The London Terror Attack - Ignoring the Pundits

When Khalid Masood launched his murderous 82-second attack in Whitehall last week, I was thousands of miles away in the Philippines, enjoying the last few days of a great holiday. That's the trouble with getting away from it all - sometimes "it" comes looking for you. Along with all my Filipino friends and relatives, I read the details of this atrocity with horror and disbelief (the Philippines is no stranger to Islamist violence). I resolved that, after our return on Tuesday the 28th, I would go as soon as I could to the scene of the attack and pay tribute to the slain: Aysha Frade, Leslie Rhodes, Kurt Cochran, PC Keith Palmer and to all the injured victims.

I went yesterday, crossing Westminster Bridge from the tube station and walking to St Thomas's Hospital, from where so many staff and paramedics rushed to help the dead, dying and injured only seven days previously. In the hospital branch of Marks and Spencers I bought a bunch of flowers and a card. After writing some words of condolence on the card, I placed it with the flowers on the first memorial on Westminster Bridge. You can just about see the card in the photograph above.

Then, I walked along the left-hand side of the bridge, following the route of Masood's deadly journey. I found it really difficult to reconcile the sights I saw - the groups of chattering tourists, the people taking photos of Big Ben - with the carnage that happened on the 22nd. That changed when I got to Parliament Square, where I found an extensive floral tribute opposite the Houses of Parliament.

Along with many others, I spent a long time looking at the flowers and, more importantly, the dedications, many of which were heartbreakingly moving. After a time, I became choked with emotion and decided to go elsewhere.

Now, displays of public grief similar to this have been derided in the past, most noticeably by Boris Johnson. When commenting upon the mourning of the Hillsborough dead by the people of Liverpool, he said:

"They (Liverpudlians) see themselves whenever possible as victims, and resent their victim status; yet at the same time they wallow in it".

Boris has apologised unreservedly since, but I believe that he was expressing a kind of aversion that a section of media commentators, left, right and centre, feel for outpourings of public sympathy. While in the Philippines, I read a Guardian article in which the writer said that leaving flowers at the site of terrorist attacks, lighting up the Eiffel Tower in red, white and blue in solidarity with London, etc, gave the terrorists "the oxygen of publicity". All complete nonsense, of course - the terrorists, in this case apparently ISIS, generate their own publicity through their online magazines and by dropping off tapes at Al-Jazeera. I am very proud to have paid tribute to the people of many nations who suffered and died on the 22nd; I am proud of the way us Londoners of all faiths united publicly in defiance of this evil crime.

As might be expected, the far Right and the far Left made their media presence felt by offering their own peculiar interpretations of the event. Nigel Farage weighed in by saying that the attack was a consequence of multiculturalism; Stop the War Coalition issued a statement saying something like this:
"We deplore the attack in Westminster, but we really must point out that this attack can be blamed on the illegal, imperialist invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan."
Refuting Mr Farage, as a primary school teacher for 34 years who has taught in many multicultural schools, I fail to see how making Diwali cards and learning about World faiths could lead to a terrorist atrocity. As for the predictable (and tediously repetitive) comment by Stop the War, it only needs to be pointed out that the Westminster attack was carried out by a British-born convert to Islam - not an Iraqi or Afghan.
Standing in front of the floral displays yesterday, I found myself fervently hoping that no more attacks like this would happen again anywhere. At the same time, a voice in my head kept telling me that more attacks are inevitable. Perhaps the last word should go to Katriona Murphy, of North London, who left the message in the picture below - Why?

7/4/2017 - as of today, the toll of innocent dead victims of this attack has risen to five. Andreea Cristea, the 31 year-old Romanian lady who was knocked into the Thames during the attack on 22nd March, has died in hospital. May she and the other victims rest in peace. The question in the last photograph remains unanswered.

The USA's first toddler president

Donald Trump is a businessman. According to some analysts, he hasn't been anywhere near as successful in business as he should have been, given the fortune he inherited, but even so, he is undeniably very rich and is accustomed to getting what he wants. As the boss for most of his working life, since the early 70s in fact, he is used to sycophancy, complete obedience, and an unhealthy dose of flattery. People who get in his way are either sacked if they are among his staff, or vigorously counterattacked with maximum force if they are not. In short he is a man who is completely programmed to get his own way. Even his so-called reality TV show, The Apprentice, involved telling people, "You're fired!"

It is symptomatic of the vanity of the man that he decided to spend some of his fortune buying his way to the presidency of the USA, which he narrowly did - narrowly because he gained less of the popular vote than his opponent, Hillary Clinton. Despite that, the American electoral college system awarded him the victory. Smug British Facebook postings declaring that this could "only happen in America" show ignorance about our own system. The UK has had had two general elections since the war when the winning party had a smaller share of the popular vote (1951 and the first 1974 election) because of the our 'first past the post' system.

His presidential style is that of the spoilt brat. He is incredibly sensitive to criticism, and seems genuinely upset by it because he isn't used to it. So accustomed is he to getting his own way, even when he was wrong, that he gives the impression of believing his own infallibility. News is what he decrees it to be, and evidence isn't necessary. He has never needed it in his business decisions and cannot adjust to having to consider different opinions as president. 

His method of responding to opposition is juvenile in the extreme: tweets that end with an insult. Meryl Streep is a mediocre actress, despite 161 awards so far; he described judges who had frustrated his anti-Muslim order as "so-called judges"; some tweets end up with toddler speak, such as "bad man". When Vanity Fair published a review headlined, "Trump Grill Could Be The Worst Restaurant In America", Trump commented on the magazine's "really poor numbers - way down, big trouble, dead! Graydon Carter, no talent, will be out!" even though Vanity Fair's sales have actually increased 24% under the editorship of Graydon Carter. Like a toddler, he hurls ineffectual and juvenile insults when he's been frustrated, irrespective of the facts.

He loves to repeat the phrase 'fake news', but is guilty of making it up himself, such as when he told his followers to look what happened in Sweden the night before. Nothing had happened in Sweden on that night, no deaths associated with violence or terrorist incidents. On the other hand, 32 Americans had been killed in the USA by their fellow countrymen with many others injured in 128 violent incidents involving guns on the day in question. 

Trump claimed that he had achieved a record number of votes in the electoral college, until journalists pointed out to him that Obama, Bush Sr, Bush Jr and Bill Clinton had all recorded more votes in the electoral college than he had. His assertions that 1.5 million turned out for his inauguration are not supported by photographic evidence which compared his inauguration to Obama's; it is clear that far fewer people were there. 1.8 million is the estimate for Obama's inauguration, while one estimate for Trump's bash is 250,000. The Washington Metro had carried only 193,000 passengers by 11.00am on the Friday, significantly fewer than Obama's two inaugurations and slightly fewer than Bush’s inauguration in 2005.

More recently, he has demanded that that charges be laid against Obama for tapping his phones at Trump Tower, insisting that the FBI and Congress should investigate his assertions with the same energy they are employing to investigating the Trump team's dodgy dealings with Russia during the election campaign. He didn't produce a shred of evidence to support his claims, whereas there is some evidence that there have been untoward dealings with Russia. Misspelling "tap" as "tapp", he concluded his Twitter rant with the customary childish insult, describing his predecessor as a "Bad (or sick) guy".

He is quickly becoming frustrated that his customary methods of bluster, unsubstantiated assertions, firing at will, and maximum force against anyone who opposes him that were his style as a mega-rich boss are not working as he would wish as president. He gives every indication of not understanding how the USA's system of checks and balances work by his repeated attempts to trample roughshod over them. His reintroduction of his amended Muslim banning order is evidence of this. 

We have a president whose rationality appears to be no more developed than that of a 5-year old, who seems quite unable to distinguish reality from fiction, and who believes that his own hunches, prejudices and random assertions amount to truth. To be honest, I am not quite sure whether he really is incapable of perceiving the truth, or, alternatively, whether he doesn't think it matters and will cynically make any assertion, or propagate any story, that suits him. My own opinion, for what it's worth, inclines to the former.

He has been in office for little more than 60 days and already those American checks and balances carefully devised by the founding fathers are being strained to the limit. We have nearly four more years of this to come from a man who is commander-in-chief of the armed forces and whose finger is on the nuclear button. This means that, while we have laughed at him and we probably will do again, we must not underestimate how frighteningly dangerous this vain, irrational and very immature president potentially is. 

Learning not to shoot the messenger

I am a PCS union officer who used to work in the DSS/DWP. Recently a rep for my union posted this on Facebook:

PCS has started a petition against all of the proposed [Jobcentre] closures. Please consider signing and sharing with others.

Innocent enough I'd have thought, but someone wrote underneath:

PCS scum still doing the Tories dirty work. Now you've outlived your usefulness ...

To which I replied:

Doing the government's dirty work by:
Marching to support the NHS on 4 March against Tory attacks.
Opposing fascism and racism.
Opposing Tory-approved tax gap that loses the UK economy £120 billion a year.
Opposing Tory Jobcentre closures.
Campaigning against Tory attacks on benefits.
Opposing Tory HMRC office closures.
Supporting strike action in EHRC to protect jobs against Tory cuts.

Immediately I posted my comment, a 'like' by a woman appeared, far too quickly for anyone to have read the whole comment. A few seconds later the 'like' vanished: presumably, when she actually saw what I'd written, it hadn't been what she'd wanted to read after all.

I could have added to my comment that Jobcentre closures won't just affect staff; they will cause major problems for members of the public. Many will have longer public transport journeys to appointments with, therefore, more chance of delays: lateness for appointments could lead to even more sanctions. It seems our PCS haters are so pleased about Jobcentre staff losing jobs that they've forgotten that the cuts will also hit the public that they are supposedly speaking up for. 

This exchange summarises a problem I have experienced quite a few times previously. I recall in the late 80s/early 90s trying to set up liaison with local NALGO representing social workers and council welfare rights advisers to campaign on welfare issues. They didn't have the courtesy to reply to any of my approaches.

I have argued with people who claim that PCS members should refuse to implement sanctions on principle. I've told them quite clearly that:

• Individuals who do so of their own initiative will be disciplined; if they still refuse to do their job as required, they'd be sacked.
• If the union told DWP staff not to implement sanctions, it would be taken to court. If it persisted in such illegal industrial action, then all its funds would be sequestrated.
• Reps would be systematically picked off by individually being ordered to carry out sanctions, and sacked when they refused. Union organisation within DWP would disappear.
• Members would desert PCS in droves because the union would have thrown away all their money on a political action that was doomed to failure from the start. Plus there wouldn't be any reps left anyway.
• We would have a non-unionised DWP, which is what the Tories would love.
• I've found that, faced with that scenario, the critic concerned usually has had no response.

I'd previously had similar arguments about Crisis Loans, my job for several years, with people who told me we should have paid everyone who applied, and not turn them down on judgemental grounds. I'd explain that if we had done that, we'd have blown our monthly budget too soon, after which we'd have had to reject every single application for the rest of the month. They too preferred to see the staff as the villains, rather than blame the people who devised the system.

There's no easy answer for DWP staff: all they can do is challenge such attitudes as and when they occur, and try to reason with any organisations if they spout such arrant prejudice, because that is what it is. In my experience, most people don't feel this antagonistic, but the minority that does is very vocal, self-righteous and sometimes ill-mannered, as above.

Attacking Jobcentre staff because of the injustices caused by sanctions is a bit like criticising hospital staff because of unacceptable waiting times in A&E. Too many people cannot distinguish the messenger from the message, but it is particularly exasperating when such political short-sightedness comes from people who, presumably being somewhere on the Left, should be capable of pinning the blame where it truly belongs. When they don't, they are falling into the Tories' favourite trap: divide and rule.

My union's petition against Jobcentre closures is here if you wish to sign it.