First of all, let me apologize for having disappointed you with my reply to your earlier note. As it happens, I had assumed, wrongly it turns out, that you were writing somewhat tongue-in-cheek, or hyperbolically, about the call centre warning, and so my response was, in turn, meant to be in a similar tone. I had also originally begun typing out some slightly more serious response about how the UK does in fact recognize two statuses - citizens and subjects. That said, I appreciate the explanation which you rightly chide me for not having had the curiosity to ask for in the first place. It is an interesting question and I wonder to what extent you think that the UK establishment has little trust in those it is ostensibly meant to govern by consent.
Hi Bob, thank you for this. In turn I should apologise for passively indirectly referring to your intervention rather than taking it up directly with your good self.
Now I’m interested in you developing your ‘more serious response’. Go for it, please, because I’m curious.
To be honest I’m mostly operating on vibes around that question of trust in citizens to be reasonable people, following the explosion in police interventions for non-crime hate incidents. Even the concept of a non-crime hate incident seems to be a misuse of legal enforcement as a ‘regime-style’ normative action.
But on the specific throwaway experience I was reporting I really think it’s accounted for by union pressure and management fear of people going off sick with stress after getting too many earfuls of abuse from disgruntled punters. In this way it speaks more to arse-covering really than anything more sinister.
Blame David McGrogan for me thinking in this way now. He’s got me hyper-attuned to overreach by ‘elites’.
Thanks for the response, and pardon the delay in getting back to you.
Regarding the “more serious response”, I did think that it was interesting that at some point British people’s status changed from being “subject” to “citizen”, yet some people such as my mother, is still officially a mere subject having been born in Ireland. As a result, her passport does not officially entitle her to the same rights of entry to certain countries as mine does. That said, she was unaware of this dual standard until a certain unpleasant incident in an airport fairly recently.
As for David McCrogan, I was unaware of his work, but I did wonder if what you were hinting at was something almost Foucauldian, about how institutions are often devised for the “surveillance and punishment” (a closer (?) translation of Foucault’s work “Discipline and Punish”). Looking up David McCrogan, I was interested to see I may not have been far off the mark as I can see he refers to Foucault in a number of areas. That is quite interesting, as Foucault is often seen as a writer of the left, but when I read the aforementioned Discipline and Punishment, one of the things that struck me about it was how easily some of his arguments would actually sound quite libertarian. If he had been alive during Covid, I wouldn’t have been surprised if he had turned up on Joe Rogan’s podcast denouncing lock-downs and mandates. The chapter on Panopticonism even begins with an account of a heavy-handed government response to an infectious disease.
That said, I think Foucauldian analysis and theories of surveillance as a motivation for documenting things like abuse of call centre staff could indeed be taken too far. In fact, as you say, there could be a number of reasons why the call centre had those warnings. When I worked in a call centre in Leeds, some people I worked with did get all kinds of unpleasant threats and abuse. It’s quite possible that those who worked the government helpline were also subject to them, and complained up the chain of command, who in turn may have actually done something on their behalf.
First of all, let me apologize for having disappointed you with my reply to your earlier note. As it happens, I had assumed, wrongly it turns out, that you were writing somewhat tongue-in-cheek, or hyperbolically, about the call centre warning, and so my response was, in turn, meant to be in a similar tone. I had also originally begun typing out some slightly more serious response about how the UK does in fact recognize two statuses - citizens and subjects. That said, I appreciate the explanation which you rightly chide me for not having had the curiosity to ask for in the first place. It is an interesting question and I wonder to what extent you think that the UK establishment has little trust in those it is ostensibly meant to govern by consent.
Hi Bob, thank you for this. In turn I should apologise for passively indirectly referring to your intervention rather than taking it up directly with your good self.
Now I’m interested in you developing your ‘more serious response’. Go for it, please, because I’m curious.
To be honest I’m mostly operating on vibes around that question of trust in citizens to be reasonable people, following the explosion in police interventions for non-crime hate incidents. Even the concept of a non-crime hate incident seems to be a misuse of legal enforcement as a ‘regime-style’ normative action.
But on the specific throwaway experience I was reporting I really think it’s accounted for by union pressure and management fear of people going off sick with stress after getting too many earfuls of abuse from disgruntled punters. In this way it speaks more to arse-covering really than anything more sinister.
Blame David McGrogan for me thinking in this way now. He’s got me hyper-attuned to overreach by ‘elites’.
Thanks for the response, and pardon the delay in getting back to you.
Regarding the “more serious response”, I did think that it was interesting that at some point British people’s status changed from being “subject” to “citizen”, yet some people such as my mother, is still officially a mere subject having been born in Ireland. As a result, her passport does not officially entitle her to the same rights of entry to certain countries as mine does. That said, she was unaware of this dual standard until a certain unpleasant incident in an airport fairly recently.
As for David McCrogan, I was unaware of his work, but I did wonder if what you were hinting at was something almost Foucauldian, about how institutions are often devised for the “surveillance and punishment” (a closer (?) translation of Foucault’s work “Discipline and Punish”). Looking up David McCrogan, I was interested to see I may not have been far off the mark as I can see he refers to Foucault in a number of areas. That is quite interesting, as Foucault is often seen as a writer of the left, but when I read the aforementioned Discipline and Punishment, one of the things that struck me about it was how easily some of his arguments would actually sound quite libertarian. If he had been alive during Covid, I wouldn’t have been surprised if he had turned up on Joe Rogan’s podcast denouncing lock-downs and mandates. The chapter on Panopticonism even begins with an account of a heavy-handed government response to an infectious disease.
That said, I think Foucauldian analysis and theories of surveillance as a motivation for documenting things like abuse of call centre staff could indeed be taken too far. In fact, as you say, there could be a number of reasons why the call centre had those warnings. When I worked in a call centre in Leeds, some people I worked with did get all kinds of unpleasant threats and abuse. It’s quite possible that those who worked the government helpline were also subject to them, and complained up the chain of command, who in turn may have actually done something on their behalf.