Notes from the Panopticon

The Waltz of the Toreadors by Jean Anouilh starring Peter Bowles and Maggie Steed

It is not the lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 –1900)

Chichester Festival Theatre's revival of Waltz of the Toreadors (in a new translation by Ranjit Bolt) is played unashamedly as a farce – and a good thing too because its farcical elements made the audience laugh out loud. At a deeper level, the characters are a uniformly miserable bunch.

Anouilh classified this play, written in 1952, as a pièce grinçante (grating), roughly equivalent to Bernard Shaw's plays unpleasant. The play is set in 1910 and Peter Bowles plays General Leon Saint Pé, whose life has been blighted by one big mistake: he remained with his wife instead of following his heart with Ghislaine, a girl with whom he had danced (the Waltz of the Toreadors) 17 years before. Saint Pé had spent those years salving his wounds by rodgering every servant girl who crossed his path, while his wife feigned paralysis to retain control over her husband. She saw him as her object, her possession, although she responded to his moral (but unconsummated) infidelity with Ghislaine by conducting a series of affairs of her own. Meanwhile, Ghislaine wasted her youth, remaining pure and waiting for Saint Pé for 17 years.

Existentialism was the intellectual core of French culture in the mid-20th century and Anouilh was an author of his time. His story is an existentialist parable: you must act in order to validate your existence – otherwise you are nothing. But beneath this philosophy lies the romantic notion that, by acting on feelings engendered by a passing moment of happiness, you will find true fulfilment. In fact, this is no more than an escape from reality, from the need to make the best of the hand you are dealt in life.

The essential theme of the play is therefore an empty one. The resolution – that Ghislaine finds happiness with Gaston (the General's secretary) who grabs his existential opportunity when she throws herself over a balcony and lands on his head – is both trite and unbelievable. The director, Angus Jackson, was right to play for laughs, but he failed to pull off his idea of turning Saint Pé's daughters into a pair of pantomime ugly sisters.

It was Maggie Steed who rescued the play. Her appearance as the General's tortured wife was magnificent. She injected humanity into the suffering of a woman who found herself trapped in a loveless marriage and was unable to distinguish ownership from feeling. Her performance was a startling contrast to the wooden performances of most of the cast who struggled to convey emotional depth in a wordy text.

Picture credit

http://www.russianparis.com/litterature/authors/anouilh.shtml 

Why I love the Millennium Dome

"The trouble with the world is that the stupid are always cocksure and the intelligent are always filled with doubt." ~ Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)

Two Prime Ministers

I love the millennium dome because it was a small government project. It is always easier to understand a small project that a big one. Both major political parties were involved. Many prominent people and consultancy firms lent their names. Two Prime Ministers are implicated; other important politicians nailed their colours to its many masts. And it was a total fiasco.

The government had hoped that private companies would finance the project but they ran for cover when disaster seemed inevitable. So a wholly government-owned company The New Millennium Experience Company (NMEC) was set up to bring the project to fruition and to run its operation. I was going to use the words "manage" and "organise" but they are wholly inappropriate.

The NMEC commissioned a forecast of likely visitor numbers from Deloitte Touche who predicted between 8 and 12 million. Financial plans were based on an estimated 12 million. This number was four times as high as the results achieved by the then most popular pay-to-visit attraction in the UK. In the event 6 million paying visitors came.

Lacked senior staff with experience

This misjudgement was hardly surprising. According to the Government's own Auditor General's report " the company lacked senior staff with experience of running a large visitor  attraction". It was only when the full magnitude of the problems became clear that the government sacked the incumbent (lets not forget that the Government made the original appointment) and a more experienced Chief Executive was appointed.

By then many mistakes had already been made. Spending on marketing was low compared with other attractions, with fully foreseeable consequences.

Catalogue of disasters

When the Dome opened no arrangements had been made to sell tickets on the door. Direct government interference cut potential revenue further when it was decided to give free access to up to 1 million school children. One can taste the desperation behind this decision. By the end of the first month, only 3% of the expected annual target had visited the dome. These 345,000 visitors were in stark contrast with the 120,000 attracted to the newly-opened Tate Modern in its first three days. The Dome was forced to cut ticket prices by 50%.

This catalogue of disasters was heralded by an opening ceremony which would be hard to surpass. An administrative error meant that guests failed to receive their tickets in time, so the 3000 people had to queue for hours at Stratford station where they had to stop to check in. Then they were further delayed by security checks and searches before being allowed onto special trains to take them to the Dome.

The sloppiness of the project was brought home to me when a Sikh friend of a friend of mine was startled to see a Sikh text displayed upside down in the Spirit Zone. I don't know how long it stayed that way.

The project was doomed from the start. It was being overseen by "three separate institutional bodies, three accounting officers and two ministers exercising three distinct roles". In the words of the Auditor General's report: "By any standards, that is a highly complex structure"

The government's problems were not over yet. When it became clear that the dome would be a financial catastrophe, they hoped to recoup their losses by selling the site. This proved harder than they expected and there were several false starts as potential buyers pulled out when they realised what they were taking on. So the costs of keeping it empty added to the deficit. At an estimated cost of £1 billion the Dome has been described as "probably the most expensive 'urban regeneration project' this country has ever seen".

"Not much of a government"

Tony Blair, Peter Mandelson, John Prescott, Michael Heseltine and John Major were all involved in planning and/or deciding to go ahead with the project. Tony Blair described it as: "The most exciting thing to happen anywhere in the World in the Year 2000" Peter Mandelson predicted "Our problem will not be attracting people, but finding enough space and opportunity for them all to enter the dome to have the time of their lives." And John Prescott commented: "If we can't make this work, we're not much of a government" .

A huge amount of money (yours and mine) has been wasted on the Dome, yet those responsible for the mistakes either remain in important well paid jobs or receive hefty pensions – demonstrating that the political clique looks after its own.

"Not fit for purpose"

But I love the Dome. It shows that our leaders, for all their self confident poses and endless self-justification when put to the test are unable to organise the proverbial "piss up in a brewery".

It is distressing that we continue to be surprised at their incompetence. It is these people, and the infrastructure they rely on, who preside over the NHS. No wonder they cannot organise a system to allocate jobs to newly-qualified doctors. No wonder the Child support agency was so hopeless that it had to be closed down. It is frightening to imagine what might be going on in areas that are complicated and that we cannot see. What else, to use John Reid's immortal words, is "not fit for purpose"?

Image credits:

www.pale.org

www.birdseyetourist.com

Campbell on TV

Where men are the most sure and arrogant, they are commonly the most mistaken ~ David Hume (1711-1776)

In the television version of his diaries, Alistair Campbell revealed far more than he intended. The three things that I took away from the programmes were:

• Campbell is a vain and deeply disturbed individual who should never have been entrusted with such power
• Tony Blair's poverty of judgement in picking his friends places Campbell in the company of other star choices (Bush, Berlusconi, Blunkett, Mandelson, as well as Cherie's indispensable confidente, Carole Caplin)
• A large part of Labour's (and Blair's) failure to engage the public in positive aspects of its policy agenda was because of Campbell's paranoia and exclusive focus on danger.

His strategy wreaked havoc because, instead of deflecting attention and cooling the impact of events, his actions poured petrol on the flames. His uncontrolled ill-temper and contempt for those who opposed his views enraged his victims who, in turn, sought every opportunity for revenge.

A telling moment was when he showed sympathy for John Prescott and the notorious egg/punch incident. Clearly, Campbell would have done the same, but more restraint is required of a Deputy Prime Minister or Chief Press Secretary.

The culmination of Campbell's career was his involvement in the dodgy dossier, the Gilligan incident, the death of Dr David Kelly, and the Hutton Inquiry fiasco. Campbell had drawn his friend Blair into territory where it was impossible for him to win. Whatever Blair said, whatever he did, he would not be believed. Campbell was his Svengali and he wrecked any moral authority Blair might have had.

The style of the diary is self-serving and pathetic, as shown by the empty note of sympathy for Dr Kelly's widow. But Blair chose to listen to him and, even after Campbell resigned, said that he would telephone him every single day. Campbell was his crutch, so indispensable that Blair insisted that he attend cabinet meetings. He needed Campbell in the same way that Cherie needed Caplin. Hole in the head comes to mind.

Blair and Campbell were a double act, although it is difficult to decide which was Laurel and which was Hardy. It is easy to imagine Campbell muttering "another fine mess you've got me into", but it was Campbell who sexed up the dossier (whatever Hutton concluded). Neither man had the innocent charm of Laurel and both shared the self-importance of Hardy. Their performance would have been comic if it had not been tragic.

Campbell's role in politics was a sorry episode which did much to undermine trust in public life, and in the men and women who populate that world. A sad story of a talented but flawed man, driven by a need to succeed in achieving narrow goals, diminished by an uncontrollable urge always to be right.

Picture credit:

www.weirdwildrealm.com/f-laurel-hardy.html 

Lady Chatterley’s Connection

"Marijuana is taken by .....musicians. And I'm not speaking about good musicians, but the jazz type... ~ Harry J. Anslinger, Federal Bureau of Narcotics, 1948

When I heard Jacqui Smith and a catalogue of other ministers putting their hands up to having smoked cannabis in their youth, saying they were wrong and that the war on drugs must continue, a shiver ran up my spine. Forty seven years ago, the barrister Mervyn Griffith-Jones made his case for the prosecution of Lady Chatterley's Lover. "Is this a book you would wish your wife or servants to read?" he asked. This question shocked the public and effectively ended the "one law for THEM and another for US" society, a society which denied respect and independence both to women and to the great unwashed.

Is that attitude now returning? Those ministers – some of whom had the benefits of an education system which allowed children of ability but no money to gain access to opportunity – are drawing the ladder up behind them. And now they are saying, "I experimented with drugs and survived, but let's close the door on the youth of today".

What will it take to prove that the current drug strategy is as much a failure as Prohibition was in the US in the 1920s? It has created the same raison d'être for organized crime. It is also filling the prisons, contributing to social exclusion, and placing a strain on the NHS.

What will it take to tear up this failed policy and look at new ways to control the use of drugs? And what will it take to persuade those ministers that their own experience is relevant. Cannabis did them no harm (if they had been caught, it would have wrecked their careers and we would not have the benefit of their abilities in the higher echelons of government – oops, I did not mean to go there, but what the hell, it's on the way to being true and these ministers might turn out OK).

A large number of media celebrities – welcomed into Downing Street by Tony Blair and hobnobbing with the royals – get away with being part of the drug culture and still manage to live rich and fulfilled lives. It's a cliché, I know, but treating people like children, telling them what they can and can't do, makes them behave like children. Treating them like adults, on the other hand, will give them self respect and a desire to behave in a more mature way.

So ministers, ask yourselves, "What is it about me and Elton John and Kate Moss that is different from every other man and woman who strays into drug taking?" Think again, please. Try to find a better way.

Picture credit:

http://www.printsandprintmaking.gov.au/Catalogues/Works/tabid/57/frmView/Record/itemID/31993/Default.aspx

What is the panopticon?

"Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom." ~ Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

At the turn of the 18th century, Jeremy Bentham proposed a design for a prison. He called it the Panopticon. It contained a central point from which prison warders were able to watch all the prisoners simultaneously, while remaining themselves unobserved. Bentham claimed two important advantages for this design. Firstly it would reduce costs (prisoners would not know whether they were being watched or not, so warders would not have to be on duty all the time). Secondly the prisoners (potentially under scrutiny at all times) would improve their behaviour. Their morals would be reformed as a consequence.

Ideal prison

It is all too easy to draw a parallel between Bentham's ideal prison and today's world. Most obviously there are the "safety" cameras which enforce the rule of the road, congestion charge cameras which record comings and goings through swathes of London, Oyster cards which follow the movements of passengers on the underground and buses. A less structured system – for the moment – are the many private surveillance cameras. These have the potential of watching our actions wherever we are – if only their information could be co-ordinated, collated and analysed. And that time is not too far away.

Then there are initiatives by local government to watch our rubbish disposal habits and home improvement activities.

This is all direct observation. But there is also indirect surveillance: mobile phone use, money transactions, the whole fingerprint, DNA database and identity card project. In China, information provided by internet service provider Yahoo was used to convict and imprison a writer who sent an email to an American journalist detailing media restrictions imposed by the Chinese authorities.

We are not watched all the time. But we can be watched whenever the authorities feel like it. So will our morals be reformed? And will that lead to a better society?

But wait – Bentham's design was intended for a prison, for convicted criminals. Is that what we have all become in our new surveillance world? If we are caught on camera, the consequences of accepting a quick fine and a criminal record are far less risky than arguing the case in court. As a result, more and more of us become criminalised.

Is there an advantage in having a better behaved population? And to obtain this, is permanent observation the price we have to pay?

Women whipped in the street

Again, we must pause for thought. The Taliban government in Afghanistan imposed moral values on the population. The religious police found women whose dress or behaviour fell below their standards and whipped them in the street. Is this the sort of justice to which we aspire? And let us not forget that until the 1960s incautious (male) homosexuals in our own country caught by the authorities were put on trial and sent to prison. They would have found it harder to be discreet if the Panopticon society that is being built now had existed then. They would have found it much harder to fight for their rights. Most would have become criminalised by default; the rest would have been forced to stay below the radar.

These are just two examples which demonstrate that authorities, when they think they have a right (duty) to improve morals, become both oppressive and dangerous.

Authoritarian governments have always sought ways to keep their population under control but in the past British governments curbed their controlling instincts. In 1898 an effort to treat anarchism as an international offence was crushed by the reluctance of Britain Switzerland and Belgium to participate. Interestingly the move was sponsored by the USA. Over the next few years the anarchist movement withered away as its efforts to disrupt society by, often suicidal, terrorist acts failed to generate sufficient following and support.

Why do the authorities feel justified in constructing this new high tech Panopticon? Why do they treat the population that they "serve" as prisoners, branding more and more of us as criminals? I believe there is a reason for this – but more of that another time.

Image credits:
http://www.prisonwall.org/postcard/pri.htm
www.runningscared.org

             

The art of the blog: a reply to Polly Toynbee’s article in The Author based on her Bagehot Lecture

…it behoveth him to have a vigilant eye to the proceedings of great princes, and to consider seriously of their designs ~ Sir Walter Raleigh (1554 –1618)

Before I started to publish this blog, I asked a friend for comments. She was very upset by what she read, believing it to be carping and critical. I took her comments to heart and have softened my tone and moderated my language. At the same time, she berated me for not voting because she believes that voting is the right way to take part in the democratic process. My opinion of political parties, however, is unchanged. Based on their behaviour and their attitude to the electorate, my feeling remains – a plague on all your houses.

Instinctive sympathy for the political process

My friend directed me to an article in The Author magazine by Polly Toynbee, "The art of the column", which I read with interest. Toynbee offers two golden rules for columnists:

• "If you are going to try to explain the world of politics to the world outside you need to have a strong instinctive sympathy for the political process and for the politicians who face the very difficult task of getting anything done"
• Spend … "a good long time as a reporter first … both a general reporter and a specialist in some particular subject … for politics is not about the miasma of Westminster … it is about policy and the real world."

Attack on the blogosphere

Toynbee's attack is on colleagues who are "overtly and strongly opinionated" and on the "alternative Rory Bremner voice (that) has become mainstream". She says there is a risk that the style of the blogosphere, its "unmediated sound and fury" coming from "unknown sources with unknown intentions", is "forcing conventional columnists to shout louder, to take up contrarian postures for the sake of it."

Towards the end of the article, she provides some good advice, referring to "the skill of crafting a column with a beginning, a middle and an end, a coherent argument, at least three facts that readers won't know, and information gleaned from talking to the leading players in the case."

Once you have gutted what Polly Toynbee is saying, it comes down to "clear off you amateurs and leave the job to us professionals, you contaminate us". And maybe she has a point. Tony Blair was an amateur when he leapt straight into the job of Prime Minister – and look how we, and more tragically the people of Iraq, have paid the price. This is despite the fact that Blair was ably assisted by Alistair Campbell, a professional journalist who had passed through Polly Toynbee's career development mill. Yet it was only at the end of Blair's career that one glimpsed how much he had done for Northern Ireland and how admired he was in Sierra Leone. With a professional journalist at his side, how did he fail focus public attention on these not inconsiderable successes?

Two objections

I have two greater objections to Polly Toynbee's position:

• First, she turns inclusion in the cosy, inward-looking, elitist world that is professional politics into a virtue for the columnist. How would she cope if the BNP, UKIP or an extreme Islamic party became mainstream? (Not out of the question – let us never forget how quickly the Nazi Party took power in Germany in the 1930s).
• Second, she places emphasis on the moderating effect of working for a newspaper, its editor and its publisher . My thoughts may come from an "unknown source", but I can assure her that I have never worked for Robert Maxwell, Conrad Black or Rupert Murdoch.

On one point I must agree with her – "… if you fail to be entertaining no-one will read you. It takes bravado to go out there and tell the world what you think." Finding readers is many, many times harder in the blogosphere. The blogger does not have the benefit of passing traffic as Toynbee does from the comfort of her newspaper column.

But even without readers, I benefit from the process of writing. With its discipline, I clear my thinking and there is always the faint chance that some passer-by may read and be interested in what I say. I have no illusions.

Incandescent fury

My original motive for starting to blog was an incandescent fury at having to live in a country led by the shallow and inconsequential Tony Blair, whose mindless actions led to the deaths of tens of thousands in Iraq and the erosion of civil liberties and the right to free speech at home. Only fundamental constitutional reform will protect us from another leader of his ilk: simultaneously besotted by his own convictions and propelled into knee-jerk policy-making by a hysterical and hostile press. I am heartened that Gordon Brown sees a need for constitutional reform and I now watch and wait for a better future.

Smell of competence

Polly Toynbee's article, and my friend's original criticism, have made me focus on what I can bring to the party. I want to do better than Richard Littlejohn who sees his job as "sitting at the back and throwing bottles". I try to look at what people do and not at what they say. For example, my wife and I have often argued about the merits of Gordon Brown. Whatever criticism was made against him, I was unable to get away from the fact that he has run the economy much better than any Chancellor in the twentieth century. He just smells of competence. His first days as prime minister feel right too. I will not make a firm judgement until the honeymoon period is over – I am only too well aware that politicians are masters of the finesse. I could not care less about his performance in Prime Minister's question time. For the moment he is making the right noises. If he follows through with liberating policies, with opportunities for better, freer lives, and if he doesn't view the public as potential criminals who need to be watched or as children unable to look after themselves or to make their own choices, I shall breathe a sigh of relief.

I am however, cautious about his reputation for bullying, autocracy and bad temper. But again, his willingness to give up power, first to the Bank of England and now to the Commons, belies this reputation. And if his bad temper was the result of watching the moronic antics of the Blair/Campbell double act, I am inclined to sympathise.

Unnoticed in the stalls

I find I have digressed but hope the diversion has strengthened my defence of blogging. I have one big advantage over Ms Toynbee and other political columnists – I am sitting here and watching from MY vantage point. I might not have a front row seat, but from up here in the gods I occasionally spot things – juxtapositions of actors, things happening off stage – that may go unnoticed in the stalls.

One more point: in democracy, no-one is an amateur. We all pay our taxes or receive our benefits, we all have a right to vote (or in my case not to vote), and we can all have our say, despite Blair's efforts to stifle free speech. The internet has yet to settle but it has the potential to be massively democratising, to become a moderator of the power of the cosy elite to which Ms Toynbee is privileged and proud to belong.

And finally, to show that I have been paying attention, here are three facts that are not well known. In the 2005 general election:

• For every 96,482 votes, the Liberal Democrats won one seat
• For every 44,306 votes, the Conservatives won one seat
• For every 26,031 votes, Labour won one seat

So what is there to sympathise with? To my mind, these figures – alongside other weaknesses – seriously undermine the legitimacy of the political process.

I have slipped in a few harsh words here and there to satisfy Ms Toynbee's prejudice against bloggers.

Picture credits:

www.safecom.org.au/lawrence03.htm

www.lboro.ac.uk/.../pages/07-commending.html

Why I am writing this Blog

"Hypocrisy in anything whatever may deceive the cleverest and most penetrating man, but the least wide-awake of children recognizes it, and is revolted by it, however ingeniously it may be disguised" ~ Tolstoy (1828-1910)

I should explain why I have decided to write this blog.

Naïve assumptions

I have always been bewildered by the world that surrounds me. It makes no sense. This is probably because my assumptions are naïve. For example, for me, honesty is a fairly straightforward concept. It is not hard to tell the truth most of the time. Yet all around me I see people – especially politicians and those in authority – lying, cheating and twisting words in order to distort or hide the truth, cover their mistakes, or obscure their motives. And these are the members of society whom we need to trust the most. Why? Because we cede so much power to them and because they have such a huge impact on our lives.

The same is true of many who claim to follow the Christian faith. The gospel of love, forgiveness and charity is very simple. The injunction "let he who is without sin cast the first stone" is clear and straightforward. Yet many Christians are very quick to condemn and impose their will on others. And many tolerate hypocrisy and bigotry with a frightening level of enthusiasm.

There are other, less dangerous, things that I don't understand. Fashion for example. Why are the colours and designs that were so popular in the 1960s and 1970s so reviled now? (Or are they coming back; I really can't keep up.) And why are the gothic shapes and flourishes of the Victorian era, which were until fairly recently covered up with hardboard and white paint, now so popular? St Pancras Station springs to mind, a joke – a bit of an eyesore – just a few decades ago; now one of the most loved landmarks of London.

Power of celebrity

I also find the power of celebrity inexplicable, although I too can be seduced by heroes. So maybe I can use my own experience to help untangle this particular conundrum. (I doubt it but I will try.)

Celebrity is connected with charisma and charisma is very important and very dangerous as we know from the example of Hitler. Yet society seems to crave leaders with charisma. It seems as if we have failed to learn from a recent – terrible – lesson of history.

Mounting body count

And how can we live with ourselves when our government has, in our name, invaded a foreign country. It disbanded the police force and army, and then watched as its own army was helpless to stop the civilian body count mount to a (minimum) estimate of 60,000. And that government has since been re-elected. When our politicians speak about this horror and there is little indication that they see these people as human beings. Where is the outrage that was expressed followed the bombing of the London underground? The number of people who died here was in the tens not the tens of thousands.

So it seems to me that I must be coming at the problem from the wrong direction. Instead of listening to what people say, I should look at what they do. If the theory which is supposed to explain how things work does not fit the facts, I should seek a theory which has a better explanation.

Restricted freedom

What I find distressing is that, in a world which is clearly getting better in many ways (far more people now have the opportunity to live rich and fulfilling lives, hunger and poverty are being pushed back in many parts of the world) serious efforts are being made to restrict freedom. We are moving from a time when the gap between rich and poor was getting smaller to one where it is getting bigger, a time when more people are spending a longer time in education but their skills and abilities fail to meet the expectations of employers.

In no way do I pretend to have answers to the problems which make me so confused. But I do want to share my reflections about them. I have ideas about how a few of the problems might be addressed, although I don't claim any special status for them. All I have done is try to think through why efforts to solve problems seem to fail repeatedly – and search for alternative ways of looking at them. The object is never to offer definitive answers but always to provide food for thought.

My perspective is Anglocentric. I have limited experience of how things work elsewhere. My focus is on the way in which politics and government works, and the way in which ordinary people like myself react to what governments and administrations do.

I hope you find this random walk through my mind maze interesting. If I succeed in throwing new light into some dark corner, I will have achieved my objective.

Image credit: http://www.stephenwiltshire.co.uk/show_print.aspx?Id=1018

Logic 101 and the Terrorist Threat

Wise men are instructed by reason; men of less understanding by experience; the most ignorant by necessity; and beasts by nature. ~ Cicero (106BC – 43BC)

If you think you don't like logic, please bear with me. This theoretical bit is very important and it won't last long. The first thing you learn in formal logic is how to argue from known facts to a true and valid conclusion: the syllogism. It works like this:

• All dogs are mammals
• Rover is a dog
• Therefore – and incontrovertibly – Rover is a mammal

Another example:

• Some dogs are black
• All dogs are mammals
• Therefore – and incontrovertibly – some mammals are black

A common mistake is to reason as follows:

• All dogs have four legs
• A cow has four legs
• Therefore – but erroneously – a cow is a dog

Or:

• Some dogs are dangerous
• Rover is a dog
• Therefore – but erroneously – Rover is dangerous

Why have I bothered to go through all this boring and basic stuff? Because it would seem that the British media including the BBC, of whom I would expect better, have not learnt this elementary lesson.

Consider:

• Some doctors trained in the Middle East are terrorists
• All terrorists are a threat
• Therefore – but erroneously – all doctors trained in the Middle East are a threat

Nevertheless, since the recent car bomb attacks on central London and British airports, we have had reams of coverage about how the NHS should be protecting us from this new and terrible threat. Now that really is dumbing down. And it is frightening in its implication – especially when you consider that the "some" in the argument above actually refers to just seven people.

The number of doctors trained abroad and registered to work in the UK is 128,000 (out of a total of 277,000). Of these, 2169 were trained in Iraq or Jordan (where the suspected terrorists came from). So the threat comes from about one quarter of one percent of doctors from Iraq and Jordan and a minute fraction of all foreign doctors. Suddenly this whole group of people, on whom the NHS relies to staff its hospitals, are put under the spotlight. And the NHS is to be put under even more pressure to scrutinise its staff.

It would be far more productive to try to understand why we are in the position of having to rely on other countries to provide us with 46% of our doctors.

Let's end with a final example of the sort of crummy logic that rules our lives:

• Some Muslims are terrorists
• All terrorists are a threat
• Therefore – but erroneously – all Muslims are a threat

Or how about:

• Some terrorists have been invited to form the government in Northern Ireland
• All terrorists are a threat
• Therefore – ???

That one is too hard for me. Perhaps we need to start again from scratch, use less false logic, and learn from experience instead.

Picture credit:

www.gapingvoid.com/.../archives/003182.html

Little Nell by Simon Gray, directed by Sir Peter Hall

Those who are faithful know only the trivial side of love: it is the faithless who know love's tragedies ~ Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

Little Nell by Simon Gray and directed by Sir Peter Hall is a controversial play. After the first preview performance, a member of the audience told Michael Pennington, who plays the part of Charles Dickens, that she would never read a novel by Dickens again. And my wife and I have been arguing about the play ever since we saw it at the Bath Theatre Royal, where it had its debut in advance of a tour with the Peter Hall Company's 2007 season.

The story is that of Dickens 13-year secret affair with a young actress Nelly Ternan. He met and fell in love with her when she, her mother and one of her sisters were performing in one of his plays. After she left the stage, he set her up as a "kept woman" in a house in Slough. He then sent his wife away (claiming she was mad) and installed his sister-in-law as his housekeeper and carer for his ten children.

The play is based on Claire Tomalin's appropriately titled book, The Invisible Woman. It is structured around a meeting between Nelly's son, Geoffrey Robinson (played convincingly by Tim Pigott-Smith) and Dickens's son, a meeting which took place several years after Nelly's death. Geoffrey's life was blighted by the lies which Nelly used to cover up her scandalous past and preserve her lover's reputation, a deceit which enabled her to rebuild her life, marry a schoolmaster and have two children, with no-one knowing the truth of her past life.

The controversy is this: who was to blame? The facts are:

• Dickens seduced a 17 year old girl from a family of actresses and installed her as his mistress while he continued his life in the public eye as a celebrity who occupied the moral high ground.

• Nelly had to maintain a low profile, both as a kept woman and in order protect her lover's status, and so sacrificed her freedom to live a normal life.

Who was at fault? Dickens for taking advantage of Nelly's youth with his fame and charisma? Nelly for allowing it to happen? Society which put such great store on sexual propriety?

Was Nelly a victim? Did she make the sacrifice willingly because she enjoyed Dickens's attentions? And finally, why did no-one mentioned Dickens's one undeniable victim: his wife Catherine?

Peter Hall, in answering my wife's question about Nelly's invisibility in a talk at Bath's Royal Crescent Hotel, said that he had tried to balance the argument. The result is an intriguing play, directed and staged impeccably and blessed with a breathtaking performance by Loo Brealey, so far best know as "shake me up Judy" Smallweed in the television adaptation of Bleak House. See it if you can.

Picture Credit:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellen_Ternan

Cheerleaders

All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others. ~ George Orwell – (1903-1950) Animal Farm

I am publishing this post earlier than intended because of Gordon Brown’s announcements on constitutional reform. It was written some time ago during the dark days of Tony Blair’s premiership. In its first few days, the Brown government addressed some of the issues which worry me and inspired me to write this blog. It is too early to make a judgment and politicians are masters of the finesse – but the signs are good. If his first proposals reflect Gordon Brown’s priorities, one can only imagine his fury as, he watched the his predecessor shred constitutional safeguards that had been refined over centuries.

Democracy is a tricky thing. The principle is straightforward – people, joined together by the vagaries of geography, form a club. A management committee is elected and the most popular chaps (m & f) are given the job of ensuring that the rubbish is cleared, that someone is delegated to sort out Mrs Snodgrass who's having a hard time, and that nobody breaks in and steals the silver.

Hard decisions

The reality is more complicated for three main reasons:

• the range of jobs to be done is enormous. Decisions are hard to make and managing the show requires a huge range of skills,
• people are forced to be members of the club whether they want to or not, they are different from each other and want different things from the club. While some are more than capable of paying their dues, others don't have enough money to survive, let alone to pay into the common pot,
• the membership is so large, it is difficult to know who is popular and who is not. Few people have the time or inclination to check whether the committee is doing a good job, whether it is doing what was agreed at the time it was elected, and even whether it is not, itself, running off with the silver.

A system going wrong

The solution devised to deal with these problems is called representative democracy. We divide ourselves into smaller, more manageable groups. In each group we choose a chap to go and represent us, who will – on our behalf – keep an eye on the committee that we elected.

It is this part of the system that seems to be going wrong in Britain.

All power corrupts

An important principle of representative democratic systems – which ensures that they continue to work effectively – is called the separation of powers. This is designed to ensure that when (inevitably) power goes to the heads of those entrusted with it, someone is in a position to blow the whistle and call foul. And, most important, that that someone should have the power to physically stop the match.

In the American Constitution, the separation of powers is made explicit:

• the President has the executive power (the job of deciding what should happen and organising how to do it),
• the Congress has legislative power (making laws which put the President's plans into effect, as well as supplying the money to pay for them),
• the Judiciary, in the form of the Supreme Court, ensures that everyone plays by the rules, most of which were written down many years ago in the constitution. The courts also have powers to interpret the constitution to take account of changing mores.

An example: President Bush has dug himself into a hole in Iraq. He needs more money to shore up the excavation before it collapses on his head. Congress, however, has proved reluctant to pass the law which gives him the money. Unfortunately, in this instance, the scale of the problem is so huge that Congress realised that it must spend the money to avoid the US being buried along with the President and his executive. But the principle remains: Congress acts independently of the executive; if it takes a different point of view, it can frustrate the President's policy.

Powers are concentrated in Britain

Here in Britain, the powers are more concentrated and – frighteningly – they are becoming more so:

• to begin with, the executive (the prime minister and his cabinet – what we normally think of as the government) sits alongside the ordinary MPs in parliament. So the power of the legislature (i.e. parliament) to control the executive is circumscribed. It would be difficult for it to mount a campaign to stop the government going off the rails,
• secondly, many (if not most) MPs go into politics, not to keep an eye on the government, but to get their fifteen minutes of fame and become members of the executive themselves. So they have every incentive to support their party leaders, and very little incentive to stick their heads above the parapet and call foul,
• since winning their seats in parliament is dependent (to a large extent) on how successful their party is, and almost not at all on how well they represent their constituents, MPs have a huge incentive to toe the party line,
• finally, since Britain does not have a written constitution, the power of the Judiciary has always been limited (although our supreme court, which sits in the House of Lords, can still judge whether the government is attempting to exercise authority beyond its legal powers). In recent years, the adoption of the European Convention on Human Rights has provided a framework for courts to judge whether the laws themselves are legal, but this has resulted in a lot of friction between government and Judiciary.

Control of the courts

So we can see how the executive has effective control of the legislature. And in recent years, we have seen it try to increase its control of the legal system as well. There has been a rash of statements by ministers with the underlying structure – "if only judges did what we told them, the world would be a better place; and if they don't watch their step, we'll force them to behave as we want them to."

In the meantime, the government has been kicking up dust to hide its true intentions. Lip-service is paid to the concept of ensuring judicial independence through constitutional reforms, but these promises are matched by attempts to opt-out of parts of the European Convention on Human Rights. And there has been a rash of efforts to increase the power to detain individuals without charge, thereby denying suspects the protection of the courts.

Double standards

A recent (and forceful) example of this push by the executive to have its own way was provided by Tony Blair in the dying days of his premiership. He said the disappearance of three suspects under control orders was a symptom of a society which put civil liberties before fighting terror. He described this as "misguided and wrong". He said that prioritising a terror suspect's right to traditional civil liberties was "a dangerous misjudgement". And this coming from a man whose only positive lasting legacy is based on his willingness to negotiate in Northern Ireland with people who, until very recently, were terrorists – a breathtaking example of double standards. Also a depressing example of politician's determination to fail to learn from past mistakes.

An excuse not a reason

Thus the supposed threat of terrorist atrocity is an excuse, not a reason. The executive will have its way or, like the spoiled and wilful Violet Elizabeth in the Just William books, it "will scream and scream till I'm sick — I can, you know".

Arbitrary detention

It is for this reason that there should be a separation of powers in Britain. The issue of detention without trial (loosely known as habeas corpus) is a very important one. It goes back in time before the Magna Carta and has been used for centuries to protect the individual against arbitrary detention by the state. It is protection against false accusation by individuals as well as by the police. In the current climate of child protection, teachers who, are vulnerable to malicious accusations by pupils, have increasingly restricted channels of redress – a frightening development. Any weakening of the law which ensures that proper evidence must be provided and tested by the courts will subject all of us to the risk of false accusation and imprisonment.

(Interestingly, in 1772, a man brought to England from Jamaica was released from slavery when his advocate successfully argued his case invoking habeas corpus. Mr Blair should have thought harder about the dangers of dismantling laws which protect our freedoms at the same time as expressing his "deep sorrow" for Britain's participation in the slave trade.)

Cheerleaders showing off their knickers

Our representatives in parliament, the chaps we choose to keep an eye on the committee, should be protecting us from these risks and dangers. But because of their entanglement with the executive, they cannot perform their legislative function properly. We are stuck with a system where the club committee has untrammeled power. If MPs were elected separately from the government, as they are in the US and some other countries, they would be less likely to act like a line of cheerleaders for their party bosses, showing off their knickers in the hope of catching the chairman's eye.

Picture credits

www.the700level.com/2005/10/i_love_the_cowb.html 

www.pulledmygroin.com/?c=Cheerleaders 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_pictures/4573536.stm