Journal of the Plague Years

An Affiche of May, 1968

• The bureaucrats, bringing insult into every sitting-room in the land...
• The Sex Discrimination Act 1978 (Amendment) Regulations 2008.
• Violence on children for fun and profit... and all completely legal.
• From The Guardian, 29 Feb.
• The Mosquito.
• UK - In Control.
• The State is Guardian to your Child.
• A Dangerous Illusion.
• Targeting Babies.The Spider's Web.
• Bin Tax.
• We don't lose all our data in the street; tons of it get lost right here behind the filing cabinet.
• Government As The Arbiter Of Morality.
• Who Owns Your Body? Who Owns You?

The bureaucrats, bringing insult into every sitting-room in the land...

15 May 2008 .

The TV licencing authorities have just had their unbelievably crass ad on BBC for the umpteenth time... it portrays a city, except that it turns out to be a sci-fi city, built of chips and rams and electronic circuits; and as we fly across our world reduced to a nerd's dream - clearly how they see us proles - a sinister voice tells us that we can't escape detection - 'it's all on the database'. Not only is it utterly (and utterly unnecessarily) distasteful, like so much of our bureaucracy these days, it's clearly intentionally thus... like so much of our bureaucracy these days...

The joke is that Jacquieeie Smith, ineffably silly and illiberal home secretary with no concept of the English constitution, is telling us this very same month that 'anti-social' people will be 'harried and harassed' by having their TV licence payments chased up. Hmmm.

'it's all on the database' 'TV licence' 1984 'jacqui Smith' illiberal bureaucracy

The Sex Discrimination Act 1978 (Amendment) Regulations 2008.

04 April 2008 .

Flirting with the barmaid is a fine old English tradition which brings much pleasure but which, like most social intercourse, occasionally gets a bit out of hand.

People are, on the whole, perfectly able to sort out the rough edges in everyday life. If there are barmaids who find over-familiar customers difficult to handle, it is not unreasonable to ask whether, perhaps, they're in the wrong job; but if, in economically constrained circumstances, they have no choice but to work as barmaids, a sign over the bar together with the legislation which already exists should be quite enough to deal with unpleasant situations.

It might be objected that customers might become aggressive if they're asked to behave: I'm not clear how the new law which Harriet Harman* has slipped in will answer this.

*The Minister for Women, who dares not walk the main streets of her own (reasonably law-abiding) constituency in daylight, at least not without a minder and/or a flak jacket, because 'the streets aren't safe'.

This new law: Pub landlords, restaurateurs, etc., will be liable to pay unlimited compensation to staff who complain of being subjected to inappropriate comments from customers. (Three occasions are all that's required, by the same or different customers.) The landlord will have the burden of proof that he/she wasn't at fault.

An unelected committee in Brussels drew up a directive, redefining sexual harassment at work. A judge in this country said, perfectly rightly (in the only correct part of the whole process), that British law was not stringent enough to meet the requirements of the new directive. So the government drew up new regulations [The Sex Discrimination Act 1978 (Amendment) Regulations 2008]. Harriet Harman then rubber-stamped the new law, as a Statutory Instrument (one of more than 10,000 of these undemocratic laws put on the books each year, which require no vote in Parliament, no discussion, no parliamentary scrutiny).

The law comes into force this week - having never passed before Parliament except as a leaflet left on a tablet, with the dozens of others left there each day.

How on earth will it work? I go into a pub and address the barmaid as 'Love'. I'm the third person to do this over the past year or so. The landlord now faces a claim against him for any amount of compensation. The only way he can keep his business going, presumable, is by tracing and suing me for the damages against him. While he's doing so he goes bust anyway because he can't attend to his work.

What does it say about this apparatchik blair babe's understanding of ordinary life and how it should be 'managed'? [And as for paving the way for any stroppy employee who wants to make trouble...]

I think I'm losing the will to live.

'Sex Discrimination Act' 'Minister for Women' 'Pub landlords' flirting barmaid

Violence on children for fun and profit... and all completely legal.

24 March 2008 .

There's been a gentle background rumbling which has been going on for years about the way that excessive physical restraint is used on minors in custody (in youth detention centres of one sort or another), which resulted this year in several hundred broken bones and damaged internal organs. The point is made repeatedly that the methods of restraint involved would be illegal if applied to adults; the explanation (excuse) given in reply is always that these children can be very violent. I have an opinion about any supposed professional adult who has to damage a child in order to control him/her, but I won't bother you with it here; what does always strike me, however, is that the places where these things are happening are in the private sector - in effect, punishing for profit. I don't for a moment think that a thug who gets to beat up often vulnerable youngsters is instantly going to behave better simply because he works directly for the community, through the state; but I think the idea of the state passing these kids on to the (profit-seeking) private sector for care and protection has to be, and will be, seen as barbaric.

[I never quite understood the logic of some teachers that the way to stop violence and bullying was by beating the bullies concerned... 'I'll teach you not to beat people up, by beating you.' But then I never quite understood how beating a child whose parents smoked would stop that child smoking, either.]

'youth detention centres' 'physical restraint'

From The Guardian, 29 Feb.

04 March 2008 .

The following two extracts from an article on page 4, without further comment:

"A former SAS soldier was served with a high court order yesterday preventing him from making fresh disclosures about how hundreds of Iraqis and Afghans captured by British and American special forces were rendered to prisons where they faced torture.

"Ben Griffin could be jailed if he makes further disclosures about how people seized by special forces were allegedly mistreated and ended up in secret prisons in breach of the Geneva conventions and international law. Griffin, 29, left the British army in 2005 after three months in Baghdad, saying he disagreed with the 'illegal' tactics of US troops."

"Referring to the government's admission that two US rendition flights containing terror suspects had landed at the British territory of Diego Garcia, Griffin said the use of British territory and airspace 'pales into insignificance in light of the fact that it has been British soldiers detaining the victims of extraordinary rendition in the first place'."

'Ben Griffin' 'Diego Garcia' 'extraordinary rendition' 'illegal tactics'

The Mosquito.

13 February 2008 .

It's the name given to small amplifiers designed to produce a high-pitched buzz so irritating to young people that it drives them away; they're used in malls and other public places where hoodies and other undesirable youth might gather. They're in the news again because there's been a call to abandon them as an infringement of young people's rights.

The Mail says that 'the children's Tsar' - who demanded the ban - lives in a secluded house and 'can't possibly understand what it's like' (to have to coexist with the yoof). No ad hominem argument there, then.

There's no doubt that these things work, at least to some extent, in reducing crowds of possibly intimidating youth and even reducing vandalism (although I suspect that it often merely moves them on to somewhere else).

What I can't get my head around, however, is what sort of society we live in that inflicts these things on children willy-nilly, innocent along with (possibly) not so innocent. Your inoffensive daughter, or mine, doing the shopping to a sound designed to drive her away? I keep having a thought, as well, of a baby in distress in a pram, with an adult parent or grandparent who, unable to hear the noise, doesn't even know it's going on. Do we seriously dislike, or fear, some our young so much that we make public areas intolerable for all of them?

Why not just lay down kid-poison, and have done with them?

Boy... ain't we just in real trouble, though?

A teacher who punishes a whole class for the misdeeds of one or two is not highly thought of... not even, I would imagine by the Mail...

'children's Tsar' mosquito

UK - In Control.

10 February 2008 .

So members of the UK Olympic team will have to sign an agreement not to discuss the political situation in China. As I was listening to the news, I jumped to conclusions. "B****y Chinese cheek," I said to myself.

But no, this gagging order does not come from China at all - it's Made In Britain.

US and Australian athletes aren't being gagged, nor anyone else in the West, so far as I know. Just the UK.

It figures.

Olympics gagging

The State is Guardian to your Child.

09 February 2008 .

More and more of the science is suggesting - in support of common sense, I should have thought - that exposure to television is contra-indicated for children under three, and that it should be strictly rationed even thereafter.

In the same week that more strong evidence is published about the damage caused to the mental development of infants by TV... the government is pushing a national curriculum to be followed by all nurseries and child-minders, one of the targets listed being that a 22-month-old child should be comfortable operating a remote control.

We mustn't allow confusion to enter our hearts. The Supreme Leader And Moral Arbiter Of The Nation and his Far-Seeing And Dedicated Balls know best.

(Ed Balls, Secretary for this and that, including children - can anybody actually remember his ludicrous new title?)

'national curriculum' 'Ed Balls' television

A Dangerous Illusion.

07 February 2008 .

The idea seems to be doing the rounds that we really need not worry too much about bugging, surveillance and data-harvesting in Britain, because the whole system is simply too uncoordinated and incompetent, with blurred lines of authority, in fact a 'typical British muddle'. Far rather a comfortable mess, a couple of commentators have suggested, than the iron discipline of a police state.

Where could the idea come from that Nazi Germany, for example, was so coordinated or had such clear lines of authority? (Exactly the opposite: Hitler's deliberate confusion of the delegation of powers contributed to the effectiveness of Nazi terror.)

To suggest that police states are all robotically disciplined is laughable - just consider Papa Doc's Haiti or Idi Amin's Uganda. Even communist East Germany's Stasi, supposed exemplar of organisation and discipline, was more muddled and disorganised than it's given credit for - and, incidentally, enjoyed less surveillance capability than the British state.

I believe we need to be very careful: we are seeing something that has never happened in history before, a stable liberal democracy abandoning, of its own volition, the framework that underlies its liberalism, its democracy and ultimately, I suspect, its stability. It is precisely the blurred lines and the muddle that are helping this to happen.

An executive which has an instinct to control, a system which allows opportunistic adventures (such as the bugging of MPs seen as 'trouble-makers' - which is a picture beginning to emerge with regard to Mr. Khan MP) and a complacency in parts the fourth estate - and the chattering classes - which dismisses our fears as 'predictable' or 'apocalyptic', are all taking us in directions for which there is no precedent. It may well be that there is no "coordinated plan to turn Britain into a surveillance state" (Steve Richards, Independent, today) - but it's happening, with extraordinary speed if not efficiency.

From time to time, when we notice a CCTV camera following our movements or, with a second or two's delay, hear our voice playing back to us on the 'phone, it might be wise to reflect. Because there are no lessons from the past to tell us where we're going.

'typical British muddle' 'Steve Richards' 'Khan MP'

Targeting Babies.

02 February 2008 .

I was depressed at the story this week of another baby, at two hours old, taken from its 18-year-old mother by social services because (the papers say) she's had mental problems. (A judge ordered the return of the baby, but it's been taken from the mother again.) Another opinion here indoors, however, is that if the baby had not been taken and had come to harm, we would then be blaming the social services for not acting. There is a 'degree of damned if they do, damned if they don't'.

But it isn't the actions of the services which I find so repellent; it's the fact that they are operating under another of this bloody government's targets. Targets for the number of children fostered, with councils receiving financial rewards for achieving them. How on earth can a target for the number of children fostered - set by a central office in the capital a million miles away, months or even years in advance - have anything to do with the number of children who need to be fostered?

There may be some magic by which central government knows these things, but they don't seem to have explained it to anyone, and meanwhile all the decisions are made in secret. And if the mother feels that she's not been treated fairly, she's not allowed to talk about the proceedings publicly.

The mother will, by the way, be allowed 'regular access' to the baby. Since the first few months of a baby's life are so important for bonding and a whole gamut of basic orientation, that can't be enough... couldn't the services have organised any way of letting the child stay with mother, in a home, under supervision, something? As it is, one wonders if it might almost be better for the break to be complete, the baby to be fostered.

If (hopefully not 'when') the baby is a troubled teenager or young adult because of the ruptured relationship, will the services take more care than they do of some 18-years-olds they kick out?

-/-

Since I keep batting on about the government's targets, one bit of news should cheer me up: the targets for arrests by the police, by which a child arrested for throwing a piece of cucumber at another appears (if the papers are to be believed) to earn as many brownie points for the cops involved as solving a murder, may be on the way out. More anon.

baby infant teenager target

The Spider's Web.

20 January 2008 .

I assume I'm not alone in wondering, sometimes, how I'd have behaved in Hitler's Germany or Stalin's Russia.

Obviously I'd prefer to think that the moment I understood what the Nazis were, I'd have opposed them. Even there, though, the problem is that there was a side to them that was very seductive; and anyway I can't know what sort of person I would have been in another country seventy or eighty years ago. I do know that the person I am now would not have conformed for personal gain or any other reason apart from fear - which I suspect applied to large numbers of contemporary Germans.

Soviet Russia is a different case. I suspect that I might have conformed largely out of fear there, too. Communism, however, played the morality card much better; I suspect that the Socialist Dream would have been at least my justification. (Then again, what would I thought of Soviet Imperialism? Would I have recognised what it was? The man I am now believes that it was toxic - as empire generally is - but after the Great Patriotic War, I have no idea what I'd have thought. And what would I have done as my neighbours disappeared? And how would I have reacted to the show trials? Kept my head down, I fear - or 'up somebody's behind', like blair in Washington.)

That said, what I'm working toward is actually closer to home; but it does relate to Stalinism - not the philosophy of Communism, but Stalinism as a method of rule (or control) and influence.

I have found coming to terms with the politics of the world and of my country to be a slow business. I started to see the lessons when I was a teenager - 1968, as it happens, is the year I mark as the beginning of that journey, first with the 'manifestations' of May (when I was lucky enough to be in France) and then with fascination and the first glimmering of understanding as I read and heard about the Prague Spring (Dubcek remains one of my heroes to this day). But I'm still on that journey, I still haven't come to terms with what I see around me, and I suspect that my writing this journal (and the tentativeness of some of it) has been a half-conscious part of the process.

I have been even slower to understand the workings of everyday politics in my own life - office politics, in effect. For most of my working life, I was a teacher; especially during my early days, I assumed that the only reason that anyone would want become a teacher would be because they felt a vocation, and I clung to that assumption for too long in the face of evidence to the contrary. In fact, of course, there were political games in the school just as anywhere else.

I finally began to understand things better when a new headteacher was appointed. He was a charming man and very dedicated; but... he had a definite political agenda for the school, an agenda which, as it happens, was strongly to the left.

He used a variety of management techniques including, but by no means limited to, the following examples from Stalin's cookbook:

• He ensured that he had a trusted person in every group, clique or department in the school, so that there was a bond either directly or via just one person with every single member of staff.
• He very seldom sat on any of the many committees, and almost never chaired them. But he would sit in the room where meetings were taking place and, as a 'friendly gesture', he would offer to look at the agenda beforehand - which one couldn't refuse - and 'to help' would make suggestions as to how it might be altered 'to be more accessible'. Somehow one always knew beforehand what the decisions made at a meeting would be, and they always were. He was insistent that 'ownership' of the decisions was ours.
• The briefest chat with him in the corridor would be followed a day or two later by a friendly note, a sort of minute recording what had been said: it often did not conform to your own memory, but you would appear to have committed yourself to something. It was difficult to go to him and say that the note was wrong and most people wouldn't make the effort (or perhaps they convinced themselves that the headteacher must be right). Perhaps months later a piece of paper would appear with your commitment noted - and the valid point that you hadn't disagreed when given the opportunity.
• Appointments to staff were supposedly made by the governors, but they seldom read each application in detail: the headteacher would supply a suggested shortlist of two names, one of which was soon revealed to be perhaps unsuitable. The other would be the applicant he wanted.

If these techniques were not learned at Stalin's knee, the headteacher certainly went to the same business school.

My reason for recording them is not out of bitterness because I suffered from them, but out of shame that for a long time I failed to see through them, and even when I did see I continued to benefit from them. I was one of his direct contacts, I was always happy to discuss an agenda with him before a meeting, I accepted his version of our chats and finally (as a reward?) I enjoyed promotion under his (clear) patronage.

I agreed with many of his aims; when I did not I either felt that I understood why he thought the way he did or I was neutral on the issues involved - which allowed me to justify my acceptance of what was taking place when the evidence was becoming clear that other people's careers were suffering and even that children were being damaged by the headteacher's programme (one or two of those stories are so salutary that they may be worth relating in a future item). In the end the headteacher was fired by the education authority

This was only a school, not Soviet Russia. But some of the methods were the same and I was taken in. So what would I really have done in a totalitarian society?

-/-

The silver lining in this is that, although I took a long time to learn the lessons, I did learn them well.

Years before my encounter with the headteacher, I had recognised crude Stalinism of the type I believe I saw in, say, Eric Heffer MP. Equally, I had a public-library understanding of Marxism, understood flaws in basic premises (all conflict as class conflict, historical inevitability), and (being an evolutionist, not a revolutionist) was suspicious of its revolutionary theory. So, although a collectivist and largely a socialist by inclination, I distrusted a Marxist Labour party with Stalinist bullies in it. [Heffer said that the Labour party, once elected, should abandon general elections so that its socialist programme could be carried out in full without distractions..]

Once I had encountered the headteacher, I understood the socialist methodology much better when I saw it in public life, from the senior levels of the new labour (long after they had abandoned any pretence of socialism) to the neo-cons in the USA - who certainly use Stalinist methods even if their objectives are utterly different.

Mind you, by all accounts the Great Leader (g. brown) appears to have adopted the bullying, as well.

'Hitler's Germany' 'Stalin's Russia' 'Eric Heffer' 'Marxist Labour party 'Great Patriotic War' 'stalinist system'

Bin Tax.

19 January 2008 .

I think it's worth clarifying this:

1. It is vitally important that everybody embrace sorting for recycling. This means millions of people have to develop a positive and cooperative understanding of what's going on.

2. So the first thing to do is to get plenty of councils to switch to fortnightly collections at the same time, successfully conflating sorting with even more inconvenience in the minds of plenty of those millions.

3. As a matter of policy; don't give people time to adjust and get used to the new system - clobber them with massive fines from the off; that'll get them to have positive feelings about this (vital) process. Be sure to think of as many ways to catch them out as possible - fines for getting the day wrong is a good money spinner. [But that's how the government tries to control us in everything... fine the evil proles!] While you're about it, terrorise some old people: you might save some money on pensions.

4. Again being sure that it all happens at once, so that people are confused, worried and learning to loathe the concept of sorting all at the same time: introduce a bin tax.

5. And microchip the bins, of course. That's the subtle touch.

microchip 'bin tax'

We don't lose all our data in the street; tons of it get lost right here behind the filing cabinet.

19 January 2008 .

Quote from the Daily Mail today (in a report about an immigrant with a forged passport processing immigration applications who also gave staff training lectures at the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal Service):

The case of this man, who applied to stay in Britain in 2002, 'is understood to be among the 450,000 "legacy" claims which were found forgotten in boxes and are now being sifted through.'

Before he was employed by the AITS, he underwent full pre-employment checks, and enhanced checks last year. Nevertheless, his ruse was only discovered - by chance - when he used forged documents to try to open a bank account

450,000 claims forgotten in boxes. It would beggar belief if it weren't par for the course these days.

I wish the government would:

• Stop trying to microcontrol everything and trying to get your bureaucratic fingers into every aspect of our lives; prioritise just like everyone else has to.

• Stop passing thousands of laws and statutory instruments every year until you've mastered the ones that you already have.

• Stop taking the something like 20 or so days (which I've seen claimed) of my life every year with all its forms, requirements, obligations... (that's before I do four months' work to pay my taxes before I start earning a penny for myself.) Some of what it makes me do is necessary, but the bureaucrats know as well as I do that a great deal gets binned - or, apparently, forgotten in boxes.

Mr. Brown et al: See the whole picture: see how your laws and regulations pile and pile and pile up, to the point that you can't competently handle them and our lives become more and more complicated. And try to see how daunting the individuals's whole picture looks for an awful lot of citizens.

AITS 'statutory instruments' 'legacy claims'

Government As The Arbiter Of Morality.

15 January 2008 .

The Roman Church has jibbed at giving children for adoption to gay couples. Ms. Ladele (A Case Of Conscience, Classified - Thought Police 14 January 2008) has jibbed at officiating at gay partnership ceremonies. A number of doctors have refused to abet abortions. Some pharmacists are troubled at giving contraceptives and morning-after pills to under-aged girls.

Homosexuality was illegal a generation ago; under-aged sex still is - though you might wonder, sometimes.

A few years ago a teacher could lose his/her job for 'promoting' homosexual relationships; now the same teacher adhering to that same Section 28 could be fired for homophobia; evidence, like other such quoted elsewhere, which goes to show that the government's 'morality' is often actually a matter of politics. Even so, both sides in this instance will claim the moral high ground.

I have referred before to the government's increasing tendency to control every aspect, not only of our lives but of our consciences. I quote myself in part: "We, your betters, will tell you how to live your lives and do your jobs; whatever your professional judgment, whatever you think, you will obey." (Education And Skills Bill. 15 January 2008 Classified - Education)

The issues I mention above are fundamental; they affect some of our most basic morality: notwithstanding that, the government instructs us. And yet... it bears repeating that these are issues of morality; there is no objective judgment that the government can call on to say that it is right. It is convinced that it is right, but that is not at all the same thing.

The joke is that if there is an objective morality, it comes from God: the evidence thus far is that God may not be too keen on, for example, abortion. Since the Roman Church and the bible may have a better claim to speak for God than the British government does, presumably He may not favour homosexuality, either. [I emphasise that I'm not trying to speak theology here, but simply to demonstrate that the government is not on firm ground when it instructs us with regard to morality. They're the same good folks, remember, who think it's fine and dandy to slaughter hundreds of thousands of Iraqis for democracy.]

It's interesting that while Ms. Ladele is going to find herself in court because of the requirement on her to officiate at gay unions, even this government has not yet insisted that the Roman church should do so.

And there's no need for all this. Allow everybody their freedom of conscience (with the requirement that if a professional cannot in conscience perform some function that they do not interfere with people's rights, i.e. that there are systems in place so that those in need of those functions are efficaciously passed to another professional).

There are presumably plenty of adoption agencies, registrars, doctors and pharmacists willing to perform the required functions without duress. Of course, if there are not, maybe the government really is moving too fast.

• I should like to point out that I'm not opposing the government's desire to extend these rights we're talking about (with the exception of the under-aged sex bit, which I think is complete madness). It's the way it is so convinced of its moral rectitude, and its desire to direct and control, that I find so repellent.

• I should also like to acknowledge the role of government in sometimes leading public opinion; the abolition of child labour or capital punishment - against the wishes of a sizeable and strident part of the population - are cases in point, as indeed are laws banning quotidian homophobic discrimination. It's precisely because of the government's responsibility in such fundamental matters that it is so important that they don't get above themselves on issues which are not morally so clear-cut.

'child labour' 'homophobic discrimination' 'Lillian Ladele' 'professional judgment' 'roman church' morality doctors pharmacists abortion contraception

Who Owns Your Body? Who Owns You?

14 January 2008 .

If the Father Of The Nation has his way this year, our consent as organ donors will henceforth be presumed unless we actively opt out.

Taking it as read that we need more donors, there is nevertheless a problem with the plan.

We live in a society within which control over our lives, our privacy, the opinions we're allowed to profess, even our own bodies, is being encroached on by the state. The presumption that doctors will be allowed to decide how they use our bodies once we're dead is a part of a process by which we become increasingly the possession of the state.

How else will you be able to see yourself when your first function as a human being will be to attend a 'birthing ceremony' in which your parents will be obliged to agree to share your upbringing with the state (Parenting Classes, 20 November 2007, Classified - Liberties) and your last will be to allow strangers, sanctioned by the state, to dispose of your body as they see fit.

To be fair, I would have let this news pass without comment - if it were not for some of the small print that came with it. The nastiest of these was brown's proposal that hospitals will be set targets on the number of donors they acquire (the article I read, which seemed broadly approving, nonetheless used the word 'vye').

I would have let it pass without comment because of the opt-out clause - except that I wondered, if hospitals are to be set targets, how long the opt-out would be respected. Then I began to wonder if we can be sure that the opt-out will even remain enshrined in law.

'Parenting Classes' opt-out 'organ donors'

Site Map