Category Archives: current affairs

amusements, current affairs

Oddity of the Week

Pope Francis is currently visiting Cuba and the USA. The followning was reported at the end of August by the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post and summarised by the Weird Universe blog:

Muslim clerics complain of the commercialization of the holy city of Mecca during the annual Hajj pilgrimages, but for Pope Francis’s visits to New York, Washington, DC, and Philadelphia in mid-September, shameless street vendors and entrepreneurs already appear to be eclipsing Mecca’s experience. Merchants said they’d be selling, among other tacky items, mozzarella cheese statuettes of the Pope ($20), a Pope Toaster to burnish Francis’s image on bread, a Philly-themed bobblehead associating the Pope with the boxer “Rocky”, local beers Papal Pleasure and YOPO (You Only Pope Once), and T-shirts (“Yo Pontiff!” and “The Pope Is My Homeboy”). The Wall Street Journal quoted a Philadelphia archdiocese spokesman admitting that “you kind of have to take it in stride”.

current affairs, freedom of speech, ramblings

So It's Two Fingers to You …

They just do not get it, do they!
According to today’s news feeds (for example here from the BBC) Rebekah Brooks is to return as chief executive of Rupert Murdoch’s UK newspaper operations.
This is the woman who was acquitted (yes, OK, she was found not guilty) of phone hacking last year, having not known, or forgotten, large chucks of what was happening in her empire over a period of something like 10 years. Others were allowed to take the fall.
OK, I accept it is Murdoch’s right to appoint anyone he likes to his organisation (providing they fulfil the legal niceties). As Evan Harris of Hacked Off has observed (quoted in the Guardian a few days ago)

Mrs Brooks’s successful defence at trial was that she was such an incompetent executive that she was unaware of industrial-scale criminal wrongdoing in intercepting voicemails and bribing public officials, and unaware of the vast conspiracy to cover it up, despite her admitting to destroying millions of emails and putting the company’s reputation before cooperation with the police.

This doesn’t seem to be a very encouraging sign in one expected to lead an organisation — any organisation.
Moreover to me this also says much about the Murdoch empire’s total disregard for ethics and morality. As the shadow Culture Secretary and others have said (also in the Guardian) it sends a massive two fingers to the British public and, I suggest, a high-five to the wealthy and influential who seem to be able to can get away with almost anything they like.
However legal it is, they basically just do not seem to get how cynical this is.

current affairs, ramblings

The (Plastic) Pound in Your Pocket

The Bank of England is introducing plastic money. Specifically polymer banknotes. They start in the autumn of next year with a new £5 note, followed by a new £10 note in 2017. And, it has been announced today, a new £20 in 2020. Which will leave only the £50 note made from paper.


But why, oh why, does this take so long? The Bank essentially know the designs, the technology and the security features. So why is it not possible to have the new £10 and £20 notes next year along with the £5 note? Why does it take 5 years to create the new £20 note. This isn’t building a space shuttle; it’s essentially printing pieces of paper, albeit with some devilishly clever technology embedded.
I have never understood why it takes any public enterprise — central government, local government, Bank of England, the NHS; the list is endless — so long to accomplish anything. They’d never survive in a competitive marketplace.
Gawdelpus!

current affairs, environment

A Right Bag of Cornflakes

Oh dear, dear.
From 5 October retailers in England are required by law to charge 5p each for single use plastic carrier bag. Except when they don’t.
It’s all well and good, and very laudable, in theory. But as with all legislation the devil is in the detail.


And oh dear me! As the Independent on Sunday pointed out yesterday, the system is a mess and is bound to lead to a whole raft of arguments with supermarket cashiers who are going to be at the sharp end of implementing the scheme. I can already picture the low-life having fisticuffs round the checkouts in Asda and Tesco.
Just take two minutes to read the article. Think about some of the implications and it’ll soon become apparent that this isn’t as clear-cut and easy as it needs to be.
If you want more you can always read the Government’s guidance.
What a mess!

current affairs

Greece without a Paddle

Greece has been shafted. Whatever the outcome of the farce unravelling in Brussels, the Greeks are stuffed, like so many dolmades. Austerity upon austerity and a collapsing economy if they agree to another bailout. Total chaos, a collapsed economy and international ruin if they don’t get a bailout and leave the Eurozone (even if only temporarily).
If you want to understand more about the international machinations which have brought this about then read this by George Monbiot for the Guardian last Tuesday, and this by Heather Stewart in yesterday’s Guardian. Do go and read them.
I’m not going to try to summarise them articles here except to say that international debt is out of control and pretty much every country in which the IMF has intervened has been largely destroyed.
Gawdelpus!

beliefs, current affairs, personal

Non, Papa Francesco!

A few weeks ago, Pope Francis stated as his opinion that couples who choose not to have children were selfish.

A society with a greedy generation, that doesn’t want to surround itself with children, that considers them above all worrisome, a weight, a risk, is a depressed society. The choice to not have children is selfish. Life rejuvenates and acquires energy when it multiplies: It is enriched, not impoverished.
[Guardian; 11 February 2015]

No. Absolutely not. I cannot agree. In fact the opposite is true: couples who have children are the selfish ones.
Even leaving aside the cost of raising children, they are an environmental disaster. Right from the off parents have to provide nappies, where the choice is between two very un-green options: washable cotton terry towelling or disposables. Noreen looked at this from a professional standpoint and came to the conclusion there was little to choose, environmentally, between the options.
And from then on there is an ever increasing requirement for clothing, food, warmth, entertainment, schooling and all manner of other plastic toot. Very little of which is at all environmentally friendly.
Children are really not very green.
Which, I’m sorry to say, seems to mean that couples who have children do so essentially for their own gratification. What is that if it isn’t selfish? Especially on a planet which is already over-populated.
Noreen and I made a deliberate decision, some 30 years ago, not to have children. We were neither of us sure we wanted children and we both had (some approximation to) a career: me earning money and Noreen in a relatively poorly paid public service job giving back to the community.
In making the decision we committed to be there for our friends; their children; their grand-children; and even their parents. Why? Because at some time everyone is going to need some support.
However good a parent — and most parents do a fantastic job — they can never provide everything a child needs. There will always come a time when there will be something a child will not wish to discuss with their parents, but for which they might value unbiased support: boy/girl-friend problems; job worries; study concerns; money worries; having done something stupid and needing bailing out of the police station; or just needing a bed for the night. And adults can need these things too, of course.
Over the years we have been rung at 3AM by a friend wanting support because they’re in court the following day. We’ve helped friends through divorce. We’ve provided a contact point for the teenage daughters of American friends travelling alone through London. We’ve talked to teenagers about study options and going to university. We’ve connected parts of both our families back together. And so on …
How is this selfish?
OK, so from a biological point of view we aren’t propagating our genes. So what? Does it matter? If it doesn’t matter to us, then it matters not at all. And it is no-one else’s concern. But yes, we are lucky to have had the choice.
We’ve given up the option of passing on our genes and increasing the population in favour of helping other people who are already here, and most of whom are completely unrelated.
None of that sounds selfish to me — precisely the opposite.
So, no, Papa Francesco, on this you aren’t even wrong.

current affairs

Arrggghhhh!!! Politicians!

There’s a scathing article, by Zoe Williams, about Education Secretary Nicky Morgan in yesterday’s Guardian. Just the opening paragraphs are enough …

In waging a war on illiteracy and innumeracy, Nicky Morgan has fallen for a fascinating delusion: “war” as a metaphor for determined, effective action. In real life war is slow and incredibly destructive; and by the time it is over, nobody can even remember what the objective was.
The education secretary’s bellicose mood takes practical shape with this suggestion: any English primary school that can’t drill times tables into every pupil by the age of 11 will be taken over by new management. Since there will always, in every school, be one kid who can’t manage it, the next government will, some time in 2017, be looking for 17,000 new headteachers.

Never say “never”, “every” or “always” for they will always come back and bite you!

current affairs, freedom of speech

Encrypted Bollox

So David Cameron wants government agencies to have access to all forms of communication and be able to access every form of encryption does he?
Or at least he thinks he does, but he has no clue what he is actually asking for.
The consequences of such a policy being enforced are so very clearly laid out by Charlie Stross in a post titled Cloud Cuckoo Politics.
Samuel Gibbs and Alex Hern in the Guardian are of the same opinion.
These two articles are worth reading. But in a nutshell if this were enacted then it would cripple all electronic communication — and that means all commerce including the government’s ability to collect taxes. It may even shut down the internet completely in the UK.


As Charlie says, this is beyond bonkers. On the other hand why are we surprised? Cameron knows nothing about technology and moreover is an “executive manager”. And we all know that as soon as anyone is made a manager they have their brains removed and forget what it’s like to do the job on the shop floor. Moreover we all also know that no manager ever understood anything technical, even if they were once a technician. Add to that the general ineptitude which seems to accompany all public service and you’ll see why the whole of government etc. is mindlessly inefficient and its leadership dangerous.
Cameron is living in cloud cuckoo land and there is probably little hope for him. But let’s just pray someone can reconstruct his brain before it is too late for the rest of us.
Gawdelpus.
Hat tip Chris Comley for the link to Charlie Stross’s post.

current affairs

Compulsory Voting?

Today Labour backbencher David Winnick (MP for Walsall) is introducing a ten-minute rule bill to parliament aimed at making voting a “civic duty” in an attempt to get more voters to turn out at election time.
Currently the UK has an awful record on electoral turnout. According to a recent BBC News article, At the last General Election in 2010 only 65% of those registered bothered to vote — that’s a massive 16 million who didn’t vote. Add to that the estimate that around 7.5 million who are eligible to vote don’t bother to register (although repeat “offenders” can mow be fined) and we have around half the country who aren’t expressing their opinion (even if that is “none of the above”).
And that’s for a General Election. Local government elections often have turnouts of no more than 25%, yet people continue to complain about their local services.
And the figures are even worse amongst the younger generation with only 44% of 18-24 year-olds voting in 2010.


One suggestion is that voting should be made compulsory, as it is in Australia where there is always around a 98% turnout. This is an idea I like and one of the few places where I would be prescriptive in telling people what to do! After all the state already makes us do other, often more onerous, things (eg. jury service) as a civic duty so it isn’t as if there is no precedent.
However for me compulsory voting would only truly work if every ballot paper had a “None of the above” option at the bottom thus allowing a positive abstention to be counted (although one always has the option to spoil ones voting paper). If nothing else the level of positive abstentions would be enlightening. One could even look at a system where if the rate of positive abstentions is too high (maybe over 25% of votes cast?) then the vote in that constituency is declared null and void and has to be re-run. That could concentrate the minds of not just a few politicians but also the electorate who would have to do their civic duty again, and again, and again … while paying the cost through their taxes!
Somehow we have to energise the great British electorate into being rather less apathetic. But then some integrity and common sense from the elected politicians would be a good start!
Thoughts anyone?