Thursday 31 July 2014

Quote of the day - on residential property values

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This is so true - it should be beaten into us all as we clamber up and down the so-called property ladder. It starts with the subsidising of housing provision under the New deal and, as Howard Ahmanson observes....

...instead of their forty acres and a mule, people got their ¼ acre and an automobile, the only practical way to travel from their ¼ acre to wherever they wanted to go. Eventually people came to see their ¼ acre with a house on it as an “investment,” and further, a “source of wealth.” But this was not a truly agrarian source of wealth. Farms depend for their value on the quality of their soil and their productivity as farms. They are truly commercial real estate. But residences depend for their value only to a minor degree on what is on the property itself, but rather on what is around it; and suburbanites demanded that covenants, or the Government in the form of City Hall or County Hall, control their neighbors and what is around them.

As they say, the rest is history. And, at times a pretty sorry history. Indeed a history that has trapped many of us into believing that owning a house isn't about getting a secure place to live but a shoot from the magic money tree. With the ironic conclusion that:

The suburban model, in the end, demanded that to preserve suburban values, that the building of suburbs be stopped!

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...more about our sober children

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Top beer writer, Pete Brown has revisited the statistics about children and young people drinking. It's another 'must read' (although sadly they won't bother) for the public health crowd. Here's a sample:

Now the decline is so steep, and so sustained, that there's no getting away from it. Last week's headlines were unequivocal - under-age drinking is no longer cool:
  • 39% of pupils said they had drunk alcohol at least once. This continues the downward trend since 2003, when 61% of pupils had drunk alcohol, and is lower than at any time since 1988, when the survey first measured the prevalence of drinking in this age group.
  • 9% of pupils had drunk alcohol in the last week. This proportion has fallen from 25% in 2003.
Bouyed by this undoubted good news, the Portman Group undertook some research among parents of school-age children to learn if they were aware of the fact that their children are not drinking. 
Unsurprisingly given the media coverage the issue receives, 9 out of 10 parents had no idea about the 34% decrease in children who have drunk alcohol. The same proportion were similarly unaware of the 33% decrease in the number of kids who think it is OK to drink alcohol on a weekly basis.
 
We have (heaven knows how) spawned the most sober and sensible of generations and Pete Brown is right - a great deal of the credit goes to the drinks industry itself. Sadly, the prohibitionists and denormalisers won't have it that way regardless of the evidence.

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Monday 28 July 2014

Dr Sarah Wollaston and the "duty to intervene" - how health fascism works

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Dr Wollaston MP, il capo di tutti capi of nannying fussbucketry, who chairs the House of Commons Health Select Committee has called for laws to ban 'supersized foods':

“Supersized” food and drinks should be banned by law in a bid to combat Britain’s obesity epidemic, the new head of the Commons health select committee has said.

Now in one respect this is just another judgement on a particular type of food service - one that is most popular with ordinary folk who can't afford to pig out in Michelin starred restaurants. But the most disturbing aspect of Dr Wollaston's call wasn't that she wants a ban - such is the default position of nannying fussbuckets everywhere - but rather that the government has "a duty to intervene".

For a Conservative MP to set out such an argument is quite disturbing. For sure, we've had our flirtations with the intellectual underpinnings of fascism before but this is a disturbing rationale - government must intervene to stop people making a choice that may (or may not) have a negative impact on their health. The context for this is apparently:

"You go into the cinema and someone will ask if you want to supersize for an extra 20p - we don’t need that.”

Now apart from being surprised that anything at all in a cinema is priced as cheaply as 20p, this argument presupposes that people are mere automata programmed from childhood to exclaim 'yes, please' at every piece of marketing communications. Even offers mumbled at the buyer by a food service operative in a cinema queue.

Indeed, Dr Wollaston, in an indication as to the scale of her ignorance of how marketing works, has this to say:

“The scale of the marketing towards children of unhealthy foods is wholly unacceptable in my view given the scale of the problem."

This is straight from the Naomi Klein "brands-are-evil" playbook - again an odd position for an intelligent Conservative MP to adopt. We are to believe, Dr Wollaston says, that consumers are rendered incapable of choice when presented with the question 'would you like to supersize that?' or 'would you like a large one of those?' This reflects the infantilising of society by lawmakers - people aren't fat because of their own poor decision-making but because the marketing of food 'targets' them, 'forcing' them to consume 'unhealthy' products.

All this suggests that those people - the majority of people as it happens - who remain at a healthy weight are stoical ascetics. Or else (and I'm inclined to this view) Dr Wollaston and her fellow fussbuckets are peddling nonsense about the marketing of food.

So where does this 'duty to intervene' come from? It's clear that no such duty exists so what Dr Wollaston is saying is rather that she thinks only 'tough' measures such as bans can deal with the 'obesity crisis'. As I'm inclined to kindness in these things, I could say that Dr Wollston is befuddling her duty as a doctor to advise her patients with some sort of wider duty falling on the state. However, regardless of Dr Wollaston's motives, the result of setting out a concept such as a 'duty to intervene' is to redefine the role of the state, to turn its role from guarantor of rights and provider of services to a primary role of shaping society.

Which is why the term 'health fascist' is entirely appropriate to describe Dr Wollaston's position. The central tenet of fascism is that the state has a duty to change men so they serve the wider purpose of the nation - we are subservient to the needs of that state because it understands what is necessary to build the right kind of society. So it is with the 'duty to intervene' - people ordering 'supersized' boxes of popcorn are not merely damaging themselves, they also damage society by placing a 'cost' on us all. Such practices are decadent with the sin compounded by the suggestion that someone profits from making people eat larger portions.

So to put this right government has that 'duty to intervene'. The wider interests of society - defined with the term 'obesity epidemic' - are served by banning a person from entering freely into a contract with another person because the state has decided that large servings of fizzy-pop and popcorn are unhealthy.

This rejection of choice in a free society because of associated 'health risks' or the 'normalisation' of somet proscribed behaviour represents a degree of control and a justification on the basis of wider society's 'interests' that can only be described as fascist. Yet this health fascism - the view that bans and controls are needed because of the 'cost to society' - has become ever more common. That we are weak and make poor choices is undeniable and society should help us to deal with these problems but this does not justify saying that I cannot be allowed the option of a 'poor' choice. The former is good government, that latter health fascism.

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Saturday 26 July 2014

Taxing supermarkets won't save the high street...but it will stop the high street saving itself


The 'supermarket levy' campaign has been around for a while and, thanks to the thoughtlessness of local politicians in assorted places, has now reached the national media:

BBC News has learned that Derby City Council has called for the right to bring in a levy as a "modest" effort to ensure supermarket spending "re-circulates" in local communities.

Some 19 other local authorities back a so-called "Tesco tax" on big retailers, which could raise up to £400m a year.

The premise for this is that supermarkets and other out-of-town retailers are to blame for the decline of town centres and, when we're asked, we all say town centres are really important. Except that we don't do very much of our shopping there any more. And the reason we don't shop there is because town centre shopping - at least for every day purposes - is inconvenient, inconsistent and often expensive. We have to get into town, park (often at considerable cost) and then lug our tired bodies round assorted shots that may or may not have the things on our list.

The 'supermarket levy' is promoted by an organisation calling itself 'Local Works'. Here's something about it:

Local Works was the coalition campaign for the Sustainable Communities Bill, originally set up by the new economics foundation. The campaign was successful when the Bill became law - the Sustainable Communities Act - in October 2007. Since then Local Works, as a part of Unlock Democracy, has been promoting the Act and urging people to get involved and government to implement it properly.

What nef did was to cobble together this coalition on the manifesto of 'localism' and the Sustainable Communities Act was sold to us on the basis of positive proposals to improve town centres and local communities. It is pretty sad that the usual green left wibble about the malign affect of supermarkets has been allowed to dominate the campaign's agenda. A fine idea that local initiatives shared can prompt national action has become just a campaign for a tax on food retailing, a campaign that won't save the high street, won't make people use independent shops but will impact on food prices in the places where most people - and especially less well off people - shop.

Seeking to rescue the traditional town centre by this route merely replaces trade with subsidy. The independent retailers and town centres become dependent on the money that flows from the levy. This doesn't really make those businesses and those centres viable, it merely acts to ossify a failed model. The future for high streets - as I have said many times before - doesn't lie with mere shopping but with being places of leisure and pleasure. This probably means fewer shops and smaller centres but it also means a different approach starting from what people want - not defined by opinion polling but rather by what people actually consume.

In the widest meaning of these words, the successful town centre is about the event, about theatre and about occasion. Some of the events are grand, some might be political or campaigning or even smaller and localised. But most of the events and occasions are personal and private - Susan's 40th birthday, the end-of-season night out for the football team, a reunion of old university friends or perhaps just a walk round town with mum and dad. The best town centres are the ones that provide for these events and occasions and not the ones harking back to a time before most people had cars and fridge freezers, a time when shopping was daily and a real chore.

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Friday 25 July 2014

Petty bans and pointless policing...nannying fussbucketry Northern Ireland style!

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The story's about the Northern Ireland cops (how times have changed) threatening a couple of skinny-dippers with being put on the sex offenders register. But tagged on the end is another bit of tin-pottism and microcosm of pointless policing:

Police in the North Down town also warned that they were on the lookout for people bringing alcohol to the beach, with officers patrolling the platform at Helen's Bay railway station. 

Yesterday Kathryn and I went up to the RHS Gardens at Harlow Carr near Harrogate to listen to a little light jazz and eat a picnic. Along with hundreds of others we sat in the sunshine drinking beer and wine without any bother, any need for dire police warnings and certainly no trouble. It's really about time we trusted people to behave sensible on a public beach and to stop this nannying and unnecessary clampdown on taking a couple of beers to drink on the beach.

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Quote of the day - on the cat ASBO

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Rocky the Ginger Tom has got himself an ASBO from Rotherham Council:

I am in receipt of several complaints regarding your cat Rocky causing alarm, distress and annoyance to other residents in the area of your property. Although I appreciate that cats do roam, I would prefer if you could take steps to keep your cat Rocky from leaving the perimeter of your garden in the future. Should further complaints be received about damage done to neighbours’ property by your pet you will be charged for the repairs. 

Well I guess the Council had to do something! However, the owners comment is priceless:

"How can a cat behave antisocially? It’s an animal, it’s a pet - he’s not going to bite your leg off, drink alcohol in the street or try and rob your phone."

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Thursday 24 July 2014

On 'right wing fundamentalism'...

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It is commonplace to describe religious fundamentalism as 'conservative' or 'right-wing'. In one respect this is simply laziness, a sort of sloppy thought-process from left inclined folk who assume that, because they don't like what those religious folk are saying, they are 'right wing'. Here - and I'm not having a dig at Jonathan who is a sincere liberal, at least in the modern, leftist meaning of the term - is a good example:


However, this got me to thinking about whether there's a world where liberal fundamentals are considered to be the views of 'nutters'. We could argue that this was - and still is in China - the official line under communist regimes. But, it then struck me that we already live in a world where those who hold to the fundamentals of liberalism - all those things that start with the qualifier, "free" - are often considered to be slightly loopy.

As a society we have a hit and miss adherence to those things we had in our Bill of Rights and that the Americans' put in theirs - free speech, free assembly, free choice and so forth are more honoured in the breach than considered fundamental. And we allow for our legislators and our courts to limit and restrict these freedoms, these fundamentals of a liberal society.

I am reminded about the debate Bradford Council held under the helpful heading of 'Islamaphobia'. The motion put forward by Respect was a very lengthy exposition of  'islamaphobia' as a concept so as to provide a justification for new restrictions to those liberal fundamentals in the interests of a thing called 'community cohesion'. The Conservative Group, in respecting those liberal fundamentals, put down an amendment that replaced the lengthy motion with this:

"Bradford Council affirms its belief in free speech"

The amendment was defeated as Labour, Respect and Lib Dems voted against - preferring instead to support an amendment that sought to deny rights to speech where the subject was religion.

Our defending free speech was seen as 'unhelpful' rather than an assertion of principle. And we see this everywhere - in the enthusiasm for press regulation (by that mythical thing called an 'independent body'), in the locking up of people for being grossly offensive on social media and in the banning of protest and agitation. Oh and we see it in the banning of drinking outside and smoking inside.

Yet when people agitate in support of these fundamentals, especially people arguing for free speech and personal choice, terms like 'libertarian nutter' and 'right wing troll' pop up like mushrooms in a fairy ring. We say we support free speech but then join in the fray when some semi-celebrity screams about needing controls on social media. We sign petitions in favour of gagging the press because Stephen Fry doesn't want the newspapers to be nasty to his friends. And then, having done this, we call for the heads of essentially harmless Christians because they don't want to bake a cake for a gay wedding.

Another bunch of us want to stop people doing things we don't like, especially when we can claim they're bad for people's health and, worse still, cost the NHS money! So fast food shops are banned near schools, sugar taxes are proposed, smoking is forbidden almost everywhere and drinking outside is stopped. Yet we'll then proclaim our support for a 'free society' when we really means a 'free-to-do-what-we-allow-you-to-do society' which isn't the same thing at all.

I'm guessing that holding to the fundamentals of a religious faith in an essentially secular world is pretty hard work. But, if our faith is in those liberal principles written down in those bills of rights, it is just as hard. Defending free speech is easy when we agree with the speaker but a whole lot harder when that speaker is saying something unpleasant, offensive or disturbing. Speaking up for personal free choice is easy when its about the convenience of modern living but when some person makes a choice to abuse themselves it's much harder to stand by those principles.

If 'right wing' is the right term to apply to those who hold to the fundamentals of a given religious belief, it should also apply to every fundamentalist - including those strange people who are utterly consistent in defending liberal principles like free speech and free choice. And who set out their philosophy as:

"Don't hit people and don't take their stuff."  

If believing this makes you a right wing nut-job then count me in!

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Wednesday 23 July 2014

It's poverty that reduces life expectancy not being born in a poor place

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The current debate about health 'inequalities' is not especially helpful or informed. On the face of things we are presented with what sounds like irrefutable evidence that being born in a particular place will inflict a shorter lifespan on the poor child:

Men in the most deprived part of the population across England, dubbed the "bottom decile" by statisticians, are set to die before they reach 74 years old – almost a decade earlier than those in the top decile, who can expect to live until they are 83 years old. Women share a similar fate, with those born in the bottom decile expected to die by the time they are 79 years old, seven years earlier than the most affluent at 86.

The result - as with much of this 'inequality' debate - is a load of froth and bother all wrapped in political accusation. Yet these figures don't answer a simple question: what happens when the child born in a 'bottom decile' place moves to live in a 'top decile' place? Or indeed vice versa? Does this act result in the diminution of health inequality or does that act of moving wonderfully prolong or sadly shorten the life of the person?

The truth in all this is, of course, that most of this geographical difference results from the concentration of poverty rather than the effect of that place on health. No-one is disputing that there is a pretty close link between poverty (however you want to measure poverty) and poor health. But we should remember that people are not poor because they live on Bradford's Holme Wood estate, they live on that estate because they are poor. Indeed, it would be interesting to know how many of the children born to parents living on Holme Wood actually spend their entire life living there? My guess is that this will be a pretty small proportion of those children.

It's also important for us to note that this debate isn't about the distribution of health spending. After all, health spending is disproportionately directed to people who are in poor health. Mostly this means more is spent (over three-quarters of total spending) on old people but it also means more is spent on poor people simply because those poor people are more likely to be ill. Indeed, being in chronic poor health is a pretty good start on the road to poverty itself - there are plenty of people that are poor because they're ill or disabled rather than the other way round. This might not be a good thing, indeed it probably isn't, but it is a fact.

The problem with much of this debate - we're talking about health here but we could be discussing more general issues around deprivation - is that it assumes a static population when everything we know about poor communities is that their populations are not static. And we know something about movers too:

...groups most likely to move include younger age groups (16–34); private rented sector households; recent movers; large and single-person households; residents with higher qualifications (NVQ4 or above); males; and white residents

And those moving into deprived areas (this research is for New Deal for Communities areas - all in the 'bottom decile' of multiple deprivation):

...people moving in are more likely to be younger, white (but not British), or from a black and minority ethnic (BME) background, to live in a larger households and to be accommodated in the private rented sector

While not an absolute, the tendency is for the relatively successful to move out with their place being taken by a new generation of relatively poorer people. And somewhere around 10% of the population moves out each year.

What we fail to do in discussing deprivation is to make the distinction between things that are genuinely about the place and things that reflect the demographics of the place's population. By way of example, it's a good call to say that Bradford's tight, gardenless terraces will feature higher levels of road traffic accidents and conditions (asthma, bronchitis and even lung cancer) that link to poor air quality. But to suggest that this environment leads to higher rates of smoking, obesity or diabetes rather stretches the effect of place.

It makes a lot of sense to use geography to target resources better - the use of geodemographics and other modelling systems was a good idea when we proposed it to Bradford Health Authority back in 1990 and it's now an even better idea given our ability to make even better use of data modelling these days. But this still does not mean that people in Holme Wood are more likely to be in poor health because they live in Holme Wood.

The real debate shouldn't be about 'inequality' - after all we can fix that by poisoning the water supply in Ilkey! Rather we should be talking about poverty because we know that high levels of poverty result in more ill-health and lower average life expectancy. So the very best way to improve health outcomes - and we've seen this in the UK over the past three decades - is to reduce levels of poverty and increase levels of wealth and comfort. And, although I won't be thanked for saying this, capitalism is by far the most effective way to reduce poverty and increase wealth!

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Tuesday 22 July 2014

How Third Sector Professionals killed Big Society...and the idea of voluntary initiative

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A few years ago I attended an event organised by Julian Dobson and others that was, or rather purported to be, connected in some way with the government's Big Society idea. And, as a fan of the idea, I toddled along in what turned out to be a vain expectation of enthusiasm for thinking about civil society and the way in which voluntary social action plays a part in transforming society for the better.

What I experienced (and this was repeated again and again in my peregrinations round the voluntary sector) was quite different. Instead of people engaged in voluntary social action what we have in this visible part of the 'voluntary' sector are two sorts of people - political activists (almost exclusively from the left of politics) and what we might call 'sector professionals'. I was struck, as I am always struck at these sorts of occasion, by the almost complete absence of any genuine volunteers - people who have got up off their backside and done something for their community.

Today, various of the 'usual culprits' in "The Sector" have rounded on the Big Lottery and Cabinet Office over the manner in which they have funded a couple of organisations closely linked to the Big Society agenda. It is, we are told by these people who made it their mission to distance "The Sector" from Big Society, a terrible scandal requiring investigations and probably executions.

Yet these people - so self-righteous in their condemnation - are the very same people that spent the first year of this government undermining the idea of Big Society. They came up with different versions of it - one's untainted by the dread association. With the result that the winners in the game were new organisations - bright-eyed and bushy-tailed for sure but inexperienced and with ideas that needed work. But where were the experts? All those people from NCVO and ACEVO, all the parasitical consultants upon the multi-billion pound state funding of the 'voluntary' sector?

These self-appointed sector leaders set out to make sure Big Society failed. And they did so for one reason alone - it was an initiative from a Conservative prime minister. To these "sector professionals" (a surprising number having close links with the Labour Party) no Tory could possibly understand "The Sector" and therefore the initiative was either a smokescreen to cover up the evil neoliberal agenda of the Coalition or else a trojan horse aimed at smuggling in cackling Tory businessmen to take over voluntary action.

What these "sector professionals" and their new found activist friends fail to appreciate is that they are the problem rather than Big Society, the Coalition government or evil Tory neoliberals. It is the transforming of voluntary organisations of all sorts - whether working with a particular group people, in a particular place or on a particular issue - from organisations doing voluntary work into sub-contractors to the state that represents the single greatest wound to our civil society.

What these "sector professionals" presided over, and it accelerated under the Blair/Brown Labour government, was the de facto nationalisation of voluntary action. We got to a situation where nothing was deemed possible without government funding and without the employing of these "sector professionals". And just as importantly those professionals were recruited on the basis of their ability to attract funds fron the Labour government, from QUANGOs led by Labour supporters and regional agencies padded with Labour councillors.

So organisations - just like their funders - got stuffed full with Labour supporters. And, when the change of government arrived and with it the Big Society idea, these people were faced with two options - suck up to the evil Tory neoliberals or do what the Labour Party wanted and undermine the policy. Sadly, for the idea of volunteering and of the voluntary society, the sector's leadership chose to dismiss Big Society and campaign instead for the continuation and extension of a role for "The Sector" as sub-contractors to state agencies.

The latest round of attacks on Big Society confirms to me everything that is wrong with those "sector professionals". I see a group of well-paid, middle-class folk protecting their interests and crafting a language of entitlement to do so. Links into government at professional or operational level - along with ministerial fear of upsetting "The Sector" - has maintained the current system of funding more or less intact. New places to broker influence arose - Clinical Commissioning Groups being a fine example - and the idea of people doing something simply because they care becomes ever more distant.

Thankfully there's a whole load of voluntary action still going on and plenty of people loving the place they live and the people who live there. But these people have absolutely no connection to or links with the entitled grant-farmers that dominate the national discourse about the voluntary sector.

It saddens me that an idea such as the Big Society was killed off by a self-interested group more concerned with protecting state-funding and state contracts than with the idea of promoting and encouraging voluntary action. The idea of the state stepping out of the way and letting people do it themselves has been sacrificed so a bunch of well-connected lefties can carry on lecturing us while living off government grants.

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Monday 21 July 2014

On how planning nearly killed Birmingham and why garden cities aren't the answer

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And before Brummies leap in and accuse me of doing down their city, the same goes for Bradford, for Leeds and for just about every other big city. Here's the quote from The Economist blog:

In the post-war era, there was a strong sense among British politicians that cities were slightly unpleasant things like mushrooms that ought not be allowed to grow too fast. Inspired by utopian city planners such as Ebenezer Howard and Le Corbusier, they decided that urban metropolises had to be cut back. Without much consultation, enormous numbers of people were "decanted" from inner-city slums to grey suburban council estates, where loneliness and crime thrived. Meanwhile, the city centres themselves were strangled with great elevated roads intended to get people in and out of the "commercial" zones. Birmingham probably suffered the worst of anywhere. Even Joseph Chamberlain's grand Council House was surrounded by roads.

Right now planners across the country are 'learning the lessons' of the past and drawing up new - and newly grand - schemes for cities and towns. Yet the echo of the think described above remains - cities are nasty, unclear, dangerous places and people want to live in ordered, structured and safe communities. We even have a "new" garden city movement:

Garden cities are back on the political and social agenda. Barely a day goes past without Boris Johnson, Nick Clegg, David Cameron or Ed Miliband talking about them. Lord Wolfson has got in on the act by launching a competition to build a new garden city in England. The prize of £250,000 is enough to properly kickstart a new social garden city movement.

And this 'movement' has a rhetoric filled with today's trendy rhetoric of 'cooperatives', 'community ownership' and 'social enterprise' - all guaranteed to get us shaking with excitement at this ordered world outside the city, a Utopian wonderland of community leadership, social capital and parks.

Forgive me if I don't share your excitement at building boring places filled with dullness, where every activity is purposeful, where committees of local worthies decide what you have in your front garden, the colour of your front door and whether you can put a six foot pink gnome by your gate. If you want these garden cities go build them but don't pretend they replace the excitement of the city or the mixed community of the market town or the tranquillity of the village. I'm with Jane Jacobs on Ebenzer Howard and garden cities:

“His aim was the creation of self sufficient small towns,really very nice towns if you were docile and had no plans of your own and did not mind spending your life with others with no plans of their own. As in all Utopias, the right to have plans of any significance belonged only to the planner in charge."
And we've seen what planners did to Birmingham. Useful though those planner might be, we can't put them in charge.
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Bikes for the unemployed! Bradford embraces Norman's dad!

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The latest more-or-less pointless gimmick:

People coming off the dole in Bradford will be given free bikes to help them get to their new jobs. 

However, it would seem that this isn't a celebration of Tebbit's father bicycling to find work in the 1930s but rather is part of the latest attempt to bully us out of cars and onto other forms of transport.  Shame really!

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Sunday 20 July 2014

Quote of the day - Owen Paterson on the green lobby...

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OK so the term 'green blob' does rather summon up images of Quatermass but Paterson is absolutely spot on in his condemnation of the so-called 'green' lobby:

I soon realised that the greens and their industrial and bureaucratic allies are used to getting things their own way. I received more death threats in a few months at Defra than I ever did as secretary of state for Northern Ireland. My home address was circulated worldwide with an incitement to trash it; I was burnt in effigy by Greenpeace as I was recovering from an operation to save my eyesight. But I did not set out to be popular with lobbyists and I never forgot that they were not the people I was elected to serve.

Indeed, I am proud that my departure was greeted with such gloating by spokespeople for the Green Party and Friends of the Earth.

It was not my job to do the bidding of two organisations that are little more than anti-capitalist agitprop groups most of whose leaders could not tell a snakeshead fritillary from a silver-washed fritillary. I saw my task as improving both the environment and the rural economy; many in the green movement believed in neither. 

These things cannot be said too often. The 'green' movement is driven less by the interests of our local environments that by self-interest, the search for power and influence, and above all by an unwavering belief that improving the conditions for ordinary men and women comes at a cost to the environment.  It doesn't. Just as no-one is poor become another is rich, the environment is not doomed by the desire of people like me to see poor people everywhere enjoying the fruits of capitalism's bounty.

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Saturday 19 July 2014

Socialism turns people into cheats...

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Or so Alex Tabarrok reports:
 

From 1961 to 1989, the Berlin Wall divided one nation into two distinct political regimes. We exploited this natural experiment to investigate whether the socio-political context impacts individual honesty. Using an abstract die-rolling task, we found evidence that East Germans who were exposed to socialism cheat more than West Germans who were exposed to capitalism. We also found that cheating was more likely to occur under circumstances of plausible deniability.


Of course here we are not at all surprised. We know that non-market systems protect privilege and promote favour-mongering even in law-abiding and mostly non-socialist Britain.

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From 1961 to 1989, the Berlin Wall divided one nation into two distinct political regimes. We
exploited this natural experiment to investigate whether the socio-political context impacts
individual honesty. Using an abstract die-rolling task, we found evidence that East Germans
who were exposed to socialism cheat more than West Germans who were exposed to
capitalism. We also found that cheating was more likely to occur under circumstances of
plausible deniability. - See more at: http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2014/07/moral-effects-of-socialism.html#sthash.4w1nOOS1.dpuf

Friday 18 July 2014

Micro-housing: a little bit of living space innovation...

If you're looking for imaginative responses to housing problems how about:

The students, together with professors and alumns, have designed and built three 135-square-foot ‘SCADpads’ — fully equipped micro-dwellings that fit the size of a standard parking space. The pop-up parking garage village also contains communal open areas, such as a Groovebox community garden, a living room, and work spaces.

You can see more here. Micro-housing is a thing - you can read a load at this blog including:

Micro-housing is one of the fastest-growing housing trends in Seattle for its affordability and sustainable lifestyle. But the problems have to do with neighborhood fabric and taxes. Put up a micro-housing complex and people who have lived in the neighborhoods for years suddenly have 40-100 new strangers on the block, depending on how many units are in the building. Many find this threatening to the fabric of their communities. 

Interesting stuff.

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On the causes of employment...

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Chris Dillow, everyone's favourite cuddly Marxist, takes Tim Montgomerie to task over unemployment - or rather employment:

My chart shows that since the Tories took office, the number of unfilled vacancies has risen. What's happened is a move along the Beveridge curve, rather than an inward shift in it. This corroborates micro-level evidence that the Help to Work scheme had only small effects in getting people into employment.

The big story since 2010 is not that the unemployed have been filling vacancies faster but rather that there's been an increase in the demand for labour.

And this observation raises some interesting questions, not just about unemployment but about economic policy in general. The link in the quote above is to a commentary from NIESR about the effectiveness of the 'Work Programme', the current government's programme aimed at supporting the transition into work for the unemployed. We should note here that the 'Work Programme' was developed in response to the perceived failings of previous schemes both in terms of effectiveness and also value-for-money.

The implication of Chris's observation is that there is a disconnection between the micro- and macro-level policies. We know this is the case because the money paid to Work Programme providers is on the basis of results rather than activity commissioned in anticipation of targets being met (and we should note this is the central criticism of NIESR's research - it's findings were very early in the programme).

So money is paid to Work Programme contractors on the basis of actual people going into actual jobs - about 250,000 of them (although the permanence of these jobs is a matter of debate). Yet we are told that, in net terms, these programmes aren't effective and that it is factors in the whole economy - the relative price of labour, overall economic growth and so forth - that determine whether or not people leave unemployment for employment.

In fundamental terms what is being said here is that those expensive programmes aimed at supporting people into work are merely an indulgence - the economic policy equivalent of putting go-faster stripes on your Lada.  Except that on the proverbial front-line it simply doesn't feel that way. Even with the incentive of less cash benefits for many long-term unemployed it's pretty difficult to find and, just as importantly, keep work. To try and help everyone understand, I'm going to tell a couple of stories.

The first one is about the young man on a college-based construction training programme. This lad is on work experience at a site and, one morning, the site manager rings up the project worker and says that he keeps turning up late. The project worker thinks this odd - he's always come to college and was pretty reliable. So she goes to see him, as she put it, "to give him the hard word". It turns out that the problem is that the lad's father - also unemployed - doesn't want him to work because he thought it might affect his housing benefit. So the young man left his tools and overalls at a friend's house and, each morning, climbed out his bedroom window and over the back fence so his Dad didn't know he was working.

The second story was told by a programme manager on Manchester's Wythenshawe estate. This manager was curious as to why Wythenshawe had such a high level of male unemployment despite that fact that right next door is the North West's biggest generator of employment - Manchester Airport. So he went to see employers on and near the airport to ask why. And he discovered that the problem was pretty simple - most airport employers had strict security checks and something like two-thirds of the men on the estate had some form of criminal record. They would fall at the first hurdle.

I could relate more stories about the barriers put in the way of the long-term unemployed. I could talk about English Bob who was told to stop going out to get jobs for his fifteen-year-old bottom set pupils and to put them through an English exam he knew they would fail. Or the efforts of much maligned businesses like Poundland to employ people with learning difficulties. Everywhere you go you'll find people - in businesses, in charities, at schools and in public agencies - trying to find ways to get people into sustainable jobs.

And it's hard. Not just because there are few jobs - certainly jobs that suit - but because many of the long-term unemployed are stuck, or addicted or ill. Some really don't want to work at all. Yet when you see a lad off Seacroft who yesterday was cock-of-the-walk on the estate standing nervously twisting his baseball cap as he waits for an interview to go on a joinery course - then you know that the problem isn't 'don't care, won't care, don't want a job'. That lad has been given such a narrow horizon - dingy council flats, petty squabbles where violence is half-a-bottle of vodka away and a world outside that sees only anti-social behaviour, illiteracy and a bad attitude.

So if the Work Programme has got only 70,000 people off that heap and into real work - perhaps for the first time ever - I see that as something to celebrate not something to condemn as failure. I think of the barriers those unemployed people have crossed, I can hear the 'give him a go' conversations with employers and I can picture the frustration of good people as they try again and again to get some hopelessly unreliable person into a job.

Chris Dillow might be right when he says it's falling wages that lie behind the growth in UK employment. But he should also see the human stories too and remember that the micro- stuff matters. These programmes may not make a lot of difference at the aggregate level but down on the ground they provide, every day, a way out for people who might not have made it out on their own.

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Thursday 17 July 2014

Why Public Health England should be scrapped...

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It's simple really, the organisation has lost any vestigial connection to either common sense or the real world. It's not enough that it tells lies, promotes an aggressive health fascist agenda and seeks to influence policy through the manipulation of lobby groups. Now it gives advice that is a combination of the obvious and the stupid.

try to keep out of the sun between 11am to 3pm
apply sunscreen of at least SPF15 with UVA protection
wear UV sunglasses, preferably wraparound, to reduce UV exposure to the eyes
wear light, loose-fitting cotton clothes, a hat and light scarf
drink lots of cool drinks

And what was the maximum temperature expected? According to the radio - 29 degrees Celsius. Heaven knows how people cope in places like Spain or Italy - the whole place must shut down! This isn't a heatwave, it's a little on the hot side for an English summer's day.

This sort of po-faced, spoil-sport fussbucketry really doesn't help at all. For most of us going about our regular day would put us at no risk at all. Indeed, the sunshine in the middle of the day was a welcome warming, a chance to sit out with our sandwich rather than hunch gloomily over our desk.

If Public Health England has nothing better to do than create and review 'Heatwave Plans' then it's pretty obvious it serves no useful purpose - indeed that it is a positive detriment to our health and happiness. Public Health England should be scrapped - immediately.

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Wednesday 16 July 2014

They've found a way to tax breathing!

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It could only be the ghastly dysfunctional socialist utopia of Venezuela:

We're used to a seemingly endless range of taxes and surcharges when we fly - passenger taxes, departure taxes, fuel levies. But Maiquetia International Airport in Caracas has taken this a step further - passengers flying out now have to pay 127 bolivars tax (£12; $20) for the air they breathe.

It seems the airport installed a new system to 'purify' the air-conditioning unit - the tax is to pay for it. Or so they say except, as one radio presenter observed:

 "Could you explain to me the ozone thing in Maiquetia? The toilets don't have water, the air-con is broken, there are stray dogs inside the airport, but there's ozone?"

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Monday 14 July 2014

Hating the untidiness of whimsy - the curse of local councils

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Control, direct, order, limit, ban, manage, prevent, dictate, regulate, licence, stop.

Sadly these are the words that best define much of local government - and us local councillors. This is what we do - we stand in the way of community, cooperation, choice, innovation and initiative. And we revel in it.

In a statement the city of Leawood issued to TODAY, an official said that a property maintenance code enforcement officer had noticed the bookshelf but "thought it was placed in the yard for pick up." Several days later, the officer received complaints about it and notified the family the structure violated a city ordinance that states “no detached structure, including garages, barns, sheds, greenhouses, above ground pools, or outbuildings, shall be permitted."

And what was it that so offended the officials of this Kansas town? It was one of these:

In its most basic form, a Little Free Library is a box full of books where anyone may stop by and pick up a book (or two) and bring back another book to share.

A nine-year-old child had set one up in his yard. A little private initiative - done with hope and a smile - to build a local community. Stamped out by the council because some busybody 'complained' and some jobsworth decided the little box of books in the garden was an illegal structure.

Don't try to tell me that your council is immune from this obsession with tidiness and the tin-pottery of control. Here in Bradford you need a licence to have a village gala. Not for safety reasons but because the Council wants to 'exercise its market charter rights'. And your council will be the same - a little ban here, a stern letter there. Whether it's the spirited citizen who's told to stop mowing the verge outside his house or the children who are stopped from their little bit of guerrilla gardening, your local officials will react to any community initiative by either wanting to stop it happening or else to bring it within their control and regulatory orbit.

But, and this is important, those intrusive officials are only doing what they know people want. Every day they encounter people who would stop someone drinking quietly on a bench, prevent a second takeaway opening on the high street and ban any number of odd but essentially harmless activities. As Scott Doyon, in writing about the Little Boy with the Little Free Library observes, we really have a problem with whimsy - and certainly independently initiated whimsy in someone's garden:

The second error is that you add value to whimsy by making it more uniform and predictable when that’s actually the exact opposite of what happens. A Little Free Library, or any other inspired creative expression, is like a flower growing through a crack in the sidewalk. You don’t make it more palatable by camouflaging it as concrete.

If we want interesting places filled with interesting people doing interesting things then we have to stop doing what people who want boring places filled with boring people doing boring things want us to do. We - and that means political and community leadership - need to stop thinking that the role of the local parish, town, village or district council is to look sternly at whether someone should be allowed a house extension, to run a fair, to open a cafe or, madly, to want a shark on the roof.

Councils are filled with people who see the busy-ness of local community as a problem, who tut and frown at folk outside a pub drinking and laughing and who think only regulations, controls, bans and licences stand between civilisation and anarchy. And who hate the untidiness of whimsy.

This, more than anything else, is the curse of local government. We are wielders of the permit and the permission not huggers of the whimsical and weird. Perhaps we could change it round! The world would be more fun I think!

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Does Bradford Council need a chief executive?

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Today Bradford Council's chief executive announced his departure from the Council. It seems to me, therefore, that this is a good time to look at the role in a manner free from suggestions (or accusations) of this sort of review being 'personal'. For the past two years Bradford's Conservative Group has argued that, given financial constraints and extensive change programmes, no function should be excluded from examination. We have therefore argued for a review of the scope and purpose of the chief executive's role.

It seems to me that there are two sorts of council - ones like Oldham, East Yorkshire or Barnsley with a dominant political leader (we should note that this applies de facto where there is a directly elected mayor) and those like Manchester, Sheffield and Bradford where the chief executives act - as a former colleague described - as an 'unelected mayor'.

In Bradford the collected policy development resource reporting to the political leadership consists of just two or three people. In contrast the chief executive can call upon and direct a 'strategic support' resource in excess of eighty officers. The policy-making function sits squarely with the chief executive and gets little or no direction from the Council's political leadership. This has applied under both Conservative and Labour leadership, it is the accepted arrangement (although the current chief executive has created a stronger policy profile at the centre by pulling resource from departments).

If we accept that local government is subject to democratic control, we need to ask whether this control is real. And by asking this question, we end up asking whether politicians should live up to role their description implies and take the lead in setting policy? Furthermore, since local government is complicated, it makes sense for professional policy support within a council to be for those politicians rather than for the chief executive. We do not expect government ministers to develop policy without policy advice provided independently from the job of administering the functions of government departments. Yet in local government such an arrangement - policy advice allowing politicians to develop policy - is not the case (or not in my experience).

Without policy development (and assuming that political leadership actually does some leading) the requirement for a chief executive such as Bradford's becomes more an exercise in organisational machismo than an essential function. The position returns to the old-fashioned town clerk role - a combination of essential governance functions and providing direction for those who the council employs to manage the different functions of the local council business.

The quasi-political role adopted by modern chief executives - a combination of ra-ra and promotion with some sort of 'sector leadership' - has contributed to the reducing of local politics to the fringes of relevance. A first step to restoring the balance would be in letting politicians develop policy rather than chief executives.

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Sunday 13 July 2014

Death doesn't become us - revisiting the case against 'assisted dying'

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My Mum has just gone into a nursing home. It hasn't been an easy time for my Dad and I feel slightly guilty that, for reasons of distance and business, I haven't been there as much as perhaps I should. But this isn't about me visiting my angst on you, dear reader, but rather about what it costs. Not because I think that johnny taxpayer should pick up the tab willy-nilly but rather to demonstrate the financial advantages - for families and the government - of people dying more quickly.

The fees at Mum's home run to about £1000 per week, which my maths tells me is £52,000 per year. And this is a hell of a lot of money. More, I suspect, than my dad ever earned in a year and comfortably more than the average earnings of people today (my Dad retired in 1997). Again, let's be clear that I do think our savings and assets are best directed to our own interests and this includes providing care - I really do not feel that I have any right to demand that young people with big mortgages and families to raise pay more tax so I can inherit Mum and Dad's house.

But this cost - £26,000 in a six month period - is one very good reason to question the seemingly inexorable move to what is called 'assisted dying'. Now when I read the advertisements placed by Dignity in Dying I am, like you will be, touched by the stories there of people's last days and how a quick exit would have saved them suffering. I don't doubt the sincerity of the people involved - knowing their beloved brother, wife or mother was dying they sought only to make what was left of their life less painful. And they think that helping these people to die would have been a release from that pain.

It's hard not to find the case compelling. So to help you understand my doubts, let me tell you something else about my Mum. Something I wrote some while ago in a little article called, "Death doesn't become us":

My Mum spent 25 years and more working with old people in and around Penge – delivering meals-on-wheels, driving the mini-buses and running Penge & Anerley Age Concern’s lunch club and day centre on Melvin Road. In this time she saw every sort of folk – from Mr Squirrel who worried that he couldn’t (at 96) dig the garden as in times past to Dr Arnott, communist party member, academic historian and employer of a maid.

Every day, my Mum would tell us, one or more of the people she saw would proclaim – in that depression of loneliness so common among the old and infirm – “I’m just a burden, I’d be better off dead”, or some similar formula of despair. Mum’s response would be to tell them not to be so silly, have a cup of tea and a chat.

But Mum’s view – informed by bitter experience – was that not all the relatives and carers took the same view as she did.

And this last sentence captures my concerns. You and I may be good, honest folk who wouldn't dream of having granny bumped off so we could inherit earlier. But can you be certain that others have our scruples? That there is no circumstance where 'six months to live' is liberally interpreted:

...where a depressed, slightly confused, sad old person signs to say they want to die, where the bureaucracy takes this as consent and Auntie Sissie or Grandpa Geoff is shipped safely across the Styx leaving his worldly goods behind for the inheritors to enjoy.

I know there will be safeguards. I'm sure people have considered how they would mitigate the possibility of the six months rule being abused. But I am less sure. My Mum told too many stories of rapacious and uncaring relatives, of useless solicitors and deadening, rule-bound social workers or doctors for me to be so sure that, despite the agony of those stories in Dignity in Dying's advertisement, we can go to a place where we deem it acceptable to kill another human being.

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Saturday 12 July 2014

On civilised behaviour...

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From an email received the other day regarding travellers camping on playing fields in Cottingley near Bingley:

...my husband has been to the playing field this evening and reports there are several large mounds of tipped rubble/earth around the perimeter of the field, bags of "household" rubbish and waste, i.e., bottles, cartons, empty tins and general rubbish, strewn around.  The main problem is the large volume of human excrement on the path over the stream between the playing field and the Yorkshire Clinic and possibly on the land adjacent to the banks of the stream bordering the Yorkshire Clinic grounds - my husband did not dare venture this far, deterred by the stench of the visible excrement and also the smell of urine emanating from the immediate area.

Employees of Bradford Council's Parks Department are now undertaking the clean-up with the costs falling on local council tax payers. What makes me most angry about this invasion isn't the fact of some travellers parking on some council-owned land (this is despite the Council making more than adequate provision for travellers in the District) but that they then proceed to leave us, quite literally, to clear up the crap they leave behind.

I have no quarrel with people who make the choice to live a nomadic lifestyle trundling from place to place with their vans and caravans. But, if they want the host population in places they stop to treat them with any sort of respect, it is necessary for travellers to behave with at least a modicum of human decency and civilisation. If such a disgusting experience were unusual we'd perhaps be understanding but it is repeated time and time again by groups of travellers passing through the locality. Broken gates, ruined football or cricket pitches, copious dumps of rubbish and a cavalier approach to what we might call waste management - this is what people see from travellers rather than some sort of adorable and misunderstood minority ill-treated by us folk in houses.

It simple terms whoever you are, don't leave your mess for the rest of us to clear up and expect any sympathy or consideration.

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Ban fridges!

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The 'green movement' (if the odd agglomeration of leftie twits and self-righteous know-alls merits the term 'movement') has developed a love for exploiting middle-class angst and guilt. You see, dear reader, our wicked consumerist ways are to blame for all the planet's woes and the western middle-class mum is at the pinnacle of this pyramid of badness, the queen of carbon emissions.

Of course, as large terrestrial mammals in North America discovered 30,000 years ago, man is a pretty rapacious predator and his passion for consumption led to their extinction before he'd cottoned on to the advantages of taming and breeding those meat animals.

However, those early North American pioneers weren't as bad as today's western middle-class mum. Oh no.  For today we have fridges, huge great fridges:

Middle-class families should stop buying large fridges in order to save energy and tackle climate change, a government-commissioned report has suggested.

Families could save up to £36 a year on their electricity bills by replacing large fridge-freezers or televisions with smaller appliances, according to a study published by the Department for Energy and Climate Change.

The report found that the average family fridge had grown in volume by two fifths since 1985, amid a fashion for large American-style appliances, while the average television had grown by more than seven inches since 2004. It warned that the trend undermined attempts to cut carbon emissions. 

Feeling guilty as you opened your double door fridge this morning? Well you should be because you're damaging the planet with such a huge monstrosity in your kitchen. Polar bears are sliding into the ocean right now because you want more space to store your organic, shade grown vegetables, fairtrade chardonnay and locally-sourced free range guinea fowl.

Such selfishness is highlighted by the author of the report in question:

Nicola Terry, a co-author of the study, said: “Why do we need a bigger TV, and why do we need a bigger fridge? I don’t understand the case, but when people go to the shop they think, that’s bigger it must be better.” 

See middle-class people everywhere - your abject obsession with keeping up is destroying the planet!

The truth is, of course, that I want a bigger TV because I want a bigger picture. And I want a bigger fridge - a plumbed-in fridge - so I can store more stuff safely. But when patronising researchers arrive trying to guilt-trip us into getting a tiny little fridge and a hanky-sized TV, the screws of social pressure are turned. I can already hear the voice of some righteous hipster; "oh, Jocasta and I live out out green  principles and haven't bought one of those American fridges - so I'm afraid the fairtrade sav blanc is a bit warm."

Trust me here folks. The size of your fridge won't make a jot of difference to the planet's temperature. So buy the one that suits your needs. Better still, be a consumer and buy the one you want. The massive walk in one with chilled water on tap and enough space to store all the food and drink for the planet-destroying barbecue you're holding on Sunday.

Go for it! Stick it to those green fussbuckets!

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Friday 11 July 2014

Freedom or security? Is this really the choice?

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It's OK folks, I'm not going to recycle that Ben Franklin quote but you'll all have noticed that the government, the possible next government and perhaps the last government too (not to mention governments in Europe and the USA) are all very keen to tell you that them having the power to stick their neb into any and every part of our lives is necessary for reasons of 'national security'.

You see, dear reader, some British people have decided that living in Birmingham or Billericay is dull and have headed off to Syria or some other part of the middle east to join in the excitingly murderous civil wars going on round there. These young folk are, in the jargon of today, "radicalised" and represent a serious existential threat to our civilisation and to that nebulous but convenient thing, 'national security'.

"It is the first duty of government to protect our national security and to act quickly when that security is compromised. As events in Iraq and Syria demonstrate, now is not the time to be scaling back on our ability to keep our people safe."

Now I rather understand why Prime Ministers are wont to say this sort of thing - after all when there is some sort of terrorist incident they're the ones who have to front up the government's response and deal with the media's inevitable "you didn't do enough" line.  And there are some British people fighting out there in the middle east who may well return to the UK puffed up with their radicalised ideas ready to do terrible things. It's not clear how many there are out there - some reports suggest 700 and other reports also suggest that a couple of hundred or so are already back in the UK.

So it seems eminently sensible for the security forces to keep an eye on these chaps so as to make sure they aren't up to nefarious stuff that threatens our security. This is what we employ spies to do, I think. But those spies have all the powers and systems they need to keep tabs on a relatively small number of dodgy radicalised men who've been out to Syria on some sort of jihad. I don't see how the ability to monitor people who have done nothing wrong and are doing nothing wrong adds to our security.

This intrusion makes us less secure. It doesn't make us safer from the terrorist or the murderer but it provides government with the means to interfere in the lives of innocent people. This is the world of micro-chipped waste bins, covert surveillance of parents, the use of anti-social behaviour orders to effect social control and the preference for the banning of anything that makes the police or security services have to do their core job of protecting us.

We are less secure because an ever widening collection of anonymous officials can order investigations, gather data and take action to enforce a mountain of controls and regulations. Everything from the smoking ban in pubs and the use of curfew orders on drinking through to legislation on speech that is so broadly written as to allow the authorities to arrest almost anyone on whatever pretext they want. And all this intervention in our lives is done to protect us, to prevent offence and to make sure that we all comply with the latest iteration of equalities-speak dreamt up by those with an interest in extending its scope.

For sure the government won't be earwigging you calling the local kebab shop for a delivery of doner and chips. Nor will they be routinely opening your post or giggling at your inane text messages. But they are giving themselves the power to do these things should they wish to. All on the basis of 'national security', a term so ill-defined as to place little or no limit on the scope of the security services and police.

If we are to have changes to surveillance rules and to give secret agencies powers to make greater use of such powers then this needs to be accompanied by two other significant additions - much greater openness and transparency from the security agencies and strong guarantees of free speech in legislation. Conducting a review of laws created for a pre-internet age does make some sense but this should not be undertaken without a wider public understanding of what any new rules might mean. Simply saying something akin to "look at the scary terrorist man with a beard" as the basis for new rules isn't right and gives me little comfort that my freedoms - especially my right to an opinion you may disagree with - will be protected.

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Thursday 10 July 2014

Does sociology need to be rubbish?

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I'm not a sociologist. Indeed I have on many occasions criticised the discipline of sociology for its lack of rigour, its preference for anecdote (OK "qualitative research") over robust experiment and quantitative analysis. But, given that 'society' (whatever we may mean by that cursed term) is central to us human animals, we should perhaps give its study a little more credit and attention.

This thought was prompted by yet another of those trite poster slogans that people recycle and share as if they are some sort of great insight into the human condition. It went:

'How about we live in a society rather than an economy?'

A moment's thought reveals the inanity of this gloriously sweeping observation - we live (and have no choice in this) in both a human society and an economy. But beneath this specious statement there might be a little glimmer of real insight from whoever penned the aphorism. We spend a great deal talking about economics and the economy. Economists are the particle physicists of social science, feted and celebrated simply for the fact of their being such masters of an impenetrable subject that brings such knowledge to our world.

Even those who seek to popularise economics fall into a trap - they'll smugly post something prefaced with a parenthesised observation: "wonkish". This usually means filled with either some chunky maths or, more usually, a dense forest of entwined jargon. And for all that we read the author's other stuff and imbibe of their wisdom, we have a sneaking suspicion that behind that innocent word "wonkish" lies the real truth. If we could only get to see through the pea-souper of indulgent jargon then the scales would fall from our eyes and we would ascend to a higher plane of understanding.

Sociologists are different. They are the botanists of social science, a bunch of folk who flit about the world saying, "ooh, that's interesting. look at that!" Except that sociologists, rather than just looking and describing have taken the idea of participant observation to the point of the ludicrous - they want to reform society in some way that would end sin and perfect mankind.

I spent a happy few years reading the output of marketing academics. And especially those writing in the field of consumer behaviour. In this field you'll find loads of quantitative research, experiment, ideas hypothesised and tested - everything you expect from a robust social science. These researchers help us understand how we respond to advertising (it's not as simple as you think), the manner in which we make in-store choices and how colours or images affect behaviour. And this is - in a manner not grasped by the actual discipline - sociology.

So here's a challenge to sociologists. Put aside the Alinsky-light social activism, step back from relating the sorrows of interviewed sufferers and embrace something more interesting and exciting. Something you can learn from those studying the behaviour of consumers. Stop with the political posturing and campaigning. And actually study society. Explore how we respond to the multiple stimuli of modern communications, poke away at why social capital declined rather than just saying it has, and explore the world as it is rather than as it would be in your perfect sub-Marxist utopia. In simple terms do the -ology bit of the sociology.

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Sunday 6 July 2014

Is it time to scrap the licence fee?

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The nature of technology means that the license fee - unless the basis for its collection changes - is a diminishing return as people switch to self-programmed TV and media consumption. In effect, only big live events would make the cut and these will be on at the local pub, on big screens in the town square and probably in new venues like village halls or community centres.

And the public rather understands this and, increasingly supports scrapping the fee:

Half (51 per cent) of the UK want the BBC licence fee scrapped and the corporation to fund itself, a study of 2,049 Brits by ComRes has found.

Of course the BBC is having some sort of apoplexy at the temerity of the public and refers to its own (unpublished) research on the matter. Research that, naturally, shows a majority supporting the license fee.  What we need to appreciate here is that the BBC start by establishing that the licence fee is value-for-money (which it probably is) and then move to argue that this justifies its continuation. I find that, quite the contrary, the value-for-money defence undermines the rationale for a licence fee - if the fee is such good value then people will surely be happy to pay it voluntarily?

I am also uncertain as to the sense or purpose in having a state broadcaster. In the infancy of TV this rather made sense as did getting the income from licensing the hardware - after all it was only in the 1970s when near universal ownership of TVs was reached. Now, in a world of multiple, competing broadcasters the case for a state system collapses as does the compulsory approach to funding. If government wishes to use part of available output for its messages then, rather than owning the biggest chunk of broadcasting, it should purchase such coverage on the market.

And the way to guarantee the independence of the BBC - something we treasure - could be to take away the government's control of the Corporation's financing. So long as the funding for the BBC is via a state mandated poll tax then it remains a state broadcaster. I see no reason why the majority of people, through one route or another, wouldn't carry on subscribing to the BBC's coverage on a voluntary basis. And we would maybe see a reduction in the Corporation's indulgence in casual financial waste such as sending nearly 400 people to Brazil for the World Cup Finals and similar numbers to cover the US elections and Glastonbury festival.

None of the arguments here are about attacking the BBC. Rather, such an approach would make the BBC a more potent force since it would lose it's 'part of the state' tag and get a defence against being simply dismissed as 'establishment'. The Corporation might be smaller and some of its programming may move to orthodox advertising-based funding models but I believe it would be strengthened by such independence not weakened.

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Saturday 5 July 2014

Giving your teenaged daughter a drink won't make her a drunkard

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A single glass of wine or beer at the age of 14 can push a young teenager along the path to binge drinking, say scientists. 

So begins the Daily Telegraph's report on some research into the psychological factors in adolescents that might predict whether they become "binge drinkers" at sixteen.  The thing is that this isn't what the researchers are saying. They aren't arguing that if you allow your fourteen-year-old daughter a half glass of champagne on New Year's Eve she will become, in short order, a raging alcoholic. Yet that is what is being implied here.

The research (or rather what is being reported) tells us that the researchers have a jolly model based on a series of 'personality' factors that has a 70% chance of predicting that a given young person will be 'binge drinking' at age sixteen. Now my gut instinct is that, like lots of psychological metrics, the model is deeply flawed. However, if we accept what it is saying, it is still a pretty blunt instrument that will both fail to identify young people 'at risk' and also identify young people who aren't 'at risk'.

Finally, we are having all population solutions - don't let your child drink - proposed for what is clearly not an all population problem. Indeed, although the size of the whole study cohort (2,000) is given we have no idea how many of the young people surveyed actually drink. We know that over 80% of adolescents don't drink at all and that most of those who do drink, don't so so dangerously. So even with the study's broad definition of 'binge drinking' (based on self-reported drunkenness) the numbers involved are likely to be very small. The certainty of the findings has to be questioned given these numbers (plus the likelihood of young people overstating consumption).

It is useful to study adolescent development and, clearly, risk-taking behaviour could be a predictor of many things (some good like being future innovators, creators and entrepreneurs) but to argue that giving a child a drink will "push" them into binge drinking is a complete misrepresentation of the research.

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