Category: United Kingdom

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The Right Wing Echo Chamber are using the Henry Nowak murder as evidence that DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) is not only bad, but it also is deadly. For those who don’t know about the Henry Nowak case here is a brief rundown of the events. Vickrum Digwa, a Sikh man living in Southhampton UK, stabbed Henry Nowak, an 18 year old university student. Digwa’s brother called police and told them that Nowak had attacked his brother for racially motivated reasons. When police arrived they handcuffed Nowak who repeatedly told them he was wounded. An ambulance was called but unfortunately to late to save Nowak.

The key discussion going on is that the police were so infected by DEI training that they allowed a White man to die because they believed the Sikh man over the White man thus causing the police to mistreat Nowak and, for this, DEI is responsible for Nowak’s death.

It is depressing that rabble rousers are using this unfortunate incident as a call to action. The facts don’t support their contention.

Digwa’s family made the first contact with the police. They claimed that Nowak had made racists comments before attacking Digwa. The police were looking for a violent man. When the Police arrived, Digwa and his family was able to tell their story first. Thinking they had a potentially violent person, they handcuffed Nowak. This is a common police practice. Police handcuff dead people, particularly if the person is suspected of a violent crime. This is for the protection of the police. A wounded person can still be violent.

Once the police learned more about Nowak’s wounds, his handcuffs were removed and his wounds attended to. Unfortunately, all this came to late for Nowak who died at the scene. The media accounts make this time lapse seem like a long time. It wasn’t. From the police handcuffing Nowak to the police administering first aid, took somewhere in the neighborhood of 2 minutes.

How DEI killed Nowak though somehow eludes me. The cops weren’t saying we have to believe the Digwa’s because they are Sikhs and ignore the wounded screams of Nowak because he was White. The police were acting on the information that the Digwa’s first provided and when they saw Nowak’s condition, they changed their tack.

It it makes no sense, as Konstantin Kisin does in the above linked article, to compare it to the George Floyd murder in Minneapolis. Floyd was arrested by cops who then used holds that were known to be dangerous when applied and have subsequently been banned. The cop’s actions were responsible for Floyd’s eventual death.

Lets be clear — the police were in no way involved in the murder of Nowak. Digwa stabbed Nowak. Digwa then lied to the police about Nowak’s and failed to inform the cops he had stabbed Nowak. As the police learned more, they released Nowak and worked to save his life. Digwa lies are the problem here and not DEI. The police had to traverse this chaotic situation and the Digwa family’s misinformation and rather quickly came to the right conclusion.

We live with imperfect systems. They will always be imperfect. Every time terrible things like this happen, they should be investigated and any information that can improve police procedures should be made. These are reasonable actions in the face of this or any tragedy. On the other hand, Farage is taking advantage of this tragedy to make dubious claims about the mistreatment of the Whites which is both dangerous and unwise. Sowing discord is apt to create even more discord and division which, I am afraid, is the actual reason Farage has latched onto this particular case.

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The media was aghast at British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s gaffe in a speech. His big mistake was saying sausages instead of hostages. So what? Any person who gives speeches in front of the public is going to occasionally make a mistake. Starmer caught it immediately and corrected it.

As far as being newsworthy, not so much going on there. It could have been mentioned in a report about the speech but the headlines are screaming gaffe which made his mistake sound like much more than a mistaken word choice. So, readers thinking that Starmer must have really screwed the pooch here, read the damn thing thinking this must be good.

It wasn’t. It was a mostly an article about a mundane political speech at a Labour Party conference. The only thing newsworthy I got out of it was Starmer’s gaffe which should hardly even counts as a gaffe. What troubling circumstances occurred because of this error? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Starmer was momentarily embarrassed over a small mistake. Yet headlines everywhere were talking about it like something earth shattering occurred.

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Mr Bates vs the Post Office documents the ongoing scandal between the British Post Office and their subpostmasters. First the title is far from sexy. I am not sure how the makers of this television series could have spiced up the title because this part 4 part series is far more absorbing than the title suggest. Perhaps this is deliberate given that this is about real people involved in real work using the tools common to the modern business workplace. The horror is real because the problem is so familiar — who hasn’t become frustrated with malfunctioning computer software and helplines that give no help.

Bates (Toby Jones) is a subpostmaster in Wales who runs into trouble when he is unable to balance his books with the Post Office’s computer’s software. Instead of signing off on the incorrect data, Bates refuses to sign off and refuses to make up the difference as his Post Office contract requires. The Post Office ends his contract letting him think that the is the only one to be having this trouble. It is only later that he finds out that he is one of many subpostmaster’s having a similar problem.

Once he learns that other subpostmasters are having the same problem, he tries to right this wrong. Initially believing that all the Post Office needed was data to prove his case but after hearing numerous stories of the Post Office management bringing to trial his fellow subpostmasters does he realized that something more nefarious is going on — the deliberate destruction of Post Office workers in order to protect the reputation and the profits of the Post office. Thus begins his twenty year (and it is still ongoing) struggle for justice.

It is hard to believe that a story about malfunctioning software, indifferent and arrogant business managers could be so engrossing but it is. I binged watched 3 of 4 episodes in one night and I would have watched the 4th on that same night if it had been possible instead I had to wait a week for the last episode. It is a highly relatable series. The horrors are horrors of the every day man and woman. Loosing everything to fight a huge corporation who have the resources to grind a person down until they will admit to anything to make the whole thing go away.

The Post Office management are the perfect bureaucratic villains. Sighting rules and contracts as reasons for their ruthless handling of the subpostmasters and spouting technobabble when people question their computer systems. Whenever any one of them says “our system is robust,” you know that they haven’t a clue about the problems with their system. They are reading from a script from their legal department. They surrendered their humanity for bonuses and prestige and cling mechanically to a confidence in Fujitsu’s Horizon software long after the problems with the system are evident. It would be almost tragic if they had not been so arrogant.

Which brings us to the Fujitsu’s Horizon computer system. Like HAL in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001, every time the camera hones in on the Horizon hardware I got a sense of doom. It seems innocent enough but the blinking lights, the menacing cold machine is trouble but I can’t quite explain why. But it can’t be wrong, right? It is a machine. A machine that mindlessly pours out incorrect data that makes no sense to the human beings looking at it and offering no explanation on how it got it but requiring that the users have complete obedience to the information it created. Because Horizon is a robust system. How can anyone argue with that?

This is an odd television story where the story trumps everything else. Everything is done well (Acting, Production) but if there was an actor reading the script in front of an empty canvass, I would have found the story compelling because it is highlighting a problem we see on a much smaller scale in our own lives. How human beings get caught in a tangle of false confidence in infallible technology and unthinking bureaucracy. The show is horrible because you can imagine yourself getting caught up in such a tangle and believable because we see these problems every day. This is must see television.