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Tag: inequality

  • If you don’t like the way big banks are run, move your money

    If you don’t like the way big banks are run, move your money

    The bankers’ pay issue is not just about Stephen Hester’s bonus at RBS. A boycott is a way of tackling the systemic problems

    John Harris

    RBS bonuses
    Focusing on RBS threatens to restrict the debate to the morals of state ownership.' Photograph: David Cheskin/PA

    Where next for the story of Stephen Hester’s bonus? On Sunday, two papers reported that the now-infamous £963,000 is only a fraction of his treasure-chest. Partly thanks to something called a “long-term incentive plan”, by this time next year he is likely to have been handed another £8m in shares, which will take his rewards since he took charge of RBS in 2008 to not far short of £40m.

    But herein lies danger. It suits the imperatives of the news media to have such a huge issue boiled down to the rewards package of one man; it’s also in the interests of the privileged people who own whole swaths of the press and broadcast media to do whatever they can to ensure that such a reductive script is followed to the letter. In that context, note the perfect role played by the RBS chairman, Sir Philip Hampton, now given temporary sainthood for turning down his bonus of £1.4m. His intervention has done its work: the issue is now in danger of becoming about matters of character and choice, rather than anything systemic.

    So, what to do? Clearly, the argument about high pay is in danger of turning cacophonous, and thereby meaningless. Canards and dead-ends abound: focusing on RBS threatens to restrict the debate to the morals of state ownership; “transparency” is a crock. Talking about “rewards for failure” nudges the issue away from basic inequality, and even limiting the conversation to the banks lets plenty of companies off the hook (witness Bart Becht, the one-time CEO of the firm that makes Cillit Bang detergent, in 2010 given a cash-and-shares package of £90m).

    Moreover, huge amounts are said, and almost still nothing done. Faced with global practices, even the most well-intentioned politicians – Ed Miliband, Vince Cable – can only try and keep the issue on the agenda in the hope that openings will eventually appear for more convincing policy.

    But Lest anyone succumb to fatalism, some interesting developments are afoot. The last two years have seen national and local campaigns in the US, encouraging people to move their cash away from big financial institutions and into small banks and local credit unions. A big fillip came with Bank Of America’s decision to charge customers a $5 monthly fee for using their debit cards – which resulted in as many people joining US credit unions in a single month as usually make the switch in a year, and played its part in that bank and others dropping the plan. The campaigns’ focus, of course, is much bigger than that – but the episode proved they were hardly wasting their time.

    That there are problems with approach is self-evident: Bank Of America has 58 million customers, whereas the campaigns were cheering about the defection of hundreds of thousands. But, in the form of the Move Your Money project and the US Move Our Money, they are still there. The former builds it activities around the recognition that “little has changed to prevent another financial crisis or to end ‘too big to fail’”, and wants to encourage people “to take power into their own hands by voting with their dollars and no longer contributing to a financial system that has led our country astray”. The latter claims it has so far deprived big banks of around $57m dollars.

    But more important than any figures is what these protests represent: a focus for outrage, as networked and agile as modern protest demands, that can keep the issues simmering away.

    This week, a British version launches, with the support of such unions as the GMB and Unite and the comparatively saintly Co-operative Group, along with some of the people involved in UK Uncut. They presumably know that the importance of high-street banking is dwarfed by the clout of the banks’ investment wings, but that doesn’t necessarily detract from the damage to their brands that can be wrought by such targeted protest.

    Cynics will scoff and claim the politics of boycotts can be just as distracting as the non-debates embraced by politicians and the press, reducible to the salving of consciences rather than any actual change. But with what is left of Occupy currently quiet and introspective, and the Hester case proving that spasms of righteousness are no substitute for the politics of the long haul, this latest move offers something very welcome: at least one means by which the arguments about the obscenities of inequality can be kept in roughly the right place.

    www.guardian.co.uk, 29 January 2012

  • Chinese Authorities Blame Internet for Fanning Uighur Anger

    Chinese Authorities Blame Internet for Fanning Uighur Anger

    Chinese authorities blame foreign activists for inciting violent protests this week in Xinjiang, and say the Internet enabled them to do it. Uighur groups have used the Internet to rapidly get out images from what they say was a provocative government crackdown on a peaceful demonstration.

    a4Following Sunday’s violence in Xinjiang region, Chinese authorities were hasty to point fingers.

    At a news conference Monday, Xinjiang’s police chief Liu Yaohua blamed the World Uighur Congress, an international Uighur rights group.

    Liu accused the organization of distorting China’s ethnic and religious policy to stir up conflict. But he especially singled out the Internet, describing it as the main medium that foreign forces use to communicate with Uighurs in China.

    Uighur activists say a peaceful demonstration Sunday in Xinjiang’s capital, Urumqi, turned violent after police began cracking down. Chinese authorities accuse groups like the World Uighur Congress of masterminding a riot from afar, in an effort ultimately aimed at creating an independent Xinjiang.

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    The government has acted quickly to block access to information. Authorities acknowledge that Internet service in Urumqi has been interrupted, but they do not say how long it will be out. They say the interruption was done legally, and is necessary to maintain social stability.
    In Beijing, the Twitter messaging system, which protesters in Iran recently used to report on police crackdowns there, has been disabled. And while cell phone connections in the Xinjiang capital, Urumqi, still operate, getting a call to the city, or making an international call from there, is proving difficult.

    Xiao Qiang teaches journalism at the University of California at Berkeley. He also edits China Digital Times, a round-up of Chinese-language content on the Internet.
    Internet is playing a bigger role this year,” Xiao noted. “Partially because what happened in Urumqi was immediately exposed by lots of cell-phone cameras, digital cameras, videos – there’s a lot of witness(es), people [who] immediately wrote and sent out video images on the Internet.”

    Internet gains importance

    Xiao compares what happened in Urumqi to the events last year in the capital of Tibet, Lhasa, when scores of Tibetans clashed with security forces there. He says Internet use in Urumqi is much more than in Lhasa.

    He says Chinese authorities immediately began removing all Internet references to the Urumqi protest, and blocking social networking sites.

    There are ways of getting around Web restrictions. Xiao says Chinese Internet users have been engaging in a tactic called “tomb digging.” Users on a bulletin board forum post an up-to-date response to an older post that mentions Xinjiang and has not yet been deleted.

    “It’s basically a covered-up way to discuss those banned issues, under the nose of the editors of those forums, and it could be very effective,” Xiao said.

    What caused violence?

    Xiao says the opinions on Internet forums are much more varied than those in official Chinese media. Some support the government and the use of force to crack down on chaos. But other users are mistrustful of the government’s handling of the situation and are more reflective about the cause of the violence.

    The Uighurs are a mostly Muslim ethnic group with cultural and linguistic ties to Central Asia. For years, many have complained that country’s ethnic majority, the Han, are taking over their traditional home, Xinjiang, in western China, and that they face government discrimination.

    University of Washington Chinese studies Professor David Bachman says the images of the crackdown he has seen show the use of force has been “extensive” and “in some ways merciless.” Despite the government’s criticism of the Internet, the wide dissemination of pictures like those also helps spread Beijing’s stern warning.

    “Clearly, the Chinese government is saying to Uighurs and to others in Xinjiang and to Tibetans and other minority groups, or for domestic protesters in the heart of China, that protests will be met with strict and harsh measures. Don’t even think about it,” Bachman said.

    Possible solution

    Bachman says cracking down – on both a restive minority and on public access to information – may solve short-term problems, but will only breed more resentment and opposition in the long run.

    He says there is no quick fix to the long-standing tensions between Han Chinese and Uighurs. He says any efforts to make the problem better, though, should first focus on deeper issues, such as trying to alleviate perceived imbalances, discrimination and inequality.

    Voa News