Notes from the Panopticon

A really simple explanation of Sunni/Shia tension and the Middle East crisis - an illustrated guide to researching the internet

"If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?" ~ Albert Einstein (1879 –1955)

 

Like most people, I am worried about what is going on in the Middle East and the way it appears to be developing into a major rift between Muslims and the rest of the world. I know very little about Islam and have only a caricatured image of the Middle East in my mind. I would guess that many others find themselves in a similar state of ignorance.

So I have set myself the difficult task of boiling it down into an explanation that is easy to follow. But that is what I like best: to take a big question and break it down into bits, so I can understand what is going on and draw my own conclusions. Before I retired, I did this for a living and what an exciting and inspiring activity it was. Now that I have been writing this blog for almost three months, it occurred to me that I could use my old skills in a new arena.

When I started to tackle the Middle East, I soon realised it was far too big a problem to condense into one 1500 word essay (the length of most articles posted on this blog). My first idea was to just break the topic down into bits. But then it occurred to me that, with all the talk about amateurism on the internet, readers might find it interesting to learn how the internet can be used to find information to develop and present an argument. The process is this:

• Find the information
• Assess its quality
• Pull it together
• And present it

I am a fervent believer in the democratising effect of the internet in all its manifestations. But using any tool properly needs training. I am not talking about the technology of the internet,but the information it contains. Not the box, but what is inside it.

When I was working as a researcher and analyst, the internet did not exist and my research took me to libraries across the world, both public and private. I was relatively well resourced and could interview people and go and see things on the ground which helped me to build an even better picture. With the internet, there is a lot more information about, and it is quicker and easier to find, but sifting the good from the bad is more difficult. So over the next few weeks, I shall share with journey through cyberspace with you using my research into the Middle East as an example.

 

When I was working, questions were posed by my clients who paid good money for the answers. Now I have the luxury of asking my own questions. So why the Middle East and why Sunni and Shia Muslims?

At one level, the answer is obvious. 9/11 meant that the free world – which is the only world in which I care to live – was threatened. That threat came from the Middle East and was committed by fundamentalist Muslims about whom I knew little or nothing. I knew that the Middle East is an area of constant strife and ferment, and that it is the repository of much of the world's oil. But I knew little about what it was actually like, about the people who lived there, or how the oil was shared between the various nations.

I was inspired to dig deeper by Vali Nasr's book The Shia Revival, which provides an illuminating introduction to the religious and cultural tensions in the region. It focuses on the religious aspect of the problem and much of the first part of the book is a review of the history and theology (to which I shall return later). The key thing I learned from the early pages is that, across the world, Sunnis represent 85-90% of Muslims but, in the Middle East, the numbers are more evenly divided. I also read Matthew Carr's book The Infernal Machine, which traces the history of the current bout of Muslim terrorism back to 1948.

So I had a historical and cultural structure on which I could build. But I felt sufficiently confident to believe that my own research skills could illuminate what I had read and add a little more to my understanding.

Had I not read these books, I would have started my research by looking in Wikipedia and Encyclopaedia Britannica (the latter can be accessed on line for a modest annual fee.) Encarta is an alternative to Britannica which I do not often use. Wikipedia comes in for a lot of flack because it is put together by "amateurs". However, many of these amateurs are also experts in their own fields who give their time and expertise for free.

Wikipedia's open nature also attracts partisans with their own axes to grind, but they are watched by their opponents who can quickly redress the balance. Wikipedia has the advantage that it is being continually updated and corrected. This is not true for many conventionally-published reference books (including those available online). My wife, a historian, is continually frustrated by inaccuracies in the online National Dictionary of Biography; her efforts to get simple mistakes corrected are met with a wall of silence. Conventional publishers may do their best to check for mistakes but are constrained by time and money issues.

We have to be realistic about information. It is only as good as its original collectors made it. It never gives 20/20 vision. But an opinion backed by the best information available is always better than a guess or a knee-jerk reaction. What we have to guard against is information that is systematically biased. This is not true of Wikipedia or Britannica, but they are different. I like to think of it this way: w-b=z (where w=wiki, b = Britannica and z = the zeitgeist).

What is the point of all this background research? It is simply this: an exam question along the lines of "The Middle East – discuss" would be very hard to tackle, whereas the question "Does the schism between Shi'ites and Sunnis contribute to the problems of the Middle East?" provides a structure to help think about the problem and investigate it properly. Knowing the right question to ask can contribute 50% or more to finding a satisfactory answer. The choice of approach often comes from inspiration after an initial probing. In my case, Vali Nasr's book convinced me that an understanding of the Middle East problem was likely to be found by focusing my research on the relationship between Sunni and Shia. Beneath the headlines which focus on terrorist attacks on the West, and the intervention of the Western coalition in Afghanistan and Iraq, there is a continuing rumble of Muslim-on-Muslim violence, with a much bigger and more relentless death toll.

Whenever I start to research a subject, I try to get a handle on numbers. Numbers tell you so much; without them, you are floundering. You have no idea of the size of what you are looking at, and you don't know how the different parts relate each other. Numbers give you a sense of scale, and they sometimes provide spectacular insights. This proved true in this investigation.

A couple of housekeeping notes. I am not writing a textbook or a manual. I am offering you the chance to "sit by Nellie". (In the dim and distant past, there was no formal training in my business. You were assigned as a new boy or girl to work with someone who had the skills. Hence – "sit by Nellie and watch what she does". It worked for me.)

In these articles I shall do my best to separate guidance on methodology from the results of research.

First, I plan to mark passages which have a lot of methodological information by presenting them in blue boxes – like this one. The boxes may also include real content. Remember that Nellie has a job to do and can't spend all her time worrying about whoever is sitting beside her.

Second, I will sometimes come across ideas and leads that I cannot deal with immediately, so I shall highlight them to remind me to go back to them. I shan't follow them all up, but that doesn't mean that you shouldn't – if they interest you. Research is about following your own nose.

Finally, sources are marked to remind me where I found stuff and at the bottom of each article there will be a list of links.

I hope you find this journey interesting.

 

Links referred to in the article:

talk about the amateurism on the internet

Wikipedia

Encyclopaedia Britannica

Encarta

Matthew Carr's book The Infernal Machine

Vali Nasr's book The Shia Revival

Child abuse Australian style (the Stolen Generations)

Ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation. ~ Khalil Gibran (1883 - 1931)

The other day I heard the story of Leonie Pope on BBC Radio 4's Saturday Live hosted by Fi Glover. It is a truly horrific story that reinforces one of the messages of this blog. We must always be vigilant; we must never allow the acts of governments and their agents to go unscrutinised.

Tragedy emerged

Leonie, now 35, was adopted by a Welsh family over 30 years ago. She grew up in Wales and now has a family of her own. It was only when she decided to trace her origins that the tragedy of her background emerged. She was the child of an Aboriginal mother who was tricked into giving her up for adoption; she was told instead that she was signing a paper about inoculation. The crime was aggravated when Leonie's mother asked where her baby was and the nurses told her that her daughter had died. When she asked for the body so she could bury it, she was told that it had already been disposed of. And the lying went on when Leonie arrive in Wales; her adoptive parents were informed that her natural mother had abandoned her in the hospital.

Leonie was one of seven children, each of whom were taken away from this Aboriginal mother. And sadly only one of them succeeded in finding her before she died.

Children taken away from parents

This story is not unusual. Starting in 1910 but continuing to the 1970s – I'll repeat that, the 1970s – 100,000 Aboriginal children were taken away from their parents and raised in church – I'll repeat that, in church – or state institutions or were fostered or adopted by white parents. Leonie was lucky because most of these children received little education, many of them were abused, and most ended up in low-grade domestic or agricultural work. The story of another family treated in this manner is told in the film Rabbit-Proof Fence and in

the book by Doris Pilkington on which it is based.

These children were all victims of a policy implemented, not only by the Federal government, but also by individual Australian states, to take Aboriginal and mixed-race children away from their parents and assimilate them into European society. The emotional damage has been devastating. Between 10% and 30% of Aboriginal children were removed in this way and many have fallen victim to depression, alcohol and drug abuse; and some have resorted to delinquency and violence. And the families and the societies from which they were stolen have never recovered.

Appalling consequences

The appalling consequences of this policy were revealed in a national inquiry, Bringing them Home, published in 1997. In the face of the evidence, the Australian government has offered neither apology nor compensation to those affected, many of whom who are still alive and living with the consequences. Indeed, a former minister for Aboriginal affairs has even denied the existence of these people, while government lawyers continue to argue that the removal of the children was done for their own good.

Now, at last some progress is being made. A report issued in 2002, Restoring Identity, has been welcomed by ministers in four of Australia's states.

Reluctant to show remorse

I can barely control my emotions as I recount this sorry tale. These actions were carried out by a democratically-elected government in a country that proudly calls itself the "Lucky Country". A government of a wealthy state, an important member of the free world, not only behaved in this manner, but is reluctant to show remorse for such gross violation of human rights.

The politicians involved could claim that they reflected the mood of the electorate, many of whom – no doubt – thought of Aboriginals in the same way as Americans in the Wild West thought of Native Americans – as a nuisance to be disposed of. And for much of the period of the policy, Aboriginals did not have the right to vote and had no representation. (They were given the vote in 1965 but, even now, there are no Aboriginal elected representatives.)

Nurses lied

Leonie was not taken from her mother by politicians, but by nurses and doctors and social workers. And these people happily lied to a woman who had gone though the twin emotional traumas of birth and bereavement. In their privileged position, they had power over this mother and they abused it. Such callousness is the stock-in-trade of functionaries charged with carrying out policy. Habituated by the daily grind of working through a case load, irritated by the emotional reaction of those effected by decisions they are powerless to challenge, these functionaries treat people as objects.

We must always being vigilant. Civil rights are very fragile. Never forget that, in another time and another place, some of those 'objects' could be you and yours.

Picture Credits:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/saturdaylive/saturdaylive.shtml

samuseum.sa.gov.au/orig/media/media-archive.htm

Rabbit Proof Fence still

The political animal – right or wrong

"I have never in my life learned anything from any man who agreed with me." ~ Dudley Field Malone (1882 – 1950)

At last! Controversy! Thank you Common Sense for replying to my post, and especially for disagreeing with me. It forces me to think some more and take stock of my ideas. One day, no doubt, I shall be presented with an argument that makes me change my mind and I look forward to that. But not today. Here is the comment in full:

I seem to think that you bristle when you feel that bloggers are dismissed out of hand as a breed. Yet you lump all politicians together and throw them into the fiery furnace. Did you never hear of a politician you had any time for? Nelson Mandela? Franklin Roosevelt? Willi Brandt? Nye Bevan? Itzhak Rabin? By and large, we get the politicians we deserve, the ones who, like the poor immigrants who service the public sector, are prepared to do the dirty jobs that we are too delicate to face – such as taking responsibility for the dull business of keeping the national show on the road and, sometimes, making the tough decisions that people who don't have to think much about it resent in a knee-jerk way. If you don't like it, put yourself up for public office. Do better. Otherwise you are merely an anarchist or (worse) a blogger whistling in the wind. Oh and by the way, I didn't sign your petition because I thought there was some merit in the argument about health and safety. If the flowerbed tender had been hit by a driver who hadn't seen her, that driver would have been entitled to feel aggrieved and that it was her own fault. The authorities have to make decisions that affect everyone. Just because a local busybody feels her freedom has been curtailed doesn't mean that the authorities are fascists or indeed that they are wrong to cleave to their decision. If you think that's officialdom gone mad, you must have spent most of your life avoiding organisations of every kind.

 

Smaller discussion first.

The wearing of a peaked cap, real or metaphorical, does not stop an individual from being a busybody. Some of the

restrictions imposed by health and safety officers are silly and need to be scrutinised. So do many of the restrictions placed on everyday life by officials making their own interpretations of enabling legislation.

There is a growing body of academic evidence which supports the view that a person stops behaving normally when placed in a position of authority. This explains atrocities like Abu Graib; ordinary decent people feel that their official position allows them to treat others without considering their humanity. On a less vicious scale, the phenomenon happens everywhere and every day in the enforcement of petty regulations by the bureaucratic process.

Iraqi translators who worked for the British army are being refused asylum when their lives are under threat and many have already been killed. This is a nasty but bang up-to-date example of how the moral compass can be lost by those who work in an official capacity. Power goes to their heads.

I shall be writing more about Philip Zimbardo and his Stamford Prison Experiment, as well as his own review – 36 years on – of this groundbreaking work (in his book The Lucifer Effect). This provides incontrovertible proof that the phenomenon exists and is universal. What Zimbardo has to say about how the experiment, and his part in it as designer and controller, affected his life should make us all sit up and take notice. His insights offer hope and understanding. There is a real chance that – if we wanted to – we could devise strategies for controlling the more beastly aspects of human social behaviour.

If you read my text carefully, you will see that I rarely say that bureaucratic actions should be stopped, simply that they should be thought through better, that decision processes should be transparent, and that there should be simple procedures to achieve redress.

And that brings me to the bigger issue: my attitude to politicians. I get a lot of flack (you are not the first to complain), so I revisit my thinking regularly and I agree that at one level I must be wrong. There must indeed be people who go into politics for good reasons.

I also have to admit that the fire which fuels my distrust has subsided with the departure of Tony Blair and his familiar, Alistair Campbell. I see Tony Blair as a political version of Jordan. He bemused people with his charisma just as she bemused people with her chest. Whatever one thinks of Gordon Brown and his policies, he cannot be accused of being vacuous or of not being a serious thinker. Whether or not he is a conviction politician does not matter. He is competent, he has a track record, and when he sets himself a task, he usually gets it done with limited negative fall-out. The fact that he believes the constitution should change in a direction that I would like is an added extra (although not far enough, I hasten to add.)

One of the aims of my blog is to examine ways in which democracy, a fragile system, can be strengthened so that incompetents like Blair and his sidekick can be stopped before they do too much harm. And one of my themes is that the separation of powers, which is at the heart of all serious democratic models of government, should be preserved and extended. No-one has a monopoly on wisdom and the spreading about of ultimate authority is an indispensible safeguard.

An aspect of this, covered in "Cheerleaders", is that MPs should have a separate role from the government executive. They should represent their constituents (i.e. act on their behalf) more seriously, keeping a watchful eye on what the government is doing, instead of blindly cheering them on or constantly attempting to put a spoke in the wheel depending on their party affiliations.

Now back to my problem with politicians. Common Sense provided a helpful parallel between politicians and immigrant workers. I should like to offer another. But I must put up a big warning sign here. It is a powerful simile to illustrate what I mean, no more and no less, and you must not take it any further than that.

If you want to find a concentration of paedophiles, you might look for them at work in children's homes or in other places where children are gathered together away from the supervision of their parents. This does not – of course – mean that everyone who works in these places is a paedophile, or even that a high proportion of them are. But these places are magnets for people with paedophile tendencies.

Now, if you want to find a concentration of control freaks – people who enjoy interfering in other people's lives and telling them what to do – you might well look at the political classes and the places where they gather. As with paedophiles, this does not mean that everyone there is a control freak, but the political process is a magnet for people with controlling ("I know best") tendencies.

I would further argue that, unlike working in a children's home where an ordinary person stays ordinary, working in politics engenders an intoxication with power in all but the strongest.

So my parallel is between uninvited and inappropriate fiddling with private parts, and uninvited and inappropriate fiddling with private lives (if you see what I mean).

Personally, I find power distasteful. I enjoy my life and I believe it is up to others to enjoy theirs with minimal interference if they harm no one but themselves. So the option of seeking office is anathema to me. To go back to Common Sense's parallel, I would prefer to clean lavatories with the immigrants.

Late in life, I became interested in thinking through my ideas about the political world. And I now realize how much my thinking has been influenced by Karl Popper, whom I have not read for at least 35 years. But his ideas have stayed with me. Openness and opportunity for all is what I would like to see and, for much of my life, I have watched it grow in fits and starts. I grieved when I saw it crushed underfoot by unthinking men such as George W. Bush and Tony Blair.

You can link to Common Sense here.

Philip Zimbardo has a website here.

Jeremy Paxman has written a fascinating analysis of the inner working of the politician, body and soul.

More information about the Iraqi translator asylum issue here.

The link to my article Cheerleaders is here.

 

A really simple explanation of the sub-prime mortgage crisis

A bank is a place where they lend you an umbrella in fair weather and ask for it back when it begins to rain." ~ Robert Frost 1874 –1963

I originally posted this article on August 31. But it has suddenly become very topical so here it is again. My prediction that we are in for a bumpy ride was right – hold tight everybody.

The Northern Rock crisis demonstrates how vulnerable financial markets are to the interdependence of the institutions. It would appear that NR was not directly affected by the sub-prime crisis; they had not invested in any of the dodgy derivatives that are causing such problems (And which are described below).

However NR decided to expand their mortgage book (I understand by +50% in the first eight months of this year), a risky strategy in a housing market which had already seen such an enormous rise in prices. And NR did this by borrowing from banks which have been caught up in the sub-prime crisis.

These banks are suddenly finding big holes in their assets and can lend no more – and they too can be accused of acting recklessly. They may argue that they have abided by the rules but this is not an excuse. They have made dodgy investments using our money. Only constant vigilance by fund managers when they buy securities will prevent them falling into traps set by the greedy. They must look at what lies beneath.

The world's banking system is threatened by meltdown. It is unlikely that governments will allow this to happen, but the crisis will see the collapse of a few financial institutions and many people will be hurt. And this will happen even if a safety net is put in place. So we should try to understand what has gone wrong. It happened like this.

Risk of default

Banks lend money to people to buy homes, cars and so on, as well as to businesses to help them operate. These loans are secured by the borrower's income flow, which should be high enough to pay the interest and, eventually, to repay the capital as well. The lending bank assesses the risk that the borrower will default and, on the basis of that judgement, it may charge a higher rate of interest or require additional collateral security. The banks charge fees, in addition to interest, to make this assessment.

Asset Backed Securities

From the early 1990s, banks in the US decided to sell on the risks they had taken to other institutions, packaging them into asset-backed securities (ABSs). In this way, the originating banks get back the money they have lent. They can therefore make more loans, while their original risk is passed on to others.

The institutions – ordinary banks and building societies around the world – that buy ABSs can choose how much risk to accept because of the way they are packaged. ABSs are divided into tranches.

Buyers of the top tranche (the lowest risk) are entitled to the first part of the capital to be repaid. For example, if they are entitled to 60% of the capital, their investment is safe unless 80% of borrowers default and only half the money is recovered through repossessions (50% of 80% is 40%). In this example, since 60% of the money is safe (the money to which they are entitled), these investors lose nothing and all losses are borne by investors who bought the lower tranches. The risk of an 80% default is so small that credit rating agencies feel justified in giving these securities their highest AAA rating and major institutions feel confident in buying them.

The second tranche of securities might be entitled to the next 10% of repayments. For these investors to lose money, 60% of the loans would have to default and lose half their value (50% of 60% is 30%). So 70% of the money remains, 60% for the first tranche holders and 10% for the second tranche. Again, the risk of a 70% default is unlikely and could warrant an AA rating for the second tranche.

Wipe out capital

When you get to the bottom tranche, investors might only be entitled to the last 4% or so of the money. So just 8% of the loans losing 50% of their value would be enough to wipe out all the capital belonging to this group. These securities get a low rating (perhaps a maximum of BBB) because of their high risk. Only specialist institutions such as hedge funds who are accustomed to managing high risk would invest at this level. They are attracted by the much higher interest rates offered by bottom-tranche ABSs to make them worth owning.

Collateralised Debt Obligations

Investment bankers don't earn huge salaries for nothing. They had another trick up their sleeve to make even more money. They took the lowest tranches of ABSs and packaged them into Collateralised Debt Obligations (CDOs). The tranching process was repeated with these securities and – somehow – the credit rating agencies were persuaded to give the top tranche an AAA rating (perhaps because these securities were entitled to the first 75% of repayments). But the flaw should have been obvious: the underlying assets only had a rating of BBB or lower. The advantage to the sellers was obvious – they could get away with offering a low rate of interest on high risk securities because of their low risk rating.

So fund managers at major banks, who should have known better, were drawn into buying over-rated assets. They were following their rules by buying AAA-rated assets, but they were walking on very thin ice. With the structure of CDOs, if the underlying assets (the whole portfolio of original mortgages) lose more than 5% of their value, losses start to affect all AAA-rated CDOs, many of which have been bought by the major international banks. Already dangerous – but there is worse to come.

Improper checks

US banks have been altering the methods they use to check the riskiness of borrowers. They have also changed the way they structure their loans. Here are a couple of things they did:

• Interest charged at adjustable rates became common. The worst were exploding adjustable rates. Clients were offered very low teaser rates which, once the introductory period was over, could be raised significantly, resulting in repayments increasing by 25% or more. This is now the main reason for home owners falling behind in their mortgage payments.
• In order to speed up the process of lending money, loans were offered without the borrower having to provide documentary evidence of income. Research has shown that 60% of borrowers overstated their income by more than 50% on their application forms.

The effects of these changes are:

• Poorly substantiated loans in the US are estimated to account for 47% of loans made in the past year, compared with 2% in the year 2000.
• Average homeowner equity in the US has fallen from 22% in the year 2000 to 13.5% in 2006.

Sub-prime crisis is only just beginning

The sub-prime crisis is only just beginning as the large number of people who overstretched themselves by inflating their incomes when applying for loans face the prospect of a sharp rise in repayments as their introductory rates expire in the next couple of years. Estimates suggest that 20% or more of the sub-prime mortgages made in 2006 will default. Since there is already a glut of properties on the market, there is a risk that recovery of capital will be affected by lower prices.

The top tranche of CDOs have a higher credit rating (AAA) than the lowest tranches of ABSs (say BBB). But compare the following figures and the problem becomes crystal clear. Buyers of the lower tranches of ABSs face a real risk. Studies suggest that 20-30% of all loans (the assets which underlie their securities) will default and lose 30% of their value, a cumulative loss of 8-10% of the total value of the loan book. Enough to put the capital of lower level ABSs at risk. But buyers of the top tranche of CDOs are facing an even bigger risk. Their capital is threatened by a cumulative loss of just 5%. And these investors are high street banks and the like who have been attracted by the AAA ratings.

Dodgy investments

So the die is cast. Those CDOs are out there. Not only in investment houses like hedge funds, which are set up to deal with high risk, but in high street banks, building societies, savings and loans. These institutions have discovered that big holes are appearing in their balance sheets and, one way or another, they will need to be plugged. This means that your "safe" cash deposits – and mine – have been used by our friendly banks and building societies to buy these dodgy investments. We are in for a bumpy ride.

www.uwe.ac.uk/csa/saws/ 

www.iadb.org/idbamerica/index.cfm?thisid=2373 

Power Structure

When the government fears the people, you have liberty. When the people fear the government, you have tyranny ~ Thomas Jefferson (1743 –1826)

Understanding an institution requires an examination of its roots. The governments of the nation states we know today are the direct descendents of monarchies. And even if those monarchies are overthrown by revolution, the new governments inherit their structure. They work the levers of power using the pattern set by their predecessors. Soviet Russia had a powerful secret police system because the Tsars bequeathed it one. In turn, modern Russia has a powerful internal security service because it never gave up the one left by the Communists. But this is straying from my subject.

Monarchies developed to protect those who lived in their sphere of influence. Have no doubts – people in those days needed protection from ubiquitous marauders. And it was good to have a local strong man providing this protection. But the local strong man required funds to fight off the predators and he exacted tribute in money, kind and service in order to do so. This set him up rather well with lands and fortresses and debts of duty, so he continued to demand money even when there was no external threat. There were local criminals to keep under control and natural paranoia has always been easy to exploit.

Death and Taxes

The tribute is still paid today. It is known as tax and, along with death (a very appropriate pairing), is the only inevitability in life.

The structure developed by these strong men and imposed on their vassals –now known as government – has many similarities to the protection rackets operated by organised criminal gangs.

If you are shocked by this analogy, think a bit harder. Pay your taxes or we will bankrupt you, and maybe even lock you up. Pensioners feeling the injustice of paying council tax at a level they cannot afford, have been thrown in prison. Obey our rules or you will be sorry.

But, you respond, aren't taxes are used to help the poor and the weak? Yes they are – but Mafia families also help out their own when it suits them. It helps to maintain their power.

"Made Men"

The dynastic wars fought throughout Europe up to the start of the 20^th century can easily be seen as the wars of rival criminal gangs squabbling over territory. The nobility were the "made men" of their era and they behaved appropriately. Imagine what Al Capone would have said if his henchmen told him they had "whacked" a usurped rival (suspected of buggery) by sticking a red hot poker up his arse. Now you have the idea, just keep looking for parallels. You will find many.

It is important to realise that a well-ordered society does need protection. It needs a tough champion to keep order. Look at what happened in Yugoslavia when the strong man disappeared. The country quickly fell into a turf war masterminded by very unpleasant war lords – no more unpleasant than medieval kings with their purges and witch-hunts, but very nasty and very up to date. Again, we have no shortage of examples.

Mafia Family

If we look at the terror tactics used by dictators such as Saddam Hussein, we are again reminded of a Mafia family – or even the Doge's Venice. Saddam's supporters were forced into a loyalty coupled with brutality by being constantly watched. They were threatened with becoming victims themselves if they failed to be vicious enough to others.

But what has this to do with democracy, you may ask? It is all about power.

Protection Racket

As Churchill famously wrote, "It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government, except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time." And the problem with democracy, especially representative democracy as practiced in Europe and America, is that it is not very good. And it is not very good because it attracts into government those people who have a taste for power – just the kind of people who are attracted by the idea of running a protection racket. It makes them feel important and gives them control over other people's lives. With the process of democracy, they can achieve power without risking their own skins. But they do share at least one characteristic with the monarchs of old. In order to be successful, they must be completely ruthless. Why? Because they have chosen to inhabit a world where ruthlessness is the only indispensible quality.

The advantage democracy has over other forms of government is that, when operating well, it allows power to be transferred easily from one politician to another. The innocent population no longer gets killed in the cross fire.

Killed in the cross fire

But this does not happen infallibly. At one extreme, democracy is distorted by elections being rigged; or oppositions banned; or constitutions changed or suspended when a leader, drunk on power, refuses to give it up. More commonly, gerrymandering is used to limit the power of the electorate. And unwillingness to give up power is very common. Edna Healy has described the "horse's eye look" that prime ministers get when their power is waning but they do not want to abandon the top job.

The drug of being Capo di tutti capi is both powerful and addictive. It is only the strength invested in the democratic process, and the guarantees of civil liberties, that protects us from those we need to be our leaders. We must defend the structures that have been put into place to mitigate the efforts of politicians to impose their will on the population. We must resist their unfettered use of the new Panopticon. We must ensure they understand that their mandate is limited, that they will always be scrutinized and held to account.

Most people don't seek power. They don't want to interfere in other people's lives. So how is it that politicians find it so easy to whip up a mob and let them loose on their enemies? To stir up hatred against a group of outsiders? To create a new order of demons? A subject for future examination.

MMR Vaccine: Truth and Consequences

All other knowledge is hurtful to him who has not honesty and good-nature ~ Michel Eyquem de Montaigne-Delecroix (1533–1592)

This article was prepared before the current measles outbreak was announced. It is even more relevant now.

The MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) vaccine has been routinely administered to most one-year-olds in the US since the early 1970s. It was widely introduced into the UK in 1988. Ten years later, in February 1998, thirteen doctors based at the Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead published a report in the Lancet, alleging that the vaccine was linked to the development of inflammatory bowel disease and autism. (The same research team had already suggested in 1995 that MMR was associated with Crohn's disease, although this claim had quietly been abandoned.) The new report was based on a finding that eight out of twelve children referred to the hospital had suffered from sudden onset of developmental disorders very soon after the administration of the vaccine.

The Guardian, at the time, stated that: "A medical study suggests today that there could be a link between the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine (MMR) given to children in their second year of life and inflammatory bowel disease and autism … They also found that the behavioural changes in the children which are typical of autism, such as forgetting the basic language they had just learned, began within days of their MMR vaccination".

Report discredited

The doctors' report was discredited by the investigative journalist, Brian Deer, who commented that: "even a superficial examination of the report revealed crude errors, inconsistencies and omissions which might properly have been challenged by the Lancet's editor". Instead of such careful scrutiny, The Royal Free Hospital was quick to promote the report through a press release, a video news release and a press conference.

Deer's investigation, published in a Sunday Times special report and a Channel 4 documentary programme, revealed that Dr Andrew Wakefield, who fronted the study, was receiving payments from Richard Barr, a solicitor who was trying to bring a case (financed by the British Legal Aid Fund) against the vaccine manufacturers. The children cited in the doctors' report, were in fact associated with Barr and his action.

Undermined confidence

The effects of the controversy were to undermine confidence and to drastically reduce the uptake of the MMR vaccination. Between 1995, when information began to appear suggesting that the MMR vaccine was implicated in bowel disorders, and 1998, when the paper was published alleging the link with autism, the uptake of the vaccine fell from 92% (close to the World Health Organisation's recommended level of 95% for the protection of a population) to 88%. It hovered at about this level until 2001 when the case was taken up by the media with a sustained attack on the vaccine.

By 2003, the level of uptake had fallen to around 80%. By then, 12% per year of young children had been put at risk by a scare which proved to be unsubstantiated. And it took until 2005 to bring the uptake rate back to 84%, which is better but still more than 10% below the World Health Organisation's recommended level.

Harm done to the nation's health

It is difficult to assess the harm which this has done to the nation's health.

The chart below, showing the incidence of the three diseases, looks dramatic; incautious journalists might jump to the conclusion that we are in the grip of a mumps epidemic caused by the MMR debacle. They would be wrong. The rise in mumps cases is mostly in the over-15 age group – a group who (as children) were too young to benefit from the introduction of MMR. This is the normal type of epidemic which occurs from time to time and which blanket vaccination is designed to prevent.

There has also been a smaller – but still significant – rise in cases in the under-15s, which probably did result from the MMR boycott. With an epidemic among teenagers and young adults (for whom MMR was not available), and with parents avoiding MMR, young children are being exposed to mumps with no protection against catching the disease.

The second chart shows the infection rates of the other diseases in a little more detail by cutting off the top of the graph and the mumps spike. It shows that there was very little effect on infection rates during the problem period. Epidemics come and go, and luckily there has been no significant outbreak of measles or rubella during the period, as there was with mumps. However, the low level of immunisation has put children and unimmunised adults at risk, in the same way that young adults are currently at risk of catching mumps.

Dangerous diseases

All three diseases are dangerous and can cause serious long term consequences:

• mumps can cause sterility
• rubella can cause birth defects in babies whose mothers are infected during pregnancy
• measles can cause death; in 2006 an uninoculated thirteen-year-old (with an underlying lung condition) was the first child to die of measles in the UK for 14 years

Children who missed out on the MMR are growing up vulnerable to these diseases. More than 3000 of them have already fallen victim to mumps.

So how did we get here and what can we learn? The government, faced with the problem of falling confidence, did not handle the situation well.

Loss of trust

The first and most serious problem was that it had lost the trust of the public. This is not a problem peculiar to the MMR crisis. But it does show how important it is for a government to show itself to be honest and open. Without trust, it cannot carry out its job properly. Here are some factors which led to this disintegration of trust:

• The handling of the BSE crisis by the previous Conservative government which undermined faith in official scientific advice.
• The disastrous strategy used in the 2001 foot-and-mouth outbreak which led to the closure of the countryside and pyres of burning carcases – how could people trust a government that let things get so out of hand?
• The failure to address the growing menace of hospital acquired infections – most people knew someone who was affected.
• The failure to demonstrate that the huge additional resources which were being poured into the NHS were making a difference – this had a disastrous effect on NHS staff morale and undermined public trust further.
• The style adopted by ministers and officials when questioned about their policies and actions; this had become mealy-mouthed and defensive.
• The failure of Tony Blair to say whether his son Leo had been given the MMR. This undermined confidence in government advice and was a particularly crass version of the "do what I say not what I do" attitude. Blair should have known better. He was a father of a young baby and was dealing with a public fearful for the health of their children and had been given a unique opportunity to demonstrate confidence in the advice of government scientists – an opportunity which he flunked.

Richer parents

In addition, faced with a potential public health disaster, the government failed to try an alternative strategy. Instead of insisting that it was MMR or nothing, they could have offered separate inoculations, an option chosen by many richer parents (including the Blairs? – a later leak suggested that Leo had been given the MMR but by then it was too late). Offering an alternative to MMR, with a carefully-reasoned explanation of why the government felt it was right to choose the three-in-one, would have been so much more reassuring than the "we know best approach" which put thousands of children at risk.

Of course the government were not the only culprits. The more drama-driven elements of the press were all too keen to spread doom-laden predictions over their front pages, to ferment fear and insecurity in their readers. And we must remember who started the whole debacle. Scientists who do not follow proper procedure undermine respect for all scientific research.

And so children were put at risk by a three pronged failure:

• Shoddy science
• A hysterical press
• A mistrusted government

Luck may run out

There is a risk that the whole can of worms will be reopened now that Dr Wakefield and two of his colleagues (Professor John Walker-Smith and Dr Simon Murch) face a hearing before the General Medical Council. They will be questioned about the conduct of the research that underpinned their report. Let us hope that lessons have been learnt and – equally importantly – that no efforts are made to reignite the fears. So far we have been lucky, with only a limited impact from reduced immunisation. Luck may run out.

Everything in moderation – including Health and Safety

The wise man in the storm prays to God, not for safety from danger, but deliverance from fear. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

I quote from a petition on the Downing Street website:

A 79-year-old disabled lady in the rural village of Urchfont, Wiltshire, has spent the last 8 years tending lovingly to a very small 'triangle' of land at the entrance to the village, including funding the plants from her own pension. She has now been told by council bureaucrats that she must stop unless she gets a licence, wears a fluorescent jacket, carries and places 3 signs in the road, and has a permanent lookout with her. Failing this, the plot will be tarmaced. Officialdom gone mad.

I urge you to sign the petition. Click here and you will find yourself speaking directly to Gordon Brown (almost).

This story is just one of many. Here are some more examples of officials bringing in rules or acting restrictively in the name of health and safety:

• Sarah Thompson of Keele University has conducted a survey of schools to identify activities which have been banned for fear of the children hurting themselves. These include playing conkers, football in the playground, and skipping.
• According to The Times, 7600 trees have been felled in the past 5 years for safety reasons in two London boroughs (with few replacements planted). Other authorities which are cutting down trees in large numbers include Manchester and Edinburgh.
• Local authorities are becoming increasingly concerned about their liability in the event of food poisoning when school groups provide food at functions, and are therefore restricting their freedom to do so. Village fetes run the same risk.
• Tesco prevented a clown from performing an act with balloons because a very small number of children are allergic to latex.

Why should the other 99% suffer

Let's examine that last example in a bit more detail. The incidence of latex allergy in the population is 1%. This is comparable with peanut allergy (no-one has yet suggested that peanuts should be banned but you never know…) The effect of both allergies is serious; it can be devastating and sometimes fatal. But this does not mean that the other 99% of the population should suffer.

The right strategies would be using appropriate warnings to enable sufferers to avoid risk and teaching the best methods of handling a reaction. Life is not fair and spreading disadvantage as widely as possible is not a sensible or a sustainable approach.

These examples of over-reaction to perceived risk are in the public domain. I would now like to focus on a largely-unknown instance of the unintended consequences of the spread of health and safety regulations. It should warm the hearts of many a die-hard Tory.

Anti-social behaviour

My father-in-law was chairman of a boy's club which specialised in adventure training. More important, it specialised in providing boys who had fallen foul of the law (often boys from Borstal institutions) with the opportunity to participate in adventure activities. These deliberately placed them in scary situations which they needed courage, stamina and self-discipline to overcome. They were well supervised and none of them came to harm apart from scratches and bruises.

The founder of the club was an ex-military man, a sergeant-major, and his adventure centre provided a brick in the wall which held back the tide of what would now be called anti-social behaviour. And it worked. An amazingly large proportion of the boys and young men who came to him from Borstal turned their lives around after the experience and "went straight". Overcoming scary situations, achieving physical goals, had given them confidence and self-respect for the first time in their lives.

Proper implementation

All this came to an end in 1993 when four teenagers died in a kayaking expedition off the coast near Lyme Regis. In this case, the company organising the trip had failed in its responsibilities. Its managing director was convicted of manslaughter, thereby proving that the legislation in place was sufficient.

The accident did not merit further legislation (proper implementation was enough). But after the tragedy, all adventure centres came under the scrutiny of health and safety. My father-in-law's club had no choice but to stop taking boys who were in danger of going off the rails. Instead, it changed into the equivalent of a leisure centre.

The founder of the club, the ex-sergeant-major, died recently. The congregation at his funeral was enormous, with people standing in massed ranks in the car park. Many of these mourners were men who had benefited from the opportunity to participate in his scheme, to test their mettle and go on to lead productive lives. We can only guess at the number of crimes committed because no more boys and young men are given the same opportunity.

Acute over-exertion

My point is this: everything we do carries a risk. Some of us will always be willing to take risks in order to lead richer lives. But none of us can do anything that does not carry some kind of risk. And avoiding risk carries a price. Without going out of our way to do anything unusual, we run the risk of being accidentally hurt:

• On the road: 271,000 people were injured in road accidents in 2005 (88% suffered minor injuries, 29,000 were seriously injured, and 3200 were killed).
• At work: 328,000 injuries occurred at work in 2005 (91% were relatively minor and resulted in less than three days off work, 28,600 were major injuries, and 212 were fatal).
• At home: there were 2,701,000 reported accidents at home in 2002 (the latest year for which figures are available), almost half of which were caused by falls. In 2004, there were approximately 3900 accidental deaths at home, again mainly caused by falls.

It would, of course, be much better if these accidents did not occur. Most wouldn't if we stayed in bed all day (and the 90,000 accidents a year caused by "acute over-exertion" would certainly be avoided). But I think you will agree with me that life would greatly impoverished.

Whenever we restrict what we do to reduce the risk of coming a cropper, we pay a price. And sometimes this price is too high. We must find a way of achieving a balance between the fearful, who encourage the extension of safety restrictions (for our own good they say), and those of us who are more adventurous and realistic about the dangers of life.

Evidence and hard facts

And I have an idea.

Before enacting rules that stop pensioners from making a garden for the pleasure of others, or prevent ex-soldiers from running courses to test the mettle of young men at risk of going off the rails, or stop clowns from twisting balloons into interesting shapes to entertain children, or insist that boys play conkers wearing goggles, or forbid girls skipping, health and safety officers and insurance companies should be required to submit proposals to an Ofcom-type regulator (Of-free?).

They should support them with evidence, with hard facts, to put their proposed restrictions into context. For example, officials should enumerate how many injuries and deaths they expect to prevent, and over what period of time, by cutting down trees in our city streets. The debate about each and every restriction would then be out in the open and the officials might think twice about some of their sillier ideas.

At the same time, in another example, insurance companies should enumerate how many accidental damage claims would be avoided by pushing up premiums to a level that make the cost of organising village fetes impractical.

If you have ever bought an airline ticket, or travelled by train, or hired a car, you will have agreed to forego rights and protections which you might have expected the supplier to provide. And you have to sign a release form every time you have a medical procedure.

There is no reason why we should not be willing to take similar risks when walking down the street. As Donald Rumsfeld said (sometimes you are right even if you are wrong), "stuff happens". A council's obligation should be limited to situations where it is negligent or has failed in its statutory obligations. It should not be obliged to have an officer standing by in case someone slips on a leaf that has fallen off a tree or is banged on the head by a conker.

This whole area needs a serious rethink. There should be a limit on the extent to which the excuse of protecting our safety is used to restrict our freedom.

Sign the petition here. You have until the 13th September.