The Fisk

Phil Hendren: A light morning fisk of Steve Richards

Every now and again I read a column that just enrages me so much I have to do a long post on it because it is so littered with annoyances. This happened when I read this morning's Independent, where Steve Richards has decided to argue about the issue of road pricing now that even more people (well over a million) have now signed the Downing Street petititon. His argument starts off by simply dismissing all those that signed the petition as "short-sighted" and intellectually "lazy" and then, amusingly, proceeds to opine utter rubbish henceforth. He says:

"There is nothing new in this. Progressive government requires strong leadership because quite often it involves taking measures that are unpopular in the short term. The upside is that genuinely progressive policies acquire popularity once they are in place. The congestion charge in London is an obvious example. Ken Livingstone took the risk against the weak populist opposition of the Tories and the silent caution of the Government. He has been vindicated subsequently, including being re-elected against a Conservative candidate who pledged to abolish the charge. Sometimes boldness is necessary even if the voters are grateful only retrospectively."

This is of course absolute and total nonsense. Londoners did not vote for Ken over Norris on the basis that one wanted to scrap the Congestion Charge and the other one didn't. It is quaintly amusing though that Richards would accuse the petitioners of being "short-sighted" and holding "lazy views" and then put forward such a reductionist argument about the outcome of an election. What actually happened is that Londoners were fooled into voting for Livingstone's manifesto on the belief that he was telling the truth when he said bus fares wouldn't go up, and that the congestion charge would remain the same. In the words of The Who, they won't get fooled again. Richards goes on:

"When the Government has dared to take risks it has also been vindicated. Indeed the level of vindication can be measured by the Conservatives' U-turns. The Tories now support policies such as the minimum wage, a London-wide elected body and the higher investment in schools and hospitals, all of which they meekly opposed. Where the Government was weak and cowardly, such as adopting a conservative foreign policy position over supporting the US in the war against Iraq, it is condemned subsequently. It is much better, surely, to be praised retrospectively for courage."

He seems to be a little confused about the nature of conservatism I think. After all, conservatism is about gradualism from the status quo based upon an instinctively averse attitude to making changes without quantifable known outcomes. Thus Conservative "U-turns" on those policies doesn't actually vindicate them at all. It simply states that they are now embedded and therefore part of the status quo, thus should be approached with a traditionally conservative attitude to change. It's a bit like all that privatisation and trade union legislation that Labour didn't reverse. They're not vindicating Tory policies by failing to roll it back, they're just acknowledging it would produce unquantifiable results to do so. Amusingly he then says:

"Transport is a crisis issue. To their credit ministers have done more than the previous Conservative administration, increasing budgets and halting the decline of the railways into what had become a decrepit Third World service. But that has been nowhere near enough. Roads are congested. Trains are over-priced and unreliable. Parts of the London Underground are a disaster area and at weekends do not appear to function at all. In some areas of the country the privatised buses are nowhere to be seen."

So lets get this straight. The transport system was crap. After ten years of Labour the transport system is still crap. The only difference is that Labour have just done more less crap less. Sorry Steve, I think that argument is crap. The fallacies really start coming out now though:

"[Road pricing] recognises that road space must be rationed. Some on the left argue that road pricing would penalise the poorest, but then offer no alternative solution. There are too many cars on a small and congested island. Road pricing would free up some space."

Just because they offer you no alternative it does not make them wrong. Let's see, couple road pricing with the inherent dependency culture fostered by tax credits amongst the poor and you instantly remove another means for social mobility. It is not for critics to offer an alternative, it for policy wonks to solve the much greater issue of restricting the free movement of the already Government-nurtured underclass. There was me naively thinking that the Left cared about the many, not just the few at the top. Richards has kindly helped me out with that perception though:

"The policy should not be seen as a sacrifice, a mistake made too often when new charges are introduced. On the contrary, for selfish reasons I want fewer cars on the roads so I can get to places more quickly."

To quote the ever wise Edmund Blackadder, "Toffs at the top, plebs at the bottom, and me in the middle making a fat pile of cash out of both of them." OK, maybe he won't be making cash, but the inherent point remains, don't bother with aspiration if you're poor, just accept your tax credits, stay in your sink estate, and let us more important elite snobs have our roads back because we can afford them. Pull the ladder up Jack! Richards then starts using London as an example again (I wonder if he actually lives there?),

"Secondly, the revenues from road pricing should be earmarked exclusively for improvements to public transport and cycle lanes. The cash should not disappear in a vacuum. Again, Livingstone points the way by spending cash from the congestion charge on buses in London. The capital is the only part of the country where bus usage is up."

Why do you think buses are so popular in London right now though? Is it because of all the lovely "investment"? No, it's up because all the cars have moved to the outskirts of the congestion zone blocking them up. We don't take the bus out of choice. We do it because we have no choice at all. This said, Richards then proceeds on to his "critique" (and I use the term loosely) of the philosophical argument against road pricing, he states that:

"The civil liberty arguments are a red herring. Some worry that the Government will know where everyone is driving. So what? Unless we are driving to rob a bank I doubt if some imaginary secret police force will be very interested. The Government is having problems sorting out tax credits and tracing foreign prisoners. Everyone is far too busy to make use of film footage of motorists heading for Waitrose or a dodgy motel to conduct some sordid affair. Presumably, there will be no road pricing cameras in the motel to check up on any further mileage."

Oh dear oh dear.... firstly, just because the current administration is utterly incompetent it does not mean that we should build the technological infrastructure to allow a future non-incompetent Government to control and monitor our every move. It would be false to assume that incompetence today will exist in perpetuity. Ask yourself this, would someone like Stalin have found a system that could monitor everyone in their cars useful?

Now, as for this supposed "red herring", using humour to essentially put forward the age old "if you've got nothing to hide, you've nothing to fear" argument, he's actually completely missing the point. Information about ourselves, where we are, and what we are doing is ours, it is not the states'.

We have autonomy over that information and we make the choice when we disclose it. For example, we choose to let supermarket marketing people know what we buy by accepting the loyalty card. We will have no choice over any tracking ability. It matters not whether someone is looking at it or not. It is about the relationship between the state and the individual.

We, as individuals, are the ultimate creators of the state; and we, as individuals are the ultimate arbiters of our information, not the state. It is not about how the information may or may not be used, it is about the assumption of who owns that information in the first place. Richards finally closes his article at this point by saying,

"The petition against road pricing will be scaring everyone from Blair downwards. Yet this Government prevails when it is genuinely bold and stumbles when it pretends to be courageous. It deserves credit for contemplating radical measures. Now it must implement them."

Well excuse me, but I fail to see what is radical about a Labour government introducing another tax for the purposes of spending. Surely that is simply acting to type?

Alex Deane: The bonkers Indy

This morning’s big story was the series of raids in Birmingham on homes of those suspected of plotting to kidnap, torture and murder a British Muslim serving in our armed forces.  Every paper led with it.  Except The Independent.  That august publication chose instead to run with this (left).

It is, a story about poor treatment that a family of Muslims has apparently received from various government bodies, culminating in their deportation.  Its appearance today, one would guess, is motivated by a misplaced desire to show "the other side" of the story.

I freely admit that this is nothing new – The Indy has been doing bonkers things with its front page for years.  But the "other side of the story" exists within the kidnap story.  As (for example) The Telegraph reports:

"Shabir Hussain, who preaches at the Ludlow Road mosque near to Jackson Road, said… "We came here to work hard and bring our children up as good British citizens. What has gone wrong?"

The kidnap plot is apparently one of thirty major plots being monitored or investigated by MI5.  The issue at the core of all of them, and the plot to kidnap a Muslim soldier in particular, is the battle within the Muslim community between those who wish to keep the law, and those who don’t – those who wish to be British, and those who subscribe first and foremost to a doctrine of fundamentalist hatred. 

Certainly, Austin Mitchell might write a story for you about a more photogenic story about an example of the former.  There is probably merit in the story, I don’t know.  But to run with it at the expense of the biggest story of the day because, on the face of it, it doesn’t fit with your political agenda… well, you might as well do what The Times used to do, and use your front page to display adverts.

Shane Greer: An appeal for everyone to hate Israel

It doesn’t take much effort for one to see the hidden message behind the Independent’s Christmas appeal: Israel is evil. But let’s pause for a moment and, in a departure from the prevailing wisdom amongst the Independent’s hacks, look at the big picture.

Israel a liberal democracy – a novelty in the region – and friend of the West exists in a state of constant uncertainty; the kind of uncertainty that results from not knowing whether if when one boards a bus it will ever reach its destination. The threat of foreign terrorism is all too real in a state that wishes only to reside in peace. In focussing on apparently dispossessed Palestinian citizens the Independent all too readily ignores the Israeli citizens who live in the northern border regions and face the daily terror of Hezbollah rockets coming from southern Lebanon, and even more readily ignores the enormous fear felt by parents throughout Israel who wonder whether their children will return from a meeting with friends at the local pizza restaurant.

The suffering of innocent Palestinians is of course deeply concerning, but to focus on their plight in-and-of itself to the exclusion of all other considerations ironically results in the cause of that suffering being lost. Any Israeli action that may, accurately or not, be attributed to Palestinian suffering is not itself the cause of that suffering, it is rather a symptom of the real cause; the unwillingness of Palestinian terrorists to lay down their arms and come to the negotiating table with a country that has, time and time again, shown its willingness to work hard for long-lasting peace.

Phil Hendren: Independent, yet biased

Where would we be without a newspaper like the Independent? The paper that is the official home to Robert Fisk, the man who became a verb? This morning they have outdone even themselves with what must surely be a candidate for "Deliberately misleading headline of the Month". On page 20, blazoned across the top of the page readers are presented with the following: "US troops surge into Iraq as death tool mounts".

It's an interesting juxtaposition to be sure, accompanied by a photo of a burning bus. What inference is the reader to make from such a headline? Well, burning bus, deaths increasing, US troops "surge" in. It doesn't take a genius to work out what is being implied by the headline. The casual reader is left under no illusion.

And yet, a quick look at the article itself and you discover that the "death toll" being referred to is in fact that of US soldiers, and the "surge" refers merely to increasing numbers, rather than sudden violent action of movement.

Shane Greer: Tally-hopeless attempt to exploit an apparent class divide

One would think on the face of it that the Independent simply wanted to highlight an apparent breach of the law (forgetting for a moment the debate over whether foxhunting should be illegal).

As usual though the real message lies beneath an apparently innocuous façade. Let’s take a moment to dissect that façade; a man dressed in countryside attire, shotgun cocked over arm, with a dead fox hanging from his left hand… the essence of privilege. With this image juxtaposed against the all too transparent ‘Tally-ho!’ it is a front page designed to evoke the ‘them against us’ attitude which characterised the foxhunting debate.

When translated the front page essentially reads: landed gentry (the enemy of the poor) flout the law in the pursuit of cruelty and self-indulgence.

However, regardless of whether one supports or opposes the ban it is fundamentally unsound to frame the debate in terms which bear no relation to the underlying reasons for one’s support or opposition. To do anything else is to engage in propaganda in an effort to win an argument one implicitly acknowledge does not stand on its own merits.  

For the record the reality of foxhunting is altogether different from the image painted by The Independent. It is a sport which attracts a wide range of enthusiasts (from all walks of life), a sport which supports an entire army of working men and women. Fundamentally it is a sport that is anything but the private preserve of the rich and over-privileged. Of course none of this is relevant to the debate over whether fox hunting should be banned; but acknowledging that fact is the first step toward rational argument.

Shane Greer: It's the Americans (that are) stupid

This is the first of a series of five fisks I'm doing of recent frontpages of The Independent newspaper.

At first it might appear that the Independent is simply making another tiresome attack against one of its favourite targets, President Bush. But if one lifts the veil of characteristic simplicity of the front page, an altogether more worrisome message is revealed. That message is one of rampant anti-Americanism, along with a more subtle – but no less important – air of anti-western sentiment.

However at a time when our very existence, our freedom, liberty, and democracy – the values we originally fought for and rescued from potential fascist domination – are under attack from Islamofascists, it is humbly submitted that we should rejoice in the similarities we share with our American cousins, rather than hammer wedges between our subtle differences.

The Iraq war may not be popular, but it started with the best of intentions; a perceived threat (valid or not) which had to be dealt with. The time for questioning the validity of the war has long since passed; instead our efforts should be expended on determining the best way to bring the war to its conclusion. We need to define the parameters of victory, and establish the most efficacious way of delivering that victory.