Alternative medicine

Alternative medicine covers a wide spectrum, from the credible, such as herbal medicines, to the ludicrous, such as healing by touching. Along the spectrum, the habits of us Mirpuris probably lie closer to the ludicrous end, as shown by the popularity of pirs, or faith healers.

Often those who visit pirs have vague, undefined symptoms, such as ‘tightness’ in the head or aching bones. Some people may well experience a reduction in symptoms after a visit to the pir, but this is more to do with dubious symptoms together with the mental reassurance which goes with visiting a pir, as distinct from a three-minute visit to a more bureaucratic NHS doctor.

In so far as pirs offer reassurance and comfort, there is nothing wrong with visiting them. They can, for example, be part of the disease management process. But to suggest that the intervention of a pir can affect a biochemical change in the body, and thus cure an illness, is ludicrous.

Attitudes to work

When I arrived in the office yesterday morning, I noticed something interesting. A cleaning lady, not far off from 60, had her leg bandaged up and was supported by a crutch. Yet she had come into work. After exchanging the normal Monday morning greetings, she explained what happened and was grateful that her employer had shown consideration by adjusting her duties. She seemed pleased by that.

She should really have been at home, yet her situation got me thinking about work and health and attitudes to them. I tried to imagine British Mirpuri and Pakistani women of a similar age- and indeed a large number of men of that age. When our people reach that age, they start complaining of health problems. Sometimes they are real, like heart disease. At other times, the ailments are undefined and unspecific- just severely aching bones, tiredness, breathlessness and the like. Heaven forbid that they should work. Those that do are often dismissed as wretched.

Ramadan

In the last week of Ramadan, it is well to do a sort of spiritual stock take. Has spirituality gone up, down or remained the same? I suspect in most cases it has made no difference, because, unfortunately, for most people fasting is no more than a ritual, albeit a very painful one. Few people understand the enormity of a month in which deprivation of bodily needs becomes the key to spiritual nourishment.

Abstaining from food and drink is only one aspect of Ramadan. The other crucial part is abstaining from other vices- like lying, back biting, hurting the feelings of others and waste and a litany of other vices. On all these accounts, people fail. I see evidence of these and other vices everywhere, with not even a special attempt being made to control them.

Of Monks and Lawyers

What do monks and lawyers have in common? At first sight, you may say very little. One group cultivates the spirit; the other gathers gold. In South Asia, though, they do have something in common: opposition to military dictatorship. Pakistani lawyers were out on the streets months before Burmese monks did the same. Both have been met with an iron fist.

Here the similarity ends. In Burma, the monks are the good guys, with whom Brown and Bush are happy to associate and to deliver homilies to their tormentors. In Pakistan, the lawyers are on the wrong side. They are opposing a good guy, our military man.

Let those Western leaders who like to sit on a pedestal to lecture the wrong sorts of dictators know that such ironies are not lost on people.

Depression

Depression, we are told by the World Health Organisation, is more disabling than angina, arthritis, asthma and diabetes. This may sound counter to what most people think, but it does raise the question, what is depression and what makes it a distinct illness? There is no shortage of definitions of depression. Extreme form of sadness is central to all.

I think three points need to be borne in mind in any discussion about depression.

First, it is an illness that has only relatively recently entered common parlance. I have a lucid memory stretching back to the late 1970s. Yet I do not recall common discussion of depression then. Now, over two decades later, it is discussed even in the villages of India and Pakistan. What has happened? Has depression increased, or have people found a single word to describe what were previously considered disparate symptoms, such as headaches, anxiety and sadness?

Second, depression has become a convenient and acceptable word to mask serious mental illness. What I mean is this: in some cases, what the person is suffering from is not depression, but a serious psychotic illness that affects the thought process. In other words, it is more respectable to admit to depression than to losing touch with reality.

Third, where the intense sadness is related to extreme life events, for example bereavement, loss of job and loss of house all occurring at once, can that be regarded as illness? Is it not normal to have extreme reactions to extreme events? In some cases, then ‘depression’ is not an illness but a reaction to life events. It is important to know this, because the solution lies in tackling the problems, not in taking tablets or making the person feel better when objectively their life situation has little to make them feel good about.

So I would say the medical term depression should be reserved for cases where extreme sadness is not based on life events or is totally out of proportion to any problems and where the thought process remains intact.

Vartan-bhanji

My English friends are fascinated by the concept of vartan-bhanji, the custom of reciprocated gift giving. Although they engage in gift giving and receiving with close family- brothers, sisters, parents, grandparents, nephews, nieces etc- they are surprised to learn that the vartan-bhanji extends to those people from the extended family with whom you have only a very tenuous link. They are also surprised by the occasions which prompt the need to make a gift to comparatively distant relatives: marriage, the birth of a son, the arrival of someone from Pakistan and weddings (and the various customs that, over an extended period of time, take place during a wedding).

Vartan-bhanji is more than just gift giving. It is a formal process that cements extended family relations. To not engage in vartan-bhanji, or not to reciprocate a previously received gift when the occasion demands, is to express displeasure at the other person and to sever links with them. And these are noticed by others. At weddings, for example, people will notice if a certain family is not present and will enquire about the reason.

Like many other customs, vartan-bhanji is also coming under a strain in the cut and thrust of urban UK living, where extended families can often be separated by hundreds of miles. As a result, the occasions that prompt the need to make a gift are gradually contracting.

“Porcupines in winter”

“Porcupines in winter”, published by the Young Foundation, is an interesting collection of short essays that sketch out the state of the relationships that characterise contemporary British life and society. There are portraits of places and of relationships between people. It rewards reading- even if you are not an avid reader. The essays are very short.

‘Porcupines in winter’ is also an apt metaphor for the state of us British Mirpuris. For porcupines are those prickly creatures. In winter, when they huddle together too close, they begin to prickle each other and therefore have to ease off a little. Then, feeling the cold, they huddle together yet more, until they prickle each other again. It is a constant struggle to find a happy medium between stifling closeness and being totally isolated.

'Law-abiding majority' myth

A study by Keele University found that over 60% of people admit to committing ‘minor’ offences, either against the government, their employers or against businesses. This includes things like pilfering things from work, lying on forms or exaggerating insurance claims. I don’t find these findings in the least surprising and I suspect neither does anyone else. The ‘law-abiding majority’ is a myth that politicians, particularly in democratic countries, have to sustain. After all, would you vote for a politician who called you a crook? Vote me you crooks!

Reserved parking spaces

On a short residential street, I recently counted 25 disabled parking spaces marked outside houses. There could not have been much more than 200 houses in total on the street. The street is in an area where parking is in general a huge problem because of shoppers visiting the adjacent high street (and it’s a popular shopping area with people coming from all over England) and because in general the families living on this and similar streets are large, with often 2 or 3 cars per household.

You’ve probably guessed what I am trying to get at. If you extrapolate the 25 spaces to a national level that would mean well over 10% of the population has some form of mobility disability, which does not sound credible. People are, in other words, creatively using disability rules and regulations to get over parking problems. Often there is some form of legally defined disability in the household, but its mobility implications are exaggerated or made up. In some cases, I have seen households given disabled parking spaces even though there is no one in the household with a visible disability.

Being given a reserved parking space outside your house is a form of welfare, and like other elements of welfare it invites abuse. Cash benefits, for example, invite the vice of sloth, by making you think twice before accepting a job that would make you a mere £20 a week better off. They invite lies by making you under-declare income and savings or, the flipside of this, they discourage frugality lest any savings affect your benefit entitlements. So the right to a reserved parking space outside your house encourages people to exaggerate minor problems, or make them up altogether, and to redefine themselves or family members as disabled.

Hypocrisy

I reckon hypocrisy must be the worst vice there is. It is so because when you witness too much of it, it makes you lose faith. How are you to feel when people who claim to be straight forward, whiter than whiter, end up telling lies about anything and everything? How should we feel when men (it is mostly men) of spirituality are found to have been involved in illicit sexual liaisons? The one can affect your faith in democracy and the other your faith in religion.

It is, however, hypocrisy closer to our own community- among British Pakistanis and Mirpuris- that I want to dwell on. It is in evidence everywhere. During the course of one weekend, I saw many instances of it.

We never tire of preaching 'sabr', or patience. It has a high status as a virtue. But alas our actions belie it. Every day I see people from our community, adults as well as youngsters, bearded as well clean shaven, who cannot wait patiently in a queue. They either just brazenly walk to the front, or absent-mindedly pretend they cannot work out where the queue begins. They are rarely challenged.

I don't know what proportion of faith patience constitutes, but it is well known that cleanliness is half of our faith. So how do we fare on that count? Our streets are the dirtiest. I see not only youngsters, high on the fire of youth, littering, but even mature people making their rubbish the problem of society. Every morning, when I leave for work, the cleaner is busy cleaning the streets. When I get back in the evening, it is as if he might as well not have bothered.

But surely, given our puritanical outlook, we are more reserved when it comes to anything to do with sex? Yet even here facts belie theory. Walk along any local high street in one of these areas and note how the young guys- and some times not so young- eye up and stare at the ladies with lascivious intent.

Blogging

I've been absent from blogosphere for a few months. Some research recently suggested that the average blog lasts around 8 months, before the enthusiasm of the writer dies down. I think I've done well by that standard, having started in 2004. Nevertheless, I hope to be able to start again in the next few days.

Politics of fear

On Sunday, I bumped into George Galloway on the Stratford Road. Yesterday evening, the door bell rang and who should be there but the local Labour MP. He is clearly startled by the reception Galloway receives, as well as by the near miss of 2005, when his huge majority was nearly overturned by the Respect candidate.

What I find bizarre is that the canvassers did not introduce themselves as Labour, but gave the impression that they were campaigning against a local sore point, the building of the new, PFI mental health facility just down the road. The local area has around 2000 mental health service users, around 200 of whom require some residential treatment during the year. The new hospital will have a 20 bed facility.

While the MP was talking with someone else, the labour party foot soldier accompanying the MP claimed it would be a secure mental health facility. I was insistent it would not, as I had read about the project in the local mental trust’s annual report. On this point the foot soldier was contradicted by the MP, who admitted it would not be a secure unit. It dawned on me that the Labour campaigners were using scare tactics to win votes and that many people, out of fear, would believe them.

With that cleared, the MP shook my hand and walked away. I told the local campaigner I would not vote Labour, because of the war and because the local MP was not pro-active, hardly spoke in Parliament and certainly did not represent the views of his constituents. To this the local campaigner replied, sotto voce, ‘We’ll get rid of him next time’.

Local election fever time....

It’s local election fever again in Birmingham. In areas with a large number of Pakistanis, there is evidence aplenty: from door-to-door campaigners to posters in windows. In other areas, you wouldn’t get so much as a cryptic clue that an election is looming.

Yesterday, the penultimate Sunday before the election, saw some feverish campaigning by most of the parties, in particular Galloway’s Respect and the local People’s Justice Party (the latter comprising mainly of retired/ nigh-retired Pakistani men who have failed to make headway in other parties). Galloway was himself out campaigning. As I strolled out for my Sunday walk along the Stratford Rd, who should I bump into but the intrepid Galloway himself, hugging everyone in sight (yes, even I got a hug).

A sizeable crowd gathered outside a hardware store, so a mic was thrust into Galloway’s hand to make an impromptu address. In his strong, macho accent, he asked people to vote Respect and throw out the Labour donkeys (he made a braying sound, on which there was thunderous laughter among the Pakistani ladies who probably didn’t understand what he was saying). He talked about local problems, from parking to crime and rats. Not able to resist a political jibe, he said we need to get rid of the two-legged variety of the latter as well. Standing next to him was Salma Yaqoob, the articulate young councillor who, in the 2005 general election, very nearly unseated a Labour MP who had a majority of Himalayan proportions. Galloway clearly has an eye on the parliamentary seat- hence the grassroots support building visit.

Elsewhere, I don’t think this will be a disaster for Labour in the Springfield and Sparkbrook wards. That is not because people love Blair- in fact even Labour voters hate him intensely. Rather, there is the phenomena of ‘biradriasm’ (clan identity) at play. Labour candidates hail from the same part of Mirpur, and belong to the same caste as, a large number of the voters in the area. For many people I have spoken to, that counts as more. They are keen to stress this and utter an expletive directed at the national Labour party in the same breath.

Curiously, I didn’t see any posters in windows in Small Heath, even though there was plenty of campaigning going on. My guess is that people are scared- there was a mini-riot at an election some years ago and people are afraid of having there windows done in. Who said the public is disillusioned and disengaged?

Experts

Aren't the beaming tele-experts who comment on the plight of the 15 sailors captured by Iran irritating? They analyse and comment on every movement, every mannerism, every word of the captives and then inform us that they are quite clearly stressed, unhappy and making statements under duress. What wisdom. We were ignorant before the experts told us all this; we thought they were just having a laugh. For sharing these pearls, the experts are no doubt handsomely rewarded.

On a more serious note, there is no such commentary by the tele-genic types on the plight of those in Western custody, whether in Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo or elswhere. Those who do raise concerns about them can be dismissed as bleeding hearts.

The problem with the public sector is…

There are a number of issues. First comes indecision and lack of urgency about anything. Projects run on for ever; no one knows how they are going. Meanwhile, we spend money, time and effort duplicating whatever the project is trying to achieve. Sometimes there are similar projects, running at the same time, uncoordinated and pulling in different directions.

Another malady is change for change’s sake, often packaged and sold as a brand spanking new approach to doing things that will revolutionise work practices. In reality it is nothing of the sort. Bureaucrats and quangocrats get bored easily with doing the same thing over and again. So they make a ‘business case’ for a new way of doing things. After many meetings, train journeys and lunches, the new way is approved and those lower down the order are rescued from ennui for another year by the order to start implementing the new way.

But then a problem arises. The higher ups, having written, discussed and approved the new way of doing things, begin to feel bored just sitting there monitoring the lower downs. Some of them move onto newer pastures, which are ripe for new ‘initiatives.’ Others stay and come up with more new ways of doing things; and so the bureaucratic merry-go-round of initiatives continues. If it ain’t broke, fix it any way!

Then there is the empire building and backyard protecting. Quangocrats forget that they are publicly funded, with a moral duty, if not always a clear legal one, to the taxpayers. If something can be done more efficiently if delivered centrally (e.g. a software package to automate administration), why argue against it? We have to be careful here. Often there is no direct arguing against. Instead, there are vague distinctions made to show how we are different, how the solution being offered centrally will not meet our needs. The sky will fall in if a central solution is imposed.

Crowning all this is the perpetual existential threat, particularly to Quangos. They make easy picking when HM Opposition is shouting waste and bureaucracy. When there is a problem, create a quango to deal with it; when bloated bureaucracy is the problem, chop the quango. Politicians win both ways.

All this arises, I think, because much of the daily work of bureaucrats and quangocrats lacks a convincing raison de etre. Doctors and nurses tend the sick, teachers impart knowledge and firemen extinguish fires. Factory workers make things that are sold. There is dignity and gratification in that. Quangocrats don’t do anything that makes one jot of a difference to people. Some work extremely hard, travel the length and breadth of the country and develop vast networks (always useful when turbulence strikes). But to most people, they make no difference.

The educational divide

As of 15 January of this year, 221,523 females had applied for full-time university undergraduate courses, as against 173,784 males. We do not yet know how many of these have been accepted on the courses, but for the purposes of this blog I want to assume that the male-female ratio will remain the same. The trend of recent years is certainly a growing gulf between the number of male and female applicants.

What does this mean? It means the future is feminine:

• On the assumption that graduates earn more than non-graduates, the divide between the rich and the poor, between the well off and the less well off, could in future reflect a sex divide.
• If intellectual compatibility and equality is necessary for a happy marriage, then women could be short of suitable partners to marry. Similarly, if people in general marry from the same social class as themselves, then the sex-cum-class divide described above will further restrict the choice of marriage partners. Settling down mellows people; with all those unmarried and unattached men, there will be a lot unchecked testosterone around, which could quite easily channel into other areas, like crime, alcohol, drugs and even terrorism.
• More women will come to occupy positions of influence. Will that mean that what have traditionally been regarded as feminine values- such as receptiveness, warmth, understanding, collegiality, cooperation, ‘motherliness’- become the dominant values in society? If so, the problem above about unchecked testosterone can be avoided.
• I wonder what will happen to the birth rate and population level. Will more and more women come to delay or postpone starting families, as they progress with their careers?

State of language

In a refreshing change from the text-speak led attrition of language, the nation’s vocabulary has increased by one in recent days. ‘Mastication for the nation’ is the catchline of an advert for a new chewing gum. It is another thing, of course, that the nation’s vocabulary should increase as a result of such trivial activity as munching on chewing gum. Surely the nation has better things to do and learn from?

The point of my blog today is to bemoan the state of language. Two things have happened to language. First, any hint of using posh or long words is shunned, on grounds of arrogance, snobbery or inaccessibility. This is related to the general trend of the decline of learning for learning’s sake, and its replacement with such instrumentalism as widening participation (in itself a good thing), ‘bite-sized learning’, the dominance of easy, marketing speak-words over heavy text ones and the general preference for imagery, where words play only a supporting role. Yet life is complex: only a rich variety of words can capture the nuances of life. There is also a complex relationship between words and thoughts: it’s not a one way process of thoughts issuing in words. The ready availability of words helps to shape thoughts.

Another modern phenomenon is the rise of pre-packaged words. Indeed, there are templates for communicating anything: you just fill in the blanks. Related to this is the consultant-speak pap that keeps reappearing in different forms: enhance, diversity, ‘going forward’, value-added, knowledge management, customers (to describe taxpayers and students), etc.

Happiness

We tend in general to experience pain and discomfort more than their opposites, intense, orgasmic pleasure, that pervades everything in our being. Whether derived from sexual fusion or some other pleasure enhancing intervention, such experiences are inevitably short lived. On the other hand, the sense of general happiness of circumstances, where life, family, career, etc, are in equilibrium, is very often not on the surface and requires some reflection to bring it out.

So what does this mean? It means we become used to an easy existence and take it for granted. Our threshold for enduring minor inconveniences is thereby lowered. That, primarily, for me explains why a huge increase in living standards has not translated into an equally huge increase in happiness. It never will- we adapt.

One reason why we are not happy is because we compare ourselves to others who are better off, financially or in other ways, than us. Once we have achieved what those others have, we begin to compare ourselves to yet others who have yet more. We may start off by comparing our situation with the person down the road who lives in a semi-detached and has a two-year old car, as against our terraced and jalopy. We begin to earn more and move to a semi and buy a better car, but then another person down the road has a sports car and lives in a detached house. And so on it continues- a constant state of anxiety and restlessness.

Dress and liberty

There has been a lot of talk about how we Muslims dress. Perhaps we are being loosened up for some legislative intervention. Perhaps wearing the veil will be banned in education and, in the long term, in other public buildings. Perhaps it will also be banned while driving, on the health and safety pretext that it can interfere with the peripheral vision. We will just have to wait and see- by turning up the heat in the debate, perhaps some people hope that they will be able to influence behaviour and avoid the need for intervention.

I know at least 3 people who changed how they dressed after July 2005. A number of others altered their sartorial preference after Straw’s anti-veil outburst last year. The debate has focussed on the veil, but many men have also donned their shirts and trousers and discreetly retired their shalwar kameez suits. Some have also trimmed their beards; others, torn between cultures, are trimming their beards in stages, so that eventually it will cease to exist, by which time they hope no one will notice.

All this is a far cry from the case for liberty presented in John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty. Mill argued that the only reason society should intervene in regulating behaviour is to prevent ‘harm’ to others. Over their own bodies, individuals are sovereign. As long as the harm to others principle is borne in mind, people could be as eccentric and offbeat as they wished. In fact, Mill argues, eccentricity is a good thing. A vibrantly liberal society depends on such difference.

Now Mill’s essay is elegant and powerful. But the word ‘harm’ is slippery It can be applied to whatever you like. Politicians can argue that the shalwar kameez, or the veil, ‘harms’ integration (just as in some traditional societies conservatives argue that westernisation harms society). Anything that goes against your idea of how society should be organised can be regarded as ‘harmful’. Yet the whole idea of liberty is to keep the concept of harm limited. If harm is continuously expanded- for example to include how you dress- then liberty becomes an empty phrase. It no longer becomes the default position, but whatever can be saved from the ever expanding domain of regulation. For Mill, liberty was definitely a default position.

Law and psychology: creating needs

Figures from the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service show that after law, psychology is the most popular subject. As of 15 January, 77,040 people had applied to study psychology later in the year- an increase of 3.9% from last year. Perhaps that explains why we are becoming an increasingly litigious and therapeutic society. The lawyers and psychologist coming from the universities need something to do.

There is more than a modicum of truth in this apparently simplistic link. Two examples will suffice to show what I mean.

An acquaintance was recently stopped in the street by a clever ‘personal injury claims’ salesman from a law firm. My acquaintance has never had an industrial accident, but, after a long discussion, was persuaded by the salesman to attend a private medical examination. The examination would test things like hearing, sight, agility etc. If anything was found lacking, an attempt would be made to link the deficit with the various jobs this person had done in his life by putting in a personal injury claim. My acquaintance cancelled the appointment, but you can see my point- lawyers putting in dubious claims to create work and money for themselves.

The second example is less dramatic, but real enough. In every job I have started, the induction has included a bit about the availability of counselling. This may sound innocuous enough, but the omnipresence of counselling does suggest that, by default, we are now being considered as weak and unable to cope. After all, the induction said nothing about the local cancer specialist.