Ah, George Galloway. As my husband remarked over dinner today, "it's not so much that this is par for the course with him, it's more that I expect him to be continually hitting new lows". It seems kind of unnecessary to post about why he's been a twat on this particular occasion, because a) it's pretty bloody obvious, and b) the internets are pretty much already on it. However, blogging about things that make me cross has got me this far, and George Galloway makes me pretty damn cross. Also, there's a video with more amusement value than his turgid excuse for a podcast as a reward if you make it to the end of the post.
I won't insult your intelligence by rehearsing all the reasons why Galloway's opinions about rape are stupid and wrong - rape charity Crisis's press comments say everything I would have said, except more eloquently, and this tweet says basically everything I would have said, except more wittily.
But one of the things that's really pissed me off about this is Galloway's attempt to excuse his comments by posing as a defender of the integrity of the term 'rape'. In the bit of his podcast that's been widely quoted, he says Assange's actions can't be called rape, "or you bankrupt the word rape of all meaning". Just in case we haven't got it, he reiterates this point again, in a passage that's been less widely quoted (probably for the understandable reason that you have to sit through five additional minutes of chuntering to get to it):
“I will not be
intellectually terrorised into bankrupting the word rape of its
actual, horrific meaning. Rape is a horrific thing, the currency
should not be debased by describing other things, however base, as
being rape.”
The problem is that you can't position yourself as being on the side of 'real' rape victims whilst
simultaneously pronouncing on who is and isn't a 'real' rape victim. There's something about this tactic that reminded me of the police's efforts to co-opt the definition of 'protest' to justify their persecution of protesters they don't like. If that's offensive (and it is), how much more offensive it is for Galloway to co-opt the definition of rape to justify his persecution of (alleged) rape victims he doesn't like. And more to the point, just as it's not for the state to pronounce on what constitutes a protest, it's not for a self-important misogynistic windbag to pronounce on what constitutes rape.
Right, now I've got that out of my system - here, as promised, is my favourite ever George Galloway moment. On election night in 2005, Jeremy Paxman interviewed George after it became apparent he'd ousted Oona King as MP for Bethnal Green & Bow. The result is stunning - the unstoppable force meets the immovable object. Watch it.
Tuesday, August 21, 2012
Monday, July 23, 2012
Speaking as a woman...
Coming home from work today on a hot, sticky, delayed train, and with no book, I resorted to reading the adverts on the wall. The one opposite me was an appeal for a charity called Plan. The headline read:
"Remember your first period? Leaving school? Getting married? Having your first child? Anita does.* She's 12."
So far, so hard-hitting. There followed a paragraph of text explaining that, for many girls, starting their periods is the first step to forced marriage - and that every year, thousands die in childbirth because their bodies aren't ready for it.
At this point I guess you may be wondering where this is going. As regular readers of this blog will know, I basically only ever blog when I am cross, and how could a well-meaning advert for a worthwhile charity make me cross? Well. Just to be clear, I'm sure Plan is a fantastic charity that is well worth supporting. And, fairly obviously, forced marriage is much more worthy of getting cross about than the content of the remainder of this post.
But the thing is, the next paragraph of their advert began:
"As a woman, you know how terrible this is. And as a woman, you can do something about it."
I'm sorry, what?
Obviously, I do realise that the advert was targeted at women, and perhaps they assumed that most men would stop reading at the word 'period' (although if so, I suspect they underestimated the power of commuter boredom). But really, this just strikes me as massively crass.
Now, don't get me wrong. I entirely accept that there may be aspects of the female experience that men can never entirely grasp or share, as this piece (found via this other one on the same theme) argues far more eloquently than I could manage in this post. But "knowing how terrible it is" to die in labour at the age of twelve? Not so much one of those things. Still less "doing something about it" - unless Plan has some bizarre women-only donations policy that I'm unaware of.
Partly, this bothers me because it erodes the legitimacy of the phrase "as a woman", which - see links above - I do actually believe is sometimes reasonable and important in discussions about women's rights. But partly, I just wonder whether it's the smart PR they clearly think it is. It's one thing to exclude half of humanity from your advertising pitch - it's another to insult them by implicitly labelling them with an epic inability to empathise.
* names have been changed, because I can't remember the one they actually used.
"Remember your first period? Leaving school? Getting married? Having your first child? Anita does.* She's 12."
So far, so hard-hitting. There followed a paragraph of text explaining that, for many girls, starting their periods is the first step to forced marriage - and that every year, thousands die in childbirth because their bodies aren't ready for it.
At this point I guess you may be wondering where this is going. As regular readers of this blog will know, I basically only ever blog when I am cross, and how could a well-meaning advert for a worthwhile charity make me cross? Well. Just to be clear, I'm sure Plan is a fantastic charity that is well worth supporting. And, fairly obviously, forced marriage is much more worthy of getting cross about than the content of the remainder of this post.
But the thing is, the next paragraph of their advert began:
"As a woman, you know how terrible this is. And as a woman, you can do something about it."
I'm sorry, what?
Obviously, I do realise that the advert was targeted at women, and perhaps they assumed that most men would stop reading at the word 'period' (although if so, I suspect they underestimated the power of commuter boredom). But really, this just strikes me as massively crass.
Now, don't get me wrong. I entirely accept that there may be aspects of the female experience that men can never entirely grasp or share, as this piece (found via this other one on the same theme) argues far more eloquently than I could manage in this post. But "knowing how terrible it is" to die in labour at the age of twelve? Not so much one of those things. Still less "doing something about it" - unless Plan has some bizarre women-only donations policy that I'm unaware of.
Partly, this bothers me because it erodes the legitimacy of the phrase "as a woman", which - see links above - I do actually believe is sometimes reasonable and important in discussions about women's rights. But partly, I just wonder whether it's the smart PR they clearly think it is. It's one thing to exclude half of humanity from your advertising pitch - it's another to insult them by implicitly labelling them with an epic inability to empathise.
* names have been changed, because I can't remember the one they actually used.
Friday, July 13, 2012
For 'corporate governance' read 'corporate government'
This week's Channel 4 documentary 'Secrets of the Taxman' - which investigated the outside interests of HMRC non-executive directors - dug up some brilliantly Catch-22 justifications from directors challenged about their conflicts of interest.
Phil Hodkinson, chair of HMRC's ethics committee, also just happens to be a director of a major UK-listed company incorporated in Guernsey. He began his statement by saying that, as a member of the board of HMRC, it was particularly important to him that his company wasn't involved in tax avoidance. Well, that's alright then. Even more excellently, he went on to argue that, since he was satisfied the company wasn't actually in Guernsey for tax reasons, his role in the company didn't constitute a conflict of interest. Ta-da! And, as if by magic, the conflict vanishes! No wonder they pay him the big bucks.
The thing is, though, you don't have to demonstrate that Hodkinson's company is actually engaged in tax avoidance to prove that he has a conflict of interest. The conflict doesn't depend on the motives behind the company's tax strategy, any more than it depends on what's going on inside Hodkinson's head. It's a simple matter of fact. If you are simultaneously responsible for helping to run the body that collects tax and for helping to run a company that, like all companies, has an interest in paying as little tax as possible, that is a conflict. You can argue that the conflict doesn't matter, or that it's being effectively managed (although, to be honest, I'd like to see you try). But you can't argue that it's not there.
This is a different kettle of fish from employing former corporate figures, which can conceivably be justified on a 'poacher turned gamekeeper' basis. It's hard to see any justification for inviting people with continued corporate interests to help tell HMRC what to do. The fact that HMRC apparently thinks this is perfectly fine is a worrying indication of just how far regulatory capture has gone in this country.
But lying underneath this fact is a really interesting story, about the embedding of commercial conflicts right across government. Somewhere along the line, someone decided that it would be a good idea if Whitehall departments were run more like companies. Government departments are now all supposed to have departmental boards, like HMRC's, which "will operate according to recognised precepts of good corporate governance in business". One of these precepts is the presence of non-executive directors, which the Cabinet Office says should be "largely drawn from the commercial private sector".
In a corporate context, the theory is that non-executive directors provide an independent challenge to the decisions of the executive directors. In practice, this often doesn't work very well even on its own terms - as the financial crisis exposed, non-executives are usually part of the same old boys network; they certainly didn't seem to do much to challenge groupthink in the banks.
But applying the same concept to the running of government, with seemingly little or no thought for the implications for democracy, is downright dangerous. Let's hear that guidance again: non-executive directors will be "largely drawn from the commercial private sector". Incidentally, it's not clear why experts from non-profits, the third sector or academia are thought to be inherently less suitable for these roles - save that the Cabinet Office wants departments to "tap into the expertise of senior leaders with experience of managing complex organisations in the commercial private sector". On that basis, I can think of at least one recently-departed senior leader with extensive experience of fucking up - sorry, managing - a highly complex UK banking institution who would make an exemplary candidate.
Non-executive directors exist to make boards more accountable, but whether accountability is a good thing really depends on who you're accountable to. In this context, it seem to me that what we're basically doing is making government accountable to the private sector. So conflicts like Phil Hodkinson's are not a shocking aberration - they're an intrinsic part of the system. No wonder HMRC was so relaxed about them. In this topsy-turvy world, 'good governance' means the institutionalisation of conflicts of interest and the insinuation of corporate interests at the highest levels of the bodies that are meant to keep them in check. Why does anyone think that's even remotely appropriate?
Phil Hodkinson, chair of HMRC's ethics committee, also just happens to be a director of a major UK-listed company incorporated in Guernsey. He began his statement by saying that, as a member of the board of HMRC, it was particularly important to him that his company wasn't involved in tax avoidance. Well, that's alright then. Even more excellently, he went on to argue that, since he was satisfied the company wasn't actually in Guernsey for tax reasons, his role in the company didn't constitute a conflict of interest. Ta-da! And, as if by magic, the conflict vanishes! No wonder they pay him the big bucks.
The thing is, though, you don't have to demonstrate that Hodkinson's company is actually engaged in tax avoidance to prove that he has a conflict of interest. The conflict doesn't depend on the motives behind the company's tax strategy, any more than it depends on what's going on inside Hodkinson's head. It's a simple matter of fact. If you are simultaneously responsible for helping to run the body that collects tax and for helping to run a company that, like all companies, has an interest in paying as little tax as possible, that is a conflict. You can argue that the conflict doesn't matter, or that it's being effectively managed (although, to be honest, I'd like to see you try). But you can't argue that it's not there.
This is a different kettle of fish from employing former corporate figures, which can conceivably be justified on a 'poacher turned gamekeeper' basis. It's hard to see any justification for inviting people with continued corporate interests to help tell HMRC what to do. The fact that HMRC apparently thinks this is perfectly fine is a worrying indication of just how far regulatory capture has gone in this country.
But lying underneath this fact is a really interesting story, about the embedding of commercial conflicts right across government. Somewhere along the line, someone decided that it would be a good idea if Whitehall departments were run more like companies. Government departments are now all supposed to have departmental boards, like HMRC's, which "will operate according to recognised precepts of good corporate governance in business". One of these precepts is the presence of non-executive directors, which the Cabinet Office says should be "largely drawn from the commercial private sector".
In a corporate context, the theory is that non-executive directors provide an independent challenge to the decisions of the executive directors. In practice, this often doesn't work very well even on its own terms - as the financial crisis exposed, non-executives are usually part of the same old boys network; they certainly didn't seem to do much to challenge groupthink in the banks.
But applying the same concept to the running of government, with seemingly little or no thought for the implications for democracy, is downright dangerous. Let's hear that guidance again: non-executive directors will be "largely drawn from the commercial private sector". Incidentally, it's not clear why experts from non-profits, the third sector or academia are thought to be inherently less suitable for these roles - save that the Cabinet Office wants departments to "tap into the expertise of senior leaders with experience of managing complex organisations in the commercial private sector". On that basis, I can think of at least one recently-departed senior leader with extensive experience of fucking up - sorry, managing - a highly complex UK banking institution who would make an exemplary candidate.
Non-executive directors exist to make boards more accountable, but whether accountability is a good thing really depends on who you're accountable to. In this context, it seem to me that what we're basically doing is making government accountable to the private sector. So conflicts like Phil Hodkinson's are not a shocking aberration - they're an intrinsic part of the system. No wonder HMRC was so relaxed about them. In this topsy-turvy world, 'good governance' means the institutionalisation of conflicts of interest and the insinuation of corporate interests at the highest levels of the bodies that are meant to keep them in check. Why does anyone think that's even remotely appropriate?
Sunday, July 8, 2012
All aboard the anger bandwagon! Now, where are we going?
In yesterday's Guardian, Jonathan Freedland argued that "nearly all our key institutions have lost trust" - banks, politicians, the police, the press. He concluded that "Labour has to voice this anger", or it will find an outlet outside of democratic politics, with potentially dangerous consequences.
I couldn't really disagree with any of this, but it left me feeling impatient and dissatisfied. Surely 'people are angry and don't trust authority figures' isn't news? The problem is that, as Freedland acknowledges midway through the piece, "the clear alternative ideologies around which collective rage cohered in, say, the 1930s are absent now". He mentions this as if in passing, but surely it's the crux of the problem? It's not enough for Labour to rant and rave so we all feel that they share our anger. Indeed, it seems odd to fault them for failing to do that - they seem to be doing a pretty good job of it from where I'm standing. What they're not really doing is offering an alternative.
They're not alone in this. I've just (finally) finished reading Robert Skidelsky's 'Keynes: The Return of the Master', and one of the things that really struck a chord with me was its observation that the financial crisis has revealed "an ideological and theoretical vacuum where the challenge from the left used to be: capitalism no longer has a global antagonist". Over the last four years, the feeling that capitalism is basically imploding has only intensified, as we lurch from sub-prime crisis to sovereign debt crisis to LIBOR scandal, all the while with rewards at the top continuing to soar even as austerity bites. Yet the result has been business as usual - and, worse, a swing to the right, with the Tories pulling off an amazing sleight of hand in pinning the blame for the markets' mess on profligate public spending.
Basically, it's not enough to point out that people are angry and tell politicians to hop on the anger bandwagon. What's really going to save democratic politics is a clear alternative to neoliberal ideology. At the moment, that just doesn't seem to be forthcoming. Yes, Skidelsky and others have made a powerful case against austerity. But, vital thought that is, it's fighting an intellectual rearguard action. What's missing is a clear and compelling vision of what the economy ought to look like, and how we can get it there. And that's where the left needs to be focussing its intellectual energies.
I couldn't really disagree with any of this, but it left me feeling impatient and dissatisfied. Surely 'people are angry and don't trust authority figures' isn't news? The problem is that, as Freedland acknowledges midway through the piece, "the clear alternative ideologies around which collective rage cohered in, say, the 1930s are absent now". He mentions this as if in passing, but surely it's the crux of the problem? It's not enough for Labour to rant and rave so we all feel that they share our anger. Indeed, it seems odd to fault them for failing to do that - they seem to be doing a pretty good job of it from where I'm standing. What they're not really doing is offering an alternative.
They're not alone in this. I've just (finally) finished reading Robert Skidelsky's 'Keynes: The Return of the Master', and one of the things that really struck a chord with me was its observation that the financial crisis has revealed "an ideological and theoretical vacuum where the challenge from the left used to be: capitalism no longer has a global antagonist". Over the last four years, the feeling that capitalism is basically imploding has only intensified, as we lurch from sub-prime crisis to sovereign debt crisis to LIBOR scandal, all the while with rewards at the top continuing to soar even as austerity bites. Yet the result has been business as usual - and, worse, a swing to the right, with the Tories pulling off an amazing sleight of hand in pinning the blame for the markets' mess on profligate public spending.
Basically, it's not enough to point out that people are angry and tell politicians to hop on the anger bandwagon. What's really going to save democratic politics is a clear alternative to neoliberal ideology. At the moment, that just doesn't seem to be forthcoming. Yes, Skidelsky and others have made a powerful case against austerity. But, vital thought that is, it's fighting an intellectual rearguard action. What's missing is a clear and compelling vision of what the economy ought to look like, and how we can get it there. And that's where the left needs to be focussing its intellectual energies.
Sunday, February 26, 2012
Bronte's advice to evil corporations: Just be yourself
After an embarrassingly prolonged absence from blogging I've been prodded into some semblance of action by reading Charlotte Bronte's 'Shirley', a fascinating novel set around Luddite disturbances in a Yorkshire mill. Fact of the Day: turns out Shirley was originally a man's name, and was only popularised as a girl's name by this book, whose heroine is distinctive precisely for having a male name and a male social role. Anyway, I digress. The point is, I was really struck by the following exchange between the mill-owner and one of his recently laid-off workers:
“Them that governs mun find a way to help us: they mun mak' fresh orderations. Ye'll say that's hard to do: - so much louder mun we shout out then, for so much slacker will t'Parliament-men be to set on to a tough job.”
“Worry the Parliament-men as much as you please,” said Moore, “but to worry the mill-owners is absurd; and I, for one, won't stand it.”
“Ye're a raight hard 'un!” returned the workman. “Will n't ye gie us a bit o' time? - Will n't ye consent to mak' your changes rather more slowly?”
“Am I the whole body of clothiers in Yorkshire? Answer me that!”
“Ye're yourseln.”
There are a couple of brilliant little gems in here for the corporate accountability campaigner. Firstly, that fantastic line “Ye'll say that's hard to do: - so much louder mun we shout out then” - surely a great motto for any campaigner faced with naysayers, complacency and vested interests. Perhaps I should frame it and put it on the wall next to my desk.
Secondly, it made me smile to see that companies washing their hands of problems and insisting it's the government's job to fix them is nothing new. (The mill-owner even goes on to argue that, if he were to take steps to help his workers, he'd be left behind by his competitors who had no such scruples... sound familiar?)
But the mill-worker's response to this is so simple, so powerful: 'Ye're yourseln'. (For those struggling with the Yorkshire dialect – I don't mean to be patronising, I've just seen it confuse people – that's 'You're yourself.') The heart of so much campaigning is encapsulated in these two words: the struggle to penetrate justifications, evasions and obfuscations and to reassert the basic principle that we are all morally responsible for the consequences of what we do - and that we all, whatever might be said to the contrary, have the power to do things differently. When campaigners challenge companies to stop dodging tax, pay their workers a living wage or take responsibility for their environmental impacts, what they're really saying is, 'Ye're yourseln'.
Monday, November 28, 2011
Lungs and liberty
I have just spent a traumatic hour watching Love on the Transplant List, a gut-wrenching documentary about Kirstie Mills, a 21-year-old with cystic fibrosis waiting for a lung transplant. She'd been given six months to live: the average waiting time for donor lungs is twelve to eighteen months.
Kirstie became ill and went into hospital a few days before she was due to get married. She came out of hospital for her wedding day only to go straight back in the day after. Out and back in again after an abortive honeymoon, her condition deteriorated - with two 'false alarms' along the way, where donor lungs became available that weren't a match for her body - to the point where she was on life support and literally hours from death. At the last possible moment, donor lungs became available, and she finally got the transplant. If it was unbearable just to watch, I can only imagine what it must have been like for her family.
The first thing this made me feel was really fucking proud of the NHS. Whether it was her two nurses being there (complete with fascinators) to look after her on her wedding day, or the consultant we'd seen interviewed earlier helping her into an emergency helicopter when she became ill on her honeymoon - the fact that this is how we look after ordinary citizens, for free, is pretty damn amazing. Okay, I'm prepared to believe that the camera crew following them around may have helped things along a bit, but nonetheless - I'm sure there are plenty of countries where someone of average means in that situation just would not have lived to tell the tale. (This burst of NHS patriotism may not be unrelated to the fact that on Friday I saw the awesome Laurence Clark's stand-up show about American healthcare, 'Health Hazard'.)
The second thing this made me feel - in common with most day-to-day experiences these days, it seems - was really fucking angry with David Cameron. Because at the weekend, the Guardian ran a feature where lots of people of varying degrees of fame and fortune got to ask the Prime Minister a question, and one of the questions was about moving to an opt-out system for organ donation. And his response (I'm quoting it in its entirety, in an effort to be fair) was:
This is exactly the kind of anaemic, empty libertarianism that really pisses me off. The sort that doesn't stop to think about why we value freedom, or what the consequences of failing to act on something might be, but instead unthinkingly applies the principle that state interference is bad. Effectively, David Cameron is saying that he values the rights of dead people more than he values the rights of living people not to become dead people. Or, to put it another way, he's saying that the right to life is less important than the right not to be interfered with by the state, even if that interference is something which won't affect you until after you are dead, and which you are empowered to reverse.*
But that's just it: in the tradition of thought David Cameron comes from, the right to life doesn't enter into the argument. In the jargon of political thought, it's the old positive/negative liberty debate: negative libertarianism refuses even to ask what effect a given course of action has on someone's freedom to do something, and instead only applies the test of whether it leaves people free from interference.
I've always been sceptical of this principle, and the fact that it's now basically running the country hasn't made me any less so. But it seems to me that organ donation must be one of the most extreme cases, and one that really exposes its emptiness as a basis on which to build your politics. Normally in political debates, the freedom 'to' is a bit nebulous and hard to pin down (the effects of a more generous welfare state on people's lives, for example) while the freedom 'from' is pretty clear (being able to keep more of your lovely money rather than having the state take it away in taxes). But in this case, the 'freedom to' is about as hefty as it gets - the right to life - while the 'freedom from' is paper thin, almost stripped back to the abstract principle, since it doesn't materially affect anyone living and is completely reversible. To continue doggedly applying the same meaningless formula in that situation seems to me like taking blind ideology to a morally and politically irresponsible degree.
* It's annoying that people often talk about an opt-out system as if it was a system of compulsion, which it's explicitly not. It seems to me there's a much, much bigger moral difference between a system of compulsion and a system of opt-out than there is between opt-out and opt-in.
Kirstie became ill and went into hospital a few days before she was due to get married. She came out of hospital for her wedding day only to go straight back in the day after. Out and back in again after an abortive honeymoon, her condition deteriorated - with two 'false alarms' along the way, where donor lungs became available that weren't a match for her body - to the point where she was on life support and literally hours from death. At the last possible moment, donor lungs became available, and she finally got the transplant. If it was unbearable just to watch, I can only imagine what it must have been like for her family.
The first thing this made me feel was really fucking proud of the NHS. Whether it was her two nurses being there (complete with fascinators) to look after her on her wedding day, or the consultant we'd seen interviewed earlier helping her into an emergency helicopter when she became ill on her honeymoon - the fact that this is how we look after ordinary citizens, for free, is pretty damn amazing. Okay, I'm prepared to believe that the camera crew following them around may have helped things along a bit, but nonetheless - I'm sure there are plenty of countries where someone of average means in that situation just would not have lived to tell the tale. (This burst of NHS patriotism may not be unrelated to the fact that on Friday I saw the awesome Laurence Clark's stand-up show about American healthcare, 'Health Hazard'.)
The second thing this made me feel - in common with most day-to-day experiences these days, it seems - was really fucking angry with David Cameron. Because at the weekend, the Guardian ran a feature where lots of people of varying degrees of fame and fortune got to ask the Prime Minister a question, and one of the questions was about moving to an opt-out system for organ donation. And his response (I'm quoting it in its entirety, in an effort to be fair) was:
"I think it's very difficult to have a policy that basically says if you haven't filled in the form, your organs can be harvested without your permission. It is a huge leap. But there are hospitals and healthcare systems we can learn from that have encouraged people to sign up to make their organs available. So there's a lot we can do without going the whole hog to opt-out."
This is exactly the kind of anaemic, empty libertarianism that really pisses me off. The sort that doesn't stop to think about why we value freedom, or what the consequences of failing to act on something might be, but instead unthinkingly applies the principle that state interference is bad. Effectively, David Cameron is saying that he values the rights of dead people more than he values the rights of living people not to become dead people. Or, to put it another way, he's saying that the right to life is less important than the right not to be interfered with by the state, even if that interference is something which won't affect you until after you are dead, and which you are empowered to reverse.*
But that's just it: in the tradition of thought David Cameron comes from, the right to life doesn't enter into the argument. In the jargon of political thought, it's the old positive/negative liberty debate: negative libertarianism refuses even to ask what effect a given course of action has on someone's freedom to do something, and instead only applies the test of whether it leaves people free from interference.
I've always been sceptical of this principle, and the fact that it's now basically running the country hasn't made me any less so. But it seems to me that organ donation must be one of the most extreme cases, and one that really exposes its emptiness as a basis on which to build your politics. Normally in political debates, the freedom 'to' is a bit nebulous and hard to pin down (the effects of a more generous welfare state on people's lives, for example) while the freedom 'from' is pretty clear (being able to keep more of your lovely money rather than having the state take it away in taxes). But in this case, the 'freedom to' is about as hefty as it gets - the right to life - while the 'freedom from' is paper thin, almost stripped back to the abstract principle, since it doesn't materially affect anyone living and is completely reversible. To continue doggedly applying the same meaningless formula in that situation seems to me like taking blind ideology to a morally and politically irresponsible degree.
* It's annoying that people often talk about an opt-out system as if it was a system of compulsion, which it's explicitly not. It seems to me there's a much, much bigger moral difference between a system of compulsion and a system of opt-out than there is between opt-out and opt-in.
Thursday, November 24, 2011
You say red tape, I say workers' rights...
When the government launched the Red Tape Challenge, the spin they put on it was that businesses would be much better able to create jobs and growth were they not bogged down by ludicrous, nannying regulations like the Indication of Price (Beds) Order. Haw haw, we were all supposed to say. Beds. Stupid Labour, passing stupid pointless regulations about beds. Whose idea was regulation anyway? Burn it all!
Turns out they meant to say that businesses would be much better able to create jobs and growth if we made it easier for them to fire people and harder for staff to get redress for unfair dismissal. Quelle surprise.
Price of beds... workers' rights... price of beds... workers' rights... Still not seeing the comparability, but I guess it's all a rich tapestry. A rich tapestry of bullshit.
Turns out they meant to say that businesses would be much better able to create jobs and growth if we made it easier for them to fire people and harder for staff to get redress for unfair dismissal. Quelle surprise.
Price of beds... workers' rights... price of beds... workers' rights... Still not seeing the comparability, but I guess it's all a rich tapestry. A rich tapestry of bullshit.
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