The Double Front Faith Schools Put Up.

One of the great ills of our age is how our kids (well yours, I don't have any myself) education has been used as an ideological battleground. Schools are political, and don't be an unwitting casualty for Gods sake. This article on the findings of a school adjudicator discovered that Christian faith schools unwittingly favour middle class kids, though that is of little surprise to me. Faith schools are largely problematic because they segregate different faiths off from one another at an early age (apparently just shy of 70% of Northern Ireland's under 25's have never met the "other side") and now to top it off they (the adjudicator did say other faiths do it) compound it by segregating on class lines as well. It is hard to see how we can have a harmonious society when so little mixing occurs.

Like faith segregation; class segregation brings problems too and is far more widespread than the former. For an in depth analysis of the problems it brings, direct to the Nick Davies education articles, it's there in the blogroll. The basic gist of the articles can be summarised as the fact that a large middle class intake into a school can be a large driver for academic success. I'm not saying that means all working class parents are rubbish at raising their kids, or that middle class people are automatically academic "betters" - God no, it is a more practical fact. More affluent parents can focus more holistic attention to a school. Why? Because their income is higher, it is easier for one parent (aka Mum) not to have the need to work, or at least to work full time, thus they have more free time to pursue on things like schools. A working class family may have two parents who by necessity have to work full time, perhaps holding two jobs, or more. Many of these jobs have crap hours that coincide badly with school hours. It isn't that they are short on parenting, they are short on time and this is what the article touches on. Middle class parents can win favour with churches by being more flexible to attend them, or to help out with voluntary church work. They know this and are sort of in tune with this back door selection. There is nothing fundamentally "better" about what faith schools teach that explains their academic success, but they can attract a high intake of kids with parents who have the time to push for high standards and tada! Although I can't overlook the more questionable parts of a faith schools curriculum it seems a lot of middle class parents can. I can't say I blame them but it does unwittingly exacerbate what is wrong with schooling today. Right wing columnists are missing the point when they say that the comprehensive system doesn't work, it doesn't really exist in the first place. Selection didn't end with the cull of the 11 plus, it just went on under more coy methods. As I said a devoted bunch of middle class parents who have the free time to expend huge amounts of energy on their kids education can drive schools to up the game, but they are not touching many schools at all, and these are falling behind and is at the root of everything that is fucking everything up in our education system. Pushy parents who have the time to join the PTA and give a head teacher a flea in the ear may be a colossal pain in the arse but they are an effective one. It is unfortunate that they can be a scarce one.

PS. I must implicitly point out that I am not saying working class parents don't place as much value on their kids education, that is obviously untrue. It is that often they simply do not have the financial freedom to expand as much free time to get involved as they may like to. But by increasing the amount of the parents who do have the time to other schools, then they hopefully speak for them into the bargain as well.

Elf N Safety (Don't) Ban Haloween.

If we were to take everything the tabloids say at face value then we would assume that just about every special occasion from Christmas to Bonfire night; to Easter had been either curtailed or even outright banned by the evil "elf n safety" killjoys. This time it seems that Halloween itself has come into the firing line of the clip board Gestapo, which is presumably why we get this article:

Halloween health and safety horror: 'Remove the stalks and wear goggles' before you go apple bobbing.

Oh God here we go again.

"Most sensible people consider it a jolly Halloween tradition that poses a danger no graver than getting a squirt of water up your nose.

But now apple bobbing has fallen foul of the health and safety police – with participants advised to wear goggles, remove stalks and use bottled water."

So have the "elf n safety police", whoever in God's name they are, saying that kids have to wear goggles as implied by this opening sentence?

"A hospital eye consultant said a ‘high-velocity impact with an apple’ had the potential to cause serious eye injury, while dirty water could lead to infection or blindness.

He recommended disinfecting water containers, using bottled mineral water and turning on lights so you can see what you are doing.

And ophthalmologist Parwez Hossain, from Southampton General Hospital, even suggested contestants remove the apples from the water with their hands instead of their mouth."

Of course not. It is just the advice of an ophthalmologist who has been asked how to prevent unnecessary injuries at Halloween time as part of an NHS trust scheme at that hospital, to offer advice (that people are not somehow bound to honour), the bottled water thing is put in as he says that the risk of eye infection is less than tap or stagnant water. Seems pretty straight forward, and in the case of other occasions, successful.

"Admissions to casualty on Bonfire Night have gone down as people have become more aware of health and safety but we have not seen a decline on Halloween."

The goggles advice seems to be in relation to a hypothetical activity involving "high velocity impacts" and not directly related to apple bobbing, but whens a technicality like that ever going to stop these kind of headlines? And when is that going to stop the reader comments who have only read the headline or glanced at the story itself, and have completely missed the point.

"What tosh this Parwez Hossain talks. Does this twit realise that if everyone went through life as precautious as he is suggesting he'd be out of a job, ans theree'd be no NHS. If these lot had their way we'd all sit at home in padded room with only one person moving around at any given time to reduce the risk of causing an injury. Someone tell this bloke to get a life."

"It's amazing, I wonder how I made it through my childhood without risk assessments for Halloween. Come on, three people admitted to hospital, out of how many? Percentage rate of injuries versus total participants?? It's easy to make up figures to suit your own ends. I hope the person with the non-job who came up with these recommendations is first to go in the cuts... but then the NHS is exempt, and therefore this waste of fresh air will carry on trying to protect us from ourselves."

This kind of journalism is the ideal thing to appeal to readers confirmation bias. They have a presupposition about something, and the article implies that that presupposition is right, which they cherry pick whats written to support their bias. In short these stories aren't going to go away soon.

Littlejohns Poppycock.

Richard Littlejohn once commented in a webchat discussion with some Mail readers that his role [in journalism] was to "sit at the back and throw bottles". In that quote he had unintentionally admitted that his "journalism" was the most laziest and cynical imaginable. Don't offer measured criticism, don't highlight valid points or make insightful statements. Just sit at the back like some spotty kid who derides everything as "this is just like shit". A monkey can do this sort of thing, and I think it is why; more than anything - I hold his columns in as much contempt as I do. His latest attack is on BBC presenters and others who have been wearing poppies before they officially start collections for them (on Thursday), whilst simultaneously deriding them for not wearing them before hand. Whatever your opponent does, attack them. If they don't do something you approve of, deride them as "out of touch" or "unpatriotic" or whatever. If they do do it, accuse them of being cynical (that's rich) and being tokenistic, and for good measure "out of touch" It really is a win - win scenario, or also known as shitty journalism too. Here is the article in full.

"Not wearing a poppy used to be a badge of honour on the Left. Now they have worked out that the Armed Forces are held in the highest esteem, they have gone completely the other way as they seek to reconnect with the British public.

Some Left-leaning broadcasters and mainstream politicians are sporting poppies already, even though there are more than two weeks to go to remembrance Day.

Members of the shadow cabinet look as if they've crawled through a field in Normandy on their way to the studio.

Someone should quietly explain that wearing a poppy in the middle of October is as inappropriate as having Easter eggs at Christmas."

It also seems the Royal Legion agree, which is why a spokesman said:

"But we would never say an individual’s wearing their poppy too early"

Of course any genuine Poppy Appeal supporter wouldn't. Only someone trying to have a cheap pop at someone they don't like would say something like that that.

About the Foreign Aid Increase in the Spending Review.

The spending review this week was hardly surprising, depressing yes but not totally a unexpected result, massive public sector cuts, binning a few quangos, typical stuff a free market fan like Gideon Osbourne would do if he was chancellor. However one surprise was the pledge to increase the foreign aid budget to 0.7 % of the national income (7 to 11.5 bn) by 2014 to meet the target of the UN oversees development assistance, the UK being the first major industrialised nation to do so. This has gone down about as well as a man doing a massive diarrhea splodge in a jacuzzi with some of the Tory grassroots, with the Conservative Home website showing that 70 percent (1145 Tory members surveyed) thought it was the "wrong idea", and was the item on the review most opposed by them. It was always going to be a controversial measure, it is no surprise that the grassroots, and others were not exactly going to start jumping up and down the streets like mad people in sheer unvarnished joy about it. I'd well imagine that some of the thousand surveyed would recommend that the foreign aid budget should be somewhere between zero and nothing. The rhetorical question "why should we increase aid when we are in a bad state in the UK?" has been bandied about, along with the quintessential "charity begins at home" (should it end there?). These statements are more an attitude I think than an objective statement. You really either believe in it or you don't, when that lady in Nottingham asked just this, I doubt Camerons response changed her mind all that much. So why did they decide to increase it then? Why do something that was inevitably going to piss off the more grassroots elements?

In some ways freezing the aid budget, or even cutting it (at the least below inflation) would have been a simplistic way of winning a few votes. The Coalition has shown that it will throw in a gimmick or two to please the punters, Phillip Hammond axing the M4 bus lane anyone? I myself couldn't fathom why they increased it - though I support the decision to do so. Even not taking into account the basic human empathy side of it, it is ridiculous to think that we can just ignore the social consequences of global poverty in our globalised world, it just doesn't work like that. But then I sort of figured out one of the motivations why they have increased it, and it may be to do with the cuts to the military. Some of the more knowledgeable commentators of this kind of thing than me (aka every living human being) on the spending review have indicated that the Coalition is aiming to try a more "carrot" than "stick" approach to places like Afghanistan, using money to win over the populations, rather than costly (both financially and human) military force. Indeed some charities are worried that some of the more traditional recipients of UK aid will end up losing out as they aren't a combat theatre. There are also worries about the Department for International Development (Dfid), who deal with foreign aid, having its administrative costs halved. It could result in less transparency about where the cash ends up, and ironically even may cost the UK, if - say the World Bank bill the amount they had to pay their admin staff back to the UK tax payer.

Time will tell if this was a radical attempt to change tack on military and foreign policy, or just ends up hurting the people it was meant to help even more than before.

A Tale of Two Telegraph Blogs

As sure as night follows day, whenever Maggie Thatcher falls ill, and some lefty columnist somewhere has harsh words about the day of her demise, there will be inevitably a column from a right wing pundit in the Mail or the Telegraph explaining how this gloating over the death of a frail old lady is cast iron proof that every left winger is a Stalinist / communist / secretly a genocidal maniac in the making. This time this trope has come from the Telegraph blogger Ed West. He argues that this kind of thing is down to the left and the progressive minded viewing all conservatives and people on the right as inherently evil. Whilst their side merely view the other side as misguided and ignorant, hence the reason why [he thinks] the right has moral and intellectual superiority, and would never stoop to gloating over the deaths of - say Tony Blair or Gordon Brown, even though a comment on the article says that they would gloat, and a letter to the Mail saying they would relish the death of the former.

It was with this in mind that I stumbled upon this piece by Tom Chivers a Telegraph guy who writes sciencey articles on his blog on their [Telegraphs] website, he appears not to be very right wing at all, and writes about the virtual incitement to homophobic violence that resulted in the headline in the Ugandan newspaper that is pictured above. Chivers is understandably appalled at the headline comparing it as a more extreme version of the News of the World "name and shame" headline a decade ago. In this case far; far worse, the NOTW article at least covered child sex offenders (I'm not saying that the article was anything but a reckless attempt to incite violence btw.) I would have thought that something like this may have proved Wests theory. A substantial number of comments to the Telegraph blogs are pretty right wing (putting it mildly!) after all. They aren't really going to be big on gay rights and the whole homosexual scene, but surely even they would have sympathy for the plight of people who will likely end up being the victims of mob violence? Surely this will prove Ed's point that these right wing guys will wear their nobility on their sleeves? Er.. no. Quite a substantial minority of them are either indifferent to those "outed", or even say that they deserve what they get. For Gods sake, I mean how much of a c**t do you have to be to so divorced from any sense of basic human decency in regards to people who will likely be lynched because of being outed like this. To give Tom Chivers credit he argues this very point with these people, and does a good job of the straw men they try to place at him (you know the "you wouldn't say this if it was Muslims doing it.." spiel). I ended up feeling sorry for him, a nice guy having to write for arseholes. The earliest comments on this article really do make you question human nature sometimes.

I don't think this is a glowing vindication for Ed Wests theory. I do think that those on the left who do do all this "piss on Thatchers grave" really do make a rod for their own backs (I wonder how many really will do it when the time comes?) when right wing columnists use this to demonstrate to their audience how horrible these "ungrateful socialists are". But let us remember that Thatcher was the prime minister of this country, and an awful lot of people paid a very heavy price on the alter of her "convictions". It isn't surprising many people loathe her. We might say that Richard Littlejohn is subject to pretty venomous abuse on - say; Mailwatch, but he earns a fortune spreading poisonous lies about vulnerable groups, so it isn't too surprising that those on the left won't like him too much. But what struck me about this story was that the people being attacked weren't leaders or newspaper columnist, but were powerless individuals in fear of their lives. And that I feel is an important distinction. Leftys can say stupid and unkind stuff, but this kind of kicking those vulnerable targets and the sheer inhumanity of some of the callousness written, seems a forte of the more right wing commentator, and I'm sad to say it is a pretty common theme on those kind of blogging sights.

Obama Administration Caves In to Stupid.

Barack Obamas advisers have decided to prevent him from visiting the "Golden Temple" or Harmandir Sahib as it is also known in India - a nation he is visiting next month. This beautiful building is the spiritual centre of Sikhism in India, and one of the prerequisites for the presidential visit would have been Obama having to cover his head, as per course in a Sikh Temple. Why then are his aides so concerned? Well they fear that some of the voters back home might think he is a Muslim if they see him wearing a head dress. No really!

Now I most certainly am not saying that all Americans are a bit thick, but really?! I mean how fucking stupid are some of Obamas most vocal critics, you know the ones who say he was born in Kenya and is a Marxist; Radical Islamist (I mean you can obviously be both, what with them mutually incompatible) fifth columnist sleeper agent cum dark lord of the Sith, or whatever. I honestly think some of the more boneheaded teabaggers actually believe that Obama wears a big cloak and secretly meets with Osama Bin Laden telling him "you have done well my young apprentice!" You cannot meet half way with idiocy of this degree, no matter how much you think you can. To think that some people can put two and two together, and come up with a vowel. There are people who must think.

1. OBAMAS GONE TO A FOREIGN LOOKING TEMPLE WITH WEIRD NAME.

2. OBAMA IS WEARING FUNNY LOOKING HAT

3. OBAMA IS IN PLACE BROWN PEOPLE LIKE TO WORSHIP AT.

CONCLUSION = OBAMA IS A MUSLIM.

Jesus, I mean talk about being on the ball. It's just so obvious when you think about it.

I'm not being 100 percent facetious about this either. Some people are actually convinced he is a Muslim. His staff must obviously think that this stuff holds some weight, why potentially create a visible hoo hah with the Sikhs if it just half a dozen rednecks who think it. The picture of Obama above in traditional Somali elder garb when he visited rural Kenya before being president was put out as "proof" he was a Muslim (ironically the photo was believed to have been circulated from the Democrats side, by Hilary Clintons allies in the 2008 leadership elections.) and it seems to have convinced in some circles, what with all the stuff about his "Kenyan passport" and his dad being a radical Muslim (he didn't follow the religion by the time Barack was born). I mean people are saying he's a Muslim because his surname sounds like Osama; and has Hussein in it for Christ sake! All of this stuff is easily falsifiable if you do about 2 seconds of background research online. It is distressing to see that Obamas administration is starting to pander to this kind of idiocy. It is also a sad indictment of modern politics, that democracy is being so debased and reduced to the nth degree of moron. Let us remember this isn't about a contest about who wins the bloody X-factor. This is about who should be elected to be the leader of the most powerful nation on Earth, during one of the worst economic crisis since I forgot to get paid one week. That is; "IT'S SERIOUS, NOT A NAME CALLING FARCE!" It is truly, another invasion from the planet of stupid.

Peter is the Gift that keeps on Giving Part II

Peter Hitchens is rather surprisingly; not a bad writer. His foreign correspondant pieces tend to be pretty good for one thing, his book "The Broken Compass" isn't bad either, even though his beliefs are not my cup of tea, but then we do have freedom of speech so there ain't much I can do about that. As a columnist though he does seem to be increasingly lazy and cliched, his polemics are sometimes so silly, I actually suspect he is just Poe's lawing his own column in the Mail on Sunday. So it is perhaps why we end up with articles like this one.

Is university really such a good thing? I spent three years learning to be a Trot.

In one sense I can see why he may have indulged in this sort of thing. The Mails increasingly elderly and right wing readership often seem to have a bit of an axe to grind in regards to yoof. I don't think I am wide off the mark saying that a lot of this is down to a lot of these bitter and disappointed people trapped by the dreary hard right conservatism that they would like to impose on us all -being jealous of a more dynamic and opportunity laden younger generation. But that really doesn't excuse Peter asking the stupidest rhetorical question ever asked by a human in the opening part of his anti - university screed.

"What are universities for anyway?"

They're there to stop the clouds falling out of the sky Peter.

"I went to one and spent the whole time being a Trotsky­ist troublemaker at the taxpayers’ expense, completely neglecting my course."

Just because he pissed around being a plazzy Lenin, doesn't mean everyone else will. Students are more likely to work harder now anyway, what with fees going up. Fees Hitchens never was landed with.

"I have learned a thousand times more during my 30-year remed­ial course in the University of Fleet Street, still under way."

Oh, the "university of life" rant. I don't doubt real world experience is very important, but you don't become a brain surgeon, or an engineer, or learn about particle physics on the street, and many other important careers that make our world go round. You learn them at university, in academic disciplines.

"And they pass through the nasty, sordid rite of passage known as ‘Freshers’ Week’, in which they are encouraged to drink dangerous amounts of alcohol and to lose what’s left of their sexual inhibitions after the creepy sex educators have got at them at school."

Young people do all of the above outside of uni as well. Some of freshers week isn't pretty, but you don't have to take part if you don't want to.

"And if they are being taught an arts subject, they will find that their courses are crammed with anti-Christian, anti-Western, anti-traditional material. Proper literature is despised and ‘deconstructed’. Our enviable national history is likewise questioned, though nothing good is put in its place"

Loosely translates into:- they teach stuff in a way Peter Hitchens doesn't like.

"Rather than putting an entire generation in debt, the time has come to close most of our universities and shrink the rest so they do what they are supposed to do – educating an elite in the best that has ever been written, thought and said, and undertaking real hard scientific research."

That would be a bit of a silly thing to do. We live in a knowledge based economy, we have little in the way of manufacturing jobs, not to mention competition from South East Asia in intellectual fields. I wouldn't be in too much of a hurry to do this.

"Or do these places exist only to hide the terrible youth unemploy­ment that is a result of having a country run by graduates?"

Playing the anti intellectual card again. I'll let you into a secret Peter. Politicians who have few qualifications are just as likely to fuck stuff up as those that are highly qualified. For all I know, they'd probably be more likely. Running a country isn't easy. Why is there this ridiculous notion that highly educated people are somehow less qualified to seek office than some bloke off the street?

Littlejohn and the Chilean Miners.

Can you actually fucking believe Littlejohn is actually bitching about the amount of coverage that the rescue of the Chilean miners received on Wednesday from Sky, the BBC and other media outlets? There is gratuitous sensationalism and emotionalism out there I'll grant, but this kind of story was pretty unique. I'd have been more surprised if it hadn't received as much coverage as it did, and I don't begrudge the story that. It was one of those rare stories in the media, a happy ending to what could have been a disaster. Most mining accidents rarely end any other way. It was a genuine human interest story, and a true tale of triumph over adversity, pulling together, and the test of human spirit in tough times. It was pretty horrendous for 33 men to be stuck in a horrible place for over two months, people - even complete strangers are bound to feel for the men and their families, and be glad to see them rescued. The static nature of the accident and the slow unfolding of the rescue effort explains why there was rolling news coverage at the site. It meant the reports of the rescues would be drawn out, and would give them something to actually put on 24 hour news for a change (though I doubt any but the hardest followers watched the whole thing live, as Littlejohn claims.) I imagine that there was a mawkish element to some of the commentary and reportage, but I think a lot of people were genuinely concerned that the miners would all be rescued safely. The rescue itself could have gone wrong. I think people were impressed by the miners resilience in a situation you wouldn't wish on your worst enemy, trapped in the bowels of the Earth in awful conditions for that time.

It is actually ironic that the Mail and Littlejohn are partly responsible for the way the rescue was covered. What do I mean? I mean that although it is true that bad news sells, too much bad news can put people off. Papers like the Mail are so unremittingly negative and hateful to everything that you end up needing a break from it all. People don't want wall to wall negativity, it's bad for the soul. They want to see a happy ending, walk about in the sun, see that good stuff happens to good people. The rescue of the miners, whilst perhaps not the biggest news story in the greater scheme of things (though not to the families.) reminded us that it wasn't all doom and gloom all the time. We were routing for these guys and luckily the rescue payed off, and that is as happy an ending as you can get really.

This being a Littlejohn article, all this talk of nice stuff was overlooked totally. I mean this quote probably speaks volumes about the sort of bloke he is.

"I don't know any of these people [the miners]. Nor does anyone else in Britain. So why invest so much time and emotional energy in the fate of total strangers?"

Oh it's called basic human compassion Richard. For people in a truly shitty and unique situation.

"discovered this week that twice as many men have died in accidents on British building sites since 2001 as have been killed in action in Afghanistan. But you won't be seeing a Panorama special on them any day soon."

This from a guy who takes the piss out of "elf n safety"... oh, every day. He then says in the same article.

"Call me callous, but I couldn't help wondering what would have happened if 33 men had been trapped down one of our few remaining British mines.

Under our modern elf 'n' safety culture, the emergency services are actively discouraged from risking their own lives to save others."

Yeah I'm sure everyone would have just shrugged their shoulders, packed up the rescue equipment and gone home leaving them stuck down there forever.

Idiot.

Ze Filthy Hun Ban OUR Poppy Sellers? Errrr Not Really.

Around about this time the press start reporting stories about poppy sellers and remembrance day. They aren't usually stories about really understanding the true concept of remembrance day, or a reflection on the vast human cost of war, or even the tireless and largely voluntary work poppy sellers and the British legion undertake on the high streets of Britain which allows Remembrance Sunday to continue well after many of the combatants of the two world wars are no longer here today, and in the case of the war it was originally intended to remember - pretty much every one of them. No it is usually an excuse to print some story about some "elf n safety jobsworth" banning pins, or in most cases an excuse to bash Germany, and exert the basest of "patriotic" sentiment about how Britain won the war, kind of missing the actual point of remembrance day, but we'll touch on that later.

For this post we look at this story about how German owned Aldi banned poppy sellers from one of their stores, by not actually banning them at all. We start with this ominous opening narrative.

"Once they fought them on the beaches. Seventy years later it seems they are fighting them in the aisles."

Seventy years. Perhaps we should start doing a bit more live and let live, after seven decades??

"But this time the enemy is the German-owned Aldi supermarket"

Oh do fuck off with the rhetoric. The Third Reich was a tad worser than a low budget supermarket chain. Glad to see that grown up British attitude to Germany shining through.

"It has infuriated war veterans by refusing to let them sell remembrance poppies in one of its stores."

I could see how that would cause ructions. But this sounds like a solid piece of Mail flat earth news though. So let's read on.

"Volunteers from the Royal British Legion asked the manager whether they could set up a stall in the supermarket to to raise money for the charity in the run up to Remembrance Sunday."

I can see why they would do that, a large catchment area of people in one visible space.

"The reply seemed little more than a declaration of war."

Oh Jeez Louise, can they give the war slurs a rest?

"The veterans were told they would not be allowed in the store itself. They would have to stand outside in the cold – and for two days only."

Hmm that's a bit tight. We are talking only one store aren't we, not a blanket ban throughout Aldis though? As it isn't clear in the article.

"The veterans usually run their annual Poppy Appeal stall in the Co-op supermarket at Great Harwood in Lancashire."

This year, however, it is closed for a refit, so they wrote to the no-frills Aldi, the town’s only other supermarket, to see if it could help."

Right it is only one store.

Aldi responded to the story with this quote.

"Last night Aldi, which had pointed out the veterans could shelter under the ‘protective overhead canopy’ outside the store, made a sudden retreat.

It announced the Great Harwood veterans could come in from the cold after all.

‘Requests to collect in-store or leave collection tins in-store are dealt with on a case-by-case basis, and due to Mr Myerscough’s age, we will gladly allow him to collect in store,’ a statement said."

Well I'll admit that the store in question was perhaps being a bit tight in not letting older fund raisers into the main store building in the height of autumn. That isn't the problem with the story. It was a bad call on behalf of whoever runs this store. There is no indication that anyone of German origin initiated this call, so the German connection is irrelevant and no indication that they were banning the poppy sellers from fund raising full stop either. The Mail can't help get a Nazi dig in anyway.

"The Aldi chain was founded by Karl and Theo Albrecht, both of whom fought for the Nazis in the Second World War. Theo died earlier this year, leaving Karl as the world’s tenth richest man, worth £14.7billion."

In what capacity they fought for the Third Reich is not mentioned. I could point out that the Mail and the Nazis weren't exactly strange bedfellows during the 30's but that would just be petty.

Stories like this, apart from being reported in the most childish and John Bull pub patriot manner, are actually in my opinion a mockery of what remembrance day is all about. It wasn't conceived as a day to point fingers at the other combat nation, or to dwell on who started what, and who won whatever battle. It was a reminder of the enormous human cost, a cost borne on for the most part on ordinary guys from all walks of life. Thrust into the fiery receiving end of the worst excesses of human evil and destructiveness, and that each red poppy signified a life lost, a soul snuffed out, a loved one vanquished. That is the horrific end product of the worst of human nature unleashed and that is the real purpose of remembrance day. It is now almost seven decades since the end of the last world war, and it seems that the likes of the Mail haven't really learned much at all in that time.

I Appear to Have Completely Missed the Boat.

A few weeks ago I posted here on the findings of some research that appeared to show a link between certain gene fragments in kids, and kids who had been diagnosed with ADHD. This had been broadcast in some sections of the news of new "proof" that ADHD was genetic and not just the end result of lousy parenting and naughty kids getting away with murder. This spurred me to write a piece muling on the hypothetical consequences to our society and notions of morality and deviancy - if it was discovered that genetics was the largest factor in determining a persons behaviour. I thought it would perhaps lead to a greater understanding (though would be very contentious to many people) of both mental disorders, and in the case of something like ADHD, and fringe autists - that it was not just a case of youngsters being difficult for the hell of it, or being "a bit of a weirdo". That or society may realise that people could be victims to a genome that they had no say in coding, and where would we go with that, with our assumption of a largely free will concept of personal behaviour. So I was both surprised and depressed by a post I read on Ben Goldacres peerless Bad Science blog. I've put up the appropriate parts of the posting in the quotes below, and it seems that if we are to believe the research into people who believe that genetic determinism is the major cause of mental issues, that it far from induces a more understanding attitude to those afflicted. It seems that I missed the boat with my previous post, and not just slightly. This stuff is pretty damning.

and Harre explored attitudes among first year undergraduate psychology students, with questionnaires designed to probe belief about the causes of mental health problems, and responses on 6-point scales to statements like “I would be less likely to become romantically involved with someone if I knew they had spent time in a psychiatric hospital”. People who believed more in a biological or genetic cause were more likely to believe that people with mental health problems are unpredictable and dangerous, more likely to fear them, and more likely to avoid interacting with them. An earlier study in 1999 by Read and Law had similar results.

In 2002 Walker and Read showed young adults a video portraying a man with psychotic symptoms, such as hallucinations and delusions, then gave them either biogenetic or psychosocial explanations. Yet again, the “medical model” approach significantly increased perceptions of dangerousness and unpredictability.

In 2004 Dietrich and colleagues conducted a huge series of structured interviews with three representative population samples in Germany, Russia and Mongolia. Endorsing biological factors as the root cause for schizophrenia was associated with a greater desire for social distance.

And lastly, more compelling than any individual study, a review of the literature to date in 2006 found that overall, biogenetic causal theories, and labelling something as an “illness”, are both positively related to perceptions of dangerousness and unpredictability, and to fear and desire for social distance. They identified 19 studies addressing the question. 18 found that belief in a genetic or biological cause was associated with more negative attitudes to people with mental health problems. Just one found the opposite, that belief in a genetic or biological cause was associated with more positive attitudes

That is pretty depressing findings. That people who are prone to a genetic view of human behaviour are more likely to distance themselves from people with mental issues, and worse seem to think that on some level people so afflicted are "prisoners of their genes." or potentially unreformable and lost causes - prisoners of their own DNA, and seen as more dangerous than people who don't subscribe to the genetic view, who may not be as willing to write them off.

Now I want to say that I don't take the view of our hypothetical "genetic" person above, in regards to those who are suffering from disorders such as these, but I think Ben's closing statements should be heeded.

"Blaming parents is clearly vile. But before reading this research I think I also assumed, unthinkingly, like many people, that a “biological cause” story about mental health problems was inherently valuable for combating stigma. Now I’m not so sure. People who want to combat prejudice may need to challenge their own prejudices too."

Seconded.

Halal Hulabaloo

There has been quite a lot of feedback in the papers from "outraged" readers in regards to the Mail on Sundays "expose" on the widespread distribution of halal meat to well known stores and food outlets without this being made clear to buyers / eaters, or even mentioned at all. I didn't actually think that it was not that well known that cheap halal meat was frequently sold - not just to take aways, but to other places too. Despite what the coverage may say this isn't in case it offends Muslims. It is just pretty good value for retailers and food outlets buying in bulk. There is really one profit that these guys are in awe to, and it ain't Mohammad.

Now back to the outcry. There is the question of the ethical nature of halal based killing of food animals, and whether it is right to keep schtum about how the meat we eat is killed (and treated.), and I have no stick with that, they are valid ones. As for the cruelty of the halal method? Despite the silliness of having to get a green light from God before killing an animal for food, as many religious purity ceremonies don't make much sense. Well the sad fact is there aren't many "pleasant" ways of systematically killing meat mammals and poultry birds with advanced nervous systems. It is a case of trying to meet the least bad option really. But that really is to miss the real gripe of many of the letters. A gripe they try to cover up (badly) in the language of animal welfare. It is grimly humorous to see complainants writing in, trying to make out that they are some kind of Linda McCartney clone, when you know that their sole contribution to animal welfare was to feel a bit bad eating gammon and pineapple at the Brewers Fayre, after watching "Babe" on Sky Movies the night before. The complainants are mostly more teed off that they may have unwittingly become involved in an Islamic tradition, than what was going through a sheep's mind before it was revolving on a rotating spit in a kebab house window.

One letter to the Mail on Sunday really encapsulated that - when you took out all the more evasive weasel wording - it was a "bloody Muslims" rant fest at heart, was the one I have reproduced below by Mrs Felton, who gives the game away with all the huffy solipsistic sanctimoniousness and fake; turned up to eleven - moral outrage of chintz soaked suburbia, that only a pissed off Mail letter writer can master

"In his letter regarding Halal meat being sold when not specified as such, Fiyaz Mughal [the Director of Faith Matters] states that the 'respect of religious beliefs is what makes us a tolerant society'

Where is the respect for my religious beliefs, when I am expected to eat meat that has been ritually slaughtered?

I find the whole concept deeply offensive on a spiritual and moral level, and I am furious that I have probably consumed halal meat unwittingly. It seems a case of some animals being more equal than others.

C. Felton (Mrs.) Gillingham Kent. "

Now I summoned all my "Northernbloke" lackeys together, which was easy as it consists of just me, and we came up with this equation. The "Mrs C Felton of Kents, animal welfare to "they've got all sorts of yuman rights these days" percentage differential, which is expressed as follows.

%AGE OF MRS C FELTONS WAKING MOMENTS DEVOTED TO THE WELFARE OF COWS THAT ARE BURGER FODDER. - 0.00%

%AGE OF MRS C FELTONS OUTRAGE AT "NOW MUSLIMS BAN PROPER ENGLISH AND CHRISTIAN MEAT." -100zillion %

Mrs Felton and many like her who write in at their "outrage", couldn't give a flying fuck about how some cows spent their last few hours on this earth, and that for me is the only real potential ethical problem there is with this sort of thing. I can't change their views. But I do get pissed off that they are so bloody mealy mouthed and backhandedly snide about what they really mean. If you want to be controversial go the whole hog. Write in and say "You can sod right off if you think I'm eating smelly muslimist meat." It may not be nice sentiment, but at least it would be honest.

Peter is the Gift that keeps on Giving

Last post, I touched upon the findings of the possible genetic link to ADHD, and what that could mean for our societies outlook on behavioural problems, and indeed criminality and deviance. I said that religious people may have difficulty swallowing this, as columnists such as Peter Hitchens have shown when they have reacted in their columns on the issue. The Judeo Christian concept of sin and fallen man and free will explaining away theodacity are contradicted by genetic theories of behaviourism in humans, and we know which trumps which in the reasoning of the devout. It could go someway to explaining why someone like Hitchens who believes that evil, and souls and sin are physically manifest -is resistant to this sort of stuff, as well as his dislike for anti - depressant use. So it is no surprise that he gave his tuppenceworth this week in response to the findings. As it is quite short I'll reproduce it here:

"The latest propaganda for the non-existent complaint ‘ADHD’ was torn to shreds on Radio 4’s Today programme by Oliver James, despite highly unhelpful interruptions by the presenter Justin Webb, who gave the pro-ADHD spokeswoman a free run. ‘Evidence’ of a genetic link is nothing of the sort.

(THAT TODAY DEBATE IS HERE AT 2:21:00 INTO THE PROGRAMME)

Even if it were, the fanatics who want to drug normal children and excuse our society’s selfish, horrible treatment of them, have to solve this problem. How can you have a ‘genetic link’ to a complaint for which there is no objective diagnosis? What is it linked to?"

"Evidence" he is very reticent to highlight in the article, and that James does not cite the sourse of in the interview. He is right it isn't "evidence" of a direct link between the gene studied and ADHD, just that there was a possible causal link discovered, which the researchers have admitted. Hitchens has only a rudimentary grasp of how science works, in his mind it must either be a direct link or not at all. All or nothing, which is pretty much counter to the way the incremental scientific method often operates.

"What is it linked to?" he asks, in regards to something that has no concrete objective diagnosis. Well the answer to his rhetorical question is the criteria put down by comparing case study notes of disorders like this, to come up with as close as a set of coherent symptoms to identify and provide diagnostic criteria for a disorder that has certain common similar behavioural patterns in different people. It's actually quite common that scientific terms may not have a cast iron objective definition that encompasses them all. For instance there is no fully objective criteria to identify something as a metal, and no rigid set of properties that define a celestial body as a planet, but we don't just say "fuck it, they don't exist then." Hitchens absolutist stance on everything shows how little he actually grasps what science is.

I just really get so hacked off with these pundits who play all these ad hominem, straw men - bum brained philosophical parlour games to make themselves look cleverer than they are, about stuff they know nothing about. It's purely because ADHD and genetic theories of behaviour don't fit into Hitchens world view, nothing more - that he opposes them and calls those who dent this view as "fanatics". Should stop trying to make out that his articles are something they aren't

Don't hold your breath!