It's tough worrying about civil liberties in the UK.
Obviously it's a lot harder in other countries. I mean, worrying about civil liberties in Russia, where journalists are being murdered to shut them up, is a lot tougher, to say the least. Or in China, where those who complain are whisked away and imprisoned, never to be seen again.
Granted, it's not that tough. But it is kind of tough - because no-one needs to put pressure on you to be quiet. You feel it all on your own. You bite your own tongue. Or at least I do.
I mean, let's look at this sensibly. I see a report of behaviour by the state that seems to infringe civil liberties, such as the police surveilling political protesters and journalists, and I think to myself "This is terrible! They are treating people going about lawful activities, such as political protest, or reporting upon it, as potential criminals. Worse, they are being overt and aggressive in their filming, which surely can only be to try to intimidate the public."
Well, generally I don't think in quite such clearly defined sentence structure, but you get my point. On the whole, I think This Is A Bad Thing, and that Something Should Be Done.
But then some other thought processes kick in. Thought processes that are part of me because I am a polite, middle-class Englishman. Those thought processes which instinctively try to damp down rebellious instincts.
For example, I think to myself "Well, these police officers are just doing their jobs. They don't get to choose whether they follow their superior's instructions or not." And I think "After all, they're not doing anything illegal - I mean, taking photographs in a public place is perfectly allowed, and something I should be glad about." And I think "Surely they wouldn't be doing this if they didn't have a good reason? Maybe there really are ne'er-do-wells in these groups, people we should be keeping an eye on."
And by these steps, I start to dampen down my initial outrage, blanketing it in a cloak of possible justifications, or polite evasions of the unpleasant reality. All I am left with is a sense of disquiet at the events, a slight sense of disappointment in myself, and a rather bitter taste in the back of my mouth.
But, of course, that sense of disquiet never quite goes away. It lingers.
Which means that when I hear of another event, such as the police using 'psychological operations' against protesters it becomes that little bit harder to deaden the outrage. The disquiet grows that little bit greater.
This is all very odd for me. Because, well, how can I really worry about civil liberties in the UK? It's far too embarrassing. I mean, this is England, for heaven's sake. We have a long tradition of enlightenment about rights. Don't we? Surely I'm being foolish for worrying.
And I desperately want to believe that. I want to believe that the good old fashioned sense of British fair play will stop all these attacks on liberty. I want to believe that there is no chance a government could get in which would use all these new laws brought in to 'fight terror' to fight whoever opposes them.
I want to believe it, but I'd be foolish indeed to do so.
The UK isn't somehow immune from oppression. Bad people have used bad laws to silence their critics before. Hell, good people who passionately believed something we now think is abhorrent used bad laws to silence their critics. Unions were put down. Workers were abused. Millions were denied the vote, and threatened with violence for demanding it.
My golden vision of a UK filled with fair play is concocted from films and books that ignore those who weren't the right sort. I think of good, upright English chaps, doing the right thing because it is the right thing. But this sort of cosy image was pushed by an Establishment already fighting a losing battle - so they project an image of their sort as the right sort, who can always be trusted to act in the best interests of all of us.
Because that's the thing - I don't think Labour are really trying to put in place all the tools an oppressive government would need. I don't even think the Tories would do much different. They're just politicians, making the best decisions they can, given the information and guidance they are offered.
And the guidance they are offered comes from a group who are part of what we nebulously call the Establishment. High up civil servants, advisers, career politicians, they all end up working to maintain their control over the country, over society. Oh, not because they're a comic book evil villain, scheming to subjugate us all. No, because they really believe they know best how to run the country, how to make sure we all benefit in some way.
But this is where they're wrong. We live in a democracy - imperfect and flawed in many ways, yes, but one in which each of us has at least some say in the way our country is run. And over the years, we have become more sophisticated, more knowledgeable, we have learned more. We have earned the right to be trusted to make decisions for ourselves.
Which means that, actually, they don't have the right to keep tabs on us for our political activity. They don't get to tell us inquests can be held in secret, because a minister or a judge says so. They don't get to tell us we have to tell them before we travel abroad. They don't get to tell us we have to give them all the information on us they want, forever, and to buy a card confirming it. They don't get to decide what is best for us.
There never was a golden age of liberty in the UK. Things have often been worse than now, but it wasn't that long ago that they were better, either. So let's work to try and make some more progress, let's work to keep traveling along the road towards greater freedom, greater liberty. Let's stop trying to justify the actions of the state for them, imagine ways in which what they are doing could be right.
In my case, let's stop being quite so... British about it.
Monday, 23 March 2009
Tuesday, 17 March 2009
What a headline
From The Times: Prince Charles warns that Britain faces dementia catastrophe. Insert your own joke about the heir to the throne here.
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.
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...
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