Did You Spill My Pint?

Did you spill my pint? Are you looking at my bird? Outside - NOW!

If you're of a certain age you'll remember and, most likely have witnessed, phrases like these being used to instigate random violence in public houses and other arenas of social life. No doubt, there is some modern equivalent parlance in use today but, though still a frequent visitor of inns, it's been a long time since I heard the anxiety inducing peal of a closing time bell.

So, I've not been punched in the face in a pub car park for a long time. Which I'm rather pleased about. It's a form of social distancing I'm quite happy for people to continue. But why are some places, some areas, more violent than others? I've been beaten up in Tadley (after the Treacle Fair), in Basingstoke (by a gang of mods from Woking in a car park), a couple of times in London (in pubs), and even in China. After all that research I'm still none the wiser.

Jaye McLaughlin has done a fair bit of research on the subject too - though of a far more academic nature (she earned a PhD at Brunel University for a thesis that examined socioeconomic inequality and violent crime) - and she was at Skeptics in the Pub - Online (on the Thursday before Good Friday) with a talk called Hate thy Neighbour:Economic Inequality, Status, & Violent Crime.

I was looking forward to it. But, unfortunately, McLaughlin, a compelling speaker if one that relied far too much on graphs to illustrate her points, hadn't done quite enough research. I'm not saying she should go out and get kicked in the head after a Country & Western evening in North Hampshire (as I did) or threatened for dressing up as Evel Knievel and Rod Stewart (as me and my friend Rob once were). I'm just saying there's a potentially fascinating talk on this subject but this wasn't it.

It was more a work in progress. I'd love to see McLaughlin come back in a year or two and I'm fully confident she'd have a much better proposition to present to us by then. But that's not the event I'm writing about here and that wasn't the event I attended.

McLaughlin began by pointing out that we'll all be familiar with neighbourhoods that are considered rough and how, in most cases, we'll also associate those neighbourhoods with poverty. But she believes, and many of her studies have backed this up, that's it not just poverty, and deprivation, that lead to violent crime. It's economic inequality and relative deprivation.

Research done in the seventies, in the nineties, and as recently as 2011 show that homicide, the most serious of violent crimes, rates do relate to income equality. McLaughlin studied police reports and ambulance call outs in London and they, too, backed this up. But why is this?

Many of these homicides, the majority of them in fact, arose from trivial altercations (car parking spaces, funny looks, or, yes, spilled pints) and most of the perpetrators were men. Most of the victims were also men. Male on male violence is the most prevalent, by far, form of violence in our society and a lot of it boils down to men fighting over status or reputation or trying not to lose 'face'.

Some evolutionary psychologist believe that because our ancestors competed over both resources and social status we have, us men specifically, inherited this behaviour and the more inequality there is in a region the more intense the competition is between rival males who may be competing for jobs, for money, or for sexual partners.

Females generally prefer higher status males to father their children (I've heard many women say they would never entertain the notion of a long term relationship with a man who is skint, I have never once heard a man say the same thing of a woman) and this has an affect on how lower status men feel about their lives.

This line of thinking, of course, does veer close to suggesting that if women would just put out for these men more often then everything would be better. Which, obviously, is utter bollocks. But in a capitalist money and status driven society we are all judged, not just by potential partners but by almost everyone we encounter, by our standing in society.

Most of my neighbours have double glazing and I don't. I felt seen when one of them made a remark about somebody in the area's windows not being up to scratch. That level of passive-aggressive behaviour can, and does, lead to real aggression in the real world.

Not from me, of course. I just draw my curtains and hide behind them so my neighbours don't look in and judge me. But many men do have an itch to scratch in terms of getting all their anger out and wealthier men can afford to take up extreme sports, or indulge in other pursuits, that do it form.

Less financially endowed males may, in some cases, join a gang or kick someone's head in in a pub car park. Studies have been done into the perception of inequality both regionally and nationally and if this leads to more violence but here, sadly but at least truthfully, McLaughlin confessed that results don't seem to have proved very much.

More work to do! We know that feelings of deprivation lead to impulsivity and aggression and that that increases the likelihood of violent crime but where McLaughlin's talk could have been better would be if she had spoke about some ideas of what can be done about this, if she'd not used quite so many graphs (replication is important in science but repetition dulls speech), and if, ultimately, she had more of an overarching narrative to it all.

She's young, she's pretty much a student (drinking from a jam jar was the telltale sign), and she's still learning the skill of how to deliver talks. Host Kat Ford (of Merseyside Skeptics) was rooting for her and so was I but, sadly, this was not the most gripping, or conclusive, Skeptics talk I've ever attended. Even online.

But I do have faith that Jaye McLaughlin will one day come back with a much better talk on this very subject. She seems to have her heart in the right place and her head screwed on properly. Which is more than you can say than someone who threatens to beat you up because you're dressed as Evel Knievel.