Layer 490 . . . The Wire, Fair Societies, Healthy Lives, Greece Crisis and Yemen's Struggle

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Returning to the previous Layer's comments on The Wire, Wikipedia says this -

The Wire


David Simon described the second season as


"A meditation on the death of work and the betrayal of the American working class ... it is a deliberate argument that unencumbered capitalism is not a substitute for social policy; that on its own, without a social compact, raw capitalism is destined to serve the few at the expense of the many."


He added that season 3 "reflects on the nature of reform and reformers, and whether there is any possibility that political processes, long calcified, can mitigate against the forces currently arrayed against individuals." 


The third season is also an allegory that draws explicit parallels between the Iraq War and drug prohibition, which in Simon's view has failed in its aims and has become a war against America's underclass. This is portrayed by Major Colvin, imparting to Carver his view that policing has been allowed to become a war and thus will never succeed in its aims.


Writer Ed Burns, who worked as a public school teacher after retiring from the Baltimore police force shortly before going to work with Simon, has called education the theme of the fourth season. Rather than focusing solely on the school system, the fourth season looks at schools as a porous part of the community that are affected by problems outside of their boundaries. Burns states that education comes from many sources other than schools and that children can be educated by other means, including contact with the drug dealers they work for. Burns and Simon see the theme as an opportunity to explore how individuals end up like the show's criminal characters, and to dramatize the notion that hard work is not always justly rewarded.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_wire

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Fair Society, Healthy Lives - And The Life Scientific

This was an excellent programme on Radio 4 this week:

Jim Al-Khalili talks to Professor Sir Michael Marmot. As a junior doctor he decided that medicine was failed prevention and went on to discover what he calls Status Syndrome.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b016ld4q/The_Life_Scientific_Sir_Michael_Marmot/

Sir Michael Gideon Marmot is professor of Epidemiology and Public Health at University College London.

I didn't manage to catch the whole of the programme, but here are a selection of quotes:

"Social injustice is killing on a grand scale."


We should be making the world - all our societies - a healthier place.


We need to understand why people get ill in the first place. The relationships between society and health.


I decided we needed to study disease and the distribution of disease. Also the determinants of disease.


Lack of control over our lives is what makes us ill.


People have no control over the lack of jobs.


We're failing children on a grand scale.
We need a decent education system that gives kids the resources to take control of their lives.


What if somebody took this seriously, and we started to make the social gradient less steep?


We need to sharply reduce social inequalities


We need the freedom to live a life we value - - - - we need to empower people to have control over their lives


Other OECD countries are far more equal than the UK.

Apparently Sir Michael has become a champion of early childhood development.

http://www.marmotreview.org/media-events/news-coverage/radio-4-the-life-scientific.aspx

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b016ld4q

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7584056.stm

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-12433925

http://www.marmotreview.org/english-review-of-hi

http://www.marmotreview.org/about-us/sir-michael-marmot.aspx

http://www.who.int/social_determinants/thecommission/en/

http://www.ucl.ac.uk/gheg/marmotreview

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Marmot


There was a mention in the programme of Amartya Sen, the Nobel prize-winning economist who teaches philosophy and economics at Harvard.

Sen's ideas were outlined in Oxzen Layer 272:

http://oxzen.blogspot.com/2010/03/layer-272-community-solidarity.html

Freedom, justice and powerlessness.

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Simon Jenkins as ever writes brilliantly about economics and social policy in today's paper -

For Cameron big bridges are sexier than real jobs


Conservative economic policy is still spellbound by supply-side glamour, so the market has no part to play in creating growth

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/nov/01/big-bridges-sexier-than-jobs

This article needs to be read in full.

The worst evil economics can inflict on humans is unemployment. Not lower pay, poor working conditions, costly housing or enforced migration; just the lack of a job. To be able-bodied and out of work is debilitating to an individual and a waste to society.


Figures today from the Office for National Statistics and earlier ones from the OECD and the International Labour Organisation all point in the same direction. The British and other European economies are running on empty. Only public sector borrowing seems to prevent renewed downturn. Today's unemployment rate of 8%, or 21% of under-24s, is a scandal. An unprecedented one million young Britons are jobless. This squandering of labour and loss of wealth is stupefying.


With luck, Greece's decision to hold a referendum on whether to endure further austerity is a blessing. It could jolt world leaders about to meet (yet again) in Cannes into much-needed panic. They have believed too long that bailing out banks is all recovery needs. They have ignored any stimulus to demand. Without demand, no one lends and no one borrows. Nothing moves and the money dies.


The credit crunch was the result of a massive policy failure for which the economics profession has yet to muster a "truth and reconciliation" commission. There is no point in merely abusing Americans for the housing bubble or Britons for the borrowing spree or Greeks or Italians for their self-indulgence. It is like abusing Germans in the 1920s for the first world war. Blame is one thing. We are where we are.


What matters is to learn lessons. The 1930s depression was in large part the result of a similar policy failure, of strangling money supply at the bottom of an economic cycle. Recovery then was heavily reliant on rearmament, from rising public expenditure on the guns, ships, planes, steel and coal of mighty armies. That spending was not productive, indeed it was appallingly destructive. But it did the trick. It fuelled demand and thus jobs. It conformed to Keynes's model of burying bags of silver and letting people dig it up.


There are some parallels today. American and British budgets are in thrall to the military-industrial complex. America's integrity as a nation is not under the slightest threat: yet this year it spent $500bn on defence and billions more on "wars of choice". Britain, while cutting back domestic spending, finds a billion pounds to fight wars in Afghanistan and Libya, countries which pose no conceivable threat. This particular stimulus to demand, through building aircraft carriers, nuclear missiles and fighter bombers, went through parliament on the nod.


The economist Paul Krugman writes in this week's New York Times on the phenomenon of "weaponised Keynesianism". He points to the eccentricity of large defence programmes being considered acceptable, not as value for money, but from some vague criterion of patriotism and national prestige. They are like Olympic Games. Other forms of civilian job creation are required to prove a "business case", which in recession they often fail to do.

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Costas Lapavitsas is also spot-on with this -

Greece crisis: Papandreou's referendum is a gamble too far


In an open debate the Greek people are unlikely to chose to stay in the euro – something September's protests made clear

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/nov/01/greece-crisis-papandreou-referendum-gamble

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Tawakkol Karman, a co-recipient of the 2011 Nobel peace prize, chairs Women Journalists Without Chains. She is a human rights activist and leader of the popular revolution movement in Yemen

The world must not forsake Yemen's struggle for freedom


Yemenis are ready to pay the ultimate price to take on a brutal dictator. Yet the UN can't even bring itself to condemn him

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/nov/01/west-must-not-forsake-yemen

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Layer 316 . . . Cameron, the New Politics, Servant Leaders, The System and The Wire

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There was an interesting news item on the radio just now about Cameron and Osborne who are continuing to live in their own homes - but with the security forces urging them to move into Downing Street immediately so that they can be better protected from potential 'threats'.

If I heard right, Cameron is still insisting on going on foot around Westminster and Whitehall, instead of going everywhere in his armoured car. Respect to Cammo! says I.

This seems to me incredibly refreshing. Firstly, a guy who's determined to be his own man, and not be ordered around by advisers and civil servants. Secondly, someone who is keen to somehow stay in touch with the real world, instead of being constantly screened off from it. Thirdly, someone who's got a certain amount of personal courage, and is prepared to take a risk in order to preserve his humanity and his sense of personal freedom. After all, if the bad guys can force even our political leaders to cringe in fear the whole time then the bad guys have won, haven't they?

There could even be something deeper going on here. Just suppose Cameron were a big enough person to see this behaviour as part of the 'new politics'. Surely a new type of politics ought to be about policies and not personalities? The new politics ought to emphasise the primacy of the electorate and the policies already voted on and agreed on. In this scenario, it doesn't really matter who leads a party or a country - if they fall ill or die then someone else will step in and take forward the wishes of the electorate. A new politics requires political leaders to be servant/leaders, and not the raving egomaniacs we're used to, from Thatcher through Major to Blair to Brown. A servant/leader has the attitude that s/he's there to help enact the wishes of the country, and not bend or steer the country according to his/her individual will or preference. As such s/he is replaceable, so there's no benefit to any bad guy in getting rid of him/her.

As it happens, for the first time ever, the coalition government has drawn up a fairly detailed programme of what it intends to do over the next 5 years. The plan has been published for all to see, and for consultation. This is surely a grown-up way of doing politics. There's a clear coalition agreement firmly in place, subject to responses from public feedback and reaction. So no matter what happens to individual figures within the government from here on in, the programme for the parliament will be taken forward. We may not like the proposals, but at least it's clear what the government is committed to. This can only be a good thing.

What's happened since the election has been perfectly logical and reasonable, but the commentariat seems to be struggling to keep up with it and is puzzled by what to say about it. The very idea of Cameron dragging his party in a more liberal and progressive direction seems to have shocked and angered the true die-hard Tories who presumed he was going to be Thatcher lite, at the very worst, and be Thatcher Mark II at best.

As for the old addage, power corrupts - and absolute power corrupts absolutely, we shall have to wait and see. No doubt Cameron won't feel able to keep up his current behaviour forever. Maybe it is all an exercise in image creation. Perhaps he will be corrupted by power and slide into the expected behaviour of a prime minister. But there's no point in speculating - we need to wait and see. And in the meantime maybe give him the benefit of the doubt and hope he continues to talk the talk and walk the walk - in Whitehall and elsewhere.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article7133563.ece

Fears for safety of walkabout Cameron

David Cameron is rejecting the advice of top security officials by insisting on walking around Whitehall, refusing police motorcycle escorts and demanding to be allowed to keep his BlackBerry smartphone.

There is increasing nervousness about the protection of the Prime Minister, who officials believe is making himself vulnerable to terrorists, lone obsessives and cyber-criminals.

Ministers, however, are being encouraged to cut back on security by ditching their official cars in favour of public transport, under a new code of conduct aimed at cutting government perks.

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Could there be a narrative in Cameron's choice of music for his desert island?

Tangled Up In Blue (Bob Dylan)

Ernie   (Benny Hill)

Wish You Were Here   (Pink Floyd)

On Wings Of Song   (Kiri Te Kanawa)

Fake Plastic Trees   (Radiohead)

This Charming Man   (Smiths)

Perfect Circle   (REM)

All These Things I've Done  (The Killers)

All credit to him for his choice of a crate of Scottish whisky as his luxury for the desert island..

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This Is America, Man. (And it's also Britain)

In this week's London Review of Books Michael Wood has written a very interesting article that's both a review of The Wire and also a comment on David Simon's latest series, Treme.

As he points out, the uniqueness of The Wire is that it's not a conventional cop show - it's a thorough investigation and exposee of the world of the drug dealers, which operates alongside of and interacts with the world of the police department, and the whole city hall bureaucracy. And it tells the truth about the inability of anyone to change either the psychotic world of the violent criminals, OR the psychotic and sociopathic world of the bureaucrats who run cities, including the police department. There are many good cops who really care about catching the crims, but they're prevented from doing what they need to do by all sorts of factors, including lack of resourcing, petty regulations, indifferent and self-centred colleagues, wrong priorities and bad leadership.

"This is America, man" means that power is at the heart of every story, and understanding power is the way to stay alive. The drug lord keeps his men out of jail by threatening witnesses or by having them murdered, and there is nothing the police can do about it.

Indeed for most of the time and for various reasons (hopelessness, habit, the need to massage crime statistics, the internal politics of the police department, the image requirements of elected officials) they supposed to do nothing about it.

David Simon says The Wire is about the City. It is how we in the West live at the millennium, an urbanised species compacted together, sharing a common love, and a common awe and fear, of what we have rendered not only in Baltimore or St Louis or Chicago, but in Manchester or Amsterdam or Mexico City as well.

London too, of course.

All kind of cops . . . tussle with an obstructive superior who sits behind a desk; but the cops in The Wire are faced with desks behind desks, superiors above superiors, each one closer to the local politicans and especially the mayor, who most of the time wants to be governor.

(Regular readers might already see where we're going with this.)

There are many political zones in The Wire, and the mayor's office is an important one. What are cops to do if they want to solve crimes rather than wait comfortably for their retirement?

The killing of Snoop (in Treme) has many resemblances to the killing of Proposition Joe (in (The Wire) . . . the calm, the fatalism, the futility of discussion, the sense of merely reasonable behaviour, an undertone of impersonal courtesy or kindness, even. But there is a difference. Joe was a thinking man who thought he could beat the system. He was wrong - because he was a thinking man, a believer in alternatives. Snoop is a psychopath who knows the system can't be beaten, only lived with for a while before it kills you.

Of course you don't have to be a psychopath in order to know that the system can't be beaten, and that it will kill you off in the end, and yet still go on working against the system anyway . . . but it helps.

Of course I'm thinking here about the many good teachers and headteachers, and others working in various public services, who have suffered from and finally been beaten by The System, even though they were intelligent, and idealistic, and believers in alternatives, and carried on working for justice and fairness and for the rights of children and other clients, in the face of a faceless and dictatorial bureaucracy driven by half-crazed and over-ambitious politicans and grim-faced Westminster civil service mandarins working to reactionary and regressive, and self-serving, agendas. The suits behind the suits, sitting at the desks behind the desks, the superiors above the superiors, monitoring targets and performance indicators and other statistics, and plotting the downfall of those who stand in their way or who dare to criticise or oppose them.

These are the realities of power.

Welcome to the 21st Century.
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