Tunnel visions

Some years ago I got a taxi up to Leeds-Bradford airport and I fell into conversation with the driver, a friendly, chatty chap.  He also happened to be a Muslim and he couldn't understand why people would want to drink alcohol when it made them behave so badly and feel so ill the day after.

I tried to explain that it's possible to drink alcohol for pleasure rather than just to get drunk - that the actual drink itself could taste pleasant and you could drink enough to reach a state of relaxation without actually getting utterly legless.  He seemed doubtful. I didn't blame him.

I expect that if you don't drink yourself but spend most Friday and Saturday nights ferrying people around Leeds in varying states of inebriation, you might have a similar reaction.  If you have to put up with drunken people being rude and abusive on a regular basis or witness the kind of pointless violence that often goes together with night time drinking in towns and cities, you might take a dim view of alcohol and the kind of culture and society that embraces this kind of behaviour as normal.

My taxi driver seemed bewildered by this kind of behaviour, but you can see that other people from that community might react differently.  With irritation or disgust for example, or condemnation, or they might develop a sense of superiority from what they see as a debased indigenous culture.

Racial and cultural stereotyping has a long and inglorious history, but is still pervasive, even in supposedly enlightened circles.

I was slightly irked by an article some time ago in New Statesman by Alice O'Keefe, relating the experience of being undercharged for a duvet in John Lewis and the travails of a relatively financial constrained 'middle class' person when faced with the moral dilemma of whether to be honest and take it back or not.

The upshot of the article is that 'middle class' morality wins out and she dutifully goes back to the checkout, but the article finishes with the line 'Us middle class types are mugs, right?'

No is the obvious response, you just have standards you were brought up with that mean if you don't go back, you'll feel like you've let yourself down and that your parents would be very disapproving.  But the problem I have is the assumption that these kind of standards are the preserve of the middle classes.  That a working class person, say, wouldn't be such a 'mug' and would just take it as a piece of luck.

Obviously, you can't extrapolate from individual cases, but pretty much everyone I can think of in my immediate family (largely blue collar or very lower middle class) would have done exactly the same, and I can't imagine we are complete outliers.  In fact, it would never have occured to my parents that there was a moral dilemma here at all - you would just go back, no question.

Ultimately, we are all highly influenced by our experiences and surroundings and this feeds into our view of the world.  But we need to be alert to the distortions that this inevitably gives rise to. To take some examples:

I regularly see coarse, drunken white people behaving badly - ergo my culture is morally superior to theirs

My only experience of working class people is watching Shameless and Eastenders - ergo all working class behave like that

I'm surrounded by people from ethnic minorities who treat me with contempt, ergo immigration is a bad thing

I work with lots of professional / hard working people from overseas, ergo immigration is a good thing with great benefits to society

All of these are pieces of a jigsaw, none completely right and none completely wrong.  What we forget at our peril is that these kinds of views (including our own), and the experiences that give rise to them are the products of constrained experience - either geographically or socially or both.  The challenge to them is to introduce a broader perspective from wider experience, so some kind of context can be achieved.

Breaching the redoubt

The Labour Party and the Unite union are in the middle of a damaging spat over the selection of candidates in the Falkirk by-election.  It's the sort of thing that plays right into the hands of the Tories and could, if not contained, cost Labour the next election.

The accusation is that Unite used tied to stack the candidate list with its 'placemen', and Dan Hodges was on the Today Programme this morning making the point that it's known Unite policy to do this.  In his opinion, Unite are out of control.

Assuming the accusations of rigging are true, I'm not for a minute condoning Unite's approach which has all the hallmarks of nefarious union behaviour from the 1970s and before: dirty tricks, rigged elections, manipulation of strike votes and the rest.  These are the behaviours of the bad old days that brought the world, and Maggie crashing down on union heads.

But setting aside the methods, there is an underlying problem here that is failing to be addressed and its one that runs to the heart of the current disillusionment with politics and politicians: the lack of diversity in the political establishment and, in particular, the lack of routes for people outside of the mainstream of Oxbridge and think tanks or local government, to get into national politics. 

Now this problem is pervasive and not restricted to any particular political party, although I suspect it applies rather less to those on the fringes such as the Greens and UKIP, and maybe that is another reason for their relative success.

But this is also related to the issue of unpaid internships acting as a mechanism for a wealthy, connected elite to ensure their children have a fast track route into lucrative and powerful careers.  It's all part of a landscape where the odds are stacked hugely in favour of a privileged few.

You can see that in this context of gross unfairness and disenfranchisement, it doesn't take much for someone with less than a cast-iron sense of morality and honesty to justify a few dirty tricks to push forward their agenda; the ends of breaching the bourgeoisie political  redoubt justify the means.

The real value of unpaid internships

The Guardian journalist Hugh Muir was giving Tony Blair a hard time yesterday because his charity has advertised unpaid internships.  He cites public indignation at the 'exploitation of the young by those who can afford to pay them' accusing Blair's charity of '..seeking help on the cheap'.

I think he's missed the point.

The superficial iniquity of getting workers for free is dwarfed by social engineering aspect of internships: the jobs, certainly those in high profile areas (usually in central London) where useful contacts and connections can be made are only open to the children of the already wealthy and well connected.

Sure, it's theoretically possible for someone from a poorer background to borrow the money or save up, but back in the real world this is highly unlikely, and they would probably be filtered out in the recruitment process in favour of more 'appropriate' candidates - i.e. the children of the wealthy and well connected. 

At heart, the internship world is about patronage and preferment, about favours for potential allies and about the preservation of entrenched privilege amongst the elite.

It may even be to Tony Blair's credit that these posts are even being advertised and not stitched up for the select few without even the semblance of process.  I doubt that James Caan's daughters had to go through a rigorous, impartial selection process to get their internships with the firms he's involved with.

The only silver lining is that pretty most jobs used to be allocated on this basis.  At least we have the semblance of a fair system covering most recruitment activities.  It may not stop unfair practices, but it sends a very strong societal message that it is unacceptable, and that at least, is the way to start changing attitudes.

The best thing the government could do to promote mobility is to ensure internships are covered by these standard employment practices, but that's hardly likely is it?

UKIP and political invertebrates

As we now know, last Thursdays elections (2/5/13) were a major success for the UK Independence Party, and Nigel Farage has been on TV and radio capitalising on it ever since.  As well he might.

Although his party's success has been written off as no more than a protest vote and he's been slurred and insulted by David Cameron and Ken Clark, amongst others, he's entitled to make as much hay as he can right now.

Now I confess, I can't stand Farage, and I disagree with his political views almost entirely, but there are a couple of things about him that I think are really interesting.
Firstly, he has a level of authenticity that most other politicians lack.  He believes what he says, has thought through his views and can articulate them with a reasonable level of clarity and consistency.

That puts him head and shoulders above most of the government front bench and most of the opposition who are usually parroting the party line using that that particular type of polished phraseology that I like to think of as ‘political vernacular’ that robs them of any semblance of conviction.

In the sense that he's a conviction politician, with a very clear view of what he wants and where he's going, he is far more the heir to Margaret Thatcher than either Blair or Cameron, quite apart from his core beliefs in small state, laissez-faire capitalism.
A second thing is that what he says obviously resonates with a big enough section of society, and these have traditionally been issues that mainstream politicians from across the political spectrum have shied away from addressing.  It's good that they can no longer do that.

So the left has not wanted to go anywhere near immigration and the social change that largely working class communities have been experiencing for decades that is the result.  Even though the Labour party is starting to have to grapple with this, you can feel the discomfort of senior labour figures like John Cruddas when forced to engage with these issues – it’s very much through gritted teeth.

I think that’s largely because of a disjunction between what we can still consider the working classes and lower middle classes, and the left wing political elite: a disjunction that Orwell noted in The Road to Wigan Pier where the urban, metropolitan, ‘enlightened’ elite find the natural conservatism of many real working class people disconcerting, not to say grating.  Gordon Brown’s now legendary dismissal of Gillian Duffy as ‘just a sort of bigoted woman’ is this relationship in vignette form.

The second big issue that Farage raises that the political mainstream would rather he didn’t is obviously Europe.  Politicians of all political stripes may now need to address the issue of why we should or should not be in Europe a bit more honestly, although you can already see them trying to interpret UKIP’s success in a way that lets them off the hook.

Up to now the majority of politicians of both left and right have been content to either ignore Europe, treat it as a necessary evil or be actively hostile, but in all cases, the preferred approach has been ‘don’t mention the war’ because it’s so potentially divisive.

Now my view is that for all its flaws, Europe is the only show in town, and aside from economic benefits of being part of that market, we are much stronger as part of a cooperative block than we are on our own. And looking at governance historically, it's clear that the direction of travel is for some decisions to be made at a higher geographic scale and that when this happens, everyone benefits. 

Particularly in a world bestrode by giant transnational corporations and scarred by what amounts to financial racketeering driven by a super rich elite, such multinational political entities offer the only realistic mechanism to challenge their power.  So in that sense, I think Farage’s anti-European view amounts to breaking the laager.

However, the biggest problem I have with UKIP is that I believe their views are fundamentally nostalgic and rooted in a misinterpretation of post war history.  Essentially, they are harking back to something like the 1950s when we were still a 'great' independent power and commanded respect and fear in the world.  The point of connection between Farage and Thatcher is the Falklands because that demonstrated, to some people at least, that we were still a great sea-faring nation with a fist class navy and the ability to project power around the world in defence of our interests.
Once again, this view marks the fault line between working and lower middle class people and the left wing elite, because I would guess that the majority of the former supported Thatcher’s approach to the Falklands, whilst the majority of the latter were at least sceptical.

For myself, I support Henry Leech’s analysis directed to Thatcher: ‘if we don’t do it, if we pussyfoot…..we’ll be living in a different country whose word will count for little.’  Swift, decisive military action was utterly critical to our global credibility.
The big problem is that in spite of the headlines and the famous victory, the Falklands really illustrated how far British military capacity and capability had fallen: it was a Heath Robinson, string and willpower affair that we won by the skin of our teeth.  We probably wouldn’t have without significant (largely unaccredited) assistance from the French and the graceless acquiescence of the US. 
This is skimmed over all too readily by those that want to recruit the mythology for their own purposes, and that includes Cameron’s ‘Thatcher saved Britain’ narrative along with all those who believe we can exist as a powerful independent state politically outside of Europe.  Any experiment with doing this will illustrate just what a mirage this view is as both our credibility and economic leverage would drain away overnight.
All of this points up the fact that it well overdue for advocates of Britain being part of Europe to up and make a case for it, instead of just hoping the debate would go away.  The problem is that to do that, they need to be much more honest about our diminished position in the world than they would like to be.  It means ditching the pretence that we’re still a significant player globally by ourselves; that we ‘punch above our weight’ internationally. It means accepting a lowering of our supposed status and prestige internationally.

This is something that politicians of all sides really do not want to contemplate, partly because it means facing up to these harsh realities and fielding the criticism of being ‘defeatist’, and partly because they fear it will go down like a lead balloon with the public.

Judging by the growing appeal of UKIP, they’re might be right on the latter, but that does not excuse continuing political spinelessness in the face of thier challenge.

Anyone for Cranberries?

I've just read the latest Intellect report on NHS IT - NHS Information Evolution - all 16 pages of it.  It's not quite as off the mark and wrong-headed as I'd feared when I read the headlines in E-Health Insider.  All that nonsense about learning from Lastminute.com.

But it's not great either.  The biggest problem is that it's breathtakingly superficial in its analysis and happy to make recommendations with little in the way of justification.  It's not that the ideas it puts forward are bad, they just lack logical foundations and hence coherence.

As far as I can see, the author plugs the gaps where some serious analysis and discussion ought to be with filler based on the premise 'everyone else is doing it, so why can't we?'. 

It's a good question, but a document underpinned by genuine intellect would have sought to answer it before trying to formulate recommendations rooted in that analysis.

I've never bought into the view of people like the Guardian's 'Patient From Hell' blogger Dick Vinegar that the failure of the NHS to espouse the latest technology is down to an unholy alliance of conservative doctors and bureaucrats, all too satisfied with the status quo.  That's just the simplistic narrative of journalism where some bogeyman must be to blame.

After all, the vast majority of the people busily not jumping on the new media bandwagon in their working lives are well on board at home. 

No, it must be something more far reaching to constrain progress so extensively and consistently. It must be something inherent in the way the business works, or doesn't work: in the fundamental way that things are organised and arranged.

The Intellect report fails to take the lid off any of that, presumably because the authors don't have enough knowledge or experience of the byzantine political and managerial landscape that constitute the NHS business, and which forms the essential backdrop of any serious attempt to formulate IT policy and strategy.

Obviously, that lack of knowledge didn't stop Richard Grainger, Christine Connelly or Katie Davis.  Oh, then again, perhaps that's exactly what it did.

Coats on their backs

The shabby exterior of Holbeck Working Men's Club isn't the backdrop many people would choose for their lives.  Less so the strip of rubble-strewn waste ground between the WMC and Holbeck Moor Road. Bounded by soil embankments, presumably to stop the Gypsies and travellers making it their home and overlooked by ranks of drab grey flats and mean grey houses, it looks grim on a good day.  It seems to exist in a microclimate of grainy monochrome.

I noticed them on my way back to the car during the last spell of arctic weather. Picking their way through the frozen mud, bricks, bottles, poly bags and god knows what else in the wintery afternoon light.  It was about minus 4 and I was glad to be getting out of the cold and into my car on the Moor Road.

Mum or granny - who could be sure?  But a 'grown up' and in charge, with three small children somewhere between the ages of four and seven I would guess, but roughly in the same ballpark as my own.  Maybe it was that, combined with the unrelenting bleakness of the setting that drew my attention to them as they straggled across the wasteland.  You might call it 'lunar' but I think that would be insulting the moon.

They looked poor, but that wasn't what caught my attention and after all, some of that might have been the setting.

No, what really struck me was how well wrapped up the children were: all with warm padded coats done up, hoods up, hats and gloves on, Thomas the Tank Engine or whatever rucksacks on.  These may have been poor kids straggling across some dismal waste ground between the M621 and an abandoned-looking WMC, but they were looked after; cared for; cherished, at least in terms of their immediate physical needs.  And they were together.  A tight little unit - some of the kids holding hands, pulling the smaller ones along.

Now none of this should be at all surprising, after all, the poor have never had the monopoly on neglecting their children.  And I have absolutely no idea of what their family circumstances might be, or their backgrounds or home life.  So I'm aware that any attempt to derive inferences from what these people looked like is extrapolating well beyond the data.

But that's not the point.  What struck me was the impossibility of locating these people on the current government's map of the deserving and undeserving poor.  Were they 'strivers' or parasites?  Were they what David Cameron means when in plumy tones he says 'haad warking fam-liz' or would they be one of the supposed 120,000 ‘troubled’ families that require a tougher approach to stop them drifting through a lifetime of state-funded idleness and petty criminality?

Damned if I know, because for all that the children were obviously cared for, it's quite possible that those coats and hats and bags were paid for out of benefit money or tax credits, or even from the proceeds of petty crime.  Equally, somebody might have scrimped and saved or traipsed around endless charity shops to provide them. 

The arbitrary distinctions of a government seeking to justify an unparalleled reduction in the money available to the poor seemed a long way away and somewhat divorced from the gritty immediacy of the scene.

Somewhere, far away, important decisions on ‘welfare’ and the like would be made by wealthy, expensively suited and booted, well-educated people in warm, brightly lit offices.  People confident in their own abilities; self-assured and articulate and whose memories of childhood, family and school would be a world away from Moor Road.  Nevertheless, their decisions might fall like a hammer blow on this little band, struggling across the freezing waste ground in front of the ragged façade of Holbeck Working Men’s Club.

These thoughts were little more than a gloomy embryo developing in the back of my mind as I got in my car and drove slowly away.  But the one thing that stuck there in my mind’s eye was their utter vulnerability.

It lives! The Health and Social Care Act 2012

Having just completed Nick Timmins analysis of the sorry saga of the Health and Social Care Bill 2010-12 Never Again, it’s worth reflecting for a few minutes on our ability to ignore lessons from the non-too-distant past.

According to Timmins’ account, Lansley refused to consider carrying through his proposals without using legislation (widely considered to be a viable, lower impact option) because he wanted to ‘lock in’ the changes in such a way that only further legislation could rescind them.

On one hand, this seems entirely reasonable, given the history of NHS reform and the constant chopping and changing of policy with each new secretary of state and government, not to mention the tendency to recidivism across the service when faced with any change.

Timmins confirms my view that the Act is intended to work like a formal constitution for the NHS.  Whereas the actual NHS Constitution is a sort of Bill of Rights for the public, the Act details the machinery of government including the separation of powers (i.e. Lansley’s desire to distance ministers from the day-to-day management of the service). It can only be changed by amendments and supplementary legislation or by repeal.  All of which will take parliamentary time and debate.

Again, there is some logic in approaching the governance of the NHS in this way, given the damaging effects of constant changes in management and direction.  After all this kind of mechanism works adequately for many national governments and the scale and complexity of the NHS, not to mention its budget, is comparable with any number of states.

The problem I have is that in order to follow this path, Lansley and co have had to re-imagine the system from the bottom up in quite extravagant detail, and in a way that is constrained by existing structures.  So the ‘new NHS’ that Lansley has played Dr Frankenstein to is an elaborate, finely balanced contrivance, but one cobbled together from new and existing components and shot through with a dose of parliamentary electricity to kick it into life.  These are not auspicious beginnings.

What impresses is the shear arrogance and hubris of someone who really believes that they can re-engineer a complex mechanism like the NHS to this degree and in a way that will result in a functioning system largely free of inefficiencies and perverse incentives.

It beggars belief, particularly when set against the abject failure of similar attempts to re-engineer complex systems such as the privatisation of the railways. It’s no small coincidence that that ill-starred venture was rushed through at the fag-end of the last Conservative administration for entirely ideological reasons.

Rather hilarious then that David Bennett, the new chair of Monitor should claim that our experience of privatisation and regulation over the past thirty years means that we’re ideally placed to construct such an edifice. He’s obviously not been paying much attention.  There is little evidence to suggest that this attempt to build a clockwork universe will be any less prone to error that those created for utilities or railways.

But given the railways for context – the sacrificing of safety for profit, the expansion of overhead costs to run a contrived ‘market’, the loss of accountability in a morass of contracts and penalty clauses, the fragmentation of a once coherent system, the opportunity cost of potential investment siphoned off for personal fortunes and shareholder dividends, etc, etc – Lansley represents the ideological hard core who believe that the only way to run public services is via some kind of market mechanism however artificial.  Or in the case of the NHS a ludicrously contrived parody of a market, beset by unfathomably complex inputs and outputs, where nobody will be able to judge success or failure for years if not decades. 

Setting aside the fact that it’s naive to the point of imbecility to believe anyone working largely alone could design such a system successfully, Lansley’s ‘clockwork universe’, the supposed self-perpetuating, self-improving, perfectly incentivised mechanism, is a neoliberal myth.  But it’s a myth every bit as ugly and disturbing as the one Mary Shelley created, and ultimately, it’s just as relevant a comment on the arrogance and hubris of some of those who rise to high public office.