Seasons greetings, lighter days to come

                     



TASHTEGO BELIEVED RED

A hand comforts held out to one who's sinking;
And what founders deeper than a world which sinks?
Like a lost ship it never once says thanks,
Since no single hand can save its timber drinking
The poisoned salt its sides awash are flanking,
Thirsty for web of weeds or sift of sandbanks,
Its last music gunshot, its gesture poise of tanks
Over the wood where swathes of death are ranking...
But witness, the hand is no hand but an arm
Curving itself with the strong swimmer's flex
- A thousand arms which thresh against the blast
Of a regressive ocean, even whose calm
Is derelict with that impartiality which wrecks
- Yet regard, regard, the red banner nailed to the msst!

                              Malcolm Lowry 1909-1957
                              best known for novel 'Under the Volcano.
                              and seaborn short stories 'Hear us, oh lord...'


PS
The image is a collage of junkmail etc begun by Ada and finished - with sweating palms - by me. I'm 80 tomorrow and find myself more blessed with wife and family than Lowry was. Take comfort too from other facts of life at sea: tides turn and even sailing boats can make headway upwind, not straight on, but tacking this way and that. (Same with truth: 'He that will reach her, about must and about must go' - John Donne, though now he might say She)

Broke-back Democracy

Like this old Liberty ship, western democracies now seem to be falling apart. The SS Richard Montgomery broke its back on a sandbank off the coast of Kent c1944 with a cargo of explosives on board. What sometimes scuppers our so-called social democracy is the deeply unstable – undemocratic and anti-social – economy on which it habitually rests. But in this case the sandbank is not the work of inhuman nature but corporate wealth and the very rich few, mostly men, who shape it in their own interest. Or what they imagine that to be.

The current break in political formation across UK, US and EU reflects this underlying economic instability. Relatively prosperous politicians and fellow-professionals are left clinging to the superstructure, while those they were meant to represent and managed are left to sink or swim. A motley crew regroup on improvised rafts, shake their fists at elites and kick out at more-unfortunates to try to get on board. Whoever, wherever, whatever... 

New Pied Pipers, old tunes... Fairy tales and nautical images apart, I've tried to get the gist of it in a Castro letter to the Guardian Weekly. An earlier version was spiked by the Observer, but the Weekly is often more progressive, international and cheaper than its Guardian/Observer stablemates.

To the Editor

Guardian Weekly 06.12.2016

Fidel Castro didn't set out to be a Stalinist dictator, he got pushed. How could Cuba not have turned to the Soviets when the US blocked its sugar crop? How could a new leader countenance loyal opposition with the CIA breathing poison down his neck? Hadn't impeccable parliamentarians,Mossadegh in Iran and Allende in Chile been killed in coups prompted by London and Washington?

Democrat or not, Fidel made most of his people healthier, prouder, more educated and - for a long time - better off.  We sometimes hear the truth about ourselves from enemies and Castro was right that  'capitalism has neither the capacity, nor the morality nor the ethics to solve the problems of poverty'.

The same now goes for the 'social' democracy that overlooks and oversees our anti-social, top-down economy. Long before cold war or globalisation, US founding fathers and the UK mother of parliaments had a lot to answer for. From plantation to wage slavery, enclosures to company law, property ruled. Down the ranks of private industry and public services, we do what we're told and take what we get from bosses you dont elect...Or else. This duress,by cash not lash ensures that power and prosperity, education and opportunity trickle up.

When things come unstuck, endemic cruelties surface in repression and revenge, the worst of both worlds. Now it ca n no longer be a choice between democracy and economic justice by other means. Democracy itself must look to other means. Representative democracy, whether in elected government or company boards, must be grounded in a more direct democracy wherever we live and work. We all need time and space to meet, discuss, decide and act for ourselves, find commonsense in commonwealth.

GW

Swansea

PS 'Equality rules' says Dame Louise Casey in a race report for Mrs May, only to focus her findings on Muslim women, burkas and the Muslim Men who keep them down: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04k6v58

What's missing in this talk of social equality, as in most talk about social democracy, is any clear recognition of the economic inequality underpinning it.

What separates Pakistani and Bangladeshi Muslims from their more liberal whiter brothers and sisters is not so much religious prejudice - on either side - as the economic divisions that so effectively keep us apart. 
It so happens that most Muslims in the UK are also among the poorest people in the UK, with all that goes with it: poor housing, poor schools, poor jobs and little prospect of upward mobility. 
Race and class lines often correlate. Poor Muslims like many poor whites and so-called JAMs fall back on old instincts and traditions and make a virtue of necessity. It's not only Muslim men who are more likely to take it out on their wives if they can keep up themselves:  the more you're put down outside, the more important to be Master at home.

Social inequalities - race, gender and class - play out the economic injustices underlying them. In posher parts of Ireland, South Africa and central London, racial and religious differences may not disappear, but many of the tensions around them melt away, and people more often work together. Shared prosperity is the best mixer.

Bullying still hurts, and inequality still rules.

To the Editor

South Wales Post 18.11.2016

Cheers to Newton schoolchildren for their Red Card Racism banner. Now we could do even better. Racism is only one front for the bullying that makes life a misery for many at school. And now, with widening fault lines across society, and social media always to hand, humiliation and despair can follow children home.

When it comes to bullying, it's not just a matter of reporting, punishing and healing wounds. Clear rules are needed and recognised procedures for reporting, sanctions and redress. And a respected referee.

I'm sure a lot's already being done, and it's a long time since I taught in schools  But more recently I have met children who felt put down and ostracised, with nobody to turn to. Safe at home, I looked around for clues on current remedial action, and found this headline 'Swansea Council to show bullying the red light.'  But about bullying among teachers not children. On a link to Llangefelach Primary I found a detailed anti-bullying policy. As I write 'Children in Wales' have an Anti-bullying Week, while an Anti-bullying Roadshow tours the UK.

Back to the Newton Red Card, the football reference makes sense. The new approach could be rolled out in a clear-cut, enforceable rule-book on bullying and mutual respect. Not just Red Cards, but Yellow for lesser offences, and a Sin-Bin as last resort. Yellow for abuse, obstruction and harassment, straight to Red for violence. The referee (Care and Conciliation Officer?) would be a recognised figure in every school or year, keeping watch and making friends, taking up reports from victims and witnesses, intervening, mediating and enforcing.

The Sin Bin sanction would not be pain-for-pain but time for reflection, an opportunity to uncover motives and promote redress. Isolation is already a punishment. On BBC news the other night (R4 PM 16.11.2016) a former school-girl bully said 'If your own life's a mess, you can make a mess of someone else's.... Bullies need care as well.'.

Prevention is better than cure. Schools must give prime time for the discussion of ongoing personal and social issues that are often nearer to children's heart than exam subjects. Better understanding among children, and between children and teachers, would reduce tension and distress, free up concentration across the curriculum. Basic human communication is too important to be left to chance and not-so social media.

GW

THREE RESPONSES:

1. From (not so) old friend May Magee  22.11.2016

For over thirty-five years I worked in Play schemes, Youth Clubs, School, Out-of-school, and Out-of-work groups, probation service, drugs projects, mental health, etc. This was mostly in what are now described as ‘disadvantaged areas’. There were usually volunteers, along with poorly paid workers. When bullying was noticed or reported, it was often recognised, by the volunteers and workers, that the bullies were in need of support and that they might have problems at home. Poverty and hardship does not make people nice, although not all people who live in such circumstances turn to bullying, there are nasty and nice people in all walks of life.

Sometimes those who grow up in ‘disadvantaged’ circumstances even develop an acute sense of injustice and set out to change society. It is quite clear that those who gave their time to talk with and support ‘disruptive’ young people realised that it was their impoverished life circumstances compared to how they saw others live, that influenced their behaviour. ‘Inequality’ was not a word that was used; neither was ‘empowerment or ‘capacity building’.

When people gave up their time, often after a long day’s work, to help set up activities such as bicycle building/maintenance, sports, scouts, ramblers, brownies and so on, it was because they realised that it helped people to have something to focus on, to work with others, something to be proud of, to have ideas recognised, and to be listened to, talked with, (not at), and get to know each other. These activities benefited the individuals and fed back into the communities in which they lived.

This is just one lifetime experience, for generations, and throughout history it was recognised that the differences between those who had more and those that had little fostered bullying. Roman slaves, prisoners of war to those living under occupation, house maids, refugees etc. History and literature is littered with examples. From talking with others engaged in social work, housing projects, drug projects, education, community police, and other face to face employment it is clear many of them realised that impoverished life circumstances made a difference to people’s behaviour, especially when there was obvious wealth and privilege beyond reach.

My recent experience of voluntary engagement with young people, schools and refugees does not show any great difference in the lives of people who have a great deal and those who do not. The well-paid jobs, money and power are still at the top, while those employed to engage with ‘disadvantaged’ people and the people they are engaged with have proportionately as little as forty years ago. There have been improvements in pay and expectations of living conditions but not enough. There are still people living in conditions that foster bullying, and still vulnerable people who have no hope of escaping their environments.

Over the years so many people, even from ‘underprivileged’ backgrounds have recognised the need to redress the imbalance of life experiences and expectations. Volunteers and paid workers realised that bullying stemmed from the feeling of injustice created by the difference between rich and poor. Over thirty years ago I wrote an essay on the effect of lifestyles presented on television and advertising on those who could not afford to enjoy the holidays, activities, goods. This is likely to fuel the sense of inadequacy and failure to have or provide for a family. Borrowing money is an option, being in debt compounds negative feelings about self.

It is great that eminent people on the radio and in print point out that there is more bullying in societies where there are big differences in income, environments and lifestyles. It hard to believe that well brought up, well educated, well paid, academics and researchers were the first to notice this. However, the hundreds of thousands of pounds that have gone into salaries, research, publications, and presentations have not been wasted if their findings prompt positive changes for those who have little. Hopefully a change is going to come, there can be a better life for everyone, and it can be done by example by those who have as well as by the continuing devotion of those who give their time freely and the over-stretched, underpaid, face to face workers. Those who have little might recognise and respect the change of wealthy lifestyles, reducing their resentment and sense of injustice and creating an atmosphere where people flourish and act more kindly to each other.

2. From youngest brother Richard (Spirit Level) Wilkinson 22.11.2016It's not academics and researchers who first recognise relationships between bullying and inequality, unemployment and poor health, etc, but the recognition tends to seem more like a private opinion or hunch until demonstrated in a form which is easier to share publicly. When relationships are demonstrated in hard data, they become more than just a private perception easily denied by those with a different view, and that should increase people's confidence in their intuitions.

The graph below comes from Frank Elgar in Canada [Elgar FJ. et al. School bullying, homicide and income inequality.  International Journal of Public Health 58, 237-245, 2013.]  The numbers up the side are the percent of 11year olds who bullied others at least twice in the previous month. Along the bottom is a measure of income inequality - less inequality on the left, more on the right.The percentage of kids bullying others varies from around 2% in the more equal countries to around 20% in the less equal ones - a ten-fold difference!  And rarely in discussions of policy to reduce bullying do people talk about reducing income differences across societies as a whole, but a good deal of this kind of statistical work suggests, what many would expect, that smaller income differences weaken the grip of status and status insecurity on us all.

see also
 www.equalitytrust.org.uk

3. From (middle) brother Martiin 22.11.2016

The big pattern about differences in power and wealth that lead to many kinds of cruelty,is not the whole story. As May M shows in her examples of smaller groups of people doing more constructive things together, how things are done on the small scale can exemplify or oppose what’s s going on more generally. So even in an unequal society, there will be working groups or maybe whole companies where people listen to one another, and enjoy working together.

Same with schools. Jean, a friend during my education training year in 1966, spent her working life after that in primary schools.  After some years of experience, she told me about a way of working with her primary class not only to avoid bullying and teasing, but to get the children to care for and look after one another.  So if a child had a problem, or a new child with a difficulty or difference was coming in to the class, there would be ‘circle time’ with the others to think how they could help.  They were aware of the child’s needs, and engaged in meeting them. I take from this the idea that while we certainly should have policies and practices to spot bullying and prevent it continuing, we should also be more optimistic, and help people to know they have power to help as well as to hurt.

And while I long for people to understand the big picture, and to change it, there’s plenty of scope for small action too.

Martin

Bullying within the family? 

May M's response above speaks for itself. In my own family, I was the eldest with a built-in advantage over two younger brothers and sister. Younger brother Martin felt that, not so much because I hit or abused him but because I was bigger, stronger and more likely to win (especially if I named the games, made up the rules). Richard the youngest of three brothers was in his early teens when I left home, felt eclipsed when I came back to stay. Whereas I did alright and Martin very well at school, Richard was judged more suited to practical than academic pursuits, and clever enough to know what that implied. Susan was not just the youngest but a girl. She felt it when she was sent to a less expensive school, but did alright both there and afterwards. That said, it was good-with-his-hands Richard who won acclaim with ground-breaking research and big books on inequality. And the damage that does, not only to the poorest but most or all of us. 'Eclipsed' was his word, not mine, but most of us know what it means and how it feels. In our family, I was eldest, but that also put me first in line for our mother to get angry with...  We made up at the end of each day, and again towards the end of her life.

In some traditional societies, most people can look forward to a measure of respect and authority as they get old. When nothing much changes, those who live longest may often know best. Now that things change faster and most of us live a lot longer, we have more time to forget and what little we know may no longer apply, unless....

Last call for Swansea Tidal Lagoon

The Chancellor's Autumn statement next Wednesday November 23 may decide future of Swansea Bay Lagoon. Here's a response to a piece by Observer science-editor Robin McKie last summer, suggesting that only nuclear energy could fill the energy gap)

 

Observer 07.08.2016

'Big Issue – Hinckley Point'

Fusion or fission, nuclear power is not the only reliable alternative to fossil fuel (Robin McKie 'If not nuclear power then what?'). Sunshine, wind and waves vary with the weather, but tides still rise and fall and the flow can be safely harnessed in and out.

With nuclear fission not yet in sight, this simpler seapower could be a better bet than rejigged EPR at Hinkley Point C. In his Aurumn budget last year, George Osborne flagged up the prospect of a tidal lagoon power project in Swansea bay, only to put it out for review when the price of oil and gas came down..

This much we may already know. The start-up cost for Swansea Bay stands at £1.3 billion as against £18 billion for Hinkley Point. The planned productive life of a lagoon is more than 100 years compared with 60 years for Hinkley Point C.  Over the years, with rising output from larger lagoons around the coast, tidal input to the national grid could match Hinkley nuclear in cost and quantity.

The modest Swansea Bay venture is set to pilot a fleet of bigger enclosures with two-way turbine arrays to harness an exceptional tidal range, extending from Welsh and British coasts across the channel to France. The technology of lagoon-wall dykes and low-speed turbines is relatively simple. Lagoons carry no heavy overhang of radio-active waste and decommissioning. They are most unlikely to blow up and In case of major breakdown the damage would not be insupportable.

A government decision on funding for Swansea Bay now awaits the outcome of an independent review later this year. With luck and common sense, this could be ready in time for Philip Hammond to give the go-ahead for this first tidal lagoon in his first Autumn budget, opening the way to a wider raft of private investment and jobs along a supply chain in waiting.Better a Swansea sprat to catch an eco-friendly mackerel than a dubious go-for-broke upstream in Somerset. With Swansea Bay as my back yard, would say that, wouldn't I. Though it doesn't have to be either/or.

Greg Wilkinson

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2016/aug/06/the-big-issue-nuclear-power-tidal-power-hinkley

Brexit Britain waltzing with titanic Trump?

First response 09.11.2016

'Another day' – group email as news came in of surge for Trump

Nightmare coming true as day dawns. Brexit Britain drifting into orbit round a Trump America. Two drunks dancing in the debris of democracy. A lopsided, ill-founded democracy collapsing under its own weight. Trump, Farage and Johnson are no Samsons pulling at the pillars of the temple....

Our 'social democracy' is not social at all. Liberty, equality and fraternity do not prevail in the reality of working life as most of us know it. What we actually experience, across all the hierarchies of corporate business and public service is a top-down system of authority, reward and privilege. And this is reflected in our stripped out 'communities'.

Individual and collective efforts and rewards are misdirected. Minds misinformed by charlatans who turn us against other enemies to save themselves.For the past generation, since the end of the 1970s and the blurring-out of the red peril, the proceeds of commonwealth have been shifted out of jobs and wages into profits and top salaries. While a few at the very top got very rich, money chasing money over the rainbow, most people have fallen behind, if not actually poorer then struggling to keep up – another day older and deeper in debt. Reality, not fantasy.

The people who voted against the present system are right in that at least, although their rage is misdirected and their supposed saviours contemptible.Those of us who think we know better, and in many ways do, have only ourselves to blame. Our wisdom, like the proceeds of our knowledge industries, has been largely kept to ourselves.as it trickles our way.

Now, like the people in Mosul, Aleppo or what used to be Calais, we must somehow regroup and rebuild wherever we find ourselves... Another day, another tide, another freer, fairer commonwealth, if only we have time.

Greg

Kevin Otoo's response from Manchester:

I guess we don't get to choose who our Samson(s) will be. Most of all I like the two drunks dancing...

Here at the corner

Where the daylight bends

Into the darkness

Where the night begins

This is the place

The place we make amends

In this chance encounter

Between two old friends

This danse macabre

Where each life depends

On the one beginning

Where the other ends.

Ps.  Don't forget Delilah's contribution! Best wishes to you and Ada as always

South Wales Evening Post 12.11.2016

Race for the bottom?

Trump and Farage hobnobbed on their treks to the White House and wilderness respectively. Now I wonder what's to stop our Brexit Britain, cut loose of the EU, from drifting into a  new role as cannonball to a loose-cannon USA?

What could that mean to us?

Trump says he wants to bring basic industries back to US rust-belts, derides the outsourcing of carmaking to Mexico. Might he not want to repatriate GM from Luton or Ford from Bridgend?
But perhaps he would prefer to subsidise some kindred spirits in British politics and get the RAF flying in sync with US missiles and drones to 'bomb the shit out of Isis' ?  Who else might get hit? Would that have to go through parliament this end or could Mrs May cite royal prerogative again?

If Trump carries out his threat to wind NATO down, while the UK turns its back on joint EU defence, will the British government cling more tightly to a lop-sided 'special relationship'?  Already we depend on US warheads and guidance systems for our 'independent' Trident defence. Our intelligence networks are shared. Who calls the tune? Can we be sure that Britain wont serve as forward base or catspaw if things turn sour between Putin and Trump? With us in line for any counterblast?

The people who voted for Brexit and Trump were rightly fed up but wrong to fall for the lies and scapegoats fed to them. 'Shooting ourselves in the foot' may be one way of putting it. Except that the tommies who put bullets through their boots were set on getting out of bloody mud not into it.

If the dollar collapses, will sterling go with it? How low, and at what cost in prices, jobs and pensions?

If the US reopens coal seams to revive old mining towns, will UK or Welsh leaders be tempted to follow suit, and forget about climate change? A race for the bottom is hard to stop, A new Atlantic cynicism could sink the Swansea Tidal Lagoon as it waits for government funding, and a whole new range of forward-looking jobs.

Greg Wilkinson

To Observer 14.11.2016

Written in response to Will Hutton's lurid Trumph lament https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/nov/13/america-trade-deals-donald-trump-nafta-isolationism

Can it be correct that 'free trade' as we know it 'spreads democracy, peace and capitalism' Or does this assertion reflect the contradictions, confusion and complacency that have brought the process to a momentary halt?

Wasn't globalisation spread by capitalism as well as spreading it?  Was capital ever democratic? Does it not thrive on war as well as peace? Can a system that transfers global wealth from those who have less to those who have most have 'underpinned our collective prosperity.'

How social is a social democracy that ends where real work begins? Who voted to automate or export their own jobs, or redouble pay for bosses and bankers to 'compensate' for the damage they do to others?

If 'trade is the lifeblood of humanity,' that blood is liberally shed in several sorts of frontier war. At home the conflict resonates across fault-lines of race, religion and class, as climate chaos goes unchecked..

The choice now is not between more of the same and 'a new dark age of closure, protectionism and nationalism'. If 'trade and exchange are foundations of civilisation', then the nature of the goods on offer and fairness of the deals must also count. Civilisation, national and global, has other golden rules. 'Do as you would be done by' and 'nothing human foreign to me' hold good in many languages. Now's the time for humankind and commonwealth to reconnect across the fragile space we share. Greg Wilkinson

20.11.2016 That letter was NOT included in  today's Observer, all though they made that Hutton article Big Issue on their letters page. Some other good letters, though none of them went for the central contradictions in a 'social democracy' that oversees and/or overlooks a self-serving authoritarian economy. Perhaps I was wrong to make such a direct attack on  the doyen of Observer columnists, and to clutter up my letter with direct quotations (two reasons why a letters-editor might prefer easier reading.)  And I didnt make it clear enough that growth CAN create more wealth for more people even as it increases the depth and pain of inequality between them. What hurts about poverty, once you've got enough to eat, is precisely its relativity.  Still my radical squib may have helped to shift the balance of selection left
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2016/nov/20/big-issue-economics-free-trade-wealth-benefit-globalised-crash-2008

BACK TO BREXIT

South Wales Evening Post 28.06.2016

The swing from Labour to Leave in South Wales and other old industrial heartlands was a cry of pain and anger. For more than a generation aging Labour voters have put up with the loss of well-paid jobs and dignity as heavy industries collapse, and low-paid services cant fill the gap.Talk of economic recovery falls flat on bleak experience. EU-funded schemes may seem like adding insult to injury. The leave vote, like many other cries for help, is a deeply damaging own goal, but UKIP and the leavers didn't get everything wrong.

Immigration was never the root of our problems, but successive governments of centre-left and right have allowed or assisted a remorseless transfer of wealth from industry to finance, wages to profits, poor and middle incomes to the super-rich. As ever, the working majority earn less than the average wage, and economic statistics since 1980 confirm the experience of people who never see them. The media, who repeat lies or balance them with half-truths should hang their heads.

The trickle up of wealth and income is not just a local problem. In or out of Europe, and round the world, we're up against is a systematic misappropriation of the commonwealth. Global markets, banks and corporations exist not to feed the people or do good, but to make money for those who already have it. The EU might have given us a better chance of turning this noxious tide. Wasn't it the UK that blocked some EU curb on tax havens, and tariffs on Chinese steel?

But the die is cast, we are where we are. Now is the time for liberals and socialists, reds. greens and nationalists to combine forces for economic and social justice. We should also reach out to those who turned to UKIP for some good as well as bad reasons. It's worth remembering that Hitler's Nazi divisions set out as 'National Socialists, including many former Communists.

Boris may boast of 'bringing back democracy' but it's up to people like us to walk the walk. Democracy begins at home and where we work. Whatever happens to the UK economy, petrol, food and house prices, we can all buy British, or Welsh. We can transfer such savings as we have from casino banks to more democratic building societies and help fund mortgages. At work we can join unions for fairer shares and demand a place in the boardrooms where decisions are made and cakes are cut.

Among ourselves, as well as in party-politics, UK or EU, we can still do more together than apart. For common sense and human kindness, in the only lives and world we've got.

Greg Wilkinson

Meanwhile...

Observer 19.06.16

'Workers must be given say in how businesses are run'

(their headline, set beside a joint letter from Labour, Liberal and Trade Union leaders warning on consequences of a Brexit vote)

If capitalism isn’t good, that’s no accident. Capitalism is not about doing good but making money from human or other resources (“Capitalism’s claim to do good looks shaky if there’s little to prevent it being a force for bad”, Business). It’s the core of capitalism, not just the culture that needs to change. Parliamentary democracy has bypassed or incorporated old pyramids of wealth and power. Unreformed career ladders of promotion, reward and authority span private and public sectors – finance, industry, media and education, political parties and government.

To counter this convergence of wealth and power requires more than strong unions. What working people need is their own voice in the direction, management and reward of companies and industries that depend on them.Greg Wilkinson

https://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/2016/jun/18/letters-capitalism-give-workers-a-say

Guardian Weekly 12.08.2016

Exploitation is the culprit (their headline)

No it is not globalisation that causes “less affluent, less educated, mainly white people” to feel themselves marginalised (29 July). Poor whites feel marginalised because they are poor and marginalised, not by globalisation but by the exploitative economy that drives it at whatever human cost.

The beggar-your-neighbour system that its friends and foes call capitalism enables those with wealth to buy up whatever human and other resources they can turn to profit, and drop them when they can’t. Dead simple: buy cheap, sell dear, keep the difference and do the same again.

Capitalism may be globalised but it’s a very British disease. Fourteenth-century peasants revolted against serfdom, only to find themselves marginalised by sheep and enclosures. Luddites smashed the machines that made their manual skills redundant. Rebecca rioters in Wales attacked new toll gates rather than pay to use old rights of way.

Scapegoating of foreigners and immigrants is nothing new either; it’s sometimes prompted by those who might otherwise feel the heat themselves.

High talk of globalisation helps fuel fears of immigration. It distracts from the real case in need of treatment: a dysfunctional economic order that still evades the logic and law of social democracy.Greg Wilkinson

Bullying: inequality hurts

Email to sons, brothers, sister and wife... 16.11.2016

More Inequality, more bullying

So said Professor Dieter Wolke in BBC R4 discussion on PM news today.  Looked him up and paged down to this:

'...In some societies it has been found that bullying increases when the resources get scarce and even more interesting is the comparison between different levels of socio-economic status: the greater the discrepancy....

'The same mechanism works in schools, where for example classrooms that have a clearer developed social hierarchy, bullying rates are higher....'

(A reformed bully who took part in PM discussion said 'if your own life's a mess, you mess up other people's'. Bullies too needed caring for, she stressed.)

http://www.escap.eu/research/bullying

To younger brother Martin who may have been bullied by me:

The Wolke piece also notes that causes of bullying go back a long way and effects are long-lasting, though more so for bullied than bullies. Now I wonder if the bullied may not also be bullies, who give as good as they get to others downstream or roundabout. This sort of take-and-give is welcome when it's kindness, not cruelty that's passed around. Better a favour passed on than a favour repaid?

Perhaps I passed on my difficulties at school to you. I remember Mum saying her elder brother was hardened by his treatment at public school, blaming her long hard labours on on him pulling out a chair from under her.

Was I like that?

I dont remember being bullied at school, just isolated – tense and on my guard, keeping my end up, trying to make some mark on people and events around. One night I leaned out of bed, put one hand flat on the floor, picked up a shoe and hit the outstetched fingers with the hard heel.
Didn't Buzzard II pull out tufts of his own fair hair? And what, if anything, had that to do with his father becoming an admiral and knight of realm? At our school, all the male teachers were Sir, though I dont remember any titles for female staff. For Miss Dunkley (who taught us music, arts and crafts, nature, gardening and French0 we only had her name. She probably deserved a title for teaching us to make things, grow things, sing in tune. Instead we laughed at her heavy cord skirts, clipped manner and hair wound round her head.

Greg

And this from youngest bro:

Nice to know link between bullying and inequality got an airing on PM.  Glad to be able to say that we were the first to show this link and also the one between reduced social mobility and inequality - both have now been demonstrated by other people on larger and quite separate data sets than the ones we used.

Richard Wilkinson

Brexit, Trump and left in disarray. Time to reopen 'Wot's Left' blog after several years neglect. Meanwhile life goes on, mine and others that matter just as much to those who live, love and often fear for them. The left as I understand it is a broad spectrum from liberal through socialist, communist, anarchist and of course Green, the relatively new kid on the old reddish block. I say spectrum, because these definitions are quite arbitrary and in theory and practice overlap, some stronger here others there... Horses for courses, but more in common than apart in the human race,

PRISON VISIT

Heard on BBC this morning that prison officers were out in England and Wales. Then went out for routine bloodtest at Singleton. Parking space free near Phlebotomy door, my number already up on the little screen when I pulled my yellow ticket out...So much for waiting lists, so I took a turn down Oystermouth Road to see what was doing outside the jail

Heart sinks when I pass that place on my free bus-pass. Strange how what was once a seaside holiday promenade has become a last resort for the unworking class. No Oysters or even cockles on Oystermouth, but lots of benefit BNBs and full board for deserving cases at HMP.

Outside the heavy front gate, but inside a forecourt fence, a cheeerful posse of some 40 officers. Most were in uniform, a mix of what looked to me like older men and younger women. The 'guard' on the gate seemed reluctant to let me in and reluctant to talk to me himself, though he did say he'd worked at a London prison I knew from visiting a friend inside.

'Do you get the same mix of prisoners in here?'

'Just a cross section.. ' and why did I want to know?

I said I'd been curious, passing by in the bus,. Now that they were out seemed a good time to ask what brought them out..

'Union policy, it's there in the press.'

'So what's in like for officers and inmates here?'

'The government decides and we do what we're told.'

'Can I talk to some of the others in there?'

'I suppose so,' he said and let me by through the forecourt gate. Everyone seemed busy talking to each other. When a young woman turned and looked my way, I said:

'I was wondering what it's like in here....' She seemed nonplussed, but not unfriendly.

Is there anyone who could talk to me?'

'Him over there,' she said.

'The big man by the door?' She and others laughed, and I walked over to him. He and a colleague with him were only a little more forthcoming than the man on the outer gate. But yes, most of the prisoners here were short term, and more likely to be young. The problem was the shortage of staff. I asked about numbers of staff and prisoners, but he could not tell me that.

'What's the ratio of prisoners to staff?'

'About 30 to one, I think.'

'Like kids and teachers at school, ' I ventured and he smiled. 'Except that you have them round the clock.'

I asked if they had problems with drugs and drones,

That as well. You cant get away from it in a city... Cant stop them getting in.'

'So what about health and safety?'

'We haven't the staff to follow regulations.'

I didn't ask about self-harm and suicides, or attacks on officers.Instead I asked if they had time to let prisoners out for exercise and education, and to my surprise he said ' No, they're out most of the time.'

Then he cut me off. 'We've got a meeting now,' he said. And I was obviously not expected to attend..

As the meeting was just inside the prison courtyard, not in public space, I left it there. I'm not surprised they didn't want to talk. Who was I ? Would anything they said be used against them? At the same time I was sad that people didn't feel able to speak for themselves. Instead they took shelter behind higher authority, the government, the union, even the press..

The last 'open' union meeting I had to leave was in Algiers 1967, when Israel had just begun its Six Day war around Palestine. I cared about Algeria and the Middle East, but I could understand that. As Reuters man in Algiers, I would surely be for Israel. But I was glad that the union man who led me out put his arm round my shoulder, sorry it had to be like that.

More recently, just before and after the Brexit vote, I found similar unwillingness to talk among leave-voters when I questioned people in the park or street. I asked quite neutral questions and was quite ready to understand... My accent may have soken for itself, and so-called hardworking people dont ask questions. 

No wonder the pollsters got it wrong in both US and UK...If they bring back the double decker 224 bus in Swansea next year, I'll sit upstairs and see if I can get a peep over the prison wall.

From the gospel of St Wikipedia:

Swansea is a Category B/C prison for adult males remanded into custody from the local courts, as well as convicted and sentenced prisoners.

Prisoners are employed in the prisons workshops, kitchen and recycling units. Full and part-time education is also provided. Other features include a Prisoner And Liaison Support Scheme, a Swansea City A.F.C. Social inclusion officer scheme, Prisoner elected councils, Job Centre Plus, Housing Officers and Community Chaplaincy.

In the early 1980s, Swansea started the Samaritans trained 'Prisoner Listener Scheme', that has now been developed in most prisons in the UK.

See also this film by South Wales fireman with colleagues in Palestine and Israel. 'Firefighters in Palestine' was shown at Swansea Cinema Co last week. Worth seeing and we could do with more inside views of working life in hard times:

Film: Firefighters Under Occupation - Palestine Solidarity Campaign