28/02/2006
If only more schools would do this
"School
gives pupils contraception" (BBC News)
Basically, a community college in Devon has decided to give out condoms
and/or the Pill and/or STI testing to kids who've been through a full
sex-education programme run by family planning GPs. This is a fantastic
idea - it gives out the 'if you're going to screw, and we know you're
going to, you might as well do it safely' message in a way that
increases the amount of qualified support that kids are going to get -
plus, it's from actual trained GPs instead of little trained PE
teachers, as it was in my case.
So unsurprisingly, as it is with all sex ed matters, some people are
being moronic about it. Parents were apparently consulted beforehand
and, of course, can opt their kids out (grr), but of course they don't
want those other kids learning about it either, and what's more
they don't like the fact that the GPs give confidentiality and so won't
know that their kid's trying not to get pregnant. I particularly like
this comment:
"Campaign organiser and father-of-eight Neville Wheelan, who
would be affected if the scheme was extended to other schools, said the
rights of parents and families were being undermined."
As a "father-of-eight", of course, he obviously doesn't believe in
contraception (I wonder if his wife does). Funnily, he doesn't even seem
to be from the area, which I thought would have been a
prerequisite in order to get your views heard by the local media.
"He said: 'The consequences, psychological and physical damage
that can be done is something that children should not be exposed to.'"
Funny, I would say exactly the same thing about having a kid -
the point of sex ed is so that we avoid said damage (having a
baby at 14 will ruin your life forever, getting chlyamidia off
your boyfriend will really fuck you up, that sort of thing.) But
there you go, you just can't please some people.
|
02/02/2006
Scumbags united
"I hate Illinois Nazis!"
[Jake Blues, "The Blues Brothers" (1980).]
Following that line, the Blues Brothers drive their car directly through
a crowd of heiling Nazis, scattering them into the river, completely
destroying their master-race image and making them look as ridiculous as
they really, underneath the swastikas, are.
Sadly, a
similar fate did not befall Nick Griffin today, and it's a shame.
This, not jail, is what he and his crowd of tinpot hatemongers really
deserve - full, humiliating, public embarassment.
It's interesting to contrast this with the current furore over the
Prophet Muhammed cartoons - made by a Danish newspaper specifically to
piss people off in about September last year, riled up by a few Internet
tossers as a 'freedom of speech against those Ay-rabs' issue, now so
successful in doing so it's destabilising the European role in the
Israel/Palestine peace process. Both the cartoons and Griffin's BNP are
at the harsh edges of freedom of speech - they may cause great, great
harm by being there.
As a small-l liberal, I have to consider freedom of speech to be one of
the values I hold most dear. People like the BNP do not make this easy.
I note, with some irony, that they don't want us to have our
freedom of speech - they're
involved in the current will-not-die iteration of the Jerry Springer:
The Opera saga. At the same time, I have to concede that while
Muslims do have genuine grievances over the cartoons - the one with the
turban bomb is truly appalling racism - their leaders really shouldn't
be trying to make it a nuclear issue; although the normal boycotts,
complaints, protests etc are absolutely fine if done in a legal and
proper way. It's not like Jerry, where the complaints were
unjustified and the protesters scummy - this is a much more even affair.
Anyway, on the Mohammed cartoon stuff, Bloggerheads
and Chicken
Yoghurt are both very good. Oh, and considering that Mark
Collett - Griffin's co-defendant - has admitted being involved with
Redwatch, the British Nazi version of a animal-rights/anti-abortion
style 'post the addresses and knock them off' hitlist (in both Secret
Agent and, istr, in the 2002-ish 'Young, Nazi and Proud' Channel
Four film) shouldn't he be in jail instead of praising himself as a
"victor" for "freedom of speech"? Only in a just world, I think.
|
22/01/2006
Long time, no see
Just haven't been blogging all that much lately, or seen the need to
blog. But now I'm back in business, at least in a part-time sort of way.
So, how has life gone since I went away?
-
Movies: There are a few movie-watching controversies right now
that I'm going to have to give my position on: I'm pro-King Kong (I
even liked the first section) and pro-Jarhead. Didn't much take
to Narnia (the use of the "something's bad there... wait, no,
it's good" cliché over and over again really didn't appeal to my sense
of true movie-making, or to even the book, although I accept that they
did a pretty good job with what material they had). Missed The
Producers due to not being anywhere near a decent cinema over
Christmas and so will have to wait for a video rental. Saw Bittersweet
Life at EIFF last year; if you're anywhere near a cinema showing
it, please do, it's no Oldboy but it's still a worthwhile
watch. March of the Penguins is out on Region 1, so anyone who
wants to see it can. Must see Cock and Bull Story, which for
some reason is only at the Cameo (Cineworld are still showing Cheaper
by the Dozen 2, however.) I have no position on Brokeback
Mountain, because I haven't seen it.
-
Music: I've been listening to a lot of Kraftwerk lately, having
got the Minimum-Maximum DVD (lovely DTS track, by the way) and
an epiphany came to me: Electric Café isn't actually all
that bad, is it? Sure, it's no Man-Machine, but it's got a sort
of rhythmic undertone that propels the whole thing along in a very
listenable, almost dancey way; and "The Telephone Call" is
eight minutes of phone-sampling techno brilliance. Anyway, besides The
Mix it looks like an absolute masterpiece.
-
Blogging: I really need to get a better blogging system, but I
don't want to pay. Decisions, decisions...
-
Politics: This
is really depressing. As is George Galloway going on Celebrity
Big Brother. What the hell was he thinking? Obviously not about
his constituents...
So far, the best musical thing to happen this year should hopefully be
Shayne Ward getting kicked off the #1 position; which will probably
happen this week (to the Arctic Monkeys, dear God), at least according
to Popbitch. Else, I'm looking forward to the Belle and Sebastian album.
|
17/11/2005
Consensus politics in action
The new, more open, "Have
Your Say" format on the BBC News website has turned into a
cesspool of idiots spouting received opinions, despite most discussions
supposedly being fully moderated. It's not quite unreadably crazy yet, but
it's getting there.
What's depressing is the kind of comments people are voting for - the
format provides a comments rating system that appears to be used by
people to bolster each other's stupid bollocks. The first sensible
comment out of all the highest ranked on this
bullying discussion is on page 3 - Mark Fairman pointing out that
bullying was in fact an accepted part of school life in the 1960s and
70s, from teacher down (see: Kes, Scum, Richard Branson's
and John Peel's autobiographies, your parent's recollections, much
of this b3ta discussion etc) and things are in fact getting better
in that bullying is now recognised as a problem. Of course, the kids are
still screwed anyway. Most of the rest of it is "bring back corporal
punishment! bring back borstal! bring back h...old fashioned punishment!
political correctness gone mad! revoke the Human Rights Act!" - all
absolute crap, but sadly believed by many.
It is this kind of consensus-jumping which caused the "TRAITORS!" front
page on the Sun, and it has absolutely nothing to do with the
truth. I know full well how little schools actually care about bullying;
one of my brothers recently had to spend a long period out of school
after being near strangled by someone that "no-one saw" (in a crowded
corridor, uh-huh), and I had a truly horrendous time at that very same
high school. I was attacked in a corridor in between the two papers of
my Higher English examination; I'm still amazed that I managed to keep
enough control in order to pass the thing. I've always suspected that
some of the stuff done to my brothers, who are all very different
individuals to me, was entirely because I was related to them; shit
filters down. Can't prove it, but I know.
The fact remains, though, that quite a lot of it is a "Code
of the Schoolyard" situation; the kind of thing that the Simpsons
skewered so well back in 1990, and not anything to do with the school's
(lack of an) anti-bullying policy. If no-one will talk, like in the case
of that assault on my brother (and other such assaults on both me and my
other brothers), then no-one can be punished - even in the best case
scenario, it's he said he said, and in the worst case scenario, it's
he's had to go to hospital for two days and stay out of school for a
fortnight but he doesn't know who his attacker is and no-one else will
even dare say anything happened, and it's this more than anything else
that stops people from going to teachers in the first place. Crappy
enforcement of existing rules, and wholesale ignoring of anti-bullying
policies, is definitely a problem, but bullying is an odd issue; this
almost omertà-like
enforced silence is a symptom of the fear that bullies cause and
administer, and of entrenched societal attitudes that are not being
confronted often enough.
And as for societal attitude, look no further than this
Guardian Weekend article on homophobic bullying - the type of
bullying that earns you a "Get Out Of Trouble Free" card. As the guy
from Stonewall points out in the article, you don't even have to be gay
to suffer from homophobic bullying; you just have to not be within
someone's Straight Stereotype. And since schools still think they're
working on a Section 28 agenda, if you get bullied that way
you're probably doomed.
I wrote a TV script some years ago, in a bout of depression related to
rememberances of my high school years, called School's Out;
conceived as a series of satirical sketches about the education system,
it instead evolved during writing into an interlinked venomous rant,
occasionally taking setting ideas from things like the deep-fat-fryer
torture scene from Spooks, aimed at no-one and everyone in
particular (and, cheerfully, bookended with a teenager committing
suicide to a Mogwai song; I was listening to "Happy Songs For
Happy People" a lot at the time). It's way too raw to even consider
sending it anywhere, but possibly with some toning down and serious
restructuring/rewriting it might at least become readable. So that's my
new writing project - making a School's Out serious revision that
I feel secure enough, at least, to post on here.
Probably won't happen, but I can always hope...
|
10/11/2005
Traitors and treason
The Sun today is somewhat out of step with the other newspapers: calling
everyone who's against 90-day detention a 'traitor'
is a bit much, really. I thought that kind of inflammatory bollocks was
going to be too low for them - I was expecting it from the Express and
St*r, though - but you
never fail to be surprised.
[NOTE: Bloggerheads
explains link. Nudge nudge, wink wink.]
I was watching the debate, and one of the Tories (having finally found
their spine) catcalled Police State at Blair; his response,
"We're not living in a police state!", didn't exactly ring true, because
if the bill had passed we damn well would be. Even in the modified
version it's a bit much. Personally, I don't think anyone who supports a
fair justice system with as few opportunities for the police to get
trumped-up charges as possible is a traitor (not that our wonderful
police forces would ever ever beat a confession out of someone, of
course, especially not one of those Arab types), but that's just my
opinion.
Oh,
and that of quite a lot of MPs of course. Ian Paisley actually
voting against internment is hysterically funny, for some reason. All
the Lib Dems managed to get their policies in order. And at least George
Galloway managed to vote this time, which says... something.
Good comment at
Davblog: really rings true somehow... And as for treason: that stunt
Blair and Clarke pulled, withdrawing the bill and saying they're going
to "make concessions" and then bringing it back intact a week later and
saying "no, f you, three line whip" really does count as betraying
Labour MPs, doesn't it? It almost certainly contributed to it being as
big a loss as it was. Good lesson to Blair: don't screw your own party
over, or you'll live to regret it.
|
09/11/2005
Blair betting
entry posted by Inquisitor at 21:00
(permalink).
edited on: 09/11/2005 23:26.
categories: Politics
BBC News -
Blair defeated over terror laws
"...he insists his authority is intact."
So, assuming the Mandelson/Blunkett boilerplate is still intact, he'll
be gone by Friday evening then?
(EDIT: Redrafted for clarity.)
|
02/11/2005
How odd.
"Bad news buried",
claim Lib Dems.
Basically: Blunkett gets turfed, and at the same time a negative Home
Office-commissioned report on the way police answer phone calls turns up
early, under embargo for the morning papers - which will be all Blunkett
all the time, with a slight mention of how the Home Office just managed
to avoid getting whacked on the Terrorism Bill.
PR really is the art of slime, isn't it?
|
25/10/2005
There can only be one contender
...for International
Scumbag of the Year. There really is little other competition:
if there is a hell, Fred
Phelps deserves every last minute of it.
|
11/10/2005
Tory Ball!
So, now Malcolm
Rifkind's out the leadership race (going for Ken Clarke), it's time
to size up the contenders for leader of the Conservative party.
-
Ken Clarke - Pro-Europe, good, experienced, better, but that
whole BAT thing's a bit dodgy, isn't it?
-
David Cameron - an acceptable compromise candidate, if a bit
smarmy and completely inexperienced. So basically Blair 2, then.
-
David Davis - (tumbleweed blows)
-
Liam Fox - The
"Tombstone" group supports him. That pretty much says it
all, doesn't it... [More
fun on Cornerstone at the Virtual Stoa.]
Really, Labour aren't going to have any opposition for a long time,
more's the pity. Ken Clarke will get pureed over all his company
directorships - especially the BAT one - and for very good reasons too.
David Davis is boring. Liam Fox is boring, but in a scary way.
Cameron is completely inexperienced, but there's something there; the
best out the bunch, unfortunately, is Ken Clarke, who is at least a
decent Parliamentary entertainer. (If you wanted that, however,
you'd bring William Hague back.)
It'll be David Cameron, I think. So we can only hope that Gordon's
better than Tony...
|
11/08/2005
Ill-informed opinions + BBC Scotland = idiocy all round
There's been a peculiarly Scottish political controversy running for a
very long time about slopping-out in prisons - it's still happening up
here, despite the fact that the prison system in England and Wales
stopped it in 1994 as part of the Strangeways fallout. The
Scottish prison service, on the other hand, couldn't be arsed to fix the
problem, despite being warned that the European Convention on Human
Rights was coming into law - it actually became part of Scots law before
the Human Rights Act appeared in England - and so have been on the
receiving end, quite rightly, of various legal judgements against them.
What's sadly not peculiarly Scottish about the situation is the general
reaction: "how dare those prisoners complain about having their
rights violated and actually being paid for it? Shouldn't they
just shut up and shit in a bucket like they're told to?" The issue has
recently come back to haunt us because the Scottish Prison Service,
instead of actually fixing the problem by, you know, installing flushing
toilets, is just setting aside more and more money to pay off the legal
judgements against them - currently £40m, and since you consider that
the judgements are only about £2000 each that's a lot of them. The Daily
Mail is going off, although the people it should be going off on
are the Scottish Executive for diverting the £13m it would have taken to
fix the problem completely to the Parliament building
yet another "Just Say No" drugs scheme.
Enter BBC Scotland. BBC Scotland now have a facility where
any person can send in a "My View" article, and have it
published on the most respected news site in Britain, and naturally
since very few people know about this and because BBC Scotland have a
liking for sensationalism (see their Luke Mitchell coverage) the most
ill-informed, stupid articles will almost certainly turn up on the site.
A good example is, indeed, an article on the slopping out issue: "Prisoners
with more rights than victims", by an 'information assistant' from
Aberdeen.
Going into what's wrong with this article would start with the title, go
straight through all the clichés and end up at the just plain wrong -
currently, slopping out affects three jails in Scotland, one of which is
the Polmont Young Offender's Institution and thus not exactly
"those in jail for the most heinous crimes" (see Dominik Savage's Out
of Control (2002) and these
Guardian
articles
for what else
is wrong
with YOIs) - but what's much more shocking is the comments section. Now,
I do give BBC Scotland credit for adding a "Have Your Say" system
to an article which basically a conversation starter (on USENET, we'd
call it a 'troll') in the first place, but what I was totally unprepared
for was the way in which everyone seems to... agree with her.
No kidding, either. They almost all agree with her completely and judge
those that might like to disagree with them as "Liberal Hippies" - which
is the kind of thing I'd expect to see on FreeRepublic, not on the BBC's
system. This gets to such the point that that someone says they're
playing "devils advocate" - and then puts the view that we have
inalienable human rights! There's the usual "this is politically
correct" bollocks, "bring back flogging!", various "liberal do-gooder"
references and such jaw dropping comments as this:
Hear hear Karen. I saw a news clip the other night showing prison
conditions in Manila, with filthy conditions, serious overcrowding and
mixing ALL prisoners together in the same cells, whether they were petty
thieves or paedophiles. The first thing I thought was 'that is how
prison should be in this country'. [JL, Wishaw]
I'm actually ashamed to be in the same country as this guy.
What these people aren't realising are a few basic facts. Peterhead
prison has slopping out on the remand wing, i.e. for people who
haven't yet been convicted of any crime; "innocent until proven guilty"
isn't exactly in these people's vocabulary, but it's still legally (and
rightly) there. At the time the £2500 prisoner was suffering
slopping-out, he was on remand. They also don't realise what slopping
out is: it's shitting in a bucket. Not only is this completely
unhygienic and thus dangerous for both prisoner and anyone else who has
to handle it - eczema was the least of this guy's problems, since they
don't actually have sinks in there either - but it's humiliating,
unnecessary and does absolutely nothing to aid the rehabilitation of the
prisoner. A modern prison should focus not on punishment but on
rehabilitation, since just punishing them generally won't solve the
problems that caused them to commit the crimes in the first place
(whether psychological, societal, educational, financial or just plain
greed); however, any attempt to change the emphasis from one way gets a
huge media outcry, fired by the Sun and the Mail and the
media transmitters on how it would all be better if we went back to the
Victorian prison system. This is amusing in a way, since they also like
to go on about how we're a "nanny state" - which is, of course, mutually
contradictory to their own "family values" positions - but since when
did the rightwing media make any sense?
In fact, this is all part of the attack on the Human Rights Act
currently coming from all corners: from those parts of Blair's
government who'd like to see "terrorists" (i.e. people who've looked at
the wrong website; as well as actual terrorists, although they probably
won't get too many of them) disappear permanently without any need for a
trial, to these right-wing media attacks on what they like to call
"liberal namby-pambyism", to the far-right-wing attacks on anything that
isn't white (and especially nothing that has any shade of Islam) having
any rights whatsoever. Even the Telegraph, which has well-written
news articles and a commendable libertarian bent that makes its opinion
columns at least occasionally agreeable to those of a leftier
persuasion, called for the removal of the HRA recently; the Scum
did it much more loudly, and the Express is getting so loud it's
even making the Mail uneasy. And if we're not careful, and make
sure our opinion is heard just as loudly as theirs, we could lose the
only thing Blair's government should actually be proud of doing;
ensuring our rights to free speech, expression and thought.
Sadly, however, in this case the comments are already closed.
|
07/07/2005
I really can't think of anything to say at this point
...
...
...
...
...
My
condolences to the people of London.
|
06/07/2005
Idiots at large, G8 conference edition
DISCLAIMER: Inquisitor is an Edinburgh resident, most of the
time. He also knows people who know members of Lothian and Borders
Police force, and people who work for Standard Life and other large
financial organisations. Hence you can discount opinions at will, but
they're genuinely held by me. Promise.
CAUTION: Very strong language. Don't say I didn't warn you.
You may have seen pictures of anti-capitalist idiots going about
Edinburgh city centre on Monday afternoon and evening like they owned
the place, and if you haven't they're here
(decent report here).
If you really want your blood to boil, read some
of the reports on Indymedia; a classic case of "We didn't do it, it
must have been...those guys!" (and, indeed, "Sure, we did it, but they
were worse!") if I ever saw one. IMC is useful for finding out their
point of view; it isn't so independent when it comes to our
point of view.
Now, I dislike unfettered global capitalism as much as anyone, but did
you fuckwits really have to rip up Princes Street Gardens? You
don't pay for that, but we do, and Edinburgh City Council will take any
excuse to hike council tax - thus hurting the poor people you claim to
be supporting. If you want to protest against the corporations that run
our society, why not do it without destroying anything? Sure, it takes
time, but that's life. And if you're going to throw memorial park
benches at riot cops (and, as one IMC poster points out, random
non-'black bloc' protesters), why not realise that they're going to get
annoyed enough to push back? You provoked them (and you did provoke
them, let's face it), so you take the consequences; your freedom of
speech, and your freedom of movement, exists only as long as it doesn't
impose on ours, and that's exactly as it should be.
I want the end of poverty too, I want to see a more equitable global
system than the one we have. And you know that in the future, no-one
will remember Saturday's peaceful rally, with 200,000 people from the
local area and around Britain in support of this view; no, they'll
remember 200 'black bloc' assholes, mostly from down south, Italy and
Spain, throwing memorial park benches at riot cops for no discernible
reason. In twelve hours, they've possibly wrecked all the Make Poverty
History campaign has managed to do in twelve months; but wow, you
smashed in a McDonalds window. Thanks a fucking lot.
[And I note that the comments to the IMC article suggests that the
anarchists could be regrouping around lines such as the "Animal Libbers"
- their words - that protest Huntingdon Life Sciences; they may be
successful, but guys who firebomb
other people's homes indiscriminately don't exactly hold the moral
high ground, do they?]
As it happens, I agree with the "Selfish Bastards" comment on this
IMC article. Since I actually live around that part of Edinburgh, I
will be very upset if these selfish anarchist bastards stop my
freedom of movement tomorrow; very upset indeed. Can you really blame me?
|
30/05/2005
Random stupidity #(∞-1)
Courtesy
BBC, an article showing off exactly how you can rather easily ruin a
hundred schoolchildren's Friday:
More than 100 GCSE pupils received a last-minute call to sit an exam
two weeks early after a mix-up meant they were given the wrong date...
Pupils were contacted when the error was discovered on Friday
morning, and the exam was allowed to be delayed until that afternoon.
That afternoon? Wow, how generous. You've been expecting to have
your totally unimportant RE exam two weeks in the future, so probably
haven't revised yet. You have, in good faith, been given an exam list
which states in bold Helvetica TWO WEEKS IN THE FUTURE. You probably
haven't even started revising yet and then you get a phone call on
Friday morning - "Oops, sorry, it's today. Can you come in this
afternoon?" I'm surprised 80% of them turned up - that's an abominable
way to treat a student.
Take a look at the sidebar, too; there's a recent history of this. This
sort of thing is getting common because no-one checks anything anymore.
There's a really lame excuse in the article: "The error had been made at
the school, but not by the examinations officer." Well, if so, why
didn't the exams officer recheck the book, or ask the question: "Are
they sitting Paper A or B?" to someone like, say, their teacher? It is,
after all, their job. Oh well.
And in today's random education stupidity roundup, we return to the City
Academies - nothing less than the Government's attempt to privatise
education without the advantages of doing so. In case you're not
familiar with the way the scheme works, it's quite simple: Peter Vardy
or some other scumbag contributes £2m, the Government contributes the
remaining 90% of the school's building cost and 100% of the running
costs, and then Vardy runs the school, including full curricular
control, forever. Seem fair to you? Not me either. Vardy is using his "Emmanuel
Schools Foundation" academies to teach creationist
crap in science classes, and others are just using them as a licence
to print money; most new schools on PFI deals, for example, have
near-permanent unbreakable contracts with Sodexho/Scolarest/Initial, and
don't even have a kitchen let alone the capability to make edible
school food.
The bad news
is that it isn't the Emmanuel Schools Foundation one that's failing in
Middlesborough, it's the one run by a construction company... and
guess who's going to take over... Stupidity in the extreme, isn't it?
|
19/05/2005
PSA: Kill the Asylum and Immigration Bill
New
Labour's asylum bill is lethal.
Successful asylum seekers will no longer gain a permanent right to
remain, but will be awarded temporary leave of up to five years.
It's a spiteful little measure for the Daily Mail crowd that will damage
the people who most need sanctuary in this country and will do nothing
to stop illegal immigration; it panders, in fact, to the DM crowd's
belief that asylum-seekers are taking our jobs etc., which couldn't be
further from the truth (in fact, they're not even allowed to have one).
There isn't even anything positive about the bill - most of the
rest of it, points system and all, is truly vile populist
immigrant-baiting of the kind I despise the most.
In any case, Britain needs immigrants of all types - we are suffering a
skills collapse - and measures like this are truly unwelcome. We treat
asylum seekers badly enough already - we're better than Australia, but
that's not saying much - and we really shouldn't be caving in again
to people who are one step away from joining the BNP. But then, I don't
believe in bigotry...
|
14/05/2005
Chris Woodhead is a tosser
That is all.
Quote:
But Mr Woodhead, speaking at a conference at Brighton College, in
East Sussex, said failing schools should be shut and state education
privatised.
Remind me why the Daily Mail still listens to him?
|
Election 2005 - post-mortem
I did, in fact, stay up for the election. Instead of blogging, however,
I was on the #ukbloggers IRC channel gratefully hosted by Nick
Barlow, qwghlm.co.uk and
others, for whom I'm extremely grateful.
So, it's a third term and another big but more controllable majority for
Tony Blair. Not really a surprise; a surprise would have been if Howard
got in. Not very many surprises on the night, in fact; the only biggies
were that George Galloway somehow got back into Parliament (I'm not a
fan) and the fact that the Lib Dems made as few gains on Labour as they
did, despite having a very large percentage of the vote. And,
unfortunately, Blunkett's back in the Cabinet; ironically overseeing
Child Support; even worse, Blair replaced Geoff Hoon with one of the
only less suitable men in Parliament, the indescribable John Reid, and
Ruth Kelly's still there. My MP, Alistair Darling, got relected with a
reduced majority. Such is life.
The fact that Labour got a majority of 68 on only 37% of the vote means,
of course, that we need a much more proportional electoral system than
we have now; something Jack
'master of doublespeak' Straw doesn't seem to be able to comprehend
(link courtesy Nick
Barlow) in an article so godawful I'm surprised the Guardian
even agreed to print it. Nick makes the argument about as well as I
would, pointing out the 1997 manifesto commitment to an electoral reform
referendum (swiftly forgotten post 170-majority) and the ignoring of the
Jenkins commission. We may well not see a decent voting system from this
government, and it's a real shame - FPTP should have been consigned to
the history books long, long ago.
And may I just extend my commiserations to Tim Ireland (of Bloggerheads
and Backing Blair fame),
who is about to suffer four-to-five years of Anne
Milton... shame, really.
|
04/05/2005
This really does say it all...
Jamster, the scumbags (do a search)
behind every other advert on UK digital TV, are
owned
by VeriSign.
This is appropriate, since VeriSign, just like the godawful characters they
advertise, are really bloody annoying... Also, it's not the first time
VeriSign's tried to con anyone with misleading T&Cs and hidden extras,
or tried to stop people from getting away from the service (something
which NetSol are notorious for). Shame, isn't it?
And, in case you're wondering who I'm voting for, the answer is 'Lib Dem'.
So blame me if the Tories get in in Edinburgh South West, I don't
care - they probably won't, though, considering how crap they are...
Since I'm going to attempt to stay up tomorrow evening, you may or
may not see Election Blog 2005. Hopefully.
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26/02/2005
Idiots Of The Week #3: Stephen Green ('Christian' Voice)
Remember the ignorant
bigots at 'Christian' Voice, the ones who posted the BBC executives'
home phone numbers on the web for all to see during the Jerry
Springer: The Opera fiasco? Well, they're even more ignorant than
we thought they were, and much, much more bigoted.
First, Stephen Green creates a publicity disaster for himself by phoning
a local-to-me cancer charity (Maggie's Centres) that was about to accept
£3000 from a special performance of Jerry Springer: The Opera,
and telling them that he and his pack of loudmouthed bigots would
protest outside their cancer centres about how they would be going to
hell for accepting the cash if they didn't refuse it, and then going and
crowing about it in the press when the charity (regrettably) followed
his advice. Of course, he
isn't replacing the £3000 out of his own pocket;
apparently, that's for "women and wimps". Blackmail is just so Christian
a virtue, isn't it? Well, only if Stephen Green does it, apparently.
The Murdoch Times this morning has an article on how he's been
copying his American fundamentalist brethren (who he is very much in
thrall to) and is about to start protesting
outside abortion clinics. The good news is that 'Christian' Voice
probably don't have all that many members, as proven by their somewhat
weak protests outside Television Centre during the JS:TO debacle. The
bad news is that they know how to work the news media, and as Marie
Stopes points out in the article there are already
anti-abortion protesters in the UK. Green's organisation will provide
them with their publicity.
So I have just visited their site, out of need to 'research', and the
first thing I see is a lovely little banner ad, telling me that I am an
"enemy of God" because I don't follow their teachings
(even though I think Jesus was a pretty swell guy, but apparently I'm
too strong on the whole equality thing.) Clicking on the 'About Us' link
gets us a series of teachings on stuff like how we have, in a line
stolen from Ian Paisley, "given away the Queen's sovereignty - owed to
Almighty God alone - to the European Union." So not really a fan of
democracy, either, is he?
Oh, and we've legalised trading on the Lord's Day, which gets almost as
big a bill as the gays on this page (although he gaybashes freely
elsewhere on the site: look at his amazingly distasteful parody of a
police anti-discrimination webpage, "The Site The Gay Police Association
Want To Ban!", which links to all sorts of American fundamentalist
'ex-gay' crap and overriden parts of Exodus.) He'd have a heart attack
if he came up here, which he might have done to 'protest' Maggie's
Centre - Scotland has liberal Sunday trading laws, where places like
ASDA are actually allowed to open 24 hours, all week. This
despite the Wee Frees. It's a law England should have had a long, long
time ago...
[If you want to explore further, I recommend Nick
Barlow's article on much the same subject.]
And I notice a link on the side entitled 'Our Own Holocaust'. Uh oh -
sounds like an abortion reference, it's the kind of thing the
fundamentalists love (see: their hitlist of abortion doctors, featuring
names, addresses and phone numbers and crossing out the dead ones in strikeout,
entitled 'The Nuremberg
Files'). Whaddya
know: [warning, link actually goes to 'Christian'
Voice]
In Britain today, to kill an unborn baby after 24 weeks is illegal,
unless the baby is diagnosed with a handicap, which as we have recently
seen, can be as trivial as a cleft palate. We compel the owners of the
smallest public building to construct ramps for the disabled, whilst
trying to eliminate disabled people before they are actually born.
Disabled people cost money to look after, and the Nazis would have
appreciated the logic of our position.
Um... Stephen? Do you have any idea how hard it is to get a
24-week abortion in the UK? (Not to mention that the 6m number he quotes
is all abortions, not 24-week ones...) As you may be aware, the
criteria for allowing a post 24-week abortion are:
-
The continuance of the pregnancy would involve risk to the life of the
pregnant woman greater than if the pregnancy were terminated.
-
The termination is necessary to prevent grave permanent injury to the
physical or mental health of the pregnant woman.
-
There is a substantial risk that if the child were born it would
suffer from such physical or mental abnormalities as to be seriously
handicapped.
>
> (source: Woman's
Health, linked to from directgov. Also see here.)
In other words, he's talking bullshit. This is easily disproven, with
the aid of National
Statistics. Just taking one year, say 2001, post-24 week abortions
total 119 (mostly under the handicapped baby rule - and usually, this is
serious stuff), from table 8. Out of 176,364 other abortions. Talk about
corrupting the statistics or what...
Oh, and look under cleft palate, in table 23. The number? One. It
would have to be pretty serious in order for two doctors to sign off on
it, and that's even before the 24-week limit kicks in.
These statistics weren't hard to find, either. I searched for 'abortion
statistics UK' on Google. It's the first hit.
Why do I get the feeling that people like Stephen Green want Vera
Drake to be the future, not the past? There will be lots of Veras
if abortion gets banned, because it won't go away; and there will be
lots of people not nearly as nice as Vera is performing them.
Women could die because of Stephen Green, and people like him, and I
simply can not countenance that. It is, after all, to do with their
bodies; and no-one else's to have a say over.
But then, Stephen doesn't believe that, does he:
[Women] should be in the home. The man should be the leader in the
family and the woman should be the daughter or wife under the authority
of her father and then her husband.
> -- quoted in Times
article, above
Jesus Christ.
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22/02/2005
Damn. Damn. Damn. Damn. Damn.
Edinburgh just rejected the
congestion charging scheme. Damn.
Let me first say that I hope all the NO voters on the DVD Forums
discussion are happy now. It's unsurprising, really; most of the people
who take part in road-related discussion on there are the kind of "all
the cops do is catch speeders instead of real crime" idiots who
regurgitate what they've been told by the Scum, Star, Mail or Express,
with the occasional sensible person regularly shouted down (which is
why I don't take part in them.) It's a real, real shame that we've
been shouted down by people who actually think that driving your kids
into school is actually a good idea.
The plan was £2 for entering the zone. £2. The "outer
zone", covering most of the city, would only have operated between
7AM and 10AM weekdays, while the inner zone (basically just the
New Town) was 7AM to 6PM weekdays, so not exactly all consuming;
besides, you would only have paid once per day per vehicle anyway.
Car clubs, disabled and elderly people with blue badges (which is
every elderly person in Edinburgh), motorbikes and similar were all
exempt.
Considering Ken Livingstone is about to jack the London charge to £8 whilst increasing
the area covered, £2 is an absolute pittance for what could have
been the cause for a lot of serious local transport improvements -
park and ride schemes, more buses, reopening the Edinburgh suburban
railway along SPT lines, even the silly tram scheme.
The trams are going to get built anyway, but the Council will find new and entertaining
ways to screw up life for Edinburgh motorists from now on; as a poster
on DVF who failed to see the point pointed out, London's road quality
went up after the congestion charge came in. Edinburgh does have
a decent public transport system, but inflation and stagnation will
see to it in the end, just like it did the Tube; without the CC,
it has much less of a chance. LRT fares will have to go up, they're
subsidised enough as it is. And it will screw over people who intend
never to own a car, like me; I quite simply do not see the point
of owning something that, in a city where everywhere is
accessible by public transport, I do not need. But
the cars will give me, and the people of the future something
for nothing; CO, CO2, nitrogen oxides, particulates, global warming
and air pollution.
So, are you happy now?
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21/01/2005
Idiots Of The Week #2: BBC Reporting Scotland, Luke Mitchell
(Yes, a running series! And why not? Gives me a reason to write.)
Those of you who don't live in Scotland may not be familiar with the
Jodie
Jones murder case, not having had it hammered into their heads over
the last three months, so I'll refresh your memories. A couple of years
ago, the said Jodie Jones (a 14-year old teenager from the Easthouses
council estate, an area of Edinburgh I know fairly well) ended
up missing after going out to meet her boyfriend, a neddish
scumbag by the name of Luke Mitchell. Later on, the body ends up being
discovered just off her route to Mitchell's house, Mitchell made an
absolute ass of himself both at the funeral and on Sky News, and the
police process the information.
Of course, as it turns out, she did meet her boyfriend... (at least
according to majority verdict.)
The Scottish media
have not exactly been forward with their tact - all the
newspapers had a shot of somewhat childish glee at revealing that Mitchell
was the one charged with the murder pretty much the second he turned
16 - and they're even less likely to gain it now. It has been like
this throughout the long, sordid, endless trial - every single night
on Reporting Scotland we got a trial update, despite the fact that
the evidence was always the bloody same. Just think of what the
front pages are going to be like tomorrow...
And bad things are going to happen because of this; in fact, the trailer
for Up Next on Reporting Scotland is what triggered me
to write this. Because Jodie was one of the supposed subculture who
call themselves 'goths' and consider themselves to be 'individual',
and Mitchell claimed
to be too, the media has found a Blame Target. And it's the same blame
target as the US media found after Columbine - Marilyn Manson. As they
just said: "Did the music of the rock star Marilyn Manson really
influence the killer's actions?"
Well, let's see...
A) MM's painting of the Black Dahlia murders, shown on his website, isn't
exactly unique to the genre. No-one's even proved to me that Mitchell
even visited the website...
B) As the BBC Scotland article I linked to just above admits, but Reporting
Scotland doesn't seem to be, Mitchell bought the Golden
Age Of Grotesque album-with-free-DVD featuring images vaguely like said
murder two days after Jodie was murdered. Oops.
("This DVD may explain how he
became...a cold-blooded killer" says the idiot reporter, right now. DO
THESE PEOPLE ACTUALLY READ THEIR
OWN REPORTS?)
C) As anyone who's actually listened to his music knows, Marilyn Manson
is taking the piss. If there is a message in his music, it's "don't
trust other people's bullshit", which is an excellent message and one
I approve of highly, especially in the case of Reporting Scotland.
The trappings around him? It's just theatrics. Look at his appearance
in Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine,
for instance - "I wouldn't say anything to them. I'd just listen... because no-one else
did." The guy understands. He's just the new Alice Cooper, designed to piss
off your parents, so lay off him.
D) There is much, much worse out there than Marilyn Manson - and I suspect
Luke Mitchell may in fact known about some of it, or at least read
about it. But of course, MM's name is recognisable while most of the really seamy
end of the music scale isn't, so that's what gets in the media.
E) It's quite possible that angry music like MM's might actually help people
get over their rage against the society they feel mistreats them -
the whole 'punch in the air' thing. Radiohead and New Order did it
for me, but hey, everybody's different.
So the answer to the question is, of course, no. MM
is merely a symptom, as is Mitchell's self-professed 'Satanism'. Mitchell
is clearly a screwed-up character; the Satanism crap and attachment
to the weird end of the Gothic bandwagon is obviously a cover for real
psychological problems, none of which will be solved by sending him
to jail forever.
(My own suspicion? Jodie found about about his side
girlfriend, and he flipped out on her. Full
stop. And as Larkin said, 'they fuck
you up, your mum and dad', and Luke Mitchell's amoral, uncaring, truly
vile mother definitely fits the bill.)
The big problem is that this will cause a backlash, just like Columbine
caused a backlash, against anyone who doesn't fit in. Just when you
thought it couldn't get much worse for people who aren't 'normal' in
school, something like this happens and you know it's going to. Wear
black? Listen to Marilyn Manson? Use the Internet, not just for
MSN? Be a bit 'weird'? We'll keep an eye on
you! Never mind that you may have no intention of killing or hurting
anyone - like most fans, in fact, of Marilyn Manson, all of whom take
pride in being a 'rebel against conformity' by buying his albums en
masse - you're marked! Even those with problems (and most MM fans are
well adjusted members of society) only really need a little understanding;
but, by God, we'll give them punishment!
This is, of course, something that will create more problems than it solves
- because, of course, if the supposed 'goths' genuinely are persecuted,
they may develop complexes like Mitchell's about it and we'll get a
Scottish Columbine (with school layouts the way they are, it's very possible
- a big enough knife and/or the right bits of the Anarchist's Cookbook and
it'll take Armed Response to stop it), the media will blame it on Marilyn
Manson and/or the Internet and the entire thing will full circle again.
It's a horrifying prospect, and one that could very well be happening,
in Britain, right now. Isn't that scary?
[In fact, isn't the possibility of blaming it on the Net why the pigs scoured
the Mitchells' computers, discovering as a sideline that Luke's brother
was viewing porno at the time of the murder? I suppose when they found
that out at least some of the feeling was that of a missed opportunity...]
The best thing I can say is: the case is extremely abnormal, and can be
simply explained in two words. We shouldn't make it
normal, but our media looks like it's going to keep trying...
[I might as well, also, do this fine
Googlebomb for
Manic: we're all talking about the White House's
empty rhetoric. After
all, the ignorant bigots one was successful, so why not give this one a go? It's for a good cause.]
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12/01/2005
I'm doing my part! Are you?
It's been said before, but it needs to be said again: Christian Voice are
ignorant bigots.
(This fine Googlebomb originally suggested by Ivory
Sky here,
and propagated by Manic at Bloggerheads.
Please follow in their footsteps.)
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09/01/2005
Idiots Of The Week: National Rail Enquiries, Celtic 'fans' and more
Me: I hate National Rail Enquiries.
Ticket seller: Oh, we do too.
--- Verbatim conversation at a ticket office, somewhere in
Scotland, yesterday
So I've spent Christmas and New Year with my family, as you do, distributed
hauls of R3 copies of Hero,
The Bourne Supremacy etc. to my very pleased brothers, and the
university term looms. I decide, because of commitments, to stay up north
for as long a period as possible and head back on Saturday the 8th, i.e.
yesterday.
As the weather's
been kinda bad lately, I check up on First
ScotRail's site about an hour before the train's meant to come in. This advises me that due
to the weather situation, to only travel if necessary (my new term
starts tomorrow) and to call 08457 48 49 50 for further information,
not mentioning what the line actually is. I call it, and I get back
a "Thank you for calling National Rail Enquiries..."
NRE, after keeping me waiting for a fairly long time, tell me (after much
kerfuffle) that services on my line are suspended and a replacement
bus service is running. They cannot, of course, tell me whether the
bus service is even going to stop at my village railway station,
and I can't call either the terminus or Glasgow stations directly, so I end up
having to get lifted into town very quickly in order to catch said
replacement bus service.
Of course, NRE wasn't exactly telling the truth, since the line was open
for business and had been for some time. A big oops there.
Thankfully, the ticket inspector was understanding when he accepted
my ticket, technically invalid for the first part of the journey, after
I explained NRE's cockup.
Other railway people were rather understanding, too, as when I asked for
an address for which I could complain to them, and the ticket seller
at Queen Street could only get me a phone number (0191 269 0305, fact
fans...):
Ticket seller: "They're useless."
Which pretty much says it all.
NRE can get away with being absolutely useless because they're the
only way, now, that a consumer can get information about the British
railway network - the telephone numbers of local stations were made
ex-directory some years ago, so all you see in the Phone Book is NRE.
This is despite the fact that to man the phone lines at a rural terminus
doesn't actually preclude you from doing other jobs at the same time.
Of course, you need to have a fairly similar amount of staff employed
to update the NRE system whenever, say, something like an extreme weather
situation happens, since the people you actually speak to are dumb
automatons in a call centre somewhere, but this doesn't figure to the
bureaucrats and plutocrats that run the British railway network nowadays.
If I had been able to call my local station, I'd have been able to
pick up the train at the village station and I wouldn't have forgotten
to pick up some of the DVDs I left behind. Grr.
Also see: out-of-hours GP phone numbers redirecting you to NHS
Direct (or the Scottish version, NHS 24), a call-centre helpline run
by nurses; banks making you call India instead of your local branch;
etc. It's all the same thing; idiot cost-cutting that doesn't actually
help anyone.
Admittedly, none of this was actually the fault of First ScotRail; they're
supposed to refer everyone to NRE, since it's the only Official Source
of this information. What wasn't the fault of First ScotRail either
was the gang of supposed football 'fans' that got on at the last stop
and were really, really loud, although they didn't exactly distinguish
themselves by attempting to control the situation either. By really
loud, I'm meaning "drowning out the music playing on my in-ear headphones"
loud. They were drunk when they got on the train, drank a lot whilst
on the train, and made the last fifteen minutes of my journey seem
like time spent in the very depths of Hell. What's more, these were
'fans' of the depressingly boorish, pissed, fucked-up, sectarian (pretty
sure I heard an IRA reference), and amazingly racist type ("There ain't
no black on the Union Jack! Sieg Heil!") that demonises Scottish
football - and this was the day before the Old Firm game, let me remind you.
I almost wished my Rio Karma had a record function so I could have posted it here -
this really was the kind of thing you never, ever wish to see or hear.
I lived in a Rangers area for a long period of time, really really hated the sectarian
aspects of it, and not liking football wasn't a way out of it. I ended up holding back
for a long time after the train stopped until I was pretty sure the
supposed 'fans' had dispersed; this was sensible plan, so I recovered
with the aid of a cup of coffee and set off for Edinburgh much more
relieved.
And then I watched Jerry Springer: The Opera, or as it really is Jerry
Springer: The Musical. Which was really funny, by the way: pretty much from the first
pseudo-operatic aria ("chick with a dick") onward. It's also not
blasphemous at all: the appearance of the diaper-fetishist from previously as Jesus
(although not a diaper-fetishist Jesus) occurs simply because the whole 'Jesus vs.
Satan' thing is a hallucination created by Springer's mind before he ends up actually
dying, and the Virgin Mary herself doesn't sing the 'raped by an angel' line
(it's the chorus, shown to be orchestrated by Satan), unlike what some
of the media publicity would have had you believe. You can even take
the ending to be a Christian redemptive message, if you like. The thing had so many warnings
strewed on it - including Kirsty Wark before each act of the play, and BBC2 continuity -
that it was almost impossible to miss it.
Oh, and the swearing? All the seven (not 280, that's counting the chorus)
'cunt's in the show are directed at the guy in the Christian religion
to whom the term most deserves to be used - i.e., Satan - and in a
single song, and the 'fuck' count doesn't even reach that of, say, Goodfellas,
Reservoir Dogs or Casino (all shown uncut by Channel Four.)
Mediawatch should really employ someone's who's done at least,
say, GCSE Maths to see whether their figures are actually right.
All in all, a storm in a teacup, don't you think? And the BBC have got a
nice 1.7m viewer total out of it. Now, all we have to do is hope there
won't be a Whitehouse v. Gay News repeat (especially since the BBC
have more lawyers and money than Gay News did), with the so-called
Christian Voice's private prosecution, and things should be well...
Bloggerheads has a nice series
of articles on the neat little relationship between Mediawatch and
the Daily Mail, and the JS:TO 'controversy' in general, here,
here, here,
here,
and here;
Mail Watch has a good piece too,
here.
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