The paradox at the heart of neoliberal forms of government cannot be understood without considering Steven Lukes' three dimensions of power [P3F], and in particular his concept of the 'third face':

"The securing of willing compliance"

Governments of both colours wish to camouflage the fact that government is now fully integrated into neoliberal globalization, and the tenets of the Washington Consensus.

There are at least four policy arenas in which this smokescreen plays a key role of obfuscating the public's perceptions of policy:

1. Maintaining the pretence of democracy, and in particular the appearance of supporting local democracy   [CE];



2. Paying lip service to, and demonstrating a bogus concern about, equality   [NEP];



3. The degradation of education into mere training   [ET];  [CTS]   [RP]



4. Keeping the creeping privatisation of public sector services 'off the radar' [DrG]   [NHSL]   [PFI];



5. Using the so-called 'War on Terror' to provide the justification for the 'Police State Britain' agenda   [PSB]   [WoT].

Mention must also be made of a fifth force working for quiescence: the consumer culture

Power: A Radical View

'Power has Three Faces'

In the first dimension, power is clearly visible in decision-making processes, where A exercises power over B when A's policy preferences, reflecting A's subjective interests, prevail over B's ...

The second dimension of power consists in [the] ability to control the agenda, to decide what gets decided - and what doesn't ...

The third face of power is not directly visible, because the securing of willing compliance to domination does not require an explicit exercise of power.

However, the mechanisms of such power (domination) are empirically accessible. They may involve the furthering of the material interests of the dominated within certain limits, as part of a class compromise, or they may involve the inculcation of ideologies that bring the dominated to accept the power structure of society as the "natural order of things" or as being divinely ordained and established.

In both cases, which are not mutually exclusive, the "true interests" of the dominated are obscured; and the dominated are misled to act contrary to their real interests, chief among them being, one may argue, an interest in being NOT so dominated and in having more freedom to live according to "the dictates of one's own nature and judgment." ...

Quoted from: Power has three faces, Review posted by Humblebee (Morgantown, WV USA), September 23, 2008

[Amazon.com]

"Titillation and Diversion": The Role of the Corporate Media in Thatcherite Britain

Leveson Inquiry: tabloids are 'completely outdated', Max Mosley claims

Sir Philip Green will not be appearing before the Leveson Inquiry.

Representatives of Goldman Sachs and Vodafone will not be appearing.   [Ind]

Those responsible for the Southern Cross care homes fiasco have also been spared any investigation by the corporate media.

All have been safe from the 'dark arts'.

The corporate press only 'investigates' behaviours and lifestyles which come under the Murdoch heading of 'titillation and diversion'.

That's titillation as in investigations into the alleged quirky lifestyles of so-called celebrities, and 'diversion' as in we're not going to rock the corporate boat by informing the hoi polloi as to the extent of corporate tax dodging.

The wider issue is the massive educational failure which leaves pupils without the attitudes and abilities which go to make up crap detection: a habit of mind which would put 'news' papers like The Sun out of business.

Mr Mosley said that during the court case it had emerged that Neville Thurlbeck, the News of the World’s chief reporter, had told one of the prostitutes to try to film him doing a Nazi salute.

A test recording made by Mr Thurlbeck had been found, said Mr Mosley, and as he showed the woman how to use a pinhole camera: “Thurlbeck said ‘when you get him to do the Sieg Heil, get him to stand back about three metres so you get it all in shot’.”

He claimed Mr Thurlbeck had then tried to “blackmail” the woman by telling her that if she did not sign an interview backing up the suggestion of a Nazi theme, the newspaper would run pictures of her and reveal her identity and those of the other women.

He said: “One of them was a very serious scientist, another had a major position in healthcare, another ran an office and they were all terribly at risk and the thought of this being published in the News of the World was terrifying for them.”

He added: “The idea that it is the job of the tabloid journalist to pillory people whose tastes may be unusual is completely outdated. If that was the case we would still be persecuting homosexuals.

“I think it’s extraordinary that the tabloid press don’t recognise that.”

Tel  24 Nov 2011    Manufacturing Consent    Rupert Murdoch: Titillation and diversion    Thatcherite Britain

Crap Detection     Tax Dodgers     The 'Fuck You Buddy' Dystopia

Leveson inquiry: blogger summoned over leak

I used safe houses

Media vilified me ...

JK Rowling: 'I was driven out of my home'

Manufacturing Consent

28 NI staff linked to phone hacking

Lord Hunt: the greater challenge is with bloggers

The phone hacking inquiry must shackle corporate power

Newspapers warned not to target witnesses

Leveson Inquiry

Leveson Inquiry

Tax Research UK

The markets distrust democracy. Just ask the masters of Beijing and Moscow

Why is the democratic world faring so much worse than its non-democratic rivals in the current storm?

Start with austerity.

It may not be the best solution for a worldwide crisis of anaemic growth and falling demand – indeed it is surely making the problem worse – but it is what the markets demand in return for manageably low rates of interest on the money they lend to governments.

That it is these men, not those we elect, who are all-powerful is not new: Bill Clinton discovered as much nearly two decades ago ...

Given that it is the markets who call the tune, the question then becomes one's ability to dance to it most nimbly – and in that endeavour democracy is an impediment ...

In the immediate postwar era, people might have been readier to endure rationing and hardship in, say, Britain because there was a sharper sense of collective identity and solidarity ... now society is less cohesive: austerity is seen as the result not of defeating foreign tyranny in a just war but of bankers' reckless greed; and few believe, as they once did, that they are guaranteed to be better off than their parents ...

The larger problem of democracies' weakness has not been caused by the economic crisis, so much as revealed by it.

The growth statistics for the pre-crash decade tell a revealing story. The EU, US and Japan did OK, clustered together in the low single digits.

But China and Russia enjoyed figures nearly twice as high. The best performing economies were the most authoritarian states ...

Gdn  15 Nov 2011    Contesting the Markets    Global Risks 2012    Is Capitalism the only game in town?    
Losing Democracy Log    Neoliberal Globalization: Pawns or Players?

Sergei Magnitsky

Is corruption in Russia's DNA?

Dear America – About the 1%, 53%, 99%, Class Warfare, Occupy Wall Street and ...

About the 1%. They won long ago. For them to continue to win they need class warfare constantly being fought.

Peace and calm do not define victory.

Division and distrust and discord are the means of assuring recurring victory in the episodic battles that wage to keep the 1% in power and in control of society’s direction and wealth.

Distract the many and try to manage the bothersome few ...

Bill4DogCatcher.com  10 Oct 2011    Falling Living Standards    Inequality    Whither Britain? Log

Second wave of enterprise zones named

"Do less; make it seem like more"

Mr Cameron said: "We are determined to do everything we can to make Britain the best place in the world to start and grow a business.

"Enterprise zones are a major step towards delivering this, cutting business taxes, easing planning restrictions and giving business the tools they need to invest and expand.

"These new enterprise zones will be trailblazers for growth, jobs and prosperity throughout the country."

Chancellor George Osborne said the zones would create more than 30,000 new jobs by 2015.

"They will benefit from over £150 million in tax breaks over four years, new superfast broadband, lower levels of planning control and the potential to use enhanced capital allowances," he added.

Ind  17 Aug 2011    Coalition Log    Full Employment

Osborne cuts short holiday to deal with stock market crisis

This is a case of the 'third face of power' in action. Not only does Osborne know - as Thatcher told us - 'you can't buck the market'; he also knows he has no powers to address growth/employment since these powers were surrendered to the market in the 1980s.

It's another case of 'do less, make it seem like more'!

George Osborne is to return from his holiday in California to address MPs about the state of the economy on Thursday, when parliament is being recalled following the riots across London.

The Treasury did not release information about what the chancellor intended to say but he will be speaking the day after the Bank of England is widely expected to reduce its growth forecast for the UK ...

Gdn  09 Aug 2011    Coalition Log    

Public sector workers encouraged to form John Lewis-style co-operatives

The Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude said today that he envisaged mutuals developing in NHS trusts, Sure Start centres, children's services, welfare provision and the civil service. He even said they could be formed in the Inland Revenue.

The aim was to liberate public sector workers and "introduce radical shifts in ownership, accountability and financing", he said.

"Every government department and every local council will be expected to put in place a right to provide, with the ultimate decision to go ahead resting with the relevant minister."

But the scale of the government's ambitions for public service reform raised fresh concerns that the programme could lead to creeping privatisation.

Peter Holbrook, chief executive of the Social Enterprise Coalition, welcomed the announcement but said:

"Without the necessary safeguards there is a danger that the mutuals could be demutualised and sold off to the private sector, reminiscent of what happened to British building societies in the 1980s.

"It would be criminal to see that happen to our public services. All mutuals need to be asset-locked to ensure that they operate for the benefit of the public, forever." ...

A stumbling block to the spread of mutuals in the public sector could be fears of job insecurity or loss of state-supported pension rights.

Maude acknowledged that if public sector staff bid to run a service, they might also find themselves subject to EU law requiring there to be a competitive tendering process.

Guardian  17 Nov 2010    'Big Society'    Corporate Public Services    Shrinking the State

Happiness index to gauge Britain's national mood

... the Office of National Statistics will shortly be asked to produce measures to implement David Cameron's long-stated ambition of gauging "general wellbeing".

Countries such as France and Canada are looking at similar initiatives as governments around the world come under pressure to put less store on conventional economic measures of prosperity such as gross domestic product.

British officials say there is still hesitation in some parts of Whitehall over going ahead with the programme during such difficult economic times, but Cameron is said to want to place the eventual results at the heart of future government policy-making.

On 25 November, the government will ask the independent national statistician Jil Matheson to devise questions to add to the existing household survey by as early as next spring.

It will be up to Matheson to choose the questions but the government's aim is for respondents to be regularly polled on their subjective wellbeing, which includes a gauge of happiness, and also a more objective sense of how well they are achieving their "life goals".

The new data will be placed alongside existing measures to create a bundle of indications about our quality of life.

A government source said the results could be published quarterly in the same way as the British crime survey, but the exact intervals are yet to be agreed ...

Guardian  15 Nov 2010    David Cameron    Nudge    Towards a new measure of wellbeing

Cheap Labour

What are the duties of government?

HPI

Government set to measure UK happiness

First goal of David Cameron's 'nudge unit' is to encourage healthy living

Discovery of 'fat gene' raises hopes for fighting obesity

McDonald's and PepsiCo to help write UK health policy

Cameron's 'nudge unit' aims to improve economic behaviour

It's doubtful whether Dave has heard about the third face of power.

Nevertheless, like most politicians, he is adept at using it to obfuscate his agenda.

It was good to hear his attack on targets. It was good to hear him talk of "power to the people".

The 'big society' can sound - on first hearing - like something Ivan Illich might have warmed to.

Who could object to the unemployed getting the opportunity to keep up with the routines of work?

But, if you peer around under the bonnet, a wholely different agenda comes into view.

First off, the empowerment of public sector workers turns out to be a smokescreen under which
the 'third sector' (charities) - and the private sector (Yank corporations) - will take over the running of
public sector activities, and targets will morph into payments by results.

Expect more failing hospitals.   [Gdn]

Second, it will soon become obvious to employers that the long-term unemployed can be hired
for £1.63 an hour, considerably less than the minimum wage.   [Obs]

As the Indie's leader so aptly put it:

The danger could be that paid jobs will be cut, only to reappear as unpaid jobs in the voluntary sector. It is not hard to imagine the absurd situation where a local council employee is laid off, only to be displaced by a benefit recipient putting in his or her voluntary hours.

The minimum wage - aka the miniscule wage - has long been a favourite target of attack by bodies
such as the CBI, who argue that it threatens jobs.

Let's be honest, sirs, it threatens profits!

Cameron pledges more power for the people

Long-term jobless 'could face compulsory manual labour'

These cuts aren't building a 'big society'

Council plans 'big society' reward points

'The Return of the Public'

According to Dan Hind’s new book, underlying our inability to tackle these crises is yet another crisis – a crisis of publicity.

In his view, the make up of the ‘public’ – "the informed autonomous body capable of initiating policy and driving legislative changes" – now excludes the vast majority of people.

Instead, the state bends itself to an elite public dominated by those who control (though not own) the vast capital flows of major corporations and the financial markets which connect them.

The key to the exclusion of most of us from the effective public is the atrophy of our means of understanding the world.

As citizens, our knowledge of issues which extend beyond our own experience is necessarily received through the mass media.

Yet the institutions which should be our eyes and ears instead act as our blinkers ...

... Hind draws on the history of the build-up to the Iraq war as an example of how the media can rule certain views in- and out-of-bounds.

While a succession of retired generals and spooks were given room to expound on the threat from Baghdad, those who believed, quite rightly, that Iraq possessed no weapons of mass destruction were treated as extremists ...

Hind correctly identifies that the market for news has not delivered media which is genuinely accountable to its consumers.

But rather than attempting to change the way we control it, we must instead change the way we produce it.

New technology offers us the tools to become producers of our own information.

Now we must find ways to widen access to the skills and resources which will make that possible.

openDemocracy  25 Oct 2010    Corporate Media    Towards a New Politics

Are our liberties threatened by the fear of real freedom?

Our liberties are threatened by (a) the corporate agenda pursued by the media (b) the diversionary tactics of corporate capital (c) the anaesthesia of consumerism (d) the educational failure (deliberate?) to inculcate crap detection, and finally the ennui of a cumulative infantilism

The liberal left is suffering from intellectual amnesia about the attack on liberty that happened under New Labour ...

Strong and controversial views on any topic, religion, ethics or politics remain unacceptable in the present cultural climate.

Even the “absolutist” position on free speech that AFAF holds is no more than that of John Stuart Mill in On Liberty but it is seen as extreme ...

The cultural climate that is the legacy of New Labour has created a new intellectual mood that requires that we hold moderate and uncontroversial views.

It is a new, therapeutic, intellectual elitism, a civic quietism in which holding strong views or engaging in heated debate is only appropriate in formal situations such as the many faux debates in “Youth Parliaments” and the like ...

Independent  07 Oct 2010

Corporate Media    Education for the Good Society    Libertarianism    The Pursuit of Happiness?

Suffolk council plans to outsource virtually all services

Enabling "Suffolk citizens to take greater control of their lives"

Thousands of jobs could go as Suffolk county council prepares to stop directly providing services in most areas ...

Services would be offloaded in stages.

While some "early adopter" services could be outsourced as early as this autumn, the rest would be divested in three phases from April 2011.

Libraries, youth clubs, highway services, independent living centres, careers advice, children's centres, registrars, country parks and a records office are among the first services that could be divested.

Ultimately only a few hundred people could remain directly employed by the council, primarily in contract management.

At present, the council employs around 27,000 people, 15,000 of whom work in education, which is set to be taken away from local authority control as the government converts schools to academies and free schools.

Many of the remaining 12,000 could face either redundancy or be transferred to a social enterprise or the private sector.

The council says it wants to withdraw from directly providing public services in order to reduce the local authority's "size, cost and bureaucracy and build community capacity to enable Suffolk citizens to take greater control of their lives." ...

Guardian  22 Sept 2010    Corporate Public Services    'Broken Britain' ... 'Big Society'

Local Government

Forget the sterile debates, we are all facing a future of austerity and sacrifice

Stephen King's solution to the globalised train wreck? More immigration.

This is because his underlying diagnosis of the problem is that there are too many old people.

Huxley's 'Brave New World' had a solution to that problem: euthanasia at 60.

Back in the real world, more migrants means - in the fullness - even more old people, therefore more migrants. When all the national parks are covered in new towns, and the oil's run out ... well you can see where it's heading.

Globalisation, unsurprisingly, is not up for discussion; Stephen King joins the politicians in involking the third face of power.

... British society is increasingly at the mercy of events elsewhere in the world.

We no longer believe our politicians with their extravagant promises because ultimately so much that influences life in Britain is beyond their control.

It's this loss of control which, perhaps, has made these debates more about personality than about substance, and therefore devoid of any real meaning ...

Independent  04 May 2010

MPs open fire on Kraft over plans to shut Cadbury factory

Kraft couldn't give a toss about it's reputation; it's in business to asset-strip Cadbury's, and for the likes of Lord Mandelson and his fellow corporate-grovellers to be complaining now is a classical example of the 'Third Face of Power' in action: pursue market fundamentalism below the radar, appear to be doing the opposite on the radar.

Report on takeover says the US food giant was either incompetent or cynical ...

Cadbury had earmarked the 75-year-old plant for closure in October 2007, which would have prompted production of Curly Wurlies, Fudge and Mini-Egg to move to Poland.

In its takeover proposal documents released in September, Kraft said it "would be in a position to continue to operate" the Keynsham facility.

Just a week after sealing the takeover, Kraft performed a startling U-turn at the cost of 400 jobs. Following meetings with Cadbury management, Irene Rosenfeld, the chairman and chief executive of Kraft Foods, said "it became clear that it is unrealistic to reverse the closure programme".

The move sparked outcry from the public and politicians.

The report said Kraft "has left itself open to the charge that either it was incompetent in its approach to the Somerdale factory or that it used a 'cynical ploy' to improve its public image during its takeover of Cadbury.

"Its actions have undoubtedly damaged its UK reputation and has soured its relationship with Cadbury employees," it added ...

Independent  07 April 2010    Economic Democracy

Kraft promises MPs: no job cuts in UK

Mandelson calls for tougher takeover rules

Brown warns Kraft on jobs

The sad lesson of Cadbury is the City still holds the whip

£2m a day cost of Cadbury deal – plus £12m for the boss

David Cameron is selling a new Tory brand - but I'm not buying it yet

Janet Daley ... wonders what became of the party that inspired her to vote Conservative in 1979 ...

'Know thine enemy' is appropriate. Janet Daley is a 'full monty' free marketeer, and as such offers a contrast to the dissembling of Messrs Brown, Cameron and Clegg who cannot confront the electorate with their support for neoliberal globalisation.

The position of David Cameron is uniquely dishonest in this exercise of 'third face of power' politics, this willingness to gull the electorate into believing that politics has much of a role to play in, for example, promoting full employment ...

Rightly, Daley asks the question: what is the Conservative Party for:

There is a battle going on for the soul of the Conservative Party – which is really a fight over whether the party should have a soul at all. Do modern political parties actually need fundamental convictions and a sense of mission? Or are they primarily marketing operations whose messages must be dictated by the techniques of advertising and opinion-testing? ...

... the things that had given rise to Labour's unpopularity were specific political and economic policies. The voters had come to loathe the power of the trade unions, which Labour governments were seen to defend; they saw Labour's favoured nationalised industries as failing, unjustifiable monopolies, and they resented Labour's taxation regime as being vindictive and destructive of economic success.

Because it was pretty clear what the voters were repudiating when they threw Labour out of office, it was also clear, at least conceptually, what Labour had to do to itself to become electable again. And, as we know, it did that in spades.

But when the Conservatives decided that they needed to undergo a simulacrum of the same process, there was no clear analogy: the desperate search for a Clause Four moment in which the party could be seen to rend its most precious garment from its back, ended in futility.

There was no Conservative Clause Four: no equivalent of the fatal commitment to nationalise the means of production that was still inscribed on every Labour membership card.

Indeed, New Labour had become successful precisely by plagiarising the Tory belief in free markets and personal aspiration.

The Conservatives did not have an ideology problem – so they had a nervous breakdown instead ...

Telegraph  13 Mar 2010

Voters fear Tory cuts and tax rises

MPs' verdict on News of the World phone-hacking scandal: Amnesia, obfuscation and hush money

The 167-page report by a cross-party select committee is withering about the conduct of the News of the World, with one MP saying its crimes "went to the heart of the British establishment, in which police, military royals and government ministers were hacked on a near industrial scale".

MPs condemned the "collective amnesia" and "deliberate obfuscation" by NoW executives who gave evidence to them, and said it was inconceivable that only a few people at the paper knew about the practice.

The culture, media and sport select committee was also damning of the police, saying Scotland Yard should have broadened its original investigation in 2006, and not just focused on Clive Goodman, the NoW's royal reporter ...

Payoffs buried scandal at heart of the establishment

An email of 35 transcripts of phone messages sent by reporter Ross Hall to Mulcaire and marked "transcripts for Neville", implied the message was for Neville Thurlbeck, the paper's chief reporter. The report said it was unlikely that Hall did not know the source of the material "and was not acting on instruction from superiors. We cannot believe that the newspaper's newsroom was so out of control".

A contract sent to Mulcaire by a news executive, Greg Miskiw, promised him £7,000 if he delivered a story on Taylor. And the MPs' own inquiry revealed the payoffs to Goodman and Mulcaire, "and that they tapped the phones of [princes William and Harry] as well". This was not in the public domain, said the report.

Criticising the Metropolitan police, MPs said detectives had known of the "Neville" emails and the Miskiw contract while investigating Goodman, but they did not investigate further, "based on available resources" and the fact that it would be difficult to prove criminal activity – a decision endorsed by the CPS.

A Labour committee member, Paul Farrelly, said MPs were disappointed that the police seemed to be more "forthcoming" when replying to a subsequent Freedom of Information request by the Guardian, which revealed they had uncovered 91 pin numbers relating to hacking – information not offered to the committee by the Met's assistant commissioner, John Yates, when he appeared before it.

Guardian  24 Feb 2010

The MPs reject testimony by assistant commissioner John Yates that there had only been "a handful" of hacking victims of the News of the World.

Former minister Tom Watson, a member of the committee, said at the press conference at the Commons:

"Scotland Yard are sitting on a whole bank of information and data about very senior people in public life who were hacked, that the public don't know about."

He called for the information commissioner to access all the police files and see if any legal breaches had occurred.

The other body which failed in its task was the Press Complaints Commission, the committee report says.

The PCC had rushed out a report purporting to exonerate the News of the World that took the paper's claims of innocence at face value.

"We find the conclusions in the PCC's November report simplistic and surprising. It has certainly not fully, or forensically, considered all the evidence." ...

Guardian  24 Feb 2010    Corporate Media

News of the World phone-hacking scandal: the verdicts

Overhaul British laws to stop 'libel tourism' report says

MPs' attack provokes the wrath of Murdoch

Today is a good day for free expression

Unanimous backing for real freedom of the press

Mandelson's 'disappointment' after Kraft meeting

As a supporter of global free markets, Mandelson is pretending to interfere with the Invisible Hand in pursuit of the third face of power.

Business Secretary Lord Mandelson has said he is "disappointed" that food giant Kraft would not commit to managing Cadbury's brands in the UK.

Lord Mandelson spoke after a meeting with Kraft boss Irene Rosenfeld.

He said he was glad of the personal meeting, but would now be looking for "much harder, more specific commitments in the next three to six months" ...

BBC NEWS  02 Feb 2010

Living in a world of make-believe:
the mythmakers of the globalising age

Since ... (1976) ... a much more powerful, partisan and explicitly ideological account of the world has come to the fore in politics and in our mainstream analysis of the world.

It focuses on the merits of globalisation, competition, deregulation and free market economics. Despite the global crash and crisis of this paradigm, most of the mainstream media with honourable exceptions ... have become even more narrow and dogmatic in their commitment to a world economic and political order which is in profound crisis.

A telling example of the power of this dominant view of the world was provided on Newsnight on Tuesday night (05 Jan 2010) by Paul Mason with an item on his forecasts for 2010.

This six minute film cited four experts, all of whom were from the City, two from HSBC, one from CitiGroup and one from GLC Hedge Fund.

All offered partisan, deeply controversial views as if they were uncontested wisdom with no scrutiny, criticism or context offered ...

openDemocracy  07 Jan 2010 

A new British bill of rights and responsibilitilies outlined yesterday could enshrine entitlements to welfare, equal treatment, housing, children's wellbeing and the NHS, Jack Straw, the justice secretary, said yesterday.

He likened the bill's potential impact to Magna Carta and the 1689 Bill of Rights ...

Straw and his minister for justice, Michael Wills, said a bill could entrench some economic rights, balance the Human Rights Act with fresh responsibilities, and also potentially act as a uniying force ...

In uneasy compromise the green paper stresses: "The aim is not to create new avenues of redress for individuals in the courts, but instead seek to influence the behaviour of courts, public bodies and individuals by placing all rights and responsibilities in a single document" ...

Guardian 24 March 2009

What use are patient rights when they're just ignored?

New rights from Labour mean nothing

Hard times call for a new bill of rights

Database State

Database State - Exec Summary

1. The 'National Equality Panel'

   Sticking plaster policy announcements of the "do less make it seem like more" approach borrowed from Ronald Reagan - and successive - Republican administrations.
   
   An excellent example is Polly Toynbee's 'Caravan' model of society, which even attracted - briefly - David Cameron's interest:

   [In] my book, Hard Work: Life in Low Pay Britain ... I described society as a caravan moving across a desert.
   
   All may move forward, but how far behind do the poor at the back have to fall before they cease to be part of the same caravan at all?
   
   Political parties will differ on how far that stretch can be - but at least now they agree all must travel at the same speed to stay within the same society ...
   
   [GDN]
   
   Economic inequality & Social Cohesion

   To create the appearance of addressing this issue, Harriet Harman set up a 'National Equality Panel', justifying it thus:

   "Equality matters more than ever and it is necessary for individuals, a peaceful society and a strong economy ... "

   The problem is that neoliberal orthodoxy maintains precisely the opposite to be necessary for free markets to operate effectively.
   
   So we should not be surprised if the panel produces a report full of worthy exhortation, only to be forgotten within days of publication.    N.E.P.

   Bill set to expose gender pay gap

Top




2. Community Empowerment

   'Local leadership is a 999 call'

   Margaret Thatcher's suspicion and distrust of local government is well documented, and her centralising policies have continued seamlessly under New Labour.
   
   This is a theme which Simon Jenkins has pursued relentlessly over several years.    [GDN]
   
   Havings sucked the lifeblood out of local government several ministers - notably David Miliband - have argued the need to devolve powers back:

   "We live richer, freer and less constrained lives. But the evidence suggests we are no more happy. And I believe the roots are a sense of powerlessness," Mr Miliband said.
   
   Citing parents juggling work and family, second-generation immigrants hit by wage discrimination and disabled people facing low expectations, he described how "all these people are in one way or another disempowered ... for the most part they do not lack the capacity to exercise power, but the means to do so".
   
   He has coined the phrase "double devolution" - drilling down power from Whitehall to town hall, and from town hall to citizens ... [GDN]

   Simon Jenkins - rightly as it has turned out - poured a tank-full of cynicism on the-then minister of Communities and Local Government:

   Under Labour, power has drifted to the centre; and despite the buzzwords there is no intention to hand any of it back. ...
   
   In his speech yesterday, Miliband rightly implied that the centralist drift in Britain has gone beyond all common sense, yielding disempowered communities and dissatisfaction with public services.
   
   To a localist the reason is simple. The lowest tier of government in France is the commune. It has an average population of 1,580. Germany's lowest tier has 4,925, and Scandinavian countries are comparable.
   
   The British average is 118,400. In France there is an elected representative for every 116 electors, in Germany for every 250. Britain's ratio is one to 2,605. Small wonder British election turnouts are half those on the continent.
   
   So far Miliband's localism is all jargon and buzzwords. We have stakeholders, conveners, forums, partnerships, meetings and cobwebby ideas such as citizens' juries. If these are localism's little platoons they are Dad's Army.
   
   The one thing Miliband and his colleagues never mention is democracy. They are horrified by voting ... [GDN]

   'Minister of Communities and Local Government'
   
   There's a commentary on the third face of power simply in that title!
   
   'Community Empowerment'
   
   What Future for Local Government?

Top




3. Education or Training?

   New Labour's 'Exam Factories'

   ... the pressure on teachers to deliver the improving test statistics by which the outside world judges them is proving counter-productive.
   
   Schools have been turning increasingly into exam factories ... Intellectual curiosity is stifled.
   
   And young people's deeper cultural, moral, sporting, social and spiritual faculties are marginalised by a system in which all must come second to delivering improving test and exam results.
   
   Warwick Mansell quoted in John Seddon, page 111

   'Education, education, education'

   Boiled down to bare bones New Labour's education policy has been about one target, and one only: year-on-year improvements in test results. The protests of the right-wing press that education was being relentlessly dumbed-down were dismissed, but it is no longer possible to refute that claim.
   [IND]
   
   Worse, the links listed below provide evidence that there is a quantum difference between that which is worth learning, and that which is easy to measure:
   [GDN]

   Four in five failed trial tests

   Laureate attacks poetry teaching

   Our children tested to destruction

   Sats put primary pupils off science

   SATs: Exam meltdown

   Science exam standards 'eroded'

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4. Critical Thinking Skills and 'Communitarian Citizenship'

   'The importance of knowing how'

   A.C.Grayling elucidated the difference between education and training in his New Scientist article:

   Knowing how to evaluate information, therefore, is arguably the most important kind of knowledge that education has to teach ... But only the International Baccalaureate makes critical thinking ("theory of knowledge") a standard requirement, and in this as in so many ways it leads the field, because critical thinking and evaluation of claims to knowledge should always be right at the centre of the educational enterprise.    [ACG]

   'Thousands of immigrants needed to finish the Olympics by 2012'

   Extinction of the engineers

   The question that has to be addressed is what purpose is being served by turning schooling into little more than what Jenni Russell dubbed "teaching them to parrot, not think". [GDN]
   
   You might be forgiven for believing that a supposedly advanced Western economy needs precisely the kind of skills which A.C. Gayling discusses. However, if you examine one of the core outcomes of the EU's Lisbon Treaty, you might understand why A.C.Grayling's 'critical thinking skills' are the very last thing the governing elite requires: