Hostile Environment

I've been following this one for a while. When I first used it in poems, people were sure i'd made it up. but no,. Home Secretary Theresa May really did have a sub-committee working under this title, whose job it was to make life unpleasant for people from abroad. At some point it all seemed to go quiet, maybe because PM Cameron didn't think it was a good look, given that he's a caring sort of guy. But once he's gone, and May's back in charge, the policy and the slogan go full steam ahead - she uses it proudly, confident that the Brexit vote gives the Home Office a mandate to persecute anyone who wasn't actually born here. 

But now, finally, there are signs that these assumptions are being questioned. The Home Affairs select committee slams the failure of the Home Office to base immigration policy on any serious analysis, and goes through the appalling record of victimisation and incompetence over the past few years. " We believe people should be working together to build consensus on the benefits and address concerns about problems on immigration." Wow. If that approach is maintained, there'll be a lot of changes in how the Home Office operates, and it's not before time. 

Royal Wedding

It was fairly predictable that a Windsor councillor would at some point complain about the homeless littering the streets, and try to ensure that they are bulldozed or hosed off the pavements before Harry and Meghan's big day. What's gratifying is the speed and confidence with which this proposal has been resisted. The police are quick to point out that this isn't a simple matter of people wandering on to the wrong patch. People are homeless for a reason, and for lack of alternatives, and simply wiping them out of the immediate line of sight isn't a solution to anything. Which is a relief, because everything we hear about Harry and Meghan suggests that they'd be appalled to be used as the reason for brutal social engineering.   

Tax Cuts

And yes, it's Trump again, bu what else can you do, when he's determined to hog the agenda? That's what you get when you vote for a volatile narcissist to be the most powerful person in the world. He's celebrating today, because he's got his tax cuts through, and is triumphantly signing them the day before Christmas. He said he'#d do it and he has, and his supporters line the steps, looking wonderfully, smugly happy. I don't think this is because the move will bring employment or a rise in living standards for their constituents. It's about profits, and rich people making more money than they were before. If ever you wanted a demonstration of why it isn't enough to see if business is happy, this is it. The Dow Jones loves it, but the prospects for most Americans are bleaker than ever before.  

We are taking names.

So says Nikki Haley, threatening the UN like an old style primary school teacher. Amazingly, it didn't work. "We're Bolivia. Make sure you get that down. We want to be top of the list", says the Bolivian representative as they go ahead anyway, and vote in condemnation of Trump's endorsement of Jerusalem as the Israeli capital.

It won't help in Jerusalem, of course. And the UN may well end up weaker, and poorer, as a result. But once you instal Trump as US president then there are a lot of things that are going to get worse. the Middle East situation will certainly deteriorate, but it's better that Trump's bullying is defied rather than letting it be indulged. Nikki Haley doesn't look that good, either, unless you look long-term through a narrow US lens - American journalists are saying this boosts her chances for a later Presidential run. God help us all.      

Let's do it all again...

Or maybe not. The Labour Party are saying they don't want to rerun the Brexit vote, and I'm mightily relieved. Was the first round a deceitful fiasco? Certainly was. Was the result dangerously close and secretly influenced by foreign groups? Yes indeed. Would the future of this country be more secure if we decided to stay in after all? Absolutely.

But I don't want another vote, because I don't want another campaign. Also in today's paper is an article by Dominic Grieve headed "Rational debate is drowned out in this climate of Brexit vitriol." The abuse and threats that he and others have received would have been unthinkable ten years ago. It's common to hear "Do you want what Jo Cox got?" as if this were a predictable part of the business of politics. The campaign we had last time was appalling, and the media was totally ill-equipped to cope. I don't see any evidence that things have substantially improved. If anything's going to rescue us from this it'll have to be the intelligence and conscience of MPs. Yeah, I know. but it's all we have.   

Staying Put

Ok, so this is two posts running about Home Office harassment, but I'm not apologising for that. the Sheila Hale case was a bad joke. Paulette Wilson's is much more serious. Came here 50 years ago, aged 10. lived and worked here, now a grandmother, no other home. Two weeks ago they picked her up, took her to detention near the airport, and without her MP's intervention she'd have been on her way. Staying Put was a wonderful poetry and music concert, put on in Wolverhampton by the great Steve Pottinger, to highlight Paulette's case and raise money in her support. It was a fabulous night - ten minutes each of eight poets, and a ukulele band which also featured sax and bass guitar. Best of all, Paulette came and really enjoyed herself. All she needs now is some common sense and decency from the Home Office, but if your main mission is to create a hostile environment, then those are in short supply.    

Keeping Us Safe

Ever since the result of the referendum, we've known that for the Home Office Brexit means "we hate foreigners." That this was petty and vindictive wasn't a surprise, but this week's Guardian correspondance column produced a little gem of its kind.

Sheila Hale is American, but married to a Brit, and has lived in the UK for fifty years. She has American and UK passports, but last year the UK one was due to expire, so she tried to renew it. "Ah," said the hawkeyed HO officials, "it's in the name of Sheila Hale. But your US passport is in the name of Sheila Hayes Hale. How do we know they're the same person?" Her simply saying so wasn't enough. She needed a recent utility bill or bank statement, in the US name which she hasn't used for twenty years. She tried explaining why this wouldn't be possible, but got nowhere. Until she had a brainwave. Her husband was a knight, so that meant she had to be Lady Hale, not Lady Hayes Hale. Well of course, they said. She got her new passport next day. 

Where do you get your news?

Key question these days, but one I saw differently this week, through sheer accident. I was in the dining room, watching the BBC ten o'clock news. It was telling me about a deal between Myanmar and Bangladesh, who'd just agreed that Myanmar would take back refugees, that Bangladesh would return them, and everything would be fine. After what's gone on, that was hard to believe. It was also hard to believe that Bangladesh got anything out of this worth having. Were we supposed to think better of them, for washing their hands of people in trouble?

But then I needed to make a drink so I moved into the kitchen, and switched on radio 4. Same story, but with a crucial bit of background added. On the radio version, the deal was arranged by China. They bullied Bangladesh into accepting it, despite the fact that it didn't include provisos for which Bangladesh had asked. Pure muscle, making something happen because they wanted to contrive the appearance of an agreement which wasn't actually there and would make no appreciable difference to those at the sharp end. But radio listeners get to hear information which doesn't make it on to the TV screen.   

House of Cards

Oh dear. i'm not sure if I ever finished series 4 of House of Cards, but since there's a whole virgin series 5 maybe I should go back to check, except that now we have the Spacey stories, and maybe that changes everything. It certainly doesn't help  when he and Underwood and Clare are having a tense discussion and he says "We can't afford to be weird with each other."   

But it's not just that. The manipulation, the ceaseless exploitation of others, the fits of simulated rage - it's all got very mechanical. The imminent defeat which will magically be transformed into a last-minute victory. As they go through the motions but I feel I've seen it all before. Maybe this has just gone on long enough, and the Spacey scandal is a twisted kind of favour in disguise. The early days, when Zoe Barnes was around, are a lively, tense memory, but maybe that is as good as it was ever going to get. 

Trump

I wasn't sure I could take more of Trump, but the four-part Channel f series tracing his entire career has been really good. Not outraged or emotional, just a calm tour through the key developments, through the eyes of a range of people who were there at the time - some of them very close. There's friends, colleagues and enemies, and some who moved from one category to the other. there's moments early on when he seems almost like a normal, decent guy, but then the urge to own and to buy takes over, and he loses control. He has two thriving casinos in Atlantic city, but then the Taj Mahal comes on the market. He has to have it. It's the biggest there is, so he has no choice. Except that all financial experts are confident that he's bound to make a loss, and they're right. He sells it, wriggles out of contracts, leaves local businesses unpaid. but none of that worries him a scrap, because he's on to the next big thing. 

the same, apparently, applies to his women and his wives. He sets up Ivana as the manager of one of these casinos, and she's very successful. Tough and ruthless, maybe, but a hard and thorough worker. There's fascinating footage of a big night where she's the boss and he's the appendage - and he hates it. He really suffers, to be at a big occasion where he's not the centre of attention. No, it won't change my opinion of him, but it isn't half filling in the detail.  

Holiday Job

Priti Patel goes on holiday to Israel. Like you do, she has meetings while she's there with a range of political contacts, including the Israeli Prime Minister. Theresa May, due to meet Netanyahu in London, had no idea he'd just been talking to her colleague. "It was just a holiday", said Patel. "And Boris knew." Well, he did - eventually. But not before it happened, and as a result officials had no chance to warn Patel that encouraging the Israeli army to think they'd get UK backing for a project on land they'd pinched from Syria might not be in our national interest. Not just a holiday, then. She actually managed to fit in 12 meetings, and apologised to Theresa May for not asking permission in advance. Oh, hang on a minute, make that fourteen. Eventually, and it takes a while, she is encouraged to resign.

Boris Johnson is no better. He languidly tells MPs he can't see anything wrong with Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe training journalists, but she's not. And the Iranians are increasingly suspicious of her as a result of Johnson's words. He goes to the Commons. He apologises if anything he has said has been misunderstood, and implies that his remarks were "taken out of context." But they weren't understood, and they weren't taken out of context. Simply, he got it wrong, and should say so, with a clear, honest apology.

They can't do it. They simply can't face the fact that they told a lie. And, as an obsessive remoaner, it does occur to me that these were two of the star performers in the campaign which promised extra money for the NHS and as a result - according to its mastermind Dominic Cummings - won the Brexit vote.     

See "Code of Conduct (revised)" in Poems from the News, also on this website. 

Guess who?

"All of this 'Russia' talk right when the Republicans are making their big push for historic Tax Cuts & Reform. Is this coincidental? NOT!...Sorry, but this is years ago, before Paul Manafort was part of the Trump campaign. But why aren't Crooked Hillary and the Dems the focus???? also, there is NO COLLUSION."

 

You guessed it. Not a teenager letting off steam, but the leader of the free world. He doesn't want to run the country, he wants to re-run the campaign - having a five star general leap on to the stage shouting "Lock her up!" is the best fun he's had in years. 

But it's not funny. A sober reminder of the personal costs of this stuff in last night's Storyville documentary coming Home, about an American soldier who left his unit, was held and tortured by the Taliban for five years, and then returned to the US in a deal involving Taliban prisoners in Guantanamo. Because of Obama, and all the politics involved, Trump was on this in a flash, passionately telling rallies that six young, beautiful Americans had died trying to rescue this deserter, who in the old days would simply have been shot. and of course, they loved it, and are still yelling for this guy to be thrown into jail for the rest of his life. Army experts, used to debriefing prisoners who've been tortured, say this man's had worse treatment than anyone since Vietnam, and should not be in prison for a single day. Oh yes, and the progrramme aslo does the legwork, asks the questions, and sets the record straight: none of the six young men were actually searching for this soldier when they were killed. It made a great story, and he told it with passion. Just turns out not to be true.  

Lobbying for Failure

Not quite sure whether to laugh or cry. Theresa May, rightly appalled by the Brexit prospects, starts chatting up individual European leaders, asking for concessions. European leaders are actually considering concessions, but then realise that if they grant them, this will be written up by the British press (and it will) as Theresa's triumph against the hated foreigners. So they quickly and unanimously decide not to offer those concessions. Thanks, guys - great job. This is going to be a disaster and we have no-one to blame but ourselves.   

Internet - for good and bad

Today's Guardian feels like another bad taste of social decline. A horrendous story about survivors of the Las Vegas shootings, who've been targetted by trolls saying "I hope someone truly shoots you in the head." Because, of course, I'm a troll so I know you were lying in the first place. Ok, so it's a fairly sick person who's thinking that way but boy, do social media do a great job of reinforcing that by offering them an instant audience.  That's on page 23.

Then I turn over, to page 25, which has a story about a 27 year old Pakistani activist, who's about to become Pakistan's first transgender doctor. She was followed on her way home by three men, who threatened and abused her. she felt nobody would protect her - except her community on Facebook. they spread the word, shamed the police into taking action and - Sara Gill believes, probably saved her life. Maybe it's not all bad.  

Men getting it wrong

Finally, justice for Eni Aluko, the England footballer smeared by the FA. (If you want my detailed account of the Eni Aluko affair, the poem Sweet FA is in Poems from the News, another part of this website). Aluko herself has been astonishing throughout, composed, objective and consistent, despite being put under all kinds of pressure.

The FA, predictably, don't come out of it that well. Clarke, their chairman, was particularly inept at the MP sub-committee showdown, by which time it was clear that his organisation had made huge errors. A sensitive man, a canny operator even, would have recognised that this was a good moment for caution and humility. But no, he's used to being in charge, so he thinks that a show of casual dominance will go down well. He dismisses accusations as "racism fluff", before it occurs to him that maybe that's not the route to take. Somebody raises a previous case of ill-treatment, which received wide press coverage, but he hasn't a clue what they're talking about. And  then, when he's accused by the PFA, rightly concerned for his failure to investigate the ill-treatment of one of their members, he insists on launching a tirade about the failure of the PFA to act on abuse. As it happens, he gets his facts wrong, but it's the tactic that's childish - "it wasn't me, sir, and even if it was look at him - he's far worse."

This is exactly the route Trump took, when it was pointed out that "He knew what he signed up for" might not be the ideal way to console a young widow grieving for the loss of her husband. Trump doesn't consider that he might have got it wrong. "what about Obama?" he says. I'll bet his treatment of grieving widows wasn't any better."  As it happens, predictably, it was miles better, and there are grieving widows aplenty to prove it. But these fantastists aren't talking about the truth; they just want an alternative world, in which they didn't cock it up. 

Growing Up

Years ago, when I was trying to educate myself about child psychology (Bowlby, Winnicott, people like that) I remember taking on board the idea that maturity was about recognising that other people existed, equally, had their own reality, and that "how I see things" might not be the only way to see things. Fairly basic insight, but just at the moment it seems quite precious.

Two recent articles on this theme. Jeffrey Sachs, not a particular hero of mine (because of his enthusiastic involvement in the "let's educate Russia about capitalism" drive) had a really sensible piece about American exceptionalism, and how the US needed to grow out of the idea that they had a God-given mission to show the rest of the world how it's done. Not world-shaking, not before time, but welcome nonetheless. And the current Ken Burns TV history of the Vietnam war is soaked in that awareness that having their US version of the truth made them miss completely what was going on in the minds of the Vietnamese.

Then there was Peter Hain, writing about Northern Ireland negotiations, and how trivial exchanges - e.g. about a shared interest in football - could actually oil the wheels of high-powered political deliberations. which is exactly what's missing in the Brexit fiasco. All the noise, all the press releases, are about what we want, what we'll do, what we need. Not a glimmer of how things look to the Europeans - who for excellent reasons think we're out of our minds.   

Fear and Lies

For once, Trump's classic summary "sad" is exactly appropriate. Paul Watson, a senior NHS official, forced hospital leaders to repeatedly chant "We can do this", criticising them for not doing it loudly enough.

Watson sort of gets it. He tries to cover his tracks by saying it was meant as "light relief", but it clearly wasn't, as in his next breath he's insisting there's a serious message there: "If it seems cheesy or patronising then so be it but it does have the merit of being true."

So there. This is about power. These aren't just any hospital leaders. They're leaders of hospitals deemed to be failing, and he's just accused them of putting patients' safety at risk. Before the chanting stunt he offered them a choice - "Do you want the 40-slide version of our message or the four-word version?" Cunning, that. It means they were asking for it, that in a way it's their fault - which presumably is why none of them told him to grow up, or to get stuffed. Welcome to Jeremy Hunt's NHS. Does that sound like an atmosphere in which you'd want to do good work?    

Getting Ahead

I have to confess, I smiled. I shouldn't, because it's a sad story for a number of pupils, and tragic for the guy at the centre of it, but there is still a strange symmetry about the story of Mo Tanweer, the deputy head at Eton who's just lost his job for handing over exam secrets to his pupils. Go on, guess what he used to do before he went into teaching. that's right. He actually was an investment banker.

Maybe he thought he was going into public service, paying something back for the riches he'd acquired. But you can be sure they were rubbing their hands. Just the kind of hot property they wanted to acquire, a guy at the cutting edge, who'd give them an edge, let them mark out their place at the front of the field. It was always one of the drawbacks of league tables, that they fired up the guys who like to be on top, to whom it's more important to bewinners than to educate the kids in their charge.  

Climate Change

Do you really need more warnings about climate change? asks Bill McKibben, as he calmly details the various weather events taking place in North America this week. And yes, of course, if you widen it to the whole planet it's far. far worse. As he knows. He's been warning about this for thirty years. But he manages to stay calm and focused, to mount yet again the unanswerable argument:

"Global warming is the first crisis that comes with a limit - solve it soon or don't solve it. Winning slowly is just a different way of losing. Winning fast enough to matter would mean, above all, standing up to the fossil fuel industry..." But that's enough. Don't take my work for it. In my paper version, it's on p.25 of the Guardian on Monday, 11 Sept. I'm sure you can find it online.

A voice of sanity

Amidst the mess and the nonsense, there are a few people thinking clearly and - usuallu - talking sense. Owen Jones, Ha-Joon Chang and, today especially, John Harris. He's made sense all through the various campaigns, ducking the hysteria and the generalisations to talk to actual people. In today's Guardian he has a terrific piece about EU nationals coming to Peterborough in search of a better life. they work hard, they move from being casual to full time, employees to employers.

Which raises a question, that Harris phrases with impeccable calm:   "Most of the EU citizens i have spoken to in Peterborough do not have a left-wing thought in their heads; they believe in a credo of self-reliance, hard work and home ownership. In a British context, these ideas are as Tory as they come. So how come so many Conservatives now want to slam the door on their most devout adherents?"