Tag Archives: Government

Ministry of Truth

Posted on by

Imagine you work for the Australian government. There you are, sitting in your work cube in front of your PC, staring into space. You’ve finished estimating next year’s value of Western Australian lamb exports per acre. What will you do in the seemingly infinite 40 minutes till lunch-time?

Ah ha. Skim through Wikipedia. Try for the “random” entry. See something you know something about – your specialist subject, in fact – the development of the Perth Railway Modellers’ Club, 1990 to 2002.

But the entry shows the name of the 1997 Chairman as Ken Brewster and you know it was Ben Baxter!…. Blimey, you can’t allow this blatant misrepresentation of the facts. Future historians of the Perth Railway Modellers Club will be completely misled. So you make a quick correction.

Go forward a few weeks. Wikiscanner becomes available. Everyone can find out what organisation’s IP address has been used to make a wiki-edit.

This sparks a media-led conspiracy frenzy over evidence that people from various corporations or government agencies have edited encyclopeadia pages.

Oh look, surprisingly (not), people from the CIA have edited entries. People working for the BBC. And, – oh my Poseidon! – people working for the Australian government have edited entries. Oh dear…. You get called into the boss’s office and shouted at. …Misusing your internet privileges…. Bringing the government into disrepute, and so on…..

Largely because some people eitehr never learned, or are incapable of applying, the most basic tests to judge the validity of information. E.g:

  • Does this seem inherently reasonable?
  • Who said it?
  • Is this information contradicted or supported by other sources?
  • Who benefits if I believe this?

Are you surprised that CIA employees have edited pages that concern the CIA or that workers for the Australian government have toned down critical articles?

If so, then it’s about time you took some courses in critical thinking and analysing information. Because you lack even the most basic skills at identifying propaganda.

Indeed, Wikiscanner might serve as a basic tool for identifying potential misinformation or propaganda, going some way towards giving an answer to the second question above.

But even so, some people sit in work reading, even editing Wikipedia, Some of these people work for corporations or government agencies. Some of them are carrying out their master’s instructions. Most are just bored workers tryng to interject some purposeful activity into the boring functionary’s day.

Some are even acting as whistleblowers.

Do we want to shut up the whistleblowers just because we are too idle to develop the thinking skills to detect spin or outright lies?

The outcome of this editing-Wiki frenzy is, surprise, surprise, that more workers get their internet access circumscribed.

In a BBC story, the Australian Prime minister reacted to the story that government employees had made edits by ruling that:

…. the department said on Friday that it had acted to block staff from editing the site.
“Defence has closed personal edit access down, though employees will still be able to browse Wikipedia for information purposes,” a spokesman said.

Throughout the world, internet access is getting curtailed for employees. In the UK, for example, at the beginning of August, the Defence Department ordered members of the armed forces to get the permission of superior officers before they blog.

The Ministry of Defence last week ordered British soldiers to stop blogging, putting videos on YouTube, joining online chats or sending text messages without a superior officer’s permission. But the soldiers carried on regardless, posting caustic commentary on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. It was a mini digital mutiny.
I’m surprised the MoD has taken so long to deal with the problem of khaki samizdat. Censorship is part of military life. Imagine if Tommies had been able to blog about the trenches in October 1914. There would have been an outcry back home. The war could well have been over by Christmas.

“Oh look, this is from a government computer. It must be part of an evil government plot!” Come on. Let’s learn to evaluate information properly to protect ourselves from propaganda, rather than shut people up or jump at the first half-baked conspiracy theory that fits our prejudices.

Will ill-judged kneejerk conspiracy theory reactions based on the IPs of Wikipedia editors become the pretext for more internet censorship? Well, yes, it looks like they have. What a great win for free speech…

End of an Era – but has anything been learned?

Posted on by

It seems today is the end of an era which has lasted longer than I have been alive. At midnight tonight the British Army ends its operation in Northern Ireland after 38 years of anti-terrorist operations. (Belfast Telegraph or The Guardian)

Despite the recent media-led impression that terrorists are all Islamic, from west-Asia, and only started attacking the west in the last decade, the “Troubles” in Northern Ireland have a history of horrific atrocities that were committed by both Catholics and Protestants. For decades Policemen were shot in their living rooms in front of their families, suspected informers were made to “disapear”(The tale of Jean McConville can break the stoniest heart), joyriders were shot dead, teenagers were brutally beaten for having girl/boyfriends from the wrong side of the street etc. As well as this, “low level” terror, the mainland UK in the 1970s and 80s was continually subjected to IRA bomb attacks. The Houses of Parliament were mortared (1991), the Conservative party conference in Brighton was blown to pieces (1984), over 700 soldiers were killed (mostly off duty) and scores of civilians were killed and maimed. As a child in the 70s, I can acutely remember why we have no bins at train stations and why “suspect package” announcements are a regular occurrence.

Anyway, after 38 years, it seems that the worst is now over and the process of normalisation can begin. The soldiers are no longer going to patrol the streets (although I recall it has been a while since they did anyway) and the overt signs of military oppression have been dismantled (such as the observation post on the Divis tower and the watch towers in South Armagh).

It would be nice to think that lessons have been learned, and the mistakes made (of which there were many) would not be repeated again. The government have comissionned studies into the troubles for this very purpose.

Sadly, it seems that, as always, the memory retention of the public is short and politicians are fickle enough to go where ever public opinion drives them.

Countless (certainly more than I intend to link to here) studies show that some of the government’s actions provided massive amounts of support (and volunteers) to the IRA cause. The most cited example was the horrendous internment policy. The CAIN study group has an excellent summary of internment, and pretty much all the research supports the idea that prior to this heavy handed tactic, PIRA were a “smalltime” organisation, playing second fiddle to the “Official” IRA who were much more disposed to peace talks and power sharing. By interning people (on both sides of the sectarian divide) without trial for indeterminate periods of time, the government provided the ammunition for the more militant wings (PIRA and the UVF) to overwhelm the objections of the more peaceful groups and increased the violence on a massive scale. As can be easily imagined, the increased violence lead to an increased security response, which in turn continued to alienate the communities and provided the impetus for more violence. The circle continued for three decades.

Now, hindsight is always 20:20 and I know enough of history to know that trying to second guess “what ifs” is something best left to fiction authors. However, it remains a strong possibility that, had the government allowed the moderates to dominate the thugs (rather than giving credence to the violence is the only option routine), the troubles would have been over 2o or more years ago.

Before any rightwingers get confused here, I am not suggesting a cowardly capitulation. In the late 1960s, the Catholics wanted better representation in government and they wanted the police to stop oppressing them. After 38 years of violence they now have better representation in government and the police are mixed. While I don’t for one second think either side could be described as “having won,” the fact remains that the Catholics in Northern Ireland now have what the Official IRA were calling for in 1968.

Despite this, it seems the recent peace on the mainland primed the public for another terrorist group to cause outrage. Despite the “lessons” from the troubles it seems that the public are crying out for a repeat of all the mistakes made in the 1970s and the government / police are more than happy to repeat them. Every “debate” about the extended detention without charge laws seems to begin with “we are not talking about a return to internment” but I cant for the life of me work out what is different. Can any one explain it to me?

Detention of a specific class of prisoner, who will almost certainly share a cultural and religious background with a significant (yet minority) portion of the UK population will do nothing to engender that population with a trust of the “state” and a feeling of “Britishness.” In reality, people who have family members detained for two months without charge are almost certain to become alienated and distrustful — providing a fertile recruiting ground for the jihad-calling headcases. When you factor in the risks inherent of police detention (injuries from other prisoners, accidents and stress related conditions) it is probable that when the first detainee dies in custody (of purely innocent and natural causes) the conspiracy theorists will have a field day and the terrorist cells will have a recruiting bonanza. We saw recently how the police can be poor at controlling evidence (Dr Haneef for example), so why should anyone assume that the intelligence required to trigger a “terrorist detention” would be any better?

Worryingly, hidden amongst the joys of the end of the troubles, there are some sneaky powers being rolled out. For example, from the Belfast Telegraph:

But at the same time, legislation goes into effect giving soldiers here the power to stop and question anyone about their movements – and hold them indefinitely until they answer.

People refusing to identify themselves or answer questions about their movements could be subject to a £5,000 fine.

The PSNI is also granted the power tonight – even though the Cabinet rejected them as unacceptable for police in the rest of the UK.

The Government acknowledged last night that the role of the Army will be ” slightly different to that in the rest of the UK”.

A spokesman for the Northern Ireland Office said the special powers are necessary because the Army could still be called up to support the PSNI.

Despite what some people tend to believe, Northern Ireland is part of the UK. Is this a sign of the future for the mainland? [tags]Law, Civil Rights, Society, Culture, Terror, Fear, Legislation, Civil Liberties, Northern Ireland, Troubles, Anti-Terror Legislation, Catholics, Protestants, Islam, Government, Media, IRA, UVF[/tags]

Tricked by their own statistics

Posted on by

Sorry for all the “crime” related posts but it is an annoying topic.

The BBC has more articles on the recently released Crime Statistics and it highlights an interesting logical conundrum. For example, the BBC article begins with:

Police recorded the first fall in overall violence in eight years, but drug offences and robbery went up.

Seems like a pretty key point to make. The rest of the news item is about how the public don’t trust the statistics and how Government needs to increase understanding of how they are collected and how accurate they are.

Comically, the article ends with this comment:

Meanwhile, police chiefs have been criticised by a committee of MPs who concluded giving police forces extra cash had not helped reduce crime.

Now, this begs the question that if the reports are crime has gone down, how do the MPs conclude that the extra cash did not help? Or, as I suspect, do the MPs feel that crime has not gone down and therefore need the government to give them advice on understanding the BCS results?

Madness cubed. [tags]Crime,Government, Statistics, Survey, Madness, Idiots, Society, Logic[/tags]

Media Inspired Cluelessness

Posted on by

A few days ago, I ranted about foolish people who thought having a hammer or baseball bat by the side of their bed was a “good idea” for stopping burglars. At the time, the comments on the Radio 2 page were not available but they are now. (If you are reading this after 24 Jul 07, it may no longer point to the right place).

At the time of my previous rant, I was mainly thinking about the idiots who feel they are skilled enough to get up in the middle of the night, naked or in pyjamas, pick up a cumbersome household item-cum-weapon and attack an intruder inside their house. The comments reinforced my previous opinions and to be honest, most of the people are simply writing jingoistic bravado, knowing that the chances of them ever being put to the test is minimal. Some are more entertaining than others though, for example:

keith hughes, salisbury
there not by the bed but under. i have 3 single handed swords, 3 hand and a half swords, a pole arm, a musket, canon, armour and a number of shields, take your pick. All of these are for medieval re-enactment. I think i have the art of home defence worked out, although i’m open to suggestions.

I hope his house is actually large enough for him to wield these weapons properly, although I suspect any burglar who waits around long enough for him to sally forth in armour with his bill pike may well be prepared to deal with the consequences. Sadly, Keith is equally deluded in thinking he has the “art of home defence” worked out, but no more so than any of the others.

The big problem I have with the comments, is the total lack of understanding. Around one in three are people complaining that the law does not allow them to defend their property (or in the case of one nutter who calls himself “King Arthur”, his women). This is a myth.

Thanks to the media’s misrepresentation of reality, these people are complaining about the unfairness of laws which don’t exist. None of them have bothered to clue themselves up, but they still feel perfectly capable of sounding off about it. Add in people who cant even follow the debate and think the discussion is about defending lives and it becomes truly comical.

Pretty ironic really. Sadly, these people have the vote…

[tags]Government, Law, Self Defence,Rants, Society, Culture, Idiots, Media[/tags]

Who funds the cost of terrorism?

Posted on by

On the BBC there is a news/vote item about the “spiralling costs” of airport security. Apparently the airports industry is complaining that complying with the security restrictions imposed by the government (or the US government in some instances) is destroying their profits and they want the Government to contribute to offset some of the burden. The BBC writes:

The aviation industry has said it can no longer afford the spiralling costs of security at Britain’s airports.
Costs have risen by 150% since new security measures were brought in after the 11 September attacks in 2001.

Security now costs a quarter of major airports’ income. Airports cover all security costs themselves, but say this is simply not sustainable.

The industry now wants the government to contribute, but ministers insist the aviation industry must foot the bill.

Since the 11 September attacks, the government has introduced restrictions on hand baggage, a ban on liquids on board and, more recently, measures to move vehicles further away from terminal buildings.

It is interesting that the airports feel having to abide by government legislation is not something they should have to pay for, it strikes me as being the same as if car manufacturers decided to make the government pay for seatbelts, but that is a debate for another day.

Likewise, the idea that losing a bit of profit to improve upon safety is a “Bad Thing” is open to all manner of arguments – you could easily complain that airports only spend a quarter of their income on security…, but I will leave that as well.

Oddly, I will also avoid the farcial nature of the security measures – they are, by and large, pointless and designed for nothing more than pandering to peoples crackpot fears, but I will rant about that another time. (Phew 😉 ) I will even leave the nonsense comments alone today.

The main thing which piqued my interest, were the options in the vote. Before you shout at me, I know these “votes” are more for fun than anything else, I haven’t taken it seriously – however, the news debate on TV, Radio and online seems to realistically consider these three choices as the only options.

Who should pay for airport security?
The aviation industry
The government
Passengers

The survey has most voters saying “The Government” and this has been reflected by the TV news coverage and the comments attached to this news item. Personally, I would have said it is the aviation industry’s responsibility but I am used to holding a minority viewpoint.

The issue I have with the choices here, and this is something which is often reflected in public debate, is the crazy idea that the Government has “money” in any realistic sense.

It strikes me that people seem to be massively unaware of the fact that making the government pay for something (even the constant stream of “Public Inquiries” we seem to need now) actually means everyone pays for it. If, for example, the UK government is forced to subsidise the airports, the money will either come from reducing other sectors of public funding (so we get worse hospitals or roads for example), cutting back on the money given to local authorities (so we pay more council tax for example) or by increasing the basic tax rates – so we pay more. What ever the option, it is the population of the country who will lose out.

Comically, the airports are on shaky ground here, as they do not bear the full costs of airport security really. Since 2001, the charges levied on airlines and travel operators has increased to offset the costs of anti-terror methods – which in turn has the effect of either reducing their profits or translating into higher travel costs. So in effect, the passenger has already been paying for the costs and now the airports want more.

Really, there are only two choices as to who bears the costs – the public as a whole, or people who use air travel. Personally, given that choice, I think it realistically has to be the people who chose to fly. Shame really. I fly a lot. 🙁

Annoyingly, despite some of the claims that all the measures are in response to demands by the UK government this is not the case. In some instances they are extra measures that the US government has demanded, in some they are demanded by international organisations. So, in effect, we have to subsidise the fears (real or otherwise) of foreign nations. Such is life, post-Empire…

[tags]Philosophy, society, culture, air travel, Security, Terrorism, Government, Industry, Taxation, Airlines, Airports, Flight Safety[/tags]

DNA database

Posted on by

The review for the new Police and Criminal Evidence Act includes a plan to capture the DNA of millions more people, by taking DNA from people accused of the most minor offences, according to the Observer.

Unsurprisingly, this is worrying civil liberties groups. In particular, there is a fear that there will be so many people’s DNA on file that it will seem unfair to miss off the rest of the population, so there will be a strong argument for getting everybody’s.

Of more immediate concern is how much the present system is collecting and how biased in its range.

Liberty claims that, per head of population, the UK has five times as many people on the DNA database as any other country. The government estimates that even if the database is not expanded to include the details of minor offenders, some 4.5 million people will still be on it by 2010.

The expansion of the database is prompting fears that people from ethnic minorities are being stigmatised. According to research by the Liberal Democrats, under the existing system within three years the details of more than half of all black men will be on the DNA database.

Do I really need to even comment on this stuff? It sets off too much knee-jerk 1984 incoherent ranting in me.

5 times as many people’s DNA as any other European country? More than half of all black men on it in 3 years? What a proud national record.

There will apparently be a few month’s public “consultation”. The road-pricing and ID petitions give you a fair idea of how far the government will diverge from whatever path it is set on, even if the whole country rises up and says mildly but assertively, “Hang on a minute. We’re not completely convinced that totalitarian control of every aspect of life is the only way to run a society…..”

Petitions work then?

Posted on by

That magical tiny number of people who can change government policy (see the post about the government bowing to “pressure” to allow the creation of human-animal hybrids) obviously didn’t sign the road-pricing petition. Millions of people took the time and effort to sign it but they weren’t the right people, obviously.

The government just ignored the whole thing, except for adding insult to injury by sending everyone emails with Blair’s name on it to say in effect “Thanks for participating but f*** off. Now I will tell you why you were wrong…” (Well, that’s what the anti-ID petition got)

On a personal note, I would never have signed the no road-pricing petition. I don’t have a vehicle. I am against cars. Well, against cars as much as anyone can reasonably be who sometimes gladly takes advantage of riding in other people’s and who takes the occasional taxi. I do object to breathing in secondhand vehicle emissions all day. I don’t like fearing death from some metallic monster every time I go out of the house. I don’t like living in a world so dependent on oil that any amount of evil seems OK, if it will secure it. And so on.

BUT, I am not so divorced from reality as to think that car journeys are the luxury jaunts of the privileged. Even ignoring the fact that people who live outside a few city centres have basically no alternative but to use a car to earn a living, get food or get their kids to school, I don’t think road pricing will cut urban car journeys by more than a miniscule amount. Bloody hell, people spend hours every day on the M25. Would anyone choose to do that if they had an alternative?

The UK has a rubbish public transport system. I live in a city. It normally takes me about eight times as long to get to work (2 buses) as it does when I have been lucky enough to get a lift. (It takes me an hour and a half to walk, on the days when I can still face the walk after a day’s work. The bus journey takes an hour a best – two at worst.) I could replace part of one bus journey with a train but this wouldn’t cut the time by more than a minute or two and would cost more.

My recent experiences of travelling by train have involved unbelievable expense with appalling service standards. It is cheaper to buy a used car and throw it away than to pay the train fare for 3 or 4 people to get to London from the North of England. (And you could breathe in less germs, have the certainty of getting a seat, smoke if you choose, stop when you choose and not have to listen to incomprehensible welcoming speeches every few minutes nor use toilets that would be considered below par in a hurricane refugees’ camp.)

With regards to the quality of service, last year, I made at least two train journeys that were a net loss to the train company. I.e. the service was so bad that they had to pay for me to use it. Both arrived hours after any possible connections were running and, on each occasion, I had to be taken by taxi for close to 50 miles. And was given a refund 🙂

Basically, there are currently no feasible alternatives to using a car for most journeys.

So this road pricing idea is just going to be another tax. Unlike direct taxation, the ability to pay will be irrelevant. What will affect how much you pay will be how close you live to workplaces, public services, schools and shops. So, also unlike direct taxation, there will be an impact on a wide range of apparently unrelated things like house prices.

So, the rich will be able to carry on driving at will, just getting irritated by the attendant bureaucracy of it. Other people will just get more and more stressed trying to stretch their wages far enough to cover the cost of the journey to earning them.

We all know the alternatives, if there really were any serious concern to cut the number of cars on the road:

  • An efficient and cheap public transport system
  • Encourage working from home
  • Planning decisions to stop cities and services from sprawling out endlessly
  • Stop closing down locally based services like post offices and schools

Too much trouble, hey? Don’t bother then, just get another source of revenue from drivers.

Juking the stats

Posted on by

The Wire (official “best tv series ever”) shows how the need to mess about with statistics distorts the nature of policing. It’s called something impenetrable like “juking the stats” (duking? jooking? dooking? On the basis of a brief Googling, I went with juking as it seems to mean “being deceptive”.)

The drive to constantly improve crime figures – numbers of crime and clear up rates – leads to several wrong-headed initiatitives, such as harrassing large numbers of people for petty misdemeanours in pointless swoops and attempting to ignore the existence of large numbers of bodies left by Stansfield’s crew.

As in art, so in life, to add yet another cliche to the “crimes against cliche use” tally in this blog’s statistics. British police are now protesting about the distortions created by the drive to improve statistics.
Continue reading →

Computers aren’t doctors

Posted on by

We all know Google has become the new hypochondriac diagnostic tool. All the same, it’s a bit disturbing how far the NHS has started to behave as if computers have some intrinisic sickness-curing value. And I’m not talking here about that inferior version of Google that you can find in the so-called NHS Direct high street shops. (Add a triage nurse, subtract the coffee and the wider web-surfing capability and these are NHS Internet cafes)

The general opinion on the new NHS computer system puts its cost at over £20 billion.

The National Audit Office claims that this cost will not all be borne by the taxpayer – only £12.4 billions, before factoring in the cost of the “savings” that will result from it. The companies involved – the major one of which was almost destroyed in the process – will somehow meet the shortfall. Hmm. I am definitely too sceptical. My limited understanding of the laws of the market make it hard for me to see why any company would bid for a contract that would cost them £8 billion pounds to complete. Their profit margins must be astronomical. In any case, I remember that about four years ago, this was going to be an unprecedented spend of £6 billion. So even on the most optimistic estimate, this project costs double what it was supposed to.

The Health Minister, Lord Warner, claims that the project will pay for itself. This in itself seems well nigh incredible, unless it means that huge numbers of clerical staff are to be made redundant, which begs the question of who is going to operate the new system then? My doctors and any hospitals I’ve ever visited have used computer systems for years. Were there some strange 19th century hospitals and surgeries lying forgotten in the world of the quill pen?

Correct me if Windows Calculator is wrong here but I believe that £20 billion (cost of shiny new national computer system) divided by 60 million (UK population) is £333.33. That seems to be the cost for every man woman and child in the UK

That’s approximately the cost of a cheap low-end PC isnt it? So this new system would buy everyone in the UK a low-end PC, WITHOUT any economies of scale.

How many doctors and nurses and hospital cleaners would it buy? Quite a fair number I would have thought, if we all club together a bit and put our £333.33 towards wages. A hundred of us could have paid for a junior doctor or a very senior nurse or paramedic or even two cleaners or cooks.

(Yes, I know that the blog has an excessively medical flavour this week. No particular reason, except maybe that getting a post picked up by the excellent NHS blog doctor site has skewed our thinking.)

More Bad Science?

Posted on by

It seems this is the week for nonsense “science” being thrown about by people who really should know better. This latest instalment may not be bad science, there are lots of fallacies which may well apply, but I will leave that up to you to judge.

Here in the sunny green and pleasant land of the UK, the TV and Radio were carrying a news bulletin, which has been picked up in the print press today, which explained that a Charity (Alcohol Concern) was calling for the Government to ban children under the age of 15 drinking alcohol at home. Seriously. Alcohol Concern are concerned [puns always intended] that a Government report shows the number of 11 – 13 year olds who “binge drink” has increased dramatically (I do not know what the figures for this are, sorry).

Depending on which news / radio station you caught this on, the feedback was mixed. In some of the “older listener” channels, there was applause at such good suggestions and heartfelt condemnation of “today’s youth” who are all alcoholic rebels, unlike any other time in the past… On the “younger listener” stations this was met with outrage and shock anyone would be daft enough to suggest it.
Continue reading →

Community Spirit on the wane?

Posted on by

For some reason, possibly temporary insanity, I ended up buying the Sunday Telegraph today (well actually the choice was Telegraph or News of the World…). As I suspected there are numerous examples of intemperate and illogical thought processes, all with the potential of providing this blog with millions of posts.

One of the things which has caught my eye early on is a page titled “The rise of can’t-be-bothered Britain” (available online). Basically, this is a piece on how since the fifties, community groups (Women’s Institute and the like) are losing out on membership. The thrust of the article seems to be trying to imply this is actually because people can not be bothered rather than anything else. Sadly, the article is riddled with poor historical analysis and some blinding leaps of illogic. Early on it sets the scene:

Seven out of 10 people questioned had no ties to groups or associations in their neighbourhoods. Among 18- to 24-year-olds, the figure rose to eight out of 10. Lack of time, or a dearth of groups relevant to their needs, were given as the main reasons.

The findings reflect the decline of bodies such as churches, the Women’s Institute and the Scouts, and appear to show the rise of a generation that cannot be bothered.

The data seems reasonable enough, so I am not going to debate that. I do have to question the assumption that this means people “cannot be bothered” though. From what I have read in the article there is little to actually support that conclusion – other than an innate journalistic bias. Further on, it continues with this mixed bag:

Membership of the Scout Association has fallen by a third since the early 1990s, to stand at 450,000 last year, while a shortage of Girl Guides leaders has been blamed on the growing number of women who work.

Women’s Institute membership, now 215,000, has halved since the 1970s, and the Labour and Tory parties have fewer than 500,000 members between them, a tenth of the level in the Fifties. According to Christian Research, less than 7 per cent of the population now attend church regularly.

Now, the less than 7% is good 🙂 , but I admit the drop off in political activity may be a “bad thingâ„¢.” There is little doubt in my mind that the increasing number of women in work is affecting the Guides when it comes to trying to get leaders but “blame” seems a strange term. Using a term like blame (remember, a journalist wrote this – they are experts in choosing the correct word for their meaning), seems to be saying women should feel guilty for going to work and earning money, rather than giving up their time for free. I find that odd, and I doubt the Guide Association would have meant it in that manner. It gets better though:

Yet research into work patterns suggests that “lack of time” may be a convenient excuse, rather than a genuine reason not to get involved. The average working week lengthened from 35 hours in the Seventies to 39 hours in 1998, but has since shortened to about 37½ hours, Office for National Statistics figures show.

Welcome to the land of bad statistics. Now, I actually do normally work less than 37.5 hours so maybe I skew the data a little, but I suspect if you average it out over the year (to include the periods where I work 12 – 16 hours a day for a fortnight straight), it comes to 37.5hrs. Despite this, pretty much no one else I know (I am aware this is not really valid data, I am trying to make a point) works less than 37.5 hours. Most work more – either voluntary or to gain overtime pay. I suspect the ONS figures are somewhat skewed and don’t count things like overtime, but this is an argument for another day. I am fairly sure the ONS figures only talk about time which is “worked and paid for” – so the hour for lunch does not count.

The interesting point about it is, this is an attempt by the journalist to imply that as people only work an average of 2.5 hours a week more, they still should have loads of spare time.

In the paper edition, the article is accompanied by a picture of loads of women “mucking in” to clean a street for a Coronation street party (1953 IIRC). The picture shows over a dozen women (probably twice as many) scrubbing the stones and decorating. What wonderful times, when communities were real communities eh?

Sadly, if you check ONS data I very much doubt that the average woman in that community was working 35 hours per week. In the days when WI, Guides etc were at their strongest, few if any women worked in jobs outside the home. Now I am not saying housework is not hard graft (it is) but the women of yesteryear had 37.5 hours a week more to do house work and be involved in the community. Today, nearly every family I know has both partners working (more than 37.5 hours but…). This was not the case in the 1970s and certainly was not the case in the 1950s. If we look at a family with no kids: In the fifties, the husband would have worked about 50 hours a week, leaving (assuming 8hours sleep) 174 hours for the family to get involved in things. Travel to and from work was almost zero as most people lived within a few minutes walk of the work place.

Today, that family will include two people working 37.5 hours a week (remember, 5 hours a week will be unpaid lunchbreaks, so they are actually “in work” for 42.5 hours a week – often people will be in work longer as morning and afternoon breaks are not counted). Now again assuming 8 hours a person a day sleep, this means there is actually only 139 hours a week free. As the average commute today is 45 minutes each way, this takes another 15 hours a week off people. Before we look at any lifestyle changes or issues, a couple today has about 124 hours a week “free time.” This is 50 hours a week less than the halcyon days of yore, or more than a full working week. This doesn’t include things like collecting children from childminders, going to the gym (less manual work means more time spent in the gym!) and so on.

Strikes me as people do have less spare time than they used to. I think this is highlighted by the further commentary:

Working-class people and those living in the north of England were most likely to admit no involvement in any community group. In London and the south, rates were lifted by the popularity of residents’ associations and book groups.

Yeah, people who work for a living (and depend on things like overtime) have less spare time than the idle rich in London. Who would have thought it? (And I am also aware that in London some people work zillions of hours a week, it was a joke).

Looking at the picture in the paper, I cant help but feel the lack of “community” is much more complicated than saying people today can’t be bothered (even in the over 60’s membership is minimal, and they will have grown up with this sort of thing, and certainly have the spare time…). In the 50s people lived in council housing, the state cared for them and, as a result, they cared for the state. Today there is more and more pressure for the state to cut people free (especially from the Telegraph), yet there is amazement that people don’t still care about the state in the same manner.

Now that is what I find strange.

Curtis’ Trap

Posted on by

This week’s programme was the second of the 3-part series. It was really well-argued. It wasn’t as engaging as the first one – the clips were a tad duller, but the logic was much clearer

Good points:
The way that public service targets have become straightjackets, undermining standards of service rather than improving them.
Blair and Brown have taken the Tories’ projects and run with them, taking them to levels that Major and even Thatcher would never have got away with.
Tranquilising the masses is creating a population who treat normal emotional variation as illness. (Surely the argument of the anti-psychiatrists who Curtis blames for the whole thing in the first place. Thoough I guess this argument is moreThomas Szasz than RD Laing)

There are apparently some clips on the BBC site, so you can catch up with the arguments even if you missed the shows.

Petitions

Posted on by

(For UK citizens) Nullfidian has posted on his blog about some online petitions which may be worth checking out. I have copied the extract below verbatim (as various technical problems are making any online time scarce here):

Here are a number of petitions that you can sign to help raise awareness:

We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister…

…to Abolish all faith schools and prohibit the teaching of creationism and other religious mythology in all UK schools.

…to ban within government-funded schools the promotion or practice of any particular faith or religion.

…to prevent the use of creationist and other pseudo-scientific propaganda in Government-funded schools.

…to separate church and state and create the United Kingdom a secular democracy.

…to Remove tax-exempt status for religions (granted such privilege) within the United Kingdom.

…to cease the creation of more faith schools, take existing public-funded faith schools from the control of religious bodies and convert them to unbiased schools for all.

…to refuse to reimburse the Church of England with public funds for repairs or maintenance to their own, private buildings.

Each petition includes more information about the exact nature of and reason for the petition. If you agree with the sentiment of the petition, please add your name to the list. If possible, to help increase the audience for these issues, please repost these in your own blogs, MySpace, LiveJournal, FaceBook, etc.

If you can think of other petitions either comment here or on Nullfidian’s blog.

National ID database

Posted on by

For this, go to the source and read it. No more secrets by Steve Boggan is a very very disturbing account of how “joined-up government” and national ID documents will mean the end of anything resembling privacy.

The blurb on the printed page says:

“Tony Blair insists his government is not building a Big Brother-style super-database. But all the talk of ‘perfectly sensible’ reforms and ‘transformational government’ masks a chilling assault on our privacy”

Brilliant article. It’s almost too much to take in and it might leave you feeling very depressed. But, really, if you live in the UK, you should read it.

2 forms of ID – this is about the cards

Posted on by

Are the letters ID inherently evil in that specific combination? They form an acronym for two of the main topics that spark up rants here – Intelligent Design (the belief that everything except evolution is so complex that God must have planned it in detail) and Identity Document (the UK’s psychiatrically-certifiable ID card scheme.)

It’s been a while since there was any complaint about the ID card scherme here. However, far from vanishing when it’s not in the news, it’s been creeping towards existence. THe BBC put up a page in December with arguments for and against. http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/actionnetwork/A2319176  The Fors basically consist of  “there would be less illegal immigration, benefit fraud , ID theft and crime in general.” None of these arguments are convincing. Nor, even if they were all true, would they seem to constitute enough of a public good to justify the full-scale imposition of  such constraints on traditional freedoms. Surely benefit fraud is the responsibility of DWP, Immigration of the Home Office, crime of the police. Aren’t they up to doing their jobs any more? The truly comical argument for ID is this, though.

Enhance sense of community: The government believes that identity cards would create a sense of shared citizenship, belonging and security

(I wondered what that lovely warm feeling I get from my bus pass was.)

If you don’t even need to know what the BBC gives as anti-ID arguments, you have probably decided a long time ago that the whole plan is both silly and dangerous. (See http://www.no2id.net/IDSchemes/faq.php if you want to read the arguments and find out about campaigns.)

You have probably heard people saying “But it’s inevitable.”  You almost certainly feel that it doesn’t matter what you think about what the government does because it never makes any difference anyway, look how mass protests stopped the Iraq war involvement (not)

Well, there is actually one way you can let the Government know that it is a deeply unsavoury plan. Go to http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/IDcards/ and sign the online petition against ID. I normally regard petitions as utterly pointless but there are reasons why this may have some impact. It’s on a site set up by the government itself to get input. If they can be made to see that this is no vote-winner, even a potential “poll tax” issue, they are going to step back sharpish.

The fiasco of the government’s current IT systems is already a scandal. Every IT project seems to cost untold millions; comes in millions over-budget; leads to civil service redundancies so services get worse;  and it doesn’t work properly when it’s finally implemented. The ID card scheme requires a huge outlay on even more new systems. A minister would need to have either some very powerful friends who needed an IT contract or a strong ideological commitment to the idea of ID to want to keep pushing this expensive and unworkable plan in the face of serious evidence of opposition.

The Government had to give way on the medical records plan to the extent of allowing us to refuse to have our medical records open to any NHS employee (or journalist, nosy neighbour, private detective, etc.,  who knows an NHS employee). They may indeed give way on this scheme. Just wait till the cost to individuals sinks in to those people who don’t think ID is a bad thing in itself. We’d be doing the Government a favour by stopping them  pushing the ID plan through.