Chris Worfolk's Blog

Recently, I headed down to Leeds Salon for their debate on “The Big Society: A Clean-up for the Charity Sector?” The event was well attended and had a diverse range of people there. Though as the event was part of Leeds Summat, I’m not sure whether that was partly responsible.

The speeches were good, though as someone who only dips in and out of politics a lot of the time, some of the content went over my head. The discussions afterward were very interesting as well. I’m looking forward to attending their next event.

RIP Christopher. Your mastery of the English language was truly an inspiration to me.

No, this isn’t another ridiculous situation at Sainsbury’s, I’m talking about the “please confirm you are ana adult” boxes that are constantly popping up on my iPhone, 4OD and BBC iPlayer.

I understand that such apps probably need to confirm that I am over 18 for legal reasons. The problem is that they ask me every time. I’m sure that my date of birth is somewhere in my profile, and even if it wasn’t, the app could prompt me to enter it once and then have done with it.

But it doesn’t, my 4OD app continues to prompt me to confirm I am old enough every time I open it.

Now, even if you accept the idea that a child could steal my iPad and decide the first thing they want to do is watch some video that isn’t appropriate for them on 4OD and hence they need to confirm it every single time, why can they broadcast such shows on TV without requiring such a mechanism.

The answer is the Watershed. After 9pm at night you can broadcast much more filth on TV. But if you’re going to argue down that line, given my device knows what time it is, why can the app not stop prompting me between 9pm and 5:30am?

Most of us reading this will live in 2011, in the Western World. We’re used to living in a civilised society, summer riots aside. But thanks to globalisation, we’re increasingly finding a clash of cultures on many issues.

A good example of this is the World Cup hosting duties being awarded to Qatar.

The problem with this is that being an Islamic nation, homosexuality (well, homosexual acts, but it amounts to the same thing) is actually illegal there. These are enforced, including against people just on holiday there^[1].

Yet, in 2022, thousands of footballers, and several hundred thousand fans will travel to the country. And many of them will be gay. Even if you take a conservative estimate that 1% of people are gay, that puts at least 1,000 gay people in a country where just being themselves – is illegal.

That’s mental. I really don’t think we should be OK with this situation.

Luckily, everyone’s favourite football character Sepp Blatter stepped in to offer some advice. He explained “I’d say they [gay fans] should refrain from any sexual activities.”^[2]. Problem solved, I guess. Of course, this is from the same man who doesn’t seem to have a problem with racism^[3] and is constantly dogged by allegations of corruption^[4].

So what do we do about it? Well, we could get all the major countries to boycott it. Or at least Western countries, who knows how much control His Holiness commands over South America’s attitudes, and the answer is probably quite a lot. We could certainly give it a try though, and it would be a worthy cause. As Bryan Goldberg points out, Qatar also has a terrible human rights record, and that’s just the start of it.

Of course, we probably won’t do that, not because missing the World Cup would be mega rubbish (which it would be, that would be the biggest drawback of not taking part), but because it would be politically insensitive for us to call a nation out on the fact that their state religion is the most intolerant faiths currently practiced in the modern world (then again, maybe I’m just being over critical – it’s easy to take 534 verses out of context⁵).

Instead, our fearless leader David Cameron hopes that bringing the World Cup to Qatar will show them that homosexuality is actually fine^[6]. Apparently, “football can be a great engine for social change and a change of attitudes” and, when it comes down to it, at least there is such a thing as an Islamic soup kitchen.

So, eleven years from now, in an attempt to change social attitudes, we will send hundreds of our citizens into a country where making love to their spouse is a crime punishable by execution. Wonderful.

[6]: http://www.insideworldfootball.biz/worldcup/bids/qatar/8894-cameron-believes-qatar-world-cup-can-change-attitudes-towards-homosexuality – this resource is no longer available

Dan Bye, council member of the National Security Society who has previously spoken at my Skeptics in the Pub group, presented a talk to the Atheist Society on faith schools and why they are such a ridiculously bad idea.

Unfortunately such talks often end up preaching to the converted – the people who turned up were the people who already know faith schools are a scar on our education system whereas those who aren’t all that aware didn’t manage to make it down.

One point of debate I found though was whether you were morally responsible if you lied to get your child into a faith school (pretending to be religious) because it was the best school in the area. Ultimately, the answer is, yes, you are a bad person. But much like Mr Cameron, I can probably see why parents do it.

My parallel was that with some recent health issues, I am now cashing in on my private BUPA cover. Yet, I’m not really sure if I agree with the idea of private healthcare. Surely the ideal in our society should be that everyone has access to healthcare and you shouldn’t be able to buy a longer life?

It’s a bit of a hypothetical argument because of course you can – those who come from a more well off, well-educated background tend to have a healthier lifestyle, make more educated life choices and avoid manual labour and as a result, end up living longer. But ignoring the pragmatic truth, what would we want as an ideal for our society? Probably one in which your health was not compromised by the amount of money you have.

Ultimately we decided that it wasn’t the same thing – while I have BUPA cover, I also continue to make my contribution to taxes and therefore the NHS, and by using my BUPA cover to go private, I am actually freeing up more time for NHS staff to treat others.

But I didn’t have to rationalise myself into that position before I decided to use my BUPA cover. I just did it, because my health is more important to me, to the point where even if I decided I did morally disagree with it, I would have been happy to compromise my principles because when you’re having a medical crisis, it’s very hard to think about anything else other than getting better.

Similarly though, if I had a child, I suspect that my emotional drive which has allowed evolved life to flourish so well would quickly turn the override switch to make sure that I put the future of my own child ahead of any sense of moral duty.

So yes, lying to get your child into a faith school does make you a bad person. But I think I can understand why people do it.

P.S. Just so we’re clear, there is no evidence that faith schools do produce better results. This is only applicable if your local faith school happens to produce better results, which could be down to a number of factors, but faith almost certainly isn’t one of them.

Thought Bubble isn’t a comic convention. It’s a sequential art convention :D. I didn’t go or anything, but Si did, and afterwards, we went to Pizza Express. I keep ending up there, despite the fact I dislike pizza.

Recently, I’ve been watching Nothing to Declare (aka Border Security: Australia’s Front Line). It’s about customs officers working at Australia’s airports and seaports. It’s pretty similar to UK Border Security, except that I actually find it interesting.

I use the term I because ultimately it’s trash TV. There is no real intellectual merit to either TV show but for some reason I find Nothing to Declare entertaining, while I find UK Border Security quite dull.

Indeed, we’ve been getting into it so much that last week I set a reminder in our calendars about it. Why is it so addictive?

The story gets stranger though. I randomly got an email from Gijsbert entitled “Nothing to Declare” with a message saying I’ve been watching loads of Nothing to Declare recently. Why do intelligent people, including myself, watch this rubbish?

It’s a fascinating question. It’s so predictable – it’s just people getting caught with cocaine on them and people trying to sneak into the country with the intention of working on their tourist visa, episode after episode. But we’re all addicted to it. Why?

It’s also interesting that both we, and Weili picked up on the fact that the show opens with the title caption “thousands of people dedicate their lives to protecting Australia’s border.” Not just work there – dedicate their lives.

Huzzah, the German Market has once again arrived on Millennium Square. So, A-Soc headed down there for a good bit of German sausage.

Have you ever been to Germany?

I have. Well, sort of. Because the reality of the situation is that there is no such place as Germany. There is, however, a place called Deutschland.

In fact, in the English language, we have names for most countries which are entirely different to their native. I’ve studied both the French and German language, and I’m currently browsing Complete Finnish, a book Elina bought me for my birthday and all of those have different names for each country in their own language that differ from the actual place name as well.

But why?

We don’t translate any other proper nouns. People’s names for example. Or brand names. It would just be strange meeting Gijsbert and saying “Gijsbert? No, I speak English so I’m going to all you Ken.”

There is perhaps an argument to be made that when languages have significant differences, such as Far East or African languages where the native words are particularly hard to pronounce, but given most of Western Europe is based on Latin, they are quite easily interchangeable pronunciation.

It gets stranger though. For example, the Finnish domain name is .fi. It’s named .fi because that is short for Finland. But Finland is the English name for the place – they call it Suomi! What is going on…

Last month, I went to the Leeds Academy to see Evanescence. The gig was enjoyable, but not quite as good as I was expecting. I had a similar experience when I went to see Feeder in February, so I’m wondering whether it is the venue.

Never the less, I got to sing along to a great mixture of songs from their new album and the old classics as well. A very enjoyable night!

I also bought a t-shirt and unfortunately I was given the wrong size. Due to my expanding belly, I definitely cannot squeeze into. Still, at least that’s Elina’s Christmas present sorted :D.