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Wednesday 9 May 2012

Institutional Racism in the UK - the case of the Met Police

'If you complain about racism, your career is finished,' says Met detective

New Commissioner Bernard Hogan-Howe has promised to drive racism out of the force. But one officer, sacked after being smeared by his colleagues, believes his words are hollow
An Asian police officer whose career was thwarted by institutional discrimination has dismissed promises by Britain's highest-ranking officer to drive out racism within the Scotland Yard as mere "lip service".
Detective Sergeant Gurpal Singh Virdi will today hand in his warrant card and become what he describes as one of only a dozen or so ethnic-minority police officers to survive 30 years with Britain's largest police force.

Last month the Met's Commissioner, Bernard Hogan-Howe, vowed to become an "implacable enemy" of racists within Scotland Yard, promising to "drive them out of the Met". But DS Virdi, whose career has been defined by a racially motivated character assassination and a subsequent smear campaign by his own colleagues, says he doesn't believe the Met has changed.

Speaking to The Independent, the retiring officer said: "The Met never wants to learn lessons from people like me."

The 53-year-old was sacked in 1998 after being erroneously charged with sending racist, National Front hate mail to black colleagues at Ealing police station. His house was searched for seven hours in the presence of his children.

DS Virdi says the raid, authorised by then Deputy Commissioner John Stevens, came weeks after he had threatened to go over the head of his superiors regarding what he felt was a sloppy investigation of a racist, near-fatal stabbing of an Iraqi and an Indian boy by five white males. DS Virdi had pointed out the parallels between the investigation and that into Stephen Lawrence's murder five years earlier; weeks later he was arrested and suspended.

"My career finished in 1998," he said. "As soon as you raise your head above the parapet, your career is finished, and everyone in the police service knows that... Most people keep silent because they know that, even if you complain, the investigation won't be done properly... That hasn't changed."

It took a year for the Crown Prosecution Service to decide there was insufficient evidence to prosecute him.

Nevertheless, Scotland Yard seemed determined to make an example of him and he was sacked in 2000. Later that year an employment tribunal found that the Met's investigation had racially discriminated against DS Virdi.

Unlike his white colleagues, it ruled, he had been subjected to an entrapment operation, been formally interviewed, had his house searched, been arrested and suspended "without sufficient evidence to support the allegations". He was awarded a six-figure settlement, mainly for the "high-handed" way the Yard had behaved and the way it had manipulated media coverage.

The Independent Advisory Group, which monitors the Met's performance on race crime, described the investigation as "disgraceful" and "a high-profile character assassination". In 2001, DS Virdi and his wife, Sathat, were assured by the then Commissioner, John Stevens, that lessons had been learnt, and he was sent an apology. An independent inquiry by the newly formed Metropolitan Police Authority concluded that there had been a smear campaign against him.

DS Virdi went back to the Met in 2002 against the wishes of his wife. In 2004 DS Virdi was assured by Lord Stevens and Mr Hogan-Howe, then assistant commissioner for human resources, that his career would not suffer as a result of a negative internal report claiming there was still "strong evidence" of his guilt.

For the past five years, he says he has "pushed pen around paper" for the Met's Sikh Association, awaiting a suitable post. "I had to go back and face them; I am not the type of person to run away," he said. "I wanted to do 30 years, and I'm glad that I've done it. I've enjoyed what I've done, but feel sad as I could have done so much more. I have been stopped from reaching my potential." Over the past five years, DS Virdi says he has supported a number of ethnic minority officers, from trainees to high-ranking officials, who have made allegations of racism but do not believe their complaints were properly investigated.

"The majority of allegations of racism and corruption have not been properly investigated – in fact they usually protect the racists rather than the victims," he said. "That has not changed.

"There have only been a dozen people, including mixed-race officers, who have survived 30 years. Most of them realise that their careers will never go anywhere and so they just go."

Born in India, Virdi grew up in Southall, west London. His father served in Delhi police, but when Virdi joined the Met in 1982, it was against his parents' wishes. He had an unblemished career in uniformed, CID and specialist squads until he was arrested in 1998.

Despite all that has happened, he says he has no regrets about returning to the police. "I can leave today with my head held high, as I can honestly say I didn't tolerate corruption or bad practice. There will be no leaving do. It wouldn't feel right after all that has happened."

The officer, or officers, who were responsible for sending the racist hate mail in 1998 have never been found; the criminal case remains unsolved. "There is nothing stopping the Commissioner [Hogan-Howe] from reopening the case should he want to, but I don't think he will, because they won't like the answers."

The Met said it did not comment on individual cases, but pointed to the Commissioner's public statements on driving out racism.

Lawrence corruption review 'imminent'

The Metropolitan Police is expected to make an announcement this week about its review into allegations of corruption within the original Stephen Lawrence murder inquiry.

The review was set up after Doreen Lawrence, the mother of the teenager killed in 1993 by a white racist gang, called for the reopening of the public inquiry into the circumstances of his death.

Mrs Lawrence's request to the Home Secretary, Theresa May, followed publication in The Independent of previously unseen intelligence reports about Detective Sergeant John Davidson, who played a leading role in the hunt for the killers, which said he was involved in "all aspects of criminality".

A former Scotland Yard commander, Ray Adams, was also the subject of an inquiry, but the findings were not passed to the Stephen Lawrence inquiry panel.

Paul Peachey

Tuesday 8 May 2012

Extend Freedom of Information to the Private Sector

Freedom of information: my monstrous idea will keep corporate tyrants at bay

Extending transparency laws to the private sector would make the likes of News International think twice before misbehaving
Illustration by Daniel Pudles
Illustration by Daniel Pudles
 
Modern government could be interpreted as a device for projecting corporate power. Since the 1980s, in Britain, the US and other nations, the primary mission of governments has been to grant their sponsors in the private sector ever greater access to public money and public life.

There are several means by which they do so: the privatisation and outsourcing of public services; the stuffing of public committees with corporate executives; and the reshaping of laws and regulations to favour big business. In the UK, the Health and Social Care Act extends the corporate domain in ways unimaginable even five years ago.

With these increasing powers come diminishing obligations. Through repeated cycles of deregulation, governments release big business from its duty of care towards both people and the planet. While citizens are subject to ever more control – as the state extends surveillance and restricts our freedom to protest and assemble – companies are subject to ever less.

In this column I will make a proposal that sounds – at first – monstrous, but I hope to persuade you is both reasonable and necessary: that freedom of information laws should be extended to the private sector.

The very idea of a corporation is made possible only by a blurring of the distinction between private and public. Limited liability socialises risks that would otherwise be carried by a company's owners and directors, exempting them from the costs of the debts they incur or the disasters they cause. The bailouts introduced us to an extreme form of this exemption: men like Fred Goodwin and Matt Ridley are left in peace to count their money while everyone else must pay for their mistakes.

So I am asking only for the exercise of that long-standing Conservative maxim – no rights without responsibilities. If you benefit from limited liability, the public should be permitted to scrutinise your business.

Companies already have certain obligations towards transparency, such as the publication of financial statements and annual reports. But these tell us only a little of what we need to know. In News International's annual report, you will find none of the information disclosed at the Leveson inquiry, though it is of pressing public interest. In fact it is only due to a combination of the Guardian's persistence and pure chance (the discovery that Milly Dowler's phone had been hacked) that we know anything about the wide-ranging assault on democracy engineered by that company.

Privatisation and outsourcing ensure that private business is, or should be, everyone's business. Private companies now provide services we are in no position to refuse, yet, unlike the state bodies they replace, they are not subject to the Freedom of Information Act. The results can be catastrophic for public accounts.

Just as the Blair government did while imposing the disastrous private finance initiative, the Bullingdon boys now shield their schemes from public scrutiny behind the corporate information wall. Companies are once again striking remarkable deals, hatched in secret, at the expense of taxpayers, pupils and patients. Last week, for example, we learned that Circle Healthcare will be able to extract millions of pounds a year from a public hospital, Hinchingbrooke, which is in deep financial trouble. Crucial information about the deal remains secret on the grounds of Circle's "commercial confidentiality".

The principle of corporate transparency is already established in English law. The Freedom of Information Act has a clause enabling the government to extend it to companies with public contracts. Unsurprisingly, it has not been exercised. The environmental information rules of 2004 define a public authority as any body providing public services, which includes corporations. Why should this not apply universally?

The Campaign for Freedom of Information points out that the Scottish government almost adopted this idea: it proposed extending the transparency laws to major government contractors. But though this plan was overwhelmingly popular, it was dropped last year on the grounds that the contractors were opposed to it. (Who would have guessed?) South Africa, by contrast, provides a general right of access to the records of private bodies. The ANC, aware of how corporations assisted apartheid, recognises that the state is not the only threat to democracy.

Freedom of information is never absolute, nor should it be. Companies should retain the right, as they do in South Africa, to protect material that is of genuine commercial confidentiality; though they should not be allowed to use that as an excuse to withhold everything that might embarrass them. The information commissioner should decide where the line falls, just as he does for public bodies today.

The purpose of this monstrous proposal is not just to shine a light into the rattling cupboards of private companies, but to change the way in which they behave. A body that acts as if the world is watching presents less of a threat to the public interest than a body that knows it won't get caught. Would News International have acted as it did if its emails could have been revealed as a matter of course rather than a matter of chance? If it is true that "governments don't rule the world, Goldman Sachs rules the world", should we not be entitled to know what Goldman Sachs is up to? Is that not the only means we have of preventing its unelected power from becoming tyrannical?

I realise that it is not a good time to be making this request: far from extending our transparency laws, Cameron hints that he wants to roll them back. But unless we decide what we want and how we mean to obtain it – however remote it might now seem – we have no means of making social progress. If we are to reclaim power from the corporations that have seized it, first we need to know what that power looks like.

Monday 7 May 2012

A web of privilege supports this so-called meritocracy


On both sides of the Atlantic, the social ties that bind our political, legal and corporate forces lie exposed
huntsman and stirrup cup
‘The meetings, lunches and visits showcase a parallel, unaccountable universe where decisions are made and deals done.' Photograph: Laurence Griffiths/Getty

Shortly after Mitt Romney's failed 2008 campaign for the Republican nomination his son Tagg set up a private equity fund with the campaign's top fundraiser. One of the first donors was his mum, Anne. Next came several of his dad's financial backers. Tagg had no experience in the world of finance, but after two years in the middle of a deep recession the company had netted $244m from just 64 investors.

Tagg insists that neither his name nor the fact that his father had made it clear he would run for the presidency again had anything to do with his success. "The reason people invested in us is that they liked our strategies,'' he told the New York Times.

Class privilege, and the power it confers, is often conveniently misunderstood by its beneficiaries as the product of their own genius rather than generations of advantage, stoutly defended and faithfully bequeathed. Evidence of such advantages is not freely available. It is not in the powerful's interest for the rest of us to know how their influence is attained or exercised. But every now and then a dam bursts and the facts come flooding forth.

The Leveson inquiry has provided one such moment. It was set up last year to look into the specific claims about phone hacking at the News of the World, alleged police corruption and the general culture and ethics of the British media. But every time it probes harder into the Murdoch empire it draws blood from the heart of our body politic, telling us a great deal about how Britain's political class in particular and ruling class in general collude, connive and corrupt both systemically and systematically.

Issues of alleged criminality will eventually be determined in the courts. But while illegality would be more damning, much of what we now know that is legal is no less corrosive. The evidence has laid bare the intimate, extensive and insidious web of social, familial and personal ties between the political, corporate and legal forces that govern a country: a patchwork of individual and institutional associations so tightly interwoven that to pick at one part is to watch the whole thing unravel. The "sit downs", pay-offs and class camaraderie on display owe more to a cross between Downton Abbey and the Sopranos than the functioning of a 21st-century democracy.

The details of the main narrative bear repeating. We now know that James Murdoch met with David Cameron 12 times between January 2006 and January 2010 – eight times for dinner, twice for breakfast, once for lunch and once for drinks. Between May 2010 and July 2011 there were also more than 60 meetings between ministers and either Rupert Murdoch, his son James, the then News International chief executive Rebekah Brooks or James Harding, the editor of the Times. That averages around one a week. We know there were more, but not all were logged as such by Downing Street.

The subplots are stunning. And the forthcoming attractions could yet overshadow the lot. Now that Brooks has agreed to hand over her text messages to Cameron, we are about to learn whether rumours that they exchanged as many as 12 texts a day are true.

Brooks was arrested both on suspicion of phone hacking and corruption last year. She was arrested again this year with her husband, Charlie Brooks, on suspicion of perverting the course of justice. Charlie went to Eton with Cameron – as did the Tory mayor of London, Boris Johnson.

Such is the incestuous nature of the British ruling class and the gene puddle from which it draws its stock. Such is their brazen venality, complicity, contempt and mendacity. Eton, Oxford, Bullingdon, Westminster – if you're looking for a tiny minority who are struggling to integrate, look no further than the cabinet.

Two things make this a matter of import as well as intrigue. The first is the lie it gives to the insistence on meritocracy at a time of acute economic crisis when benefits are slashed, the poor hammered. Cameron and his cabinet insist others pull themselves up by their bootstraps even as they themselves swan around in their parents' expensive pairs of loafers. Today almost 40% of MPs went to private school. In 1997 it was just 30%. In terms of social mobility, we are going backwards. The issue here is not class envy but class entrenchment. The fact that they were born rich is irrelevant. They had no choice in the matter. But the fact that they appear to want to give even more to those who already have a great deal while denying much to those who have little is unforgiveable.

The one job Cameron landed in the private sector was arranged by his wife's mother, Lady Astor, who was friends with Michael Green, then executive chairman of Carlton. Green gave Cameron a starting salary of £90,000. He has no more had to stand on his merits than James Murdoch had to interview for a job at News Corp.

Rocked in the cradle of power from birth so that its rhythms become second nature, these people imbibe their sense of entitlement with their mother's milk. But the personal tutors, private schools, the most expensive universities do not, somehow, suffice. As though the benefits of wealth were not enough, they apparently feel the need to game the very system they already control.

Which brings us to the manner in which these interactions mock the very notion of democracy on which the nation's illusions are based. For the meetings, lunches and visits showcase a parallel, unaccountable universe where actual decisions are made and deals are done. All these informal gatherings took place at a time when the government was supposed to be adjudicating News Corporation's bid to take over BSkyB. With the culture secretary described by Murdoch's lobbyist as a "cheerleader" for News International, it seems as if the takeover was to all intents and purposes a done deal, prevented only by the fallout from the hacking scandal. All the kinks ironed out on horseback and settled in time for the main course. Parliament would have been a mere rubber stamp. Oversight reduced to an afterthought in a House of Commons that may soon more closely resemble a house of cards.

Sunday 6 May 2012

An Ultimate Example of Cost Benefit Analysis

Brilliant pupil's 'logical' suicide




By Louise Jury



Thursday, 3 December 1998

A BRILLIANT schoolboy shot himself in the head after carefully calculating the benefits of life and deciding it was not worth living, an inquest was told yesterday.

Dario Iacoponi, 15, a pupil at the London Oratory in Fulham, west London, which is attended by Tony Blair's two sons, Euan, 14, and Nicky, 12, kept a diary of his philosophical thoughts on life in the two months leading up to his death. The Oratory is one of the top Roman Catholic schools in the country.



After weighing up the pros and cons, he decided to commit suicide and planned it meticulously. He taught himself to use his father's shotgun and worked out how to fire it with a wooden spoon. He then waited until neither of his parents was at home before carrying out the plan last month.



Dr John Burton, the West London Coroner, said it was clearly a considered process and Dario "came down on the side of suicide".



The inquest was told that the teenager was a brilliant pupil who had already passed six GCSEs at A* or A grades a year early. He played the violin and piano and was hoping to study law at Yale or Harvard.



But a darker side to his character emerged in diaries found by police. They spoke of his difficulties in coping with life, although there was little, or no mention, of any specific problem such as bullying.



Dario, an only child, was found by a 20-year-old lodger at the family's home in Ealing, west London. He had a shotgun by his side.



His father, Pietro, a translator, was in Switzerland on business, and his mother, Saleni, a teacher, was at an amateur dramatics class.



Inspector Colin Nursey, who found five diaries covering the last year of Dario's life, said there was a reference in them contemplating suicide. "He would not leave a note, he was very specific about that," he said.



Neither parent was in court, but Nadia Taylor, a family friend for the past 15 years, told the inquest that Dario was "always a very sociable and very friendly person". She added: "We are all very shocked. It all came as a surprise to us that he felt this way."



But Dr Burton said he could see no other conclusion than that Dario had taken his own life. "He has made it clear that he did so. That is the only verdict that I can return.



"He was quite stoical about it. He did not fear death. He decided on balance that life is not good and points out that the mathematics he has used are indisputable."



Dario's headmaster, John McIntosh, has said he was baffled and the school shocked. "He was an extremely able boy and he got on well with other pupils and his teachers and was extremely happy at school."

Brain drain or not, the right to emigrate is fundamental

S A Aiyer

Socialists like health minister Ghulam Nabi Azad won't admit it, but they rather liked the Berlin Wall. They think it's morally right to keep citizens captive at home, unable to migrate for better prospects. Azad has proposed not a brick wall but a financial one: he wants all doctors going to the US for higher studies to sign a financial bond that will be forfeited if they do not return.




Sorry, but the right to emigrate is fundamental. States can curb immigration, but not emigration. The UN declaration of human rights says in Article 13, "Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own." Article 12 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights incorporates this right into treaty law. It says: "Everyone shall be free to leave any country, including his own. The above-mentioned rights shall not be subject to any restrictions except those provided by law necessary to protect national security, public order, public health or morals or the rights and freedoms of others." The public health exception relates to communicable diseases, not a shortage of doctors.



Hitler didn't give German Jews the right to migrate. Communist East Germany thought it had a right to shoot citizens attempting to escape over the Berlin Wall. The Soviet Union mostly had strict curbs on emigration, but allowed the mass exit of its Jews to Israel after the 1967 war in which Moscow backedthe Arabs. Moscow imposed a "diploma tax" on emigrants with higher education, to claw back the cost of their education. Israel often picked up the bill, leading to sneers that the Soviet Union was selling Jews. International protests obliged Moscow to abolish the tax.



Like the Soviets, Azad wants to claw back sums spent on educating doctors. Like East Germany, he seeks to erect exit barriers by denying Indian doctors a 'no objection certificate' to practice in the US. The right to emigrate does not enter his calculations: Azad does not want this azaadi!



Many Indians will back him, saying the brain drain imposes high costs on India. Well, all principles have some costs, but that's no reason to abandon them. Azad wants curbs just on doctors, but the principle applies to all Indians. Would India be better off if it had kept captive at home economists like Amartya Sen and Jagdish Bhagwati? Three Indian migrants to the US have won Nobel Prizes-Gobind Khurana (medicine) Chandra Shekhar (physics) and V Ramakrishnan (chemistry). Had they been stopped from leaving India, would they have ever risen to such heights?



Cost estimates of the brain drain are exaggerated or downright false. Remittances from overseas Indians are now around $60 billion a year. NRI bank deposits bring up to $30 billion a year. Together, they greatly exceed India's entire spending on education (around $75 billion). Even more valuable are skills brought back by returnees.



Remittances skyrocketed only after India made it easier in the 1990s for students to go abroad. One lakh per year go to the US alone. The number of US citizens of Indian origin has tripled since 1990 to three million, and the US has replaced the Gulf as the main source of remittances.



The brain drain has anyway given way to brain circulation. Youngsters going abroad actually have very limited skills. But they hugely improve their skills abroad, mainly through job experience, so returnees bring back much brainpower.



Indian returnees were relatively few during the licence-permit raj, because omnipresent controls stifled domestic opportunities. But economic liberalization has created a boom in opportunities of every sort, so more Indians are returning. Azad should note that the fast expansion of private hospitals has attracted back many doctors. Scientists, software engineers, managers and professionals of all sorts have flocked back. This carries a simple policy lesson: create opportunity, not barriers.



Millions of Indians will not come back. Yet they do not constitute a drain. They have become huge financial assets for India through remittances and investments.



They have also become a foreign policy asset. Three million Indian Americans now occupy high positions in academia, Wall Street, business and professions. They have become important political contributors, and two have entered politics and become state governors (Bobby Jindal and Nikki Haley). Indian Americans have become a formidable lobby, helping shift US policy in India's favour, to Pakistan's dismay.



However, these are secondary issues. The main issue is human freedom. The UN declaration of human rights recognizes the right to migrate. This fundamental freedom has more value by far than the financial or foreign policy value of the diaspora. Never forget this in the brain drain debate.

Saturday 5 May 2012

The perils of imitating Shane Warne


| 27th December, 2011

Richie Benaud, the celebrated leg spinner also known for his legendary one-liners in the commentary box, once said, “a bleeding ring finger at the end of every training session was not only normal but essential for my development as a wrist spinner.”

Being one of the most influential and highly-regarded leg-break bowlers at a time when leg-spin was both rare and misunderstood, Benaud knew what he was talking about. He recalls spending most of his late teenage years at the New South Wales Colts’ nets. He would practice landing his stock delivery on the same spot for hours on end.

“Four times a week I would turn up at exactly quarter to three with Billy Watson (who coincidentally would go on to play for Australia himself) and practice in the same net.”

Numerous others would show up at their own leisure to replace Billy, but Benaud would keep practicing until the last ray of light had faded into yet another Sydney summer evening.

“It (leg-spin bowling) is perhaps the hardest and most complex facet of cricket”, Benaud said and the “easiest thing starting out would be to keep it simple and true to your ability.”

The end of that statement is perhaps more significant than it has ever been, for the modern day leg-spinner has to learn not only the complex art, but also to grow out of the shadow of the greatest spin wizard of them all — Shane Warne.

The apparent simplicity of the genius, with his easy flowing action, unprecedented success and captivating personality seems to offer the perfect road map for an aspiring leg spinner.

In the years since Warne’s retirement, talented young bowlers have devoted their energies to modelling themselves on the brilliant Victorian, misguidedly expecting such an ordeal to be rewarding. The truth, however, truth is far closer to the contrary. Such pursuits often give birth to “spinners” who rarely turn the ball or for that matter, possess any of the other bamboozling variations (flipper, top-spinner, googly) so essential to the authentic leggie’s bag of tricks.

The explanation to this fascinating conundrum lies in both the sheer inimitable genius of Warne and the finer aspects of the leg-spinning trait itself.

Leg-spin, unlike any of the other bowling traits, does not require a high-arm delivery release. The bowler, instead, is required to have the shoulder stretch a bit to the side at the point of delivery. This is due to the peculiar and extremely strenuous way the ball is released from the wrist (the flick).

Abdul Qadir
Abdul Qadir ripping a leggie (notice the arm to the side)

The round arm action makes it much easier for the bowler’s wrist to make the necessary flicking movement, transitioning from facing the sky to facing the bowler at the time of release. It also allows for the maximum number of revolutions to be imparted on the ball, resulting in the drift and fast turn, which are crucial to the lethal leg break.

What determines the amount of turn more than any thing else, however, is the pivot of the legs of the spinner. This pivot has to be strong because it needs to drag the entire body with it, the rule being that the greater the momentum the greater the turn. The pivot is greatly aided by a side-on action. If the bowler is completely side-on in the delivery stride, half his work is already done for his body can then easily be dragged with the momentum generated by the motion of delivery.

Mushtaq Ahmed and Devendra Bishoo completely side-on – making it easier to pivot
Mushtaq Ahmed and Devendra Bishoo completely side-on – making it easier to pivot

The authentic leg-spinner’s action then requires an equal amount of work to be done by the front arm and the bowling arm, resulting in quick shifts in momentum that appear a bit haphazard in real time. This leads to “funny” actions being associated with leg-break bowlers.

My whole analysis goes out of the window when you look at Shane Warne. Having the most insignificant of jumps, Warne’s action is much more front-on compared to the traditional leg-spinner. His action doesn’t involve the extravagant movements associated with the likes of Qadir or Mushtaq and is in fact so fluent and easy on the eye that it often appears deceptively lethargic.

Shane Warne gets much more front-on and also avoids the extravagant momentum shifts to display one of the most graceful bowling actions .
Shane Warne gets much more front-on and also avoids the extravagant momentum shifts to display one of the most graceful bowling actions .

“How, then, did the magician conjure the wicked turn that mesmerised so many?” Mike Gatting would surely ask. And the answer really can only be attributed to the oddity of Warne’s natural ability. His shoulder and wrist, both freakishly strong and flexible, were able to impart a vicious spin on the ball that others will find impossible to replicate.

This freakish nature is demonstrated even more clearly when you notice his variations. The top spinner and googly, the most common leg-spinning variations, both require the ball to be released with a very different wrist position compared to the stock ball, needing the back of the hand to end up facing the batsman (top spinner) or the ground (googly) after release. This is an extreme change that normal bowlers cannot achieve by a simple adjustment of the wrist. A change in the point of delivery is essential to bowling these variations. Where initially the shoulder stuck out to the side, the arm is now closer to the head for the variations. Compare, for instance, Qadir’s top spinner to his normal action shown above.

Abdul Qadir’s action; much more round arm for the change ups.
Abdul Qadir’s action; much more round arm for the change ups.

Qadir was not alone in needing to make this switch. Almost all leg-spinners who have versatility, so crucial to being a complete wrist spinner, have to rely on this slight give-away to land their change-up deliveries effectively.


Kaneria Legbreak                                 Kaneria Googly (Blue:Head, Red:Line of Release)
Kaneria Legbreak Kaneria Googly (Blue:Head, Red:Line of Release)

Now compare this to Warne, and the difference is evident.

Shane Warne Legbreak                              Shane Warne Googly
Shane Warne Legbreak Shane Warne Googly

In fact, comparing Shane Warne’s repertoire just confirms why it was so hard to pick the great spinner, who was able to churn out his entire array of deliveries without the slightest hint of change in his action or release point. His strong shoulder and unusually flexible wrists bore the brunt of the change up every time.


(Left to Right/Top to Bottom: Leggie, Wrong-un, Flipper, Slider)
(Left to Right/Top to Bottom: Leggie, Wrong-un, Flipper, Slider)

Therefore, while Warne’s ability to turn the ball and perfectly camouflage his variations is nothing short of breathtaking, one must at the same time keep in mind the anatomy and natural gift of the great spinner that frankly can’t be imitated. With his destructive attitude and knack of getting under the batsman’s skin, Warne is definitely the embodiment of an attacking spinner.

Aspiring newcomers have a lot to learn from his attitude but would be better suited to look towards the traditional greats in Qadir and Benaud when it comes to modelling and reconstructing bowling actions.

Thursday 3 May 2012

Markets can't magic up good teachers. Nor can bonuses

Monetising incentives in education in the name of social mobility assumes everything improves with a price on it. But it doesn't
Matt Kenyon 0304
Illustration by Matt Kenyon
 
Payment by results and performance-related pay differ structurally but amount to the same thing: the belief that everybody works harder when there's a bonus in it. It's very prevalent in – but not limited to – this government, and it certainly didn't start with either this one or the last. It's based on a 1960s idea, Victor Vroom's expectancy theory, "that individuals are motivated to engage in certain behaviours when they believe that those behaviours contribute to an organisation's goals (expectancy), when the individuals further believe the behaviours will be rewarded (instrumentality), and when the individuals value the rewards (valence)". A roundabout way of saying what economists always say – incentives work.

So, in the field of unemployment, it was actually the last government which introduced a payment-by-result system, though nobody realised then what a rip-off it was, because of the commercial confidentiality clauses that somehow let the spending of public money off the hook of public scrutiny. In the prison system, the thrilling new hope was the social impact bond, first introduced by Jack Straw, where investors could plough cash into programmes to reduce reoffending, and when they got results, the government would pay out.

Payment by results is circling addiction charities like a vulture, often cited as the top anxiety for the third sector, who point out that you might have tremendous results for one year and terrible results for the next. That's addiction for you – it doesn't track upward in a steady trajectory; it's chaotic.

And now the education committee's ninth report, published last week, suggests that teachers might achieve more if their students' grades were reflected in their pay. What we're looking at, in a variety of forms, is the marketisation of public services. And even though it's already well in progress, shall we just take a second to ask how well it works, before we carry on?

The short answer is that it doesn't. It has been noted by researchers that, when you use a quantitative indicator (like cash), corruption pressures occur. "When the Department of Labor attempted to reward local agencies for placing the unemployed in jobs, the agencies increased placement rates by getting more workers into more easily-found short-term poorly paid jobs, and fewer into harder-to-find but more skilled long-term jobs."

It is only the spelling of labour that gives this away as an American study. Meanwhile, in the UK the service company A4e stands accused of sending people on training courses that were simply them in a room with a broken computer; harrying people into working voluntarily for A4e itself, work that was often (this bit is genuinely priceless) the training of other unemployed people, in how not to be unemployed; placing long-term unemployed people with charities and co-operatives, who undertook their training while A4E walked off with the money (result!). Let's not even get started on what Emma Harrison, the head of A4e, paid herself: let it be enough to say that the kind of people who are motivated mainly by money are rarely the same people who care what happens to the unemployed.
Dashing just briefly through the prison service, I remain unable to see any real difference between a payment-by-result approach for the reduction of reoffenders, and ordinary targets for reducing the same. Payment by results is just a target with a price tag.

And that being the case, surely everything the coalition has said about the last government's targets – that they distorted the aims of public service, created perverse incentives and added layers of bureaucracy – would also be true of a payment-by-result system. But I sought clarity once from Nick Herbert, minister for policing and criminal justice, and he simply refuted any similarity by bare assertion. It isn't the same as a target, because I say it isn't. It was like trying to argue with Eminem.

Moving on to education, the most virgin terrain in this landscape, the argument for payment by results is as follows: the Sutton Trust found that good teachers are the single greatest factor in improving social mobility. Therefore if you raise teaching standards you stimulate social mobility.
The flaw here is that it doesn't follow that good teaching is engendered by specific financial rewards. It's quite possible that teachers entered the field in the first place because they weren't that interested in competing for money.

In the US, they've been experimenting with payment-by-result systems for years. And mainly the outcomes are poor; occasionally, a state might throw up a programme that works (Texas's system seems to work in a modest way). But my main reservation is that America is a stupid country to be looking to in the first place, when it has the worst results for state-educated pupils, which correlates neatly with its status as one of the most unequal countries in the OECD. It is absolutely nonsensical to be trying to pick apart the US system to find the bits that work slightly better than all the bits that don't work at all.

Why can't we take as our starting point a nation whose 15 year-olds have maths and literacy scores we'd actually want to emulate? Countries where inequality is very high tend to be the same as the ones who think that everything will get better once you put a price on it. Then when things don't improve, they think the problem is their bonuses weren't sufficiently well designed. It never seems to occur to them that there are mines deeper than silver and gold.