Micro-managing society

Today the media is full of (appropriately) the dreadful story of this poor woman with a handicapped daughter who was driven to suicide by constant harassment by yobs whom the authorities are unwilling to do anything about. The story behind this woman's desperate act is depressingly familiar and all day I have been hearing from the various agencies and politicians who excuse themselves from blame and insist that lessons will be learned. The politicians in the meantime think in terms of new legislation or new controls to address the problem as they see it.
I grew up in a relatively law abiding society. I am not romanticising this. Of course there were rough areas and there were ruthless criminals (the Krays would be one example) but the main stream of society was pretty well isolated from criminals and vandals. The police and society in general was on top of the job and society was orderly, if somewhat boring. As I look back I see this as a legacy of late Victorian social activism. They cleaned up the statute books, they introduced compulsory schooling, public health and a strong interest in the welfare of the poor. I think their activities worked and by the time I was born there was a balance between government's interest in regulating society and society's willingness to be regulated. Since that time the reforming zeal of the regulators has gone overboard. Every aspect of society must be controlled and regulated. God forbid that any citizen should be trusted to take responsibility for themselves!
Today in our village a  group of chattering schoolchildren appeared in the square with clipboards - presumably on some sort of field survey. They were accompanied by four or five schoolteachers who hd them well under control. The children all wore high visibility jackets each emblazoned with the logo of the caring sponsor and the tag "Keeping our children safe".  I said all, but not quite all. Two boys were without their Hi-Vi jackets - presumably there were not enough to go around. What, I thought, would be the outcome if one of those two were unluckily in an accidental encounter? How could that be explained? We are constantly being pushed into ridiculous situations. The teachers supervising these children were undoubtedly responsible professionals who could be trusted in their duty of care. Except that someone ha decided that they could not wholly be trusted and that Hi-Vi jackets could insure perhaps against some teacher oversight or negligence. Put aside for the moment the thought that once these children left school at the end of the day they would discard the Hi-Vi jackets and go home in small groups, swinging their bags, playfully pushing each other and generally fooling around without supervision. Where are they more at risk?
This idea that regulation and legislation will create a perfect society is pure madness. The evidence after 50 or 60 years  runs counter to the argument. This week, which has coughed up some random examples, has show us that two policewomen who have made mutual baby-sitting arrangements have now been advised that they are breaking the law. And to compound this absurdity, we are told that OFSTED (and why are they involved in this?) are investigating a further 450 similar cases! Of course there are worthy spokespersons are only too happy to make the argument that all of this is worth it if it saves one child. I never hear the parallel argument that this same level of controls and legislation to eating would all be worth it if it saved one obese person from an early death. But I may not have to wait for long for that argument if this craziness continues.
The insidiousness of this nanny statism is that it is all done with the best of intentions. It is difficult to argue that some things are best left alone, that too much control and regulation is counterproductive, that more is often less.
If you give people control over their own lives and the responsibility that goes with, most will rise to the challenge. If people have deficiencies in one area or another they will find partners, friends and community support. This in the end is what community is all about. Unfortunately the trend of the last two generations has been to distrust community to manage its affairs. In recent years this distrust has extended to teachers, to doctors and nurses, to the police - none of these can be trusted to perform their professional functions and have to be restricted by monitoring and targets. If there is a legacy from Blair's ten years it has been to replace a service culture with a target culture.
I despair because I don't think any or much of this legislative meddling can be unpicked. It will probably take a revolution and that won't be pretty.

Mandy does a Hezza!

How curious politics can be. Peter Mandleson, Lord High-Everything-Else, once despised by all Labour true-believers, becomes a Conference darling and the only one who can deliver a message of hope to the assembled faithful.

The Fightback Starts Here!

1. Baroness Scotland stays in the headlines. Her erstwhile cleaner goes public to state that she never showed the worth Patrician her passport, which in any case was outdated. The police have yet to find any evidence of forged documents. The day after the Baroness is exposed for claiming £170,000 second home expenses the government changes the rules so that she is not breaking any code. The public are reassured that the rules that apply to the rest of us don't apply to anyone in government.
2. Gordon Brown contrives to look desperate and pathetic in his repeated attempts to get a photo-opportunity with Barack Obama. Meanwhile Tony Blair is charging £180 a head in Toronto to anyone wishing to be photographed with him.
3. The government pursues its obsession with turning every adult into a potential paedophile. This time two police women who have been offering mutual support to each other in the form of baby sitting have been told that they are breaking the law.
4. Andrew Marr asks a coded question about taking painkillers in an interview with Gordon Brown. Brown doesn't answer the question. The Downing Street spin machine goes ballistic and stokes the story. The Guardian blames Guido.
5. Lord High Everything Else hints that he would not be averse to working with a Conservative government.
6. Tessa Jowell is asked a question about Labour's vision for the future. She doesn't know. She waffles.
7. Alastair Darling makes a speech about the economy. He is questioned about Baroness Scotland only paying her cleaner a miserable £6 an hour.
8. Kevin McGuire says the Labour Government looks shifty on the economy.
9. Get the bankers. Never mind that nothing has been done about bonuses in the time the government has been running nationalized banks. Let's do something popular for the conference.
10. Charles Clarke makes a few helpful suggestions.

Scotland campaigns for the Conservatives

Well, not really, but the Conservatives can hardly believe their luck in the past week. Baroness Scotland breaks the law and then dismisses the matter as a trivial oversight. Now put aside the fact that the law she introduced, to harry employers unlucky enough to hire one of the many hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants that this government encouraged, that many employers might be intimidated by threats of racial discrimination if they turned away many of these applicants, she has undoubtedly confirmed that there is one law for us and another for them. Furthermore she cheerily announced that her action was very much akin to overlooking payment of the congestion charge. For those of us who don't drive in London this has no meaning, but I suppose she means it's the equivalent of overlooking a parking fine.
But the Gordon Brown yesterday, interviewed on Five Live suggested that the worthy Baroness was misled. That certainly puts a different complexion on matters. This Tongan immigrant is obviously going around the country with forged documents, which means that the good Baroness should not have merely dismissed her but called the police to clap her in irons. So she is not only neglecting to apply the law to her own circumstances she is also failing to implement the law when she is a witness to wrongdoing in others.
Along with most of the population, I don't want this poor Tongan immigrant to be hounded to pay for the high crimes of the high and mighty. She probably entered the country knowing that our borders are open and the authorities would turn a blind eye. She probably applied for an NI number and was given it without questions asked. She is probably honest and hard working and if the immigration laws in this country re so loosely applied why should she be concerned? Indeed.
Once again our better, the so-called "Great and Good" are trying to eat their cake and keep it. Is the Labour Party now the Patrician Party, or should that be the Patricia Party.

Hope for the Liberal Democrats

I don't have a high opinion of Nick Clegg, but I have to say I have revised my estimate upward after listening to his speech this afternoon. Whatever one may think of the Liberal Democrat scattergun approach to policy-making and their determination to spend useless energy attacking the Conservatives when their target should be Labour this was a well-delivered speech, full of energy and rhetorical flourishes. If he conducts his campaign like this the party may not lose too many of Charles Kennedy's gains.

Scotland is free!

Apparently Baroness Scotland did not hire an illegal immigrant; she merely forgot to make a photocopy of the woman's papers and for this "administrative error" she has been fined a whopping £5.000, which of course she can afford to pay, having squirreled away £170,000 in dubious expense claims.
The spinners are at it again! The original crime was to hire an illegal immigrant, a practice that Baroness Scotland herself deplored and tabled legislation to punish the practice, but it now appears that this was not a problem. The real crime was the mistake of failing to take and keep photocopies of the immigrant's documents.
What is it about Gordon Brown that he fails to understand the situation. Baroness Scotland may well be  marvellous person with many good qualities, but she is Attorney General. She administers the law and must be seen to respect it. If she fiddles the law to suit her own personal circumstances she must go. And that't that!
Tony Blair sacked Mandleson the first time around because he had made a mis-statement on his mortgage application. It was not a particularly big deal and no doubt Mandleson, or one of his backers, was good for the money. But Blair made him go because of the propriety of it. Why can't Brown understand this?

New socks

Sometimes the best inventions are low tech. Yesterday I bought a pack of seven pairs of black socks - a routine purchase. But these had colour-coded heels and toes, so that while they look like black socks in your shoes, come wash day they can be matched up again.
Why didn't anyone think of this before?

Are we beyond outrage?

14 years ago some MPs were found to be taking bribes to ask questions in the house about developing legislation. Presumably the asking of the question meant that the issue of concern to the interest group was accommodated in the draft of the legislation. At the time there was outrage - ministers and MPs resigned; the Labour Party was elected to power in part on a promise to clean up politics.

Fast forward to the present day and matters have, if anything, got worse. MPs and Peers routinely fiddle their allowances and develop phantom mortgages; members of the House of Lords charge fees of £125,000 to clandestinely amend legislation in favour of a special interest group.

In the last week Baroness Scotland, who holds the office of Attorney General, has apparently been employing an illegal immigrant. Now we all know that an ordinary citizen caught in such circumstances would not be able to plead ignorance and action would be taken against that employer for breaking the law. And breaking the law it is and in this instance by an office holder whose sworn duty it is to hold up the law of the land. It ought to be the scandal of the decade, but it is not, apparently. Off hand remarks are blithely made about informing the authorities and the assumption is that this is a storm in a teacup and of no importance at all.

In other words there is no respect for the law from those who should uphold it.

And the more remarkable observation is that nobody else seems to care very much either.

Our society is beyond outrage.

Anyone but Brown

It has always been a curious feature of human psychology that people can persuade themselves of the absolute perfection of their leader despite all evidence to the contrary. When a number of televangelists came unstuck through their sleazy activities some years ago there were still followers who remained convinced that their leader was more sinned against than sinning.

So, no matter what, there will be those who continue to believe in Gordon Brown although that band will become very small. I noticed yesterday that the message of Labour investment versus Tory cuts had been modified by Lord High Everything Else to Labour's wise spending versus Tory attacks on public services - a subtle but important difference.

The public are not going to buy into this. The Times today announces a poll which establishes that a large majority feel that anyone but Gordon Brown would be a better leader. Precisely.

Drift

I heard on the news this morning that the decision to send in a force to rescue the journalist was made by David Milliband and Bob Ainsworth but that the Prime Minister was "informed". Come again?

You would be hard pressed to call up the name of a single Prime Minister, up to and including Tony Blair, who would not want to have the say-so on any military adventure that was likely to go pear-shaped, and be prepared to stand up for the consequences. If the action were completely successful then I suspect that we would have been told that the Prime Minister "approved" the rescue, but as it went slightly wrong the Prime Minister wants to distance himself.

This is pathetic; the man is afraid of his own shadow.

The leap from number 2 to number 1 is huge. I have seen several people in my time who have been excellent in junior and middle management positions who found themselves totally out of their depth when they finally got to the top. Usually they don't last. People find a way to move them on before they can do much damage.

But here we have a man who is the senior political figure in the country who can make vainglorious boasts about saving the world from economic collapse but is fearful of the consequences of any decision outside his comfort zone.

The word is out that Gordon Brown is now on a course of serious anti-depressants to moderate his spasmodic eruptions into uncontrollable rage. So be it, but does this not produce a rather more passive Gordon Brown, more along the lines of the ditherer, the one who hides when the political going gets difficult, rather than the hyperactive meddler in every detail of government? Neither extreme is desirable but it does appear that we get periodic doses of both.

Obviously those in and around Downing Street know what they are dealing with but is it not time to resolve the problem. As much as we might like the Labour Party to be severely punished for its disastrous handling of government I am not sure that our democracy is best served by demolishing a political party because of one man's madness. But somebody needs to do something. When George III went mad, the government of the day had the good sense to make arrangements to ensure the continuation of governance. In earlier times rulers were deposed or disposed of

Either way things were not allowed to drift.

Beatlemania revisited

For some unaccountable reason this weekend was a Beatles retrospective, and it was interesting to watch that footage when girls wore skirts and boy wore ties and suits. Beatlemania was a phenomenon. There had been nothing like it on this scale before and by comparison Frank Sinatra's "bobby-soxers" would have appeared no more shrill than a Women's Institute outing.

What was it about The Beatles that drew such a response? At the time I would have answered that it was their musical brilliance and I think I would make the same assessment today. Most of the performers of the day were largely ordinary - some had talent, some had sex appeal, some had a gimmick - much like any generation. The Beatles rose above all this because they were musically advanced and I put this down to the genius of John Lennon.

Yes, be careful with the word genius but without his drive and creative energy I doubt that the group would have become the phenomenon it did. Paul McCartney wrote some sublime songs during this period - all I think attributable to his vying with Lennon. And even George Harrison and Ringo were energized to raise their game. Each made important contributions as well as Brian Epstein and George Martin, but the two latter were only able to work with what was there. Lennon was the prime mover, the leader and the core.

People respond to genius even when they don't know what it is. No ordinary people in Einstein's time understood his theory of relativity but they responded warmly to him when he appeared on American television. Stephen Hawking in our time is universally admired without any understanding of his contribution to physics. Bob Dylan had one of the worst singing voices ever, but became astoundingly popular because people at the time instinctively acknowledged the genius of his music and lyrics.

So too with The Beatles. Musicologists may analyse the shift from major to minor key and the falling cadences, but the impressionable young minds of the 1960s heard original music which married instinctively with the lyrics. There was nothing else quite like it. Genius!

Cheers!

Imagination triumphs again! The legislative killjoys in the Scottish Parliament have forced pubs to keep their prices constant for at least 72 hours. This was intended to stop "happy hour" promotions. Some pubs have now responded by offering cheap drinks for three day periods - in other words continuous happy hours.

It does the heart good to read stories like these.

Another craven action from GB

In 1962 I visited the town of Wurzburg in Germany as a hitchhiker and youth hosteller. It was a pretty town with an interesting mix of architecture. I liked it. 40 years later I revisited the town and this time took the time to look around the museum. What I missed the first time because I was too impecunious to afford the admission was the quite shocking history of the last few months of WWII. Wurzburg was carpet-bombed by us and almost obliterated. Two models of the city, before and after, illustrated the tale. About 90% of the town was destryoyed, including the hospital.

Well, after the war the Germans rolled up their sleeves and rebuilt their towns, much as they were before this wanton destruction. I saw other examples on this trip through parts of Germany. If there have been cries for compensation for the victims then I have not heard them, and certainly they have not been reported in this country. Terrible things happen during war, but once the damage has been done, the only sensible thing to do is to rebuild your life.

However we now live in a compensation culture. No victim is allowed to get on with life unless they have been adequately compensated - even if it takes many years.

The victims of IRA bombings are innocent victims and I feel sorry for them. At the same time I have to ask what really can be done? The atrocity has happened. That fact won't be changed. Compensation can never make true amends.

In any case the compensation chasers end up with a distorted view. The men who detonated the bombs are to blame, but they have no money, the Americans who donated money to fill IRA coffers may have some blame but we don't know who they are, the Czechs who manufactured the semtex may also be blamed but they probably don't have deep pockets, but the people who sold the semtex to the IRA, the Libyan Government, apparently have lots of money, so maybe they should compensate the victims.

Into this moral morass steps one G. Brown. His first view, that nothing could or should be done about compensation was probably the correct one. It is not popular, it is not nice, but it is a realistic and defensible political position. Any leader worth his mettle would take this position in the best interests of the state.

But we unfortunately have a Prime Minister who will stoop to any craven political ploy to earn short term gain - in this case to get the Libyan situation off his back. Promises are made which cannot be kept and the victims will have their hopes temporarily raised only to see them slowly wither over time.

Libyan aftershocks

I have remarked before that Gordon Brown is a classic bully. He is very good at beating up and terrorizing those in weaker positions than himself but steers clear of anyone with the strength to stand up to him.

The Libyan negotiations, which are dripping out day by day, illustrate the downside of having a weak and bullying character in the office of PM. Qaddaffi has run rings around him and Brown apparently was afraid to raise the issue of compensation for IRA victims, according to the Sunday Times today. We should not be surprised by this revelation but it is a pretty poor show. Libya did not hold all the cards in these negotiations- they wanted trade and respectability with the latter probably being the bigger prize.

Any leader with any strength of character would have been able to deal on this issue.

Browndown

There was no sense that Gordon Brown looked rested and refreshed when he made his first appearance after an extremely long holiday. Grey faced and whey-faced he faced the cameras unenthusiastically in a robotic manner.

Several insiders have always made the case that Brown was bonkers and much of his public behaviour certainly betrayed some personality problems but this post today presents a plausible case for the theory that Brown is actually on serious medication to try to keep his behaviour under control.

Those who forecast that Brown might leave Number 10 accompanied by men in white coats may not have been too wide of the mark!

The Lonely Smoker

Smoking used to be a happy social activity. After a lengthy Sunday lunch my grandfather would go to his humidor and bring out two fat cigars to share with my father. Both pleasurably went through the rituals of rolling the cigar between thumb and finger, sniffing it, removing the band, cutting the smoking end and carefully lighting it with a Swan Vestas match. After dinner conversation was accompanied by the rich and not unpleasant aroma of cigar smoke.

Today I saw a lone woman dragging a few long puffs on a cigarette outside a hair salon. She was obviously in the middle of her hair treatment but needed a break, I emphasize the loneliness because it is common enough now to witness a small knot of smokers outside pubs, restaurants, courts, shops, libraries, fitness centres, sharing their comradely sense of exclusion from approved society. The lone smoker is perhaps rare but, who knows, may become more common.

As I was growing up, as I indicated above, smoking was an everyday part of life. Even school staff rooms exuded smoke during breaks. Smokers were mostly male, but in men it was an almost universal habit. Some women smoked but it was generally considered to be a masculine activity. Nobody pretended that it was good for you. Men joked about smoking coffin nails and were fatalistic about future health problems or shortened life expectancy. If it was going to be a short life the you might as well enjoy it.

Smoking was a social pleasure rather than a private vice. How times have changed!

British PM fooled by dictator

British Prime Minister learns that he has been fooled by an unscrupulous dictator.

September 3rd. 1939

or was that

September 3rd. 2009

Lies, more lies and Gordon Brown

This day had to come. For weeks now Gordon Brown has been hiding, hoping that the consequences of his ineptitude would go away. If anything it has got worse and he has to keep compounding lies with more lies.

Everybody knows what the situation was and there are times when realpolitik has to overcome nice feelings. Ok you do what you have to do and hold your nose. Every leader has to face up to this unpleasant reality from time to time, except, it seems, Gordon Brown, who seriously lacks courage.

Blair had to deal with a not dissimilar situation with the Saudis a few years ago. They were unhappy about close scrutiny of some of their dealings with British Aerospace by the Serious Fraud Office. Blair recognized the reality and canned the investigation. Not nice but realistic. And he did have the gumption to confront questions about the propriety of his move by emphasizing the impact it would have on British jobs. Eventually we all got off our righteous high horses and got on with life.

Unfortunately Brown is so inadequate that he ha contrived a situation that has made the SNP look like international statesmen, made the Labour leader in Scotland look like a complete idiot, upset the Americans, undermined justice in this country and achieved a marginal economic benefit that could probably have been achieved through tougher diplomacy..

When will he go?