Continue to Ask Al Anything

[Filuwaúrdjan]

What is the common mistake/misconception posters make (psephology or otherwise) you read on forums that makes you go insane the most?

If we just look at psephological errors, it is interesting that a lot of the really irritating ones (the habit of confusing geographical entities - constituencies, counties, whatever - with voters for instance, or insisting that the electorate is stable from election to election; that it is always the same people voting every time) are facets of a single fundamental error, namely forgetting that all election results are created by a vast number of individual decisions taken by individual members of the electorate. Which, in a way, is a pretty basic 'the map is not the territory' mistake. Additionally we have (of course) the tendency to think that tomorrow will look exactly like today, the belief that all societies are fundamentally the same (and that 'the same' means 'exactly like the United States'), and the widespread inability to appreciate that profound demographic change does not occur in the space of (say) four years. There are others. There's a lot.

Still, all of this is infinitely less irritating than the sight of certain pseudo-histories or incorrect opinions about literature.

[Zinneke]

What is the common mistake/misconception posters make (psephology or otherwise) you read on forums that makes you go insane the most?

If we just look at psephological errors, it is interesting that a lot of the really irritating ones (the habit of confusing geographical entities - constituencies, counties, whatever - with voters for instance, or insisting that the electorate is stable from election to election; that it is always the same people voting every time) are facets of a single fundamental error, namely forgetting that all election results are created by a vast number of individual decisions taken by individual members of the electorate. Which, in a way, is a pretty basic 'the map is not the territory' mistake. Additionally we have (of course) the tendency to think that tomorrow will look exactly like today, the belief that all societies are fundamentally the same (and that 'the same' means 'exactly like the United States'), and the widespread inability to appreciate that profound demographic change does not occur in the space of (say) four years. There are others. There's a lot.

Still, all of this is infinitely less irritating than the sight of certain pseudo-histories or incorrect opinions about literature.

Thanks I
 Also I have another question : where do you place yourself on the "political entrepreneurs drive electoral change" Vs the sociologists argument that politicians simply meet demand of societal factors and cleavages that arise from them. I've been reading Rob Ford on Brexit and then the whole political entrepreneurs theory applied to a European context and I'm wondering. I know it's obviously a bit of both and then some but, for example,if we take Brexit, was it explained by a grassroots frustration against a multitude of things that the EU embodied or can it be put down to sustained elite campaigning with the likes of Farage and the Tory Right putting Brexit on the agenda.

[parochial boy]

Possibly a dumb question, but I've always been a bit curious about the slum clearances that you got in the UK I think mostly after World War 2. How bad exactly were the conditions in the old slums that were demolished? And how much better were the new estates, Huyton or wherever, that were built to replacement? Seeing as those places have such a bad reputation these days, would could have been done better at the time?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

What is your favorite political party (worldwide) and why is it your favorite?

Politics is an inherently disreputable trade in which it is necessary to do grubby things in order to get anything done, and this is particularly true for political parties as organisations. In other words: not only is the answer 'none' but I don't think even having one would be a good idea.

[インターネット掲示板ユーザー Punxsutawney Phil]

3. Thank you! I use dear old Microsoft Paint (the extreme simplicity of the programme is actually its biggest advantage) and have a steady hand and a good eye for colour.

Ah, a fellow intellectual...

[Sic Semper Fascistis]

3. Thank you! I use dear old Microsoft Paint (the extreme simplicity of the programme is actually its biggest advantage) and have a steady hand and a good eye for colour.

Ah, a fellow intellectual...

Same here. As long as you can find an editable blank map, it has all you need.

[インターネット掲示板ユーザー Punxsutawney Phil]

3. Thank you! I use dear old Microsoft Paint (the extreme simplicity of the programme is actually its biggest advantage) and have a steady hand and a good eye for colour.

Ah, a fellow intellectual...

Same here. As long as you can find an editable blank map, it has all you need.

Preach!

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Possibly a dumb question, but I've always been a bit curious about the slum clearances that you got in the UK I think mostly after World War 2. How bad exactly were the conditions in the old slums that were demolished? And how much better were the new estates, Huyton or wherever, that were built to replacement? Seeing as those places have such a bad reputation these days, would could have been done better at the time?

Do you want the short answer or the long answer? Let's start with the former.

Conditions in the old slums were genuinely horrific. They were bad when they were built - i.e. before the statutory regulation of house-building in the late 19th century - and over time they deteriorated rapidly: many slum houses were as good as falling to pieces by the 1950s. The exact nature of slum housing varied across the country, but the most common type was the back-to-back terrace: in essence, each house facing the street was connected - usually only by a thin interior wall - to another house of identical design.^1. Obvious issues with privacy and adequate ventilation were compounded by a total lack of private amenities (so communal privies, standpipes and washing facilities etc) which were often very poorly maintained. Many back-to-backs were built around central courtyards, which meant that those who lived in the inner terraces had very little daylight, while those on the outer terraces had poor access to the amenities, which were always located in the courtyards. The public health implications of all of this were as predictable as they were deeply tragic. Essentially these were foul and horrible places, every bit as bad as the worst slums in the contemporary Third World, if aesthetically rather different.

Firstly, it needs to be noted that not all post-war estates were built as replacement housing for slum-dwellers: until the middle 50s the emphasis was on correcting endemic market failure and the massive housing shortage that had built up as a result of those, plus the further reduction of housing stock as a result of bomb damage. So let us focus purely on those estates that were built as part of slum-clearance projects. The first thing to say is that they were not as good as the houses on estates built for general housing needs; usually they were considerably worse. The second is that even the very worse of these were better than what they replaced, but that this must count as an exceedingly low bar to clear (see above). The third is that the quality of such houses, such estates, was highly variable: while central government provided the financial support required for their construction², everything else was the responsibility of local authorities and the various building firms they contracted the work out to once plans and been drawn up and approved. The fourth is that the worst are/were always system-built (i.e. built in a factory and assembled on-site, like an airfix model) and that while there are some properly nasty low-rise system-built estates, the stereotype of the ghastly system-built tower block exists for a reason. Needless to say the quality of the various building systems was not uniform either: the Larsen-Nielsen system was the worst to be widely used in Britain (and is forever associated with the Ronan Point disaster), other systems had their good points and bad points. The most common was the Bison Wall Frame, which was unique amongst building systems as the blocks were entirely self-supporting and required only a few bolts to assemble. The good news was that this meant that they were (are) unusually structurally sound. The bad news is that factory conditions and site conditions are apt to vary, meaning that bolts often did not fit - time pressures also led (quite frequently) to sloppy practice on-site. The fifth is that problems with these houses became apparent to their new residents almost immediately: poor insulation was a problem in the winter, as was dampness. Complaints were frequently made about a lack of privacy and personal space (a grime partial-repetition of the most hated feature of the old slum houses there), about the near-uniform lack of public amenities, about isolation and so on. As time went by maintenance became a problem (system-built tower blocks are amongst the most expensive form of housing to maintain to a livable standard, something that was glossed over a the height of system-built mania even though the issue was already well known), and when once puts together the physical deterioration of these buildings with the impact of the changes to council house allocation in the 1980s, well, er.

'What could have been done better?' is a really vast question, not really suited to a shorter answer. But my main argument here would be that the only way to a better outcome would have been a) to have acted sooner and to accept that getting the issue right would take time; that if Rome was not built in a day then there was no reason why Castle Vale had to be, and b) to actually listen to the tenants and to build them the sort of houses that they wanted, or at least incorporate their preferences into any plans. But all of this went against the spirit of the age.

My long answer to your question would be my doctoral thesis.

<sub>1. Other forms of slum housing included tenement blocks (particularly common in London and in Scotland), cellar-dwellings (common in and around Manchester) and low-rise back-to-back terraced tenements, these restricted entirely to Tyneside.

2. Via an exceedingly complex system of subsidies, the details of which I won't explain here, except to say that just about the only people who understood them were civil servants at the Minister of Housing and Local Government.</sub>

[H. Ross Peron]

Given the strong Nonconformist traditions of large parts of England as well as Wales and Scotland, is there an equivalent to the American or Dutch Bible Belts where religious devotion and observance remains high in parts of Great Britain? It seems Northern Ireland remains somewhat more religious than Great Britain and that there are certain islands off of Scotland where a strict Sunday sabbath continues to be observed.

[25 Abril/Aprile Sempre!]

3. Thank you! I use dear old Microsoft Paint (the extreme simplicity of the programme is actually its biggest advantage) and have a steady hand and a good eye for colour.

Ah, a fellow intellectual...

Same here. As long as you can find an editable blank map, it has all you need.

Oh well. That's exactly how I made my most recent Italy political maps as well. Of course Al's are just another thing.

[Tokugawa Sexgod Ieyasu]

Housman or Thomas? Or, if you'd prefer: Betjeman or Larkin?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Housman or Thomas?

There are many notable poets called Thomas, so I shall assume this refers to Dylan Thomas who is one of my favourites. A copy of his Collected Poems is a bedside perennial. Enormously gifted, technically brilliant and capable of actually doing things with those gifts, with that technical excellence. His very specific combination of intellectual and religious seriousness with a real child-like capacity for playfulness is something that I admire greatly. The world that he expressed and evoked - that of South Wales in the first half of the Twentieth Century - is one that means a lot to me and that I know the shadow of, as my Nan grew up in the region at that time. I get genuinely very angry when people repeat those nasty, slanderous myths about the manner of his death: he died of a combination of his chronic lung problems, a particularly dangerous New York smog and outright medical negligence, not as a result of alcoholic folly. So the answer, of course, is Thomas.

Or, if you'd prefer: Betjeman or Larkin?

I prefer cyanide. Betjaman was a jolly nice chap and an excellent advocate for architectural preservation, but his poetry was pure doggerel and I have no time for it whatsoever. Larkin* was a supremely talented individual but an intellectual coward and a moral black hole, and I find this reflected in his poetry which is so much pointless, nihilistic nothingness - a waste of effort and of talent. I would not go quite so far as Geoffrey Hill, who believed that Larkin only ever wrote two good poems in his life, but I share the general sentiment.

_{*Absolutely not a jolly nice chap.}

[Tokugawa Sexgod Ieyasu]

I prefer cyanide. Betjaman was a jolly nice chap and an excellent advocate for architectural preservation, but his poetry was pure doggerel and I have no time for it whatsoever. Larkin* was a supremely talented individual but an intellectual coward and a moral black hole, and I find this reflected in his poetry which is so much pointless, nihilistic nothingness - a waste of effort and of talent. I would not go quite so far as Geoffrey Hill, who believed that Larkin only ever wrote two good poems in his life, but I share the general sentiment.

_{*Absolutely not a jolly nice chap.}

I tend to be a little more generous to Betjeman than that, but I completely agree about Larkin. I was fully disabused of the notion that he had anything interesting to say when I realized that "somewhere becoming rain" in the last line of "The Whitsun Weddings" is supposed to be an image with negative connotations. What an utter--pun intended--drip.

[Robert California]

To what extent can we compare the "old school" social revolutions of, say, France and Russia with the Cold War-era social revolutions of the Third World and more contemporary "urban civic revolutions"?

[Arson Plus]

What is your opinion of Tony Benn and the Militant tendency?

[WMS]

What year of the Weimar Republic is the United States at? Discuss with maps

[Torie]

Thank you for your long essay on housing above. Is the UK still building "public" housing, and if so, have the authorities learned from the mistakes of the past? Are larger estates still being built, or is it being built on a more scattered basis, and is there much use of what are referred to in the States as housing vouchers, and if so, how well is the voucher system working in practice.