Slow News Day

Postscript

In a thrilling post-script to my blog on ethical capitalism, I recently had an opportunity to try out this theory for real. Walking back home from dinner in Calcutta we met a Bengali man called Steven. Steven was a ‘pavement dweller’, English speaking and a Christian. He told me a potentially dubious story about his family being killed in a car crash and the money and employment that should have been left to him being taken away by unscrupulous extended family members who now have nothing to do with him.

Steven wanted to take us on a tour of Calcutta. This is not unusual; it’s a fairly common ask of people here. Usually they are rickshaw drivers but sometimes, like Steven, they are on foot. It’s also a bit of a minor ruse - you take people on a shitty tour and then embarrass them into paying too much. Nevertheless, without thinking about this blog, I thought it could be interesting to see where Steven took us.

I asked him how much he charged and he told me it was between me and my God. 

The next day we went on the tour - taking in the flower markets, the burning ghats (a public crematorium), Mother Teresa’s orphanages and the Eden Gardens. When it came to the end of the tour I paid Steven about $12 (NZ) - about the same as we had paid elsewhere for similar tours and a decent amount of money for a half day’s work here.

I also told him that if he had a mobile phone number I could help him set up a walking tours website that might see him earn more regular money in the long run.

Steven did not seem to understand what I meant and stormed off after telling us his usual rate is $50 (NZ) an hour, which is obviously ludicrous.

The next day Emma Joy and I saw him getting a cut-throat shave on the side of the road. He beckoned me over and started shouting at me.

“What you paid me yesterday was peanuts! It’s a matter of principle,” he shouted.

We hurried off, although I kind of wanted to tell him that he was the one who lacked principles. It’s a shame as I was kind of interested in how the site might pan out and had gotten on with Steven during our tour.

Brief Encounters in India

It’s easy on a trip this long to start to feel like you’re not ‘doing’ enough. Not visiting enough temples, seeing enough clay pots in museums (ever noticed how many clay pots there are in museums?!) or engaging enough in ‘cultural’ experiences. To be honest, both James and I get ‘templed out’ very quickly. A clay pot is a clay pot. And the one actual cultural performance we have been to was interminable (luckily we only picked the two hour ‘tourist’ version and not the dusk-till-dawn real thing).

But, not surprisingly, what’s most interesting to me are the people we are seeing and meeting. In India especially, people are so confident and keen to talk to us and find out about us, where I think Westerners are more likely to look but not ask.

On our train from Kochi to Varkala a couple of weeks ago we met Deepu.

Deepu was 15, nearly 16 years old, but spoke with us like he was our age. He has just finished Year 10. When he leaves school he wants to study aeronautical engineering, at the University of Edinburgh. He knows all about Edinburgh, having read up on everything, and even knew about the comedy festival. Deepu doesn’t like hot climates and therefore loves Bangalore, which is a little cooler, being 1000m above sea level. He asked where we were going and I told him we were off to Varkala, to the beach. He’d never heard of Varkala, nor of Benaulim or Palolem, two other beaches we’d stayed at in Goa. He was interested in the sea. He asked James if he could swim. He seemed to think I was doing a tour of India going to only beaches, and asked if my guidebook was a guide to the beaches. He was most fascinated to find out that in fact ‘everything’ was in there. Despite his maturity, Deepu lit up like a child when he talked about cricket. He and James spoke at length about their favourite cricketers and their opinions on the Indian Premier League currently taking place.

On the same train we met Harishma. He was a jewellery salesman, 22 years old and recently married to a 24-year-old eye doctor. She doesn’t work now that she is married; he asked her if she wanted to, but she prefers to be a housewife. He showed us a photo of her - she was absolutely stunning. “She’s much better than me”, he told us. Harishma mostly directed his conversation towards James. He seemed amused by marriage and when he spoke about it he was redolent of a teenage boy. He told us how different his life was now; how before he was free to do as he pleased whereas now he must answer to his wife, inform her where he is all the time. Harishma travelled with a young man whom he referred to as his ‘staff’, who discarded his rubbish for him, got things out of his stowed luggage for him when told, and, mortifyingly for James and I, went and bought us bottled water at Harishma’s instruction after we’d mentioned in passing that we were thirsty.

Harishma’s friend was killed in the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks, where gunmen ran riot through the city and murdered 172 people. This was a man who apparently never left his office during the day, but on this one day had gone down to the street for lunch. He had become engaged to his childhood sweetheart a week before he was killed. His fiancee has not spoken since the day of his death.

I have felt scared in India, twice, like never before. Once was stupid. We were in a mall and someone dropped something on a lower floor that smacked loudly onto the tiles, the sound reverberating up the central space to where we were. At the same moment, someone screamed - probably a little girl, screaming as little girls do. My heart raced and my legs started shaking; fight or flight in action. Logically I knew a split second later that it was nothing, but my slightly on-edge brain had jumped to what seemed directly afterwards like a ridiculous conclusion. I was embarrassed, and shaken.

The second time was fully justified. On a forty minute drive from Palolem beach to the train station in the dark, we had so many near-death brushes that I cried. The traffic here never ceases to amaze and scare me. Head-on collisions are practically invited by most drivers on a daily basis; how they don’t actually happen more often is beyond me. In Bangalore, we were undertaking a 4WD in a tuk tuk when it turned left onto us and crushed the tuk tuk up against a metal fence. We were ok and both 4WD and tuk tuk continued driving as if nothing had happened.

I’ve also been uncomfortable here like never before, both in a physical and social sense; though those experiences have only served to show me what a charmed life I lead. A twelve hour overnight train journey where we had to sleep on the floor had me indignant and irritated, until I gave myself a good metaphorical kick in the arse and got on with it.

Yesterday, we used all our powers of patience and politeness before kind of losing it with a kid trying to sell us boxes of juice. It was so silly it was funny, him putting the boxes beside us or in our bag and us giving them back to him over and over, as he put on his best sad face and repeated “Please sir, please madam, take one” for more than ten minutes. Were we right or wrong to refuse so profusely when it would have cost less than a dollar to just buy them both? Our theory after a couple of minutes was that if we gave in we would simply have been teaching him that if you pester long enough, people will give in. But saying that now, it sounds uncomfortably like the unspoken rule not to feed any of the dogs so as not to encourage them to beg.

I have littered in India. Not directly. I saw someone on the train get up after their meal and come back to their seat without their meal tray, so went in the same direction assuming there must be a bin between the carriages. I couldn’t see a bin. I asked a man who was sitting there where it was. He looked at me like I was a little simple and indicated that I should throw it out of the train. “Oh, I can’t do that!”, I told him, and went to take it back with me so I could discard it later at the station. He took it and threw it out for me.

Interestingly, go one class up on the trains and bins are available right where you’d expect them.

We have brought the game of Scrabble to the masses, just by quietly sitting and playing it. Wherever we go, people come and sit with us while we play and we explain the rules, in varying degrees of simple and broken English, or in fluent English in many cases. One man was amazed to hear that you can buy Scrabble in India. The little boy who told us he was thirteen when he was clearly ten or under spoke to us very well about the game, my Reader (he wanted to know how much it cost) and our camera. We showed him the picture of the smallest lizard either of us have ever seen - the size of a tadpole - found in James’s pants the other day (not being worn at the time – and no ‘tiny-pants-lizard’ jokes please).

Though there’s no denying that this is an awe-inspiring place, on a day to day basis, I don’t feel like I’m walking around in awe of everything.

I’m just enjoying ‘life’ in India.

Doing a little, and seeing a lot.

EJA

What does ethical Capitalism really entail?

Being down and out in South East Asia can sometimes mean begging or prostitution (as in any country in the world), but in a land built on numerous strata of poverty there are many other lines of work that people take to lift themselves from between a rock and a hard place.

I don’t know the statistics, and I cannot find them quickly online, but I would wager that per capita, South East Asia (and other regions of similar levels of economic development) has more sole traders and small businesses than its Western counterparts by some distance.

At night in all the major cities, charcoal fires spring up, soon surrounded by metal vats of soup, plastic bowls of herbs, fast grilling fish and seafood, rows of ducks with heads still on hanging limply to the floor, and some of the tiniest seats and tables known to mankind.

For the reasonably brave-hearted this is usually where you can get your best food; it’s certainly the cheapest. Numerous others make their living from selling fruit, vegetables, fish or meat from thriving city markets.

Every town is plied by numerous tuk tuk, jumbo, cyclo, and soengthaew drivers; if there is water there are boatmen and if there is rainforest there are machete wielding guides. 

While men dominate the field of transport, street food seems to be a shared affair; women often act as small mobile shops, carrying improbably heavy loads around congested streets and bargaining hard over a bag of pineapple or a triptych of slightly stale doughnuts.

While in Hanoi, Emma Joy and I visited the Women’s Museum and watched a video about the lives of these women. Most come from the countryside, as work is only widely available there during the harvest. If their husbands are alive at all, they are too sick, lazy or unwilling to diversify to bring in a decent income themselves and consequently the women have little choice but to move to the city. They face gruelling days that start in the early hours of the morning and end late at night; earning scraps of money that keep their children fed, clothed and hopefully educated. They are some of the most hardworking people I have ever come across.

• Interesting read - worldwide statistics about street vendors
• The Women’s Museum has an online exhibit about street vendors
• Stupid tourists - beware the evil street vendors!

They are often derided by tourists as they can be a bit pushy (often a case of the language barrier getting in the way of decent communication - I have since tried to be way more respectful of these people and occasionally buy the odd piece of fruit or doughnut). The evening after we visited the museum we met the woman below, who kind of kicked off the idea for this blog. Rather than selling the usual stuff, which a lot of tourists routinely say no to, she approached Emma Joy and I and let us carry the stick apparatus the vendors use to carry their wares so we could take a photo. She asked us for about one US dollar for the privilege - which is a fair whack in Vietnam, but in the big scheme of things, peanuts.

(It has to be said that not all tourists share this view - there’s a worryingly ubiquitous breed of skin-flint traveller who gets outraged at paying an extra 50 cents here or there and brushes past local people selling stuff as if they don’t exist, or talk rudely to them as if they are sub-human. These people are seriously missing out on life! You do get hassled a lot in most Asian countries but it doesn’t cost anything to just smile and say ‘no thank you!’)

Anyway, the point is she had branched out a bit from selling fruit because she had realised there was a bit of a niche market that would earn her extra cash (she wasn’t alone in this of course, lots (but not all) of the street vendors in Hanoi do this). It was pure capitalism at work - making money out of nothing! The trade was a little bit of her time in return for satiating the desire of two slightly tipsy tourists to look like a street hawker.

I’ll call this the capitalism of ingenuity.

Why is it important?

We hear a lot in these post-GFC days about ethical capitalism. You can’t move in some Western democracies without being accidentally sexually harassed by a caring conservative.  Lots of us are looking for a way to return to the way we lived while things were booming, but we don’t want to look too ostentatious about it. It’s possibly the sole explanation for Glamping and similar things like the sudden trendiness for making your own soap/detergent/compost. They are all worthwile and fun things in themselves - but lifestyle magazine editors the world round have gone and stamped them with their ‘glamour’ glitter stamps and ruined things entirely for genuine eco-warriors across the world.

Anyway - it all boils down to either of two mutually inclusive edicts:

1) We want to make lots of money - and look like we actually care

2) We want to make lots of money and actually care at the same time

Let’s assume we are all genuine and want to genuinely give a shit and therefore edict 2 is true in and of itself. For capitalism to have any future in this hypothetical, utopian society the trickle down effect actually has to work. More of a splash down.

But for this to happen we have to develop systems of ownership that do not predominantly view capital as monetary or asset-based. In other words, we require those with the money to act altruistically, take a smaller share of the pie and allow those that work for them to take a greater share. The capital the workers are putting in may not be financial; it may be intellectual, or effort based - the important thing though is that it must to some degree carry as much weight as cold hard cash.

We could call this John Lewis world.

This sort of thinking is not new - it is called Human Development Theory and is pretty well explained in this Wikipedia article.

If this potentially more equitable world is to be realised, the way we talk about capital would have to radically changed. Things may have changed in the last ten years - but when I did economics at Uni, capital was a pretty standard thing and there was not much debate (at undergraduate level at least) of what it really constituted. Yes, as I have written above, there are concepts such as Human Development Theory - but these are not exactly part of our everyday vernacular. People enact parts of this theory every single day of course, but they aren’t really aware that they are doing it. The average Black Cab driver is exercising a powerful form of intellectual capital (and branding, of course, with the distinctive shape and look of his vehicle) when they exploit “the knowledge” and charges a premium rate as a consequence. However, I have never overhead a Black Cab driver describing “the knowledge” as an inherent competitive advantage over other taxi drivers in a highly competitive market.

The point I am trying to make, I think, is that - for an ethical capitalist society to work properly the general population needs to know a lot more about how capitalism works, what they personally bring to the table, how much that is worth and how to extract genuine and fair reparation for their contribution. If we analysed and then developed most businesses along these lines my guess is that you would quickly see the disappearance of grotesquely high CEO payments that are way out of line with the salaries of the people that provide expertise and labour at the production end of a company.

What has this got to do with all the small business owners and sole traders in South East Asia?

Not all tuk-tuk drivers, rickshaw tour operators, hawkers and street food sellers are alike. Some clearly do a lot better than others. I have spent some time thinking about what sets apart the people that seem to do well from the people that seem to do poorly and with a bit of poetic license I think the differences can be described in terms of alternative forms of capital.

Take the average tuk-tuk driver. All his competitors have a tuk-tuk - so in a competitive market there is not a lot to divide him from his competitors in terms of the physical product he offers. That said, you do see some drivers with colourfully decorated vehicles or pumping out terrible Eurotrash music, which is presumably an attempt to stand out from the crowd.

Tuk-tuk drivers also operate in three distinct markets - local taxi-based transport, carrying goods as couriers and ferrying around tourists. I can’t claim to be an expert on those first two markets, but as someone who was involved in his first (minor) tuk-tuk crash a couple of weeks ago and who has spent a good period of his life travelling and bartering with these guys, I feel relatively well-placed to comment on the tourist market.

Here are a few general thoughts on this particular market:

1. If drivers are operating in a town with many tourists this must be a more lucrative market to work in than local markets as it is easy to charge tourists a much higher rate.
2. Drivers sometimes refuse fares - this is either because the tourist does not want to pay enough money, the distance or route is long or full of traffic or ends up in the middle of nowhere, or (and this is a gut feeling) they do not want to take tourists as they are concerned about the language barrier and potential conflict.
3. Therefore, drivers with a decent standard of English seem to do better in this market.

In an analogous sense I know point three to be true. Bartering for a tuk-tuk can be frustrating - especially when neither of you speak the same language. It’s not just a word-for-word barrier but an empathetic barrier; the driver sees the tourist as little more than a cash-cow and the tourist sees the driver as a cheat. It is interesting to note, though, how this attitude can change when a driver has enough English (or, I imagine, if the tourist speaks enough of the driver’s language) to share a sense of humour. That moment of laughter realigns both people in the negotiation as humans on an equal footing.

From a personal point of view, if I end up sharing a bit of a joke or a smile with the driver I loosen up a lot in negotiating and am open to paying a higher fare - or at least quibbling less over small sums of money. Before I know it, I’ve got to my destination… I might be a dollar or so out of pocket but I am a happy customer and have had a nice travel experience to boot.

So what ‘capital’ advantages does this second driver have over the first? I propose he has two sorts of ‘capital’ at work here, which allow his one-man-business to prosper while the other tuk-tuk driver’s languishes. One is the ‘capital of education’; i.e. he is able to speak a reasonable standard of English, and two is the ‘capital of empathy’ - he understands the mindset of the backpacking tourist. I am eager to lap up quality ‘real’ travel experiences - and the crazy tuk-tuk ride with the charming and funny tuk-tuk driver is just one of those things. Because he knows how my mind works to a greater extent he can more easily provide me with a service that I will pay more money for. He can see it written all over my podgy Western face.

My favourite real-life example of this at work was a guy called Cowboy Lim (I’m assuming that’s a nickname!).

When you arrive in Melaka, about as touristy a place as you can find in Malaysia, the bus drops you off in a square swarming with rickshaw drivers who offer identikit tours of the city for about $10. The vast majority of them look exactly the same and most seem to have pretty average English - which can make a tour a little uninformative. Cowboy Lim wore a striking cowboy hat, was seemingly about 103, loped with the gait of a wiry teenager and approached us quicker than lightning. He had the gift of the gab and made us laugh. He took us on a brilliant tour of the city and even chucked in a free cold can of Coke, perfect in the thirty-odd degree heat. I have since recommended him to a few other travellers. The guy had done so well as a rickshaw driver that he had been able to start his own guesthouse and he had recently taken a holiday to New Zealand, which is expensive by anyone’s standards.

Cowboy Lim had human capital seeping out of his pores.

At this level of business, monetary and asset-based capital are small to non-existent, but people are often able to make a decent living without this being a problem. A good example of a successful business I heard about that uses next to no monetary and asset-based capital is the Hanoi street food tours run by this guy.

I didn’t get to go as he was too expensive (presumably due to his popularity), but I heard rave reviews and he has the top Google ranking for ‘Hanoi street food’, which is always a good sign. All he needs for his business is access to a computer, a phone, a pair of decent shoes, proximity to a city with an internationally renowned street food culture and inherent knowledge of that culture. The most important capital he owns is not a physical asset - it is the capital of knowledge and the capital of culture.

But this got me to thinking… what drives some people in these markets to excellence and some into casual lethargy (in some towns with maybe too many tuk-tuk drivers it is a common sight to see drivers who are not carrying passengers just lying in their vehicles murmuring half-heartedly to passing tourists). I suppose to some degree this would depend on infinitely complicated variations in each tuk-tuk driver’s personality, but on a macro-scale I think it could be seen as the ‘capital of aspiration’.

Somewhere along the line, the tuk-tuk drivers, or other successful sole traders, have either through luck or their own initiative realised that by the careful application of their own ingenuity they can provide a better life for themselves and their families. The other side of this coin may be that they have somehow bought into materialism in a way the other tuk-tuk drivers haven’t, but something in my gut tells me that doesn’t ring true. I think the other less successful drivers are operating on a minimum effort basis - i.e. ‘I know how much money I need to sustain a reasonably easy and comfortable life and I will put in the exact amount of effort required to achieve that’. Which is fair enough, but not likely to provide for an interesting life.

Where does all this lead? Well, it’s clear that to improve the lot of a big portion of Asia’s poorer people a greater provision of business-based adult education would be useful. Hopefully, small improvements here would mean better access to education for the children of these people (and in my experience that is a major motivating factor for many of the S E Asian and Indian people I have met). Their children go on to become doctors, scientists, businessmen etc.

And the West should learn to appreciate the capital provided by its workforces more. Successful businesses are nothing without well treated staff. Pay peanuts, especially in relation to those at the top of the company, and you do not have a recipe for long-term sustained success. Pay equitably and recognise the contribution that humans bring to your business at all levels and you take a good, long step towards an ethical capitalist society.

orwellian-advocate asked: Hello there, I've read your recent post regarding to religion and your visit to the National Mosque of Malaysia and found them quite lacking towards certain details. Although, it is an interesting read. What you lacked in the post was that you forgot to mention the politicization of Islam and race in Malaysia. Islam in Malaysia is like Christianity to the United States, state organised and 're-edited'. How do I know this? Well I'm indigenous to Malaysia. Question: been to Sabah or Sarawak?

Hi there, thanks for the email. I am by no means an expert on Islam in Malaysia - but I would love to know more of your thoughts on this… I found the way Islam was presented when I visited the country very interesting and am always open to more informed people than me filling me in!

We did not have time to get to Sabah or Sarawak this time round as we are on  a bit of a tight schedule. Definitely planning to go there soon though.

Lilac robes

If you think coalition Government in New Zealand is unwieldy, have a thought for politics buffs in Malaysia. The same broad coalition, first known as the Alliance and changing its name to Barisan National in 1973 when it branched out even further, has held power since 1957. It is composed of fourteen parties - Winston Peters would have a field day.

Three major parties form the basis of Barisan National - the UMNO (United Malays National Organisation), MCA (Malaysian Chinese Association) and MIC (Malaysian Indian Congress) - something that mirrors the triptych of dominant cultures in Malaysian society… Malay, Indian and Chinese.

The country is on the brink of an election. I say brink because a fair election is something of an unbalanced battlefield if you happen to be a member of the opposition or media in Malaysia. Wikipedia has an awkwardly written account of that here - and it’s not really the subject of this blog - but it is necessary to set the scene.

Part of the internal politics here is the extent to which Malaysia should be an Islamic state. One of the bedrocks of this country is its religious intermingling and tolerance - it’s a place where Hindu temples, Chinese Taoist temples and Mosques are intentionally built near to each other as if some sort of religious dust hanging in the air may rub off on the newcomer and provide good luck.

However, there are factions within Barisan National that believe Malaysia should become more predominantly an Islamic state and they seem powerful enough to ensure that the opposition here are able to use Islam as a tool to needle public doubts in the powerful incumbent Government.

This was underlined in a story earlier this week where current Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad was forced to release three letters sent to various Prime Ministers of Israel condemning their illegal actions and atrocities against the Palestinians. The opposition had accused him of being inconsistent in his stance on the Middle Eastern dilemma, a position no politician would like to be in here in the run up to an election - especially since the 2008 elections were a bit wobbly and the opposition have made some advances in getting their message across in the past four years.

It makes one wonder how far the Arab spring will spring and whether it will affect more benign Islamist democracies such as Malaysia - or whether we are really talking about a different kettle of fish.

I visited the National Mosque in Kuala Lumpur, a building which abstracts older Islamic art forms to good effect in its modern design. Non-Muslims are allowed to attend the mosque at certain times of the day. As non-Muslim tourists tend to arrive wearing inappropriate shorts and singlets you are thoughtfully provided with a fetching lilac robe to wear inside.

Just outside the impressive prayer hall, out of bounds to those clad in lilac, there is a stand stuffed with educational leaflets about Islam. They range from the informative to the persuasive, with titles such as ‘Sex in Islam’ and ‘How Does a guy named Gambino become a Muslim?’.

The leaflets are written by a man called Dr Y Mansoor Marican, who believes such lilac-visits to Mosques are opportunities for religious education and dawah, spreading the message of Islam. Below is a Youtube of the Dr explaining his point:

Before I go on, I should probably explain that I consider myself to be an agnostic. This isn’t a lazy choice, and it doesn’t mean I think that creationism is a possibility and doubt evolution as a fact, I just feel a certain level of discomfort at describing myself as an atheist. Sometimes you can get called out as a fence-sitter, but I prefer to think of it as being the person who calls for the coin to land on its ridge rather than heads or tails (an idiot probably).

It’s a kind of strange dual existence. I dislike the modern atheist’s occasional call to ridicule religion - it reduces their argument to name-calling - but I also believe they have the right to ridicule who the hell they want.

I don’t think mankind is really yet equipped for certain to know either way as to the origins of the universe. We can certainly rule some stuff out, but there are a very large number of other possibilities that we have probably not even considered yet. Part of me doubts the need to define a moment that things sprung into existence anyway; why do we struggle to conceive of something having no beginning or end? Maybe it’s because our own beginning and end are so absolute (unless of course you believe in reincarnation!)

One thing I am certain of though, is that human morality should not be derived solely by a book or collection of books written thousands of years ago. That’s not to say that messages contained in the Bible or Koran are wrong - not murdering people is a pretty helpful ethical construct for a successful society to share; it’s just that these messages are true because they are shared by humanity regardless of their views on the origin of the world.

People who are humanist are often maligned for not having a spiritual or moral side; secular societies are often described as decadent - but in my experience decadence is spread pretty evenly along the toast of life. I’ve seen as much ‘immoral’ behaviour in Malaysia as I have in Manchester for instance.

Dr Marican’s leaflets did indeed provide me with something of an education. For instance I did not know that “Islam emphasizes foreplay in sexual activity”. I did of course know that like most religions Islam believes homosexuality to be a sin, which makes it an unethical way of life in my opinion. 

I also found out that in accordance with Islamic law, women have long held a lot of rights that women from other cultures have fought hard to achieve in this century. Including the “right to have her sexual needs met by her husband, a marriage contract, divorce, refuse a marriage proposal and maintain her name upon entering marriage… the right to inheritance, own and run her own business, exclusive possession of her assets and to dispose of them in ways that she considers appropriate”.

There are some inconsistencies in Dr Marican’s leaflets though. For instance, in the leaflet on polygamy he argues that polygamy is allowed within Islam to protect widows and orphans when men are in scarce supply due to warfare. He says the guidance in the Koran is “for all mankind and for all times until the end of civilisation” - that is, that sometimes polygamy will be necessary and at other times it is not. Presumably, there is no possibility that women will become a scarcity according to the Koran as polyandry is not permitted. Clearly, in situations as seen in modern day China, where a one-child policy coupled with selective sex-based abortion and child abandonment has led to their being substantially more men than women, it would seem practical that some women took on more than one husband.

He also at once accuses the West of misappropriating Islam while simultaneously misappropriating the West. “Extra-marital affairs, free sex, prostitution and humiliating women by describing them as sex workers - these are forbidden in Islam but are either legalised or tolerated in the pseudo-monogamy of the West!”

All of the above happens in the West and the East, regardless of whether the society is Christian, Islamic or neither of the above. A quick walk down Kuala Lumpur’s main shopping street is all you need to do to secure yourself a ‘massage’ with a scantily clad woman. We are universally quite horrible to women when we want to be.

As for legalising prostitution, those who advocate this don’t generally do so because they think it is morally right for people to exchange money for sex but in an attempt to increase the welfare and safety of sometimes vulnerable people who work in the sex trade.

What underlies Dr Marican’s message though, is that Islam in its purest form is not evil as it is sometimes portrayed. But then again neither are large swathes of all religion, except where they seek to arbitrarily discriminate against those who are different.

The agnostic in me is always angered by people who say religion (or oil, or money) is the root of all conflict between humanity. It’s not at all; being a great big stupid, greedy, prejudiced human being is the root of all conflict between human beings.

Money, oil and religion are just the lilac robes we wear to cover that fact up.

It would be good if we could cast them off - wander around mosques in the ideological buff; around cathedrals while postulating freely on the concept of a quantum universe or spend an evening in a Hindu temple arguing furiously against the concept of reincarnation while, most importantly, not offending anyone else by our actions.

It would be good if politicians like Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad, and others in similar political predicaments, could be honest about the violent farce that is ownership of the Palestinian area and admit that the place has changed hands so many times and been the victim of such rampant, foolish partitioning that now no one is emphatically in the wrong and no one is emphatically in the right.

Of course, every individual act of violence is wrong, every well meant mortar or blockade is evil, but while people waste their lives arguing over past recriminations these evils will just perpetuate. Not just in Palestine, but wherever there is historic and seemingly immovable hatred.

Religions that point out our differences and hide the honesty of our shame are not helpful here - a philosophy which points out what’s under the lilac robe is, even if it is a sun-burnt beer belly.

Being an editor

Last Friday I resigned from my job as the editor of the 3news.co.nz website. Here are some thoughts on the 3 and a half years I spent working there:

As a journalism student about four years ago, I was fortunate enough to see veteran Middle East correspondent Robert Fisk deliver a talk at AUT University.

He had a very keen crowd in the palm of his hand as he told his many tales of daring, he is a rare breed of journalist, prepared to sacrifice great swathes of his life to tell the modern world’s most important story.

Feeling a little embarrassed at my own slender contributions to the world of news, I asked Mr Fisk what young aspiring journalists should do to ensure journalism remained worthwhile and ethical rather than descend into inanity and corruption as witnessed at the Leveson Inquiry.

His answer was unequivocal – you need a good editor. Someone who can protect your risky and expensive work from those with ulterior motives to cut costs and reduce newspapers to rewrites of X Factor press releases.

My mind was set, I had already enjoyed working as the editor of the student newspaper, Te Waha Nui, and now knew this was the job for me.

About half a year later I was lucky enough to end up as the chief editor of this website, and suddenly that wish was a reality.

What was the reality like?

I did indeed spend time protecting my best writers from other rigours. Not so much from owners or news executives who were begging me to make them dumb down, but from the financial realities that currently affect most newsrooms.

There is a growing mass of news to report and the public have a greater appetite for it, but, conversely, in many places there are fewer people doing so in a professional manner.

Good journalism takes time and giving the best journalists that time means organising and running a fluid team that’s capable of bending at one place where another place needs support.

I also came into this job at a time where the mainstream media is not necessarily the darling of the public. The public’s relationship with the fourth estate is more similar to their relationship with the Government these days. Information is power, and unfortunately for the majority of hard working journalists a few major organisations abused that power.

The public may be outraged at the behaviour of UK tabloid journalists, but I promise you their ire is at least matched by every reporter who spends his time working hard to convey the truth ethically.

Ethical decisions came up far more often in this job than I expected. I hope I gave them my all by considering my actions carefully and talking with more experienced staff here at 3 News.

I didn’t always make the right decision. My lowest point as an editor came after I published images that many would consider private of a reasonably well known person. It was a decision I made under considerable time pressure that I am ashamed of today. I removed the images and apologised.

And herein lies one of the major problems with journalism ethics. Media power is exercised by people just like you, who make mistakes, who have bad days and good days. When we make mistakes though, they can affect people’s lives profoundly. We take that responsibility very seriously, but we could be better at admitting and rectifying our mistakes.

Is it enough for a newspaper to call a man a sex offender on page one and then retract that news on page 10? Is it ok for me to get traffic from an unethical decision, and then retract that decision at a time when less people will see it? Obviously not, as a trade we must be more accountable to people and more willing to accept our errors.

The journalist who makes a hard ethical decision, but is then able to explain the valid reasoning behind that decision is an extremely valuable part of any news team. Codes of conduct and journalist licenses have been suggested as ways of regulating the press… these may have some effect, but not as much as ensuring those who make editorial decisions have the ability to make and explain ethical decisions in the first place.

We also face criticism as to the quality of our product. Something that increases as the number of varying and specialised news outlets increase online. The public have a much wider choice of news provider nowadays and this allows them at best to pick the cream of journalistic endeavour and at worst to languish in sites which just confirm, and never challenge, a prejudiced point of view.

This is a good thing, it keeps mainstream media on its toes. We know we need to be consistently better.

Anyone who fronts to the public and isn’t just handing out free candy, is going to have to battle with all sorts of differing viewpoints as to the quality of their service. Many people misunderstand the process of journalism and the motives of journalists. Letting people see more of the way we operate has started to help this, but has also exposed some of the harsher aspects of our job.

A death knock looks bad to the naked eye, although most experienced reporters can tell you stories of how people have found some comfort from talking publicly about a loved one.

A look at the way people operate in the more cerebral areas of the internet – Wikipedia, Reddit can also point the way for journalists in the future. Strong referencing and allowing the public access to raw data for their own analysis is an essential tool of the reporter looking to build trust with an audience.

But it’s important to remember that what journalists are really here to do is report stories.

This is an area that is also misunderstood. It’s all too easy I guess for a story to stray so far from fact that the journalist has not really said anything at all.

This is a good example.

But when done properly, a well crafted story conveys much more than a list of dispassionate facts. We all gravitate towards stories as a way of understanding the world, when events are portrayed to us in this way with skill we not only take on board the information but also gain a fraction more empathy for the people living through the event.

If I was to write down the numbers of people killed during the holocaust in German concentration camps you would of course experience a feeling of extreme sadness, but when BBC reporter Richard Dimbleby describes the horror of entering the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945 with such human eloquence, those numbers spring to life. It’s the most human way to understand.

Knowing what makes a story, how to angle it, how to expand it and then tell it, is the real skill here. A recent conversation with a colleague reminded me that the best journalists are not the ones who can nail a live cross, write fifty live updates in ten minutes or cut back a 400 word story to 300 against deadline (although these are obviously very important skills), they are the people who really understand what a story is, where to find the story and how to tell it.

So in that vein here is a good story to round off with, unfortunately I have stolen it from a personal hero – ex-BBC Political Correspondent and ex-editor of The Independent Andrew Marr.

In 1996 Marr was made editor of The Independent, then a relative newcomer to the British press which had been lauded for its unbiased stance on issues and bold design and layout. Unfortunately this had not translated into sales and Marr took on the job at a particularly perilous time.

The paper’s proprietor was Tony O’Reilly, a notorious Irishman fond of cost-cutting and wedged in the middle of a furious price battle with Britain’s more established broadsheets.

Marr’s tenure at the paper was short lived but innovative. He radically redesigned the paper to try and boost sales, organising stories via subject rather than news values. He also started the first “Letter From The Editor” and produced many alternative front pages that are viewed as classics of their time.

But things soon turned sour between O’Reilly and Marr and Marr was eventually sacked.

The rumours behind the sacking were either that he refused to implement a round of redundancies or that the paper’s other publisher David Montgomery had been strong-armed into sacking Marr by Tony Blair’s spin doctor supreme, Alastair Campbell, after Marr insisted on running a story that compared Blair to previous Tory Prime Minister John Major.

Whatever the reason for his ousting, Marr had won the respect of his colleagues. When he packed up his belongings and went to leave his office his staff stood in unison and banged the tables loudly with their fists. It’s a Fleet Street mark of respect for an editor who has earned his stripes and is on his way out. The banging of the tables is a modern version of the crashing sound of the printing press that was used to make the same point in times gone past.

For Marr it was his proudest moment as a journalist.

On Friday I had my last day of work as the Chief Editor of this site, I am leaving to pursue some travel and ambitions in the UK.

So here’s an online bang of the table for my colleagues here at 3 News, you’ve made me feel welcome, been great friends and above all inspired me – thank you.

This blog was originally published on my 3news.co.nz blog - Views on the News - James

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