Driving the police up the wall at Fortnums

I am late catching up with last week’s Sunday Times and its description of the scene at Fortnum & Mason in Piccadilly during the recent disturbances:

Thirty police in riot gear went into the store to drag out protesters but others scaled the building and chalked “Tax the rich” and “Tory scum” on its walls. One played…a clarinet on the roof

So, thirty police did this, but others did that, is that the sense of it?  The only thing I am unsure about is whether the police who scaled the walls were wearing riot gear or whether that was only for those who went into the store. I reckon that shinning up walls, writing things and playing musical instruments is probably impossible in riot gear, so I conclude that the qualifying description “in riot gear” applies only to those who went into the store.What were the protesters doing meanwhile?

Let’s bring back Latin in schools, to make sure that serious newspapers keep their subjects distinct from their objects.

It was later rumoured on Twitter that a group of tweed-clad Old Etonians had trashed the Slough branch of Lidl in a reprisal raid.

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A hundred page novel consisting only of Vs

Here is one of those strange conversations which spring up on Twitter and die away again, soon to be lost in the ever-running stream which follows. That is their nature, of course, and although I do know a couple of people who archive all their tweets, most of us are content to let them disappear. Every so often a snippet seems worth capturing.

The participants in this one are three writers on legal technology. Charles Christian is a barrister turned legal technology journalist who edits the Legal Technology Insider and the Orange Rag blog. He is also, by his own description, a “sometime poet and fantasy and science fiction writer” with a site called Shared Cultural References serving for him much the same purpose as this site serves for me . Joanna Goodman is a well-known freelance writer, specialising in technology, legal and professional services, knowledge management and corporate communications as well as wider subjects. I write on the management of electronic documents in litigation (“edisclosure” in England & Wales, “ediscovery” everywhere else) and, if given, say, 10 days in a week, would write on other things as well. Like many people who work for themselves, we all keep strange hours. Random Twitter conversations with a wide range of people throughout the day and night give one the social aspects of the workplace without the downsides like commuting and office politics.

Yesterday’s conversation began with Charles reporting that he had fallen asleep at his keyboard. The ensuing sequence is shown below:

It is not out of the question that one might produce great art by such random means – I was in the New York Museum of Modern Art earlier this week, and much admired works by Jackson Pollock, created by the painter’s equivalent of a writer leaning on his keyboard. I am reminded also of the experiment reported by the American comedian Bob Newhart which posits the idea that an infinite number of monkeys with typewriters could produce all the world’s great books. This collision of infinity, probability and time recurs in popular culture – see the WikiPedia article here. Newhart’s monkeys nearly got there with the line: “To be, or not to be, that is the gesondenplatz…”, which must have something going for it if I can remember it 40 years after I last heard it.

Charles should, I think, have taken care to rest his sleeping head three characters to the left. A 100 page novel created in his sleep and consisting solely of Zzzzzzs would have had a post-modern cachet which multiple Vs lack.

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Well how much is porn on the Internet, Jacqui?

Everyone is a bit puzzled as to why former Home Secretary Jacqui Smith chose to tell us about her ignorance of the porn industry. One would have thought that she would try and avoid headlines which included her name and the word “porn”, given that her disgrace was based in part on the fact that she claimed her husband’s X-rated videos on expenses.

Most of the comment, in fact, has been about the photograph with which the Times illustrated its article, showing Smith in a rather louche leather coat standing in a Soho Street, like a Madame on her way to inspect a new batch of recruits for her brothel. What caught my eye was the headline in the iPad version of the article. Where the print version was headed “I never knew the Internet was so full of porn, admits Jacqui Smith” the iPad version read “I never realised how much porn was on the Internet, admits Jacqui Smith”. The ambiguity in this subtly different version brings with it a clear reminder of that previous occasion when the cost of porn escaped her notice. Was the sub-editor having a laugh at her expense, I wonder.

For myself, I do not particularly blame Smith for not noticing that entry on her domestic Internet bill. She was a busy woman and, as with Baroness Scotland’s unfortunate oversight in respect of her illegal immigrant cleaner, it is something easily done. They share a collective responsibility in that they were members of a government which was particularly unforgiving of our daily oversights, burdening businesses and individuals with a mass of petty compliance obligations and hordes of petty little runts-in-office to catch us out and punish us. Indeed, one of the best results of the Parliamentary expenses scandal in which Smith was the star turn has been that MPs now know what it feels like to be caught out for every trivial infringement of the rules.

Discipline for Bristol Jobsworths – not likely

Times columnist Matthew Parris was amongst those who commented on the story of the council jobsworths who made a family take down their windbreak whilst eating their picnic on Clifton Downs in Bristol (see Putting petty officials back in their box). Like the rest of us, Parris fears the unchecked power of small people with authority unsupported by thought or brain. He wonders if the council officials have been disciplined.

I think this is unlikely for various reasons. Employment law is weighted heavily in favour of employees and is unlikely to appreciate the distinction between being an official and being officious. Very few public servants are actually dismissed, for incompetence or anything else. Besides, unless Bristol city council is very different from other local authorities, it is probable that the senior staff share the general bureaucrats’ view that theirs is the earth and everything in it. They may call us “customers” and describe themselves as “public servants”, but the reality is the rather paradoxical one that they have come to think of themselves as our masters. The contradictions inherent in this reach their apogee with signs erected by highways officers telling us to “think”. They don’t see themselves as others see them, which is probably as well for their self-esteem.

I suspect that Bristol’s apology was inspired by a quick-witted PR person. Bristol did not apologise because anyone thought that the officers’ heavy-handed conduct was wrong, but because someone rather brighter than the general run of council officers spotted a PR disaster looming. Another of Matthew Parris’s long-time battles is with people who cannot say “sorry”; it does not matter what inspired Bristol’s apology, they did at least make one.

Their apology was not accompanied by the usual empty assertions that “lessons have been learnt”. Perhaps the PR person was clever enough to realise that this phrase has been discredited with over-use by officials whose capacity to learn anything is pretty slim.

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Big Society undermined by thick policemen and CPS prosecutors

The story of the Manchester policeman who ignored a gang of street vandals but arrested their victim raises all sorts of issues. Police who neglect their duty, and misuse arbitrary power are bad enough. What of the prosecutors, who hauled the victims through the courts whilst declining to prosecute the policeman who struck newspaper seller Ian Tomlinson? And what hope is there for David Cameron’s big society?

In most stories where a victim of crime takes on his or her tormentors, they have been driven to it because the police prefer to stay in their warm police stations ignoring calls for help. The Telegraph article Women arrested for swearing at yobs, tells of an occasion when PC Plank was actually present, and made an arrest.  You must have someone to drag off to the cells if you are going to get your bonus points, and the small female victim will do if you lack the guts to take on the perpetrators.

A brick was thrown through Miss Harrop’s window, and her boyfriend “left the house to confront six youths standing outside, but a patrolling police officer witnessed him being chased away by the group, who later returned to the street outside the property”. The policeman just “witnessed” this did he? Perhaps some Health & Safety regulation barred him from doing anything to help. Perhaps he was just too cowardly.

In the absence of any intervention by the police, Miss Harrop went out and gave her undoubtedly strong views using, so the charge sheet said, “abusive words within the hearing or sight of a person likely to be caused harassment, alarm or distress”.  I cannot quite picture the sort of yob who throws bricks through windows and chases people down the street but who is likely to be distressed by a small woman shouting at him. Thick policemen I can understand, but the charge-sheet was presumably drawn up by someone notionally possessed  of a brain.

Putting petty officials back in their box

A Bristol family’s picnic was ruined when over-zealous council officials (or “dim jobsworths” as they are known) made them take down their wind-break on Clifton Downs.  We have to turn this tide somehow and put petty officials back in the box from which New Labour released them.

Petty officialdom is nothing new, of course. Every culture has always had small-minded officials with powers disproportionate to their intelligence. It always used to be one of those things we mocked the French for – they guillotined their leaders in the cause of freedom and then voluntarily submitted to legions of bureaucrats and small men in uniform eager to tell them what not to do. The English have always mocked theirs – Hodges, the bossy blackout Warden in Dad’s Army, is a figure of fun who stands in for every killjoy whose job involves the enforcement of regulations; as a rough rule of thumb, the actual significance of such a person (and, one suspects, the size of his penis) is inversely proportionate to his self-importance.

The missing component, of course, is discretion, that is, the application of intelligence to any situation in order to decide what is right. You cannot expect discretion from stupid people, which is why traffic wardens, town planning officers and the like are simply given rules to apply or enforce. The word “jobsworth” derives from the curious expression “it’s more than my job’s worth”, with the implicit admission that the job is not worth very much to anybody apart from its holder.

Such people thrived under New Labour, for whom no activity was too minor to be regulated. Figures obtained by Lib Dem MP Chris Huhne before the election showed that 4,289 new criminal offences were  created between 1997 and 2009, roughly one for each day in office.  More and more officials were employed to enforce them and given ever greater powers, including the power to levy on-the-spot fines. Labour may not have executed the hereditary aristocracy, but it took away its powers, such as they had, and, in a curious parallel with the French Revolution, simultaneously empowered the little people with more authority than peers had had for generations.

Amputee soldier can walk 400 metres so DWP cuts his benefits

A civil servant has decided that private Aron Shelton, who lost one leg in Afghanistan and may yet lose the other, should have his disability living allowance taken away after he struggled to walk 400 metres. You can read an article about it here and you may then like to focus on the quotation from the civil servant which appears at the end. It reads:

A spokesman for the Department for Work and Pensions said: ‘Aron Shelton’s case is under review and we recognise his brave service to his country.

‘This case is a stark reminder why we need a new assessment to decide if someone is eligible for DLA.

‘Under the current system we ask customers to supply us with the relevant information and, unless further information is requested, our staff will make a decision based on this. Eligibility to DLA, like all benefits, is set out in legislation and is not discretionary.

I wonder what degree of urgency is being given to this review and how long it takes to decide that the decision is wrong. How many civil servants have to read the file? How many tiers of management must it go through, do you think, before it reaches somebody is sufficiently senior to decide that a brave man who gave his leg for his country should have a car to get about in? And in what sense is the soldier a “customer”?

Revival of Oxford Agenda and Oxford Inciter Blogs

I am thinking of reviving my Oxford Inciter and Oxford Agenda blogs. This post appears on both of them. Both ran for several months until a couple of years ago when my day job became all-consuming.

The day job involves electronic disclosure or e-Disclosure of documents (electronic discovery, or e-discovery in every common law jurisdiction save England & Wales). My role is to educate and inform judges, lawyers, clients and suppliers about the law, the practice and the technology involved in e-discovery, and in marketing the ideas and services to others. The primary medium for this is a blog for the e-Disclosure Information Project, whose 250 or so posts in 2009 sometimes generated several thousand words per week. There is more than enough to write about on that subject, and optional things fell by the wayside. In addition to work in the UK, I spend about a month each year at conferences abroad. These trips simultaneously gave me a wider range of subjects to write about and less time to do so. It seems worth having a go at reviving the non-work blogs.

The subjects which I used to air in them – dishonest politicians, the creeping power of civil servants, the expensive stupidity of local government officers and the incompetence of railway companies – have worked their way into my e-Disclosure writing. This is not a drawback – I like comparisons and parallels, and my readers seem to appreciate the leavening of the rather dry legal and technical subject-matter with examples pulled from other areas of everyday life. There is, nevertheless, plenty to write about which cannot be turned to didactic purposes in my work blog and, besides, it is refreshing for the brain to cover other things from time to time.

Four stories in one day to remind us why we need judges

We are going to need a strong judiciary in these dying years of New Labour. Four events reported today remind us how contemptuous Government has become of those who elect it.

The Government announced plans to exempt MPs from a requirement to detail their expenses. The Treasury announced that it would not be hurrying to compensate those who lost their pensions in Equitable Life. The Government said that Heathrow Airport is to be extended without Parliamentary debate. And John Mortimer, fierce fighter for individual liberty, died. I do not suppose there was in fact a connection between this last event and the other three, but it is easy to see one.

Speed cameras and statistical ignorance

A new study shows that government claims about lives saved by speed cameras are overstated. This is ammunition against the free-spending little people who run our local authority highways departments. As recession closes in, councillors and others who have been rubber-stamping big budgets are going to have to start questioning what the money is for and why it is necessary to spend it.

Researchers at Liverpool University have knocked Government claims that 100 lives a year are saved by speed cameras. Whilst speed cameras do reduce accidents, the numbers are exaggerated. The research shows a fall in accidents of 19% compared with the claimed 50%.

Does this matter very much, you might ask. After all, this Government belches out false statistics daily and has, indeed, devoted more energy to rigging the apparent outcomes of initiatives than it has on the initiatives themselves. It does matter, and for reasons which go beyond the actual facts behind this research and beyond motoring. Money is wasted in vast quantities on things which make little difference; things which really do matter are neglected in favour of those which yield apparently good outcomes; the police, who need all the friends they can get at the moment, are tarred with the fall-out of policies to which they do not necessarily subscribe; and any little surviving regard for government (as opposed merely to this Government) takes another pasting.