On me, boring the pants off Labour hopefuls

 Chester, Labour, MPs, on a high  No Responses »
May 032013
 

I’ve spoken to four Labour hopefuls for the parliamentary seat of Chester.  I’m not sure why they keep on coming.  The conversations are always long; and for me absolutely fascinating.  But then I don’t half speak a lot.

For them it must be sheer torture.

A sign of democracy at work, mind.

A good sign, that.

I appreciate each and every visit sincerely, and in the spirit each and every one was intended.

The most recent visitor to my humble abode, unannounced this evening but pleasurably received, shall remain (as with the other three) quite nameless.  There was plenty to talk about, though.  Two things I’d like to mention.

I realise now, as a result of this evening’s conversation, that the following is important for me when choosing a candidate for MP.  Two fundamental approaches.  One involves judging which person might be most faithful to their constituency; which person might be least likely to be swallowed up by Westminster and that black hole of community betrayal.  The other, in a cruelly globalising world, involves judging which person might be most effective for their constituency; which person might be able to set themselves apart from that black hole of community betrayal I mention and use it to engineer greater benefits in a wider picture.

The tipping point towards one candidate or another or another or another will be determined by how sure we can be of their fidelity and competence.  And since people grow as they live their lives, what we vote on now will never be what it becomes.

So we can’t ever be sure of anyone, can we?

Of course not.

But even so, we must take our decisions as people stand before us today.  In a sense, we must determine to what degree we want to risk our futures, and how: is the job of MP a potentially magnificent multiplying of the role of local councillor?  Or, alternatively, is it a far more complex throwing of the conceptual dice, as that big and foreign world out there is seen in terms of its multiple impacts on our much smaller existences?

Is it possible, in the end, to interact with the big – and change it before it manages to irrevocably change us?  I do wonder.  I think, in fact, I’ve wondered all my life.  I think, perhaps, this – above all – is what has stopped me from interacting.

Talking of which, I’d like to come to the second point I wanted to mention in this post.  The subject of One Nation Labour arose tonight: the contrasts it may afford, once decently articulated, between the divisive Tory narrative of turning one sector of the British people against another on the one hand and the collaborative future Ed Miliband’s Labour will probably wish to engineer on the other.  But an interesting phrase, connected to the aforementioned concept, also came up in conversation: a strongly expressed desire on the part of the candidate I spoke to this evening to radically change Britain for the better.  And my reaction was quite subdued; at the very least, we could say nuanced.  Let me explain why.

I suggested that instead of wanting to radically change Britain – which quite easily could be interpreted as yet another prejudice-based obsession to change people where people-change is impossible – we should begin to construct a narrative around wanting to change the structures, companies and ways of seeing and making society that impact on our ability to radically be the people we always have been.  That is to say, One Nation Labour should not end up a fresh-faced rerun of New Labour’s New Britain – forcing square pegs which are happy to be square pegs into round holes they quite vigorously dislike – but, rather, a newly forged adapting to those 21st century realities which involve the engendering of enabling instincts many good corporate organisations now use on a daily basis.

In short, instead of changing Britain, and by extension the people, we should be changing the environment in order to liberate and release the people.

The difference may be one of focus.  The implications would, however, be substantial.

It’s not the people who are at fault – even as the Tories would have us believe this is the case.  No.  It’s the round holes which refuse to place themselves at the service of us incorrigibly square pegs.

Now worked on and fashioned carefully, that would be a tale worth weaving.  If only the progressive souls amongst us would one day accept that the great political actors of the 21st century should focus on adapting environments to people and not the other way round.

Especially as the other way round has already been tried and found terribly wanting.

Electoral success would indeed come to those who might believe in such an approach.

My question running as follows: are we even able to properly comprehend the nature of the challenge?

OFPolitico – the new independent regulator for politicians

 democracy, democratic deficit, free press, Leveson inquiry, MPs, MPs expenses, political parties, politicians, politics, regulation, unclassifiable  No Responses »
Mar 182013
 

The Royal Charter deal hacked out by hacked off politicians, presumably fed up to the back teeth of the whole sorry mess, is currently being resisted by those it is designed either to channel or shackle – depending, that is, on your point of view.  Yes.  It’s true.  Such an intervention by Parliament in the doings of the free press could lead to a police state some way down the line.  Alternatively, in the light of so many recent and documented events in #hackgate land, it could just as easily lead us to a useful downsizing of the existing and perniciously cosy nexus of politicians, the media and/or police.

Some thoughts to be getting on with, in no order of importance:

  • Just because you’re “anti-press abuse” doesn’t mean you’re “anti-press”.  In fact, if you truly love a free press, you’d surely prefer it not to abuse its potential reach.
  • Wishing to prevent the abuse of the powerless by the powerful is compatible with wishing to hold the powerful to account.  The problem of giving or not the media free rein arises when powerful media and powerful politicians become, essentially, indistinguishable actors and actresses in our democracies.  This is lately more a case of an economically shackled press which, whilst acting as if it believes in freedom, really believes in corporate self-interest.  The free press they claim we’re on the point of losing has never been free in the way they would sell it us.
  • Self-regulation of newspapers clearly failed: it was the media players who once had the chance and the media players who cocked it convincingly up.  It’s clear that something really important needs to be done: if an independent regulator is the only way forward, then let it be so.  If there is another way, of course, then let disinterested parties with no conflicts of interest, either political or financial, decide.
  • A free press should exist to inform and illuminate our democracy, not to allow certain individuals to lever power on the backs of their media ownerships.  There is nothing in the least salubrious nor free about a society where monopolistic media units decide who speaks, on whose behalf and when.  Especially when fifty percent or more of all copy is (freely!) sourced from the same wire services or cut-and-paste press releases.
  • Finally, while we need the service efficient and effective journalism may once have managed to provide, the financial pressures on all media organisations – a haemorrhaging of resources in some cases these days – no longer guarantee in themselves the service a good democracy requires.  It’s a joke to say that a latterday Citizen Kane will hold power to account in the public interest.  It’s a bad joke; an irony of the toughest kind.  Yes.  He or she will hold power to account – but only in a very personal sense; only in terms of the interests of his or her shareholders, of his or her publishing corporations, of his or her global financial needs.

Where I do, however, agree with the newspaper professionals is here.  As per the Guardian article linked to above (the bold is mine):

Trevor Kavanagh, the associate editor of the Sun, said it was worrying “when three political parties get together and their final verdict is welcomed so enthusiastically by Hacked Off which is definitely seeking to shackle and gag the free press. We simply do not want politicians to have control whatsoever in what goes in or doesn’t go into newspapers.“

This is fair enough.  We might go further, of course.  We, the public and sovereign voters, simply do not want newspapermen and women to have control whatsoever in who gets in or doesn’t get into power. 

But perhaps, in the circumstances, that’s a bit of cheap shot.  (On the other hand, perhaps it’s not.)  Which brings me to my final point tonight.  If self-regulation is clearly past its sell-by date for newspapers and other media, and the evidence thus far would seem to indicate this is singularly the case, perhaps self-regulation is also past its sell-by date for politicians and other professional leader-types.  We’ve had so many scandals in relation to MPs’ expenses, revolving doors and all kinds of self-enrichment scams subsidised on the ever-weakening backs of the taxpayers that, hardly surprisingly, the evidence would appear to bear out the assertion: leaving all the above, as well as salary increases and living and working conditions various, in the hands of interested parties like MPs is bound to lead to similarly systemic abuse.

Not to mention the conflicts of interest that lobbyists pay highly to take advantage of and which no one, but no one, is doing anything about.

Time for an independent regulator for MPs and other parliamentarians then?  It would be a good moment for the suggestion to gain traction.  As the “free” press lost some of its choking and often self-interested stranglehold over politicians via the introduction of truly independent regulation, so a counterbalancing institution would be slotted into place to control – in an equally systematic manner – potential abuse of a political nature which newspapers might formerly have dealt with and uncovered.

That it required the actions of the Telegraph and other papers for the abuse of MPs’ expenses to come to light should not be forgotten, of course.  But what equally must not be forgotten is that the system of oversight which should have brought it to light in the first place was more or less as self-regulated as the systems which the very same press subscribed to in their own industry before Leveson.

And look where that led us all.

In both cases, it is significant that a bacterial-like culture of self-enrichment and deception spread out as it did.  So if the only solution for a corrupt British press is a new independent regulator, perhaps we should demonstrate how competent and even-handed British democracy still can be by putting in place – as soon as is practicable – an exactly similar institution to channel – or shackle, depending on your point of view – these professional enablers and leaders of our sacred body politic.

Peopled by representative persons without political or financial interests in the matter, it could be a kind of supreme court of the citizens.

A democratic circle which would serve to satisfactorily complete a dirty undemocratic cycle in the most elegant and sustainable way possible.

Yes, we need to spend more money on our MPs (but definitely not on their pay)

 democracy, MPs, on a high  2 Responses »
Jan 122013
 

Yesterday, I discovered there was science to back up my behaviours as incorrigible blogger:

[...] unthinking work responds positively to the attractions of monetary payments.  They dangle a larger carrot in front of you – or threaten you with a larger stick for not working harder – and, verily, you end up working harder.  But when it comes to using your brain to think, more money actually makes you perform worse!  Time and time again, the data proves the latter.  An astonishing – and apparently counter-intuitive – conclusion.

Where, then, do our MPs fit into this frame?  Paul describes the three main theses thus:

There are three basic camps on MPs’ pay.  The first camp maintains that all MPs are thieving bastards and should be paid less.  The second camp says that MPs may or may not be thieving bastards but that their pay should be held down so that they are “in touch” with the people they represent.

Then there’s the camp who go with the “to get the right MPs doing that important governing thing really well, you have to pay a good rate, and the current ones’s nowhere near enough.  They’re the ones taking the high ground, telling the other two campas they need to be more rational, or at least not Chairman Mao.

I think, however, that Paul misses out a fourth – one I have arrived it in the light of my aforementioned post on the dumbing down of processes in a thinking society.  That is to say, we have to decide whether the job of an MP is equivalent either:

  1. to that of a manager-driven and wage-slaved legislative worker bee; or
  2. to that of a self-motivating and cognitively-enhanced legislative thinker.

If the former, then we can structure the debate as Chris also seems to have done (the bold is mine):

The news that MPs think they deserve a £20,000pa pay rise is neither surprising nor relevant. Not surprising, because we all think we’re underpaid. And not relevant, because pay does not and should not depend upon desert. Instead, the question is: if we paid MPs more, would we get better governance? I’m not sure.

But I don’t think the former, that is to say, that of legislative worker bee, should hold true – and if it does at the moment, then we have the wrong people in the job (and maybe utterly the wrong system in operation).  It is, of course, arguable that this is exactly what we have – but perhaps precisely because of the assumptions that currently underlie the arguments surrounding our MPs’ responsibilities.  Bound hand and foot, as they are, by political-party loyalties and whips – as well as all the related behaviours which such a relationship engenders – too much of what they seem to do these days involves amplifying centrally sourced, structured and engineered messages which party hierarchies wish to disseminate.  Instead of being those self-motivated thinkers I suggest they might in other circumstances aspire to being, they tend far more often to act as simple cogs in an echo-chamber machine.  Original thought is squeezed out by monolithic postures – and the nearest they ever get to being those original thinkers I am asking for is when they are asked to scrutinise new legislation which, in itself, is all too often couched in rubber-stamping process.

Little impact or influence do they ever seem to have if we care to measure them in terms of concepts such as true innovation, grassroots connection and individual investigation.

So how could it be?  Let’s go back to the social media examples I started out with.  Whilst I worked full-time as a data-entry processor for a large banking corporation, outside my working day I was also blogging on this site.  The job I carried out here was far more complex, cognitive and wide-ranging than punching numbers ever managed to be.  Whether it had – or indeed has – any intrinsic value, only you have a right to say, of course, but even a minimal appreciation of what I’ve been writing will surely admit it’s been more complex than simple manager-driven data-processing.

I was, then, both worker bee and self-motivated cognitive thinker.  For the former, I worked harder as bonuses were dangled in front of me; for the latter, the bonuses involved the very personal satisfaction of writing a rounded piece, some hits stats which allowed me to believe some people had found it useful enough to read and the distant thought that at some distant time life might reward me differently for what I was doing.

But all of the above could not have been even contemplated if the technology to research my posts – and publish them once written – did not exist; was not cheap; and, above all, wasn’t seamlessly connected to thousands of other thinkers similarly engaged.

The cognitive stuff so many of us produce these days exists, therefore, not because of our pay but – rather – because of our tools.  It is access to these splendid tools that really drives us to continue wanting to turn our unformed imaginings into consequential trains of thought – and, equally, turn our consequential trains of thought into cogent and understandable posts.

If, then, we are to assume that MPs in the future should be, more often, self-motivated cognitive thinkers than manager-driven worker bees who are assumed to be blindly responsive to stick-and-carrot remuneration packages, the above examples of blogging and social media would seem to indicate that, yes, it’s time for us to consider a significant investment in our democracy – but not with the managerialist instincts that so often lead us to foolishly construct pyramidal hierarchies with highly-paid CEO-types balanced problematically at their tops.

We need to put more money into democracy, it is true – but definitely not into MPs’ pockets or, even, political-party coffers.

Where then?

In my opinion, the fourth approach we need to resolve the conundrum of MPs’ remuneration would run as follows:

  1. We would need to flatten the pyramid of responsibility.
  2. We would need to pay MPs the kind of salaries which good university teachers – ie good enablers and facilitators of learning, development and research environments – would expect to receive.
  3. We would need to ensure MPs’ back-office operations are resourced enough to develop and research legislative ideas and innovation as effectively as any decent university-based research department.
  4. We would need to spend far more on enabling and creating policy environments of truly original and organic thought around each and every MP in Parliament.

Finally, think tanks, lobbyists and journalists with ready copy to peddle would have to be banned from all legislative negotiations: if possible, we might consider passing specific legislation to summarily eliminate them via parliamentary phaser gun; if not, at the very least we should aim to taser them into frequent and blabbering submission.

The latter is, of course, a joke.

The rest, though, is anything but.  What do you think?

Take your dog for a walk – and the voters for a ride

 in a hole, Legal Aid, MPs, MPs expenses, NHS, riots  No Responses »
Sep 122011
 

This item requires little comment, I’m afraid:

Shamed Tory Peer Lord Hanningfield has been released from prison after serving nine weeks of his nine-month sentence for fiddling taxpayers out of £14,000.

The website which brings us this story currently has a picture of the gentleman in question taking his dog Jefferson for a walk.  Meanwhile, it would appear the justice system has decided to take the rest of us for a ride.

Compare the above with this, if you will allow me to remind you:

A college student with no criminal record was jailed for six months on Thursday for stealing a £3.50 case of bottled water during a night of rioting.

The judge in the latter case justified the sentence in the following way:

[...] District Judge Alan Baldwin said the background of “serious public disorder” was an aggravating feature.

I wonder what he might have said about the issue of MPs’ expenses. Surely another clear example of “serious public disorder”?

Or not … as the case may be.

And then we wonder why we don’t love Legal Aid as much as the NHS.

On David Cameron’s "most troubled", white collar looters and that blessed National Citizen Service

 a con, David Cameron, England, MPs, National Citizen Service, national service, riots, white collar looters  No Responses »
Aug 152011
 

Thus says our Prime Minister, David Cameron:

“Within the lifetime of this Parliament, we will turn around the lives of the 120,000 most troubled families in the country.”

I wonder how Mr Cameron intends to define “most troubled”.  When he uses this term, what exactly does he mean?  Does he mean the poorest, that is to say, using poverty as a crass indicator of criminality – or does he mean the most criminal, in which case any social class?  I would be very interested in what his expectations are: if, for example, we do manage to identify those white collar looters of families at the top of the social pyramid, where it’s the mothers and fathers who have been involved in crime (in this case, corporate fraud), do we really expect the aforementioned miscreants will attend programmes such as the National Citizen Service - and, if they refuse to, be required, by Mr Cameron’s millionaire Coalition, to fully participate?

Or is this all, in fact, one massive underhand plan to take advantage of these disgraceful riots in order to cement politically convenient theses?  Which is actually to say: “most troubled” = rioters and looters = benefit claimants = only the poor.

Myself, I’m all in favour of a National Citizen Service – as long as, of course, it includes an expenses regime akin to that of MPs.  What do you think?

On confusing the instinct to deter with the need to punish properly

 Big Society, bigotry, crime, David Cameron, Grant Shapps, in a hole, MPs, normblog, Parliament, Twitter  No Responses »
Aug 112011
 

Norman has a useful piece on triangulating, and even – quite appropriately in the circumstances – intellectually nabbing, the rights and wrongs behind the recent riots.  Well worth a read.

Meanwhile, to the extent that I can, I’ve been following the Twitterverse on the subject of some of the wilder opinions MPs have expressed at the session held in Parliament today on the same matter.  Coupled with what I was reading till far too late last night, I’ve come to the following conclusion: we are confusing the understandable instinct to deter right now with the need to properly punish long-term.  Thus it is that the Greater Manchester Police were making it clear in no uncertain terms yesterday evening that every miscreant would be caught, locked up and charged – with such an overbearing tone I began to feel mightily guilty myself.

Plenty of other people were happy with the tone used, though.  So who am I to say?  But when Mr Cameron decides today we must evict the wrongdoers from their homes, I don’t think he’s being entirely clear about his own motivations and their origin.

First, this nice paragraph from an instant analysis of the proposal itself:

We should note in passing that Grant Shapps, a housing minister whose knee is never knowingly un-jerked, has today suggested that the ‘locality’ condition should be scrapped so that those found guilty of ‘being involved in rioting’ in another area could be evicted. The trouble with that is it would simply mean being convicted of an arrestable offence, even if wholly unrelated to the home or to housing, would be a ground for eviction. That may just be a step too far for all kinds of reasons, not least Article 8. [...]

And so it is that I do rather feel that whilst the GMP has a perfect right, under the circumstances, to use any tone it might wish in order to tilt the balance of behaviours in the direction we would all prefer, and whilst – quite separately – Mr Cameron might understandably wish, by leading through overbearing threats, to remove from law-abiding neighbourhoods those anti-social elements who have caused so much trouble, I still am driven to conclude that aiming to deter demagogically after the event will always lead to the writing of bad legislation – as well as, more importantly, a cycle of poor sentencing always likely to store up for the future its own particular problems.

Those who have made the moral and individual mistake, to paraphrase Norman’s article at the top of this post, of committing these acts of aggression do – then – need to be punished, of course.  But we shouldn’t allow our own fear of not being able to achieve an immediately cost-effective peace in the streets to lead us to grandstand imperiously in the hope that such declamatory actions guarantee that peace sooner.  If, in order to effect peace, we must use impositional discourses, the society we will generate will inevitably contain future swathes of injustice.  And maybe this worst case scenario.  As I pointed out on Shuggy’s thought-provoking post:

[...] I don’t see the police as fascist by the way. As I wouldn’t see the army either. In all conflicts, the people who make up the forces of “order” are just as much at the mercy of their taskmasters (politicians) as any of the rest of us inevitably become. If we *must* go with a state where its representatives only ever choose to represent those who are already active, and the imposition of law and order rather than its consensual application is to be par for the course, then at least let us impose it efficiently. What is absolutely unacceptable is to have the worst of all possible worlds: more or less non-consensual rule coupled with inefficient public order-keeping.

But I would far rather believe that if the government is truly interested in the Big Society (of what seems like a veritable age ago now), it needs to ensure that it manages to be duly and generously big-hearted too.

Precisely when this is most difficult to sanction.

What is happening at the moment, however, where the public-order requirement to deter further criminality is blurring our ability to perceive the social requirement to be more even-handed and just than the miscreants, is not a standpoint we should happily embrace.

We shouldn’t confuse a profound belief in the importance of a just and intelligent legal system with an alleged tolerance of anti-social behaviour.  Even more importantly, we shouldn’t allow such anti-social behaviour to circumscribe our ability to construct and sustain a just and intelligent legal system.

Britain today

 a con, MPs, News of the World, police  No Responses »
Jul 192011
 

I’m currently watching policemen talking to MPs about their relationship with newspaper staff and organisations.  It’s just been announced that ten people in New Scotland Yard’s communications department, of which there are apparently a total of forty-five individuals tasked in the role of representing the police to the outside world, have in the past worked for News International. 

In the Britain of today we might expect the police to watch and report on the press and the press to watch and report on the police.  Singularly, however, it would seem that – instead of the latter – the police and the press actually employ each other.  And almost on the nod.  Without any vetting process whatsoever.  (Though nominal tendering procedures do seem to be in place.)

(Goodness me, for my lowly job at the bank, I had to go through an outsourced and independent vetting process where – if I remember rightly – even my medical record was covered off.)

I am sure you will be able to see it on YouTube and iPlayer and Sky over the next few days.  A sequence of talking-heads, repeating the same unhappy mantra: “I don’t know.  I wouldn’t know.  It wasn’t my job to know.”

And we still have Brooks and the Murdochs to go.

MPs and other public servants: should we want them to work as hard as we do?

 Big Society, in a hole, latterday capitalism, MPs, targets  No Responses »
Feb 262011
 

The question is close to my heart.  Stumbling and Mumbling provides me with some food for thought thus:

This raises the question. If MPs were paid no more than their experience and qualifications would suggest (say, £40,000), how would it change our politics? Would it really cause many talented would-be MPs to pursue other careers? And would this be a serious loss anyway?

If truth be told, the vast majority of us ordinary folk work under the yoke of so many performance management systems, micro-objectives, annual goals and those productivity and quality targets galore which all too obviously riddle our working lives, that the oxygen (or maybe we should say the carbon monoxide) of public glare which our dear MPs and other public servants suffer from seems very small beer by comparison.  MPs have access to the media and can put across their ills much more effectively than their voting public can, to such an extent that – perhaps – they even end up believing their own rhetoric.  But it is not the MPs who are underpaid and over-managed.  Rather, it is the whole nation.

Should we want MPs to work as hard as we do?  No.  For once, I would say not.  Our focus should be on achieving, for everyone, the kind of lifestyles even MPs should be able to enjoy – if only, that is, we were more efficient at organising how our society functioned.  With fewer responsibilities at the top of the political tree, with flatter hierarchies, with properly devolved decision-making strategies which weren’t designed (à la Big Society) to exclude everyone but white semi-retired constituents from local governance, we could reduce the need to pay those salaries we already pay – salaries Chris discusses so cogently in his piece – and involve far more people in those truly important matters of democracy a broader participation by all would lead to.

And with more of an emphasis on what should be the democratic journey of life and less on the discrete micro-managed targets of mind-deadening capitalism, we could make space in people’s working and leisure lives for a far more productive and horizon-expanding approach to politics – an approach which would surely serve to benefit us all.

Why not devolve all local responsibilities to councils and leave MPs entirely to deal with the rest?

 broken politics, in a hole, local government, MPs  No Responses »
May 082010
 

I wonder why we can’t simply assign each party its MPs based entirely on the simple percentages of popular vote they achieve – and, in the absence of clear local ties for the MPs as individuals that such a system would lead to, we could simply strengthen and empower the local responsibilities of councils and their representatives.  In this way, MPs would spend their time in London dealing with national and international issues (which is what they seem to prefer to do anyway) and local issues would be dealt with at a local level.

There would, of course, have to be some regular interface between national and local representatives – but such forums would not be difficult to organise.

Or am I now falling into the trap of spouting Tory libertarian “Big Society” doublespeak?  Not out of a desire to confuse or distract, I assure you.  Not in my case.  I’m not saying it to cut back on the state’s involvement in people’s wellbeing.  I’m saying it – I think – to improve that involvement.

Am I just following a misguided line of thought then?

So is anyone able to tell me why the above would be such a bad idea?
____________________

Update to this post: Paul’s just posted some wishful thinking over at Never Trust a Hippy.  Nice ideas.