Category Archives: Politics - Page 4

Out of kilter

Posted by on April 20, 2010 1 comment

I’ve been watching this whole Iceland volcano story with interest, indeed as a resident of the UK, I could be said to have very little choice in the matter!

I’ve noticed in the coverage that, aside from the airlines, there have been other people and companies hit by this.  People are low on medicines they need to control medical conditions, among many other stories.  This could have been avoided.

I am coming to think that our reliance on just in time methods has been shown to be an achilles heel, as has our reliance on imports and air freight.  I’ve talked about balance before, and I believe that what we are seeing here is that our situation is unbalanced, a wheel out of kilter.  I’m an advocate of local goods, and when the business is being poached by artificially lowering currencies, I also consider that the appropriate level of protectionism is a reasonable response.

If I take a lesson from this it is the importance of diversifying, making better use of local sources and building in redundancy.  We need to stimulate local jobs and protect local economies and communities, we also need to develop high speed rail as a matter of some urgency.

I also wonder at the unbalanced media coverage.  The BBC, and a lot of the UK media, seemed to miss the stories of the Finnish F18s and the NATO f16s that suffered damage in this cloud, most of the interest in the news websites seem to come from the commenters, not the journalists!

Fear for the debate

Posted by on April 5, 2010 3 comments

We had a large protest the other day in the nearby town of Dudley, the English Defence League were there as were Unite Against Fascism.  The whole thing is over a mosque that is planned for the town, and has been somewhat convtroversial.

Cue riot police, protestors, disruption, etc, etc.

This brings me to my greatest fear over the debate on racism, immigration, far right elements and the politics of all of this; not only that a reasoned debate will be completely absent but that it will be of such low quality that it might as well be absent.

Let me be very clear.  It’s no good trying to brush the fears of the right wing under the carpet or drown their voices out, any method that does not address and successfully resolve the reasons for those fears will be doomed to fail.  Also, attacks on the main players will not do, this method of “tackling the man not the ball” (formally known as an “ad hominem” attack) simply leaves the ball in play and at great risk of going to the feet of someone else.  When these answers come, everyone must be willing to listen, not to simply sloganise and brush them aside.  I get a distinct feeling of a sense of disenfranchisement in this, this must be addressed urgently, how can someone who feels shut out of things be expected to have any faith in political solutions?

Furthermore, we are an island nation with limited space,  resources and limited capacity of public services.  There are serious structural, logisitic and operational issues here that society needs to address with complete seriousness, not in the form of populist soundbite politics.   We try to approach things with a willingness to listen to the other person’s viewpoint, even if we won’t like what we hear, because the other person may well have a serious point to make, we must try not to make things about taking sides.

I fear very greatly for the future of this debate.

Codes and Prejudices

Posted by on December 3, 2009 3 comments

I was keeping an eye on the IT news the other day, I saw an interesting article about the way we are being forced into conformity by the corporations we work for.   The author mentioned a recent case, where a person who is very passionate about climate change was allegedly sacked because he disagreed with his company on the matter, his company disagree and all this is pending the attentions of the legal system, so it is all rather up in the air at the minute but does make interesting food for speculation.

The author of the article pointed out that, through “Codes of Conduct” and other methods, various organisations can work to exclude people whose views and lifestyles are not the strict majority norm.  A couple of examples he gives are a teacher who got into considerable difficulty for being a pagan and another teacher who posed topless a few years before being a teacher getting into trouble for that.

It’s a question I’ve pondered before with regard to the rows about Anglican clergy, for example, why should a priest’s gender matter?  What matters more is their ability to do the job, though fundamentalists would without a doubt disagree with me, as is their right. So when looking at teaching (which did seem to get singled out a little more in the article), surely what matters is that we have a good teacher, someone who can get the lessons across?  Who gives a damn if they’re pagan?  If you can do the job, the standard of the work’s good and you keep your professional life reasonably seperate from your personal life where’s the problem?  That question, forces us to confront our prejudices and frankly it’s needed.

All of this raises questions about how far employers should be allowed to go in these dictates, at what point do we turn and say “That’s none of your business”? Human Rights legislation is improving in this area in Europe, but it does seem to me as though in some instances employers are (without realising, I hope) working to undermine the human rights of their employees. This is a trend we need to fight and I notice Britain is very slow on the uptake (we have opt outs) with human rights and employment laws.  It is to be hoped we come to our senses.

A Few Thoughts on Free Speech

Posted by on October 26, 2009 3 comments

A few days ago the leader of the British National Party, Nick Griffin, made an appearance on the BBC 1 program Question Time.  His appearance was controversial to say the least, but I feel that the response and oppostion he got raises issues with the way we handle democracy and freedom of speech.

There were demonstrations outside BBC Television Centre and other BBC offices, and the view of the demonstrators that he wasn’t welcome on British TV was very thoroughly made.  The demonstrations were well meaning no doubt, and while I agree that racism and bigotry isn’t welcome, I’ll stick my neck out here and suggest that this risks taking the liberal movement into the territory of being an oppressive force.

The point I wish to make, is that the concept is “Freedom of Speech” not “Freedom of Speech We Like”. Our democracy gives everyone the chance at speech, and all points of view are necessarily represented.  The desire to suppress these views, to stop people expressing the views that are painful for us to hear, is only natural but it is wrong, no matter what our reasons are.  Once we start blocking speech on the grounds of the simple fact somebody somewhere doesn’t like it, it’s the thin end of the wedge, how long before that same power to block expression is turned on others?  How long before it’s turned on you?

We must hear the speech we dislike and challenge it, not cover our ears, to this will leave the field open to those who would spread hatred.  To silence or simply drown out the opposing points of view, undermines our own credibility, and simply shows that we cannot respond adequately.  It also deprives us of the chance to hone our arguments.

Suppressing speech also risks pushing issues under the carpet and they will never be addressed, left to fester.  Later they might resurface as political or social land mines, much larger problems than they needed to be.  Just because you don’t like what’s being said, or who’s saying it doesn’t mean that the speaker doesn’t have a valid point.

I know from my own experiences that listening to speech that you don’t like is painful and distasteful, but it is necessary.  I feel that this is where our mindfulness practise comes in, our sense of detachment is needed.

In short, while I disagree with the BNP on issues of race and discrimination (but will admit they seem to have been quite accurate in their assessment of post peak oil nuclear power and also nuclear emissions), I do defend their right to have their say.  Because to do otherwise, will ultimately harm us all.

An apology for Alan Turing, good!

Posted by on September 10, 2009 No comments

I’ve just heard in the last few minutes that the Prime Minister has issued an apology for the awful treatment of Alan Turing.

I’m very pleased as this just underlines the fact that treating someone like this is utterly unacceptable in any society that claims to be civilised.

The link to Number 10 website is here.

Hereditary Guilt

Posted by on August 31, 2009 1 comment

I’ve been keeping an eye on the growing campaign for the British government to apologise for the treatment of Alan Turing.

I support this campaign, and have already signed the petition linked to above. But it’s not just because I think Turing was treated abysmally badly, but also because I think we still harbour the sort of tendencies that led to Turing’s treatment and that needs to be highlighted.  We need to stop writing people off because of one bad thing, it seems that as soon as we realise that they’re not perfect there’s hell to pay, our treatment of high profile media figures is a perfect example of this.  Lao Tzu, Buddha and Jesus all warn us away from this behaviour, and while I’m not sure what Psychology has to say on the matter I can’t see it being particularly favourable.

What’s been equally interesting is comments I’ve been reading on the story, the feeling that maybe the British should apologise for everything from the Empire onwards.  Of course, if that sort of thing is acceptable, then the old colonial powers (yes, all of them, it wasn’t just us Brits) will be apologising for the next hundred years!

But the point I’d like to make is that the current generation can’t be held responsible for things that were done by past generations, I appreciate that people are hurt or national pride (and I think that this is mostly pride) has been injured, but once reasonable amends have been made (like the symbolic apology above) we need to move on and drop the blame game.

Of course, this failure to forgive grudges is mirrored in the doctrine of original sin.  I’ve been reading about the history of both the middle eastern religious movement and also the Bible, and it’s fascinating to see how the way the people have regarded the text has changed and to be honest, it tells you more about people than it does about God.

As for original sin, there are questions over how literally the story of the Garden of Eden was intended to taken, with the strong possibility that it was never intended (as with much of scripture) to be read literally.  My own feeling is that it is not.

The doctrine was heavily influenced, but not originated, by St Augustine of Hippo, the idea being that Adam’s sin is passed down to all of his descendants.  Now quite aside from the fact that several churches disagree with this doctrine, there is another problem.

Consider that our reasoning powers, the ability to have the kind of awareness we do, are evolved right there into our nature.  This would put that doctrine in the position of condemning a person simply for being Human, so along comes the Church with the cure.  Nice setup isn’t it?  I’ll also point out right here though that not all churches accept original sin, I don’t believe in tarring everyone with the same brush.

But, let’s face it, Evolution does rather torpedo the Eden story and with it original sin.  I prefer another reading of it, which is that the great weight and inertia of human history, culture and society have combined to put us in a position where we often fall short.  This sounds very much like Karma and is also the position of many Orthodox Churches.

To summarise?  We need to stop writing people off for not being perfect and once people and countries have apologised, stop guilt tripping them indefinitely.  Finally we need to realise that the sins of the fathers do not fall onto the shoulders of their sons.  If we’re to have a healthy future, we have to let go of things.

The recent NHS controversy

Posted by on August 17, 2009 1 comment

I watched the recent furore over the US right attacking the British NHS with some interest and also a little head shaking.

Let’s be honest, it’s not a perfect system, but it’s there and it’s working and we’d be a lot worse off without it.  Many people, myself included, would not be alive today without the NHS.  I’ve yet to find a perfect system anywhere and to be honest, the criticism levelled at the NHS in the UK is a vital part of the process that refines it.  Such criticism is most useful if constructive and useless if done with ill intent.

It’s been instructive to watch the attacks, a certain US news mouthpiece proclaimed that if the scientist Stephen Hawking were British he’d be dead.  Hmm, slight problem with that is that he is British and also has received treatment from the NHS.  These people are so eager to attack, so full of vitriol that they can’t even do a basic fact check first.

I am honestly starting to wonder if this is the counter attack of the special interest lobby for US healthcare.  I just wish it looked to me like they actually cared about those less fortunate than themselves, because in my opinion they certainly don’t seem to.

This is an example of the sort of politics that we need less of, protecting the fatcats and special interests above all else.  It doesn’t actually solve any problems and when the system falls apart, as it surely will if abused and unbalanced for long enough, everybody loses – rich and poor.