Four senior army officers went public today in opposition to the use of British military symbols and heritage by ‘extremist’ groups or political parties. The implication was that the political parties they had in mind included the BNP, as reported by BBC News Online.
In response, one of the things said by a BNP spokesman was “The Spitfire is nothing to do with the modern military. It is to do with Britons fighting during the Second World War against European dictatorship.”
I suggest we look closely at the decisions that the British government and in particular Winston Churchill ( himself a popular icon amongst the more right wing parties) made about conducting a war against a European power.
At several stages, and especially in the summer of 1940 after the Dunkirk evacuation and the onset of the Battle of Britain, Churchill had the option to abstain from the war. Indeed, Hitler was taken aback that this didn’t happen. Britain could have left mainland Europe to the Nazis, and to a straight fight between them and Stalin’s Russia… a power which Britain might equally have feared, and whose Communism today’s right wingers would no doubt condemn outright as an even worse alternative.
The longer-term would have been more difficult to call, for a Britain which wished to retain an Empire, but in the short term Britain might pragmatically have agreed terms with Germany, and the Battle of Britain would never have happened… a much more attractive prospect than fighting on, with a skeleton army short of everything, and risking invasion and total collapse.
But Britain didn’t do that. Churchill didn’t do that. It wasn’t Germany, it was Hitler’s Nazi regime in Germany… a fascist, nationalist regime. Churchill’s primary motivation, however much you might pick apart his social views as those of an upper class Englishman born in the 1870s, stemmed from the fact that he saw Britain as a standard bearer for “decency”, a concept that mattered most to him, and therefore as a bulwark against the values of Hitler and the Nazis. This had nothing to do with Europe, geography, or super-states. Churchill ultimately committed Britain to the terrible risks and privations of continued war on behalf of ‘decency’ against a totalitarian, racist and anti-democratic regime.
That’s what the Battle of Britain, and the Spitfire, and Churchill himself all signify. A truly British, but not ultimately an introspectively nationalistic, stand against fascism and intolerance.
I just think that anyone who adopts those symbols, to signify the values of their own organisation, should be aware of this. It is well documented. If they continue to use those symbols in full knowledge of those values, because they genuinely aspire to them (no bull!) then I don’t think that anyone should complain… unless, of course, those professed values repeatedly fail to translate into action.
I was set off on this train of thought by listening to the radio this morning. It was one of those quite rare occasions when even Radio 4 was able to annoy me with some sloppy wording.
The Consumer Prices Index (CPI), I heard, “rose by 1.1% last month”, and the RPI actually “fell by 1.4% last month”.
No they didn’t!!! If the CPI rose by 1.1% last month, that’s a terrifying 13.2% annualised rate – as bad as when the IMF was bailing us out and the economy was falling to pieces – and we should all be heading for the lifeboats. Conversely if the RPI fell by 1.4% last month (the difference is mainly due to the effects of housing costs on the index) then that’s got the cost of living falling at an annual rate of 16.8%. Five or six years of that and everything would be free – hurrah!
What actually happened is that the CPI rose by 1.1% in the 12 months to September 2009. Similarly the RPI fell by 1.4% in the 12 months to September 2009.
Now – before you all condemn me as a pedantic curmudgeon with nothing better to do – this matters. It matters because we all have enough trouble with percentages and estimates and absolute values as it is, without somebody who’s job it is to make things clearer making it worse. We had exactly the same problem earlier in the year when car sales were being quoted… e.g. “sales of Vauxhall cars fell by 24% last month” and so on.
Once my mind was set on this track I was reminded of the 75p debacle surrounding the uprating of the UK State Retirement Pension in 2000. What caught the headlines was that pensions were “only going up by 75p” that year. Everyone, media included, focussed on the absolute figure – 75p – and all the measly things you could buy with it. How could Labour government be so mean to the elderly? But 75p was simply the result of applying that year’s RPI to the single state pension – a mechanism intended, by and large, to do no more than maintain the real value of pensions. Nobody argued about whether the correct percentage had been applied (it had) – and almost nobody argued about whether the right index was used. A separate agenda – about the value of state pensions overall – was pursued by attacking the absolute value of the result of the ‘keeping it level in real terms’ uprating.
And it worked!
With an election in the offing (2001) the government made a commitment to uprate the State Retirement Pension every year in future by a minimum of 2.5% if the RPI was below this, and by the RPI itself if it was higher. That has been in play ever since.
I’m not debating, here. how much the State Pension should be, what it is for, how it should progress relative to average earnings, how it relates to income related top-ups for the least well off pensioners, how it should be funded, or any of that. But neither did many of the public or the media back in 2000.
The result is that next April, at a time when annual inflation could well still be negative, the State Retirement Pension will increase by a minimum of 2.5% – a real terms increase of possibly as much as 4% – at a time when drastic steps are being tabled to cut, let alone contain, public expenditure.
To bring this back to my quibble with a CPI which “rose by 1.1% last months”, I am not arguing the merits of the State Retirement Pension or its growing real value, I am pointing to the consequences of a policy which was set in response to an outcry about “75p”, which was able to get purchase because people couldn’t relate easily enough to annual percentage rates and to the notion of real terms value.. [So much so that I actually think that an increase of £0-0p in a year of zero inflation would have caused less controversy than the rise of 75p in 2000.]. So my plea is for journalists to keep everything as clear as they can (yeah right!) – and “give 75ps a chance.”
[Declaration of (dis)interest. During the 1990s I was a policy making Civil Servant in the DSS - the UK Department of Social Security and the precursor to today's DWP. I dealt with the impact of benefits on living standards, work incentives and the distribution of income across different groups of people such as retired people, disabled people and families with children. If anyone is interested I can go on at length about the RPI and other indices such as the Rossi index, which is the RPI with changes in housing costs removed. I had first hand experience of how the perception of changes in benefits could affect policy, at the expense of debate of infinitely more complex and morally fundamental questions about equity, funding and often crucially about simplicity and efficiency of administration. HOWEVER - I was not a Civil Servant in 2000-2001, having already run away with the internet start-up circus.]
One of the emerging uses of a blog, drawing on its early form as a diary, is to look back and trace the development or the origins of your own ideas. It makes it very easy to check, for example, whether one is even consistent.
So, on the subject of neighbours and “Other People”, I was reminded of an extract from a piece I wrote in my old blog back in April 2007. [I've edited it slightly for readability, but not to change the meaning at all.]
An example that came to mind was my [own] response to a scene in the film ‘Witness’, set mainly in an Amish community. The Harrison Ford tough cop character, John Book, is posing as an Amish in order to hide out from forces unknown who are out to eliminate a witness to a murder. He has to travel into town on an errand, dressed in Amish clothes, and he and a companion are picked on by the local bullies. Taking advantage of his assumed Amish non-violence they push him around, knock his hat off and, eventually, when they go “boo” in his face, he snaps and punches the bully out. There’s such an exultation, such a catharsis, and such satisfaction in the bully’s shocked reaction to this unexpected resistance, that this remains one of my favourite movie moments. But was it the right thing to do, the smart thing? No – his anger was mainly about the humiliation of his companions, not his own ego, but in his retribution he risks exposure, he risks alienating his hosts, corrupting his companion’s faith in his Amish lifestyle – he gains nothing. Do I realise this analytically? Yes. I’ve realised this fact for 20 years. Has this changed my reaction? No.
But once I got on to thinking about ‘Witness’ I thought, in contrast, about another of my all time favourite scenes – from the same film. At the end [alert - plot spoiler!] John Book has discovered that his main enemy is a corrupt cop, a former buddy. There’s a big fight which ends with this guy holding a shotgun on him. The villain has the gun, he’s got the status to allow him to fake the evidence (once Book is dead) – but the Amish are converging on the scene… quietly, calmly. It’s not that they would rush this man and kill him. But they can see him – they can bear witness (there is, of course, a theme of ‘bearing witness’ in different senses throughout the film) and, as Book asks him, “Are you going to kill all of them too?”
This, too, is a very striking image, a sequence of action that would require far too many words to sum up the points. Many people, non-violent by their very culture and faith, are converging on someone who, despite holding a weapon and wielding considerable corrupt influence, cannot get away with his crime for so long as he is in plain view and these people are prepared to bear witness to what they see.
I think that very nicely sums up the thinking that I am now revisiting. To be clear, it’s not just about the extreme example of major or violent crime. On the contrary, most of the time it’s going to be about petty crime, incivility, vandalism and littering… all those things that chip away at the quality of life and send the signal that it’s “Other People’s” job to clean up.
I also think that the motivation to bear witness has something in common, at bottom, with that much more visceral, violent, and ultimately ill-judged reaction that we see from John Book in that clip.
The dust is starting to settle on this story, of events two years ago, which regained prominence due to a Coroner’s Court hearing. There will, though, be an IPCC investigation into the handling of events.
I waited a while, because it’s always wise to ensure that most of the facts have emerged from beneath the summary headlines. But now I feel that this is another example of what I’m becoming more and more preoccupied with.
The focus of the judicial scrutiny, and definitely that of the reporting, has been on what the various ‘Agencies’ did or didn’t do – the Police, Social Services, Doctors and the NHS, and so on. As a result, the focus of the response has equally been to criticise those who somehow failed. Any reaction to this, in turn, will therefore no doubt be about processes and structures… and ‘roles’ and ‘guidance’ and…
The aim will be to ensure that something sufficiently similar doesn’t happen again – and this can be difficult, especially if you concentrate on processes, because the next time it will be a bit different. In fact, it’s quite possible that some of the process that got in the way of helping Fiona Pilkington was, itself, the product of recommendations and changes resulting from one or more bad cases in the past.
I’m not saying that there shouldn’t be such reviews, they may well do some good. But I think that, in line with what I’ve said before, there are two problems which will persist if we are always drawn to systems and to picking over institutional failings. Both of them stem from the “Other People” problem.
The professionals involved in the case are all “Other People” insofar as they were fulfilling certain duties on behalf of the rest of us. We sub-contracted the duty of care for vulnerable members of the community to them, and they discharged this duty in line with formally defined roles. Those roles define and constrain their reactions – for example, by encoding the level of seriousness of the case and somehow prioritising it – often, to be fair, in the face of very high caseloads. It’s the system, too, which we now somehow expect to taken on the burden of coordinating the responses of the different agencies – perhaps through ‘flags’ and databases and the ubiquitous form. Much of the time this must suppress people’s instinctive judgements or their ability to pick up the phone and have a chat about someone.
But there’s a much more serious “Other People” issue here. Perhaps I should have put it up front. It’s the question, “Why was this problem left to the ‘Agencies’ and where were the neighbours?” read more…
Dinner Lady sacked for telling parents their daughter had been bullied
So here, helpfully, is a practical example of the big rather theoretical principle I’ve just been talking about.
Here’s the BBC News Online coverage, and I’m also relying on the girl’s father’s first-hand testimony given on GMTV.
The facts, as reported so far (and I stress that), are that a seven year old girl was tied up by a group of children and tied to a fence, then hit with a skipping rope.
The school dealt with the incident by informing the parents of the children responsible. But the letter home to the girl’s parents stated only that she had been (in the father’s words) “injured by a skipping rope”.
The dinner lady who dealt with the incident is a volunteer with the local Beavers and, on meeting the parents there, told them more about the incident. The father contacted the school… as you might imagine.
Subsequently the dinner lady was the subject of a disciplinary hearing and has, I believe, been dismissed – for a breach of confidentiality.
Assuming I have all these facts right, and that there are no other special circumstances to be revealed, the temptation is to react to this decision on its own terms… not least to question whether the school committed some corresponding breach of duty, or even falsified information… I wonder what the relevant entry in the accident book says, and who signed it. I wonder what duty the school has to ensure the parents have all the information needed to help the girl deal with the incident - there’s a good chance the girl was too intimidated or embarrassed to tell her parents. And what about the general example being set to children, where surely the principle is that bullies must always be exposed?
But I’m not going that way. Why? Because to do so is to accept that community ties are overridden by the outsourcing of moral and social interactions between people to ‘authorities’, to ‘Other People’ in a regulated environment, where ‘confidentiality’ is one of the undisputed kings. This isn’t a doctor or a lawyer in 1-1 private consultation we’re talking about. It’s a sequence of events in a communal space, a school, where children learn how to be part of a community, as well as how to do English and Maths.
I think my reaction to this story, and what I hope is the reaction of many others, stems from this demotion of communal connections and relationships. The ‘natural’ resolution of this situation, between parents, children, teachers, support staff has been fragmented by the intervention (or at best the interpretation) of formalised roles.
In my eyes this increases the sense that each of us, or at least each household, is being pushed towards an isolated status, where we can only be trusted to deal with each other through rules and processes. Note that I say rules and processes – not broad principles (which I’m all in favour of, so long as they are open to debate and discussion). The dinner lady’s other connections, through friendships, through out-of-school voluntary activity, have been annulled by her formal role as a public sector employee subject to a set of contractual terms and conditions. That’s the only basis on which she seems to be being judged, an example made and a message sent.
My alternative? Give some weight back to the full range of communal ties, networks of relationships, non-institutional roles, judgement and common sense. Trust people not to react disproportionately. Trust ‘Us’ to deal with it, and to calm the situation, if there are such hasty reactions. If we don’t get to exercise those skills, including the self-restraint - they will fade away and then only institutional/authoritarian controls will be left. Let the bullies get used to the idea that they are part of a society (that they are members of an ‘Us’) that might recognise them and disapprove of their actions, rather than that they are subject only to a formal ‘policing’ by ‘Them’… a policing which only takes hold if you are caught by ‘Them’, and not if your actions are seen by (the much more numerous) ‘Us’.
My reaction is conditional on finding out more. But my principle isn’t. Let’s see how this one turns out. If it was actually a minor incident – then that just cuts both ways.
But if I’m right about it – what can we do, what can that dinner lady do? What can/should the local community do – and how can local views best be brought to bear on this sort of case? What does a generic, NoBull, way of dealing with such cases look like and how can it push back the bureaucratism without also damaging some if the useful principles within the law and civic mediation?
On that last note, my pre-occupation with Bull, the school’s main response (probably forced upon it by yet more formal processes, pending appeal etc) is only to say that its priority remains to provide the “best possible education” for its pupils. Better, surely, just to say nothing than to say something meaningless?
It will become clear over time that the ‘Other People’ or ‘Us and Them’ theme is a regular element of my thinking about community and action. This isn’t (just) about obvious historical, social, ethnic or tribal (e.g. football club), divisions that have been recognised, documented, and maybe thus reinforced. It’s more about the underlying psychological processes that may be involved in our attitudes to others, in our immediate reactions to a situation and, thus, our relationship with our local community.
So I think I should try to clarify this, for when it crops up elsewhere in this blog. I don’t think I’m saying anything new, anything that hasn’t been dealt with academically by sociology (with its ’conflict’ and ‘consensus’ models of society) or by evolutionary psychology with it’s intricate analysis of how certain genetic inheritance can be favoured by group behaviours as well as those of an individual. But I need my own personal version – simpler and more vivid – to work with.
I know humans aren’t monkeys – we are probably some kind of great ape – but the lives of monkey ‘troupes’ or even of other clannish species such as Meerkats are the easiest to relate to. Many species of monkey live out their lives in clans, essentially extended families. Within those families there are all sorts of different protocols and hierarchies that determine interaction and status – many of which we can relate to when explaining the psychology of organisations… body language, pecking order, nurture and so on. But one of the greatest sources of pressure on a monkey clan is another monkey clan. They compete for resources (territory, food, shelter, remoteness from predators) and they may also compete for genetic resources – one clan seeking to break up another and appropriate the DNA of the strongest specimens into their own dominant family tree.
Just as relationships within clans, even amongst relatively distant kin, can be tender, altruistic and mutual… conflicts between clans can be brutal, total and fatal – either directly or as a result of pushing the losers into dangerous and impoverished territory. The difference, however it may be sensed and experienced, is clan. The decisions about how to respond to any situation fork at that point – is this individual ’My-clan’ or ‘Not-my-clan’? Thereafter the answers are very very different. ‘Us’ or ‘Them’.
The second thing I want to make clear is that these are primitive distinctions – they are run by older, simpler, more hard-wired parts of our brains (minds?) which may have been overlaid, but not deleted, by our more complex social, linguistic and intellectual selves. Hence I’m not so interested in more modern, explicit and established national/tribal boundaries. read more…
Sometimes I’m compelled to blog a topic just to get a succinct point of view on the record… usually because of the way I have seen or heard it reported.
Today this was electric cars. For some reason the debate focusses on whether they are achieving the performance, capacity and range of cars with internal combustion engines. This also tends to sustain a rather cursory way of regarding electric cars – i.e. that they must be green because they emit no exhaust fumes.
So I just want to list some of the other critical considerations that should be raised every time the credentials of electric cars are examined. These are my questions or challenges, I’m not offering the answers:
- Electric cars are, at best, as green as the means of generating the electricity which is used to recharge them. In a country served by old-style coal-fired power stations, an electric car is a coal-burner.
- It’s worse than that – because there is an extra inefficiency – the loss of power during transmission and transformation over the grid. [I think these losses are quite high - compared to the delivery of the power from an internal combustion engine when delivered via a local mechanical transmission].
- Once the electrical charge is “on board”, then the efficiency of the electric motor in converting it into mechanical energy needs to be considered.
- The evaluation should also take account of the ‘whole life’ energy costs of an electric car, i.e. is more or less energy required to source the materials, fabricate the parts and assemble the car, than for other types of vehicle. Similarly – how do the energy costs of decommissioning and recycling stack up.
- Finally – moving away from energy efficiency per se – what are the relative environmental impacts of the extraction, processing and manipulation of the materials required for electric cars and for other types? In particular I am thinking about the batteries and about the magnets and motor windings.
I’m sure there’s a combination of answers to those questions which would put electric cars out in front. I would love to know some of the answers and considerations… but I would also love to know why the media seem to cover electric cars on such a superficial level, thus encouraging the rest of us to do the same. Government is making decisions right now about investing in electric cars, and that debate should be informed and properly democratised.
There’s another common theme to my thinking – I’ll be writing about it soon and, indeed, re-posting an item from my old blog about it. If nothing else it will prove that I’ve been going about it for quite a while.
There were also elements of this idea in what I said yesterday, concerning the way we seem to want to use “Other People” to deal with “Other People”, not least via the use of legislation, regulation and good old BANNING THINGS! At best we pay a service charge to our local authorities in order to fund that intervention and, at the same time, distance ourselves from the conflict.
Anyhow, more of that anon. But I was prompted to jump the gun a little on this topic, because I wanted to share this article from BBC News Online which demonstrates some of the practical responses that I am interested in fostering. The quoted phrase, “the disengagement of the criminal justice systems makes it harder for communities to fight crime” has something in common with my “Other People” issue. More later then…
Interesting. I had a couple of weeks holiday at the beginning of August, and then two further weeks when I’ve been back at work – but all spare time has been taken up by the visit of my brother and sister-in-law from Australia (a once in ten years event).
The holiday started with me being away from convenient web access most of the time, and maybe that was the trigger, but I haven’t blogged since the holiday started.
Conclusion? Although I think of my blog as a mixture of personal and professional thinking, it would appear that I only blog when a) I’m working and b) I have sufficient time outside of work to organise my thoughts.
OK – that’s based on the evidence of one occurrence, at least since I embarked on the new blog, so let’s see what happens next.
