Category Archives: current affairs

beliefs, current affairs, freedom of speech, medical, science

Circumcision and Morality

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Two pieces I picked up from this week’s New Scientist. First a report of moves to “encourage” male circumcision:

New York is […] considering whether promoting circumcision among the city’s men might help limit the spread of HIV there. The procedure has worked wonders in Africa, cutting the infection rate by 60 per cent in circumcised Ugandans, Kenyans and South Africans compared with their intact compatriots. On 28 March, the World Health Organization and UNAIDS endorsed it as a means of reducing HIV spread.
So far […] the procedure has only been shown to work in Africa and in men who only have sex with women. So could a similar strategy work in New York, where sex between men and infection through intravenous drug use are more prevalent?

As this quote implies male circumcision isn’t just actively under consideration in NY but also in the whole of Africa. And now to female circumcision:

The painful and dangerous practice of female circumcision has been outlawed in […]Eritrea, where around 94 per cent of women are circumcised […] anyone who requests, incites or promotes female genital mutilation [will] be punished with a fine and imprisonment.

I appreciate that there is a difference of scale between male and female circumcision, but it seems to me there is a disconnect here. How can it be immoral to (seek to) mutilate female genitalia but yet moral to (seek to) mutilate the male penis?

Yes, OK, male circumcision may reduce the incidence of HIV amongst a defined section of the population: males who have sex with females without condoms. But it worries me that there is clearly going to be (political, medical and peer) pressure applied to men to get circumcised, and on parents to have baby boys circumcised. Worse I can see circumcision of male babies becoming an unquestioned part of perinatal care with parents not even being asked if they consent. And for adult men (at least in Africa) I can foresee the scenario there was in India some years ago where men were effectively bribed to have vasectomies. If I choose circumcision of my own free will, then fine. But how dare the medical profession, let alone politicians, decree that I must (or even should)? And how dare parents inflict it on a baby? If the same situation was being applied to women there would be the most almighty outcry — and rightly.

Let’s stand by our human rights and be very clear that all body mutilation (whether medically induced or not) which is not chosen of the subject’s own free will is immoral and (probably) illegal under international law.

When will politicians and the medical profession learn?

(Oh and by the way, no I’m not circumcised and I’m very glad my parents didn’t inflict it on me.)

current affairs, science, thoughts

10 Things We Didn't Know Last Week

Every week the BBC News website posts an item called 10 things we didn’t know last week. I just happened to look at this week’s and was struck by some of the oddities therein …

1. The UK’s national time signal is accurate to within 1,000th of a second of Coordinated Universal Time.
2. Drinking, drug-taking teenagers are in the decline in England, according to a survey by the Information Centre.
3. The average water temperature of the UK’s rivers and lakes is 5C in winter, 18C in summer.
4. Eight of the 10 most crowded train journeys in the UK are outside London. [That did surprise me when I saw it earlier in the week; but then note they are measuring overground trains, not the London Underground.]
5. The average duvet is home to 20,000 live dust mites. [I’m surprised that’s all; I would have expected the number to be 100 times bigger!]
6. Designer discount retailer TK Maxx is called TJ Maxx in the US. [Try to understand the importance of this.]
7. Having a baby can cost you up to two months sleep in the first year. [I would have thought that continues for something like 20 years, doesn’t it? Though never having been selfish enough to have children I wouldn’t know.]
8. Chimps and bonobos differ from humans by only 1% of DNA and could accept a blood transfusion or a kidney. [I knew the 1% difference in DNA, but hadn’t realised the implications for transplants. But why a chimp would want a human kidney baffles me.]
9. Britain’s peat bogs store carbon that is equivalent to 20 years’ worth of national industrial emissions.
10. Dogs can seemingly perform the Heimlich manoeuvre (a technique for helping someone who is choking). [I have this bizarre picture of a coiffed miniature poodle trying to do the HM on an 18 stone rugby player!]

current affairs, freedom of speech, thoughts

Child fingerprint plan considered

According to a report on BBC News website this evening:

Biometric ID cards will include fingerprints, plus eye or facial scans. Proposals to fingerprint children aged 11 to 15 as part of new passport and ID card plans are being considered.
…
Under existing plans every passport applicant over 16 will have details – including fingerprints – added to a National Identity register from 2008. But there was concern youngsters could use passports without biometric details up to the age of 20 … This could happen if they are issued a child passport between the ages of 11 and 15, which would be valid for five years.

The challenge that officials have been asked to find an answer to, is how do you make sure that people who are 16 and over have got biometric details recorded in their passports.

Shadow home secretary David Davis said the proposal “borders on the sinister” and added it showed the government was trying to end the presumption of innocence. “This government is clearly determined to enforce major changes in the relationship between the citizen and the state in a way never seen before.”
…
Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman Nick Clegg said “It is a measure of ministerial arrogance that plans are being laid to fingerprint children as young as 11 without having a public debate first.
…
Campaigners have long battled fingerprinting of children in schools, a practice they estimate happens in about 3,500 establishments. From this month guidelines from privacy watchdog the Information Commissioner will urge schools to get parental consent before taking biometric data. But under the Data Protection Act schools do not have to seek parental consent, and calls to outlaw the controversial practice have been rejected by the government.

I can choose not to have a passport (for instance) and thus not have my biometric data recorded. A child under 16 cannot by make such a decision as, by law, they are a minor and thus they cannot give their consent. Surely no-one should be fingerprinted, or have any other biometric (including DNA) information taken without their explicit consent.

Yet again this government seems to be ignoring both existing, long-established, English law and our civil liberties on the spurious premise that it will help in the “war against terrorism”. We need to resist this at every turn.

current affairs, food+drink, thoughts

Brain Abdication

Oh dear. I saw an item on yesterday’s Breakfast (BBC1 TV) about food labelling which contained the usual snippets of vox pop. One female delivered herself of the opinion

It’s the government’s responsibility that we know exactly what we’re eating.

Spherical things that come in pairs! If she is bright enough to understand the words government and responsibility, how is it she cannot see that what she eats is absolutely zilch to do with the government and everything to do with her. Isn’t it our own responsibility to know what we’re eating? And if we think we don’t like it (for whatever reason: taste, look, hygiene, pesticides etc. etc.) then don’t eat it. Or does this female believe that the government should tell her when to change her socks and knickers?

This is more than just idle non-thinking, this is willful abdication of brain-power and is tantamount to criminal stupidity. It should certainly be classed as using the brain without due care and attention — £200 fine and 3 points on the licence; after 12 points they shoot you. On this showing it would do wonders for world over-population. 🙂

Why is Britain in the state it is, with a government who do whatever they like and no-one much apparently noticing? Because the great British public can’t be assed to think! I somehow doubt you’d catch Joe Public in any of our European neighbours caring so little. But then they do say

  • 5% of people can think and do
  • 5% of people cannot think
  • the other 90% of people can think and don’t

And doesn’t it just show! Is there any hope for us? Or is it my job to turn the light out?

current affairs, thoughts

Here we go again …

BBC News has today published an item under the title Nuclear review ‘was misleading’ . Here are a couple of quotes from the opening paragraphs:

A High Court judge has ordered a rethink of the government’s nuclear power plans, after a legal challenge …

[The] judge ruled that the consultation process before the decision last year had been “misleading”, “seriously flawed” and “procedurally unfair”.

Tony Blair said while the ruling would change the consultation process, “this won’t affect the policy at all”.

Has Blair totally lost it (did he ever have it?) or is he just a dictator? If the policy isn’t open to being changed, just what is the point of having a consultation? I give up, I really do. This guy has absolutely no clue! Please will someone teach the guy what democracy is about?

It seems to me Blair’s only saving grace is that he can’t be as bad as his apparent successor (Gordon Brown) will be. And that is so scary I think I want to go and hide.

amusements, beliefs, current affairs, science

Worst Inventions

According to BBC Focus magazine the 10 most loathed inventions of all time are (in reverse order):

10. Religion
9. Speed cameras
8. Fast food
7. Television
6. Cigarettes
5. The car
4. Sinclair C5
3. Nuclear power
2. Mobile phones
1. Weapons

Do not ask how they arrive at this conclusion. I can see why most of these things get on the list, even if I personally wouldn’t have nominated them. However I wouldn’t even have thought to mention the Sinclair C5, it was so pathetically a no-hoper, let alone put it in the top ten most loathed. I’d far rather see things like politics, the aeroplane, the iPod, non-essential plastic surgery and fireworks on the list. But what do I know: I’m an educated thinker!? 🙁

books, current affairs, thoughts

British Library to Start Charging Researchers

Apparently the UK government is proposing to reduce the British Library’s funding and force it to start charging researchers for use of its resources. This will have a major impact on all researchers, both independent and academic. It is also illogical as the government has insisted that access to the national museums is free, and that they provide research facilities free of charge. How then can they insist that the BL — perhaps the country’s most prestigious museum resource (its objects just happen to be books and not “stuff”) — charge for its services. This is crazy!

A petition to the Prime Minister has been set up; you can sign it electronically here: . I urge you to do so! You have to be a UK citizen to sign.

current affairs

The Zen Way of Playing Rugby

I’m currently struggling through a nasty gastric flu bug, which meant yesterday I had time to lie in bed and watch the Six Nations Rugby Union Internationals on TV. And I realised a strange thing about modern rugby: it’s the only game I know where the referee spends the whole match telling the players how to play the game while play is in progress. In all other sports I can think of the players are assumed to know how to play the game and the referee penalises them when they transgress. In rugby the referee tells the players what to do then penalises them if they ignore him. Listening to the referee’s radio mic there is a continual chat of things like: “[ref waving arm] Offside line. Eight white your feet are behind it … [blast on whistle] … Penalty blue. Eight white, offside.” The forwards even have to be told every time how to scrummage: “Crouch … Touch … Hold … Engage”, or form a line-out: “Lads I want one metre between the lines. Three blue, that’s one meter not half a meter.”

Its a good thing rugby is a relatively slow and even-paced game of set-piece plays, little heaps of big men fighting for the ball, someone kicking the ball and occasionally a bit of open running. Can you imaging how interesting it would be for cricket umpires to run their game the same way as a rugby referee? Or the confusion that would ensue if the zebras tried telling American Football players how to play while play was in progress?

current affairs

Senior Bosses Want to Sack 5% of Employees

BBC News reports that according to a recent survey almost a half of UK senior bosses would like to sack 5% of their employees to improve competitiveness and efficiency. The report makes this sound like the old Roman Legion’s trick of decimation: eliminate one in ten to encourage the others. However 75% of bosses said they wouldn’t bring in such a policy because they are afraid of creating a “climate of fear”.

Well I hate to tell them something … there already is a climate of fear, because this is exactly what many employees think their employers do actually do.

Indeed I have heard HR people openly and seriously saying that they give managers an annual target of having 5-10% of employees in the lowest “unsatisfactory” level of annual appraisal. Such a rating leads to a programme of “corrective action” which if performance doesn’t improve results in dismissal. If these people are not replaced (which generally they aren’t: “they weren’t doing anything useful so we can live without them”) then this automatically raises the performance bar for everyone next year when the manager has to find another 5-10% of unsatisfactory employees.

Hands up all those who think their employer doesn’t do this? …

Yes, I thought so. Now, senior managers, why is morale amongst your staff so low?