Grenfell Tower Fire Inquiry - Monbiot’s Perspective:

On Privilege

I can’t remember where I first saw this blog post, I reshare it with interest and admiration for the story the writer tells:

When You’re Accustomed To Privilege, Equality Feels Like Oppression

Posted on March 5, 2016 by theboeskool

I’ve never been punched in the face. Not in an actual fight, at least. I’m not much of a fighter, I suppose… More of an “arguer.” I don’t think I’m “scared” to get into a fight, necessarily–There have been many times I have put myself in situations where a physical  fight could easily have happened… I just can’t see myself ever being the guy who throws the first punch, and I’m usually the kind of guy who DE-escalates things with logic or humor. And one of the things about being that sort of person, is that the other sort of guy–the sort who jumps into fights quickly–tends to not really be a big fan of me… Not when he first meets me, at least. They usually like me later. Not always. You can’t win ’em all…

The first rule of White Club is you do not talk about White Club…

When I moved to Nashville, I didn’t really know anyone. I got a job as a server on my second day here, and before long, I was one of the servers the management favored… Which meant I got better shifts, better sections, and better money. About nine months after I had been there, a new guy started. We instantly disliked each other. He didn’t like my smart mouth, and I didn’t like how he walked in and immediately acted like he owned the place. He carried himself with this annoying confidence… Like it was his world, and he would tolerate our being in it, as long as we stayed out of his damn way. There were also rumors that this guy had spent some time in jail, and it was very clear that he was NOT a “DE-escalater.” He was the sort of guy who knew exactly how much he could bench, you know? And you could sense that–just below the surface–there was always this restless energy that silently dared you to say something… He was an intimidating dude.

So it bothered me a little bit when–only a month after he started working there–he was already getting rotated into some of the good sections… Another mouth to feed meant less money for me… He was a good server though. But nothing he did got under my skin nearly as bad as this: When Chuck (we’ll call him “Chuck. His name wasn’t Chuck, but it was definitely a name in the “Chuck” category of names. It certainly wasn’t a pushover name like “Chris”) would walk toward you, he ALWAYS expected YOU to be the one to move out of the way. He didn’t do this when walking toward girls… But if he and another GUY (me especially) were heading toward each other, he would head straight for the other guy–not making eye contact–and he always assumed he had the right of way. If not, you would get bumped by this stocky, solid mass of aggression who seemed to be just itching for someone to question his intended path. And really, this seemed to best describe how Chuck lived his whole life–Walking straight at people, and expecting them to move. Until one day…

Turns out there are other people…

I had had enough. I kept thinking “Why am I always moving out of this guy’s way?” Just about everyone else in the world seemed to agree that if two people were walking toward each other, both people would acquiesce a little… Leaning the side closest to the other person back just so. What gave this guy the right to just EXPECT that I’m going to move out of his way? And then another thought started tugging at my brain: “What if I didn’t move? What if I just kept walking too?” I was done playing by his rules. And that evening, as he walked quickly toward me in the aisle of the restaurant (we both were fairly fast walkers), I walked toward him… And I didn’t move. I’m not a giant of a man, but I’m solid enough to hold my own–especially when I see a collision coming–and the impact spun him around. Right there, in front of guests, he immediately said, “What the F*CK, dude!?” I said, “You alright?” He was furious, and insisting to know WHY I had just bumped into him. I said, “Chuck, I was just walking… Why did you assume that I was going to move out of your way?” He followed me around the restaurant, angrily attempting to escalate things. He ended up stopping me by another table, and when I said something along the lines of “Welcome to planet Earth,” he shoved me. Hard. And not like a shove where you put your hands on someone and then shove… It was the sort of shove where his hands were already moving really fast when they hit my chest, and it made a pretty loud noise. All of his bench-pressing muscles let lose on me–this person who dared question his right of way–and I was knocked about two steps back.

I walked away from him, and I could feel my heart beating in my ears. I thought about what I should do… If I should say something to a manager (that didn’t seem like a good idea), if I should say anything more to Chuck (that seemed like an even WORSE idea)… I decided to just try to avoid him for a bit and let him cool off. About 15 minutes later, the GM asked to talk to me. He said that a guest had seen Chuck angrily shove me, and had complained and described what happened (describing it as him “hitting” me, but it was definitely a shove). I told him what happened–about him always assuming I was going to move, about me simply walking and not moving, and about the arguing and the shove that followed. It was a corporate restaurant, so he took everything very seriously. He filled out an incident report, asked me if I wanted to press charges, and told me if I wanted him gone, he was fired. I said that I didn’t want the guy to lose his job… I just wanted him to recognize that other people had every right to be there that he did.

And so, I recently thought about this story again after I had just read this amazing quote (a quote for which  I tried very hard to find an attribution, but kept coming up “Unknown):

“When you’re accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression.”

And things started making a little more sense to me. All this anger we see from people screaming “All Lives Matter” in response to black protesters at rallies… All this anger we see from people insisting that THEIR “religious freedom” is being infringed because a gay couple wants to get married… All these people angry about immigrants, angry about Muslims, angry about “Happy Holidays,” angry about not being able to say bigoted things without being called a bigot… They all basically boil down to people who have grown accustomed to walking straight at other folks, and expecting THEM to move. So when “those people” in their path DON’T move… When those people start wondering, “Why am I always moving out of this guy’s way?” When those people start asking themselves, “What if I didn’t move? What if I just kept walking too?” When those people start believing that they have every bit as much right to that aisle as anyone else… It can seem like THEIR rights are being taken away.

Equality can FEEL like oppression. But it’s not. What you’re feeling is just the discomfort of losing a little bit of your privilege… The same discomfort that an only child feels when she goes to preschool, and discovers that there are other kids who want to play with the same toys as she does. It’s like an old man being used to having a community pool all to himself, having that pool actually opened up to everyone in the community, and then that old man yelling, “But what about MY right to swim in a pool all by myself?!?”

This is the “Again” of “Make America Great Again.” Don’t worry–They’ll just open some swim clubs and make the membership really expensive…

And what we’re seeing politically right now is a bit of anger from both sides. On one side, we see people who are angry about “those people” being let into “our” pool. They’re angry about sharing their toys with the other kids in the classroom. They’re angry about being labeled a “racist,” just because they say racist things and have racist beliefs. They’re angry about having to consider others who might be walking toward them… strangely exerting their right to exist. On the other side, we see people who believe that pool is for everyone. We see people who realize that when our kids throw a fit in preschool, we teach them about how sharing is the right thing to do. We see people who understand being careful with their language as a way of being respectful to others. We see people who are attempting to stand in solidarity with the ones who are claiming their right to exist… The ones who are rightfully angry about having to always move out of the way… People who are asking themselves the question, “What if I just keep walking?”

Which kind of person are you?

I should mention that “Chuck” and I eventually became friends… Proving that people who see the world very differently can get along when they are open to change, and when they are willing to try to see the world though another person’s eyes. There is hope.

A Scandi View of Corbyn

The following post was circulated on Facebook in 2016 - an interesting perspective: 

“Jeremy Corbyn – a mainstream [Scandinavian] social democrat

Jonas Fossli Gjersø 19 September 2016

If there is such a thing as a ‘best practice approach’ in public policy the Nordic model would probably be it and, at any measure, a useful benchmark for Britain to move towards.

As a Scandinavian who has spent more than a decade living in Britain, nothing has made me feel more foreign than observing the current Labour leadership election. From his style to his policies Mr Corbyn would, in Norway, be an unremarkably mainstream, run-of-the-mill social-democrat. His policy-platform places him squarely in the Norwegian Labour Party from which the last leader is such a widely respected establishment figure that upon resignation he became the current Secretary-General of NATO.  Yet, here in the United Kingdom a politician who makes similar policy-proposals, indeed those that form the very bedrock of the Nordic-model, is brandished as an extremist of the hard-left and a danger to society.

So who is right? Is the Norwegian Labour movement some dangerous extremist group that unknowingly has occupied the furthest leftist fringe of the political spectrum? If so, a casual glance at the UN’s Human Development Index would suggest that Norway certainly has not suffered as a result of successive Labour-dominated governments. Or is it, perhaps, that the British media’s portrayal of Corbyn, and by extent his policies are somewhat exaggerated and verging on the realm of character assassination rather than objective analysis and journalism?

It is probably not without reason that a recent report by the European Broadcasting Union found that the United Kingdom among all of the EU member-states (+Albania, FYROM & Turkey) scores the lowest in levels of trust in written media.   

The most common refrain among the British political commentariat is that Corbyn is unelectable. That no matter how many members his election as leader has drawn (currently trebled Labour membership from c. 180k to 560k), or how popular his political rallies are, the Labour Party under his leadership is condemned to lose the 2020 general election. The premise of this analysis seems to be based on the assumption that the British electorate are permanently and irredeemably ‘small-c conservative’ and that no political party can win without reaching out to this elusive centre-ground of British politics.

Whereas this strategy might have accounted for Tony Blair’s electoral victories in the late-90s, it becomes less persuasive when applied to the post-2008 era. The socio-economic structural changes Britain has undergone since the financial crisis has severely discredited the neo-liberal orthodoxy in both academia and amid the general public, as the trend of widening income and wealth inequality has left far more economic losers than beneficiaries in its wake. I would suggest that tapping into this growing demographic among an increasingly polarised electorate makes Mr Corbyn’s distinctiveness as a social-democratic candidate an asset rather than a liability.

Another moniker Mr Corbyn’s detractors often apply to his policies are that they derive from some so-called extreme of the political spectrum, that they are ‘hard left’ and ergo hopelessly idealistic and unworkable. To a Norwegian observer such as myself I find this characterisation puzzling. Mr Corbyn’s policy-platform, particularly in regard to his domestic policies are largely identical with the Norwegian Labour Party manifesto. Railway nationalisation, partial or full state ownership of key companies or sectors, universal healthcare provisions, state-funded house-building, no tuition fee education, education grants and loans to name but a few, enjoy near universal support among the Norwegian electorate, in fact, they are so mainstream that not even the most right-wing of Norwegian political parties would challenge them.

And this is not only the case in Norway, but has been integral to the social-democratic post-war consensus in all the Nordic countries. Judging by almost any measure of social indicators these policies have been a success, the Nordic region enjoys some of the world’s highest living standards and presumably should be a model to be emulated rather than avoided. Obviously the Nordic region is no earthly paradise and there are cultural, economic and historical differences between the UK and Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden, but if there is such a thing as a ‘best practice approach’ in public policy the Nordic model would probably be it and, at any measure, a useful benchmark for Britain to move towards.

The whole controversy surrounding Mr Corbyn probably betrays more about Britain’s class divisions and how far the UK’s political spectrum has shifted to the right since the early-1980s, than it does of the practicality of his policy-proposals.

Whereas in Norway there is a high-degree of media ownership fragmentation, they are sometimes owned by not-for-profit foundations and all receive state subsidies based on circulation, which in turn ensures a modicum of objectivity and plurality of opinion. Their British counterparts are often highly partisan and espouse a largely right-wing editorial agenda. In contrast, British media ownership is highly concentrated: 70% of national newspapers are owned by just three companies and a third are owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News UK.

Since 51% of leading British journalists are among the privately educated 7% it is not surprising that they have internalised an ideology that serves their own privileged class interest, consciously or not, rather than that of the wider population. This raises the question of whether British politicians should solely be reacting to the agenda of the conservative-oriented press, or that they themselves should set out visions for how society should be organised to better serve the interests of the electorate.

I would suggest the latter despite what self-proclaimed political ‘realists’ might think. Imagine what this cadre of ‘centrist’ commentators would have to say about a radical project such as the NHS today had it not been introduced in the late-1940s. The same goes for other widely cherished national institutions such as the BBC. For democracy to function, a plurality of views must be offered a platform and indeed also receive thorough scrutiny by the press. Instead, the British media has focused its reporting on the personal characteristics of Mr Corbyn, usually in rather unflattering terms, and shown scant or shallow regard to his policy-agenda.

Equally, a comparative approach would be useful to broaden the British political debate instead of simply comparing his candidature to that of Michael Foot or Tony Blair who stood under very different socio-economic conditions. What a direct comparison of Britain with other similar European states would reveal is both the dire condition of British living-standards for populations particularly outside London and how conventionally social-democratic Mr Corbyn’s policies are. You might agree or disagree with his political position, but it is still far too early to discount Mr Corbyn’s potential success at the next general election – particularly if he manages to mobilise support from the c. 40% of the electorate who regularly fail to cast their ballot in elections. Indeed, just as few might have recognised the socio-economic and ideological structural changes which converged to underpin Margaret Thatcher’s meteoric rise in the early-1980s, we cannot exclude the possibility that we are witnessing the social-democratic mirror image of that process today, with a prevailing wind from the left rather than the right.

About the author

Jonas Fossli Gjersø holds a PhD in International History from the London School of Economics and Political Science”

Best and clearest explanation I have seen of how the NHS is being privatised:

I am a Labour MP and I voted for UK Airstrikes in Syria!! Am I a knave or a fool?

Many Labour Party members will be wondering why the 66 Labour MPs given a free vote chose to vote for airstrikes in Syria, given the overwhelming majority of party members and constituents who opposed that policy.  It’s easy to become confrontational when asking this question, but actually many people would really genuinely like to understand the MPs reasoning here.  GIven that feelings are running high on this issue, it may be hard to get a non-confrontational discussion foreseeable future.  So here is a handy Cosmopolitan-style quiz for those who voted for airstrikes to determine how their reasons (which are sure to be numerous and complex) add up. 

Knaves or Fools

Answer yes to all that apply to you, and then consult the scoring key at the bottom.

A. I’m outraged by the terrorist attacks, we have to show them they can’t mess with us.   B. I just can’t stand that pious incompetent Corbyn, he’s a naïve old hippy peacenik who never grew up, and I want to align myself firmly opposed to him. C. Britain has been a major military power for centuries, making us respected and feared (in a good way) around the world.  In recent decades this reputation has been eroded, and I just can’t bear to think of that.   D. Our involvement probably won’t make any difference really to the Syrians, so other considerations to do with the UK political scene are going to determine how I vote. E. I have done some shady or careless things in the past.  Someone knows about them, and I think they might leak that information if I don’t vote for airstrikes. F. Airstrikes will make us safer, I actually do believe that. G. If we don’t join the airstrikes, some of our richest allies will withdraw their friendship and their trade.  Johnny Public doesn’t want to hear that, but it’s the truth. H. The left-wing of the party can never win because Middle England will just never go for their approach.  We have to compromise and be more centrist, and I will vote in a way that aligns me with that. I. I’m not sure what to do, but everybody applauded Hilary Benn’s speech so that must be the way to go. J. We can do damage to the terrorists with these airstrikes, I actually believe that. K. The military is actually a terrific British industry, use it or lose it! L. I and/or people I know and care about will do well financially out of the airstrikes. M. Great Britain’s reputation internationally would be shamed if we don’t take part in this action. N. Despite what the polls say, a lot of my constituents have actually lobbied me to vote for airstrikes. O. I and/or my family have been in the armed forces: civilians don’t understand this, but forces personnel are highly trained professionals who will do a terrific job. P. I like more of the people voting for airstrikes, than I like those voting against. Q. I just don’t share the old labour values that Jeremy Corbyn stands for: sorry but it’s in the long-term interest of the party and the nation to get him out. R. We need to send a message to our allies that they can count on us. S. I am worried about the growth of Islamic culture in Europe and the West.  We can’t stop them building mosques, and wearing hijabs, but this is something we can do. T. We can’t just do nothing, the terrorists will think we are cowards. U. The truth is, although nobody wants to say this, our economy really depends on those oil interests. V. I refuse to be bullied by a lefty rabble. W. My own political reputation among people that matter will be enhanced by voting for airstrikes.

Scoring Key:

Score 5 for answering yes to questions A. F. I. J. O. T. Score 4 for answering yes to questions C. K. M. S. Score 3 for answering yes to questions G. H. Score 2 for answering yes to questions D. N. Q. R. Score 1 for answering yes to questions B. P. U. V. Score 0 for answering yes to questions E. L. W.

Score less than 30: Knaves

You see yourself as being an experienced politician, a man (or woman) of the world.  Politics in your experience is largely about deals and relationships that take place outside the public eye.  Although your aim is, you think, generally to act in the public interest, sometimes you have to do unpleasant things.  The public lack the sophistication to be allowed to know about this.  But you are concerned that your approach is out of step with the current reformist mood of the labour party.  That sort of idealism is all very well but it can never work and it is very tiresome for you to be impeded by this rather immature approach.  You may ultimately prefer to ditch politics as a career and work in the private sector where – with your knowledge and contacts – you are sure to do well.

Score greater than 30 Fools

You have a view of Britain as an international power which is increasingly being seen by your colleagues and constituents as rather outdated.  Confronted with a different idea of Britain, less militaristic, humbler but more inclusive, you feel  uncomfortable: baffled and frustrated.  You have difficulty in imagining why others might not share your views, after all, everybody has relatives who were in WWII right?  We’ve all seen those films!!  So these are thankless times for someone with your vision of Britain to be a Labour MP.  You might do better working for the National Trust or some other heritage industry.