About Mme Jacobs

Madame Jacobs died this week.
She had been working for us for over twenty years.

Jacqueline Hennebert was born in 1928 in Beaumont, a small town in the Belgian Ardennes. During World War II the large family was evacuated for a time to the South of France, but they made their way back as it was easier to find food and work in the rural Belgium they knew. Already at 14 she had a job in a factory. Later, after the war, she came to work in Brussels. She started living with the older Pierre Jacobs whose wife had run away. They helped run the Jacobs family small laundry business together, in the days when the well-to-do would still pay for the service of having their dirty washing collected and brought back clean and ironed. They had two children, Michelle and Jean-Marie. The first was born before they could marry as in those days it was dificult to obtain a divorce. She came in for some unpleasantness on that count which she much resented.
She also worked looking after other people's children and cleaning.
Pierre died in 1979 leaving Mme Jacobs a young widow. Although she had a small widow's pension she preferred to remain active, doing laundry on a smaller scale, child-minding and also for a time managing the stock of a toy importer.

One of the people she worked for was Clara's landlady, on whose recommendation she began to clean for Clara in 1981.
When Clara moved in with me to my rented flat in 1986 one of her conditions was that Mme Jacobs would continue to clean for us. I was initially reluctant as I had always cleaned for myself. However, when I learned that Mme Jacobs would also be doing the ironing, a chore I particularly loathed, this seemed like a good proposition. I was at once pleased with the professional results so there was no looking back.
In 1989 Clara was pregnant and we bought a house of our own in which to start our family life. We were going to need someone to look after the future children once Clara had returned to work. Given our irregular working hours it had to be someone reliable who could be available at all times and who preferably could also do the cleaning of the much bigger house when the children were asleep or, later on, before fetching them from school. However, we didn't really want someone to live in. Mme Jacobs was the perfect choice. She had recently lost some of her regular customers and so was more than pleased to take up the offer of full time employment with us on a regular wage. She helped a lot with the move and setting up home in the new house as I was convalescing from hepatitis at the time and could not do much myself.

So she became very much part of the family in our new house in Ixelles. She was the children's nanny or 'nounou', a constant presence for them and who would become a grandmother figure to them as their real grandparents were too far away to be seen often. She was the one who provided the French speaking part of their upbringing alongside our Italian and English, and satisfied their needs when we could not be there. Julia and Thomas developed a deep affection for her and they in turn were the grandchildren she for so long never had, as Michelle could not have children and Jean-Marie had his very late.

As the years went by and the children needed her less and she became well past the retirement age of most people and gradually frailer, she still wanted to continue coming to work in our home. To a certain extent she needed the money, not so much for herself as for her entourage (of which more later) for who she paid for things she denied herself; but also I think she could not conceive of an idle life for herself and she enjoyed seeing our family and being in the atmosphere of what had become her other home. She used to like coming round to enjoy our garden during our long summer absences.
So there was a tacit agreement that she could continue as long as she felt she could and wanted to.
We took on Nadia, an Algerian lady who was one of Mme Jacobs' many protégés to do the heavier chores, reducing Mme Jacobs' duties to washing and ironing, cooking the odd meal, sewing and other lighter tasks. The transitional process was not easy as Mme Jacobs had become used to organizing all the housework and being in charge. In the end we arranged to have them come at different times to avoid disputes and they became once more on good terms with each other during the shorter periods they coincided. We had never imagined we would have to resolve problems managing our 'staff', but I suppose that is one inevitable aspect of job creation.
By this year she would come three days a week from 11 till 4 and one from 1 till 4. The last time she came was in late September. On our way to Italy with Julia to start her year in Pavia, we dropped her off at Jean-Marie's in the Ardennes as her second grandchild was about to be born. She returned to Brussels ten days later not to her home but to hospital. Old age had finally caught up with her and her body was failing her. Still her end came unexpectedly quickly. We had always thought she would spend her life working till the end, as that was her nature and so it was.

Mme Jacobs had a larger than life personality and (until her last year) a large body to go with it. She had a powerful voice and a strong Walloon accent, she was in a way still the country girl come to the big city. She liked to talk and It was not always easy to get a word in edgeways. She was one of life's optimists and would laugh off difficulties, having seen worse in her time.
For us she came to epitomize Belgium and things Belgian, we certainly enjoyed her Belgian culinary classics such as 'carbonnades', 'chicons braisés' and cakes. She was our finger on the pulse of contemporary Belgian life. She had an abiding suspicion of the Flemings but was unconditionally proud of any Belgian achievement whether by Walloon or Fleming.

She continued to live in the large house in Etterbeek which had once housed the laundry. She kept the first floor to herself. On the ground floor lived her daughter with Mario, her Angolan husband and his much younger brother, Ninho, who acted as a substitute son for the childless marriage. Further up lived a series of tenants, likely as not hard-luck-story foreigners not actually paying rent but enjoying her generous protection. For a time she was also involved in active work for NGO's that looked after foreigners. It's perhaps not surprising that Michelle works for the Petit Château refugee centre and Jean-Marie also married an African. There were always lots of people about in the big house. She would tell horror stories about Mario, true to the classic role of mother-in-law, but was very fond of Amina who was mother of her grand-daughter. We were always kept up to date of recent developments in her family and house. I assume that in turn we were the subject of conversation over the meals which she continued to cook for Michelle and family.

We sometimes felt her good nature and generosity led her to be exploited by those around her, but she didn't see it that way. We thought she should take more time for herself to rest, but she liked to be occupied. For years she would spend her Sundays often in miserable weather selling things from her stall at jumble sale style 'brocantes' to make a bit of money on the side for the family.
For Mme Jacobs it was normal to work hard to help others, which is really what she did right to the end of her life, until her body could take it no more.

She will be missed, especially by Julia and Thomas.
Adieu Nounou.

About politics

Bertrand Russell in his essay “In praise of idleness” schematized the economic organization of society in the following way. There is always a certain amount of real work to be done; it involves changing the position of matter in relation to the earth’s surface. This is what the real workers do. Then there is a whole category of people who plan the work, tell the workers what to do and keep records of it. Sometimes there is a difference of opinion as to what to tell the real workers to do, so a third category of people argue as to whether objets should be moved from A to B or B to A: this is called politics.

Politics is how decisions are reached on the allocation of limited resources within a society and therefore affects us all whether we know it or not, whether we like it or not. Politics should then rightly be of interest to everyone living in a society That it is not always of interest to many has to do with how it is conducted in our modern Western so-called democracies.

I myself as a teenager was not particulalrly interested in politics, which is only natural as I was well catered for and didn’t have to fend for myself. I first became seriously interested in politics as a student when living in Germany (1979-80) as it seemed to be a major social activity amongst the staff of the school I was working in. You weren’t really going to get to know anyone if you weren’t interested in politics. This was because the school, which had been in existence for 10 years, was still officially an experimental comprehensive school (Gesamtschule) to which teachers within the state system were only assigned if they asked to be. So to a man and a woman they were all believers in this great social experiment and all motivated and militant. They were “Alternative”, convinced that personal behaviour could set an example for change. The very idea that change in society might be possible and desirable was something new and exciting to me at the time, I admittedly had not given it that much thought before having been fairly comfortable as I was and surrounded by people in much the same situation.
So as I had plenty of time on my hands I engaged in endless discussions with them and joined them on various demonstrations, against nuclear power (“Atomkraft, nein danke”), unsavoury right-wing candidates for Chancellor (“Stoppt Strauss”) and the like.

A big demonstration is real people politics in action. Being in a big crowd with a shared purpose is an atavistic human experience that is quite uplifting. Demonstrations are ignored by those in power at their peril.
More recently I went on the big anti Iraq war march on a bright but very cold February morning in Brussels where the atmosphere was committed but peaceful in a positive way. On Iraq the views of the people were of course ignored by those in power, but we can now feel ourselves vindicated by how things inevitably turned out and those responsible have been rightly consigned to the dustbin of history.

For it is axiomatic that as Lincoln said, “You can fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time”. It can take a very long time, but in the end, as happened in Eastern Europe twenty years ago, there is a limit to the amount of wrong and injustice that people are prepared to put up with. I believe that ruling against the will of the people is unsustainable. The advantage of a democracy is that in principle change can come peacefully through the ballot box and will not require violent revolution.

I feel quite strongly about having the vote. I say that because as a United Kingdom citizen who has been living abroad for over twenty years, I am now disenfranchized. Those who fought for American Independence had a point with their claim of “no taxation without representation” (you see we’re back to politics being about the allocation of resources), so you could argue conversely that as I don’t pay tax in the UK, I shouldn’t get to vote there; but then again, I don’t think anyone would argue for disenfranchizing the unemployed or any other category in society who in net terms pay no tax. On the contrary, the vote is a fundamental right for the national of any country and the undemocratic UK is about the only country I’m aware of, certainly in the EU, that denies its expatriates the vote. I’m not saying I have a burning desire to vote for either of the two main parties right now, but it’s the principle that counts and I am after all still a citizen of the country, so I feel I should have a say (however small) in how it is run.

Fortunately, thanks to the European Union, as an EU national resident in Belgium, I can vote in the Belgian local elections and for Belgian members of the European Parliament.
When the right to vote came in about ten years ago I was keen to take it up. My borough, Ixelles, had for a long time had a centre right led coaltion, but partly thanks to the advent of many newly enfranchized EU ex-pat resident (and tax paying) voters it changed to Socialist/Green which has brought about many tangible environmental improvements for example in terms of public green spaces and bicycle-friendliness.
Local politics, because it is closer to the citizens, is doubtless open to more direct influence and has more obvious effects on our daily lives.
I know a lot of EU foreign residents, however, who have not taken up the vote in Belgium. That’s partly because they dislike the idea of voting being compulsory. Yet the notion that some people find having to vote might interfere with their Sunday must appear abhorrent to those in Africa who are prepared to queue for hours to vote because they finally have the opportunity to do so. I think compulsory voting should be the case everywhere as part of the package of a citizen’s rights and obligations (you have to pay your taxes after all). Don’t get me wrong, you’re not compelled to vote for any party, you can go along and register a blank vote as not being content with anything on offer. At least that way you have particiapted. But if you do have any sense you will also have voted one way or another as it is your opportunity to have some influence in the shaping of society.

Voter apathy is the scourge of democracy. It represents the failure to grasp that politics is relevant to everyone who lives in a society. Apathy is, however, wholly understandable because in its practised form, politics, as in parliaments and governments, to many does not appear to deliver the desired outcomes they voted for, so they think “why bother?” Change in a peaceful civilized society can only really be delivered at a glacial pace as it has to be consensual within the context of limited resources and vested interests. But change does happen, and on a major scale, as you will realize merely by looking back over the decades. It happens largely because of the impact of bigger external events which, in what is already a globalized economy but not yet a globalized polity, seem to elude the control of government. However, change also happens because of the persistence of those in government. So elections do matter and though change does not appear to occur in our lives from day to day, it does over time largely because of the maintenance of pressure, including ultimately from voters. Not to vote, then, is to be short-sighted and impatient. In an imperfect world, to vote is the best tool Joe public has to achieve a better world.

Of course a major reason for voter apathy is the politicians themselves.
e.e.cummings neatly expressed the general disgust that “a politician is an arse on which everyone has sat except a man”
Although you and I may argue about politics till the cows come home on the abstract basis of what policies might solve all the world’s woes, in practice, we are stuck with politicians, if policies are ever going to be delivered on. (And so, therefore, realistically, probably not in the near future).

Alongside the more noble Aristotelian definition of “politics”, that is originally how to govern the “polis”, the city state, which I have been using in this discusion so far, politics has come to mean the much dirtier business of politicking and how individual politicians jostle for power. As in “So and so said such and such, but it’s all politics”, it has nothing to do with who believes what but rather with who wants the job. Politics in this sense has little to do with ideas, let alone ideals and everything to do with personalities.
Indeed many voters too are far more swayed by the personality of politicians than by their policies. The media of course feed on this.

For too many politicians the ideas are just hooks on which to hang personal ambition and thirst for power.
This is not new: politics has always existed in this sense, ever since men have competed for each other’s attention and the right to speak on behalf of others in order to defend collective interests. Modern politics is just the latest version of this ancient struggle for leadership. Here the old adage applies that some are born to greatness (there are still plenty of political dynsaties about) some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them.

In the course of my work as an interpreter for the European institutions I have seen an awful lot of politicians at close quarters. However much you may dislike individual politicians, possibly for their beliefs but quite probably just for their characters, you have to recognize that the capable ones would not be where they are if they were not in some way able to appeal, at least initially, to their fellow citizens so as to put their trust in them. They have what people call “charisma”, for want of a better word. In the end these men and women know how to network and how to speak in public to convince. While it is true that modern politics is a media circus in which debate has become reductive in order to accomodate it to the small screen and the small attention span of the sound bite, in the longer run, the politicians who make it to the top and manage to stay there really do have an ability to engage with an audience and to sustain discourse that transcends the poverty and paucity of what often passes for political debate on television, or the vacuity of formal statements required on certain occasions. President Obama has set a great example for the importance of a set piece speech that takes the time to set out policy while remaining inspiring.

Some politicians are of course drawn into politics as a vocation because they are idealists fighting for a cause. I think Obama falls into this category. Others enter politics for utterly selfish reasons even before having the opportunity of being corrupted by power. I think Berlusconi is a clear case here. At an iconographic level in 2009 these two represent the opposite extremes of what makes a politician. In between Obama and Berlusconi there are politicians of every shade, character, motivation and belief. But make no mistake, nobody would be successful in politics without an inflated ego and an ability to charm.
Although there are some altruistic and idealistic ones, it is the majority of self-interested politicians that give the profession its bad name in the public mind. Sadly in these days it really is a profession, a full-time job which people train for (by taking politics and law degrees) and commit to a party machine to succeed in, rather than engage in as a calling that is an adjunct to some other more honourable profession. In some countries, like Italy, being a politician is so highly paid, counting all the fringe benefits, that money is a major reason for being in politics in the first place. Small wonder some people don’t feel like voting for any of them.

Politicians in power of course change over time. We like to think that they at least start as idealists with a cause, enjoying huge public support; but they gradually become too accustomed to power, taking their support for granted while having to compromise more and more with the constraints of the real world; and finally they succumb to the desire to stay in power rather than to do what’s right and in some cases even to the temptation to feather their own nests rather than defend the interests of those who put them there.
By then it is clearly time for a change. If a week is a long time in politics, a term can seem an eternity. At least in a democracy politicians can be voted out of office (or removed by internal putsch when their party feels they will cost them the next election). This is good, there is no point in having the vote if you can’t change your mind and try somebody else.
In fact, there seems to be a limited freshness to politicians in power and they are better changed regularly. The man I admire today, I may well despise tomorrow; Blair has been a case in point.
Still politicians are a necessary evil in politics and there are some I continue to admire and would be ready to vote for - but not to stay in power forever.

The same is true of course of political parties. Let me also say in passing that I dislike the list based electoral system that enables party hacks to be elected without being answerable to any clear constituency. It’s a fine moment in British politics when the local independent defeats the unknown central office nominee in a “safe” seat.
However, in a world where politics is the “art of the possible”, parties, like politicians themselves, are a necessary evil; although the fewer the better if you are going to get anywhere. The history of government by coalition of small parties is not good: it’s one of sharing out the cake rather than building meaningful consensus.
A party is a bit like an organized religion: any thinking man is going to find it hard to accept the entire manifesto. At least in a proper democracy there is room for dissent and debate within a party and an opportunity to change your allegiance if you disgree with too much of the programme.

So what are my own politics ?

Over the years, as is natural in most people, mine have drfited towards the right. I say it is is only natural, as young people tend to be idealistic until their experience of life teaches them what motivates their fellow humans and what they are therefore likely to accept in order to live together peacefully. Also politics is about protecting what you have: the young impoverished student owns nothing and has everything to gain; whereas the middle-aged man has over the years through hard work accumulated much that he is loathe to give away.
Deep down though an individual’s politics are informed by how one sees man and society.

I believe that man is governed by enlightened self-interest, but not as some would have it, solely by the profit motive and that he is by natural disposition at least as co-operative as he is competitive. Life and society cannot be reduced to brute economics, human experience is broader and we should be governed accordingly in an inclusive manner. Even the die-hard capitalist needs to understand that he is not going to make money without a healthy, well educated, socially contented workforce that has sufficient money in its pockets to spend on consuming what he produces.

I would regard myself as centre left on most economic and social issues as I suppose would befit a member of the chattering classes, yet without being a drawing room socialist. I believe that there is an important role for the state in providing everyone with those universal reliable services of good quality which are in the public interest (health care, education, sanitation, water, power, communications, transport, public security - to name the most obvious) and that people should contribute towards them according to their means. Otherwise there is no point in living together in a society. The idea that the free market can somehow deliver these is absolute twaddle, dogma that is manifestly not borne out by reality. Over history provision of public services by the state, through innovation or nationalization, has marked real social progress. Most of the recent exercises in privatization have been to the advantage of a minority and to the detriment of the majority. Subsequently many services have had to be rescued in some way by the state, often at great expense (ultimately to the taxpayer). So why not just keep them in the public hand to begin with, as they are too important to be left to chance.

Likewise major infrastructure projects in the public interest are unlikely to get off the ground without significant funding from the state as the private sector’s interest in immediate profit is too short-sighted. On both counts I have a sneaking admiration for the French model that proudly ignores the Anglo-Saxon way. France has maintained a strong state in order to unify a vast and often rural territory to the benefit of all its citizens. Notably France was the first country to build a high speed railway network. Sarkozy, though he wishes to modernize his country, is not about to diminish the role of the state: witness his idea of raising a very large loan to boost the economy. Keynes is not dead: In the present financial and economic crisis the state has been called to the rescue. The state, and therefore we as taxpayers, must foot the bill for that huge cash injection for generations to come, so it is not inappropriate that regulation should now be set in place so as to avoid in the future excesses of what basically is plain old greed on the part of a few that got the many of us into the mess we’re in now.

When it comes to law and order, I find my views are much more right-wing. While poverty, deprivation and marginalization can explain crime they offer no justification for it. People have a free will and must assume responsibility for their actions. That after all is the principle on which our justice systems are based. A society that tolerates crime and is indulgent towards criminals does itself no favours. They should be seen to be punished to act as a deterrent to others.

Actually, it is not unusual for what are conventionally held to be left-wing or right-wing views to cohabit in the same invidual. Political correctness is an obstacle to freedom of thought and expression and to real political debate. It is always refreshing to hear an intelligent politician speak his mind. It nearly always turns out that the truth of a situation is far more complex than can be expressed in vote-winning political slogans. Real problems in society cannot be addressed without being frank about their real causes. A proper political debate about policy that takes into account the complexity of a situation and the finely balanced opposing interests behind it is genuinely stimulating, enjoyable and essential. More time needs to be taken to hold it so that people become as interested in politics as they should be for the general good of society.