Monday 16 February 2009

Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell

Something a little different this weekend: I've just read the new book by Malcolm Gladwell, he of Tipping Point fame (The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference). The book, Outliers: The Story of Success tells the stories of the people many would call geniuses, those who have been remarkable in some way.

And oddly, I think the book actually has a few lessons for the left in there too.

Outliers is a fascinating book. Malcolm Gladwell looks at successful people, and how they got there, in an interesting way. Some of the conclusions are perhaps what we have suspected, but he has done the legwork to find the data that backs it up. I really do recommend you take a look at it.

Many of us look at successful people, in whatever field, and assume that they must have a gift, that there is something about them which is special. Gladwell, however, has examined these people, to try and find what connects them all, what they have each done to get to where they are.

And what is this magic ingredient? What is this special something that connects all these people?

10,000 hours.

Yes, the first answer is 10,000 hours. 10,000 hours of work and practice. 10,000 hours, day after day, month after month, year after year, of sheer effort on whatever it is they are now successful in. The figures seem to hold for everything from music, to law, to ice hockey. People start to get good, really good, when they have spent 10,000 hours doing what they do.

Now, this isn't really that surprising an answer. It may be a little disappointing, but it's not surprising. It's disappointing because all of us secretly would like to think that the people who are successful are somehow gifted - that their success has literally been given to them. But it turns out that successful people really aren't that different than the rest of us.

Sure, you need a certain base level of intelligence, or a little bit of skill, but then it is is the amount of effort that is put in that effects how successful you are.

Well, mostly, anyway.

Because that brings us to the second answer, the second reason some people are successful and others aren't. And that is the environment they were surrounded by, mainly as children.

Why did Bill Gates get to be the richest man in the world, and the most successful nerd ever? Is it because of a special genius? No, not particularly - not to see he isn't a genius, but that's no guarantee of success.

Is it the amount of work he put in? Well, yes - he began writing software code as a schoolboy, and continued to do so, religiously, fanatically, throughout his adolescence, and beyond.

But Gates also got to be successful because he was one of the first few people to have the opportunity to do this. His school was unique in having access to a computer at a time when they took up a room and cost millions. He was able to continue coding, in a series of odd events, throughout his adolescence. He was able to get his 10,000 hours in early, before others were able to. And it was this that left him in a perfect position to take advantage of the personal computer boom of the 70s and 80s.

So what's the lesson for the left?

The mantra of this government when it comes to education, and indeed to society, has been that equality of outcome was a perverse and wrong thing to aim for. Instead, it was fairer to offer equality of opportunity.

But this book shows us, through various examples, that we simply don't all get an equal chance. Opportunities are always going to unevenly spread. On the whole, this is unavoidable - the book shows through some remarkable examples that sometimes we can't even tell what will turn out to be an opportunity, or an advantage, until long after the time.

Importantly, though, the book does look specifically at education, and the achievements of children from richer and poorer backgrounds. There has long been a difference in educational achievement between rich and poor. But through the examination of test results, we can see it doesn't have to be this way, or at least the difference can be substantially reduced.

It turns out that poorer children get at least as much benefit out of education as richer. Tracking the test scores from the beginning of the school year to the end, the improvements are pretty much uniform.

But where the differences really start to show is testing from the end of one school year to the start of the next. Poorer kids stay at the same level, or even fall back slightly - they have (not unreasonably...) spent the summer playing games, having fun, and building those memories of long hot summers that seemed to go on for ever.

The richer kids, however, have continued to move forward. The environment they are in at home is one that is conducive to learning - their parents push them to learn, or they are surrounded by books, or whatever. They keep learning, and being educated, in their own time.

Now, this isn't much of a difference over one summer, but over all the summers of a child's school lifetime, it really mounts up.

So the obvious answer, if we want to reduce the difference that the financial background of a child's parents makes to their educational achievement, is to provide children with an environment that consistently enables them to learn. Having a long break in the school year, not surprisingly, stops poorer children learning.

So why not get rid of it? If we're really serious about enabling opportunity for all, why are we holding onto a summer holiday that enables children to take part in a harvest? We are no longer an agriculture based society. We are an urban society, who need to be based primarily around knowledge industries. So let's stop making kids take a break from gaining knowledge every year.

So yes, I rather liked this book. Outliers: The Story of Success is on Amazon, or you could, you know, actually go to a local bookshop.

Friday 13 February 2009

Disappointing headline

In a brief update to Sunday's post on torture and Binyam Mohamed, we have the contender for most disappointingly misleading headline: This appeared in my news feed as Ministers face torture questioning. Interesting idea for how select committees could get more information from the government...

We do not live in a police state

Just a general customs official state?

Monday 9 February 2009

On Crossing The Line

I want to talk about a news story regarding the construction of a database to store the details of all passenger movements in and out of the UK. Every time you go abroad, your name, address, telephone number, travel itinerary, etc. will be collected. The data will be stored for up to 10 years.

As the Times report says:

Some immigration officials with knowledge of the plans admit there is likely to be public concern. “A lot of this stuff will have a legitimate use in the fight against crime and terrorism, but it’s what else it could be used for that presents a problem,” said one.

“It will be able to detect whether parents are taking their children abroad during school holidays. It could be useful to the tax authorities because it will tell them how long non-UK domiciled people are spending in the UK.”


I am continually amazed at the lengths the government goes to to gather ever more information about what we get up to. I am also amazed at the lengths they will go to to not tell us what they are up to.

Just like the issue yesterday, this is a question of balance - what are we prepared to give up for what gain?

The travel database tells us that, in the opinion of the government, we are prepared to give up our privacy with regards to where and when and with whom we travel, because in return we gain a tool we are told will assist in the fight against various forms of criminality.

Have we got the balance right here? As I said yesterday:

The question is not an idle one. If we or the government have got the balance wrong, ultimately our society will suffer. The judges in the Binyam Mohamed case quoted Henry Hallam:

“Civil liberty in this kingdom has two direct guarantees; the open administration of justice according to known laws truly interpreted, and fair constructions of evidence; and the right of Parliament, without let or interruption, to inquire into, and obtain redress of, public grievances. Of these, the first is by far the most indispensable; nor can the subjects of any State be reckoned to enjoy a real freedom, where this condition is not found both in its judicial institutions and in their constant exercise.”


In addition to this, at least for me, the ability to raise public grievances should be added - without the ability for the general population to agitate, protest, and complain, Parliament's right to "inquire into, and obtain redress of" public grievances becomes pointless.

I am not arguing that the travel database in and of itself damages the ability of the populus to protest. However, I would argue that it is another symptom of the growing tendency of government to see the population as a many numbered beast to be monitored, catalogued, observed and controlled. Taken in conjunction with the (to be charitable) unintended effects of some laws, a lack of effective redress against the police when they overstep their bounds, and mass surveillance that "risks undermining the fundamental relationship between the state and citizens", I believe it does have the effect of further dissuading people from protesting in a state with a steadily increasing and pervasive surveillance culture.

So have we, and has the government, got the balance right?

In the case of the various databases and monitoring of the population, we appear to have crossed a threshold, one which has a bearing on the relationship between the citizen and the Executive (the government of a State). The Executive has an obvious need and right to gather information to carry out services for the people of that state. This includes, to an extent, the gathering of information to fight crime. However, the unwilling and automatic gathering of data (as opposed to that handed over willingly, such as for the receipt of services) for the purposes of crime prevention or detection should be kept to a minimum.

Is it not better to require there to be suspicion of criminality before data can be gathered this way? Consider it as analogous to a system of requiring warrants for searches and communication intercepts. A reasonable level of suspicion (this level would obviously vary depending on the data that is being sought) must surely be reached before data is taken without agreement? Instead, we have a system where all must provide information, either as a consequence of wishing to pursue a lawful act, or by inappropriately sharing data provided for one purpose (such as receiving a service) without consent.

This is purely a land-grab for data. And once your personal data is in the hands of others, you cease to have control over what use it is put to - now, and in the future.

Because you need to be happy not only to have the current government have this information about you, about what you do, where you live, who you travel with, but also to be happy to have every possible government afterwards holding this data about you.

And I'm just not that trusting.

Sunday 8 February 2009

Torture, Openness, and Balancing Acts

This weekend I want to talk about the furore surrounding the treatment of Binyam Mohamed.

Binyam Mohamed is an Ethiopian-born UK resident. In 1994, aged 15, he came to the UK with his father, who was seeking asylum. After obtaining five GCSEs and an engineering diploma at the City of Westminster College in Paddington, he decided to stay in Britain when his father returned, and was given indefinite leave to remain. He lived in the UK for seven years, during which time he converted to Islam. He travelled to Afghanistan, via Pakistan, in June 2001. He returned to Pakistan sometime after 9/11.

In April 2002, he was arrested at Karachi airport. He was attempting to fly to Zurich, but was not using his own passport.

What happened next is murky. Binyam alleges he was held at two prisons in Pakistan over three months, where he was hung from leather straps, beaten, and threatened with a gun. He further alleges that he was questioned by men he believed to be FBI agents. The torture stopped after he was visited by two Britons, who he believes were MI6 officers. Instead, he was told he was to be tortured by Arabs.

Binyam alleges he was flown in a US aircraft to Morocco, and taken to a jail near Rabat. Here, he says he was tortured for the next 18 months. 18 months of beatings, noise, being slashed with scalpels in his chest and genitals. During this time, he was accused of being an al-Qaida terrorist. Binyam denies the allegations, but he does say he would say anything to try and get the torture to stop. He signed a statement about a dirty bomb plot.

Binyam says that after this 18 months in Morocco, he was flown back to Afghanistan, escorted by masked US soldiers who seemed shocked by his physical condition. When he arrived back in Afghanistan, he says he was kept in a darkened cell in Kabul, chained up, and subjected to loud music for 5 months, while being questioned by Americans. Only after this time was he moved to the Bagram air base, and shown to the Red Cross. Four months later, he was in Guantanamo.

More than a year later, over three and a half years since he was arrested, Binyam was charged with a crime.

On 28th July 2008, an attempt to make the facts clearer, for use in his defence in the US Military Tribunal, was made by Binyam's UK lawyers, who filed a petition that the Foreign Office should be compelled to turn over the evidence of Binyam's abuse. The judges agreed, saying the information was "not only necessary but essential for his defence". The classified US documents were turned over to Binyam's US counsel, for use in his attempts to be set free.

Soon afterwards, all charges against Binyam were dropped, "without prejudice". His lawyers were told new charges would be forthcoming. None have done so.

The question that the UK judges were now asked to look at was if there was a public interest in allowing the publication of seven paragraphs in their original judgement, in which they "provided a summary of reports by the United States Government to the [Security Service] and the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) on the circumstances of [Binyam Mohamed]’s incommunicado and unlawful detention in Pakistan and of the treatment accorded to him by or on behalf of the United States Government as referred to in paragraph 87(iv) of our judgment." Essentially, these paragraphs are believed to say what the UK government knew about Binyam's treatment, and when - did they know he had been tortured? Were they complicit?

The Foreign Secretary blocked them being made public. The government argued that the US had threatened to suspend intelligence cooperation with the UK if the paragraphs were released, and therefore national security required them to remain secret.

As with all cases of national security, this is a balancing act. We have to decide what we are prepared to give up on the one hand, in return for something else on the other.

The case of Binyam Mohamed tells us that, in the opinion of the government, we must give up a desire to examine what has been done, with the knowledge and complicity of the UK government, to one man, because in return we gain, or retain, the benefit of intelligence sharing, and therefore enhanced security for us all.

The question for me, is whether the opinion of the government is right - have they got the balance right? Have we got the balance right?

The question is not an idle one. If we or the government have got the balance wrong, ultimately our society will suffer. The judges in the Binyam Mohamed case quoted Henry Hallam:

“Civil liberty in this kingdom has two direct guarantees; the open administration of justice according to known laws truly interpreted, and fair constructions of evidence; and the right of Parliament, without let or interruption, to inquire into, and obtain redress of, public grievances. Of these, the first is by far the most indispensable; nor can the subjects of any State be reckoned to enjoy a real freedom, where this condition is not found both in its judicial institutions and in their constant exercise.”


So have we, and has the government, got the balance right?

I'd argue we haven't.

As the judges said in their ruling, "[i]t is a novel issue which requires balancing the public interest in national security and the public interest in open justice, the rule of law and democratic accountability."

Binyam's lawyers argued that there was an absolute bar to granting a public interest immunity in the release of information pertaining to Binyam's alleged torture:

There was a general public interest in the exposure of evidence of any serious criminality by the State. It would therefore be contrary to the public interest to claim public interest immunity to conceal evidence of such criminality, as the rule of law demanded the investigation of such wrongdoing and the open and public adjudication of it.


The judges rejected this argument, because a public interest immunity certificate is there to protect the interests of the entire state, whereas the claim of criminality is against the Executive of the State - the government. In which case, they judged, it may still be in the public interest to block publication of information pertaining to an illegal act by the Executive, if to release that information would damage the interests of the wider State.

Essentially, because bad things could happen to the population, or their interests, it should be possible for the government to stop the release of information showing they or their agents acted in an illegal manner.

In this case, the 'bad thing' would be the reduction in intelligence sharing by the US, and thus placing the UK at greater risk of a successful attack. This is the crucial claim on which the whole judgement pivots. And, importantly, what is in the interests of national security is decided only by the Executive, by the Foreign Secretary, not by the judges.

This is where I think the balance is wrong. While I am sure the judges have made a sound judgement in law, I disagree about the protection of the State. It is incredibly damaging to the State as a whole to allow an Executive to get away with a criminal act, especially an act of the seriousness of torture. It is damaging to allow the suspicion that the Executive is getting away with a criminal act to linger. It is, in my opinion, more damaging to the State than the possible risks caused by the damaging of national security.

For that reason, I would argue that allowing the nebulous argument of national security to trump that of open justice in fact damages the State, and in a pervasive and insidious manner. In the balancing act between potential physical harm, and actual harm to society's accepted mores of justice, the judges have got it legally right, and morally wrong.

However, judges are not there to make the laws we want. That is what Parliament is for. That means we need to make Parliament bring government to account, if necessary by placing an absolute bar to public interest immunity being used in cases of allegations of serious criminality by the government. And if that is what we want Parliament to do, that is what we must make the Members of Parliament to do, by making the matter a "public grievance", and holding them to account over it.

Because sometimes we need our government to do the right thing, regardless of the cost.

(I encourage you all to have a look at the Binyam Mohamed ruling. It is fascinating, and illustrates the balancing act the judges have had to try and decide on.)

Sunday 1 February 2009

The Future of Globalisation? - Part 2

The Prime Minister tells us, in words of wisdom from his icy ivory tower in Davos, that protectionism must be avoided. The participants at Davos tell us how de-globalisation is not an option, that we must not start to dismantle the system they created, that made them so rich, so powerful.

And you know what? They're right.

Well, in so far as they go.

The rise of globalisation has been met with mistrust in many countries of the world, by many sections of society. In the UK, the gap between rich and poor has steadily grown. Relative poverty has increased. Some of us have felt uneasy that the prosperity of our country, that our own increased purchasing power, that the cheap prices of the shiny goods we want, have all been built on the backs of workers in China, India, around the world. In the back of our mind, we know they are likely to have been exploited, exploited for our benefit.

Yes, these workers in foriegn climes may even be happier with their lot than with their alternatives. Hordes of Chinese continue to abandon the fields, the crushing peasant lives they had been living in the country, to try and find a better life in the cities and factories. And in their eyes, it may indeed be better. But is that really all we can hope for? That things get a little better for the people we exploit? That they get a little better, slowly, while things get a lot better, quickly, for the people at the top?

Globalisation has produced an uneasy feeling in many people. But while prosperity was rising, we silenced that little voice of our conscience, and got on with spending. Now, however, prosperity is deserting us, and the tensions and distaste over globalisation are starting to come to the boil across Europe.

But we can't go back and change the system we now have. Demanding British jobs for British workers gives rise to protectionism, an ugly nationalistic kind of protectionism. It is a protectionism that seeks to protect British workers at the expense of everyone else, and ultimately it will be at our expense too.

There is no doubt in my mind, however, that something needs to be done. Globalisation has benefitted capital. World trade has made those rich enough to take advantage of it richer, while those unable to move as easily as the flows of digital capital have suffered. Companies wishing to take advantage of this now appear to be shipping workers wholesale from one country to another, to work on a temporary contract, at lower rates than the resident population.

Regardless of the economics of it, treating workers like cattle to be shuttled from building site to building site, from country to country, is just wrong. It degrades them. It degrades us.

But globalisation is an invincible tide, we are told. We cannot turn back the clock. To fight against it is futile.

Which is why I am suggesting embracing globalisation instead.

But it isn't the globalisation of capital, the one system of international co-operation that those at Davos want us to believe is possible. They call for reform of the IMF, the World Banks, anything to prop up the system they built. But now is the time for us to start building our own system, our own organisations to deal with the world as it is.

The case of the Portuguese and Italian workers is not an argument to block companies bringing in foreign workers to work on British sites. No, as I said, we depend on providing incentives and disincentives in this system. But instead of focusing on how to disincentivise workers taking action, it is time to focus on how to disincentivise companies taking advantage.

The globalisation I am calling for is a globalisation of working rights, of unions, of wage negotiations. In late 2007, two European Court rulings effectively allowed companies to undermine existing collective agreements in countries where they work. Both cases said that trade union action against overseas companies that had refused to apply pay and conditions of a host country had infringed the freedom of the company to operate freely under European Union law.

The protectionist way to deal with this would be to try and get the European Union to accept a change in the rules that stopped foreign firms being able to do this.

The new globalisation way to deal with this is to organise with unions in all European countries to negotiate coordinated agreements with companies.

Companies and capital are now global. Labour is becoming increasingly global. Now is the time to make our labour organisations global as well. And this means moving beyond the fraternal organisations that exist, the chummy little talking shops for union leaders. No, now is the time to build a truly international union, committed to protecting the rights of workers in each company, not in each country.

So yes, we need to build a union that can have workers striking across the continent, across the globe, if a company tries to take advantage of workers in one of the countries they operate in. Yes, we need to build a union that is willing, no, that demands to negotiate wages for workers throughout a company, not just those in a certain country.

Labour is becoming globalised. Unions need to do so too. Because now companies are seeking to play workers from one country off against workers in another, not from one factory against another. Because capital seeks to migrate to where it can take advantage of workers, regardless of the land they end up in.

And most importantly, because we need to be united against a new global capital that has more power than ever before to exploit us around the globe. We are stronger together, in a global union, regardless of the language we speak. And that, my friends, is acting in our own economic self-interest, that is playing the capitalists' game in a way they won't like.