Notes from the Panopticon

Learning lessons

Education is the transmission of civilization.~ William James Durant (1885–1981) and Ariel Durant, born Chaya Kaufman (1898 - 1981)

After the murder of Benazir Bhutto, Pakistan dominated the news for a week or so but that has now faded. We were regaled with speculation about the danger to the world posed by an unstable, nuclear-armed, undemocratic state where fundamentalist Muslims find it easy to integrate into society. It was in Pakistan that the Taliban (which took over the government of Afghanistan and provided shelter to Al Qaeda) were originally able to organize and build a foundation. A recent analysis on television suggests that the Taliban are direct descendants of protestors who instigated the mutiny against British imperial rule and Christian missionary zeal in 19^th century India. But Pakistan is also seen as a major bulwark in the "War on Terror" and has been the recipient of $5bn in US aid since the attack on the twin towers.

Endemic corruption 

Now the excitement has died down, Pakistan has dropped out of media consciousness but its problems remain. And one of its greatest problems is education. Like the rest of public life in Pakistan, the education system is subject to endemic corruption. And this should trouble the rest of the world because education in Pakistan is being exploited by fundamentalists in their drive to recruit new followers.

When it was provided with American aid on a massive scale, Pakistan promised to devote some of the money to improving its education system. The World Bank has also allocated a separate $300mn specifically to support schools and colleges – but fearing that the money will disappear into a sink of corruption, it is reluctant to disburse the funds until proper control systems are put in place. These fears are justified. American officials supervising military aid suspect that invoices for supplies are inflated by as much as 30%, enabling millions of dollars to disappear. And in the education system, officials estimate that corruption taps 15% of intended expenditure.

Dangerous structures

Little has been done to improve education in Pakistan. In the Punjab, for example, there are 63,000 state schools, of which:

• 5,000 (8%) have been condemned as dangerous structures.
• 26,000 (41%) have no electricity.
• 16,000 (25%) have no toilets.

Many teachers see their jobs as sinecures and don't turn up to work, while local inspectors distrust the information provided by the ministry of education. Few schools have enough classrooms and some resort to teaching in the open air under trees (possibly safer than sitting in a classroom with cracks in the walls and an unstable roof). Often they have to cope with only one quarter of the desks required. Understandably, parents are reluctant to send their children to these underfunded and under-supervised institutions.

Vacuum filled

Two groups of educators have moved in to fill this vacuum: private schools and religious madrassas. It is the madrassas that have attracted most attention and generated hysteria in the press both inside and outside Pakistan. Some of them are run by fundamentalists, preach Jihad, and groom their students to be revolutionary fighters and suicide bombers

The media in Pakistan and across the world, supported by wild estimates made by Pakistani police, have exaggerated the scale of this problem. A more restrained study by the World Bank and Harvard University has estimated that the true numbers of children being educated in madrassas represents a little less that 1% of children in the 5-19 age group. These figures must be put into context:

• 33% of children are enrolled in state schools.
• a further 12% are enrolled in private schools.
• 87% of children enroll in primary education, but numbers fall sharply at secondary level.
• literacy rates are 63% for men and 36% for women, showing that the standard of education is poor (in comparison, the figures for India are 76% and 54%).

Wealthily endowed madrassas

The development of the private sector is striking. Private schools now educate one third as many children as those educated in the state sector. The population values education and is willing to make sacrifices to give their children the schooling which the state fails to provide. Much has been said about madrassas (wealthily endowed by Saudi money) providing the only chance for the poorest Pakistani families. But private schools are cheap and all but the very poorest can afford them.

So is there nothing to worry about? Indeed no. There are dangers and they are serious ones. The WB/Harvard study showed that, while in most areas of Pakistan madrassas account for less than 1% of school enrolments, in the so-called tribal areas (where Pasto is the main language and there are strong links to Afghanistan) the percentage rises to over 7%. These are the areas the state finds most difficult to control and, if madrassas do have a malign influence, it is here that it would be easiest to foment and develop an anti-democratic movement.

Children brought up to hate Muslims

The survey also estimated that there are about 175,000 students enrolled in madrassas. If we make a guess that 5% of madrassas are run by fundamentalists, this still means that almost 9000 children are being brought up to hate Muslims who do not meet their own "high" standards.

The theory propagated by the extremists is this. The only acceptable law is Sharia law and this should be interpreted strictly (hence the enforcement of headscarves and the like for women … among much worse horrors). It is the duty of good Muslims to create a state which accepts and enforces Sharia. Government leaders who do not concur are the enemy. Those who conspire with the West are the enemy. Muslims who support these governments are the enemy.

In this way, the fundamentalist madrassas create a justification for killing other Muslims. The suicide bombers are given a target and a cause. It has, however, very little to do with the West; the majority of victims are much closer to home. But a flow of almost 9000 young men and women (possibly more – other estimates are higher and my guess of 5% of may be optimistic) is more than enough to recruit suicide bombers and build momentum for the movement.

Dodging and weaving

So let us return to Benazir Bhutto. She and her husband spent the years since she was ousted from power dodging and weaving to avoid convictions for corruption and embezzlement. Indeed, she was convicted of money laundering by a Swiss magistrate, while a British judge found grounds for a prosecution against her and/or her husband for purchasing an estate in the English home counties with the fruits of embezzlement.

Despite this track record, the West was keen to have Bhutto as a friend in Pakistan because of the fear that a nation with its own nuclear weapons could fall into the hands of someone worse. The US has provided huge amounts of cash, some of which has been used to buy delivery systems for these weapons of mass destruction, and has only recently begun to worry about whose finger might be on the button. Bhutto provided some hope of a friend to the West and she certainly looked the part, acting like a civilized politician, speaking excellent English, and sending her son to Oxford.

She had plenty of support in Pakistan (the first attempt on her life killed more than 130 people because her rally attracted so many supporters). But it is almost certain that she, like other political leaders in Pakistan, was a thief. Some of the money she stole, and the money that leaked away into the pockets of bureaucrats and politicians, was supposed to have been spent on education, on the rebuilding of dangerous schools, and on ensuring that teachers turned up to do their jobs.

The public in Pakistan wants education and many people are willing to pay for it. Some of them, however, send children to be taught hatred by cynical clerics who tell them that martyring themselves while killing the opponents of whichever fundamentalist branch of Islam they represent will earn them a place in paradise.

Bully boys

"I have learned silence from the talkative, tolerance from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet strangely, I am ungrateful to these teachers" ~ Kahlil Gibran (1883 – 1931)

The news that a 19-year-old girl from the largely Shia town of Qatif has been sentenced, by a Saudi court, to 200 lashes and six months in prison, after she and a male friend were raped by a gang of seven men, adds poignancy and relevance to this article. Both victims were originally sentenced to 90 lashes for “illegal mingling”, for riding in a car together without a chaperone. The girl’s lawyer was banned from the courtroom and his licence withdrawn when he appealed against the original sentence.

The rapists were originally sentenced to terms ranging from 10 months to 5 years, sentences which were also increased on appeal. The two cases, the illegal mingling and the rapes, were tried at the same time and in the same court.

Let me first establish my credentials. I am straight. I am attracted by women, not by men. I have homosexual friends of both sexes. I have been propositioned by men and turned them down because what was on offer was not to my taste.

So what is it that homosexuals do which is not to my taste? They are people who are just like the rest of us but who are attracted to the bodies of others of the same sex. They get pleasure from indulging in activities that are parallel to the ones I like to indulge in with my wife. My preference is to do these things with a woman, not with a man.

For homosexuals, the practices they enjoy with willing partners were illegal in this country until very recently. They remain illegal in many countries. And everywhere homosexuals are discriminated against merely because of what they like to do with each other.

Let's not beat about the bush. Let's be clear about what discrimination is. It is bullying pure and simple. It is picking on individuals who don't fit into the norm. It is picking on the kid in the playground because he wears glasses. But what is special about some forms of bullying is that they are:

• ignored by those whose job it is to maintain law and order (e.g. disproportionate numbers of black people in prisons and mental institutions)
• tolerated (e.g. churches exempted from female equality legislation)
• officially sanctioned (e.g. laws against homosexual acts)

All pretty obvious stuff, so why go through it again? It is because the laws against homosexuality – which were brutally enforced until so recently – were as wrong then as they are now. (It is likely that the brilliant Alan Turing, who did much to win World War II by deciphering enemy codes, was hounded to death by an unrelenting police force.)

Laws which stop people doing what they want to do – unless of course they hurt others – are wrong. So how was legislation against homosexuals justified? And how are the prejudices which still lead to discrimination (e.g. restricted employment in the church and armed forces) justified? The justifications fall into 4 groups:

• Religious
• Unnatural
• Unsocial
• Disgust

Religious objections

Religious objections continue to be the most effective. They come from powerful institutions which influence the framing and interpretation of laws. They also enjoy a peculiar exemption from normal debate because people's religious beliefs are treated as sacrosanct (no pun intended). In Britain for example, churches continue to discriminate against homosexuals – as they do against women – with impunity. Their justification is in scripture and in the beliefs and feelings of their adherents.

What is it about sexual preference that makes it so difficult for churches to accept? They are happy to ignore or sidestep a vast array of other scriptural strictures ("thou shalt not kill" leaps to mind), while homosexual behaviour leads to deep discomfort, and even to schism. At the same time, it is an open secret that homosexuality has dug its roots deep into the workforce and hierarchy of many churches, resulting in little harm to their operations.

The harm that does result is caused by the moral hazard inherent in covering up activities that are officially outlawed. This leads to corruption and institutional paralysis in the face of evidence of abuse. It is the same moral hazard caused by the celibacy of Catholic priests and nuns which, notoriously, has led to child abuse scandals across the world and the payment of millions in hush money. And some church institutions in which systematic abuse took place survived almost to the present day (e.g. the Magdalene laundries in Ireland).

Churches would be cleaner and healthier places if they accepted that most homosexuals, like most straight people, are decent, honorable and caring members of the community. Their sexual preferences hurt no one and, as individuals, they have much to offer to the community. Acceptance would make it easier to police the bad apples (straight as well as gay).

Nature in all its glory

The claim that homosexual acts are unnatural can be attacked from three directions:

• First, what is wrong with unnatural? The list of unnatural things that are part of everyday life is endless. Births by Caesarian section, wearing clothes, flying in airplanes, circumcision, enforced monogamy, baptism, inoculation, pain relief… Why single out homosexuality as unacceptable because it is unnatural?
• Second, who says it is unnatural? The fact that so many people in so many places and times have been willing to indulge in acts which carry the severest penalties suggests that their impulses are common, powerful and natural. Any field with farm animals reveals that homosexual activity goes on among all kinds of animals, not just among humans.
• Third, what's so good about natural? Dying of malaria is natural.

The "unnatural" lobby sometimes argues that homosexual relationships are, by definition, barren. But that is not an excuse for legislating against them or discriminating against them. Priests and nuns are required to be celibate by their calling. Infertile couples of all kinds have sex and, outside of Ceausescu's Romania, no-one is forced to have children. The argument is spurious.

Moral turpitude

Does homosexuality disrupt society? I'll give two examples to explore this hypothesis:

• Imagine a man propositioned by a woman but not tempted because he is homosexual. His tastes are frowned upon by society, so he enters into a relationship with this woman for whom he has no desire. This unhappy relationship could easily become socially disruptive; finding a man to make him happy would be more likely to result in harmony.
• Now imagine a woman reaching marriageable age at the end of World War I when there was a shortage of men. For companionship, she chooses to live with another woman and discovers that she is not averse to sexual experimentation with her companion. When this relationship becomes known, they are shunned by society. That shunning is socially disruptive. Not their loving act.

People's sexual preferences are part of who they are. I would not be happy in a homosexual relationship and I do not expect a homosexual to be happy in a straight one.

Finally, the argument that homosexuals might corrupt our children. This argument is spurious too. A homosexual would only corrupt a child sexually if he or she was a paedophile (and there are almost certainly more heterosexual than homosexual paedophiles).

And homosexuals who want to adopt, or otherwise organize themselves to bring up children, are just as likely to be as good parents – or bad parents – as straight couples.

" It's disgusting and should be banned."

I was careful to say at the outset that, when propositioned by men, I declined because it was not to my taste. I did not find it distasteful or disgusting. I just did not want to do it. There are a whole range of things I like to eat that my wife dislikes because of the taste or texture and she is not slow in saying so. I sometimes feel hurt when she says that the custard or sticky drinks that I enjoy are disgusting because it spoils my appetite. Disgusting is a nasty word for something you dislike. It is used deliberately in the context of homosexuality in order to raise the emotional temperature. To justify the bullying.

Truly disgusting acts are those where someone is made to suffer, like locking up homosexuals or executing them (as happens in Iran).

Legalised bullying

None of the justifications for legislating or discriminating against homosexuals carry any weight. So why was legalized bullying against a minority tolerated for so long? It is because there is an impulse in many people that makes them feel justified in telling others how to live their lives. And even to call for their prejudices to be turned into laws.

The controlling impulse of those who claim moral superiority and those who think they know best is a powerful force. No longer able to discriminate against homosexuals, the "do it my way" brigade are picking on other groups: smokers; fat people; drug takers; immigrants; asylum seekers; Polish plumbers; women who want abortions; just women (in many countries and communities, especially Islamic ones); terminally ill people who want to end their lives (and friends and relatives who, distressed by their suffering, want to help them); non-violent drinkers; adolescents; children; parents…

There is an unrelenting desire to bully non-conformists and minorities. Homosexuals have proved very recently that minority groups no longer have to accept all that is thrown at them. So let us all learn a lesson from them and not give in to those who want to push us around.

It would be even better if we curbed the urge to tell other people how to live their lives. Providing information is good. Giving a helping hand when asked is good. Offering unsolicited advice is bearable. Forcing people who don't hurt others to conform is unacceptable. This I find disgusting.

The Sharks and the Jets

The last few weeks have given an insight into the silly, testosterone-fuelled, adolescent nature of our political class. With the smell of an election in the wind, they spent the time braying at each other, calling each other chicken, and striking menacing poses.

Neither side felt particularly confident, so the poses were particularly nauseous and infantile. But they were not unusual. When will politicians grow up and behave in a way that earns respect instead of behaving like gangs of louts?

The press does not help – journalists stand about and egg the idiots on.

And we're supposed to take elections seriously.

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:

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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:

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Logic 101 and the Terrorist Threat

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

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

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

Another example:

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

A common mistake is to reason as follows:

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

Or:

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

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

Consider:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Or how about:

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

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

Picture credit:

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