Are these the first crowdsourced riots of the 21st century?

 Britain, crowdsourcing, in a hole, Internet, riots  No Responses »
Aug 092011
 

From the only perspective I can reasonably report – that of Twitter participant and online media reader – there seem to be a number of different bands out there at the moment, each working to outdo the other.  When I say working to outdo the other, I don’t mean consciously or necessarily engaging in battle.  It’s something different, something more nuanced.

Groups of “activists” are coalescing around several discrete points of interest.  First we have the police and the rioters themselves – as one tweet pointed out this evening:

Fundamental problem Police have – they are fully trained for a Riot but not for Looting. Kinda like War vs Terrorism relationship #ukriots

Then we have the Prime Minister and the Mayor of London, who’ve finally cut short their holidays – although I’m really not clear whether this will have much of an impact.  There have been murmurings that the photo opportunities of the latter were taking priority over clean-up initiatives.  I even read that a certain Eric Pickles was trying to hijack examples of positive citizen involvement by describing them as the blessed Big Society in action.

Proof, that it to say, that Tory social policies were actually working.

And then finally we come to the two parties I find most interesting in all of this: the spontaneously combustible rioters on the one hand and the spontaneously virtuous clean-up brigades on the other.  For in all the major cities where riots are now affecting daily life, a contra-team of socially conscious subjects has used the very same social media the rioters have taken advantage of, in order to communally combat the violent acts and pick up the pieces on the mornings-after which follow the aforementioned mayhem.

And it is this dynamic I find intensely interesting.  Let’s just imagine the analogy of war versus terrorism holds here, and the police – whilst it takes them time to adjust their tactics and procedures to a new territory, enemy and environment – are unable to protect enough of the streets of England to dispel all doubts about their effectiveness in such a new landscape.  This remaining doubt will allow the more active rioters to continue to hold sway over those who might otherwise be encouraged to give up on the activities in question – and so maintain the wave of disturbances for much longer than we might imagine.

Yet, every morning, the contra-brigade of determined subjects will be ready to clear up the mess the rioters are leaving behind.  Vigilantes of a kind, then – but cleaning-lady and gent vigilantes.  Peaceful vigilantes.  A kind of almost Gandhi-like serenity, yet underpinned with contained fury, in their determination to show – through silent insistence and deeds rather than words – that they are more powerful in their ability to put the kingdom back together again than those who would have us destroy everything.

So it is we stand and watch and witness what appears to be an unfocussed and difficult-to-understand rage – difficult to understand, that is, for those who have most to lose here: that rest of us who observe shocked and bemused from the sidelines of utter incomprehension.

And yet some public figures are already being brave enough to look beyond simple expressions of anger.  Some are being brave enough and laying out for all to see – even whilst the encroaching social meltdown takes place – the realities behind the rioting and looting of this marginalised underclass; the generalities that serve to allow us to understand far better what is taking place, even as the vast majority of politicians find themselves unable to provide anything more convincing than the wearily self-evident knee-jerk support for public order.

Is this, then, going to be a different battle soon?  A different kind of riot?  A different kind of war?  A war where the police become rightly fearful of the power of the marginalised underclass, even as this underclass tips the balance in its own favour?  A war which will escalate dramatically as rioters and the contra-brigade of cleaning-ladies and gents become locked evermore dangerously in a conflict where day unremittingly follows night – and whose end no one can predict?  A war where violence and peaceful dignity end up sidelining the traditional means of the state, as they fight to win over an evermore terrified populace to their very particular messages?

And are these, then, the first crowdsourced riots of the 21st century?

If they are, this is perhaps the first time when the virtual world has spilled so completely back into the real.  And it is time, perhaps, for us to become at least cautiously unsure.  The history of the Internet, from open source to social media, has shown us that the power of the crowd thus channelled is very much more effective than the old hierarchical structures.  Just imagine a modern state which is unable to learn these lessons in time – and finds itself on the wrong end of a virtual baseball bat of considerable proportions.

For aficionados of the Internet, this may be a sad day indeed.  When so much good could be exerted through the use of new technologies, it seems it has been the turn of the violent to show us the true impact and potential of peer-to-peer technologies.

It remains to be seen whether the good men and women – those with the Gandhi-like serenity I mentioned earlier – can now successfully turn swords into shields.

History would seem to indicate this is unlikely to be any permanent victory.

More than likely short-lived, in fact.

Watch this space, I’m afraid.

When lying is not clever but corrosive

 a con, Britain, in a hole, lying, police, politics, riots  No Responses »
Aug 092011
 

Whilst Chris plays devil’s advocate and justifies the use of lying in politics, we have this report from the Guardian yesterday which indicates the following:

The NHS is one of the most cost-effective health systems in the developed world, according to a study (pdf) published in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine.

The “surprising” findings show the NHS saving more lives for each pound spent as a proportion of national wealth than any other country apart from Ireland over 25 years. Among the 17 countries considered, the United States healthcare system was among the least efficient and effective.

And goes on to point out that:

“The government proposals to change the NHS are largely based on the idea that the NHS is less efficient and effective than other countries, especially the US,” said Professor Colin Pritchard, of Bournemouth University, who analysed a quarter of a century’s data from 1980.

“The results question why we need a big set of health reform proposals … The system works well. Look at the US and you can see where choice and competition gets you. Pretty dismal results.”

The Guardian article politely describes the Coalition government’s argument that we need more competition in the NHS to improve its efficiency as “assertions”.  I’d be rather more inclined to term them “lies”.  And this is when lying in politics is not clever at all but, instead, mostly corrosive.

Chris may believe that (the bold is mine):

Politicians, I think we can all agree, talk a lot of rot. The question, then, is whether they believe what they say or not. Personally, I’d rather they didn’t. I’d rather we were ruled by intelligent liars than sincere fools.

My impression, however, is that such lying leads long-term, in that drip-feed way modern communications depends on so vigorously, to the kind of explosive conditions Britain’s major cities are suffering from at the moment.  This isn’t a just case of people losing respect for their communities and environments – more significantly, it is surely a case of people losing respect for their ruling classes.  And so it is we have to ask why this has happened – and, indeed, when.

If this is exclusively a public order issue, and people are, as one commenter has argued, simply morons, then the job of policing depends not on keeping us all under control – for most of us don’t need to be kept under control.  Rather, it is a question of keeping those who misbehave under control.  Most of the time this is possible and is achieved.  As I pointed out on Twitter yesterday, I always remember what a PC once said to me whilst I was still a Parish Councillor: “The public see us as a police service; we see ourselves as a police force.”

These riots, then, at a minimum, are a symptom of the inability of the good ruling classes to do what good ruling classes do: lead by example, with efficiency.

By spending the past decade “intelligently lying”, to paraphrase Chris’s concept, and the last government is as guilty of this as the current one, we have created a political and socio-cultural environment where “getting away with it” is more important than “getting on with it”.  Telling lies intelligently leads to resolution of short-term problems, but surely stores up mightily disbelief in the social contract for the future.

What goes around always comes around.  Thus it is that society is a closed system: if you heat it up on one side you’re going to get a reaction at some time on the other.

You don’t have to be chemist to understand this.

Just a moderately fair and just human being.
____________________

Further reading: this was drawn to my attention yesterday.  The Riot (Damages) Act 1886, apparently still in place, seems to indicate that the police themselves are responsible for paying compensation to those who’ve lost homes and premises to the vandalism of rioting, except where private insurance has already covered the costs.  This is what it says on the matter:

2 Compensation to persons for damage by riot.

(1)Where a house, shop, or building in [F1a police area] has been injured or destroyed, or the property therein has been injured, stolen, or destroyed, by any persons riotously and tumultuously assembled together, such compensation as hereinafter mentioned shall be paid out of [F2the police fund] of [F1the area] to any person who has sustained loss by such injury, stealing, or destruction; but in fixing the amount of such compensation regard shall be had to the conduct of the said person, whether as respects the precautions taken by him or as respects his being a party or accessory to such riotous or tumultuous assembly, or as regards any provocation offered to the persons assembled or otherwise.

(2)Where any person having sustained such loss as aforesaid has received, by way of insurance or otherwise, any sum to recoup him, in whole or in part, for such loss, the compensation otherwise payable to him under this Act shall, if exceeding such sum, be reduced by the amount thereof, and in any other case shall not be paid to him, and the payer of such sum shall be entitled to compensation under this Act in respect of the sum so paid in like manner as if he had sustained the said loss, and any policy of insurance given by such payer shall continue in force as if he had made no such payment, and where such person was recouped as aforesaid otherwise than by payment of a sum, this enactment shall apply as if the value of such recoupment were a sum paid.

A curious state of affairs, to say the least.

Meanwhile, Paul has a characteristically all-encompassing, fair and just perception of these events here.

The foolish people destroying their communities may not have political aims as such.  But – as someone wisely tweeted yesterday – the causes of anything which happens in society always lie, by definition, in politics.  And if the causes lie in politics, hopefully their solutions should too.

Hopefully I say – always assuming we don’t want our politicians to be intelligent liars.

In the end, politics will be both cause of and answer to all of this

 Britain, politics, riots, Twitter, unclassifiable  No Responses »
Aug 082011
 

Two tweets on this evening’s terrible events in Britain which caught my eye.  The first, as follows:

RT @David_Ritter: Just because rioters do not have political aims does not mean the causes of the riots do not lie in politics #londonriots

Curiously, I then went on to misquote this idea via a second tweet of my own:

@Bhoyvince @dominiccampbell As tweet I read earlier said, just ‘cos rioters haven’t political aims doesn’t mean politics isn’t the answer.

Both cause and answer then.  In the end, after battle, the generals must retire, and it will be the turn of the politicians to exercise what they should have exercised a long time ago: a judicious, open and intelligent sensibility applied to an entire nation awfully in need of both proper leadership and understanding.

Britain today (II) (or banal soliloquies of corporate speak)

 a con, Britain, James Murdoch, lawyers, News Corp, News of the World, Rupert Murdoch  No Responses »
Jul 192011
 

I’ve just seen the Murdochs give their account of what has happened during the past decade in News Corp.  Essentially, top-level executives got paid immense amounts of money to receive oral advice from highly expensive lawyers, either directly or via intermediaries – and then somewhere along the line, some individuals or other apparently hid, misplaced or confused key evidence which would otherwise have made it impossible for the executives in question not to commit to root and branch removal of criminal activity.

I may of course be wrong about all of this – but that’s my reading of it right now.

I do have two things to say on this matter: one, I actually prefer Rupert to James.  James has this most irritating habit of personalising all objects, so he says “I can’t speak to” something instead of “I can’t speak about” something.  Also, whilst Rupert took his time over most of his responses, James filled the silences with banal soliloquies of corporate speak.  I much prefer watching someone think before they open their mouth, even if it is to express their inability to remember, than suffer the awfulness of hearing a language I love so very much mangled by the tongues of those whose principle aim seems to be to avoid all sense of responsibility.

And the second thing?  Well, as I tweeted during the show itself:

Am I glad News Corp only does TV, news & films – just imagine if it did nuclear power with that lack of corporate control. #NOTW

If they thought this was going to be the moment they regained the initiative on being fit and proper as far as owning the totality of BSkyB was concerned, surely ordinary laws of corporate governance wherever would indicate they really weren’t fit and proper to run anything.  Not necessarily because of outright and overt criminality but, rather, simply because of an utter incompetence in relation to a correct and judicious understanding of corporate responsibility more generally.

An utter incompetence which absolutely beggars belief.

Resetting Britain to a kind of "year zero" (or "Why would entrepreneurs set up new media outlets?")

 Britain, broken politics, broken society, Ed Miliband, entrepreneurs, Fifth Estate, Fourth Estate, new media, News Corp, on a high, Rupert Murdoch, social media, Spectator, www.politicalinnovation.org  No Responses »
Jul 132011
 

Osbert Lancaster has asked a good friend of mine the following series of questions on Twitter this evening:

@Paul0Evans1 Hmm. Why would entrepreneurs set up new media outlets? Why might I invest in them? Is my blog a media outlet? NGO newsltr?

I’m fascinated in particular by the first two questions.  One, for linguistic reasons.  Two, for quite practical ones.

The first can be interpreted in two slightly different – but important – ways.  “Why would entrepreneurs set up new media outlets?” doesn’t mean quite the same as “Why would entrepreneurs set up new media outlets?”  And knowing the difference between the two and understanding the implications of such a difference might, in turn, very well help to answer the second of the four questions in this lovely 140-character summary of what may now excitingly face us in the aftermath of Rupert Murdoch’s humiliating – though possibly tactical – climbdown over BSkyB.  As another tweet not a few minutes ago pointed out with cautious wisdom:

Nice to see Murdoch humiliated, but too early to gloat. This is a guy whose childhood sled was called ‘Crush All Enemies Without Hesitation’

Anyhow – back to the subject of this post.  Real entrepreneurs – those who challenge existing ways of thinking – absolutely thrive in markets which tend more towards freedom than monopoly.  Indeed, one of the basic functions of entrepreneurs in what we might term a wider society is to ensure that monopolistic competition – towards which all modern capitalism seems to wish to tend – is given a salutary jolt every so often.

If Mr Lancaster wants a good reason to invest in either new media outlets or new media outlets, post-Rupert Murdoch as has been, then the above reason could one of the first he might wish to consider: for only in a society where communication is free and considered can business be conducted in the kind of radical and constructive ways that these true entrepreneurs I talk about seem to prefer to avail themselves of.  It is in all businesses’ interests then – all businesses, that is, which care to conduct their business ethically (or would prefer to) – for the media to operate with transparency; for the media in our country to reflect, to argue with and to challenge our shakers and makers in such a way that true dialogue – and not a simply sterile set of occasional consultations – becomes par for the course in our society.

“Why might I invest in them?”  Why, indeed …  Because, essentially, for particularly businesslike reasons, it would lay the foundations for a better business culture.  When the Fourth and Fifth Estates communicate adult-like and with genuine interest in the issues at hand, so the businesspeople who will generate our wealth will know far more clearly that the ground rules are going to be grown-up and sincere.

And they will know that when they go into business, they can expect to be treated with coherence and understanding.

If the pact between our politicians and the media can convert itself in something rather more transparent and outgoing, it won’t only be the voters who’ll be able to heave a sigh of relief:

Do we now need to re-evaluate the House of Commons? Has it finally redeemed itself after MPs’ expenses? #hackgate #bskyb

It’ll also be our businesspeople who’ll know there’ll be one less thing to worry about – that is to say, the ever-present and bedevilled choice between a moral exchange on the one hand and underhandedness on the other will become far less problematic when we are able to create a society which visibly rejects the antics of the spivs and fly-by-nights.

What is really facing us, as we contemplate the rack and ruin which Rupert Murdoch’s methods will surely end up bringing to the investors in News Corp, is an opportunity to refashion a society.  After the dictatorship of cultural life which News International has effected on British society – that “spell which is now broken” as I think Ed Miliband was reported as having said in a Spectator interview today – there is now a clear opportunity to decide how we can proceed: an illuminating and liberating opportunity, in fact, to start constructively at some kind of “year zero”.

What we really want from our media is that ability to engage at a peer-to-peer level – a dialogue between equals; a conversation where politics is no longer an evil game but, rather, an enabling device to improve the lot of everyone.  And if we are to achieve this, then starting from scratch – realising in time that we actually do have that opportunity to wipe the slate clean and redo our media landscape – is about the most important thing we may yet be able to understand in the next six months to a year.

A trip switch of truth?

 algorithms, Anthony Painter, Britain, in a hole, morality algorithm, Rupert Murdoch, trip switch of truth  No Responses »
Jul 072011
 

Anthony Painter has just published a powerful article over at Labour Uncut.  One phrase which particularly caught my eye was the following:

Tim Wu’s The Master Switch details many such moments in US history where communications and media companies have reached a size where they dominate the marketplace and begin to infect public and cultural space. [...]

He then asks a most apposite question:

All this begs the immediate question: what is too powerful? It can take a number of different forms. In the case of News International, it is its ability to subvert democratic process and divert law enforcement from its proper course. In other words, it’s not the morally reprehensible and criminally abhorrent phone hacking that occurred at the News of the World per se. It is the fall out from hacking that makes clear the degree to which News International and the News Corporation have been able to prevent due process from occurring and its capability to resist political and public revulsion at its behaviour. [...]

Which then prompted me to tweet this idea:

Maybe we need algorithm to calculate when media organisations are too powerful and need breaking up. Automatic. Trip switch of truth.

To be honest, I’ve thought about this idea for a long time now – and in a wide variety of circumstances where individual discretion and political patronage have all too often gone hand in hand.  If our political masters and mistresses were to know that their decisions in such transcendental circumstances would be triggered by transparent criteria such as these, whether they be automated algorithms or specialised checklists to be used by qualified servants of the state, then it would take the burden of decision-making off the shoulders of those who might be tempted – for purely political reasons – to finally allow a genie such as Rupert Murdoch out of his communications bottle.

What’s absolutely clear is that any decision-making needs to be in the hands of a system which isn’t open to criticism from any party.  Without that, the crude converting of technocratic Britain into a massive Mafia-like family of contacts and influences will not only continue unstopped – it may even become unstoppable.

What Croatia has meant to me

 Britain, Croatia, Greece, poverty, Spain, teaching, tear gas, Teta Tugica, unclassifiable  No Responses »
Jun 302011
 

 

I’ve written on these pages quite a bit on Croatia and its people.  I have family there.  It used to be my summer holiday destination.  I have always been between two cultures – at the very least. 

Since I lived for sixteen years in Spain and my wife and children are Spanish, this kind of became almost three cultures.

For me, my mother’s sister Tuga, my dearest dearest aunt, always represented what Croatia meant to me.  There was the food, the family life, the strict education, the more than occasional indulgences, the slipper thrown in anger, the kisses and hugs given ever-so-freely – the sense, when all was said and done, of belonging to a nation I was nevertheless always going to be an outsider to.

There was also her impish manner – her laughter, her joy of life.

I remember conversations with strange people when we went back in the 1980s – young people who wanted to find out our political inclinations.  I was naive at the time.  Then, after almost a decade away, I went back in 2002 and had this experience – which only goes to show how me and naive are probably, even now, still bosom pals.

I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown – in part because I was running out of money; I was unemployed – and had been for three years.  But, in hindsight, I think a more important reason was that I believed myself a fish out of water – and the pond I was inclined to hanker after was Britain not Croatia.  In this, I was mistaken.  In Britain, my instincts and reactions were misunderstood.  Human love and physical contact are an intrinsic part of the Slav soul. 

Britain believes in many things – but in its institutions, love and contact form no part.

That, then, is what – because of Tuga and people like her – Croatia really means to me: humanity, reality and sincerity.

I may be mistaken, of course – but no more mistaken than I am in gravitating towards a country which believes that when teachers duly vote in favour of a strike, this is disorder.  And when governments use tear gas against the impoverished, this is order.

Is the NHS so important to the British because we don’t really do God?

 38 Degrees, Britain, in a hole, Insalud, NHS, NHS cuts, Spain  No Responses »
May 292011
 

I received this email from the excellent 38 Degrees the other day:

Dear Miljenko,

Andrew Lansley’s NHS listening exercise closes in just 4 days. We need to move fast to flood it with objections to his dangerous plans.

Thousands of personal submissions to the listening exercise will make it much harder for Lansley to spin the results. He’ll have to publish the figures, whether he likes it or not. They will tell a clear story: the overwhelming response is against these dangerous changes to the NHS.

It’s easy and fast to send your message to the listening exercise using the 38 Degrees website. It only takes a couple of minutes. There are suggestions for what issues to raise, and you can see what other 38 Degrees members are already saying.

Get started here:
http://www.38degrees.org.uk/nhs-listening-exercise

There are signs our pressure is starting to work. Yesterday, Nick Clegg said he thought Lansley’s plans need to be watered down and delayed. [1] But today’s Daily Telegraph reports that Conservative hardliners have started planning their fightback. They are determined to rush Lansley’s plan through. [2] We need to keep the pressure growing!

We’ve already created a huge stir this week with our hard-hitting newspaper adverts. Next week we will submit a copy of our 400,000-strong petition. So now, let’s back all of that up with thousands of personal submissions telling the listening exercise we don’t want our NHS ruined.

We have got until 5 PM on Tuesday, May 31 to send messages. Send yours now:
http://www.38degrees.org.uk/nhs-listening-exercise

Lansley wants to use the listening exercise to claim he’s building support for his plans, so he can plough ahead. But by working together we can make that impossible.

The British Medical Association’s own submission to the listening exercise says Lansley’s plans should be scrapped. [3] Nurses’ groups, health care charities and patient groups all seem to agree. [4] If we all keep working together, we can protect our NHS for future generations.

The listening exercise closes in four days. Please take a couple of minutes to write in now:
http://www.38degrees.org.uk/nhs-listening-exercise

Thanks for being involved,

Johnny, David, Becky, Hannah, Cian, Marie and the 38 Degrees team

PS: Here’s what the BMA said after submitting their listening exercise response: “the message from doctors is clear and simple – the Bill must be changed significantly, if not withdrawn altogether, if the NHS is to continue to improve.” [3] Send your message in now at: http://www.38degrees.org.uk/nhs-listening-exercise

NOTES
[1] Channel 4 News http://www.channel4.com/news/clegg-signals-nhs-reform-slowdown, The Financial Times: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/db0e43cc-878d-11e0-af98-00144feabdc0.html
[2] Telegraph: Tory MPs in campaign to stop Nick Clegg diluting NHS reforms http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/8540088/Tory-MPs-in-campaign-to-stop-Nick-Clegg-diluting-NHS-reforms.html
[3] Telegraph: Doctors repeat call for NHS reforms to be scrapped http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/8536450/Doctors-repeat-call-for-NHS-reforms-to-be-scrapped.html The BMA’s response to the listening exercise is here: http://www.bma.org.uk/healthcare_policy/nhs_white_paper/listeningresponse.jsp
[4] http://38degrees.org.uk/pages/save-our-nhs-who-is-worried

Meanwhile, most of my (very Labour) Twitter and Facebook feeds are currently deluged with items about this selfsame subject.  And it got me wondering as to why here in Britain we are so particularly enamoured of our health service.

My only other experience of living in a country for any length of time is Spain.  I remember my contact with the Spanish Insalud – their equivalent of the NHS – as almost uniformly positive.  The first summer I was over there they dealt very efficiently with a curious high temperature I was struck down with; they saved my wife’s life from the horrors of multiple meningitis with an incredibly complex operation; they brought our three children into the world with consummate skill (though, for a while, led us to believe our second child would be born spina bifida – a mistake of calibration I hope no health service cares to commit again); they made my mother-in-law’s last six months as comfortable as anyone could possibly have done …

And so it goes on.

But I could say the same of our homegrown NHS.  And yet what I might suggest are significant cultural differences do exist – and do impact on how we believe such services should function.

In the Spanish system, families are not only not kept at a distance from the patients, they’ve always been an essential part of the procedures.  From monitoring the state of the drip to keeping loved ones company, family members are fundamental to the Spanish way of hospital care.  In fact, most Spanish hospital rooms (and they generally tend to be rooms for two or three patients rather than wards for ten or more) seem to be equipped with reclining chairs so that family members can spend all day and night looking after their relatives.

This is perhaps a true Good Society, writ absolutely large.

And under such circumstances, death, in general, is no stranger – medicine serves not to detach us from life but brings us closer to the process that leads us all to our very solitary end.

Not all Mediterranean circumstances are as I describe them above, of course – I have personal knowledge of people facing up to the inevitable as well as deliberately ignoring it.  But I would hazard a guess that Mediterranean countries are far more publicly aware of death, far more accepting of its reality (you only have to see how the theatre of bullfighting has flourished for so long in Spain to understand this), than Anglo-Saxon countries.

This is why I suspect we in Britain and the US, even where in our very different ways (the former via supportive socialism, the latter via rapacious marketplace), spend so much of our time and political energies deflecting our attention and our resources from the need to face up to death’s inevitability onto procedures, systems, cultures and approaches which attempt to distance us from its march.

I wonder if, at least here in Britain, the way we pay for and do so much medicine is precisely because we don’t do God.

I’m not suggesting that we should do God.

Really, what I’m suggesting is that by not looking to face up to the afterlife or its absence we end up, essentially, creating health systems which – like gigantic corporations and their work processes – tend to break down every single part of our existence as participants into discrete entities which only experts can manage and ever have overall oversight of.

In this way, we become strangers in our own bodies.

In this way, we become strangers in our own worlds.

In this way, we focus on the medical games people play and ignore the realities of life which underpin them.

I don’t agree with the terribly self-serving proposals the Tory-led Coalition is looking to put in place.  But I do wonder, in the light of my experience of at least one other culture I love and treasure, whether there isn’t any other more profound kind of change the NHS needs to undergo.  The NHS, that is to say – and by extension, a wider British society.

The NHS, for the British way of life, is a sacred cow – and rightfully so.  We are, after all, talking about our very own way of dealing with death.  But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t wonder if there aren’t better ways of managing our own feelings and reactions to such an emotive subject.

In the meantime, fight all you can to save this wonderful institution.  But remember, when we talk about the importance of health, we may actually be describing our very uncertain relationship with death.

"THIS is NOT what I voted for. STOP IT"

 a con, Britain, identity cards, public-private axis, Spain  No Responses »
May 232011
 

The Telegraph reports today on a new identity card system which the Coalition government is working on introducing.  This is one response to such a plan:

What is wrong with the Conservatives?

WHY are they being so unfeasibly stupid?

THIS is NOT what I voted for. STOP IT.

Another commenter suggests (presumably of Cameron):

After pooh poohing the idea of ID cards the boy can hardly say it was a good one so he has to reinvent  it under a different guise to make it his own…unless there is public outcry when he will do a double U turn and drop it again.

It is like watching a blindfolded kid playing pin the tail on the donkey.

Now I have to say I lived quite happily with a cheap (around €10) ID card system for sixteen years of my life.  The card was very useful when opening bank accounts and proving identity in a whole host of different circumstances.  These days, it can be used electronically to prove identities online – just as the Coalition government suggests it would like to do in the Telegraph report.

However, the facile argument which posits that we should be concerned more about the public-private axis of who controls the data and less about the practicalities of the beast in question is worrying.  Whilst the state often appears to get things wrong – we know only too well the many recent British examples of this (more here) – the ingrained instincts of private industry to prevent reputational damage, which lead to the covering up of both wrongdoing and plain incompetence (more from the private sector here), surely demonstrate that what we ought to be discussing is which systems are best to use and how best to maintain them – not (for what seem like spuriously political and ideological reasons) in whose hands they are somehow “naturally” and “inevitably” going to be safest.

Another example here (in Spanish): for almost a year, the Spanish police were unaware of a typographical error in their leaflets which would have led Spanish citizens looking for further information on how to unblock their electronic identity cards to completely the wrong website – dnielectronica.es instead of dnielectronico.es. What’s more, when a hapless Spaniard tried to tell his authorities about the problem, they ignored him completely – as a result of which he decided to register the domain under his own name to ensure no one else might do the same.  By so doing, he also ensured that no one else might try and attack the security of the Spanish identity card system and its misdirected users.  The story ended just a little unjustly when the Spanish state finally took note of the issue and took control of the site in question – without, however, even expressing their gratitude to the man who’d gone to so much trouble to save the state from itself.

So really, what am I trying to say here?  Whilst bureaucracies often act crassly, they do not only exist in the public sector.  The instinct to ignore, cover up, hide or simply fail to prioritise issues which do not enter the chain of command at the right level for them to be effectively noticed is common to both private industry and the state.

The issue then is not this public-private axis I mention above but, rather, how better we can reap the clear advantages of concentrating certain private data in identity card systems of some kind or another, in order that we may then improve our ability, especially online, to usefully identify ourselves – whilst, at the same time, not exposing the integrity of our identities to greater risks than is already the case.

That, I would gently suggest, should be our focus right now.

Unfortunately, right now, I simply don’t see it.  And meanwhile, our political classes continue to chatter uselessly about the public and private – as if there were, in practice, a real difference between the two.

On post-ironic Britain and how we live dangerously when we give up our right to be offensive

 Britain, in a hole, post-irony, Twitter Joke Trial  No Responses »
Nov 242010
 

Via David Allen Green today, this thought came my way:

Our greatest legal blogger @Charonqc introduces the apt phrase “post ironic Britain” at http://bit.ly/g20X1M re #TwitterJokeTrial

Meanwhile, Charonqc’s full post can be found here.

The problem is that we’ve been in the grip of post-ironic Britain for quite a while now.  Possibly all our history, in fact.  The sensitivities of small “c” conservative heartlands – whether Tory- or Labour-voting – have been with us as a brake on free thought and broadmindedness for almost ever and always.  From the “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” trial in the early 1960s to the claustrophobic nature of the traditional English village, hypocrisy and cant have never been far from the British soul.

And hypocrisy and cant do not countenance the freedoms of insensitive honesties.

But the process is not limited to the actions of individuals happy to describe themselves as conservatives with a small “c”.  Those on the so-called “progressive” side of politics have also played their part in creating the conditions for the Twitter Joke Trial to reach its unhappy, post-ironic conclusions.  At the hands of their well-meaning political correctnesses, humour has become a high-risk activity, with criminal conviction staring us all in the face.  Much as the Nazis were allowed to ride to power on the back of a more widely-shared distrust of Jewish culture and belief, so tolerance of judicial and political intervention in irreverent content and social discourse is unhappily high and has prepared the ground for awful actions on the part of the state. 

Of course, I’m not arguing in favour of a society which is generally offensive to its component parts.   I’m simply suggesting that the fact certain people may take offence should not be the only – nor even determining – factor in how we judge the level of perceived risk generated by such potentially inflammatory discourse.

Farmers burn stubble every autumn.  We also may need our society to regularly go through analogous processes of catharsis to maintain a steady bearing on where our compass of common sense should lie.

We live dangerously when we give up our right to be offensive without fear of criminal retribution.

And I’m afraid this already happened a very long time ago.

Patience, goodness, a moral high ground and political efficiency

 Britain, conversational politics, hangbitch, in a hole  No Responses »
Oct 252010
 

Kate makes an impassioned appeal for common sense and coherence over at Hangbitch, published yesterday.  Meanwhile, the Guardian publishes this opinion poll today:

A majority of voters are convinced that the consequences of spending cuts will be unfair, according to a Guardian/ICM poll.

But the poll suggests there is no full-scale revolt against the coalition measures after last week’s comprehensive spending review, with Labour slipping behind the Conservatives for the first time in the Guardian polling series since July.

The Conservatives have turned a two-point deficit in the Guardian’s last ICM poll into a three-point lead, 39% to 36%. The government also retains a strong lead on economic competence.

That will come as a relief to ministers who feared the immediate political impact of the massive cuts in spending could be far worse.

Two things are clear: firstly, Britain is not France and secondly, the French will always surpass the British in their passionate expression and experience of political engagement.  We on the left may be right about what we say: the recent spending review may be the most regressive tool to have hit this country for decades, the financial services sector is taking us all for an almighty ride and the poor will suffer – as they always do – disproportionately the consequences of the errors of the rich. But being right is not enough.

Nor will it win the public over.

Winning the public over means dialogue and understanding.  It means trust.  It means engagement.

None of which a boycott of the 35 companies Kate mentions in her piece will ever achieve.

When Stuart Rose intervened in the last general election by signing a similar letter (Vince Cable apparently found the intervention “nauseating” at the time), I suggested to my wife that we should stop buying in Marks & Spencer.  Her reaction was interesting.  She idly wondered if I wasn’t heading for another nervous breakdown like the one I suffered during the lead-up to the Iraq War seven years ago.

For simply suggesting that I might wish to disengage with a corporate behemoth in a structured way, I was giving off signs of being on the verge of mental collapse.  The implications are astonishing.  But, to be honest, if today I dared to suggest a similar boycott to my work colleagues, or, indeed, to my apolitical friends and family, I can’t see the reaction being all that different.

I’m not sure exactly what’s happening, but what I suggest might be taking place is a process of normalisation, of internalisation, of a taking on board of the terrors of our time.  It would seem that certain boundaries are being moved by the regressive nature of the spending review.

Its awfulness will take time to kick in for people who do not work directly in the public sector, whilst anyone who is immediately affected will – I fear – tend to blame the economy in general and not the Coalition in particular for their condition.

Or if they blame the Coalition, they will not have the media support to allow them to voice that opinion.

The Coalition, especially the Tory part of the Coalition, have understood for a while that whilst it is absolutely essential to fight over the centre ground of British politics, it is not entirely impossible to move that centre ground to where you may feel more comfortable and at home.

I know some of you may have been unhappy with my references to the Nazis yesterday, but this process of normalisation which I fear may be on the point of happening – and which the Guardian/ICM poll mentioned above already seems to indicate is taking hold – reminds me most unhappily of that creeping process of becoming accustomed to the unacceptable that Nazi Germany exemplifies most clearly.  The horrors of National Socialism are obviously in a league of their own but this government’s penchant for propaganda, for brazenly saying one thing before an election and quite another after, is really not all that different from Herr Goebbels’ unhappy achievements in communication.  Blaming ethnic minorities for the miseries of late 1920s Germany is really not all that removed from blaming the poor for being poor in early 21st century Britain.  Especially when the poor are now so very much poorer precisely because of the actions of the rich.  The very rich, that is to say, who managed to so comprehensively mess up the delicate balances in high-rolling finance – and then had to get bailed out by governments which really couldn’t afford such benevolences.

Thus it is we have to accept that in the midst of all this horror, we didn’t keep our eye on the ball at all.  As Paul so rightly says:

The wider conservative milieu conducted an incredibly successful assault on the legitimacy of representative democracy in the closing years of the last government. One that Labour were unable to resist because it didn’t occur to many of them that it was happening. And the results have been stunning.

As a twenty-year old ultra-Thatcherite Bullingdon Club member, Osborne could never in his wildest dreams have believed that he would achieve everything he went into politics for within six months of taking office. And he would have thought you were mad if you told him he wouldn’t even need to win an election to do it!

Legitimacy.

Yep.  That’s what we need more of.

Patience, goodness, a moral high ground and political efficiency.  That is the mix we need.

In Britain, conversational politics must always be our most violent weapon.  It’s the only way to win over the British in the end.  Being so savagely unlike them never worked.  Not long-term.

Propaganda, life in Britain and modern technocracy at its best

 Britain, in a hole, propaganda, technocracy  No Responses »
Oct 242010
 

These two posts – here and here – are worth reading in their entirety, if you’re looking to get a feel for what’s happening to our once verdant and prosperous land.  As someone just tweeted, the following opening paragraph from the second link above puts everything in perspective:

What better way to wind down after a difficult week at the office, in which you’ve sacked 500,000 people, slashed public spending, made the poor poorer and seen your party sink in the polls, than to close your eyes, dream you’re on a far-away island (I don’t know, maybe Belize, the Cayman Islands or the British Virgin Islands – I hear some of Clegg’s Tory chums can fill him in on that) and spin some discs…

Life in Britain can only get worse, can’t it?

It makes you think this is what it must’ve been like living under Nazi rule in a Jewish ghetto in the 1930s.  Not – I hasten to add – because I believe this government is Nazi-like in its instincts to propagandise our public discourse or document our every communication.  Whilst proposing the liquidation of 500,000 public sector jobs over a period of four years is simply an example of modern technocracy at its best – this is, after all, a duly (well, partly) elected coalition of common interests operating with the interests of everyone in the country.

No historical parallel there then.

No.  The reason I mention the ghettos (and I fervently hope that this does not make you believe I am either trivialising the awful nature of the situation then or exaggerating the government’s penchant for unkindness now) is because this fever we are beginning to labour under where we assume there will come a time when things do not get any worse – or cannot get any worse – means we are already deluding ourselves as to the full extent of the changes planned.

Cuts from above, handed down by people who only focus on high-level detail and leave the dirty dirty for their ministers and underlings to work out, are not examples of consensual politics at all.

Meanwhile, this excuse sounds familiar: the situation is so grave that uncontemplatable things suddenly become contemplatable:

Britain’s Coalition has managed the trick of blaming everything on Gordon Brown’s Government. The facts – that debt, interest rates and unemployment were low before the crash – are ignored. The themes are profligacy, fairness, inevitability and overdue reform of the public sector. Each claim is belied by the evidence, but the Coalition is undaunted. The tactic is to repeat its assertions relentlessly until, like the best of fibs, they are believed.

Mr Osborne had one. Britain, he said more than once in the Commons, was on the verge of bankruptcy before he took action. That’s not even remotely true: Britain, like most developed countries defrauded by the banks, has an uncomfortably large debt interest bill and a structural deficit. Bad enough, but not apocalyptic.

The cuts, though, are fair, they insist. Hence Nick Clegg’s remarkable claim, in an interview published yesterday, that it is “complete nonsense” to measure fairness only through the tax and benefits system. Yet he did so while arguing that the tax and benefit changes are, of course, fair.

Mr Clegg justified this fib, disputed by the non-party Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), by stating that “the richest are paying the most”. The LibDem said: “Those who say otherwise are not being very straight with people and, frankly, they are frightening people.”

By “most” he did not mean actual sums of money, of course. That would be silly. He meant that the top of the top decile, perhaps 2% of taxpayers, will surrender a larger proportion of their income than the lowest group. He forgot to say that this is only the case, among a group accustomed to ingenious tax arrangements, thanks to Labour’s imposition of a 50% rate, a move opposed vehemently by Mr Clegg’s new Conservative friends.

This other penchant for propaganda and doublespeak is really so familiar.  I wonder where – and, historically, when – I’ve heard it all before.

*

Of course, making fun of Nick Clegg must be quite easy at the moment.  And it does make me question if our politics is entirely healthy.

We seem to move in deathly consonance – like a flock of weighty birds – from one (even if hardly hapless) victim to another.  Today, it’s Clegg’s turn to get the flak; the day before yesterday we had Peter Oborne informing us that Osborne is the really bad guy and in the end Cameron might have to do something about it.

But this is all surely just one more symptom of our unfocussed state of mind.  We are lashing out according to the opportunity this interview or that presents.  We spend our mortal hours fisking the statements and moral quandaries of people who are getting away with murder.

For they are all in it together, for goodness sake.  And we know what happens when people burn their bridges.

I’m not arguing for more tribal politics when I say this.  We have more than enough of that already.  What I am trying to say is that we need to understand how we in politics, on all sides of the political debate, cannot propose leading the people of Britain again where they do not want to go.

If all we can do is spend valuable weeks and months pointing out how wrong they are and yet still find ourselves unable to show where we are right, we will have to kiss goodbye to any chance of recovering the future for an incisive left.

For what we must recognise is that each new political generation is the son and daughter of the previous.   Their envelope of action is defined by what they had to survive.  And in some way, we must accept, as harbingers of a doom we can readily predict but not now avoid (unless we are prepared to take the direct action that nations like the French are happy so to do), that part of the blame for this dreadful mess is ours and ours alone.

The Nazis came about partly because of a wider tolerance in European society to their ideas on race and how relationships between different peoples should be conducted.

We can only really begin to do something about this Coalition government when we understand we are also a part of the problem.  To some extent, they exist today because we were as we were.  Our challenge now is to show the rest of the country we are no longer the same.

There must come a time when we have to stop being so damn clever.

There must come a time when we start being a damn sight more good.
____________________

Further reading: William Keegan in today’s Observer writing about possibly the most dangerous chancellor of our lifetime.

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