In brief: yer all savages

I’m not one to defend the general British public (see forthcoming entry on culture when it, erm, forthcomes) but I feel that I should get my spake in, albeit briefly, about this.

BBC Newsnight presenter Jeremy Paxman has described the British public as “barbarians” who are too busy working to find time to appreciate art.

I’m not a huge fan of Paxman’s, it has to be said, for I find him more much more offensive and condescending than I do challenging and interesting, and the above strikes me as a typical statement of his.

Here are a few simple sums for you Mr. Paxman: earnings of £XX,000 per year, X children, £XXX,000 mortgage, and £XX,000 in car loans/ student loans/ credit card and other debts don’t leave many of us with whole lot of Xs to play around with. We work all the time, just to make our ends meet. And you wonder why we plebeians spend all of our time working and little of our time perusing art galleries? We’re flipping exhausted!

I would have thought it was f-ing obvious, even to a snob like you who makes considerably more Xs than the rest of us put together, and who doesn’t have to worry at all about where his next paycheck comes from or goes to.

TfTd

I always listen to Radio 4 in the mornings on my way to work. I’m in that demographic now, don’t you know. I’m nearly always leaving as ‘Thought for the Day‘ begins. For those of you unfamiliar with Thought for the Day it is, as the link says, ‘reflections from a faith perspective on issues and people in the news’. I think it would be more accurately described as patronising and sanctimonious reflections from God-bothers full of their own self-importance, but anyway. I find it insufferable.

This morning the Reverend Doctor Middle Class and Vaguely Disgruntled was doing his piece. He started off by recounting a tale of how he tried to help a young lady with her suitcase onto the bus. She declined his offer, and brushed his hand away when he offered again. This reaction, he blamed, on women’s constant quest for equality. If it wasn’t for the equality gained so far, he implied, women wouldn’t think twice about accepting help from a man. He tried to redeem himself, of course, by talking then about the disparities in earnings of men and women – and in doing so ‘approved’ of our pesky feminism – and then came back to the quandary of women not allowing men to help them when they clearly need it.

Seriously, Reverend Doctor Middle Class and Vaguely Disgruntled? Really? If I give you the benefit of the doubt for a moment, and believe that you genuinely thought that telling a story about a woman ‘in need’ would be a good introduction to a discussion about equal pay rights, I have to tell you that you’re a little naive. I know a lot of women – and I’m one myself – and I’m pretty sure that most of us don’t spend our time declining offers of help from men because we’re obsessed with equality. If you really need to know, I rather think that we women feel that it’s intrusive to be approached by strange men offering help (or anything else), that it can often be intimidating to be approached in such a manner, and that we decline because we feel uncomfortable and we would rather not have you near us or our suitcases. Is that unfortunate? Of course it is. In an ideal world, we would all be helping each other carry our butterflies and rainbows around; in a realistic world, we react as we do because we’re conditioned to do so by what we see around us. It’s got nothing to do with equality, or its lack.

But I’m not going to give you the benefit of the doubt. I think that for all your talk of equal pay for the sexes and of narrowing the employment gap, you think we women have got too much equality already. You gave your game away when you mentioned that ungrateful young woman twice in three minutes. You’re thinking, I’m sure, that she should have been happy to take help from you, the Big Man, instead of trying to assert her independence when she was so clearly in need. But the world, thankfully, doesn’t work your way any more. Perhaps the next time you pipe up on Thought for the Day, you’ll remember that it’s not all about you, and that women don’t spend  their waking moments trying to figure out how to get their equality points higher at the expense of people like you.

Moments of madness

Radio 4 recently reported an interesting story about new Internet billing software which disables your machine by issuing so many pop-up reminders about your outstanding payments that your computer becomes unusable. It’s currently being tried by the developers, MBS, and is used mostly on, unsurprisingly, porn sites. From what I can gather – I don’t remember all the details – it asks you to check a box indicating that you would like a free trial period on the site, but in doing so, you agree to the terms and conditions that you will receive the pop-ups. Of course, that clause is on page 20 of the terms and conditions which no one ever reads anyway. And these pop-ups aren’t those we were all too familiar with in the pre-Firefox days, either; they’re the type, apparently, that you can’t close and that are so memory intensive, your computer can’t function. Until you agree to pay, that is. My thoughts on this are predictable – that such things really should be more closely regulated – but they are not the point of this post.

The point is this: one lady interviewed by Radio 4 was complaining about this software because it had disabled her husband’s computer. She and he were obviously very upset by what had happened, but I was both embarrassed and amused by the way she told her story. Her husband had had a five minute moment of madness, apparently, when he decided that he would like to seek out some pictures of ‘nude women’ on the internet. He went to this site in what really must have been a moment of madness (she repeated), and checked the text box agreeing to the terms and conditions. She just doesn’t know what he was thinking! (I do!) He was plagued by pop-ups and eventually had to come clean to both his wife and his employer (he was using his work computer). Bless!

Now seriously! In what world does Mrs. Moment of Madness think that this is the first time that Mr. Moment of Madness has looked at porn. It’s not! It’s the first time he’s been ‘caught’ by you, but it is not the first time he’s accessed porn. I would stake my life, and yours, on this. It was so obvious from her voice that she absolutely wanted to believe what she was saying, and that she wanted the listener to believe it too, but her doubt was evident. She’s hurt, angry and probably a little humiliated at what she’s discovered, and I’m sure that she wants to believe her husband was possessed by something shocking at the time, but we all know that’s not true. I feel bad for her, but she’s not fooling anyone, including herself.

The moral of the tale: Middle England ain’t ready for porn. And it certainly ain’t ready for an MBS billing system. (Oh, and always read the terms and conditions!)

I do hope that Mr. and Mrs. Moment of Madness get through this, but I dare say he’s in the spare room for now. Possibly along with his laptop.

More racism in Big Brother – housemate evicted this time

Hooray for sense prevailing.

Emily Parr has been removed from the Big Brother house for using a racially offensive word to another housemate.

The 19-year-old from Bristol was taken out of the compound at 0330 BST and was forbidden from having any further contact with the 11 other contestants.

This week’s eviction vote has been suspended, in which Emily was nominated along with Shabnam Paryani.

A spokeswoman for Channel 4 said that the decision had been taken because “such behaviour won’t be tolerated”.

Emily said: “Are you pushing it out, you nigger?” to Charley Uchea, while they were dancing in the living room on Wednesday evening.

Good Lord! I’m actually in shock. First, this Ms Parr is from Bristol, a multi-cultural city; and, second, she’s a student at age 19, so we can assume that’s she fairly well educated. Yet she still thinks it’s acceptable to use such words? Officemate and I were discussing it and we wondered if it just ’slipped out’ because they were fooling around, or if she uses the word ‘nigger’ habitually. Or, indeed, if it just ’slipped out’ on national television because it is a common word in her lexicon. Regardless, her behaviour is shameful.

The post of my post, however, was to note my appreciation of Channel 4’s quick thinking to evict the offending housemate immediately. This is a contrast to their decision in Celebrity Big Brother, where they allowed racist behaviour to continue over a period of days. I’m trying to believe that Channel 4 and the production company, Endemol, are genuine in their claim that they won’t tolerate such behaviour, but I’m inclined to think that they’re rather more concerned with preserving their ‘reputation’ and not losing their sponsorship again.

We’ll probably never know, and it’s largely academic anyway. And in whatever case, it’s a result for common sense and sensibilities and for that I’m grateful. I’ll bet the Respect task Force think all their Christmases have come at once!

Abortion case in Ireland

There’s a very serious and interesting appeal case going on in Ireland at the moment. A girl, Miss D, who is age 17, wants to travel to England for an abortion, but is being prohibited from doing so by the courts. Abortion is still illegal in the Republic of Ireland unless there is a risk to the life of the mother, but many women travel to England or Wales each year to have terminations, and they do so legally.

The current case involves a a young girl who is in the care of the Health Service Executive, and who is carrying a foetus which, apparently, will not be able to survive outside the womb. Logic would suggest that this is an open and shut case – what is the point, after all, in continuing with the pregnancy? – but not so in Catholic Ireland. The elements of her case are threefold:

1. She is challenging the court order placing her in care, because it restricts her leaving the country.
2. She is challenging the Health Service Executive’s decision instructing the gardaí (police) to stop her leaving the country.
3. She is challenging the Health Service Executive’s decision to refuse to let her travel to terminate the pregnancy unless there’s a risk she’ll commit suicide.

I understand that the main impediment to her termination is simply that she’s in care and that the Health Service Executive has been granted a court order against her travelling for an abortion. In any other circumstances, she would have been allowed to go without question; it seems that the Health Service Executive is really just trying to protect itself by stopping her. As if she doesn’t have enough to contend with…

The case has gripped all of Ireland, unsurprisingly, and could have many political ramifications because the Taoiseach (prime minister) recently called for a general election. I’m not sure that the abortion laws will ever change in Ireland, but it’s high time they were revisited. Perhaps now they will be.

In any case, the appeal is being heard tomorrow, and I’ll be keeping a keen eye. And, as it happens, I’m going to be in Ireland so I’ll be able to hear a lot more about it than I would here. Naturally, Irish pro-lifers are protesting the appeal with all their might, but I’m hopeful they’ll make little difference. And, unless I just haven’t noticed, the Church is being suspiciously quiet on this.

I’m vehemently pro-choice in case you hadn’t noticed. In fact, I don’t even stop at ‘pro-choice’: I’m say I’m pro-abortion and be done with it. Because I am.

Fingers crossed.

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[Edit: Thankfully, it seems that she’ll win her appeal. I hope so]

Guns, man

I don’t have much to say about the shootings in Virginia because, frankly, I wasn’t shocked. If a country as gun-happy as America claims surprise about a deranged kid killing 31 of his peers with one, then more fool it. It was a tragedy, no doubt, but a predictable one nonetheless. A similar thing will happen again at some point in the future. This is a certainty. With any luck, the body Americans trust with their law enforcement will be more dependable next time.

And I won’t be the first to mention the irony of George Bush condemning the killing of 31 innocent people in his country on a day when 180 innocent people were killed in the country that he insisted on attacking. But we’ve all forgotten about Iraq now so that’s OK; it’s all yesterday’s news, and that’s just how Georgie likes it.

The UK is not immune, of course, and I would advise the folk in Downing Street to start paying more attention to the increase in gun crime here. Of course, the victims so far have only really been young black men who were probably involved in gang violence, so the issue is not pressing yet. Or at least I think that’s how it works…

I’m feeling angry about the state of the world tonight, and the people we elect to make it better. I’ve also found a new level of cynicism, it seems.

Giuliani and Reid

Today is one fucking appointment and arrangment after another (with the last one at 8.30 tonight), and I’m going to get no writing done at all. I haven’t got any writing done in too long, but I suppose I was in Ireland for a while.

I need to drink more coffee, very quickly, or I’ll never get through it all.

And why the hell is it so cold in our house in the mornings? My feet and hands are surely about to fall off.

The BBC website is my favourite place in the world, and I spend way too much time there. That would be another reason for the non-writing sometimes, I suppose.

But look: Giuliani joins race for president.

Former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani has officially joined the running for the Republican nomination for the 2008 US presidential election. The Federal Election Commission said Mr Giuliani had filed a “statement of candidacy” – a one-page form outlining a candidate’s wish to seek office.

Does this make anyone else giggle? Not only is it the the 40th (approx.) person running for the White House but it’s Giuliani! That just doesn’t fit or something. It’s just stooopid. Mind you, I’ll cut my arm off if he gets in.

Oh and this: Sex register to include email.

Sex offenders could be forced to register their e-mail addresses to prevent them approaching children on the internet, the government says. Home Secretary John Reid said he was also considering making paedophiles add their chatroom names to their other details on the Sex Offenders Register.

If there are any more temporary things in the world than email addresses and online IDs, I would like you to tell me. Sex offenders put their handles on the sex offender register and turn around and make new ones the next day. He’s forgotten that a sex offender is generally much, much smarter than your average offender. Job’s a good ‘un. John Reid has, once again, conjured up a totalitarian idea which can only serve to increase bureaucracy ten-fold with little positive effect. Of course, it’s only a gesture to placate the proletariat because Reid, like Blair, never fails to assume that we can’t see through these sorts of policies. Were it not for the fact that Blair has hair and Reid doesn’t, I would think that they were clones. Maybe he and Giuliani are clones…

Man, I’m running late already.

Germaine Greer needs to lie down

Darn it, I’m still feckin-well addicted to it. Big Brother that is. I’m watching it and I’m reading about it and I never stop talking about it. Oh my, I wish someone would stop me!

I think that I’m done with it all until I see something else that makes me want to rant. Take the following from Germaine Greer, for example. I’ve never known Greer to be so disparaging of strong and intelligent women, but she gets very scathing in this piece. Look at what she says about Shilpa.

There are no good reasons for watching Celebrity Big Brother and very good reasons for not. Not watching will spare you the nerve-fraying annoyingness that is Shilpa Shetty. Everything about her is infuriating: her haughty way of stalking about, her indomitable self-confidence, her chandelier earrings, her leaping eyebrows, her mirthless smile, her putty nose and her eternal bray, “Why does everyone hate me?” Not to mention the crying jags. What no one seems to have quite understood is that Shilpa is a very good actress. Everyone hates her because she wants them to. She also knows that if she infuriates people enough, their innate racism will spew forth.

So she deserves to be racially abused? Is that the implication here?

She is just the girl to raise the pit bull in a dizzy little drip like Danielle and keep her frothing at the mouth long enough for her nascent career as a sweet little Wag to disappear down the drain. When Shilpa is finished with Danielle even Teddy Sheringham will know what a small, dark heart beats within her fetching chest. This explains the slightly cannibal air of self-satisfaction that never abandons Shilpa. She knows what she is doing. She will shred the nerves of all the other women in that house until even Cleo pulls back her frozen lips and shows the fangs behind her witless Mona Lisa smile.

Oh, so it is all her fault then? Mainly for being able to recognise that she’s not a vapid, talentless idiot, you’re saying?

Wha?!

I’m thinking that this piece probably says more about Greer than it does about Shetty. I’ve always had an admiration for Greer (she was one of the most prominent feminists around as I was growing up), but she’s been letting herself down a lot in recent years. She seems bitter and unhappy about something, and she resorts to attacking women who remind her of who she once was in order to express her discontent. Even when she was on CBB herself last year or whenever it was, I watched her thinking that there was something missing. She’s not fair anymore, and I always remember her being very fair.

Shilpa isn’t nasty like she describes, but she is a reminder to frustrated women the world over that they’re not all they want to be. This is clearly what upset the three ‘ladies’ in the Big Brother house, and I can’t help but think that it’s what’s upsetting Greer too. Nay, think of the BB house without Shlipa, I say! She’s not perfect, no doubt, but she’s smart and funny and kind and generous and interesting. I can’t think of another housemate to whom you could attach those adjectives. But perhaps Germaine doesn’t like such qualities in a person, now that she’s lacking in them herself.

It’s a shame, really, because I think Greer could still be a very influential and important person; feminist or otherwise. If only she’d stop being a moron apologist (and something of a moron herself, truth be told) long enough to realise it…

Shocked and upset

No, no, no, I’m not done ranting yet for today at all!

The world shocks and upset me.

And by ’shocks and upsets me’, I mean things like this.

Parents of a severely disabled girl in the US have revealed that they are keeping her child-sized in order to give her a better life. Along with hormone doses to limit her growth, Ashley’s parents also opted for surgery to block breast growth and had her uterus and appendix removed.

“Dad is frequently the one that lifts her from one place to the other, so if she gets bigger that becomes much more difficult, as they get older it becomes more difficult. At that point in time they would be forced to consider using a mechanical lift, which is much more impersonal.”

“Ashley has no need for her uterus since she will not be bearing children,” they said, adding that the decision means she will not experience the menstrual cycle and the bleeding and discomfort commonly associated with it. The operation also removed the possibility of pregnancy if Ashley were ever the victim of sexual abuse, they said. The removal of the girl’s breast buds was also done in part to avoid sexual abuse, but was carried out primarily so she would not experience discomfort when lying down, the parents said.

The parents deny, of course, that Ashley’s treatment (and there’s been a lot of it) is for their benefit, but I can’t seem to believe that: she’s been through numerous irreversible operations so that her parents wouldn’t find it as difficult to care for her. Sure, it’s all under the guise of ensuring Ashley’s well-being, but such spurious arguments as, ‘we removed her breast buds to avoid sexual abuse’ only serve to heighten my suspicions. When does such a grave concern ever even become relevant in one’s mind, and why would one feel that such invasive surgery is the only option?! (And let’s not even get started on where they got the notion that being a victim of sexual abuse is somehow highly correlated with having breasts!) And as a woman, I can assure both of them that one’s breasts are very darned important to us ladies, and are worth the odd bit of discomfort when lying down! They’re your BREASTS, gawdammit!!! And so what if they have to consider using a mechanical lift!? I wonder if Ashley would prefer to have to use a mechanical lift to get around, or to have everything about her being and person altered just so that daddy could still lift her? Much more impersonal, my arse!

I’m not a parent, and I hope that I’m never faced with such issues, but at the moment I can’t understand what gives these parents the right to halt their daughter’s natural progress in such an extreme fashion? I never, ever use this expression (mostly because I’m not sure about the existance of a deity) but seriously: who said they could play God?

The BBC discussion page on this (most of which disagrees with me, but anyway).

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Edit #1: a Comment is Free page on this issue. Unfortunately, it seems to have descended into name-calling as is too often the case on CiF but it might be worth the read.

Edit #2: there is further discussion on this issue on this post.

Edit #3: here’s another Comment is Free discussion page.

Edit #4: a further piece on Comment is Free. I’m not sure I’ve seen an issue get such attention in a long time. And proper order.

Just keeping everything up to date…

Iraq, Iraq, Iraq

Man, this turned into quite the rant once I got started. There seems to be something of a conspiracy that Hussein isn’t dead at all. I’ve admitted before that I do like the odd conspiracy but I want to question this one. First, what would be the point in keeping him alive? And second, given the look of that whole arrangement at the hanging, if they did hang a look-a-like, there is simply no way that it could remain a secret for long. I’m having trouble finding links about this on the web, so if anyone knows a good information source about this conspiracy, I’d quite like if you posted it in the comments (thank you). I’m always interested in learning more about such things. I can’t stop thinking about it, actually: the hanging and the effects it will have. This piece reflects a lot of my feelings on the issue:

Saddam Hussein deserves no one’s pity. But as anyone who has seen the graphic cellphone video of his hanging can testify, his execution bore little resemblance to dispassionate, state-administered justice. The condemned dictator appeared to have been delivered from United States military custody into the hands of a Shiite lynch mob. For the Bush administration, which insists it went to war in Iraq to implant democracy and justice, those globally viewed images were a shaming embarrassment. Unfortunately, all Americans will be blamed, while the Iraqi people are now likely to suffer still more. What should have been a symbolic passage out of Iraq’s darkest era will instead fuel a grim new era of spiraling sectarian vengeance.

No, he doesn’t deserve pity, but in executing him the way they did, it’s the western world which looks bad and although the NYT only mentions America, this includes the UK too.

Mr. Maliki’s usual cheerleaders, President Bush and Britain’s prime minister, Tony Blair, have distanced themselves from this repellent spectacle. Yet the Bush administration again finds that it has little credibility to lecture anyone on the basic dignity due to detainees. The Washington Post reported yesterday on an internal F.B.I. investigation that revealed a pattern of deliberate taunting of the religious beliefs of Muslim prisoners at Guantánamo.

And now they shirk from what they caused. Surprise, surprise. The slimy bastards. — – — – — This too. Very true. Who would have thunk it: Bush and Blair telling fibs!

It was the Bush administration and not Saddam that turned out to be lying about WMDs. As we all know now, there weren’t any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Amazingly enough, it was Saddam who was telling the truth from the very beginning. Bush was the one who lied to the whole world.

He really did take us all for fools – President George W Bush – and what is even more sickening to me is that he got away with it. Dammit, he was even elected for a second term in office. (Note how I didn’t say ‘reelected’ there because it’s not as if he was elected to office the first time he served there.) I remember in the run up to the Iraq war, and for the first few months of battle, that the issue that stuck in my throat the most was that Bush and Blair clearly believed that their electorates were idiots who couldn’t see through their lies and propaganda and manipulations. We all felt this sentiment, and we were all angry about it, yet neither of these men has had to answer any questions about it. I know that Paxman has probably asked a few questions around this in recent years but I’ve never felt that the issue has been addressed. Why doesn’t anyone ever say, ‘Mr President/ Prime Minister, you treated the people you’re supposed to represent honestly and loyally like they’re fucking halfwits and you’ve never once apologised for the lies you told those people that led to war.’ I dare say they will never be brought to task about this. This continues to make me very angry. — – — – — Oh, and [lastly] this is a very sensible piece about Iraq, which has a little tongue in cheek for good measure. If you can’t see it on the site, it’s posted under the ‘more’.