No comment needed, really .....
Thursday 23 December 2010
Wednesday 15 December 2010
What he said
Following up on the BBC interview with Jody McIntyre, I think this is the best summary of the real issues I've read so far.
Tuesday 14 December 2010
What is the MPS thinking?
Another demo, another round of stories that raise serious issues about how the Met police these events.
This is particularly egregious - and fantastic to see that the police are not the only 'great British institution' to engage in the bullying of wheelchair users (not that being in a wheelchair makes you automatically defenceless or helpless, of course, as Jody McIntyre demonstrates toward the end of the interview) - but some of the stories coming out around the kettling last week are if anything even worse.
If reports such as this are true, and the Met is using kettling as a tool of collective punishment intended to dissuade people from attending demos in the future, then we are talking about policing practise that far far exceeds any reasonable remit. There are many other reports of the events last week, e.g. here, but these talk only of collective punishment in the abstract. The post on Critical Legal Theory is one of the first I've seen that implies officers on the ground know that this is what they're doing. I say practise, rather than policy, because I sincerely doubt that it is a policy in any formal sense. But it doesn't have to be if the officers involved understand what they are doing to be directed in this way. And it's hard to interpret the request to shut the coffee shop that the people 'contained' were using - not smashing up - in any other way.
Random unprovoked violence on the part of the police, while never, ever, acceptable, is at least understandable 'in the heat of the moment'. Human frailty and all that. Those who engage in it could and should be weeded out on a case-by-case basis without undermining the whole notion of 'policing protest' (that they aren't is of course a major problem in and of itself, but not what I'm getting at here). Deliberately depriving people of their liberty in order to deter them from exercising their democratic rights is an entirely different thing. It does indeed suggest that the protest is not being policed but attacked.
This is particularly egregious - and fantastic to see that the police are not the only 'great British institution' to engage in the bullying of wheelchair users (not that being in a wheelchair makes you automatically defenceless or helpless, of course, as Jody McIntyre demonstrates toward the end of the interview) - but some of the stories coming out around the kettling last week are if anything even worse.
If reports such as this are true, and the Met is using kettling as a tool of collective punishment intended to dissuade people from attending demos in the future, then we are talking about policing practise that far far exceeds any reasonable remit. There are many other reports of the events last week, e.g. here, but these talk only of collective punishment in the abstract. The post on Critical Legal Theory is one of the first I've seen that implies officers on the ground know that this is what they're doing. I say practise, rather than policy, because I sincerely doubt that it is a policy in any formal sense. But it doesn't have to be if the officers involved understand what they are doing to be directed in this way. And it's hard to interpret the request to shut the coffee shop that the people 'contained' were using - not smashing up - in any other way.
Random unprovoked violence on the part of the police, while never, ever, acceptable, is at least understandable 'in the heat of the moment'. Human frailty and all that. Those who engage in it could and should be weeded out on a case-by-case basis without undermining the whole notion of 'policing protest' (that they aren't is of course a major problem in and of itself, but not what I'm getting at here). Deliberately depriving people of their liberty in order to deter them from exercising their democratic rights is an entirely different thing. It does indeed suggest that the protest is not being policed but attacked.
Sunday 12 December 2010
Student fees debate
This has to be the best piece concerning the actual substance of the Browne Report I've read. It's over a month old now, but as far as I'm aware the vote in the Commons on Thursday conformed to all the major points covered.
What shines through particularly clearly is the critique of the market fundamentalism that lies at the core of the report's - and the coalition's - thinking. Can we look forward to other important policy areas being totally driven by the spending preferences of 17 year-olds? Which is not to criticise 17 year-olds - a housing policy entirely driven by the spending preferences of the 50+ age group would be just as scary (as well as being not too far away from what we actually have at the moment).
I know I should be used to it by now, given that market mechanisms of the type proposed by Browne seem to be central to almost all policy change that has occurred since about 1980, but I'm constantly amazed by the vacuity of the (usually unspoken) assumptions about human nature and social action that lie behind them. As Collini points out, the outcomes of 'reforms' such as these seem almost inevitably to strengthen and entrench existing financial, political and social hierarchies. One of the prime reasons they do so is that people emphatically are not perfectly informed rational consumers, individually or collectively. This is is why, despite the best efforts of Thatcher, Major and Blair, we still have decision-making processes in most areas of social and political life that do not rely totally on the 'free' market. Why higher education should be chosen to test the idea that important social institutions can be successfully run almost entirely by the invisible hand is beyond me.
What shines through particularly clearly is the critique of the market fundamentalism that lies at the core of the report's - and the coalition's - thinking. Can we look forward to other important policy areas being totally driven by the spending preferences of 17 year-olds? Which is not to criticise 17 year-olds - a housing policy entirely driven by the spending preferences of the 50+ age group would be just as scary (as well as being not too far away from what we actually have at the moment).
I know I should be used to it by now, given that market mechanisms of the type proposed by Browne seem to be central to almost all policy change that has occurred since about 1980, but I'm constantly amazed by the vacuity of the (usually unspoken) assumptions about human nature and social action that lie behind them. As Collini points out, the outcomes of 'reforms' such as these seem almost inevitably to strengthen and entrench existing financial, political and social hierarchies. One of the prime reasons they do so is that people emphatically are not perfectly informed rational consumers, individually or collectively. This is is why, despite the best efforts of Thatcher, Major and Blair, we still have decision-making processes in most areas of social and political life that do not rely totally on the 'free' market. Why higher education should be chosen to test the idea that important social institutions can be successfully run almost entirely by the invisible hand is beyond me.
Tuesday 7 December 2010
Fair play to Ken Clarke
And it's not very often you get to say that!
Old suede shoes was just subjected to a light roasting from John Humphries on Today. Not that he didn't hold his ground.
You can read too much into Today's current style - the presenters seem most likely to go for cheap populist shots, and more interested in getting the interviewee to slip up and say something 'controversial' rather than exploring the issue at hand in any real depth - but it was interesting that Humphries essentially parrotted tabloid talking points for most of the interview. The very idea that someone should say prison is not automatically the best option seemed to offend him (or at least offend his presenter's persona). The default stance was 'prison works'.
So fair play indeed to Ken Clarke for standing up to this very strong media meme, and pointing out some of the extremely negative aspects of imprisonment rates 'on the lower slopes of mass incarceration' (as I think David Downes characterised it). That it took a Tory Justice minister to do this should make many on the Labour front- and back-benches hang their heads with shame.
Old suede shoes was just subjected to a light roasting from John Humphries on Today. Not that he didn't hold his ground.
You can read too much into Today's current style - the presenters seem most likely to go for cheap populist shots, and more interested in getting the interviewee to slip up and say something 'controversial' rather than exploring the issue at hand in any real depth - but it was interesting that Humphries essentially parrotted tabloid talking points for most of the interview. The very idea that someone should say prison is not automatically the best option seemed to offend him (or at least offend his presenter's persona). The default stance was 'prison works'.
So fair play indeed to Ken Clarke for standing up to this very strong media meme, and pointing out some of the extremely negative aspects of imprisonment rates 'on the lower slopes of mass incarceration' (as I think David Downes characterised it). That it took a Tory Justice minister to do this should make many on the Labour front- and back-benches hang their heads with shame.
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