Labour's Growth Plans?

Although Labour's budget has started to rebalance the inequalities between rich and poor neighbourhoods, public and private sectors, and male and female pay structures, their strategy for growth has yet to be set out. This is becoming increasingly important because it is unlikely that Kier Starmer will win a second term as PM without achieving significant growth: he has idenitified it as the single most important factor in his plans, but it will not be able to deliver itself. So how do Labour hope to achieve it? Most people would probably agree that growth will come from the use of information technology to drive increases in productivity. But few have recognised that this just creates an additional inequality, between high-tech and low-tech users. So unless a regulatory mechanism is written into Labour's plans, growth is likely to be based on one group of society exploiting another, in the same way it always has been.

SUPPLY CHAINS

The single most important factor in the slump we saw during Covid was a breakdown in global supply chains. This was due to a popular high-tech concept called 'Lean Six Sigma'. This attempted to reduce waste and increase profit margins by treating the hugely complex and international supply chains as one long conveyor belt. This was only made possible by information technology. When one product was sold to a customer at one end, another product was automatically ordered from suppliers at the other end. This reduced the need for any expensive storage capacity in between, making the whole process maximally efficient, thereby increasing profit margins.

For a while this system worked perfectly, but when Covid hit, smaller parts of the supply chain began to break down. They had very little spare capacity with which to flex to meet gaps in the supply and demand for materials and labour. This led to a catastrophic collapse of the conveyor belt as a whole. My theory is that 'building back better' has meant organisations have attempted to reduce the risks involved in resourcing their components internationally, by resourcing them from suppliers closer to home. This may have reduced the risks of the chains breaking again, but has meant that labour costs, and therefore the cost of products to the consumer, have remained relatively high. This is because manual labour in the high-tech EU and UK economies is relatively expensive. So the profit margins for many parts of the manufacturing process that used to be outsourced to lower wage, lower-tech, economies around the world, have been squeezed.

This change in global manufacturing practices is nowhere more obvious than the automotive industry. During the pandemic, no-one needed a new car. The reduction in demand was balanced by a parallel break down in the supply chain, so the net effect on pricing was that cost of purchasing a new vehicle remained about the same. However, the reduction in volume of new cars passing into the second hand car market led to demand for second hand cars outstripping the supply. The price for purchasing a second hand vehicle then rose steadily, by an estimated +30% year on year, from 2019. In addition, replacement parts were harder to source, so the cost of repairs increased to extortionate levels. Many people reverted to using public transport, which created problems for the aging public transport networks. The virus spread quickly across commuters who were largely employed in low-tech sectors. So it can be seen that huge inequalities began to emerge in the death rates of the high-tech and low-tech transportation sectors and their associated workforces. Now, it just so happens that cars are the biggest export of the EU and UK's the high-tech automotive industries. America's biggest export is the petrol that fuels our cars, and China's is the electrical products that go into making them, so the GDP of all the major economies in the world were interlinked in this same supply chain. 

Now, a second blow to the UK economy emerges. Recent figures suggest that while the EU's was able to adapt its Lean Six Sigma supply chains to source more of its parts from an internal market the UK has not been able to keep up. This was probably because of Brexit and the fact that we have basically just isolated ourselves from all our nearest trading partners. So the first thing the UK government will now have to do is fix its supply chains and this is not going to be easy. Unless the EU suddenly has a reverse of its policy on the internal market, it is unlikely to allow any of its member states to do deals with the UK independently. Thus, UKGDP looks like it is going nowhere very fast, and that Brexit has well and truly sunk the UK economy.

DEFENCE INDUSTRY

So this is where the defence industry comes in. The UK has developed its defensive capabilities around trade. It knows better than anyone else that trade is not possible without securing the passage of goods by force, if necessary. The EU pays NATO for these services, but the Trump administration is likely to demand more and deliver less. Thus the UK has a unique position in NATO due to the 'special relationship' it has with the US, and the strategic position it has for the trading routes in and out of Europe. For example, whereas Ireland is not a member of NATO it still benefits massively from all the protections that NATO offers the EU as a whole, including those afforded it by the UK's continuing presence in Northern Ireland. 

So there is potential for the UK to use its unique position within NATO as a bargaining chip to secure a better deal with the EU on trade. This would be based on it increasing its commitment to the defence industry, through the R&D it already shares with the US and EU. NATO has always been very active in the R&D. It is interested in all sorts of scalable healthcare products and industries. The pandemic showed how agile the UK is as a world leader in the conversion of genomic intelligence into world-beating pharmaceutical products, with Pfizer and Astra-Zenica leading the pack in these fields. 

It may therefore be in the EU's and UK's interests to create a super-national defence industry that is similar to the one that the US had during the Cold War. That is where the nation state commissioned innovation from the private sector, but because the private sector was not tied to any particular nation state, it was able to adjust more easily to innovations, and was more efficient that the Soviet Union in keeping costs down. And if a super-national industry like this was looking for a place to base itself, for legal and ethical business purposes, then nowhere could be better placed than Northern Ireland, from a geo-political and military point of view. 

HUMAN CAPITAL

The pandemic proved the worth of many areas of the economy that had been under-valued for many years before. Genomics, for instance, is just one branch of Human Capital management and exploitation. With greater knowledge of the interaction between genes and environment on the horizon, this is likely to be a hihgh growth area. In addition, the hierarchical structure of a centralised NHS, in association with its local Higher Education, Public Health and Adult Social Care partners, makes it perfectly placed for investment in R&D that has scalable potential. 

However, weaknesses have been exposed in its data storage, data sharing, and data security architectures that need to be worked out, probably at the level of the new Integrated Primary Care Hubs. That is, if the public sector will be able to take full advantage of the private investment in R&D that is now available in the synergy between Big Data, Artificial Intelligence and Large Language Models. For example, a local authority could set the expectation that a drone will be able to deliver a defibrilator anywhere within its geographical area within five minutes of a 999 call being received. It would be up to private providers to compete for the contract, but up to public services to run it.

This could help prepare the ground for more innovative social housing, that could be purpose-built by the private sector to meet commisioning objectives set out by local public services. They might, for instance offer telemedicine services to retirees, with remote sensing capabilities, through state-of-the-art infrastructure, that would be agreed for individual tenancies, that may or may not attract public funding, following the appropriate needs led assessment. 

The facilities would have to meet local standards of quality and inter-operability, so an element of licencing woud have to be involved. But the model for these sorts of facilities already exists, and could easily be extended to many different demographics, many who are currently unable to secure even the most insecure types of tenancy in the current housing market, providing some certainty and return on investment, for landlords and tenants alike.   

The NHS also needs to provide more assurances to local businesses that workers will receive an appropriate occupational health service at the point of need, regardless of ability to pay. This would be alligned with DWP benefits and would be aimed at reducing the number of unemployed who become inactive. This number increased dramatically during Covid and has remained very high. Demographic factors are significant, and may require a public health approach to accommodating the needs of different cultures, in order to improve access to health. For example, blood testing for Vitamin D levels among immigrants, testing for male and female hormone levels at specific age points, and analysing MRIs for white matter lesions for anyone suffering concussion, should be reviewed by NICE for their contribution to quality adjusted life years. 

In addition, anyone who contributes their own personal and provate data to a givernment run public health programmes should be able to get an estimate of their life expectancy in return, through an app delivered by their GP. This will help establish the sort of risk-reward calculations that healthcare professions need to embed in their patients, and help patients can be empowered to take control of their healthcare plans for themselves. It should also help stimulate the private healthcare prividers to provide a suite of psychological and physiological assessments that can be fedback to the GP for R&D purposes.

ENVIRONMENTAL ASSETS

Advances made in the health and social care sector through R&D needs to feed into an information revolution in other sectors. Evidence already exists in the energy, mining and agricultural sectors that more and better knowledge infrastructures can make them more competitive, scalable, and profitable. Unfortunately, these industries are currently extremely exposed to exploitation by financial services which is a high-tech industry that has no interest whatsoever in promoting UKGDP or reducing the gap between them and more low-tech economies. Government could help small and medium sized businesses to access the same Big Data, Artificial Intelligence, and Large Language Model resources that the multi-national conglomerates do. This should facilitate more routes from cottage industry to mass market, and provide some assurances regarding risks to investment capital. 

Recent history in Lithium Mining, Electric Vehicles, Fertilisers, and Flooding show that the more exposed the UK comes to global forces outside of its control, the more adaptable it has to become. The need for us all to 'Think Global & Act Local' is demonstrated by organisations like the 'Farming Forum' operting at the grassroots of international collaboratives like the 'Agricultural Market Information System'. These platforms prove the value that information sharing amongst competitors has to all businesses within a sector, in terms of: sourcing raw materials, predicting trends, setting prices, managing waste, sharing knowledge, and collective bargaining. If this information revolution will be about anything, it will be about government providing the environmental conditions for individual aspirations to grow and accumulate wealth. 

At the heart of this information revolution is an investment in human capital. This means new technology will likely be deplyed in exploiting human capital. But we must not repeat the mistakes of the past where exploitation means depriving individuals of their liberties and whole communities of their identities. Our public services have only survived because of the contributions our Commonwealth partners have made to them. And because of their contributions, our public services have become hot-spots for the creation of new forms of cultural and identity capital. We should be ready now to export some of that learning to the rest of the world. 

The easiest way to do that is through knowledge transfer and cultural exchange activities for our Commonwealth students. Once they have graduated from a UK Higher Education Institutions they should be offered an opportunity to work on an International Development Programme of their choosing, in return for having their student loans paid off. Only in this way will we be able to repay the debts of the past, and continue to look forward to their help in the future. It is in the interests of the Commonwealth that we work together to create these new markets, markets within which the information revolution can continue to grow.    

CONCLUSIONS

There is plenty to be optimistic about when it comes to the UK's growth prospects. It may take strong leadership to see it through, but a vision and set of values is already in place by which we can plot a course through some of the most difficult obstacles we face in the current economic climate. We must build an infrastructure that can accelarate the information revolution, that creates a feedback loop between the UK Government and every Commonwealth Citizen, if we are going to be able to participate in the global economy in the way that we want to. New technologies make this possible, but implementing the lessons we have learned from our not-too-distant past is the only way we will be able to make it real. We are on the threshold of a new age, with unknown potentials and dangers, but with good planning, some trust, and a commitment to each other, I am sure we can all pull through. A Happy Thanksgiving to all!

Labour's Social Housing Plans?

NHS bed blocking currently causes even the best run and well designed pathways of care to grind to a halt. But there are two sides to this coin. Finding placements is an adult social care problem, and constructing them is a social housing problem. Either way, the NHS ends up paying for the widening gap between the two. The solution could be found through Labour's local planning strategy. 

We are informed by their conference this week that the details of their strategy to reform local planning laws are still being worked out; but I think it could give the green light to projects to start providing social housing 'on prescription'; i.e. to residents on NHS risk registers according to their demographic identity and type of unmet needs. 

Yes this sounds like a form of ghettoisation but, as anyone who has ever lived on a council estate will know, it can also be a necessary part of protecting vulnerable people in society from abuse, not just dumping them all in the same pot of misery and poverty. 

After all, access to Council Housing already involves a threshold that is effectively controlled by the Local Authority and NHS anyway. So why not involve these authorities in longer term public-private contracts where the private money gets paid off through the appreciation of the material assests, and public investment accumulates wealth through developing the knowledge and skills of a local commuity and ensuring continuity of care.  

The conceptual infrastructure already exists go make this dream a reality. If the private investment in the housing stock is met by government investment into training staff to run the new primary care networks as virtual wards, then we could see the 'over 55' warden-controlled housing model being rolled out to meet the needs of other 'at risk' groups. 

Anti-social behaviour legislation already exists to make these tenancies subject to a series of conditions which are used to promote the sort of secure and structured pathway to recovery that the evidence base tells us they need. 

The business case also seems feasable. The accelerating tax burden is only going to be reduced through developing solutions at sufficient economies of scale to impact on the number of quality of life years we can buy with each pound of our gross domestic product. And access to 24/7 care would suddenly become a lot cheaper for the most resource intensive cases on NHS waiting lists.

I believe these sorts of local infrastructure projects are now necessary to free up GP resources and the meet the needs of the working well. Only in this way can we get a real return on the investment we make in this country through paying our taxes. Thus, it seems like a good deal for everyone, but will the public buy into it? Only the politicians will be deciding that.

Has Universal Credit made People Sick?

The Conservatives have announced new policies to manage a recent increase in economic inactivity (Centre for Social Justice 2024).

“Since the pandemic, total spending on working age disability and ill-health benefits increased by almost two-thirds from £42.3 billion to £69 billion and we now spend more on these benefits than our core schools’ budget or on policing.” (Rishi Sunak 2024)

Official statistics suggest that there has been an increase of something like 850,000 (43%) of economically inactive claimants since the start of the pandemic in January 2000. Successive reports (Kirk-Wade and Harker 2023; Powell 2024) have highlighted the link to long-term sickness absence, and suggested that older-age and ill-health have interacted to cause this trend, with “long Covid” and “Waiting lists” cited as evidence.

“The number of working-age people who were economically inactive, which means they were out of work not looking for work, reached its highest level since 2012 in December 2023 to February 2024. The number of people who are inactive because of long-term sickness increased to a record high of 7% of the working-age population.” (Powell 2024)

 

Source: Office for National Statistics (ONS), INAC01 SA: Economic inactivity by reason (seasonally adjusted), 16 April 2024

The Government narrative is that after the pandemic arrived in the UK on January 30^th 2020, successive lockdowns in March - June 2020, September - November 2020, and January - July 2021 caused damage to the labour market by acceleratinging economic inactivity from which we have never recovered. 

However, official reports from 2022 suggest that while the lockdowns differentially impacted vulnerable people in unpaid and insecure employment at the time, the labour market recovered quickly: 

“Coronavirus: Impact on the labour market

Most affected groups

Some workers were disproportionally economically impacted by the pandemic.

Unemployment rates for minority ethnic groups were higher than average before the pandemic and saw a larger increase between January-March 2020 and January to March 2022. People from minority ethnic group were more likely to experience a loss of income at the beginning of the pandemic. While unemployment rates have risen more for minority ethnic groups over the pandemic, employment rates have also risen due to decreases in economic inactivity rates.

Employment among men has fallen slightly more than among women over the pandemic. An increase in economic inactivity for men means that women made up over 48% of the workforce in January-March 2022, a record high.

The youngest and oldest workers were most likely to lose their jobs or be furloughed at the beginning of the pandemic. Youth employment recovered quickly from spring 2021, and had nearly returned to pre-pandemic levels by January-March 2022. Many older workers opted to retire early.

Low paid workers were more likely to work in sectors most affected by the pandemic, particularly hospitality and non-essential retail, so were most likely to be put on furlough or experience falls in income at the beginning of the pandemic. However, the rise in vacancies in 2021 and 2022 was driven by low paying jobs and by February 2022 unemployment rates in low occupation had almost completely recovered.

The employment gap between disabled people and people without disabilities widened during the pandemic, before returning to close to pre-pandemic levels.” 

(Francis Devine et al 2022)

 

Thus, while the lockdowns may account for things like the small but significant (1%) rise in “discouraged workers” during this time (@86,000) it cannot account for the massive rise in long-term sickness absence, particularly as there is no increase in unexpected deaths that might accompany it.

In addition, the Government narrative does not explain the significant ‘churn’ within the economically inactive figures that begins six months before the pandemic. The Centre for Social Justice data shows that starting in April/May 2019 there was a 4.3% (@370,000) swing in the reasons being given for economic inactivity, from “looking after family/home” to “long-term sick”. Although the swing does not account for new claimants, it could account for the link to ill-health, but this has not been addressed in the official narratives. 

 

April/May 2019 was the start of a period of “managed migration” conducted by the DWP, to switch people from individual “legacy benefits” to the household-based Universal Credit system. Reports from DWP concede that the “managed migration” process differentially affected single people on tax credits, which seems to confirm that vulnerable workers were affected by these changes. However, because the change to Universal Credits has been overseen by the Centre of Social Justice, any damage it has done is likely to be suppressed by the current Government. 

Thus, contrary to the Government narrative, there is an alternative theory to the one that says the NHS is responsible for the recent increase in sickness-related economic inactivity: Rather, the evidence is that the group of people who were on "legacy benefits" have been made ill by transferring them onto Universal Credits starting in 2019. 

This group seems to have included very vulnerable people: single-parent families, unpaid carers, young adults, ethnic minorities and retired people, in insecure employment; who may have been cohabiting with relatives, extended family, or friendship groups as the most viable low-cost housing option. This group's employment had already been affected by lockdown and the imposed changes to their financial circumstances could have been enough to trigger a long-term sickness episode that has been recorded by GPs as something to do with their mental health.

“There were 2.9 million lone-parent families in 2022, accounting for 15% of all families. This is not significantly different to 2012, when there were 3.0 million lone-parent families, equivalent to 17% of all families. While the majority of lone-parent families are lone-mother families (2.5 million, 84%), in 2022, 16% (457,000) were lone-father families. Lone-mother families are more likely to include one or more dependent children (66%) than lone-father families (48%).” (ONS 2024)

“Our results indicated that: (1) British adults with intellectual impairments were more likely than their peers to be exposed to non-standard employment conditions and experience job insecurity; (2) in both groups exposure was typically associated with poorer health; (3) British adults with intellectual impairments in non-standard employment conditions were more likely than their peers to transition to economic inactivity; (4) among both groups, transitioning into employment was associated with positive health status and transitioning out of employment was associated with poorer health status.” (Emerson et al 2018)

There does not seem to have been any consideration within Parliament of the impact of the Government’s changes to the benefits system. The situation is of course complex, but local counsellors within more deprived areas will be well aware of the sorts of families who are being affected in this way. Unless this information is aggregated at the macro-economic level of data analysis, it is unlikely to become part of the official narrative, unless or until there is a change of Government.   

Meditation on Identity Conflict

Identity conflict involves discrimination against someone,

Not for anything they do, just for being themselves,

It happens if there is something about the victim that the perpetrator doesn’t like,

The victim is categorically unable to change, and the perpetrator refuses to.

The perpetrator feels forced to oppose the victim to save themselves,

And they project their negation onto the victim(s),

This may in turn cause the victim(s) to be split, who will enter a dissociative state,

Or project their negation(s) onto yet more victim(s),

Who are they? 

Maybe they remind them of something they did that they want to forget?

Maybe they remind them of feelings they would rather hide and deny?

Maybe they remind them that they can’t do things that they wished they could do?

Maybe they remind them of someone who has hurt them in the past?

Maybe they do not fit the narrative that they want all their friends to believe?

Maybe they do not fit the order that they want to impose on their world?

Yes, they are ambiguous; they are not them are they?

They threaten their identity because their identity excludes their existence,

They are an inconvenient truth for them,

A truth that is easier to eradicate completely than try to understand,

They cannot do anything to dissuade them of their premeditated acts,

They have tried them and convicted them already,

They must be guilty of a crime even if there is no evidence that they have committed one,

They have caused them to do this to them: they are Evil, they are possessed by the Devil,

They must be destroyed, eliminated, removed, disposed of, abolished, terminated,

They are not them now.

Identity and the State

An article, titled "Anti-western ideology is infecting public sector: King’s College counterterrorism course, on contract to MoD, dangerously downplays extremism", written by Melanie Phillips and published in the Times on 16/01/2024 has caused me to reflect on the Identities involved in the War in Gaza, and how they affect me in my role as a mental health nurse in the UK.

Phillips quotes another writer referred to as Anna Stanley in the article, but I have to assume that Phillips has filtered the meaning of Stanley's article to meet her own needs. The Times is supposed to be a non-partisan newspaper, but I would say that Phillips is quoting from a Trumpian perspective - i.e. from a sort of proto-fascist populist Nationalist perspective.

"King’s College London is the academic centre of Britain’s military and counterterrorism training. Its counterterrorism course, under contract to the Ministry of Defence, has been designed for civil servants and other professionals involved in this work from a number of government departments.

Now, questions have been asked in parliament after an account of the course written by a former civil servant, Anna Stanley, who participated in it a few months ago and who until this month was an open-source intelligence analyst at the Foreign Office.

In Fathom, the journal of a pro-Israel research group, Stanley wrote that although the lecturers included a previous defence minister and former senior officials at the Foreign Office, Home Office and GCHQ, some of them spouted “typical postmodern identity politics”.

Those on the course were told that labelling an organisation “terrorist” was a problem because it “implies a moral judgment”. Lecturers showed slides that stated: “Condemning terrorism is to endorse the power of the strong over the weak”, and, “terrorism is not the problem, rather the systems they oppose are terrorist”.

The course, wrote Stanley, was a “deeply, existentially depressing" experience. Extremism and terrorism, she said, were being misunderstood to the point of creating a national security risk. She found herself surrounded by civil servants who “hate the concept of the state”. Their unchallenged assumption was that Israel was a terrorist state and Hamas’s atrocities should be “contextualised”.

They accepted without demur an argument mounted by one civil service participant, whose brother had fought for Isis, that Britain’s anti-radicalisation programme, Prevent, was inherently racist because it focused on Islamist extremism — mere mention of which made Muslims “feel uncomfortable”.

While lecturers gave right-wing extremism disproportionate weight, wrote Stanley, the overriding emphasis was that Islamist extremism was exaggerated. This directly contradicts the conclusion reached by Sir William Shawcross in his review last February of Prevent, which he found was dangerously underestimating Islamist extremism while exaggerating right-wing threats."

It struck me how Phillips' article focuses on the sort of post-colonial identity conflicts that I have seen playing out at work. It is fascinating to see how they are playing out at the heart of the British establishment. 

Phillips cleverly positions herself in binary opposition to the process she claims to promote, e.g. outside of the democratic debate and superior to it. She accuses others of doing the same, so she is quite clearly admitting some familiarity with this sort of splitting as a technique, as do I. 

This mutually inclusive exclusivity then sets the scene for a metaphorical battle between an evil invasive virus and the heroic immune system of the unsuspecting host, which is where she positions us, the Times reader, viz. the Nation State.

Thus, my initial impression was that Phillips was using Stanley's voice to:

a) devalue the rights of minorities to express their voice within what is supposed to be a permissive learning environment;

b) adopt a tone of xenophic fear, demonising any opinion that corrupts her own ideal, covert, and therefore imaginary, vision of what the National identity actually is; and

c) conclude that the inability of the State to develop a coherent narrative in the face of several competing perspectives is a weakness, rather than a strength, of our multi-cultural political democracy.

As a mental health nurse and public servant working in the NHS I recognise the sort of identity work that Phillips is doing as being very familiar, but the reference to 'Israel' makes it particularly relevant to the current war in Gaza, and the Rishi Sunak's attack on 'anti-semitism' in the ranks of the Labour Party. This raises some unsettling questions about the sort of racial insecurities that are going to be driving our National security agenda at the coming general election.

So this article tests out my identity along racial fault lines when I am more used to it being tested out on other fault lines: for example, gender. I am aware that I have to adopt a non-binary gender identity as I go to work and resume a more traditional, more gendered, binary identity, as soon as I get home (the male is the one who has to take the bins out in our household apparently!). I do this to adapt to the social context I am in.

But nobody ever accuses me of being in any way less authentic for doing this - or in any way of being more of a threat; I do not get accused of being a 'double-agent', or of being an 'agent provocateur', or even of being a 'change agent' anymore. I am simply doing my job, for my patients, and this job involves some 'identity work'. So if I can cross between the boundaries of one protected characteristic, i.e. gender, so effortlessly, then why not any others, i.e. race and/or ethnicity?

Well, the obvious answer is that it isn't effortless, it actually takes a lot of hard work. Employers may not take account of this labour activity so it comes free of charge to them, but many of us do have to change our identities as we move between different socio-cultural environments as part of our everyday lives. This is particularly obvious as we go in and out of work, and less so perhaps as we go in and out of different domestic households and families, or in and out of different pubs and clubs. So why is identity agility so hard to accept when it comes to our racial identities?

Surely, what this article actually validates is that identity is somehow tied to place as much as it is tied to our physical characteristics; identity is as complex, multi-layered, and as malleable as our autobiographies are; identity is transactional and co-produced, manufactured even, marketed, consumed, and exchanged - there exists a political-economy of identity but not a financial market, identities have a currency, a certain value to one person and another to another.

So if people still get upset about having to modify their identities to 'fit in' with their surroundings, what cognitive mechanisms can we suggest they employ to help them do that? If identity is at least partially about observing the emotional etiquette of a place or social context, then the dual process theory of emotional regulation can help us understand it. As the name suggests, there are essentially two parts to this process:

a) the 'threat avoidance' part that seeks to suppress all other possible identities, through a slavish ritualistic addiction to an 'alpha identity' that must prevail above all others, or succumb to a primordial fear that the whole structural edifice will come crashing to the ground; and

b) the 'reward seeking' part that seeks to predict the changes that are needed to successfully adapt the current identity to meet the demands of a changing social and emotional environment, by constantly reading any alternative narratives available to it in any social situation.

Both mechanisms are present in all of us but may be weighted one way or the other, depending on the biological inheritance and environmental habitat involved. The first process is probably higher in people on the autistic, obsessive-compulsive, and schizophrenic spectrum, while the second is probably higher in people with more resources for emotional intelligence. The combination effectively equates to a lower and higher capacity for empathy and socialisation, and a more or less significant trauma history, respectively.

Within a social network the two processes will be in constant opposition and their relative strength may lead to the sort of dynamics observed in the cohort of students referred to in Phillips' article. So I turned to the original article to evidence this: "Scandalous Indoctrination: Inside a Kings College Counter-Terrorism Course for UK Civil Servants" (Stanley, 2024). And true enough, in it Stanley attempts to prioritise the 'threat avoidance' of the Israeli's over any others, whilst ignoring any mutual 'reward seeking' that could be found between the different parties involved.

Apart from some egocentrism, there is nothing inherently wrong with her argument. For example, Stanley claims a moral and cultural superiority for the Israel State and legitimises this position as a valid form of collectivist politics. From a psychiatric perspective, I agree that there is a legitimate need for a culture to defend itself based on its learning from a collective trauma history. This principle is effectively written into the definition of a delusion by the World Health Organisation’s International Classification of Diseases version 11:

Delusion MB26.0:

A belief that is demonstrably untrue or not shared by others, usually based on incorrect inference about external reality.

The belief is firmly held with conviction and is not, or is only briefly, susceptible to modification by experience or evidence that contradicts it.

 The belief is not ordinarily accepted by other members or the person's culture or subculture (i.e., it is not an article of religious faith).

To all intents and purposes, this means that Stanley's fear that Israelis have been/ are being/ will be being: “anally raped at a peace festival by someone shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’” is neither a persecutory nor a religious delusion, at least as long as there are enough Israeli’s who believe that this remains a possibility, which would also rule out personality disoder.

Persecutory delusion MB26.07:

A delusion in which the central theme is that one (or someone to whom one is close) is being attacked, mocked, harassed, cheated, conspired against, or persecuted.

Religious delusion MB26.08:

A delusion involving religious or spiritual themes or subject matter that other members of the person's religious group do not accept as possible.

However, such a fear would probably meet the criteria for being considered a ‘paranoid ideation' within the context of a more or less historic, or more or less vicariously experienced, 'post-traumatic stress disorder', with or without 'specific phobia', although not necessarily needing any further treatment, depending on its duration, complexity and severity:

Paranoid ideation MB26.7:

Ideation, not held with delusional intensity, involving suspiciousness or beliefs of being harassed, persecuted, or unfairly treated by others.

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder 6B40:

Post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) may develop following exposure to an extremely threatening or horrific event or series of events. It is characterised by all of the following: 1) re-experiencing the traumatic event or events in the present in the form of vivid intrusive memories, flashbacks, or nightmares. Re-experiencing may occur via one or multiple sensory modalities and is typically accompanied by strong or overwhelming emotions, particularly fear or horror, and strong physical sensations; 2) avoidance of thoughts and memories of the event or events, or avoidance of activities, situations, or people reminiscent of the event(s); and 3) persistent perceptions of heightened current threat, for example as indicated by hypervigilance or an enhanced startle reaction to stimuli such as unexpected noises. The symptoms persist for at least several weeks and cause significant impairment in personal, family, social, educational, occupational or other important areas of functioning.

Specific Phobia 6B03:

Specific phobia is characterised by a marked and excessive fear or anxiety that consistently occurs upon exposure or anticipation of exposure to one or more specific objects or situations (e.g., proximity to certain animals, flying, heights, closed spaces, sight of blood or injury) that is out of proportion to actual danger. The phobic objects or situations are avoided or else endured with intense fear or anxiety. Symptoms persist for at least several months and are sufficiently severe to result in significant distress or significant impairment in personal, family, social, educational, occupational, or other important areas of functioning.Specific phobia is characterised by a marked and excessive fear or anxiety that consistently occurs upon exposure or anticipation of exposure to one or more specific objects or situations (e.g., proximity to certain animals, flying, heights, closed spaces, sight of blood or injury) that is out of proportion to actual danger. The phobic objects or situations are avoided or else endured with intense fear or anxiety. Symptoms persist for at least several months and are sufficiently severe to result in significant distress or significant impairment in personal, family, social, educational, occupational, or other important areas of functioning.

The counter-argument would be that the politics of cultural superiority can easily become a racially divisive ideology, and Stanley's argument comes close to this. This can occur when membership of a collective is predicated purely on owning a racial heritage (as per the concept of “Aliyah”), rather than being drawn towards a moral or religious affiliation or signing up to a nationalist identity (as per the politics of the “United Arab List”). But in the end, it is not really clear to me which of these alternative definitions of cultural identity Stanley is actually trying to defend?

Stanley attacks “typical post-modern identity politics” which I would argue is synonymous with most post-structuralist forms of any post-Freudian psychiatry. “Surely we can acknowledge subjectivity while being able to come up with a collective understanding of what terrorism is?” she says. Here I think she is referring to the split between structuralist and post-structuralist interpretations of the cultural lexicon that emerged in the 1960s. But I would argue this split is resolved through viewing the self as both an objective “Me” and subjective “I” as characterised by the Chicago School of Sociology. The “I” may involve some form of innate cognitive capacity to use language, but the “Me” is any and all the social identities that we construct when we use it. 

Ironically, the post-modern identity politics that Stanley rails against probably support her position. The post-structuralist argument a scholar of Foucault might make is that the structure of a cultural lexicon is based on asymmetric power relations, and the cultural lexicon can quickly lose its clarity in a conflict zone; this is exactly what Stanley appears to be complaining about, if I understand the authors concern over the ambiguous and/or ambivalent use of the term “terrorism” correctly; but she misses the point that Prevent’s focus on Islamic extremism is racist because it excludes all the moderate views caught up in the conflict, which again, is part of the catastrophe that we are now witnessing unfold in Gaza; and what I'm afraid to say is so evident in the polarised position that she takes.

In summary, Stanley is justified in feeling the way she does because her identity positions her in a collective history that has a moral perspective on the current conflict. This position is supported by others who have the privilege of being able to be an external observer. However, this remains one position in a whole theatre of other positions, with different perspectives on the conflict, with different histories, different objectives, and different beliefs. We are thus, all equally justified in taking a position, whether or not it is consistent with the majority or minority view, as long as the collective that we belong to can endorse it. What is not possible though, is to resolve the conflict while the two main protagonists prioritise 'threat avoidance' over any 'reward seeking' positions. It is only when the balance of these cognitive mechanisms is able to change, that we will be able to see an end to the War in Gaza.   

Footnotes - click on names to see video links for events of the day: Rishi Sunak ; George Galloway ; Keir Starmer 

Existentialism

I exist as the Homunculus,

I hold myself together, 

Across the sensing and responding,

Across the time and space,

Bridging a river of emotions,

Where all emotions are communications,

Between a past self and a future other,

Where all others split me from the I,

And memory splits the I from all of me,

We hold each other, 

Across past and future,

Good and bad both dominate,

Our Western Christan order.

We exclude our non-binary Identities,

We banish our demons to Hell,

But between Alpha and Omega,

There are many stories to tell,

There are many stations to Nirvana,

And many avenues to explore,

Veins and arteries come full-circle,

Both inside and outside ourselves,

Information is at the boundary,

Of a knowledge that makes us feel safe,

But keeps us ignorant of the other,

Inside and outside the borders,

Of our Western Nation States.

How Do We Love?

(posted on Facebook 10/12/2023)

Ignore this post, it is not about you, it's about love.

As a psychiatric nurse I have had a lifetime of pondering the intricacies of human relationships. Part science and part art, my profession poses the fundamental question: "How do we love?" (not, who, what, or why but how).

And it often struggles to find the answer.

This question has haunted me more than ever this year: working in an NHS in crisis; with War breaking out on Europe's doorstep in the Donbas and Gaza regions; the post-Brexit economy stalling; and asylum seekers being deported to a place few others in the World have ever been, or had ever desired to go.

So this morning I watched this video and the answer I think it gave me is that:

1) We learn to live with the objective and subjective parts of ourselves in relationship to others.

2) But, the unity we find is constantly tested by the antagonistic forces of wider socio-economic realities.

3) So that, although we are all born as two halves of other survivors, we will inevitably struggle to find a unity between them, throughout the rest of our lives.

See what you think. And thank you Professor Ellie Anderson for your eloquent and succinct presentation:

YOUTUBE.COM

Sartre and Beauvoir on Sex and Love

This video was originally a Zoom talk philosophy professor Ellie Anderso