Why Dont You Blog?

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Was it something I said?
(Post edited to make a bit more sense)

“Doctors want right to talk faith” according to an item on the BBC health page about a BMA conference. The piece starts:

Doctors are demanding that NHS staff be given a right to discuss spiritual issues with patients as well as being allowed to offer to pray for them. (from the BBC website)

Doctors? Do NHS “doctors”, in general, feel that they have so much spare consultation time on their hands that they need to fill it with philosophical discussion? Well, no.

It’s those pesky members of organisations like Christian Voice, again. In this case it’s the “Christian Medical Fellowship”

The CMF web page title says :”a Christian perspective on Working Overseas, Ethics, Christian Apologetics, Abortion, Evangelism, Faith in Practice and Medical Training” This is too big to show in a browser title bar but you have to admire how comprehensively it gives the flavour of their interests.

They claim to represent 4,500 British doctors. (Scary, huh, if true?) The centrality of proselytizing to their goals can be seen in the literature offered by HealthServe, their overseas mission wing.

Isa Masih, meaning ‘Jesus the Messiah’, was published from July 1996 – April 1999. These back issues contain news from the Muslim world and resources for Christian students who are working towards bringing the good news of Jesus the Messiah to Muslims in universities and other tertiary institutions worldwide. …

What’s spurred their efforts to influence the BMA was the case of a Somerset nurse who offered to pray for a patient, was suspended then reinstated.

This is the sort of issue that the rabid wing of Christianity loves to make much of, and the media love to treat their complaints as news. (Auxiliary nurses told not to wear crosses and all that.) All following a goal of making religious fanaticism seem mainstream and “Christianity” under threat.

A mainstream CofE vicar (debating the issue with a man from the National Secular Society on BBC Breakfast) was aware that an unsolicited offer to pray for a patient would make her seem like the angel of death.

How much more terrifying to a sick person, if the volunteer pray-er is the doctor or nurse who is treating a patient?

If they really think prayer works, wtf can’t they just go off and do it without having to involve the prayee?

I will charitably pretend that they don’t just want to add numbers to a roll of converts (although this is the likeliest explanation for this evangelising) and that they really want to help people. In that case they must instinctively know that any efficacy of prayer comes from the power of suggestion. The prayers, crosses, and so on, are magical rituals and charms that rely on the expectations of the target.

The placebo effect, if it helps anyone get better. However, even the suggestion that your medical professional wants to pray for you would have a pretty definite nocebo effect on anyone, as it suggests that your doctor thinks you are beyond earthly hope.

of course, as the Chaplain pointed out the other day, if Christians really believed in heaven, why would the sick bother trying to stay alive? Or why would believing doctors be so cruel as to try to keep people away from their happy-ever-after afterlife?

Another crazy ID scheme, this time in India.

ID cards planned for India’s 1.1 billion
Hi-tech entrepreneur will lead operation to create huge database (headings from the story in the Independent)

Here the rationale is not just “terrorism” but also a claim that ID cards will benefit the poor.

…..will help in the delivery of vital social services to the poorest in society who often lack – or are at least told they lack – sufficient identification papers. The government has long complained that most of the money set aside for the neediest is diverted as a result of corruption, and it believes the cards could help to tackle identity theft and fraud.

Hmm. An impressive sleight of hand in “ID-card justification” creation, although the Indian government is clearly following a model similar to the UK one. The “fighting poverty” argument is:
(1) Corruption prevents relief of poverty.
(2) ID cards will prevent identity theft and fraud.

Where is the logical connection between 1 and 2?

I will temporary defy logic and try my best to look at the argument from the pro-ID card side.

Even on the assumption that corruption is the only bar to stopping poverty (which is a big and unjustified leap of faith) doesn’t that make dealing with corruption the main priority?

To get from priority 1 to priority 2, you would have to assume that “identity theft” is the only way that “corruption” works.

You would also have to assume that no “corruption” could possibly be involved in handing over billion dollar contracts to major industrialists.

(This is a leap of faith that is far beyond my jumping abilities. Silly me, I would have assumed that pumping resources in to relieve poverty and to stamp out corruption would be the intuitive way to go. You live and learn, hey?)

You would have to assume that identification documents wouldn’t become another incomprehensible/insurmountable burden for the very poorest that would probably make it even harder for them to access resources. (ditto… This is a leap of faith ….)

And you also need to believe that this won’t give rise to a new set of forms of corruption – in distributing ID documents, forging them, and so on.

Which might illustrate an admirable capacity for inventiveness in the face of survival pressures. But it’s quite hard to see how creating new forms of criminal industry would otherwise bring any benefit to the Indian poor.

The Independent says that the poor ” often lack – or are at least told they lack – sufficient identification papers.”

This scheme will provide a whole new set of identification papers for the poor to be told that they lack, then. From the perspective of the poor, this is a scheme that you could best characterise as “adding insult to injury.”

This is quite an astonishing news item.

East Lancashire youngsters see film on terrorism danger
More than 2,000 10 and 11-year-olds will see a short film, which urges them to tell the police, their parents or a teacher if they hear anyone expressing extremist views.
The film has been made by school liaison officers and Eastern Division’s new Preventing Violent Extremism team, based at Blackburn….
The terrorism message is also illustrated with a re-telling of the story of Guy Fawkes, saying that his strong views began forming when he was at school in York. It has been designed to deliver the message of fighting terrorism in accessible way for children. (from the Lancashire Telegraph)

(h/t Bruce Schneier’s blog)

No, really. It’s a real news item. You can check. I didn’t make it up.

It seems that the area around Lancashire is quite fertile territory for anyone trying to get kids to do free police-work. This blog item is also about kids being recruited to provide low-level spying services in their community. A Sefton school designed posters for a Community Information Box initiative. These are displayed in libraries, buses and so on. Sadly, I can’t find an image of the winning poster online but I’ve had my attention drawn to one.

The poster presents a list of things that public-spirited citizens should look out for and drop anonymous notes about in their local Community Information Box. The list is bizarrely inclusive: from swearing and dog-crap through to real crimes like physical attacks and terrorism.

(I hope that the anonymity is designed to protect the kids from life-threatening comebacks if they accidentally inform on some really vicious people. However, this only works if you assume that really vicious people are not just vicious but are also too stupid to make inferences about who reported them, from the content, context and timing of information. And I rather suspect some of them may have those skills. So, I hope that they also have a child witness protection programme in place. )

I really hope that the school students generated the volunteer informer’s checklist, rather than some adult with no sense of perspective. Because, although I am still womanfully resisting a fear of terrorism that is used to manipulate us out of any concern for our civil liberties, I can’t help but be filled with the fear of creeping totalitarianism.

What a wonderful tool for any authoritarian state – compliant children, ready to report any odd behaviour or unorthodox opinions to the authorities out of fear of potential terrorism.

So, what a good job that our democracy is so secure. It’s not as if real extremists – say, people promoting a myth of indigenous ethic Britishness, frinstance – are getting any spurious legitimacy as a result of a British population that has been driven half-mad by its fear of dicey expenses claims, or anything……… Well, that’s OK then isn’t it?

An interesting Guardian post by school students who found their classroom was covered by 4 cameras and sound recording equipment.

This is a link to Adam Curtis’s page on the BBC website. This has some engaging clips from his new “interactive theatre” show in Manchester. This seems the longest.

Interactive theatre does sound as if it might be beyond boring. Bear with me.

Charlie Brooker wrote about it in today’s Guardian supplement.

About now a sizable percentage of you will be thinking “that sounds wanky”, and starting to back away. Don’t. Because it’s also … well, it’s also a funhouse. To be honest, no one really knows what it is. After a struggle, Curtis himself says it’s “a psycho-political theme experience in which you become a central character. It’s going to be frightening. A walk of enchantment and menace.”

Adam Curtis has made some brilliant TV documentaries. (Wikipedia entry) These clips deal with the same issues, although in a more abstract way. Dare I say “visceral?”

If you prefer a bit more clarity of argument, you might want to try and find Curtis’s more verbally coherent documentaries elsewhere, on Youtube, frinstance.

This is how the BBC described his 2005 Power of Nightmares about how the war on terror was used to generate fear and consolidate neo-con power.

I am overawed by the predictive power of Leviticus, if I’m right in thinking that that’s the book that set the rules for orthodox jews.

As far as I can make out, from this BBC story, (Light sensors cause religious row) orthodox jews aren’t allowed to see by electric light on holy days.

A couple have taken legal action after claiming motion sensors installed at their holiday flat in Dorset breached their rights as Orthodox Jews.
Gordon and Dena Coleman said they cannot leave or enter their Bournemouth flat on the Sabbath because the hallway sensors automatically switch on lights.
The couple’s religious code bans lights and other electrical equipment being switched on during Jewish holidays.

I can’t understand the problem, here. If the hallway sensors detect that it’s dark – the outside world will have street lighting, surely.

So the litigious couple can’t go in the street anyway, as far as I can see. Because then they would be in non-kosher electric light anyway….

Unless street-lighting doesn’t count because those lights are already on when the couple leave their home. In which case, I suggest that they trick the sensors and just switch the lights on permanently in advance of any jewish holiday… Lateral thinking, hey?.

Did Leviticus ban all electric light? Or just proscribe electric light switches and motion sensors but say some lights were acceptably kosher?

As I said at the beginning – this rulebook seems so amazingly farsighted. There must have been real prophets at work, if they foresaw electric lighting a few thousand years ago. Is there anything in there about when we get the jetpacks?

Well, I had to do it, didn’t I? After finding out about the Racist Rev, the failed BNP candidate who was also self-defined as not a BNP member, I had to find out more about his “Christian Council of Britain.” (Link to wikipedia article)

Infuriatingly, it comes top in google for Christian Council while other more innocent – if more authentic – “Christian Councils,” such as Ryedale Christian Council, Telford Christian Council, trail behind.

Site report:
The good news: On the basis of its website, it’s about as real as something that’s not very real.
The bad news: It’s definitely not a spoof site.

Website look and feel:
Like a Vatican website, with a spurious seal and a dramatic Victorian angel statue emitting rays of light and holding a cross as if playing the bass. Gothic-looking Biblical font used for the title.

Content:
Most of the pages don’t work, being “under construction” since 13 June 2008, unless they created it yesterday and got the yyyy bit wrong. Most page links lead to a bit of text saying:

Welcome to the new website.
Please be patient as it is still under construction!

Which isn’t bad, considering the shite I expected it to say. Racist Christians must have the proverbial patience of Job. (I am assuming that means “a lot of patience”. My apologies, if Job turns out to have been really impatient, being so annoyed by getting a name meaning “what you do for wages”)

The most recent – indeed only – entry on its “Sunday Lunch” Blog discusses an article in the Daily Telegraph, from November 23, 2007. Like most things on the site, the post date is 13 June 2008, suggesting it was brought in with other old guff when this site was set up and that nobody’s looked at it since.

The About us is possibly wishful thinking. It claims an executive of seven PLUS a national council. It generously says you don’t have to be a Christian to be on the council, which must improve its odds of getting members, but I still doubt that there is a membership roll greater than the number of people I could fit in my bathroom.

Articles has 3 entries in one post by “Revd RMB West, Moderator, Christian Council of Britain.” The word “self-styled” is unaccountably missing. Think about getting stuck in a bus queue with a bigoted drunk who’s carrying the Daily Mail and you have the flavour.

Latest news is the only thing I can find that has much in the way of content. It’s not “latest news” in the sense of being particularly recent. But it does seems to be the “latest” news on this site, so I have to hold off on the phone call to the trade Descriptions Act.

It is a doozy (whatever that is) The piece is a response to the CofE’s General Synod’s call to Christians to oppose the BNP. You can imagine how welcomed that was by the Christian Council.

Whoever wrote it (”albert”) starts off trying to present it as if he is just someone who thinks the BNP is being misrepresented. However, he soon shifts to saying “we” rather than “the BNP.” He has already failed in the first paragraph.

The call of the Synod of the Diocese of Chelmsford is misconceived in that the British National Party is not a racist part, nor does it recommend or countenance politics of racial or national misbehaviour. ……. The British National Party is the only political party not seeking to do this; but rather to ensure a future for the indigenous peoples of these islands.

Indigenous people’s rights? Who are these noble savages? He must mean “celts”, given that we don’t know much at all about who lived here before them. How are they to be identified then? Are they hiding on the dark side of a mountain on Anglesey?

Ah. They don’t have some secret genetic science that can identify the indigenous peoples. The answer’s in genesis. Goddidit. He just forgot to avoid confusion by stopping people from all over the world coming to the UK over a few millennia.

It is the will of God that the one race of mankind be divided into nations or descent groups with each having its own homeland where its interests, identity and values can be protected, upheld and promoted (Genesis 10: 5, 32; Acts 17: 26-27) . (from the Christian Council site)

In case you remain as confused as I am over the whole concept of Britishness, as expressed by the Rev, it’s an “ethnic” concept of Britishness. Yes, this explains nothing. The term “ethnicity” is as clear as mud, and I’ve studied Anthropology – it’s a shorthand description of a few cultural traits, at best, and by its nature, it is constantly evolving:

BNP UNDERSTANDING OF BRITISHNESS
.. Hitler sought to deprive the ethnic Poles of their identity and homeland by mass immigration from the Third Reich of ethnic Germans. Surely it is the denial of ethnic identity to the native British population which is analogous to what Hitler tried to do in Poland; and it is the mass immigration lobby, therefore, who are the far right and are practising what they accuse everyone else of doing.
Revd RMB West, Christian Council of Britain

Well, no, “mass immigration” lobby? (D’uh? name one person in it?) “the far right”. Blimey! This means that the term “the far right” is a dirty word, even to the BNP. (Well, for propoganda purposes anyway.) I shudder to think of what the BNP would see as “far right”.

There is something very disturbing about fascists claiming legitimacy by stealing the story of anti-fascism. The BNP are increasingly trying this trick – confounding bigotry with patriotism. Making racism appear patriotic. As Charlie Brooker’s old school-teacher said, they are insulting the memoriy of everyone who died or suffered in fighting fascism.

Today’s BBC’s Big Question was discussing the premise that the Buggering Nutters Party had a right to be heard.

The aforementioned “big question” was effectively decided by the very format of the programme, given the fact that BNP people were central to the discussion, so they were obviously getting heard. There were some very good audience and panel responses to them, but still, it’s hard not to see this as a pretty generous BBC platform. Their representatives were able to showcase their policies throughout the whole programme.

I was briefly stunned to see a vicar, in full clerical dress.

The BNP are indeed becoming masters of manipulation. They have already annexed the Union Flag, thus leaving non-racist English people with the red on white cross, (which was previously associated only with another miniscule fascist party, called the League of St George.) Along with UKIP, they hijacked the image of Churchill in their election propoganda. (Trying to connect their fascist nature with an image that only has power because of a war against fascism…. Ironic, n’est ce pas?) As well as stealing this iconic Tory figure, they have stolen policies from old Labour – building a manufacturing base, expanding British mining, and so on – allowing them to build a base in the least politically-aware parts of the working class.

All in support of a racist project that they barely bother to conceal . Unsurprisingly, they don’t bother to hide it because it’s their basic USP.

And there they are, on the BBC, with a vicar – a failed BNP candidate – as if they are now trying to annex the Church of England. He’s wearing a dog-collar and what looks like a bishops top – except it’s green. The identifying subtitle – not available for ordinary audience members -calls him Reverend blah. (It lists his church as Baptist Beans or something.)

I momentarily suspect that Rowan Williams has really fallen asleep on the job.

Nah, Phew. It’s just a bit of subliminal political chicanery. It turns out the Racist Rev isn’t a CofE vicar. But you have to do a fair bit of searching to find that out.

From Seismic Shock:

Back in 2006, Reverend Robert West was suspended from the Tory Party for addressing a BNP meeting. He went on to set up the Christian Council of Britain, which although claiming to represent ‘Christian values,’ was little more than a front group for the racist policies of the BNP.
Since then, various Christian organisations have denounced the Christian Council of Britain, whilst the BNP’s religious tactics have been reported in the Christian press. Back in December 2008, the General Synod of the Church of England voted to ban clergy from joining the BNP.
Suffice to say, Rev West is none too happy.
This Sunday, Rev West addressed a congregation in the Baptist Chapel in Barton in the Beans, Leicestershire, deploring the General Synod’s decision. (from Seismic Shock)

He comically sought asylum from the BNP, when he got into trouble with the tories for giving aid and comfort to the BNP.

Rev’d West claimed his action was sparked by a desire to “seek “refuge from political correctness by applying for asylum with the British National Party – Britain’s finest and most decent party – in our country’s hour of need.”
Ironically Rev’d West taught political philosophy and equal opportunities law at the universities of Nottingham and East Anglia, was also a member of the Lincolnshire Council for Racial Equality. (My emphasis)
But, switching to the BNP, he claimed Cameron’s A-list, an attempt to boost numbers of women and black candidates, was “discrimination of the worst kind.”
(From antiracistnetwork)

I guess that having lost his election attempt, that makes him a “failed asylum seeker.” (Control orders – where are they when you need them?)

The Daily Mirror (“Fake vicar leads the bigots’ bid “) cast doubt on his vicar credentials, in its brief but informative list of the backgrounds of BNP candidates – which included the party leader’s own attempt to play the Christian card.

“The ex-National Front chairman said Jesus would vote BNP if alive today”

Well, maybe, if the BNP was standing for election in Palestine. Unless they mean, if Jesus was a racist UK voter.

It seems the BNP see a move into the knee-jerk Christian realm as step forward for them. According to Ekklesia:(BNP helping to establish church group based around racial ideology)

The confirmation followed speculation previously reported by Ekklesia, that members of the British National Party (BNP) were involved in setting up a ‘Christian front.’….
“The Christian Council of Britain is a group set up to represent Christian values and the Christian Heritage of the country” West told the programme. ..
Asked how many members his church had, West said; “at this stage there aren’t very many but that is always the way when you are beginning something. You have to believe what you are doing is right.”….
The presenter then asked him whether there was a link between his church and the BNP.
“There is a link in that the BNP has encouraged and facilitated the formation of the Christian Council of Britain. They are working as facilitators. They are supporting what we do” West said.
He denied however that he himself was a member of the BNP. But, he said, the church group “arose in connection with the Nick Griffin trial.”

It seems that the word “Christian” is a weapon in the would-be fascist arsenal. On the model of the US religious right, I assume. The US right have already been pretty successful in hijacking the term as a synonym for “wingnut.” It is depressing that the BBC has inadvertently been suckered into the process of redefinition.

Give me a minute to get over the shock of finding myself in agreement with Cameron Diaz. *pause*

A Guardian CIF Green post by Brendan O’Neill accuses Diaz of expressing a fashionable “Malthusianism” for saying that there are too many people in the world. He claims

We’ve got all the space in the world
Cameron Diaz is parading the latest Malthusian fashion, that the world has too many people. Ignore her, it’s wrong, wrong, wrong.
It’s official: Malthusianism, the belief that there are too many people on the planet, has become fashionable. A-list fashionable. Alongside the grumpy old men in grey suits who have traditionally made up the Malthusian lobby, Hollywood starlets now bemoan the burden of humanity on the planet.

Nah. Brendan’s argument is wrong, wrong, wrong.

I really hope you weren’t getting paid for this CIF piece, Brendan. Because that would be a non-zero portion of the planet’s limited resources getting misdirected.

Yes, we have got all the space in the world.

That’s pretty much true by definition. It just means the world has its own allotment of space.

However, it doesn’t mean the world isn’t overpopulated, nor that the earth can absorb a few more billion human life forms.

Air, water, fuel, the survival of other species, our dependence on a working ecosystem – somehow, these don’t factor into Brendan’s vision of the world. He just takes as an item of faith that the food supply can be expanded more or less indefinitely through industrial production. Through the application of the human ingenuity of billions of people.

Give me a break. Even if that were true – and if you could ignore the effects on the ecosystem and generate raw materials through magic (which I can’t believe for a minute) – what specific evidence does Brendan have that people will start coming together to apply rational solutions to the creation, use, disposal and fair distribution of materials?

A recognition that the earth can’t hold an infinite number of humans doesn’t imply that you are a follower of all the thoughts of a 19th century economist who also noticed this.

Nor does it mean that you want to kill off loads of existing people (as Brendan suggests) nor that you share any other ideas with the BNP (as Brendan suggests) nor with the Duke of Edinburgh (as Brendan suggests) nor even with David Attenborough (as Brendan suggests.)

This is the central problem with Malthusianism: it looks upon population growth as the only variable, and everything else – from food production to industrial development to human ingenuity itself – as fixed. In short, founded on a negative view of humanity as incapable of resolving its problems or improving the world, it can only see more humans as something to worry about, a harbinger of disaster. In this sense population scaremongering is a fatal distraction, focusing people’s attention on the “problem” of overpopulation rather than on what we can do collectively to make the planet a better, wealthier, more fruitful place for hundreds of billions of human beings.

It seems that nothing can shake Brendan’s utopian vision of collective human action to make the planet better. But some very basic biology lessons might shake his faith in the capacity of the any species to survive if it becomes too numerous for its environment.

Hundreds of billions, indeed. Has he got any idea of what the world population is? If there were hundreds of billions we’d have to start rationing air.

He ends with this wonderfully comic bit. Comic because it treats a 30-year-old newsbite from a musician with no expertise in the subject as if it was intrinsically more worthy than an uninformed rant from Joe Normal in the pub.
Comic, because it implies that money can somehow feed people. (Chocolate coins, maybe)
And it’s a comic piece of celeb-quoting, because, in any case, Lennon’s last sentence undercuts the whole assumption that there is enough of everything for everybody

So ignore Ms Diaz. I preferred it when celebs had a more positive outlook. Asked on a 1970s chat show about overpopulation, John Lennon said it was a “myth”: “We have enough food and money to feed everybody. There’s enough room for us, and some of them can go to the moon anyway.”

UNITE – the UK’s biggest trade union – has a vicar’s section. Wow. Blimey.

The union is currently a bit pissed off by the state of vicarages.

Some Church of England clergy and their families are living in crumbling and decrepit vicarages that are unsafe and environmentally unfriendly, according to trade union officials.
Unite, the country’s largest union that represents about 2,500 faith workers, is calling on the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, Dr Rowan Williams and Dr John Sentamu, to “practise what they preach” in terms of the carbon footprint left by hundreds of parsonages.
Unite want the Archbishops to revamp more than 6,000 vicarages and rectories that the union claims fail to meet modern environmental and safety standards. (from the Times)

OK, I am genuinely impressed that “faith workers” have joined a union. If you happen to be a vicar you can find out more from the UNITE webpage about their faith worker section.

I am even a bit impressed by the word “faith workers”. It sounds a bit like people who can work miracles by faith, which I guess they would see as coming naturally with the job description. But it also makes them sound a bit like prostitutes, who tend to get called “sex workers” by people who are trying not to offend them.

But, I am diverted by the prospect of there ever being a vicar’s strike. How long would it take for anyone to notice?

As someone living in a house which even the rawest curate would turn up his or her nose at, I was initially a bit unsympathetic to the complaints about their houses not being palaces. (Except for the Archbishop of Canterbury, I assume, as his home is called Lambeth Palace. I reckon the clue’s in the name.)

However, being a faith worker doesn’t seem to be quite the ideal job that you might assume if you are going on the same idea as me: “only work one day a week, get free housing and all the sherry you can drink.” Unite says:

“Ministers of Religion” have no employment rights and Unite is campaigning strongly to obtain these.

The New Humanist site said last year that:

We’d have had the Church of England down as fairly decent employers – short hours, free biscuits … you get the picture. Plus your overall boss would be the Archbeard, who seems like a nice enough guy. But it turns out the Diocese of Worcester has been trying to sidestep giving its clergy protection under regular employment law by claiming the buck stops at an infinitely higher desk.

Bloody hell, if you have an employment contract with god, it must be a bugger to enforce your rights under it. He’s so busy working in mysterious ways that, when you are being infested with mice and frogs (as in the case the New Humanist post discussed), he hasn’t got the time to send round the exterrminators. Unless of course, he deliberately sent a plague of frogs and you were too atheistic a vicar to realise that was one minor righteous smiting being applied to you.

(Luckily I can help you here, vicars. Now, you can speak directly to the man upstairs via his holiday postcards blog. I can’t promise he’ll turn up at an employment tribunal, though. Better stick with UNITE.)

According to the Times, church organists got employment rights in February 2008. So vicars might be feeling a bit jealous. Coveting their neighbour’s employment rights, even. If the Times is to believed:

Episodes of bad blood between vicars and organists …. could end following a judgment by an employment tribunal that organists are church employees.
Robert Leach, director of Organist Publications, a company that provides assistance for church organists, said: “This is a landmark decision …… It is estimated that about two thirds of qualified organists are no longer prepared to accept an appointment in the Church. Problems working with vicars is one of the most quoted reasons.”

Inspired by the Rapture Index, this is an attempt to quantify the UK political news for the past week or so on an objective (:-)) scale. And to put it in a handy playable format.

• MPs shown to be largely venal (3 square snake)
• Labour Cabinet sets off self-destruct button: e.g. the previously unknown Purnell bids for political domination by saying Brown should be replaced; Flint tries to play a spurious feminist anti-Brown card (complaining he treated her as “decoration”. Comically this came after she posed in a ludicrous Observer fashion photoshoot, the subtext of which was “Look at me. I may be in the Cabinet, but I’m really HOT”; etc ) (3 square snake)
• Jacqui Smith leaves Cabinet (merits a 2 square ladder by itself.)
• Several repulsively self-promoting Blairite clowns leave the Cabinet, gamely deflecting the shame of their own discovered venality by blaming Brown for everything they can think of, from global financial meltdown to not being very nice, but mainly for being unpopular. (2 square ladder)
• Relatively decent people in new Cabinet, eg, Glenys Kinnock. (Ignore the presence of Mandelson.) WTF didn’t Brown think of having a sensible cabinet at the start of his term? (2 square ladder)
• Local elections: Labour trounced everywhere. Tories win pretty well everywhere, even taking Lib Dem councils, despite the LibDems having been relatively blameless in ExpensesGate. (10 square snake)
• Euro elections: The repellent BNP gets two Euro Mps – one representing MY AREA, ffs. Grrr. The a-bit-less-repellent-but-still-sickening UKIP gets more votes than the Labour Party. (15 square snake)
• BNP leader egged when he tries to hold press conferences. (2 square ladder. I know it’s childish and probably counterproductive to welcome it, but still… Whose heart is so dead it wouldn’t be cheered by the sight of Nick Griffin getting egged? Although a Bush-referential shoe would have been even more satisfying to the viewer, assuming it was the steel-toecapped Doc Martin, traditionally favoured by some of his supporters.)
• House of Lords yet again does the decent thing – as they did when they refused to OK 42-day detention. (In your face, Jacqui Smith.) The Lords uphold appeals against control orders (trans. house arrests) that were based on secret, ie. unchallengeable, evidence. (1 square ladder.)
• Whole new push for constitutional reform. Sadly the current suggestions generally involve measures like PR – which would probably give the demonic parties, like the BNP, even more influence – or reform of the House of Lords – which would make it into something more like a government rubber stamp rather than the current random collection of toffs, miscreants, retired judges, generous political donors and old party faithfuls, which is still independent enough to give bad bills a good kicking. (1 square snake.)

Sorry, I haven’t designed a board yet. There are too many snakes and not enough ladders. Feel free to try it yourself.

The BBC says this incident wasn’t waterboarding. Just a friendly sticking someone’s head down the toilet, perhaps making it seem like the schoolyard bullying on which we all look with nostalgic affection. *

The Guardian the Independent, and many other papers, even the Daily Mail (ffs) all used the W word.

From the Guardian:

Torture allegations against six officers in the Metropolitan police were so serious that Scotland Yard used the word “waterboarding” to describe the claimed mistreatment of five suspects arrested in a drugs raid.
Despite attempts to play down the seriousness of the allegations against six officers in north London – with sources describing it as more Life on Mars than Guantánamo Bay – it emerged today that it was the Met itself which used the word waterboarding in a document to describe the alleged actions of its officers.

There’s something a bit cheering in the fact that the reports of this horrific and nationally shame-inducing story indicate that – in the UK at least – waterboarding is recognised as torture – even as a particularly vile form of torture. (Bear with me, I’m trying to extract something positive from this story, although it’s an uphill struggle.)

However, I confess to being confused by the implication that torture, as such, doesn’t seem inherently newsworthy enough. Oh, we’re all getting so used to plain old vanilla torture, aren’t we? We can only be shocked by its appearance in a fashionable new guise. Or maybe if it involves waterboarding, so it sounds like something we can blame on the USA

The facts of this story – apart from the extent of the waterboarding element – include the following:
6 Met police officers (allegedly) tortured suspects.
The torturees were “foreign nationals” (i.e. fair game.)

That implies that 6 employees of the British state – people employed to uphold the rule of law – felt free to torture suspects, because the suspects were apparently in no position to uphold the aforementioned rule of law against the police. No one would pay the slightest attention to any complaints the victims made.

It also seems that these officers would have been quite right in assuming that they could do whatever they felt like to the suspects, as the complaint didn’t come from the victims. It seems to have been made by a “police employee.” I.E. Someone with a sense of decency strong enough for them to overcome all the pressures to keep their mouth shut. The rare heroic person whom we all believe ourselves to be, in the face of the masses of evidence that very few of us actually are.

I really admire that person. He or she is really the only cheering element in this disgusting story. However, recent misdemeanors** involving the Metropolitan police suggest that people like that are few and far between on the Met’s payroll. See the cases that were so well discussed on Apathy Sketchpad.

*That sentence needs a heavy sarcasm alert, in case it wasn’t obvious. Lowest form of wit, yeah, I know.
** understatement for effect, in case it wasn’t obvious.

British politics seems to have gone into a weird meltdown, all because of a few expenses claims. Some MPs fiddle their expenses….. why am I less than surprised?

The TV news and most of the press are filled with people expressing their horror and claiming to have lost all faith in Parliament. How odd.

The Iraq war or evidence of collusion in torture didn’t have that effect, oddly. But a few dodgy expenses claims did?

It seems that the system was constructed so that MPs were more or less expected to claim for things (such as food and rent) that the rest of us have to treat as normal household expenses. This system was apparently created – in Thatcher’s time- so that MPs wages would appear becomingly modest to us sensitive taxpayers.

Mp’s wages aren’t exactly low – from the perspective of the average non-millionaire – but they aren’t paid enough to keep up two homes – one of which is in central London – and to run an office to deal with constituents. Hence, the expenses scam was deliberately set up to let them pay for things, whilst appearing to be taking home wages lower than those of judges or hospital consultants.

Obviously, some of them took the piss. In which case, the problem is mainly the failure of the system for scrutinising their claims. The House of Commons seems to have agreed en masse to scapegoat the Speaker – who had already upset Tory MPs by letting the police apply the same rules to them that they expect the police to apply to the rest of us. However, even the Speaker’s sword-falling hasn’t stemmed the Telegraph’s desire to pick through every Tesco’s receipt and claim for dry-rot-proofing it can get its hands on.

The result is a country that seems to have decided that a few fiddled expenses mean that our entire Parliamentary system is broken. The Guardian has been soliciting random famous-ish political-ish people’s wishlists, throwing up ideas ranging from PR to time-limited Parliaments, as if any random political commentator’s ideas are somehow relevant. It even gave David Cameron a platform to spout the Tory party’s nebulous reform ideas.

Marina Hyde called for lots more Independent MPs, then had to write another column explaining that she didn’t mean celebs, in the face of an unholy collection of celebs – Esther Rantzen, ffs – began scrambling to get elected. However, if we don’t have professional politicians, it seems most likely that D-list celebs would fill the void. No one in their right mind could see that as an improvement.

This is baffling. None of the reform suggestions seem to have anything to do with expenses-fiddling at all. If Parliament is broken, and constitutional change is urgent – why was noone calling for it before? The BBC reported this morning that more people voted for Britain’s Got Talent (or an x-factor or a big brother or something, the “got talent” name is obviously a lie) than vote in elections. And there were loads of people in Stoke willing to tell the BBC that they won’t ever vote again.

There is much media fretting about the BNP and other lunatic parties getting votes. I thought this was just a fear tactic. However, I have been told by people who live in likely-BNP-recruiting-territory estates that there seem to be significant numbers (i.e greater than zero) of BNP posters proudly showing in house windows. (I assume that these would counts as a bricking invitation in any reasonable court.)

It’s hard to imagine the waves of mass stupidity that give rise to that. For a start, it seems to be going on the principle that – if your MP is dishonest enough to have got the taxpayer to have paid the cost of a John Lewis lighting unit – you would automatically choose to have someone with a criminal record for committing GBH and inciting racial hatred as a clean alternative. Britain’s Got Morons by The Bucketload might be a more suitable tv show theme.

I have been as pissed off as anyone at the effrontery of some of the expenses claims. But I admit to having been quite pleased to see Jacqui Smith hoist on her own “If you’ve got nothing to hide, you’ve got nothing to fear” petard. I’ve also enjoyed seeing people who’ve made much of their desire to stamp out benefit fraud being revealed as engaged in benefit frauds that amount to much more than a well-paid worker’s wage.

Did many people really think MPs were all more ethical than the average person, until the Telegraph printed their expense claims? Does someone getting something for nothing really rouse the public to such fury, when any number of seriously bad decisions didn’t bother anyone?

Fine to reform our voting systems, the composition of our parliament and so on. But it’s hard to believe that meaningful constitutional decisions can be taken during the current hysteria.

OK, I have finally torn myself away from the accursed Wii long enough to surf the internet, read some articles and comments and become quite worried about the future of the human race.  Before I am accused of massive hyperbole, remember America is the worlds only superpower and, like it or not, societal changes there radiate out across the English speaking world quite quickly. (Yes, I am looking at you Creationism).

It seems that, despite being the leader of the free world, a beacon of Democracy and willing to invade other nations who abuse human rights, the USA has a very ambivalent approach towards one of the most inhumane of activities – torture. I know I have talked about this previously, but reading through the comments on the USA Today letter reminded me of conversations I have had with people in the US, and gives an insight into how the government policies seem to be built.

First off my position on the matter: Torture is never, ever, acceptable. It is a war crime and the practitioners of such acts should be treated as international war criminals. Waterboarding is torture. Calling torture “enhanced interrogation” does not change what it is any more than calling my car a boat will make it sail. I can think of no (real) circumstances in which torture is justified. Saying torture is better than execution is farcical.  The idea that torture would be carried out in my name, or to protect some nebulous concept of my safety is abhorrent.

However, I consider myself a rational person and I am willing to explore viewpoints and opinions that differ from my own. It is possible that I could be wrong in my stance about torture so I will look at some of the arguments for it. For the purposes of this rant, I will use the responses to the, frankly, insane USA Today letter. From these it appears the following “justify” torture: (Some I will post in full, others I will try to identify the more coherent parts)

in the meantime…they saw off our heads…….while weak dems say nothing about that……why do dems defend these killers of U.S citizens is alarming…..shows there huge weakness for our security. (from wave who, unsuprisingly, has no friends but 5 recommends for this nonsense)

This makes no sense. It is nothing but an appeal to fear, wrapped up in some bizarre attempt to make 2+2 equal three hundred and eleven. But it is a common one so I will try to salvage some sanity out it and see if it holds any water.

It breaks down into a few parts. First off the claim that torturing people is the only defence against “them” sawing off American heads. Now, given that people in custody are no longer in position to weild a saw this is true, but there is no requirement to torture them for this. Has the mistreatment of people in places such as Guantanamo reduced the amount of beheadings of Americans in the middle east? Erm, no. So we can strike that part. The second bit is just a sign that wave is insane. Objecting to torture is not defending the killers of US citizens any more than not torturing murder or rape suspects is. Shall we advocate tortuing people suspected of drink driving (which kills many, many more citizens each year)? If not the argument makes no sense.

The next one hints at what worries me about society.

Why is this such a difficult question for you? Given the choice between the safety and security of my loved ones *and* subjecting a terrorist to a few moments of anxiety (enhanced interrogation techniques), this is an easy choice! Glycine

Oh my Thor. Worryingly this is an attitude similar to one I encountered in people I talked to during my visit to the US. It shows the horrific effect language has had on people. 24 is not real. People do not get up at the end of the show, take a bow and give a PR conference to promote the sale of their DVD. Torture is torture. The clue is in the name. Waterboarding is not a “few moments of anxiety.”

This whole bag of madness falls down on a few levels. First off, if it is so mild how can it work on embittered, committed jihadists? If it is so mild (I can generate more than a few moments of anxiety for most people going to an interview, let alone questioning by law enforcement) why is it called “enhanced interrogation?” Dispel forever the idea that waterboarding is tame. That any form of torture can be passed of as time and almost humorous. It is not. It is there to break a persons will in the shortest possible time. This is not something people ever fully recover from.

Equally sad is the loss of any form of “innocent until proven guilty.” It now seems that if someone thinks you are a criminal you are one and will be tortured until you confess. Sounds all very 21st century to me. The people subjected to torture by agents of the US government are not always confirmed terrorists. Some will be people who are massively unlucky. Is torturing them (which will provide no extra security to your loved ones) acceptable? If so, where do we draw the line? When do we stop torturing people on the off-chance they may know something which may help increase the security of your loved ones? Crucially, what happens when someone comes to torture you to protect their loved ones? Would you be OK with that? Even if you are actually insane enough to think that torturing people based simply on their nationality and skin colour is acceptable, you have to face the fact it decreases national security. For every person who is interned and tortured, there will be families at home who rail against the injustice. Mistreatment of prisoners is the greatest recruiting tool an insurgent or terrorist organisation can hope for. For every suspected terrorist you torture, you recruit four or five more into his organisation. How does this make any sense at all?

We have the token argument from insanity:

Torture like many evils will not ‘go away’ because do-gooders wish it so.
and
Which is worse: killing the enemy outright or keeping them for the duration in a POW camp? (or Federal prison?) Incarceration, even with three meals a day, a bible, a toilet, clothing, bedding, et cetera, is none the less, torture — but who gives a damn? Ronald David (who, amazingly, has 8 friends on USA Today. Wow).

This is no argument, its just mad ranting. Torture like any crime will never quite go away but does that mean we should accept it? Do we accept rape or murder? No. If someone abducted ten people from US cities and tortured them for a few months, they would go to jail or face the death penalty. If the government does it, its OK. Does that make sense? I just love the attempt to use a derogatory “do-gooders” term against those who oppose evils such as torture. I’d rather be a do-gooder than a do-eviler. Maybe its the atheist in me.

Comparing torture with incarceration is madness. Nothing further needs to be said. Everything else this nutter has written on this letter speaks of mental illness.

(two chestnuts from Crazyfun_22 who has 11 bloody friends) In addition to Michael, the other loons posting about waterboarding are also subscribing to something in either their water or thier “Pipe”. The waterboarding the japanese did is not even close to what we did following 9/11, those people were drowned in the process. Waterboarding that ends in death can and shoud be classified as torture…so put down the remote after you turn off MSNBC and look some stuff up from multiple independent sources and get your facts straight.

Right, so torturing someone and stopping just before they die is OK then. This is insane. Torture is torture. Murder is murder. You can torture someone to death which is both torture and murder. Its like saying raping someone but not killing them is OK. All this crazy makes my head hurt.

Lastly, all you people who are commenting on waterboarding being used to get info on Iraq and make an Iraq-Al Qaeda connection….WRONG….it was used to try and determine intel on potnetial threats to Americans…period. While I am sure Saddam was part of the questioning, it was for American’s safety…and that does include you loony bins.

Here we come to the basic claim that seems to sustain the support for torture.

Torturing person X (who is hopefully not the from the same ethnic or religious background as you) is acceptable if it provides actionable intelligence that can save lives of people you care about.

This argument allows Americans to condemn other nations who torture prisoners (because the information gained is not helping people they care about) while practising it themselves. It carries a strong moral appeal because, seriously, who doesn’t want to save lives. There is even a utilitarian argument that the suffering of the few outweighs the benefits for the many. You can see why so many people agree with this concept and, as a result, support the use of torture by agents of the government .

Sadly it is all nonsense, and for so many different reasons it is hard to know where to begin.

If we take the utilitarian argument first. You have no way of knowing if the information provided from the torture will save lives until after you have tortured the person. If you know in advance enough to make this call, you know enough to not need to torture the person. Without knowing this you have to react to everything the person says – including lies and confusion. This takes up resources and manpower better spent elsewhere. A committed jihadist could even use this to distract your resources from where they would be best placed. If you are tortuing someone who genuinely doesn’t know what you are asking, when do you stop? Do you wait until they make something up? Unlike Jack Bauer you have no way of knowing the veracity of what your victim is telling you. You may get the truth in the first 10 seconds (about how long I would take to crack) but would you believe it? Would you continue to torture until you broke them and they changed their story? In reality, unlike 24, torture is a good way of making somone say what you want them to say – nothing else.

Following on from this, if you torture the person and it turns out they cant give you useful information, what then? The argument that useful information means torture is justified now means this was not-justified. Do you proceed to punish everyone involved with the now-criminal act? Anything else means the utilitarian argument suggests all torture is justifed on the basis that an unknown amount of information gained may be useful – but this applies to everything. Maybe torturing you or your parents will be useful. How do we know until we try?

It strikes me people can be quick to come up with hypothetical situations where torture would be acceptable, as long as it is someone else on the receiving end. Knowing that no system is 100% correct, innocent people will occasionally get caught up, would you be happy if you were that innocent person? If not, then torture is not acceptable. If you feel you would be happy to spend five years in “enhanced interrogation” because you knew, deep down, it was making the world safer, then I think you are insane.

(ranting over, back to the Wii…)