Showing posts with label illegal. Show all posts
Showing posts with label illegal. Show all posts
Tuesday 5 March 2024
Thursday 10 February 2022
Monday 14 September 2020
Wednesday 10 October 2018
How would Corbynism work in government? Here’s a clue
Aditya Chakrabortty in The Guardian
What will a Corbyn government actually do? Brexit aside, British politics has no bigger known unknown. The prospect fills the rich with fear and the left with hope. Both sides assume that Prime Minister Jeremy Corbyn will be defined by his radicalism, yet in one corner of Britain an arm of the state is already ruling in his name. And the early results are sobering.
In the north London borough of Haringey, the Blairite council leadership was deposed by Labour members a few months ago and replaced with avowed leftwingers. Said the new council leader, Joe Ejiofor: “Over the next four years, it will be up to us to show everybody what this mythical beast the Corbyn council does.” The title may not have been of his making, but by God was he going to wear it. “It is for the many, not the few.”
Everybody cheering that May morning knew what he meant. No more slinging families out of their homes to clear way for multinational developers. No more machine politics and trampling over communities. No more of the politics of contempt.
It was the willingness of the previous leader, Claire Kober, to hand swaths of the borough over to giant building companies that forced her out of office. The Corbyn councillors know they’ll be judged on how far they protect locals from a predatory property industry, which is why they have cancelled the terrible Haringey Development Vehicle. But a real case study of the possibilities and pitfalls of Corbynism in government can be seen right now, in the battle over a small market in Tottenham.
Everyone’s first impressions of Seven Sisters market are terrible. No signs welcome passersby, and the front is almost truculent in its tattiness. But venture inside, and, as another Guardian contributor wrote of a visit: “Within a minute of arriving it was obvious to me that it is irreplaceable.” Because it is magic: a warren of stalls, customised with wooden balconies and eaves, where nearly all the shopkeepers are from Latin America. They sell Colombian coffee and Argentinian meat and films from back home. The soundtrack is a babble of Spanish and salsa. Latin Americans, among them Corbyn’s wife, Laura Alvarez, flock here from across the capital.
“Without this market, the community would have a mental breakdown,” says Vicky Alvarez, who runs a hairdresser’s. In a city that brags of its openness to the world, here’s a corner that bears that out. In a nation of shopkeepers, here are migrants grafting to realise their dreams. About 80 families rely on the so-called Latin Village for their living. Generations of kids have been raised here, playing in the plywood warren. Alvarez says, “We are like meerkats, watching over each other’s children.”
It may take a village to raise a child, but it has taken migrants to raise this village. I remember when this place was semi-derelict.
Anywhere else, the Latin Village would be a prize attraction – but Haringey has decided it should be knocked down and handed over to Britain’s biggest private residential landlord to redevelop. Grainger’s plans include nearly 200 homes, not one of which will be at council rent. The architects’ drawingsshow a Costa and a “Pasta Express”. It is BlandTown, and Labour signed off on the lot. The politician who has done most for the largely Corbyn-supporting traders is a Tory: Boris Johnson, as London mayor, decreed that the indoor market had to be protected.
Rather than taking up the traders’ case, Ejiofor and Adje have fobbed them off. Instead of Haringey cracking down on the market manager, last month it sent an enforcement officer to hassle traders. A pregnant woman running a nail bar was found without a licence, and told to close the shop. In a complaint that I have seen, she said she had felt “embarrassed and humiliated” in front of customers and neighbours. Days later, she miscarried.
This small story carries big lessons for all those hoping for a radical alternative in national government. Ask Haringey cabinet members why they have handled this so badly, and they complain about having a plateful of poison pills left by the last lot. One says: “It’s so difficult to shift the bureaucracy.” Any Corbyn administration will face both of these problems, multiplied a hundredfold.
None of the above is intended to damn a council leadership that’s only five months old and which has some good ideas about cutting council tax for the working poor. Nor is it meant to put on the frighteners about a Corbyn government. But any new Labour administration will be judged on how much change it makes for the people it claims to represent, and how far it represents the social movements whose energy it draws upon. This is the age-old tension of Labour in government, and it will be felt especially keenly by a social-movement politician like Corbyn.
Locally or nationally, no radical government will have it easy. Money will be tight, and Britain has political and economic structural problems that will take decades to put right. Which is why the case of the Latin Village is so instructive. A council must be able to pick the right side in a fight as small as this. It ought to be able to follow some basic principles. Let traders run their own market, and invest in the Latin Village as a local gem. A bit of imagination, a dollop of willpower, lashings of principle. The Corbyn council should learn from this case. Its supporters expect better; the traders deserve better.
What will a Corbyn government actually do? Brexit aside, British politics has no bigger known unknown. The prospect fills the rich with fear and the left with hope. Both sides assume that Prime Minister Jeremy Corbyn will be defined by his radicalism, yet in one corner of Britain an arm of the state is already ruling in his name. And the early results are sobering.
In the north London borough of Haringey, the Blairite council leadership was deposed by Labour members a few months ago and replaced with avowed leftwingers. Said the new council leader, Joe Ejiofor: “Over the next four years, it will be up to us to show everybody what this mythical beast the Corbyn council does.” The title may not have been of his making, but by God was he going to wear it. “It is for the many, not the few.”
Everybody cheering that May morning knew what he meant. No more slinging families out of their homes to clear way for multinational developers. No more machine politics and trampling over communities. No more of the politics of contempt.
It was the willingness of the previous leader, Claire Kober, to hand swaths of the borough over to giant building companies that forced her out of office. The Corbyn councillors know they’ll be judged on how far they protect locals from a predatory property industry, which is why they have cancelled the terrible Haringey Development Vehicle. But a real case study of the possibilities and pitfalls of Corbynism in government can be seen right now, in the battle over a small market in Tottenham.
Everyone’s first impressions of Seven Sisters market are terrible. No signs welcome passersby, and the front is almost truculent in its tattiness. But venture inside, and, as another Guardian contributor wrote of a visit: “Within a minute of arriving it was obvious to me that it is irreplaceable.” Because it is magic: a warren of stalls, customised with wooden balconies and eaves, where nearly all the shopkeepers are from Latin America. They sell Colombian coffee and Argentinian meat and films from back home. The soundtrack is a babble of Spanish and salsa. Latin Americans, among them Corbyn’s wife, Laura Alvarez, flock here from across the capital.
“Without this market, the community would have a mental breakdown,” says Vicky Alvarez, who runs a hairdresser’s. In a city that brags of its openness to the world, here’s a corner that bears that out. In a nation of shopkeepers, here are migrants grafting to realise their dreams. About 80 families rely on the so-called Latin Village for their living. Generations of kids have been raised here, playing in the plywood warren. Alvarez says, “We are like meerkats, watching over each other’s children.”
It may take a village to raise a child, but it has taken migrants to raise this village. I remember when this place was semi-derelict.
Anywhere else, the Latin Village would be a prize attraction – but Haringey has decided it should be knocked down and handed over to Britain’s biggest private residential landlord to redevelop. Grainger’s plans include nearly 200 homes, not one of which will be at council rent. The architects’ drawingsshow a Costa and a “Pasta Express”. It is BlandTown, and Labour signed off on the lot. The politician who has done most for the largely Corbyn-supporting traders is a Tory: Boris Johnson, as London mayor, decreed that the indoor market had to be protected.
‘Everyone’s first impressions of Seven Sisters market are terrible.’ Photograph: Alamy
Like many of the headaches that await Prime Minister Jez, this was one Ejiofor’s team inherited. The complication is that a key part of the land, which sits right above a tube line, is owned by Sadiq Khan’s Transport for London (TfL). Yet the Corbyn council has made the issue worse. It needed someone in charge of regeneration who was allergic to the charms of property developers, but the new leader has instead appointed Charles Adje. Just a few years ago Adje was suspended as a councillor for covering up an official note warning against giving a licence to an especially controversial developer. Asked about this, the council says Adje “made an error of judgment”.
Within weeks of becoming leader, Ejiofor received a lawyer’s letter from traders in part detailing their problems with the man who owns the lease to the market. Jonathan Owen was last year reprimanded by TfL for phrases such as “bloody illegal immigrants”, and declaring at a meeting that “if I wanted to, I could get rid of 90% of the traders here”. The official investigation I have seen notes that he has apologised for the behaviour. He remains in place, paying £60,000 a year for the lease while taking what stallholders conservatively estimate is £340,000 in rent from all of them. The traders have previously offered £100,000 to manage the lease themselves, but TfL took the lower bid.
Very little of that money seems to have been reinvested in the market: carpet tiles are broken and filthy and the electrics keep breaking, so the cafes and butchers’ foodstuffs rot. Questioned about this and other issues, Owen offered no comment. When traders asked last month whether the drains could be unblocked, Owen’s reply was: “When was the last time you cleared the drains in your house?”
This is the Corbyn council’s first big test, and handling it ought to be simple. They’re supposed to take the side of the people, not builders. Their manifesto promises: “Where we have to regenerate parts of the borough, we will bring residents with us.” At a meeting this summer opened by Corbyn ally Chris Williamson, Labour members across the borough voted to stop any demolition of Latin Village, and to save it as a “cultural asset”. Ejiofor’s team has a mandate; it’s just not upholding it.
Like many of the headaches that await Prime Minister Jez, this was one Ejiofor’s team inherited. The complication is that a key part of the land, which sits right above a tube line, is owned by Sadiq Khan’s Transport for London (TfL). Yet the Corbyn council has made the issue worse. It needed someone in charge of regeneration who was allergic to the charms of property developers, but the new leader has instead appointed Charles Adje. Just a few years ago Adje was suspended as a councillor for covering up an official note warning against giving a licence to an especially controversial developer. Asked about this, the council says Adje “made an error of judgment”.
Within weeks of becoming leader, Ejiofor received a lawyer’s letter from traders in part detailing their problems with the man who owns the lease to the market. Jonathan Owen was last year reprimanded by TfL for phrases such as “bloody illegal immigrants”, and declaring at a meeting that “if I wanted to, I could get rid of 90% of the traders here”. The official investigation I have seen notes that he has apologised for the behaviour. He remains in place, paying £60,000 a year for the lease while taking what stallholders conservatively estimate is £340,000 in rent from all of them. The traders have previously offered £100,000 to manage the lease themselves, but TfL took the lower bid.
Very little of that money seems to have been reinvested in the market: carpet tiles are broken and filthy and the electrics keep breaking, so the cafes and butchers’ foodstuffs rot. Questioned about this and other issues, Owen offered no comment. When traders asked last month whether the drains could be unblocked, Owen’s reply was: “When was the last time you cleared the drains in your house?”
This is the Corbyn council’s first big test, and handling it ought to be simple. They’re supposed to take the side of the people, not builders. Their manifesto promises: “Where we have to regenerate parts of the borough, we will bring residents with us.” At a meeting this summer opened by Corbyn ally Chris Williamson, Labour members across the borough voted to stop any demolition of Latin Village, and to save it as a “cultural asset”. Ejiofor’s team has a mandate; it’s just not upholding it.
Rather than taking up the traders’ case, Ejiofor and Adje have fobbed them off. Instead of Haringey cracking down on the market manager, last month it sent an enforcement officer to hassle traders. A pregnant woman running a nail bar was found without a licence, and told to close the shop. In a complaint that I have seen, she said she had felt “embarrassed and humiliated” in front of customers and neighbours. Days later, she miscarried.
This small story carries big lessons for all those hoping for a radical alternative in national government. Ask Haringey cabinet members why they have handled this so badly, and they complain about having a plateful of poison pills left by the last lot. One says: “It’s so difficult to shift the bureaucracy.” Any Corbyn administration will face both of these problems, multiplied a hundredfold.
None of the above is intended to damn a council leadership that’s only five months old and which has some good ideas about cutting council tax for the working poor. Nor is it meant to put on the frighteners about a Corbyn government. But any new Labour administration will be judged on how much change it makes for the people it claims to represent, and how far it represents the social movements whose energy it draws upon. This is the age-old tension of Labour in government, and it will be felt especially keenly by a social-movement politician like Corbyn.
Locally or nationally, no radical government will have it easy. Money will be tight, and Britain has political and economic structural problems that will take decades to put right. Which is why the case of the Latin Village is so instructive. A council must be able to pick the right side in a fight as small as this. It ought to be able to follow some basic principles. Let traders run their own market, and invest in the Latin Village as a local gem. A bit of imagination, a dollop of willpower, lashings of principle. The Corbyn council should learn from this case. Its supporters expect better; the traders deserve better.
Sunday 29 April 2018
The Tories keep getting blamed for the terrible events they caused. To be honest, it’s out of order
Mark Steel in The Independent
Amber Rudd says she finds the cases of families who were threatened with deportation, and harangued for documents they never had, “heartbreaking”. So she deserves respect for having the strength to carry on, while she suffers from a broken heart like that.
She also denies there was ever a “target” for removing immigrants, so we can only imagine how poignant a moment it must have been, when she was told “home secretary, you know when your government boasted before the 2015 (actually 2010 election) election it would ‘cut net migration to tens of thousands’? And an Inspection Report stated there was a ‘target of removing 12,000 immigrants?’ It turns out some people in the immigration office interpreted that as implying there was some sort of target.”
She must have cried and cried and howled, sniffing, “I know it sounds silly, but I can’t help feeling that makes this government partly responsible.”
Hopefully she’ll have had plenty of friends consoling her, saying reassuringly: “Oh home secretary, you mustn’t blame yourself. All of us set targets for removing people, regardless of the fact we’ve been told by an array of institutions this will cause appalling hardship to innocent people. You’re a good person. Stay strong, Amber, stay strong.”
So she’s proved her leadership qualities and overcome the heartbreak she feels so deeply, to explain: “We are deeply bountifully humongously sorry, but I would remind the country that three years ago, we thought it was popular to scream about chucking out piles of immigrants, so we can hardly be blamed if that has turned out not to be true after all. Now if you’ll forgive me, I must take some more antidepressants. I’m heartbroken you see.”
Theresa May must be even more heartbroken, because she was home secretary at the time. Some people suggest this means she had some knowledge of the targets, but that would be unfair, as she was busy sending out vans with signs on the side saying “illegal immigrants, go home”, so she can’t have had time to write down lots of numbers as well.
But now they love Caribbean people so it’s worked out fine in the end. Soon Amber Rudd will feature on a dancehall track with Shaggy, about the Windrush families, that starts “Dem tell I sad tale dat send chill trew I blood, Me weep so many tear dey call I Heartbreak Rudd.”
And the prime minister will end her apology by saying “I would now like to repeat my message for my Caribbean bredren. Listen up rude boy, me send out one love for me have pain in I ‘eart. But blame be upon dem raasclat immigration official, for me is vexed upon why dey carry out act what I tell dem do, Selasie I.”
She must feel even worse than Amber Rudd, because last year she made speeches such as “Brexit must mean control of the number of people who come to Britain. And that is what we will deliver.”
It would be ridiculous to imagine this was designed to create the impression she was in a rush to cut immigration, which was why Conservative Party spokespeople sometimes mentioned cutting immigration as few as 46 times in a three-minute interview.
Sometimes, if a minister was asked for a statement about the standards of maths in schools, or whether England would ever win the World Cup, they wouldn’t even mention their pledge to be tough on immigration until the ninth word.
So it’s a puzzle how anyone in the immigration office got the impression they were required to be a little bit zealous in the area of immigration.
It’s possible a pattern could emerge here, in which Conservatives start to feel sorry about other matters that they get unfairly blamed for just because they caused them.
For example, they’re dreadfully shocked about the lack of health and safety regulations in housing, even though David Cameron can’t possibly have predicted that his pledge to create a “bonfire of regulations” might lead to a reduction of regulations.
Iain Duncan-Smith will declare he’s appalled by stories of disabled people having their benefits stopped after being declared “fit for work”, when he can’t possibly have known this was going on, which is why he’s “truly awfully shocked and immeasurably saddened and exploding with volcanic sadness”.
Then they’ll announce they are devastated by the revelation that cutting benefits for the poorest people while asking the wealthiest people for less in tax made the poor poorer and the rich richer.
But they will add that cutting the top rate of tax was in no way designed to lower the top rate of tax, and they certainly don’t ever remember setting a target to cut the top rate of tax. It was probably down to some heartless tax official, and he’ll be in right trouble when they catch him.
But much of the Labour Party must be on Valium as well. Because throughout the years of the coalition, they went along with many of these measures. They were so concerned to appear tough on immigration that they had special mugs made, saying “I’m voting Labour, for controls on immigration.”
If they’d had the money, they would probably have made other household goods with the same message, such as toilet rolls and Ventolin inhalers. The Labour leaders from that time must be heartbroken.
So they should make one joint statement together, to cover all their heartbreak, that goes: “We’re really sorry, we had no idea our policy of being proudly, relentlessly foul would lead to any foulness.
“When one lot screamed, ‘Vote for us because we’re really foul’ and the other lot shouted, ‘That’s not fair, we’re quite capable of being disgustingly foul’, we didn’t know we’d misjudged the situation and foulness wouldn’t always be popular. So we’re all really really sorry, even though it’s not in any way in the slightest tiddly bit our fault.”
Amber Rudd says she finds the cases of families who were threatened with deportation, and harangued for documents they never had, “heartbreaking”. So she deserves respect for having the strength to carry on, while she suffers from a broken heart like that.
She also denies there was ever a “target” for removing immigrants, so we can only imagine how poignant a moment it must have been, when she was told “home secretary, you know when your government boasted before the 2015 (actually 2010 election) election it would ‘cut net migration to tens of thousands’? And an Inspection Report stated there was a ‘target of removing 12,000 immigrants?’ It turns out some people in the immigration office interpreted that as implying there was some sort of target.”
She must have cried and cried and howled, sniffing, “I know it sounds silly, but I can’t help feeling that makes this government partly responsible.”
Hopefully she’ll have had plenty of friends consoling her, saying reassuringly: “Oh home secretary, you mustn’t blame yourself. All of us set targets for removing people, regardless of the fact we’ve been told by an array of institutions this will cause appalling hardship to innocent people. You’re a good person. Stay strong, Amber, stay strong.”
So she’s proved her leadership qualities and overcome the heartbreak she feels so deeply, to explain: “We are deeply bountifully humongously sorry, but I would remind the country that three years ago, we thought it was popular to scream about chucking out piles of immigrants, so we can hardly be blamed if that has turned out not to be true after all. Now if you’ll forgive me, I must take some more antidepressants. I’m heartbroken you see.”
Theresa May must be even more heartbroken, because she was home secretary at the time. Some people suggest this means she had some knowledge of the targets, but that would be unfair, as she was busy sending out vans with signs on the side saying “illegal immigrants, go home”, so she can’t have had time to write down lots of numbers as well.
But now they love Caribbean people so it’s worked out fine in the end. Soon Amber Rudd will feature on a dancehall track with Shaggy, about the Windrush families, that starts “Dem tell I sad tale dat send chill trew I blood, Me weep so many tear dey call I Heartbreak Rudd.”
And the prime minister will end her apology by saying “I would now like to repeat my message for my Caribbean bredren. Listen up rude boy, me send out one love for me have pain in I ‘eart. But blame be upon dem raasclat immigration official, for me is vexed upon why dey carry out act what I tell dem do, Selasie I.”
She must feel even worse than Amber Rudd, because last year she made speeches such as “Brexit must mean control of the number of people who come to Britain. And that is what we will deliver.”
It would be ridiculous to imagine this was designed to create the impression she was in a rush to cut immigration, which was why Conservative Party spokespeople sometimes mentioned cutting immigration as few as 46 times in a three-minute interview.
Sometimes, if a minister was asked for a statement about the standards of maths in schools, or whether England would ever win the World Cup, they wouldn’t even mention their pledge to be tough on immigration until the ninth word.
So it’s a puzzle how anyone in the immigration office got the impression they were required to be a little bit zealous in the area of immigration.
It’s possible a pattern could emerge here, in which Conservatives start to feel sorry about other matters that they get unfairly blamed for just because they caused them.
For example, they’re dreadfully shocked about the lack of health and safety regulations in housing, even though David Cameron can’t possibly have predicted that his pledge to create a “bonfire of regulations” might lead to a reduction of regulations.
Iain Duncan-Smith will declare he’s appalled by stories of disabled people having their benefits stopped after being declared “fit for work”, when he can’t possibly have known this was going on, which is why he’s “truly awfully shocked and immeasurably saddened and exploding with volcanic sadness”.
Then they’ll announce they are devastated by the revelation that cutting benefits for the poorest people while asking the wealthiest people for less in tax made the poor poorer and the rich richer.
But they will add that cutting the top rate of tax was in no way designed to lower the top rate of tax, and they certainly don’t ever remember setting a target to cut the top rate of tax. It was probably down to some heartless tax official, and he’ll be in right trouble when they catch him.
But much of the Labour Party must be on Valium as well. Because throughout the years of the coalition, they went along with many of these measures. They were so concerned to appear tough on immigration that they had special mugs made, saying “I’m voting Labour, for controls on immigration.”
If they’d had the money, they would probably have made other household goods with the same message, such as toilet rolls and Ventolin inhalers. The Labour leaders from that time must be heartbroken.
So they should make one joint statement together, to cover all their heartbreak, that goes: “We’re really sorry, we had no idea our policy of being proudly, relentlessly foul would lead to any foulness.
“When one lot screamed, ‘Vote for us because we’re really foul’ and the other lot shouted, ‘That’s not fair, we’re quite capable of being disgustingly foul’, we didn’t know we’d misjudged the situation and foulness wouldn’t always be popular. So we’re all really really sorry, even though it’s not in any way in the slightest tiddly bit our fault.”
Thursday 7 April 2016
Making money is not a vice, but refusing to contribute tax is
We can have a vision of a good life that is not simply a yacht off the Virgin Islands, but one in which we have decent schools and hospitals. Photograph: Alamy
Suzanne_Moore in The Guardian
That global elite – I always suspected they were up to no good … I must be psychic! And look, here is the proof: the Panama leaks show all these vultures hiding away their money in perfectly legal schemes to avoid paying taxes in countries out of which they operate their businesses. The yachts flying Panamanian flags off the coast of some of these islands may have been a hint but somehow the wrong-doing of the super rich has simply become part of the environment. A stroll around London reveals rough sleepers among ghost mansions and empty penthouses, bought by those who will never make them homes.
This is just what a globalised capital city looks like. This is where global capital comes to hide itself. Never mind these idyllic tax havens, the UK itself is a centre for a form of money laundering. This is “our” success.
After the crash of 2008, the City rallied, paying for more than half of the Tory election campaign.
Anger at the bankers dissipated into a sort of shrug of the shoulders. Those who caused the damage hung on to their bonuses. Austerity works by saying that it is in our own self-interest to punish ourselves.
Hopefully some of this compliance is now falling apart, but the Panama leaks reveal something so massive that it’s hard to get to grips with it: big, bad, rich people do secret, mean things.
Jeremy Corbyn, as ever, seems mildly irritated by the workings of global capitalism. After all, he was elected in protest at a leadership that had simply sucked it up. New Labour was so intensely relaxed about wealth that it made up phrases such as “wealth creators”. All of this was personified by Cherie Blair, forever on some grabby supermarket sweep while her hollowed-out husband sells his services to dictators. Corbyn’s asceticism may be a relief, but its not yet an alternative.
Some things need to be said now, and said clearly. Not paying tax may not be illegal, but it is immoral. It is a form of theft. The acceptance of a caste system whereby the likes of David Cameron and George Osborne rule us, and we are not allowed to question the finances of this elite has to stop. We all pay tax to train doctors and maintain the roads they are driven on. The idea that this elite does not use the services that are provided is simply not true.
Try, for instance, calling a private ambulance and having it driven only on private roads? I note, after another strike by junior doctors, that just before the 2010 election, Jeremy Hunt, then culture secretary, reduced his tax bill by £100,000 through a deal that meant he transferred his companies’ office buildings. This is only human isn’t it? Why shouldn’t he do this?
Here is why: tax is a marker of civilisation, a form of a social contract that right now is being torn up in front of our eyes. Even Adam Smith called tax a badge of liberty. And yet for many, freedom is entirely bound up with paying as little tax as possible. The richer you are the more free you are to not contribute – though you are still free to lecture others on the benefits of hard work.
This is what is so peculiar, too, about Cameron telling us he will no longer benefit from his father’s offshore arrangements. He did. He has. That is not in question. But the new kind of privilege is one that sees itself both as God-given and hard-earned. This delusion has hit its apotheosis in Zac Goldsmith, that charisma vacuum, who is strangely listless except when he is stirring up racial tension.
But then this wealth bubble is a private-members club because it is, by nature, profoundly antisocial. Tax-dodging, aversion or whatever polite term we use, is premised on the free movement of money. The social consequences of this, be it the movement of migrants or the closure of industries, is someone else’s problem.
Part of this hyper-capitalism is the idea that only money makes money and people make nothing. “The left” went badly wrong buying into this worldview for a while. Financialisation meant only services would produce profit. But making things, whether you’re assembling a car, or a painting, or a house, still matters. We also became muddled about aspiration. It was good, then it was bad – rather than it being just a fact of life, like breathing. The need is to simply find a language of aspiration that is about all of us. The economy is increasingly spoken of as if it were the weather and completely uncontrollable. No.
We can have a vision of a good life that is not simply a yacht off the Virgin Islands, but one in which we have decent schools and hospitals, and our entrepreneurial skills are both useful and what we use to contribute. Where we understand that we pay tax precisely because there is such a thing as society; making money is neither a vice nor a virtue. Refusing to contribute, though, is a vice. That tight bastard who never buys a round in the pub though he earns more than you? Do you really want him running the country? Because that’s the country in which we currently live.
Suzanne_Moore in The Guardian
That global elite – I always suspected they were up to no good … I must be psychic! And look, here is the proof: the Panama leaks show all these vultures hiding away their money in perfectly legal schemes to avoid paying taxes in countries out of which they operate their businesses. The yachts flying Panamanian flags off the coast of some of these islands may have been a hint but somehow the wrong-doing of the super rich has simply become part of the environment. A stroll around London reveals rough sleepers among ghost mansions and empty penthouses, bought by those who will never make them homes.
This is just what a globalised capital city looks like. This is where global capital comes to hide itself. Never mind these idyllic tax havens, the UK itself is a centre for a form of money laundering. This is “our” success.
After the crash of 2008, the City rallied, paying for more than half of the Tory election campaign.
Anger at the bankers dissipated into a sort of shrug of the shoulders. Those who caused the damage hung on to their bonuses. Austerity works by saying that it is in our own self-interest to punish ourselves.
Hopefully some of this compliance is now falling apart, but the Panama leaks reveal something so massive that it’s hard to get to grips with it: big, bad, rich people do secret, mean things.
Jeremy Corbyn, as ever, seems mildly irritated by the workings of global capitalism. After all, he was elected in protest at a leadership that had simply sucked it up. New Labour was so intensely relaxed about wealth that it made up phrases such as “wealth creators”. All of this was personified by Cherie Blair, forever on some grabby supermarket sweep while her hollowed-out husband sells his services to dictators. Corbyn’s asceticism may be a relief, but its not yet an alternative.
Some things need to be said now, and said clearly. Not paying tax may not be illegal, but it is immoral. It is a form of theft. The acceptance of a caste system whereby the likes of David Cameron and George Osborne rule us, and we are not allowed to question the finances of this elite has to stop. We all pay tax to train doctors and maintain the roads they are driven on. The idea that this elite does not use the services that are provided is simply not true.
Try, for instance, calling a private ambulance and having it driven only on private roads? I note, after another strike by junior doctors, that just before the 2010 election, Jeremy Hunt, then culture secretary, reduced his tax bill by £100,000 through a deal that meant he transferred his companies’ office buildings. This is only human isn’t it? Why shouldn’t he do this?
Here is why: tax is a marker of civilisation, a form of a social contract that right now is being torn up in front of our eyes. Even Adam Smith called tax a badge of liberty. And yet for many, freedom is entirely bound up with paying as little tax as possible. The richer you are the more free you are to not contribute – though you are still free to lecture others on the benefits of hard work.
This is what is so peculiar, too, about Cameron telling us he will no longer benefit from his father’s offshore arrangements. He did. He has. That is not in question. But the new kind of privilege is one that sees itself both as God-given and hard-earned. This delusion has hit its apotheosis in Zac Goldsmith, that charisma vacuum, who is strangely listless except when he is stirring up racial tension.
But then this wealth bubble is a private-members club because it is, by nature, profoundly antisocial. Tax-dodging, aversion or whatever polite term we use, is premised on the free movement of money. The social consequences of this, be it the movement of migrants or the closure of industries, is someone else’s problem.
Part of this hyper-capitalism is the idea that only money makes money and people make nothing. “The left” went badly wrong buying into this worldview for a while. Financialisation meant only services would produce profit. But making things, whether you’re assembling a car, or a painting, or a house, still matters. We also became muddled about aspiration. It was good, then it was bad – rather than it being just a fact of life, like breathing. The need is to simply find a language of aspiration that is about all of us. The economy is increasingly spoken of as if it were the weather and completely uncontrollable. No.
We can have a vision of a good life that is not simply a yacht off the Virgin Islands, but one in which we have decent schools and hospitals, and our entrepreneurial skills are both useful and what we use to contribute. Where we understand that we pay tax precisely because there is such a thing as society; making money is neither a vice nor a virtue. Refusing to contribute, though, is a vice. That tight bastard who never buys a round in the pub though he earns more than you? Do you really want him running the country? Because that’s the country in which we currently live.
Monday 15 February 2016
Why on earth would HSBC leave a country that gives banks an easy ride?
Prem Sikka in The Guardian
Bankers in the UK have faced no prosecutions – despite their serial abuses, and the catastrophic consequences of their actions.
HSBC to keep its headquarters in London
Bankers face no retribution in the UK. Iceland has sent 29 bankers to prison for their role in the 2007-08 banking crash. The UK’s overcrowded prisons could have squeezed in some bankers, but there have been no prosecutions for bringing down the industry and ushering in austerity. The UK finance industry has been a serial offender, as evidenced by mis-selling of pensions, endowment mortgages, payment protection insurance and rigging of interest rates, but successive governments have failed to prosecute.
Abuses are deeply ingrained into the bank business models that pursue ever rising profits and mega performance-related remuneration for executives. Perhaps someone would investigate the culture that enriches a few at the expense of many. Despite the fanfare of an investigation, the FCA, possibly under pressure from the Treasury, dropped its investigation into banking culture.
Auditors are paid vast sums to evaluate internal controls operated by banks. Yet all ailing banks received a clean bill of health before the 2007-08 crash. This should have prompted the regulator, the Financial Reporting Council, to act, but it did not.
Irked by this inertia, Andrew Tyrie MP, chairman of the Commons treasury committee, pressed the FRC to investigate the audits of HBOS, a bank bailed out by taxpayers in 2008. In January 2016, some eight years after the events, the FRC said that it is considering making some “preliminary inquiries”.
It is not only regulators, prosecutors are missing too. In the US, Citicorp, JPMorgan, Barclays, the Royal Bank of Scotland and UBS have pleaded guilty to manipulating the foreign exchange rates, and traders have also been convicted of rigging a benchmark interest rate known as the London Interbank Offered Rate (Libor). In the UK, the Serious Fraud Office has recently lost six cases of alleged rigging of Libor. It previously botched investigation into the collapse of Icelandic banks.
Deep reforms of the finance industry are not on the government agenda. After the banking crash, the government sought to take the heat out of the public debate by appointing an Independent Commission on Banking, under the chairmanship of Sir John Vickers. Its 2011 report recommended ringfencing retail banking from speculative trading. In the interest of stability, the report recommended that banks have a broader capital base to enable them to absorb shocks. Both remain unimplemented. Last Sunday, Vickers complained that the Bank of England had watered down the proposals, and banks might not have enough financial buffers to survive the next crisis.
The above is just a small illustration of the shameless appeasement of the finance industry by the UK government. It is hardly surprising that HSBC and other financial behemoths find London attractive. The finance industry may welcome the government’s capitulation, but the rest us are repulsed by the stench of scandals and bailouts. The UK’s regulatory system has utterly failed and needs to be redesigned.
Bankers in the UK have faced no prosecutions – despite their serial abuses, and the catastrophic consequences of their actions.
‘Perhaps someone would investigate the culture that enriches a few at the expense of many.’ Photograph: Reinhard Krause/Reuters
So, HSBC is retaining its headquarters in London. Was there ever any danger that it would quit a cosy jurisdiction with feather-duster regulation and prosecutions as rare as hen’s teeth?
Banks have little to fear here, as UK regulators and prosecutors rarely take action.
In 2012, HSBC paid a fine of $1.9bn to US authorities for its role in money laundering by drug traffickers and governments on sanctions lists. The US Department of Justice stated that the bank “accepted responsibility for its criminal conduct and that of its employees”. In 2015, the Swiss authorities fined HSBC 40m Swiss francs (£28m) for “organisational deficiencies” that allowed money laundering to take place in the bank’s Swiss subsidiary. UK regulators twiddled their thumbs.
Leaked documents showed that HSBC’s Swiss banking arm helped around 30,000 wealthy clients dodge taxes. As the primary regulator of HSBC, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) promised investigations. Just a few weeks later, Martin Wheatley, the FCA chief executive found that his contract was not being renewed, even though he had some “unfinished business”. In January, HMRC told the House of Commons public accounts committee that it had abandoned its criminal investigation into the role of HSBC in alleged illegal activities.
So, HSBC is retaining its headquarters in London. Was there ever any danger that it would quit a cosy jurisdiction with feather-duster regulation and prosecutions as rare as hen’s teeth?
Banks have little to fear here, as UK regulators and prosecutors rarely take action.
In 2012, HSBC paid a fine of $1.9bn to US authorities for its role in money laundering by drug traffickers and governments on sanctions lists. The US Department of Justice stated that the bank “accepted responsibility for its criminal conduct and that of its employees”. In 2015, the Swiss authorities fined HSBC 40m Swiss francs (£28m) for “organisational deficiencies” that allowed money laundering to take place in the bank’s Swiss subsidiary. UK regulators twiddled their thumbs.
Leaked documents showed that HSBC’s Swiss banking arm helped around 30,000 wealthy clients dodge taxes. As the primary regulator of HSBC, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) promised investigations. Just a few weeks later, Martin Wheatley, the FCA chief executive found that his contract was not being renewed, even though he had some “unfinished business”. In January, HMRC told the House of Commons public accounts committee that it had abandoned its criminal investigation into the role of HSBC in alleged illegal activities.
HSBC to keep its headquarters in London
Bankers face no retribution in the UK. Iceland has sent 29 bankers to prison for their role in the 2007-08 banking crash. The UK’s overcrowded prisons could have squeezed in some bankers, but there have been no prosecutions for bringing down the industry and ushering in austerity. The UK finance industry has been a serial offender, as evidenced by mis-selling of pensions, endowment mortgages, payment protection insurance and rigging of interest rates, but successive governments have failed to prosecute.
Abuses are deeply ingrained into the bank business models that pursue ever rising profits and mega performance-related remuneration for executives. Perhaps someone would investigate the culture that enriches a few at the expense of many. Despite the fanfare of an investigation, the FCA, possibly under pressure from the Treasury, dropped its investigation into banking culture.
Auditors are paid vast sums to evaluate internal controls operated by banks. Yet all ailing banks received a clean bill of health before the 2007-08 crash. This should have prompted the regulator, the Financial Reporting Council, to act, but it did not.
Irked by this inertia, Andrew Tyrie MP, chairman of the Commons treasury committee, pressed the FRC to investigate the audits of HBOS, a bank bailed out by taxpayers in 2008. In January 2016, some eight years after the events, the FRC said that it is considering making some “preliminary inquiries”.
It is not only regulators, prosecutors are missing too. In the US, Citicorp, JPMorgan, Barclays, the Royal Bank of Scotland and UBS have pleaded guilty to manipulating the foreign exchange rates, and traders have also been convicted of rigging a benchmark interest rate known as the London Interbank Offered Rate (Libor). In the UK, the Serious Fraud Office has recently lost six cases of alleged rigging of Libor. It previously botched investigation into the collapse of Icelandic banks.
Deep reforms of the finance industry are not on the government agenda. After the banking crash, the government sought to take the heat out of the public debate by appointing an Independent Commission on Banking, under the chairmanship of Sir John Vickers. Its 2011 report recommended ringfencing retail banking from speculative trading. In the interest of stability, the report recommended that banks have a broader capital base to enable them to absorb shocks. Both remain unimplemented. Last Sunday, Vickers complained that the Bank of England had watered down the proposals, and banks might not have enough financial buffers to survive the next crisis.
The above is just a small illustration of the shameless appeasement of the finance industry by the UK government. It is hardly surprising that HSBC and other financial behemoths find London attractive. The finance industry may welcome the government’s capitulation, but the rest us are repulsed by the stench of scandals and bailouts. The UK’s regulatory system has utterly failed and needs to be redesigned.
Wednesday 28 October 2015
Why are drugs illegal?
‘To enable Harry Anslinger to keep his army of drug enforcers [the Untouchables], he created a new drug threat, cannabis, which he called marijuana to make it sound more Mexican.’ Photograph: Tomas Rodriguez/Corbis
David Nutt in The Guardian
This is, of course, a flawed question but one that illustrates a major paradox in the UK and international laws on drugs. Some drugs – such as alcohol, caffeine and nicotine – are legal, whereas others – such as cannabis, cocaine and opium – are not. This has not always been the case.
In the 19th century extracts of these three now-illegal drugs were legal in the UK, and were sold in pharmacies and even corner shops. Queen Victoria’s physician was a great proponent of the value of tincture of cannabis and the monarch is reputed to have used it to counteract the pain of menstrual periods and childbirth. Now it is denied to people with severe enduring spasticity and pain from neurological disorders and cancer. Why?
David Nutt in The Guardian
This is, of course, a flawed question but one that illustrates a major paradox in the UK and international laws on drugs. Some drugs – such as alcohol, caffeine and nicotine – are legal, whereas others – such as cannabis, cocaine and opium – are not. This has not always been the case.
In the 19th century extracts of these three now-illegal drugs were legal in the UK, and were sold in pharmacies and even corner shops. Queen Victoria’s physician was a great proponent of the value of tincture of cannabis and the monarch is reputed to have used it to counteract the pain of menstrual periods and childbirth. Now it is denied to people with severe enduring spasticity and pain from neurological disorders and cancer. Why?
Activists to get high together in protest against psychoactive substances ban
The truth is unpalatable and goes back to the period of alcohol prohibition in the US in the 1920s. This was introduced as a harm-reduction measure because alcohol was seen (correctly) as a drug that seriously damaged families and children. But public demand for alcohol in the US did not abate and this fuelled a massive rise in bootleg alcohol and underground bars (known as speakeasys) that encouraged the rise of the mafia and other crime syndicates.
To combat this, the US government set up a special army of enforcers, under the command of Harry Anslinger, which became known as “the untouchables”. This army of enforcers was widely celebrated by the newspapers and the acclaim propelled Anslinger to national prominence. However, when public disquiet at the crime and social damage caused by alcohol prohibition led to its repeal, Anslinger saw his position as being in danger.
To enable him to keep his army of drug enforcers, he created a new drug threat: cannabis, which he called marijuana to make it sound more Mexican. Working with a newspaper magnate, William Randolph Hearst, he created hysteria around the impact of cannabis on American youth and proclaimed an invasion of marijuana-smoking Mexican men assaulting white women. The ensuing public anxiety led to the drug being banned. The US then imposed its anti-cannabis stance on other western countries and this was finally imposed on the rest of the world through the first UN convention on narcotic drugs in 1961.
Mexican soldiers burning marijuana, cocaine, heroin and other drugs in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua. Photograph: AFP/Getty
This process of vilifying drugs by engendering a fear of the “other people” who use them became a recurring theme in drug policy. Black Americans were stigmatised on account of heroin use in the 1950s. In the 1960s hippies and psychedelics were targeted because they opposed the Vietnam war. In the 1970s it was again inner-city black Americans who used crack cocaine who received the brunt of opprobrium, so much so that the penalties for crack possession were 100 times higher than those for powder cocaine, despite almost equivalent pharmacology. Then came “crystal” (methamphetamine) and the targeting of “poor whites”.
The UK has followed US trends over cannabis, heroin and psychedelics, and led the world in the vilification of MDMA (ecstasy). In the UK a hate campaign against young people behaving differently was instigated by the rightwing press. As with past campaigns, they hid their prejudice under the smokescreen of false health concerns. It was very effective and resulted in both MDMA and raves being banned. This occurred despite the police being largely comfortable with MDMA users since they were friendly – a stark contrast to those at alcohol-fuelled events.
Since the demise of ecstasy we have seen the rise and fall of several alternative legal highs, most notably mephedrone. This was banned following a relentless media campaign, despite no evidence of deaths and with little attempt to properly estimate its harm. Subsequently we have discovered that it saved more lives than it took because so many people switched from cocaine and amphetamine to mephedrone that deaths from these more toxic stimulants decreased by up to 40%. Since mephedrone was banned in 2010, cocaine deaths have risen again and are now above their pre-mephedrone levels.
As young people seek to find legal ways to enjoy altered consciousness without exposing themselves to the addictiveness and toxicity of alcohol or the danger of getting a criminal record, so the newspapers seek to get these ways banned too. Politicians collude as they are subservient to those newspapers that hate youth and they know that the drug-using population is much less likely to vote than the drug-fearing elderly. We have moved to a surreal new world in which the government, through the new psychoactive substances bill, has decided to put an end to the sale of any drug with psychoactive properties, known or yet to be discovered.
This ban is predicated on more media hysteria about legal highs such as nitrous oxide and the “head shops” that sell them. Lies about the number of legal high deaths abound, with Mike Penning, minister for policing and justice, quoting 129 last year in the bill’s second reading. The true figure is about five, as the “head shops” generally now sell safe mild stimulants because they don’t want their regular customers to die.
The UK has followed US trends over cannabis, heroin and psychedelics, and led the world in the vilification of MDMA (ecstasy). In the UK a hate campaign against young people behaving differently was instigated by the rightwing press. As with past campaigns, they hid their prejudice under the smokescreen of false health concerns. It was very effective and resulted in both MDMA and raves being banned. This occurred despite the police being largely comfortable with MDMA users since they were friendly – a stark contrast to those at alcohol-fuelled events.
Since the demise of ecstasy we have seen the rise and fall of several alternative legal highs, most notably mephedrone. This was banned following a relentless media campaign, despite no evidence of deaths and with little attempt to properly estimate its harm. Subsequently we have discovered that it saved more lives than it took because so many people switched from cocaine and amphetamine to mephedrone that deaths from these more toxic stimulants decreased by up to 40%. Since mephedrone was banned in 2010, cocaine deaths have risen again and are now above their pre-mephedrone levels.
As young people seek to find legal ways to enjoy altered consciousness without exposing themselves to the addictiveness and toxicity of alcohol or the danger of getting a criminal record, so the newspapers seek to get these ways banned too. Politicians collude as they are subservient to those newspapers that hate youth and they know that the drug-using population is much less likely to vote than the drug-fearing elderly. We have moved to a surreal new world in which the government, through the new psychoactive substances bill, has decided to put an end to the sale of any drug with psychoactive properties, known or yet to be discovered.
This ban is predicated on more media hysteria about legal highs such as nitrous oxide and the “head shops” that sell them. Lies about the number of legal high deaths abound, with Mike Penning, minister for policing and justice, quoting 129 last year in the bill’s second reading. The true figure is about five, as the “head shops” generally now sell safe mild stimulants because they don’t want their regular customers to die.
‘Queen Victoria’s physician was a great proponent of the value of tincture of cannabis, and she is reputed to have used it to counteract the pain of menstrual periods and childbirth.’ Photograph: Alamy
The attack on nitrous oxide is even more peculiar as this gas has been used for pain control for women in childbirth and surgical pain treatments for more than 100 years with minimal evidence of harm. But when a couple of premiership footballers are filmed inhaling a nitrous oxide balloon, then it becomes a public health hazard. In typical fashion the press renamed it “hippy crack” to scare people – what could me more frightening to elderly readers than an invasion of hippies on crack? In truth, the effect of nitrous oxide is nothing like crack and no self-respecting hippy would ever use it. Still, it seems likely it will be banned along with every other mind-altering substance that is not exempted.
The psychoactive substances bill is the most oppressive law in terms of controlling moral behaviour since the Act of Supremacy in 1558 that banned the practice of the Catholic faith. Both are based on a moral superiority that specifies the state will decide on acceptable actions and beliefs even if they don’t affect other people. Worse, it won’t work – evidence from other countries such as Poland and Ireland that have tried such blanket bans shows an increase in deaths as people go back to older illegal drugs such as cocaine and heroin.
Moreover, it may seriously impede research in brain disorders, one of the few scientific areas in which the UK is still world-leading. But hey, who cares about the consequences of laws, so long as the police and the press are appeased?
So the short answer to the question “why are (some) drugs illegal?” is simple. It’s because the editors of powerful newspapers want it that way. They see getting drugs banned as a tangible measure of success, a badge of honour. And behind them the alcohol industry continues secretly to express its opposition to anything that might challenge its monopoly of recreational drug sales. But that’s another story.
Monday 30 June 2014
No Second Wife Please - We're Indian Muslim women
Jyoti Punwani in the Hindu
Will the Muslim personal law make polygamy illegal?
When the Bhartiya Mahila Muslim Andolan started working on codifying Muslim personal law, they weren’t sure whether to ban polygamy, or make it conditional. Senior lawyers pointed out that despite bigamy being an offence, Hindu men continued to take a second wife. These women didn’t enjoy the status of a wife, whereas even the fourth wife of a Muslim man had that status.
But the final draft of the new ‘Muslim Marriage and Divorce Act’, released in Mumbai on June 18, makes polygamy illegal. How come? “That’s what Muslim women wanted,” says Noorjehan Safia Niaz, co-founder of the BMMA. “We played the Devil’s Advocate with them, asking them wasn’t a second wife necessary if the first couldn’t conceive, for example. Their reply always was: ‘No. No second wife. No woman should have to share her husband with another woman.’”
Of the seven years taken to arrive at this draft, two were spent talking to Muslim women, most of them poor, uneducated and living in ghettos. It was these women who were desperate for a change, urging the BMMA to “quickly change the law, get us justice.”
But the middle class, supposed to be the pioneer for reform, left Noorjehan disillusioned. A US-returned Muslim in Hyderabad baulked at the BMMA’s proposal to make 18 and 21 the minimum age of marriage for women and men respectively. “It should be 18 for both,” she suggested. Muslim male lawyers in Karnataka saw nothing wrong in a 13-year-old getting married as long as she had attained puberty. But in the bylanes of Bhopal, uneducated Muslim women suggested 21 and 25 instead. “Our daughters graduate at 21,” they pointed out.
“Middle class Muslims kept saying: ‘Don’t tamper too much with the shariat.’ They have well-off families and education to fall back on; the unjust decisions of qazis don’t affect them much,’’ explains Noorjehan. What kept the BMMA going was the response of poor women.
Consultations with these women were held across 10 states where the BMMA has been working, training paralegal workers as arbitrators and providing legal aid. Men would attend their public meetings, and a few would invariably object to their attire (“you are wearing a sari, you haven’t covered your head, you aren’t wearing a burqa — so you aren’t Muslim”), or to their lack of qualifications (“you are not aalims”). One man in Ranchi who objected vociferously to everything, later told Noorjehan, “I agree with everything you say, but if I don’t object, I can’t face my jamaat.” The BMMA took a decision not to consult the All India Personal Law Board and the religious organisations. “They have shown they don’t want change.”
The starting point of this long process was the condition of poor Muslim women, victims of the unIslamic and unjust decisions of maulanas and qazis. The Muslim Personal Law (Shariat) Application Act 1937 has no specific provisions to be followed, leaving every qazi free to rule as per their understanding of the Sharia. The Dissolution of Muslim Marriages Act 1939 lays down grounds on which a woman can approach the court, but few can afford to do so.
Because of this, reformists such as the late Asghar Ali Engineer campaigned for years for the need to codify Muslim personal Law as per Quranic injunctions, which grant women more rights than any other religion does. All Islamic countries have put in place modern personal laws. But in India, the move has always been resisted on three grounds: 1. The Sharia can’t be touched; it is divine. 2. It will be impossible to decide which of the four schools of Islamic jurisprudence should be followed in codification. 3. This will be the first step towards enacting a Uniform Civil Code (UCC).
As Engineer never tired of explaining, the Sharia is based on the Quran, it is not the Quran. In India, the Shariat Act was drafted and enacted by the British. The BMMA worked with Engineer on its draft, choosing to base it on the Quran itself. The draft contains verses from the Quran to back its provisions.
Thus, to decide the minimum age of marriage, the Quranic injunction of ‘maturity’ of the spouses was interpreted as emotional maturity in addition to physical. “Besides, in Islam, marriage is a contract, and a contract can only be between two adults,” says Noorjehan.
The draft makes many common practices illegal, including underage marriage; unilateral, oral and instant talaq; making the woman give up her mehr (dower) and halala, the practice by which you remarry your divorced wife only after she consummates her marriage with another man and is then divorced by him. “This has no mention in the Quran, it’s become a prostitution racket in places like Lucknow,” says Noorjehan.
Is this the right time to release this draft, given the new government’s emphasis on the UCC? “We oppose the UCC. But we also want to know, when will the right time come to get justice for women? Twenty years back, we were asked to wait as the Babri Masjid was demolished, the community was under attack. Aren’t women part of the community? Ten years back we were told the Gujarat pogrom had taken place. Can these leaders give us a guarantee that 10 years later, there will be a really secular government, and the community won’t be under attack? Secondly, who decides this hierarchy of issues? Let’s tackle all issues: discrimination, security and also women’s rights. Besides, how many of these leaders have worked on these other issues at the grassroots level? It is groups like us who have done so, tried to get the Sachar Committee recommendations implemented and also campaigned against Modi.”
Noorjehan knows it will take the efforts of many groups to get the government to accept the draft. “Let the community debate our draft first. At any rate, for us, the process was as important as the result.”
Thursday 12 June 2014
Cricket - There's more grey to chucking than we might think
Osman Samiuddin in Cricinfo
A decade ago cricket's ancient and embedded hyper-morality crashed into the modern world's burgeoning thirst for reality television. The focus for this communion was Muttiah Muralitharan, and more specifically his action. Two TV networks, ESPN (in India) and the UK's Channel 4, broadcast what were paraded at the time as definitive acquittals of Muralitharan's action, which had till then been called periodically, sanctioned occasionally, and the subject of hysterical debate permanently.
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Muralitharan went through his repertoire of deliveries with a steel-embedded plaster brace around his right arm, from bicep to wrist, and with admirable good nature. He looked a little uneasy in the ESPN show, a little too much like the guinea pig just becoming aware of his centrality to bigger, buffeting winds. But he went about it like a man who felt he needed to.
He bowled to Michael Slater in that one, to recreate match conditions. There was a doctor present too, explaining the unique physical quirks of Muralitharan's wrist, arm and shoulder, though he felt a little like Dr Nick Riviera, whose only residency of note has been on The Simpsons. Ravi Shastri, for ESPN, was quadruply burdened, as host, judge, jury and, eventually, the benefactor who cleared Murali. Shastri did so in the manner with which we are all familiar, effectively hype-mastering a science documentary. For Channel 4, Mark Nicholas managed a sombre posture, considered and inquiring but above all providing a kind of bipartisan seal on matters.
The issue by then had become so divided along racial lines that a non-Asian clearing of Murali felt necessary. That was the ultimate takeaway, of course, that Murali did not chuck. He could not with that steel brace on. Even Slats, an Aussie, said so.
In hindsight it is not so much the details of Murali's case that were important as was the fact that cricket felt the need for this public trial by TV in the first place. Even today, viewing it produces the kind of cringe only a certain kind of reality show does; especially the eagerness with which Muralitharan is cleared, as if he was guilty of some crime.
Though he looks uncomfortable in the ESPN version, Murali looked cheery and eager for Channel 4. He was probably a willing participant, perhaps even an instigator in doing the shows, but that is hardly the point. He was compelled into it by cricket, feeling no other recourse was available to prove that he was not some evil, cheating villain who would leave cricket forever corrupted. That is precisely what umpires such as Ross Emerson and Darrell Hair seemed to think he was, no-balling him with such ugly fervour that it was impossible to avoid feeling a vicarious humiliation at what Murali underwent. Men are prone to delusions when invested with the tiniest bit of authority in any case, but when furnished with a haloed moral authority they become monsters, or cricket umpires.
Hair and Emerson were after all only maintaining professional tradition. In every purge of suspect actions, umpires have led the hounding, right at the front of bloodthirsty crowds. Chuckers (and even the word is so phonetically derisive) have never been just men with kinks in their actions, or have seemed to bowl thus as a natural outcome of the overarm bowling action, which basically predetermines some degree of straightening (as an ICC survey discovered back in 2004). Cricket has treated chuckers as lepers because cricket doesn't have a reliable sense of a scale of bad: it can summon about the same amount of moral outrage for slow over rates as it can for Mankading, intimidatory bowling and match-fixing. It has a spirit nobody can define but one everybody screeches about when it is - regularly and easily - breached. So Murali and Saeed Ajmal walk around with an asterisk floating above them. To their detractors they are asylum seekers who exist only because of the weak-kneed liberalism of a governing body.
Maybe now the urge to purge is suppressed a little but the moralising over suspect actions remains; in the smugness of Australia and England that their offspinners do not bowl doosras, or feel the need to wear long sleeves (Shane Warne, one failed drug test plus one corruption scandal to the good, sniggering at Ajmal's long sleeves in the World T20 is a classic example of cricket's wonky moral scale); in Michael Vaughan tweeting and Stuart Broad responding to a photo of Ajmal in action and, metaphorically, nodding and winking. That yanks into black-and-white territory what is an inherently grey matter.
Suspect actions can be deliberate but they can also be functions of the mechanics of human bodies we do not understand. Could anyone have imagined that a study would find 99% of bowlers in cricket straighten their arm to some degree? What effects do injuries have, as a fairly serious accident did on Ajmal's right forearm when he was younger? How to explain the squirmy spectacle of Shoaib Akhtar being able to bend his elbow in ways that normally ought not to have been possible?
Where, in any case, is the study that sheds light on the exact nature of the advantages gained from greater elbow straightening? It is said that bowling the doosra is impossible without breaking the acceptable degrees of flex, but how to explain Saqlain Mushtaq, the pioneer, who did it with almost no visible bend at all? He even bowled it under the eyes of Hair and Emerson and elicited not a squeak, so he must have been fine, right? Even if we make the crazy assumption that post-Murali, Hair might have been chastened?
| Where is the study that sheds light on the exact nature of the advantages gained from greater elbow straightening? | |||
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Cricket cannot continue being blind to the grey of this issue because soon we might be in greyer territory. Last week the ICC's cricket committee expressed its concerns about the identifying, reporting and testing of suspect actions. The processes, they said, need to change.
The primary reason appears to be discontent with the testing labs at the University of Western Australia in Perth, where bowling actions have hitherto undergone testing. The time and cost of sending a bowler that far has always been problematic but now more issues have emerged. One official familiar with the meeting last week says that there was concern about discrepancies in the findings of the Perth labs and others around the world. Apparently the Perth lab has not been following the exact protocols for testing actions that the ICC has laid down, disagreeing with the nature of those protocols.
So the ICC wants to accredit other labs around the world, in England, South Africa and India initially, and ultimately standardise testing protocols and results. The utopian aim is to have testing centres in every Full Member country, so that bowlers can be observed, tested and corrected at domestic level before they get further.
More significantly, they are also testing body sensors that could capture real-time analysis of a bowler's action during a game. These were tested by under-19 players at the recent World Cup but only in net practice, and much more work needs to be done before it goes further. The calibration of the sensors on the arm is a particular issue, especially after players dive in the field.
In time, that will be the least of the problems, because trickier questions will arise. Who will wear sensors in a game? Those who have already undergone testing once? Others we suspect have a kink in their action? Nobody, as the ICC says, is cleared permanently, so everyone is under the scanner theoretically. Singling out someone who may have a kink but has not been tested officially places an undue burden on the bowler and recreates, in a way, the TV trial Murali underwent. How real is real-time? Will we be able to see the results after each ball, after each over, after each session, after each day?
Mike Hesson has already asked how those with suspect actions will be policed: what happens, he said, if a wicket falls off a ball delivered by an action in breach of the laws? Will a TV umpire review it immediately? Umpiring technology hardly needs further complication. As it stands, these discussions haven't begun but these are difficult and complicated questions. It is, after all, a difficult and complicated issue, even if it feels sometimes that cricket has still not grasped this.
Thursday 18 July 2013
Cricket Betting in India
It is just not possible to bet on the minutiae of a match, including that of a bowler sending down a pre-designated no-ball. © Getty Images
Never meet a hero, they reckon. But what of a villain? Say hello to Vinay, from Bhopal, capital of the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh. He is an illegal bookmaker, which also makes him a scourge of the game, and a malevolent, match-fixing mobster. Right?
When I met Vinay in a hotel lobby, the reputation of his brethren – there are estimated to be more than 70,000 bookies in India – preceded him. All, bar those who work at race courses (where gambling, so the argument goes, is based on skill rather than luck, and therefore socially acceptable) are illegal. It is said – by the ICC, corruption officers, national boards and player bodies – that the illegal bookies are dangerous men from the underworld. People fear them. And so, in truth, did I, as I waited for Vinay, nervously tapping my feet to inane pan-pipe music.
Yet when he arrived, I immediately felt at ease. There was no cloak, no dagger. His smile was brilliant, his handshake warm, his enquiry after my health genuine. We had already exchanged emails, Twitter messages and phone calls. What followed was a crash course in India’s vast gambling industry. Over several weeks as part of my research for a book on corruption in cricket, I would spend time living with him and his family, and watch him run his business (he also owned a construction firm); I would hide from the police, learn how bookies control betting markets, and hear of fixes before they happened. When we parted, I told Vinay of my initial apprehension. “Me?” he guffawed. “This is too much amusement for me. I hope you know me now, ya? But perhaps I understand why you were like this. Bookmakers in India are supposed to be all bad. No. We are trying to make our living in a corrupt country, and we do this by taking any opportunity we can.”
The backdrop to my visit was the sound of exploding myths. Chief among them was the notion that it is possible to place a bet on a no-ball, a misconception that called into question the precise nature of the conviction of Salman Butt, Mohammad Asif and Mohammad Aamer in the spot-fixing trial of November 2011 – though there is no doubt that the News of the World sting showed them to be corruptible. But preconceived notions about corruption in cricket simply collapsed, for it is just not possible to bet on the minutiae of a match: a batsman scoring a certain amount of runs, a fielder being placed in a particular position, a bowler operating from a specific end – or even sending down a pre-designated no-ball. Why? Because just as Indian bookies are not the threatening hoodlums of popular depiction, neither are they knuckledragging imbeciles. “Do you think we’re fools?” asked Vinay. “If someone says they want this no-ball bet for big monies, and I’m Ladbrokes in London, I tell them to go away. No bookmaker in the world takes this bet.”
One does not need to be invited into Vinay’s home to understand that any bookie worth his salt would suspect that this customer had inside information. Yet throughout the Southwark trial of the three Pakistanis and their agent, there was a wilful acceptance that the News of the World would have been able to place a bet on the timing of a no-ball, had they so wished. This was clear from the sentencing remarks by Mr Justice Cooke: “Bets could be placed on these no-balls in unlawful markets, mostly abroad, based on inside advance knowledge of what was going to happen… Individuals in India were making £40,000–£50,000 on each identified no-ball. On three no-balls, therefore, the bookmakers stood to lose £150,000 on each bet by a cheating punter.”
In fact, this is impossible. The illegal Indian market is highly organised and, crucially, uniform. It offers only four markets for its gamblers: match odds, innings runs (known as lambi), brackets (the number of runs scored in a certain amount of overs), and lunch favourite (essentially, betting that the team who are favourites at lunch in a Test, or at the innings break in a limited-overs match, will go on and win the game). In the case of the lambi and brackets, a spread is set for the number of runs to be scored, and gamblers bet over or under.
The odds for these markets are provided by four syndicates, who have reached the top of the food chain through their expertise in the field. They charge a fee to bookmakers to use those odds, then take a cut of the profits from all over the country. Think of the syndicates as wholesalers, and the bookies as convenience-store owners, who buy the goods, then sell them on. Vinay is what is known as a first-tier bookmaker. Occasionally, because he is highly regarded, he acts as one of the syndicate heads, who are often based in Mumbai or Dubai, sending out odds to bookies lower down the chain; bookmakers from the second, third or fourth tiers have fewer customers, and receive the odds via SMS, with the syndicate able to reach hundreds of them at once using bulk messaging software. “All bookies in India are connected,” said Vinay. “They will send on the prices to even more.”
Because the syndicates are so dominant, the potential for the manipulation of markets is obvious. And it is certainly more profitable than paying a bowler to overstep. “The Indian market is very big and powerful,” Vinay told me just before England’s One-Day International against India at Hyderabad in October 2011. “There are much smarter ways to manipulate betting. Look, I’ll show you.”
On his laptop he logged on to Betfair, the person-to-person betting exchange with more than four million customers around the globe. After it was announced India had won the toss, he sent updated odds to 200 bookmakers across the country. On the match-odds market, India were favourites at 1.95 (even money would be 2.00). These decimal odds translate into the traditional fractional odds used in the UK as 20-21: in other words, if you bet £21 you can win £20.
“Now watch how I move the Betfair market,” said Vinay. When he sends the SMS to his cohorts instructing them to lower the odds, they flood Betfair with money – or, to be precise, with people prepared to place bets at these odds. He explained: “It is currently India 1.95. Watch how they become 1.85 in line with our odds… wait, you’ll see here how it works… we want to get India short.” Vinay was keen to price India as short as possible because he knew most of his punters would back the home team. Since an Indian victory would have been certain to cost him money, he wanted to discourage punters from backing them. Seconds later, he chirped: “There, you see: India 1.85 now on Betfair. We have moved the market.” And all this from a text message which simply read: “India 85”.
Unfortunately for cricket and the ICC’s Anti-Corruption and Security Unit, some fixes are almost impossible to prove. © AFP
This, of course, is not corruption – just the sheer weight of (illegal) Indian money. Yet no matter what wagers are struck, the bookmaker and the syndicates are able to avoid losses by using betting exchanges to hedge their bets. For example, a bookie may have accepted a wager from any Tom, Dick or Hari of £10 on England to win at even money. This has the potential to cost the bookie £10. However, when England’s odds during the game drift to 6-4 (greater than even money) – either because momentum has shifted towards India, or because Vinay has manipulated the market from a hotel room in Bhopal – the bookie can lay off, or hedge, his bets. The original bet risks him £10. But by placing a wager himself on England at odds of 6-4 for £10, he stands to win £15 if he’s successful: £15 minus £10 is a guaranteed profit of £5. (In the case of an Indian win, Vinay would have hedged his position too, although – because of the amount of money wagered on India – he would be merely seeking to reduce his losses to a manageable level.) Now consider the potential when four or five figures are involved.
Hedging is not illegal, but it shows that corruption is not an exact science: there is more than one method and more than one protagonist. The assumption that it is largely bookmakers who fix matches would appear to be wrong. Vinay worries that punters close to players or officials do the fixing, costing him money. Yet there seems little doubt that the all-powerful syndicates have massive influence, as well as the funds and organisational ability, to fix elements of matches – or even the results themselves.
The bookies and the professional punter can be considered enemies, in the mould of the old-fashioned pork-pie-hat-wearing odds-maker and his traditional chancer customer. It is a war for inside information: who knows more? The only consistent loser is the less clued-up customer, who is in effect betting blind. The syndicate operates a subtle fix. By sending out false odds via their bookies, they tempt customers into taking them. Vinay gave the example of how, armed with prior knowledge that a well-known Test match in 2011 would not end in a draw – when a draw looked at one stage the only possible result – the odds were set so that more people would bet on the stalemate. This is a ruse that hundreds of thousands fall prey to, and the money tots up.
The professional punter can do likewise, but he is a simpler operator. His original way of making money from fixes, which would have been used in the days of Hansie Cronje – and before the betting exchanges were commonplace – is less sophisticated. It requires much poking and prodding of contacts up and down the country, hoping minions will then place the bets correctly. It is a system that primarily takes advantage of the sheer size of the industry: a few lakh in Mumbai (one lakh equals 100,000), a few more in Delhi, a few more somewhere else. Next week, mix it all up again in an attempt not to draw attention to the scale of the enterprise – and hope you don’t get found out.
“The punter will have his friends placing the bets all over,” said Vinay. “There is a big connection. Some punters are connected like the bookmakers are connected. If a punter has 50 friends, he can get 50 bets.” The aim of fragmenting his bets by placing many smaller ones instead of a couple of large ones is to prevent the bookmaker from suspecting inside knowledge. The subtle nature of the sting fuels the belief that a wide array of markets are available to bet on in India. But it is not because there is a betting market for fielding positions that a syndicate or punter has cajoled a captain into moving a fielder from third man (there is no such market). It is because, without a third man in the first ten overs of a one-day international, more runs are likely to be scored. This allows the syndicate to set false odds on a bracket, knowing that, if they offer runs in the first ten overs at, say, 70–75, most gamblers will bet under. Similarly, a punter who has a close friendship with a batsman might have arranged for him to score fewer than 25. This will give him an edge when it comes to the lambi, bracket and match odds. If it sounds like insider trading on the stock market, that is precisely what it amounts to.
Unfortunately for cricket and the ICC’s Anti-Corruption and Security Unit, it is almost impossible to prove. The fixes are so minute – at least in terms of the impact on the match result – as to be virtually undetectable. How, for example, could the ACSU prove in court that a batsman has scored deliberately slowly for just one over in a Twenty20 match to sate a syndicate or a punter playing the brackets?
But the ACSU do not help themselves by failing to grasp how the illegal market in India works. They were embarrassed when Ravi Sawani, their former boss, admitted in the Southwark trial he had not heard of the term “bracket”. They should also be pilloried for failing to grasp the nuances of spot-fixing, wrongly believing there are manifold markets for bookmakers or gamblers to exploit. Yet we should not simply criticise the governing body. Rarely are players, the collective, admonished. “It’s down to them to take ownership,” said an ACSU source. “A few players have said: ‘There should be more ACSU people.’ No, we should have 20 guys on the field naming the two who are at it.”
There is hope – but only a little. If India’s bookmakers were legalised, they would have to operate exactly like Ladbrokes or William Hill. That would mean an end to the credit system, where bookies accept customers on trust. Instead, they would need money in their account to wager. And to have an account, they would have to hand over their personal details. When accounts are kept and verified, you have a paper trail. If you have a paper trail, you have no rogue punters setting up fixes with their friends in cricket teams. At a stroke, the potential for corruption would be reduced by half.
Vinay is not convinced: “People say: ‘Legalise betting in India and fixing will stop.’ Yes. We are ready to pay tax. I’m tired of paying off the police. But it will not stop fixing. Never.”
Wednesday 27 March 2013
Cricket, Physics and the Laws of Probability
In the recently concluded test match between New Zealand and England an event occurred which in
this writer's opinion once again questions the predictability of an lbw
decision as a method of dismissing a batsman and especially the DRS system
which is being touted as a scientific fact. On the last ball of the 99th over
in the England
second innings the ball, to quote Andy Zaltzman in Cricinfo:
The ball ricocheted
from Prior's flailing bat/arms/head, and plonked downwards, in accordance the
traditions of gravity, onto the timbers. It did not brush the stumps. It did
not snick the stumps. It did not gently fondle the stumps. It hit the stumps.
The bails, perhaps patriotically mindful of their origins in early cricket in England
If the stumps and
bails had behaved as cricketing precedent and Isaac Newton would have expected
them to behave, England
If the ball having hit the stumps fails to dislodge the
bails then doesn't it introduce even more uncertainty into a DRS based lbw
decision which its supporters claim to be irrefutable evidence? This incident
requires that in an lbw appeal the DRS should not only predict whether the
ball, if not impeded by the batsman illegally, would have gone on to hit the
stumps but also if it would dislodge the bails.
Supporters of the DRS rely on the infallibility of
scientific laws to promote their support for technology. Then, like true
scientists they should admit the weakness of their science whenever an anomaly
appears. Assuming for a moment that these scientific laws are infallible then
how do they explain the reprieve that Prior obtained? Also, shouldn't the DRS have been used to declare Prior out
since the ball had actually hit the stumps?
Hence I would like to make a suggestion which may unite the
supporters and opponents of the DRS. I suggest that the LBW as a method of
dismissing a batsman should be struck off from the laws of cricket. Instead, a
run penalty should be imposed on the batsman every time the ball comes in
contact with an 'illegal' part of
his/her body. The DRS could be used to adjudicate on this decision. The penalty
could be ten runs and increasing every
time the batsman uses such illegitimate methods to stay at the crease.
Sunday 20 May 2012
The Unfairness of the Switch Hit
Why aren't more bowlers complaining about the switch hit?
The stroke is patently unfair and widens the imbalance between bat and ball
May 20, 2012
In my playing days I believed many Englishmen used to unnecessarily
complicate what was meant to be a reasonably simple game. It looks like
that habit has now spread.
I can't imagine a more complicated solution to control the switch-hit phenomenon than what the ICC is considering.
Complex changes to the lbw law regarding what is a batsman's leg side
and analysis of the risk-reward ratio of the shot to see if it
disadvantages the bowler are two such proposals. Without watching
another ball bowled, I can tell you the answer to the second suggestion:
the switch hit is patently unfair to bowlers.
If a bowler, having already told the batsman (via the umpire) how he's
going to propel the ball, places his field for a right-hander and ends
up delivering to a left-hander, how can that be fair? It's possible to
reach a more equitable arrangement dealing with the mafia.
One of the critical duties of an administrator is to ensure the contest
between bat and ball remains balanced, like an evenly weighted see-saw.
The switch hit is a hefty dad on one end with his five-year-old son,
feet dangling in mid-air, on the other.
A simple law that states, "Having taken up his stance, a batsman may not
change the order of his feet or hands in playing a shot", would ensure
balance is restored.
With the fielding positions still effective, let the batsman play the
reverse sweep, the scoop or whatever other innovative premeditated shot
he dreams up and any self-respecting bowler will feel the odds are in
his favour. The reverse sweep does not defy the proposed law above
because the top and bottom hands remain exactly that on the handle.
If the ICC wants real proof of any disadvantage then let the bowler not
have to tell the batsman from which side of the wicket he's going to
deliver. When the bowler swaps from over to round at his pleasure, see
how long it is before batsmen are bleating. In fact, the umpires would
probably be the first to call for a truce.
In addition to disadvantaging the bowlers, the switch hit could unfairly
help the batting side win a tight Test match. By swapping at the last
moment, a batsman could induce a no-ball under the maximum-two-fieldsmen
behind-square-leg law to gain victory without hitting the ball or the
bowler knowingly doing anything illegal.
| One of the critical duties of an administrator is to ensure the contest between bat and ball remains balanced, like an evenly weighted see-saw. The switch hit is a hefty dad on one end with his five year-old son, feet dangling in mid-air, on the other | |||
I've championed the cause of bowlers over the years, as the major
innovators in the game, and I'm staggered they have been so timid in
this debate. Whatever happened to the spirit of those revolutionaries John Willes and Ned Willsher,
both of whom played a role during the 19th century in upgrading bowling
from underarm (via sidearm) to the modern over-arm delivery?
I'm surprised no modern-day bowling revolutionary has tried swapping
alternate deliveries from over and round the wicket until the officials
enquired, "What's your problem?"
As a part-time leggie and a baseball catcher in my younger days, I would
have seriously considered letting a batsman have it with a
well-directed throw if he changed the order of his hands or feet while I
was running in to bowl. I've no doubt Wills and Willsher would adopt
more subtle methods, but I'm sure they would have admired my zeal in
attempting to get my point across.
I'm often told the switch hit should be allowed because it's legal in
baseball. That's nonsensical because in baseball the hitter has to stand
in either the left- or right-hand batter's box, so the pitcher knows
beforehand what he's facing and can adjust his field accordingly. And
late in a close game the opposing manager will call on either a right-
or left-handed pitcher in order to exploit the switch hitter's weaker
side.
There's no doubt the switch hit requires a hell of a lot of skill, and
it's exciting when Kevin Pietersen or David Warner clubs a six while
quickly swapping from one style of batsman to another. Skilful yes, fair
on the bowlers no, and it's the approval of such imbalances between bat
and ball that can lead to things like chucking and ball-tampering, or
at the very least on-field animosity.
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