KEEPING CONFIDENCES

Peter Sutcliffe, aka the Yorkshire Ripper - would you keep his secret?

A few years ago I went to a talk in which a social worker was describing a research project she had conducted in New Zealand which led to the book she was promoting. I cannot remember much about the book but I do recall her saying that it was important to guarantee total confidentiality to people you were talking to if you wanted them to speak freely and honestly. If they thought there was any possibility that you would betray their confidences by betraying them to the police they would immediately clam up.

When it came time for questions I raised my hand intending to ask her what she would have done if she had conducted her research in Yorkshire instead of New Zealand, had come across Peter Sutcliffe and realised he was the notorious Yorkshire Ripper before the police did. (Their investigation was notoriously incompetent.) There was not enough time for my admittedly awkward question in the end so I never got an answer, but it did set me thinking about the limits of confidentiality. Not only social workers with a book to write but priests also have to face this quandary. They are bound by the vows of their calling not to reveal what they hear in the privacy of the confessional box but have faced pressure to give up paedophiles who confess their sins to them but not to the police. 

There are three purely practical reasons why this idea is a non-starter. Firstly: if word got out that confessing to a priest led you to being grilled by a police officer, people would stop confessing without necessarily ending their criminal activity. Second: confessional evidence would probably not be admissible in court on the basis that, if a priest disobeys his vows, how can you trust what he says under oath? Third: never underestimate the power of martyrdom: if priests have a choice between breaking the seal of the confession (ie their vow of confidentiality) and going to prison themselves, the vast majority will embrace the earthly punishment and would be supported by a Catholic hierarchy rocked by its own child abuse problems and desperate for the opportunity to prove that the representatives of God on earth would sacrifice themselves for the faith. We would probably end up sending priests rather than paedophiles to prison, which rather defeats the point. 

But there is another reason why priests should not be obliged to give up those who confess their sins. Do we really want to live in a society in which everyone is obliged to report those who break the law to the authorities? For, if child molesters have to be betrayed, surely drug-takers and tax-dodgers must be too. The law does not distinguish between different types of crime when it comes to reporting illegal acts so, before long, we would be living in the kind of society which was utterly rejected by the inhabitants of East Germany, Russia and all the other countries which later threw off the yoke of the secret police. We might think that some crimes are not worth reporting but those who enforce the law do not grant us this luxury.

Landlords who rent out properties would have to act as unpaid and unofficial immigration officials by checking that their prospective tenants had the right to live here; doctors would have to inform the hospital authorities if they thought that their patients might not be entitled to free treatment on the NHS; and we would all have to give up friends who had slipped into a drug use, which might be spiralling out of control.

What would you do if a friend telephoned you and admitted that he was addicted to cocaine or heroin, that he owed money to his dealer, his wife had left him and he was about to lose his job? His life was going down the tube and he appeals to you for help. Do you say you will help him get on a programme and see what you can do to help him keep his family and job and free himself of his addiction – or do you hang up and call the cops to say that Joe Bloggs has just admitted to you that he has taken illegal substances?

Decent people would, of course, help their friend recover their life, even though it would technically mean that they were failing to report a crime (taking illegal drugs) to the authorities and would thus entail aiding a criminal. This is what priests are doing when they do not give up the child-molester by reporting him. That is not to say they ignore the wrong he (usually) does. “Go away and sin no more,” are the last words a priest says to someone who has confessed. They are distinguishing between a sin – that which is against God’s law – and a crime – which is against the law of the land. The two often but not always overlap.

The difference between child molestation and drug-taking, of course, is that there are identifiable victims who need protection in the first case but not the second, even though the fallout from drug use can be devastating for the families of addicts. It is not easy for a priest to allow a paedophile to continue his criminal – and sinful – activities without anything more than an exhortation to stop sinning.  But it is necessary. One of the reasons Catholic priests are not allowed to marry is that they have to hear these confessions but cannot give up the secrets they contain – to their wives or anyone else. Just as that social worker had to keep the secrets of those who talked to her in order to write her book, so the priest has to stay silent when he (definitely in the case of Catholics, possibly if they are Protestant) is hearing what terrible things have been done by those who come to them trusting that they can confess and that what they reveal will be heard in confidence. 

Edwin Lerner

My other blog is diaryofatouristguide.blogspot.com

THE ABOLITION OF AUTISM

Autistic - and Down Syndrome? - children

A closer view

I went to a ‘relaxed’ performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Chichester recently. It was given by Flute Theatre, which was formed by Kelly Hunter to work with autistic people who are encouraged to come forward and join in the action with the actors. I even spoke briefly to her before the show: she is obviously very committed to the remit of the company, to involve people on the autism spectrum in performance. I am also reading Brave New World, the title also coming from Shakespeare (Ariel in The Tempest) and it set me thinking about what future there would be for people like this in a future where we control reproduction.

Let us get some terms right first of all. There are three related - and often confused - conditions: 

Asperger’s Syndrome – this is an inability to communicate effectively with other human beings. At its mildest, it is being unable to make small talk and a tendency to drift away and make poor eye contact with others. It is a condition an ex-partner of mine said I have and there may be a little truth in this although, as I have managed to lead a full and independent life, it is not a crippling condition at least at one end of the spectrum. In fact, some women would say of virtually all men that they do not pay enough attention to them.

Autism is a more severe version of the above and autistic people are very reliant on carers, usually their parents. They may have a tremendous memory for numbers (such as the savant Raymond played by Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man); they may bring great joy to parents and siblings, but they struggle to make friends and to live independently. Males are four times more likely than females to have the condition.

Down Syndrome people (previously referred to as Mongols) are instantly recognisable with their flattened faces and thick necks. While autism is an intellectual condition, Down Syndrome is a medical condition which can be identified through prenatal testing and this often results in the abortion of the affected foetus. 

Because autism and Asperger’s are on a spectrum, it is hard to determine accurate numbers, but there are probably around twenty five million people with the condition in the world today and nearly twice as many with Down Syndrome. Autism is a predominantly masculine condition, four to five times more common in males than females, while Down Syndrome is non-sexist, equally prevalent in both genders. Flute Theatre does not seem to distinguish between the conditions and I am sure there were people with all of them amongst those who were invited to take part in the performance – often magically – with the professional actors

There are no pre-natal tests - yet - for autism but the technology has advanced to the stage that you can now test for Down Syndrome children in the first twelve weeks of pregnancy. Unlike, autism, the causes of which are not fully known at present, Down Syndrome is caused by a chromosome (number 21) which can be identified relatively early. Although the test is not completely accurate, it can give parents a pretty good idea if their child will have the condition and, if it indicates that it will, they almost always terminate.

Before we rush to judgement on the Down baby abolishers, we should put ourselves in their position. Would you happily take on the extra commitment and frustration that having a Down child involves? Like most people I would accept and embrace any child I had but might, in the cold light of day, take the option and choose the easy path. This is one of those situations where technology influences decision making. It is hard to opt for ignorance, even harder to choose what was once known as God’s will, later just bad luck.

Dominic Lawson has written movingly about having a Down Syndrome daughter, saying that his desire to protect her meant that he bonded with her much more quickly than with her more ‘normal’ sister. He also said that his wife had expressed the view that those who had indicated that it was a shame that they had not known of her condition in advance – and, by implication, having a temination - could no longer be regarded as their friends. A bit harsh maybe, but the Lawsons would see this as a way of protecting their beloved daughter from those who think she should have been quietly flushed away before being born. 

This is an impossible conundrum and I am thankful that I have never had to consider it. I both sympathise with those who opt for termination and admire those who do not, either by deliberately remaining ignorant or by ignoring the implications of a positive test for Down Syndrome. I do not think it is possible to eliminate or forbid technology which makes us more able to analyse and understand the world around us but I also think that we sometimes know too much for our own good. It is probably just a matter of time before we can predict autism accurately in unborn children and, with people being allowed to abort foetuses that have nothing worse than a hare lip, it is likely that eventually both Down Syndrome and autism will disappear as we strive for ever more perfect pregnancies. 

Which will be a huge shame – and will leave the Flute Theatre crowd out of a job. Enjoy their work while you can, whether you are on the spectrum or have children with the condition or not. 

Edwin Lerner

My other blog is diaryofatouristguide.blogspot.com 

An interesting post by the mother of autistic sons: http://www.autismsupportnetwork.com/news/prenatal-tests-and-autism-mothers-story-4278942

For more on Flute Theatre go to: http://www.flutetheatre.co.uk 

SHOULD WE GIVE TIPS?

A pile of pound coins (photo from pixels.com)

Now I have to declare an interest here.  Working as a tourist guide, I have made a fair proportion of my income from tips. The exact amount varies from a nice bonus at the end of the day to the difference between survival and prosperity. There is, of course, a box in my annual tax return form in which I can (and do) add a figure for ‘extra income’. It is not actually labelled ‘Tips’ but the sub-heading indicates that this is where the honest tax-payer enters his or her tips.  I always fill it in with a - more or less - accurate figure.  

Plenty of people do not.  Tips and other cash earnings are notoriously a part of the black economy and go untaxed. I do not use the phrase ‘tax free’, as some do when referring to cash earnings, because they are not free of tax in theory even if they often are in practice.  This is the main argument against tipping, that it allows some people an unfair advantage over others who have tax deducted at source and have no opportunity to add cash to their pay.

What are the advantages of tipping?  Well, I can honestly say that I am a better tourist guide because of it.  You soon learn which are the comments and jokes which go down well, how long people want to listen and how often they want to be left to sleep (more than you at first imagine).  The potential of earning a tip also makes you remember that you are dealing with real human beings.  They do not care if you are hung-over and fed up and that you do not want to go to a cold, windy Stonehenge for the umpteenth time.  It is their first and probably only time and they expect someone who is being paid to make it worthwhile.

And they are prepared to pay extra for someone who makes the extra effort to bring a group of ancient stones clustered together on Salisbury Plain to life. That is the thing about giving tips. It is entirely voluntary.  When we have a bad day in the tip basket, I will say to a driver who complains that you can take a horse to water but cannot make him drink.  You can conduct the same tour with similar sized groups and the same degree of enthusiasm on consecutive days and on one you will feel like you are the best in the world because the tips were good and on the next you will feel like a failure because they were bad.

I like this uncertainty.  It adds to the interest of the job, to not know exactly how much you are going to earn. It keeps you both on your toes and down to earth.  All the knowledge, qualifications and experience in the world will not compensate for a grumpy attitude or appearance and tipping reminds those who work with paying customers of this important fact.  To put it bluntly, tipping prevents you from disappearing too far up your own backside.

There is no rationality about tipping so it does not appeal to those who like an ordered and predictable world.  People tip taxi drivers but not bus drivers.  They (hopefully) tip tourist guides but not travel agents.  Waiters earn tips but not chefs.  The story goes that the word comes from the initials of the phrase ‘to insure promptness’ from those who were bringing you dinner or drinks, although this is probably a myth, acronyms being very much a twentieth century invention, occasionally turned into ‘backronyms’ of the past.

Whatever its origins, tipping has survived albeit in a patchy way.  Some cultures do not encourage or even allow it and younger people seem less comfortable with it than older ones, although that might well change as they accumulate more disposable income.  The biggest threat to tipping could well be the cashless society. You can add the ‘service charge’ to your restaurant bill (and many places nowadays do it for you) but this is sometimes absorbed by the business and only reaches the waiting staff as part of their basic wages rather than the bonus it is meant to be.  But how can you tip a barman for making you a particularly nice drink if you pay him with a credit card.  As for buskers (and beggars) they face a bleak future in a world in which plastic is king.  I have no desire to live in such a sterile place but Sweden, which is usually a good predictor of the future, is going that way and we could well follow, while the USA remains wedded to cash.

Some people find the whole process of tipping demeaning because it encourages a servile attitude.  I emphatically deny that it does so in my case.  People like a fawning guide as little as a grumpy one and sometimes you have to crack the whip in order to keep the group in shape even if it means missing a tip. 

The ultimate justification for tipping is that it is a way of saying ‘thank you’ in financial terms.  In restaurants, for example, the person eating is probably earning between two and two hundred (maybe two thousand) times what the person serving makes.  The server is performing a service and, if he or she does it well, should be rewarded.  Tipping is sending money directly from the richer man (probably) to the poorer person and, as such, it is wealth redistribution in practice.  It does make for a perfect world but it helps to nudge us towards a fairer one and so, in practical terms it should be encouraged. It is wealth actually ‘trickling down’.

And so, do I give tips to those who provide services for me.  If you get, you have to give.

Edwin Lerner

My other blog is diaryofatouristguide.blogspot.com

ALL TIED UP

Redford in The Old Man and the Gun - with tie loosened

This year we have been worrying about Brexit, climate change and Donald Trump  So what am I writing about at the end of 2018?  The importance of a necktie, of course.

I am one of those men who never quite feel they have finished getting dressed until they have put their tie on.  In practice, however, I rarely wear one, however, unless I have a specific reason to do so such as going to work (increasingly unnecessary) or attending some formal event (increasingly rare).  I have quite a good collection of ties in my wardrobe, two dozen I chose myself plus a few ones leftover work ones and others given as presents which I never actually wear, but which I could not throw away because they remind me of the person who gave them “hideous ties, so kindly meant” as John Betjeman put it in his lovely poem about Christmas, which you can see and hear him reading  on YouTube (link) – wearing a tie.

While they are still considered de rigeur for male politicians, newsreaders and James Bond, the health risks of ties are increasingly making them redundant and even dangerous.  They are said to increase the risks of strokes and to carry germs so are effectively banned in hospitals: you never see a doctor wearing one there nowadays and rarely in a surgery, whereas previous generations regarded it as an essential sign of professionalism and, I suppose, seriousness.  You were just not considered a fully paid up professional unless you wore that stretch of silk or wool, often with the badge of your professional organisation. 

Gradually the old school tie gave way to the fashionable accessory; tie shops began to appear and a sign of seriousness became an excuse for frivolity.  This undermined the point of a tie, which might have been completely plain in its heyday.  A stripe or two would be the nearest it came to raffishness, even these carrying a hint of the old school or professional association which you (or your parents) had to earn the right to wear.  As often as not a tie would signify membership of a club or organisation and would set the wearer apart as a man of distinction, a real big spender as Shirley Bassey would say with a hint that she wanted a piece of the action – in both senses.  A tie equalled money equalled success equalled sex.  The act of undoing it could slow down the process of love-making but maybe that was no bad thing.

Mark Zuckerberg likes to pretend that he is a rebel and makes a virtue of tielessness so he always wears a tee shirt, unless he is taking to politicians and is obviously in trouble. Sir Alex Ferguson, on the other hand, was always seen with a club tie when he was representing Manchester United and managing the team to glory. He was a big spender, although it was not his own money he was parting with when singing players.  Yet, when he was interviewed for a profile in The Times newspaper, he was photographed at home with an open-necked shirt.  Somehow you could not imagine Sir Matt Busby doing the same.  Jose Mourinho used to wear the Chelsea tie but did not at United and stood on the touchline with an open-necked shirt.  Likewise, Prince Charles, who comes from an older more formal generation, is rarely seen tieless in public while his sons usually are, William wearing an open-necked shirt when he takes his children to school.

That seems to be the fashion today, a smart suit and shirt but no tie.  Let us stick to the basics and do away with all unnecessary items if we want to be taken seriously seems to be the message.  If you have to wear a tie, the way you do so sends out a signal.  Leaving it loose around your neck shows that you are in but not of the establishment. In films actors adopt this style to show they are portraying someone working inside the system who is nevertheless naturally rebellious.  Although they have to hold down a job and wear the uniform, they have not fully given in to the tyranny of conformity.  Billy Crudup tried this in the film Jackie when he portrayed the journalist but it seemed wrong to me.  The real Jackie Kennedy was impeccably stylish and would never have tolerated a man wearing his tie so sloppily.  Similarly Robert Redford does this in his film The Old Man and the Gun in which he portrays a compulsive but kindly bank-robber who uses an unthreatening method to grab the loot, with the tie done up properly when he is robbing but left loose when he is off duty.  This does not quite work for me, the character he is portraying being an exploiter of the system rather than a rebel within it - but we get the point.  The suit and tie are a uniform not an expression of who he really is.

One of my sisters-in-law says that, if you are going to wear a tie, you should at least do it up properly.  I agree with her.  However, I do have to leave the top button undone when wearing one.  I have a rather thick neck and, in order to wear a ready-made shirt of the correct size for the rest of my torso, I find the collar uncomfortably tight if it is done up.  To compensate for this, I tie a Windsor knot which is wider and hides the undone button. Ian Fleming wrote that his hero James Bond thought that the Windsor knot was the mark of a ‘cad’ (the last time I can remember that word being used without irony) but I disagree.  I think it is the one useful and worthwhile thing that frivolous and self-important man did for the world, giving us the thick-necked men a way of wearing what is really a totally unnecessary item of male clothing.

Edwin Lerner

My other blog is diaryofatouristguide.blogspot.com

SHOULD WE WEAR THE POPPY?

Samuel Johnson – a hero of mine – said that every man thinks meanly of himself for not having been a soldier.  There is something about wearing a uniform and putting your life on the line that appeals to men – and women – on a very fundamental level, even if we are intellectually and morally peace-loving types. So many of us, myself included, wear a poppy to honour those who have risked or given their lives, even if we disapprove of some of the wars they have fought in.

Is it right to do this?  I know it is a little late to ask the question, as poppy month is passing, but I was thinking about this when I wore mine and stood for two minutes in memory of those who gave their lives in the First World War and subsequent conflicts. Prior to 1914, soldiers were a romantic but not a respectable lot and you might have admired them from afar but did not want them anywhere near your daughters (or wives).  As is often pointed out, wearing a military uniform involves long periods of boredom followed by short periods of terror. When the fighting was over and the old soldiers were not much use they were often ignored and became destitute. Even today the homeless are disproportionately made up for former servicemen who could not cope once they took off the uniform and lost the routine of a life wearing it.

The money you spend on your poppy - around £50 million pounds a year in Britain - goes to service charities to help people cope with life after they can no longer fight.  There are emotional scars as well as wounds and few people can begrudge a pound or two to help those who have fought even if they did so in wars that were unnecessary and even immoral.  The first rule of the armed services is that you obey orders and war would be impossible if every soldier was allowed to debate the ethics of the conflicts they were involved in and the actions they were told to take.

In the First World War, after which the whole idea of poppy wearing started, millions of men did just what they were told and went over the top into the face of machine gun fire which cut them down to die in agony in the mud, many without having got near to or fired a shot at the faceless enemy.  German machine gunners, incidentally, had a virtually zero chance of survival if their positions were breached – even if they put up their hands in surrender. 

Field Marshall Douglas Haig is often cast as the villain of the piece, sending thousands of men to their deaths in a battlefield where obedience, class distinction and the fear of disgrace combined with an industrialised form of killing (those machine guns) combined to leave the bodies of around a million British men behind in the killing fields.  Yet it is unlikely that, had Haig been replaced by AN Other general, the casualties would have been significantly different.  He was simply a product of his time and regarded casualties as a necessary cost of victory.  He expected his generals to produce long lists of fatalities as a sign of their commitment to achieving this victory.  

Certainly Haig had little tolerance for those who might now be identified as suffering from shell shock, a concept he would not have recognised or distinguished from cowardice. Those who refused to fight or turned around in the face of almost certain death could expect little mercy from either their officers or fellow soldiers and only recently have they too been acknowledged in the war commemorations. There is still a feeling that a soft attitude to those who failed to do their duty would have made victory impossible and, what in the end is the difference between shellshock and cowardice?  Fo those who overcame their fears and doubts they were essentially the same.

These are all discussions worth having but not ones you can indulge in with a poppy seller.  They just want your pound (or more) in exchange for the symbol of sacrifice.  Virtually everyone who has worn a uniform buys and wears a poppy in honour of their comrades and many of those, like myself, who have never come near to fighting in a war (thank God) will do so out of respect for those who have done so, partly out of a lingering Johnsonian guilt at not having been called up.  

For public figures poppy wearing is virtually compulsory, so all politicians, television presenters and even footballers have them pinned to their clothing for weeks in advance of Remembrance Sunday.  In order to show that I am not going to be browbeaten into wearing one, I usually leave it late and put mine on the day before Remembrance Sunday. For public figures failure - or outright refusal - to wear one risks the sort of pressure to conform which is right next door to bullying and which is itself next door to the kind of totalitarianism which we were supposed to be fighting against in the World Wars. This seems to be getting stronger the farther we are away from the actual fighting. It is a century since the First World War ended and none of the fighters are around to remember what is was like, but that does not make it easy for anyone to go poppyless in public. 

Or almost anyone.  The footballer Nemanja Matic, who grew up in Serbia, remembered the bombs falling near his childhood home and, knowing that it was British and American airmen who were dropping them, without putting themselves in significant danger, he chose not to have a poppy sewn into his Manchester United shirt.  He explained his decision with dignity and restraint, which was very brave in its own non-violent way.  I chose to wear the poppy and stand in silence in memory of those who had fought and fallen, even though I may have had reservations about what they were fighting for.  Matic chose not to and was perfectly free to do so.  That freedom to choose is what those soldiers were fighting and often sacrificing their lives for after all.

Edwin Lerner

My other blog is diaryofatourisguide.blogspot.com

HOW FAR CAN FIFTY-FIFTY GO?

Lambeth Town Hall - usually thought of as a bastion of equality

Lambeth Council is in a spot of bother.  Some of its employees have alleged – apparently with justification – that black people who work for what was always considered one of the most right-on and progressive councils are permanently stuck in low-grade jobs while the top posts go to white workers, who enjoy all the perks and privileges that go with higher-level management positions.  In the meantime an Asian-American called Michael Wang is suing some elite colleges which did not offer him a place but instead made offers to African-Americans with significantly worse grades.  To put it crudely, black-skinned Americans were benefiting from quotas while yellow-skinned ones were not.  Wang’s case may well torpedo the whole project of affirmative action, which has been challenged for some time by those who are losing out from it.  

This all raises the question of how far fifty-fifty equality can go.  This is my name for a phenomenon which particularly applies to women who complain about under-representation in art galleries and board rooms.  It highlights the difference between equality of opportunity – everyone being given a fair shot at achieving success regardless of their skin colour or gender – and equality of reward in which places at elite institutions and jobs are handed out in a way that reflects the proportions which exist in society.  Hence fifty-fifty, which reflects gender ratios, although things would obviously be different when it comes to race.

Equality of reward can only go so far.  In Silicon Valley, the great majority of top positions are held by men – many of them of Asian origin – for the simple reason that they seem to be better at thinking up schemes which people are prepared to pay good money for. Things move so fast in the world of computer technology that there is simply no time to worry about gender and racial balances.  Anyone who spends too much time worrying about them will be left behind in the race to invent the latest app.  Incidentally, the undoubtedly right wing Steve Bannon has complained about the high proportion of Asian people in computer companies, although I doubt he was thinking of the rights of African-Americans when he did so. 

Equality of reward only works in one direction. Feminists never complain that women are vastly under-represented in the bad things in life.  In prisons, for example, there are very few female inmates, simply because men commit the vast majority of murders and robberies and virtually all rapes.  The equality of reward feminist seems to be saying that they are entitled to half of the good stuff in life by right but are quite happy for men to dominate the bad stuff on merit - or demerit.  

On the subject of incarceration, one of the most well-known and demining statistics of our time says that an African-American man is more likely to go to prison than to university.  This is not, I hasten to add, because they are inherently worse people than whites, but because they have been dealt a worse hand in life.  If you have two pairs you will never – or very rarely – beat someone who is holding a full house.  Equality of reward in the form of affirmative action was an attempt to redress this imbalance but, when it comes to handing out a prison sentence, the severity of the crime should always decide the type of punishment.  (Again this does not deny that many justice systems are inherently racist in the way they charge and condemn black people.)

My preference is instinctively for equality of opportunity and I often use the example of black footballers to support it.  I can remember the days when they were routinely booed by the crowds.  I should have walked out and complained but, to my shame, I never did. These players had to endure far worse and more blatant discrimination than female artists or aspiring intellectuals of any colour and yet, within a generation, they have shown that they can play as well as or better than their white counterparts and now make up a healthy minority and often a majority, of most successful teams. Booing black footballers today would be absurd - as well as offensive.  Sports teams are the ultimate meritocracies and people of colour have shown that they can compete as equals in them without having to rely on quotas to achieve parity with whites.

I say sports teams are meritocracies but the same cannot be said of sports clubs where black faces are still rare in the boardrooms and on the coaching benches.  In these places, more subtle pressures are brought to bear and old-fashioned racism still triumphs over meritocracy in what are laughably called the ‘upper’ levels of the game. There might be an argument for at least exposing a lack of equality of reward in these cases.

I think you have to accept that some people will tend do better at certain things in life.  Men tend to be more successful entrepreneurs and inventors probably because they like to fiddle with things (and not only parts of their anatomy).  Women tend to be better at looking after young children because men often do not have the patience to do so.  It is important to distinguish between a generalisation and an assumption here.  There are plenty of successful women entrepreneurs and some men who are perfectly competent at looking after little children.  You should never assume that a gender or a skin colour absolutely determines your role in life but it will inevitably have some effect on it. Quotas can only go so far to counteract this. 

Edwin Lerner

____________

For more on the Lambeth case go to: theguardian.com/society/2018/oct/01/staff-accuse-lambeth-council-of-institutional-racism

An article on Asian Americans and affirmative action can be found at: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/10/15/the-rise-and-fall-of-affirmative-action

My other blog is diaryofatouristguide.blogspot.com

TOO MUCH OF A GOOD THING?

The window display in a referendum shop, Scotland 

Referendums – referenda? – seem to be all the rage at the moment.  I am writing this in Scotland where the nationalists, far from accepting the 2014 choice by Scots to stay in the UK, are pressing for another vote. Presumably, if they get and lose that one, they will press for another – and another – until they get the result they want, when they will suddenly lose enthusiasm for the concept of asking people their opinion. 

A similar problem exists with the European Union which we voted on a couple of years ago.  Several people are now suggesting a second referendum on the subject with the hope of reversing the first vote.  The trouble with that idea would be that you would have to offer people not two choices but three – stay in, leave with a negotiated settlement the like of which the government has proposed, or crash out without paying a penny and saving some £40 billion pounds in the process.  Plenty of people favour the last option and would not accept the result of a vote which did not offer it.  The nightmare scenario would then be, say, 45% for staying in, 30% for leaving with a settlement and 25% for crashing out.  This is quite possible and would leave a majority wanting to leave - but not agreeing how – with the biggest single vote for staying in.  No politician would ever allow that scenario to arise and leaving one of the three options out would effectively disenfranchise a large part of the electorate so a second referendum is, I would have thought, very unlikely to happen.

In fact, to be precise, it would be a third referendum on Europe, not a second.  I am old enough to have voted in both the first and second ones, choosing to stay on both occasions, being on the winning side (comfortably) in the first and the losing side (narrowly) in the second. The original referendum was in 1975, the very first time the British people had encountered the phenomenon of voting on a single issue.  It seemed quite jolly at the time and, even if the second vote was marred by immigration scares and outright racism, it did at least get people to exercise their franchise in larger numbers than they had ever done before.

But you can have too much of a good thing.  Voting is about decision making not about detail: him or her for office; this party or that; in or out of Europe, proportional representation or first past the post. Then you leave the detail to the politicians, which is what they are paid for after all. Maybe we can have another either/or vote when the dust has settled and we can see if breaking with the EU has worked and we remain prosperous and comfortable. If it leads to huge queues of lorries on the M2, vegetables rotting in the fields and the NHS in even greater trouble because of a lack of workers, we might want to go cap in hand to ask if we can come back, please. Otherwise, we need to accept the first vote and get on with the process.

The elephant in the voting booth when it comes to allowing the people to decide, of course, is capital punishment.  The accepted wisdom is that, if you allowed the people to decide, they would vote for its restoration and bring back hanging.  Yet there is not the slightest possibility of that actually happening.

Why not? Not only have we managed to create a relatively safe society without resorting to executing criminals but we have lost the means and the will to use the death penalty.  The USA still has it and still executes people in certain states. Yet it is one of the most violent countries in the world with a far higher murder rate than that of any state which does not execute people.  The Second Amendment, which allows the carrying of weapons, leads to their use when minor confrontations turn deadly and to hideous unstoppable massacres of the innocent by nutcases whose lives have gone wrong. 

In contrast the UK, in or out of Europe, is a relatively peaceful place.  There are acid attacks and knife crimes but we trust the police to get on top of these problems and maintain some sort of law and order.  There is no evidence that restoring the death penalty would effectively deter crimes of this sort.

And what if we did bring it back?  We would need lawyers, judges and doctors to argue for and implement it and there is no sign that they have any enthusiasm for bringing back state killing.  How would it be done anyway? There are no trained hangmen around; lethal injection would almost certainly be challenged successfully in the courts as cruel and unusual punishment; the electric chair is obsolete. Firing squads? The heart sinks at the thought of getting enthusiastic amateur volunteer killers to shoot the condemned. 

The great majority of lawyers would refuse to argue in favour of the death penalty, judges would flinch at the thought of donning that black cap and not many doctors would want to become involved in the process. Any professionals who facilitated capital punishment would become known as death-mongers and find that invitations to fashionable cocktail and dinner parties rapidly dried up.  While they lost hope of professional advancement and acceptance, there would be armies of volunteers who would oppose efforts to use capital punishment and make life a misery for those who tried to enforce it.  Never underestimate the power of peer pressure.  The chattering classes will not support the death penalty so it is not coming back – ever.

Get over it, death penalty restorers.  It is a hopeless cause and, while there may be enthusiasm amongst the general public for its return, the people who would have to put it into practice are simply not there. Restoring the death penalty is one option that will never be put to the people in a referendum.  Thank God.

Edwin Lerner.  (My other blog is diaryofatouristguide.blogspot.com)