“Sometimes people need to think before they act”
She has recently, in her official capacity, threatened to shoot someone, threatened to have someone beaten up, and most famously she called the balding president of City Council Ken Cockrel “Shrek”.
Thankfully there were some school children on hand to admonish Detroit councilwoman Monica Conyers for her appalling behaviour.
“Sometimes people need to think before they act“.
Bravo to the girl who told it like it was.
UPDATE: Watch this follow up interview for a classic and sick-making example of the “I was bullied as a child” defence.
Published on 13th May, 2008
Irena Sendler: 1910-2008
Every child saved with my help and the help of all the wonderful secret messengers, who today are no longer living, is the justification of my existence on this Earth, and not a title to glory.
Until today, I’d never heard of Irena Sendler. As the Jews in the Warsaw ghetto began to be transported to Treblinka, Irena risked her life to smuggle out children using any means possible. One baby was smuggled out in a mechanic’s toolbox.
Irena wrote down the names of all the children she had helped to escape, placed them in jam jars and buried them in a friend’s garden. She was caught, tortured and beaten by the Gestapo; but she never gave away a single name, or the identities of her underground colleagues. Her courage reminds me of Maximilian Kolbe.
You can read more about Irena’s life here and here. I’ll leave her with the last word:
I was taught that if you see a person drowning, you must jump into the water to save them, whether you can swim or not.
Published on 13th May, 2008
Knit your own muesli
Those strange fanatics who ostentatiously mortify themselves, inwardly and outwardly, with health biscuits and health garments, battened aggressively on the new food. Earnest spectacled young men devoured it on the steps of the National Liberal Club. A bishop who did not believe in a future state preached against the poster, and a peer’s daughter died from eating too much of the compound. A further advertisement was obtained when an infantry regiment mutinied and shot its officers rather than eat the nauseous mess…
Yes, it’s a snippet from Saki’s short story, Filboid Studge, about a young man who made a success of his putative father-in-law’s new breakfast cereal by grasping “the fact that people will do things from a sense of duty which they would never attempt as a pleasure”. He changes the food’s name from “Pipenta” to “Filboid Studge”, creates advertisements such as one that depicts “the Damned in Hell suffering a new torment from their inability to get at the Filboid Studge”, and thus makes the older man a fat wodge of cash. The older man then makes sure his daughter marries someone far richer than the £200 per year poster designer.
Whenever I read that story, I have muesli at the back of my mind. I can’t bear the stuff, and I can barely believe how much some people are willing to pay for it.
However, food company Alara has just pushed up the stakes and is now offering a bespoke muesli service. If you visit this page, you can create your own mixture using up to 16 different ingredients, including such things as Yacon Root, Lucuma Fruit Powder, Cacao Nibs and - at only £96.46 per kilo - freeze dried blueberries. My own, impromptu mixture - which I have christened “Graun Poison” and hope never to taste - weighed in at £33.62 for the kilo (including postage, mixing charge and a one-off set up fee).
If anything, it proves to me that Alara has hit on two other truths. People don’t just buy this stuff out of a sense of duty, but for the heightened pleasure of spending obscene amounts of cash on it, not to mention the chance to create a mix that will inspire a crazed, envious and competitive streak in their friends and neighbours.
It might be worth finding out if the owners of Alara have any daughters - heiresses tend to get snapped up pretty quickly, even now.
Published on 13th May, 2008
Pravda on the rates (II)
A quick note of thanks to friend and local statistician, Dr Archer, for picking up on my analysis of council spending on propaganda.
Published on 12th May, 2008
Blue Letterbox, Yellow Pages
Something battered and beautiful I spotted this afternoon.
Allen Road, Stoke Newington N16.
Published on 11th May, 2008
Council propaganda and the Labour vote
Like Bill Dornan over at Foolish Interruption, I think that the nonsense written about the Evening Standard and the mayoral election is an expression of sour grapes.
…can we please lay to bed the idea that the Evening Standard swung the election? – it’ll only encourage them. A tawdry rag it may be, a great former of opinion it is not. The idea It’s the Standard Wot Won It seems particularly strong in the Guardian’s own little world. The Standard’s “poisonous” campaign has been blamed by a few more Ken fans (all links just from the Graun, I can’t face digging out all the lip quivering stuff I’ve read). The irony, of course, is that the Guardian itself ran a string of vigorous, if somewhat hysterical articles (only vulgar rags like the Standard run actual campaigns you see) against Boris: the effete and frivilous Tory, the racist, the evil, baby-eating Tory bigot etc.
Bill’s absolutely right. What pretentions either paper may have of influencing voters, the fact remains that most people in London read neither of them.
What most people in London do read - or, at the very least, receive - is the propaganda freesheet that is shoved through their letterboxes by their local council. On that basis, I felt that these were the publications that had the power to influence the largest number of voters.
So I hunted out some statistics that would help me uncover whether there was any connection between the amount spent on these publications, or the frequency with which they were circulated, and the way in which voters in London boroughs voted in the last set of local elections (ie 2006). I found them here in a report about Ken Livingstone’s budget proposals for 2005-2006. In an appendix I found a chart that was chock-full of details relating to “London Borough publications funded by ratepayers”.
The idea was, of course, to prove that at a cost to Londoners of £3,300,000 per annum, Livingstone’s own propaganda sheet The Londoner was good value for money. It wasn’t: new mayor Boris Johnson scrapped it within days of taking office.
However, the information about the borough publications is fascinating. The table below is the data as presented by the GLA, minus the details about The Londoner and those for the Corporation of London’s thrice-yearly Cityview (which is anomalous in the sense of both audience and the fact that the Corporation isn’t controlled by a political party). I have added to that data details of the party that won the council in the previous local elections (ie 2002).
At first glance, these figures don’t seem too bad. If you look down the grey column headed CPCPH (Cost Per Copy Per Household), you’ll see that there’s no real pattern between spending and which party controls a borough. The Lib Dems and Labour are more likely to spend more per individual copy, but the Labour Party is also likely to get a better deal for the taxpayer - a competitive 6p per copy per household in Hackney, and no cost at all in Labour-controlled Hammersmith & Fulham and Hounslow (the freesheets were paid for by advertising). That said, it needs to be borne in mind that there were no figures available for Waltham Forest (then No Overall Control), Tower Hamlets, Brent (both Labour) or Islington (then Lib Dem).
However, by multiplying Cost per Copy per Household, by circulation, and then multiplying the new figure by the number of editions produced in a year, it is possible to work out how much each borough council was spending on freesheets. Here you will begin to spot a very clear trend:
Labour councils spent the largest sums of taxpayers’ money annually on freesheets. What’s more, those high spending boroughs retained control of their boroughs in the subsequent council elections in 2006. Only one Labour council spending £165,000 or less on propaganda - Barking and Dagenham - retained control. All the others lost overall control or fell to the Tories.
Of course, one could argue that this is slightly unfair. Some of those councils have much larger populations, so have to spend more money to reach all their voters residents. So, breaking down the figures to show the annual taxpayer cost per household, you get the following:
There’s a similar pattern. Only those Labour councils spending over £1.50 or more on freesheets managed to retain control. All the others were swept out of power in 2006 (though there is the anomaly of Lambeth, where Labour gained control from a hung council). It also emerges that the Tory controlled Barnet, whilst spending a relatively large £152,880 on freesheets, spent a reasonable 72p per head - far divorced from the outrageous £6.50 Greenwich was expecting its residents to cough up each year.
Even these figures only tell part of the story. There also seems to be a connection between how frequently council freesheets are circulated, and whether the ruling party keeps control after the 2006 elections.
Yes, you guessed it. All the Labour councils that retained control of their boroughs in 2006 were issuing between 11 and 26 freesheets to every household. No council issuing 10 or fewer managed to cling on.
So what can we conclude?
I’m not a statistician, but there are some facts we can deduce from the data.
1. Labour boroughs spent an average on £1.77 on council propaganda. Tory boroughs spent an average of 70p.
2. The Labour boroughs that spent most on council propaganda were likely to have retained control after the 2006 elections (though whether there is a causal link is unproven).
3. The Labour boroughs that spent least on council propaganda were likely to have ceded control after the 2006 elections (though whether there is a causal link is unproven).
4. Over £3.5million was wasted on propaganda that could have been more usefully spent on actually improving people’s lives, instead of convincing them their lives had already improved. If you include Livingstone’s The Londoner this figure leaps to near the £7million mark, and would doubtless cross it if we had the figures for the freesheets issued by Tower Hamlets, Islington, Brent and Waltham Forest.
5. Hammersmith & Fulham, Hounslow and Harrow all proved councils can issue as much stuff as they like, at no cost to the taxpayer, if it is funded by advertising.
My personal view is that, in scrapping The Londoner, Boris Johnson has shown that in these belt-tightening times, there are better things to spend taxpayers’ money on than freesheets. I also think there’s scope for a campaign to abolish them or, at the very least, bring their expense down to the absolute minimum. That said, even if it were funded by advertising, who would relish this sort of thing landing on their doormat?
I’d also like to see some more work - using bang-up-to-date figures - to examine the link between Labour councils’ high freesheet expenditure and local election success. But until someone does that, my response to those who say “It was the Standard wot won it” for Boris will be that “It was Hackney Today (described by one local councillor as a cross between Pravda and Heat) wot won it” for our own elected mayor, Jules Pipe.
(Note: if you want a copy of my spreadsheet, you can download it here.)
Published on 10th May, 2008
A waste of time and money?
I know it’s an incredibly old-fashioned way of looking at things, but I reckon the best way to find out what people think is to discover where they are, then go and ask them.
Not everyone agrees of course. Whoever conducted this survey, which aimed to find out what young people in Hackney think about crime, preferred to ask their questions regardless of whether anyone was listening.
I’m the first to admit that I’m way out of touch with what kids in Hackney read, what they listen to, where they hang out, and what websites are popular. But I can bet you anything you like that not many of them are going to spend acres of time doing the following things:
- reading the Council’s propaganda mag, Hackney Today. (”Hey, Nish, you seen this campaign to save our local post offices? How cool is that?”)
- trawling through the Hackney’s Consultation Finder. (”Jase! Jase! Look at this! It says here that “Hackney Local Authority are currently preparing a series of planning policy documents which will form part of the Local Development Framework (LDF). The LDF sets out the future direction of land use, development and regeneration in the Borough.” And they want to know what we think about it!”)
- reading the Hackney Young People Empowered (HYPE) website. I’m willing to be proved wrong, and to hear that this very worthy and useful site is straining under excessive server load. But if I learned one thing when I worked with kids, they prefer to create their own spaces on the web.
Sadly, the mastermind behind the “Young people’s attitude towards crime” survey thought differently, and that’s exactly where they tried to drum up custom:
It was decided to design an electronic survey consisting of a variety of open and closed questions. The survey was posted on the internet, with the link being publicised through Hackney Today, Consultation Finder (Council’s website) and the HYPE website (a dedicated website for young people).
Surprise, surprise, the Council wasn’t exactly inundated with responses. In a period when crime is one of the most pressing issues facing young people in the borough; and in which several teenagers have been murdered; guess how many took part in this ill-conceived survey?
Twenty-three.
Nor did all of the twenty-three manage to answer every question. That was more like eleven.
So what did this triumphant bit of research find? I’ll cut through the crap and summarise it for you:
- Most kids are worried about crime;
- Five kids said they’d been victims of crime;
- Peer pressure is seen as a problem;
- Families are thought to be the best people to help keep kids on the straight and narrow.
I could go on, but it would be pointless. As the report points out:
In using this data, a note of caution is suggested by Consultation Team based on the low level of response received. The results therefore may not be truly representative of the views of young people in Hackney.
Of course they aren’t representative of the views of young people in Hackney. Apart from the fact hardly anyone filled in the questionnaire, there’s another tasty morsel tucked at the back of the report…
Only eleven young people said they lived in Hackney.
So, in return for a month-long consultation, we’ve got a report crammed with things we knew already, based on the views of eleven confirmed Hackney residents. And I bet it didn’t come cheap.
I might just find out how much it costs. After all, I know the right person to ask.
Published on 8th May, 2008
What’s Wendy Done?
I thought politicians were supposed to have highly-sensitive antennae, designed to stop them looking foolish. A bit like Yes Minister’s James Hacker, who refused to be photographed with a pig, but was happy to be snapped with a woolly lamb.
The electronic age throws up new challenges in this respect. Even Gordon Brown would think twice before hosting his website with - for example - “Don’t Panic Web Design”, and I can’t see David Cameron plumping for a company called “Top Hat Media”. They’d be laughed at if they did.
That’s why I was quite amused to find out who hosts the website of Scottish Labour Party leader Wendy Alexander, especially as she and Gordon Brown can’t actually decide whether she did, or did not, call for an immediate referendum on Scottish independence. “Bring it on,” she said. Or did she?.
Anyway, in an attempt to shed a bit more light on what was going on, I visited www.wendyalexandermsp.org.uk, where I was delighted to find a photo of her posing in a bottle shop. Intrigued by the lack of caption, I wondered where the image came from. So I did this:
And, having opened the image in new window, I was delighted to find it was hosted at…
Yes, a server called wendy.intraspin.com
I’m sure Intraspin is an excellent firm - but I can’t think its name is designed to bolster the reputation of any Labour politician who is trying to spin themself out of this kind of mess.
Published on 8th May, 2008
A Little Tagging
Luke Akehurst has asked me to:
Pick up the nearest book
Open it at page 123
Find the fifth sentence
Post the next three sentences
So I have. Here are my three sentences:
Presently there was a telegram announcing that he was a prisoner. My father, even at the moment of victory, was haunted by the fear that the Germans would massacre their prisoners. Barbara, to whom the Russian revolution had been exhilarating, was confident that German militarism was destroyed for ever and that a Utopia would emerge.
From A Little Learning, Evelyn Waugh.
In return, I tag Ann O’Dyne, August, Puss, Dave Hill and Bill Dornan.
Published on 8th May, 2008
I wasn’t going to say this…
Stoke Newington sunshine and a hairdryer breeze. Baby moorhens with sealing wax beaks. Empty Sunblest bags tied to pond railings; orderly waste in a park crammed with bins. Toddler and pink pushchair: ‘ello, kwack, g’bye.
Out into Church Street, boy sucking juice from a beaker. Arrogant mother slams pram into our wheels, her brood bob in her wake as she scowls into her phone.
Past the library and peer into shop windows. A man walks alongside and says:
“Your wife get you to look after the baby?”
“Yes, she’s not too well this afternoon. So I took him to the park.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean anything by…”
“No, no. It’s just lovely to be out in the sunshine.”
I pause and look at my new companion. He’s got the dead eyes and walled-up face of the kid who grew up amongst violence, but the smile of a man who draws strength from hope. He’s wearing an England football shirt, his slight stoop making it hang loosely down the central margin of his back.
“I’d like meet someone and start a family some day,” he says.
“Yes, that would be nice. I’m sure it’ll happen at some point.”
“I hope so,” he continues. He’s in his forties. “I need to at my time of life.”
“Well, sometimes wonderful things happen.”
“I’ve had girlfriends before,” he says. Then: “I’ve had a few girlfriends. But…”
A heartbeat of a pause.
“So you’ve been to the park?” he continues.
“Yes”
“My dad used to carry me on his shoulders. I loved that.”
“I carry William, but these days he wants to clamber off and play.”
“I’ve just been to the library. For a course called Learning Direct. Have you heard of it?”
“Sort of. It’s a government-backed learning thing, isn’t it?”
“Yes. It helps you get back into work.”
“So what are you going to be doing?”
“I’ve been a bit lazy, so I’m thinking of doing a course in Maths and English. There were two really nice women. The course is recognised by some employers, but not all - I think it’s about 50 per cent who do.”
“Well, I’m sure the fact you’ve made an effort to improve your skills will go down with any employer.”
“I hope so. What I’d really like, if it goes well - in the future… .” He pauses for a moment. “What I’d really like is to go on, and actually do GCSEs in English and Maths.”
“That would be fantastic. I hope you do.”
“It would help me get a better job. Oh, is that the bus stop?”
“No, that’s just down there, near the cemetery.”
“Should I have gone back that way?”
“No, you’d have had to go round the corner. It’s probably a bit quicker this way.”
“What do you do?”
“Oh, I’m a writer. I write things for companies.”
“What sort of things?”
“All sorts. Newsletters, contract bids, websites, marketing materials - anything really. The good thing is that, when I get to know a company, I end up writing all the stuff they want to read nicely.”
We arrived at the bus stop.
“I wasn’t going to say this,” said my companion, reaching in his pocket.
Oh no. Here it comes.
“I just thought it was such a nice day, and I’d talk to you. But… .”
He presses a card into my hands.
“Please take this.”
“Thank you,” I say, thrusting it into my pocket. “Lovely to have met you.”
“Goodbye,” said the man.
I steered the pushchair round the corner and took the card from my pocket.
It read: “NORTH LONDON CHURCH OF CHRIST”, and in spidery writing on the back a name and telephone number. “Children’s classes are provided”.
Published on 7th May, 2008