National Information Forum We Hate! Page

A series of articles by Derek Kinrade originally republished from the National Information Forum's magazine Innovations in Information between 2004 and 2007, but now continuing in the National Information Forum's regular, electronic - "Member's Information Sheets".

Call centres • Secrecy • Models • Spin • Dogma • Bureaucracy • Pragmatism • The Olympic Games • Petering Out • Retirement • Euphemisms • Football • Rewarding Failure • Road Casualties • Honours • The Ex Factor • Blood Sports • Inequality • Bad Politics • The Burka • Obesity • E.Mails • Self-Interest •The Suppression of Information • Consumerism • Tradition • War •
Parking Enforcement • Injustice • Hypocracy • NEW Gutter Journalism

The views expressed are not necessarily those of the National Information Forum. There are, of course, many other subjects that are ‘off-limits’ on the website of a charity. But there may, from time to time, be new thoughts that ought to be expressed here towards a healthy debate on social issues.

WE HATE NO. 31: GUTTER JOURNALISM
Marry, sir, they have committed false report; moreover, they have spoken untruths, secondarily, they are slanders; sixth and lastly, they have belied a lady; thirdly, they have verified unjust things; and, to conclude, they are lying knaves.
William Shakespeare: ‘Much Ado About Nothing’, Act V, scene 1.

In approaching this subject, we are acutely aware of the need to avoid intellectual snobbery. If we should speak of ‘quality’ newspapers, there is an implication that there are others that lack quality. This may not be so. They may simply be different as ‘pop’ differs from ‘classical’ music. A range of publications cater for a disparate audience of varying literary abilities.

Nor should ‘tabloid’ necessarily be seen as a pejorative term. There is no good reason why fine journalism should not appear in tabloid format. Equally it is apparent that extreme views are by no means confined to the tabloid press. They commonly feature in the broadsheets, as for example Simon Jenkins’ recent article in The Guardian in which he argued that the entire defence budget should be cut. “We are safer,” he said, “than at any time since the Norman conquest. Yet £45bn is spent defending Britain against fantasy enemies.” There is nothing wrong with honestly and rationally opposing the status quo. As will be apparent to readers of our News Briefings, we personally are antagonistic to all religious institutions, would like to see the dismantling of the monarchy, and favour assisted dying.

By ‘gutter journalism’ we mean rather those elements of the popular press which, instead of reporting fairly on the broad highway of news and arguing from a rational base, have their nose in the detritus of human activity. Their focus is on gossip and scandal. It is not that journalists who follow this path cannot write well (though they may be locked in their own ethos), rather that they choose to appeal to the baser instincts of society. In taking this direction, in pursuing an intrusive and prurient interest in the transgressions of celebrities and human fallibility, sometimes dishonestly, they know that they are in tune with an unhealthy appetite for sensation among large swathes of the British public. They are prepared to be casual with the truth or manipulate it selectively so as to suggest culpability. They also, from time to time, demonstrate a partiality for a range of prevailing prejudices. As such they have a disproportionate and dangerous capacity to influence political opinion.

What is really troubling in gutter journalism is a tendency to demonise minorities. We recall that when we published our guide for refugees and asylum seekers, How to Make a New Life in the UK, one daily newspaper criticised it for referring immigrants to sources of advice on their legal rights!

Back in 1957, Richard Hoggart’s The Uses of Literacy explored a fear that the growth of mass communications could be exploited to debase standards and bring about a greater trivialisation in productions for a majority readership. Even at that time a massive increase in, and the extraordinarily low level of, new-style popular papers was seen by Hoggart as posing an ominous threat of cultural debasement and vulgarity, stimulated by the need for papers to achieve a viable circulation. Recent developments suggest that his concerns were well-founded. Self regulation has had limited success. The Press Council, founded in 1953, was widely seen as ineffective, and in 1991, following the Calcutt inquiry, was replaced by the Press Complaints Commission, reinforced by a code of practice. Despite this, the number of complaints received has steadily increased, raising concerns around declining ethical standards of sections of the press. In a YouGov poll in 2008, journalists were rated the least trusted of 23 professions, the overall level of trust having fallen most of all groups. Similarly, in research commissioned by the Media Standards Trust, 70 per cent of all respondents disagreed with the statement ‘We can trust newspaper editors to ensure that their journalists act in the public interest’.

It was the sometimes reckless reporting surrounding the disappearance of Madeleine McCann that finally brought matters to a head, prompting a House of Commons inquiry on press standards, privacy and libel, under the auspices of a committee of the Department of Culture, Media and Sport. The second DCMS report, published on 24 February 2010, makes disturbing reading. While recognising the importance of the freedom of the press to report and comment on events, public figures and institutions, to be critical of them and provide a platform for dissenting views, it notices that “there have been times when events have led the public and politicians to question the integrity of the methods used by the press, and the competence of the PCC as an industry regulator”. It notices that, like its predecessor, this body has been seen as lacking teeth, too closely allied to the press industry and insufficiently proactive in upholding standards.

The report’s consideration of press standards was mainly based on the McCann case and The Guardian’s revelations regarding phone-hacking and blagging – the practice of obtaining information through deception. It presents a dismal picture. In respect of the McCanns it speaks of “an inexcusable lowering of standards” and “inaccurate, defamatory reporting”, concluding that self-regulation had signally failed. The verdict on illegal phone-hacking at the News of the World is even more disturbing. The committee reports: “Throughout we have repeatedly encountered an unwillingness to provide the detailed information that we sought, claims of ignorance or lack of recall, and deliberate obfuscation”. This behaviour, the report concludes, reinforces the widely held impression that the press generally regard themselves as unaccountable and that News International in particular has sought to conceal the truth about what really occurred.

And so, we contend, our hatred of gutter journalism is well made. There is much more that could have been said in relation to individual cases: those of Michael Todd and Stephen Gately for instance. This is not the place to comment on the DCMS’s recommendations for reform, beyond noticing that there continues to be no enthusiasm for statutory regulation. Rather we prefer to go back to Richard Hoggart, who observed that the freedom from official interference that we enjoy, coupled with the tolerance we are happy to show, seem to allow “cultural developments as dangerous in their own way as those we are shocked at in totalitarian societies.

WE HATE NO.30: HYPOCRISY
“Be as you would seem to be”
Thomas Fuller: ‘Gnomologia (1732)

Double-speaking has been a favourite convention in the theatre for many years, much exploited by Shakespeare as when in ‘The Merchant of Venice’ the money-lender Shylock, being introduced to Antonio, says in an aside to the audience: “How like a fawning publican he looks! I hate him for he is a Christian…” But to Antonio’s face he says “Rest you fair, good signior; your worship was the last man in our mouths.” In this way characters in life, as on the stage, will say one thing, but carry another in their minds. To be hypocritical, in its literal meaning and in practice, is to play a part.

When Gordon Brown was heard to refer to Gillian Duffy as “a bigoted woman”, the media seized on that comment, accidentally picked up on air. Yet the essential point, surely, was that it exposed the insincerity of the blandishments previously heaped on the unfortunate woman. To be fair, Brown’s lapse, which has cost him dear, was made in the heat of the moment, under pressure. Sadly, even in less stressful circumstances, it is part of many politicians’ stock in trade to flatter people and say what they are thought to want to hear, rather than telling them the unvarnished truth. The received wisdom is that this is the way to win votes, and that the Prime Minister’s fatal error was only to leave his microphone switched on.

But this view could be mistaken. The electorate is cannier than politicians think. A classic example of this arose during the 1966 general election. Alf Morris, who first took his seat in the House of Commons in 1964, had supported Sidney Silverman by agreeing to act as a teller for his successful bill to abolish the death penalty. Friends and colleagues told Alf that by supporting Silverman he had committed political suicide, given the fierce opposition to the measure in Manchester. His Wythenshawe constituency was home to both parents of Leslie Ann Downey, one of the child victims of the Moors murderers. Thus when the 1966 election was called, Alf was told by even his closest friends that he had no chance at all of being re-elected. Canvassers reported that the only issue being raised on doorsteps was Alf’s involvement in the campaign to end the death penalty. In practice, however, Alf stood by his controversial stance yet doubled his majority over his Conservative opponent. He drew the moral that most voters are concerned more about trust and a readiness to stand by firmly-held convictions. Whereas, voters generally are able to sniff out hypocrisy and self-interest.

Yet it can be argued that hypocrisy is part of the human condition: that even our acts of kindness and goodness have an element of self-interest. Alain de Botton in Citizen Ethics in a Time of Crisis argues “What looks like goodness must involve either obedience or perverted forms of egoism (the biographers can be expected to unearth the details in due course). Self-interested motives are glued to the underside of every apparently benevolent act.” In political leaders it may be difficult to distinguish between the national interest and self interest – the quest for power.

Certainly there is a hierarchy of seriousness in the hypocrisy stakes. Most of us, from time to time, have been guilty of what Dean Inge called ‘innocent hypocrisy’. As when we give effusive thanks for a gift that we detest. The motive here is not to hurt the giver’s feelings rather than a desire to deceive.

Somewhat more dubious are those who lead a double life: allowing themselves to be seen as pillars of society when secretly having some very questionable habits. Dr. Johnson made the point – you may think oddly - that there was nothing more unjust than to accuse someone of hypocrisy because they failed to live up to the values they professed and to which they aspired. In particular, of course, sexual infidelity is ordinarily a prime, though commonplace, source of hypocrisy. One that is certainly hated by its victims.

But it is religion that is the happiest hunting ground of hypocrisy, all too often blurring the line between genuine sanctity and the pretence of sanctimony, (companions these two in the Concise Oxford Dictionary). In hating hypocrisy in this context we even have the support of the 1662 Prayer Book, which asks the “Good Lord” to deliver us, among other things, “from hypocrisy”. Most sinister of all are those priests who, having been ordained into holy orders, purporting to be ‘God’s representatives on earth’ and seen as occupying the moral high ground, have systematically and persistently sexually abused young children. For them there is really no excuse, and we concur, at least metaphorically, with Matthew 18:6. And those who suppose that by protecting them they are preserving the reputation of their church are not only hypocritical but misguided

WE HATE NO. 29: INJUSTICE
I’m a happy person. But injustice I loathe. Loathe it.
Joanna Lumley, interview in Guardian Weekend, 3 April 2010.

We must begin by conceding that injustice is not necessarily illegal. We admit further that much of what we select to feature in our news briefings relates to injustices of one kind or another. Moreover, that information plays a key role in revealing injustice, just as the suppression of information is designed to hide it.

The poverty/affluence ratio
As Plato recognised, the imbalance between the rich and the poor is a prime source of injustice. We have noticed on several occasions that left unchecked the imbalance escalates, impervious to equality law. Its impact is clear in the disparities of life expectation across different sections of society. The rich, on the whole, will counter the charge of injustice by alleging that the poor get what they deserve, that poverty is a by-product of fecklessness. Sadly, there is some truth in the tendency of what was originally intended as a welfare stopgap to instead foster a culture of dependency, so that state provision can come to be seen as a highway rather than a bridge. The consequences can be dire. It may be negative to suggest that society is broken, but it undoubtedly has cancerous cells, evidenced by our burgeoning prison population and thuggery on our streets. Equally, however, those who have inherited wealth or who have done well in life often fail to acknowledge their luck, or to recognise that life at the subsistence level of welfare benefits isn’t much of a life at all. Anyway, it seems to us that fairness (the bedrock of justice) dictates that taxation should at all times seek to redress the disparity.

Privilege
Closely allied to inequalities of wealth, we believe, is deference to privilege. A cardinal principle of justice is that no-one should be above the law, neither the Pope, nor the monarchy, nor anyone else in a position of power and authority. We have previously inveighed against the plans to give the royals a blanket exemption from the Freedom of Information Act and are dismayed to see that this gagging legislation has been enacted (royal assent 8 April). We should not forget that it was the hedonism of the Bourbon court in contrast to the penury of the masses that triggered the French Revolution, and while the bloodletting that followed was no model for republicanism, the whole episode should serve as a cautionary retrospective. Some of the recent election propaganda has focused on the so-called ‘middle class’, sometimes defined as the bourgeoisie. Justice – or to put it another way, the avoidance of injustice – demands fairness for all. A great pity therefore that these amendments to the Freedom of Information Act should receive royal approval on the same day as the Equality Act!

First past the post (from the perspective of the also rans)
Then there is our voting system. We have commented on this before, for it provides a striking example of blatant injustice. Firstly, that the ‘first past the post’ arrangements can be seen to produce overall results in which the proportions of seats won bears little relation to that of the total votes cast for each party. Secondly, that the great majority of seats are seen as virtually ‘safe’ for candidates of a particular party. The effect of this is that contrary votes in such constituencies are futile and those who do not support the ‘safe’ candidate are effectively disenfranchised – and unrepresented. In determining which party comes out on top only the ‘marginals’ count. Thirdly, ‘first past the post’ makes it possible for a candidate to be elected despite only limited support. We repeat that in 2005 only three MPs secured the votes of more than 40% of their constituents. The Electoral Reform Society thinks that, on balance, the massive failings of ‘first past the post’ severely outweigh the advantage of its incumbency. So do we. Indeed we see it as profoundly undemocratic.

Redressing injury
Next, we regard the Government’s inadequate (ungenerous) response to the needs of people infected by contaminated NHS blood, and the fate of troops with health problems arising from the first Gulf War, as injustice by indifference. It suggests that the slogan ‘A future fair for all’ is simply empty rhetoric.

Prurience
Finally, we think that the pillorying of Tiger Woods is unjust. You may think that this is relatively unimportant, but the episode is instructive in shining a light on our media’s preoccupations. Given means and opportunity, Woods has simply succumbed to a temptation that is instinctive within the human condition, especially in males. It has nothing to do with love and he should not beat himself up about it. No doubt his partner is devastated and feels betrayed. But her grief, which will not go away, is a private matter. It has nothing to do with golf and is not our business. The kind of prurient press intrusion that Woods’ indiscretions have generated is something we do not need and which we hate.

There are countless other examples of injustice in the UK, and yet more in the wider world. But to parody W.S.Gilbert ‘the task of filling up the list we would rather leave to you’.

WE HATE NO.28: PARKING ENFORCEMENT
“Injustice, swift, erect and unconfined. Sweeps the wide earth, and tramples o’er mankind.”
Homer: Iliad

We will admit that this series is frequently controversial. Just as some will hate ballet as pretentious, others will see it as sublime art. To be honest, in fact, Ann doubts if hating things is a noble sentiment. But then we hate nobility. Our hatred, on the whole, is akin to wearing a car coat at the Cenotaph. On this latest subject, however, we think that we may be approaching consensus. And we say ‘approaching’ only because traffic wardens and their puppeteers may not agree.

Some years ago we were on holiday in the United States of America (it is remarkable that they are called United: perhaps simply to distinguish the USA from South Africa). We found ourselves in Georgetown, the posh part of Washington, where, curiously, parking was permitted until 4pm. As the appointed hour approached a phalanx of pick-up trucks was assembled in readiness, and on the dot of the legal time limit they moved in, removing the previously innocent vehicles with ruthless efficiency. In the supposed ‘land of the free’ it struck us as hideously tyrannical.

We accept that there is a need for traffic control. Otherwise, in some places, cars would clog up roads like cockroaches in the malt room of a brewery of distant memory. But sensible control is one thing; rigid, targeted enforcement is another. The very word ‘enforcement’ is redolent of harshness and intolerance: it conjures up an invasion of our freedom and liberty. Even the Inland Revenue (to use the old term) had the sensitivity to call it compliance. And in the case of the Revenue there is no pretence that its objective is anything other than to raise money; even then it gives some of it away as tax credits. Another interesting comparison is with the police. Unquestionably police forces exist to enforce the law. But because they have a very wide, multi-functional remit, they must, perforce, have a sense of proportion, recognising a hierarchy in the seriousness of offences. They can, and do, respond to some contraventions with a caution. They are there to protect the public and, at least by law-abiding citizens, are seen as a resource of help.

This strikes us as very different from single-minded, over-zealous parking enforcement where the impression that frequently comes across is one of maximising ‘hits’ and corresponding fines: rigid adherence to permitted time and penalties where drivers can scarcely avoid minor, temporary transgressions (e.g. lorries in tight situations required to stop temporarily to make their deliveries). Our feeling is that the remit of traffic wardens is too narrow and that communities would benefit from a service that was committed to support as well as control. Strangely, in a country which is generally disposed towards tolerance we have allowed the pursuit of parking offences to become an industry. We think that it is one that itself should be controlled.

WE HATE NO.27: WAR
“War involves in its progress such a train of unforeseen and unsupposed circumstances that no human wisdom can calculate the end. It has but one thing certain, and that is to increase taxes.
Thomas Paine: Prospects on the Rubicon (1787)

We approach this particular animosity with some circumspection. Most people are against war and will concede that, at best, it is a strategy of last resort. But when our armed forces are in current combat it simply isn’t done to criticise. On the contrary, our troops are hailed as heroes and their actions as courageous. The good people of Wootton Bassett turn out in all weathers to honour the dead, and the military – even royalty – encourage and support this sincere demonstration of sorrow and respect, draping the coffins in the Union Jack. This is an expression of solidarity and patriotism, reinforced, as individual soldiers are killed, by all-party condolences at Prime Minister’s Question Time. We are thus politically assured that the courage and sacrifice of those who have given their lives (of which there is no doubt) have contributed to making Britain a safer place by fighting terrorism in its heartlands.

But what if this view is entirely mistaken; if the war in Afghanistan actually has an opposite effect of stoking up animosity towards the West and increasing the threat of terrorist attacks? If not developed in Pakistan or Afghanistan then from other sympathetic countries? Might the show of allegiance then be seen as a veneer to vindicate a misconceived approach to ideological differences?

And can an offensive war ever really be justified? Is it desirable that young men and women should indulge in licensed killing and perhaps come to enjoy it? Shelley, in his poem Queen Mab, called war “the statesman’s game” and in a note, drawing on one of William Godwin’s essays, argued that whatever may become of the abstract question of the justifiableness of war, it seemed impossible that the soldier should not be a depraved and unnatural being. He wrote of the ridiculousness of the military character, whose “first constituent is obedience”. Of course, in Shelley’s day soldiers were “trepanned” into service, whereas they now volunteer. They are brave certainly, but it remains true that it is not the soldier’s business to consider the justice or the wisdom of military action. We find it odd that there is such enthusiasm to serve, to risk death, severe disablement, or lingering traumatic stress disorder. And we certainly believe that the courage of our troops in action needs to be separated from the merits of them being required to be courageous.

Successive wars have taken a heavy toll and a temporary sense that they are best avoided. But politicians fail to learn from experience. Some conflicts are eventually settled by negotiation, a strategy that should, perhaps, have been the first resort. Some are unwinnable, some end in failure, having made a bad situation worse. And there are some people, of course, whose business is war and the provision and development of weapons of destruction, dressed up as defence. It is, we believe, a hateful rather than a glorious business.

WE HATE NO.26: TRADITION
Derek Kinrade
“Hardened round us, encasing wholly every notion we form, is a wrappage of traditions, hearsays, mere words.”
Thomas Carlyle: ‘On Heroes, Hero-Worship and the Heroic in History’ (1841)

Traditions have been defined as the handing down of opinion, belief or custom from one generation to another. They come with no guarantee of being true, right or valuable. Much less whether they are appropriate in changed circumstances; on the contrary it may sometimes be thought that failure to move on is to regress. As Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. put it “To rest upon a formula is a slumber that, prolonged, means death.”

Yet many people are hostile to change, save for reversion that restores the old order. In particular, there can be a desire to cling on to or bring back particular values that enshrine and protect privilege. In this construct, tradition is perceived as the conservation of certain inviolate principles, the sacrifice of which is to debase the social order. To this way of thinking, tradition is to be revered; respected as the benchmark of pedigree in which subordinate and ruling classes have their proper place.

Adherence to tradition is always tenacious; nowhere more so than in organised religions, where fundamental belief in supernatural events and primitive explanations remains unshakeable even in the face of indisputable scientific evidence (and the essentially random, indiscriminate horror of natural disasters). I will not spell out these traditional totems, for to do so is bound to give offence. Yet such commonplace reticence allows excesses of absurdity, arcane practices and discrimination to pass unchallenged through successive generations, reinforced by persuasive exponents, particularly in faith schools. As an antidote I do most heartily recommend Baron Paul Tiry D’Holbach’s Ecce homo! An eighteenth century life of Jesus, published anonymously in 1770 and now available in English in a splendid critical edition edited by Andrew Hunwick. Of the original publication, Diderot observed that it was “raining bombs within the House of the Lord”. And when the first English translation by George Houston appeared in 1813 he was committed to Newgate for two years and fined £200! Traditional recourse to the miraculous still plays a major part in cementing the beliefs of a variety of faiths that share different but equally dubious foundations. But because the texts that advance these superstitions are said to have been divinely inspired they remain immutable in the minds of believers. These are the ultimate traditions, inhibiting, as one Guardian correspondent put it, the ability of young minds “to think clearly about social and ethical problems, and to reach reasoned judgments about the natural world”.

There are similar totems in our political arrangements. Policies may change, but there is a marked reluctance to reform constitutional practice. In particular, tradition rules in our electoral procedures, the two major parties having clung stubbornly to the ‘first past the post’ system, despite the fact that, among other things, successful candidates seldom command whole-hearted support. In 2005, only three of the MPs elected gained the votes of more than 40 per cent of their constituents. Thus the considerable number of votes cast for losing candidates counted for absolutely nothing, and the opinions of a large proportion of voters went unrepresented. There are signs now of the possibility of change. It cannot come too soon.

Then there is our traditional loyalty to an unelected monarchy, despite its chequered history. Strangely, the majority of our people acquiesce to the status of subjects, rather than citizens, and accept the enormous privilege accorded to the ‘royal’ family and the inherent class and financial inequality it enjoys. The debateable excuse is that governance lies with Parliament and that the head of state’s role, thought to be merely ceremonial, provides stability. Thus, again among other things, we sustain the tradition of the monarch’s speech (Her Majesty’s Most Gracious Speech) at the beginning of each session of Parliament, knowing that it imparts at second-hand the prepared priority intentions of the government of the day. On the one hand, among the ermine, crimson and gold of the House of Lords, it is the quintessential expression of tradition; but by a more rational judgement is an elaborate feudal charade, more of shadow than substance.

Another sad tradition is the advocacy of cruel sports. Just now there is pressure to repeal the Hunting Act, to overturn legislation that took eight decades to achieve, so that a minority of humankind can enjoy chasing other animals to a gruesome death. Traditional views may not always be entirely false, but as T.S.Eliot observed “a tradition without intelligence is not worth having”. Much less, a tradition without compassion.

But I will not be trashing my historical 78s. Let us continue to cherish what is estimable in our cultural heritage and in our national pride: free speech, magnificent cathedrals and churches (whether or not ‘God’ is a reality), Morris dancers, village greens, test matches (especially last wicket batsmen who know their onions), Britten and Elgar, Betjeman and Bennett, the Cup Final, the last night of the proms. Let us respect that which is good from the past; but also ruthless in committing to the scrapheap traditions that perpetuate irrationality, political manipulation, inequality, class elitism and bloodlust. Remember that inscribed beneath the bust of Mark Twain in the Hall of Fame for Great Americans are the words: “Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul”.

WE HATE NO. 25 : CONSUMERISM
The consumer today is the victim of the manufacturer who launches on him a regiment of products for which he must make room in his soul.

Mary McCarthy: ‘America the Beautiful – the Humanist in the Bathtub’, On the Contrary (1961)

Consumerism has several definitions. We should explain that our target here is the pursuit of happiness through consumption and the acquisition of material possessions. Even that must be qualified, for it is undeniable that consumption does bring (though not guarantee) happiness and can be economically beneficial. So let us narrow down what we have in our sights by prefacing consumerism with the adjective ‘inordinate’, particularly if financed by borrowing.

You may think that recent events tend to show that our nation, somewhat in common with other developed countries, has mislaid its sense of values and lost touch with its financial (even moral) compass. Remarkably, we pay an Italian coach (admittedly talented) £6.1 million a year to manage England’s football squad, more than three times the nearest equivalent post holder (Marcello Lippi in Italy). Bankers and other executives claim extraordinary salaries and bonuses, a number of BBC entertainers are paid fabulous salaries, while some Members of Parliament have been caught up in a monstrous expenses scandal. It is small wonder then that the common person increasingly aspires to a better life, even in some cases to a second home. Not content with maintaining and cleaning one house and paying one whack of Council Tax, these enthusiastic duettists voluntarily duplicate their commitments, travelling huge distances to get away from their first to their second abode, or perhaps vice versa. Even more of us, no longer satisfied by simple things, fork out hard-earned cash and travel huge distances in pursuit of trivial pastimes and relaxation. Unfortunately, many – particularly after Christmas - are now left counting the cost, saddled with a burden of debt.

Advertisements present alluring, seductive scenarios, sometimes aimed at children, and are apparently (and remarkably) effective in shaping our cupidity. Obvious lifestyle mutations can be seen in our addiction to gadgets and gismos, and the metamorphis of homespun products into ever-more elaborate forms. This is not so much a Darwinian evolution as the survival of the most profitable. Try, we suggest, to find soaps in a contemporary chemist’s shop. They are still there, but diminished. You will more readily encounter ‘handwash’, in a range of colours with a plunger dispenser; along with a vast range of gels, lotions, hair colourings, specialist razors, even ‘shower therapies’, enough to satiate Narkissos. And there are a plentiful number of eager customers jostling to buy these intemperate luxuries.

Supermarkets – those gargantuan, impersonal temples of temptation - epitomise the psychology of consumerism, creating as well as meeting demand, luring the unwary to join a bonanza of prodigality. Many of them will feature conditional offers – such as ‘buy two, save 50 pence’ – calculated to increase rather than reduce spending, expanding consumption and, may we suggest, transferring wastage from the store to the consumer. (In the UK it is estimated that one way or another food waste alone now amounts to more than 8 million tons). The sale of cheap alcohol is a particular concern. You can now transform your living room – if you have one - into a saloon bar, the perfect snug, and be helped to face the challenges of life without ever going to a pub: twice the quantity at half the cost.

Those who lack the wherewithal can readily buy into the good life by using the friendly plastic credit card, confusing need with desire and capitulating wisdom to gratification by agreeing to pay rates of interest hugely above those available to savers. It is commonly alleged that the blame for our present recession lies with bankers who went in for irresponsible, reckless lending. But no less culpable are those consumers who allowed themselves to be seduced to take on burdens of debt that they could not repay, creating a culture of massive over-indulgence that almost brought the nation to financial ruin.

None of this, of course, is new. Thorstein Veblen coined the term ‘conspicuous consumption’ as long ago as 1899. Make no mistake, consumers are an endangered species. In this and previous issues we have drawn attention to the concern of the Office of Fair Trading over some of the perils of spending. The recession teaches a sharp lesson that as individuals there is a need for caution, for – dare we say it - what Gordon Brown used to call ‘prudence’, before it all went pear-shaped.

WE HATE NO. 24: THE SUPPRESSION OF INFORMATION
Back in 1961, US President John F. Kennedy, addressing the American Newspaper Publishers Association, said: “The very word ‘secrecy’ is repugnant in a free and open society…We decided long ago that the dangers of excessive and unwarranted concealment of pertinent facts far outweighed the dangers which are cited to justify it.”

Traditionally, British governments have seen it differently. The passing of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 was hard won and even then its provisions were strewn with ‘get-out’ clauses. Before the Act came into force on 1 January 2005, Heather Brooke, an American journalist, had discovered how difficult it was to extract information in Britain. The tendency for those in authority to ‘clam up’ made her angry and led to her writing Your Right to Know, published in 2004 in anticipation of the new legislation. When the Act came in she began to make requests: one on MPs’ expenses, then their travel and then their second-homes allowances. And so began a long fight to overcome stiff opposition. Eventually the Information Commissioner ruled that MPs’ claims for allowances (though not the associated documentation) should be released. Even this was resisted. The Commons Speaker, Michael Martin, against legal advice, appealed to the High Court and lost. The rest of the story – how after further delay the facts were leaked to The Daily Telegraph and published day-by-day – is well-known. What is even more telling is that when the official version was finally released in June 2009, despite most of the embarrassing farrago being by then in the public domain, it appeared in so-called redacted form, heavily and visibly censored!

The Forum, of course, has a special interest in information. We believe that its free flow is a conduit to the public good, and that, conversely, impediments to openness are not conducive to the well-being of society. There are still some people, however, who wish that the expenses scandal could have been avoided; that it has eroded the authority and standing of our Parliament. We have heard it said that parliamentarians who took advantage of the lax rules on expenses are no worse than the sins of society at large, such as petty smuggling, avoiding value added tax by making payment in cash, and similar dishonesty. But by that reckoning, surely any malpractice could be justified. We think that the public outrage over the greed of some parliamentarians has been cathartic. We see no reason to deny freedom of information other than on grounds of a genuine threat to national security; not just to spare the embarrassment of those in authority. Our leaders have taken the line, at least publically, of arguing for greater transparency and democracy, but there is still a disposition towards secrecy. This is epitomised in David Miliband’s refusal to release evidence of the CIA’s treatment of Binyam Mohamed to the High Court on the questionable ground that it would damage Britain’s relationship with the USA. This dispute has brought the executive into direct conflict with our judiciary.

Alas, another, and wider, move to suppress information is on the horizon. This concerns the monarchy. From the outset it has been held that since the royal household is not regarded as a public authority it falls outside the provision of the Freedom of Information Act to supply information on request. Although certain bodies can be included within the scope of the Act if it appears to the Secretary of State “to exercise functions of a public nature”, the royals have never been so designated (an exclusion that may be thought remarkable given the wide range of public duties carried out by the monarchy at huge public expense). The website of the British Monarchy claims that it is nevertheless committed to transparency, and to making information available “where appropriate”. But the effect of this, surely, is to release or not release information only as the guardians of the monarchy see fit.

Notwithstanding the general exemption, there remains the question of the status of correspondence with the royal household held by public authorities and therefore potentially within the scope of the Act. This, along with information that relates to the conferring of honours or dignities, is the subject of a special exemption under Section 37(1) of the Act. Moreover, an obligation under Section 1(1) (a) - to confirm or deny that the requested information is held by the authority - does not arise if the information is exempt or would be if it existed. At present, these are ‘qualified’ exemptions, that is to say they are subject to a public interest test, so that they apply only if the public interest in maintaining the exemption outweighs the public interest in disclosing the information. Under Section 201 there is also a provision that has the effect of ‘disapplying’ the exemption after 30 years, when the information is regarded as having become an historical record.

Ministry of Justice guidance on the exemptions has been that it is a fundamental constitutional principle that communications between the Queen and her Ministers and other public bodies are essentially confidential in nature and that there is therefore a fundamental public interest in withholding information relating to such communications. It is said that the sovereign has the right and the duty to counsel, encourage and warn her government and is thus entitled to have her opinions on government policy and to express them to her ministers. The guidance goes on to say that she is, however, constitutionally bound to accept and act on the advice of her ministers. Any communications which have preceded the giving of that advice remain confidential because of the need to maintain the political neutrality of the Queen in public affairs (its reality and appearance).

We have a problem with this guidance. Leaving to one side the fact that we have no codified constitution, we find it difficult to accept this curious interpretation of constitutional principle. It seems a perverse logic to argue that the political neutrality of the sovereign should be upheld by concealing the communication of her views to ministers; this implies that while we pretend to have to all appearances a politically impartial sovereign, she can in reality exercise political influence, but covertly, behind the scenes. Far from providing trust in the political neutrality of the sovereign, exercising purely ceremonial functions, this secrecy leaves hidden the extent and direction of the sovereign’s power.

But now there is a new, even greater, bone of contention, for it has been announced that the Act is to be amended. The 30-year-rule will be reduced to 20 years, except that if the member of the royal family relevant to the correspondence is after this period still alive the exemption will continue to apply until five years after his/her death. Here the overriding sting is that during the 20-year period the exemption will become ‘absolute’, so as not to be open to the public interest test and to preclude release altogether. In the event of an extension beyond the lifetime of the royal family member, the exemption will then continue to be ‘absolute’ in the case of the sovereign or heir to the throne, but ‘qualified’ for other members of the royal family.

The reasoning behind this move is that the present safeguards within the Freedom of Information Act are “insufficiently robust to protect our current constitutional arrangements”. The amendments are said to be designed “to ensure that our information access arrangements allow essential constitutional relationships and conventions to be preserved”. We consider, on the contrary, that whereas Parliament is seeking to be more open, this change profoundly reinforces an essentially defensive position, retreating back to greater secrecy and away from transparency and freedom. Whatever one’s view of the merits of the monarchy, we suggest that the idea that it should be protected by a blanket ban on freedom of information profoundly undemocratic. Recent experience shows that there is a public interest in knowing exactly how taxpayers’ money is being spent, and that open accountability and checks are as desirable in relation to the monarchy as they are in respect of the workings of Parliament. Moreover, it is surely in the best interests of the monarchy that it should be seen to have nothing to hide.

WE HATE NO. 23: SELF-INTEREST
“He who lives only for himself is truly dead to others.”
Saying 771, ‘The Moral Sayings of Publilius Syrus’ (1st century BC, translated Darius Lyman, 1856)

Our hatred of self-interest is said somewhat with tongue in cheek. For self-interest is clearly part of the human condition; in all of us, indeed in all animals, it serves as a mechanism towards our preservation. But it can be taken too far. As we approach a general election, take voting as an example. All too often what we call democracy is really no more than the exercise of self-interest. The consideration is not what is best for society, for fairness, for the well-being of our nation, but which political party is likely to provide us personally with the greatest benefit. Thus the mindset of those who seek election is also frequently not high-minded, but predicated on temptation.

As we have said before, the same can increasingly be said of executive pay, where in many cases the objective is no longer a fair and reasonable reward, but the maximum that can be extracted. The idea has taken root that a fit and proper salary is not enough; that it should be enhanced by bonuses and other inducements, commonly paid irrespective of merit. So that the gap between the pay of managers and the managed grows ever wider. And no less the lifestyle of governors is divorced from the governed.

Nor, we suggest, can believers in God generally claim the moral high ground. We recognise, of course, that piety can to some extent be characterised by concern for others and selfless endeavour. And we are not here particularly castigating the way-out moral and political imperatives of the ‘religious right’. Rather we seek to make the wider point that at the root of much religious belief is the concept of personal salvation: the narcissistic pursuit of a heavenly reward after death. Among suicide bombers this is carried to extremes, but it is nevertheless indicative of a perverted, selfish morality. The idea that ‘God’ is on the faithful believer’s side is also a common example of deluded self-regard: framed, again in an extreme case, by the ludicrous notion that following a natural disaster those who survived have somehow enjoyed divine protection; prompting the inevitable implication that the rest were not worth saving.

Few of us, we suspect, altogether avoid the lure of self-interest, or even do unto others as we would have done to ourselves, but we can at least recognise, hate and avoid the more obvious siren voices

WE HATE NO.22: E.MAILS

“E-mail has become the bane of some people’s professional lives.”

Randall Stross: ‘Struggling to evade the e-mail tsunami’, New York Times, 20 April 2008.

This is a qualified hatred. E.mails can be either a curse or a boon. In their favour, they offer a fast and mostly reliable means of conveying information. Detailed reports and pictures can be attached. Within an organisation, e.mails have the advantage that day-to-day communication is possible without the need for physical, simultaneous presence of sender and receiver. In the wider world – and we do mean world - the system is particularly useful for simple enquiries and rapid responses. Given the increasing unreliability, complexity and cost of postal services, e.mails are now a welcome alternative. They are, for example, perfect for distributing this News Briefing – and for feedback. Nor is the argument that this kind of communication is hostile to language sustainable. It is perfectly possible to be textually economical or literarily loquacious, according to context. Indeed there is a strong argument that our computers can be an aid to enhanced expression and creativity.

Unfortunately, however, e.mail transmission is open to attack in ways that have become all too familiar. Susceptibility to poisonous interference has spawned a whole new electronic vocabulary: words such as ‘spoofing’, ‘bombing’, ‘worms’ and ‘viruses’ describe ever-present dangers. A big problem is the pernicious dissemination of junk mail, so-called ‘spam’, sometimes targeted on a gargantuan scale. The technical simplicity of the e.mail system allows spammers to send millions of e.mails every day. We found one advertisement on the internet offering the opportunity to send e.mails to over 10 million people at a cost of $29. The consequence can sometimes be an avalanche that can engulf the unfortunate recipients, leaving them unable to cope. A term has been coined to describe their plight: e.mail bankruptcy.

It is bad enough to be overwhelmed with spam. But needless messages from our allies can be even more difficult to deter. Because of the essential simplicity of this kind of communication, with the opportunity to copy in all and sundry, messages tend to proliferate in a way that formerly, in pre-electronic days, afflicted only celebrities bombarded by fan mail. Nowadays you don’t have to be famous. It is a familiar experience to take a holiday, a welcome break from work, only to return to a huge backlog of e.mails, mostly of minimal importance. And whereas letter post is now generally restricted to one daily delivery, unsolicited e.mails can and do arrive incessantly by day and night. Old-fashioned values tend to dictate that every message deserves a reply, but this can become impossible, prompting us to retreat behind automatic, palliative responses admitting that we have become victims of information overload.

Our heartfelt expression of hatred in this instance, therefore, is somewhat a call to exercise discipline: to communicate on a need-to-know basis, rather than simply sharing tittle-tattle.

WE HATE NO.21: OBESITY

“More die in the United States of too much food than of too little.”

J.K.Galbraith ‘The Affluent Society’ (1958)

“Should the gloomier scenarios relating to obesity turn out to be true, the sight of amputees will become much more familiar in the streets of Britain. There will be many more blind people. There will be huge demand for kidney dialysis. The positive trends of recent decades in combating heart disease, partly the consequence of the decline in smoking, will be reversed. Indeed, this will be the first generation where children die before their parents as a consequence of childhood obesity.”

House of Commons Health Committee report (May 2004)

Galbraith’s comment must surely hold good for the United Kingdom. Obesity now presents one of the biggest challenges we face. The cost to the NHS alone – put at £4.2 billion - is increasing in line with expanding waist lines. It is already a common experience to sit on a double seat on a bus and find that the person next to you spills over on to your seat.

It is not just that obese people look incongruous. The fact is that their well-being is in jeopardy. At the very least the effects will be debilitating; they will have trouble with breathing, walking or running, and will experience pain in their knees and back. At worst, they are at a substantially increased risk of a range of diseases. Type 2 diabetes, heart disease and certain cancers are linked to excess body fat. It is estimated that obesity is responsible for 9,000 premature deaths in England each year, and life expectancy is reduced, on average, by nine years.

Of course, obesity is not new. When I was a child in Toxteth a neighbour was infamous because she had to turn sideways to get through her front door. But what has changed is the incidence of the condition. Obesity has grown by almost 400% in the last 25 years, so that instead of the odd person (such as young ‘Fatty’ Bowman) almost 25% of our population is now obese. The number of hospital admissions with a primary diagnosis of obesity was seven times higher in 2007/8 than in 1996/7. And the numbers are still rising.

The causes are fairly straightforward. While genetic factors can affect appetite and metabolic rate, obesity is overwhelmingly attributable to overeating, an irregular pattern of meals, bad diet, and lack of activity. The step change in the incidence of obesity can fairly and squarely be traced to over-indulgence, increased reliance on convenience foods (particularly those with high levels of saturated fats and sugar), motorised travel and more sedentary lifestyles.

So there is every reason to hate obesity and to hate one’s own obesity. It is quite simple to measure: by dividing your weight in kilograms by the square of your height in metres. If the answer – known as your Body Mass Index – is 30 or more, then you are obese.

WE HATE NO. 20: THE BURKA
“The problem of the burka is not a religious problem, it’s a problem of liberty and women’s dignity. It’s not a religious symbol, but a sign of subservience and debasement. I want to say solemnly, the burka is not welcome in France. In our country, we can’t accept women prisoners behind a screen, cut off from all social life, deprived of all identity. That’s not our idea of freedom.”
Nicolas Sarcozy, President of France, 22 June 2009.

British people, on the whole, have a deserved reputation for tolerance. We have welcomed a motley collection of people to our shores and have accepted, if not embraced, many cultural idiosyncrasies, recognising that we have numerous curious traditions of our own. There are, however, limits. We have frowned upon binding feet, female genital mutilation and forced marriage. Ann and I now wish to suggest that wearing the burka, if not of the same order of barbarity, is something that thinking Muslims should abandon.

President Sarcozy has really said it all, but let us take each of his points in turn:

Not a religious symbol
Here the Islamic authority must be the Qur’an. We are not scholars of that sacred text, but although we have tried we have been unable to find any stipulation we feel sufficient to justify the burka. We think that Surah XXIV/31 comes closest. Translations vary, but the thrust is that women should display only as much of their ornaments as is apparent and should draw their veils over their bosoms. We read it that display of feminity is to be reserved for family members and some others within their household, significantly including “children who know nothing of women’s nakedness”. The thought, surely, is that women should be modest outdoors and not parade their sexuality. We find it difficult to think that the Prophet or the revealing messenger had in mind the wearing of an all enveloping garment covering everything except the eyes. It is true that SURAH IV/34 says that men are in charge of women (because Allah made one sex to excel the other), and are instructed to admonish those who might be rebellious, and scourge them. But we beg leave to doubt if even those who accept such a position of authority have licence to impose unreasonable requirements.

A sign of subservience and debasement
It can certainly be argued that the Qur’an makes female inferiority and subservience explicit. The Muslim religion shows every sign of male domination, and we think that this is a great pity, not least for the males. When Ann visited Sudan some years ago she travelled by train overnight from Khartoum to Port Sudan with a male worker. They shared a carriage with four well-educated Sudanese men, robed and turbaned. In the waking hours they engaged in lively conversation and in the night all slept on bunks head to tail. It was a close and memorable journey, free from reserve. They treated Ann, who was dressed informally, in a relaxed and natural way. But when Ann disembarked at Port Sudan and made to shake hands with one of her travelling companions, he drew back. At the end of the platform, Ann was aghast to see four burka-clad wives emerging from a separate carriage.

It is often said that wearing a burka is reasonable if a free choice. But even where this is claimed, one has to question whether it is rather a conditioned choice, a response to input that it is the right thing to do, a bizarre article of faith and symbol of allegiance. Or sometimes a deliberate profession of exclusion. We think that the garment – dubbed “a medieval style of tribal dress” by The Week - is so extreme as to be divisive, a statement of separation and a threat to community cohesion which puts women down. This is particularly sensitive in Britain, because female emancipation, such as we have achieved it, has been hard won. We have our own history of male supremacy, and brave women have fought over the years to seek equality, enshrined in law. The last thing we need is for anything that appears to put that progress in jeopardy. Women are no longer second-class citizens, and a tradition that suggests they need to be hidden offends cherished values.

We can’t accept women prisoners behind a screen, cut off from all social life, deprived of all identity. That’s not our idea of freedom.
When Alf Morris visited Saudi Arabia to give a keynote speech at a conference of disabled people, he was accompanied by his wife, Irene. Their flight was late getting into Riyadh. They were met by a member of the Saudi royal family and driven to the hotel where the conference was to be held, arriving barely three-quarters of an hour before its opening. Irene takes up the story:

“In the middle of our somewhat frenetic preparations, there was a knock on the door and a tall man in a sheikh’s outfit – a thobe gown, ghuttera headscarf and rope – said that he had brought me a gift. I thanked him and he told me that his daughter would be with me in a minute or two to show me how to wear it. With time at such a premium I thought that was not my priority at the moment, but the girl soon arrived and unwrapped the parcel, revealing an abaya [burka]. She draped the garment around me, covering me from top to toe save for a see-through slit for my eyes. All the time I was thinking, uncharitably, ‘hurry up and go, it will be very rude of us to be late’. When she eventually left, I rolled up the dress, returned it to its box, put it in the wardrobe thinking it to have been offered as a memento of our visit, and got dressed in my own clothes: a mid-length black skirt and a black blouse which I thought would not cause offence.

“With very lttle time to spare, Alf and I went down the hotel’s circular staircase to meet our host, Prince Salman bin Salman, a brother of the Crown Prince at the time…We found a line of sheikhs on one side and abaya-clad women on the other, standing as though on parade. When we got to the bottom of the staircase, they moved in. Alf was escorted away in one direction with the men, and I was shepherded off in another with the women. I was at a loss to understand what was going on, and I could see Alf looking towards me with considerable concern as he was led away. At the same time I sensed discomfort among the women I was left among, and it was explained that the ladies did not sit in the same place in the conference as the men. Then one of them said, “you’re not wearing your abaya”. I told her that I didn’t know I was supposed to wear it; that I thought it was a gift to take home as a souvenir.

“Remarkably – given that the conference was about rights, inclusion and integration – I soon discovered that while the proceedings went on in one hall with hundreds and hundreds of men, most of the females watched the proceedings on closed circuit television in another. Even then they didn’t know where to put me. I was placed on a dais at the back of the hall and a screen put round me. I asked if there was a problem, and if so what it was, explaining that I didn’t want to sit there having travelled several thousand miles to hear Alf opening the conference. Reluctantly I was allowed to sit on the back row.”

It would be difficult to imagine anything more un-British than this experience. Indeed, anything more degrading in any country. And difficult to reconcile ‘covering up’ with the religious view of humankind as having been divinely created. In Britain, no less than in France, women generally participate freely in intellectual discourse, social interaction and not least in sport, gloriously delighting in healthy, physical expression of their physique. The burka virtually precludes any such activity, setting its wearers apart as anonymous beings, alien to our most basic values and the principles of gender equality. Obscuring the face is particularly sad. It is the shop window of our personality, a means of expression and one of the most important ways in which we communicate with each other.

Ultimately this is not an issue of hatred; rather a plea that Muslim men should come, as soon as possible, to respect the status of women and encourage their rightful place not only in their own homes, but in our wider society. Women form around half of the population. Inhibition of normal participation in social and intellectual life, even if voluntary, is to lose a massive and distinctive contribution to the life of the nation.

WE HATE NO.19
BAD POLITICS

“As to the nature of government, we should say, its authority must be derived, not inherent – its object must be the good of the community, not of a class – its rule must be equitable, not partial. If [people] be naturally equal, no one of them can have a right to rule [their] fellows, otherwise than by their expressed consent.”
Washington Wilks, ‘Christian Republicanism’ (1848)

Just now there is a malodorous aroma around the Palace of Westminster. Some members (not all) have stretched their permitted allowances and expenses beyond even the absurdly generous and flexible rules of the fees office ‘Green Book’. Parliament has been brought into disrepute.

Yet this is something which can (and we are assured will) be cleaned up. The miscreants who have abused the public purse can be brought to book and the rules tightened up. Less amenable to change are wider concerns around constitutional theory and practice. The laxity surrounding remuneration has served to sharpen critical examination of our political systems, and has led to a widespread demand for root and branch parliamentary reform. There is a growing awareness that the machinery of democracy can be or become defective, open to corruption, unrepresentative and unaccountable; that those who hold the reins of power can oppress rather than serve the people, dominated by self-interest rather than a concern for the public good.

Sovereignty
What needs to be done? We must begin, we fear, with the monarchy. No matter how gracious, how popular our monarch (and we are old enough to remember the enthusiastic response to her marriage and coronation), the fact is that she is unelected. And the hereditary principle survives to ensure that the people have no say in their future heads of state. As Louise Christian put it on the Republic website: “someone who is mad, bad or a complete waste of taxpayers’ money can become queen or king”. It might be even more realistic to ask whether, given a free choice, you would opt for Charles Windsor as the next head of state.

This is no longer an extremist position. In a survey, published on 4 June, more than 5,000 Guardian readers gave their views on the big constitutional questions. 54% wanted to abolish the monarchy. Nor do we feel any sense of personal animosity. When Charles I was beheaded, he was portrayed as a tyrant. When Louis XVI went to the guillotine, he was roundly hated. The position in 21st century Britain is different. Many people have a profound affection for our Queen and respect the dedication she has invested in her lifetime of service. Nevertheless, the role of the monarch is a curious one: cast as head of state, yet denied any overt political influence. Thomas Paine put it thus: “At the Restoration, we were wise enough to shut and lock a door against absolute monarchy, but were foolish enough to put the crown in possession of the key.” The danger is that power can be exercised behind the scenes under cover of secrecy. But one of the consequences of this strange compromise is that now, with the wheels coming off the political machine, the head of state must appear to remain silent and to that extent ineffective.

Some people, apparently, enjoy the pomp, regalia and ceremony surrounding the crown and accept, for example, the fact that the Queen’s speech simply reproduces the Government’s words. But is it not the case that such ceremonies, upheld as tradition, are really no more than feudal relics? We can, if we wish, continue to revere royalty, but has not the time come for a more modern form of national leadership; for an elected head of state, chosen by the people, equal under the law and with no special exemption from the Freedom of Information Act? Should we not also abandon the concept of the Crown in Parliament and Crown Immunity and consign the Privy (i.e. secret) Council to history? In a different context, Gordon Brown has said (10 June 2009): “No more can Westminster operate in ways reminiscent of the last century”. Shouldn’t this view extend to the role of the monarchy, which is reminiscent of even earlier centuries? Who knows, the royals may be glad to be set free.

Our unwritten rules
The second defect, we believe, is the lack of a written constitution. As yet, there is nothing to codify and enshrine the way in which we are governed, so that in practice the exercise of power is unconstrained, based only on custom and precedent and the so-called ‘royal prerogative’, which hands the Prime Minister enormous discretion. To his credit, Gordon Brown has initiated (in October 2007) a national consultation to draw up a bill of rights and establish a written constitution. “The character of our country,” he said, “will be defined by how we write the next chapter of British liberty…we must never forget that the state and the people are not equivalent. The state is always the servant of the people…liberty belongs to the people and not governments”. This is unfinished business and surely a priority. We have been reading the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen approved by the National Assembly of France on 26 August 1789 (www.constitution.org/fr/fr_drm.htm). And while the French Revolution hardly provides a blueprint for the future, there is much in this document, written with the help of Thomas Jefferson, which translates to our own times.

The pretence of representation
Next in our sights is the notion that we are ‘represented’ by members of parliament. In his Du Contrat Social (1762), Rousseau pointed out that the idea of representation is modern; it comes to us from feudal government. But the general will, he argued, does not admit of representation. The deputies of the people (in our context MPs) are not and cannot be its representatives: they are merely its stewards. “The people of England,” he continued, “regards itself as free; but it is grossly mistaken; it is free only during the election of members of parliament. As soon as they are elected, slavery overtakes it, and it is nothing.” We think that there is a great deal of truth in this. It may be impracticable to change the system of assumed representation, but important to recognise its limitations. For the most part, candidates are nominated by party activists, the wider electorate having no say in their selection. Numerically, MPs are commonly elected by a minority of the electorate (22% in the case of the present incumbents). Even if well-intentioned, they cannot realistically hope to represent all shades of opinion within their constituencies. They generally rather represent their own views, or those of lobbyists, or donors, or those of the government, prompted by party whips. The unfortunate situation here is that, once elected, MPs are accountable to their electorate, usually years later, only at the next election. This has to change.

Electoral reform
Then there is the electoral system. When they are popular, the larger parties like ‘first past the post’ in that it gives them the possibility of a thumping majority. But proportional representation has the merit of more fairly reflecting the views of the whole electorate. David Steel has pointed out that at the 1983 general election Liberal/SDP got 25% of the popular vote and 20+ plus MPs, while Labour got 27% and 200+ MPs! It is argued that the present arrangements make for stable government, but consider what this means if the party in power loses its way. PR, we think, is more likely to provide desirable checks and balances, and the possibility of a few seats going to undesirable, fascist parties is a small price to pay for democracy.

The House of Lords
We don’t hate the House of Lords, but loathe and detest much that is associated with it. A second house plays a vital role in examining and, if necessary, challenging government legislation. But let’s get rid of the pretension, the ermine and the concept of nobility. And let’s have an elected house. The present practice of shoehorning non-MPs into the Lords so that they can be brought into government is profoundly undemocratic. While it would be unfortunate to lose the expertise and enthusiasm of some of the present members, let them put themselves up for election, subject to an undertaking of active participation.

Of course, reform is in the air. The danger is that politicians, left to themselves, will shy away from a radical agenda and steer the direction of change to their own benefit. The case for strong public involvement through a Citizens’ Convention – an assembly of the people with recourse to referenda - is overwhelming.

These are, of course, personal views. You may not agree with them. But the need for change is beyond question and it is surely time for an open debate with nothing off limits. How we are governed is fundamental to the nation’s social welfare.

Book III/15 in G.D.H.Cole’s translation at www.constitution.org/jjr/socon.htm (in public domain).

This information sheet has been compiled by Ann Darnbrough and Derek Kinrade. The views expressed do not necessarily represent those of the National Information Forum.

WE HATE NO.18 : INEQUALITY
“Whatever may be the general endeavour of a community to render its members equal and alike, the personal pride of individuals will always seek to rise above the line, and to form somewhere an inequality to their own advantage.”
Alexis De Tocqueville: Democracy in America (1835-39)

We have inveighed in previous Briefings against the tendency in some occupations to seek a place on the ‘gravy train’ and once aboard to aspire to the highest level of rewards enjoyed by fellow travellers. In contradistinction, we have also drawn attention to the worsening plight of those whose income falls around or below the poverty line. The gap between these extremes, between rich and poor, is somewhat the measure of inequality in our society, widening as these trends move in opposite directions.

In the USA, inequality has sometimes been seen not simply as inevitable, but as part of American greatness. Lester Maddox suggested, as recently as 1966, that inequality breeds freedom and is a spur to opportunity. Here, on this side of the Pond, we rather see inequality – or at least unbridled inequality - as a social evil: evidence of moral decay and a malaise just now that is running out of control. There is no need again to recite the excesses of the greedy, which have recently been seen to have infected even the body politic. But it is instructive to consider the other end of the spectrum. New Labour has signally failed even to meet its own targets of reductions in child and pensioner poverty. Deprivation has gone from bad to worse and most of its victims are trapped in their misfortune. Children from minority ethnic groups are notably disadvantaged compared with white British children, with levels of poverty particularly high in Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities. Oxfam, the charity famous for focusing on third world poverty, is “alarmed” at the state of affairs in Britain, pointing out that the recent budget failed to address the needs of our poorest people. It argues that the protection given by the welfare state is inadequate. To make matters worse (as we have noticed in previous Briefings), poor households face inflation rates well above the average because they have to spend a disproportionate part of their income on those necessities that have particularly risen in price: food and fuel. Oxfam has called on the Government to bring forward a rescue plan, including an emergency increase in out-of-work benefits and steps to make it easier for people to move from benefits to work.

But the position of those who are able to move into low-income work is little better. Helpfully, following the release of the annual Households Below Average Income data for 2007/08 on 7 May, The Guardian rapidly published details of people in poverty and a representation of the British Inequality Index since 1961. The HBAI figures show that the number of people living in poverty in the UK has increased to 13.5 million. 7.5 million of them are of working age. The Guardian report notices that the figures show that the real earnings of those on low wages were lower in 2008 than they were in 2005. New Labour inherited an unequal society in 1997, but has presided over cuts in the incomes of those at the bottom of the pile, while tolerating a free-for-all at the top. The Index reveals that inequality in Britain is 38% higher than it was in 1961, and is now at levels “not seen under Macmillan, Heath, Thatcher or Major”.

What does such inequality, unprecedented in modern times, mean for our society? A new book, The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better, has many of the answers. Based on long and painstaking research (by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett), it finds that “more unequal societies are bad for almost everyone within them – the well-off as well as the poor”. I like the use of the word “almost”. It has that emphasis of understatement also found in the bus advertisements that proclaimed that there “probably” is no God. Scrutiny starts with the indisputable health inequalities between people at different levels in the social hierarchy in modern societies. Of course, everyone dies, but some go more early than others, and generally the link to social status is clear: just as it was (if more dramatically) in Manchester during the industrial revolution, when average life expectancy among the poor was 17 years. The fact that poor health and violence are more common in unequal societies is well known, but Wilkinson and Pickett examine in detail the hypothesis that a host of other social problems that are more common at the bottom of the social ladder are also more common in more unequal societies. They support the view that material inequality is divisive and an obstacle to a wider human harmony. In unequal societies competition supplants co-operation, so that “people are less caring of one another, there is less mutuality in relationships, people have to fend for themselves and get what they can.” The final chapter, ‘Building the future’, begins with a quotation from Tom Scholz which I find particularly apt: “Turning corporations loose and letting the profit motive run amok is not a prescription for a more liveable world.”

Enthusiastic that the perspective they outline should permeate the public mind, the authors have set up a not-for-profit Trust to try to make the relevant evidence better known. Its website is at www.equalitytrust.org.uk, and I think that readers will find a visit most rewarding. It provides a summary of the evidence on each of eleven health and social problems, supporting the belief that in order to gain substantial improvements in the real quality of life of the populations of developed countries it is necessary that differences in income and wealth are greatly reduced.

We are strengthened in hating inequality. But that is not enough. Change is needed, and the Equality Trust website provides an opportunity to sign up to a charter asserting that:

current levels of inequality are unfair and socially damaging
greater equality leads to happier, more cohesive, healthier and safer societies
greater equality is an essential part of sustainable societies and of the fight against global warming
greater equality is achievable.

Oh, and by the way, the problems of international inequalities between rich and poor countries are not overlooked. In the final chapter of The Spirit Level, the authors say that the evidence strongly suggests that narrowing income differences within rich countries will make them more responsive to the needs of poorer countries.

The Equality Trust can be contacted at 32-36 Loman Street, London SE1 0EH; tel: 020 7922 7927. The Spirit Level is available from Amazon for £12.80.

WE HATE NO.17: BLOOD SPORTS
Derek Kinrade

“We have enslaved the rest of the animal creation, and have treated our distant cousins in fur and feathers so badly that beyond doubt, if they were able to formulate a religion, they would depict the Devil in human form.”
William Ralph Inge, ‘The Idea of Progress’ (1922)

Truth to tell we hate animals being killed at all, but reserve our supreme loathing for when it is done for pleasure. We aren’t sure why otherwise civilised people regard it as acceptable; it is as curious as it is hateful. Yet pursuits such as shooting birds out of the sky and pursuing foxes with packs of hounds have long been regarded as reasonable pastimes, even by people who ought to know better.
Here there are strange anomalies. People who feel a deep affection for certain animals show no regard for others, apparently unaware of the contradiction. Take the uninhibited remarks of the famous tenor Lauritz Melchior in that remarkable book of 1953, This I believe: “My greatest relaxation is nature. I mean by that to disappear into nature – to go out in the forest with my gun, my dog, or a friend.” Even Charles Darwin confessed to a “passion for shooting and for hunting” during his time at Cambridge.

How can this be explained? Well perhaps it has something to do with what has become part of the Christian tradition. Chapter 1, verse 26 of Genesis (allegedly the first book of Moses) ascribes the following statement to God: “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth”. It is but a small step from ‘dominion’ to ‘licence’, closely followed by ‘arrogance’. For it is inescapable that a feature of blood sports is that you can do whatever you like to animals.

It is entirely in keeping with this view of nature that whenever legislation is put forward to combat cruelty to non-human animals there are always some people who dissent. Thus when the Cruelty to Animals Bill of 1835 had its second reading it did not pass unopposed. This was a bill of conspicuously good intent. Among other things, it consolidated and amended protection for cattle when being driven or impounded, and extended provisions against keeping or using premises for “running, baiting or fighting” bulls, bears, badgers, dogs or other animals or for cock-fighting. It was calculated, said Mr Pease, in moving the bill, “to prevent the dreadful cruelties which were daily practiced towards animals”. Yet 16 of 46 members opposed it. Class was an issue. Sir Matthew White Ridley noticed that while the bill left coursing, shooting, fishing etc., “the amusements of the higher classes”, untouched, it infringed too much on “those of the humbler classes”.

Fortunately, over the years, there have been some notable voices ready to express a contrary view. Mahatma Gandhi said “The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated”. Schweitzer recognised the same principle: “Compassion, in which all ethics must take root, can only attain its full breadth and depth if it embraces all living creatures and does not limit itself to mankind.” And, in an earlier age, Thomas Paine wrote: “Everything of persecution and revenge between man and man, and everything of cruelty to animals, is a violation of moral duty”. Today, in our own country, one of the leading opponents of blood sports is the League Against Cruel Sports. Its magazine, Campaign Update, campaigns for fairer treatment of greyhounds ‘surplus’ to the needs of the racing industry, and presses the case for continuing action to outlaw those barbaric activities which persist in this supposedly sceptred isle: the need for stronger enforcement of the Hunting Act; a ban on the use of snares; an end to the promotion of tourism to watch bullfights; and a stop to the mass shooting of birds for entertainment. The League, along with the International Fund for Animal Welfare and the RSPCA has recently launched a website www.huntingact.org, devoted to providing information about the legislation, with clear guidelines as to what is legal and what is illegal hunting.

But what we need above all is for the great mass of our fair-minded population to hate blood sports, so that killing animals for fun is finally relegated to a condition of abnormality.

WE HATE NO.16:
THE EX FACTOR – EXCESSIVE EXECUTIVE EXPECTATIONS
Derek Kinrade

Enter, stranger, but take heed
Of what awaits the sin of greed
For those who take, but do not earn,
Must pay most dearly in their turn.
J.K.Rowling, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone

Back in the days when I first received money for work (as well as satisfaction), we were much concerned with ‘differentials’ when it came to negotiating pay increases. There was an acceptance of a hierarchical system of rewards, but this was constrained by a sense of fairness, a belief that the pyramid should have something of a symmetrical shape and that top salaries should not be too far removed from those at the bottom. This changed, I think, with the onset of what may loosely be called ‘the Thatcher years’, with her government’s dedication to the free market and deregulation, when the pursuit of wealth came to be seen as a virtue, notwithstanding the inequality created for those left behind.

In the climate that has led to the current recession, when deregulation was replaced by ineffective regulation, top executives have too often looked to the best deal possible, no longer content with a reasonable return; mindful not of their junior staff but comparing themselves with the best dispensation in similar positions elsewhere, often buttressed with bonus schemes and sometimes with share options. It has been part – a big part – of a culture that the Green Party has called ‘footloose finance’ and Jenni Russell (The Guardian, 19 January) ‘casino capitalism’, sustained by the idea that it is necessary to pay top money to secure top people: a myth blown out of the water by the present credit crunch, which has revealed that quite often we have been paying big rewards for big failure. Nor has this bonanza, even now, been put into reverse. In a recent interview with The Times, Lord Myners, Minister for the City, is quoted to the effect that too many bankers fail to realise they are grossly over-rewarded and have no sense of society.

But this malaise is not confined to the private sector. The Taxpayers’ Alliance reveals detailed (and to me shocking) information through its ‘Public Sector Rich List’, first published in 2006 and now available in a third edition. It tells us that, in 2007/8, 387 people were receiving annual remuneration packages of £150k or more (averaging £240k a year) across 140 government departments, quangos, other public bodies and public corporations. 4 of them had annual earnings of more than £1 million, 21 more than £500k and 88 above £250k. What is particularly disturbing is that these 387 people are reported to have had an average pay rise of 10.9% between 2006/7 and 2007/8. Matthew Elliott, Chief Executive of the Alliance, is quoted as saying:

“While ordinary families are suffering in the financial crisis, the public sector elite are enjoying record pay packages. Far too often, senior officials get massive pay rises and generous bonuses despite serious failures on their watch.”

Among other things, the Alliance’s website (www.taxpayersalliance.com/files/public-sector-rich-list-2008.pdf) identifies, again on 2007/8 figures, the top 10 best rewarded executives working for bodies involved in the failed financial system regulation, the top 24 in departments that have presided over much publicised losses of personal data, and the ‘top ten rewards for failure’.

The website does not spare personal financial data, drawn from information in the public domain. Packages over £200k a year are commonplace; indeed the Prime Minister weighs in at only 195 on £189,994, which includes his salary as an MP, First Lord of the Treasury and Minister for the Civil Service. And some of the year-on-year increases are truly staggering. I have been told that when one NHS Trust (not on the Alliance website) achieved Foundation status the chairman was promptly awarded a whopping unstaged 147% increase and the non-executive directors 124%. In contrast, nurses were pinned down to staged increases that amounted to 1.9% per annum (below the rate of inflation). On band 5 of the NHS pay scale, on 2007/8 figures, they had to get by on £23,174.

Peter Mandelson may dismiss this kind of criticism as the ‘politics of envy’. I regard it as the politics of injustice. And the sad thing, as Jenni Russell points out, is that instead of rethinking the way we live, work or gobble up the world’s resources, the government “is evincing a devout desire to get the old system of high-consumption, high-risk capitalism back on track, as quickly as possible.”

The message, even figuratively speaking, is surely: “ye cannot serve god and mammon”.

WE HATE NO.15: HONOURS
Derek Kinrade

Just a minute, I think I hear you say, aren’t honours a good thing if they reward genuine outstanding achievement: going the extra mile, working beyond the call of duty? Do they not encourage service for the benefit of others? These are powerful arguments. But some way short of the whole truth.

Let us first consider the shortcomings in the selection process: the alleged recognition of those who make substantial political donations, the preferment that is said to be based on seniority in the Civil Service and the armed forces, the private vendettas that deny worthy candidates essential support. And the surprising absence from the lists of people conspicuously meriting honour. There is too a suspicion, across the board, of a class-based hierarchy of awards. But the procedures are secretive and awards are conferred or withheld without explanation and are therefore not open to challenge.

There is yet another more subtle objection: a danger that honours may – in some recipients – induce a certain sense of superiority, a touch of inflated ego. Those who are honoured or ennobled are rendered, as it were, honourable or noble. Arrigo Boito, borrowing from Shakespeare, recognised the perils of self-satisfaction at being awarded an honour in the famous first act monologue of Falstaff in Verdi’s opera of that name: “flattery falsely inflates it, pride corrupts it, slanders taint it: as for me, I want none of it!”

In line with this, over the years, there have been a significant number of ‘refuseniks’ – people of principle who, for whatever reason, have turned down the offer of an honour. It must not be assumed that this is necessarily an expression of republican sentiment. John Evelyn, an ardent royalist, was said to have been (like his father) “a studious decliner of honours and titles”. He declined the Order of the Bath and “often refused” a knighthood. But in some cases the reasons for refusal may well be the association with monarchy. Joan Smith is surely not the only one to have rejected an honour for this reason. For inherent in the ceremony associated with the award of honours, is a feudal relationship between the monarch and the subject. Honours are conferred by a ‘sovereign’, to whom deference is expressed through bowing or curtsying; and, of course, walking backwards. Thus, while awardees are dutifully thankful, their inferior position is publicly proclaimed, and the monarch’s status and authority in the feudal system are publicly reinforced.
Thomas Paine, no friend of monarchy, was typically forthright: “When I reflect on the pompous titles bestowed on unworthy men, I feel an indignity that instructs me to despise the absurdity.”

There is in the whole show (for that is what it is) a deeply-rooted antiquity, expressed in formal ritual. Some would call it tradition; I regard it as an anachronism that has more in common with a 19th century operetta than a modern democratic society. Even the titles of the honours are outdated, including Orders of the Garter, Thistle, Bath, St Michael and St George, a Royal Victorian Order and awards related to a vanished empire, the latter word one that has recently been culled from the Oxford Junior Dictionary. I find it disconcerting when an old, down-to-earth friend becomes a baroness or a lord, or an illustrious star becomes a dame, with – at best – inevitable pantomime associations.

Thankfully the media is catching up. A leader in The Guardian (31 December) refers to a “baffling hierarchy between the awards” and “the system’s class-bound origins”. It ventured: “Some will conclude that honours are adult Blue Peter badges that real grown-ups should learn to live without”, and ended: “The objections arise because of the system’s insistence on pulling rank.” On the same day, The Independent provided an illuminating summary of the chequered history of the honours system, reinforcing the view that, despite attempts to recognise the claims of ordinary achievers, they remain for the most part obstinately elitist. Surely it is time to reform, modernise and democratise the whole business.

WE HATE NO.14: ROAD CASUALTIES
Derek Kinrade (with Ann Darnbrough)

Well doesn’t everyone? The problem, rather, is that we accept them too casually. If you listen to radio traffic reports you will hear, every day, about a succession of “accidents”, the focus being on the adverse impact on road availability rather than on the people who have been hurt: unless, of course, the RTA is exceptionally grievous. The problems are so endemic that we tend to take them for granted as inevitable: as a cost for the convenience of motoring.

But aren’t things improving?
You may well say that things are getting better. Road deaths have fallen below 3,000 (per annum) for the first time since 1926 and there is a sharp fall in serious injuries (down 37% since 1994/8). The figures for children are conspicuously better than even these averages. Only motorcyclists buck the trend, with deaths up by 26% since 1994/8. But there is no room for complacency. The slaughter on our road network remains scandalously high and the statistics say nothing of the suffering endured by the relatives of the casualties. To speak of improvement is like comparing the death toll in the second and first world wars. In London more people are killed on the roads than are murdered.

A significant proportion of deaths result from dangerous driving, and tougher penalties are surely needed. Proposals for a six-point penalty for “excessive speeding” (20 mph or more over the legal limit), and confiscation of licence after two such offences, are welcome. Likewise the new charge of causing death by careless driving will mean greater accountability as it will be the consequence of the carelessness that is, at last, recognised and addressed by the courts. Consideration is also being given to lowering the drink-drive limit and introducing a drug-drive limit. Offences of driving under the influence of drugs are currently difficult to prove, but are thought to account for around 20% of all road deaths.

But the sins of hard-core offenders are only part of the story. Many collisions – perhaps most of them – arise just from poor driving, inattention, fatigue, mistakes, miscalculations and a failure to allow enough room for error that afflict even those normally well disposed to respect road safety. You can’t completely take the danger out of driving. George Colman put it in the 18th century that “accidents will happen”. It is sadly true that some people, as the American author Don Marquis reminded us, are so unlucky that they run into accidents that started out to happen to somebody else. But as Hotspur remarks in Henry IV, part 1, while all manner of things are dangerous – “to take a cold, to sleep, to drink”, yet “out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety”. Let that be our watchword. There will always be a pressing need to drive responsibly and with caution; to avoid taking risks: I am tempted to say conservatively, but that would never do. An even better way to reduce accidents is to leave the car in the garage.

It’s the poor what suffer most
The National Information Forum’s focus is on underprivileged people. It is therefore relevant to draw attention to the European Federation of Road Traffic Victims’ theme for 2008: that “we are all vulnerable…, but some are more vulnerable than others”. The recent report, Road Casualties Great Britain, mentions that poor people are four times more likely to die in a crash than are the wealthy. It is even worse in London, where research has shown that a child from the lowest income group is over 20 times more likely to be killed while walking than a child from the wealthiest group.

RoadPeace
One charity that has consistently pressed the case for a fairer and safer system whereby the threat of road death and injury is reduced is RoadPeace. It campaigns for justice for road victims, demanding that death and injury should no longer be regarded as minor traffic offences; that the treatment in law for all motorists who kill or injure through negligent driving should be treated in the same way as other cases where death or injury is caused through equivalent negligence. It follows that death or injury should be explicit in the charge and that cases should be heard by a judge and jury, not by lay magistrates, and that the level of culpability should be reflected in the sentence.

But RoadPeace also provides direct support for bereaved and injured people through a national helpline (0845 4500 355) and provides specialist advice and escorts to courts and inquests. Its most recent newsletter (No.26, Autumn 2008) provides far more information than is possible here.

RoadPeace has recently relocated to Brixton in South London. It can now be contacted at: G4b Shakespeare Business Centre, 245a Coldharbour Lane, London SW9 8RR, tel: 020 7733 1603; e.mail: info@roadpeace.org; website: www.roadpeace.org. We are particularly delighted that this vigorous charity is one of five winners of this year's Guardian charity awards. As the Society Guardian’s website points out, the awards recognise and nurture innovation and excellence among smaller charities, which typically have the fresh thinking, flexibility and reach into communities that make the crucial difference to people's lives.

WE HATE NO.13: REWARDING FAILURE
Derek Kinrade (with Ann Darnbrough)

Golden largesse for feeble performance has become, like lap dancing clubs, 24/7 drinking and casinos, an unsavoury part of the national scene. I refer, of course, to those extraordinary salaries and bonuses awarded to people who have loaned money irresponsibly or, conversely, have invested public money in banks palpably at risk. To people, moreover, who appear to be largely unaccountable for their actions. Obviously no-one has set out to fail. But fail they have: big time. No-one has put it better than Will Hutton (The Guardian, 14 October) who refers to “breathtaking business misjudgment, epic regulatory failure and a 20-year indulgence of now-defunct ‘free market’ principles”. What I hate most in such a context is the indiscriminate payment of excessive ‘rewards’ across the board.

But you may think that it is all very well to be wise after the event: in this case the credit crunch and meltdown of global stock markets. I take that point and rely instead on the remarks of my partner, Ann Darnbrough, in her miscellany A Rebellious Disposition, published, please note, in 2007:

“Though lacking the skills of a trained accountant, I nevertheless have strong views about those sad people who dedicate their energies to acquiring personal fortunes, rather than benefiting the world around them; piling up riches by every this way or that, without thought for those struggling to make an honest living. Some may call it the politics of envy. I prefer to think that it is a basic principle of elementary morality.

“A recent Guardian survey found that over the previous 12 months boardroom ‘earnings’ had risen seven times faster than average earnings. More than 200 directors ‘earned’ more than £1m. Eight chief executives were said to have ‘earned’ more than £1m as a basic salary, quite apart from mind-boggling bonuses, perks and share options. The magic word ‘bonus’ seems to have high ‘earners’ salivating. In 2006, the total of bonuses to be paid out in the UK was estimated at £8.8bn.

“While some attempt has been made to lift the poorest members of our population out of absolute poverty, the disparity between those at the bottom and those at the top inexorably widens as the rich are allowed, indeed encouraged, to become immoderately richer.

Enough is never enough
“Naturally, we all want enough money to keep our lives going and to be able to do those things we enjoy. The trouble is that for so many people, enough is never enough…it all too often seems that once a person becomes rich their main object in life is to become richer. You might say they have caught the deadly affluenza virus that can be almost impossible to shake off.

“The defence for monstrous pay is that it is necessary to attract the right calibre of people. But does this argument stand up? Does outstanding performance necessarily follow financial reward, and is a devotion to high living the best qualification for leadership? Whatever happened to the idea of achievement through dedication as the ultimate prize? Unbridled remuneration simply creates a hierarchy of status, divorcing the leaders from the led. Don’t get me wrong. I know that absolute equality is an impossible dream, not really a dream worth dreaming, and that financial incentives are needed as a spur to achievement. What I am saying is that there needs to be an overriding sense of proportion, a climate of what is reasonable rather than a free-for-all based on supply and demand.

“I believe a healthy nation, one that is prosperous in the best sense of the word, cannot be built on greed. A nation state based on the pursuit of affluence will surely die. True wealth is made up of the contributions of all its citizens to the common good: to each other as neighbours, to strangers around us through kindness and to the wellbeing of the state through fair and equitable taxation.”

Ann was not alone in challenging the culture of greed, but most of us closed our eyes and ears to the dangers of an economy built on excessive debt and weighted in favour of entrepreneurial adventurers. Information about the finances of banks and the ratio of deposits to lending now abounds in the media, but in non-specialist newspapers it was conspicuous by its absence before the bubble burst.

We have drifted into countenancing a society in which the rich get ever richer and the divide between those at the top and those at the bottom has widened to an obscene degree. I may have mentioned (but it is worth repeating) that while people on quite modest incomes pay National Insurance contributions at 11%, high earners pay only 1% on income above £40,040 a year. Similarly, if you cast your eye on your gas or electricity bills, you will find that the price is higher for low consumption. This is surely indefensible.

I rest my case, save that those who have benefited from their mistakes still have an opportunity voluntarily to pay something back. But perhaps that is another impossible dream.

WE HATE NO.12 : FOOTBALL

Not, I hasten to say, the beautiful game, nor yet the likes of Accrington Stanley or those who labour enthusiastically on Hackney Marshes. My distaste rises exponentially as we move into the higher echelons of competition.

But at all levels, club football attracts tribal support. The original pretext for one’s particular attachment may be slight, but once implanted it tends to remain entrenched, like religious faith or heroin addiction. And it is irrational and deaf to common sense. At the lower levels of the sport this hardly matters, but at the top it translates to an allegiance and dedication to success literally at any cost.

Thus we have seen, increasingly, an acceptance that success can be bought. It amounts to a collective madness. Given wealthy owners, prepared to commit huge resources, there is virtually no limit to the importation of the talent thought necessary to achieve pre-eminence. And fervent fans have become party to this strategy, apparently unconcerned that, beyond the shirts the players wear, their favourite teams for the most part bear little affinity to the areas they allegedly represent.

Foreign owners, foreign managers, foreign players
Of the big four in the English Premier League, none has an English manager. Only Sir Alex is British. The players are largely drawn from the elite of footballing countries across the world: proven maestros imported to secure supremacy. And the costs are enormous, with massive transfer fees and top managers and players being paid incredible salaries. As we have seen in recent seasons, the result is that the contest has become more and more predictable, with most of the teams in the league destined to be also-rans. This process is reinforced by the inevitable drift of better players from struggling clubs to those challenging for silverware. Soon, unless something is done, I suspect that the big four will become the big two; perhaps even the big one.

Men predominate as the cheer leaders in this outrageous system. I have heard it said that some find the climatic moments in a game as “better than sex”; which is surely a sad commentary on their love lives. Apparently they have substituted the romance of football for romance in their relationships. I think the sad fact is that they bond with other men, and prefer their company to that of their partners. And at such great cost. When I first went to watch Liverpool FC, it cost a shilling (5 pence) to get in and an old penny to store my bike in somebody’s back yard. Nowadays, admission, refreshments, travel (sometimes over hundreds of miles), parking, replica shirts and other accessories add up to a whopping outlay, and for those men with family responsibilities this is inevitably at the expense of their nearest and dearest. Today, even to watch football on television mostly requires a slice of the family income to be diverted to subscription channels. Conversely, people who are hard up cannot afford to participate. It is another example of social exclusion.

Yet another unfortunate consequence of the system, with its over-reliance upon foreign players in our top clubs, is that the home countries are drawing talent from a contracting pool and finding it increasingly difficult to recruit the equivalents of George Best and Billy Wright so that they can field competitive teams. In the pursuit of localised aims we are frustrating national achievement.

Change will not be easy. As Napoleon Bonaparte remarked “There is no place in a fanatic’s head where reason can enter”.

(I swear I wrote this before the acquisition of Manchester City by the sheiks of Abu Dhabi (for the big four now read the big five) and before Andy Burnham’s speech to the Cooperative Party).

WE HATE NO.11 : EUPHEMISMS
(or: what’s wrong with the truth?)
I was triggered to have a go at this subject by the May 2008 issue of Plain English, which reported that our urbane Justice Secretary, Jack Straw, has condemned euphemisms in the public services. Well I wouldn’t go quite that far. Euphemisms are defined in the Oxford Dictionary as the substitution of a mild or vague expression for a harsh or blunt one, and there are many circumstances in which I am on the side of mildness: as when a cherished manuscript is turned down by saying that it does not fit the publisher’s present requirements, rather than pronouncing it to be a load of tosh. Or a gentle let down after a dire audition. Being outspoken may be honest, but it can also be hurtful, rude and offensive.

Much depends on our intention in being less than direct: there are many motives, such as kindness, prudishness, superstition and pretension. Thus shoddy homework may be said to be ‘not wholly without merit’ (rather than fatally flawed), old people are ‘of a certain age’, impaired people are ‘disabled’ (actually, if you think about it, this is a contra-euphemism), foul weather is ‘inclement’ and pets are ‘put to sleep’. Christians do not die, they ‘go to meet their maker’ or are ‘called to higher service’. Such masterpieces of elusion go on ad infinitum. As Charles Dickens (Bleak House, 1852/3) reminded us, even when we speak plainly we are prone to preface our remarks with an apology: ‘Not to put too fine a point on it’. To my mind, weasel words do not matter very much. They are no more than delicate subterfuge in polite society.

Gilding the lily
Euphemisms cross over into ‘We Hate’ territory when we enter the arena of what is commonly called ‘double-speak’: messages honed to camouflage and mitigate an unpalatable reality. Perhaps this is what the writer of the gospel attributed to Matthew had in mind when he recorded Jesus as saying (5:37) “let your communication be Yea, Yea; Nay, Nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil”. So far as the public services are concerned, there is a wonderful example of circumlocution in the June 2008 issue of the DWP’s Touchbase, which describes the latest raft of welfare reform as a challenge “to ensure that everyone has an opportunity to take advantage of the jobs market, irrespective of social, health or other barriers to employment”. Whereas, unless I am mistaken, its primary purpose is to reduce dependence on state benefits. I understand from The Oxford Companion to British History that in the 19th century workhouses were similarly represented as “a productive environment for the able-bodied poor”.

This kind of PR communication is now commonplace. The Nazis perfected propaganda as an art form, so that what began centuries ago as no more than a mechanism for propagating religious faith has become a skill devoted to massaging and neutralising truth; what Alan Harrington (Life in Crystal Palace, 1959) described as “flower arrangements of the facts” and Cyril Connolly (The Unquiet Grave, 1945) as “taking refuge in evasion”. This is where the Forum’s main interest lies, because we hate subterfuge and want public information to be unvarnished.

Cloaking evil
Yet there is a category of euphemism that is even more sinister. Recent conflicts have spawned a category of expressions that seek to disguise what can only be described as corrosive atrocity. Again, Hitler and his henchmen were in the vanguard. They called the holocaust ‘Die Endlösung’ (final solution) to resolve ‘the Jewish question’ in Europe. In more recent times genocide has been diminished as ‘ethnic cleansing’. On the battlefield, attackers speak of ‘friendly fire’ which, being mistakenly directed at their own side, is anything but friendly. The indiscriminate killing of innocent civilians unfortunate enough to be in the vicinity of enemy positions has become known as ‘collateral damage’, while the conveyance of prisoners to countries where torture is acceptable has been called ‘extraordinary rendition’. Failing that, ‘water boarding’ may do the trick. (If you have any doubt about whether this and other techniques used at Guantanamo are forms of torture, I recommend the May/June issue of Amnesty magazine). In Afghanistan and Iraq, ‘Standard Operating Procedure’ (SOP), normally a perfectly legitimate term, was deployed as a deadly euphemism for abhorrent and illegal interrogation techniques which, as I write, are said still to be in use.

I doubt if these sick perversions of language are what Jack Straw had in mind, but it is surely time to be honest.

WE HATE : CALL CENTRES

I recently needed to locate a street parking bay in Westminster for a disabled driver and phoned the City Council (or so I thought). The person who answered seemed uncertain generally about parking bays and passed me on to a colleague who asked me where I needed the space. “In Whitehall,” I replied. “Where is that? Is it Whitehall Road?” the voice asked. “Whitehall,” I said, beginning to sound irritated, “in central London, near where the Prime Minister lives.”

“We’re only a call centre,” rejoined the perplexed operator.

Unsurprisingly, a recent Citizens Advice report finds that telephone call centre service is often poor. You are likely to be kept on hold for ages, presented with a multitude of automated options before receiving an inadequate response.

The report says that four out of ten of us (surely too low) are “dissatisfied with our experience of some call centres”. Such centres, according to the report, are now pervasive, yet CA found that 97 per cent of respondents, when prompted, found at least one aspect of them annoying. The report, Hanging on the Telephone, demonstrates the negative impact of poor call centre service by drawing on a MORI survey of consumers and the experience and evidence of CA bureaux nationwide. In particular, it finds that call centres don’t work well for people who want to resolve complex problems, and those who have learning difficulties or don’t speak English. The time taken to get through, the cost of calls, lack of ownership and a failure to recognise the role of intermediaries like CABx are all highlighted. Utility companies are identified as the worst offenders, followed by government agencies and financial institutions, like banks and insurance firms.

CA’s Chief Executive, David Harker, comments that “the use of call centres is a fact of modern living. They can offer significant benefits if consumers can deal with matters on the phone at a time which suits them. But they are not the answer for everyone. There is a long way to go to achieve a balance between dealing efficiently with high volumes of calls and providing accessible and responsive services. Almost all call centre users have criticisms of their experience and a significant proportion is left dissatisfied. Critical problems about money, debts and benefits, affecting people on very low incomes, simply are not getting through. Call centres should be an effective gateway to services and problem resolution, not a barrier.”

This, we feel, is a gentle verdict. We think that call centres operate for the economic benefit of the provider rather than that of the consumer, and often are designed to protect senior managers from complaints. We suspect that there is an undisclosed pyre of burning dissatisfaction, particularly where call centres are located abroad. The Forum’s concern is with the serious lack of information being provided where this is urgently needed.

WE HATE : SECRECY

It is commonly said that Britain has a “culture of secrecy”. And if the Freedom of Information Act can do anything to encourage that culture to change then that can only be a good thing. We are all for as much openness as possible. But let’s not delude ourselves. Most people have some things that they prefer to remain hidden, and public bodies are no different. No amount of legislation is likely to bring to the full light of public scrutiny the darkest corners and most embarrassing secrets of governments and public authorities. What is disturbing, however, is that an Act that has taken 30 years to reach the Statute Book is quite so full of ‘get-out’ clauses. Described by a leader in The Guardian as “a pale shadow of the 1997 white paper that encapsulated Labour’s enthusiasm in opposition” (31 December 2004), the Act begins simply enough and in the right direction by giving, on request, a general right of access to information held by public authorities. But the devil is in the detail. Part II of the Act (which the Explanatory Notes dispose of in a little over three lines) contains a raft of exemptions, some of them absolute, others dependent on a ‘public interest’ test. Particularly contentious are exemptions which, on the evidence of a ministerial signature, allow for non-disclosure ‘to safeguard the national interest’ (section 24), or if the information sought constitutes a trade secret or would, or would be likely to, prejudice commercial interests – including those of the public authority holding it (section 43).

Under section 60 there is a right of appeal against ‘national interest’ certificates and we know Richard Thomas, the Information Commissioner, to be a man of the highest integrity and resolve. Nonetheless this is a disappointing Act. ‘Freedom of Information’ is perhaps a misnomer. We think ‘Curtailment of Information’ is nearer the mark.

WE HATE : MODELS

Not, despite some reservations, the sort that parade on catwalks, but what the French call idées fixées. An example is the ‘social model of disability’ which holds (correct me if I’m wrong) that disability is attributable to the physical, attitudinal and communication barriers created by society, or perhaps more accurately which society fails to dismantle or change. Despite significant progress in addressing the needs of disabled people, society (whatever that means) is certainly not blameless; but is not the greater truth that the shortcomings and insensitivity of non-disabled folk compound disability, rather than being its sole cause? And in a degree related to an almost infinitely variable level of impairment.

The ‘social model’, we think, emerged as a reaction to another paradigm – the ‘medical model’ – which was seen as identifying and relating to disabled people in terms of their impairments. My partner remembers being in hospital as a child (for years on end) when the consultant would sweep in and be told, “this is the spastic”. The danger, however, in repudiating such medical insensitivity is to move on to an unbending hostility to medical interventions, even those that seek to prevent or cure impairments, on the dubious ground that such strategies present disability in an unfavourable light.

Like all models, the ‘social model of disability’ predicates a one-rule-fits-all fundamentalist formula, underestimating the diversity of disability and the severity of its impact. It is not, as lawyers say, ‘case-sensitive’, derogating from, if not entirely rejecting, the view the rest of the world has that impairments are in themselves to a greater or lesser degree disabling.

We are alas increasingly beset with models: a tendency to apply fixed rules to any given situation. I’ve seen it called a disorder, as for example when psychologists at the University of Maryland concluded that conservatism is a set of neuroses routed in “fear and aggression, dogmatism and the intolerance of ambiguity”. Adherents of these values, they said, had a “preference for moral certainty” and disliked nuance, an intolerance of ambiguity that could lead people “to arrive at premature conclusions, and to impose simplistic clichés and stereotypes”.

In all such beliefs, facts are subordinate to concept; and imagination and exploration outside the rules rigorously outlawed. But not in Innovations.

WE HATE : SPIN

Don’t we all. Imagine yourself in a descending lift. On the lower ground we find ‘Myth and Legend’, which makes no pretence to reality: holy grails and magic swords in this department; then one floor down to ‘Rhetoric’, which tries to impress through the flamboyance of its language, more often than not with an implication of insincerity; next ‘Confusion and Muddle’, where parrots and finches are kept in quarantine; down further to the level of jargon and gobbledegook, so brilliantly targeted by the Plain English Campaign; finally, deep in the basement, we encounter the dark purveyors of ‘Spin’: at best imparting a favourable bias to a bald and unconvincing narrative, at worst dealing in outright deceit. The task of making up the list I’d rather leave to you.

Official spin, of course, is not new. During World War I, David Lloyd George set up a British War Propaganda Bureau, headed by a Member of Parliament. This was followed in 1916 by the establishment of a ‘Department of Information’. And readers of a certain age may remember a famous wartime speech by Winston Churchill, just after the Dunkirk evacuation, in which he asserted that Britain was armed to the teeth, ready to repel a Nazi invasion. Whereas, of course, our defences, apart from the RAF, were in complete disarray.

Heightening our cynicism
But these messages were directed at the enemy! The problem today is that many of us have come to suspect that almost everything we are told by Government has to be treated with caution. This is more serious. Trust is the first casualty of misinformation, and charm offensives tend only to heighten our cynicism.

Worry not! Last year, Whitehall appointed a ‘spin slayer’: Howell James, a former political secretary of John Major. He is this country’s first-ever ‘Permanent Secretary of Government Communications’ and shares with the Forum a dedication to ‘getting the message across’, albeit a different message. A leaked suggestion reported by BBC News is to use doctors, scientists and other professionals to communicate important Government messages because, it was said, “the public trusted them more than ministers”. Mr James himself has already been accused of using “mealy-mouthed words” and “honeyed phrases”, but we wish him well. Turning round a culture of spin is going to take time. But there is one certain remedy: it’s called honesty.

WE HATE : DOGMA

“The world,” said Albert Einstein, “is so full of possibilities that dogmatism is simply indecent.” Nevertheless, it is an indecency that afflicts huge battalions of people – in religion, politics and many other spheres of thought. This is not to say that all dogma is false; simply that it is by its nature taken on trust as an article of faith, in most cases untested. Dogma, by definition, is not susceptible to independent thought and is often so entrenched that its adherents ignore or repudiate even hard evidence discrediting their beliefs. “The mind of the bigot,” said Oliver Wendell Holmes, “is like the pupil of the eye; the more light you pour upon it, the more it will contract.”

You may say (rightly) that there is a difference between a naïve belief in beneficent, protective gods and the Nazi dogma of Aryan supremacy. But this is not a defence of the validity of dogma. Nor is it a sound basis for educating our children.

No less disturbing is blind adherence to rigid political agendas. Henry Porter in The Observer recently observed how detrimental political party loyalty is to sensible decision making: “Members of the major parties,” he wrote, “make endless excuses for the failings of their own leaders, while treating their opponents as members of an untouchable caste.”

All ideas should be open to questioning
At the extremes dogma is positively divisive and dangerous. As Professor Richard Dawkins pointed out in a recent broadcast “irrational militant fundamentalism is on the march”. The time has come, he argued, for people of reason to say “enough is enough”.

In a valedictory speech marking the end of his five-year presidency of the Royal Society, Lord May of Oxford, claimed, as reported by Ian Sample in The Guardian (30 November 2005), that fundamentalist thought from religious beliefs to the ideologies of green lobby groups [and I would add some disability groups] is skewing debates over some of the most pressing issues facing humanity. He criticised groups for putting their own traditions, unsupported beliefs and dogmas above scientific evidence. All ideas, he argued, should be open to questioning, and the merit of ideas should be assessed on the strength of evidence that supports them and not on the credentials or affiliations of the individuals proposing them.

WE HATE : BUREAUCRACY

Literally, ‘bureaucracy’ is really no more than the necessary official workings of government. But somehow the word has come to be associated with crass, unimaginative, practices, and is now commonly understood in a pejorative sense.

Sometimes it also brings out qualities in the ‘bureaucrat’ that lead to sloth, petty tyranny and abuses of power. Shakespeare, back in 1601, had Hamlet soliloquizing about “the law’s delay” and “the insolence of office” among those burdens that can engender a death wish! Many frustrated, downtrodden people will resonate to that thought.

Slavish bureaucrats
Sometimes, bureaucracy may also be, to use the words of an old television series, “the last refuge of the timid”, with bureaucrats locked into slavish and blinkered adherence to rules, stifling imagination and creativity.

Bureaucracy sometimes begins well, but changes direction through time. Thus a parking control scheme may be initiated in a genuine attempt to regulate traffic, but degenerate towards a punitive mechanism to provide revenue. Or a public service – that is a service for the common good – may be diminished by passing into hands that have an overriding interest in profit and over-generous executive salaries. Voluntary organisations, alas, are not entirely free from the latter malaise, but in my experience those who work in the ‘third sector’ are generally leaner, fitter and more committed to a strong sense of purpose than their statutory counterparts. The voluntary principle has much to commend it, is cost effective and tends to minimise bureaucracy.

Confusion heaped upon confusion
Just now there are admitted to be bureaucracies in the statutory sector that have so decomposed as to have become “unfit for purpose”. It may be that some bureaucrats are themselves incompetent, or careless, or lacking leadership, or under-resourced, or given impossible tasks, or driven by targets, or so overloaded with well-intentioned new legislation and initiatives as to bewilder not only the service user but also the service provider. It does often seem that as complexity is added to complexity, so confusion is heaped upon confusion. Stir the pot with quangos, directorates, think tanks, task forces, consultants, commissions, strategy units, agencies and malfunctioning computer systems and you have a proverbial recipe for disaster. It all stacks up to systemic failure and a bureaucracy in crisis.

Readers will have their own list of fiascos. They have been whipped up by our tabloid press, but we are all surely legitimately shocked. It appears that each part of a dysfunctional system may be protective of its own narrow remit (and its own existence), fulfilling individual objectives but failing to see the overall picture, so that, in an attempt to achieve cohesion, further overarching bureaucracies are introduced to try to promote “joined-up thinking”.

It is always difficult, even impossible, to pin down blame. Criticism can be deflected by focusing on those parts of the system that are successful, so that failures are portrayed as minor blemishes in a massive drive for progress. This is not a new excuse. Charles Dickens, as a young parliamentary reporter, encountered what he called the “Circumlocution Office… always voted immaculate by an accommodating majority”!

But perhaps we should not be too critical. There is a British tradition of bumbling along and you may well think this is preferable to the kind of ruthlessly efficient bureaucracy that so well organized the holocaust. I couldn’t possibly comment.

WE HATE : PRAGMATISM

Beware if you are told to “live in the real world”. Pragmatism is the antithesis of idealism – the pursuit of romantic, unattainable goals – but no less extreme. It will be said that you can do only that which is practical, but in reality you are being invited to subordinate principle to expediency, to abandon doing what is right because it is inconvenient, expensive, time-consuming or simply embarrassing.

Perhaps the classic example is to say “the poor are always with us”, abandoning policies to address poverty by treating it as an unavoidable misfortune; one of the ‘realities of life’ for which Samuel Johnson coined the phrase “necessary evils”. He was referring only to the appending of notes to Shakespeare’s plays, but it has come to be applied to almost any situation that it is easier to accept as inevitable than to challenge. War is a case in point. Despite the evidence of history, men (and by and large I do mean men) still leap to fight rather than seek alternative resolutions: stoking up even greater hostility, resentment and ill-will instead of first attempting to address the grievances of their enemies.

Continuing to eat factory-farmed chickens is, to my mind, another example. You may think that this comes well down the scale from the horrors of poverty and war, but the chickens would not agree. Simply because we like chicken and the cheaper the better we are pragmatically prepared to close our eyes to the barbaric cruelty that they endure.

Politicians are particularly prone to pragmatism, following the dictates of party whips rather than their own consciences and suppressing their cherished beliefs if they see them as vote-losers. Circumstances alter cases, of course. Our patron, The Rt.Hon.The Lord Morris of Manchester recently pointed out during the passage of a Bill through the House of Lords that to seek to amend it, however beneficially, would effectively result in it running out of time and being lost. The issue, essentially, is one of doing right. Back in the 1960s, as a new MP, he sponsored Sidney Silverman’s Bill to abolish, once and for all, the death penalty for murder. He did so knowing that his constituency was home to both of the parents of Leslie Ann Downey, one of the child victims of the Moors murderers. Many of his constituents openly declared that this signalled the end of his parliamentary career. In fact, when Harold Wilson called a snap election shortly afterwards, Alf Morris’s majority over his Conservative opponent doubled. The moral of this shock result, he reflected later, appeared to be that while they may not share a candidate’s view on some issues, most voters are concerned more about trust and a readiness to stand by firmly held convictions.

This story reminds me of Edmund Burke, who in an earlier age was described by Oliver Goldsmith as “too fond of the right to pursue the expedient”. Or, if you think this particular example is open to question, you may prefer Theodore Roosevelt. “No man,” he wrote in The Strenuous Life, “is justified in doing evil on the ground of expediency.” Though there is currently talk of “values” in addressing the problems of global conflict, this is one principle that seems to have been overlooked by a later President. You may feel that at the very least there is a case for avoiding unnecessary evils; but I could not possibly comment.

WE HATE : THE OLYMPIC GAMES

Although support for the 2012 London Games appears already to be declining in inverse proportion to the huge escalation of costs and the prospect of Lottery funds being diverted away from good causes, Londoners are commonly said to be “largely” supportive of the project. Well nobody has asked me. I have been implacably opposed to the whole enterprise from the outset. My latest rant is on behalf of all those who hold similar views.

You may say, “What has this to do with Innovations in Information?” My response is simply that some of the financial information provided in support of the bid appears to have been decidedly optimistic if not innovatory. According to thelondonpaper (6 March 2007), members of the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee went so far as to accuse the organizers of the games of indulging in “Alice in Wonderland” budgeting. The cost of the project, as now officially revealed, is already more than treble the original prediction and is probably destined to go on rising; which seems to be the way of all such adventures. As Simon Jenkins put it in The Guardian (2 March 2007): “To build six temporary stadiums for 16 days of sport is the kind of gesture once confined to African dictators”.

A claim in mitigation is that the required developments will help the long-term regeneration of the areas in which they are placed. Well, perhaps, but surely another triumph of hope over experience. The evidence from other major cities that have staged the Games in recent times (not to mention the Dome) hardly supports the notion of an ongoing Elysium. In a letter to The Guardian (10 March 2007), Kevin Swaine pointed out that the Athens Olympics left the country with such a debt that every new home built in Greece now has a 19% tax added to help clear the enormous burden.

A more fundamental objection than money, however, is the nature of the modern Games: far removed from the historic Greek celebrations in honour of Zeus; even from the relatively modest Games held in London in 1948. For the whole bonanza has become largely a rite to nationalism. The Olympic logo may have interlocking rings, but the reality is that rather than being bound in a great spirit of unity the priority of the superpowers is to come top. Personal achievement in sport is primarily a contribution to national pride and supremacy.

The staging of the Games has also become overblown. Each successive host nation cannot be seen to put on a poorer show, so that the attendant presentation becomes more and more elaborate. As far as Britain is concerned this cannot be for the greater glory of our contestants, for if anything is reasonably predictable it is that we will finish among the also-rans of the medal table. The elation that greeted the success of our Olympic bid was, I believe, symptomatic of a fundamental malaise. The supporters of the project have fallen for the conceit, born in Britain’s colonial past and encouraged by Elgar’s sublime music, that ours is a land of hope and glory which God has made mighty. Why ‘God’ should favour one nation above another is unexplained, but the vainglorious hope is that he will make us “mightier yet”. Patriots have succumbed to an inflated sense of our national importance and our place in the world.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the sporting arena. A few, admittedly stunning, successes have inflamed a climate of wholly unrealistic expectation. Pride has well and truly gone before a fall. In football, rugby and, most recently, cricket we have been brought crashing down to earth. Yet a whitewash in the Ashes has not restored humility. Rather we are urged to new ambition by looking forward to a renewed contest in 2009!

I do not wish to pour scorn on the achievements of our Olympians, some of which over the years have been truly heroic. I protest rather at the context in which the medals are won: the triumphalism attending elite success over the mass failure of the losers. In this respect the London Marathon is a far more inclusive model. Pride of place is given to elite competition, but without the pompous anthems and the flag-waving, and followed by a huge contingent of people who simply run for the joy of being part of a great event with the opportunity to raise lots of cash for good causes.

Finally, to return to the financial issues, there is the telling argument that the money devoted to the Games – our money - could be better spent; the Lottery will be raided when there are more deserving priorities. If it must be for sport, then let us strengthen local activities held for grassroots participation rather than national ascendancy. Derek Mapp, chair of Sport England, charged with getting two million more people active before the Olympics, is quoted in Guardian Sport (22 March 2007) as saying, “It is like I have to do it barefoot”. Sport England’s lottery income will be cut by £55.9 million in 2009, which will bring its contribution to the Olympic project to £395 million. And this against a total annual income of £265 million.

Arts funding is also threatened. Joan Bakewell, chair of the National Campaign for the Arts, is reported in London Lite (16 March 2007) as saying that Lottery funding had been a “golden egg” for the arts. “Today,” she added, “it’s starting to look a bit tarnished”.

“All victories breed hate,” wrote Baltasar Gracián in The Art of Worldly Wisdom. For my part, I simply hate the thirst for supremacy. I would like to see the billions about to be lavished on the 1912 Games used to enhance the Social Fund.

I HATE : PETERING OUT

Please note “I”, rather than the usual collective “We”. This is strictly personal. If, when close to death, you want to eke out your days in a drug-induced torpor, so be it. I would want your palliative care to be the best that is possible. But please don’t seek to impose your views on me. When my days are numbered, I’m for the quick release button, if necessary and if possible with assistance.

We are generally living longer, sometimes beyond any prospect of a continuing decent quality of our physical life or, indeed, mental capability. Occasionally such deterioration can come earlier through the onset of a fatal disease. Why, in such exigencies, should we wish to hang on? What purpose is served in doing so, apart perhaps to conform to a religious taboo?

Yet it seems to me that it is precisely those of a religious persuasion, theoretically dedicated to goodness and with a belief in the possibility of a blissful hereafter, who are most reluctant to part with earthly torment and want to impose their inhibitions on other people. As an utterly convinced, even devout, atheist, and one who has already experienced being on the very brink of death, I see nothing to fear in oblivion. Indeed, I feel it a rich blessing not to have to contemplate either ‘hellfire’ or the tedium of a disembodied eternity in ‘heaven’.

The disability lobby (and I use that word in the sense that I think it is by no means representative of many disabled people) has its own distinctive dogma, though in some respects similar and overlapping to religious ideology. It has argued against the enactment of Lord Joffe’s Bill for regulated assistance to die, at least until such time as adequate palliative care is available. Well, for myself, I don’t want end-of-life palliative care, however perfect. It is not my idea of dignity in dying. Indeed, having lived an independent life, I doubt if I will want to accept any kind of care. Nor do I think much of the argument that making the option of voluntary euthanasia easier and more acceptable could lead to the inhuman slaughter of disabled people. That’s a smokescreen if ever I saw one.

Don’t misunderstand me. I accept that life is precious; to be preserved, respected and safeguarded. There can never be a limit to reverence for life, but in some circumstances it can be part of that reverence to respect the right of an individual to relinquish a life that has become intolerable and futile and end it humanely.

I (along with many others) want choice over the end of my life. I want to decide when I am ready to die and, in expressing a rational and reasonable request, to have the legal right to get medical help to do so. Death, as Shakespeare reminded us in Henry IV Part 2, is certain to all. The inevitable dénouement is simply a matter of timing, and I don’t want to be frustrated by a vocal minority. I want independence in this final choice and hate laws that constrain my right to make that decision for myself.

WE HATE : RETIREMENT

Alas, because this is the last issue of Innovations in Information it will also be my final whinge. Which is a pity. I could have gone on, and on, and on, though perhaps not always within the Forum’s charitable objectives.

Speaking for myself, although my work for the past 13 or so years has been purely voluntary, I hate the idea of retirement so much that I intend to continue to avoid it at all costs. I know that many people long for it, and if you’re simply making a living from a ghastly job that isn’t surprising. I met a friend recently who greeted me by saying “I’m just back from Rarotonga”. The smile on his cherubic face seemed to say, “Why on earth are you still working?” I might have said – but didn’t – that I think it’s work that gives meaning to life. Pastime and play simply fill the gaps in between.

The very word ‘retirement’ smacks of disengagement. One of the meanings in Collins English Dictionary is “to recede or disappear”; another – in a military context – is “to fall back”. We ‘retire’ to bed. Work, by contrast, ideally confers a sense of purpose, promotes social interaction and imposes structure. Of course there are some occupations from which one is well advised judiciously to retire. The evidence of late recordings shows that singers have often gone on too long (may Pavarotti be remembered as he was). Footballers have an even more limited effective time span (though Teddy Sheringham seems bent on giving a whole new meaning to the ‘freedom pass’). But for most of us, given reasonable health, there is no obvious reason to leave the field. A fixed age of retirement, after all, is only a 20th century concept.

There are, to my mind, two sides to the same coin: heads, the benefits of work; tails: the perils of idleness. Work can be, in the words of Noël Coward, “much more fun than fun.” Without it, as George Berkeley pointed out in A word to the wise (1749), “there can be no such thing as a happy life”. Alfred Marshall, I think, also hit the nail on the head, in his Principles of Economics (1890):

“The truth seems to be that as human nature is constituted, man rapidly degenerates unless he has some hard work to do, some difficulties to overcome; and that some strenuous exertion is necessary for physical and moral health.”

Unfortunately, the level of such ‘strenuous exertion’ must inevitably change with time, as strength and energy decline. Perhaps we should, in contemplating retirement, substitute another word for ‘work’, since it implies a duty, possibly onerous, from which we may be glad to be relieved. ‘Activity’ could be a happier choice. Yet the transition from the discipline of work to freedom of chosen activity is likely to be a difficult one. As William Cowper wrote in Retirement (1782):

“’Tis easy to resign a toilsome place,
But not to manage leisure with a grace;
Absence of occupation is not rest,
A mind quite vacant is a mind distressed.”

I have enjoyed writing ‘We Hate’ and have been reinforced, from time to time, by letters of support. Though this is my final offering, readers may be interested to know that our director, Ann Darnbrough, has fulminated over a pretty wide range of her own bête noires – perhaps rather more constructively and humanely – in her new book, ‘A Rebellious Disposition’.

(The quotations have been drawn from the superb The Oxford Book of Work (ed. Keith Thomas, 1999), which seems to bring out almost everything that could be said on the subject).

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UPDATED June 2010

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