Sorry, not sorry

Not so long ago I described something as being “a bit mental” and it’s quite possible I will do again. I probably shouldn’t, we’re better than that and in the wrong context (every context?) it can be construed as offensive.

There is though - and I may be flattering myself here - a big gap between my fault and that of Ken Livingstone. Today, the former Mayor of London described a political opponent as being “obviously very depressed and disturbed” and needing “psychiatric help”. And all because Kevan Jones (same party, but it’s difficult to tell) had suggested Ken wasn’t up to his new job. This would sound like the usual rough and tumble of politics were it not for Jones’s known history of depression; something he had spoken about in the House of Commons.

Livingstone did apologise, but only after much strong arming from Jeremy Corbyn, then watered it down in a television head-to-head with the standard “sorry if you’re offended” non-apology, suggesting that, anyway, the other guy had started it. I could have left it at one politician saying something unpleasant about another - it happens all the time, it’s a democracy in ‘rude health’ - were it not for an earlier claim to be unaware of Jones’s mental health condition. This was plausible enough in itself, but when accompanied with some vague reference to not having been around Parliament for some years felt like an embellishment too far.

The function of prayer

"The function of prayer", wrote Søren Kierkegaard, "is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays". Maybe, just maybe, that's why some choose prayer in times such as these. So enough with the snarking over "pray for Paris"; it may not be my way, but if it helps others it would be intolerant of me to say "no". And I'm pretty sure that, if anything, it's intolerance, not religion, that's at the "root of all evil".

Police misuse of the English language is “criminal”

The Home Secretary Theresa May, speaking at the Police Federation's annual conference, did so in front of a stage bearing the slogan “Cutting Police by 20% is criminal”. Literally speaking this isn’t true, but of course this is wilful ignorance on my part; it’s a play on a word, though its passive-aggressive tone serves a purpose – to discourage debate.

The Police don’t want to discuss how a 20% cut might be achieved, because their most recent complaints have included how much time they spend doing paperwork. Some of this, they claim, is the result of cuts to back-office administrative staff, presumably to keep up the headline number of the boys and girls in blue.

I share this concern, and as I want to help might I suggest one obvious measure? Since it is cheaper to employ someone trained for admin work in an admin role, we can save money without affecting those on the ‘front line’ by making the highly trained (and expensive) police officer – the one his/her Federation says is stuck at a desk - redundant.

Alan Turing doesn’t deserve a pardon

A lot of concern, some outrage, over the refusal to grant Alan Turing a pardon, yet this seems about right to me; not for the stated concern that he was properly convicted no matter how objectionable the law of the time, it’s more for what a pardon represents. A pardon is, to quote one definition, the “excuse or forgiveness for a fault, offense, or discourtesy”. Turing did nothing that requires forgiveness. I’m aware of the pardon in 2006 for the 306 soldiers shot during the First World War for cowardice, but I’d suggest this is different; we can excuse supposed acts of cowardice through exceptional circumstances or doubt about any guilt, without excusing the act itself. To pardon Alan Turing would amount to forgiving him for being homosexual and, having been treated so brutally, it’s the last thing he deserves.

Silence will fall

#remembranceday Silence shouldn't be compulsory, but those who don't observe it show their true colors [sic], and should be judged accordingly

I am uncomfortable in collective forms of remembrance; I generally find their subject best remembered in private contemplation. This of course is a personal view, many prefer to come together and share their grief or thanks. I have no argument with this, except when it requires the adherence of others. I am reminded of two events; the first was David Blunkett (then the Labour Home Secretary) who initially suggested the new ID card (since scrapped) could be optional, whilst at the same time admitting those without would be unable to use NHS services, amongst others. Secondly, the insistence of the ‘great’ British public in requiring Princes William and Harry to parade in public behind the coffin of their mother. There are many forms of tyranny. The comment above was hardly the worst, I include it as a mild example of how intolerant we are, or have become; I’m not sure which.

War!

Imagine Yugoslavia as an example. A federation of republics bound together largely by autocracy - dictators tend to get their way - and then by a rotating presidency; that last bit sounds familiar, I’ll bet they even had a single currency. Then they had civil war.

War - what is it good for, apart from (as Harry Hill reminded us on the weekend) ITV drama serials? German chancellor Angela Merkel raised the danger in a speech to the Bundestag yesterday, strong arming them into approving measures to improve the Euro bailout fund. “Nobody”, she pointed out “should take for granted another 50 years of peace and prosperity in Europe”; which sounded remarkably similar to my father’s response to a query on the purpose of the EEC. My Dad - and I’ll grant, the chancellor - have a point. 25 years ago I had to concede there were advantages to a common market; bringing nations closer together in a way that is to the benefit of all, reduces the chance of conflict.

Merkel however would go further. “If the Euro fails, Europe fails” she tells us. And because she had the courage to raise the bloody history of our continent, no-one has the nerve to question whether the medicine will avoid a repeat, or achieve the opposite - well, she started it! There must be far gentler ways to bring the people of Europe together - and I’d question whether it requires government. It’s usually governments that cause these things in the first place.

Opportunism knocks

Given the perilous state of the European economy, I’m finding it difficult to be enthused by a referendum on EU membership. Euro-sceptics see this as a best chance in a generation to ditch an unloved institution, so I can imagine how it might make sense to push the issue now, but I can also see problems in this approach. Though it’s a crisis largely of the Euro’s making, there is a problem with the world economy too; in such times people are as likely to develop a herd mentality as they are to strike out with confidence on their own.

This is the wrong time to decide. There are economic advantages and there are regulatory pitfalls - I’m being polite - we don't yet know how these will be changed by the closer financial integration that will form part of the Eurozone recovery. The “loss” of the AV referendum earlier this year was seen as putting the issue of “electoral reform” on the backburner for a generation. Imagine a narrow vote for maintaining membership, used as an excuse for doing the same. Let’s wait until people know what it is they’re voting for - or against - rather than have them base it on a guess.

Any man's death

Society was up in arms about Murdoch being pied, but torturing and murdering Gaddafi is ok, something wrong with that picture.

Well quite, there would be something wrong with that picture if I thought it accurate. However, I’ll pass on this straw man and note the rather disturbing inference that for many, trial and execution by the state would have been preferable. There were three possible outcomes:

1. Gadaffi executed on the spot.
2. Gadaffi put on trial and then executed.
3. Gadaffi put on trial at an international criminal court.

It would seem strange to intervene for the sake of one, when unwilling to do so for the thousands of Benghazi; so I’m assuming the non-interventionists - those who objected to NATO involvement - would continue to proclaim the need for Libyans to handle their own affairs. That leaves two possibilities, both with the same result, and though both are objectionable, in the light of last Friday’s indignation I ask myself which is worse - the blood lust captured for all the world to see, or the quiet rational heart that would deliberate - and then kill.

The King is dead

My name is Phil Ruse; it has been eleven days since my last post. That’s a rate I was at when I first started this nonsense; so either there’s nothing I have to say or there’s nothing left to say... which might be the same thing, not sure about that. Or perhaps I can’t be bothered. I might edit that bit out, at least I’ll take out the “just”; in the bin with “it’s a fact” (it never is), “in my opinion” (it always is) and a growing collection of other aberrations. I wonder if this will undergo the usual vigorous editing, a savage excision to the point of what’s necessary, and lose its intent in the process. I know, you couldn’t tell, and I should probably stay away from the subject of necessary. I shall therefore pluck random events from the news and hope it doesn’t sound too desperate.

Steve Jobs is dead, long live Steve Jobs. I knew he was ill, but when he resigned from whichever position he resigned from, I didn’t realise how ill. There is a lot about Apple I don’t like, or of which I’m deeply suspicious. I loathe the walled garden, the “money for nothing” results of their app store; you make the software, Apple takes the money, OK, a percentage, but still… And a predatory approach to patents which I acknowledge is partly defensive; you can be quite sure that if Apple were playing nice, some idiot patent trolling company in Texas would be doing it to Apple. I’m not sure the technology was always as revolutionary as reported, but the user experience certainly was; Apple replaced the idea of reading the manual (remember rtfm?) with querying why you should need one.

The former CEO of Apple might well have been one of those filthy rich types incurring the wrath of the Wall Street occupation, but since no-one really knows what they want, including the protesters, it’s difficult to say. I’d hazard not, because the Apple chief made his money in smartphones and other tangibles that simple folk can understand. I have some sympathy, because I am simple too; yet for every Steve Jobs we need a Ross Perot for those shiny objects to see the light of day. Some investors, financiers, bankers (whatever you want to call them) become very rich on the back of this, sometimes without risk and yes, this does seem unfair. But if this is all you’re saying (“things must change” isn’t saying anything) then who are you arguing with? Complain about unequal taxation by all means, but don’t dilute the message with a general anti-bankers polemic.

The excellent – and frighteningly prolific - Norman Geras wrote an interesting post defending such protest and while the points raised are certainly valid I can’t help but trip to the next step – there’s always another question - what is the alternative? I’m not enamoured with those systems that have tried, as their method restricts that greatest of freedoms, freedom of choice. I stumble to Churchill’s description of democracy as “the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried”, and wish I could be so polite.

An apology

Lest I become part of the baying twitter mob, I thought I’d try writing something positive, so I shall offer some advice. An apology should be the main - some would say only - part of an apology; try to avoid the following:

• Don’t make me count the ways. “two wrong and stupid things” - are you counting the type or number of offences?
• Don’t name drop. “I took out nasty passages about people I admire” doesn't lessen your transgression, especially considering what you did to those you’re not so keen on.
• Don’t self-aggrandise. “...the powerful people I had taken on over the years for their wrongdoing” would be wince inducing even if true. You’re a writer, not a freedom fighter.
• Don’t leave anything out and don’t delay. If it takes several versions, disclosing a little more each time, leaving it until there’s no way out, people might think you insincere.

I do have some sympathy - a little - for your employer, when I last checked over 7,500 people had “liked” your “apology”. Perhaps this is why it feels like the minimum thought necessary, a token gesture to enable you, your employer and your readership to stumble on. There’s a ready market for your polemic, say nasty things about the right targets and it’s proof of something that deep down us ordinary types already knew; money trumps gross misconduct every time.

Abandon currency!

Former chancellor Nigel Lawson was in entertaining form this morning discussing the current EU economic mess, though it did sound as if he’d been celebrating too early. The ‘solution’ wasn’t so much for Greece to abandon the euro, but for the EU to abandon its dream of a single currency. As he put it, monetary union requires fiscal union; and fiscal union would require political union, something most Europeans don’t want.

I remember several occasions when people voted “No” and were ignored; in the case of Denmark threatened with the consequences and told to vote again, presumably as often as needed to produce the ‘right’ result. I can easily imagine many wanting monetary union, but not the foundations required to make it work. Just as I continue to find it difficult to square the Liberal Democrats championing of local democracy, whilst pushing for deeper European integration; and if this doesn’t mean political union, what does it mean?

The tragedy of our day

I wonder if the Labour party thought it a good day to bury stupid policy; they have form. I should thank them, and the TUC, for the light relief provides distraction from what might have been a grim day. Not so much the tragedy of what those zealous idiots started ten years ago, more the reaction of those who even now conflate Afghanistan and Iraq with alarming ease; or, for example, the Guardian’s intellectual vacuity in insisting it an act of terror, rather than one of war. Presumably without a formal declaration it isn’t such; and thus becomes the perfect excuse for any state harbouring an organisation wishing to slaughter the citizens of another. The US and its allies prosecuted a just war in Afghanistan, if there can be such a thing; to do otherwise would have been monumental folly, a signal to others that sheltering Al Qaeda carries no risk, no penalty, no matter what.

Yet I am disingenuous, for my daughter has left on a week-long activity holiday with her school. That grim feeling is better described as nervousness; it is her first time away. Much as I feel I ought to, I find I cannot concern myself with the murderous stupidity of others. At least not to the extent - I hope - of changing the way I think, the way I behave. I refuse. We've been through this before.

The tragedy of our day is the climate of fear in which we live, and fear breeds repression. Too often sinister threats to the bill of rights, to freedom of the mind, are concealed under the patriotic cloak, of anti-communism.
-- Adlai Stevenson

Fix you

So I went on holiday and everyone - a “lost generation” no-less - stared rioting... for four days. Well thank you, but this post isn’t really about me. By the time I returned the “rampage” had stopped and I had to suffer - am still suffering - the various current affair “specials” on why and who’s to blame. Panorama, for example, used some lovely background music.

Some idiot blamed the previous government; more idiots blamed the existing government. Some thought it black culture innit - whatever that is - others, something to do with the poor, or being poor. If I were one of the less fortunate (and who knows, there’s plenty of time) I’d be getting slightly pissed off at the constant suggestions of my inevitable anti-social behaviour. There was a legitimate seed for protest - a Police shooting a few days earlier - but it was quickly consumed by our more thuggish members.

Besides, our moral grounding is hardly a rock in the knowledge there’s more to lose when you step out of line. And therein lies the problem; it’s not so much the violence, more our naive - and potentially dangerous - belief that no matter what, there is a solution to making us all behave better, all the time; and the lengths some will go to achieve this desired result. It’s as if we’ve learnt nothing from the past or even future portrayals of attempts to “fix” the population.

They can see no reasons, ‘cos there are no reasons

I am culpable to a reflex defensive response to the idiot Norwegian who murdered so many of his own countrymen last Friday. I only caught the news late on Saturday, suddenly finding myself in the middle of a stream of Twitter bollocks already well under way. I was, to say the least, less than enthused with comments expressing “solidarity” with “Norwegian socialists”, which with some reflection I recognise as wrong. “Solidarity” has acquired an overtly political intention which in this context I find insensitive, however it’s difficult to argue with identifying the victims by their political beliefs, when it’s those beliefs that caused them to be targeted by that inadequate human being.

But I remain irritated with the grasping appropriation of victimhood by and for those who share a political outlook. Likewise the seemingly inevitable conflation that results when said murderer cites various authors, journalists and other celebrities in his mad manifesto. Is Prince Charles to be lauded as a result of Brevik's displeasure? Or if I might put it another way, Jeremy Clarkson isn’t stupid as a result of being quoted by a stupid man...

Leave yourselves on the righteousness of the sun

News International is currently reeling from righteous anger over its mismanagement of the now defunct News of The World newspaper; an anger threatening to engulf its other titles, The Sun (itself not averse to righteous indignation) and The Times, as well as obstruct the attempted takeover of BSkyB by its parent company. However, like the MPs expenses scandal, I worry it may reach the point (if it hasn’t already) of criticising from a general animosity rather than over any illegal activity. For example, the tail-end of the expenses scandal saw criticism of claims for biscuits which, given how many offices across the country can claim for milk and sugar, hardly seemed a valid complaint. The result was IPSA; a ludicrously over-the-top, ineffective and inefficient waste of millions of pounds of taxpayers money. And journalism is a more difficult profession to regulate if (and I used to think this a safe assumption) we also believe in the freedom of the press.

Therefore if we’re considering travelling down this dangerous path, let’s not distract ourselves with a personal dislike for this newspaper or that, this political party or that; let’s concentrate on the specific issue of phone hacking and who (if anyone) is at fault. Much as we may want to question David Cameron’s judgement in appointing Andy Coulson, the relevant question is whether Andy Coulson did anything illegal in his previous position as editor of that paper. Likewise we may be tempted to query the cosy relationship between News International and the Conservative party, and before them Labour who were in government at the time of these events. We might be upset to find that when Gordon Brown was Prime Minister, The Sun newspaper obtained details relating to his son's medical condition - which he understandably wished to keep private. These are worthy concerns, and the speed with which politicians are distancing themselves suggests a long overdue adjustment is already taking place. They are however distractions from the question we ask; who is responsible for the phone hacking and why wasn’t it stopped?

In answer we find not a failure of regulation, but people who engaged in unlawful activity and others who didn’t do their job. It is not the fault of the Press Complaints Commission when journalists break the law and the police - for whatever reason - fail to uphold it. It is this failure of the police - who knew what was happening yet took no action, some of whom were themselves corrupt - which should be our greatest concern. Tighter regulation of the press would have made no difference. We should also remember, though unpleasant, the actions of The Sun in obtaining private medical records may be no worse than those of The Telegraph in obtaining details on MPs expenses, or The Guardian in scooping this latest story. It’s mucky stuff, the truth; do we really want to stop it?

Firebreak

Yesterday James Murdoch blind-sided everyone with a contrite apology, announcing the closure of The News of The World in the process, and was grudgingly - and temporarily - declared a genius. Immediate joy was soon tempered with the realisation that hundreds of presumably innocent people were being made redundant for the actions of those who had worked there before. One of whom, Rebekah Brooks, is now chief executive of News International, which in addition to owning the defunct newspaper also owns The Times and The Sun. Earlier this week Rebekah was tasked with, or gave herself the task of, leading the internal inquiry into the dodgy activity that went on at the time when she was editor… insert your own sarcastic comment here. The rest, as The News of The World can no longer say, is history. But she must be really good at her job.

The barbarian horde

What do you think of someone who would mug a man wearing a pacemaker?

It's not the dumbest question I’ve heard from a reporter, it’s a personal favourite; and as you can imagine that’s up against some stiff competition. However I’m a believer that our press is a reflection of its readership, and you’re an ugly bunch. I’m not even sure where to start; the soon to be defunct News of The World newspaper in hacking the voicemail of missing (and subsequently it was discovered, murdered) schoolgirl Milly Dowler, or the public’s failure to react until presented with this more sympathetic victim. Our munificence is not measured by the protection we give to our own, but to those whose values and lifestyle we do not share.

It’d also help if people could refrain from dodgy moral relativism such as “Hari doesn’t look so bad now” or even (and I’m not kidding here) a comparison I saw for the Ross/Brand nonsense of yesteryear. It’s what appears to be a systemic bribing of the Police that should worry us most, but there are millions who should share responsibility for these nefarious activities. Breaking into something digitally should be no different to breaking into something physical; yet such action is effectively green-lit by an insatiable appetite for gossip. Tut-tutting when they overstep the mark, and then paying for the product, means it’s inevitable that something or someone we do care for will one day be targeted.

Waving goodbye

I would gladly wave goodbye to the hysteria generated over Ken Clarke’s refusal to play catchphrase, but can only hope (rather than believe) this to be the case. ‘Rape is rape’ is one of those peculiar expressions that manage to be both true and false; it is everything to everyone, a statement intended to end rather than open a conversation.

Yet if we believe in rehabilitation, as I do, we need to discuss what that might mean in practice. Is recovery possible for those who have committed the most heinous of crimes? Can reduced sentences for those who plead guilty form any part? What are the exceptions? Without presuming to answer, these are all valid questions.

Ken Clarke is what some might regard as a rare breed, a pro-European liberal reformer of the Conservative party; it’s a miracle he’s survived so long. He came unstuck for eschewing the usual platitudes, others will take note and avoid making the same mistake, probably they’ll avoid the subject altogether.

Stokes Croft

The trouble in Stokes Croft, Bristol on Thursday brought back an old question of why people feel justified in such protest. I’m sure some get a real kick out of standing up to large - and therefore evil - corporations such as Tesco, but for any shop to survive it will require customers.  If as suggested people really “don’t need” or “don’t want” the new store then it will close through lack of business. Smaller shops will only be threatened if local people stop using them; that is their choice. It is choice that is really at risk. Protecting the local character? No, these demonstrations are about something else; an attempt by a vociferous minority to impose their will over that of the individual.

When holy books become wholly metaphor

Lots of reports today on a study of census data taken from nine countries; which has extrapolated religious extinction. It’s an interesting conclusion because, Voltaire’s comment aside - “if god did not exist it would be necessary to invent him”, I had always assumed this end. However, I have history in blurring the boundaries; my experience of religion, when religious, was generally of the positive. To me, even when I did belong the Bible was more metaphor than fact. I can’t remember whether I stopped believing before or after I began to see the ‘will of God’ as more important than the figure, since foremost had always been the message; Love.