Reading the Riots: An Environmental Problem

Clearing away the waste

The UK riots during the summer were the result of people who perpetually felt outside the law, according the research by The Guardian and London School of Economics and contrary to the government’s assertion that it was solely down to criminals.

One of the starker statistics of the newspaper’s ‘Reading the Riot’ series is that 85% of 270 people who took part in the riots attributed policing as a “significant cause”. Indeed, 75% said that they had been repeatedly stopped and searched but there was also a less tangible general anger towards the lack of respect shown by the police. In other words, for the vast majority of rioters  - and perhaps they represent an even larger silent group – law and the state were not about their protection but about their oppression and alienation.

If we take the riots as a series of crimes, then the first instinct is to condemn them. But, in his reading of Hegel, The end of human rights: Critical Legal Thought at the Turn of the Century, Costas Douzinas suggests that crime is in fact a cry for help by the offender. ‘The essence of crime is the criminal’s demand to be recognised and to be respected as a concrete and unique individual against the uniform coercion of the legal system.’ (p277). It is the failure to recognise people as beings who deserve respect and dignity that ultimately pushes them  into alienation and then to trangress the law. (I don’t want to say this true of all criminals but certainly this could be said for many of them.) Of course, a thief often steals to meet unfulfilled needs but the law has a tendency to force people to fit into a certain mould. Crime then becomes a way for the individual to have a voice. Given the link between identity and property, it is surely not surprising that many of the crimes were acquisitive in nature (even if they did verge on the bizarre in some cases).

This lack of recognition or respect by the law can be seen clearly in the way that stop and search powers are applied disproportionately to black people and how the whole ‘War on Terror’ discourse has targetted Muslims (and arguably people who look as if they are Muslim). But the Guardian/LSE research shows that race was just one of a number of contributing factors, including poverty, unemployment and lack of education. What they all shared was a general sense of alienation and of not being a ‘part of British society’.

What happened is that whole swathes of the population have been pushed out into the environment (so to speak) of British society. There are a core group of decision-makers and direct beneficiaries at the centre and everyone else around the edges. Perhaps the Occupy movement captures this thought best with the distinction between the 99% and the 1%. (I think it’s probably more than 1% who have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo but as a slogan it’s pretty catchy.)

It was interesting that phase 1 of the ‘Reading the Riots’ research was published in the same week as the end of the climate change conference in Durban. One could argue that when the riots happened, like climate change, the environment came back to bite society on the arse. And, like climate change, it wasn’t those in power who were the victims but other parts of the environment.

In the battle against climate change, recycling and renewable energy are seen as the solutions and creating waste the problem. Perhaps the problem that led up to the riots (and other forms of alienation) is that people are treated as waste and not valued as a ‘part of British Society’. When we throw things away, the state (in the form of the local authority) collects it and disposes of it at landfills or buries it. Out of sight, out of mind, so to speak. The problem with waste is that it is never cut off from society. Pollutants will still get into the soil and the air and affect us. That’s why the law imposes an obligation on local authorities to provide recycling services. Whilst the analogy isn’t perfect, perhaps this is how the 1% sees the 99%: resources and waste of their money and power.

It was interesting that the David Cameron claimed he used his veto against the plan amend the Lisbon Treaty to solidify closer fiscal union in the Eurozone in the interests of Britain. What he considered British interests was in fact the interests of (not even the whole of) the Conservative Party and its backers and, more debatabely, the City. He even told Angela Merkel and Nicholas Sarchozy that the EU and the ECJ do not belong to them, suggesting possible legal action. So, once again, the power elite in Britain sees law as a way to maintain the status quo. The irony, according to many commentators and politicians,  is that maybe Britain itself got pushed into the environment.

Presumed Guilty Before Being Proven Innocent (via Legal Focus)

By Pravin Jeyaraj The Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) has begun fitness-to-practise proceedings against the nurse arrested this week in connection with three deaths from insulin-contaminated saline solution at Stepping Hill hospital in Stockport. However, the nurse, Rebecca Leighton, has not yet been charged and police enquiries are still ongoing. It is thought that up to 14 patients have been affected by the contaminated saline solution. Sin … Read More

via Legal Focus

Second chances make the world go round

David Cameron should be given a break for employing former News of the World editor Andy Coulson as his press adviser. He has come under a lot of flak – accused of poor judgment – ever since he took Coulson on four years ago, following the latter’s resignation as editor in response to the phone hacking scandal.

Cameron’s defence is that people screw up, make mistakes and he believes they deserve a second chance, that they shouldn’t be continually hit around the head with their mistake. (I use the word ‘mistake’ loosely.)

Regardless of what I think of his politics, I think the Prime Minister deserves to be applauded for looking beyond the mistake, seeing the qualities of the man, and not caving in to the pressure from his judgmental opponents, as should the Daily Star Sunday for employing Glive Goodman after he was released from prison.

Maybe I am being naive. But just imagine what this world would be like if everyone who ever screwed up was not given another chance and prevented from moving on. Show me the person who has never made a mistake and I’ll show you monkey’s uncle.

With his decision to take on Coulson, I believe that David Cameron demonstrated those values of forgiveness and non-judgementalism that we all hold dear.

Of course, Coulson has not yet been convicted of a criminal offence. But the elusive second chance is a problem for ex-offenders. A lot of employers carry out Criminal Record Bureau (CRB) checks and many of them “run a mile” at the though of employing a convicted criminal. Mark Johnson of the prisoners newspaper wrote in the Guardian last year of the futility of CRB checks:

Look around you in the workplace. Ask yourself how many of the people you really know? How much do you know about their past and even their present? Admit that you know very little, so little that employers are probably safer with an ex-offender who has discussed his past and his new life openly. A clean CRB check gives a sense of security that may be entirely false, but it’s probably the narrowest way of measuring risk.“

Everyone wants to know what background checks David Cameron carried out on Coulson but Johnson argued that it is “not always necessary for an employer to know about the past”. He said that “there are many offenders who will easily slip into a working life and who pose little risk to employers”. And those that can’t should be offered the support they need.

The truth is that Cameron and the Conservative Party are not that unusual, when it comes to giving second chances. According to a survey of 474 employers interviewed by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, 51% said that they had knowingly recruited an ex-offender. Let’s hope that his action is an example to the other 49%.

Walking in someone else’s shoes…

This week, Prime Minister David Cameron made a speech on immigration policy and was attacked by Vince Cable, Business Secretary for being inflammatory – wrongly, in my view. Personally, I think that it is something that should be discussed because – like it or not – it is something that does concern people.

However, having just watched (for the second time) “The Day after Tomorrow”, I think that the film provides an interesting, alternative take on whole immigration issue. The film is fundamentally about what could happen if we don’t deal with global warming. However, it highlighted one possible consequence. Billions of refugees flooding from the West to the southern equatorial and southern hemisphere countries. It was shown in the film as Americans trying to get into Mexico, who at first closed their border, and Americans then crossing illegally into Mexico across the Rio Grande – in other words, a reversal of the current situation. The American refugees were only allowed across the border when the US President agreed to cancel all Latin American debt.

This could be summarised in the President’s speech at the end of the film – that what we call the Third World showed hospitality.

Here’s one reason why we in the West should be a lot more welcoming to people who come to our respective countries from what we call the Third World – why we should generally be a lot nicer. One day, most likely thanks climate change, we could need their help. And, of course, we will think it outrageous when they turn us away.

Big Society Libyan-style

One of the big question in British politics today is, what the hell is the Big Society?

Well, we only have to look at Benghazi, the first Libyan city to declare freedom, for a glimpse into David Cameron’s vision for the UK.

“Neighbourhood Watch-like groups, all armed with AK-47s, manned checkpoints in and out of all the towns. But every military and police post for 360 miles had been abandoned.”

The local community banded together and took on functions previously carried on by the state, even though every media report of the protests have made that point that “civil society is virtually non-existent and the business sector still young and weak”.

Then there is Misrata. One resident told Reuters that not only have “protestors overcome security forces and taken full control”, but also law and order did not collapse. Within a matter of hours, “calm return to the city…the people’s spirits here are high, they are celebrating and chanting ‘God is Greates’.” What’s more, it was the community, not the state, who are organising traffice, searching pedestrians for weapons and even placed some armed intruders from Tripoli under arrest.

I am instinctively against many of the cuts that the UK government is making and I am suspicious that they are using the deficit to disguise their neoliberal ideology. However, if the Big Society is alive and kicking in a place where there was allegedly no civil society, just think what can be done here!

The irony is that, according to Politicocoa, it was possibly Colonol Gadhaffi who put some of the structures in place for a Libyan Big Society.

“The people committees everywhere that Gadhafi espouses in his “Green Book”, with no one excluded from decision-making. A pathetic piece of window dressing for a dictatorship for the last 40 odd years, for sure. But something that has been drilled into Libyan minds routinely for over 40 years too. So perhaps they are now thinking, “ok, we’ve never actually done these participatory things mentioned in that book that had seemed like fiction until now, but now we are free to do so, we know how we’ve got to organise, let’s get on so things don’t fall apart.” I wonder if it will sustain, or if we end up with the usual representative democracy and its inevitable disappointments.”

Let’s hope Cameron doesn’t take any other leaf from Gadhafi’s book.

I agree with Dave (God, I feel so dirty)

…well, I agree with David Cameron’s point on multiculturalism.

Now, I am not saying this as a white person who doesn’t like difference, but as a British Asian, whose whole life has been spent bridging the gap between two “cultures” – a Western one and an Asian one. On the one hand, it is quite easy to feel the tension between two. Let’s face it, there is a certain level of togetherness, community and morality in Asian cultures which can be sadly lacking in the West. Yet, at the same time, European individualism is a blessing against what can sometimes feel like the tyranny of community. Fortunately, with parents who have adopted a certain level of pragmatism, it has been possible to take the best of both cultures and create my own personal culture.

Now, those familiar with Hegel’s dialectic or who have read this blog before, may recognise a dialectic between cultures. European cultures and Asian cultures can, on their own, be quite antithetical, but, as anyone from an immigrant family can testify, the two can come together in a beautiful synthesis or ‘melting pot’.

The problem with the idea of multiculturalism is that it seeks to protect the individual cultures. It maintains the separation between thesis and antithesis. But it is much more natural, when faced with competing ideas, for the two (or more) to engage in a dialogue, learn from each other and reach an agreement. This is synthesis. This in integration.

When David Cameron talks strengthening or defining British culture, however, I would be wary however. It’s important to note that, at least for me, the synthesis of two cultures was done by me. It was not imposed by anyone from above. Any state-sponsored integration would be just as damaging or meaningless as state-sponsored multiculturalism. True integration can only ever be done at a grassroots level. Government and community can only provide the environment for that integration to take place.

 

Eric Pickles – Liar, Liar

Captain SKA calls George Osborne, Nick Clegg and David Cameron liars. But it seems that the government as a whole suffers from pathological mendacity.

Even straight-talking, cuddly, Yorkshire man, Eric Pickles, the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, can’t help being economical with the truth.

So, under the proposed Localism Bill, the government is going to repeal the power of local authorities to charge for waste collection – or, as he likes to call it, impose a bin tax or fine. (The power was given under sections 71-75 of the Climate Change Act 2008.)

Instead, the government wants to encourage local authorities to reward households according to how much they recycle. It cites Windsor and Maidenhead council as an example, where households are given points which can be redeemed at local businesses. (The same scheme is also operating in Halton borough council.)

What Eric Pickles fails to mention is that the whole point of charging for waste collection was never to be an extra source of revenue. The charges would have solely been used to fund some form of incentive for recycling (and the costs of administering the system). A ‘pay as you go’ recycling scheme would essentially be a way to redistribute money from the least environmentally conscious to the most environmentally consciousness. In a sense, it was a way for the state – or the local community – to recognise desirable behaviour.

So what’s the alternative? Well, the scheme operated by Windsor and Maidenhead Council and Halton Council are administered by Recyclebank. The incentives are funded from general taxation, from whatever the council saves by not having to fork out on landfill tax. But, as well the money only coming from the local community in the form of council tax and business rates, there is the additional source of the central government grant (and thus society at large). This isn’t exactly in keeping with the idea of localism and decentralisation that the government is trying to promote.

But, where is the actual money going? It is not going to the households based on how much they recycle – they are only getting points and vouchers. The hard cash is going businesses that take part in the scheme, according to the consumer choice. The state therefore is giving up control over the distribution of taxpayers’ money to the market. Furthermore, when the government talks about incentivising households, it is really redistributing money from individuals and households to business. In light of the last two years of bank bailouts and public sector cuts, incentivised recycling is not what it seems.

The Big Society – Does size matter?

I attended a workshop yesterday, organised by the Environmental Law Foundation, on how the concept of the Big Society could help local residents to achieve environmental justice. Of course, there is a still confusion about what David Cameron meant when he coined the Big Society. But I think I heard possibly one of the best definitions of it yesterday, from Steve Shaw, the National Coordinator of Local Works.

Local Works is an organisation that was specifically set up by the New Economics Foundation to campaign for and push for the parliamentary acceptance of the Sustainable Communities Act. This is what Shaw said:

“The Big Society has always been there. It is about the things you want to do but the rules are a barrier and they can only be changed by government. The Sustainable Communities Act comes in as a bottom up process to change. It is the only concrete example of the Big Society.”

I had heard of the SCA but didn’t really know what it about. Apparently, in a nutshell, local residents can submit ideas for local initiatives to their local council, who then pass it up to central government (via the Local Government Association) and the government has to seriously consider each before approving or rejecting. There probably is a bit more to it than that, but effectively it means that the people have a real say as to what happens in their local community.

Personally, I think the confusion arises more from the form of words rather than the content. I don’t think anyone is opposed to the idea of the Big Society – it’s a catchy, vacuous name for social responsibility, even though social responsibility is much more self-explanatory. In positing the Big Society, Cameron was trying to put forward an alternative philosophy to Big Government. The problem is that it is easy to understand Big or Small in relation to Government. But Society is not a specific entity. Big Society is just Society, the adjective is superfluous.

Arguably, the best definition of the Big Society, or social responsibility, comes from Margaret Thatcher (I feel so dirty now). In her autobiography, she clarified what she meant when she said that “there’s no such thing as society”: “My meaning, clear at the time but subsequently distorted beyond recognition, was that society was not an abstraction, separate from men and women who composed it, but a living structure of individuals, families, neighbours and voluntary associations. I expected great things from society in this sense because I believed that as economic wealth grew, individuals and voluntary groups should assume more responsibility for their neighbours’ misfortunes. The error to which I was objecting was the confusion of society with the state as the helper of first resort…Society for me was not an excuse, it was a source of obligation.” This is why you can’t describe society as big, because the obvious question would be: “how big?”

And then, if size really does matter, then everyone knows that nothing gets big by itself. If the government want a big society, it needs to masturbate it and in a controlled fashion, because there’s nothing messier and more annoying than premature ejaculation.