Saving The World, From A Swiss Fortress

Samuel Hooper1 Comment

The wait is finally over.

 

What do Bono, Eric Schmidt, Matt Damon, Jamie Dimon and David Cameron all have in common?

No, U2 are not auditioning for a new band member. The answer is even more thrilling – the World Economic Forum 2014 is convening for their annual gathering in Davos, Switzerland. The tired, the poor and the huddled masses can rest easy because these luminaries, together with Benjamin Netanyahu, the CEO of Wal-Mart and the King and Queen of Belgium have arrived in full pomp and splendour, to do…whatever it is exactly that they do there every year.

From the WEF homepage:

Profound political, economic, social and, above all, technological forces are transforming our lives, communities and institutions. Rapidly crossing geographic, gender and generational boundaries, they are shifting power from traditional hierarchies to networked heterarchies. Yet the international community remains focused on crisis rather than strategically driven in the face of the trends, drivers and opportunities pushing global, regional and industry transformation.

“The Reshaping of the World: Consequences for Society, Politics and Business” is therefore the thematic focus of the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2014. Our aim is to develop the insights, initiatives and actions necessary to respond to current and emerging challenges.

If this sounds to you like something you might hear in a second-tier business school lecture or the opening paragraphs of a particularly bad Tom Friedman column, you would be forgiven your mistake. It’s the year 2014 and our moral, intellectual and financial betters have apparently only just come to the realisation that technological forces are transforming our lives, communities and institutions.

Thank goodness for the sagacity of these wise men (and they still mostly are men), who alone among us have perceived that some kind of shift has taken place in our national economies and personal behavioural patterns since the internet and these fancy cell phones popped into being. It is astounding to witness how some of the brightest, busiest and most successful businesspeople, politicians and artists can sit and listen to so much meaningless garbage, and then come back a year later under the powerful spell of collective amnesia to do it all over again.

And seriously – “networked heterarchies”? All outward evidence suggests that there is but one solitary networked heterarchy that has gained and consolidated power in recent years, and that is the one currently booked into a Swiss convention centre to discuss just how wonderful networked heterarchies are, and to divide up the spoils of another bumper year.

In sessions with meaningless titles such as “The New Digital Context”, the world will be put to rights in Davos 2014 – and any outstanding items from the Bilderberg 2013 agenda will no doubt followed up and neatly resolved by those people privileged to be invited to both.

Here’s Klaus Schwab (what better name could there be for the leader of such an event?), the Founder and Executive Chairman of the WEF, welcoming the distinguished delegates to the annual shindig. And yes, he does have a symphony orchestra on the stage behind him. Pity them.

 

At least Schwab has the decency to admit at around the 1 minute 20 second mark that the whole affair is really about providing an opportunity for the global super-elite to relax, do business deals and network. He puts it somewhat more prettily than this, but the meaning is quite clear. This alpine convocation is like a gold-plated version of LinkedIn, with extra snow.

Cardinal Peter Turkson of the Pontifical Council for Peace and Justice also traveled to Davos, and read aloud a message from Pope Francis. Given the Pope’s well known thoughts about conspicuous displays of wealth and false displays of public piety, one must wonder whether poor Cardinal Turkson found himself having to ditch his prepared remarks and speak extemporaneously for fear of being run out of town for speaking truth to power.

On a personal level, I just don’t quite get it. For most of my career I have worked as a management consultant and project manager. But when I went on vacation, I left my work and all the trappings of my professional life behind at home. I didn’t walk the streets of Paris or the hills of the Lake District pretending to still be running IT projects or anything else to do with my line of work. And so if the shining people in Davos wants to have a good shindig in snowy Switzerland, I would have a lot more respect for them if they would just say so, and spend their time skiing rather than propagating the farcical myth that they are bringing their unique professional skills to bear on the problems of the world.

And yet every year we go through this worn-out pretense that the greatest minds of our generation are sequestering themselves in the mountains to hatch new plans to save the world, when really we all know they are there to slap themselves on the back for another successful year, drink glühwein and try to avoid being isolated in a corner and engaged in interminable, pious conversation by Gordon Brown.

So I have a proposal. Let’s test the mettle of these great, good and benevolent people who claim to care so much for us small folk. Let’s hold the World Economic Forum 2015 somewhere different, somewhere cheaper, calculate the difference in cost and give that sum of money to a front-line charity picked at random from a hat.

Let’s hold the World Economic Forum 2015 in my hometown of Harlow, Essex.

Superb transport links. Al Gore and Bono can hop on the 501 bus from Stansted Airport and stay at the new Holiday Inn Express.
Superb transport links. Al Gore and Bono can hop on the 501 bus from Stansted Airport and stay at the new Holiday Inn Express.

 

Marissa Mayer, Eric Schmidt and Mark Zuckerberg can network and negotiate new business deals at this conveniently located Wetherspoons pub.
Marissa Mayer, Eric Schmidt and Mark Zuckerberg can network and negotiate new business deals at this conveniently located Wetherspoons pub.

 

Concrete jungle where dreams are made, oh, there's nothing you can't do.
Concrete jungle where dreams are made, oh, there’s nothing you can’t do.

 

I’ll see you there!

 

With Water Cannon In London, The Police State Inches Closer

Samuel Hooper2 Comments

Coming soon to a demonstration near you.

 

Coming soon to a British town square near you: trigger-happy and power-corrupted police officers, newly armed with water cannon, ready to hose you down with a cooling blast of high powered icy water if the authorities do not approve of the cause or tone of your protest.

The Association of Chief Police Officers, or ACPO, is submitting a request to the Home Secretary, Theresa May, to authorise the use of water cannon in any town or city across England and Wales. They are doing this, they insist, to bolster their ability to control anticipated protests from what they call “ongoing and potential future austerity measures”.

The Guardian reports on this unprecedented move against the public:

The Association of Chief Police Officers says that the need to control continued protests “from ongoing and potential future austerity measures” justifies the introduction of water cannon across Britain for the first time.

The London mayor, Boris Johnson, has already announced a consultation on the introduction of water cannon on to the streets of London ready for use by this summer.

A new Acpo/College of Policing briefing paper makes clear that chief constables across England and Wales have also been asked to discuss water cannon with their police and crime commissioners and “it is anticipated that the home secretary will be approached in early 2014 in respect of water cannon authorisation”.

This attempt by ACPO to raise the spectre of an implausible large-scale breakdown in public order is complete and utter nonsense, a risible and transparent excuse to bring draconian tools of crowd control to the streets of a generally calm and peaceful liberal democracy.

This is not Ukraine or Greece. And even if we were, like Ukraine, in the grip of large-scale civil disturbances, there is every chance that the fault would rest primarily with the fictitious government and not the fictitious protesters; so why further tilt the odds even further in favour of government power to suppress dissent by arming the police with water cannon?

But the really chilling disclosure comes next:

The police envisage using their water cannon to “exert control from a distance and critically to provide a graduated and flexible application of force ranging from spray to forceful water jets. The mere presence of water cannon can have a deterrent effect and experience from Northern Ireland demonstrates that water cannon are often deployed without being employed.”

Behold the power of the deterrent effect on freedom of speech and assembly. The ACPO will make it widely known that they are purchasing some new, state-of-the-art water cannon, weapons capable of blasting 9000 litres of water into a crowd in just five minutes at potentially deadly force, and sit back and watch the anticipated protests about this or that suddenly fail to materialise – or so the theory goes. But here the enemies of civil liberties may have underestimated the level of public opposition to their scheme.

We may rarely give a second thought to the scenes of plucky, unfortunate foreign demonstrators being blasted off their feet by high power jets of water often shown in television news reports from overseas, but if such a thing were to begin happening in Trafalgar Square or in the shadow of Parliament it would be another matter entirely. The British people will not abide a bully.

Scraping the barrel for recent examples of civil disorder to justify their unprecedented request, the chief police constables produced three very weak cases:

[David Shaw, West Mercia Chief Constable] cites three occasions in the past 10 years when police commanders would have considered using water cannon on the streets of London had they been available.

He names them as the Countryside Alliance demonstration in Parliament Square in 2010, the Gaza demonstrations against the Israeli embassy in 2008-09 and “potentially” the student protests of 2010, when specific locations were targeted.

They would also have been considered during the August riots of 2011 but he concedes they would have had only limited impact on the “fast, agile disorder” seen then.

So apparently farmers and bolshy students number among the most grave threats to law and order currently on the radar of the British police. How heartening it is to know that police chiefs up and down the country are so in tune with the fears and concerns of the communities that they purportedly serve.

More ridiculous still, ACPO themselves admit that water cannon would have been entirely useless in confronting the most recent case of serious civil disturbance in Britain, the August 2011 riots, because the looting and damaging was too fleet-footed and agile. It turns out that people intent on smashing and grabbing merchandise from the windows of electronic goods stores tend not to stand still at the scene of their crime, link arms and form orderly ranks so as to be efficiently mowed down by a hastily-scrambled water cannon.

So what is this really all about? One explanation could be that ACPO are politically agitating, and trying to send a message of their disapproval of coalition austerity policies to the public and their elected representatives, essentially saying “we told you that cutting government spending would lead to chaos and disorder and we were right; now we have to take the draconian step of procuring water cannon to prevent the country from sliding into anarchy”.

This is one plausible possibility – as we have seen only too recently with the Andrew Mitchell “plebgate” scandal, there are those in the police force with very hardened agendas who would stop at nothing to discredit or cast doubt on the performance of Conservative ministers.

But in truth, a more convincing explanation is that the police just really fancy having these new toys to scare and intimidate people, that they have decided that building good community relations with the public and doing the hard work of policing large scale events just isn’t worth the effort when they can just bully the public into cowed obedience much more easily.

They likely pursued this strategy in the belief that vague and nebulous references to potential future instances of moderate civil disorder would be sufficient prompting for Theresa May to roll over and grant their wish in her desire to appear tough on the issue of law and order. The British public can only hope that she has the political courage and commitment to civil liberties to tell ACPO to back off – but based on her record, the signs are not encouraging.

Unwarranted plans to bully and intimidate by the ACPO.
Unwarranted plans to bully and intimidate by the ACPO.

 

The saving grace of this worrying affair will be the newly-created police and crime commissioners, now in place throughout many parts of the country – officials whose primary job it is to advocate for the local population, highlight their concerns and see them addressed by the police forces.

This brazen move by ACPO will be a good early test of the new commissioners. Do they have real teeth, and the strength to dig in their heels and make the police chiefs focus on local priorities rather than their own private Orwellian ambitions, or will they merely act as a fawning rubber stamp to power?

We may soon find out.

Best Thing Of The Day

Samuel HooperLeave a comment

I know it is not nice to laugh at the misfortune of others. But when people bring misfortune upon themselves by showering themselves with boiling water in a cack-handed attempt to emulate demonstrations by television weather reporters, and their tribulations are documented in a series of videos on YouTube, I think we are all absolved from blame:

 

Q. “That was really cool! Did you burn yourself?”

A. “A little bit, yeah”.

Of course, new videos are already emerging, making fun of those who have injured themselves in the name of science:

 

Best Thing Of The Day.

Defying The People On Europe

Samuel Hooper2 Comments
Not so fast. First we need to preserve democracy by translating the referendum question into Cornish.
Not so fast. First we need to preserve democracy by translating the referendum question into Cornish.

 

Labour peers in the House of Lords have filed more than fifty amendments to the EU Referendum Bill as it makes its way through the committee stage in a transparent and bold-faced attempt to filibuster the bill, defy the clear wishes of the British people and to save their hapless leader, Ed Miliband, from having to take a firm and unambiguous stance on the issue.

The Telegraph reports:

David Cameron’s plan to give the public a vote on membership of the European Union could be defeated within weeks after Labour peers tabled dozens of outlandish amendments that could halt its progress in Parliament.

More than 50 amendments were tabled for the committee stage of the EU Referendum Bill, including holding a petition of a million voters, posing the questions in Cornish and giving prisoners the vote, the Telegraph has learnt.

As a private member’s Bill, it has a limited time to pass through Parliament. It can only be debated on Fridays and must be approved by both houses by February 28.

Dirty parliamentary tricks such as this have been used by all sides at one time or another, but it is dispiriting to see them deployed against a bill that merely seeks to return power to the people on an important issue of sovereignty such as this. There is no need to wait for a petition of a million votes before proceeding, we know that a vast number of people support a referendum. Neither do we need to pose the referendum question in Cornish, Klingon or any other obscure language. And topics such as the re-enfranchisement of prisoners currently serving custodial sentences deserve their own hearing and debate, not just to be used as ammunition in childish political games.

I remain genuinely torn on the issue of Europe. Whilst I see the EU in its present form as nothing but a scandalously wasteful talking shop in pursuit of a closer union never formally sanctioned by the citizens of any of its member states, the issue of a potential British withdrawal would be very thorny. Though none of the worst-case scenarios peddled by the pro-European scaremongers are anything near accurate (all of our trade with the EU vanishing overnight, sudden diminution on the world stage among others), there are real questions that need resolving around the realistically achievable options for future relations between a seceded Britain and the remainder of the EU. At its most basic, we need to know the terms on which Britain can continue to remain a part of the common market and free trade area whilst subscribing to as little as possible of everything else that the EU has taken it upon itself to do.

When they are not busy accusing eurosceptics of being little Englanders or xenophobes, those on the pro-European side of the fence are forever issuing mea culpas, saying that of course the European Union has flaws and needs reform, but that the only way to tackle this is from the inside as a fully engaged player. But the day to press for such reform never seems to come, or when it does come Britain finds that her interests on a key point do not align with other key players in the union, resulting either in gridlock and inaction or another painful debit from the “give” column in the give and take of our membership, the price, we are told, of being part of the club.

I am exceedingly unwilling to spend another year, yet alone another 5-year stretch between general elections, being fobbed off in this entirely predictable manner. Yes, what happens if Britain crosses the Rubicon and votes to leave the EU is of tremendous importance for our country, and those on the “leave the EU” side need to flesh out this part of their argument more fully in order to be more convincing to those such as myself who are genuinely torn. But the fact that these questions have not yet been fully addressed is no reason to delay the referendum, in the same way that contempt and distrust of the British people is also not a legitimate reason.

I often get the sense from the words and actions of the Labour Party that they are convinced that they know what is best for me far better than I do myself. But nowhere is this self-righteous superiority combined with ruthless determination to promote their vision of Britain over all others more evident than in the current manoeuverings of the Labour peers in the House of Lords.

The people deserve their say, and if Ed Miliband cannot muster the courage to take a public stance one way or another, he should at least call off his ennobled lackeys and prevent them from impeding the wheels of British democracy any further.