Journal of the Plague Years

• Vive le Compainie!
• The Oil Problem. (Not that we're running out but that we're taking to long to face that we're running out.)
• Those good folks at TV Licensing.
• A kid needs a dad like a fish needs a bicycle.
• Not the beginnings of the end, but possibly the ends of the beginning...
• United we may survive; divided, we probably won't.
• Is Brown committed to social justice?
• Where the interests of some Labour MPs really lie...
• Foreign food putting our parsnips out of a job.
• Harriet Harman, Whip.
• Cluster bombs as an essential part of an ethical UK foreign policy.
• US Government to have access to full information on every British Citizen (all sixty million of us).
• 'If you could see him as I do...'
• Perhaps you shouldn't bother to read this: it's a just rant about computers (but there's an apology in it too).

Vive le Compainie!

30 May 2008 .

I. A fairly devastating report from Civitas (author, Harriet Sergeant) on public confidence in the police mentions, inter alia, the bonuses given to police commanders linked to 'arrest targets' being met (with no weighting for more serious offences): as a result, it says, officers are often under pressure at the end of the month to meet targets, with young men being pursued as 'the most likely to offend'. Well, we all knew that; but it was rather brought home by the officer who reported that he was so concerned that he would give a special warning to his own teenaged son at the due time every month. (One officer reported that he was pressed to charge some children with 'harassment' when they were stopped from playing around a tree: I would say that there must be more to this story than that, but I have a terrible suspicion that there isn't.)

II. A private-sector firm of litter wardens, Xfor, on a commission-only contract with the council in Peterborough, is apparently paid a 35 bonus for every fine it dishes out. It seems that each 'environmental warden' is earning about 30,000 per year in profit for the company. I'm not surprised to hear that there's been an outcry, particularly that the arrangement has wardens handing out tickets on 'the flimsiest of evidence'... or probably none at all, if reports about the practices of, say, traffic wardens are true.

I really don't think I like the idea that I live in a country where such arrangements are accepted as normal and reasonable.

A personal financial stake in finding people to punish... at best, it constitutes a flagrant conflict of interests (between the duty of any official, or his employer, to the community and the exigencies of his own pocket); more likely, it's an open invitation to abuse.

Even in principle there can't be any workable system of checks and balances in a system of this nature to protect the innocent citizen (or the child accused of playing near a tree). The whole concept goes definitively against a thousand years of European political development (not that anyone seems to give a damn about the hard-learned lessons of history any more...) The tabloids would probably refer to it as 'legalised mugging'; for once, they would undoubtedly be correct.

I suppose I should ask you to forgive the language, but why the Hell are we letting these things happen? We're giving the streets to the condottieri... We must be barking mad!

There... now look at what you've made me go and write! And I've never sworn on this site before, despite terrible provocations.

condottieri 'Peterborough council' 'environmental wardens' litter 'Harriet Sergeant' Civitas Xfor

The Oil Problem. (Not that we're running out but that we're taking to long to face that we're running out.)

30 May 2008 .

There have naturally been plenty of comments on radio and TV this week, from folk in the street, about the rocketing prices of fuel - usually, on TV, filmed in a garage forecourt (such as Newsnight's 'The Village Pump', a little oily soap from Peterborough). It's saddening that what people have to say hasn't changed much... not since the 1970s, really... 'Disgusting!' and 'It shouldn't be allowed' just about cover their spectrum: there really isn't much understanding that we're in a new place, that prices and, emphatically, supply are rapidly moving out of anybody's control (or ability to 'disallow').

I really don't think that Brown helped matters this week by insisting that supply must be increased or that OPEC should (in effect) be deregulated. I imagine that he knows that those are, or soon will be, non-existent straws to grab at; but simply by saying these things, he allows a mindset to continue that sees price-rises as a sort of foreign (probably Arab) blackmail just like back in 1973. Almost all of the media seem still to be allowing a hope - almost an assumption - that prices will come down again, perhaps not immediately and perhaps not to the levels of ten years ago, but definitely down; and the politicos certainly don't have the guts to put that rosy picture where it belongs.

Once or twice on this site, I have accused Johann Hari (in the Independent) of writing articles which I would like to have written; he did it again yesterday, in 'The world must end its addiction to oil' (29 May, p31: www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-the-world-must-end-its-addiction-to-oil-835814.html).

For anyone who wants a clear, cold-light-of-day picture of where we stand, this really is the one to read.

[Supply and demand are in the article, of course, and the impact on the climate even if that imbalance weren't an issue; also a reminder that most of the oil we buy is in the hands of people who despise us - whether we're democrats, Jews or Christians, humanists or atheists, women, gays, artists or musicians, or almost whatever - and who spend vast amounts of their revenue from our pumps on teaching hate in mosques and madrasahs throughout the world, including Europe and the US.]

However, over the last decade or so, the public conversation has gradually moved, ever so painfully and far too slowly, toward the reality of how we're going to address the issues which face us.

National and industrial carbon-trading is begin to work in some areas; it's clumsy and far from universal, but it goes some way to addressing a basic problem which bedevils us - human nature. And now people are beginning to talk about personal carbon-trading, by individuals - the wealthy will pay more for their pollution, the less wealthy will be able to see some compensation; the idea has a definite appeal, the sense that it has a chance of contributing to a saner future.

Except that... I wonder if there's a fly in the ointment...

If personal carbon-trading will literally be on a person-for-person basis, then living in a large household will become more economically desirable than it now (which may well be a good thing in respect of the housing problem, too). The question is, how will the carbon allowance be set? Will a child have the same carbon allowance as an adult? Will a baby?

[If not, why not? Much of some adults' extra carbon-footprint will surely arise out of their jobs... or will our pay and allowances include a licence to produce an amount of carbon? In which case, I foresee problems far worse for the tax authorities than were ever posed by company cars - or far worse for the rest of us if the tax-authorities ignore the issue.]

If a baby or child does have the same allowance as an adult, then, as they come into a household, the instant effect will be to allow the combined household to increase its carbon footprint... it will come to make economic sense to breed more children just as it becomes urgent to breed less.

It's not beyond imagining that some folk will have an extra baby to fund a larger car...

'carbon footprint' 'carbon trading' OPEC 'Johann Hari' 'deregulating oil supplies' 'the village pump'

Those good folks at TV Licensing.

29 May 2008 .

TV Licensing has the job of collecting the tax each year on every television in the country; a job which it does not perform all that effectively , it seems, since hundreds of thousands (or even millions) of TVs are unlicensed (unlicenced?) - or so they tell us when it suits them, ie when they're in bullying mode.

[There must at least be enough evaders for Jacqui Smith to think that chasing up unpaid fees is a good way to 'harry and harass' citizens whom she deems to be a nuisance. (The bureaucrats, bringing insult into every sitting-room in the land... 15 May 2008 - Classified - Control.)]

If your home doesn't have a TV, however, you are harassed: reports are anecdotal, of course, but there are lots of them; I can report a TV-less aunt who was persecuted to distraction by TV licensing who, even after they'd insisted on their right to search every inch of her house, refused to accept that she was telling the truth and wrote to her, telephoned her, threatened her with court action, called her a liar to her face... you can guess the sort of thing...

Ian Fannon, Communications manager of that upstanding bureaucracy, has a letter in the Independent (Problem solved? 29 May) which starts, "I would like to reassure your readers that... we have no wish to trouble people needlessly." I missed whatever sparked this letter, but clearly even he recognises that there's a perceived problem. He goes on to give a number which the public can call to "make sure all our records are up to date, and minimise future correspondence."

Actually, if there's no TV, there should be no need for any correspondence anyway, but then we do now live in country where the citizen (sorry, 'subject',) is deemed guilty/liable before the event.

The particular problems with your offer, Mr. Fannon, are that:

1) the number is not generally published (as why would it be, since we've all got tellies?)

2) advising the voice at the end of the line that there is no television is met by disbelief (or incomprehension?)... and, on at least one famous occasion, I'm told, by the accusation of lying;

3) it takes hours to get through to the voice in the first place (but then you didn't imagine any different, did you?)

but, never mind those - we're used to all of them in People's UK plc's bureaucracy... it's the last which is so offensive:

4) the number you offer is on a premium rate exchange. For the privilege of telling TV Licensing that we don't owe them any money, we pay - quite a lot.

Suit!

'TV licensing' 'Ian Fannon' 'People's UK plc'

A kid needs a dad like a fish needs a bicycle.

28 May 2008 .

This is murky ground for me...

There is a pervasive feeling that children and young adults are more stressed, less happy, more violent, or whatever, than they were a generation ago. Assuming for now that this is true (and the UN does suggest that England is the worst of the developed countries in which to try to bring up a child), there is an opinion which often goes with this feeling, that a big part of the problem is the absence of good male role models for so many young men - because of single or broken families, or simply of fathers who have to work all the hours God sends.

The weight of New Labour opinion, and of the government, however, as manifested through the new regulations passing through parliament, is that no account needs to be taken of the presence or absence of a father when decisions about in-vitro fertilisation or adoption are being made.

I don't know whether the lack of fathers (and male teachers and other such role models) really is at the core of the problems of so many of our youngsters... but it is a widespread opinion, including amongst many professionals, and there's nobody who knows that the one thing isn't the cause of the other... so, until we actually know what the truth is, what's with New Labour's continuing, state-sanctioned, denigration of the role of father? (and of marriage, come to that...)

(As it happens, I too believe that this generation is far more troubled than their parents were, and I have some opinions of my own as to some of the causes; but that's neither here nor there: my argument, as so often, is about the lack of joined-up thinking - or its displacement by ideology and 'the party line'.)

IVF adoption 'absent father' 'role model'

Not the beginnings of the end, but possibly the ends of the beginning...

28 May 2008 .

I. The TV licence slot on the BBC still says 'it's all on the database', but it's removed the sinister and unnecessarily threatening 'you can't escape'. I've decided to claim the deletion as a victory for the campaigning power of this site (The bureaucrats, bringing insult into every sitting-room in the land... 15 May 2008 - Classified - Control.)

II. Far more serious and heartening: Brown has announced that Britain is going to abandon cluster bombs. (Cluster bombs as an essential part of an ethical UK foreign policy. 25 May 2008 - below.) The complaint is already being made that the US, along with China and others, did not attend Dublin and won't be moved by the British decision; irrelevant. Completely unexpectedly (by me, at least), against all the signals and certainly against American wishes, we're doing the right thing. (And you don't have to be a pacifist to go along with that sentiment.)

'it's all on the database' 'you can't escape' 'abandon cluster bombs' 'doing right'

United we may survive; divided, we probably won't.

28 May 2008 .

The individual citizen, unless he or she enjoys a fair bit more than the average income, feels more powerless now than at any time in the forty years of my adult life. The evidence ranges from anecdotal to symptoms visible over the whole country - ludicrously low turnouts for recent general elections, the increasing struggles of the charity sector, the crash in membership of the Neighbourhood Watch schemes, the poor turn-out at community meetings, PTAs and so on. The causes impress us according to our own viewpoints and prejudices; I believe that our long working ours and the pressures on or family life (often imposed by government or it's agencies) are fairly central, as is the increasingly rigid and remote bureaucratisation we endure; and there's nothing like a few sessions of computer-controlled telephone conversations ("your call is important to us") to teach us exactly how powerless we are.

I am by nature a collectivist...

I believe that a large chunk of the population is willing to commit to a more collective society, and more might do so if they knew what it meant and/or could see any possibility of collective action being allowed to work. [The most soul destroying collapse and failure of a collective act recently seen was in the March against War, and the ineffectiveness of a million people against this government burned deep into people's psyche.] The sort of collectivism which will embrace our working together - perhaps leading ultimately to a restoration of a widespread public service ethic - may be a rather different animal from a single issue march, no matter how many joined the ranks; but there are strong arguments that this country will not survive the economic travails of times ahead if we don't learn to work together as we did in the 1940's.

Unfortunately Thatch/Blairism was not impressed with that idea.

The question is who there is around who might lead a country needing to take the necessary steps. For all that the new Blair-like Cameron has recognised many of the changes taking place in our society, for all that he's even adopted 'centre-left' language, his solutions are still rooted in a conservative, atomised mindset which neither understands nor, more importantly, trusts collectivism. The same would be as true, or more so, among all the realistically potential alternatives.

The reason why this site will still support Brown over the coming months (despite many concerns about his competence and leadership qualities) is that there isn't another potential leader in Labour who has any of the history, understanding or experience needed to give collectivism (or any other policy) a sporting chance - for all that it'll need more courage from him than he's shown so far. [I'm beginning to think that David Miliband's time might come, but he needs to get his knees brown: 10 to 15 years, and he might be up to it. The problems are now, however, and he is not ready.]

Vince Cable, and one or two other Libs and Greens, might have the right mental equipment, but they're not going suddenly to be elected to the leadership in 2010 - the best we can hope for, without holding our breaths, is a few cabinet posts.

So Brown it has to - not that that will stop me castigating him when he snafu's, as he will.

Incidentally, I find more cause for hope than for concern in the increasing willingness of labour to organise for the strikes which are so vexing the Daily Mail. If the right people are given half a chance, the strikers who co-operate today can also be the workers who co-operates tomorrow. Simplistic? I don't think so: some of the toughest unionists a generation ago were also some of the most patriotic, whatever Thatcher may have believed.

I realise that a much more extensive analysis is required, of housing, transport, education, health... But my particular interest is in that sort of shift in the way our society works... because collectivism can give ordinary people a self-respect and, more pertinently, a sense of empowerment which we need need need!

'Vince Cable' 'March against war' 'David Miliband' 'strikes are good' 'neighbourhood watch' Collectivism 'Vince Cable'

Is Brown committed to social justice?

27 May 2008 .

Even from writers purporting to be his critics, I've read too often how, 'whatever other faults he may have,' no one would deny Gordon Brown's commitment to social justice; the same assertion appeared again this weekend in (I think) the Independent.

Maybe not his commitment... but, beyond a doubt, either that or his competence is open to question (at the very least).

While Brown has been encouraging us to believe that he has been redistributing the nation's wealth in favour of the less well-off 'by stealth', there are simply too many realities which go to contradict this comfortable picture.

Setting aside the extraordinary business of the 10p tax band - which has not been settled, whatever Frank Field and others may believe, since the net effects of the mess and the subsequent patch-up have simply (still) been to hammer a million of the poorest while giving a considerable tax break to the better off...

[At this point, first draft, I started to reel off a list of Brown's actions, or initiatives, or whatever, both as chancellor and prime minister, which have assisted the 'haves' - often to the active detriment of the 'have-nots'... The list included: (1) The changes in dental and prescription charges have exercised me in that they no great effect on most of the population - but have hit a few million at the bottom end so hard that, for example, even if they can find an NHS dentist, they can't afford proper treatment under the new charges... (2) The ideological commitment to the Tory's surreal nationalisation arrangements on the railways has progressively made travel, even to work, a burden - again, only to those at the bottom of the economic pile... (3) Education... But I realise I could go on forever, without really proving my point. So, I've decide to see if just one slightly simplistic bit of analysis will make at least a prima facie case:]

Buy-to-let and the price of houses:

We're told, repeatedly, that a hard property market (ie, high house prices) is good for the economy. There are actually no grounds for supposing that this is true for the vast majority of the population who, unless they've been able to pull the ladder up behind them, face crippling mortgages for many times their annual salaries - if they can ever get a foot on the housing ladder in the first place.

The high price of property has been fed by (particularly) Brown's deregulation of control of the money supply - which has had so many other malign effects which are now becoming only too evident. Because the 'haves', self-evidently, always have easier access to this liquidity, they have bought extra homes (in the case of the Blairs, six of them on top of their ten years of rent free accommodation and subsidies); even where these properties have been out of the range of ordinary buyers, they've worsened the supply position of housing in both quantity and (inherently) price for the rest of us.

But that's not the worst of it: those with access to liquidity - the 'haves' again - now bought property to rent out. The effect has been that the well-off have been able to outbid ordinary people on property, and then, in a market of shortage, have been able to rent out those properties at sellers'-market prices to the very people who've been unable to buy property because they've been outbid.

In many countries (in most, in war-time), this kind of activity would be called profiteering, and regarded as one of the most serious criminal, even capital, offences... precisely because it hits the ordinary people so hard, and affects social morale so damagingly.

Yet, although it would have been possible to put a stop to this practice with little difficulty, Brown not only allowed it, but encouraged and fertilized it. Such a commitment to social justice,

profiteering 'buy-to-let' Brown 'commitment to social justice'

Where the interests of some Labour MPs really lie...

27 May 2008 .

A gaggle of these apologies for socialism have bearded the Darling chancellor to threaten a new tax revolt.

Never mind the lorry drivers' protests, these MPs want to reverse the increases in road tax being levied specifically on the most polluting private cars. This site has always favoured differential taxation against avoidable pollution, but at the same time I accept that any such measures must be open for discussion. (Having said which, I'm inclined to be suspicious of any politician who, while claiming to be progressive, fails to recognise the unprogressive nature of the big 4x4s and SUVs being used on urban streets.)

These particular nonentities earn my unreserved contempt, however, not for arguing against the tax... but for arguing that Darling will face a revolt as heartfelt and damaging as the '10p' revolt.

Whatever your opinions may have been, the 10p revolt was about social justice, and at least pretended to be in defence of the most vulnerable members of society. No socialist could compare it with this self-interested squawk on behalf of more privileged people owning unnecessary and damaging vehicles.

But then, that's blair's new labour for you.

[Added 28 May: It seems that it's older large cars that the MPs are trying to defend, on the grounds that they're often owned by people who aren't actually at all well off; if I've understood this correctly today as opposed to getting the wrong end of the stick when writing this item yesterday, then clearly it might mitigate the MPs position... although I'm not sure that it vitiates my argument. This is another regrettable example of my misunderstanding what I read and hear... but then again, the media don't always report very clearly in the first place, and this is one time when I'm blaming the way the news was reported rather than my understanding of it. Anyway, house rule: what's written here stays written here.]

[Added 29 May: I'm losing track; some sources are saying that the high road tax applies to all older cars (such as the Express), some are saying cars built since 2001, as I originally thought, (eg the Independent). (The net has differing opinions, too.) I'm inclined to believe the Indy. To be frank, (assuming the Indy's right) anyone who owns a large 2002 car may be under pressure, but however poor they may think they are, they're not at the bottom of the economic pile; so my original comments stand. To be even franker, the details of this fuss don't actually interest me so much as people's reactions - and how the media misreport, obfuscate or distort the simplest items so that a moderately well-informed person (which is how I see myself) so often actually has no idea what's actually happening, short of spending all day watching the Parliament channel or researching the deepest recesses of government websites... which is not the best way to promote participatory democracy.
[I write some Meldrew-esque stuff on this site, but the amount of time I've spent on this item smacks of becoming obsessional... quite apart from going around in circles... so whatever comes to light tomorrow, this item is now closed - after one parting thought: Since the affected cars are apparently becoming 'valueless' because the road-tax is going to be 'so high', all us poor people are going to buy them at throwaway prices... and at long last we're going to contribute our share to global warming.]

'Road tax revolt' 'crypto-tory' 4x4 SUV

Foreign food putting our parsnips out of a job.

26 May 2008 .

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, columnist in the Independent; often wrong, of course, but always interesting and excellent value. She wonders if the current movement* against importing so much food from abroad** may unconsciously have a racial or even racist sub-text; all those foreign foods flooding the country standing for all those foreign immigrants...

*on ecological and 'air miles' grounds; **often from countries in, for example, Africa, which may need to export to survive;

I suspect that she's enjoying pulling our leg. I'm sure she remembers how in the last generation or so we've welcomed all those foreign foods. (I reckon that, within twenty minutes of my flat, there are restaurants representing over 200 cuisines, not to mention what I could buy in delicatessen and supermarkets.) As I understand it, our national dish, in so far as we have one, is chicken tikka masala, which is as English as fish'n'chips but born of Asia... an allegory, I'll claim, of how we've taken the world to our hearts.

There's a serious issue in there, however: Many of the parts of the world that may be worrying about where their next meal will come from are exactly those parts which were sometimes forced by the World Bank and 'the West' to promote cash crops at the expense of subsistence.

'cash crops' 'Yasmin Alibhai-Brown' 'foreign food' immigrants 'chicken tikka masala'

Harriet Harman, Whip.

26 May 2008 .

A stony-faced Harman stood behind the Speaker's chair, hands on hips, as (Tory) Nadine Dorries spoke for a reduction from the present 24-week limit for abortions.

Copyright assumed to be with Mail on Sunday:
Permission for reproduction sought - no reply.

It is a place (and posture, apparently) sometimes taken by party whips when there's a three-line whip (where MPs are under absolute instruction to toe the party line). The problem is that it was promised that the abortion vote would be free. Harman's presence in that spot was therefore the exact moral equivalent of Beria's presence at a politburo vote (off to one side, not officially at the meeting, while saying 'pretend I'm not here') after an absent Stalin has just told the members that of course they must vote according to their consciences. And, remember, Harman is no longer a whip. [Insert, added 04 June: One of those things which comes back to you in a moment of idleness... I was thinking Harman was (chief) whip; she wasn't, of course - that was Jacqui Smith... My defence is that those two are such clones that it was an easy slip to make.]

It now comes out that the display was part of an orchestrated campaign by Harman the Barbarian, along with sidekick-clones Ruddock, Follett and Thornberry (all wimmin) to pressure (or 'intimidate' as a former minister put it) members to vote against Ms. Dorries' amendment. One claimed to have heard Harman's harridans shout, 'Vote against us and the sisterhood will never let you forget it.'

The women formed 'a human corridor' through which members had to run a gauntlet of intimidation. 'Some male Labour MPs felt very intimidated. Afterwards, the women were crowing about how successful they'd been.'

Is this all true? Harman's pose behind the Speaker's chair indicates that it was. So, to me, does my own experience of living in the People's Republic of Islington - where, even now, Lillian Lidele continues to struggle for to right to live and work according to her conscience - as she had done without any problem for decades until 'the party line' got its teeth into her.

She really is a loathsome piece of work. It might, I suppose, be more forgivable if she were only a bit more competent.

'Nadine Dorries' Ruddock Follett Thornberry 'Three-line whip' 'Harriet Harman'

Cluster bombs as an essential part of an ethical UK foreign policy.

25 May 2008 .

Talks started in Dublin at the beginning of last week in the hope of an international agreement to ban cluster bombs. I see no point in reprising the evils of these weapons, nor that the majority of injuries and fatalities are (almost inevitably) civilians, nor that the bomblets (which look like toys) kill vast numbers of children who pick them up to play with them, often after the causative war is long over.

There is no moral place for these weapons in war (or anywhere else). In fact, according to many (and probably most) experienced professional soldiers in the British forces, they do not even serve any military purpose in the type of warfare we're seeing now.

There is an overwhelming consensus among delegates from the hundred or so nations taking part that the need for a total ban is urgent. But, any hope of a favourable outcome is being scuppered by the British government (although not, as some reports have it, by the British.)

'Senior Foreign Office sources' said that, on at least one of our systems, the UK position is 'non-negotiable'. Great!

Why are our beloved leaders resisting the ban? The reasons I've seen given are:

• cluster bombs are stored at US bases in Britain;
• British soldiers might have problems with their legal status if they fight alongside US forces using cluster bombs;
• "A range of issues is at stake" (MoD officials).

Hmmm.

It appears that the reality may be that the British government is acting at the behest of the US, which is not attending the talks. Nothing more to be said, really, is there?

But I'm going to throw out a couple of random thoughts anyway...

• We'll "work internationally for a ban" on weapons which cause "unacceptable" (sic) harm to civilians. (A "promise" by Gordon Brown, 2007.)

• "An ethical foreign policy." (Blair, Brown et al, ad nauseam since 1997.)

Yeah. Right.

'An ethical foreign policy.' 'cluster bombs' 'perfidious albion' Dublin talks

US Government to have access to full information on every British Citizen (all sixty million of us).

25 May 2008 .

This heading is just to shock some sense into you... But it may be true within three years...

Lockheed Martin, a US company, is bidding to run the UK national census in 2011. There's a bit of a tizzy about it in some circles; MPs on the Treasury select committee are concerned that 'once census data entered the United States it may be subject to forcible disclosure (to the US government).' Personally, I would have thought that the sheer fact the company is American would provide that government with sufficient leverage if it were that way inclined. What interests me far more is why there is any consideration that our detailed census data (which by law we have to provide) should ever get into the hands of a foreign company in the first place - if you stand back and think about it, it really is an absolutely extraordinary idea.

Our law says that census information is to be released for 100 years. The US's 2002 Patriot Act allows the US government to seize any information on foreign citizens and governments it deems necessary in the interests of national security. To which law is Lockheed Martin going to give greater respect? Hmmmm.

Actually, what I really want to know is why we allow the government to allow all our most personal data to be taken by any private company whatsoever, whether foreign or British? (And remember, it's done that way for purely political/ideological reasons.)

'Lockheed Martin' Census 2011 'Patriot Act' 'Treasury Select committee'

'If you could see him as I do...'

24 May 2008 .

There are columnists in some of the rags with whom I simply never agree... Littlejohn, in the Mail, self-evidently comes from a far-away galaxy, on the edge of time and space, so I'm still rather reeling to find that he echoed some of my arguments (not the other way around) on behalf of Lillian Ladele's stand against the People's Republic the other day.

Fortunately, a side-item on the same page restored my sense of normality. It's a rather strange story about Brit teacher Paula Stibbe, who's applying to the European Court of Human Rights to have a chimpanzee declared legally 'a person' so that she can adopt him, if necessary: he may apparently be in some danger if the Austrian animal sanctuary in which he currently lives goes bankrupt.

Littlejohn predictably finds it nonsensical that the case is to receive a primary hearing in front of a magistrate rather than being laughed out of court. [He would lose my vote whether he were right or not, however, since where rights are concerned, he always seems to write 'yuman (sic) rights'... so that I suspect he probably doesn't have much more sympathy even where humans are concerned.]

Whether animals will ever be generally recognised in law as having rights, I don't know; that the question should be discussed seems to me to be perfectly reasonable, and discussion - if it is to have any meaning - sooner or later ought to imply testing in a court of law.

The Pope has recently talked about non-human sentience (in, say, an alien, such as Littlejohn, from another planet...), suggesting that such an alien is as much a creature of God as Mankind is. People speculate on what happens if machines ever come to self-awareness (I was watching the film Short Circuit the other week). Some religions and plenty of new-agers are convinced that animals are the same as people in the sight of God. On the other hand, it's not too long since there were plenty of white folk who were perfectly satisfied that Africans had no soul... nor women... nor Jews... nor neighbours from the next village...Just because something isn't generally accepted now doesn't mean that it never will be or that the ideas involved shouldn't be examined with serious care.

Perhaps, not so long ago, Littlejohn would similarly have ridiculed his contemporaries who wasted everybody's time with foolish talk about abolishing slavery. (True; animal status may not be the same thing at all... but how will we find out what we think if we believe the idea's too laughable even to talk about?)

So I accuse Littlejohn of that particular sort of illiberalism which doesn't argue the case but tries to make a joke of it. There... I feel better now; Littlejohn is back where he belongs, in the pages of the Mail.

Littlejohn 'animal rights' 'animal soul' 'Paula Stibbe'

Perhaps you shouldn't bother to read this: it's a just rant about computers (but there's an apology in it too).

24 May 2008 .

I'm afraid that it has required all my considerable restraint not to launch into a techno-rant in this item. I have to admit that I am suspicious of new technology - or rather, of the unjustified faith which we place in it. (I had growing reservations before then, but) it was the computer-controlled descent of a 'fly by wire' Airbus A320 at the display in France nearly 20 years ago, which ended in a fatal crash in the woods a mile beyond the runway, that convinced me. {The computer over-rode the pilot's decisions in landing the plane.) Hardware fails and software is no better than the programming that's put into it. I've had a flying licence for over 40 years and I'll neither touch fly-by-wire nor fly as passenger aboard an airliner which doesn't allow pilot over-ride. My reserve was confirmed later when a friend of mine, driving on a motorway in a BMW, was locked into top gear by his car's electronics, which also refused to work the brakes and at the same time locked the ignition switch so that he couldn't switch the engine off...

We are told that hardware is much more reliable now, which is true, and that software engineers know what they're doing... which is not quite so true...

When it comes to computers, my history is mixed. I've progressed from 1983 Sinclair QL (w/p and spreadsheets) which never crashed, to 1994 Amiga (added image manipulation and internet) which occasionally crashed but always told me why with a crash-proof and clear reporting system so that I seldom had the same crash twice, to 2000 Mac, which crashes, but in predictable and repeatable circumstances, to 2004 Intel/Microsoft (on which I build this site), which crashes randomly almost every day giving reports which are incomprehensible and therefore utterly useless. Experience at work, where I used Microsoft networks from '87 (always crashing) and Mac networks from '89 (never crashed once) - through the gamut of operating systems on both - plus anecdote from friends with their own computers, suggests that my experiences are pretty uncontroversial.

Unfortunately, I also selected to use Website x5 to produce this site, and was committed by sheer quantity of work before I discovered how bad it is (and that Incomedia's own site suffers from some of exactly the problems I complain of, which doesn't inspire confidence.)

To cut a long story short: x5 packed up a few weeks ago, leaving a gap in my postings for a few days; much fiddling and reinstalling finally got it going... until it packed up this week during a routine defragmentation - all files zeroed completely, though every other (of many) programmes came through fine. Fortunately I had a backup on stick. When I applied the stick, x5 tried to wipe that too... I fooled it; I had a spare backup, albeit a few days old. (It turns out to be a feature of x5's paranoid defences against piracy.) I finally got the system working... I think.

So four days off-line... hence the first part my apology. I'm about to upload my new material, hence the second part of my apology, that I'm so shaky with this programme now that I think there's a risk that I'll corrupt the whole domain - although apologising's a bit of a waste of time, since if the domain's corrupted, you won't be able to read it!

It's been particularly annoying, since it's been a week I particularly wanted to comment on... not least the pathetic advertisement for a mature democracy offered by (especially) the Labour party at the Crewe by-election... Still, all being well, I'll be entertaining you here as normally from now on...

Computer crash failure incomedia website x5

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