Fighting the criminal gang culture

So the solution to Britain’s “broken society” is to fight the criminal gang culture?

Well just let’s make sure we are fighting against the right gangs and attacking the right sources of the current brokenness of society.

The Sunday Times, August 14th Harriet Sergeant article on “Fixing broken Britain” proposes the view that not all the criminality comes from Hackney and Camden.

Whether in the prehistoric times of hunter-gatherers or our own post-industrial age, any society’s role is to advance the collective interests of its members, both weak and strong. To earn the right to do this its governers have an inherent responsibility to provide an environment that gives its individuals purpose, security, discipline, rights and responsibilities.

The criminal gang groups that inflicted mayhem on society in the cities of Britain will rightly be confronted and punished for their feral disregard for the property and indeed life rights of others.

But these are not society’s criminal gangs. They are gangs who have been evicted and excluded from the society in which the rest of us live – their threat is therefore external and not internal. And fighting them will never fix the brokenness within our society. The solution is to bring them back into society and it will take generations of cultural renewal to do it.

There is a view that the real criminal gangs who are breaking our society are the successive European politicians and mainly, though not exclusively, Labour governments of Britain since the mid-1990s.

By a lethal combination of their misguided policies and the law of unintended consequences, the criminal arrogance that promoted war in Iraq also created the nanny state that condemned the under-class to expulsion and exclusion from our society. They achieved this by

• creating minimum wage levels that sent millions of jobs offshore and robbed people at the lower levels of society of their global work competitiveness, daily purpose and self-respect,

• fostering a “progressive” public education system that has resulted in millions of young people being barely literate and thus unable to compete,

• removing competition from key aspects of childhood experience and fooling people that they can succeed without effort “because I’m worth it”,

• elevating the “rights” of individuals, including children, to such a level that discipline is virtually absent from life experience – whether in the family, the school or the workplace,

• diminishing the “responsibilities” of individuals to contribute added value to society by handing unearned benefits to all as their right, rather than selectively targeting the support to the truly needy

• and many more examples of ineptitude under the cloak of do-goodery.

The result is that these criminal gangs of bureaucrats have sent vast numbers of potential participants in our society to a freezing hopeless Gulag. Excluded in care-less purposeless state-supported boredom where they create – outside our society - their own society of heirarchy, order, purpose, security, competition, rights, responsibilities and discipline – their own criminal gangs.

Everyman’s Open Champion

All of us here, “Northern Ireland everyman”, are so proud of Northern Ireland’s finest; Gmac, Rory and now Darren – our Champions.

Darren is a hero for Northern Ireland everyman. His triumphs, low times and emotionally charged highs are what we all experience in our lives, though perhaps to a much lesser degree. Due to his humility, we can identify with him as an easygoing affable personality despite the fact that he is a world-class sportsman. We care about him.

Just a really nice, friendly, unaffected guy. Smoking a cigar, having a drink, sharing a joke. In enjoyment, smiling and laughing; in pain, vulnerable and crying; in defeat, gracious and phlegmatic; in triumph, generous and mindful of his family. A role model for Northern Ireland everyman. We care about him.

The unique frankness with which he personally relates his ups and downs, while facing life’s challenges under a constant media spotlight, has also made him a positive cult figure within and well beyond the golfing world. Peter Alliss said he was the most popular Open champion in his 50-year memory of the competition.

As Darren sank the final putt with his own inimitable aplomb and humorous touch, I poured a celebratory brandy to toast the man from my hometown; “Come in Dungannon, I know your knock”. Let the celebrations begin.

Nobody should rain on Darren’s parade – enough rain fell at Royal St George’s over the weekend anyway.

And yet……… From the caring admiring Northern Ireland everyman, to our role model hero –“Darren, enjoy your celebratory few pints – but not too many. Let the party roll – but not for too long”.

Man, we were so happy – but reflective - to see you with the Claret jug as your private jet landed in George Best Belfast City airport. George Best – Northern Ireland everyman’s earlier hero. We cared about George. We care about Darren.

The Alternative Apprentice – Lordship or Leadership?

The Apprentice reality TV show is a classic of its genre, due in no small part to public fascination with the gratuitous humiliations doled out to hapless, servile, “because I’m worth it” participants by the bizarrely charmless Lord Sugar. However, to portray it in any way as a model of how to train young executives in business leadership is a real stretch. Far too much Lordship and not enough Leadership.

Lord Sugar struts, snaps, snarls and Lords it over everyone, with little challenge offered to his barbed comments and sometimes doubtful or dated opinions. Despite his Lordship’s undoubted financial success, he simply does not demonstrate the social skills, verbal ability, empathy or charisma required for genuine leadership of intelligent “independent minds” in today’s business world. Why would anyone want to be his learning apprentice?

Say The Apprentice format were reversed, so that losing finalist Jim Eastwood – a young man who, to his cost, was prepared to challenge the lordly genius - was in the Boardroom high-chair asking the hard questions and the surly Alan Sugar given the responsibility of leading a team on a task; how long would it be until his dictatorial inability to lead and get the best from a team was exposed with the words “You’re fired”?

We don’t need to wait for such an episode of the Alternative Apprentice to find out the answer. Rabbie Burns had Lord Sugar sussed out and metaphorically fired over 200 years ago!

Ye see yon birkie ca'd 'a Lord,' 
Wha struts, an' stares, an' a' that? 


Tho' hundreds worship at his word, 
He's but a cuif for a' that. 


For a' that, an' a' that, 
His ribband, star, an' a' that, 


The man o' independent mind, 
He looks an' laughs at a' that.

Business communication - The (future) King’s Speech

The William and Kate duo bring a youthful freshness to Britain’s ancient Royal institution, which again demonstrated its unrivalled ability to put on a show of public-pleasing wedding pomp and circumstance. But just one thing jars.

Following this triumph, Wills’ and Kate’s popularity on their current trip to the Canadian Dominions continues - for now - to keep the romantic dream alive for the easily pleased starstruck masses. So what is wrong?

Well, in each speech he has made, the future King has read every single word in a boring unnatural monotone worthy of his revered but rhetorically-challenged Grandmother or stammering Great-Grandfather. His speeches, while carefully crafted and elegantly constructed, are bland on delivery and of course as a direct result, even the “jokes” fall embarrassingly flat, despite the fact that the guy has a good smile and indeed appears to be engaging on a one-on-one basis.

Surely after all the publicity around “The King’s Speech” the Royal handlers are aware that so much more is demanded of people in such privileged positions. As they and we all know, honeymoons don’t last forever.

No, it is not 1939 and he doesn’t stammer, but now that Wills is back from Canada he should put himself on a crash course in natural public speaking and never again get in front of a microphone with a fully scripted speech.

This tightly scripted “royal-speak” is not the way Kings, commoners, republicans and in particular, business leaders should communicate in 2011. Our lazy self-serving fear of making a mistake in wording or grammar is no justification for the tedium that we inflict on our captive audiences of listening to a wooden, passionless delivery.

Listen up CEOs, executives, team leaders! Our speeches are not about us; they are about the listeners. Or as Marshall McLuhan originally and insightfully commented “The medium is the message”. Think about it before your next public speech!

News of the World

The closure of the News of the World seems like a good outcome in light of the appalling behaviour of its journalists in the phone hacking scandal. But fear not, the vacuum in provision of intrusive tittle tattle and invasion of individual privacies to find "scoops" for the titillation of the great British public will soon be filled.

What irritates me is the universal po-faced righteous response to all this. There is no fundamental moral difference between hacking of phones and the time-honoured "legitimate" intrusive practices such as those of the paparazzi, or the sly journalistic eavesdropping on private conversations that has been the stuff of media fodder for generations.

Indeed, even the revered BBC is happy to condone the regular cringe-making hurtful activities of their interviewers when they ask a distraught bereaved parent "how they feel" in order to make a dramatic piece for their own six o'clock News of the World.

Elements that respect the rights of individuals, such as privacy, restraint and dignity, used to count for something in the media. Now it appears that anything goes, so why all the surprise?