Daily Archives: Tue, 19 June, 2007

Mid-knight’s Children

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Salman Rushdie’s knighthood has caused some very predictable results in Pakistan and Iran.

I can’t help being suspicious over the timing of this. There have been plenty of opportunities to honour Rushdie since the Ayatollah’s fatwa was placed on him, but it seems the UK wasn’t too keen to antagonise Iran.

Until now.

Do you have to be a conspiracy theorist to see this as unfortunate timing?

I normally draw a pretty rigid line against the idea that the US is led by people so demented they will blow up the Twin Towers or whatever to justify a war, so I’m normally all for applying Occam’s Razor. (Explanations based on normal RealPolitik usually suffice and are usually grubby enough.)

However, applying Occam’s Razor in this instance, it is quite hard to believe that our leaders are so naive that they thought “Oh Gosh, that nice Salman Rushdie. We haven’t shown him how good we thought Midnight’s Children was” without remembering that he was still subject to a death sentence for blasphemy based on the Satanic Verses.

So the kinighthood thus comes to look like an act designed only to stir up more fanatical suicide bombers and to enrage Iran even more, thus opening the way for the war with Iran that we’ve all been dreading or looking forward to (depending on the number of shares we hold in Haliburton or oil companies.)

Still, I remain impressed that you can apparently now get a honour without handing over a few million in loans to one political party or another.

PC is not an insult

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It seems that every day now there is an item in the more popular media (take that however you want) which brings the spectre of “Political Correctness” into view. In around 99.99999% of the times the phrase “PC” is used, for something other than a Police Constable 😀 , it is the start of a combination of appeal to ridicule and false dichotomies. The tabloid press are the worst for it, but this attitude is reflected in all walks of life.

One strange, yet recent, example is found amongst the comments on Bernard Manning following his recent real life death (I am sure he died on stage many a time). Now, if you have never heard of him you are truly lucky. Bernard Manning was an overweight comedian (in the loosest sense of the word) who had a small repertoire of jokes that revolved around the mother-in-law, women and ethnic minorities. Famously, when performing at a police convention he made a remark to a black policeman to the effect of asking if he (the policeman) enjoyed walking the beat more than swinging in the trees. Yeah, Bernard manning was that funny. I am not convinced there was ever a time people found sheer offensiveness as “funny” but it seems I may be wrong. People are actually leaving messages about the hateful creature saying he was a comic genius. On the radio (Jermey Vine, again) there were people saying how great he was and that ridiculing politicians and the powerful (rarely targets of Good Ole’ Bernard) was too easy, and that Bernard took the difficult path to attack vulnerable minorities who couldn’t respond.

I never said his supporters were sane did I?

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Rights or not?

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I was listening to Jeremy Vine on Radio 2 today (yes, I know…) and as always his “phone in” show attracts odd, outspoken members of society, no matter how trivial the topic is. One of today’s odd topics was about the proposed legislation to force “rights of way” along coastal routes, even if the landowner objects. The Radio 2 website even has a “have your say” on the subject.

Now, I have very mixed opinions on this and would probably lump for maintaining the status quo – we currently have about 70% of the UK coast open for “ramblers,” the rest is in private or Ministry of Defence hands. That said, I can see the arguments put by some of the ramblers – and as a big fan of the countryside in general I think it would be nice if there were more places to go. Anyway, from this position of steadfast ambivalence, it amused me to see one of the arguments used on the show (repeatedly).

Basically put, there was an argument that as we are “born on an island” we have a “birthright” to walk the coast. Seriously. Well, when I say seriously, I mean it is not something I have made up for giggles here but I am not 100% sure how serious the people who said it were.

Sadly, the fact that no one seems to have picked up on this during the bits of the show I listened to and the fact people could actually use such a line of nonsense as an argument, highlights the downsides of the UK’s educational policies. Gone are learning classical philosophy and the origins of society. Now people think a “right” to do something comes with no burden of obligation and is identical to wanting to do something.

Unfortunately this watered down idea of what a “right” actually is, means people are less concerned when important rights are lost… So it looks like we will force landowners to allow access to their land at the same time we bring in ID papers, increased CCTV monitoring, longer detention without trial and so on.  Well done Britain.

[tags]Education, Classics, Classical Studies, Philosophy, Culture, Society, UK, Coast, Landscapes, BBC, Radio 2, Jeremy Vine, Civil Rights, Rights[/tags]

Ebuyer Good and Bad

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Well, first off, I was wrong when I worried about Ebuyer getting my goods to me, they actually arrived today. Fortunately, I had relied more on City Link’s claims of when the goods would be delivered than Ebuyers and was able to accept the delivery.

Oddly, even though Ebuyer claimed the shipment would only be two thirds of the goods, all arrived at the same time. I wonder if Ebuyer are aware of this… 😀 Overall, this is not a “well done” to Ebuyer, I am relived the things arrived but the almost random scheduling is still annoying. I hope it never comes down to a case of me singing a company’s praise simply because they managed to do what I paid them hundreds of pounds to do…

Also, especially pertinent since my local authority now only collects household waste every two weeks, the amount of packaging used was outrageous. Seriously. I even took some pictures (one of the items was a new memory card so I had to try it out) to prove my point.

Box on side Box from top

I have put some household items around it so you can get an idea of the size. It is a big box. You would think it held something really big, or really fragile.

Contents - shot 1 Contents - Shot 2

As you can see, the sole contents of this box were FIVE DVD-RW disks. Yes, only five. All that packaging for five disks. Amazing really. The memory card was a bit different as it came in a plastic envelope – much more in proportion. I wonder if I can make Ebuyer pay for the extra costs involved in getting rid of that carboard and the plastic padding that was inside (doesn’t photo very well, so I excluded most of it). Anyway, I am still going to think of Ebuyer as a bad shop for a while longer…

[tags]Waste, Environment, Bad Shops, eBuyer, Google Checkout, Rant, Shops, Society, Technology[/tags]