Causes of Violence

Thanks to JuliaM (she reads CiF so I don't have to), a link to an article in The Guardian by George Lavender, on why the new gang injunctions won't work.

He's saying that these things have been tried before in the US and didn't work, and that's a valid contribution to the argument: I don't know if he's right or wrong, but the point deserves consideration. However, some of his secondary arguments made me suck my thumb and start rocking in my chair. In fact, the piece is full of premium, Grade A 'ressi-zum' whinging and entitlement wheedling. Try this:

Gang injunctions have also been used to justify increased police surveillance and harassment of communities of colour. All those named on the injunctions in Oakland have been black or Latino, and has lead [sic] critics of gang injunctions to describe them as "legalised racial profiling".

If members of a certain racial group commit crimes, it is not racist to say so. If 99% of terrorist incidents are committed by dark-skinned, bearded men between 18 and 30, then it isn't racist to ignore white female pensioners in your searches; in fact, it is common sense and mandatory for the effective use of limited resources. If all the Oakland injunctions name black or Latino people, perhaps that's a hint as to where the problem lies? (Clue: it's not with the people charged with clearing it up.)

Or this:

Community organisations in California say that injunctions are an ineffective and inappropriate response to social problems, because they fail to address the fundamental causes of violence such as poverty and unemployment.

Can't we lay this one to rest? Poverty and unemployment do NOT cause people to be violent. I have had no money at some points in my life, and I have been unemployed. At no time did I ever think of committing acts of violence because of it. That's because I am not a violent person, and the thought of hurting someone - or even their property - for whatever reason is, and always will be, abhorrent. Violent people are violent, whether rich or poor. To say that people become violent through poverty and enemployment is a massive insult to all those poor people who continue to live blameless and peaceful lives, despite all the acknowledged difficulties.

Or this:

"Our communities will only become safer places when we have secure incomes, when our basic needs for housing, nutrition and health care are met, and when we believe our lives matter", says Manuel Fontaine of Plan for a Safer Oakland.

Here we get to the crux of the issue. Pay us money, house, clothe and feed us, tell us we are important, and we might start to behave.

Please note: I am not saying that poverty and unemployment are not a blight on someone's life, and should not be alleviated if possible. In an ideal world, we would all have nice, secure jobs and a decent income. And some people would still behave like rats in a cage. The roots of anti-social behaviour are far deeper than mere cash, plasma tellies and 'nothing to do'. Targeting and removing the worst offenders might only be a sticking-plaster, but it's a start. Don't forget that the principal victims of gang violence are usually also poor and disadvantaged. Who is speaking up for them?

How Aid Can Work

A news story supporting capitalism from, surprisingly, the Beeb:

This is precisely the impact that the yellow-shirted sanitation marketing team from International Development Enterprises (IDE) were hoping they would have.

Cambodians' toilet habits are causing serious problems - and gently suggesting changes has not worked.

Most of this small south-east Asian country's people live in rural areas - and only one in five of them have access to a toilet.

In fact, people are twice as likely to have a mobile phone.

Aid agency gives villagers a toilet. Result - they come back later to find it is being used for storage, or to house animals.

Enterprise company visits village, tells them why they need toilets, and offers to sell them a simple and cheap design. Result - the villagers are queueing up to get one. Rival companies are set up, reverse-engineer the toilets and start up in competition. Toilets become a status symbol.

Aid encourages dependency and stifles economic activity. Thinking outside the box (sorry) stimulates growth and gets results. It's a chain reaction.

All together: yes we CAN.

The Elimination of Poverty

I have always had a lot of time for Frank Field. Ever since he was appointed by Tony Blair as the minister for 'thinking the unthinkable' and was then roundly ignored and sidelined, I have felt that he was one of the very few people in Labour's ranks who understood how society really worked, and was prepared to say unfashionable things to make his case. He's the very opposite of a woolly liberal - tough-minded and clear-thinking, even if he is on the Left.

Yesterday, David Cameron announced the setting up of an Independent Review on Poverty and Life Chances and, to his credit, asked a Labour MP - Frank Field - to lead it. I think Frank will be an ideal leader of a review which needs to get down to basics and unpick the current disastrous situation, where Labour poured money into alleviating (the target was 'ending') poverty, but we ended up with a society where the divide between the poor and the rich was wider in 2010 than it was in 1997. He has written an article in today's Telegraph where he sets out some thoughts.

His first point, and one which has been made here and in many other places, is that if you measure poverty in the way that Labour does, where an income below 60% of the national average marks you as 'poor', then the elimination of poverty is a mathematical impossibility. As you lift people's incomes, so the national average goes up, and you are back where you started. As Field says:

Any candidate sitting GCSE maths should be able to explain that raising everybody above a set percentage of median income is rather like asking a cat to catch its own tail. As families are raised above the target level of income, the median point itself rises. Not surprisingly, therefore, no country in the free world has managed to achieve this objective, not even in those Scandinavian countries whose social models many of us admire.

He recommends a focus on, not the simple and rather clumsy measure of raw income, but on the non-monetary factors such as how easy it is for a poor person to "climb the ladder towards prosperity". He concludes:

If the review is successful, the debate over poverty will give way to a dynamic approach that looks at how we ensure that each individual is able to achieve their best self. And taxpayers will be in a position to judge whether government expenditure – at whatever level – is geared to this outcome.

Smart move by iDave. A Tory - or even a tainted LibDem - couldn't get away with mentioning taxpayer value, for example, without calling down the screaming hordes of lefties in the media and the BBC. I will watch this one with interest.