Mass media and mass politics (2001)

From the August 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

Parliament is a place full of games and flippancies, so what better basis for a new drinking game? The rules are simple, sit down and watch the live-feed television channel BBC Parliament just after the election, and wait (bored beyond tedium by the irrelevancies of the place) for the swearing in of the new MPs. Simply, knock down one drink for each MP who affirms rather than swearing to God, and knock down two for each MP who clearly indicates that they don’t believe a word they’re saying – and its guaranteed after all that you’ll be as sober as a fish.

What sharp-eyed readers will have noticed, is that there is no provision for those MPs refusing to believe in the Queen. Indeed, they are not allowed to not believe in the Queen, and so must swear by her, whether they swear the oath on the Bible or “honestly and sincerely” affirm. Many see such oaths as an irrelevant anachronism, and so take them without caring about the substance. Socialist delegates sent to Parliament, too, would not allow the requirement to swear fealty to the parasite and her family to prevent them taking up their seats.

The reverence to the monarch, though, is all-pervading in Parliament, as when MPs considering “The Queen’s Speech” (i.e. the announcement of government business for the year) debate motions “humbly and gratefully” thanking the Queen for a speech she had no hand in, other than reading aloud (badly). All of which is a throw-back to the times when Parliament was simply a forum for expressing views, which could be conveyed to the person of the absolute ruler of the land, the monarch. Despite the historical changes in power, the superficial forms have been retained.

The historical hangovers, however, go further than in the simple fripperies of the place. When Parliament became open to a general franchise (i.e. read, open to the votes of the capitalist class) after “The Great Reform Act”, the 1832 general election saw 827,776 people eligible to vote. They were voting for some 658 seats, which meant at least one MP per 1,258 voters (although some voters lived in multi-member constituencies, an undemocratic practice which managed to survive until 1950 until the abolition of the University Seat.

This ratio of electors to members is more reminiscent of the ratios on modern local councils, and it would have meant that there was more than a fair chance of actually knowing (at least by sight) the person being elected. As the franchise was generally widened, the number of seats in Parliament was not (at least within the same ratio). What this effectively meant, was a diminution of the effective power of each vote. Obviously, if the number of MPs had risen with the number of voters, it would have meant a corresponding decline in the power of vote for each MP in the Commons. Our current 40 or so million voters would need around 31,000 MPs in order to have that much effective control. The point, though, is not about mathematics, or pragmatic power, but about the “quality” of the vote. In the modern constituency, it takes a huge number of electors to change, to register any sort of shift in the public mind. It also takes huge numbers of people to effect a quantitative change into the qualitative change of having a representative in Parliament.

What this approach encourages is the aggregation of voters into an undifferentiated mass, votes expressing difference or disagreement needing to be lost into the swamp of a high bar majority. This aggregation is furthered by the attempts of politicians to turn the elections into presidential style elections for a government, rather than for representatives, thus making it the sum across the whole country, resulting in one qualitative change, that of the government overall.

It’s no wonder that people feel no pragmatic connection between their voting preferences and the outcomes; and no wonder that people feel so little connection with any of the parties. All these become are technocratic career structures for advancing politicians, a platform from which to project policy ideas to be reflected off the undifferentiated mass, which has no control over what is projected, beyond passive reflection.

This process of “mass culture” has, of course, been assisted by the spread of the mass media. The social relationship is the same, a few technocratic broadcasters/media barons, projecting images and ideas to be passively reflected by a land mass of consumers. Indeed, representative politics follows the same course. Instead of abstractedly measuring response in terms of money, it reads response in terms of flat votes, formally equal but failing to register differences in value or quality.

The politics of mass powerlessness

The mass media, though, has effected another change in the political scene. Where once parliament was intended to function as a forum, representing the views and analysis of “the people”, this can now be achieved by the mass media. Whenever a story breaks, or significant events are occurring, the media produces “community leaders”, and “representatives” of consumers, fishmongers or whatever so-called “interest groups”. Thus, the media can claim to represent the divergent views on a particular topic.

This claim, however, is undermined by the fact that the media self-selects these “representatives”, and by the fact that more often than not, these representatives are not even vaguely appointed by the people they claim to represent. In selecting who can speak, the media exercises power similar to that of the medieval monarch determining who gets to sit in their parliament. Indeed, the modern mass media presents itself as a forum for the people, as the place for representation and for determining legitimacy. It is effectively a third house of parliament, the House of the Mass.

A clear example of this can be seen from the recent general election. The BBC published their broadcasting guidelines on the internet, boldly stating that Labour, Conservative, Liberal Democrats and the assorted Nationalists were to be regarded as “major parties”, and thus entitled to technically unlimited national coverage, and anyone else could only be guaranteed the coverage of their manifesto launch if they were contesting over 100 seats. In this way, they effectively determined who was going to do better in the parliamentary elections, who got the all important media coverage.

The eighteenth century Liberal philosopher G.W.F. Hegel (whose thought Marx spent so much time criticising and adapting) postulated the ideal state as one in which an absolute technocratic ruler, freed from social interest, held power, and in which all other classes in society were recognised and represented in a parliament for/by this ruler. For such opinions he has been execrated in the past; however, his analysis finds itself borne out in the genuine movements of liberal society, for that is exactly what obtains today in modern politics.

Advisers and hangers-on maintain a stranglehold on the state apparatus, while the mass media provides a means of identifying and recognising certain interest groups within society, and constructing the playing field on which political battles are fought out. The media, though, always lies within the hands of the ruling elites, and so ensures that representation remains within the bounds of holding the existing social relations together.

Given, though, that these “representatives” only exist by and through the virtual world of the media, and only exist through the recognition of power and not through the active involvement of those they claim to represent, they can only present an abstraction of the views they claim to put forward; akin to the abstract “people” of radical bourgeois politics. As such it is the politics of mass powerlessness.

Unlike some anarchists who claim that democratic decisions represent a tyrannous act against the sovereign individual, we state that a free society can only be one in which people can directly and actively take part in politics, and concretely have their minds known through democratic voting on the ideas, rather than for representatives, to talk in their place. The important point must be that debate on issues is two way, with the full and active involvement of all parties concerned, not a one-way monologue to reflect off the enforcedly passive audience.

This all means that those engaged in political struggle must battle against the media for access and for the opportunity to air views. The opposite response, like that of those anarchists who refuse to deal with the media, leads simply to surrendering the field of political combat to the opposition.

Pik Smeet

Proper Gander: TV and the Virus (2020)

The Proper Gander Column from the May 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

Now that many of us are cooped up at home, the wider world is, even more than ever, filtered through the media. E-mail, teleconferencing apps and social media have enabled us to keep in touch, raising the question of how much harder the lockdown would have been had it happened thirty years ago, with only landlines and the postal service at our disposal. The internet has helped us stay sociable and informed, even if it’s also the source of fake news, such as the wacky theory that the virus has somehow been transmitted through the new 5G phone masts.

As for printed media, the lockdown has accelerated its long-term decline. Even before the end of March, newspaper sales had fallen by over half within a few weeks. One bonus of this is that fewer people have been exposed to the likes of the Daily Mail and the Sun, reducing the risk of being infected with their bigoted opinions.

Television has seen a predictable rise in viewers, with people spending more time slouched on their settees. But what we’re watching looks different to how TV was just a couple of months ago, even in small ways. We’ve had a non-Christmas Queen’s Speech. Presenters on Breakfast and The One Show are making a token gesture by sitting a regulation two metres apart, with the latter feeling the need to prove it with a tape measure. Soap operas now seem even further removed from reality, featuring as they do such impossible scenarios as people in pubs and hopping from one neighbour to another. By early April, the first adverts made during the outbreak started appearing, with cynical and cringeworthy ads from internet providers cashing in on booming demand. Panel shows such as Have I Got News For You and Loose Women have survived by their participants videoconferencing from home, and seem empty without the studio audiences’ reactions. Otherwise, Breaking Bad box sets and endless repeats of Homes Under The Hammer are a temporary escape from the distressing updates on the news channels.

As the virus claimed more lives and the lockdown became the new normal, the tone and content of TV news changed. Directives must have been issued to producers to manage the messages sent out, to reinforce government advice about social distancing and movements being restricted, and to emphasise community spirit to maintain morale. A lesson about the influence of what’s broadcast would have been learnt early on, when reports about panic buying leaving supermarket shelves empty fuelled more panic buying, leading to a feedback loop. Noticeably, news coverage quickly switched away from disruptions to food supplies, as if a memo went round the newsrooms saying that that they were making things worse. And there’s been an obviously thought-through emphasis on ‘good news stories’ such as Tom Moore raising money for the NHS by a sponsored walk round his garden, people on their doorsteps clapping for health workers Thursday evenings, and volunteers delivering supplies to those who are vulnerable and isolated. We need to watch something a bit more upbeat after hearing about the latest number of deaths and how the system is struggling to cope with the crisis.

The paltry number of people being tested for the virus and the lack of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) supplied to staff working in appalling conditions have featured prominently in news programmes on all channels. Footage from hospitals and care homes has been heart-breaking to watch. The BBC, being closest to the state, has perhaps been a little less searching in its reporting than journalists from Sky News or Channel 4. The abilities of those in government to manage the system have only been challenged in a too-cautious way by the mainstream TV media. Donald Trump’s further descent into being some sort of Caligula has been reported with a weary matter-of-factness, and there were just a few grumblings by pundits about Home Secretary Priti Patel’s non-apology of ‘I’m sorry if people feel there have been failings’ over PPE distribution. Boris Johnson catching the virus took up most of the TV news for days. Reporters have politely shelved any criticism of him since he went into hospital, although Jon Snow on Channel 4 News managed to hint that he might not really have been unwell enough to need to be in intensive care. Presumably the nurses who treated him there weren’t among those reduced to wearing bin bags and homemade masks.

Rosa Maitlis

Some wider social problems behind the situation have been raised on TV news, such as how the virus is disproportionately affecting people from non-white ethnic groups, who overall also happen to more often live in overcrowded conditions and have smaller incomes. Emily Maitlis, on 8th April’s edition of Newsnight pointed out that poorly paid and overstretched workers in shops and care homes are particularly at risk from the virus, adding ‘what type of social settlement might be needed to be put in place to stop the inequality becoming even more stark?’. But as one David Osland tweeted, ‘a couple of offhand remarks mildly praiseworthy of the lower orders does not transform Emily Maitlis into Rosa Luxemburg incarnate’.

Of course the mainstream media can’t and won’t question the system itself, even though the pandemic is exposing capitalism’s many failings. So we haven’t heard much on the news about the delay in starting the lockdown being due to the state prioritising the economy for as long as possible over people’s wellbeing. Or about how the lack of PPE and other resources is really down to them being commodities, and are therefore always rationed, and isn’t just about the state not getting its act together with distribution. Or about how the class divide is behind the inequalities which make those with less wealth more at risk. Still, the TV news gives us the information to draw our own conclusions from, and when we need a break, there’s always Homes Under The Hammer.

Mike Foster

Season of Goodwill (1987)

From the December 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

It’s that time of year again. The colour supplements are full of advice on how to avoid making a fool of yourself at the office party, while at the office party insecure, immature males attempt to take advantage of female colleagues whose only encouragement to these would-be Lotharios is being in the same building.

Normally friendly colleagues can be observed watching each other closely each time a visiting representative brings in his company’s bribes. Hell hath no fury like a recipient of a bottle of scotch last year who receives only a bottle of sherry this year.
Speaking of drink, the result of alcoholic over-indulgence can be induced without recourse to the spirit bottle. This state may be attained on December 25 by using your gift-wrapped calculator to add up the amount of money that the ’celebration" of some Palestinian's birthday has cost.

Another method of inducing nausea is to tune in to the annual broadcast by a London pensioner named Betty. Betty's recipe for a happy life is to have millions of pounds in the bank and to take lots of holidays during the year.

There is a 16th century saying that "Christmas comes but once a year but when it comes it brings good cheer". Christmas certainly brings good cheer to those capitalists who make those commodities considered so necessary for this time of year; plastic Christmas trees, artificial snow, inflatable reindeer and all the baubles that a gullible public buys in the mistaken belief that possession of these "festive" goods will in some way bring a little happiness into their lives. It’s all a bigger con trick than the virgin birth.

"Of course", s/he says, "I'm not bothered about Christmas myself, but it's so nice for the children". Take a walk around a toyshop and see children's confusion at all the attractive objects that they so badly want but are forbidden to them unless their parents can afford them. It might be Christmas but we're still living in a capitalist world.

Christmas is great for reinforcing sexual stereotypes. Do you want your daughter to be just like mummy? Wouldn't your little girl just love to wake up on Christmas Day and find her Wendy House fully fitted with a kitchen, microwave and ironing board? Let's not forget to strengthen her maternal instincts. There is a wide range of dolls to choose from. For the doll who wants everything there are prams, push-chairs, layettes and baby doll care sets. But who would want to buy their child that obnoxious capitalist product, a talking Cabbage Patch Kid?

Do you want your son to become an aggressive, competitive, insensitive person? The sort who sexually harasses women at office parties? If so, the shops have the ideal Christmas presents for him. There is the Laser Tank — "blow the tank into bits and pieces"! The Phaser Force Gun Set; practise shooting a friend. How about the "good and evil" Masters of the Universe type action figures — recommended for instilling respect for leaders, especially those with more brawn than brain.

Editorial: The Alternative Queen’s Speech (1988)

Editorial from the December 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

(A text to be read before the real thing on Christmas Day)

I’m speaking to you today from Sandringham — or is it Balmoral? No matter, it’s one of the big houses or palaces I own and every Christmas Day I intrude on what enjoyment you might be having to foist a boring speech on you which is supposed to strike a thoughtful, humane note among the celebrations. I’m sitting in a sort of study and behind me is a window which opens onto the lush estate where my house stands.

I own these places because I’m a very rich woman – I’m worth about £3,340 million. Although I was born into this wealth and have never known what it is like to be poor, I shall be talking to you as if I’m the sort of ordinary, everyday grandmother you’re likely to have a chat with in the bus queue or the doctor’s waiting room or at the supermarket check-out. Except that I am the mother of the nation (for my recent ancestors it was of the Empire) unless Margaret Thatcher manages to take that bit over as well. So for this broadcast I compose my face into this maternal expression—calm, caring, perceptive, wise.

A lot of people seem to believe that it’s my speech, all thought up by me. Well I do have a say in it but it’s really what the people I work for tell me to say. I’m what is called a constitutional monarch — I do what the government tell me — and if I kick over the traces I’ll end up like my Uncle Edward.

Whatever is in my speech the media people will report it as if its really profound, earth-shattering, historical. They’ll dredge through the frigid platitudes in the hope of finding some small nugget of humour, or controversy or intelligence. Then they’ll blow it up into a big headline —“Queen Says War’s A Killer”, that sort of thing. I don’t blame them; media people are like everyone else — except those like me — they have to earn a living.

In case my speech comes over as too boring and trivial I try to touch on some real problems which you might be experiencing. Like being homeless or struggling with life in a slum or in a high rise or battling to keep up with the mortgage on a regimented semi somewhere. This is a bit of a cheek, coming from someone who owns these big houses but I can’t let on about the real housing problem — like shopping at the supermarket or having to queue for the doctor its part of the wider poverty of all who work for their living.

This being Christmas I have to say something about children, to fit in with all that schmaltz about little faces aglow around the tree and so on. I drop hints that childhood is not all like that — about violent, broken families, drugs, crime, dead-end years in comprehensive schools. It wasn’t like that for my children; they had the best of everything, their schools carefully chosen and their whole lives based on the confidence that they would never want for anything. Perhaps that’s why I get so upset at all those news items about Koo Stark and so on . . .

I often refer to problems abroad which, I say sadly, are casting such a blight across the joys of this great Christian festival. Like war, famine, epidemics — always easy to talk about because they are going on somewhere all the time, wiping out millions every year. I pretend they’re like social quirks which would go away if the Christmas spirit — peace on earth, goodwill to all and so on —were allowed to last all year. Some people might be awkward and ask about these problems being knit into the fabric of a social system which awards these great privileges to me and forces degradation onto you. But they’re obviously suffering from a lack of that christmas spirit.

And that brings me to Christmas itself. All those singing cash registers. All that rubbish being sold. All that nonsense spouted from pulpits and in programmes like this one. I try to forget that Christmas is only a short break in the routine, year-in year-out, exploitation, poverty, conflict and insecurity which you endure and the wealth and capital accumulation which keeps me so cosy. That’s what destroys people’s hopes, distorts their lives, represses them, kills them. And I’m one of its most prominent figureheads.

But I mustn’t go on like this. My job is to encourage the most massive diversion of your attention from reality into a circus world of noise and colour. Remember my wedding? My coronation? The jubilee? The weddings of my children? You loved them all, they made you forget where you really stand in the social order, what your lives are really like. And that is what I’m supposed to do, in this Christmas Day broadcast for example.

Well it’s been nice getting this off my chest — a change from the usual twaddle. Oh, there’s something else . . . Merry Christmas. Suckers.

Greasy Pole: Crack down on the fraudsters! (2001)

The Greasy Pole Column from the February 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

The queen's speech is when she dresses up in large, heavy and expensive clothes and rides in her carriage to the Houses of Parliament—but only to the House of Lords because, as a result of something which happened a few hundred years ago, she is not allowed into the Commons, who have to be brought to the Lords to listen to the queen by Black Rod, who is called that because he carries one. The MPs go to the Lords with each minister walking beside their opposition shadow, often sharing a private joke but presumably not about the queen because they have all sworn loyalty to her.

When they get to the Lords they hear the queen telling them about the work which is planned for them in the next session, which is a bit boring for the ministers because they know it already. The speech is punctuated with the phrase "My government will . . ." as if the queen is telling the government what to do when really it is the other way around. Some people sneer at all this as a mess of outdated flummery. Others regard it as essential to our way of life and think that without it civilisation as we know it would crumble into the dust.

In December, for example, the queen told us that her government is going to crack down on Benefit fraudsters—people who claim state benefit when they are not legally entitled to. The government certainly thinks this is important because they say it costs between £2 billion and £4 billion a year and some ministers have been known to hint that bloated claimants roll up in posh cars to sign on at the dole office, or skim up a ladder to clean windows when they are claiming disability benefit for a bad back.

Campaign

Some months before the queen had told us about the crack-down it had been publicised in the DSS Xpress, a magazine which announces itself as "For all staff throughout the DSS" so does not have any Page Three girls or racing tips or agony aunts. But what it does have is no more relevant. The front page of Issue No. 2 (June 2000) is dominated by a piece "Tackling the fraudsters". Based on an interview with Charlotte Abrahams, one of a team running a campaign to expose and prosecute people who make illegal claims for state benefit, the article crackles with teeth-grating quotes like "What fraudsters are doing is unfair" and "We need DSS staff to 'buy in' to the idea and give us their support”—which make Page Three and tipsters and agony aunts seem rather less objectionable. Charlotte tells us that benefit fraudsters ". . . are taking public money—our money—that is meant for the vulnerable". She highlighted a recent TV campaign which depicted the Social Security "cheats" as greedy cynics who are willing to stoop to scrounging drinks off their mates. Anyone who felt their gorge rise when they watched these ads could have gone out to get away from them, except that if they did that they might have come across the same message, plastered across the backs of buses.

But the DSS Xpress is not content stop at hunting down illegal benefit claimants. On the back page there is a piece about another anti-fraud campaign—this one against Social Security staff. The hunter-in-chief is one Tony Edge, who has worked for the DSS for over 30 years and is now a man with "a special interest in fraud and compliance issues". He is not one to mince his words: "This is an important matter with potentially serious consequences in terms of the loss of public funds and the public's confidence in us". (After 30 years, it seems to have escaped him that there are very few organisations "the public" have as little confidence in as the DSS). The burden of Tony's campaign is to encourage staff members to spy on each other and to report anyone they suspect of defrauding their employer in any way. This can't be healthy for what is called staff relations but in case anyone fails to understand what is expected of them there are three touching stories about how this has worked in individual cases, one of fiddling expense claims, another of claiming benefit while working, and another of using unauthorised software in the DSS computers. So far, no stories of anyone smuggling the odd paper clip home but presumably Tony is working on it.

Manifestos

We might have expected that the Labour government, ever alert to any opportunity to exploit popular neuroses, would come up with a policy to bash the Social Security fraudsters. The policy announced in the queen's speech had already been flagged up at Labour's conference in September, when we were told about plans to take new powers to trawl through bank accounts and insurance policies, to check telephones and electricity and water meters of people suspected of making false claims. Tony Edge must have been quite excited at the prospect. The government can claim to have a mandate of sorts for this, for their election manifesto used militant words like "crack down . . . clampdown . . . maintain action against benefit fraud of all kinds". Which was not new or different because the Tories were making the same threats: "Social Security fraud," they screamed in their manifesto, "must be stamped out". They had already started on this: it was Peter Lilley who began hunting down the fraudsters when he was in charge of Social Security; in 1994 he set up a Benefit Review, partly to measure the scale of false claims. It should not surprise anyone that New Labour are enthusiastically carrying on where the man they once hated, as the most implacable representative of Thatcherite policies, left off.

In places where the real world of poverty and survival operates, the estimate that fraudulent claims run into billions of pounds every year does not go unchallenged. The Royal National Institute for the Blind has examined how the Benefit Review decided that the claims for Disability Living Allowance were potentially losing £499 million a year through projected fraud. They concluded that the Review arrived at this figure by adding the amounts involved in "suspected fraud" (which were not in any way proven) to those in "confirmed fraud". When we take into account the fact that of 1,200 interviews carried out by the Review the number of cases of "confirmed fraud" was only 18 we see the matter in a rather different light. In fact, if each of those 18 people had been receiving benefit at the highest level the loss would have amounted to £77,000. Set against this, the Review projected underpayment of benefit, due to under-reporting or to mistakes by Benefits Agency staff, of a little over £230 million. To put a human face on their findings, the RNIB listed cases in which blind, sometimes elderly, people had had their claims, which were quite within the rules, refused and who won their case only after a long and stressful appeal. Of course it would once have been quite proper for these people to be scourged by Peter Lilley—and now by his successors in the Labour government—as scroungers and fraudsters.

Poverty

The assault on so-called fraudsters is popular with politicians because it has a number of elements crying out to be exploited by anyone with ambitions to climb the greasy pole. The victims of the assault are often among the more deprived and vulnerable people. It is easy to depict them as calculating, cynical scroungers when they are often simply desperate about how to survive, and not doing this as efficiently as they might. In many cases when they have made false claims they have overlooked the fact that they could have applied legitimately for some other benefit, except that nobody at the DSS went out of their way to tell them and the forms were too long and complicated. They are typical of the human casualties of this social system in which workers are judged by the degree of their availability for profitable exploitation. In terms of their access to the wealth which their class produces they are in the lower reaches, where poverty means sickness and premature death. In June 2000 researchers at Glasgow University found that women from poorer backgrounds are three times more likely to contract cervical cancer. In September the Joseph Rowntree Trust stated that two million children in Britain are in conditions where they lack at least two "basic" amenities, things like a damp-free home, an annual holiday or usable furniture. Yet these people are among the class who produce all the wealth of capitalism. The fact that they allow themselves to be deprived of proper access to what results from their labour is a fraud on a scale which historically dwarfs the most lurid of what happens down at the Social.

Then we must ask what are we to think about the assurances from political leaders, that the problems of society can be ameliorated, or even eliminated, by a few simple measures. Blair's Labour Party is particularly eager to try this deception. That is why they make so many speeches denouncing some uncomfortable aspect of working class life, as a prelude to churning out yet another new law to reassure us that nothing more is needed to settle the problem. In this way we get a law against the so-called yob culture, which is defined, not as the boorishness of MPs in what they call their debates but as disruptive behaviour in city centres by alienated youngsters. Or a law which slaps a curfew on teenagers, on the grounds that if a young person is on the streets after a time approved by Jack Straw they are bound to be planning to burgle an old person's home. And a law clamping down on Social Security fraud. Get rid of problems like these, we are informed, and we shall benefit enormously from the existence of a working class which does not rebel against the repression of its social position. All of that argument is fraudulent.

And finally, Blair's Labour Party won millions of votes by persuading people that they are a proper alternative to the Tories and that under their government capitalism in Britain would be run in a different, more humane and progressive way. There is a mounting pile of evidence to expose how untrue this is, including the government's assault on people who practice a kind fraud which is unacceptable to capitalism. Which makes the Labour Party among the worst of fraudsters, whose exposure should be a priority.

Ivan

Greasy Pole: The Queen Speaks - Sort Of (2006)

From the December 2006 issue of the Socialist Standard

Through an amazing, not to say unique, set of circumstances, Greasy Pole has come into possession of an early draft of the Queen's Speech to the nation on Christmas Day. As usual, the speech makes an impressive human document, covering a wide range of vital issues with the customary insight, compassion and courage. However readers must bear in mind that this is the first draft of the speech; when the broadcast takes place it may turn out that some changes have been made.

Tradition
Speaking to you this Christmas Day, I am humbly aware that I am carrying on a tradition begun by my grandfather and carried on by my father. We are all agreed that tradition plays a vital part in our lives - we all find comfort and security in the confidence that things will stay as they are even if it would be much better to change them. Of course as the Queen I am more in favour of this than most people - after all it is tradition that is often used as a clinching argument for keeping me and my family where we are. For so many of you, my viewers, it would not come amiss if you had less regard for tradition and more for thinking about re-organising society. But we won't go into that right now.

To begin, let us look at what my government have been doing and what they intend to do between now and next December 25. (You must not be misled by the words "my government", into thinking that I tell Tony Blair and the rest what to do. The opposite is true; that is why I am speaking to you today). My government continue to fight wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which seem to have no end in sight. You may recall that Mr. Blair and the other leaders assured us that Iraq would be a quick, clean business and not another Vietnam. They did not remind us then that the late President Johnson had promised the American people that Vietnam would not be another Korea. What future war, we may ask, will be justified on the grounds that it will not be another Iraq? And how many will be killed while this is going on?

Rebuild
This is not say that it has been all bad news from Iraq. If we can forget the soldiers who have been killed and their grieving families and the tens of thousands Iraqi corpses which testify to the murderous efficacy, if not the unfailing accuracy, of American and British weaponry, there is another side to the story. Bechtel, a big and powerful American engineering company, has just finished a contract to repair the water, power and sewage system in Iraq, supposedly to the benefit of the people there. For this Bechtel were paid 2.3 billion dollars by the American government. And what has been the result? Well 52 Bechtel employees were killed during the work. Anything else? The electricity comes on for only a few hours a day, for much of the people there is no clean water supply and the sewage is largely untreated. In a recent issue of the New York Times a professor of economics wrote that "By any material measure, Iraqis are worse off than they were under Saddam".

Crime is another matter which my government are vigorously tackling. Theft may be all very well if it is the kind which allows one class to have access to most of the wealth but not when someone tries to help themselves outside the law. Violence is admirable when it is the clean, clinical type guided out of the skies of Iraq by trained people in uniforms but it is unacceptable when it is a few rowdies on the street after closing time. So Mr. Blair's ministers are cracking down on it; they are planning to bring in more laws which will enable courts to pass longer sentences on offenders. This will almost certainly mean more people being sent to prison and I confess I am a little puzzled by this; the government wants tougher sentences because of the high re-conviction rate for released prisoners and it seems rather odd that in these circumstances there should be plans to imprison more people.

Farepak
We can all remember Mr. Blair's fine speech when he declared his intention of being "tough on the causes of crime" - meaning a crack down on problems like poverty in families, which is a standing incentive to people to take what they see as the short cut of crime to alleviate the pressures they are under. As part of this crackdown the government set up the Sure Start scheme, heralded by Mr. Blair as "…an idea (that) would lift all the boats on a rising tide". But now he has had to admit that It has not worked like that; he now says that "…Their problems are so multiple…these families then end up having five or six organisations dealing with them, but no one is actually dealing with them. If we are to change that we need a different way for government to operate". (Of course he did not really mean that last bit - governments "operate" as needed by this social system, with its poverty and doomed schemes like Sure Start).

An example of this was the collapse of the company Farepak. Now I don't need to have anything to do with Farepak because it was a firm which promised to help people with very little money to save up, a little at a time, for Christmas so that they could afford the turkey and the drink and food and the presents for the kids. It is not clear how many people were impressed by this idea; one estimate is that about 150,000 families were involved – another estimate is that their "savings" amounted to about 41 million pounds. And all this was in the expectation that come Christmas they would get a nice hamper or some high street vouchers. Except that, like Sure Start, it did not work like that because Farepak's parent company - European Home Retail (EHR) - was in trouble over their overdraft with Halifax Bank of Scotland. When it turned out that EHR was using the savers' money to pay off their bank loan Farepak collapsed, leaving those hopeful families facing a very bleak Christmas. HBOS blamed EHR for failing to have a "viable solution" to Farepak's problems. The chairman of EHR, Clive Thompson, retaliated that Farepak had been "hung out to dry" by the bank.

Merry Christmas
But the sprit of Christmas, which I am recommending to you today as the way out of the world's problems, is not entirely dead. Clive Thompson unburdened himself on BBC Radio, saying "I feel very deeply for all those people who have been hurt by the collapse, in particular those who saved for Christmas – which has been ruined". These charitable words were offered by someone who is a past president of the Confederation of British Industry and who has sat on the boards of six FTSE companies. Not to be outdone, the managing director of Farepak, Gilodi-Johnson weighed in: "I am really gutted that everybody has lost out like this". Well yes.

So there it is, this Christmas 2006. While one class in society enjoys a securely affluent life style the other endures the kind of poverty which sometimes requires them to put together scraps of money in order to survive a paltry holiday. Huge corporations make massive profits from war and the ensuing social strife. All of this at a time when we are told that this is a season of peace and goodwill. It suits me and the class I represent, to believe that. But you?

Merry Christmas.

Suckers.

Ivan