Northernbloke. (the thinking mans misanthrope.)

Littlejohn Is Empathetically Stunted

2011-03-22T16:10:00.000-07:00

The Daily Mail and its hard core readership aren't exactly brimming with the milk of human compassion. It is all to often a deeply depressing insight into the dark recesses of bigotry and cynicism passing off as pessimistic insight. A gloomy mush of narrow intolerance and mean mindedness. But I swear Richard Littlejohn actually manages to scale newer and higher heights of this kind of shit in his columns. His writing can still create shock in those who thought they were immune to being surprised at the vileness the Mail will stoop to. Like his column piece that attacked the naming of the victims of the Ipswich murders as sex workers. (I mean this etymological nitpicking is in perfectly good taste in regards to women who had been horribly murdered.) Or taking the piss out of netting put down to stop the brutally overworked Chinese workers jumping to their deaths. This article however broadly attacks the decision to have a minutes silence for the victims in Japan at a premier league football game. Now that is fair enough. You can have your own views on whether these things are profound moments of reflections, or just largely demonstrative window dressing. That is the role of newspaper columnists. But he somehow turns it into some attack on the Japanese atrocities in WW2 (which being over 70 years ago means it is really relevant to today's events in Japan.), and that Japan may as well be on Mars as it is so alien and whatever. It is just so bizarre and horrendously bad taste at the same time. I mean how mean minded does he think his readers are? Here are some of the worst bits.

We get a subtle "charity begins at home" dig.

"Our natural inclination is to wonder how we can help. But besides sending specialist search teams and offering heartfelt sympathy, there is nothing we can do. Japan is an advanced, wealthy nation, which will recover and rebuild over time. It doesn’t need our money."

Fair enough. This sentiment is expressed with some glib crudeness. But the CBAH argument isn't really an argument but an attitude. Perhaps an unpleasant one, but many hold it. It is really the second part of the paragraph that sets the misanthropic tone of the article;

"Despite filling our homes with Japanese electronics and our garages with cars made by Nissan and Toyota, despite the vivid images on TV and assorted social networks, it remains a faraway country of which we know little and understand less."

Although not explicitly said out loud. This appears to imply that as Japan is a long way away, then we should care a little bit less or something like that. You see I kind of thought that basic human empathy would kick in at the plight of any group of people who had suffered a huge loss of life in such a tragic event, regardless of whether they were in Manchester or on Mars.

"Anyone who has visited or worked in Japan will tell you it is like landing on another planet. Beyond the baseball caps and Western clothes, the Japanese people have a distinct culture of their own, which is entirely alien to our own values."

So what? It's not that fucking alien. Lots of Japanese people died horribly. Lots have lost everything they had. Whole towns on the North East coast are gone! I've never been to Japan, but I know that they have suffered really badly with this. It's basic fucking human empathy to sympathise with people in this situation. Why bring this up???

"They are militantly racist and in the past have been capable of great cruelty."

First point. It's sort of racist to call a n entire collective people "militantly racists". Secondly this applies to pretty much every nation on Earth. It's just that some of us British weren't on the end of it, which can change your perspective.

This is when he brings up the war.

"It is wrong to visit the sins of previous generations on their modern descendants,"

Yes it is.

"Yet many surviving members of the Burma Star Association still harbour deep animosity to everyone and all things Japanese"

Now I understand their anger, and the horrible suffering that they endured, and no one can tell them that they are not entitled to think that way. But that doesn't mean that this is a good way to feel. The people who died last week were innocent of the crimes their ancestors commit ed. Littlejohn is sort of implying that the one minute silence was inappropriate because of this (he uses the example of his wife's grandad who was tortured by the Japanese in the war.). But the people who died didn't commit these crimes. As I said, I can understand why the victims of such appalling treatment feel this way. But that does not mean it is a good thing. When you cannot divorce your hostility, even to innocent people who were not responsible for what their ancestors did. That most peoples common humanity comes to light in such a dreadful event, and that boundaries and even past hostilities are overridden in times like this. I find it baffling as to what point he is trying to make. At least the victims of Japanese war crimes had reason to feel this way. Littlejohn doesn't.

Littlejohn bizarrely tries to tie it in with the whole death of Princess Di thing:

"Ever since the hysteria surrounding the death of Lady Di, when half of the nation seemed to take leave of its senses, a section of the population seizes any excuse for a sobfest."

Yeah, the Diana thing was OTT. But this was a huge natural disaster. The two events are really incomparable. To say there has been a sobfest is an exaggeration. People see lots of shattered lives and are moved by it. The mawkish bastards! Hell, Diana's death was a tragedy. She was a young women with two young kids. The scenes after her death were OTT, but it was still a tragic event (for her loved ones especially) nonetheless.

"There is nothing more meaningless than seeing highly-paid, precocious superstars linking arms and standing in silent tribute to victims of an earthquake on the other side of the world."

Again this "other side of the world" spiel. whether they live 100 miles or 10 000, it was still a dreadful tragedy.

"Sam Kirkpatrick, a reader from Stanwick, Northamptonshire, saw a woman taking part in a road race this weekend wearing a T-shirt imploring spectators to: ‘Pray for the Japanese people.’

The implication being: not just that she was advertising the fact that she is a caring soul, but if you don’t pray for Japan you must be a heartless bastard."

How does Sam know why she was wearing it? She may have been a Christian charity raiser or something.

There is a certain amount of demonstrative posing that goes on with tragedies like this. I have no doubt about that. But a lot of the spirit behind the silences, and the lady with the "prey for Japan" T-shirt is well intentioned (though the debate about its effectiveness is another matter.). So at least give them credit for trying. I honestly suspect Littlejohn is both envious and genuinely flummoxed that people behave this way. That people actually can care about shit that doesn't directly relate to them. That Richard Littlejohn cannot relate to the basic human empathy most of us take for granted.

Very, Very Bad Shit Happens.

2011-03-13T10:09:00.000-07:00

There seems little more to say than has already been said about the dreadful events that have happened in the Northeast of Japan. The pictures speak for themselves about the immense destruction the earthquake and tsunami have wrought in that region, they look like scenes from some immense Apocalypse. It is truly a horrific reminder that the world may be a fascinating and beautiful place, it does have the power to viciously bite back at it's inhabitants.

The tsunami has naturally been a massive talking point in both every day conversation and in the online world as well, and I have been struck (though not really surprised) by the amount of pseudoscience that gets brought up when events like this occur. I'm not even talking about understandable stuff such as will the nuclear power stations (or the nuclear fuel) explode? No, as the Uranium fuel rods in a power station aren't weapons grade. The "Supermoon" theory is also utterly idiotic. That the fact that the moon is (supposedly) at its closest orbital position to the Earth (it isn't till the 19th March. A little technicality.).means its gravitational power increases the frequency of earthquakes. This is nonsense. The differences in the distances of the moon have so little influence on gravity and tidal fluctuations on the Earth. It would be like standing 100 meters away from a bonfire, and saying "I'm too warm. I'll stand 100.3 meters away instead." The moon can barely lift the oceanic tides about 6 meters. It can't shift trillions of tonnes of the Earths crust. If the moon wanted to harm humans, it would have done so already.

No, the common sentiment of some of the responses to the disaster is that it is some form of penance for the evils the human race has inflicted on the globe. That it is part of some "cosmic plan.". That hey; it's just like "2012", even though it's 2011, and that 2012 was a made up film anyway. The fact that this is the second earthquake in a rich country after the New Zealand quakes (this apocalyptic spiel doesn't seem to get spouted as much when a poor country like Haiti gets hit by a natural disaster.). Both lie in the Pacific ring of fire, where the most unstable tectonic boundaries are, so yes you will get Earthquakes there. Partly human hubris and the desire to turn random events into a conscious narrative, are to blame. It must be God or "Nature" giving mankind a cosmic bollocking, not just that we live on shifting plates over a 8000 mile wide ball of molten (well some of it) rock, and something has got to give every so often, sadly with awful consequences for those who live on top of it. That we are reaping what we sow with our pollution and stuff. Overlooking that earthquakes don't generally make concessions for tree hugging hippies. That nothing humans did can stop what happened, and that we can't stop these things from happening, only to try to ride them out with specially designed buildings and seabreaks if we can. Or perhaps most frighteningly of all, we are at the merciless; unthinking whim of the lethal arbitrariness of the rough end of nature. Whose plan we can never know, as there isn't one. Perhaps thinking there is a plan makes some people make sense of senselessness.

Scathing Letter to Richard Desmond, From a Daily Star Reporter Who Quit Due to Papers Anti-Muslim Stance

2011-03-05T11:10:00.000-08:00

If you haven't seen the letter to Richard Desmond from former Star reporter Richard Peppiatt, then I suggest you do so now. (Letter in full here) At first I thought it might be a spoof (albeit a good one) from a left wing blogger, but it seems like the real deal. The prose of this letter is wonderful (one example about the Muslim loos thing, he says how the paper got all "flushed" over the story!). It is loaded with very funny barbed sarcasm and contempt for the journalistic atrocities Dirty Desmond has committed. The letter is a surreal and damning insight to Desmond's empire. He describes how he just made stuff up about Kelly Brook off the top of his head. Dressed in a burqua and wore M&S underpants at the same time. Tried to propose to Susan Boyle (she declined his offer btw!!). That; apparently stories about Jordon (not the country) took precedence over the Egyptian uprising. That the paper only has one reporter to cover the entire North of England, and that they just pinch stories off the Mails website. That the stories it prints wouldn't stand up to a "gnats fart". All of this he surmises looks to Desmond as:

"[I] suspect you see a perfect circle. I see a downward spiral. I see a cascade of shit pirouetting from your penthouse office, caking each layer of management, splattering all in between."

I'm not saying his time at the Star is laced with a healthy dose of cynicism!

The letter has a more serious point to make, and it seems the straw that broke this camels back was the dubious EDL coverage the paper gave, stuff about how the EDL was to become a proper political party. (actually all the story was about was Tommy Robinson, the EDL leader - wanted the EDL to become a political party.) and the incessant anti- Muslim sentiment of the paper. And it is here that Mr. Peppiatt hammers the nail squarely on the head:

"You may have heard the phrase, "The flap of a butterfly's wings in Brazil sets off a tornado in Texas." Well, try this: "The lies of a newspaper in London can get a bloke's head caved in down an alley in Bradford."

If you can't see that words matter, you should go back to running porn magazines. But if you do, yet still allow your editors to use inciteful over insightful language, then far from standing up for Britain, you're a menace against all things that make it great."

It's not often that I give someone from Fleet Street credit, but kudos to this guy. If a few more have the balls to vote with their feet, who knows?

They Blew it All, Because Bronze Age Bigotry Came First.

2011-02-28T15:44:00.000-08:00

Eunice and Owen Johns lost their high court case to become foster carers because they refused to say that a homosexual lifestyle was acceptable. The social services feared that this would be a problem (and it would be) if they adopted a child who would later enter into homosexual lifestyles. Of course this is being seen as yet another occasion when the rights of Christians is being superseded by the rights of homosexuals.

Well it isn't. No one can force the more "rigorous" practitioners to like homosexuality, but when they are in a position to actually put this belief into practice, potentially on a child then we have a problem. It isn't the thought police. It is saying that a person may have views that may result in an adverse situation that clouds their professional approach. That you may have views that are considered controversial in a private setting, but may create a conflict of interest in professional situations.

The law that has brought about the court case, currently says that the rights of a person to live free from homophobic discrimination supersedes their right to be discriminated against on the grounds of religious prejudice. That is the right of a person who had their sexual orientation determined by matters out of their control has the right to not be discriminated against by someone who signed up for a religion, who has the opinion that gayness is bad because some book told them it was. I'm sorry but it is a strange moral standard when an opinion has more moral worth than someone being persecuted for something they had no control over. And no amount of strongly worded letters by Dr Carey about how Christianity is being trampled on by gay rights (well you want to be free to persecute, so go figure.) changes that fact.

I think stories like this wind me up so much because of the sheer wastefulness of them. This couple (and I'm sure they were pretty good foster parents in the past, who had a lot to offer.) went to court to try to justify being specially immune from the law because some old book said (about twice) that they had to discriminate against a whole group of people. I hope it was worth it. That they went all this way to defend a biblical issue that on the scale of things isn't that big a part of the Christian faith. That any reasonable person might have thought that wasting all that energy on upholding a "value" that is so irrelevant and blatantly morally wrong. Now a child has lost the chance of having some kind of stable upbringing because upholding some piece of Bronze age bigotry was obviously far more important. What a waste.

It is interesting that they sort of issue a similar statement of regret, but obviously without seeing the inherent irony of what they say:

"'Worst of all, a vulnerable child has now likely missed the chance of finding a safe and caring home at a time when there are so few people willing to foster or adopt."

"Sceptic of Sceptics" James Delingpole Defends Homeopathy. Uh?

2011-02-23T09:41:00.000-08:00

James Delingpole likes to see himself as some maverick voice, alone in the old wilderness. The only one eyed king in a kingdom of the blind, who can see the whole man made climate change thingy for the elaborate fraud that it is. He claims that this is why he is "reviled" and not because of bad methodology. So it doesn't really help his cause when he writes articles defending homeopathy, and wheels out all the straw man arguments all homeopathic apologists are presumably honour bound to wheel out. You know the "scientists have been wrong before." "It's just like a new religion." and so on.

Tom Chivers has a new post debunking the argument Delingpole makes. He makes perhaps the best counter argument to the claim that people who dismiss homeopathy (or CC deniers) are just as bad as the inquisitors persecuting heretics:

"I’m sure some people do get overly aggressive about some of these things (alas, we don’t all have James’s saintly good manners when it comes to dealing with those with whom we disagree). But the point of scepticism – true scepticism – is that it is constantly evaluating. So, I promise you, if Ben Goldacre, or James Randi, or I (to put myself in some serious company), were to be presented with solid evidence that homeopathy worked, we would alter our position. I don’t even know what “evidence” you could present a Spanish inquisitor to convince them that Jewish children shouldn’t be forcibly converted, or what evidence you could give a witchfinder to show that witches don’t actually exist. The comparison is a nonsense one.

I'll have to remember that one!

New Blog. Ooooooh

2011-02-15T15:20:00.000-08:00

Remember I said I wanted to do a new blog, separate from this one. I hadn't canned the idea, it just got a little delayed (what's new there with me!!) but I am pleased to say it is now up and running. I need to change the colouring of the fonts, some of the sidebar information, and put it on the blogroll here. I would have done this yesterday but Blogger templates is a fucking nightmare to edit (The spellcheck has decided to stop functioning about two paragraphs down. What the hell's all that about?) It is just horrible on my main machine, but surprisingly not as bad to fiddle with on the laptop (paradoxically that is just so old it takes 34 years to load up.) So it is now up, but the design creases will be ironed out. Unless I end up shooting myself first in frustration at Bloggers petulant silicon behaviour.

the Northernbloke blog will still continue though.

Will the Daily Star Start Openly Supporting the EDL?

2011-02-10T04:28:00.000-08:00

This headline is an utter misrepresentation of course. All the actual story boils down to is that EDL leader Tommy Robinson (or Stephen Lennon as he is really called) wants to turn his ramshackle mob into an official political party, somewhat in the manner that Nick Griifin did. Apparently one of his key policies will be, [he] is going to outlaw the Quran and make it more compatible with British traditions. WTF??!!* The story may just be a case of if wishes were horses; we would all ride, on the part of Robinson. No, what is striking is that the Star seems to be ratcheting up support for the EDL. This headline is actually not the most tacit of the signs that Richard Desmond may be allowing his paper to support such a dodgy group. The Star claims in the same article that a phone poll they conducted resulted in a staggering 98% (that figure has been revised to 99% in later articles.) of readers agreeing with the EDL policies**. Admittedly a tabloid phone poll is as dubious as a Jeremy Kyle lie detector test, but what about this loaded strapline from another article, this one about two Muslim Respect councilors not giving a standing ovation (though they both claim to have smiled appreciatively) for a soldier awarded a George Cross medal.

Admittedly the colon does imply that it means that is just the stated intent of the EDL (why not word it ....EDL say they will fight for ....?), but it could be interpreted [by the readers] as an endorsement of the group by the Star, and I am certain this was intentionally done.

If that wasn't bad enough, we then get the following editorial piece, that I will paste in full, as it has to be seen in it's entirety.

"Critics say the English Defence League is a racist, extremist organisation that's filled with hate. The group's leader Tommy Robinson strongly denies this. He says members have no problems with race.

But he admits he is against 'barbaric' Islam and the way it affects Britain. Whatever side of the fence you fall, one thing's for sure.

There is a visibly growing support for the EDL. It is attracting people across Britain to its ranks who feel the same way.

This should be a warning to the major political parties. Key voters are so fed up with them that they are looking elsewhere.

And there are real underlying issues here with Brits who feel abandoned by their leaders.
The EDL are now planning to field election candidates. If the Tories, Labour and Lib Dems don't heed this and address key issues they could soon become a political force.

Then, whether you like them or not, Tommy and his followers will have to be taken very seriously."

Hmmm.

Although not quite a "Hurrah for the Blackshirts.". Is this an all but endorsement of the EDL, from the most racist tabloid in Britain? Which I might add has pumped out the most appalling lies that can only be seen as an attempt to shit stir community relations in this country.

I do wonder if Desmond is using his dying papers, now not "pressured" by the IPCC; as vehicles for his own bizarre xenophobic views. I'm not just talking about the rumours of him singing "Deutchland uber Allies" to his execs whilst goosestepping about in his offices. Check out this article from as far back as 1994 pointing out how his pornos were peppered with an obsessive level of racially related material. What with the whole "Pull out of Europe" thing at the Express and now this. All I do know is that as far as I am concerned, the Star and the EDL thoroughly deserve one another.

Twats.

This post from Roy Greenslades blog, has heaps of interesting stuff on the whole affair.

This post from Ian Burrell shines much more light on the behind the scenes decisions to run with the "endorsement" front page headline. That it was the editors decision and not Desmonds, as I had suspected. And that the EDL are making capital on the publicity.

*This isn't an atypical display of Robinsons buffoonish ignorance. This toe curling performance on Paxo's show gives you a clear indication of Tommy's towering intellect.

** Without being privy to the wording of the phone poll, and how broad the level of "agreement" (though not support) with EDL is, we can take such a lofty figure with a pinch of salt. Likewise there is the fact that those who support the EDL are much more likely to ring in.

Steve Coogan Fights the Good Fight

2011-02-06T15:04:00.000-08:00

Oh just what we need! More privileged men abusing their status on telly by picking on an easy target. Not women this time as with Gray and Keys, but with the Top Gear trio on the Mexicans. Captain Slow (who should know better) exclaimed Mexican food looked like sick. Hamster, who doesn't know better said they were all lazy and overweight (a lot of Mexican immigrant workers seem to keep a fair few of the cogs nicely oiled in the US service industry from my experience), and Jeremy Clarkson lambasted them for searching for better opportunities elsewhere. Which is a bit rich from a man who fucked off sharpish out of South Yorkshire to move down south when the offer came. The only thing that ever went faster than the Stig was Jeremy heading south from Doncaster on the M1. What is it with wealthy men pissing on those lower down the ladder? There is something so criminal about this I sometimes want to hit someone repeatedly with a heavy shovel? Enough of the impulse towards random acts of violence, it seems Steve Coogan feels the same and takes them to task in this very good smackdown article. Don't know if you'll be around the Top Gear track again though Steve!

But keep the good fight up.

The Pen is Mightier than the Sword

2011-02-05T12:03:00.001-08:00

I had decided to myself to not really comment on the whole Sky football sacking thing. I don't know a lot about football and it wasn't really an incident I knew all that much about. However there have been a series of correspondents to the incident who have followed one familiar theme. That football is a mans game, and that a bit of sexist banter (though telling a female colleague to shove a microphone into your pants seems like stepping over the line a bit.) is just something that women should have to put up with. This is a pet hate of mine. It seems that a certain generation of some men (and it is usually men) have the opinion that casual racism and sexism is both trivial and indeed rather daring. Some of those with this world view have sent letters into the Bolton News (my local paper), one from my old friend Arnold Harrison, the stupidest man in Lancashire, and this offering of verbal crud from Colin Higson of Over Hulton.

ONCE again Steve Jones[1], leading exponent of the PC brigade and all things thereto, twists the facts to suit his argument.

First he says Gray and Keys are entitled to their own views (that itself is an astounding admission for one of his ilk).

Then he goes on to say they should keep their views to themselves (he could take a bit of his own advice and stop lecturing the rest of us with his drivel). If he had taken the trouble to obtain the facts he would have known that they were doing exactly that. It was some other PC maniac that decided on his or her own bat to broadcast a private conversation (nice people, these PC nuts).

If Mr Jones (I apologise if it is wrong or sexist to call him Mr) has ever attended a football match he would know that spectators male and female accuse match officials of not knowing the laws of the game, being blind (sorry visually handicapped ) and having all sorts of afflictions.

He should have heard the woman near me berating the referee’s assistant at the Reebok this week.

Was that sexist? No. She was just doing what all football fans including Gray and Keys do all the time and if by some unfortunate circumstance we are to have female officials forced upon us they will get it, make no mistake, every match as their male colleagues do.

If Mr Jones doesn’t like it he should take up his bed and walk to the top of Rivington Pike away from his keyboard never to regale us with his boring comments ever again.

Colin Higson Over Hulton

This is precisely the kind of mentality that get on my royal tits. Notwithstanding that asking is calling someone "Mr" unPC the stupidest rhetorical question in the history of the universe. No it is that this, and the comments lie it is just blatant apologism for sexist bullying. So I e-mailed this response to the letters page, trying to articulate as best as I can my distaste for this kind of attitude. Hopefully they may actually print it as well.

There have been some worrying letters on this page (Colin Higson “All football supporters have a rant” Feb 5th 2011) and others, as well as in general discussions about the nature of Sky football pundit Andy Grays sacking and Richard Keys resignation in regards to the whole off air furore about their comments about referee Sian Massey. It seems that some people seem to think that blatant sexism is just “something women should put up with.” Because as Colin Higson et al can tell us, just because something like arbitrary discrimination on the basis of someone’s gender is one of this biggest insults to female dignity and liberty going – doesn’t necessarily mean that it is a bad thing[2].

Let us summarise what happened, and why Gray and Keys left. Gray and Keys dismissed the competency of a referee of who they knew nothing about, almost purely on the basis of the XX composition of her chromosomes. How, may I ask; is that any more morally justifiable than when I overheard a guy I once worked with; who upon seeing the new manageress (she was a black lady) sneered “they’ll promote anyone these days.”[3] That comment and this incident highlight why racism and sexism are such moral evils. Writing off the collective worth of a whole subset of humanity on nothing more than them being “the wrong sort.”

Prejudiced comments in (supposed) privacy may be one thing. But school bully boy Grays compounded the sin by making lewd comments about placing a microphone to a female colleague, whilst his trusty little sidekick Keys cackled along like the snivelling little toady he is. Anyone who made these comments would have been disciplined by their boss in any workplace in the UK.

I am sick and tired of chauvinistic bigots dismissing their abuse as a “bit of friendly banter”. Spineless bullies who victimise easy targets always “justify” it in this way.

So let us not say these two buffoons are martyrs to the PC brigade, because they aren’t.

[1] Steve Jones isn't me by the way, and his letter was very good and well argued IMHO.

[2] Yes I blatantly nicked that pun from Ben Goldacres "Bad Science" book.

[3] I have to confess that this never actually happened in the way I said it did. It is a retelling of a quip Tory MP and twat David Heathcote Amery reputedly exclaimed when he saw the black MP Dawn Butler in the members gallery at Westminster. I changed the details as there is a tiny chance that the letters editor might have got cold feet about printing something potentially seen as libelous. But the sentiment of my argument still stands.

The Expresses "Pull Out of Europe" Crusade is Just Like that Bit in Braveheart, But Quite a Bit Shitter.

2011-02-01T15:41:00.000-08:00

The Daily Expresses petition to Downing Street about pulling out of Europe has taken a distinctly "you will not take our freedom" sort of slant, but considerably more shitter than Braveheart was. They had Mel Gibson and a huge army pretending it was the olden days, standing in a field. The Express had to make do with a load of gaudy bin bags full of petitions and a self conscious looking man pretending to be St George and holding a shield made out of cardboard (and I bet this was what he went into media for.). Hollywood this aint! To be fair though they recruited a small army though. They may not have had woad smeared over their faces, or dirty hair and mucky beards (though they should have done this in fancy dress, it would have been well funny.), and an Irish guy with pluck. No all we got was a few dowdy looking Eurosceptic MP's, an Express columnist who was probably there on pain of sacking, and one of the readers who had obviously been paid to turn up and offered a free pub tea into the bargain for showing up.

So far so shit. Why do I even comment on this ridiculous PR stunt? Well it is the wording of the article that tickled me. The Express bigged up the whole thing with this ludicrous comment that shows they haven't quite figured out how this democracy thing works.

"DAVID Cameron was yesterday given the clearest message yet that the UK should leave the European Union."

Hell, we aren't going the way of Egypt are we?

"Editor Peter Hill led a delegation to hand over the bulging sacks of petition coupons signed by 373,000 of our loyal readers."

Er. No. Cancel the threatening flybys of the capital.

373,000. Fucking hell I mean a skateboarding cat on youtube can get more hits than that! I actually checked to see what sort of thing could get 373,000 people to be vaguely interested in something, by getting a comparative viewing figure on youtube, and a video called "I'm Nicki Minaj!! Ask Shane #26" actually topped that by a few thousand. (It's well over 400,000 at the time of writing.) Yes a spoof video of a Noel Gallagher lookalike wearing a Lady Gaga wig, and dancing to a comedy rendition to the tune of "Video Killed the Radio Star" with some camp Jango Fetts as backing dancers (honest) drummed up more interest than a political campaign by a piss poor national newspaper. Why doesn't Richard Desmond ask Shane to do a comedy video of himself dressed up as Gwen Stefani, accompanied by some Hobbits, who take it in turns to shit on a large pretend Euro, whilst dancing to backing music of Hazee Fantasees "John Wayne is Big Leggy" that has had the lyrics changed to "Fuck you, Hermann Van Rumphoy" It could work.

I mean seriously for a national paper crusade, 373,000 signatories for a petition is pathetic. the Express has a daily circulation of around 640,000. That's just circulation. It is reckoned total readership is roughly 2.5 people per single paper. So about 1.6 million perhaps saw this crusade. There were apparently four petition cut outs per paper, so it isn't a case of to few slips to go round. Hell one person could potentially post all four to have four fake signatories. How the hell is this a clear message to David Cameron that we should cut our losses and leave the EU? On the basis of a petition signed by 0.74 percent of the UK population aged over 18. That's the level of popular support the Monster Raving Loony party had for it's policy to paint grey squirrels red to balance the numbers out a bit! Not a monster blow to the establishment that the Express editorials are claiming was it?

I had to laugh at this comment by a Downing Street spokesmen:

"A Downing Street spokeswoman said: “We will respond in the usual way.”

Which translates to "We'll wait till you've gone home and then we'll burn the bloody lot of them."

Meet The Sceptics (Those Ones that are Supposed to Have Been Silenced)

2011-01-31T15:14:00.000-08:00

If you want proof that the BBC, the supreme mouthpiece of the New Socialist World Order is suppressing the AGW deniers and silencing them in a Inquisition like manner, then look no further than BBC 4's "Meet the Sceptics" where the evil Communist mouthpiece silences the dissidents yet again by giving them an hour long documentary on the forbidden topic. That's pretty impressive for a "countertheory" that has never been able to publish a peer reviewed paper. So forgive me if I don't really buy all this "were silenced" stuff.

I haven't seen it yet, (gonna watch it now. Yikes.) but I'm sure it'll be called "a stitch up" or a "character assassination", the usual stuff.

James Delingpole Makes a Grade A Tit of Himself on Horizon Pt II

2011-01-30T15:12:00.000-08:00

As we know in part one, Climate "sceptic" James Delingpole was made to look rather silly on the Horizon documentary about "Science under attack" by the royal society president Paul Nurse. Delingpole has been quite slow to respond on his blog about the affair. It really went belly up a bit for him and I think he has been stumped a bit by how badly it backfired for him* and has put up a few articles criticising Ben Goldacre for calling him a "penis" and attacking him for being an "intellectual coward" by supporting the consensus on AGW. Which I think is out of line against a man who could have been taken to the cleaners by the notoriously litigious poo lady and by exposing the murky underworld of the big medical companies and the AIDS denial in South Africa in the "Bad Science" book. He then attacks the mathematician Simon Singh** for being a bit of a bully for tweeting about our lone crusader:

Sorry, but @JamesDelingpole deserves mockery ‘cos he has the arrogance to think he knows more of science than a Nobel Laureate

Oh bloody boohoo. Delingpole, who ironically is not averse to resorting to a bit of playground abuse (libtards) is trying to set himself up as the victim of some kind of Twitter smear campaign of abuse for his noble stance on climate change. Now let me make it clear, I don't approve if he has received threatening messages, but bloody hell he can't half give it but is incapable of taking it. He has essentially used his blog to promote the idea that climate scientists are colluding in a scam to extort trillions of dollars from a gullible Joe Public. That he somehow has somehow he has seen through the tissue of lies that some of the most qualified climatologists in the world have failed to notice. These are big claims, so you might expect to get a bit of flack for stating it. Sorry James that's how the cookie crumbles mate. As I said he has taken a metaphorical cricket bat around the chops, and as everyone knows when the debate goes tits up resort to straw man arguments. Let's take a look at some of Jameses.

"Yet in the opinion of Singh, the worldwide Climate Change industry is the one area where the robust scepticism and empiricism he professes to believe in just doesn’t apply. Apparently, the job of a journalist is just to accept the word of “the scientists” and take it as read that being as they are “scientists” their word is God and it brooks no questioning or dissent"

This shows James has little understanding of how either to critically appraise scientific research properly and what scepticism is. Possibly it is the result of those with a journalistic background being attracted to holding contrarian views from what they perceive as an aloof "elite" Delingpole appears to believe "scientists" are some monolithic cult who dictatorially decide from on high what is scientifically orthodox and what isn't. The vigorously researched evidence for AGW was simply not obtained in that manner. It is not unreasonable for a qualified scientist to take at face value the "views" of an unqualified layman who doesn't appear to know what science is.

"There’s a “consensus” on global warming. It’s immutable and correct. And anyone who disputes it is a vexatious denier informed by nothing but ignorance and who deserves nothing other than to be hounded and bullied and abused by the Guardian, the Independent, the BBC, Simon Singh’s Twitter mob, Ben Goldacre’s Twitter mob, and the shrill nest of paid-for trolls who infest the comments below this blog not to present a reasoned case but merely to disrupt and offend."

There is a consensus amongst scientists, a very rigorous one supported by shitloads of evidence to back it up. I shall repeat this again loud and clear.

SCIENTIFIC CONCENSUS IS NOT THE SAME THING AS CONVENTIONAL WISDOM OR DOGMATIC ORTHODOXY. NOT AT ALL!!!

Thanks for listening!

Well you can split hairs over what you think the motives of the AGW sceptics may be, but I take the philosophy of Johann Hari. All people deserve respect, all ideas don't. Oh and don't accuse your opponents of trying to rubbish the cause; and then do just that in the same paragraph.

"Well I’m sick of it."

Blog about something else then.

"What sickens me is the hypocrisy of people who claim to be in favour of speech, claim to believe in empiricism, claim to be sceptics yet refuse to accept room for an honest, open debate on one of the most important political issues of our time."

Nurse had a debate with you my friend. Horizon asked you on to do that and you fucked it up. Want some credibility, stop relying on shitty research.

**"My case is not that I “James Delingpole have taken a long hard look at the science of global warming and discovered through careful sifting of countless peer-reviewed papers that the experts have got it all wrong.”

If you are going to accuse the folks who wrote these papers of some sort of cover up, I suggest you start swatting up a bit. Bloody hell if you want to stick your neck out, do the homework.

"What I am saying, and I say almost every day, is that the evidence is not as robust as the “consensus” scientists claim; that there are many distinguished scientists all round the world who dispute this alleged “consensus”;"

How would you know? You haven't read the bloody evidence. You just bloody admitted it!

"that true science doesn’t advance through “consensus” and never has;"

Well quite possibly. But it's a bloody good sign of an accurate theory. Newtons third law works just as well today as it did in old Isaacs time.

"that there are many vested interests out there determined and able to spend a great deal of money by making out that the case for catastrophic, man-made global warming is much stronger than it is."

Yeah because high petrol prices and and end to cheap flights have always been real vote winners. Anyway if a scientist did discover that AGW wasn't occurring it would be the find of the century. You'd be lauded, showered with cash and grants from the oil companies. There sending the Nobel Prize your way as well. Real life isn't like a Michael Chrichton novel.

"and because they are not issues which require an exclusively scientific knowledge to understand. They just require the basic journalistic skill of being able to read and analyse."

But a sciencey background sort of helps. Anyone can read a scientific paper, but an unqualified journalist can make mistakes with scientific papers. Melanie Philips for instance didn't realise that Cochrane papers were specifically designed to criticise scientific papers, so she jumped to the wrong conclusions over what was said about the quality of Andrew Wakefields detractors findings. That is why I am all for opening science up to the greater public and journalists who have to report scientific stuff to their readers, but often fail to do so very well.

"Yet despite apparently knowing nothing more about me and what I do than he has learned from a heavily politicised BBC documentary, and maybe heard from his mob of Twitter bully chums or read in the Guardian, Singh feels able to decide that Paul Nurse is right on this issue and I’m wrong. Well I don’t call that an evidence-based argument. I call that dishonest, thoughtless and – given the high ethical standards Singh claims to represent – outrageously hypocritical."

Yes, as just because you haven't actually read the peer reviewed papers on the subject, doesn't necessarily mean you can't loftily proclaim that it's all one huge con by the people who wrote them, and have people give you a round of applause for it.

"“If my cause is really so powerful and right and true, how come its response to any kind of criticism is not to engage with it through argument but merely to try to silence it with censorship, appeals to authority, crude character assassination and establishment cover ups?”

This reasoning is how; inevitably- these kinds of things can self sustain themselves. If they do take you on, they are the scary "establishment" trying to bully the heretics. If they don't take you on, they are trying to hush you up and censor you. The MMR causes autism and Intellegent Design proponents trot this very same argument out, and because it is so superficially plausible on one level, that is why pseudoscience can be so persist ant on the flimsiest of evidence to actually support it. So it is with trepidation that I quote Delingpoles closing words on the whole affair*

"This has been a bruising week for me. But in the long term, I have a strong suspicion, it is going to do far, far more damage to the BBC, to Sir Paul Nurse (and, by extension, to the integrity of the Royal Society) than ever it has done to me."

Pseudoscience, the gift that keeps on giving.

James Delingpole Makes a Grade A Tit of Himself on Horizon (Part I)

2011-01-27T08:33:00.000-08:00

It's unbelievable! I go away for a few days (hence why this one follows on a bit later than the actual interview I am posting about) and I get confronted with a feast of fertile blogging fodder that I had no idea was going on as I haven't been on the web at all during the duration, (not always an entirely bad thing to do now and then.) or looked at a newspaper the whole time. Melanie Philips has pissed off almost everyone on Twitter with a bizarre and ill thought out column about the "gay agenda" pushing homosexuality to schoolkids via special awareness topics in their lessons, designed to "destroy the concept of traditional sexuality". Jesus! Two sports pundits given the boot for slagging off a lady ref. A hard line Christian GP who has been appointed to the Advisory Council for the Misuse of Drugs. This is a pretty impressive list of potential topics, but old news is no news, so I have decided to retrospectively comment on the story that has the most personal interest to me of which I have only just found out about this past day as a result of my self imposed news blackout. A story involving a well known climate change skeptic who ended up looking like a complete berk on a BBC documentary. This was one of the most embarrasing interviews ever to grace the box that didn't involve Bill Grundy and any member of the Sex Pistols.

The Horizon documentary titled "Science Under Attack" was presented by the President of the Royal Society; Sir Paul Nurse. In it Nurse was concerned about the discrepancies between what Scientific consensus has to say about - in particular -climate change; GM crops and the nature of the HIV virus, and the general views about these issues in the eyes of the lay public. The programme was good and I genuinely encourage you watch it on I-player (link provided) if you haven't seen it. It focused primarily on climate change, and I was a bit disappointed the other topics took perhaps as much of a backburner as they did as they are all interesting topics in themselves. But as I said climate change is probably the most obvious contemporary scientific topic that creates a controversial divergence between the scientific consensus of climate scientists (around 97 percent agree man made climate change is occurring) and the layperson (half of Americans and a third of Britons think ACC is being deliberately exaggerated) It is unsurprising then that Professor Nurse interviews a climate change denier to find out why this is so, and into this steps James Delingpole, the Daily Telegraphs resident "ACC is bollocks" blogger. The interviews with him in the documentary are stunning, not because Delingpole puts in a good performance, but because; in American parlance - he got his ass handed to him on a plate, a big silver platter even. It is pure car crash stuff. Delingpole is edgy and clearly out of his depth even before the fun starts. Delingpole dismisses "scientific consensus" as unscientific (I presume he makes the mistake of thinking it is just the same as conventional wisdom. Delingpole makes broad sweeping statements throughout the interview but never elaborates, so you can see why we may have to speculate on what he means). Nurse disagrees and says that this amount of consensus over such a long period of time is a healthy sign that the evidence is very strong, and that as scientific superstardom results from demolishing established theories, it must have been pretty robust or it would have been disproved. The killer blow is landed when Nurse proposes a hypothetical scenario to Delingpole and his "consensus is not science" stance. Say he was suffering from cancer and the doctors had come to a unanimous consensually conclusion about his treatment plan, (which happens often) would he reject this treatment for one that hadn't, as happens every once in a blue moon, if that? Delingpole is floored by this. He visibly looks like he wants to stop the interview and hastily tries to change the subject onto the East Anglian e-mails thing. I know some editing goes on with this kind of thing, but my god Delingpole comes off badly on this one. Nurse has stumbled upon what i think is the best way to combat pseudoscience, or conspiracy theories. Point out the bleeding obvious flaws in their logic. People like Delingpole cherry pick data (and ACC involves lots of figures to selectively shove into an article), and quote figures out of context to bolster and inflate the validity of their "stance". They never go for the biggy, disprove the warming effects of carbon dioxide, demolish the whole ACC theory to a chorcoally pile of dust at it's root. They can't. Nurse however is in the position of being able to quietly and calmly attack the major flaws of their arguments without turning it into a slanging match involving the "evil establishment" against the lone Galileo figure in the eyes of a layperson, or looking like a dusty old don being one upped by a polemicist pulling out all the logical fallacies to make his point look one hundred times better than it actually is. It's like calmly explaining to a moon hoaxer who says they had to remove all the stars from the photos, thus why they are not visible; that thinking that not one astronomer or scientist looking at those photos would notice that the stars suddenly being missing was a bit dodgy - is so monumentally fucking stupid that anyone who thinks this shouldn't comment on opening a loaf of bread, let alone expect anyone to take them remotely seriously. The interview also shows (and I am aware of post production editing) to some extent that Delingpole can dish it out on his blog (sometimes in quite a dubious manner) with the largely receptive audience, but is a little squeamish at taking it himself. Hell if as a non-scientist; you want to dismiss 97 percent of respected climate scientists as liars, expect to have to face the harsh questions from a critical point of view. Let us hope we are reclaiming some of the "war against science." Point out the major flaws of the key arguments the pseudoscientists are peddling, and not let them cherry pick on their own terms, and perhaps; perhaps popular perceptions of science will improve. Here's hoping anyway.

Turn in to part II tomorrow where we look at James Delingpoles take on the whole interview.

*POSTSCRIPT. Although the hypothetical question posed by Paul Nurse and Delingpoles response are the point the interview jumped the shark, this doesn't even take into account the lofty claim on his behalf that the entire peer review process has been trashed by the "climategate" affair. How? Again he makes lofty announcements and never backs them up with evidence, or indeed anecdotes. He even admits that it is really a political and not a dispute about scientific research. The admission that he hasn't the time or the scientific know how (Mr. Delingpole has a degree in English) to read peer reviewed research papers on climate change is astounding for a man who spends about 95 percent of his blog "proving" how ACC is made up by communists or whoever. How can he know that the peer review process is irrevocabally damaged by the East anglia broohaha if oh... he hasn't read a fucking peer reviewed paper on the damn subject. Christ in heaven, what was he thinking in this interview? Then he pulls the coup de gracé by saying his job isn't to interpret the data, it is to interpret the interpreted data. Or as it is known in every day terms, "Just having an opinion on stuff". Watch it, it truly has to be seen to be believed.

Baroness Warsi and Anti Muslim Bigotry in the UK

2011-01-21T10:51:00.001-08:00

1. What the BBC puts Muslims.... story was really about.

2. I flush the "Muslim toilests" down the loo as bullshit

3. 5cc demolishes the "Muslims tell British to go to hell..... headline

4.MCB tell the Daily Express a few home truths. (presumably after they had finished telling us all what to teach in our schools.)

I found all of the pictures above just by typing Daily Star / Express Muslims, no loaded terms like racism etc. I also found that what the front page images were saying was either untrue or completely distorted in every item I have put up above. With this in mind it is interesting to hear what Baroness Warsi had to say about anti-Muslim prejudice in the UK today.

Baroness Warsi's speech has been pretty controversial to say the least. If you look on the Telegraph blogs which is generally a good place to find varying right wing conservative opinion (Warsi is a Tory after all.) you get a mixed response to what she said, from the ghastly Lord Tebbit basically saying she should shut her mouth, to Peter Oborne agreeing with her, and lots of comments on his article... er not. As I said the debate is rather confused and seems to fall between two issues, the first being whether or not Muslims are particularly singled out in the prejudice stakes. The second is whether the British have a legitimate reason to fear of Islam / Muslims in the UK to "justify" that fear. Let us look first at argument number one, are Muslims particularly susceptible to prejudice in the UK? In my opinion this is pretty straight forward and I agree with Baroness Warsi that it is pretty widespread and in some ways the acceptable face of prejudice these days. The sentiments around the headlines I have shown imply that British Muslims demand special treatment; that they as the minority expect the majority to confirm to their values. Muslims are ungrateful and unpatriotic towards Britain; no - they actually hate the UK, and that they have a sense of victim hood (listen to Jon Gaunt's claim of "bleating" in this heated interview on the Jeremy Vine show, about 13 minutes in.) and that they have the audacity to claim to be victims of prejudice, a claim no one in the majority should indulge at face value. The sense that the Muslim minority are the recipients of special treatment at the expense of the white majority was in some part a triggering point in the Burnley race riots 10 years ago. Again as with the headlines, this seems t6o be more a case of here say than actually having any basis in objective truth if you care to sift through the evidence. All of which is mixed in with urban myths and misunderstandings over individual anecdotes blown out of proportion and falsely repeated as truths. Anecdotally I do a few hours in my local pub on a Thursday night, and I overheard two separate patrons grumbling about these very things in relation to the Warsi speech, that was in one five hour shift. Then there are those stupid chain posts on facebook, things like "you can't do X in case it offends minorities [aka Muslims], that do the rounds with depressing regularity. So on these levels yes, Muslims in the UK are more vulnerable to facing prejudice in relation to other people.

The second argument revolves around whether Islam, or at least the radical forms of Islam are a threat to modern Britain and the West itself, and is Islam uniquely incompatible with western values? Well in the case of radical Islam yes it is a threat to western values, but that doesn't make it unique. The founding doctrines of Islam like the other Abrahamic sects are a product of their times, which aren't our times. They were written in a rougher tougher age when justice was rough and justice was done by hitting people with swords. Where women's rights were unheard of. Where enslaving your fellow man was just "stuff that happened". It is therefore no surprise that religious fundamentalists of all the major religions will end up clashing with the liberal pluralistic values of the democratic west. The old testament and the harsher end of the Quran is about as far removed from what we would call "western values" as you can get. If Islamic fundamentalists take this stuff at face value then it is unsurprising that some will denounce the west as decadent and whatever. However let us not forget that right wing Christian authoritarians regularly denounce the west, and sectarian organisations like the EDL clearly loathe pluralism and democracy though they claim to be patriotic.

It is often claimed that Islam is uniquely evil and incompatible with western values. This really isn't true. Religions sort of sawtooth in the violence done in their name, at present radical Islam is peeking all over the world, and violence is done in the name of Islam, even on the streets of London in 2005. But let me stress that religious violence is not just confined to Islam, all the major religions will resort to bloodshed if taken to extremes. That when people resort to a combination of dogma, adherence to violent medieval codes of practice and supremacism, then the shit will hit the fan. But that was part of Baroness Warsi's point. Muslims are a diverse group of people, some take it too literally, most pick and choose what to believe. Most probably haven't even read most of the Quran, like most who say they are Christians, who haven't even read most of the Bible. Most modern people either couldn't or wouldn't be able to follow them totally to the letter these days anyway. All Muslims seem to be far to often lumped in as one monolithic group of ultra excitable fanatics who want to burn and stone stuff at the drop of a hat, and that is just removed from reality. As for Islam being uniquely incompatible with a liberal democratic society. Take a look at the protests in Iran in 2009, and the people of Tunisia rising up against a grasping kleptocrat. Seems the people in those countries aren't to keen on living under authoritarian regimes, both countries that are Islamic majority ones.

I would be naive to say that Islam has it's fair share of problems, all human organisations do. The Abrahamic faiths will always struggle to find their place in a modern democratic society that increasingly seems to reject the influence they once had (and a good thing that is too.) and contradicts the archaic doctrines they hold dear. But when I see the horrible comments about Muslims on the Telegraph blogs, and some of the casual racism spouted off as truth, we have to remember that these are human beings we are talking about. Muslims aren't some monolithic alien species who are wholly incompatible and irreconcilably different from the rest of us, a point I believe Ms. Warsi was trying to make, and a point that sometimes needs to be made a lot more.

Ed West Tries to Tame the Telegraph Blogs Comments (Good Luck!)

2011-01-19T12:05:00.000-08:00

Some of the comments on the Torygraph Blogs have to be seen to be believed. The mean mindedness, the stupid conspiracy theories, the dreadful racism, or even just the fact that even the most innocuous of posts seems to end up descending into an argument about holocaust denial. Just the simple lack of humanity of some of them are enough to make you want the end to come that bit quicker. I don't know if it just the luxury of anonymity that produces comments such as those, or we have some pretty fucked up people out there? It is sometimes like peering into some dark dark abyss, when you think to yourself what sort of mindset spews this kind of stuff out.

I also think it must be rather a both embarrassing and unpleasant bit of baggage for the bloggers themselves, and this was sort of confirmed by a blog entry by Ed West today appealing to the people leaving comments to perhaps tone it down a bit. Read what he has to say and not just mouth off all the racist garbage you can think of for once. It seems he has been spooked a bit about a previous post about what he sees as the problem of ghettoism in Muslim communities in Birmingham. The post is a little intellectually lazy, drawing on second hand anecdotes to come to sweeping conclusions, but he is entitled to write about what he likes and community relations are after all an important issue that should be raised. It is the tone of some of the comments that bothers him (and me), they are pretty hard core and some revolve around hints of ethnic war and parts of Britain being ethnically cleansed. Trying to restore some sanity and perspective to the points he was originally making West appeals to the better angels of those leaving the extreme comments:

"People who type “why can’t we discuss this issue?” and then write underneath “WE NEED TO KILL ALL MUSLIMS” don’t seem to understand that they’re the problem, not the solution. The Standpoint story is depressing enough without the comments underneath adding to it. So for God’s sake, try to remember it’s human beings we’re talking about here – don’t kill debate with hatred, and if you have any hatred, save it for me."

I have a feeling that his appeal will largely fall on deaf ears. You will often hear; say a Mail columnist missing the point by claiming that no-one can discuss immigration or race relations without being deemed "racist" by the "liberal elite", that's not really the case. As this appeal unintentionally admits, a lot of it is down to the fact that racist comments have a nasty habit of derailing even the most innocuous of debates on this issue, not always just a fear of some elite howling "racist" at anyone who dares mention the topic. It is little wonder that those on the mainstream tread warily in this area.

Upward Mobility Gets a Bit More Elusive.

2011-01-18T15:12:00.000-08:00

I'm glad I am not embarking on a degree course this coming year. The obstacles in just getting through all the rigmarole towards a degree these days just seem so much steeper. Especially if you are a student from a poorer background, or even a conventional middle class background as well. I mean when the tuition fees are hitting nine grand a lot of sixth formers are going to seriously question whether it is all worth it. I'm not even talking about the so-called "soft subjects" whatever they may be. I mean even traditional degrees that were seen as gateways to well paying careers (not that should be the be all and end all of studying) such as medicine or finance; law and IT, and so on. Nine grand is a potential huge risk especially in the more competitive areas where jobs may be scarce to start with and perhaps less well paid at the beginning. Sadly I think there are many who are just going to throw the towel in before they even fill in the UCAS form. I'd like to see some sort of brighter side to all this, but then I read this story about three out of five of the more prestigious graduate recruiters planning to filter out graduates who will not or more importantly [for this post] cannot perform unpaid or very limited paid internships to get a bit of work experience. (and lets face it or the employer a free staff member into the bargain.) On the face of it this seems rather sensible. Firstly there are more graduates for fewer posts, so bump up selection criteria. Secondly it can go some way to solving the studying / experience paradox. That is you can't get experience as you are studying, and you can't do the studying whilst you are doing the experience, so you end up having to study for the job, only to not have the experience for the job because you don't have the experience for the job you have to study to get. Lastly it's good CV fodder. However these placements have the downside of being more difficult to do if you don't have much in the way of cash. If you have your own cash or a well off family that/they can see you through the costs of doing unpaid or poorly paid work (some pay the lavish sum of £2.50 p/hr), all those trains, taxis, fuel and buttys and pop start totting up, not to mention the money lost through a gap in earning. Many of these internships may continue after the degree is over and the student loan is drying up. Lower income people are further disadvantaged by possibly having to supplement their income with a paid part time job. Balance this with study, a reduced amount of time available for out of curriculum internship, the possibility of cutting the hours of paid employment (likely needed for household income) to complete the internship. Then the fact of having reduced mobility as you have no savings for a flat or something near the internship, or running a car, or paying for buses. The problems in having to continue unpaid or below minimum wage internship after qualifying is much more pressing for someone of limited means who really needs to start earning decent money that bit more urgently. It is highly depressing to think that many less well off people are going to see the odds so harshly stacked against them, and it will enter their minds "Is this really all worth it?", and I hate to say a fair few are going to think yes.

All in all not a great sign for a future spurt of healthy upward mobility.

The Perfect Stick With Which the Mail Can Use to Beat the NHS

2011-01-15T10:50:00.000-08:00

Swine flu has had a great deal of coverage this past few weeks, and none more so than in the very tragic case of young Lana Ameen (3 years old) who died of the illness shortly after Christmas. This has led to some people including (understandably) her grief stricken parents to question the wisdom of the governments scientific advisers advice not to vaccinate children under 5 who showed no outwards symptoms of the illness this time around, unlike last years outbreak. (sadly Lana fell under this category.) There have also been reports of a shortage of flu vaccines (not always just the H1N1 strain. The media always fudge these kinds of technicalities) in some areas, either the result of bodged forward planning or people surging to be vaccinated after they have seen the new criteria for those who should be inoculated (i.e carers etc.) and reacting to the narrative string of deaths from flu that have been reported from around Christmas time, or by stories of left over vaccine from last year being handed out. Concerns about the reasons why the advisers changed the criteria have compounded the issue. The perceived "overkill" in response to the last outbreak (though there was nothing trivial about it to the estimated 457 who were believed to have died of swine flu) may have led to a "dropping of guards", or that some kind of herd immunity from last years inoculations should see this year through as well. Or that procuring massive amounts of vaccine for the under 5's was objectively economically unsound after it was estimated that only one in four under 5's had received the previous call to have the jab last time around. We still live in a society that has a fair amount of suspicion towards vaccination, another wonderful legacy of the MMR scare. Though there are reports of worried parents paying over the odds for private inoculations in the aftermath of Lanas tragic death.

It would be an invidious task for anyone to oversee. To decide how vigorously to respond to an outbreak before it has happened, with a finite amount of money to deal with the problem. If we had Star Treks replicators we could perhaps afford to magic medicine up for everyone with no need to bean count. But sadly we don't, and it is devastatingly hard to know where to draw the line. My own hunch is that under 5's should have remained eligible for the vaccine. But I don't have either the full facts about budget restraints or the medical expertise to really expand on this other than perhaps a theory of being over prepared than under. But as I said I don't have the medical knowledge to expand on that. Amanda Platell of the Daily Mail probably has less knowledge about medicine than I do (and that aint a lot), and probably thinks disease is spread by Satan farting in your face like 15th century folk believed. Unlike me she isn't afraid to make sweeping generalisations and give her uninsightful tuppenceworth;

"One can only imagine the courage it must have taken for Zana and Gemma Ameen to release a picture of their three-year-old daughter Lana in the final hours of her pitifully short life.
Lana died from swine flu on Boxing Day, and now Dr Ameen, a hospital registrar, has spoken out to expose the cruelty of a system that refuses vaccinations against this deadly flu to children under five. Had Lana been given the £6 jab, as her parents had requested, her father is convinced she would still be alive.

Not only does this needless tragedy expose the flawed reasoning behind who is entitled to the inoculations, it also highlights the shameful way the £110billion we now spend on the NHS is used. Or rather, wasted.

Where is the morality in a public health system that removes tattoos and performs boob jobs, yet denies children protection from a known killer?

In a week when we’ve learned that some doctors are getting £100,000 overtime pay, on top of their £96,000 salaries, and that nearly a thousand GPs are on salaries of £200,000, how can it possibly be justified?

The UK’s NHS system still allows wide, free access to patients from anywhere in the EU. Other countries, quite rightly, prioritise their own citizens. Why on earth don’t we?

The truth is that all political parties are terrified of admitting the truth — the NHS needs a complete overhaul. There must be priorities and surely a life-saving drug for a child is more important than vanity procedures and gastric bands for those who can’t control their eating?
Dr Ameen is right when he says the decision not to give children the jab is not about saving lives but saving money.

‘Everyone — from her health team to the Government, to me, her Daddy who loved her more than anything in the world — let her down,’ he wrote in this paper yesterday.
And until we stop treating the NHS like some sacred cow, and face up to its failings, children like Lana will continue to be its innocent victims."

This article is revealing in many ways. Firstly it shows that Platell knows nothing about what she is spouting off about. You can't really make direct comparisons between such differing health care procedures such as how far a blanket vaccination program should go and providing gastric bands for a start. The second is that this article is not just an attack on the vaccination program, but a launchpad for a broader attack on the NHS itself, hence all the stuff about treating our own etc... This is perfect material to attack the NHS regardless of what it does. Attack them for being under prepared as this article does, or attack them for wasting money if they over prepare as Lidljohn did in this article . It is win-win for armchair pundits who can safely attack from the office, without ever having to face the responsibility of allocating funding for potential pandemics which no one can ever wholly predict. With this kind of story the NHS can be painted as a bloated incompetent socialist bureaucracy which either wastes taxpayers money, or lets kids die by penny pinching. This is the real point of these polemics, not any sort of insightful critique of the way our health care is funded. So forgive me if I won't be lectured by someone like Platell about facing up to the "failings of the NHS"

Who on Earth is Writing Sarah Palin's Speeches?

2011-01-13T08:58:00.000-08:00

The exact nature of the content and theme of Barack Obama's official speech about the aftermath of the shootings in Tucson has been the subject of extreme speculation in the days running up to it. Would he use it to directly attack the Tea Party and Sarah Palin? No. Would he call for unity in the wake of the shootings? Yes. Would he attempt to capitalise politically on it by smearing the more vocal of his opponents and claim they were actually responsible for it and not just some lone nutter? No. The speech I think went down pretty well. He obviously highlighted on calling for national unity and an opportunity to restore debate to bringing people closer together not further and violently apart. Of course his speech focused heavily on the victims of the attack. Such as news that Gabrielle Giffords had actually opened her eyes for the first time since the attack, and then onto the less fortunate victims especially Christina Green who was born when 9/11 occurred and was sadly killed in the shooting. Now it is fairly obvious that Obama is a cool and analytically minded man with a process based legal mindset. Not counting that due to the violent nature of the crime that led to the speech would be difficult for anyone to find the right words to say - this was from a speech perspective not Obamas strongest area (and in a nation that requires a lot of emoting from a leader this has worked against him), however he pulled it off pretty well. The speech was moving and a celebration of the victims lives and the spirit of the nation, not an angry opportunity for a polemic to name names and point fingers. It never seemed either overly sentimental or forced, which is a difficult act to pull off for someone who is not a naturally emotive person. It was as fitting a tribute to the victims and to the country as could have been expected by the head of state. The same can't be said for another speech given by Sarah Palin.

Palins speech; the first one she has made on the shootings since the attack happened wasn't before a live audience but pre-recorded on her website. This makes the biggest gaffe in it totally unfathomable. But let's look at the speech itself. In contrast to Obamas, there was a much greater sense that she used her words to help her own ends into the bargain. A bit of back peddling on her behalf to distance herself from the affair. (Note she wasn't directly responsible for what happened btw) One particular example that stuck out for me was when she quoted something Ronald Reagan had said about rejecting the notion that when a law is broken, society is not at all assumed to be to blame, but the lawbreaker is, and that lawbreaking begins and ends with the lawbreaker. Whether you believe this or not, it is awfully handy to use to distance oneself from the accusations that incendiary rhetoric is fanning the flames in the minds of gunmen with an axe to grind. The speech had a much more self indulgent theme than Obamas did, his was largely an appeal to unity and a memorial to the victims. Palins seemed primarily some kind of damage limitation exercise on her behalf. But the biggest gaffe of all had to be the use of the term "blood libel" to describe the liberal medias attempts to link herself and the Tea Party (I presume that is who she meant) to the shootings. Now let us leave aside that this was supposed to have been a speech lamenting the deaths, and; oh - not about lamenting the bad PR you have been getting from it, I mean who the hell thought using the term "blood libel", a biblical phrase first used to describe the collective guilt the Jews would have to carry the can for for killing Jesus, and was then used to justify the pogroms the Jews faced at the hands of vengeful Christians, was a good idea? Did Palin (or whoever wrote the speech for her) really think that the flack she got was on a par with the victims of these purges? That the fact that Gabrielle Giffords is Jewish should have perhaps raised questions about the suitability of the analogy? That it displayed a staggeringly crass lack of perspective? You really have to ask who put this into the script, a pre recorded one at that; so it can't be dismissed as a slip of the tongue either (admittedly it would have been a very strange one as well). We really have to ask is this women actually more ignorant and gormless than we already suspected. And is it time someone so monumentally unfit for high office should perhaps shuffle off back to her day job sometime soon?

Who Was to Blame for the Massacre in Tucson?

2011-01-09T15:03:00.000-08:00

A few of the Telegraph bloggers are suddenly very keen to point out that "the left / liberals" are a bit too eager to pin the blame on the Tea Party and people like Glenn Beck, for encouraging the terrible shootings that have led to six deaths and thirteen injured when lone gunman Jared Loughner opened fire at a meeting where the right wing Democrat congress woman Gabrielle Giffords was holding a meeting, an apparent assassination attempt which has led to Mrs Giffords needing life saving treatment for a bullet to the head, and has caused the deaths of a 9 year old girl; Christina Green*, and several elderly people dead as well. The Torygraph bloggers who have been pretty supportive of the Tea Party are keen to highlight that the left are trying to politicise the massacre for their own ends, and to discredit the Tea Party itself for their own ends.

Obviously the blame ultimately lies with the Loughner himself. He fired those shots, he decided to murder people for whatever twisted "reasons" he may have had. But the controversy around Palin and Becks antics on the part of "the left" and others in relation to the shooting is not a politicising act as such, but (IMHO) serious questions about the nature 0f the kind of rhetoric emanating in some right wing; anti government; libertarian circles. Now there is no evidence that Lolughner was a Tea partier, and if you can stomach reading the self pitying incoherent drivel he has posted in the past, he comes across as an unbalanced anti-government paranoid conspiracy theorist who is attracted to both hard left and hard right sentiment, a classic self pitying fanatic with an axe to grind who thinks the system is spying on him and is to blame for his own failings as a person, and that all us schmucks are too thick to see what he can.

Now back to the criticisms of Beck and Palin. Obviously they aren't responsible for the massacre, and should not take direct blame for it. However, and this is where I'm sorry to say - mud sticks. The level of some of the sentiment from their supporters has been geared towards implied violence. Some of the more fringe extremes have been echoing sentiments in the mould of the placard above. There has been rather a lot of use of metaphors relating to aggression and violence and an inability to even entertain the notion of listening to the opposing side. Not even taking into account the innocuous "Mama Grizzly" thing. Stuff like the rattlesnake poster saying "don't step on me!" or Palin using the "gunsight map" to make a stand against the 20 reps who voted for the healthcare reforms (including Gabrielle Giffords herself). Palin has been keen to remove it from her website since the attack occurred. Now let me emphasise again, Sarah Palin did not guide the hand that fired the bullets, the killer is to blame for what happened. But that does not excuse the harsh incendiary rhetoric that has been doing the rounds. To quote the republican David Frum (so it isn't just leftys who have condemned the militant language):

"Conservatives have been quick to repudiate – to brand as offensive and disgusting – any suggestion that the Tucson shooting was somehow inspired by the extreme anti-Obama political rhetoric of the past 2 years.

In this, conservatives have the facts on their side. By all reports, the Tucson shooter was a very mentally disturbed person. Even if Jared Lee Loughner was aware that Sarah Palin’s PAC had posted a gun sight next to Congresswoman Gifford’s name, that awareness cannot be translated into a motivation. It makes no sense to talk of the “motive” of someone who is fundamentally irrational.

That point should be acknowledged, accepted, and internalized. Yet as we acknowledge that extremist rhetoric did not incite this crime, it should also be acknowledged that the rhetoric has been extreme, and potentially dangerously so. I wrote in April 2009:

A man bearing a sidearm appears outside President Obama’s Aug. 11 town hall meeting in Portsmouth, N.H., under a sign proclaiming, “It is time to water the tree of liberty.”
That phrase of course references a famous statement of Thomas Jefferson’s, from a 1787 letter: “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants.”

Earlier that same day, another man is arrested inside the school building in which the president will speak. Police found a loaded handgun in his parked car.

At an event held by Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in Arizona last week, police were called after one attendee dropped a gun.

Nobody has been hurt so far. We can all hope that nobody will be. But firearms and politics never mix well. They mix especially badly with a third ingredient: the increasingly angry tone of incitement being heard from right-of-center broadcasters.

The Nazi comparisons from Rush Limbaugh; broadcaster Mark Levin asserting that President Obama is “literally at war with the American people”; former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin claiming that the president was planning “death panels” to extirpate the aged and disabled; the charges that the president is a fascist, a socialist, a Marxist, an illegitimate Kenyan fraud, that he “harbors a deep resentment of America,” that he feels a “deep-seated hatred of white people,” that his government is preparing concentration camps, that it is operating snitch lines, that it is planning to wipe away American liberties”: All this hysterical and provocative talk invites, incites, and prepares a prefabricated justification for violence.

Again: this talk did not cause this crime. But this crime should summon us to some reflection on this talk. Better: This crime should summon us to a quiet collective resolution to cease this kind of talk and to cease to indulge those who engage in it.

Although there is always the risk of a loony with an axe to grind going on a shooting rampage whatever you say, or however eloquently you word your views. The sentiments on Glenn Becks show, and the more militant talk on the murky ends of the tea party are music to the ears of a paranoid misfit with an irrational hatred of big government, or any for of government whatsoever and in any form. When Beck equates firearms control with the rise of National Socialism, or calls Obama a white hater without any evidence to back that up, these kinds of people are going to listen. When suggestive imagery about "gunning" after your opponents may cause someone like Palin to perhaps worry that someone could take her literally, especially when people have been turning up to these meetings brandishing firearms that would not be out of place on a bloody battlefield (why do you need such a large arsenal by the way. How big are the coyotes on your farm?) When right wing news networks totally exaggerate the perceived dangers of social democracy such as health care reform as "some doctors are going to send granny to the gas chambers." or pro abortion as "Stalins USSR". This feeds the paranoia of frightened disturbed individuals who think the establishment is out to get them. Is it not too much to ask that those who may be cynically manipulating this stuff, to see that they may be stirring things up that they may not be able to control. Do they even comprehend where it could lead? The right are often quick to highlight European nations slackness on zealous ultra Islamic preachers using militant rhetoric, and that we shouldn't be surprised if a devotee may take their words to horrific conclusions. The same applies here. For all the talk of liberty, there seems a lot of fascistic violent sentiment doing the rounds. Time for more constructive dialogue with opponents, and less threatening demagogy .

THIS VIDEO IS AN INTERESTING AMERICAN PERSPECTIVE ON THE MILITANT SENTIMENT THAT WAS DOING THE ROUNDS, THOUGH BEFORE THE SHOOTINGS HAPPENED. IT IS EVEN MORE PERTINENT IN LIGHT OF WHAT HAPPENED.

*Christina was born on September 11th 2001. She was at the meeting to highlight the positive things that happened that day. What a tragc irony. Utterly heartbreaking.

Banning the N - Word from Huckleberry Finn Isn't Just PC Gone Mad.

2011-01-07T10:58:00.000-08:00

There has been a controversy in the US this past week about a book editor called Alan Gribben who has brought out a version of Mark Twains popular "Huck Finn" with the word "nigger" excised and replaced with the less racially charged "slave." instead. This has led to Gribben being pilloried as some kind of politically correct vandal kowtowing to "hurt feelings" of "minorities", the usual spiel which we see associated with stuff like this. But people who have only heard that bit of the story are missing the point. Mr. Gribben is a well known scholar on these stories, possibly the only man who knew more about them was old Mark Twain himself. The reasoning [on Gribbens part] behind this act was to actually stop schools in the South from banning the book outright for it's perceived racist connotations, that the editorial would explain the change and allow everyone to understand the racial terminology in the correct context. It was not an act of censorship, but an attempt to circumvent it. Alan Gribben should be applauded, but I doubt many see beyond what they want to see in this whole affair.

In an ideal world the book should be printed as Twain wrote it. People should have at least some grasp of artistic and narrative context. Just because someone uses iffy terminology or controversial stuff doesn't mean that they are endorsing or approving it. There are three reasons I see that results in people wanting to ignore the whole thing, all of which are in some way a response to people not taking what I have just said on board. Firstly the racism and slavery that are themes of the book are still very uncomfortable topics in that part of the US. There is shitloads of baggage around the whole thing. Just overlooking the Huck Finn books is one easy way for teaching boards to skirt the issue. Secondly some black commentators and others hear about all this racist talk without actually reading the books and jump to the wrong conclusions, calling for this "racist nonsense" to be barred in the classroom, which gives the boards another reason to do the first thing. And finally because racist boneheads start calling for the books to be taught ostensibly as it is PC Marxism not too, but largely because they get off on books with nigger written in them. These people don't realise that Twain's works actually condemn racism, as subtext and context don't mix well in the literalists mind. It's rather like those BNP people who deliberately buy gollies and black and white minstrel memorabilia. They think they are being rebellious.* Or on the other side, why on later film versions of "Oliver Twist" Fagin's overt Jewishness** had to be toned down as the perceived anti-Semitic nature of the character began to overshadow the "message" of the story. So we have a mixture of - on the firsthand - being well intentioned and buck passing at the same time, others missing the point totally, and for the latter - missing the point and being racist as well. Alan Gribben has discovered (I hope) a method of getting Twains brilliant books back into the classroom avoiding the above in one stroke.

It really is a shame these books are banned. They aren't racist. Mark Twain wrote them precisely to challenge the prejudice of the age. As his readers perhaps would have thought back then, that Huck Finn was right to think that Tom Sawyer was wrong to help some (and someone elses) mere slave boy escape. Huck and the readers learn through getting to know "nigger" Jim and to learn about his plight and see how he is a victim. To see him as a human with feelings and emotions and not just some piece of property. To see that Tom Sawyer was right to challenge the racist "wisdom" of the age, to his conscience. Twain is challenging the reader to see the wrongness of treating human beings as slaves and to appeal to the plight of your fellow man and not to the racist dogma of the age. These are important stories, and no-one is going to come out a raving bigot if they read them properly. So far from being a PC busybody perhaps Alan Gribben will end up doing us all a favour.

* This scientific phenomenon is also known as "looking like a bit of a prat."

** That was the point really. Fagins Jewishness wasn't really all that relevant to the actual story. It is sort of hinted at in dead exposition in the books that he was a Jew who had fled from pogroms in his native land to London. But anti Semites blew it up as his "Jewishness" being responsible for his villainous character. The simple fact is Fagin could have been from Birmingham and it would not have changed the story in any real way. You just need a grotty looking weirdo who's dodgy and gets kids to steal for him. It doesn't matter where he came from.

There is No "War On Motorists" But there Should Be.

2011-01-04T11:38:00.000-08:00

Both Eric Pickles and Philip Hammond seem to think that there is something called the "War on motorists", and have vowed to end this so called war. Well let me just explain something.

THERE IS NO WAR ON MOTORISTS TO STOP!

I hear this phrase from Jeremy Clarkson and Richard Hammond, just about every right wing columnist who's ever existed, people who write angry letters to newspapers about being (gasp) fined for parking somewhere they shouldn't. People who moan at speed cameras slowing people down (isn't speeding actually dangerous and all that "hit me at 30 I live, 40 I die! stuff btw??) and so on and so on. So bloody what if you get fined for speeding - tough titty it's illegal you moron. Got booked on double yellows? Schoolkids know you get done for that. Fined for overstaying on a meter zone, buy a watch then!

Why is this such a "pissed off" posting? My particular beef about this kind of thing has come about because A) Eric Pickles, the communities secretary has got rid of the last governments limits on town centre parking and higher fees for parking in town centres, because what we obviously need is more cars clogging up our town centres that can barely cope with what they have now. B) Philip Hammond is Transport Secretary and has said that this is a part of stopping the war on motorists (translates to sucking up to petrolheads) and that:

"cars are a lifeline for many people – and that by supporting the next generation of ultra-low emission vehicles, it can enable sustainable green motoring to be a long-term part of Britain’s future transport planning."

Which loosely translates into "Fuck changing our car dependency, that's way too much bother on our part. What will Jeremy Clarkson say about that? I'll just make up some stuff about future cars that run on antimatter, and pass the buck for some other guy to pick up down the line."

Let me say off the bat, that I do drive, and there is no doubt the car is on some level a useful tool. In an ideal world we could use them to our hearts content and they would benefit our lives. Say they ran on air, and could turn into a briefcase you could carry around when you didn't need them (a la the Jetsons) so no need for stuff like parking spaces then. Unfortunately they don't work like that, and we don't live in a Hanna Barbera cartoon. Our dependency on the car is a serious problem and it needs tackling. But no one has the balls to do anything about it, and that is a problem when the guy tasked with handling this stuff is bullshitting his way out of facing up to the terrible problems the car addiction is stacking up. I saw this was likely to be the way we were headed (in a traffic jam probably) when the rather clever M4 bus lane was said to be facing the chop, the motorway equivalent of having Scrappy Doo shot dead in an episode of the Scooby Doo cartoon. Then the speed cameras in Oxfordshire are to be deactivated to save cash (thought they were there to fleece motorists?) This has confirmed my worst fears.

Our obsession about private car use is a lot like being addicted to crack. It may make us feel better in the short term, it gives people a buzz and our high with their new machines, and we all go crazy if someone tries to get a grip on our addiction. Like crack these small pleasures are eclipsed by so many pitfalls. Yes, crack may feel nice for a while, but you do realise you have to steal from grannies to get cash: you have pock marked skin and about four teeth left at 25, you stink and look awful and all this is a result of wanting that high. Likewise cars clogg up our streets and town centres, and then the bypasses, then the bypasses of the bypass that had to bypassed. They are smelly and expensive to run. They kill about 71 people per day (UK), and maim many others for life. They poison our air. They require roads and motorways that scar our landscape, and can bisect communities as that snarling bypass acts like an impenetrable tarmac frontier (the Twyford Down cutting on the M3 was nothing short of environmental vandalism. Bloody dreadful). The petrol they run on helps fund vile regimes like Saudi Arabia, and has caused so much shit in the Middle East. They make us miserable and cause seemingly mild mannered people to explode into ranting swearing lunatics for stuff as simple as someone taking a few seconds longer to park up. They disrupt wildlife and cause carnage to wildlife populations and, oh they fuck the climate up too. Truly a record anyone should be proud of. Some say cars are liberating, they seem to just enslave us as much in my opinion. And yet any attempt to try and fix this addiction results in derision and anger, as does anyone who is addicted but won't admit it when confronted. And this rage makes transport secretaries crumble. But the problems excessive car use cause won't go away. Indeed the 6 billion PFI sum (no really) being spent on the M25 widening project* should be a nice little sum our kids will have to pay back over the long haul.

The problem of excessive car usage is compounded by how it drives ugly libertarian impulses in the more vocal petrolheads that can cascade downwards to other motorists. How the freedom to drive at 46 mph on a suburban main road is now somehow seen as some sign of resistance against the "Big brother state" and not just the actions of a selfish prick with a small penis who is going to kill someone if he's not careful. How traffic wardens** are seriously compared to the Gestapo and have to wear those cameras lest they be punched in the face by a driver too stupid to realise that he doesn't have a sovereign right to park his Audi "sportscar" where he likes. To quote that quintessential darling of the right :-) George Monbiot:

"When you drive, society becomes an obstacle. Pedestrians, bicycles, traffic calming, speed limits, the law: all become a nuisance to be wished away. The more you drive, the more bloody-minded and individualistic you become. The car is slowly turning us, like the Americans and the Australians, into a nation which recognises only the freedom to act, and not the freedom from the consequences of other people’s actions. We drive on the left in Britain, but we are being driven to the right."

One of the less remarked comments of Margaret Thatcher that although seemed quite innocuous, turned out to have great consequences was her crass remark about any man over 26 being a failure if he couldn't drive and used public transport. Some of that mud sticked. We need urgent urgent investment of public transport, and more bums on buses and trains. I can't see how the car focused society is ultimately sustainable. It will be bitter medicine to swallow, people won't like it, but I don't see how it is avoidable if we want to avoid serious problems in the future. War on the motorist. If only.

* I'm astounded this doesn't seem to generate a great deal of controversy. The Variable Speed Limit signs they put up seem to arouse more pique. (the Nanny State is slowing us down.) Do these VSL signs (used to regulate a steadier traffic flow discipline) also hint that widening may still not be enough?

** The issues around private clamping, or wardens being paid on commission to book people are separate arguments, and IMHO are both better done by the public sector for the simple purpose of up keeping traffic parking regulations and not to make cash. Cutting the dependency of car use will be a painful process and the public need to be won over (a bit). Stuff like this just antagonises everyone and is dodgy anyway.

Guilty Because He Looks A Bit Weird

2010-12-31T08:20:00.000-08:00

I have no idea if Chris Jeffries killed poor Johanna Yeates, and I am sure no one else knows exactly who did kill her (except for the killer) at the moment either. But isn't the amount of insinuation about the man from both the press and from general conversation (I overheard one woman say he must be guilty as he has a "paedophiles face". Really) really quite unsettling, way beyond what should be appropriate for the current stage of the enquiry. Apart from the controversy about him (or not) reporting Johanna leaving her flat the day she vanished, the accusations that he might have done it include:

*He is a "Peeping Tom" (well that was some blokes wifes opinion anyway. Not that the Mirror didn't let it stop them printing a "Jo suspect is "Peeping Tom" headline.)

*He has a daft hairdo

*He made former tenants wife "uncomfortable."

*He entered said flat (of which he was landlord) without asking

*He had mucky fingernails.

*He likes poems (he's an English teacher.) and got wrapped up in reading them aloud.

*He looks funny.

*He had a strange coat.

*Some of his former pupils called him "Strange Mr. Jeffries."

*Some other pupils thought he was gay on the single basis of him not being married.

*He read poems by writers who were obsessed with things like death (Also known as nearly everyone who writes poems.)

*He let out a flat (Johanna's flat) to a fellow teacher 12 years ago who was done for sexual assault of a minor years later.

*He was a bit eccentric, and people who commit murder on telly are always eccentric.

Stuff like this is not very helpful. It is way too early in the enquiry to start muck raking about a bloke who let us make this clear: - MAY NOT HAVE ACTUALLY DONE ANYTHING BY THE WAY! A slightly eccentric English master at a posh school is certainly nothing new, and being "a bit strange" doesn't immediately mean you have a propensity to strangle young women to death, and all the "psycho poses" like the one above don't really change that.

Petitions to be Debated in Parliament. A Gateway to Mob Rule, or A More Open Democracy?

2010-12-28T13:18:00.000-08:00

This plan to allow the most popular online petitions to be debated in parliament - a Tory election manifesto pledge - has been given the go ahead by the coalition. Naturally this has unsettled some who see it as a potential road to mob rule, however the government and the reasoning behind the plan claim it is a way to reconnect with voters who feel increasingly shut out and alienated since the expenses crisis broke last year. A chance to kick start democracy and parliamentary enthusiasm to a jaded and indifferent electorate. Critics say it will end up meaning that parliament will be honour bound have to debate supporting / opposing wacky petitions such as making Jeremy Clarkson prime minister (50'000 signed that e-petition, the minimum limit proposed is double that.), or making the Jedi a recognised religion, and so forth. Or that these petitions are often rather based on the ephemeral fickle desires of the electorate. These are legitimate concerns, so we must ask; will this idea be a good or bad one?

My own personal answer to this question is yes. It will be both a good and bad thing. Mass participant democracy is so multifaceted and fickle and nebulous it can't be much else. The positives are that the plan is certainly democratic to a degree. It also has the benefit of being able to bring transparancy to the arguments of the proponents and opponents of controversial popular issues such as membership of the E.U, capital punishment and immigration (I guarantee at least one of these will be at the head of the list of stuff to be debated.) in parliament being forced to up their game and fight their corner in the public debate on these issues, raising public awareness of the pros and cons of each. Sometimes lots of people may have strong views on this kind of stuff, but little working knowledge of how these would be put in practice. Hopefully this kind of debate could give laypeople insight into how the mechanics governing a country actually works. It could also reassure an electorate that issues that may be popular talking points in the public sphere, but are seen to be "ducked" in the Commons are now being debated (though we must emphasise that they are "only" being debated and are not full blown referenda.)

Now for the downsides of the idea. Surprisingly the issue of stuff like the "Clarkson for PM" petition having to be debated is pretty minor. For one thing the criteria around the new petitions is more robust, and it would take about 5 seconds to reject it if it was put through for debate (Clarkson says he doesn't want to be PM for a start. Debate over.) There is the risk that parochialism, short term gain at the expense of long term goals and appeals to popular prejudices and xenophobia may become more prevalent. (though that may be seen as acting in the course of popular democracy) That there will be more soundbites and appealing to raw populism. Almost certainly we may see "astroturf" campaigning where petitions ostensibly started by "the grassroot public" will have bigger interest groups behind them, who can use these things to their own effects (and can call it the "will of the people"). Ditto for those right wing libertarian groups who mask their dislike of a certain form of regulation as "climate change scepticism". They will likely slow decision making and the parliamentary process, as the various debates of the pros and cons eats in to Westminster's time. I can see various back bench MP's stirring up these petitions of their own making to pursue their own eccentric obsessions (Don't be too surprised if Philip Davies tries getting a "Ban Political Correctness"* petition started. I could see Nadine Dorres doing this kind of thing as well.) And lastly they could actually make people more dejected at the state of our democracy. People may end up being a bit pissed off when their large petition that they signed; say on leaving the EU, doesn't get them the referendum (and cross channel divorce into the bargain one would presume) they were so keen on, as the Eurosceptic John Redwood explains in this blog post here . As we see the practical issues are not as clear cut we may think. Time will tell I suppose.

*Banning Political Correctness may be both fairly popular and could seem to be an easy thing to achieve. But then we remember that PC is just a vague adjective for a bunch of stuff / people / regulations some other vague group of people don't approve of. Even debating what passes as "PC" and "Non PC" could be wrangled over for ages. I'd hate to think how this would then be translated into workable laws, which could be wrangled over for even more ageser. Ditto for the inevitable calls for bans on "Elf - N -Safety", "Non Jobs" and "Worthless Degrees" How do you translate abstract terms to solid laws? Answer not very easily.

Christmassy Thing

2010-12-27T15:31:00.000-08:00

I should have posted more over the past few days but I have been sick as dog with some cold virus seemingly everyone in the North of England went down with as well. It also didn't help just spending about 36 hours of this weekend sitting there doing little more than eating Celebrations and drinking cans either. But even I managed to be shaken into some form of stunned lucidity on Christmas Day by seeing Matt Lucas blacking up on my TV screen, running around in Stanstead Airport pretending to be a female Afro Caribbean coffee shop assistant for a mockumentary on a fly on the wall look at an airport (Come Fly With Me BBC 1.). He even did the wacky Jar Jar Binks accent too. I mean actually fucking hell! Naturally this all went down like seven pounds of dog shit in a jacuzzi with critics and viewers.

Great call guys!!!

Ding Dong Merrily on High and Dry.(See what I did there?)

2010-12-23T15:38:00.000-08:00

A few years ago I worked at a major UK supermarket, we'll codename it ASDA as that was what it was called. ASDA used to be closed only four days a year, Christmas Day; Boxing Day*; New Years Day, and Easter Sunday. Well now it seems all the major supermarkets (except our local Morrisons) are now opening on Boxing Day, so the workers have one less holiday day at Christmas, and that it sad.

Christmas serves an important function in our society. Now I am big time atheist, Jesus was no more the son of God, as Arthur Askey was. The Nativity may be as factually valid as an episode of Buck Rogers, but that doesn't mean we should just do away with it. Now I'm a cynical misanthrope who lives in a dirty bin lid and swears incoherently at passers by, and even I manage to capture some of the Christmas spirit, you'd have to either be very miserable or currently Tyrone of Coronation Street not to even let a little of the festive spirit rub off. A good natured affirmative group celebration like Christmas is good for us all, a time to realise life isn't all work and practical stuff, that human existence should be life affirming. And getting presents is a bonus too! In short Christmas is everything the ultra free market isn't.

A young woman on Facebook has fallen foul of this extra opening day. And she was understandably put out. It just seems wrong opening the supermarkets on Boxing day, and you got that sense from her comments. I mean come on! Will these mega companies really go bust if they allow their staff (who often have young families, who are now deprived of the company a loved one at Christmas) two days off at Christmas. This is precisely what bugs me about ultra free market advocates (who incidentally often seem pretty protected from the arse end of this kind of society.) reasoning. It may generate wealth**, but it doesn't generate human wealth so to speak. These aren't inanimate units of production, but human workers with desires and lives and families, and a desire for emotional comforts and the comforts of home and hearth and whatever.*** That is perhaps why I have a soft spot for Christmas. It stands as a long standing bulwark against the free market fundamentalism that may have made us richer but not happier. But will the day itself come under threat? I have heard (but have no verification) that some US superstores do open for a few hours on the 25th now. Bugger.

*Pretty much every year I was there there were rumours that this was the year they'd take the plunge and open Boxing Day.

**No I'm not a communist by the way. The free market has its uses, but should not be a societal end in itself. To quote David Starkey "It remains true as always, people are motivated by more than just market forces."

** It has been argued that some people are so lonely at Christmas that they would welcome them all being open on the day as they would at least have a shop assistant to speak to that day. This always breaks my bloody heart when I hear it. Perhaps we should try to change the factors that allow people to become this cut off as an all year round project, rather than making it a reason to open stores on Christmas Day.

Information for the New Year, and Transporting Stuff that Was Supposed to be on this Blog to a New One.

2010-12-21T15:29:00.000-08:00

I did say a few weeks ago that I would be doing some reviews of several episodes of Sci Fi shows on this blog. However I just don't feel that they "fit" in here somehow. They seem out of place on a broad brush blog that devotes most of the time to currant affairs, popular pseudoscience and taking the piss out of the Daily Mail (all indeed enjoyable pastimes I might add.) I don't know where they fit in on here overall. Now I did say when I started that stuff like that would be put up, but it hasn't really happened. But then again I was just making this whole thing up on the fly, and most of the stuff I still put up is largely spur of the moment stuff that happens to tickle my fancy at a given moment. However the desire to review the episodes of a few sci fi shows close to my heart has never left me, and indeed in 2007 I had some bare bones reviews of the Star Trek spin off Deep Space 9 put to paper, as it was being shown on syndication on Virgin 1 (Channel 1 as it is now known) at the time. Indeed taking a leaf out of the expansion of Chuck Sonnenburgs superb SFDebris reviews to blip TV has spurned me on even more. There is a lot of personal enjoyment for me in mulling over shows that ran through my formative years. So I have decided to put them all together on a separate blog I intend to start up some time in the new year. It makes more sense that way, and not just on a blog seemingly established to picking holes in Peter Hitchens opinion pieces. After all there is no rule to say you can't have more than one blog on the go.

So the shows I intend to review will probably start with Star Trek Deep Space Nine (Seasons 1 to 7 concurrently in viewing order), then the Trek Movies, and Babylon 5 after that. After that, who knows? It's a lot of telly for sure. But I think something like that needs a separate, more specialist blog altogether. I'll start setting notes up at Crimbo, and put the details up on here before everyone is too pissed to be physically capable of reading anything at all as New Years Eve kicks in to gear.

Happy Days.

Peter Hitchens Accuses Mathew Parris of Misrepresenting His Veiws, And then Does Just That to Bob Ainsworth.

2010-12-19T15:19:00.000-08:00

Peter Hitchens has got into a bit of a right old ding dong with Matthew Parris over him apparently misrepresenting his views on homosexuality on some debate they had. He has used his blog and column to continually call on Parris to apologise to him in a very public manner. It has the ring of a bit of a creepy spurned lover [on Hitchens part] being a bit weird and obsessive to their former partner. I half expect Matthew Parris to write to Peter telling him to back off and get over it. Something like:

Dear Peter

I know you got hurt and all, nut please man get some perspective. I also know that you have been breaking into my house when I am at work at the Times, I know that you are upset and all but please stop rifling through my draws and trying on all my underpants. That's crossing the line old boy. Take a holiday, Fallaraki is cracking this time of year. Eric Pickles got so pissed last year he tried to have a fight with a fruit machine and then fell asleep on the main road, pissed himself as well, it was proper funny! You'd love it you old rum cove!

Kind Regards my old mucker

Matt.

To be fair having what you said being misrepresented is not nice. I could see how he would be put out by it. So I'm sure that Britain's most supreme arbitrator of right and wrong in the entire world would never misrepresent the views of someone else, after he was peeved that it may have happened to him?

Er no:

Hitchens is cheesed off at Bob Ainsworth for calling for the legalisation of drugs. Now on its own that isn't exactly a big shock, Hitchens is very anti drugs legalisation of any kind. Now that in itself isn't a crime. Drugs is a hot political potato, as a polemic columnist he has the right to proclaim his view on how drugs should be handled, indeed he wouldn't be dong his job otherwise. It is how he attacks Bob Ainsworth that I feel is unfair:

"But they will earn him the curses of parents whose children’s lives have been – or are yet to be – ruined by drugs, and of a society which will find out too late what it is like to live in a state where pleasure and self-stupefaction have driven out self-discipline and the work ethic.
What, you may wonder, leads a middle-aged white-collar trade unionist into the wacky world of drug legalisation?

(You're a fucking journalist, find out by reading what he said then.)

I have no idea. Was it something they discussed during those meetings of the International Marxist Group that Mr Ainsworth once attended? Or is the moustache a giveaway?

Like so many of his age group, did Mr Ainsworth see the 1967 release of Sergeant Pepper – and the druggies’ anthem A Day In The Life – as a seminal moment in the cultural revolution?
Does he imagine himself sitting among the Fab Four, suspended above reality atop a sweet-smelling cloud? It would explain a lot."

In light of what is said by this article, and that saying a mans moustache means he must be an evil communist usurper is the most stupid thing ever committed to a blog in history - this seems like an unfair assessment of Ainsworths comments and why he supports legalisation. When you hear about the appalling violence in Mexico that is down to fighting the war on drugs, and the successes in Portugal which has taken a much more liberal approach to policing drugs, then he is absolutely bang on to put the case for liberalising the drugs laws (aren't politicians accused of all sounding alike anyway?). Hitchens wants to portray the pro legalisation lobby as a bunch of selfish hedonists who want to legalise drugs so they can sit on a beach spliffed up at 4 in the morning, discovering the most profound existential answers by staring for a long time at a deck chair. Might some people actually come round to thinking that prohibition is actually causing more harm than the drugs they are supposed to stop? Saying that Ainsworth wants either a stupefied population, or wants to legalise them to smoke pot and pretend to smoking a spliff with the Beatles on cloud is dare I say it;- misrepresenting what he actually said. And we all know that is bad, especially if you are demanding an apology from someone you said did just that to you.

The "Teach Both Sides" Paradox on Climate Change, Darwinism Et Al, In a Nutshell

2010-12-17T11:00:00.000-08:00

Professor Brian Cox off D-Ream highlighted the dual paradox that faces hot scientific potatoes such as climate change or evolution, where the mainstream scientific consensus of experts points extremely heavily in favour of both, but popular layman consensus can be divided and highly contentious, often flying in the face of the experts view. The problem is twofold, firstly in the interests of "balance", media orientated directors or journalists / editors will "promote" the other side either they think that showing both sides of the story is the fair and just thing to do, or plainly out of a spirit of contrarian irreverence to piss off the "establishment". This route is not a solid way to take into account that one of the sides could plainly have got the facts wrong. The second is more controversial. If say climate change proponents point out that the "deniers" don't have a leg to stand on, and have dodgy evidence, and thus have no scientific or factual basis to claim equivalence and equal air time, well they end up looking like they do have something to hide, at least to those laypersons looking at the issues. What are they so afraid about in debating the issues? Unfortunately not seeing the vigorous academic scrutiny and peer review that became the scientific consensus that gets put out. That is why we end up with public scepticism being much higher than those of qualified climate scientists. (75 percent in the UK think AGW is happening. 97% of scientists think the same, and every scientific body of international and national stature.)

This paradox is summed up superbly (but unintentionally) in a blog article by Alex Singleton, a journo from the Telegraph, not a paper to deny airspace to a AGW denier - about an e-mail circulated at Fox News about putting out "both" sides of the AGW debate

"From: Sammon, Bill Sent: Tue Dec 08 12:49:51 2009Subject:

Given the controversy over the veracity of climate change data……we should refrain from asserting that the planet has warmed (or cooled) in any given period without IMMEDIATELY pointing out that such theories are based upon data that critics have called into question. It is not our place as journalists to assert such notions as facts, especially as this debate intensifies."

Ostensibly this e-mail sounds pretty reasonable, and I can see why Alex Singleton may think that this is a good approach to take in regards to climate change. However, and this was Proffessor Cox's point. Although Bills attitude towards the role of journalism may be admirable and well intentioned in regards to something like the scientific consensus of climate change, it doesn't really fit the approach to take on scientific issues that have been researched. I have no problem with them saying that some do criticise and disagree with the consensus on AGW, but they are not saying how much criticism there is, and how is a very small minority, mostly composed of laypeople and has no real standing at all in the harsh world of scientific peer review and evidence based research. That is the point Cox said, this outlook to scientific reporting may seem fair, but it is giving pseudoscience airtime that is totally unwarranted from a research sense.

Singleton then brings up a point that highlights an important gap in the often humanities based background of journalists, and the research work of science:

"wonder if the journalists writing attacks on Fox realise that these sort of advisory emails are frequently sent around the staff of Left-wing establishments, declaring that “ethnic minorities” must henceforth be called “minority ethnics” and that no one may be labeled a “gypsy”. Anyway, do take a look at the email, and you will see the absurdity of the criticism:"

There is an important distinction between this example and the climate change e-mail. The former is about appealing to sensibilities and not hurting peoples feelings. It is a subjective thing, you can't really quantify it or measure it. It is essentially a matter of opinion. The latter is about a subject that is researchable and researched, a tangible scientific phenomena, and is subject to evidence based research, almost all confirming AGW is real. I think some journalists like Singleton are so used to the opinion piece and the polemic, they seem to think that science works like their world. That they all meet up in the "Science Establishment" once a year and create a "bible of science" in their little society. He backs my suspicion up with:

"It sounds to me as if Fox News is making a conscious effort, if I may use their catchphrase, to be fair and balanced. What a pity that the Left, like fanatical fundamentalists, regard global warming as such a sacred doctrine that they cannot permit anyone anywhere to criticise it."

See he sees it as "doctrine" and "left wing". That AGW research consists of nothing much more than a bunch of Guardian readers in the North Pole or whatever. And thus why popular reporting of science is in such a dismal state. I don't want to shut AGW deniers up, or send them to prison. But I don't think they should get away without the public being told that there is almost nothing to their claims. That not all counter claims are as valid when you research them. In practice we all do this anyway, when David Icke said he was the son of God he got laughed at. Why? Because even without the benefit of objecive analysis (though you are welcome to try) we knew that the ratio of he is Jesus, to he's nuts was 0.00001 : 99.9999. Likewise for all Singleton may talk about fairness, does the Torygraph give ample credence to the claims 9/11 was an inside job. Ditto, it's barmy.

No-one is saying AGW deniers should be silenced, but they should be judged by the veracity and accuracy of their claims, which don't stand up too well. That isn't an attack on free speech.

The Mail Likes to Condemn the Moral Depravity of Todays Society, But then they Also Like to Show Images of Nubile Young Women . But Which is Worser?

2010-12-14T15:35:00.000-08:00

The Mail likes to seize on any occasion to show how today's society is going squarely down the bumcrust foetid pan of Lucifers disgusting spiritual lavatory, so it is unsurprising they have got on their high horse about Rihanna and Christina Aguillera doing the following sort of routine on the X - Factor finale

However they also know that a large portion of their readership are retired lower middle class slightly bored men who have a bit too much time on their hands as well. So they have to get around the double standard of being both morally outraged at these brazen hussys baring their bums (and nice ones they are too. Sorry getting off track there) and bappage on a pre watershed show, but at the same time do a double paged splash of totty for the boys without calling it page 3 stuff. So we get this hilarious "warning" accompanying the pictures about why they were obliged to print them which highlights the Mails hilarious hypocrisy and the often fine line between disapproval and titillation there is around this sort of thing.

"WE APOLOGISE TO READERS BUT YOU HAVE TO SEE THESE PICTURES TO UNDERSTAND THE FURY THEY'VE STIRRED."

Superb!

It's obvious that just writing "Some people were upset that half a dozen young nubile women with not very much on bent over some chairs, and performed suggestive poses on a pre - watershed programme" would never be sufficient to describe what happened. That only by showing the photos could a retired prison officer from Formby work up enough moral outrage to go in the back room and let off steam by having a w.... er... no I mean by writing a strongly worded letter to Simon Cowell.

Probably best to leave it there!! "Have to see these pictures" my arse. Or Christinas or Rihannas.

Was Frankie Boyle Out of Line About Harvey Price Yes. Should Channel Four Censor Him No.

2010-12-11T09:48:00.000-08:00

Frankie Boyle is in serious danger of becoming a parody of his original self. His once scathing wit seems to be rapidly descending into just saying anything as "controversial" as he can think of just to generate as much shock value in his act as humanly possible. If there is any greater satirical or ironic context than the superficial gratuitous shock value on offer in his current stand up routines then it is hard to detect. Boyle runs the very real risk of becoming a crude caricature of his currant persona and running his career smack bang into a solid dead end. His latest act has got him into hot water with Katie Price (AKA Jordon.) who is understandably pretty pissed off with Boyle as he had the following to say about her disabled son Harvey in his C4 show:

"Jordan and Peter [Andre] are still fighting each other over custody of Harvey – eventually one of them will lose and have to keep him."

He then promptly turns it up to 11 when he says:

"I have a theory about the reason Jordan married a cage fighter – she needed a man strong enough to stop Harvey from f***ing her"

Hmmmmmmmmm.

Understandably this has become a talking point about what should be deemed as acceptable material for a stand up to include in his act. Are some topics just to hot for the microphone? Should stand ups face censure for controversial comments about minorities such as disabled children? The question becomes even more pressing when after Jordan complained to C4 with the threat of legal action, Ofcom announced they intend to pursue the complaint with an official investigation. This does raise the age old question, does free speech have taboos that should never be broken? And the additional question should Boyle be censured or even punished by law for what he said?

My own opinion on his comments is that they are unpleasant, they are a cheap attempt to push the boundaries just to get a shock horror response without any greater context or subtext to the routine in question. It is the stand up equivalent of running into a supermarket, grabbing the Tanney and shouting "fuck c**ty bollocks" at the top of your voice. Not exactly highbrow humour. Now I might not have much time for gratuitous shock humour, but that is only my personal taste, and people are free to laugh at this kind of stuff, or incorporate it into their act if they want to. However there is one important factor with the choice of target that shouldn't be overlooked. It has been argued that Jordan takes every opportunity available to stick her and her lovers, and her kids in front of the cameras, and she should take the flack for this, and that if she is willing to indulge in the light of publicity she should be able to take the flack that comes with it, thus Boyle was in effect doing just that. But Harvey has no say in what his mum does, nor will he ever be physically able to have a say in the future. Nor was it a social commentary on Jordon being a screen whore as C4 tried to make it out as. And lastly it wasn't even that funny, so it's not a case of really crude stuff being passable on the virtue of it being a good joke.

But the argument for banning Boyle, and indeed other comedians from telling jokes about taboo issues is another argument all together. When you start laying out what people can and can't say (short of slander, incitement to violence etc.) well you are on a road to pretty murky territory. Freedom of speech is one of the greatest gifts we have in our society, and I don't mean the sort of freedom of speech until someone says something I don't like variety that seems popular. So no he shouldn't be censored or threatened with legal action, nor does taboo subjects not have a place in comedy because people are a bit iffy with the subject. Some of the greatest satire such as the Brass Eye paedophilia special and Jerry Springer the Opera used extremely controversial issues to satirise the often double standards society has towards these issues, a context that Christian Voice and the Daily Mail writers appear to have missed at the time. But I'm afraid Frankie cocked up a bit by making lousy jokes about a disabled kid who can't fight back just to "edgy", and he is rightfully getting flack for it. Just because you can say a thing (and I emphasise he shouldn't be banned from telling jokes) doesn't mean you should do it. You might want to have a barney at your girlfriend, but would you do it her grans funeral? So in a nutshell he made some badly thought out comments, made a prick of himself and actually succeeded in making me sympathetic to Katie Price for once. But if he was prosecuted for what he said, then I'd be the first supporting this foul mouthed Proclaimers lookalike. Ah well.

My Thoughts On Corries 50th Anniversary Tram Crash Explosion

2010-12-07T15:34:00.000-08:00

The 50th anniversary of Corrie has lead to the writers to commemorate the occasion by attempting to do what is known in filmmaking jargon as an attempt at "Jumping the Shark", and to give them credit they pulled it off pretty well. I mean it's not like these people are accustomed to filming "Die Hard" for a living, but that aside, the Corrie Tram crash over Leanne and Peters bar (I've forgotten what it's called and can't be arsed googling it.) was pulled off pretty well I think, and that got me thinking. This scene cost about one million pounds to film, that is equivalent to about under a minutes film time of "Avatar" and "Revenge of the Sith", but it was more exciting than any scene in those films. A magic tree falling down in Alpha Centauri and a lightsaber duel on a volcanic world were outdone by a pub with dodgy gas fittings blowing up, and a fake tram landing in a pretend paper shop in a studio in a city in the North. I would well imagine that both George Lucas and James Cameron would have spent ten times as much on a scene like this with the resources they have. They would have set up all the right camera angles for optimum viewing position for the audience. Spent months setting up CGI shots and hired trained stunt men to do the leap on the ground as the concussion from the explosion hits them. It would have been choreographed, crisp, too perfect. And that is the problem with some of these big budget films. The Corrie scenes were done on as lower budget, with less sophisticated technology, but it seemed more real. There was real rubble and fire and chaos. It was more arbitrary with the demands on time and budget constraints (and it was also an outdoor location shoot -well the scenes inside the wreckage aren't, - which brings up other problems), it was in short more realistic and exciting, as that is what these sorts of things are in real life, chaotic and out of the blue, messy. It felt real as nothing on Avatar or the Star Wars prequels, which sprung from the binary code of a graphics program did. As Red Letter Media accurately said, a little bit of the magic was lost when CGI overkill came into play. It's all a bit too clean and perfect to be plausible.

A good example of my theory that less can sometimes be more was in another soap "Emmerdale". They jumped the shark with a plane crash, but because of the low budget they could show little of the actual event. The explosion was seen in the reflection of a car window, and a burning line torch dangled off the side of an unseen filming truck was supposed to be one of the burning wings of the doomed airliner landing on the road into the village, and that worked surprisingly well. In reality something like that would be totally out of the blue, a totally surreal experience of a rain of fire descending on the hapless village arbitrarily raining carnage from above. If Emmerdale had had 20 million to do that scene and today's FX tech, I don't think they could have matched the simple effectiveness of those scenes.

As with a lot of Corrie it is the little things in the script, and the high standard of writing that makes the episode. It looks like goodnight Vienna for Sunita, I defy anyone to have remained stiff lipped when Dev broke down with guilt admitting she wouldn't have been in the shop at all if he hadn't made her work a shift instead of going to the hen do. Or how they are prolonging the suspense by having them trapped under all that very unstable rubble that I have a feeling will not be standing for much longer. It's guesswork figuring out the other two may be who have a one way ticket to soap heaven. Or a clever scene when they are so wrapped up with the main explosion, they don't realise a surrounding house is on well alight until they feel the heat from the window, who else is unnaccounted for?

It's pretty exciting stuff I know that.

Martin Durkin VS Brian Cox (That Science Bloke From D-Rream)

2010-12-05T15:06:00.000-08:00

Martin Durkin isn't a happy bunny. The physicist professor Brian Cox from D -Ream did a lecture on the BBC about the role of television programmes in promoting science, and in relation to this - how television documentaries presented by both scientists and documentary makers handle contentious scientific issues. I won't summarise too much on what he says as the entire 40 minute lecture can be found on this link. (The specific bit containing the furore I mention and Durkins documentary are in the second part, but I recommend watching all of it, it is a very concise and thoughtful look at how TV and science should be handled.) Cox explains the tendency of TV and journalism to provide "balance" on contentious scientific issues, which can lead to the elevation of junk science as somehow equivalent to the rigorously scrutinised scientific consensus in the eyes of the lay public. How a polemical "maverick" can pass flat earth science as somehow fact based in evidence based research, when it is largely opinion from unsolicited sources. Cox is obviously troubled by how increased "vetting" of sources and the veracity of the material may be seen as some kind of censorship which could harm the reputation of science. It is certainly not the case that Cox is advocating himself as some latter day inquisitor ready to silence a latter day Galileo for pissing around with his heavy balls off a steeple tower as James Delingpole and Martin Durkin may have you believe, as they blow hard on their toy trumpets.

Durkin is upset because Cox showed an excerpt of his documentary as the kind of "bollocks" that he was on about. That it may be seen as a factual piece and not as a hypothetical piece of "polemical cack" that may be a more accurate moniker. (To be fair Cox doesn't directly say it is the latter) Durkin then responded with a rebuttal he christened "Big Daft Cox" which really sums up the childish and petulant name calling Durkin seems so fond of (1).

Durkin, like Dellingpole is not averse to resorting to passive aggressive abuse of someone who has the temerity of questioning the validity of the climate change deniers science, he even gets a Godwins in early as well. (which the deniers never hesitate to point out is one of the cardinal sins of the "warmists", on every fucking occasion.) Guys if you are going to put your heads above the parapet expect some "critical" feedback. No-one should be afraid of critical analysis if they are as certain as they say they are. The response uses the typical tricks of the pseudo science trade.

"This year’s BBC Huw Wheldon lecture was delivered by pop star and celebrity-physicist Brian Cox, who was telling us how science should be reported on television.

Brian looks like a rebel. One of the kids. He has long hair and wears a T-shirt under his jacket. But appearances can deceive. I’ve met countless grungy greens who are every bit as censorious and freedom-hating as the most well-ironed Nazi."

The taking stuff out of context swiftly follows.

And, as it turns out, Brian is about as rebellious as Captain Mainwaring. He says it’s the job of documentary makers to relay to the public science which has been approved by the scientific establishment.

He didn't say that. He said scientists doing these documentaries should point out that the currant body of scientific evidence backs up their claims, and that laymen polemics, or the people responsible for these documentaries should be honest in saying "look this is just my opinion", or "there is no peer reviewed evidence to support these claims." He does not say that polemic pieces don't have a place, and for that matter neither do I.

"The logic of his descent into censorship went like this (it so often does): Science is really important – just look at the need to combat global warming. Government funding is therefore vital. And television ‘has a big responsibility to get the science right’."

Combating a potentially serious threat to the climatic welfare of the human homeworld is sort of a big deal. I know that Delingpole and Durkin think they are being all rebellious and clever by defying the "madness of the crowd", but based on what? Climate change scepticism is growing, leaders seem more inclined to go with that sentiment as well. They better be right about their "campaign for truth" or their may be serious consequences for society.

"He admits that his argument ‘does sound rather authoritarian’ and asks himself blithely towards the end, ‘Have I been led to an Orwellian conclusion? … I don’t know.’"

Well no. He never says stuff like "Swindle" should be banned. Just that the viewing public have a right to know that documentaries like Durkin's was counter to the rigorously scrutinised scientific consensus (which I must emphasise is NOT the same thing as conventional wisdom) that currently exists on the subject. That his views were his own and not based on peer reviewed scientific sources. I don't see this as any less dictatorial as product manufacturing guidelines being made to publish accurate data about their product, and what in reality it is or isn't.

Durkin really starts firing on all cylinders now.

"His special worry is global warming. The problem appears to be this. Lots of people don’t believe it. Despite the fact that there is almost total acceptance of this ridiculous theory in the media, many ordinary people just don’t buy it."

Firstly it wasn't exclusively about climate change. Secondly, yes there are lots of people who don't believe it. Many ordinary people (who don't have advanced degrees in climatology I might add.) don't buy it . But nearly every scientist in the field does!! People are of course free to believe what they want. However I think people deserve the right to have the objective evidence for and against presented to them, with transparency in the veracity of varying claims on a contentious topic. I do think we have an odd situation going on here when there is such a discrepancy in the views of the lay public and the scientific observations.

"So if some scoundrel (like me) pops up and says the science behind this garbage is bunkum, the scientific establishment – Cox & Co – become furious."

Rule number three of a climate change denier. Play the "voice in the wilderness" taking on the "establishment" card. Cox wasn't ranting like a loony anyway. If you are going to espouse a view that flies in the face of decades of painstaking research, and call it bullshit, expect a "robust" response!

"And I know to my cost what it’s like when they turn on you."

Yeah they pay you lots of cash to look at big skyscrapers in Hong Kong on a boat, and look wistfully at the Angel of the North. (2)

Durkin now turns his fire on the peer review process that is designed to ensure that a paper is rigorously scrutinised before being published in a respectable scientific journal.

"Peer review happens when an article is submitted for publication to a science journal. The editor doesn’t know whether the author is talking out of his hat or not, so he sends it out to other scientists working in the same field to (anonymously) pick holes in it. If the others say it’s fine he’ll print it. If not, he doesn’t.

"Peer review is at best imperfect. At worst it’s a rather nasty form of censorship within the scientific community. Good papers are frequently rejected. Rubbish is often printed."

Oh Martin! Where to start. The editor may know about the topic for a start, at the very least they may have a background knowledge of science (does tend to help if you edit a scientific journal). Secondly anonymity helps guarantee a fairer environment for scientists to lay into a paper, and not to cause fall out by either knowing the author or each other. Thirdly the editors don't just either bin or print. They can say that the author must perhaps cite one source as conjecture, or remove a dubious source prior to publication. Or rewrite the article to a higher standard and print it at a later date.

Peer review is obviously imperfect, all systems designed by man are. But I challenge Durkin to come up with a better alternative.

The fourth canard of the climate change denier is the "It's all a conspiracy to set up a new socialist world order" argument. Hence he starts to claim:

"Their reputations have been built on certain theories (like global warming). Their grant funding depends on the wide acceptance of these theories."

"Cox and his chums in the scientific establishment love to portray themselves as simple well-meaning scientific folk. But as anyone who has experienced the wrath of the scientific establishment will attest, it’s a significant political force, bullying politicians and beating up critics."

"But science is incredibly political. Whole careers are built on, and the funding of entire institutions depend on certain ‘scientific truths’, or as they should be called, ‘funding excuses’."

"Global warming isn’t just the best funding wheeze they’ve hit upon since the Cold War."

This claim that it is all some big con dreamt up by the "establishment" (3) to tax the schmucks like us never makes much sense to me. For a start it hasn't worked. If as they say; it was all a big conspiracy - did no legally binding treaty get formed at Copenhagen by the socialist brotherhood or whoever? Shouldn't they run with it? Secondly the modern scientific method doesn't work that way, and is much more adept at spotting woo than in the past. Popular climate change studies have been around for a few decades, if the ACC theory had been as riddled with holes as the skeptics claim, it wouldn't have survived long enough to become as "orthodox" as it is. A sort of survival of the fittest of ideas occurs. Intense scrutiny would have rendered it to the wastebin of bad ideas about 25 years ago. Finally as a tool to "scare" the public into punitive taxation it is a lousy scaremongering one. Politicians have used flat earth tales to bullshit the masses, but they have two major things that allow them to be used to this effect that AGW doesn't. Number one they appeal to popular prejudice and misconceptions, and number two; they are abstract and objectively hard to prove. Methods to combat AGW far from appealing to popular sentiment are often inconvenient and unpopular such as increasing the cost of flying and petrol. And AGW can be studied and researched, it is tangible, not some abstract subjective threat.

The debate about man made climate change may seem to be a scientific spat, it is not. It is politically motivated. If you listen to a denier for long enough, the real reason they oppose the ACC theory eventually comes out:

"What’s more, the political views of scientists are inevitably, profoundly coloured by their almost complete reliance on big state funding. Predictably, most of them have the trite anti-capitalist worldview that almost always go with it."

" It’s also a repository for all the green, middle class anti-capitalist prejudices which are part and parcel of the Western intellectual worldview."

Is it unsurprising that both Durkin and Dlingpole class themselves as neo-liberal libertarians? The anti-ACC movement is highly ideologically motivated, so don't think ill of me when I consider them a tad hypocritical to sneer at the majority of scientists who do support the ACC theory as valid, as only motivated by politics and special interest. Perhaps some do actually value objective research even if it doesn't fit in with their world view.

(1). Durkin reputedly fell out with a geneticist who criticised the material in "Swindle" and called him "A big daft cock" So the title of the riposte is quite ironic.

(2). See this post on the "Trillion Pound Horror Story."

(3). "Establishment" is a conspiracy theorist buzzword. You don't have to split hairs about who is part of the nebulous "establishment", it sounds all X-Files, and it protects you from being sued for libel if you name names.

Turn the Grinchometer Up to 11. I'm Pretty Glad Ivan Got the Beautiful Game.

2010-12-02T08:49:00.000-08:00

I really am a kind of the Grinch of sport. I loathe it, I hate it, I want to kick it's athletic face in. I won't humour it, or lamely try (and fail) to get in the sporting spirit with stuff like the world cup. I want to pop all the footballs, burn the cricket bats, single handedly vomit the entire worlds supply of the sporty energy drinks into a big hole that leads directly to the very bowels of the Earth itself. Sport; and footy in particular is rubbish, and that's all there is too it! I am so averse to the cult of football, that I may actually end up living in a hermits cave on a hill, where those children who wear football kits at the beginning of matches will point and sing mocking songs about the miserable and weird creature who resides there every at every World Cup event with only his despair at the whole vacuous awfulness of footy mania as his only companion. So with that cheery assessment out of the way, it is not entirely unsurprising that I'm not beating my own bare back with a big heavy chain in some archaic grief ritual at the news of Russia winning the bid to host the 2018 World Cup.

Nothing hammered home to me the extent to which footymania had established it's iron foothold on the heart of the nation was when I took a walk around my neighbourhood on the day of the game that England were ejected from this years World Cup. I was quite literally the only person on the streets when that match was broadcast. This was a glorious summer Sunday afternoon, not a cloud in the sky and there was just me. It was then I realised just how much on the periphery of British society militant footy loathers like myself are during this event. Most non footy fans seem to make their deal with the soccer devil, or at least pay lip service to the event. I might like to think I was flouting convention by sticking to my anti soccer credentials, but trust me there was no-one paying any notice, the beautiful game takes custodian of most souls in the end. You are truly on your own during the World Cup. It was like being a survivor in 28 days later, but with less death and suburban zombies obviously.

This is just the kind of mania that grips the nation during a World Cup occurring overseas. Imagine one over here? There would literally be no escape. I would be a cornered lamb with a dodgy hind leg trying to evade a pack of growling wolves who hadn't had a square meal for a good while - totally screwed. I would have had to have entombed myself in a concrete bunker, cut off from all outside contact lest I go completely insane from overexposure. So as unpatriotic and mean spirited as it may sound, I am glad Russia is hosting it. They are welcome to have it as far as I am concerned. I know that there is going to be some major league corruption and backhanders going on behind the scenes whilst all this is going on. I also know that if the stadia aren't finished on time, the foreman won't just get a hostile Sun article as he may here, but will likely have a nuclear submarine sent round to his house as incentive to tighten the pace of construction a bit. But you know, there we are, it's a cruel world. That may sound like mean sentiment, but what would you expect from the Grinch?

I Hate Bloody Snow

2010-11-30T15:28:00.000-08:00

A few people on Facebook et al have been quite pleased that we have had these recent snow falls, and to cut a long and not particularly interesting story short - I'm not one of them. Snow may provide an appropriate background feature to a Quality Street tin, but in reality it is cold depressing and a bit shit. Bing may have dreamed of a White Christmas, but he can keep them as far as I'm concerned. So in a sort of spin on that idiotic Taxpayers Alliance rant about buses, I too explain in explicit detail why this hydrological spawn of Satan gets on my chilly wick so much.

I hate snow because it is cold, and I don't do cold. I hate snow cause it happens in winter, and I don't do winter either. I hate snow because of the damned inconvenience it causes. I have to spend ages in the freezing cold shoveling a clear path to get my car off the drive, something I can accomplish in 7 seconds in clement weather. I don't want to feel like an inmate of the gulag (there's a reason Stalin sent his enemies there) to perform a simple task. I hate snow because it turns the humble pavement into a constant hazard, always on the knife edge of setting up a pedestrian for a nasty fall. I hate snow because it turns the road into a H2O minefield that can sneak up and remove the drivers control of the car without much warning. I hate snow as it is the nomme de guerre of the man who brought us the preposterous 1993 song "Informer" (the "I lick your bum bum now" song), and no word should yield the power to summon that tune to memory. I hate snow because it gives some people an excuse to say "it's character building" when everything gets buggered up and grinds to a halt, it's not character building, it's just fucking annoying. I hate snow because people send in those stupid pictures of bleak snowy vistas in the Peak District to North West Tonight, and Gordon Burns has to pretend to care about them. I hate snow because we have to have a news article on telly with a reporter standing outside a salt depot, and salt depots are boring. I hate snow because snow is ice, and lots of ice is an iceberg, and an iceberg sank the Titanic, so snow is actually evil. I hate snow because it can be turned into snowballs, and snowballs lead to snowball fights and those rock hard compressed snowballs that feel like a small moon has smashed into your face when it makes contact with your reddened ice parched bonce on the school grounds of yesteryear.

So there you go. Jack Frost fuck you, screw you you climate altering made up brother of David Frost.

The Daily Express Get Britain Out Of the EU Crusade.

2010-11-26T07:31:00.000-08:00

The Daily Express has gone where the Sun and Mail have yet to tread, and openly called for Britain to leave the E.U completely in one of its daft "crusades" that it comes out with. I'd imagine this "crusade" was cooked up by Dirty Des and Nigel Farage over a pint somewhere. Desmond probably reckoned an anti - Europe theme would appeal to the readership, though how long this crusade lasts will remain to be seen. These things in the Express tend to last as long as the jaded people writing it can be bothered to keep them going. Though it seems that the Express is pretty keen on this one, so keen that they even made up a fake statistic for the front page (The Eurosceptic Dan Hannon says the figure is roughly 55% want out, which sounds much more accurate.) Whether this is the start of the deliberate demise of a paper with declining readers, that is sent out to die vocally, becoming a single issue lobbying piece for it's proprietor is any ones guess. The paper interviewed a few random members of the public about whether they agreed with the Expresses stance (though it is not that clear how they came to the 99% figure), the responses given showed that those interviewed knew as much about the EU as I know about the TV show Ugly Betty (AKA fuck all), which is a bit worrying if ever the call for a referendum ever came up. Everyone seems to have strong opinions about it but do they really know all that much about it? I have to wonder whether there is a strong vein of practical opposition to the EU or is there a strong seam of possible xenophobia in the UK towards the continent. Not the best basis to oppose it. I would be genuinely interested to see how the Express readers would rate their reasons for wanting to leave the EU (of course the ones who do take that view.) in order of what they were most hacked off about. A list of stuff like:

1. THEY'D RATHER WE WERE IN NAFTA

2. THE EUROPE OF COMPETING, EXCLUSIVE NATION STATES LEADS TO BETTER AND MORE PRACTICAL GOVERNANCE.

3. THE E.U IS TOO PROTECTIONIST, TOO SOCIALLY DEMOCRATIC, AND TOO INTRUSIVE ON NATIONAL SOVEREIGNTY.

4. THE C.A.P IS THE STUPIDEST POLICY EVER INVENTED BY A HUMAN BEING.

5. HERMAN VAN ROMPOY LOOKS A BIT WEIRD.

6. I'M INCREDIBLY NOSTALGIC FOR A TIME WHEN YOU COULD BUY ELECTRICAL GOODS WITHOUT A PLUG FITTED.

7. THESE PEOPLE MADE WELSH AN OFFICIAL LANGUAGE OF THE E.U. WHAT'S ALL THAT ABOUT?

8. BENDY BANANAS. NUFF SAID

9. I DON'T LIKE FOREIGNERS STICKING THEIR NOSE IN JOHN BULLS AMPLE GIRTH.

10. THE E.U INVENTED YOOMAN RIGHTS. POLITICAL CORRECTNESS, DO-GOODERY AND LESBIAN GYPSY OUTREACH WORKERS, OR AT LEAST THAT'S WHAT BARRY DOWN THE PUB SAYS.

11. IT HAS FRENCH AND GERMANS IN IT.

My own hunch is that the ones at the bottom of the list will be the top of many a Express readers concern list. My own response to whether Britain's membership of the EU is a good thing or a bad thing is -depends on who you are. It really only affects people like me indirectly. If I was a big ultra free market proponent then I'd probably not like it too much. The other main anti-EU argument about the sovereignty issue, is a little exaggerated. I mean some of the talk about how the EU is trying to take over Britain when we have one of the largest and most powerful economies, and the largest military force of all the members, I'd like to see how they could seriously threaten us as much as some say. I'm sorry to say that a lot of anti EU sentiment seems largely down to a lot of Little England insularity, a purely emotional reaction that is not based on any practical objections. To quote Johann Hari:

"I find it hard to believe Eurosceptics when they say they are genuinely concerned about the erosion of national sovereignty, rather than dislike of Europeans. If they were really worried about sovereignty, surely they would occasionally complain about the fact that foreign multinationals have bullied sovereign British governments into whittling corporation tax and workers' rights to almost nothing.

Or they would complain that large parts of Britain's sovereign army - including its nuclear weapons - cannot be used without American authorisation. Or that large parts of our incredibly powerful media are accountable to foreign billionaires who shamelessly use their newspapers to pursue their own business interests rather than Britain's (or - wild idea! - a human rights agenda).

In fact, the totally independent nation state - which is so selectively fetishised by Eurosceptics - was always a myth. Nation states deal with the world as they find it, with all sorts of messy bargains and ad- hoc pooling of sovereignty."

I think that really sums it up very well. Pulling out of Europe - and I think a referendum could be easily possible, Cameron will have to face his Eurosceptic MP's one day, who knows after the Lib Dems are out of the scene next election? - is a BIG deal and not to be taken lightly. The case has to be put before us all, rational arguments for or against (I personally think there's more in the for camp. But since they can be never be bothered to do this, the anti camp will lead the debate, and do so.). If you only dislike the EU cause Britain ruled the waves once, and we hate the French etc.. Buy yourself a poster of a big bussomed girl in a Union Jack bikini to masturbate furiously to, because it may be a bit too late if we slam the door on the continent and perhaps retrospectively wish we hadn't been so hasty to do so, a few years down the line.

Does Littlejohn Think Homosexuality and Paedaphillia are Interchangeable

2010-11-23T16:04:00.001-08:00

Just spotted this one from Littlejohn on that Sharia Schools thing, about how his naive schooldays were so perfect in the innocent olden days of yore.

"We didn’t even know what homosexuality was, even though we’d been warned to steer clear of that chap who was always hanging round the swimming pool."

Hmmm that sort of sounds like an implication that being a gay man means that you have an unhealthy interest in young boys. So it's not too surprising people may be a bit sceptical at the sincerity of comments from Littlejohn such as this:

"Though homosexuality wasn't exactly my idea of a night out, I thought it outrageous that gays were subjected to discrimination in areas such as employment, housing and pensions.

I've always argued in favour of civil partnerships."

He couldn't possibly be making that up.

Review. "Martin Durkin. Britains Trillion Pound Horror Story"

2010-11-23T14:01:00.000-08:00

WATCH DOCUMENTARY HERE

I nearly didn't watch Martin Durkins "Britain's Trillion Pound Horror Story", and indeed I put it off. Not because I don't know a lot about economics (not that that stopped Durkin from this documentary!) and I'll just end up feeling thick, but because he wrote "The Great Global Warming Swindle" which was a bit shit. But no; it was there on 4oD and that was that. It pretty much confirmed my worst fears. In the spirit of lousy polemic documentaries it had shitty production values, it was unfunny, it lacked focus and had those god awful "sketches" to make the points it was trying to make. And in the spirit of all bad documentary films, it threw out straw men all the way through, and was so blatantly partisan it totally undermined any valid debate it was trying to make. He also had a scene where kids "protest" about us lot racking up debts that they will have to pay off, by having them rattle off slogans they had obviously just been told to say. Hmmmmm. In short I expected the worst, and wasn't let down.

Durkins film purports to be about the dire state of the nations finances. It seems that not even accounting for the banking crisis -it is a sorry story indeed. We are 4.8 trillion pounds in debt, which translates to £77'000 per person, or a stack of 50 pound notes 6561 miles high! Although he does say that the official figure is much lower, at 1 trillion. The extra amount is calculated by taking into account other factors such as future public pension liabilities, which does beg the question of how do you class future entitlements as the total public debt, before the people they are meant for have even claimed them? I had further questions about his economic analysis. In one scene he describes the debt by using a metaphor of a bath left running, with George Osbourne's cuts as using an egg cup to try to drain the water. He also highlights the risks of governments trying to print their way out of the debt by increasing the circulation of bank notes, which increases inflation, and in the extreme cases can cause what Geoffrey Howe calls "death of currency" as what happened in 20's Germany, and could be exacerbated by the creditors raising interest rates. Durkin seems to see the economy of a country as like a persons bank balance, an essentially fairly closed system. He never mentions who we are in debt to. Who is in debt to us? What is coming into the country? Would it be even in our creditors interest to see us go under? (see what's happening in Ireland) Economies are a much more open system. I'm not saying that the debt is not trouble (it is certainly to be worried about.), Durkin is just not explaining the bigger picture.

Durkin now tries to state his theory on why this debt came about. He claims that it is down to successive governments bankrolling an expanded client state. He claims that the private manufacturing sector are the only true wealth creators, and they are overshadowed by a large public sector who are economically parasitic (and as Durkin implies many times, largely a bunch of overpaid wasters who can't hack "real" work.) and funded by a government who can only raise taxes and borrow money to fund them. The large service sector has little to offer, as they can't export much. Thus our wealth creators are losing out to the debt creators, and that is why we are in this situation. I don't want to expand on the minutia of this argument as there are thousands of economic essays which explain this sort of thing a zillion times better than I could, but this does highlight Durkins straw man approach. Public workers can create wealth by proxy for instance. Say a doctor heals an entrepreneur, or a fireman saves a burning shop, or police confiscate dodgy goods. Again economics is not that much of a closed system. This is sort of the limits of the economic discussion on how the debt arose. From this point on the polemic mutates to the real point it wants to make.

In some ways this documentary is structured like Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11". The title being a bit of a smokescreen to create the launchpad to allow the creator to turn it into a personal pet crusade. In Moores case it was the Iraq war, Durkins is to promote his rigorous deregulated free market "all tax is theft" economy philosophy. That is why all his "Taxpayers Alliance" and "Adam Smith Institute "friends" get so much airtime in the documentary. The crux of his argument focuses on two locations, Durkins native North East and Hong Kong. So let's look at what he says about the former location first.

Durkin highlights the fact that the North East has high levels of people working in the public sector (around 60%, up to 77% in parts of Wales) and has a declined industrial base. Durkin and his buddy from the Taxpayers Alliance or whoever wax lyrical about how the North East had a strong industrial and manufacturing base in the late 19th to early 20th century, when the state made up about 10 percent of the workforce, and how this raised prosperity in the UK. They conveniently don't mention the great poverty that existed as the flip side of all this, and the protectionism the British Empire employed (2), minor omissions like that. They bemoan that the manufacturing base moved elsewhere where it became more profitable, after the two world wars and the increase of the state, and this is one of the problems of their uber free market philosophy -it looks great on paper, but we are not just an unthinking economic experiment, but a living human society. There is no doubt that this kind of economy can generate wealth, but it brings a host of other problems. Those shipyards shut down because it was cheaper to "outsource" their services overseas, where they could pay less emancipated foreign workers peanuts, and get away with cutting corners in the less democratic nations, compared to the relatively well paid and unionised British workers and it's democratic rules. Likewise Britain of the 19th century didn't have to bother (though much private charity did happen) as much about workers shitty pay and conditions as they had much less electoral say back then. It is inherently unstable. The unfettered free market takes advantage of an unliberated workforce (is it unsurprising that monetarism was first tried out in the Chilean police state of the 70's) - society gets richer and they demand more voice - they get more say and higher wages and representation - companies move elsewhere to undercut them with a new unliberated workforce -repeat the cycle. In short the increase in public sector jobs and service sector ones is a response to the loss of the industrial ones, there was simply nothing else to put in their place. A democratic society cannot just let swathes of its people being left without any real access to jobs. I'm not saying this is a perfect solution, but it is hard to see what would be an alternative. Textbook example of how a means to an end becomes the end in itself, and with that lets travel to the far east, to Hong Kong.

Durkin thinks we should be more like Hong Kong, with it's shiny skyscrapers (3) and it's free market economy, apparently considered the most free market of all. He again forgets to mention that HK has one of the highest gaps between rich and poor in the developed world, that the health service and the neat looking transport services are publicly funded monopolies (which he said were the road to shitdom in the UK), and that outsourcing to China is begging to happen. That Hong Kong - unlike the UK is a small city state, as we have seen the spreading of wealth in an ultra free market economy doesn't always travel everywhere, you can only do business in Hong Kong, in Hong Kong. And this is the root of the flaw (IMO) in Durkins and his Adam Smith institute friends argument. They see the totally unregulated free market as almost a magical force of nature that will always work wonders by virtue of what it is. In short it has become an article of faith for them. The invisible hand exists to these people, as a kind of fiscal version of the force on Star Wars. It binds us surrounds us, and can make you a shitful of dosh if you just grab it. In reality it is just an economic system, one of many. It can generate wealth obviously, but so did the command economies of the USSR in the twenties. They become unstuck when they become the end in itself, economics is ephemeral, things change to affect them, sticking doggedly to a system without reacting to whats going on around will eventually land you in trouble.

I don't want to say much more about the documentary, or delve further into economics. Quite simply there are shed loads of people who have forgotten more than I know about this type of thing, and are well worth reading for a more in depth account. But there was one comment on the documentary I thought that was telling "Taxation is theft", that sounds more a philosophical statement than an objective one. And in the end I feel that about Durkins theory, it owes more to ideology than a practical way to solve a financial problem.

(1) This is a nice little summary of the Economics of Hong Kong, and some of the problems of the economic system Durkin espouses.

(2) This essay has an interesting account of the way the Empire operated its economy around the time.

(3) We can take a tour of Hong Kong without going there courtesy of Google maps Street View. Hong Kong is on there. See firsthand if Durkin is being overly generous or not.

Bashing the Bishop Pete of Willesdon

2010-11-22T15:31:00.000-08:00

Bishop Pete of Willesdon, bloody Willesdon? Do they have an Archbishop of Wythenshawe? A Vicar of the parish made up of the Burger King on the Northbound Trowell Services on the M1? -. I digress. Bish Pete is officially the most horridest man in Christendom after he made some stupid comments on Facebook about the royal family, Katie and Williams wedding likely lasting seven years, Chas's ears, the royals being a bunch of philanderers -and a tasteless joke about a princess and a bridge column in a tunnel in Paris (I made the last one up by the way). Why do I mention this preposterous story? Well Melanie Philips; Peter Oborne; Richard Littlejohn, and some prat no-ones ever heard of on the Torygraph blogs are saying that this [Anglican] godbloke; who has made republican comments as well - should be sacked as technically the Queen is a sort of his boss (what about God?? Is she like the Department manager and he's the MD or something?), and he swore an oath of allegiance to her, so technically he has committed the ecclesiastical equivalent of slagging his boss off online. This is all interspersed with how republicans are just a bunch of mean minded; disloyal killjoys, blah blah -who should just shut their faces. So much for the ostensibly libertarian Torygraph, yeah free speech if you sing to the right songsheet more like.

It's not the unedifying and slightly weird "reverential" forelock tugging that seems to be going on with some of the conservative commentators response to our royal betters tieing the knot, that bugs me about this story, though I do hear "get a fucking grip it's 2010 for gawds sake!" screaming in my mind with some of the coverage this weddings getting. No it's how they are reacting to an institution [The C of E ] they supposedly revere as an essential part of our "Judeo Christian bedrock values". In case they haven't noticed the C of E is dying on its arse a bit at the moment. The guys comments were a bit in bad taste yeah, but come on! The C of E is losing followers. Joe public loses interest with stuff like this. It's trivial. It really highlights the bubble some of these people are in in regards to the role of the Anglican church in regards to modern Britain. It is almost pitiable to see these guys getting worked up at the "harm" this is doing to the church. Yeah it causes harm, it shows how out of touch it is, getting worked up about it. People won't want to know. Kick this bloke out! Yeah it's not like the C of E is having staffing crises is it? Do get a grip.

And on a final note. As I said his comments were a bit of a case of republican sour grapes. But I know that some of the homophobic comments from that same institution are a lot worse, and are directed at people who don't have the material trappings of bishop Petes targets either. I wonder why these commentators (I'll let Oborne off the hook) don't get half as worked up about that sort of sentiment?

They're (Not) Banning Christmas. Part 1

2010-11-19T14:39:00.000-08:00

We're not even in December yet, and the "You can't celebrate Christmas because it might offend Muslims" stories are beginning to creep in the newspapers, like a festive equivalent of reindeer shit at the bottom of a Christmas stocking. These stories will never go away - ever. They are as much a part of the festive season as mince pies, crackers and a fifty minute episode of a popular comedy that is passed of as a "Christmas special." This one concerns light displays in Rochdale that were put up to celebrate both Eid and Diwali being kept up alongside the traditional Christmas lights. In short a non - story. I think it is a rather touching move on the part of the council, I don't know why it is just - nice. It's an unpretentious non patronising and understated inclusive thingy that is quite a pleasant touch. In short you'd have to be a bit of a tit to object. So try telling this to perennial muppet Philip Davies; Tory MP for Shipley (not in fucking Rochdale):

"I’ve no idea why local authorities up and down the country are so ashamed of celebrating Christmas.

They aren't. Get your facts straight.

‘All this kind of pussyfooting around is done in the name of not offending other people from other faiths.

‘But it tends to be done by white middle-class people with some kind of bizarre guilt complex."

I'm pretty sure Davies is just taking at face value, secondhand information about a story he knows nothing about. I actually believe if you told him that the full moon offended Muslims in Britain as it was an affront to their symbol, so in response Burnley council are going to sell their own town to China to buy enough antimatter to blast it to a permanent crescent shape -he'd believe you, and give a really nice soundbite for the right wing press into the bargain.

I'm sure the Daily Star will exercise that rigorous impartiality in regards to a "Muslim" story, that only a downmarket tittyfest run by a prono wonk can achieve.

"CHRISTMAS IS HIJACKED BY MUSLIMS AND HINDUS"

Or not. Yet more lies to pander to racist boneheads. All we need.

This is pretty ominous stuff. There is simply no amount of integration or meeting half way that minorities (especially Muslims) can attempt that will seemingly stop this kind of stuff. Or any cross community project that is sneered at as "political correctness gone mad, sucking up to Muslims". Is it simply that you are damned either way? These sorts will simply have a pop whichever way you go? What a bunch of pricks.

Merry Winterval.

Comments on SFDebris "Prime Directive / Dear Doctor" Videos

2010-11-16T13:49:00.000-08:00

PRIME DIRECTIVE REVIEW

DEAR DOCTOR REVIEW

SFDebris; or Chuck Sonnonberg is the Ebert and Siskel of Youtube Star Trek reviews. His insights to the series and his witty critiques of the various shows are really second to none. That odd looking lad blubbing about Britney Spears this ain't. Watch his videos now, get your friends to watch them, get your family to watch them as well, even your pets. Even if you haven't seen Star Trek watch them! They may not mean much in that context but hey. Now back to the crux of this post. SFDebris nails on the head exactly how a well intentioned and well known key philosophy of Star Trek lore went from a sound philosophical reaction to the mistakes made in our world to a hideous parody of its original self that ended up on occasions matching and suppressing the evil it was supposed to combat. That is the Prime Directive, Star Treks Federations non-interference directive. I want to see how this code that was supposed to portray an enlightened attempt to alleviate suffering actually resulted in suffering from inaction on several occasions by analysing SFDebris videos and commentary with some of my own thrown in. Intrigued? - well read on.

Anyone familiar with Chucks work will know that the Enterprise episode "Dear Doctor" is one of his most well known written reviews, and was one of the most requested Youtube reviews. Everyone has their "Yikes" moment with a Prime Directive story (well especially in the later ones) when the directive was taken to such extremes you just had to question the face value assumptions of the infallible "rightness" of the PD. I crossed the Rubicon with the TNG episode "Homeward" where some made up science caused a planet to lose it's atmosphere thus killing the pre -industrial population, (don't worry some get rescued) which under the PD would have to happen lest their culture be contaminated. Now you might have thought that these guys may have had bigger fish to fry, than someone dicking about with their culture, when - oh- THEIR FUCKING PLANETS ATMOSPHERE HAS VANISHED INTO THIN AI...., I MEAN; SPACE!" That's a level of philosophical devotion I find hard to relate to (to put it mildly). However in SFDebris case he highlights the ENT episode "Dear Doctor" as a prime example of all that went wrong with the application of the PD.

In summary "Dear Doctor" is about a bunch of pre -warp aliens called the Valakians who are dying of a genetic disease. The Enterprise crew discover a second sentient species on the planet called the Menk, they are less intelligent and are not afflicted. The ships doctor, Phlox discovers firstly that the genetic disease will render the Valakians extinct in 200 years, and in addition the Menk are on the verge of an evolutionary leap in intellectual growth.* Saving the Valakians (who are on an evolutionary path to extinction) may disrupt this leap. In the end Captain Archer and Phlox withhold the cure so nature can take its cause. Chuck objects to this episode on two fronts, the first being that for all Phlox and Archer protest about not playing god, they are doing just that! Withholding a vaccine to a people who are destined to die in some evolutionary grand plan anyway, and secondly that the episode treats evolution as something with a grand conscious plan for us all, and not just a blind process by which natural environmental processes alter gene frequencies. Let us be clear about this, Phlox has all but signed the Valakians death warrant on the basis of raw speculation about how things may turn out, and by applying pseudoscientific theories of evolutionary predestination into the bargain also! Sorry Valakians you are the weakest link. Goodbyeeee!

Like SFDebris I agree that the P D is in principle a good idea. As he said it probably arose from a mix of revulsion to the extremes of the Truman doctrine, when even the most vile of tinpot barbarians could get a load of cash and weapons if they got themselves called "anti - communist" , and how the conquest of the American continent was carried out. There are many instances where something like the PD would be both moral and enlightened a thing for explorers to heed. A non interference directive. Not unnecessarily dicking about with less advanced cultures, interfering in wars that don't concern them, not giving less advanced peoples technology they can't handle. These are sensible rules that both benefit explorer and explored. The problem with the application of the PD, which snowballed towards the VOY/ENT end of the franchise, was that it mutated from an enlightened philosophy grounded in pragmatism to theological dogma, and from that evil flows.

The latter examples of the PD gone awry are a textbook example of sensible rules being corrupted by rigidity and dogma. Like Chuck says, the PD must be enforced no matter what, no mitigating circumstances. The PD is good and just, because it is the PD, general order one! No involvement that [they] might cause harm, in any circumstances at all! This kind of mentality is why religious dogmas can be so harmful, when you apply absolutist rules to an arbitrary world. To quote SFDebris:

"this kind of thinking assumes that the Prime Directive was a divine being or something, that it has a plan, and who are mere mortals like Janeway and Paris to question it? It is, in fact, merely a rule created by human beings. Not to say that it isn't an important rule, since there is much justification for it (such as preventing exploitation of undeveloped systems). But that doesn't make it an absolute, that there's never a reason to ignore it."

We see this mentality in some religious dogmas today. I'll highlight one of them as an example. The refusal by Jehovah's Witnesses to give blood. In antiquity this aversion to "misuse" of blood was likely based on a misunderstanding of what blood was on the part of people who had no knowledge of advanced biology. Think of all the purity and hereditory metaphors associated with blood. They must have seen blood as some magic life giving fluid that when spilt from the body (a lot of violent death back then) is responsible for supping the god given life energy and death.This is wholly inaccurate but we can give them the benefit of the doubt. It was seen as wise back then not to handle blood willy nilly. However society has changed since then and this view of bloods properties is pretty inaccurate, however still JW's ignore this and insist on denying the effectiveness of blood transfusions, and worse still may allow someone to actually die than have a transfusion. This is when a law written by man is taken to such ludicrous extremes that an absolutist law is upheld even to the extent that it is based on an obsolete understanding that bares no resemblance to reality -just because it is a law, that is always virtuous, because by virtue it always is!

The second failing of the PD is summed up as:

"The biggest excuse, and the one Janeway trots out here, is that you don't know what the consequences would be. You could make things worse. Granted, going in and stopping a war could be a really sticky problem, but using this as a justification for allowing millions or billions to be incinerated alive? With that kind of logic, you should never get involved in anything. If a person is trapped under a piece of fallen masonry in an alley and calls for help, ignore them. After all, if you save them they could go on to marry and have children, and one of those children could wind up growing up and joining a group of whack-jobs and helps them plant a nuclear warhead in a major city, killing tens of millions of people. Or maybe they'll just live a long and happy life. You don't know, but under the reasoning of the Prime Directive disciples, it's better not to take that chance"

To take another real life analogy. If the Haiti earthquake had happened in the Star Trek universe and if we took the PD to the standards applied above, then there would have been no relief effort at all on the part of Starfleet. I mean what happens if this was a turning point in history? What if the poor people of Haiti, standing in the smoke and rubble of their homeland, are spurned on by adversity and the fact that an earthquake devastated them - to transform their island into a industrial powerhouse, then a global empire, then a natural disaster stopping galactic federation rapid response squad? Lest anyone anywhere ever suffers from geological disasters. Thus by helping them their destiny is screwed. In reality of course we know no-one seriously would take that point of view. How do you know any of that will happen? That is sheer speculation. Like Chuck says we would be paralysed be fear to do anything at all if we took the attitude above. We are humans who can only see the here and now, we don't have the prescience to take the stance above, and to think otherwise would be the height of hubris as Riker says. We have to be motivated by compassion and pragmatism and in reaction to current events, what else can we go by?

Chucks videos show how the PD became more zealously applied as the franchise progressed. As we see; both Kirk and Spock agree that telling the Yonadas they live on a fake looking asteroid is a lesser evil than letting them all be wiped out. Spock says it is logical to do so. It was certainly the moral thing to do. The Yonadas are a sentient people with hopes and dreams, and are irreplaceable if they are rendered extinct, being told they live on an asteroid may be upsetting, but it's better than being dead. Likewise when the original crew warned the (ostensibly) primitive Organians about the dangers of Klingon occupation, and how the Feds would help them to develop their society by providing schools and improved farming techniques, in exchange for joining an anti-Klingon alliance. It could be argued that this was chauvinistic and patronising, but it was [from their point and ours] preferable to slavery and brutal occupation under Klingon rule. Society is ephemeral and situations can change and this reflected that. Things are already going downhill when Picard and his crew have that hideous straw man argument about saving the doomed society, Riker's "height of hubris" comment is comically circular reasoning. Then we get Janeway and Archer taking the PD to its fundamentalist, absolutist conclusion. The logical end point of a law being so rigidly applied, it actually causes more harm than what it was set up to prevent. Man cannot (IMHO) proclaim to have an insight on this destiny / nature / the greater scheme of things / the cosmic plan - circle the appropriate one, indeed I'm personally doubtful there is any great plan at all (but that's just me and another topic entirely). In fact I do wonder did someone like Stalin think that "greater destiny" called for the Kulaks to disappear when he was lying awake in bed at night?

It's actually kind of ironic that such a rigorous interpretation of the Prime Directive actually goes against the spirit of exploration in Trek. If your going to seek out new civilisations on a manned ship you are going to have to interact with them at some point. I would have thought Starfleet would have taken a similar view to this as the puritanical Lady Whiteadder in Blackadder II did to parties. "Where there are people, there are people to fornicate with!" What about colonising or exploring planets? A disrupted bit of bacteria could be a civilisation in the making that has been snuffed out. If your going to take this kind of rigorous attitude, I'd really stay at home and hide!

We never learned what happened to the Valakians. I don't know if Chuck is right and they became the Breen, and the Menk the Pakleds. But I do remember Tacitus (well obviously not personally remember!) commenting on so called "civilised" people not putting their money where their mouth was, when he proclaimed that the Romans made a desert and called it peace. I wonder if a philosopher from those last remaining Valakians thought similar of Starfleet. "They let us go extinct and called it high mindedness"

And Now For Something Completely Differentish

2010-11-15T15:21:00.000-08:00

I might change tack a bit this week. There have been a few too many posts devoted to dissecting the stupid / untrue / objectionable stuff (AKA all of it) written in the Daily Mail and Express, it gets a bit depressing sometimes focusing on all the negative shite and stupidity that gets written there. Apparently this week they are griping about how the Germans are stealing our time, and gingerbread men are being banned in case they offend Muslims, and how the armchair generals would have had the old couple kidnapped by Somali pirates - rescued singlehandedly in time for tea and biscuits, as it is easy to do so when you're - oh ... not actually fucking there at the time it all kicked off!

I did mention when Northernbloke kicked off in February, that there would be reviews and similar kinds of stuff alongside the Mail bashing, but I feel this bit is neglected somewhat. I won't say it is because of any circumstances out of my control, more a case of I just forgot, or more likely I was just too lazy to be arsed writing the bloody things in the first place. But as I've been catching up on 4oD on youtube (that explains a dearth of posts) I have a few things I'd like to put up in response to the documentaries I've watched. It's like a break from having to root around the Internet to debunk a Littlejohn story about how a traffic warden bazookad a puppy with a RPG for walking over a double yellow line, the kind of stuff even Smiffy of the Bash Street Kids could instantly detect as 24 carat bullshit. So hopefully the line up should be:

1. Review of Martin Durkins "Britain's Trillion Pound Horror Story"

2. Response to a youtube video about the morality of the Prime Directive on Star Trek. (hopefully not as geeky as it sounds.)

3. Review of Ben Steins "Expelled"

And the to do list involves:

1. Reviews of really bad Star Trek episodes.

2. (Possible) Review of Niall Fergusons "War of the World.", not entirely given this the green light.

How exciting.

Do Some Conservatives Secretly Admire the Chinese Dictatorship?

2010-11-10T11:05:00.000-08:00

I ask this question because there are several conservative commentators who have what could be best described as an "ambiguous" attitude to the communist regime in China. They are always keen to emphasise that a democratic China is little more than an idealists pipe dream, that other nations highlighting the shortcomings of their governments human rights record is a futile venture, and that the Communist party just refuse to listen to any criticism (well they do have a lot to lose.). So the shortfall is don't bother -China will never be free, ever. Peter Hitchens has proclaimed loftily, presumably asking all 1.3 billion of them; that "China will never be free and has no intention of being so" Andrew Alexander has these similar sentiments also. But it is this article by Jeremy Warner, the Telegraphs deputy editor that exemplifies this kind of thing to a tee, and it also highlights another aspect to this kind of thing which gives us the ambiguity in some conservative pundits attitude to this regime.

"Why is it that the BBC, in its reporting of David Cameron’s visit to China, keeps banging on about the supposed dilemma faced by the Prime Minister over whether to raise human rights abuse, and in particular the plight of Liu Xiaobo, a prominent Chinese dissident unable to collect his Nobel peace prize because he’s serving an 11 year sentence in a Chinese jail?

There’s no dilemma here at all – except in the vague terms already referred to by Mr Cameron, this is not an issue which needs to be explored at all on a visit which is meant to be wholly about trade. Only the BBC, would, in oblivious disregard for the national interest, keep on trying to make something out of it."

Yes on technical terms it is not a visit to do with promoting democratic reform. But Cameron is a head of state of a major developed nation that supposedly prides itself on liberal democracy. Will the PM comment on this high profile dissident, and the contentious issue of China's human rights record, a country the UK wants to do trade with? It may not be directly relevant, but that doesn't make it a valid question.

He sticks in a bit of that horrible cultural relativism about the "suitability of liberal democracy" on non Westerners that all but says "they don't do democracy, their brains are wired up different"

"but to attempt to judge China by contemporary Western standards is neither helpful nor justified."

"China has always put ideas of the collective good above those of individual liberty, and is therefore from an entirely different cultural tradition to that of Thomas Paine, the French revolutionaries, and the rights of man. Attempts to impose Western models and ideals on the Chinese political class are therefore not just futile, they are are culturally insulting."

Jeremy I take my hat off to you. Defending the conduct despots seldom gets more imaginative than that.

"Neither the US nor the British government would take kindly to being told by the Chinese how to manage their internal, or even external, affairs; "

No I don't suppose they would. I don't think the leaders of Apartheid South Africa did, or the leaders of the USSR did. I'm sure pretty much any government doesn't appreciate criticism no matter how justified. That doesn't mean that logically you shouldn't criticise anyway. I'm not naive enough to believe that the Chinese will just give everyone the vote if we ask them nicely, and that external criticism would only be really effective if there is the right internal mechanisms to elicit change as well. But external criticism has its uses.

The remainder of the article changes tack somewhat, and this is where the ambiguity to the regime is most evident. Is the authoritarianism and disdain for individual holistic human rights (especially minority rights) at the expense of a monolithic hegemonic society, on some level appealing to some of these commentators? That these chauvinistic powers can dispense with the more "ninnyish" and self critical aspects of a liberal democracy? Does this explain:

"You don’t need to go far back in Western history to find similarly intolerant attitudes to political opposition, and as for the human rights agenda, well that’s a very recent addition indeed. The human rights industry really only started to gain traction from the 1970s onwards. Only in very recent years have human rights activists managed to subvert the law to this overarching end. Looking at a system which now demands that candles are provided for pagans practicing their dark arts at Her Majesty’s pleasure, and other such nonsenses, you can understand why the Chinese want none of it."

He actually begins to turn up the tempo even more in this bizarre passage:

"I’m not seriously arguing against western libertarianism, but some might think, looking at the country’s relative lack of crime, that the Chinese system has much to commend it. The most important thing to understand about modern China, one eminent expert once told me, is that all actions of policy, justice and administration are wholly focused on just one goal – maintaining the Communist Party elite in power.

This gives the system a strange kind of democratic accountability

Yeah it's strange in being undemocratically democratic. I wonder which way Liu Xiaobo cast his vote???

"As long as the CP keeps delivering, it will continue to command popular support and is therefore safe. Officials know that the moment they fail, their end will by nasty, brutish and short. For the moment, there is little if any appetite in China for Tiananmen Square type protest. The Chinese are too busy trying to get rich to worry about human rights."

Sentiments which can only be expressed in that way that only writers making excuses for a police state a few thousand miles away from the comfort of their office in the free world, can manage.

Melanie Phillips Knows Even Less About Unemployment than the MMR Vaccine.

2010-11-08T14:53:00.000-08:00

The Mail is in its element with the Tory plans to send the long term unemployed onto "community work". That'll teach the scrounging bastards, stop them spending zillions of pounds on cider and plasma telly's, and watching Jeremy Kyle all day, and so on. Christ, they even began one article with the adjective "feckless unemployed". Now I'm not naive - I know not everything is ticketyboo with welfare payments, and it is a difficult balance to achieve. But what really gets on my steaming wick about the rhetoric around this story is the implication that everyone who is unemployed is A) better off that way, and too lazy to look for work and B) chose to unemployed. I cannot stress how unfair these assumptions are. I've had a tough year employment wise, and I can assure you that in my experience A and B are completely opposite to what I have experienced, and I doubt I am alone in that regard. I got so fucking wound up about this labeling of those who were out of work as a bunch of idle layabouts, by people who had been fortunate enough never to have experienced the cold winds of unemployment -that I actually was moved to write a letter to the local paper in response to some prat who had written in mouthing off about something he knew nothing about. (I made headline letter too) Such is the fog of ignorance around this much maligned group. So with trepidation I have been keeping up with the commentary on the issue, and lo and behold Melenie Phillips was only too willing to spout complete bollocks to the target audience, and; my God it's a masterpiece.... of shite.

"There is a rough rule of thumb that if the wrong kind of people are opposed to what you are doing, then you must be on the right track."

No Mel, that's just blinkered thinking.

"So what is he doing to provoke such fury? Why, making the outrageous proposal that instead of sitting at home on benefits doing nothing, people who are out of work should actually give something back to society in return."

What? Are all people doing that? Is looking for jobs, filling in application forms etc.. doing nothing. What about people who worked and paid N.I, but were made redundant, and will pay it when they get a new job. That is sort of "giving something back". Not everyone unemployed and on benefits is automatically a lazy scrounger, why can't people fucking see that?

"According to advance reports, IDS will be requiring the unemployed to undertake community service projects such as gardening, clearing litter and other menial tasks."

Couldn't this threaten some of the people who already do this for a paid living? Why pay someone a good wage, if you can pay people peanuts to do it for them. It could actually put more people out of work. At least they could give gardening advice to their new "co-workers".

"Following the example of U.S.-style ‘workfare’, they will do such jobs for 30 hours per week for four weeks at a rate of £1 per hour, under the threat of being stripped of their Jobseekers’ Allowance for three months if they fall short."

The plan for this scheme is that Job Centre advisers will "assign" long term jobseekers to these placements on their own discretion if they feel it would "benefit" them. A worry I have about this scheme is that the job seeker is under compulsory obligation to attend a specific location and time, no ifs and no buts. What if they can't fit childminding around them? What if their kid is ill one day? What if it is driving distance and they have no car, or can't afford the fuel for the journey, or the bus fare? Are they to lose three months of JSA for even a minor transgression? Let me repeat that, there may be people who have no access to a source of allowance for 90 days!

"Shock horror! Such is the outrage on the Left, you’d think IDS was proposing to send little children up the chimneys."

Oh boo hoo, some people think differently to Mel on a controversial plan. The monsters

So far so bad. But this being a Mad Mel article, the stupidity and mindfuck swiftly gets turned up to eleven. Check this utter brain melt out:

"They [the leftys] whine, for example, that the unemployed can’t be expected to find work, as there are no jobs to be found. At the very same time, they splutter that having to do such community work will give the unemployed no time to look for work.

They don't literally mean there are NO jobs at all! Anywhere! There are few jobs to go round relative to the levels of unemployed, that's why people are struggling to find something. As for her second point, if the work corresponds with the opening hours of the job centre, anyone without access to their own computer (which means a lot of unemployed people who tend to be skinter than the whole) will find it difficult to look for something.

"Well, which is it? If there aren’t any jobs, what’s the point of looking for them?"

You know Mel, credit where credits due. I thought you were just a slightly barmy right winger, but I now realise you are in fact the worlds greatest satirical genius. I mean no one could intentionally be this moronic and not just secretly taking the piss, undermining the values you claim to espouse.

"IDS is, indeed, the one person against whom that particular smear of ‘heartlessness’ cannot be made to stick. The patent decency of the man is plain for all to see. He is motivated by the highest possible concerns to rescue the poor"

That's her opinion I suppose. IDS' "compassion" always strikes me a bit like the heavy handed patrician attitude to the poor in Victorian times, a compassion that can disappear if you don't accept it on their terms. Not helpful.

Mel now starts changing tack, pulling out straw men to show how it's the left who actually hate poor people.

"under the guise of ‘compassion’, the Left traps people in permanent poverty through treating them as less than human."

???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

"For what drives ‘progressives’ absolutely wild is the moral concern at the heart of the IDS project — to encourage the poor to take some responsibility for themselves and for others. But it is an article of faith on the Left that the poor are helpless tools of circumstance; and so it is outrageous to expect them to behave as anything other than victims, who accordingly can only ever take rather than give."

This kind of sentiment is what worries me so much about this kind of stuff. Mel and IDS don't seem to grasp the fact that - let me spell it out for those at the back -

"PEOPLE DON'T ALWAYS CHOOSE TO BE UNEMPLOYED AS A LIFESTYLE CHOICE"

They don't seem to tumble to the possibility that people can be poor and unemployed because of arbitrary factors like pure bad luck. Their attitude seems to be "anyone who is unemployed is too lazy and idle to get a job." Mel is guilty of the things she accuses her opponents of. She can't see them as victims in any circumstances! She can't see them ever giving, only taking! If this punitive philosophy is espoused by the guy tasked with sorting unemployment. Yeah people are going to worry!

"This is tantamount to saying that the poor are a breed apart — incapable of displaying the same human dignity as the rest of society."

said someone who said this:

"to encourage the poor to take some responsibility for themselves and for others."

Call me cynical but doesn't this imply that the poor generally don't do these things willingly? Thus implying that they don't have the same sense of dignity as other members of society?

She then blames the entire left for creating a poverty layer as part of a plan to keep themselves in work. No, really.

"Their resulting entrapment in permanent poverty then gives the Left their own meal ticket for life through the enormous industry they run to manage the lives of the poor."

With that in mind it is heartwarming to see Mel's own solution to welfare recipients.

"But there was one important element of the U.S. scheme from which the Coalition is flinching. It set a cut-off point for benefit payments if the claimant hadn’t found work by the end of a set period."

"But it seems that the IDS proposals will not contain that crucial welfare cut-off point. So one might say that, far from being unprecedentedly harsh and cruel, these proposals don’t go far enough."

Setting a specific time limit for finding a job and then cutting their benefits after that time is up is seven shades of stupid. Finding a job is dependent on so many external factors. Availability, the whim of an employer, the economy, the time of year and so on. You cannot put a time limit on something that owes so much to pure chance. Yeah you can cut the benefits of those who obviously aren't looking for work (that's why you have to sign on in the first place), but to put a set limit for everyone regardless of circumstances is brainless and actually downright evil.

This kind of sentiment to the unemployed and those on benefits is what worries me so much, especially now that those in power share them. We never hear of the problems of the collapse of traditional manufacturing base jobs, outsourcing, the service sector orientated jobs market (that is why many young men with poor communication skills find job hunting difficult), the reliance on agencies that deflate wages and allow employers to lay off agency workers at a moments notice when things are slack. That job security is wretchedly low these days. As for people who are better off on benefits (and I admit it can happen.), is it always out of laziness, or down to low wages that don't reflect the cost of living? Or due to the large numbers of part time entry level jobs? Is it moral to cut child benefits to children who had no say in their parents circumstances?

But all this would be both hard to convey and would require a lot of reflection and self analysis, which isn't really the turf of Melanie Phillips. I mean why do you have to bother with all that shit, when unemployment is all down to people being to lazy to get a job. You don't have to tackle the root causes, because there aren't any. People choose that life, and we'll punish them for it. It's all their own fault and not down to say something like bad luck or the butt end of a very free market orientated jobs sector. We don't have to change anything because they brought it all on themselves. That kind of attitude is growing, and if we judge a society on how it views those on the lower rungs, that isn't something to be proud of.

Outright Racism at the Express

2010-11-04T16:09:00.001-07:00

This headline from the Daily Express is one of those occasions when a Northernbloke post writes itself:

Obviously the Daily Express defines "Muslims" as this grotty looking bloke holding his stupid placards (or as they are technically known - A4)

The story is about a bunch (3 of them) of Muslim "fundamentaslists who heckled the courtroom after Roshonara Choudhry was jailed for life for the attempted murder of her MP

Stephen Timms after she was caught up in radical Islamism and decided to take "revenge" on Mr. Timms by stabbing him for voting for the Iraq war. Now I may be a cynic; but does that headline have a dual implication, not just that some deluded blowhards made absolute dicks of themselves in a free court that would be abolished if these planks ever got their way. But that by extension the British Muslim population often take the same attitude with the country as a whole? Because it seems like crass labelling to me, and a deliberate distortion of events to put a greater rhetorical point across.

There is no excuse for headlines like this. Roy Greenslade has often described Richard Desmond as a rogue proprietor, who blatantly obfuscates and insinuates with his headlines (think the more lurid "Maddie" headlines.). This headline is up there with the "Muslim Schools Ban Our Culture", a rhetorical device designed to highlight how these alien fifth columnists are nothing but ungrateful traitors who loath "our way of life", and can never ever meet any common ground with "us". This is the mindset that made a 21 year old straight A student throw her life away in a senseless attack on someone who did something she didn't like, and why a loner from a suburb of Burnley had a fucking cache of weapons prepared for a race war. And this kind of mindset, of monolithic, mutually irreconcilable "camps" is all being indulged on a national newspapers front page headline available all over the country.

Jon Snow VS the "Poppy Facists"

2010-11-03T08:56:00.000-07:00

Even if you don't always agree with him, Jon Snow deserves some admiration for his commitment and dedication to a high standard of professionalism in what he does, and this includes his commitment not to wear any form of sign or symbol upon himself during public broadcasts which he believes to be unsuitable for someone in his career to do. Quite a lot of people know this who normally wouldn't do so, as this moratorium extends to the remembrance poppies that are pretty much universally worn by anyone who's on telly during this time of year. This perceived intransigence on Snows part has not always gone down too well with some, and has led to accusations that Snow is being disrespectful to the cause the poppies are worn for. In this case it has led to a small clash between a commentator on Snows blog and the man himself issuing a swift rebuke to his accuser. Like many of these spats; the original blog post was not about the thing that caused the spat but was about another topic (why more people in [Snows opinion] don't take up cycling) and got waylaid somewhat. It is also a prime example of the dual standards of logic that that significant minority who claim like free speech and expression, but apparently only if what is said or done meets their approval. So here is commentator Stan:

"jon,when you ride your bike,do you ever think of the hundreds of thousands of british troops who gave there lives in world war 2 tokeep our great country free you alone dishonour them by not wearing a poppy.YOU LOOK WHAT YOU ARE ON YOUR BIKE."

Hmmmm bit of tortured logic there. Snow replies:

"Stan they died that we might be free to wear a Poppy whenever we wish. i wish to wear mine on Remembrance Sunday. When you wish to wear yours is your business. Compelling people to wear poppies because YOU think they OUGHT to is precisely the Poppy fascism, or intolerance, that I have complained of in the past. On yer bike Stan, with or without a poppy, it’s all your own free choice..Hitler lost the war!"

The whole John Snow won't wear a poppy thing is a storm in a teacup, but it does highlight how occasions like remembrance Sunday, and something like the aftermath of the death of Princess Diana can take a wrong turn. Remembrance day and the wearing of the poppy are supposed to be a poignant reminder of the enormous human cost of war. Diana's death was indeed a genuine human tragedy, a young mother of two young boys who was hounded to death by bullying photographers. But in both cases (especially the latter) there was a feeling that a lot of the "grief" or "showing our respects" had a distinctly demonstrative feel. There was little of the feeling that this was a measured reaction to a tragedy, but just an excuse to mawkishly ham it up by showing how much you care and are "patriotic" by crying the loudest at the cameras, or by excessive use of the caps lock on the comments pages. And that I'm afraid is a hell of a lot more disrespectful to the memory of a cause than Jon Snow not wearing a poppy.

The Double Front Faith Schools Put Up.

2010-10-31T16:27:00.000-07:00

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.

2010-10-29T03:16:00.000-07:00

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.

2010-10-26T14:33:00.000-07:00

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.

2010-10-24T07:48:00.000-07:00

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

2010-10-21T14:44:00.000-07:00

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.

2010-10-20T12:18:00.000-07:00

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

2010-10-17T15:10:00.000-07:00

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.

2010-10-15T07:48:00.000-07:00

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.

2010-10-13T14:39:00.000-07:00

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.

2010-10-11T15:38:00.001-07:00

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

2010-10-04T08:29:00.000-07:00

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

2010-10-03T11:55:00.000-07:00

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!

A Brief Post on the "Genetic ADHD" Findings.

2010-09-30T13:52:00.000-07:00

Which can be summarised as:

"ADHD Genetic Faults Link – One child in 50 is suffering from ‘attention deficit disorder with hyperactivity (ADHD), a problem whose causes are not well established and could be partially of genetic origin, according to a study released this week.

This condition, which leads to fidgeting, inattention, difficulty concentrating, impulsiveness, causing problems at school and affects more boys than girls. Symptoms appear within the first year of life.

The reasons advanced are varied: lax parents, food too sweet, biochemical disorders on neurotransmitters.

Genetic causes, are also mentioned since the risk that the child is hyperactive is increased if a parent is and that if an identical twin is hyperactive, the other has 75% chance of being well. A study published by the British journal Lancet shows for the first time direct evidence that goes in that direction.

Researchers led by Anita Thapar, Professor of Genetics at Cardiff University (Wales), compared the DNA of 366 children with hyperactivity and that of 1047 did not suffer. They then found that hyperactive children were more likely to have in their genome into small fragments of DNA double or absent.

These fragments, variations of copies of a gene, or CNV-role control valve on genes, their absence or duplication may alter gene expression.

They also found that these fragments were found in locations such as chromosome 16, which are involved in schizophrenia and autism, a disease that has some similarities with hyperactivity, such as difficulty in learning.

For researchers, one can imagine a biological basis common to both diseases.

“This is the first time we’ve found that children with ADHD have chunks of DNA that are either duplicated or missing,” explained Anita Thapar."

So we have a possible link between DNA oddities and ADHD that has evidence of positive correlation between both. But the article is keen to point out the following:

“Hyperactivity is not caused by a single genetic change, but probably several, including CNV, interaction with unidentified environmental factors,” said another researcher, Kate Langley."

This article has had a fair amount of coverage. ADHD is of course a concern for many parents so that isn't quite unexpected. It is also a controversial issue as there are those who believe ADHD is little more than a fictional disorder designed to exonerate bad parenting and just put a fancy label on naughty kids. But if the link has validity then this does raise interesting questions, and I do think it could (if there is a definite causal link) have a profound effect on societies thinking on both how disruptive individuals should be treated, and indeed our current consensus on ethics and understanding of human nature and the innate sense of good and bad humans have.

The potential consequences of discovering that the composition of the genome may be a dominating factor in the makeup of a persons character would throw our established notions of behaviour and the way we deal with "antisocial" traits quite literally out of the window. It is generally believed that a person, say a naughty child or a thuggish hoodie or a criminal deviant has chosen to be like that. They have decided to rebel from society. To not play by the rules. They are misguided at best, at worst downright evil. Parental issues and the person in questions background do generally come next in line in common consensus reasons for [negatively sanctioned] deviancy and antisocial behaviour. Our laws, both civil; workplace and school, criminal trials and general societal sensibilities reflect this. Diminished responsibility of course can be taken into account, but most trials assume at least some form of sound mind and active; freewill motivated cause of antisocial behaviour, and who is to say that at present that is our best understanding of how to deal with this sort of thing? But if inherited genetics was proven to be a big (and possibly the biggest role) in creating disruptive and antisocial behaviour what then? No-one chooses their own genome, like some organic computer program. That would render our established method of dealing with this sort of thing - completely obsolete. We would have to move from away from pure or largely free will; motivated theories of individual behaviour to one of a high degree of genetic influences. That is why if you think about the potential conclusions that can lead from these findings - this story could be so groundbreaking to our society. And contentious too.

If, hypothetically speaking, genetics was found to be the prime motivator for human behaviour and "bad" behaviour in particular, then we would see society having a hard time accepting it as nothing more than "do-gooder" shrinks and scientists making excuses for bad behaviour. Right wing columnists would go to town claiming it was all down to bad parents and feral youth, not arbitrary genetics. A genetically based prime motivator would also be extremely controversial and hard for the main religions to swallow. I think it would be as controversial as creationism, and could possibly be the next science / religion battle ground. "Free will" and "soul" are trumpeted by evangelicals and others, the former in particular being used to get God off the hook in regards to bad stuff people do under his "perfect" watch. Neither of these sit well with genetic theories of behaviour, and this is partly why; say Mel Phillips and Peter Hitchens are so "hostile" to things like ADHD.

There would also be the issue of being able to screen genes of embryos to spot these "troubled" genes. This of course brings the inevitable ethical questions of potential programs of "eugenic terminations", and the results that would follow. In Stephen Baxter and Aurthur C Clark's novel "The Light of Other Days" the characters [set in the future] notice that there are fewer hard discipline scientists and musicians than there used to be, as things like Aspergers and Manic Depression had been screened out and "treated" at birth. Could "purging undesirable" traits become closer to reality? And where could it lead?

I'm not for one minute saying that genetics is the sole factor in determining someones behaviour. I don't think that (neither do the researchers in the article), other stuff influences it also. But have put a hypothetical situation that could distort our held beliefs in such a radical way. A smallish research study that could have enormous consequences down the road.

Ooh New Star Wars Films. Sort Of.

2010-09-30T10:25:00.000-07:00

I was interested to hear that Rolf Harris impersonator, George Lucas was planning to "remake" The Phantom Menace in 2012 on the news today. "Hooray" I thought, they are going to rewrite the awful dialogue of the prequels, we won't hear the kid who became Vader saying "yippee", and with luck Jar Jar Binks would die horribly at the hands of the Trade Federation, preferably hoisted ny his own glowing blue balls (watch the film.), and watch Annakin and Padme babble godawful romantic non sequiters at each other, whilst seemingly monged up to their tits with Stacey's Mum of Eastenders medication for her nerves. But no, Lucas just plans to re release the films concurrently on an annual basis so they can be seen in 3-d. Lucas was apparently Luke warm (see what I did there!) about 3D films, but when James Cameron did Avatar, he felt he had to respond, and that lays bare the sad reality of popular film making today. It ain't about making good movies so much as shoving as much CGI and other visual wizardry onscreen in order to make loads of cash with your blockbuster. Sad to say that making pots of cash is still the primary ambition in the world of film. A good film may stir the heart, and rattle the senses, and raise a question or two in the viewer, but does that flog loads of popcorn as easily as just sticking a load of fake looking space battles and blue people who live on a planet with bullshit physics and can plug their psychic tails in a spacehorses anus (no really). It can be disheartening to see films like the Star Wars prequels, which while visually (and George certainly has the scope for visual direction) stunning, have lame stories, which wilt under the sheer volume of CGI per frame. How Avatars visually rich visuals disguised a simplistic and cliched central plot. Other directors are guilty of papering over the cracks of weak stories with loads of CGI'ery too, but because I'm nice I won't name names, even though Michael Bay is guilty of doing this ...... Oh all the fucking time!

No I was disappointed to discover that the "remake" of Episode I, TPM - was a cosmetic one. Because IT IS THE WRONG FLIPPIN DIRECTION!! WRONG! With a bit of work (start by getting Jar Jar Abomination off the screen) there was a trilogy of decent films in there to be teased out by a decent writer. Look at Empire and A New Hope, the ones that; from a writing point - Lucas had the least influence on and especially Empire, the greatest of all the Star Wars films. Lucas is not really a good screenwriter, but with good writers to do that and articulate this excellent visual and conceptual artists ideas to a tight and pathos laden teleplay, his visions came alive so memorably as they did in those excellent films. The core concept of the prequels was a good one, the secret sith baddy conspires to usurp control of the galaxy by bringing about its downfall, and civil war by playing both sides against the other - whilst corrupting the protagonist to the final conclusion thrown in too. I'd say it was almost foolproof and a good series of films could have been made from it. But this was squandered by over reliance on visual shit that was just there for the hell of it, and Lucas letting his ego take priority into not subconsciously facing up to his poor writing and [especially] dialogue skills, and subcontracting them to a co-writer, or fully separate writing team. You're not telling me that those three prequel films were ever script edited at all!! (or even looked over by a friendly team member who could offer a bit of kind advice) The amount of plot holes and leaps of logic that made it to the final product itself. It was kind of the reverse of the Star Trek films, where a preposterous core story was made good by a strong script. It was a good (I'd cautiously, almost say foolproof) central story was let down by a bad script.

And that was why my heart sank just that little bit further today. We had the chance to make something out of the prequels and instead all we'll get in 2012 is to have to wear some stupid spectacles at the cinema, to have remade scenes of pod racers whiz past our heads, Darth Mauls red pole being waved in our face, and Jar Jars ears smacking us in the chops when he treads in some shit in the Tatooine ghetto. Sadly a step back really.

Ed Milibands Labour

2010-09-28T13:30:00.000-07:00

As Ed Miliband just about squeaked past his brother to become Labour leader and gave his first ever leaders speech he seems to have made the break with New Labour, if we take his words at face value New Labour has gone, and a more traditional social democratic, union friendly one headed by him has taken its place. Instead of laying down a middle ground and staying there, he seems to be re-establishing a more traditional Labour manifesto. There was the admission that Iraq was a mistake, that tuition fees are bad, that a rampantly free market City was also no longer flavour of the month either. He offered the hand of friendship to the unions, but warned against militancy for militancy's sake as not to be tolerated. In short it was a most tacit embrace of social democracy that has been seen by the party since the nineties and the Labour traditionalists seemed to like what they heard. Gone are the days when it seemed like Tony Blair was only half comfortable with his party and almost disliked the older elements of the labour movement and tried to distance himself from them. When it seemed that New Labour was almost ashamed to admit any association with social democracy. Gordon Brown may have been more tribal at heart, but the financial crisis derailed everything, and the plain fact of a government having spent over a decade in power meant that he had really run out of steam in reasserting this sort of thing. But it seems today that this is the way forward for the party.

But is it risky? In one sense no. The party probably lost most of its floating support through the credit crunch and apathy after 13 years in office. But equally the Labour core vote was frittered away quite liberally with what they saw as an abandonment of them for the more middle class, swing voters. It may have been a necessary shift in values 13 years ago, but it put a lot of people out. I'm sure there was more than one red rose wearing MP candidate trudging dejectedly through a former northern mill town, at the less than enthusiastic response from once core voter bases this last election. I'm sure this is some ways an attempt at rapprochement with the disenfranchised arms of the party and voters, to shore up the core vote again. But what of getting votes further afield? In some ways Labour leaders were sort of keen to distance themselves from the kind of policies above because they thought that they lost votes. there was a strong feeling that in '87 and '92 that the Thatcher loving parts of the press had pilloried them for their policies, and the public had got swept up with this. But it is a little different now. The unfettered free market is seen as a major villain in causing the credit crisis in the publics eyes. The Coalition is hardly all that popular, and talk of the "big society" are a telling euphemism of this. Is Ed Miliband planning on greater public sentiment for social democracy in the face of ConDem spending cuts, and the cold winds that they potentially may bring with them? That they can poach worried public sector workers and disgruntled Lib Dems sidelined by the coalition compromises that as the junior partner; they bear the brunt of?

It is an interesting dichotomy building up. On the one hand the coalition wants spending cuts to bridge the deficit. It is of course - partly ideological. The Tory front benchers are stuffed with instinctive small government believers, steeped in hard Thatcherism. Considerable swathes of the public sector are seen in their eyes as an obstacle to hard core monetarist prosperity, and a socialist affront to got rid of. Ostensibly purging them in the name of spending cuts is a plum opportunity to do so, and I think a lot of the electorate have twigged onto this. By positioning themselves as a counterweight to a government looking downwards to cut their way to economic strength, as a government willing to shore from the bottom up, against the worst excesses of the free market, stabilising the economy from the ground up, and hopefully catch some Lib Dems who may want to fall off the spending cuts boat. Positioning Labour as an ideological counterweight to who has the most apt economic recovery plan.

Interesting times ahead whatever happens, and perhaps a move away from the centre ground seeking.

Did You Hear the One About the Council Banning Mother in Law Jokes? Yeah that was Just Made Up As Well.

2010-09-27T08:04:00.000-07:00

The right wing press have yet again reported another story of "PC councils going mad" and in this case Barnet council have banned their employees from telling mother in law jokes in case they offend "elders and parents". This creates an ongoing narrative in the usual suspects of the red tops that the civil service is infested with politically correct puritan zealots who are so afraid of "upsetting" any minority peoples they will resort to unimaginable acts of PC overreaction at the expense of the "silent majority." If anyone who even casually acquaints themselves with the postings on the "Tabloid Watch and " the "5cc" blogs - reads this type of story in the papers, they know to smell a rat when they see one, and surprise surprise - this one is complete crock pulled out of some random PA wire copy, and then re pulled out of a "reporters" arse too for good measure. Yes the so called "cultural awareness booklet" is not some kind of Old Testament of PC that must be obeyed verbatim, on pain of death (which would presumably be a post mortally challenged issues and cadaver awareness diversity training in PC jargon.) but just a 12 part booklet that virtually no-one read; on various random issues offering advice on dealing with differing members of the public with courtesy, which was handed out at a one off meeting no one could really be bothered showing up for. It is not clear whether mother in law jokes were even mentioned in at all (the council says not.), or if they were (in the meeting or booklet) it was just to say that the parochial nature of them meant that they did not translate that well. Here is the councils response in full.

"A council has denied banning mother-in-law jokes after it was reported the puns had been outlawed.

A national newspaper reported that the north London council created a 12-page booklet saying the jokes were "offensively sexist" and disrespectful to "family elders".

A spokeswoman for Barnet Council said a document was created but was not widely published. It said there was no policy on the jokes but expects staff to be "polite" to members of public.

She said it was a handout given to 35 members of staff after a "one off" equality and diversity training session.

The spokeswoman said: "Barnet council does not have a policy on mother-in-law jokes.

"There is no booklet and no ban on mother-in-law jokes.

"Our advice to staff is that they should be polite and avoid giving offence to any member of the public."

Sounds fair enough to me. Though it gave the papers a chance to print some old "mother in law" jokes which I presume A) makes them look like they are defying the PC Stasi and B) shows what jokes were like in the good old days (some of the ones are a bit more recent.), when you could call a spade a darkie.. or something like that.

Just goes to prove in tabloid land if it looks like bullshit, sounds like bullshit, and smells like it. It is!

Do Bobbies on the Beat Cut Crime?

2010-09-25T07:52:00.000-07:00

It seems a strange question to ask. Pretty much everyone seems to think so. Voters seem to want it. Politicians and opinion formers lobby for more beat officers and less time spent with coppers "filling in forms". It even appeals to common sense gut feeling. More police on patrol is bound to deter baduns. It supposedly follows doesn't it? Tom Utley in the Mail seems to think it does.

Or does it?

Utleys article is in response to the Chief Inspector of the Constabulary; Sir Denis O'Conner, who said that a drop in public faith in the police was in part due to them seen as turning a blind eye to responding to anti-social behaviour. This has lead to Theresa May saying she wants to put more bobbies on the beat. Alan Johnson has also said that he thinks that was a good plan too. (this would contradict Utleys point that it is politicians who are reluctant to see more beat policing. Why would they when it is electorally popular?) It does seem odd that senior coppers have been seen to be rather reluctant to do just this. (O'Conner never actually says out loud that more police on the beat actually cuts crime. Just that people seem to like it.) Or when they refer to it they seem to address it rather obliquely , like they don't seem to like to talk about it. Well the papers do like to talk about it, and are constructing a narrative of combing the worst examples of really horrible anti-social scrotes terrorising their poor neighbours to utter despair, showing how beat police are needed even more than ever. At first I suppose I would have perhaps felt the same way that it most follow that more cops on the streets will cut crime but then I read these pieces by "Flat Earth News" author Nick Davies, an investigative journalist who looked into this very thing. (articles: Here; here and here.) I began to see perhaps why the top cops are wary of beat policing. It just doesn't seem all that effective as a method of policing. The striking year long; 1972 to 73 experiment where Kansas city police used scientific methodology to test the effectiveness of beat based policing - discovered that when they created three specific "beats", one with three times as many foot patrolling police officers, one with none and one with the normal amount of cops, that the police numbers had next to no effect on the crime levels in the three zones, confirmed by over 600 different research indicators. Other studies have yielded the same results, that is foot patrol frequencies have negligible impact on crime rates and detections. It has been reckoned that a police officer in the UK would have to patrol for over 80 years to randomly chance upon nabbing a burglar in the middle of making off with someones DVD player. Bobbies on the beat appear to at best a sticking plaster solution to fighting crime, and only really succeed in making the public feel safer (which is not to be sniffed at. The fear of crime whilst not the same as actual crime, can cause great misery and fear to many people.) and at worst an attempt to fight crime, by not fighting it at all, and even making the public feel more threatened by coming to the understandable post hoc conclusion that as there are more cops around, there must be more crooks around as well.

When you began to give the issue some thought, it does dawn on you that the relative ineffectually of beat based policing is not quite the superficial contradiction in terms it appears. Davies uses an excellent metaphor to describe this method of policing as "doctors being told to prevent car crashes". What this essentially means is that crime like car crashes - is a multifaceted and complex issue, with many complex factors contributing to its causes and frequency. The on foot policeman is in the same boat as the hypothetical doctor, standing with his medical bag on the hard shoulder of the M6 earnestly waiting for his first casualty. He is reactively engaged into fighting on single front, a complex problem without having the resources to fight it in a larger context. The cop like the doctor knows that he is only scratching the surface of the problem. He knows stuff like drugs and alcohol abuse, and lack of facilities for kids, and policies of dumping the families from Satans sulphurous shitter without adequate concern for the local community. And indeed the problem of families like these being so chaotic and fucked up to the point of perverse nihilism, that any conventional deterrent is not going to achieve anything. These all have to be tackled, like the doctor knows that putting barriers and matrix signs on the motorway to warn traffic of hazards, or the problems will continue persist, with them picking up the pieces at the end. It may seem that a visible police officer could perhaps have stopped some yob decorating a car door with a pen knife, or harassing that disabled women as she goes to the local shop, and I'm not saying that in some circumstances it may be able to tackle some of the problem, or cause a less bold tearaway to have second thoughts about his line of work. They probably both apply. I'm also not advocating that coppers on the beat (especially working and getting to know the community) be withdrawn as they are of no use at all. Top cop Ian Blair has; if you read between the lines, has implied that the PCSO's were brought in to be delegated to this kind of policing. They do have a role and must be used. But they appear not to be the quick fix solution to every ones prayers, and this is a problem.

I say that the popular perception of beat based policing being a surefire way to cut crime levels, when in fact it is largely (not wholly though) a cosmetic operation, is a problem because of the fact that crime is such a complex beast to tackle. This means that to really make progress in tackling it you have to understand the roots of it. Unfortunately this is often seen as synonymous with sticking up for criminals and social engineering by critics, hence why politicians like to laud putting "feet on the street" so much. Getting to the roots of crime won't get headlines with a crime busting narrative, and can lead to accusations of being soft or turning a blind eye to "real peoples" suffering under crime. I hope to put accross that just because I think the more conventional police approach was not half as good as is perhaps thought, that doesn't mean I don't care about the victims of crime. I know that on many crumbling estates the residents can be browbeaten to sleepless fear at the hands of absolute gangs of horrors, or that an entire block can be dragged down to crime ridden misery at just one rogue family, and I sympathise with them a lot. This kind of posting may sound a bit hollow if you live in this kind of place, but I really don't think that more foot patrols would have stopped this from happening or have helped the stories published in the papers to support more foot patrols. It would likely be a case of borrowing from Peter to pay Paul, as yobs just terrorise someone out of the sight of the patrols and return when they have left. Then you have the issue of the patrolling being interrupted by actually dealing with antisocials, or being sent to a nearby incident. This is where I feel Utleys article misses the point. He sees crime and policing at the most generic level, with all the complexity removed. Sadly it isn't, if it was crime would have been solved years ago. No-one actually benefits from antisocial behaviour, and it affects everyone - so there isn't an ulterior motive for the police / government to "ignore" it. I think all right thinking people would do everything possible to stop crime if they had the power to do so, but sometimes that power can be elusive. That I think needs to be said more often, that this kind of thing can't be deconstructed as A is bad so we have to do B -there's always C,D and E as well. If the powers that be indulge this kind of thinking (and I'm not saying under the heat of popular flack, and nothing is more emotive than crime - that I can't see why they would) then they risk ending up initiating policies of limited merit otherwise.

Surely that truly is betraying the victims of crime.

Good News About the Ozone Layer

2010-09-21T12:19:00.000-07:00

The UN scientists who undertook the "Scientific Assessment of Ozone Depletion 2010" have stated that the Montreal protocol of 1987, when 196 countries phased out the use of CFC's has meant that 2010 is really the first year when the thinning of the ozone layer, which led to the "hole" over the Antarctic discovered in the 80's - has not increased, but not yet decreased either. Hopefully this reduced level of CFC's means that the worst of the damage has been prevented. And that a concerted collective effort to curb a pollutant has been (so far) successful.

The CFC's creating the hole in the ozone layer was one of the most famous popular environmental focal points of the 1980's, yet was and still is rather misunderstood by many. It was a tragic tale of a very promising bunch of compounds having the ability to unleash a terrifying chain of events under the right conditions, which would lead to one of the most surprising examples of scientific unforeseen consequences. The hole in the ozone layer was a big concern in the 80 and 90's and led to Montreal being enacted to curb but not fully stop CFC's as well as things like freon and halon fire extinguishers dumping this stuff into the stratospheric ozone layer. As I said it does still remain a not well understood phenomena in parts of the lay population. The hole (it is actually more of a zone of depleted ozone, than a literal hole in the sky.) is sometimes blamed on man made climate change, whilst it is really a different topic altogether. Though the two do have some interlapping points, which really take us on other trajectories elsewhere. Was this why the Daily Star proclaimed that this story "proved" Global warming [their words] was just "hot air"? Many of the comments on the Expresses report of the story seem to confuse the two issues as one. So what is all this ozone malarkey then?

This will be only a summary of what the "ozone thingy" is all about. I mean who the hell am I, a bloody science teacher? About 20 to 30 kilometers up, in the stratosphere there is a diffuse band housing 90 percent of the planets ozone in a layer called the ozone layer. Ozone is essentially 3 chemically linked oxygen molecules, rather than the two linked ones you normally get in atmospheric oxygen. At this height the thinner air allows more UV radiation to saturate the molecules up there. This means that the UV can slice individual oxygen molecules off which attach to other paired up oxygen molecules, creating ozone. This ozone is also chopped up into normal oxygen by UV, which can then have other single molecules latch on and create some more ozone. This effect, with its interactions - also has the useful ability to shield the surface (and all us lot) from the most harmful levels of UV radiation such as UVC and the most dangerous wavelengths of UVB, so we get suntans and plant food, and not cancers and sterilized single celled lifeforms. A natural radiation shield that stops us getting zapped by our own suns less welcoming side. The molecules being chopped and shifted in the layer mean that it is constantly seeing ozone created then destroyed, then created again, all in a level of finely tuned equilibrium, and it is this equilibrium where CFC's do the damage.

CFC's or chlorofluorocarbons (or bromocarbons) were created in the late 19th century for use as refrigerants and propellant gasses and expander aerosols. They were initially seen as the saviour of this kind of chemical product. They took over from stuff that was either flammable or poisonous or both together. CFC's were neither. By using halogens rather than hydrogen bonded to carbon, they didn't burn, and lacked the unpleasant properties of older stuff used fo their new purposes. They were also very stable, well they were down on the ground. In the 1970's and 80's it was noticed (by amongst others James "Gaia Theory" Lovelock and others) that the ozone layer was thinning. It became known that CFC's which had been pumped into the atmosphere for 60 plus years, were themselves starting to degrade by UV bombardment in the upper atmosphere, it had just taken a while to degrade them. Single chlorine and even worse - bromine atoms were energised and broke free where they could interact with the ozone and "steal" the third atom, which could go on to eat into more ozone molecules. It is reckoned that through this and further catalytic reactions, one of these radicals could devour 100 000 ozone molecules, throwing the equilibrium to a sharp deficit of ozone to oxygen produced. Montreal was implemented to prevent the CFC's from overwhelming this layer to an unsalvagable level.

For me if the report singles out that the damage to the layer has been stemmed, then this is a great success story for evidence based scientific assessment and damage limitation of a serious problem. That perhaps a situation caused [unintentionally] by man on the planets ability to sustain life as we know it, can be rectified by reasoned collective action led by scientific methodology to prevent a positive feedback point of no return. It provides hope that a workable solution plan to counter man made climate change (which is different to this phenomena I might add.) is achievable in a reasoned and pertinent timescale. We may get ourselves unwittingly in these scrapes, but we can get out of them if the will is there.

*I'm pretty sure some bright spark somewhere is going to comment that if we aren't all going to get "cooked" by the ozone hole (usually worded "well they used to say that the ozone hole would kill us all.") after all then perhaps it should follow that man made climate change won't be such a big deal after all. Let us remember that it took a concerted effort to remove the CFC's. It didn't magically mend itself. Which I'm sure will be forgotten by the writers of this kind of stuff.

Some Pope Related Stuff.

2010-09-19T12:14:00.001-07:00

I was in two minds as to whether to comment on the Popes visit to the UK. I mean what more can really be said? Obviously Richard Dawkins is going to have something to say on the matter. Obviously a lot of the right wing press are going to get in a lather about a bloke who openly espouses the evils of secularism, permissiveness and gay rights. I imagine there was a run of collective pant wetting going on when "Papa Ratzi" attacked multiculturalism and the fact that you can't call Christmas Christmas in case it offends other faiths. All the stuff they say that the liberal elite ban anyone from discussing, by discussing it at every opportunity; every fucking day in their columns(hmmm). In short the whole debate had more straw men being tossed about the room, than a boozy row at the Gummidge household. Oh and the Pope compared atheists to the Nazis. In short the whole thing has been pretty depressing reading. I won't repeat verbatim any of the specific charges levelled at the "militant atheists" and "anti Christian bigots", but let us look at some of the general charges condensed down here:

THE COST OF THE VISIT.
The total cost of the papal visit is estimated in the range of £12 million. There have been concerns about the Pope being treated as a head of state for his trip, and that the Vatican doesn't behave like one. It is immune from UN human rights charters for one instance. That was the point in the letter signed by 50 people, including Richard Dawkins; Stephen Fry; Johann Hari etc. They agreed that they didn't want the pope banned,(undemocratic) but could the Vatican have stumped up some of the cash. (they're hardly having to patch their boots up are they?) It's a legitimate question and was not asked in a particularly rude manner. In fact it is hard to see why the Mail accused Stephen Fry of being "shrill" (though I can see the context for that connotation.) I couldn't see him mouthing off incoherently in anything I saw him mentioning the visit. It's a free country. People have a right to ask whether their taxes are being spent [as they see it] fairly. Catholics do make up only 9% of the UK's population**

MILITANT ATHEISTS.
The militant atheist charge is as old as the hills. It would be much easier for the Church of Rome (and all the other faiths) if atheists were good atheists. That is they were of the "I don't believe, but do respect belief variety. Even now religious criticism is still considered a bit "bad mannered". Of course this leads to the secondary charge of militant atheists "picking on" Christians. In a way I feel that some Christians do see what is legitimate criticism about the veracity of their faith, and leeway their religion receives -as being picked on or persecution. No idea should be considered off limits for sceptical analysis in a free country. Indeed secular humanism and atheism itself are subject to some of the most unpleasant abuse from critics of these. The pope himself said that an atheistic world view leads to the fricking Nazis, who tried to erase God, which they didn't. That secular values will lead to anarchy as religion and morality are intertwined. He has a right to say that of course. I mean what else is he going to say about secularism and atheism, which are the two single most threats to a faith based system. It is no wonder they rattle the devout so much. As I said free speech means that they should be allowed to voice their concerns. It is a stretch to say that the "militant atheists" had that much of an affect on the whole thing. Dawkins gave a speech. No citizens arrest was made. The red tops barely mentioned the protests at all. The BBC of course covered all sides (and got flack off the conservatives in the press for doing so.) and certainly did not privilege the "Catholic haters" over the Pope. In fact the "New Atheist" movement as a whole isn't as widely known as the religious would imply, how much influence they have outside the dining rooms of the Guardianistas is unknown. The atheist bus thing smacked of trying a bit too hard. And has anyone ever seen someone wearing those atheist T-shirts on the Richard Dawkins site, cause I never have!

I also got a bit fed up hearing right wing pundits banging on about how liberals /the left / cultural Marxists or whatever were out of line or "sneery" at the Pope. I mean how else where they going to think about him. He's called gay marriage a "great evil", all the stuff about contraceptives and AIDS in Africa. His unfettered conservatism, to name a few. They are going to be a bit pissed off with him. There would be something wrong if they weren't. It is no good moaning about people moaning about someone with controversial views. Yeah they are going to want to counter them. It is .... free speech remember. (I'm not supporting spouting a load of straw men and crude abuse passed of as "debate." If you want to fully embrace the spirit of free speech be prepared to stick some really good points in there.)

THE POPES ROLE IN THE CHILD ABUSE.
This is really the smoking gun. The ecclesiastical elephant in the room. Probably the main point of contention for both the secular humanists and the greater public at large, vis a vis the popes visit. The child abuse scandals of the Church of Rome are disgraceful., and the response from the Vatican is as well. I think it is hard to exonerate Ratzinger of any wrong doing in the whole affair. He held the head position of the title of the dodgy sounding "Congregation of the Doctrine Faith." which meant he was the head honcho for implementing Catholic law throughout the church, and was thus put into the orbit of the crisis. We have heard that he was warned of pedarest priests and resorted to censuring them, or subjecting them to ecclesiastical (not criminal) hearings (see post here.), and in 2001, writing letters to every bishop saying that on no accounts should they go outside the church to deal with this (he called this communications blackout "the goods of the church" in 1985.). It is not hard to conclude that because of who he is, he has evaded any criminal scrutiny for the role in abetting the cover up of child abuse, and putting the doctrines and pomp of the church before the welfare of living; feeling children. I really cannot say that I know of anyone else in a Western democracy who could have evaded any form of criminal investigation as easily as the Pope. I don't consider it impertinent of the likes of say - Johann Hari of the Indy, to question the legality of the Popes actions. As it happens another (now former) high ranking member of an organisation that has been heavily involved in the case around the abuse and death of a youngster; Peter Connely or baby P, has been reported in the papers, running concurrent with the Popes visit. Sharon Shoesmith the former director of Harringey children's services has been testifying before an education select committee, defending her role in the whole tragic affair. It is interesting to highlight the very hostile press she receives from the Sun newspaper in comparison to the generally favourable coverage the same paper gave to the Pope.

As for myself. I don't think the protests against his visit were out of line, and even if I did, as I said before it is a country with free speech so it would be tough if i did think so. The Pope should really hand over all the documents the church has on the abuse over to the police, should tell the practitioners of Catholicism in Sub Saharan Africa that God came to him in a dream and told him that condoms were OK with him. But I'm guessing neither will actually happen. Nor did I think that David Cameron would have stopped the visit, or that a citizens arrest would occur. I don't believe that; apart from practicing Catholics of course -most people were that interested. I think a load of kids and nuns were bussed around to bolster numbers though. His embrace of the Archbish of Canterbury was quite nice though. Showing that even religious divides can be bridged with time. I actually don't think Ratzinger is all that popular anyway in the UK. Certainly less so than his predecessor The reader comments in the papers are much less positive than the editorials. There is quite a lot of contempt for the way the church has carried on, and some of Ratzingers views on contraception and homosexuality. He is largely seen as an archaic figure in an archaic institution. A bit like Christianity in general in this country.

**And another thing. The Tax Payers Alliance who get about five bajillian huffy soundbites in the press every time something a bit left wing gets even a few quid of tax payers money, were mysteriously silent about the 12 million of tax their "allies" forked out for a minority faith. I'm sure they just forgot or something. But I bet they would have somehow remembered if another religion had received that much for a visit to the UK.

Facebook is Evil! (part 569million)

2010-09-16T08:05:00.000-07:00

Journalists have never been shy of expressing their disdain for the Internets ability to "open up" amateurs and laymen to the world of media and public writing, which was a more protected sphere of exclusivity before hand. This will inevitably take the form of Twitter being derided as a load of saddos talking shite on a computer and the inevitable "evils" of Facebook. Yes it will be one extended gripe about Joe public dumbing down standards with their evil "modern media". I understand why this mentality exists with some writers / journalists. It is their turf that is being invaded, and it seems that the blogosphere and things like on line fanfic and the better youtube home made productions are blurring the lines between professional and lay media even further. But sometimes I really wish that some of the writers who sound off about this kind of stuff - would actually do some research into the things they are criticising, without visibly demonstrating that they don't have the foggiest about what they are on about. I mean people like you! Sandra Parsons. Who writes:

"Thanks mostly to the internet, the past decade has seen the end of exclusivity.

Rather than reading a book and giving serious thought to an issue, people skim information on Google and use the instantaneous Twitter to tell the whole world the first banal thought that comes into their head.

On Facebook teenagers compete to see how many ‘virtual’ friends they can accrue — I’m told the new target is one million — yet learn little about real friendship with all its complex levels of intimacy and trust.

Anyone, no matter how witless, can write a blog or put up a video on YouTube and garner thousands of ‘hits’ within hours. Privacy, reticence and modesty are seen as old-fashioned while let-it-all-hang-out voyeurism, via reality TV shows, is the order of the day."

I think the book /Internet skimming thing is in response to some research about how the two affect performance (I think it was something like that.) No one is saying never read reference books ever again. The Internet is very convenient for looking stuff up time wise, and access wise. That's why it is popular for that kind of thing. Anyone who wants to do hard research, knows that proper reference texts are better, and that wikis should be taken with a liberal pinch of salt.

The facebook rant is rather daft as well. I get so fed up with that "Facebook is no substitute for real friends." You reckon? Of course it isn't! Everyone knows that! I don't ever recall the creators of Facebook ever stating that was its intention. That is overlooked by people who point this out. It was never designed to substitute for real human interaction. Put it to bed!! The million freind goal would be extremely difficult for anyone non famous. It would require a hell of a lot of random strangers responding positively to a friend request. Hmmm. Again if she had bothered to learn about facebook; beyond second hand anecdotes - she would have known this. The "anyone can get thousands of hits on a blog/YouTube instantaneously. Yeah right! Because everyone just decides to check out some random uploading / article for the hell of it. Possibly you might chance upon becoming a viral hit, or get some publicity by a popular public medium. But if you aren't well known fame could be elusive. Don't worry Sandra, you still have quite a head start with a newspaper column!

PS. Isn't it a bit hypocritical of the Mail [Parsons column appears there] and other papers that rigorously bang on about the importance of competition in the free market and in regards to "countering" our licence funded BBC, are the first to scream blue murder and try and (rhetorically) pull the drawbridge up when their niche may be encroached upon? (still a long way to go though.) It must be working, what with all those Corens and Lawsons and Lee Potters writing articles. Christ even Littlejohns daughter gets a job at the Mail. Nice to see 'em keeping it in the family!