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Young Rebels, Old Establishment.
18 January 2008 .
Something's been bugging me about the Hain donations business, and I think I've worked out what it is. When I was young, Hain was an activist against apartheid; even then he could be quite irritating, but he was working for something good. He popped up again from time to time with opinions on this or that; I didn't always agree with him, but what he said seemed principled. But then there was The Dear Leader's crusade against Iraq and Hain, far from being principled, used weasel words - I can't remember now whether I read or heard him, but I remember what I thought: so many of the young rebels, who stirred me or at least made me think when I was young, have grown old and complacent within the comforting embrace of the establishment. Tariq Ali, despite the illusion of his old fire, had me marking him as a 'generation enemy' (which I imagine to be much like a 'class enemy'). Actually, I never trusted Jack Straw in the first place. but he's a classic case of a young 'leader' who seems to have brought nothing of his youthful socialism with him (if he ever really had any) but the method, and none of the idealism at all.
I note that various people have argued rationally in Hain's defence. Dominic Lawson in the Indy says that it's the jealousy of Hain's colleagues, rather than corruption, which has done for him and I admit that what I've said about him in recent days has been coloured by my opinion of him. But I do hold to the view that Hain is among those who've sold out. G.B.S. (I think) said that a young man who isn't a socialist is a bounder and an old man who is a socialist is a scoundrel. Too many of the determined young men and women of my youth, including Hain, obviously agree with him; I don't. I wonder if these turncoats of convenience are why our world doesn't challenge war and poverty as it should, and that's what's been bugging me.
Incidentally, Lawson says that the business of the donations to Hain are of little interest to the public at large. I don't think that's entirely true and I certainly think it shouldn't be.
(In praise of, for example, Germaine Greer: infuriating but still, I believe true to herself. New Year Wish: to have a good blazing argument with Greer, even though she'd win hands down.)
Target Targets.
18 January 2008 .
I imagine that I share with most people the view that the police have two overarching jobs; firstly, with other agencies, the protection of the public against crime and, secondly, the investigation of crime and apprehension of criminals. I'd say that the first of these is the priority; in a sense, the second - while inevitable - is a measure of our failure to prevent crime in the first place.
In keeping with the philosophy of government these days, the police are set targets; the target we most often hear about is that for arrest rates. I'm not clear that we hear anything much at all about targets for crime prevention, and targets not only cannot work where not set but will actively damage areas which they miss (it isn't humanly possible to set targets for everything, which means that targets must invariably cause some areas to be overlooked.)
There is an apprehension that because of the arrest-rate target, police are concentrating on offences which provide the best chance of a result for the resources employed - but that the offences concerned are not those which are most damaging to the community. The target is thus producing an unforeseen (albeit totally foreseeable) result. [The same seems to be true of targets in education (e.g. teachers preparing children for exams instead of educating them) and the health service (e.g. the fudging of waiting-list figures - which most certainly does happen).] In other words, the target is perceived as failing in its job.
Worse than that: the target is tackling the secondary rather than the primary target (of preventing crime); worse still is that we keep hearing evidence that the target is actually impeding the prevention of crime: youthful offences (on the level of, say, scrumping or knock-down-ginger) which would once have earned a sharp word from a policeman (with good effect on the vast majority of children - and no resulting hostility to the police - as I can report from personal experience) now result in bureaucracy, a record, and even the courtroom; a growing number of judges and magistrates have been increasingly scathing about this last.
[ASBOs, which resemble a very strong talking-to, are a perfectly reasonable idea to assist in the prevention of crime and may well be working in the majority of cases, but they have been abused enough to have lost their value. In any case, any system that can see a person banged up for actions which are not against the law is so contrary to natural justice anyway - that perhaps ASBOs aren't a reasonable idea after all.]
Speaking as a potential victim, and as a potential patient, I do wish that they'd give up on these most sweeping targets. Let the professionals make the decisions, suited to the conditions they face. Of course the police, and doctors and teachers, need to be assessed and reviewed; of course there are those in all three professions who will be lazy or incompetent if allowed, and there have to be reporting systems and where necessary sanctions. But if the professionals are public about their aims and systems, it's amazing how quickly the public is able to pick up on which institutions - and which individuals - are doing their job properly. That, with publicly operated inspection systems (with teeth) seem to me to be a far more universal tool than targets,
The trouble is that the politicians get their teeth into this or that idea, and then hang onto it like grim death even when it transparently isn't working. Does anybody now seriously believe that the privatised railways are fit for purpose? The trouble for us is that we have to live with for decades with consequences of political fads.
But then, even when I was young, I believed in change by the evolution of systems; so I have very little time for the eternally neotropic tendencies that politicians and other ambitious careerists seem to feel obliged to display.
A Bit Of Your Correspondent's Own Soul-Searching.
16 January 2008 .
Imagine that a citizen has a perception that the decisions made, and the actions taken, by those with authority or power are not always the best. Assume that our citizen is broadly rational - that the prima facie evidence for our his/her perception is indeed presented day by day through the various media.
In our society, the citizen's first and obvious option - indeed, duty - is to vote. This is the ultimate instrument, for society, in controlling the government of the country; for the individual, however, it's more symbolic than real - to the extent that so many people feel that their vote makes no difference or doesn't matter that our turnout for the last general election allowed blair to return as PM (with a huge parliamentary majority) on the basis of support by just 23% of the electorate. As a direct sanction for the citizen critical on individual issues, the vote is far too crude.
The next option is probably membership of pressure groups, or even to join a political party.
Membership of party or group is (so far) the natural medium for the citizen to make his voice heard: despite the drawbacks, it is hard to imagine serious alternatives until our political systems evolve - which I imagine means electronically.
But activism within a group doesn't suit everybody. Not me, for a start. I think government is important; I also think medicine is important, but that doesn't mean I have to become a doctor or a nurse - nor am I really suited to being on the board of governors of a hospital. To cut to the chase: I believe that there's a great deal around me that's good. However, there are also things out there which aren't quite so dandy: if I want to say something about them, I should do so - in the way that best suits me, perhaps, but definitely I should. And if there are things which are good but which I believe to under threat, then equally certainly I should speak my mind on them, too. Hence this website - the way that's right for me.
Now to a couple of difficulties:
Planning or Surfing?
11 January 2008 .
Whatever we were told about choice and variety when we moved from broadcast to cable and satellite TV, not everything has improved. Years ago, Americans were amazed that our UK radio stations had programming - distinguishable programmes which were worth looking up in the listings in order to plan one's listening: the US barely came up to that in many of their TV schedulings, which was why channel surfing was so common. Now most of our TV channels don't have a timekeeping, predictable schedule and, unless you make a dedicated effort, they are only really suitable for - channel surfing. Have you tried to watch sequential episodes on cable channels? Even if you planned as best you could, many of them show no interest in presenting programmes in sequence. The number of Part Is I've watched, but then been able to find hide nor hair of the associated Part IIs.
We actually lose by comparison with the US in that at least there is a tradition there of cable channels producing programmes - which almost never seems to happen here.
To say nothing of the black-outs, pixillations and freezes with are such a feature of digital TV.
They're Here! They're Here!
10 January 2008 .
Another alien abductee on ITV evening news, together with his photographic proof of alien presence. Classic misdirection: confident in our dismissal of said aliens as a joke, we will miss the truth - that they really are taking over.
Entertainment masquerading as news.
Private Eye on the New Year
09 January 2008 .
After a refreshing break, I've just bought my first Private Eye of the new year. It's filled with reports of corruption, rapaciousness and incompetence. No change there, then.
A letter (from Len Pedroza) referred to the Eye as having progressed 'from a squalid little rag to a fine organ of investigation'. It wasn't really that bad, but it is that good. So far as I'm concerned, it's the Newspaper of Record for our domestic body politic; and the record it keeps is rather shaming.
I think one has to keep a sense of perspective: I'm not suggesting here that this country is somehow a worse place to live in than others.
What I do think is that price of political and social liberty, like that of peace, is eternal vigilance. We should be watching our politically (or financially, bureaucratically, religiously or otherwise) powerful in all their actions that might affect the public well-being; and we should be judging them against our own highest standards. And so far as paper publications are concerned, the Eye's the one that does it. [I'm not at all sure that there's anything like it, that functions properly, anywhere else in the world.]
What I find hard to come to terms with is this: The Eye reports, week after week, on cases of appalling behaviour; not only corruption and incompetence but nepotism and exploitation seem to form an orderly queue for its attention. Often the same people, even the same cases, pop up again and again; sometimes for years or after gaps of years. There is every reason to assume that the vast majority of what it writes is kosher - supposed refutations by guilty men actually go to demonstrate their guilt and issues first examined by the Eye (eventually) appear in the mainstream press. I know that a few very serious people regard it very seriously; so why doesn't the material published in it produce storms of protest?
In fairness: the Eye does occasionally get it very wrong - it's impossible to put your head over the parapet without that sort of risk; it's nearly been litigated out of existence several times and its enemies have tried to use its mistakes to do all they can to put an end to it. However, it's been around, and matured, for forty years, and I hope for the sake of the country that it keeps going.
Respect For Our Elders And Betters.
08 January 2008 .
There's an article in the Sunday Telegraph about the tens of thousands of British servicemen deliberately exposed to atomic explosions, and made to enter radioactive clouds without protection, back in the 1950s; it mentions the disproportion number of premature deaths, and massive numbers of cancers suffered by these (mostly) men, who were a mixture of regulars and of teenaged national servicemen who knew absolutely nothing about the danger they faced - and which they passed on to their children, if they lived long enough and were able to father any.
What struck me was the comment by more than one victim that, 'in those days, we did what we were told'.
On this matter alone, I have to say; Thank God for the modern disrespect for authority. Give me stroppiness and cynicism any day.
I should like to add; Surely nobody would let themselves be put in the same position now...
Of course, I should also like to say that our elders and betters (!) have learned some lessons too, and wouldn't ask us to do damaging things; but these are the same elders and betters who still won't fully acknowledge that there is any connection between the atom tests and the sickness which followed within days and which has lasted ever since - and who of course won't acknowledge the possibility of responsibility - and who, for example, still take us into unnecessary elective wars of dubious legality.
Janet Street-Porter.
07 January 2008 .
In yesterday's Independent on Sunday, Janet Street-Porter wrote an article which started, "Blogs are surely the musings of the socially inept." The internet has given a voice, she says, to millions of people who have nothing to say worth saying.
She does at least make a concession to blogs from war zones or from where freedom of speech is constrained.
Of course Ms. Street-Porter has plenty of space to say what she thinks in her columns; so I find myself wondering why she goes out of her way, in the paper of which she is editor, to be so dismissive of the rest of us.
I know (or at least I'm told) that this woman is very popular, so I may be alone in this opinion; however, here goes:
I have always found her strident and opinionated. On the whole, I have found that what she has to say has been poorly informed at best and thoroughly banal most of the time. And I stopped routinely buying the IoS as it became less worth reading and more shallow; it was only later that I discovered that this followed closely on Ms. Street-Porter's appointment as editor. So there.
[To be fair, her real target may be the self-promoting powerful. But I find it more difficult to be bitchy if I have to be fair.]
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