I do voluntary work with the sort of kids this law has been designed to target - the ones who walk around a council estate causing trouble, because there's nowhere for them to go but home, where they can look forward to crowded houses and parents who are high.
There are two approaches to dealing with that problem. The first is laws like this, which allow the police to prosecute them simply for walking the streets in a group, and set them up for life with a criminal record. That will inevitably lead to worse crimes in the future as they find themselves unable to work because of that record.
Alternatively the government could stop cutting funding for organisations that try to provide a place where they can go and be children without causing others trouble. Youth centres are shutting down due to a lack of funding - the one I volunteer at only functions because its funded by a local church, and even then it only just scrapes by.
Honestly, I don't really know where I'm going with this, other than needing to rant about the fucked up approach this government is taking with their "Big Society", carefully focused on making sure the poor are criminalised, and the rich don't have to worry about supporting them.
"..the sort of kids this law has been designed to target - the ones who walk around a council estate causing trouble, because there's nowhere for them to go but home, where they can look forward to crowded houses and parents who are high."
I've long been of the opinion that poor parenting (and/or an abdication of responsibility on the part of the parents) is a major contributing factor to teenage delinquency.
What are your thoughts, based on your experience of working with these kids?
Most of my thoughts have been covered in the earlier replies to your comment - bad parenting is certainly a factor in some cases, but at the same time we have some parents who come along and tell us that they have no idea what's going wrong with their kids. In a lot of cases it seems that the only thing going wrong is that they live on the wrong estate, and their kids are getting mixed up with others who encourage them to do things they shouldn't.
I've certainly seen that almost all of them are perfectly nice one on one, but once they get into a group setting they can be utterly horrible (I've been called a cunt by a seven year old girl for telling them they need to let someone else have a go on the xbox). Society has a lot to answer for, in telling people that they should be the centre of attention at all times, and have everything that they want whatever it takes.
Its a really difficult problem to solve, and if I'm brutally honest, I think a large part of the generation growing up now was lost years ago. Our organisation exist to work with seven to twelve year olds who are particularly bad, and even at that age there are a few who I have little doubt will spend their late teens and early twenties in prison. That largely comes from growing up in a culture where nobody has achieved anything for generations - and so they've been told from an early age that they won't either, given that sort of background the odds of working hard to make it are pretty slim.
On the basis of your comments, I applaud you for your volunteering efforts. It seems to me that an important way of reducing "bad parenting" is helping people to not become bad parents in the first place.
May I ask which organisation it is you do this work through, and how you got involved? If you'd rather not say then don't worry.
Thanks, that's the idea. None of us are really qualified to do much more than attempt to provide a positive role model to kids who don't really have any, and every now and again it actually seems to work.
The particular organisation I'm working with is the Forest Estate Community Hub, in Egham, which is run by my church. I ended up getting involved mostly because I was one of a few people who thought something like the kids club we run was needed, and in a small church the only way things like that happen is if you step up and get on with it!
The closest we get to a web page is a Twitter account at https://twitter.com/ForestEstateHub, which gets updated both with the kids club, and various other groups that use the building.
I've long been of the opinion that poor patenting (and/or an abdication of responsibility on the part of the parents) is a major contributing factor to an awful lot of society's ills...
Sometimes, but I doubt it is the real problem, as far as modern society goes. Look at the London riots, where parents were forcing their children to turn themselves in afterwards. I would ask instead if society is right to bombard everyone with constant reminders that they are undesirable if they are not wealthy, famous or good looking. What internal world view does this create for those effectively trapped at the bottom? A sense of self-worth? Unlikey.
Anyone who thinks parenting practices -other than the most extreme- shape behavior should think twice and look at the evidence. The blank slate by Steven Pinker might be a good starting point.
There's plenty of evidence that the effects of parenting are generally smaller than we would like them to be, again with a few exceptions.
As you rightly point out extremes of Abuse and neglect have the most long lasting impacts on human development than nearly any other factor.
However even with those examples excluded, the amount of talking that a child is exposed to when in their developing years has significant impact on their long term development; see the "word gap" [1]. Not only that but nutritional environment (often based on parental choice) for the first 2-6 years has a massive impact on long term brain development [2].
So yes in fact parenting practices have a massive impact even when you exclude abuse and neglect.
Except that what many of us here would consider extreme are actually pretty common. Estimates for the prevalence of domestic violence and sexual abuse are difficult to measure accurately, but are conservatively > 10% in the population at large and much higher in the deprived communities which will be targeted by these laws.
Having spent significant time of my youth in a bad neighbourhood (with awesome, stable parents though), and having spent much of my later life with people on the edges of society, I can confirm this. It's reached a point where I'm shocked to not eventually hear some awful stories about childhood of these people.
From what I recall, Pinker makes no such assertion. Rather, he argues that we underestimate genetic effects and that while this is understandable from an ethical/political perspective, it is ultimately harmful.
In fact, I vaguely recall that on the issue of parenting he argued that genetics play a big role, but that so does parenting.
Basically, he's arguing that we factor in genetics more, not that we disregard parenting and social environment as a significant factor.
(but be sure to let me know if I'm wrong. It's been quite a while since I read The Blank Slate)
The idea that somehow it is reasonable to have any expectation that two random people who manage to have unprotected sex are able to be responsible parents is absurd. There are going to be troubled households, and it is up to the rest of us to take up responsibility.
This is basically again an instance of the ages-old problem of symptoms being easier to treat than the disease. And that's assuming the disease is even identified correctly in the first place.
The dis-ease is the current distribution of resources, which is a symptom or side-effect of capitalism evolving to its extremities - those systems can be influenced to incentivize different behaviours and patterns though to correct the dis-ease. If people believe resources are scarce, then there may be an issue. If people believe we have access - through human will, passion, and ingenuity - to the resources of the whole universe, then scarcity is only an illusion and we need not allow this fear to perpetuate, as it only leads to unnecessary suffering through fear of survival, and fear-mongers being able to control populations and create wars or at minimum perpetuate the suffering of one group for the gain of what they consider their own population.
This is a myth. Please refer to Deirdre N. McCloskey's work for a thorough debunking. The first two volumes of the proposed six volume set are available from amazon, the one you'll be interested in is 'Bourgeois Dignity: Why Economics Can't Explain the Modern World'.
Could you clarify or specify what it is you say is a myth and why it's a myth? A brief of what Deirdre N. McCloskey says would be very helpful and much appreciated - thanks.
Edit: Reading the Amazon short description, "[...] The result was an explosion in economic growth and proof that economic change depends less on foreign trade, investment, or material causes, and a whole lot more on ideas and what people believe. Or so says Deirdre N. McCloskey [...]"
That is relating to distribution of resources, albeit local resources.
We can watch a similar thing unfolding in Hamburg at the moment. Following a demonstration that ended up in street fights and an alleged attack on a police station, large parts of the central districts were declared a "Gefahrenzone" (danger zone) where the police has special rights to check persons and deny them entry into that area. This is a special provision in Hamburgs police law that allows the police itself to declare such a zone with very little judical oversight. AFAIK this is the first time this has happened on a large scale, it's interesting to watch events unfold.
I grew up in the German town of Baden-Baden, which has the highest millionare percentage in all of Germany, and this is exactly what that town turned into:
> Street life in these places is reduced to a trance-world of consumerism, of conformity and atomisation in which nothing unpredictable or disconcerting happens, a world made safe for selling mountains of pointless junk to tranquillised shoppers.
No special laws needed (other than one to disallow gather in public to drink alcohol, just for B-B, to move the homeless out of sight). It has 5000 shops for jewelry and designer clothes, while the last place where you could buy a CD closed in the 90s.
Sorry, I don't have a point, but this whole article struck me as a description of the spirit of that town. It's carcass now, while steadily getting even prettier on the outside, and rotting even further from the inside. A race to the rock bottom of lameness and soullessness.
But hey, that's just Baden-Baden, it's always been lame... to see that spirit seep into cities like Hamburg or even (some parts of) Berlin, now that is creepy. Where-is-the-nest-and-can-we-please-burn-it creepy.
I'm not aware of anything of this nature in Berlin.
The city has changed in the past few years for sure, with Tacheles gone and the police evicting the last few remaining squats, and rents rising all around. But the local government of Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg at least seems keen to protect its character as the most interesting part of the city.
People can always go to Charlottenburg if they want boring and clean.
This also happens occasionally in Copenhagen, Denmark, when the police decides to create 'search zones', where the police create zones, where they have the right to search anyone. They don't need political or judicial permission to do so, they already have it.
But at least, these zones are met with much public debate, and the police has refrained from using them lately.
They introduced something similar for the UK, as part of Terrorism powers - there was a big stink when it turned out that the Metropolitan (London) Police had continuously designated the entire of Greater London as such a zone continuously for years, as soon as the law was passed.
I was stopped and searched in the City of London under terrorism laws for acting suspiciously and "doing a double take" when I saw a police car. I was simply looking twice before crossing the road, but there you go...
As it happens I was heading in to a meeting with a client who I was doing some web dev work for at the time. They published a porn magazine, and I had a big pile of their magazines in my bag. To her credit, the cop who was searching me didn't even raise an eyebrow when she saw them.
Woah. I should have noted, that the 'search zones' in Copenhagen were rather limited (usually to parts of Nørrebro). But they would often fall in busy areas.
"It is being misused because the police have the power to impose a blanket area, where any police officer can search anyone without reason for suspicion on the basis that a senior police officer has thought that there might be terrorist activity or terrorists operating in the area."
That article dates from 2009, but section 44 of the Terrorism Act, which allowed for stop-and-search without suspicion, was suspended following a 2010 ruling by the ECHR that it violated Article 8. In various developments since that suspension, it doesn't look like anything as sweeping as the previous powers will be coming back any time soon.
To be fair, the political leaders are damned whatever they do on this issue now.
On the one hand, we have the principled argument of H. L. Mencken, "The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all."
On the other hand, we have had a few very high profile cases recently where it's hard to see how even a generous interpretation of proper human rights safeguards should protect someone, yet that person has won legal battles time after time in court using technicalities and weasel words. In most cases, those victories are ultimately won in the European Court after failing in all national courts here in the UK. And these are the ones that make the headlines and force politicians to react.
What is easy to forget when looking at the latter cases is how often the European Court has also told a current UK administration it had gone too far, often in granting sweeping powers to police forces and security services in recent years. A majority of voters might have agreed with those decisions if they were pointed out, but the related stories aren't always front page material.
In short, I suspect a lot of the talk about getting rid of ECHR and the Human Rights Acts is populist politics. No political party is seriously proposing getting rid of those without at least introducing some other form of human rights legislation instead, but then at least they've done something. I'm guessing that being the politician who didn't do anything after stories about Abu Hamza not being deported have been on the front page of the Daily Mail for years is probably not a good way to win your next election.
The facts of some of those high profile cases were... not exactly as the press portrayed them. For example, there was one high profile case where a murderer couldn't be deported to, I think, Italy because of the Human Rights Act. What the press didn't mention is that he was pretty solidly English - he'd lived in the country since the age of 5, and didn't speak Italian or know anyone there - but even though morally he was firmly our responsibility and not Italy's, the Government tried to foist him on Italy through a legal technicality. The human rights laws just provided a way for the courts to ignore their legal weaseling and come to the only reasonable conclusion.
The facts of some of those high profile cases were... not exactly as the press portrayed them.
Indeed. Unfortunately, politicians are often compelled to respond to the portrayal of what is happening, as presented in the media, as well as to what is actually happening. When the press distorts these cases just for the print equivalent of linkbait titles, it does have undesirable consequences for the debate as a whole.
This sounds like NYC's stop and frisk, which, while still nominally requiring probable cause, became in practice blanket permission to stop any black or Hispanic person for any reason.
However, it might be different from a law allowing the police to turn people away from a part of town.
Interesting, I was in Hamburg in Dec for the CCC conference (Which was great btw) and stayed for new years eve. I was curious why so many police were around downtown but figured it was just due to the massive amounts of fireworks everyone was setting off. Do you have any good sources to get more information on this?
The underlying situation is pretty complicated and dates back to developments in the 80s (Hafenstrasse Hamburg etc.), I doubt there's good english references.
Four paragraphs of lamentations about exclusion, inequality, sanitization, poor, young, etc. before any hard facts and seven before the actual topic is brushed. Oh, and no sources or references for the events he describes.
Asbos have been granted which forbid the carrying of condoms by a prostitute, homeless alcoholics from possessing alcohol in a public place, a soup kitchen from giving food to the poor, a young man from walking down any road other than his own
OK, it's not a news article but there are blogs much better than this.
Apart from people who already know what he's writing about and agree with him, who would want to read this piece of pure mood affiliation? No wonder they're in the red.
"Again this year, in Manchester, the Council used its powers to obtain an ASBO to stop mobile soup vans operating in the city centre. These vans provide food and assistance regularly each evening to about 100 homeless people. The Council however argued that after the vans had left there was a mess all over the place and people had complained. Probation staff argued that the same could be said about every kebab shop, pub, chip shop and off-licence in the city." [section d, para 3]
Under this injunction, the proscribed behaviour becomes a criminal offence. Asbos have been granted which forbid the carrying of condoms by a prostitute, homeless alcoholics from possessing alcohol in a public place, a soup kitchen from giving food to the poor, a young man from walking down any road other than his own, children from playing football in the street(3).
This is not a one-off, they always do that, so it must be a choice. At a guess they want it to look like it does in the newspaper. You could call that keeping things the same across two different media, or you could call it replicating the limitations of paper, online.
Which is why Wikipedia is better and more reliable than newspapers. In order of hiding reality: Conspiracy videos that take 50 minutes to get to any vague kind of point at all, Infographics, Newspapers, Wikipedia.
He is probably referring to the fact that the Guardian newspaper does not make a profit ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Guardian ). It's not relevant, as I'm sure that George Monbiot does not care about this, the Guardian is aware of it, and none of these parties would give a flying feather what spindritf's opinion on this topic is.
Especially since he doesn't seem to have an opinion on anything relevant to the extremely important change the article brings to light, but would rather discuss the editorial quality of the article itself.
An analogy would be people on the sinking Titanic discussing the poor command of the english language by those lads who asked them to get in the boats.
The same exists in Belgium for about a year or so where it's called a "GAS boete" (Gemeentelijke administratieve sanctie ~= muncipial administrative sanction).
They have been the subject of a lot of dismay among people because they're often used for the wrong thing.
Some stupid reasons to get a GAS fine are:
- Eating a sandwich on the porch of a church
- Posting negative comments about the police on a news website
- Kids can't play football when the pidgeon herders (? - NL: duivenmelker) are managing their pidgeons.
- sitting on the back part of a bench
- Putting garbage from your car in to a public trash can. (yes, IN TO the trash can, not next to it)
It was seen as illegal dumping of trash (NL: sluikstorten)
I actually don't fancy this sport or hobby. You just have to pay attention the "feral" pigeons running about in the cities. Many of them have exactly one crippled leg, where their band originally was. After the pigeon doesn't return home, this thing cuts into the leg over time and in a slow and painful process the leg falls off...
He lays this at Norman Baker's feet, who has only been in the job a few months (although he has apparently defended the new law).
As a fellow Lib Dem I'm thoroughly ashamed that this is getting anywhere with us in the government, and I've tweeted him (Baker) to challenge his position - his account looks like a bog standard politician's announcement feed, no interactions with other accounts save the odd retweet, so I don't expect he'll respond (if he does fast enough for an edit, I'll link to it here).
ASBOs have been awful - I remember hearing about a case my dad sat on (he's a magistrate) where a homeless guy, who had been seriously assaulted, was up on charges of breaching his no-swearing ASBO for his reaction to the police ignoring him while he sat their bleeding! Very unpleasant laws used to attack the vulnerable, and they're making them even more wide-ranging. I am fuming!
How many people are afraid to walk down a dark alley at night? That's a freedom we should have but plenty of people are forced to get a taxi or stay home because of a real fear of being robbed. I live in a city where it is safe, even for young women alone and I'm amazed when I remember what a restricted life it was in more dangerous, yet more "free" cities. If someone demands money from you in a deserted street, do you have the courage to refuse? If not then you need something, perhaps not these poorly defined laws begging to be abused, but something to protect you from those subtle threats that constantly erode your quality of life.
How many people are afraid to walk down a dark alley at night? That's a freedom we should have
It is also a freedom that a group of 15-year-olds in fashionable clothes, a homeless person, or someone who just bought a bottle of wine from the shop should have.
If someone demands money from you in a deserted street, do you have the courage to refuse?
If they demand money from you, they are almost certainly committing at least one criminal offence, and you should probably call the police.
If they ask for money from you, and you don't want to give any, just say no.
If not then you need something
A spine, perhaps?
A little recognition that not everyone in the world is as fortunate as probably everyone reading these posts wouldn't go amiss, either.
There are good reasons to create and enforce laws, but I don't think prohibiting otherwise harmless activities because someone in a more powerful social class doesn't like them should be among those reasons.
Very well said. Tackling a problem with a broad brush law that grants liberties to one group while denying those same liberties from another should never be the answer.
When kids were breaking into our power box and shutting off the power, trying to enter the house after I walked in the door (meaning I learned to be very, very quick in locking the door), and finally threw a brick through our window, the cops greeted my complaints with "what did you do to provoke them?"
(truthfully, I think my existing was the provocation. We signed a new lease somewhere else 2 days after the brick)
None of these laws are going to fix the problem which I think lies more with policing and with community than with not having enough laws.
All of those are criminal offences in their own right though - while clearly inept in your situation, the police don't require new powers to arrest someone for entering your house without permission, throwing bricks through windows, or vandalising power supplies.
There may be people who are afraid to walk about after dusk, but in the vast majority of cases their fears are unfounded. Violent crime has been plummeting in the UK for years. Even at its height, "dark alleys" were pretty safe.
Making ever more draconian laws, curtailing more and more people's freedoms will not help to alleviate these irrational fears.
In response to "Violent crime has been plummeting in the UK for years", we may want to bear in mind the possibility that the PR talents and ability to control the press of UK governments and police forces has been on the rise for years.
The answer to that is proper policing force, not custom laws that ban individuals from begging. It's not a beggars fault if a non-harassing "got any change" makes you feel uncomfortable.
At what point am I "allowed" to feel uncomfortable? Is it the first time in a day when I'm asked for change outside the Post Office? Is it the second or third time in a day when I'm asked for change at the bus stop? How about the fourth, fifth, and sixth time when I'm asked for change at the major transfer point for buses and trains where lots of people have to wait? Or the seventh when I'm coming out of an office building?
Why do people get to impose themselves on me, from advertisers to panhandlers to petition gatherers, repeatedly, day in and day out? I'm not talking about ambient noise or other people going about their business, chatting with each other and interacting how they want to interact. Why is it OK for me to be interrupted multiple times a day--especially when I'm in places where I have no other choice than to be--before I get to say I'm "uncomfortable?"
I realize that the law can and probably will be imposed unfairly and I disagree with the overly broad impact that it will have, but I can slightly understand the motivation behind the original idea.
> At what point am I "allowed" to feel uncomfortable? Is it the first time in a day when I'm asked for change outside the Post Office? Is it the second or third time in a day when I'm asked for change at the bus stop? How about the fourth, fifth, and sixth time when I'm asked for change at the major transfer point for buses and trains where lots of people have to wait? Or the seventh when I'm coming out of an office building?
The solution to your discomfort is for homelessness to be tackled meaningfully, not to have the police get extra authority to remove those people from your sight.
I spent several years traveling only by public transit and running into beggars at least twice a day. During that same period, I also once had a cop pull up to a bus stop, start harassing me and actually threaten to arrest me for standing there (I was waiting for the last bus of the night). Guess which experience was worse?
Again, if the advertisers, panhandlers and petitioners are not harassing you (which violates existing laws), what exactly is the problem? Not to mention that some places may have laws banning certain practises outright. If enough people are feeling uncomfortable by non-harassing panhandlers, then a general no panhandling law will be passed. Some places (a city in Brazil) has a no advertising law.
The question isn't about someone's right to feel comfortable, it's laws targeting an individual instead of a class. A place decides no petitioning? Sure, fine (putting aside any civil rights issues). A place decides petitioning is OK, unless they don't like a specific petitioner? How does that make sense? If the petitioner is acting correctly, why should they get a ban? And if they aren't, why isn't their unacceptable behaviour categorically banned?
Each individual is not harassing me but in the aggregate it is annoying and harassing. That's why I retold one (particularly bad) day like I did. One person, fine. Eight people, fuck it I'm staying indoors today. Each person was acting lawfully but the point is that all of them added together were a nuisance, especially since that kind of activity--leafleting, panhandling, and petition gathering in particular--gather around places where people must be. If I need to take route 5B into downtown, I have no choice but to be at a bus stop along route 5B so I can't just remove myself from the situation. At some point, "people have no right to not be annoyed" turns into "people have the right to impose annoyances on others" and I think that preventing this change is a worthwhile goal, even though the law from this article goes too far.
I don't know about the culture where you come from / where you are, But isn't being in public just that? Being in public. When you get out there, you do open yourself for social interaction and conversation / nods / smiles / chit chat and even pan handling.
As long as they are not directly accosting you, how is this their problem? How do you expect an individual person to know that you have been already approached 8 times?
At least where I come from, the logic goes like this: You don't want to deal with the public? Don't be in public. YMMV.
Poverty is not the issue, though it is the cause. Restated, I have no problem with someone begging for change _because they are poor_. The problem comes from being hassled, repeatedly, daily, by anywhere from 1 to 8 (not kidding, kept count) people who are trying to sell me something, trying to get me to give them change, or trying to have me sign a petition of some sort. Where does the line for my choosing not to interact with anyone blur into being forcibly interacted with?
It's a free country, and you're in a public place. The right to make other people feel uncomfortable is far more important than the right to not feel uncomfortable.
and it's more important than the actual risk of crime.
No.
Reducing fear of crime is valuable in itself, for the simple reason that it generally improves quality of life. Educating the public is useful to that end, and frankly we could do with a lot more of it, starting with putting all the security theatre and scary announcements whenever we travel anywhere these days back in perspective. But assuaging irrational fears is a lousy way to choose what to legislate. Laws should be created based on real needs, not imaginary bogeymen.
I'm wondering: where is the new George Orwell? Why aren't all writers writing about this? Clearly we need a new 1984, because we didn't learn anything from the original.
I doubt a book would make much difference. Something with more mass appeal, like a movie or TV show maybe. But it's still a long shot IMHO.
Or you know, we could vote those people out of office. We keep bashing those clueless politicians but we did put them here in the first place. We don't even have the excuse of dictatorship.
This tendency around these parts to look for technical solutions (tor, bitcoin, etc...) for political problems is very saddening.
Assuming most of the readers of HN come from democratic countries, we shouldn't have to fear our government. No amount of openSSL will fix that problem.
> Or you know, we could vote those people out of office. We keep bashing those clueless politicians but we did put them here in the first place. We don't even have the excuse of dictatorship.
The sad truth is that politics is basically a marketing game. Whoever pours the most money into ads and campaigning has the best chance of winning [1]. There aren't enough people who care enough to do their own research to make a real difference
The old joke: "Don't vote, it only encourages them" has been on the wall of London's Anarchist Bookshop for years. Sadly, the false dichotomy of American politics, the corrupt buying of candidates and parties there and in most places, a lack of desire of anyone who wants to be a politician to rock any boat and make lasting structural change means that sometimes you need to do more than just play the fixed game with already loaded dice, where the prize doesn't really do much for you anyway.
I'm working on several strategies in this space. Perhaps we should gather some constructive conspirators.
See, that sounds jailworthy already, even though it's in the spirit of opening up debate, discourse and emancipation...
>If enough people do that, he might accidentally get elected.
Alternatively, if no one voted, the corrupt bastards couldn't legitimately claim power.
This is a serious flaw in our current implementation of "democracy". If you don't vote for the two /three main parties (who are all neocons anyway), you are effectively ignored. People argue vote, or not to vote, but in the end whatever either of these options will be ignored.
In some elections, inquorate elections do not stand, and a re-election is required. This would be a good idea, but is unlikely to happen.
In some places (notably Australia) government feels legitimated by compulsory voting (even fr expats). I don't know the sanctions for not voting, but voting turnout there is high.
> Or you know, we could vote those people out of office. We keep bashing those clueless politicians but we did put them here in the first place. We don't even have the excuse of dictatorship.
Yeah, but do you really think Labour would be any better? Both parties seem so scared of the Mail and the Telegraph that they'll do anything to look tough on crime. Thinking about it, is this the inevitable result of an aging population?
I'm not from the UK, I was talking in general. It's terrible that we come to consider the government the enemy when we're the one who are supposed to put them here.
Maybe the next series of Black Mirror will have something that covers these things more specifically? I think it's covered some very interesting concepts already.
Orwell's thoughts and writing were shaped by his experiences of the British public school [1] system, serving in the colonial police service, living as a homeless person in Paris and London, fighting on the republican side in the Spanish civil war, and (late in his life) seeing how the second world war played-out. These experiences honed his conscience and anger.
It's hard to imagine people who have lived similar lives now (maybe a minimum-wage warehouse worker from South London who went to fight with the rebels in Syria and came home wounded) believing that society can be changed in useful ways by writing fiction.
And if they did, and they became a threat to power, the daily mail would probably destroy them fairly quickly. Different times.
[1] In the UK, "public schools" are mostly what everyone else on the planet calls private schools.
> Orwell's thoughts and writing were shaped by his experiences of the British public school [1] system, serving in the colonial police service, living as a tramp in Paris and London, fighting on the republican side in the Spanish civil war, and (late in his life) seeing how the second world war played-out. These experiences honed his conscience and anger.
I disagree. I'm sure education and lifestyle was important in shaping Orwell's world-view, but I believe that he was inspired by the Nazi Germany and Stalin's Soviet Union and not by the Spanish civil war or his schooling years.
He witnessed first-hand how totalitarian governments operate and a possible future outcome. A book that played a major role in his understanding of the Soviet Union was Darkness at Noon[1] by Arthur Koestler written in 1940, a book which gives an insight view of the Moscow Trials[2] in 1938. Orwell's 1984 was published in 1949.
I agree that Nazi Germany and Stalin's Soviet Union were certainly major inspirations for his writing 1984 and Animal Farm. But those are just his best-known works.
They don't really explain, for example, why he voluntarily lived as a homeless person before writing Down and Out in Paris and London, or his feelings about the plight of working people that motivated the writing of The Road to Wigan Pier. Its also worth noting that in Spain he was fighting against Franco's fascists in the mid-30s because he could already see where that belief system leads.
Orwell's experience of private education resulted in his strong views about the role of class and privilege in British society at the time - concerns which are arguably still relevant today. His time in the colonial Burmese Police led him to say, in The Road to Wigan Pier, that "I hated the imperialism I was serving with a bitterness which I probably cannot make clear". It would be interesting to speculate on what he would think of UK foreign policy after 9/11.
Orwell was a social critic. In the context of the issues raised Monbiot's article and the question about a "new Orwell", anyone who was successfully taking on that role would be doing more than just writing cautionary tales about possible future totalitarian dystopias.
> I disagree. I'm sure education and lifestyle was important in shaping Orwell's world-view, but I believe that he was inspired by the Nazi Germany and Stalin's Soviet Union and not by the Spanish civil war or his schooling years.
His experience of the Communist party and the infighting on the Republican side during the Spanish civil war was a massive influence, though.
To further clarify, a tramp is someone who travels around but works only if/when he has to, a hobo is someone who travels around mainly looking for work and a bum is someone who does neither.
This is news to me, but a neat distinction. American English, I presume, since the latter two are unknown in English usage, unless they've just become archaic and associated only with American (see "soccer"). I suspect these nuances have been lost to most, but then that's a common problem in modern usage.
We don't really see tramps anymore in the UK. Your definitions are correct. A tramp is someone who is always on the move. We saw lots of them after the two world wars in the UK, as conscripted traumatised ex servicemen returned home. I'd imagine in the USA to see a few Vietnamese War veterans to be tramps now.
About twenty years ago, while day-hiking in the southern part of the Peak District, I got talking to a guy who was walking the same section of road as me. He was pretty shabbily dressed and his shoes were worn-out, and he said he was walking from (I think) Birmingham to Carlisle to stay with his brother because he had no money and nowhere to live. He told me he was keeping away from towns and sleeping in forests and barns. All his possessions were stuffed into the pockets of his coat. We walked a couple of miles together and he seemed like a nice guy.
Not exactly a "gentleman of the road" with a spotted-hanky-bundle on a stick, but the nearest I've seen to an archetypal tramp. I hope he made it.
I originally used the word "tramp" because (from memory) that was the word Orwell used to describe himself in Down and out in Paris and London; corresponding to the meaning described at [1]. I was aware that it is considered pejorative, but not the different meaning in US English.
Also, just to confuse things, in Scotland they are generally called "private" schools and are extremely popular in some places - Edinburgh has 25% of kids attending private schools.
There's one coming this year. Can't necessarily claim Orwell's talent, but having taught with a professor who made this very point a couple of years back, I've been working on a sociopolitical novel on this specific topic (with bells on) since then on and off and now it's getting into shape. The autumn's events (Brand v newsnight, NSA) have for me been very encouraging in demonstrating that I've not just been barking up my own tree.
Charles Stross (cstross on HN), Cory Doctorow and Ken MacLeod off the top of my head. They're nowhere near as prophetic as George Orwell as modern governments are becoming totalitarian police states too quickly to keep up with.
Sure, I think I was referring to time scale rather than accuracy. cstross in particular complained on twitter recently that plot elements of novels he's working on annoyingly started to appear in the headlines.
I'm not sure the fault lies with Orwell rather than with us.
Orwell showed us a world where rampant socialism, statism, lack of individual liberties, twisting of language for political means, and widespread unaccountable surveillance led to a horrific dystopia. People read the book and people agreed that it was something best to be avoided. But at every opportunity people have flinched away from the example of 1984. People have said "oh, but this socialism is the good kind, it's different", they said "this statism isn't that kind of statistm", and "it's only a small limitation of liberty in exchange for valuable improvements in safety", and "these changes to language are in service to a greater good", and so on, and so on. Then we get to widespread, unaccountable surveillance by the state and suddenly everyone starts shouting about 1984 and wondering how things could possibly have gotten so bad without anyone noticing.
Lots of people have been noticing, but even more people have been ignoring, or excusing.
That's a very creative interpretation of Orwell's work. You do realise that he was very much a socialist and that much of his work was inspired by his socialism, right?
Not many are willing to go against the atomistic monoculture, as it would break many liberal ideals held since the enlightenment. There is a case against nanny-state policies in Nassim Taleb's Antifragile, but not sure if it's close to what you mean.
idk, what I'm reading in this article is that it's basically going back in time, i.e. before 1984 where the rich could afford having gated communities.
> Sadly Britain does have a problem in some communities with ingrained, persistent and extremely damaging anti-social behaviour.
yes, for instance the banker community behaved in a very financially antisocial manner. Though that's probably not what you meant. Your task next is to work out the comparative magnitude of these different problems and to compare that to the magnitude of effort expended on prosecuting them.
Even accepting your thesis for a minute, because one group gets away with bad behaviour does that mean we should excuse everyone's bad behaviour and let everyone behave as badly as they wish? I fear anarchy lies that way.
Anyway global regulators are doing all they can to clean up the banks and have them pay restitution for their actions. So it's not like they are being allowed to carry on either.
> Anyway global regulators are doing all they can to clean up the banks and have them pay restitution for their actions. So it's not like they are being allowed to carry on either.
Oh, you mean like how the credit default swap market is back to 2008 levels already? Perhaps you're referring to how clearly illegal behavior (HSBC) was settled without any well-earned prosecutions? Yes, they are definitely on the case! Just after we remove some of these undesirables first...
> because one group gets away with bad behaviour does that mean we should excuse everyone's bad behaviour
That's not what was said, nor was it what was meant. I explicitly mentioned prosecuting both of them, but brought up the blind spots that contain the larger problems. Paying a lot more attention to the much smaller problem is not logical.
> Anyway global regulators are doing all they can to clean up the banks and have them pay restitution for their actions. So it's not like they are being allowed to carry on either.
Not as far as I know. Citation needed of the number of bankers prosecuted or jailed for malfeasance. And to why it can't happen again.
Would there be a bigger picture, showing us, how these behaviour comes into being? How it could be addressed or prevented in other ways? "Ingrained" seems to indicated, that you feel (yes, it's an emotion , not an established fact) there is no help anyway, so lets get rid of them. Society, after all, does not exists. It's you or them?
In the light of the recent complaints on this blog about homeless people in SF: maybe there is a completely surprising "disruption" lurking, if you do not address this subject with a "we" mindset.
Put posters into stident halls of residence giving accurate information about how much people drink.
Early research suggests that some people drink lots because they think that's the norm and it's what everyone else is drinking.
When someone ends up in a&e for alcohol related stuff a note is taken of who sold them alcohol. This allows us to aee if any particular clubs need to work on harm reduction.
Change minimum pricing for alcohol, and prevent special offers for alcohol. This would have minimal impact on most people, but would help reduce binge drinking.
Have better training for gps and gp nurses. Most people drinking too much are not serious enough for specialst drug and alcohol rehab, and primary care is a more appropriate setting for them.
Urban design and planning can set expectations - early experiments show that clubbers leaving a premises are quieter with good planning of te environment.
"Society, after all, does not exists. It's you or them?"
I think it's difficult to paint retube as believing that society doesn't exist when they used the term "anti-social". It kind of implies society, don't you think?
It's like a kid in class that would stare at you constantly and if you complained say "All I'm doing is just looking at you. I can look at you can't I? Other people look at you all the time and you don't complain!".
Some behaviors can fine by themselves or excusable as one-offs, but become obnoxious in particular circumstances, often persistent repetition such as constantly playing very loud music, persistently parking a car in front of someone's driveway, etc.
We all have the right to do many things, but in some situations if those rights are persistently abused it can be fair that there's a way to withdraw them, or escalate the penalty of an otherwise minor infraction, but only in specific circumstances.
>It's like a kid in class that would stare at you constantly
This may be annoying, but it is not a crime.
Loud music, blocking driveways: now there are often existing rules about these. Rules that are objective (eg: no noise heard in a residence that exceeds 40 db between 9 PM and 8 AM) are the right way to stop the nuisance behavior not: "I don't like your looks, so you can't make any noise here."
Rules that are objective (eg: no noise heard in a residence that exceeds 40 db between 9 PM and 8 AM) are the right way to stop the nuisance behavior not[.]
On paper, that sort of thing is great, but as far as I've seen, it falls apart pretty quickly in practice. As someone currently trying, and failing, to use proper channels to deal with antisocial behaviour from a neighbour, the `objective' rules actually end up tying the hands of those trying to fix the problem. What starts out as a well-intentioned action with the aim of ensuring fairness pretty quickly ends up acting as a shield for the offender and a roadblock for the victim. In my particular case, and the case of several others with whom I've spoken, the problem is compounded because the victims have Uni degrees and non-regional accents, so they're clearly bo-boes throwing their weight about and drive out the `disadvantaged'.
>the problem is compounded because the victims have Uni degrees and non-regional accents, so they're clearly bo-boes throwing their weight about and drive out the `disadvantaged'.
So the only solution to "bad government" (lack of enforcement) is more "bad government" (we-don't-like-you laws.) Sorry, I don't agree.
I used to work in local government doing ordinance enforcement and I would have pilloried any inspector who performed as you describe.
It was my experience however that people would move into certain areas because they were extremely cheap and then complain about the pre-existing problems. My favorite were people who moved into new condo building adjacent to commuter train tracks and then complained about frequency and noise of the trains.
Depends on the extent. If it is persistent, and makes you genuinely fear for your safety, it can be assault (in the UK assault does not require the person to touch you).
Which is another reason why this law is idiotic: The legal system in the UK already have ways of dealing with this. However the police generally do not want to follow up allegations related to these crimes because e.g. assault without any physical contact is extremely hard to prove for obvious reasons.
If they try hard to avoid enforcing the current laws, there's little reason to think the new law is being pushed forward to help the public.
This is such an American attitude.
Seriously, "bad guys"? I stopped using that term as a child. I learned that there are two side to almost every story.
It is good that finally there will be sufficient powers and less efforts required for the police to finally restore the order in the post apocalyptic crime ridden wasteland that is UK /s
It blows my mind that this is possible in a country like the UK.
It remains to be seen whether it really is, and if so, for how long.
Remember, this is basically all being done because ASBOs have been a failure by almost any metric you can imagine. They were always controversial on civil liberties grounds. They became a badge of honour, or perhaps I should say an achievement to be unlocked, for many of the very people whose behaviour they were supposed to moderate. They were widely ignored by those supposedly constrained by them. And they didn't get a free ride when they were inevitably challenged in court, either.
They were also challenged by the courts so parliament is basically remaking them in their original form again.
Given that criminal barristers are protesting poor working conditions right now I think the government might want to think about making enemies in the legal profession.
Ha, who am I kidding. This government thinks they're above everything.
Question: have things always been like this in the past few decades? Have we always gated off our poor, and passed laws to harass them? How can we change it, and will we ever? I honestly am asking, not rhetorical.
people would be able to organize protests? it looks more like a "manifestation censorship"... this is the established power controlling what people can and cannot in public spaces in a spooky way.. this is ridiculous..
sorry to tell you that but.. you are no longer in a democracy in UK.. because you dont control anything anymore
Is not politicians that should control people, but people that should control politicians
I'm not sure if ASBOs are perfect, but for anyone that has had to share a street with (for want of a better word) complete arsehole neighbours, I should imagine they are a god send.
Can you elaborate an example where the neighbour is not violating any laws or bylaws, and needs a tailored law against them?
Best I can come up with off the top of my head is a restraining order, when there's obvious potential for very damaging acts, but no crime has been committed yet, or for parole type scenarios.
TBH, I don't know enough of the law to provide an example. There may well be laws that would cover the case, but the ASBOs seem to be the preferred instrument by councils or whoever. If I was the person suffering the harrassment/noise pollution/whatever, I wouldn't really care what legal instrument was used.
I found that apt. I enjoy opera and ballet. If you stand outside the coliseum 15 minutes before an ENO performance, you will see - most surely - opera lovers hogging the pavements. I cannot imagine for one moment a PC handing out a citation to a single one of them. Teens waiting to get into a show in camden however, I can see these being handed out like take away flyers. (sorry for the bad analogy)
When opera lovers start looting shops, then the police will start handing out citations. You seem to think it's unfair that a group with no history of causing trouble should be treated differently from one that has. And yes I have been both a teenage goth in Camden and in the queue at the ROH to see Turandot (among others).
Treating a group differently because a similar group was trouble in the past is no way to run a police service!
If it's a bunch of people affiliated with a political ideology (e.g. EDL marches, occupy) then you might have a point since they're voluntarily associating - but profiling based on age, race, what type of entertainment they're queuing for, that is unjustifiable! think of the number of false positives....
The existence of football hooligans would tend to disprove that. Also punks. You can actually very easily correlate "trouble" with "preferred entertainment".
Punk was political, specifically anarchist - argument void.
I didn't say you can't correlate it, I said you can't treat them all like criminals by default - only a small fraction of football fans are violent, similarly teenagers.
A law that effectively bans people queuing up to watch football is the same level of crazy as banning teenagers from queuing up for goth metal.
Political, specifically Fascist I think you mean. There is a big overlap with punks, football hooligans and BNP/Combat 18. Ever heard of Skrewdriver? Where does the law ban people from standing in queues?
Your initial comment referenced the possibility of people being given an order for "clogging up the pavement", whether protesting, queuing for the opera, etc - that is what I've been referencing.
I never said I agree with it, I am merely stating opinion of how this law will be (ab)used. I have been to many shows in camden myself and have caused a fair share of trouble "on the pavements". This law is a terrible idea - but make no mistake - the author knows exactly how it will be levied.
Instead of attacking 1-2 cherry picked (and typical Monbiot) tangents from the article, it would be helpful if you'd point out if his representation of the new law is accurate or not.
Various independent sources cited including Liberty - a well respected organization covering human rights issues in the UK. And of course, Parliament's own official publications of the bill.
Of those only 7 and 8 can be considered valid. Liberty, whether you agree with them or not (on some issues I do, on some I don't) no-one can deny is a lobbying group with an agenda. And I am pretty sure even Wikipaedia frowns on using Wikipaedia as a reference, why does the Guardian get a free pass to reference the Guardian? Scriptonite is just some guy's blog!
Why can't references to (allegedly) biased source be references? Every author has an agenda, knowingly or unknowingly. Unless they referenced papers are false or lie they still may reference facts that allow you to form your own opinion - just don't take every conclusion at face value. At least the author provides you with the references so you can go an check for yourself.
Also: Why are you excluding reference 1? It's a paper written for the RICS, which is an institution of the royal charter. They probably have their own agenda, but I'd not expect them to publish false information.
There's nothing wrong with an article referencing something from another article in the same paper. It doesn't count as a circular reference if the articles are by separate, identifiable authors. Wikipedia needs stricter citation rules because it's harder to verify authorship.
There are two approaches to dealing with that problem. The first is laws like this, which allow the police to prosecute them simply for walking the streets in a group, and set them up for life with a criminal record. That will inevitably lead to worse crimes in the future as they find themselves unable to work because of that record.
Alternatively the government could stop cutting funding for organisations that try to provide a place where they can go and be children without causing others trouble. Youth centres are shutting down due to a lack of funding - the one I volunteer at only functions because its funded by a local church, and even then it only just scrapes by.
Honestly, I don't really know where I'm going with this, other than needing to rant about the fucked up approach this government is taking with their "Big Society", carefully focused on making sure the poor are criminalised, and the rich don't have to worry about supporting them.