith.

Such bruised idealists are, in classical political terms, Tory converts in larval stage. As to why the Tories aren’t amongst them promoting the gospel of Interests, it’s a puzzle to me, and one I’ll have to leave to the brothers and sisters of that parish to answer.

So what is the answer for the disappointed idealist? One thing I heard quite frequently around the time of the invasion was that people were prepared to “forgive” Tony Blair in his failures of domestic governance because of his forceful expression of international idealism. Well, we know now that a government which demonstrates lying and incompetence in small, domestic matters will show the same qualities in large, international ones. To reverse the old parable, a government unable to remove the mote from it’s own eyes – and which gets away with it – will be unable to remove the beam from someone else’s. You don’t have to embrace the full realist agenda to realize that a government which can’t be trusted in a country where it can be thrown out of office can’t be trusted to take action in places where it can act with less supervision.

Personally, I’m not too optimistic about getting either, but if you’re in the market for salvaging your ideals, I’d say that this is the place to start.

So how was he identified? From what I can determine it was down to three factors:

He came out of the same block of flats linked to one of the 21/7 bombers
He looked non-white
He was wearing a coat on a warm day

In terms of the first, I have no idea whether he was registered at that address for bills, Council Tax etc. I also don’t know exactly when that address was linked to the Oval bomber. It could be reasonable to assume that the time frame was too tight for the cops to be able to acquire a list of residents and winnow potential suspects out from it. Until that time, everyone emerging from the house has to be accounted a potential suspect, given other factors.

Unfortunately, these are pretty weak. They seem to rest on the idea that anyone not white but not actually black or Chinese is Asian – and that anyone ‘Asian’ is Muslim. This is less likely to be true in London than in anywhere else in Britain, and possibly Europe as a whole. As a non-Afro Brazilian, Mr De Menezes’ heritage is likely to have been either Portuguese or Italian.

The cops also identified the fact that Mr De Menezes was wearing a coat on a warm day as a factor identifying him as a potential bomber. This is taken from the criteria adopted in Israel. Unlike Britain, Israel has very few migrants from hotter countries. “Unseasonable” means exactly the same for an Israeli or a Palestinian. Again, this is much less likely to be true in London and it’s not going to be helpful at all during the winter. And the unseasonable wearing of coats is only one of a list of identifying datapoints. Others include: distracted or ecstatic facial expression; a freshly shaven head; a suspect mumbling or talking to himself; agitated expression or movement. See here, also here.

How many of these other factors applied? Jean De Menezes was on his way to repair a fire alarm.

A marginal note. The news and talk shows yesterday had a rash of people trying to launch “shoot to kill to save” as a replacement term for “shoot to kill”. Forget it. That formulation doesn’t fit into headline language and it’s the kind of thing that newsreaders stumble over. It’s clumsy and it stinks of PR – of some sharp suited intellectual wide boy snapping his fingers and saying “got it! why dont we just say…” No arrests for last Thursday yet, but already we’ve got that well known characteristic of British public life – a bunch of tossers brainstorming around the urgent need to perfume a fuckup.

Bottom line. The De Menezes family accused the police of being “stupid and incompetent”. That about gets it, I think, but I suspect it goes further up the chain than that. Give the cops all the latitude you want, but the people here to protect us need to do better than this.

I suppose the answers to that question can be partly determined by political affiliation. Lefties tend to be drawn towards D-Day, and visions of a mighty host liberating a continent from fascism. And as I understand it, righties tend to sniffle over the Battle of Britain, which harks back to the days of individual combat by champions and so sets British history in a pleasingly organic context.

Not me. I would have been a sleazy intelligence officer, baffling the jerries with double crosses, triple thinks and quadruple bluffs from my headquarters, the Office of Sleazy Intelligence.

As I see it, the Office of Sleazy Intelligence was located in seedy-genteel quarters round the back of Shepherd Market, handy for the Café Royal and subject to constant patrolling by Ladies of the Night with their fur coats, high heels and small dogs.

“Doing business?” they would ask as I sauntered past and skipped up the rickety stairs. Of a kind madam, of a kind. Very special business as it turned out, business involving gold bullion, exploding rats, inflatable tanks and secret pornography.

My own office, the Head Office of the Office of Sleazy Intelligence, would be stuffed to bursting with bonded whisky, crisp Reichsmarks, silk stockings and other items for the equipment and consolation of haunted ladies, destined for France and inevitable doom in the Cellars of the Gestapo.

Later, I would follow the victorious hosts of democracy to the Continent. Theirs would be the honour and the glory. I’d settle for half the German treasury, obtained in return for two crates of spam and a carton of Craven A.

And after the shooting stops? Let others return to the thanks of a grateful country. Sleazy Intelligence never sleeps, though it can be found lounging in a rumpled silk suit at the Circle Sportif in Saigon; sampling the sleeping dictionaries and opium dens of French Indochina; being mildly patronising to both quiet and noisy Americans; travelling to Antibes with a word of advice for old colleagues. No Graham. Forget all that Catholic stuff. No-one gives a monkeys.

Years of selfless service and a number of cash only businesses in out of the way parts of the world reward the Sleazy Intelligence Officer with a house in the country, a baroquely fascist political outlook, a number of consultancies and a face like Auden’s testicles. His lawn is graced with a Zulu kraal. He likes Zulus. They are fine, upstanding fellows. He likes to watch them while contemplating the decline of the West. Eventually he dies in bed. It is four days before he is discovered, his remains nibbled copiously by his pet armadillos.

A life well lived, I think.

We all know about Princess Tony don’t we? Yes, we do. We all know about how Princess Tony likes to fly all over the world bringing smiles to people’s faces. Do you remember what the place was called that Princess Tony went to with his friend Crazy George? The place where he made all the children happy by arranging a big firework display and lots of finger painting?

Yes, that’s right. It was Iraq.

Anyway, this time Princess Tony and his other friends Hairy Bob and Nobbo the Little Rock Star went to Africa. Now Africa is a place where all the children play with guns and nobody has any money except a few people who have all the money, and they take it and put it in a bank in a place called Switzerland. And there aren’t any Milky Ways or Smarties or Turkey twizzlers and everybody has to eat mud.

Well you know what Princess Tony did? Princess Tony and his friends Hairy Bob and Nobbo the Little Rock Star made all the children put their guns away and then they gave them strawberryade and kinder eggs and lots and lots and lots of current buns. And he made the people with all the money take it away from the place called Switzerland and give everybody pocket money so they could buy Milky ways and Smarties and Turkey Twizzlers. And all the Africans jumped up and down and said Thank you Nobbo the Little Rock Star! Thank You Hairy Bob! And especially big Double Thankyous and hugs and kisses Princess Tony!

It made Princess Tony happy to see all the little smiling Africans. But when he got home, he wasn’t happy any more. Do you know why, children? It was because of the Ugly Face Man.

Nobody knows where the Ugly Face Man came from. Perhaps he has no home. Because every time Princess Tony came back from making people happy somewhere he would see the Ugly Face Man sitting outside the place where he and his friends work, pulling ugly faces and shouting rude things. And he had posters with nasty horrible things written on them about Princess Tony.

You know what the Ugly Face Man was, don’t you children?

That’s right. A nutter. Can you pull a face like the Ugly Face Man,? Ooooh, horrible!

Seeing the Ugly Face Man made Princess Tony unhappy. He didn’t like it when people pulled ugly faces at him and shouted rude things when all he wanted was for people to smile and sing and say how wonderful Princess Tony was. Tony’s friends, the parliamentary pixies, didn’t like it either. The parliamentary pixies are little men and women who run around all day and all night constantly having ideas that make all our lives better in a thousand and one ways. But it’s hard to have wonderful ideas when there’s an Ugly Face Man sitting outside pulling ugly faces and shouting all day.

When he heard that the Ugly Face Man had made the parliamentary pixies sad, Princess Tony got red in the face. “It’s nasty and horrible and just not fair!” he said. And Princess Tony stamped his little feet.

Suddenly Charlie the Safety Elephant appeared in a puff of bureaucracy. “Don’t worry, Princess Tony” he said. “I’m here to protect you and all your little chums. And I’m going to make a law. I like doing that!”

“What kind of law are you going to make, Mr Safety Elephant?” said Princess Tony.

“It’s a law that says ‘go away Ugly Face Man’ said Charlie. “And it means that he can never come back and nor can anyone who thinks like him and wants to say nasty things and make life hard for Princess Tony and his little friends. And everyone will be able to go round making Africans smile and having wonderful ideas that improve all our lives in a thousand and one ways and there’ll be nobody to say nasty things about them or interfere in any way at all.”

And so it was done. And Princess Tony and the parliamentary pixies all lived happily ever after.