46 Learning the hard way
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Daniel Dorling
Abstract
Government in Britain is still setting a bad example to the rest of the world in terms of the selectivity of its reporting and its summarising of its own commissioned research. This particularly affects the debate over regional inequalities and trends in them.
Writing in April 2007, I quote below the words of three government ministers. Currently their roles are: Secretary of State for the Environment (David Miliband); Minister of State for Housing and Planning (Yvette Cooper); and the Minister for Work (Jim Murphy). I pick on these three because they are not easy targets; indeed, they are who we should be looking to, to be making a difference to our cities and regions in the future.
My worry is that ministers have a general concern, which is to paint a rosy story, coupled with a spin they themselves receive from their key advisors, that results in a general air of unreality and unsustainable comment being made continuously. How are these people with great personal integrity being failed by the government policy machinery?
At the very top of government, leaders are cocooned from the world to such an extent that they find it very hard to understand why they may be unpopular. But why, lower down in the government apparatus are junior ministers also selectively quoting our research and statistics in an easily misunderstood way? Here is the first of my three examples:
“The State of the Cities report was published just two or three weeks ago and it looked at the fifty-six primary urban areas of England, not just the eight biggest cities outside London, but the next forty-eight towns and cities, and it came to a stunning conclusion.
Abstract
Government in Britain is still setting a bad example to the rest of the world in terms of the selectivity of its reporting and its summarising of its own commissioned research. This particularly affects the debate over regional inequalities and trends in them.
Writing in April 2007, I quote below the words of three government ministers. Currently their roles are: Secretary of State for the Environment (David Miliband); Minister of State for Housing and Planning (Yvette Cooper); and the Minister for Work (Jim Murphy). I pick on these three because they are not easy targets; indeed, they are who we should be looking to, to be making a difference to our cities and regions in the future.
My worry is that ministers have a general concern, which is to paint a rosy story, coupled with a spin they themselves receive from their key advisors, that results in a general air of unreality and unsustainable comment being made continuously. How are these people with great personal integrity being failed by the government policy machinery?
At the very top of government, leaders are cocooned from the world to such an extent that they find it very hard to understand why they may be unpopular. But why, lower down in the government apparatus are junior ministers also selectively quoting our research and statistics in an easily misunderstood way? Here is the first of my three examples:
“The State of the Cities report was published just two or three weeks ago and it looked at the fifty-six primary urban areas of England, not just the eight biggest cities outside London, but the next forty-eight towns and cities, and it came to a stunning conclusion.
Chapters in this book
- Front Matter i
- Contents v
- Sources of extracts vii
- Foreword xi
- Acknowledgements xiv
- Introduction 1
-
Inequality and poverty
- Prime suspect: murder in Britain 13
- The dream that turned pear-shaped 31
- The soul searching within New Labour 41
- Unequal Britain 49
- Axing the child poverty measure is wrong 57
-
Injustice and ideology
- Brutal budget to entrench inequality 63
- New Labour and inequality: Thatcherism continued? 65
- All in the mind? Why social inequalities persist 83
- Glass conflict: David Cameron’s claim to understand poverty 93
- Clearing the poor away 97
-
Race and identity
- Ghettos in the sky 103
- Worlds apart: how inequality breeds fear and prejudice in Britain 111
- How much evidence do you need? Ethnicity, harm and crime 115
- UK medical school admissions by ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and sex 121
- Race and the repercussions of recession 125
-
Education and hierarchy
- What’s it to do with the price of fish? 133
- Little progress towards a fairer education system 139
- One of Labour’s great successes 147
- Do three points make a trend? 149
- Educational mobility, England and Germany 155
- Cash and the not so classless society 159
- Britain must close the great pay divide 165
- Raising equality in access to higher education 170
-
Elitism and geneticism
- The Darwins and the Cecils are only empty vessels 189
- The Fabian essay: the myth of inherited inequality 193
- The return to elitism in education 199
- The super-rich are still soaring away 209
-
Mobility and employment
- The trouble with moving upmarket 217
- Britain – split and divided by inequality 221
- London and the English desert: the grain of truth in a stereotype 225
- Are the times changing back? 237
- Unemployment and health 243
-
Bricks and mortar
- Mortality amongst street sleeping youth in the UK 249
- Daylight robbery: there’s no shortage of housing 251
- The influence of selective migration patterns 255
- The geography of poverty, inequality and wealth in the UK and abroad 263
- All connected? Geographies of race, death, wealth, votes and births 291
-
Well-being and misery
- Against the organization of misery? The Marmot Review of Health Inequalities 299
- Inequality kills 307
- The geography of social inequality and health 311
- The cartographer’s mad project 327
- The fading of the dream: widening inequalities in life expectancy in America 333
- The importance of circumstance 339
-
Advocacy and action
- Mean machine: how structural inequality makes social inequality seem natural 347
- Policing the borders of crime: who decides research? 351
- Learning the hard way 357
- When the social divide deepens 363
- Ending the scandal of complacency 365
- Our grandchildren will wonder why we were addicted to social inequality 369
- Mind the gap: New Labour’s legacy on child poverty 373
- Remapping the world’s population: visualizing data using cartograms 379
- If I were king 385
- Bibliography 387
- Index 389
Chapters in this book
- Front Matter i
- Contents v
- Sources of extracts vii
- Foreword xi
- Acknowledgements xiv
- Introduction 1
-
Inequality and poverty
- Prime suspect: murder in Britain 13
- The dream that turned pear-shaped 31
- The soul searching within New Labour 41
- Unequal Britain 49
- Axing the child poverty measure is wrong 57
-
Injustice and ideology
- Brutal budget to entrench inequality 63
- New Labour and inequality: Thatcherism continued? 65
- All in the mind? Why social inequalities persist 83
- Glass conflict: David Cameron’s claim to understand poverty 93
- Clearing the poor away 97
-
Race and identity
- Ghettos in the sky 103
- Worlds apart: how inequality breeds fear and prejudice in Britain 111
- How much evidence do you need? Ethnicity, harm and crime 115
- UK medical school admissions by ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and sex 121
- Race and the repercussions of recession 125
-
Education and hierarchy
- What’s it to do with the price of fish? 133
- Little progress towards a fairer education system 139
- One of Labour’s great successes 147
- Do three points make a trend? 149
- Educational mobility, England and Germany 155
- Cash and the not so classless society 159
- Britain must close the great pay divide 165
- Raising equality in access to higher education 170
-
Elitism and geneticism
- The Darwins and the Cecils are only empty vessels 189
- The Fabian essay: the myth of inherited inequality 193
- The return to elitism in education 199
- The super-rich are still soaring away 209
-
Mobility and employment
- The trouble with moving upmarket 217
- Britain – split and divided by inequality 221
- London and the English desert: the grain of truth in a stereotype 225
- Are the times changing back? 237
- Unemployment and health 243
-
Bricks and mortar
- Mortality amongst street sleeping youth in the UK 249
- Daylight robbery: there’s no shortage of housing 251
- The influence of selective migration patterns 255
- The geography of poverty, inequality and wealth in the UK and abroad 263
- All connected? Geographies of race, death, wealth, votes and births 291
-
Well-being and misery
- Against the organization of misery? The Marmot Review of Health Inequalities 299
- Inequality kills 307
- The geography of social inequality and health 311
- The cartographer’s mad project 327
- The fading of the dream: widening inequalities in life expectancy in America 333
- The importance of circumstance 339
-
Advocacy and action
- Mean machine: how structural inequality makes social inequality seem natural 347
- Policing the borders of crime: who decides research? 351
- Learning the hard way 357
- When the social divide deepens 363
- Ending the scandal of complacency 365
- Our grandchildren will wonder why we were addicted to social inequality 369
- Mind the gap: New Labour’s legacy on child poverty 373
- Remapping the world’s population: visualizing data using cartograms 379
- If I were king 385
- Bibliography 387
- Index 389
