London Habits - thoughts on the intellectuals' loathing of England

I give you a toast, ladies and gentlemen.
I give you a toast, ladies and gentlemen.
May this fair dear land we love so well
In dignity and freedom dwell.
Though worlds may change and go awry
While there is still one voice to cry
There'll always be an England

We know that there's a sort of intellectual that loathes England and the English, even while relishing the pleasures and treasures of the nation. George Orwell wrote about such people over seventy years ago and little has changed. What has happened is that many of these people have become essentially rootless, believing that they belong to some global patria - Harm de Blij's 'Flat Earthers' living in David Goodhart's 'Anywhere'.

What I don't understand is why the English members of that Laputan patria are so offended by the idea of England and Englishness. Not even the the football hooliganism bit of Englishness that causes us pain but the unchanging places of England's countryside, the market towns, cricket and the village pub. They've even found a name for it - Deep England:

Forget Little Englanders – Deep Englanders believe that life was better before the evils of industrialisation, foreign competition and, you know, immigration

Name: Deep England.

Born: In the good old days.

Appearance: A glass of warm ale, a sun-dappled larch on the village green, the thwack of leather on willow, a cheeky wink from the milkman.

To most of us this is just...well...England.  But the anonymously authored Guardian piece continues in this vein before concluding with telling us what we should say about this:

“Deep England is regressive and harmful for the population at large.”

You see my friends, those traditions of ours - village cricket, beer, church bells, morris dancing - along with the idea that you don't need to change something if it isn't broken, they are harmful. These are - our Guardian writer asserts - places that voted to leave the EU filled with terrible English people. England is a terrible place and we must stay in the EU so as to prevent England.

We have a rise in self-loathing bigotry among a class of mostly London-dwelling folk who aspire to be one of those 'Flat Earthers' living in 'Anywhere'. It hurts these England-deniers when they're reminded their near neighbours rather like where they live and also pretty much like the way it is right now. The 'Flat Earthers' pretend - contrary to the actual evidence from these places - that the folk living there are unfriendly, unwelcoming, suspicious of anyone who looks a little different.

These 'Flat Earthers' have developed an image of their enemy, a bigoted stereotype of the thick, fat, flushed Englishman - the corrupted image of Skegness's Jolly Fisherman adorning the front of these self-loathers house journal, New European sums up their ignorance and prejudice completely.



Look beyond the caricature here with it's UKIP scarf and spot instead at the discarded ice-cream cone, the litter on the beach and the brown sea. This is how the 'Flat Earthers' see the world outside their bubble - loud, lewd, dirty, common. What they don't see it that their world is closing in. The faces of the people outside that world are now pressed up against the bubble of 'Anywhere'. And the 'Flat Earthers' are scared. Scared of those ordinary folk who've suddenly realised they're just as important as the great and good in London.

I remember a boss of mine talking about visiting his soon-to-be wife's parents out in the sticks somewhere (Hampshire if I recall correctly). They'd had a lovely day, a pleasant evening, nice food, company and some wine. After everyone had gone to bed, Tom (my boss) was creeping along to his fiancees bedroom for a cuddle, only to hear his putative mother-in-law call out in a loud voice, "and we're not having any of those London habits here."

None of us provincials and suburbanites think everything is perfect or even that leaving the EU is some sort of panacea to society's ills. Rather, we would like to be seen as people rather than something to be either sneered at or patronised. Above all, as English men and women, we think our country is great, has done great things, and is worth preserving as a place rather than a mere brand in a nebulous, purposeless 'Anywhere'.

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Quote of the day - on conservatives in academia

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From Jonathan Haidt's review on political diversity (or rather its absence) in social psychology:

Conservative graduate students and assistant professors are behaving rationally when they keep their political identities hidden, and when they avoid voicing the dissenting opinions that could be of such great benefit to the field. Moderate and libertarian students may be suffering the same fate.

I asked a while back why there are so few right-wing sociologists (effectively none - although there are a couple of libertarian sorts). It's good to see some real academic confirmation of this as a problem, that having some colleagues who don't automatically blame society's ills on capitalism or neo-liberalism might be a good thing.

Nothing will change though. Most universities will remain hostile places for anyone who wants to explore society from a conservative perspective.

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Confirmation bias - or shall we just call it sociology?

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The research was done some while ago and has been variously reported across the more left-inclined ("liberal") media. It typically has a headline something like this:

Low IQ & Conservative Beliefs Linked to Prejudice

Essentially the premise of the research is that only stupid people are 'conservative'. This is all wrapped up in the self-important language of the sociology academic but in the end it all boils down to statements like this:

Nonetheless, there is reason to believe that strict right-wing ideology might appeal to those who have trouble grasping the complexity of the world.

The problem here lies in the headline above, the presumption that prejudiced views are ipso facto right-wing. Thus the researchers definition of 'social conservatism' runs something like this:

Social conservatives were defined as people who agreed with a laundry list of statements such as "Family life suffers if mum is working full-time," and "Schools should teach children to obey authority."

These outlooks are then connected to a series of statements about racial prejudice and unsurprisingly the results show that the researchers' definition of 'social conservatism' links with those prejudicial statements. In the report, another psychologist makes a parallel observation:

...a study of left-wing liberals with stereotypically naïve views like "every kid is a genius in his or her own way," might find that people who hold these attitudes are also less bright. In other words, it might not be a particular ideology that is linked to stupidity, but extremist views in general.

Or rather people who say 'absolutely' to Tweet-length sweeping statements are less likely to be the brightest in the box. My concern is that the archetypal liberal perception of conservatism is, in fact, a stereotyped list of prejudices - for liberals (and I'm using this term in its American usage here) things that they dislike or disagree with are automatically 'right-wing'. As a result the researchers here have simply confirmed their own prejudice - right-wingers are nasty prejudiced folk and probably stupid.

Since 99% of sociologists and social psychologists are left of centre in their views, much of the research base in these subject is informed by the assumptions underlying that left wing position. I've wondered before why there are very few right-wing sociologists with responses varying from 'you can't be a right wing sociologist' to 'you're just dismissing the subject because you don't agree with what it finds'.

What this research sets out to show - and it will be used again and again by the left - isn't that conservatives are stupid but that because prejudice is emotionally-founded the less intelligent are more likely to use it to base their political opinions. And if you define all the prejudiced positions as 'right wing' then you confirm that those folk are prejudiced. All the researchers have done is confirm their bias, they haven't added to the body of knowledge about why some people are prejudiced.

Sadly, this left wing confirmation bias corrupts almost all of modern sociology making it almost wholly useless as a guide to understanding society.

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"White Hat Bias" - fixing results to support what you think is righteous

When we look at research in public health fields - those matters relating to lifestyle choices especially - we often see what we suspect is a search for evidence to substantiate an ideologically-predetermined position. So, for example, the ideology decides that standardised packaging would be a way to reduce the uptake of smoking among the young and this is followed by a set of studies that appear to show just how much packaging influences the decisions of young people considering taking up smoking. Except that, when we pull these studies apart, we find that they show nothing beyond the (rather obvious) fact that people prefer attractive, bright colours to drab unattractive colours.

This is "white hat bias" - a term coined by US biostatistician Professor David Allison:

It was Professor Allison and Dr Mark Cope who coined the phrase in relation to obesity research. They defined it as: “bias leading to the distortion of information in the service of what may be perceived to be righteous ends”*

 

It seems to me that this problem is endemic in evidence-gathering for the development of public policy and especially social policy. Examples would include starting with the presumption that inequality is a negative indicator of health - there isn't any consistent evidence to support this contention yet is remains an assumption in healthcare planning and, in particular, planning around public health.

 

Alongside this prejudiced approach to evidence we also find the use of 'evidence' that is not supported by the facts -  so one of Bradford Council's public health consultants presents as 'fact' that, without further intervention, hazardous drinking will increase in the City. This ignores another fact - that alcohol consumption (especially among the young) has fallen significantly. It seems odd, given this change, to make an argument stating that 'hazardous' drinking will increase unless 'something is done'. We see an intelligent, well-informed man allowing his presumptions about health to run ahead of the actual evidence simply because he believes that drinking is something to be discouraged.

This problem would be fine if it wasn't the case that lay people can be easily dismissed when they challenge this 'white hat bias'. From sweeping statements such as 'we have evidence to support this from the literature' (I got that one when I challenged some facts), to simply ignoring the challenge and falling back on the logical fallacy of 'I'm the expert so I'm right'. We also get 'Macclesfield is in Greater Manchester' answers where the 'white hat bias' allows the person to simply ignore a fact. A good example here is the fact that consumption of non-dairy extrinsic sugars (that's all the sugar we add to stuff plus honey) has fallen significantly over the past 30 years. Meaning, of course, that sugar cannot be isolated as the guilty party in rising rates of obesity.

The problem of 'white hat bias' isn't limited to public health - I've seen it in work around regeneration, local economic development and retailing - but it is that case that such bias is now so ingrained in public health research as to cast doubts on the entire corpus. As the researchers at the University of Alabama pointed out:

UAB researchers examined ways in which scientists writing new research papers referenced two studies reporting the effects of sugar-sweetened beverages on body weight. They found that less than one-third of the papers that cited the beverage studies accurately reported the overall findings, and more than two-thirds exaggerated evidence that reducing sugar-sweetened drink consumption reduced weight or obesity. The UAB researchers also found several examples in breastfeeding studies in which the authors selectively included some data and discarded other research to support the theory that breastfeeding decreases the risk of obesity.

 And the result of this is that we get public policy initiatives that are not appropriate to the problem - plain packaging for cigarettes is unlikely (indeed one year on in Australia evidence now supports this argument) to make any difference to either the take up of smoking by teenagers or the overall consumption of tobacco. Yet the bias of researchers means that the only studies considered are those limited, qualitative studies showing that kids like bright colours.

The same problem can be seen with policies to limit or control fast food takeaways despite there being little or no evidence linking fast food to obesity. However, we still get Councils pushing through planning controls (banning takeaways near schools, for example) that won't change anything. 

We went through a time when 'evidence-based policy-making' was all the rage. What we should now realise is (as those cultural studies students could have told you from the start) that scientists and researchers wedded to a particular position will be selective in their interpretation and presentation of evidence so as to provide support for that position. 

 

The researchers who coined the phrase 'white hat bias' should be commended for their efforts and for the warning. But I fear it will fall on stony ground - the ideologues of public health are simply uninterested in any evidence that questions or contradicts their prejudged policy prescriptions.

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Misinformation, ignorance and prejudice masquerade as a serious article about obesity.

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A friend of mine at university once described articles written by the likes of Enoch Powell or Tony Benn as superficially works of logical completeness and coherence that, on closer examination, reveals a huge leap of what can only be faith half way through the article.

This article on obesity lacks the intelligence, wit or wisdom of Enoch or Tony but it suffers the same problem. It starts like this:

McDonald’s cookies have an energy density comparable to hydrazine. Hydrazine is a rocket fuel used to manoeuvre spacecraft in orbit. It was astonishing, then, to watch a small child graze through two boxes of the desiccated biscuits in one sitting. His parents watched on, preoccupied with their own colossal meals: a noxious amalgam of meat, grease and sugar.

Now I'm not about to defend the quality of McDonald's food (although - and we'll return to this - there isn't any proven link between fast food and obesity) but we know where the author is coming from. We have a problem with obesity and, our author argues, it isn't enough to say that it's a matter of personal choice.

It's an argument - one I don't agree with but an argument nevertheless. And we do have a problem with obesity. However, the author loses me with this single line:

Over 63% of Australian adults are overweight or obese.

Note what has been done here. We were talking about obesity - being grossly and unhealthily overweight - and suggesting that perhaps the morbidly fat really do have a problem resisting food. But now all of a sudden we're talking about obese and overweight. We have, to use that piece of sociological jargon, 'problematised' being overweight by implying that it falls in to the same health category as being obese.

And, to put it bluntly, this simply isn't true. Here's the science:

Relative to normal weight, both obesity (all grades) and grades 2 and 3 obesity were associated with significantly higher all-cause mortality. Grade 1 obesity overall was not associated with higher mortality, and overweight was associated with significantly lower all-cause mortality.

This is not some little study either but:

...97 studies were retained for analysis, providing a combined sample size of more than 2.88 million individuals and more than 270,000 deaths.

Essentially the research is saying that having a BMI of between 25 and 35 doesn't represent a health problem  - overwhelmingly the people our author is talking about fall into this category.

So what is the actual scale of the problem? If we take morbid obesity as the essential measure (in the UK this is defined as a BMI over 40) then currently around 1.5% of men and 3.5% of women are morbidly obese. Now this is a lot of people - about 1.5 million - so we shouldn't ignore it as a problem but it isn't anything approach the scary 63% that our author cites. Even if we add those with a BMI between 35 and 40 the numbers only rise to 5% or so - between 3 and 4 million.

And this brings us back to fast food. Quite simply there isn't a strong connection between takeaways and obesity (which isn't to say that fat people don't eat in McDonald's but to say that's not why they're fat):

When the researchers weighed these children they found something rather interesting. Here are the average body mass index (BMI) figures for each group by frequency of visits to fast food outlets. Bear in mind that a 'healthy weight is 18.5 to 25:

Weekly visits        BMI

Every day:            17.8

4-6 times:              18.3

2-3 times:              19.6

Once:                    20.3

Less than once:     21.4

OK this is for children but it makes the point - quite remarkably showing a negative relationship between regular fast food consumption and obesity. It's whats in the fridge at home and the drawer in the office that's the problem not Burger King or the kebab shop.

Our author concludes that we are all victims of:

...the roots of overconsumption: cost of living, manipulative marketing, nutritional misinformation and – often overlooked – simple palatability.

The overconsumption point is an interesting one for, as our author should know but doesn't, overall calorie consumption has been falling. We're still fatter but it's too simple to blame advertising, fast food, offers of chocolate oranges or Big Sugar for the problem. A proper assessment would pick up these facts and ask questions about our sedentary lifestyle, about the support given to very fat people and medical interventions that are possible.

Instead Ben Brooks (an arts/law student or so his biography tells us) chooses to play silly games with the statistics - the evidence, the truth, if you prefer - in order to make his snide little prejudice against McDonalds into a public health point.

Update: some more practical evidence that it's not McDonald's but our broader food choices that matter are on view in this fascinating student project.

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Populism (or is it prejudice) du jour...

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Ah yes, let's roll out an anecdote to justify our prejudice:

“I’m influenced by my time as MP for Stoke-on-Trent. I remember talking to a young, second-generation Pakistani British lad who was concerned about the speed of change in the community as a result of the failure to introduce controlled migration from the EU accession states last time,” 

So the child of immigrants doesn't like others doing what his parents did? And we should construct public poilicy on this basis?

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Fat taxes - targeting the preferences of the poor (again)

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Why do I never hear cries of anguish and anger from those who claim to champion the interests of the poor when the matter of nannying taxes on "junk food" arises.

"Fat taxes" would have to increase the price of unhealthy food and drinks by as much as 20% in order to cut consumption by enough to reduce obesity and other diet-related diseases, experts have said. Such levies should be accompanied by subsidies on healthy foods such as fruit and vegetables to help encourage a significant shift in dietary habits, according to research published in the British Medical Journal.

And the target for these nannying fussbuckets is to change the habits of the poor - to force them to eat more expensive, less pleasing (at least to them) food. And that this will be a "benefit" to those poor people:

Although the less well-off are affected more by health-related food taxes, they may also ultimately benefit because "progressive health gains are expected because poor people consume less healthy food and have a higher incidence of most diet-related diseases, notably cardiovascular disease"

The poor, ignorant chavs don't know any better do they - they must be shoved into a change of habits, into no longer eating the stuff they like to eat because a minority of them get unhealthily fat. There's no discussion as to why so people get so fat or how support from the medical profession might help such folk. No, we make these foods - what we might call "working class" foods - more expensive because we disapprove of them.

The New Puritan's first target is becoming clear - "sugary" drinks. And, as they ever do, the chosen approach is what we might call epidemiological creativity:

Research in America found that a 35% tax on drinks sweetened with sugar sold in a canteen, which added about 28p to the price, led to a 26% drop in sales. Studies have estimated that a 20% levy on such drinks in the US would cut obesity by 3.5% and that adding 17.5% to the cost of unhealthy food products in the UK could lead to 2,700 fewer deaths from heart disease

Read the above paragraph carefully and you'll see that, while it suggests a single piece of research, it really notes findings and "estimates" from at least three wholly unrelated studies. The first one shows that, in a controlled environment, if you increase the price of something by 35% you get a big drop in sales. Nothing surprising there then. However, the writer then eases smoothly into a "studies have estimated" statement about whether those price increases would reduce 'obesity'. This is what's known, in less high-flying circles, as a "guess" - indeed, a guess designed to fit the prejudice of the author.

This creative deception is then repeated with a second estimate, this time on reduced deaths from heart disease. Here we should note that the tax (one assumes VAT since the increase is 17.5%) is applied to all "unhealthy" foods not just to the sugary drinks referred to in the other half of the sentence.

The entire paragraph - I suspect lifted straight from a press release without question or challenge by Mr Campbell the Guardian's health correspondent - is designed to deceive us, to suggest that fat taxes will save lives whereas the truth is that we have no idea at all whether fat taxes will result in such a benefit. Especially when - as we know well - rates of heart disease have been falling, year-on-year for at least three decades.

Just as with minimum pricing for alcohol, these proposals - wrapped up in supposed concerns about obesity - are merely a pseudo-scientific manifestation of arrogant middle-class prejudice.

"Oh no, we wouldn't let our Jamie go to McDonald's"


"We only use natural fruit juices - we won't have Coke in the house"

And so on - these are the thoughts driving the fat tax campaign. It is simply New Puritan disapproval. So what if rates of childhood obesity are falling - something must be done. It you're going to eat burger and chips let is be hand-formed burgers using welfare-farmed lean rare breed beef and organic, hand-cooked chunky chips rather than a Big Mac and fries. So what if ordinary folk then can't afford to treat their kids - think of the health benefits!

We should stop and think for a minute about what all this means. Not just that introducing such a tax would be a "pasty tax" on steroids but that we are targeting the preferences of the poor for no other reason than that we disapprove of them. And this - while understandable in the righteous Guardian reader - is simply wrong.

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Remembering and the prism of prejudice

Mum's Garden

Do we really remember stuff or do we rather see glimpses of the past through a prism of our prejudice? Sometimes that crystal is kindly, showing the past as a wondrous, carefree time filled with pleasure. Other times – other people – see the past as dark, scary, a place of evil ghosts and terror.

In one respect we can nail down the past – there are events and occurrences, things that happened. The day you started school, the time you broke your arm, family marriages, births and deaths. Are these the past or are they simply a framework on which we hang reminiscence?

Throughout my upbringing, we were told (with varying degrees of assurance) that our surname – Cooke – was Irish. Nothing wrong with that and the name is certainly is a good Irish name and we were brought up Roman Catholic too.

Yet when someone actually looks at the family history, it turns out that my father’s family has very little Irish connection and that the surname – originally without what we liked to called the ‘superior’ E – takes us back to the Isle of Wight. Turns out there’s a great deal more Irish in my Mum’s (Anglican) family than in my Dad’s (RC) family.

Reminiscence, in this case, had trumped history. The truth – the framework of facts – had been broken by the weight of that remembering. History was replaced by myth – in this case harmless but such myth-making might be dangerous.

There is a fine tradition of family biography. We are rightly fascinated by where we came from and how it made us what we are. But there’s a dark side to this – what I’d call the search for excuse rather than explanation. Too often this involves reminiscence cloaked in darkness, painting of the personal past as a terrible time.

We do this dark remembering because we believe it cathartic – let it all out, says the therapist. But does that person stop for a second and consider how such reminiscence might hurt others? Do we examine the truth or merely state that our recollection – however dark – is a true recollection? And, in our reminiscence, do we condemn others as wrongdoers so as to set ourselves as victims?

I suppose that it doesn’t matter much really if we are discussing the distant past (although the damage of myth is plain to see in Ireland, the Balkans and many other places of conflict) but what if our reminiscence – the myth-making – is about the living? We cannot let indulgent catharsis come ahead of truth and our remembering is not truth. Yet too often we are tempted to tell others of our remembering.

For me, if we remember only bad things – and blame our current predicament or the struggles of our lives on those things – then we are little better than the things we criticise. We choose to hurt others as a means of explaining our personal position.

We want that remembering to justify what we think today. And so we do it through that prism of prejudice.

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Free speech: some lessons on politeness from the 18th Century

Free speech is a pretty simple concept. It means I can say what I like, doesn’t it? Perhaps it does but what about deliberate offence? Bullying language? Prejudicial language? Where does the limit to free speech lie? Today we have become less worried about sexual swearwords or blasphemy that would have been the case with our forebears. But where they worried greatly about “fuck”, “shit” and “Jesus Christ”, we now obsess about “nigger”, “poofter” and even “paddy”.

Perhaps we are right, maybe making such prejudicial words beyond the pale is correct. For sure, using them is rather asking for a smack in the gob but we do appear to have lost – among all the legislative frenzy – the idea of politeness. Yes, politeness is often a deception – a white lie (are we still allowed to say that). But is its loss making it harder for us to justify the defence of free speech?

In his magnificent examination of English culture in the 18th Century, “The Pleasure of Imagination”; John Brewer looks at the conflict between politeness and sensibility:

“Many of the ideals of sensibility seem to contrast with those of politeness – authenticity rather than show, spontaneous feeling rather than artifice, private retreat rather than urban sociability, the virtues of humble rank rather than high station. They appear to stand in opposition to the values of polite London society.” (Brewer, The Pleasures of the Imagination, Pg 115)

Such a comment reminds us of the explosion of “spontaneous” feeling at the death of Diana, of Oscar winner bursting into tears and rambling about their inspiration and of the slight discomfort some of us feel at the seeming need for every comedy to have at least three swear words in every sentence.

However, politeness was not enforced by statute. There were no laws requiring polite behaviour in the 18th Century. People were polite because it was expected of them and for them to play any role in society failing at such expectation was to risk being rejected. Today we have begun to seek legal remedy to the enforcement of selected standards of behaviour – these may be the vast collection of law and case around so-called “equalities” or the growing judgmentalism of “standards boards”.

If we are to rescue free speech from its emasculation by self-interested groups and their public agents, then we have at some point to challenge the regulation of language that supports the interventions of these agencies. Conservatives should ask whether it is better to regulate politeness through society rather than through the law. It is incredibly rude to call someone a “paki” but is it really any ruder than calling that person a “cunt”? The law says it is since it privileges one word as a special condition subject to the possibility to punishment under the criminal law while the other remains just very rude.

I am not one of those people who think that the entire edifice of “equalities” should go. But I do think that the regulation of language through the criminal law is wrong and that those aspects of equalities legislation should be repealed. And the growing collection of “standards” applied to councillors, doctors, public servants and the like are also attempts to use the law to control speech – breeching the principle of liberty.

Free speech comes at a price – that of offence. But since we cannot ban or bar every possible word or combination of words it cannot work to select a few words for special treatment. However, I would point out that using offensive language has a societal price – getting thumped is part of that price but the other part is to colour our view of that person to their detriment.

So – as a good Tory – let’s look to our history. And teach our children this:

“Politeness created a complete system of manners and conduct based on the art of conversation. It places the arts and imaginative literature at the centre of its aim to produce people of taste and morality because they were considered a means of achieving a polite and virtuous character.” (Brewer, Pg 111)

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How often are our assumptions about Muslim women challenged?

I went to Cullingworth Surgery this morning to see the doctor. Don't do this too often as it usually leads to a massive rant about the uselessness of the appointments system and the idiocy of NHS bureaucracy. Today was different.

Leaving aside making us poorly folk wait outside in the pouring rain for ten minutes, everything went smoothly - went in asked for appointment and got one for 8.30am with Dr Khan. And here starts the real story of the visit.

Dr Khan is new - to me at least - and I was quite taken aback on entering the consulting room to find that the Doctor was not only Muslim but quite obviously a Muslim woman. I guess I should register for consciousness-raising sessions or something but I think it fair to say that for me (and I'm sure most of you reacted this way) the words "Doctor Khan" provide the image of a charming, well-spoken, probably bearded man.

The lesson I take from this is to take a fresh perspective on obviously Muslim women and not to assume that they are necessarily seen as either inferior or oppressed just because they wear a head covering and modest dress. This is not really any different from those women I remember at mass who wore a mantissa or the nice Jewish ladies in North Leeds with their tidy wigs - covering one's head is a cultural norm not an expression of female submission.

This goes to show that a woman can go through university, medical school and further training and still retain her Muslim identity & belonging. I suspect there is a lesson in this for all those peddling anti-Muslim myths and for a fair few Muslim men too!