More on Perverts

Dear Mrs A¬¬¬¬____,

You ask if she has any disabilities I know of. If I did know of any I would not be able to tell you under disability law and you are not able to ask her. In telling you she has no disabilities I may have committed an offence under discrimination law, and certainly against the spirit of the law, because I have unfairly discriminated in her favour against those with disabilities.

Either way your disclaimer suggests I write “No responsibility… can be accepted for any…inaccuracies … or damage that may result …”. This means I can and may be writing accurately or inaccurately without responsibility. Moreover you have stipulated the information given is confidential. Thus I expect you to talk to no one of what I write. If you have a similar disclaimer exonerating you from responsibility or accuracy and damage caused, you can go ahead. If your disclaimer is confidential, then so much the better; you don’t even need to inform me that your claim to confidentiality is not expected to be honoured.

You ask “Has the candidate been subject to any concerns, where the concern … was unfounded … If so, give details.” I won’t be obliged under law to do this, it is bad law. Moreover such concerns may have been covered by a similar confidentiality clause, similarly provisoed that they need not be accurate, so I would not have been able to give you the details you oblige me to give and may have made them up without the need to accept responsibility for the damage it would cause . But I tell you I have no cause for concern because I, as a decent human being, recommend K____; not because the law demands I tell you – and not – at the same time.

Yours sincerely,

Bill Brookman

Perverts

Dear Mrs A___,

I am sorry I have not found time to reply to the questionnaire about the lovely K____, who, if you have met her, you will know is a wonderful person and excellent for the post.

However the point of the questionnaire is to take a roundabout way of asking do I think she is a paedophile and a pervert. Interestingly those words appear nowhere on the forms but are the only salient points the government has said you must discover. (For the record I am quite sure she is neither; if I thought otherwise I would have let you know without the need of a government law.)

You will be aware that you, I and K____ may be criminally liable if we get any of the form filling wrong. Thus it has a ridiculous disclaimer making it not worth the paper it is written on.

So now you have a dilemma and so does K____ and so do I because she does not deserve this.

I am sorry for this most unsatisfactory state of affairs. It will get better when laws, which largely miss the point (in that the great majority of paedophile cases occur within the family, or people known to the family - by males) hastily made and poorly thought through, to please a prurient press and public demanding instant no-risk fixes; which are enforced by the threat of criminalising those left with bureaucratic tasks which in no way should come within criminal jurisdiction for non-compliance, are found to be unworkable and are repealed.

Yours sincerely,

Bill Brookman

Greek Fable - the financial collapse

If you drove through Southern Europe recently – over the past 15 years – you would have seen, in Greece, Portugal, etc., massive modern roads and infrastructure being built. All this in sleepy southern European Latin type countries who do things differently to Northern Europe.

It was a Stalinism by the back door, (but benign so we didn’t notice. So, not strictly Stalinism, but certainly his “command economy”). It was paid for by Northern Europe by commissars – oops, commissioners. And no one was going to say no – why should they? As all this cash and busyness was poured in, who cares that their sleepy way of laissez-faire is swept away? Why not ride the wave? And who could object? The German technicians will design it, we get to build it, the burgeoning bureaucracies in our own countries mean Poles, Greeks and Portuguese can get cushy jobs.

The problem was that, like in Russia, they didn’t really mean it. Only the North Europeans have all that work ethic stuff to fix and maintain the complexities they themselves create. The southern Europeans were bemusedly in it for the ride.

Well now the pack of cards has tumbled. The retirement they gave themselves at 45 has come to grief.

But it won’t come to grief in quite that cleaning out of the Stygian stable sort of way. The financiers screamed “don’t bail out Greece!” but they did – just as the west bails out the third world in unending, diluting, bloating aid, with all that accompanying disaster – which is another subject.

Should the Tories limit SureStart?

To Andy Reed (MP)’s Facebook

Should the Tories limit SureStart?

SureStart may be a victim of its own success. In the same way that grammar schools were originally for poor boys and, because of their success became bourgeois, so SureStart is desired by many – including those in Andy’s Facebook stream – for whom it was not intended. For SureStart to be justifiably well-funded it must stick to its original brief: To stimulate brain development of those children who are statistically most likely to be the low-achieving, low-functioning and, yes, criminal, members of the next generation.

By stimulating them and supplanting the poor parenting skills that their parents are not giving them – and this should be the case if SureStart is recruiting correctly – these children have a better chance in society and society will get more in return.

In a comprehensive dream stimulated by Tony Blair, for which he is not given credit, these SureStart children are then picked up by schooling, Extended Schools and other initiatives (though Extended Schools was prompted by the Victoria Columbié scandal, not quite part of the original plan). From there they are passed on to Connexions (which hit problems from the start because of hostility from already established agencies).

Organisations like mine www.Billbrookman.co.uk placed ourselves ready to take up structured (predominantly circus) provision with these young people 3 years ago. We could not persuade the powers-that-be to give us this mandate inspite of our clarity of purpose and comprehension of the programme. Perhaps our failure showed that already then the vision was becoming blurred.

Had SureStart/Extended Schools/Connexions et al been allowed to run for 20 years for whom it was intended then we might have been able to see if we had managed to create a country where a whole generation of society destined for the dust-bin would have pulled through.

I cannot give my support to SureStart if it is not true to its purpose. If it is, then I support it.

Compensation Culture

This blog first appeared as an article in Arts Professional magazine. It should not be copied without prior consent.

Abigail Cheverst’s recent article, ‘A world gone mad’, (AP183) argued that our risk-averse culture, fuelled by a scare-mongering press, was a driver for the misapplication of risk assessment. She had a good point but she should ultimately blame insurance companies and their clever clauses, which constrain the policy holder until action, quality of life and healthy risk are quashed. ‘Compensation culture’ is now the bed-fellow of the insurance claim. But is it largely myth-driven? Litigation does not occur as often as we might fear, but it occurs often enough to condition our actions disproportionately. As observers, we expect greed, cowardly capitulation or obstruction from plaintiffs.
Love a duck
An annual duck race was canceled because the organisers could not manage the costs of, amongst other things, fencing off the stream. The reason given by the organisers and press for the cancellation was risk-averse, barmy health and safety (H&S). I suggest the reason Abigail Cheverst might give would be the misapplication of a risk-assessment. However I believe that the real impetus behind both given reasons was the fear of litigation. This fear is fueled by the insurance company’s desire to safeguard against any mishap obliging them to pay-out. To avoid this, the insurance company sets clauses of such severity as to close the event. Let me make a vital modification to my argument: the reason why sensible event organisers have not resolved these H&S vexations is that, even if it could succeed against grim litigation culture, it has no defence against the specific insurance clause. Failing to adhere to a clause would render the organisers, to blame. Blame is enshrined in our laws and supported by our adversarial legal system.

“There is much emotional timidity but little informed debate about what ‘insurance’ means.”

Playing with fire
Does the string of problems from barmy H&S, through risk aversion, risk assessment, compensation culture and insurance clauses to blame, end up back again at barmy H&S? Yes. At a park, we wanted our Maypole dancers to arrive from the boating lake. “We don’t want them to arrive by boat in case something happens,” said the council, but would not say what that ‘something’ might be. It was slightly Kafka-esque. Genuine concern for health and safety was not an issue, but common sense could not prevail against the fear that litigation, frivolous or not, may uncover an insurance clause which went unheeded. A performer friend has insurance to eat fire which states that he must keep his equipment in a locked metal case. But his equipment is metal brands with asbestos-substitute wicks which are inflammable without paraffin. His puppets are more flammable. Obtaining a metal case has proved unfeasible. An old heavy gun-cartridge case fell apart, flight case padding soaks up paraffin and keeping track of keys with costume-changes and street-performance is a nightmare. The phrase ‘metal case’ is easily said but the object is harder to find. The box is impractical and contributes nothing to safety that he can see, so he uses a bucket. But should he tell a booker that he cannot perform because he is ‘uninsured’? Is he uninsured? Let’s say that the fire eater does his fire-eating act and sets a member of the public on fire. Will the insurance company not pay up even though the absence of a metal box was not material to the case? A booker could not risk it. They must say no to anything proscribed by the policy. But let us probe deeper. What exactly are we insuring against? This is not America; if you don’t have ‘insurance’ here, the ambulance will still take you to hospital. There is much emotional timidity but little informed debate about what ‘insurance’ means.

Package deal
My point is that I suspect that many colleagues don’t know if insurance is invalidated or not if certain clauses are not adhered to, nor are they articulate about what insurance is actually for. And that brings me to my next point: we limit activity, trusting that that protects us; but how protected are we if we miss something out? Because, for the insurance company to avoid paying out, it needs to write clauses that minimise – or do I mean eradicate? – risk of harm. But if something goes wrong, then something has not gone to plan, and that usually means the clauses have not been adhered to. That should mean no pay-out and thus the policy was a waste of time.

We were given funding to buy computers by the Arts Council England (ACE), which said we must upgrade our alarm and insurance. Soon, the cost of the insurance and burglar alarm equal the cost of the computers. But, you say, the insurance is in case something happens. What? What could go wrong? The house could burn down? How many buildings do you know of gutted by fire and all the computers destroyed? The computers depreciate so by now they are only worth a fraction of their purchase price. We will never get the value back unless the insurance pays for full replacement. But, as I say, the chance of a complete write-off is far less likely than what happens in real life: computers get slow, out of date, get viruses or lose data; none of which is covered by the policy. When the printer breaks or, as we found, our graphics tablets didn’t work properly, did we claim? No of course not: we abandoned the tablets. When a printer conks out we pop off to Dixons for a cheap replacement because it is urgent, and we would lose our no-claims bonus. One day I forgot to switch on the alarm and lock the door. The laptop was stolen. The clauses said that the door had to be locked and the alarm on. But that was exactly why it got stolen – because those conditions were not met! So what use was the insurance if it is not there when you need it – for life’s little accidents? And – hold on – that laptop was a replacement one we bought when the ACE one became faulty, so it wasn’t even part of the original insurance package! Boo-hoo!

Bill Brookman runs Bill Brookman Productions, a street arts company
www.billbrookman.co.uk
bill@billbrookman.co.uk

How to Run a Somali Brothel

I have rehearsed and organised theatre and musical events and rehearsals all my life in the UK. But I only need to run rehearsals for two weeks in Somaliland before I am accused of running a brothel.
We have hired a detached house surrounded by a wall and the obligatory guard with AK47 in which to rehearse our Somali cultural company Geediga Nabada (“Peace Caravan”).
The neighbours (I’m not sure where – we are quite detached) complained to the landlord that the new lodgers had opened a brothel and were chewing khat (the ubiquitous Middle-East narcotic plant). Understandably the landlord came round to investigate. But just as the idiotic neighbours displayed manifest stupidity by accusing a music rehearsal – singing pro-peace songs set to traditional instruments – of being a sex-fest; the landlord behaved like a complete plonker. He barged in on the rehearsal and, inspite of finding 16 middle-aged people sitting around singing songs to the traditional Arab lute, the ud, chose not to believe his ears or his eyes, trusting instead to believe his prejudice and attempted to bust up the "whore-house".
His vacuous morality was revealed when he realised he would not get his rent. Hypocrite. He was happy to throw “prostitutes” out but was happy for them to no longer be sex-workers and remain if his income was threatened.
It has worked out quite well for us. We are moving out anyway in high dudgeon to a better location: a proper stage and amphitheatre down the road.
Geediga Nabada is spreading a message to Somalis to try to not be foolish, violent, bigoted or idiotic with each other whenever they have a disagreement. Judging by our neighbours’ and landlord’s attitudes, we have our work cut out.

Death Below my Window

2009-09-22 Shooting Nairobi.doc

Last night I was awoken by gunshots outside my fourth floor window of my grubby hotel room in down-town Nairobi. I had just spent the evening discussing with Marie from the UN how on earth I was to get from Nairobi to Somaliland. Riots and death had occurred in Hargeisa; the capital of Somaliland, due to the President of that country – which is not recognised internationally – stalling the elections, provoking a fist-fight in his parliament.

I had learned in Haiti to count bullets as they are fired and thus to use the information to know when the shooter has emptied the magazine and I would have a chance to do what ever I thought best while he reloaded. (I’m guessing it will be a “he” doing the shooting as most brutish, stupid acts of armed violence are committed by men. This evening was no different.) But the plan never worked in Haiti and didn’t work here because I never know how many rounds any particular gun may hold. And of course I loose count. Never-the-less I calmly counted 15 shots (or was it 16?) over two periods of shooting separated by a brief pause.

My hotel window overlooks a narrow dark alley-cum-street with concrete buildings matching the height of my hotel and some scrappy yards opposite. There is no street-lighting in the alley, but light creeps in from elsewhere.

Much earlier I had unwisely thrown open all the windows to allow a through-draft in the heat. ‘Unwisely’ because that had already allowed the mosquitoes in and I had had to be quite elaborate with my mosquito net protection which the hotel, unusually, provided.

Far, far more important than trying to count bullets was the rule never, ever to peer out of a window, or even worse, stick one’s head out to get a better view. This, carefully, very carefully, I proceeded to do. Down below, directly below my window, was a young man walking around, seemingly in a daze and almost certainly shot. But his moves were more of a man unsteady and uncertain after perhaps receiving tragic news, stunned to silence and unsure what to do next, rather than in pain.

By climbing on top of the toilet I could look out of another window at another angle (I had opened this window to allow a through-draft of my domain). This was frightening as I could see a group of men at the corner of the street hiding in the shadows. Could they see me? My face felt so white and gleaming in the poor glare of the city night and I craved some blacking to put on my face. In hindsight this seems such an elaborate desire. At the time it seemed perfectly logical.

I recorded my thoughts in a whisper on my portable sound-recorder, only then realising what a massive, visible glare its electric control-panel made.

A police Land-Rover had arrived. No flashing blue lights or fuss. Then another. The ‘gang’ at the street corner morphed into onlookers. I could see the gleam of mobile phones in the street from the policemen.

At some point the man had died and was lying in a pool of blood below me. More courageous now, I took a photograph and was terrified as my flash went off, drawing attention to my position. (I have attached this photo) I was sure I had turned the flash off. Heart racing, I realised that it was the police photographer who was taking photographs. It was his flash, not mime. His flashes made the blood twinkle.

Now it was clear there were two bodies down there. Another was in the gutter below me so I had to lean out further to see him.

More standing around and talking, but still no fuss, the policemen took little notice of the bodies and kept their distance from them.

Eventually one police Land-Rover left and the other backed up to the bodies. Seemingly on-cue the onlookers/accomplices/friends, whoever they were, drifted off and the grisly work of taking the bodies was left to a man in a white coat and a policeman and his less-willing partner.

The bodies were dragged and carried and stuffed into the back of the Land-Rover, one leaving a slime-trail of blood. One of the policemen took off his white blood-stained rubber gloves and threw them in the gutter. Quietly they left. Two patches of blood and a blood-trail are still congealing below me as I write this the next morning. The gloves are still there.

More to follow.