Notes from the Panopticon

The tragic death of Rhys Jones ~ the devil makes work for idle hands

"I think we ought to raise the age at which juveniles can have a gun." ~ George W. Bush, St. Louis Missouri, October 18, 2000

The shooting to death of Rhys Jones, an eleven-year-old boy, on the streets of Liverpool has generated the usual round of hand-wringing, breast-beating, finger-pointing, and promises of action from the leaders of the main political parties. "Solving this will not be simple", they say, and then go on to talk about how they will work harder using policies that have already been proved to fail.

The solution is not simple. But there are two factors that are easy to identify which contribute to the problem:

• Government anti-drugs policy
• Youth unemployment

In the 1920s, the United States experimented with the prohibition of the sale and consumption of alcohol. It was focusing on a social evil – and alcohol remains a problem in Britain today. According to the Home Office's British Crime Survey (figures for 2006/7), 46% of offenders who committed violent crimes were perceived to be under the influence of alcohol. This overall figure breaks down as follows:

• Domestic, 39%
• By strangers, 58%
• By acquaintances, 47%

(See table below.)

However, the American way of tackling the evil of drink proved worse than the disease. Sharp operators recognized an opportunity to make money and the era of gangsters – with its bloody violence, corruption of government officials and gun crime – emerged. And despite the repeal of prohibition, the organised crime syndicates that grew out of the gangs remain and have grown stronger.

It is extraordinary that the world's governments have, collectively, failed to learn this lesson. Instead, they have picked a fight against illegal drugs that they can never win. And in so doing, they have provided organised crime with a new area to exploit.

In contrast with alcohol, only 17% of violent offenders were under the influence of drugs in 2006/7:

• Domestic, 15%;
• By strangers, just 12%
• By acquaintances, 21%.

Only in the case of muggings did drugs have a higher percentage than alcohol (by just two percentage points).

However, making drugs illegal has had exactly the same effect (this time on a world-wide scale) as alcohol prohibition in the US in the 1920s – corruption, bloody violence, gangs, knives and guns.

The Home Office identifies three levels of gangs:

• Peer groups
• Street gangs
• Criminal networks

A study (by Professor Pitts of Bedfordshire University) of gang membership in South London found that the development of the drugs market has led to the need for an expanding workforce. The street gang provides the shop floor of the international drugs business; gang members protect the territory and provide a distribution network.

Low level peer group gangs are sucked into this culture. Pitts found that 40% of younger gang members were reluctant. They had no criminal record but felt unable to leave the gangs for fear of reprisals on themselves or their families. The knife and gun attacks that have made the headlines recently are, in part, a reflection of this.

It is not hard to see that these are preconditions for an escalation in violence. The lower level gangs are used by hard-line criminal networks to distribute their drug merchandise. Real money is at stake and it needs to be protected. What could be easier than for the big boys to provide their new lieutenants with weapons. Guns bolster their recruits' morale and sense of importance. And a genie is let out of the box.

I said there were two easily-identified factors leading to the upsurge in violence on the street. Let's now examine the second one. It would be harder – not impossible, but harder – for criminals to draw street gangs and their members into their networks, and harder for street gangs to conscript new members, if the pool of potential recruits was smaller. But that pool is large and growing. See chart below.

Between the year 2000 and 2007, the unemployment rate among 16 and 17 year-old boys has grown from 21% to 31%, an increase of 45%. The unemployment rate for 18-24 men is lower at 14%, but this is still two and a half times the rate for all age groups, and has grown by 15% during the period. By contrast, unemployment among all age groups is 5.7%, down by 5% over the period. So we have a large and growing group of boys and young men with nothing to do. And as we all know, "the devil makes work for idle hands".

The irony is that, over this same period, the percentage of boys achieving 5 or more GCSE passes at grades A*-C has risen from 46% to 57%, a rise of 24%. This improvement has come at some cost. Government expenditure on education between 2000/1 and 2005/6 rose from 4.9% of GDP to 5.6% (from £47bn to £68.5 bn, a rise of 46%).

It is a pity that all this money spent by government, and the efforts on the part of teachers and pupils, did not help more boys to find jobs. Instead, it seems that nobody wants them. With nothing better to do and with little to hope for, it is not surprising that their youthful energy is channelled into anti-social behaviour. Such alienation from society easily escalates into a gang culture. Gangs provide respect and a sense of belonging for these young men which is denied to them by society.

Now add to this problem the opportunities offered by illegal drugs. Criminal networks find it easy to turn the boys and young men that nobody wants into hoodlums (to use an old-fashioned, but graphic and appropriate word from the days of prohibition) and to arm them with weapons.

So finding the solution to the rise in gun and knife crime, as well as more general anti-social behaviour, requires effort in two areas:

• Finding a less damaging way to control narcotic drug supply and consumption, and
• Finding a better way to provide boys leaving school with (1) qualifications that employers find useful and (2) attitudes that prepare them better for the world of work.

Picture credits:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/08/21/ngcse121.xml

http://brain.brent.gov.uk/brain/braincf.nsf/images/nad2_logo/$file/nad2_logo_content.jpg

Victory by Athol Fugard, starring Richard Johnson, Pippa Bennett-Warner and Reece Ritchie, director Cordelia Monsey

"Oft expectation fails, and most oft there

Where most it promises; and oft it hits

Where hope is coldest, and despair most fits."

-William Shakespeare (1564-1616), All's Well That Ends Well

Athol Fugard's play Victory in the Peter Hall Season at Bath's Theatre Royal is short and sour. The anger that was Fugard's muse during the apartheid era has been replaced by despair.

It is easy to understand his disappointment. He had risked much as a white liberal working and waiting for the overthrow of the apartheid regime. The thrill of seeing his objective achieved as Nelson Mandela walked free and universal elections took place must have been euphoric. But then he had to face the realisation that political change made little difference to the day-to-day lives of many of his black compatriots.

The new regime has done little to improve the economic welfare of the country. On average, it can be classed as a middle-income economy but the reality is that South Africa has one of the highest rates of income inequality in the world. It also faces an epidemic of HIV/Aids, with 20% of its adult population infected, and is having to cope with an influx of refugees, especially from Zimbabwe (a country which provides a stark example of what South Africa could have become).

The government's efforts to expand the economy by increasing the rate of privatisation and by cutting government spending is opposed by organised labour, one of the reasons why growth has not been strong enough to reduce the unemployment rate. Poverty, unemployment and lack of economic empowerment are still endemic among disadvantaged groups. And corruption is a serious problem.

It is not only white liberals like Fugard who have to live with disappointment; at least they have the option of moving away. The people who remain in the slums have little to look forward to and perhaps this is why crime has exploded. South Africa has the second highest level of violent assaults in the world per head of population, and the second highest level of murders. It is top in murders with firearms, top in rapes.

With this background, it is not surprising that Fugard's play is so bleak. A young black couple attempt to rob the house belonging to Lionel (Richard Johnson), a liberal white man. Vicky (Pippa Bennett-Warner) is the daughter of Lionel's dead housekeeper. She was born at the time of Nelson Mandela's release from prison and named Victoria, a symbol of the hope that came with the creation of the Rainbow Nation.

Lionel has recently been widowed and, in his despair, he failed to answer Vicky's calls for help as she faced poverty, abuse and hopelessness in the slums. So she has brought her boyfriend Freddie (Reece Ritchie) to steal money which she saw in the house as a little girl. Freddie too is facing poverty and hopelessness; in his mind, the only way forward is to join the gangs of Cape Town.

Fugard has waited thirteen years to write this play which is based on an incident in his own life. He is remarkably honest. It is difficult to admit that the hopes of your entire life have been dashed, which is what he has done in a thinly-veiled allegory for the despair that has replaced the hopes of South Africa's first free election.

One wonders if Lionel is actually Fugard himself, who has now abandoned his home country to live in California – just as Lionel has abandoned Vicky. He recognises that his liberal ideals failed to change the reality of life for the majority of South African blacks.

It must have been hard to hold up the banner of freedom against the vicious white supremacist regime, but Fugard's socialist liberal ideals which helped defeat apartheid no longer offer a better future for the country. Free market ideology has been successfully espoused throughout much of the East (including Communist China and socialist India) as the route out of poverty. But in Africa and the Middle East, regimes cling on to the discredited economics of the 1960s and 1970s, and are surprised when poverty remains and social unrest erupts.

The despair of Fugard's play belongs only to the text. The director (Cordelia Monsey) has brought the best out of an excellent cast. Johnson, Bennett-Warner and Richie present three tortured individuals whose lives are filled with disappointment. They have no hope for the future.

Picture credit

news.bbc.co.uk/2/low/entertainment/1910559.stm 

http://theater.nytimes.com/ref/theater/hirschfeld/index.html?rf=date%2Fdetail_15.html

How can I fuck things up today?

Bureaucrats: they are dead at 30 and buried at 60. They are like custard pies; you can't nail them to a wall. ~ Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959)

I have just been reading Andrew Alderson's graphic account of his time in Basra. (Bankrolling Basra) It describes how, from a standing start, he established an organisation which took over the roll of the defunct southern branch of the Iraqi Central Bank. Under Saddam, Iraq was run Soviet fashion. All economic activity was owned by the state and wages were paid out of central funds. When the state operations were abruptly ended by his overthrow, there was no money to pay the workers. This led to a simmering resentment which threatened security. Alderson, a merchant banker and volunteer member of the Territorial Army, was given the job of kick-starting the economy because of his financial background. He re-established a flow of funds to pay wages to get vital utilities and social services working again. Over the months, he built an international team of experts in each field who helped Iraqi managers restart operations under the interim regime.

Less directive and "colonial"

As the time for the handover of power approached, civil servants in London decided that the organisation Alderson had built should be replaced by a transitional authority which would be less directive and "colonial". This decision took no account of the inexperience of Iraqi managers in operating without central control. The civil servants sent over to implement the new approach turned up with no understanding of the situation on the ground, of what had been achieved, or why it had been tackled in the way it had.

Alderson returned from his meeting with them deeply frustrated. A colleague who was on the receiving end of his vitriolic description of what had passed replied 'Andrew be reasonable, these guys don't get out of bed each morning and say "right, how can I fuck things up today?"'.

Challenge my prejudice

Followers of this blog will understand that this is a comment I have to take seriously because it reflects pretty closely what I think about bureaucrats in general, and civil servants in particular. And put that way, it requires careful reflection because it is a forceful challenge to my prejudice.

So let's get down to it. Bureaucrats have power. They have been put in a position from which they can MAKE other people do what they want, or STOP them from making their own choices. This power is circumscribed by two types of limitation:

• legislation
• procedure

Legislation is made by politicians, who make laws and institute policies to achieve goals, move society in chosen directions, or control people. (Though bureaucrats do have a lot of power over how legislation should be interpreted.) Procedure is the method used by bureaucratic institutions to ensure that individual civil servants are pulling in the same direction and treating the citizens over whom they exercise power fairly. Procedure is also there to ensure that money spent is properly accounted for, and that acts carried out by bureaucrats of all types are consistent with policy.

Bramble thicket of bureaucracy

So what can go wrong? Kafka, in The Castle and The Trial graphically describes the way that bureaucracy can turn itself into a bramble thicket which can catch the unwary citizen and not let him go. Procedures are quickly set up by different departments. They can be impenetrable to the uninitiated and may be contradictory. The 1980s television series, Yes Minister, lampooned the way that civil servants ran rings round a fictional minister and tied him in knots of self-contradiction. Joseph Heller coined the phrase Catch 22 to crystallise the way that, by fulfilling one requirement, the unwary citizen can be caught by another – conflicting one.

In this maze of rules and regulations the bureaucrat is in a position to impede the citizen with procedural requirements, forms to complete and offices to visit. The effect can be stifling.

Proving black is white

Bureaucrats are also skilled at generating whole vocabularies of jargon and acronyms which make it easy for them to obscure their true motives and objectives. Above all, through a combination of ever shifting jargon and weasel words, it becomes possible to prove that black is white and white is black, a carefully-honed skill which can be a double-edged sword for their political masters. Civil servants can either use it to protect ministers or a threat to keep them in their place.

One of the reasons for the economic stagnation of India and South and Central America up to the 1980s was the overweening power of bureaucracy. In India's case, the curbing of bureaucratic power has led to an extraordinary economic resurgence. This is less evident in South America where bureaucratic interference is a deliberate policy. It helps political oligarchies retain power and ensures that competition does not threaten their lucrative monopolies.

Pressure cooker of hierarchies

This takes us back to what bureaucrats say to themselves when they get out of bed in the morning. They live in a pressure cooker of hierarchies, jealousies, office politics and backbiting. But, at the higher echelons, they don't have to worry about their jobs or pensions. They don't have to produce anything that anyone else wants. (The rest of us do because, ultimately, our wages our paid because the organisations for whom we work make or provide things that people are willing to pay for, whereas civil servants' wages are paid out of taxes that no one wants to pay.) So what can they do? Top civil servants can make their jobs bigger and more important by making more work for themselves or by taking over colleagues' portfolios. That type of activity provided a lot of material for Yes Minister. And, of course, they can boss people about; it is rare that they have to face the consequences of any damage they do.

So if I allow myself to be totally cynical, I could speculate that they do ask themselves "how can I fuck things up today?" Why? Because they have the power, because they don't have to face the consequences, and because they operate in a parallel world where incomes are always secure and they have nothing better to do. But that, I am sure, is unfair.

Battle in the corridors of power

So let's return to Basra. The internal battle in the corridors of power in Whitehall was lost by the Foreign Office (FO) – just watch the acronyms flow – and won by the Department for International Development (DFID). It was the DFID civil servants that arrived in Iraq with news that the structures set up to regenerate the economy of Southern Iraq were "colonial" in their approach. Instead they were to be replaced by an "aid" structure. And the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) was to be replaced by a Transitional Advisory Team (TAT).

Alderson had built up the CPA South team and had battled for money to rebuild some of the State Owned Organisations (SOE). The central plan had been either to let these businesses wither and die or – more fancifully – to sell them on the international financial market. The team, realising that these SOEs were essential to the economy had had a measure of success in keeping them going, had kept people in jobs and reducing discontent.

Tight financial control

This was achieved because, with his commercial background, he was able to recruit specialists and keep a tight financial control. His organisation was effectively in charge of ensuring that the money was being channelled and spent properly by his own team and by others whose budget he oversaw. At the same time, the Iraqi managements were helped to develop their own decision making and financial management skills.

Despite the relative success of this approach in difficult and deteriorating circumstances, Whitehall decided that it was inappropriate and that instead a cadre of "nation-building specialists" should be brought in to "help existing government institutions take charge". But in post Saddam Iraq, there were no functioning institutions and the new ministries were too weak to undertake the responsibility.

Frightening example of misplaced priorities

Still, the policy had to be implemented and, in a frightening example of misplaced priorities, a woman was sent out from Scotland to prepare a report on gender issues. And this at a time when dangerous riots, a worsening security situation, crippling economic problems, and a shortage of staff were making it difficult to provide adequate health, education, water, power and finance services.

Rearranging deckchairs on the Titanic

The organisations which were trying to tackle these issues were dismantled. In their place, consultants – "experts in institutional capacity building" – were appointed. They arrived in Basra and interviewed members of the departing team and asked each of them three questions:

• what do you do?
• what should we do?
• do you want a job?

The civil servants who came up with this idea may not have asked themselves "how can I fuck things up today?" but they might as well have done. Something had to change, so they decided to rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic.

Image credits:

http://culture.indian-network.de/ushascorner/usha_bureaucracy.htm

http://www.josephbau.org/BW_pics/bureaucracy_low.jpg

http://www.toddmarrone.com/images/artwork(images)/computer(images)/Bureaucracy.gif

The terrorist and the rubberneck

Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be trusted to act humanely or to think sanely under the influence of a great fear." Bertrand Russell

Fight!

When I was at school and in the playground, it was amazing how – from time to time – there would be a sudden murmur which would grab everyone's attention. "Fight!" And suddenly, as if from nowhere, a great magnet would pull everyone into a milling circle around a couple of boys, inevitably boys, fighting.

The audience had no effect on the protagonists who continued to lay into each other. There was a buzz of excitement in the crowd and the noise level would rise. Eventually the teachers would turn up. They would push through the excited children who were jostling and straining to get a better view, grab hold of the combatants and pull them apart.

As they fought their way into the centre, they would try to disperse the crowd with fatuous injunctions. "Off you go, there's nothing to see here". Clearly there was something to see. Why else would we be there?

These sorts of remarks are also made by the police trying to clear bystanders or control crowds when there has been an accident or a fire or someone is taken ill in the street.

Magnetic effect sells newspapers

It is the magnetic effect of these occurrences that sells newspapers and glues us to our television screens: terrorist events, natural disasters, major accidents, abductions, wars. The effect is visceral.

No doubt there is a psychological explanation for the power of the reaction. We slow down to see what we can of an accident on the motorway. We are drawn to the crowds of a football match; we have to see the latest film; and when true drama unfolds we are sucked in to the spectacle. The instinct to join in, to be part of the crowd, is the same in all these examples and television, in particular, ensures we can indulge our ghoulish tastes.

Ruthless exploitation of raw feelings

This instinct is used to manipulate us and is the raison d'être of news coverage in all media. And because media empires enrich themselves by feeding this appetite, they are only secure when they have enough material to excite their audience. They are driven by the imperative of maintaining income. And they are ruthless in exploiting our raw feelings in order to do so. Because of this, they distort reality.

Multiple deaths in a spectacular train wreck or air crash are therefore more exciting than the 3,201 deaths and 28,954 injuries sustained in a typical year on British roads. This is almost 62 deaths a week, 9 deaths every single day. Compare this with an average of 23 rail passenger deaths per year over the last 12 years. In terms of passenger miles travelled, the rate of death on the roads is about eight times as high as on rail. But train crashes grab the headlines and our attention.

Thrill factor

The thrill factor would not matter so much if it did not damage the political process. The government has its agenda distorted by the barrage of attention focused by the media and is tempted to legislate by knee-jerk reaction. Even if it avoids this trap, it invariably wastes millions of pounds on public enquiries.

These usually end in a whitewash, or in vague conclusions, or they are simply ignored because the moment has passed. At the same time, MPs are diverted from screening legislation on less flashy subjects as they too are sucked into the media driven frenzy. As a result, less than satisfactory legislation goes through without sufficient scrutiny.

The government, anxious to wrest back control of the agenda, attempts to manipulate the news itself. This process – that takes up an increasing part of its time and attention – has come to be known as spin.

As a result of spin, perspective is lost, priorities are distorted and the government loses our respect.

Terrorist atrocities

So far, I have used everyday examples to make my point. But things get even more out of hand when there is threat of war or terrorism.

On 9 September 2001, when terrorists flew planes into the twin towers, the Pentagon, and attempted to attack another location just over 3000 people died. In the same year, the number of people who died on US roads was 42,196. The 9/11 death toll represented just three and a half weeks of road casualties. It also compares with an average of 2000 general aviation deaths each year in the USA in the 1990s. And, interestingly, ten times as many American die from gunfire each and every year (almost 30,000).

But the drama and newsworthiness of 9/11 cannot be denied. Rubbernecking went into overstretch. Not only that, but it was easy for politicians and the media to stimulate fear in the population.

In response to the attacks of 9/11, the US embarked on two wars. So far in Iraq it has lost 3400 soldiers and in Afghanistan 319. So the cost of this response in American lives has now surpassed the number of people killed in the attacks. In terms of money the cost of the 9/11 events was calculated at $27 billion (loss of life, property etc. etc.). The financial cost of the response in the Iraq war alone passed $378 billion in March 2007.

At least 63,000 deaths

Perspective and priorities go out of the window when policy is built on a visceral reaction to a dramatic event. If we add a minimum estimate of the number of Iraqis killed (60,000 is the lowest estimate – other estimates, also from reputable sources, put the figure in the hundreds of thousands), the numbers become stark:

• terrorist action: 3000 deaths,
• American reaction: 63,000 deaths (minimum estimate)

This represents a factor of over 20:1. But it is not an exceptional ratio. Between 1968 and 1981, Palestinian terrorists killed 284 Israeli civilians. Yet between 1968 and 1975 (a shorter period), Israeli retaliation killed 3500 Arab civilians in Lebanon, Jordan and Syria (a factor of over 12:1). And the vast majority of these casualties, on both sides, were bystanders. Civilians not combatants. People like you and me.

Add to this the huge cost of mounting the war and the terrifying instability that has been exacerbated in the Middle East. Then think back to the event that started the ball rolling – the initial 3000 deaths on the East Coast of the USA. Just one tenth of the number of deaths from gunfire tolerated each year. We can now see how effective the hijacking was; how our rubbernecking helps the terrorist to do his work.

Puppets in the White House

It was child's play for the designers of the 9/11 attacks to pull the strings of their puppets in the White House. With minimal expenditure of their own resources (a US commission estimated that the cost to the terrorists of mounting the 9/11 project was half a million dollars, one 756,000th of the cost of the Iraq war so far), the terrorists have created a mayhem from which only they and their allies have benefited. They have finally achieved what they have been trying to accomplish for so long: open civil war in the Middle East. And they could not have done it without the help of George Bush.

Perhaps it would have been better if our teachers were right, if they had been able to persuade us, as kids in the playground, that there was nothing to see. Perhaps we should wean ourselves off acting on gut instinct when something dramatic happens. We pay a high price to feed our addiction to real-life drama.

Image credits:

farm.tucows.com/_archives/2005/12/9/

images.twiet.nl/world_trade_center.php

Should Burkas be banned?

"If you dig a hole for someone else, you'll fall into it" ~ Hungarian proverb

The flurry of excitement when a few more women started to wear the burka reminds me of the furore when men started to grow their hair long. There is an obvious difference this time because the political climate is more frightening, but at root the issue is the same – an attempt to force individuals to conform to an unimportant convention. What is more interesting is what lies beneath.

Rift opening up between peoples

Men with long hair represented a power struggle between generations. The burka is a manifestation of a rift opening up between peoples. And as with long hair, the reaction from the media, political leaders and ordinary people is disproportionate.

     Jack Straw complained about the burka, saying 'I felt uneasy talking to someone I couldn't see'. When I first heard this comment, I was inclined to sympathize. Then I thought harder. He is, presumably, perfectly happy to talk to people on the phone. And as for the statement by the Dutch cabinet that 'burkas disturb public order, citizens and safety' is simply outrageous. They are talking about mere clothing.

     I have a confession to make. When I see men wearing Hassidic outfits, I am taken aback by their outlandishness. I feel the same when I see someone with an unfortunate facial disfigurement. No doubt the feeling springs from the same emotional well, but it is a weakness in me that I try to overcome. Above all, I try to avoid my internal reaction rebounding onto the person who is going about his or her business. It is my problem, not theirs.

     But this is a complex controversy and it provides a rich seam of insight which can be mined to illustrate several aspects of human interaction.

     First of all fashion. The upsurge of hijab wearing by women in the West is quite new. (The hijab is the generic term for the various different types of head covering worn by women in various Muslim countries. The Niqab and Burka are versions which respectively cover up most or all of the face). A few, mainly-newly arrived, immigrants, continued to dress as they had before they came to the west. By the second generation, most were happily moving towards greater integration in both dress and habits.

Neo-hijab

The neo-hijab fashion is a reaction to the upsurge in hostile feeling that followed 9-11 and 7-7 and, I would guess in the Netherlands, to the murder of Theo van Gogh. It suddenly became important for young women to wear a badge that identified them with their community. But it was also a fashion statement not so far removed from the recent enthusiasm for body piercing and tattoos. Without the drama created by the media and by politicians, it may well have subsided with little comment.

Bricks through windows

     The visceral reaction against it illustrates how a population responds when it feel threatened. Those of us unable to control our feelings throw bricks through windows, push bags of faeces through letterboxes, and spit at people in the street. The less physically courageous write letters to the papers, express outrage at the way our culture is at risk from a flood of foreigners, and demand that something be done to stop this overwhelming tide.

     And those of us unable to face our feelings, who want to maintain a facade of liberality, focus our fears on the burka. You might say that this is a much milder reaction. But it fuels the fires of conflict as much as all the others. Politicians who found excuses for complaining about the burka should know better. It is part of their job to encourage better feelings in the community, not to validate a primeval hostility to the outsider.

Liberty disappears

     Let us now move elsewhere, to countries like Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq where women are forced to cover up. The Taliban beat and whipped women in the street for failing to follow their dress code. Iranian police are stopping women in the street, warning them not to show their hair, and arresting them or impounding their cars if they attempt to argue. Even in Iraq where the "liberating" forces have brought in female soldiers to try to keep the peace, government officials and police refuse to speak to women unless they wear their veils. It is now impossible for them to move around Bagdad with any of their hair showing. Liberty disappears quickly once it becomes acceptable to enforce fashion.

     If it is acceptable to impose convention, people feel justified in their prejudices. Repression becomes part of the received culture of society. Racial prejudice was acceptable in the American South until it was undermined by civil rights protests in the 1960s; anti-Catholicism was acceptable in Northern Ireland until a thirty year civil war broke out; anti-Semitism was acceptable in most of Europe until the Nazi's took it to their bosom and unleashed the horrors of the holocaust.

Women cover their chests

     Finally, let us examine the idea that women should cover their hair at all. The traditional explanation is modesty. But this requirement for modesty is all about women being constrained to avoid inflaming the passions of men and this notion is openly acknowledged in Afghanistan. It is an example of the imposition of a restriction on one group of people (women) by another (men) in order to deal with a problem that is entirely their own.

    But let us not be too complacent. It is universally accepted that women in the West should cover their chests when going about their daily business. We must ask ourselves if that convention is very different from the requirement to cover up hair. Don't scoff. Bear in mind Cole Porter's resonant words:

In olden days a glimpse of stocking

Was looked on as something shocking

Now heaven knows

Anything goes.

     And it is a much better world because of it.

Image credits:

www.bbc.co.uk

http://www.brandywiners.org/AnythingGoes/AG_boat.jpg

Foot and Mouth 2007: Moment of truth* for DEFRA

Experience teaches only the teachable ~ Aldous Huxley (1894 – 1963)

DEFRA (aka the Department for the Elimination of Farming and Rural Activities) now has an opportunity to demonstrate that it has changed its spots.

It has long been vilified as one of the most intrusive and inefficient arms of government. Its insatiable bureaucratic demands, and the inability of its different sections to coordinate and share information, mean that farmers are subjected to repeated inspections and duplicated veterinary visits.

Despite all this data collection, DEFRA has proved itself unable to operate efficiently. In 2006, because of its chaotic office structures, it was months late in distributing the payments due to farmers; at one point, it admitted having 400,000 tasks left to complete. Most farmers were forced to borrow money from (and pay interest to) their banks in order to cover the shortfall.

Farmers have complained bitterly at the extra paperwork imposed by DEFRA's implementation of the animal passport scheme. Now, at last, there is a chance to show that all the pain has been worthwhile. DEFRA should have, at its fingertips, all the information it needs to nip the foot-and-mouth outbreak in the bud. It should be able to trace the exact movements of every single animal that has been affected. It should be able to identify every single animal with which the affected herd has come into contact. And it should be able to do this more or less instantly. If not, all the effort that has gone into the passport scheme has been a waste of time and money.

This time, there is no excuse. In 2001, decisions were made by the Blair government which, as ever, framed policy first and thought about it later. It failed to consult the reports prepared (at great expense) after the 1967 foot-and-mouth epidemic and therefore learned nothing from that experience. Now DEFRA has the animal passport information to hand, while lessons learned from the 2001 epidemic are comfortably within living bureaucratic memory.

If DEFRA fails to deal with the outbreak effectively, the minister in charge (Hilary Benn) should resign. There should also be a wholesale clear-out of the higher echelons of DEFRA. Gordon Brown should make it clear that he expects an exemplary response. Failure should not be tolerated. However unpleasant this crisis may be, our new government should see it as an opportunity to break with the past. It must ensure that the civil service does its job effectively; it must force it to face up to its responsibilities.

* el momento de verdad, or moment of truth, is – rather appropriately – the point in a bullfight at which the matador is expected to make a clean kill.

Picture credit:

by Steven, aged 9 - one of many pictures submitted by children affected by the 2001 foot-and-mouth epidemic.

www.visitcumbria.com/footandmouth.htm

Coca Cola politics

"It's not the voting that's democracy; it's the counting." Tom Stoppard (1937-)

Coca Cola (Coke) was invented in 1885 and catered for the market for soft drinks when alcohol prohibition was introduced to Atlanta GA the same year. Pepsi Cola was invented a little later in North Carolina but the trademark was only registered in 1903. After a few chequered years, Pepsi initiated a competitive battle in response to Coke's refusal to sell its syrup ingredient at a discount to Pepsi's eventual owner. He decided to go it alone with his newly-acquired brand name. The real battle started in 1924. Pepsi doubled the size of its bottle, while continuing to sell at the same price as Coke, supporting its discounting action with a successful radio advertising campaign.

The Ku Klux Klan

In the 1940s, Pepsi made progress by recognising that African Americans were an untapped market. The company used targeted advertising and hired an African American sales force. After a pause during World War II, it continued the campaign using African American role models to promote the product while facing down racist hostility and threats from Ku Klux Klan.

Deal with the old Soviet Union

The battle for dominance in the cola market continues to this day, with Pepsi forever in second place to Coke but definitely holding its own. Competition between the two companies has been fierce in the US market and throughout the world. For political reasons, Pepsi has held pole position in a few countries, e.g. Saudi Arabia (because of Coke's marketing in Israel), francophone Canada, and the old Soviet Union where it negotiated a monopoly. Both companies use a raft of modern marketing and market research techniques to hold their own.

Focus Groups

The companies use surveys to calculate their market share in different regions and identify the demographic profile of their customers in different parts of the market. They conduct taste tests and, crucially, focus groups. These bring together a representative selection of participants who are asked about their attitude to the product, its packaging, and any advertising campaign under consideration. The conversation is guided but participants are encouraged to discuss ideas with each other. The results of such research has proved helpful in designing products, in the broadest sense, and in preparing effective advertising and marketing campaigns.

Little merit?

A key way in which focus groups are used is to identify the ideals and aspirations of individuals in the target market. This information is used to generate a "personality" for the product. You can understand why. Coke and Pepsi are sweet, brown, flavoured fizzy drinks with little to distinguish one from the other (and some might say very little merit). So the marketing departments project an image onto the products through advertising and packaging, in the hope that consumers will identify their aspirations with them. If the marketing is successful, consumers will, in turn, buy the products in the hope that by consuming them their aspirations will be fulfilled. "I'd like to teach the World to sing" and "I'd like to buy the World a Coke" provided a warm fuzzy image of world peace and harmony. Coca Cola used Father Christmas in its winter promotions to evoke an image of joy in the ideal family. It was so effective that it's widely believed that the instantly-recognisable figure of Santa, with his Coke-brand coloured outfit and foaming beard, was invented by Coca Cola advertising.

In the 1950s, Pepsi began to fear that its product would be stuck in the ghetto. It abandoned its flirtation with an ethnic image, dumped the old management, and moved on to associate itself with young people. It identified itself with the "the Pepsi Generation" – and all the thrust and vigour of youth – at a time when teenagers were making their mark on the world.

A sort of "New Labour" project.

Loans for honours

But what has this to do with politics? Well, the techniques of market research, especially focus groups and advertising, are now used extensively by the major political parties. This costs a lot of money and the loans for honours fiasco has resulted from the main political parties having to match each other's spending. The job is made easier for them by two factors.

Tribal politics

Firstly it is estimated that only 21% of electors who are likely to vote will actually make a choice. These are known as floating voters. The rest, for one reason or another, have already made up their minds. Some have convictions which predispose them to one party or another, some see themselves as members of a group or tribe that is naturally Conservative or Labour (I don't know whether this is the case with the Liberal Democrats), some are stuck in a groove and can't be bothered to change their minds. This is a natural phenomenon and represents a reality about the nature of the electorate. Still, it means that political parties can concentrate their resources and focus their attention on the relatively small group of people who remain to be persuaded that one party or another will provide them with a better government.

Serious unfairness

The other factor is anything but natural and relates to marginal constituencies. In the UK, the USA, and some other countries, elections are organised on a first-past-the-post-system – the candidate who has more votes than any other in his or her constituency wins. There is a deep unfairness when governments are elected in this manner and power is placed in the hands of political parties by a system which is manifestly unjust. The almost 80% of voters who do not change their minds are (conveniently) grouped by voting preferences. Let's not beat about the bush here: rich people live in wealthy areas and mostly vote Conservative; poorer people tend to live on council or housing association estates and mostly vote Labour. As a result, in most constituencies, the majority is large enough to swamp the effect of the floating voter. Seats where the winning majority is less than 10% (i.e. susceptible to change on a 5% voting swing) are considered marginal. In the last election, 131 seats were marginal. That is – by coincidence – 21% of the total. So 21% of floating voters in 21% of seats actually determined the outcome of the typical election. That is just 4.5% of the people who voted.

Project an image onto the party

This is a very exciting figure for the majority parties. They can focus all their attention on attracting just 4.5% of voters. If they get it right, they will win the election and have the power to introduce whatever policies they like for a period of five years.

They do not try to convince this group of the value of their policy or their competence in government. Their favoured technique is the focus group. If they can successfully identify the ideals and aspirations of the tiny group of people who make a difference, if they can then project that image onto their party, they will have achieved their aim. And the image they project has little to do with the brown, unpalatable (?) contents of the cola bottle (no pun intended).

The views of 95% of us count for nothing

The magnitude of the unfairness is shown by the following figures. Since 1935, no government has had the support of the majority of voters. In three elections since then, the party with the greatest number of votes lost. In 1997, Labour won a seat for every 32,340 votes, the Conservatives won a seat for every 58,187 votes, and the Liberal Democrats won a seat for every 113,977 votes. The Labour Party won 63% of the seats with just 42% of the votes. In 2001 and 2005, the votes per seats were, respectively, as follows:

• Labour: 26,031 and 26,860 per seat
• Conservative: 50,347 and 44,306
• Liberal Democrats: 92,485 and 96,482

Perhaps this throws some light on why only 61% of electors can be bothered to vote at all. Since both parties are focusing on the same group of voters, it is hardly surprising that they end up projecting the same image. And so we have Coca Cola politics and the views of 95% of us count for nothing.