Finding a practical solution to the death penalty

This rather horrifying headline appeared in The Times last week:

Oklahoma plans to use gas chamber for executions

The story (£) revealed that the US was 'on course to use nitrogen gas to execute inmates by suffocation' despite its being an 'untested method of capital punishment that is set to be adopted because European countries refuse to export the drugs used in lethal injections'.

According to the Associated Press, Oklahoma City Republican Mike Christian justified such a plan by saying:

'You wouldn't need a medical doctor to do it. It's a lot more practical. It's efficient.'

Obviously, practicality and efficiency in such matters, in what is apparently a modern democracy, are the most important considerations.

Faced with such inconvenient blocking tactics by European countries, where the death penalty has been abolished completely - save for the dysfunctional dictatorships in Belarus and Kazakhstan - Oklahoma is not the only US state whose reaction is not to follow an apparently civilised course. Instead, it, and places like Utah, are choosing to follow a course more familiar to the regimes of Iran and Communist China, and inevitably infused with sickening echoes of Nazi Germany.

In Utah, its House of Representatives passed a plan to bring back the firing squad. It has yet to reach the senate. The bill's chief sponsor, Republican Paul Ray, believes such an execution method is more humane and faster than lethal injection and in the state's best financial interests. Another great bonus of the firing squad, of course, is none of those holding a rifle knows who fired the fatal shot.

There is something horrifyingly callous, mechanised and officious in the way these elected officials speak. For them, it appears, the death penalty is little more than a process, as much an arm of the state as the tax office or rubbish collection; choosing the method of execution is more finding, in a very real sense, a practical solution to a problem and less a form punishment.

In a brief moment of respite last week, I picked up The Best of Benn, a new collection of Tony Benn's writings and diary jottings from over his life and it featured a 1963 essay published in The Guardian where he had this to say on one particularly chilling practice while studying the death penalty in the US:

'In the execution shed of one American prison which I visited sixteen years ago they were proud of a little device they had invented for spreading the responsibility still further. When the murderer was standing hooded and roped on the trapdoor, a signal was given to eight warders locked alone in another room. Each then pressed a different button while a spinning roulette wheel outside made its random electric contact with one of the buttons and released the catch that dropped the convict to his fate. ERNIE, the Premium Bond machine, couldn't have done it better.'

If only such horrors were confined to historical articles.

Times tables and shaking hands

My times tables book was nothing as interesting as this....
and how many times tables books has Carol Vorderman done?

It is, one presumes, a sure sign of ageing when, after reading a headline about education, my first reaction is to bemoan ‘well it wasn’t like that in my day’.

This was certainly my instinctive response to the story about the latest policy emanating from the education secretary Nicky Morgan. In her ministerial wisdom, she has decreed that every 11-year-old in the country must be able to recite their 12-times table, write a coherent short story and be able to read a novel. Any schools which fail to do so two years running will face ‘a takeover by new leadership teams and will be forced to become academies’.

These ‘targets’ are, surely, a statement of the obvious and do not seem to me to be particularly ambitious. I can’t remember exactly at what age I was when I had to recite, by myself, the 12 times table to my headmistress, the daunting Mrs Adams, but it was certainly no more than six. It was a ritual the whole class had to go through; a trudge up several flights of stairs to her office, which in my hazy memory is dark, cushioned and smoky.

I should add that – despite the last sentence – I was not schooled at Gradgrind’s academy. We were well-taught, it was fun. We were all rewarded for being good at something and a few of the friends I made then  - more than 30 years ago – are still friends today. And, there was something very satisfying about being considered good enough to visit Mrs Adams and correctly recite the 12-times table. What’s more, this and similar experiences taught me a variety of useful skills that have helped me in daily life.

I am not sure – though I appreciate that mastering our times tables is of enormous value in life – that, as a six-year-old, making that lonely ascent to the office, I was aware that Britain’s position on the international stage was at stake. I was interested to hear, however, on Broadcasting House this morning, Dame Pauline Neville-Jones, the former head of the Joint Intelligence Committee, saying that the issue ‘goes to the heart of whether the UK is going to succeed in global competition and where we rate in 10 years’ time’. Appearing alongside her, Peter Gowers, the chief executive of Travelodge, concurred, adding, on what might seem a more mundane level, that:

‘…so many of the people we see at 16 do have these basic gaps in their literacy and accuracy. We’re not talking about sophisticated skills, we’re talking about the essentials of everyday life’.

Somewhat startlingly, Mr Gowers also said that he had recently put 7,000 people through training, ‘learning about eye contact and shaking hands’ as, in the hospitality industry, such skills were essential.

‘We are growing up with a generation of teenagers many of whom can’t do these basic things….. it’s not a life skill they bring to work’.

Even if we accept that there might be a smidgen of exaggeration in this, it would seem that there is widespread concern that children are simply not grasping some basic and essential skills needed for life in the workplace and at least the government is trying to do something about it.

Learning times tables and how to greet someone properly are very useful, vital, tools indeed. We should certainly be ambitious enough to hope that a majority of children will be able to master these before they leave primary school.

Having said all of the above, it must be remembered that, for whatever reason, some children will simply be unable to achieve some, or all, of these targets. Bringing in new headteachers – even if they do not live in smoky dens at the top of the stairs – and converting the schools into academies, inevitably adding to bureaucracy and long periods of instability, will not change this or do much to help pupils. Indeed, those failing are quite likely to be the worst affected.  

The government likes academies as it breaks the strangle-hold of the local education authorities; so while the government might well wish to its academy-programme expand with even greater rapidity in the future – using a child’s education as the means to push its political agenda – politicians will find that just issuing diktats from Whitehall won’t just make it happen.

Crystal Palace; nothing happening very slowly

By the time something is done with the north terrace of Crystal Palace Park - the site of Joseph Paxton's masterpiece and now little more than waste ground - I would not at all be surprised if the construction of HS2 to Manchester had long been completed and we were all used to travelling on Crossrail 2. Such is the complexity of the site, coupled with the various interested parties, it is very tricky to make any progress. And so it comes as no great surprise to learn that the exclusivity deal signed between Bromley Council and the Chinese ZhongRong group - who want to spend £500million rebuilding a version of the palace - has come to an end with little evidence of progress being made.

A quick recap of the original timetable:

Early 2014 - Shortlist of architects selected. This was achieved and the six firms - the usual suspects for such a high profile project - can be found here

Autumn 2014 - Architect selected and a planning application submitted

Winter 2015 - Building work begins

The last two have got utterly nowhere. The hoped-for schedule was always wildly optimistic and so it has proved. The notion that a planning application of such magnitude would be passed so swiftly, especially considering widespread opposition from local groups, was absurd. I should add that the scheme does, or perhaps did, have support from some residents and local businesses, impressed by the scale and potential of the project. They have, however, become increasingly hard to track down.

The main sticking point seems to be that the Chinese firm want to take over large swathes of the public park and Bromley Council have not received sufficient assurances over access to the land or, indeed, what on earth they would put in a new palace once it was built.

Bromley Council are very keen to stress that just because the exclusivity deal is over, does not mean talks with ZhongRong have ended. They continue. In a statement, dated Monday February 2, council leader Stephen Carr says the following:

'These have been and remain complex proposals. The potential to completely restore and improve the park as well as regeneration for the surrounding area is something we cannot ignore. Equally, the Council is not going to agree to something without being confident about the proposals as we are custodians of this fantastic park.'

He adds:

'Whilst we are no longer bound by an exclusivity agreement, the confidential discussions have not concluded and these continue with ZhongRong. Local people and other interested parties should know that when there is something to say, we will keep them informed as we have sought to do all the way along this process and I thank them for their continued patience.'

From Bromley's perspective, it is easy to see their point. Someone is offering a huge amount of money to regenerate a pitifully neglected spot and while it is a huge pity Heritage Lottery Fund money has been lost, AGAIN, it is a pittance in comparison to the quantity being talked about by this Chinese firm. But one must question whether a project on this scale was ever vaguely realistic.

The Greens were first out of the traps this morning (Friday January 30) calling for the scheme to be scrapped. Tom Chance, the party's candidate for Lewisham West and Penge, said:

'The idea of building a huge hotel and conference centre on our park was wrong, the consultation process was hopeless, and the consequences have included community groups blocked from improving our park, the loss of millions of pounds of lottery funding, and a huge amount of anger and resentment among local people.

'Bromley and the GLA need to stop messing around with fantasy projects and send the ZhongRong group packing.'

And he has his own ideas as to what should happen now:

'If they set-up a Community Land Trust to govern the park's future this could find viable ways to implement the adopted masterplan incrementally without losing large areas of the park to private ownership and commercial buildings. 

'The council could also work with local environmental groups to turn the scrub and woodland on the hill top into a popular local nature reserve within the next six months, instead of denigrating it as a waste of space and trying to concrete it over.'

Personally, I'm sure Bromley will persist for a while longer but I expect ZhongRong to eventually slink away and the council will be forced to return to the masterplan. The gleaming building, below, which dazzled the easily-bedazzled Boris Johnson so looks increasingly unlikely ever to emerge. I doubt even Joanna Lumley's smile would be enough to rescue this.

A story that Beggar's Belief!

Above is the front page of the latest Ayrshire Post (January 9). It claims to be an 'expose' of the beggars in Ayr but the language is so extraordinarily inflammatory and unpleasant the editor, and the writer, should feel thoroughly ashamed.

It reads:

Brazen beggars are coining in up to £200 a day on the streets of Ayr.
Roving East European gangs and lone-wolf Scottish scroungers are plaguing Ayr for rich pickings.
Now we can reveal new get-tough moves aimed at unsettling them are to sweep into action.
And there is vast backing to BANISH them from the town centre for good.
Our expose this week captures the panhandling pests on camera as they beg for cash help, typically waving worn polystyrene coffee cups.
Tourists and residents loathe them sitting on the public pavements.
But in recent weeks dozens of shameless beggars have preyed on people's consciences and targeted the High Street area during the Christmas spree.
It is thought that ALL the Eastern Europeans involved are transported from immigrant enclaves in the central belt.
And one woman beggar has a warm and cosy council tenancy ..... [bile turns to page 5.]

And this was just on the front page.

Looking at the use of language more closely, let's pursue it a little more:

Brazen beggars - these people have the temerity to be outside;

Roving East European gangs - run for your lives, there are hordes of foreigners on the lose;

new get-tough moves aimed at unsettling them are to sweep into action... to BANISH them...for good - these people will be swept away like litter from the gutter. Or Jews from Poland.

Tourists and residents loathe them sitting on the public pavements - because they're litter and shouldn't be on public benches. Only the gutter for them;

dozens of shameless beggars have preyed on people's consciences... during the Christmas spree - not only do these guttersnipes have the temerity to be outside, they also open their mouths and hunt down innocent Christmas shoppers in packs. And why, of all times, do they do this at Christmas? Christmas is a time for giving presents, not giving to scroungers (check Bible to be sure this is right Ed.)

one woman beggar has a warm and cosy council tenancy - look, she's not even bloody homeless. She's conning you.

Now, begging of any sort is not pleasant for either the beggar or the, erm, beggee. For those who are asked for money it can be embarrassing, uncomfortable and genuinely intimidating.

And people who find themselves on the streets, begging, frequently include the most vulnerable in society; those with mental health problems, the unemployed, the lonely, the abandoned, people who simply find the process of coping day by day impossibly difficult. And people begging on the streets does also include organised criminal gangs, sometimes forcing trafficked people into prostitution and to ask for money on the streets.

But, for the Ayrshire Post, there seems to be only two sorts of 'beggars': 'roving East European gangs' and 'lone-wolf Scottish scroungers' and no one else.

The Ayrshire Post's report comes just two days after Shelter Scotland - who have declined to comment on the Ayrshire Post's story - published a report that, on the one hand, finds that homeless applications in Scotland have thankfully decreased by 34 per cent in the last five years; but also identifies an 38% rise in applications from the private rented sector. The report can be found here.

Part of me wonders if there has been a dreadful editorial mistake. Surely no sane reporter, sub-editor or editor could have allowed such copy to be published. Perhaps there was a system error and a 'jokey' draft 'story' was accidentally sent to the printers, Maybe we will hear a heartfelt apology before too long. I genuinely hope that will prove to be the case, otherwise what has been published is simply vile.

But, for now, people seem to be getting pretty outraged by the paper's stance offering plenty of comments like these:

@ayrshirepost this is a disgraceful headline story pic.twitter.com/5JFkDQfOPu
— Ayrshire Greens (@AyrshireGreens) January 8, 2015

As someone who is proud to be born & raised in Ayrshire, this headline from @ayrshirepost is embarrassing. pic.twitter.com/dJCIJEf3iU
— Gavin Corbett (@gavincorbett) January 8, 2015

(thanks/apologies to contributing tweets & pics from @Ayrshire Greens, @gavincorbett and @MartynMcL)

Nous Sommes Charlie

PARIS

LONDON

MARSEILLE

BERLIN (via @tquitoioBismuth)

MADRID (via @LPJ_Espagne)

ET MOI

90 Syrian refugees from 3.2million; are we doing enough?

Listening to the reasonable-sounding James Brokenshire, it is clear the government is very keen we should all be immensely proud of our contribution towards alleviating the plight of the millions of Syrian refugees, forced to flee their homes by the wretched, increasingly fractured conflict in the country.

And we must not for a second think its problems over net migration have in any way impacted upon the United Kingdom only accepting 90 refugees in the last year.

The immigration minister was speaking as an Urgent Question had been asked in the House of Commons about the government’s failure to accept appeals from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to increase the numbers of refugees allowed into the country.

Overall, Western countries have agreed they will resettle up to 100,000 Syrian refugees over the next few months. This is not a tiny number but only a dent in the 3.2million people who have fled the country and meagre in comparison to the almost 1.2million in Lebanon, 1.1million in Turkey and 630,000 in Jordan. And the UK and the United States have refused to commit to any increase whatsoever. Nevertheless, the country should be very proud of our efforts, as James Brokenshire said on ten separate occasions, variations along the lines of this:

‘This government and this country can be proud of what we are doing through this assistance and our political focus – and, yes, through the vulnerable persons relocation scheme in providing asylum.’

It is certainly true that the UK is donating more aid to the Syrian crisis than all other countries bar the US. This is the biggest refugee crisis of our generation by a considerable margin. As well as the 3.2m who have escaped the violence by leaving the country, 6.5million Syrians are displaced within the country. The United Kingdom has committed £700million towards humanitarian relief. The focus of this money is to alleviate the suffering of refugees being hosted in neighbouring countries, providing water for up to 11.5million people, supporting 600,000 medical consultations and funding 5.2million monthly food rations. This is all hugely valuable work for which the government should rightly be applauded.

But to continually claim a decent number of refugees are being offered asylum here stretches credulity. Moreover, it bears no historical comparison either with previous crises of a similar scale. For example, Britain accepted 25,000 Ugandan Asians after Idi Amin expelled them in 1972; 4,455 Kosovan refugees were airlifted here between April 25 and June 25, 1999 and by the end of 2002, there were 1,575 Rwandan refugees still in the UK.

Time after time, Brokenshire repeated the line that the vulnerable persons relocation scheme was working effectively, liasing ‘closely with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to identify the most vulnerable cases displaced by the conflict in Syria and to relocate them to the UK’. The criteria of this scheme must awfully strict for only 90 possible cases to have so far been identified. Either that, or those carrying out the work are being staggeringly inefficient.

After Yvette Cooper suggested the government’s reluctance to take in more refugees might ‘cloud their conscience over helping refugees’. Brokenshire rather got on his high horse, saying such a claim ‘was not worthy of our proceedings’. But it’s hard not to come to that conclusion.

James Brokenshire

Yesterday, Radio Five Live hosted an emotive call-in show on the issue, with a succession of callers shouting down the phone offering comments such as ‘we should be looking after our own first’, ‘we should be rebuilding towns for them’ so ‘these people’ don’t have to come to this country. Another lady said that ‘if we hadn’t opened our borders to 560million in the EU, we would be in a better place to take these refugees’. Britain was a ‘small island totally at breaking point’ before adding that, if Germany took 30,000 refugees, one day in the future they might get EU citizenship and ‘eventually become our problem’. A lovely sentiment, of which the lady speaking felt immediately ashamed.

The government’s net migration target lies in tatters, and it is attitudes like those above, fostered by Nigel Farage and UKIP, which are currently driving the government’s spluttering policy.

Nigel Farage, it should be noted, has backed Syrian refugees coming to the UK, though he has shied away from providing a specific number. In December last year, the UKIP leader said:

‘I think refugees are a very different thing to economic migration and I think this country should honour the 1951 declaration on refugee status that was agreed…. the original ideas of defining what a refugee is were good ones and I think, actually, there is a responsibility on all of us in the free West to try and help some of those people fleeing Syria, literally in fear of their lives’.

Neither Brokenshire nor the Home Secretary has met with the Refugee Council to discuss the current crisis; as experts in their field they could at least offer sage advice. And they have, with other leading aid charities such as Oxfam, Save the Children and Amnesty International, called for the government to offer up to 10,000 resettlement places to Syrian refugees.

Refugee Council Advocacy Manager Anna Musgrave, said:

‘Britain should be offering safety to thousands, not hundreds of refugees from Syria, in this case, numbers speak louder than words. Failure to act swiftly will leave more refugees struggling to survive in the region and a permanent stain on Britain’s reputation for offering safety to people in their hour of greatest need.’

James Brokenshire and the government can be as proud as they like of their resettlement programme. But, as with their repeated failureto stand-by the Afghan translators who served alongside our soldiers so bravely, to continue to ignore the pleas of the international community, the United Nations, the Church of England, charities and a loud public voice, will do lasting damage to Britain’s long-standing reputation as a country which offers refuge to the desperate.

The day after the night before

I expect there have been a lot of sore heads in the pub industry today. Campaigners, who have spent years trying to challenge the power of the major pub companies (pubcos), might have woken with headaches after celebrating defeating the government over pub rents and the beer tie; pints were eagerly consumed first in Whitehall before the party continued at a south London pub.

Meanwhile, in the board rooms of pubcos, executives are likely to have been rubbing their foreheads in anguish, watching as their share prices plummeted; at one point Enterprise Inns' shares dropped 17 per cent and Punch Tavern's slumped 11 per cent. It must be worrying times for both companies, especially as each is laden with more than £2billion of debt.

The reaction to the vote, which will mean pub tenants tied to pubcos will be able to demand a market rent option (MRO) and buy alcohol from providers other than their pubcos, who often charge a far higher rate (up to 70%) than the open market, has been predictably split.

The campaigners are joyous; the pubcos and their supporters, on the other hand, are despairing. They have spent much of the day predicting apocalyptic levels of pub closures and a vast numbers of redundancies. It is certainly true to say that these are uncertain times and it is hard to be sure of what will ultimately happen.

For the campaigners, yesterday’s vote is an enormous success. These are not professional political lobbyists or campaigners but publicans, or former publicans, trying to challenge a system they see as grossly unfair. Along the way they have been supported by organisations such as Camra, who believe the vote ‘will help keep pubs open and ensure the cost of a pint to consumers remains affordable’ and the Federation of Small Businesses who claimed today the result would be a ‘boost to local economies while giving consumers greater choice’. Greg Mulholland MP, who has spearheaded the campaign in parliament, was understandably in an effervescent mood after the vote and received plaudits from his colleagues – such as Tim Farron – for his not insignificant efforts.

The British Beer and Pub Association, on the other hand, has been predicting doom in the industry as a consequence of the vote. There is barely a news programme on which its chief executive, Brigid Simmonds, hasn’t appeared today. In each appearance she has repeated the claim that the government’s own research shows ‘1,400 more pubs closing, with 7,000 job losses’. The piece of research she is referring to is this by London Economics, commissioned by the Department of Business, and she is certainly quoting it selectively. It actually predicts the closure of between 700 and 1,400 pubs, with the consequent jobs losses of between 3,700 and 7,000. Ms Simmonds has only referred to the top figure.

The London Economics study only consulted pubcos to make its predictions, each providing a sample of between '300-400 anonymised pubs'. It is fair to say that pubcos have a vested interest in this debate and there appears to have been little effort to gauge the opinion from any other side in the exchange.

The report also finds one more reason why pubs might close that hasn't been much mentioned by the BBPA; that several of the stakeholders it interviewed believe the UK is 'still operating excess pub supply of approximately 6,000 pubs'. Definitely a gloomy prospect, but not one that can pinned on Tuesday's vote.

And finally, Ms Simmonds fails to take into account that pubcos have already declared their intentions to dispose of huge numbers of pubs. For example, in their 2013 annual report, Punch Taverns, owners of more than 4,000 pubs, say they want to focus on their core business of 2,990 pubs. Their plans for the non-core division - compromising of 1,106 pubs - is to dispose of them 'over the next four years'.

Enterprise Inns, meanwhile, wanted to dispose of £70million worth of pubs by the end of September this year. It may well turn out that both firms use yesterday's vote as cover for their already declared intentions. Of course, 'disposing' of pubs doesn't necessarily mean they are going to close; but supermarket chains must be rubbing their hands with glee at the prospect.

Contrastingly, according to a survey published in 2013 by the Federation of Small Businesses, 88 per cent of tied pubs said they would be better off if they operated under a ‘fair rent’; 74 per cent said they would spend more promoting their business; 74 per cent said they would hire more staff and 65 per cent said they would cut the price of beer.

Another frequently repeated claim from Ms Simmonds is that the beer tie has been a success in this country for almost 400 years. This doesn't stand up to much scrutiny. Fifty-seven per cent of tied publicans struggle on less than £10,000 a year. Of Enterprise Inns pubs - they have more than 5,000 - they had 579 'business failures' in one year according to their 2013 Annual Report; down on previous years but nothing to boast about. These are not symptoms of a system working well.

And I have lost count of the numbers of tenant publicans who have contacted me personally to tell me about their suffering; struggling under unimaginable amounts of debt caused, seemingly, by the unreasonable demands of pubcos, themselves trying to shift their own debt mountain. Many of these tenants - all, without exception, hugely hard-working people desperate to run good pubs - have now lost their pubs, their homes, their livelihoods, their health. Pubcos have consistently failed to respond adequately to their concerns; it is their lack of action that has led to this turn of events. 

They won't give up of course. The lobbying campaign by the pubcos and the BBPA against these changes has been huge and they have well placed - and immensely senior - allies to almost the top of the Conservative Party. They will hope the government finds a way to drop this amendment. But,  if these changes lead to the demise of the pubco, they need only look in the mirror to find the founders of their own downfall.