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Fred The Scapegoat

Feb 1

Posted by Aidan in Holyrood | 13 Comments

CC Some rights reserved by Lincolnian (Brian) - BUSY - IN AND OUT

“But the goat, on which the lot fell to be the scapegoat, shall be presented alive before the LORD, to make an atonement with him, and to let him go for a scapegoat into the wilderness“ Leviticus 16:10

Though, of course, both Simon Hester and Sir Fred Goodwin were chosen by the lot of having been in charge of RBS at some point. One up to the fall, and one after. And like the proverbial bovine both the fankle of Simon Hester’s bonus last week and the government turning Fred Goodwins umbrella inside out (HT to Peat Worrier for that exclusive footage) are barely even symbolically important. Many people in the banking industry are still Sir CDO. Many more are still raking in enormous amounts of money in short term bonuses that severely distort the incentives within the financial industry and then leak into the real economy through exploiting genuinely useful financial instruments such as commodity futures to such an extent that hundreds of thousands of people are pushed into hunger because of pinstriped castles in the sky.

The ongoing financial catastrophe of the last four and a half years are not the fault of two Chief Executives of one company, one of whom wasn’t even employed there until after the crash. It was a systemic failure of the global financial system, particularly in the US and the UK but also around Europe and what was once broadly described as “the Free World” or “the West” and if you’re of a more right-on view point your probably currently refer to as “the Global North”. Not only that, but it was the latest and largest in a series of failures in the dominant political economy of the prior 40 years that stretches back past the current sovereign debt crisis (which is really just the second act of the 2007-2008 crisis) and finds echoes in the Enron and Worldcom scandals and the Argentine Default of the early 2000s, the Long-Term Capital Management debacle and the Russian default of the late 1990s, the Asian crisis prior to that, the Savings & Loans crisis in the US in the 1980s and 1990s and so an ad nauseam.

Obviously with such a broad sweep of crises a huge number of different, conflicting factors played into them. However they also all fundamentally grew from an uncompromising and unyielding faith in the market fundamentalist economic consensus articulated by Hayek and the Chicago School. Sometimes markets work. Sometimes they don’t. Problems arise when they are allowed unchecked and unfettered reign. Problems which cause huge social dislocation, uprooting people, throwing people on the scrapheap before their lives really started and killing people – and that was when they were functioning as designed. Since then they have became utterly dysfunctional even within their own frame of reference, requiring massive public subsidies, three am shotgun mergers and the world staring into an economic abyss so bad I’ve run out of cliches to describe it.

So, on the one hand, we have the worst financial crisis in human history causing untold damage and on the other hand we have the small matter of catastrophic global climate change which is inexorably moving closer and we appear to be increasingly incapable of doing anything about it, partly because of the financial crisis taking up a lot of both monetary and political capital.

But never mind, some guy who was only ever really a cog in the machine in the great scheme of things is going to have to spend five minutes changing the title drop down on his online banking. Whoop.

A short sharp smack

Jan 30

Posted by Kirsty in Crime | 34 Comments

Sometimes I like to kid myself that I live in a civilised country, where people of any shape or size can co-exist and be protected by law. Then I see the debate on smacking – revived at the weekend by former Education Minister David Lammy – and I’m reminded with a jolt that it’s still deemed a parent’s right to physically punish the smallest, most vulnerable people in society. And that society seems okay with that.

According to David Lammy MP, in an interview with LBC Radio, Labour’s decision in 2004 to tighten the smacking law was a factor in last summer’s riots. He argues working-class parents should be able to physically discipline their children to prevent them from joining gangs and getting involved in knife crime.

I think smacking children to discipline them for bad behaviour is wrong. I think physically snatching a child away from a hot oven or a road busy with traffic isn’t.

In England and Wales, the Children Act 2004 says parents can mildly smack their children as long as their action does not cause “reddening of the skin”. Any punishment which causes harm like bruising or cuts can face legal action, with adults facing up to five years in jail.

This legislation on smacking is stricter than in Scotland. Back in 2003, the Scottish Executive intended to make it an offence to smack children under the age of three, or hit those of any age with an “implement” such as a belt, slipper or cane. The latter proposals were adopted, but the ban on smacking toddlers was dropped after the measure was rejected at committee stage.

Lammy’s notion that rebellion in young people and children will be quelled, and not generated, by fear of physical chastisement is ridiculous. The proposal that last summer’s civic unrest, as well as ongoing antisocial and violent behaviour, stems from too few unruly kids getting a clip around the ear is the kind of patronising nonsense which I expect to spew from out-of-touch politicians with no real care or concern as to why some of Britain’s youth are rioting. The notion that smacking should be okay for working class parents in particular is disgusting. Are we okay with men from working class backgrounds hitting their wives and girlfriends?

I think children who are hurt become angry and humiliated, and less likely to behave in a way that meets society’s expectations. Children who are told at school to talk about their fallings outs and find ways to be kind to their playmates, but who then go home and get hit because someone can’t be bothered to explain to them why their behaviour is wrong are well aware of the hypocrisy. I think unemployment, lack of aspiration and cuts to public services will do far, far more damage to good parenting and well-behaved teenagers than whether or not you’re permitted to smack your children.

Lammy’s comments are absurd: being able to physically punish children will do nothing to resolve antisocial behaviour, and probably only encourages it. But what I find almost worse is that this is a debate which is still acceptable today. It’s amazing that society at large seems okay with a violent act by an adult inflicted on a child in a way which would be unacceptable between adults – partners, colleagues, strangers.

Sweden was the first country in the world to ban the physical punishment of children in 1979. Since then, reports of neglect and child abuse have risen. According to Louise Sylwander, Sweden’s first Children’s Ombudsman, there’s no evidence this is because of a corresponding rise in actual cases of abuse in Sweden: instead, it seems the ban has led society to become less tolerant of violence against children, and more confident in reporting children at risk.

Young adults who rioted, who are violent, who carry knives do so for a myriad of complex social and economic reasons, which a decent society should endeavour to resolve. They don’t do it because they’re bad, and because that badness wasn’t beaten out of them at an early enough age. Poverty and poor parenting are issues within this myriad web of causes, but so too is a society that doesn’t care enough, where politicians can lazily pontificate and legislation can fall far too short to protect the vulnerable. Simply, having to resort to smacking is a failure, on every possible level.

 

Jan 30

Posted by Aidan in Holyrood | 5 Comments

Margo MacDonald’s Assisted Suicide (Scotland) draft was published last week. The same day a woman I’d known all my life died after a condition she’d had since her teens finally deteriorated to a terminal state. She was one of the strongest, bravest, bawdiest people I’ve had the privilege to know. I’m not going to enumerate her suffering here because, frankly, it’s not relevant. She was great, everyone who knew her was a better person for doing so.  What is relevant is her determination to maintain control over her life.

I don’t just mean the choice to live or die here, I mean control over every aspect of life. What the home helpers did, when they came, what they cooked (I discovered at her farewell that a book of offal cookery I’d given her was appreciated by everybody but the people charged with trimming chicken livers), the relationship they had with her wasn’t a bureaucratic one. It was a personal one.

I don’t know what the end was like for her. She’d experienced things I actually can’t describe. She’d been fighting for decades. There are many people like her. People who know what’s happening to them.

Who are we to deny them? What right does any of us have to say “no, you must suffer indignity and incapacity”?

My friend didn’t chose that way. She literally fought until her dying breath. It’s not for her that I write this.

It’s for me.

My disabilities aren’t life limiting. I will hopefully get old, my body will fail and, when the time comes as it does to all of us I will die.

I don’t know if I can be as brave as my friend. When my mind fails, when my body gives in and there’s clearly no way back I want my love ones around me followed by an armful of morphine.

“To die proudly when it is no longer possible to live proudly.  Death of one’s own free choice, death at the proper time, with a clear head and with joyfulness, consummated in the midst of children and witnesses:  so that an actual leave-taking is possible while he who is leaving is still there.”  – Friedrich Nietzsche, Expeditions of an Untimely Man

Who is society to deny me that?

UK = Titanic, sez Tory MP

Jan 26

Posted by Kirsty in Constitution, Westminster | 4 Comments

Speaking after the meeting of the Welsh Affairs Select Committee on Tuesday, David Davies MP (no, not that one) likened the future of the UK to the ill-fated Titanic, saying “It’s just a question of how long it takes to sink.”

I don’t tend nor like to give credence to the statements of politicians who claim £2,000 from taxpayers for a family business, or who thinks the torture of suspected Al Qaeda or Taliban terrorists is “a bonus”. It’s not even a very tasteful metaphor, when the news is still peppered with the ongoing search for missing souls in a maritime accident.

But on the day nominations close for the Plaid Cymru leadership, after Wyn Jones indicated he would stand down after disappointing 2011 election results, it’s pleasant to turn from Scotland to Wales, to see how devolution discussions are panning out there.

Davies’ comments are an interesting insight into the sheer irritation some Tories must have with a nation’s quest for devolution.

The Silk Commission was established in October 2011, to review both the fiscal and general powers of the Welsh Assembly. It will report on fiscal powers this autumn, looking mainly at whether the Senedd should take more responsibility for raising finance rather than from the block grant. It will then make recommendations on the Assembly’s other powers the year after.

In a similar sort of way to the commission on the West Lothian Question, it is the coalition’s preferred way to try to answer the issues developing around devolution, deriving from the original deal between Clegg and Cameron. Three members of the committee – chairman Paul Silk, Noel Lloyd and Dyfrig Jones – appeared before the Select Committee chaired by Davies this week.

And the Titanic jibe was not Davies’ only outburst. While chairing the Committee, Davies basically told Commission Chairman Paul Silk to get on with it:

“Could I suggest we could save £1m by you issuing a report now calling for lots of extra powers for the Welsh Assembly,” he said, because it “Is inevitably going to happen anyway.”

I doubt Davies’ ‘sod it’ attitude will sit well with the supposed unionist mantra of ‘stronger together’. It would be interesting to know how many of his fellow party members share the same view. At least it’s good to know the idea of more powers for Wales is an irritant to some on the government benches. After all, two stinging gadflies of nations pestering and positioning and petitioning for more powers are harder to ignore than one.

 

 

Alex Salmond is asking the wrong question on independence

Jan 25

Posted by Jeff in Holyrood | 70 Comments

Today’s announcement from the SNP includes a significant piece of information regarding how First Minister Alex Salmond intends to run the forthcoming referendum – the question to be posed. That question is as follows:

“Do you agree that Scotland should be an independent country?”

I personally think it is a terribly worded question to be asking, far too open to misinterpretation. As many on the unionist side are keen to point out, how independent is Scotland if it shares a monarchy, currency and defence force with England? Does this question ask if we want to draw the line inside or outside of these issues?

So, for me, there is one obvious answer to that question and it isn’t no and it isn’t yes, it is ‘define independence’.

We can’t go into such an important decision as this with so much confusion hanging over what the question means and, to be honest, I fear the SNP is giving itself a bit of a handicap here because there may well be Scots who would be keen to vote Yes to Salmond’s original question regarding ‘negotiating a settlement with the UK’ but will decide to vote No to the above. The question paints a Scotland as too isolationist, too much like the Norways and the Icelands who sit outwith the European Union rather than a Scotland that is inclusive and seeking to be a part of the British isles and a part of Europe at large.

There must be a way to ask the necessary question while making it clear that currency and monarchy will, at least in the short term, be shared.

There is a reason why Ladbrokes are offering a massive 9/1 on Scotland being independent from England by the end of the decade. After all, Scotland could vote Yes in 2014 and the bookies could still have a strong argument for not paying out.