Journal of the Plague Years

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• Signed Programmes on Television.
• Opinions need to be moderated by other people.
• "Time is running out!" (Adam Hart-Davies on TV telling us to fill in our tax forms).
• Doom and Gloom may Save Your Life.
• TV isn't too loud, it's too quiet.
• You can trust the scientists...
• Me on Capital Punishment.
• Princess Diana.
• On Selecting An Embryo.
• Debt and Obesity.
• Mr. Ali Is Going To Change His Name.
• A Jihad for 2008
• The Things People Say.
• Benazir Bhutto

Signed Programmes on Television.

04 January 2008 .

The BBC runs chunks of the late evening as what it calls the 'Sign Zone', in which a very brightly lit character, usually in purple, repeats the dialogue in British Sign Language. Sign Zone programmes are clearly marked in the listings so that those who read BSL can know where and when to find them - and where those of us who find it distracting can know what to avoid. So far, so good.

However; more and more films and dramas are signed on all sorts of channels, without - so far as I can tell - either the seekers or the avoiders knowing when signing will be offered. I have no objection in principle, but I admit that I find the signing incredibly distracting. A question keeps occurring to me: how many people are there who read British signing (which can't be very inclusive) who can't read subtitles?

I think it's the strange colours the signers wear that's so difficult; and the painful way in which they crane around as if to look at what's going down on-screen - which we know they can't. Oh, and going to see Don Giovanni (and paying quite a lot to do so) and then having a brightly lit character prancing around signing through the gloomiest scenes.

I can't resist the Jeremy Clarkeson moment. Why are those who can't hear the opera going to it? Especially since from most of the auditorium it is necessary to use opera glasses to see the signing, which means people doing so can't even be watching the opera.

Since I am being non-inclusive, and will get opprobrium from some, let me say that since an accident I can't smell or taste things properly - which is more of a deprivation than you might imagine: however, I wouldn't expect special arrangements to be made at a wine-tasting, or a speaker to describe my food to be provided at a restaurant. If you believe that this final paragraph is trivial, then I accuse you of being discriminatory.


Opinions need to be moderated by other people.

03 January 2008 .

I was saying today that I thought that the great temples, cathedrals, mosques et al, built by Humankind to something greater than itself, were not just more good but inherently more beautiful than those temples of mammon, the corporate towers, built to profit and often to the self-aggrandisement of individuals. Without meaning to be so, I think I was close to suggesting that this was self-evident, independently of any aesthetic values.

I was challenged to justify my opinion. I came out with - I'm afraid - predictable arguments such as about how whole communities worked for their religious buildings, carpenters doing their bit, masons adding their touches, and so on.

In return I was asked to consider that possibly a cathedral is just as much a monument to the ego of individuals as is a skyscraper; that ordinary people had no choice but to do as they were told in helping to build them (and paid heavily for the privilege); that, once they were built, the cathedrals did not serve the people so much as serve to subjugate them; and other points in a similar vein.

A whole raft of cogent arguments which I hadn't even begun to consider... My point here about is not which way this particular argument might go; it is that I was given a healthy reminder about the dangers of unmoderated opinion. I hope that this site is not opinionated... but I'm a bit worried about precisely that, right now. Whoops!


"Time is running out!" (Adam Hart-Davies on TV telling us to fill in our tax forms).

02 January 2008 .

"If you don't fill in such and such a form by this or that date, you'll be fined. And get clobbered with interest bills."

"Tax doesn't have to be taxing"

(And let's tax you a bit extra by repeating the advertisement a hundred times an evening, when you've just got back from work and need to relax.)


Doom and Gloom may Save Your Life.

01 January 2008 .

Discussing his hopes and resolutions for the new year, in a newspaper the other day, someone said that he would like to see us all cheer up a bit, be less gloomy, stop worrying so much about house prices and global warming.

Let's overlook the difference - by orders of magnitudes - in importance and urgency between the two issues...

I have no intention of renouncing my doom and gloom about the precarious state of our world - nor of shutting up about it. If I am right (along with those who think like me), then to ignore the problems we face is now suicidal. If I'm wrong, it won't kill us.


TV isn't too loud, it's too quiet.

30 December 2007 .

20 years ago, give or take, there were complaints to ITV that the sound on advertisements came up too loud, blasting homes and neighbours at each ad-break. ITV denied the charge and pointed out that it operated an envelope, a volume limit which confined both programmes and ads; they assured the public that the sound-tracks of ads didn't exceed these limits.

Astonishingly, these reassurances were accepted by the authorities, and the complaints from the public were considered to have been answered.

Equally astonishingly, nobody pointed out that the problem, therefore, was not that the ads were too loud, but that the programmes were too quiet.

So 20 years on we still have ad-breaks on some channels that blast our ear-drums - especially as often these days there is no wall between programme and ads to give you any warning.

Is it deliberate? Hmmm.

It does seem that everybody connected with marketing is such a bottom-feeder.


You can trust the scientists...

30 December 2007 .

When they prepared, and set off, the atom bomb at Los Alamos in July 1945, the scientists acknowledged a degree of uncertainty in the maths. As best they could guesstimate, there was up to a 5% chance that the explosion of the bomb might set off a chain reaction which would consume the planet's atmosphere. The decision was made, probably by the military, to downplay this possible outcome; the test went ahead.

Ain't that just something?

This info came from a professor at my university who had been on the Manhattan team. He was suffering acute depression and was in his cups when he chose to talk to half a dozen of us rather confused and slightly frightened students one wet, cold evening early in 1969. I have come across hints of the story, but can find no mention of it on the net. I believe it to be true.


Me on Capital Punishment.

30 December 2007 .

I would be happy to see all the murderers, thugs, rapists... all the men of blood and pain... dead and gone. But; I'm utterly opposed to the death penalty.

We were talking about this, me and some folks who are what might be called 'good Christian people'. (It is interesting how often it is avowed and vocal Christians who most favour capital punishment.)

If anyone needed expunging, Saddam most certainly did - he was as loathsome a schoolyard bully writ large and murderous as any you could find. Yet I did not want him executed (and look at what a snafu his hanging turned out to be).

While it's not something I'll discuss here, there are one or two in my own life whom I'd happily have seen dead who, not so long ago, would have been hanged for what they did. Yet, if the question had arisen, I'd have opposed the death penalty for them too.

[I'm writing this because I'm feeling a bit exercised about the topic, and I started the journal in the first place partly to write about what exercises me. As well: this item seems worth doing because our attitude to life and death seems to me to be pretty defining in some ways; hence it seems that my attitude may have a bearing on other topics in the journal, and so you might as well be given a glimpse of that attitude...]

Here are my most basic reasons; nothing original, but nobody has ever answered them to my satisfaction:

• No human agency is omniscient. Sooner or later, an innocent person is executed. (And, my oh my, it does seem to be sooner an awful lot, doesn't it?) The thought of the innocent person being led by priest and prison governor (pillars of the community in whom the prisoner should be able to trust) down that corridor is so abhorrent as to be intolerable to anyone with an ounce of imagination.

• In a Christian culture/society, we claim to believe in redemption. How can anyone seek and hope to find redemption if we kill them before they have a chance? Or do we wait until they are redeemed, and then bump them off? (This is why I cannot understand Christians so often favouring death as a punishment - the two concepts are surely incompatible.)

That's it. I have all sorts of other reasons, ranging from the sixth commandment to the absolute certainty that no politician should be allowed that sort of power (a plea for clemency delivered into the hands of Blunkett? Or Reid? God forbid! Or Smith? Even the suggestion's a joke). But these are the two core reasons which sum it all up for me.

Anyway, I want my juries to consider the facts of a case, not the possible mortal consequences of any decision they might come to.

By the way: I wholly acknowledge the need for killing in war or in extremis in self defence (but not by looney Norfolk farmers who don't like gypsies - that's always the problem... there are always the loonies. Still, no doubt they think I'm the looney: that's what church, family and parliament are for, to try to find the right path and get us to accept it.)

Also by the way: I don't oppose parental smacking, either.


Princess Diana.

30 December 2007 .

Each time I read the Daily Express, Princess Diana is in there somewhere, even now. There was an extraordinary letter to that paper earlier this year in which the writer complained at how we are not allowed to remember and grieve for her.

Diana-Worship truly defeats me. I have asked all the predictable questions, but there are two which have never been answered in any way I can understand.

The first is, how could so many people grieve so deeply for someone whom they've never met, who's not part of their family or social circle, who shared little if any of their experience - with some people, if they are to be believed, still grieving after ten years? I mean no offense, and certainly no criticism; I simply don't get it.

The second is this: how much of the worship of the princess is to do with her looks? If, in a parallel universe, Princess Diana had been an ordinary, rather homely woman, but had otherwise done exactly the good works she is now remembered for... Would she have been worshipped in the same way?

And, why don't we worship Princess Anne, who quietly gets on and does a great deal more than Diana ever did?

It's not Diana herself who bewilders me - and rather worries me: it's the extraordinary, OTT emotion of ordinary people, which I can't distinguish from Beatlemania or Fuhrer-worship.


On Selecting An Embryo.

29 December 2007 .

It may be that this point hasn't appeared in writing because everybody thinks it's so blindingly obvious. Or, perhaps I've just missed it...

As I understand it, those opposed to selection say that choosing one embryo (with, presumably, desired genes) will condemn others, which might have lived, to death. Surely, if the choice isn't made by doctor and parents, it will still be made - by random chance; all the other embryos, which might have lived, will still die.

I don't imagine that I will ever be faced with making the choice, so I'm free from the obligation to have an opinion set in stone; but my instinct is against selection. I just wish that those with whom I agree would avoid emotive but rationality-free arguments. Actually, I also wish that they would avoid their tendency to assume the moral high ground. (I hope I'm not throwing stones at glass houses...)


Debt and Obesity.

29 December 2007 .

Somebody suggested today that debt and obesity are often two sides of the same coin - they both result from our inability to control our own consumption. It is certainly an argument with a ring to it.

Perhaps, though, there is more than one coin minted with the same two sides.

Obesity is sometimes cited as a result of relative poverty and poor education. Debt is surely another side to that coin.

And debt is sometimes the result not of greed or poverty but of desperation in the face of the intolerable and increasing exigencies of our high-speed, high-pressure, psychotic society; I should not be surprised if obesity (from comfort-eating?) were the other side of that coin, too.


Mr. Ali Is Going To Change His Name.

28 December 2007 .

A full-page report in the Daily Mail today about one Mohammed Amir Ali, who life has been made a misery by identity theft - one of about 80 000 people put through this mill each year.

The thieves appear to have used his personal details to hire cars, open bank accounts and credit cards, obtain loans and state benefits, obtain a driving licence and acquire thousands of pounds worth of traffic fines: total damage in the order of 10 000.

When he realised what was happening, Mr. Ali contacted the police: they told him they couldn't help him because no crime had been committed under British law. When bailiffs came - over fines he knew nothing about - the police said that they would help the bailiffs if he didn't pay.

I assume that the Mail has done its research, and isn't simply wasting our time with dubious reporting. So; I was under the impression that obtaining goods, services or cash under false pretenses has always been a crime in this country. Are the police lying? Or is it true that identity thieves (80,000 victims p.a., remember) really aren't committing any crime?

Still: much more important to make sure that we don't photograph our kids at their nativity play. Or express a political opinion within such and such a distance of Parliament. Or allow live music to be performed at one's daughter's wedding reception at home. Or wear a hood while shopping. Or let home made cake be sold at the local WI. Or forget to have 'No Smoking' signs prominently displayed in the parish church. Or break any of the 4609 other laws passed, at the latest count, each year.

Mr. Ali feels that he has no choice but to change his name by deed poll and, with his family, up sticks and move to new life somewhere different.


A Jihad for 2008

28 December 2007 .

There would rightly be outcry if advertisers and retailers were to invoke the Prophet to lubricate their sales of iPods, turkeys and socks. Yet they use the name of the Christ Child without a blush, trivialising music which has been sung in praise of His birth for centuries - sung in the yearning for peace and love and certainly not for ringing tills. Two thousand years ago, the Saviour. Today, the Mall. Not entirely a higher plane of the human spirit, I suggest.

So my Jihad for the coming year is going to be a one-man campaign against such music being used for advertising, or as muzak, or in any way that allows it to continue to be so tainted and subverted.

Perhaps, at the same time, somebody could take on the task of organising a popular outcry against Christmas pop music (Slade, McCartney et al.) on the grounds of banality and repetitiveness. No bans, though: we have too many rules and regulations already.

Postscript, Added 30 December:

Since I started this journal, I've avoided looking at other people's personal sites; I want this one to bed in as my own work, as far as possible, for a few months.

Since writing this item and deciding to wage war, however, I did a bit of googling on carols in malls. Rather to my surprise, almost everyone was in favour of Christmas music while they shopped: among hundreds of sites, I found only a handful demurring, although those that did clearly felt strongly about it. (Surprise, because several friends - unprompted by me (!) - have said how much they loathe Christmas muzak, and I've never heard anyone say, 'oh, how nice,' when assailed by it.)

Then I started reading a bit more carefully, and thinking a bit more clearly, too - both of which I should do more often.... and once I did, of course I realised that what the sites favoured was not Christmas muzak at all, but people gathering to sing carols, or school groups, or waits - a wholly different thing.

A serious lesson, or at least reminder: I wrote the item without proper thought. It's the muzak that I detest so much, the mindless mechanical banality of it, its endless repetition, the sheer cynicism of it. Etc. The conscious sharing of Christmas by people singing together as an act of community, fun, commitment or what have you, was never something I would criticise. The lesson is, how easy it is to bash away at the keyboard without actually having thought what exactly is trying to be said.

Now I can worry about what else I've written in this journal that is not actually what I mean at all. Ah, well, no doubt it'll all come out in the wash. A pale, liberal pink, no doubt, with a dash of grumpy.


The Things People Say.

27 December 2007 .

I noted that I had heard about the assassination of Benazir Bhutto; I felt that there was nothing further I could usefully add to the bald fact. However, I regret that I can't resist mentioning the following:

After Bhutto's death, Mr. Bush immediately took to his hind legs to pronounce that the assassins must be brought to justice (along with a predictable plug for his War on Terror, which may have been helpful, although I'm uncertain of that): it's perhaps unfortunate that each time they played his pronouncement on the box, they had just told us that it was a suicide bombing.

More importantly: I note that in some quarters a comparison has been drawn between Bhutto and Princess Diana. Hmmmm. No. Bhutto was an extraordinarily courageous woman who died for what she believed in.

The comparison might be at best laughable, at worst odious, if it were not itself symptom of a small tragedy: I believe that it was drawn by people who wanted their British audience to understand the horror felt by Pakistanis at Bhutto's death - people who may have been correct in feeling that we can no longer understand such things outside the strange unreal world of Diana-worship..


Benazir Bhutto

27 December 2007 .

I've just heard that this remarkable, brave and very human woman has been assassinated.


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