My friend Ivor wrote recently about a scheme being run at his daughter’s school, involving an odd form of sponsorship by a certain doughnut corporation. Long story short, the entire scheme basically just consisted of the school selling doughnuts to children, a portion of the profits from which, would go to some kind of “good cause”. Rather than consulting parents first about the idea, the first contact Ivor had was effectively a sales letter from the school, inviting him to pre-purchase some doughnuts.
Social Issues
The Daily Mail’s portrayal of cannabis is textbook bad journalism
Generally speaking, I try not to get too hung up on the individual failings of articles in the right wing press. I could spend from now until Christmas objectively criticising just one edition of the Express or Mail – and they are tame compared to their American counterparts. Every so often however, they seem to lose the plot a little bit, drop their pseudo-moderate cover and output what can only be described as textbook, blatant propoganda, the likes of which Joseph Goebbels would be proud. Every once in a while, the logical jumps made become so cavernous, that one is forced to consider the possibility that the Daily Mail is in fact a working proof of Poe’s Law; that their ranks are in fact filled with undercover liberals, pretending to hold conservative viewpoints, while deliberately presenting themselves as idiots, in order to discredit the conservative ideology.
Press editorial standards, including those supposedly upheld by the PPC, state that there should be a separation between news and opinion. That means that the DM is free, within reason, to publish its racist, sexist, classist, homophobic, xenophobic, hysterical and illogical babble, so long is it is clearly portrayed as opinion. It is also free, should it choose to make such a bold leap, to publish actual facts, about actual things, things that actually happened. What it is not free to do, is to mix the two up. Of course, this means that yesterday it went ahead and did exactly that, exploiting the death of a young man to push its anti-drugs message. (more…)
What ever happened to conviction?
Conviction. Not of the criminal kind, but the act, the nature, of sticking to your beliefs. What ever happened to it?
I may not be all that old, but I’m pretty sure there was a time when people had it – or at least, some people had it. Yet it seems we’re at an all time low right now. Looking at the commentary following the death of Steve Jobs a few days ago reminded me of how bad things really are. People who I often agree with, who stand up and speak out for fair trade, localism, workers’ rights, environmentalism and against consumerism, mourning for the CEO of a company whose own actions are the complete opposite to all those ideals. That isn’t to say that Apple are any worse than their competitors, but we don’t put their competitors on a pedestal. People seem to think that it’s rebellious to leave Microsoft for Apple, which leaves me drowning in irony. (more…)
Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
The infamous words above, of course, from Macbeth. I thought of these words in relation to the recent spate of protests, of the Occupy kind and otherwise. Let me say first that I am greatly supportive of these protests. I am also however, concerned. (more…)
Thoughts on Dale Farm
Just a couple of thoughts on the planned evictions and demolitions at Dale Farm, where a traveller community has overshot its planning permission:
I wonder how people’s attitude would change if instead of travellers who had overstepped their planning permit, it was a middle class community who had built 4 bedroom houses?
Guess what: evicting these people, bulldozing everything and then dealing with the homeless men, women and children you’ve created is going to cost a hell of a lot more taxpayer money than just leaving them be. Yes, they were wrong to overstep their planning permission (might I add overstep – since they did rightfully have it for half the site), but going in with bulldozers is mindlessly destructive. (more…)
Notes on Swing Voting
Current events in US politics have had me thinking. There’s a huge fear that a lack of satisfaction in Obama may well provide an opportunity for the extreme right. It is true that the chances of an radical group coming to power increase drastically in times of crisis, but we must not view the situation as on first glance.
One of the great advantages of a two party system is that those who lean left, can vote for the left-leaning party and those who lean right, vice verse. There’s no worry that, as in a three party system like the UK, a vote for the Lib Dems might be “wasted” and instead benefit the Conservatives (of course, this is one reason we wanted STV/AV). The cost of this however is a lack of choice – if the left-leaning party is in fact too centerist for you as a voter, you’re between a rock and a hard place. (more…)
Obligatory Post-Riot Blog Post
As a result of the recent riots, it seems like every man and his dog has returned to their blog to pass comment. I’m therefore going to, in typical riot style, join the masses and put forward a brief (turned out not so brief) post. It’d almost be wrong not to. One thing I must say however is that most of what can be said has been – I won’t claim to be adding anything new, although I have managed to agregate some of the better stories of the past week or two. The unfortunate problem is that the people with the power to change things aren’t listening, so we might just have to shout louder to escape the liberal echo-chamber. Please though, no looting.
New Labour? Blue Labour? Can I get a pint of Labour Classic?
It’s very rare that people actually ask me to comment on stuff. More often, I just stick my nose in where it isn’t wanted and generally offend at least a handful of folks. Several days ago however, my good friend @sarahcritcher asked for my comment on a piece in the Independant about “Blue Labour”. Here’s my take:
Socialism is now a dirty word. It’s almost more acceptable to say you’re a BNP supporter than a Socialist. There’s an overwhelming consensus among society that Socialism is “bad” – although nobody really knows why (this is in fact, something I wish to discuss further in my upcoming book, but that’s for later). (more…)
Super-injunctions shouldn’t even be an issue
This is a response to my friend Sarah’s blog post on the Ryan Giggs super-injunction.
In all honesty, 9/10 of super-injunction cases wouldn’t even be an issue if the press didn’t concern themselves with personal business. I don’t agree with super-injunctions, but I’d rather see them obselete and unneccesary than anything else. (more…)
The Hypocrisy of Discrimination
After the somewhat biblical length of my last post, I’ve decided to leave today’s offering somewhat shorter. In many ways, I’m forced to, because I have only a few answers for a number of questions.
Questions like: why is it socially unacceptable to say that you, as an individual, hate black people, but yet perfectly okay for a whole institution to disciminate against homosexuals, because of what’s written in the bible? (more…)