What are the limits of free speech in an open society? My instincts are libertarian, so I'd start with the premise that we should allow the maximum freedom possible which includes press regulation, unless someone is inciting criminal behaviour. So far so good, but then there's a number of cases in recent months around freedom of expression that are problematic.
Take Dapper Laughs for example, aka Daniel O'Reilly, who had a show on ITV2. I really don't want to defend Dapper Laughs; even Gene Hunt might think twice about sticking up for that show. The extracts I saw on YouTube were loutish and sexist; many others felt strongly enough to petition ITV and several comics wrote an open letter to the channel. The end result is ITV has cancelled the second series (if it was ever planned) and Daniel O'Reilly went on Newsnight to make an apology claiming that it was a character that got out of control. We can debate whether a fictional creation can escape the control of its maker or whether Dapper Laughs, who seems to be Daniel with a different name is really a character as such, elsewhere. Whatever you think of the show (I hope you don't like it), doesn't it still count as free speech?
You could argue that broadcasting the programme is not the same as someone writing a blog or posting videos on Vine or YouTube; that's more a question of audience numbers than the principle. Free speech would be so much easier to defend if everyone used that right wisely. In any group of people, there is always one goes too far. If you can't think of anyone in your office who keeps overstepping the mark, the bad news is that it's you.
The worry for me is not the Dapper Laughs was offensive and unpleasant, it's the strange precedent that it sets. Many liberal-minded people in the media wrote at length how the programme was an incitement to sexual assault; yet why was a stupid comedian the focus of such ire and not religious programming from the Middle East, available in the UK, that preaches women should be beaten for disobedience and gays should be killed. Ofcom is, as to be expected, launching an investigation...into Dapper Laughs.
This is known as 'whaboutery', citing other cases where a principle was not applied. It's an old philosophical trick, doesn't mean it's not valid. Campaigners for women's rights can claim a victory of sorts against ITV2, whilst much worse goes unchecked. Then there's Julien Blanc, the self-styled pick up artist, who is the focus of a campaign to be banned from Britain. For the record, I think he's a seriously nasty piece of work and any woman that falls for his tactics needs help from a mental health professional. Denying him entry to the UK risks increasing his profile amongst the type of man who might go to his seminars - they also need to seek help just not from him.
And there's the other point, unless in the eyes of the law he is committing or has committed a criminal offence, which is debatable, we are dispensing with the rule of law. Let him in if no crime is involved and he can hold his seminars; protestors can picket outside those seminars. Both are exercising their rights to free speech.
I think what bothers me about the Julien Blanc case most is that we have allowed extremist preachers into the UK on many occasions to preach much worse sermons than his pick-up tactics. Again it's a curious kind of message about women's rights that is so partisan, as if Muslim women or minorities do not deserve a Twitter campaign or a petition. There was a related incident a month ago, where Bill Maher on his TV show tried to discuss the problems of homophobia, misogyny and general bigotry in many Muslim countries. His guest, Ben Affleck shouted him down, accusing him of 'Islamophobia'. Here's the clip:
Bill Maher
There's a really interesting reply to Ben Affleck from a Pakistani woman, Eiynah, who wrote a book called 'My Uncle is Gay' and since been declared an Enemy of God and threatened with death. Below is the link, it's worth reading in full.
Open letter to Ben Affleck
Ben Affleck is a fine actor and director and no doubt his intentions were good, yet he sought to close own any further mention of the subject on a discussion programme with his peers. That's censorship, not free speech.
Let's consider a different case also in recent months, where an exhibition about slavery, with actors as live exhibits, was cancelled from the Barbican following a vocal media campaign and petition that it was was racist. The actors involved did not think so, nor did the Barbican or any of the countries were it was shown prior to the UK. Yet you and I will not be able to judge for ourselves, as protestors have ensured 'Exhibit B' will not happen. For more background, there's a link to the Guardian article.
Exhibit B
I realise at this point I should 'check my privilege' - English, heterosexual male, educated at private school. That means I've never experienced discrimination or prejudice, apart from occasional jibes about being a short. 5'7" isn't that short, it's Tom Cruise height and in no way is it comparable to being on the receiving end of genuine discrimination.
Nonetheless, free speech and free expression cannot be defined as the freedom to say nice things that we all agree with - that's not real freedom. For reasons I cannot comprehend, people articles written by Peter Hitchens, who trades in bile and cant. To take issue with the errors, logical flaws and gross generalisations in a single article of his would take days; one could argue his writing promotes prejudice, intolerance and bigotry. But he's free to write what he likes, you may choose to read it ( I'd suggest you don't), or not. That's your decision. In my opinion, you would get more sense and potentially a joke or two out of even the most right wing cabbie.
By the same token, much as it may offend your personal values, free speech must be free, with as few restrictions as possible.
Oh dear, it looks like I've ended up defending Dapper Laughs and Julien LeBlanc....feel free to lay into me as much as you like. That's your right.
Monday 17 November 2014
Tuesday 30 September 2014
People Moving
I'd like to talk about immigration. Did a chill just pass through cyberspace? Did you look over your shoulder worried that this blog might not be work safe? Are you fearful that the next sentence begins 'I'm not a racist but...' Relax, this is a safe place. There will be no references to England being swamped or seaside towns being overrun; nonetheless even mentioning the word 'immigration' can be enough to shut down debate.
This strikes me as odd; no subject should be taboo apart from Morris dancing which is in my opinion nothing short of witchcraft. I've seen 'The Wicker Man'; one day you're skipping round the village green in a costume with bells on, next day you're sacrificing Edward Woodward to the pagan gods. My attitude to folk traditions may be influenced by a traumatic late night viewing of said film, aged twelve, when I had no idea of the ending. However I digress, back to the tricky subject of immigration.
Let me set out a simple principle: very few things are inherently good or bad, apart from Morris dancing which I've mentioned, patio heaters are another, as are leaf blowers (they are all bad just in case you were wondering). Inherently good things might include a small child laughing, Michael Palin and freshly baked bread (unless you are gluten intolerant). My point is that you cannot discuss immigration in simplistic binary terms, namely you are either for it or against it with no shades of opinion in between. The idea is self evidently nonsense, which these two hypotheticals will hopefully demonstrate.
Imagine that the only immigrants wishing to settle in the UK were highly educated, tolerant and hard-working people, with no dependents, who wished to work in areas where there was a chronic shortage of candidates such as physics teachers. Their numbers were modest and could easily be absorbed by the country without pressure on housing or social services. Ask anyone what they thought of immigration in this scenario and the overwhelming majority would be in favour.
An alternative scenario might be one where the only immigrants wished to settle in the UK were members of organised crime families, with convictions forserious offences, who intended to devote their time in their new homeland to furthering their criminal works. They too would arrive in small numbers, but in this situation nearly everyone would be against immigration. So it's a a meaningless question to ask is immigration good or bad, without context.
Think of it another way, I invite you to a fantasy time-travel dinner party, except you have no idea of the guest list. Do you say yes or no? Hard to decide. What if I tell you it's composed of the most famous individuals of the last 100 years? You would be intrigued yet the crucial question is the people attending. It might be Hitler or Gandhi, Stalin or Martin Luther King. The example is deliberately absurd to illustrate the futile nature of debating a concept without context. The devil is in the detail as the saying goes and it was probably said by Satan's lawyer.
Talking about immigration is a very touchy subject for mainstream politicians. Ed Milliband forgot to mention it during his conference speech, funny that. David Cameron looks like he's regurgitating a fur ball every time he's forced to discuss the subject. I think the reason it's become so toxic is one of the new axioms of modernity that we are all supposed to endorse, yet most know is ridiculous. The free movement of peoples is one of the stated principles of the EU, which on the surface sounds like a lovely idea. Except when you think about it, it's profoundly unfair. There are close to 500 million people in the EU, what would happen if they all decided overnight to settle in Bruges. It's a charming city, I've never been, but I've seen the film 'In Bruges' and it's nothing if not photogenic; there's no way it could accommodate half a billion people.
So logically, we can't all just settle where please, not least because it impacts the people already living there. If you need further proof, ask a Palestinian about their feelings on the matter. Okay cheap comment, but the concept is sound. The world is host to over seven billion people, some live in poor countries, others in middle income ones, a minority in prosperous lands. There is no conceivable scenario, where anyone would suggest total freedom movement of peoples as the most likely outcome would be huge migrations from the poor to the rich states which in turn would cause chaos and ultimately make everyone worse off than they were before. The Economist magazine, normally a perceptive and wise publication, holds to this dogma, irrespective of the practicalities. They also back free movement of capital and look how well that's worked out - a subject for another blog
You cannot discuss immigration without talking about who those people might be, however delicate our collective sensibilities. The question is not one of pure economics and in any event, economists cannot agree whether mass immigration is a net positive or negative for the host countries. Britain is a liberal society, under the rule of law, which does a reasonable job of protecting individual liberties. It's not perfect, nowhere is, something that the likes of Liberty seem to forget; it's a work in progress. Maybe there is heaven on earth somewhere, Sweden perhaps or Denmark? But they've seen a surge in far right votes recently, so there's trouble even in paradise. And it seems that immigration is the flashpoint, especially if newcomers reject liberal values, such equality for women or not stoning gay people to death, for example.
Of course there's xenophobia and racism towards new arrivals and none of this excuses that, but I wonder if the flowering of far right groups across Europe is the poison fruit of this creed about free movement. It undermines one of the fundamental attributes of a nation state, which is the control of its borders and the granting of rights to work and settle. If the aims of unrestricted movement of peoples in the EU was to bring people together, it seems to be having exactly the opposite outcome. That's not whant any of us want, whatever party we vote for.
This strikes me as odd; no subject should be taboo apart from Morris dancing which is in my opinion nothing short of witchcraft. I've seen 'The Wicker Man'; one day you're skipping round the village green in a costume with bells on, next day you're sacrificing Edward Woodward to the pagan gods. My attitude to folk traditions may be influenced by a traumatic late night viewing of said film, aged twelve, when I had no idea of the ending. However I digress, back to the tricky subject of immigration.
Let me set out a simple principle: very few things are inherently good or bad, apart from Morris dancing which I've mentioned, patio heaters are another, as are leaf blowers (they are all bad just in case you were wondering). Inherently good things might include a small child laughing, Michael Palin and freshly baked bread (unless you are gluten intolerant). My point is that you cannot discuss immigration in simplistic binary terms, namely you are either for it or against it with no shades of opinion in between. The idea is self evidently nonsense, which these two hypotheticals will hopefully demonstrate.
Imagine that the only immigrants wishing to settle in the UK were highly educated, tolerant and hard-working people, with no dependents, who wished to work in areas where there was a chronic shortage of candidates such as physics teachers. Their numbers were modest and could easily be absorbed by the country without pressure on housing or social services. Ask anyone what they thought of immigration in this scenario and the overwhelming majority would be in favour.
An alternative scenario might be one where the only immigrants wished to settle in the UK were members of organised crime families, with convictions forserious offences, who intended to devote their time in their new homeland to furthering their criminal works. They too would arrive in small numbers, but in this situation nearly everyone would be against immigration. So it's a a meaningless question to ask is immigration good or bad, without context.
Think of it another way, I invite you to a fantasy time-travel dinner party, except you have no idea of the guest list. Do you say yes or no? Hard to decide. What if I tell you it's composed of the most famous individuals of the last 100 years? You would be intrigued yet the crucial question is the people attending. It might be Hitler or Gandhi, Stalin or Martin Luther King. The example is deliberately absurd to illustrate the futile nature of debating a concept without context. The devil is in the detail as the saying goes and it was probably said by Satan's lawyer.
Talking about immigration is a very touchy subject for mainstream politicians. Ed Milliband forgot to mention it during his conference speech, funny that. David Cameron looks like he's regurgitating a fur ball every time he's forced to discuss the subject. I think the reason it's become so toxic is one of the new axioms of modernity that we are all supposed to endorse, yet most know is ridiculous. The free movement of peoples is one of the stated principles of the EU, which on the surface sounds like a lovely idea. Except when you think about it, it's profoundly unfair. There are close to 500 million people in the EU, what would happen if they all decided overnight to settle in Bruges. It's a charming city, I've never been, but I've seen the film 'In Bruges' and it's nothing if not photogenic; there's no way it could accommodate half a billion people.
So logically, we can't all just settle where please, not least because it impacts the people already living there. If you need further proof, ask a Palestinian about their feelings on the matter. Okay cheap comment, but the concept is sound. The world is host to over seven billion people, some live in poor countries, others in middle income ones, a minority in prosperous lands. There is no conceivable scenario, where anyone would suggest total freedom movement of peoples as the most likely outcome would be huge migrations from the poor to the rich states which in turn would cause chaos and ultimately make everyone worse off than they were before. The Economist magazine, normally a perceptive and wise publication, holds to this dogma, irrespective of the practicalities. They also back free movement of capital and look how well that's worked out - a subject for another blog
You cannot discuss immigration without talking about who those people might be, however delicate our collective sensibilities. The question is not one of pure economics and in any event, economists cannot agree whether mass immigration is a net positive or negative for the host countries. Britain is a liberal society, under the rule of law, which does a reasonable job of protecting individual liberties. It's not perfect, nowhere is, something that the likes of Liberty seem to forget; it's a work in progress. Maybe there is heaven on earth somewhere, Sweden perhaps or Denmark? But they've seen a surge in far right votes recently, so there's trouble even in paradise. And it seems that immigration is the flashpoint, especially if newcomers reject liberal values, such equality for women or not stoning gay people to death, for example.
Of course there's xenophobia and racism towards new arrivals and none of this excuses that, but I wonder if the flowering of far right groups across Europe is the poison fruit of this creed about free movement. It undermines one of the fundamental attributes of a nation state, which is the control of its borders and the granting of rights to work and settle. If the aims of unrestricted movement of peoples in the EU was to bring people together, it seems to be having exactly the opposite outcome. That's not whant any of us want, whatever party we vote for.
Sunday 10 August 2014
Monkey Business
David Slater, a wildlife photographer, is in dispute with Wikimedia, the foundation behind Wikipedia, over a photo. He wants the picture removed from the public domain, Wikimedia is refusing on the grounds that the monkey took the picture. It is now a very famous image of a crested macaque grinning into the camera - the ultimate selfie. Slater argues that the selfie was only possible because he had spent £1,000s travelling to the animals' habitat in Sulawesi and positioned the camera in the first place. Wikimedia's policy is that it is public domain - there was no human author involved in creating the copyright, if anybody has image rights it would be the macaque. But primates do not have property rights, although the Planet of Apes films suggest that is only a matter of time.
I am a fan of wildlife photographers, Wikipedia and crested macaques, so this story leaves me very conflicted. It also may inspire the use of monkeys wore widely in professional photography, on the other side of the camera. If you are a magazine editor looking to cut costs, bring a gibbon with you to next photo shoot and let him operate the camera with remote control. Bazinga! The photos are no longer copyright so you don't have to pay.
Realistically, the costs of breeding, training and feeding a monkey, along with the handler's wages, mean that any savings on copyright would be offset by outgoings on tyre swings and bananas. So for the time being, professional photographers can relax - a monkey could potentially do their job but it's just too expensive.
There is a wider issue about copyright in the digital age which in turn is linked to content and content creators. Everybody likes free stuff: free beer, free food, free accommodation. All these words have positive associations, the best of all being free bar. The only time I've encountered a genuinely free bar, which included spirits, was at the Kobo party after the London Book Fair. It was excellent, I lost the power of coherent speech and have no memory of the taxi ride home. Free trumps paying for things, whenever we have the option. And many of us have become used to paying very little or nothing at all for much of the media we consume.
It's a great deal if you are a consumer of content, like anybody who enjoyed looking at the monkey selfie or anyone who uses BitTorrrent or other illegal download sites. Now I know a lot of people download media illegally, I used Limewire before it was shut down. In my defense, a lot of the music wasn't then available on iTunes or Spotify - they forced me into a life of crime, your honour.
(Thus far I have avoided using the phrase 'pirate' copies or 'pirate' media, because it makes me think of a man with one leg and a parrot on his shoulder which is confusing.)
But it is still a crime, not a serious one like murder obviously. Yes, everyone does it, but lots of people drive over the speed limit that doesn't mean we don't accept the need for speed limits. Yet when it comes to illegal copyright, many people I've spoken to who include IP lawyers, TV producers and a social media analyst for a major tech firm, justify their actions with a range of excuses:
'It's not really stealing because the Warner Brothers makes so much money anyway.'
'People who download illegally also buy content.'
'The copyright system is obsolete.'
This sounds like a variation of Wikimedia's defence over copyright infringement - a load of monkey balls. We pay to go to the cinema, to a football match, to attend a concert, go clubbing and go to the theatre. Why then do we expect to consume content at home for free. Or put it another way, we don't generally work for nothing or give our property away to strangers, so why do we think musicians, photographers, TV and film writes owe us a freebie? What have we done for them in return, other than click the rating button?
The scale of the problem was brought home to me when I had a second broadband line installed (it's for uploading commercial video work, not porn in case you were wondering). The engineer was polite, helpful and then proceeded to tell me about how I could hack my Netflix box to access everything for free and a range of other hacks that unlocked online HD video libraries. This guy worked for BT, who has a vested interest in getting people to pay for content for example, sports rights. But free wins every time.
Perhaps the answer lies in a more flexible copyright system with the facility for micro-payments and streaming extended more widely. Much as I love Wikipedia, pulling the monkey trick to use a photographer's work without permission is not the way forward either.
PS - In all honesty, I wish I had taken notes when the BT man was telling me his trade secrets. It's not like I was overcome with an attack of morals, it was that same syndrome when people start telling me directions, my brain shut down after the third word.
PPS - Here's a couple of excellent links on the issue of freebies
Harlan Ellison rants about working for free
Musician Whitey responds to a request for licensing his music for nothing
I am a fan of wildlife photographers, Wikipedia and crested macaques, so this story leaves me very conflicted. It also may inspire the use of monkeys wore widely in professional photography, on the other side of the camera. If you are a magazine editor looking to cut costs, bring a gibbon with you to next photo shoot and let him operate the camera with remote control. Bazinga! The photos are no longer copyright so you don't have to pay.
Realistically, the costs of breeding, training and feeding a monkey, along with the handler's wages, mean that any savings on copyright would be offset by outgoings on tyre swings and bananas. So for the time being, professional photographers can relax - a monkey could potentially do their job but it's just too expensive.
There is a wider issue about copyright in the digital age which in turn is linked to content and content creators. Everybody likes free stuff: free beer, free food, free accommodation. All these words have positive associations, the best of all being free bar. The only time I've encountered a genuinely free bar, which included spirits, was at the Kobo party after the London Book Fair. It was excellent, I lost the power of coherent speech and have no memory of the taxi ride home. Free trumps paying for things, whenever we have the option. And many of us have become used to paying very little or nothing at all for much of the media we consume.
It's a great deal if you are a consumer of content, like anybody who enjoyed looking at the monkey selfie or anyone who uses BitTorrrent or other illegal download sites. Now I know a lot of people download media illegally, I used Limewire before it was shut down. In my defense, a lot of the music wasn't then available on iTunes or Spotify - they forced me into a life of crime, your honour.
(Thus far I have avoided using the phrase 'pirate' copies or 'pirate' media, because it makes me think of a man with one leg and a parrot on his shoulder which is confusing.)
But it is still a crime, not a serious one like murder obviously. Yes, everyone does it, but lots of people drive over the speed limit that doesn't mean we don't accept the need for speed limits. Yet when it comes to illegal copyright, many people I've spoken to who include IP lawyers, TV producers and a social media analyst for a major tech firm, justify their actions with a range of excuses:
'It's not really stealing because the Warner Brothers makes so much money anyway.'
'People who download illegally also buy content.'
'The copyright system is obsolete.'
This sounds like a variation of Wikimedia's defence over copyright infringement - a load of monkey balls. We pay to go to the cinema, to a football match, to attend a concert, go clubbing and go to the theatre. Why then do we expect to consume content at home for free. Or put it another way, we don't generally work for nothing or give our property away to strangers, so why do we think musicians, photographers, TV and film writes owe us a freebie? What have we done for them in return, other than click the rating button?
The scale of the problem was brought home to me when I had a second broadband line installed (it's for uploading commercial video work, not porn in case you were wondering). The engineer was polite, helpful and then proceeded to tell me about how I could hack my Netflix box to access everything for free and a range of other hacks that unlocked online HD video libraries. This guy worked for BT, who has a vested interest in getting people to pay for content for example, sports rights. But free wins every time.
Perhaps the answer lies in a more flexible copyright system with the facility for micro-payments and streaming extended more widely. Much as I love Wikipedia, pulling the monkey trick to use a photographer's work without permission is not the way forward either.
PS - In all honesty, I wish I had taken notes when the BT man was telling me his trade secrets. It's not like I was overcome with an attack of morals, it was that same syndrome when people start telling me directions, my brain shut down after the third word.
PPS - Here's a couple of excellent links on the issue of freebies
Harlan Ellison rants about working for free
Musician Whitey responds to a request for licensing his music for nothing
Sunday 15 June 2014
Discombobulation
I should offer an explanation for the pretentious title of this blog. As a guiding principle, I try to follow George Orwell's advice for writing English. He counselled against using a Latin derived term when an Anglo-Saxon one existed; arcane and obscure Latinate words are no substitute for clarity of thought. If only academics and would-be intellectuals writers took note. But there's something particularly fitting about 'discombobulation' to describe the modern experience where technology makes old practises redundant. The word itself is too long, it stumbles off the tongue in a mass of syllables, tripping out in an awkward jumble. It feels outdated and outmoded, just like many of us do when confronted by relentless change.
The bizarre protest of London's taxi drivers last Wednesday against the cab app Uber was a case in point. A revolutionary technology brings the price of minicabs down, making their use easier and simpler; the reaction of the black cabs is to protest. Maybe I would too if I had spent 4 years learning the Knowledge, which is how long it takes for the average black taxi driver to qualify. GPS tracking and sat nav have made that effort to a large extent pointless.
As an example, last night I took an Uber from the West End to my flat. It was a mint condition S-Class Mercedes, that arrived within in 3 minutes of requesting the ride and cost £4 less than a black taxi. The driver did not have the Knowledge, he had sat nav - the whole experience was easier, less hassle and cheaper than hailing a cab. And he had a great sound system, what's not to like? There is the black cab equivalent to Uber, Hailo, but it's more expensive so I'll probably stop using it altogether.
Safety is the usual cry of technophobes, a charge levelled at Uber. The only flaw in the critics' case is that all their drivers are CRB checked, you have a record of their name and their license plate. And let's not forget than John Warboys, the serial rapist, was a black cab driver - there's risks everywhere but this system improves customer safety. Fact.
The problem with inventions is that you cannot uninvent them. Once cheap and reliable motor cars came to market, the horse-drawn Hackney carriage was doomed. Hackney carriage drivers no doubt staged a protest slow trot in Trafalgar Square, but given the option of travelling staring at a horse's bum at seven miles an hour or speeding at thirty miles an hour with no animal's anus at eye level, travellers chose the car.
Motorised rickshaws made human rickshaws obsolete throughout India, the clock cannot be turned back. Although I do remember one Western traveller ( a traveller being a tourist who stays in the country for more than two weeks, gets giardia, stays in the flea-ridden accommodation and never tips), telling me in all seriousness that he missed the poetry of the human rickshaws in Calcutta. By poetry I think he meant photogenic poverty; he was stoned at the time, so it might just have the Nepalese temple balls talking.
Balls or no balls, whether it's Uber or Kindle, iTunes or Instagram, technology moves quickly and moves faster than our ability to adjust. I liked the smell and feel of vinyl records and even toyed with the idea of going back to analogue, getting a turntable for classic albums only. And then I had a mental picture: a stack of vinyl, unplayed, unused whilst I listened to my music on Spotify or iTunes. Whilst digital music may not have the sensuality of records, it's so easy and user-friendly, you can't return to CDs or records.
Likewise photography has suffered a similar paradigm shift. Film has died a death, it laster longer than some predicted but is now the preserve of select professionals and keen hobbyists. The other 99.9% of photos are digital, many taken on smartphones. Most are terrible, but thanks to Instagram's clever filters, they look okay and much superior to the overexposed, out of focus photos holidaymakers used to collect from Boots after their summer holidays.
As Stewart Lee said in his recent TV series, 'do you remember when we had things' and I do. I'm old enough to remember cassettes, vinyl, VHS, mini-disc and a whole host of outdated technologies. In due course, printed books may join that list. Yes, sorry to say, it's probably only a matter of time before most reading becomes digital. People are highly conservative when it comes to their media habits, yet I don't know anyone who has switched to e-reading that regularly buys physical books. None of this means that I won't miss printed books if they do disappear. Not only are they good for reading, they make you look smarter. Fill a room with intellectual tomes that you have never read, you lend yourself an aura of wisdom and learning. And hardback books are great for other uses, such as propping up things, acting as drinks coasters or raising the height of a computer monitor - to name but a few of their uses.
No matter how much I much like physical books, I'm not about to start burning Kindles in the street. They just won't catch fire, no matter how hard you try. Besides I love my Kindle, it's a library in the palm of my hand - apart from when I forget to charge it and then it's not even a decent coaster. Plus even a tiny spill of beer and it goes all funny. Some lovers of old technology say that what happens you have no USB lead, what happens to your fancy e-reader then? True, on a desert island, I would be stuck. However, a bunch of vinyl wouldn't be much use without a generator and I suspect that paper books might be sacrificed in the cause of lighting fires or toilet tissues, especially if it's a new novel by Ben Elton.
Besides if you apply that logic to our lives, then pretty everything we have is rendered useless on a desert island, save a penknife, a plastic tarpaulin and a tinderbox. The kind of people who carry around those things everywhere they go are usually the sort of people we should put on desert islands. There they can indulge their fantasies of black UN helicopters heralding the apocalypse whilst getting a really good tan.
Whether are happy about it or not, the new wave of technological change is sweeping the world and it's going to make a lot of people redundant. Uber will probably mean less black cab drivers, but more Uber drivers and more people taking taxis. The new translation software for Skype may make translating and interpreting, at least for basic communication, something that doesn't require a person.
Lawyers, accountants and a whole host or professions will face similar disruptions. My limited experience with high street solicitors was so dreadful, I can't see how an app could do any worse. They managed to get the name on the deeds of the property wrong, three times, each instance in a different way and miscalculated the stamp duty. And at the end of the process, you pay them £1,000s. Give me Uber for solicitors any day.
Medicine will face the same issues where software replaces simple, process-based tasks. Basic diagnosis could in theory be done by an app, there I said it. These days most people self-diagnose before visiting a doctor anyway, why not formalise the process? Yes, I realise there is a lot more to it than that, but still... it's going to happen.
The real dilemma is how we react to these changes and it's safe to say that protesting about them is the wrong answer. Brussels has banned Uber, so its taxis will cost more. Europe generally seems committed to a Canute-like course of banning or regulating technologies in the hope that the status quo can be preserved. It can't. Eventually Brusssels will give in and its residents will have access to the cheaper taxis the rest of the world enjoys. We should sympathise with those affected; banning progress only makes us poorer in the long run. The best strategy is to keep the job market flexible, the business environment benign and maximise the chances for those made redundant to find new roles.
Although on second thoughts, I'm not sure we want former black cab drivers doing other jobs. UKIP might be hiring.
The bizarre protest of London's taxi drivers last Wednesday against the cab app Uber was a case in point. A revolutionary technology brings the price of minicabs down, making their use easier and simpler; the reaction of the black cabs is to protest. Maybe I would too if I had spent 4 years learning the Knowledge, which is how long it takes for the average black taxi driver to qualify. GPS tracking and sat nav have made that effort to a large extent pointless.
As an example, last night I took an Uber from the West End to my flat. It was a mint condition S-Class Mercedes, that arrived within in 3 minutes of requesting the ride and cost £4 less than a black taxi. The driver did not have the Knowledge, he had sat nav - the whole experience was easier, less hassle and cheaper than hailing a cab. And he had a great sound system, what's not to like? There is the black cab equivalent to Uber, Hailo, but it's more expensive so I'll probably stop using it altogether.
Safety is the usual cry of technophobes, a charge levelled at Uber. The only flaw in the critics' case is that all their drivers are CRB checked, you have a record of their name and their license plate. And let's not forget than John Warboys, the serial rapist, was a black cab driver - there's risks everywhere but this system improves customer safety. Fact.
The problem with inventions is that you cannot uninvent them. Once cheap and reliable motor cars came to market, the horse-drawn Hackney carriage was doomed. Hackney carriage drivers no doubt staged a protest slow trot in Trafalgar Square, but given the option of travelling staring at a horse's bum at seven miles an hour or speeding at thirty miles an hour with no animal's anus at eye level, travellers chose the car.
Motorised rickshaws made human rickshaws obsolete throughout India, the clock cannot be turned back. Although I do remember one Western traveller ( a traveller being a tourist who stays in the country for more than two weeks, gets giardia, stays in the flea-ridden accommodation and never tips), telling me in all seriousness that he missed the poetry of the human rickshaws in Calcutta. By poetry I think he meant photogenic poverty; he was stoned at the time, so it might just have the Nepalese temple balls talking.
Balls or no balls, whether it's Uber or Kindle, iTunes or Instagram, technology moves quickly and moves faster than our ability to adjust. I liked the smell and feel of vinyl records and even toyed with the idea of going back to analogue, getting a turntable for classic albums only. And then I had a mental picture: a stack of vinyl, unplayed, unused whilst I listened to my music on Spotify or iTunes. Whilst digital music may not have the sensuality of records, it's so easy and user-friendly, you can't return to CDs or records.
Likewise photography has suffered a similar paradigm shift. Film has died a death, it laster longer than some predicted but is now the preserve of select professionals and keen hobbyists. The other 99.9% of photos are digital, many taken on smartphones. Most are terrible, but thanks to Instagram's clever filters, they look okay and much superior to the overexposed, out of focus photos holidaymakers used to collect from Boots after their summer holidays.
As Stewart Lee said in his recent TV series, 'do you remember when we had things' and I do. I'm old enough to remember cassettes, vinyl, VHS, mini-disc and a whole host of outdated technologies. In due course, printed books may join that list. Yes, sorry to say, it's probably only a matter of time before most reading becomes digital. People are highly conservative when it comes to their media habits, yet I don't know anyone who has switched to e-reading that regularly buys physical books. None of this means that I won't miss printed books if they do disappear. Not only are they good for reading, they make you look smarter. Fill a room with intellectual tomes that you have never read, you lend yourself an aura of wisdom and learning. And hardback books are great for other uses, such as propping up things, acting as drinks coasters or raising the height of a computer monitor - to name but a few of their uses.
No matter how much I much like physical books, I'm not about to start burning Kindles in the street. They just won't catch fire, no matter how hard you try. Besides I love my Kindle, it's a library in the palm of my hand - apart from when I forget to charge it and then it's not even a decent coaster. Plus even a tiny spill of beer and it goes all funny. Some lovers of old technology say that what happens you have no USB lead, what happens to your fancy e-reader then? True, on a desert island, I would be stuck. However, a bunch of vinyl wouldn't be much use without a generator and I suspect that paper books might be sacrificed in the cause of lighting fires or toilet tissues, especially if it's a new novel by Ben Elton.
Besides if you apply that logic to our lives, then pretty everything we have is rendered useless on a desert island, save a penknife, a plastic tarpaulin and a tinderbox. The kind of people who carry around those things everywhere they go are usually the sort of people we should put on desert islands. There they can indulge their fantasies of black UN helicopters heralding the apocalypse whilst getting a really good tan.
Whether are happy about it or not, the new wave of technological change is sweeping the world and it's going to make a lot of people redundant. Uber will probably mean less black cab drivers, but more Uber drivers and more people taking taxis. The new translation software for Skype may make translating and interpreting, at least for basic communication, something that doesn't require a person.
Lawyers, accountants and a whole host or professions will face similar disruptions. My limited experience with high street solicitors was so dreadful, I can't see how an app could do any worse. They managed to get the name on the deeds of the property wrong, three times, each instance in a different way and miscalculated the stamp duty. And at the end of the process, you pay them £1,000s. Give me Uber for solicitors any day.
Medicine will face the same issues where software replaces simple, process-based tasks. Basic diagnosis could in theory be done by an app, there I said it. These days most people self-diagnose before visiting a doctor anyway, why not formalise the process? Yes, I realise there is a lot more to it than that, but still... it's going to happen.
The real dilemma is how we react to these changes and it's safe to say that protesting about them is the wrong answer. Brussels has banned Uber, so its taxis will cost more. Europe generally seems committed to a Canute-like course of banning or regulating technologies in the hope that the status quo can be preserved. It can't. Eventually Brusssels will give in and its residents will have access to the cheaper taxis the rest of the world enjoys. We should sympathise with those affected; banning progress only makes us poorer in the long run. The best strategy is to keep the job market flexible, the business environment benign and maximise the chances for those made redundant to find new roles.
Although on second thoughts, I'm not sure we want former black cab drivers doing other jobs. UKIP might be hiring.
Thursday 8 May 2014
Modern Privacy
According to Edward Snowden in last week's Guardian, everyone is now under surveillance, not just individuals but 'entire populations' by government agencies such as the NSA who operate above the law. Maybe he's right and we are living in an Orwellian nightmare, controlled by secretive powers. If this is The Matrix, then Snowden in his own mind is presumably Neo. The only glitch in the Matrix as it were, is that he lectures the West on rights and freedom from Putin's Russia. I assume Mr Snowden must have lost his sense of irony somewhere in transit.
I suppose it should make no odds, whether Snowden makes these claims from Moscow or a haven of freedom, say Denmark. Everyone likes Denmark, especially after watching three series of Borgen. They must be nice people and probably don't do much snooping or spying. Wait a minute, a whole plot line was the intelligence service victimising Muslims or was that The Killing Series 2 ?...erm...the point still stands. Either what he's saying is true or it's not, even if he does so courtesy of Vladimir Putin: the gay-hating, Stalin-loving, journalist-murdering leader of a kleptocracy.
There is a wider question, however, raised by his revelations about privacy versus security in cyberspace. Take for example, organised crime. Misha Glenny in his excellent book 'McMafia', describes how following the collapse of the Soviet Union, mafias from Eastern Europe have expanded globally. Their ranks swelled by ex-military and intelligence operatives, these crime organisations now rival the established mafias in Italy and cartels of Mexico. Globally, organised crime is estimated to account for 10% of world output. Much of that is presumably drug money, but their activities also includes fraud - which most of us have experienced.
Unfortunately for law enforcement, modern mafia are tech savvy. They use offshore tax havens, sophisticated corporate structures and money-laundering schemes, making it hard to track down perpetrators. Terrorists from home-grown far right extremists in the US to Al-Qaida cells across the world are equally smart. Some avoid digital communication altogether; others use sophisticated codes and encryption methods to hide their presence. All of this presents a security nightmare for the police and the intelligence agencies.
'Crime' and 'terrorism' are not reasons enough to disregard legal norms and individual privacy on a whim. But we are surely deluding ourselves if we think old-fashioned methods of detection and prevention work in this new, globalised, internet-connected world. Sacrificing some privacy for enhanced security may be a trade worth making. Put the issue another way: would you mind if the security services trawled emails if it prevented terrorist outrages? It's not a simple yes or no proposition. It gets even more complicated, when you have to consider that the more the likes of NSA reveal their surveillance, the more their targets change behaviour in response.
In the UK, the moment you walk down the street, chances are you are on CCTV. Londoners are caught on camera 70 times a day on average. So at least when it comes to walking down the street, we lost our privacy long ago. The same is true for much of our web activity. When you sign up to Facebook and Instagram, you have also signed away the rights to any images or data you post on their platforms - it all belongs to Mark Zuckerberg. Google knows what you've searched and where you've been. Apple tracks your music tastes, Netflix monitors your viewing habits and Spotify probably has a better idea of what playlists you prefer than you do yourself.
Maybe emails are the last bastion of private communication. Except of course, if you email using a work address, it is, I hate to break this to you, company property. Perhaps if you email from your own computer from certain email services, you have retained a sliver of privacy. But we all now how easily emails are hacked and how slack we are with passwords - it wouldn't be hard for even an amateur to access many people's accounts.
The rise of cloud computing and software takes this process even further, where we handover our personal data to private companies to store and manage. I assume Dropbox employees don't go peeking in my folders, not sure how I would know if they did. But let's return to Edward Snowden's original claim, that we live under constant surveillance without privacy. Regardless of the NSA's snooping, digital cameras will continue to proliferate. Whether it's a Glasshole, sporting Google Glass, a camera worn on policeman's lapel, a Go-Pro attached to a cyclist's helmet or security cameras, they are getting smaller, cheaper and storing the data easier. At some point, it will be possible to record every single one of our waking moments in Hi-def, forever creating an endless Youtube feed.
In a planet, where we are constantly filming and photographing each other and Tweeting those results publicly, notions of privacy seem strange. We are conduct 24 hour surveillance of each other, so feigning outrage that the state has conducted passive data trawls is perhaps hypocritical. Despite months of front page articles, the Guardian's expose of state snooping has not caught the public imagination in the same way as MP's expenses, for example. Perhaps the reason is most people shrugged and had assumed that spying is what the security services do - it is in their job description after all.
This is not make light of the potential for abuse when state agencies can go prying as they please. But we are going to need a modern approach to these issues. You'll notice I've ducked out of providing an answer and as for privacy, that's so 20th century.
I suppose it should make no odds, whether Snowden makes these claims from Moscow or a haven of freedom, say Denmark. Everyone likes Denmark, especially after watching three series of Borgen. They must be nice people and probably don't do much snooping or spying. Wait a minute, a whole plot line was the intelligence service victimising Muslims or was that The Killing Series 2 ?...erm...the point still stands. Either what he's saying is true or it's not, even if he does so courtesy of Vladimir Putin: the gay-hating, Stalin-loving, journalist-murdering leader of a kleptocracy.
There is a wider question, however, raised by his revelations about privacy versus security in cyberspace. Take for example, organised crime. Misha Glenny in his excellent book 'McMafia', describes how following the collapse of the Soviet Union, mafias from Eastern Europe have expanded globally. Their ranks swelled by ex-military and intelligence operatives, these crime organisations now rival the established mafias in Italy and cartels of Mexico. Globally, organised crime is estimated to account for 10% of world output. Much of that is presumably drug money, but their activities also includes fraud - which most of us have experienced.
Unfortunately for law enforcement, modern mafia are tech savvy. They use offshore tax havens, sophisticated corporate structures and money-laundering schemes, making it hard to track down perpetrators. Terrorists from home-grown far right extremists in the US to Al-Qaida cells across the world are equally smart. Some avoid digital communication altogether; others use sophisticated codes and encryption methods to hide their presence. All of this presents a security nightmare for the police and the intelligence agencies.
'Crime' and 'terrorism' are not reasons enough to disregard legal norms and individual privacy on a whim. But we are surely deluding ourselves if we think old-fashioned methods of detection and prevention work in this new, globalised, internet-connected world. Sacrificing some privacy for enhanced security may be a trade worth making. Put the issue another way: would you mind if the security services trawled emails if it prevented terrorist outrages? It's not a simple yes or no proposition. It gets even more complicated, when you have to consider that the more the likes of NSA reveal their surveillance, the more their targets change behaviour in response.
In the UK, the moment you walk down the street, chances are you are on CCTV. Londoners are caught on camera 70 times a day on average. So at least when it comes to walking down the street, we lost our privacy long ago. The same is true for much of our web activity. When you sign up to Facebook and Instagram, you have also signed away the rights to any images or data you post on their platforms - it all belongs to Mark Zuckerberg. Google knows what you've searched and where you've been. Apple tracks your music tastes, Netflix monitors your viewing habits and Spotify probably has a better idea of what playlists you prefer than you do yourself.
Maybe emails are the last bastion of private communication. Except of course, if you email using a work address, it is, I hate to break this to you, company property. Perhaps if you email from your own computer from certain email services, you have retained a sliver of privacy. But we all now how easily emails are hacked and how slack we are with passwords - it wouldn't be hard for even an amateur to access many people's accounts.
The rise of cloud computing and software takes this process even further, where we handover our personal data to private companies to store and manage. I assume Dropbox employees don't go peeking in my folders, not sure how I would know if they did. But let's return to Edward Snowden's original claim, that we live under constant surveillance without privacy. Regardless of the NSA's snooping, digital cameras will continue to proliferate. Whether it's a Glasshole, sporting Google Glass, a camera worn on policeman's lapel, a Go-Pro attached to a cyclist's helmet or security cameras, they are getting smaller, cheaper and storing the data easier. At some point, it will be possible to record every single one of our waking moments in Hi-def, forever creating an endless Youtube feed.
In a planet, where we are constantly filming and photographing each other and Tweeting those results publicly, notions of privacy seem strange. We are conduct 24 hour surveillance of each other, so feigning outrage that the state has conducted passive data trawls is perhaps hypocritical. Despite months of front page articles, the Guardian's expose of state snooping has not caught the public imagination in the same way as MP's expenses, for example. Perhaps the reason is most people shrugged and had assumed that spying is what the security services do - it is in their job description after all.
This is not make light of the potential for abuse when state agencies can go prying as they please. But we are going to need a modern approach to these issues. You'll notice I've ducked out of providing an answer and as for privacy, that's so 20th century.
Tuesday 29 April 2014
Tube Strikes
It's tube strike time again and no one is exactly sure what the unions are striking about, not even the unions themselves. Is it redundancies or ticket offices or...frankly who cares? The net effect is that millions of commuters have a miserable journey to work, if they can make it at all. I imagine some will be humming the London Underground song, where the singer imagines shooting every single LU employee with a 'f**king rifle'.
London Undergound Song
Now I personally think that's a somewhat extreme solution to this industrial dispute, not least because one of the victims would be the red mohican-sporting man who works at Oxford Circus - and he for one is a charming fellow. But the problem remains that tube workers, often a minority of those workers, have the potential to inflict £100 millions of damage to the capital's economy more or less at will.
I've lived in London for nearly 40 years and can remember many, many tube strikes. They all sound, look and feel exactly the same (well apart from some questionable suits worn in the early 90s): irate union bosses blaming management, management blaming unions, massive queues of irate and tired travellers outside train stations.
The problem remains that the tube unions have an uniquely powerful negotiating position. When they go on strike, their members lose a few days' pay. London's business and workers, however, suffer much more. At the end of the strike, there's a good chance that the union will have extracted extra concessions or payments to offset the loss of earnings.
In other words, it makes sense for the unions to strike on a regular basis and it is cheaper to buy them off than to stand up to their demands. This is certainly the calculation that successive managers of the Underground have made - dealing once and for with the unions is just not worth the grief.
You'll notice that I've skated over the specifics of this strike, which are about voluntary redundancies and the closure of ticket offices...apparently. It's got nothing to do with an internal power struggle at the RMT following the death of Bob Crow, nothing whatsoever. Yeah, right.
To me there is a more general issue about modernisation, to which the tube unions seem axiomatically opposed. To take one example: the advent of Oyster cards reduces the need to have a person behind a ticket counter at every station. New technology has made that role in some cases redundant. That doesn't mean stations will be left unattended, just that there won't be somebody twiddling his or her thumbs behind a ticket counter that is almost never used.
The other big step in modernisation, which is already part underway, is to automate the trains themselves - making them driverless. Before you recoil in horror, just think about the following: automated trains are never late for work, never call in sick (unauthorised absenteeism accounts for around 10% of delays), they never drink on duty, never fall asleep, react faster and always drive at the optimum speed. They are more reliable, cheaper and safer. There is also one clincher for automation, it means a driver will not have to witness someone hurling themselves under a train.
Redundancy is always reported as a negative outcome. But thanks to technological progress many unpleasant and dangerous jobs have become redundant, from cotton pickers to chimney sweeps. Driving tube train no matter well paid, is a lonely, isolating and depressing job where statistically you are likely to see somebody commit suicide.
The tube unions are always against any changes to the status quo, no matter how small. That is no way to run a railway; technology allows us to achieve the same or better outcomes for less money and fewer people. Progress in other words.
The unions could behave differently, they could co-operate and compromise but there's nothing in it for them. It seems to me that the only way we can achieve real change on the Underground is to ban strikes altogether. There, I said it. Otherwise, get used to strikes for the foreseeable future.
London Undergound Song
Now I personally think that's a somewhat extreme solution to this industrial dispute, not least because one of the victims would be the red mohican-sporting man who works at Oxford Circus - and he for one is a charming fellow. But the problem remains that tube workers, often a minority of those workers, have the potential to inflict £100 millions of damage to the capital's economy more or less at will.
I've lived in London for nearly 40 years and can remember many, many tube strikes. They all sound, look and feel exactly the same (well apart from some questionable suits worn in the early 90s): irate union bosses blaming management, management blaming unions, massive queues of irate and tired travellers outside train stations.
The problem remains that the tube unions have an uniquely powerful negotiating position. When they go on strike, their members lose a few days' pay. London's business and workers, however, suffer much more. At the end of the strike, there's a good chance that the union will have extracted extra concessions or payments to offset the loss of earnings.
In other words, it makes sense for the unions to strike on a regular basis and it is cheaper to buy them off than to stand up to their demands. This is certainly the calculation that successive managers of the Underground have made - dealing once and for with the unions is just not worth the grief.
You'll notice that I've skated over the specifics of this strike, which are about voluntary redundancies and the closure of ticket offices...apparently. It's got nothing to do with an internal power struggle at the RMT following the death of Bob Crow, nothing whatsoever. Yeah, right.
To me there is a more general issue about modernisation, to which the tube unions seem axiomatically opposed. To take one example: the advent of Oyster cards reduces the need to have a person behind a ticket counter at every station. New technology has made that role in some cases redundant. That doesn't mean stations will be left unattended, just that there won't be somebody twiddling his or her thumbs behind a ticket counter that is almost never used.
The other big step in modernisation, which is already part underway, is to automate the trains themselves - making them driverless. Before you recoil in horror, just think about the following: automated trains are never late for work, never call in sick (unauthorised absenteeism accounts for around 10% of delays), they never drink on duty, never fall asleep, react faster and always drive at the optimum speed. They are more reliable, cheaper and safer. There is also one clincher for automation, it means a driver will not have to witness someone hurling themselves under a train.
Redundancy is always reported as a negative outcome. But thanks to technological progress many unpleasant and dangerous jobs have become redundant, from cotton pickers to chimney sweeps. Driving tube train no matter well paid, is a lonely, isolating and depressing job where statistically you are likely to see somebody commit suicide.
The tube unions are always against any changes to the status quo, no matter how small. That is no way to run a railway; technology allows us to achieve the same or better outcomes for less money and fewer people. Progress in other words.
The unions could behave differently, they could co-operate and compromise but there's nothing in it for them. It seems to me that the only way we can achieve real change on the Underground is to ban strikes altogether. There, I said it. Otherwise, get used to strikes for the foreseeable future.
Saturday 5 April 2014
Protest Parties
After two live TV debates between Nick Clegg and Nigel Farage, the instant poll gave Farage a resounding victory with 69% to Clegg's 31%. You may loathe UKIP and their leader, you may believe their party members contain a worrying number of oddballs, cranks and racists, but you cannot deny that Farage and co. are upsetting the cosy Westminster consensus. Relax, this blog is not going to sing the praises of UKIP, there are enough pub bores across the land, who own every Top Gear DVD and book by Richard Littlejohn, to rant about Britain being swamped and PC gawn mad.
But the growth of a protest party from a fringe group to 12% support in the opinion polls has changed the dynamic of the upcoming election. On current trends, it seems likely the Tory party will lose and Labour could gain a slender majority. With the economy returning to strong growth, the deficit and unemployment down, these trends ought to benefit the government.
Historically, the British electorate has tended to adopt a 'if it ain't broke don't fix it' mode of voting. Coalition politics does complicate matters, yet the basic pattern has been that the main party in power ought to benefit from positive economic news. Instead, the Conservatives' poll ratings remain stubbornly low at 32%.
The strange thing about the UKIP phenomenon is that it has improved Ed Miliband's chances of winning the election. I know, ridiculous isn't it? Miliband is by far the worse Labour leader of modern times, making Michael Foot seem positively statesmanlike. The party is being lead by the human equivalent of quiche and not even a tasty quiche either. In my mind, he's a broccoli flavoured- something nobody willingly orders unless, for example, they are a vegetarian and it is the only menu option. So your average UKIP voter, who ought to be on the right-wing fringe of the Tory party, would rather vote UKIP, split the Tory vote and increase Labour's chances of winning. Perhaps most people don't make these kind of calculations, but if you are sufficiently anti-EU and anti-immigration to consider voting UKIP, you must also be aware that Labour and the Lib-Dems are pro-Europeans.
In effect, UKIP voters are self-harming which begs the question why? One possible answer is that aren't very bright. Judging by some of their candidates and voters, that's possibly true. However they can't all be idiots. I suppose it's possible, but it's more likely that their ranks include rational, intelligent individuals, than the stupidest 12% of the population. People that dense probably haven't heard of the EU and even if they have, they think it's something you catch from loo seats (hang on, that could include UKIP voters). Anyway, you get the point.
I think the answer for UKIP's rise lies in the style of modern politics and in particular David Cameron's approach to government. Ask many people who you would rather have a drink with, Cameron or Farage and I reckon most, including left-wingers, would say Farage. If Miliband is a human quiche, Cameron is the physical embodiment of a Coldplay song. Inoffensive background music that excites little emotion good or bad. If he were a colour, it would be fawn. Yet he manages to combine the essence of fawn, with a curious lack of awareness of the wider world.
Filling your cabinet with Old Etonians and public school boys looks wrong to the vast majority of people not born into privilege. Refusing to participate in a live debate in Farage plays badly. Rejecting an electorate pact with UKIP, where will not field candidates against Eurosceptic candidates is perverse. Put simply, he does not have the common touch or seem to understand that it's necessary. Margaret Thatcher, with her huge coiffeur, twin set and pearls, was hardly a natural working class hero. Nonetheless she seemed to speak a language that resonated with many.
If Cameron, Clegg or Miliband want to combat the rise of the protest vote, they need to start talking and acting like human beings, not automata. We don't need our leaders to be average, we do need them to have a pulse and minds of their own. Say what you like about Farage, he's not bland. And there will be more Farages to follow if the Westminster elite does not change their ways.
But the growth of a protest party from a fringe group to 12% support in the opinion polls has changed the dynamic of the upcoming election. On current trends, it seems likely the Tory party will lose and Labour could gain a slender majority. With the economy returning to strong growth, the deficit and unemployment down, these trends ought to benefit the government.
Historically, the British electorate has tended to adopt a 'if it ain't broke don't fix it' mode of voting. Coalition politics does complicate matters, yet the basic pattern has been that the main party in power ought to benefit from positive economic news. Instead, the Conservatives' poll ratings remain stubbornly low at 32%.
The strange thing about the UKIP phenomenon is that it has improved Ed Miliband's chances of winning the election. I know, ridiculous isn't it? Miliband is by far the worse Labour leader of modern times, making Michael Foot seem positively statesmanlike. The party is being lead by the human equivalent of quiche and not even a tasty quiche either. In my mind, he's a broccoli flavoured- something nobody willingly orders unless, for example, they are a vegetarian and it is the only menu option. So your average UKIP voter, who ought to be on the right-wing fringe of the Tory party, would rather vote UKIP, split the Tory vote and increase Labour's chances of winning. Perhaps most people don't make these kind of calculations, but if you are sufficiently anti-EU and anti-immigration to consider voting UKIP, you must also be aware that Labour and the Lib-Dems are pro-Europeans.
In effect, UKIP voters are self-harming which begs the question why? One possible answer is that aren't very bright. Judging by some of their candidates and voters, that's possibly true. However they can't all be idiots. I suppose it's possible, but it's more likely that their ranks include rational, intelligent individuals, than the stupidest 12% of the population. People that dense probably haven't heard of the EU and even if they have, they think it's something you catch from loo seats (hang on, that could include UKIP voters). Anyway, you get the point.
I think the answer for UKIP's rise lies in the style of modern politics and in particular David Cameron's approach to government. Ask many people who you would rather have a drink with, Cameron or Farage and I reckon most, including left-wingers, would say Farage. If Miliband is a human quiche, Cameron is the physical embodiment of a Coldplay song. Inoffensive background music that excites little emotion good or bad. If he were a colour, it would be fawn. Yet he manages to combine the essence of fawn, with a curious lack of awareness of the wider world.
Filling your cabinet with Old Etonians and public school boys looks wrong to the vast majority of people not born into privilege. Refusing to participate in a live debate in Farage plays badly. Rejecting an electorate pact with UKIP, where will not field candidates against Eurosceptic candidates is perverse. Put simply, he does not have the common touch or seem to understand that it's necessary. Margaret Thatcher, with her huge coiffeur, twin set and pearls, was hardly a natural working class hero. Nonetheless she seemed to speak a language that resonated with many.
If Cameron, Clegg or Miliband want to combat the rise of the protest vote, they need to start talking and acting like human beings, not automata. We don't need our leaders to be average, we do need them to have a pulse and minds of their own. Say what you like about Farage, he's not bland. And there will be more Farages to follow if the Westminster elite does not change their ways.
Sunday 23 February 2014
Tax Reform
I'd like to talk to you about tax reform....wait, don't go. What you've just remembered you have a doctor-haircut-dentist's appointment now, so you can't possibly read this blog?
Bueller.....Bueller.... anyone want to talk about tax reform?
Unless you are a tax lawyer, tax accountant or have Asperger's (the three conditions can co-exist quite comfortably), avoiding a discussion on tax reform is perfectly normal. Tax, like immigration, is one of those flypaper topics that draws out weird insectoid lifeforms, the type of person who posts on newspaper comment boards with nicknames such as 'Freeborn Englishman', 'No to EUSSR' and 'Straight Shooter'. Their avatars are often a reworked version of the EU flag, made to resemble the Soviet Union's hammer and sickle or the cross of St George with a bloodstain. The subject also attracts the ranters of from the left, less numerous than the hard-right headbangers but persistent. They tend to use aliases such as 'The Real Che' or 'Rosa Luxemburg', with avatars ranging from 'Stop the War' banners or effigies of Margaret Thatcher hanging from a noose. The net effect is to make balanced, reasonable people associate the subject with oddballs and cranks.
There are other reasons why tax reform is never properly debated. Most obvious is the headache inducing complexity of the subject. Britain's tax code has doubled in size since 1997, now ten times longer than 'War and Peace'. Read Tolstoy's classic and you are taken on an epic journey, in the company of cast of engaging and complex characters. Read Tolley's Tax Code from start to finish and you are likely to go insane. If you do manage to read it and don't lose your mind, then it's likely you are already suffering from a severe personality disorder, requiring immediate psychiatric intervention. So bewildering, so baffling, so Byzantine is modern tax legislation that not even tax experts can agree on what it means. I remember reading a newspaper article last year about a recent change to the tax code. Twelve of the finest tax lawyers, accountants and academics were gathering to discuss its implication; they were unable to reach a consensus.
Then there is the issue of vested interests, who would rather the general public did not look too closely at the tax system, otherwise they might start to ask awkward questions. An unholy trinity has formed in Britain, as it has in many countries, between politicians, bureaucrats and multi-nationals that prefers the current system to any radical reform. These groups all benefit from an overly complex and convoluted tax structure; they fight attempts at transparency and clarity. Politicians like a myriad of reliefs, allowances and tax bands; it enables them to reward their voters, hide the true level of tax and play politics with the nations finances.
Civil servants, whether they are central or local government functionaries or quangocrats, seek to protect their jobs and influence. When you ask a bureaucrat about cutting down the tax code, you are asking a turkey to vote on the subject of Christmas or Thanksgiving. They vote no, unless they are seriously depressed with life as a turkey. Multi-nationals too prefer things the way they are. An opaque, confused and contradictory system grants them a competitive advantage over small and medium size businesses who struggle with the burdens of compliance. Moreover, these multi-nationals can exploit a system so complex it is by its very nature full of holes, to avoid paying as much as individuals or entrepreneurs. Your local corner shop cannot employ transfer pricing or register its property holdings in Lichenstein, Tesco can and does.
There is an overwhelming temptation therefore, given the Herculean nature of the task of reform, for both politicians and electors alike to add further laws rather than remove them or to tinker with the existing status quo. Yet collectively burying our hands in the sand, we are no better than the ostrich - a dumb birds waiting to be plucked. We should care about tax reform, because the current situation constitutes a confidence trick played on the general public to serve base political and corporate ends. Let me give some examples from the current tax system, to illustrate my thesis:
National Insurance
NI, levied on employers and employees, is perhaps the best case of a tax that creates misleading expectations and perverse outcomes. Firstly, it is not insurance by any reasonable definition. Money raised by NI goes straight to the Treasury, there is no NI fund which acrues over time. Government uses the money to pay previous obligations with current funds, a set-up which if copied by a private insurance firm would land all the directors in prison for a very long time. What's more, NI doesn't even come close to meeting the pensions and health care liabilities, so the shortfall is made up by general taxation. Whether you have paid NI all your life, it makes no odds. The money has been spent and is long gone, which is an incentive to pay the absolute minimum.
Employers national insurance is a whopping 12%, which most people who don't run businesses never notice. What this levy does it make it much more expensive to create permanent jobs, instead of casual or freelance contracts. The employer receives no benefit whatsoever. Boo hoo, you might say, that's the cost of doing business. Companies benefit from the education system (sort of), roads, police etc, so it's only fair that they should contribute. Maybe, but employer's NI isn't linked to profits, turnover or cashflow. The burden falls more heavily on smaller businesses, who have less access to credit that multi-nationals.
So you have a tax that is misleading, doesn't raise enough, stifles entrepreneurs and makes job creation expensive.
45 or 50% income tax
I realise that suggesting that progressive taxation is a bad idea may in some people's eyes relegate me to realms of the swivel-eyed tax nuts, but hear me out. Let's say you are a Guardian reading, Labour voter who wants to redistribute wealth, surely more progressive taxation is your answer? The numbers suggest otherwise. The super-rich pay an effective tax rate of 8% as they can engage in bizarre tax avoidance schemes using offshore trusts. Chris Moyles is in the news for a tax dodging scheme where he claimed to a second-hand car dealer. Lots of us can think of words to describe Chris Moyles, there's a four letter one beginning with 'c' that trips of the tongue. None of us would every describe him as a 21st century Arthur Daley.
What these tax-avoidance capers do indicate is that people will come to extreme lengths to avoid paying tax. Guy Hands, the private equity guru, won't even change planes at Heathrow for fear of affecting his non-dom status. And even at a 45% rate of tax, the British system is already very progessive with the top 1% of tax payers providing 33% of the tax take. Yet inequality is at record levels. Even if we returned to the 50% band, the extra revenue raised would be at most £1 billion and do nothing to dent the gulf that separates the poorest and richest.
Under Gordon Brown, the Treasury commissioned a study about the effects of moving to a flat income tax rate, abolishing NI and raising personal thresholds. The results were startling, tax yields were predicted to rise as compliance become easier to enforce and tax avoidance less rewarding. Those on low incomes, once the threshold was raised were better off. Gordon Brown insisted that the report be redacted, with much of the conclusions removed.
There's also the other question of the fairness of income tax. Top rate income tax is after all levied on those in work, which is something we wish to encourage and reward. Make income tax too high and those top earners may chose free time over office time, as their net returns are minimal. Meanwhile, the real source of inequality in Britain, the distribution of land and wealth remains completely untouched. Much as you may feel a financier of £500,000 a year is overpaid, he or she still has to turn up for work each day. The Duke of Westminster, whose net worth is close to £4 billion, gets richer every year by several £100 million thanks to rising property prices.
Why tax those in work over those who don't have to work by accident of birth? It's illogical and leaves government finances dangerously reliant on those 300,000 top earners. So progressive taxation is a convenient myth. Those on low incomes may pay 20% in income tax, but they pay 20% VAT on goods and services and punitive taxes on cigarettes and alcohol. Factor all these other taxes into the equation and the end result is we tax the poorest 20% far more harshly than the Duke of Wesminster, relative to income.
Very high rates of income tax are avoided by the super-rich, raise minimal revenue and make tax compliance expensive and difficult. Even a socialist would wonder why we bother.
Buy to Let Tax Relief
This is a more minor tax issue, unlike the big strategic questions of income tax and NI (which is really an income tax in all but name). Yet it is a perfect illustration of the madness of modern tax. The UK is experiencing an acute housing crisis in the South East. Too few new homes are being built, with market wide open to international buyers that are snapping up available stock. So what you want to do in this situation is surely encourage more house to built, right? Wrong, what we do instead is give private buy-to-let landlords a tax break on their mortgage interest.
Your average buy to let investor is in their 50s, already owns one home without a mortgage and has one or two other properties to provide rental income. In other words, they are well-off individuals who are then making up to a 15% return on capital, from charging rent to their tenants, typically young people in their twenties, on lower incomes at the start of their career. Who in this scenario deserves a tax break? Remember too that this investor does not build new property, they merely drive up the prices of existing housing.
Logically, the tax system ought to favour building houses to meet demand. Logic doesn't win elections. As is often the case, tax and tax breaks are all about politicians looking after their client base. Buy-to-let owners vote and usually vote Tory, votes Cameron desperately needs.
Mortgage tax relief helps the well-off extract rack rents from those worse off, subsidises property speculation and rewards the rentier over the worker.
This blog is just a tiny glimpse into the sheer lunacy of the Britain's tax system , a monster that has outgrown its original purpose. I've got more examples if you are interested, what about business rates for example....hey...come back, that cat dressed as shark video can wait...it's important...hello....
Bueller...anyone...Bueller?
PS All that it takes for the evil taxes to prosper is for good people not to pay attention.
Bueller.....Bueller.... anyone want to talk about tax reform?
Unless you are a tax lawyer, tax accountant or have Asperger's (the three conditions can co-exist quite comfortably), avoiding a discussion on tax reform is perfectly normal. Tax, like immigration, is one of those flypaper topics that draws out weird insectoid lifeforms, the type of person who posts on newspaper comment boards with nicknames such as 'Freeborn Englishman', 'No to EUSSR' and 'Straight Shooter'. Their avatars are often a reworked version of the EU flag, made to resemble the Soviet Union's hammer and sickle or the cross of St George with a bloodstain. The subject also attracts the ranters of from the left, less numerous than the hard-right headbangers but persistent. They tend to use aliases such as 'The Real Che' or 'Rosa Luxemburg', with avatars ranging from 'Stop the War' banners or effigies of Margaret Thatcher hanging from a noose. The net effect is to make balanced, reasonable people associate the subject with oddballs and cranks.
There are other reasons why tax reform is never properly debated. Most obvious is the headache inducing complexity of the subject. Britain's tax code has doubled in size since 1997, now ten times longer than 'War and Peace'. Read Tolstoy's classic and you are taken on an epic journey, in the company of cast of engaging and complex characters. Read Tolley's Tax Code from start to finish and you are likely to go insane. If you do manage to read it and don't lose your mind, then it's likely you are already suffering from a severe personality disorder, requiring immediate psychiatric intervention. So bewildering, so baffling, so Byzantine is modern tax legislation that not even tax experts can agree on what it means. I remember reading a newspaper article last year about a recent change to the tax code. Twelve of the finest tax lawyers, accountants and academics were gathering to discuss its implication; they were unable to reach a consensus.
Then there is the issue of vested interests, who would rather the general public did not look too closely at the tax system, otherwise they might start to ask awkward questions. An unholy trinity has formed in Britain, as it has in many countries, between politicians, bureaucrats and multi-nationals that prefers the current system to any radical reform. These groups all benefit from an overly complex and convoluted tax structure; they fight attempts at transparency and clarity. Politicians like a myriad of reliefs, allowances and tax bands; it enables them to reward their voters, hide the true level of tax and play politics with the nations finances.
Civil servants, whether they are central or local government functionaries or quangocrats, seek to protect their jobs and influence. When you ask a bureaucrat about cutting down the tax code, you are asking a turkey to vote on the subject of Christmas or Thanksgiving. They vote no, unless they are seriously depressed with life as a turkey. Multi-nationals too prefer things the way they are. An opaque, confused and contradictory system grants them a competitive advantage over small and medium size businesses who struggle with the burdens of compliance. Moreover, these multi-nationals can exploit a system so complex it is by its very nature full of holes, to avoid paying as much as individuals or entrepreneurs. Your local corner shop cannot employ transfer pricing or register its property holdings in Lichenstein, Tesco can and does.
There is an overwhelming temptation therefore, given the Herculean nature of the task of reform, for both politicians and electors alike to add further laws rather than remove them or to tinker with the existing status quo. Yet collectively burying our hands in the sand, we are no better than the ostrich - a dumb birds waiting to be plucked. We should care about tax reform, because the current situation constitutes a confidence trick played on the general public to serve base political and corporate ends. Let me give some examples from the current tax system, to illustrate my thesis:
National Insurance
NI, levied on employers and employees, is perhaps the best case of a tax that creates misleading expectations and perverse outcomes. Firstly, it is not insurance by any reasonable definition. Money raised by NI goes straight to the Treasury, there is no NI fund which acrues over time. Government uses the money to pay previous obligations with current funds, a set-up which if copied by a private insurance firm would land all the directors in prison for a very long time. What's more, NI doesn't even come close to meeting the pensions and health care liabilities, so the shortfall is made up by general taxation. Whether you have paid NI all your life, it makes no odds. The money has been spent and is long gone, which is an incentive to pay the absolute minimum.
Employers national insurance is a whopping 12%, which most people who don't run businesses never notice. What this levy does it make it much more expensive to create permanent jobs, instead of casual or freelance contracts. The employer receives no benefit whatsoever. Boo hoo, you might say, that's the cost of doing business. Companies benefit from the education system (sort of), roads, police etc, so it's only fair that they should contribute. Maybe, but employer's NI isn't linked to profits, turnover or cashflow. The burden falls more heavily on smaller businesses, who have less access to credit that multi-nationals.
So you have a tax that is misleading, doesn't raise enough, stifles entrepreneurs and makes job creation expensive.
45 or 50% income tax
I realise that suggesting that progressive taxation is a bad idea may in some people's eyes relegate me to realms of the swivel-eyed tax nuts, but hear me out. Let's say you are a Guardian reading, Labour voter who wants to redistribute wealth, surely more progressive taxation is your answer? The numbers suggest otherwise. The super-rich pay an effective tax rate of 8% as they can engage in bizarre tax avoidance schemes using offshore trusts. Chris Moyles is in the news for a tax dodging scheme where he claimed to a second-hand car dealer. Lots of us can think of words to describe Chris Moyles, there's a four letter one beginning with 'c' that trips of the tongue. None of us would every describe him as a 21st century Arthur Daley.
What these tax-avoidance capers do indicate is that people will come to extreme lengths to avoid paying tax. Guy Hands, the private equity guru, won't even change planes at Heathrow for fear of affecting his non-dom status. And even at a 45% rate of tax, the British system is already very progessive with the top 1% of tax payers providing 33% of the tax take. Yet inequality is at record levels. Even if we returned to the 50% band, the extra revenue raised would be at most £1 billion and do nothing to dent the gulf that separates the poorest and richest.
Under Gordon Brown, the Treasury commissioned a study about the effects of moving to a flat income tax rate, abolishing NI and raising personal thresholds. The results were startling, tax yields were predicted to rise as compliance become easier to enforce and tax avoidance less rewarding. Those on low incomes, once the threshold was raised were better off. Gordon Brown insisted that the report be redacted, with much of the conclusions removed.
There's also the other question of the fairness of income tax. Top rate income tax is after all levied on those in work, which is something we wish to encourage and reward. Make income tax too high and those top earners may chose free time over office time, as their net returns are minimal. Meanwhile, the real source of inequality in Britain, the distribution of land and wealth remains completely untouched. Much as you may feel a financier of £500,000 a year is overpaid, he or she still has to turn up for work each day. The Duke of Westminster, whose net worth is close to £4 billion, gets richer every year by several £100 million thanks to rising property prices.
Why tax those in work over those who don't have to work by accident of birth? It's illogical and leaves government finances dangerously reliant on those 300,000 top earners. So progressive taxation is a convenient myth. Those on low incomes may pay 20% in income tax, but they pay 20% VAT on goods and services and punitive taxes on cigarettes and alcohol. Factor all these other taxes into the equation and the end result is we tax the poorest 20% far more harshly than the Duke of Wesminster, relative to income.
Very high rates of income tax are avoided by the super-rich, raise minimal revenue and make tax compliance expensive and difficult. Even a socialist would wonder why we bother.
Buy to Let Tax Relief
This is a more minor tax issue, unlike the big strategic questions of income tax and NI (which is really an income tax in all but name). Yet it is a perfect illustration of the madness of modern tax. The UK is experiencing an acute housing crisis in the South East. Too few new homes are being built, with market wide open to international buyers that are snapping up available stock. So what you want to do in this situation is surely encourage more house to built, right? Wrong, what we do instead is give private buy-to-let landlords a tax break on their mortgage interest.
Your average buy to let investor is in their 50s, already owns one home without a mortgage and has one or two other properties to provide rental income. In other words, they are well-off individuals who are then making up to a 15% return on capital, from charging rent to their tenants, typically young people in their twenties, on lower incomes at the start of their career. Who in this scenario deserves a tax break? Remember too that this investor does not build new property, they merely drive up the prices of existing housing.
Logically, the tax system ought to favour building houses to meet demand. Logic doesn't win elections. As is often the case, tax and tax breaks are all about politicians looking after their client base. Buy-to-let owners vote and usually vote Tory, votes Cameron desperately needs.
Mortgage tax relief helps the well-off extract rack rents from those worse off, subsidises property speculation and rewards the rentier over the worker.
This blog is just a tiny glimpse into the sheer lunacy of the Britain's tax system , a monster that has outgrown its original purpose. I've got more examples if you are interested, what about business rates for example....hey...come back, that cat dressed as shark video can wait...it's important...hello....
Bueller...anyone...Bueller?
PS All that it takes for the evil taxes to prosper is for good people not to pay attention.
Thursday 16 January 2014
Big Sugar
Britain is on track to become the first developed nation where more than the half the population is obese by 2050. The adult obesity rate continues to rise, topping the scales at 25% of the population. That figure conceals the fact the only 34% of the population has a healthy body mass index. Two out of three adults are overweight, one in four are so overweight it will seriously harm their health and probably shorten their life span by up to ten years. These are the findings of a new report by the the National Obesity Forum.
Now what surprised me most about this new report from was not the data and predictions it contained. You only need walk down the high street to see that many of our citizens are already putting the Great back into Britain. And I suspect I'm not alone in noticing that teenagers have silly haircuts, ridiculous dress sense and questionable music taste but that they are also... how shall we say it politely... bigger.
Unless you are a paid lobbyist for a junk food company, let's assume that we all agree Britain is getting fatter. What was really unusual about the report and the linked debate about the role of sugar in our diet, was the vitriolic response from right-wingers. I counted three articles, in The Telegraph, The Spectator, and the Mail, by different authors which asserted that weight gain was about individual willpower and poor choices. They didn't present any facts for their claims; they were however keen to say rude things about fat people.
When presented with a national health catastrophe which is going to blight the lives of millions, my first reaction would not be to start calling people names. But for some reason, those on the right of the political spectrum get very angry indeed if anyone tries to frame the debate in terms of harm reduction and effective policy. Perhaps pouring scorn on the overweight helps satisfy some ideological imperative or a personal need to abuse others, but it's a lousy basis for getting results.
Hang on though, isn't weight gain all about lack of self-control? I'd say the evidence suggests otherwise. From the late 1970s, Britain, like America has conducted an experiment in nutrition. A wealth of data suggests that exercise levels and calorie intake have not changed significantly since the seventies, what is different is the amount of refined sugar we eat in our diet. Lab rats subjected to the same diet change become morbidly obese and develop diabetes; some even get liver failure. Many adults in the Western world are eating over 150g of sugar day or taking one quarter their calories in the form sucrose or fructose. That's especially worrying because a calorie is not a calorie, i.e. the body has to work harder to extract energy from protein and fat, compared to sugar. Sugar is an immediate powerful hit, it is a 'rush' of energy.
I can remember from my childhood that sweets were an occasional treat. My pocket money was enough for a copy of 2000AD, a can of Coke and a Curly Wurly - that was it for the week. These days many children consume chocolate bars and sugary drinks daily. Adults do the same, constantly grazing on sugar in a myriad of forms. Don't take my word for it, watch the video below, where Dr Lustig explains how fructose in particular affects the body. His central point is that it behaves like alcohol and causes a similar level of harm.We treat sugar as if it's normal foodstuff, whereas it should come with a serious health warning.
Sugar: The Bitter Truth
Why then are then public health messages so contradictory? Most people will parrot the phrase 'five a day', assuming that healthy eating means consuming five portions of fruit and vegetables a day, even if some of those portions are fruit smoothies. Breaking news: the 'five a day' slogan was invented by Californian fruit growers. A better health message would be eat plenty of vegetables, some fruit and don't eat processed food - the Mediterranean diet in other words. But we don't hear that message because the makers of smoothies, who also produce carbonated sweet drinks, are big corporate donors to those framing health policy. They would rather the public didn't realise that a smoothie has very little nutritional value (as the fibre is gone) and in same cases more sugar than a can of soft drink.
So coming back those furious rants by right wing journalists, that I mentioned earlier. There's another reason they would rather call overweight people names . If they accept that refined sugar is dangerous and potentially habit forming, then there is yet another scandal for modern capitalism. In the same way that the banks privatised the gains and socialised the losses for their toxic business model, big sugar interests have taken the profits for themselves, whilst dumping the costs on the public purse.
But the general public are also complicit in the great sugar binge. Dress it up as vintage fairy cake or a Victoria sponge, it is still a great big lump of sugar. Cupcakes may be aching on trend, especially when served by a hipster in full forties garb, it still doesn't make them good for you. Eat too much of it regularly, you will gain weight, get diabetes and die early. It sets up a cycle of craving and bingeing in the body that mimics other addictive substances.
The first step to beating a problem is accepting what it is. Sugar is addicitive and deadly.
Let's tax it the way we would any harmful substance and treat it with caution. The alternative is ruined and shortened lives, which is a high price to pay for cheap sugar.
Now what surprised me most about this new report from was not the data and predictions it contained. You only need walk down the high street to see that many of our citizens are already putting the Great back into Britain. And I suspect I'm not alone in noticing that teenagers have silly haircuts, ridiculous dress sense and questionable music taste but that they are also... how shall we say it politely... bigger.
Unless you are a paid lobbyist for a junk food company, let's assume that we all agree Britain is getting fatter. What was really unusual about the report and the linked debate about the role of sugar in our diet, was the vitriolic response from right-wingers. I counted three articles, in The Telegraph, The Spectator, and the Mail, by different authors which asserted that weight gain was about individual willpower and poor choices. They didn't present any facts for their claims; they were however keen to say rude things about fat people.
When presented with a national health catastrophe which is going to blight the lives of millions, my first reaction would not be to start calling people names. But for some reason, those on the right of the political spectrum get very angry indeed if anyone tries to frame the debate in terms of harm reduction and effective policy. Perhaps pouring scorn on the overweight helps satisfy some ideological imperative or a personal need to abuse others, but it's a lousy basis for getting results.
Hang on though, isn't weight gain all about lack of self-control? I'd say the evidence suggests otherwise. From the late 1970s, Britain, like America has conducted an experiment in nutrition. A wealth of data suggests that exercise levels and calorie intake have not changed significantly since the seventies, what is different is the amount of refined sugar we eat in our diet. Lab rats subjected to the same diet change become morbidly obese and develop diabetes; some even get liver failure. Many adults in the Western world are eating over 150g of sugar day or taking one quarter their calories in the form sucrose or fructose. That's especially worrying because a calorie is not a calorie, i.e. the body has to work harder to extract energy from protein and fat, compared to sugar. Sugar is an immediate powerful hit, it is a 'rush' of energy.
I can remember from my childhood that sweets were an occasional treat. My pocket money was enough for a copy of 2000AD, a can of Coke and a Curly Wurly - that was it for the week. These days many children consume chocolate bars and sugary drinks daily. Adults do the same, constantly grazing on sugar in a myriad of forms. Don't take my word for it, watch the video below, where Dr Lustig explains how fructose in particular affects the body. His central point is that it behaves like alcohol and causes a similar level of harm.We treat sugar as if it's normal foodstuff, whereas it should come with a serious health warning.
Sugar: The Bitter Truth
Why then are then public health messages so contradictory? Most people will parrot the phrase 'five a day', assuming that healthy eating means consuming five portions of fruit and vegetables a day, even if some of those portions are fruit smoothies. Breaking news: the 'five a day' slogan was invented by Californian fruit growers. A better health message would be eat plenty of vegetables, some fruit and don't eat processed food - the Mediterranean diet in other words. But we don't hear that message because the makers of smoothies, who also produce carbonated sweet drinks, are big corporate donors to those framing health policy. They would rather the public didn't realise that a smoothie has very little nutritional value (as the fibre is gone) and in same cases more sugar than a can of soft drink.
So coming back those furious rants by right wing journalists, that I mentioned earlier. There's another reason they would rather call overweight people names . If they accept that refined sugar is dangerous and potentially habit forming, then there is yet another scandal for modern capitalism. In the same way that the banks privatised the gains and socialised the losses for their toxic business model, big sugar interests have taken the profits for themselves, whilst dumping the costs on the public purse.
But the general public are also complicit in the great sugar binge. Dress it up as vintage fairy cake or a Victoria sponge, it is still a great big lump of sugar. Cupcakes may be aching on trend, especially when served by a hipster in full forties garb, it still doesn't make them good for you. Eat too much of it regularly, you will gain weight, get diabetes and die early. It sets up a cycle of craving and bingeing in the body that mimics other addictive substances.
The first step to beating a problem is accepting what it is. Sugar is addicitive and deadly.
Let's tax it the way we would any harmful substance and treat it with caution. The alternative is ruined and shortened lives, which is a high price to pay for cheap sugar.
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