As with all my predictions about Tory leadership contests, I got this utterly wrong. I always get it wrong when it comes to the tories. Maybe I should actually be relieved about that.
As it's a fairly slow news day (unless one counts Dubya's mangling of the Spanish language as well as the English; is it really too much to ask for the President of the USA to get the Spanish Premier's name right?) and as I really don't want to talk about World affairs (apparently some Philippine terrorists have beheaded an American hostage) because it's too depressing, I think I'll limit myself to mocking the Tory leadership contest.
As I trust you noticed, the Tories took something of a beating in the election. So much so that little Billy felt it necessary to stand down as leader to make way for someone who could lead the party back to the halcyon days that they enjoyed in the 80's. Alas poor Billy, we barely knew ye. Let us take a moment to reflect on the political passing of the man and his career as leader of Her Majesty's Opposition...right, that's long enough. Frankly, I'm glad to see the back of a man whose only positive contribution to the last 4 years was to make the Tories completely unelectable, and who tried to convince the country that we needed to stop all this forward thinking nonsense and mire ourselves firmly in the past. My only regret is that it is not mandatory to execute failed party leaders who encourage autocratic thinking in the PM.
So anyway, the Tory party is once more a rudderless and decaying hulk, seemingly doomed to be torn apart on the rocks of political ineptitude and public distrust. Who can captain their ship into the calmer waters of government (or at least as a realistic opposition)? The short answer is of course, no one. Not whilst the Labour party have control of the centre left and centre right amongst the electorate. But let us ignore that trifling fact for a while, and pretend that a new leader will actually make the slightest difference.
So who are the candidates for this thankless and dare I say worthless job? Well, there only seem to be 3 contenders who will evoke any sort of recognition from the public. These are (in reverse order of odiousness) Kenneth Clarke, Michael Portillo, and Anne Widdecombe. Some other names are being bandied about such as Francis Maude and Peter Lilley, but as no one would recognise those two if they assaulted them on the street, I think they can safely be discounted.
So what of these 3, these brave 3 who are (or may be) volunteering for the worst job in the country? Firstly we have Mr. Kenneth Clarke, the unhealthiest health secretary that ever made it to government (it was sort of difficult to take him seriously when he encouraged us to improve our general state of health as he puffed on a cigar whilst swigging brandy by the snifter). He's been pretty much anonymous for the last 4 years due to his unwavering support for the EU. This sets him at odds with a large portion of his party, who view Europe with the same sort of horror that you or I would reserve for finding a fly in one's drink. However, he has now reared his head once more and is hoping to unite the party under a pro-euro banner and march them proudly into the next election with a realistic chance of getting into power. He has as much chance of this as Hermann Goering did of becoming an Orthodox Jew.
I somehow can't see the Tories undergoing a transformation from bigoted xenophobes to open armed europhiles in the space of a few years, so I suspect that Mr. Clarke can be pretty much ruled out of the contest. And as a side issue, I would like to put a bet that he will be the first MP to suffer a heart attack in the new parliament. The man has a complexion that is a lovely mix of pallid grey and broken veined red. His jowls sag and his skin is unhealthy and bloated. The man really needs to improve his lifestyle before he becomes fertiliser. But I digress...
Next we have Michael Portillo, a man whom I have already described as the finest homosexual of Spanish origin that the Tories have ever had. I would have to install this man as the odds on favourite assuming that he decides to take the job in the first place. There have been whispers that he would prefer someone else to take on the task of rebuilding, let them lose the next election but not so heavily and then take over when the Conservatives actually have a chance of challenging the government. A little underhanded perhaps, but then he is a politician. However, if we assume that he does go for it, what will he have to offer apart from the thickest lips and nicest hair in parliament?
Certainly, he is the only candidate who has even the remotest chance of uniting the divided party. He is eurosceptic, thus appealing to the right wing, but he is also in favour of being inclusive. In other words, he values treating people who are not WASP (White Anglo Saxon Protestant) as normal human beings rather than as a bunch of leftie, politically correct, black lesbian single mothers. This should appeal to the left wing of the party (the ones whose voices were drowned out by the hurricane of bile and hatred that the rest of the party was spouting during the election campaign). So theoretically, the man has a good chance. And anyone who annoys Norman Tebbit (who is clearly identifying himself as a rather unpleasant little homophobe...so nice that the right wing are saving the likes of me the trouble of pointing out how intolerant they are) is alright by me. I would even go so far to say that he could even make the Tories electable again...well, okay perhaps he'll manage to make them appear human again. Even that would be an achievement.
Finally we have dear old Doris Karloff herself, Anne "3 men a day" Widdecombe. You'll have to excuse me as I find myself crying tears of laughter at the mere thought of this woman (and I only tentatively identify her as such; woman is easier to write than "some form of biped") being thought of as a realistic leader of the party and perhaps of the country. This is a woman whose ranting puts me to shame. A woman who managed to utterly humiliate herself at the last Tory conference with her ignorant bleating about drugs and who went further still by implying that drugs are only a problem if you live in a council estate and didn't go to university.
I was getting ready to unleash all manner of reasons as to why this woman is the second cousin of the antichrist, and why the fact that she appeals to the blue rinse brigade and various stuffy old colonels is reason enough not to vote for her. But it occurs to me that there is no need; anyone with 2 eyes, 2 ears, and a sense of what is and what is not normal can see and hear for himself or herself that she is unelectable. The left would never accept her, although if the Tories do choose her as their leader, then they can look forward to being politically shipwrecked for many more years to come.
One of the main themes of this little rant has been the 2 distinct halves of the party and whether they can be united. In truth, I don't see this as being possible as they are ideologically opposed to each other and have little chance of reconciliation. The best thing that can happen is for them to split accordingly, and then hopefully the far right will wither and die whilst the left gets absorbed by the LibDems. Think of a world without a Tory party...what a wonderful world that would be.
Wednesday, 13 June 2001
Tuesday, 12 June 2001
Lock them up and throw away the key
Prisons are shit. They don't work, because we don't use them as we should; places for rehabilitation.
So then, all appeals for clemency were rejected. Despite the opposition of a large minority of people, yesterday the inevitable happened and the end came for Timothy McVeigh. In the poetic and moving words of the 16th century poet John Donne, "Farewell to thee, thou blinkered and idiotic murdering fuckhead; didst thou really think that the slaughter of innocents would further thy cause? Or has thy mind simply snapped like a rotted tree in a storm? Either way, good bloody riddance to you!" Or something like that anyway...
As I've already gone into my feelings concerning the death penalty, there is no need to belabour the point. Suffice to say that he got what he deserved, unfortunately the event was a media frenzy and so it somewhat detracted from what should have been a solemn occasion. However, there were numerous calls for mercy from the many opponents of the death penalty. By mercy, they were presumably talking about life imprisonment which doesn't seem particularly merciful to me, but that is by the by. Having addressed capital punishment previously, I think perhaps a glance at the alternatives is warranted. I can't claim to be an expert on the American prison system, but I do have a certain level of knowledge of our own and so I shall limit myself to that.
I suppose the first question should be "Why do we have prisons in the first place?” which is not as straightforward as it seems. Are they for punishment, deterrence, rehabilitation, or containment? But more than that, why are they actually needed? Large-scale prisons are a comparatively recent innovation. Before that, the main alternative to being condemned to death was banishment. This took many forms as society progressed; in prehistoric until the dark ages this generally took the form of banishment from a tribal territory. A man alone in the land of a hostile tribe could look forward to a fairly short life packed with interesting times. As we moved into the medieval and beyond, banishment (or at least the incidences that made it into the history books) became the province of the rich and powerful. It was rare that a king could feel so secure in his position that he could afford to have an influential rival executed, so banishment to the continent became the alternative. When one bears in mind that this occasionally resulted in said rival coming back at the head of an army of continental mercenaries, this could be said to have been a bit of a rubbish method of disposing of undesirable elements.
In the time of the Empire banishment became the exile of thieves and murderers (amongst others) to penal colonies, America until they kicked us out, and Australia after that. Not for nothing are Aussie soap opera's referred to as criminal...
And so we get to today, where banishment is a thing of the past. And why? Well, if one looks at the whistle stop history of it, one can see that the objective behind it is the same in each case; send the offender far away where they can't bother us any more. No thought was given to what happens to them once they were banished, because it ceased to be our problem. Someone else had to deal with them in whatever way they saw fit; we simply stopped worrying about them. This is perfectly fair and reasonable when you have somewhere to send them.
However, I would say that our attitude towards prisons isn't a million miles away from our ancestors’ attitudes toward banishment. As the prison population are for the most part put back into society after having served their time, our complete indifference as to what happens to them whilst they are in there is perhaps not the best way of dealing with things. At present, our prisons are little more than warehouses for criminals. So in that respect, the main purpose of our prisons is containment. In an ideal world, this wouldn't be a bad thing at all. Certainly, no one in their right mind would want criminals freed and at large after they'd done something deserving of punishment. So prisons fulfill the roll that banishment once did; removing an undesirable from society.
They do this by confining criminals together in enforced cohabitation. Being human beings like the rest of us they intermingle, befriend some and antagonise others. Social hierarchies are formed (e.g. Sex offenders at the bottom, gang bosses at the top) and rules are created and observed. If broken, then the prisoners deal punishment themselves. In other words, a sub-culture forms. The longer one is exposed to this sub-culture, the more ingrained it becomes and the less likely one becomes to be able to live by the rules of normal society. In other words, they become institutionalised.
It seems to me that we are storing up trouble for ourselves when we store people in prison. They rarely learn the error of their ways or get the opportunity to improve themselves via increasing their qualifications (either practical or academic) so there is little or no rehabilitation on offer. As to punishment and deterrence, they fulfill that function the first time someone is sent there. But I would say that it is because a first time prisoner suffers fear of the unknown. Sometimes that first prison experience is enough to deter someone from serious crime (I'm tempted to make a crude pun about them never forgetting their first time, especially when one considers the part that fear of being raped in the showers has in the deterrence value of prisons). All too often though, new tricks are learned and the criminal becomes more alienated from society.
There are two schools of thought about this. To the right, the approach is to build more prisons so that we can contain more people for longer periods of time. To the left we have the desire for rehabilitation and understanding of the offender. Somewhere in the middle (although admittedly glancing off to the left) is me. Crime does need to be punished. It's just that I tend to believe that people are inclined to make mistakes in their lives, and blanket condemnation followed by a process that will incline them more toward criminal activity does not seem to me to be the wisest idea. Certainly they should be imprisoned (if only because we have no realistic alternative; I mentioned banishment earlier, perhaps once we have the technology for establishing permanent dwellings on the Moon and Mars we will see the re-appearance of penal colonies...). It's what we do with them once they're there that I take issue with.
And yet again, I'm going to cop out. Having stated that I think our current system doesn't work, I can't offer a functional alternative. I can offer idea's of course, and I've already hinted at them. Improving the educational facilities within prisons so that an unskilled and uneducated prisoner can finish his sentence and have either a trade to go into or qualifications to help him get work would be a good start. At the same time, one must remember that a crime was committed and this should be punished, so more Spartan surroundings and a strictly regimented lifestyle for all prisoners could be imposed(does anyone really imagine that if that odious little turd Jeffrey Archer does get imprisoned that he will be at anything other than a luxurious and comfortable prison? The bastard will probably get Jonathan Aitken's old suite...).
The flip side of this view is "Why should criminals have the opportunity to better themselves when citizens don't have access to the level of education that they would like?" Well, here's fun; why not try improving access to education for everyone? I don't mean for the prison issue to be looked at in isolation. I keep harping on about society, and our prison population is just one of society's problems. If, when one goes through school, one has access to a good education (by which I mean both academic and practical; I find it disgusting that someone who could be a top class electrician or builder gets a hard time through school because of our emphasis on academia. As always though, that is a rant for another day...) then it is less likely that one will commit a crime. I say that because one of the main background factors to crime is poverty and social deprivation. If we think of prison as a second chance to get this education, but also incorporate the element of punishment, then we deter people from crime by using both carrot and stick. At least that way, when society does encounter repeat offenders and pathological criminals, we will have clean hands and a clean conscience when dealing with them.
So then, all appeals for clemency were rejected. Despite the opposition of a large minority of people, yesterday the inevitable happened and the end came for Timothy McVeigh. In the poetic and moving words of the 16th century poet John Donne, "Farewell to thee, thou blinkered and idiotic murdering fuckhead; didst thou really think that the slaughter of innocents would further thy cause? Or has thy mind simply snapped like a rotted tree in a storm? Either way, good bloody riddance to you!" Or something like that anyway...
As I've already gone into my feelings concerning the death penalty, there is no need to belabour the point. Suffice to say that he got what he deserved, unfortunately the event was a media frenzy and so it somewhat detracted from what should have been a solemn occasion. However, there were numerous calls for mercy from the many opponents of the death penalty. By mercy, they were presumably talking about life imprisonment which doesn't seem particularly merciful to me, but that is by the by. Having addressed capital punishment previously, I think perhaps a glance at the alternatives is warranted. I can't claim to be an expert on the American prison system, but I do have a certain level of knowledge of our own and so I shall limit myself to that.
I suppose the first question should be "Why do we have prisons in the first place?” which is not as straightforward as it seems. Are they for punishment, deterrence, rehabilitation, or containment? But more than that, why are they actually needed? Large-scale prisons are a comparatively recent innovation. Before that, the main alternative to being condemned to death was banishment. This took many forms as society progressed; in prehistoric until the dark ages this generally took the form of banishment from a tribal territory. A man alone in the land of a hostile tribe could look forward to a fairly short life packed with interesting times. As we moved into the medieval and beyond, banishment (or at least the incidences that made it into the history books) became the province of the rich and powerful. It was rare that a king could feel so secure in his position that he could afford to have an influential rival executed, so banishment to the continent became the alternative. When one bears in mind that this occasionally resulted in said rival coming back at the head of an army of continental mercenaries, this could be said to have been a bit of a rubbish method of disposing of undesirable elements.
In the time of the Empire banishment became the exile of thieves and murderers (amongst others) to penal colonies, America until they kicked us out, and Australia after that. Not for nothing are Aussie soap opera's referred to as criminal...
And so we get to today, where banishment is a thing of the past. And why? Well, if one looks at the whistle stop history of it, one can see that the objective behind it is the same in each case; send the offender far away where they can't bother us any more. No thought was given to what happens to them once they were banished, because it ceased to be our problem. Someone else had to deal with them in whatever way they saw fit; we simply stopped worrying about them. This is perfectly fair and reasonable when you have somewhere to send them.
However, I would say that our attitude towards prisons isn't a million miles away from our ancestors’ attitudes toward banishment. As the prison population are for the most part put back into society after having served their time, our complete indifference as to what happens to them whilst they are in there is perhaps not the best way of dealing with things. At present, our prisons are little more than warehouses for criminals. So in that respect, the main purpose of our prisons is containment. In an ideal world, this wouldn't be a bad thing at all. Certainly, no one in their right mind would want criminals freed and at large after they'd done something deserving of punishment. So prisons fulfill the roll that banishment once did; removing an undesirable from society.
They do this by confining criminals together in enforced cohabitation. Being human beings like the rest of us they intermingle, befriend some and antagonise others. Social hierarchies are formed (e.g. Sex offenders at the bottom, gang bosses at the top) and rules are created and observed. If broken, then the prisoners deal punishment themselves. In other words, a sub-culture forms. The longer one is exposed to this sub-culture, the more ingrained it becomes and the less likely one becomes to be able to live by the rules of normal society. In other words, they become institutionalised.
It seems to me that we are storing up trouble for ourselves when we store people in prison. They rarely learn the error of their ways or get the opportunity to improve themselves via increasing their qualifications (either practical or academic) so there is little or no rehabilitation on offer. As to punishment and deterrence, they fulfill that function the first time someone is sent there. But I would say that it is because a first time prisoner suffers fear of the unknown. Sometimes that first prison experience is enough to deter someone from serious crime (I'm tempted to make a crude pun about them never forgetting their first time, especially when one considers the part that fear of being raped in the showers has in the deterrence value of prisons). All too often though, new tricks are learned and the criminal becomes more alienated from society.
There are two schools of thought about this. To the right, the approach is to build more prisons so that we can contain more people for longer periods of time. To the left we have the desire for rehabilitation and understanding of the offender. Somewhere in the middle (although admittedly glancing off to the left) is me. Crime does need to be punished. It's just that I tend to believe that people are inclined to make mistakes in their lives, and blanket condemnation followed by a process that will incline them more toward criminal activity does not seem to me to be the wisest idea. Certainly they should be imprisoned (if only because we have no realistic alternative; I mentioned banishment earlier, perhaps once we have the technology for establishing permanent dwellings on the Moon and Mars we will see the re-appearance of penal colonies...). It's what we do with them once they're there that I take issue with.
And yet again, I'm going to cop out. Having stated that I think our current system doesn't work, I can't offer a functional alternative. I can offer idea's of course, and I've already hinted at them. Improving the educational facilities within prisons so that an unskilled and uneducated prisoner can finish his sentence and have either a trade to go into or qualifications to help him get work would be a good start. At the same time, one must remember that a crime was committed and this should be punished, so more Spartan surroundings and a strictly regimented lifestyle for all prisoners could be imposed(does anyone really imagine that if that odious little turd Jeffrey Archer does get imprisoned that he will be at anything other than a luxurious and comfortable prison? The bastard will probably get Jonathan Aitken's old suite...).
The flip side of this view is "Why should criminals have the opportunity to better themselves when citizens don't have access to the level of education that they would like?" Well, here's fun; why not try improving access to education for everyone? I don't mean for the prison issue to be looked at in isolation. I keep harping on about society, and our prison population is just one of society's problems. If, when one goes through school, one has access to a good education (by which I mean both academic and practical; I find it disgusting that someone who could be a top class electrician or builder gets a hard time through school because of our emphasis on academia. As always though, that is a rant for another day...) then it is less likely that one will commit a crime. I say that because one of the main background factors to crime is poverty and social deprivation. If we think of prison as a second chance to get this education, but also incorporate the element of punishment, then we deter people from crime by using both carrot and stick. At least that way, when society does encounter repeat offenders and pathological criminals, we will have clean hands and a clean conscience when dealing with them.
Monday, 11 June 2001
Drink
I seem to be less approving of drink than of drugs. Which is odd, as I rather enjoy both.
Were you at all drunk yesterday? Or over the weekend? I would certainly expect so bearing in mind that it's summer (despite the omnipresent rain) and your weekend will have been free of care. So can I safely assume that you had a typically British weekend and that your memories of it are somewhat hazy? Good...
It has been commented on that the British drink as if someone might suddenly take it away from them, and I am hard pressed to find any evidence to refute this. What does puzzle me is why we follow the same routine almost every weekend and with such little variation despite the fact that we invariably end up embarrassing either ourselves or our friends and are usually guilty of committing at least one act on a night out guaranteed to ensure one is left feeling foolish and awkward in the weeks to come.
However, if you were to talk to the person sitting nearest you right now about their weekend, I have little doubt that they will tell you what a fantastic time they had, wax boastfully as to the quantity of drink that they consumed, and perhaps even regale you with an outrageous tale of what happened when they/their friend/their pet finished their 12th pint and then ran into a policeman/former spouse/Lord Lucan. God knows, I'm pretty sure I would even though the events of the weekend passed are pretty much a blur to me. This is despite the fact that I felt dreadful for most of Saturday, remedied this by starting drinking in the early evening thus guaranteeing further nausea on Sunday which saw me becoming a permanent fixture on the sofa alongside a large bottle of Coca-Cola and a permanently babbling (though for the most part vacantly stared at) TV.
Realistically, rather than feeling satisfied at a weekend spent either drunk or recovering, I suppose I should be filled with mortification at a weekend wasted, with nothing achieved other than a Friday night spent ranting incoherent rubbish at Abby and Claire, the majority of which I can't even remember (I’d apologise, but I suspect that they may feel equal measure of mild embarrassment for having done exactly the same...). I'm not though (although this is the first time I've actually thought about this in any detail and I have to say, thus far I'm a little perturbed and may even go so far as to not get drunk this coming weekend) and I suspect that you would be surprised at me if I was.
Alcohol has always played a large part in British life and culture. Like the rest of Europe, we made use of brewing technology at a very early stage in history. In pre-Roman times, drinking water was a dangerous thing to do as one was at risk of catching all manner of interesting diseases due to the lack of sanitation. Happily, the brewing process killed off any bacteria in the water thus ensuring that those who drank beer had a higher survival rate than those who stuck to untreated water. Natural selection being what it is, Britain gradually became an island whose inhabitants were quite merrily (not to mention merry) accustomed to downing pint after pint of beer.
As a side note, in the Far East they got round the problem of impure water by adding leaves to it and boiling it, thus producing tea. I am given to believe that there is not such a hard drinking culture in the East and I'd be intrigued to know whether anyone has looked into whether there is any connection between this and the historical points mentioned above.
And our drinking culture has actually served us rather well historically. It kept the peasantry drunk and satisfied during the Middle Ages, thus allowing them to endure any number of upheavals caused by kings and kingmakers during this turbulent time. It also ensured that none of them strung enough thoughts together to realise just what an unutterably shitty deal they were getting out of life, a much understated value of alcohol. In the time of the British Empire, our adversaries (the ones that we didn't obliterate anyway) commented with amazement on the fact that our soldiers fought with such valor and tenacity for their daily pay, of which by far the most important component was a pint of rum. Yes, each man daily drank a pint of rum, a concept that even the hardest drinkers among you should regard with a measure of respect and amazement.
It is only recently that alcohol has started to become a hindrance to our status as a world player. Whilst keeping ones workers permanently pissed was considered advantageous when they were mill workers, labourers, soldiers, and subsistence farmers, it is less useful when trying to operate high-tech machinery, enter huge swathes of data into complicated computer systems, or work in any sort of high pressure business environment.
If one couples this with the reluctance to train people to any particular level of specialisation (presumably a hangover from our empire days where the upper classes preferred their subjects to be competent but not too bright so as not to highlight the failings of the upper class itself) then we can see that perhaps the government has one or two things to think about as they start making their plans for the new parliament.
This is not to say that I am becoming anti-alcohol; anyone who has ever been out with me will confirm that I have a long and meaningful love affair with all manner of wine and spirits. However, I do find it fascinating how we as a culture treat alcohol compared to the other drugs available for recreation. Alcohol, had it just been discovered, would almost certainly be criminalised as a class A drug due to the long term damage it causes to Liver, brain, heart etc, not to mention it's potential for overdose and addiction.
And addiction is what I am really driving at here. We shudder with horror at the thought of a heroin addict going through messy and painful withdrawal, and perhaps feel a sense of disdain at their lack of willpower for allowing themselves to get addicted in the first place. Okay, fine; I challenge you to give up alcohol for a year. Any takers? Come on, it's only a year! We expect drug users to give up their drugs for the rest of their lives, all I'm asking of you is a single year of not drinking alcohol, surely that's not too much to ask? But it is, isn't it? I don't imagine for a moment that I could give up drinking at this point in my life, and I salute anyone who thinks that they could.
I'm going to stop short of saying that we are a nation of people hopelessly addicted to a drug and that we are unable and unwilling to break that addiction (although the only reason I back away from saying something like that is due to my own unease at thinking in such terms even though this does seem to be the case). What I will finish on is by asking you to imagine a British society without alcohol and consider whether it would be better, and whether we would have nearly as much fun at weekends.
Were you at all drunk yesterday? Or over the weekend? I would certainly expect so bearing in mind that it's summer (despite the omnipresent rain) and your weekend will have been free of care. So can I safely assume that you had a typically British weekend and that your memories of it are somewhat hazy? Good...
It has been commented on that the British drink as if someone might suddenly take it away from them, and I am hard pressed to find any evidence to refute this. What does puzzle me is why we follow the same routine almost every weekend and with such little variation despite the fact that we invariably end up embarrassing either ourselves or our friends and are usually guilty of committing at least one act on a night out guaranteed to ensure one is left feeling foolish and awkward in the weeks to come.
However, if you were to talk to the person sitting nearest you right now about their weekend, I have little doubt that they will tell you what a fantastic time they had, wax boastfully as to the quantity of drink that they consumed, and perhaps even regale you with an outrageous tale of what happened when they/their friend/their pet finished their 12th pint and then ran into a policeman/former spouse/Lord Lucan. God knows, I'm pretty sure I would even though the events of the weekend passed are pretty much a blur to me. This is despite the fact that I felt dreadful for most of Saturday, remedied this by starting drinking in the early evening thus guaranteeing further nausea on Sunday which saw me becoming a permanent fixture on the sofa alongside a large bottle of Coca-Cola and a permanently babbling (though for the most part vacantly stared at) TV.
Realistically, rather than feeling satisfied at a weekend spent either drunk or recovering, I suppose I should be filled with mortification at a weekend wasted, with nothing achieved other than a Friday night spent ranting incoherent rubbish at Abby and Claire, the majority of which I can't even remember (I’d apologise, but I suspect that they may feel equal measure of mild embarrassment for having done exactly the same...). I'm not though (although this is the first time I've actually thought about this in any detail and I have to say, thus far I'm a little perturbed and may even go so far as to not get drunk this coming weekend) and I suspect that you would be surprised at me if I was.
Alcohol has always played a large part in British life and culture. Like the rest of Europe, we made use of brewing technology at a very early stage in history. In pre-Roman times, drinking water was a dangerous thing to do as one was at risk of catching all manner of interesting diseases due to the lack of sanitation. Happily, the brewing process killed off any bacteria in the water thus ensuring that those who drank beer had a higher survival rate than those who stuck to untreated water. Natural selection being what it is, Britain gradually became an island whose inhabitants were quite merrily (not to mention merry) accustomed to downing pint after pint of beer.
As a side note, in the Far East they got round the problem of impure water by adding leaves to it and boiling it, thus producing tea. I am given to believe that there is not such a hard drinking culture in the East and I'd be intrigued to know whether anyone has looked into whether there is any connection between this and the historical points mentioned above.
And our drinking culture has actually served us rather well historically. It kept the peasantry drunk and satisfied during the Middle Ages, thus allowing them to endure any number of upheavals caused by kings and kingmakers during this turbulent time. It also ensured that none of them strung enough thoughts together to realise just what an unutterably shitty deal they were getting out of life, a much understated value of alcohol. In the time of the British Empire, our adversaries (the ones that we didn't obliterate anyway) commented with amazement on the fact that our soldiers fought with such valor and tenacity for their daily pay, of which by far the most important component was a pint of rum. Yes, each man daily drank a pint of rum, a concept that even the hardest drinkers among you should regard with a measure of respect and amazement.
It is only recently that alcohol has started to become a hindrance to our status as a world player. Whilst keeping ones workers permanently pissed was considered advantageous when they were mill workers, labourers, soldiers, and subsistence farmers, it is less useful when trying to operate high-tech machinery, enter huge swathes of data into complicated computer systems, or work in any sort of high pressure business environment.
If one couples this with the reluctance to train people to any particular level of specialisation (presumably a hangover from our empire days where the upper classes preferred their subjects to be competent but not too bright so as not to highlight the failings of the upper class itself) then we can see that perhaps the government has one or two things to think about as they start making their plans for the new parliament.
This is not to say that I am becoming anti-alcohol; anyone who has ever been out with me will confirm that I have a long and meaningful love affair with all manner of wine and spirits. However, I do find it fascinating how we as a culture treat alcohol compared to the other drugs available for recreation. Alcohol, had it just been discovered, would almost certainly be criminalised as a class A drug due to the long term damage it causes to Liver, brain, heart etc, not to mention it's potential for overdose and addiction.
And addiction is what I am really driving at here. We shudder with horror at the thought of a heroin addict going through messy and painful withdrawal, and perhaps feel a sense of disdain at their lack of willpower for allowing themselves to get addicted in the first place. Okay, fine; I challenge you to give up alcohol for a year. Any takers? Come on, it's only a year! We expect drug users to give up their drugs for the rest of their lives, all I'm asking of you is a single year of not drinking alcohol, surely that's not too much to ask? But it is, isn't it? I don't imagine for a moment that I could give up drinking at this point in my life, and I salute anyone who thinks that they could.
I'm going to stop short of saying that we are a nation of people hopelessly addicted to a drug and that we are unable and unwilling to break that addiction (although the only reason I back away from saying something like that is due to my own unease at thinking in such terms even though this does seem to be the case). What I will finish on is by asking you to imagine a British society without alcohol and consider whether it would be better, and whether we would have nearly as much fun at weekends.
Thursday, 7 June 2001
A Cruel and Unusual Punishment
I stand by my opinions in this rant. And as a side note, I've gained great amusement from watching those who condemn the death penalty in all circumstances struggling to provide justifiable exceptions for the execution of Saddam Hussein.
As you are no doubt getting piss sick of me babbling endlessly about the election, and as by now you will have made the decision of whether to vote and who to vote for, I shall resist the temptation to discuss today’s national trip to the polling station (apart from just there obviously...). In fact, I feel that perhaps my near obsession with exhorting you to vote may have perhaps driven you away from me somewhat. This of course worries me, because I want to feel as if we're one big happy family, and so I've had a good hard think about what I could discuss to perhaps win you back over. And then it came to me in a blinding flash; what better to reduce you to a helpless state of belly laughter than a rant about the death penalty!
My mind has been set thinking along this well trodden path by the ongoing saga of Timothy McVeigh a.k.a. the Oklahoma Bomber. As you may be aware, he is scheduled to be executed on Monday for the bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma (being known as the Oklahoma bomber may have given that away to you...) which caused the death of 168 people. Actually, as a side issue, do you remember that incident? Most of America (and the world if we're honest) put the incident down to one of the many extremist groups based in the Middle East. The palpable waves of shock throughout the USA at the discovery that it was an American who looked just like everybody else who had planted the bomb would have been rather amusing were it not for the depth of the xenophobia that it revealed. But that is something for another time...
This is the first federal execution in America for something like 30 years (federal law is sort of like national law whereas state law varies from state to state; several people have been executed under state law, especially in Texas which it may not surprise you to learn had Dubya running it prior to his election as President...) and it has caused something of a stir for a number of reasons. The old debate of "Is this murder sanctioned by the law?" has kicked off in earnest, the possibility of televising the execution itself has also been much discussed and rejected (although it is to be shown over closed circuit TV to the families of his victims; anyone care to take bets as to how long it will take for this footage to debut on the Internet?). We have also, and for me most satisfyingly, had the shortcomings of the FBI quite graphically demonstrated as their failure to disclose thousands of (admittedly non-vital) documents delayed the execution and caused much distress to all concerned.
What interests me in the main is the validity of the death penalty itself. It may (or may not) surprise you to learn that I am very much in favour of the death penalty. Despite my liberal leanings, I think that in certain circumstances, it is fully justified. And the key phrase there is "in certain circumstances"; these circumstances do need further explanation and definition.
In what circumstances can we justify depriving another human being of their life? Whilst it is tempting to say that we could do so for such things as "Being French in a built up area", "Phoning a computer support line without having a clue how a computer works", and "Being fucking stupid". However, as this is a reasonably important subject, I shall approach with something resembling the gravity that it deserves.
Firstly we start with the biggie: Murder. Can we justify the old adage "A life for a life"? I would say that we couldn’t. Man is judged by his fellow man (if you want to get all biblical about it) and man's judgment can be flawed when looking at the evidence available. There are many cases of people being executed for crimes that they did not commit, and I am certainly not advocating a return to that. Nor would I do so for the crime of Rape which, utterly degrading and horrific though it certainly is, has the same potential for miscarriages of justice (if not more so) than murder. As to the current crime that is still punishable by death (treason), this is hopelessly outdated in concept and needs radical overhaul if it is to have any relevance.
Now it may appear that I am going back on what I said earlier in that I have dismissed the main crimes that tend to inspire calls for the return of the death penalty. Well, yes I am dismissing them because most of the appeals for its return on these grounds are formed on the basis of retribution and deterrence. As a deterrent, the death penalty does not work, and I would say that the fact that America continues to have a horrendously high murder rate goes some way to proving that. As a means of retribution...well, I refuse point blank to align myself with the sort of person who bays for the blood of a man condemned. The type of person who *demands* the execution of a criminal (family of the victim excluded) is one step away from lynch mob mentality and as a confirmed humanist, I'd like to think that we all have the potential to evolve away from the darker, reactionary side of our psyche. This sort of attitude (however justified it may be at the time) simply serve to propagate intolerance and hatred.
I personally believe that if there are circumstances that justify the execution of another human being (and I shall detail what I believe they are below) then one should ask for this ultimate sanction with reluctance and with sadness that it is necessary to have a person killed for the good of society. I am paraphrasing Clarence Darrow who expressed this with eloquence that I could only hope to aspire to when he defended the killers Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb in 1924 when I say this. He gave a speech to this effect when summing up his case for not executing the two young men who had committed the savage and senseless murder of a classmate as an intellectual exercise in committing the perfect crime. Both of them were sentenced to life imprisonment despite the frenzied and angry demands for the death penalty by the state. This is how it should be.
As to the types of crime that actually should be punishable by death, my earlier opinions concerning paedophiles will perhaps give you a clue as to what they should be. Basically, truly monstrous and repeatedly committed offences should be punishable. And no, I am not saying that we should keep releasing people until they have committed sufficient crimes to justify execution. I am referring to Serial Killers, Serial Rapists, and Child Sex Offenders. This is a class of criminal that is pathologically and irreversibly compelled to kill, rape, and abuse. There is nothing that we can do to help them, and there is nothing that they can contribute to society other than what we can learn from them through studying them in order to ensure that this cannot happen again. Once this process of study is complete, they should be put to sleep quickly, quietly and painlessly. Timothy McVeigh's death is fast becoming a sideshow, and as long as this remains the case concerning execution, we have no right to call ourselves a civilised society.
As you are no doubt getting piss sick of me babbling endlessly about the election, and as by now you will have made the decision of whether to vote and who to vote for, I shall resist the temptation to discuss today’s national trip to the polling station (apart from just there obviously...). In fact, I feel that perhaps my near obsession with exhorting you to vote may have perhaps driven you away from me somewhat. This of course worries me, because I want to feel as if we're one big happy family, and so I've had a good hard think about what I could discuss to perhaps win you back over. And then it came to me in a blinding flash; what better to reduce you to a helpless state of belly laughter than a rant about the death penalty!
My mind has been set thinking along this well trodden path by the ongoing saga of Timothy McVeigh a.k.a. the Oklahoma Bomber. As you may be aware, he is scheduled to be executed on Monday for the bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma (being known as the Oklahoma bomber may have given that away to you...) which caused the death of 168 people. Actually, as a side issue, do you remember that incident? Most of America (and the world if we're honest) put the incident down to one of the many extremist groups based in the Middle East. The palpable waves of shock throughout the USA at the discovery that it was an American who looked just like everybody else who had planted the bomb would have been rather amusing were it not for the depth of the xenophobia that it revealed. But that is something for another time...
This is the first federal execution in America for something like 30 years (federal law is sort of like national law whereas state law varies from state to state; several people have been executed under state law, especially in Texas which it may not surprise you to learn had Dubya running it prior to his election as President...) and it has caused something of a stir for a number of reasons. The old debate of "Is this murder sanctioned by the law?" has kicked off in earnest, the possibility of televising the execution itself has also been much discussed and rejected (although it is to be shown over closed circuit TV to the families of his victims; anyone care to take bets as to how long it will take for this footage to debut on the Internet?). We have also, and for me most satisfyingly, had the shortcomings of the FBI quite graphically demonstrated as their failure to disclose thousands of (admittedly non-vital) documents delayed the execution and caused much distress to all concerned.
What interests me in the main is the validity of the death penalty itself. It may (or may not) surprise you to learn that I am very much in favour of the death penalty. Despite my liberal leanings, I think that in certain circumstances, it is fully justified. And the key phrase there is "in certain circumstances"; these circumstances do need further explanation and definition.
In what circumstances can we justify depriving another human being of their life? Whilst it is tempting to say that we could do so for such things as "Being French in a built up area", "Phoning a computer support line without having a clue how a computer works", and "Being fucking stupid". However, as this is a reasonably important subject, I shall approach with something resembling the gravity that it deserves.
Firstly we start with the biggie: Murder. Can we justify the old adage "A life for a life"? I would say that we couldn’t. Man is judged by his fellow man (if you want to get all biblical about it) and man's judgment can be flawed when looking at the evidence available. There are many cases of people being executed for crimes that they did not commit, and I am certainly not advocating a return to that. Nor would I do so for the crime of Rape which, utterly degrading and horrific though it certainly is, has the same potential for miscarriages of justice (if not more so) than murder. As to the current crime that is still punishable by death (treason), this is hopelessly outdated in concept and needs radical overhaul if it is to have any relevance.
Now it may appear that I am going back on what I said earlier in that I have dismissed the main crimes that tend to inspire calls for the return of the death penalty. Well, yes I am dismissing them because most of the appeals for its return on these grounds are formed on the basis of retribution and deterrence. As a deterrent, the death penalty does not work, and I would say that the fact that America continues to have a horrendously high murder rate goes some way to proving that. As a means of retribution...well, I refuse point blank to align myself with the sort of person who bays for the blood of a man condemned. The type of person who *demands* the execution of a criminal (family of the victim excluded) is one step away from lynch mob mentality and as a confirmed humanist, I'd like to think that we all have the potential to evolve away from the darker, reactionary side of our psyche. This sort of attitude (however justified it may be at the time) simply serve to propagate intolerance and hatred.
I personally believe that if there are circumstances that justify the execution of another human being (and I shall detail what I believe they are below) then one should ask for this ultimate sanction with reluctance and with sadness that it is necessary to have a person killed for the good of society. I am paraphrasing Clarence Darrow who expressed this with eloquence that I could only hope to aspire to when he defended the killers Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb in 1924 when I say this. He gave a speech to this effect when summing up his case for not executing the two young men who had committed the savage and senseless murder of a classmate as an intellectual exercise in committing the perfect crime. Both of them were sentenced to life imprisonment despite the frenzied and angry demands for the death penalty by the state. This is how it should be.
As to the types of crime that actually should be punishable by death, my earlier opinions concerning paedophiles will perhaps give you a clue as to what they should be. Basically, truly monstrous and repeatedly committed offences should be punishable. And no, I am not saying that we should keep releasing people until they have committed sufficient crimes to justify execution. I am referring to Serial Killers, Serial Rapists, and Child Sex Offenders. This is a class of criminal that is pathologically and irreversibly compelled to kill, rape, and abuse. There is nothing that we can do to help them, and there is nothing that they can contribute to society other than what we can learn from them through studying them in order to ensure that this cannot happen again. Once this process of study is complete, they should be put to sleep quickly, quietly and painlessly. Timothy McVeigh's death is fast becoming a sideshow, and as long as this remains the case concerning execution, we have no right to call ourselves a civilised society.
Wednesday, 6 June 2001
The End of an Empire
I'm by no means the only person to compare the US to the Roman Empire. I'm not even the funniest (step forward Eddie Izzard). I do like to pretend I'm one of the best.
And so it is that I find a piece of news that goes some way to confirming what anybody who observed the debacle that was the US Presidential election had long since either known or suspected; that Dubya is in the White House thanks entirely to the scheming and underhand machinations of his brother Jeb. Co-incidentally the man who is Governor of Florida. Co-incidentally, the state where all of the controversy over vote counting and voting irregularities was centered. Co-incidentally the state that won the election for Dubya.
Essentially, the US civil rights commission have found that good 'ol Jeb is guilty of a gross and negligent dereliction of duty by failing to address any of the massive number of problems that either prevented people from casting their votes in the first place or guaranteed that those who did vote would do so incorrectly, thus spoiling their ballot papers. "Fair enough" you may think, "so Jeb is an incompetent and inefficient politician; nothing special there, and his failures will have affected all voters, not just the Democrats".
Well, to be blunt, you'd be wrong. For starters, black voters were 10 times more likely to lose their votes in Florida. Historically, black people have predominantly voted Democrat, so amazingly enough Jeb's failure benefited Dubya...who would have thunk it?! (Incidentally, the reasons as to how it was black voters who suffered because of the cock ups range from the bureaucratic, such as barring people from voting who had the same name as a convicted felon; as half of Florida's prison population is black one can see how this caused problems. There are also the more sinister occurrences such as the State Troopers setting up multiple roadblocks and random spot checks on cars and people, all of which was done in predominantly black neighbourhoods)
Essentially, he helped to guarantee that the affluent white areas that were inclined to Republican could, and that the poorer minority areas that were inclined to vote Democrat, could not.
So then, just one more example of how Democracy can be corrupted, twisted, and used to the benefit of a few. Now that Dubya is in, he is doing his utmost to use his power for the benefit of his friends in big business by introducing tax cuts, allowing oil drilling in Alaska, and trying to manufacture an energy crisis in California (the latter two are being derailed since the defection of a Republican senator). Speaking frankly, I am getting piss sick of being let down by our supposedly fair system of democracy, and at the risk of sounding like some sort of anarchist, I think it's getting near the time where we need to rewrite the rules so that the system actually works, or risk losing the whole damn thing and having to start again.
You may think me somewhat...excitable in thinking like this. You may even think I'm completely round the twist. In my defence I would say this; if you had said to a citizen of the Roman Empire living in the reign of the Emperor Trajan (about 100AD) that in a little over 200 years the empire would crack and fall they would have laughed you out of Rome (after having marveled at your funny clothes...and assuming that they understood a word you said as well...actually, this isn't a very good example at all if I analyse it too closely but let's ignore that for now).
The Roman parallel can be drawn with various other points of our society; I have previously made the point that under our democracy, the wielding of power is dependent on being elected by the people. The people are made rather more malleable by a press that helps keeps us stupid and help to think as little as possible (and if that sounds paranoid, bear in mind that The Sun is the best selling newspaper in this country) and so the process of election of our leaders becomes little more than a vacuous popularity contest. On that basis, the current government will do whatever it takes to keep them popular with the people in order to get themselves re-elected. As they are in power for less than 5 years, they have to do something within that time in order to keep the masses satisfied, and so they will always take a quick and temporary solution over a difficult to implement but ultimately long term solution. We don't have a society, we have a 5-year cycle.
In Rome before the emperors the same held true. The wielders of supreme power were known as Consuls. The citizens elected them for 1-year terms. The citizenry could be influenced by bribery and so the process of election of their leaders became a contest between the rich. However, as the people then were rather more fickle than they are now, no Consul would ever take for granted being re-elected (before the first Dictator of Rome, a bloke named Marius, no-one had been Consul more than 7 times) and so would not authorize any public works that would not be completed within their term. This short-term thinking led to the gradual, almost imperceptible decline and fall of the Roman Republic, then the Empire afterwards.
You may have heard of the saying "He who does not heed history is doomed to repeat it". To an extent, this is true, although not entirely. Circumstances now are not exactly the same as they were then; we do not have endless waves of Barbarians threatening our borders (unless you count the French...) and they do not have complexity of Global Economics and Globalisation. I've also oversimplified one or two points from Roman History so as to save you from excruciating boredom. But the basic principles are there. I would say that Rome initially had the right idea in that they limited the right to vote to citizens. In principle, this was a sensible move, although they went about it the wrong way because they used predominantly financial criteria to decide who became a citizen. In today’s world where we have 1 man = 1 vote, this means that you and I can vote for our leaders. At the risk of sounding like an elitist, this also means that the any Tasha Slappa and charva over the age of 18 can also vote. If someone appeals to the lowest common denominator then they will get elected. Quite frightening really, isn't it?
So what is to be done? Once again, Laidler cops out and states that he doesn't rightly know. Some sort of citizenship exam would be a good idea but as to how to implement that, I couldn't say. To save me from the accusation of being in favour of a Nazi-like state, I should also make it clear that any such system would have to ensure that people who don't have the vote have all of the same rights (bar voting of course) and treatment on the same level as those who do. By saying that, and knowing human nature the way I do, I've undoubtedly consigned the whole thing to the status of "Pipe-dream".
Regardless of what needs to be done to remedy the current democratic crisis, I hope that I have at least gone some way to impressing on you that there is one. I wholeheartedly believe that there is, and I dearly hope that there is something that can be done to make the transition from this system to whatever is coming next a little easier than the upheavals that were suffered by Rome. As in all things, time will tell.
And so it is that I find a piece of news that goes some way to confirming what anybody who observed the debacle that was the US Presidential election had long since either known or suspected; that Dubya is in the White House thanks entirely to the scheming and underhand machinations of his brother Jeb. Co-incidentally the man who is Governor of Florida. Co-incidentally, the state where all of the controversy over vote counting and voting irregularities was centered. Co-incidentally the state that won the election for Dubya.
Essentially, the US civil rights commission have found that good 'ol Jeb is guilty of a gross and negligent dereliction of duty by failing to address any of the massive number of problems that either prevented people from casting their votes in the first place or guaranteed that those who did vote would do so incorrectly, thus spoiling their ballot papers. "Fair enough" you may think, "so Jeb is an incompetent and inefficient politician; nothing special there, and his failures will have affected all voters, not just the Democrats".
Well, to be blunt, you'd be wrong. For starters, black voters were 10 times more likely to lose their votes in Florida. Historically, black people have predominantly voted Democrat, so amazingly enough Jeb's failure benefited Dubya...who would have thunk it?! (Incidentally, the reasons as to how it was black voters who suffered because of the cock ups range from the bureaucratic, such as barring people from voting who had the same name as a convicted felon; as half of Florida's prison population is black one can see how this caused problems. There are also the more sinister occurrences such as the State Troopers setting up multiple roadblocks and random spot checks on cars and people, all of which was done in predominantly black neighbourhoods)
Essentially, he helped to guarantee that the affluent white areas that were inclined to Republican could, and that the poorer minority areas that were inclined to vote Democrat, could not.
So then, just one more example of how Democracy can be corrupted, twisted, and used to the benefit of a few. Now that Dubya is in, he is doing his utmost to use his power for the benefit of his friends in big business by introducing tax cuts, allowing oil drilling in Alaska, and trying to manufacture an energy crisis in California (the latter two are being derailed since the defection of a Republican senator). Speaking frankly, I am getting piss sick of being let down by our supposedly fair system of democracy, and at the risk of sounding like some sort of anarchist, I think it's getting near the time where we need to rewrite the rules so that the system actually works, or risk losing the whole damn thing and having to start again.
You may think me somewhat...excitable in thinking like this. You may even think I'm completely round the twist. In my defence I would say this; if you had said to a citizen of the Roman Empire living in the reign of the Emperor Trajan (about 100AD) that in a little over 200 years the empire would crack and fall they would have laughed you out of Rome (after having marveled at your funny clothes...and assuming that they understood a word you said as well...actually, this isn't a very good example at all if I analyse it too closely but let's ignore that for now).
The Roman parallel can be drawn with various other points of our society; I have previously made the point that under our democracy, the wielding of power is dependent on being elected by the people. The people are made rather more malleable by a press that helps keeps us stupid and help to think as little as possible (and if that sounds paranoid, bear in mind that The Sun is the best selling newspaper in this country) and so the process of election of our leaders becomes little more than a vacuous popularity contest. On that basis, the current government will do whatever it takes to keep them popular with the people in order to get themselves re-elected. As they are in power for less than 5 years, they have to do something within that time in order to keep the masses satisfied, and so they will always take a quick and temporary solution over a difficult to implement but ultimately long term solution. We don't have a society, we have a 5-year cycle.
In Rome before the emperors the same held true. The wielders of supreme power were known as Consuls. The citizens elected them for 1-year terms. The citizenry could be influenced by bribery and so the process of election of their leaders became a contest between the rich. However, as the people then were rather more fickle than they are now, no Consul would ever take for granted being re-elected (before the first Dictator of Rome, a bloke named Marius, no-one had been Consul more than 7 times) and so would not authorize any public works that would not be completed within their term. This short-term thinking led to the gradual, almost imperceptible decline and fall of the Roman Republic, then the Empire afterwards.
You may have heard of the saying "He who does not heed history is doomed to repeat it". To an extent, this is true, although not entirely. Circumstances now are not exactly the same as they were then; we do not have endless waves of Barbarians threatening our borders (unless you count the French...) and they do not have complexity of Global Economics and Globalisation. I've also oversimplified one or two points from Roman History so as to save you from excruciating boredom. But the basic principles are there. I would say that Rome initially had the right idea in that they limited the right to vote to citizens. In principle, this was a sensible move, although they went about it the wrong way because they used predominantly financial criteria to decide who became a citizen. In today’s world where we have 1 man = 1 vote, this means that you and I can vote for our leaders. At the risk of sounding like an elitist, this also means that the any Tasha Slappa and charva over the age of 18 can also vote. If someone appeals to the lowest common denominator then they will get elected. Quite frightening really, isn't it?
So what is to be done? Once again, Laidler cops out and states that he doesn't rightly know. Some sort of citizenship exam would be a good idea but as to how to implement that, I couldn't say. To save me from the accusation of being in favour of a Nazi-like state, I should also make it clear that any such system would have to ensure that people who don't have the vote have all of the same rights (bar voting of course) and treatment on the same level as those who do. By saying that, and knowing human nature the way I do, I've undoubtedly consigned the whole thing to the status of "Pipe-dream".
Regardless of what needs to be done to remedy the current democratic crisis, I hope that I have at least gone some way to impressing on you that there is one. I wholeheartedly believe that there is, and I dearly hope that there is something that can be done to make the transition from this system to whatever is coming next a little easier than the upheavals that were suffered by Rome. As in all things, time will tell.
Tuesday, 5 June 2001
Evictions and Elections
Written at a time when both Big Brother and the idea of the Tories winning were novelties.
Have you had much of a chance to watch TV recently? If so you will doubtless be aware that by the end of this week, a voting process will have taken place. The choice is a one that is currently dividing the nation and has seen heated debate throughout the media. Both of the main candidates have their supporters and detractors, although the more sensible observers are already discussing the merits of tactical voting, and what the future could possibly hold once all the votes are counted. Yes, the first nominees for eviction from Big Brother have been announced.
Looking back on that paragraph, it's quite obvious that I was trying to be a bit clever and ambiguous in order to make you think I was talking about the General Election. However, it occurs to me that when one bears in mind the projected percentages of people who will vote a lot of people would probably have assumed that I was talking about either Big Brother or Survivor anyway. I may even have reminded you about the election itself, so low has its profile been in comparison. What a waste of a perfectly adequate journalistic device. Bugger...
Although, perhaps not such a waste after all. It certainly puts our priorities as a nation into perspective. According to some poll or other, more people aged 18-25 will vote for the Big Brother eviction than will vote in the General Election. To put it another way, we care more about a gameshow than we care for who runs our country. Now I like Big Brother and watch it frequently, but as it does not and is not likely to directly affect my quality of life in the future, it comes a fairly distant second to Thursday’s election for me. I also appreciate just what a boring little git that makes me sound like, but please let me explain...
At the risk of repeating myself from earlier rants, it is very important that we get up of our collective backsides and go to the polling stations on Thursday. Even if you're going to vote Tory, you should go to the Polls. Christ, turn up and write "Wibble" and draw pictures of flowers on the ballot paper if you like (were it not for the LibDems I'm damn sure that's what I would do...) just please turn up!
If it seems a little strange that I should be so vehement about this (as I'm not noted for getting my proverbials in a twist about many things), then perhaps I should throw a few figures at you. I'm aware that it is said that you can prove anything with statistics, but you can prove anything with facts as well, and that is what the following are.
It is estimated that 40% of the voting population will not cast a vote at this election. Of course, that does mean that the majority of people will, and in that sense we're doing better than American democracy can manage at the moment. But 40% is a hell of large minority. To put it into perspective, Hague needs a swing of about 9% in his favour to win. That's not very much at all! And that also makes it eminently possible that we could wake up on Friday morning to see a shorter and almost 67% gittier looking PM grinning back at us from outside 10 Downing Street. I'd call that a much scarier prospect than any challenge Big Brother can throw at someone...
Now, I'd imagine that the 40% don't vote because they either can't be bothered or because they think it won't make a difference. To address the latter point first, it most certainly does make a difference. Perhaps not if one limits oneself to thinking in terms of Conservative versus Labour, but if those 40% were to vote LibDem, we'd have a LibDem government. Aside from the fact that this would be rather funny because they would panic if they did get into power (I can picture Charles Kennedy being awoken by a phone call in the early hours of Friday morning..."Hello...yes.... we’ve WHAT?! Are you sure? You do know that this is LibDem HQ don't you?") this would be a good thing for democracy in general. Even if more people voted for any of the other parties, it would perhaps cause the big two to think a bit more carefully about how they form their policies during the next parliament as it would be clear that they run the risk of either having to share power with a third party (The Labour-LibDem axis facing the Conservative-Monster Raving Loony Alliance) or losing any chance of power altogether.
As to the former point, short of using electrified cattle prods to shift people from their sofa's that are perfectly molded to their backsides and forcing them to take 5 minutes of their attention away from the one eyed beast that is their God, I see little that can be done. Unless...
Why not simply combine reality TV with the election? At the beginning of the election campaign we put all of the leaders of the major parties in the Big Brother house to be observed 24 hours a day. We can have Tony, Billy, and Charlie in there, and we don't have to stop with Big Brother. If we stick a couple of scantily clad lingerie models in with them we can incorporate Temptation Island. Don't give them any food except rat meat, rice, and whatever insects and grubs they can catch and hey presto, we have Survivor in there as well! Not only will the percentage of votes increase (Because votes will also be able to be cast by phone, thus catering for anyone who doesn't want to leave their house for anything other than work or the pub) but also we'll have the best and most entertaining election campaign in History! Surely that has to be worth voting for.
Have you had much of a chance to watch TV recently? If so you will doubtless be aware that by the end of this week, a voting process will have taken place. The choice is a one that is currently dividing the nation and has seen heated debate throughout the media. Both of the main candidates have their supporters and detractors, although the more sensible observers are already discussing the merits of tactical voting, and what the future could possibly hold once all the votes are counted. Yes, the first nominees for eviction from Big Brother have been announced.
Looking back on that paragraph, it's quite obvious that I was trying to be a bit clever and ambiguous in order to make you think I was talking about the General Election. However, it occurs to me that when one bears in mind the projected percentages of people who will vote a lot of people would probably have assumed that I was talking about either Big Brother or Survivor anyway. I may even have reminded you about the election itself, so low has its profile been in comparison. What a waste of a perfectly adequate journalistic device. Bugger...
Although, perhaps not such a waste after all. It certainly puts our priorities as a nation into perspective. According to some poll or other, more people aged 18-25 will vote for the Big Brother eviction than will vote in the General Election. To put it another way, we care more about a gameshow than we care for who runs our country. Now I like Big Brother and watch it frequently, but as it does not and is not likely to directly affect my quality of life in the future, it comes a fairly distant second to Thursday’s election for me. I also appreciate just what a boring little git that makes me sound like, but please let me explain...
At the risk of repeating myself from earlier rants, it is very important that we get up of our collective backsides and go to the polling stations on Thursday. Even if you're going to vote Tory, you should go to the Polls. Christ, turn up and write "Wibble" and draw pictures of flowers on the ballot paper if you like (were it not for the LibDems I'm damn sure that's what I would do...) just please turn up!
If it seems a little strange that I should be so vehement about this (as I'm not noted for getting my proverbials in a twist about many things), then perhaps I should throw a few figures at you. I'm aware that it is said that you can prove anything with statistics, but you can prove anything with facts as well, and that is what the following are.
It is estimated that 40% of the voting population will not cast a vote at this election. Of course, that does mean that the majority of people will, and in that sense we're doing better than American democracy can manage at the moment. But 40% is a hell of large minority. To put it into perspective, Hague needs a swing of about 9% in his favour to win. That's not very much at all! And that also makes it eminently possible that we could wake up on Friday morning to see a shorter and almost 67% gittier looking PM grinning back at us from outside 10 Downing Street. I'd call that a much scarier prospect than any challenge Big Brother can throw at someone...
Now, I'd imagine that the 40% don't vote because they either can't be bothered or because they think it won't make a difference. To address the latter point first, it most certainly does make a difference. Perhaps not if one limits oneself to thinking in terms of Conservative versus Labour, but if those 40% were to vote LibDem, we'd have a LibDem government. Aside from the fact that this would be rather funny because they would panic if they did get into power (I can picture Charles Kennedy being awoken by a phone call in the early hours of Friday morning..."Hello...yes.... we’ve WHAT?! Are you sure? You do know that this is LibDem HQ don't you?") this would be a good thing for democracy in general. Even if more people voted for any of the other parties, it would perhaps cause the big two to think a bit more carefully about how they form their policies during the next parliament as it would be clear that they run the risk of either having to share power with a third party (The Labour-LibDem axis facing the Conservative-Monster Raving Loony Alliance) or losing any chance of power altogether.
As to the former point, short of using electrified cattle prods to shift people from their sofa's that are perfectly molded to their backsides and forcing them to take 5 minutes of their attention away from the one eyed beast that is their God, I see little that can be done. Unless...
Why not simply combine reality TV with the election? At the beginning of the election campaign we put all of the leaders of the major parties in the Big Brother house to be observed 24 hours a day. We can have Tony, Billy, and Charlie in there, and we don't have to stop with Big Brother. If we stick a couple of scantily clad lingerie models in with them we can incorporate Temptation Island. Don't give them any food except rat meat, rice, and whatever insects and grubs they can catch and hey presto, we have Survivor in there as well! Not only will the percentage of votes increase (Because votes will also be able to be cast by phone, thus catering for anyone who doesn't want to leave their house for anything other than work or the pub) but also we'll have the best and most entertaining election campaign in History! Surely that has to be worth voting for.
Monday, 4 June 2001
Living and Dying like Royalty
Whenever I hear people talk of how difficult it is for the UK's royal family, I always think back to this rant.
So then, slightly bizarre weekend; Nepal provided a most excellent example of the dangers of inbreeding amongst royals as they started the weekend with one king, had a new one by Saturday, and another new one by Sunday night. This was all due to the wacky antics of the Crown Prince Dipendra who was (allegedly) a tad peeved by his mothers refusal to endorse his choice of bride. Being a traditional sort, rather than embarking on a campaign of romance and melancholy in order to show his family the depth of the love that he held for this woman so scorned by his austere and old fashioned mother, he instead took an AK-47 and proceeded to shoot dead his father, mother, sister, 5 other members of the family, and then shot himself thus placing him in a coma from which he never awoke, and inadvertently making himself the king. He died on Sunday night and his Uncle Gyanendra who was fortuitously out of the country at the time is the new king.
Gosh, it's all very exciting isn't it? Regicide, matricide, patricide, fratricide, suicide...it's rather like one of those blood drenched fairy tales that one gets told when you were a child! Truth be known, I wouldn't have mentioned the incident at all were it not for the Prime Minister of Nepal's explanation for the massacre. He said it was an accident. Yes, that's right, the murder of 9 people with an automatic rifle...was an accident! What, was he cleaning it, fully loaded, in the family dining room when it went off by accident, his finger became stuck to the trigger and he was unable to control the gun from pointing around the room. Before he knew it, 9 members of his family lay dead, and he was so overcome with guilt and despair that he shot himself.
As porkies go, claiming that this is an accident is right up there with the episode of Blackadder where his rivals in the election accidentally brutally cut their heads off whilst combing their hair. It's also quite sad that the only reason that you or I now know that Nepal has a royal family is because their numbers are now much reduced. I know that our royals have been much criticised of late, but at least they have yet to butcher each other in an orgy of bloodshed. That said, it would certainly cut the civil list down to a reasonable amount and save the government the trouble of going through endless debates about the abolition of the monarchy put forward by backbench M.P.'s.
Actually, it may surprise you to know that I'm very much in favour of our royal family. Not in that horribly old fashioned "they do a marvelous job" sort of way that anyone with grandparents will be depressingly familiar with. No, I happen to think that although they are a bone idle bunch of semi-retarded morons who are vaguely aware that they get visited by a man called Tony every week in order for mummy to sign some documents to make laws, they are an economic boon to the country.
I realise that they do sap a sizable portion of taxes in order to finance their lifestyle (although I remain astounded that the Queen Mum managed to run up an overdraft in excess of £2 million; were the bank sending her nasty letters informing her that they would be charging her £10 for exceeding her authorised limit of £100? I somehow doubt it...) but they do bring in a vast amount of revenue simply by their very existence.
Tourists come to visit by the planeful, and many of them come to visit anything with a royal connection (particularly Americans which I find rather strange; they spent long enough trying to throw off the yoke of the oppressive and tyrannical British monarch so why are they so keen to immerse themselves in royal history? Do they see the castle and think it's a new Disneyland or something?).
Like many other European countries, we do have something in common with Nepal in that we butchered our Monarch and abolished our royal family. This was all courtesy of old wart face, Oliver Cromwell. Unlike many other European countries (Spain excepted as they had their decades of dictatorship more recently under Franco, after which a constitutional monarchy was instated) we restored our monarchy in the shape of Charles II. Barring a couple of altercations which saw the crown switch hands to William of Orange, it has been passed down without too much incident and with pretty much all their pomp, ceremony, and ostentation intact.
This stands us in pretty good stead in the tourism industry. Lets face it, other than our heritage there's bugger all reason why anyone would want to come to an island where the weather is frequently awful, the food could charitably said to be edible, and the only thing the people hate more than foreigners is somebody who lives about 5 miles down the road in a different village/town/city. So although the royals cost us a fortune, they make us a bigger one. If you have problems with this due to any inherent republicanism, I find that it helps to think of them as a sort of zoo. It costs a lot to maintain the exhibits due to their rarity, but people flock to see them for that very same reason. As long as the admission price is kept high enough then we'll keep making a profit from them. And we can always hope that Charles will finally snap and batter Prince Philip to death with a cricket bat...
So then, slightly bizarre weekend; Nepal provided a most excellent example of the dangers of inbreeding amongst royals as they started the weekend with one king, had a new one by Saturday, and another new one by Sunday night. This was all due to the wacky antics of the Crown Prince Dipendra who was (allegedly) a tad peeved by his mothers refusal to endorse his choice of bride. Being a traditional sort, rather than embarking on a campaign of romance and melancholy in order to show his family the depth of the love that he held for this woman so scorned by his austere and old fashioned mother, he instead took an AK-47 and proceeded to shoot dead his father, mother, sister, 5 other members of the family, and then shot himself thus placing him in a coma from which he never awoke, and inadvertently making himself the king. He died on Sunday night and his Uncle Gyanendra who was fortuitously out of the country at the time is the new king.
Gosh, it's all very exciting isn't it? Regicide, matricide, patricide, fratricide, suicide...it's rather like one of those blood drenched fairy tales that one gets told when you were a child! Truth be known, I wouldn't have mentioned the incident at all were it not for the Prime Minister of Nepal's explanation for the massacre. He said it was an accident. Yes, that's right, the murder of 9 people with an automatic rifle...was an accident! What, was he cleaning it, fully loaded, in the family dining room when it went off by accident, his finger became stuck to the trigger and he was unable to control the gun from pointing around the room. Before he knew it, 9 members of his family lay dead, and he was so overcome with guilt and despair that he shot himself.
As porkies go, claiming that this is an accident is right up there with the episode of Blackadder where his rivals in the election accidentally brutally cut their heads off whilst combing their hair. It's also quite sad that the only reason that you or I now know that Nepal has a royal family is because their numbers are now much reduced. I know that our royals have been much criticised of late, but at least they have yet to butcher each other in an orgy of bloodshed. That said, it would certainly cut the civil list down to a reasonable amount and save the government the trouble of going through endless debates about the abolition of the monarchy put forward by backbench M.P.'s.
Actually, it may surprise you to know that I'm very much in favour of our royal family. Not in that horribly old fashioned "they do a marvelous job" sort of way that anyone with grandparents will be depressingly familiar with. No, I happen to think that although they are a bone idle bunch of semi-retarded morons who are vaguely aware that they get visited by a man called Tony every week in order for mummy to sign some documents to make laws, they are an economic boon to the country.
I realise that they do sap a sizable portion of taxes in order to finance their lifestyle (although I remain astounded that the Queen Mum managed to run up an overdraft in excess of £2 million; were the bank sending her nasty letters informing her that they would be charging her £10 for exceeding her authorised limit of £100? I somehow doubt it...) but they do bring in a vast amount of revenue simply by their very existence.
Tourists come to visit by the planeful, and many of them come to visit anything with a royal connection (particularly Americans which I find rather strange; they spent long enough trying to throw off the yoke of the oppressive and tyrannical British monarch so why are they so keen to immerse themselves in royal history? Do they see the castle and think it's a new Disneyland or something?).
Like many other European countries, we do have something in common with Nepal in that we butchered our Monarch and abolished our royal family. This was all courtesy of old wart face, Oliver Cromwell. Unlike many other European countries (Spain excepted as they had their decades of dictatorship more recently under Franco, after which a constitutional monarchy was instated) we restored our monarchy in the shape of Charles II. Barring a couple of altercations which saw the crown switch hands to William of Orange, it has been passed down without too much incident and with pretty much all their pomp, ceremony, and ostentation intact.
This stands us in pretty good stead in the tourism industry. Lets face it, other than our heritage there's bugger all reason why anyone would want to come to an island where the weather is frequently awful, the food could charitably said to be edible, and the only thing the people hate more than foreigners is somebody who lives about 5 miles down the road in a different village/town/city. So although the royals cost us a fortune, they make us a bigger one. If you have problems with this due to any inherent republicanism, I find that it helps to think of them as a sort of zoo. It costs a lot to maintain the exhibits due to their rarity, but people flock to see them for that very same reason. As long as the admission price is kept high enough then we'll keep making a profit from them. And we can always hope that Charles will finally snap and batter Prince Philip to death with a cricket bat...
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