Category Archives: words

activism, human rights, words

The last steps to safety: helping refugees in transit to Germany. Stories from border town volunteers.

As European leaders meet for the sixth time this year to talk about what to do about refugees, people on the ground are getting stuff done.

Freilassing Hilft, a collaboration of volunteers founded through four friends and a Facebook group eight weeks ago, feeds 1500 different people every day, who pass through the small border town in Germany.

“We’re expecting another 700 more this evening,” Rolf said, volunteering with the separate and long-established charity Caritas at Salzburg’s main station on the other side of the border.

Two “special” trains arrive daily from the south, from Vienna.

Individual men, women and children have become a package – ‘ die Flüchtlinge‘ – refugees – who arrive en masse. From the platforms they are escorted by police and young military service soldiers to segregated areas in the fluorescent lit station concourse.

There they wait.  Standing in an orderly narrow queue between cold aluminum crowd control barriers near the exit at the back of the station.

Chatting and relaxed at both ends of the line, a dozen heavily armed police supervise passing these people on. Dark navy uniforms stand out against the reflective white flooring. Big boots and bigger guns don’t seem a very friendly way to greet up to 1500 people a day who have left behind violence and conflict, with only the possessions they can carry; each with a small rucksack, some with small children.  The children look as mine would after travelling; a little fraught, bewildered and awake in harsh neon at night, when they should be asleep. Most but not all, clinging to a trusted parent. And no crying.

One teen is wandering on her own, looking a little lost, drowning in a turquoise terry towelling  dressing gown that’s too big. I wonder what her story is.

Along the ‘safety’ barricade, white vested volunteers weave back and forth holding out plastic bags of cheese sandwiches and drinks. “Hold them up high,” says Rolf waving 500ml water bottles in the air in his blue, disposable-gloved hands. “If they want them they’ll reach out and take them, you don’t need to say anything.”

There is calm and quiet. There are no words. Tense and tired looking faces nod respectfully to volunteers in appreciation of support. And still they wait for the special buses laid on to bring them across the Austrian-German border, to the small town of Freilassing, seven kilometres away. They will soon be in Germany.

Refugees can only cross the border on these supervised buses. Refugees aren’t allowed on the regular trains from Salzburg any more at all.

Special buses get driven discretely between Salzburg and Freilassing, often in the dark. The town of 16,000 inhabitants has been the checkpoint entry for numbers equivalent to about a tenth of its own population every day since the end of August.

From Freilassing special trains are onwardly coordinated by the Bundesbahn to take the refugees to a scattering of cities across the country. The refugees don’t get told where they are going. That’s deliberate,  said local volunteer, eighteen year-old Jana on the platform in Germany the next morning. She’s the deputy leader of the volunteer group Freilassing Hilft, an organisation founded through four friends’ collaboration in a Facebook group just 8 weeks ago, to give refugees support in transit.

“Some people have specific places they want to reach”, she explained. “They may have family members who they know are in Hamburg for example, and only want to get sent there. It could be upsetting to find they’re being sent somewhere else.”

Berlin, Magdeburg, they’ve been widely distributed, but few helpers know exactly where either.

While most refugees transfer directly from the Austrian buses to German train after registration checks and getting lunch bags from local volunteers, if a train isn’t due straight away they are bussed less than mile away to the Sägewerkstraße centre where they will stay no longer than 24 hours.

Those people who have not yet been registered by police – under tarpaulin awnings on the station platform, or on the bridge the Saarlachbrucke crossing point thirty at a time – go through the registration process at the centre.

In the dry and protected space the men, women and children get some respite, from the weather at least. Donations of winter clothes and shoes are distributed by Caritas volunteers and Freilassing Hilft to those who need them. Medics and professional volunteers can care for health needs. So close to their destination, it can be tense.

Sixty-four year old Kunnikunde joined the Caritas volunteer group in October. A group staffed mainly by pensioners since the students have returned to their studies. She helps distribute the donated clothing inside the former furniture showroom. “Helping them, seeing them smile, afterwards when it is over it is a great feeling, like running a marathon”, she said.

It’s not the same for everyone who works inside though. For the professionals who have been helping for longer, this intensive support is taking its toll. “I see dark faces in my dreams,” one told me. “I can’t forget them.” He sighed, clapped me on the shoulder, as if giving me some sign of solidarity in spirit. I wondered what support he needs and feels able to take, as he gives to others. He pulled on blue plastic gloves each with a professional snap, and went back inside.

The vast building is shut to other outsiders. It has no windows. Security teams patrol the barrier lines, marked off with tape and supported by local police. Whether it’s more to keep people from getting out or others getting in, I’m not sure.

It is not overstatement to say this is the biggest humanitarian disaster Europe has seen since the Second World War and Germany seventy years on, is again redistributing people fleeing war and its effects. As a border town, people in Freilassing have had plenty of experience.

Local feeling is mixed, says Jana. “We have three shifts,” she explained. “All together in the last five weeks we had probably 450 volunteers come and help us. And we get on well with the other organisations. We all work well together, the relationship with the police is very pleasant. But we certainly need to watch that the [public] mood doesn’t change.”

Since I met her two weeks ago, that number has rocketed to over two thousand individuals helping out, some coming to help from miles away.

Their organised management of community spirit is exemplary. They’ve channelled local people wanting to help, into actual donations and distribution of food and drink. An empty concrete floored shell of a shop-under-renovation is their base opposite the station to accept regular donations of thousands of apples, bananas, cereal bars, water, and sandwiches. Volunteers take shifts in the unheated room and bag up packed lunches for distribution to refugees arriving off  the buses. The group has borrowed a handful of supermarket trolleys to take supplies across the road.

Today’s “wish list” on Facebook:

– men’s winter shoes sizes 6+
– Bananas
– White rolls
– Still mineral water 0,5l
– children’s drinks 0,2l
– drawing things
– Babyshoes sizes 19-22
– Baby milk and bottles

“This shift is simply packing the lunch bags for a couple of hours, and we get lots of people if we put out a call,”  Jana explained when I asked how they get hold of what they need. “We can say, we need bananas, and after two hours we have sixteen crates of fruit and then people come along saying, but you have loads, you’re hoarding it. Other times we have nothing and need to use cash donations to buy everything ourselves. Last week we had to go twice a day to the supermarket, but we can’t go to Aldi anymore and just buy up all their stock. We need to pre-order and what we need can change in a matter of minutes. It’s hard to plan with.”

It’s an impressive set up by students who decided they could not simply stand by and do nothing. As we chat two more volunteers come along to register for shifts and Margret, a local mother of three, drops in a huge crate of apples from her orchard.

“What else can we do?” she asks. “You can’t just leave these people with nothing. Unless they felt forced to, they wouldn’t leave. There are families, and young children who are scared, and alone, and they need our help.”

One recent good news story Jana told me, had everyone in tears.

The police helped an asylum seeking Syrian husband in the north of Germany to go south again and reach Freilassing when he heard his wife had managed to escape the war zone one year after he had. Police had escorted him to the Sägewerkstraße, the building now known by the name of its street; enormous open plan furniture warehouse space donated by a local landowner as a staging post for the refugees’ journey. Meeting his wife after a year and two tortuous journeys apart was an emotional experience for them both, as well as all the Caritas charity and Red Cross staff involved. The asylum seeking couple were able to leave together and returned to his new home in the north. A rare good news story. Not all refugees find family or complete the journey safely with family they set out with. Not all refugees are from Syria, and some have traveled for up to two years before this last step to what they hope will be safety.

At the Austrian-German border police now check the ordinary vehicles passing through and ask for papers, a return of the border controls that had been removed in the Schengen agreement. A recent change which taxi driver Andreas is starting to feel has become too much of a burden on residents.

“For our children, or our children’s children, what is the future going to look like? We’ve got our own problems. Poverty, housing the elderly, and there never seems to be money to fix it. But suddenly for refugees, the money’s there.”

That Saturday saw two demonstrations.

One crowd called for support of the border towns, such as Freilassing, just as for the organisations and supporters who are engaging themselves in the work with the refugees. The Caritas Director Pralat Hans Lindenberger said that the refugees also needed to be shared fairly across the German states, as quickly and fairly as possible.

In the counter demonstration many of the attendees were brought in from different parts of Germany, says Jana, with few locals from far right and recognised Nazi organisations.

Supporters are however still signing up to help. While the number of refugees seeking asylum usually falls in winter as seas become more dangerous, this shows no sign of change yet despite or because of the reportedly cut rate crossings offered by the human traffickers.

Others are getting involved to help but to the volunteers it seems ad hoc. This Telekom portal launched today offering multi-lingual support. Long term volunteers will welcome the support tools for the refugees and their own staff.

Helpers and organisations are all calling for central government support.

In the short term, as winter snows may arrive soon, broader cooperation of nation states at government level in funding and manpower is needed in a consistent collaborative approach, as embodied by the Freilassing organisations in the microcosm of the Austrian-German border.

“Basically”, says the Red Cross volunteer, “all our leaders need to lead. Not only ours.”

Everyone is calling for greater leadership from not only the German government and more from Austria, but a collaboration including the UK. When I said I’m from the UK, they laughed. Since Germany takes the same number a day in this small town, as we might in two months time, I’m not surprised.

Austrian ‘support’ is also felt to be cursory, simply passing people on to Germany. No one knows how long goodwill in Freilassing can last. But volunteer numbers still say, ‘refugees welcome.’

Winter has begun. Although more support has been announced it is as yet unclear to the volunteers what it will offer where.

Unless there is safe passage to travel, and shelter at the point of arrival and all along ‘the route of Hope’ from Greece to Germany, the volunteers in Freilassing won’t help as many people as they do today, including the hundreds of unaccompanied children.

In the Alpine cold, many of them will simply never reach the border at all.

This UK response is not enough, not in this Parliament or even next year.

As political leaders prepare to meet in Malta to discuss measures to stem the flow of migrants and refugees from Africa to Europe,  I think of Rolf’s words, “you don’t need to say anything.”  But we do.

We need to speak up, so they hear a million voices of migrants. Speak up so that our leaders know they have the support of many people who want a more positive proactive approach in our population, but are not as vocal as the anti-immigration crowds. Speak up for the children who are still to set sail.

Any further border control agreements must put respect for human rights at their heart, not put more barriers in the way of people migrating or those getting on with grassroots practical support. Leaders must enable refugee routes to safety, and condemn those placing these people in more harm.

These people are survivors. They have not walked there, seen loved ones drown, given up all they know, for the joy of voluntourism. People in Germany laughed at our government’s commitment to take our share of people. It’s the only laugh I’ve heard recently in relation to refugee support.

As Kunnikunde said,“We have big hearts, but our generosity cannot go on forever. We all need to do this together.”

*****
*****

If you want to help make a difference and support refugees through volunteers at the organisation Freilassing Hilft (Freilassing Helps) you can make a regular or one-off donation. This enables them to buy stock according to need and in line with what donors have already provided.

Donations care of the charity:
Verein Europäischer Zwillings- und Mehrlingsfamilien e. V.
Account: VR RB Oberbayern Südost
IBAN: DE 787 109 000 000 002 310 45
BIC: GENODEF1BGL
Purpose: “FreilassingHilft”
The purpose is important so that “FreilassingHilft” gets the donation.

For a receipt of your donation, email: [email protected]. More information: see their Facebook group.

OR consider the Red Cross or the long established local Caritas.

Thank you.

justice payment

Foto credit and story supported by Freilassing Hilft

words

Counting war stories, making remembrance meaningful.

Let’s not make remembrance futile by making the depth of a bow a measure of respect. Measuring deaths in war and war’s wider effects well, should get more emphasis to make a difference for better lives.

Neil Halloran’s data visualisation [1] on war since WWII is really worth a watch. Perhaps it will leave you both horrified and hopeful. He says; “If watching the news doesn’t make us feel hopeful about where we are heading, watching the numbers might.”

Hopeful despite how awful war is today, and how much we ignore, or are ignorant of, because we are in a time of relatively few in-war deaths*. Relative compared with WW1 for example.

The First World War claimed more than 10.5 million battle deaths.

In the size of those numbers, it is easy to lose sight of the individual in war. An exhibition I visited earlier this year in Brighton, managed to restore that, through thirteen intimate stories, at the exhibition: War Stories, Voices From The First World War.

In two low lit rooms visitors were invited to share in the wartime experiences of 13 men, women and children: to see through the eyes of an Indian soldier wounded on the Western Front and cared for in the Royal Pavilion hospital, a Brighton & Hove Albion footballer on the front line, or the gardener imprisoned for his pacifist belief. Echoes of haunting stories of people from the past, backed by Barber’s Adagio for Strings playing softly over the sound system.

Personal letters, diaries, art, photography, clothing, film and memorabilia evoked the love, fear, loss and longing that touched the lives of millions of people.

Lives and deaths that we most often today see simply as data, lost in numbers. The exhibition successfully rediscovered small individual stories from the big data.

“Names, names, forever only names. May you be remembered always, not just as soldiers, but as fragile human beings.”

Visitors could add their own story or message like this one, to the collective exhibition too, by creating a message written on a luggage tag, and tying it to an iron cut out tree.

The majority of messages were from children.

“For my dearest Grandad Private Frederick George Hughes, of the Staffordshire Regiment,” started one.

Some comments were critical and reminded me how personal sacrifice can be remembered down the generations, and how our remembering of the big picture is often selective, and politicised.

“In memory of my Indian ancestors who died in WW1 and WW2, I have not forgotten, like the English history books and politicians have.”

In the same way, what has been criticised today has been highly selective and politicised.

Today, some seem preoccupied with looking at Cameron’s photoshopped poppy or the angle of Corbyn’s bow, at the special Centotaph memorial service rather than  thinking about the reasons we stop to ‘remember’ at all.

We have too little broad public understanding of the ordinary, the now, and the continuing impact of war; or on fixing its effects on the living people in our communities, and those where others live.

We have too little broad public understanding  of the refugee crisis as a side effect of war. The poem ‘For the Fallen’ seems as appropriate for these civilian casualties as servicemen and women:

“They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning,
We will remember them.” [2]

One line even more fitting than most for those who drown on their route of hope: ‘They sleep beyond England’s foam.’

It can be hard to remember these people as individuals in the mass images we see on the media. We know of some better than others.

In the mass numbers in the refugee crisis it appears the media don’t always use accurate numbers. We cannot reliably know how many refugees are dying or are looking for somewhere, anywhere, safe to go. Measuring and reporting these people accurately [3] matters not only in providing the right services in the right places, but this organisation that admits its own numbers are wrong (double-counting the same people making multiple border crossings) [4] is being given huge amounts of money. We must understand how many people are really being helped though these funds, measure what is done, and what more they need.

We measure another side effect of war badly at home in the UK, those who are often forgotten, the ex-service men and women living on our streets. Homelessness is hard to measure and compare when the government basis of measurement keeps moving. “The bottom line is that we can no longer rely on these figures to show national trends.” [5]

We should be better at measuring these effects of war on society. If we measure situations well, it can help make policy and practical changes more effective, and the support offered, more useful.

We also need to be better at talking about war and its effects. Despite our world class systems in the UK, able to pick up details of all of our internet use, we seem unable to have a collective conversation of our role in wars elsewhere in the world in a transparent fashion. Or accurately measure the effects of action we take in other countries including those that may be unintentional.

Let’s make remembrance count for something. Real remembering means learning lessons. It means getting things done, for living people. It means not only remembering people that died, but why they died: to protect our homes, our loved ones and our freedoms.

*****

References:

[1] Neil Halloran’s data visualisation on war since WWII  http://www.fallen.io/ww2/  – note: *relative is discussed in his visualisation and how he uses in-war and civilian deaths is discussed in more detail.
[2] Laurence Binyon wrote ‘For the Fallen’ first printed in The Times on 21 September 1914
[3] UN refugee numbers http://data.unhcr.org/mediterranean/regional.php
[4] How the EU miscounts migrants http://theconversation.com/seeing-double-how-the-eu-miscounts-migrants-arriving-at-its-borders-49242
[5] http://www.crisis.org.uk/data/files/publications/Homelessness_Monitor_England_2015_final_web.pdf

image source: I walk Cornwall

 

deregulation, NHS, politics, words

Blue Sky Thinking – Civil Aviation Authority plans to cut medical services – public consultation appears to be tick-box

Updated March 2016: the world class services at the centre have been closed. Class 1 and 3 medical certificates are no longer provided via the aeromedical centre at Gatwick.

The most recent CAA update of January 2016 confirmed that the plans would go ahead despite almost universal objection to many principles and the way it would be done. Unsurprisingly, there were only 15 responses to the 3rd consultation.

CAP 1338 was the third of three documents published by the Civil Aviation Authority in 2014-15, which had only 15 responses. The first two were CAP 1214 (www.caa.co.uk/cap1214)
and CAP 1276 (www.caa.co.uk/cap1276) which includes the 40 original responses to consultation, including major airlines, BALPA, the Honourable Company of Air Pilots (guild founded in 1929), aeromedical doctors and other professionals. All of which objected.

*****

Blog published October 28, 2015:

If government divests the state of our expertise along with our infrastructure, how will we ensure services continue to deliver universal public good?

The NHS is struggling to monitor the safety and efficacy of its services outsourced to private providers, according to a report published in the Independent in April. Now consider an outsourced medical service where the safety and efficacy is reduced, for our commercial airline pilots. #Whatcouldpossiblygowrong?

If you looked very hard at the Civil Aviation Authority’s website over the last year you would be forgiven for missing the links to the consultation to outsource or divest from its medical services. [1]  This is the service organisation of 30 or so staff who ensure in a part state owned set up, that newly qualifying pilots for commercial airlines and air traffic controllers are fit for the job. And not only British pilots, but others come from outside the country, so great is its reputation. It is the last state-owned of 4 such centres, and based at Gatwick.

Pilots have unique needs and unique fitness-to-fly checks to pass, as documented by Aida Edemariam in last weekend’s Guardian: “The medicals especially, Bor says, mean facing “the risk of losing one’s job… as often as every six months”.”

The initial consultation, now a year ago, suggested outsourcing the service to the private sector. Today it seems the prefered path is complete divestment from the delivery of its services. The second part of the seemingly tick-box exercise closed today. [5]

Tick-box, because the plans are going ahead despite almost every response to the consultation voicing concerns or serious questions, including from major airlines. Balpa at the time hadn’t been able to adequately respond in the original Oct-Dec 2014 timeframe. Many other suggestions and ideas were raised, but from the CAA consultation response to criticisms it seemed blue-sky thinking, creative alternative solutions differing from the CAA plans, was not welcomed.

It seems that in a bid to become lean, akin to having less to pay for on the balance sheet, the government is selling off not only concrete assets but losing British state-led skills in services at which we excel. It is asking commercial companies to fill the gap and many question if there is sufficient expertise in the commercial market to deliver.

There are five key concerns here. The first, is that without the state to hold accountable for the service, airlines and pilots must foot the bill they can no longer control, in a near monopoly market. Elsewhere in health, spending on outsourcing these services has  reportedly rocketed.

The second, is quality control. How will quality of delivery be maintained for services which operate entirely for the benefit of the public good, but are now be required to turn a profit?

And the third is continuity of service. How will the universality of these services be maintained, offered fairly and to whom?

The fourth is whether the UK should sacrifice its unique leadership position of respected medical expertise in European and global flight safety?

And finally and most importantly, pilots, airlines, and healthcare professionals questioned in the last quarter of 2014 whether safety may be put at risk if the cost cutting move at the Civil Aviation Authority goes ahead.

This cut to regulatory oversight is part of the bonfire of red tape.

Responding to plans outlined by the Civil Aviation Authority in a public consultation [1] last autumn, professionals overwhelmingly suggested service improvements could be made without outsourcing what one airline called “the priceless nerve centre of expertise in the CAA”.

Based at the CAA’s Gatwick headquarters, the aeromedical centre offers the initial medical examinations required for commercial airline pilot and air traffic controllers and periodic checks thereafter. It also undertakes assessments of the fitness of pilots to return to flying after illness.

“All pilots who hold a commercial licence undergo an annual Class 1 medical assessment with an Aeromedical Examiner, increasing to every six months from the age of 60, or 40 if they are undertaking single pilot operations. [source: whatdotheyknow.com ]
The CAA expects to reduce overall costs by outsourcing all of its aeromedical non-mandatory functions, outlined in consultation plans that were discussed with potential providers at meetings in mid April. [2] But unions suggested the CAA is putting commercial pressures before the public interest and denounced the plans.

Steve Jary, Prospect national officer for aviation, said:

“The CAA executive board needs to listen and put safety, not commercial interests at the heart of its decision making.”

In its follow up consultation response in early 2015, the CAA said it does not believe in putting a price on public safety and it realised that cost and value are sensitive issues.

The national value of excellent medical services to pilots in any business model on paper however, may be impossible to put a price on in practice. It was especially sensitive earlier this year as the plans for change coincided with the climate of raised passenger awareness following the Germanwings flight 9525 on March 24.

Long before this, in response to the October 2014 consultation, the Honourable Company of  Air Pilots, a professional guild, wrote:

“As long as human pilots are part of the aviation safety chain, it is essential that their fitness to operate is monitored and supported by an expert community without fear of or bias from commercial pressures.”

Lacking in detailed financial analysis it is hard to see from the consultation how alternative solutions measure up against private provision. Specifically there was no estimate in the document of the cost of the CAA meeting its statutory obligations. [3]

One of the three airlines that responded in consultation, suggested the CAA could be seen to be outsourcing the commercially viable part of the service:

“The Aeromedical centre only seems to account for £500k out of the £3 million …and could potentially be seen as the most profitable element.”

By contracting out to a commercial provider, and introducing the need to make a profit, some respondents are concerned it would further increase costs to industry or individuals, and the CAA acknowledged this. Fees could potentially rise in what will be effectively a monopoly market, as in April there were only three other approved providers for this service, across all of the UK. Two are already operated by the same public private partnership and although part owned by government, are essentially commercially run.

Free from Treasury control, the Civil Aviation Authority is self-funding but sits under the wing of the Department of Transport, accountable to the Secretary of State for Transport. [4] But Government support was questioned by a pilot in the consultation, who wrote:

“If the CAA and the Department for Transport cannot resolve this without destroying the CAA medical service then we might as well pack it all in.”

Pressure has reportedly come from EASA, the European Aviation Safety Agency to follow regulatory best practices and separate the duties of the authority from the delivery of services.

However a group representing 15 CAA (UK) approved medical examiners, with a mean of 22 years experience, suggested this regulatory issue could be resolved in other ways, and said:

“Outsourcing any part of the medical department would remove essential functions, weakening the ability to respond to or promote future regulatory changes.

“Fragmentation will introduce inefficiency as work which should be integrated will be on at least two sites – never helpful.”

The medical service provided by the CAA is recognised as a market leader across Europe. It influences European and worldwide aeromedical policy and as one airline wrote in the consultation, has “rebuffed some of the more non evidence based demands of the European Aviation Safety Agency.”

Maintaining that globally respected expertise, say the CAA plans, is a third reason for redesigning a medical department fit for the future but many respondents believe that outsourcing will achieve the opposite.

The Honourable Company of  Air Pilots suggested the plans would have:

“an adverse impact on flight safety and diminish unacceptably the UK’s aviation medicine competency, research capability and global reputation for excellence and leadership.”

Headcount of currently over 30 full time equivalent staff could be reduced to eight if outsourcing plans go ahead and the service operates at its minimum regulatory duties.

Last year’s preparations for the outsourcing included an event in May open to providers through the NHS Partner’s Network of the NHS Confederation at which one was an NHS provider, but all others were private sector contracting organisations.

The Public and Commercial Services Union believes there is no provider which could fill the gap if the CAA stops providing its services in the current form. They said:

“We are requesting that this consultation be halted and consultation commences with the recognised trade unions on options within this paper to retain all existing services in-house.”

In April, the CAA said: “We are continuing to explore options for the future provision of medical services. Safety remains our number one priority and we will ensure that any changes that are made will be designed to enhance the UK’s excellent safety record. All medical requirements relating to pilots are set at international level and regulated nationally and will remain in force and unchanged regardless of any decisions relating to the provision of medical services in the future.”

Mr Haines,  explained at the April Board Meeting that “there would be a further discussion at the Board on the outcome of the CAA’s medical review consultation.” What that was is yet to be published. Transparency has not been the board’s strongest point in 2015.

Consultations are about allowing the public a chance to participate in democratic processes in order to play their part in determining the outcome. This consultation appears to have changed little of the plans.

There should be public debate around what we need our service institutions for, what value we place on a universal public good where cost and benefit cannot be personalised, and where change requires meaningful public consultation.  These changes are too important to be reserved for niche interested parties or for them to be a tick box exercise in which the planned outcome goes ahead regardless of the majority feedback. Public consultation in its present form, appears to offer little in the way of checks and balances in today’s democracy. Some are described as farcical.

Changes made in the public interest should be transparent, accountable, and robust to stand up to meaningful challenge.

As the Treasury seems set on its course, I wonder if they are using blue sky thinking to divest from our wealth of knowledge, staff and skills wisely, or plucking justification for ideology out of thin air?

###

References:

[1] Responses to consultation on the future structure of the CAA’s Medical Department: http://www.caa.co.uk/docs/33/CAP%201276%20Future%20structure%20of%20CAA%20Medical%20Department.pdf

[2] The prior information notice: http://ted.europa.eu/udl?uri=TED:NOTICE:99734-2015:TEXT:EN:HTML  (not yet a full tender notice)

[3] Financial detail limited: https://www.caa.co.uk/default.aspx?catid=1350&pagetype=90&pageid=16369

[4] CAA independent but accountable to Department of Transport http://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/written-questions-answers-statements/written-question/Commons/2014-09-10/209031

[5] Autumn 2015 consultation part two

change, politics, surveillance, Tech, transparency, words

George and the Chinese Dragon. Public spending and the cost of dignity.

In 2005 I sat early one morning in an enormous international hotel chain’s breakfast room, in Guangzhou.

Most of the men fetching two adult breakfasts from the vast buffet wore cream coloured chinos, and button down shirts. They sported standardised haircuts with hints of silver. Stylish women sat at  impeccable tables, cradling  babies in pink hats or spoon feeding small children.

On a busy downtown street, close to the Chinese embassy, the hotel was popular with American parents-to-be.

My local colleague explained to me later, that her sadness over thousands of Chinese daughters exported from a one-child policy nation in 2005 was countered by the hope that loving foreign families were found for them.

She repeated with dignity, party mantras and explanations drilled at school. She has good job, (but still she could not afford children). Too little land, too few schools, and healthcare too expensive. She sighed. Her eyes lit up as she looked at my bump and asked if I knew “girl or boy?” If it were a girl, she added, how beautiful she would be with large open eyes. We laughed about the contradictory artificial stereotypes of beauty, from East and West, each nation wanting what the other did not have.

Ten tears later in 2015, British Ministers have been drawing on China often recently, as a model for us to follow; in health, education and for the economy. Seeking something they think we do not have. Seeking to instill ‘discipline, hard-working, economy-first’ spin.

At the recent ResearchEd conference, Nick Gibb, [1] Minister of State at the Department for Education, talked about the BBC documentary “Are Our Kids Tough Enough” for several minutes and the positive values of the Chinese and its education system. It supposedly triggered ‘a global debate’ when British pupils experienced “the harsh discipline of a Chinese classroom”.

The Global Times praised the  First Minister Mr. Osborne as “the first Western official in recent years who focused on business potential rather than raising a magnifying glass to the ‘human rights issue” during his recent visit [2] when he put economic growth first.

Jeremy Hunt, Secretary of State for Health, was quoted at the political party conference  saying that he saw tax cut changes necessary as a cultural shift.  He suggested we should adopt the ‘hardworking’ character of the Chinese.

An attribute that is as artificial as it is inane.

Collective efforts over the last year or more, to project ‘hard-working’ as a measure of contribution to UK society into politics has become more concentrated, especially around the election. People who are not working, are undermined by statements inferring the less productive for the nation, the less value someone has as a person. Comments are repeated in a sustained drip feed, from Lord Freud’s remarks a year ago that disabled workers were not worth the full wage, to Hancock’s recent revelation that the decision to not apply the new minimum wage to the under 25s from 2016 “was an active policy choice.”  Mr. Hunt spoke about dignity being self-earned, not dependent on richness per se, but being self-made.

“If that £16,500 is either a high proportion or entirely through the benefit system you are trapped. It matters if you are earning that yourself, because if you are earning it yourself you are independent and that is the first step towards self-respect.”

This choice to value some people’s work less than others and acceptance of spin, is concerning.

What values are Ministers suggesting we adopt in the relentless drive for economic growth? [3] When our Ministers ignore human rights and laud Chinese values in a bid to be seen as an accepting trading partner, I wonder at what cost to our international integrity?

Simple things we take for granted such as unimpeded internet  access are not available in China. In Chinese society, hard working is not seen as such a positive value. It is a tolerated norm, and sometimes an imposed one at that, where parents leave their child with grandparents in the countryside and visit twice a year on leave from their city-based jobs. Our Ministers’ version of hardworking Chinese is idyllic spin compared with reality.

China is about to launch a scheme to measure sincerity and how each citizen compares with others in terms of compliance and dissent. Using people’s social media data to determine their ‘worth’ is an ominous prospect.

Mark Kitto from 2012 on why you’ll never be Chinese is a great read. I agree, “there are hundreds of well-rounded, wise Chinese people with a modern world view, people who could, and would willingly, help their motherland face the issues that are growing into state-shaking problems .”

Despite such institutional issues, Mr. Osborne appears to have an open door for deals with the Chinese state. Few people missed the announcements he made in China that HS2 will likely be built by Chinese investors, despite home grown opposition. Ministers and EDF have reportedly agreed on a controversial £25bn development of Hinkley Point C, nuclear plant, with most of upfront costs provided by Chinese companies, although “we are the builders.” [4]

Large parts of UK utilities’ infrastructure is founded on Chinese sourced spending in the UK it’s hard to see who ‘we’ are meant to be. [5] And that infrastructure is a two-way trade. Just as Chinese money has bought many of our previously publicly owned utilities, we have sold a staggeringly long list of security related items to the Chinese state. [6]

In July 2014 the four House of Commons Select Committees: “repeated their previous Recommendation that the Government should apply significantly more cautious judgements when considering arms export licence applications for goods to authoritarian regimes which might be used for internal repression.” 

UK to China exports
Chris Patten, former Hong Kong Governor,  criticised Osborne’s lax attitude to human rights but individual and collective  criticism appear to go unheard.

This perhaps is one measure of British economic growth at all costs. Not only is Britain supplying equipment that might be used for internal repression but the Minister appears to have adopted a singularly authoritarian attitude and democratic legitimacy of the Committees has been ignored. That is concerning.

The packaging of how upcoming cuts will be presented is clear.  We will find out what “hard working families” means to the Treasury. We need to work harder, like the Chinese, and through this approach, we will earn our dignity. No doubt rebuilding Britain, on great British values. Welfare will continue to be labelled as benefits, and with it, a value judgement on economic productivity equated with human worth. Cutting welfare, will be packaged as helping those people to help themselves out of self inflicted ‘bad’ situations, in which they have lost their self worth or found an easy ‘lifestyle choice’.

As welfare spending is reduced, its percentage spend with big service providers has risen after reforms, and private companies profit where money was once recycled in the state system. There is a glaring gap in evidence for some of these decisions taken.

What is next? If for example, universal benefits such as Universal Infant Free School Meals are cut, it will take food literally from the mouths of babes, in families who cannot afford to lose hot school dinners, living in poverty but not qualifying for welfare. The policy may be flawed because Free School Meals based on pupil premium entitlement does not cater for all who need it, but catering for none of them is not an improvement.

Ministers focus the arguments of worth and value around the individual. Doctors have been told to work harder. Schools have been told to offer more childcare to enable parents to work harder. How much harder can we really expect people to work? Is the Treasury’s vision is for us all to work more to pay more taxes? It is flawed if by adopting the political aim, the vast majority of people take home little more pay and sacrifice spare time with our friends and loved ones, running our health into the ground as a result.

The Chinese have a proverb that shows a wisdom missing from Ministers’ recent comments: “Time is money, and it is difficult for one to use money to get time.”

I often remember the hotel breakfast room, and wonder how many mothers, in how many in cities in China miss their daughters, whom they could not afford to keep, through fear of the potential effect. How many young men live without women in their lives who would want to, but find the gender imbalance a barrier to meeting someone. How many are struggling to care for elderly parents.

Not all costs can be measured in money.

The grandmother I met on the station platform last Wednesday had looked after her grandchild for half the day and has him overnight weekdays, so that Mum can first sleep and then work a night shift stacking shelves. That’s her daughter’s second shift of the day. She hardly sees her son.  The husband works the shelf-stacking third shift to supplement his income as a mechanic.

That is a real British family.

Those parents can’t work any harder. Their family is already at breaking point. They take no state welfare.  They don’t qualify for any support.

Must we be so driven to become ‘hard working families’ that our children will barely know their parents? Are hungry pupils to make do as best they can at lunchtime? Are these side effects children must be prepared to pay if their parents work ever harder to earn enough to live and earn their ‘dignity’ as defined by the Secretary of State for health?

Dignity is surely inherent in being human. Not something you earn by what you do. At the heart of human rights is the belief that everybody should be treated equally and with dignity – no matter what their circumstances.

If we adopt the Ministers’ be-like-the-Chinese mantra, and accept human dignity is something that must be earned, we should ask now what price have they put on it?

MPs must slay the dragon of spin and demand transparency of the total welfare budget and government spend with its delivery providers. There is a high public cost of further public spending cuts. In order to justify them, it is not the public who must work harder, but the Treasury, in order to deliver a transparent business case what the further sacrifices of ‘hard working families’ will achieve.

 

###

[1] ResearchEd conference, Nick Gibb, Minister of State at the Department for Education

[2] New Statesman

[3] https://www.opendemocracy.net/ournhs/jen-persson/why-is-government-putting-health-watchdogs-on-leash-of-%E2%80%98promoting-economic-growth

[4] The Sun: George Osborne party conference speech with 25 mentions of builders: “We are the builders”, said Mr. Osborne.

[5] The Drum: Li Ka Shing and British investment https://www.thedrum.com/opinion/2015/01/28/meet-li-ka-shing-man-o2-his-sights-has-quietly-become-one-britains-biggest

[6] Arms exports to authoritarian regimes and countries of concern worldwide The Committees http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201415/cmselect/cmquad/608/60805.htm#a104

 

[image: Wassily Kandinsky ca 1911, George and the Dragon]

history, politics, women, words

Sophie Scholl – post election protest, the press and public

Had she not been executed in Munich aged 21, Sophie Scholl would have celebrated her 94th birthday today.

Had she been alive, I would like to have invited her for the German tradition of afternoon coffee and cake in an artisan cafe in the student quarter of Schwabing, in the north side of central Munich. One we both once knew well and liked. One opposite a bookshop.

She famously wrote in a letter: ’Send me more new books, I’m dying of hunger!’

We might have talked of Heine’s poetry that she loved and was banned. Of Hemingway or Mann. When she was at school there was a long list of books removed which weren’t by Nazi approved authors.

I’m sure she would have approved of the literary prize – won by Glen Greenwald in 2014 – named after Sophie and her brother.

We may have strolled past the space where the Wittelsbach Palace in the Brienner Strasse once stood, Munich’s former Gestapo headquarters, where she was questioned for four days in 1943. It was torn down in 1964. She didn’t live to see that happen.

She was convicted of high treason and executed on February 22 after being caught distributing homemade anti-war and anti-Hitler leaflets at the University of Munich (LMU), with her brother Hans.

She was a courageous, bright young woman who stood up for peace, criticised the Nazi leader and government, and died for her ideals, embodied in the group the ‘White Rose’.

The media then was controlled and wrote little of what protest there was.

Some media outlets today in the UK and America have been criticised for their poor coverage of recent peaceful protests. But set fire to a police van or deface a monument and your cause might make the front page. Albeit for all the wrong reasons.

It is time for journalists to reconsider their role and responsibilities. In a world of change which may include losing the right to free speech and equality for women and minorities in the Human Rights Act, it seems odd editors of all people, would choose to be so biased.

The White Rose group called for students to fight against the party. The Nazi party. To leave the party organizations in which they saw students politically muzzled and protest contained.

Post UK General Election 2015 I wonder if there are people who are doubting their own political involvement with parties who lost seats.

Some may be joining political groups or marching under campaign groups’ banners. What will they achieve?

Post Election Protests

Of the two thirds who did not vote for the winning GE2015 party, how many people turned out in protests today?

There was more of a widespread rally reported on the stock market than on the streets since Friday morning.

“Centrica, the owner of British Gas and one of the UK’s main energy providers rose 7.4 per cent to 276.5p. Royal Bank of Scotland was one of the best-performing financial stocks, up 6 per cent at 352p.”  [FT May 9, 2015]

This week after the election, parties and large member campaign groups may be thinking hard about their messages and their audience.  If their message on the NHS for example, has hundreds of concrete case studies of moves towards outsourcing under the last five years of government, and millions of online signatures, yet they cannot convince the voting public that the state NHS as we know it is at risk, something is wrong with the message, their delivery or finding the audience they need to engage.

What matters to the majority of people everyday is more palpable than policies or protest campaigns; shelter, water, food, power, transport, our digital infrastructure and freedom of communication and travel. The protection of human dignity. To feel safe.  To have access to justice and education and health. To have freedom to love and live as you choose.

There is also another possibility. That not enough people care enough to stand up with the courage of their convictions. But perhaps it is rather that the majority are just too busy managing daily life?

Perhaps there is also an argument for campaign groups with millions of members to stop national protest and start delivery of grassroots local change. To provide the services and solutions that strengthen individuals. Their big campaigns did not turn into great electoral power.  Perhaps like twitter, there is a tendency for the message to only reach already like minded folk. Small concrete changes for individuals may have more impact on everyday lives. Through those could come cohesion. And instead of telling their already convinced supporters to sign yet another petition, they should share stories, with consent, of everyday lives.

Stories of what real life is like when you are affected by policies in practice, stories whose ripples will reach further. Show, don’t tell. Don’t tell us the NHS is in danger, show us the service rationing.

The Access to Work cuts consultation affecting the disabled has already been announced, picked up by twitter and in the Independent.

But how effective any ensuing protests may be, may depend on the press and wider public for enough support.

The Press and the Public

In the 2015 General Election campaign, many felt the biggest winner was spin.

There was the Telegraph’s last minute email to readers, and a letter so misleading reportedly from business owners that even big name companies distanced themselves from it.

Now after the result and seeing the first cuts to the disabled and threats to free speech, I really think the Telegraph editor(s) should go and sit in a corner and think about what they have done.

When on Friday I spoke with an experienced investigative journalist, his reaction to the election result was disappointment the campaign had been so bland on content yet strongly partisan.

For people who blame Scots for the outcome of the election, the political press did its job. Not only have cuts in compassionate welfare been successfully justified by blaming the demand for it on laziness, employment market failures have been left squarely at the feet of foreigners, and the press front pages managed to drive a wedge between the nations and parties.

‘Divide and conquer’ is an ancient but perhaps forgotton meme. Pushing living issues we struggle with in society back into our own hands so that we criticised each other and not the failings of parties’ policies to deal with them, was an effective tactic.

The created fear of anything foreign became not just about mugs, not just about people crossing the channel, but fear of the unknown.

So we voted for what we knew or against what we could no longer trust.

So what would Sophie have been like today?

She would no doubt find the injustice of our recent changes in the legal system abhorrent.

Solicitors tell me of rumors that people on probation in Sussex are no longer being met face-to-face since the service was privatised. She may also have had fears that an increase in juvenile behaviour legislation as was implemented in her youth in Germany, will come into Britain. Powers to search pupils, issue same day detention, exclusions & use reasonable force began in 2010. What will be next for our young people under the same leader now in charge of directly punitive services? A fan of long custodial sentences.

She would perhaps have been pretty sharp on twitter. She may have supported Millifandom. She would have stood up to the press. She would have become a pretty indomitable woman. Exactly what the judge, state and its supporters saw in her at 21.

I will not be able to indulge Sophie on her 94th birthday, as she lies buried in a tiny grave, in the Perlach cemetery on the south side of Munich next to the Stadelheim prison where she spent her final days.

It is still one of the largest prison complexes in Germany today.

She reminds us that well used peaceful protest, and print, can prick the conscience of citizens and those in power to achieve justice, fairness and a future society open to all who want to live in it.

“We will not be quiet. We are your bad conscience. The White Rose will not leave you in peace.”[Flugblatt 4]

The world is better for Sophie Scholl and friends having been there. She would have been 94 today. It wasn’t long ago she was 21.

Herzlichen Glückwunsch Sophie, meine Liebe.

*****

*****

The White Rose background:

In 1943 open protest was impossible.

Their sixth and final leaflet produced by the movement was titled: “To fellow freedom fighters in the resistance”.

Its last lines are quite hard to translate: “Frisch auf mein Volk, die Flammenzeichen rauchen!” But the spirit is this. “Wake up people, where there is smoke there is fire.”

Would the White Rose flyers have fanned the sparks of protest in Munich had she not been killed?

The state wasn’t prepared to find out.

She was convicted of high treason on February 22 after being caught distributing homemade anti-war and anti-Hitler leaflets at the University of Munich (LMU) four days earlier, with her brother Hans.

The judge, Freisler, who became later known for his ideology of the  ‘pernicious juvenile’ which helped shape Nazi law, condemned six people to death from the group the ‘White Rose’: all three defendants of the first trial of February 22, 1943: Hans and Sophie Scholl and Christoph Probst; as well as Alexander Schmorell, Willi Graf and Professor Kurt Huber in the second trial on April 19, 1943.

Sophie Scholl believed she could change things. In life or death.

“It is such a splendid sunny day, and I have to go. But how many have to die on the battlefield in these days, how many young, promising lives? What does my death matter if by our acts thousands are warned and alerted? Among the student body there will certainly be a revolt.”

She was given a written copy of the charges against her. In her cell she wrote one word on the back of the page. “Freedom.”

But she did not get the student revolt or the freedom she hoped for.

Of about 8,000 Munich students a maximum of 50 ever stood up for them. Neither the leaflets left in the university or the White Rose deaths sparked great protest against the Nazi regime.

The ‘seditious’ leaflet promoted peace and pointed out how many young men were losing their lives on the Russian front.  It decried gagging laws and limits to freedom of expression. It called for people, in particular students, to be individual conscious citizens with responsibility to freedom, and honour for their future.

Fatally, it also said that Hitler’s regime must fall to ensure the survival of Germany: “Hitler und seine Regime müssen fallen, damit Deutschland weiterlebt.”

 

References:
The White Rose papers: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.

http://www.bpb.de/geschichte/nationalsozialismus/weisse-rose/61035/zeitzeugin

Spiegel: http://www.spiegel.de/einestages/widerstandskaempferin-sophie-scholl-jetzt-werde-ich-etwas-tun-a-948731.html

Michael C. Schneider/ Winfried Süß: “Keine Volksgenossen. Studentischer Widerstand der Weißen Rose”LMU Müchen 1993 ISBN 3-922480-08-X

Barbara Leisner: ‘Ich würde es genauso wieder machen’. Sophie Scholl, ISBN: 3-612-65059-9

Tech, words

Chinese whispers, modern weapons #fiction

When you play the party game as children, what starts off said into the ear of one player, becomes something quite unintelligible by the time it reaches full circle.

It can cause chaos and it’s quite fun. Unless it ends up something hurtful the hosts would rather hadn’t been shared.

Not so fun, is the potential for the chaos caused by technology with the capability to spread information from one place to another, sufficiently damaging to bring business to a standstill. Or security. Or utilities. Or our medical devices.

In my spare time, I write fiction. [I have a long work-in-progress set against stories of post World War II emigration.] Here’s some flash fiction from today.

###

December 2015 in London.

After an apathetic  run up to the election, when few concrete policies emerged with detail that could be pinned down publicly and become humiliating in case of coalition concessions, the election was decided. A weak power sharing was agreed. Conservative and right wingers, with the dash of yellow that had survived.

Admitting another poor win, the party have ousted Cameron, and elected a new leadership. Boris and Nigel have already had a few laughs and a few run-ins.

On her way home, twenty-eight year old Kate grabs a copy of the Evening Express with their garish grins on the front cover. Again.

Barely 100 days into a winter government, May is long gone. Little of substance has changed save some minor screwing down on the rights to welfare access for foreigners or those ‘fit-to-work’.  Legacy policies remain.

One of those was on cybersecurity;  technology that protects online communications, banking, shopping, health data and more.

Kate reads the page 3 article:

“In a knee jerk reaction to recent violent attacks, the cyber security ban first proposed in the last parliament has been rushed through.“

Campaigners claim the MPs understand so little of what they are legislating that they “believe it would be possible to stop terrorists communicating privately without astonishing collateral damage to Britain’s economy, freedom, and security.”

Businesses and government bodies that have security affected under the new laws, consider what to do.

Kate working in her finance IT admin job, spent the day running reports on what software and historical data she needs in the system. Some sort of internal review.

Banking has IT still in place from the seventies. Building anything from the ground up is hard work. Patches are added on for as long as they’ll work. They’ll get round to fixing it. Soon.

Curled up on the sofa  she uses her single log-on for government agencies, for identity, administration and payments. Finally submits her passport renewal and thinks about visiting her cousin in San Francisco in February.

She books the bargain deal seen in an ad on Facebook that suited exactly what she wanted.

Her cousin joked ‘please bring wine’, theirs has run out. His last post mentioned the price of bottled water.  And China extracting it from the sea. Crazy.

Kate decides to catch up with that BBC Radio 4 IT podcast she missed. “There’s a good bit on banking,” her colleague Dan had said,  “and bring-your-own-device at airports.”  He was cute, and she was interested. Earphones, PJs and slippers on.

She worries shes turning into her mother.

Finishing her popcorn, Kate’s half way up before remembers she need do nothing. She isn’t yet used to the clinic’s networked library system administering her insulin dose. [Something else she’d inherited.]

Medical devices have expanded exponentially. Thousands of people have insulin pumps or heart monitors installed, running citizens on invisible software. The transport system for data, the life blood for humans and high-tech.

Kate’s delighted to get independence from appointments.  Her consultant delighted to cut running costs. Teleheath permits datasharing . Algorithms flag warning reports for abnormal statistics.

The individual products are pre-integrated and powered by central backbone systems. The clinic has an overview of everyone it manages remotely.

Kate’s numbers are usually fine, and ignored with a normal label, somewhere in the system.  But they have started to show she needs a greater dose. She’ll get a call in the morning to discuss a change in her meds, to be adjusted remotely.

Thirsty, she gets up and fills her glass from the tap. That reminds her. She should check her bill online.

Utilities across the UK, power and water, many owned by one Chinese conglomerate, have replaced old mainframe customer billing systems with these integrated modern software. Behind the scenes too, its distribution has interoperable compliance permitted by deregulation and required for globalisation.

Checking her alarm before she puts out the light, Kate smiles at the perfect step count for the day. Her fitapp makes her think of Dan.

She dreams of him. Somehow he’s landed with her in San Francisco. They won’t let him through immigration as he doesn’t want to give up his work laptop. Or phone. The flight can’t take off again and every staff member is using their own device to try and control airspace which is filled with pac man eating the planes.

While she travels in her sleep in the small hours, an organisation in a country she’s never been to, starts sending massive amounts of data into systems around the world. Some with bugs.

Overloaded, her hospital system shuts down, spewing out warning reports including Kate’s into the nighttime corridor. It doesn’t report exactly how her own device is affected because they haven’t researched it. 

Still tired, she gets up and hears the radio news in drips through the shower.

“A military coup in China, thousands of private business owners rounded up.”

“Concern is growing after what appears to be a mass cyber attack spreading malware to banks…”

She wonders if hers is affected.  It’s going to snow says the forecaster just as the water stops. And the lights and radio cut off.

Kate curses the landlord, towelling soap suds from her hair. She picks up her phone but can’t call out as there’s no network – either down or just as after 7/7 perhaps it’s overloaded.

She swears again.

She hopes no one is trying to call her.

It looks like today is going to be very inconvenient.

In the tube queue Kate starts contemplating a duvet day, she’s squashed in an impatient mass of people. Ticket machines are down and it’s bedlam. She picks up a paper from the stand.

Water cannon are back on the front page.  The story is about the role of government, state security and how to keep control.

The headline asks:

“Is London’s newest weapon out of date?”

****

 

“Alongside the Great Firewall, China has been developing a new way to intercept and redirect internet traffic, according to a new report from Citizen Lab.” [The Verge, April 2015]

When the intelligence services knows states have infiltrated commercial company systems, and governments have these tools, how will they be used for good, and who defines those purposes?

How do citizens of all nations make sure that our commercial businesses, our everyday life support systems & legislation are well designed?

Do MPs in government understand what it should and can control and is it investing in the right tools to do so? Are our MPs sufficiently skilled for the requirements in the realm of cyber security and digital rights?

Has water potential to be the next weapon of mass destruction?

[image: Telegraph]

not health, poetry, women, words

National Poetry Day 2014 – Remember

This year’s National Poetry Day is today, Thursday 2 October.
The theme for 2014 is ‘remember’. 

***

Memories of Jacob’s Room – At the Sea Lane Cafe

Beyond the pane of glass,
endless strata of sands stretch out to the lighthouse.
Wet swathes of brown and grey in irregular ridges,
in donkey colours.
I think of the rides of childhood he never had.
The sky sleeps snug above,
inverted greyness of the ground,
tucked in
and thickly cloud clad.

Stranded seaweed lies drying,
dying on the foreshore.
Patterns like magnified veins.
Scattered stones,
rounded down by years of wear,
worn down tossing in the waves.
Becoming sand.
Tossing in the waves.
The result of endless cycles of destruction,
construction,
worn down under pressure.
Tossing in the waves.
Becoming smaller,
and smaller.

Tiny damaged shells are picked up by playing children,
taken home, clamped tightly in their tiny hands.

Inside the adults sit, each at a table,
one a group of six absorbed in talk of the breakfast,
stolen from the office fridge.
Told by a man wearing tortoiseshell rims
around elegant eyes,
deep in experience,
face etched with laughter, he grins.
His white-grey hair merging with the wintry sky beyond,
beyond the glass.
I drift into daydream.

I would like to have known him.

‘Number fifty-nine. Pot of tea for two?’

‘That’s your peugot, the blue? Isn’t it? You’ve left your lights on.’

An older woman gets up, keys in hand.
Dragged from her steaming reverie,
thoughts abandoned.
Dragged back outside into the cold mainstream of life
by the saving, searching beams of her car.
She stays outside and walks along the ridge.
Kitesurfers catch the early morning offshore breeze
on their voyage out.

And I,
I think of Virginia Woolf
and her pebbles
and of knitting blue woolen stockings
which were so small.

And never worn.

***

 

change, choice, politics, words

O my Luve’s like a red, red rose #indyref

“O my Luve’s like a red, red rose, that’s newly sprung in June:       O my Luve’s like the melodie, That’s sweetly play’d in tune.

As fair art thou, my bonnie lass, so deep in luve am I;                 And I will luve thee still, my dear, Till a’ the seas gang dry. […]”

Robert Burns, 1759-1796 [aged 37]

You can listen to the full poem sung by Suzy Bogguss

Friends and I hold a Burns Supper every year. What began as a one off, was repeated in a different home, with the same dozen guests a year later. So a tradition was born to celebrate the life and works of  Scotland’s most famous export.

“His national pride, fierce egalitarianism, and quick wit have become synonymous with the Scottish character itself.”      Robert Burns Birthplace Museum, Dumfries

Burns was famous for his belief in equality, and his poem “Is There for Honest Poverty“, commonly known as “A Man’s a Man for A’ That” of 1795 declared a stance in society, seen today as the rise of a liberalism, which is declared the world over today still. It is often used by the Freemasons as Burns was at the time of his death. It is the fierce pride in humanity of man that infuses Burns’ work and which has transcended time. His love poetry, and rural recordings, being ‘ahead of his time’ made him memorable. But I feel it was his awareness and discussion of identity and social-economic politics which still inspires and what makes his work contemporary.

The Burns Night Declaration

Perhaps it is some of that inspiration that Westminster hoped to capture by naming the latest political deal, granting Scotland more rights which Mr. Brown pledged this week, “The Burns Night Declaration.”

Scots have been promised “modern home rule within the United Kingdom” on a breakneck timetable on Monday if they rejected independence next week.”

From a personal perspective

I think there is a real chance of a yes vote. If Scotland were to vote for independence next week, I will celebrate the freedom, with a divided allegiance. The Scottish ‘heart’ in me will stir with a rallying cry and remember my ancestors who died on the fields of Bannockburn. My English ‘head’ will be disappointed, as I worry for the country downsizing to the size of Denmark will be a shock, and not fully thought out change, without a leader who can bring the whole country together.  I foresee a future in which the Celts are ruled still rather than greater independence for Scotland, with more dominant powers from Brussels instead of London as they seek strength and support as they once did with France in the Auld Alliance, rallying against English oppression. Should there be a yes vote, I will be dispirited, whilst clinging to optimism of change.

I have concerns about the economy, research investment, about its potential effect on the NHS and education provision, arguably better for the people than in England today. But in the end, my concerns don’t count, it is for the Scots in Scotland to decide.

As a Scot living in England, I have no vote. For my part, that is quite alright. For another Scot I know who fully intends moving back ‘up North’ and going ‘home’ in some years time, she is devastated at the thought of Scotland going solo, and that she has no say. Her sister still in Scotland, who can vote, was among those who received a letter in which she felt that it hinted that her employer, the Job Centre, may be put in jeopardy from a yes vote. [She may be right if DWP would need to be significantly ‘disentangled’ according to this report.] She’s considering voting yes anyway. Why?

Because at local level she thinks their jobs are in jeopardy of potential outsourcing regardless of the vote.

Because she’s lived through years of ‘better together’ and has seen only a decline in standards of living and no one has seemed to really seek to change that. She may not realise, Scotland is not alone in this, but with little elected power in Westminster, they may see independence as their only hope of change.

Because she feels democratically disempowered. No matter who she votes for today, it still results in not getting who they want in charge of government, and no way to oust them if a few areas of England vote that person in. The overall budget control for Scottish spending comes from Westminster. And lastly, in terms of governance, whilst necessary, adding experience and a system of ‘check and balance’ on legislation, the unelected House of Lords sits only in London and can appear accountable to no one, never mind the Scots.

How may politics be affected by the outcome?

I hear many people have had enough of imposed rule as they see it and disconnected leaders. One may think through devolution, more powers for Holyrood would have satisfied the desire for autonomy, but in fact people are fed up with the rhetoric  of the political rule from both Westminster and Edinburgh.

Many dislike the leadership choices on offer [latest FullFact poll stats here Sept 11th]. Women in particular appear to consider this important in their decision. Should the yes vote win, it will not necessarily be a win for Mr. Salmond, but a win for independence.

Key is, what will that independence really look like? It will be interesting to see. Would it be what Mr. Salmond expects? What scenarios have been thought out [1], debated, and what may have been missed?

The red rose of Labour has become faded in Scotland.  This has and  will continue to have an impact on future General Elections. I believe however, it must be encouraged to continue to grow, come back and actively thrive in Scotland regardless of this vote outcome. All mainstream parties would do well consider this, above party politics. There is a risk that the disenchantment with mainstream politics will give rise to more extreme factions. A sense of identity is a good thing, but at its extreme can be twisted into a damaging minority view of nationalism which is based on one group view over another, the real-world diversity of a nation excluded. Should mainstream parties leave a vacuum in the garden of Scottish politics, others will be quick to fill it, and it is often ugly weeds which take root fastest.

How has the People’s involvement in politics been affected?

Perhaps the best thing about this campaign has been an awakening. An awakening of people’s role in the democratic process, exemplified by the planned march on voting day in one area of Glasgow.  Where low turnout is typical organisers aim to stir people and carry them with them, to the polls, [which may or may not be legal electoral practice]. There has been an unprecedented number of electoral registrations.  But also an awakening of the big parties that your action and inaction matters. It has been forgotten in recent apathy. This awakening will not be restricted to Scotland, and politicians across Europe should learn from these experiences quickly, as calls for independence in other places are bound to come.

The Scots are inspirational to many.  Whilst fiction, the spirited speech of William Wallace in Braveheart calls to the basic instinct in us all, for freedom. We Scots have a strong sense of history as part of our identity. Entwined in that is the relationship between the wealthy landed Scots and the English nobility, and the complex succession of the throne and in-fighting of Scots lairds.  Who sided with whom, when and how trust was won and lost became glorified legend in Rob Roy and Braveheart, but it’s not all based on fiction, but historical fact.

What has been perhaps unfairly represented by some media headlines and survey statistics, is the image of how “the English” feel about “the Scots” and how the two countries would be after a yes vote. One survey showed well over 66% in favour of the Union, but the survey chose to represent a subjective statement on currency as its headline, for example. Poll upon poll state conflicting measures as ‘fact’. It is hard to separate fact from feeling in an emotive debate.

A Troubled Relationship

If you are not Scottish, you may or may not be familiar with the Scot’s spirit of the everyday, not celebrities nor stereotypes. If you have time, listen to this speech, a Burns night reply from the lassies. It gives the ladies a chance to ‘get their neb in’. (4.28) It’s meant to be tongue in cheek and irreverent, and not to take the subject too seriously, and this hits the spot. But mainly because it hints at something of what matters to Scots  in a speech about Burns.  In particular it’s worth considering this one snippet. With humour she tells us what matters above politics and above class, is relationships and communication. It is the relationship and communication that has broken down between Westminster and the people in Scotland which may be the Union’s  downfall. The Scottish People feeling neglected, had stopped talking to Westminster a long time ago, and Westminster didn’t notice.

Robert Burns understood People

Burns was a poet, a man of love and passion. A man of the heart. A man popular with women, a philanderer, yet perhaps one of the first feminists? Not a warrior, not a career politician, he was a man for the people. He recognised women’s rights above and amongst politics, and spoke up on our behalf:

“While Europe’s eye is fix’d on mighty things,
The fate of empires and the fall of kings;
While quacks of State must each produce his plan,
And even children lisp the Rights of Man;
Amid this mighty fuss just let me mention,
The Rights of Woman merit some attention.”

Visiting politicians would do well to appeal to the rights of women as Burns did. I believe that it is not a romantic notion of freedom, which will lead to a majority of the yes vote. It is another practical aspect of life exemplified in Burns’s poetry which matters to people today, and how we live. It can affect all, but disproportionally affects women, it is poverty:

Visiting Scotland I have seen an increase in poverty and hardship in recent years, and experienced the Scots’ spirit which has refused to give in and tries to resiliently ride above it. Scotland has found life economically tough in the last twenty years. Bit by bit, it has seen its shipbuilding, steel making and coal mining weaned away with few jobs to replace those hard industries. Farming and fishing on small scale has become harder to compete worldwide. Scots believe in society and living well together. They’ve seen the right to a pursuit of happiness undermined at every turn, in the ideology focused on the economic wealth development of the individual. Westminster may have woken up too late to the effects that has had over years of neglect and apparent blinkered ignorance “down South”.
Politicians could learn from Burns

These last minute efforts of visiting politicians may or may not be planned in the campaign.  But as Burns said,

“The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men gang aft agley.”

The politicians may visit all they like, for a day or a week, better late than never. It will not make or break the majority of voters, voting with their head based on practical matters, but it may influence the ‘don’t noes’ the ‘vote for freedom’ who vote only with the heart at the last minute, and influence enough to swing the outcome. The majority of people will decide based not on last ditch efforts and promises, but on how they want to live, and what kind of society they want to see. Will speeches and promises made in a week, override experiences of many years? Or will they swing an influential minority?

The question is how convinced will voters be of the need for a complete break from the United Kingdom and true independence with its associated risk, versus the offering in the Burns Night Declaration? How much will heart rule the head or vice versa?

Whichever way the vote may go, how will mainstream political parties react and cultivate the long term relationship between Scotland and England? There will be a period between the vote and enactment. How will uncertainty be handled in that interim? How will the yes and no factions keep talking to one another, and grow as one nation, whether in a united, devolved or separate states?

O my Luve’s like a red, red rose

Scotland whichever path you choose to take, I will follow your decision closely.  Whatever happens next week, some will be broken hearted. I hope I won’t be among them. And I hope that for those who are disappointed with the outcome, we will all be kind, encouraging and not seek to blame, as we go about restoring our trust, our relationships and grow together in a positive, new direction. Society cannot afford a political vacuum which will provide space for the weeds of extremism to grow between us.

Wherever we are born, it is not unexpected to continue to have positive feelings for that country, as our birthplace. I may have left over thirty years ago, but my heart is still in the Highlands. I still love Scotland and hope she still loves us enough to stay together.

But I’ll understand if not.

“But to see her was to love her,
Love but her, and love forever.
Had we never lou’d sae kindly,
Had we never lou’d sae blindly,
Never met – or never parted –
We had ne’er been broken hearted”

Robert Burns, 1759-1796

***

[1] Governing after the Referendum – by the Institute for Government  http://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/sites/default/files/publications/Scenarios%20paper%20-%20final%20APJR.pdf 

 

art, women, words

“You just put your lips together and blow.” RIP Lauren Bacall

Film fans around the world will feel another loss today, as the death of Lauren Bacall was announced.

The Huffington Post:

“Lauren Bacall, one of the last stars of Hollywood’s Golden Age, has died. [..}

… it was for her four films alongside Humphrey Bogart for which she will be best remembered.

“Bacall married Bogart in 1945, the couple going on to have two children, a son and a daughter. The pair remained together until his death in 1957. After Bogart’s death, Bacall married actor Jason Robards Jr, to whom she had a further son.”

Anyone who knows me, knows how much I love classic films. I enjoy their pace, artistry and use of language which is often so different in contemporary film making. I am a fan of the forties style. I also love the audacity and spirit of fun which is portrayed in that era of Hollywood leading ladies.

Lauren Bacall’s screen glamour and quintessential attitude will forever be immortalised in lines from To Have and Have Not, the film in which she met Bogart.

“You know how to whistle, don’t you, Steve? You just put your lips together and blow.”

The idea of a woman capable of something a man was not or that she could be his equal, was slightly tongue in cheek, but in fact a critical component of the development in society at the time. In the Second World War, notions of what women could and could not do were tossed aside, as women whether in the workplace in manufacturing or agriculture, replaced their men at war. Clothes and looks, and attitudes to sexuality and marriage, were changing. Post-war there was turmoil as roles were realigned. Some of this was reflected in film of the era, women were often dutiful housewives or dangerous femmes fatales. Bacall straddled both in real life and on screen.

Attitudes to women’s role in society and post-suffragism politics were changing. Bacall played an active role here. During the late 1940s, together with Bogart and others, she set up the Committee for the First Amendment. Though widely noted as naive, it was an attempt to stand up to the attacks on Hollywood by the House of Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), to defend free speech and political rights.  Much as one would see the Blacklist thirty years later portrayed in The Way We Were [1973] by Barbra Streisand.

Lauren Bacall saw much change in views towards women in society in her lifetime. But that passing line, in her breakthrough film points to one small, insignificant thing which does not seem that much changed, then or now. I find it can still be seen as mildly inappropriate or surprising by some today. A woman whistling in public. Not a wolf whistle, diet-soda-would-be-proud-at-that-misfired-act-of-equality style whistle. But a tune. A rip roaring rousing melody.

Some of the most simple things in life, bring the most pleasure.

Today it is rare that I meet another women who likes to whistle, at all, never mind as much as I do. When in towns in pedestrian underpasses, in deserted London Underground tunnels or in the car. Wherever I can get a good acoustic. But occasionally I’ll forget to stop if someone should unexpectedly stumble into the soundwaves. And quizzical glances, little smiles, half comments reveal, it’s maybe a little less usual. But perhaps we should celebrate simplicity more often. It’s fun to whistle, as it is to sing. And perhaps it’s OK to be a little different, a characteristic Director Howard Hawkes who discovered Bacall, sought out and strove to preserve.

It was her film acting which made her name and found her leading man in all senses. For Lauren Bacall, Bogart was the love of her life. My favourite of their films, The Big Sleep, will no doubt be the source of headlines today.

She worked on Broadway in musicals, gaining Tony Awards for Applause in 1970 and Woman of the Year in 1981 but it was her performance in the film, the The Mirror Has Two Faces which earned her a Golden Globe Award and an Academy Award nomination. In 2009 she received an Honorary Oscar “in recognition of her central place in the Golden Age of motion pictures.”

Amongst her own achievements, it may be she will be best remembered for what she shared together in the classic black and white era with Bogart, part of the glamorous couple. She hoped that she would be remembered more for herself.  For me,  she was unique, distinct and different in film noir. It’s her independent, grown up sassiness for which I’ll remember her on screen, and the glimpses into her strength of character I admired in real life.
“You know how to whistle, don’t you, Steve? You just put your lips together and blow.”
art, communications, not health, words

I won’t be unoriginal – RIP Robin Williams

Good-Will-Hunting-Rowboat-Painting-facsimile-davesgeekyideas
The boat painting in the film Good Will Hunting, by the Director, Gus Van Sant

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

From The Huffington Post:

“Beloved actor Robin Williams was found dead on Monday, police reported. He was 63.

According to his publicist, Williams had been battling severe depression.” (Huffington Post, August 11th)

As a teen, we’d all seen Dead Poet’s Society in which he played inspirational teacher, John Keating. We didn’t just watch it. We felt it. “Oh Captain, my Captain.” It was a film which allowed us as teens to discuss suicide. He taught us something of self expression, through fiction. He inspired us to indeed, seize the day. Carpe Diem. We felt his awkward authenticity. Or perhaps, his real-life authentic awkwardness. He had to manage his mental health publicly. There were occasions when you could see through the exterior, and see how hard that was.

One of my favourite of his films, is Good Will Hunting. Whilst cliched fiction, I have always enjoyed the park scene, in response to the boat painting discussion in which Will (Matt Damon) disrespectfully hits raw notes in Sean’s (the role played by Williams ) life. Matt Damon’s character hits out at criticism of his chosen path in life and avoiding the expectations of others. He counters, “At least I won’t be unoriginal.”  That is perhaps a comic’s greatest fear.

Whilst playing a psychologist, and asking his client to open up, Williams manages to do the same for himself on the screen. He somehow touches a genuineness in that role, perhaps revealing an ability for self-examination which not all of us possess. Whilst playing a character, I believe in that role we see much of what it meant to him being authentic as an actor and as a human being. He discusses the value and need we have of revealing who we really are. The importance of being oneself. And the grit of authentic experience. Comics are famous for being less than happy on the inside. Extrovert exteriors can be used to mask the inner storms and insecure introvert.

We, Joe Public outsiders, will never know the real Robin Williams, but I believe this WTF radio interview with Marc Maron captured some of the authentic him, from 2010.

It comes with a ‘bad language’ warning if the title doesn’t give it away (mainly at the start): WTF interview April 26, 2010.

Mark gets Robin talking about playing the early days Mork, stand up clubs in the seventies and fellow comedians and experiences, learning his art. He talks about fears and authenticity, plagiarism and ‘the celebrity’.

The art of being a comic seems to have been fraught with fear of failure and fear of feelings, but a need to use them to engage with an audience. “What do you do with the anger? What do you do with the fear? ” He openly agrees with the interviewer, ”Big Time”. But he also shares how he deals with them. He shares his optimism on second chances, on alcoholism and heart surgery. He talks about divorce and living ‘in a different game as two units’, and how well his family manages it. They talk about sharing insecurities with the audience, and where they draw the line between sentiment and overstepping the mark, looking for approval from the audience. Effectively wanting to know from them, the universal question which makes the world go round, “do you love me?”

Talking about therapy they close by talking with humour, he puts the whole subject of dying over in the WTF category. He reveals through comic interpretation, discussion with his conscience. There is a fine boundary between his comedy humour and revealing his innermost thoughts. There may be many wondering about that interview today.

He was loved, popular with close colleagues and the wider worldwide audience. He will be missed. Most of all by his family, friends and those he knew, who should grieve in privacy. Let’s hope curiosity in the celebrity will permit them that.

His acting has been part of my life since I can remember watching films, and he touched the lives of many he will never know. My kids have laughed raucously watching him as Professor Brainard in Flubber only this week, in the summer holidays.

He was the deep Sean McGuire. He was the humorous DJ, Adrian Cronauer. He was the desperate & committed parent in Mrs. Doubtfire. He was engaged John Keating. He was the Fisher King. He enjoyed exploring dark traits in characters such as in the role of photo shop technician-turned-stalker in One Hour Photo. At the heart of each one was a glimpse into a conflicted character.

He was so much more. He was original. He was it seems, the very complex, Robin Williams.

Thank you, and Good Night.

****

Added Aug 13th: I believe there is a need for society to be able to talk about suicide, as there was when it was raised through Dead Poet’s Society. But how we do it, still needs sensitivity and adjustment.  

The Samaritans called for extra care of reporting after news stories on August 13th breached guidelines. Their number: 08457 90 90 90