Experiences in Great Britain by Jana Eyssel

In February and March this year Jana Eyssel from Gottingen visited the UK on a Global Venture. We have just published her full report, below is an extract discussing here experiences in Great Britain


Experiences in Great Britain
I will focus here on cultural experiences I made during my stay and cultural differences I noticed. However, I will not mention every difference I observed. British and German cultures are similar, but there are nevertheless countless small differences, which are too small to be mentioned here. I will only write about differences that are important to the theme of environment, except one.

Traffic
The first important difference I noticed was the organization of the traffic. At least in Cheltenham bikes do not seem to play an important role as means of transportation. In three weeks I counted about 40 bikers – a number I could count in Leipzig in one day. However, using a bike is much more dangerous in Cheltenham than in most German cities because there are mostly no cycle paths or only very narrow ones. In Germany, normal cycle paths are about 1 meter wide. In addition, cars seem to rule the streets not only over bicycles, but also over pedestrians. In Germany, pedestrians mostly have the priority on the streets. In Great Britain this does not seem to be the case. This becomes obvious by having a look at the organizations of the traffic lights. Cars always have green light, whereas pedestrians have to wait very long for their green light, which after a very short time turns to red again. Therefore every road to cross becomes an obstacle for a pedestrian, especially for elderly people who cannot walk fast enough to cross the street in the time of the green light. Besides the traffic lights, also other aspects demonstrate the general acceptance of cars. Being the liveliest and the most important part of Cheltenham, the city centre is fully accessible by car. There are not only large parking places built near the town centre, which encourages people to go by car to do their shopping, there are also several roads cutting through the pedestrian area. Even here pedestrians have to wait a long time for being able cross the streets. This all shows that the local politics is not willing to diminish traffic but is making Cheltenham a very car-friendly place. In my opinion this is a very negative aspect, because of traffic's important role in air pollution. Other reasons are noise pollution, danger of accidents and health problems.

Organic and Fair Trade Products
In Great Britain, fair trade products are much more common than in Germany. Here in Germany, it is very rare to find those products in 'normal' shops, for instance in supermarkets. And if there are some fair trade goods, the range of products in general is limited to bananas, chocolate and coffee. Only world shops and some wholefood shops provide the customers with a wider array of fair trade products. In public, the importance of fair trade is not very present. In my opinion, people do only see that they can influence the lives of a very limited group of farmers in a certain place in a developing country. The global importance and the influence on global economy, politics, justice and the environment unfortunately are not recognized in Germany.

However, it seems to be the other way round with organic food. I hardly saw any organically grown products in supermarkets and the number of wholefood shops is very small in Cheltenham. In Germany, there are many small wholefood stores and nearly every supermarket chain has its own organic food brand. However, these big food brands undermine the idea of organic food in a way. Originally, organic food meant locally and organically grown, seasonal food, which came from small farms. Now, supermarkets produce their organic food industrially and often in distant countries. This makes organic food cheaper and makes it available for a greater group of people. I personally see a problem in this industrialized organic food. In my opinion, it cannot be called organic food anymore. There are different standards for organic food in Germany, which are symbolized by different seals displayed on the products. The standard regulations, which are used the most, above all for organic products in supermarkets, are lower than others. Those products, which are subject to stricter regulations, are mostly sold in smaller shops. They are more expensive because producing them on a high level of quality costs a lot of money and because they are mostly produced locally, where the loans for the workers are much higher than in other countries.

I had the impression, that the importance of organic food is not fully recognized in Great Britain. On the one hand, the consumer benefits from buying organic food. It normally is healthier due to the lack of chemicals and it tastes better. On the other hand, like fair trade products, organic food too has larger implications. Normally, organic food is better for the environment than conventionally grown food. This is again due to a much more reduced use of chemicals. When organic products are produced by local farmers, the ways of transportation are much shorter, which reduces the impact on climate change. Local farmers are being supported; they do not have to sell their goods to supermarket chains, which can lower the prices as they wish. In addition, organic food tends to be wrapped in a sparing way, so this is also a way of save resources.

Surveillance
The second aspect is very special to Great Britain. This is why I mention it although it does not concern the environment. British people are subject to a wide range of surveillance measures. According to the Liberty report "Overlooked: Surveillance and personal privacy in modern Britain", surveillance can be divided into two main parts. The first one is mass surveillance; the second one is targeted surveillance. Mass surveillance can be divided into "mass informational surveillance" and "mass visual surveillance". During my stay in Britain, I mainly noticed this last category, embodied by CCTV cameras. Great Britain is the world leading country in public video surveillance. As the non-governmental organisation Liberty states on its website, "Britain is monitored by 4 million CCTV cameras ... There is one CCTV camera for every 14 people in the UK". "These are not targeted at any particular individual but store information in anticipation of possible use at some future point". In many cities people are filmed over 100 times a day. When I talked to people about the immense number of CCTV cameras in public places and my bad feelings about them, the general answer was that the cameras were needed because Great Britain had such a high rate of criminality and violence. This had also been the reason for establishing the cameras all over Britain. However, there is no evidence that the number of crimes having been committed or the fear of crime have diminished since the use of CCTV. Despite this fact, CCTV has not been questioned in public, due to the fact that most people are not well informed about it, "'a general unquestioning assumption that CCTV works'" and very positive official publicity of CCTV. The small impact on Britain's criminality rates makes it possible to question this surveillance project, which probably is an important factor in the British government's domestic spending. Not only on the side of the criminal CCTV does not seem to work, but there are also some negative implications on the side of the witnesses. CCTV creates the illusion of safety. Thus, if people witness a crime, the impulse of intervening is reduced. People tend to think that there is someone watching who will call the police. In fact, due to the large number of CCTV cameras, the monitors are not being watched regularly. However, besides its ineffectiveness, another aspect is very important. Despite the widespread slogan ‘nothing to hide, nothing to fear’, the knowledge of being observed changes people's behaviour – even if it is only unconsciously. This is a fact proven in psychological experiments. Already the British philosopher Jeremy Bentham has described this effect in his utopia of the Panopticon. For the French philosopher Michel Foucault this image later became the embodiment of exercise of state power. Another very important aspect is the questioning of individual privacy. Even if one has nothing to hide, it is very legitimate to not want other people to know where one is going and whom one is meeting with. There is also a danger lying in CCTV surveillance. It has already blurred the boundary of privacy in the name of security. Having already crossed this line, it becomes easy to enlarge the possibilities and thus the power of public surveillance. There are no sufficient legal boundaries limiting the use of CCTV. The Liberty report states that "'[s]urveillance therefore seems to be capable of abuse, in terms of unjustified harassment – especially to those from minority communities'".

One example is the introduction of CCTV in primary schools, which was done in 2008. A German newspaper asked: "And what about the surveillance of the youngest pupils? Do we really need recordings of four-year-old which could be used in court?" Another alarming example is a pilot project executed in Portsmouth: Cameras of the type "Perceptrak", produced by the company Smart CCTV have been installed. The company promises that those cameras will not only help in solving crimes which have already been committed, but they will help to prevent crimes by detecting suspicious behaviour. According to the company's website, the camera is able to detect 18 different types of suspicious behaviour. If two or more types are combined, the system reports this by showing the suspicious object or person in a red circle on the monitors in the control centre. The personnel then have to decide whether or not the observed situation might lead to the commitment of a crime. Other examples are the combination of the two main types of surveillance, mass and targeted surveillance, by "‘data mining’ or ‘profiling’". This becomes problematic when the profiles are composed of ethnic or religious criteria, because it puts national security very close to institutionalized racism. This whole issue turns Great Britain, which is the mother land of democracy, into a surveillance society. The NGO Privacy International rated Great Britain as a state in which violation of privacy had an "endemic" character, just besides Russia, China, Malaysia and Singapore on the top of the list containing 37 countries.

In Germany, the government tries hard to establish more public surveillance in form of CCTV, databases and so forth. I think this is a global and very serious phenomenon of which Great Britain is the precursor.

Full Report available here