cynicalbastard

Sorry, that’s a Jim Carrey reference. I’ll go and lie down.

The Commons yesterday was debating extending the not-yet-enacted ban on smoking in public places. Lots of steam from both sides, mostly about the impact of smoking on workers in pubs and restaurants.

One question, however. I don’t deny that there is now strong evidence of the impact of passive/secondary smoking. However, all the research I’ve seen focuses on smoking within the home (ie the impact of partners’ or parents’ smoke). I’m also aware of a couple of cases in the US where bar employees have sued their ex-employers for ‘getting’ lung cancers, though causality was never proved.

Is their any evidence that proves that exposure to smoke, say, four-six hours a day for five-six days a week leads to lung cancer? And, if not, and if it’s an ‘intuitive’ jump, given the average knowledge of the public and politicians about scientific research (and I include myself in that), is there any rationale for this expansion in policy beyond yet more restrictions to freedom?

The mind the gap blog is documenting the campaign against violence against women currently being run by a group of feminists in Cardiff.

Very laudable of course, but it’s just a shame that they patently care nothing about violence against men. It’s men, after all, who are by far the likeliest victims of violence, whether on the streets of the UK or in wars across the world. But then, perhaps, violence isn’t a gender issue at all?

More on the rape story and consent, both Devil’s Kitchen and Talk Politics have excellent articles on the subject. But where do they find the time to write at such length?

There’s also been much comment on the Julie Bindel article in The Guardian. As I’ve said on other blogs, it should come as no surprise that a writer who has spent her life working within the Domestic Violence Research Industry should write such a piece, and play fast and loose with statistics. As with so many other areas of research, lazy journalists pick up statistics and use them without much checking, then THAT use is picked up by someone else and you end up with statistics being used in ways which the original researchers would never recognise.

Before starting to write for The Guardian, Bindel was at Leeds Met University working on prostitution, amongst other issues. She proposed totally criminalising the men involved with a fairly robust campaign (IIRC if you were spotted kerb-crawling, you were summoned to a ‘re-education’ day run by Ms Bindel and colleagues). Unfortunately, no-one had checked with the good ladies of Spencer Place to see what they thought of the scheme and I believe it was dropped after many of the local working girls protested about potential loss of trade (nothing had been put in place to replace their lost income).

Since when she’s made a career writing articles for The Guardian and continuing to plow the furrow of men’s evil towards women. It should be no surprise that being thoroughly ideologically connected to the belief that men abuse women and that we live in a rapists society, everything becomes grist to this mil. Just as it is no surprise that an academic at the Women Abuse Studies Unit is suggesting the rape rate is soaring. These researchers are paid to discover abuse of women. Funnily enough, that’s exactly what they then do (not to suggest it doesn’t happen, but to suggest that it becomes a prism psychologically and economically through which the world is viewed). And if funding requires building up the alleged levels of abuse, manipulating the statistics, well, it’s what happens in every other sphere, why not in this one? And men, of course, so ashamed of what we’ve done, don’t challenge it. And if the price is a generation of women scared of their own shadows because of the supposed levels of abuse, that’s a price worth paying.

The George Best post made it into the Britblog roundup for this week, for which I thank whoever nominated it.

As usual when looking through the roundup, I discovered a couple of new-to-me blogs with some excellent writing. So kudos to Early Modern Notes (and I really must explore the world of history blogging right after I have enough time to see my family again). And through early modern to the True Crime blog (excellent writing and none of yer Ann Rule type tabloidisms here).

And also to the wonderfully named Boob Pencil for a hilarious piece on a trip to IKEA and the resulting mental and physical tribulations. As this blog is based for half the time in Manchester, the world of Manc bloggers is another I’ll have to explore the week after I spend some time with my family (and finish my dissertation, and pass my driving test).

Praise to all.

over at random rants…

Glad to see Gordo following one of the prime laws of Yes, Minister.

“The ship of state, minister is the only ship that leaks from the top”

What we obviously need is a leak enquiry.

“Yes, Minister”

The lovely nosemonkey has a piece on proposed EU rules on tracking phone and other personal data. Basically, it’s a British proposal to get through the proposals that were thrown out domestically some months ago.

What we’re now moving towards is the state attempting to monitor the activites of all individuals at every level. From compulsory bank accounts and the ‘cashless’ society, monitoring of phonelines, a TV in every home (linked to digital so viewing habits can be monitored), the spread of CCTV to unofficial versions of the IDcard scheme, private space is increasingly disappearing. The opportunity to live apart from the state is decreasing. It’s enough to make one set out for the hills. Luckily, I’m fairly close to them already.

Of course, all this monitoring requires excellent IT systems. And the government hardly has a good track record with those.

(edit–later) More entertainingly the major record companies (including the increasingly unlovely Sony) are asking for permission to access these file. Indeed, to use anti-terrorist legislation to access records on piracy. Because pirates are funders of terrorism, see? Only, of course, they’re not. Treating your customers like potential terrorists, it’s a great way of ensuring their loyalty.

On a similar basis to the latter post, I got a letter this morning from the TV licensing people, telling me that as I hadn’t replied to any of their previous notes, they had now authorised enforcement officers to come to my flat and interview me ‘under caution’.

Perhaps they can then explain to me why not having a television is seen as an act requiring the TV-less to be treated as potential criminals. When the Licensing authorities do their ‘there are three houses on acacia avenue without licenses’ it looks like a threat, but it might just be because the people living there don’t want to watch the idiot box. From the BARB statistics there are 700,000 homes in the UK without TVs. And all of those people are treated like criminals with every new licensing campaign.

It’s another example of the culture of ‘you must act in this way or you can’t be a full member of society’.

There was I listening to a report on Today (just realised that link probably won’t work tomorrow, here’s the story from the Grauniad) about people in poor areas not having access to bank accounts, and thus ‘having’ to use loan sharks, and I thought, as is my wont, what a load of bollocks.

Why is there such a push to make everyone have a bank account? Why is it increasingly difficult to live life without one? I’m not one of the tinfoil-hat brigade, but if I didn’t know better, I’d assume there was some secret agency wanting to make sure none of us could live outside the control of the state, that all our financial dealings could be summoned at the press of a button, and that stories like this, under the guise of ’social’ concern, are simply part of a campaign to stop people being able to stay ‘invisible’.

I’m sorry, but I can’t get upset about the death of George Best (well, beyond the Donne ‘any man’s death’ notion). We’ve been watching obits for days, explaining his importance, suggesting he’s the nearest thing the UK has to Joe DiMaggio.

And yet, I can’t help feeling it’s one of those massive media hypes where most ordinary people will shrug, say, ‘I remember him’, and carry on. Manchester at five this afternoon was not exactly full of weeping United fans. I know being an Irishman there’s probably going to be a few Jamesons sunk tonight and a few tears, but there are in Irish pubs every weekend (he says in broad brush stereotype).

I’m in my late thirties, and only saw him play in his Fulham days. Subsequently I only know him as a yellow (and sometimes bright yellow) pundit on Murdo-vision. I heard someone honestly tell the cameras earlier that he was a ‘brilliant analyst’. No he wasn’t! Most of the time he could barely string three sentences together. And off screen he was more renowned as a drunk and someone whose wife put up with more than her fair share of abuse.

To someone younger than me, what would he really mean? Man Utd have had bigger heroes since (if Cantona died, then you’d see some tears), and the footage of his wonderful tricks is frankly over-shadowed by yer average Premisershits import every weekend. He certainly didn’t have the cultural importance of DiMaggio (and Alex was no Marilyn).

So why the fuss? Well, the meejah is run by people just a little older than me. People brought up being told by their Dads how important Bestie was, how talented he was. And they believed it all. So all this coverage is a way of saying ‘my Dad knew what he was talking about’.

There’s been a lot of coverage of the ICM survey of attitudes towards rape victims. Notably at Big Stick who references rhetorically speaking and the rather wonderful gendergeek (where I’ve just spent a happy, pissed off, and argumentative hour in that order disagreeing with about 70% of what’s posted but much enjoying the experience, a highly recommended site FWIW).

I don’t do shock horror, particularly when it comes to the attitudes of the British public. What did surprise me though was that these answers were given to totally straight-forward questions. This was not a question of, ‘if both parties have been drinking and can’t remember the night before, and the woman claims she was raped but there was no other evidence, should she take some responsibility?’, where one could understand (and even agree) with a percentage answering ‘yes’. But when the question is simply ‘did she deserve to be raped?’, it’s far less understandable. It’s also, of course, far less relevant to the great majority of situations. Being able to say ‘yes, she was raped’ isn’t always that clear-cut, and the real battlefield of the last couple of decades has been over the giving, or not, of consent.

As in the other case occupying the front pages today. I’m not massively surprised that the Judge involved has received so much criticism. It’s one of those ‘well rape is bad, so this must be a terribly conservative judge’ situations, whatever the facts of the case. It’s one of those areas where we’re not allowed to think differently, and to apply common sense. The evilness of the act must drive all before it, even to the extent of warping the way we’d otherwise view the situation. Certainly the comments of the Welsh assembly member Leanne Wood are symptomatic that this is a very strange world.

A woman should be able to get drunk if she wants to without fear of being raped. Men should not be given the impression that it is acceptable to have sex with a woman who is too drunk to consent.

The first sentence is completely correct, of course, but how does it logically lead to the second? Must consent be explicit? Is it always? If both parties are drunk how is consent received and understood (or must the man stay sober)? What level of explicitness is required? Is the woman entitled (as she did in this case) to turn round the next morning and claim rape even though she can’t remember whether she consented?

Perhaps we’re going down the lines of the US colleges where consent must be completely enunciated at every stage of sexual activity (how tedious and, well, unromantic).

If we do move further into this territory, we seem to be busy reducing women to passive creatures who have no control over their own sexuality, are not able to take any responsibility for what happens to them, but are simply at the mercy of men. It’s terribly Victorian. Which makes it odd that it’s an attitude that is associated with ‘feminism’. I wonder, if Ms. Wood’s ideas were enshrined in law, whether we’d get to breach-of-contract cases. ‘You promised to do this, but failed to deliver’.

Interestingly, the one situation where such levels of detailed consent are obtained is in BDSM scenes. But that’s probably not the sort sex that would be supported by the neo-puritans demanding the current sexual contracts.

I’ve got a Board meeting that day, but, hey it’s worth a try…

I know this has been covered in extremis, but it’s still my top turn-on...Girls with corpses magazine.

Reminds me of a more jokey version of Buttergeit’s Nekromantik (and, I guess, Nekromantik 2). Once banned, now available through amazon. It’s the end of civilization I tells ye.

Remind me again what the point of Children in Need is? Oh, that’s right, charidee. Well blow me (but only if you can afford the necessary bid).

There was I thinking it was an excuse for some of the worst teevee in the history of mindless entertainment. Why, just because there’s a charidee appeal, is it thought necessary for serious news reporters to ‘perform’ on this show? To dress craply and do something from ‘Grease’. Who cares? Who is really motivated to give money by such a farrago? You are? Then you’re a twat.

How are we meant to ever take these people seriously again? Things haven’t been the same since Angela Rippon got out from behind that desk and slung her legs round Eric Morecambe and his short, fat hairy thing. I bet most of them absolutely hate the whole experience, which is the only good thing about it; watching that Buerk grimace as he has to recite some joke like a Wodehousian Pat and Mike sketch.

And why, just because it’s a charidee appeal, is it thought necessary for French and Saunders to be on our screens at all?

But worst of all are the regional shows. Going to Wayne of Pontefract who is sitting in a bath of baked beans for the twentieth year in a row. Go and wank over Splosh magazine if you must Wayne, but don’t inflict it on us. Is the real purpose of CiN that people with minority sexual preferences get to practice them on television? Must be a real thrill. All that cross-dressing, depilation, wallowing in various substances. Think about it. It’s Mr Kinsey’s fetish hour come to the screen.

And then there’s the activity out on the streets. Fourteen year olds in fancy dress let out from school because of a ‘charidee’ event. Fuck’s sake. GO AND LEARN SOMETHING YOU PATHETIC MORONS. You don’t get a career by learning to wear a Goofy outfit.

Actually, if you link up with someone of deviant enough sexuality, you just might.

While we’re on the subject of the not-so-blessed Ann, I was amazed by her latest desperate attempt to get publicity. It eve n got picked up by lgf.

First cousins shouldn’t marry, she said. Obviously she has in mind the large asian community within her constituency. However, she stated it as a health issue generally.

“As we address problems of smoking, drinking, obesity, we say it’s a public health issue, and therefore we all have to get involved with it in persuading people to adopt a different lifestyle”

Well, yes, there are genetic issues, and potential health problems for any children. But what the fuck business is it of the state? Are we now to get a Ministry for potential partnerships to vet any engagements, Moonie style? Will we have to submit to a long-winded application process to be allowed to fall in love (which the government IT system will fuck up)? So it’s genetically problematic. So is marrying someone with a known recessive gene for heart disease, or cystic fibrosis, or, well, pretty well anything. But that doesn’t mean the State intervenes.

Can we get back to living our own lives now please?

There’s been a few ruminations on differences between the US and UK versions of t’blogosphere recently. The online journalism review has a long article (referenced by Mr Worstall).

Analysing the difference in numbers between Worstall’s page and instapundit or the dailykos, he suggests,

A crucial factor in this readership disparity is the vast difference between British and American media.

Surely rather more crucial is the difference in population? There are far more people in the US than in the UK. Hence, greater numbers reading blogs. Okay, as Paul Berger (one of the writers of ‘Blog!’) points out, the disparity in blog readership is even greater than the disparities in online populations.

But there’s also the question of awareness. Many US blogs (especially those on the right) are regularly mentioned on talk radio. Here, blogs have yet to get beyond T’Grauniad/Independent nexus. Apart from Belle, of course. Perhaps that’s the key to the future–politico-blogs from fictional London call-girls?

As many of you know, I spent most of the election lambasting Ann Cryer, one of my local MPs, for encouraging racism. And likewise the BNP, and some of their ludicrous arguments. The story of ‘asians grooming white girls’ in Keighley has raised its head again recently with a BNP march planned for 5th November (though it was eventually cancelled).

Over on Pickled Politics, Sunny takes the blame for the march, as his article was quoted approvingly by the BNP. Something they’re always keen to do with supposed supporters from minority ethnic commmunities (’look, even the *****s agree with us, we must be right’). However, it’s been a continuing story all year in Keighley and on local community boards.

Sunny joins in with the BNP in wondering why the story has been ’swept under the carpet’. But I’m still wondering whether it has. Cryer’s and the BNP’s use of the story put it in the headlines. But is there anything surprising about it?

In Keighley, as in Bradford, where large Asian populations live, those ethnic groups control much of the crime. Which means, mostly, drugs and prostitution. So asian pimps look for girls to turn out. And find asian ones (not a story) and white ones (story).

And elsewhere in the country we have an epidemic of child prostitution. And, while many of these girls and boys are turning themselves out, the majority must be being pimped. Given the people involved in crime in this country, the large majority of these underage-girl pimps must be white.

But that’s not a story. That’s just crime. Fear of the outsider continues to rule?

Mr Worstall kindly mentioned this blog t’other day.

‘He seems to hate all the right people’.

(simpsons)
‘Does he hate Blair?’
‘He hates everybody!’
‘Does he hate other Blair?’
‘He hates everybody!’
‘Does he hate…?’
‘HE HATES EVERYBODY!’

(/simpsons) (weirdly Wordpress treats even non existent tags within triangular brackets as potential HTML and doesn’t render them)

Mr Worstall has a book out which I’ll review in due course.

With the mainstream media covering blogging more and more, and serious VC money being offered to Pajama Media, the merest hints of the end of the blog bubble are in the air.

You read it here third. Or indeed, fourth.

While the Sony debacle winds to a sorry end, with mass apologies and extreme harm to the company’s brand image, almost unnoticed there’s been a debate going on in Europe about fair use of CDs and DVDs that threatens to scupper US attempts to institute worlwide controls on their ‘you might think you’re a consumer but actually you’re a potential criminal’ model.

The IHT reports on the continuing arguments over the four-year old Copyright Directive, which allowed for ‘private copies’. As any fule no, such terminolog is hard to define. On the face of it, once you’ve bought a DVD, you’d be able to copy it as many times as you want as long as only you used it. This is completely contrary to the increasingly obvious US agenda which is trying to re-institute pre-home taping understanding that for each ‘play device’ you must purchase another copy of the work.

As the report, pressure is mounting in France (and has already won through in the smaller EU countries) in favour of more consumer rights. We’ll see how the American corpos react. With white phosphorus perhaps?