I can’t explain the year date so easily. There’s obviously been a mistake in the year part of the date of several hundred years.

I can sympathise, given that my PC has been under the impression that I was still living in the 12th December 2009. If it were to decide that I’m really living in the 14th century, I’d have to blame in on having accidentally bought Irish computer parts.

I doubt that the Irish government reads this humble blog with the same attention to detail as do branches of our own but if you are reading this, Taoiseach, please get some underlings to update your system clock.

( Happy New Year.)

Readers send in their problems. So far, none of these have seemed to relate to the types of arcane technical or theoretical issues that you’d expect to worry evolutionary biologists.

The “problems” seem to be the dull wrangles between conscience and desire that we all experience, though you would hope that fewer of us share the problem-sharers’ capacity for self-justification.

To paraphrase one: “I am a good catch and my wife can’t breed any more, doesn’t evolutionary biology require me to get a younger model?”

Amazing that people with no capacity far self-knowledge can apparently survive into middle age. Obviously human intelligence wasn’t really that important to the survival of our species… (well, until now, anyway, what with climate change and ecological devastation, and all … )

Is this garbage there to give aid and comfort to creationists? It pretends that biology can somehow replace human morality. It misunderstands basic concepts of evolution, in ways that you would normally expect from the Discovery Institute.

I guess I’ll take it as a joke after all.

Alistair Noble wrote that “Intelligent design should not be excluded from the study of origins”

As a former science teacher and schools inspector, I am disturbed that proposals for science education are based on near-complete ignorance of intelligent design. I also think the views of “most British people” in this matter should not be so readily set aside.

Even if it were true that “most British people” believed in ID, this doesn’t make it a valid scientific theory nor imply that “most British people” are qualified to decide what pseudo -science is taught in schools.

The fact is that that “most British people” (hmm, me included) don’t know enough about biology to get a GCSE in it. Choosing a theory of life is not like casting a vote on XFactor.

He argues that ID is nothing to do with religion; life is complex and beautiful; it seems designed so it must have been….

It is easily overlooked that the origin of life, the integrated complexity of biological systems and the vast information content of DNA have not been adequately explained by purely materialistic or neo-Darwinian processes. Indeed it is hard to see how they ever will.

But hey, this is not about religion….

It is an all too common error to confuse intelligent design with religious belief.

The intellectual dishonesty of this claim – that it’s not religiously based – is quite telling. What specific “science” did he teach?

If Intelligent design constitutes a good scientific theory, why draw the line at using it in biology? What about physics? What about cosmology?
“A magic man did it” applies even more aptly to these subjects, surely?

It’s certainly possible that our models of “evolution” will be proven to be false by some new and better explanation of biological processes. That’s science. ….. It is well nigh inconceivable that science will ever decide that the magic man is an explanation for anything.

Alistair’s Guardian profile says

Dr Alastair Noble is an educational consultant and lay preacher, and a former teacher and research chemist

Research chemistry? Why bother? Surely, the magic man made all the chemicals and chemical transformations. Why not just read Genesis instead of messing about getting research results?

Lay preacher? He argued that ID is real science, and can’t be confused with religion (see above) So his being a lay preacher is just a coincidence. Indeed a coincidence so uncanny that it can only have been designed by a superior being.

A few links, chosen randomly by my own intelligent design, to other blogs discussing this nonsense better than I have, and indeed, having done so in a rather more timely fashion.
evilburnee.co.uk
Wonderful life
Richard Dawkins, net

(Lucky for Oftsed, anyway, as they now seem to be legally obliged to do it).

It also seems to be lucky – for the CofE- that a CofE-funded study – doing some statistical analysis of OFSTED’s application of its community cohesion standard – concluded that faith schools are better at promoting it.

I’m not going down the cynical “Well, you get what you pay for” route, here. I am just wondering what “community cohesion” might mean. If “faith” schools are magically better than bog-standard schools at mixing together the communities they are sited in, then someone should have sent the message to Northern Ireland, where the people trying to end decades of internal war are trying to get kids taught together, whatever their family religion…….

I was under the impression that there was a UK map (on the BBC or somewhere) showing that the poorest and most deprived areas were the most socially “cohesive” – people had lots of contact with relatives, lived close to where they were born, shared values, helped each other out, etc.

Strong community ties can serve as a survival strategy for the poor, but there are many complicated good and bad implications. (I believe the East End community was considered quite cohesive in the Kray era, for instance.)

Hence, I googled “community cohesion map”. I haven’t found the map I was looking for, yet. Most of the top results are policy documents related to education or housing. They are pretty close to unreadable (without getting the urge to rip the language area out of your own skull, anyway) but it’s obviously a big current policy topic. So, you’d assume there must be a useful definition in there somewhere.
Here’s the Experian Community Cohesion Factsheet. Factsheet, see. Doesn’t that mean it has the facts?

Hmm, it certainly has sciencey-looking maps, showing you can plot measures of community cohesiveness on a map.

Well, yes, you can plot anything to a map. A map doesn’t care whether you actually define the things you are mapping.

Cohesive and harmonious communities are the bedrock of a civilised and stable society. Enhancing cohesion is fundamental to reducing disorder, increasing public confidence and improving everyone’s quality of life. It is therefore important to understand the factors that underpin cohesion to consider the best ways to deliver services and engage with residents to accomplish longterm sustainable improvements.

Bedrock of a civilised society… Now why does that sound familiar? How many bedrocks does a civilised society need?

The Experian measures seem to be disturbingly related to ethic origin of respondents. It’s not as if this sort of information could ever be misused, is it? (Rhetorical question.)

Not sure how to claim your prize, sorry, but there seems to be a £9 million jackpot up for grabs.

So get marking those cards.

No prizes for spotting comedian Mark Thomas in there, either. But you can have him as your starter, so you don’t have to actually see him at a protest to cross him off your scorecard.

Breaking news:
Sorry kids, it looks as if the Information Commissioner has finally tried to spoil your fun. By actually spotting the outrageous nature of the information in this Guardian story .

Five women were paraded naked, beaten and forced to eat human excrement by villagers after being branded as witches in India’s Jharkhand state.
Local police said the victims were Muslim widows who had been labelled as witches by a local cleric. (from the BBC)

This poses an interesting question. Does Islam have “witches?” Are they mentioned in the Koran? (I have no idea. I am too idle to googleit even)

The BBC has a video but I’m such a wuss that the warning that it contains disturbing footage was enough to stop me playing it. The video has understandably outraged people in India.

According to more links on that BBC page, witch persecution is not uncommon in India today. For instance, the BBC story “Witch family killed” reported the deaths of four people, who were stoned and buried alive in June 2008.

More than 500 people have been killed in Assam – and half as many in neighbouring West Bengal – in the past few years because their neighbours thought they were witches.
A study on these killings by a Bengal police officer, Asit Baran Choudhury, suggests that most of those accused of practising witchcraft and then killed are “isolated families” with some landed property.
He says most of those killed are widows.
“Powerful people in the community target them to acquire the land,” says the study. (from the BBC, 12 June 2008)

These horrific tales don’t need commenting on. It’s blindingly obvious what’s going on here. I could refer you to the mountains of anthropological literature about persecution of “witches”. The European witch trials were so similar in terms of targetting widows and grabbing property. But any mention of “anthropology” or “history” places this sort of madness in a conceptual realm that’s outside our own experience – in the distant past or in some “superstitious” alien society that is nothing like the modern world (Ha.)

In any case, I tend to assume that most readers are halfway sane so I won’t do this to death. Feel free to work up your own outrage. I’m getting a bit tired at expressing outrage at things so WRONG that they defy any sense of innate human decency. And I choose not to go down that road, as a matter of principle.

How monumentally convenient for someone who is jealous of another’s good fortune to make up insane accusations and convince the gullible that they are true.

taking photographs of public buildings is, in and of itself, evidence of suspicious behavior sufficient to give authorities the right to stop and detain anyone engaging in such behavior.

Isnt that a great attitude for the Chief of the Franklin, Wisconsin Police Department to have?

Isnt it equally great to remember back to the bad old days of the Cold War when this sort of behaviour was used as an example of how Ebull the Commiez were?

The BBC website has a report on the argument by the Refugee Council that the UK should take some responsibility to grant asylum for vulnerable residents – children -of the squatter camp at Calais.

They are talking about children. Children who are living in a squatter camp. I think that qualifies as a humanitarian issue. Surely all our media hysteria about risks to children should also apply here?

But, in the interests of “balance”, presumably, the BBC gives at least an equal space to the views of Migration Watch, who carefully seek to redefine this issue to ignore the “children” bit. After a load of unchallenged nonsense such as an assertion that 80% of people who say the word “asylum” are admitted to the UK, their spokesman says

“You have to look at the system as a whole, you can’t just say there are vulnerable children” (from the BBC)

Now, I’m already on semiotic alert by the BBC’s description of this squatter camp as

the camp known as “the jungle”

And lo, there is a sidebar with links to previous BBC articles about this camp.

SEE ALSO
UK turns down ‘jungle migrants’ 18 Sep 09 | Europe
France to close migrant ‘jungle’ 16 Sep 09 | Europe
Migrant squalor in Calais ‘jungle’ 02 Jul 09 | UK
UN to help advise Calais refugees 01 Jul 09 | UK

Was a decision taken in early July to use the “jungle” word? Hmm, does that mean that it’s full of Africans? Yes, I believe it does. Jungle is a pretty loaded word. It arrives carrying echoes of the racist ideas that supported colonialism. That’s why we now say “rainforest”.

I don’t have a problem with calling the “rainforest” the “jungle”. However, I do have serious problems with the BBC calling a refugee camp a “jungle,” given that I don’t believe that trees and parrots are over-represented in the Calais camp.

And what is MigrationWatch? Surely that must be an organisation with equal credibility to the Refugee Council, given that it’s accorded equal billing by the BBC? Well, maybe it’s just me but I rather think not.

Its website says that

We are an independent, voluntary, non political body which is concerned about the present scale of immigration into the UK.

Let’s say “concerned” is putting it mildly. The word “rabid” would probably fill the bill better. Here are the first 3 of what they call “key facts”:

Net immigration has quadrupled since 1997 to 237,000 a year.
A migrant now arrives nearly every minute.
We must build a new home every six minutes for new migrants.

They have a press page where they record their appearances in the media: (When I say “their” I am not convinced that “they” exist far beyond their spokestwat, but that may be wishful thinking)

Bear with me while I paste in their media triumphs over the past couple of years. Unsurprisingly, the Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph are the favoured platforms – until the BBC started to see their glorious leader as a spokesman:

Migrant housing figures, Letter in The Daily Telegraph 25 July, 2009
25-Jul-2009
Turks increasingly turn to Islamic extremism: Al Qaeda’s reliance on Arabs is altering as recruits from Turkey and Turkic-speaking areas of Central Asia form a recent wave of trainees, experts (sic) say.
By Sebastian Rotella Los Angeles Times – 20-Jul-2009
At last, the truth about immigration and council house queue jumping
By Andrew Green The Daily Mail, London – 30-Jun-2009
Statisticians are right to publish and be damned By Sir Andrew Green,
The Times – 12-Feb-2009
We must create a culture of solidarity, not offer amnesties
Editorial from The Catholic Herald 28-Nov-2008
How many more people can our small island take? As population heads towards 70 million has the penny dropped for Labour? by Sir Andrew Green The Daily Mail – 19-Nov-2008
Devastating demolition of the case for mass immigration by Sir Andrew Green, Chairman of Migration Watch UK, The Daily Mail – 01-Apr-2008
Immigration is making matters worst (sic) Letter by Sir Andrew Green
The Surrey Advertiser – 07-Dec-2007
Hold back the immigrant flood By Sir Andrew Green,
The Sunday Times – 04-Nov-2007
‘We must act now to cut immigrant numbers’ Commentary by Sir Andrew Green, The Daily Telegraph – 24-Oct-2007

Plus this “1 Sep 2009 … Sir Andrew Green was interviewed on the Today Programme at 8.35 this morning about the asylum seekers’ camp near Calais”

Who is Sir Andrew Green and why are his views so much more worthy of media attention than, say, mine? A Guardian profile from 2005 says his friends are unanimous that he’s not a a racist. Oh, well, that must be OK, then.

Apparently, he can’t be a racist, because he was British Ambassador to Saudi Arabia…….

The portrait that emerges from those who know Sir Andrew is of a shy, private individual, “a right old Tory, Daily Telegraph reader”, and also a “very religious” man who held regular evangelical meetings at the British embassy in Riyadh. (from the Guardian, 4 Nov 2005)

A very religious man. LOL Regular evangelical sessions.. Double LOL. Why am I not surprised that this right-wing figurehead for an ugly ideology is also an “evangelical Christian”? Indeed, “suffer the little children” may have become his new watchword, if we consider his Calais stance.

Just to show exactly how “unracist” the former ambassador is:

The row offered Sir Andrew an opportunity to renew his argument on the BBC’s Today programme, when he said: “We have no problem with immigration from Poland, which is valuable to all sides.” (from the Guardian, 4 Nov 2005)

So Eastern Europeans are OK?

But. almost all the migration to the UK that makes up the numbers that Migration Watch presents (e.g UK supposedly needs to build a house every 6 minutes for migrants) is from EC countries. This apparently doesn’t worry “Migration Watch”.

Shouldn’t they call it “Non-white Migration Watch” and have done with it, then? Clearly not, because even the BBC would then have problems presenting Sir Andrew Green’s views on its main pages, in the name of balance.

Seriously. It must be the slowest news day ever. Obviously the media has hit saturation point with war, famine, plague and pestilence so now we have a headline news bulletin which revolves around the President of the USA expressing an opinion about someone.

What the fuck has the world come to for this to be news? Even the BBC has shamed itself by covering it. To death.

In a nutshell, Kanye West was a jack ass and interrupted an award winners speech.  Yeah, big deal. I could just about see that being the news item but the reality is people act like self-centred idiots day in, day out. The fact that some one famous is self-centred is hardly news. Following this frankly uninteresting incident, President Obabma was holding a conversation about it off air, but some ABC staff recorded it and felt the need to post twitter messages about it. Following it becoming “news” ABC have apologised to CNBC and the POTUS and have removed the twitter posts. Obviously this has done nothing to reduce the global spread and the wonders of the interweb mean we can all listen to the President of the USA calling Kanye West a “jack ass.”

Is this really how low our society has sunk? Is the President’s personal opinion about someone’s behaviour genuinely newsworthy? What impact does this have on anyone’s life?

If pushed, I am sure you could easily find in excess of 50% of the worlds population who would call Kanye West a “jack ass” even prior to his MTV awards behaviour. Is that news worthy? If not, why not?

The only thing I can think of is that the worlds news agencies are so overwhelmed by the onslaught from Web 2.0 crap applications that anything which has even a passing reference to them becomes news based solely on its perceived ability to appeal to the yoof market. It is shameful, and certainly goes a long way to explaining why “old media” feels it is under threat from the new media…

Shame on every news outlet that carried this story. Even a cat up the tree would have been more newsworthy.

What is this scary thing? Of course, it’s the internet.

Mind the gap: The perils of failing to keep pace with your child online
A dangerous gap has emerged between web-savvy kids and parents. Professor Tanya Byron has launched a new campaign to help — before it’s too late

Hmm. This is to mark the launch of a campaign, a “grassroots campaign” no less. (There’s a beautiful phrase in US politics for a campaign that pretends to be a genuine upsurge of democratic will but actually, well, isn’t. Oh yes, the word is “Astroturf”)

The campaign seems to involve asking kids if they can use any tech and getting very afraid when they say yes..

The campaign’s catalyst is Byron, known for her television programmes The House of Tiny Tearaways and Am I Normal?, as well as the author of the government-backed 2008 Byron Review Safer Children in a Digital World, which resulted in the creation of the UK Council for Child Internet Safety.

So, a tv child psychologist heads it. Hmm, why am I less than convinced by this whole thing? A tv child psychologist who also writes for the Times. And gets written about in the Times. Because, she’s also in the news today. (In the Times):

Ministers need to act swiftly on child safety, warns adviser

It’s Tanya, now known as “Gordon Brown’s adviser.”

Well who else could the government call on? Obviously, no amount of experience or qualifications or all-round peer-reviewed respect gained by any other child psychologist, or by any person who actually knows anything about the internet, could stand up against the fact that she’s got tv programmes.

(If you ever doubted that senior politicians are in thrall to the cult of celebrity at least as much as the people who read Heat (etc) magazines, Tanya is the living proof of your naivete.)

The busy Tanya is panicking about the UK not implementing some European directive on games classification. Or all of her recommendations, really. So she’s going from school to school asking questions, to support the idea that kids may know things about using the internet that their parents don’t. And that this is somehow inherently terrifying….

The games classification thing is typical of the kneejerk reactions of this “grassroots” campaign. For a start, it’s inherently counter-productive, in terms of their supposed goals. Would anything make a game more attractive to an early teenager than an 18 certificate?

Is there any evidence that playing pc or console games that are “too old for them” harms kids? Any evidence at all?

Is there any evidence whatsoever that parents are all in a strange population subgroup that failed to notice anything that happened over the last twenty years? Like the arrival of the Internet. How many adults do you know who don’t use computers or the net?

There’s a more internet and computer nonsense on the BBC today.

Tech addiction ‘harms learning’
Technology addiction among young people is having a disruptive effect on their learning, researchers have warned.

The study – Techno Addicts: Young Person Addiction to Technology - was carried out by researchers at Cranfield School of Management, Northampton Business School and academic consultancy AJM Associates.

(The AJM website mission statement says:
“Providing outstanding returns for investors along with excellent leadership in managing real estate projects is the AJM Associates mission.” I, for one, admire the conduct of educational research by profit-oriented real-estate companies and management schools….In your face, stuffy old educational academics. )

You can buy the study from Siigel Press for about $25. It’s on their “Bestseller” list. (Hardly surprising that it’s a best-seller. It got a free plug on the BBC, ffs)

The blurb talks up the shock value of this “bestseller”.

Technology addiction amongst young people, particularly in terms of facilitating social networking, is having a disruptive effect on positive attitudes towards learning. Read the results of this collaborative study spearheaded by Cranfield School of Management, Northampton Business School and AJM Associates. While students expressed little concern of addiction, technology obsession is hindering spelling skills, encouraging plagiarism and disrupting classroom learning. Download this report to learn the full details and the disturbing impact technology is having on today’s youth.

Call me a pedant – despite my possible incipient adult-onset internet addiction – but “While students expressed little concern of addiction,” doesn’t seem like correct grammar to me.
And surely they don’t really mean to claim that technology addiction is “facilitating social networking”?

If it was only possible to channel the energy that goes into manufacturing internet scares and turn it to a useful purpose, we could all be driving round in hot-air powered vehicles and could stop worrying about global warming,

Otherwise, I think that – if you really want to protect your kids online – you actually talk to them.

Court orders Christian child into government education
10-year-old’s ‘vigorous’ defense of her faith condemned by judge

(”Her” “vigorous defence”, indeed. “Her” faith, indeed.) To summarise the tale, a court-appointed guardian ad litem

reasoned that the girl’s “vigorous defense of her religious beliefs to [her] counselor suggests strongly that she has not had the opportunity to seriously consider any other point of view.” (from worldnetdaily)

To paraphrase, he saw the girl as being in danger of being far too isolated and brainwashed for her own good. Just in case, that doesn’t have the ring of truth, look at, say, Amazon’s Classical homeschool list to see what kinds of material are available for homeschoolers.

Classical.HomeSchool for grades K-3

(No, I don’t know why it has a dot between Classical and Home either. I am already baffled enough by grades K-3. I am guessing kindergarten to grade 3[?]. Basically very young children then.)

Item 1. is

KJV/Amplified Parallel Bible, Large Print (King James Version) by Zondervan Publishing
The list author says:
“My favorite Bible, the beauty of the KJV language, with Amplified to enhance…great for reading aloud to the children.”

Item 2.

Teaching the Trivium: Christian Homeschooling in a Classical Style by Harvey Bluedorn
The list author says:
“The # 1 Homeschooling Book in my opinion, and I have read ALOT of them. This is where it all starts!”

(wtf is the trivium? I casually assume that was the metal thing you use to suspend pans over a camp fire. No, that’s a trivet. The freedictionary says

in the Middle Ages, one of the two divisions of the seven liberal arts, comprising logic, grammar, and rhetoric.

So, a medieval curriculum then. Hmm. What a brilliant idea in the 21st century. (not) Wikipedia gives more choices.:

Trivium is the Latin singular form of trivia. It may also refer to the following:
* Trivium (band), an American heavy metal band
* Trivium (cipher), a synchronous stream cipher
* Trivium (education), in medieval educational theory

I suspect “the singular form of trivia” may be just as appropriate.)

To continue the homeschool trivia curriculum:

3. The Three R’s by Dr Beechick
4. Dr. Beechick’s Homeschool Answer Book by Ruth Beechick
5. Egermeier’s Bible Story Book by Elsie E. Egermeier
6. The Child’s Story Bible by Catherine F. Vos
7. Prima Latina: Introduction to Christian Latin, Teacher Manual by Leigh Lowe
8. The Alphabet for Classical Latin by Helena Bluedorn
9. A Greek Alphabetarion: A Primer for Teaching How to Read, Write & Pronounce Ancient & Biblical Greek by Harvey Bluedorn
10. Ray’s new primary arithmetic: For young learners (Ray’s arithmetic series) (Ray’s arithmetic series) by Joseph Ray,

etc. Enough, already… You get the flavour.

Basic reading and maths, fair enough, although I begin to be suspicious of even these books, given the context. And the fact that googling Ruth Beechick found me this enthusiastic home-schooler’s blog.

I think I now own every book Ruth Beechick has written ~ well, not every one; she’s got a new one just hot off the press: “World History Made Simple: Matching History With the Bible.” (from Homeschooling from the Heart blog)

Speaking of history, number 14 on the Amazon list is:

14. The Story of the World: History for the Classical Child; Volume 1: Ancient Times by Susan Wise Bauer
The list author says:
“This is a *good* story…I do like it, however have your Bible handy and make sure your children are grounded in OT History FIRST…may want to skip the beginning sections, and pre-read so for editing”

In other words, it’s a book that doesn’t JUST have the Old Testament in it, so they have to issue a health warning.

The Latin and Greek seem eccentric, to say the least. However, surely they’d be a welcome relief from the constant Bible shit. Maybe not, given that they seem to be there just so these poor unfortunate kids can read even more Bibles.

I can understand why people might prefer to spare their kids the many horrors of standard schools. But, to teach kids at home, following this sort of curriculum…… How could any child subjected to this have a hope in hell of fitting in with other people, let alone of thinking for themselves?

The BBC website headline says

Parts of Britain ‘like The Wire’

I assumed that was a subject-verb-object construction, meaning “There are parts of Britain where people like the Wire.” Which is bound to be true but a bit of a strange news headline.

But it turned out they meant:

Parts of Britain (are) ‘like The Wire’

Even that is fair enough. After all, it’s a drama that’s deliberately meant to suspend disbelief through “realism” ffs. Bits of it feel “true” to me, “true” in terms of my experience of the world and of the ways people act. I don’t assume that makes it literally “true,” in a documentary sense. No one who’s ever watched a tv series before would assume it’s a literally “true” representation of life in Baltimore, let alone any UK city.

The Conservatives have compared parts of the UK to The Wire, a US television show which portrays inner-city drugs and violence.
In a speech, shadow home secretary Chris Grayling argued that the UK was suffering the same culture of gangs and street violence found in the US.
He said Labour had failed to ensure law and order was preserved in the poorest parts of the country. ..
Mr Grayling repeated his charge that poorer communities in the UK have been let down by Labour, saying: “The Wire has become a byword for urban deprivation and societal breakdown in modern America.”
He said: “When The Wire comes to Britain’s streets, it is the poor who suffer most. It is the poor who are the ones who have borne the brunt of the surge in violence under this government.

It’s pretty obvious at this point that Chris Grayling hasn’t really ever watched the Wire.

Because, if he had, he’d have noticed that the crimes aren’t just at street level.The economy, the political world and the media don’t exactly emerge unscathed.

Crocodile tears for the “poor” seem to be the Tories’ new election strategy. For instance, they claim that the poor are being let down.

Oh yes, “let down by rising crime” is the claim. I think that misinterpreting & manipulating crime figures is called “juking the stats” in the Wire. So you’d think that a Wire-o-phile like the shadow Tory Home secretary would have the grace to blush when he does it. (Seeing as all crime figures show falling rates)

OK, the Tories aren’t the BNP – which is also trying to corner the market in populist concern for the class-formerly-known-as-working (before the last Tory governments hammered it into the ground.) But they bear a pretty monstrous responsibility for the disaffection and poverty of so many neighbourhoods, where many people never found work since the 1980s. (Don’t make me repeat the list of Tory crimes against “no-such-thing-as-society”, because I will rant for hours.)

So it’s doubly sickening to see them both using the consequences of their own actions as a stick with which to beat the government and dragging the good name of the Wire into it.

Still, it’s all in the game, I suppose…..