Acceptable Blackmail

Strikes put me in a bind. In principle I consider the ultimate sanction for any individual is to withdraw their labour and in parallel we are each responsible for our own actions and the anticipated consequences for any affected by those actions. But handing in your notice and going to find another job is a very middle class option. What if there is only one very large employer able to use your skills? You have the sanction of taking your labour away but you have to accept a dramatic change, probably for the worse, in your circumstances.

In an ideal world the the employed and the employers are always in dialogue and each pro-actively helps the other achieve the mutually agreed objectives. Might be difficult sell if, as an employer, you need to work your existing plant even harder to generate cash stream, so you can invest in new plant, which will lead to two thirds of your employers losing their jobs but increase your productivity threefold. It is very unlikely the workforce will be able to exercise the maturity to work their way through that one. It is of course not an ideal world and many employers just see their workforce as a tool to extract extra profit, unable to recognise that their fate depends on the morale and goodwill of each and every worker. They are in it together, like or not.

It is no wonder that resentment builds in groups of workers and collectively they decide to withhold their labour. To use the economic sanction of their labour withdrawal, to impose their collective will on the employer and force them to accept new conditions. Collectively they have greater clout than individual actions. Just coordinated individual actions in essence, but of course orchestrated. My problem with this is that the consequences for not just the employer but the people dependant on that employers product or service goes way way beyond the mere costs at the root of any disagreement. The traveller on an urgent trip is denied that trip or worse is subjected to hours or even days of delay, costs and inconvenience. Or the schoolchild's education future is put in jeopardy with a distinct possibility that they will never be able to recover from the lost lessons. As a direct consequence of the decision to strike, people completely unconnected to the negotiation, are used as pawns but have to suffer the consequences without any recourse. This is no more or less than blackmail and coercion. Do as we say or see the costs, pain and suffering we can inflict. Yes, there are all sorts of exceptions, rationalisations, excuses to offset or justify but in essence this is what any strike is about. Some groups of workers have more blackmail impact than others. Why not immediately concede? At the root is a leader, led issue but there may also be a wide variety of future implications which make it foolhardy to concede. We perhaps could still have a car manufacturing industry if only employers had not given in too easily to the workers short-term demands.

Even with good communications, implacable conflict can result and is even more certain when there are just plain bad parties, whether employer or employee, or resistance to change, or fraught economic pressures and uncertain futures, all the grist of every day life. When the trust falters you have entrenchment. Collective action by individuals is perfectly acceptable. Work to rule is an excellent example. If management decree this is the right way to work nothing wrong in following it to the letter. Wake up management. The rub is of course what on earth do they do when they are working normally? So withdrawal of labour is a legitimate action, collectively and individually. But the collective and each individual has to accept responsibility for the foreseeable consequences of their withdrawal of labour. It is their obligation to ensure innocent bystanders are not used as hostages, putting them in jeopardy, or else accept the financial retribution from the innocents so used. Very limiting on what actions are acceptable. Better that the collective takes the employer to court to prove or disprove the reasonableness of any refusal to accept a settlement. This will only result in even more fat lawyers and deferring to someone to decide between two sides, both with right on their side! That is life, sometimes it is plain unfair and there is no rational explanation.

Ultimately there only is one choice. Either put up and shut up or walk away, even it is to your severe detriment. For the employer, they have to respond, when individually each employer walks away. Life is unfair and stacked against you. This particularly so when well meaning agencies interfere and upset the natural order. The government decision to withdraw benefit from the unemployed that refuse to take a job actually is a remit to employers to continue offering unacceptable terms. The government has just tipped the scales heavily into the hand of the bad employer. The only tenable recourse is to hope for a favourable response to very limited constrained collective action or to walk away. Tough.

Empty Words

We are surrounded by a babble. A babble of empty words that make a lot of sound, that seem to be saying something really rather important but actually deliver next to nothing. I read with mild interest or mostly amusement the Radio Times and their reviews of that days outpourings. Now when they get to 'review' the interminable formulaic CIS TV show or some clone copy or endless repeats as one of their choices of the day you just know they are scratching around to fill space. It really struck home the other day. It was a particularly poor day for TV, the listings were poor. The reviewers were reduced to re-paraphrasing the brief come-on descriptions of the actual listings. When they end up summarising Graham Norton's TV personality as a way of finding something to say, you can see the bottom of the barrel has been scrapped clean, just the grain showing.

What we are witnessing are words to fill a prescribed space irrespective of content. How honest it would be to just leave a blank space. That is why of course I gave up reading newspapers many years back along. Not that I am not interested in world events just the newspapers were sadly letting me down. Just taking the Sundays, leaving the dailies and weekend version aside. What is it four, or is it now six sections, of weekly outpourings on not too dissimilar weight of paper and print. Not written by a novel band of contributors for each week but the same journalists week after week spreading their word content across the sections. Given, a rather extraordinary and exceptional given, that these contributors are highly articulate, very well read across a immensely wide range of topics and are a conduit for well reasoned incisive thought, given that, how many of the weeks of the year could they practically managed to put together a cogent article? Clearly no one person can be assembling, week after week, the requisite number of words to convey deep insightful views. They must resort to prattling, sounding right, saying self-evident things that might be perceived as relevant but actually camouflaging the paucity of real ideas. So we have generous amounts of speculation, anticipation, knee jerk reactions and the tried and tested mob appeal quotient. Strip all that away and there is paucity of factual matter, a lack of meaningful context and almost certainly, no worth its weight in salt, measured judgements of where now or where from.

The pages have to be filled, week after week, with something. Anything rather than a blank page even though that would be more honest and would not be so contemptuous of their readers intellect. But it is not just the printed page. The same applies to the current affair programmes and to all those documentaries. Bigged up large but with small menus on offer. Just have to spread out thin to justify the allocated schedule time or maybe to justify the celebes extortionate fee. So much prattling about nothing. Sure we cannot be serious all the time, and speculation, gossip, tittle-tattle in small doses lightens the mood and might even rejuvenate the probing critical mind. But lets keep the main content purposeful with words given respect to expand and explore ideas, that broach new horizons and take us as a people to places where our fertiles minds have not been before. There is so much out there to get our minds around. Prattle might be an oil but it is not a mechanism to discover.

Having written myself out of the plot I leave you with........








Space to think.

Whose choice is it?

Our leaders keep banging on and on about patient choice, parent choice, citizens choice. But who are they talking to? No one that I know. I live in a pseudo rural community in the country outskirts of a large county town. Our nearest Cities are either 35 or 50 miles away with no more major town in between. So realistically what is my hospital choice? I am lucky in that my local hospital can provide good general care. Obviously no doctors surgery is based in my pseudo village and where ever I look I am faced with getting the family member into a car to go to a surgery. Whether into town with all its traffic congestion or out along rural roads for a longer but quicker journey. The point is sheer practicalities govern my options. Not value judgements on the skills, published merit points or consumer friendliness of this compared to that surgery.

The scenario is very similar when considering which state school. My town has a choice of three schools all within its suburbia, one to the west, one to the north and one to the north east. Rush hour traffic becomes stagnant around school openings times so to cross town you have to double or even triple your journey time. If you were masochistic inclined you could have a choice to make. Common sense says no one can rely on their job being there tomorrow. We are in very insecure economic times when any jobs, even the most secure, can suddenly evaporate. Any sensible rural based parent will have a contingency plan incase the de rigueur second car has to go. So where do the school bus run take your village kids. This is the real choice, practicalities. Not league tables, not the smarm quotient of the staff, certainly not that it is governed by well meaning but ruthlessly ambitious middle class parents, not the newness of its buildings or even whether it has been bestowed academy status. Just the simple day to day exigencies how do I manage to get all my kids to school day in day out, all weathers.

I am lucky I am one of those middle class parents or patients. In my days we ran two cars, at enormous cost, so I could commute and my wife could do the chauffeuring as and when required. The point is this is a very middle class privilege. I do not believe the majority of the country enjoy the economic freedoms of running two cars and being able to exercise a degree of choice. They, the countries majority, are totally dependant on the norm state provision. There is no option or choice their kids go to where the school bus takes them. They go to the only practice that will accept them within their neighbourhood. Their income and expenditure is tightly contained by what the grey faces deem reasonable. They do not get to do choice. Other faceless one choose for them and only sanction the costs they deem permissible. So where is the demand for choice coming from?

Set aside London and a few of our bigger cities and I suspect the largest percentage of our population will empathise with my situation outlined. The government policy makers, the originators of the think tank outpourings are all London based and all doing very well thank you. They are so out of touch with the economic realities and have a totally distorted view of travel options when deciding for us we need more choice. In London with a wealth of travel options, with alternate schools, surgeries or hospitals in all compass directions and all within a short easy journey time. Choice may well be a sensible driving force. May, but I doubt actually. All it does is give the economically mobile more freedom whilst at the same time severely limiting the provision for those without the economic freedom to choose. So what might be a consideration for London is not a sensible, desirable or attainable option for the vast majority. What is needed is not choice but an excellent universal provision, available to all regardless of income, background or vocal clamour.

That extra mile

Keep circling back to the same topic, so I suppose must be kind of important to get a good steer on it. When is reward enough and more is obscene and socially divisive? See also my Tax, Salaries and Rewards and Higher Aspirations.This is the core question nagging at me. To better your lot is the principle drive that makes people go that extra mile to achieve the extraordinary. We all benefit hugely from all those around us striving beyond the norms to achieve. We want and need them to do it. Maybe even our best athletes are not just seeing how far they can push their skills, to find their own limits. More than likely the distant prospect of fame, notoriety and possible rewards to come are the spur on those so long cold dark mornings when every fibres protests, stay in bed. Switch athlete for skill or expertise, there is in each of us that internal desire to see just how good we can become or far we can go. Excellent. Just not sufficient justification on its own, it needs that added bolster. Fame, recognition and then the dosh that might follow. Reward of an achievement reached is not enough. Fame absolutely, or at least the attention it brings. Without the bonus of creature comforts? Most cases, not.

What we all want is release from the worry of survival from day to period, we want our progeny to have as good or better start and we want to provide for our kin. Good and wholesome aspirations. Incentives enough to push on and try harder. Proper just reward for making that extra effort, to stand out above the crowd of wannabes. But how much reward is adequate and when is it over the top? Enough to have and enjoy a relaxed none caring lifestyle through to your final days. Spared from the haunting, will I, can I afford relief from discomfort, pain, lack of care and nurture. Sufficient so that comparisons to equal or comparable peers is not unfavourable to you. There is a rub, of course we have a predilection to compare ourselves much beyond our actual modest achievements. There is this built in escalator here to be resisted. Lets assume our peers operate a 'higher or lower' wall to approve or contest comparison claims. Next of course we need enough to ensure our progeny receive the benefits of all our hard efforts. Somewhere along the line of a good home, nice clothes, private education, mind-expanding holidays and leisure, connection to similar influential families, protection from the costs of education, helping hand to set up a home and positive introductions to potential employers or clients, somewhere we pass from fair and reasonable to the inequitable. Where your hard efforts so set up your descendants so that, without any effort on their behalf, they can coast on your successes to the detriment of other aspirants.

Inheritance tax is both the final insult and a social leveller. After a lifetime of hard taxed effort the State seeks to take away any residual value. By doing so it reduces your descendants to well off but not excessively so. With the sting in the tale. Why bother in the first place to put money into permanency when none of your kin will get to benefit? If you follow the logic, might just as well paper over with polyfilla and save yourself the time, cost and effort. Then the Nation loses out, instead of accumulating treasures from the past, it gains just puddles of decomposing goo. No, providing we can keep a lid on excessive rewards, then, on past evidence, the second generations will squander their inheritance and in doing so provide opportunities for upcomers to profit from them. Keeping a lid on excessive rewards is the key. Enough to make the extra effort worth while but not so much as to distort the social fabric and threaten the underlying goodwill of all, to see success rewarded.

Finally, having exploited the benefits of living within our society and utilising it as their base to make their fortunes, when the rich complain as the State takes back or regulates the excesses of rewards accruing, they have a stark choice. Either turn their backs on the society that nurtured them on their road to success or accept that this is the price demanded from all those other tolerant people also wanting a chance to make the big time. The makings of a fair and equitable society.

Sanctity of Life

Sanctity of life is the one cardinal tenant we have all grown up with and accept unquestionably. Unless of course another country is copying your particularly nasty bomb, when it is then okay to kill. Or someone you are not in an allegiance with decides to shoot his own people, when it is okay to kill. Or when for God, King and Country, (not too sure of the prioritising here) it is okay to send off to slaughter a third of your adult male population. Apart for those global government decisions then, well no. We stand by as some 3,600 are killed annually in traffic accidents, untold numbers expose themselves to early deaths by drink, drugs, smoking and food abuses. All that though is trivial against the millions of babies that die each year around the globe for want of some simple cheap necessity, whether, clean water, basic food, treatment against malaria or diarrhoea. So no, there is no such thing as the sanctity of life.

Thank goodness Terry Pratchett is using his status to try and lift the veil on all the pious bunkum that surrounds the last great taboo, death. It is okay now to talk openly and freely about sex. Time we applied the same common sense to death. It comes to us all, it is the manner, the means and the propriety of the event we should get all het up about. A life squandered, taken by some stupidity, some reckless lack of forethought, these are all to be railed at and most vigorously. Equally whether self-induced by poor life choices or by the hands of some mindless could not care other.

Death is consequential to life. It is the when of death we need to focus our attention on. Maximising for everyone born, their opportunity to live an enriching and fulfilling life is the overarching priority. After that the when of death. When is it right and proper and when should we utilise all possible skills and techniques to defray. Not to get side-tracked into issues of means or timing. These follow on from that prior decision, when is death acceptable. We kill routinely so let us not be too squeamish about talking of decent and humane methods of bringing a life to an end. When it is decided, it is due time.

So how do we square a surgical procedure that will cost in excess of say £50,000 to give a chance of life to a deficient baby that has no meaningful prospect of a 'normal' life when millions of otherwise perfectly healthy babies die for want of 50p spent? I have difficulty squaring 100,000 babies saved against one damaged baby being given a compromised chance. Stark, deliberately so, as there are mountains of ethical issues out there of how we prioritise and choose to save here or let die there. What it comes down to is, there is no such thing of a sanctity of life. We every day, we all make choices, about who will live and who, without our support, will die. What better then than to face up to an easy choice. Let those whose life has reached an end, arrange for a dignified death at their time and place. If that is their own free choice. And that is the only moral dilemma. Is it their free choice?

Centre Revolution

From time to time you stubble across something and suddenly realise times are a changing and changing fast. We do not realise and cannot comprehend the implications but we are in the midst of a revolution in the way we are managed and governed. I was looking into the implications of the Localism Bill. Its intentions point in the right directions, so definitely a plus positive, just not radical enough. The cynic in me suspects just another attempt to pass the buck down the line whilst keeping the real control and iron grip on the strings where it always has been, in Whitehall. Just maybe these changes are enough to eventually unravel that grip and we, the people, actually do get control of our own destiny. My problem with that is, I do not think we any longer have a simple 'local community' persona, but see my Matrix Society. The point is that user friendly guides on behalf of the government, in simple english, are all accessible online. Maybe just part of a selling campaign but so much better than being in the dark and wondering what is to come and how it might impact us. A real opportunity for all of us to digest and let our MP know what we really think about it.

Still a long way to go but it is marvellous that our Ministers of State are opening themselves up to direct contact with the general public they are meant to serve. That they are accessible, that comment or opinion can be left on their tweets or blogs is a giant significant step forward for democracy. Does not mean they personally are going to read them and almost certainly no actual response will be discernible. But they will count and have influence and, with time, as we get used to this connectedness, mature in its application, so things will markedly improve. In the meantime this increased clamour of 'what about me' and the shouting of 'look at me, over here' may drown out initially the scope for citizen dialogues in real-time.

Not just tweets and blogs nor just processing government requirements on line, road tax or tax returns just to name two, life is getting more connected. For example the government now automatically looks up to check your car is registered, has insurance and a valid MOT before issuing its tax disc. It is joined up government at last. No man with countless forms and stamps to oversee the process. Of course it has all sorts of implications on what government can do with that information. Ominously information that they can then commercially sell, for uses none of us would ever agree too, except we are given no choice. My favourite example is the interactive mapping my County provides. I can look up a map, zoom into a particular footpath and report a fault with the footpath, with my statement of conditions and even attach a photo to show the nature of the problem. Compared to the bureaucratic processes the applied before this is a breeze. Not just footpaths but problems with Highways and why not anything the County is responsible for. It puts me as a citizen in a position where I can play my part in helping to keep the wheels turning and reducing the paperwork necessary to get things change. An example of the direction we are going in. Bravo. One day soon my report, after a cursory verification, will automatically be forwarded to the landlord responsible for its upkeep, with just the County monitoring for satisfactory completion. I as citizen am directly involved and able to play a responsive part in my own community. Localism in action, albeit in a very small way.

Bright new future. No not quite. The signs are we are moving, slowly, towards more openness. That authorities will have to make accessible their spending over a limit is both a burden for them but also a freedom for us. With abuses by either side, just a matter of time. We as a country are still far too secretive and in particular our government. We as citizens have right to know what is being planned and done on our behalf. Stop. No exceptions, no weasel word get outs, commercial secrets, national security. If I am to be killed by a retaliatory soviet or chinese bomb I have a right to know and the why and wherefores. Not for any survivors to discover fifty years down the line when deemed no longer 'sensitive'. Now. So much meddling behind scenes, free from counter comment, free from the rigour of challenge, so dangerous and so unhealthy. So raise a glass with me to the brave new world emerging and may the toast be 'with all good speed'.

Blinker our Children

The barmy army are at it again. Seems if we ban overtly sexual advertising outside of schools and have an age certificate on pop-promotion video's suddenly everything is going to be alright. Daft, not just plain daft but idiotically daft. Wake up and look around. Highly charged sexual images, innuendos, provocative gestures and posture, dress fashion, make-up, perfume advertising, the whole kerbang, permeates throughout our society. Like the lettering in the seaside rock, no matter how far down you go there it is, always there, no getting away from it. Sex is potent and powerful and sex sells like nothing else. Unfortunately we have a very puritanical, head in the sand, rather not know or think about sex attitude, which makes a mature response difficult to come by.

Fortunately I really do not think our children have any comprehension of sexuality or can respond in any meaningful way to it, until puberty kicks in and the hormones starting wreaking havoc. However it is these public images which now serve as role models for our young and that they will draw on to inform their own behavior in later adult life. So we do have to be aware, to be very aware and very concerned.

It can as no surprise to us. We know that our young teens are the idolising fans of all the latest pop-stars. We know that they are the market for all the music put out. We know all about the videos that sell and promote the latest pop one day wonder. So why the shock. Do we live two separate entirely compartmentalised distinct lives? One as adults willingly taking in all the blatant raunchiness on offer and then this other detached sweetpie person that is parent and is cooingly concerned about exposing our children to the reality that we , in our other persona , are more than willing to accommodate. Yes of course double standards.

Forget age certificates, forget purity police to monitor what our children are exposed to. Wake up for goodness sake. Our young are more skilled, faster in leaning, passing on information between themselves and unlocking whatever child locks we care to invent. They live comfortably and serenely in this totally connected world and can access sites you never dreamt existed. Putting blinkers on our children to shield them from the adult world they are passing through is nonsense. Our world is their world too and that is the issue we have to grasp.We, the adults have the choices, what kind of world do we want to occupy. We could turn our back on this blatant sexuality, this in your face raunchiness, this promotion of sex just as a means to get what you want. A regressive and fierce-some puritanism is one option. Or we face the world we actually live in and start talking openly. About sex, about copulation and about the deep emotions it generates and how these emotions are the things that tie us together. See also my Self Image Not a wham bang, done that on to the next thing. But perhaps the height of all possible human emotions and therefore something to be revered and given some respect. Lets all grow-up!

Bring back Radio?

Television was to be the great leap forward where images would supplement expand and excite way beyond the finite strictures of the leaden words used to capture or convey any ideas. Just has not turned out that way, has it? To keep pace with the moving image and the rate of image renewal possible, without confusing the viewer, the density of ideas possible to convey has dropped dramatically, by factors of tens. Time a news item on TV and time a comparable news item on radio and compare the amount of novel content communicated by the spoken word as against the TV. You could also do the same exercise comparing radio content with one of the more serious topical magazines to see a similar diminution of content from written to spoken. We are good at scanning and taking content out of the written word, less good to hearing at dialogue and retrieving paraphrases out of the content and virtually hopeless at seeing the word for the trees when presented visually.

So a conundrum. One picture can tell a thousand words. Show me a picture of the innards of a gizmo and I can see how it works and relates. A whole page of text describing the same thing might leaving me baffled and confused. Yet a series of images, or equally a sequence of videos, might fail to convey any idea of a process without a verbal story helping me along by explaining the progression. So images can be both powerful (when self-explanatory) or confusing without other mental props to provide the requisite linkage and continuity to guide the evolution of an idea.

Gradually my faith in the BBC providing programmes showing exemplar skills is on the wane. My irritation is mounting each time I see some glad-hander standing in some distant but indeterminate landscape to do their piece to camera. Why? What does this nothing place actually contribute and inform about this spoken piece. Worse can I be bothered to sort out whether they are actually there or just standing infront of a blue-screen with some library picture projected background. Do I care? Why send all these reporters around the country together with all their supporting camera, sound, recordist and make-up crews, putting them up over night and finding their travel costs to achieve what flash of insight? Nil. Now I do love my visuals and I can well imagine that with care and forethought the background can really add depth and enhance the meaning. Trouble is everything is done on the rush, to meet deadlines, to keep within budget, to be there before the rival that no one has any time left to think about what visual story might amplify or even make the spoken words the embroidery.

There is worse to come though. I find myself screaming at the screen every time the hackneyed cliche of shoe and ankle sock hopscotch across the playground. Or visuals so deliberately out of focus as to make them worthless. Are we really so vulnerable and at risk as a society that the faces of our children dare not be shown for fear of attracting the attention of a molester? Are our fears just fantasy that need urgent correction or have we grown to this point when the very next person will attack you or yours? Let us all get it into perspective. The rate of attack probably has not changed much over the century. All that has changed is just that our access to reports of an incident now reach us sooner and from much more distant places. Our actual vulnerability is much as is ever was, if not much improved.

Even worse. No screening of a live event can now be complete without the obligatory pixelated faces. It must have missed me, the injunction that whenever I go out and about I should hold up a pixelated face to all those surveillance cameras that monitor and record my every movements, around town, inside buildings and along our major roads. Records that I have neither consented to, nor have very much knowledge where and when they are being taken and certainly have no say in who gets to review and judge the innocence of otherwise of my actions, meetings and movements. So why? Why pander to these fragile ego's that have to be protected from the camera just because they are a inconsequential moving background? There just might be a tenuous argument which says the identity of a person under arrest might pervert the course of justice. I would argue even on that one. I do not even think that 'undercover' operative that raid an MP's office should been given the screen of anonymity. I want to know who are these idiots that, in our name, go about carrying out instructions that they should have to common sense to baulk at. No, it is just pure laziness and fear of criticism. The technology is now there and it is easier to just use it than to challenge those cheap easy assumptions. What secrets does that person have that demands freedom from identification. With the oncoming product placement within our favourite screenings are we to see restaurants and prized objects pixelated out because they refuse to stump up the going rate? Why does that nurse on duty have to have her identy hidden, what is she hiding? If there are secrets out there, we as a society need to know about it. Just another example that the BBC needs more balls and is now more concerned in keeping its nose clean than pushing the limits and defining standards. What a shame.