The age of Misinterpretation

We have lived for the last decade in the age of information but as this new decade takes hold it is becoming clear we are now in the age of misinterpretation. With the rampant development and availability of technology we now live in an age where information (more specifically news) is no more than a few inches from our fingertips.

In the old days news came from one of two sources, our daily papers or our rolling news channels, most people would no longer extol the virtues of ether of these media sources. The belief that they are just not fast enough to respond or active enough to be accurate is widely accepted, but at the same time the emergence of social media and the resulting real time information it produces means we are left without the full picture.

How many of us on the morning commute investigate the storeys of the day may it be via twitter, facebook, blogs and news websites; on our ipads, iphones or our blackberrys? Recent studies suggest in excess of seventy percent of us are whole reliant on the information the internet provides. 

The thing we don’t think about though is how big a picture we actually receive from these sources. With the average Briton losing interest at around the 483rd word, we now get our news in snippets rather than in swathes. Small bundles of immediately relevant data.

The idea that more people are becoming actively involved in their environment is a wonderful thing, but without the guidance and encouragement of our daily papers or our news channels are we really seeing the issues as a whole?

Communications specialists are beginning to realise very quickly the honest answer is No. It has become, because of the availability of instant and individually relevant news, a sheer impossibility to inform and keep the public informed of the evolution and causality of the issues.

This is not the fault of the individual or even the governing classes, it is merely the modern age. We must develop new techniques that allow us to feed complex and elongated issues to the public in the manner they want, but in an age where story and issue development can no longer be laid out clearly to the majority, how does the government keep them informed?

Gone are the days of lies and spin not because it’s not effective but because it is no longer practicable, instead the truth and the blog are the future. No longer can we rely on the journalist and the paper it is time for a shift towards the blogger and the online paper (and the interactive media it brings).

Communicating ideology or even just the issues of the day must be done in this age of misinterpretation with video and with pictures but we lay on uncertain ground. Democracy in this country must be held accountable, how though when it is no longer afforded an active or plausible method of right to reply.

Time and technology will and is creating new methods for governments to explain themselves but that is the fundamental issue. Time! Active accountability is possible right now through both the old and the new forms of media, but active response and reply is not.

The public have all the forms of new media at their disposal but the government does not. We live in a “democratic dictatorship” as Disraeli once put it and because of this the government are struggling to respond to a new age and a new era where everyone in this country can have a loud and active voice in their countries governance apart from those chosen to govern.

I suppose the result of this pondering would be an unsurprising conclusion, modernity and technology will transform the way this country is governed but until the process is complete; the voice of the many must not have too much effect on the decisions of the few.  

The defence of the realm

We talk constantly of the Ministry of Defence and making sure our armed services receive all the funding they require. We send our boys off all over the world to keep the peace and to ensure democracy, but that phrase has two sides to it.

We can no longer ensure the defence of our realm with the might of our army and our services alone, extremism as an idea is nothing new to the British public but its causalities and forms have changed since the days of terror in London.

To defend this sovereign sceptered isle and its mother of all democracies we must begin to assess the protection of its citizens in their homes and in their communities. To do this we need new policies and a return to some of our older values, it has become all too clear over the last few days that morality and discipline have all but vanished from British society.

The Government wishes to talk of these riots as an affront to British society and as totally unacceptable, these things I would never dispute as causality should for the main part remain an irrelevance in regards criminality.

We have heard a lot about policing and maintain order in this country by “consent”. This has been the British way since Robert Peel (which is why the police have the nickname 'Bobbies')created the police force in 1829 and it should always be thus. How many countries can claim to have an unarmed police force for example?

But consent only works when the public respect, and to a certain extent, fear the law. For generations we have lived in a country where if a parent or for that matter child was stopped by a police officer they felt a certain amount of disgrace. I am not saying we should fear the police but that we should be forced to respect them.

We live in a society where the powers and judgment calls of the average police officer have all but been removed in favour of other less direct methods. We must take this opportunity to re-empower our police officers with new legislation on low level crime and far more freedom for the police to deal with low level criminals.

A new low level crime act consisting of: on the spot anti-social behaviour fines, on the spot compulsory local community service orders, low level truancy fines, legal protection for police men against nonsense human rights legislation that interferes with the process of policing, active naming and the shaming of low level criminals, new powers allowing police officers to apprehend youths and take actions outside of the court room, giving magistrates courts the ability to suspend benefits going to low level criminals including EMA (or its replacement), a know their name policy for local police men.

All of this combined with new powers for PCSO’s to create an effective and functional two tier policing system and a return to imposing and substantiated police uniforms. Returning discipline and morality to the streets is not an easy task but it must be and remain a priority for the government. Although what I am suggesting gives the police an unprecedented amount of power and the ability to stand as judge and jury against low level criminality, it will restore the ever lessening balance between the criminal and the police.

Restoring order to the streets with tougher legislation and police empowerment is one thing but it will not solve the problem on its own. We need to also consider education and deprivation in our communities. After fifteen years of a labour government we still have a very small uptake of apprenticeships when we compare them against when we had technical collages. I do not for one minute suggest that the riots in London can be explained as “protests against a lack of education and jobs”, but what I will say is we live in a country where we are currently failing to provide the right jobs and the right education for those who either can’t or are unable to pursue academic subjects.

In a country where even today our service sectors prefer a candidate with a degree what hope do those without one stand of finding employment, we must provide those who do not or cannot gain academic qualifications with alternative skills or risk consigning them to a social underclass and in doing so create a forgotten education.

Mr Gove talks of Academies and of extending the scheme further. Yes they work but the scheme needs to be pushed further still.  Academies are having a fantastic effect on education levels in deprived areas but when one in three students arrive there unable to communicate properly let alone read or write, it may be time to accept that we need an education system that concentrates both on academic leadership and providing the basic skills to ensure those who can’t or won’t pursue it are not forgotten and left to fester at the very bottom of the pile.

Education and legislation will not work on their own. We must see reform of our social services as well, the government must again empower our social workers to take action without the threat of negative consequences.

It must ensure that case workers are given the time and the training to make real and long lasting differences to families in need. Most of all we must simplify the system. Put an end to multi-agency involvement and get back to a situation where a single case worker is empowered to channel benefits, assistance, government held information and any and all support necessary to any one they deem in need. A single lead case worker with real power and the ability to make judgment calls will insure the process of helping those families. 

With this three pronged approach we can not only tackle the underlying causes once and for all but also ensure that in the cases where positive action is ineffective the full force of the law becomes not only a resource but also a functioning deterrent.

This is how we stop extreme behaviour on our streets not just with force and more power to the police but with a combined effort to both provide hope and a working future for those that have been left behind.