Staring you in the face

My sweetheart often says to me that I am a superbig geek and I think he is right. For two days now I have read over the paragraph-in-progress below thinking that something was a bit off but otherwise not thinking very much at all – as you do with work in progress: just leave it and sort it out later. The unwitting and entirely unsuspected humour hit me just now. See for yourself: where does the proper writing end and where does the note to self about how this paragraph will continue part begin?

(For context: The topic is Scottish Conservative women, their role in the Scottish Conservative Party past and present and so on…)

Worth a thought

As you probably know, I am a fan of emphasising the Conservative perspective on events, albeit in moderation. The reason for that is that I deem ignorance of any kind potentially harmful. We need to know about Conservatives.

If you’re not put off by those introductory statements then you might find the following quite interesting. Paul Goodman, writing on the Tory grassroots internet platform ConsHome.com, posted an open letter to David Cameron this morning that illuminates some of the conflict within the Conservative Party about the course currently taken in relation to rioting and rioters. I particularly want to draw your attention to the last two paragraphs in which Goodman comments on the proposed British Bill of Rights. Goodman is addressing Cameron directly and he is making a valid point about the dark side of social morality as expressed by the PM.

“We’re working [said David Cameron in his speech yesterday] to develop a way through the morass by looking at creating our own British Bill of Rights…The truth is, the interpretation of human rights legislation has exerted a chilling effect on public sector organisations…It is exactly the same with health and safety.”

This is the big one, isn’t it?  Since the riots, you and other Ministers have made a series of announcements.  Convicted rioters could lose their council homes.  Even those not jailed could lose their benefits.  Child offenders will be named and shamed.  And so on.  But how on earth is all this compatible with the Human Rights Act?

The full post is here.

Warum Bayern Mathematiker braucht – aber bayerische, bitte schön!

Man muss unsere segensreiche bayerische Staatsregierung hier natürlich auch verstehen: Gelingt es ihr nicht, das Wasser der mathematisch-naturwissenschaftlichen Bildung in die hiesigen Hirnsteinbrocken der Bauernkinder zu pressen, werden die Fachkräfte und Ingenieure fehlen. Die muss man dann aus dem feindlichdeutschen Ausland holen, und die wiederum sind dann schon wieder so gebildet, dass sie nicht verstehen, wieso eigentlich die Staatspartei, aus der die Staatsregierung wie die atomare Wolke aus Fukushima erwächst, so segensreich ist, und folglich gewählt werden sollte – statt dessen haben sie dann so komische grüne Ansichten. Bayern braucht bessere Mathematiker, nachdem wir es mit Fremsdsprachen wie Englisch und Deutsch und Geschichte jetzt nicht so wirklich haben. Dann bauen wir die besten Autos für weniger gute Länder und noch ein Gewerbegebiet mit Disco und sind auch sonst in der Champions League. Alles nur, weil wir so tolle Mathematiker aus dem Menschenmaterial züchten.

So, dann hätten wir das jetzt also auch geklärt. Es bleibt so gut und wird noch besser; der ganze Artikel ist hier nachzulesen.

Changing colours I

From www.stern.de

I have had a lot on my plate these past weeks and haven’t been able to write about anything very much. Life has been good, so I lived it instead of reflecting on it on this here blog. There was one thing last week that I did want to share here though.

Just out of curiosity, has anyone noticed the striking resemblance between this man above and this amphibian creature here?

From www.redbox.de

The man is Philip Rösler, new leader of the German Free Democrats (liberal), the gecko/chameleon is the cute star of a TV commercial that you can check out in full here. Note how the little green guy adopts the colour of that which he wants most, in this case of the yellow yoghurt. Another striking semblance between Rösler (and many other politicians, think of ‘Dave the Chameleon’) and the wee gecko man. ‘Cute’ is probably not an attribute that Rösler will go by though.

Further observations on changing colours to follow soon.

Pars pro toto, or The democratic body

Today was Tuesday, foot day. He had divided the week up among different organs and members: Monday, hands; Wednesday, ears; Thursday, nose; Friday, hair; Saturday, eyes; and Sunday, skin. This was the variable element of the nocturnal ritual, what it left open to change and reformation. Concentrating each night on just one area of his body allowed him to carry out the task of cleaning it and preserving it with greater thoroughness and attention to detail; and by so doing, to know and to love it more. With each individual organ and area the master of his labours for one day, perfect impartiality with regard to the care of the whole was assured: there were no favouritisms, no postponements, no odious hierarchies with respect to the overall treatment and detailed consideration of part and whole. He thought: My body is that impossibility: an egalitarian society.

* * *

Mario Vargas Llosa (1990) In Praise of the Stepmother. London: Faber & Faber. pp. 59-60.

Baby steps for the sociologist

This is me fumbling around with party political theories right after a conference in the Study of Party Politics last November. I guess I worked with the old trick of starting with what you know already and then working from there towards the new stuff.

Pretty bookish eh.

 

 

Put down that weapon

“Write like the wind!”, my doctor mum said to me the other day, and here I am, writing like the wind on the penultimate thesis chapter. My main aide: great music. Truly I tells ya, there’s nothing to fire one on like truly good music! Kills a couple of birds with one stone: you (obviously) have the happy tunes and therefore no longer sit in silence at the desk, so you don’t feel cut-off from the world. Furthermore, if like me you you listen to music that you already liked as a teenager, you even have the unexpected company of your Younger Self. Can be great – you’re so much more accomplished than her! Still as geeky, ok, but that’s good.

So yah, I am sitting here listening to Midnight Oil and I’ve got to say, what a great band!! Moves me to the core the way they’re fighting against racism, pollution, war and social inequality. That kind of sincerity and care about anything really is precious and timely. You don’t often find it, or when you do it often seems so trite and clichéd.

It took me a while to find a suitable track – stupid Sony Music Australia blocks most official videos. But this one here, ‘Put down that weapon’, seems a suitable tune for the day; from the 1985 album Diesel and Dust, the ‘weapon’ here is probably a nuclear one but this doesn’t dimish the necessity for us today to put ‘it’ down, whatever weapon it may be.

Conservative crossdressers in Cuba

From my research.

Interviewer: Where do you think it’s going with Conservatism in Scotland?
I think we are flat-lining and we will- I don’t think we’re universally hated anymore, I think we’re just an irrelevance. We’re seen as some- as an oddity and being a Conservative, you know, voting for them or being a member of the Party is almost like erm something that consenting adults do in private with the curtains closed.  It’s almost, you know, something weird like cross-dressing (laughs) […] I think we must have the weakest centre-right apart from maybe Cuba.

Subterranean opinions, or: Is this nasty?

I like the notion of values or opinions being subterranean. It means that they are similar to the conventional values and opinions, the ones that we discuss in public, except that they are slightly deviant and therefore not discussed in public.

Confused? I think the following few pointers taken from the Adam Smith Institute’s most recent newsletter make clear what subterranean values and opinions are. It starts off well and gets better. All you Scots out there who aren’t Conservatives, buckle up!

Let’s kill nanny…

At the end of a speech on civil liberties, the PM casually mentioned he was setting up a new, centralized government information agency. It seems to be a whole new nationalized industry, taking data from councils and departments and flogging it for cash. I do hope my data isn’t part of it [says Eamonn Butler who compiles the newsletter, B.] . And I thought the plan was to make government smaller and less centralized?

Westminster village idiots

* Minister Eric Pickles says ‘the era of big government is over’. (Yeah? See above.)

* A Lords Committee says peers should be allowed to retire. (No, it’s MPs we want to retire…)

* The PM wants councils to encourage people to hold Royal Wedding street parties. (I don’t know where they’ll buy the cakes, since there’s going to be two weeks solid of bank holidays.)

* Meanwhile, Tory MP Nadhim Zahawi wants bank holidays on St George’s and St David’s days. (Why stop there? If you really want to win votes, there are 365 saints’ days a year.)

* The Shadow Justice Secretary attacked plans to give prisoners the vote. (Yeah: Nobody living off the state should get to vote, including the Shadow Justice Secretary. And Scotland.)

* Doctors’ leaders have attacked the planned NHS reforms as ‘risky’. (Which is exactly what they did in 1948 when the idea of a National Health Service was proposed.)

* Barclays boss Bob Diamond told shocked MPs to butt out of his bonuses. (Which, given that Barclays didn’t take a penny of government bail-out, he seems perfectly entitled to do.)

* George Osborne says that the VAT rise is ‘a tough but necessary step towards economic recovery. (Er, no…tax cuts would be a tough but necessary step towards economic recovery.)

This makes me wonder why so many people are so sceptical of the Conservatives when there are these loopy Liberal fish to fry – though there are heaps of Liberals of the ASI variety among the Conservative Party membership, especially among the young ones.

The dangerous thing about classical Liberals is that they have virtually no social conscience. Economic concerns always prevail, and not just in times of economic crisis. How anybody in their right mind can tell you that markets are colourblind, for instance, and that therefore only a society that follows free markets mechanism is a just and equal society, is absolutely beyond me. All I hear in that is ‘markets are immoral because they have no social conscience’. And how is that ever a good thing?

Morality/politics = chalk/cheese

The devastation that can be caused by modern weapons makes it essential to avoid armed conflict. Policies aimed solely at doing the best for your own country, in essence selfish assertiveness at the group level, deepen and perpetuate the differences in the world, when the need and perhaps the actual trend is for all of us to be on the same side. A way must be found to align national interests with global interests, and national loyalty must be diluted by care for humankind. We have to learn to live together, otherwise we shall die together.

While we cannot predict what further advances science and technology will bring, we can be sure that they will result in changes in two directions: a higher quality of life for all with the enhancement of civilisation; and the means to destroy that civilisation and perhaps even the human race. Since the latter path is clearly unacceptable, we must learn to base policies on moral principles. If we are to have a future more free from tensions than has recently been the case, we must seek for more openness and honesty in both foreign and domestic policy. It may well be that, as the importance of the sovereign state becomes diluted, domestic and foreign policies will merge.

I am aware that I shall be accused of idealism. But those who say that morality is like pie in the sky should imagine what the world would be like if politicians simply disregarded all moral considerations.

______

Robert A. Hinde (2007) Bending the Rules. Morality in the Modern World. Oxford: OUP. pp. 169-170.