They came

First they came for the Moslems, and I didn’t speak up for I was not a Moslem;

And then they came for the Christian, the Jew and the Hindu too;

And I remained quiet for I thought they knew

Who had won?

They came for hate, and that seemed OK;

But passion as well, that went the next day

It’s for the best, they explained;

There’s too much pain

When you get into bed

With love

Now few dare dispute

Their truth absolute

There were some

But whilst they came for Martin

They never came for me

For there was nothing worth taking

Or nothing left to take

Cheese and pineapple on a stick

One of the great things about having children, besides the supposed excuse for watching films you ought to have grown out of, is the readily accepted defence for behaving strangely in public. Thus I found myself at a wedding reception dancing in the most peculiar way and, since there was nothing about it in the news, you can trust me when I say that no one was hurt in the process. I even came out with my dignity intact.

OK, that bit’s not true but dancing with a seven year old affords a certain level of absolution; for a short period of time I truly enjoyed myself. Though the worst thing about any reconnection is that no matter how good the moment, there are the moments that follow. Enough maudlin nonsense, here’s the report.

The GPS got me to the church on time. I’m so enamoured of my new best friend that after a stop at the service station I still got her out for a chat despite knowing the rest of the way home. She can take me to the third exit at the roundabout (and back again) anytime.

The church service was nice - though for me the pastor overdid the smiling with his eyes closed, holding his palm upwards and swaying during the hymns. I know there’s nothing wrong with this but I had my religious radar on and it was a little over sensitive. The bridegroom was smiling and relaxed, the bride looked lovely and Little Miss R was totally carried away with excitement.

The reception was good too. The best man was nervous, about half my age, and still gave a far better speech than I could ever manage. Most of the guests may have had strong religious backgrounds but contrary to popular perception the few I spoke to were easy going, genuine and a far better example of kindness than most. They looked just like ‘normal’ people…

I will close by making the following observations.

• There are far too many middle aged men, or any men for that matter, who know the Macarena… stop it. Conversely there is nothing wrong with the YMCA. This dance personifies cool… as anyone who saw me can testify.

• The pastor may have thought it was love but personally I think its cheese and pineapple on a stick.

Striped pyjamas

I spent part of last week and most of this week being fought over between Texas and Canada. Canada won, so the Texas catch up meeting will be one where I have to explain why I haven’t caught up. I’m spending a lot of time creating large “to do” lists and then farming the work off to other people. This week I had to work on some problems on our next rather than current project and they weren’t even the problems that originally caused me to offload my work. The first turned out to be a fault with the live version of the software; the other error was process rather than software but it took me an age to track it down.

So I spent ridiculously long hours at work, drank way too much coffee, learnt how to butter toast yet still had time to watch another film.

My 3rd film of the week (three in one week is a modern day record) was The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas. Now if I were analytical I could point out the limited budget, the stage school child actors who weren’t wholly convincing and compare it to other films on the same subject. But for me the small scale brutality was effective, as it was sudden. I appreciated the different perspective and though it was simply told this didn’t affect my appreciation of the film; the end may have been predictable but it was nonetheless moving.

Welcome to the temple of Richard Dawkins

There are would-be murderers, all around the world who want to kill you and me, and themselves, because they are motivated by what they think is the highest ideal.
--Richard Dawkins

I'm agnostic. I believe the theory of evolution, that’s ‘theory’ in its scientific rather than popular sense. There’s a part of me that wonders why I should have to qualify myself, but the larger part thinks it easier that way.

With the recent anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth I somehow found myself reading a Richard Dawkins blog. This was in response to a colleague of mine who had read of a report showing an ‘alarming’ percentage of science teachers who didn’t believe in evolution. It later turned out that actually it was a percentage who weren’t convinced that evolution offered all the answers… then later again we agreed that not only did we not know the result of the survey but that, since we didn’t know the question asked, the previous discussion had been rather pointless… but still a lot of fun.

Regardless, I found myself reading Dawkins’ blog and it wasn’t long before I had this strange feeling of déjà-vu. If I remember correctly (I don’t care to go back because it was an ugly read) the discussion originated on correspondence between Dawkins and a journalist; in which the journalist had the temerity to infer that Richard Dawkins appropriation of Darwin’s significance was counter-productive to the teaching of evolutionary theory.

The journalist suggested that the teaching and acceptance of evolution was best served by keeping it separate from any debate on religious belief. Dawkins reply missed the point; he repeatedly commented that this was irrelevant as the science stands for itself. He either couldn’t, or wilfully refused, to entertain the idea that a person forced to choose between truth and love will sometimes choose love. Personally I think this rather wonderful; though Dawkins and his acolytes would doubtless roll their eyes at the very suggestion.

Richard Dawkins is an evolutionary biologist and an atheist; like most of us he combines what he knows (which is considerable) with what he believes. This is perfectly natural and in Dawkins case it helps to shift a lot of books; but in presenting the two tenets of evolution and atheism as a package he undermines that with which we can all agree. I say this because I don’t know any Christians who disagree with the theory of evolution. If he were to separate the two then science as a whole would find it easier to educate, and sloppy ideas such as ‘intelligent design’ would lose their grip and slowly die away.

So why doesn’t he? Judging from the many contributors to his blog I found it difficult to escape the feeling that they enjoyed the conflict; the intellectual bullying of people considered their inferior. It was unpleasant but I can hardly blame the great man for his following. There’s a certain irony in this fundamentalist approach to following their highest ideal, for they fail to consider the possibility that it’s not so much religious belief that is the ‘root of all evil’ but religious intolerance; and in that respect they condemn themselves.

A privatised affair

I’m a staunch believer in capitalism, though I admit I’m prone to try and have it both ways – as an ugly necessity that provides the money to pay for the nice things in life; schools, hospitals and the like. And as I’m someone who grew up in the eighties I’m generally comfortable with the privatisation of national industries; the notion of allowing potentially successful companies to operate free from political interference seems eminently sensible. Since our politicians are often failed businessmen, businessmen on the make or people who’ve never had a real job, they’re the last people who should be trusted to run anything. In addition there’s an inherent conflict of interest in having the same people who own a company being tasked with its regulation.

Whilst Harold Macmillan may have likened it to selling off the family silver, all this remark really demonstrated was (perhaps not unsurprisingly) how out of touch he was. The repeated windfall taxes are ample evidence that the government can, if it wants, steal money just as easily from the private sector as it can the public.

The earliest examples of privatisation (BT, British Gas) were extremely successful; we may complain about the prices but these are driven by market forces and we now have a very real choice. In later years however, flushed with the success of what had gone before, the Conservatives became almost dogmatic in their approach. If they could privatise those industries, they could privatise anything, and at times it appeared they weren’t too bothered with the outcome.

Had there been much left then I’m quite sure the current Labour government would have equalled, perhaps even excelled, the Thatcher years. However they found ways to make the Conservatives look almost prudish by comparison; the fluttering of its eyes at the merest suggestion of a PFI and the sluttish manner in which it jumped into bed with any industry that would have it. The re-employment of Arthur Anderson (accountants to the dodgy but, tellingly, sponsors to various Labour party events) who Thatcher herself had banned from government contracts, was ample evidence that there really were no limits.

Not even the Royal Mail was safe.

In principal I have no issue with a privatised mail service; I do however have a problem with the timing and reason behind the decision to sell a share in the company. I’m no great financial expert but it’s a pretty safe bet that selling in a busted market results in a much lower price than if you sell when all is well. It’s as idiotic as having a large pile of gold for sale but instead of selling it quietly, a little at a time to maximise your income, you announce your plans in advance and thus drive down the price. That particular example, courtesy of Gordon Brown, cost the taxpayer several billion pounds - and that’s back in the days when several billion pounds was a lot of money.

Of greater concern than the government’s incompetence is their duplicity over the need to sell. The company pension scheme has a crippling £6bn deficit and we know the government, in the form of Peter Mandelson, wants to sell. How convenient then that the chair of trustees for the pension scheme should write a letter to Peter Mandelson, stating the urgent requirement to do just that. There are two other methods to deal with the shortfall, one of which suggests the government take over the running of the scheme, allowing the company to run as a profitable concern. This is by far the fairest solution because had the government (past and present) not taken a 13 year pension holiday from paying in, then this problem wouldn’t exist; and neither would the negative image of the company (cultivated by the government) as a drain on public finances.

If The Royal Mail is to be sold, it should be as a going concern and at a time when the best price can be obtained for the British tax payer, not at a time that is politically expedient and the focus of the populace is elsewhere. But before selling we should first ask whether it needs to be; and this can only happen after an informed debate that doesn’t involve the orchestration of correspondence for the purpose of leaking it to the press.

David McCallum and some giant man-dissolving snails

God I’m tired. It’s been a horrible week and, since I seem to use that phrase rather a lot, I’m thinking I should get those words engraved. You know where. I’ve overdosed on data scripts for the next rollout; I left my last script to run overnight and came back this morning to find it took nearly four hours to finish. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, a data script will take as long as it takes, but it’s enough to attract attention. I think I hold the company record for the longest ever running script, 38 hours to create 17+ million rows, designed to enable on-line queries to execute with greater speed. Is that ironic? I’m not sure, it might be. Did I mention I’m tired?

Last night I was on a case with David McCallum who unfortunately, and literally, came to a sticky end. We’re looking at a tunnel in a sand dune, only of course it couldn’t be a sand dune because how can you have a tunnel through the sand? David, with his forensic hat on, takes a look and decides to crawl right in. “I wouldn’t do that” I said, noticing this giant snail, only I was too late. Poor David, he never knew what happened. Only he did, because giant man-dissolving snails aren’t exactly the fastest killers around. I’m not exactly sure what happened next but at one point my arms fell off, I fell over and I couldn’t get up again because… well it’s not easy when you’ve got no arms.

What the hell was that about? Why did I have to dream about Ducky? Why couldn’t it be Ziva? She’s ‘fit’ (I may be middle-aged but I know the lingo) and I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t come to a sticky end… at least not from a giant man-eating snail. Though with my luck, she probably would.

L'Enfer

My car is ‘briefly’ in the garage for its paint job and I am currently driving to work in the oldest courtesy car on the planet. It’s an automatic, not much of the driver console appears to be working, a brake warning light decides to flash up periodically, it has a tendency to shimmy of its own accord and has 140,000 miles on the clock. To your average U.S. citizen this may be no more than a trip to the local shop, but in the U.K. that’s a long way. Oh, and the radio doesn’t work; so for 35 minutes I am trapped with only my thoughts for company. Now there’s hell for you.