Elina made me a pig. I’ve decided to name it Muhammad.
Take a deep breath in, we’ve done it!
Another four more years. Then my mum can retire! Also, there was something else that we were celebrating four more years of, but it slips my memory. Here is a bad recording to remind us why…
David Cameron unveils his new proposal for structuring government.
Recently, Brendan O’Neill wrote an article for the Huffington Post, entitled “If You Were Abused by Sir Jimmy Savile, Maybe You Should Keep It to Yourself“.
He argues that there is no reason for people who claim to have been abused by Jimmy Savile 30 years ago, to now come out and talk about it. It doesn’t make the victim feel any better, as they’re essentially just having horrible memories splashed across the media for everyone to see, not to mention that they are then fitted into a neat little box of victim, rather than the fully-rounded human being they probably are.
It doesn’t do justice any good, because Savile is now dead, and therefore cannot be brought to justice. The unfortunate reality is that it genuinely is too late – if he did do what he is alleged to have done, and it’s looking like he probably did, then he has now got away with it, forever.
Thirdly, it doesn’t do any good for society either, as it simply increases the paranoia that there is a sexual predator lurking in every corner and continues the slide to where, as Chris Morris suggests, we will reach a time when even a simple conversation between mother and daughter, will be carried out at gun point.
As a consequence of the whole incident, they’re probably going to dismantle Jimmy’s charity, because if there is anyone that should be punished for Jimmy’s actions, it is almost certainly the beneficiaries of a charitable foundation, many of which weren’t born when the alleged incidents took place. In fact, the idea of it being Jimmy’s charity is nonsense, because he’s dead, it’s actually our charity, it belongs to society, so I’m not quite sure why we are smashing up our own things in some form of mob justice against ourselves.
David Cameron recently addressed the Conservatives at their party conference, which has never been his strong point, but he make some points that really hit the zeitgeist.
The two phrases I think are notable are that he wanted to “get behind people who want to get on in life” and that he did not have a “hard luck story” but said that “I am not here to defend privilege, I’m here to spread it”.
This has been a topic of much debate in recent times, given the rise of the victim mentality that plagues increasingly more people as they define themselves by the disadvantages that we demand should automatically entitle their opinion to credence.
This is a strange concept – the idea that you can solve privilege by granting yourself the privilege to hold opinion while refusing to grant others such a privilege, but it never the less one that has been widely adopted and as a result, caused a strong backlash.
It also potentially opens up an avenue for the Tories to try and position themselves as the new workers party. With Labour being a sad joke and the Lib Dems being the sniveling sell-outs that we currently are, I don’t think we should rule out the possibility that people will be sold on this message (I also grow tired of fellow Lib Dems constantly tweeting about what the Tories are doing – it’s our fault their in government!).
Cameron knows his audience, and it isn’t us, so he isn’t trying to appeal to us. He knows who he can win votes from and he is going after them aggressively. So maybe, just maybe, it wasn’t a particularly bad speech after all.
When I was at school, we once read a short story about a world that made everyone equal by giving everyone a disability.
For example, if you were intelligent, you had to wear a buzzer in your ear that stopped you from thinking about something too much, if you were strong and athletic, you had to wear weights to drag you down – everyone was equally beaten down.
Of course, this was a story about a ridiculous society, that none of us would want to live in. Or so you would think. But more and more recently, it seems people are arguing for such a society.
There is a lot of inequality in this world. But some people seem to think the answer is restricting more people’s freedoms, rather than granting further freedoms to others.
I came across an example of this on Twitter recently. It wasn’t an ideal example, but will suffice.
The author of said point correctly points out that there is a double standard here. Women have the freedom to appear topless in The Sun’s Page 3, but a man who wanted to get his penis out, would not be allowed to go to print.
It’s a classic case of discrimination against men.
But clearly, the solution is to increase the amount of freedom in our society by allowing a newspaper to publish a penis on its third page. Not to place equal restrictions on everyone on what we’re not allowed to publish.
Unfortunately, such attitudes, from people who would presumably like to think of themselves as progressive (though I could be entirely wrong there) actually play directly into the traditional political-religious structure that aims to control society though the suppression of human sexuality.
After all, rationally, there is nothing wrong with putting a picture of a penis in a newspaper. Almost half the world has one, it’s perfectly natural and maybe if we did it more, we wouldn’t have so many ridiculous taboos around sex and sexuality (and everyone would benefit from this, though especially the LGBT community).
So, if we’re actually trying to push a progressive agenda, do you think we could be progressive with our freedoms, rather than regressive?
EDITOR’S NOTE: The story was “Harrison Bergeron” by Kurt Vonnegut.
About ten years ago, everyone started to panic about the increased use of mobile phones while driving, because they seemed to be causing lots of accidents. The response was to ban the practice, which became illegal in 2003, unless you were using a handsfree set.
This was widely supported by the mobile phone industry who happily charged us lots of money to provide a variety of handsfree solutions, from simple holders to elaborate integrated in-car systems.
The problem is however, they don’t work. Driving while talking on a handsfree kit is just as dangerous as driving while holding the handset. Multiple studies have all supported the same conclusion.
It’s easy to see how this situation happened. You assume it is the act of holding the phone, so without testing it, you suggest it as an idea and phone manufacturers jump on it as an easy way to make more money from us. To further their own profits, they continue to push the idea that it is safer to drive using handsfree, even though it isn’t.
In fact, it turns out that it is the act of holding a conversation, which takes some of your attention away from the road, that reduces the safety. So it is irrelevant whether you’re holding the handset or not.
Worth thinking about, next time you take a call on your handsfree set.
Jason Wong is a student at LSE and also the perpetrator behind this advert, that would perhaps even feel out of place in an edition of Nuts magazine. Recently, he wrote an article in their student newspaper, arguing against gender neutral toilets. You can read it here.
He doesn’t seem an experienced writer though – for example, he says that the money spent on gender neutral toilets would be better spent on free printing for students. Does he not realise that the standard unit of measurement for wasted money is nurse’s salaries?
He sums up his message briefly in a series of tweets.
This is an incredibly sexist, and anti-progressive attitude.
The overwhelming majority of my gender are not sex offenders. Believe it or not, we are capable of sharing an environment, like we do in the majority of life, without sexually assaulting a woman.
There are of course a minority that do commit sexual assaults, but this is by no means confined to one gender perpetrating such crimes, and even if it was, that would not be any excuse to lambast 48% of the population.
I know it’s a cliche to compare such attitudes to racism, but I think this is a good example to compare. Statistically, a higher percentage of black people go to prison than white people (see this report). This is nothing to do with the colour of their skin, it’s to do with the social problems of black people tending to live in higher poverty areas, in which white people from the same area are just as likely to go to prison.
But, if you were to take Jason Wong’s argument to treat entire social groups without regard for individual equality, you could easily make an argument for having segregated toilets for white and black people. After all, why should a white person have to live in fear every time we uses a bathroom, because we’re openly inviting criminals in?
Of course, such an attitude would not only be ridiculous, but absolutely abhorrent. Yet such arguments along gender lines, vilifying men, are often openly accepted by society.
Recently, the following tweet appeared on my timeline.
I’m not ensure sure what so called men’s rights activities are. People who the author feels are not actually interested in men’s rights but have some other kind of agenda? How would you tell the difference between these people and people genuinely interested in men’s issues?
This recurring theme is very interesting though, as it suggests, as many comments have done recently, that someone can be disqualified from having an opinion or interest in equality, because of their gender.
This seems very strange to me. The idea that you could improve gender equality by banning one gender from having an opinion.
To me, having a fair and equal society is everyone’s business. Some people may consider it advantageous to their specific demographic to be privileged, but I believe that it is everyone’s interest to work towards equality.
Indeed, it may be considered more admirable for such individuals to fight for equality. Fighting for your rights if you are at a disadvantage is a welcome attitude, but ultimately, you are only acting in your own self interest. But those who are in the privileged group, and still fight for equality, are the epitome of morally conscientious citizens.