politics

The Circle

People talk about politics being in circles… that we have “left” and “right” wings whose extremes meet and become indistinguishable. I had a vague idea of what that meant but the idea is still confusing. However this made more sense today after reading the typical one-dimensional views on BBC News forums. The topic is getting the unemployed to work for benefits.

I found it a little surprising that so many mentioned the phrase “right wing politics” with terms like “scroungers” and “wasters”. Yet chastising those members of society that do not contribute to the productivity of the nation is an idea championed by communism as a mechanism to encourage “comrades” to renew their efforts within the workforce. Of course communism is deemed to be “left wing”.

Politics is just weird. People are even weirder.

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More To The Point

The buzz question in Britain at the moment is "how do we combat knife-crime?". Looking around you find there are a lot of answers. Some suggest tackling poverty as an indirect solution; some suggest having police stop-and-search every questionable face on the street; I have even seen suggested that knives should have their pointed tips removed to reduce their effectiveness as a weapon.

None of these will work. There are already thousands ingrained with fear and a need for retribution that offering them a "financial package", searching them to submission and trying to persuade them to buy these new knives without points will do nothing. The politicians simply see them as the denizens of council estates; the results of a poverty-stricken upbringing without any future hope. They seem to miss the point that they lack respect for "authority" and their reasons for turning their back on the rest of society.

I have just purchased The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels because of what I believe is the new communism. It is the uprising of those that feel repressed and looked-down-upon by the rest: forming their own micro-cultures of equality with some degree of hostility towards their oppressors. It is probably not the revolution that Marx and Engels envisioned (though without reading the book I could not speculate further). But what concerns me is that history tells only dark stories where democracy has fought against communism.

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Ripping Off

There is a lively debate on the BBC Blogs about downloading files illegally. I’m not so sure where I stand now. I don’t personally download content illegally (though I do copy my CDs onto my computer for my own personal use on my iPod). I can see why people would want to download music themselves, but I think it is what people do once they have obtained the download that is the most telling.

Many of the comments underneath the article casually state "it is not stealing; it is copyright infringement". They often compare taking a CD from a shop to downloading the same content from the Internet. It appears they hold the CD in much higher regard: in this instance it is stealing — they are taking a product permanently and from that point it cannot further be sold; whereas the content on the Internet is not stealing since the product still exists. Rubbish.

What is the difference between two lumps of plastic and bits of paper cunningly shaped and moulded to produce exactly the right noise and a collection of beeps and bumps that make the same noise? The CD is, after all, merely a copy of a song; no less so than the copy available for download. CDs can be replicated, as can digital media files. When you think that CDs cost little more than their electronic counterparts (if you look in the right places, granted), what is the difference between stealing a CD from HMV and downloading content without paying and sticking it on your own CD? Perhaps just a matter of pence.

However, downloading content to try it out is cited as being a motivating factor to buy further content. At the moment I am watching Skins episodes from 4OD — Channel 4’s On Demand service. I could be persuaded to buy a DVD of Skins and I might perhaps watch the next series of it on the television. Of course, I pay for it in the advertising I receive, and perhaps this is the way forward for on demand music downloads. Not sure I want Kris Marshall selling me BT phones in the middle of an album though…

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Come To London

People often ask me why I dislike London so much. It’s the pretentiousness and arrogance of the place.

Take this morning. I received an email from the TDA trying to persuade me to get into teaching. It has announced its new pay rises for newly qualified teachers. From £20,627 to £20,155 marks a whopping 2.45% pay increase. That is of course unless you happen to teach in London, where starting salaries rise from £24,168 to £25,000, making a rise of over 3.4%.

If people are so drawn to London, why do they have to give bigger pay rises to people that would otherwise be there in the first place?

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Youth Culture

Try being a child today. It’s even harder than you think. Kids do tend to take things in their stride: that is true. However, it seems that fact is often abused by those in control over them.

Children don’t get the rub of the green. They are tested more now than they ever have been, and their workload has greatly increased: the comeback is that GCSE and A Level qualifications aren’t worth a thing and are too easy. A child isn’t measured by their ability as such, more on how much better they are than some statistical threshold, based on their performance compared to other children of the same age. This does not breed better knowledge and understanding — it’s just raising a generation of competitors. Ask a child to complete a quiz, and almost drone-like they will do it under exam conditions.

Kids are moved from pillar to post; the fear of being victimised in some way is cause enough to impose curfews. There is no sense of community across age groups at all. They have the natural society and culture removed from them; and yet any attempt to form their own subculture or cyber-culture is stifled and discouraged.

The reasons children suffer in these ways are down to those that ultimately take control of their welfare and development — they are the most two-faced and contradictory people on this planet. How exactly are we meant to develop young minds and our futures when our only means of doing so is to put the youth in a lifelong cagefight for their own survival and prosperity?

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Bio Break

There is some discussion as to whether biofuels are the future of powering motor vehicles. The idea is that we create fuels by growing crops rather than digging oil out of the ground. The desired effect is that carbon emissions are reduced, and that the impending global drought of oil won’t have such a huge effect.

However, there is the problem that it requires fuel to generate fuel. Obviously, you can’t just shove barley in your motor and start her up. Ethanol-based fuels require fermentation of crop, which is most efficient on heating gently for a sustained period. Whether such a controlled atmosphere can be both economically and ecologically sustained remains a doubt in some quarters. And whether carbon emissions will be reduced as a result of mixing petrol with other products is a long-standing unproven conjecture.

So my advice is to get a bike. And reward yourself with a dram o’ malt.

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Political Incorrectness

I recall whilst at school in a Religious Studies class, we were asked as an exercise to describe ourselves in six words. Some were selected by the teacher to read out the words they had chosen. He had deliberately chosen students with some questionable views and hardened fronts to start. The first had chosen "straight" as one of his words, and the others followed suit.

He then asked me to read mine. "Straight" wasn’t one of the words on my list. I won’t deny that it was quite a confusing time, and put into that position I did want to affirm my heterosexual orientation, so I followed suit, changing one of the words on my list.

On finishing, the teacher was close to fits of rage. He branded the class as homophobic bigots and dismissed the class. At the time I did feel rather ashamed. I had let peer pressure get to me, and I had described myself with a word that did not immediately come to mind, so I can’t really say it was an honest reflection of my opinion of myself. But spending two hours last night staring into space, reflecting on these kinds of things, I thought to myself: ‘what if I had said "gay"?’.

If anyone in the class had done just that, perhaps they might have been admired for their courage, but they certainly wouldn’t have been admonished for their narrow-mindedness.

It seems that is what political correctness is all about. It’s not so much about ensuring that individuals and minorities aren’t offended by the words or actions of an individual; rather it seems to be a concession by those of the majority to accommodate a minority group.

Having said that, I empathise with the origins of the "PC movement" — its purpose is to give everyone a level playing field, to let everyone know where they stand, and to give the appropriate protocol for those who wish not to cause offence to others.

Conversely, for those that exercise their right to "Freedom of Speech" in order to cast aspersions and wilfully cause offence are entirely wrong to do so: indeed it is quite possibly a criminal offence, and as such Freedom of Speech does not entitle them to intentionally offend someone.

So, in summary, political correctness is a good thing in its foundations, but has lost its way in its development. In my view, I don’t really follow the political correctness protocol, but I don’t cause offence either. Rather, I follow the don’t go there protocol, since for the most part there is no real need to. If you don’t want to cause offence, you naturally stay clear of anything that might.

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Stormy Seas

Yesterday I caught the end (the final two minutes) of a historical documentary of the life of Attila the Hun. It prompted me to read the entry of his life on Wikipedia. Through the links there connecting him with others — namely Genghis Khan (Temüjin) and Timur (Tamerlane), with the addition of Alexander the Great, I have found some traits that connected the four.

Firstly, all four were indeed hungry to expand the empires of their people. Attila had conquered much of Europe and continued to pursue further outreaching lands until his death in 453. Alexander the Great expanded his empire to further the Greeks’ knowledge of the extent of the world at the time, and made plans to strive beyond those boundaries. Of course, when their other, more questionable traits are considered, their overall reputation (save, perhaps, Alexander the Great) led them to be consigned as evil, vicious and villainous.

However, the great quality that is in common with all of them lies in their ascent to power and is the reason behind their dominance then and their noteriety now. The key was that they formed alliances with rival tribes. Doing so saved a lot of bloodshed early on, and ensured they had a large enough platform from which to build an empire.

You may well be wondering why I am writing this. I feel this second trait, the ability to unify vast areas of the world, is something that we lack today. I feel that the world needs a leader that can perform negotiations between sects of people and create unity amongst its people. However, can this be achieved without a bloodthirsty warmonger?

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Inflation

Now I’m no economist by any means. But I have picked up a few things here and there. Firstly, there are several measures of inflation. Some are used for different purposes — rather like statistics, really. Statistics can be manipulated to support an idea; and furthermore different statistics can provide conflicting evidence in favour or against an argument.

So there are situations when using one measure of inflation is better than another. Most public sector workers will be expecting pay rises of at least the rate of inflation. This means they can afford the same things next year that they bought next year. So the government refers to the Consumer Price Index (CPI), which stands at 2.1%.

However, when working out the interest on student loans – which is linked to inflation – the government refers to the Retail Price Index (RPI), which has doubled in the last year to 4.3%.

How peculiar. Even within government, the rate of inflation differs by which one is more than twice the other.

RPI is measured by taking the prices of 600 items and services in 146 regions. These services include mortgages and loans. From this, the price rises (or falls) determine the index. It is thought that RPI is the most accurate measure of inflation. CPI is calculated in a more complicated way — sampling through many different factors, such as location, item, item, and outlet, and are weighted from coefficients drawn from samples of household expenditure. All rather complicated, and similar in some ways, yet yield spectacularly different results. Odd then, that the government use both. Oh well…

Lesson of the Day

The adoption of double standards is perfectly fine.

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Politics for Politics’ Sake

Everyone is excited about these American elections. I find that a little odd. A country over the pond is deciding on who is going to be the next ruler of the world. I’m not that bothered really.

Who really cares about whether Barack Obama is leading the candidacy race? Who cares really over the Hillary Clinton campaign? Or even all those seemingly countless other candidates that want to be the next president of the United States — should we be that bothered about it?

Yes, it might be important for international relations. Yes, it might influence much of what goes on between various countries of the world. But should we take any more notice of international politics than we do in local politics? It seems a little peculiar that we should gawp at celebrities being lined up for the White House over which we have no control when so many of us — it seems — moan about everything that affects us. It’s a shame.

Lesson of the Day

Even if you can’t change the world, you can still make a difference.

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