Reaching for the Golden Oldies

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If there’s one sure sign that a Prime Minister thinks he or she is sailing in troubled waters, it’s when he or she reaches out for the Golden Oldies. And there are few Oldies quite as Golden as the mantra about ‘more bobbies on the beat’ which is, apparently, Starmer’s topic of the day. It’s a well-played tune, previously deployed by Rishi Sunak, Liz Truss, Boris Johnson, Theresa May, David Cameron, Gordon Brown, Tony Blair, and John Major. I’m pretty sure that I remember it from Thatcher and Callaghan as well, although the online fossil record is harder to follow from such primitive times.

There are another two certainties which follow on from any promise to increase the numbers of police on patrol. The first is that it won’t happen. And the second is that it would make little difference, even if it did. Crime is a complex phenomenon, which has no one simple cause, and whilst seeing more police walking around, preferably armed at least with tasers and big batons, appeals to a certain electoral demographic (a demographic which obviously suffers from a combination of short memory and gullibility), there is no real evidence that it makes a huge difference to the volume of crime – and it may not even be the best way of using any additional resources which can be dedicated to policing. As one anonymous police source put it, “We’d rather take the money with no strings attached and invest in other things”.

One report on Sir Starmer’s anticipated pearls says that the measures are being introduced amid “fears there is a lack of visible police presence which is driving street crime and in turn more serious and violent offences”. It’s utter nonsense, of course. Lack of visible policing doesn’t ‘drive’ crime, it merely makes it marginally easier to commit. The ‘drivers’ of crime are many and varied, but include drug abuse, greed, poverty and desperation, to say nothing of crimes of passion. There was once a politician who promised to be “tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime”, but when he got into office, he discovered that the second was too difficult and would require too much effort, and the first was more easily addressed by empty rhetoric than actual action. Still, empty rhetoric makes for a good chorus line in a golden oldie.

When to draw a line

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The recent drama on the BBC, Steeltown Murders, was an example of how the emergence of new evidence can lead to the police re-opening old cases which were not solved at the time. (In passing, it also reminded me of the fact that I was, briefly, on the very, very long list of potential suspects, by dint of living in the south of Wales and owning a white Austin 1100, two facts which taken together were considered sufficient to lead to a visit from the boys in blue, a request for an alibi, and an examination of the vehicle in question.) In very general terms, there are two reasons why the police might re-open an old investigation – either there is new evidence, or else it becomes clear that the previous investigation was in some way flawed. Whether all crimes which fit into one of those categories should automatically be re-opened is another question; it is surely right to consider also the seriousness of the crime in question and the length of time which has elapsed.

It is hard not to conclude that the investigation by the Met into the various gatherings in and around Downing Street during the Covid lockdown was somewhat less than thorough and rigorous. Johnson ended up being fined for what always seemed to me to be the least serious of the events at which he was present, whilst getting off scot-free for events which seemed far more serious. Turning to Conservative HQ, it is beyond my understanding that the police could have looked at a photograph of 20-odd people, clearly not socially distanced and attending what was clearly a party and then claim that there was not enough evidence of rule-breaking. The video that emerged last week has, inevitably, led some people to demand that the investigation should be re-opened, since the case now clearly meets both the criteria referred to above – a less than thorough initial investigation coupled with new evidence. The Tories are clearly keen for the matter to be declared ‘closed’ and to ‘move on’, and in terms of an operational police decision, it would be hard to justify pouring significant amounts of time and resource into re-investigating this particular crime, no matter how inadequate and incompetent the original enquiry seems to have been.

It isn’t just about operational policing, though. The fact that Johnson received only one fine has allowed him to claim repeatedly that he was, in effect, ‘exonerated’ on all the other potential counts, adding to his sense that he is being unfairly targeted. Simply choosing to ‘forget’ past transgressions adds to the Johnson narrative (supported by Gove) that the privileges committee has reacted in an over-the-top fashion (even though they weren’t actually investigating the events themselves, merely the extent to which Johnson lied about them) to some minor misconduct. Given that compliance with the regulations was seen at the time as being essential for the protection of public health, allowing ‘them’ to get away with stuff for which ‘we’ would expect to have been fined (and many were) adds to a sense that there are two laws in operation and makes it harder to ensure enforcement in the event of a new pandemic. It’s hard to think of another crime where “This is an old story. We repeatedly apologised for this event at the time” would be considered adequate reason for taking no further action.

Perhaps the real question here is ‘who should decide?’ An overstretched police force is likely to be biased in favour of not re-opening investigations (or doing so in an under-resourced manner, something at which Steeltown Murders did more than hint). Victims and the public at large (and in the case of crimes committed by politicians, other parties) will tend to prefer a demand that ‘justice must be done’. Maybe we need a more transparent and independent way of assessing whether and when to re-open past cases and when to draw a line.

Learning to live with it

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The media reported two fatal stabbings in London last week, an occurrence which seems to be becoming all too frequent. Each and every one is a tragedy for those involved, of course, but to put it in perspective, very, very few people die each year as a result of knife crime. According to the House of Commons Library, there were 244 homicides as a result of the use of a sharp instrument in the year to March 2021. Yet no-one seriously suggests that we should ‘just learn to live with’ knife crime, and invest resources in dealing with the consequences rather than in attempting to reduce the incidence. It would be a very silly argument to make. And yet…

Contrast that with preventable deaths due to Covid. There have been 174,000 premature deaths so far which mentioned Covid on the death certificate, according to the ONS, and currently around another 1,000 are being added to that total every week. There are things which the UK government could do to reduce the incidence of infection, or even to make resources available to allow the more civilised governments in Wales and Scotland to take more steps to protect the population, but they have instead decided to allow the virus to rip through the population in England, with inevitable knock-on effects elsewhere in the UK. Instead of acting to prevent deaths and hospitalisations, they are investing scarce resources in building extra temporary wards in hospital car parks (with no clue as to how they will be staffed, given that Covid-related staff absences are increasing daily). It’s good business for what the Telegraph referred to as “purveyors of soft-shell body storage solutions”. Yes, that’s right – their normal business is supplying temporary morgues, but they are handily diversifying to house the living in glorified tents. Although we may yet be calling on them for their core business skills as well. This is what ‘learning to live with Covid’ looks like for at least the next few months in the UK, and there is no certainty that it won’t be so for a great deal longer.

One of the fundamental arguments for restricting people’s freedom has always been to protect others from the consequences of that freedom. That is why we do, quite properly, restrict the ‘freedom’ of people to walk around the streets carrying knives, and we act against transgressors. In the case of Covid, the argument has been turned upside down. The ‘freedom’ of people not to have ‘restrictions’ placed on their daily lives in order to control the spread amounts to the freedom to infect others as they wish. Not intentionally, of course – that’s where the comparison with carrying knives breaks down – but those resisting restrictions have enough knowledge to know that the ‘freedom’ they demand has inevitable consequences for others, including the premature death of thousands of them.

The UK finds itself at a time of crisis with a government in thrall to people who present an effective cull (perhaps unintentional, although in the case of some of them, I cannot be certain) of the oldest, frailest and most vulnerable of the population (for it is those categories most likely to die early) as some sort of libertarianism, a protection of the ‘freedom’ of the many. And, rather than having a reasoned debate on what collectively enforced measures might be sensible to reduce the impact of the disease, the public is encouraged by the UK government, from the PM down, to see any measures as individually restrictive rather than collectively preventative, and a compliant media goes along with this. It’s difficult to overstate how dangerous the crazies who have infiltrated and taken control of the Tory party are, but the one thing Brexit has taught us about them is that ‘winning’ one argument is never enough for them. Their pursuit of ideological purity can and will never be satisfied, and the costs of making the attempt will be high. Wales and Scotland need out.

It's not just innocent and ignorant nostalgia

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Last week, a former Tory leader, Iain Duncan Smith, was widely mocked for asking “what has happened to us as a nation” because people are working from home rather than going to the office as he claimed (even that claim is subject to caveats – many civil service jobs were moved out of London, along with those performing them) that they did throughout the war years. As his many detractors have pointed out, there were no computers or internet, and few people even had telephone lines; working from home would have been impractical even if the government of the day had thought it desirable.

The mocking, though, might be missing an important point about the mindset of IDS and those who think like him. Johnson almost certainly agrees with the point IDS was making, and has said similar things himself. He is invariably trying to imagine himself in the shoes of his great hero, Winston Churchill, from the way he carries himself to the views he expresses, even if he falls a long way short when it comes to serious oratory. It’s not unreasonable to suppose that, had the technology existed to support home working at that time, the wartime PM would still have insisted that everyone turned up for work at the office. He was notoriously unconcerned with the number of civilian deaths in pursuit of his goal of total victory, and would probably have seen protecting the business of Lyons Corner Shops and Tea Rooms (the forerunners of Prêt, whose business is threatened today) to say nothing of the interests of the office landlords, as being a far more important consideration. Besides, bomb-dodging is character-building, and encourages people to think of themselves as being in solidarity with soldiers on the front line.

There’s another aspect of the Blitz years which those who glorify them tend to gloss over. In an eery parallel with the response to Covid, crime, and especially economic crime, was rife. The unscrupulous exploited shortages, and contractors defrauded the government on a grand scale. Conmen had a field day, and gangs ruled over territories with an iron fist. They were less genteel about it than their corporate equivalents today, but they were almost as effective at transferring the wealth of the many into their own pockets. Crises create opportunities for the ruthless, and the more the rest of us behave normally, the greater those opportunities. It’s not that people like IDS are simply being selective about the blitz – only evoking what they regard as the ‘best’ bits – it’s more that they only want ordinary people to remember those aspects which create some sort of warm glow. Glossing over deaths, poverty, hunger, crime – this is, after all, one of the eternal values of his party. His attempt at misdirection through misplaced nostalgia is not as harmless as the mockery might suggest.

Nothing to see here

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The traditional context for using the phrase “Nothing to see here. Move along now.” is the policeman given the responsibility of keeping bystanders away from some incident or other. It never means that there is actually nothing to see, merely that (s)he and those who stationed him or her there don’t want people stopping to see it. When the perpetrator of the incident uses the phrase, (s)he is either trying to hide what has happened, or else merely extracting the urine. And as Boris Johnson demonstrated yesterday, the two are not mutually exclusive.

His demand that people stop asking him awkward questions to which there is no truthful answer which does not expose his failure to follow rules, and no lie which can be made to fit the known facts (not that that is something which overly worries him), is based on his assertion that people at large are either not interested in establishing whether he’s followed the rules or not, or else simply don’t care. It amounts to saying that if electors don’t care how venal, dishonest, or corrupt he is, then opposition politicians and the media should just shut up and accept it as well. It plays to the popular trope that all politicians are only in it for themselves anyway, and has the added advantage – for him – of enabling him to tar others with his own used brush.

Sadly, his assertion that people don’t care has an element of truth to it. It is based on the results of opinion polls which show that, despite all his lies, bluster and evasion, despite presiding over one of the worst death tolls in the world due to Covid, and despite all the contracts corruptly awarded to mates and donors, if an election were held tomorrow, he would still win a clear majority of seats in England: enough to continue in government across the whole UK. He’s wrong, though, in claiming that it means that ‘people’ don’t care; what it actually means is that ‘people who vote for the Tories’ don’t care enough to change their vote as a result. To him, those two caveats might not be important – like Trump, he seems to believe that the only opinions that matter are those of people likely to vote for him. But his current majority, like any future majority in line with the polls, is based on a minority of votes which gifts him near-absolute power as a result of an electoral system which is unfit for purpose; the ‘people’ to whom he is referring constitute only a minority.

But even if he were right, even if ‘people’ in general really don’t care about how dishonest he and his government are, does that really mean that they should not be questioned or held to account? There have been major crimes in the past which many have almost admired for their audacity, but no-one seriously suggests that the criminals should not be prosecuted as a result. A democracy – even a partial democracy like the UK – in which governments are excused from breaking rules or even outright criminality because the electors don’t care is a democracy which is doomed. The opposition should care, the media should care, we all should care whether those we elect to lead us are honest or not. Whatever Johnson says, there really is something to see – and we should insist on seeing it.

Who will be next?

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In defending itself against critics of the deportation flight earlier this week, the government claimed that the criticism was only coming from the ‘Westminster Bubble’; the implication being that it could be ignored.  The first part is ‘true’, in the sense that the outrage being expressed is mostly coming from MPs; but it is the conclusion that the government draws from that which should concern us.

Firstly, of course, the MPs are elected to represent us.  There is no requirement (or indeed mechanism) for them to check whether their constituents agree with the stance they are taking, but that is no excuse for simply ignoring their views.  If they are doing any sort of job at all, the MPs should also be more aware than the mass of the population of the detail of the content and implementation of government policy.

The bigger concern is that the government believes that it can and should do whatever it wishes as long as it thinks that the population at large isn’t going to actively object.  They are probably (and sadly) correct in assuming that the population at large is not hugely exercised about the deportation of convicted criminals, particularly (and this aspect doesn’t go away just because it isn’t voiced) black ones.  As we’ve seen in relation to other issues, mere facts and details (such as the fact that they’re being deported to a country of which they have no memory or knowledge, the lives that they have built in the UK, their families, their conduct after serving their sentences) don’t shift prejudices and preconceptions, which are often deep-rooted.  The fact that the decisions being taken fly in the face of what the same government calls ‘British values’ (such as justice, equal rights, and fair play) is also irrelevant; the adherence of many to those values is, like that of the government, more a matter of words than actions or beliefs.

History tells us that failure to oppose the loss of rights for some leads to the loss of rights for others.  Those who take away the citizenship and rights of one group today will come after another group tomorrow, and another one the day after.  Convicted criminals, even those who’ve served their sentences and reformed after release, aren’t the easiest group to defend or support, but picking on the least defensible group is the way normalising the loss of rights always starts.  The way to avoid the question “Who’s next?” even arising is not to turn a blind eye to the treatment of those currently in the line of fire.

Only dabbling

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Entrepreneurship is one of those things which are generally felt to be axiomatically ‘good’, and young people in universities and even in schools are encouraged to think about establishing their own businesses.  Whilst it’s true that successful businesses are an asset to the community and provide jobs, I’ve often wondered whether it’s really such a good idea to encourage everyone to think that they can be entrepreneurs.  Part of the problem is that we tend to read and hear only about the successes, but many, many entrepreneurs fail; and even some of the most successful have been through multiple failures before hitting the jackpot.

There is also a tendency to understate the element of luck involved in the process; conventional thinking praises the acumen of the successful and assumes that failure is down to the lack thereof in others, but in reality, that ‘acumen’ thing is far from being the only factor – and may not even be the most important.  We find it hard to cope with that though in a paradigm which is based on an assumption that individuals have a great deal more control than is actually the case.

Another aspect which concerns me is that the line between ‘entrepreneurship’ and crime is sometimes a fine one.  Some entrepreneurs sail very close to the wind when it comes to obeying regulations and laws; and some even seem to think that they have no moral obligation other than to obey the letter of the law.  If the law doesn’t specifically forbid something, that makes it acceptable. 

There are plenty of examples of ‘successful’ entrepreneurs whose business practices have later been revealed to be, shall we say, ‘dodgy’?  One obvious name which springs to mind is Sir Philip Green - wasn’t he praised for years as a successful entrepreneur?

But a report in the Business section of yesterday’s Sunday Times took the biscuit in this regard (sadly it’s behind a paywall).  It referred to a plan by Arron Banks, who bankrolled Nigel Farage’s Brexit campaign, to float his business on the stock market for £250million. One paragraph read as follows:

“Banks has claimed that his first dabblings with entrepreneurship came during his school days; he was expelled after being caught selling lead stolen from the roofs of school buildings.”

Perhaps I’m just a bit old-fashioned, but the term I use for selling stolen goods isn’t ‘entrepreneurship’, it’s ‘crime’.  Still, as a “close ally of Farage” and a man who “has forged ties with Donald Trump” (a man whose own business dealings have come under a degree of 'scrutiny', to say the least), and was pictured with the president-elect the day after his election victory, his “early dabblings” don’t seem to have done him any harm.  Such is the power of the word ‘entrepreneur’.

Rabbits and lettuce

Tweet Yesterday, a group of AMs discussed the question of unwanted callers, particularly in the context of the old and vulnerable. Their concern was primarily around the element of scam and fraud of which many of the callers - whether in person or by telephone are guilty.

I’ve posted previously on the pernicious nuisance calls which I receive regularly when I’m working at home.  It goes wider than the Windows support scams, though. I also suffer regularly from the ones which leave recorded messages on my answerphone, but which never name the company nor leave any contact details.  Leaving me a recorded message telling me that I must press 9 to stop the calls is singularly unhelpful – even if I were to believe that it would actually have any effect anyway.

These calls are a real nuisance, and particularly so for the elderly and vulnerable who are at serious risk of being taken for a ride.  I find them a nuisance, and I don’t think I’m in either category - yet. It’s not easy to determine which calls are honest and which are not, although I start from the simple supposition that any organisation which chooses to ignore or attempt to circumvent TPS rules is unlikely to fall into the ‘totally honest’ category. 

I recently came across this report on the whole issue commissioned from GFK–NOP by Ofcom.  In principle I welcome any attention being given to this problem; we need to shine a bit of light on a murky part of our entrepreneurial sales based economy.

The report lists different types of calls indicating the proportion that fall into different categories.  One of those categories is “other” and this is the one into which “surveys” fall.  “Surveys” is a neat way of circumventing the TPS rules, because they’re not actually selling anything - according to them.  Some of them do, however, pass the details they collect on to other companies who will then try and sell you something.  And those companies can semi-legitimately claim that the TPS rules do not apply because by completing a survey you’ve agreed to be contacted.  A neat circumvention – the best response is never to answer any surveys; which is my standard response.

It’s a pity however that the report from GFK-NOP doesn’t really get to grips with the international callers, one of the big loop holes in the whole TPS system.  Nor does it name, let alone shame, the miscreants.  I wondered whether that might not be because a number of the "survey" calls that I get – despite having told them a number of times that I never answer surveys – are from a company called GFK-NOP; a company which itself uses an Indian call centre to make some of the calls.

At least nobody can say that Ofcom didn’t commission an expert in the field.  Some of us might think, though, that this particular expert has something of a vested interest in the subject.  I had a boss once who used to talk about never “putting rabbits in charge of lettuce production”.  Using a company which makes nuisance calls to produce a report on the subject sounds not dissimilar.

Just sleeping?

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The closer we get to election day for the new Police and Crime Commissioners, the less well thought through the whole process seems to have been.

The government had expressed a strong desire to see strong non-party candidates coming forward.  But that aim has been fatally undermined by the cost barrier.  Not only do candidates have to find a significant (£5000) deposit, they also have to fund the production and distribution of any promotional literature.  The refusal to allow the usual election privilege of free distribution has simply put another hurdle on the route.  It apes the worst aspect of US politics – that so many elected roles are the exclusive preserve of those who have the wealth to contest them, albeit with the caveat that few are likely to try it in practice.

The suggestion that candidates should instead promote their candidacy through public meetings local newspapers and electronic media is surely unrealistic – as it is also unrealistic to expect any candidate for such large areas to be able to have direct contact with more than a tiny portion of the electorate.

By default, most of those who bother to vote – and I suspect turnout will be extremely low – will end up voting along traditional party lines, knowing little about any of the candidates.

In effect an attempt by the government to move towards a more American-style of electioneering where the individual counts more than the party, will end up achieving precisely the opposite.

Then we have the restrictions on candidature, of which a number of potential candidates have already fallen foul.  Whilst I can see the rationale of banning somebody who has just been released from his third term for armed robbery from setting police priorities, the idea that an otherwise model citizen who committed a youthful folly 30 years ago should be similarly treated seems draconian.  And at least one could say that such a person would have had some direct experience of the Criminal Justice System.

But apparently this was a restriction agreed by “all parties” in the House of Commons, and challenged by none during its passage through the legislature.  Were they all asleep, or just not paying attention?

Reward and Punishment

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There was an interesting juxtaposition, time wise, of two stories around the New Year, which highlighted for me the different standards applied to different groups and interests in society.

The first story was about the plans of the UK Coalition to crack down on council tenants who sublet their houses, by making it a criminal offence.  The detail was a bit hazy – I can’t see what’s wrong with taking in a lodger, for instance – but I think that they were really targeting people who move out of their council houses into alternative accommodation and then rent out the council house at a profit.  It’s a way of using someone else’s property to make a profit.  ‘Our’ property, in a sense, because the houses are publicly owned.

It was accompanied, of course, by a lot of guff about how council rents were subsidised by the rest of us (not really true these days), and how council houses were really only ever intended for those who could not afford their own homes (again, something of a re-writing of history).  It will have struck a chord, however, with those not entirely familiar with the details of the financing of social housing, and striking a chord is what such announcements are all about.

The second story was about the New Year Honours list, and more specifically about the honour given to the head of a hedge fund who had donated large sums to the Conservative Party.  He’d made large sums of money by betting that Northern Rock would collapse.  The techniques used by hedge funds, though, are a little more nuanced than gambling – this is the sort of gambling where the act of betting influences the outcome, if only you can bet enough money.

And, of course, the short sellers didn’t have enough money or shares to cause a collapse themselves, so they borrowed other people’s, and bought and sold things that they didn’t own.  Some might see that as using other people’s property to make a profit.  ‘Our’ property in a sense, because many of the shares ‘borrowed’ for the casino were owned by pension funds and other large financial institutions, usually on behalf of many of us.

But here’s the point.  In principle, the two actions seem to me to be quite similar, and there is no obvious argument that one is somehow more moral than the other.  So why do we criminalise the small scale abuse but honour and reward the large-scale abuse?  Which one causes the greatest misery for the greatest number?

Controlling the markets

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Marcus draws attention to the extent to which ‘the markets’ now control policy, with governments being mere bystanders.  The Observer article to which he links also underlines the way in which governments are being changed undemocratically to satisfy ‘the markets’.

Saturday’s Western Mail had a leader column on the Eurozone crisis, which argued that two things are now necessary.  The first is that Germany must take the lead, and the second is that ‘the markets’ must give the Eurozone time to breathe.  I don’t know whether the first will happen or not; but I’m confident that the second won’t.

There is a tendency for politicians and commentators to imbue ‘the markets’ with rather more rationality than is actually justifiable; the idea that they should also show some responsibility or compassion to the people of countries such as Greece and Italy is about as likely as porcine aviation.

The economic idea of the market acting as Adam Smith’s ‘invisible hand’ to match buyers and sellers has long since been lost in the financial sphere, as individuals and organisations have realised that they can make money for themselves by speculating rather than buying or selling anything, let alone investing.  But as with any other type of gambling, one person’s profit is another person’s loss.  And the losers, in this case, are most of us.

If the speculators believe that they can make a profit by bankrupting a country or two, undermining a currency, or bringing down a few leaders, then no appeal to their better nature will stop them.  And even if it did stop some of them, there would simply be others who would pounce on what they would see as weakness to line their own pockets.

That doesn’t mean that the WM leader writer is wrong to want to see the markets giving the Eurozone a break; it just won’t happen voluntarily.  We sometimes seem to forget that the markets are a human artifice, not something with an objective existence of their own.  They were created to fill a social need, but have been subverted in the interests of the few – it’s another example of the 1% and the 99%. 

If we wanted, collectively and internationally, to re-assert social control over them we could do so.  The fact that so many of our politicians are unwilling even to countenance that merely underlines the extent to which those who benefit from the system also control the political agenda.

In many other contexts, people who enrich themselves at the expense of others, even whole countries, would be regarded as criminals.  Why do we allow ourselves to be so beholden to them?