An end to mankind

Just thinkin….

It was a make or break decade for mankind when ‘The Pill’ and other such contraceptives became commonly available. Up until that point mankind had reproduced the species because they liked sex. It was no done deal that they would continue to reproduce when they realised how to break the link to pregnancy. I guess it turned out that we had developed a culture of family and love of children which meant that people actually reproduced because they liked not only sex, but children too. I guess it wouldn’t take a lot for that culture to shift and for people to consider children to be a poor life choice, and then we reach the end of our evolutionary path, some other less sentient creature will rise to the top in our absence.

The old Labour vs The Unions problem

This is turning into a bit of a sketchpad. Musing on the previous evenings BBC Newsnight.  That’s ok.

Labour Party Conference ’11 / BAE shedding 3000 defence jobs.

One of the problems with the Labour Party being so closely linked to the trade unions is that a specific trade union needs to stand up for the current workers in a particular trade, and not necessarily the economy as a whole. If i am made redundant (as i was a few years ago) i expect to union leader to be on my side, personally and not the side of the company or the general economy. Whereas, a responsible political party or government has to look at the situation, say at BAE (where 3000 have been made redundant) and think the following – this is a company who employs over 100,000 people in the UK, and contributes tens of millions in tax revenue, that figure is always going to fluctuate up and down depending on how many people want to buy their products. If there is a slowdown in demand they have to be free to readjust the workforce in line with that, up or down. They have to make the best business decisions as they see fit, if they were to decide not to let these 3000 go, perhaps in ten years time all 100,000 would go because the company had made many such bad business decisions. Perhaps they have let too few go, perhaps they should be letting 10,000 go, and if they did that they would be in a position to employ 25,000 more over the next ten years. That’s not a question that a union leader will contemplate.

A trade unions purpose is to defend the current employee, not future potential employees. Thus the Labour Party/Trade Union dichotomy.

So Ed Miliband agreed with the tuition fees policy all along?

So Ed Miliband has announced his alternative plan for university funding. He’s going to cap the fees at £6000 rather than £9000. Wow. Given that most fees are less than £6000 anyway, and he’s pretty much accepting the rest of the government policy on this, it looks like a bit of a climb down to me. At the time they offered up the ghost of some mythical alternative policy which would have made everyone really really happy, if only they had been in power, but it turns out they basically agreed with the policy which saw mass demonstrations and riots in London.

My own view was at the time that the demonstrators had walked into a trap. The real argument was about general government cuts, which people wanted to protest, not the specific univerisity fees policy, which was more nuanced and arguably fairer and more egalitarian than the current system. It was an unwinable argument for the protesters and the failure of these protest have blunted the enthusiasm for any protests against ‘real’ cuts. Milliband and Labour can take a lot of the blame . They should have shown good faith and judgement by backing the policy even against public opinion, then they would have been listened too when the real cuts came.

• University fees will not be paid by students.
• They are paid for by well-to-do, relatively successful people in their late 20s and 30s, who have been to Uni and benefited.
• The lower the fees, the more that Mrs Khan who works 40hrs at Tescos ends up paying taxes for Timmy to lark about at Uni.
• Anyone who doesn’t go to Uni because they think they can’t afford it, simply hasn’t understood how it works ! and perhaps doesn’t have the intellect to go anyway

What are my rights?!

I think that justice is a good thing, or at least justice being seen to be done is a good thing for society. I think fairness is a good thing, and think society is a good thing, helping others in need. Tribes within tribes within a country within an international community.

But human rights? idunno, convince me.

What does a human have a ‘right’ to expect from life. I think my answer would be that depends where you live. If you live in a country which has an environment regularly un-conducive to life and well-being then you may well die young of hunger. It means nothing to state a ‘right to work’ in those circumstances, or even a right to life. You NEED to work, you need to attempt to plough the land and raise animals or you and your family will die pretty sharpish. Either that or move to a place with a more conducive environment and/or more developed economy.

Being human is not like being a house cat, its like being a wild cat. The default position is that there is no nice owner who gives us Whiskas when we ask and a few nice toys to play with. By default we need need to work hard to stay alive. Of course im not saying that we should abandon all the advances of western society in the last 500 years. Just stating that any ‘rights’ that we have come from being part of a society, how many rights would I have if i was stranded on a desert island for a year? would it do me any good to stand on the beach, arms folded, demanding my human right to shelter, work and a living wage?

So in a society based on democracy, a citizen’s (human) rights are decided on by the elected delegates of the day. They are not some eternal law handed down from on high. So how can a government ever be found to be violating someone’s human rights?

I heard a serious person say recently that having a broadband connection was a human right. Wise up!

Hierarchy of affectedness by death

interesting that people, and by people i mean the twitterverse, feel uncomfortable and a little self righteous about the hierarchy of affectedness of the deaths in Norway and Amy Winehouse. Winehouse was one person, a rich celeb, a junkie, there’s no equivalence with the tragic mass murder near Oslo.

It’s of course easy to say that you are more affected or interested in one death than another, the Sunday Mirror had to make an actual call on which was more important to its readers. Early editions had the Norway story as the front page splash, with a top banner mentioning Winehouse, then interestingly for later editions they flipped it.

The fact is that there IS a hierarchy of affectedness, and it tells us a lot about our selves. We seem uncomfortable about it but it’s this:

#1 Death of young national cultural icon

#2 Death of dozens of europeans in dramatic fashion

The Sunday Mirror knows it and we know it but don’t want to admit it. He’s the kicker, have we all forgotten about the thousands of children currently dying of starvation in Somalia, of the parents killing themselves because they can’t bare to watch their children die?

#3 Death of thousands of Africans

it’s uncomfortable for us to rate these events, but deep down i think we have to admit we don’t have the head space to consider and be affected by every tragic death which occurred yesterday. 156,000 people die in the world every day, 384,000 are born.

If a close family member died yesterday, just one person, not known or loved by anyone but yourself, their death would jump to #1. It’s uncomfortable, but the hierarchy of affectedness is perhaps rational.

A couple of quotes on free speech

“Nothing worth saying, is inoffensive to everyone”

Johann Hari

“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities”

Voltaire

“We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavoring to stifle is a false opinion; and if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still”

John Stuart Mill

If drought and famine turns an area unsustainable, then what?

Is it cruel and counterproductive to pour money and aid into countries and communities which life has become more and more unsustainable? With climate change, might it become more and more an issue? If there are regular droughts and famine in my area should the international community waste aid airlifting grain to me or should they be funding refugee camps and a new life in a more sustainable place on the planet?

Kidney Transplant Idea

The idea is this:

People need kidney transplants

We can get by perfectly well with just one kidney

People should be able to donate a kidney to someone they don’t know, and in return they know that they will go to the top of the list for a transplant if it turns out they ever need one

Facebook – pet peeves

The phrase pet peeve is a pet peeve, but I can’t think of an alternative. dammit!

Personal messages on people’s wall: ‘Hi mike, did you get anywhere with that insurance claim?’

What’s all that about !? if its a personal message send a text or an email, or at least a facebook message. why-oh-why would anyone ask things like this in a public way so that all of Mike’s friends can see it?

Wives, husbands, partners, boyfriends and girlfriend comment etiquette.

This is a big area, and makes me cringe more than most. Personally I think the rule should be that you don’t ‘like’ or comment on a partners comment, photo or link. oh really? you like this link or status update by your boyf, you think its funny? you think he’s brilliant and clever and you want everyone to know you do??

Then there’s the ‘reply’ to a boyf/girf/hubbby/wife comment. The worst case is when its about the kids, discussing how brilliant your little treasure is, and how cute that cute thing he said was. three or four comments back and forth in front of everyone, so all your mutual friends can see.

Don’t get me started on the ‘luv ya babes’ stuff. that’s just criminal, almost deserves defriending.

There is of course the incessant posting of proud kiddy photos.

This is one of the many annoying things that i do way too much. Also, the mobile photo upload of something ‘fun and interesting’ i’m currenting doing. guilty as charged. i can’t help it. Along with the ‘check in’ to show that i have an interesting life. again, guilty as charged. And the ‘funny’ status update. I do too much of that too… and in retrospect, most of the time, less than funny. Then again, in my defence, if no one tried to entertain through status updates it would get very boring very quickly.

In defence of appeasement

Cotton Eyed Joe, Back for good, Country House. Three of the number one hits of 1995. Remember them? seem like yesterday? 16 years ago, still pretty fresh in the memory. Think how fresh in the memory The Great War was to the people of Britain 16 years after it ended, when Hitler started to throw his weight around europe.

It was just around this time when the dust had settled and people had begun to gain just a little bit of perspective regards the biggest human catastrophe the people of the world had ever inflicted on themselves. Around a million British men had died, whole communities ripped from the country. Made worse by the realisation that it was needless, a twist of fate mixed with bad diplomacy, arrogance, badly entangled national treaties mixed with the jingoism and short sightedness of the national press. Most of all, people were starting to realise that it wasn’t just as easy as ‘Germany was to blame’, therefore we should punish them. Germany had been caught up in this European tragedy as much as anyone. This was all as fresh in the mind as ‘Back for good’ is for us today.

The one thing the country had decided was that it was to be the war to end all wars. This was mixed with an inkling of regret and guilt about the treaty of Versailles and and a smidge of respect for how Hitler seemed to be getting the country back on its feet.

Harold Macmillan wrote in his memoirs (yes, i read such crap) that in the 1930s people regarded the new phenomenon of Air War similarly to how we now (in the 60s) regard nuclear war. It was a terror, which would bring war to the home land killing countless women and children. The prime minister in the mid 30s, Baldwin, reflecting on how arial bombing had been used in the spanish civil war lamented that any future wars would simply be about which side could kill the most women and children in their homes, quickest. He wasn’t being melodramatic, he was calling it like he saw it, as he ordered the building of bomber aircraft.

On the eve of war, after Hitler had broken the Munich agreement and entered Prague, Chamberlin asked his generals to estimate how many casualties should be expected on the home front. They told him, 150,000 deaths in the first week.The truth was, terrible as it is, that slightly less than 150,000 people were killed by german bombers over the 6 years of the war. A tragedy but multiples less than was feared. They literally thought that if they couldn’t stop a war happening most of the people in the country would be dead soon, fathers, mothers, sons, daughters. Anything was better than war, Churchill was principled and probably right but he was going to get us all killed, and should quiet down.In to this comes Chamberlains quote, which is used to damn him.

“How horrible, fantastic, incredible it is that we should be digging trenches and trying on gas-masks here because of a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know nothing!”

There are two strains of appeasers and they shouldn’t be tarred with the same brush. There are the nazi lovers, Mosley and the black shirts, and his sympathisers like Lord Rothermere, owner of the Daily Mail and Evening Standard, high profile but few in number. Then there are the other sort, who just wished to avoid war, wished to go the extra mile, These people were misguided as it turned out Hitler was, well, Hitler and had to be fought through force of arms but this didn’t necessarily seem to be the case at the time, and 15 years after Cotton Eye’d Joe and Austin Powers, i fear that i would wrongly have been in the appeasement camp.

Is Facebook mummifying us?

For the first 10-12 years of my life i had some really good friends who i remember fondly, we played football in the local park together, started to support teams, watched movies like Star Wars and Goonies and Platoon (while under age by a mile!) together, we went to youth clubs and parties, rode our bikes pretending to be CHiPs and spent a great deal of our formative years together.

When I moved to high school we grew apart, and after a few summers doing different things and going different places I found i had a new group of friends. With these friends, with the notable addition of some laideezze(!) i had the teenage experience of growing up and into my boy/man phase. Some of the boys where a few years older and learned to drive, 205 GTi was the weapon of choice. Learned to play guitar and with some of those friends had the exciting/terrifying experience of playing songs to people for their amusement/entertainment. I then moved on to the university days and the trying to not to have to get a job days, along the way i lost touch with some of the teenage friends and some i still see and speak/email all the time. It goes on, through different jobs and locations, there were people i had intensely bonding joint experiences with while working abroad, and people who were friends of friends of friends who i am still in contact with long after i’ve lost touch with the friends in common. When i was 10 i maybe had 5 good friends and 10 acquiescences, when I was a student it felt like i had 50 friends and 100 acquaintances, now days I’m probably back to my 5-10.

I had unique relationships with all these friend groups at the different stages of my life. I grew and changed as did they. We grew apart whether through circumstance, neglect or choice. It seems sad to think I may fall out of touch with my current friends, as it would have done when I was a ten year old, but this is life’s journey. The people i spent time with formed me, and i them. No mater the ultimate modern virtuous demand of ‘just be yourself !’ our identity is formed in the context of those around us. Unless you live in a small town, and rarely leave, I imagine my story is quite normal.

What is the impact of Facebook into all this? I don’t mean the phenomenon of suddenly being back in contact with these friends I had at various stages. It’s quite interesting to see what they are all up to, but what is the impact on the 12 year old who suddenly finds it a lot more easy to stay in touch with the friend he’s had from when he was 6, easy to fire off the occasional text message or Facebook message, to be tagged together in photos, to have the static evidence of the person you where and are.

How easy is it to move on to the next group of friends? How easy is it for that to happen organically? Will we not only be stuck with the same group of friends, but stuck being, in a sense the same people we were, mummified the moment we join Facebook?

The person that I am, my beliefs and values, should always be considered provisional

Social Justice – what’s that?

It’s a phrase which rolls off the tongue, and catch-all good cause, but it strikes me that I don’t really know what it means. At least I would say that I’m not clear what people mean when they use it. I would go further to say that I’m not sure that people using it have a clear idea of what they mean.

Whats the difference between Social Justice, and justice in society?

Justice in society surely means a functioning, transparent, fair set of laws and the means to enforce them. Other such meanings are open to political subjection, depending on your leaning on the liberty verses equality scale. Does social justice mean fairly rewarding financially those who work hard, are intelligent, innovative in the work place? or does it mean taxing them more to help those who are less well successful?

No one looking out at any political landscape considers that they are completely content with the status quo, in a sense every one who is political active whether it be on the left of the right of center are campaigning for their idea of a greater social justice.

Putting your shopping money where your mouth is

This is one of those articles that expresses the (slightly synthesised rage) i’ve been trying to muster for weeks. Supermarkets only set up in areas where they think people will use them, there’s no point protesting as trying to get them not to, if people really didn’t want a Tesco or Lidl on your road then they wouldn’t shop there. They DO shop there, so QED. I’d also extend the point to challenge the weird idea that seems to have arisen that companies have some sort of moral or ethical core that can be appealed to or protested at. A company exists to make as much money as it legally can, if it doesn’t then it becomes inefficient and the market weeds it out, it we want to challenge apart of how companies make money then we appeal to law makers, we don’t protest out side Top Shop.  but, thats a slightly different story all together!

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jan/24/shoppers-supermarkets-local-shops

They’re on my east London patch all the time: large vans, often unavoidably double-parked, emblazoned with the legends “Sainsbury’s”, “Ocado” or “Tesco”. From these emerge men bearing heavy plastic crates who head for the neighbourhood‘s smarter front doors. Home food deliveries by supermarket giants are part of life’s routine among the local, over-busy affluent. I wonder how many of these are opposed to the arrival of a Tesco Express just down the road, even as employees of the same company or others like it to unload produce into their halls. Maybe quite a few.

This scenario, with its whisper of a double standard, captures the challenge for the sorts of concerned citizen all across the land that regard the expansion of supermarkets into corner shop country as a menace to society. They foresee small independent traders driven out of business, the demoralising sight of boarded-up shop fronts and the homogenisation of neighbourhoods. They resent the economic and legal muscle with which the super-chains see off opposition and bemoan the inability of local authorities to stop them. They organise protestsaccordingly.

I sympathise. But the problem with people objecting to the success of supermarket chains is that in so doing they’re also objecting to the consumer decisions other people make. We can argue that the dominance of a handful of food monsters ends up limiting choice, but not that anyone is forced to buy from a newly arrived supermarket in the first place. Unless Tesco has misjudged the market – not a failing for which it is renowned – it knows that plenty of folk from around my way will welcome it.

 

 

2011 Tuition Fees = 1984 miners strike?

How the 2011 Univeritsty Tuition Fees protest might relate to the 1984 miner’s strike.

There are as many histories as stars in the sky… is the sort of thing someone might say.

So when i stoop to give a paragraph on one of the most important political moments for the UK in the later 20th century, and perhaps the UKs most formative industrial dispute, i’m always going be hitting it from one of many possible angles, and never giving anywhere near the whole story.

From reading biographies and articles by the major players on the left and right of British politics of the early 80s, one things pretty certian. The miners strike was planned in advance, and not by the miners.

Thatcherism, for all its evils, always needs to be seen in the context of 1976-1979. but anyway anyway, from one angle i said, so i’ll try not to get distracted.

Elected in 1979 and again in 1983, the Tories had a clear mandate to crack down on the power of the unions, with Labour only getting 27% of the vote, there was going to be blood on the carpet, it was a dangerous time for government and it was a dangerous time for the Labour party. The latter of course fluffed it completely, and Neil Kinnock the leader at the time describes his decision to not openly condem the miners strike as his biggest political mistake. Quite a statement from someone who made a lot of political mistakes.

Thatcher thought she needed to win a battle, she needed to break the unions and scare them, its clear the Alan Clark diaries, Martin Westlake’s bio of Kinnock and indeed her own autobiography they were looking around for a stooge, a ‘good enemy’. Looking for a union leader so naive, idealogical, arrogant and completely out of touch with the bulk of the country that he could be provoked in to strike action. Up pops Arthur Scargill.

She implied that she intended to close a few pits, and subtly let it be known that she feared the miners could bring the country to a standstill if they went on strike. A pretence she kept up for a year, even though she had a secret stockpile of coal which would have seen the country through two more years. Harsh stuff, given what the miners families went through. Good working people, family men just wanting to keep their livelihood, communities torn apart and lives ruined. The goverment refused to compromise, not even to allow the men to save any degree to dignity, the aim from the start was the break them and to be seen to, and to be seen to have been strong and in control. Scargill took the bait, called a national strike without a ballot, the Labour party was split and it essentially ended the left wing as a political force in Britain until 1997. Even then, the parliament elected in 1997 wouldn’t have dreamed of undoing the union and labour relation laws passed in the mid 80s.

ANYHOO !!!

There were union disputes after that, when then unions could have and should have won, as they had a far better case and more support, but Scargill had poisoned the union brand, with Thatcher handing him the vile of liquid.

So is something similar happening today with the Tuition Fees riots? Have the Tories rushed this announcement out first to take the sting out of the inevitable anti-cuts feeling the country? The intellectual argument for tuition fees is, at least reasonable and can certainly be framed as fair in any sober analysis of the arguments. Along the lines of ‘Mrs Smith who works in Tescos and Mr Patel who worked his way up to factory manager from labourer should pay a bit less tax than little Joe Bloggs who walked in to a 25k job straight from his phycology degree’. There are good arguments either way but the fact remains that all three main parties are largely in agreement. So, the student protesters WILL lose. Then who’s going to bother protesting and fighting when the REALLY unfair cuts come?

Classic politics, 1984 style. It’s a shame the students and far left don’t see it.

Le Pen, Le passé

sketchpad:

As French National Front leader, Jean Marie Le Pen hands over the reigns to his daughter. It’s worth noting, that in liberal leftish France, the National Front, similar to the BNP in the UK, gets 17% of the vote.

In the UK, the Liberal Democrats, who are currently in government with Deputy PM and 3 cabinet ministers, gets around 20%. The BNP barely registers 2%.