Notes from the Panopticon

Damart Days

Autumn is a second spring where every leaf is a flower ~ Albert Camus (1913 –1960)

Damart is probably the best-known manufacturer of thermal underwear in the UK. Every year, as autumn arrives along with the falling leaves, a Damart catalogue pops through the letter box. Until now my wife has thrown it in the bin. This year she has kept hold of it. She is starting to feel the cold.

We're neither of us old but we are "getting on". The delusion of immortality is fading. Aches don't go away. Pains and other symptoms begin to seem serious and could presage an illness that will stay.

When you read about the latest health scare or news that this, that or the other activity predisposes or increases the chances of being afflicted with this, that or the other condition, nothing is said about the fact that the best predictor of getting cancer or succumbing to a heart attack or a stroke or going bananas is getting old.

Now I'm not trying to be morbid or to depress anyone. I am quite happy most of the time. I am content to be "getting on" despite the disadvantages. The drawing in of the years, like the drawing in of the days, makes me reflect on how lucky I have been. How lucky I am.

I haven't achieved a great deal in my life. In many ways it's been an "also ran" sort of life, the kind of life that most people lead. Many of us try to bulk up what we've achieved but, personally, I don't see much point in that. I hope I haven't made too many people unhappy during my life and, if I've achieved that, then I'm glad.

Life continues to offer challenges and moments of excitement and novelty, and in my small way, I keep trying to push my horizons forward, learning new things and sometimes making new friends. Listening to other people, mostly through what they write, is a good way to avoid stagnation.

There are things that make me sad. I feel sorry for people whose lives are closed and limited, and who can never experience the richness which I've enjoyed by having the luxury of choice. My parents left Czechoslovakia when I was less than two years old and I often think of what might have been. The lives of generations of people in the Eastern bloc were crushed by a dynasty of greedy megalomaniacs who claimed to know best how lives should be lived. They didn't of course. They simply enjoyed power and control and the luxury that came with them.

Today, people continue to live under the heel of other megalomaniacs and in even more misery than the compatriots I left behind. These monsters ensure the continuation of poverty in much of Africa, the Middle East and South America and are responsible for many broken lives.

How quickly things change when tyranny subsides. Many people in South East Asia are joining the lucky generation, even in China. And India shows that it is not only dictators who prevent people escaping poverty and enjoying the freedom that general prosperity brings. It can be overweening bureaucrats too. Indians call them the abominable no men.

I am one of the lucky ones who lived in an open society in the 20th Century. I am horrified by how carelessly that openness is being thrown away.

At the beginning of this piece, I mentioned the delusion of immortality which dominates our lives. I should also mention that many people cling to that delusion – in the face of all the evidence – by looking forward to an afterlife. (Remember that most suicide bombers are drawn into their terrible trade by the promise of an afterlife.) How much stronger we would be if we recognised that our lives are all that we know we have. Whether or not there is an afterlife, if we could just accept that life is the only thing we can be sure of we would, perhaps, recognise how very precious it is.

For me this is the very foundation of what is right and wrong. If I have nothing other than my own life, the same is true of every other person. If I fail to enjoy my life to the best of my ability, I have nothing. That is also true of every other person. So I should like to help everyone with whom I come into contact to enjoy their lives. Not to tell them how to live their lives – because their lives are theirs and not mine – but to offer a helping hand and to share. To share with absolutely everyone who wants to share with me. No-one is different: quick or slow, big or small, white or black, woman or man, weak or strong, old or young ...

Nothing big (it's far too easy to get it wrong) but in little everyday ways. The only true and lasting happiness, after all, comes from companionship with others.

    Damart days are good days for me. I hope they are good for you too – when you get there.

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

Why I love the Millennium Dome

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

Two Prime Ministers

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

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

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

Lacked senior staff with experience

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

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

Catalogue of disasters

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

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

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

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

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

"Not much of a government"

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

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

"Not fit for purpose"

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

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

Image credits:

www.pale.org

www.birdseyetourist.com

Lady Chatterley’s Connection

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Picture credit:

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