Will there be a Soviet Spring?

Tensions are high in Russia as former soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev has added his voice to the growing list of individuals calling for Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin to scrap the results of Russia's recent parliamentary elections and start the ballot process from scratch.

Despite widespread allegations of vote rigging and ballot-box stuffing, Putin's United Russia party saw their share of the vote in the Duma (the Russian representative assembly) drop below 50% of the total vote for the first time since Putin came to power twelve years ago. Gorbachev, the Nobel laureate who oversaw the collapse of the Soviet Union, called the elections 'dishonest' and urged the Kremlin to change its authoritarian stance towards pro-democracy protestors.

The new Russian constitution allows a candidate to stand for two six-year terms, meaning that if Putin is re-elected in next year's presidential election, he could retain the power in Russia until 2024. However, those who are pressing for political and economic reform in Russia will realise that the single biggest obstacle to achieving those goals is Putin himself. Questions are rightly beginning to be asked about increasing corruption, politically-motivated arrests and the murders of Putin's opponents.

Following Boris Yeltsin's disastrous free-market reforms in the early nineties, many Russians adopted a stoically fatalist attitude towards politics. Up to now, most Russians had accepted an informal social contract whereby they allowed the state to restrict their personal freedoms to a degree in return for political stability and rising living standards. Now that those living standards are stagnating in the aftermath of the global political crisis and Russia's younger generation are able to compare their lives to those in the rest of Europe because of easy access to travel and Wi-fi (ironically, a consequence of one of the regime's genuine successes), discontent is spilling out onto the streets of Russia's largest cities.

Quality of life is not the only thing waning in the former superpower. Russia's indomitable figurehead is no longer the immensely powerful man that he once was. A million people have seen YouTube videos of Putin being booed at a judo competition in his constituency heartlands. Imprisoned anti-corruption blogger Alexei Navalny has poked fun at Putin's hardman image and his posts have made him one of the most popular political commentators in Russia.

The state has transported 5,000 police and interior ministry troops into Moscow in response to a Facebook campaign that has attracted a pledge from over 40,000 people to attend demonstrations this weekend in Triumfalnaya Square and Revolution Square in the shadow of the Kremlin. Amnesty International are monitoring the situation and warning that a bloodbath could result if security services are determined to put down the demonstrations at any cost.

As whispers persist about the potential of a Soviet Spring political uprising, both Putin and the pro-democracy campaigners will be holding their breath in the days to come.

My Message to the 1%...

I'm struggling a bit this week, used as I am to my daily diet of Facebook, blogs and tweets from UKUncut about whichever Vodafone branch they have occupied today. My beautiful desktop computer, which is without doubt my closest friend bar none, failed me on Monday this week when the hard drive pitched out and I am now surviving by borrowing laptops for an hour here and there and licking batteries whenever I get bored - which is often.

On my rare forays onto the internet, there is a Facebook group I have seen this week which has made me sad. It is titled as follows: "Doesn't make sense does it?? Homeless go without eating. Elderly go without needed medicines. Mentally ill go without treatment. Troops go without proper equipment. Veterans go without the benefits they were promised. Yet we donate billions to other countries before helping our own first. 1% will re-post and 99% wont. Have... the guts to re-post this. I KNOW I'm in the 1%"

Now, there are a whole host of reasons why this upsets me. I'm going to go through them quickly, because I could rant about this for days, but here goes. Firstly, homeless people may go without eating, but primarily they go without a home. This is a simple inequality and true frustration should be aimed at people who have obtained obscene wealth and multiple homes through self-interest and duplicitous behaviour. Alternatively, you could pick on foreign aid organisations, who are only wasting money on such worthless projects as supplying clean water to fellow human beings. Choose the targets of your anger carefully.

Secondly, elderly people generally don't go without much needed medicines - in fact, quite the opposite. Many are abandoned in uncaring residential homes and medicated as an alternative to being socially stimulated. They are also given antibiotics by the bucketload that they simply don't need - this is why we have superbugs such as MRSA popping up in our hospitals. If you really care about the elderly, do something positive and write to your MP and David Cameron and demand that they increase spending in real terms on the NHS and social care. Believe me, this is a cause that really needs your support. Now, I'll be truly amazed if the '1% who post this message' actually strive to do something constructive.

The mentally-ill do sometimes go without treatment, it's true, but the argument for the increase in real-terms NHS-funding covers this as well, so I'm satisfied that we're all reading from the same hymnsheet. Let's move onto soldiers.

I struggle to see why the UK needs a standing army. We have no resources worth seizing and no enemies who would regard invasion as worth the effort. We continue to kid ourselves that the UK has a role to play in policing the world's fragile democracies, with the irony being that the money we waste on sending young men to be pointlessly killed would be far better spent on social projects to help those in need, increasing our diplomatic standing with the countries in question. Every pound we spend on trying to secure a supply of oil for the next decade could surely be better spent on developing alternative energy sources that could free us from our dependence on the whims of other countries.

This does not change the fact that our soldiers should expect high-quality equipment. However, the UK is no longer a major military player on the world stage, and with the stakes so high, intelligent youngsters considering joining the army should wonder if the country really has their best interests at heart.

This leads me onto the final point I would like to make - the group does not offer any mathematical basis for removing foreign aid. Billions of pounds were indeed spent on foreign aid last year - six billion, in fact. Consider the fact that the UK spends over £700 billion every year - and somehow found £800 billion more to bail out the banking system.

In the context of the world at large, will the six billion we spent on foreign aid last year make any difference? This does not even consider the ridiculous sums the UK makes from third world countries, providing loans and receiving debt interest through the World Bank and IMF, and without considering the social consequences thereof. Haiti is still suffering from the after-effects of the devastating earthquake there last year. Australia, Brazil and Sri Lanka have suffered hundreds of deaths due to flooding in the past few weeks alone. Are we truly saying that we are happy to spend £800 billion on compensating for the auspices of the world's wealthiest and least-deserving, but that we begrudge the £6 billion we give to the entire rest of the human race? Because if we are, we should truly be ashamed.

Better in Our Day

I never know how to begin these things. I don't even blog that often but I'm becoming acutely aware that my blog entries are haphazard and on occasion, utterly disjointed. This is a source of perturbation for me. I have postgraduate qualifications in creative writing, but not only have I not yet written a best-selling novel, I can't even construct a coherent blog entry within an hour of starting. Proof if it were needed that Coke Zero is not good for the little grey cells.

Okay. I'll try and focus now.

England won. You know this already, if you care. I allowed myself a little smile as Don Fabio gurned his way through an ecstatic post-match press-conference talking about how beer was the secret to England turning round their form in the World Cup. If this is true, the great unwashed that I shared the pub with on Wednesday afternoon could probably win the event themselves without even trying.

The last few weeks have seen a number of the couples I know splitting up. I mention this only because it's a backdrop to a sea change in relationship dynamics that I've noticed and feel is worth mentioning. The older women at work comment on this a fair bit, smug as they are in the comfort zone of marriages that have lasted longer than I've been alive. Nonetheless, they have a point, and it goes like this.

Young people can't communicate. It's a human instinct, but basically, we're becoming increasingly awful at it. Sure, I can blog, and you can reply to me via Facebook or even text message if I really piss you off, but the chances are that you're not going to confront me in person. I could spend the rest of this blog entry pointing out how ugly your mother is, and at worst you're going to ignore me. We have lost the ability to talk to one another, and with it go essential life skills such as the ability to empathise and compromise. What interaction we do have tends to have little to do with actual communication and instead apes the overly-dramatic scenes in Hollywood and Eastenders. We are all attention-seekers now.

There are many peculiar side-effects to this insidious aspect of modern life. We have fewer friends, and are not as close to the ones we do have. We share less, care less, and know nothing at all about our neighbours (apart from the fact that BNP Man across the road owns a labrador I refer to as BNP Dog, for want of a better name, and is always being arrested for being drunk and disorderly at 5am.)

This puts a particular strain on our personal relationships. I know a number of people my age who have simply given up on the likelihood of ever finding a long-term partner (generally, they are the ones who decide that cats and dogs argue less and therefore make better companions.) However, we still yearn to bond with others and typically find this bond in a single uber-close friendship, the kind of which seems to transcend gender and sexuality.

What does this mean for the future of our generation? Are we in a hopeless position, like my colleagues seem to think? Hardly, I feel. People still meet, fall in love, decide to have children and commit their lives to one another. Yes, we are more cynical about our future, and more prone to outlandish gestures at the expense of genuine feeling, but time is on our side, and we can look to learn from the example of those in the older generation who have withstood the pressures of untold years growing together. Above all, we should look to embrace the way that modern technologies allow us to stay in touch with the people we might otherwise lose, while being smart enough to do more to show we care for the friends we see every day.

Mass-Killing Most Foul

It started innocently enough. A friend posted on his Facebook status that the popular TV series '24' starring Kiefer Sutherland as Jack Bauer, was coming to an end, and that during the 8 series (each of which supposedly represents one day in Bauer's life) he had killed 266 people.

I have never seen the TV show, nor do I particularly have any interest in the premise. I think that Kiefer Sutherland is a solid, unremarkable actor. I didn't know whether my friend had literally watched every episode and kept a running total or simply read the number in TV Weekly, but either way, my maths brain kicked in and I made the following simple calculations.

266 people over an eight-day period equates to 33.25 killings per day, and because I'm guessing the show doesn't take a prolonged hiatus every time Bauer has to pee or takes a nap, this works out at approximately 1.38 bodybags per hour. I don't know if Bauer has an admin who deals with the paperwork on his behalf after these events, but if he does, the admin may just be the only person who has a higher-pressure job than Bauer himself. You can imagine that his relatives run America's most successful funeral business. Similarly, his senior officer has a lot of responsibility on his shoulders. Every time Bauer requests a week's leave, the chief has to weigh up the time lost by the department against the average saving of 166 lives.

Why is this worth a blog entry? On the off-chance that this blog is read by anyone from outside the UK, in the last week we have seen our third mass-killing in the UK within 25 years.

Details of events are still in the process of being patched together, but certain facts seem to be agreed upon. A Cumbrian taxi-driver, Derrick Bird, turned a warm sunny day in Northern England into a veritable bloodbath, avenging slights by targeting a number of people including family members, local businessmen and a former boss before rampaging at random through a number of small towns with a shotgun and a sniper rifle. He killed 12 victims, injuring many more, and it seems likely that most of those killed fell within a very narrow timeframe.

It pains me to admit it, but I can't deny that I'm interested in incidents of this nature. Those of you who know me well will already be aware that I have an analytical brain obsessed with maths and probability. This manifests itself in questions like, how many victims? How many shots? the % likelihood of it happening again on any street, anywhere, tomorrow? It's ghoulish, but I can't help it. It's how my brain works.

In addition to the maths involved, the random element of the Cumbrian shootings held similarities with other events of this type, incuding the Hungerford massacre in 1987, and Dunblane a few years later. This is where the psychology of mass-killers comes in, and like it or not, it is a fascinating subject.

Unlike Michael Ryan, the gun-obsessed loner who opened fire with automatic weapons in Hungerford town centre 23 years previously, or Dunblane's Thomas Hamilton, the unemployed former scout leader with a seemingly unhealthy interest in young boys, Bird seems to have been a popular man with a regular job, hobbies, friends and a close family. However, the reasons for his spree may never be known, as in common with the other two, he killed himself in the immediate aftermath. All three perpetrators held guns legally, and much debate is still to be had over proposed restrictions on gun ownership within the UK in future.

Mass-killers are always men, and men typically prone to anxiety and depression. They exhibit difficulties in communicating with others, and an exaggerated interest in violence. They fit the profile of Stephen Pinker's cross-cultural reference point, the 'amok', a male who revenges his lack of status in a suicidal murder spree.

As a final note, there appears to be correlation between the way in which violent events have been reported and the likelihood of copycat events following. In short, the more coverage and attention that is given to mass killers, the more likely it is that copycat events will occur (this can be evidenced in the Port Arthur massacre in Australia, only a few weeks after Dunblane. The killer, Martin Bryant, upon being apprehended, reportedly asked if he had 'broken the record' for most people killed in a massacre at one time.)

I'll have a few more posts on psychology in the future, but for now, just in case any of you are attention-seeking impressionable types, I'm going to have an evening of mass TV-watching. If I look angry, it's just because 24's about to come on and I've left the remote slightly out of reach.

Say No More

A fitting title for what has been a lousy week for at least one person close to me while my own week has been up there as one of the happiest I've had in ages. Mostly this has been due to the positive experience of a UNISON Tackling Racism course, which has made me think a whole lot more on the subject.

The single biggest thing I took from the course is how much of the insitutional racism in today's educated world tends to be an unwitting and unintended side-effect of not thinking through policies and comments, rather than being due to direct prejudice. Of course, it would be foolish to think that such prejudices no longer existed and either way, the divisive outcome still needs to be tackled. However, I am hopeful that this is symptomatic of a cultural shift whereby the racism we do see is a product of thoughtlessness rather than malicious forethought. It is not yet the sea change that black and minority ethnic people deserve, but at least we can hope that things may be moving in the right direction.

The real topic of this entry is about talking. It might have been good to talk in BT adverts a few years ago, but recent experience teaches us that it might be even better to shut up. In the last ten days, we have seen Lord Triesman, head of the English Football Association and chair of the England 2018 World Cup bid stung by the Daily Mail into making unwise comments to Melissa Jacobs, a lady he considered to be a personal friend but who was actually armed with a tape recorder and a requisite amount of silver.

Triesman suggested the possibility that Russian referees at the forthcoming world cup in South Africa might make preferential decisions towards Spain in return for Latin American support in deciding the outcome of who would host the event in 2018. So far, so ill-advised - but Triesman was clear that this was a private opinion only, and that he had no evidence that supported the possibility. Regardless, the sting became front page news and Triesman duly resigned, sagely noting that he was foolish to entrust his opinions to a former colleague. The England bid team have worked hard to minimise the damage, while much of the fallout has been attached to the odious Daily Mail, who have already blotted their copybook by supporting the Nazis in the run-up to World War II. In fact, I love to tell that story so much, I've decided here and now that that will be the topic of a future entry. Watch this space.

In the same week, US waitress Ashley Johnson became briefly famous for being sacked by pizza chain Brixx. Her crime - posting a Facebook entry criticising customers for being lousy at tipping. She has joined the less-than-illustrious ranks of those to put jobs at jeopardy by not thinking through the consequences of their actions.

And as for me? Kettle, this is pot...you're black. One of the hardest lessons my career has taught me is that there is a time and a place for being honest and critical with opinions. It frustrates me sometimes when things are not done well and I know that they could be done much better. However, there is also a way to make this point and much to be said for leading by example, rather than being cynical or using that horrible phrase, 'I told you so.'

Would I criticise my employer in this blog if I felt that the criticism was justified? Yes, I have always struggled to lie and I suspect that my principles would win out in the end. However, I feel it is also important to acknowledge that I and my colleagues work very hard and are often underappreciated by the general public for the things that we do well. More than ever, it is something well worth remembering.