Controversy Reigns

After all the worries about the cost of events during the cuts and fears of republican protests, the Jubilee events went off (pretty much) without a hitch... Oh no, hang on. There was this:

'A group of long-term unemployed jobseekers were bussed into London to work as unpaid stewards during the diamond jubilee celebrations and told to sleep under London Bridge before working on the river pageant.

Up to 30 jobseekers and another 50 people on apprentice wages were taken to London by coach from Bristol, Bath and Plymouth as part of the government's Work Programme.

Two jobseekers, who did not want to be identified in case they lost their benefits, said they had to camp under London Bridge the night before the pageant. They told the Guardian they had to change into security gear in public, had no access to toilets for 24 hours, and were taken to a swampy campsite outside London after working a 14-hour shift in the pouring rain on the banks of the Thames on Sunday.'           -Shiv Malik, 4 June 2012.

Apologies have been made. And while it's all well and good for Close Protection UK to suggest that they were 'not in the business of exploiting free labour' - and that it was all a simple matter of errors made - reports suggest that exploitation of free labour was exactly what happened.

So calls for serious inquiries are entirely justified (Malik & Mulholland, 2012). Former Deputy PM Mr John Prescott is whirling up a storm - and so he should - because we need to how a democracy just allowed a huge festival celebrating the 60 year reign of a monarch to be staffed by indentured labourers.

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References:
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+ Shiv Malik 'Unemployed bussed in to steward river pageant'; in The Guardian; 4 June 2012.

+ Shiv Malik & Helene Mulholland's 'Unpaid jubilee stewards: Prescott accuses government of exploitation'; in The Guardian; 6 June 2012.

Love Conquers

Compassion serves as an important part of many narratives. In Star Wars love, passion and compassion became central issues as the franchise expanded across various mediums, particularly the prequel films. Its Jedi heroes went from wise old knights retired as hermits into monk-like warrior-priests - who refrain from love for fear of the potential corruption.

The most significant portrayal of someone falling foul of this is Anakin Skywalker. In the prequels we are presented with the idea that Anakin falls to the dark side when his love for his wife is exploited against him - Palpatine using jealousy, anger and hate to twist Skywalker into Darth Vader.

But this wasn't the message in the original trilogy. In Return of the Jedi it was Luke's compassion and Vader's love for his son that helped them defeat the Emperor. That sentiment was reaffirmed in the wonderfully written game Knights of the Old Republic, through the venerable old mouthpiece Jolee Bindo:

"Love doesn't lead to the dark side. Passion can lead to rage and fear, and can be controlled, but passion is not the same thing as love. Controlling your passions while being in love, that's what they should teach you to beware, but love itself will save you, not condemn you."

And compassion is capable of driving more than selfless devotion. Richard Dawkins discussed the role that altruistic behaviours play in the evolution of creatures:

 "Reciprocal altruism - you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours. When animals live in groups where they encounter each other frequently, genes for returning favours can survive. Individuals sacrifice themselves for each other, they give food to each other - to close kin and other individuals who might be in a position to pay back favours on another occasion. Selfish genes give rise to altruistic individuals."

This suggests that your own potential is best served, not by absolute selfless devotion  nor selfish introspection, but rather through the self-centred notion that you help yourself best by caring about the well-being of others.

As it was put in a report compiled in the 1920s to find an answer for Britain's struggling economic situation, the liberal Yellow Book (1928):

'We believe with a passionate faith that the end of all political and economic action is not the perfecting or the perpetuation of this or that piece of mechanism or organisation, but that individual men and women may have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.'

Compassion serves as a huge advantage to the evolution of an individual. But it is also central to the liberal ideology, where a society takes an interest in the fulfilment of the potential of its individual members - acknowledging that your liberty as an individual is best defended by defending the liberty of others.

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References:
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+ 'Yellow Book' or 'Britain's Industrial Future: being the Report of the Liberal Industrial Inquiry'; Ernest Benn Ltd, 1928.

ACTA, Transparency and the EU: Visible to the Naked Eye

There are many ways in which transparency can ensure the presence of the critical eye needed to guard against corruption. But it can all be for nothing if no one is paying attention.

The high profile international controversy surrounding the SOPA/PIPA Acts  are a perfect example. The act was followed swiftly by the ACTA treaty that faced numerous protests across Europe (BBC, 2012). ACTA now finds itself buried in EU procedures. There it is out of sight and out of mind - not due to any particular fault with the EU's processes - but rather due to an absence of interest in Europe's politics.

The Autumn 2009 Eurobarometer survey says that only 23% of people in the UK trust the EU, with 60% of people saying that they did not understand how the EU worked. In the Autumn 2011 surveys, it was also covered that 62% of UK citizens felt under-informed about the workings of the EU.

It is worrying when an issue of international law enforcement can slip by unnoticed because an organisation is little trusted and little understood.

In the case of ACTA - an attempt to create a multinational treaty to target copyright infringement - it reached the European Parliament with the backing of 22 of the EU's member governments. But upon arrival a number of countries backed away from ratification in the face of protests and ACTA was referred to the courts (Lee, 2012). Now it is being deemed unlikely to see the light of day due to the current 'political reality' (Arthur, 2012).

This disparity between government backing and public opposition shows the real importance of democratic institutions being visible and their processes being understood. When there is a lack of visibility, it creates a democratic deficit - which tips the balance of power away from those not paying attention and towards those who make make and pass our laws.

What can be done is to ensure that this crucial part of the UK's checks and balances plays its part?

One certain distinction to make would be differentiating between disinterest and disaffection. Just because people have become disaffected with the trasformismo occurring within modern British politics, this is no reason to conclude that there is also a disinterest in being engaged with politics.

Every protest, march and sit-in of the last 24 months have been testament to this. Further they declare something to be fundamentally wrong. Either our political process is broken and has found itself rejected - and therefore needs to be updated and improved. Or, as young people grow up, not enough is done to demonstrate the importance and functions of, nor the reasons behind, our political process.