Natalie Solent |
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Politics, news, libertarianism, Science Fiction, religion, sewing.
You got a problem, bud? I like sewing.
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Tuesday, October 30, 2007
In the eighth comment to this Samizdata post by Philip Chaston I suggest that he should suffer a legal penalty for saying what he did. Friday, August 24, 2007
Awaiting a response. Jane Shilling writes with tears in her eyes, Secretly, writers like to imagine that words are not mere ornamentation, but possess some real power for change. I have just been reviewing, for the Times Books section, Alan Bennett’s elegant fantasy, The Uncommon Reader, in which a chance encounter between the Queen and that exotic rarity, a travelling library van, infects Her Majesty with a subversive rage for reading.Somewhere out there is the kick in the pants that holds the key to Yann Martel becoming aware what a smug, condescending ass he is, but - alas - it has so far failed to connect. Laud and Geek Nirvana. I had heard of Derek Laud, mentioned in Andrew Anthony's article about whether race has become a "self-perpetuating problem", as a Conservative parliamentary candidate in the 1997 election. I had had no idea he was in a television programme called Big Brother. Laud and Jindal. Credit goes to Henry of Crooked Timber, a left winger, who defends Bobby Jindal, a candidate for governor of Louisiana, against claims that he is a Catholic bigot. Jindal, born a Hindu, is a convert to Catholicism and twelve years ago wrote a defence of Catholicism for a religious publication. This piece of writing is being quoted against him now by his political opponents. Henry writes: ... the ‘Jindal on Religion’ website and accompanying TV ad, put up by Louisiana’s Democratic Party, are actively dishonest. The website says that Jindal argues thatI wonder how this will play out. The parallel is not exact, but it reminded me of the mistake Prynne made in publishing Archbishop Laud's diary. (A more accurate account of my mental processes is that it reminded me of the mistake Thingy made in publishing Bishop Wasitlaud's diary. Google and my husband helped out.) They played for keeps in those days. Laud had Prynne fined, imprisoned and mutilated. Years later the tables were turned, and Laud was in the Tower on trial for his life, with Prynne prosecuting in a trial so blatantly unfair that one actually feels sorry for Laud. Prynne got hold of Laud's private diary in which he agonised about his lusts and other sins and had all the juiciest bits published in order to discredit him with the Puritans. However, Prynne had been so long a lawyer and a pamphleteer that he had forgotten how the rest of his fellow Puritans thought. It was not enough to save Laud, but that tactic backfired: One of Prynne's greatest blunders was to publish Laud's diary in the Civil War in order to destroy him. It had the opposite effect: Puritans like Walwyn and Robinson were surprised to find how much common ground they shared with him. When Laud, for instance, confessed that he had dreamed of taking the Duke of Buckingham to bed with him, he seemed to Prynne at his most contemptible, whereas to less coarse-grained Puritans, who knew what it was to confide to diaries their temptations to sin, he seemed at his mosttouchingly vulnerable.Now, Catholic apologetics and fantasies about Dukes are very different things, but I wonder if Jindal's writings on Catholicism might, like the diary, far from infuriating Protestant readers, impress them with how seriously he takes his religion - even if they think it's the wrong one. Tuesday, August 21, 2007
Loss of nerve Edward Paul Brown was a premature baby whose birth and death took place within minutes of each other on February 23rd 2007 in a lavatory in Queen's Hospital, Romford. Eighteen weeks into her pregnancy, his mother, Catherine Brown, was told that there was no amniotic fluid surrounding the baby in her womb. This meant that the baby's chances of survival were minimal and her own life was threatened. Catherine Brown took the "devastating" decision to abort. Even those (such as I) who generally oppose abortion, will see this as a hard case - and I hope that any comments do not get sidetracked onto that issue. So. We have a woman in hospital waiting for the procedure that will abort her baby, a child she had wanted to bear and raise. Not a pleasant situation at any time, but what followed next was disconcerting to read about even for those who have grown weary of NHS "war stories". I first saw this in the Times (Baby's birth and death in lavatory of hospital with no trained staff), but there is a considerably more detailed account in This Is London (Mother forced to give birth alone in toilet of 'flagship' NHS hospital) (A very similar account appeared in the Daily Mail.) Both headlines understate the peculiarly modern horror of what happened. The reader gets a picture of nurses trying to help, but out of their depth because Queen's Hospital did not at that time have a proper maternity unit. That picture is wrong. The part of it that is wrong is the "trying to help." The nurses declined to help. This Is London quotes Catherine Brown's mother, Sheila Keeling, who was present as her daughter went into labour: "I was running around frantically trying to find gas and air for her and pleaded with nurses, who seemed very matter of fact, to assist," she said.(Emphasis addded.) Not just could not help, would not. Would not even be present, as far as I can see. Modern nursing has moved on, you know, since the days when the role of the nurse was to hold your hand and wipe the sweat from your brow. They don't do that any more! What caused these nurses to hang back from offering the ordinary, unskilled comfort that would once have been seen as the heart of their calling? I am tempted to simply blame it on the NHS. Certainly this case is something to set against all those stories we hear from those benighted lands where healthcare is not financed by taxation. Of course I do blame the NHS for the dreary catalogue of delays and mismanagement that Catherine Brown suffered before the birth; the wait for a scan, the further wait for pain relief, and the fact that she had to lie in a mixed sex ward and the fact that they nearly dumped Edward's dead body. But that is old hat. Things were no different a decade and a half ago when I was in labour in another hospital in Essex and the midwife was obliged to run out into the corridor and yell "Where's the fucking obstetrician?" And my would-be epidural man popped his head round the door and announced that he was ready to begin twenty minutes after the birth. I did not hold it against them. It was a difficult day, lots of births happening at the same time. At least they tried. In Queen's Hospital as Catherine Brown crouched over the support bar of a disabled person's lavatory to deliver her doomed child, they felt themselves unqualified to try. More than their jobs were worth. No, this gutlessness is new, and although I do see it as yet another consequence of the command economy of the National Health Service, to add to the melancholy consequences we knew about already, I seek a more specific explanation as well. One major factor might well be fear of getting sued. Yet that, too, does not wholly explain it. The nurses concerned must have known that their chances of being held personally liable were tiny and they must also have known that the chances of their hospital getting sued for neglect of duty were significant. (None of the reports I have read in the press say whether this happened, although clearly some official inquisition took place and reached the verdict that press has been reporting over the last few days.) The loss of nerve is not just seen in hospitals. One can see it in the other public services too. Looking at the fire service, fireman Tam Brown nearly drowned saving a woman's life in the River Tay - and was rewarded by being threatened with disciplinary action by Tayside Fire and Rescue, on the grounds that he had "broken procedure" by entering the water. He was meant to use the correct ropes and poles and since his crew did not have the correct ropes and poles he was meant to watch her die. Possibly he was meant to put the down time to good use by filling in a safety report on the incident. As it happens he not only got away with his archaic belief that that was not what he had joined the fire service to do, but was belatedly praised for it by his superiors - but, make no mistake, as Squander Two says, that will be because of the publicity. Looking at the police - Julia Pemberton was murdered along with her son by her estranged husband. She called the police as he rampaged with a shotgun through the house. You can read the transcript of her last 999 call here. "Officers are on the way," says the operator. That was moderately close to being true and the fact that the police could not even find the address of a woman whose house they had fitted with a panic button is not really relevant to this post. They got there in the end and saw the son, William, lying on the drive. At this point three unarmed officers vainly but creditably attempted to help him. Guess what? They were breaking procedure. In the words of Julia Drown MP, However, the irony is that the officers who stand out as having done everything, and more, that the family could have expected from the police, were the ones who breached the police's policy. The police did not actually go into the house for hours. Goodness, no. There might have been a violent criminal in there! Probably it made no difference. The victims were already dead. But for all the police knew Julia Pemberton could have been alive but desperately wounded and praying for help. Time was when the ordinary village policeman, unarmed as he was, would have gone in. Let me say (before someone says it for me) that I do not claim that I would have the courage to go into a house where a killer might lie in wait, or that I would have jumped in the bitter, fast flowing waters of the Tay to save some stupid woman who wanted to top herself. But such were the traditions that were honoured in the police and fire services. In fact, when I talk about "gutlessness" and "loss of nerve" here I am not talking about individual physical courage. Fireman Tam Brown showed great courage. At least three of the policement in the Pemberton murders did as well and all of them showed more guts than I would. But institutional gutlessness surrounded them, was embarrassed by them, and will kill off their like eventually. Poisoned soil does not long give forth good fruit. Going back to the Queen's hospital example, I do not have the personal qualities to be a good nurse, though I do think I could have bestirred myself to help in this case, when even standing around being useless because untrained would not have been useless and was clearly what the patient wanted. All the training nurses have these days appears to have trained the initiative and compassion right out. I keep asking myself why anyone wants the new way? Perhaps, in the case of those who will not act because unqualified in that speciality, it is a fear of finally having to be the real thing. When your whole life has been one long rehersal the raising of the curtain for the First Night is not always a welcome event. So Nurse Smith listens to the howling through the lavatory door rather than act wrongly and Constable Jones watches the stripy tape flutter around the perimeter of the silent house and waits for the Armed Response Team. Perhaps, in the case of those who make these regulations, it is a peverted delicacy. Some are offended by the eruption of death or violence into their paper world, by the bloody evidence that not everything is covered by their rules. Below that delicacy, deeper and colder than mere personal malice, is a hatred of efficacy. How do we get our nerve back? (Cross posted in Samizdata. Comments are open there.) Friday, June 22, 2007
The wisdom of crowds. "Oh dear," say the worried people at Wikipedia. "The murder of Charlene Downes has become a cause célèbre for the extreme right who claim that it is being played down by the media because the victim was white and the accused Asian." "What shall we do to remedy this regrettable situation?" "I know! Let's prove them right." (Via Laban Tall.) Ever closer union. I generally think that any word or deed that brings closer the great day when the European Union shall perish is a good thing. But all the same... Poles demand more EU votes to compensate for war deaths You are kidding, right? Poland didn't lose a fifth of its population so that Tweedledum could have a bigger toy sword. Wednesday, June 20, 2007
Eve Garrard of Normblog on different attitudes to democracy in the Middle East: Firstly, some people think that because a country is a democracy, it is vulnerable to certain kinds of pressure which wouldn't work on a non-democratic polity. So it may be legitimate to threaten and punish it in various ways, e.g. by boycotting its institutions, since these threats are likely to work [...] Furthermore, democratic governments have been voted in by a majority of their citizens, and hence those citizens share responsibility for their government's policies - they're complicit in them in a way that the subjects of a dictatorship, who have no choice, are not.This view is contrasted with another: On this second view, the fact that a government has been democratically elected gives it a special claim on our support. We have a duty to recognize it, and we shouldn't try to prevent it from carrying out its policies, since these have been democratically endorsed by the relevant electorate.View A is usually applied to the voters of Israel; View B to the voters of the Palestinian Authority. But it doesn't have to be so. So we could, if we wanted, use the first view to justify a boycott of Palestinian institutions because of Hamas's murderous policies, and we could use the second view to demand support and assistance for the Israeli government, indeed for any Israeli government, since they're all democratically elected. Michael Moore thinks*, concerning 9/11, that "there is much more to the story then we've been told." "Why don't they want us to see that plane coming into the building? Because, you know, if you know anything about flying a plane, if you're going 500 mph, if you're off by that much, you're in the river. To hit a building that's only 5 stories high that expertly, I believe that there will be answers in that video tape and you should demand that that tape is released."President Bush can comfort himself that at least now he will get some respect from Mr Moore for his expert ability to fly a plane onto a target considerably smaller than a building only five stories high, namely a runway. *My headline is intended to amuse. Friday, June 08, 2007
Qu'est-ce qui gravite autour de la Terre? Keiran Healy of Crooked Timber and his commenters have lots of snarky fun with two surveys about the percentages of Americans who do not approve of inter-racial dating (17%) and who did not know or accept that the Sun goes round the Earth (26%). He writes, There was a degree of understandable concern about the remaining 17 percent, but (some people said) it’s only been forty years since Loving vs Virginia. And, as it turns out, it could be worse. The idea that the Earth orbits the Sun has had rather longer to catch on, but my colleague Omar Lizardo over at OrgTheory brings us new data from this year’s General Social Survey on the popularity of that idea. It turns out that almost three quarters of Americans now subscribe to the Galilean view. Click through to Omar’s post for data on the percentage of Heliocentric-Positive Americans who think the Earth takes a year to orbit the sun, as opposed to a day, a month, or some other time period.I argued that it is ignorance rather than adherence to religious teaching that fuels the heliocentric view. An earlier commenter, Quo Vadis, pointed out this painful clip from the French version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire that shows it's not just the Americans who have trouble with the solar system. Note that it was not just the hapless contestant who got it wrong but a majority of the audience. And 2% thought it was Mars. British readers, do not feel superior just yet. Michael Jennings sent me this link: A physics teacher begs for his subject backI only wish the problem were as new and as limited (i.e. to the AQA examination board) as he implies. My memories of my time as a teacher are beginning to go as fuzzy as a modern physics specification, that being the re-branded name for "syllabus" in this bright new day, but I think one of my pupils once argued that we shouldn't have nuclear power because the atoms might escape. I didn't give him zero marks, either. He was doing better than many. Thursday, June 07, 2007
As a craftswoman, I was particularly inspired by the entries to this quilt contest: "Although “Fibers From Within,” made by #214-000, is rather lumpy and odd-looking, the photograph of it peeking out of a dumpster in Anchorage, Alaska was a stroke of genius. Judges awarded the entrant the “Creativity in Presentation Award.” Aslo, if you wanna see something really, really sad, look at the pictures showing one lady's quilt before and after it went through the washing machine. Click on the thumbnail for "after". Wednesday, June 06, 2007
A diagnosis of dyslexia is no more than a painkiller for middle class parents whose children read badly, argues Professor Julian Elliot, quoted in this Times article. I do not agree. You can see the difference in the writing. Plain old bad readers are plain old bad writers but dyslexics are skewed writers. You know it when you see it. But Professor Edwards has a helluva point when he says, "The disability lobby is so strong and the advantages, financial and otherwise, so great that they are diagnosing dyslexics all over the place," ... "At universities students can get laptops, extra books and other equipment, sometimes to the value of almost £10,000 each. It’s a very problematic area." More problematic still, to me, is the fact that dyslexic students can get their degree under less stringent conditions than non-dyslexic candidates, and, crucially, the fact that they had the extra leeway does not appear on the certificate. This has nothing to do with the issues of whether dyslexia is a real condition (I think it is) or what proportion of those claiming it really have it (I have no sure knowledge, though in considering any question to do with the integrity of the modern British examination I am a pessimist.) It also has nothing to do with lack of sympathy for those who honestly struggle with spelling, for any reason. I sympathise greatly with those who are not cheating and not at all with those who are. The prime victims of the false dyslexics, naturally, are the genuine dyslexics. But even assuming that the diagnosis of dyslexia was utterly certain and utterly unfakeable, an exam is meant to measure how well the candidates do certain set tasks under certain set constraints. It should not measure how well they would have done them if the world had been different. Why should dyslexia get you extra time when poor reading for other reasons does not? Why should poor reading get you extra time when poor mathematics does not? (Note to self: don't give 'em ideas.) Indeed, why should poor reading get you extra time in a physics exam when poor physics does not, or in a French exam when poor French does not? It's as if, in the hundred metre sprint at the Olympics, after eliminating in the heats hundreds of competitors who, though healthy, simply did not have the genes and/or the training to make the final, the Olympic authorities added two extra slots on the lineup, set twenty metres forward, for people suffering from some particular wasting disease of the legs. In his letter to the editor of the Times, John Gillespie writes: If an employer required French knowledge from a prospective employee, he would have no idea that his prospective employee might require 25 per cent more time to complete a task in this specialist area. If an accountant is employed, does his employer want to discover that his employee needs 25 per cent more time to do his calculations than other colleagues? Some of the replies just didn't get it. My son needed extra time in exams not because he couldn’t read but because he can’t spell. I don’t mean the odd problem with “i” before “e”, or how many m’s in accommodation; I mean every word. Visually, he can remember only the first three letters of a word. After that, every word he writes, his name included, has to be spelt out phonetically. Imagine how much time this takes. Would you really begrudge him that extra 25 per cent? This is not an argument that it is in the son's interest to make. It is people hiring for those many jobs where you cannot avoid reading and writing who don't want to find out when it's too late that they have picked someone who - through no fault of his or her own - can't do the job. I don't so much begrudge this young man his extra twenty five per cent of time in itself, but I certainly begrudge him being given it secretly when others are not. A better argument for the writer to make might have been that there are too few jobs when you can avoid reading and writing. Too much of the modern world is obsessed with dragging reading and writing - bleeding forms and bleeding reports and bleeding policies and bleeding stupid effing mission statements - into fields (including advanced and prestigious fields) where it is not really necessary to read or write that well. I blame goverment regulation. On the other hand, this is a good point from the same letter: There are a number of signs which make it possible to spot children who are likely to be dyslexic even before they start to learn reading and writing. Why isn’t every primary teacher taught to recognise these indicators? Not only could appropriate help then be given promptly, but the problem would be diagnosed before the child knew how to cheat. And a Dr John Macdonald wrote that in many subjects there is no good reason for having such tight time limits. There is a real need to look carefully at all examinations to see for which ones the ability to complete a task against the clock is an important skill that must form part of the assessment. I teach a course in problem solving to final-year physics undergraduates, and I would value far more a student who took a little longer to produce a better thought-out solution than one who showed the ability to produce an approximate solution in a short time.I have no difficulty envisaging a dyslexic physics genius. I suspect that the real reason for a lot of strict time limits is that the logistics of arranging a longer exam are troublesome. The examination centre must cater for more candidates needing the toilet or water or whatever without giving them chances to cheat. These difficulties would cost money to solve - but "free" laptops also cost money. Ultimately, discredited qualifications also cost money. Do not suggest to me that continuous assessment might be the way forward unless you want a poke in the eye; we are only just struggling out of the mire of dishonesty that fad caused, and besides the mummies and daddies want a break from doing all these projects. Tuesday, June 05, 2007
There is a cherry on top of all this. Shelley described poets as "the unacknowledged legislators of the world." I could certainly agree with the views on legislation expressed in this article on free speech by one of our modern-day poets, Pamela Hardyment. (Though it's "playwright" not "playwrite". Just sayin'.) Ms Hardyment is the author of Dancing Alone and Other Poems. She's a supporter of PEN and has signed many of that organisation's admirable petitions to free imprisoned writers. Pam Hardyment is also a Jew-hater. "What is particularly disturbing is the way opposition to the Jewish state descends into vicious antagonism against Jews themselves, as shown by this sickening recent outburst from writer Pamela Hardyment, a member of the National Union of Journalists, which in April voted to boycott Israeli goods.That was from Leo McKinstry's widely-quoted story in the Express. It draws on Stephen Pollard's more detailed account here. Dear old Shelley thought that "Poetry is the record of the happiest and best moments of the happiest and best minds" and says of Homer, Virgil, Bacon, Raphael and Spencer that "if their sins were as scarlet they are now white as snow: they have been washed in the blood of the mediator and redeemer Time." Time, however, is a selective redeemer and only offers the wash to those poets who qualify as great. Some of us may still be alive in around fifty years' time to judge whether Ms Hardyment made the cut. Given that her most well known literary work so far is not only an outpouring of bigotry but also has the distinction of containing eleven consecutive exclamation marks, I am not hopeful. Monday, June 04, 2007
Sumptuary laws. Jackie Danicki writes, "God save Britain from these sick people who are in power." Entirely appropriate sentiments. They were prompted by the truly frightening views of a minister: Asked how much she thought a bag should cost, Justice Minister Harriet Harman said: "That’s a matter for society!"Want to laugh, because it's about handbags? Got a joke coming about Mrs Thatcher? Be my guest, and you can have my joke about "they will take away my handbag from my cold dead fingers" thrown in. Now you've got it out of your system, ask yourself what power over your life Harriet Harman would not take from you and give to politicians or the mob - for that is what having something decided by society means - given that she would take from you your right to buy or sell a bag at a price mutually acceptable to buyer and seller. Monday, May 21, 2007
"What he hasn’t done is lie in a corridor all night at the Royal Free watching his severed toe disintegrate in a plastic cup of melted ice. I have." - A Samizdata Quote of the Day. Saturday, May 19, 2007
Propaganda is a double edged sword.Two blog posts about paradoxes of propaganda caught my interest. First, my Biased-BBC colleague Niall Kilmartin writes: In WWII, Germany sent films of its army and airforce in action to neutral countries. Their message was clear: see our tanks blasting your neighbours, our planes bombing them – this can be you if you don’t cooperate with us. Thus Germany gained a propaganda victory from its acts. These films were re-shown in British newsreels; you can hear the disdain in the voice of the British announcer saying, “This is what Germany is proud of.” Thus the Nazis' propaganda victory was also their propaganda defeat: they got respect from their ruthlessness and military skill, and they got a lack of respect from the same thing. In those days, British media coverage hid neither the one nor the other. And Helen Szamuely of EU Referendum writes: Nyanko Sabuni is Burundi born centre right politician in Sweden and is the Minister for Integration and Gender Equality. She seems to be taking her job very seriously and has launched a fight against honour killings in Sweden. Added later: another one, although this time it is a case of unintentional concealment rather than unintentional revelation. In a comment on a Croziervision post, Antoine Clarke writes: The advantage of subversive propaganda by the MSM is that when a REAL military setback occurs no one notices. Quote of the Someone in a position of power has done something inefficient and/or counterproductive? Really? Well I never. Must tell the world.- Squander Two, when suffering from outrage fatigue. Friday, April 20, 2007
Thursday, April 19, 2007
Bitter prescience. This article was written by a Virginia Tech student in August 2006, after an earlier evacuation following the sighting of a gunman on campus. The policy that forbids students who are legally licensed to carry in Virginia needs to be changed.If that man and others had been armed there is no guarantee that it would have saved lives. For one thing, most of the students are too young for a concealed permit under Virgina's laws. Of those who are not, only a very low percentage would opt to be armed. Of those who were armed, random chance might easily mean that they just weren't in that part of the building when the shooter struck, or were killed before they realised what was happening, or shot and missed, or whatever. In my frenzy for honest speculation let me add that the defender could end up himself accidentally killing an innocent in crossfire - or her gun could end up being lifted from her dead hand by the murderer and used for yet more mayhem. No guarantees. Ever. But I know of several killing sprees that were cut short by armed students or faculty - the one at the Appalachian School of Law is the most recent. "If just one life is saved..." has been the rallying cry of several anti-gun campaigns. Though certainly a successful it has never been a rational slogan. The role of chance is too big for us to know what course of action will change the murder statistics by one. I think arming the sane against the insane would save dozens of lives from spree killers over a period of years in the US. (Here in Britain the prospect is so remote that there is no point in even discussing it.) Beyond that, I think many more lives would be saved by guns being used to defend law-abiding citizens against ordinary crime, and more yet by the mere presence of guns acting as a deterrent. As a slogan, that doesn't exactly make the heart thunder. Apart from its necessarily statistical nature, another difficulty in getting this argument across to the wider public is that a massacre prevented or curtailed by an armed citizen is a massacre that gets bumped down the running order for the evening news. Here in Britain, what percentage of people have ever heard of Peter Odighizuwa's curtailed killing spree compared to the unimpeded efforts of Cho Seung-hui? Even in America, those making this argument are swimming against the tide. It does not help that the media, most of whom favour gun control, actively play down the use of guns to save lives. (Here's the CNN story from 2002 about the Appalachian killings. All sorts of details but it only speaks of students "grabbing" and "subduing" Odighizuwa. No mention that their actions, though most certainly brave, were renderered much less nearly suicidal by the fact that two of the three of them had guns.) Wednesday, April 18, 2007
A distant mirror. When reading about the tragic massacre in Virginia I came across an account of an earlier, and yet worse, mass murder at a place of education in the USA. I'm afraid I cannot remember at which website I saw it - but its nature was such that I had no difficulty finding the Wikipedia page again. A short excerpt from the list of 45 victims, most of whom were children: Arnold V. Bauerle, age 8, third grade student, Henry Bergan, age 14, sixth grade student, Herman Bergan age 11, fourth grade student, Emilie M. Bromundt, age 11, fifth grade student, Robert F. Bromundt, age 12, fifth grade student, Floyd E. Burnett, age 12, sixth grade student, Russell J. Chapman, age 8, fourth grade student, Robert Cochran, age 8, third grade student, Ralph A. Cushman, age 7, third grade student.Two things surprised me about this dreadful event. The first was that I had never heard about it, the second that it happened in 1927. Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas any more. In a Biased BBC discussion of BBC coverage of Americans who don't accept evolution, commenter Sarah pointed to an Ipsos MORI poll in 2006 that said under half of Britons accept the theory of evolution as the best description for the development of life. Sunday, April 08, 2007
Things ain't what they used to be. Do you wonder why this happens? The British boat crew were caught in a position when they did not even have the opportunity to defend themselves from capture. At the very least, our rules of engagement need changing. It is very likely that the Iranians had orders not to continue with the kidnap operation if it met resistance, as it was carried out under the very guns of the British warship HMS Cornwall. Yet because the Iranians knew that HMS Cornwall was under orders never to fire first, their daring plan succeeded. Funnily enough, the answer was in the Times News in Brief column a couple of weeks ago. Teenagers as young as 14 are ambushing security guards making cash deliveries to banks and shops, police said. They have even been caught on CCTV striking on the way home from school. In a fifth of the robberies a firearm was produced against guards, who are told not to resist. The raids yield up to £25,000. Monday, March 12, 2007
Are we nearly there yet? As you may have noticed, at present my blogging is taking a back seat. It has been temporarily sedated with sugary sweets, points for every green car spotted, and promises of overpriced fizzy delights at the next service station. I hope to be back in a few weeks. Tuesday, February 06, 2007
Ticking all the boxes. I get the impression that Mick Waters, Curriculum Director of the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA), is trying too hard. As Jack Huges, a commenter to Biased BBC, said of Mr Waters' article: It's heavy going, because its just babble. In every sentence he tries to tick all the boxes.[Added later: After re-reading the article, I softened a bit. Mr Waters may even be moving the national curriculum (not that we ought to have one at all) in the right direction. But, oh boy, he needs to be stripped to his undies and passed through the dejargonator before being allowed contact with the public.] The QCA's anxiousness to be all things to all assessment schemes shows up elsewhere as well. On page 11 of the Times (given the problems on the Times site I won't even try linking) there's an article about how the new proposed changes to the curriculum will bring back traditional teaching methods into the heart of the dustbin. Or possibly vice versa. Tagging along with the main article is a sidebar headed "New methods" and tailed "Source: QCA", which says under the heading "Modern languages" that pupils are to Learn French, German, Spanish, Italian, Mandarin, Arabic or Urdu. Focus on listening, speaking, reading, writing and grammar.And for an encore, catch flies with your tongue. Why not? You'll already have proved that you can act like a chameleon when you focussed on four different things simultaneously. Monday, February 05, 2007
If you're unhappy and you know it, ring the cops. If you're unhappy and you know it, ring the cops. If you're unhappy and you know it, and you really want to show it... If you're unhappy and you know it, ring the cops. If you're unhappy and you know it, shout out loud. If you're unhappy and you know it, shout out loud. If you're unhappy and you know it, and you really want to show it... If you're unhappy and you know it, shout out loud. If you're unhappy and you know it, blow your horn. If you're unhappy and you know it, blow your horn. If you're unhappy and you know it, and you really want to show it... If you're unhappy and you know it, blow your horn. If you're unhappy and you know it, ring up again. If you're unhappy and you know it, ring up again. If you're unhappy and you know it, and you really want to show it... If you're unhappy and you know it, ring up again. If you're unhappy and you know it, jump up and down. If you're unhappy and you know it, jump up and down. If you're unhappy and you know it and you really want to show it... If you're unhappy and you know it, jump up and down. (The original version of this post was rather obscure, so I have expanded it. I also felt that a musical setting would render the advice of the Minister on how to assist an old woman being beaten up more memorable to citizens anxious to do the right thing in these difficult times.) (Cross-posted at Samizdata.) Sunday, February 04, 2007
I've missed you, Britblog roundup, what's new? Why not follow the link* and read this jolly post from Nearly Legal: Why do people do it? Why do they sign up for joint tenancies with private landlords together with people they have only just met?*It occurs to me that if I give the link here on this blog it defeats the object. You are meant to be rounded up like a naughty decimal 3 fig over the sig and sent to read it at Mr Worstall's. Saturday, February 03, 2007
Dead horse, still needs flogging. You know I said I was still busy? I'm still still busy. But if you pine for my company, the more reactive, and hence quicker, style of blogging at Biased BBC has tempted me out once or twice. And there is always time to get in a last flick at old Dobbin. The other day I had cause to look again at this old post from 2003 while taking part in a survey of bloggers. It still bugs me the way people say, "But Saddam Hussein's regime could not possibly have cooperated with Al Qaeda because it was secular," as if that settled the matter. It still bugs me and they're still saying it. I swear, I wrote most of this post before doing a search on Google News for "Saddam" and "secular" and finding this Washington Times article published all of seventeen hours ago. Just to show that heartwarming cooperation between secular and religious organisations does happen, scroll down on this post from Moonbat Media to hear a video of Stop The War Coalition marchers chanting, "Khaibar, Khaibar, Ya Yahood, Jaish Muhammad sawfa ya'ood!" ("Khaibar, Khaibar, Oh Jew, the army of Mohammed will return!") The Chair of the Stop The War Coalition is Andrew Murray of the Communist Party of Great Britain. Friday, January 19, 2007
Still busy. But there's always time to smirk when one is mentioned in the Times. True, in this instance one was mentioned on November 19 2005, but one's mention was quoted again by the mentioner today. Which is the only reason one mentions it, to be sure. One has to toddle off now and practise counting to two. Tuesday, January 16, 2007
"I like work; it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours." Unfortunately I have to do it. Light-to-zero blogging for a while. Monday, January 08, 2007
I don't want you to notice me, because if you do notice me, you might expect me to post things and I haven't time today. So I want it clearly understood that I am not really here. But the 99th Britblog roundup is really here. There. Go. Thursday, January 04, 2007
I could a tale unfold whose lightest word Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood, Make thy two eyes like stars start from their spheres, Thy knotted and combined locks to part, And each particular hair to stand on end Like quills upon the fretful porpentine. But this isn't it. Despite being in the "crime" section of yesterday's Times I think this one will leave your knotted locks knotted*, like quills upon a porpentine who has not a care in the world: 'Text-pest doctor harassed patient' First a few caveats. This case is ongoing; we don't yet know the verdict. The story as given here may be incomplete or wrong. I am not seeking here to judge between the two sides of the case described. My interest is purely in the sociological or political questions it brings to prominence. The facts as related by the Times are these. A doctor did a biopsy on a woman. He asked her for a phone number so he could communicate the result of the biopsy. Whether he did actually do so is subject to dispute: he did leave a message saying she was clear, but there seems some reason to believe that when he did so he could not yet have known the result. What is not in dispute is that he used this phone number to send four text messages asking her for a date. Now the charge that he purported to tell her medical facts when he did not yet know them is a serious breach of medical ethics, if it turns out that is what happened. But it raises no political issue and I don't want to blog about it. What did strike me as worthy of comment was that all parties plus the reporter seem agreed that his four requests for "a drink, coffee, dinner, whatever you like, pleeeezz" were a sort of twenty-first century equivalent of the famous Victorian scandal of Colonel Valentine Baker. As the doctor would say, pleeeezz. The sections of the messages quoted display no lewdness. He literally asks her out for a coffee or dinner. I have nothing but sympathy for those people, either men or women, who find themselves in the terrifying position of being stalked. But in this case the woman was not even propositioned. The fact that there were four messages over two days smacks of pestering, but it could partly be explained by the fact that she did not reply; the third three messages seem at least 50% taken up with pleading for a reply, and much of the rest is apologising ("m sory 2 contact u like dat"). Sheesh, I've gone and done what I said I didn't want to do and got tied up with this specific case. Look, tone and circumstances can be everything in these cases and I don't know what they were. The age ratio of the two parties could make a difference, as could the level of apprehension the woman was under concerning her state of health. There is also the issue of the allegation that he made a medical statement that pretended to certainty he did not have: as I said, that is a serious charge. The same goes for his allegedly obtaining the phone number under a medical pretext and then using it for personal reasons. All in all, I definitely want to leave it to the General Medical Council hearing to decide which of these two parties is in the right. However I do have an opinion on this: we have adopted a stricter code than ever the Victorians knew if for a doctor to ask a patient for a date (not sex, a date) in itself constitutes a career-destroying offence. And this is not the only case I've seen recently where something like that does seem to be the unspoken assumption. This standard is unsustainable. The situation of a doctor vis-à-vis his or her patient is not like that of a teacher and a pupil, in which one party is under the authority of the other, even assuming the pupil is above the age of consent. I read a touching little paragraph of local news a while ago concerning the golden wedding celebrations of a couple consisting of a doctor who met his wife-to-be when she was his patient. Is this to be forbidden? This all seems designed to force doctors into celibacy; a high proportion of all the people a doctor ever meets must surely be made up of his or her patients. *Buy a comb, willya? I can't solve all your problems. Wednesday, January 03, 2007
It was indecorous to taunt Saddam Hussein at his execution. I take failures of decorum seriously; they are ominous at any time and the omens are specially bad for a country that is trying to evolve new customs, as Iraq is. So far, so bad, but let's keep it in proportion. A lesser dictator also killed by his own people, Benito Mussolini, had his body hung upside down in the Piazzale Loreto, with his mistress Clara Petacci and the rest of his entourage swinging in a line beside him. Why do people behave in this indecorous way? The answer is obvious - because their family, friends or countrymen have been murdered by the dictator. They offer the dead their living throats to make one last cry of rage. No need to ask why do victims behave as they do towards murderers. Why did the murderers behave as they did towards their victims in the first place? Not so easy. What shall we do about it? Harder yet. I shall probably be taken to task for my own lack of decorum, but when I heard the indrawn breaths of outrage at Saddam hearing bad words in his last minutes, I thought of all the same people praising poor Reg Keys for denouncing Tony Blair to his face. Mr Keys' son Tom was a military policeman killed by a mob in Iraq. Reg Keys became a protestor against the war and stood against Blair in Blair's own constituency. Naturally he lost, but having stood, was entitled to the traditional post election speech. So he had his say, burning with emotion, and Blair had to stand a yard away and take it, knowing the cameras were on him all the time. And the papers purred with pleasure, calling it an iconic moment. As far as I was concerned it was understandable behaviour from a grieving father towards the man he blamed for his son's death - understandable but indecorous. OK, so there's a difference. Tony Blair wasn't about to be killed. Then again, Tony Blair did not kill Tom Keys (a fact that the elder Mr Keys seems to have forgotten in his anger), whereas Saddam Hussein did kill his victims. So I see the behaviour of some of the relatives of those victims, who seized their last chance for a fractional revenge, as understandable. I also wish it had been prevented. But the concepts of "world outrage" and "Saddam Hussein" really ought to have intersected before last Saturday. A merry dance. Sean Gabb defends the right to free speech of members of the British National Party - i.e. he defends the right to free speech of any of us five years earlier than he might otherwise have to. Take his [Inayat Bunglawala's] statement that people have a right to their private political views. That may be the case in some benevolent oriental despotism. In England, it has long been accepted that we have a right to express our political views in public. Such, at least, has always been my understanding.So far as I can tell from the Guardian story that started this latest round, most of the people Inayat Bunglawala is denouncing, such as Simone Clarke, principal dancer with the English National Ballet, had held their views in private - and had made strenuous efforts to keep them private - until they were forcibly made public by the Guardian. This post from Dancerdance, which I think may be a blog about dance, discusses the implications. Incidentally, not long ago someone from Mr Bunglawala's own workplace expressed his or her political views in the form of a death threat to a critic of one of Mr Bunglawala's columns. That too was intended to be private but ended up in the public realm. Tuesday, January 02, 2007
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