Archive for the ‘Religion & Politics’ Category

It is always good to really challenge your beliefs when you can, so last night I tried to put aside any biases I hold and read through the Green Party manifesto.

I had previously written them off as sexists who support homoeopathy. Taking a look at their manifesto they talk a lot of sense though.

Here is what I like:

• They make the case that inequality is bad for everyone (I have a blog post coming on this)
• They want to reduce government borrowing
• They aim for a 35 hour working week
• Not increasing the rate of corporation tax for small businesses
• Ensuring the NHS is entirely publicly run
• Get rid of academies and free schools
• Treat drug abuse as a health issue rather than a crime
• Ending religious opt-outs of equality legislation
• Reformation of the House of Lords

Here is what I do not like:

• Their plan to pay for their pension plan is based on removing the tax incentives for people to pay into private pensions
• Increased tax on fuels including its introduction on aviation fuel
• Significant restrictions on air travel
• Supporting the Post Office which is an appallingly-run and non-essential organisation that we can afford to and should let fail
• So-called “business protection zones” to stop supermarkets
• Removing the internal market from the NHS
• Decentralise the NHS – they claim they can do it without it becoming a postcode lottery, but I am not convinced
• Complementary therapies being available on the NHS
• End mixed-sex accommodation in hospitals – why? Surely the Greens should be gender progressive?
• Provide funding for women’s refuges (but not men)
• Provide funding to tackle violence against women (but not men)
• Forcing companies to hire women onto their boards
• Reducing the voting age to 16
• Move towards a written bill of rights
• Oppose nuclear power
• Reduce motorway speed limits to 55mph
• Support organic food and oppose GM food

I was originally going to end this blog post with something like this:

There is certainly plenty in their I dislike. But the question is, do they talk less nonsense than the other political parties? I think it is quite possible that they actually do.

However, on reading through the list I have just made, there really is some unscientific stuff in there. So I don’t really know where to go with this ending now…

I’m not actually going to comment on any issues in this short piece. I just wanted to point a link over to this blog post where Chris H has catalogued a few interesting research papers showing clear evidence for sexism.

Ally Fogg recently published a very good article in The Guardian regarding Alan Turing. It said basically the same thing I wrote back in July. Sure, his writing is more poetic and his spelling may be correct. But… I don’t really have an end to this sentence.

Earlier this year, Leeds got it’s own Speakers’ Corner. Thanks to Elina is now has it’s own website too. If you want to keep up with all the latest updates by subscribing to the mailing list, see the Speakers’ Corner Leeds website. It’s one of the few groups I’m not running lol.

Following the popularity of his poem on his blog, Jonni committed it to video last weekend. Here it is…

The warm weather has got me thinking about hose pipe bans. I’m not sure whether they are instigated by the water companies themselves, or by a statutory instrument of government, but either way, it is at the hand of the water companies themselves, complaining about the lack of water. Sometimes this can be attributed to exceptionally dry weather, but often it can just be the case of the private sector cutting water reserves in an attempt to extract more profit.

Therefore, in my opinion, if a water company fails in this way, they should be fined. And fined heavily, because water is quite important.

But extending this, we could regularly fine them, and restrict the profits, for the greater good. Utility companies, and indeed many other natural monopolies that were previously nationalised and have since been sold off, often report large profits. This is just more money passing to the rich, from the poor. Which is bad.

However, we privatised them anyway, because we’re told that private companies run more efficiently.

But why do we let them make such high profits?

Consider if we bled them dry. We hardly let them make any profit because of the price caps and fines we imposed on them. Would this make them less efficient? I suspect not. I think, if anything, they would be forced to run themselves more efficiently in their desperate bid for survival. It would encourage the very efficiently we originally privatised them to bring.

The consequence however was that private investors were less likely to invest in infrastructure. But how much money actually ends up being invested in infrastructure now? Clearly a lot less than could be given the profit given out to the shareholders.

More importantly, if you have just skimmed most of the profit from a private company and taken anything they have left back in fines, you suddenly have a lot of spare money. Money that can then be used by the government to subsidise investment in infrastructure.

Straight Pride UK promotes the idea of having a straight pride, alongside a gay pride. Fine, no problem with that. Not sure I see the point, as situations where I feel discriminated against as a heterosexual are reasonably infrequent, but each to their own.

In fact, their wording starts off quite nicely.

There is nothing right with being homosexual, there is nothing right with being bisexual, and there is nothing wrong with being heterosexual

But then it says this.

being proud to be of natural orientation

To me, that implies that being homosexual is not a natural orientation. Which is where I start to take issue with it. Any sexual orientation you are born with is a natural orientation.

And if it is natural, why should we be proud of it? Sure, it’s great being straight. The majority of people in our society are straight and this being straight gives me a large selection of potential partners (ideally I would be bisexual but you can’t choose how you’re born), but surely something I have no control over, and was given randomly at birth is not something I should be proud of?

Their Twitter strap line is worse.

A voice for those practising traditional lifestyles & relationships. Those who want to celebrate being of natural born orientation & traditional family values.

To call the homophobia experienced in the twentieth century traditional relationships does a rather large disservice to extensive periods of history. And what are these traditional family values they speak of? Presumably a time before martial rape was criminalised because I can’t think what else is different between a loving couple marrying and adopting today to one of fifty years ago.

Then, as you reach their aims page, you begin to suspect the entire thing might be a troll.

Heterosexuals do not have equality, homosexuals have more rights then any sector of society. They have the right to take over city streets, dress ridiculously, and parade with danger and contempt, invade hotels and B&B’s run and owned by people who object to homosexuality, and then sue them when refusal is given.

Surely it must be, because no intelligent person could believe this, could they?

As Richard Littlejohn would say, you couldn’t make it up. Credit.

A bill is currently making its way through the various structures, to pardon Alan Turing.

What a load of nonsense.

Alan Turing was guilty of homosexual activity. He was. Of course nobody for even a moment would pretend that is something that should be a criminalise offense! But to pardon one person is essentially saying “you did wrong, but you did a lot of good so we’re going to let you off”.

Is this the message we want to put forward? If so, I think it’s time we pardoned Julian Assange for those rapes he may or may not have committed. Clearly, we’re not going to be doing this.

What we we should instead by saying is “this law was nonsense, and anyone convicted of it is now exonerated of any wrong doing, regardless of how many German codes you broke”.

Don’t pardon Turing – pardon everyone. They never did anything wrong.

Last Saturday there was supposed to be a Leeds Speakers’ Corner.

However, a couple of days before, the council pulled the plug on the event because they said the area was in use for Sky Ride, a large cycling event. Or so I was told anyway. So just to clarify, freedom of speech in Leeds is cancelled, in case it interrupts Rupert Murdoch’s bike ride.

What I think is more concerning however, is that the organisers of LSC, decided to accept this and call the event off. Not turn around and say in a polite voice “do fuck off, we have freedom of speech in this country and if we want to turn up to a public space and speak our mind, we will do”, but say OK, that’s fine, we’ll just stay at home and keep our traps shut then.

Perhaps we can stay in and watch some serious analysis on Sky News instead.