The nice, pleasant, decent left is valorising violence with its silence and excuses

I know it's not all of you but "The Left" as it likes to call itself really does have something of a problem with being extremely unpleasant. And this problem is getting worse not better.

It may not be the biggest of big deals but this rather illustrates the problem:

"The government has blocked a giant statue of Margaret Thatcher in Parliament Square over fears it will be vandalised..."

 So it's just a statue of Britain's first woman prime minister - something definitely worth marking in Parliament Square (where, in case you haven't noticed, there aren't many statues of women). But because of that unpleasant faction on "The Left" it isn't going to happen.

The bigger problem with all this is that so many of those nice, pleasant, decent folk who hold left-wing opinions are prepared to make excuses for the sort of people who indulge in this sort of vandalism and worse. You only need to read the story of the attack on Sarah Wollaston's office, listen to Sheryll Murray describing the appalling vandalism and personal attacks in her election campaign, or to run down the Tweets of the Liberal Democrat campaigner in Manchester targeted at four in the morning for the heinous crime of putting up some posters.

Yet every time the response is to swat it away - "every party has these people" - to draw a false parallel between policy disagreements and vandalism or personal attacks ("look at these political campaign posters I don't like") or whataboutery - "here's something nasty that a Tory said fifteen years ago, what about that then". When the extreme left target a Liverpool MP for the terrible crime of being critical of Jeremy Corbyn, targeting that includes appalling anti-semitism and misogyny, those nice, pleasant, decent folk with left-wing views do nothing and say nothing. Every time.

It's true that every party has its share of unpleasant folk but it's also true that only "The Left" valorises vandalism, personal insults, threatening behaviour, intimidation and bullying as campaign methods. And because those nice, pleasant, decent folk with left-wing views don't deal with it - even having the almighty gall to talk about some sort of "kinder" politics - this sort of campaigning continues.

I've said for a long while that our political culture celebrates the bully - you only need watch "The Thick of It" to appreciate this - but we now are in the position where a faction on "The Left" has lifted this unpleasantness and transferred it to the political campaign itself. In forty years as an active political campaigner, I've never known a time when so much unpleasant, personal and downright nasty campaigning has been directed at the good people who hold different political opinions from "The Left".

I know you consider yourself different. You're not part of that left, oh no. But so long as you tolerate, excuse, deflect or explain away violent campaigning, you are little different from the left wing men who are doing the vandalising, performing the intimidation and ganging up on those most exposed and especially women and ethnic minorities.

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Some interesting stuff to read including snowflake bullies, non-racist football, child mental health and why public health lie all the time

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Bullies with a cause - exploring the 'snowflake fascists':

To make matters worse, among “the most consistent findings in educational studies of creativity,” according to psychologists Erik L. Westby and V.L. Dawson, is that “teachers dislike personality traits associated with creativity.” Although teachers report they value creativity, these nonconformist children who act and think differently and don’t quite fit in—the children most in need of teachers’ support and protection—are, research reveals, teachers’ least favorite students.

Rod Liddle on form as he discusses why football isn't racist whereas middle-class professions are (and has a go at Beyonce):

It’s not just Millwall, mind — football has done extraordinarily well in accustoming the white folks to divest themselves of racial prejudice. It is still the focus of anti-racist odium from the middle-class liberal left, of course, which despises what it sees as a lowbrow white working-class leisure pursuit. And yet there were more black players on Millwall’s books in 1975 than there were black journalists on the Guardian’s staff. A greater proportion of black footballers then and now than black academics, black lawyers, black MPs, black educationalists, black social workers — name your middle-class profession and the answer will be the same. And black Britons thrived in the same trades as those working-class supporters on the terraces — as electricians, plumbers, labourers.

Frank Furedi in challenging mode as he discusses mental health and children:

Confused and insecure children are likely to be diagnosed as depressed or traumatised. Virtually any energetic or disruptive youngster can acquire the label of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Youngsters who give their teachers a hard time or argue with adults are likely to get stuck with the label of oppositional defiant disorder.

The proliferation of new medicalised categories with which to label school pupils says far more about the inventive powers of the therapeutic imagination than the conditions of childhood. Pupils who suffer from shyness are offered the diagnosis of social phobia. The diagnosis of school phobia can now be applied to label those children who really dislike going to school.

And Chris Snowden explaining slowly and carefully why public health lies all the time about drinking:

The graph represents the relationship between alcohol consumption and mortality. It is, I think, well known that the relationship is J-shaped. This particular J-curve is based on 34 prospective epidemiological studies which collect data on how much people drink and then follow them over a period of years with a view to seeing if they die and what they die of. As this graph shows, the risk of death declines substantially at low levels of alcohol consumption and then rises, but it does not reach the level of a teetotaller until the person is consuming somewhere between 40 and 60 grams of alcohol a day, which is to say between 35 and 50 units a week.

Here's a canter through the weird and wonderful world of consumer apps (this Uber for everything!):

Valet Anywhere will find you and park your car for you. Dufl will pack and ship your bags for you. Zingy, Barkpost, Wag! and FetchPetCare all offer on-demand dog-walking. Over the holidays, I received a breathless pitch for Thirstie, an app billed as a “discovery-to-delivery platform that allows you to stock up on last-minute wine, beer and spirits under an hour.” (Lest you think Thirstie has cornered its market, it’s locked in a Coke-Pepsi-style battle with its arch rival, Saucey.)

Meanwhile the Adam Smith Institute are running against the tide on migration - a welcome challenge to the media-led shouting:

The best international development policy would be to let in more workers from the third world in to work in Britain, according to a new paper from the Adam Smith Institute. Politicians should stop trying to save entire countries with foreign aid programmes and instead help their inhabitants by letting them move to developed countries, it says.

Finally, this is a really great idea:

Using this LoT (Locator of Things) technology, Pixie has basically created a network of items that can correspond and even talk which each other. This does not only create a ‘smart household’, but it also adds potential smart technology to the city. Add a pixie to your bicycle and find it back easily. Let your car give you a sign when you forgot to bring your driver license. Or add a Pixie to your shopping cart and let it find a your pre-set shopping list.

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My new heroes - some Warwick University students

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Who chose not to be bullied and to further their education:

A group of history undergraduates at Warwick are causing controversy by organising their own student-led lectures while their tutors go on strike.

It doesn't matter whether or not you support the reasons for the strike, these students show initiative, creativity and leadership. They have every right to take this action, just as the lecturers have every right to go on strike. And it sticks a couple of fingers up at the bullying nature of trade unions when it comes to what they deem to be 'strike-breaking'. 

And the response of the union is, as ever, to threaten:

“Further escalation of the dispute, including a ban on marking, will unfortunately lead to greater disruption. We urge students to contact their vice-chancellor or principal and ask them to lobby the national employers’ negotiating body, UCEA, to urgently reopen negotiations.”

The message seems to be: "do what we say students or we'll stop you from getting the education you're paying for".

Well done to those students for standing up and making clear that they are the customer here - as one student put it:

"This is an argument between the staff and governing body, not the students and it is not right that we are jeopardised. It is unfortunate that the education system seems to be neglecting its primary aim in the face of monetary conflicts."

Well said and quite understandable given £9,000 in fees!

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The excitable crowd...

This is a hard post to write for I understand - more than I care to analyse - the power of words to wound and the ability of other people's lies to destroy a man. Those who wave "sticks and stones will break my bones but words will never hurt me" probably haven't experienced the agony - the torture - of incessant verbal abuse. Not the shouting sort but the quietly whispered version; the drip, drip, drip of nastiness, the exclusion, the endless pointing to flaws and failings.

So, yes folks, words can - and do - drive people to the point of no return. And we should respect that fact and act accordingly. But we talk here of persistent, deliberate, directed, personal attacks not the generality of criticising a place or a people. Such things do not wound, do not destroy and are designed more to irritate, to generate a response.

I recall the first time I was attacked on the basis of a stereotype - it was the north/south thing. This fellow student told me I was a rich, posh southerner who wouldn't understand real life because...well because I was from "The South". I was surprised mostly by the 'all southerners are posh' line since I'd never thought of myself as anything but perfectly ordinary, as far removed from poshness as most folk. What shocked me though was the realisation that this man saw the world through a prism of stereotyped prejudice - his 'rich posh southerner' line was little different objectively than the view of black people as good at sports but not much else.

I say all this to provide some context, to point out that there's a difference between tribal allegiance and personal feelings. There's a big difference between calling someone fat and ugly and saying that everyone from Denholme is an inbred. Both these comments are rude but only the first is personal. And those folk from Denholme revel in their slightly redneck image (although heaven knows how they got to be called Frogboilers).

Which brings me to the excitable crowd, the mobile vulgus - the mob. For it is in this monster and its exploitation by a savvy few that the real danger lies. Step back to the distinction between the personal and the general - the mob takes offence (or is directed to that fake offence) at the latter and, in doing so, uses the former to prosecute its case. In times past this resulted in some rows, maybe a fight.

Today - because the government wishes to control speech - it results in someone being arrested for being rude on Twitter.

It seems that the mob can issue any kind of threat once its dander is up - from whining, self-righteous victim-mongering to actual death threats. But the target of that mob's anger - whatever their initial words - is hounded, chased, attacked and threatened. And the men of the law - with their shiny police vehicles and politically-correct masters - do the bidding (as they ever did) of the mob.

These laws - the ones that get people arrested for joking about blowing up a snow-bound airport, making snippy comments about Olympic divers or making unpleasant remarks about people from Liverpool.

These laws are the real offence.

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If Gordon were a councillor....

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One of Labour’s more egregious pieces of legislation was the 2000 Local Government Act. You know, the one that got rid of the “out-of-date” committee system and replaced it with sleek, streamlined, single-party executive committees and useless scrutiny. This is legislation that Gordon Brown supported and continues to support.

Well under that legislation we also got the Standards Board for England and an enforceable ‘code of conduct’ for Councillors. This defines when a member is subject to the provisions of the Code:

“1) A member must observe the authority's code of conduct whenever he -

(a) conducts the business of the authority;
(b) conducts the business of the office to which he has been elected or appointed;or
(c) acts as a representative of the authority,

and references to a member's official capacity shall be construed accordingly”

So actions within a Local Council Cabinet Member’s office would unquestionably be in a place where the ‘Code’ applies. And under the general obligations of the ‘Code’ a member must:

“treat others with respect”; (2(b))

…and must not:

“…conduct himself in a manner which could reasonably be regarded as bringing his office or authority into disrepute.” (3)

…and must:

“…if he becomes aware of any conduct by another member which he reasonably believes involves a failure to comply with the authority's code of conduct, make a written allegation to that effect to the Standards Board for England as soon as it is practicable for him to do so.”

It seems to me that, on the assumption that Gordon Brown’s behaviour is as described in reports, had he been a Councillor rather than an MP, there would have been a case brought before the Adjudication Panel of the Standards Board. And, assuming the behaviour was shown to have happened, its nature (throwing things, shouting at junior staff, etc.) would warrant a suspension.

Now, as people know I think the Standards Board, Code of Conduct and associated kangaroo courts should be scrapped. But Gordon doesn’t.

Good thing he’s not a Councillor then?

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We won't stop bullying until we stop promoting bullies

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Bullying is the deliberate and persistent targeting of an individual or individuals to achieve a given end – most commonly their collapse into tears, resort to violence or departure.

There has been a great deal said, much speculation and a great deal of unpleasantness surrounding Gordon Brown’s behaviour. Now I don’t know whether Mr Brown is a bully, whether he condones or encourages such behaviour in others or whether his alleged bursts of violence should be seen as a major problem or not. But I do think we have a problem with bullying in our political culture – indeed, in our wider society. Put simply, we are very tolerant – even praising – of behaviours that are typical of the bully.

John Terry is celebrated for his forthrightness and “strong-leadership” as he praised Didier Drogba’s attempt to bully a referee over a particular decision. And it’s not just the former England captain at fault – such behaviour is common-place as this BBC report from 2003 about Manchester United players “refusing to bully” referee, Andy D’Urso. Bullying tactics are rife in football, have crept into cricket and I’m sure will begin to arise in other sports.

Examine some of the persistent targeted attacks on particular individuals – be it the Daily Telegraph’s assault on Nadine Dorries, the #kerryout campaign on Twitter or Labour’s constant smearing of Lord Ashcroft. These are attempts to use bullying as a deliberate campaigning tool. None of these targeted individuals are without fault – but that cannot justify these sorts of bullying tactics, surely?

In a world where malicious gossip, the unattributed briefing, the marshalling of attack messages through such hideous ideas as “mob Monday” and the joyous celebration of the aggressive, unheeding, shouting leader - look at Sir Alex Ferguson, at Sir Alan Sugar, at Alistair Campbell. These are our roles models of leadership – vulgar, ignorant, aggressive, selfish and often just downright unpleasant. Step back and ask how anyone could condone - let alone employ - a man as unpleasant and bullying as Tucker from In the Thick Of It. Is it any surprise that those at the bottom of that slippery pole think the way up is to climb over the crushed careers of others?

Anyone who has been on the receiving end of an unjustified, malicious and unpleasant campaign of political bullying – a straightforward attempt to destroy someone’s career – will know that there is no defence. Nothing you can do to stem the tide of snide, the avalanche of maliciousness. The bullied person ends up isolated – who would risk all that nastiness rubbing off on them. As was said of me by a senior Liberal Democrat (not to my face, of course, he’s too chicken to do that): “Simon finally ran out of friends”.

All the anti-bullying websites, all the well-meant “resources” for schools are useless besides a political and social culture that thinks targeting and destroying an individual – because we can – is acceptable. Instead of discussing the stuff about Gordon Brown, should we not be talking about the bigger issue of bullying? Should our leaders not be setting an example rather than taking advantage?

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