Regular readers of this blog, if there is such a thing, know that I am often stimulated to comment by things written in 'The Guardian' newspaper. I am typical of many British liberals in that I get my information from it and the BBC News, these days usually online rather than watching television. However, this does not stop me being irritated by the things it says. If I pick up a copy of the far more right-wing 'Daily Mail' or 'The Daily Telegraph' then I get even more irritated, but such a high level of irritation is probably not healthy for me and there are not enough hours in the day for me to blog about them all. I suppose one issue is that with the centre ground of British politics having shifted so far to the right since 1976/9, that me, Clement Attlee and Winston Churchill let alone Sir Stafford Cripps, Aneurin Bevan and Tony Benn are left looking like left-wing extremists. I know Churchill was strongly opposed to the Socialists, but if you look at his policies these days they would seem to be of the extreme left-wing variety: a mixed economy plus a strong welfare state. Partly that comes from the fact that the Labour revolution of 1945-51 was more Liberal than Socialist in its outlook.
Anyway, we are getting off track. So, 'The Guardian' is the daily newspaper which sits closest to me politically though these days the gap is quite wide. I have also noted that too often it allows weak analysis into its articles which with a little sub-editorial work would have been picked up. However, as the 'Bad Science' column of that very newspaper constantly shows, actually stopping and thinking about things, digging below the attention grabbing headlines, is something that very few people do these days. They want shocking, easy answers rather than ones that involve real thinking. I was recommended to check out the new movie 'Idiocracy' (2006). I have no idea why I have never come across this before. However, it is about a man from present day who is put into suspended animation for 500 years and awakes in a world in which everything has been 'dumbed down'. It is a satire on current US society, but you can really believe it when you see what is written and broadcast without giving any thought to it.
On this basis I come to the columnist Simon Hoggart. He was recently selected by John Prescott to represent the essence of British middle class people. He has a very nice job, he churns out a column in 'The Guardian' on Saturday which aside from being far shorter, is really little different to this blog. The major thing is of course he gets paid for it. He pokes some gentle fun at middle class mores such as the round-robin letters sent at Christmas and recounts his life as he goes on innumerable holidays and for dinners and so on. However, there is a very dangerous thing about Hoggart and this is why I have invented the new crime of 'advocacy of eco-crime'. I accept that aside from fining people for dumping hazardous waste, eco-crime as a branch of the law is not overly developed, but I imagine that will change in the future. The advocacy element of my charge comes from legislation we do have in the UK, introduced in 2005 to punish people who whilst they may not take part in terrorism, encourage terrorism or justify or glorify it, not just in the UK but anywhere in the world.
Why do I feel that Hoggart should be charged with 'advocacy of eco-crime'? It is his incessant attacks on wind turbines. He represents these as the 'cathedrals' of what he sees as the 'religion' of environmentalism. He neglects to comment on the other 'religions' of our modern society, in particularly the highly damaging cult of consumerism which, generally unchallenged, has been setting the agenda for government policies and public behaviour certainly since the 1960s if not longer. It has 'cathedrals' in every town centre and out-of-town retail park, but I see no complaint about the rubbish and pollution these generate in vast quantities. On the basis of seeing concerns with the environment as a damaging 'religion' he simply portrays the environmentalists as misguided, foolish and to some extent dangerous. His particular gripe is with wind turbines which he feels are ugly, generate a minimal amount of electricity, wear out too quickly (despite lasting as long as a coal, oil or nuclear fuelled power station) and thus drive people away from the areas where they are introduced wrecking the tourist economy. I have seen a single wind turbine power a whole village and a factory without emitting any smoke. I do not need any more convincing of the need for them. Hoggart forgets that in the early 19th century before the country began filling with smog, air and water pollution many English counties had 200-400 windmills, to the extent that it was difficult to be anywhere without seeing one. For some reason, windmills which were a great fire hazard (due to the flour in the air you could not light a candle inside one and any spark could cause an explosion), are seen as attractive and useful but wind turbines are somehow evil. Given the strange concern about the appearance of wind turbines many are now being built out to sea, but this is still not enough. In Dorset I came across a campaign to prevent wind turbines built 16Km off shore. Would they rather have a coal-fired power station on Portland Bill instead? One advantage of wind turbines that Hoggart and others forget is that if you take them down you can erase all trace of them, but the site where a power station has been is contaminated for decades, just look at the site of the Millenium Dome built in South London where a gas-fired power station had stood. It took months to clean up the site before it was safe to build anything on it; nuclear power stations leave an even greater legacy.
Hoggart is a man of double standards. He seems delighted that some environmentalists have now seen nuclear power as the quickest way for the world to reduce its CO2 emissions. Hoggart sees this as vindication of his attacks on environmentalists (in this case Stephen Tindale, former director of Greenpeace and Chris Goodall a candidate for the Green Party) and that there should have been no opposition to nuclear power in the 1970s and 1980s, as if it would all be fine by now because we would have loads of nuclear power stations. He argues their switch in opinion demonstrates that environmentalists cannot be trusted, suggesting that we should never listen to them again. Again, this simply is derived from Hoggart's bile rather than thinking through the actual developments. The environmentalists are no big fans of nuclear power they know the risks it brings (anyone who lived through the Chernobyl disaster of 1986 is aware of this; the mutations among children born affected by it are absolutely horrific even more than twenty years on), but they see it as numerous Pacific nations are on the verge of disappearing beneath the sea as the lesser of two evils. If the UK had embraced nuclear power in the 1970s to the scale that Hoggart feels is necessary, then we could be looking at a large area, say of Cumbria (location of Windscale/Sellafield plant) and neighbouring counties around that would be uninhabitable; as it is the sea off there has major ecological damage to creatures. The UK is tiny compared to Belarus and more densely populated; 4000 people died after the Chernobyl disaster in the UK it would have been many times more.
If the UK government had not dilly-dallied over alternative sources of energy and got down to developing these in the 1970s when the oil price rises were an impetous, the UK would be in a far better position now. UK scientists were at the cutting edge in wind and wave power but a lot of their projects were under-funded or allowed to go abroad. Almost forty years have passed and Britain is only slowly making use of alternative energy. We are in a different world now, the policies of the 1970s whether from government or environmentalists would not fit in the late 2000s. Hoggart complains about the religion of environmentalism and yet he also wants to punish the 'believers' for not being sufficiently dogmatic in their views over a 40-year period. He conveniently edits his memory. I read a copy of the children's magazine 'Look and Learn' from 1964 and it outlined the damage CFCs from aerosol sprays were doing to the environment and it took thirty years to begin eliminate them from products. The environmentalists were right about that, yet to Hoggart they must be wrong or he forgets it.
Thus, I charge Simon Hoggart, columnist with the crime of advocacy of eco-crime. He has abused his influential position to glorify dangerous policies towards energy in the UK. He has sought to persuade influential people to adopt approaches that will halt the growth of much needed wind turbines and so is contributing both to the shortage of energy in the UK but also to air and water pollution and the rising of the world's average temperature. He has sought to ridicule those going about legitimate business in promoting a more thoughtful development in these areas simply on the basis of them responding to changing circumstances. He has allowed those arguing his line not to be challenged on their inconsistencies and simply often irrational behaviour to these issues.
Hoggart's punishments will be to move to the Wittenham Clumps in South Oxfordshire and every morning open his curtains to see how the vast towers of Didcot power station to the North-West blights the entire landscape of this otherwise beautiful part of England. He will be to house a family from a Pacific island which has gone under water because he has persuaded people not to move to methods of providing power that cost others so much in terms of their homes and identity. Of course he will be forced away from his column. He has had a free hand to whine on incessantly about his own, perverse perspective on things for too long; 'The Guardian' should be embarrassed to keep on employing him and should relieve him of his duties and allow more rational, thoughtful people into his place.
P.P. 22/3/2010: This weekend I noted that Hoggart, clearly out of wind turbines to complain about has now turned to cyclists, portraying them as being 'dangerous' when transported on trains. What he failed to note in his complaint against cyclists using public transport is that even a decade ago cyclists and other passengers were not compelled to mix; us cyclists simply lifted out bicycle into the guards van and stood with it all the way. It is the removal of these that has forced bicycles to mix with other passengers. Even so, bicycles on trains are no more hazardous on trains that the pushchairs, skis and snowboards, let alone the vast luggage, that Hoggart seems to have no problem with. Has he set himself a mission of trying to curtail any form of activity which will help reduce air pollution and eke out our fossil fuel supplies?
Wednesday, 4 March 2009
Tuesday, 3 March 2009
Agency Workers: Cannon Fodder of the UK Economy
One of the worst legacies of the Thatcher era (1979-90) and the Thatcherist politics we have seen since has been the casualisation of the workforce in the UK. I suppose this was a natural evolution of the anti-trade union policies that the Thatcherites felt were necessary such as the breaking down of the closed shop (i.e. it being compulsory for workers in a company to belong to a union) and the further erosion of the rights of trade unions in the early to mid-1980s. Beyond this though was the New Right attitude, that for companies to prosper they had to be able to recruit and discard workers as easily as possible without having to worry about things such as contracts and redundancy pay, effectively moving back to the kind of employment patterns prevalent before the Second World War. Along with this desire to have a 'flexible' labour force and reduce employment costs was a wish to remove the other seemingly burdensome cost of things such as sick pay, paid holiday, pensions and the costs of training staff. There was an expectation that you should be able to employ workers that were ready to work precisely for your company, the exact way you worked. This is why business has such problem with universities. It does not want educated, thinking people who may question their employers, instead they want people churned out who can fit into their particular company without any need to induction or retraining.
This attitude that this is the correct pattern of employment, with the workers giving unquestioning loyalty to a company even after they are laid off, has not really been challenged since Thatcher established as what she felt was the only 'logical' way to run workforces. The easiest way to get workforces like this is to employ them through agencies. The advantage of this is that they are not employed directly by your company, it is the agency who is responsible for the workers. They usually charge double the hourly rate that the workers are paid, but many companies and sections of the civil service and education prefer to pay these higher costs to get the flexible workforce that they feel they need. In fact this is often a fantasy as the case of a worker kept on temporary contracts for nine years at the University of Glasgow proved when he took his employers to court last year. In fact the university would have saved itself thousands of pounds if they had given the worker a contract themselves. The rights of agency workers have improved. The European Union's Social Chapter which was introduced in 1989 but which the UK finally signed up to in 1997 and The Fixed Term Employees Regulations of 2002 prompted by EU pressure have moved things on. The UK remains exempt from the Working Hours Directive of 1993. However, such rules allowed contract workers to pay into pension schemes and if their contract stopped (after a 13-week probation period) they were entitled to redundancy pay. Agencies have also introduced paid leave and sometimes sick pay, so things are getting better than in the 1990s when I was an agency employee.
My own experiences are not the worst out there but I know them well and they show up some of the difficulties that this approach to agency workers cause. I was on a contract for 2.5 years for one employer. It was a weekly contract which meant any Friday I could be laid off. My employer saw themselves as generous as they usually told me if I would be needed for the next four weeks. They reduced this to three weeks which caused difficulty for me as I had to travel for an hour on public transport to reach my workplace and buying a monthly season ticket saved me a lot of money. However, if I bought a monthly season ticket and then only needed it for three weeks my income would suffer (I was on that marginal an income). They did not understand why that was such a difficulty. They had enough work for 2.5 years, in fact for longer as it was me who resigned the job in the end, I could have stayed there longer there was more than enough for me to do and they had the money to pay me. I earned £10 per hour and worked a 36-hour week. Whilst they did not have to pay me holiday leave (I did not take one day off in 2.5 years) or sick leave, they had to pay the agency £20 per hour (half of which I received) to employ me which meant over the space of the 2.5 years (i.e. 130 weeks) x 36 hours x £10 = £46,800 for using the agency, which far exceeded any holiday pay, sick pay and redundancy pay that I would have received if I had been a member of staff.
The problems of being an agency worker did not simply extend to having no sick cover, no holiday pay or redundancy, it also prevented me improving myself. When new software was being introduced I suggested that I was sent on training to learn how to use it. I was told very directly that there was no point, when it came in, I would simply be laid off and someone who knew the software would be employed in my place. It was assumed that there would be people out there who knew this specialist software and would be willing to be employed at the same rate as me. Of course that is the 'logic' of the flexible labour market. The implication was that I should pay for training myself to make myself a suitable employee. This assumption that the burden of training should always lie outside companies whether in colleges and universities or through individuals paying for it is an enduring one. There is no comprehension that to have a new employee would lose all the expertise and experiences I had built up working for their company let alone the damage it did to my morale. No employer seems to understand that no-one wants to feel they are disposable and that if they do they are not inspired to do anything except go slow or sabotage the company. Most training courses are outside the reach of the average worker's income and as an agency worker you lose twice as you are not being paid anything while you are shelling out for the training.
The other problem I encountered when an agency worker was that no-one would take responsibility for me. This branch of the civil service employed 100 agency staff often rising to 150 over the Summer, out of a total workforce of 650 people. The Personnel Department would often refuse to communicate with me because I was not a member of staff. They did not see the problem in not signing timesheets on a Friday (a day they would pick to go on an 'away day'; I must say that the Personnel Department of that section of the civil service excelled in arrogance and self-centredness even among personnel staff) despite the fact that it meant the agency workers' wages would be delayed a week. The key problem came when the job came to an end. In Britain if you turn up at a Job Centre and have been dismissed or have resigned from your job and try to claim unemployment benefit (as opposed to income support) your benefits are frozen. You need a letter from your employer saying that they made you redundant. Now as an agency worker the Personnel Department said my work was coming to an end, but they said that because the agency was my employer it was up to the agency to write such a letter. However, the agency also refused to write me such a letter because they said it was up to the company if I kept working or not. Neither would accept responsibility for my work coming to an end despite the fact that they were condemning me to 6 months without benefits. They simply did not care what situation that left me in.
Thus, agency employment is a nightmare and leaves you very vulnerable. Of course originally employment agencies were supposed to be for people between permanent jobs or looking to find work to supplement their income as their main job was being a mother or they were retired. However, since the 1980s agency work has become the full-time main form of employment for thousands of people who have to battle to get any kind of protection. An interesting article by Owen Burcott and David Hencke in 'The Guardian' of 21st February 2009 reminded me of the extent to which agency workers are being used and how vulnerable they remain despite the legislative gains. It was found that 850 agency workers had been employed by car manufacturers BMW at their Cowley works outside Oxford and around 6,600 BT employees who were being laid off this year were agency workers. The BMW agency workers had a week's notice and received no redundancy pay, they are simply tossed aside because it is so easy. There is no thought about the fate of these people. Apparently the UK had 1.3 million agency workers, 4.5% of the workforce, almost one in every twenty workers, in 2006, a far higher percentage than elsewhere in the EU. Agency workers come from all kinds of professions from secretaries to warehouse workers to civil servants to skilled car makers to call centre staff.
The UK has a flexible labour force in its agency workers and yet it seems to have brought no benefits to the UK economy. As I have noted, companies actually delude themselves in thinking agency workers are cheaper than employing people directly, the reverse is actually the case. All that they relieve the company of is having to worry about the fate of these people. In doing this they forget about the damage to the morale of this workforce. Now, not everyone who works for an agency wants a permanent job, but from my own experience a large percentage do and settle for agency work because it is all that they can get.
There have been ongoing negotiations between trades unions and employers to get more rights for agency workers, particularly in terms of redundancy pay and periods of notice of termination of employment. Again it is only because Britain is being pressed by the EU (why can we not come up with some gains for workers without having to being pushed to do it) which wants such rights in position by 2011. You would think with a 'Labour' government in power they would be pressing ahead with such improvements, well they were until the evil (and I do not use that word lightly, I would add sleazy and corrupt to it too) Lord Mandelson who is Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise & Regulatory Reform and Pat McFadden Secretary of State for Work and Pensions are now trying to stop these minor improvements for fear of irritating business. In fact Mandelson, being an arch-Blairite rather than any Labour politician of course has no interest in benefiting workers simply in pandering to the wealthy who have got Britain into the appalling economic state it currently is in. We are supposed to get legislation before the summer but Mandelson is reviewing all that the EU is asking for to see what the minimum he can get away with and as union leaders have noted his decision to continue consultation is simply prevarication. In the meantime thousands of people are being thrown into poverty and dumped on the ritual pyre to the great false religion of flexible labour which simply means allowing employers to shaft their workforce and get away with it.
P.P. 19/03/2008 - It is interesting that the UK government this week is again resisting attempts to end its opt-out from the EU's Working Time Directive which would ensure that British workers would work no more than an average of 48 hours per week. The UK economy depends on workers doing long hours at low wages and they know it would mean a readjustment if people were stopped doing the 60 hours which are still common in some industries. Pathetically, they are using the case of volunteer fire-fighters, saying that they will be banned. There are 16,500 'retained' firefighters in the UK and 630 volunteer ones in Scotland, compared to 38,000 full-time firefighters. This is a tiny fraction of the working population. In addition, the UK is not unique in having volunteer firefighters, I know Germany has had them since the 19th century and yet they seem to have no problem with the Working Time Directive. The UK government should come clean and admit that the reason why they want British workers to be compelled to work such long hours is to keep employers on their side. These employers, despite their huge bonuses have set up a working economy based on long hours and low wages and to adjust it now would make them feel they had to lay off workers just as unemployment is rising. The British government, if it had any concern for the welfare of the British workforce, should have adopted the Working Time Directive at a time when they could have been less blackmailed by rapacious employers; it could have accompanied the introduction of the minimum wage. I find it incredible that the British government puts so much effort into fighting off legislation which would make the working lives of many of its citizens better.
This attitude that this is the correct pattern of employment, with the workers giving unquestioning loyalty to a company even after they are laid off, has not really been challenged since Thatcher established as what she felt was the only 'logical' way to run workforces. The easiest way to get workforces like this is to employ them through agencies. The advantage of this is that they are not employed directly by your company, it is the agency who is responsible for the workers. They usually charge double the hourly rate that the workers are paid, but many companies and sections of the civil service and education prefer to pay these higher costs to get the flexible workforce that they feel they need. In fact this is often a fantasy as the case of a worker kept on temporary contracts for nine years at the University of Glasgow proved when he took his employers to court last year. In fact the university would have saved itself thousands of pounds if they had given the worker a contract themselves. The rights of agency workers have improved. The European Union's Social Chapter which was introduced in 1989 but which the UK finally signed up to in 1997 and The Fixed Term Employees Regulations of 2002 prompted by EU pressure have moved things on. The UK remains exempt from the Working Hours Directive of 1993. However, such rules allowed contract workers to pay into pension schemes and if their contract stopped (after a 13-week probation period) they were entitled to redundancy pay. Agencies have also introduced paid leave and sometimes sick pay, so things are getting better than in the 1990s when I was an agency employee.
My own experiences are not the worst out there but I know them well and they show up some of the difficulties that this approach to agency workers cause. I was on a contract for 2.5 years for one employer. It was a weekly contract which meant any Friday I could be laid off. My employer saw themselves as generous as they usually told me if I would be needed for the next four weeks. They reduced this to three weeks which caused difficulty for me as I had to travel for an hour on public transport to reach my workplace and buying a monthly season ticket saved me a lot of money. However, if I bought a monthly season ticket and then only needed it for three weeks my income would suffer (I was on that marginal an income). They did not understand why that was such a difficulty. They had enough work for 2.5 years, in fact for longer as it was me who resigned the job in the end, I could have stayed there longer there was more than enough for me to do and they had the money to pay me. I earned £10 per hour and worked a 36-hour week. Whilst they did not have to pay me holiday leave (I did not take one day off in 2.5 years) or sick leave, they had to pay the agency £20 per hour (half of which I received) to employ me which meant over the space of the 2.5 years (i.e. 130 weeks) x 36 hours x £10 = £46,800 for using the agency, which far exceeded any holiday pay, sick pay and redundancy pay that I would have received if I had been a member of staff.
The problems of being an agency worker did not simply extend to having no sick cover, no holiday pay or redundancy, it also prevented me improving myself. When new software was being introduced I suggested that I was sent on training to learn how to use it. I was told very directly that there was no point, when it came in, I would simply be laid off and someone who knew the software would be employed in my place. It was assumed that there would be people out there who knew this specialist software and would be willing to be employed at the same rate as me. Of course that is the 'logic' of the flexible labour market. The implication was that I should pay for training myself to make myself a suitable employee. This assumption that the burden of training should always lie outside companies whether in colleges and universities or through individuals paying for it is an enduring one. There is no comprehension that to have a new employee would lose all the expertise and experiences I had built up working for their company let alone the damage it did to my morale. No employer seems to understand that no-one wants to feel they are disposable and that if they do they are not inspired to do anything except go slow or sabotage the company. Most training courses are outside the reach of the average worker's income and as an agency worker you lose twice as you are not being paid anything while you are shelling out for the training.
The other problem I encountered when an agency worker was that no-one would take responsibility for me. This branch of the civil service employed 100 agency staff often rising to 150 over the Summer, out of a total workforce of 650 people. The Personnel Department would often refuse to communicate with me because I was not a member of staff. They did not see the problem in not signing timesheets on a Friday (a day they would pick to go on an 'away day'; I must say that the Personnel Department of that section of the civil service excelled in arrogance and self-centredness even among personnel staff) despite the fact that it meant the agency workers' wages would be delayed a week. The key problem came when the job came to an end. In Britain if you turn up at a Job Centre and have been dismissed or have resigned from your job and try to claim unemployment benefit (as opposed to income support) your benefits are frozen. You need a letter from your employer saying that they made you redundant. Now as an agency worker the Personnel Department said my work was coming to an end, but they said that because the agency was my employer it was up to the agency to write such a letter. However, the agency also refused to write me such a letter because they said it was up to the company if I kept working or not. Neither would accept responsibility for my work coming to an end despite the fact that they were condemning me to 6 months without benefits. They simply did not care what situation that left me in.
Thus, agency employment is a nightmare and leaves you very vulnerable. Of course originally employment agencies were supposed to be for people between permanent jobs or looking to find work to supplement their income as their main job was being a mother or they were retired. However, since the 1980s agency work has become the full-time main form of employment for thousands of people who have to battle to get any kind of protection. An interesting article by Owen Burcott and David Hencke in 'The Guardian' of 21st February 2009 reminded me of the extent to which agency workers are being used and how vulnerable they remain despite the legislative gains. It was found that 850 agency workers had been employed by car manufacturers BMW at their Cowley works outside Oxford and around 6,600 BT employees who were being laid off this year were agency workers. The BMW agency workers had a week's notice and received no redundancy pay, they are simply tossed aside because it is so easy. There is no thought about the fate of these people. Apparently the UK had 1.3 million agency workers, 4.5% of the workforce, almost one in every twenty workers, in 2006, a far higher percentage than elsewhere in the EU. Agency workers come from all kinds of professions from secretaries to warehouse workers to civil servants to skilled car makers to call centre staff.
The UK has a flexible labour force in its agency workers and yet it seems to have brought no benefits to the UK economy. As I have noted, companies actually delude themselves in thinking agency workers are cheaper than employing people directly, the reverse is actually the case. All that they relieve the company of is having to worry about the fate of these people. In doing this they forget about the damage to the morale of this workforce. Now, not everyone who works for an agency wants a permanent job, but from my own experience a large percentage do and settle for agency work because it is all that they can get.
There have been ongoing negotiations between trades unions and employers to get more rights for agency workers, particularly in terms of redundancy pay and periods of notice of termination of employment. Again it is only because Britain is being pressed by the EU (why can we not come up with some gains for workers without having to being pushed to do it) which wants such rights in position by 2011. You would think with a 'Labour' government in power they would be pressing ahead with such improvements, well they were until the evil (and I do not use that word lightly, I would add sleazy and corrupt to it too) Lord Mandelson who is Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise & Regulatory Reform and Pat McFadden Secretary of State for Work and Pensions are now trying to stop these minor improvements for fear of irritating business. In fact Mandelson, being an arch-Blairite rather than any Labour politician of course has no interest in benefiting workers simply in pandering to the wealthy who have got Britain into the appalling economic state it currently is in. We are supposed to get legislation before the summer but Mandelson is reviewing all that the EU is asking for to see what the minimum he can get away with and as union leaders have noted his decision to continue consultation is simply prevarication. In the meantime thousands of people are being thrown into poverty and dumped on the ritual pyre to the great false religion of flexible labour which simply means allowing employers to shaft their workforce and get away with it.
P.P. 19/03/2008 - It is interesting that the UK government this week is again resisting attempts to end its opt-out from the EU's Working Time Directive which would ensure that British workers would work no more than an average of 48 hours per week. The UK economy depends on workers doing long hours at low wages and they know it would mean a readjustment if people were stopped doing the 60 hours which are still common in some industries. Pathetically, they are using the case of volunteer fire-fighters, saying that they will be banned. There are 16,500 'retained' firefighters in the UK and 630 volunteer ones in Scotland, compared to 38,000 full-time firefighters. This is a tiny fraction of the working population. In addition, the UK is not unique in having volunteer firefighters, I know Germany has had them since the 19th century and yet they seem to have no problem with the Working Time Directive. The UK government should come clean and admit that the reason why they want British workers to be compelled to work such long hours is to keep employers on their side. These employers, despite their huge bonuses have set up a working economy based on long hours and low wages and to adjust it now would make them feel they had to lay off workers just as unemployment is rising. The British government, if it had any concern for the welfare of the British workforce, should have adopted the Working Time Directive at a time when they could have been less blackmailed by rapacious employers; it could have accompanied the introduction of the minimum wage. I find it incredible that the British government puts so much effort into fighting off legislation which would make the working lives of many of its citizens better.
Monday, 2 March 2009
Retro Pop - Different Genres Being Used
Well, the retro pop phenomenon that I have been observing for over a year now seems to be marching at a pace. I suppose Duffy getting three Brit awards helped. It does seem to be encouraging a revival of original 1960s material too. Today Sandie Shaw turned 62 so I suppose that it was no surprise I heard 'There's Always Something There To Remind Me' (1964) which I think first encountered used on a sad I think TDK (anyway for audio cassettes) advertisement on television in the 1980s. However, having heard 'Pretty Flamingo' (1966) by Manfred Mann twice today suggests something is up. Given I have developed a 'Life on Mars' phobia whenever I now hear anything recorded between about 1964-74, life is getting difficult!
Anyway, the two latest examples of currently generated retro pop are very interesting. DJ Shasmin's remix of 'Be My Baby' first recorded by The Ronettes in 1963 and covered by loads of people, ones I have heard of including Travis, Maroon 5 and Glasvegas (even Jason Donovan!). I imagine this is part of a memorial for Estelle Bennett (1941-2009) of The Ronettes. I once played an original copy of the single on a radio show I did briefly which featured a lot of 1960s stuff. I have only heard the remix once; it will be interesting to see if it is successful. Hearing it I assumed it was a cover version by The Sugar Babes, which may be intentional. Former Sugar Babe, Mutya Buena along with Queen of Retro, Amy Winehouse, recorded a track that was inspired by 'Be My Baby' and sampled the chorus, called 'B Baby Boy' (2007).
The most surprising retro single at present however is 'Up All Night' by recently reunited Take That. When I heard it first I was convinced that it was a newly uncovered (Paul) Simon & (Art) Garfunkel track. With all that percussion and the acoustic guitar it sounds as if it has come out of something aimed at New England university students circa 1967. There is a repeated instrumental break in it, but rather than sounding like something from the 2000s it goes into, well, what I originally felt was sort of semi-Kinks/semi-Small Faces, but after today, know is very Manfred Mann.
We are now ranging through quite a few revived genres. I accept that Amy Winehouse and Duffy were soul even blues in their approach. The Ronettes are not a thousand miles from that, but the Phil Spector 'wall of sound' does mark it out and it probably sits in the mowtown camp if not strictly there by recording label. Tom Jones has just gone back to being himself of forty years ago. However, Simon & Garfunkel is a different style to these entirely, but maybe Take That's refound popularity can carry it.
What is interesting is that despite the musical connections back there are no historical or social or cultural connections being made. Perhaps it is because with the recession in full flow people feel no link to a time that seemed quite prosperous and when protest was not about securing jobs or greedy bankers, but about anti-war and changing the establishment. The only thing that came close was Sandi Thom's wistful, 'I Wish I Was a Punk Rocker (With Flowers in My Hair)' (2006), which I find very stirring, but in fact its lyrics rightly show that we are nowhere close to the challenges to the status quo that was seen in 'In seventy-seven and sixty-nine revolution was in the air/ I was born too late into a world that doesn't care', etc. despite the fact that thousands of us are losing our jobs and houses simply because some bankers already earning millions want to squeeze out every last iota of profit and take no responsibility for it. However, the UK police are predicting a Summer of rioting in this country, so maybe this 1960s retro pop will dry up and instead we will have the styles of the early 1980s and see covers of material by The Clash and things like The Jam's 'A Town Called Malice' and The Specials' 'Ghost Town'.
Anyway, the two latest examples of currently generated retro pop are very interesting. DJ Shasmin's remix of 'Be My Baby' first recorded by The Ronettes in 1963 and covered by loads of people, ones I have heard of including Travis, Maroon 5 and Glasvegas (even Jason Donovan!). I imagine this is part of a memorial for Estelle Bennett (1941-2009) of The Ronettes. I once played an original copy of the single on a radio show I did briefly which featured a lot of 1960s stuff. I have only heard the remix once; it will be interesting to see if it is successful. Hearing it I assumed it was a cover version by The Sugar Babes, which may be intentional. Former Sugar Babe, Mutya Buena along with Queen of Retro, Amy Winehouse, recorded a track that was inspired by 'Be My Baby' and sampled the chorus, called 'B Baby Boy' (2007).
The most surprising retro single at present however is 'Up All Night' by recently reunited Take That. When I heard it first I was convinced that it was a newly uncovered (Paul) Simon & (Art) Garfunkel track. With all that percussion and the acoustic guitar it sounds as if it has come out of something aimed at New England university students circa 1967. There is a repeated instrumental break in it, but rather than sounding like something from the 2000s it goes into, well, what I originally felt was sort of semi-Kinks/semi-Small Faces, but after today, know is very Manfred Mann.
We are now ranging through quite a few revived genres. I accept that Amy Winehouse and Duffy were soul even blues in their approach. The Ronettes are not a thousand miles from that, but the Phil Spector 'wall of sound' does mark it out and it probably sits in the mowtown camp if not strictly there by recording label. Tom Jones has just gone back to being himself of forty years ago. However, Simon & Garfunkel is a different style to these entirely, but maybe Take That's refound popularity can carry it.
What is interesting is that despite the musical connections back there are no historical or social or cultural connections being made. Perhaps it is because with the recession in full flow people feel no link to a time that seemed quite prosperous and when protest was not about securing jobs or greedy bankers, but about anti-war and changing the establishment. The only thing that came close was Sandi Thom's wistful, 'I Wish I Was a Punk Rocker (With Flowers in My Hair)' (2006), which I find very stirring, but in fact its lyrics rightly show that we are nowhere close to the challenges to the status quo that was seen in 'In seventy-seven and sixty-nine revolution was in the air/ I was born too late into a world that doesn't care', etc. despite the fact that thousands of us are losing our jobs and houses simply because some bankers already earning millions want to squeeze out every last iota of profit and take no responsibility for it. However, the UK police are predicting a Summer of rioting in this country, so maybe this 1960s retro pop will dry up and instead we will have the styles of the early 1980s and see covers of material by The Clash and things like The Jam's 'A Town Called Malice' and The Specials' 'Ghost Town'.
Thursday, 26 February 2009
Return to Victorian Policing for the UK?
I was intrigued to read that the so-called 'think-tank' group, Reform is advising that the UK move back towards the police structure that Britain had in the Victorian era, well, really up to 1942 Defence (Amalgamation of Police Forces) Regulations for southern England and the 1946 Police Act for most of the rest of the UK, though not really completed until the 1964 Police Act. If we go back to the date for which I have best figures, coming from my work on the Great Unrest we find that in 1908 there were 197 police forces in England and Wales (plus 48 in Scotland where mergers began in 1930), primarily because many towns had separate forces to those of the counties around them. For example as well as the Kent County Constabulary there were separate forces, until 1942 in Dover, Folkstone, Maidstone, Margate, Ramsgate and Tunbridge Wells. Thus, a criminal could skip across seven jurisdictions without leaving the county. Back in 2006 the government attempted to take the 1942/6 and 1964 developments a stage further and combine the current 43 constabularies in England and Wales (Scotland now has 8 constabularies; Northern Ireland has always had only one) into 17 so-called 'super-forces' though this initiative failed primarily as people felt they would be too far from the central organisation of their police units.
Forming large regional groupings was trying to go into the opposite direction to what most trends in Britain have been doing certainly since the 1995-8 with the establishment of local government unitary authorities which fragmented a county like Berkshire into four pieces and the recreation of the tiny county of Rutland in 1997 which has only two small towns Oakham and Uppingham. I have often noted how the British cling to outdated, often impractical, elements because they have no pride in anything contemporary. This is why it is taking so long for imperial measurement to die out, despite the fact that nothing else has been taught in British state schools for over 35 years. The British like the quaint and the old fashioned in favour of anything larger or more efficient. Interestingly Reform argues that smaller forces are more efficient and wants to introduce an additional 52 constabularies, raising the number to 95, a figure not seen since the 1940s. They argue that senior police officers effectively form an oligarchy, so I think they imagine that having an additional 52 chief constables would widen the intake a bit.
Another interesting thing is their reference to the Metropolitan Constabulary as being de facto the national police force and rather than the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) formed in 2006, that the Metropolitan force should take on formal responsibility for tackling such things. Again this is no different really to the pattern of the early 20th century in which detection of serious crimes such as murder was often handled by someone sent down from Scotland Yard and for dealing with riots Metropolitan police were often sent in as the only other alternative was the Army.
I suggest Reform look back to the experiences of having numerous constabularies. One key problem was the small size of these forces. In 1911, some towns such as Tonypandy in Wales would only have eight policemen all told and Hull despite being a port and a large city only had 5 mounted police. Given that we are seeing cutbacks in constabularies in an effort to cut costs. The rural county of Dorset is shedding 50 police; next door Hampshire which contains the port cities of Portsmouth and Southampton is dropping 100, more suburban Surrey is reducing by 144, 80 from Gwent in Wales and 120 from County Durham. This follows on from the fact that 19 constabularies cut police numbers in 2008. Now, if you increase the number of forces by 120% then each force will have 45% of the police they had before. I know they will have smaller areas to police and I hope that Reform has divided up the country on a rational rather than nostalgic basis, but it would mean a lot of fragmentation. In addition, each new force will need a Chief Constable and deputies and all the staff associated with those roles, so the smaller forces will actually lead to fewer frontline police officers.
So, as in 1911 we will see a plethora of small forces and a return to the dependence on London to supply detectives and probably riot police too (which given police predictions of civil unrest this Summer in the wake of the recession, this is an issue to consider). In 1911 local forces were overwhelmed. Some were able to draw on deals they had made with other constabularies, such as Liverpool bringing in police from Leeds and Birmingham, but this leads to a very complex pattern of command. I have noted the reluctance of the British population to see their local forces merged with those of neighbouring areas, back in 1911, for example in Cardiff, middle class people turned out to assault Metropolitan police brought in to help control the rioting as though they were not involved in the strikes occurring at the time, they had a violent hostility to 'foreign' police being used in their city. It became typical for 'imported' police to remove their insignia that showed which constabulary they belonged to. I did wonder during the 1984-5 Miners' Strike if officers not wishing to be the focus of complaint was only part of the reason for them concealing their insignia or whether deep in police forces there was still this guidance about revealing the origin of imported police, as, during that strike, police were bussed in from all over the UK to strike areas.
I would be intrigued to see on what basis Reform feels smaller forces are more efficient. I would suggest that they pay at least some attention to the history of the forces in the UK before making these sweeping statements, which whilst in line with recent tendencies in this country towards parochialisation could cause real problems especially as we might be heading towards a period of unrest not unlike that of the 1910s and certainly resembling that of 1981-5.
Forming large regional groupings was trying to go into the opposite direction to what most trends in Britain have been doing certainly since the 1995-8 with the establishment of local government unitary authorities which fragmented a county like Berkshire into four pieces and the recreation of the tiny county of Rutland in 1997 which has only two small towns Oakham and Uppingham. I have often noted how the British cling to outdated, often impractical, elements because they have no pride in anything contemporary. This is why it is taking so long for imperial measurement to die out, despite the fact that nothing else has been taught in British state schools for over 35 years. The British like the quaint and the old fashioned in favour of anything larger or more efficient. Interestingly Reform argues that smaller forces are more efficient and wants to introduce an additional 52 constabularies, raising the number to 95, a figure not seen since the 1940s. They argue that senior police officers effectively form an oligarchy, so I think they imagine that having an additional 52 chief constables would widen the intake a bit.
Another interesting thing is their reference to the Metropolitan Constabulary as being de facto the national police force and rather than the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) formed in 2006, that the Metropolitan force should take on formal responsibility for tackling such things. Again this is no different really to the pattern of the early 20th century in which detection of serious crimes such as murder was often handled by someone sent down from Scotland Yard and for dealing with riots Metropolitan police were often sent in as the only other alternative was the Army.
I suggest Reform look back to the experiences of having numerous constabularies. One key problem was the small size of these forces. In 1911, some towns such as Tonypandy in Wales would only have eight policemen all told and Hull despite being a port and a large city only had 5 mounted police. Given that we are seeing cutbacks in constabularies in an effort to cut costs. The rural county of Dorset is shedding 50 police; next door Hampshire which contains the port cities of Portsmouth and Southampton is dropping 100, more suburban Surrey is reducing by 144, 80 from Gwent in Wales and 120 from County Durham. This follows on from the fact that 19 constabularies cut police numbers in 2008. Now, if you increase the number of forces by 120% then each force will have 45% of the police they had before. I know they will have smaller areas to police and I hope that Reform has divided up the country on a rational rather than nostalgic basis, but it would mean a lot of fragmentation. In addition, each new force will need a Chief Constable and deputies and all the staff associated with those roles, so the smaller forces will actually lead to fewer frontline police officers.
So, as in 1911 we will see a plethora of small forces and a return to the dependence on London to supply detectives and probably riot police too (which given police predictions of civil unrest this Summer in the wake of the recession, this is an issue to consider). In 1911 local forces were overwhelmed. Some were able to draw on deals they had made with other constabularies, such as Liverpool bringing in police from Leeds and Birmingham, but this leads to a very complex pattern of command. I have noted the reluctance of the British population to see their local forces merged with those of neighbouring areas, back in 1911, for example in Cardiff, middle class people turned out to assault Metropolitan police brought in to help control the rioting as though they were not involved in the strikes occurring at the time, they had a violent hostility to 'foreign' police being used in their city. It became typical for 'imported' police to remove their insignia that showed which constabulary they belonged to. I did wonder during the 1984-5 Miners' Strike if officers not wishing to be the focus of complaint was only part of the reason for them concealing their insignia or whether deep in police forces there was still this guidance about revealing the origin of imported police, as, during that strike, police were bussed in from all over the UK to strike areas.
I would be intrigued to see on what basis Reform feels smaller forces are more efficient. I would suggest that they pay at least some attention to the history of the forces in the UK before making these sweeping statements, which whilst in line with recent tendencies in this country towards parochialisation could cause real problems especially as we might be heading towards a period of unrest not unlike that of the 1910s and certainly resembling that of 1981-5.
Saturday, 21 February 2009
'Alien to British Culture': A Myopic View of Britain's History and Society
I have just started reading 'The Strange Death of Socialist Britain' (1992) by Patrick Cosgrave (1941-2001). I read the book that inspired the title of 'The Strange Death of Liberal Britain' (1935) by George Dangerfield which I read about eight years ago. Both books look at how and why what seemed to be the political and even social consensus of an era faded away. Dangerfield was looking back to the period of 1906-14 in which the Liberal Party was in power and brought about social welfare reforms. In addition, there seemed to be a consensus about a liberal society and democracy which following the First World War and the dictatorships of the 1920s and 1930s, people were nostalgic for. However, as Dangerfield shows that despite the popular image, in fact Britain of the early 1910s was facing immense social upheaval with pressure from organised labour, female suffrage supporters and those seeking an independent Ireland, that some feared the country was verging on civil war or a revolution.
Cosgrave looks at a different period, stretching from 1945 victory the Labour Party and the mixed economy and welfare state that was created and seemed to be accepted right across the political spectrum up to the end of the period of Thatcher in power and the unexpected defeat of the Labour Party in the 1992 election. That period is seen as the last gasp of Socialism in Britain and Labour was only able to come back to power in 1997 by turning into a post-Thatcherist party focused on an individual. I have long argued that the Labour Party, not even New Labour, came to power in 1997, rather, the Blairite Party came into office along the lines of a Gaullist or Peronist party seen in other countries. Of course the current economic crisis with the governments of the UK and other countries taking over banks and companies suggests that maybe Socialism in practice is not entirely dead.
Given that Cosgrave is a biographer of Margaret Thatcher, Lord Carrington, Enoch Powell, R.A. Butler and Sir Winston Churchill, I was not expecting a liberal or left-wing appreciation of the period under scrutiny. However, even given that it was written at the time when Thatcherism seemed to be scattering all rivals to the winds it seems an astoundingly narrow, almost deluded approach. Cosgrave goes beyond anything the Thatcher regime voiced. It soon becomes apparent that he feels that the loss of the British Empire 1947-80 or there abouts as being a huge error and that in some way Britain should have clung to its colonies, not least, because independence only led to dictatorship and wars, of course neglecting the reasonably peaceful development of India, the most populous of Britain's former colonies after the 1940s. Cosgrave wants all or nothing. He did not want the colonies to go and yet he sees the Commonwealth, the looser connection between elements of the former British Empire as a huge error too, but more on that in a minute.
Now anyone who believes that Britain (or any European state) could have clung to its empire in Africa and Asia has absolutely no idea of history. If the American War of Independence 1776-83 and Spain's loss of its American colonies in the 19th century show nothing about trying to keep hold of colonies as they mature, then Cosgrave and others should simply look to the experiences of those countries who did try to retain their colonies beyond the due time. Not only does it ignore the ongoing conflicts in many colonies in the 1880s-1910s but also what happened after 1945. France fought in Indochina effectively 1945-54 and in Algeria 1954-62. These conflicts led to over 178,000 locals and French dying and another 225,000 being wounded; torture was used and there were massacres in Paris in 1961 and in Oran in 1962. It also came close to plunging France into a civil war 1958-60. Is this the kind of experience Cosgrave wanted for Britain? Another example is the Portuguese Colonial War 1961-74 between the colonial power of Portugal which had held colonies in Africa for over 400 years, far longer than Britain, and the states of Mozambique and Angola fighting for independence. This killed untold thousands of locals, over 8000 Portuguese troops and led to the displacement of over a million people. Even closer to home, it can be argued that Britain's continued occupation of Northern Ireland (and I know this is a controversial argument as many argue that that state is entirely a part of the UK) but that conflict from the start of the 'Troubles' in 1969 to 1998 led to the death of over 3000 people and brought the conflict to mainland Britain in bombing campaigns. Does not Cosgrave understand that if Britain had tried to cling to every colony it would have suffered such an experience many times over. Perhaps he wants a police state under martial law, because that is the kind of UK you would have ended up with if Britain had not let its colonies go, not some kind of paternalist dream he seems to subscribe to.
Then Cosgrave has a problem with the Commonwealth, well as he puts it, not the entire Commonwealth but the ''new' or coloured Commonwealth'. He feels it was wrongly constructed because it permitted free immigration of people from those countries to the UK and so leading to 'large pockets of immigrants alien to British culture'. Now that is poor analysis and basic bigotry on so many levels. For a start he seems to think that immigration to the UK started with the arrival of the ship the 'Empire Windrush' in 1948, whereas of course people have been moving into the UK for many centuries. People came from Africa and the Middle East with the Romans and right throughout Britain's involvement with the slave trade. Refugees from France came in the 16th century and refugees from China and Russia were coming through the 19th century. Too many people look in askance when a television series does not show an all white population in Victorian Britain especially in the cities, but of course an all-white population is simply a myth it was never like that as you can see easily from paintings of the time. The Commonwealth did not create immigration, in fact it made it harder to immigrate into the UK. Under the British Empire at its height, an era when passports were restricted to those autocracies like Russia and the Ottoman Empire, people moved freely around the empire. They might face prejudice but at that stage there were not legal restrictions.
Like many people Cosgrave makes the mistake that the British Nationality Act of 1948 somehow opened doors that had been closed. In fact it simply regulated relations between countries that were now not part of an empire but had a different, increasingly independent relationship with Britain. Decades after the Republic of Ireland was formed, Irish people still have rights to stand as candidates in the UK and vote, and a whole raft of rights as if we were still connected and not two sovereign states. What would have been Cosgrave's alternative to the evolving Commonwealth, to say 'well, yes, I know we conquered you, exploited you, messed up your economy and got you to fight in our wars for us, but I am sorry, we owe you nothing, you have no right to come to the UK'. To have closed access in that way would have seemed incredibly mean-spirited and Cosgrave forgets that even Conservatives of that era did not see the world in the harsh terms that he does. Those countries such as France and Portugal who fought bitter wars of decolonisation, even they formed communities with their former colonies, so Britain would have appeared peculiar not to have done the same. Of course Cosgrave's 'me first' attitude to the states of the Commonwealth is the same as his attitude to workers too.
Cosgrave forgets that economic migration works like a lot of economics through supply and demand. Immigrants would not have been brought to the UK (Enoch Powell himself despite his racism, brought West Indian nurses to work in the health service) if there were not jobs for them. Cosgrave forgets that until the economic crises of the 1970s, Britain like most of western Europe had 'full' employment (usually reckoned to be 92-97% of the working population in employment, there is deemed to be a need for 'transitional' unemployment as people move between jobs) and that was with the immigrants he loathes. Britain without immigration would (as it had done in the late 1940s when it experienced labour shortages in many key industries) have faced difficulties in its transport, health and retail sectors in the 1950s and 1960s. There were insufficient white UK people to do the jobs needed by the booming economy, especially at the wage rates employers were willing to pay. Cosgrave forgets this too, that despite of his love of the Thatcherite principle of a flexible labour force willing (or compelled) to work at the lowest cost to an employer possible, that low wages promote immigration. Cosgrave is clearly wrapped up in the attitude that the white British population shop accept its 'station' and do poor jobs at low wages and certainly not complain (he loathes trade unions as much as he does immigrants). It is noticeable how many Polish workers have returned to Poland now the British economy is suffering. Of course writers like Cosgrave believe there is something inherently attractive about Britain that we need to repel those unlucky not to have been born here from languishing in the wonders of Britain. This is, of course, why immigration into Britain in recent years has almost been matched by emigration of Britons especially to France, Spain, the USA and Australia.
Cosgrave also makes an error when he portrays the culture of immigrants to Britain as 'alien' to British culture. For a start, what is British culture? I have debated this before, but it is certain that it is not something static. Even if people have a nostalgia for a Britain of the past, it is an edited past (for example with the black faces and malnourished removed from the picture). British culture is diverse and constantly evolves. Immigrants have always been part of that and have been assimilated in the UK faster than in some other countries, Germany being a notable example. Of course immigrants by definition are people with 'get-up-and-go' as they have travelled hundreds or thousands of kilometres to get here. The passive people who accept their place in the world are those still back in India or Jamaica. By definition immigrants want to get on and want their children to become doctors and not work the long hours they worked. Of course this eagerness to shake up society and to pull your family up social levels upsets Cosgrave no matter what ethnicity the individual trying to achieve it. Here he again marks himself out from a strong strand of Conservative tradition which encourages the individual and their family (even Margaret Thatcher lauded families) to prosper and get on and sees the Conservative way as a better way to promote such advancement rather than the 'Nanny state' controls they associate with Labour. Cosgrave is a pre-Disraelian Tory and seems to favour a feudal hierarchy with no chance of advancement. Of course with his bigoted, racialist (as opposed to racist) approach he could not accept 'coloured' immigrants gettting off the bottom rung. In addition, many immigrant families whether they felt they should or because they genuinely believed in it, were stronger advocates of elements seen as being at the heart of British culture such as church attendance and sports like cricket than most white British families. Of course this stemmed from how such things were transmitted across the Empire and remain even now in the Commonwealth. In particular to speak of Commonwealth immigrants as being 'alien' to British culture is most misguided as their arrival here often speaks of their faith and adherence to that culture in a way that people arriving from other countries would find impossible.
I suppose I am not surprised that I picked up this copy of Cosgrave's book for £1 (reduced from £16.95). I was hoping for something that came close to Dangerfield's account and analysis and instead found a book which is even out-of-step with the contemporary Conservative view of society and recent history and tends towards being an attempt at a respectable history from the BNP (British National Party) perspective. Of course you can argue that the whole basis of his book is on a faulty foundation and that there never was a Socialist Britain. The welfare state built on the Liberal social welfare policies of the 1910s; Keynes was a Liberal and certainly not a Socialist and what we saw by the end of the 1940s was not Socialist economics with a directed economy, it was kind of Keynesian approach though prosperity meant many elements of Keynesianism were not needed until the mid-1970s. Nationalisation is seen as being Socialist economics, but again the approach adopted to nationalised industries was one of being at arm's length which was part of the problem and so the form was little different to the rationalisation of the railways carried out by the Conservatives in the 1920s or the muncipal gas boards of the 19th century. British foreign policy was not Socialist. Decolonisation was pressed most strongly by Franklin D. Roosevelt, US President and the Conservative governments oversaw far more decolonisation than Labour ever did. Labour was anti-Soviet and brought Britain into NATO and kept it out of the ECSC which formed the basis of the EEC and thus the EU. It was the Conservatives who moved Britain to participating in Europe. So, one can look hard for a Socialist Britain and not find one.
It would be more accurate to have titled Cosgrave's book, 'The Strange Death of Tory Democracy Britain' as what we saw from 1975/9 onwards was actually the overthrowing of the Disraelian tradition of the Conservative Party (which spent 48 years of the 20th century in power and another 20 years in coalition governments, usually in a dominant position) by the New Right and how far that marks a jump from the kind of society the party that tends to be in power most often in the UK wants to try to foster. Given that I would argue that we need another Attleean revolution now (i.e. a Liberal one) to deal with the financial crisis and its human consequences, it is important to blow away the false divide that authors like Cosgrave have put up and see in fact that we have experienced first the Conservatives then Labour be shorn of their social conscience so dumping us into a situation where greed dominated. As to rising bigotry, well that fills the headlines today and needs to be challenged by us all. Given that Cosgrave has irritated me so quickly I can imagine I am going to be stimulated to write more about this doyen of Thatcherism.
Cosgrave looks at a different period, stretching from 1945 victory the Labour Party and the mixed economy and welfare state that was created and seemed to be accepted right across the political spectrum up to the end of the period of Thatcher in power and the unexpected defeat of the Labour Party in the 1992 election. That period is seen as the last gasp of Socialism in Britain and Labour was only able to come back to power in 1997 by turning into a post-Thatcherist party focused on an individual. I have long argued that the Labour Party, not even New Labour, came to power in 1997, rather, the Blairite Party came into office along the lines of a Gaullist or Peronist party seen in other countries. Of course the current economic crisis with the governments of the UK and other countries taking over banks and companies suggests that maybe Socialism in practice is not entirely dead.
Given that Cosgrave is a biographer of Margaret Thatcher, Lord Carrington, Enoch Powell, R.A. Butler and Sir Winston Churchill, I was not expecting a liberal or left-wing appreciation of the period under scrutiny. However, even given that it was written at the time when Thatcherism seemed to be scattering all rivals to the winds it seems an astoundingly narrow, almost deluded approach. Cosgrave goes beyond anything the Thatcher regime voiced. It soon becomes apparent that he feels that the loss of the British Empire 1947-80 or there abouts as being a huge error and that in some way Britain should have clung to its colonies, not least, because independence only led to dictatorship and wars, of course neglecting the reasonably peaceful development of India, the most populous of Britain's former colonies after the 1940s. Cosgrave wants all or nothing. He did not want the colonies to go and yet he sees the Commonwealth, the looser connection between elements of the former British Empire as a huge error too, but more on that in a minute.
Now anyone who believes that Britain (or any European state) could have clung to its empire in Africa and Asia has absolutely no idea of history. If the American War of Independence 1776-83 and Spain's loss of its American colonies in the 19th century show nothing about trying to keep hold of colonies as they mature, then Cosgrave and others should simply look to the experiences of those countries who did try to retain their colonies beyond the due time. Not only does it ignore the ongoing conflicts in many colonies in the 1880s-1910s but also what happened after 1945. France fought in Indochina effectively 1945-54 and in Algeria 1954-62. These conflicts led to over 178,000 locals and French dying and another 225,000 being wounded; torture was used and there were massacres in Paris in 1961 and in Oran in 1962. It also came close to plunging France into a civil war 1958-60. Is this the kind of experience Cosgrave wanted for Britain? Another example is the Portuguese Colonial War 1961-74 between the colonial power of Portugal which had held colonies in Africa for over 400 years, far longer than Britain, and the states of Mozambique and Angola fighting for independence. This killed untold thousands of locals, over 8000 Portuguese troops and led to the displacement of over a million people. Even closer to home, it can be argued that Britain's continued occupation of Northern Ireland (and I know this is a controversial argument as many argue that that state is entirely a part of the UK) but that conflict from the start of the 'Troubles' in 1969 to 1998 led to the death of over 3000 people and brought the conflict to mainland Britain in bombing campaigns. Does not Cosgrave understand that if Britain had tried to cling to every colony it would have suffered such an experience many times over. Perhaps he wants a police state under martial law, because that is the kind of UK you would have ended up with if Britain had not let its colonies go, not some kind of paternalist dream he seems to subscribe to.
Then Cosgrave has a problem with the Commonwealth, well as he puts it, not the entire Commonwealth but the ''new' or coloured Commonwealth'. He feels it was wrongly constructed because it permitted free immigration of people from those countries to the UK and so leading to 'large pockets of immigrants alien to British culture'. Now that is poor analysis and basic bigotry on so many levels. For a start he seems to think that immigration to the UK started with the arrival of the ship the 'Empire Windrush' in 1948, whereas of course people have been moving into the UK for many centuries. People came from Africa and the Middle East with the Romans and right throughout Britain's involvement with the slave trade. Refugees from France came in the 16th century and refugees from China and Russia were coming through the 19th century. Too many people look in askance when a television series does not show an all white population in Victorian Britain especially in the cities, but of course an all-white population is simply a myth it was never like that as you can see easily from paintings of the time. The Commonwealth did not create immigration, in fact it made it harder to immigrate into the UK. Under the British Empire at its height, an era when passports were restricted to those autocracies like Russia and the Ottoman Empire, people moved freely around the empire. They might face prejudice but at that stage there were not legal restrictions.
Like many people Cosgrave makes the mistake that the British Nationality Act of 1948 somehow opened doors that had been closed. In fact it simply regulated relations between countries that were now not part of an empire but had a different, increasingly independent relationship with Britain. Decades after the Republic of Ireland was formed, Irish people still have rights to stand as candidates in the UK and vote, and a whole raft of rights as if we were still connected and not two sovereign states. What would have been Cosgrave's alternative to the evolving Commonwealth, to say 'well, yes, I know we conquered you, exploited you, messed up your economy and got you to fight in our wars for us, but I am sorry, we owe you nothing, you have no right to come to the UK'. To have closed access in that way would have seemed incredibly mean-spirited and Cosgrave forgets that even Conservatives of that era did not see the world in the harsh terms that he does. Those countries such as France and Portugal who fought bitter wars of decolonisation, even they formed communities with their former colonies, so Britain would have appeared peculiar not to have done the same. Of course Cosgrave's 'me first' attitude to the states of the Commonwealth is the same as his attitude to workers too.
Cosgrave forgets that economic migration works like a lot of economics through supply and demand. Immigrants would not have been brought to the UK (Enoch Powell himself despite his racism, brought West Indian nurses to work in the health service) if there were not jobs for them. Cosgrave forgets that until the economic crises of the 1970s, Britain like most of western Europe had 'full' employment (usually reckoned to be 92-97% of the working population in employment, there is deemed to be a need for 'transitional' unemployment as people move between jobs) and that was with the immigrants he loathes. Britain without immigration would (as it had done in the late 1940s when it experienced labour shortages in many key industries) have faced difficulties in its transport, health and retail sectors in the 1950s and 1960s. There were insufficient white UK people to do the jobs needed by the booming economy, especially at the wage rates employers were willing to pay. Cosgrave forgets this too, that despite of his love of the Thatcherite principle of a flexible labour force willing (or compelled) to work at the lowest cost to an employer possible, that low wages promote immigration. Cosgrave is clearly wrapped up in the attitude that the white British population shop accept its 'station' and do poor jobs at low wages and certainly not complain (he loathes trade unions as much as he does immigrants). It is noticeable how many Polish workers have returned to Poland now the British economy is suffering. Of course writers like Cosgrave believe there is something inherently attractive about Britain that we need to repel those unlucky not to have been born here from languishing in the wonders of Britain. This is, of course, why immigration into Britain in recent years has almost been matched by emigration of Britons especially to France, Spain, the USA and Australia.
Cosgrave also makes an error when he portrays the culture of immigrants to Britain as 'alien' to British culture. For a start, what is British culture? I have debated this before, but it is certain that it is not something static. Even if people have a nostalgia for a Britain of the past, it is an edited past (for example with the black faces and malnourished removed from the picture). British culture is diverse and constantly evolves. Immigrants have always been part of that and have been assimilated in the UK faster than in some other countries, Germany being a notable example. Of course immigrants by definition are people with 'get-up-and-go' as they have travelled hundreds or thousands of kilometres to get here. The passive people who accept their place in the world are those still back in India or Jamaica. By definition immigrants want to get on and want their children to become doctors and not work the long hours they worked. Of course this eagerness to shake up society and to pull your family up social levels upsets Cosgrave no matter what ethnicity the individual trying to achieve it. Here he again marks himself out from a strong strand of Conservative tradition which encourages the individual and their family (even Margaret Thatcher lauded families) to prosper and get on and sees the Conservative way as a better way to promote such advancement rather than the 'Nanny state' controls they associate with Labour. Cosgrave is a pre-Disraelian Tory and seems to favour a feudal hierarchy with no chance of advancement. Of course with his bigoted, racialist (as opposed to racist) approach he could not accept 'coloured' immigrants gettting off the bottom rung. In addition, many immigrant families whether they felt they should or because they genuinely believed in it, were stronger advocates of elements seen as being at the heart of British culture such as church attendance and sports like cricket than most white British families. Of course this stemmed from how such things were transmitted across the Empire and remain even now in the Commonwealth. In particular to speak of Commonwealth immigrants as being 'alien' to British culture is most misguided as their arrival here often speaks of their faith and adherence to that culture in a way that people arriving from other countries would find impossible.
I suppose I am not surprised that I picked up this copy of Cosgrave's book for £1 (reduced from £16.95). I was hoping for something that came close to Dangerfield's account and analysis and instead found a book which is even out-of-step with the contemporary Conservative view of society and recent history and tends towards being an attempt at a respectable history from the BNP (British National Party) perspective. Of course you can argue that the whole basis of his book is on a faulty foundation and that there never was a Socialist Britain. The welfare state built on the Liberal social welfare policies of the 1910s; Keynes was a Liberal and certainly not a Socialist and what we saw by the end of the 1940s was not Socialist economics with a directed economy, it was kind of Keynesian approach though prosperity meant many elements of Keynesianism were not needed until the mid-1970s. Nationalisation is seen as being Socialist economics, but again the approach adopted to nationalised industries was one of being at arm's length which was part of the problem and so the form was little different to the rationalisation of the railways carried out by the Conservatives in the 1920s or the muncipal gas boards of the 19th century. British foreign policy was not Socialist. Decolonisation was pressed most strongly by Franklin D. Roosevelt, US President and the Conservative governments oversaw far more decolonisation than Labour ever did. Labour was anti-Soviet and brought Britain into NATO and kept it out of the ECSC which formed the basis of the EEC and thus the EU. It was the Conservatives who moved Britain to participating in Europe. So, one can look hard for a Socialist Britain and not find one.
It would be more accurate to have titled Cosgrave's book, 'The Strange Death of Tory Democracy Britain' as what we saw from 1975/9 onwards was actually the overthrowing of the Disraelian tradition of the Conservative Party (which spent 48 years of the 20th century in power and another 20 years in coalition governments, usually in a dominant position) by the New Right and how far that marks a jump from the kind of society the party that tends to be in power most often in the UK wants to try to foster. Given that I would argue that we need another Attleean revolution now (i.e. a Liberal one) to deal with the financial crisis and its human consequences, it is important to blow away the false divide that authors like Cosgrave have put up and see in fact that we have experienced first the Conservatives then Labour be shorn of their social conscience so dumping us into a situation where greed dominated. As to rising bigotry, well that fills the headlines today and needs to be challenged by us all. Given that Cosgrave has irritated me so quickly I can imagine I am going to be stimulated to write more about this doyen of Thatcherism.
Tuesday, 17 February 2009
We Expect You to Be Able to Walk on Water - Excessive Demands in Job Specifications
With the end of my current job less than five months away I am back into the pattern of applying for work. Of course I am doing this at probably the worse time possible. There are going to be so many more people out there seeking jobs. I have already accepted that given that all the jobs in my field seem to be in northern England or Scotland and I am living currently in southern England, that I am going to have to move yet again which will mean that by the end of 2009 I will be in the fifth house I have lived in since 2005 and the eighth since 2001. You can hardly say that I am not part of the flexible labour force, though of course half of those moves have been compelled by the landlord rather than me seeking work.
Anyway, having swallowed the fact that there will be yet more packing and unpacking, before that stage I actually have to get a new job. Of course, I have accepted that it means that I am likely to face a pay cut too, but again, I reckon I could probably tolerate a fall of £5000 (€5600; US$7100) per year, perhaps more, especially if I move to northern England and Scotland, where, bar from in expensive city centres, the cost of property to rent is cheaper than the South-East of England and some consumables are cheaper too. Against this willingness to be flexible is the fact that I am now over 40 and despite anti-ageist legislation, I know that in all fields employers prefer a cheap, young employee over an old, more expensive one. So I quite expect to be unemployed with only my £1400 redundancy payment to help me out, this would pay less than two months' worth of my mortgage, so house repossession is also likely.
Despite the fact that much of what I have currently could be gone by the Summer, I am persisting in looking for any job that I seem suited for. I am registered with online agencies and have weekly emails of vacancies. I also have friends and relations keeping their ears and eyes open for possible jobs too, just as you are recommended to do. At present I am being very positive and applying for posts that would actually be a promotion for me, though I may be deluding myself in that regard. The big challenge is the job specifications. I discussed some of this back in August 2007 when looking at the silly way so many companies behave when recruiting people. Now I am back to actually applying for jobs once more, I am finding many new examples and I am sure thousands of you out there have your own war stories.
I do wonder who writes job specifications. In most companies of any size the Personnel Department or Human Resources or whatever, is often involved and from my experience on that side of the process, have a great deal of input which usually slows down and complicates the recruitment process. These days there is often a standard pattern, with an outline of who you would be reporting to if you got this job and what functions the job entails, well that is fine, it is generally what you need to know. Sometimes there is a detailed description of the company and its history which if you were interested you would already know anyway, but some people insist on including as if they are going to set you a comprehension test on it. Then you get to the so-called Person Specification. This reminds me of people who go to dating websites and somehow expect that they can order a perfect partner who matches every item they tick or cross. In fact humans are more varied than that and do not fit patterns.
The idea behind person specifications is a sound one, that they break down the requirements of a job into bite-sized chunks against which the applicant outlines their abilities and experience. When applying for my second job in the civil service, the interviewer literally read out these and asked for a response which was then written down by the secretary, sometimes she would ask for another example too. It was incredibly mechanical and would have been better handled by completing a computer-based questionnaire. It is clear that these specifications are an aggregate of the wishes of a team of people, often coming from very different parts of the company. Many people involved in recruitment have set requests that they always ask for (particularly in terms of qualifications) which in fact bear no relevance to the job in question. I remember working with one colleague on recruitment who always insisted that the applicants must make use of time management software in their work. I suppose it is a good principle, but she simply kept asking about the use of this stuff and ironically none of the applicants used it. Asking for certain qualifications is more about the perceived status of the job than actually what the job entails. I am incredulous that I received application forms for managerial positions which ask me to list every exam I took in secondary school and which grade I got. I last took such an exam in 1984, what effect does whether I got a 'C' or a 'B' in 'O' Level Mathematics (an exam which has not existed since 1992), 25 years ago, have on how good I can manage a department now? It is just like saying that the overseas sales of the company in 2009 are influenced by the balance of payments or the exchange rates of 1984. For all the emphasis on skills, abilities and experience in person specifications, so many of the elements included are simply ritualistic.
Companies are conscious that their staff costs are often the largest single component of their outlay so they seek to reduce them, often below a level which permits the company to function most effectively. This seems to be particularly the case in the UK, which ironically has a low-salary economy, but certainly has the longest working hours of the EU. This is because so many UK employees are actually doing the job of 2 or even 3 people. I remember some jobs of the past that I have looked at that definitely seemed to include this. In particular in the late 1990s I remember a company in Norwich that wanted someone who could translate documents from German to English, establish a database, maintain an online presence and work on the helpdesk until 10pm when requested. In many companies these functions would be carried out by four staff, perhaps with some overlap, but to expect all of these skills to be wrapped up in a single individual for £16,000 per year (which even in 1998 was not a stupendous salary) either seemed that they had a precise person they simply wanted to give the job to, at a miserly rate if they indeed had all those skills or that the coming together of different departments had meant the stitching together of a Frankenstein's monster of a post. This was just one of the most extreme examples, but you see if constantly. Whenever recruiting staff I always battle to keep down the number of requirements on the person specification and ensure they are actually relevant to the job the person will do, not what people think the person doing that job does or wishes they would do.
Often the demands are contradictory. Even if you can read the coded language of person specifications it often conceals a turmoil behind the thinking of the recruiter. The most classic case of this I saw was when I worked with two colleagues on a panel to appoint a deputy to the fourth member of the panel. She was one of these people who bunged in loads of additional requirements, like so many managers, seeming to feel that a single employee could somehow radically alter the department and this in a 0.5 post not even a full-time one. Her specification wanted someone who could organise huge events, deal on a one-to-one basis with clients, maintain and further develop the website in new directions and carry out both secretarial and administrative roles on 2.5 days per week and the actual days altered week-to-week as the manager required, though she often gave less than 14 days' notice. We asked the manager if she wanted an assistant or a lieutenant. Now there is a difference, the former simply does what the manager asks and takes little iniative; the latter can stand in for the manager if she is not there and will develop new projects under her own steam. Anyway, the manager said she wanted a lieutenant. She had the chance to change her mind when we interviewed the applicants, one was like an assistant in personality and one like a lieutenant. The manager went for the latter who turned out to be incredibly hard working (often staying late and coming in at weekends despite being part-time) and advanced the department's provision and profile. Was the manager pleased? Of course not, she whined and complained that this woman was taking far too much initiative and being too brusque. She kept the woman on probation for 12 months longer than normal by which time the woman sensibly resigned. Of course the manager had in fact wanted an assistant, well, in fact a lackey, but had felt embarrassed to admit that despite it being offered to her. In addition, her own self-esteem seemed to matter far more than any benefits which accrued to her department.
So, even behind the over-stacked, contradictory person specifications there is often a whole extra layer of incompetence just lurking there. Now it is my turn for the first time in almost four years to start applying for jobs again. Fashions in recruitment seem to change pretty quickly, in my experience the acceptable style for a CV lasts two years, but person specifications are still around and seem to be much in the same style. Of course the companies I am applying to, may be simply lagging in terms of fashion. Person specifications usually have Essential (usually shown with an 'E') and Desirable ('D') criteria which are usually used to separate two very close interviewees. The former, in theory, are what you must have in order to do the job, though as noted above, in fact they are usually the requirements three people need to do three different jobs and it is unlikely anyone straddling so many skill sets actually exists. This is why you so often see re-advertisements with the company complaining that there were insufficient good candidates. It also helps explain why industry feels young people are under-skilled. This may be true in some cases, but no-one has analysed if in fact, the mismatch stems from companies increasinly wanting applicants who are made up of more than one individual's abilities and have years of experience in a newcomer to that labour market.
I was told that if you match 4 out of 5 of the E requirements then you should apply for a job. Of course many recruiters do not work that way, it has to be that you match 6 out of 5 (the sixth being the one they would have wanted to include but it was felt there were too many and you should know what the extra ones were) or otherwise you are hopeless. Recruiters are merciless in telling applicants when they feel they have wasted their time. (As an aside, you know how, especially in times of high unemployment you are advised to speculatively apply to companies that you think you could work for. When I did this one rung twice to tell me at length that 'this is not how things are done' and that I should know better. They thought I was lying when I said other very similar companies took my applications in good faith and in at least two cases in the past it had got me work). No-one ever applies for a job for 'fun'. There are far better things to do in a day than spend a couple of hours filling in yet another form and trying to draft what you are saying to the hundreds of requirements expected by the company. As applicants we take it seriously, it is a shame companies often do not do so too.
My last application was in response to a person specification. It had 18 E requirements and 3 D requirements, actually not a bad number. However, when you look at what they entail, they need a strategist, a process manager, a product quality controller, a staff performance/personnel manager, a market researcher and forecaster, a marketing manager and a researcher, and, of course, your bog-standard line manager and committee chair. Now, many of these skills do not actually sit well alongside others. In addition, if I was as good a marketing manager as they are seeking, I would be going for marketing manager jobs, not this vacancy and in fact that goes for most of the other types of post they are wrapping up in this one. I applied partly for the challenge of stretching myself across these different roles, but I anticipate they are going to be disappointed because this is not one job it is at least four if not more.
Setting unrealistic expectations is going to lead to disappointment and though the successful applicant will have done their best and try to fit with what is required, that disappointment that they are not the super-human that was desired is going to hang over them, as it did over my 2.5-day lieutenant colleague, and that is an appalling basis on which to start a working relationship. It also reduces effectiveness as managers squabble over the employee to make them come and do the role that they wanted and thinks they have appointed someone for, whereas 1-3 other managers also try to snatch the new worker thinking that the person was appointed to the role they felt they needed. The newcomer is left dizzy and their efforts are dispersed; they are at the whim of management changes and work that they have focused on might simply be declared unnecessary or irrelevant when a different manager comes to the fore. Thus, unrealistic, aggregate person specifications disconnected from the job in hand, not only make life difficult for applicants but also harm the company.
P.P. 17/06/2009 - I just encountered a new record for the number of requirements on a job specification. This one, which is actually a lower-ranked job than the previous record holder (36 Essential and 10 Desirable requirements). This one has a total of 38 Essential and 10 Desirable requirements. It is clear that whoever wrote the specification clearly cannot tell the difference between every task you might be assigned in the job and what the necessary skills are to undertake it. Whatever they might assume, there is a difference. To me all of this signals that more staff across companies need to be trained in how to recruit (and interview) effectively to save wasting their, the company's and the applicants' time.
Another phenomenon is that even with jobs which being advertised to the general public and are not internal posts, you are asked to show evidence that you have experienc of their particular, named committees, which not having ever worked there is impossible. This may be suggesting that really they only want internal candidates and yet have felt or been compelled to advertise more broadly, or, I believe more likely, that no-one has proof-read the specifications before they are sent out. For one the other day, which only had 20 Essential requirements, a number of skills were repeated down the page so responding to each in turn I found that I was repeating myself. It is a waste of time for the recruiters as well as for the applicants. Employers, please take far more care over your job specifications. In my experience, you can reduce your requirements by a fifth simply by removing duplication.
Anyway, having swallowed the fact that there will be yet more packing and unpacking, before that stage I actually have to get a new job. Of course, I have accepted that it means that I am likely to face a pay cut too, but again, I reckon I could probably tolerate a fall of £5000 (€5600; US$7100) per year, perhaps more, especially if I move to northern England and Scotland, where, bar from in expensive city centres, the cost of property to rent is cheaper than the South-East of England and some consumables are cheaper too. Against this willingness to be flexible is the fact that I am now over 40 and despite anti-ageist legislation, I know that in all fields employers prefer a cheap, young employee over an old, more expensive one. So I quite expect to be unemployed with only my £1400 redundancy payment to help me out, this would pay less than two months' worth of my mortgage, so house repossession is also likely.
Despite the fact that much of what I have currently could be gone by the Summer, I am persisting in looking for any job that I seem suited for. I am registered with online agencies and have weekly emails of vacancies. I also have friends and relations keeping their ears and eyes open for possible jobs too, just as you are recommended to do. At present I am being very positive and applying for posts that would actually be a promotion for me, though I may be deluding myself in that regard. The big challenge is the job specifications. I discussed some of this back in August 2007 when looking at the silly way so many companies behave when recruiting people. Now I am back to actually applying for jobs once more, I am finding many new examples and I am sure thousands of you out there have your own war stories.
I do wonder who writes job specifications. In most companies of any size the Personnel Department or Human Resources or whatever, is often involved and from my experience on that side of the process, have a great deal of input which usually slows down and complicates the recruitment process. These days there is often a standard pattern, with an outline of who you would be reporting to if you got this job and what functions the job entails, well that is fine, it is generally what you need to know. Sometimes there is a detailed description of the company and its history which if you were interested you would already know anyway, but some people insist on including as if they are going to set you a comprehension test on it. Then you get to the so-called Person Specification. This reminds me of people who go to dating websites and somehow expect that they can order a perfect partner who matches every item they tick or cross. In fact humans are more varied than that and do not fit patterns.
The idea behind person specifications is a sound one, that they break down the requirements of a job into bite-sized chunks against which the applicant outlines their abilities and experience. When applying for my second job in the civil service, the interviewer literally read out these and asked for a response which was then written down by the secretary, sometimes she would ask for another example too. It was incredibly mechanical and would have been better handled by completing a computer-based questionnaire. It is clear that these specifications are an aggregate of the wishes of a team of people, often coming from very different parts of the company. Many people involved in recruitment have set requests that they always ask for (particularly in terms of qualifications) which in fact bear no relevance to the job in question. I remember working with one colleague on recruitment who always insisted that the applicants must make use of time management software in their work. I suppose it is a good principle, but she simply kept asking about the use of this stuff and ironically none of the applicants used it. Asking for certain qualifications is more about the perceived status of the job than actually what the job entails. I am incredulous that I received application forms for managerial positions which ask me to list every exam I took in secondary school and which grade I got. I last took such an exam in 1984, what effect does whether I got a 'C' or a 'B' in 'O' Level Mathematics (an exam which has not existed since 1992), 25 years ago, have on how good I can manage a department now? It is just like saying that the overseas sales of the company in 2009 are influenced by the balance of payments or the exchange rates of 1984. For all the emphasis on skills, abilities and experience in person specifications, so many of the elements included are simply ritualistic.
Companies are conscious that their staff costs are often the largest single component of their outlay so they seek to reduce them, often below a level which permits the company to function most effectively. This seems to be particularly the case in the UK, which ironically has a low-salary economy, but certainly has the longest working hours of the EU. This is because so many UK employees are actually doing the job of 2 or even 3 people. I remember some jobs of the past that I have looked at that definitely seemed to include this. In particular in the late 1990s I remember a company in Norwich that wanted someone who could translate documents from German to English, establish a database, maintain an online presence and work on the helpdesk until 10pm when requested. In many companies these functions would be carried out by four staff, perhaps with some overlap, but to expect all of these skills to be wrapped up in a single individual for £16,000 per year (which even in 1998 was not a stupendous salary) either seemed that they had a precise person they simply wanted to give the job to, at a miserly rate if they indeed had all those skills or that the coming together of different departments had meant the stitching together of a Frankenstein's monster of a post. This was just one of the most extreme examples, but you see if constantly. Whenever recruiting staff I always battle to keep down the number of requirements on the person specification and ensure they are actually relevant to the job the person will do, not what people think the person doing that job does or wishes they would do.
Often the demands are contradictory. Even if you can read the coded language of person specifications it often conceals a turmoil behind the thinking of the recruiter. The most classic case of this I saw was when I worked with two colleagues on a panel to appoint a deputy to the fourth member of the panel. She was one of these people who bunged in loads of additional requirements, like so many managers, seeming to feel that a single employee could somehow radically alter the department and this in a 0.5 post not even a full-time one. Her specification wanted someone who could organise huge events, deal on a one-to-one basis with clients, maintain and further develop the website in new directions and carry out both secretarial and administrative roles on 2.5 days per week and the actual days altered week-to-week as the manager required, though she often gave less than 14 days' notice. We asked the manager if she wanted an assistant or a lieutenant. Now there is a difference, the former simply does what the manager asks and takes little iniative; the latter can stand in for the manager if she is not there and will develop new projects under her own steam. Anyway, the manager said she wanted a lieutenant. She had the chance to change her mind when we interviewed the applicants, one was like an assistant in personality and one like a lieutenant. The manager went for the latter who turned out to be incredibly hard working (often staying late and coming in at weekends despite being part-time) and advanced the department's provision and profile. Was the manager pleased? Of course not, she whined and complained that this woman was taking far too much initiative and being too brusque. She kept the woman on probation for 12 months longer than normal by which time the woman sensibly resigned. Of course the manager had in fact wanted an assistant, well, in fact a lackey, but had felt embarrassed to admit that despite it being offered to her. In addition, her own self-esteem seemed to matter far more than any benefits which accrued to her department.
So, even behind the over-stacked, contradictory person specifications there is often a whole extra layer of incompetence just lurking there. Now it is my turn for the first time in almost four years to start applying for jobs again. Fashions in recruitment seem to change pretty quickly, in my experience the acceptable style for a CV lasts two years, but person specifications are still around and seem to be much in the same style. Of course the companies I am applying to, may be simply lagging in terms of fashion. Person specifications usually have Essential (usually shown with an 'E') and Desirable ('D') criteria which are usually used to separate two very close interviewees. The former, in theory, are what you must have in order to do the job, though as noted above, in fact they are usually the requirements three people need to do three different jobs and it is unlikely anyone straddling so many skill sets actually exists. This is why you so often see re-advertisements with the company complaining that there were insufficient good candidates. It also helps explain why industry feels young people are under-skilled. This may be true in some cases, but no-one has analysed if in fact, the mismatch stems from companies increasinly wanting applicants who are made up of more than one individual's abilities and have years of experience in a newcomer to that labour market.
I was told that if you match 4 out of 5 of the E requirements then you should apply for a job. Of course many recruiters do not work that way, it has to be that you match 6 out of 5 (the sixth being the one they would have wanted to include but it was felt there were too many and you should know what the extra ones were) or otherwise you are hopeless. Recruiters are merciless in telling applicants when they feel they have wasted their time. (As an aside, you know how, especially in times of high unemployment you are advised to speculatively apply to companies that you think you could work for. When I did this one rung twice to tell me at length that 'this is not how things are done' and that I should know better. They thought I was lying when I said other very similar companies took my applications in good faith and in at least two cases in the past it had got me work). No-one ever applies for a job for 'fun'. There are far better things to do in a day than spend a couple of hours filling in yet another form and trying to draft what you are saying to the hundreds of requirements expected by the company. As applicants we take it seriously, it is a shame companies often do not do so too.
My last application was in response to a person specification. It had 18 E requirements and 3 D requirements, actually not a bad number. However, when you look at what they entail, they need a strategist, a process manager, a product quality controller, a staff performance/personnel manager, a market researcher and forecaster, a marketing manager and a researcher, and, of course, your bog-standard line manager and committee chair. Now, many of these skills do not actually sit well alongside others. In addition, if I was as good a marketing manager as they are seeking, I would be going for marketing manager jobs, not this vacancy and in fact that goes for most of the other types of post they are wrapping up in this one. I applied partly for the challenge of stretching myself across these different roles, but I anticipate they are going to be disappointed because this is not one job it is at least four if not more.
Setting unrealistic expectations is going to lead to disappointment and though the successful applicant will have done their best and try to fit with what is required, that disappointment that they are not the super-human that was desired is going to hang over them, as it did over my 2.5-day lieutenant colleague, and that is an appalling basis on which to start a working relationship. It also reduces effectiveness as managers squabble over the employee to make them come and do the role that they wanted and thinks they have appointed someone for, whereas 1-3 other managers also try to snatch the new worker thinking that the person was appointed to the role they felt they needed. The newcomer is left dizzy and their efforts are dispersed; they are at the whim of management changes and work that they have focused on might simply be declared unnecessary or irrelevant when a different manager comes to the fore. Thus, unrealistic, aggregate person specifications disconnected from the job in hand, not only make life difficult for applicants but also harm the company.
P.P. 17/06/2009 - I just encountered a new record for the number of requirements on a job specification. This one, which is actually a lower-ranked job than the previous record holder (36 Essential and 10 Desirable requirements). This one has a total of 38 Essential and 10 Desirable requirements. It is clear that whoever wrote the specification clearly cannot tell the difference between every task you might be assigned in the job and what the necessary skills are to undertake it. Whatever they might assume, there is a difference. To me all of this signals that more staff across companies need to be trained in how to recruit (and interview) effectively to save wasting their, the company's and the applicants' time.
Another phenomenon is that even with jobs which being advertised to the general public and are not internal posts, you are asked to show evidence that you have experienc of their particular, named committees, which not having ever worked there is impossible. This may be suggesting that really they only want internal candidates and yet have felt or been compelled to advertise more broadly, or, I believe more likely, that no-one has proof-read the specifications before they are sent out. For one the other day, which only had 20 Essential requirements, a number of skills were repeated down the page so responding to each in turn I found that I was repeating myself. It is a waste of time for the recruiters as well as for the applicants. Employers, please take far more care over your job specifications. In my experience, you can reduce your requirements by a fifth simply by removing duplication.
Monday, 16 February 2009
Dead In Seconds 3: Second World War Games
This is part of my irregular series of complaints about computer games for PCs. Playing computer games especially historically set ones is a major hobby for me. However, I get frustrated when many of them seem, particularly on the 'Easy' level to be impossible to progress without relying on cheats. Usually this seems to stem from the fact that there has been insufficent play testing so the user is eliminated in an arbitrary way or gets stuck in a situation in which you can only switch off the machine and either abandon the game or start again. Sometimes these flaws come from bugs. I was a big fan of 'Hidden and Dangerous' (1999) a game in which you had a squad of four commandos who had to carry out various missions in the Second World War. The storylines were interesting and the background authentic, but unfortunately filled with bugs so your brave men would die if they got on a boat as they fell into an engine or they got stuck in a look-out tower as there was insufficient room for them to stand up and they were also unable to crouch. I also liked 'Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines' (2004) which had an excellent back story of vampire clans in California, but needed 23 downloaded patches for it to work and then put you up against so powerful enemies with minimal weaponry and armour that you very quickly became stuck.
Now, as I have noted on this blog, since having my computer rebuilt following that fake anti-virus virus which hit me and presumably thousands of people across the world last month, I have been re-installing different games to what I had before, working my way through the pile of games that I have bought over the years and never played. I found that another couple of games like 'Hidden and Dangerous', 'Commandos 2: Beyond the Call of Duty' (2001) and 'Commandos 3: Destination Berlin' simply would not install on my computer. As noted before I did manage to get 'Faces of War' (2006) and 'Codename Panzers: Phase One' (2004) installed and have been playing them. In both games you control a small unit of soldiers in the Second World War and in both you can plan campaigns as the Germans, the Allies or the Soviets/Russians. It is interesting how these companies separate what were called the Allies into the Americans and British (and sometimes the French Resistance) and the Soviets, though from the moment the Germans invaded the USSR in June 1941, on Churchill's principle that 'my enemy's enemy is my friend' if nothing stronger, they were all in it together. Officially China was also part of the Allies.
Anyway, I outlined how in 'Faces of War' I found it tough as your small unit was generally faced by whole regiments often far more heavily armed, but that as the Germans I completed the first mission to blow the Nijmegen Bridge, so preventing the war ending in January 1945. I then moved on to Bastogne in the Battle of the Bulge and found my covert team, especially the snipers, not content to work cautiously, they simply ran up to the American front line and stood there while they were shot even if I kept calling them back. Meanwhile Rambo-like US soldiers in their shirtsleeves (despite the bitter 1944 winter) simply charged up escaping harm. I gave up on this scenarion but had plans to come back, thinking I could restrain my sniper and then if I eliminated the bulk of the troops on the US frontline, might stand a chance. Only, this time after Nijmegen I was sent back for tank training which I had already done. I did it again only to be sent back to Nijmegen, I was stuck in a loop not even with the chance of the suicidal Bastogne mission. I tried playing as the Soviets but had to go through all the basic training once again even though by now I knew all the controls perfectly and the Soviet troops were little different to how the German ones had been except they had worse American accents. This could have been a good game, but macho American stylings, plus flaws in the progression system rendered it pointless.
Now 'Codename Panzers: Phase One', though criticised for looking pretty old fashioned for a game produced in 2004 seemed to play much better. It reminded me of Talonsoft's 'West Front' (1998) with the same bird's eye view, though with greater detail. I quite like being able to role a clutch of tanks down some high street. You follow one character who has wistful diary entries before each scenario. I managed to get through as German Oberleutnant Hans von Groebel up to rank of Oberst and heavily decorated before being invalided out in late 1942 presumably so you did not have be on the defensive for the rest of the game.
I am now playing as Leutenant Aleksander Vladimiriov and got an appendicitis after the Germans were turned back from Kursk in 1943 and then only brought back to service in February 1945 for the assault on Budapest. I suppose this was to reduce the number of maps they need to create, but it seems a shame to have missed out such a chunk. Now, it comes to the problems of the gameplay. In Budapest I keep being blown apart by German forces I cannot see. Even if I run infantry in the building overlooking where the artillery piece or the concealed tank is, it remains invisible and I cannot fire at it. In contrast my soldiers and tanks who may be many streets away are hit precisely on the first shot by artillery, mortar and tank fire eliminating me immediately. You can go round clearing out every soldier from every building and yet you are still precisely targeted. Perhaps that all the staff at Stormregion who developed this are Hungarian and their quality checkers are German we have got this situation you get with US-produced games, in that you cannot really beat the Americans.
Perhaps the Hungarians cannot tolerate seeing Budapest fall to the Soviets (as it did in reality) though it does seem simply some flaw. I can accept 'fog of war' but nothing infuriates me more than people who are invisible to me, but can see right through building after building to hit me dead on. I do not mind games being tough, I just want them to be fair. It seems pointless in having the game with all the wonderfully drawn buildings and well-researched vehicles, if no matter what my skill, my strategy, my tactics, my planning, I am still going to be eliminated. Game makers do not seem to understand how disheartening it is and how unlikely we are to buy anything more from them. Though in this case as I got 'Codename Panzers: Phase Two' (2005) with it (primarily so I could play as a Yugoslav partisan), I cannot hold that particular sanction until I see something else of theirs.
To some degree I am pleased that the release of 'Empires Total War' has been delayed because if it lets them eliminate some of the flaws of earlier games (laser-guided medieval rockets, galleons equipped with radar and bullet-proof Mongol warriors) then I will be far happier especially, as atypically for me, I am going to buy it new.
Now, as I have noted on this blog, since having my computer rebuilt following that fake anti-virus virus which hit me and presumably thousands of people across the world last month, I have been re-installing different games to what I had before, working my way through the pile of games that I have bought over the years and never played. I found that another couple of games like 'Hidden and Dangerous', 'Commandos 2: Beyond the Call of Duty' (2001) and 'Commandos 3: Destination Berlin' simply would not install on my computer. As noted before I did manage to get 'Faces of War' (2006) and 'Codename Panzers: Phase One' (2004) installed and have been playing them. In both games you control a small unit of soldiers in the Second World War and in both you can plan campaigns as the Germans, the Allies or the Soviets/Russians. It is interesting how these companies separate what were called the Allies into the Americans and British (and sometimes the French Resistance) and the Soviets, though from the moment the Germans invaded the USSR in June 1941, on Churchill's principle that 'my enemy's enemy is my friend' if nothing stronger, they were all in it together. Officially China was also part of the Allies.
Anyway, I outlined how in 'Faces of War' I found it tough as your small unit was generally faced by whole regiments often far more heavily armed, but that as the Germans I completed the first mission to blow the Nijmegen Bridge, so preventing the war ending in January 1945. I then moved on to Bastogne in the Battle of the Bulge and found my covert team, especially the snipers, not content to work cautiously, they simply ran up to the American front line and stood there while they were shot even if I kept calling them back. Meanwhile Rambo-like US soldiers in their shirtsleeves (despite the bitter 1944 winter) simply charged up escaping harm. I gave up on this scenarion but had plans to come back, thinking I could restrain my sniper and then if I eliminated the bulk of the troops on the US frontline, might stand a chance. Only, this time after Nijmegen I was sent back for tank training which I had already done. I did it again only to be sent back to Nijmegen, I was stuck in a loop not even with the chance of the suicidal Bastogne mission. I tried playing as the Soviets but had to go through all the basic training once again even though by now I knew all the controls perfectly and the Soviet troops were little different to how the German ones had been except they had worse American accents. This could have been a good game, but macho American stylings, plus flaws in the progression system rendered it pointless.
Now 'Codename Panzers: Phase One', though criticised for looking pretty old fashioned for a game produced in 2004 seemed to play much better. It reminded me of Talonsoft's 'West Front' (1998) with the same bird's eye view, though with greater detail. I quite like being able to role a clutch of tanks down some high street. You follow one character who has wistful diary entries before each scenario. I managed to get through as German Oberleutnant Hans von Groebel up to rank of Oberst and heavily decorated before being invalided out in late 1942 presumably so you did not have be on the defensive for the rest of the game.
I am now playing as Leutenant Aleksander Vladimiriov and got an appendicitis after the Germans were turned back from Kursk in 1943 and then only brought back to service in February 1945 for the assault on Budapest. I suppose this was to reduce the number of maps they need to create, but it seems a shame to have missed out such a chunk. Now, it comes to the problems of the gameplay. In Budapest I keep being blown apart by German forces I cannot see. Even if I run infantry in the building overlooking where the artillery piece or the concealed tank is, it remains invisible and I cannot fire at it. In contrast my soldiers and tanks who may be many streets away are hit precisely on the first shot by artillery, mortar and tank fire eliminating me immediately. You can go round clearing out every soldier from every building and yet you are still precisely targeted. Perhaps that all the staff at Stormregion who developed this are Hungarian and their quality checkers are German we have got this situation you get with US-produced games, in that you cannot really beat the Americans.
Perhaps the Hungarians cannot tolerate seeing Budapest fall to the Soviets (as it did in reality) though it does seem simply some flaw. I can accept 'fog of war' but nothing infuriates me more than people who are invisible to me, but can see right through building after building to hit me dead on. I do not mind games being tough, I just want them to be fair. It seems pointless in having the game with all the wonderfully drawn buildings and well-researched vehicles, if no matter what my skill, my strategy, my tactics, my planning, I am still going to be eliminated. Game makers do not seem to understand how disheartening it is and how unlikely we are to buy anything more from them. Though in this case as I got 'Codename Panzers: Phase Two' (2005) with it (primarily so I could play as a Yugoslav partisan), I cannot hold that particular sanction until I see something else of theirs.
To some degree I am pleased that the release of 'Empires Total War' has been delayed because if it lets them eliminate some of the flaws of earlier games (laser-guided medieval rockets, galleons equipped with radar and bullet-proof Mongol warriors) then I will be far happier especially, as atypically for me, I am going to buy it new.
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