Draw Breath

There is a great photo of Councillor Nicky Kelly on the platform of Wicklow railway station in the current edition of the Wicklow People. Unfortunately, I have yet to locate it online. The photo was taken about 3 minutes after the 5.25 train from Dublin had reached Wicklow. Apparently, Nicky Kelly and other local politicians had thought that it would be the perfect opportunity to meet and greet the prolitariat as they arrived home from a day in the office. However, as the train arrived in Wicklow, the doors opened and the swarms of people did what they usually do, jump off the train and sprint out of the station. Few people even looked up to see who was handing out leaflets, let alone stop to talk. Pity, as train congestion from Wicklow is a significant bone of contention. The one solitary commuter pictured with Nicky Kelly had all the time in the world to voice her concerns.

Oh the joys of playing political games with the constititution. The consequences are always someone else's problem (more here).

In a comment to Tuesday's post on the deaths in Wexford, Frank McGahon linked to Neil Ferguson's review of Nicholas Taleb's new book, Black Swan. Taleb's basic point is that we're very good at providing narratives for shocking events in hindsight, but that very often they're just down to utterly unpredictable or inexplicable 'black swan moments.'

Anyway, I see that Oliver Burkeman has another review of the book in yesterday's Guardian. I don't think that the point is that the narratives we construct are necessarily untrue. It's more that they cohere around the landmark event and so are not apparent until afterwards. So, the conditions for the First World War were in place when Franz Ferdinand entered Sarajevo. But that doesn't mean that anyone could have predicted that this spark would set the whole thing off.

I like the Taleb's comment about Rumsfeld's famous 2002 unknown uknowns speech (see also here). Taleb had apparently set his thinking out for Rumsfeld's people and so was the inspiration for the speech. But he now says that "I don't want to be advertised as someone who's too close to these people." I'd say. Anyway as Burkeman has it,

"Rumsfeld's "unknown unknowns" speech made perfect sense. The problem, Taleb says, was that Rumsfeld himself didn't understand it. The black swan way of thinking should have prompted the defence secretary to be cautious about his capacity to predict the future in Iraq. Instead, he fell, again and again, into the prediction trap."

That is, he constructed narratives to explain past events and in his arrogance inferred from that that, being smart enough, he could spot the narratives leading to future events too.

Another lesson that the real gobshites in life are not the stupid people. It's people who are not nearly so clever as they think.

There's a great post over on South Belfast Diary trying to get to grips with what 'normal' politics might mean in a Northern Ireland context. Worth a look.  

I see that Steve over on Pub Philosopher has a post extolling the punitive regime in Japanese prisons. Apparently, according to an article in The Independent,

"While Japan incarcerates its citizens at less than half the rate of Britain, prison time is notoriously harsh. Inmates are kept isolated and mostly in silence, and forced to obey hundreds of military-like rules. Strip searches are common, as are beatings."

Steve's comment on this is that "perhaps Japan locks up fewer people then the UK because most would-be criminals are shit-scared of going to prison."

Then again perhaps not.

Research done a full forty years ago and repeated on countless occasions since suggests that for your average rime-intending punter the severity of prison terms only has an effect on the decision to commit a crime if they are already pretty certain that they'll get caught. For the most part, it's the risk of apprehension that deters potential criminals.

Moreover, while prison might have visual appeal for punishment fantasists, experiencing of actual prisons obviously doesn't deter many offenders (though education probably does). And, again obviously given that throwing thousands of criminals into prison doesn't tend to reduce the crime rate, neither does it deter potential criminals.

It really irritates me that we think having the highest prison population in Europe is a good thing and not entirely screwed up. The notion that prison deters is even undermined by a cursory look at who is actually in the UK's prisons.

Couldn't it possibly be the case that some of them would be better off elsewhere? Like in care units for the mentally ill? Or, in proper drug rehabilitation units, thus increasing the likelihood that they won't reoffend?

And then there's the female prison population. In 1994 the percentage of women who were in prison because they failed to pay their TV licence peaked at 57%. Why? Because the BBC went on an enforcement drive by outsourcing their licence bureau. And the licence company got a commission for every new licence they collected. So, when they came to your door and you didn't have a licence, they'd turn a blind eye if you buy one on the spot. Otherwise you get fined.

And guess who couldn't afford either licence or (surprise surprise) fine? Single mums. So they get carted off for a short spell in jail and their kids are sent to grandparents or into care. Thus setting up the cycle for another generation.

So these people wouldn't be there if we had the Japanese prison system and everything else stayed the same? Really?

Well, Joanna Newsom has done me another favour. I received the album of the guy who supported her at the concert last week, Ned Collette and, though it's a bit ropey at times, it's generally fabulous. Very Nick Drake. And, to a small extent, Richard Thompson. If you like acoustic singer-songwriters, you could do worse. Only thing is, don't bother following Collette's links to his UK distributor (they seem to be a wholesaler). The Australian source for his album got it to me in no time at all so I'd try them.

Anyway, this all got me a-youtubing music. And where better to end up than with one of the loveliest songs in contemporary English folk…

According to this piece on the RTÉ news site, entitled "Figures Show Rise in Abductions," if you live in Ireland you should be very very afraid. Apparently "Garda statistics show that the number of abductions increased by 50% in the first three months of this year compared to the same period last year."

The rise in abductions in the first quarter of this year, from six to nine, means that you suffer an appalling 0.00021% chance of being kidnapped. As opposed to the far more acceptable 0.00014% chance in the same period last year.

What an informative headline. I'm heading for my bunker.

Sarah Carey has an angry post on the terrible tragedy this weekend gone in Wexford. It certainly seems like something was brewing and it raises serious questions over the non-handling of the situation by people in the HSE.

That said, I'm not sure that we can automatically look for firings from the embers of catastrophe. It may just not be fair to point fingers without getting a sense of what's going on.

So: the (social) science: the management of risk is all the rage at the moment in regulation circles, and a one or two people, like Christopher Hood, have suggested a close connection between the monitoring of risk and the enthusiastic allocation of blame. Ultimately, Hood argues that this can have a perverse effect on bureaucratic behaviour, with administrators being more motivated by the need to avoid blame than by the precepts of their professions. For instance, school administrations might be reluctant to allow kids on outings for fear that one of them would graze a knee, despite the obvious value such experiences offer to children.

From another perspective, performance targets have a similar effect on administrators: stick a target on them and, largely for fear of the consequences of failing the expectations of bosses or politicians or whoever, they'll game the system. They'll do this either by focusing on the target in a way that produces terrible consequences or simply by lying. Demands for performance can permeate down to subcontractors whose managers can sideline the judgements of professionals in order to meet the expectations that have been placed on them. Something that can certainly lead to outright disaster. My good friend Mel Dubnick was one of the authors of the landmark article linking perverse administrative behaviour to the expectations placed on bureaucrats (by the way, I have copies of all these papers: drop me a line if you're interested and lack a subscription).

Anyway: the point. There was certainly a fuck-up of monumental proportions in the HSE this weekend, but only with the benefit of hindsight. Most certainly, this family was displaying very disturbing behaviour, but again, we don't even know precisely what was said by the Guards to the people they spoke to in the HSE. We don't know how many calls like this the Guards make or how serious they thought the situation was. Which isn't an attempt to shift blame in any sense. I'm simply pointing out that all these organisations deal with very troubled people day in and day out. The question has to be: was there anything in the perceptions about these particular troubled people that gave rise to unsually significant concerns before the event?

After all, precisely how risk averse do we want social services to be in this country? I presume that, while we certainly don't want paralysis, neither do we want children taken into care the instant alarm bells are raised. We don't want social workers and psychologists responding to every call made.

We want them, despite the risk, to exercise some judgement over when to intervene and when not to intervene.

And we certainly don't want a regime in place where there is only one step between an error of judgement and a P45. Think about the incentives that would produce.

So the serious questions raised are as follows. What is a good indicator of risk? And how, if it's at all possible to acertain that, ought that to be communicated through the system? And finally, was the system out of whack a few days ago or, brutal though it might sound, was this tragedy beyond the powers of a state acting within acceptable bounds? Even if such things have happened before, can we really envisage systems where they would never happen again?

I doubt any investigation will tackle these issues though. Better to hang a bureaucrat out to dry.

Update: I've just re-read the comments to Sarah's post and entirely agree with her that it can make sense – be good community policing as one commenter put it – to bring a priest into the situation to talk with people. Communities are not simply amenable to state intervention.

Where I differ from her is in deciding that states can always intervene at the right time and place and – in the absence of a state that gets everything absolutely right – we'd probably prefer one that intervened less than necessary to one that intervened more.

MBTs may not be the de rigeur footwear for walkers in the city for much longer if an article in today’s Guardian is true. The benefits of supposedly walking like Masai tribesman may be outweighed by the sense of panic one’s legs feel when the footwear is removed. Muscles are stretched but these are the wrong muscles apparently. I have always thought the Masais have the most remarkable posture and are so graceful in their movements. Conversely, most non-Masai MBT wearers in Dublin look like they are swaying as they walk in an attempt to maintain balance.

Maybe the key is in the word barefoot.

While we're all reading up on first round of the French Presidential Election, it might be worth skipping over to A Fistful of Euros for some perspective on France's economic woes.

Not that France doesn't have economic woes. And it certainly has political problems, perhaps even to a catastrophic degree. But badly-compiled comparisons don't help.