Main menu:
Journal Items - General:
Bigotry builds on bigotry.
09 February 2008 .
I fell into the classic trap yesterday, and I'm ashamed of it. A total prat, Dr. Tamimi, came out with some obnoxious rubbish and I reacted to him as if he and his ilk speak for Islam.
Unfortunately, once again, it seems that the Fourth Estate is stoking the fires rather than simply reporting the news: if you want to see what isn't - but might as well be - an orchestrated campaign to bring alarm and despondency to Muslims and Non-Muslims alike, just go back and read some of the tabloids for yesterday and today. (The BNP must be beside themselves with glee.) In their news reporting, one particularly loathsome rag always refers not to Hamzah but to 'hook-handed cleric' Hamzah. There is no doubt that he is worthy of every condemnation that can be heaped on him - but the rags really ought to let the facts speak for themselves.
If Parvez were executed, would it be Blair's fault?
06 February 2008 .
I've been asked why I didn't add my tuppence-worth on this site on behalf of Pervez, the Afghan under threat of the death sentence for 'blasphemy'.
My answer is that I believed that an outcry led from the West would be the kiss of death for him; in the event, I'm relieved that there seems to be a good chance that I've been proved wrong. However, the episode does beg the question that's been in the air since Iraq in 2003: to what extent should we interfere with the 'internal' affairs of nations which we may regard (and I do regard) as barbaric? Specifically, as in this case, can we try to step in when innocent lives are at risk?
The reason above all others why I loathed and despised The People's Dear Leader was that there was, before the invasion, a growing consensus around the world that it was the business of the international community to act, to interfere, against cruel and tyrannical states - a consensus which bush and blair set back by a generation (at least, I dare say). And that at a time in the planet's history when we can no longer afford these distractions of military adventure. So, would Parvez' death be on the heads of bush and poodle? On top of the hundreds of thousands of others, would they be bothered?
Elsewhere on this site, I've made it clear what I thought of Saddam. I say again; the international community had the responsibility to act - bush/blair could have justified their adventure, maybe, if the community had shown that it wasn't going to do anything; but that simply was not the case when the 'coalition' went in.
Monkey See, Monkey Kill.
05 February 2008 .
My namesake is chairman of the 'Campaign for Hunting.'
One of Stephen Fry's questions on QI was about the fate of the passenger pigeon. The last flock of a quarter of a million of these birds (which had once been measured in billions of birds and hundreds of miles) was wiped out, quite consciously, by a group of 'sportsmen', shooting for fun, at the end of the nineteenth century. I thought Mr. Fry, who was clearly as alienated by the event as I, was remarkably restrained.
'That was then.'
No, it wasn't.
In the 60s or early 70s, an Italian Film Crew in South American hunted down what they believed to be the last flock of (I think) vicuna. Fortunately, they'd been misinformed. I've tried to trace the incident on the net, without success - the net is still quite random in what it throws up; but the story is not apocryphal, and I'd be surprised if it were unique. I'm fairly certain that if just one pair of foxes were left alive, and the last fox hunt were announced, there would be plenty of folks in pink who would fall over themselves to ride.
I suppose I should accept that there are those of us who kill for pleasure and those who don't. I don't. And I'm a bit fed up with being told that I'm a city boy and don't understand these things. Also, I'm not convinced that those who think that living creatures are there for them to do with as they wish are that far removed from those who think that the planet is there for them to do with as they wish - the people whom this site believes may be driving our planet to destruction.
When I was young I thought my name was fairly unusual, and I was rather proprietorial about it. The coming of the net showed me that there are thousands of us around (several seem to be scientologists); but, when I see my name, I still think me. So it's a bit of a shock to find that an evangelist for serial killing has my name.
A Parallel Universe.
05 February 2008 .
Bruce Anderson is a columnist in the Indy who expresses views which seem to me quite extraordinarily out of touch, but which I have to acknowledge are the views of people I meet all the time, including through my family. One of my problems, having taught and lived in a fairly low-income environment in North London, is that I see some of the troubled lives around me as being 'real' reality - teaching is as total-immersion a job as any, and more than many. Unfortunately, Bruce Anderson clearly doesn't see beyond fairly narrow horizons, either.
Yesterday Mr. Anderson wrote about the how broke the average Tory MP feels.
"Tory MPs are now suffering because of the economic successes associated with Thatcherism. A combination of higher salaries and lower tax rates has ensured that a lot of lawyers, bankers and brokers are vastly better off than they would have been 30 years ago. They are the sort of chaps whom the average Tory MP was at school or university with, or might meet at dinner parties... He is feeling broke after paying his tax bill... He looks at his upper-middle class friends and feels poor... All this is so unfair..." His thesis is that MPs are virtually forced to fiddle their expenses, and that it is understandable that they do so.
At first I thought that Mr. Anderson was writing tongue-in-cheek. He wasn't. There are so many assumptions, so much of a world-view that outside the experience of 95% of us, in those few sentences, that I truly do not know how to begin the process of analysis. (Or, deconstruction?)
No doubt he would share common ground with that eleemosynary gentleman who referred to the patients at his hospital so cheerfully as 'the scum of the earth' (q.v.). Or with Mr. Cameron.
Novel ways to lose data.
04 February 2008 .
It seems that our recent ructions with the Afghan government are the result of their lot finding that our lot have been talking to their lot's rebels, i.e. the Taliban.
I suggested that the government were right to talk to our enemies, if necessary in secret, and that For Once, They Should Be Lying ( Classified - Middle East, 28 Dec.) about it.
What I didn't quite expect was that a memory stick giving all the details about it should get into the hands of Afghan secret police. And the bit about building training camps for the Taliban; having that on the stick smacks of pure genius.
I hardly dare ask, but... training? To fight? Against whom?
Hmmm.
Axes To Grind. (Re; Bleedin' Scroungers, yesterday)
03 February 2008 .
From the beginning, I swore that, while this site would definitely be for grinding axes, it would not be for grinding my personal axes. It would seem that to keep to that promise requires more strength of character than I have.
And if I'm arguing matters in which I have an interest, as I did in my last item, do I have to declare myself? It seems, despite how I try to convince myself otherwise, immoral not to...
[I'm reserving the right to withdraw this item the moment I realise I've gone a step too far.]
I'm on incapacity benefit. This whole blogsite started for all the reasons I've mentioned from time to time, but its core motivation was that it should be part of my own effort to get back to normal again.
I worked (without a break) for most of my adult life, paying higher rates of tax than I would now, even if I were earning three times as much in real terms. I didn't complain about the taxes, and can't, because I am, politically and emotionally, a collectivist. Towards the end, but long before it happened, I knew that one day I might be in trouble, and maybe I lasted longer than I might have done because I knew (or thought I knew) that, if the worst came to the worst, I wouldn't find myself on the street.
I'm a private person, and I don't, frankly, like you knowing my business. Apart from anything else, despite the fact that I don't think I should be, I'm ashamed of not being perfect. But, if I 'm going to grind an ax in which I have an interest, I don't think in all honesty that I have any choice.
Since I've gone public, at least I can say to the Telegraph and the Mail that I'm fed up with being called a scrounger; you know precisely nothing about me or my circumstances. And, to my shame and embarrassment, but being vulnerable, I'm angry at letting myself be frightened by your braying.
[But if you think I'm a good enough writer, you could always employ me, perhaps to work from home (thereby saving you space, rent and money), and stop me from being a scrounger.]
And since I've told everybody everything now, I will tell you that my best hope of getting back to normal at present is writing, and I'm trying to write a novel, and this site is all part of the therapy, etc. etc. etc. And I'll tell you good folks all about the book later in the year, I hope (it's about halfway through what I hope is the penultimate draft).
Bleedin' Scroungers.
02 February 2008 .
A month ago, the number of people who were on incapacity benefit unjustifiably was 200,000. A week ago it was one million, today we're told it's 1.9 million (over two thirds of the total). Apart from the fact that there's a sort of hard-man bidding war between the two main parties (with the third apparently consenting), I think they should just get where they're going and cancel incapacity benefit altogether.
Of course, if they've been paying fourteen billion pounds a year (or even two thirds of it) unjustifiably, there ought to be a financial scandal. But, since that figure is dwarfed by the commitment to underwrite Northern Rock (which would never have crashed without the government's mishandling) and even more dwarfed by what we're going to lose over pfi arrangements (to which the government remains wedded because they make the books look better for a few years... which is all they want), I don't suppose we'll bother with the scandal bit.
Anyway, who cares, so long as we can keep taxes down a few more pounds? (Except, of course, those who in an increasingly exigent social climate need the welfare safety net - but who cares about them, anyway?) One of the rags, the Telegraph I think, or maybe the Mail, referred to the sort of people who might be getting this benefit, the obese, the anxious or the depressed, with the clear indication that we should be thinking, well, they're just having us on. GPs, of course, are just colluding with the scroungers. The Mail has made its view on depression clear, that these people chose that illness because it can be faked so easily.
Funny that we still think of new labour as the heir to Labour, the party which in massively more constrained times created the welfare state in its ultimate form with the support of a population which had just proved, through war and tribulation, its right to decide (and even as I write that, I realise that the very words 'welfare state' are dirty words now to a vast number of people).
Funny to think that the People's Dear Leader quite explicitly saw himself as in the spirit of Clem Atlee, and the Great Leader sees himself (almost as explicitly) as truer to the values of Old Labour.
On a totally unrelated topic, I'm sure it isn't true that we have the worst record in the world for dumping people in mixed sex wards, despite a recent record of sexual assaults in such wards running to three figures.
Return to Current Journal
Go to Previous Journal (21 Jan 08 - 31 Jan 08)