Virtually all British are not racist and welcome foreigners into their communities

Why, when the vast majority of white British people are not only NOT racist, they rejoice in the company of people of all colors from at home and overseas, did the UK vote out?


This post has been UPDATED 27 June - please see closing paragraph.


There are probably over 17 million reasons, each a mish-mashed summation of countless perceived pros and cons, and unique to every Leave voter. There were likely to have been very few racist driven, knee-jerk Leave votes, but much mulling was likely to have been based upon misinformation.

There follows one of probably thousands of attempts to make sense of what happened. Importantly however, people from overseas and home grown minority communities should not be concerned. We still love you. You remain welcome. We still love Europe. Please do not consider us bigots or racists. Our peaceful coexistence and mutual appreciation of each other underpins our security and safety.

To the shock and dismay of many, by a very narrow margin, Britain has voted to leave the European Union. Whilst this author respects people that voted Leave, he and his wife voted to Remain. Although we share many well founded reservations about the EU with tens of millions of others across the continent, we felt the best way to resolve such problems was from the inside.

Given the magnitude of the impact of the referendum, that many only voted Leave as a protest vote against the establishment, thinking, based upon the polls that Remain would win anyway, and that the young, most of whom do not even have a vote, seem vastly in favor of staying in, we therefore seized the opportunity to sign the following petition:

We the undersigned call upon HM Government to implement a rule that if the remain or leave vote is less than 60% based a turnout less than 75% there should be another referendum.

At the time of writing this piece, the above petition already had over 1,500,000 signatories. Located on Parliament's petition page, it is stated that any petition attracting over 100,000 signatures is automatically considered for a debate by Parliament. Given that this petition is already over 15 times this amount, barely a day into a potential three month run, the hope is that this will receive serious debate. Furthermore, IF Parliament truly wishes to reflect the will of the people, it will bring about a second referendum, EVEN THOUGH this could deal a mortal blow to the government that brings this in. Why? Because, empowered with the knowledge of how people actually voted, rather than a rough appraisal from the polls which suggested Remain would just clinch it, 'Referendum 2' will likely deliver a far more solid-majority for staying within the EU.

We feel many people were hoping for a close outcome the other way, because they wanted to send a message of disgust at the profligacy and aloofness of the Brussels eurocrats, that share the blame for this present disaster alongside a couple of Old Etonians, who cared more about their relative standing than the nation. Many people also wanted to do likewise because they wanted to stick two fingers up to a distant Oxbridge elite that volubly, not just ignored, but sneered at their concerns - often by labelling them as feckless, racist, bigoted and uneducated.

Had this referendum been accessible to 16 year olds, who will be far more impacted by the outcome than older folk, regardless of all the other failings in Referendum 1, it would likely have returned a solid majority for Remain anyway.  Not only are the the young far more international and socially minded, but through having to address their interests, the Leave and Remain lobbies would have had to spend less time running fear uncertainty and doubt campaigns about immigration and the economy, and more on European values.

Clearly there were among the Leave voters, those that had genuinely considered the options, and based upon the information available at that time, still wanted out.  (Mis)information of material influence included a claim that the EU membership cost of £350M each week would then be available to plough back into the NHS. There was also a fear raised that remaining in would facilitate yet more waves of immigrants from new accession countries and ultimately Turkey, soon, and that this would push the nation's social infrastructure beyond breaking point. These were particularly resonant concerns for old AND young, struggling to find a job, a roof over their head or access to an NHS dentist in many of the peak vote leave regions. It was not dislike of people from outside, simply fear for their future, following years of austerity-UK already, that forced these people to vote Leave.

Beyond the protest and the fear of more immigration votes, probably the biggest driver for a leave vote from older folk, who seem to have, as a majority, voted Leave, was likely to have had nothing to do with the EU or politics at all. Dangerously overlooked is the likelihood that many voted Leave as it resonated with their recollections of Britain's Commonwealth past and, frankly, simpler times. Many older folk, particularly those with poor access to relevant support from family or community and especially those in rural areas with little broadband, find the Internet and often even basic texting on a mobile phone, bewildering at best. Many cannot even see a screen or the keys on their phone, yet more and more of their daily dealings,  particularly in this austerity-efficiency driven age require this, if they are not to be effectively cut off from state and business support services. And worst of all, they are preyed upon - especially when they want to end subscriptions to X, Y or Z and are met with intransigent overseas call center operators deploying Catch-22 scripts - by some of the UK's biggest companies. For these poor, neglected people, the Leave vote was not a protest but a cry for help.

Sadly the elite championing the 'Remainers' distanced themselves by yet more talking down to likely leavers. The heavy handed FUD (fear, uncertainty & doubt) proclamations and aloof dismissal of leaver concerns from across the board, including Juncker, Cameron, Corbyn, Carney and FTSE 100 bosses (each and every one likely a multi-millionaire) completely backfired. Instead, these belittling approaches kindled recollections of childhood and grandparent tales of the British Spirit, when the nation stood alone during the first half of WW2. Here, the recent Union-Jack festooned streets to commemorate the Queen's 90th birthday and now, the European Cup, also likely had an influence. Little by little, dozens, hundreds of both considerations and emotional knee-jerks, based on sound information and misinformation and channeled through the dozens of cognitive biases each of us deploy, somehow generated a 51.9 percent voter majority for Leave.

This was not democracy in action though, not true democracy, not a fair expression of the will of the people, but the product of ill conception, a cock-up of biblical proportions brought on by the failings of our UK and European leaders. Three Mile Island's partial meltdown, the worst nuclear accident to date in US history produced negative outcomes that were tiny in comparison to what many feel about 'Referendum 1'. Both 'disasters' (As Referendum 1 is likely a disastrous misrepresentation of the true will of the UK people) share similar root causes: 'human factors', 'mistaken beliefs' and poor management.

Regardless, whatever the outcome, we have to make the best of what lies ahead. Please know that most of us wish to be part of Europe and our young see themselves first and foremost as Europeans. There are only a few immigrants we want to make unwelcome. These, like our home grown criminals, aim to profit from abusing our trust. Therefore, to the vast majority of you, please know, that the majority of us Brits, of whatever color or region, welcome you with love and respect into our community. At the very least you are our extended family, so please feel loved.

Update - 27 June 2016

Following news of a spike in racist abuse incidents, sincere, heartfelt apologies to anyone who either has or now fears being on the receiving end of this. Among our people are a tiny minority - the exception to the rule - that deliver misery to the rest of us. It is impossible for an outsider to get into their heads to understand WHY, because they think differently. It is probably something connected with seeing the Brexit majority vote as an endorsement of their long-held, largely bottled-up views. Similar deranged mental processes probably also trigger wannabe rioters, thugs, thieves, 'extremists' of any kind and even pedophiles. Please just know that their behavior is not condoned by the masses, that probably many people may be looking on silently in disgust but wary about intervening, as it might escalate things. Please appreciate that every society regrettably harbors similar bad people. Please also appreciate that the vast majority of us do care and that, were any such situation to start threatening to escalate into a physical confrontation, we would attempt to defend you. Do not be afraid to ask for help as most of us care much more for your wellbeing than these racists.

FBI Vs Apple: Relevant to the UK? Hell yes!

The broad pro-Apple, anti FBI argument is that by helping them to hack a terrorist's phone, a dangerous precedent will have been set, significantly diminishing the privacy of everyone else. Is this really the case, or has the 'crowd' got it wrong?

Is the UK’s Police culture healthy?

This post, though still relevant, was written in 2014.

Three separate pieces of relatively new news over the past week suggest there may be serious cultural problems within the UK's policing, intelligence and justice systems. There was to have been a pause in new posts as efforts to develop this site focused on presentation, but this demands attention. The biggest story related to how police gathered intelligence on grieving families who were seeking justice in relation to their loved ones.  An internal report into the Metropolitan Police’s now disbanded, undercover Special Demonstration Squad said it gathered and ‘wrongly retained’ information on targeted families. It also states that the information gathered 'served no purpose in preventing crime or disorder'. 

Mick Creedon, the Derbyshire chief constable who is running the internal investigation into the undercover unit that operated between 1968 and 2008, will criticise Scotland Yard for disregarding "rules and legislation that clearly set out what they should, and should not have, collected and retained". The Guardian

Another story was headlined in the Daily Mirror: 

Police 'refuse to deny' mystery aircraft flying over London was top secret Met spy plane

According to this piece, the plane apparently has the ability to intercept telephone calls. Adding to the sense of mystery it stated the plane was registered to a firm with no other official records. ITV.com's piece on this suggests that two planes, costing £3m per year, are used to monitor mobile phone calls.

Tracking the mystery plane, courtesy Flightradar24.com

Back in 2011 the Telegraph had a similar piece and, in addition to stating that such planes had been in use since 1997, also reported, 

The existence of the fleet of planes - each costing at least £3 million to purchase and hundreds of thousands more to operate - has never been publicly disclosed. 

Whilst refusing to confirm or deny knowledge of the aircraft spokespeople are reported as stating that that any such activities would be conducted legally. 

Might this news have made more of a splash this time than it did in 2011 because of how the Snowden revelations sensitised us to potential state snooping? In searching for an answer to this Google led to an earlier story about how police had sought to infiltrate various groups, boasted of hundreds of ‘informers’ and warned a potential recruit that her activities could harm her career. As outrageous as the story seems it even provides transcripts and access to the audio tapes.

There are TOO MANY incidences of the police going either too far in what the reasonable man or woman would consider the wrong direction or not far enough in the right direction . Why?

The law is not a straight, fine line. Instead it is a big, fat, squiggly smudge.

On one side of where ‘reasonable people’ would expect a straight fine line to be are grey areas clearly beyond the legal wording of the law, where it remains easy to commit crime and get away with it, because of knowledge of how the legal process works. Here, over the last decade you will have found many bankers enriching themselves by peddling junk assets misrepresented as investment grade and by rigging markets. Many people still operate in these grey areas today.

On the other side of where ‘reasonable people’ would expect the straight fine line to be is the rest of the big grey squiggly area. To the ‘experts’ this includes areas they feel either within the technical bounds of the law (even though it may be completely against their awareness of the intended spirit of the law) or where there are likely to be sufficient ‘returns’  justifying the risks of possibly falling foul of an alternative interpretation. Recently there was news of celebrities who thought they were 'avoiding tax' found to have 'evaded tax'. That was in this grey area. So too are probably too many covert police operations. 

One should not however come down too hard on the police. Whilst there may be serious issues that need resolving, the vast majority of what the police do is both legal and worthy of our gratitude. The problem is with that little bit that is not: there seems too much of it. Think back to the dark days of the British motor industry. Back then it was deemed reasonable to churn out cars that had a far higher probability of breaking down than Japanese alternatives. Whilst the Japanese had an almost unique 'zero defect culture', with 'continuous improvement' leading to ever greater reliability, the Brits had a 'that'll do culture', allowing anything that passed basic inspection to go to market. This outmoded 1970's approach may still be pervasive across the police and numerous other public services.

 

Before looking at the cultural issues and what might be done about them, there was a third news item leading to this piece that came out a few days ago.It was the announcement by the Mayor of London of a new Business Crime Strategy 2014-16 (Clicking this link opens the PDF file in a new window)

and the opening statement by the  Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime, which included:

Across the capital crime is falling like a stone – down 17% under this Mayor – and our streets are getting safer. But crime against businesses remains significantly under-reported and the police response when reports are made is too often inadequate. Unless and until reporting increases and the response improves we won’t be able to deal with all the forms this threat takes.

This blogger is probably one of many who knew businesses which they feel were failed in the past by the police. Many, many small businesses have suffered as a result of some kind of criminal fraud, theft or attack against them. If this blogger's experience is anything to go by, even when there is concrete evidence detailing both the fraud and the perpetrators, the police have not wanted to know. Just like how moped smash and grab gangs have cottoned on to the fact that the police avoid chasing them due to safety fears, fraudsters have probably been aware of and enriching themselves on the back of this knowledge for years. The net result is that, across Britain, we are a lot poorer, because many otherwise fine small businesses have been defrauded, often into oblivion.

This is an important part of the flip-side: where the police do not seem to be doing enough of the right kind of thing. The police will argue, no doubt in part justifiably, that they struggle with resourcing and finance issues, but this is not a sufficient excuse. Various aspects of the national policing and justice system still seem woefully inept, leading to a massive squandering of whatever resources there are. Two recent personal experiences give weight to this.

The first was when attempting to offer the police an itemised bill showing hundreds of pounds worth of illicit phone calls made from a stolen phone and being met with not just disinterest at the counter, but a 'hostile-defensive' disinterest. An appropriate intelligence gathering exercise would have used the bill to harvest the electronic source, prior to feeding the data into a process to map how the thousands of phones stolen each day across the UK were being used. The second was when being interviewed as a potential witness in a major fraud investigation (as opposed to the minor frauds that blight British businesses). Having been interviewed by two people and this being taped, I was then sent a typed, paraphrased account of the interview to check and sign as a 'true and fair' account, which it was not. If they were going to do such a thing, why not just send a verbatim script, rather than cycle through potentially endless iterations, consuming massive manpower, until paraphrasing was correct? Better still, why not just stick with the audio (Digital audio can be forensically watermarked to prevent manipulation and timestamped for referencing)? Save for important sensitivities there is much more that this author could refer to.

Add the above accounts to those of many others in the public domain (and far more stories that are not shared) about how ineffectively UK policing and justice resources often seem to be deployed and one ends up with a pretty damning picture. Whilst some of this observed ineptitude may be down to 'procedural restraints' etc., many such excuses are just more 'smoke and mirrors' from organisations that culturally, in spite of whatever words come out from the Home Office, the Latest Commissioners, or anyone else associated with 'The Establishment', are stuck woefully in the past.

So what about culture?

This is probably the same kind of question that  British car makers were asking back in the 1970s: 'So how do we make our cars as good as the Japanese?' Back then, it was not all about the unions. Today it is not all about resources. Today, albeit now owned mainly by foreigners UK factories churn out some of the best cars in the world. They got to this stage by realising you cannot tackle everything at once and by applying lessons leaned from the best.  Incremental improvements, one step at a time, Japanese style, made the industry better and better (Before various people start railing about Deming and so on, remember that Japan really embraced this). A desire to pursue ever better execution of one's role needs to be part of the organisation's DNA. This does not come about from on-high pronouncements, but from a regular drum-beat of stories about how desired behaviours can trump bad behaviours within an organsiation to improve it. And this is where (Ishikawa style) we start getting to what may be the root cause of all these cultural issues.

Possibly far too much of the management of our policing and justice systems is driven by hard 'metrics', or 'key performance indicators', or, to be more realistic, stuff managers often mistakenly think can be measured so as to be managed. Possibly too many senior managers in our criminal and justice systems have done MBAs, executive MBAs or short courses covering issues such as 'The Balanced Scorecard', without appreciating such a discipline fully in the round: that these techniques can just as easily be badly applied. Whilst, with new technologies there is a rapidly growing mass of data that can be harvested to inform useful metrics, such inputs need to be balanced with a constant stream of 'soft' stories, that illustrate what good and bad policing is in different situations. There needs to be that hard and soft mix. Strategies should not be directed by just a cascade of hard (Objective measures such as crime counts) and 'semi-hard' (Subjective measures coming from telephone polls etc.) metrics, down through the management pyramid. Instead collections of metrics need to be disseminated along with collections of 'guiding stories' recounting aspirational and inappropriate behavior, and there should then be a stream of such stories gathered and disseminated on a regular basis to empower everyone to deliver to their best potential.

Like it or not, performance and motivation needs to be measured and rewarded, not relative to hard benchmarks (because just as with the law, the real world cannot be depicted by straight, fine lines) but openly and subjectively relative to mixed pools of metrics, guided by stories. Maybe at all levels, management has become too cowardly, preferring to hide behind metrics than taking responsibility for personal judgements which then go down on record. This has to change.

Through sharing stories and working on incremental improvements often catalysed by them, these days both Japanese and British car workers take pride in what they contribute toward. Whilst members of our policing and justice systems have a right to take pride in much of what they do already, by both allowing and requiring them to be slightly less hampered by pure metrics and more empowered by 'liberating and guiding stories', there could be far more pride and reward (from the sense of having been part of something really good) to come in the future.

This however, is not a voice from on high, but just a blog post, and sensible comments are welcome.

Liberty, community and safety - a think-piece

Liberty, Equality and Community

At the core of what most in the West regard as a good quality of life is ‘freedom’. Life liberty and the pursuit of happiness is a phrase at the heart of the US Declaration of Independence. France’s Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité, which roughly translates to 'Freedom, Equality, Brotherhood', or ‘Freedom, Equality, Community' has also been widely adopted elsewhere, including in India’s constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). So have we clarified ‘liberty’? No.

Judging from Wikipedia, the Universal Declaration is far from universal. It seems many Islamic countries consider it to present a secular, Western perspective that is in conflict with Sharia. Amnesty International and others feel it should embrace the right to refuse to kill. Some feminists have issues with terms used, such as ‘brotherhood’ and ‘himself’. Others propose an alternative approach whereby collective objectives recognising the interdependence of people within societies come before personal objectives. One also has to look at the list of signatories to the UDHR. China with one fifth of the global population, many Islamic states and more besides are not on it.

Of course, today’s second most populous country, India, is a signatory to the UDHR, but this then raises further questions about the point of it all. This is because we all ‘know’ that India is such an unequal nation. We ‘know’ this from the statistics we read about India, the anecdotes of travelers and from what we have seen in the media, including the film, Slum-dog Millionaire. We know that Indian cities harbour masses in extreme poverty, in sight of some of the richest people on the planet. So clearly, India signing up to the UDHR and even embracing the concepts of liberty and community in its constitution, actually means little.

Without reliable access to the basics such as food water and shelter, to which some might also add, education and basic medical care, and others, dignity, and so on, there is little in the way of appreciable 'liberty' (In fact some destitute people commit crime so as to be jailed). In the last blog post there was a reference to a report published by The High Pay Centre, which indicated that the gap between highest and average earners had grown massively recently. Its analysis of OECD figures also suggests that the poorest fifth of the UK population are the poorest in Western Europe. Even though the UK are signatories to and have ratified the UDHR, many of its poor and vulnerable live, day to day, in fear. We fight for liberty as a nation, but we all seem to be pulling in different directions.

The ‘Gini Coefficient’ 

The Gini Index is a benchmark for the inequality of wealth distribution within a nation. Like any such index whilst prone to controversy it can deliver ‘workable’ results. Numbers can be relative to each other both over time and from country to country. Higher scores indicate greater inequality. As deployed in the CIA World Factbook, a score of 100 (impossible) would denote ‘perfect inequality’.

The CIA data as just reviewed for this post showed Lesotho to have the highest index score (63.2, based on 1995 data). Next came South Africa (63.1 with 2005 data) then Botswana (63.0, 1993 data). You may be surprised to discover that the United States ranked on this table of 141 nations at #41 (45.0, 2007) way above India at #80 (36.8, 2004) and the UK at #104 (32.3, 2012) with Sweden at #141 (23.0, 2005 - What would its score be without that chap from Ikea, ABBA and Bjorn Borg?!)

‘Liberty’, an essential element of security and safety, is tied closely to the concept of equality and this is eroding almost everywhere, fast. Many readers (as I was) were probably startled to realise that the USA had such a higher Gini score than India. What is worse, is that the USA data shown above was calculated for 2007, before the housing and financial crises, and India’s for 2004, before it became the “I” in ‘BRICS’ and the world’s call centre, software house and owner of Jaguar Land-Rover. The gap will have widened. I also question the data for the United Kingdom. Equality has been getting a lot worse lately, particularly for the nation’s most impoverished 20%

Wrapping this piece up.

There are many more schisms undermining security and safety across the UK than that between people considering themselves part of or outside of The Establishment. Whilst much of this has a sociological flavour: an area this blogger DOES NOT want to get into, there are aspects that merit exploration in due course. Pedestrians, Motorists and Cyclists (And bus and cab and lorry drivers too) do not have to be at war. Sub-communities should not have to be fearful of each other. The old and the young could both benefit from investing time into seeking to understand each other’s perspective on the world. ‘Outliers’, both rich and poor also need to be more tied firmly into the wider community. The changes we need are cultural rather than legislative. Contrary to historical views about how long cultural changes can take, in this era of the Internet such changes can also come about blindingly fast. All we need to do is to find and promote the right viral 'memes' (check out the concept on Wikipedia) and the people that matter on each occasion will hopefully adopt them. This is not coercion (or 'Nudging for that matter) but what might be termed 'crowd-enlightenment'. As trite as it may seem, by finding and developing ‘community’, we also build security and safety.

Metropolitan Police: 'The Job'

Police car with ANPR on London Bridge, July 2014

The last post recalled a fairly traumatic situation where, after an age, the police had still not arrived at the emergency. The post before that expressed concerns about our emerging surveillance state. Earlier still, there was a post about how some victims of crimes, such as bike theft, recounted the police’s disinterest. There is a mass of evidence pointing to how poorly the police can sometimes either behave or be deployed, and it sticks. We now need some ‘balance’.

A child looks up to his father and says, ‘Dad, why are we on this planet?’

An opening think-piece about the 'surveillance state'