toby raves: on housing benefit, the South Bank Show and Hebrew jazz

The week in politics: Cameron at EU Summit

The main political news of the week continues to be the fallout from the spending review that was published last week Wednesday, though the stories have been rather thin on the ground in Westminster as eyes turn further afield.

On Thursday prime minister David Cameron travelled to a summit of EU leaders in Brussels at loggerheads over their stance on the EU budget. As Britain prepares to face a new age of austerity and fiscal restraint the EU was hoping to raise their annual budget by 6%, something which Cameron called “unacceptable.” The budget increase would mean the UK paying an extra £900million in to the European Union. The Conservative party had in the past campaigned for a freeze in the EU budget. Cameron appears to have won a partial victory on the subject by winning an agreement that in future the EU budget will reflect how the budget of national countries.


Boris gaffe on housing benefit

The main dispute in government seems to be over the housing budget and possible cuts to housing benefit. Boris Johnson, the Conservative mayor of London, came out this week as  being against “Kosovo – style social cleansing” which could be one effect of imposing a cap on housing benefits as areas with a high rate of rent (in the city centre) will see a mass movement of people to the outskirts as rents become unaffordable. The Lib Dem Business Secretary Vince Cable called mayor Johnson’s words “inflammatory language.” The issue of housing benefit reform looks set to be one of the most divisive for the coalition government.


Comment: 
South Bank Show on Sky Arts: is toby raves eating humble pie?

Last week I wrote about how Sky needs to be doing more to invest in quality journalism and programme making and how if they were going to become the dominant force in British broadcasting that taking on a more proactive role, making their programme budget come nearer to their marketing budget, was part of the added responsibility that they were taking on.


Could it be that I was just being reactionary, venting anger unjustifiably towards the Murdoch machine?  Sky Arts, the cultural TV channel from BSkyB, snapped up the rights to host the South Bank Show from 2011. Consisting of a live screening of the awards ceremony itself (as opposed to the delayed offering from ITV) the show will also screen a series of documentaries on the winners.  It seems then that Murdoch has managed to keep the venerated institution that is the South Bank Show; an institution Prince Charles said “remained without rival.”


So Sky has done more than ITV in keeping a show of high repute going. At least that seems the case. What I said last week was that the channel had to start investing in new top quality programmes. South Bank is a fantastic show but it is hardly new.


It’s a show with a strong brand and anyone who has even the remotest interest in arts television will have had a watch of the show.  The host, Melvyn Bragg, is a (too) familiar one. The subject matter it could be argued don’t need illuminating on. The RSC was the last ever focus for an episode of the South Bank Show, one could argue that they were a worthy subject matter, but, one could also argue that they were a little safe. In the 21^st century when there is such a diversity of talents and media through which talent is communicated why focus on the most traditional talent in the most traditional of means?


This debate comes down to whether or not arts television is there to shed light on a host of new emerging talent that is out there, or whether it is to delve deeper into the hearts and minds of household name artist.  Personally I think that the South Bank Show coming back to our screens, even if it is just for satellite viewers, is a good thing. Just.


The show is, ultimately, a brand and its presenter is its biggest exponent. Bragg breaks the first rule of the Frost school of journalism, because he himself becomes the story a lot of the times. But the issues of it being a too much of a brand give way to its big selling point: for many people it is the first point of call with an artist. The first time many people realise the value that an artist holds because of the significance of being on the show. A South Bank Show is proof that you’ve arrived.


It is also still an education, focussed on making the viewer learn about the subject, not the subject matter. We know of the inner demons of Francis Bacon not because of an inquisitive biographer but because of the inquisitive nature of the show.  The paranoia that Howard Hodgkin feels ,as an artist more at home in the foreign land of America, than at home Britain is a new angle not known to many viewers until aired on the South Bank Show. The show comes into its own when it portrays elusive painters and sculptors in particular.


The South Bank Show definitely has a place in the arts tv landscape, some would say that at the top of the tree and Sky is ultimately hoping that to be the case. But there needs to be shows which illuminate viewers on parts of cultural life in Britain which are as yet undiscovered. There should be shows which make you feel you’ve learnt about someone new, who does something that, before you sat down never even knew existed. The South Bank: Underground... now there’s a thought.  


Pictures of the Week: Guilin China


The last in our series of pictures from China, this week we look at Guilin. The city located in the Guangxi Zhuang province and is renowned for it unique scenery of fauna, and literally means 'city of sweet Osmanthus' in acknowledgement at the abundance of Osmanthus trees in the area. This pictures capture everyday life in the city as well as the temple and its surroundings. Enjoy!

photos courtesy Suswati Basu 

Playlist of the Week: Jazz
I'm sure no one here needs telling of the virtues of this art form, but still Jazz has always been under appreciated as a genre. Any fan of improv has to admire the way it puts spontaneity at the front of the list of rules. toby raves  is loving listening to the Reykjavik Jazz Quartet at the moment and their album 'Hot House'. The music just seems to spiral, one to the next.This week's playlist is just like the jazz quartet themselves. Spontaneous, ice cold and red hot, all at the same time.

Note the inclusion of 'Motovu -Bor-chu', a song which mixes black jazz with hebrew prayers. Spontaneity and fusion. Enjoy.

track listing:
John Coltrane - Stardust
Herbie Hancock, Thad Jones, Ron Carter, Jonathan Klien, - Motovu -Bor'chu
(cover) Miles Davis - On Green Dolphin Street


 John Coltrane - Stardust by cloneelite 


 Herbie Hancock (Hear O Israel) - Matovu - Bor'chu by subraw 


 On Green Dolphin Street by LSDuo 


Video of the week
It's the scariest week of the year, and so in acknowledgement of that this week toby raves thought it only appropriate that the video for this week should have a suitably scary edge. The Gate is a cult 1980's horror film which has a fair share of gore, and some imaginative animation which is even scarier in this age of CGI. check out the trailer for this film here.


toby raves second video of the week is the first part of a South Bank show profiling Howard Hodgkin, the British abstract painter. Even in 1999, when the film was made, Hodgkin was regarded as one of the most important artist to come from Britain. That all from toby raves week, until next Saturday...

 

toby raves: on the Spending Review, Murdoch Press, and Frieze

This Week in Politics

Spending review announced!

This week there was only one story, every other story was simply the periphery to the core issue. The Comprehensive Spending Review, what in essence amounts to a audit of all the money that the government spends was announced by George Osborne is the house of commons on Wednesday. “today is the day when Britain steps back from the brink” announced Osborne as he set out explaining why the biggest cuts to the public sector since the end of the Second World War were necessary.

Even in the wake of the announcement before parliament and the publication of the review there is still debate wrangling over how fair the cuts are, especially to the poorest in society. The independent research institute, The Institute of Fiscal Studies, described the measures outlined as reinforcing the regressive nature of the coalition government’s economic plan. Nick Clegg responded to the accusations on Thursday, calling them “airbrushed” and a distortion of the facts. Despite the fact that the ramifications are unclear, here is what we do know:

·
Department for Work and Pensions has been the biggest casualty with a £7bn cut to welfare budget. These cuts have some of the widest ramification with fundamental challenges to the idea of a universal welfare state. The highest bracket of earners are likely to have to see a decrease in their child benefit, whilst disability living allowance and the Employment Support Allowance are all set to be cut.

·
The budget for Local governments is also set to be cut with the biggest casualty being the social housing budget which is to be cut by 50%. To make up for the expected shortfall the government is expected to raise the amount of rent paid by council tenants so that they are more in line with markets. It is still hoped that up to 115,000 new homes will be able to be built by 2015.

#
· The Home Office has also suffered major cuts to its budget, and as a result there will almost certainly be fewer police officers patrolling the streets. How badly the Home Office cuts of around 14% will affect front-line services are as yet unknown.

And there we have it, the Spending Review to end all Spending Reviews and certainly the most important document to come out of Whitehall in a generation. The country will change beyond recognition if these cuts are seen through with the public sector being relied upon less and less to provide services in this country and the private sector more and more. It remains to be seen whether what is being described as chancellor Osbourne’s “colossal gamble” will indeed pay off for the country.

This Week's Comment

Murdoch vs BBC: is it a fair fight?

“The time, it is hoped, is gone by, when any defence would be necessary of the ‘liberty of the press’ as one of the securities against corrupt or tyrannical government.” So begins the J.S. Mill essay On Liberty. Written to communicate the need and indeed necessity for a thriving society ( then 19^{th century} Victorian Britain) to remain a pluralist one, guarding against what he calls the tyranny of the majority. Modern day Britain seems to have forgotten the lesson.

Out of the handful of big players in our free press there are two giants in the field: BBC and BSkyB. This week saw the beginnings of what looks like a divergence between the two,one growing stronger, the other, weaker. The BBC under the terms of the Spending Review will have to absorb the World Service and welsh provider S4C into its business model, for BSkyB and NewsCorp, the company which owns 40% of the shares of BSkyB, the prospect of buying the remainder shares, giving Murdoch control of Britain’s biggest broadcaster as well as the biggest selling newspaper in Britain, is still on the cards.

The plan, in case you weren't aware, is to have all of NewsCorp’s output in one place. The great unanswered question of print, how to make money from newspapers and websites is suddenly cracked. How? Step 1, set up a paywall on your newspaper websites. Step2, merge your print and TV operations. Step 3, at the point of payment simply incorporate your two sections – when people pay for their satellite TV simply offer them the chance to have access to the print websites added to any package, giving the customer convenience and access, whilst giving your newspaper much needed additional income.

Why is this so important? Well, while people are reading blogs such as toby raves more often they still pay attention to what the print media has to say. An endorsement from the Sun going in to elections is what parties spend time and money trying to achieve. Papers don’t give you money, but they do give you power. Days after becoming Prime Minister David Cameron held a private meeting with Rupert Murdoch. Murdoch left by the back door.

Merging what was previously two separate entities, print with its forum for outspoken journalism and broadcast with its much stricter regulation is a revolution in media with the potential to damage the free press Murdoch is said to care about.

Murdoch himself has come out fighting. This week he gave the inaugural Margaret Thatcher lecture in which he described those who were opposed to the merger as “small thinkers,” who were opposed to growth and therefore, implicitly, not seeing the bigger picture. The whole theme running throughout the lecture is that state dependency, in all its guises is something to be abhorred.What then, in the paradise world that Murdoch inhabits should the press look like? Murdoch has this to say:

“A free society requires an independent press: turbulent …enquiring…bustling…and free. That's why our journalism is hard-driving and questioning of authority. And so are our journalists. Often, I have cause to celebrate editorial endeavour.”

In truth I am opposed to the merger. Primarily because Murdoch would be the first to admit that he is an influential person, not many are angry of that fact, though some are, and some would even applaud him of that fact. It certainly is not his job to say, “hold on, I’m too powerful, let me stop” but it is someone’s job. A job that would neglected if the nation’s strongest commercial broadcaster were to be allied on a solid,official basis with multiple print outlets. One opinion stream, one headquarters, two outlets – diversity, but hardly pluralism. It is in my opinion the job ofthe government to mitigate the influence that one person has in shaping the agenda and deciding what people should be outraged at and what people shouldn’t- this isn’t the same as restricting growth. But for the sake of playing devil’s advocate I will say that Murdoch could, could, have a point.

Much, then, becomes dependent on the BBC, the natural counterweight, and the only other big beast. This week saw their leaves being pruned. The World Service will no longer receive a grant and S4C, the welsh language channel will be paid for from the licence fee, this equates to a 16%cut in the budget. Austerity has spread even to the wild free for all that is the beeb.

The BBC is becoming weaker right at the time when its strength is needed most. As Mark Thompson explained in his MacTaggart lecture, competition between the two is welcome but BSkyB (and soon the whole ofthe Murdoch empire) has to invest more in keeping journalism at a high quality and programming to a high standard - Sky’s marketing budgeting is the same as ITV’s programming budget. In a world where the BBC is diminished and NewsCorp is keen to fill the breach in market share, who will feel the breach for high standards of journalism and programme making if NewsCorp are all about marketing and less about finding the best talent around? Journalist and news agencies can sometimes be the story themselves. The phone hacking scandal at the News Of the World bear testament to that – in a society whose mainstream media is so close to decision makers and where the media is a monopoly who will hold Cameron or Murdoch to account? The intentions of NewsCorp may be noble (thisis me playing devil’s advocate here) but to have a situation where the Times, theSun, and Sky News are dominant is dangerous.

There are many ways you can interpret the J.S Mill quote I started with. Freedom of the press can mean freedom from government interference, or it can mean freedom to hear many different viewpoints and not have any suppressed but a strong counterweight to the BBC cannot hide from its responsibilities or indeed, if it were true to its moral code, be happy to be a monopoly.

Full transcript of the lecture is availablehere - http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/oct/21/rupert-murdoch-inaugural-margaret-thatcher-lecture

Pictures of the Week -Yangshou, China

continuing our series of pictures taken from China this week the pictures are from the Yangshou, in the province of Guangxi. The area is well known for its mountain retreats and rock climbing. Photos courtesy Suswati Basu.

Playlist of the week - American Harmony
Everyone loves a good harmony and it seems that those Americans do it better than anyone else. This week's selection of tracks certainly emphasises that point. starting with the gentle tones of Freelance Whales this playlist takes you on a acoustic guitar ride of cheerfulness with afrikaan drums from Vampire Weekend along the way.

Track Listing
1. Freelance Whales -Location
2. Fleet Foxes - Quiet Houses
3. Vampire Weekend-Horchata
4. Local Natives-Airplanes
Location by blackbirdflyy


05 Quiet Houses by Stephen Branch


Horchata by audiodax


Local Natives - Airplanes by stndrdeviations


Video of the Week - London art scene
London: the centre of it all, where the action occurs. Well, if your like me and not in on all the art action going on in the big city then see these clips.

The Frieze Art Fair came to town this week. This five day festival of contemporary art was full of the latest trends and the usual debates on what is art. On the off chance you missed it check out this clip of the show and see if you can spot the appearances of Ai Weiwei and Grayson Perry.Also this week saw the opening of the London Film Festival - here are trailers from two highlights of the festival, Route Irish directed by Ken Loach and Mike Leigh's Another Year, out on the 5th November. That's all from toby raves until next week.

Toby raves: on the deaths of free education, satire and summer

The Political round up

Vince Cable – Magician. Gymnast. Hard Man

Tuesday saw the release of the much anticipated Browne Review into higher education. Although much of the reviews findings had already been leaked in the build up to its release, the findings will still come as a shock to those students that will be affected.

The report proposes lifting the current cap on tuition fees from £3,000 to a soft cap of £7,000, allowing universities to charge any amount that they wish but receiving less and less money the further they go over the cap.

It was left to Vince Cable, Lib Dem MP and Business Secretary, to announce that he agreed with the “main thrust” of the report, thereby performing an astonishing U-turn. Cable, along with every member of the Liberal Democratic Party signed a National Union of Students pledge opposing any increase in tuition fees. Trying to justify the dramatic change in policy the Business Secretary stated that “the roads to Westminster are littered with the skidmarks of the political parties changing direction on this issue.”   

This issue could prove to be highly damaging for the party as the Liberal Democrats have consistently campaigned against tuition fees and have gained significant amounts of supports from students because of this. Although the Lib Dem leadership appear to have accepted the case for raising tuition fees the final outcome has not yet been settled yet and concessions will no doubt be sought.

Vince Cable was again the star of the show on Wednesday as he put forward the postal services bill for the first time. This bill, if approved, would radically alter the nature Royal Mail. The main proposals of the bill is to turn the Royal Mail into a mutual company; a type of co-operative, where the staff would own at least 10% of the shares. Cable has described this as the UK’s largest ever share ownership scheme.

The remaining shares could end up in the hands of a private company such as TNT, the Dutch logistics company. In this event a wave of industrial actions, led by the CWU (Communication Workers Union),  would be almost inevitable as the threat of a large number of layoffs would become a reality. Cable and the coalition government have stated actively stop a programme of mass redundancies or interfere in any industrial disputes.

Privatisation may appear a convenient escape for the government – the Royal Mail has a black hole in its pension pots which is in the billions of pounds – but the institution, much like the BBC, has a place in the nation’s heart which means that pushing through privatisation could be a fraught process.

Solid Debut

Wednesday saw the first appearance at PMQ’s for Ed Miliband, the newly elected leader of the Labour Party. Sticking to questions on child benefit the consensus seems to have been that Ed produced a surprisingly capable display which had Cameron on the back foot.  The next big confrontation between the two, at the dispatch box will be on October 20th when the spending review, the extensive government audit which will outline the scale of the cuts, is announced in parliament. 

Comment: 

Can we Brits even do satire anymore?

It starts as all the others do; the clouds part, followed by the sound of harps and then the voice which utters  the words “the Simpsons” in a melodic, familiar way. The opening credits for The Simpsons are the most famous in television history, and even with the latest makeover of the subtitles (now complete with animation suitable for the high definition age) there is still a sense of familiarity and gentle humour about them – the appetiser which settles you in to the meal.

The opening credit sequence of the Simpsons episode to be broadcast in the UK on the 21^st October is not quite in the same vein. The regular “couch gag” is a minute long exposition on the conditions of a Simpson’s animation sweatshop in South Korea; the conditions are suitably bleak. There then follows cats/rabbits (it’s difficult to tell) being shredded to make the stuffing for Bart Simpson dolls, a dolphin head as a tape gadget and a unicorn, whose horn makes the holes for all those Simpsons DVD’s we begin to purchase around this time of year, on its last legs.

The storyboard for this gag comes from Banksy, the guerrilla graffiti artist extraordinaire now turned satirist, railing against the Fox Machine. It hasn’t worked. The gag in the first place is woefully misinformed. 

South Korea, where the Simpsons cartoons are made, is the 13^th most industrially developed country in the world. 83% of school leavers go on to university, a figure which puts our 45% to shame. South Korea also has high speed fibre optic broadband in every primary and secondary school in the country. The whiteboard, in schools in the UK, is seen as a technological advancement to behold. So South Korea is not the right choice of country for a polemic against “the man” and being an animator is not comparable to working in a sweat shop – who’d have thought it. Banksy got it seriously wrong on this and should just stick to art he knows best.

The art of satire: ridiculing figures who put themselves about as worthy of being followed, use to be something that the British were famed for. Now satire from the UK is reduced to misguided cartoons and Mock The Week, a truly poor show full to the brim with sell–out comedians who make jokes about the Queens vagina and pass it off as being clever and edgy. I am of the generation that is just about old enough to remember Spitting Image. A show which highlighted to the viewer on the outside of the Westminster bubble just how crazy that world was. The show was OTT, but only in so far as it helped tell the joke. For example, who doesn't think of John Major as being grey?

To this young twentysomething that now seems like a golden age in British satire compared to what we have now. If one thinks of satire now the names that come up are all on the other side of the Atlantic. Tina Fey captured the Zeitgeist in America with her take on Sarah Palin. Jon Stewart’s parody of Glenn Beck’s ‘out there’ conspiracy theories is the latest in his long line of classic sketches. While Stephen Colbert, my personal favourite of the American satirist, week in week out ridicules the ridiculous reporting of mainstream media through his outlandish (yet familiar) newsreader character (who is apparently based on Bill O’ Reilly). 

The Americans understand what we once used to: that satire has to be based in truth. “You can see Russia from my house” is a reserved yet hilarious statement for Tina Fey to make, and it is all the more hilarious because Palin thought (and maybe still thinks) that this qualified herself to be in The White House. That and the fact the she thinks Africa is a country.

The ridicule of Brown and Cameron and Clegg, and soon enough Miliband on our TV screens will all be about getting the physical appearance and mannerisms just right. This is at the expense of capturing the banality of what it is our politicians say to us. I admire Bremner, but impersonation isn’t satire.Spitting Image brought forth a whole generation of young satirist, but now it seems that the only satire which sticks to the golden rule, that there is humour in truth, is The Thick Of It.

 Satire, more than most genres needs time to bed in and find itself. Season 3 of The Thick Of It and the film In The Loop were the funniest offerings in the franchise. It is a genre which also needs  to be  organic.  Studio audiences are fine, the constant interruption of an egomaniacal host isn’t. Formulaic quiz shows seem to have captured the true art and bottled it, ready for distribution in easy manageable chunks which can be repeated again and again on Dave.  Bring back Spitting Image! Or alternatively, make ‘Private Eye: the TV show.’

Pictures of the Week

This week's photographs come from the city of Chengde and its magnificent municipal gardens. photos taken by Suswati Basu.

Playlist of the week 

This week really brought it home. Summer is indeed over. As always it never last long enough. This playlist is a real close your eyes and sit in front of window playlist. From the slow disco of Trophy Wife, whose single Microlite is out next month on Moshi Moshi, to the Californian hipster sound of The Drums; there's a tinge of coolness running through it. The music isn't sweltering, but then neither are our summers. Apologies for the lack of auto play, I'm hoping to resolve the issue.

 Trophy Wife - Microlite by isaidahip 

 The Drums - Let's Go Surfing by Nooizze 

 The Sea by Morcheeba by orsten 

 Beach House - Zebra by mattpoco 

Video of the week

Because I could not get the Foals 'this orient' on the playlist, this week there are two videos. The second video being the promo that Michael J. Fox made to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the iconic film Back To The Future. That's it for this week. Have a nice weekend, and hopefully see you again next week.

revised mission statement

The Toby Raves blog will now be a weekly. Going out ever Saturday I hope to be able to include the following:

The Weekly Political Round-up-  A succinct run-down of all the latest goings on in UK (maybe even world) politics.

The Comment Article - An in depth look on topical issues.

The Weekly Playlist -My choice of the perfect soundtrack to set your weekend by (he says, hoping technology allows him to do so)

The Weekly Video - My choice of what's best out there, in the world of YouTube.

Regular Pictures - To stimulate the mind; because Toby Raves needn't be text heavy.

Regular short stories and possible serialisations - short, but the nonetheless punchy. These stories will be my own personal creative input into this blog.


Right, it looks like I had better get started. see you on Saturday. 

And now for something a little different...

Come on Ed

Breaking news. Ed Miliband has named Alan Johnson as his Shadow Chancellor and Ed Balls as his Shadow Home Secretary.

As Steve Richards pointed out on last night's Newsnight programme, (http://www.bbc.co.uk/i/v8hh3/?t=18m30s) who he named as Shadow Chancellor was crucial to him setting a firm tone as leader, crucial to him not being seen to react exaggerated media headlines on psychodrama (Ed Balls is married to Yvette Cooper and both were considered the only serious candidates for the job), and crucial because the government are seeking to enact a radical cuts agenda thereby dismantling the New Labour legacy and causing heartache to many people in the public sector who will lose their jobs.

To then not name either Yvette Cooper (the obvious choice), or Ed Balls (the only credible alternative to Cooper) to shadow Chancellor George Osbourne already smacks of someone trying to avoid tomorrow's negative headlines rather than someone who sees that he is going to need his best and most capable people on board for the 4 and half year long haul. Definitely an inauspicious start.

Mission statement

This blog will attempt to demonstrate that culture and politics aren't mutually exclusive. That you can like both and write about both. That the two shall meet

To that end : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBPK5Un7H5c