‘It’ being the idea that it is a legitimate function of government to dress its servants in uniforms with shiny buttons and have them bully and interrogate people to make sure they are behaving themselves.
The word, Prussianism, was still used between the wars, but was much more common in the Indian summer of the British Empire, a century ago. It encapsulated the contempt of the liberal British (either little Liberals or little Conservatives) for the Bismarckian state and its imperative to dominate and regulate the lives of the people through petty officialdom. And that state was epitomised by shiny uniforms, the image of Prussianism.
Before the launch was buried under a torrent of further Home Office cock-up stories, the new, excitingly repressive, UK Borders Bill was launched with that image. There is nothing in the Bill about uniforms. Those are matters of prerogative. Likewise renaming the immigration service.
So the fact that John Reid chose to show off his latest ‘get tough’ policy* by unveiling the new uniforms for a renamed immigration service, is an epiphany of cultural change. Yesterday’s chaos (of which more in another post) may have covered it up, but I did not detect a whisper of the same public derision of Prussianism that the early 20th century Brits reserved for government by shiny uniforms.
[* Of course, Dr Reid, making Kylie carry an ID-card will stop people-smuggling dead. Now go with the nice man and have a quiet lie down…]
While I have no objection to border guards and immigration officials wearing uniforms (or not), this does strike me as titanic deckchair restacking.
Best regards
We tend to forget that bullyboy legislation, of the John Reid kind, is intended to be enforced upon the path of of least resistance. In other words it is much easier to browbeat and intimidate those travelling quite legally to the UK with the scary uniforms and fancy agency names than it is for those same immigration officers to deal with the real problem of the massive influx of illegal immigrants into the UK.
In a rather apt example a Latvian friend of mine recently came back to the UK after a brief trip home to Riga following the divorce from her British husband of 16 years. Despite actually having a full British passport and nationality the Liebstandarte Division of the Border and Immigration Agency claimed that it was necessary for her to have a British passport reissued in her maiden name since she was now divorced from her husband and that they held her at Stanstead airport until her ex husband could verify her identity. The reason given? She sounded foreign and she might be trying to get in on a false passport to gain free health care (she has just undergone a rather nasty breast cancer operation as it happens).
As for her occupation, which is the neat climax to this, she runs the “Britishness Test” course at a college in South West London for those wanting to apply for British nationality.
As for her occupation, which is the neat climax to this, she runs the “Britishness Test” course at a college in South West London for those wanting to apply for British nationality.
Perhaps she could give me lessons. I seem to be failing mine (as Britishness is defined by our glorious masters) despite having left the country on fewer than a dozen occasions.
From the linked article:
It’s that pesky “freedom” that’s the root cause of all problems. Cure that one and the other problems fade away.
And certainly this:
will solve so many problems. Don’t you just hate the unneatness of rights and proof?
Ultimately though they will realize that senior party membership is all that is neccessary for entitlements of any kind. That, of course, will be after they finish merging New Labour with the ‘Conservatives’, make the PM ceremonial and have the party chairman running the show.
Yes, clearly freedom is a problem, but they are working valiantly to stamp it out. Reid told the Express:
The only interpretation of that that makes sense is that there are huge numbers of people being prosecuted and penalised under automatic procedures for the new regulatory offences this supremely censorious government has invented. It is wholly implausible that they’ve found that many more people who would have been regarded as criminals by members of the public.
Economic & Social Research Council
The word “justice” is like a loaded gun in the hands of a child. When used by somebody that doesn’t know what it is, innocent people are killed.
And from your link:
Perhaps an indicator of governmental priorities?
Drug offences had the highest detection rate at 93 per cent for 2005/6; criminal damage and burglary were the least likely to be detected [6].
Less an indicator of government priorities, than of public ones, I’d say. Drug offences are detected before they are recorded, for the most part, since police go out to find them. The amount of effort they are putting in must be very impressive indeed if they are managing to record drugs offences in 7% of cases without finding a user or a dealer.
On the other hand, if someone burgles me or damages my property, then I’m quite likely to complain about it, and quite unlikely to know who is responsible.
Almost all drug offences are unreported, therefore; whereas many, perhaps most, offences against property (at least among the insured) are. But finding someone to charge with the offence (“which is what’s meant by “detecting a crime” here) is genuinely difficult if the criminal is unknown to the victim.
Julian,
That story is priceless.
But probably not atypical. If you really wish to engage yourself in a Kafkaesque nightmare then phone the Immigration and Nationality Directorate. In the unlikely event that you get to speak to someone and the even less likely event that their comprehension of English is sufficient for them to understand your problem they will put you on hold and transfer you at random to somebody else. And repeat, ad-sodding-nauseum.
Now, if you really want to complete a fun day you could then follow-up with a quick call to the National Insurance Contributions [dis]Organisation…
But don’t do the latter if you’re self-employed. The psychiatric consequences are serious (although there are voluntary self-help groups that can facilitate your rehabilitation).
And under no circumstances whatsoever attempt to get an iota of sense out of the Rural Payments Agency.
I temped at both NICO and the RPA a few years back and while I never witnessed the antics described in the link the entire operation was corrupt and slovenly and disorganised and utterly incompetent. My “line manager” was brazenly making a packet in overtime while shopping at the MetroCentre, for example. When The Times broke the story I wasn’t surprised.
NICO and RPA – the Ant & Dec of government, except without the charm.
Actually take that back. Ant & Dec are very good at what they do.
Now how long will it be before six illegal immigrants are found working as Border Guards?
I have a problem with the part of the proposed legislation that says I, as a resident Kiwi, have to show up to some police station to be fingerprinted and my details put on a national database. My main objections are a) police bungling and b) computer hackers stealing my details, as is a DEAD CERT to happen. These people are incompetent, I wouldn’t trust them to organise a piss up in a brewery and I won’t be stopping by to see the rozzers for a friendly chat, sorry “Dr” Reid, you ex-alcoholic Glaswegian thug. An attitude shared, I suspect, by the criminals and the illegal migrants the legislation is designed to snare. Legislation, poorly thought through and shovelled through Parliament, is never the answer.
I have a problem with the part of the proposed legislation that says I, as a resident Kiwi, have to show up to some police station to be fingerprinted and my details put on a national database.
And the acceptable bits are? Data-sharing? Powers of arrest if immigration officers find you not carrying proof of entitlement to residence? Penalty notices up to £1,000 if they believe you have failed to keep your records up to date?
…the criminals and the illegal migrants the legislation is designed to snare.
That is not what it is designed for. It is designed to (1) look ‘tough’; (2) stoke public fears about immigration; (3) embarrass the Tories; (4) make a move towards the construction of the National Identity Management Scheme under populist colouring; and (5) hide some of the costs of the same, pursuant to the strategy issued on 19th December on the last afternoon of parliament before Christmas in which the ID scheme ball was put under three budgetary cups in three different agencies.
Oh, and there’s probably (6) to distract attention from the government’s other problems, too. But unlike the others, that is one object it didn’t achieve. Not even for a whole morning.
Computer hackers? Stealing your data? Wow, I don’t know any hacker who is remotely interested in your data.
Nearly all hackers utterly despise authoritarianism and are working to stop it in some way. Yes, we sometimes break into computers, and invade your privacy? Bah, a few, but that’s not what most of us are interested in.
Secret government documents, information about computer systems.. all very interesting. Destroying government IT systems massively invading people’s privacy.. hmm, maybe. Invading evil people’s privacy to try and put an end to their evilness… perhaps.
I doubt we’re out to get you, really 🙂
Off topic…
Editor: indeed it is… and I have no idea what the hell you are talking about… deleted
Brian,
Who?
“I doubt we’re out to get you, really :)”
Parasitical. You sound like a tanned, pony-tailed Vermontian, who got into computers because of anti-authoritarian movies like War Games. Frankly it’s not ageing hipsters like you I’m worried about. It’s the people who make a living stealing identities and selling them on. I don’t trust the British police to properly protect the biometric samples I am expected to volunteer under proposed legislation, but I will apparently be criminalized if I don’t volunteer them. So unless you’ve got anything concrete to volunteer, why don’t you take your smug nostrums and…
You are concerned about hackers stealing details of your fingerprints? Really?!
Are you perhaps one of those people who wear gloves all the time? And doesn’t tell anyone you meet who you are or where you live? Because if you don’t, you are in danger! Hackers have a couple of amazingly complex and technical techniques for obtaining your details called “following you around” and “asking people questions”. Many people carelessly leave their fingerprints all over the place, just lying around in public on beer glasses and door handles. And I’ve had complete strangers willing to tell me who they are: name and address and tedious details of their families and pet cats and stuff. It’s amazing how complacent people are…
🙂
Seriously, people can steal your identity if your record doesn’t have biometrics so they can just say they’re you and nobody who doesn’t know you personally can prove otherwise; if you have no record, so they can go apply for one in your name but with their own fingerprints; or if they can somehow alter, not steal from, the national database so as to substitute their biometrics under your name and not have anybody notice. And if the database record is protected by a simple digital signature and stored on banks of CD-ROMs, say, that’s not easy to do. They would have to both get your own fake record digitally signed (which may be possible with a bit a bribery, probably), and somehow get the central read-only database to serve up either their record or yours as required (which may be possible if you can tap the line, break or bypass the encryption, and paste the correct data into the message stream without disturbing any of the checksums. Or possibly just subvert/replace the terminal.)
I have absolutely no doubt that it would be possible – but the effort you would have to go to… it would be easier to simply bribe the official checking your ID to look the other way, or mug them for their wallet.
If there is a problem with this, it is not that the scheme won’t work securely, but that it will. For the first time, you will not be able to slip between the bureaucratic cracks or fade into anonymity. And all those little things that are technically illegal but which nobody bothers about because they can’t be enforced – all of a sudden will leave a data trail like an 8-lane motorway straight to your door.
Will we all, at that point, say “we didn’t really mean to let you make that…, you know…, actual law“?
It makes no sense to object to ID on the grounds of hackers stealing your data. The problems of identity theft and government databases are precisely opposite. We accept the possibility of identity theft in order to stay at least partially anonymous. Only if nobody can tell who you are can somebody else pretend to be you.
Fortunately, incompetence and technological difficulties mean that the system won’t be perfect, and that’s a good thing. Lay bricks for a few weeks, and you will soon have no fingerprints. Of course, everyone else will be able to do the same and steal your identity if you do, but at least you will have the comfort of knowing that your biometric database record is satisfyingly blank.
Pa, lest you think I always disagree with you, I better go on record occasionally when you make a case I so clearly agree with. I think you’ve nailed the problem perfectly with these statements. While bad for individuals, it would go good for freedom as a whole if the database was hopelessly hacked, compromised and unreliable. It is the potential for effectiveness that terrifies. I can think of no throughly efficiently enforced government that was less than a nightmare.
A government with superhuman power and subhuman morality is the worst of all evils I can imagine.
I should clarify my use of “individuals”. I meant “in particular individual cases” and “freedom of individuals as a whole”.
I would truly enjoy reading about somebody hacking the database. Please retrieve all information for national and local politicians, and post that publicly (they have our data, why shouldn’t we have theirs), and render the rest gibberish. Repeat as needed until the law is repealed.
Pa, Mid,
Hear, hear.
However there is an even worse possibility you neglect, more probable than either: that the database will be corrupt, broken, leaky AND treated by the authorities as an oracle and used to enforce all the petty rulings, presumed always to be right.
Actually UKgov ambition is a bit more than enforcing every bloody stupid regulation. It is aiming at direct management of individual lives, under the rubric of “personalisation of public services”, which would remove the need for explicit law altogether.
Reading Jerome K Jerome’s “Three Men On The Bummel” recently, which is set in a post-Bismarck but pre-WWI Germany, I was struck by the author’s reflections on just this theme. Jerome says some very interesting things about how bizarre and uncomfortable the heavily-policed and rule-bound German society seemed to him, the proverbial freeborn Englishman. It made me feel quite nostalgic for a freer, quieter England where people appreciated ordered liberty and a non-interfering government!
Oh to be able to wind back **all** the legislation since – to pick a date… say 1984.
To quote Ronald Reagan, or was it Barry Goldwater?, a government with the power to give you everything you want can take it off you as well.
Something that a whole new generation of voters is about to find out.
However there is an even worse possibility you neglect, more probable than either: that the database will be corrupt, broken, leaky AND treated by the authorities as an oracle and used to enforce all the petty rulings, presumed always to be right.
I agree. Anyone who has to argue with someone “on the other end” about what is right and wrong “on der com-poo’ah” should know what can happen.
Terry Gilliam’s Brazil nailed it many years ago.
Guy,
I’ve been thinking about this for several days and I really do think a system that is known to be broken and is enforced anyway, is not as bad as a fully accurate system that facilitates the control of individuals by the government.
In short, I prefer incompetence to competence when the capacity in question can be, and in fact shows every sign of being, used to consolidate total government control of every (former) individual.
Previously i was convinced that a word “prussianism” was purely German and it was used to emphasize the professionalism, aggressiveness, militarism, and conservatism of German militants. However. now i see it is not as simple as that. Will look for further historical background on that.