Though Cowards Flinch

I’ve contributed to a running debate in the letter’s section of the Morning Star:

In 2009 George Osborne said:

The fact that people in the City give us money, even though we are promising tougher regulation, is a sign that many people in the City understand that there needs to be change.

Osborne once sold himself as the Chancellor who would be progressive and tough on banks, carry out well needed reform, and still walk away with votes from the city, because he was decisive, on top of things, and they recognised the need and public thirst for change.

So what, 2 years on, was the change the bankers could believe in?

Britain’s biggest banks are to be given until 2019 – longer than had been expected – to implement radical reform of their operations to prevent another taxpayer bailout of the system.

Of course, George Osborne welcomed Sir John Vickers’ findings, or what the Independent Commission on Banking have admitted were “deliberately composed of moderate elements” – but, given the almost universal agreement that high street and speculative arms of banking should be separated (apart from Bob Diamond and a few others), one wonders why the ICB stopped short of a recommendation for a full break-up, plumping only for a ring fencing of the two activities.

(On the subject of Bob Diamond, he met with the Chancellor on the 1st of this month to request he delay banking reforms, possibly repeating previous threats that he’ll take Barclays and leave the UK. Just saying).

As an Independent leader article put it: “ring-fencing still leaves open the possibility of banks stealthily dismantling the internal demarcation over time.”

I guess with (not so) tough measures like this, it’s obvious why big shots in the city are bankrolling Osborne – they want a man who can get things done for them.

The Vickers report on banking reform is long, but two paragraphs sum up where it goes wrong.  

The first is para. 5.93, which justifies the 2019 implementation timetable thus:

The Commission has taken into account the current equity capitalisation of the UK banks and the levels of potentially loss-absorbing capacity that they already hold in forming its recommendations and setting the timetable for implementation set out below. This should provide sufficient time for banks to build up extra capacity without having rapidly to shrink assets. If implemented on this timetable, and given the degree to which transitional and arbitrage risks have been factored into the recommendations, the risks to the pace of recovery around the reform package should be low.

In other words, the Commission wants to give banks the time in which to balance their willingness to lend and the size of their deposit base.

Now, I’m no banker, but balancing lending with deposits seems to my untutored eye to be the essence of being a bank. 

So if the Commission believes that  banks cannot undertake their core function for another seven years, without the risk of further meltdown, shouldn’t they at least look at some kind of alternative?

Which brings me to paragraph 6 of the Executive Summary:

In any case, it should not be the role of the state to run banks. In a market economy that is for the private sector disciplined by market forces within a robust regulatory framework.

So THE key alternative for the fostering of ‘real’ economic growth – promoted by plenty of perfectly sensible economists AND Peter Mandelson - is ruled out on page 1, with no justification beyond “it’s not the role of the state”.

No wonder the report leaves a bitter taste.

Today’s Daily Mail front page is all about:

dishonest GPs defrauding the taxpayer of millions of pounds by claiming money for ‘ghost patients’.

Now, I’m not here to defend either poor practice or fraud by GPs, if that is proven in the fullness of time.  

But I am interested that the Daily Mail seems unable to make the fairly simple connection between:

1. the PCTs concerned actually having done their scrutiny job pretty well, by discovering these alleged frauds/poor practices through their well-established ”quality and outcomes franmework” process; and
2. the Coalition’s plan to abolish all these PCTs in 2013, and their replacement with commisioning groups of, erm, “dishonest GPs”.

And I’m intrigued as to why the Daily Mail team didn’t show the same front page alacrity when it was reported that other PCTs had been “cleansing” thousands of very real patients from GP lists in “cost cutting drives”, with 38,000 patients removed from lists in Brent alone. 

After all, the scale of the “savings” incurred by potentially denying thousands of poor people access to primary healthcare is many times  the cost to the NHS of any of this alleged fraud/malpractice.

Very odd editorial priorities.

While a great many of us watched with pleasure the Arab Spring unfolding, and other similar events in and around the region, others – such as arms dealers – looked on in horror.

Nowhere did this happen with such irony than Libya. Earlier this year Sergei V. Chemezov, the director of the Russian state company in charge of weapons exports, told reporters that Russia can expect to lose $4 billion because of the unrest.

This relates to an “historic” trip taken by Putin to Libya in 2008. One journal has it like this:

Russia canceled Libya’s $4.5 billion debt “in exchange for multibillion-dollar contracts for Russian companies.” Dozens of documents were signed, including a Declaration on strengthening friendship and developing cooperation between the two countries, as well as a number of major contracts.

In January 2010, Putin announced that Russia was to supply Libya with “small-arms and other weapons to the value of $1.8bn (£1.1bn, 1.3bn euros)”. Such investment seemed worth making last year – and it didn’t come cheap cancelling all that debt.

Now, as one news source has put it: “$4 bn down the drain”. The rebels are refusing to “buy weapons from Russia because the country will not need them in the future.” Those weapons might have been used to kill them, the rebels, and now they are refusing to buy them – makes sense to me.

…And I laughed until I cried.

Cameron speaking today:

That’s why I have asked our social policy review to look into whether we should cut the benefits of those parents whose children constantly play truant.

Oh for Christ’s sake.  He’s a fucking moron.

Benefit deduction for regular truancy already happens, regularly.

Taken at random from Google:

Hammersmith & Fulham Council guidance:

Repeated truancy can result in fines and possibly even time in prison for parents. Prosecution can result in a fine of up to £2,500, a jail sentence of up to three months or a community sentence.

Newcastle Council guidance:

The magistrates court can apply to have not only fines but also costs and compensation orders to be deducted from benefit.

Deduction of benefit for truancy has been happening for years. I’ve argued against it personally, long and hard, in magistrates’ courts (I was a magistrate till 2007).

Either Cameron’s telling us the fines process will be taken out of the judicial process to god-knows-where, or he/his policy team simply don’t have a fucking clue.

Today Randeep Ramesh spent two hours answering questions on the Guardian about the NHS bill, currently going through parliament.

Naturally, Though Cowards flinch submitted a question – two in fact! They are as follows:

1) Will the reforms, as they stand now, really abolish bureaucracy?

And,

2) What impact do you think Lansley’s changes, and in particular his championship of privatisation over the years – have had on President Obama’s attempts to change the healthcare system in the US?

To which Mr Ramesh replied:

1) It will replace one bureaucracy, run by the state, with another private one. The difference is that the private sector bureaucracy, I think, will be bigger as the system will be more complex and more contract-driven. It will probably employ more people. Unless the social enterprise/charitable arm gets their act together it will be paid for by cutting wages and pensions.

And,

2) Interesting that you speak of Obama. I spoke to Robert Wah, chair of the American Medical Association, who thought that LAnsley’s plans would have some effect on US thinking – but only if they could slowdown how quickly costs rise. He was largely behind the reforms, unsurprising for an American perhaps. It’s worth looking at the US as Nobel laureate Paul Krugman noted about the state-funded Medicare system and its private peers:

“The larger point is that we don’t have a Medicare problem, we have a health care cost problem. And Medicare actually does a better job of controlling costs than private insurers — not remotely good enough, but better.”

*

So there we have it: More bureaucracy and (if the US system is anything to go by) a better deal only for the private sector – whose principle concern is not necessarily patients.

Talking to GP Magazine, Labour peer Lord Rea said “it was unlikely that the majority of MPs in the Commons will vote against the Bill.”

Not good.

Will the Arab Spring become the Arab Autumn on Saturday 17th September?

I ask this purely in the spirit of enquiry. The honest answer is I don’t know, but as a one-time resident of the country I am keeping what tabs I can on developments.  This is severely limited by my inability to read Arabic.

Saturday 17th September is the date being advertised for the supposed uprising on this Facebook site, and that site appears to have inspired this ‘counter revolution’ Facebook site, and there are competing Youtube videos around, as well as various discussion threads (just stick “17 septembre algerie” in Google for starters).

The obvious questions then arise.  Why the 17th September, and why a Saturday rather than a call to action following Friday prayers, as has been the trend in Tunisia, Egypt, Syria and Yemen?

One explanation given for the date is that it’s the (151st) anniversary of Napoleon III’s visit to Algiers, though that hardly seems convincing.  The Saturday timing is being explained on the basis that the opposition grouping, the Coordination Nationale pour le Changement et la Démocratie (CNCD) has previously called for Satruday demonstrations, and this has been taken as evidence that it is the CNCD who are behind the attempts to build the 17th as the key day. 

In general, the message board are awash with accusation and counter-accusations around Lybian, Islamist and ‘Zionist’ influences, and it’s hard to get any real picture of what might actually happen, if anything.

We’ve been here before in Algeria, of course.  Back in January there were eight self-immolations, some of which are likely to have been “inspired” by the initial action in Tunisia, and there was sporadic demonstration activity. 

On balance, it does seem unlikely that the 17 September calls are anthing more than wishful thinking on the part of the internet-agitants, and that the resources on the ground needed to make it happen may not be present.  The conventional wisdom that memories of the truly horrific civil war are too fresh in people’s minds to risk any new insurrection probably do carry some weight, as does the fact that the main opposition parties and groupings are split.   Cutting across this are the complex questions of Arab/Berber/Kabyle identity politics, which may militate against any national movement (though of course that is what was said about Libya a few months ago).

Nevertheless, the fact that revolutions have taken place in the three countries directly to the East, and in the most unlikely of circumstances to the outside observer, means I’ll be keeping a close eye on the Algeria-focused interwebs over the next few days, and I’d be interested to hear what people closer to information sources have to say in response to this inquiring post.

Last night, my LRC comrade and friend Simon, of Latte Labour (from here I will refer to him as LL) penned a criticism on his blog of my piece on why anti-fascists must fill the political vacuum that the EDL aims to exploit.

The piece is very convincing, and you can read it here, as well as remind yourself of the fantastic, yet worrying, Muslim Ray Guns video, and a number of original images.

LL starts his piece with a quote from Labour councillor David Adley who tweeted the following re Peter Tatchell: “”stop far right Islamists” is completely missing the point of today’s demo. Where were the “far right Islamists” today?”

The point here about an absent enemy is clearly not the crux of LL’s argument, even though he begins with this quote – but rather that it seems inappropriate to mention far right Islamism on the day where many gathered to support Muslims against the EDL. LL develops other themes, some of which I pick up here.

I want to start with a quote, around a 1/3 of the way down the piece which reads:

Carl himself quotes the East London Mosque as saying that the event of concern was the doing of an ‘external hirer’. One wonders what has happened in church halls over the years. And here, I think, is part of what is going on. There is a basic failure to understand the function of a mosque as a fairly fluid community space.

I’m so glad LL picked up on this point, because as it happens one other point of disagreement we have has regard to platforms for fascists. I, for example, will allow far right opinions to be published in the comments thread of my blog if, and only if, they are challenged – either by myself, or by a reader. I don’t take ad hominem argument very seriously, but I do take fascist ideology seriously, and am prepared to challenge it. LL on the other hand has made it clear that spokespeople from the British National Party, for example, should have no platform at any level, lest we take their ideas seriously. For me, taken to its furthest logical extension (a total ban of these ideas being made public in any way) is not only, itself, totalitarian, but would drive it underground and make it harder to track.

The reason I raise this is because Anwar al-Awlaki was allowed to speak first of all – and it has been found true that he was not moderate before his arrest in Yemen in 2006 – and also unopposed and unchallenged via video link to mosque-goers. I contend that had it been Nick Griffin speaking at a church hall for example, the noise would have been ferocious, but not only that – the vicar of the church would not have heard the last of it; giving voice to a fascist, how dare they (and rightly so – no matter the subject on which Griffin, hypothetically, was allowed to speak).

This hypothetical church also has a duty to be a “fluid community space”, but allowing free terrain to a person with demonstrably dangerous ideas is beyond reasonableness. It would be absurd not to expect the East London Mosque (ELM) to abide by these same principles.

Further still, the spokesperson for the ELM at the time did not come out to blame al-Awlaki’s presence as the work of an “external hirer” – instead took responsibility and then implied they had no idea al-Awlaki was as dangerous as he is – an unlikely story.

LL notes at this stage that the details here may not be important – which I contend they very much are – but does say, on giving me the benefit of the doubt (though, there is no doubt?) that it would be “wrong to push the point in tandem with an anti-fascist mobilisation”. It is here that we reach the meat of what LL is saying, and here we come to understand a basic design flaw in the Left’s analysis of the far right.

The English Defence League are dangerous for one reason alone: they are growing in number and with that comes the threat of attacks on innocent people and the prospect of vigilantism – with it a return of violent fascist street gangs, roaming the streets picking on people, probably at random, for their religion and a number of other varying factors (have we not also seen the worrying pictures published by Hope Not Hate of the EDL members carrying armed weaponry – are these people who are against extremism?). They are not, we should remind ourselves, a threat because the convincing and difficult set of ideas they hold.

To be sure, the EDL is largely politically immature. A pertinent question, I think, here is to ask is a political group the sum of its parts or the sum of its party line? If the latter, then is the party line what they tell us, the public, it is, or is it what they tell themselves internally? If the former, then at best the EDL is a group of agitators who have sought to wind up what they perceive as the Muslim enemy with petite tactics (Israel flags, pig masks, songs such as “Muhammed is a paedo”) and street presence (of which one must include the almost inevitable escalation to violence, racism and general threat).

I hope that we all, especially on the Left (which is my tribe), can agree on this analysis of the EDL. In which case, if we can, why are we not honest about our opposition to all forms of extremism, not just the extremism they represent. After all, when the right or far right accuse the Left of being soft on far right Islamism, to the point where we often team up with it (Moazzam Begg is someone who is on record as being unable to discount his own support for the Taliban, their disgusting pursuits and ideologies – who only oppose al-Qaeda on issues surrounding national strategy. But in spite of that is given free terrain, even today – by the human rights organisation Amnesty International [for the Rights based Liberal ticket] and by the Socialist Workers’ Party at their Marxism Festival [for the Trostkyite far Left ticket], for example) there is some truth in that. We don’t exist only to appease the EDL, obviously, but it makes no sense for this truth to be present in their rhetoric. How many, for example, while writing articles and blogs from a Leftist perspective on how vile the EDL are, will be writing about the homophobic threats Peter Tatchell received on that day – on the side of the road supposedly representing enlightened thinking, unlike across the road where the pinheaded thugs lay, pissed – for even daring to hold a banner suggesting Muslims and Gays unite against a fascist mob?

So, to the challenge of whether it is appropriate or not, my answer is unequivocally: yes. One of the interesting things about the EDL, and neo-fascist, anti-Islamic rhetoric today, is that much of it professes to being tolerant of homosexuality and homosexuals. The EDL even has a gay division of sorts. But Peter Tatchell sees very well what cynical ploy is going on here, and has acted on it. He recognises that at heart the EDL is a “clash of civilisations” organisation that thinks Muslims and Islam is, at its very core, backward. Tatchell refutes this. His aim is to work with the Muslim community, particularly with the gay Muslim community, against the extremism they experience from both sides. Not only are they Muslim-bashed by the EDL, they are gay-bashed by homophobes in their own community, who use Islam as a weapon against them, and not a tool of peace, which it was intended for. Tatchell is standing on the side of those Muslims for whom coming out has meant not only neglect but torment and backlash – it could not have been more appropriate for him to demonstrate who exactly it was he was bellowing against that day, because it shows up the lack of nuance in the EDL’s message, and it is altogether concrete who and what he stands against, lest the Left be confused.

We, as the Left, are against the extremism from all angles, and Tatchell’s placard that day was not simply a message that confronted the aggressors across the road, but provided a box around the ears for the Left, some of whom don’t feel it necessary to challenge hard right thinking of those to whom they give victim statuses. If that isn’t patronising, paternalist, dangerous and, ironically, rather neo-colonialist, then I don’t know what is.

We could come back another day to hold a smaller protest about the Islamist far right (and we should, in the spirit of this – which Peter Tatchell was only one who even bothered to reply to) or we could allow Tatchell to protest in the capacity in which he is known, against extremists on both sides, and from whom Muslims suffer severely.

For LL to say, as he does, that Tatchell’s “words will do absolutely nothing for gay Muslims” is dangerously to forget how much ignoring it, or pushing it to one side, will do – undoubtedly, were Tatchell to stage a protest condemning homophobia in the Muslim community, he would still receive abuse from the Left on the grounds that it is inappropriate while there are still imperfections in the power balance between Muslims and non-Muslims (just one proof of why the Left must readdress its own opposition to far right Islamism). Indeed, as Nick Lowles of Hope Not Hate himself once said: “We oppose the racism and Islamophobia of the EDL just as we oppose the religious bigotry and antisemitism of the MAC.” Was he being inappropriate?

Ken Clarke uses the following information to justify the tough new punishments he’s planning for the “criminal classes”:

It’s not yet been widely recognised, but the hardcore of the rioters were, in fact, known criminals. Close to three-quarters of those aged 18 or over charged with riot offences already had a prior conviction

Ooh, three quarters. That sounds a lot. He must be right then.

Except, that it’s not necessarily a lot at all, when compared to the percentage of the general population, and the percentage of all people in the riot-affected areas, that have a criminal record.

Figures for criminal record rates are not routinely maintained, but this statistical bulletin from 2001 is instructive.

Table A gives the educated estimate that 27% of males between 18 and 45 years have some kind of criminal record (we focus on males here because they make up the majority of riot convictions)

While this looks nowhere near the 70-75% used by Clarke, the following must also be considered:

a) This 27% covers only ‘standard list’ offences, which include “all indictable and certain of the more serious summary offences”, but exclude  cautions, reprimands, final warnings, or informal methods of dealing with offenders”. It is not immediately clear if Clarke’s figures, presumably drawn direct from the police (who would have access to this information) include or exclude the latter set, but clearly he would have reason to include as many run-ins with the police in order to maximise his claim.

b) The riots took place and mostly involved people living in deprived areas, where criminal record rates are almost certainly higher anyway.  As noted, this sort of data is not routinely available, though it is possible the newly announced Guardian/LSE study may provide some data, but it would not be a surprise to many people, I suspect, if the deprived area criminal record rate turned out to be 2-3 times as high as in the country overall.

c) Most importantly, and missed in the earlier edition of this post, many of those charged and now counted as part of the 75% used by Clarke, will have been traced from fingerprints (hat-tip to Bob Piper on this – he has spoken to his local police who confirm that this was a key route to charging).  Obviously, only people with previous convictions will have previous fingerprints, and this will skew the percentage massively in favour of Clarke’s thesis).

So it may well be that, in the end, that the proportion of those convicted of riot offences is still somewhat higher than the proportion of people living in the riot-affected areas (and my recent rational choice account suggests why this might be). 

Or it might not be.

It is, therefore, the height of irresponsibility on the part of Ken Clarke to be selling criminal justice policy before what he now claims has been substantiated.

Mind you, Clarke’s approach to policy-making has always been a bit feral.