Mick Hartley

Spring Break

I'm off for a week. Back on Monday the 19th.

The Hezbollah Rampage

You can get a fair idea of the way the Guardian editorial on Lebanon is going to go from the very first sentence:

The gun battles that have erupted across Beirut between Hizbullah fighters and militias loyal to the US-backed government have broken a 17-month stalemate.

It's that "US-backed" which gives the game away. And soon enough the true villains reveal themselves:

The Lebanese army stayed neutral throughout. Hizbullah's show of force left the government even weaker than it was at the start of the week. The government had bitten off more than it could chew in confronting Hizbullah over its fibre-optic cables. The government cannot now retreat, because if it did it would be finished, but nor can it impose its authority on the ground.

Behind a weaker Lebanese government lies a Bush administration which has alternated between periods of neglect and urging direct confrontation. Neither has worked. Nor has its isolation of Syria. George Bush arrives in the region for his final tour next week. His programme has more to do with paying homage to Israel on the 60th anniversary of its founding than it has with dousing the flames of conflict that the US and Israel keep on fanning. Lebanon is just one more of Mr Bush's failures in the Middle East.

For a different take, read Noah Pollak's analysis (via Michael J. Totten, who has plenty of other excellent Lebanon links):

What does the crisis in Lebanon teach us about Hezbollah? It teaches us the same lesson we learned from Hamas when it took Gaza: Islamic supremacist groups, despite their claims to the contrary, cannot be integrated into states or democratic political systems.

We have heard for many years from an array of journalists, scholars, and pundits that Hamas and Hezbollah are complicated social movements that employ violence in the service of their political goals, and that they are therefore susceptible to diplomatic engagement. Such tropes about Hamas have become standard — that there should be a Fatah-Hamas unity government, that Israel should diplomatically engage Hamas, that Hamas’s victory in the Palestinian elections make the group a legitimate political player, etc. — and likewise, similar claims are made about Hezbollah’s role in Lebanon: that it is a legitimate representative of the Shia, that it can be negotiated with, that, like Hamas, the magic elixir of political integration will dissuade Hezbollah from its traditional behavior, which is to terrorize and dominate any system in which it participates.

The Hezbollah rampage in Lebanon that we are witnessing should make it obvious to any sentient observer that Hezbollah’s claims to democratic political legitimacy have always been intended only to manipulate the credulous. Participation in politics requires the willingness to persuade your foes, to compromise, to stand down when you don’t get your way. But there is no record of Hamas or Hezbollah ever observing such restrictions: the moment Hezbollah was confronted with political pressure, it responded not within the political sphere, but with warlordism — with an exhibition of violence intended to make clear not just that Hezbollah is the most powerful force in the country, but that challenging it will result in its enemies’ humiliation and dispossession. In the streets of Beirut, with Kalashnikovs and RPGs, Hezbollah is making it abundantly clear that its participation in Lebanese politics ends when Hezbollah is asked to submit to the state’s authority. How many more Middle East “experts” are going to proclaim that the answer to Islamic supremacism is dialogue and political integration?

How many more? I expect the Guardian leader writers are working on something along those lines right this minute.

Promoting Democracy

Paul Berman on the policy of "malign stability" as practiced by the US, pre-Bush:

To hurl curses and insults at the Bush administration is a worthy, right, and just thing to do; and yet there is no reason to trip all over ourselves in acknowledging that Bush and his administration did sincerely desire to achieve a democratic outcome in Iraq. For some 60 years before the Iraq war, American policy in the Middle East had nothing to do with democracy. American policy was based on a principle of malign stability, conducted in the belief that stable dictatorships would guarantee American interests.

The pursuit of malign stability governed America's Iraq policy over the decades, and the results were unusually hideous, given that Baathism is a kind of fascism, and Baathist Iraq was an exceptionally murderous totalitarian state. The pursuit of stability led the US to abandon the Iraqi Kurds in the mid-1970s; to support Saddam against the Iranians in the 1980s; to follow a policy of hands-off, see-no-evil serenity, even in 1988, when Saddam was once again massacring Kurds, this time at a more gigantic level than before, sometimes by means of poison gas, no less. And, in keeping with this same malign policy, the US decided to leave Saddam in power after the 1991 war, even while applying sanctions and conducting a permanent mini-war, in order to prevent the dictatorship from starting up yet another war. The policy of malign stability grew, in short, ever more malign, until, in the years after 1991, we ourselves were inflicting damage on the Iraqi people with our sanctions. Iraqi society fell into a dreadful downward spiral, and the results were ghastly.

Sixty years of this policy produced no stability at all in the larger Arab world, as we eventually discovered. And so, like it or not, the Bush administration announced a change. A measure of skepticism in observing government policies is always a good idea, but, by now, a great deal of first-rate journalism has been written on the American war policy and its implementation, and nothing in any of that journalism, to my knowledge, indicates that Bush and the administration rushed into war with the intention of establishing a new dictatorship, which is what the traditional policy would have required. The refusal to allow the Iraqi exiles to form a government-in-exile and to impose it upon the rest of Iraq after the invasion, the decision to dissolve the Baathist army and thereby remove the only possible basis for a new Iraqi dictatorship - these may well have been foolish moves, tactically speaking. But these were measures that, in the administration's imagination, conformed with the larger goal of encouraging a democratic development - something new, not dictatorial.

What brought about the thousand idiotic blunders that wrecked the hopes for a democratic alternative, then?

As always with Berman, you need to read the whole article.

Democracy in Zimbabwe

If the opposition MDC do decide to take part in the proposed two-way run-off with Mugabe's Zanu-PF, this is what they'll face:

Zimbabwe's "war veterans" militia plan to intimidate voters by posing as police officers during the presidential run-off, a policeman has told the BBC....

The BBC's Orla Guerin met the police officer deep in Zimbabwe's bush, as he was afraid of being identified.

"The war veterans will be wearing police uniforms," he said.

"They will be given ranks and force numbers. They'll be part and parcel of the police deployed in every ward. So when people come in to vote they will see war veterans from their area in among the police, and they will be intimidated."

He said that preparations were at an advance stage - that the order to issue uniforms had already been given by provincial police headquarters.

Though opposed to the plan he said he was powerless to stop it, because if he objected he would be risking his life.

"Anything can happen," he said.

"You can be abducted, or just disappear, or your family can be endangered. You never know who is watching you. You can't trust anyone in Zimbabwe."

He also said the police had been told to go out and campaign vigorously for Mr Mugabe's Zanu-PF party, and to remind people that they won the country's freedom with the barrel of a gun.

"They are trying to threaten people into voting for them, so they do not get off the throne," he said.

"Zanu-PF are determined to continue ruling the country, and continue destroying it."

Somebody's Got to Pay

How to sing the Blues - a masterclass from Little Johnny Taylor:

The Horseman of Hackney Wick

Along the Hertford Union canal:

The Licing Lifestyle

Here's a website on the joys of sex and insects - combined (via Metafilter). Yes, pubic lice, but not ordinary pubic lice. They're from Japan:

First, they DON'T BITE, they just live off dead skin cells and such in your bush. Really, you're cleaner with them there than without them.

Second, these babies are HUGE!!! Well, huge compared to regular lice. And they just live happily in your underwear.
It's so COOL! They grow, and have families.
You can feel em living and crawling around. It's like having personal Sea monkeys in your pants ;-)
Seriously, though, they really are my personal pets that go everywhere with me. You get attached to them like any pet.

I'm wondering if this has any connection to the e-mail I just received from a lady called Dominique, with the message, "Grow a monster in your pants!"

The White Horse of Ebbsfleet

No surprise that Mark Wallingford's white horse is the early favourite: the most significant point about the "Angel of the South" mega-sculpture competition is how poor all the other entries are. The Beeb have a brief film...

Five designs for a £2m hilltop landmark in Kent, which will be visible from road, rail and air, have been unveiled.

Turner Prize winner Mark Wallinger is among internationally-acclaimed artists shortlisted for the Ebbsfleet Landmark.

He is proposing a white horse, 33 times life-size, which would look out over the Ebbsfleet Valley and mark the new Ebbsfleet International station.

The winning design will be announced this autumn and is expected to be completed in 2010.

Whiteread is proposing to create a craggy "recycled mountain" with a life-size cast interior of a house on the top.

Deacon's sculpture would be a "nest" of steel latticework outlining 26 interconnecting polyhedrons.

French artist Daniel Buren has designed a "signal" tower of stacked cubes with a single laser beam of light passing through it.

Sculptor Christopher Le Brun has proposed a monumental wing and disc - a reference to the winged messenger of Mercury, the Roman god of travellers and commerce.

I wonder what the other artists think of Wallingford's horse. After weeks, months, of imaginative struggle they come up with their various constructions, and then along comes Wallingford, with an idea that may have taken him all of five minutes to come up with - "I know. Let's build a huge bloody great white horse".

Though it pains me to say it, what with his execrable Turner Prize-winning display at Tate Britain, not to mention his efforts wandering around a gallery in Berlin in a bear suit, Wallingford's horse is far and away the best here. The Angel of the North was something of a one-off, being a popular and artistic success, and the whole idea of creating a southern version smacks of PR desperation, but if we're going to get one let's have the horse. The others are just awful, from Rachel Whiteread's concrete house (I liked her earlier inside-out house in Bow, but can't she do anything else?) to Richard Deacon's silly lattice structure, to Christopher Le Brun's pompous disc and wing - "a reference to the winged messenger of Mercury, the Roman god of travellers and commerce". Please not that one. A modern white horse to echo all those bronze-age white horses that litter the southern English countryside: it's a neat idea - plus the sheer visceral impact of seeing that massive beast from miles away.

If they decide to go for it, that's when the real work will begin, of course. They'll have to lower this huge block of white marble - probably the biggest the world's ever seen - on to the field near Ebbsfleet, and let Mark Wallingford get to work with his hammer and chisel, releasing the inner horse just as Michelangelo released the inner David from his marble prison those centuries ago. Perhaps he could do it while wearing his bear suit...

Living in a Theocracy

It's getting serious when even the Iranian mullahs are concerned about president Ahmadinejad's increasingly deranged ravings:

Iran's president has alarmed the nation's conservative clerics with remarks suggesting he believes a mystical Shiite religious leader backs his government.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who came to power in 2005 with the votes of Iran's religious poor, has in the past courted controversy for his public devotion to the return of the 12th Imam, a figure he regularly refers to in speeches.

According to Shiite Muslim teaching, Abul-Qassem Mohammad, the 12th leader whom Shiites consider descended from the prophet Muhammad, disappeared in the year 941 but will return at the end of time to lead an era of Islamic justice.

While this is a core Shiite belief, some critics say that Mr Ahmadinejad has encouraged "superstitious" practices surrounding it.

"If the president means that the 12th Imam is supporting the government, we should say that it is wrong," Gholamreza Mesbahi-Moghaddam, a conservative cleric and member of parliament, was quoted as saying by the daily newspaper Etemad-e Melli yesterday.

"Surely the 12th Imam is not supporting the current 20 per cent inflation in Iran," he added, referring to Mr Ahmadinejad's failure to curb price rises.

He was responding to a speech Mr Ahmadinejad made a month ago at a Shiite shrine in Mashhad, in eastern Iran, and broadcast on state TV on Monday. The BBC monitored the address.

Ali Asgari, from Mashhad, another conservative cleric, said: "Ahmadinejad should think in a more worldly way. He should manage the country. People are not expecting (religious] advice from the president."

In other words, leave the gobbledygook to us and get on with running the goddamn country.

This comes soon after Ahmadinejad suggested that martyrdom should be encouraged as a solution to Iran's economic problems.

On the subject of martyrdom and the 12th Imam, it's worth recalling something that Matthias Küntzel wrote, in an article on the Tehran Holocaust deniers' conference:

It is precisely this suicidal outlook that distinguishes the Iranian nuclear weapons program from those of all other countries and makes it uniquely dangerous. As long ago as 1980, Khomeini put it this way: "We do not worship Iran, we worship Allah. For patriotism is another name for paganism. I say let this land [Iran] burn. I say let this land go up in smoke, provided Islam emerges triumphant in the rest of the world."

Anyone inclined to dismiss the significance of such statements might want to consider the proclamation made by Mohammad Hassan Rahimian, representative of the Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who stands even higher in the Iranian hierarchy than Ahmadinejad. A few months ago, on November 16, 2006, Rahimian explained: "The Jew"-- not the Zionist, note, but the Jew --"is the most obstinate enemy of the devout. And the main war will determine the destiny of mankind. . . . The reappearance of the Twelfth Imam will lead to a war between Israel and the Shia." The country that has been the first to make Holocaust denial a principle of its foreign policy is likewise the first openly to threaten another U.N. member state with, not invasion or annexation, but annihilation.

Justifying Torture

On the question of torture (via Harry's Place) this is one of the best responses I've seen to that old "ticking bomb" chestnut, from barrister Philippe Sands:

Anyone opposed to torture is always challenged by the "ticking bomb" scenario (is it justifiable to torture a person who has placed a bomb in a school in the hope of gaining information that could save lives?). One can debate whether it is just a nice dilemma for a seminar in moral philosophy or whether it can ever plausibly apply in the real world. Nonetheless, I decided to put it to Sands.

"Could I justify torture in circumstances where a bomb was planted in a school and my children were going to be affected?" he replies. "The easy answer is to say it's hypothetical and I'm not going to go there. But that's a cop-out. I think one has to say that 'never' means 'never'. Once you open the door, it cannot be shut. The threshold becomes very difficult to define. Once you accept that there are some circumstances where the deliberate use of force is justified, it is inevitable that the door is open and it will be used again in other circumstances. That door has to be kept shut. I think that's where I come out ... ".

Certainly in such a situation no order should ever be issued to say, "OK, torture the bastard, do whatever you have to, just get the information". But in real life you'd nevertheless hope that someone would take it upon themselves - acting alone and prepared to take the consequences - to stretch the rules somewhat. Which is to say, the theoretical answer should always be "never", but individuals as moral agents will make their own judgements according to circumstances, though on the understanding that what they're doing is illegal. There was an interesting case a while back in Germany, where a policeman was faced with a kidnapper who refused to divulge the whereabouts of the child he was holding ransom. Threat of force soon produced the necessary information and the child was rescued, but the policeman - quite rightly - was prosecuted, despite the fact that his actions may have saved the child's life.

As to the main point of what Sands has to say:

“In physical terms, of course, it’s not worse than the mass torture that is happening today in many countries of the world. The reason that it’s so important is that the US has always held itself out as doing things differently - and has done things differently. It has been a leader in developing international human rights law and international humanitarian law. If a country like the US opens the door to this type of behaviour in a formal sense, the world has changed. It’s vitally significant.

“I work as a barrister for a large number of governments. I have been told by foreign ministers, I’ve even been told by a president, that - on the basis of the legal advice and the documents that led to the decision of December 2002 - they now see no reason why they can’t do the same thing. It has opened the door to the legitimation of those types of action in foreign countries. And worse, it has made it impossible for the US to say to those countries you can’t do them. So moral authority has gone, and there’s no longer any difference between us and them. We have seen the price Britain and America have paid for that over the past five years. It’s a big price, and it’s going to take a generation to get over it.”

Here, just as one example of the kind of accusation which the US brings on itself, is what they're seeing on Sudanese TV:

An Al-Jazeera cameraman released from the U.S.-run Guantanamo Bay detention center last week described it Monday as the worst prison mankind has ever seen.

Sami al-Haj, a Sudanese citizen, was whisked from his hospital bed in a convoy escorted by police cars with flashing lights and wailing sirens to an outdoor event in his neighborhood organized by his family. His speech was broadcast live on Sudanese television.

"After 2,340 days spent in the most heinous prison mankind has ever known, we are honored to be here. Thank you, and thank all those defended us and of our right in freedom," he told the cheering crowd.

Al-Haj was the only journalist from a major international news organization held at Guantanamo and many of his supporters saw his detention as punishment for an Arabic television channel whose broadcasts angered U.S. officials.

The U.S. military charged he was a courier for a militant Muslim organization, an allegation his lawyers denied.

We may sneer at the absurdity of that phrase "the worst prison mankind has ever seen", but thanks to Rumsfeld and his "action memo" of 2002 it's a viewpoint that's not as ludicrous as it should be.

Filming North Korea

Another sign of the shift in South Korean attitudes to the North, along with the election of a more conservative government pledged to put an end to the Sunshine Policy, is a new willingness to explore the reality of life under the Dear Leader through film. Just released is "Crossing", about defectors escaping to China:

In the film, Yong-su (played by Cha In-pyo), a North Korean living in a mining village in Hamgyeong Province, crosses the northern border with China to get food and medicine for his ailing wife, only to find himself on the run. His 11-year-old son (Shin Myeong-cheol) also risks his life to trace his father in China.

Shot in Korea, Mongolia and China between July and September last year, "Crossing" portrays the plight of North Koreans who are desperate to survive. It does so in a realistic manner aiming to raise awareness of the issue.

"This movie is about a man who faces poverty, violence and extreme control just because he happens to be born in North Korea," Cha said. "In the movie, my son is 11 years old, and I have a real son who is now 11 years old. When I was playing the role for the movie, I thought about the possibility that what I would do if my own child were sick and starving?"

...Kim said the production staff members had so far met more than 100 North Korean defectors, and that careful preparations have been made to reflect the reality concerning defectors without provoking unnecessary controversy.

Director Kim said North Korean defectors' organizations helped the project in many ways, offering detailed views about the situation in North Korea and lending photographs that were later used as references for the film.

First indications suggest it's a powerful piece of work. Trailer (in Korean) here.

And now they're planning to film "The Aquariums of Pyongyang", Kang Chol-Hwan's extraordinary account of his life in a North Korean prison camp:

With the title, "The Aquariums of Pyongyang", taken from the book of the same name, written by Kang Choel Hwan and Pierre Rigoulot, the movie will be co-produced by South Korea and the U.S. and is slated for release next July.

The movie will feature human rights abuses, love of family, friendship, the division of Korea, and others according to the first-hand experience of Kang Cheol Hwan in the Yoduk Camp.

Kang said in a telephone interview with Daily NK that "Although my stories do not show what is happening in the completely-controlled zone of the North Korean political prison camps, I believe it is a significant opportunity to unveil the true nature of North Korean prison camps."

He added, "I hope that the movie producers put the testimonies of other former prisoners into the movie, so the unimaginable stories that happen in North Korea's political prison camps can be seen throughout the world."

The effect of these films could be considerable - in South Korea especially.

Especially Unwise to Criticize Islam

Here's Sam Harris - author of "The End of Faith" - on free speech and Islam:

The controversy over Fitna, like all such controversies, renders one fact about our world especially salient: Muslims appear to be far more concerned about perceived slights to their religion than about the atrocities committed daily in its name. Our accommodation of this psychopathic skewing of priorities has, more and more, taken the form of craven and blinkered acquiescence.

There is an uncanny irony here that many have noticed. The position of the Muslim community in the face of all provocations seems to be: Islam is a religion of peace, and if you say that it isn't, we will kill you. Of course, the truth is often more nuanced, but this is about as nuanced as it ever gets: Islam is a religion of peace, and if you say that it isn't, we peaceful Muslims cannot be held responsible for what our less peaceful brothers and sisters do. When they burn your embassies or kidnap and slaughter your journalists, know that we will hold you primarily responsible and will spend the bulk of our energies criticizing you for "racism" and "Islamophobia." [...]

In a thrillingly ironic turn of events, a shorter version of the very essay you are now reading was originally commissioned by the opinion page of Washington Post and then rejected because it was deemed too critical of Islam. Please note, this essay was destined for the opinion page of the paper, which had solicited my response to the controversy over Wilders' film. The irony of its rejection seemed entirely lost on the Post, which responded to my subsequent expression of amazement by offering to pay me a "kill fee." I declined.

I could list other examples of encounters with editors and publishers, as can many writers, all illustrating a single fact: While it remains taboo to criticize religious faith in general, it is considered especially unwise to criticize Islam. Only Muslims hound and hunt and murder their apostates, infidels, and critics in the 21st century. There are, to be sure, reasons why this is so. Some of these reasons have to do with accidents of history and geopolitics, but others can be directly traced to doctrines sanctifying violence which are unique to Islam.

A point of comparison: The controversy of over Fitna was immediately followed by ubiquitous media coverage of a scandal involving the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS). In Texas, police raided an FLDS compound and took hundreds of women and underage girls into custody to spare them the continued, sacramental predations of their menfolk. While mainstream Mormonism is now granted the deference accorded to all major religions in the United States, its fundamentalist branch, with its commitment to polygamy, spousal abuse, forced marriage, child brides (and, therefore, child rape) is often portrayed in the press as a depraved cult. But one could easily argue that Islam, considered both in the aggregate and in terms of its most negative instances, is far more despicable than fundamentalist Mormonism. The Muslim world can match the FLDS sin for sin--Muslims commonly practice polygamy, forced-marriage (often between underage girls and older men), and wife-beating--but add to these indiscretions the surpassing evils of honor killing, female "circumcision," widespread support for terrorism, a pornographic fascination with videos showing the butchery of infidels and apostates, a vibrant form of anti-semitism that is explicitly genocidal in its aspirations, and an aptitude for producing children's books and television programs which exalt suicide-bombing and depict Jews as "apes and pigs."

Any honest comparison between these two faiths reveals a bizarre double standard in our treatment of religion. We can openly celebrate the marginalization of FLDS men and the rescue of their women and children. But, leaving aside the practical and political impossibility of doing so, could we even allow ourselves to contemplate liberating the women and children of traditional Islam?

It's worth reading in full.

Update: more on that FLDS comparison.

The Retail Trade in Shoreditch

Those Other British Cities

Bemoaning the size and influence of London is a common enough theme. Here's Tim Hames in the Times:

It is a Bank Holiday Monday. So how about a quick quiz? What, at the last census, was the third most populous city in the United Kingdom? Manchester, maybe, Liverpool, perhaps, I sense you wondering. No, it is Leeds. How about the fourth largest then? It is Glasgow. The fifth, it must be Manchester or Liverpool surely, but it is Sheffield. And finally the sixth.

Just one shot at this. Hard luck. It is Bradford. Liverpool comes in eighth (behind Edinburgh) and Manchester is ninth (ahead of Bristol). I would have put Newcastle in the top ten but Cardiff, Coventry, Leicester, Belfast and Nottingham all outscore it.

If these answers come as a surprise, you could be forgiven. Because, put bluntly, these cities are an irrelevance. There is only one city that truly counts in this country and that is London. It is not just the largest place in the UK but comfortably the biggest in the whole of the EU.

It will retain that status until Turkey, and through it Istanbul, is awarded membership, so (in my view, alas) it is safe for a fair few decades, if not another century. In 2001, London was (at 7.17 million people) seven times larger than the second city of Birmingham (971,000).

Population estimates since then indicate that the margin had expanded to 7.5 by 2006 and could reach a factor of 8 by 2011.

It is rarely appreciated how unusual this situation is. In France, Paris is a mere 2.5 times the size of its nearest rival (Marseilles). In Germany, Berlin is but twice that of Hamburg. In Italy, the ratio between Rome and Milan is 2:1 as well. In Spain, the same applies to Madrid and Barcelona. In Poland, it also the case for Warsaw and Lodz. With the exception of micro-states, it is hard to find any other similar dominance of one city across the rest across Europe. There is, in fairness, a place that is almost the same. Whether, in the light of events, we deem Austria a sound fellow model is debatable.

So we live in what is universally recognised as a highly centralised country that is overwhelmed to an arguably deeply unhealthy extent by one supersized city. To compound this, what is the sole part of England that enjoys a decent element of decentralised authority? London, the conurbation that lords it over every other city, town or village.

I'm sympathetic to his argument, but the statistics he uses are completely misleading. Here are the census figures he's referring to. Manchester's ninth, with a population of 392,819 - but of course that's a function of arbitrary city boundaries rather than a reflection of Manchester's real size. The Greater Manchester conurbation comes in at well over two million. West Midlands is of a similar size, and Greater Glasgow is over a million. The reason Leeds, Sheffield and Bradford come so high in the list is simply because the city boundaries correspond fairly well to the areas of conurbation. So no, Britain really isn't that unusual in terms of the level of centralisation in the capital city. Less so than France, I would think, where Marseilles and Lyon hardly compare with Manchester or Birmingham in terms of real size. Britain's uniqueness is an illusion; merely a matter of definitions.

But these definitions do matter. I agree that some of Britain's other cities should have mayors with similar powers to London's so they could, as it were, punch their weight, but first you'd need to redefine the cities: Manchester to include all of Greater Manchester - Salford, Stockport, Oldham, the whole works - and Birmingham to include all the West Midlands - Solihull, Dudley, West Bromwich, Walsall - with possibly Wolverhampton as an exception since it's recently been upgraded to a city itself, and isn't likely to accept downgrading for incorporation into a nearby larger city anytime soon.

And that's the problem. None of these places, for years defined by fierce local pride, are going to submit to this. Black Country dwellers would rather die than say they're from Birmingham. I'm sure there'd be major advantages in having Britain's major metropolitan areas unified as cities presided over by mayors as in London, but it's not going to happen.

A Lion In Spitalfields