A Radio 4 documentary yesterday presented a fascinating analysis of a now little-remembered incident. The blurb says:
"In 1982 South African undercover police bombed the London offices of the African National Congress. The attack was just one in a string of operations mounted by the apartheid regime against its enemies on the streets of the capital. Jolyon Jenkins speaks to both sides - the bombers and the bombed"
Mrs Thatcher's government was not inclined to play up a bomb attack on British soil by the agents of a foreign power. At that time, Nelson Mandela was still no more than a dangerous terrorist in their eyes. Clearly a blind eye was turned to the activities of South Africa's Bureau of State Security in Britain.
However, Scotland Yard was not as systemically fascist as some incidents would lead us to believe. One of the heartening anecdotes was that of an ANC staffer who found that BOSS had started a hate campaign amongst her neighbours, accusing her via anonymous letters of being a terrorist who prepared bombs at home. She drew the inference that preparations were being made for an explosion at her house while she was inside it. Hearteningly, the Met. Police was very helpful in putting an end to the threat.
One other striking aspect of the programme for me was the utterly respectable jobs now occupied by the then activists whose reminiscences we heard.
Thursday, 31 January 2013
Wednesday, 30 January 2013
Liberals and independent schools
Alison Willott, whose liberalism cannot be questioned, has a letter in today's "Independent". It is a response to criticism of Nick and Miriam Clegg's reported uncertainty over whether their children's imminent secondary education should be at state schools.
John O'Farrell (Voices, 28 January) does not consider the main reason why people pay for a private school. It is because they offer choice.
We wanted our children to be able to study ancient Greek – it was my own degree and my mother's and we are passionate about the subject. We also wanted a school with excellent music. Some state schools may offer these but the only way you can access them is to move house into their area. Since we lived within walking distance from both sets of grandparents, moving house was not an option.
And yes, our children did go on to read Greek at university. Their music experiences were sublime; and they did cross-country running, and fencing, and drama, and debating. Their schoolmates, incidentally, came from a wide range of backgrounds.
We chose to pay for this, and had to economise accordingly: [...] I'm perfectly happy with that – it was our choice, but please don't say we are the ones being subsidised.
Make all state schools offer excellent music, drama, sport, fencing, debating, car maintenance classes, photography classes, as well as small classes and a wide range of subjects to study, and private schools will wither on the vine. It's the state schools that have to change.
Alison Willott
Monmouth
What I want to know is whether daughter Jenny intends to include the Iliad in her bedtime reading for her young family.
John O'Farrell (Voices, 28 January) does not consider the main reason why people pay for a private school. It is because they offer choice.
We wanted our children to be able to study ancient Greek – it was my own degree and my mother's and we are passionate about the subject. We also wanted a school with excellent music. Some state schools may offer these but the only way you can access them is to move house into their area. Since we lived within walking distance from both sets of grandparents, moving house was not an option.
And yes, our children did go on to read Greek at university. Their music experiences were sublime; and they did cross-country running, and fencing, and drama, and debating. Their schoolmates, incidentally, came from a wide range of backgrounds.
We chose to pay for this, and had to economise accordingly: [...] I'm perfectly happy with that – it was our choice, but please don't say we are the ones being subsidised.
Make all state schools offer excellent music, drama, sport, fencing, debating, car maintenance classes, photography classes, as well as small classes and a wide range of subjects to study, and private schools will wither on the vine. It's the state schools that have to change.
Alison Willott
Monmouth
What I want to know is whether daughter Jenny intends to include the Iliad in her bedtime reading for her young family.
Monday, 28 January 2013
Balance of the sexes in public life
Rosemary Butler, the Welsh Assembly's presiding officer, has written to the leaders of the four parties represented in Cardiff Bay. She seems to think that a decline from 52% to 44% female representation is somehow a failure and that top-down action is necessary to bring the figure back up again.
The first thing to be said is that the numbers are relatively small, compared with Westminster or even the Scottish Parliament. It needs only a couple of the 60 AMs to change sex (through the electoral process, of course) for the headline percentage to change dramatically. My own party, with only six AMs at the outset, went from an ideal 50-50 representation in 2000 to a period before the last election when there was a 17%-83% male-female split!
As party leader Kirsty Williams points out, "the Welsh Liberal Democrats have a strong and proud record on female representation. As well as being the first party to elect a female leader, we also have a female President, a female vice-President and, until recently, a female chief executive." Writing as the secretary of a local party which has a woman in the chair and a woman treasurer, I also feel that the Liberal Democrats must have been doing something right.
From the foundation of the party in the 1980s, anti-discrimination was built in to the articles of the Liberal Democrats. Candidate selection, right up to the final short-list, had to have gender balance. This continues, and is not widely enough publicised. The other Westminster parties took time to catch up and, in my opinion, sometimes over-corrected. Positive discrimination produced one or two inadequate representatives in safe seats.
But we cannot be complacent. As Kirsty also said, "there is more that can be done on this issue [and] we will continue to work to ensure that we increase female representation in the party". One of the difficulties we have is in persuading women to put themselves forward in the first place. It is surely significant that, in the UK as a whole, we have better representation of women at a local and regional level than we do at Westminster. We must find the reasons for this and counteract them.
It would help if public bodies in Wales set a better example. The Welsh Government has done reasonably well: the first permanent secretary (head of the civil service) was a woman, and so is the current incumbent. June Milligan is the director-general of local government and communities and the chief veterinary officer is Dr Christianne Glossop.
Where, however, are the female local council chief executives or directors of finance - or female council leaders, come to that? It cannot be said that male-dominated Welsh local government has covered itself in glory.
The first thing to be said is that the numbers are relatively small, compared with Westminster or even the Scottish Parliament. It needs only a couple of the 60 AMs to change sex (through the electoral process, of course) for the headline percentage to change dramatically. My own party, with only six AMs at the outset, went from an ideal 50-50 representation in 2000 to a period before the last election when there was a 17%-83% male-female split!
As party leader Kirsty Williams points out, "the Welsh Liberal Democrats have a strong and proud record on female representation. As well as being the first party to elect a female leader, we also have a female President, a female vice-President and, until recently, a female chief executive." Writing as the secretary of a local party which has a woman in the chair and a woman treasurer, I also feel that the Liberal Democrats must have been doing something right.
From the foundation of the party in the 1980s, anti-discrimination was built in to the articles of the Liberal Democrats. Candidate selection, right up to the final short-list, had to have gender balance. This continues, and is not widely enough publicised. The other Westminster parties took time to catch up and, in my opinion, sometimes over-corrected. Positive discrimination produced one or two inadequate representatives in safe seats.
But we cannot be complacent. As Kirsty also said, "there is more that can be done on this issue [and] we will continue to work to ensure that we increase female representation in the party". One of the difficulties we have is in persuading women to put themselves forward in the first place. It is surely significant that, in the UK as a whole, we have better representation of women at a local and regional level than we do at Westminster. We must find the reasons for this and counteract them.
It would help if public bodies in Wales set a better example. The Welsh Government has done reasonably well: the first permanent secretary (head of the civil service) was a woman, and so is the current incumbent. June Milligan is the director-general of local government and communities and the chief veterinary officer is Dr Christianne Glossop.
Where, however, are the female local council chief executives or directors of finance - or female council leaders, come to that? It cannot be said that male-dominated Welsh local government has covered itself in glory.
End of a great library?
There are disturbing news reports that "Islamist" rebels retreating from the combined French and Malian forces have set fire to the central institute in Timbuktu which houses a unique collection of ancient manuscripts. A few may remain in private hands - if I recall Aminatta Forna's 2010 documentary correctly, many citizens of Timbuktu have their own small collections which one hopes they have concealed - but if the reports are true, there has been cultural destruction greater than the bombing of Coventry and Dresden in the last world war.
Saturday, 26 January 2013
Lead times
I want to tell you a story. The details have become blurred over the years, but it is basically true.
One autumn, a keen systems designer, whom I shall call "Mark", in a division of a large corporation had a bright idea. He could see a way of combining the various existing management data into a single easily-read report. He took an outline of his proposal to his head of department, who thought it worth taking to the finance director. The finance director called a meeting and asked when the scheme would be ready. Mark made some back-of-the-envelope calculations - so many weeks detailing, so many weeks programming, so many weeks testing, add on contingency for error-correction etc. - and said "June". The finance director said he would think about it, but after a few days informed the other two that the budget would unfortunately not allow for the new work.
Mark went back to his routine work and thought no more about his scheme until the next April when he had a call out of the blue from the top floor. We've had second thoughts about your program was the message; we can see how much management time it would save and we'd like you to go ahead with it. It will be ready by June as you promised, won't it?
Mark learned from this episode never to give fixed dates in future, but to quote only elapsed time when asked when projects would be ready. When he told me the story several years later when we were both IT contractors, it confirmed my impression that higher management in large commercial undertakings could be as impractical as that in the civil service.
Unfortunately, politicians, because so few have real-world experience, are generally burdened by the same mind-set. They seem to believe that projects can be turned on and off like a tap.
One autumn, a keen systems designer, whom I shall call "Mark", in a division of a large corporation had a bright idea. He could see a way of combining the various existing management data into a single easily-read report. He took an outline of his proposal to his head of department, who thought it worth taking to the finance director. The finance director called a meeting and asked when the scheme would be ready. Mark made some back-of-the-envelope calculations - so many weeks detailing, so many weeks programming, so many weeks testing, add on contingency for error-correction etc. - and said "June". The finance director said he would think about it, but after a few days informed the other two that the budget would unfortunately not allow for the new work.
Mark went back to his routine work and thought no more about his scheme until the next April when he had a call out of the blue from the top floor. We've had second thoughts about your program was the message; we can see how much management time it would save and we'd like you to go ahead with it. It will be ready by June as you promised, won't it?
Mark learned from this episode never to give fixed dates in future, but to quote only elapsed time when asked when projects would be ready. When he told me the story several years later when we were both IT contractors, it confirmed my impression that higher management in large commercial undertakings could be as impractical as that in the civil service.
Unfortunately, politicians, because so few have real-world experience, are generally burdened by the same mind-set. They seem to believe that projects can be turned on and off like a tap.
Clegg is *not* endorsing Plan B
BBC broadcasters' spin is misleading. The website editor is more scrupulous. Nick Clegg specifically regrets cutting so much capital spending, as Stephen Tall lucidly explains.
It seems to me that in the panic generated by the Greek crash, decisions were rushed. It was easier to make percentage cuts across the board, rather than take time to discriminate. It was clearly necessary to show progress in cutting the structural deficit in order to "get the bond-holders off our backs" as the deputy prime minister put it. Only Ed Balls would disagree with this; Labour's outgoing chancellor would have cut slightly more government expenditure than the coalition is doing. It was right to replace the PFI-based "Building Schools for the Future" scheme. However, within the envelope of budget cuts it would have been possible to retain some capital projects (e.g. in the Wales budget) while reducing spending on administration elsewhere. The restructuring of the NHS in England comes to mind.
Having said all that, the coalition has been rather bolder than Labour in authorising several big railway expansions. The GWR and Valleys Lines electrification is one example and, whatever one thinks of the environmental impact, HS2 is also going to generate a lot of construction work.
It seems to me that in the panic generated by the Greek crash, decisions were rushed. It was easier to make percentage cuts across the board, rather than take time to discriminate. It was clearly necessary to show progress in cutting the structural deficit in order to "get the bond-holders off our backs" as the deputy prime minister put it. Only Ed Balls would disagree with this; Labour's outgoing chancellor would have cut slightly more government expenditure than the coalition is doing. It was right to replace the PFI-based "Building Schools for the Future" scheme. However, within the envelope of budget cuts it would have been possible to retain some capital projects (e.g. in the Wales budget) while reducing spending on administration elsewhere. The restructuring of the NHS in England comes to mind.
Having said all that, the coalition has been rather bolder than Labour in authorising several big railway expansions. The GWR and Valleys Lines electrification is one example and, whatever one thinks of the environmental impact, HS2 is also going to generate a lot of construction work.
Friday, 25 January 2013
Second-hand smoke
When Peter Black relayed on Facebook his blog post about the smoking storyline in Casualty, some FB friends cast doubt on the perception that smoking in the workplace affects the health of co-workers. I can offer some personal experience. For many years, I was an IT contractor. I was always glad to land a job with an insurance company, because these firms were the first to ban smoking on their premises. The big insurance companies are not known for their philanthropy, but are good at calculating odds assessing statistics and they would have had access to the best and latest relevant scientific data.
Our place in the EU
As Peter Black points out, the much-trailed speech to Bloomberg's "On the move" (video here) was that of a PR man. However, the shape of the European Union envisaged by Mr Cameron and his ilk is beginning to be discerned. It is that of little more than a common market. The UK would have tariff-free entry to the continent and our financial institutions would be allowed to trade there without restrictions. Our professionals would presumably be allowed to practise in the rest of the EU, but we would be permitted to set a cap on the numbers of other EU nationals entering the UK. We would cooperate on terrorism, but would not participate in the European Arrest Warrant, instead relying on cumbersome and uncertain extradition arrangements. Above all, we would unwind all the social measures mandated by the EU. The relationship would be purely commercial.
On the other side of the English Channel, the French would be happy to see the UK out of the EU altogether. They have never wanted us in the first place. (I can't resist the thought that the products of the Paris Institute see themselves as the heirs to Napoleon or even Charlemagne and resent any challenge to their potential rule over a new European empire.) The Germans are more agnostic. They would prefer us to stay in the EU as is, but would not go to the stake for us.
What can be predicted is that the other EU members would not allow the UK to compete with them having the unfair advantage of much poorer employment conditions, and health and safety standards. They would no doubt expect a continuing contribution to the EU budget, as Norway and Sweden do.
However, there are many smaller nations who want us to stay and not purely for our budget contribution. They look to the UK, with its tradition of parliamentary democracy, to counteract the authoritarian tendencies of the EU institutions. They also agree with us that reforms are needed to common policies. There are signs, however, that they are repulsed by the anti-Europe rhetoric of Tories (and some on the Labour benches) amplified by our media.
On the other side of the English Channel, the French would be happy to see the UK out of the EU altogether. They have never wanted us in the first place. (I can't resist the thought that the products of the Paris Institute see themselves as the heirs to Napoleon or even Charlemagne and resent any challenge to their potential rule over a new European empire.) The Germans are more agnostic. They would prefer us to stay in the EU as is, but would not go to the stake for us.
What can be predicted is that the other EU members would not allow the UK to compete with them having the unfair advantage of much poorer employment conditions, and health and safety standards. They would no doubt expect a continuing contribution to the EU budget, as Norway and Sweden do.
However, there are many smaller nations who want us to stay and not purely for our budget contribution. They look to the UK, with its tradition of parliamentary democracy, to counteract the authoritarian tendencies of the EU institutions. They also agree with us that reforms are needed to common policies. There are signs, however, that they are repulsed by the anti-Europe rhetoric of Tories (and some on the Labour benches) amplified by our media.
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