thedailybeast--2019-02-04--Were in the Age of Fracture Heres How We Start an Age of Repair

We’re in the Age of Fracture. Here’s How We Start an Age of Repair.

This is adapted from Beast special correspondent Michael Tomasky’s new book, If We Can Keep It: How the Republic Collapsed, and How It Might Be Saved, out this week from Norton/Liveright. This adaptation includes three of 14 specific suggestions for reducing polarization put forward in the last chapter. Kirkus gave the book a starred review. Jeffrey Toobin says it’s “brilliant and timely.” You can buy it here.  Division is the American condition. We’ve been divided since the Hamiltonians, the coastal elites, and the Jeffersonians, the country folk, the yeoman farmers, were at each other’s throats in the 1790’s. Things stayed that way for decades. Then, in the 20th century, the Depression and World War II brought people together and provided a kind of civic glue: The generation that had fought the Nazis and fascist Japan had a perspective on life that prevented them from thinking of the people across the aisle as enemies. But once that generation passed the torch to a new generation, it all came unglued. Newt Gingrich was once asked by the journalist Jane Mayer why he skipped Vietnam. “Given everything I believe in, a large part of me thinks I should have gone over,” he concluded. “But there was a bigger battle in Congress than Vietnam.”  About a decade ago, I used to think that a new Depression and world war would return us to a state of some harmony. Not that I was cheering for them to happen, but I thought at least they’d yield that silver lining.  I no longer believe this. We’re not the same people we were in the 1930s and ’40s. We’re too stratified and too materialistic. Today’s better-off Americans would never sit still for something like the rationing that Americans accepted during the war. And unless the morality of this new war were absolutely crystal clear, we’d be at loggerheads about it from the start. This would be, let’s face it, especially true if it were a Democratic president who got us involved in the hostilities—the conservative media would be full of reasons about how it was all preventable or brought on by the weakness and implicit anti-American posture of the incumbent. A colleague once joked to me that maybe an alien invasion could unify the country, but the more we thought about it, the more even that scenario fell apart. If we were invaded by the green people of Planet Zanthon, in time, we’d discover something about life on Zanthon—say, that the green majority was oppressing a restive purple minority. From there, it wouldn’t be long before Fox News was agitating for a white-green interplanetary alliance to beat back the black-brown-purple hordes. No—for now, we’re stuck here.  What, if anything, can be done about it? There are some ways out of this mess. But before we get to those, two points must be made. First, it’s useless to hope that politicians can just go back to getting along the way they once did. They didn’t get along better in the old days because they were nicer people. They got along better because a particular set of historical forces and circumstances produced a degree of social cohesion that called on them to cooperate more. Today, a totally different set of historical forces and circumstances exist, and they produce social atomization rather than social cohesion. Our politicians can’t overcome that. Being romantic about how “they” were “better” in the “good old days” is both inaccurate and a waste of time.  Nevertheless, there are some changes to our political system that we could contemplate that might help ease the situation. Most of these aren’t especially realistic, to be honest, at least in the near future; but we have a dire situation, and we have to think outside the box and be open to making root-and-branch changes to the political system.  Of course, we need to end partisan gerrymandering if we can, through commissions that would draw legislative districts, a practice that’s catching on around the country. Meanwhile, here’s a much more interesting idea: Why don’t we revisit the whole concept of single-member districts? They are inherently and definitionally unfair, leaving a significant chunk of a given district’s citizens with their views completely unrepresented. They are not mandated by the Constitution, and some states used to use “general-ticket” voting, which we now call “at-large” voting. What if we were to return—and I’m well aware that this is politically unfeasible for now, but just go with me on the thought experiment—to some at-large voting? Say, for example, that states with more than a minimum number of districts—six, perhaps—had to elect their congressional delegations half by district, and half at large, either from the entire state or, if a large state, from common-sensical, non-gerrymandered regions?  Let’s think about New York in this hypothetical. Right now, New York has twenty-seven congressional districts. Now let’s say I waved my wand and only fourteen of New York’s representatives were chosen from individual districts, and the other thirteen were elected from three different geographic entities: five from Long Island, Queens, and Staten Island; four from Manhattan, Brooklyn, the Bronx, and two or three suburban counties up through the lower Hudson Valley; and four from the rest of the state (one would have to study the population distribution, but this seems roughly fair to me). What would such a system produce? Probably a few more Republicans! Certainly, the first region would tilt somewhat Republican. And at least one of the four at-large representatives from the Manhattan-Hudson region would likely be a Republican. This person would probably be from the Hudson Valley, but he or she would have to be more moderate than your average House Republican to have garnered enough votes to win the seat. And the upstate New York region would certainly lean Republican, but upstate New York has enough urban areas that this district would typically elect one at-large Democrat, who would again be more moderate than your typical Democrat.  Replicate this all over the country and what happens? You have a chance at having maybe 15 or more Republicans who would play some legislative ball with Democrats at budget time. Fifteen may not sound like much, but when we’re talking congressional votes, 15 is a lot—maybe enough to swing an outcome. Concomitantly you’d have that many fewer very conservative Republicans and very liberal Democrats from ultra-safe districts, many of which would be eliminated.  While I’m tossing pies in the sky, here’s another thought. The House of Representatives has been at 435 members since after the 1910 census. The population in 1910 was 92 million. Today it’s 320 million. A congressman in 1910 represented about 260,000 people. Today, one represents more than 700,000. The founders intended the lower House to be close to the people. It’s awfully hard for a representative to be close to 730,000 people.  Compare our House to the UK’s House of Commons. It holds 650 members, each representing around 100,000 constituents. The 577 members of the French Assembly each represent around 115,000 people. The 150 members of Australia’s House of Representatives each represent on average around 160,000 people. At those sizes, a legislator can know his or her district very intimately, which is just what our founders intended.  We can’t go that small—going down to 100,000 constituents per district would give us a lower house with 3,200 members! And mind you, I would never favor increasing the size of Congress if the new members were elected on the same single-member basis. Any increase in size would absolutely have to be tied to and predicated upon de-mandating single-member districts. If new members could be elected according to a scheme like the one I laid out above, I think expansion should merit the most serious consideration. If we could add, say, 65 seats, up to a nice round 500, and if we could ensure that the bulk of those 65, or indeed all of them, would not be elected from ultra-safe conservative or liberal districts but from ideologically heterogeneous districts or regions or whole states, the very nature of the House of Representatives would change for the better. You’d have a critical mass of compromisers.  There is no project in American politics more important, none that could do more to reduce polarization, than reviving moderate Republicanism. I say that as a liberal and an enrolled Democrat. That’s the precise inflection point at which the system is really broken. If some person or group of people will put money—and serious money; billions, not millions—into this project, that person or persons can help rescue the republic. A Club for Growth of the center can save this country.  Why? Imagine a typical conservative Republican House member. Not a radical, just a typical conservative. When he got to Congress—say, back in the early days of the Bush administration—he was a right-wing freak. Now things have shifted enough that he’s just a run-of-the-mill conservative. And the only pressure he ever gets back home is from his right. The district is cut in such a way that he doesn’t really have to pursue Democratic or independent votes. The voters he does care about take instruction from Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity and the local Christian broadcaster. The local newspaper is right-wing. There are four or five ambitious people eyeing his seat—a few state legislators, a rich businessman or two. Each of them is more right-wing than the last. It’s unrelenting, and it’s why these people vote the way they do.  Now imagine that some of that machinery existed in moderate form. Some of the above machinery could not be recreated—the media, for example. But some could. Suppose this organization identified more moderate voters, organized them, turned them into a bloc. And suppose this organization also recruited candidates and supported them financially. Given time, this organization would make a difference.  This would be a massive and perhaps impossible undertaking. But surely there are some rich moderate Republicans out there who could fund such a pressure group. It would take a long time to have an impact. Some people I’ve discussed this idea with say they don’t think there even are many moderate Republicans anymore. They may be right. But atrophied muscles can be brought back to strength. I suspect that millions of Republicans might choose moderation over extremism if someone just placed it on the menu for them. The problem is that for decades, no one has.  When ideas like this are proposed—ideas that try in some measure to conjure back to life a lost past—the wise cynics always say two things. First, that the past can’t be recreated; second, that even if it does work, its success will be quite limited. On the first point, I agree that the past can’t be recreated. It will never be like it was in the 1950s through the 1970s. There aren’t going to be any more Jacob Javitses or Charles Mathiases or Lowell Weickers, to name three old Republican senators who were genuine liberals. But here’s my response: The country doesn’t need liberal Republicans. It needs Republicans who are basically conservative but who harbor a few moderate instincts and who—this is the key thing—actually want to come to Congress to compromise and get a few things done. Surely those Republicans exist. And on the second point: Again, critics are correct—this project wouldn’t work in a lot of districts, which are too right-wing to bother with. But it doesn’t need to work in a lot of districts. It needs to work only in a handful. A half-dozen such wins in House races begins to alter the nature of Republican caucus. A dozen constitutes a real voting bloc.  All of these ideas I’m mentioning are long-term projects, the work of 10 or 20 years. But imagine a Congress a generation from now in which are seated 12 to 15 moderate Republicans in the House, and three or four in the Senate. They would vote with Democrats for a tax increase. Next would come the crucial step: They’d have to survive reelection after so voting, because the right will come after them with everything. But if they did survive, it would send a loud and clear signal to other Republicans. It would break the back of Grover Norquist’s anti-tax pledge, and Congress could start governing again.  We also need to think a lot more broadly than electoral-system reforms. We need to look at the whole society, and we need to look to the whole society and demand engagement and commitment to reviving our civic health from leaders in other walks of life. We need more and better and more courageous leadership from prominent people in every realm.  I think back to the Age of Consensus, that time of depression and war, and how that consensus didn’t just happen but was forged. It was created by leaders in the corporate and business world, in organized labor, in our religious life, in our civic organizations and the nonprofit world, and in our universities. There was a lot they disagreed on; obviously, the corporate-business version of the American Dream was more conservative and individualistic than the other ones. But all of them made an attempt to say to the American people that we were one nation conceived around certain noble principles and that people had to pay heed to those principles.  We need that kind of effort now. And we have to start it by thinking not about Congress or our political system, but our society. A nearly ironclad rule of history: Politics changes after social conditions and expectations change. A clamor is raised about working conditions, a terrible shirtwaist factory fire claims many lives, there is an outcry; only then does politics respond. That’s the normal pattern. So, since politicians won’t lead this effort, we need to demand something we haven’t been demanding much in these recent years: We need our non-political leaders to take very seriously the job of trying to pull the country together. We need them to be visionary and forward-thinking. We need them to see—and, crucially, to say, and say and say—that they will all benefit, even and especially the corporate leaders, from a less divided, and I would add less unequal, country.  We are in trouble. Our political culture is broken, but it is not broken for the reasons you often read that it’s broken—because “Washington” is “dysfunctional,” or because politicians have no “will.” No. It’s broken because some people broke it. It was broken by the people who pushed an economic theory on the rest of us that has driven trillions of dollars that were once in middle class people’s pockets to a comparative few at the very top. Who refused to invest in the country anymore. Who will not even negotiate real investment. Who have been telling us for years that the market will take care of all our needs, while the market has in fact left thousands of towns and communities strafed and full of people addicted to drugs—the drugs, by the way, that that same free market is pumping out in vastly greater quantities, and for vastly greater profit, than it did 20 years ago. And who have built up a parallel media universe in which any of these common-sense assertions is dismissed as socialist, and in which anyone who doesn’t endorse the thesis of Donald Trump’s greatness is immediately dismissed.  They broke it. They broke it to gain power and to remake society in a way that was less communitarian, explicitly less equal, than the society we were building from 1945 to 1980. Yes, there were errors and excesses aplenty on the other side, my side, that required correction; on matters like welfare and crime, on which liberalism did surely fail (not that conservatism has succeeded: the war on drugs has been one of the great moral calamities of the last 50 years—imagine if we’d spent on treatment over all these decades what we’ve been spending locking up poor men caught with an ounce of weed or a gram of coke). But here’s the thing: They weren’t out merely to correct the errors and excesses. They used the errors and excesses as an excuse—which liberalism gave them, I admit—to import an entirely new ideology. And don’t think they’re finished. Ask Charles Koch how “finished” he thinks they are. If he’s being honest, he’ll say they’re just getting their boots on.  They broke it. They broke it with the thought only of winning in the moment; no concern for the long-term health of the republic. First it was some fairly mild anti-immigrant rhetoric; then it got bolder, flashier, because that’s how these things progress. First it was relatively subtle racial dog-whistling; then, by degrees, a bit less so. First it was a stretching of the truth on this, on that; then, a real-live war mounted on false pretenses, complete with the accusation that those who didn’t support the war were enemies of the government, of America, and of freedom itself. Each act and utterance of hatred, each lie, seemed I suppose defensible in the moment. But we see now what they’ve given us, drip by drip: a citizenry so inured to hatred and lies that is was willing to elect (even though a majority of them did not) exactly the kind of demagogue the Founding Fathers warned against.  We live today in the Age of Fracture, to borrow the phrase of the Princeton political scientist Daniel T. Rodgers. It seems inescapable, but eventually, this Age of Fracture will end, and a fifth age will loom before us. What will we call that age? We might be able to call it the Age of Repair, if we act to repair things. And if we don’t…I don’t wish to sound melodramatic, but there is no law of the universe or heaven that says democratic republics have to last forever. They must be kept alive. Ours is dying. And a young generation is coming of age that doesn’t have much faith in the American dream, capitalism, or democracy. And based on what they’ve seen, why should they? All their lives, they’ve seen only growing inequality and increasing dysfunction.  We know what the problems are. And we know what the solutions are. We know what it will take to keep the republic. The only thing we don’t know is whether the people who have the power to keep it will decide it’s finally time to do so.


theguardian--2019-05-11--Its not enough to break up Big Tech We need to imagine a better alternative Evgeny Morozov

It's not enough to break up Big Tech. We need to imagine a better alternative | Evgeny Morozov

As [Facebook](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/facebook) all but pleads guilty to a severe form of data addiction, confessing its digital sins and promising to reinvent itself as a privacy-worshiping denizen of the global village, the foundations of Big Tech’s cultural hegemony appear to be crumbling. Most surprisingly, it’s in the United States, Silicon Valley’s home territory, where they seem to be the weakest.  Even in these times of extreme polarization, Trump, who has habitual outbursts against censorship by social media platforms, eagerly joins left-wing politicians like Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders in presenting Big Tech as America’s greatest menace The recent call by Chris Hughes, Facebook’s co- founder, to break up the firm hints at things to come.  Neither the [Silicon Valley](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/silicon- valley) moguls nor financial markets seem to care though. The recent decision by Warren Buffet – one of America’s most successful but also most conservative investors –to finally invest in Amazon is probably a better indication of wait awaits the tech giants in the medium term: more lavish initial public offerings, more Saudi cash, more promises to apply artificial intelligence to resolve the problems caused by artificial intelligence.  More than a year after the Cambridge Analytical scandal, the Big Tech debate is still mired in the same hackneyed categories of market efficiency, tax evasion, and odious business models that had launched it. If we are going to break up Facebook, shouldn’t we at least break it up for reasons other than its effects on competition or consumer welfare?  The two ideological camps, despite their presumed convergence on the Big Tech issue, are unlikely to use this debate to reinvent their own political projects. Those on the right who hope to score electoral points by bashing Big Tech are still mum on what their preferred alternative future looks like. Furthermore, in as much as these movements pine for the return of a conservative and corporativist society ruled by forces seated outside of elected institutions, Silicon Valley, with its extensive digital infrastructure for permanent soft governance, is their natural ally.  Mark Zuckerberg speaks during the F8 Facebook Developers conference in April. Photograph: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images  In the international context, this insistence on salvation by Big Tech acquires an extra twist as there’s so much more salvation – and, also, national development – to be meted out by those very technology giants. This prompts some populist leaders to fantasize about turning their entire countries into efficiently-run fiefdoms of some Big Tech overlord. Thus, the Bolsonaro government in Brazil has [proudly announced](https://blogs.oglobo.globo.com/ancelmo/post/governo-sonha-em- vender-correios-para-uma-gigante-como-google-ou-amazon.html) that they “dream” of having Google or Amazon take over the national post office, soon to be privatized.  Today’s crisis-prone Brazil reveals yet another consequence of surrendering the space formerly occupied by politics to the savior-industrial complex of Big Tech. The long-term effect of their supposedly revolutionary activity is often to actually cement the status quo, even if they do it by means of extremely disruptive solutions.  Nowhere is this more evident than in how digital technologies are being used to deal with the most burning of social problems. Thus, as crime rates have skyrocketed, Brazil has become a hotbed of innovation in what we might call Survival Tech, with a panoply of digital tools being used to check on the safety of particular streets and neighborhoods and coordinate joint community- level responses.  Thus, Waze, a popular Alphabet-owned navigation app, already [alerts](https://www.redebrasilatual.com.br/cidadania/2019/03/alerta-de-risco- de-crime-do-waze-provoca-debate-sobre-preconceito-em-sao-paulo) users in large cities like São Paulo or Rio de Janeiro that they are about to enter a risky part of town (the provenance of the data that is feeding such recommendations has been quite murky). Likewise, residents concerned with crime rates in their own neighborhoods increasingly [use tools](https://sao- paulo.estadao.com.br/noticias/geral,grupo-de-vizinhos-no-whatsapp-vigia- bairro-na-zona-leste-de-sp,70002801838) like Whatsapp to share tips about any suspicious activities in the area.  As things get worse – and not just in Brazil – such Survival Tech, allowing citizens to get by in the face of adversity without demanding any ambitious social transformation, stands to flourish. The last decade, with its celebration of austerity, has been good for business as well. In fact, the entire technology boom that followed the 2007-08 financial crisis can be effectively explained through this lens, with venture capitalists and, later, sovereign wealth funds, temporarily subsidizing the mass production of Survival Tech for the dispossessed and the disaffected.  “Survival Tech,” however, is too lousy of a brand to merit its own conferences or laudatory manifestos. Instead, we prefer to celebrate the “sharing economy” (with startups helping the poor survive by accepting precarious jobs or renting out their possessions), the “smart city” (with cities surrendering their technological sovereignty – in exchange for temporarily free services – to the digital giants), the “fin tech” (with next-generation payday loans based on user data being marketed as a revolution in “financial inclusion”).  Unless the underlying economic conditions improve – an unlikely proposition – governments will continue their implicit alliance with the technology industry: this is the only way to guarantee that the masses, increasingly unhappy with the massive fiscal and behavioral sacrifices expected of them – eg the prospect of higher environmental taxes already stokes riots in Europe – get at least a modicum of security and prosperity, however short-term and illusory.  Hence, we arrive at today’s paradoxical outcome, whereby 99% of technological disruption is there to merely ensure that nothing of substance gets disrupted at all. Pathology persists – we just adapt to it better, with sensors, maps, AI, and – why not? – quantum computing. The real gospel of today’s Big Tech – sanctioned and celebrated by governments – is innovation for the sake of conservation.  Such programs might be launched and celebrated under the banner of “digital transformation” but, in reality, they imply very little conscious and guided social transformation at all. Rather, what is sold under that label is the very opposite idea, ie the notion that individuals and institutions need to adapt to – not to transform – the technological world around them. As preached today, “digital transformation” is all about transforming institutions and individuals to match the seemingly unchangeable social conditions – not the other way around.  The favorite policies of today’s progressives – breaking up the Big Tech or even redistributing their data – might resolve some real problems. But it’s hard to see how such measures would undermine the world of Survival Tech. After all, such virtual gear can be perfectly furnished by hundreds of start- ups – the alternative world of Small and Humane Tech, so beloved by Silicon Valley’s critics – and not just by the likes of Microsoft or Amazon.  In contrast, we can imagine an alternative future world of Rebel Tech, which does not perceive social conditions as set in stone, to be accepted and adjusted to, by means of latest technologies. Instead, it deploys bespoke technologies to alter, shape, and – yes – rebel against entrenched social conditions. The distinctions between Survival Tech and Rebel Tech are not philosophical or eternal; clever policy can get us more of the latter and less of the former.  Breaking up the tech giants, having them pay a fair share of taxes, making better use of their data are all necessary but, alas, insufficient conditions for effective social – not just individual or institutional – transformation. Today, such nominally progressive slogans are often made from depressingly conservative vantage points. They imply that, as long as the tech industry accepts its responsibility as the anointed successor to the car industry – becoming, in the best of cases, the ecologically-friendlier driver of economic growth –we would eventually go back to the comfy and prosperous social- democratic world of the 1960s or 1970s.  As appealing as this vision might seem, it merely camouflages the lack of any strategic thinking on behalf of the progressive or social democratic forces that are backing it. The rise of Big Tech is a consequence, not the cause, of our underlying political and economic crises; we will not resolve them merely by getting rid of the Big Tech or constraining their operations.  Small and Humane Tech might be of some help. However, without an overarching vision – and a concrete plan – for ditching Survival Tech in favor of Rebel Tech, progressive forces would not have much to say about technology – and, by extension, of contemporary politics as well. “Small tech” cannot afford to be so small-minded.


theguardianuk--2019-01-25--Is there a right way to deal with children who commit crimes Gaby Hinsliff

Is there a ‘right’ way to deal with children who commit crimes? | Gaby Hinsliff

How does an 11-year-old boy end up alone in a London police cell? Eleven years old, for heaven’s sake. That means either still in primary school, or at best in the nervous beginnings of secondary. Eleven still says muddy knees, flapping around in a blazer several sizes too big, and wanting a bedtime story – or at least it does for the parents of the lucky children. Life is not like that for every 11-year-old, however, and it is the unlucky ones who are perhaps most likely to end up in the bowels of a police station. His solicitor didn’t say what he was accused of doing, when she [posted on Twitter](https://twitter.com/HudsonKerry/status/1087784268032626688) earlier this week that “no child should be in a cell. Period.” Her point was that a custody suite is no place for a kid that small, no matter what they might have done.  But the mind makes leaps, anyway. Children as young as nine have been found carrying knives. Gangs organising so-called “[county lines](https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/jan/10/police-arrest-22-and- charge-10-in-county-lines-drugs-crackdown)” operations, running drugs from the inner city deep out into rural towns, have been known to recruit from primary schools.  I thought about this boy, and what he might or might not have done, when the [storm broke](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/jan/08/james-bulger- detainment-oscars-shortlist-removal) over a new film about the murder of toddler James Bulger. Vincent Lambe’s Detainment tells that painful story over again but this time through the transcribed police interviews and court testimony of Jon Venables and Robert Thompson, voiced by child actors. The boys had just turned 11 when they stood trial for his death.  Even a quarter of a century later, all this evokes disturbing feelings. Close your eyes, and you may still be able to see the CCTV images shown night after night; a tiny boy, his hand trustingly in that of an older child, being led off to what we now understand will be his death. His poor mother, Denise, had lost sight of him only for a moment in a busy shopping centre, yet by the time she began frantically searching it was too late. A nation was gripped by every unbearable moment of the trial, which to this day drives debate both about the [possibilities and limits](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jul/05/jon-venables- criminality-attitudes-james-bulger) of rehabilitation – Venables has twice been [jailed](https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/feb/07/james-bulger- killer-jon-venables-pleads-guilty-to-having-indecent-images) for offences involving child abuse images since being paroled in 2001, while Thompson is still living under his new identity – and about the social conditions that could have produced such horror. It feels like part of our collective national experience, and yet James does not belong to us. The memory of a dead child belongs first and foremost to his parents, as Lambe apparently failed to appreciate when he did not speak in advance to the Bulger family.  When Detainment was this week [nominated for an Oscar](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/jan/23/james-bulger-detainment- parents-film-oscar-nomination-denise-fergus-ralph-bulger) in the best live- action short film category, a title that in this context sounds hideously crass, the family were understandably angry and distressed. Regardless of the artistic merits of the film, there is something grotesque about placing their dead boy in this glitzy, superficial, red-carpeted context.  But that is not their only objection. Friends of the family say they see the film as part of a wider liberal agenda to build sympathy for Venables and Thompson, pushing the memory of their son to one side. They want the focus to stay on James, as for them it always will be. And that is where things get murkier. It would be grossly unfair to demand that the Bulger family see their son’s murderers in any one particular light, but grieving relatives do not ultimately have a veto on how the rest of society engages with difficult moral questions.  Both Venables and Thompson were said to have been loved but neglected, raised by families struggling with addiction and mental health issues. They were perpetrators and victims of violence, at times both frightened and frightening. The [trailers for Detainment](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8eKZTtJGsi8) – which is not on cinema release, but is being shown at film festivals – show the boys weeping and panicking in their police interviews, but Lambe says his film is a factual rather than a sympathetic portrayal, which does not seek to make excuses for them. It is right, he says, that we see them as human beings not monsters; children whose actions need to be explored and understood to prevent such things happening again. It is a crucial and timeless argument and yet the timelessness, in a sense, is the problem. To rake over all this again, with the pain it invariably causes, seems justified only if there is something new to say.  For the argument in favour of understanding is almost as old as the crime itself. It was most bravely made at the height of the trial, when feelings were running high on Merseyside and crowds tried to attack police vans bringing the boys to court. But it has been made sporadically ever since on film, in print, in books such as [Blake Morrison](https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2003/feb/06/bulger.ukcrime)’s troubling [As If](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2005/feb/09/scienceandnature1). The disturbing juxtaposition of childishness and murder is brought alive in the film by a shot of one of the boys sitting in a chair, small feet swinging inches from the floor. But it was captured at the time in court artists’ sketches and trial reports noting how Thompson sucked his thumb in the dock. The unanswered question hanging over Lambe’s film is why now, and why this story of all true stories? If the point was to introduce a new generation to the argument, then why not through the stories of that generation, fictionalised if necessary to avoid intrusion?  This week’s story of the 11-year-old languishing in the police cell turned out, in the end, to be both more and less troubling than it initially appeared. The boy’s solicitor, Kerry Hudson, confirmed later that the child concerned was accused of malicious communications over social media – not a trivial offence, given the impact of cyberbullying on vulnerable teenagers and the way gang violence often escalates from social media beefs, but not the most serious either – and was later released. The question of how the criminal justice system should approach children of this age committing un-childlike crimes, however, lingers.  Every time a teenager stabs another teenager on the way home from school, we are confronted all over again with the terrifying capacity of some children for violence and with questions about the social conditions in which that can happen. Every time, public opinion divides between those seeking to understand why a child carries a knife, and those who (as John Major said of the Bulger case) want to understand a little less and [condemn a little more](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/major-on-crime-condemn-more- understand-less-1474470.html).  Yet as the children’s commissioner, Anne Longfield, has tirelessly argued, the process of gang recruitment looks increasingly like a form of grooming. Older boys, still children themselves, target younger ones who don’t see them as a threat. They single out the kids excluded from school, troubled, or hungry for attention they don’t get at home. Before long, these children, too, can become perpetrators and victims, both frightened and frightening. We may wait rather longer, however, for the film that imprints their stories as deeply on the national consciousness.  • Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist


theguardianuk--2019-05-28--As a newly elected Green MEP and a refugee Ive got a message for the far right Magid Magid

As a newly elected Green MEP and a refugee, I’ve got a message for the far right | Magid Magid

I am honoured to have been elected as a [Green party](https://www.theguardian.com/politics/green-party) MEP. I can’t wait to get to work on behalf of all those who put their faith in me and in our movement’s vision of hope. We are truly building a common world, rooted in the aspirations of the young and set to deliver lasting change for all.  On a personal level, I feel humbled by and grateful for the immense support I have received. Ten years after Yorkshire and the Humber sent a member of the BNP to the European parliament , we’ve elected a black, Muslim refugee standing for the Green party. Now isn’t that something?  The election results from across Europe are bittersweet. Yes, they show that [dark shadows of hatred](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/may/27 /european-elections-far-right-surge-ends-in-a-ripple) continue to enshroud us – reminding us that xenophobia and hate are by no means a uniquely British problem. Yet we have also witnessed the mighty [Green wave cascading through Europe](https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/may/26/greens-surge-as- parties-make-strongest-ever-showing-across-europe) and landing on our shores. We have seen the light of hope beaming not only on the distant horizon, but right here and now in front of us – where we comfortably beat the Tories in all parts of the country, with seven elected Green MEPs. Through this spirit of resistance, we are able to see clearly the path that will carry us to a kinder, fairer, more tolerant Britain and to a greener, more welcoming and more democratic Europe.  Television analysts and the political elite have been left perplexed. They have scrambled and toiled, attempting to downplay our movement’s success as due to little more than good fortune built on “protest votes” against Westminster’s lack of progressive leadership. Some have even scornfully claimed that the support and enthusiasm we have seen is temporary, and that it’s just a matter of time before it is undone.  They could not be more wrong. Millions of citizens from Sheffield to Stuttgart have grown weary of the same old politics of party colours and tribal allegiances. Europeans are craving an alternative vision that boldly quashes the far right, seeks to address the fragile economic and social conditions that are fertile grounds for the spread of fear and division, and is fit to deal with the most urgent issues of our time.  And to answer that plea for something different to the failing status quo, we will build a collective movement which wholeheartedly rejects rampant wealth inequality, xenophobic intolerance and climate-change denial. A collective movement that embraces internationalism, delivers immediate and radical climate action – and most importantly, isn’t afraid to proudly state – “Immigration makes us great”.  The European Union is a medium through which this movement can make real change. That is why we must not leave it or abandon it to those who would happily destroy it – but we should transform it into an entity that truly works for everyone, and that includes building consensus around a visionary pan-European Green New Deal.  So to Matteo Salvini, Viktor Orbán, Marine Le Pen, Nigel Farage and the like. I’ve got a message for you: you are the enemies of every European who ever swore “never again”, because your rhetoric and your deeds are a daily declaration of war on the hard-fought peace of Europe. Right now, you may be celebrating and looking forward to your champagne and truffles in Brussels, but I promise you that whether I’m in [Europe](https://www.theguardian.com/world/europe-news) for five weeks, five months or five years – you are going to fail in your attempts to drive us apart. You are going to lose.  This may be the end of one campaign, but it is the start of a much bigger one that will be waged on the European stage. It is a campaign for compassion, mutual understanding and human rights, and against hate in all its forms. It won’t be easy, and we will need your help.  Together, we can turn the tides of history.  • Magid Magid is a Green party MEP and former lord mayor of Sheffield


theguardianuk--2019-12-11--Christmas 1939: the spread of barbarism - archive

If anybody wants to measure the effects of the rise and influence of the totalitarian philosophies of the State on the brutalisation of life, he has only to study the newspaper for a single day and then ask himself how the events there recorded would have struck a reader in the days before the Communist, Nazi, and Fascist systems had swept over Europe. A great surface of the Continent was then under the rule of authoritarian Governments, and liberals all looked forward to the day when those Governments would be changed into something better. He could never have imagined the plight into which Europe has fallen. Take only the events recorded in the last few days.  In Finland the Government that has succeeded the Tsar’s Government is engaged in a wanton invasion, and it refuses the services of the International Red Cross on the cynical pretext that its violence is not war. In Poland the scientific laboratory of one university has been dismantled and the professors of another sent to a concentration camp by a Government whose predecessor was proud of its services to science. A Jewish prison State is being set up of which a visitor to Germany so unprejudiced as Mr Villard has said that the treatment the Jews are receiving there would be condemned in any civilised country if it were applied not to human beings but to dogs or cattle. Children are taken as hostages for the docility of their parents. Populations are moved here and there at the pleasure of a single man; famine is wantonly created and spread.  All the barbarities that have disfigured man’s record in war are multiplied and organised as a system of civil life. What is terrifying in this spectacle is that it is not the result of war or of some passing emergency. It is the result of armed doctrine. Once societies succumb to the doctrine that man has no rights against the State this collapse of civilised standards is inevitable. The doctrine that Hitler preaches, that cruelty is the truest kindness, must of necessity turn the world back to barbarism, and to a barbarism infinitely worse than the barbarism of the ages when, in Hobbes’s well-known description, man’s life was nasty, brutish, and short.  The more post-war history is studied the clearer does it become that the fatal mistake made at Paris in 1919 was the failure to grasp what was happening to Europe. Famine, which had been banished from the horizon, had returned to madden and terrify great populations; disease had attacked people after people and despair had settled on their spirit. It was because the peacemakers did not realise that their first business was to restore this afflicted Europe that the peace settlement has such a disastrous history.  It is clear that vigorous economic co-operation will be essential after the war if any new peace is to have a tolerable chance. For this reason M. Reynaud’s eloquent speech last Wednesday in the Chamber of Deputies is an event of capital importance. It shows that this truth has been grasped by a French statesman who has the gift of leadership and is widely respected for his integrity, and courage.  In a striking article in the Figaro last week M. Wladimir d’Ormesson presses the same view. He puts it that we have to find a way of turning the millions spent on armaments to the improvement of social conditions in Europe. This is the task that defeated us twenty years ago. It is the task not merely of making peace but of healing a sick Europe. At that time there were a number of inter-Allied bodies which might have given invaluable help in peacemaking and reconstruction. Mr Wickham Steed held rightly that they should be used as a nucleus for a working League of Nations. Unhappily President Wilson extinguished all such plans by withdrawing the American representatives from those bodies.  To-day one of the most distinguished of the members of that inter-Allied service, M. Jean Monet, is the chairman of the Anglo-French co-ordinating committee, and the arrangements for financial and economic co-operation between the two countries go far beyond anything that was attempted in the last war. This is an excellent beginning, for if any scheme is ever to succeed in Europe it must start from the Western allies. But it is only a beginning, and certain things are essential to success. The Cabinet must be strengthened by the appointment of an Economic Minister; the economic conditions of the two countries must be thoroughly explored by experts; the full use must be made of the contacts established between the trade union movements of the two countries; and public opinion in both countries must be prepared for revolutionary changes. For we have in view an association that is not merely to serve the needs of the war but to become part of the life of the two peoples. If we fail in that, the task that defeated us twenty years ago will defeat us again.  This is an edited extract. Read the article in full.  It is a long time since Europe spent a Christmas unshadowed by the threat of war. Year after year we have seen the shadow growing, with its increasing menace to the basic Christian message for the season, whether that message be read in the richly extended mistranslation of the English version which offers peace and goodwill to all men without qualification or in the more precise rendering which promises peace to men of goodwill. The English message was the less logical but the more hopeful, for if peace was to depend on men of goodwill there was a marked shortage of such characters among the rulers of Germany, where violence and broken pledges, supported by the most prodigious campaign of organised calumny that has ever afflicted human annals, gave far too abundant proof that force was the only argument. Now all the more immediate hopes of sanity and good faith are shattered; Christmas brings not peace but a sword.  The pessimism that has settled on the world has clothed itself in some minds in a general theory that is particularly alarming. From the experience of the wild election of 1918 and its effect on the Peace of Versailles some historians have drawn the melancholy conclusion that a democratic society is more vindictive and rapacious than an aristocratic society when dealing with a defeated enemy. They contrast the peace made after Waterloo with the peace made more than a century later with the Central Powers and Turkey.  In one respect, indeed, the second peace was much better than the first. In 1814 and 1815 no regard at all was paid to national feeling, and territory was distributed to suit the convenience or the ambitions of the Great Powers. In comparison the treatment of the map of Europe in 1919 was liberal and humane. Mr Fisher put this well in his History of Europe  “The new political frontiers of are Wilsonian, and so drawn that three per cent only of the total population of the Continent live under alien rule. Judged by the test of self-determination, no previous European frontiers have been so satisfactory.”  Some critics are apt to forget that if Europe has paid for the vices of the Treaty of Versailles she paid for the vices of the Treaty of Vienna. We have only to recall the history of Italy and Poland, to take two countries to whose national feeling great violence was done, to see how much trouble those treaties caused in Europe.  There was, however, one important respect in which the victorious Powers in 1815 were much wiser than their successors in 1919. It is of this that historians are thinking when they draw their disturbing contrast between the two. France was treated with great generosity in 1815, whereas the defeated peoples in 1919 were harshly used. The reason for the indulgence shown to France is not obscure. The statesmen who made the Peace were afraid of the return of Napoleon or the rise of a successor, and they were therefore anxious to give the restored Bourbon house a good chance of keeping its throne. Moreover, France was represented by one of the greatest diplomatists of all history, and Talleyrand by his skill obtained a great influence over Castlereagh and Wellington.  The Allies should have seen in 1919 what the Allies had seen in 1814, that they had a special reason for treating the defeated Powers with consideration. For in the war they had distinguished between the old Government and the German people. If that distinction had been kept in mind when the Peace was made better terms would have been given to the enemy Powers because the old Governments had been dispossessed. But unhappily Germany had no Talleyrand in 1918, and the British people had felt the burden of a war of four years much more than their great-grandfathers had felt that of a war of twenty. In this atmosphere the desire for unlimited reparations drove out all generosity and wisdom, and the Allied statesmen at Paris made the mistake that Castlereagh and Wellington had avoided.


thehuffingtonpostuk--2019-05-21--Labour Is Determined To End The Vicious Cycle Of Substance Abuse Harming Children

Just over two years ago now, I spoke out about my experience of being the child of a father with a serious drink problem in the Houses of Parliament.  Along with other MPs who also spoke out movingly like Caroline Flint and Liam Byrne, just over a year ago we were able to persuade the then Secretary of State for health, Jeremy Hunt, to resource a package of measures, backed by £6 million in joint funding from the Department of Health and Social Care and the Department for Work and Pensions, designed to help support children in England living with alcohol-dependent parents.  Many people say speaking out won’t make a difference, that’s there is no point especially from opposition. But today I’m speaking at The Children’s Society, who are launching CAPE, a new project to support the children of alcoholics, made possible by that funding.  The new project involves providing better training and resources for health professionals to support the children and families that they work with and ensuring better identification and support for those at risk. This is something that the APPG on children of alcoholics directly called for in its manifesto for change.  It proves that you can make a difference by campaigning for what is right, speaking with conviction and making an argument based on facts and sound analysis. I’m especially proud that by coming forward and telling my story has had such a positive impact.  Supporting children with an alcoholic parent, or indeed a parent grappling a wider substance misuse problem, is a cause very close to my heart.  Last year the research from the Children Commissioner, showed there are 103,000 children growing up in families where domestic violence, parental mental ill health and alcohol or drug abuse are present – the so-called ‘toxic trio’. This includes 52,000 children aged five or under.  We know that children of parents with alcohol and drug use disorders (COPADs) not only suffer from physical, mental and behavioral problems at higher rates than other children but are also more likely to develop their own substance use problems in adolescence.  And it ultimately creates a so-called ‘cycle of violence’ – where substance misuse impacts on children who have their lives coloured by these experiences and are, in turn, at an increased risk of exposing their own children to adverse experiences such as substance misuse.  It’s why action is so necessary and it’s why the projects like the one by the Children’s Society will be so crucial, giving frontline health professionals the skills and confidence to identify children and families in need of that support to help break the cycle.  Helping vulnerable children impacted by alcohol and drugs will be a personal mission of mine in government as part of our vision of building a society where the health and wellbeing of children is a public policy priority across government. Quite simply, I want us to help our children to become the healthiest in the world, I want the wellbeing of our children to be the best it can be. A big ambition certainly, but we should be ambitious for our children.  We will put in place an overarching children’s health strategy so that every child matters. Our strategy will be adversity informed as well. Adverse Childhood Experiences – ACEs – whether a single event or prolonged trauma experiencing ranging from domestic abuse, sexual abuse, bereavement, being a young carer, or substance misuse in the home can have a lasting and sometimes devastating effect.  One in three diagnosed mental health conditions in adulthood are known to directly relate to adverse childhood experiences and ACEs can increase self-harm and suicide amongst children and young people. Research has also shown the more ACEs a child experiences, the more likely those children are to suffer in adulthood from conditions like heart disease, diabetes, cancer and substance abuse.  Not only does the prevalence of adversity in childhood effect health outcomes, it can impact wider life outcomes too, with evidence pointing towards poorer academic achievement or an increased likelihood to be involved in violence, crime and being bounced around the criminal justice system.  These experiences reinforce that ‘vicious cycle’ as men and women with four or more ACEs have greater odds of reporting binge and heavy drinking compared to their counterparts.  When drug overdoses and chronic alcohol abuse cuts thousands of lives short in the UK every year we have to act. Just last week a major international study found that drinkers in the UK get drunk more than any other nation in the world.  Figures from February this year revealed one in five people drink more than the recommended limit of 14 units per week, while the number of people admitted to hospital primarily due to alcohol has increased by 15% over the last 10 years.  But at the same time, the Tories are cutting alcohol addiction services in our communities as part of the public health cuts of £700million in recent years, at a time when austerity has undermined communities leading to increases in all of the social conditions that breed drug and alcohol problems – poverty, homelessness, youth crime and alienation.  Just last week the IFS reported on the increase in so called ‘deaths of despair’ – rising death rates for those in middles ages from suicide, drug and alcohol overdoses, and alcohol liver disease. It’s shameful.  Therefore drug and alcohol addiction services will no longer be a neglected, under-resourced service with a Labour government.  We will ensure the most vulnerable in our society are given the support, help, rehabilitation and care they need, while ensuring we have a fully resourced strategy to support children affected.  Nelson Mandela said “there can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way it treats it children.” Well, too often in our society children, their health and wellbeing outcomes receive scant attention by policy makers. I’m determined to change that.  Jon Ashworth is the shadow health secretary and Labour MP for Leicester South


thehuffingtonpostuk--2019-08-04--7 Reasons Why Indian Women Stay In Sexless Marriages

Considering women in India are conditioned to believe that sexual gratification is not an important aspect of their lives, the figures are probably not deeply shocking. HuffPost India spoke to therapists who revealed that most women struggling with sexless marriages don’t even consider the lack of sex may be a root of their troubles.  1. Sexual gratification is not important in a marriage  “Is he abusive?” “Is he financially unstable?” “Does he have an extramarital affair?” If the answers to these questions are a “NO”, then the woman starts believing that sex is not the most important factor for a healthy and happy union. “She doesn’t even realise that she could be deprived of her basic rights. And this is mostly due to social conditioning, where a sexless marriage is not considered the worst kind of marriage to be in,” says Shah.  2. Sex was never good, so there is nothing to miss  This makes sex less enjoyable or inviting for the woman, and she chooses to voluntarily stay off it. With less sex comes low self esteem, which stops her from discussing her needs with her husband. More often than not, the wife internalises it and even shifts the blame on to herself.  It is a myth that Indian women do not crave for sex as much as the men do. Another convenient misbelief is that women want fewer sexual partners. If sex within marriage is not satisfactory, they are more than willing to look outside. Indian women are, in fact, open to leading parallel sex lives.  4. The belief that compatibility and sex are the same  This may come as a shock to most, but experts say emotional compatibility has nothing to do with sexual satisfaction. You could be best friends with your husband. You both could even be deeply in love. But even that may not guarantee a fulfilling sexual relationship.  5. Feeling responsible for the lack of sex in marriage  Caught between work and family, Indian women lose their appetite for sex. According to Chowdhury, married women often complain that the burden of taking care of the home, children and extended family is on them. So, unlike men, who can unwind after office hours, it becomes impossible for them to relax. Naturally, a woman’s body shuts down when in bed and she suppresses her desire for sex.  7. The fear of financial insecurity and raising kids alone


theindependent--2019-12-10--General election: what the parties are promising on the big issues

It has been an election campaign dominated, unsurprisingly, by Brexit and, in recent days, the NHS. But beyond the seemingly endless campaign gimmicks, soundbite interviews and scripted appearances, there are real policies at stake that will affect the country we live in for years to come. Here, we run through key issues that have seen less of the limelight in the build-up to Thursday’s vote, telling you what each of the three major parties is pledging – and what we think about it.  Tories: A “triple lock” on taxes, with no increases in income tax, national insurance and VAT for five years. Boost public sector investment up to 3 per cent of GDP but rethink if debt interest hits 6 per cent of revenue.  Labour: Public spending boost of £83bn, with rises in corporation tax, capital gains tax and income tax for the highest earners to fund it. Nationalisation of rail, mail, water and the big six energy firms, as well as the broadband arm of BT.  Lib Dems: A “mechanism” that lets the public share profits of tech firms, plus a tax on frequent fliers, while cannabis use would be legalised and taxed. Corporation tax would be restored to 20 per cent, but the marriage tax allowance would be scrapped.  Our view: Pain and short- to medium-term economic damage from Brexit will be substantial, and restrict the ability to boost public spending, cut taxes or reduce the national debt. The terms of a new trade deal with the EU, let alone any with other major nations, are unknown – and therefore so are the nation’s future prospects. Tories promise to “unleash Britain’s potential”, presumably by making the economy more competitive via “supply side” reforms, while Labour’s huge fiscal stimulus would raise the rate of growth in the economy, but experts say to only a relatively modest extent. The Liberal Democrats have enjoyed the most favourable reviews from independent think tanks such as the Institute for Fiscal Studies.  Tories: Ensure universal credit “works for the most vulnerable”, but end the benefit freeze and bring in tough punishments for those who cheat the system. £1bn for extra childcare places before and after school, and during holidays.  Labour: Scrap universal credit, the benefit cap and the two-child policy, while bringing in a pilot of universal basic income. £58bn for the “Waspi women” affected by state pension age changes.  Lib Dems: Reform universal credit, reducing the wait for first payments from five weeks to five days. Introduce a legal right to food. Keep the triple lock on the basic state pension while Waspi women would be “properly compensated”.  Our view: Universal credit is almost universally loathed, and its shortcomings have been well-advertised. Even in its primary goal of reducing the cost to the taxpayer the new system has failed – and it is yet to be fully rolled out nationally. The problem, as the Commons Public Accounts Committee has pointed out, is that scrapping universal credit at this late stage in its development and returning to either the old system or yet another new system would cost more than persisting. In other words, UC may be the least bad option for the public finances.  Tories: Cut greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, spending £9.2bn to improve the energy efficiency of homes, schools and hospitals – with £6.3bn installing energy-saving measures to cut bills in 2.2 million homes.  Labour: Aim to “achieve the substantial majority” of emissions reductions by 2030, but no pledge to cut out greenhouse gases by that date.  Lib Dems: With a net-zero target to 2045, the Lib Dems will insulate all of the UK’s homes by 2030, ensuring 80 per cent of electricity comes from renewable sources by 2030 and planting 60 million trees a year. Ban on fracking and non-recyclable single-use plastics, with all cars electric by 2030.  Our view: In their ways, all the parties’ promises to make the UK carbon-neutral are ambitious. Even the Tories’ would cost £1 trillion. The problem, of course, with any of these plans is public resistance to moving out of conventional cars, scrapping gas boiler central heating, and taking fewer flights. The parties are also unclear about whether these targets account for offshoring our pollution to China and elsewhere.  Tories: £14bn for schools, and programmes to deal with bullying and disruption.  Labour: Charitable status removed from independent schools, 30 hours of free childcare for pre-school children and a Sure Start centre in every community. Scrap university tuition fees and bring back maintenance grants.  Lib Dems: £13.9bn a year on early years, including boosts for children’s centres and free childcare for 2-4-year-olds, as well as those aged nine months and over whose parents work full-time. An extra £10.6bn a year on schools, including 20,000 more teachers, and £10,000 skills wallet for adults to invest in training.  Our view: Education, education, education was once the chant, and, under new management, Labour has the edge on radicalism. In economic terms, encouraging higher education should improve skills and therefore the underlying performance of the economy. The question is how much of the cost should be paid by the individual and what should be accounted for by the state. On schools, after years in which they were prioritised by New Labour, then partly ring-fenced from austerity, the state of British school is not as dire as its times portrayed, which may be one reason why the issue has subsided in importance.  Tories: New social housing white paper and a pledge to renew the affordable homes programme.  Labour: Pledge to build 100,000 homes for social rent each year. Some 8,000 homes available for people with a history of homelessness, and £1bn a year for councils’ homelessness services.  Lib Dems: Build 300,000 homes a year, including 100,000 for social rent. Government-backed tenancy deposits for private renters under 30. Council-tax hikes on properties left empty for more than six months.  Our view: If tougher regulation and a larger role for the state is the solution to the housing crisis, then the Labour Party has all the answers. The obvious retort to that is that measures such as rent control have been tried and sometimes led to perverse consequences. In terms of supply, there is some agreement – Labour and the Liberal Democrats and committed to building, but the Tories promise only a white paper.  Tories: An Australian-style points-based immigration system, with an NHS Visa for qualified doctors and nurses. Freedom of movement will end.  Labour: Numerical targets scrapped along with the 2014 Immigration Act. Pledge to dismantle the “hostile environment” that led to the Windrush scandal, while free movement will be subject to Brexit negotiations.  Lib Dems: Stop Brexit and retain freedom of movement. End hostile environment. Resettle 10,000 refugees a year, and a further 10,000 refugee children over the next decade.  Our view: All the main parties refuse to say whether immigration will be higher or lower than it is now, whether Brexit happens or not. There is much talk of “control” and, in different ways, they all stress that migration should match the needs of the economy, but beyond broad principles there is little specific – because immigration remains so explosive.  Tories: £1 billion in extra funding every year, while building “a cross-party consensus” to find a long-term solution, on the condition that any reform must ensure nobody needing care would be forced to sell their home to pay for it.  Labour: A comprehensive National Care Service for England. Under a lifetime cap on personal contributions, no one would be required to face costs of more than £100,000 for care in old age.  Lib Dems: Raise £7bn a year with a 1p in the pound rise in the basic, higher and additional rates of income tax for health and social care.  Our view: All parties agree there is a crisis; none has an actual plan. Despite promising such a scheme, Boris Johnson has conceded the plan is not fully worked through. Labour and the Liberal Dems talk in more detail, but again a few paragraphs in a manifesto do not constitute a plan.  Tories: Recruit 20,000 police officers over the next three years to replace those lost due to budget cuts since 2010. Consult on toughening laws for attacks on emergency service workers and boost the number of Tasers and body cameras available for police.  Labour: Re-establish neighbourhood policing and recruit 2,000 more frontline officers than the Conservatives. Establish a royal commission to develop a public health approach to drugs. Review the Prevent programme. Eliminate institutional bias against black and ethnic minority groups.  Lib Dems: Invest £1bn in community policing and take a public health approach on violence. An extra 2,000 prison officers to help make prisons “places of rehabilitation”. Pledge for an immediate 2 per cent pay rise for police officers.  Our view: Every political party promises to reduce crime, but few governments succeed in doing so. The extra police promised by all, plus the restoration of cuts to the criminal justice system (such as the courts and probation service) offered by the opposition parties might well improve matters. However, crime levels are also linked to social conditions and the wider state of the economy. Thus, as new Labour used to say, political parties need to be tough on crime, but also tough the causes of crime.


theirishtimes--2019-09-23--Why corporate social responsibility is a core element for some businesses

JP Morgan chief executive Jamie Dimon and dozens of other leaders at some of the world’s largest companies last month said they plan to abandon the long-held view that shareholders’ interests should come first in business.  The purpose of a corporation is to serve all of its constituents: employees, customers, investors and society at large, they said. It may seem like a radical thing to say, but the phenomenon – known as corporate social responsibility (CSR) – is here to stay.  To explain it in simple terms, CSR is when a company does something that – on the face of it at least – appears to be aimed at contributing something positive to the community or wider world, other than, of course, economic activity.  But don’t be fooled. The reason companies engage in this is because they believe it gives them a competitive advantage. Ibec head of corporate affairs Siobhán Masterson describes this as the concept of “shared value”.  “It’s where policy and practices that enhance the competitiveness of the company simultaneously improve the economic and social conditions in the community in which it operates,” she says. “It sounds basic, but it’s actually quite significant.”  She says there are a lot of examples in emerging economies. “The likes of Nestlé has these milk farm projects,” she says. “MSD has been rolling out diabetes products in China to address the huge spike in the condition.  “They’re doing this on a charitable basis, but of course they are also increasing their market. It sounds like a cynical way to operate if you look at it coldly, but, if you think about it rationally, there is a huge carrot for businesses to do this.”  Masterson says another aspect of CSR is company leaders. “You’ll have noticed a lot of CEOs are taking on these causes,” she says. “They are defining themselves not just by their success in business, but also around what they achieve in terms of sustainability.  “They have moved from these statements of ‘doing no harm’, and leaving the planet as they found it, to actually saying ‘no, we want to do better than that. We want to leave the planet in better shape.’  “It’s not a choice for a company any more. Small companies might do something like buy the town’s Christmas lights or sponsor the local GAA club, which might differ a lot from what a multinational might do.”  So what are the competitive advantages driving companies to act this way? One of the main ones is attracting and retaining talent. “Graduates are more aspirational than ever,” as Ruairi Kavanagh, editor of GradIreland puts it. “They are looking for workplaces that fit in with their values.”  Masterson agrees. “The key driver of this is talent and next-generation talent,” she says. “Younger generations are saying they are interested in certain causes and will select employers based on what they are doing on them.  “That could be sustainability or climate change or whatever, and because there is so much competition for talent, companies want to do as much as they can to attract and retain that talent.  “Companies have whole teams working on these issues now. They are not an add-on. They are integrated into the business and are part of the strategy around attracting and retaining talent.  “During interviews nowadays, it’s almost like graduates are screening employers rather than the other way around. In a sense, the tables have turned.”  Abbey Carlton, director of social impact at recruitment website Indeed, says CSR is “core” to its business and how it goes about finding jobs for people. “We focus on struggling jobseekers – those who face significant barriers to employment,” she says.  “These may be jobseekers without a college degree, from low-income backgrounds, with limited work experience, who receive public assistance, from traditionally disadvantaged groups such as those with disabilities, the long-term unemployed, and migrants.  “By identifying a set of common challenges across these groups, we can impact a range of jobseekers rather than one particular population.” Carlton says this approach helps staff at the company “to truly appreciate the importance of their work”.  “Not only is it a chance to give back to the communities that we live and work in, but it’s also an opportunity for them to learn about our products and supports from those that need them the most,” she says.  “It’s not just that giving back feels good. It’s also a development opportunity for us as a company and as employees.  “CSR also allows companies to tell the company story in a way that connects them to their current and prospective employees. It shows people in a meaningful way what that company values.”  Earlier this year, Indeed conducted a large international survey, and the main finding was that employer reputation is crucial for jobseekers as 92 per cent said pride or shame at working for a company would influence their decision to apply for a role there.  Carlton says there is a whole range of ways companies engage in CSR activities, no matter their size.  “One approach is to mobilise your workforce in the local community, volunteering and fundraising for local causes that your employees are passionate about,” she says.  “We see the greatest opportunity for impact when you align your social impact work with the heart of the business.  “What is your business about, and how can you redirect some of your efforts towards the non-profit sector and the users of your product or service that might be struggling on the margins?  “For us, that starts with recognising that millions of qualified jobseekers are often overlooked or face barriers to finding work. We focus on inclusive hiring – using our technology, insights, expertise and networks to make sure everyone gets a fair shot.”  Later this year, Indeed will launch a project to help athletes transition their talents into new jobs when they retire. Carlton says Indeed has committed to helping 1 million jobseekers around the world find employment in the next five years through CSR schemes.


vox--2019-05-03--Meet the Canadian doctor who prescribes money to low-income patients

Gary Bloch became a doctor because he wanted to help people who were less privileged than him. For years, he tried his best to treat patients coping with poverty and homelessness.  But no matter how many blood tests he ordered and prescriptions he wrote, many of his patients’ health problems persisted. He realized it was because he wasn’t addressing the issue that most plagued them: poverty.  So in 2005, instead of prescribing only medication, he started developing the concept of prescribing money. And for the past 10 years, he’s been putting that concept into practice.  In concrete terms, that means that Bloch connects his patients to ways of boosting their income, like applying for welfare or disability support. Often, it means guiding patients to fill out their tax forms so they can access government benefits. Is it a doctor’s responsibility to do this? Yes, Bloch says, because if you don’t treat the social determinants of health (like income and housing), you’re not actually doing what you can to ensure your patients get healthier.  Similar to the notion behind universal basic income, the idea here is that if you really want to help people, the most effective starting point might be to simply give them more money.  As a family doctor at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto, Bloch hasn’t contented himself with prescribing income in one-on-one appointments: He’s also been pushing for broader social policy change. Treating individuals’ poverty may be a good step, but he wants to see systemic change, including a more robust social assistance program. In 2016, he was appointed to an Ontario government commission tasked with creating a 10-year road map to income security for the province (you can read the resulting recommendations here).  Although some doctors have told him they just don’t have the time or resources to prescribe money, Bloch says he’s gotten an overwhelmingly positive response from across Canada and beyond. As a Canadian who now lives in the US, I was curious whether his model could work within the (very different) American health care system. I spoke to him about that, and about how exactly he prescribes income and what the results have been so far. A transcript of our conversation, lightly edited for length and clarity, follows.  What inspired you to start prescribing money when most other doctors weren’t thinking along those lines?  Seeing patients, it became clear to me very quickly that until we worked on the basic social foundations of health, we wouldn’t be able to do much about traditional medical issues. There’s an incredibly strong body of evidence that proves the link between poverty and poor health outcomes. Most health providers get the evidence, but they pass it off, saying, “It’s not really my domain to deal with that.”  I disagree. That’s why I went back to the drawing board and said, “How can I start to insert real action in the front-line practice — and find ways to do that that feel doable for busy front-line practitioners?”  Before we get into your technique for doing that, can you talk a bit about that body of evidence linking poverty and poor health?  In the 1800s, the German pathologist Rudolf Virchow, the founder of modern pathology, traveled to many industrial work sites around Central and Eastern Europe and came to very strong conclusions about the link between poor social conditions and health outcomes. He said you cannot separate medicine from political or social life — politics is just medicine writ large.  From the 1960s or so, there’s been a pretty constant stream of studies looking at the link between people’s social situation and their health. They looked across every geographic location, across every disease, across accidents and trauma and growing up in poverty. Then they drilled down further into the biological markers and epigenetics — changes in the way genes are expressed as a result of people living in adverse social situations.  An important inflection point that’s worth noting is the World Health Organization’s Commission on Social Determinants of Health, which came out in 2008. It said that there is no real separation between social conditions and health, and that health practitioners must do something about this.  So how did you start making a change?  The first thing I developed was something very simple called a clinical tool on poverty, a three-page handout offering a three-step approach to dealing with poverty in the context of a typical primary care appointment. It’s basically: Ask everybody about their income, be aware of the evidence linking poverty to poorer health outcomes, and then actually do something about it — connect patients to supports.  The first version came out in 2009. This [handout] took off like wildfire, which was a real surprise to me. It was picked up by major medical organizations in Canada, it was replicated in every province and territory across the country, and it got international pickup as far as Japan. It seemed to touch on a real area of interest and need.  Can you walk me through the logistics of this in a bit more detail? Someone comes into your office. What exactly do you say in order to “prescribe money” to them?  Say someone comes in and you find out they have low income and they have some degree of disability. You ask them if they’re getting disability support, and tell them about the different supports available — federal programs, provincial programs, etc. It’s not a long conversation if you have a basic sense of the landscape. You can say to people, “You know what? I think you should get an application for the Ontario disability support program. Bring it back and we’ll go through it together and fill it out. If you’re living on basic welfare, in Ontario that’s $700 a month — if we can get you disability support, that will jump up to $1,100 a month.”  I’ve seen this story play out over and over, and the impact on people’s health is palpable.  Is there a particular patient’s story that leaps out at you?  I think of a guy who came in a couple years ago. He’d been living [in a tent outdoors] in Toronto for about five years, he hadn’t been in touch with health care, he had a history of childhood trauma, and he was progressively separated from society. By the time he came to see me he was pretty rundown. He was ready to get out of his tent, but he had no social support or income. It was obvious that he had major physical and mental health issues — PTSD, major depression, diagnosed diabetes, terrible worms on his feet.  We managed to get him housed in a shelter, for a start. Then we got him onto the disability support program. That opened up worlds for him. He was able to get an apartment, get medications, eat properly for the first time. He’d come in and tell me excitedly what he’d been able to buy to eat, like fresh fruit and vegetables. He started making some social connections through a support group. His health just improved dramatically. He came in as an emaciated man, and within six to 12, months he’d bulked up. And he would actually smile.  In the years since you started doing this at St. Michael’s Hospital, have you been able to hire a few people to help patients fill out applications for welfare, housing, disability support?  We managed to put in place a whole series of social risk-focused interventions. The first was income security specialists — we have two full-time people, permanent salaried staff funded by the government, who are focused only on improving our patients’ income security. They’ll sit with patients individually and work on financial literacy and getting bank accounts and getting them to file their taxes.  We also put in place a lawyer and a legal assistant. They deal with a range of issues for our patients, like housing and income.  We’re even working now to do standardized health equity assessments across departments, to see how well they’re serving those who are traditionally most marginalized. All of this has evolved within the last five years.  As you help patients this way, have you been gathering data and studying the results of these interventions?  We have a research program trying to get a sense of how well each of these components in our program works. We’ve got a randomized controlled trial of the income support program. They’ve just been wrapping up the trial itself and now are analyzing the data. The results will be coming out soon, hopefully by the fall.  And in the meantime, is this model being replicated elsewhere in Canada?  There are a couple of scattered examples. There’s a team in Winnipeg called My Health Team, a team in the Kootenay boundary region of British Columbia, and a team in Peterborough, Ontario. They’ve all drawn on the work that we’re doing.  Some of it will take government will. We were lucky enough to have government support for our income security program back when we started it. We have a very different kind of government in Ontario now, though, so we’ll see.  There’s a benefit for the government in funding this, because treating poverty now will save the government money on the health side in the long term, right?  Absolutely. The challenge is getting governments to think long-term — to convince people who are elected for four years to be willing to take a chance on something that won’t see outcomes until probably long after they’re out of power.  We’ve seen this trajectory before, though, like with smoking. Fifty years ago, no one cared about smoking from a health perspective. But then the health world picked up on it, got the evidence that this was a bad thing for our bodies, and started pushing the government. Eventually, over a few decades, the government got the story that until we deal with this issue, we’re going to have worse and worse health outcomes and it’ll come at a huge cost to our society.  There’s some obvious conceptual overlap between your model of prescribing income and the idea of universal basic income, which Canada has experimented with. In the 1970s, when people in Dauphin, Manitoba, were given a basic income, the town saw a decline in doctor visits and hospitalizations. How do you think about the role of basic income in health care?  It is one policy option to consider. I don’t necessarily think it’s a panacea. I think if it’s done right — meaning it provides an adequate income for everyone who needs it — then sure, it can be a really good income support program. But I think people need to go beyond just income. My fear is that putting in basic income could be used as an excuse to get rid of other social programs: disability support, health support, child care support. What you lose is the ability to individually target groups that are at high need for certain services. So I’m cautiously supportive.  Has your model of prescribing income been tried in other countries?  In the UK, there’s been a welfare rights advice network since the early 1990s. In many cases, the [people who advise patients on their rights] are less embedded in the health team than we are — they’re often NGOs working alongside the health team — but they have been doing really good work. There’s also a really interesting offshoot in the UK called “social prescribing” that has spread like crazy in the last five to 10 years. Health providers identify social needs, including loneliness, and then connect patients to social supports.  And what about the US? Canada’s health care system is very different from the system here. Is your model one that you can imagine being replicated in the US?  Sure. There are really strong players in this area in the US. Johns Hopkins is a great example of a health system that has really tried to pick up on this. UC San Francisco’s department of social medicine is doing powerful research in this area. There are also the groups Health Leads and Health Begins [which address issues like housing and social needs alongside medical care].  Your biggest challenge is the social policy environment — there’s less interest in the US in proper social programs. There’s only so much the health institutions can do without the government getting on board.  Sign up for the Future Perfect newsletter. Twice a week, you’ll get a roundup of ideas and solutions for tackling our biggest challenges: improving public health, decreasing human and animal suffering, easing catastrophic risks, and — to put it simply — getting better at doing good.


windowoneurasiablog--2019-01-09--Karelia Doesnt Want to Unite with Finland but to Be Independent Tuomi Says

Karelia Doesn’t Want to Unite with Finland but to Be Independent, Tuomi Says

Staunton, January 9 – Karelia does not aspire to unite with Finland but rather to have an independent existence, something few in Moscow are prepared to recognize or discuss because those in the Russian capital do not recognize the unique multi-ethnic community that exists in the republic and that aspires to an independent existence, Andrey Tuomi says.  And because people in the two Russian capitals view things that way, they assume that any Karelian demand for autonomy and self-determination is nothing more than a cover for a program of joining the republic to Finland. They assume that Karelians and Finns are the same nation, something that simply is not true.  There are several “simple but important” ways in which Karelia and Finland are “very different territories which are in no way drawn toward one another so as to become a single state,” Tuomi continues. The first of these is that “the Karels are a separate, completely independent people,” in no way a part of any other Finno-Ugric nation.  Despite some similarities with the Finns, “the Karels have their own unique culture, customs and traditions,” he says. Most of them have a different religion, and all of them have “a different mentality, a different character, and even different external signs” that set them apart from the Finns and other Finno-Ugric nations.  Even when the borders between the two peoples were more open, “Karels did not mix with Finns, did not change their religion and did not change their way of life.” Some moved and assimilated just as some Finns did, but this is “typical” for all peoples who live in a border zone, Tuomi says.  Of course, the number of ethnic Karels in the republic is “today very small.” Most of the republic’s population consists of Slavic peoples, “above all, Russians, Belarusians and Ukrainians.” But “these are far from being the same Russian show live in the Russian basin, beyond the Urals or in the western oblasts of the Russian Federation.”  And equally they are far from being the same as Belarusians who live in their own country or Ukrainians who live in theirs. Thus, the people of Karelia are “a different ethnic community which in must other cultures, Karel and Pomor, have formed. The mixture of these cultures and blood in Karelia is so deep” that one can speak about “citizens of Karelia.”  One indication of this is that residents of the republic speak of themselves as being Karelians both within the republic and beyond its borders rather than identifying primarily as members of this or that nationality.  Second, there is no possibility for the Karelians and the Finns to unite because they exist “not simply in different economic and social conditions but also live today in completely different eras and dimensions,” Tuomi continues. Neither Karelia nor Finland needs unity. It would have “catastrophic consequences” for both.  Karelia lags behind Finland several decades, “not only economically, technologically, politically and socially,” he says, but “mentally as well.” It would take decades for that to be overcome given that Finns would continue to move forward even as Karelians rushed to catch up.  Third, “the unification of Karelia and Finland into a single state is impossible because Finland’s attitude toward Karelia is significantly distinguished form the attitude of the federal center. If Moscow views Karelia simply as its own territory and part of the empire, the Finns see it above all as a sovereign and unique republic and even a bridge between the western and eastern parts of the Finno-Ugric world.”  Finns don’t want to absorb anyone, including the Karels; and they feel they would be putting themselves at risk by expanding, he continues. Helsinki certainly has no aspirations to “take back” even those parts of Karelia the Soviets seized after the Winter War. Finns are not willing to take on the burden of bringing these regions up to Finnish standards.  Both in the wake of the collapse of the Russian Empire and of the USSR, the Karelians pursued not union with Finland but rather an independent existence; and even today, most of them see no other future for their land other than as “an independent, sovereign state living in peace and concord with similarly sovereign states.”  At present, Tuomi says, Karelians “have all the conditions” to achieve that goals, “except for the main one: recognition that we are in a position and have the right to independently decide and choose our path of development. I hope,” he concludes, “that this is only a question of time.”


windowoneurasiablog--2019-02-28--Declining Incomes among Russians Put Future of Countrys Middle Class at Risk Chepurenko Says

Declining Incomes among Russians Put Future of Country’s Middle Class at Risk, Chepurenko Says

Staunton, February 27 – The declining incomes of Russians over the last few years are not only leaving all but the very wealthiest residents of that country poorer than they were but putting at risk the formation and survival of the politically critical middle class in the country, according to Aleksandr Chepurenko of Moscow’s Higher School of Economics.  Such a class began to appear in Russia in the 1990s when the state was weak,” and consequently “we can speak about the middle class in Russia as being in its first generation,” a collection of people who having lost everything at the end of the 1980s and early 1990s nonetheless were able by their own efforts to claw their way back to relative well-being.  The emergence of such people gave hope for the future, but in the last two decades with the creation of the power vertical, they have been eclipsed by “a quasi-middle class,” people with roughly the same incomes but whose money comes not from their own efforts but as a result of rents offered by the state in exchange for loyalty, Chepurenko continues.  “These people did not risk anything: they simply accepted decisions” from above and therefore played and play a very different social-political role. Among the most prominent of these are the siloviki, “’the holy cow’ for our powers that be.” As long as the pie was growing, all of them could continue to get more without difficulty.  But when the pie ceased to grow but in fact became smaller, a problem arose and is only intensifying, forcing them not to fight for the creation of new wealth but for the division of existing wealth among them. As a result, the sociologist says, there have now emerged “a large number of conflicts of some siloviki structures with others.”  Big businessmen, who are not part of the middle class either, “are interested in stability but not in a free, competitive market system characteristic of a democratic society.” They thus are not like the middle classes in the US and other Western countries in either their behavior or their role.  The real middle classes, whenever it is possible, “vote in favor of the market and a competitive economy.” In Russia, they are deprived of the possibility of voting in that way because of the destruction of parties who favor such outcomes. And that has led to some dangerous trends, including withdrawal from normal political life.  All of this is hidden by the fact that Russians tend to evaluate middle class only by income which means that many government or quasi-government employees are included in it even though they have different values and different behaviors, Chepurenko says. Many in fact hold values directly antithetical to the genuine middle class.  The situation is not good for either the real middle class or these people, but the reasons are different: Earnings from entrepreneurship are down by half over the last decade or so, but possibilities for the lower levels of the bureaucracy are down as well.  The differences between these two and even the decline of both have been hidden not only by the propensity of Russian scholars to measure the middle class solely by income but also by the explosion of consumer credit as people in both categories try to maintain their lifestyles by borrowing. That isn’t sustainable for very much longer, he suggests.  To change this situation, Chepurenko continues, the government would have to do what it did in the early 1990s, reducing its role in the economy, eliminating many “’economic crimes,’” reducing pressure on businesses and so on. But it is far from clear that it will take these steps, although some economic developments already on view in the West may appear.  Thee include the rise of what some call “the precariate,” the group of people at the bottom of the middle class who work as adjuncts in universities or hold multiple jobs in order to try to maintain a middle-class way of life. There is some evidence that Russia is going in this direction as well.  “But we could go in a different direction than the West and continue to surprise the entire world by our weapons, our ballet and our sports, and then, in the absence of necessary economic, political, and social conditions, our middle class will not disappear because it simply has not appeared.” Today, that seems the more likely prospect.


windowoneurasiablog--2019-04-13--Ever More Russians are Sharing Their Anger about Regime New Poll Finds

Ever More Russians are Sharing Their Anger about Regime, New Poll Finds

Staunton, April 13 – For months, polls have shown that Russians are increasingly unhappy with the Russian powers that be; but now, a new survey shows that they have passed yet another marker on the path to more open demonstrations of that anger: more than half of all Russians say they are hearing criticism of the regime from families and acquaintances.  Given that only 45 percent say that they personally feel that way, this development means that the anger they feel is now being communicated to others, something that will along with deteriorating economic and social conditions lead to a more dramatic increase in anger than would otherwise be the case and make protests more likely.  That is because such comments have the effect of legitimizing and crystallizing feelings among those who until now have not been willing to admit to themselves just how upset they may be with the situation.


windowoneurasiablog--2019-06-17--Agora Hopes to Achieve in Daghestan What It Did in Ingushetia and Authorities Likely Fear That

Agora Hopes to Achieve in Daghestan What It Did in Ingushetia – and Authorities Likely Fear That

But precisely because of what has happened in Ingushetia in the intervening period, the mass demonstrations against the regime, his efforts are likely to face more resistance in Moscow and Makhachkala where officials may conclude that only if they allow such illegal actions by the force structures will they be able to hold onto power.  Chikov visited the Daghestani capital last week to talk about his group’s activities across the North Caucasus. Over the last year, he said, victims of official abuse have received 190,000 euros in compensation by order of the European Court, and numerous siloviki officers have been charged and convicted of illegal actions against the population.  “Of the republics of the North Caucasus,” the rights activist said, “the most problematic and difficult place is Ingushetia because there is a powerful civic opposition,” with dozens of people under arrest and charged with crimes that could lead to long jail terms.  At least part of the explanation for why the opposition movement could grow to such an extent in Ingushetia, Chikov continued, is that his group achieved some great successes in reining in the security services: “the entire staff of the center for countering extremism [in that republic] was put behind bars for torture and murder.”  He added that at the time “no one believed” that the rights community could clean house in the force structures of the republic. Most of the lieutenant colonels and majors who worked there had been able to do whatever they wanted for years and were “absolutely sure” that they were beyond any punishment. Agora proved them wrong.  So far, he noted, “we have not been able to achieve such major successes in Daghestan,” where conditions are deteriorating because of problems at the Chechen border and in social conditions in various parts of the republic. But he expressed confidence that with time, Agora and its allies would be able to achieve successes equivalent to those in Ingushetia.  That is something the Putin regime and its defenders fear and seem likely to try to do everything they can to prevent.