Politics – Page 48 – More Zonkyness

UK Riots: Part 2

Aug 202011

Now that some time has passed, it is time to rethink thoughts about the riots in the UK. Everyone (including me) reacted very quickly in the wake of the riots in London and elsewhere with their immediate reactions. Not always with impressive results, and indeed even those who had a reasonable point to make would probably agree that the situation is more complex than at first supposed.

Was It Really That Bad ?

Well of course it was to those who were actually caught up in the riots, but sometimes we get the impression (especially amongst the more … excitable foreign bloggers) that the rioting was worse than it actually was. For instance the London riots involved 22 districts out of a total of 326 districts, or in other words only 6.7% of London by area was involved in the rioting. And that’s an exaggeration – for instance my brother lives in Enfield which saw two nights of rioting, but hardly saw a thing other than the Sony warehouse burning in the distance.

Or by population, the police estimate that up to 3,000 people will be charged with various offences relating to the riots. Let us assume that only 1/5 of the people involved in the riots will ever be charged with anything – that adds up to a total number of rioters of 15,000. Given the population of London is 12.58 million, only 0.11% of the population was rioting. Even if I’m out by a factor of 10 (so there were really 150,000 rioters), that would still be only 1.1% of the population were rioting.

Even if you assume all those 15,000 rioters were from Croyden (a place with some of the most serious riots), a place with a population of around 330,000 people, we find that 15,000 out of 330,000 gives a percentage of 4.5% – so even when we over inflate the figures for rioters ridiculously, we still get a tiny proportion who actually took part.

So what we saw recently, was the result of a tiny proportion of the population. Even amongst young people, the majority were appalled at what they were seeing and what is less commonly reported is that the volunteers who turned out to cleanup the mess caused by the rioters included even more young people than took part in the riots.

One of the other things that doesn’t get so well reported is that the rioters were not all young people – there were more “mature” adults in the mix as well. It also wasn’t particularly racial either – all “races” were involved in the rioting.

So what about the underlying causes for the riots ?

No Excuses: They Were All Just Criminal Thugs

Well, there’s no arguing with the fact that the rioters were criminal thugs … or at least the worst ones were. But just disregarding underlying causes is the action of the feeble-minded. Why were these criminals rioting this year and not last year ? Or the year before ?

There is some underlying reason why the riots occurred this year and not in other years. Whatever underlying causes turned these people into rioters should be examined to see if there’s a viable method of stopping that from happening – whilst they may be rioters this year, even without riots they are likely to be creating trouble of some kind at any point in time. Theft, burglary, assault, etc.

Police Brutality

The riots started with what began as a peaceful protest into the shooting by police of someone called Mark Duggan. If there had not been a shooting, there probably would not have been a peaceful protest about the shooting. Which in turn would not have descended into rioting, which in turn would not have caused what we could call “copy-cat” riots elsewhere.

So in a sense the “police brutality” in shooting Mark Duggan did cause the rioting, but the later riots were not in support of Mark Duggan at all – they were simply acquisitive and destructive riots. It could have been any cause triggering them – a protest at the killing of anyone, a demonstration against student fees, protests against the globalisation culture, etc.

Whereas there may be a problem relating to the shooting of Mark Duggan, and we can regard that as the trigger for the later riots, in no way can the shooting be described as the cause of the riots.

Economy

This is my favourite underlying cause as I have made the point before.

In summary, the rioters are to some extent economically disadvantaged but that is not why they rioted. The poor (unless they are exceptionally so), can put up with their situation if they see there is hope of improvement. For the young, this means seeing opportunities for improvement – that they can get a job, can pursue self-improvement through education, etc. If they do not have hope, this leads to frustration with their situation exacerbated when they see others improving their lot.

Not all of the “hopeless” riot of course, so again there are other reasons as to why the rioters were made into rioters.

Parental Failure

This is of course the favourite excuse for the “family values” politicians … frequently coming up with this without checking any of the evidence. And they usually get a dig in at “failed” families too – single parent families.

Maybe it’s true that all of the rioters came from single parent families where the remaining parent has poor parenting skills. Although I have not seen any evidence of this … one or two examples that may have come to light do not make a trend. Even if it is poor parenting contributing to the riots, the answer to this problem is not going to be simple.

One of the most obvious answers is to provide “alternative” families … young people below a certain age (say 16) are always grouping together to form a pseudo-family of sorts whether they need one or not. If we’re worried about gangs and gang culture, we need to provide alternative groups for young people to join; if they are not joining the ones that already exist then there is something wrong with the ones that exist.

Gun Control

Probably one of the most bizarre and offbeat claims was that the UK’s gun control laws helped kick off the riots … which is patently ridiculous. After all the US (with somewhat more lax gun control than the UK) has had riots itself, and gun control didn’t seem to stop the looting then.

Besides which there is an assumption that the shopkeepers whose shops were looted were present and able to defend their property … if only they had had guns! Well it turns out that most shopkeepers were not present, and some shopkeepers did protect their property, and without the assistance of guns.

So the presence of someone prepared to face down the rioters, sometimes stops those rioters. Whether or not guns are available.

Where’s The Enquiry ?

One of the most bizarre reactions to the riots has been to pointedly refuse to hold a public inquiry into what is going on. No matter how “wise” someone is, they cannot know all of the answers to the riots. Or if they do, why were they not able to stop them in the first place ? I have fairly strong opinions as to why these riots started, but I would love for an inquiry to get to the bottom of the causes.

Apart from anything else, it would be a great opportunity to say “I told you so”.

But more importantly, it would be an opportunity to get to the root causes of the problems with evidence to those causes. The riots are a symptom of an underlying problem, or far more likely a number of underlying problems all combining into the riots. These underlying problems undoubtedly have other outcomes than the riots.

Fixing the underlying problems will not only make future riots less likely, but will also improve our society in other ways.

London Riots

Politics 1 Response »

Aug 082011

On the third night of rioting in London, the most immediate reaction of every sensible person is to condem the violence as mindless thuggery. Or more cynically, not quite mindless thuggery designed to allow those who are so inclined to loot shops.

Which is quite right of course. Nothing excuses this sort of violence.

The interesting thing about the reactions of politicians is that the right-wing politicians do nothing more than condem the violence, whereas the left-wing politicians in addition to condemning the violence, also point out the economic situation is leading to a generation of young people who are frustrated with their situation who see no hope of a normal life. Or in other words right wingers are content with a simple minded answer, whereas the left-wingers are at least trying to look a little deeper.

That doesn’t excuse rioting of course, and you’ll find that most young people weren’t rioting. Not even most of the most deprived young people. The rioters themselves, would in normal circumstances be kept busy with paying jobs giving them enough money to entertain themselves without rioting.

With the present economy, there are too many young people who have no job, see no chance of getting a job, and see the government cuts take away opportunities for education which may in the end lead to a job. And in a city like London where every young person can see the incredibly wealthy around, must lead to incredible frustration.

Of course doing anything to make the rioter’s lives easier is something that grates. But what about making the lives of all the young people who didn’t riot better ?

Press Regulation for the UK in the Wake of HackGate

Media, Politics No Responses »

Aug 042011

Pretty much everyone is agreed that the current “regulator” for the printed media (the Press Complaints Commission) is pretty much a waste of space and needs to be replaced with something else. After all, it has pretty much ignored the whole News of the World phone hacking scandal. But what ?

It would be easy to say that self-regulation has failed, and that a legal regulatory framework is required. But that gives politicians far too much say in how the media operates – which is something far less desirable even than allowing phone hacking. Because despite the current scandal involving phone hacking, breaking the law to obtain information for a story is not always wrong.

It depends on the story of course – a story about some celebrity up to some sexual shenanigans does not justify any illegal information gathering. This applies even more to some victim of crime, but getting to the truth behind something like the politician’s expenses scandal ? Perhaps that does justify what would be illegal activity.

The overriding requirements for a new organisation to oversee the press are :-

It should not be controlled by politicians. This is the core of what it means to have a free press – free from political interference. Specifically free from interference from publishing stories that the press wishes to publish. That is not to say politicians cannot have a say on what kind of story would be acceptable.
It should not be controlled by journalists, editors, or newspaper proprietors. The current PCC is controlled by the media themselves, and look how effective that is.
It should be controlled by ordinary members of the public selected by lottery. This avoids the regulation of the press being controlled by the establishment; offer £75,000 a year and most people selected would jump at the chance.
Sanctions available to the authority should be significant – varying from a fine as a percentage of daily revenue, banning publication for a number of issues, requiring an editor to resign, etc. This would require a law allowing the enforcement of the sanctions.
All stories together with the classification of sources (more on this later) should be sent to the authority in an electronic copy. Most stories can (and should) be sent in advance of publication to allow the authority to review and prevent publication.

Public Interest Immunity

Certain stories qualify for public interest immunity, but the phrase “public interest” is problematic as it does not mean what the public are interested in. There is no clear definition of what public interest is, but you could think of it as what the public should know rather than what they want to know. For example, some members of the public may be interested in the sex life of a famous footballer, but that most definitely is not in the public interest.

Unless his “sex life” includes rape of course.

But if a story were to be about perhaps a bunch of newspaper editors allowing their journalists to routinely break the law on the flimsiest of pretexts, then there is a “need to know”.

In the later situation, a public interest immunity should apply. Or in other words, breaking certain laws to gather information is justified.

The key thing here is that we no longer trust editors to make this sort of decision without the commercial interest influencing their decision. Such decisions now must be made by an appropriate authority. So in addition to the list given above, a press regulatory authority needs to allow and encourage journalists to seek their advice on such matters in secret.

Classification of Sources

One of the things we have heard consistently on the past is that journalists do not reveal their sources … not even to their editors. Well, perhaps (or I’m not entirely sure I believe that), but that does not mean that the journalist has to hide what kind of source the story comes from.

The reason journalists never reveal their sources is that a source for a story may fear retribution for leaking information. After all footballers with a predilection for balling the wrong person are notorious for killing off those who would leak their stories. But fair enough. After it is not just their lives that sources might fear for – it could be job security, or reputation, etc. And in some cases, they could have a legitimate fear for the life.

But anyone who has read any history of the intelligence services will know of this problem, and of any number of solutions. The most obvious solution, is not to name sources but to allocate them code numbers, and categorise the source information – from which numbered source, and what kind of source it is – information from a whistleblower, copied from a document, rumour, etc. There’s a lot of ways this can be improved.

But the key thing is that an editor or a regulatory authority does not need to know the name or identity of a source, but the methods by which the information was obtained.

Norway’s 9/11 Moment

Politics, Religion 2 Responses »

Aug 042011

First of all, a little number crunching … Norway has a population of around 5 million as compared to the 309 million in the United States. Or around 1.43% of the size (in population). If we were to “scale up” the known casualty figure of 76 dead to the equivalent figure in terms of the US population, we get a figure of around 5,300 “casualties”. So whilst the Norway bombing and shootings casualties are “only” 76 in number, it is hardly an exaggeration to call this Norway’s 9/11 moment.

There are of course differences – not least of which is that this appears to be the work of a single individual rather than a network of terrorists. The fact that this was a christian fundamentalist rather than an islamic fundamentalist ? That’s only on the surface – when someone’s heart is as black as hades, the shade of black hardly makes a difference. As I said a long time ago, it is not Muslims or Christians that are the enemy, but extremist fundamentalists who want to force their view of the world onto others.

Perhaps you could claim that Norway’s catastrophe has more in common with the London 7/7 bombings because the terrorist was “home grown”. Fair enough, but even 7/7 has been called Britain’s 9/11.

There are those who say that this is the end of Norway’s “time of innocence” … which frankly I find a little odd, and perhaps a touch patronising. Whilst on first reaction, Norwegians may not have seen themselves as a target for terrorism, those Norwegians in charge of security matters will have on reflection realised that it is still possible for Norway to be attacked. And well before the events of last Friday.

Norway deliberately chose an open society – perhaps one of the most open societies there has ever been. And despite the risks of an open society where a nutter can commit these sorts of crimes, it seems that Norway is determined to remain free and open. Many other countries when attacked by terrorists have reacted by clamping down on their freedoms in order to make terrorism just a little less likely, but it does not stop it.

It seems that Norwegians have reacted to this tragedy in a way that can only be called mature – whilst there is undoubtedly anger at the killer, and some concern about security, they are determined to keep their freedoms.

Foreign Aid: Enough Already ?

Politics No Responses »

Jul 172011

Given the current situation in Eastern Africa, it is about time to come up with a few words about foreign aid … specifically the amount that each country contributes towards foreign aid. There is plenty of suspicion that some countries are not contributing their fair share – indeed some countries have promised aid and then failed to deliver.

There are those who criticise the uses to which foreign aid is put – and there may be valid criticisms there, but whilst your country is being stingy, you don’t really have the right to criticise. Stump up the money to at least the average, and then you may criticise away. Indeed some of the criticisms are in the end due to a lack of money – for example paying for emergency aid to keep starving people alive doesn’t solve any long term problems, but solving the long term problems takes money beyond that for emergency aid.

I’ll be using percentage of GDP as a metric of how stingy countries are when it comes to foreign aid. Some may criticise this metric, but it is the only sensible metric to use … and indeed someone has already looked at the percentage of GDP question and more or less come down on the side of saying that it’s probably the best metric available. See here.

When looking at the figures, it is worth bearing in mind that the UN has a target of getting the rich to contribute 0.7% of their GDP towards foreign aid. This is a target that was agreed by the rich countries way back in 1970, and has rarely been met. Stealing an image from another web page :-

Graph of foreign AID by GDP

I would rather have included just the second graph which is the important one, but the first allows me to make a point about absolute aid monetary values. It allows the US to hide it’s stinginess behind it’s absolute value of donations – it looks generous, but the true story is hidden behind the size of the US. For instance, you could more accurately compare (in absolute terms) the donations by the US with Europe as a whole – if you add up the value donated by the next three largest contributors (all in Europe), you get a value of approximately $39 billion – way more than the US, and the contributions from less wealthy European countries would make the US even more stingy.

I’m picking on the US here simply because it is one of the stingiest rich countries around, but very few countries reach or exceed the UN target of 0.7% of GDP. Only 5 out of 23 countries (22%) meet or exceed the UN target. Or in other words, 78% of the listed countries have not met a target they are obligated to have met by the mid-1970s!

And before anyone mentions that this is because of the current economic climate, bear in mind that foreign aid budgets have increased since the banking crisis – over time, the rich countries have accumulated a “debt” of some $4.1 trillion dollars representing the shortfall between what they have promised and what they actually give.

Or in other words it’s not “enough already”, but we have fallen a long way short of what we promised to do – except for a tiny minority (that 22% who exceed the target are all quite small countries). It may well be that some foreign aid is wasted, but that is a topic for another time – a time after the UK has reached the 0.7% target (it is currently 0.56% of GDP).

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