As regular readers of this blog will know my line manager in my current job has systematically driven me from it. She has set up conflicting demands, i.e. that by dismissing any suggestion I make as irrelevant or 'inappropriate', even striking through proposals I have written and then complains that I defer to her too much and do not propose innovations. Similarly she complained that I bothered her too much coming to talk to her about things, so I reduced that and used more emails, but that too is wrong as now I am not speaking to her sufficiently and not asking 'probing questions'. She says she finds me too submissive but fears coming to speak to me.
One reason for not asking probing questions and getting everything written down, as I have explained before, is because she forgets what she has said to me previously, for example, switching the days of regular meetings and twice altering the number of copies of reports that have to be produced. Now, there is no problem changing your mind, but when she has she insists it must be me who was doing it deliberately wrongly as she could 'never' have thought the other way let alone given instructions saying that. I have tried to fit in with everything she instructs but even that is apparently inappropriate 'complying' or 'fitting in' with her wishes is the wrong attitude, so she says, though she cannot indicate the right attitude I would adopt, it is just that I am wrong.
Anyway, in the current pattern of working in the UK, the line manager decides everything and so removes you by the rules she sets with no come-back. Thus, over a period of nine months not only has this job proven to be impossible for me to hold on to, no matter what I try to do, it has effectively brought my career to an end at the age of 44. Ahead lies having my house repossessed and a long period of unemployment for me, simply because of the caprice and personal prejudices of one manager.
Obviously all of this has caused stress for me as I have sought ways to please my manager and cling on to my job only for her to come back with new criticisms in the highly indignant way which is apparently the common attitude. My very behaviour is insulting and apparently even a question I asked at a public lecture was insulting to her and 'an embarrassment' to myself and the unit, despite the fact that the lecture was unrelated to the work of my company let alone my unit. Apparently, I am both too confident and outspoken, but insufficiently positive and by that very fact I disparage the unit. I would ask anyone how could they be positive when facing such criticism especially when it is often contradictory. I think I am doing well not to have had a nervous breakdown faced with such Kafkaesque treatment.
I know I will not work again for a long time and that all that I have worked for over the past ten years has been trashed in less than hat in months. One challenge going forward is not holding on to hatred. It is so easy to curse my boss and just to think, 'what if?' before one of these nasty meetings (typically lasting 2-3 hours). What if her car broke down, what if she was attacked in the street, what if she fell ill, what if someone found something to complain about her for, what if someone made her comply with the rules of the company, what if her friends in high places disowned her, or even better, turned on her? It is very easy, sometimes consoling to run through these scenarios. However, I realise how corrosive such thoughts can be. I have written recently about how anger might feel good, but like a narcotic actually damages you and hatred is much the same.
I am undecided on whether I believe in karma, but I do think that you can trigger some immediate effect if you let yourself hate. It begins to blind you to how someone else believes. Perhaps my manager has set out intentionally to do me harm, but it is more likely that she genuinely believes she is right to criticise me and remove me from the company, that I am truly insulting and will damage the reputation of her and the business she works for. If I cannot see the way she sees the world then I cannot be alert to things I might be able to do to make things that little bit less unpleasant for me. Another thing, I realise, is that I am probably well out-of-step with current business culture, in which you are free to take individual words or even tone of voice as something which causes offence to you, for which you have to become vocally indignant and visibly horrified. I must say some of the 'horrified' performances are quite comic as if the manager in question has suddenly gone back to the days of Jane Austen and seen an inappropriately clad man emerging from the lake.
Though I do not like Catherine Tate's 'comic characters', I think the phrase of one of them 'how very dare you?' perfectly sums up the indignant tone so often used; self-righteousness taken to an absurd level. Maybe the absurdity is why I am slow to spot that such an attitude is a weapon that can be turned against anyone they choose. By being offended you stop the question being one of a difference of opinion and turn it immediately into a moral question, one in which you have already seized the 'high ground'. In addition the horror expressed at the view disagreed with means that they can shut down any rational discussion, 'it's so offensive, I can't talk about it' means that they can make a charge, define that it is bad and shoot down any challenge all in one.
Perhaps rather than anger, I should pity the people who are so lacking in business skills that they have to resort to such tricks simply to get their way. Getting their way is a key goal, not just in substance but down to the minute details, individual words, colour of text, absolutely everything. For them getting 99% of what they want is not enough. Even with 100% it is not 'wrong' or 'inappropriate' if not expressed precisely the way they want it (even if they never actually tell you this). Unless you can read your manager's mind you are going to suffer. Maybe I am less tolerant of this attitude than some people but I have seen even very good workers who are praised across their departments, criticised over small issues, sending an email a day later than expected (even with two weeks remaining before the deadline) and not expressing something the exact way the manager wants. Even such petty things they are told, is 'letting the side down'.
I am getting back into repeating my postings about indignitaries and this posting is about something different, even though in my case it has been prompted by indignitary behaviour. What I check myself from doing is running through all this speculation of how bad or even mildly discomforting things should happen to my line manager, even if in part as some kind of balance for the unpleasantness she has assiduously inflicted on me, whatever her motive. Beginning to have thoughts like these are the first step on being contaminated by hatred. Such fantasies begin to dominate your waking thoughts, perhaps even your dreams. They can easily become more extreme. Talking with friends and colleagues it was fascinating how one advised me in all seriousness to shoot my manager and that he being in with certain people in West London could organise that. Another said how he had identified the car park at the company which had no CCTV surveillance and was near to a public exit to the site so was the ideal one for assaulting people returning to their car! To some degree it is heartening to think that I am not alone in thinking this way about our company's management, but on the other hand, it alarmed me to think that I was at risk of becoming like these two, just a step away from actual violence.
I know that simple prejudice at work can muck up your entire life and the lives of those people around you. Violence would do that to a greater extent, not only messing up the life of the manager, perhaps she would simply brush it off, but others around her and of course, myself and others around me. I do worry that if she is mugged or burgled or her car vandalised, already it is me at the top of the suspect list which would put me into even worse circumstances. In addition, it is corrosive to think this way. If there is no way you can get at being treated so badly by your manager, then you have to rely on non-human sources.
I think the reason why karma and 'vengeance is mine sayeth the Lord' were brought in for humans was to stop them wasting their lives. It is so easy to get into a frame of mind in which you think about how the person might come unstuck from severe action you might take against them to humiliate or discredit them to simple things such as their car breaking down on their way to the meeting at which they are going to treat you so badly. This clogs up your brain and means you fail to focus on things like trying to get another job or engaging with effective ways of winning some compensation, Thoughts of revenge easily become your entire focus and sap your energy. While the target is probably oblivious to your thoughts, you are effectively helping them to win by damaging your own life on top of the damage they have already inflicted.
It can be stunning how many people cannot see beyond their own egos. Not only my current manager but also bullies in the past have believed that I 'need to see' that what they are doing is 'right' because it is nothing more than common sense. Their view of the world is so distorted that they set their own moral boundaries. I have sometimes thought what characterises evil and have come to a conclusion that it is a focus which is just on the benefit of the individual and however that can be achieved, with no thought or even disapproval of those affected by the actions of the evil person. If we look at real evil people (as opposed to portrayals) they generally do not believe they are evil. Think of the serial killers and the war criminals, they all believe what they did was 'right' even 'moral'. Yet by objective judgement they are evil. Now I am not equating my manager with such criminals, but it seems all too common that you have people in business who are so focused on their own personal advancement and ensuring their personal perspectives are the only acceptable ones that they begin to stray into modes of behaviour that we see among the genuinely evil.
Everyone, even the most powerful will face people they feel hard done by, whether this is genuine or not. In some/most/all cases we can wreak retribution on these people. Yet to be obsessed in planning to do so, let alone acting on it, we are further corroding ourselves. We become consumed, literally, eaten up by the need for revenge. It strips us of our faculties, we can no longer see clearly, we can no longer hear differing advice, we cannot think about other things, certainly we lose enjoyment. We all hope that 'whatever comes around, goes around' and that the person gets their come-uppance. Of course, quite often we never see them 'fall', but from the moment they begin treating us and others badly, they are beginning to lose and they will continue losing. Perhaps not in the financial sense, but in the fact that they chip away at their humanity and people respond to that.
For all her apparent success, no-one trusts my manager and they only do what she wants not out of respect but from fear of their own positions, something which will no doubt increase now they have seen what has been done to me and how quickly. Things will be done for her at best in a lacklustre way. In addition even the CEO of a company cannot work in a vacuum they need to hear differing perspectives to their own. If they are not then the company will falter, not immediately but steadily. This is happening in my context already no-one is warning my manager of the pitfalls she is walking into. To do so would be to risk being treated the way I have been. Being way behind schedule in planning a prestige event, not keeping the website updated, jobs she has taken on herself but is neglecting because she puts no store by the views of colleagues; only she can be right. When your views are rejected so often you stop giving your view. Consequently you can already see she is walking head long into failure. Her obsession with the advertising of an upcoming prestige event has meant she has neglected the organisation of the event and with less than four weeks to go has only a single speaker for the whole day. There is no incentive for me to step in and try to rectify that. My ideas have now been taken up by her and have become 'hers' but her obsession with style over substance means that the event will fail, it is too late to prevent this now.
It is hard not to wallow in anger and a desire for revenge against someone who has treated you badly. However, with reflection it can be seen that it does more harm to you than to them. In addition, there will be revenge maybe that you will never witness, but it will come. A person who is a bully reaps the consequences of such behaviour and will fail. Their narrow focus means they miss the warning signs and they will not listen to any alerts that they are busily marching towards such an outcome. You have to accept that some balance ensure they will not escape unpunished by their behaviour and instead cut yourself off from concerning yourself any longer with that person otherwise you risk being dragged down into their morass alongside them.
Showing posts with label indignitaries. Show all posts
Showing posts with label indignitaries. Show all posts
Sunday, 1 April 2012
Sunday, 11 March 2012
Caution: Indignitaries At Work
I am now in line to be kicked out of my job. It is not on the grounds that I have stolen money or harrassed anyone or even was incompetent, it is simply that my manager dislikes me. She somehow sees my very person let alone my manner, offensive. She complains I repeat myself and write too long emails and yet goes on at length repeatedly around the office whining the same stories to everyone about her washing machine. She complains I do not meet the 'high standards' of the department, primarily on the basis that I lack 'team spirit' a very ill-defined criterion which basically comes down to whatever she thinks it should be. It has nothing to do with being a colleague as I have worked successfully with the other seven people in my office and tens of others across the company. What is alarming is how a single manager has so much power, how she can set different rules for me to my colleagues. I am supposed to eat elsewhere, I am supposed to knock more loudly on her door than my colleagues, I have to notify her in a particular way if I have to go to the doctor, something my colleagues do not have to do. She complains that I am too outspoken but also that I defer to her too much. There are no objective measures of her criteria which allows her to say such contradictory things at one time. She spends so much time socialising with senior staff, taking up a large part of the working day, that they take her views without question. I have tried to talk to her manager and simply have been told he cannot discuss the case. There is no-one I can turn to bar the union representative and I have no idea what you do in such situations if you are not in a union.
For me the severity of this step is great. I am liable to be kicked out with no pay and so will immediately default on the mortgage payments on my house meaning that my fears of having it repossessed have only been delayed by a year. It seems unlikely that I will work again as I will be unable to get anything but a highly biased reference from my manager. I have explored the problems with this particular manager before: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2011/12/why-are-british-managers-so-bad.html
Looking back I wonder if I could have done anything different to forestall this problem and the answer seems to be no. The case against me has been built on such insubstantial complaints that if it had not been these then it would have been something else. Basically the difficulties were two emails which apparently were critical of how my unit worked, though you would struggle to find that meaning in what I wrote. I suppose that I should not have said that I had no ability to control scheduling, the thing that the correspondent was making a mild complaint against. Apparently I was supposed to accept blame for things I cannot control. I was told I should not have said a colleague was off sick, even though that is completely the reverse approach to the previous place I worked. There they felt if you did not reveal the cause of the shortage of staff as something legitimate like illness then you were effectively criticising the company for not looking ahead sensibly to recruit sufficient staff. A more established in my office made the identical error some weeks later and while he has been chastised for it he is not being kicked out. I also said that my job did not involve cleaning up, which is a statement of fact. However, in a twisted way, this has been portrayed as being an unacceptable statement, on the grounds that it is both disparaging to cleaners who do a wonderful job; makes me appear as arrogant due to my qualifications and experience and yet also is said to show I have no pride in myself and thus, by implication no pride in my colleagues, thus violating the team spirit requirement. This statement was apparently so offensive that it led to a complaint being telephoned in by a visitor.
The last damning charge is that I did not inform my manager correctly before going to a hospital appointment despite it being in the Outlook system she can access for weeks and me talking about it with her for 10 minutes precisely a day before I went. Apparently it is fine that she forgot the conversation and she argues that she cannot afford the few seconds it takes to check the Outlook calendar. It is also apparently acceptable for her to stamp around the office demanding where I am, when just asking one of the colleagues could have revealed that. My behaviour is portrayed as 'discourteous' whereas hers is apparently beyond reproach though to most readers I would assume it would appear at best childish at worst idiotic, but maybe I am wrong in modern British society.
This is the key factor: indignation. In our powerless society, it seems that no-one can be anyone I am the first to admit that I make mistakes, but I learn from them. In addition, I have never done anything that is so severe it should lose you your job. Is it fair that individual words, assuming they are not racist, sexist or otherwise insulting should be enough to bring down your career? Maybe in this era of unemployment it is sufficient and we should all look at every single word we use thinking how it might be turned against us.
Of course, it is impossible to see through someone else's eyes, so what to us might be anondyne, apparently can be highly inappropriate to someone else. I have neither violated what society would deem acceptable nor what my company does, just what my manager 'feels' is unacceptable. That is not even direct criticism, but apparently something that seems to her as being insufficiently ardent in singing the praises of the unit she runs. From my historical knowledge such mentality seems very much like a personality cult and I am someone like those who stopped clapping some seconds before the rest of the people having heard one of Stalin's or Mao's speeches. Of course, I will not be killed but at the age of 44, my career is over and I have effectively become unemployable for the rest of my life.
As I have noted before, it is no longer sufficient in the UK to complain about something, you have to stamp and shout at your loudest. Neither is it sufficient to be irritated, annoyed or put out, you must be utterly appalled, completely indignant, generally way out of proportion to what has happened: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2008/12/rise-of-indignitaries.html I suppose given the prevalence of this trend in society we should not be surprised to find it in the workplace. It is exacerbated by procedures like performance reviews, appraisals, probation periods, fixed-term contracts which put immense power into the hands of often poorly trained managers certainly without an ability to detach personal prejudice from their judgements of work effectiveness. It is a kind of focused discrimination, not on race, age or gender, but simply on who they like or dislike. Staff of all levels will not discuss or debate or really just complain they become indignant as if even the most minor misunderstanding has been concocted with malicious intent, both offensive in itself and aimed at bringing the company into disrepute. Of course, none of these things is done that way. However, not being indignant gives away the few grams of power they feel they have snatched and, horror of horrors, they might be forced to admit that they are sometimes wrong, something my manager seems incapable of acknowledging. Thus, by being so offended, she can play, 'it is so terrible I cannot even talk about it' card, shutting down any reasonable rational debate.
As I have noted before, the clamping down on discussion let alone the suggestion of different approaches or Heaven forbid, even mild criticism, is damaging to British business: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2011/02/i-dont-want-to-hear-that-censoring-in.html I have no idea when I might work again and it seems unlikely that it will ever be for a large company. I am naturally bitter that years of study and hard work can be trashed by the prejudice of a single individual, but I imagine it is a common occurrence. There was nothing I could have done once I got the job. If I kept quiet I was being rude and not taking sufficient initiative, if I spoke I was being rude and arrogant. There was never a way of winning and never any redemption for my 'offences'. I just post this as a warning for people who might be in similar positions, I do pity you, yet I fear this approach in the workplace will become even more common as incompetent people remain in position and unemployment rises higher.
For me the severity of this step is great. I am liable to be kicked out with no pay and so will immediately default on the mortgage payments on my house meaning that my fears of having it repossessed have only been delayed by a year. It seems unlikely that I will work again as I will be unable to get anything but a highly biased reference from my manager. I have explored the problems with this particular manager before: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2011/12/why-are-british-managers-so-bad.html
Looking back I wonder if I could have done anything different to forestall this problem and the answer seems to be no. The case against me has been built on such insubstantial complaints that if it had not been these then it would have been something else. Basically the difficulties were two emails which apparently were critical of how my unit worked, though you would struggle to find that meaning in what I wrote. I suppose that I should not have said that I had no ability to control scheduling, the thing that the correspondent was making a mild complaint against. Apparently I was supposed to accept blame for things I cannot control. I was told I should not have said a colleague was off sick, even though that is completely the reverse approach to the previous place I worked. There they felt if you did not reveal the cause of the shortage of staff as something legitimate like illness then you were effectively criticising the company for not looking ahead sensibly to recruit sufficient staff. A more established in my office made the identical error some weeks later and while he has been chastised for it he is not being kicked out. I also said that my job did not involve cleaning up, which is a statement of fact. However, in a twisted way, this has been portrayed as being an unacceptable statement, on the grounds that it is both disparaging to cleaners who do a wonderful job; makes me appear as arrogant due to my qualifications and experience and yet also is said to show I have no pride in myself and thus, by implication no pride in my colleagues, thus violating the team spirit requirement. This statement was apparently so offensive that it led to a complaint being telephoned in by a visitor.
The last damning charge is that I did not inform my manager correctly before going to a hospital appointment despite it being in the Outlook system she can access for weeks and me talking about it with her for 10 minutes precisely a day before I went. Apparently it is fine that she forgot the conversation and she argues that she cannot afford the few seconds it takes to check the Outlook calendar. It is also apparently acceptable for her to stamp around the office demanding where I am, when just asking one of the colleagues could have revealed that. My behaviour is portrayed as 'discourteous' whereas hers is apparently beyond reproach though to most readers I would assume it would appear at best childish at worst idiotic, but maybe I am wrong in modern British society.
This is the key factor: indignation. In our powerless society, it seems that no-one can be anyone I am the first to admit that I make mistakes, but I learn from them. In addition, I have never done anything that is so severe it should lose you your job. Is it fair that individual words, assuming they are not racist, sexist or otherwise insulting should be enough to bring down your career? Maybe in this era of unemployment it is sufficient and we should all look at every single word we use thinking how it might be turned against us.
Of course, it is impossible to see through someone else's eyes, so what to us might be anondyne, apparently can be highly inappropriate to someone else. I have neither violated what society would deem acceptable nor what my company does, just what my manager 'feels' is unacceptable. That is not even direct criticism, but apparently something that seems to her as being insufficiently ardent in singing the praises of the unit she runs. From my historical knowledge such mentality seems very much like a personality cult and I am someone like those who stopped clapping some seconds before the rest of the people having heard one of Stalin's or Mao's speeches. Of course, I will not be killed but at the age of 44, my career is over and I have effectively become unemployable for the rest of my life.
As I have noted before, it is no longer sufficient in the UK to complain about something, you have to stamp and shout at your loudest. Neither is it sufficient to be irritated, annoyed or put out, you must be utterly appalled, completely indignant, generally way out of proportion to what has happened: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2008/12/rise-of-indignitaries.html I suppose given the prevalence of this trend in society we should not be surprised to find it in the workplace. It is exacerbated by procedures like performance reviews, appraisals, probation periods, fixed-term contracts which put immense power into the hands of often poorly trained managers certainly without an ability to detach personal prejudice from their judgements of work effectiveness. It is a kind of focused discrimination, not on race, age or gender, but simply on who they like or dislike. Staff of all levels will not discuss or debate or really just complain they become indignant as if even the most minor misunderstanding has been concocted with malicious intent, both offensive in itself and aimed at bringing the company into disrepute. Of course, none of these things is done that way. However, not being indignant gives away the few grams of power they feel they have snatched and, horror of horrors, they might be forced to admit that they are sometimes wrong, something my manager seems incapable of acknowledging. Thus, by being so offended, she can play, 'it is so terrible I cannot even talk about it' card, shutting down any reasonable rational debate.
As I have noted before, the clamping down on discussion let alone the suggestion of different approaches or Heaven forbid, even mild criticism, is damaging to British business: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2011/02/i-dont-want-to-hear-that-censoring-in.html I have no idea when I might work again and it seems unlikely that it will ever be for a large company. I am naturally bitter that years of study and hard work can be trashed by the prejudice of a single individual, but I imagine it is a common occurrence. There was nothing I could have done once I got the job. If I kept quiet I was being rude and not taking sufficient initiative, if I spoke I was being rude and arrogant. There was never a way of winning and never any redemption for my 'offences'. I just post this as a warning for people who might be in similar positions, I do pity you, yet I fear this approach in the workplace will become even more common as incompetent people remain in position and unemployment rises higher.
Friday, 11 November 2011
Howling For Vengeance
I know that this is going to be a controversial posting, but it is something that is one of those issues that nags at me so that I need to get it out of my system. That was the prime purpose of my blog, which is why I need to write this posting even though I guess that, in turn it will irritate others. It is a factor which has come up many times certainly in my memory over the past 20 years, but the particular occasion recently that it has come to my attention is following the sentencing of Vincent Tabak for the murder of architect Jo Yeates in December 2010. Tabak received a life sentence with a tariff of a minimum of 20 years. However, for Yeates's parents this was not enough. I accept that they grieve for their daughter, but the statements they made after the sentencing suggest that the pair of them are very nasty people in themselves with an outlook which is barely different from Tabak. The couple are David Yeates aged 64 and Teresa Yeates aged 58. They seem symptomatic of the 'indignitary' approach which is so common in British society and is reinforced by the hysterical tabloid newspapers, notably 'The Sun' part of the Murdoch media empire of News International.
I have no sympathy for Tabak and certainly believe he deserves a life sentence in prison. What alarms me is the desire for the destruction of our legal processes, the move to arbitrary sentencing including execution and the fact that the language used in condemning the killer in fact help create an atmosphere which promotes such violence rather than seeks to reduce it.
The Yeateses, who have no legal training, complained that there was no death penalty in Britain and regretted it was not an option. However, in fact it seems as if even that would have been insufficient for them. Instead it appears they would have preferred to have Tabak tortured to death. In an official statement they said: 'The best we can hope for him is that he spends the rest of his life incarcerated where his life is a living hell, being the recipient of all evils, deprivations and degradations that his situation can provide.' They should be at least cautioned for trying to provoke fellow prisoners of Tabak from doing him harm. What they have no understanding of, is that the behaviour they are lauding is just the kind that excited their daughter's killer. To urge prisoners to visit such behaviour on the convicted man is simply to legitimise the kind of violence he carried out himself. In turn this will add to an 'atmosphere of permissiveness' in that others will things such 'deprivations and degradations' are acceptable for them to turn on any man or woman they feel is 'guilty'. Rather than doing anything to reduce future perpetrators, the Yeateses' language simply lionises such behaviour.
These days it seems entirely legitimate to wish for a 'lynch mob' approach to sentencing. You only have to sit in a pub when the news of such cases comes on television to know how many volunteer executioners there would be. In many ways all the legal reforms of the past three centuries seem to be forgotten and the average person in the street feels they are qualified to act as judge, jury and executioner for the person they believe to be guilty. The selection of the 'guilty' seems more based on the appearance of the person than any legal arguments. I am convinced that Amanda Knox is guilty of the murder of Meredith Kercher in 2007. The murder was a particularly perverse one and yet because Knox happens to be a beautiful American, she has to be innocent in the public eye and no-one is going around saying she should suffer the kind of 'deprivations and degradations' that were visited on Kercher. In fact, with her release on appeal earlier this year, she has mutated into a victim herself. This highlights how patronising the Americans are to other people's justice systems. Knox is portrayed as suffering at the hands of a foolish Italian court that somehow missed seeing her 'innocence' shining through.
A patronising attitude towards courts was seen in the Yeates case. It is clear that her parents had no faith in the legal system. Her father said: 'I always knew he was guilty but feel relief because I don't know how I would have reacted if the jury had come back with a verdict of manslaughter.' Again the father feels he should have been the judge, deciding on the sentence, not through the approach of law, but simply on his gut feeling. It is interesting, he probably felt the same about Christopher Jefferies, Jo Yeates's landlord who was an early suspect on to whom Tabak tried to shift guilt. I am sure if Jefferies had been charged, even though we now know he was innocent of the crime, David Yeates would be telling us how he should have been executed and how he knew that man was guilty.
The simplicity of this ability to sniff out guilt without any legal training, simply by looking at a person, leads the indignitaries to become exasperated with the legal processes. Teresa Yeates was disappointed that it took three days for the jury to decide on a majority guilty verdict (10:2) for Tabak. She said: 'It was the right verdict but it took so very long.' Of course, she sees the jurors as stupid for not being equipped as she clearly feels she is, to simply detect a guilty man and to sufficient level to satisfy the courts. Of course, the courts, juries and the whole legal system are disparaged by people like the Yeateses and organs like 'The Sun'. They self-righteously know the guilty and see any chance for the so-clearly guilty to have defence or to go through any legal process. Their favoured approach would take us back in Britain literally to the Middle Ages, to the kind of situation England had before Magna Carta of 1215. Such arbitrary execution characterises dictatorships of the kind the UK has helped to overthrow in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, but apparently for our own criminals, it is perfectly the kind of system we need to introduce.
Of course, for 'The Sun' even the Yeates's ostentatious statement about the punishments they want inflicted on Tabak are insufficient. The newspaper went further not missing the opportunity to slag off misguided foreigners, in this case, the prison system of the Netherlands, Tabak's home country on 29th October, appended to their article on the Yeateses saying: 'Dutch prisons are known for their luxurious hotel-style facilities, with each cell having its own heater, fridge and microwave'. The British are stunningly nationalistic, no other country, bar perhaps the USA, can be good enough in punishing criminals. Clearly they relish the overcrowded, insanitary conditions of British prisons which lead to murders and widespread reoffending. Much of the British public and the majority of the UK press have no faith in what our Victorian predecessors did, that there is a chance of rehabilitation. In their view as in the USA, guilty is guilty for eternity so the best thing to do is to kill the perpetrator, who will always be easily to detect, quite often because he is always going to be something like a 33-year old European man rather than a 24-year old American woman.
Infected by American culture the UK is now a society in which no emotion is sufficient unless it is taken to the fullest extent. You some how appear neglectful if you are not howling in sorrow or in anger or in calling for vengeance. Few seem alert to the actual words, most extreme so far in the Yeateses' statements, foster the kind of violent society which created the murder in the first place, a society with utter distrust in legal procedures so a society in which lawlessness in all its forms seems to be the only 'solution'. By being indignant, by howling in the media, you only foster more of the same kind of behaviour as that which distressed you in the first place. This is not civilisation it is a return to a barbaric age in all aspects.
I have no sympathy for Tabak and certainly believe he deserves a life sentence in prison. What alarms me is the desire for the destruction of our legal processes, the move to arbitrary sentencing including execution and the fact that the language used in condemning the killer in fact help create an atmosphere which promotes such violence rather than seeks to reduce it.
The Yeateses, who have no legal training, complained that there was no death penalty in Britain and regretted it was not an option. However, in fact it seems as if even that would have been insufficient for them. Instead it appears they would have preferred to have Tabak tortured to death. In an official statement they said: 'The best we can hope for him is that he spends the rest of his life incarcerated where his life is a living hell, being the recipient of all evils, deprivations and degradations that his situation can provide.' They should be at least cautioned for trying to provoke fellow prisoners of Tabak from doing him harm. What they have no understanding of, is that the behaviour they are lauding is just the kind that excited their daughter's killer. To urge prisoners to visit such behaviour on the convicted man is simply to legitimise the kind of violence he carried out himself. In turn this will add to an 'atmosphere of permissiveness' in that others will things such 'deprivations and degradations' are acceptable for them to turn on any man or woman they feel is 'guilty'. Rather than doing anything to reduce future perpetrators, the Yeateses' language simply lionises such behaviour.
These days it seems entirely legitimate to wish for a 'lynch mob' approach to sentencing. You only have to sit in a pub when the news of such cases comes on television to know how many volunteer executioners there would be. In many ways all the legal reforms of the past three centuries seem to be forgotten and the average person in the street feels they are qualified to act as judge, jury and executioner for the person they believe to be guilty. The selection of the 'guilty' seems more based on the appearance of the person than any legal arguments. I am convinced that Amanda Knox is guilty of the murder of Meredith Kercher in 2007. The murder was a particularly perverse one and yet because Knox happens to be a beautiful American, she has to be innocent in the public eye and no-one is going around saying she should suffer the kind of 'deprivations and degradations' that were visited on Kercher. In fact, with her release on appeal earlier this year, she has mutated into a victim herself. This highlights how patronising the Americans are to other people's justice systems. Knox is portrayed as suffering at the hands of a foolish Italian court that somehow missed seeing her 'innocence' shining through.
A patronising attitude towards courts was seen in the Yeates case. It is clear that her parents had no faith in the legal system. Her father said: 'I always knew he was guilty but feel relief because I don't know how I would have reacted if the jury had come back with a verdict of manslaughter.' Again the father feels he should have been the judge, deciding on the sentence, not through the approach of law, but simply on his gut feeling. It is interesting, he probably felt the same about Christopher Jefferies, Jo Yeates's landlord who was an early suspect on to whom Tabak tried to shift guilt. I am sure if Jefferies had been charged, even though we now know he was innocent of the crime, David Yeates would be telling us how he should have been executed and how he knew that man was guilty.
The simplicity of this ability to sniff out guilt without any legal training, simply by looking at a person, leads the indignitaries to become exasperated with the legal processes. Teresa Yeates was disappointed that it took three days for the jury to decide on a majority guilty verdict (10:2) for Tabak. She said: 'It was the right verdict but it took so very long.' Of course, she sees the jurors as stupid for not being equipped as she clearly feels she is, to simply detect a guilty man and to sufficient level to satisfy the courts. Of course, the courts, juries and the whole legal system are disparaged by people like the Yeateses and organs like 'The Sun'. They self-righteously know the guilty and see any chance for the so-clearly guilty to have defence or to go through any legal process. Their favoured approach would take us back in Britain literally to the Middle Ages, to the kind of situation England had before Magna Carta of 1215. Such arbitrary execution characterises dictatorships of the kind the UK has helped to overthrow in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, but apparently for our own criminals, it is perfectly the kind of system we need to introduce.
Of course, for 'The Sun' even the Yeates's ostentatious statement about the punishments they want inflicted on Tabak are insufficient. The newspaper went further not missing the opportunity to slag off misguided foreigners, in this case, the prison system of the Netherlands, Tabak's home country on 29th October, appended to their article on the Yeateses saying: 'Dutch prisons are known for their luxurious hotel-style facilities, with each cell having its own heater, fridge and microwave'. The British are stunningly nationalistic, no other country, bar perhaps the USA, can be good enough in punishing criminals. Clearly they relish the overcrowded, insanitary conditions of British prisons which lead to murders and widespread reoffending. Much of the British public and the majority of the UK press have no faith in what our Victorian predecessors did, that there is a chance of rehabilitation. In their view as in the USA, guilty is guilty for eternity so the best thing to do is to kill the perpetrator, who will always be easily to detect, quite often because he is always going to be something like a 33-year old European man rather than a 24-year old American woman.
Infected by American culture the UK is now a society in which no emotion is sufficient unless it is taken to the fullest extent. You some how appear neglectful if you are not howling in sorrow or in anger or in calling for vengeance. Few seem alert to the actual words, most extreme so far in the Yeateses' statements, foster the kind of violent society which created the murder in the first place, a society with utter distrust in legal procedures so a society in which lawlessness in all its forms seems to be the only 'solution'. By being indignant, by howling in the media, you only foster more of the same kind of behaviour as that which distressed you in the first place. This is not civilisation it is a return to a barbaric age in all aspects.
Wednesday, 27 January 2010
Pay & Display Dismay
One section of the UK population which irritates me immensely, as anyone who reads this blog knows, are those people who believe in a 'freer' Britain in which they can speed around , use their mobile phones and park where they like with impunity. This is primarily associated with driving, whether in a car or a commercial van or lorry, but in fact this is simply because they feel they can talk about outrageous things in that sphere whereas in others such as re-introducing the death penalty and castration as sentences for courts and expelling any immigrants, would be challenged more vigorously. In the field of regulation of driving and parking they constantly portray the rules as having nothing to do with safety but simply as a form of taxation. I constantly come back to the fact that if you do not break the law, then this is a tax you are exempt from. However, it is clear these people think very individualist behaviour in vehicles, which puts others' health and lives at risk is not a crime so they should face no charges.
Another issue has come up in this regard, brought into view by the Breakfast programme run on BBC1. This is the rule that even if someone has a valid ticket to park in a particular location, if there are numerous other ones on display, they can still be fined. The response has been vigorous, that this is another tax. I am marginally more sympathetic to this argument because if these people have actually got to a car park, rather than believing they have some exceptional God-given right to park on a double yellow line with their lights flashing while they do the shopping, as I see so often, then that is a good step. However, if your car, van or lorry is full of different, similarly looking tickets, why should you compel a parking warden to read them all to find if one is correct or not. They complain about traffic wardens anyway, so why are they happy to give them more work. Perhaps councils and the government should adopt the same approach and never bother taking down road signs when the road layout is changed. Perhaps they should simply stick up signs that they have lying around rather than ones that actually relate to the towns that can be reached from the location where the sign is. Maybe we should put up a selection of speed limit signs and say that drivers have to comply with whichever one is correct for the particular road. This would be a major challenge for many drivers given that many cannot adhere to the speed limit even when there is a single clear sign.
I think, that if you cannot be bothered to keep your vehicle sufficiently tidy so that anyone can see simply whether you have the correct ticket or not, then you deserve to be fined. The UK is better than some countries anyway. I remember in France in the 1980s seeing people with a string of road tax stickers down their windscreen, but no-one in the UK would complain that we have to show only the current one on our windscreens. Potentially I could have thirteen different road tax discs on my windscreen making it a challenge for anyone to spot if I had a current one, but, of course, that is seen as a silly approach. Simply chuck away old parking permits. Or, if that is really too much trouble, at least shove them off the dashboard on to the floor!
What this whole complaint stems from is the unhealthy characteristic that seems to have taken root in the UK and is growing like mold throughout our society. This believes that the individual's desires (not even just their needs) must be satisfied and not constrained, certainly not by the safety or interests of anyone else, and certainly not policed by any state authority (just by who can shout loudest). This is already impinging on road safety but is likely to spread into other aspects of society effectively implementing 'mob rule' in many things. Examples of this spread can be seen in Simon Cowell's desire to have a political show that makes decisions by people telephoning in. Of course, tabloid newspapers have long done this, I remember an opinion poll in 'The Sun' newspaper of the 1980s which told you to ring one number if you wanted the minimum sentence for certain crimes set at 20 years and another if you wanted it at 25 years. There was no option for no sentence or 10 years or 15 years. What can be seen as a 'free' choice can easily be engineered to channel you into backing a policy which has already been established (just ask any of the dictators who have run 'free' elections) and so seemingly giving it popular support. Of course, the people peddling this kind of approach see what they do as simply based on 'common sense' whereas in fact it is based on assumptions and prejudices and excludes so many options that fall outside the very individualist approach they advocate.
If you want to see this in action just watch an episode of 'Live from Studio Five' which is made by SkyNews (owned by Rupert Murdoch) and shown on Channel 5, Monday to Friday evenings. It features former model Melinda Messenger, former footballer Ian Wright and a runner-up on 'The Apprentice' television show. It is a magazine programme which mixes coverage of celebrities with discussion of news items. This is where it is most dangerous as it presents a very right-wing perspective especially on social and legal issues in a light manner with the presenters indicating that they see pretty extreme views as somehow 'common sense'. Fortunately it only attracts 230,000 viewers. However, it is a good example of how the 'me first above anyone else' attitude is being fed into the popular consciousness and it is on this basis of assumptions about 'common sense' that more extreme steps are made to seem unassailable by those of us who would like an inclusive society that does not value freedom to behave how you like over the right of people to live in safety.
Another issue has come up in this regard, brought into view by the Breakfast programme run on BBC1. This is the rule that even if someone has a valid ticket to park in a particular location, if there are numerous other ones on display, they can still be fined. The response has been vigorous, that this is another tax. I am marginally more sympathetic to this argument because if these people have actually got to a car park, rather than believing they have some exceptional God-given right to park on a double yellow line with their lights flashing while they do the shopping, as I see so often, then that is a good step. However, if your car, van or lorry is full of different, similarly looking tickets, why should you compel a parking warden to read them all to find if one is correct or not. They complain about traffic wardens anyway, so why are they happy to give them more work. Perhaps councils and the government should adopt the same approach and never bother taking down road signs when the road layout is changed. Perhaps they should simply stick up signs that they have lying around rather than ones that actually relate to the towns that can be reached from the location where the sign is. Maybe we should put up a selection of speed limit signs and say that drivers have to comply with whichever one is correct for the particular road. This would be a major challenge for many drivers given that many cannot adhere to the speed limit even when there is a single clear sign.
I think, that if you cannot be bothered to keep your vehicle sufficiently tidy so that anyone can see simply whether you have the correct ticket or not, then you deserve to be fined. The UK is better than some countries anyway. I remember in France in the 1980s seeing people with a string of road tax stickers down their windscreen, but no-one in the UK would complain that we have to show only the current one on our windscreens. Potentially I could have thirteen different road tax discs on my windscreen making it a challenge for anyone to spot if I had a current one, but, of course, that is seen as a silly approach. Simply chuck away old parking permits. Or, if that is really too much trouble, at least shove them off the dashboard on to the floor!
What this whole complaint stems from is the unhealthy characteristic that seems to have taken root in the UK and is growing like mold throughout our society. This believes that the individual's desires (not even just their needs) must be satisfied and not constrained, certainly not by the safety or interests of anyone else, and certainly not policed by any state authority (just by who can shout loudest). This is already impinging on road safety but is likely to spread into other aspects of society effectively implementing 'mob rule' in many things. Examples of this spread can be seen in Simon Cowell's desire to have a political show that makes decisions by people telephoning in. Of course, tabloid newspapers have long done this, I remember an opinion poll in 'The Sun' newspaper of the 1980s which told you to ring one number if you wanted the minimum sentence for certain crimes set at 20 years and another if you wanted it at 25 years. There was no option for no sentence or 10 years or 15 years. What can be seen as a 'free' choice can easily be engineered to channel you into backing a policy which has already been established (just ask any of the dictators who have run 'free' elections) and so seemingly giving it popular support. Of course, the people peddling this kind of approach see what they do as simply based on 'common sense' whereas in fact it is based on assumptions and prejudices and excludes so many options that fall outside the very individualist approach they advocate.
If you want to see this in action just watch an episode of 'Live from Studio Five' which is made by SkyNews (owned by Rupert Murdoch) and shown on Channel 5, Monday to Friday evenings. It features former model Melinda Messenger, former footballer Ian Wright and a runner-up on 'The Apprentice' television show. It is a magazine programme which mixes coverage of celebrities with discussion of news items. This is where it is most dangerous as it presents a very right-wing perspective especially on social and legal issues in a light manner with the presenters indicating that they see pretty extreme views as somehow 'common sense'. Fortunately it only attracts 230,000 viewers. However, it is a good example of how the 'me first above anyone else' attitude is being fed into the popular consciousness and it is on this basis of assumptions about 'common sense' that more extreme steps are made to seem unassailable by those of us who would like an inclusive society that does not value freedom to behave how you like over the right of people to live in safety.
Thursday, 4 December 2008
The Rise of the Indignitaries
The term 'indignitaries' was one that seems to have been coined by 'The Guardian' newspaper a couple of weeks ago. To mean it seemed so perfectly to sum up a trend in British society which relates to things that I have been touching on periodically, namely that British people love getting angry. An indignitary is someone who enjoys venting their anger, to such an extent that they will often go back and get angry about things that did not irritate them at the time and certainly they made no complaint about.
Clearly this term has arisen over the complaints regarding the Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand radio broadcast which involved telephoning the elderly actor Andrew Sachs (born 1930 in Berlin interestingly) and leaving lewd messages about his granddaughter, Georgina Baillie (born 1985). Baillie is a burlesque dancer who performs under the name Voluptua with a troupe called Satanic Sluts, so not the innocent teenager I imagine many complainants envisaged. The Radio 2 programme was recorded on 16th October and broadcast on 18th October. At the time there were only two complaints to the BBC about the programme because of crude language. However, it was only subsequently that complaints came in about the phonecall 'prank'. By 29th October it had risen to 18,000 and the following day 27,000. Now it would be interesting to know how many of those people actually listened to the radio programme. Radio 2 does have 12-13 million listeners over a given week, but given its 'comfy', easy-listening approach I am uncertain how well the Ross-Brand programme sat with the rest of its output anyway.
Baillie herself demanded that both me be sacked and portrayed them as being 'beneath contempt'. Interestingly the focus was on sexual activity with this woman rather than the reference to Sachs killing himself. Partly this is because media coverage of Baillie allows pictures of a burlesque dance in her corset to be included rather than pictures of an elderly male actor. Brand was sacked and Ross was suspended. They apologised for what they said, but Baillie and her father wanted personal apologies and were dissatisfied that they did not receive them. Sachs who has been working in the media for fifty years, made no comment, probably because he has been there and seen it all in his career. Whilst the broadcast was offensive to an old man (I have no sympathy for Baillie who has made herself a lewd spectacle anyway so must expect such responses) the anger was less on what it did to him than allowing an opportunity for people to get angry. This is because, many people in the UK actually like lewd material (notably 'The Sun' newspaper which was very indignant about the broadcast but features lurid pictures of scantily clad women regularly) but also enjoy being indignant. This muddies things and has drowned any debate about how broadcasters should interact with people in the public eye, people who have primarily retired from the public eye and so on. I am sure the bulk of people who complained simply heard 'respected elderly actor', 'granddaughter' and that was enough for them to boil over.
I have been prone to this tendency myself. Reading 'The Devil's Horsemen' by James Chambers (1979) I felt furious that the barbaric behaviour of Mongol invaders of the 13th century went unpunished, in turn I was angered by Mongolia's lionising of Genghis Khan and that easily could have led to racism against Mongolians. This might seem very obscure but it is easy for all of us to fall into that sense of anger often about things over which we have no control. Where it is more dangerous is when our unnecessary anger can have a real impact. Of course someone becoming racist will impact, but there are greater problems when it is more immediate. I think Brand and Ross probably needed to be admonished but I was upset when people then wanted some purge, especially of 'Mock the Week' which has been the only political satire programme showing in the UK (I exclude poor quality US shows) in the past couple of years and political satire is vital for democracy. Some of the humour can be shocking but in a way which actually draws us up short and think about issues which is something very important.
As I have said before, anger is so popular in the UK for two reasons. Most UK people have little future ahead of them and at the moment that future is becoming more bleak with a sharp rise in unemployment and house repossessions. The British also thoroughly enjoy moaning (like complaining but without actually directing it towards anyone who can do anything about it). It is the primary occupation of many people in the UK, especially the elderly and they are probably unique in Europe in loving it so much. Moaning is the outlet which actually lets UK people tolerate how badly they are actually treated by their government, retailers, their employers, etc., in ways that no other nationality would tolerate.
Anger in the UK has stepped up a gear in the past 20 years as the British people have had to face worse and worse service and abuse from service providers such as transport companies, utility companies, etc. These days people know that unless they shout they are going to get nothing. Service providers have choked off this ability by having all this refusal of talking to abusive people and in certain contexts such as airports regularly threatening them with anti-terrorist powers even against mild complaints, such as a pregnant woman needing help with a trolley or complaints about damaged luggage. In the context of the powerlessness that the average person in the UK faces on a daily basis, anger is now the only tool left to get over that sense of futility that so many of us encounter. Of course the outlets for anger themselves are being clamped down. Either they need to leave us some outlet or they will have to start doping us with calming tablets as in 'Brave New World' (1932) which featured the drug 'Soma' with the slogan 'a gram is better than a damn'. One method at the moment to give some feeling of control to the population is all these talent shows for which the public telephone in to select who stays or goes. No wonder there is a plethora of such programmes including 'Big Brother', 'I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out of Here', 'The X Factor', 'Strictly Come Dancing', etc. Of course as politicians know the public are fickle and the judges on these programmes increasingly brindle against the public's choices which are often based on aspects that are unrelated to the format of the programme.
So, being an indignitary is about getting back some of that self-respect, some of that control that we so lack in contemporary Britain. Self-righteousness always makes you feel good and being indignant allows you to demonstrate just how right you are and more than that, that you are a person who is willing to stand out and make a point. Ironically, actually the opposite is the case. Being indignant is about joining the bandwagon, proving that you are equally as good at getting angry, as equally as righteous as your family, neighbours, colleagues, etc. Perhaps this tells us about the decline of religion in Britain. These feelings of being part of a special, right group once came from being in a religious denomination. Now, with church attendance at only 7% of UK people who say they are Christian going to church regularly, compared to 20% in Canada and 43% in the USA (though these figures have been questioned it is clear that attendance in English-speaking North America exceeds UK attendance by many times) where do people turn to get those naturally desired feelings? They unite together to complain to the BBC and demonstrate their righteousness and how they are part of the moral element of British society.
Ultimately I can understand why UK people behave in this way, it comes down to the fact that I dislike what they get indignant about. I have spoken before about my incomprehension of the hatred for speed limits on roads and in particular of safety cameras. I can understand why people dislike immigrants but I loathe the hatred they express of them and would point to how much harm such racist attitudes do to the UK. I can understand why people hate paedophiles, but I see danger too in vigilante attacks especially when aimed at paediatricians. Why do people engage in violence in order to get fox hunting back - it is cruel and unnecessary. There are many things which people should get angry about but they do not. They do not get angry about how we are bullied by landlords, ripped off by utility companies, have our families killed by speeding cars, how education is becoming so segregated, how so many children are in poverty in the UK and have no opportunity to escape, how many old people die each year of cold, how many homeless people there are, how people are bullied at work and have no security in their work, how working parents find it almost impossible to access childcare, how little politicians listen to us, how we need more schools and hospitals, how we need cheap public transport and affordable housing, how our civil liberties are being eroded, how racist political groups are getting more powerful and will wreck our cities, how patchy recycling is, how much litter people dump and how much fly-tipping they do, the use of knives and guns to kill young people, binge drinking, those are just the things I can think of off the top of my head. I am sure you could find many more.
So next time there is some moron of a comedian saying something foolish turn off your radio or your television and go and email the prime minister or your local councillor and get angry about something that is worth getting angry about. For too long we have been encouraged to think we can change nothing, but that is because so many of us have stopped trying. We have a real strength in our fury, but do not fritter it away, direct it into something which can make the UK and the world better. Be proud to be an indignitary, be one with dignity, start combating speeding in your street, not simply whine about Russell Brand.
P.P. - 04/02/2008: I remembered another type of indignitary from may days in the civil service. Back in the early 2000s I wrote a piece about the wartime code-breaking at Bletchley Park in Buckinghamshire where the British decoded the German Enigma cyphers. I made a special effort to mention the Polish contribution to this achievement. The Polish intelligence agencies were trying to break the cyphers before the war broke out and Pole smuggled out the vital encyphering wheels after Poland had been invaded in 1939 at immense personal risk. Poles also served at Bletchley Park. Less than a day after completing my piece I had an email complaining that no-one writing about breaking Enigma ever mentioned the Polish contribution and that I was no different. I felt terribly offended especially as I had taken effort to feature the full extent of the Polish input. I pointed this out to the complainant and it became clear they had not actually read what I had written but had simply assumed I would leave out the Poles from the story. I can understand that after reading numerous pieces in which that was a case, it was a fair assumption, but it blunts your compaint when you do not pay attention to what is said in a particular piece and in this case complaining at someone who sympathised with your case. So, knee-jerk responses are never healthy.
Another indignatry behaviour I was irritated by is the Israelis being unwilling to accept historical maps that do not show Israel on them even if they show a time when that state did not exist. I do not complain because I do not see the UK on a map of the British Isles period or the USA missing from maps of 18th century North America or Poland missing from a map of Europe of 1890. The world changes and maps should reflect what is happening at the time not what people wish is/was/had been the case. It weakens your case when you respond in this blanket way. Anyway which Israel should be shown? The one of Biblical times (before or during or after Roman occupation?) or the one of 1948? 1967? 1973? 2009? They all look different.
Caveat: I have nothing against Americans, Jews, Israelis or Poles, just individuals who happen to come from those nations and behave in an indignitary manner.
Clearly this term has arisen over the complaints regarding the Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand radio broadcast which involved telephoning the elderly actor Andrew Sachs (born 1930 in Berlin interestingly) and leaving lewd messages about his granddaughter, Georgina Baillie (born 1985). Baillie is a burlesque dancer who performs under the name Voluptua with a troupe called Satanic Sluts, so not the innocent teenager I imagine many complainants envisaged. The Radio 2 programme was recorded on 16th October and broadcast on 18th October. At the time there were only two complaints to the BBC about the programme because of crude language. However, it was only subsequently that complaints came in about the phonecall 'prank'. By 29th October it had risen to 18,000 and the following day 27,000. Now it would be interesting to know how many of those people actually listened to the radio programme. Radio 2 does have 12-13 million listeners over a given week, but given its 'comfy', easy-listening approach I am uncertain how well the Ross-Brand programme sat with the rest of its output anyway.
Baillie herself demanded that both me be sacked and portrayed them as being 'beneath contempt'. Interestingly the focus was on sexual activity with this woman rather than the reference to Sachs killing himself. Partly this is because media coverage of Baillie allows pictures of a burlesque dance in her corset to be included rather than pictures of an elderly male actor. Brand was sacked and Ross was suspended. They apologised for what they said, but Baillie and her father wanted personal apologies and were dissatisfied that they did not receive them. Sachs who has been working in the media for fifty years, made no comment, probably because he has been there and seen it all in his career. Whilst the broadcast was offensive to an old man (I have no sympathy for Baillie who has made herself a lewd spectacle anyway so must expect such responses) the anger was less on what it did to him than allowing an opportunity for people to get angry. This is because, many people in the UK actually like lewd material (notably 'The Sun' newspaper which was very indignant about the broadcast but features lurid pictures of scantily clad women regularly) but also enjoy being indignant. This muddies things and has drowned any debate about how broadcasters should interact with people in the public eye, people who have primarily retired from the public eye and so on. I am sure the bulk of people who complained simply heard 'respected elderly actor', 'granddaughter' and that was enough for them to boil over.
I have been prone to this tendency myself. Reading 'The Devil's Horsemen' by James Chambers (1979) I felt furious that the barbaric behaviour of Mongol invaders of the 13th century went unpunished, in turn I was angered by Mongolia's lionising of Genghis Khan and that easily could have led to racism against Mongolians. This might seem very obscure but it is easy for all of us to fall into that sense of anger often about things over which we have no control. Where it is more dangerous is when our unnecessary anger can have a real impact. Of course someone becoming racist will impact, but there are greater problems when it is more immediate. I think Brand and Ross probably needed to be admonished but I was upset when people then wanted some purge, especially of 'Mock the Week' which has been the only political satire programme showing in the UK (I exclude poor quality US shows) in the past couple of years and political satire is vital for democracy. Some of the humour can be shocking but in a way which actually draws us up short and think about issues which is something very important.
As I have said before, anger is so popular in the UK for two reasons. Most UK people have little future ahead of them and at the moment that future is becoming more bleak with a sharp rise in unemployment and house repossessions. The British also thoroughly enjoy moaning (like complaining but without actually directing it towards anyone who can do anything about it). It is the primary occupation of many people in the UK, especially the elderly and they are probably unique in Europe in loving it so much. Moaning is the outlet which actually lets UK people tolerate how badly they are actually treated by their government, retailers, their employers, etc., in ways that no other nationality would tolerate.
Anger in the UK has stepped up a gear in the past 20 years as the British people have had to face worse and worse service and abuse from service providers such as transport companies, utility companies, etc. These days people know that unless they shout they are going to get nothing. Service providers have choked off this ability by having all this refusal of talking to abusive people and in certain contexts such as airports regularly threatening them with anti-terrorist powers even against mild complaints, such as a pregnant woman needing help with a trolley or complaints about damaged luggage. In the context of the powerlessness that the average person in the UK faces on a daily basis, anger is now the only tool left to get over that sense of futility that so many of us encounter. Of course the outlets for anger themselves are being clamped down. Either they need to leave us some outlet or they will have to start doping us with calming tablets as in 'Brave New World' (1932) which featured the drug 'Soma' with the slogan 'a gram is better than a damn'. One method at the moment to give some feeling of control to the population is all these talent shows for which the public telephone in to select who stays or goes. No wonder there is a plethora of such programmes including 'Big Brother', 'I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out of Here', 'The X Factor', 'Strictly Come Dancing', etc. Of course as politicians know the public are fickle and the judges on these programmes increasingly brindle against the public's choices which are often based on aspects that are unrelated to the format of the programme.
So, being an indignitary is about getting back some of that self-respect, some of that control that we so lack in contemporary Britain. Self-righteousness always makes you feel good and being indignant allows you to demonstrate just how right you are and more than that, that you are a person who is willing to stand out and make a point. Ironically, actually the opposite is the case. Being indignant is about joining the bandwagon, proving that you are equally as good at getting angry, as equally as righteous as your family, neighbours, colleagues, etc. Perhaps this tells us about the decline of religion in Britain. These feelings of being part of a special, right group once came from being in a religious denomination. Now, with church attendance at only 7% of UK people who say they are Christian going to church regularly, compared to 20% in Canada and 43% in the USA (though these figures have been questioned it is clear that attendance in English-speaking North America exceeds UK attendance by many times) where do people turn to get those naturally desired feelings? They unite together to complain to the BBC and demonstrate their righteousness and how they are part of the moral element of British society.
Ultimately I can understand why UK people behave in this way, it comes down to the fact that I dislike what they get indignant about. I have spoken before about my incomprehension of the hatred for speed limits on roads and in particular of safety cameras. I can understand why people dislike immigrants but I loathe the hatred they express of them and would point to how much harm such racist attitudes do to the UK. I can understand why people hate paedophiles, but I see danger too in vigilante attacks especially when aimed at paediatricians. Why do people engage in violence in order to get fox hunting back - it is cruel and unnecessary. There are many things which people should get angry about but they do not. They do not get angry about how we are bullied by landlords, ripped off by utility companies, have our families killed by speeding cars, how education is becoming so segregated, how so many children are in poverty in the UK and have no opportunity to escape, how many old people die each year of cold, how many homeless people there are, how people are bullied at work and have no security in their work, how working parents find it almost impossible to access childcare, how little politicians listen to us, how we need more schools and hospitals, how we need cheap public transport and affordable housing, how our civil liberties are being eroded, how racist political groups are getting more powerful and will wreck our cities, how patchy recycling is, how much litter people dump and how much fly-tipping they do, the use of knives and guns to kill young people, binge drinking, those are just the things I can think of off the top of my head. I am sure you could find many more.
So next time there is some moron of a comedian saying something foolish turn off your radio or your television and go and email the prime minister or your local councillor and get angry about something that is worth getting angry about. For too long we have been encouraged to think we can change nothing, but that is because so many of us have stopped trying. We have a real strength in our fury, but do not fritter it away, direct it into something which can make the UK and the world better. Be proud to be an indignitary, be one with dignity, start combating speeding in your street, not simply whine about Russell Brand.
P.P. - 04/02/2008: I remembered another type of indignitary from may days in the civil service. Back in the early 2000s I wrote a piece about the wartime code-breaking at Bletchley Park in Buckinghamshire where the British decoded the German Enigma cyphers. I made a special effort to mention the Polish contribution to this achievement. The Polish intelligence agencies were trying to break the cyphers before the war broke out and Pole smuggled out the vital encyphering wheels after Poland had been invaded in 1939 at immense personal risk. Poles also served at Bletchley Park. Less than a day after completing my piece I had an email complaining that no-one writing about breaking Enigma ever mentioned the Polish contribution and that I was no different. I felt terribly offended especially as I had taken effort to feature the full extent of the Polish input. I pointed this out to the complainant and it became clear they had not actually read what I had written but had simply assumed I would leave out the Poles from the story. I can understand that after reading numerous pieces in which that was a case, it was a fair assumption, but it blunts your compaint when you do not pay attention to what is said in a particular piece and in this case complaining at someone who sympathised with your case. So, knee-jerk responses are never healthy.
Another indignatry behaviour I was irritated by is the Israelis being unwilling to accept historical maps that do not show Israel on them even if they show a time when that state did not exist. I do not complain because I do not see the UK on a map of the British Isles period or the USA missing from maps of 18th century North America or Poland missing from a map of Europe of 1890. The world changes and maps should reflect what is happening at the time not what people wish is/was/had been the case. It weakens your case when you respond in this blanket way. Anyway which Israel should be shown? The one of Biblical times (before or during or after Roman occupation?) or the one of 1948? 1967? 1973? 2009? They all look different.
Caveat: I have nothing against Americans, Jews, Israelis or Poles, just individuals who happen to come from those nations and behave in an indignitary manner.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
