Wandered over to an interesting talk last night entitled Europe and America – Worlds Apart? that took took a statistical look at the differences between the two population blocks.

A lot of people, myself included will presume that Americans are staggeringly different from us and that democracy and free-markets aside, there is little that unites us.

The reality in statistical terms is quite surprising.

In a tour-de-force of graphs and charts, Professor Peter Baldwin (Professor of History at University of California) charged though the issues at a breakneck speed to show that America is actually not that different in end outcome from Europe.

America is considered to be a very unequal country with strong concentrations of wealth – although it is actually fairly similar to Sweden in that regard. I think that in the UK we tend to forget that many of Europe’s dominant firms are actually controlled by founder families, with only limited voting shares available on the stock markets.

In areas of absolute poverty, again the USA is about average when compared to the countries that make up the European Union. Some parts of Europe have less poverty, and some have more.

America is generally considered to be very religious, but actually it is about the same as most of Mediterranean Europe – and that outlier of Catholicism, Ireland.

In terms of social spending, if you include the strong tradition of philanthropy in the USA, then you actually get a net expenditure in the US which is roughly average with Europe. In Europe we may mandate the spending through taxes, and in the US more is voluntary – but so long as the end result is the same, does it matter if the money comes from donations or taxes? Personally, I think not.

Surprisingly – and this drew a heckle from the audience – car ownership in the US is comparable to Europe. However that statistic was rightly pulled into question by the fact that it doesn’t include SUV ownership, which is markedly higher in the USA. Likewise statistics about private vs state schooling, although he did point out that regardless of how you define a privately funded education (and that is a contentious issue), the US and Europe do tend to be roughly similar.

On the environmental issue – I am sure we all know that the USA is evil incarnate and that their emissions per person are massively greater than the rest of the world.

However, if you take emissions per unit of GDP generated by each person, then the US is not much different from Europe. This is not fiddling with the figures – but a quite serious issue. If, for example, the UK’s economy was as efficient as the USA’s, then our carbon emissions could be comparable. The reason we emit less per person, is that each person is less productive at work.

Another one which surprised me was road vs rail transport.

The USA has a rail network that is comparable to Europe’s, but it is put to a totally different use. In Europe humans travel by rail, but cargo travels largely by road. In the US, it’s the other way round. You can reasonably argue that the US and Europe are similar in transport, albeit with a different focus on what/who is moved.

In fact, the only area where there is a significant difference between the USA and Europe is in the triumvirate of guns/murder/prisons. Excluding murder, the crime rate in the USA is again similar to Europe – but murders are staggeringly higher, as is prison incarceration rates. Add in that the USA has a much higher rate of gun ownership, and you can draw the obvious, if contested, conclusion.

The question that wasn’t really addressed in the talk is that with a wealth of data showing that the US and Europe are actually quite similar, why are we convinced there are huge differences.

My personal gut instinct is one of enthusiasm. I find most Americans I have met/known tend to be incredibly enthusiastic about whatever issue they latch onto. Americans may be as religious as Europeans, but those who are religious tend to be strongly religious. The same for with business – people trying to set up a business in the USA are vastly more driven to be a success than I notice in European small businesses.

A key cultural difference is that in the US, in general if you set up a business that fails, you are an entrepreneur and an adventurous person. All to often in Europe if you set up a business that fails, then you are a failure. Setting up a business in Europe that succeeds can almost be worse!

I have also often noticed that a society that claims to be very individualistic can also give considerable authority to fairly minor functionaries in an almost militaristic style. I personally find it slightly amusing how even the most basic of municipal workers can wear uniforms that have badges all over the place, epaulets, and where a small brand sign might be expected, you will find a huge crest or coat-of-arms, with moto and the related paraphernalia of a military uniform.

These are the more subtle differences that can’t be represented in statistics – and is why the perception of strong differences between the two sides of the Atlantic are deeper than mere numbers.

As an aside, Lord Howe was in the room and he also commented on the social differences – recounting a story about when the US accidentally bombed the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade in 1999. The Chinese people stoned the US Embassy in Beijing in protest – and as the UK is seen as the US patsy, the UK Embassy was also pelted with stones.

The US offered compensation to the Chinese, but demanded compensation back for the damage to its Embassy. Everything was formal and legal with financial matters to the fore.

When then Chinese asked the British Ambassador if the UK would demand compensation – he responded that he was quite untroubled by the incident as the stones had been used to make a delightful new rockery in the garden.

That says more about the differences between the UK and the US than any collection of slides and statistics could ever achieve.

Thanks to the Henry Jackson Society for setting up the event.

Being primarily a pedestrian, I am less bothered by road works than many people, but they do leach over into pavements or block much used routes across roads, so I read with interest a press release this morning about fines for roadworks that run beyond their allotted time-scale.

Irresponsible firms who allow their road works to overrun will face penalties of up to £25,000 a day – a tenfold increase on the current £2,500 maximum daily charge – under plans published today by Transport Minister Sadiq Khan.

Impressive – until you put on your cynics hat, which I wear a lot when reading government press releases.

The most obvious one is that road works will simply become a Bakers Dozen. For those of you familiar with the saying, but not sure as to why bakers offer 13 loafs, let me inform you.

It is claimed (although disputed) that Henry III imposed a draconian punishment for anyone who short-changed a customer buying a dozen loafs of bread. So severe was the punishment that bakers took to adding a thirteenth loaf as insurance.

Incidentally, only the nobility could afford (or need) a dozen loafs at a time, so this law only benefited the rich, while the poor carried on getting ever smaller single loafs and being ripped off.

Anyway, under the new road works regime, if the punishment for going a day over the allocated time is that severe, all that will happen is that utilities firms will reserve an extra day from the local authority, for insurance purposes.

So, a road reserved for a week today, will be reserved for maybe 8-9 days next week. Builders being builders, they will know they have extra time to complete the works, and some labour creep into the overtime will occur.

So, the net effect of the larger fines is to cause more road congestion as repairs are booked for – and take – a longer amount of time to complete.

Someone please explain how that is a good thing.

With the news media largely dominated by a recent assassination in my old stomping grounds of Dubai, there has been much talk of the use of fake passports.

Politicians have been outraged at the insult to the British Passport and muttering dire warnings about the sanctity of the passport system itself being imperilled.  Last night, Channel 4 News had a dark shadowy figure explain how easy it is for spooks to fake or clone passports. This being top secret information, the speaker was hidden from view and only identified by his first name.

All very serious stuff.

Some years ago I needed to get a new passport as my old one had expired and at the time I was rather too poor to afford to renew it (let alone have a reason to use it) and that experience of stupid bureaucracy educated me as to how incredibly simple it is to get a fake passport in the UK.

It turned out that my Birth Certificate was a photocopy (from the days when photocopies were done on decent paper) and I needed an original. Also, where my Managing Director had signed the declaration of worthiness, it turned out that as I had filled in the form and he had signed it was a very naughty thing indeed. My remonstrations that Managing Directors are too busy to fill in forms, they just sign forms other people fill in fell on deaf ears.

It took three visits to get the application approved, largely because in my naivety, I thought that level of narrow minded pettiness over frankly, insignificant issues was something that had died out in the 1970s. A year later I needed a special visa from the US Embassy, and ran into the same level of mindless bureaucracy again – what is it with civil servants and petty paper pushing?

Bear in mind that some of the procedures may have changed in the subsequent few years – but when people tell you that the passport is the highest form of identity that exists, remember how easy it is to get one in someone else’s name.

How to Get a Fake Passport

1) Move into a new property or bedsit/squat.

2) Visit your local Family Records Centre and look up the name of a person who was born around the same time that you were. Order a copy of their Birth Certificate. The key point here – no proof of identity was required and you could pay cash over the counter. No “audit trail” exists and you can collect the certificate by hand the following day.

3) Now you have a name to clone, contact a suitable utilities provider (gas, electricity etc) and inform them you have just moved into your home and can you have an account opened up.

4) Twiddle fingers for a while and wait until the first utility bill arrives. You now have the two forms of ID required – a Birth Certificate and a Proof of Address.

5) Get a passport application form and ask a fellow conspirator to declare that they are doctor or solicitor and that they think you are a terrible nice chap. At most, the only check made against them is a phone call to check they did fill in the form.

6) A couple of weeks later – and a passport arrives in the post.

7) Move out of property and vanish along with your new fake identity.

Simples!

Following on from news that TV companies can now take payments for putting products on screen as part of the plot, comes news that TV dramas can have a stronger impact on boosting contraceptive use than serious news programmes.

“Researchers found that college-age women who viewed a televised drama about a teen pregnancy felt more vulnerable two weeks after watching the show, and this led to more support for using birth control.”

I wonder how soon before TV soap operas, themselves originally a way for companies to advertise their brand will become an arm of the government Ministry of Truth and start pushing social messages at impressionable viewers?

However, a warning was also given.

“The problem with using stories to persuade people is that people can interpret them in different ways. You don’t always get the results you expect,”

The recent tale of the NHS iPhone application that expected you to type in the number of alcoholic drinks you consume so that it can warn you if you are drinking too much backfired rather spectacularly. Instead of being a warning line to stay below, the application is treated as a game, with people trying ever harder to get a “high score” each night.

Opps!

I had the opportunity last night to listen to a presentation regarding one of the most famous, and subsequently, controversial episodes in the Israel/Palestine conflict in recent years. A now infamous piece of film-footage is now widely considered to be at best, rather dubious and at worst, an outright fraud. While I am really not a fan of conspiracy theories – I do try to keep an open opinion about the issues they raise.

After a slightly fraught afternoon – no I can’t go, yes I can go, the meeting room is moved, the meeting is delayed – a shockingly long queue at security – I just about managed to get to the Committee Room only have arrived early!

The image of the incident that most people will probably recognise is below:

This is part of a short new story shown on a French news channel, which became a totemic issue for Palestinians and Arabs generally as an example of the Israeli army’s aggressive tactics. In short, the film appeared to show a father and son cowering behind a barrel sheltering from gunfire. The son died and was proclaimed a martyr, while the father survived with 12 gunshot wounds.

A lot of inconsistencies exist with issue, such as doctors disagreeing which leg a bullet went into, what time things happened etc – most of which I am personally willing to put down to an acceptable level of inaccuracy due to the situation at the time. It is very rare for witnesses at a British road accident to give identical opinions of what happened at an event, so I think we can be forgiving of mistakes in the middle of a de-facto war zone.

There is also unbroadcast footage of the dead son lifting his head and moving around a bit, although I would be tolerable of arguments that this is reflex actions or the results of impacts from later gunshots.

For me though, what certainly peeked my interest was that two people next to a wall and hit with 15 high-calibre bullets tend to leave rather a lot of blood on the wall. There is absolutely no blood at all at the scene of the attack as shown in the film footage. That is bizarre. Also, if shot with over a dozen military grade rifle bullets, you tend to have very little of the person left intact. Unlike the handguns seen on movies, military rifles tend to use much larger bullets – the sort that shatter limbs and kill very effectively. However, not only did the father survive, but his wounds are totally unlike what bullet wounds should look like. Medically, this is just an impossibility.

The question being raised is whether a minor incident occurred that was then expanded upon to create a propaganda story – or was it in fact an outright fraud and the whole thing a “hollywood” production.

The presentation last night was given by the French journalist, Philippe Karsenty who comes down very firmly on the fraud side of the debate, and is currently in the middle of legal action in France over his views – which have been supported by other news media outside France.

My personal opinion is that there is something seriously wrong with the footage, and if you see the unedited raw films, more questions are raised. Not just about the Palestinians, who have an understandable desire to spin a news story to their favour, but more worryingly, the actions of a French news channel in reporting the story, knowing that the story reported differs significantly from the raw footage. Apparently, CNN turned down the story when presented to them due to its dubious quality.

So, an incident some 10 years ago was talked about last night. So what?

The reason it matters is an area which interests me in general – and that is how a media story becomes The Truth, even after the facts show it to be otherwise.

Show most people the above photo, and they will tell you it shows the Israeli army killing an innocent family – but wont be aware of the later controversy about its origin.

Another favourite of mine is the Paediatrician who was attacked by a mob who didn’t understand that a Paediatrician is not a Paedophile. Although a home was vandalized by idiots, there was never a mob. Nonetheless, the story of the Mob attacking a home still recurs as an example of the dangers of vigilantism in tabloid newspapers.

I find it fascinating, in a slightly morbid sense, as to how people can be whipped up into a fury about something, but these same people don’t seem to care about the facts of the matter. To quote Yes Minister; “Something must be done. This is something, therefore we must do it.” However, as pointed out – doing nothing is often better than doing the wrong thing.

Why, I wonder, are people able to be so incredibly passionate about a topic – and yet at the same time utterly indifferent as to the details and facts that underpin it?

Are we as humans driven by an urge to seek the satisfaction that comes from “doing something”, even if that something actually makes matters worse? Disaster aid agencies are well aware of the problems that can be caused by too much aid turning up and causing overlaps or delays due to congestion. Yet the public were outraged when charities cried “Stop!” when flooded with donations following the Boxing Day Tsunami, and is starting to happen with the Haiti earthquake.

I don’t know the answer, but do find it curious.

Anyway, back to last night – a vastly more detailed overview of the complex controversy surrounding the al-Durrah incident can be found over at Wikipedia.

Also, thanks to the Henry Jackson Society for pulling the presentation together, and squeezing me in at the last minute.