It is men who cause war and conflict, not women. Dick Skellington looks at the latest research.

The male sex drive is the cause of nearly all conflict in the world, from football violence to wars between nation states, according to scientists at the Institute for Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology at Oxford University.

Women, on the other hand, have evolved a tendency towards peaceful co-existence, in the scientists' phrase, women are programmed to ‘tend and befriend’ in order to protect their offspring providing them with a greater chance of survival.

The study's findings are an example of the 'Male Warrior Hypothesis' in contemporary evolutionary anthropology. This suggests that men are more likely than women to discriminate against others considered outsiders, a tendency apparent across different time periods and cultures.
Over history conflict between rival groups of men provides opportunities to gain access to mates, territory and increased status. Under this theory natural selection in an evolved psychology amongst men initiates aggression.
Emily Cousens, Sarah Pine and Ali Johnson, representatives of the Wadham Feminists, argue that such a theory is misplaced. Society creates and constructs what we think of as masculine and feminine and encourages and rewards different traits amongst males and females. They contend this does not necessarily have a biological basis.
If the research in Oxford is credible it might explain the persistence of conflict as these mindsets become transfixed. They seem relatively resistant to change, according to the researchers. So it seems, if we can rely on the boffins from Oxford, then war and violent conflict sadly will always be with us, especially in those societies, such as Syria, where women are subjugated through centuries of religious dogma, and of course it might help to explain the resistance of a male dominated Anglican Church in England to women bishops.
 

The views expressed in this post, as in all posts on Society Matters, are the views of the author, not The Open University.

Cartoon by Gary Edwards.

Despite small improvements our prison service remains vulnerable to appalling incidents of mistreatment and cruelty. Dick Skellington reports.

A common thread through these posts reveals a lack of care for individual welfare that at times is alarming. Prisons have difficulty balancing the priority of security with humane and dignified treatment. A friend of mine, aged 76, who has served 29 years in prison, recently had a cataract operation at Kingston Prison in Portsmouth. He wrote to tell me that throughout the procedure he was handcuffed to the bed. My friend, it is a long story, is incarcerated on recall for an offence which he did not commit, has a impeccable record while inside and is not considered a danger to anybody. So you may wonder at my capacity to be surprised by further revelations.

But when I read the report by the Prison Ombudsman, Nigel Newcomen, into risk assessments and the use of restraints for seriously ill and dying prisoners, I was taken aback. Yes the report, which looks at provision in England and Wales since 2007, demonstrates there has been marginal improvements in care. Prisons like Kingston – one of the few prisons in England and Wales which has a wing for elderly prisoners -– have introduced a planned approach to treating sick and terminally ill prisoners, one more tailored to their needs, though do not tell my friend. Nevertheless, despite some sympathetic regimes, a disturbing trail of shocking incidents have been uncovered by the ombudsman.

Over 50 dying prisoners were wrongly chained or inappropriately handcuffed during their final days in hospital. A terminally ill cancer patient died while handcuffed to a prison officer. His condition was only confirmed as terminal two days before he died, but the restraints were not removed even when he was short of breath and could not move far from his hospital bed. Another prisoner in a medically induced coma remained chained throughout. 

The ombudsman found restraints such as escort chains and handcuffs were used on the majority of dying prisoners who were admitted to a hospital or hospice in the last six months of their lives since 2007. In 23 of the 51 investigations restraints had been inappropriately used as recently as 2012, often on frail, infirm and weak prisoners. Longer sentences and more offenders being sentenced later in life mean that prisoners aged 60 and over are now the fastest growing age group in jails across England and Wales, and that it is more likely that prisoners will die in the care of the system. 

"An older and ailing population brings new challenges and the past decade has seen deaths from natural causes outstrip self-inflicted deaths as the principal cause of death in prison custody. In 2011-12, there were 142 deaths in custody from natural causes, an increase of 20 over the previous year," said the ombudsman.

The ombudsman found that prisoners who were already ill attending hospital remained chained and cuffed, even if their condition became terminal. Furthermore, concerns raised by escort or medical staff were not appropriately considered, and restraints were routinely applied according to a prisoner's security category or offence rather than the risk presented and, in some cases, restraints remained in place even as release on compassionate grounds was being sought.

The report concluded that the right balance between decency and security is still not being achieved. Too often an overly risk-averse approach is taken when frail, immobile or even unconscious prisoners remain restrained. The ombudsman recommended that whenever a risk assessment is completed, the prisoner's health and how this impacts on risk should be assessed. Too often the restraints used if the prisoner was fit and well are applied to cases of serious ill-health. It is important that changes in the prisoner’s condition prompt an immediate review of their restraints to prevent them remaining in place longer than necessary.

This report raises serious questions about the humanity within our prison establishment, an establishment further shaken by a report in February following the release of Daniel Roque Hall, a disabled man suffering from a terminal condition, Friedreich's ataxia, which causes loss of physical co-ordination. Daniel was given a three-year sentence after admitting trying to smuggle cocaine worth more than £300,000 in his wheelchair from Peru through Heathrow.

According to his family and lawyers, within hours of admittance to prison, Daniel suffered a spasm and fell from an examination couch, sustaining a head wound. He was taken in handcuffs to a care home for elderly people. Staff there were not given full details of his medical requirements, which included Warfarin, prescribed to thin his blood. He was moved to Wormwood Scrubs, where he suffered further spasms and was denied his full medication. The two constant carers he needs, in case of spasms, were not supplied, nor were the stretching exercises. Hall's condition deteriorated rapidly and in the early hours of 23 August he was rushed to University College Hospital, London, and placed on a life support machine. A consultant at the hospital said Hall's heart had been "stunned" by his treatment at the prison. His GP says his life will be threatened if he is sent back to prison. No longer on a life support machine, Hall remains in hospital while his lawyers seek a judicial review of his treatment. (See article here).

In February the Law Lords at the Royal Court of Justice reduced his original prison sentence to 18 months and Daniel was released. The Court ruled that his serious disabilities which leave him unable to move his limbs, feed himself or use a pen or telephone, meant he should not be returned to prison. Daniel could not attend the hearing, not because of illness, but more worryingly because the Royal Court of Justice does not have adequate disabled access. 

Daniel's solicitor regretted that the Court did not conclude that the treatment Daniel received violated his human rights. His team concluded: 'Daniel's case is exceptional but he is certainly not the only prisoner in England and Wales who has serious disabilities or health problems. All are entitled to expect the equivalent level of care they would have access to if they were in the community, but there are serious concerns about the ability of the prison service to care for them.' Following Daniel's release a spokesman for the prison service commented: 'The Prison Service holds in custody those sentenced by the Courts and it is committed to treating all prisoners humanely and decently.'

Currently the mission statement for the HM Prison Service highlights three objectives. First is to hold prisoners securely. Second to reduce the risk of reoffending. And third to 'provide safe and well ordered establishments in which prisoners are treated humanely, decently, and lawfully'. Perhaps there are tensions in that third objective between delivering 'well-ordered' establishments and decent treatment. Maybe it is time for the service to give decent treatment its own objective, distinct from the desired order of the prison itself.

For, despite the claim from the prison service following Daniel's release, the findings of the prison ombudsman's investigation and the Daniel Roque Hall case demonstrate that the Home Office really does need to do some very clear thinking about establishing humane treatment for sick and disabled prisoners in its care. This will mean the prison service must re-evaluate its commitment to humane and decent treatment, and look again at its mission statement, to ensure it is delivered. The evidence suggests that pious statements are not enough and fool no one.
Dick Skellington 14 May 2013 

The views expressed in this post, as in all posts on Society Matters, are the views of the author, not The Open University.

Cartoon by Catherine Pain

What was even more unanticipated was the kind of award. Something from the psychology or psychotherapy world might have been expected, but I have been short-listed for an 'erotic award'!

For those who are not familiar with them, the Erotic Awards, initially called the Erotic Oscars, have been running since 1994. They were founded by Tuppy Owens Tuppy_Owens who is a sex therapist who campaigns particularly on issues of disability and sexuality, and the whole event raises funds for the charity, Outsiders, for disabled people and their relationships. My book explores the complicated and contradictory rules on relationships that we are subjected to in 21st century relationships.

Awards are presented presented to campaigners, films, writers, artists, publications and sex-workers, as well as to academics, like me. The Erotic Awards are an annual 'celebration of sexual creativity and diversity' with the goal of helping society become more open about sex and more accepting of sexual diversity.

The other academic finalists are Brooke Magnanti and Sue Newsome. Brooke Magnanti is a biological scientist who recently wrote the book The Sex Myth to counter prevailing myths about sex, sexuality and sex-work. Brooke also wrote the best-selling Belle de Jour series of books which were adapted for a BBC series featuring Billie Piper. I've met Brooke at a couple of events that I've been involved with and she is an extremely friendly and approachable person, as well as somebody who has done a lot of good challenging assumptions about sex and sex-work. 

The other nominee, SueNewsome, is involved in a conference which I'm putting on for COSRT later this year. She is a sex coach, educator and therapist who is also involved with SHADA (the Sex and Disability Alliance) and does very important work in this field.  

I'm guessing that my own work was nominated because, like Brooke's, part of its aim is to challenge assumptions and myths about sex and relationships. Also, one aspect of Rewriting the Rules is to counter conventional psychological work which often tries to explain less common sexual and relationship practices – instead of seeking to discover what can be learnt from people in diverse sexual and relationship communities.

This is important to me because it moves away from the idea that there are normal ways of doing things, and that any other way is strange and problematic, towards the idea that there is a great variety of possible sexual and relationship experiences and understandings possible, and that it is worth tuning in to those which work best for us, as well as reflecting upon the ethics of different possible practices and identities. 

However I'm up against two very impressive co-nominees who both certainly deserve the award. We will see what happens on the night!
Meg Barker 17 May 2013

Meg Barker is a registered psychotherapist with the UK Council for Psychotherapy. She  

• organises the conference programme for the College of Sexual and Relationship Therapists (COSRT) as well as being on the editorial board of their journal and writing for their website, 
• co-organises the Critical Sexology Group which presents open interdisciplinary seminars on sexuality in London three times a year
• co-edits the Taylor & Francis journal Psychology & Sexuality with Darren Langdridge and is on the editorial boards of Sexualities, Porn Studies, the Journal of Popular Romance Studies, and the European Journal of Ecopsychology.

Catch her Youtube presentations: 90 second lecture on sex therapy and introduction to bisexuality research in the UK

The views expressed in this post, as in all posts on Society Matters, are the views of the author, not The Open University.

Cartoon by Catherine Pain

The swing against ‘Europe’ reflects a wider swing against the concept of any community wider than a gated one, writes Alan Shipman.

While the EU’s opponents say that leaving it would boost our national solidarity and sense of community, the policies built around the new Euro-scepticism suggest something else. 

It’s more than likely that the United Kingdom Independence Party’s (UKIP) remarkable 26% vote share in May’s local elections reflected a traditional mid-term protest. The Liberal Democrats, now in government, were no longer a viable vehicle for followers of the two big parties to signal impatience with their leaders. UKIP stood out as an especially alluring alternative: the only party capable of reducing taxes while raising public spending, improving the NHS and public transport while turning away the immigrants who’ve helped to keep them running, removing red tape while intervening to stop ‘unwanted’ buildings and retail developments, and making home-owners better off while reducing housing demand. 

But as well as viewing UKIP as a serious threat, some big-party strategists are assuming that its appeal derives from its central manifesto commitment: withdrawal from the European Union. That’s why certain ministers have taken the extraordinary step of suggesting they would vote to leave the EU if a referendum were held now, and might see little disadvantage in doing so even after David Cameron has renegotiated its terms (see this article). It even led some to reject resistance to a Queen’s Speech amendment designed to force the prime minister’s hand over a referendum date.

These may be clever tactics to ensure the success of Cameron’s renegotiation. Germany and other large member states might concede more if (as Euro-sceptics argue) the EU needs Britain more than Britain needs the EU, and can be convinced that even the once firmly pro-European Conservatives are in danger of slipping away.  But they run the risk of creating a national presumption in favour of withdrawal, unless the benefits of membership can be proven. And that’s an impossible task.

A cost-benefit analysis of joining the European Economic Community (as it then was) could have been attempted in 1973, because the UK’s situation was known and its trajectories with or without accession could be sensibly projected. After 40 years of membership, it’s very hard to stage the exercise in reverse, and decide if the UK would get richer by withdrawing. On the positive side, it’s estimated that 3 million of the UK’s 29.7m jobs are directly supported by the EU’s single market. But that doesn’t mean that leaving the EU would put 3 million jobs at risk (see this article), since the rest of Europe would still be open to UK exports, though we don’t know on what terms. 

On the negative side, EU directives are now the main source of regulation that continues to grow, despite successive government's business secretaries’ promises to reduce it. But regulation can be an enabler as well as a constrainer of free enterprise; and it’s likely that governments of a non-EU Britain would have introduced many of the same rules. 

While former chancellor Lord Lawson argues that the EU will intentionally undermine the UK’s financial service sector (over 10% of its national output) with new rules if it stays in, the mayor who presides over most of it is dubious about leaving. Boris Johnson realises that Eurozone business could then drift to financial centres – Luxembourg and Malta, as well as Paris and Frankfurt – whose governments are unequivocal about staying in the EU’s inner core. And although this should be an easy time to condemn Brussels technocrats for persisting with economic policies that are amplifying the deficits (and re-awakening the national animosities) they were meant to eliminate (see this article), the UK’s pursuit of a parallel austerity programme makes that harder to do.

A much broader narrowing
What is clear – and increasingly challenging for those who want to continue UK membership – is that this country pays more into the EU than it directly gets out. The UK contributed EUR 11.3bn, and received EUR 6.6bn, in the most recently accounted year. No amount of renegotiation or agricultural policy reform will change this, since the UK (even after its long recession) is among the bloc’s richest economies, part of a better-off ‘north’ that will always be a net payer while the disadvantaged ‘east’ and ‘south’ are net payees. The case for staying in is based on indirect economic benefits – freedom to trade with, move between and migrate to 26 (soon to be 27) other countries, playing by the same rules – and non-economic gains, of which the bloc’s internal peace and external strength are the most obvious but least quantifiable. 

But the inclination of a quarter of the electorate to assess the EU on a straightforward money in/money out basis – and of major parties to be pulled in the same direction – confirms a seismic political shift over the past 40 years. The welfare state, and Britain’s wider tax arrangements, have been re-appraised on the same basis. People now expect to get out at least what they have paid in, and to scrap the system if they do not. The days of looking beyond money as a measure of benefit, and of expecting those with more to pay more, are long gone. 

It’s a world away from the generation of politicians (led by Edward Heath and Harold Wilson) who brought Britain into Europe and fended off the earlier demands for renegotiation or withdrawal. They had lived through a world war which not only underlined the need to build a European community, but also brought a sense of community broad enough (and of fluctuations in fortune sharp enough) for the advantaged to accept some ongoing obligation to the less advantaged. The swing against ‘Europe’ is, when viewed more carefully, a swing against any community wider than a gated one. UKIP is adamant that scaling-down the UK’s international obligations would enable it to rediscover and enhance its intra-national solidarity. Other parties should be wary of imitating a challenger whose detailed commitments actually suggest the reverse.
Alan Shipman 21 May 2013 

Alan Shipman is a lecturer in Economics at the Open University. He is responsible for the modules You and your money:personal finance in context and Personal investment in an uncertain world,  part of the foundation degree in Financial Services.

The views expressed in this post, as in all posts on Society Matters, are the views of the author, not The Open University.

Cartoon by Catherine Pain 

Shocked and delighted, Meg Barker explains why winning meant so much.

Following my last post I'm very pleased to report that last Friday, I was the proud recipient of the Erotic Award in the academic category. Even better that my co-nominees Sue Newsome and Brooke Magnanti both received awards in other categories: Sue for her important sex therapy work around disability, and Brooke for her recent book about sex work and sexuality, Sex Myths.

My award was the last one of the night to be announced so I was extremely nervous by the time they got to me. Despite regularly talking to large audiences, I found the thought of going up on stage absolutely terrifying. My main worry was that nobody would know why I was there: that they would see me as something of a fraud compared to all the performers, activists and practitioners who had preceded me and who are so well known in these worlds.

The audience mainly consisted of members of the kink and related communities who were also staying on for the rest of the Night of the Senses ball, including those in Outsiders (the sex and disability charity which the event was fundraising for. These are very important groups for me because so much of the academic work that I've done has been within such communities, and with the aim of increasing awareness of them beyond the stereotypes and myths that frequently circulate. I've always tried my hardest to make my work accountable to the people who are involved in it, and to the wider communities that they come from, but this seemed to be a real test of that. Would they see my writing as valuable? Would they even know who I was?

A decade ago when I started researching sexual communities, very few people in my discipline of psychology studied the kinds of groups that I was working with: the kink, bisexual and polyamorous communities. Those who did were generally seeking to conduct research which would explain why some strange people deviated from ordinary sexual behaviour: by engaging in practices other than genital sex; by falling outside the gay/straight binary; or by being in sexual relationships with more than one person.

I felt that the much more important, and less patronising, question to ask was what we could all learn from people in these communities who had – by necessity – examined issues of sexuality, gender and relationships closely and come up with many different ways of doing things. Inspired by the work of Alfred Kinsey and his colleagues, my assumption was always that there is a diversity of possible ways of being sexual and relating to others and that there would be real value in making people more aware of this. My work as a sex therapist has brought home just how much rigid ideas around sex and sexuality are responsible for all kinds of pain and suffering: from the teenage girl trying to figure out what to do sexually so as not to be labelled too tight or slutty; to the person who forces themselves to have sex for fear of losing their partner; to the people with disabilities who struggle to find any representations of themselves as sexual beings; to the many people who live in fear of their sexual desires (or lack of them) being exposed because they don't fit into what they've been told counts as 'normal'.

It hasn't always been easy working in this area. At the start many colleagues found it embarrassing and questioned the legitimacy of what I was doing. Being open about my own involvement in the communities I was studying – so that people could evaluate my work with knowledge of my potential biases – led to exposure and judgement that was very painful at times. But over the last few years it seems that more and more academics have been taking these areas seriously and asking the same kinds of questions as me, as you can see if you check out the papers in the journal I co-edit Psychology & Sexuality. Also colleagues in other areas have become much more interested and supportive. And public awareness has shifted such that media reports are far less likely to demonise or ridicule either the communities or the research.

Last year I published my book, Rewriting the Rules, which brings much of the work that I've been doing to a general audience. The response has been completely positive from academics and non-academics alike. I'm very grateful to my university – The Open University – who have been nothing but supportive, publishing The Bisexuality Report launching my book, and publicising my Erotic Award on their website.

This year Christina Richards and I are publishing a book on sexuality and gender for therapists and health practitioners. This will hopefully make professionals more aware of the needs of people across diverse sexualities and genders, whether 'normative' or 'non-normative'. I'm engaging again with kink communities to explore the sophisticated understandings of  consent that are developing there which may be helpful more broadly given the current climate regarding sexual abuse. Finally, I'm starting a project with Rosalind Gill and Laura Harvey analysing sex advice in self-help books, problem pages, and TV shows. I'm hopeful that this work can lead to the publication of some more positive sex advice which is inclusive of all of our sexual practices, identities and experiences.

I'm so grateful to all of the people and communities who have supported my work over the years and who have taken part in it for little direct reward. There is no way that I could have done all this without them, and that is why this award means the world to me.
Meg Barker 24 May 2013

The views expressed in this post, as in all posts on Society Matters, are the views of the author, not The Open University.

Cartoon by Catherine Pain 

There are sound bites, and there are sound bites too far, writes Dick Skellington

Not all families are hard working, not all families can be, and not all hard working people live in families. Ministers habitually pour out the phrase as if all they ever think about are families, rather than the various kinds of other households, who may work even harder. Also a lot of people who work hard are not wealthy, and a lot of people who are wealthy do not word hard. The more you think about the phrase the more the false notes really begin to grate. 

Persistent use of the phrase by Ministers plays a huge part in reinforcing the divide-and-rule tactic often employed by Governments in trouble. Governments love scapegoats, and one of the implications of 'hard working families' is that all those people who are not in hard working family environments are less deserving. 

The phrase has long been associated with the Conservatives, but more recently was taken up by Gordon Brown during his New Labour premiership. In 2005, when Brown was fighting the General Election, the BBC News website conducted an interesting analysis of the phrase 'hard working families', rooting its populist adoption in the widespread use of unforgiving political rhetoric about welfare 'handouts' to 'scroungers'. 

Back then commentators were pointing out that the effect of its use is to marginalise people living in single households, such as lone parents. There were those who questioned too the wisdom of using language which suggests that couples with children were more hard working than those without children. At the end of the election campaign, one lone parent reminded Brown to ensure he 'consider everybody, in every class and every financial situation'. 

Despite this, the Coalition has upped the ante on the adoption of the rhetoric of hard work. The result is often hysterical shifts in tone even in one speech. Theresa May is a habitual offender. In March she gave a keynote speech entitled We Will Win by Being the Party for All and used it to champion 'people who work hard and want to get on'. Those who were not so aspirational were condemned to the margins of her priorities.  It really is astonishingly dumb politics to use an inclusive sound bite and then rush headlong down an exclusive blind alley.

Wikipedia, not always the most reliable source on such issues, does contain some useful observations about the phrase 'hard working families'. The phrase is an example, it argues, of 'glittering generality' in contemporary political discourse. Its origins are found in tabloid newspaper discourses of the mid '90s, and, for those of you who can remember the drab 2005 general election campaign, it emerged with such regularity during that campaign that many people begged politicians to put it in the trash bin.

A key assumption behind the phrase is that working is good for us. To work is to get by, to pay your taxes, to keep your family afloat. Many people work hard but are paid so poorly that even a national wage can't stop an increase in poverty among working people in the United Kingdom. Indeed, there is recent evidence from the Resolution Foundation that hard working families are actually worse off since the Coalition came to power, so on one level, bleating on about appealing to their needs could be seen as hypocritical. This assumption also ignores the fact that parenting, or caring for relatives, are in themselves intensely hard working achievements. Mums and carers are not what Theresa May is thinking about when she uses the phrase. 

I might be running against the current mood in the nation – a nation whose shires just legitimised the United Kingdom Independence Party, who are also championing 'hard working families', in the May local elections. In the end though, whatever your political party of choice, the persistent use of the phrase 'hard working families' may rebound on its exponents. The next General Election might be won by the party which appeals to all the country, not just one section of it, and a focus on 'hard working families' may alienate those other groups pushed into the margin of political priorities. Its lazy use is bad politics, but I doubt if it will stop in the current climate of a blame culture in which some families seem more deserving than others.
Dick Skellington 28 May 2013

The views expressed in this post, as in all posts on Society Matters, are the views of the author, not The Open University.

Cartoon by Catherine Pain

If you are buying a house, look at the number carefully, writes Dick Skellington. 

I have long suspected that superstition may have a negative impact on property value, but have no idea why odd-numbered houses are more expensive than even. Anyone with any ideas why please contact the blog.

Research by the UK property company Zoopla has found that odd-numbered homes are worth £538 more than even-numbered homes. A typical odd-numbered dwelling is worth £207,202, but the even-numbered dwelling is worth only £206,664. Number 13s on average gross only £203,892 at sale.  

I never thought about the number when buying my home 27 years ago, and nothing bad has happened to me since, apart from those blows and misfortunes caused by my own stupidity, and the long delay in replacing the roof, now a task completed along with installing a new bedroom and landscape designed small garden. In 1985, the terraced Edwardian property in a quiet conservation area of Stony Stratford was affordable, in good condition, and felt right.  And in case you ask, no, I did not buy it on a Friday. 

It seems the British, along with other people in Europe, still find the number 13 unlucky. The origins for the superstition are contested but it seems to have something to do with the fact the there were 13 people at The Last Supper, and fear of 13 was widespread in medieval times. 

Number 13 even has its own phobia. People who have an abnormal fear of the number are suffering from something called triskaidekaphobia. Some new-build estates now avoid the number 13 like the plague. Many skyscrapers do not have a thirteenth floor.

And did you know the price of a property decreases as its number increases? So if you live at number 898 I fully empathise (the reason is that high numbers are generally further away from amenities and shops). However, should you reside at a number 1, I envy you (the implication is that you only have neighbours one side, or you live on a corner). See the table below:

AVERAGE VALUES BY PROPERTY NUMBER 
Property Number    Average Value

1                                      £229,411
2                                      £222,273
3                                      £218,724
4                                      £217,662
5                                      £215,605
6                                      £213,476
7                                      £212,292
8                                      £211,711
9                                      £211,026
10                                    £210,864

Maybe I should give my number 13 a name. I could be ironic and call it Sea View (the sea is 120 miles away), or I could have a laugh and call it The Haunted House, or even better Triskaidekaphobia. But I would probably settle for something less alluring and compelling. Ousebank Terrace, after the nearby River Ouse, should do, or even Society Matters. 

If I put a name on my house it should compensate for the number 13 factor.  You see those smart-asses at Zoopla found that a property with a name is nearly £100,000 more expensive than a home which only has a number.  So I am off to B&Q to buy a plaque.

Dick Skellington 30 May 2013

The views expressed in this post, as in all posts on Society Matters, are the views of the author, not The Open University.

Cartoon by Gary Edwards

For the people who bring the news to our living rooms, 2012 was the most dangerous since 1995, writes Dick Skellington.

Since 1995, when Reporters Without Borders first began collecting casualty rates among media personnel in war and conflict zones, the rate has been increasing. Last year was the most dangerous yet as the civil war in Syria took its toll. 

In total 90 journalists were killed, 6 media assistants, and 48 citizen journalists lost their lives. The total of 90 dead journalists was the highest for any year since 2002*. This total included 18 killed in Syria, 18 in Somalia, 10 in Pakistan, and 6 in Mexico.

2013 shows continues of the bleak trend. By the end of May, 23 journalists had been killed and 9 citizen-web journalists have lost their lives. A further 175 journalists and 162 citizen web-journalists had been imprisoned. Most of the victims were in Syria and Pakistan. It included the legendary French journalist Maria Colvin who was killed in Homs.

Since 2002, over 700 journalists have died in world conflict zones, according to Reporters Without Borders. I believe it is important we reflect on these chilling statistics every day we read a newspaper or watch the news.
Dick Skellington 5 June 2013

The views expressed in this post, as in all posts on Society Matters, are the views of the author, not The Open University.

*Note: Journalists killed only includes cases where Reporters Without Borders has clearly established that the victim was killed because of his/ her activities as a journalist.
 

Cartoon by Gary Edwards

Recent horrendous child murders have raised concerns about access to pornographic images. But pornography does have positive impacts which need to be considered before we rush to greater control, argues Meg Barker.

Pornography has been in the news again with arguments that murders and other crimes can be linked to pornography and that access to pornography should be more tightly controlled, especially internet pornography.

Such issues are also a major point of argument in the academic world. Recently I found that I've been listed – among other academics – in a rather negative article in the Psychology Today magazine, which argues against the new journal Porn Studies. I was very happy to be invited onto the editorial board of Porn Studies so I thought I would write a few words in response to the criticisms that have been levelled against it, which also relate to some of the wider debates that are going on in relation to pornography.

Arguments against Porn Studies
The arguments against the journal come from a combination of academics (mostly psychologists and feminist academics) who themselves research and write about pornography from the perspective that it causes harm. One group of academics criticised the publishers of Porn Studies, because they felt that the journal took a 'pro-porn' perspective and was therefore unbalanced. Generally this group is critical of pornography for perpetuating and reproducing the objectification and oppression of women through common representations of women's bodies as objects for men's sexual gratification and of sex where women are fairly passive and the focus is on men's pleasure. The author of the Psychology Today article makes a similar argument about lack of balance, but with particular concerns around the potential individual harms of pornography such as addiction and negative impacts on the developing brains of young people viewing pornography. 

Given that there have not yet been any issues of the new journal, these arguments against it were made on the basis of the membership of the editorial board which, critics thought, is weighted in favour of those who are pro-pornography.

Moving away from polarisation 
I have written previously about the tendency of debates in areas such as pornography to become polarised into 'pro' or 'anti' stances, and we see that happening here: academics position themselves as 'anti' pornography and assume that this journal must therefore be 'pro' pornography because of the lack of academics with whom they are familiar on the editorial board. The argument seems to be that if you are not for us you must be against us.

In contrast, I see the journal as doing something very important in moving beyond such polarisations and in attempting to bring together work about pornography from across all disciplines and from a variety of perspectives, thus refuting the idea that there are only two possible positions.

One key reason why such polarisations are problematic is that pornography is not one singular thing about which it is possible to be 'pro' or 'anti' in its entirety. If we take the legal definition of pornography in Britain as materials 'produced solely or principally for the purposes of sexual arousal' then this includes a vast array of different things, from photo shoots in lads magazines, to Fifty Shades of Grey and much of the online fan fiction which that book was based on, to pornographic movies, online porn sites, sending somebody an arousing text message or posting a sexual image of oneself on the internet, erotic comics and a great deal more. Even the category of 'violent pornography' is difficult to define. Some would include images of consensual BDSM practices akin to acupuncture in this category, for example, but not the violence of 'torture porn' movies like Saw or Hostel because those are (a) mainstream films and (b) not aiming to sexually arouse.

Pornography can be produced such that it is problematic in many ways, and it can be produced in deliberately ethical, queer, or feminist ways (although there is always the risk that such words are used as selling points and do not really filter down to how the people involved are actually treated). Pornography can serve to perpetuate or to challenge norms, of sex and gender for example. As lawyer Miles Jackson points out, context can mean that something which was not intended as pornographic becomes so (for example, if the scene from the 12-rated Casino Royale movie where Bond is tortured was cut out and edited together with similar scenes from other films); or that something that was pornographic ceases to be so (for example viral clips from porn movies which are circulated for shock or humour value rather than to produce any kind of sexual arousal).

Balance and effects

Even if we consider the potential negative effects – or harms – of pornography, these effects are again multiple rather than singular. There is the potential harm of pornography causing criminal behaviour, violence towards women or other groups, or sexist attitudes. There is the potential individual harm that the Psychology Today author writes about, of people becoming addicted to pornography or it having adverse effects on relationships. And there are the possible cultural harms of pornography reproducing and perpetuating certain understandings of how sex, gender, and relationships work which limit and constrain individuals, communities and societies in problematic ways.

In relation to this latter point come a number of important and complicated questions about the role of pornography, and other forms of media, in reflecting and/or reinforcing certain problematic practices and dynamics. And, following on from this, where the energies of those who would like to see total gender equality, for example, or better understanding of the diversity of sexual identities and practices, would be best directed. Should we focus on pornography (and if so, which kinds), on more mainstream forms of media, on other aspects of society (such as education or government policy), or on all of these things?

It is important also, of course, to consider the possible positive effects of pornography, which include enabling people to figure out what they like sexually, providing sexual enjoyment, exposure to diverse bodies (naturally this depends on the type of porn which is viewed), and helping people to communicate about sex within relationships, amongst many other things. It is important both within academic work and beyond that we are aware of such positive aspects and to include the experiences of those who engage with pornography as viewers, readers, etc. as well as considering the pornographic materials themselves, and the ways in which these are produced and distributed.

I would very much hope that the Porn Studies journal lives up to its aims of publishing papers across the whole spectrum of disciplinary areas which have something to contribute on the topic, and I would certainly hope that perspectives which are critical of pornography are included. Indeed it is vital that submissions demonstrate awareness of the multiple perspectives that exist around this topic. 

I would also hope that the journal will represent a move away from polarised positions. The tendency to polarise gets in the way of constructive conversation, and may also result in people feeling backed into a corner such that they feel they need to be entirely 'pro' or 'anti' pornography in all its forms, rather than being able to do the important work – for example – of pointing out problematic representations and damaging practices and proposing more liberating, culturally valuable, or ethical alternatives.

My role in the journal
Finally I will respond to the specific charge made against me in the Psychology Today article which claims that I must believe that 'internet porn is the greatest thing since the invention of "talkies"' on the basis that 'most of my research has been conducted within sexual communities, focusing on bisexuality, BDSM, and open non-monogamy'.

First I certainly do not believe that all pornography, or all internet pornography, is a purely positive thing. As a sex therapist I have worked with people who have struggled greatly with online pornography and their relationship to it, and there are many kinds of pornography that I personally (and politically) feel are part of the problematic cultural understandings which require the strongest kind of critical challenging. As a psychologist I know that the research on the potential harmful effects of pornography to date has been very unclear, with evidence both for and against pornography impacting negatively on attitudes and behaviours. And I also see that the study of pornography thus far has been dominated by such negative-effects research and feel that it is time to broaden the net so that people from across disciplines are working together to address all the different important and interesting questions about pornography.

As for the assumption that I would be 'pro-porn' because my research has focused on sexual communities, I am perplexed to say the least. To suggest that sexual and gender diversity is equivalent to being 'pro-porn' is incorrect and does a disservice to these communities. My work in these areas has helped me to recognise the range of experiences of sex and sexuality that are possible, and the ways in which understandings of sex and sexuality (put across in pornography and in many other forms of media) have the potential to constrain and to liberate, to worry and to relieve, to close down and to open up. I would hope that this position will be an asset in my role on the editorial board of Porn Studies as I will endeavour to challenge taken-for-granted understandings and to encourage writers to be aware of multiple possible perspectives, as well as seriously considering the real-world ethical implications both of the materials which they are researching, and their own writings on the topic.
Meg Barker 9 June 2013

Meg Barker is an Open University lecturer teaching mainly on counselling modules, and is also a therapist specialising in relationships. Find her other blogs here. 

The views expressed in this post, as in all posts on Society Matters, are the views of the author, not The Open University.

Cartoon by Catherine Pain  

Dick Skellington reflects on our disunited kingdom in his holiday postcard from Sardinia.

I was born just after the Second World War which cost the lives of millions combating tyranny and racial hatred. A friend who was born a decade earlier expressed his concern about what he sees as disturbing parallels between the present and the thirties – the longest downturn in modern times, the persecution of minorities, mounting stigma against the unemployed, and antipathy towards those living on benefits and immigrants. All this in a gathering storm of Islamaphobia. 

We do seem to becoming more mean-spirited and
selfish, and more antagonistic towards outsiders. Of course, as someone famously put it, we must beware of generalisations, even that one, but I am sure I am not the only one who has been struck by some of the dispiriting political rhetoric and media hysteria of late, especially after the brutal killing of a soldier in Woolwich. 

I left for my holiday in Sardinia with UKIP's popularity running at nearly 30 per cent in some opinion polls. The streets of the country are witnessing far more frequent demonstrations from fringe Far Right organisations such as the English Defence League. It is as if UKIP's resurgence has pushed the country further to the right, making intolerance of difference a badge of honour for some. Its gathering support is a symptom of disempowerment among the white working class. UKIP supporters are more likely to earn below the national average wage, be white, male, and over 60.
 
As I left for my holiday the spectre of further corruption allegations against Ministers and Members of the House of Lords dominated the quality and tabloid newspapers, adding fuel to the fire of political disrepute.

Meanwhile, the festering boil of banker corruption remains to be lanced at a time when banks are still reluctant to lend, while little progress has been made on tackling the twin problems of tax evasion and tax avoidance. The focus has always been on the soft target of benefit scroungers. 

The Government struggles to resolve some of the most critical problems of the day. The lack of adequately paid jobs, falling or at best stagnant wages for many, a shortfall in affordable housing, the absence of growth especially in regions beyond the Greater London area where major cities and urban conurbations face further local government cuts in spending in the next two years, youth unemployment at record levels, underemployment rising too, a stalled deficit and increased borrowing. The Labour opposition meanwhile seems incapable of promising anything too different from the current spate of austerity. Across mainstream politics membership is plunging. UKIP and others will reap the harvest of this disaffection.
 
All these failings are making it easier for more extreme fringe parties to secure greater political respectability.  We are at greater risk of becoming hostages to an unrepresentative band of right wingers. I am in Italy where, of course, they know much more than we do about the perils of ignoring the threat of intolerance; and where austerity is struggling to tackle deficits with similar outcomes, if not worse, for young people and the vulnerable. And yes, I hear you shout, you could have holidayed in Portugal or Spain, more riddled with economic stagnation than the UK, then you might get some context. Just look at what is happening on the streets of Turkey's big cities this month. The UK is by comparison perhaps not so bad. But from here, where the sun shines, our problems seem the more acute to me. We seem to be harking back to an alleged golden age, back to the little Englander mentality of the 19th century.

Our country remains in extensive care. It is living through a lost and traumatic decade, especially for the young. It is nice to be away from it all, if only for a few weeks. Britannia does not look so cool from here.  Wish you were here.
Dick Skellington

The views expressed in this post, as in all posts on Society Matters, are the views of the author, not The Open University.

Cartoon by Catherine Pain

Nearer his end than his beginning, Dick Skellington reveals just how he might end up. 

I do not think I will go that far. Just send my metal to the recycling plant and scatter my ashes over the waters beneath The Needles.
Dick Skellington 13 June 2013

The views expressed in this post, as in all posts on Society Matters, are the views of the author, not The Open University.

Cartoon by Gary Edwards

Even the participation of UKIP could not disguise the apathy and disaffection with our political parties. Although the Electoral Commission report on the outcome is still awaited the projected turn out looks likely to fall below the turnout in May 2012.

The historic trend in voter participation during the last 100 years shows a gradual decline. It seems we vote in television reality programmes with greater enthusiasm than we do in political elections. In 2010, for example, 15,466,019 votes were cast for The X Factor but when it comes to choosing our political representatives we vote with our feet. In the recent elections for Police Commissioners the turn-out was as low as 18 per cent.

A report from The Economic Intelligence Unit (EIU), published in March, casts further disturbing light on just how low our opinion of our institutions has sunk.

According to the EIU faith and trust in British institutions has reached an ‘all time low’. Britain now possesses one of the lowest political participation rates in the developed world. We are, in the words of the EIU, in the midst of ‘a deep institutional crisis’, and in a study of 167 countries we sit behind Iraq and Palestine in political participation rates. Even in recent by-elections turn-out has fallen to below 50 per cent.

Britain, according to the EIU, is not only below all the major European powers, but also lags behind some nations that were not considered political democracies until very recently. These include the Lebanon, Tunisia, and Namibia. The EIU did score us highly on having a system of free and open elections, but we scored only six out of 10 when it came to participation. The ERIU democracy index looked at several other factors in producing their latest index, but even then Britain was ranked 16th out of 167 countries, placing it in the lower rungs of the top 25 major democracies in the world.

The EIU report concluded that in Britain: ‘Problems are reflected across many elements – voter turn-out, political party membership, the willingness of citizens to engage in politics and their attitudes towards it. Trust in government, parliament and politicians is at an all-time low’ (my emphasis).

The crisis in trust in our key institutions has been exacerbated by recent scandals involving the police, the church, our financial systems, the BBC, and the media (phone hacking).

The EIU report specifically signalled out the Libor rate rigging scandal as a key factor in recent low political participation, while disillusionment with our political systems has been further damaged by the MPs' expenses scandal and ‘cash for questions’ controversies.

The EIU argue that the British public remain disaffected with politicians who they believe have not sufficiently cleaned up their own act, and have failed to call the bankers to account for triggering the financial crash that precipitated the severe austerity measures now being imposed on the British people. It even suggests that the 2011 riots were a response to a loss of confidence in our political and ruling elite.

It ends with a chilling warning to the Coalition in its final two years in office: ‘There is a clear risk of escalating resentment among affected groups, particularly if further state support is offered to the deeply unpopular financial services sector.’ It's worrying too for Labour, as they look unlikely to be able to offer anything more radical than a similar raft of cuts and welfare squeezes that will make it difficult for them to charm new voters.

These are disturbing times for our democracy, and the more our elite institutions are exposed, the greater the risk to our democratic future. Greater accountability may do something to alleviate the fall from grace.

Find out more:

• Full EIU data
  

Dick Skellington 17 June 2013

The views expressed in this post, as in all posts on Society Matters, are the views of the author, not The Open University.

Cartoon by Gary Edwards

The stock market is currently confounding doom-laden forecasts. But Alan Shipman advises caution.

Then bounceback might be woefully premature, given that the economy has been static or shrinking for two years and unemployment is rising again. But these days, a recovery in asset prices can contribute to economic revival as well as signalling that investors are expecting one. Many households had to tighten their belts after 2008 because the value of their assets (mainly homes and shareholdings) had fallen perilously close to (or sometimes below) the value of their debts. Because they had to save more and spend less, others found their incomes falling and jobs disappearing. The government then decided it had to curb its own expenditures to match its shrinking tax revenue, unleashing a wave of benefit cuts and state-sector job loss which gave the spiral another downward push.

When share and property prices pick up, the squeeze on household and business budgets is reduced, and the private sector can start spending its way to recovery. That seemed to be happening in the second quarter, with surveys indicating strong growth in service-sector activity, including the markets where those trending trades take place.

The BLASH backlash
So if falling asset prices were what made the recession so long and deep, why isn’t their rebound prompting wider celebration? It’s partly because, for every grateful seller, there’s a would-be buyer who’s now been priced out of the market. If you want to live in London (or anywhere in the south-east) and don’t already own something there, the new surge in asking prices is hardly reassuring.

Still more worrying is the probable reason for house and share price indices jumping so quickly from floor to roof. It began not with a revival of the activity that creates new assets, but with an injection of credit that bids up the value of existing ones. The Bank of England’s retention of a record low interest rate backed up by quantitative easing since 2009, and extra Treasury help for banks to make cheap loans via schemes like ‘funding for lending’ and ‘help to buy’, have allowed the lucky recipients a one-way bet – to Buy Low And Sell High, revving the markets as they do so.

Other central banks and finance ministries around the world have indulged in similar credit easing since 2008. Economists have long preached that low interest rates lead to high asset prices. Anyone with money, and anyone without it who can borrow, rushes to invest in things that yield a durable income flow – and whose rate of return is likely to stay above the inflation that long waves of cheap credit can also unleash. So market-watchers can see ‘bubbles’ going well beyond the major stock exchanges and estate-agents’ windows. Recent surges in American university tuition fees, Damien Hirst auction prices and debt issued by financially fragile governments like Ukraine and Hungary are also signs of a speculative frenzy caused by low-cost funds seeking improbably high returns.

There are three reasons for caution about this euphoria, even among those who were first in the market and now enjoying generous capital gains. Firstly, low-interest lending was intended to promote real investment in new production capacity. But many businesses are still having problems getting the loans they need to expand. Private investment shows few signs of sustainable recovery; and the supply of new housing isn’t rising to meet the new demand, which is why prices (especially in London) have rallied so quickly.

Secondly, this lack of real expansion means that the price rise for assets – which are claims on the income from future production – isn’t supported by actual trends in future production. Markets that climb in defiance of fundamental value inevitably fall back down to earth. Thirdly, when the inevitable price ‘correction’ occurs, many households and businesses (and banks) will be left holding assets that are worth less than their debts. The conditions for slump could then return with added force.

That bursting of the new bubbles needn’t happen this year, or anytime before the 2015 general election. The turning-point is generally expected to come when central banks are forced to start raising interest rates, either because inflation takes off or because they can’t keep swelling their own balance sheets with yield-free government debt. It’s to avert any fear of this happening in the near future that US Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke has been giving reassurances that interest rates will stay at their present low level for several more years. Mark Carney, the newly arriving Bank of England governor, won’t want to buck this trend, given that the first to raise rates will inevitably be blamed for any price crash that follows.

If their strategy works, cheap credit will by then have revived the economy’s supply side as well, justifying the higher price of assets and ensuring that they avoid another drop. But the unbalanced sources of this year’s growth – driven by public and private consumption, with little revival of fixed investment cast doubt on the strength of its foundations. As government and business start to celebrate a return to GDP growth over the next year, there’s a risk that their boardroom champagne could fall suddenly flat.

Alan Shipman 21 June 2013

The views expressed in this post, as in all posts on Society Matters, are the views of the author, not The Open University.

Alan Shipman is a lecturer in Economics at The Open University. He is responsible for the modules You and your money:personal finance in context and Personal investment in an uncertain world, part of the foundation degree in Financial Services.

Cartoon by Catherine Pain
 

A Dalek has a better chance of appearing on the cover of the Radio Times than a black TV star does, writes David Herman, so who is representing non-white Britain on our screens?

Lenny Henry recently attacked the whiteness of this year’s Baftas. The awards, he said, were a disgrace for not celebrating black talent. “There weren’t any black people at the Baftas; there was no black talent,” Henry told the Daily Telegraph. “In 200 years’ time, our children are going to look back to now and say: ‘Remember that really weird period when there weren’t any black people in any programmes?’ It’s unthinkable, but now we’re having to live through it.” He is absolutely right. Out of 31 nominations or special awards for individual categories, 31 went to white actors and performers.

The Baftas are by no means exceptional. Take the peak-time programmes on a recent Friday. On BBC1 was The One Show (two white presenters), followed by A Question of Sport (white presenter and six white panellists), Would I Lie to You? (white presenter and six white panellists), Have I Got News for You (white presenter and four white panellists) and The Graham Norton Show (white host and four white guests). On BBC2 it was Gardeners’ World (two white presenters) and QI (white presenter and four white comedians), followed by Newsnight (white presenter).

It’s the same story wherever you look. From Call the Midwife to Broadchurch, Top Gear to Match of the Day, the presenters, guests and main leads are white. Do you like arts programmes? Whether it’s Melvyn Bragg or Alan Yentob, Andrew Graham-Dixon or Howard Goodall, Mark Kermode or Jools Holland, the presenter is white. Every major sports presenter and commentator is white, though there are one or two black football and athletics pundits, and the occasional black cricket commentator if the West Indies are touring. Chat-show hosts and quiz presenters are white. So are the people who appear on the cover of the Radio Times – the Doctor’s assistant last week, Robert Peston the week before that. There’s a better chance of a Dalek appearing on the cover than a non-white TV star.

The most serious example is in news and current affairs. All the presenters on Newsnight and the three main Radio 4 news programmes, nearly all the TV newsreaders and nearly all of the editors and main reporters are white.

Why does this matter? First, how can the experiences and realities of non-white viewers be represented properly when nearly every major personality in television is white? The situation is especially worrying when all the figures of cultural authority – newsreaders, current affairs presenters, people who run all the TV and radio networks – are white.

Second, what about non-white talent? Surely they must feel discouraged about their chances of breaking into television or radio when there are so few role models and when what they see and hear is, in the immortal words of Greg Dyke, “hideously white”?

Finally, what kind of society do we think we live in? Is it as white as the 1950s and 1960s or is it properly multiracial? If we think we live in a diverse society, why are there so few non-white faces on TV or behind the scenes, in charge of networks? As the media run endless stories about Asian grooming gangs, immigrants sponging off the welfare state and alleged terrorists such as Abu Qatada, where are the positive images of non-white Britain? Lenny Henry started out in the mid-1970s. Who would have thought that, almost 40 years on, things would have changed so little?
© David Herman

Posted 26 June 2013

This article appeared originally in the New Statesman, 24-30 May 2013.

Reprinted with kind permission from the author.

Cartoon by Gary Edwards

The cost of government spending cuts can be measured in human lives, reports Dick Skellington.

The Coalition Government is sticking to Plan A –A for Austerity – and carrying on regardless of any argument that insists other strategies may be more productive for delivering growth and economic stability. The next two years promise more cuts to welfare and local services as austerity bites. We have already witnessed a suicide by a woman so desperate about a bedroom tax designed to boost Government coffers, that she took her own life. But how common are such incidents? Is there a connection between austerity and a nation's public health? 

In a new book The Body Economic, researchers David Stuckler and Sanjay Basu present a convincing case that such suicides, and a consequent rise in physical and mental ill health, are a product of the austerity regimes gripping many of the world's developed economics since the global financial crisis of 2008.

The book puts forward a weight of evidence suggesting that the kind of policies adopted by the Coalition Government, designed to alleviate debt and reduce the deficit, have devastating consequences on people's lives.  If austerity had been run like a clinical trial, David Stuckler argues, it would have been discontinued. "The evidence of its deadly side-effects – of the profound effects of economic choices on health – is overwhelming."

Since 2008 in the United States over 5 million people have lost access to health care because they lost their jobs and with them their health insurance  In Greece, one of the hardest hit nations in the downturn, ill-health demographics have shown a disturbing upward trend. Greece has experienced a 200 per cent increase in HIV cases, for example, and across worst hit nations such as Spain, Portugal and Italy, suicide rates have increased. In the UK Stuckler found that 10,000 families have been pushed beyond welfare and into homelessness by the austerity cuts to housing benefits.

Stuckler is a distinguished Oxford academic who specialises in exploring the connections between political economy and public health. His book is a chilling warning about the impact of future austerity measures. "Recessions can hurt. But austerity kills," he concludes.

The most extreme case is Greece. "There, austerity to meet targets set by the troika is leading to a public-health disaster," says Stuckler. "Greece has cut its health system by more than 40 per cent. As the health minister said: 'These aren't cuts with a scalpel, they're cuts with a butcher's knife.'" 

For Stuckler what is most galling about the cuts is that they have been decided "not by doctors and healthcare professionals, but by economists and financial managers. The plan was simply to get health spending down to 6 per cent of GDP." Where did that number come from? he asks. It's less than the UK, less than Germany, and far less than the US.

Cuts in HIV-prevention budgets coincided with a 200 per cent increase in the virus in Greece, driven by a sharp rise in intravenous drug use against the background of a youth unemployment rate now running at more than 50 per cent and a spike in homelessness of around a quarter. The World Health Organisation, Stuckler says, recommends a supply of 200 clean needles a year for each intravenous drug user; groups that work with users in Athens estimate the current number available is about three.

The suicide rate in Greece was relatively low before 2008. Since then the rate has risen by an astonishing 60 per cent, while depression has doubled. Public health services have been overwhelmed and charities report a tenfold increase in cases. "There have been heavy cuts to many hospital sectors. Places lack surgical gloves, the most basic equipment. More than 200 medicines have been de-stocked by pharmacies who can't pay for them. When you cut with the butcher's knife, you cut both fat and lean. Ultimately, it's the patient who loses out."

While the book makes abundantly clear the cause-and-effect link between austerity and decreased levels of public health,  such public health disasters are not inevitable, even in the very worst economic downturns. Stuckler's analysis of data from the 1930s Great Depression in the US shows that every extra $100 of relief in states that adopted the American New Deal led to about 20 fewer deaths per 1,000 births, and four fewer suicides and 18 fewer pneumonia deaths per 100,000 people.

"When this recession started, we began to see history repeat itself," says Stuckler. In Spain, for example, where there was little investment in labour programmes, there was a spike in suicides. In Finland and Iceland, countries that took steps to protect their people in hard times, there was no noticeable impact on suicide rates or other health problems.

So in this current economic crisis, there are countries – Iceland, Sweden, Finland – that are showing positive health trends, and there are countries that are not: Greece, Spain, now maybe Italy. Teetering between the two extremes, Stuckler reckons, is Britain.

According to Stuckler, The UK is "one of the clearest expressions of how austerity kills". Suicides were falling in this country before the recession, he notes. Then, coinciding with a surge in unemployment, they spiked in 2008 and 2009. As unemployment dipped again in 2009 and 2010, so too did suicides. But since the election and the Coalition Government's introduction of austerity measures – and particularly cuts in public sector jobs across the country – suicides are back.
Ministers seem unwilling to address the increase in suicides, arguing it is too early to conclude anything from the data. But based on the actual data, Stuckler is in no doubt. "We've seen a second wave – of austerity suicides," he says. "And they've been concentrated in the north and north-east, places like Yorkshire and Humber, with large rises in unemployment. We're now seeing polarisation across the UK in mental-health issues."

He cites, also, the dire impact on homelessness – falling in Britain until 2010 – of government cuts to social housing budgets, and the human tragedies triggered by the fitness-for-work evaluations, designed to weed out disability benefit fraud.
Stuckler calls on governments to set our economies on track. The book publicity blurb sums it up succinctly. 

"We can prevent financial crises from becoming epidemics, but to do so, we must acknowledge what the hard data tells us: that, throughout history, there is a causal link between the strength of a community's health and its social protection systems. Now and for generations to come, our commitment to the building of fairer, more equal societies will determine the health of our body economic".
It is not to late. Almost, but not quite.
Dick Skellington 28 June 2013

The Body Economic: Why Austerity Killsby David Stuckler and Sanjay Basu is published by Allen Lane. 
 

The views expressed in this post, as in all posts on Society Matters, are the views of the author, not The Open University.

Cartoon by Catherine Pain

Dick Skellington reports on one piece of Government legislation that is definitely worthwhile 

The RSPCA welcomed the move and said it was vital that quick action was taken to end the suffering of animals working in circuses. A spokeswoman said: “What is important for us is that there is a clear deadline date for the ban and a proper retirement plan is put in place for the animals. There are huge welfare concerns involved with hauling circus animals like zebras, lions and tigers across the country for our entertainment.”  

It is estimated that across Britain there are 35 wild animals being used in the only two circuses still operating.  You may see some when the travelling menageries visit your local park this summer. The hope is that in the interim period wild animals will be not exposed to any further mistreatment.

A spokeswoman for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said: “We announced in March 2012 that it was our intention to ban the use of wild animals in travelling circuses and we are now working towards bringing in a Bill to achieve this."

I am with the American Civil Rights activist Dick Gregory on circus animals. He drew a parallel between the treatment of animals in circuses and the treatment of slaves: “When I look at animals held captive by circuses, I think of slavery. Animals in circuses represent the domination and oppression we have fought against for so long. They wear the same chains and shackles."

The new law will ban wild animals, but perhaps does not go far enough. Domesticated animals such as cats, dogs, rabbits and horses will still be allowed.  I remain concerned too about the caging of animals in zoos, but that concern is for a post in the future. Here, after much ministerial prevarication, let us give the Government its due.

Anne survived and is now enjoying life in her new surroundings at Longleat.

For details of the Government position see here.
Dick Skellington 1 July 2013

The views expressed in this post, as in all posts on Society Matters, are the views of the author, not The Open University.

Cartoon by Catherine Pain

Cute and cuddly characters can't disguise outrageous loan repayment interest rates, says Pete Cashmore.

With the exception of Go Compare's moustachioed tenor, Betty, Joyce and Earl are probably the most recognisable current characters in TV advertising, cropping up with increasing frequency. They are the 'Wongies', the loveable face of payday loan firm Wonga, whose typical APR (Annual Percentage Rate of interest) is 4,214%.

You're probably less familiar with Speedy Roo, who is yet to make an impact on our TV screens, instead preferring to engage with the public on our streets. Speedy Roo is the cuddly marsupial face of Speedy Cash (APR 1,410%), and he has a blog where we can get to know him. It tells us that he bounces into the offices around 10 am, where he spends time catching up with employees and preparing for events – but only after he checks his Facebook profile. Speedy Cash currently have 25 high street branches in the UK, all festooned with bright balloons.

And it can't be too long before we get to know more about the Pounds To Pocket aliens. There are two of them at the moment, her a brassy no-nonsense Geordie, him a scatter-brained amiable Brummie.

Cuddly, friendly, adorable, eccentric – the Wongies, Speedy Roo and the P2P aliens share all these attributes. And they're not alone in the world of cuddly payday loan company mascots: Reel Big Cash (APR 1,737%) has a kindly old man on a fishing boat, reeling in that loan money; while Dosh Now (APR 4,559%) has a grinning man who doesn't have a nose or eyes – he's so happy with its service he seems to have grinned his own face off.

The payday lenders' approach is similar to that used by Britain's banks in the aftermath of the financial crisis of 2008. As the word 'banker' increasingly came to be used pejoratively, so there was a sudden rash of cutesiness and adorable eccentrics: the Halifax (bailed out to the tune of £25bn) and their staff-run radio station; the Woolwich's amiable work-obsessed 'Steve' character; and perhaps most unctuously HSBC's nauseating little vignette in which a Malaysian family employed by the bank relocate to Vancouver, so the bank thoughtfully buys the mourning daughter a gecko to replace the pet snake she was forced to leave behind.Wonga, in addition to boasting its wrinkly triptych, regularly runs competitions to win cash and games consoles via Facebook – its Spot the Ball competition currently offers more than 400 prizes. A few months ago, perhaps inspired by the popularity of BuzzFeed's feline-related enterprises, it attempted to break into the cat market by inviting users to send in pictures of their feline friends, for no specific reason other than people think cats are cute, and that a payday loan company who shares your love of cats can't be all bad.

All this fluff seems somewhat at odds with a recent report released by Citizens Advice, describing payday loan companies as 'out of control'. The study of 780 cases revealed that companies were targeting the under-18s and – more disturbingly – people with mental health issues, and that some customers were even drunk at the time of being talked into taking out a loan.
Almost nine out of 10 borrowers were not asked to provide proof that they could afford to repay the loan, and 84% of those having repayment problems were not given the chance to have their interest and payments stalled. Faced with figures like that, one starts to understand the charm offensive and the need for comedy kangaroos.

Lenders occasionally do get their wrists slapped – witness Cash Lady's witless attempts to use Kerry Katona's well-publicised financial problems to attract customers to its 2,760% APR loans; or Peachy Loans''quirky' way of reading out its 1,918% interest rate ("nineteen eighteen").

However, the advertising watchdog admits its powers are limited, and there is currently no ban on 'cute'. Perhaps the government could throw that in to the mix when it overhauls the rules, before we witness the rather sickening spectacle of children begging their parents to buy them Betty, Joyce and Earl dolls.
Pete Cashmore
Posted 4 July 2013

This article first appeared in The Guardian and is reproduced here with kind permission.

The views expressed in this post, as in all posts on Society Matters, are the views of the author, not The Open University.

Cartoon by Catherine Pain 

Steven Primrose-Smith calls himself The UniCyclist as he pedals 31,000 kilometres around 50 European cities while studying for two OU degrees with little more than a solar-powered laptop and a tent. From Belarus he sent Society Matters this exclusive post on dictatorship and democracy. 

It's taken for granted that democracy is the most desirable political option available. Although Britain pretends otherwise, it doesn't actually have a democracy. It has representative democracy and this falls a long way short. Ask anyone who voted for the LibDems to scrap tuition fees, only to discover later that they helped push through a threefold fee increase. 

A true democracy, where the population has a say on every issue, as in ancient Athens, is now a real possibility. If we combine Estonia's ability to have an e-election with your typical Saturday night X-Factor voting system, it's feasible. But no politician is going to suggest this because, first, it would reduce their own power but, more important, they don't trust us. And with good reason.

The problem is that a lot of us don't know what we're talking about. Even when we do, we vote, as you might expect, for what's in our personal interests rather than what would be best for humankind. Representative democracy gets around the issue of our political ignorance but not our selfishness.

Recently I was in Belarus, famously Europe's last dictatorship, and it occurred to me that there are certain problems coming our way that democracy won't be able to solve but a dictatorship, in theory, could. Let's put aside the fact that Belarus's regime is a brutal and selfish system that looks out for Luckashenko and his cronies and think about what could be achieved if a dictatorship were benign.

In a democracy, the managed decline cannot happen. Imagine a politician saying, “Vote for me! I'm going to make you and all your friends much worse off.” Another party would jump in, pretend the collapse wasn't happening and steal the votes. In a democracy, parties have to keep everyone sweet. In a dictatorship, a single party could force through necessary decisions without the worry of being voted out.

Freedom is very important to me and, if history is any judge, a dictatorship is always more about lining the pockets of those in power than creating a better world. So what is needed is a non-democratic system – one where the current regime cannot be voted out – but where no single party has ultimate power. Impossible?

The current political system in Britain is adversarial. The three main parties fear each other and future upstarts. Each party must always offer an immediate good deal rather than the better option for everyone in the long run. I have a suggestion. The three parties could come together and determine which issues were so important that on these they cannot be divided, such as working towards the best possible managed decline rather than impossible perpetual growth. All other policies, however, would be decided by the party in power. Despite modest gains in local elections by Greens and UKIP, there still seems little alternative to the Big Three, a democratic tyranny (the word 'tyranny' wasn't originally negative) with, yes, less democracy than we currently have but without actually having a dictatorship. 

Perhaps we wouldn't notice much difference. Since 1855, no party has ruled Britain other than the Conservatives, Labour or Liberals, or their predecessors. But within this new system, difficult, long term decisions could be made and adhered to with The Big Three working together rather than against each other. An improvement or a dictatorship under a different name?
Steven Primrose-Smith 10 July 2013

You can access Steven's regular OU blog here or visit his website.

The views expressed in this post, as in all posts on Society Matters, are the views of the author, not The Open University.

Cartoon by Gary Edwards

The ghost of an Armenian captain threatens Turkey's attempt to subvert the forthcoming 100th anniversary of the Armenian genocide, writes journalist and honorary OU graduate Robert Fisk. 

Confronted by the chilling hundredth anniversary of the genocide of one and a half million Armenian men, women and children at the hands of the Ottoman Turks in 1915, Turkey's Government is planning to swamp memories of the Armenian massacres with ceremonies commemorating the Turkish victory over the Allies at the battle of Gallipoli in the same year. Already, loyalist academics have done their best to ignore the presence of thousands of Arab troops among the 1915 Turkish armies at Gallipoli – and are now even branding an Armenian Turkish artillery officer who was decorated for his bravery at Gallipoli as a liar who fabricated his own biography. In fact, Captain Sarkis Torossian was personally awarded medals for his courage by Enver Pasha, Turkey’s war minister and the most powerful man in the Ottoman hierarchy.  

The greatest hero of Gallipoli was Mustafa Kemal who, as Ataturk, founded the modern Turkish state. But in view of the desire of some of Turkey's most prominent historians to brand Torossian a fraud, the word ‘modern’ should perhaps be used in inverted commas.

Now these academics are even claiming that the Armenian army captain invented his two medals from the Enver.  Yet one of the most the outspoken Turkish historians to have fully acknowledged the 1915 genocide, Taner Akcam, has tracked down Torossian’s family in America, met his granddaughter, and inspected the two Ottoman medal records; one of them bears Enver Pasha’s original signature.

His memoirs, From ‘Dardanelles to Palestine’, were first published in Boston in 1947.  Ayhan Aktar, professor of social sciences at Istanbul Bilgi University, first came across a copy of the book 20 years ago and was amazed to learn – given Turkey’s attempt to annihilate its entire Armenian population in 1915 – that there were officers of Armenian descent fighting for the Ottomans.  The eight month battle for Gallipoli – an Allied landing on the Dardanelles straits dreamed up by Winston Churchill in the hope of capturing the Ottoman capital of Constantinople (today’s Istanbul) and breaking the trench deadlock on the Western Front – was a disaster for the British and French, and the mass of Australian and New Zealand troops (the ANZAC forces) fighting with them.  They abandoned the beach-heads in January of 1916.

In his book, Torossian recounts the ferocious fighting at Gallipoli and other battles in which he participated – until, towards the end of the Great War, he found his sister among the Armenian refugees on the death convoys to Syria and Palestine.  He then turned himself over to the Allied forces, meeting but not liking T.E. Lawrence of Arabia – he called him a mere “paymaster” – and re-entered Turkey with French forces.  He eventually travelled to the US where he died.

The gutsy Professor Aktar, however – noticing his colleagues’ unwillingness to acknowledge that Arabs and Armenians fought in the Ottoman Army – decided to publish Terossian’s book in the Turkish language.  Initial reviews were favourable until two historians from Sabanci University took exception to Ayhan Aktar’s work.  Dr Halil Berktay, for example, wrote 13 newspaper columns in ‘Taraf’ to declare the entire book a fiction and Torossian a liar, a view that came close to what Aktar calls “character assassination”.  “It is a ‘trauma document’ of an integrationist Armenian officer who fought in the (first world) war,” Aktar says.  "But his family were deported to the Syrian deserts in spite of the fact that Enver Pasha (the Turkish war minister and the most powerful man in the Ottoman hierarchy) had clear orders to the local governors not to deport officers’ families.”

Lower-ranking Armenians in the Ottoman army were disarmed and later massacred amid the genocide, in which women were routinely raped by Turkish soldiers, gendarmerie and their Circassian and Kurdish militias.  Churchill referred to the massacres as a “holocaust”.  Taner Akcam, the Turkish historian who discovered Torossian’s granddaughter, was stunned by the reaction to the Turkish edition of the book;  one critic, he says, even claimed that the Armenian officer did not exist. “This book, along with Aktar’s introduction, pokes a hole in the dominant narrative in Turkey about the Gallipoli war being a war of the Turks.  As Aktar shows in his introduction, not only Torossian and other Christians played an important role in Gallipoli, but some of the military units were also composed of Arabs.”

Turkish foreign minister Ahmet Davutoglu spoke at Gallipoli two years ago and gave a perfectly frank account of how Turkey planned to define the Armenian genocide on its hundredth anniversary.  “We are going to make the year of 1915 known the whole world over,” he said, “not as an anniversary of a genocide as some people claimed and slandered (sic), but we shall make it known as a glorious resistance of a nation – in other words, a commemoration of our defence of Gallipoli.”

So Turkish nationalism is supposed to win out over history in a couple of years’ time.  Descendants of those who died among the ANZAC troops at Gallipoli, however, might ask their Turkish hosts in 2015 why they do not honour those brave Arabs and Armenians – including Captain Torossian – who fought alongside the Ottoman Empire.
Robert Fisk Posted 12 July 2013

Robert Fisk of the Independent was awarded an Honorary Degree by The Open University in 2004. This article originally appeared in the Independent on Sunday on 12 May and is reproduced here with kind permission of Robert and the Independent. 

The views expressed in this post, as in all posts on Society Matters, are the views of the author, not The Open University.

Cartoon by Gary Edwards

A war memorial is to be erected in a town which has not lost any military personnel in conflict, writes Dick Skellington

Bradley Stoke is close to Filton airfield, once home to the Bristol Aeroplane Company (BAC), who produced aircraft parts at a frantic rate during the Second World War. The base needed to be protected from air raids. Savages Wood (just opposite the Willow Brook Centre, the location for the memorial) spent some time as a decoy airfield for Filton, complete with pretend landing lights. But because of its newness Bradley Stoke has so far been spared the human loss of conflict.

Katherine Robinson, the Scout group leader and one of the organisers, said the memorial was to "pass on the tradition" of remembrance to the next generation and be a "visual focus for the town".

"I fully appreciate that Bradley Stoke is a new town and it was just green fields and farmland when the first and second World Wars were being fought," she said.

"But we know unfortunately that conflicts aren't just consigned to these wars but are ongoing and so we're thinking about the future as well.

"So although Bradley Stoke did not exist physically during the wars, I think it's very important that we do have this in the town."

There will be an official dedication ceremony (date to be confirmed), but the Scout Group would very much like to know if anyone has someone they would like considered for inclusion in the roll of honour on the memorial.  There are a few restrictions on inclusion, and they would be happy to consider those who fought and died, fought and survived (and have now passed away) or civilians involved in conflicts past or present. Suitability of candidates will be decided by the Friends of Bradley Stoke War Memorial. You can submit a written response to: Management Suite, Willow Brook Centre, Savages Wood Road, Bradley Stoke, Bristol, BS32 8BS or via email to  FriendsofBSWM@gmail.com

Next year will see the nation mark the centenary of the First World War, the 'war to end all wars'. Bradley Stoke shows us how futile that hope was. The new memorial will be unveiled at the town's inaugural Remembrance Parade on November 10 this year.
Dick Skellington 17 July 2013 

The views expressed in this post, as in all posts on Society Matters, are the views of the author, not The Open University.

Cartoon by Catherine Pain