Capitalism’s ultimate revenge: Coalition Britain

 capitalism, Coalition, Coalition capitalism, Coalition cuts, Coalition economics, democracy, in a hole, politicians, specialisation, specialisations  No Responses »
May 182013
 

If we believe in a history of the masses – not just in one of heroes and heroines – there has to be more to what is going on between Cameron & Co and the rest of civil society than simply the bald intention to fill corporate pockets with even more dosh than they already possess.  There must be bigger movements at play here than simply stupid incompetents being stupidly incompetent.

Firstly, it would appear there is a massive battle being fought between a society of professionals on the one hand and a society of the unprofessionalised on the other.  So it is we have doctors, nurses, teachers and lawyers fighting painfully disagreeable rearguard actions with people who have few actual qualifications to be what they end up acting out: in the main, alpha businessmen and women and politicians of all colours and levels.  These latter two “professions”, if the label can (or should) be usefully applied, currently have few training paths to prepare them for the roles they carry out – supposedly on our behalf but more generally on their own.

Secondly, there does seem to be a recognition out there that specialisation – the very stuff of both charlatans and experts – may in some insidious way itself be destroying society.

In another universe then, quite parallel to Cameron & Co’s, we might appreciate the attempts of what we could charitably describe as Wannabe Renaissance Men (WRM) (there would appear to be few women, thankfully, of the same mettle) to break through the Chinese Walls of self-interested sectors.

The problem, of course, is that these WRMs I describe really aren’t.  They’re not doing what they do in order to break down barriers that divide society but, instead, in order to re-establish – using the most unpleasant methods possible – those barriers which most benefit them at a quite individual level.  It would seem they have so convinced themselves their might is right that anything can be justified – precisely and simply because of who or what originates the acts in question.  And we are so taken aback by the astonishingly unexpected nature of these acts – so massively and confusingly outside our moral scope – that we find ourselves mainly giving in:

Govt using practices we instinctively know are wrong but our inexperience of such immoral behaviour is restraining our outrage. #Disabled

Yes.  It’s possible that Cameron & Co are able to sleep at night because they truly believe themselves on a crusade against evil and interested parties.  They see themselves as cavaliers – as latterday buccaneers of magnificent breaking-the-rules ambitions – in much the same way as top-flight businesspeople often feel themselves hard-done-to by a comfort-seeking society which fails to appreciate the real emotional hardships they run the gauntlet of in their uncertain rise to the top.

No wonder these creatures all become self-seeking and selfish.

No wonder they believe we must become like them.

But, in reality, Cameron & Co are anything but Wannabe Renaissance Men – anything but the far-sighted finally able to shrug off a lazy society’s shackles and liberate a democracy of the dreadfully slumbering.

They sense something that perhaps all of us should sense, it is true, but they are utterly incapable of performing the service civilisation requires of them.  As Pope Francis mentioned the other day, their money is ruling the vast majority instead of serving the same.  And unable to reconfigure it, they have given up at the first hurdle; they have given in and become its hugely detrimental servant rather than its master.

Renaissance Men?  They wouldn’t know a flying machine if it hit them on the noggin.  They’d assume it was a brutal and violent attack by dangerously trained beings on their self-taught, unqualified and intuitive impulses.  Out of such inferiority complexes are born the actions of the essentially brutish.

So who’s lost their moral compass?  Is it ourselves – lost in a sea of society-defining media?  Is it the journalists themselves – as yet another suspiciously discrete body of professionals too?  Or is this actually a case of the pyramid so taking over everything we do, think, say and believe that a 21st century of gloriously compulsory education has only prepared us properly for outright submission?

Maybe, even, Cameron, Gove and their cohort of evil politicos are right in some of what they say – even as they wrong in most of what they do.  Specialisations are destroying society; sectors which know so much about their own workings are never going to be entirely direct about the changes which might prejudice them.

Maybe we are all Wannabe Renaissance Men (and Women, of course).

Maybe that’s the problem.

Capitalism’s ultimate revenge: the diarrhoea of an amateur democracy.

Coalition Britain, in fact – multiplied, now, a thousandfold.  And controlled by those with the biggest chips on their shoulders history has seen.

From a society of supposedly meritorious conduct, those who least deserve to be in charge are those who have most benefited from a social democracy that urged us to value citizens in terms of what they were instead of what they did.

And so it is that the moral black hole this Coalition of half-baked humans inhabits is bound to fail, time and again, to properly impact on our sense of right and wrong.

We’ve been taught for far too long that what you do isn’t what you are.

To such an extent that what they are is affected in no significant way by what they do.

And even as they lambast us for our relativistic ways, they continue to ruthlessly take full advantage of the room for manoeuvre such generous morals do allow.

The importance of knowing what our leaders HAVEN’T done

 a con, business, business leaders, laws, politicians, politics  No Responses »
Apr 282013
 

It’s really getting tricky to work out exactly what is going on.  Two examples come to mind:

Which brings me to this recent epetition requesting that someone devise laws that would cover at least the latter case:

Ban MPs from voting on matters in which they have a financial interest

Responsible department: Office of the Leader of the House of Commons

We call on HM Government for new legislation to ensure that:

i. No member of Parliament may speak or vote in a debate on legislation which could financially benefit any commercial operation in which they have a financial interest; and

ii. No member of Parliament may speak or vote in a debate on legislation which could financially benefit any commercial operation which has made – or currently makes – donations to themselves personally or their political party.

We believe this is necessary to prevent corruption. It is also in accord with the spirit of political reform supported by the government.

And this is why I point this out to you today: mainly because I don’t believe the real issue to hand is working out what our leaders HAVE done.  That is the job of journalists and other politicians – that is the job of all those who oversee how things work.  No.  I think the real issue to hand is quite another one.  As I tweeted a few minutes ago:

Leaders have spent last 30 years passing laws to control us in order we didn’t notice laws which for their own benefit they haven’t passed.

And when I say leaders, I do mean both business and political.  It’s what they DON’T do which should really be occupying us now.

Why has our democracy stumbled into the 21st century with no legislation of import in place to prevent those with certain financial interests from voting on a matter they will benefit directly or indirectly from?

Why have our allegedly free markets been built upon the foundations of a money-pricing system which allows the major banking corporations to collude in fixing their levels?

What other aspects of latterday democratic life simply choose to ignore pressing legal matters such as these – and prefer, instead, to pass laws relating to a whole host of curiously repressive regimes which only really affect the ordinary people?

And where they also – gently but persistently, and into the bargain – end up improperly distracting us from the above.

After all, we’ve had a plethora of constructive and revealing websites and organisations which continually register, define and explain what our leaders have been getting up to and are doing.  Isn’t it time, now, that we began to do the same with everything else – that is to say, everything else they quite deliberately HAVEN’T done?

Time for yet another Internet list then?

The hugely important list of all the major pieces of legislation, which those whose intention it is to seriously hobble democracy and free markets have made bloody damn well sure should never happen.

So anyone know where we might start?

Bite-sized replies on a virtual postcard, please!

A game of snakes and barriers: the BBC the snakes, the class system the barriers

 BBC, business leaders, class war, class warfare, old boys' networks, politicians, statistics, unclassifiable  2 Responses »
Apr 032013
 

I’ve watched, very sadly, the decline and fall of my beloved BBC.  Perhaps it was always going to be a government mouthpiece of sorts.  But whilst governments still represented the median voter, that their (our) public broadcasting systems also might molly-coddle the politicos … well, it somehow didn’t seem so important back then; somehow didn’t seem so grave.

Whilst there is clear evidence out there that the BBC has failed, for government-led ideological and propaganda reasons, to properly report issues of the day, I’m not sure – at least to date – whether anyone accused it of re-engineering the future.  But today I think we have such a case.  Today we get “The Great British Class Survey”.  Its top-down motivations can be better understood here:

Policy makers tend to focus primarily on the economic dimension of class. Concepts like progressive taxation (taxing richer people more heavily than poorer people) are a good example of this.

Increasingly, the social dimension of class is receiving some attention, with initiatives to improve networking opportunities for people who are otherwise socially excluded.

But the cultural aspect of class has so far largely been ignored, perhaps because it is a broad yet subtle concept that can be difficult to measure. The problem is, if we don’t measure it, we can’t know how important it is and how much it influences people’s chances in life.

Especially where we discover its publication will take place:

[...] The data from this survey will be analysed by Professors Savage and Devine and the findings will be published in a suitable peer-reviewed journal.

So essentially a massive survey, which serves to cement the idea that society should be described in a highly fragmented and supposedly snakes and ladders way (presumably looking to promote the idea of a meritocracy where everyone gets the opportunity to climb the multiple ladders of self-betterment), will be carried out through the BBC‘s sponsoring of a mass, and freely obtained, participation by maybe hundreds and thousands of licence-payers – only to end up a) in the naive data-crunching hands of academia, and b) in the insolently ruthless clutches of think-tank folk everywhere.

For the Lord only knows what’ll be made of the findings – or indeed how they will be used, in quite partisan ways, to drive further wedges into a future self-interested stratification of our nation.

But here’s a pointer if you still don’t fully understand the potential implications.  Try substituting the word “class” in the title of this survey with the word “caste” – and then see how you feel about it all:

Caste is a form of social stratification characterized by endogamy, hereditary transmission of a style of life which often includes an occupation, ritual status in a hierarchy, and customary social interaction and exclusion based on cultural notions of purity and pollution.[1][2] [...]

Ring any bells?  Does to me, anyhow.

There is, after all, a very fine line between simply describing a situation and ending up prescribing it – especially through the critical framework you elect and the publicity you give to its launch. And the launch that has been given does, I’m afraid, make me doubt its future political neutrality.

In fact, whatever happened to the idea we were all human beings?  You know, those human beings at the suffering edge of 21st century history, who were encouraged so firmly to find ourselves “all in it together”.

Oh, these button-pressing, number-crunching academic, political and business leaders!  What blessed obsessions with getting to know us via our stats they do exhibit.

Don’t you really just love ‘em?

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.

What a politician’s lies really mean

 a con, lies, politicians, politicking, politics  No Responses »
Mar 082013
 

The job of a politician, fairly so too, is to tell lies.  That is to say, not tell the truth as it is but tell the truth as he or she would wish it to be.  Politicians deal more in the future than the present.  The present is an inconvenience – it is more difficult to shape and manipulate.  Much easier it is likely to be to convince a voting public that tomorrow may just be the corner we are hoping to turn than to convince them that today is not quite as miserable as it (manifestly) is experienced.

In fact, to take care of a voter’s expectations with respect to the future is probably to take care of how they feel about the present.

The past, meanwhile, is for the irritating elephantine figures amongst us who – with their considerable memories – tie down flights of fancy with a reality all too inarguable.

Better ignored, then, instead of faced up to.  Better proscribed instead of prescribed.

Now we all understand and appreciate, I think, the moments in the political cycle when politicians enthuse.  Tony Blair was good at this; John F Kennedy for the Americans too.  When such salespeople of gloriously word-ridden ideals make our emotions fly with their clever crystallisations of moments in a country’s history, we feel – all of us – that anything might be possible.  Whether in adversity or in a time of great advances, a nation’s spirit – how millions feel about themselves and about their environments – can be productively affected by the simple declamations of political leaders.

In companies, some CEOs can do the same.

And in all these cases, in their upsides and downsides, we encounter both the power of that human spirit to overcome and reshape reality as well as a profound appreciation of the value such people add to our experiences of life.

There is, however, a much darker side to these professional communicators: communicators for some – or, as I said the other day, obfuscators for others.  What do we understand by those moments when such leaders claim to have a quite different relationship with the future – those occasions when they say they are taking hard decisions and proceeding to tell us tough truths?  What is the point of such behaviours – and how do we react?  Bad news seems to travel fast, it is true – but, more curiously, bad news seems, like a cinéma vérité surface of edgy camera angles, to engender its own weight of inarguable veracity.  We seem to believe more readily the depressions of tough political love than the emotions of sky-soaring pleasure.

The question then arises: when politicians engage in such behaviours – the tough political love, I mean – what are they really engaging in?  Knowing, as they must, that whole economies will see their precious confidence exhausted, shouldn’t we be suspicious of any political salesperson who chooses to paint a situation as negatively as they possibly can?

What are they trying to achieve?

What are their true aims?

Isn’t it – simply – a desire to fully manage the moods, and perhaps the overarching ability to fight back too, not only of an entire environment but also of an entire people?

Beware the salesperson who chooses to be that bearer of bad news.  They are only out to control you even more than those who – more normally – only choose to sell you the good.

Bureaucracies – our saviours or our assassins?

 bureaucracy, business, business leaders, corporations, in a hole, NHS, politicians, pork-barrel politics, private bureaucracy, private sector, privatisation, public sector, pyramid politics, pyramidal organisations  4 Responses »
Mar 072013
 

Rick has a lovely piece on defending bureaucracy as a Good Thing.  It starts off like this:

Gus O’Donnell presented a thought-provoking programme on Radio 4 this morning, In Defence of Bureaucracy. He presented two arguments. Firstly, you can’t get much done without basic organisation. Secondly, bureaucracy, with its formal rules, offers protection from the arbitrary whims and prejudices of those in power.

I suggest you read it in its entirety.  It’s not just a piece about bureaucracy in government.  It’s also a piece about bureaucracy in the private sector.  This paragraph, for example:

Bureaucracy is the corporate equivalent of the rule of law. It protects people from arbitrary decisions inside the organisation. Rules and procedures give people clarity about their roles, their scope for decision making and their boundaries. Like the rule of law, they protect employees from random and vindictive treatment by their bosses. It has become very fashionable to deride bureaucracy but working in organisations with fewer rules and procedures can be just as unpleasant. Trying to second guess the whims of a maverick autocratic boss can be every bit as energy draining and innovation stifling as working in a bureaucracy.

In essence, as a set of democratic societies, we could not have arrived at where we are if it hadn’t been for the law-engendering instincts of overarching rules, processes and procedures.

It’s clear, therefore, that our impulsive perceptions of bureaucracy need a makeover.  We need to perceive it with a greater sense of its complex contribution to latterday civilisation.  Therein the rub, of course.  There’s plenty of evidence that bureaucracy – and its fairly widely independent relationship to political masters – makes it a perfect vehicle for doing ill too.  Just because a bureaucracy religiously ensures that rules, processes and procedures are followed to the letter doesn’t mean that only good may necessarily spring forth: if the rules, processes and procedures in question are malignant in nature, the result will be unkind.  What’s more, pretty consistently – even remorselessly – unkind.

The most obvious example is how the Nazis appropriated the Weimar Republic’s institutions.  But we also have an example much closer to home:

Patient interests were neglected for years by NHS mangers as hospitals concentrated on cutting waiting times at the expense of good care, the head of the service admitted today.

Sir David Nicholson accepted that he was “part” of an environment where the leadership of the NHS “lost its focus” and which indirectly led to the unnecessary deaths of hundreds of patients at Stafford Hospital.

Now it still seems the latter case is being the subject of much political football – the Tories have recently blamed the previous Labour government for, I assume, its attachment to targets (perhaps, in this case, the wrong ones – that is to say, the easiest ones to measure); meanwhile, the Labour opposition is calling for Nicholson to resign his current responsibility as driver of highly unpopular government-organised change at the NHS.

As I’ve said on a previous occasion:

If you think about it, the pyramid which reaches pointy-headed to the sky is actually totally absurd.  As the work gets more complex and challenging, we use fewer heads to decide what needs to be done.  The chances of committing errors, of stressing oneself into illness, of failing to achieve one’s targets … these are all bound to increase with the traditional pyramid we are all used to.

Surely this is madness.

Surely we need if not a cylinder, at the very least a pyramid without a considerable part of its upper superstructure.

And as Shuggy concisely points out:

From the Hootsmon:

“Excessive hierarchy must become a thing of the past. Upward communication must be encouraged and constructive criticism should be positively received.”

The remedy for this is, apparently, to give those at the top of the hierarchy more power:

“Headteachers should be seen as the chief executives of largely autonomous organisations…”

Kier Bloomer being desperately stupid in a way that only intelligent people can be. I’ll make this my last post on education for some time because this stuff makes me so depressed I can’t stand it.

Again as I’ve said on other occasions, where we currently find ourselves is here:

Where managerialism takes over, and where hierarchies reduce the number of people involved as the tasks get more complex, we get the big-hitter striker syndrome: a man or woman at the top on whom everyone is focussed. A man or woman on whom everything depends. A man or woman who will one day fail; or perhaps, over time, frequently fails – but has the physical presence to convince us they are, even so, actually succeeding; and so deserve the massive salaries they command. [...]

Bureaucracies and top executives – or corporate law and CEOs, if you wish – are complicated relationships, after all.  It’s true, of course, that bureaucracies can act as a dead hand on individually dangerous and maverick leaders.  But as the Nazis showed us, and as the concept of charismatic leadership more widely demonstrates, a stratospheric leadership structure can just as easily use a bureaucracy to escape conviction and control as that very same bureaucracy can serve to ameliorate the former’s wilder instincts.

If we want to continue to believe we can use bureaucracy as a force for good, we need – first and foremost – to sort out the ever-growing dysfunctionality of pyramidal structures, as well as the inefficient concentrations of wealth that accompany it.

It’s the people, stupid!

 bureaucracy, corporate Communism, free-market capitalism, in a hole, people, politicians, private bureaucracy, private sector, process, public sector, public-private axis, system, Welfare State  No Responses »
Mar 032013
 

This post is about two tweets which came my way yesterday.  Both speak of the importance of personal responsibility.  The first describes its reach in private industry (in this case, I believe in relation to a recent story on the freemium app industry):

Companies are made of people, and people have a responsibility for their actions, inc. developing (potentially) exploitative freemium games

The second, which came my way hot on the heels of the first, said much the same thing – only, this time, in the context of the NHS (the Mid-Staffordshire scandal comes immediately to mind):

The best managers help clinical staff treat according to need and make patients healthier, not enforce NHS policy whatever the consequences

Meanwhile, in an oxymoron-like diatribe of the weakest kind against everything and anything New Labour ever did, David Cameron has this to say in today’s Sunday Telegraph:

That is what everything this Government does comes back to: the future. We are looking at the horizon, not tomorrow’s headlines; doing what’s right for the long-term. Thirty years ago, Margaret Thatcher said that we should be “in the business of planting trees, for our children and grandchildren, or we have no business to be in politics at all”.

I couldn’t agree more. In 30 years’ time, I want people to be able to look back at this government and see that we paid down our debts, helped create millions of jobs, sorted out welfare, made our schools world-beating and built homes for a generation.

Doing this kind of work might not earn you popularity points in by-elections, but it’s what I’m in politics for: making the country we love as great as it can be.

I haven’t heard that “planting trees” metaphor for really quite a while.  I suppose we’ll have Michael Gove telling us next that we should all write a novel before we die.

I’m also just a little puzzled – maybe out of technical ignorance – as to why he says “paid down our debts” instead of “paid off“.  Unless, of course, he means that it’s going to be the little people at the bottom of the pile who’ll always end up saving the Tories from their economic selves.

But perhaps this is all just a little too nitpicking on my part.

In truth, it’s always going to be the people who make a difference to any society.  Politicians of the kind who tend to rule us prefer to ignore this.  If they didn’t, they’d have to engage us in their processes – they’d have to get us involved and actively participating.  Far easier to blame an anonymous public-sector bureaucracy – and shift the responsibility stealthily onto equally anonymous private-sector equivalents – than to admit that the root of all our problems lies not in our systems but their application.

It’s not so much a new education system we need – it’s more a system teachers and students know how to work with.

It’s not so much a new legal system we need – it’s more a system whose costs victims and other participants don’t have to fear.

It’s not so much a new health system we need – it’s more a system which provides support as and when a person becomes a patient in need.

The Welfare State is the way to make our society less inhumane.  It’s in our grasp – but it is a choice.  We can spend considerable resource on allowing the fortunate to further concentrate their good fortune – or we can deliberately decide to give the less fortunate the consideration, charity and kindness most belief systems have tended to argue should be made forthcoming.

But what we have to accept is that, either way, it’s a choice.  If we choose to fashion a world where we must walk on the other side of the road from that homeless man who dies at the doorstep of a bungalow, we can.  We will do so, I am sure, in order that ambitious alpha men and women can – amongst the disasters they also commit – achieve what they undoubtedly do.  And this is clearly an act of socioeconomic decision-making at the highest level, committed by coherent men and women.  It is a freely-taken decision. It is an unforced decision to let some people live better at the expense of others.  It is a statistical calculation of risks that approves of achievement at the very top, even as it judges society will not rise up in arms and disintegrate as a result of the anonymous homeless dying distastefully in the streets.

If, on the other hand, we opt to help such homeless people – if our goal is to create a socioeconomic environment where this kind of action is prioritised over other, more aggressively innovative, behaviours – we may create, again entirely consciously and deliberately, a society where survival is ameliorated for a far greater number of our souls here on earth, even as achievement measured objectively loses its bleeding edges.

And either way, to come back to the original set of choices, and whether politicians like it or not, if anything turns out right, it’ll come down not to systems they proudly and powerfully announce but, rather, to their humane application – or otherwise – by people who look and act and feel like you and me.

That personal responsibility.

That core humanity.

That attachment to caring at an individual level for each and every relationship.

That love, even.

That kindness, generously imparted.

Far more important for a classroom than this textbook or that is the mind that plans the lesson around a book and the hands that clutch its spine.

For the funny thing about Cameron’s oxymoron of a weak diatribe is that there was very little in it I found myself fiercely disagreeing with.  Oh, yes.  Those silly sentences on immigration.  The daftness around welfare.  But in reality, the poor man knows exactly what we need to do.  Like when he says, almost pleadingly (the bold is mine):

These are not claims or promises: they are facts. We are turning the tide on years of decline — and building a Britain for those who work hard and want to get on. And we need to go further. We need to get more houses built. We need to build new roads and railways and energy connections. Some reading this may not like that; but as I have made clear, this is not a popularity contest but a battle for Britain’s future.

The problem isn’t the words, David.  The problem is the people.

In fact, the problem – more widely expressed – is your, and your professional class’s, attitude to people in general.  The fact is that systems, for high-flying politicians, are like electromagnets of recent generation: when you have the opportunity to choose between getting people voluntarily onside or creating a foolproof system designed to cage them into a certain set of behaviours, you can guarantee any minister worth their caviar will be pulled inexorably in the direction of implementing a brand-new system over convincing ordinary people to work better with an existing one.

I really do sometimes get the feeling that Cameron and some of his cohort are locked painfully into the wrong party of UKIP-incubating MPs and hangers-on.  If only he, and perhaps they, had chosen Labour, we could right now be facing another decade of government.

Maybe I should now spoil this post for you (or, alternatively, not) by saying how very much that idea makes me shudder.

Then again, maybe I shouldn’t.

*

They say familiarity may breed contempt.

I’m inclined, however, to believe that being a politician (of empire-building instincts, at least) makes one contemptuous of the familiar.

In this, both One Nation Labour and the more traditional Conservative impulses, which Cameron has appealed to in his text today, have aimed to reassure potential voters in a time of utter uncertainty that being British, in itself, is quite enough to be getting on with.

But in the end, they are all just words – both Cameron’s and Miliband’s, I’m afraid.

In a sense, I get the feeling that our politicians are likely to be as lost here as the rest of us.  And in this realisation (as Poirot might suggest!), I find the future most terrifying.

Where ordinary people would be the real solution, our leaders are now only able to work with systems.

The systems have taken over to such an extent that these ordinary people I mention truly have no impact whatsoever on the results – even as they end up shouldering all the blood-spattered blame.

The personal responsibility which I started this post with is impossible to properly engineer or encourage.  We spend our time terrified of the juggernaut-like mechanisms that threaten to bury our professional futures in a careering disgrace.  We hide, like frightened rabbits, from the oncoming lights which should illuminate – but which, in the end, serve only to make the shadows evermore powerful.

Yes.  It’s the people, stupid.

And our leaders are too stupid to realise it.

The downsides of Googlefying council meetings

 democracy, Google, in a hole, politicians, politics, publishing, WikiLeaks  No Responses »
Feb 182013
 

About eleven years ago I was studying in Spain for a Publishing Master.  There were many great and good craftspeople who taught us the ins and outs of a very particular trade – a very special trade.  At the time, I was looking to set up an online publisher.  I was aiming to cut costs in the industry by using technology to combine the roles of various skillsets in one individual.  This wasn’t the paused, many-handed and time-honoured way of publishing – but in time it has come to pass, and ten years later we live in a quite different world.

What really was focussing minds ten years ago, however, at least in Spain and at least in this course, was what was seen as the evermore pervasive and encroaching danger of an American search-engine upstart called Google (the bold is mine):

Google began in March 1996 as a research project by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Ph.D. students at Stanford[1] working on the Stanford Digital Library Project (SDLP). The SDLP’s goal was “to develop the enabling technologies for a single, integrated and universal digital library” [...].

Google’s aims were clear – as least to the Spanish tradition of editors.  Whether you liked the idea or not, whether you were prepared to collaborate or not, whether you accepted the terms as laid down by the powerful or quixotically attempted to resist their impositions, Google’s ultimate aim was to turn your thoughts, your lives, your very own selves and – finally – even your carefully guarded intellectual property into nothing more nor less than the virtual equivalent of the water that since time immemorial succeeds in seeping everywhere.

In the name of transparency, openness and sincerity (TOS), Google would one day be ripping out the very heart and soul of your entity.

And so that, as well, has come to pass.  Online caches of all kinds mean that however careful a maintainer of your content you are, anything and everything you post is likely to come to someone’s preserving notice and instincts.

But, what’s more, instead of being used to promote the transparency, openness and sincerity (TOS) I mention, it’s become a sorry old tool of a most traditional bent: a tool which, in hindsight, my dear Spanish opponents were right to fear – and perhaps even right to resist.  Google’s asserted desire to make knowledge available to all comes at a massive cost.

The cost is the Googlefying of you, me and the cat’s mother.

*

The Americans have consistently trashed WikiLeaks for opening the door to all kinds of communications they firmly argue are better kept secret.  And yet, from their very own apple-pied backyards, we have Google invading every corner and content we could possibly conceive.  The instinct to bare souls is shared too: you and I, our friends and family … all of us spill our bleeding-edge thoughts into the ether that now embraces everyone.

It’s hardly surprising, then, that the Googlefying instincts which a decade of brutal exposure has engendered should have now reached the chambers of our democracies.  This story, for example, from 2011:

AN internet blogger has been arrested after she tried to film a Carmarthenshire Council meeting from the public gallery.

Now it would appear that no crime had been committed, nor local law infringed.  The council in question simply took exception to its proceedings being recorded in such a way.  I’m sure that the immediate reaction of most people in the Twitter- and blogosphere would be one of anger and surprise.  And I suppose I’d feel pretty obliged to go along with such reactions – if only it wasn’t for the history of Google I’ve just gone and recounted.

Images and video are such cruelly permanent matters.  Can we honestly argue that our democracy is entirely better for encouraging the kind of politicians who thrive on television appearances and firmly taped and registered political events?  Many would argue, of course, that the transparency they bring is only ever going to improve the transparency of our political processes.  But I’m really not sure this is the case any more.  Images and video seem – of late, anyhow – to promote the worst kind of manipulation our body politic has seen for a very long time.

And if the arguments people have used against WikiLeaks – a dumping mechanism of all kinds of unwary data which makes private truth-telling and negotiation impossible to promote – are to be considered at all sustainable in any way, then equally the Googlefying of our wider world – of which random and unannounced filming of council and other democratic process is simply one of many examples on the horizon – needs to come under a far closer scrutiny.

From a very personal perspective, I would like to see far more politicians who can speak to the public without falling into the temptation of speaking to the gallery.

So ask yourself this, then: which, in the end, will the Googlefying of the world really encourage?

Are the English political cowards?

 a con, cowardice, England, English, Labour, NHS, NHS cuts, politicians, politics, poverty  No Responses »
Feb 102013
 

This piece just published by Seema Chandwani on Labour Left describes all too clearly what’s happening to the NHS at the moment:

Across the country, the NHS is being dismantled, downgraded and closed down. These decisions are reckless and defies commonsense considering the  growing population. Regardless of the rhetoric from Cameron, the systematic collapse of the NHS is at the heart of Tory ideology as recently exposed by the release of government documents from the Thatcher era. What we are seeing now is an attack on the NHS to fulfil Thatcher’s once defeated plans.

And whilst the Twittersphere I find myself in appears to be vociferous enough, no hugely physical manifestations in the real world seem to be taking place.  The government is proceeding apace with its plans, it would seem.  Nothing too contrary prevents it.

Seema has this to say on the subject (the bold is mine):

The biggest weapon the Tories (and their Lib Dem friends) have to fulfil their vision is public apathy and naivety. The media’s coverage of what this government is doing to the NHS has been intentionally weak and we are being drip fed myths of desired improvements by a manipulating Tory regime. As I have a diabetic brother and my younger sister is being treated for suspected MS, being apathetic, naive and manipulated cannot be an option for me, I am sure that each one of you have similar reasons or experiences why the NHS is important to you.

Actually, I would wager that the vast majority of English people have very direct reasons or experiences to value the NHS.  If not at a personal level, then almost certainly at a familial.  So this – this personal experience, or lack of it – cannot be the reason the English are not now dramatically out on the streets, defending their future wellbeing and health.

Perhaps, then, the explanation lies elsewhere: are the English, in fact, political cowards?

I don’t mean everyone.  I don’t mean the activists.  I don’t mean those of us who love and hate politics in equal measure.  I mean ordinary people: people living their lives; people the politicians are supposed to serve and represent; people who only have the time to survive, work and occasionally live.

Does a certain level of poverty – or its horizontal threat – make of us all little cowards in some way or another?  When you still have a little to lose, do you prefer not to make waves?  Is the fear of losing everything a matter which leads us to kow-tow to those who are hurting us?  And is that precisely the place where we find ourselves now – as a people, as a community and as a nation?

The Tories don’t really have us by the balls, do they?  They simply have us by our cowardice.

For being blind only means you cannot see as the wicked do too easily

 a con, ATOS, disabled, people, people with support needs, politicians, politics, sex offenders, sexual abuse  1 Response »
Jan 172013
 

I went to Chester Zoo recently.  I saw some beautiful butterflies.  All butterflies are beautiful – but these were particularly beautiful.  What’s so very beautiful for me about these creatures is how they dance unthreateningly from one position of rest to another.  They add to the world in almost everything they do.

But they do so in such a sustainable way.

We could do well to treasure their example.

There’s something else I admire about the butterfly, of course.  A long time ago, I was instructed by my father – who, even today, treasures their example in much the same way I suggest above we should all aim to do – not to try and touch them ever.  Apparently, their wings are covered in tiny scales – the touching of which removes an important protection.

In this, butterflies are one step away from a lingering but unstoppable death.

One touch, in fact.

Yet evolution has cared to find them a place in the scheme of things.  Nature has created them and decided unthreatening, in this case, is good.

And nature, in this, at least in this case, is about as wise as it gets.

Two examples today, then, of where we human beings have become butterfly-crushing bastards.

First, Aaron Swartz’s suicide, the implications of which I hope will continue to resonate: please read these two posts from John Naughton and ensure that this indeed does continue to happen.  From the second of the two, and quoting from a Matt Stoller article:

[...] What killed him was corruption. Corruption isn’t just people profiting from betraying the public interest. It’s also people being punished for upholding the public interest. In our institutions of power, when you do the right thing and challenge abusive power, you end up destroying a job prospect, an economic opportunity, a political or social connection, or an opportunity for media. Or if you are truly dangerous and brilliantly subversive, as Aaron was, you are bankrupted and destroyed. There’s a reason whistleblowers get fired. There’s a reason Bradley Manning is in jail. There’s a reason the only CIA official who has gone to jail for torture is the person – John Kiriako - who told the world it was going on. There’s a reason those who destroyed the financial system “dine at the White House”, as Lawrence Lessig put it. There’s a reason former Senator Russ Feingold is a college professor whereas former Senator Chris Dodd is now a multi-millionaire. There’s a reason DOJ officials do not go after bankers who illegally foreclose, and then get jobs as partners in white collar criminal defense. There’s a reason no one has been held accountable for decisions leading to the financial crisis, or the war in Iraq. This reason is the modern ethic in American society that defines success as climbing up the ladder, consequences be damned. Corrupt self-interest, when it goes systemwide, demands that it protect rentiers from people like Aaron, that it intimidate, co-opt, humiliate, fire, destroy, and/or bankrupt those who stand for justice.

But Aaron Swartz isn’t alone in his death at the hands of the political inversion of our public interest.  Here in Britain, today, we now have plenty of evidence to hand to demonstrate how all these unsung heroes of our time – human butterflies all – are being broken by a political system that turns a very real public interest into a very private personal benefit.  Some choice examples here:

The first example concerns a constituent of mine who was epileptic almost from birth and was subject to grand mal seizures. At the age of 24, he was called in by Atos, classified as fit for work and had his benefit cut by £70 a week. He appealed, but became agitated and depressed and lost weight, fearing that he could not pay his rent or buy food. Three months later, he had a major seizure that killed him. A month after he died, the DWP rang his parents to say that it had made a mistake and his benefit was being restored.

[...]

To illustrate one of those cases, I shall cite a letter I received from a constituent, Janine, in Liverpool. Her dad was thrown off sickness benefit in November after an Atos work capability assessment and was declared fit for work despite suffering from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Six weeks later, on Christmas day, Janine’s father died.

[...]

My caseworker, like those of many Members, is inundated with cases that are tragic and heart-rending. The telephone line to my office is often clogged with crying people. They often ring several times a day, as they are unable to cope with the stress that they are facing. Many have mental health problems, and are unable to cope with the paperwork. They are unsure what to do with it, and they ring me to ask for help in the most tragic and personal way.

[...]

We are all here today because constituents have come to us and told us their stories. Constituents have come to me in their wheelchairs with their carers because they have wanted me to know about the difficulties that they are experiencing. They cannot understand why, in the face of overwhelming medical evidence, they are still being called in for interviews. Some cannot understand why they have been told “If you make it to this interview, you must be fit for work.”

[...]

Thirdly, there is a category of people who are being considered fit for work although they have had, for instance, a severe stroke or are awaiting a back operation. One constituent was told that if people could move an empty cardboard box, they could go to work. Do the health care professionals employed by Atos always take account of the fact that people have to get to work in the first place, or that, while they may be able to perform an action once, they may not be able to perform it repeatedly when it causes severe pain?

[...]

Many disabled people’s groups say that the reductions in benefits have had a catastrophic effect on recipients, and there have been a number of reports of suicides and untimely deaths brought on by immense distress. In my surgeries, I have heard several harrowing and very sad accounts from constituents who have been subjected to impersonal and inhumane work capability assessments by Atos. One has been diagnosed with an aggressive brain tumour, which cannot be completely removed because that would leave her paralysed. In August and September of last year she had radiotherapy to slow down the growth of the tumour, but in October she was told that it would grow back even more quickly, and that she would have to have further radiotherapy or she would die. I should add that this lady also has polyarthritis and asthma. Why has this lady been placed in the work-related activity group? Her doctors and consultants have specified that she should be placed in the support group as she is fighting for her life. Her only concern should be winning that battle.

[...]

Another constituent contacted me who had been ill for two years and was eventually diagnosed with cancer following a serious bout of pneumonia. Prior to her illness, she had an unblemished employment record. She was certified as unable to work by her GP and had attended many DWP hearings about the employment and support allowance, with the final one being in April 2012. She won her tribunal hearing against the Atos decision. She had not received a single penny in state benefits from before April 2012 until she died at the end of November. She faced immense distress and was denied any financial assistance at a time when she was vulnerable and in desperate need of assistance.

[...]

Clearly many of my constituents have not been treated with the fairness and decency they deserve. Although I realise that we need to see whether people can work, we need a system that is humane and fair, not one that causes fear and loathing. It is time the Government realised that they are driving many sick and disabled people into poverty. What does the Minister think of Citizens Advice’s detailed year-long study “Right first time?” on the controversial work capability assessment run by Atos, which has revealed evidence of widespread inaccuracies in the medical reports that help to determine whether individuals are eligible for sickness benefits? Citizens Advice also tracked a group of people through the process of claiming employment and support allowance and looked at how their claims were handled. The report’s conclusions are stark: 37 individuals were tracked and had their reports examined, with serious levels of inaccuracy revealed in up to 43% of the reports. That level is significant enough to have an impact on the claimant’s eligibility for benefits—surely our sick and disabled deserve better than this.

[...]

Over 5,000 of my constituents are on incapacity benefit or employment and support allowance and they are facing this terrible system. I should like to give a few examples. Mr H, a double-leg amputee, was told to undertake an 80-mile round trip for his work capability assessment. Mr W, who has serious mental health problems, had a panic attack and was physically sick during his WCA but was told he was fit for work. His wife believes that he is being victimised by Atos. Mrs D, a district nurse who broke her back at work, was told that she is fit for work. Mrs M, who was treated for cancer in July 2010, was deemed fit for work before the results of the operation came through. Her appeal will not take place until next month. Mr E, who is one of the people the RNIB is worried about, had been completely blind for 16 years and forced to give up work, but was told by Atos that he was fit for work.

And finally (the bold is mine):

A gentleman in my constituency—let us call him Mr D—served in the forces for many years and is now in his late 50s. In the past 18 months, he has undergone extensive surgery to the brain, following a tumour, and in November 2011 he was informed that he required further surgery, this time to his neck, to remove the growing tumour. At the same time—in precisely the same month—Atos assessed Mr D as being fit for work. That assessment was undertaken by someone who was not trained as a doctor at a time when Mr D was going to assessments with a gaping wound in his head and still undergoing treatment. Does it not make an entire mockery of the whole process if that is allowed to happen? Does it not cast real doubt on the effectiveness and accuracy of the whole system? Most ominously, does it not reveal the system’s true intention?

Several of my constituents—far too many to be isolated incidents—have told me that they were asked by the person carrying out the assessment whether they just sat around all day watching Jeremy Kyle. I expect uninformed, unprofessional and crass comments from the likes of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, but not from medical professionals with the serious task of determining whether a person is fit for work in, presumably, an objective and non-prejudicial manner.

Too much to read you say?  Too many words, distant experiences and other lives we cannot be expected to share?  Well, I’m afraid there’s plenty more of the same at the Hansard link in question.  And you really should read it all.  In fact, I insist.

Now.

Go ahead and do it.

And then come back for a very short last couple of thoughts.

*

If Aaron Swartz has anything in common with any of the rest of us souls who populate this planet, it is with these human butterflies I refer to above.  Struggling to understand the world as it really is, yes.  Weak, in no way at all.  With everything stacked against them too.  For being blind only means you cannot see as the wicked do too easily.

And seeing life as it is doesn’t mean giving up on goodness either.

Even when pursuing goodness may – ultimately – mean one’s own destruction.

*

One final link for you to think about.  This, tonight, from the Independent, takes us back to the conflict-strewn 1980s:

The Labour MP Tom Watson alleged in the Commons in October that politicians belonging to a paedophile network had used their powerful connections to escape justice.

In a short statement tonight, the Metropolitan Police said: “The Metropolitan Police Service have today, Thursday 17 January, launched an investigation, Operation Fernbridge, into historic allegations of child abuse in the early 1980s at the Elm Guest House, Rocks Lane, Barnes, London.

“The investigation will be led by the Child Abuse Investigation Command. Anyone with information is asked to contact officers on 020 7161 0500.”

Talk of breaking butterflies on wheels, eh?

This shit is everywhere, at all levels and in all countries.

Isn’t it?

In a thinking society, why do they dumb down all the processes?

 corporations, people, politicians, problem-solvers, process, pyramid politics, pyramidal organisations, unclassifiable, work, Work A, Work B, work-life balance, work/life balance, workers, workfare, workforces, working people, working to live, working-class, workshy  1 Response »
Jan 112013
 

Yesterday, on the back of an excellent post published by James Firth describing the upsides of shirking and laziness, I in turn said this:

And thinking on this fearful government campaign against the concept of shirking as James would prefer to understand it – a concept we could just as easily describe as idle thoughts, imagination and deliberately unfocussed creative and lateral thinking in general – makes me wonder if our government doesn’t have a couple of prejudices driving it:

  1. Thinking idly must be the preserve of the idle rich – because it’s one of the most sure-fire ways of getting richer.
  2. Thinking idly must be the preserve of the already powerful – because, as one sure-fire way of understanding how the world really works, it’s bound to lead the plebs to reconsider their assigned positions in society.

What I didn’t realise was that there is science behind what is happening.  Watch this video, first – it’s only ten minutes long and will change your life for sure.


http://youtu.be/u6XAPnuFjJc

As you will see if you follow my instructions to the letter, 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.

Are human beings, in reality then, hard-wired socialists by nature?

It’s certainly a thought, anyhow.

*

Naturally enough, this got me thinking.  I worked for about seven years in a large banking corporation.  My experience in one department there led me from relatively thinking tasks at the beginning to evermore desultory and meaningless data entry six years on.  The trends were absolutely clear: the dumbing down of processes and their corresponding procedures was an instinct which was manifestly part and parcel of corporate life.  The question was: why?

I always assumed it was an urge to reduce training costs, limit the impact of staff turnover and make it impossible for any one worker to be in control of sufficient intellectual property which a move into another company might prejudice.

The dumber the processes the workforces have to carry out, the fewer of those processes – and their value-adding implications – they can take away with them out of malice or pique, for example.

But in the light of what we’ve just seen in the RSA video above, it would seem that there is an intuitive (maybe even conscious) conspiracy sustaining itself to take out of a thinking society such as ours – trained for decades, as it has been, in the constructive cocoon of compulsory education to cogitate better and more profoundly than ever before – all the relevant and value-adding opportunities to use our cognitive and self-motivating side to be precisely that.

So instead of substituting a stick-and-carrot system designed to make simple and repetitive tasks function at least minimally well with an alternative system which would fit exactly with our thoughtful and educated latterday brains, large and small companies everywhere have decided – whether deliberately or instinctively – to jettison all attempts to take advantage of our minds and, instead, return us to the drudge of manager-driven wage slavery.

In a thinking society, where almost everyone has been taught how to imagine, create and laterally devise, this is why they’re dumbing down all the processes: it’s a power thing, after all.  A desire to keep a hold of those old hierarchies.  A need they have to maintain the control that externally motivated work has over the worker bees it commands.

And what’s even more curious is that as we continue to find ourselves carrying out more and more meaningless tasks in our work time, in our leisure time we’re blogging and videoing and writing to our heart’s content.  What’s more, with mostly very little monetary reward.

Whilst we’re pushed towards evermore robotic work experiences, our need to think and cogitate cannot be suppressed.  Just as, in fact, our democracy is removed from our politicking, so our desire to search out and practise democratic process moves into online and other virtual manifestations.

However hard you try to remove freedom of thought and cognitive opportunities from human beings and their daily experiences, you are bound, I think we can all agree, to ultimately fail.

And whilst we humans are pushed towards – and back into – meaningless work, and whilst our robots become cleverer and more ingenious, no wonder our politicians feel the need to criticise the thinkers: to criticise them roundly, describe thinking as shirking – and let it be understood that those who wonder are wasting their time.

After all, imagine how difficult it might be to rule over a nation of people far cleverer than you.

A nation of people who thought stuff without the petty reward of the only thing that separated you – with your concentrated wealth – from them.

A nation of people who didn’t believe stuff in accordance with what you gave them or withheld.

A nation of people who did what was right because doing what is right is what keeps them alive.

That, in conclusion, is what we now have in the United Kingdom.

Too many clever voters who think better in their spare time than their leaders are now managing in their paid time.

Curious, isn’t it?  Curious how historical hierarchies always seem to fight to reassert themselves.

Why do we hate politics so much? (A clue: it ain’t the politicians!)

 political innovation, politicians, politicking, politics, unclassifiable, war  No Responses »
Jan 062013
 

Imagine going naked onto a battlefield every day of your life.  Imagine being a civilian caught up in the collateral damage of professional warriors.  Imagine having to swallow the ideology of people who claim to know what’s best for you.

Imagine, if you will, a war where you have no place which is not that of passive observer; where the stray bullets kill your desire to live even when they miss you by a mile; where the powerful have the whole bloody armoury in their possession and all you can do is observe their trigger-happy antics.

Imagine, in fact, what it must have been like to live in a Sarajevo under siege:

The siege of Sarajevo, as it came to be popularly known, was an episode of such notoriety in the conflict in the former Yugoslavia that one must go back to World War II to find a parallel in European history. Not since then had a professional army conducted a campaign of unrelenting violence against the inhabitants of a European city so as to reduce them to a state of medieval deprivation in which they were in constant fear of death. In the period covered in this Indictment, there was nowhere safe for a Sarajevan, not at home, at school, in a hospital, from deliberate attack.

— Prosecution Opening Statement, ICTY vs Stanislav Galić, 2003[14]

*

It’s nowhere near the same in latterday British politics, of course.  Not yet, anyhow.  Not for a while.  Or is it?

In a way, in a very figurative way that is, perhaps it really is the same.  Perhaps that’s why we hate our politicians so very much.  And, in a very great sense, we are wrong to blame them for it.

I am minded to voice the above thoughts on the back of this piece by Gloria de Piero over at Labour List at the moment.  In it, she describes the results of a poll she commissioned which revealed that a quarter of people interviewed would – in what is admittedly a rather hypothetical context – seriously consider becoming an MP:

Imagine you were in your thirties or forties, and friends of yours suggested you should stand for election to become an MP. What do you think your reaction would be?

Enthusiatic: I’d definitely consider standing – 6%

Interested: I might consider standing – 18%

Total enthusiastic/interested – 24 %

And this is the conclusion she comes to as a result (the bold is mine):

To end on a positive note – the good news for the Labour Party is that of those that voted for the Labour Party at the 2010 election, Labour voters were most likely to be enthusiastic or interested in standing for election and we were least likely to say ‘I don’t like politicians and the way politics works’ though these figures did change when Yougov asked about future voting intention with more Lib dems saying they would want to stand. But I think there’s all to play for the People’s Party in working to create a One Nation Parliament which looks and sounds like Britain.

That bit about the Lib Dems is what caught my attention.  If I’ve understood the data correctly, we’re saying here that those who must feel most frustrated at the moment – most under siege, that is, to use my opening metaphor – are those who’d most like to empower themselves through getting a direct hand on the levers (where not triggers) of power.

It’s not just the Lib Dems either.  When we say how we hate politics and politicians, what we’re really saying is that we don’t like to be swept up in a war where we are only ever collateral damage; a war where we are the victims of megaphone politics; a war where a system reserves for itself a right to behave as uncooperatively as it does, without allowing affected civilians and non-combatants to arm themselves in their own defence.

It’s that level killing-field which Thatcher and Hurd refused to sanction during the Balkan conflicts: an awfully unequal hierarchy of combat, happening all over again in Cameron’s Britain.

In essence, what I’m saying here is that when de Piero’s poll indicates that a quarter of all our voters would be interested in becoming MPs, it’s not so much because they believe in the system and want to dutifully participate but – rather – precisely because they have come to conclude that the system is inevitably a war.  And this 24 percent is now sufficiently unhappy with sitting passively on the outside looking in, whilst the practising politicians continue to toss fiscal, conceptual and intellectual hand grenades at this poor group or that, that they’re looking to fight back – interestingly enough, even on the terms which the existing system requires – by acquiring their own box of sufficiently inflammable and destructive political weapons.

When the Lib Dems, or indeed you or I, say we’d be interested in becoming an MP, what we’re really admitting to is being mightily fed up of being shot at.

What we’re really admitting to is that we’d much rather get the opportunity to do a bit of shooting back.

And really, what this poll is also beginning to reveal is that considerable support is building here in England for a figurative Second Amendment – in amongst the least likely of places, peoples and parties.

Anonymous – lynch mob or thought mob?

 anonymity, crowdsourcing, custodians, justice, mob rule, on a high, police, politicians, thought, thought experiment  No Responses »
Dec 252012
 

How do traditional police forces decide how to police?  What are the processes they follow?  Strange things certainly seem to be happening here in the UK.

Some posts ago I reported on the puzzling case of Andrew Mitchell.  Channel 4′s Michael Crick seemed to have positively proved that the #plebgate scandal was far more complex than originally seemed to be the case.  Others, more recently, have cast doubts on Mr Mitchell’s revision of events and the proof less-than-positive he has supposedly presented.

Myself, I really don’t know where the truth lies in this particular case.  All I do know is that such claims and counter-claims are becoming par for the course in the environment that interfaces social media with more traditional news-gathering.  If I didn’t know better, I’d think someone – or something – was deliberately trying to feed amateur communicators the world over with contradictory information designed to whisk out from beneath them any and all desires to fix and determine reality.

Essentially, to push control of reality-editing (more here) back into the hands of the professionals.  Whoever those professionals might be.

*

It’s getting so difficult now that we don’t just distrust our politicians – we’re beginning to even distrust those who would manage the state on our politicians’ behalf.  That is to say, the police forces I mention at the top of this post.  There was a time, I think, when the relationship between government and police was as tight as it could be.  Thatcher’s time for example?  I think so.  And look what we got (more here).  Yes.  Maybe the outlines of the state were calmer than they might have been – but significant abuse of power seems to have taken place with such a close relationship.

Hillsborough and Orgreave being just two manifest examples.  Perhaps adding broadly to the mix those blind eyes so cruelly turned to widespread paedophilia and sex abuse.

Or not as the case may be.

Only the future can confirm where our pasts really lay.  And even then there will be those who defend the indefensible.

Back to my original question.  How do those who police our societies decide which general directions to take?  The above histories would seem to indicate that there is plenty of room for political intervention – whether charismatically coaxing or directly deliberate.  A recent case from India only serves to underline what can happen when the guardians no longer guard honestly.  Whilst the Times of India headlines its story today as “Cops begin to pay the price for anger over rape”, Russia Today reports that the hacker group Anonymous has decided to take down the Delhi police website in protest.

It would seem that when law-enforcement agencies lose touch with their prime mission, other forces will eventually – perhaps systemically – kick in (more here).   Whether these be lynch mobs furious that those they should trust laugh in their faces or hacktivists who use what appears to be a certain crowdsourced common sense to determine how to act, in reality there would seem to be little difference from Thatcher’s apparently close compact with the security forces in the processes thus latterly observed.

Yes.  The justice system is there to offer guidance and shape – but where was the justice system in the case of Jimmy Savile?  Where was the justice system when Milly Dowler and the phone-hacking scandals refused to unravel themselves?  Where was the justice system in the above-mentioned pain of Orgreave and Hillsborough?

Whenever, in fact, did justice and the system we use to administer it ever properly or entirely coincide enough for us not to distrust its operation?

So much of what our guardians have done – and surely still do – seems to be determined by conversations held behind closed doors, in well-furnished rooms and on many and various club-ridden understandings.  Democracy is hardly their namesake; egalitarian representation hardly their objective.

Is, then, a lynch mob of furious offline thousands or a thought mob of clever online computer users – citizens, both, spending their time interpreting what our societies want in such ways as I have already described – too radically a different set of processes from what our most sacred institutions have done, and will do in their inimitably sordid ways, from put-upon and surly generation to generation?

Really what I’m suggesting here is that perhaps the solution in the future won’t lie in politicising the police – and the security forces more generally – with top-down figureheads such as these recently miserable police commissioners but, rather, by giving a direct and open space to ordinary citizens in order that they might participate in the crowdsourcing of that societal common sense I have alluded to earlier on.

If we could but sensibly examine how Anonymous reaches its decisions to attack – and replicate its often sharp sense of right and wrong within the framework of a Western democratic state where the rule of law operates for all – we might discover a new way of policing and administering justice.

A way which could protect us all from the abuse of power that being a guardian of the guardians inevitably engenders.

Perhaps we are already part of the way to having achieved it.

Perhaps this is what a free and open Internet is all about.

Perhaps this is why so many governments seem to be against it.

The crowdsourcing of common sense – and, as a result, justice itself – by the anonymous masses.

A brand new electoral system fit for a coalition age

 ConDem-millionaire complex, election manifestos, elections, electoral reform, Labour, Lib Dems, Lib-Con pact, LibDems, political innovation, political parties, politicians, politicking, politics, sorted, Tories  3 Responses »
Dec 012012
 

Here’s an idea – an idea for a completely new electoral system.  Let me explain the background first.

I have to say that before this Coalition government emerged, I thought the idea of a coalition between a couple of left-leaning parties was just what the British body politic was crying out for.  It didn’t happen that way, of course.  New Labour finally blew it under the weight of its evermore creaking contradictions – and the Lib Dems rather more rancid right-wing tendencies came out on top as national government and power beckoned.

But I do now begin to wonder if the problem is really Cameron & Co – or something else.  They are, after all, simply quite old-school first-past-the-post politicians – politicians who find themselves biding their time for a future they expect will bring them ultimate victory.  They may, of course, also be conscious that they’ll get soundly kicked out at the next general election – but by then, through awful self-inflicted economic crisis, they’ll have stamped their positions and policies on anyone who dares to follow on.

Whether this anyone be a different party or – simply – different leaders within the same unhappy grouping.

It does, however, seem that a certain trend and tendency is being established.  Two fairly impervious postures with an osmotic membrane of a kind sidling between.  That the Lib Dems are running the risk of extinction at the moment, precisely because they have allowed the aforementioned process of osmosis to poison the public’s perception of their politics, and that their prior chameleon-like ability to pick and mix has metamorphosed into the uncertainty of violently flip-flopping behaviours, doesn’t mean that the functionality they could provide isn’t going to be needed in the future.

Which is where we come to my idea for a new electoral system: an electoral system designed to enable coalition government by facilitating its transparent formation.  Let’s say, some way down the line, the United Kingdom (or whatever it is by then) decides to adopt electronic systems of voting.  Let’s even suggest, once adopted in that typically British toe-in-the-water way, we decide to embrace further advantages such systems could bring.  One of these advantages could run as follows: for many years, and throughout the first-past-the-post era, people have complained that voting for one party or another inevitably means compromising on certain issues.  Yes.  Labour might be OK for one voter on welfare but not hit the mark quite on Trident.  Or the Tories might convince someone on the economy (well, this is a thought experiment and we are supposed to use our imagination) but not on privacy rights.  Or the Lib Dems might get it right on grass-cutting and dog-control policy but be totally all over the place as far as drugs is concerned.  How about, then, we use an electoral system which allows us to vote for a different party in a discrete number of specially selected policy areas?  Yes!  Once the votes were all counted up across the national landscape, each party would have direct responsibility for those areas the public had judged they should be in charge of.  And a representative from the relevant party with expertise in the corresponding area would then be assigned by the party to hold the ministerial portfolio in question.

The figures of Prime Minister, Speaker and so forth could all still exist.  The PM could, even, continue to have responsibility for reshuffles and changes of government.  But in each case, he or she would have to choose from members of the parties which the people had voted for in each policy area.

This would clearly be a brand new electoral system – a system which depended heavily for its functionality on virtual-community technologies and multifarious software tools.  But it would also be a brand new electoral system entirely fit for a consensual and collaborative – that is to say, a coalition – age.  No longer would politicians have to triangulate their positions.  No longer would the electorate have to compromise when they voted.  In everything we began to do in such a body politic, honesty, sincerity and directness would become the definers of a completely new era in representative democracy.

What say you?

What upsides and downsides do you anticipate?

And how on earth, once accepted the principle by a sufficiently large constituency of citizens, could we convince enough of our first-past-the-post, anti-collaborative and anti-consensual politicians to finally and utterly let go of their carefully-tended turfs?

Are politicians landgrabbing areas of human endeavour – and do we need to do something about it?

 corporations, evidence-based professionals, fascism, in a hole, on a high, political innovation, politicians, politicking, politics, Roosevelt  2 Responses »
Nov 172012
 

We’ve been complaining – those of us who do – about a manifest private corporate takeover of democracy.  One of my consistently most-read posts includes Roosevelt’s definition of fascism, a definition I am happy to repeat here:

[T]he liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism—ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power.

And those of you who read these pages often will know how unhappy I am about this.  Not primarily because it’s allowing corporate bodies to concentrate wealth to the detriment of a wider society.  No.  That isn’t my primary concern.  My primary concern lies in the dangers for our future intelligence and ingenuity such an inefficient conglomeration of interventions in our democracy will provoke.

That is to say, corporate takeovers of democracy, as per Roosevelt’s definition, are actually more inefficient as far as results and outcomes are concerned.  An example.  I read yesterday in a Spanish online magazine that if the earth’s climate warms by more than four degrees (and to be honest, it really doesn’t matter whether this is Fahrenheit or Centigrade, now does it?), then ninety-five percent of the human species will eventually be wiped out.

Try sorting out that mess of a future with the decision-making processes of a corrupt corporate body, looking only to feather its managerial nests.

We need to be smarter and cleverer in how we organise ourselves, take decisions and operate in the future.  Not less so.  And the fascism which is beginning to reign over us here in Britain, that fascism of Roosevelt, that fascism in both deed and thought, is – above all – a far less efficient way of organising and generating our inspiration than other, rather more inclusive and supportive, systems we could use.

Perhaps, in a sense, it’s not the corporations we need to batter.  Perhaps they do, indeed, do just what we allow them to get away with.  And the truly culpable agents in all of this are those individuals, organisations and institutions which specialise in the dark arts of politicking.  In very few areas of human endeavour are you actually voted for, praised and loved as a result of your innate ability to sell a donkey.  So it is that politicians are as they are – and it seems we need them to continue to be thus – precisely because they lie to us.

It seems to fulfil a deep and profound need.

Thus to the point of today’s post: if we cannot change how politics works, if politics must operate as described above, then maybe we need to reduce politics’ reach.  Maybe we need to begin to identify areas of human organisation and ingenuity which can operate outside government control.

When I say government, I do of course include all those private corporations which use existing and supposedly democratically-elected representatives as mere and pliable extensions of their own marketing and policy-making departments.

Private corporations of which there are now really far too many.

But, as I say, let’s not blame them for doing anything we don’t, through our governments, prevent them from doing.

Let me just ask you this question: in your own role at work, whether the company is large or small, do you you operate under the control of reasonably adequate processes and procedures?  And do people follow in a reasonably faithful way such ways of thinking and doing?  And when such ways of thinking and doing are not followed as they might be, are there issues which colleagues will raise as to why they have not been followed as instructed?

Personally, my experience is that such systems are generally followed and used as a basis for logical organisation and information exchange.  In most areas of human endeavour, we do try and operate as evidence-based professionals.  This doesn’t mean we don’t make mistakes or allow our emotions to sometimes take hold.  But it does mean that, generally speaking, such emotions are kept in check by being forced to think rationally and clearly, as well as taking time out to explain our viewpoints sensibly.

Politics, right now, from where I’m sitting, really doesn’t seem at all like that.  Headline politics, I mean.  The stuff right at the top.

The higher up the greasy pole they get, the more illogical they’re forced to become.

So then.  We can’t change politics – it is, in fact, an ancient skillset which no one has managed, or cared, to change through the ages.  But where we can attempt to save the planet from the stupidity of illogical thought is to reduce the impact such red-card activities can have on the organisational and decision-making systems we employ.

We need not just to reduce public-sector government (and by extension its bureaucracy) – we also need to reduce the deadening hand of inefficient exercises of power that private-sector bodies currently demand should be theirs by right.

We need to become more efficient – and we need to become more efficient soon.

That is to say, we cannot deny this need in the face of climate change, population growth and a whole host of other problems out there.

Politics and private-sector bureaucracy have shown us historically how they failed us in the past.  But the 21st century’s challenges are far more serious than those of previous centuries: we know, logically, rationally and scientifically, that something truly unpleasant is on the horizon.  The implications of continued failure are simply too awful to contemplate or condone.

Let us decide, then, as we learn and realise that politicking will never change, to increase the scope of those areas of human endeavour which do think logically, do think in an evidence-based way and do understand the importance of creating systems and environments which allow people of different opinions to share them constructively, hammer out productive agreements and create common foundations for future advances.

That furious pitter-patter of guilt-ridden establishment brogues

 David Rose, end of a dynasty, End of History, End of Morality, establishment, in a hole, medieval mind, police state, policed state, politicians, unclassifiable  No Responses »
Nov 112012
 

This is clearly what people in the trade call a hatchet job.  It’s written by two journalists: one, unfortunately, called David Rose; the other, rather more identifiably, called Bob Woffinden.  More background to this complex and unclear situation, with corresponding links, can be found at the moment over at Tom’s place.

The only thing I’d add to Tom’s piece, which I don’t think I found included, is this story which came my way via Ally Fogg’s Twitter feed this evening:

Can anyone confirm that the David Rose who wrote the hatchet job on Messham in the Mail today is same DR writing here? newstatesman.com/politics/2007/…

The link and story it directs us to, written indeed in 2007 by a certain David Rose, admits quite openly to the following introduction to a deeper world of editorial collusion:

My secret life began, as if scripted by P G Wodehouse, with an invitation to tea at the Ritz.

The call came at the end of the first week of May 1992. I was the Observer’s home affairs correspondent, and at the other end of the line was a man we shall call Tom Bourgeois, special assistant to “C”, Sir Colin McColl, the then chief of the Secret Intelligence Service. SIS (or MI6, as it is more widely known) was “reaching out” to selected members of the media, Bourgeois explained, and over lunch a few days earlier with McColl, my editor, Donald Trelford, had suggested that I was a reliable chap – not the sort, even years later, to betray a confidence by printing an MI6 man’s real name.

I suggest you read on to get a full flavour of what was about to happen – though I suppose even the most naive of us out here might already realise the essence of the game …

  1. that just over a week ago a man – who most are prepared to admit was seriously and sexually abused in his youth whilst under the care of the state – should speak up in public to the BBC‘s “Newsnight” programme, and then proceed to retract his accusations …
  2. that the “Newsnight” journalists should fail to properly check the story having previously dropped an investigation into Jimmy Savile’s activities in the same organisation …
  3. that another man who was pinpointed by some in the mainstream and social media as having been one of the abusers, Lord McAlpine, should then have to issue this statement, denying – before he had actually been officially named by anyone of repute – that he had done anything of which he could be reasonably accused …
  4. and then that two journalists, one of whom has the same name as a host of other selfless individuals sadly labouring under public suspicion through mere association, should proceed to destroy what little reputation the accuser apparently had in any case …

… well, it does seems all rather weird, to borrow a term going the rounds at the moment.

In fact, there’s far more weirdness in all of this from the establishment side of things than anything a clearly sad and suffering survivor of sexual abuse could ever promulgate.

Just to underline two finally salient points.  Firstly, as Tom reminds us in another piece he posted today:

The fact of the matter is it wasn’t the BBC that wrongly implicated Lord McAlpine in the child abuse scandal.

It was North Wales Police.

Abuse victim Steve Messham – and the widow of another victim – told Channel 4 News that they were shown a photo and wrongly given Lord McAlpine’s name by police when they were interviewed by them in the early 1990s.

Now I’m aware that the McAlpine family tree is fiendishly complicated but it’s an extraordinary mistake to make on the part of the police – which is why it’s even stranger that the harsh, critical light of opprobrium is being concentrated in the direction of the BBC (and on Steve Messham too) and not in the least bit on North Wales Police.

Further to this point, you can find more from a couple of days ago from the BBC itself here:

A victim of sexual abuse while he was a resident of a north Wales care home has apologised for making false allegations against a Conservative politician.

Steve Messham said police had shown him a picture of his abuser but incorrectly told him the man was Lord McAlpine.

Secondly, Lord McAlpine’s own carefully couched statement already linked to above had this revealing sentence in its very first paragraph (the bold is mine):

“Over the last several days it has become apparent to me that a number of ill-or uninformed commentators have been using blogs and other internet media outlets to accuse me of being the senior Conservative Party figure from the days of Margaret Thatcher’s leadership who is guilty of sexually abusing young residents of a children’s home in Wrexham, North Wales in the 1970′s and 1980′s.

In a document I am sure was so obviously parsed and approved by his lawyer, that he should choose to say “the senior Conservative Party figure [...] who is guilty of sexually abusing young residents” and not choose, for example, to say “who it is alleged was guilty of sexually abusing young residents” is surely revealing in itself.

Now I may be reading far more into this than is fair.  It may be true that – under Thatcher – we lived in a policed state and not a police state (more here).  But whilst the least shadow of a doubt remains, it is clear – at least to me – that something feels as wrong now as it did a decade ago during the lead-up to the Iraq War.

That furious pitter-patter of guilt-ridden establishment brogues was never louder or more worrying than today.

From banking to the BBC, from Murdoch to the police, from MPs’ expenses to democratic deficit, from the destruction of public services to the reconstruction of private-sector graft … well, little it now seems is out of the frame of our suspicions.

Little it now seems is too incredible.

Who can we turn to?  Who can we trust?  Who can help clear up this mess?  Who has the moral authority and right?

These are the questions our politicians need to answer.  These are the issues of the day.

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