Saturday, July 19, 2008 

Weekend links.

Lee Griffin - Those irresponsible child drunks (a revisit)

Jason Burke - The not-so-winnable war against terrorism

Deborah Orr - For many in Glasgow East, Labour picked up where Thatcher left off

Robert Fisk - When propaganda turns out to be fact

Howard Jacobson - Military service, crocheting and ping-pong – that will separate the men from the boys

And the entirety of the Magistrate's Blog is worth a look, one I keep forgetting to add to the sidebar.

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Friday, July 18, 2008 

Crime stat porn and thoughts connected.

Try as they did, opposition politicians yesterday were fighting a losing battle in trying to get some sort of advantage out of the latest crime figures. With the apparent rise in knife crime and teenagers killing each other in record numbers in London, it ought to have been a reasonably easy task. The figures though told a completely different story, and one which is also increasingly difficult to dismiss: after stabilising over the last couple of years, the large falls once again accelerated in 2007/08. Crime as recorded by the British Crime Survey (PDF, references are made throughout the post to the relevant pages), more authoritative because of its huge over 40,000 survey sample showed it to have fallen by 10%, while police recorded crime fell by 9%. In fact, the only figures to show a rise were homicide, which rose by 2% from 759 to 784, drug offences, which were up 18%, mainly because of the continued, possibly soon to end confiscating and warn policy on cannabis and gun offences, which also rose by 2%. Everything else, as recorded by both the police and BCS, either remained stable or fell.

Dominic Grieve, David Davis's replacement as Tory shadow home secretary tried to claim that violent crime had risen by "80%" under Labour, but this ignores the fact that violent crime as measured by the BCS has fallen by an astonishing almost half since 1995, 48% down. Because of the way the police recorded crime changed in 2002/03 figures are now not comparable prior to then, but while the police recorded a 25% rise in violence against the person between then and 2005/06, this has since fallen by 9% to 0.96 million offences (page 21). Where Grieve got his 80% figure from is a mystery.

It was instead left to the tabloids to shriek about the figures which previously they hadn't much cared about. They mostly played down the collected for the first time figures by the police in which knives were used in a crime (attempted murder; wounding with intent to do grievous bodily harm (GBH); wounding or inflicting grievous bodily harm (i.e. without intent); robbery of business property; and robbery of personal property) which totalled 22,151 attacks or offences in total (page 75), which showed that more than 55% of police recorded crimes involving a knife took place in either London, Birmingham or Manchester, while in large areas of the country there were by comparison a tiny number, such as in Cumbria where there were 73, North Yorkshire in which there were 66, Norfolk 67 and Dorset 47 (the Guardian has a handy interactive map), to instead look at the BCS figures on violent crime involving a bladed instrument.

The BCS in total recorded 2,164,000 violent incidents against adults in England and Wales in 2007/08 (page 62). Of these, 6% involved a knife (page 63). Extrapolating from this, this is where the headlines and leading paragraphs of around 130,000 offences involving a knife came from. Further distorting and potentially worrying people, this was then broken down to 350 a day or to a "knife attack" every four minutes. It doesn't matter that these figures are essentially meaningless when you can't get a full rounded figure in the first place from 6% of 2,164,000, they nonetheless occupied the front pages and screamed about the reality of life in "Blade Britain". What few of the papers bothered to go into was the caveats that are involved in these figures which help greatly in understanding that these are simply not instances of people getting stabbed or even attacked. For example, just over 51% of all violent incidents resulted in no injury whatsoever (page 72), while the most common injuries that were suffered were minor bruising or a black eye (28%), severe bruising (15%) and cuts (13%) (page 73). In only 12% of violent incidents was any form of medical attention sought, with 9% seeing a doctor and just 1% requiring an overnight stay in hospital. Of the 2,164,000 violent incidents, around a third were incidents of stranger violence (page 71), while another third was, more surprisingly, acquaintance violence. Domestic violence accounted for one in six violent incidents. The overall risk of being a victim of violent crime was 3.2% (page 70). The overall risk of being a victim of any sort of crime was 22%, the lowest since the BCS began in 1981.

It wasn't even as if the tabloids could claim there had been any huge rise in knife crime, as the statistics in fact mainly show the opposite. The use of knives in the 2,164,000 violent incidents was actually down 1% to 6% from the 2006/07 survey, although the figure was not stastically significant (page 76). The figure involving knives used in violent incidents has also stayed broadly stable since 1995, hovering around or below 8%. Also interestingly, the Metropolitan police, which have been collecting figures with crimes involving knives separately from other forces also recorded a fall. The Met recorded 10,220 knife enabled crimes in 07/08 (page 76), 16% down on last year, figures which were 4% down on the previous year. As korova on Mask of Anarchy points out, mostly ignored but also in the figures is the fact that 7% of violent incidents involved a blunt or "hitting" instrument, which can do potentially as much if not more damage than a knife, but which have been lost sight of in the current atmosphere. We are not then suffering from a knife crime epidemic. The reality according to the figures is that we're experiencing a stabilising effect and no real rise in knife crime. What is happening without question is that young people, especially in the cities are carrying knives, and are increasingly prepared to use them, as the latest terrible death of a teenager shows. That's the main reason why we're currently having such potentially adverse and over the top media attention, along with the fact that alongside the mostly black victims, three of those who have died have been white, middle class, and either had telegenic, hospitable and eloquent parents or semi-famous relatives.

The problem is, as we all know, that fewer and fewer people believe the statistics. Two-thirds believed that crime had risen over the past year, but as often seems to be the case, only 39% believed that crime had risen in their area. The same pattern seems to apply to those who think that the NHS is nationally getting worse even while they think that their local services are actually fairly good. It's hard not to link this directly with media coverage: faced with the number of young deaths in London, who wouldn't after all believe that crime is rising? With all those front pages this morning, again, who wouldn't believe it also, even if they read the articles in detail, where most do make clear that according to the statistics, if they care to believe them, that crime has fallen apparently spectacularly? This is where Louise Casey's recommendation for a independent statistics board might help, but only if it potentially has teeth which can challenge the media picture.

Also related but also without an answer is exactly why crime is falling so significantly, again, if we are to believe the statistics. This incidentally isn't just happening here but across the Western world, so unless everyone's on the fiddle it's an almost global picture. The Guardian's editorial suggests the reason is that we've all gotten richer but that we've also gotten older, and crime, as the BCS itself shows, is predominantly a young man's game. Criminologists themselves admit that don't know, which in itself is refreshing; others point towards better security. The government's policies also have to be considered; perhaps the record numbers in prison have contributed to the fall in crime? If so, that itself puts those of us on the left who think there are already too many people in prison, let alone without adding more capacity, especially when those inside cannot get adequate treatment for the drug problems and mental health issues which so contribute to crime, in a difficult position.

In summary, there is no knife crime epidemic, or at least one isn't reflected in the statistics. Crime itself is at its lowest point for a generation, and again, although it doesn't feel like, Britain is now probably the safest it's been overall since the early 1980s. The real difficulty is in convincing the public themselves that this is the case, and not exaggerating the real problems we do have into a picture of a broken society. The biggest difficulty of all is that we don't seem to have any answers whatsoever.

Related posts:
Richard Garside - Knife crime: perception vs reality
Little Richardjohn - I live in Peckham. I feel safe.
Cassilis - You can't just ignore the inconveinent numbers

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Investigative blogging, the Tories and watching the ministerial written statements.

A whole load of investigative blogging has been going on of late, especially over at the Ministry. Unity first uncovered that one of the individuals who officiated on the employment tribunal in the case of Ladele vs Islington shares a name with a person who was previously the chairman of governors at an independent Catholic girls' school, quite obviously a potential conflict of interest when ruling on matters of discrimination involving a registrar refusing to officiate on civil partnerships.

Next, in response to the Charity Commission report on the Smith Institute, which although critical did not find the smoking gun that Guido amongst others hoped it would over its connections to Gordon Brown, Unity raises the question of Policy Exchange and its extreme closeness to Cameron and co, which bears much of a resemblance to that which the Smith Institute has been criticised over. While trying to gain full advantage from the report, Guido happens to link to the Centre for Open Politics, which models itself on the American Sunlight Foundation. Their gambit is:

Our work is inspired by and based on the work of the Sunlight Foundation in Washington D.C. We are committed to helping voters, bloggers and journalists be their own watchdogs, by improving access to existing information and digitising new information, and by creating new tools and websites to enable all of us to collaborate in fostering greater transparency.

Underlying all of Sunlight’s efforts is a fundamental belief that increased transparency will improve the conduct of politics itself and the public’s confidence in the political process.

All well and good, you might think; more transparency in politics is exactly what we need. You would expect however that those who have set-up this Centre for Open Politics would be, well open about their politics and transparent in their reasons for setting it up. The slightest Googling by Unity, and amazing as it may seem, it turns out that COP's founders, Harry Cole and Amanda O'Brien are respectively formerly Vice Chairman/Treasurer of the Edinburgh University Conservative Association, as well as running some of the recruitment drive for the youth Tory organisation Conservative Future, while O'Brien is likely to be the same Amanda O'Brien who's currently the deputy chairman of Essex Conservative Future. What's more, the domain name for COP's is registered at the self-same building out of which MessageSpace operates, which just so also happens to be associated with Guido.

Elsewhere meanwhile Cameron's decision to publish the expenses of the vast majority of his MPs might well backfire after it was noted that 78 of them are using their allowances to pay for the party's "Parliamentary Resources Unit", the Labour equivalent of which MPs have to pay for out of their own pockets. The Tories are on the defensive and confident they'll be found not to be breaching any rules, but John Mann has asked the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards to investigate.

Even more interesting for those of us keeping an eye on the habitual liar and fantasist which is Nadine Dorries is that her expenses show that she spent £2,938 on the services of Media Intelligence Partners. As Tim on Bloggerheads notes, the services provided by MIP are Media strategy', 'Media relations', 'Crisis management', 'Media Training', 'Public relations and political consultancy', 'Identity management' and 'Analysis and research'. According to the Green Book rules on what can and cannot be charged to the taxpayer, expenditure under the Incidental Expenses Provision is not permitted for "Advice for individual Members on self promotion, or PR for individuals or political parties." Dorries used taxpayer cash on MIP during her campaign for the abortion limit to be cut to 20 weeks. Could it be that she's been caught bang to rights yet again misusing her expenses, after previously using Commons notepaper inappropriately and funding her website also from the IEP?

Finally, Matt Wardman brings our attention to the government's usual habit of flooding out written ministerial statements just before parliament goes into recess and the silly season begins in earnest. Well worth watching.

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Thursday, July 17, 2008 

A system unchanged by scandals part three.

Robert Murat got his day in court and £600,000 in damages, but even he must be wondering whether it will change the way that the tabloid press in this country operates. Looking at the Sun and Daily Mail websites tonight, neither has mentioned the settlement announced in the high court. The only mention the Sun has made of any sort of settlement being reached is contained in a "Staff Reporter" story from Tuesday which doesn't mention that the Sun itself or the News of the World have agreed to pay him damages.

With damages to Murat of £600,000, six figure payouts to two of his acquaintances whose names were also dragged through the mud, and overall legal costs, Roy Greenslade estimates that it will have cost the four groups, Express Newspapers, the Mirror Group, Associated Newspapers and News International in the region of £100,000 per paper. Again, in the long run, we're talking of peanuts here. These are still peanuts which will have to be accounted for, and who knows, some employees may well lose their jobs as a result of the costs. That won't however stop any one of these newspapers from smearing individuals in exactly the same way as they did Murat. As elucidated before, it's far too profitable and the negatives are too few to make them think twice before declaring on their front pages that a man is a paedophile or that a missing girl DEFINITELY WAS in that man's villa.

Greenslade mentions that the dedicated legal teams on each paper has to take some of the blame. I'd agree, but I think the real blame lies with one individual only: the editor. They are the ones who decide what and what isn't ultimately printed, and each one in this instance thought that it was perfectly acceptable to print libel about a man whose only crime was wanting to help the police find the little girl that had gone missing close to where he lived. Here then is a roll call of shame: Rebekah Wade; the Sun. Colin Myler; News of the World. Paul Dacre; Daily Mail. Veronica Wadley; Evening Standard. Kenny Campbell; Metro. Richard Wallace; Daily Mirror. Tina Weaver; Sunday Mirror. Bruce Waddell; Daily Record. Peter Hill; Daily Express. Martin Townsend; Sunday Express. Dawn Neesom; Daily Star.

The other main reason why this will have no effect whatsoever on it happening again is that the newspapers have hardly even acknowledged that they've done anything wrong. The only way to make anyone take notice on these occasions when such repeated and hysterical libel has been committed is for the newspaper to be forced to print the apology on its front page, like the Express and Star both did after the action by the McCanns. Having seen the Daily Mirror and Sun front pages tomorrow, neither so much as mentions Murat. The Sun even has a story claiming that the McCanns are about to be cleared, just to rub it into Murat that he'd have more luck trying to get blood out of a stone than forcing a tabloid newspaper to own up to its errors.

If anything therefore ought to put the final nail in the coffin of the myth of self-regulation this ought to be it. Tina Weaver for example sits on the Press Complaint Commission's main board which decides on the cases brought before it for adjudication, while Paul Dacre is the chairman of the code committee! Digitagit summed it up very nicely in the comments on another Greenslade piece:

As with the Mosley case, the toxic combination of greed, vanity, self-importance, affected outrage and false morality is a trait common to all our popular press and is just repulsive beyond belief.

Indeed. These self-same newspapers preach at us day in and day out about law and order, respect and morals, and when it comes down to it, they are just as guilty if not more so than anyone else in society. Only a complaints body with genuine teeth, that could perhaps stop a newspaper from publishing for one day when they commit such outrageous libel, or which personally fines editors or proprietors like Ofcom does could potentially stop this rot.

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Wednesday, July 16, 2008 

Cameron, the broken society and the wider left.

Reading the Grauniad's interview with David Cameron and the accompanying article, it's very difficult not to become depressed that after 10 years of Blair, within a couple of years we're going to be under the thumb of his very real heir, and with not just the Labour party but the entirety of the left raising barely a whimper of defiance.

Cameron's broken society gambit is almost certainly the one detail that makes me despair the most. He knows it's not true, we know it isn't true, the government knows it isn't true, even the Times, whose sister paper has done the most to perpetuate the notion knows it isn't true, and yet I don't think I can recall a single politician, whether they be Labour or Liberal Democrat who has directly challenged Cameron to provide some real evidence that British society is any sense broken. Here's Cameron's incredibly weak case for it:

He denies he is giving a false picture of Britain by talking of a broken society, saying: "There is a general incivility that people have to put up with, people shouting at you on the bus or abusing you on the street, or road rage. There is a lot of casual violence; and I think it is important to draw attention to it."

It doesn't seem to matter that I somehow doubt Cameron himself has been on a bus in years, if ever, but this isn't a picture of a broken society. It may be a picture of an uncivil, rude, selfish society, but what it is not is a broken society. This is anecdotal evidence writ large: I reasonably regularly travel on buses and I've never seen people shouting at each other, let alone shout at me; more likely is that everyone will be ignoring each other or desperately hoping that the few noisy ones that are stop talking so loudly about their sex lives. I've seen bus drivers themselves try to cause trouble by picking people up when they don't say please and thank you (incidentally the one who did this only picked up those that also happened to be black) but again, not random shouting and slanging matches. I have been on occasion abused on the street, but that's the sort of thing you have to put up with when you're four-eyed and an ugly bastard; as on the previous post, some people either to need to grow a backbone or get over themselves. Road rage, as someone recently pointed out, didn't exist as a term back in the late 80s, and what's also developed since the late 80s is the congestion and delays which so often prompt it. Then there's the casual violence that according the BCS has dropped by 40% since 1995.

Cameron, rather than being compared to Blair, likes to be compared to Obama. The difference is that if either Obama or McCain tried to claim that America is a broken society, a claim that probably has more merit than the notion that ours is, considering the crushing inequality, far higher crime rate and pitiful minimum wage, not to mention an even more pervasive notion of individualism, then they would be absolutely crucified for not being patriotic about their own country. Thankfully we're not anything like that here, but what we are instead is intensely cynical, incredibly self-critical and with a tendency for self-loathing. Those are all qualities that I myself have in abundance, so I'm not pointing the finger. They do however lead us to exaggerating and making out that things are far worse than they actually are. Cameron's broken society rhetoric can be directly linked back to Blair's own "tough on crime" soundbite, even if it was created by Gordon Brown. That itself was connected with the James Bulger murder, which despite being a horrific one-off was enough to set us back on the "prison works" road which hasn't altered for over a decade. Cameron is now working off the back of the rise of knife crime to claim that society is broken. It's just as dubious then as the notion that prison works was, but because it's so current and can't be argued against because of the immediacy of such terrible crimes, it's difficult to argue against.

Labour's response to all this is to claim that David Cameron is a PR merchant who doesn't have any policies. For a time this could wash: he is the former while he didn't have the latter. That simply isn't true any more. He remains the PR merchant with a spin doctor in Andy Coulson behind him to rival Alastair Campbell, but the Tory party does now have policies. Not brilliant ones, but they're enough, just as Labour was suitably vague prior to 97. What's more, they instantly appeal even if they fall apart after a moment's study: their fuel escalator idea is a fantastic concept, easy to understand but which is completely out of step with their so-called green credentials; locking up yobs with knives is populist and difficult to argue against while being a terrible idea; and his broken Britain stuff is brazen and defining but empty.

What's more is that he's combining it with the ruthless streak that such politicians who crave power have. He's also already compromising, hence letting it be known that the Tories may have to raise taxes before they can cut them because of the huge borrowing debt and the black hole in the public finances, whilst looming over Boris in the Mayor's office like Blair would have liked to have done over Ken. He already has the sort of public image which Blair gained, and which Brown would kill for, with decent popularity ratings, and his performance over the last year has won over the doubters in the Conservative party itself.

As far as I can see it, the left has two choices. Either the Labour party picks itself up out of its desperate misery, viciously goes on the offensive against Cameron and completely challenges them over every little detail, over whether we have a broken society, over public spending pledges, over what their foreign policy would be, and the left joins in with it, even if deservedly detached, or the left has to disconnect completely from Labour now. You see it on Comment is Free and elsewhere, how the left, despite its complete disengagement and resentment in places with Labour is getting all the blame for what's gone wrong and none of the credit for what's gone right. The real danger is that the left and its causes get dragged down with Labour, and out of not just power but out of any influence for another generation.

This is why it makes me so despondent when rather than challenging the Conservatives and potentially forcing them to improve their plans, the left seems more concerned with such petty, ridiculous and banal matters as whether or not we should use the word "chav". Yes, a tiny minority of individuals are stupid, wear awful clothes, listen to terrible music and act like imbeciles; if some people want to call them chavs let them get on with it. There are more important things to be concerned with. If the last 10 years have taught us anything it's that someone with charisma is an incredibly dangerous thing. Unhinged by even the slightest disagreement amongst backbench supporters, Cameron has the potential to be far more destructive than Blair ever was. We're almost certainly going to have at least five years of Tory rule, so let's at least ensure that there's some sort of opposition, shall we? Or we can go and shoot ourselves now. There, comrades, are the options.

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The youth crime action plan.

After the understandable explosion of coverage over the weekend after the deaths of 4 men in London alone on the same day, including the 20th teenager to have been killed in the city this year, the reaction to the actual Youth Crime Plan itself, which has been long in the drawing up, has been almost entirely muted.

Partly this was because over the weekend the government managed to yet again get itself in a frightful muddle of its own making. Spurred into action by the immediate howling that something must be done from the newspapers, and also to respond to the Tories' pledge that anyone caught carrying a knife would be sent to prison, Jacqui Smith toured the studios on the Sunday making clear what the tough community punishments would be, as opposed to locking the miscreants up for God knows how long. This would involve restorative justice sessions, taking teenagers into hospitals to see victims of violent crime, face to face meetings with victims, and community sentences of up to 300 hours to be carried out on Friday and Saturday nights. Because Jacqui Smith was suitably vague, doubtless because all these measures had been thought up incredibly quickly, she gave the impression that teenagers were going to be taken into accident and emergency wards to see victims almost as soon as they had been wheeled into be patched up. The media ran with this, and then also got a father who had lost a child to knife crime in one instance saying that he would have nothing to do with seeing the perpetrators of his son's death face to face. It was apparent this wasn't what the government was suggesting, with them instead giving the possibility that offenders would be taken onto normal wards to see victims of violent crime, and only then if it was agreed with the individuals themselves and the doctors, and that only those who wanted to take part in such restorative face to face schemes with those who had carried knives would be considered for such sessions, but the media screamed U-TURN when Jacqui Smith stood up on Monday and gave a more substantial account of the proposals.

The whole avoidable escapade overshadowed the fact that this was actually a far better and more likely to work scheme than the blunt instrument of the Tory prison for anyone who carries a knife nonsense. No one challenged the Conservatives over the very basics of such a plan: with prisons already overcrowded and close to total capacity, how on earth would they provide the spaces needed for such a draconian policy? The completely useless answer to this is that the Tories plan to sell off some of the Victorian prisons and build new ones (as originally proposed by our friends at Policy Exchange). That this doesn't solve the problem at all, makes you wonder who wants to buy the prisons in the first place, especially in the current climate, and is in the neverland realm of time doesn't seem to matter. How exactly would prison solve anything anyway? We already know that prison for the young either doesn't work, or in fact equips them for an entire life of crime rather than deliver the sharp shock that might be necessary to get them out of carrying a knife, but it's a populist, easy proposal which you can make in opposition and not get called upon for.

The Youth Action Plan generally seems to have understood for the first real time under New Labour that the tough talking, eternal crackdowns and constant new initiatives have not worked. All they have done is just wetted the appetite for more of the same, and given the consistent impression that it's what we're going to get. This change in tact is almost certainly the work of Ed Balls, who's managed to persuade, with the Supreme Leader's help, the more Blair-inclined Smith and Straw of the virtues of a welfare based approach. Out has gone the distraction that was the ABSO, first introduced by Straw but not really used habitually until David Blunkett was home secretary, and in has come the view that targeting of those most at risk of turning to crime, the crucial involvement of parents and the setting up of dedicated local youth offending teams, involving all the local services, from the police to the social services to the schools, all involved in monitoring progress and intervening if necessary.

As identified by Mark Easton, the real heart of the report itself is not in the new measures proposed, but in the research behind it to back up its own suppositions. Hence 5% of youth offenders make up 50% of the actual crime committed, the hard core that do so much to give the vast majority a bad name. Equally, it identifies the factors that so increase the chances of someone being a prolific offender rather than one who might get in trouble once or twice during their childhood. Predictably, being a member of a "delinquent" group vastly increases the chances of offending; what doesn't however is a person's temperament, with both infrequent and prolific (high rate) offenders having broadly the same chance. What does make the difference is maltreatment as a child, if a parent is convicted of a crime, ADHD diagnosis, and low socio-economic status. Nothing ground breaking there either, but it has the useful effect of confirming what you already think that you know. This might be where specific targeting and targets can get over their deservedly bad name: specifically intervening where there is potential trouble ahead can in this instance make all the difference. Understandably, this does raise concerns about the nanny state, interfering in the family structure and the potential demonising of individuals; if however we are to make progress and as a result stop the mindless impression that everything is permanently getting worse and that the next generation are going to bring us all down, it might well be a necessary evil.

There are, as Lee Griffin especially has noted, some of the more harebrained ideas still in the plan. The eviction of families from council houses should they consistently fail to comply with successive orders, parenting ones as well as ASBOs, is a barmy idea which either just puts the problem somewhere or potentially makes the family homeless which makes a bad outcome even more likely. It simply isn't going to happen, and is probably only in there for the benefit of the tabloids and to make the whole deal same harsher than it otherwise is. Lee also objects to "unpaid work in the community" on Friday and Saturday night for child criminals, which I think is actually not so bad an idea. It's clearly just another harsher way of saying community service, and carrying it out on the nights when most teenagers go out will be the sort of punishment that might just get through to the minority that if they decide to act like morons or plague people to death that they'll have their leisure time to do so taken away. The only problem is just who will supervise it and given up their own weekends. Where I do agree with Lee and others is on the completely disproportionate mass curfew orders which the government is encouraging, which stigmatise youth as a whole rather than dealing with those who are a pain. Most the time it's not even that they're actually committing any sort of offence, it's that they're daring to be on a street corner or outside at all. There was a local news report the other week about anti-social behaviour where one guy who didn't want to be identified's chief complaint was that some of the youths had "called him names"; for fuck's sake people, grow some sort of a backbone. Especially illiberal is the Redruth saga, where kids who dare to be outside after 9pm during the school holidays are to be marched back home and their parents potentially given orders to keep them inside and otherwise, when they haven't broken any rule but have transgressed over the threshold of being young and outside at night.

On the whole however, the plan is mostly sensible, level-headed, backed up by evidence and might just well actually confront some of the most intransigent problems in some communities that we face today. It's a break with the tough on crime without being tough on the causes sense that has blighted policy for the last decade. The real tragedy is that it's likely to be thrown out the window by the Conservatives before it's even had a chance to work.

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Express-watch: Distorting a government report? Surely not?

Let's keep this one relatively brief, as I have no intention of giving the Express any more hits for their blatant rabble rousing. You might recall last year that the Express distorted a Sheffield council report which was a plan for averting possible tensions in the city into a "ethnic baby boom crisis" which was due to precipitate "race trouble".

They've done much the same thing today, albeit on the front page, with it screaming that even MPs now "FEAR RIOTS IN BRITAIN".

The report which the Express is referring to is from the Communities and Government Committee, available here, entitled "Community Cohesion and Migration". Not once in the entire report is the word "riots" used. Nowhere in the report do the MPs responsible so much as suggest that they fear riots or even mass disturbances will break out as a result of a failure to integrate. About the closest they get is here, in the conclusion:

The continued under-funding of migration pressures at the local level increases the risk of community tensions escalating, particularly given that the majority of people in the UK already believe that some groups, such as immigrants, get unfair priority access to public services.

The Government needs to take immediate action to address public concerns about migration, and to defuse tensions before they lead to disturbances.

The report incidentally debunks that immigrants get unfair priority access to services, something the Express didn't see fit to mention. The committee then suggests that tensions need to be defused before they lead to "disturbances"; not that they fear riots are going to break out. It for instance states this:

Some degree of tension between individuals is not necessarily problematic and can be seen as an indication of a healthy democracy. The problem is when tensions escalate to a point where they negatively affect community cohesion. Open disturbances between migrant and settled communities are rare. Thankfully, to date no disturbances have occurred on the scale of those which took place in Burnley, Bradford, and Oldham in the summer of 2001 between settled Asian and white communities—though there have been localised disturbances in areas such as the Caia Park estate, Wrexham, and Boston, Lincolnshire.

Although they may not be widespread, we are still concerned about tensions between migrants and settled residents, and how through addressing the underlying causes of these tensions disturbances may be prevented from arising. Our evidence, particularly from our visits, indicated that there are many tensions relating to practical issues and fears over the changing nature of communities, and the pace of that change, as well as concerns about the pressures placed on public services from migration.

Again then, they're concerned about tensions which may lead to disturbances, they don't fear that riots are about to break out. The Express is engaging in blatant scaremongering.

Let's go through the Express report in a little more detail:

IMMIGRATION is the single biggest cause of public concern, an influential group of MPs warned yesterday.

Actually, they didn't. Directly above the report introduction, they quote a MORI poll from January 2007 which found that 1 in 5 were most concerned about migration, above even crime and terrorism. To suggest this might now be slightly out of date would be stating the obvious: the current hot concerns are the economy and knife crime, with immigration having taken a back seat, especially as there is ancedotal evidence that suggests that there are now more Poles returning home than coming to work in Britain.

The MPs’ devastating report concluded that migration has had a significant impact on communities and local services – greater even than crime and terrorism.

Again, it doesn't. That's quoting from the MORI poll and not the conclusions of the report at all. The closest in comes is in these two nuggets:

Public concerns about the effects of migration cannot simply be dismissed as racist or xenophobic. Tensions often arise on real practical issues, such as the proliferation of Houses in Multiple Occupation (HMOs). (Paragraph 16)

The rapid pace of change experienced by many communities has led to increased local public concern about migration and can negatively affect community cohesion. (Paragraph 24)

The Express:

It also revealed that tensions were rising between some settled ethnic communities and new arrivals because of increased competition for “race equality” resources.

The report:

The Community Development Foundation (CDF) told us that it was aware of new patterns of racial prejudice and hostility between settled Asian and Caribbean communities and new ethnic minorities, who MAY (my emphasis) resent the increased competition for ‘race equality’ resources.

There are of course problems, as the report makes clear, in some communities where migration has suddenly exploded where previously there was little to none. The Express though for some strange reason doesn't mention that of two of the three places visited by the committee which have experienced problems with migration and tensions as a result, both Burnley and Barking and Dagenham have a large British National Party presence. The BNP have four seats on the Burnley council, while they have 12 in B&D. The BNP might have moved in on such fears, but they could also have helped them to spread through their campaigning. Still, isn't it nice to see the Expresss doing its own bit for community cohesion?

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Tuesday, July 15, 2008 

A system unchanged by scandals part two.

If the payout to the McCanns by the Express group over repeated, completely untrue allegations, not just about their "involvement" in the abduction of their own child but also about their sex lives was embarrassing, then the truly unprecedented payout to Robert Murat by not just the Express papers but every single one of the daily tabloids with the exception of the Daily Sport, three of the Sunday tabloids and also the Scotsman is an indictment of a journalistic culture that regards the lives of those who are being written about as being of no concern whatsoever.

After the apology and payola for the McCanns, Murat's chances of a settlement were always going to be greatly increased. While the McCanns settled on going after the Express because of its clear for all to see race to the bottom, by far the most egregious offender against them, Murat was smeared by all and sundry, leaping to the most lurid conclusions based on the tiniest glimpses of so-called evidence. The Sun, for example, claimed that his computer had child pornography on it, and that he looked at various other questionable sexual websites; that Murat has since had his computers returned to him and no action has been taken for possession of child pornography suggests that these allegations were completely groundless. Anything that might suggest he was in any way strange or abnormal was also seized upon, such as the apparent fact that he joined in with children when his former employers hired a bouncy castle, or that he had been "in a hurry" when hiring a car. The Sun (again) even aired allegations it knew to be completely false, quoting a taxi driver who said that he had driven Murat, who had Madeleine with him on the night she went missing. That this couldn't have been possible because Madeleine had not disappeared at the time he claimed to have driven them didn't stop the paper from printing such abject garbage.

The award for starting the entire ball rolling though has to go to the Sunday Mirror and their reporter Lori Campbell. As Private Eye noted at the time, the paper already had form, having carried an interview the December before with a man called Tom Stephens, who had known some of the prostitutes murdered in and around Ipswich. The police swooped on this clearly distraught individual and swiftly released him after it became completely clear he had no involvement whatsoever with their deaths, distracting the investigation from the real quarry, Steve Wright. Campbell, with a heightened sense of what's creepy and what's not, decided that Murat's behaviour was akin to that of Ian Huntley's after the disappearance of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, and noblely reported her suspicions to the police: "[G]iven the unimaginable horrors which Madeleine's parents were enduring, it seemed the very least I could do," she said at the time. Murat's real crime it seems was not to have tried to get away from Praia da Luz, as you might expect someone involved in the kidnap of a child from the area to do, but instead to stay and help. Indeed, Murat had been helping the police with translating. For his concern about the missing child, he was treated to the finest which the British press has to offer. Lori Campbell meanwhile was nominated for Reporter of the Year at the British Press Awards.

Roy Greenslade has outlined three reasons for why this story has so revealed the British tabloids' true colours, lest they really needed exposing anyway: firstly, because this was happening in Portugal, hence they thought they could get away with pushing their coverage further towards the line than they could if this had occurred on British shores. This was undoubtedly a factor, but what also influenced their reporting what that they felt that they could simply get away with it in any case. Without the Express group going too far over the McCanns themselves, Murat would have almost certainly failed in bringing any sort of action. In an interview with the BBC he said his own savings had gone; his mother's were also beginning to dwindle, reducing his chances of bringing an expensive action down to almost nil. As it was, if the McCanns could get some sort of settlement, Murat almost certainly could also, and the firm acting for him, Simons Muirhead and Burton already act pro bono on human rights case. Whether they'll be waiving their fee in Murat's case is unclear.

What's more, it was financially viable in any case for the papers responsible to do so. Murat may receive £550,000 damages; split that 11 ways and it adds up to just £50,000 a newspaper, which to the Daily Mail and Sun especially is absolute peanuts. They've had a year of fun, boosted their circulations, brought in far more than that through their race to the bottom, competing with each other as to who could print the more lurid stories, and at the end of it they have to cough up a whole £50,000? To spout a cliche, they literally must be laughing all the way to the bank. Sure, it's embarrassing that they're going to have to apologise, although it's not clear whether the apologies will be front page specials like the Express's ones to the McCanns were, but has it any way affected the Express or Star in the long term? Of course not. They're still printing the same old crap as they were previously, and if a few readers take umbrage, that's a casualty of the game. This time round those disgusted by the tabloid's behaviour can't even switch to a different rag to show their displeasure: all of them were at it (unless they switch to a broadsheet, which is unlikely). A man's life and his subsequent employability doesn't matter one jot to the editors, the journalists responsible or the owners and shareholders; if it did, there would been grovelling apologies and payouts to Colin Stagg, completely ruined by the press campaign against him. He is instead being compensated by the state, when it should have been editors who demand law and order and tough penalties for everyone other than themselves who paid up.

Greenslade's final reason for why this occurred is that the press has been pushing against the contempt laws in this country for years, and that is undisputably the case. He's missed out a fourth, and most important reason though: churnalism. The whole Madeleine McCann disappearance fits entirely into Nick Davies' rules of production, the very first of which is run cheap stories. This might have taken place in Portugal, and so have had higher costs than cheap stories over here, but these were easily recouped by rises in circulation. In fact, journalists didn't have to necessarily even be in Praia da Luz, where nothing much happened anyway. The Express, for instance, spent most of its time copying out of the local Portuguese press, which was just as guilty, if not more so of printing complete garbage. Secondly, once the ball was rolling, it had to keep on going, meaning journalists had to come up with something even if there was nothing new to report. To suggest that complete fabrication in some cases did not take place would surely be a naive statement. This also inspires ninja turtle syndrome, where if one paper is printing it, the others have to regardless of its veracity.

I wrote after the payout to the McCanns that it changed absolutely nothing, and neither will this latest admittance that they went too far. The benefits of doing so are too large while the penalties are so few and so weak; Murat was very lucky, while the newspapers this time round were unfortunate. The libel system, and indeed, the Press Complaints Commission were drawn and set up not to protect the genuinely little people who find themselves in the crossfire through being in the wrong place at the wrong time, they were drawn up to protect the rich and the famous and the newspapers themselves respectively. The PCC is utterly toothless while the libel laws are now rightly being described as a worldwide disgrace. The vested interests and industry standards are so vast however that any change is simply unconsciousable, whether by politicians or those within the organisations themselves. Only when the public themselves actually stop buying the despicable rags will they be forced to change their ways. They show no signs of doing that.

Related:
Enemies of Reason - Murat & libel

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Monday, July 14, 2008 

Lily Allen's war against knife crime!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1

The BBC doesn't help itself against accusations of dumbing down when it opens its report on knife crime on the news at 10 by quoting Lily Allen asking everyone to stop stabbing each other on her MurdochSpace blog. In case you were interested in what else La Allen was telling people about in her post, here it is in full:

got bored of the pink , I can't believe i'm posting a blog about my hair , sooooooo " the hills" kinda sorta finished the album , hopefully a single out soon , but i'm definitely gonna post a new song or two this week . I'm starting Bikram yoga tomorrow , YAWN . . That pic of me up there is in my new flat , i've been in for a week and it's been an OK move , I've been sofa surfing and living in hotels for two years , so it's really weird being in this place alone , and don't get too excited burglars , i've got metal roller blinds that go down at night and a panic button by my bed , no panic room though . food for thought . it has been a tough week though , you may have heard my nan passed away , last weekend , we were close and even though she had been very ill for the last few years , it was a big shock , and surreal to find out at Glastonbury . But i went up to see my grandad in Kings lynn (where they lived) and drove him down to Wales where we will bury her on friday. All very sad , but he is doing well and being very brave . I love my family . Anyway the point is my nan would have killed me if I went to her funeral with pink hair , so there is another reason . Anyways in other news , I'm getting a dog from Battersea dogs home , i found her on the weekend , and after a visit from a rehoming officer hopefully, i'll have her by next week . She's called Honey and she's quite fat (insert dogs like their owners joke here) , but very sweet , she's a mongrel . There were so many Stafforshire Bullies there it was so sad . People should really think about getting puppies from breeders or breeding them for that matter , if you saw all those poor dogs without a home with their sad little faces , you wouldn't even think about buying dogs from people who profit . I'm starting Bikram yoga tomorrow , YAWN . . please can everyone stop stabbing each other in the UK , it's really sad , my thoughts are with all the families affected by these heinious crimes . we need to have a knife amnesty , we should put on a big concert to raise awareness and stop the violence , Boris , if your listening , call me man speak soon peeps x xx

Now, if someone took it upon themselves to stab dear old Lily, then that might just be a incident of knife crime we could all unite around the positive benefits of.

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Americans not getting irony shocker.

The cliché is official then - Americans really don't understand irony, or at least, Barack Obama's campaign team doesn't. You can perhaps imagine why their campaign might not like the New Yorker's front cover because some of those who don't get the joke (or who do, but will cling to it as a propaganda tool) might use it against them, but to call it "tasteless and offensive" seems to show that the ones who don't get it are also those whom it was meant to appeal to.

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George has written a sketch!

There's very little that's more attractive than a passing pop-psychological explanation for exactly why we are what we are and how to influence individuals into working towards the greater good. The latest is Richard Thaler's book Nudge, which has wonderfully bewitched the Tories: firstly because it doesn't involve throwing money around and secondly because it's American in origin.

Here then is the latest wheeze from little Georgie Osborne on how to encourage households to be more energy efficient, via the Grauniad, following their article on Saturday on Nudge:

First, social norms can be used to promote energy efficiency. A Conservative government will require household energy bills to contain information enabling families to compare their energy consumption with that of similar homes. As we have seen from pilots in America, this information can have a massive impact on energy consumption, as households who are using more than the average reduce their energy use to come into line with the norm. And as long as households that are using less than the average are given some sort of positive recognition - for example a special mark on their energy bill - they don't increase their energy use to fit in with the average. Without the use of any intrusive tax or regulatory instruments, overall energy consumption falls.

This rests on a few underlying assumptions: firstly, that householders actually care about being energy efficient. This may be true of trendy middle class families that want to boast about how low their carbon assprint is, and will want to keep up with the other Joneses in battling each other to bring it down, but will it of others who couldn't care less what their neighbours do and find it rather an invasion of privacy that their levels are broadcasted to the whole surrounding estate? Secondly, it accepts as a given that householders will compete to bring it down because of the overwhelming embarrassment of committing a crime against the environment. Thirdly, has there ever been a more worthless form of "positive recognition" than a "special mark" on a bill? To suggest this might reduce householders to infants who are promised a reward if they behave is putting it mildly. It also reminds me of a scheme that ran for the first couple of years of secondary school, where you received "commendations" from teachers for especially good pieces of work, and received a certificate when you reached a certain number. The flaw in this scheme was obvious - it rewarded the naturally bright and the hard working while ignoring those that did work hard but who didn't achieve the same level of quality in their work. Add in how those who rejected the "norm" of working hard and sneered at the "swots" laughed at the scheme and it was little surprise when it collapsed in on itself.

All of this seems to ignore the obvious reason to become more energy efficent - not to compete with the neighbours in the atypical Daily Mail style, but to bring the bills down. Moreover, the whole scheme smacks of something that I'd hoped that we'd moved on from: the incredibly flawed idea that "naming and shaming", because that's what this is, albeit in a much more subtle form, encourages people to moderate their behaviour. It doesn't; it instead makes them more defiant and in the eyes of some makes those who are worth looking up to. Crime or becoming more energy efficient, I'd wager things would be little different.

It's understandable why this is attractive to the Conservatives - not content with wanting to introduce markets to every public service around, they now think it's the perfect way to get neighbourhoods to work together. It also rests however on what they have in the past derided as paternalism, which is this undoubtedly also is. Osborne ends his weak article with:

Our work with the world's leading behavioural economists and social psychologists is yet more proof that the Conservative party is now the party of ideas in British politics. Gordon Brown needs to get on board with this new agenda, and fast. If he doesn't, he shouldn't be surprised if he gets nudged out of office sooner rather than later.

Or perhaps Brown will instead not be moved by passing crazes which change with the wind, which the Conservatives seem to be clutching at to pretend they have new ideas rather all the same old ones. It's hard not to picture the chinless George Osborne as Eric Idle and Brown as Terry Jones, with Osborne ending his tirade of innuendo by finally asking Brown what "it" is like.

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On the uselessness of lists.

In general drawing up huge lists is a thankless, pointless task which tends to prove precisely nothing. That most of those who do are self-obsessed narcissists convinced of their own righteousness (and I include myself here) doesn't help. Therefore including Andrew Neil, Tessa Jowell and three Grauniad no-names in compiling their "Media 100" list is hardly likely to inspire confidence. It's no surprise therefore when Carolyn McCall (Groan Media Group CEO) and Alan Rusbridger are both in the top 40.

You know they're just talking bollocks though when this is how they describe Rebekah Wade, who is at no.30, whereas Paul Dacre who still controls a paper with a lower circulation, it's worth remembering, is at no.4:

"Politically I think it had almost zero influence at the last election, and will have even less at the next one," said one panellist. "It has ceased to be the player it was at the heart of British media and politics."

To call this total nonsense would be perhaps putting it too lightly. If you honestly think that a newspaper with a circulation of 3 million, read by probably closer to 8 million has no influence then you're living in a fantasy world. A rather nice fantasy world, it has to be said, but still one that doesn't exist in reality.

You can in fact argue the opposite. While the Daily Mail undoubtedly punches above its weight, and almost everyone agrees that in the not too distant future it will usurp the Scum as the biggest selling daily, it was the unholy alliance of the Murdoch press with Blair that helped ensure that he stayed with us for as long as he did. Although it took a very long time, the Grauniad finally said it was time for Blair to go in around 2005. That left the only papers that really supported him the Times and the Sun. The Mirror doesn't count - although it's unlikely it will ever abandon Labour, it has long since lost any major influence and it always favoured Brown over Blair. No, what helped keep Blair from going under after the Iraq war was the unstinting support of the Sun - its fanatical hatred of the BBC and diabolically slanted coverage of the Hutton inquiry distorted the process out of recognition with the reporting elsewhere. While sympathetic towards Michael Howard, it never offered anything resembling support towards the Conservatives, and with most of the public also unconvinced by Howard, Labour returned in 2005, despite the Blair millstone around the party's neck, even if the Tories did win the popular vote in England.

This pact was always because of the overwhelming Wapping influence on Blair - constant deference towards the Sun's leader line, instant recognition of the latest demands it made, and impeccable rushing to accomodate and help with the next day's headlines. The reason why the Sun's influence has waned now Blair has gone is because Brown has always been far closer to Dacre and the Mail then Wade and the Sun. This hasn't altered the editorial line much, as it is still overly supportive of Brown, showing that Murdoch is still yet to be convinced by Cameron, no matter how similar to Blair he is. This though disproves the idea that somehow the Sun will even be less influential come the next election: already we've seen Cameron making his play on knife crime in the pages of the Sun, something they've unsurprisingly championed. The battle will shortly be joined, and the choice will be made. Will it be as much as a defining moment as the Sun's change to support Labour in 97? No, because the media has overwhelming changed since then. To pretend it won't have any influence is the view of someone who wishes it didn't.

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