Police Killed in Line of Duty

 Turns out there's a wikipedia page for US police killed in line of duty. Quite a contrast with a page for UK police killed.

For anyone too lazy to click, US killings of police run about 50 or above, the UK runs about 1 a year.

The context is the culture: US view police as maintaining order against crime in the midst of an armed populace, meaning a focus on conflict and violence, while the UK has a different history. In short, there's not an arms race in the UK, there is in US.

Unbelievable--So Much for White Superiority

The other day the Times had an article discussing the composition of the cabinet selected by PM Truss, which notably had no white males in the top four positions. Rather buried in the depths of the article was this fact: 

In part, the gains in government by people of color reflect social change and advances through education. On average, ethnic minority pupils have outperformed white Britons at school in recent years. In every year from 2007 to 2021, white pupils had the lowest entry rate into higher education.

I'm used to looking at the various breakdowns of statistics about our society and seeing what I might call the "usual suspects"--that is, Euro-Americans or Asian-Americans at the top, if the statistic relates to something good (wealth, income, etc.) and Afro-Americans and Hispanic-Americans at the bottom. The positions reversed if the statistic relates to crime, helath, life expectancy, etc.

We see that so often we, at least I,  start thinking it's the expected order, which is just a step away from being "natural". 

But this statistic from the UK upsets those expectations. And it raises the key question: what the hell is going on; why the difference in societies? 

Red Tractor--UK

 Saw a tweet complaining about the 230-odd pages of material the Red Tractor inspector wanted.  Did a search and found it's a UK scheme, as they'd say:

We are a not-for-profit company that is the UK’s biggest farm and food assurance scheme. We develop standards based on science, evidence, best practice and legislation that cover animal welfare, food safety, traceability and environmental protection. Around 50,000 British farmers are accredited to Red Tractor standards, which form the basis of buying and sourcing specifications for major supermarkets, household brands and restaurant chains, ultimately making life simpler for everyone,

50K is about half the active farmers in the UK, but I'm not sure of the definition. It doesn't mention organic products. 

I find this:

 "Results are weighted to represent the full population of farm businesses that have at least 25 thousand Euros of standard output as recorded in the annual June Survey of Agriculture and Horticulture. In 2019, this accounted for approximately 56,521 farm businesses. "  (That would be a little over $27,000 depending on exchange rate.)

Someone with ambition could, or maybe already has, compare UK distribution of farms with US. 

The Bureaucrat's Necessity: Forms in the UK

 I designed and redesigned a fair number of forms during my career. We had a Forms Management Branch in ASCS when I started.  The program specialist would take his problem to them and together they'd work together to get a master for the printer. 

Overtime I started to design forms in Wordperfect tables.  Got quite good at it, if I do say so. I think Forms eventually got most forms converted to Wordperfect. I haven't checked the online forms in years so I don't know whether they've now converted to PDF fill-ins or to HTML.  

Anyway, the UK also has forms.  This post says they're doing 6 percent a year (I hope that's not true, though if they have the sort of expansion of programs we've had in agriculture in recent years they might be expanding the number that fast).  They would like to have all HTML forms.  It's interesting to see how differently their government works than ours, as I believe I've noted before. 

Rebanks and the American System--Corn Laws Redux

 James Rebanks had a best-selling book back in 2015--The Shepherd's Life, a memoir of raising sheep in northwestern England.  More recently, as described in his Twitter account, he's diversified his operation with pigs and cows, and put more emphasis on diversified farming and conservation.  And he has a new book, English Pastoral (currently only on sale in England).

It took me a little while, but my new book is now on sale (for pre orders)

It is about everything I care about and love and I hope you like it pic.twitter.com/kpg2u7JmZH

— James Rebanks (@herdyshepherd1) May 28, 2020

This week BBC America had a clip of him and his wife as they argued against the "American System" Their concern was the negotiations between the UK government and US over trade terms, as the UK leaves the EU.  If there are no trade barriers/tariffs on agricultural trade, they fear that UK agriculture will be overwhelmed.  (I sense a reprise of the repeal of the Corn Laws back in 1846.)  

Rebanks outlines the case for a protectionist stance towards agriculture in this March article. And it's based on his book tour (NYTimes piece) of Kentucky when selling his first book.

On Fences and Hedgerows

Here's an article on hedgerows in the UK. 

I remember visiting North Carolina ASCS offices with the district director (this was 1968 or 9) and noticing some barbed wire fences (not many in the tobacco-growing area) with the wire on the outside of the posts.  I was struck because in NY we put the wire on the inside; dad explained it meant that cows pushing against the wire were pushing against the post, while if it were on the outside they would be forcing the staple out of the wood.

Years later I learned the difference related to the way agriculture developed in the Northeast versus the South.  In the Northeast livestock were fenced in; field crops were attractive to livestock.  In the South livestock, especially hogs, were left to roam free, field crops of tobacco and cotton weren't attractive to livestock, fields of corn etc. that were attractive were protected by fencing out.

Now I'm guessing the use of hedgerows in the UK reflects the relative scarcity of wood--no split rail fences there,  the fact that fields developed long before barbed wire became available, and the development of a historic pattern.  Hedgerows would seem to require a long lead time to grow; not like a fence which can go up in a few days.  So if farms have been around for centuries, there was time for hedgerows to develop.

Why Not Follow the UK: Gov Wifi

For commercial establishments everyone and her brother now offer WiFi.  Not the government, at least not that I am aware of.  But our British cousins offer it, specifically "GovWifi", as described in this post at the UK blog:

GovWifi, developed and managed by Government Digital Service (GDS), is a single wifi login which can be simply and cheaply installed by government departments over their existing infrastructure.Anyone who registers with GovWifi will have access to wifi at any participating public sector location. It’s available to civil servants, consultants and visitors to government departments.It’s been designed to replace user and guest wifi with a single secure wifi connection.Users register once. After that, they’ll automatically connect to the GovWifi network. They don’t need to remember a password or sign in to different networks when they move between buildings.

So why can't the US government do this?

The Culture Which Is British (not USSR or USA)

With apologies to Marginal Revolution where Tyler Cowen has posts beginning: "The Culture Which Is...", here's a link to a Politico piece on how the UK handles Doomsday: if it's Armageddon and the government is decapitated, what does the prime minister want the commanders of its nuclear deterrent to do?  Very interesting, as well as the quick comparison with the USSR and USA's plans for the same contingency.

Surprise of the Day--London's Canals

London has twice the mileage of canals as Amsterdam, according to this article in the NYTimes.

Apparently housing prices in London have become the highest in the world, and some people are finding houseboats on the canals to be an alternative. 

UK Versus US: Enclosed Farmland

An interesting piece in Buzzfeed (Hat tip: Marginal Revolution) on Britain's housing problems. But I want to steal one of its 15 graphics:

Note the "enclosed farmland" category, which basically covers most of England and Ulster, plus bits of lowlands Scotland. 

Trying to find the equivalent for the US.  There's this NASS map, which can get very detailed--I'd never seen it before. 

And there's this map of "prime farmland". 

What's important I think is that farmland in the US is much more splotchy; the UK is much more uniformly developed as either farm or urban.

The Culture Which Was Victorian

This post from Treehugger on "tin pack tabernacles" captures a key aspect of Victorian Britain: a combination of  their engineering ingenuity, their religion, and their determination to civilize the world.  Oh, and their penny-pinching. They created a temporary church, made of corrugated iron sheeting, which could be shipped as a package and assembled on the spot.

UK Versus US Government

Don't remember to whom I owe a hat tip, but this provides an overview of how social policy is administered in the UK.  A couple excerpts:

Local authorities are forbidden by law to do anything which is not expressly permitted by Parliament; local authorities which want to undertake any special initative need to promote a private Act of Parliament

Despite the existence of a "council tax", local government has very limited discretion in its ability to raise money, and it is not permitted to exceed central government limits. Loans cannot be taken without express sanction. Central governments can make the availability of grants conditional on compliance with their policy.

Compare this to our federal system and we see once again how weak our government really is.

Big Versus Small Farmers

Even in the UK there's tension between big farmers and small farmers.  See this post from Musings of a Stonehead on the position, as he sees it, of the National Farmers Union in the UK.  (Also see the sunset photos and the Victor Hugo poetry of the preceding post.) 

It's the old story: if government regulations apply equally to everyone, the burden is greater for the small producers and therefore the big guys get a competitive advantage.  If they don't apply at all, the little guys get the advantage.

On Class, and the Lack Thereof

I recommend Tony Judt's The Memory Chalet, a book of essays written as he became immobilized in body by Lou Gehrig's disease. It's getting 5 stars on Amazon. The writing is graceful.  Judt, now dead, was a Londoner, of Jewish heritage, a historian who taught on both sides of the Atlantic but ended up in New York City.

I want to quote from the essay "Bedder".

"I grew up without servants.  This is hardly surprising: in the first place, we were a small, lower-middle-class family who lived in small, lower-middle-class housing.  Before the war [WWII], such families could typically afford a maid and perhaps a cook as well.  The real middle class, of course, did much better: upstairs and downstairs staff were well within the reach of a professional man and his family." [His parents could afford a day-nanny for him. At Cambridge he had "bedders": women who looked after undergraduate rooms. Oxford has "scouts".]

Judt's class-consciousness is British, as are his gradations.  I think he means his family was middle-class because they weren't "working class/lower class"; they had white-collar jobs, not manual labor.  The "lower" part probably implies no college education, not a professional lawyer, teacher, manager. I think it's generally true a higher proportion of Brits had servants (say from 1850-1950) than Americans. Americans had "help", neighbor girls who might come in after childbirth or during sickness.  But anyone who could afford regular employees probably was considered upper-middle-class. 

Having noted this bit in Judt, I was struck when I saw on a newscast a talking head describing a growing "underclass" resulting from people losing their jobs in the Great Recession and being unable to find new employment. To me "underclass" is a bit pejorative, although perhaps not as much as "lower class" would seem.

British Exceptionalism

From Ralph Luker at Cliopatria comes a hilarious video on all things British?

The Unmentionable in France

Dirk Beauregarde provides more information than some will want, on excretion in France and the UK.  Among the items:

"70% of French workers consider their toilets in the workplace « unfit for use », though 30% still use them – presumably out of necessity.
In French schools a staggering 68,3% of kids never use the loos, either for lack of paper or lack of soap."

Us and the Brits--Transition and Budgets

There's been a little comment in the blogosphere on the transition in Britain. Took a day or two to come up with a coalition government, but now the Brits have all their cabinet in place and beavering away--no long drawn out confirmation hearings and the occasional embarrassing disclosures for the British. That's just a piece with the other ways in which their government differs from ours. I found this in a writeup on the British budget approval process:

The British Parliament has no ways and means committees, no budget committees, no appropriations committees. The committees that do scrutinize government departments lack the power to authorize new government programs and spending. Britain has one dominant figure who controls most of these functions: the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Roughly speaking, the Chancellor of the Exchequer is the Treasury/Finance Minister for the British Government, yet he has unparalleled power compared to the US Treasury Secretary.

The Chancellor has sole responsibility for setting tax rates. He does not preside over a tax committee. Rather he makes all of his tax decisions in an annual statement to Parliament, which is referred to as the annual Budget Statement. In essence, the Chancellor is a one-man Ways & Means Committee. The Budget Statement he presents (discussed below in greater detail) outlines not only tax rates, but also the total amount of money that will be spent on all government activities (both mandatory and discretionary).

Thus, the Chancellor is also a one-man Budget Committee.

If I understand, the finances and spending bills get considered and there's the possibility for change, except if the government doesn't agree to the change, they can make it a vote of confidence and win that way. 

British Bureaucrats Are Different

The first two paragraphs from the Guardian:

David Cameron would retain Gordon Brown's top civil servant as his right-hand man in Downing Street if the Tories won the general election – as part of plans aimed at ensuring a quick, efficient transition to a Conservative government.
The Tory leader, who is desperate to avoid squandering his first term in office, intends to reappoint Sir Gus O'Donnell – the mandarin who has been more closely associated with Brown than any other in Whitehall – as cabinet secretary for his entire first term in office. Senior Tory sources confirmed that Cameron would be "very happy" to retain O'Donnell in the post as head of the home civil service, and would rely on him heavily if and when the Tories return to government after 13 years out of office.

Turns out Sir Gus was John Major's press secretary, but rose to the top under Labor.  Imagine this happening in the U.S.--I can't either.