Big Scrotum wins the day

MPs yesterday 'debated' (ie they blew hot air then did what their whips told them) the introduction of identity cards. Of course, the NuLabor regime bulldozed the measure through, and it's a nailed-on cert that we'll have to carry the things in the not too distant future. (It's also a nailed-on cert that the implementation will be a cock-up of staggering proportions, and will open up a whole new and lucrative market for criminal enterprise, but that's an acceptable price to pay for complete surveillance over Joe and Jane Public.) Two choice quotes jumped out at me:

"Home Secretary Charles Clarke told MPs ID cards would help counter, not create, a "big brother society". MPs narrowly back ID plan, BBC News online, 29/6/05

Which is positively Orwellian. I next expect Big Scrotum to say that Freedom is Slavery, War is Peace, and Ignorance is Strength (see Hamster blog entry from 2003)

"The creation of this detailed data trail of individuals' activities is particularly worrying and cannot be viewed in isolation of other initiatives which serve to build a detailed picture of people's lives, such as CCTV surveillance (with automatic facial recognition), use of automatic number plate recognition recording vehicle movements for law enforcement and congestion charging, and the proposals to introduce satellite tracking of vehicles for road use charging." Richard Thomas, quoted in ID cards 'will reveal details of daily life', Guardian, 28/6/05

Who's Richard Thomas? Only the government's Information Commissioner, "appointed by the government to report to parliament on privacy issues" - no dyed-in-the-wool libertarian he, no 'friend of terrorism', but rather the State's own spokesperson on information. Not that it'll make a slight bit of difference to Big Scrotum and the Dear Leader...

Physician, heal thyself

Following the smoking bans imposed in Ireland and, earlier this year, Italy, it looks like England is the next place where fags will be banned in pubs. The Scottish Executive has already announced a total ban in Scotland to start next year (although who's going to enforce it in some of the howffs on Sauchiehall Street is another thing - best break out the riot gear, boys) and Wales is also on its way, so it's a racing cert than England will follow suit. The NuLabor regime talks of a "consultation" and only banning smoking in pubs where there's "prepared food", but it's nailed on that there'll be a ban in all pubs.

Personally, I'm not too bothered. I do smoke, but only 4 or 5 a day, usually only 3 if I stay in of a night, and I can live without a fag with my pint and go outside for a puff. Hell, it might even help me pull - in Ireland, the ban's led to the phenomenon known as 'smirting' where smokers chat each other up outside bars. Neither do I think it's a major imposition on 'personal freedom' - in our 24/7 surveillance society there are far greater dangers to freedom than not being able to puff on a coffin nail, and I rather wish the pro-smoking zealots would address themselves to these.

What does gripe me, other than the sheer smirking patrician middle-class moralism of this whole 'debate', are two things:

1. The pot calling the kettle black. It's the BMA that's forever calling for a ban on smoking (amongst many other activities) and punitive increases in the price of booze, yet doctors are notorious drug abusers. As the old joke goes, an alcoholic is someone who drinks more than their doctor. Quacks drink like fishes and smoke a fair old bit too, and if that wasn't enough they often self-prescribe opiates. I can't say I blame them, given the stresses of the job and the sheer temptation of the prescription pad, and if they want to get off their heads then fair play to them, but it's awful rich for them to then tell the rest of us how to live healthy lives.

2. A complete ignoring of the major factor behind reduced life expectancy and lifestyle disease - capitalism. The sheer stress involved in wage-slavery, particularly at the bottom of the heap, shortens your life - it's known and quantified that those of us in the 'lower social classes' (aka working class oiks and riff-raff) live many years less than our 'betters' higher up the rung [1], and suffer worse and more chronic health problems. Not to mention the environmental degradation that's an integral part of capitalism - polluted air and water, food laden with chemical toxins, destruction of habitat and open spaces, more roads and cars and thus more fumes and particulates for us to inhale (the nobs, of course, live in the country away from all that 'unpleasantness'), poor housing, and of course drastic climate change. All the dangerous activities, such as smoking and drinking, that quacks want to ban or control, are but minor 'risk factors' compared to the greatest risk factor of all - living in capitalist society. Banning smoking whilst ignoring capitalism is like stopping a pub fight and ignoring a city-wide riot, yet you never hear a peep about the inherent health and life threats of capitalism from middle-class quacks. Perish the thought.

Trouble is, not mentioning the mother of all risk factors behind poor health and reduced life expectancy is ignoring the elephant in the room, and leads to good old middle-class liberal victim-blaming. The plebs are ill because we smoke and drink and eat fatty and sugary foods and don't go to the gym twice a week, and although some liberals might pity us - poor dears, they know not what they do - in the end it's all our fault, in their eyes.

As liberalism is the dominant ideology of capitalism that's hardly surprising, I suppose, but in practice it leads to increasing restrictions on our life choices, and to cutbacks and privatisation in the NHS. Why? Because the middle classes increasingly ask "why should I pay for the care of someone who smokes/drinks/eats the wrong foods/doesn't exercise enough?", and the simple logic of that rhetorical question leads inexorably to private healthcare. If the principle is that the cost of the healthcare of those who take 'unnecessary risks' with their health should not be borne by those who 'live healthy lifestyles', then plainly those who willingly take such risks should pay for their own healthcare. The Daily Mail-reading middle classes would nod their heads vigorously when you're talking about the lifestyle risks that we plebs take, such as as smoking and drinking, but what then about people who go sailing, or mountaineering, or hillwalking, or skydiving, or hang-gliding, or play rugby, or take part in any activity riskier than a walk in the park? Surely they should pay for any care they might need as a result of their activity? If I break a leg whilst out on the hills and the mountain rescue come for me, why should other taxpayers who don't hillwalk pay for my stay in hospital and out-patient care?

The simplistic, economically-individualistic answer to those rhetorical questions is: everyone should pay for their own healthcare. The NHS is based on the principle that care is given on the basis of clinical need, regardless of ability to pay, funded by general taxation, but that means that, by definition, we all subsidise the healthcare of others, regardless of how 'clean' our own lifestyle is. Which seems fair enough to me, in the same way as it's only right that education should be free and universal. As a childless bloke, I could ask the rhetorical question: "Why should I pay for the education of kids when I don't have any myself?", to which most folk would tell me not to be such a selfish bastard, and rightly so. Yet we allow the "why should I pay for XXXX?" questions of the selfish middle classes to dominate debates on health service provision, even though anyone with half a brain can see the logical end result of such 'policies'. As the middle classes are forever professing their faith in the NHS then presumably they don't want fully privatised healthcare, so the only other conclusion to draw, if the Nigels and Sarahs want to retain the NHS yet not pay for the care of wilful risk-takers, is that they want to use the "why should I pay?" argument as a stick to bash the heads of the plebs with, and to enforce control over personal aspects of our lives that they find distasteful.

That's what burns me about the whole smoking ban issue. If it was just about the health of workers in pubs and public places then there'd be no problem, but that's plainly a tissue-thin figleaf of a rationale for since when has the State, particularly the right-wing neo-liberalist State we've had since 1979, given a toss about the health of workers? No, it's the sheer hypocrisy of quacks, and their wilful ignoring of the destructive nature of capitalism, that really gets my goat.

Articles

Why do doctors drink so much? BBC Magazine, 14/6/05
Smoking ban consultation to start. BBC News, 20/6/05
England smoke ban plans unveiled. BBC News, 20/6/05

References

[1] National Statistics Online - reports on life expectancy in the UK. See in particular Trends in life expectancy by social class 1972 - 2001

The unfreedom of the open road (3)

There was a government announcement on the radio news today that shocked even me by its sheer audacity. The Transport Secretary, Alastair Darling, announced that the government is planning a scheme to charge motor vehicle users by the mile to drive on Britain's roads. How is it planning to do this? Through satellite tracking of every single vehicle on every single road, even the meanest single-track country lane. I thought I'd become inured to the NuLabor State's authoritarianism and its yen for 24/7 surveillance on everyone, from birth to death, but this really took my breath away. When this scheme comes in, in 10 or so years' time, the State will know exactly where and who you are, if you're in a car, at any time. It's bad enough now, with licence plate recognition technology installed on every motorway and many A roads, but at least you can escape the ubiquitous TV camera on quieter B roads and country lanes. When this comes in, the State will have complete surveillance on you.

The BBC reports, as befits the establishment's broadcaster, barely mentioned any 'civil liberties implications', concentrating instead on doubts as to whether the scheme will a) work, and b) pay for itself. C4 did at least mention 'Big Brother' worries, to which Darling replied that all these issues would have to be "bottomed out", whatever that means. He then went on to blithely say that some new cars were already fitted with tracking boxes, and that this would be standard on new cars in a decade's time. Has the State really stitched up an agreement with motor manufacturers to put a surveillance box in all cars, and if so when was it announced, if it was announced at all?

The ostensible aim of this scheme is to cut traffic congestion, but if you believe that you really will believe anything, and there's a bridge in New York I think you'd be interested in buying. There are so many easier ways to cut congestion - cheap and plentiful public transport being favourite, coupled with reduction of subsidies to road freight to get bloody wagons and their Yorkie-choffing pseudo-macho reactionary fatboy drivers off the roads. This would be an order of magnitude cheaper than the sophisticated bleeding edge - and bleeding expensive, and bleeding profitable for firms like Crapita and EDS - technology, logistics, bureaucracy, and cops needed to make the total surveillance scheme work.

But of course it's nowt to do with the figleaf reason, and everything to do with the State making authoritarian hay whilst the sun shines (see previous post to the Hamster weblog), whilst the populace is so cowed/thick/disinterested/scared to protest. The cracker about this scheme is that it immediately divides and rules middle-class liberals, who are about the only folk making a ruckus about freedoms (mainly because the working classes under the camera have no voice left). By cutting congestion and road traffic, the scheme puts the State onside with all the Greenies, who'll simply say to anyone concerned that freedom of movement is going west: "what's more important: the planet or a few civil liberties?" And, for liberals, the environment will trump anything. Even the report in the Guardian, that weathervane of liberal opinion, barely mentioned implications for freedom and instead focussed on the Green angle.

It'll be interesting to see what the more radical Left, what's left of it in the UK, reacts to this. Anti-capitalists and No Globals (as the Italians call them) have been bitterly opposed to ID cards and other authoritarian measures, but then they're very much anti road expansion and 'car culture', so maybe they'll find themselves split as the 'moderate' liberals are. I do hope not.

Articles

Pay-as-you-go road charge plan. BBC News, 6/6/05
Charging plan aims to prevent road gridlock. The Guardian, 6/6/05.

The Press we deserve

There was a good article in the Guardian Media supplement on Monday, which I usually throw into the recycle bin unread on account of it being full of self-regarding London-centric Nathan Barley types, but this time I was short of reading material whilst scoffing my tea so I thought I'd have a flick through it. The article [1] was written by Roy Greenslade, editor of the Daily Mirror in the Cap'n Bob Maxwell days, and slated the reactionary, gutter and sewer Press for blatantly racist demonisation of "asylum seekers". Plenty other leftish commentators have done the same, but few with the level of detail and record used by Greenslade, and that can't be brushed off by the Peter Hitchens' and Richard Littlejohns of this world. The article is a condensed version of a publicly-available report [2] which gives a historical overview of Press campaigns against foreigners [3], and makes depressing but necessary reading.

To a large degree, the reactionary Press reflects the pervasive racism endemic in English society, but amplifies it by an order of magnitude, and legitimises anti-refugee racism:

"It is a vicious circle. Public prejudice breeds mythical stories and those mythical stories, having been given credibility by being published, breed yet more prejudice among the public. That process, in which the press both reflects and worsens public attitudes, sets off a chain reaction in which the reflection and the worsening interact until reality is buried under several layers of myth and prejudice."

The scum Press will no doubt justify itself, if or when the accounts come to be settled, on the basis that it only reflects the base racism of the English, but that's a joke. By printing such stories, at best highly distorted versions of reality, more often than not outright and brazen lies, the hacks on the Sun, Express, Star, Mail, to name the most conspicuous offenders (the Mirror isn't entirely innocent, either) bear heavy responsibility for the verbal and physical abuse directed at refugees. The fist may be some knuckledragger's, but the thought was planted, fed and watered by the hacks.

These hacks and propagandists - 'journalist' is too professional a term to apply to them - should be held as much to account as the scumbags who attack refugees, ideally in a manner as direct as their headlines. Chances are they won't be, and will continue to write racist and inflammatory 'stories' and commentaries without any comeback whatsoever. Funny, it was the self-same reactionary Press that so lambasted trades union leaderships in the 70s for exercising "power without responsibility", but for all the righteous criticisms of union barons and executives, in the end they could be held to account by their members. Who's going to force hacks to take responsibility for the pain they cause through their lies? Their proprietors? Their editors? Fat chance - as long as copies shift off the newstands, Murdoch and Rothermere and the rest won't give a toss.

Not that the State should be let off the hook either. It was the Tory regime back in the late 80s that first whipped up the asylum seeker scare, and succeeded in turning the term "asylum seeker" into the modern-day equivalent of "nigger", but NuLabor not only carried the Tories' work on, they positively accelerated the demonisation of foreigners, thus giving the green light to the scum Press, and fascist groups like the BNP, to attack people who've come here in the mistaken belief in the English sense of 'fair play' and 'tolerance'.

In a decade or two, all this fuss about 'asylum seekers' will be just history, and a new group will be scapegoated as blacks and asians and Irish and muslims and refugees have been, but by that time Straw, Blunkett and Blair will be writing their memoirs and cementing reputations as 'respected elder statesmen', whilst the hacks who wrote such reams of poison will be living in comfortable retirement in the country. The pain, the abuse, and the deaths that their words have brought about will be long forgotten.

Refs:

[1] Scapegoats for every ill in society by Roy Greenslade, Guardian Media 31/5/05. Irritatingly, you have to register and fill in a stupid questionnaire to view Media articles so this link won't take you directly to the story, but at least registration is free, although quite what point it serves other than to irritate users unnecessarily I don't know.

[2] Seeking Scapegoats: The coverage of asylum in the UK press. Institute for Public Policy Research, 31/5/05. Available as a PDF document.

[3] Including the Irish, or "Republican terrorist sympathisers" as we used to be known before we became 'cool'.