Category Archives: current affairs

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?

current affairs

Public Service vs Private Business

Trying to run a public service like a business will never work
A public service is an inherently different beast from a business and asking one to behave as the other is like asking a fish to ride a bicycle
So says Kerry-anne Mendoza in short, but spot-on, analysis in yesterday’s Guardian.
This is why our public services — NHS, railways, utilities etc. — are in a mess. They need to be run a services not as profit generation for shareholders.
Politicians, please note and action!

current affairs, freedom of speech

Surveillance Powers

Yesterday’s Guardian carried an interesting and coherent dismantling of why the authorities need more surveillance powers in the wake of the Paris attacks. The writer, Henry Porter, argues that more surveillance powers undermine our liberty and openness in just the same way that the terrorists are trying to.

current affairs, ramblings

2015 Predictions

I thought I’d give my crystal ball a dust off and see if I could come up with a few ideas as to what might happen over the course of this brand new 2015.
What follows is the best I can interpret from the misty images I saw in the aforesaid crystal ball. They are just my ideas of what might happen based solely on hunches and gut feel; I have no inside knowledge and I haven’t been studying the form — so if you base any decision on any of this I will take no responsibility for your idiocy.
Anyway, here are my thoughts on what might transpire this year:
UK

  1. Labour win the General Election — although probably not with an overall majority; they form a government in coalition with the LibDems
  2. As a result of the new government the unions start demanding, and getting, inflation busting wage rises
  3. Theresa May beats off a challenge from Boris Johnson to become leader of the Conservative Party
  4. There is no change in UK interest rates
  5. A major household name (possibly a high street store) calls in the receivers
  6. At least one UK holiday tour operator goes under stranding several hundred holiday-makers abroad
  7. Against expectations UK inflation will be around 4% driven by higher wage settlements and spending by the new government
  8. On 31 December FTSE will close down 10% compared with 1 January
  9. UK will see at least one major plane crash and one major train crash
  10. Duke of Edinburgh dies and is given a state funeral
  11. Queen Elizabeth II becomes Britain’s longest reigning monarch
  12. The UK has a warm winter and a cold wet summer

Overseas

  1. Violence in South Africa between black tribes threatens to turn into civil war and causes a white exodus
  2. Death of President Mugabe of Zimbabwe is followed by further civil war
  3. Major epidemic will affect the developed world — could be Ebola or flu or MERS or something entirely new
  4. Australia will experience an earthquake of at least magnitude 7
  5. The Pope will issue a revolutionary encyclical, possibly on birth control, divorce or the celibate priesthood
  6. A number of international sporting bodies are proven to be driven by massive bribery and fraud
  7. The Islamic world continues to descend into total meltdown with more factional fighting, civil war and coups d’état; the exceptions are Saudi Arabia and UAE which remain relatively stable due to their oil wealth
  8. Russia continues to be belligerent over Ukraine and only their economic woes will prevent World War 3
  9. Brussels finally gets fed up with the UK’s posturing and formally asks us to leave the EU
  10. A major airline goes into liquidation

Personal

  1. I finally have to be put on insulin to control my diabetes
  2. We lose the venerable Harry the Cat (well he is over 17) but he is replaced by two kittens

It will certainly be interesting to see what really does occur. I’d be tempted to put money on none of this happening.
Do you have any good predictions for the year ahead?

current affairs, ramblings

Criminalising Behaviour

2 Comments

A couple of weeks back, on 6 November, Simon Jenkins launched a stinging attack in the Guardian on the government’s propensity to criminalise various behaviours. His full article “Our addiction to criminalising human behaviour makes a mockery of private responsibility” is worth reading, but here are a few key extracts.

If poisoning your foetus with alcohol is a crime, why is it not a crime to abort it? If alcoholism in pregnancy is “attempted manslaughter”, as a QC told the court of appeal … surely abortion is murder.

We need a philosopher — as Raymond Chandler would say — and we need one fast.

The advance of criminal law into these recesses of private morality is ominous.

Now we have the proposed crime of “emotional violence” – including “reducing self-esteem” by calling someone fat – showing there is no limit to the law’s ambition. To be against jailing people for such offences is not to condone what they do, merely to apply some sense of proportion.

Oxford’s Jonathan Glover sought to apply moral precepts to everyday life in his excellent book, Causing Death and Saving Lives. He quoted from Karamazov the brother’s euphoric cry that “everyone is responsible for everyone else and in every way”. It was, he said, heavy with “nightmare implication”.
[…]
Such paternalism – or perhaps control freakery – led the last Labour government to create 4,300 new offences through 50 criminal justice acts. It led Tony Blair to justify war against one state after another, for its own good.
[…]
Glover asked only that we “work out what things are most important and then try to see where we ourselves have a contribution to make” … There must be some room left for private responsibility.

Indeed there must be some room — I would say a lot of room — for personal responsibility. We are too good at insisting that someone — anyone — is to blame except us. It is never our fault or our responsibility.
This has to stop. We have to start taking responsibility for our own actions. Just as we cannot be responsible for other people’s emotional reactions, we cannot expect them to be responsible for things which are down to us to attend to.
Guys & gals … We have to grow up and take responsibility for ourselves, and tell our politicians to get out the way.

current affairs

Long Arm of the Law

The long arm of the law is getting longer and needs to be amputated!
It has been widely reported in the last couple of days (see, inter alia, here and here) that the Government wants to abolish Police cautions and instead allow the Police to fine people directly for most minor offences.
Like many others I see this summary justice as an erosion of our liberties and another move towards a police state.
Just because, according to the Police Inspectorate, around a third of cautions are issued incorrectly doesn’t mean they should be replaced with a more draconian measure. If anything it suggests the scheme doesn’t work and should be abolished. Yes, I dislike the notion of Police cautions as a piece of instant justice as much as I do summary fines.
A Police caution still gives the offender a criminal record. However the person concerned has had no opportunity to have their side of the case properly heard, in court, as the Police are acting as prosecutor and either magistrate or judge and jury. This to me is an infringement of the justice system which is based on the principle that everyone has the right to be heard in court by their peers (either in the persons of magistrates or a jury).
And allowing the Police even greater powers to fine offenders makes that far far worse.
We know why the government want to do it. They see Police cautions as a “soft option”, which it isn’t as it gives the offender a criminal record. Moreover it will probably save money which would otherwise have to be spent on the magistrates’ courts (already severely cut back) and will likely bring in extra revenue — in the way speed cameras and parking wardens have done.
But it means that many people will accept the caution or fine — often when they shouldn’t — because they don’t want to have to go to court for whatever reason; possibly because the Police have used scare tactics on them.
Out of court disposals (by which I understand cautions and the proposed fines) are incredibly problematic in terms of giving someone a criminal record without any form of legal procedure or check and balance. Both summary fines and cautions should, in my mind, be abolished: either the offence is serious enough to put the suspect before a magistrate or it isn’t.
Instant justice like this cannot be a good thing in a democratic, supposedly free, country. It all smacks too much of the Police state!

current affairs, words

"Cleansing the stock" and Other Euphemisms

While we’re on about politicians, George Monbiot had another side-swipe on Tuesday 21 October in his Guardian column: ‘Cleansing the stock’ and other ways governments talk about human beings.
Basically he’s on about the euphemisms that politicians, governments, and indeed companies, use to disguise — from themselves and (they think) us — the horrors of what they get up to. For example:

The [Dept of Work & Pensions can talk of] using “credit reference agency data to cleanse the stock of fraud and error”

Hills, forests and rivers are described … as “green infrastructure”

Wildlife and habitats are “asset classes” in an “ecosystems market”.

Israeli military commanders described the massacre of 2,100 Palestinians … in Gaza this summer as “mowing the lawn”.

People, aka. human beings, can be referred to as “personnel targets”. And then there are the old favourites: “neutralising”, collateral damage” and “extraordinary rendition”.
Dictatorships, and those wishing to conceal what they’re up to have always spoken thus: for example look at Communist Russia and Communist China.
Gawdelpus!

current affairs

Ebola Panic

This article from Simon Jenkins in the Guardian on 17 October takes a swipe at politicians’ panic over Ebola — a classic case of the politics of fear.
But in amongst it all he has another couple of telling comments.

… air travel which, in the digital age, is almost all non-essential …

Ah, someone else has woken up to this! It’s time business and politicians did too and realised they can operate just as efficiently and more productively using electronic communication, teleconferences etc. and not flying people around the world. Hey look! Even Joe Public uses Skype!
Oh and no, holidays in the Maldives, Morocco or Thailand are NOT essential either!

The political scientist Louise Richardson wrote in “What Terrorists Want” that it is precisely what western politicians seem happiest to give them: they want to make us fear them. “By declaring war on terror,” she says, “far from denying al-Qaida its objectives we are conceding its objectives. That is why a war on terror can never be won.” It is a terminological admission of defeat.

Yes! Something else I keep saying. Stop giving the “terrorists” the oxygen of publicity. Stop splashing every threat, murder, bombing all over the front pages f every newspaper and news bulletin. All you’re doing is giving them publicity, which is precisely what they need.
No, I’m not saying shut our eyes to what they’re doing and/or don’t report it. Just make it low key, as in “In other news …”.
And finally …

A democracy must know what it should fear … [but] … Freedom from fear is a human right. We pay politicians to guard us from terror by not terrifying us.

Jenkins’s article is worth a read.