Just 'so'

It's the small words that are the most difficult.

I've been slightly eccentrically mulling over the meaning of the word 'so' for the past few days. It seems capable of meaning almost anything. Dictionary.com gives more than 30 possible uses from adverbial uses indicating extent or manner ("so cold", "do it so"), to use as a conjunction signifying intent or result ("he seemed to be successful, and so he was"), to a pronoun indicating proximity ("nine or so").

The most common meaning in every day speech is perhaps least explored: "so, I was walking down the street", "so, how are you?", "so, what next?" Cambridge Advanced Learners Dictionary explores this more colloquial use, suggesting that 'so' can begin a sentence:
1. to indicate a connection it with something that has been said or has happened previously;
2. as a way of making certain that you or someone else understand something correctly;
3. to refer to a discovery that you have just made;
4. as a brief pause (sometimes to emphasize what you are saying);
5. before you introduce a subject of conversation that is of present interest; or
6. to show that you agree with something that someone has just said, but you do not think that it is important.

That seems to cover most possible sentences and conversations. French and Spanish seem to have similar words ("alors" and "pues" respectively), heard constantly in everyday talk. These correspond to some meanings of "so", but the correspondence is only exact in its inexactitude. To a certain extent, whatever they mean, these words are just used as punctuation, to fill space as sentiments and sentences are formulated - what a relative of mine use to call "sloppy speech".

But there's something more. Life may just be, to use Arnold Toynbee's phrase, "one damn thing after another", but we crave connection, some sort of narrative thread. By scattering 'so' through our sentences, we create create connections in our conversations, and form at least the illusion of such a narrative.

Opening up

Following Jaspergate - or Jasper-ama to adopt Andrew Gilligan's more florid moniker - you can expect to hear a lot more about openness and accountability in the mayoral election campaign.

Boris Johnson and the Lib Dems had a first stab on successive days last week, variously pledging that they would make the City Hall register of interests public, would set up a code of conduct for mayoral advisers, would require them to attend question and answer sessions with the London Assembly, and would publish details of their responsibilities and contact details on the web.

Only some of this is new: elected officials already publish their register of interests (Livingstone's is here), and all staff (including mayoral advisers) are bound by a code of conduct and required to attend London Assembly hearings if summoned. Nevertheless, these proposals could make a difference to the openness of City Hall.

If they were implemented, that is. Readers with long memories may remember Ken Livingstone's Advisory Cabinet. This big-tent public committee was one of Livingstone's election pledges in 2000, and included Labour MPs Diane Abbott, John McDonnell and Glenda Jackson (though not Frank Dobson), London Assembly members from all parties and assorted great and good from the worlds of race relations, disability and gay rights

The Advisory Cabinet met several times during Livingstone's first year in office (disconcertingly, this BBC Report of its first meeting includes a picture of an alarmingly chinless and younger me in the background). But after a while, initial enthusiasm faded, and with it the Advisory Cabinet: now a Google search brings up this ghost page.

The meetings had become, to use Bagehot's formulation, 'dignified' rather than 'efficient', with real decision-making and debate taking place behind closed doors. If Johnson or Paddick win, it will be interesting to see with how much gusto they follow through their current enthusiasm for flinging those doors open.

After the flood?

So, how much has Ken Livingstone been damaged by the relentless revelations that culminated this week in Lee Jasper's resignation?

The last poll published, by YouGov last month, showed Boris Johnson leading Ken Livingstone, by 44 points to 39 (a reversal of their positions a month previously), though the strongest gains were made by Brian Paddick, whose share of first preference votes increased from eight to 12 per cent.

In the wacky world of the mayoral election system, however, these first preferences are only part of the story. On this basis, the second preferences of those people voting for Paddick (and minority candidates) as their first choice, would be re-distributed among the front-runners. So the critical question is whether Paddick's votes are 'anyone but Ken' or 'anyone but Boris'. That will make all the difference.

The fieldwork for the YouGov poll was conducted between 19 and 21 February, so the situation may well have worsened since then, as cringe-making personal emails became Lee Jasper's undoing. But, if the polls are only this bad, following weeks of destabilising and embarassing revelations, the Mayor might be forgiven for feeling a glimmer of optimism. Lee Jasper has resigned, the sheet has been wiped clean, a new beginning beckons...

And yet. It's always struck me as curious the fact that Andrew Gilligan's Lee-gate campaign began in December last year, fully six months before the mayoral election. Didn't such an early start run the risk that allegations would become old news in voters' minds by May? Shouldn't he have been keeping his powder dryer?

In today's Standard, in an article that gently chides Johnson for sloppy attention to detail on transport policy, Gilligan writes a sentence that might strike fear into hearts at City Hall: "Luckily for Boris, all these questions have so far been largely drowned out by the ongoing Jasperama. I can promise more such entertainments in the future."

Gilligan is an odd and obsessive character, and this may be grandstanding. But, in the week when William Hill made Boris Johnson the favourite, I wouldn't want to bet on it.

The Corrections

The Guardian's Corrections and Clarifications column is always a good read, but it's unusual to have corrections correcting corrections. This correction, from today's paper, shows the fractures that beset the UK left:

"A clarification of an opinion piece headlined The political choice facing London could not be clearer (page 35, January 24) said that although Nick Cohen believes Ken Livingstone is unfit to be the Labour candidate for London mayor he is not a supporter of Boris Johnson, contrary to an assertion we made. In fact the piece said he had "more openly lined up behind Boris Johnson". While Nick Cohen has not endorsed Boris Johnson as a candidate he wrote in a Time Out piece in December last year, "Go Lib Dem, Green or Tory [Johnson] if you must. But don't vote for [Livingstone]" (Corrections and clarifications, page 36, January 26)."

So is that clear? Nick Cohen attacked Ken Livingstone in the Observer. Seumas Milne attacked Cohen for that attack in the Guardian, alleging that he (Cohen) was supporting Conservative candidate Boris Johnson. Cohen demanded a correction, arguing that he had never argued for Johnson, but only against Livingstone. Milne went back to his sources, and has now demanded a correction to the previous correction.

This could run and run...

Not mentioned in Dispatches

There's nothing like the sound of the great British public in sanctimonious hue and cry. I have worked for Ken Livingstone, and I like the man, so my sympathies will be obvious. But there was a lot of dross in the Dispatches show on Monday night.

That Livingstone has spent money boosting London among our trading partners - quite right. That he likes a drink - not a great surprise (though I've seen no evidence that he habitually drinks in the morning). That he, a nostalgic socialist, has forged links with Venezuela - eccentric, but to be expected. That some of his associates come from the wacky (or even 'Stalinoid') fringes of socialism - again, unsurprising.

But there was more menace in the details. Firstly, Dispatches alleged that Livingstone's office used public money to attack Trevor Phillips in his candidacy for the chief executive of the Commission for Equality and Human Rights. Secondly, they claimed that people in Livingstone's office worked on his campaign, while being politically restricted GLA bureaucrats.

Both of these allegations are serious, but they are expressed in shades of grey. In relation to Trevor Phillips, it is easy to present the row in terms of personalities. There's been bad blood since Livingstone suggested in 2000 that Phillips might be his deputy, and Phillips replied that this was typically patronising behaviour. But there's more to it than that.

There are two distinct views of what anti-racists should seek to achieve, and how, in play here. I'm not an expert, but a simplistic view is as follows. Phillips believes in a broadly integrationist approach, which values a common 'British' identity, expresses concerns about multiculturalism and seeks to work through negotiation. Livingstone's view, or at least Lee Jasper's, is more Manichean. To create a truly multicultural society - where difference is viewed as a matter for celebration rather than a problem - the organs of the state need to be attacked until their intrinsic racism is overturned.

I don't take sides on this, or even claim that my presentation of the argument is correct, but this is about more than 'Ken hates Trevor'. In fact, you can hardly think of a more important issue for public debate. Whether the campaign was correctly pursued through attacking Phillips is another matter, but this is not about nothing.

The water is murkier still in relation to GLA officials misusing their office to pursue political ends. The staff alleged to have done so are 'politically restricted' - an injunction that applies to all senior local and central government staff. As such, of course they should be impartial.

But - and it's a huge 'but' - the staff accused of this offence were not appointed to support the Mayor as generic local government officers, but as some of his closest aides, trusted to work with a nascent bureaucracy to make sure that his policies could be implemented.

The GLA's organisational structure gave the Mayor the right to appoint 12 staff, but didn't give those staff the right to direct other offices. So Livingstone agreed with the London Assembly that they would appoint staff to help him, while he would make sure that they had the budget they needed to carry out their own role.

So, the aides' position is far more like that of special advisors than that of normal bureaucrats. For example, they all have contracts that expire at the same time as the Mayor's period in office. It may - or may not - be that some of them paid attention to the campaign to re-elect the Mayor while they were strictly speaking at work, but we appear to be talking at the margins.

Which of us can honestly say that we have not sent an email or written a letter on personal matters while in the office, whatever formal procedures may say? And would we be surprised to read that central government special advisors had an interest in the re-election of their party, as well as on the pursuance of its policy?

That said, the row exposes the persistent flaws in the GLA's constitution. With characteristic fudge, New Labour created a structure that aped the presidential model of US mayoralties - where senior officers are unambiguously appointed by the Mayor, are accountable through him and lose office when he or she does - without following through in terms of staff appointments. Politicisation is only a problem when it is surreptitious.

The new GLA Act half tackles this problem, by making staff appointments a matter for the GLA's chief executive rather than for the 'scrutinising' London Assembly. But the legislators still fail to understand the basic issue: if mayors are to rule, and to be accountable for what they do, their employees must be allowed to dance to a more political beat.

Practitionerification makes perfect

Mocking public sector recruitment ads for meaningless managerialism and blairite gibberish is easy sport, and the pages of the Guardian a particularly fertile hunting ground. Easy sport, but to be resisted as far as possible: one doesn't want to turn into Peter Hitchens (or Christopher for that matter), and as daft as job titles might be, they are often attached to roles performing important, if Daily Mail-baiting, functions.

But...

...occasionally your eye is caught by something so toe-swivellingly inane, so mind-bendingly abstracted, so gut-wrenchingly evasive, that it needs to be picked up and shaken, like a terrier with a rat. Saturday's Guardian advertised for two roles at the National Academy for Parenting Practitioners. Even the name of the organisation (surely not NAPPIE?) gives a clue that we journeying far beyond meaning.

The first two sentences of the pre-amble will serve as a taster of the whole:

"If we want to change the world then how our children grow up is a massively important place to make a start. The role of parents is critical to that, and our changing society and its changing demands on parents removes old certainties, leaving many with a real appetite for expert support from those they trust."

Where to start? The inanity of the first sentence (sorry, Whitney)? The ocean-going banality of explaining the importance of parents to how children grow up? The evasive vagueness about "changing society and its changing demands" (we don't want to suggest any parents are inadequate, do we)? The patronising lie about the "real appetite for expert support"?

The sad thing is that, buried amidst more crap about 'parenting agendas' and 'respect action plans', NAPP's website reveals that they actually do rather sensible stuff, like training social workers who work with children - people who do one of the hardest and least appreciated jobs in the world.

It's just a shame that they, or their recruitment consultants, decided to wrap these job descriptions in such evasive, tired and sly verbiage. It makes for such an tempting target that it's hard to resist a Hitchens-esque rant, before reverting to re-assuring Toynbee-ism.

Do as I say, not as I do

There are plenty of serious commentaries on the weird, and increasingly alarming, world of data security after the events of the past few days. This is not one of them.

BBC Political Editor Nick Robinson's excellent blog has been following the detail of the story, and provides (or at least does at the time of writing) a link to a PDF file of a sheaf of papers, including print copies of the relevant NAO-HMRC emails (with names blanked out), and an exchange of 'letters of record' between Dave Hartnett, the Acting Chairman of HMRC, and Caroline Mawhood, the Deputy Auditor General of the NAO. Mrs Mawhood's letterhead includes, for all to see, her email address, and mobile, land-line and fax numbers.

I'm no expert, but this doesn't sound like data protection 'best practice' to me. It's no excuse for the cock-up at HMRC, but it does perhaps show how easy it is to slip up when you're in a hurry.