Saturday, July 05, 2008 

Peter Oborne on Islamophobia and Chris Dillow on James Purnell.

The ever reliable Peter Oborne has an excellent article on Islamophobia in the Daily Mail of all places, ahead of a Dispatches docu on Monday. He mentions the Muslim bus driver who "ordered his passengers off so he could pray", which you might recall from these couple of posts and on 5cc:

Take the story in a red-top newspaper (The Sun) earlier this year about a bus driver who apparently ordered his passengers off his bus so that he could kneel towards Mecca and pray.

It was taken up by those who want to exaggerate and exploit divisions in our society and added to the growing list of perceived outrages committed by Muslims in this nominally Christian (though largely secular) country of ours. Pictures of the driver on his prayer-mat went the rounds.

Except it didn't happen like that. The truth was that his bus had been taken out of service by an inspector because it was running late, and the passengers switched to the one behind - not an unusual occurrence by any means, as bus travellers know.

The driver, with his bus temporarily idle, took the opportunity of a break and used it for his prayers. Meanwhile, as CCTV cameras show, the passengers waited for no more than a minute before boarding the next bus and going on their way.

That is the explanation the bus company would have given if it had had the chance. Instead, the newspaper chose to believe its one informant, a 21-year-old plumber, who had arrived late on the scene, jumped to the wrong conclusion and seen the chance to make some money by selling the story.

In these disturbing times, when Muslims are seen as fair game for any mischief or mendacity, the newspaper jumped at it. 'Get off my bus: I need to pray', screamed its headline, and another Islamophobic nail was hammered into the coffin of inter-racial harmony in this country.

Not that Oborne has convinced the Mail's commenters:

The headline should read 'Is post war Britain anti-British?'

- Doris, Yorkshire, 4/7/2008 9:21

This is neither a phobia nor is it a prejudice.

- A Guy, London, England, 4/7/2008 10:01


Other essential reading is provided by Chris who destroys James Purnell and his proposed ultra-Blairite welfare reforms.

Labels: , , , , ,

AddThis Social Bookmark Button

Friday, July 04, 2008 

On the travails of Boris and throwing things out the pram.

Justin asks what those of us who suggested some on the left were throwing their toys out of their pram on the election of Boris Johnson are feeling now that only 2 months in things seem to be going rather badly for Bo-Jo.

More than fair enough, as I used more or less those exact words at the time, although it should be pointed out I more objected to the view that people had voted for Boris for a joke rather than because of his record or policies against Ken's.

My second point was about the idea that Boris would be a disaster, and Liberal Conspiracy handily has a rather extensive list of "gaffes and controversies" already. The thing is generally the rather thinness of the list. Is Ray Lewis's resignation really a mistake on Boris Johnson's part or is it Lewis himself not being completely honest on his past? It looks embarrassing at the moment, but in a few months I would wager that no one will even remember who he was. Similarly, the hoo-hah about James McGrath and his swift despatching in fact reflected the fact that Johnson and the Tories as a whole are determined not to get caught up in the drip-drip of scandal which dogged Ken Livingstone towards the end of his tenure. That Lewis jumped ship far sooner than Lee Jasper did, even though the list of offences against Lewis, apart from his direct lie over being a JP is more minor that against Jasper also shows how sensitive and concerned the Tories are over Johnson's potential for embarrassing them.

The Independent Forensic Audit Panel sure looks like an attempt to defame Livingstone after the fact and is to be condemned, but accusing Policy Exchange of running things behind the scenes is pretty poor. The point about Socialist Action was that it was some far-left cabal, and let's face it, Policy Exchange is centre-right Cameroonies writ large with a grudge against Muslims. It's little surprise they're involved. Have to agree over Simon Milton, if only because of his links with Shirley Porter.

The Rise festival thing is a typical Tory u-turn, but whether many Londoners will care or not is another matter. Drinking on the tube, as some of the commenters suggest, isn't really a gaffe; if anything was a gaffe it was the utterly moronic parties on the last Saturday on the tube which were only going to end up one way and helped justify the unjustifable. Again, it might come down to what your definition of gaffe is on the press conferences, it seems more like an atypical politican's decision.

Now, a real policy disaster ought to have been the doubling of the bus fares on the poor, but again, what do you expect from any sort of Tory? The time to pursue Johnson over his real intentions was during the campaign, but instead what most on the left managed was either "Boris is an idiot and whoever votes for him is an idiot" or "he'll be an incompetent disaster". This list doesn't really show that he's incompetent; it shows that he's a Conservative politician.

The good thing about Johnson's victory is that now some virulent and ruthless individuals are dedicating blogs and other things to watching him, something we know the Evening Standard won't do, but as well as exposing his failures what also needs to be done is to build an alternative that can win the Mayorality back in four years' time. At the moment there's no one at all on the scene, or even an alternative party. We're still more concerned about what Ken thinks than anyone else, and he's not going to run again and he's not going to win again. It's not even as if some of us on the left really want Boris to fail because it might perusade the country at large that Cameron and co can't be trusted with being back in power: so many of us are fed up with New Labour in any form that the Blairite Tories look just like another set of bastards in slightly sharper suits and with slightly posher accents. In any case, we shouldn't be throwing brickbats at each other, but instead be uniting to find that alternative. Boris was never a better option than Ken, but pretending that he was an idiot or obviously going to be incompetent was a poor ploy. Next time we have to do better.

Labels: , , , , , , ,

AddThis Social Bookmark Button

 

Even more thoughts on knife crime and the Sun.

ChrisC objects in the comments on my previous post on all things knife crime, saying the statistics do not say that crime is falling. Going by the police statistics on violence against the person, he's right, which have been rising exponentially since the way they were recorded was changed in 1999. The past couple of years have seen this level off and the figures become stable. I am correct however when I refer to the British Crime Survey figures, considered more authoritative, which paint a completely different picture, with violent crime have fell by 43% since 1995. The police figures he links to conclude there were around 1,000,000 offences against the person in 2005/06 as reported, while the BCS for the same year measures over 2,500,000, a drop from a peak of 4,000,000 in 1995. Crime itself by both measures has also been falling since 1995 (PDF), but as we know all too well, it doesn't feel like that and very few outside police/political/judicial circles believe it.

The major flaw in the BCS when it comes to the current apparent epidemic of knife crime is that it doesn't survey under-16s, who are also those who are in the front-line of muggings for expensive gadgets, such as mp3 players and mobile phones. This is to change, as was announced by "Wacky" Jacqui Smith, but for now it is still the best measure we have. Also to consider is that increasingly those who are the victims of violent crime are turning up to hospital without reporting it and giving asinine stories when asked what happened to them. There have been trials in Scotland in hospitals that have attempted to link the numbers of those admitted to A&E with stab wounds etc with the eventual number of crimes reported, and to highlight how big the discrepancy is. This is something that most certainly needs to at least be considered south of the border, as the only way we'll ever get to the bottom of how the deep the problem is through valid, unquestionable statistics from all sources, police, BCS, hospital, even schools, as Lee Jasper(!) argues very eloquently on CiF in an excellent post which has a number of good suggestions of how to tackle knife crime without throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Also vital is that the independent body Louise Casey recommended in her report for crime statistics of all varieties is established, which will hopefully put a stop to the selective and partisan reading of the crime figures.

Also very interesting on the statistics score is this post by the BBC's Mark Easton, who's digging on hospital patients with various wounds is rather eye-opening:

Between the years 2002-3 and 2006-7, the number of these children admitted to hospital with knife wounds in England "almost doubled" we are told. From 95 cases to 179. A rise of 88%.

However, over the same period, the numbers of under-16s admitted to hospital with gunshot wounds has gone down from 253 to 181. A fall of 28%.

So, 84 more children were admitted with stab injuries than five years earlier. But 72 fewer children were admitted with gunshot injuries.

If no distinction is made between knife and gun injuries, the headline might read "teen violence stable.


and:

Given the particular anxiety over youngsters with knives, I looked at the most recent data for under-16s and spotted something quite surprising. Of those 179 children admitted to hospital last year, 72 or 40% were in London.

Knife fights appear to be a particular and growing problem in the capital. Juvenile disputes are too often resolved with a blade.

It is a different story in the North West of England. In Manchester and Liverpool it is gunshot wounds that the hospitals are predominantly dealing with.

Between 2002-3 and 2006-7, London doctors treated 33 children with wounds from firearms. In the North West, medics patched up an astonishing 251.

During the same period, London A & E departments admitted 225 children with stab wounds compared with 117 in the North West.

What do we conclude from all this? Well, I don't think these figures tell a story of increasingly ferocious juvenile violence sweeping the land. Instead, they offer clues to the nature of predominantly urban gang culture.

If you don't believe me, consider this. In 2002-3, not one school child was treated for a stab wound anywhere in central and south east England outside London. How many victims were there in this large and populous region last year? None.


This is what I've been arguing here on the previous post and before. While there are serious, apparently intractable problems in London involving knife crime, and gun problems in Manchester and Liverpool, of which we've heard relatively little since the tragedy involving Rhys Jones, outside of the major cities there is not some huge crisis involving weapons, especially not "a Dark Age of lawlessness" as the Sun so hyperbolically put it. The emphasis on London is understandable - it is the capital city, reflects England and Britain as a whole and is where the media is encamped, and so of immediate concern to them and their children. For those of us outside of it however who simply don't recognise this picture of a land in constant fear of teenagers carrying blades, it rankles. While it would be crude to describe what's happening in London as a moral panic, as 18 teenagers this year already have lost their lives, what is noticeable is pattern of coverage. A couple of years ago the main concern was guns. At the beginning of this year it was drunken feral teenagers kicking adults to death for little to no reason. At the moment it's knives. The circle will probably square before too long.

The Sun itself, predictably, is in no mood for introspection or such analysis. Like with previous victims of crime where it's difficult to determine who's using who, the Sun is relying on emotion, this time from Ben Kinsella's distraught and clearly in mourning sister Brooke. Her suggestion is for national service to be brought back seems to be more one of desperation than of complete seriousness:

“I want politicians to consider bringing back National Service. If these evil people want to fight so badly, let them fight for their country. If they want to pick up a weapon, let them fight for a good cause.

“We’re losing hundreds of innocent boys in Iraq and Afghanistan, so we may as well send these criminals overseas to fight. The only way to stop this is to do something extreme.”


It doesn't seem to have been put gently to her by the Sun journalists responsible for the interview that the last thing the army needs are "evil people" when they're fighting what is not a typical war but one against an insurgency where public support of those in the area is crucial, and that training already violent young individuals to been even more ruthless in survival tactics is not the greatest of ideas, but then the paper isn't interested in realism. It simply wants her words to move minds for its own agenda.

There is this rebuke to the Sun's continuous demands for more prisons without thinking of the consequences however:

“I want to see proper prisons brought back,” she said. “It’s like a badge of honour for kids to be put in prisons these days. Inside, they gain more respect and make contacts which they use to become even harder criminals when they’re released. They’re in for a couple of years and when they come out they’re treated like heroes.”

Although what a "proper prison" is is anyone's guess.

Again, not that this alters the Sun's editorial view:

EACH day seems to bring more horror than the last.

The Sun warned yesterday that we are sinking into a Dark Age of crime.

And now we learn of the ghastly slaughter of two fine young French students in a London bedsit.

Even in the current climate of violence, the savagery of their murders leaves us numb with horror and revulsion.


Those murders are clearly an exceptional case, and as PDF reflects, it would be a major surprise if burglary really was the primary motive when such extreme violence and brutality was used. As we've seen though, to call this a "Dark Age of crime" is to ignore the evidence in front of your face.

As The Sun has repeatedly said, our political leaders, the police and the courts must show they grasp the seriousness of the crisis we face.

That means more arrests, stiffer sentences, more jails.

But more must be done to break up the gang culture.

Many will agree with grieving actress Brooke Kinsella, who calls in The Sun today for a return of National Service.


Quite. If there's one thing that'll break up gang culture, it'll be ordering them about and splitting them into regiments.

Brooke, whose brother Ben was killed by a knife gang, believes a tough spell of compulsory military life would stop teenagers drifting into street crime.

She believes it would instil in them discipline, respect and common decency.

Actually, she doesn't say anything like that all, or if she did it's not included in the interview write-up. The only thing she says about it is what I've quoted above. Looks like the Sun is trying to develop the idea for her or put words in her mouth. Either way, it's still an unworkable suggestion.

National Service was created to prepare a generation of young men to defend us from an enemy abroad.

Now the enemy is within.


Now the language is similar to that regarding the terrorist threat. Of course, if there was now a successful attack, the mood would swiftly swing from concern about knife crime to exploding brown people again. In both cases talking of an enemy within is over-the-top and unhelpful, but again that doesn't seem to matter.

Decent young people would feel outraged that they were having to suffer because of a mindless minority.

But the crisis we face is engulfing everyone.

That means nothing — including National Service — can be ruled out in our battle to end the savagery.


As we've seen, the crisis is not engulfing everyone, and it would be nice if the Sun could admit that it isn't. Once you've built your prospectus around eternal terror or insecurity on the streets though it's difficult to back down. Using such potentially counter-productive and discriminatory tactics will do nothing to solve the crisis that does exist, and will instead embitter a whole generation out of the desire that something must be done.

Then again, it could be worse. You could think that giving kids PlayStations for telling us what their lives are like is a good idea, as does the completely brainless Polly (what is it with that name?) Hudson via Anton Vowl.

Labels: , , , , , , , ,

AddThis Social Bookmark Button

 

Big Brother as a microcosm of society.

It's silly enough to attempt to extrapolate from problems in the capital what problems are affecting the country as a whole, so when you start to attempt to extrapolate from the inhabitants of one house, even if it is the Big Brother house, what's wrong with wider society you really ought to just quit while you're ahead.

Kudos have to go then to Alan Finlayson who having viewed the latest series of Big Brother (which up till now I've succeeded in not mentioning) has decided that we are a selfish society. To begin with you don't have to watch one of the most vicious and pernicious of television programmes to recognise that, but to state that the individuals who inhabit the Big Brother house are selfish is akin to describing Hitler as really rather nasty or John Inman as really rather camp. There are three main reasons why someone thinks that going on Big Brother is a good idea: one is to boost their own ego; second is to attempt to become famous; and the last is to try to win the prize money at the end and become loved by the public at large at the same time. All three of these things mean that at some point you're going to have to be extraordinarly selfish or guilty of avarice, otherwise you'll get voted out first, and the few individuals who are nice or normal tend to get booted out early on because they're considered boring. The first series was largely an experiment with mainly normal people, and although it started the phenomenon off, it couldn't just be that continously or people would stop watching. Instead it's turned into a microcosm of the celebrity world as a whole - noisy, unpleasant, garish, hypocritical and utterly vacuous. As a nation we may be selfish, but the vast majority of people, including the young that habitually get it in the neck are still polite, kind, intelligent and a joy to be around. Big Brother levels of alienation, hatred and threat have not become the default mode for society at large -- yet.

Labels: , , , , , , ,

AddThis Social Bookmark Button

Thursday, July 03, 2008 

Anonymity or bust.

Somewhat related to the previous post, as Unity notes on Lib Con the government has published its "solution" to the law lords' ruling on anonymity. His conclusion could have been predicted:

In short, its just what we’ve come to expect from emergency legislation - a badly conceived and prejudicial mess in which political expediency takes precedence over civil liberties.

You can understand why the government has rushed to legislate - the prospect of various unsavoury individuals, to put it lightly, being freed, including potentially the gang "killers" of Charlene and Letisha Shakespeare on what will be described as a "technicality" is enough to get a party of government scared at the potential consequences. Some of the blame has to be however levelled at the police, who unlike the government greatly encouraged the expansion of anonymous witnesses while knowing full well that it had not been properly defined in the legislation which introduced it in the first place. Rather than making clear that it could only be considered as a last resort in cases where otherwise the guilty would go free, it was instead starting to be offered as a first resort, as evidenced by them making clear that the law lords ruling would not affect anyone who was frightened of giving evidence in the Ben Kinsella case, where three individuals have now been charged with his murder anyway.

It isn't just the police though - Louise Casey proposed it for the disabled and elderly who had been victims of anti-social behaviour in her criminal justice system review. The bill does at least contain the clause that a judge will have to consider the possibility of a witnesses' potential to be dishonest before granting an anonymity order, but it still can't be challenged by the defence. While, as with almost everything else at the moment, there isn't a simple solution, witness protection programmes, while expensive, could potentially stop this problem in its tracks. Failing that, as Michael Clarke suggests in the comments, a potential compromise could be allowing the defence to know who the witness is - but restricting them on pain of being expelled from the Bar Council and also being held in contempt of court of revealing the identity to the defendant themselves. The right to a fair trial needs to be paramount - and bad legislation brought in to fix a a temporary problem threatens that.

Labels: , , , ,

AddThis Social Bookmark Button

 

Scum-watch: Yet more on knife crime.

It's a brand new day, it's time for another brand new hysterical Sun leader on knife crime. First though, the Sun is urging every one of us to join in their aptly named "crusade" against knife crime by wearing a stylised "K" designed by Ben Kinsella himself. A noble venture, but as usual it's worth wondering whether the Sun would care so much or be pushing this so hard if Kinsella hadn't happened to have a semi-famous sister, or had been a colour other than white, as most of the victims of knife crime have been. It has been discussed here somewhat before, but it's taken the deaths of white "good" middle-class kids for the press to start shouting at the sky over street violence.

The Sun leader is as always a classic of the genre, hilariously over-the-top while proposing a solution which is no better if not worse than any which a politician has championed:

STABBING someone again and again until they die is the purest form of evil.

Those are the heart-rending words of actress Brooke Kinsella as she launches a campaign — backed by The Sun — to end the curse of knives and gangs on our streets.


It's a good thing we've decided on what the purest form of evil is. Maybe we can get down to agreeing what the less pure forms of evil are - leaving the toilet seat up, stealing candy from babies, etc. That this is the umpteenth campaign by the Sun to end the curse of knives and gangs doesn't seem to suggest to the hacks that it will do precisley nothing to stop the next jumped-up kid from sticking silver into the chest of another; or maybe it does, and they know full well that sales come from constant overreactions and scaremongering.

Our society is at a crossroads.

We are sliding rapidly into a Dark Age of lawlessness where human life has no worth and the only rule is the rule of a bloodstained knife.


That the number of murders has fallen recently, and that outside the major cities where there are undoubted serious problems life continues much as it has for decades doesn't seem to get in the way of the tabloid writer's reaching for the hyperbole. As a recent BBC in-depth look concluded, the number of knife offences overall has remained largely static over the last few years. What has changed is the age of those carrying them, with the age of those dying after knife attacks also falling. A couple of years ago the moral panic was about guns; while that is still a problem too, the subject has now changed to knives. In another couple of years it'll probably change again. The number one reason given for carrying weapons is insecurity, the sort of insecurity which the media itself has a hand in establishing. City and town centres at the weekend are lawless hellholes filled with binge drinkers; hoodies stand on every corner just waiting to do you over; every young person is potentially carrying a knife. If you get the impression that everyone your age is carrying a weapon, you might be inclined to as well.

This is why the Sun's proposed solution is so completely daft. Its coverage has helped to fuel a vicious circle, and now it proposes automatic jail sentences for everyone caught carrying a knife. It doesn't seem to matter that innocents and the scared will be caught up in this crackdown, those inspired to carry one for protection. While such behaviour can't be condoned, giving them a four year prison sentence, especially when you're below 16 for carrying a knife is the criminal justice policy of the madhouse. Four years' stay in a young offenders' instutition, alongside the genuine criminal fraternity and the other deeply troubled, mentally ill youth that make up the population is about the last thing that's likely to lead to someone deciding not to be so foolish again. It's the kind of thing that robs someone of their little remaining faith in society, embitters them and takes them out of the world at the precise time when they're maturing through social contact with those not just their age. Fines similarly are not the answer - hefty community service punishment, restorative justice sessions with those who have been victims of knife crime and help to get out of the gang culture if they're part of one is far more likely to have results.

The Sun however just wants the circle of going permanently in and out of the prison system to go on and on:

Those knives are out there because thugs have no fear of the consequences of carrying one.

The price of carrying a knife on the street HAS to be automatic jail.

Not a caution or a fine but JAIL.

That means we need to build more prisons.

Not next year or in five years but NOW.

We are looking at a catastrophic breakdown of law and order that threatens every family.


Of course, the crime statistics as we've noted time and time before say the opposite - it's just now that the serious problems which are still there beneath the surface have started to hit those who previously avoided them. Similarly, "thugs" don't carry knives because they know they can get away with it, they carry one because of either fear or status. It also doesn't matter that the Sun has consistently demanded new prisons without once providing an answer to where they're to be built, where the money to do so is to come from, or who's going to run them, it just wants them NOW.

His sister is haunted by the fact that the last faces Ben saw were the gloating brutes who murdered him.

That thought should haunt our politicians too.


Which again feeds into the idea that politicians can protect us from such crimes. They can't. All they can do is attempt to control it - and the controls which the the Sun wants are unlikely to help with that.

Labels: , , , , , , ,

AddThis Social Bookmark Button

Wednesday, July 02, 2008 

The undemocratic task force.

In a way, it's almost verging on chutzpah for Kenneth Clarke, former member of the Conservative government which foisted so many unpopular and regressive policies on Scotland first as an experiment to now be offering solutions to a problem which he had a hand in cultivating in the first place. One of the main reasons why Scotland finally achieved devolution and a parliament was undoubtedly the poll tax, levered first on the nation which had steadfastly refused to become a part of the Thatcherite revolution and therefore deserved the contempt with which it was treated, but we should perhaps let bygones be bygones. On the whole, Clarke and his "Democracy Task Force's" paper (PDF) on the West Lothian question is worthy of praise, praise of which more in the final paragraph. It's just that it comes to such a simpering compromise in its conclusion that's unlikely to be accepted, and that will do very little to staunch the sense of grievance which some feel about where the power now lies in the UK.

First though the conundrum itself. Devolution in Scotland has left the unhelpful constitutional problem of Scottish MPs being able to vote on legalisation that affects only England and/or Wales, the Welsh assembly not currently having the same powers which have been devolved to Scotland. This problem wouldn't be so bad if the MPs in Scotland were spread more equally across all parties, but the Labour party has overwhelmingly had Scotland as its personal fiefdom for quite some time. This is gradually starting to be broken, with both the Scottish Nationalists themselves and the Liberal Democrats making gains, and could be much extended at the next election with Labour's collapse in popularity and with the SNP in power in Edinburgh, but at the last election Labour had 29 Scottish MPs, the LDs 12, the SNP 6 and the Tories a very lonely 1. Added into the problem is that most of the Scottish Labour MPs are either one of two things: mostly completely loyal and therefore unlikely to rebel against the Labour whip; or either ministers or former ministers, not to mention the prime minister himself. This has led to bills affecting only England, such as the votes on tutition fees and foundation hospitals being carried only by Scottish Labour MP votes. With the Tories likely to sweep the board in England at the next election, but with certain victory still in doubt, it's feasibly possible that Labour could still cling on to a majority but only through their Scottish seats, with the Tories the defacto party in power in England.

One of the other factors which the Clarke report doesn't touch on much is that the Conservatives already have won the popular vote in England, as they did at the last election, yet because of first-past-the-post still received 100 fewer seats than Labour. This will undoubtedly be even more pronounced at the next election, with the Tories likely to wipe out Labour almost completely south of a decent chunk of the Midlands (London is a different matter), yet the Conservatives continue to oppose proportional representation because they realise that even though the system works against them, they'll still be able to get a decent majority if they win well, let alone if they win big. This was more defendable when the vast majority voted for either Labour or Conservative, but that is no longer the case when the Liberal Democrats won over 22% of the vote last time round, not to mention the votes the other minor parties received despite there being next to no chance that any of the candidates would actually win any seats. The report however meekly dismisses proportional representation out of hand, with the simple response that "[W]e do not favour either practice [PR or US-style separation of powers] in the UK as British political culture would take a very long time to adapt to either practice." This simply isn't good enough.

The Clarke solution is instead of pure "English votes for English laws" a poor substitution for it that would make very little overall difference. Rather than simply barring Scottish MPs from voting on legislation which doesn't concern their own constituencies, the task force proposes that Scottish MPs would be barred from taking part in the committee stages and report stages of a relevant bill, while being allowed to vote on both on the second and third readings. This would still however leave non-English MPs with the ability to vote down a bill at the crucial third stage. Clarke is rather pleased that this would still leave the UK government with an effective veto if it felt that the bill damaged UK interests as a whole by urging its members to vote down the amendments made to it in committee stages at the third reading.

If this sounds complicated, then it is. If you're reading this in the first place then you're likely to have some sort of remedial interest in politics, but for those out there that don't this is about as confusing as it gets, like attempting to explain what colour something is to a blind person. It also falls down because it ignores the simplest solution, if we're also going to reject PR: that English votes for English laws makes the most sense and would be easy to institute. The other argument made by some is for an English parliament, or full English devolution, but this isn't a solution or option which I've ever been tempted by: what's the point of establishing yet another devolved instutition when we have a perfectly acceptable one already in use, if only it can be acceptably modified to make it work both more fairly and better than it currently does? The break-up of the union this also might herald is also a red herring; Scotland still seems unlikely to go independent any time soon, however much some both north and south of the border might like it to, and any changes on the constitutional level over the West Lothian question are hardly likely going to be the straw that breaks the camel's back.

It is of course Labour that is stalling any solution on either front. It didn't shoot down Clarke's "solution" for the exact reason that it keeps their strangehold on Scotland and also potentially England in tact. It's the best of all worlds in short-term polticial terms: the West Lothian question has been answered, but things carry on as before. That this trickery won't trick English voters themselves doesn't seem to enter into the equation. It's strange however why the Conservatives are still so mealy-mouthed with their policy. They could have proposed something that would have made everyone except the Labour party immensly happy, yet they've done the opposite. You can understand why they reject PR, as they fear that it could keep Labour and the Lib Dems in a coalition for potentially all-time, especially when they can still win big as long as they're slightly more popular than Labour under FPTP, yet on this they have potentially everything to lose. The best thing that can in fact be said for Clarke's task force's report is that it's short and to the point, unlike so many other policy documents. That it took four years to produce rather dampens down even that accolade.


Related posts:
OurKingdom - The Madness of Ken Clarke
OurKingdom - Cameron wanted English nationalism, not the West Lothian question, answered
Paul Kingsnorth - A radical answer to the West Lothian question

Labels: , , , , , , , , ,

AddThis Social Bookmark Button

 

Snobbery? On my internets?

Most would agree that the worst threads on Comment is Free occur beneath every posting on Israel and Palestine, as the interest groups on either side flock via Google Alerts or GIYUS to commence battle whilst boring everyone else to tears. There are other posts that attract high amounts of criticism, and excluding ones by radical feminists, which usually deserve it in spades, it almost always seems to be when the person in question writing is below the age of 30. This was true of the Max Gogarty meme, who although a poor writer and son of a hack hardly deserved the scorn which was poured on his head from all across the internet.

Enter Majid Ahmed, a state school student from Bradford who achieved 4 A grades at A-level, but who unfortunately was convicted of burglary when he was 15, on the basis of which he had his offer of acceptance to study medicine from Imperial College London rescinded. Having admitted his mistake, in which he was a bystander rather than someone who participated in any actual robbery, most would accept that shouldn't bar him from a place on a college course. The crowd on CiF of course has other ideas:

But would I want to come to you with my health problems? Probably not.

Majid - you sound self-pitying.

OMG what a story of woe. How can anyone keep banging on, with a straight face, about how they have overcome such hardships only to be stopped by some terrible snobbery.

This may surprise you matey but lots of people grow up facing hardship and gain good results and have to struggle to make good. However what they don't do is burgle a house and then bitch about how their conviction is proving a barrier.

Often people living in tough conditions have those conditions made much worse by their bad neighbours who break into their houses and make tough conditions tougher.

To be honest I don't want to visit a doctor who has served time in jail for crimes they have committed.

I find it crazy that you feel like a victim, rather than hold up your hands and admit that your poor choices have led to this situation. The real victims are the people who have been subjected to your dishonesty. Get over it and stop bitching.


You ask whether the outcome would be different had you hired professionals to draft your appeal - but you can write an article for the Guardian - are you being funny?

You claim you were goaded into breaking the law by friends, then you claim you were innocent but pleaded guilty. How you dealt with the police and the criminal justice system showed no sense of personal integrity. You chose immorally in breaking the law and then chose immorally again in pleading guilty while still considering yourself innocent.

There is no word of any sense of personal shame or of reform, only whinging in this article.

One of the lovely things I have found in working with many young Asian men and women in deprived backgrounds in their profound understanding of right and wrong, which is picked up in the family. This seems to have passed this candidate by.

The place will go to someone who was too busy studying to get a criminal conviction.

I spend a lot of time in hospital with a chronic and serious illness. While I am there I often see and talk to medical students on the wards as well as junior doctors. I don't want to consider the possibility that any of the people that the hospital lets loose on the wards have criminal convictions. Patients are often in a very vulnerable situation and the hospital staff as well as student doctors, nurses and physios etc must be beyond reproach.

You made a bad decision at 15 and now have to live with the consequences. You say that you didn't know you had no right of access to the dwelling but that you did know that they were a bad crowd - this should have been a major clue about their "new chill out pad" and as a dwelling is another term for someone's home I think it is clear that you knew it was not the home of one of your friends.

You seem very adept at working the cultural minority angle. Saying you didn't want the shame of your mother accompanying you through the courts so you had to plead guilty. Nonsense! If you were innocent of the charge then going to court to prove these would have been far less humiliating for your family than having a son who is a convicted burglar.

Get over your false sense of injustice. Medicine is a hugely competitive course and many students with four or five grade A 'A' levels and without criminal records get rejected for the course. Further, many people grow up in impoverished circumstances and successfully pursue their dreams without either burglarising someone's home or blaming everyone but themselves for their own stupidity. And, as for nothing in your life having been easy? Well, you seem to manage self pity with great ease.

Thank you Imperial; you make the right decision.


Snooty individuals on CiF not acting like vindictive cretins, perhaps?

There are of course a few lone voices like this ahem, rather sensible chap:

Majid, ignore all the sour and bitter people on here that seem to think that committing a criminal offence when you're young and stupid ought to preclude you from having something resembling a life for the rest of your days; most of them probably did things mightily similar to you at the same age but didn't get caught. Re-applying to another college is a good idea however, as Imperial clearly aren't interested in your potential and only see you as a potential liability.

And we of course wonder why the youth of today are how they are.

Labels: , , , , , ,

AddThis Social Bookmark Button

 

Suitably rewarded.

Unlike with gorgeous pouting Andy Burnham and his deliberately suggestive remarks on heart-melting, hand-wringing phone calls, there really doesn't seem to be anything in the letter sent by Geoff "Buff" Hoon to Keith Vaz, except a rather poor joke between friends. Anyone with half a brain, which apparently rules out David Cameron, could see that Hoon was referring to rumours that Vaz had been offered a knighthood in return for his support on 42 days, and was doing so sardonically. Such use of punctuation and sarcasm doesn't translate well when you're reading the letter out in parliament.

This doesn't of course rule out that Vaz wasn't suitably bought off like the DUP were, something that Diane Abbot for one suggested. It does seem strange that the committee you chair one month produces a report which makes clear that it considers 42 days completely unnecessary, and the next you then decide that it in fact is entirely needed and that the government has delivered all the needed safeguards. It might just be that Vaz, like the other most egregious Labour members, felt that Gordon simply had to be saved for the nation and so voted the correct way in the same loyal fashion they've displayed since 1997. We might have to wait for the next or next few honours' lists to find out.

Labels: , , , , ,

AddThis Social Bookmark Button

Tuesday, July 01, 2008 

Victimhood, Jill Saward and civil liberties.

The anger and thirst for change that victims of crime often display, and the power that they subsequently have because of their misfortune has been discussed here before. Unlike Helen Newlove however for example, Jill Saward has decided to go to the electorate with her concerns, rather than promoting them through the prism of a tabloid newspaper campaign, although it's worth mentioning Saward's first article was in the pages of the Sun. For that, she deserves the same credit and praise that David Davis received for his stand on civil liberties. Putting your money where your mouth is and being prepared to argue the case in public rather than through the media is a step up from hollow campaigns where it's unclear where the media brand ends and the political principles begin.

Saward couldn't really have chosen a more inappropriate beginning to her article on Comment is Free though:

Not all men are rapists or sexual predators.

It's just that only men are, and that only they are potential rapists or sexual predators. That is Saward's point, is it not?

It's worth putting in a little background here. Jill Saward was the woman raped in the "Ealing Vicarage" attack; her father was the vicar. The judge in the case when it came to court gave those responsible a longer sentence for the burglary than for the rape, and said that the "the trauma suffered by the victim was not so very great." Deplorable certainly, and Saward's campaigning since then has certainly helped many in similar circumstances to overcome or at least come to terms with what happened to them. It is perhaps worth noting though that Saward is married to a journalist; something that always helps with getting publicity for such a campaign.

What's more, Saward is standing on what she says is a true liberty platform, calling for people to be "safe at home, safe at work and safe on the street." In this, Saward has entered into the same sort of thinking which was has led to the current set of criminal justice policies in this country, which was ably identified recently by Ian Loader. As globalisation has undermined the previous utopian ideal of the government being able to provide a job for everyone for life, or being able to secure at the least a decent standard of living, something that for a distinct minority is still a dream, attention has instead turned to the idea that the government can and must provide another form of security, a physical one, at both all costs and all the time. This, too, is another utopian unachievable fantasy, which to even start to fulfil would require the government to be able to step in as soon as human nature begins to manifest itself, but is one which has been bought into because through otherwise draconian policies it can begin to be moved towards. This thinking was understandable when crime was at its peak, from which it has since sharply dropped, but as Loader notes, the public due to how the government has responded to the original concern now no longer believes the statistics that say it is has fallen, and the popular media, if not the public themselves, who now seem to be divided over whether prison works or not, still demand endless punitive crackdowns.

As a result, and with the rise of technology, this has inspired the view that all crime is both eminently solvable and that this process can be greatly helped by the latest scientific innovations. It matters little that these innovations, such as the DNA database, are insecure and far from infallible; when the victims' rights are forgotten, or when notable and powerful commentators constantly suggest that they're being forgotten, the potential for injustice through presumed progress greatly increases. Saward, far from being concerned that the DNA database, through holding the data of thousands of completely innocent individuals holds the possibility that someone completely innocent may one day be connected with a crime they didn't commit through potentially unquestionable evidence (and as MrPikeBishop points out in the comments, the Omagh bomb case, which subsequently collapsed with the low carbon copy DNA process being questioned, first identified a 14-year-old boy from Nottingham as prime suspect) is instead convinced that one of the best ways of of preventing, or at least solving crimes of a similar nature to what she suffered is to establish a universal DNA database.

Like with the other victims of crime which pursue change in order to attempt to stop what happened to them from occurring again, it can't be disputed that Saward's heart is in the right place; it's that the method she suggests is strewn with unknowables which could in the long run cause more harm than good. The problems with a universal DNA database are manifold: would such a database even work when there are 60 million profiles on it, without throwing out numerous false positives or identifying dozens of people that would have to be methodically eliminated? Would criminals not attempt to adapt to it by contaminating crime scenes? How would we react if someone was falsely accused and imprisoned on the basis of DNA evidence once we'd reached the universal stage? This is without going into how the 60 million profiles would get onto it in the first place, and whether all those entering the country, whether as tourists or to live here would be required to give samples before they were allowed in.

Saward's argument is also coloured by her view that this would somehow be righting the injustice of the innocent already on the database by adding everyone else that err, also happens to be innocent. This is both a logical fallacy and correcting an injustice with even more injustice, something which should always be resisted. It's also not entirely clear with Saward is actually arguing against a straw man; David Davis released his personal manifesto on Friday, which made clear that he wants the "1 million innocent" on the database removed and the serious criminals left off put on it. There obviously however has to be some sort of compromise on the removal of the data of the innocent, as I've suggested before, because of the undoubted use the database has provided in identifying some of the most serious unsolved cases of rape and murder, such as that of Sally Anne Bowman, whose mother incidentally was another who joined Helen Newlove in putting together a manifesto in oppositon to that of Davis's. Those arrested but never charged should still have their data taken from them to ensure that they are not potential suspects in any unsolved crime, but if no crime is subsequently linked to them after a period of a number of years then the information should be destroyed. This would be relatively easy to achieve, but whether we could trust the police to do so would be another matter.

Some in the comments have questioned Saward's data on those whom have been the victims of sexual attacks, but it's the data on those who have been found guilty through the use of the database which has been directly challenged by GeneWatch, in response to Gordon Brown's recent speech on Liberty which was obviously directed at David Davis but which failed to mention him. Their conclusions were (PDF):

• The figures cited by the Prime Minister refer to an estimate of DNA matches, not solved crimes;
• The reported matches are not actual matches obtained with individuals’ profiles retained on the NDNAD following acquittal or charges being dropped, but are an estimate based on a number of unverifiable assumptions;
• DNA matches are not successful prosecutions and many matches occur with the DNA of individuals who are not the perpetrator of the crime, including victims and passers-by, or are false matches

Saward's arguments are in fact symptomatic of the view that the "criminals" have all the rights and that the victims have none. This has always confused the rights of suspects who are innocent until proven guilty with the rights of those whose name the case is being brought in, but Saward goes one step further than they often do in questioning the right to silence, as she does on her website:

For example, if the police have reason to believe that a person may have driven a few miles over the speed limit, that person is obliged to tell the police where they were at the time of the alleged offence. They have to assist the police; otherwise they can be punished to the same extent as if it were proved they were responsible.

But if that person was suspected of stabbing a young man to death; that person has the right to remain silent. He or she does not have to tell the police where they were – or even provide an alibi. They do not have to assist the police at all and they are not punished for not doing so.

The right not to incriminate yourself is treated by some as a sacrosanct part of our civil liberties. Why?


I'd say that if Saward doesn't understand why that is then she doesn't understand the criminal justice system at all. It's for the prosecution to prove its case, not for the defendant to have to prove his innocence, especially when the state is all powerful and has all the resources at its disposal while the defendant potentially has none. The right to silence is a fundamental part of that.

The thing that rankles most about Saward's campaign and also that of Newlove's is the disingenuousness of their arguments, and especially their personal victim status. It's true that much more could be done for most of the victims of crime, but the answer is not a rebalancing of the system as it is now, but more care before and after trials itself for them. Saward herself is right to be aggrieved at how she was treated in court, but when it comes to Helen Newlove, for whom the CPS, the state and the media at large bent over backwards to help, to claim the same thing is to go beyond what the state can reasonably be expected to provide. Indeed, both expect the state to provide constant safety and protection, something that it simply can't deliver. And fundamentally, Saward's case is flawed from the very beginning with the idea that men rape because they can get away with it. Only the most pathological do so. The others rape either because they can at that moment in time, and don't think of the possibility of getting caught, or do so out of power, which overwhelms any idea that they may be caught. Anger about being a victim is never a good place to come from in changing policy, and when it also makes it more difficult for those opposed to be critical as a result, it increases the possibility of systematic injustice from otherwise good motives. That is why David Davis, or indeed the Green candidate, deserve support and not Jill Saward.

Related post:
Though Cowards Flinch - Outflanking David Davis... to the right

Labels: , , , , ,

AddThis Social Bookmark Button

Monday, June 30, 2008 

Learning by example.

Churnalism or not, the story of the examiner who gave two marks to a candidate that simply wrote "fuck off" in answer to a question is getting some rather unfair criticism.

I mean, let's be sensible for a second. Are we certain that the person taking the exam isn't a blogger? Who could possibly demure that telling individuals to "fuck off" via posts on the internet cannot at times be incredibly witty? Considering that one of the doyens of the blogging scene has come to much attention via the fact that he consistently comes up with new ways to call someone a fucking cunt, who are we to judge what is and what isn't worthy of marks at the GCSE stage?

Besides which, the examiner and the board are completely right in the view that if some sort of effort has been made to answer a question, regardless of its apparent inadequacy and wrongness, it still deserves to be given consideration. Let's also face it: at least the candidate bothered to turn up for the exam, whilst most of the others with a similar mindset would have done the opposite. In the circumstances, the candidate deserves to be applauded for overcoming the fear of failure for not even attempting a cogent answer, and when the youth of today have such glorious examples to learn from, just why are we so surprised when the first thing they can think of is to fire off an expletive? If he hadn't filled in any response, he most likely would have received a 'U', or ungraded. Instead, he might have achieved a 'G'. Under this glorious New Labour government, I think that's an achievement we can all be proud of.

Update: This post wasn't meant entirely seriously. QT takes issue not so much with me but with Patrick Vessey, whose point I'm more than sympathetic towards. Of all the questions you could be asked, and all the things you could be asked to describe in a GCSE English exam, being asked to tell the examiner what the room you're in looks like has to rank as one of the most unimaginative, banal and downright boring things that could have been raised. It's not just the students you have to feel for, it's also the individuals at the other end, the ones that have to mark them. Being forced to read hundreds if not thousands of descriptions of dank, dismal, suffocating dirt brown gym and PE halls is not something I'd like to do; by comparison, the more pithy response of "fuck off" would come almost as a relief.

The issue isn't so much with the exam board, which was just following things to the letter, but with the process which brought the student to writing "fuck off" instead of going through the motions. Most, as stated, would have simply either written their name on the paper and stopped there, or not even done that. There was a possibly apocraphyl story which went round when I was at school that writing your name on the paper got you a couple of marks, so it isn't just answering with expletives that potentially gets you points. This was a one-off blown out of proportion, but the real question is why so many accept or even celebrate their failure. One of the most fascinating sociological studies into the acceptance of failure was Paul Willis's Learning to Labour, which although conducted in the late 70s is still a seminal and influential text. A modern reanalysis and study of whether the same factors are still at work (from my own experience, I would suggest they most certainly are) would perhaps help with the debate. My own contention has always been that the lack of opportunities for vocational training, or when it is available, is considered by teachers and employers alike as either a "soft option" or as not equivalent to GCSEs or A-Levels has been at the heart of the problem of underachievement amongst some. The hope was that diploma system would do something to alter this, but with the current problems which seem to be plauging their introduction, this seems less likely. Despairing or over emphasising the lack of respect or collapse in standards this case apparently reflects doesn't seem much of an answer to me; understanding why is far more important and essential.

Labels: , , , , , ,

AddThis Social Bookmark Button

 

Scum-watch: Could this be the most hypocritical statement by a newspaper ever?

Another teenager's died, so the Sun has to rush out the boilerplate response of this must change us immediately and irrevocably as a nation again. It's this quite remarkable paragraph however which is deserving of more attention:

The seeds of this destruction were sown long ago. A generation raised to believe that greed was good are now the hopeless parents of the savages who empower themselves by carrying blades.

A generation raised to believe that greed was good? This couldn't possibly be a reference to the Thatcher years could it, when the Sun was in the absolute vanguard of that mantra? Or that event that symbolised the greed of the 80s,
the Wapping revolution, when Murdoch established his fortress, sacked the print workers and ordered his hacks to go through the strikers while once inside they were treated to no view whatsoever? Murdoch of course epitomises the greed and power syndrome, a man who thinks that it's perfectly permissible to order about politicians through his media whilst paying as little tax as possible. If this is a generation raised to believe that greed was good, and that is now why one of the reasons we're seeing multiple deaths of teenagers in our capital city, then the Sun most certainly has to answer for helping to sow those seeds in the first place.

We can debate the root causes until the cows come home. But there is only one swift solution: The brute force of the law.

Not of course for tax dodgers though; only brats carry bladed weapons should be banged up for 5 years, a solution as self-defeating as any that the Sun has ever advocated.

Gordon Brown is at least moving in the right direction — insisting culprits be punished, not let off with laughable cautions.

But as we’ve said again and again he needs more jails for that to work.


Jails which are incidentally full agaim because of a direct result of the Sun's constant demands for crackdowns on crime. Now that everyone except for the tabloids and the public accept that crime has fallen dramatically over the last 10 years, the Sun still wants even more. We couldn't possibly realise that far too many of those currently in prison shouldn't be there and instead either on drug treatment programmes or receiving help for their mental health problems, freeing up space for the more egregious of the knife carriers, could we? No, that would make too much sense. Instead we'll just be treated time and again to some of the most hypocritical, sanctiminous and also dangerous nonsense from the biggest selling newspaper in the land.

P.S.

Nothing to do with the Sun, but the Express has once again plumbed the depths with a front page splash. Ben Kinsella, the boy tragically killed, just happens to have a sister who was once in EastEnders, which gives them the opportunity to use a suitably fruity picture of her rather one of the person who was actually murdered. Some might call this revolting.

Labels: , , , , , ,

AddThis Social Bookmark Button

About

  • This is septicisle
profile

Links

Archives

Powered by Blogger
and Blogger Templates