Current Affairs 5:24 pm
But wanted to post a link to this absolutely fantastic Speak You’re Branes site. If you have ever had the misfortune of stumbling across the ‘Have Your Say’ section of the BBC website, and found yourself despairing at the revelation that, yes, the world is populated by morons, then here is the antidote.
Enjoy.
Current Affairs 3:21 pm
Rather nice of them, really.
Over here.
Current Affairs 8:45 am
I don’t really care all that much about rowing, but was quite pleased for the rowers, who came head of the river for the first time since 1956, last Saturday. To celebrate, they put a boat on the quad…
Current Affairs and North America and Politics 8:14 am
Oh, when will this be over? Clinton’s latest gaff is referencing the assassination of Bobby Kennedy in June 1968 as a casual illustration of previous long Democratic nomination campaigns.
Surely it’s obvious by now that she’s useless. I’m not sure Obama is all that much better, but for God’s sake if there is to be any chance of a Democratic win come November this nomination campaign has to end, and the acrimony has to cease. If only Clinton’s lust for power would cease preventing her from climbing down for the sake of,America, and arguably all of humanity…
Current Affairs and Politics 9:18 am
Ann Widdecombe!
For the following comments made to the Oxford Student Newspaper last week (here is but a choice selection of the best):
“What happens with those shows, things like [Celebrity] Fit Club, that have huge viewer numbers, is that they establish you in the public mind. And the next time you are on television doing a programme on something like the benefits culture, they’ll watch because it’s you. It does help, indirectly, get your message across”.
She describes herself as a “sensible feminist”: “There is a huge difference between 1970s feminism and 1990s feminism. In the 70s we were saying, ‘give us the opportunity and we’ll show you we are as good as men’. Now what feminists are saying is, ‘we want special favours, we want all-women short-lists for parliament’. I absolutely reject that sort of feminism.”
Also, we must be aware of “Christainophobia”, for which we can partly blame the Anglican Church for “failing to stand up for itself”. This is all part of the ‘political correctness’ which is itself “a symptom of what [Widdecombe] call[s] the libertarian dictatorship”.
And we also get a lesson in effective family planning: “I do support the abstinence policy. If everyone had always followed the Church’s teaching, which is chastity before and fidelity within marriage, we wouldn’t have AIDS or any sexual diseases”.
I was going to do a little critical analysis on these choice morsels, but what’s the point? Widdecombe speaks for herself – an Odious and Vile Little Toad.
Current Affairs and Oxford 10:50 am
I’ve been thinking about the supposed ‘tradition’ of ‘trashing’ finalists at Oxford, and i’ve come to the conclusion that it really is a thoroughly obnoxious and unpleasant practice.
For those not contained within the bizarre bubble that is Oxford University, ‘trashing’ is the practice of meeting people after their last exam and covering them with unpleasant things, usually food and drink, but in more extreme cases things like dead fish, vomit and human excrement.
Usually ‘trashing’ is presented as a harmless ‘tradition’, and just a bit of post-finals fun. On reflection I think that both claims need to be challenged and can be found wanting.
Firstly ‘trashing’ is not a tradition. People did not trash each other 15 years ago; it is an extremely recent phenomenon, and any status as a ‘tradition’ is purely invented. Furthermore, I see no worthwhile appeal in the claim that it is a tradition – which it is not – anyway: lots of things are traditional, like paying women less than men for work of equal skill and intensity (here we have an illicitly institutionalised tradition, at least in my opinion), but few people would be game to defend that on the grounds that it is ‘traditional’. For a less controversial example, Morris Dancing is traditional, but nothing follows – if you Morris Dance outside my window at 5am and wake me up, your appeal that it is ‘tradition’ won’t cut any mustard, nor would you expect it to.
Secondly, i don’t think that ‘trashing’ is harmless fun, on many counts.
To begin with, it is insulting. Why? Because Oxford has a disproportionately high number of homeless people, and there is something particularly repugnant about privileged Oxford undergraduates, all of whom are bankrolled either by parents, the state or the University, buying food and drink simply to waste it, leaving most of it to spoil on the floor after the ‘trashing’ is over. When you recall that there are people in this city who struggle to eat on a daily basis, you realise that trashing is perhaps not so harmless at all.
As a connected point, there is something thoroughly obnoxious about trashing insofar as no trashers ever clean up after themselves. Instead food, drink and vomit etc are left all over the floor of a public street. Other people are expected simply to endure this, while still others are expected to come along and clean it all up – those others being some of the poorest people in society, namely those who work as street cleaners, an already difficult and let’s be honest less-than-pleasant job, done for extremely poor pay.
So trashing insults more people than just the homeless – further it is positively dangerous: two people last year suffered broken limbs after slipping on mess left by trashers. That’s simply not fair, and it shouldn’t happen when it can so easily be avoided.
Finally, i object to trashing strongly on the grounds that it reinforces the message that Oxford undergraduates are both the beneficiaries and the manifestations of extreme privilege, who hold a contemptuous disregard for others. Partly this is for reasons already noted: wasting food in front of the homeless, expecting others to clean up for you, etc. But trashing generally express an attitude of privilege: that Oxford undergraduates are so wealthy that they can afford to have their suits trashed (all students do exams in suits – ’sub-fusc’ – for those note familiar with the system) - after all they can just buy new ones, can’t they? (Those students who are in fact not so financially privileged may themselves hold some prudential objections to trashing).
Oxford students can afford to waste food, and expect others to clean up after them. The message is clear: we are the privileged elite, we can do whatever we want, and you must not only live with it, you must pay for it too. In other words, trashing is an expression of superior class status.
Personally that is not the message I want to send to residents of Oxford, to wider society as a whole, or to prospective students already wary of Oxford’s reputation as a bastion of privilege and elitism cut-off from the modern world.
So in summary, don’t trash me, and don’t expect me to trash you.
Current Affairs and Politics 9:20 am
So looks like cannabis is to be re-classified as a Class B drug, after a period of down-grading to Class C.
I think it’s pretty clear to everyone that this has nothing to do with science, crime, or other candidates for being plausibly good reasons. Rather Labour, and Brown especially, are trying to pander to Daily Mail reading middle England (hence the Mail’s headline last week: CANNABIS: FINALLY A U-TURN). In my opinion it won’t work; why vote for u-turners, when you can just vote for the other lot who said they were ‘tough on drugs’ all along?
The whole thing is ridiculous though. Firstly there is no conclusive proof that cannabis is especially harmful unless abused in ridiculous quantities – but you know, if you eat chips 3 times and day and no fruit and veg, you’ll get fat and die early. But nobody is reclassifying chips. Further, even if something is bad for me, who is the government to tell me I can’t do it? Especially when lots of other harmful things are legal (and taxed). After all
how can something with no recorded fatalities be illegal, and how many deaths are there per year from alcohol?
Oh, the Irony Of It All.
And further, smoking cannabis does not make you into a criminal. I’ve smoked cannabis on and off since I was 13, sometimes quite heavily on. I have, to date, not turned into a sociopath hellbent on crime prancing across the stepping stones to harder drugs, plunging me into a life of deviancy.
One last thing though, recreational drug-use is at record highs in this country. But if your drug-use is recreational, as opposed to dependence-habitual, that suggests you have a reasonably high level of disposable income with which to purchase recreational drugs. So who do we think are using drugs? Just the scum on council estates, stealing your car radio for their next fix? Or the very middle class voters – and if my quotidian experience is anything to go by, their children – whom such ‘tough on drugs’ policies are meant to pander to?
The more you look at this world, the more ludicrous it all looks. I’d laugh, if I could bring myself not to take it all so seriously.
Current Affairs and Philosophy and Politics 9:43 am
Simon Blackburn has a good little piece over here at T.H.E.
My favourite two are:
8. The myth of equal respect
The belief that everyone deserves equal respect and that anything else is discriminatory and elitist. The truth is the exact opposite: discrimination is a virtuous activity and elites are to be admired. The very few human beings who are good at anything, whether football or playing the violin or writing or painting, form an elite and deserve respect for their excellence. Other people either deserve sympathy for trying and failing, or should be ignored if they have not even tried.
Respect is not the same as toleration. I am lucky if my neighbours tolerate my singing when in the garden, but they would have to be tone deaf to respect it, and if they did then of course they in turn would forfeit my respect as music critics.
There are people whose chosen lifestyle disqualifies them from any respect at all, such as celebrities, although a more charitable view is that they deserve respect for the amount of publicity they can bestow, which is why they get into nightclubs and Downing Street. Religionists know in their hearts that they are always teetering on the edge of being ridiculous, and are therefore nervous about respect and constantly insist on it.
10. The myth of the public service ethos
The idea that sometimes people will do something because it is the right thing to do, not because it affords them any advantage. This was once true, but constant repetition by politicians and economists that it is a myth has successfully made it one.
Peter of Peter’s Apology thinks Mr Blackburn is not to be respected, I expect that’s got something to do with his religious and moral objectivist leanings…
But Peter is not the only one, over at Crooked Timber, poor Simon has been laid into:
Aside from the obvious fact (which Geras points out) that the claim that everyone deserves respect in the rights and human dignity sense doesn’t entail the hostility to discriminations of achievement that Blackburn claims, his statement that “very few human beings … are good at anything” is simply crap.
Many many human beings are talented cooks or gardeners, accomplished dancers, considerate colleagues, good mothers or good fathers. Many many human beings are empathetic, or courageous, or patient. And no, I don’t think those who are (for example) rated good cooks by those they know and cook for “deserve our sympathy” for failing to be Escoffier, nor should they be ignored for not even trying to be Escoffier. Blackburn, on the other hand, probably ought to have our sympathy: not for trying and failing to make it to the level of, say, David Hume, but for falling victim to the delusion that the less that superb doesn’t amount to good. What a failure he must imagine himself to be!
I feel an urge to defend Mr Blackburn at this point:
1) Blackburn is right: most people are not very good at anything. Note the word very. That’s important that is. Lots of people might be good cooks and gardners. The few who are very good go on Telly and do it for a living (and so forth). It’s simple a fact about the world that most people are decidedly average in their talents. Despite the propaganda you’ve been fed in primary school, which is perpetuated by ‘interactive, have your say!’ media culture, the fact is most people are only mildly good at a few things, and average or less than average at most. But that is just an empirical fact…nothing need follow from empirical facts alone.
2) If one bothers to read the tenor of Blackburn’s piece, his point is quite obviously not an attempt to insult people by denying them the ’status’ of ‘equal concern and respect’ that liberal egalitarians a la Dworkin hark on about. Hie point, as i take it, is to expose the fact that talk of equal respect is a pervasive sham detrimental to the interests of those very people it is aimed at and used to placate in the first place. Rhetoric about ‘equal respect’ is simply disingenuous – it does not follow that Blackburn advocates an Aristotelian vision of excluding the non-excellent – as he says, toleration can often be extended, except when people aren’t willing to reciprocate or to try themselves. But respect is a different matter; respect needs to be earned, and does not come automatically on the back of the myth – and it is a myth – that all people are good at stuff, because that is not true – but of course nothing follows from that as things stand.
Given that Simon is quite clearly a man who leans ever so slightly to the left, I can’t help thinking that it is a little silly to accuse him of holding nasty and inegalitarian attitudes towards ordinary people. From what I can tell, he’s been reading his Nietzsche more closely than his Truth ook might sugest (or his appearance at Balliol last year, for that matter), and has noticed that many lies are wrapped in the cloak of being beneficial to those they are given to.
So well done Simon, keep up the good work.
Current Affairs and Politics 9:30 am
THAT DEMOCRACY DOESN’T WORK:
This would never have happened if philosopher kings were in charge.
I’m a philosopher king. At least I like to think so.
Good article over here as to why this is an indictment of the state of modern Britain.
Plus did you know that if the Tories win the next election – sorry whenthe Torries win the next election, then the Prime Minister, The Chancellor and the Mayor of London will all be Old Etonians? Great.
Current Affairs and Politics 9:50 pm
Unfortunately for The Sun, it turns out that Loony Lefties still inhabit Balliol JCR – and by the looks of things, there’s quite a few of them.
Tonight I brought a motion to the JCR General Meeting proposing that we cease to buy The Sun with collective funds. After a relatively short debate, the motion was passed by overwhelming majority. By overwhelming I mean that it wasn’t even worth counting votes (done via raised hands) because support was so evident – though as a rough guess I’d say the ratio was about 5-1 in favour.
Gutted for the rugby team
