God Save the Queen

Let me preface this with the statement that I am not a royalist and, whatever (i.e. little) respect I may have for the traditions of government in the United Kingdom, any move towards something more progressive and democratic than hereditary power is definitely a good thing (the same thing goes for the house of Lords).

But, as anyone who saw the amount of attention William and Kate's wedding got will realise, this is an institution that's not going to disappear overnight.

From a foreign perspective, the UK system of government can look far from democratic. However, monarchism is not necessarily incompatible with democracy, and the fact that we have a queen does not mean we are a de-facto feudal society. yes there are differences to a republic, but these differences aren't necessarily a bad thing.

First, the head of state is not a position of real power. This means, consequently, that the highest elected position in the country is still a position of subservience, albeit in a purely ceremonial role. The Prime Minister does not govern by right but by the will of the Monarch. Whilst this isn't much of a difference by and of itself (The Queen doesn't exercise any form of authority over government policy) it manifests in subtle ways. For example, the Prime Minister is not granted any kind of title, so while you can have Chancellor Merkel and President Sarkozy, it should only ever be Mr Cameron (unless they have a PHD or professorship, but then we are talking about politicians here).

Second, it partially divorces politics from international relations. When sending representatives abroad we have two options. For serious political statesmanship, we send the Prime Minister. However, for building international ties in a more apolitical manner we have the royal Family, a nice big visible symbol of the UK without the messy strings of who is actually in government at the time. you might slam your door n the face of Cameron or Blair, but wen faced with the more politically neutral Elizabeth II things can become a lot more palatable.

Third, it takes care of secularism. the Queen is the head of the church of England. As a consequence politicians fee little or no need to talk at length about the faith or lack of it. There is no fear that if we let anyone other than a christian run our country it will descend into wanton anarchism. Rather we have a supposedly Christian country that is relatively secular in its outlook and relatively tolerant of other faiths (Not that we're by any stretch a model of religious and racial tolerance... but that's for a different post). It also means we avoid gross pieces of hypocrisy like claiming to be the head of a secular country while finishing every speech with the words "God bless America."

However, it's safe to say that the existence of a monarch does far less to diminish the UK's status as a democracy than the fact that in 2012 we have an upper house where not a single member was elected to their position.

God save the Queen... but the House of Lords can get fucked!

Nick Clegg the White

You know that bit in Lord of the Rings where the merry band of warriors shows up at Isengard and Gandalf warns them not to listen to what Saruman says in case his words cast a sort of spell on them? No, not in the films of course, there he gets promptly knifed and impaled on a giant wheel before he can say much, and you only get that if you sit through the extended editions. What follows (in the books) is a remarkably persuasive bit of dialogue that almost has you sympathising with the senile old bugger. I only mention it as it's an image that occurs to me every time I see Nick Clegg.

You see, however much I may know that he's lying through his teeth, I can't help but like the idea of what he's saying (no increase in tuition fees, scraping Trident etc). It's just a shame that he seems completely unable to deliver on these promises (no increase in tuition fees, scrapping Trident etc).

Which makes one of today's stories both heartening and a little depressing. In a speech to the eponymous 'City' he spoke about the 'standing feud' between capital and labour and how he is going to kick start getting employee ownership "into the bloodstream of the economy."

I've blogged before about how modern capitalism and the influence of shareholders is little more than a modern variation of feudalism, and Clegg's comments certainly seem to be singing from the same Hymn sheet. However, it's worth having a closer look at what's being proposed.

First up this is, at present, just a proposal that vaguely floats the possibility of giving workers the right to a share option. Encouraging talk and bluster is little without proper legislative backing. Time and experience has shown that you cannot simply rely on some companies setting a good example of how to treat their employees.

Secondly, even if employees are given the right to a share option, this will not miraculously place the control of companies into the hands of their employees. Rather it will likely see many employees choosing to opt out if given a short term financial incentive (say a choice between a cash bonus or a share bonus) rather than the long term investment option.

Thirdly, even if a large portion of the workforce do choose to become shareholders it is still likely to lead to a silent minority who hold shares but, unless they are very organised, are unable to significantly influence the direction of the company.

In short, these proposals may indeed promote growth by giving employees the feeling of being valued and having influence, but don't go anywhere near far enough to see any real change.

All of the above is moot, however, if these proposals, like so much of what has come out of Clegg's mouth in the last two years, quietly disappears into a gulf of inaction and public amnesia.

Of course I may be wrong and this could be the start of something fantastic, but when Clegg himself describes  the idea that, maybe this is the right thing to do regardless of economic growth as "lazy stereotypes" then it's probably time to start checking his basement for sinister caverns for breeding Orc/city-boy warriors for an assault upon Middle Earth (or maybe middle-England?)

FREEDOM!

A little over three hundred years ago the Acts of Union brought together the separate countries of England and Scotland (Wales having been taken over militarily by the English and Ireland being far too complicated a topic for this blog post). Since then the terms 'Britain' 'Great Britain' and 'United Kingdom' and 'England' have come to be thought of as more or less interchangeable by the international community.

All of this may be about to change depending on the outcome of the SNP's promised referendum on Independence. However, Mr Cameron, not wanting to be the Prime Minister that oversaw the dissolution of the Union is engaging in a war of words over the timing and the manner of the referendum.

Firstly there's the insistence that the referendum give a final legally binding 'yes or no' answer or, as Cameron puts it "legal, fair and decisive." In other words, make it an absolute 'in' or 'out' with no third option for devolution of greater power to Hollyrood and when you've come up with a result don't go asking the same question again.

then there's the suggestion of Westminster granting the authority to make this decision to Hollyrood but only if they have a referendum in the next eighteen months.

this is something of a power-play by Cameron who hopes that, when push comes to shove, a declaration of total Independence would prove hard enough to stomach for a majority of Scottish voters that they return a 'no' vote and promptly give him an excuse to never give them a choice in the matter again on the grounds of they've already made their bed and can lie in it.

This is potentially a high-risk strategy as he hopes that by putting pressure on the issue now with time constraints and talk of having 'legally binding' results that a populace that hasn't already been sold the idea of complete Independence will baulk and hand him victory. However, if he goes in too heavy handed this may backfire spectacularly handing Salmond the coup of saying 'Look at those dismissive arrogant English! They're only going to let you vote on something in the most condescending way possible.'

the real problem is that, when faced with either a choice between Independent Scotland and the status quo, or Further devolution and the status quo, there's likely to be a significant number of people who will opt for the lesser of two evils as they see it, making it near impossible to establish what people actually want and providing politicians of every colour a smoke screen to argue that they actually won and that it's the game that was wrong.

An ideal compromise would be the deployment of a single transferable vote system but, well, we all know what happened the last time we had a referendum.

The idea of the machine

We live in a feudalistic society... more or less. Put another way, very little has actually changed in the way our society runs itself in the last few hundred years.

Originally we had a simple arrangement where the wealthy land owner owned the land, and the peasants worked on the land, paying rent, or tithes, or tributes to the landowner who dutifully did more or less bugger all actual work.

With The industrial revolution this evolved into a system where the wealthy land owner owned the factory and the peasants worked in the factory. Substitute in factory owner and working class and you have the system as it was until a good portion of the way into the twentieth century.

With the decline of the manufacturing industry and the rise of the city we saw a transition to a third generation of the system, in which the wealthy own the company, and the unwealthy get to work for the company. The employees get no control over what the company does, how it treats its staff or what it produces. The upper levels of management are only answerable to shareholders who have no vested interest in the well being either of those below them or society as a whole. Thus we have, still, a system in which the haves exploit the have nots and are answerable only to themselves.

Yes there are people who set up their own businesses, but the examples of where these people have gone on to great success are so few when compared to the thousands of small businesses that either stay very small or die altogether (often under the boot of competition from a large company) that these can only ever be looked at as exceptions, as people that beat the system. In the historical list of folk heroes alongside Ned Kelly, Robin Hood and John Dillinger you'll eventually find Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield.

First Step

Eighteen years since Stephen Lawrence was killed, a prosecution for his murder has led to the convictions of two men. In the intervening period there have been no fewer than three separate prosecutions in a case which has seen, amongst other things, a reformation of the ‘double jeopardy’ law and a revolution in the public perception and discussion of racism.

Eighteen years.

Yet the phenomenon of institutionalised racism remains rather poorly understood in the public perception. Most people are OK with the idea that it means people acting in a prejudiced or prejudicing manner without consciously intending to, but this begs the question, if people don’t realise they’re doing it, how do we know it exists?

Let’s take a more general (by which I of course mean more specific, but usefully illustrative) case, say, the number of years it takes people in a particular industry to make it to senior management level. there are sometimes cases where people feel they have been overlooked or had to work harder in order to achieve the same as their colleagues of different backgrounds. With any single person it’s nearly impossible to establish that they’ve been the victim of institutionalised racism. Yes there are cases where people are provably held back by their ethnicity, but that form of overt racism is a separate phenomenon and recognised as wrong. In most cases there simply isn’t any positive evidence one way or the other to establish whether the person’s ethnicity has had an impact on how they have progressed in their career. However, when large groups are considered, something very different happens.

The old adage about ‘lies, damn lies and statistics’ is itself something of a lie. Statistics are potentially one of the most powerful analytical tools available to us. The problem usually arises when they are quoted inappropriately and out of context (Daily Hate, I’m looking at you here!). When they are presented in an honest and clear format by people who understand the limitations of the data they are resenting they can provide real insight (Those wishing a more in depth look at the importance and abuse of statistics are referred to Ben Goldacre’s excellent book “Bad Science” and Radio 4’s “More or Less”). Thus is the case with institutionalised racism. Taking the example above, if you collect data over a large enough sample group then the relative merits or not of individual cases even out and it’s becomes possible to see measurable differences between different groups, differences that are large enough to fall significantly outside the natural spread of data. When this happens there are only three possible conclusions:

1. The results are a fluke (Though this argument rapidly loses credibility for large sample sizes).
2. People of the ethnicity in question are less able than those of other backgrounds.
3. This ethnic group are the victims of institutionalised racism.

The first two of these tend to wither away to nothing upon closer inspection of the data/one’s soul respectively. The only remaining interpretation being that something is happening that shouldn’t be.

The same principle applies to other institutionalised prejudices like sexism, ageism, homophobia, etc.

I was explaining this idea to a friend at one point who responded with, “That sounds uncomfortably like ‘thought crimes’ to me.”

This raises a very important point. As there is no positive evidence of such racism in individual cases, individuals cannot be held criminally accountable for it. Put another way, institutionalised problems require change on an institutional level. The problem is that most institutions, in the absence of positive proof of the problem, are reluctant to introduce measures to address this.

What makes the Stephen Lawrence case so compelling is that, for once, it was possible to identify specific instances where individual actions and the system itself led to a failure to bring Lawrence’s killers to justice that required nearly two decades’, massive publicity and an overhaul of the Metropolitan Police to get to today's result.

Not that today's verdict is really an end, either to the investigation into Lawrence's murder or the problem of institutionalised racism.

Don't get me wrong, two murder convictions and a more accountable and sensitive Metropolitan Police is a good first step, but as this is an organisation that is supposed to embody " fairness, integrity, diligence and impartiality, upholding fundamental human rights and according equal respect to all people" I think it's fair to say that this is pretty much in the job description and the fact that it's taken the murder of an innocent young man and eighteen years of heartache and determination from his family to achieve this is little short of shameful.

A good first step, which takes us as far as square one.