BRITAIN

BRITAIN

The Guardian, London, Sept. 22: Dostoevsky wrote that “the degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons”. If that is right, British civilization is none too healthy just now. Record numbers of inmates are crammed into the jails.

The difficulties of sardine-tin rehabilitation are exacerbated by a doggedly vengeful refusal to reward convicts who mend their ways or show regard for others. Last spring Gordon Brown vetoed an overdue rise in the meager pay prisoners can earn by spending time productively. This month a tabloid scare story led to certain social events being banned. But the most gratuitous stricture of all predates any red-top campaign.

Civil and political rights

In a report last week a U.N. committee warned that the voting ban in prisons may be at odds with the international covenant on civil and political rights. The ban dates back to a musty statute from 1870 — a time when the franchise was a privilege, reserved for a minority. Today the vote is everywhere considered a right — except within jail walls.

No one believes disfranchisement is a deterrent; nor does it make sense as a punishment: the purpose of prison is to deprive people of their liberty, not their political voice. Sheer lack of thought meant that - until Strasbourg intervened - the ban often effectively applied to remanded prisoners, not convicted of any crime. If inmates were encouraged to take an interest in society, then perhaps fewer than two-thirds would reoffend on release. As it stands, in more than one sense, they are barred citizens. It is time to give them the vote.

JAPAN

Asahi Shimbun, Tokyo, Sept. 23: The top two officials of the agricultural ministry resigned Friday over the ministry’s inadequate response to some companies’ sales of tainted rice designated for industrial use as rice fit for food. Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Minister Seiichi Ota and his vice minister, Toshiro Shirasu, stepped down amid a public outcry over the latest food safety scandal to hit the nation.

Now, many Japanese consumers must feel that the top farm policy officials have abandoned their efforts to get to the bottom of the problem and install effective measures to prevent a recurrence, instead of fulfilling their responsibilities, as expected. This is really distressing.

Slipshod investigation

The farm ministry said it conducted nearly 100 on-the-spot investigations of Mikasa Foods Co., one of the companies accused of selling tainted rice as food, but failed to detect any wrongdoing. Obviously, the ministry’s investigations were shockingly slipshod.

Even after the misconduct was confirmed, the ministry was indecisive, failing to immediately reveal the names of the companies that unknowingly purchased the tainted rice. The two officials refused to admit their ministry’s responsibility despite its repeated acts of incompetence in dealing with the problem. That was certainly enough to cost them their jobs.

The government must make a thorough investigation to uncover the root causes of this scandal as well as the government’s failures and then take steps to prevent it from happening again. The government’s responsibility goes beyond simply dealing with the consequences.

UNITED ARAB EMIRATES

Khaleej Times, Dubai, Sept. 24: Men who love the fact that they wear the pants are probably going to love this: a new American study, to be published in the September issue of the Journal of Applied Psychology, debunks the “ideal world” notion of gender equality at the workplace.

The bottom line of the study is that “Men with traditional attitudes about gender roles earned $11,930 more a year than men with egalitarian views.” Which means men who endorse “distinct roles in society for men and women” are likely to have more successful careers than those who advocate “equal roles for men and women at home and in the workplace”.

Bizarre twist

The empirical evidence in the study showed a connection between peoples attitudes about gender roles and their salaries, reported the Washington Post. This is quite a bizarre twist to the wage disparities debate doing the rounds all over the world, not just in the United States and it is bound to open up the “Should women just stay back at home and let the men be the breadwinners?” stream of consciousness. Not a nice thought as more and more women get out of the house and get to work.

The most worrying aspect about the study is it tends to brand egalitarian men almost as wimps.

There are already fears that families may start inculcating “traditional gender views” in their sons so that they can watch the boys go up the corporate ladder faster. That is a rather distressing thought.

But what really bothers us is the fact that it pays you $ 1,000 more per month if you possess a mindset that reinforces the man-woman stereotypes.

INDIA

The Hindu, Madras, Sept. 25: In a space of just one week, the landscape of the U.S. financial sector has changed quite dramatically. Days after the collapse of Lehman Bothers and the takeover of Merrill Lynch by Bank of America, the two remaining independent investments banks, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, have sought to convert themselves into bank holding companies. ... As bank holding companies, they will resemble the commercial banks in the matter of rules of governance more disclosures, higher capital reserves, and tighter regulation. In return, they will have access to emergency funds from the Federal Reserve.

Messages for regulators

There are significant messages for regulators everywhere. In the U.S., commercial banking and investment banking services were segregated under a 1933 Depression-era Glass-Steagall Act. Even after its repeal in 1999, when financial conglomerates were allowed to undertake a range of activities, they retained the walls between commercial banking and investment banking. As recent events demonstrate, that strategy has cushioned their losses from exposure to the sub-prime crisis. For the two big investment banks, regulatory approval for their transformation can only be the starting point. Evidently both will require hefty doses of capital infusion. Recent reports suggest that they are turning to Japanese investors. Goldman Sachs leveraged every $1 of capital into $22 of assets and Morgan Stanley $1 into $30. Clearly such high leveraging, besides being unacceptable to more prudent conventional banking, might continue to cause problems to the transformed entities irrespective of the other, diversified, financial services they might undertake.