Blind Justice

So Jon Venables, the child killer of James Bulger has been released from prison. Again. The Telegraph newspaper  reports that this will be the fourth new identity he has been given in an effort to keep him safe from reprisals but on every other occasion he has managed to breach the terms of his release in some way. The last time he was taken back into custody, three years ago, it was for child pornography offences, surely evidence enough that this is one unfixable individual.

What many will not understand is the regular attempts to deny the obvious; at thirty-one years old he is now fully formed. His character is set. He may express remorse, he may be able to fool teams of psychologists and criminologists but at his core he is one sick puppy who will probably never assimilate successfully. He will forever have to struggle to conceal his true identity and why should the public be potentially put at risk while he tries?

At the same time people who have otherwise lead useful lives are branded – sometimes on scant evidence - as criminals, serve time and are never again able to regain their former place in society. Genuine contrition for a lapse in judgement may count for nothing in a world now conditioned to condemn. Once you were considered to have served your time and allowed to start over, but now we seem to demand lifelong penance for the slightest slip up.

Woe betide you get labelled a sexist or racist, or end up on the sex offenders register because a scorned date cried rape, or a co-worker claimed harassment. No amount of pleading can remove those stains; society is not ready for your rehabilitation. We’d rather effectively pardon IRA murderers and their commanders, release violent criminals on parole to offend again, turn a blind eye to black-on-white hate crimes or spend decades ‘studying’ the Ian Bradys and Myra Hindleys and Jack the Rippers of the world.

Nobody’s interest is served by this. But wait; that’s exactly it. Society is not remotely interested in the minor issues of basically good people straying from the path. One strike and you’re out, matey boy; no second chances for you. No, the puerile public interest is far better piqued and more newspapers sold by pouring millions into the dysfunctional psyche rehabilitation industry. Better a reoffending psychopath making horror headlines than the plight of a truly contrite, skilled worker reduced to cleaning streets. It’s all about the narrative; it’s X-Factor for prison reformers, “It’s my life, it’s my dream – love me because I’m broken…”

Forget the even hand; atop the Old Bailey, blindfold Lady Justice has failed to notice the scales are weighted and it’s the party with the best story who gets the breaks. Nobody wants to read books about villains left forgotten and quietly kept away from the world. There is far more mileage in the rehab/reoffend/public outrage cycle than in any notion of what’s in society’s best interests. Mind you, it does partially explain the constant pardoning of that classic repeat offender - the Labour Party.

Sell Yourself

Some of you may be aware I’m currently looking for work. Being self-employed for ten years the last thing I really want is full-time employment for ‘da man’ but it’s an option I would be foolish to overlook. So, yesterday, having knocked my ‘interesting’ CV into shape, I began the long haul trawl through various job sites. My god, what has happened to the world of work?

Years ago jobs had proper names, names that told you what people did; butcher, baker… candlestick maker. So much were people identified by their trades that many took them as their family name. Archer, Carpenter, Draper, Fletcher, Fuller, Hayward, Mercer, Prentis, Taverner, Taylor… class assembly used to sound like a recruitment fair. (I have no idea what a Patel does, or did… if recent reports are true it may mean ‘lives off the state’.)

But back to the search. Jobs no longer have real names or defined purpose. Many are mundane roles genetically modified to sound more important and less judgemental. Thus nobody is looking for plain old nurses any more but there are many jobs in the burgeoning ‘care’ sector all of which appear to require an arm’s length list of qualifications of dubious utility; how many courses do you have to go on to be capable of wiping arses, chatting and doing a spot of light housework?

The realm of sales recruitment is just as impenetrably worded as ever: “focus heavily on brand awareness and relish the opportunity to create a personal and positive customer experience” In sales the ‘opportunities’ are always ‘exciting’ and ‘dynamic’ and ‘interactive’ and ‘focused’, presumably in ways that say, Ice Road Trucker, is not, even if it’s a counter job at Debenhams. Actually, I do know why selling is so oversold; I shudder to recall the years of my life when I did myself irreparable mental harm trying to sell stuff; it’s basically lying to people’s faces every working day of your life. That has to take its toll – for years I suffered Post Traumatic Sales Disorder.

The gobbledegook language of sales and management speak has bled over into the most ordinary of jobs and our litigious culture has added further layers of box-ticking bullshit. No wonder the poor old indigenous young Brits can’t get a start when even the most ordinary job is described in incomprehensibly vacuous ways and requires a ‘skill set’ a multi-lingual rocket surgeon would be hard pressed to acquire. No wonder they are reduced to mailing out multiple CVs with no hope of a reply – they don’t even know what a ‘Petrol Colleague’ (Asda) might be, let alone know how to sell themselves as one.

The truth of the matter is simple; most jobs are utterly basic and can be performed by anybody with a bit of what we used to call gumption. There are few occupations out there where the knowledge and skills can’t be acquired quite quickly and fine-tuned over a relatively short period. But in our politically correct, equality and diversity monitored, qualification-centric world it seems everybody must jump through those flaming hoops.

The art of finding a job seems to no longer be matching your ability to an employer’s needs but negotiating your way through the minefield of ridiculous HR rhetoric. It’s easy to see why there appear to be more jobs advertised for recruitment consultants (just sales, really, but selling people) than any other. 

Technofear

Technology. It’s all around us and has been for centuries. The second the drooling man-ape picked up a rock we created technology. Once that damned wheel got invented it was the end of a peaceful existence for mankind. By the time the term ‘engineer’ was coined it was all beginning to get out of control and now it’s just gone too far! We have machines that make decisions, for heaven’s sake, something that the majority of humans are incapable of ever achieving with any degree of success. But it’s worse than that:

Take the smart phone. I’ve hated telephones since the days of Button A and Button B, when you had to recognise an incorporeal voice in seconds and make the appropriate choice. (I usually pressed B, got my pennies back and left the call box to walk around the block, getting my nerves up for another attempt. It’s not natural, I tell you.) I’ve had a mobile phone since the early nineties, although I hardly ever use it; I don’t like phones, remember?

Then, like a sheep, a couple of years ago I finally succumbed to the lure of the smart phone, but I’m beginning to wonder why. The marketeers tell you that you can control empires from its shiny screen, that it enhances your life immeasurably and makes the most lukewarm geek suddenly icy cool. Everybody’s best friend (well, second-best) is now a nerd, apparently. But I have no such nerd-counsel and I find myself staring at the thing, wondering what it is.

This all started when I was persuaded – against my better judgement – to download a keyboard app that my interlocutors were telling me would revolutionise my life. “But why?” I asked, “What will it do that the standard keyboard won’t do?”  It’s just SO much better, they told me. Do it. An hour it took me and that was just to get the thing found, downloaded and installed. An hour I will never see again, after which said app proved to be an absolute horror; another thing to learn, for which I had no need. Which brings me to my thesis; how does any of this enhance my life?

I’m typing this piece on a full-sized keyboard while sitting in a comfortable chair at a desk. In front of me is a big screen at a convenient focussing distance and I have a mouse so I can quickly go back and correct that typo in the last paragraph. I can read almost a full A4 page in one view and I can freely cut and paste, spellcheck and look up words on any one of the dozen or so browser pages I also have open, courtesy of my fast broadband connection. Meantime I’m dipping into Twitter, listening to an internet radio station and checking my bank account. Why would I want to do any of that on a tiny fingerprint covered screen, squinting to see it in daylight and forever losing a data signal?

But, you can organise your whole life with a smartphone, they wail, practically rending their garments at what they see as my extreme Ludditity. You can keep everything on the cloud and never lose anything ever again; there is nothing, they say, that you can’t do on a smart phone. My response is, yes, maybe I can… but I don’t WANT to. I have books and a Kindle for reading, an iPod for music and both of them have a battery life of, effectively, forever. I have a computer for internet access and full-scale software applications and I have a television for, you know, watching television.

As for ‘organising my life’ I have an infallible way of keeping track of my activities past, present and future; it has random, high-speed access, multiple processing levels and is fully integrateable with all my other functions… it’s called a brain and it’s never switched off, never needs rebooting, needs no batteries and I already know how to use it. When that packs in I don’t believe even the most advanced smart phone will come close to replacing it.

I don’t even use my smart phone as a phone. For that I have a handy Nokia, which fits neatly and inconspicuously in my pocket and like my other dedicated tools has a battery life of several days. So, now the smartphone is out of contract, I guess I can cancel; I just don’t need it.

Not so smart now...

Before you mount an intervention consider this: If you put all your faith in technology where does that leave you when the lights go out? And if you still think it’s all sexy and ‘da bomb’ just remember that ‘they’ know where you are at all times, can check out your every interaction with the world and if the EU gets its way will soon be able to take control of your car automatically. How much longer before the machines take control of you altogether… like they have your kids? (Cue spooky music)

Little Britain

As expected. There has been much chatter about Britain’s role in the world and about the supposed breakdown of the mythical ‘special relationship’ with the USA. So important are Britain’s ties with America that Barack Obama will simply go ahead and use somebody else instead as his political whipping boy. We may share a language – although ‘share’ is an interesting way to describe a wholesale massacre – but otherwise our common history is very much that; in the past.

For Britain and America, despite some superficial similarities – and to some parts of the world, that means bloodthirsty and interfering – are very different peoples. While Britain, until recently, was a largely homogenous culture of traditional and conservative values, the USA was always a bubbling pot of over-excited go-getters. The stereotypical portrayal of an American in British sitcoms was always that of an overly loud, socially gauche child with far too much money and self-confidence. I miss those days.

Anyway, it seems America has a new ami today – oh fickle friends – as it skips about the playground, hand in hand with La belle France. Oh, sorry, they've always been friends – ‘America’s oldest ally’ Obama says. Being British we will watch eagerly for the cracks to appear; this could be great fun. No more bullets whistling around our ears; we can just throw brickbats from the sidelines. It’s what we are exceptionally good at, although I think the establishment calls it diplomacy. If the USA thought that the British secretly looked down their collective nose at them, they are in for a treat with the preternaturally huge-schnozzed Francais.

We Brits hate people getting too big for their boots. Remember Sarah Beeny and her enormous house? Hands up how many of you secretly wanted her to fail? And the Grand Designers; isn’t the best bit when it all gets a bit too much for the budget and the nerves? An Englishman’s home is his castle, they say. Have you any idea how much it costs to run a castle? And then you have to employ people, who probably hate you for it. And you have to live the part too.

Soon, from what seemed like just another rung on the property ladder you’re chartering yachts you can’t afford to holiday with people you don’t really like but have to keep in with because your daughter’s internship depends on it. And if you want her to marry a prince she really has to be properly blooded, so she needs a horse for the hunt. And you simply must be seen at Ascot, Henley and Monaco. Suddenly your leap into the upper strata of society is a millstone round your neck as the east wing roof falls in, the scaffolding goes up and you have to relocate your annual summer bun fight to an expensive hotel. And… and... and it’s all gone horribly, expensively wrong.

Don’t you envy the ‘little people’, the ones with the simple honey-hued mellow stone walled cottages on the green? The ones who can live and let live because they live within their means? Being part of a great big club means you have to appease the great big club’s rules which, you soon find, are not for your benefit but for the furtherance of the club’s vainglorious ambitions.

When you finally, reluctantly sell the country pile and slide back down the social order don’t you feel the weight lifting from your shoulders? No more rigged blackballing at the golf club. No more sneers at unforgivable, yet trivial, social gaffes. And all that money you had to spend just to stay treading water. No more face to save, no more lies to defend. Ah, peace and quiet. You can keep up with the Joneses; it was keeping up with the Rothschilds that was the problem.

Yer, ah kno'

There is a YouTube video currently doing the rounds. It shows Barack Obama praising every country as being ‘one of America’s closest allies’ and telling all small countries that they ‘punch above their weight’. He has so much regard for these important friends that in order not to praise any of them above the others he just trots out the same old aphorisms time after time. So much for that relationship being in any way special. Great Britain? That was hard work. Little Britain sounds bloody good to me. 

The Losing Side

I may be wrong - it happened once before - but I don't get all the politicking around David Cameron's so-called ‘surprise defeat' in the Commons yesterday. What I saw was a prolonged debate with plenty to think about, followed by a vote which was – if there was any surprise at all - much closer than I expected. The narrow result of 285-to-272 against the motion reflected a persuasive performance by David Cameron rather than, in my view, any support for Ed Miliband or his muddled message. If our Parliament truly reflected the mood in the country the outcome should have been more like two-to-one against.

Sure the doves are out, chanting victory and singing outside their tepees, ululating in joy and hugging the hell out of any tree in range, but nobody except the BBC is hugging Ed Miliband today. I expect he is waiting for his summons to Len McCluskey’s office to find out if he keeps his prefect badge for another term.

Yet today’s papers are full of views that this spells the end for Cameron. I really don’t see that. Why? He didn’t do what history suggests Tony Blair did and take the country into an illegal, unwinnable war on ‘sexed-up’ evidence. If anything, Cameron’s term in office may come to be remembered as the time that Britain finally gave up wanting to play world soldiers and got on with democratically rebuilding its own nation state. I only say ‘may’ because I believe there is still much to do.

There may be many reasons for Cameron to stand down as party leader, but I’m not convinced this was the decider. I’ve not been a great fan, but his performance yesterday was, I thought, impressive in huge contrast to the push-me-pull-you antics of Mr Ed. It is reported that some Labour MPs ended the day still unsure as to what Miliband’s position actually was.

So it seems we’re not going to war in Syria any time soon. That should be a decision to celebrate. It seems the much-vaunted but always abused ‘special relationship’ may be in doubt. Good. It seems like a victory, albeit a narrow one, for democracy; at least our version of it. And if democracy won on war, we might just have a chance of it winning in peace; it’s about time. Maybe now we can get on with deploying a bit of democracy at home and sort out our far more important relationship with Europe.

I wish you'd won.               I know. Loser!

Ed Miliband is today being bullishly myopic, claiming a victory and calling for Cameron to consider his position. Be that as it may, I know which of them looked like a leader yesterday and which looked like a bewildered youth way out of his depth. There definitely was a loser yesterday, but I don’t think it was David Cameron.