Nigel Farage in the ring - could have been a contender?

Nigel Farage came to Hainault in east London yesterday to take his election fight to the gym of heavyweight boxer, Dereck Chisora. What sort of ringside crowd would he attract? Did his performance there suggest he is likely to land any blows on his opponents? I went a few stops east on the Central Line to see.

The pavement leading to the Gator ABC Boxing Club was blocked by double-parked vehicles being worked on from the many nearby motor-trade units. Walking down the centre of the road, dodging the van traffic, I passed a breaker’s yard and a rag-trade studio and then went down an alley to the venue. The Brexit Party Leader’s luxury minibus was left up on the road where it was indistinguishable from the overflow vehicles of an adjoining car-detailing workshop.

The doors of the venue opened to a rush by the crowd for the handful of white, plastic garden-chairs. The rest of us in the audience of 200 or so stood amongst the punch-bags and gym equipment. A few winced when over-loud dance-music heralded the undercard speakers stepping into the ring.

Farage’s first warm-up was Michael Heaver MEP, and until his Leader’s fiat, the party’s PPC for the Tory seat of Castle Point, Essex. He is co-owner of the shuttered right-wing website, Westmonster, and is reported to have applied to join the Conservative Party between leaving UKIP and the start of the Brexit Party.

The start to the end of his act was knocking Labour. He made no appeal to Labour voters, just simply listed many reasons why he thought that party unworthy of support, including a 'lack of patriotism' and its plans to extend Freedom of Movement before finishing with, “Don’t send your kids for maths lessons with Dianne Abbott." But how does the Brexit Party intend to attract - not just drive away from Labour - the latter party's voters on matters other than Brexit, I wondered? I’m still wondering. 

Heaver, an MEP for the East of England, told us we were in the East End. Yet Hainault is far from there. Some who call it home do originate from that place but are now at the eastern edge of the London conurbation, looking out onto the fields of Essex. The Daily Telegraph’s Chief Political Commentator, who today reported that the Conservatives had offered Farage a deal - with the Tories putting up just paper candidates in forty seats to which the Brexit Party would restrict itself - said the meeting, which he attended, was three miles away, in Dagenham, in his paper's coverage yesterday. That’s in another borough.

If Farage, Heaver and company really had wanted to meet the people, they would have been out - in Dagenham talking to shoppers in its Heathway, or over in Barkingside High Street. But that audience would be more likely to ask them about the NHS, crime, housing or schools then the focus there was on Brexit in the controlled conditions of this gym.

Next was Ben Habib MEP; the EU’s MEP with the highest earnings. If the intended audience had been those there looking up at him in the ring, rather than those for whom the event was organised - watching the feed going from the camera erected over a ring corner to their screen - he would have lost some of them when railing against the Prime Minister’s “sophistry” and when giving his advice for the assembled to “cogitate”. There was an obvious contrast between the many Brexit Party supporters there who had managed to source several different clothing items in their party’s shade of light blue and this candidate’s Saville Row suit. But some like to look up to their leaders.

Munish Sharma followed. The Brexit Party candidate for nearby Ilford South, and who would be presumed to have a least a modicum of economic understanding (he had just left his job at a financial regulator to fight the election) related how he had recently discovered that for a couple of his retired supporters, ‘their pension does not match their living costs.’ He announced that ‘I will be looking into these matters,’ doubtless aware that such is for the never-never; in the 2017 General Election, UKIP got 477 votes in Ilford South; Labour received 43,724. 

Emma Stockdale, Brexit Party candidate for West Ham, was ‘keen on the 50s.’ That was a time of 'self-discipline' - (applause) but 'also the Treaty of Rome' - (boos). We will see how well she fares with the former “arable farming background in North Yorkshire” that she mentioned. She is standing in the London Borough of Newham where every politician - local and national - is Labour. There is just the one farm in Newham, the council-owned Newham City Farm that introduces local children to what may well be their first view of a cow in the flesh. Labour won forty times more votes than UKIP in West Ham in the 2017 General Election. Stockdale seemed not to have an idea of how to germinate support where's she's standing; in places such as Plaistow and Forest Gate her party is seen by many as being not far from the politics of the BNP.

It’s hard not to write in clichés when such are apt about those who were there. Many of the women in the audience were hardened, late middle-aged - often blonde - still with their original inner London cadences and who meet a common expectation of how will be many residents of south Essex.

The down-at-heel Brexit Party supporter, waiting outside for his Leader to appear after the meeting, struck up a conversation with a security guard who had ambled over from the next-door unit to check on the spectacle. “They” (those running society) “don’t want little people like us.” was the supporter's comment after, ‘hello’, to the hi-viz jacketed worker. That supporter had previously been pleased to see two young blokes leaving the alley and remarked upon their youth and the hope it gave him. They told him they had been at another unit and that they despised Farage but now that they “knew that c*** was here” they would have waited to abuse him had they not needed to be elsewhere. Farage later walked past his supporter and gave a slight acknowledgement, although Ben Habib had earlier momentarily shaken his hand, made his excuses and left.

Those in the gym weren’t completely white as there were also security guards, media, others at work, a candidate and perhaps, two of the party’s supporters. About twenty-five of the audience were under forty; a majority would be retired. The Brexit Party can’t do well with such a limited demographic. How did their savvy digital media operation get them this audience? The Essex badlands aren't just like this, despite the misconceptions of outsiders.


Waiting for Farage to arrive, I wondered why the Brexit Party were doing this gig? Other similar rallies have been cancelled. Would he have anything new to say that the undercard did not know about?

Brexit Party cogitations would have identified the Ilford North constituency where we were as about as good as it gets for them in London. It is at the eastern edge of the phalanx of continuous Labour seats that stretch in a Y shape thirty miles from here to Heathrow on the other side of London. There is nowhere Labour eastwards from Hainault until one seat in Ipswich and one in Norwich. 

And that’s Brexit’s problem; UKIP’s best result in the Ilford North constituency was 8.9% in 2015. They didn’t run in 2017. Heading towards town, support for the Brexit Party will likely plummet to be as minimal as it was for their UKIP predecessor. With Farage’s announcement that they are not fighting the Tories in their 2017 seats, the Brexit Party will be a Midlands and Northern party, or more likely, it will be a nothing.

UKIP came third in support - with 12.6% of the popular vote - in the 2015 General Election. They were receiving similar in opinion polls just before polling day. They won one seat. The Tories won 36.8% and 330 MPs in 2015. A rolling seven-day average of polls to yesterday placed the Brexit Party on 8%.

Nigel Farage arrived and ducked under the ropes onto the canvas to cheering and applause. The previous day he had said the Brexit Party would be standing in all seats against Labour. Earlier in the week he had made his announcement that they would not fight in Tory seats. How were they going to fight Labour?

By calling them bad names and restricting the fight to Brexit, apparently. He did not mention or employ any strategy to try and take seats from Labour other than on this single issue. 

It was a wrong-turn. Any training that Farage has done in the past has been for different types of bouts, not for a national, head-to-head with Labour. Nothing yesterday indicated any work by the Brexit Party on the preparations that even lightweights know to be necessary - studying the form of your opponent and then adapting your fight to win. 

Farage has not got on the fighter's exercise bicycle or watched videos of old fights. What is true about how this ‘strategy’ will get his party nowhere in Newham is also more true than not in Nottingham and Newcastle. He would “fight like crazy” those “doing their damndest to overturn democracy.” Farage claimed there are many Labour voters ‘who won’t ever vote “Tory, but will vote Brexit Party” and ‘it’s the Tory Party who will split the vote, not the Brexit Party in solid Labour constituencies.’ “They (the Conservatives) genuinely fear us” he claimed. 

We put “country before party” was repeated by him and contrasted with a claim that the Tories were doing the reverse. His claim about the Brexit Party's conduct would have more resonance if someone independent was saying this rather than the Leader of his own party remarking on his own conduct. “I am not for sale” he said. I’m not for underselling either, he might have added. 

Farage did try one new theme, or rather a warmed-up one that he had first raised upon the result of that 2015 General Election when the party he led, UKIP, got one in eight votes but one in six hundred and fifty seats. ‘The system needs changing' and 'the House of Lords is' “political corruption.”

In less than ten minutes he was done. He then answered two questions and posed for photos.

What did his supporters there think about what he says, I asked? “He is the Leader; he can do what he wants.” And from another, “I almost hero-worship him.”

Clive Power

All photos copyright - Clive Power. All Rights Reserved.

Fowler Road, Hainault - site of Gator ABC Boxing Club.

Crossed points - how railway companies are still taking passengers for a ride

Railway companies are not moving fast enough to deliver fairer ticketing

When planning rail journeys, I've had to spent longer than should be necessary through having to check a few rail websites to ensure I get the most suitable ticket. It's frustrating that I can't be confident enough to just enter my details and buy.

You can't be sure that you are getting all the train and ticket price information you need from even the authoritative websites, such as the National Rail Enquiries website (run by the Association of Train Operating Companies - ATOC), or at the train operating companies own individual websites as well as on the websites of third parties. Government can get energy companies to now offer understandable and complete price information; why can't similar happen with rail?

Hidden Trains

Rail websites - including NRE and the train operating companies' own sites - don't list some trains. Read the exchange (from the bottom) that I had on Twitter last month with NRE about this problem:

This week, The Times has run a series of articles reporting about this 'hidden trains' flaw, as well as about other problems such as how rail companies won't tell you how you can save money by splitting tickets. That's when you buy a ticket, say from London to Coventry and from Coventry to Manchester, that might be cheaper than a ticket from London to Manchester. You can use these split tickets on the same train, as long as it stops in Coventry and with no need to change at that intermediate station.

In response to this negative coverage, the rail industry appears to have realised it needs to make some conciliatory noises. But are they moving their position as much as they are suggesting? 

Airline style ticketing  

In today's Times, there's a further article about rail fares and which has a misleading comment that is attributed to the Rail Delivery Group - RDG (a rail trade body - Network Rail and the train and freight operating companies). It's announcing as new - and with a fanfare - something that has been long established: Airline style ticketing.

This pick 'n' mix style ticketing, that is proclaimed in the article, has been here for a long time. Look at this example from the National Rail Enquiries (NRE) website, for a trip from London to Manchester and back, today, with outward travel during peak time and return travel off-peak.

You can buy the Anytime return for £322 but it's cheaper to 'pick 'n' mix & buy an Anytime single (£166) out & an Off-peak single for the return (£41.20) for a total of £207.20. But it's no big deal - most people know that's what you do; buy two differently priced singles rather than buy a peak return ticket if you are only travelling during the peak period in one direction. So this is hardly the "better and more transparent" deal that the RDG claim.

(I wonder whether Airline style pricing - dynamic pricing where prices constantly change to reflect demand - may ever be widely used for rail in the UK?)

Unpublicised tickets
 
I was pleased to see the RDG stating in today's article that "Passengers would be given the option of slower, cheaper trains". But will all the 'hidden' trains be publicised? That's the issue covered in the tweets above but let me give more detail:

Look at these screenshots from NRE and London Midland websites for travel this morning from London Euston to Perry Barr. 

Note how the 0749 London Midland train is not listed by NRE. It's a much slower journey but it has only the same single change (at Birmingham New Street station) as the faster journeys that include Virgin Trains (London to Birmingham). But this alternative by London Midland only is £36 cheaper. 

Unnecessary delay?
 

The RDG also say today that "most of the changes it was suggesting required government approval." Really? What's to stop NRE listing the hidden trains on their website straightaway?

Daggers - on the pitch and on the terraces

Dagenham and Redbridge FC 1 – Bradford City FC 0

Saturday 3 March 2012

Travelling through Dagenham it's no longer possible to orientate by the prominent pubs that used to punctuate the repeating pattern of uniform housing.

The pubs are gone. Now it's only passing the shops stuck to the stations that gives you a sense of movement. 

And going down road after road of off-white and pebble-dash ‘Homes fit for Heroes’ you can't imagine you're on your way to a football club that's only twenty years old.

When you get there, nothing about the place gives you any impression of modernity. Dagenham and Redbridge FC play in a former factory football club site that has been used as such since 1917. Backing onto an industrial estate, the ground is also next to some of that flat, scrag-end land that passes for open space around here. I bought the programme complete with an ad for a firm of pawnbrokers with photos of the World War One medals that they'd be happy to take off your hands.

I went to the game because I thought it might my last chance to watch the club that cannily bears the name of the borough where I live whilst Dagenham and Redbridge are still one of the ninety-two.

It was good to be back in a ground that you can walk around, at least along the two terraced sides. The site, and the walk around, reminded me of Millwall’s Old Den. Both tattered grounds were situated alongside the scruffier end of the motor trade.

At the Daggers' ground, Don Autos and Boston Garage Equipment both have ads. Diamond Cars, a minicab firm, sponsored this match. The programme had a picture of bloke, with a car hood up, mending the car engine. The auto repair place, next to the stadium, had vehicles out front with sprayed on notes like ‘airbag deployed’ or ‘boot will not open’.

A benefit of the anaemic history of the Daggers means that it's unlikely that there will be any similar ‘upgrading’ to their stadium as happened to the Lions. Millwall’s New Den is designed for everything save any way of retaining atmosphere. Dagenham and Redbridge FC's Victoria Road oozes Seventies football. 

If not motors, then the building trade is the other theme of Victoria Road. The ground has a ‘Traditional Builders Stand’ as well as ads for roofers and for a college course that teaches how to hang a door. Daggers aren’t going to attract too many Arsenal or even West Ham fans squeezed by ticket prices.

The overwhelmingly good-natured crowd included many children, and their mums and dads, who were attending as part of a cheap entry promotion - a total of 3,041 including 345 in the Bradford end. These numbers were double that of their at home five-nil humiliation by Cheltenham a fortnight previously. It was a bright, spring-like day. 

Daggers bore the name of West and Coe, undertakers, on their shirts. A hospice was the match’s charity of the day. With just one season in League One, and their recent bumping along the bottom of League Two, the club must be facing the possibility of being despatched to non-League after just five years. But with Dagenham winning up North against tough Morecambe in the week, would today see a further resurrection and movement from being second bottom in the league? 

Bradford City were all in black as befits their recent history. It is one hundred and one years since Bradford won their only honour, the FA Cup. It is eleven years since they were in the Premiership. Now, as the lowest ranked of all ex Premier sides, they may well be the first of their former peers to go down to the Conference.

First half

The game stopped just when it started because of a foul by Bradford City, who saw their Matt Fry booked. But City started well; workhorse Kyel Reid was knocking in cross and after cross from the left-wing. He was nearly rewarded after ten minutes where, with the Daggers keeper beaten, only a goal line kick away by Jon Nurse stopped City from opening the scoring. Later Reid demonstrated a feisty overhead kick to stop the conceding of a throw-in.

 

And then, five minutes before half-time, Reid, a graduate of the West Ham Academy (so maybe not too far from home) seemed more influenced by his now Northern base and momentarily dropped the Association code and delivered an excellent rugby league conversion over the crossbar.

An unwelcome interval

The half-time interval featured ‘Sign Up Against Racism Day’ with a phalanx of dignitaries posing mid-pitch with their pens. They included the Chief Executive of the local council, the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham (who have the naming rights for the ground) as well as a Tory prospective parliamentary candidate (for the local constituency that was maybe only won by Labour last time because one in nine voters cast their ballot for the BNP) and the Head of Public Affairs at Canary Wharf.

The latter must have felt that he had never travelled a longer ten miles than that between the glistening totem towers of the future of British capitalism and the industrial elephants’ graveyard that is Dagenham, complete with the near carcass of Ford, once Britain’s biggest industrial site. 

He really need not have bothered. Nobody from the crowd that I could see paid any attention as they took part in this signing ritual. The event was not too far distant from the actions of prim Edwardian matrons from the Temperance movement coming to the East End to lecture locals about the evils of the demon drink.

It's wrong to abuse the patience of the crowd to deliver what are now hegemonic views on race, or climate change, or whatever. Just because there's a captive crowd of a few thousand doesn’t mean that they're there as your audience. 

Not content with this half-time proselytising, the Daggers programme also carried a council ad suggesting people should ‘Celebrate St George’s Day’ as if a local authority can spark genuine festivities in such a manner. 

World War Two Britain saw endless lectures about saving waste food for pig swill or bathing in just a couple of inches of water. But something happened by the Sixties that made these patronising lectures, even with often useful messages, a cause of irritation to many. People realised they no longer had to listen and they switched off. It's a cause of regret that football fans today seem resigned to accepting that they can’t just watch a ball be kicked about but also have to be ‘educated’ at the same time.

This top-down approach doesn't work and this official ‘anti-racism’ has some strange outcomes. No presumption of innocence for John Terry; Luis Suarez found ‘guilty’ by a previously unknown court of the land, the Football Association.  

And the news about this match being part of ‘Daggers Against Racism Family Fun Day’ found little echo at the interface of the Dagenham and the Bradford fans on the terrace. I saw the aftermath of the nasty racist abuse of a group of twelve to fourteen year old Asian Bradford fans by Daggers supporters, who were aged in their late teens and early twenties. I saw the line of stewards and cops separating the few bigots and some Bradford fans and then the continuing invective being jabbed by a few Dagenham and Redbridge supporters over the thin line of security guard yellow and police black.

It's interesting how Bradford City have many Asian fans, albeit from a city that maybe has a majority Asian population. That's in stark contrast to West Ham, located in the heart of overwhelmingly Asian Newham, which has a fan base that's very nearly all Essex whites. It's this multi-racial Bradford support, a grassroots approach, that will really ‘kick racism out of football’ a lot better than the organisation with the same name ever will. 

Dagenham and Redbridge FC made a strong statement condemning the racism after the match. But the Daggers’ fans, at the time of writing, have made near 200 posts on a forum that are mostly expressing disgust at this incident but also suggesting practical ideas about how to oppose such bigotry.

Second half

From late in the first half and for most of the second, Dagenham and Redbridge were dominant.

Bradford’s Deane Smalley, looking all the world from the back like a pause button, with his number 11 on his black shirt, was inexplicably not pushed until the sixtieth minute when he became the first of his side to be substituted.

And then, seventy minutes in, came the only goal. Preceded by a dummy, Daggers' Matthew Saunders hit the free kick straight into the net. The scorer then immediately hobbled off with his left leg in pain and was carried round the pitch in fireman’s lift. With the Dagenham crowd now chanting for the first time, their team immediately got in close again with good cross by Nurse.

And in the last minutes, Daggers’ Brian Woodall was briefly one on one with City’s keeper until his lack of pace gave retreating Bradford defenders time to catch up and so forced the Dagenham player to shot square, directly to the goalkeeper.

One-nil to Dagenham and Redbridge was a fair result for a contest that saw Bradford fail to profit from their early promise in the game. The Yorkshire fans roughly shook the pull-out tunnel entrance cover from above as their team left the pitch.

Clive Power

Labour Conference sketch

A political party eats itself not when arguing, but when it isn’t fed

Ed Miliband & Justine Thornton, Labour Conference, 2011

With three years or less until it again has chance of power, you may have thought that Labour would be engaged at its present conference in some debate about where it wants to go. You might also expect that it would be seeking some insight into why it came off the road. 

But a spectator watching Labour's Liverpool gathering over the last few days would probably get the impression that many delegates think they are driving solo - up for their own political X Factor audition, rather than discussing how best to get those Xs against a Labour candidate’s name. The moving of policy discussions to the National Policy Forums and policy commissions has done its job.

So the conference watchwords have been ‘anecdotes, advice or accomplishments’ - do you want to know what the NHS was like in the 1990s; would you benefit from some personal public health pointers or would you be interested in knowing about the fab school/hospital/charity that the speaker leads? 

And the plan for the event appears to be: you can do the politics and discussion elsewhere; at conference we are going to educate and inform you. 

The theatre of dullness

On Monday, amongst the many speakers I watched on TV, only the delegate from Maidstone & the Weald - sixteen-year-old Rory Weal - had any vim. He was rewarded with a paternal hand on the shoulder from Miliband for his speech about how his family has been saved from penury by the welfare state, but without him mentioning his father, a former millionaire property developer. I wish I could lay money on Weal's political future.


At Labour conferences in the past more delegates were like Weal - providing political theatre and never shy about the limelight. And those from the socialist redoubt constituencies, like Islington North, used to add many fireworks. Yet the present day delegate from that place was quite so underwhelming that my pen expired when trying to record her name. 

Other speakers also made politics-free contributions. During the time spent on the Education and Skills 'debate', Andrew Chubb, an Academy head from East Yorkshire, took the opportunity to deliver the speech, that he is doubtless repeating around now to the parents of his next year’s prospective intake,  about the successes of his school. Maybe Labour conference is the place for sales propositions; it might help the connected take their school, or other brand, national.  

Only many delegates should more carefully check the timings of these pitches. Several less polished speakers, who had clearly spent time penning their surgically crafted phrases, ended up just throwing them away. Flustered and over their allotted time, they spewed them out, rapid-fire, over an irritated chair telling them to ‘wind up now’. 

I wonder if many of these speakers were surprised that these signature soundbites that they used were identical to those spoken by others on the conference stage. Were ‘Key Conference Phrases’ Lucky Bags on sale to delegates arriving at Lime St. Station.

Pzazz this party conference doesn’t possess. And as a sympton of that, whether good or bad, Labour leaders have been bereft of any rhetorical flourish since Kinnock. Miliband just hasn’t got it.

And many conference delegates, despite the well into middle age profile of most of them, seem to have no gumption or presence - little historical or other political knowledge outside the here and now.

They will borrow, willy-nilly, a useful sounding phrase from a scrapbook of political terms. So in the ‘Prosperity and Work’ discussion, any lingering members of the ‘red shirt, red tie, red socks, red underpants’ brigade must have been startled to hear, from Tony Burke of Unite, that what was needed was an “Alternative Economic Strategy”. 

But no, it was not the return of that centre piece of Labour policy from 30 years previously, but just a random phrase that the union man had chanced upon.  

The key speakers 

And the star turns? The First Minister of Wales, Carwyn Jones (looking like a member of the Cambrian branch of the family of the Health Secretary, Andrew Lansley) spoke like his speech had been written by the ‘Visit Wales’ PR team. 

Whatever original thought had been inputted into his address must then have been overwritten by the software that is clearly in to make sure all the key phrases go in, and for the requisite number of times, into all the speeches of the leading players. “We can make that future a reality” said Jones, with maybe a hint of embarrassment.  

What are the political problems in Wales? What contribution or changes to Labour party policy might the leading Welsh member have in mind? If the First Minister knew, he was not inclined to say. “Thanks very much for that inspirational speech, Carwyn” replied the Conference Chair, without even a smidgen of irony. 

Or Ed Balls? Looking very sharply dressed, he read out what had been given out, and well reported upon, hours before he walked up to the rostrum.

Apart from that it was hard to tell whether Balls was more animated expounding his revisionist views of the tasks of the Labour Party (“Working night and day to make savings and cut bureaucracy”) or puckering up to kiss Harriet Harman after his speech when she was still far across the stage. 

And so on to next week’s Conservative party conference. With the dark storm clouds over the economy and the future of the Euro as well as the compromises with the Liberal Democrats, can it possibly be as apolitical as Labour’s? 

Clive Power

(photo - NCVO via ww.flickr.com/people/ncvophotos. Some rights reserved by NCVO.)

Out of the range - a Cowboy Noir round-up

Set in Southwest USA, 'Cowboy Noir' cinema shows that smalltown or wide open settings can be as close as crowded cities

Cowboy Noir

Watching Kill Me Again (John Dahl, 1989) once more, I was reminded how much I like a certain group of films.

These films appear to be a genre, but it had escaped me if anyone had identified them as such. I was going to call them 'Cactus Noir' but a little digging meant I found out they have already have a name – Cowboy Noir. 

A Cowboy Noir film may well start with a sap rolling into a small town. When travelling there he will be hitchhiking a ride, driving either a stolen car or one running out of gas, or be ticketless on a train.

After he arrives, one of his first stops will be at a bar. The guy behind the counter will either ignore him, despite him being the first customer of the day, or silently appraise him as a contender for a con he's considering.

The atmosphere in a Cowboy Noir is languid. They would have no need of a thermometer that goes below 75. If the film isn’t based on a Jim Thompson book, it 's from not far away. Actors called Walsh - J.T or M. Emmet are often in supporting roles.

Right from the get-go, the guy knows he should drink up and move on, even if has to tackle the surrounding desert on foot. But he never does, because the femme fatale walks into that bar or his his motel or just bends over in the street, right in front of him, to re-tie a strap on her strapless sandals.

And from early on you know he’s not going to walk away from the forthcoming heist, scam or murder into which he is being ensnared. He won’t walk away, even though it’s clear to all (including him) that it will end with his mugshot in the newspaper that will report his conviction or killing, whilst she gets over the border.

The Cowboy Noir films have some roots in the 40s films where the femme fatale is first seen approaching the frosted glass door of a private eye’s rundown office. But these movies eschew San Francisco or New York for some small town in South West USA.

After Dark, My Sweet (James Foley, 1990) is one of the best. There are several points in the film where you just will Jason Patric’s sap character to move onto to the next town but, a kidnapping and  murder later, it’s clear he's only going to be leaving that town if its cemetery is full and they have to bury him elsewhere.

Cowboy Noir films seem to have the ability to get the best out of actors who you may think should have only ever made it onto the small screen.

Nicolas Cage raises his game considerably in Red Rock West (John Dahl, 1992).
Don Johnson delivers in The Hot Spot (Dennis Hopper, 1990). Johnson here avoids the usual fatal bullet or knife and ‘escapes’ to a life, not with the woman he loves, but alongside the femme fatale who is going to make every moment from then on feel like he is living under the gun.

Kill Me Again (John Dahl, 1989) is perhaps the runt of the herd. Neither Joanne Whalley-Kilmer, Val Kilmer nor Michael Madsen can really lift the film although Whalley-Kilmer (all the way from Stockport to sandy deserts) flounces around in Film Noir style dresses. Unusually, the sap (Kilmer's character), gets to keep the money after Whalley-Kilmer’s character has made the usual about turn and taken up again with the thug (Madsen's character) whom the sap saved her from in the first place.

Some films bubbling around the edge of the genre include The Last Seduction (John Dahl, 1994) which has many of the features, but not the location as well as both The Getaway (Roger Donaldson, 1994) and Blood Simple (Joel Coen, 1984) which both have the location but with plots that may be beyond the limits of the genre. Grifters (Stephen Frears, 1990) glitters brightly but in a neighbouring constellation. 

Clive Power

(photo - Philippe Leroyer, http://www.flickr.com/photos/philippeleroyer/3410179696 Some rights reserved by Philippe Leroyer.)

Harriet Sergeant's Spectator front-cover article “These rioters are Tony Blair's children” is riven with inaccurate statistics and ill-founded claims

cross-posted to Liberal Conspiracy
------------------------------

(These rioters are Tony Blair's children - Spectator 13 August 2011)

Spectator magazine - child unfriendly

Adding little but more tinder to the bonfire of ill considered comment about recent events, Sergeant (a fellow of the Centre for Policy Studies [CPS]) uses her article to gives her opinion that the riots were “not about poverty or race” and also to state that “unless we understand the causes of this anarchy and the role that government has played, how can we put it right?” 

But the dubious ‘facts’ throughout her article mean anyone using it to try to understand the riots will be chasing phantoms and not provided with any ideas to 'put anything right'. 

1. The source for her claim that “A full 63 per cent of white working class boys, and just over half of black Caribbean boys at the age of 14 have a reading age of seven or below” is presumably what she wrote in her own CPS publication of 2009, ‘WASTED’ [i], 

In this, she stated “63% of 14 year old white working class boys have a reading ability of half their age. Over half, 54% of 14 year old black Caribbean boys have a reading age of seven” but also that “White working class boys are most at risk of under-performing with 63 per cent unable to read and write properly at 14 compared to 43 per cent of white girls from a similar background. Black working class boys do not do much better. Just over half of them, 54 per cent, can not read or write properly at 14”. 

Note “have a reading age of seven or below” only appears in the first of the two passages quoted above from ‘WASTED’. 

‘WASTED’ gives the source of the second these claims as a report in the Daily Mail [ii] on 13 August 2007. The Daily Mail article refers to an unnamed Bow Group report but makes no mention of comparison to seven year olds just stating, as in the latter passage in WASTED, that “White working-class boys were found to be most at risk of under-performing, with 63 per cent unable to read and write properly at 14.”  Indeed elsewhere in the Mail article, it is reported that it is just “one in five (14 year old) boys has a reading ability of a pupil half his age.”   I have no idea about the veracity or not of the claim in the Spectator article about so many boys having a reading age half their actual age but I note that a report in the (London) Evening Standard [iii] on 13 August 2008 about the last SATS results for 14 year olds (which were a way of measuring literacy and which were abolished for that age in 2008) that states that “More than one in five (of 14 year old) boys - 21 per cent - have a reading age of nine.”  2. I think Ms Sergeant must have been very unfortunate that the 14 year old boys that she interviewed, and who had dropped out or had been excluded from school’ “only turn(ed) up to school to sell drugs or stolen goods.” Never turn up  to do things like meet their siblings there or their friends still attending their school? 3. Her claim, possibly originally known from late 90s research, that “half of the prison population has a reading age below that of an 11-year-old” has been displaced by a more authoritative statistic from 2008, given by Edward Leigh MP, as Chairman of the Committee of Public Accounts, who reported that “nearly 40 per cent (of those in custody) have a reading age lower than that of a competent 11- year old.”[iv] [v]  4. Between 2001 and 2009, 12 teachers were ‘struck off’ from teaching for incompetence, not just “suspended”. Being stuck off can be permanent, or for a fixed period.[vi]

5. Sergeant wrongly states “of the 1.8 million new jobs created over the Labour years, 99 per cent went to immigrants”. Rather the number of those in the workforce who were born abroad was equivalent to 88 per cent of the number of extra workers that there were in 2010, compared with 1997 [vii].  

6. The unemployed get money designated for council tax and other things such as rent but they don't get money for “utility payments” as the author appears to be stating. If in arrears with the utilities, small sums may be taken directly from benefits to pay towards gas and electricty bills but this isn’t any extra money. [viii]  

7. I wonder how current is her claim that “the catering trade alone has recruited 10,000 workers from outside Europe to work in kitchens or as porters or back of house staff”? Sergeant also uses this statistic in her CPS publication WASTED but I see the same statistic was used in the Daily Telegraph [ix] on 14 February 2005.  

I thought that Labour’s ‘get tough on immigration’ persona, in its latter years in government, had meant the end of some working visas for such workers and so there may well have been a reduction from the reported 10,000 non-European catering workers, but I do not know the current number of such workers (or how European is defined here: EEA +CH + ?)  

8. I would be interested in the source of her statistic that “49 per cent of British parents did not know where their children were in the evenings or with whom. Some 45 per cent of 15 year old boys spent four or more evening a week hanging about ‘with friends’ compared to just 17 per cent in France.”  

Certainly if boys are out so often hanging around, I would have thought they must be doing a lot of revision with their friends during this time because 65.4 per cent of boys obtained Grades A* to C in the GSCEs in 2010 [x] 

9. Britain has the highest teenage pregnancy rate in Western Europe, not Europe.[xi]  

10. I do not know if “Since 1997, a single mother of two children has seen her benefits increase by a staggering 85 per cent”, as Sergeant writes, but I do know that inflation between 1997 and 2010 was 41 per cent.[xii]

Updates

1. From the discussion about this article at Liberal Conspiracy:

a)  I agree with Damon (5) that lists of facts and figures (as in my article) are dry to read but I also wish that more articles were the result of research and referenced the source of their facts and figures. Opinion pieces can be good to read when well-written, but I’m tired of the multitude of blogs that are just venting.

The author of the Spectator article is a regular talking head and is widely published in the conservative media. She is also a fellow of The Centre for Policy Studies (CPS).

The CPS describe themselves as “one of Britain’s leading think tanks” and with “an outstanding record of influencing government policy”. They claim a whole list of measures that they proposed and which the Coalition government have enacted including “Abolition of school quangos”,” Reform of the Children’s Plan” and “Abolition of the Serious Organised Crime Agency” all of which is stated “have their roots in papers published by the CPS.” 

It is such a CPS paper, WASTED, by Sergeant, that forms the basis of some of her incorrect facts in the Spectator article. A paper that also has insufficient sources, like simply “The Daily Mail” of a certain date’. It is alarming if such research really does help determine government policy. 

A few years ago I was impressed with the fact-checking of the Economist, when one of their journalists came back to me checking a couple of figures, amongst a lot of information that I had given for his research for an article. These figures were not quite as robust as others, but also very obscure, and it reflected well on that publication that they discovered this and wanted other sources – they did not run with those figures in the end.

As a subscriber to the Spectator, I will be writing to the editor asking him why they do not appear to fact-check and why I should believe anything they write which make uses of statistics or similar in its analysis or arguments.

Clive Power, 19 August 2011

b) Mr Power writes:

“Sergeant wrongly states “of the 1.8 million new jobs created over the Labour years, 99 per cent went to immigrants”. Rather the number of those in the workforce who were born abroad was equivalent to 88 per cent of the number of extra workers that there were in 2010, compared with 1997 [vii].”

Quickly read, this might suggest that Sergeant had written 99 where she should have written 88. That would be a serious mistake but not a significant one. I assume that the number of those in the workforce who were born abroad includes many who were already in work in 1997?

George Brennan, 21 August 2011

c) Yes, she has converged two figures and also done this inaccurately. The workforce increased by more than two million between 1997 and 2010 and it so happens that 88 per cent of that figure (not 99 per cent) happens to be the number of “non-UK born” workers in Britain in 2010. 

As well as getting the percentage incorrect, it’s also completely wrong for her to state that either 99 per cent or 88 per cent of the “jobs created over the Labour years… went to immigrants” because, as George Brennan states,“ the number of those in the workforce who were born abroad includes many who were already in work in 1997”.

Sergeant’s error with the percentage may relate to her saying the workforce increased by 1.8 million jobs (not 2 million) between 1997 to 2010. It could be that the percentage error is “a serious mistake but not a significant one”, as George states, but to write (as she does) that just about all new jobs between 1997 and 2010 were taken by immigrants is both a serious and significant error.

Thinking it through – how likely is it that 99 per cent (or 88 per cent) of workers at Sure Start centres throughout the country in 2010, as an example of new jobs created during the Labour government, came from abroad? 

Unusually the Daily Mail gives the relevant figures but again with the same ‘misunderstanding’ (being generous) about the migrant part of the workforce summed up in their provocative and wrong headline “Migrants took 9 out of 10 jobs created under Labour.”

Clive Power, 21 August 2011

2. Further and excellent analysis of the fake “A full 63 per cent of white working class boys, and just over half of black Caribbean boys at the age of 14 have a reading age of seven or below.” 'stat' by PaulB in A made-up statistic.

3. Compare tone of Harriet Sergeant 2011 Spectator article comments about employment with:

"Today's immigrants are not taking jobs from British workers but rather doing jobs that otherwise would stay vacant: between the spring of 2002 and 2006, migrant workers found 740,000 jobs, while the number of jobs taken by British-born workers remained steady." (Leading article, Spectator, 5 April 2008).   

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[i] http://www.cps.org.uk/cps_catalog/WASTED.pdf November 2009

[ii] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-474956/Schools-hit-death-discipline-boys.html#ixzz1VLPlKVv2

[iii] http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23531128-more-than-a-third-of-14-year-old-boys-have-a-reading-age-of-11-or-below.do

[iv] Edward Leigh MP - Committee of Public Accounts: Press Notice: Publication of the Committee's 47th Report, Session 2007-08 http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-archive/committee-of-public-accounts/pacpn081030/ 

[v] Half of the prison population has a reading age below that of an 11-year-old’ is often accredited to ‘The Moser Report’ [A Fresh Start - improving literacy and numeracy] [DfEE 1999, ref: CMBS 1 http://www.lifelonglearning.co.uk/mosergroup/] although that report contains no such claim. 

[vi] “In rare move, GTC orders two-year ban for humanities specialist…Only 11 other teachers have been struck off for incompetence from a workforce of around 500,000 since the GTC was formed in 2001” Times Educational Supplement 16 October, 2009. http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storyCode=6025119

[vii] The Office for National Statistics ’Labour Force Survey’ http://www.statistics.gov.uk/statbase/Source.asp?vlnk=358&More=Y as quoted in a written parliamentary answer to Tory MP James Clappison on 12 October 2010 (Hansard: HC Deb, 12 October 2010, c286W) and as reported in the Daily Mail on 29 October 2010 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1325013/Migrants-took-9-10-jobs-created-Labour.html

[viii] My questions to those receiving Job Seekers Allowance and to those receiving benefits paid to those unable to work because of illness or disability.

[ix] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/philipjohnston/3614911/Home-front.html

[x] http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/aug/24/gcse-results-rise-in-students-taking-year-early

[xi] From FPA factsheet (http://www.fpa.org.uk/professionals/factsheets/teenagepregnancy) quoting United Nations Statistics Division, ‘Statistics and Indicators on Women and Men, Table 2b- Indicators on Childbearing’, as accessed by FPA on 3 March 2009.

[xii] Bank of England Inflation Calculator http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/education/inflation/calculator/flash/index.htm

(photo - Clive Power. Some rights reserved, see www.flickr.com/photos/clivepower/128058660)