Ah, the Comprehensive Spending Review. 

Surely it was a Shakespearian drama of our times.  George O, costumed in hair and grin, cutting determinedly at the national budget, looking to save a buck or billion.  Nick and Vince (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern?) squirming and smiling and not going to Oxford.  Grizzled Tories peering at the books and recoiling in 'orror from wot Gordon 'ad done.  And Ed, who had done none of it. 

Now I've kept my academic nose clean of politics and economics, so I'm not about to engage in any of the nitty-gritty analysis about whether this £ or that £ will do x or y to this or that group.  There are plenty of political bloggers for that.  And they have charts. 

As an anthropologist, I get to say that it's all about the people, man.  The problem is, I'm in not-so-sunny Melbourne; I'm not on the ground, scribbling frantically in my trusty notebook and taking the pulse of the nation West Yorkshire.  So other than my usual line about contemporary economic uncertainty and the possibilities for a turn to the past, I'm all out of revelations on the people front.

But I still want to talk about the CSR.  It's a big thing.  It's a big thing in that we don't actually know what the consequences down the track are going to be, and in that sense it is probably the biggest thing that the ConDem Coalition have done thus far. 

The response, in at least some quarters, has been weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth.  Maybe some of that has been warranted; Tory wingnut pleas to dispense with the minimum wage and, y'know, post-Victorian labour laws, and left-of-left laments for the overnight obliteration of the entire North ... not particularly. 

What has been established is that the CSR disproportionately cuts at the poor.  That sucks; it really, really stinks.  But, this is a Tory government and in an era where even the leader of the Labour party is offended and distressed by the 'red' epithet, was anyone seriously entertaining thoughts that George Osborne was going to come charging out of Nottingham Forest firing arrows?  Even Friar Tuck is off signing up to the Anglican Covenant these days. 

I don't mean to suggest that this means we should say "oh well then" and be pleased we're in a semi-detached with a nice new sofa and an eco-wotsit.  Nor am I a great believer in that "real world" so often bandied about by those who have a cubicle all of their own (fancy!). 

But, the global political-economic system in which we find ourselves is not, and never has been, structured for equality.  In that it has created (or compunded) losers, the CSR is a product of that system.  It could not be anything else. 

And it is profoundly unfair. 

And it has benefited many of us. 

What are we actually willing to do about it? 

I have been hesitating throughout this week about writing a post on the comprehensive spending review.  Since most of the posts and articles I've been reading have been CSR-related, I haven't posted any of them here whilst I contemplate.  So, this handful of links is a bit of a CSR black hole. 

Having said that, the Inequalities blog have a good article on how the coalition has 'found it so easy to cut benefits for the poor'.  This is more about social attitudes than the CSR itself and it's very much worth a look. 

The North-South divide has been cropping up in the news with concerns the CSR cuts will aggravate it.  So it must be John Bulmer time.  Still, oldies but goodies: John Bulmer's North.  (Vaguely related note: I've just started reading Helen Jewell's book about the North-South divide, and I had never before twigged that Northumbria = North of the Humber.)

The Heritage Crafts Association are reporting that skills minister John Hayes has highlighted support for craft skills in a recent speech at the RSA.  This is good news for the HCA, but 1) how seriously do we take this as an indication of potential government policy? and 2) if we do, and we read it alongside the Browne report on higher ed (and do read Stefan Collini's article in the LRB on that front), should we be worried about it as a vision for education which isn't really doing any favours for the social status of traditional crafts? 

Completely unrelated to any of the above (unless we get into spectral ethnography; but that's only my new favourite thing on Tuesdays), Peter Ackroyd has a new book out about the English ghost.  Related to the spectres of English Catholicism, apparently.

And speaking of ... the CofE blogosphere has been firing busily over news not only of the ordinariate but of every women-back-in-the-kitchen brigade charging out to form their own non-secret society.  As I imagine it, a Society of St Teatowel and St Nappy meeting would consist of a chorus of "more tea, vicar?" from 1950s housewives.  It could all go horribly wrong when the housewives turn out to actually be Sharon's Dita Von Teese-themed hen night.