As a prelude to the WhyDontYou Comment Week (due to start tomorrow if we have the time 🙂 ), we have taken Michael‘s advice and put in a comment subscription facility. Now, if you find a thread you like here you can post a comment and, if you want to be kept informed of the debate, you can tick the box and get notification of follow ups via email. All good fun. Part of the idea behind us commenting a lot more next week is to help encourage discussions and share opinions via the blogosphere – which, it seems to me, is part of the reason they exist.
Category Archives: General
No logo?
On pharyngula’s link to the Dawkins’ new Atheism logo and T-shirt special offer, I was mildly taken aback by his characterisation of the commenters who spoke against the idea on Dawkins site.
One weird thing about this development, though, is that it sure brings out the whiners and concern trolls.
Oh, “so it will have entertaining mad fundy comment rants”, I thought, instantly going there to read them, of course (with the topic of commenting being a recent theme on this blog.)
Hmm. Not so. The comments were generally from sycophants, people with typeface design concerns and people who recognised the similarity to the traditional” Anarchy” logo. Most “anti-“comments seemed pretty rational statements of a slightly different point of view. IMHO,
- T-shirts, atheist web-site identifiers? Nothing wrong with them. No big deal. Good way to generate revenue for RDF. Good way to find fellow atheists’ blogs.
- People who don’t feel that it’s desirable to identify yourself to strangers by your (non)belief in a deity, as if you are showing what football team you support – also a valid point of view.
I do have problems with tendencies of the “New Atheism” to start forming an orthodoxy and dismissing any opposition without thought. Being able to herd cats would be a “Good Thing” then? Don’t sheep usually end up getting slaughtered?
I’ve been struggling with how to say this without causing offence (like arguing about religion with the couple of Jehovah’s Witnesses and Catholics in my overwhelmingly non-believing workplace) but:
- Atheism is REALLY not a religion. (Just as we all know not collecting stamps is not a hobby.)
- Religion is not just belief in a superpower. That is one small silly lie at the centre of a massive social construction. Organised religion is a social construction.
- Religions start from beliefs and ethics. It’s when we start organising around implementing those beliefs and ethics that human power relations come into play.
The tooth fairy is a pretty innocuous belief only because it doesn’t have a social organisation based round it. Otherwise, we’d be righteously smiting our enemies for their teeth. - Atheism doesn’t have a Pope. Or bishops or arch-bishops or mullahs or people with a closer relationship to unbelief than the rest of us.
- Atheism does need people to expound ideas. To challenge nonsense and to spur other people to thinking. It is very important that there are central forums where people can connect. The “New Atheism” is doing a pretty good job of this.
- But there is always a danger of ascribing too much power to a few central figures. Our tendency to search out venerable white male authority figures to be sycophantic and obedient to them is one of the problems of religion, not the solution.
- Being prepared to argue the toss about what we don’t believe in is surely not just the defining characteristic but also the great strength of atheists.
Mad scientists
Blimey Britain leads Europe in something! Don’t start waving the flags yet though, it’s the number of animal experiments. Peter Tatchell’s Comment is Free points out that animal experiments are at an ll-time high.
The Home Office website provides some details here.
Mice, rats and other rodents were used in the majority of procedures; eighty-three percent of the total. Most of the remaining procedures used fish (9%), and birds (4%).
Dogs, cats, horses and non-human primates, afforded special protection by the Act, were collectively used in less than one percent of all procedures.
The number of procedures using non-human primates was 4,200 down by 450 (10%) from 2005, mainly due to a decrease in old-world primates. The number of animals used was 3,108.
…
Genetically modified animals were used in 1.04 million regulated procedures representing thirty-four percent of all procedures for 2006, compared with thirty-three percent in 2005 and eight percent in 1995. The vast majority (95%) of these procedures used rodents, most of the remainder were fish and amphibians.Around thirty-eight percent of all procedures used some form of anaesthesia to alleviate the severity of the interventions. For many of the remaining procedures the use of anaesthesia would have potentially increased the adverse effects of the procedure.
Apparently these procedures are now increasing and will increase further with ever greater demand for GM beings.
One of the people who framed the animal experimentation legislation has very severe doubts about its operation.
Prof Balls said he was dismayed that progress in science had not produced more alternatives to using animals in research. “As a scientist I’m entitled to believe in modern technology to deal with these problems, but I’m disappointed that more effort hasn’t been put into bringing the numbers down,” he said
There are some issues that leap out as you read the bald statistics, such as,
- if this is just ‘science’, how it is it that the cute pet factor seems to influence the choice of animals? Shouldn’t it be the similarity to human biology that determines their sacrificial value?
- Is a mouse genetically modified to have disease x really very much like a human being who has developed that disease?
- What can fish and amphibian experiments tell us about human biology? They might indicate levels of river toxicity.
- 72% were conducted without anaesthetic, then….
I’m far from absolutist on this. If the sacrifice of some poor mammal can spare great human suffering, then I’d have to go for saving my own species.
All the same, it’s well nigh impossible to skim through a few issues of any pop science magazine without finding large numbers of experiments that are so morally dubious and seemingly pointless that you wonder what ethics committees are for.
The naive observer, i.e. me, would assume that you couldn’t torture animals unless human life hung in the balance and there was literally no alternative way to get the information. These should surely be the mininum requirements.
There has just been a ruling on a judicial review sought by the British Unnion for the Abolition of Vivisection . A High Court judge ruled that the government acted unlawfully in allowing some experiments on primates. Astonishingly, cutting the top of a primate’s head to induce a stroke was seen by the government as causing ‘moderate’, rather than ‘severe’, suffering. The mind boggles at a definition of “severe”.
In any case, I didn’t realise there was a problem with strokes in people who have had the tops of their heads cut off. Wow. that must affect approximately, erm, 0% of the population.
The Sainting of Baden Powell..
You would, possibly, be forgiven for thinking the BBC is leading a campaign to deify Baden-Powell. In the magazine section (so named to avoid having to publish news, one suspects) there is an article titled “What Would Baden-Powell Do?” It seems the BBC editor has enough humour to equate the racist, misogynistic Baden-Powell with Jesus. Seems about right to me. Too add to this allusion, there is breathless references to how Baden-Powell’s “wisdom” has stood the test of time… Seriously.
Once you finish reading the comments, you would expect good old Benedict to be writing a Papal Bull as we speak (I will ignore any Church of England issues…) and the image of a collection of crusty old fools sitting around saying how the youth of today, aided by soft government and human rights legislation, have destroyed the country will be permanently etched in your mind.
Before I properly rant, I need to make clear something. The Scout movement is wonderful. I have nothing but admiration for the people involved, leaders and members, who often give up huge amounts of their personal time for no reward other than the feeling of “Job Well Done.” Despite my dislike for Baden-Powell, the fact remains that Scouts are wonderful thing the world over. However, Baden-Powell simply started the movement and gave it impetus. He does not act from beyond the grave guiding scouts (pun intended) towards a “moral” future.
Early on, the BBC show which way this article is going with this:
And while some of Baden-Powell’s advice seems out of place in today’s risk-averse society, much of it seems prescient.
Here, we see a combination of the crackpot idea that people today are “risk adverse” as a society (pretty meaningless, but it ticks the boxes of the tabloid readers) with some major cherry picking and spin on Baden-Powell’s writing. Comically, even the selected bits published by the BBC fail to show that “much” of it is prescient — unless you have an oddly literal way of using the word much. In a way, this is somewhat like reading a theists blog about the Jesus and the bible.
Basically, the BBC reprint ten snippets of Baden-Powell’s (ahem) wisdom, out of which three remain valid today. If you see that as “much” then, as I said, I think you have an odd understanding of much. I am reasonably sure you could extract ten commandments out of any historical document and find two or three which were still valid today.
Where he is in keeping with modern thoughts, he is pretty wet for want of a better word – for example, he says people shouldn’t harm animals, shouldn’t smoke until they are adults and shouldn’t drink huge quantities. Today we would be happy with teaching the first to children, but the second two are not quite in keeping with modern standards.
Better still, when he strays from the current thinking he really goes off the rails. We get some wonderful snippets like:
The shape of the face gives a good guide to the man’s character.
(on bees) They are a quite a model community for they respect their Queen and kill their unemployed.
(on saving people about to be hit by a train) Lie flat and make him lie flat too between the rails, and let the train go over us both
And my personal favourite bit of nonsense:
(on saving people from drowning) Plunge in boldly and look to the object you are trying to attain and don’t bother about your own safety.
Wow. Risk averse or not – if you follow his advice on these topics not only are you an idiot, but you are more than likely to end up dead (or in prison). Trying to copy Harold Lloyd and letting a train run over you is a short cut to ending up dead. The is not some stupid rule pushed upon a care free society by evil Health and Safety people but a simple fact.
If you don’t bother about your own safety when you try to save someone else — in water or not — then the reality is you are more than likely to become a casualty yourself. Not only does this mean you fail to save the “object” you are after, but it means when (if) the emergency services arrive they have two people to deal with. It really is stupid, yet it is a common thing all over the world.
As for the phrenology and obscure social judgements, well, I hope I don’t need to explain why they are mad.
Showing how the idea that we are a “risk averse” society as the result of Health and Safety (and RoSPA) molly coddling, the comments give the ranting-tabloid readers the chance to mouth off, without considering the double standards of their complaints. It is somewhat infuriating that these people who rant about “taking risks” are the first to demand “public enquiries” whenever someone gets injured — or god-forbid a criminal moves into their neighbourhood…
The comments range from the somewhat confusing to the complete misunderstanding. Take this example:
If everyone selfishly followed ROSPA’s advice we would have no heroes.
Now, I know I have been having trouble getting my head round sayings lately, but this has stumped me as well. This person seems to want people to be put in harms way, often die, so that others can be hailed as a hero. Wow. How selfish…
We also get the predictable nonsense about how all anti-social behaviour is linked to (insert topic of choice) which is typified by these two:
Baden Powell was a real man, not like the Beckham boys generation of today. When was the last time anyone went out and fought a bear? Society should take notice of these true words of wisdom.
Perhaps if more of Baden-Powells philosophies on life were in place in todays world we wouldnt need so many ASBOs. As a former Cub, Scout and Venture Scout I beleive that the scouting movement helped to mould me and my attitudes towards others and we desperatly need more empathy towards others in our selfish modern age.
Yes, I am sure it is entirely down the scouting movement. Obviously, just like Christianity, without it people would be un-restrained murdering rapists… As for having to wrestle a bear to be a real man, well… I am sure in some neolithic community that would be good criteria for making your “wisdom” wise, but I doubt it is the case in modern times..
Thankfully, one commenter points out the problem with relying too heavily on “common sense” approaches to problems or dangerous situations. By and large, as humans, we have not yet adapted the proper “sense” responses to some situations, especially living in a temperate climate as the UK should be. This is why people make the mistake of trying to crawl out on breaking ice, or jump into raging torrent rivers, to save someone and often end up casualties themselves.
A very recent example of people making a mistake because they were in a situation they had no idea about has been during the recent floods in England and Wales. People here are not used to having to pump out their houses so end up using petrol powered pumps without ventilation and die. This is the sort of thing the HSE and RoSPA try to prevent.
Why do people have a problem with trying to save lives and prevent accidents?
[tags]HSE, Health, Safety, Society, Culture, Risk, Scouts, Baden-Powell, Nonsense, BBC, Idiocy, Belief, Risk averse, Risk Taking, RoSPA, HSE, Common Sense, Floods, Death, Accident, Injury[/tags]
Commenting on blogs
Now, we are as guilty of this as anyone else, but looking through the stats it seems that, on average and discounting bots, there is only one comment made out of every 250 page views on this blog. Part of the fun of blogging is getting feedback from others and learning from their ideas an opinions. To try and rectify this, WhyDontYou blog is asking everyone who visits and reads a post to leave a message — even if it is just a “You Suck” comment — and we will do our bit by beginning a “Comment Week” next week, where we will leave a comment on every post we read. Please join in and spread the word.
Two short planks?
It’s National Brain Training Awareness Month, according to the Metro.
I couldn’t remember the name of the month (I still thought it was July) or the name of the Prof* who’s promoting it (Ian Robertson), without finding my copy of the Metro and copying it down. So this brain training stuff might be becoming a matter of urgency.
Ian Robertson said
“Studies show our average IQ rose all the way through the 20th century, but has declined over the last ten years.”
I have to admit that this seems more than mildly spurious, given that IQ is not exactly reliable evidence of much (The field is dominated by shady bad-scientists from Birt to Eysenck and doesn’t show anything except the ability to do well on IQ tests.)** But, given that the claim fits so smoothly in with my own prejudices, I’m happy to run with the ball here.
I do indeed feel that people in general are getting noticeably stupider. I would be happy to argue the toss all day about what factors could be responsible – from the after effects of the lead in the petrol when today’s young adults were growing brain-tissue, through a lowest-common-denominator education system that rewards conformist office skills and discourages imagination, shot through with constant testing.
But, this diatribe must have some word limit, so I’ll stick to the synergistic effects of an increasingly stupid culture. According to Robertson, the brain is a muscle that needs exercising throughout life.
Few of us are doing work that exercises it. (Working in a call centre uses much less of the brain than a traditional manual labourer used to exercise.) Few of us have interests that expand our consciousness or physical or mental skills.
The more stupid we become, the more stupid things get rolled out for our entertainment, the more we imbibe them uncritically, the more stupid we come.
*Cue Whiney codgerish rant*
It used to be said that the Sun newspaper was aimed at people with a reading age of 11, hence its mass market appeal. Now, that’s already starting from a pretty low base.
But, we now have television that makes reading the Sun seem like an intellectual pursuit. (It involves READING, ffs.)
Dull and self-obsessed “ordinary” people locked up with others of their ilk while they compete ever more bitchily for our attention. Talent shows with z-list music-biz judges, where both contenders and judges compete bitchily for our attention. And so on. Dull Z-list celebs learning to dance. Dull z-list celebs eating raw worms. 10 sexiest male singers. 100 greatest TV advert characters……..
We are basically socially reinforcing every tendency towards stupidity that we can muster. And we are making ourselves as stupid as we possibly can at a time when we really need our brains. We are living in a time of extreme crisis – in terms of wars, resources, the natural environment, population pressure. And we are all busy doing the “fiddling while Rome burns” thing – switching off our intelligence to avoid noticing that all the threats that have been looming for decades haven’t gone away.
*Cue Gushing rave*
From another perspective, though, there is lots of evidence that some people have been getting much smarter over the past ten years. The Internet didn’t even really exist a little more than ten years ago. And it’s spawning works of genius all the time. The people designing software and net tools are expanding the world’s possibilities every day. Just plain old Internet users are taking these inventions and creating miraculous things in terms of communication and art. (Witness the atheist blogroll, some of the things on You-tube, the arcane worlds of linux fanatics and hax0r groups, brilliant blogs, amazing photography, stunning 3d rendering, etc)
So I suspect that average intelligence hasn’t actually fallen. The average brain capacity has just become polarised. The people with the working brain tissue are getting exponentially smarter and the mentally challenged are giving up the fight to become fully human.
(* Not sure what his job is. The Metro says “Dean of NeuroScience at the University of Dublin”. Some training site that cites his research says “Professor of Psychology at Trinity College Dublin.” Maybe a promotion plus a change of specialty? )
** Coincidentally, Pharyngula expresses his problem with doubting the validity of IQ while wanting to go along with IQ-based research that matches what he wants to hear – in his case, that atheists have 5 points higher IQs than believers. Well, he’s only pretending to be torn. Of course he doesn’t accept it as ‘true’, enticing as the idea is. there is an interesting discussion of IQ, with some good comments. The post was picked up on WhyDontYou tumbler and Planet atheism as well.
*** How brainy is this, hey? Three footnotes. On a blog? 🙂 In your face, stupid people.
Biblical rain and Gods
As a mild, but boring – hence homeopathic – antidote to boredom, you can look in Wikipedia to find out what saints are attributed to any given day. (Today there is a preponderance of German saints, for example. Plus, it was Haile Selassie’s birthday.)
Somewhat appropriately, given the recent Biblical-style rain and floods – nay, Floods – experienced in parts of the UK, China and USA, today also appears to be the date of the Roman Nepturnalia – celebrations for Neptune (the Roman sea god, do keep up.)
While we are increasingly being brought to face the reality of climate instability, there are enough people willing to try to influence the weather by ritual means that the devotees of Neptune could fit right in unnoticed.
This was a really great news item and photo. As an inspired publicity stunt for the new Simpsons movie, a giant cartoon Homer, holding aloft a doughnut, was drawn next to the Cerne Abbas giant.
Rent-a-pagans were quick to get in on the story, for the sidestream publicity benefits. (They’ve got a district manager. They must need a serious revenue stream.)
Ann Bryn-Evans, joint Wessex district manager for The Pagan Federation, said: “We were hoping for some dry weather but I think I have changed my mind.
“We’ll be doing some rain magic to bring the rain and wash it away.”
She added: “I’m amazed they got permission to do something so ridiculous. It’s an area of scientific interest.”
(Yes, people who claim to believe that they can influence the weather by their magical actions are saying that the giant Homer is ridiculous.)
Well I think they can claim overkill success on this one. Although praying for rain in the current UK is like praying for continuing war in Iraq. I.e. your prayers are answered before you’ve got the first words out.
Most people who aren’t Native Americans might feel that conducting communal rituals to influence the movement of clouds and air and water is just an example of doing something/anything to feel less pathetically weak against forces that are more powerful than us by several orders of magnitude. It’s not likely that massive air masses are going to be swayed by a good ululation. It might make you feel better, but only if you suspend rationality.
(It’s obviously still more rational than praying for interference by the creator of the universe though. If there were such a being, and s/he shared human thinking processes about guilt or innocence, we’d be pretty far down the deserving-a-miracle list, having brought this on ourselves, despite having the Free Will gift. There must be beings in Alpha Centauri facing going down a galactic plughole to worry about first.)
The rational response to climate chaos is to change our lifestyles, en masse, at a social level and hope it’s not too late. Well, that doesn’t appear to be going to happen does it?
Well, Plan A, then. Pay loads of lipservice to the issue. Come up with “ecological” solutions that create new products for us to consume and new waste mountains. Devise carbon crediting ideas that noone can understand and that actually reward countries with ancient forests for ripping them down and replacing them with fresh young trees. Solutions that monetise everything then treat money as the key to the solution, so that the poor end up paying the most anyway.
This will let our societies carry on spending our resources like a drunken sailor in a new port, with 6 month’s pay and a terminal illness. As if none of us really expect to have any great-grandchildren. Bit of a short-term solution though.
In the meantime, better put either or both of Plans B and C into operation then. You start believing there’s a needy and insecure but easily-pissed off human being that’s bigger and stronger than the earth’s atmosphere who can smite it into submission or will beam us all up to heaven if you are just adequately sycophantic. I’ll start knocking up a really big boat and collecting a couple of samples of any life that come within my reach. It’s worked before, allegedly.
Why don’t you just switch your television on..
…. and watch the Wire?
If you haven’t seen it and you are in the UK and you have Sky or cable, watch it now.
Series 1- Episode one should be on FX now. NOW unless it’s way past ten o’clock. In which case you can catch it on the repeats (possibly Sunday. Don’t as me, I’m not the TV Guide.)
If you have seen it, you probably want to watch it again a few more times anyway.
You’ll thank me later.
New Theme Time
It has been a quiet weekend here on the blogging front, but we have worked on a new theme – returning to a Stonehenge header picture and blue colour scheme. The site should now look like the screenshot. If it is radically different there is a problem or we have removed the theme 🙂
As always, there may be a few teething problems early on, so we really do appreciate it if you can take a moment to let us know if you encounter any problems. No matter how trivial you may think a problem is, if you tell us, we can try to fix it! One thing we will try to look at is page loading time. Our initial work around for this, is to increase the use of “read more” breaks in the content of posts on this page, but I am aware some people don’t like this, so please take a moment and let me know what you think.
[tags]General,Site Admin, Theme, Whydontyou, Blog[/tags]
Bad Social Science from Ben Goldacre
This blog is a great fan of “Bad Science”. But this week, Ben Goldacre has pretty well gone out of his depth when he dipped his toes in the murky pool of social science research.
He applauds what he believes to be the first randomised controlled trial in social research. So far so good. An excellent idea to apply scientific methods to social sciences…. He makes some reasonable specific points but, overall, he is completely missing the point.
For instance, he suggests there should have been randomised trials for Drug Treatment Orders as alternatives to prison, with prisoners allocated at random to one or the other. In this specific case, he shows a lack of social understanding that seems almost wilfull for a doctor. Continue reading
Crime and the Rose Tinted Past
At the risk of turning this blog into a never ending stream of rants about public perceptions of crime, it seems there are even more woo-like nonsensical things being pushed out by people (Hattip oustudent blog).
On the BBC “Have your say” pages there is an ongoing debate about crime, and public understanding of the levels of crime.
By and large, the comments speak volumes about a people who are so disconnected from reality, so twisted by media led scare stories, that they no longer have (if they even ever did) any objective view point on the world around them. As is always the case, lots of people who comment, have no idea what the topic they are commenting on is about but want to make a comment about how much they hate the government and everything wrong in the world is entirely the fault of Tony Blair for misleading the nation over Iraq. Even the rain is caused by that… Continue reading
Media Inspired Cluelessness
A few days ago, I ranted about foolish people who thought having a hammer or baseball bat by the side of their bed was a “good idea” for stopping burglars. At the time, the comments on the Radio 2 page were not available but they are now. (If you are reading this after 24 Jul 07, it may no longer point to the right place).
At the time of my previous rant, I was mainly thinking about the idiots who feel they are skilled enough to get up in the middle of the night, naked or in pyjamas, pick up a cumbersome household item-cum-weapon and attack an intruder inside their house. The comments reinforced my previous opinions and to be honest, most of the people are simply writing jingoistic bravado, knowing that the chances of them ever being put to the test is minimal. Some are more entertaining than others though, for example:
keith hughes, salisbury
there not by the bed but under. i have 3 single handed swords, 3 hand and a half swords, a pole arm, a musket, canon, armour and a number of shields, take your pick. All of these are for medieval re-enactment. I think i have the art of home defence worked out, although i’m open to suggestions.
I hope his house is actually large enough for him to wield these weapons properly, although I suspect any burglar who waits around long enough for him to sally forth in armour with his bill pike may well be prepared to deal with the consequences. Sadly, Keith is equally deluded in thinking he has the “art of home defence” worked out, but no more so than any of the others.
The big problem I have with the comments, is the total lack of understanding. Around one in three are people complaining that the law does not allow them to defend their property (or in the case of one nutter who calls himself “King Arthur”, his women). This is a myth.
Thanks to the media’s misrepresentation of reality, these people are complaining about the unfairness of laws which don’t exist. None of them have bothered to clue themselves up, but they still feel perfectly capable of sounding off about it. Add in people who cant even follow the debate and think the discussion is about defending lives and it becomes truly comical.
Pretty ironic really. Sadly, these people have the vote…
[tags]Government, Law, Self Defence,Rants, Society, Culture, Idiots, Media[/tags]
Papal bull
You might think the Catholic Church had enough to worry about with the laughably huge sums its having to drag from the contributions of the faithful to pay out to kids abused by its minions, but the Pope seems to be going for “the best defence is offence” strategy.
The Pope has been spraying papal bull^^^ in all directions, making some mockery of the concepts of ecumenical fellowship.
Protestants
In Sunday’s Observer, Will Hutton compared the Pope’s recent pronouncement on Protestants to the tribally offensive behaviour of drunken Orange marchers, pissing on the Wigan train while shouting anti-Catholic rants. He referred to the Pope’s Continue reading
Cartoon capers
It beggars belief that the population of London, let alone Islamabad, is reading Danish cartoons as a matter of course. I bet the Danish speaking population of London can be numbered in the hundreds and, in Pakistan, I’d be surprised if there are more than a handful of speakers of Danish as a second language. So, the whole furore was blatantly manufactured.
All the same, to be honest, I am a bit ambivalent about this. Today, four people were jailed for 6 years each for their parts in an anti-Danish-cartoon demo. The serious response strikes me as a little like the cartoon fury in the first place.
I would never possibly condone mad anti-infidel ranting. I find the content of what teh men said deeply disturbing and even sufficient to drive me to rage. All the same, people often shout rubbish on demonstrations, carried away by the atmosphere and the pleasure of getting their rhetoric listened to. (Or you can probably replace “often” by “always”.) Who is listening except the other demonstrators? Continue reading
Self Defence or Self Delusion? (long)
Today’s Jeremy Vine show on Radio 2 was almost made to infuriate me. It was almost as if the researchers read my mind and found some topics that would be guaranteed to get on my wick, and better still would be certain to get the amazing collection of people who ring in, to ring in and add to the nonsense being debated. Well, it worked like a treat. It really did. If it wasn’t frowned upon to use work telephones to phone radio shows and call every one idiots, I would have done so today. Really. And I do hate myself for it, because it means I am another one of the brain addled fools who rings in to rant.
Anyway, admissions over with, on to the rant. Today’s “show” began with a call in about the expulsion of four Russian diplomats following the Russian refusal to extradite the man suspected of killing Litvinenko (news). This was reasonably tepid – at the end of the day it is the sort of thing which is done in international politics. It strikes me as reasonable for the UK government to demand his extradition. It is almost reasonable for Russia to resist, and if the UK had a punishment regime which was worse than in Russia (death sentence etc), then I would certainly back their refusal. As it stands, we don’t.
I was only half listening to this, the callers were generally only calling so they could go on air and criticise the UK government over something, logical consistency was nicely ignored. A few messages read out were along the lines of people accusing the UK of “punching above its weight” etc and saying we should just keep quiet and not hassle the Russians over this. Odd standards, but there you go. It didn’t rile me that much.
Next came the best bit. The middle debate was about some “research” which apparently shows 1 in 3 British people sleep with a weapon by their bed. Mostly these are things like baseball bats and hammers. Now, as I don’t know anyone who does this there is implication that entire cities are full of people who go to bed armed to the teeth.
The basic premise was debated initially by the guy who is an ex-burglar and now a BBC1 TV “personality” showing people how to prevent break-ins (cant remember his name), and “Daily Mail Columnist” Peter Hitchens. Instantly you can see this is going to make the blood boil. The Mail describe him as having an “uncompromising blog” when in reality he spouts out pure nonsense. Often it is ill informed nonsense, sometimes it is offensive nonsense, but it is always nonsense.
Anyway, the ex-Burglar chappie made some reasonable comments along the lines of hiding a weapon by your bed will not deter thieves and if you batter the burglar you are likely to face prosecution. He went on to suggest better ways of preventing burglary. FoolHitchens replied to this by saying it was a policy of fear and assumed burglary was always going to happen. He then went on to spout out some fanciful claims about how it was “better 30 – 40 years ago” and that it was all societies fault that people were too frightened to sleep without a hammer next to their bed.
Showing either his mastery of irony, or more likely his lack of any idea of logical conclusion, Hitchens continued to create an argument from despair about declining moral standards and how the law was at fault. Etc. It was pure sound bite designed to cater to his selection of Mail readers, he even went as far as to lament how it is always the middle class (of which he seems proud to include himself 1) who have to suffer, how they are the only law abiding people and so on. If you can get the listen again bit to play (I cant tonight for some reason) it kicks in at about 35 – 45 min point and you can hear him head down the road of quoting imaginary statistics. He really is an annoying *****.
Despite his claims to know about criminology, it seems on this subject as so many others, Hitchen is a poor student. For a start, despite his ideas that there was a golden age x years ago (it changes depending on what he is writing for etc), this really is not the case. Burglary is a poor one for him to try and pin on the social decline because it is one of the few crimes which is easy to track over the years. Looking at both the British Crime Survey and the reports from the ACPO, burglary is on the decline and has been since 1999. Going back more than two decades and it was much higher during the halcyon years he lusts after – in the late seventies and eighties it was significantly greater than today.
Add to this the reality that most people subjected to burglary are poor people who live in poor neighbourhoods and you can see he has built an argument on foundations of quicksand. The incidents of burglars (normally poor people themselves) travelling to “middle class” neighbourhoods to do a spot of pilfering is low to say the least. Despite the Daily Mail’s scare stories, “middle class” areas have a greater police presence, higher incidence of home alarms etc. All of these go towards protecting the property. If you doubt this, try to find some insurance quotes. Try for a poor, run down, inner city area and compare that with the same – or larger – property in a “nice” postcode area. As someone who has lived in both areas, I can tell you the difference is staggering.
Fundamentally, this talk show and especially Hitchens pure nonsense, speaks more of a segment of society which has (for whatever reason) allowed itself to become frightened of ghosts. This middle class who read the mail and listen to idiotHitchens are being tricked into thinking there is much more of a risk than there actually is. Note: I am not downplaying the risk or saying burglary is not a terrible thing to be subjected to. It strikes me this current furore over the subject is a result of Kerry Katona getting held up at knife point in her own home (news). Now her circumstances were terrible. You wouldn’t wish it upon your worst enemy but they certainly are not indicative of the experiences of “normal” people. Three men sledgehammered their way into her house and held a knife to her neck. They did this because she was very rich (not middle class). It is not a typical event. It is so atypical it made the news headlines.
As this was a “phone in” show, you can imagine the comedy value from the callers. Worryingly, every one I heard said they did, indeed, sleep with a weapon next to their bed. Now, this may be an artefact caused by the researchers selection process but it is still disturbing.
The callers were all saying how they kept baseball bats, hammers (even one had a crossbow, a pilum and a sword to hand …) in case their home was invaded and they needed to fight to defend their property. Blimey. A nation of ninjas. In the past I have ranted about firearms and it may be easy to guess that I am not a big fan of people taking this route towards home defence. There are many issues, but the main one I have problem with, is it is ludicrous to say the least.
Among the callers were a few women and what sounded like an older than middle aged man. Now, without going into too much detail I am fairly confident I have at least an average understanding of what is involved in a claws out fight with weapons to hand(2). I am also 100% confident that if some one attacked me with a hammer, without knowing the best way to wield this particular weapon, I could take it off them and inflict major damage on them. This is the basic thing for people who try to defend themselves like this to realise. As soon as they confront the burglar with the weapon the stakes are raised. Lots of callers were saying that they challenged a burglar with a butter knife (or whatever) and he ran off. What would happen if he hadn’t run off though?
Sticking with the hammer as an example (although the same applies to most “household” weapons), most people attacking a burglar will do the adrenalin inspired thing and swing it at the burglars head. Great if he isn’t looking and doesn’t know you are there – you may hit him. If he is aware of your presence, it really is unlikely you will get a solid blow anywhere it counts. Now, the important bit is if you miss. This can be trouble. Most swinging weapons tend to encourage people to swing them full force – this is especially the case if “frail” people are using them as they seem to want to get their bodyweight behind it. When the weapon fails to connect, the person swinging will often be forced to carry on with the swing until they can either bring it under control, or it hits something (often the floor or wall). While this is going on, most people are largely unable to do anything – other than get beaten or killed by the intruder who now (rightly) fears for his or her own life.
Baseball bats, for example, are often more effective used as a poking weapon rather than swinging, but I doubt any of the people who called in, proud they have one, would use it like this if an intruder was in their house. If that first swing fails to totally disable the attacker, it is unlikely the home-defender will come away from the situation in a “nice way.”
More worryingly, there was the idea that this (weapons by the bed) was a good idea for the elderly and women alone with small children. Blimey. The worst categories. Sadly, illusions aside, most of the middle class homeowners are unlikely to be well versed in the raw aggression and violence a fight like this can produce. If the burglar is the stereotypical 40 – 50 year old “career burglar” then fine, they may well run off. If the intruder is young, a hardened criminal (fighting in prison is a good way to learn close in skills) or a desperate drug addict, the chances are the office-working home owner will be given a sadly firm lesson in self defence.
There really is only one sensible course of action if you are in your house when a burglar breaks in. Lock yourself in a room and call the police. If you try to challenge the intruder you are risking everything. If there is more than one of them, or they don’t flee immediately things are going to get a LOT worse for you. Remember you can replace property. Your nose, bones or even your life are more important.
A weapon by the bed does not make you any safer than a lock on your bedroom door. The weapon, no matter how much it may “reassure” you is actually more likely to ensure you are hurt rather than robbed. It will not act as a deterrent to the thief, as he has to be in your house before he knows it is there.
One last point – if a burglar breaks in while you are home, it is less likely that he is the “career burglar” mentioned above, so really think twice before trying to be the hero. Despite this, the chances of being burgled are low, and the chances of it happening while you are at home is even lower. If you really are that worried, check your insurance policy – it is the best defence to losing things you have.
Sadly, I have spent so long ranting about this nonsense I no longer have the energy to pick up on the last piece of the show which was about Imaginary Friends. What a gift that would have been 🙂 .
[tags]Crime, Society, Peter Hitchens, Philosophy, Self Defence, Middle Class, Burglary, Nonsense, Madness, Woo, Culture, Fear, Imaginary Friend, Belief, Ideas, Media, Daily Mail, BBC, BBC2, Radio, Knives, Weapons[/tags]
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1 – It should be noted that the wiki page for his brother has this to say:
Hitchens was educated at The Leys School, Cambridge (his mother arguing that ‘If there is going to be an upper class in this country, then Christopher is going to be in it.’) [13], and Balliol College, Oxford, where he read Philosophy, Politics, and Economics. During his years as a student at Oxford, he was tutored by Steven Lukes.
Unless the family were particularly spoiling Christopher rather than Peter, I can only assume both went to Oxford. Not the normal “Middle Class” behaviour.
2 – For my sins, I have spent a period of my life teaching people how to fight like this and also teaching people how to secure their property.