Though Cowards Flinch

Over at Liberal Conspiracy, it was noted that a woman was denounced for breastfeeding in public. This was reportage of a story wherein said woman faced a fair bit of abuse, quoted liberally below.

“You’re disgusting! You shouldn’t be out!” yelled the first voice of righteous opprobrium: an old woman. “Go home! That’s disgusting!”

“There was another woman there – a younger woman, who looked my wife in the eye and told her clearly that she was indeed “disgusting” and “a disgrace.”

A young man tried to promote the theory that tits – especially in their functional mode – were okay:

“he suggested that my wife wasn’t being so disgusting and that this breastfeeding was a perfectly natural act”

but the others shouted him down as a pro-tit pervert.

As an addendum to this, I wish to report that yesterday in Starbucks, I observed a mother breastfeeding her child in full view not just of the café itself but beside a window to the café. Not only was she not denounced but one of the staff came over to check if she had everything she needed. There is, after all, some hope for humanity.

The black gates and checkpoint at the Whitehall entrance to Downing Street

I’m pleased that David Cameron is, in one respect, setting a good example as Prime Minister – walking about the place, dispensing with excessive security measures such as outriders and so on.

Terrorism and other acts of violence are facts of life – we can’t barricade ourselves in, as a nation or individually. So we should walk about freely and face no restrictions of civil liberties which are key to democratic action.

Jolly well done Prime Minister. Just a thought though, could you please remove those bloody great gates at the end of Downing Street while you’re at it?

An anti-Falklands War demo marches through Downing Street.

There should be as few barriers between the powerful and the rest of us as is feasible. These barriers were added in 1989 and served no useful purpose since then. The IRA attack on Downing Street in 1991 used mortars, making the gates an irrelevance.

The only thing the gates, the accompanying security checkpoint and restriction on a right-of-way have ever achieved is to deny the historic right of protest movements to march through Downing Street on their way to deliver petitions to the staff of the Prime Minister.

Such a move, like Cameron walk-abouts, would probably be symbolic only.

Conservatives still have plans to add to the abolition of Stop and Account forms by abolishing Stop and Search forms, meaning one fewer administrative blocks between citizens and the executive power of the police. This is a further infringement of liberty.

Yet if the symbol is all we’re likely to get, this one would be a powerful one, from the point of view of the protest movement.

Having noticed an odd link in the incoming traffic to this blog, I followed it only to find a Google spreadsheet, available to anyone, not just to the author, with the emails of half the blogosphere on it. It is part of Wikio’s effort to encourage bloggers in the top 100 to agree to have their websites translated into other languages.

Wikio staff contacted various bloggers directly, and encouraged them to set up biographies and pictures on the Wikio website, where the rankings are all located. Naturally it makes sense to have all this information gathered into one place, so that the progress of each blogger can be monitored, before their material is turned over to the translators.

But one has to wonder what the hell Wikio are doing gathering that information into a publicly viewable place? A lot of it – like my name and the email address attached to this blog – are already public, but I can’t imagine a lot of those other email addresses, names, twitter accounts and even secondary email addresses are all public. Even if they are, putting them in one public spreadsheet is good news for spam bots, bad news for us.

Also, note the interesting “(argh!)” remark beside the notation that a user’s blog is pro-life. That tickled me.

PS, I have noted that by linking to the spreadsheet, I’m making it ‘more’ public – giving it attention. My argument is that it’s already public and shouldn’t be, and that my complaint has more credibility if I can link to the evidence, and maybe this extra publicity will encourage bloggers to follow me in emailing complaints to Wikio. (There is now no need to do this).

In a nutshell, from Jessica Asato, Acting Director:

“If Labour is going to win back the key seats needed to form a government next time, it needs to identify the best campaigns across the country and replicate their winning elements. This means selecting personable candidates who are willing to work 24/7, appointing diligent consituency organisers and identifying local issues which galvanise the electorate to identify Labour as a party which cares about their day-to-day needs, not the demands of lobby journalists.”

Exactly the sort of depoliticised guff and local opportunism which New Labour practiced, in the case of senior MPs voting against the closure of hospitals or being given permission by the whips to vote against Trident, as in the case of Andrew Smith.

Which makes it all the more sickening that Don Paskini would compare these people to deeply principled rebels like John McDonnell.

Incidentally I’m seriously thinking of ending every post with ‘Novus Laboris delenda est” from now until people stop bickering over the minuscule and pointless differences between Milibands 1 and 2, Alan Johnson, Harriet Harman and whoever else runs for the leadership.

Labour are up one vote in Canterbury. Fuck the Tories, John McDonnell for Prime Minister. Now carry on.

I. Stephen Hawking and the aliens
I have heard mentioned in the past that Stephen Hawking is one of that motley crew of believers in extra-terrestrials. And it was confirmed for me this morning, on BBC radio 4, that he has made a documentary in which he speculates not merely that alien lifeforms exist, but that they may be dangerous and we should steer clear. This got me thinking.

Obviously Prof. Hawking is an extremely able, gifted man – and his work in attempting to popularise physics is something to respect. I would not presume to challenge him, nor the other eminent scientists like Prof. Brian Cox, that alien life may indeed exist – that it may be microbial etc.

But where does the science come into speculating as to how dangerous it might be?

Even assuming one surpasses the problem of relativistic physics when it comes to the sheer distances involved between two near stars, never mind distant ones, there’s the question of time. Human civilisation has existed for, say, ten thousand years but that’s only ~ 7.3e-7% of the time that the universe has existed, during which entire solar systems have been wiped out.

So, mathematically speaking, not only is the problem simply one of a vast number of planets where eventually variables like distance from sun, the right type of sun, the size of planet etc come into line, but where we have to be in the right time-frame as well – and bearing in mind the age of the universe, that’s not an easy thing.

On the basis of such calculations it seems a bit sensationalist to speculate that aliens may be dangerous. We may never know. Reading one rather fascinating approach, bearing in mind the geophysical forces which shape our planet, 250 million years from now, when Pangaea re-forms, there may not even be a trace of humans left on Earth’s surface.

II. Media and authority
All of this is where the newspapers step in, of course. “Don’t talk to aliens, warns Stephen Hawking” is the Times title. “Stephen Hawking warns over making contact with aliens” says the BBC. No doubt the Sun’s page 3 will have quote Rebecca, 19, from Bournemouth, who finds the thought of aliens arriving on earth just so exciting.

These are the realms into which we are taken by a lot of television – the realms of celebrity. A well-known face is sponsored to feature in a programme that is by and large well meaning, but if it concentrated on those things which can be empirically verified by science, would be thought to bore the socks off the average punter.

Thus we have Stephen Hawking talking about, of all things, aliens.

It reminds me of George Bernard Shaw’s objections to a great deal of scientific discovery – evolution, germ theory and vaccination, for example, and the attention this was given at the time. Now Shaw was not a scientist and spoke from no scientific authority. In point of fact, many of his anti-scientific rants, usefully available in his Collected Prefaces, railed against scientists rather than abstract theory – but the theory caught it hot from GBS’ pen too.

National newspapers reported this stuff all the time, not just as the rants of an eccentric but as if a blow had been struck by one side in a debate against the other. As with Stephen Hawking, this was a departure from the world of science, towards the world of celebrity. Well-known figures expostulating on things they can’t possibly know.

III. Media and celebrity
These days we have Ross Kemp running round battlefields pretending to have a clue. For current affairs programming, Christine Bleakley on the One Show is a happy-clappy joke (I haven’t seen Chris Evans’ slot so I’ll hold judgment). And so on through any number of people who are complete twits, evident non-specialists in the field they are speaking about, and who are elevated by a centralised media to semi-stardom.

There was the blissful moment when nauseating ex-teen, Daniel Radcliffe, was asked about his opinion on the leadership debates, combining pre-existent celebrity, non-specialism and complete gormlessness in one package. All featured in the Sun, unsurprisingly.

Even for specialists the dangers are the same. Watch literally anything presented by ‘historian’ Bettany Hughes, a graduate of St. Hilda’s College, Oxford.

Certain people are elevated over the rest of us to educate us, and not through any great learning but simply because of the nature of a centralised media. There must be sources of authority to ask about things, otherwise newspapers aren’t reporting the opinions of a celebrated personage – merely the opinion of the much less illustrious opinion of a staff writer, and that doesn’t really count as news, apparently.

Even where those sources of authority can reasonably be expected to hazard an educated guess about the stuff they’re presenting, the danger can lie in the method of presentation – speculation independent of a balancing fact, or independent of a sense of proportion. Like aliens being dangerous.

As an avid sci-fi fan, I’m as curious as anyone else about the principles and technologies that would shape a human-alien first contact – and with Stephen Hawking it may be just as honest. We should be aware, however, that this frivolity, like the rantings of George Bernard Shaw, exists in a great pool of pseudo-science, mysticism and other views that serve different social functions.

To take a topical example, the conspiracy theory in the Arab world that Israeli Mossad was responsible for the 9/11 attacks finds its voices of authority in engineers who’ll speculate that aeroplanes alone couldn’t bring down the towers and serves the social function of relieving people from having to challenge the Islamist demons on their shoulder.

Compared to this, of course, the examples of Christine Bleakley and co are less spectacular. I doubt she’ll ever feed a conspiracy theory. But neither are we likely to get piercing analysis. So people can sit back and consider themselves informed, without ever having to actually be informed, one of the most important personal responsibilities in a democracy.

This great pool, as I have called it, is fed into by what GBS would have called ‘vested interests’ – e.g. the corporations who sponsor the cultural programmes of the religious right. We all know just how anti-scientific those are. These interests simply utilise the same form as more mainstream media – hence Christian broadcasting like the 700 Club. While more secular versions may deal with ‘facts’, that’s not to say that it’s better in principle.

When the debate is focused around secular issues, say MMR vaccines, animal testing or immigration, we get the same thing. In one corner a speaker from Immigration Watch or whatever the preposterous anti-science anti-vivisection group of the hour is, and in the other corner, some academic, commentator, journalist or politician. And this is presented as a method for reasoned exposition of key issues that afflict us – which it need not be.

Regardless of ‘fairness’ or ‘popularity’, some of those present may simply not have a clue what they are talking about. And, conversely, there may be issues that go un-discussed as a result.

IV. Arguments to authority and the blogosphere
Elevation by celebrity is deadly, just as much when we are too respectful of genuine specialists as when we permit interlopers of other specialisms and none to take over that role. We can let ourselves be guided by what is being said, especially when presented to us in a shiny format, or from such an august personage. This is despite the fact that both pretenders and personages can very often be full of it.

One only has to read Polly Toynbee columns over an extended period to realise her political expertise is the greatest exercise in political charlatanry since the Divine Right of Kings. It’s little different for the pretenders, hoping through sheer dint of effort to one day be regarded as a specialist in their chosen field. This is often what Tory blogger Iain Dale is accused of – self publicising etc. Well, he’s no better or worse than anyone else.

This danger of an appeal to authority, argumentum ad verecundiam, was eloquently rejected by John Locke in Concerning Human Understanding*, and it is completely undemocratic.

When men are established in any kind of dignity, it is thought a breach of modesty for others to derogate any way from [the opinion of men of established authority], and question the authority of men who are in possession of it.

This is apt to be censured, as carrying with it too much pride, when a man does not readily yield to the determination of approved authors, which is wont to be received with respect and submission by others: and it is looked upon as insolence, for a man to set up and adhere to his own opinion against the current stream of antiquity; or to put it in the balance against that of some learned doctor, or otherwise approved writer.

Whoever backs his tenets with such authorities, thinks he ought thereby to carry the cause, and is ready to style it impudence in any one who shall stand out against them. (Book 4, XVII.19.i)

From the point of view of the Marxist, there also exists the clear danger that Capital, having control of celebrated institutions, also controls and disseminates ‘expert’ opinion to suit itself. Recently, this process was documented by David Harvey when it came to things like the Powell Memo or the sea-change in acadaemia from a preference for ‘embedded liberalism’, which even included a strong Marxist Left flank, to ‘neoliberalism’.

One of the key successes of the blogosphere, in my view, has been the ability to rubbish appeals to authority by challenging the very basis of that authority. Now that many of us can write and opine, the narrow group that do it professionally seem a little less important. Not to denigrate the very real differences between the two – professional journalism is read far more widely than blogging, no doubt, and given much more weight to.

Nor would I challenge the view that quality control is important on blogs, and is sometimes neglected or made irrelevant, the latter in the case of blogs with more than one purpose – e.g. personal musical tastes and politics, where one element is based on argumentation and the other on simply showcasing a preference. Yet overall, I think our contribution is still a net positive.

V. And back to Stephen Hawking…
Beyond the self-congratulatory aspect to all this, there is a wider point. I am not qualified to comment upon Hawking Radiation for example, and this I’ll freely admit. I could pretend to be, but in the absence of any formal qualifications in quantum physics, my views would likely only gain currency if they fulfilled some social function, e.g. as ideology. Yet this doesn’t mean that nobody is qualified to comment, even if they lack formal qualifications.

While above I rail against those who have little or no background in what they talk about, it’s mostly from seeing the effects of this lack of background rather than being because they lack such a background. It would be a mistake to extrapolate from this that only those formally qualified are worthy of having an opinion. I have only qualifications in ancient history but I feel myself quite qualified to talk about politics, music, the arts and so on.

Even if I’m not.

If celebrity elevates people – irrespective of their learning – to preside over us, that is bad. Yet it is equally bad to suppress others simply because they lack formal qualifications that denote learning. What I look forward to is the day when there is some equivalent of the blogosphere for all media – a genuine participatory journalism in which ‘experts’ jockey with amateurs who have access to the same range of experimental data or learned journals.

Which, today, we don’t, nor would we have the time to use them if we did. If the realm of freedom begins after the realm of necessity ends, to speak undialectically for a moment, for most of us, that’s still nowhere near enough free time to establish hobbies that might prove to be intellectually fruitful not just for us but for the entire human race.** Even deprived of such time, however, the contribution of the average moron is still the equal of any expert.

It can be just as tainted with conceits or humility, it can be just as frankly expressed or couched in terms more amenable to socially acceptable proposals and ideals. It can be complete tosh or not. And there’s no reason under the sun such people shouldn’t have the right to be heard, why on matters like aliens, Stephen Hawking’s voice should be heard above the din, or on matters like evolution, GBS’ voice, but others should be condemned to obscurity.

Celebrity is what we call this exclusion and it is toxic.

Read more…

I was recently looking at the excellent web site AfterNow which examines issues of population health and their relationship to the type of society we live in.

In one of the videos there Prof. Phil Hanlon describes the human species as obeseogentic, having an innate tendency to consume available food even if it makes us obese.

He argues that those of our ancestors who failed to eat what was available would not have survived to produce descendants, so on classic Darwinian grounds we are adapted to eat as much as we can.

This was fine until the technology of food production reached its current development. In rich countries today substantially more food than is necessary is readily produced. Under these circumstances what had at one time been a survival trait becomes a source of pathology.

This is a very telling point, it undermines the idea that over-eating is almost a moral failure, the ideology that healthy eating is a matter of personal responsibility. If eating what is available is programmed into our genes, preaching dietary responsibility is as futile as the centuries of religious strictures against fornication.

At the same time it hits at the belief that all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds if production is guided by consumer preferences expressed in the market.

Our preferences express survival traits that are no longer appropriate.

How then can we respond politically to the growing health problems posed by obesity?

If we reject moral lectures, what is left?

Planned food production. It is possible determine with a high degree of precision how much food is required to maintain the population at a healthy nutritional level. Produce in excess of this and there will be health problems due to obesity, diabetes etc. Produce less and there will be health problems due to malnutrition.

Agriculture in the EU has long been the subject of political intervention, but these interventions have not been directed towards optimising population nutrition. To move that way would require the Commission to set quotas for the production and import of carbohydrates, sugars, proteins, saturated and unsaturated fats, set by the dietary needs of the EU population.

It would require planning in kind of the sort that was carried out in wartime, but without the need for rationing.

Rationing was only necessary because total wartime production was short of optimal health requirements.
Today it would be unnecessary to interfere directly with personal consumer choice in that way. So long as the total flow from farm to factory was controlled, there would be no need to intervene in the detailed flows from factory to consumer via the super markets.

Failure to do this, continuation down the line of market led food production means condemning the rising generations to a future of ill health.

In a case that could have philosophical idealists wetting themselves for decades to come, by naming something before the fact of it, we should adapt to the Conservative attempt at framing inheritance tax as a ‘death tax’. Here’s my proposal:

Step 1. We suspend habeas corpus for those who use the phrase ‘death tax’, or any other such attempts to name a fairly banal law so as to inspire fevered opposition to it. So the entire Tory Party, to begin with, starting with Lansley.

Step 2. We execute all the aforesaid and confiscate all their property, to be liquidated and used to fund universal comprehensive, elderly care. This programme will be called the “Live Long and Prosper Tax”.

Step 3. We collect the votes of elderly people and Trekkies everywhere and guarantee victory at the next general election.

Step 4. (Optional) We liquify the remains of all those who have died (or committed suicide through stupid political posturing) and use this to feed the living, who we will connect to a giant virtual reality machine in which Gore was elected President, communism works and nobody is offended ever.

We will call this the “Matrix Tax”.

Simple.

Health warning: What follows is an example of serious geekdom by someone whose Master’s dissertation was based on Aristophanes and who was very bored this evening. Namely, me. Unlike the only previous poetry competition on TCF, this will not hold your interest. Run away now.

If you haven’t fled, you might already have heard – being the sort of saddo who keeps up on cultural events – that Carol Ann Duffy, our poet-laureate, has written a poem about the triumph and tragedy of David Beckham, his career and injury and how terrible and inspiring the whole thing is. It goes like this:

Achilles

Myth’s river – where his mother
dipped him, fished him, a
slippery golden boy flowed on,
his name on its lips.

Without him, it was prophesied,
they would not take Troy.

Women hid him, concealed him
in girls’ sarongs; days of
sweetmeats, spices, silver
songs…

But when Odysseus came, with
an athlete’s build, a sword and a
shield, he followed him to the
battlefield, the crowd’s roar,

And it was sport, not war, his
charmed foot on the ball…

But then his heel, his heel, his heel…

One supposes that the worship of sporting celebrities has existed since the days of Ancient Greece. In my mind, that doesn’t make it any less irksome when famous poets – the successors of Coleridge or Shelley or Byron or Tennyson – start writing paeans to their heroes like they are eight year old boys or thirteen year old girls, who want to be or want to date that person.

So I have decided to write my own poem, to get into the spirit of things, invoking an ancient play which is much more fitting for David Beckham, merely one man among hundreds of talented footballers, than the epic Homeric tragedy on the rage of Achilles.

Beckham

Garlanded, astride Olympus.
His golden scrotum
the merest flash on a green field.
Cheering crowds anoint him.

Philosopher King. The coldless
African hordes fly.

Cast out are Paphlagon’s men,
their tongues outshone. The mob
love another whose fame stands
alone…

Charmless Dionysus awakes!
His dream fades amidst noisome
mist, while River Styx rocks his
boat and boasts back to sleep.

No sport, no war, just the oars
and Xanthias’ groans…

Brekekekex-koax-koax…

I tried to find some way of suggesting that David Healy’s right foot would kick England’s arse whether they had Beckham or not, but Duffy’s prose is quite constraining in its syllables per line, reflecting her predilection for simple words. I, on the other hand, quite like complex words.

As huffing and puffing seems to be what lefties are best at, in the eyes of the Right-blogosphere at least, we at Though Cowards Flinch thought it might be fun to try some.

It has come to our attention that the magazine ‘Total Politics’ is planning to publish an interview with Nick Griffin, the racist leader of the British National Party.

Before we forget, therefore, we thought we should announce that, in the event of the publication of this interview, TCF will withdraw from the annual voting process to rank the popularity of UK blogs, run by Total Politics magazine, which once we welcomed and which made itself relevant to the internet through the annual UK blogging guide (pictured).

Our withdrawal will of course be laughed off as inconsequential, and ‘exactly what you’d expect from humourless, sanctimonious Lefties’ by the people who run Total Politics, if indeed they notice it at all.

However, we do hope that an early announcement of our decision to withdraw from a process which has provided, at the very least, some light-hearted entertainment over the last couple of years, will provide other bloggers on the Left with some food for thought over whether they should participate.

This will clearly be a personal decision, and we understand that there are a multiplicity of views on the ‘no platform’ question as it relates to the BNP. It behoves us therefore to set out briefly our reasons for proposed withdrawal.

As a group of bloggers, we broadly support a ‘no platform’ stance in respect of the BNP.  This is not a call to ban the BNP, or deny their individual members’ civil liberties. A more effective approach is solidarity between anti-fascists, without recourse to the law, to make a clear statement that the BNP are beyond the pale.

Publication of an interview by Total Politics, which will be distributed to every parliamentarian, peer, political journalist and to councillors across the country, does the opposite. It is a further acquiescence to the BNP message being accepted as a normal part of British political discourse. It is not.

We also do not feel that such an interview is in keeping with the mission statement of TP, which is to be “unremittingly positive about the political process”. Lest we forget, this is a party which abuses that process. Its elected officials are amongst the laziest and most incompetent, giving the lie to their promise to help solve local problems.

Not to mention the outright thuggery of some of them.

Thus we seek solidarity amongst Left bloggers, and any bloggers writing from a different perspective but who share our views on this matter, as a way of seeking to force the hand of Total Politics into the withdrawal from publication of the planned interview.

Total Politics should be made aware that to proceed with publication it will risk, via a boycott, losing whatever legitimacy its voting process has as a measure of blog popularity , with consequent negative impact on its business.

For more information on our stance in respect of the BNP and similar fascist organisations, the following blog entries may be helpful: In the land of the blind the one-eyed man is king (by Duncan),  Once more on the no platform policy (by Dave), Churchill and my dad: Why I’ll march against the BNP (by Paul) and SDL world pub tour continues (by Gordon).