Despite these apparently turbulent developments, BT is ploughing ahead with the implementation of its ‘Webwise’ tracking software which profiles user behaviour by tracking online viewing through ISP data. BT should think carefully about the effect this may have on its already-tarnished reputation, but it probably won’t.

Lies, damned lies and statistics. Over 1000 people asked for ID cards – counted over TWO years

carving up the crime statistics

In a demonstration of the contempt for sensible interpretation of statistics which recently got the UK government into trouble for claiming that knife crime had fallen based on a sample of 78 incidents over three months, “Home Secretary Jacqui Smith has said that 1,142 messages from the public to the Identity and Passport Service (IPS) between November 2006 and October 2008 were classified as ‘wants an ID card’. This made ID-card requests “by far the most common subject matter”, Smith said on Thursday, in response to a parliamentary question from Liberal Democrats’ Home Affairs spokesperson Chris Huhne.” In real terms, that’s around 1.5 ‘messages’ a day. By contrast, up to 2 million people actively protested against the Iraq War in one day, but the government ignored them. Worse yet, Ms Smith admitted that “the IPS received 3,073 items of correspondence on the scheme between 1 November, 2006, and 31 October, 2008 but admitted that the IPS did not sort the correspondence according to support for or opposition to the scheme. (Thanks to ZD Net). So the erosion of democracy and slide into banal authoritarianism continues apace. We already know the endgame. We’ll get ID cards, the system will fail and vastly exceed its budget. The data warehousing will be managed at great expense by US companies. There will be huge breaches of security and fraud. But the statistics hold out a glimmer of hope. At this rate of take-up, the government could save a huge amount by purchasing card-making kit and laminators from Woolworths and individually making up the identity cards. There are plenty of out-of-work folks who could help, taking photos of the 1100 people who definitely want an ID card and putting their names in a special ‘Loonytunes’ databank. Their psychological profiles identify them as prime targets to vote positively for any mad government initiative, volunteer for crazy scientific experiments, buy Jaguar cars and sign up for BT Broadband. So it’s not all doom and gloom.

Another victory for profiling.

Police went Crackers in Wimbledon, aided and abetted by the tabloids, they hounded the wrong man for 12 years

With the conviction of Robert Napper, the Metropolitan Police announced today that there was no need for an enquiry into the Colin Stagg fit-up, on the grounds that ‘lessons were learned.’ In other words, the Police know what they did wrong and it won’t happen again. So that’s alright then. Except it’s not. It has not been too widely reported that the female police officer who participated in a ‘honey trap’ to frame Colin Stagg received £125,000 compensation, early retirement and a pension, while Napper, the person responsible for the crime, who had been reported to the police by his own mother for rape, was arrested twice for carrying a loaded handgun within eight weeks of the murder on Wimbledon Common, had a history of copycat crimes, including rape and battery of a mother and child and was allowed to roam free to commit further horrible crimes while the police and tabloid media engaged in a vicious miscarriage of justice aimed at clearing up the case of a mother brutally murdered in front of her infant child. Their grotesque entrapment antics led to further crimes being committed. It has been claimed that using today’s technology, the same ‘mistakes’ could not happen, yet contrary to media reports, DNA samples from both Napper and Stagg were available and could have been used to at least eliminate Stagg from their ‘enquiries.’ This is doubtful: Stagg was ‘convicted’ by the police, egged on by the media, keen to find a perpetrator for a heinous crime, at an early stage. The ‘honey trap’ was sordid, illegal and reckless. There should be an enquiry, but there won’t be. 

John Baker’s piece for THUS (below) summarises the details of this case better than I can. It is sad and remarkable that we are not taking this opportunity to re-examine the lack of police (and media) accountability which led to this gross miscarriage of justice. The victims were not just the family of the murdered woman, nor Colin Stagg and his family. Several other people raped and possibly murdered by Napper, certifiably criminally insane, might have been spared had the police not behaved like actors in a bad TV drama. As far as we know, nobody lost their job or has been called to account – at least not publicly.

John J Kelly

Next step Somalia, to deal with those blemming pirates. The strategy is simple . . . .

Mum's not the word

By Julia Margo, Demos

I expect that my fascination with Karen Matthews is predictably middle class. Her crime may be heinous, but she has captured our imagination in her role as working class anti-hero: a reminder of how some people (the ‘other half’) live in today’s Britain. The weekend coverage of sink estates – the ‘bubble communities’ in which the working class associates of Matthews and other greasy-haired and withered welfare-dependent mothers supposedly live and breed, governed by social norms unrecognisable to you or me – reveals our need to intellectualise from above the divides that shape our society. Not to make sense of them but to shiver in smug confidence that this is not our world.

Clear your plate, Emily, or mummy will patronise you

In middle class suburbs children skip to school with nutritious lunch boxes and lacrosse sticks. In Matthews-land they walk barefoot with mud for shoes and lice in their hair. Or so our narrative goes. Poverty is linked to poorer child well being, but lots of poor parents are brilliant and norms of behaviour in many small working class communities are often better enforced than in some looser middle class hubs.Somewhere in the reporting of this horrible story cruelty and bad parenting became a class issue and being poor or out of work became synonymous with child abuse and neglect.

Take the Conservative party’s new plans to intervene in low income homes where parents do not work. In these homes, parenting style and effectiveness will be examined by trained staff as well as parental attitudes to work. The assumption is that parents who do not work or work sporadically are worse parents. An army of trained welfare to work officers will therefore help parents into work and thus magically solve their parenting deficits. An earlier idea from the Conservatives was to use the tax and benefit system to promote marriage, the assumption being that married parents are better parents. Matthews, who is neither married nor employed, would presumably have been targeted by both interventions. (For balance, let’s not ignore the incumbent Labour government’s ‘Welfare to Work’ plans to force disability claimants and other cadres of the long-term unemployed to seek work or lose benefits in an economic downturn with the prospect of 3 million unemployed amongst the able-bodied portion of the population? JK)

Why would they not work?

The statistics do suggest that children are more at risk if they come from single parent or unemployed families. A wealth of econometric analysis shows there is a small association between being very poor and being a bad parent and being a single parent and neglecting your children. But this is merely freakonomics, it tells us nothing about why this may be the case, and since the vast majority of single parents and unemployed parents are absolutely fine, it appears to be a red herring.

It is quite simply more difficult to parent alone and without money; we should not ignore the need to tackle structural disadvantage in society if we are to genuinely protect children. But being poor does not make parents cruel or neglectful. The link between bad parenting and poverty or unemployment is there because the skills required for good parenting are similar to those required for successful employment and holding down a relationship. Quite simply nice, friendly people, who would make nicer, friendlier parents, keep their partners more often than moody, difficult people and tend to find it easier to get and keep work. And following this through, people with personality disorders and extreme interpersonal difficulties find it next to impossible to work or hold down a relationship and parent in a Karen Matthews-esq style.

Identifying and treating antisocial traits in childhood will definitely help

The solution to genuinely bad parenting (as opposed to the average struggling parents) cannot be to either redistribute money, or to force parents into work and incentivise marriage. These address merely the symptoms not the cause. And at the extreme end, would not address the interpersonal difficulties that explain why a mother would abuse her child. In the long-term we need to develop interventions that address the roots of cruel parenting: interpersonal development. Indications of anti-social personality disorder and other psychological and social problems are often apparent in children and teenagers. The way to protect the next generation of children from cruel parenting is therefore to invest in interventions that would address developmental problems in early childhood and end the cycle of cruelty.

Bottoms up

Much recent research has explored the causes of youth binge drinking. Work at Sheffield University has suggested that “cheap alcohol is the single biggest driver of alcohol harms”, so shortly the government will unveil plans to ban the sale of cheap alcohol and thus end the Binge Drinking Culture. I doubt this will work.

The single biggest cause of ‘alcohol harm’, ‘binge drinking’ or whatever other label we like to place on this not-so-rare phenomenon is the fact that people – teenagers in particular – like to get sloshed of an evening.

We can fiddle the pricing system, run educative campaigns about the ill effects of alcohol use, use punitive interventions such as on the spot fines and stop supermarket discounts (as the policing and crime bill will do). We could even ban selling alcohol to under 21s, as Boris Johnson is reportedly in favour of. But I guarantee that this will not work (cf North America who shares our statistics on underage drinking for the compelling evidence as to why the latter will not).

Young people like getting drunk and will simply switch product of choice if they can no longer afford their White Lightning or 20/20: they will club together and buy a bottle of vodka. They think the law is boring and that the police are as cool as parents and as important to avoid when under the influence. Many of them take illegal substances such as Cannabis about as often as they drink a beer (Cannabis is both illegal and much more expensive than booze but it doesn’t put them off). We are barking up the wrong tree.

Pretty middle class girls supping sensibly

So what to do? First, I would suggest we stop printing weekly pictures of mini-skirted young girls on a debauched night out as if this was worth reading about or representative of most modern youth. I believe the media is normalising the idea of binge drinking and making those young people who aren’t drinking copiously feel like they are missing out or are failing to live up to social expectations. For this I reference excellent work in US universities by Cass Sunstein, which shows that when new students are told that their campus has a culture of binge drinking, they drink much more than peers who are told that alcohol is considered uncool. I have barely read a newspaper or watched TV in the last two years without encountering some reference to the extent of the British binge drinking culture: it certainly sounds like all the cool kids are doing it, even though the statistics suggest that the vast majority of young people are not (yet).

Second, the best research from the behavioural sciences suggests that young people are more likely to drink heavily when parents or other familiar adults or role models do. So let’s take some responsibility here and stop blaming young people for internalising behavioural norms set by us. It is well known that the UK has an adult binge drinking culture that is the shame of Europe and I never drank so much in my life as when I was working in Parliament in my early 20s and hanging out with purple-nosed MPs.

Third, forget academic research, policy analysts and psychologists; successful advertising agencies understand youth culture like no other organisation and have become increasingly adept at marketing a host of useless products, clothes and lifestyles to impressionable teenagers and children. The government should appoint a crack team (hopefully not literally, JK) of the most successful advertising executives currently moulding the youth market and task them with devising a strategy to sell sobriety and clean fun to the younger generation.

Fourth, rather than paying out for yet more ‘qualitative research’ with young binge drinkers to work out why they do it, I would like the ongoing government review of this issue currently being led from the Department for Children, Schools and Families to fund some research with young people who – despite the unremitting peer pressure, public expectation and easy availability of booze – do not binge drink, and find out why. I believe it would be very informative.

Judge Dredd is ultimate law

My earlier advice about recruiting Pikey police has clearly fallen on deaf ears. The nation was stunned – not literally, yet – by today’s news from our own Sarah Palin, Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, that 10,000 tasers would be issued and 30,000 police trained in their use. Amnesty International report that 300 people have died as a result of tasering since 2001, not entirely surprising given that these playful plastic guns deliver upwards of 50,000 volts via barbs. Since the government has not tired of telling us that crime has dramatically fallen on their watch, I for one am puzzled as to why we need to restyle (un)PC Plod as Judge Dredd. Ms Smith, who incurred general ridicule after confessing herself fearful of walking the streets of South London then issued a sound bite to say that she had bought a kebab in Peckham, might consider carrying one herself, except it would be illegal. Let’s hope against hope that none of these weapons of mass electrocution go astray or are left in Starbucks’ toilets by forgetful officers (Thus passim).

Are you feeling lucky?

Mace, tasers, coshes, whips, canes, tear gas, rubber bullets and other weapons of severe corporal punishment in routine use by police forces conjure up images of a fascist police state, which of course is the opposite of our happy, freedom-loving democracy. It’s a very sad day when escalating violence on either side of the criminal divide is given a shot in the arm – or, in this case, 50,000 volts in the chest – by attention-seeking authoritarian wierdos. And I don’t mean the BNP. Please think again. Don’t give plod these nasty toys, which he’ll start testing out on drug dealers (black people) and suspected terrorists (Asian kids) or gangs (white underclass). It’s crass and desperate. And we don’t think it makes you look hard, Jacqui.

We have very few rules apart from good taste. I won’t publish racist, sexist, bigoted or spiteful stuff. Pass this url to everyone you know. Tell them it’s not about THem and US. Let’s have a revolution and let’s have it for fun.