Authoritarianism is generally associated with the repression of the Jews, the massacre of Kurds, mindless or terrified salutes to Brother #1, the Fuhrer, or myriad other personalities, and the strict control of personal and social liberties. So captivatingly wicked has the totalitarianism of 20th Century Europe, Indo-China, and Africa been that it seems that western nations have become comfortably numb, immunised against the smaller, more discrete elements of control that creep into our lives. Indeed the population of the UK in particular seems quite content to offer a silent complicity when it comes to restriction of liberty, seemingly on the basis that none of it 'really' amounts to fascism after all.
What we're left with after this muted vote of confidence is a society floating, but only just, whilst its integrity is compromised by a variety of leaks and design contradictions - A society where anyone can drink themselves into the gutter within hours but where a gram of Cocaine will land you in a Police Station, where films containing sex scenes can be viewed by fifteen year olds, but the legal age of consent is sixteen, where people trust the state with their tax details, address and date of birth...but not their DNA. In short, not just the laws, but the attitude, the culture, of the UK is deeply conflicted between wanting 'liberty' on the one hand, but not knowing what it really means on the other.
And so it is proven by the latest report from Thorax, a part of the BMJ commissioned by the British Thoracic Society. The report finds that various cohort studies from around the world have noted that effect that smoking imagery in films can have upon the impressionable minds of teenagers, and concludes that it is largely responsible for the uptake of smoking by children. The report does acknowledge other factors (peer pressure, parents, alcohol intake, drug use etc) and takes these into account in its findings. In fact, it is quite a convincing study and reasonably well reported. However, what is objectionable are not the findings, but the conclusions of the author. The abstract concludes that the results indicate a need to 'review current film classifications'. This in itself should immediately expose the motive of this review. In any other piece of medical literature, especially one where a link but not causality has been found, the author would usually conclude with suggestions regarding how best to consolidate the apparent correlation, or perhaps to establish the mechanisms by which such a link is created. But not this report. This report concludes with a suggestion of social policy.
Subsequent commentators and journalists alike have since discussed the merits of any proposal to re-classify any film containing smoking, or tobacco imagery. Advocates see it as being inline with the current ban on tobacco advertising, whilst opponents dispute the validity of the evidence. Both sides might have a point on the letter, but have missed the point on the spirit of such a notion. The fact is that to demand a re-classification of such films is in fact a cry out for a law to 'save us from ourselves'. Although to be fair to think tanks and the media, it often isn't so much a call to save us from ourselves as much as saving other people from themselves. Indeed, upon posing the question most people would deny that they would begin taking drugs if they were legalised. No problem then, full steam ahead!...But wait, I know I said that I wouldn't...but they will. Enter the enigmatic 'they' with their loose ethics and seeming disregard for their own lives and health. In fact so wayward is this milieu that more 'sensible' members of society are happy to forgo their own liberty to save 'they' from their self-destructive tendencies. No one can tell who 'they' are, but apparently 'they' definitely exist.
To say that films affect us in this way is a gift of an excuse to all feckless parents and wayward teenagers. Any psychologist will tell you how imagery, audio, and our surroundings can influence us, but to simply give up and accept these phenomena as inescapable is to wave goodbye to anything even resembling classical liberalism. Once you admit that you are a slave to advertising, or a sucker for a smile and wink, you can give up on autonomy, personal sovereignty, it's all a myth. On the other hand, we can continue upon the path which mankind has walked throughout its existence, endeavouring to overcome its own limitations, to control its urges, and to truly become a master of ourselves. In fact, given the sheer number of instinctive human actions that we now find abhorrent, to shrug our shoulders and to say 'well it's just human nature' could probably considered a contradiction in terms.
Successive governments have engaged in a long, reluctant, shuffle along this road in the past, and are quite content to drag their feet even now. This should be hardly shocking to anyone - the duty and excise on tobacco in the UK currently pulls in just over £11 billion per year, whilst the cost to the tax payer of smoking related illnesses is estimated at just below £3 billion. Additionally, there is already many a penny to be made in the sale of black market tobacco products which would only serve to soar with any future tax rises. So the State does indeed find itself in a bit of bother, pulled by the market on the one hand to keep things as they are to furnish the exchequer, or battle towards a healthier society and seek to raise revenue in other, less popular, sections of the economy.
Of course it could attempt to do neither and simply leave the future in the hands of the public, choosing education instead of legislation. The Thorax research might well show a very strong and undeniable correlation between phenomena, but of course not every child who visits the cinema is smoking, and although I've said it before I shall repeat myself - once you acknowledge the existence of an exception to the rule you cannot ignore it. More fruitful would be to establish the cause of the exception than dismiss it as an anomaly. Perhaps there is a factor in children's lives which means that they can see cigarettes in a movie and not be heavily influenced. In the name of liberty itself would this not be a far greater and useful discovery than the fact that the kids want to be cool?
Friday 4 November 2011
Saturday 8 October 2011
Dunbar's Number and Facebook
Life is a cruel sport. The good guy does not always win, criminals will sometimes get away with it, and sometimes nature itself will ruin the lives of many a good person. With so much of our lives seemingly beyond our control we are left with quite a tricky path to navigate with regard to how seriously we take the act of living at all. One could fall the way of a cynic, a nihilist, or a solipsist and trivialise life to the point of not caring, at which point the lives of others become unbearable in your presence. Alternatively, you could treat life and the universe with a suspicious glare, refusing to tolerate the slightest drop in concentration, and certainly balking at the slightest hint of humour, at which point the lives of others become unbearable in your presence. The problem for liberals therefore is to identify the middle path - to acknowledge that life needs a good joke, but that a joke isn't a good one unless it is at someone else's expense.
Enter Dunbar's Number. Strictly speaking it isn't an exact number, there are very real approximations as to what it might be, but more crucial is the driving concept behind it. Dunbar's Number is supposedly the number of human beings that we can acknowledge or conceptualise as other people, as beings with an identity. The people who make up this number have been labelled, by David Wong, as part of your 'Monkeysphere'. Your family and close friends will certainly be a part of this select group, probably your colleagues also. But as we move further away towards people that you might perhaps only see once a year, or even less frequently, or even people you've yet to meet, we start to leave the Monkeysphere. Beyond this invisible boundary people no longer have a recognisable identity. Instead they are simply a phenomena, like the birds in the trees or the weather - part of your surroundings, but as far as you are concerned not people. Some suggest that this is an inevitable limit of our brains, others suggest that it is a deliberate mechanism for coping with life in large numbers. Imagine how difficult your life would be if you were to treat every other human being you came into contact with on a daily basis as a close personal friend.
Natural or man-made, it is certainly a convenience. It serves as a simple solution to our earlier problem - how to make our way through life with a balance of humour and concern, without unduly upsetting or vilifying other people. Simply speaking the people within our Monkeysphere receive our deference and respect as well as immunity from any trivialisation of their daily troubles. People outside the sphere are not afforded such immunity, but since they are outside the sphere and we don't encounter them on a personal level, their concerns and perturbations don't matter to us in the slightest. But what happens when actually we gain the ability to influence and communicate directly with people outside the sphere?
In the case of a recent Facebook page it is quite clear that the sentiments expressed on the page will reach far more people than Dunbar's Number. Whatever the views of the people on the page it is probable, given the number of potential readers, that someone will find their views disagreeable. The accusation leveled at the page's creators are that it is trivialising rape and therefore is distressing to rape victims. The comments written on the page certainly lack any real concern for rape victims and will happily make crass jokes about sexual abuse, but now that such expressions have left the monkeysphere, and become available for all to read, the question is - what obligations are loaded onto the author, and what are the rights of the reader?
The first thing to acknowledge is that there do exist people who are determined to be offended. The story goes that upon completing the first English Dictionary, Dr Samuel Johnson was congratulated for not including any indecent or obscene words. His response was "so you've been looking for them, have you?". The story may or may not be true but it certainly illustrates the point that one should always be a little suspicious about motives. In order to be offended by something in print one has to have read it first. This involves first finding the text and then should any warning signs be present, ignoring them. Such was the cases of "Meredith" and "Jane", two women who were invited to participate in BBC 5 Live's morning phone-in. Both of these women were rape victims, and neither had innocently stumbled across the offending page. Jane had been explicitly directed to the page by journalists eager to know her take on things, whereas Meredith epitomised the problem at hand. Part of her therapy since her sexual assault had been to seek out pages such as this and campaign to get them removed. Leaving aside the questions of whether or not this is a valid route for therapy to take, it is quite clear that both women are now asking for a page to be taken down from Facebook which they would never have read in the first place and thus not been offended by it.
But let's not get ahead of ourselves, these women also have a genuine concern about the affects of these pages on society. This page has been described as 'promoting rape' which is quite a strong statement to make, and does not deserve to go by unexamined. The act of promotion necessarily requires some form of imploring or enticing of certain people to do certain things and these sort of lures are not really present on the page. But an even bigger implication of this statement is that actually we can't trust people to visit this page and no be affected, that this page needs to be removed for the benefit of those who might otherwise visit it and come away with the impression that rape is acceptable. Of course, no one would deny that our experiences and interactions play a part in shaping our views of society and the world, but the implication is that removing an offensive page such as this will actively change a person's view, which of course it would not, and if anything is a gross insult to men in general. Removing abhorrent discourse form the public domain only ensures that such views and attitudes go unchallenged. If the posters on 'You know she's playing hard to get when you're chasing her down an alleyway...' didn't already know that sexual abuse is an abhorrent act, they certainly do now.
Rape victim charities have argued that his page trivialises rape and I would be inclined to agree with them, but I don't see trivialisation as being an inherently bad thing. Trivialising life, as we have already touched upon, is a great way of dealing with an existence that would otherwise be catatonic or neurotic, and a 'sick' sense of humour is just one component of such a mechanism. If anything trivialises rape it is the act of reducing the topic to an argument about a Facebook page rather than, for example, improving the quality of education in schools, or (closer to my home) campaigning for street lighting in Leeds' Hyde Park, a spot notorious for violent crimes and sexual assaults. If the 'Monkeysphere' is an adaptation it is a stroke of genius, and if it is a natural restriction it is a gift. But what campaigners are asking of people is something they simply cannot deliver. We cannot extend the sphere indefinitely, and sooner or later someone will fall short of the necessary qualifications, so we have to ask ourselves - Do we have the right not to be offended?
Addendum: I should point out that it is not clear whether or not Hyde Park deserves its notoriety. Police.uk does indicate a high number of violent crimes committed in the area surrounding the park but does not indicate the exact nature of those crimes.
Enter Dunbar's Number. Strictly speaking it isn't an exact number, there are very real approximations as to what it might be, but more crucial is the driving concept behind it. Dunbar's Number is supposedly the number of human beings that we can acknowledge or conceptualise as other people, as beings with an identity. The people who make up this number have been labelled, by David Wong, as part of your 'Monkeysphere'. Your family and close friends will certainly be a part of this select group, probably your colleagues also. But as we move further away towards people that you might perhaps only see once a year, or even less frequently, or even people you've yet to meet, we start to leave the Monkeysphere. Beyond this invisible boundary people no longer have a recognisable identity. Instead they are simply a phenomena, like the birds in the trees or the weather - part of your surroundings, but as far as you are concerned not people. Some suggest that this is an inevitable limit of our brains, others suggest that it is a deliberate mechanism for coping with life in large numbers. Imagine how difficult your life would be if you were to treat every other human being you came into contact with on a daily basis as a close personal friend.
Natural or man-made, it is certainly a convenience. It serves as a simple solution to our earlier problem - how to make our way through life with a balance of humour and concern, without unduly upsetting or vilifying other people. Simply speaking the people within our Monkeysphere receive our deference and respect as well as immunity from any trivialisation of their daily troubles. People outside the sphere are not afforded such immunity, but since they are outside the sphere and we don't encounter them on a personal level, their concerns and perturbations don't matter to us in the slightest. But what happens when actually we gain the ability to influence and communicate directly with people outside the sphere?
In the case of a recent Facebook page it is quite clear that the sentiments expressed on the page will reach far more people than Dunbar's Number. Whatever the views of the people on the page it is probable, given the number of potential readers, that someone will find their views disagreeable. The accusation leveled at the page's creators are that it is trivialising rape and therefore is distressing to rape victims. The comments written on the page certainly lack any real concern for rape victims and will happily make crass jokes about sexual abuse, but now that such expressions have left the monkeysphere, and become available for all to read, the question is - what obligations are loaded onto the author, and what are the rights of the reader?
The first thing to acknowledge is that there do exist people who are determined to be offended. The story goes that upon completing the first English Dictionary, Dr Samuel Johnson was congratulated for not including any indecent or obscene words. His response was "so you've been looking for them, have you?". The story may or may not be true but it certainly illustrates the point that one should always be a little suspicious about motives. In order to be offended by something in print one has to have read it first. This involves first finding the text and then should any warning signs be present, ignoring them. Such was the cases of "Meredith" and "Jane", two women who were invited to participate in BBC 5 Live's morning phone-in. Both of these women were rape victims, and neither had innocently stumbled across the offending page. Jane had been explicitly directed to the page by journalists eager to know her take on things, whereas Meredith epitomised the problem at hand. Part of her therapy since her sexual assault had been to seek out pages such as this and campaign to get them removed. Leaving aside the questions of whether or not this is a valid route for therapy to take, it is quite clear that both women are now asking for a page to be taken down from Facebook which they would never have read in the first place and thus not been offended by it.
But let's not get ahead of ourselves, these women also have a genuine concern about the affects of these pages on society. This page has been described as 'promoting rape' which is quite a strong statement to make, and does not deserve to go by unexamined. The act of promotion necessarily requires some form of imploring or enticing of certain people to do certain things and these sort of lures are not really present on the page. But an even bigger implication of this statement is that actually we can't trust people to visit this page and no be affected, that this page needs to be removed for the benefit of those who might otherwise visit it and come away with the impression that rape is acceptable. Of course, no one would deny that our experiences and interactions play a part in shaping our views of society and the world, but the implication is that removing an offensive page such as this will actively change a person's view, which of course it would not, and if anything is a gross insult to men in general. Removing abhorrent discourse form the public domain only ensures that such views and attitudes go unchallenged. If the posters on 'You know she's playing hard to get when you're chasing her down an alleyway...' didn't already know that sexual abuse is an abhorrent act, they certainly do now.
Rape victim charities have argued that his page trivialises rape and I would be inclined to agree with them, but I don't see trivialisation as being an inherently bad thing. Trivialising life, as we have already touched upon, is a great way of dealing with an existence that would otherwise be catatonic or neurotic, and a 'sick' sense of humour is just one component of such a mechanism. If anything trivialises rape it is the act of reducing the topic to an argument about a Facebook page rather than, for example, improving the quality of education in schools, or (closer to my home) campaigning for street lighting in Leeds' Hyde Park, a spot notorious for violent crimes and sexual assaults. If the 'Monkeysphere' is an adaptation it is a stroke of genius, and if it is a natural restriction it is a gift. But what campaigners are asking of people is something they simply cannot deliver. We cannot extend the sphere indefinitely, and sooner or later someone will fall short of the necessary qualifications, so we have to ask ourselves - Do we have the right not to be offended?
Addendum: I should point out that it is not clear whether or not Hyde Park deserves its notoriety. Police.uk does indicate a high number of violent crimes committed in the area surrounding the park but does not indicate the exact nature of those crimes.
Tuesday 9 August 2011
Pig's Head on a Stick
Well, the 'silly season' never really got started did it? Drifting in on the tail of the phone-hacking scandal came the nascent tremor of the euro-zone economic situation, and peppering this palimpsest of news people occasionally recalled that there was famine in Ethiopia. And now the 'silly' and more bizarre stories are going to have to fight harder for the headlines as parts of the UK smoulder in ruins.
Never known to waste a good crisis of course, a good deal of posturing has resulted from this sorry state of affairs from politicians and political commentators alike. Since there is an appetite for 'investigations' and 'inquiries' at the moment, there is a mood to establish the truth of the matter, but sadly existence of this mood, developing in tandem with ongoing events, ultimately fosters the same kind of irrational and cynical reasoning that often mandates an inquiry in the first place. In the desperate effort to establish the truth whilst riots are still going on, commentators are essentially trying to investigate the source of the fire whilst the building burns around them. If flames have enveloped the entire building, how can you really be sure that someone left the grill on? And even then, is that information immediately useful?
Of course, the truth should not be left untouched, but frankly the attempts by politicians and commentators to explain this bizarre turn of events are pathetic if not a little contemptible. Labour politicians have repeatedly stated that these riots have resulted from a lack of opportunity and anger at the government cuts. Conservative politicians have claimed that this is part of the Labour legacy. And some commentators and bloggers have even dare claim that this is the consequence of consumerism and the celebrity culture. All of these accusations, whomever they are leveled at, of course always start with the words "I'm not excusing these events", or words to that effect, but regardless of which caveat they preface their thoughts with they fail to admit that they are still blaming someone other than the actual looters.
The most obvious difference between the riots occurring now and the ones that occurred thirty years ago is that the riots in the 1980's involved rioters actively aggravating the police. The scale of looting was relatively low, because actually the rioters of old, the classic rioter if you will, actually had a cogent, if possibly misguided, point to make. The fact that the present day rioters are barely in contact with the police just goes to illustrate that these people really don't have much of a point to make at all. Social deprivation and government cuts affect everyone, not just teenagers and young adults, so to reduce this violence and destruction to the result of unpopular government policy is simply lazy.
Indeed, such reasoning would not just seem to be lazy, but also in contradiction with the available facts. Currently, over a hundred people have been charged in the aftermath of the rioting in London, and current reports state that some of the people charged today have included Youth Workers, Social Workers, University Graduates, and even a recent enlistee to the Armed Forces. On first analysis, the fact that a list of rioters should include people in these professions does not seem particularly noteworthy, until one realises that these are not professions associated with the 'hopeless', 'disengaged' and 'deprived'. If someone who is 'disengaged' can become a Social Worker then it's a wonder that the Social Care service can function at all.
The argument from consumerism is an even more ludicrous line of reasoning. Of course, frequent images of celebrities flaunting their latest high-end purchases, and the ability of very high-profile individuals to ostensibly earn dizzying amounts of cash for seemingly very little work or effort, will always work to discourage anyone, not just the young, from putting in the effort themselves. Hopelessness is often born out of jealousy. However, once again, there are not middle-aged men or women involved in this looting, clamouring for the latest goods from high street stores. In fact, given the child population of London, it unarguably the case that there are a number of teenagers that are also not taking advantage of the seemingly lawless environment. If capitalism and the celebrity culture were truly the underlying cause of these events then one would need to clearly address this disparity between those inside and those outside the mob. What makes those who abstain from looting different from other people? Answer this question and you will do far more than anyone who advances this pathetic 'insight' into 'modern life'.
It is far too early to be postulating in this manner. Riots may be (at the time of writing) over in London, but they are simmering elsewhere. The sheer scale of the rioting cannot even be taken to be an indicator of the popularity of the 'cause' - instead of a common battle cry and a conch, this crowd could just as easily have limitless youthful curiosity and Twitter. All of the thoughts alluded to above are quite simply a cynical round of the blame game, with each person wishing to condemn the rioters whilst simultaneously tacking on a rider loaded with culpability to the target they have pre-chosen to suit their political bias. Any one of them could be proven to be correct in their analysis - but it would just good fortune. All of them rely on the axiom that all children are but a blank slate, waiting patiently and in good faith to be etched on by the corrupting and tainted influences of the wider world. But perhaps we shouldn't rule out the fact that actually, in the end, there is no explaining away that some people are just criminals, some people are just stupid, and that some people just want to belong to a crowd.
Never known to waste a good crisis of course, a good deal of posturing has resulted from this sorry state of affairs from politicians and political commentators alike. Since there is an appetite for 'investigations' and 'inquiries' at the moment, there is a mood to establish the truth of the matter, but sadly existence of this mood, developing in tandem with ongoing events, ultimately fosters the same kind of irrational and cynical reasoning that often mandates an inquiry in the first place. In the desperate effort to establish the truth whilst riots are still going on, commentators are essentially trying to investigate the source of the fire whilst the building burns around them. If flames have enveloped the entire building, how can you really be sure that someone left the grill on? And even then, is that information immediately useful?
Of course, the truth should not be left untouched, but frankly the attempts by politicians and commentators to explain this bizarre turn of events are pathetic if not a little contemptible. Labour politicians have repeatedly stated that these riots have resulted from a lack of opportunity and anger at the government cuts. Conservative politicians have claimed that this is part of the Labour legacy. And some commentators and bloggers have even dare claim that this is the consequence of consumerism and the celebrity culture. All of these accusations, whomever they are leveled at, of course always start with the words "I'm not excusing these events", or words to that effect, but regardless of which caveat they preface their thoughts with they fail to admit that they are still blaming someone other than the actual looters.
The most obvious difference between the riots occurring now and the ones that occurred thirty years ago is that the riots in the 1980's involved rioters actively aggravating the police. The scale of looting was relatively low, because actually the rioters of old, the classic rioter if you will, actually had a cogent, if possibly misguided, point to make. The fact that the present day rioters are barely in contact with the police just goes to illustrate that these people really don't have much of a point to make at all. Social deprivation and government cuts affect everyone, not just teenagers and young adults, so to reduce this violence and destruction to the result of unpopular government policy is simply lazy.
Indeed, such reasoning would not just seem to be lazy, but also in contradiction with the available facts. Currently, over a hundred people have been charged in the aftermath of the rioting in London, and current reports state that some of the people charged today have included Youth Workers, Social Workers, University Graduates, and even a recent enlistee to the Armed Forces. On first analysis, the fact that a list of rioters should include people in these professions does not seem particularly noteworthy, until one realises that these are not professions associated with the 'hopeless', 'disengaged' and 'deprived'. If someone who is 'disengaged' can become a Social Worker then it's a wonder that the Social Care service can function at all.
The argument from consumerism is an even more ludicrous line of reasoning. Of course, frequent images of celebrities flaunting their latest high-end purchases, and the ability of very high-profile individuals to ostensibly earn dizzying amounts of cash for seemingly very little work or effort, will always work to discourage anyone, not just the young, from putting in the effort themselves. Hopelessness is often born out of jealousy. However, once again, there are not middle-aged men or women involved in this looting, clamouring for the latest goods from high street stores. In fact, given the child population of London, it unarguably the case that there are a number of teenagers that are also not taking advantage of the seemingly lawless environment. If capitalism and the celebrity culture were truly the underlying cause of these events then one would need to clearly address this disparity between those inside and those outside the mob. What makes those who abstain from looting different from other people? Answer this question and you will do far more than anyone who advances this pathetic 'insight' into 'modern life'.
It is far too early to be postulating in this manner. Riots may be (at the time of writing) over in London, but they are simmering elsewhere. The sheer scale of the rioting cannot even be taken to be an indicator of the popularity of the 'cause' - instead of a common battle cry and a conch, this crowd could just as easily have limitless youthful curiosity and Twitter. All of the thoughts alluded to above are quite simply a cynical round of the blame game, with each person wishing to condemn the rioters whilst simultaneously tacking on a rider loaded with culpability to the target they have pre-chosen to suit their political bias. Any one of them could be proven to be correct in their analysis - but it would just good fortune. All of them rely on the axiom that all children are but a blank slate, waiting patiently and in good faith to be etched on by the corrupting and tainted influences of the wider world. But perhaps we shouldn't rule out the fact that actually, in the end, there is no explaining away that some people are just criminals, some people are just stupid, and that some people just want to belong to a crowd.
Friday 17 June 2011
Bogey-man and Magic Wand Politics - The Conservative Assault on Sexuality
Imagine teaching your son or daughter to cross the road safely. Having got them as far as the pavement it's fair to say that the first thing on your mind is to tell your child about all the terrible risks of being in the road, - the fast cars, the inattentive driver, the risk of injury or death - all of the possible dice we roll whenever we step out onto the tarmac. Once your child understands this you might then begin to teach them how to look left, look right, and so on. Taking the utmost care to make sure your child fully appreciates all of this, you content yourself in the knowledge that you have done well by your child, and have made them that much safer and responsible. And even better than this - no one had to tell you to do it.
Fast forward a few years and your son or daughter may well be straying forth into other unknown territories of responsibility. Whether it be drink, drugs or diet, your child will be needing the best information they can get in order to behave rationally and responsibly with their health, sanity, and general well-being. And indeed it may be the case that you constantly remind your child of the consequences of drink and drugs, or a poor diet. But there remains a subject that only just registers a pallid, weak response that barely registers above the din of the school playground, a subject that people know rather a lot about, but about which nobody speaks.
In a month of great success for mindless reactionism, sex is back on the agenda. Cries of outrage at the latest pop performance on television, the implicit and explicit meanings of song lyrics, suggestive advertising, and Internet pornography are now fast becoming a daily occurrence. Having realised that they can only bleat on for so long about the economy to justify their continued existence, the Government has found a new bogey-man, and indeed is grasping for a new magic wand. Having identified society's enemy they now seek to destroy it, quickly and painlessly, and then you can be grateful. Cliché can sometimes appear lazy, sometimes boorish, but often than not it is by its very nature quite apt. Rarely was this more so than the proclamation that 'history has a habit of repeating itself'.
And so it is proved today with the latest outburst from Mike Stock, a man who by all means made plenty of money by writing songs palatable for a large audience. But now the product is 'highly sexualised' on its "slow but unmistakable descent into pornography" and this he is not happy with it. But he would do well to recall that we genuinely have 'been here before'. At the very peak of his songwriting successes this very debate was being hacked out, not just in the press, but actually in the United States Senate, accosted by a group of Washington wives calling themselves the 'Parents Music Resource Center'. To speak against the notion that pop and rock music in America needed either self-regulation, or Orwellian state legislation, music professionals such as Dee Snyder, Frank Zappa, and John Denver were invited in 1985 to present their case to the Senate. The aforementioned (and other artists such as Tina Turner, Sheena Easton, Motley Crue, and Prince), were accused of a variety of ills ranging from corrupting the young, being responsible for the rise in incest amongst the population, teenage pregnancy, teenage suicide, and even the spread of HIV. In fact, one edition of CNN's 'Crossfire', a political debate show, even carried the tag line "Does Rock and Roll Cause AIDS?". The outcome of the entire sorry affront to liberty (not to mention the U.S. Constitution) were the "Advisory: Explicit Lyrics" labels that record companies now voluntarily attach to their releases. But even though this debacle was put to bed around a quarter of a century ago in the States, it appears that we are hell-bent on repeating history in our very own British way.
Following neatly on from the Bailey Report, Mike Stock has effectively condemned the nation's broadcasters for putting such filth into our homes without permission (the similarity between the words of Tipper Gore and Mike Stock is uncanny), as well as denouncing the watershed as being largely meaningless. But although the argument of corporate responsibility is an enticing and obvious one to address, the real nettle that both Reg Bailey and Mike Stock have comprehensively failed to grasp is why, if there is such an inexorable influx of 'pornography' into our, and our children's lives, is it actually a problem? Try as they might, proponents of the 'fight' against the 'sexualisation of the young' are only able to muster a spluttering, indignant mumble about something called 'their day' and decency. If you're really lucky, you might come across some bloated, red-faced parent who will repeat ill-informed nonsense about paedophiles with such frequency as to make any criminal psychologist weep at the futility of it all.
One thing is clearly a problem however - none of these moral crusaders are in any way, shape, or form, prepared to actually talk to their children. As alluded to in my preamble, you simply would not allow your child to learn to cross the road by trial and error. But in the case of sex, parents are more than willing, if not enthusiastic, at the prospect of burying their head in the sand and vainly hoping that their child gets it right. Sex is largely off the table for discussion, but to read the Bailey report one could be fooled into thinking that the entire population is talking about graphic sex from the breakfast table to the dining room, in the schoolyards, on the television, and on the news. But, perhaps disappointingly for our saviours, no such conversation is taking place. Allusions are made, and suggestive imaging is surely used, but none of these outlets actually talk explicitly about sex or sexuality. As Frank Zappa pointed out the first time around:
Fast forward a few years and your son or daughter may well be straying forth into other unknown territories of responsibility. Whether it be drink, drugs or diet, your child will be needing the best information they can get in order to behave rationally and responsibly with their health, sanity, and general well-being. And indeed it may be the case that you constantly remind your child of the consequences of drink and drugs, or a poor diet. But there remains a subject that only just registers a pallid, weak response that barely registers above the din of the school playground, a subject that people know rather a lot about, but about which nobody speaks.
In a month of great success for mindless reactionism, sex is back on the agenda. Cries of outrage at the latest pop performance on television, the implicit and explicit meanings of song lyrics, suggestive advertising, and Internet pornography are now fast becoming a daily occurrence. Having realised that they can only bleat on for so long about the economy to justify their continued existence, the Government has found a new bogey-man, and indeed is grasping for a new magic wand. Having identified society's enemy they now seek to destroy it, quickly and painlessly, and then you can be grateful. Cliché can sometimes appear lazy, sometimes boorish, but often than not it is by its very nature quite apt. Rarely was this more so than the proclamation that 'history has a habit of repeating itself'.
And so it is proved today with the latest outburst from Mike Stock, a man who by all means made plenty of money by writing songs palatable for a large audience. But now the product is 'highly sexualised' on its "slow but unmistakable descent into pornography" and this he is not happy with it. But he would do well to recall that we genuinely have 'been here before'. At the very peak of his songwriting successes this very debate was being hacked out, not just in the press, but actually in the United States Senate, accosted by a group of Washington wives calling themselves the 'Parents Music Resource Center'. To speak against the notion that pop and rock music in America needed either self-regulation, or Orwellian state legislation, music professionals such as Dee Snyder, Frank Zappa, and John Denver were invited in 1985 to present their case to the Senate. The aforementioned (and other artists such as Tina Turner, Sheena Easton, Motley Crue, and Prince), were accused of a variety of ills ranging from corrupting the young, being responsible for the rise in incest amongst the population, teenage pregnancy, teenage suicide, and even the spread of HIV. In fact, one edition of CNN's 'Crossfire', a political debate show, even carried the tag line "Does Rock and Roll Cause AIDS?". The outcome of the entire sorry affront to liberty (not to mention the U.S. Constitution) were the "Advisory: Explicit Lyrics" labels that record companies now voluntarily attach to their releases. But even though this debacle was put to bed around a quarter of a century ago in the States, it appears that we are hell-bent on repeating history in our very own British way.
Following neatly on from the Bailey Report, Mike Stock has effectively condemned the nation's broadcasters for putting such filth into our homes without permission (the similarity between the words of Tipper Gore and Mike Stock is uncanny), as well as denouncing the watershed as being largely meaningless. But although the argument of corporate responsibility is an enticing and obvious one to address, the real nettle that both Reg Bailey and Mike Stock have comprehensively failed to grasp is why, if there is such an inexorable influx of 'pornography' into our, and our children's lives, is it actually a problem? Try as they might, proponents of the 'fight' against the 'sexualisation of the young' are only able to muster a spluttering, indignant mumble about something called 'their day' and decency. If you're really lucky, you might come across some bloated, red-faced parent who will repeat ill-informed nonsense about paedophiles with such frequency as to make any criminal psychologist weep at the futility of it all.
One thing is clearly a problem however - none of these moral crusaders are in any way, shape, or form, prepared to actually talk to their children. As alluded to in my preamble, you simply would not allow your child to learn to cross the road by trial and error. But in the case of sex, parents are more than willing, if not enthusiastic, at the prospect of burying their head in the sand and vainly hoping that their child gets it right. Sex is largely off the table for discussion, but to read the Bailey report one could be fooled into thinking that the entire population is talking about graphic sex from the breakfast table to the dining room, in the schoolyards, on the television, and on the news. But, perhaps disappointingly for our saviours, no such conversation is taking place. Allusions are made, and suggestive imaging is surely used, but none of these outlets actually talk explicitly about sex or sexuality. As Frank Zappa pointed out the first time around:
"It's not sex, it's titillation. Given the choice between broadcasting violence or graphic sex usually it is the violence that is opted for."What we really need in the West is not less sex, but more of it. First impressions are priceless, and the first contact that a child has with any topic will lay the foundations for their interpretation of everything that succeeds it. Information and education, not cotton wool, are the key to making better choices. For when they finally unravel the swaddling the young will enjoy their freedom, but they will not be prepared for it. By submitting ourselves to a vow of silence on the matter we condemn ourselves to be forever battling against your child's first experience of anything sexual. Suddenly we are no longer the authority, we are withholder of truths, and we will have to fight doubly hard to regain the trust of our children when the rest of the world (to them at any rate) has appeared so ostensibly candid and honest. There the seeds of ignorance are sown and victims are created. People's lives can be ruined by a misjudgement in their sex life. People can spend their lives perpetually anxious and paranoid because of a reluctance to talk about their sexuality. Sex is fun, but sex is also risky and traumatic. So instead of allowing our children to stumble blindly into the wilderness, why not at least point them in the right direction?
Saturday 28 May 2011
The only way to maintain privacy for anyone is to guarantee it for no-one.
Having grown up in the rural North Cotswolds I can assure you that the so called 'small-town mentality' is something more than apparent, and in fact something very real and tangible. In small towns and villages in Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire it is not uncommon to find that everybody knows everybody else, everybody knows everybody else's business, and everybody is quite happy to talk about it. As a newcomer to the area you might well conclude that rural Britain is rife with scandal and intrigue. Unnerving? Perhaps. Conspicuous? Perhaps not. But this phenomenon definitely should not be surprising since it is not so much a measure of scandal, as the degree of focus.
As an uncertain person in a competitive city environment, one must necessarily pick their battles carefully. In a small rural hideaway, one can afford to be more or less indiscriminate - keeping an ever vigilant watch out for betrayal, opportunity, and weakness. The brief glare from a solitary passing stranger instead morphs into the all-seeing eye of the parish community. I'm sure it would not be too difficult for you to imagine the scene (bearing in mind that cliche and stereotypes do not sporadically sprout from thin air) of the local village pub. The place might be full of many groups of friends, family and colleagues - each having their own conversation about work, sports, or even politics. But quite probably the conversation will veer towards the latest local scandal to have found its way through the rumour mill. With flippancy, gentle misogyny, casual racism, unwarranted hubris, and above all a healthy dose of hypocrisy, the group parse the latest indictment, ferociously castigating one party, whilst maybe reluctantly praising another, and eventually come to their own conclusions about the matter. The next day they will go to work and disseminate their philosophy to their further friends and colleagues, revel in the attention, and enjoy the humoured banter that results from this mitosis.
Of course, this narrative may well make the event sound far more malicious than its participants would have you believe. But if you can see past this, perhaps you could imagine the subject of such a discussion standing up in the pub and demanding that conversation about him cease immediately. The fellow would be laughed, jeered, and snorted at. He would be accused of wanting to have his cake and eat it - or perhaps make his bed and then wish to lie in someone else's. The fact of the matter is that to adhere to his vain cry of anonymity would strain the instincts of all involved, and forever engage them in a masochistic web of complexity and deceit. Even on a small scale, the submission to such a request would be the beginning of the end of honesty.
But let's multiply out the numbers, shall we? Say the small village of a hundred becomes hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people, who, if they don't know you, at least have access to information about you and your activities. Suddenly, the issue of privacy becomes one of great concern to such a person and, as we have seen recently, they will go to great lengths and expenditure to maintain it. Tens of thousands of pounds can be spent in an effort to silence as many individuals as possible, to the point where we very nearly face the absurd prospect of trying, and possibly imprisoning, someone with a legal bar on them being named even after their conviction. But does all this rigmarole really preserve someone's privacy?
The obvious problem with this system is that far from being fair, it openly dictates that the level of this vague 'privacy' one might be entitled to is determined by your ability to pay for it. Our poor friend in the pub might well wish to take out a court injunction could he afford it, but he can't. Therefore, the oft invoked 'court of public opinion' can do its worst. If you can afford it even public opinion is of little consequence.
The less obvious characteristic of this issue is how people view 'privacy'. Privacy is of course nothing to do with other people talking about us. Privacy is everything to do with people talking about things we do not want them to know. And one could be forgiven for thinking that there may be something more than a little suspicious about wanting to do something but actively not wanting people to know about it. There is no implicit bowing to the tyranny of the majority here - if one partakes in something considered just by the cringeworthy minority but wishes to remain anonmyous, then one should not be surprised when people begin to question your motives. Either such a person agrees with the minority but wants to assume the position of the majority, or they ostensibly wish to appease the minority whilst being part of the majority. In either case, the subject is both deceitful and duplicitous, and it remains to be seen whether such characteristics can be good for the human condition.
Ultimately, 'privacy' is the shield we use to excuse our dishonesty and deceit. The cornerstone of liberalism is the ability to exercise our freedoms so long as we do not restrict the freedoms of others. But the corollary of such a maxim is that you must be prepared for dissent and debate. If we are not proud of our actions then we should not partake in them. If we are proud and true to our convictions then what does it matter when the baying crowd decry them - they are what we believe to be true and just. We make our own privacy and we get the final say on what is said and what is not by virtue of our actions. The moment that anybody is able to circumvent this simple responsibilty then the focus on such a person necessarily increases. To put it another way, the more you seek to protect your privacy, the further you thrust yourself in the public eye. What do you have to hide?
As an uncertain person in a competitive city environment, one must necessarily pick their battles carefully. In a small rural hideaway, one can afford to be more or less indiscriminate - keeping an ever vigilant watch out for betrayal, opportunity, and weakness. The brief glare from a solitary passing stranger instead morphs into the all-seeing eye of the parish community. I'm sure it would not be too difficult for you to imagine the scene (bearing in mind that cliche and stereotypes do not sporadically sprout from thin air) of the local village pub. The place might be full of many groups of friends, family and colleagues - each having their own conversation about work, sports, or even politics. But quite probably the conversation will veer towards the latest local scandal to have found its way through the rumour mill. With flippancy, gentle misogyny, casual racism, unwarranted hubris, and above all a healthy dose of hypocrisy, the group parse the latest indictment, ferociously castigating one party, whilst maybe reluctantly praising another, and eventually come to their own conclusions about the matter. The next day they will go to work and disseminate their philosophy to their further friends and colleagues, revel in the attention, and enjoy the humoured banter that results from this mitosis.
Of course, this narrative may well make the event sound far more malicious than its participants would have you believe. But if you can see past this, perhaps you could imagine the subject of such a discussion standing up in the pub and demanding that conversation about him cease immediately. The fellow would be laughed, jeered, and snorted at. He would be accused of wanting to have his cake and eat it - or perhaps make his bed and then wish to lie in someone else's. The fact of the matter is that to adhere to his vain cry of anonymity would strain the instincts of all involved, and forever engage them in a masochistic web of complexity and deceit. Even on a small scale, the submission to such a request would be the beginning of the end of honesty.
But let's multiply out the numbers, shall we? Say the small village of a hundred becomes hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people, who, if they don't know you, at least have access to information about you and your activities. Suddenly, the issue of privacy becomes one of great concern to such a person and, as we have seen recently, they will go to great lengths and expenditure to maintain it. Tens of thousands of pounds can be spent in an effort to silence as many individuals as possible, to the point where we very nearly face the absurd prospect of trying, and possibly imprisoning, someone with a legal bar on them being named even after their conviction. But does all this rigmarole really preserve someone's privacy?
The obvious problem with this system is that far from being fair, it openly dictates that the level of this vague 'privacy' one might be entitled to is determined by your ability to pay for it. Our poor friend in the pub might well wish to take out a court injunction could he afford it, but he can't. Therefore, the oft invoked 'court of public opinion' can do its worst. If you can afford it even public opinion is of little consequence.
The less obvious characteristic of this issue is how people view 'privacy'. Privacy is of course nothing to do with other people talking about us. Privacy is everything to do with people talking about things we do not want them to know. And one could be forgiven for thinking that there may be something more than a little suspicious about wanting to do something but actively not wanting people to know about it. There is no implicit bowing to the tyranny of the majority here - if one partakes in something considered just by the cringeworthy minority but wishes to remain anonmyous, then one should not be surprised when people begin to question your motives. Either such a person agrees with the minority but wants to assume the position of the majority, or they ostensibly wish to appease the minority whilst being part of the majority. In either case, the subject is both deceitful and duplicitous, and it remains to be seen whether such characteristics can be good for the human condition.
Ultimately, 'privacy' is the shield we use to excuse our dishonesty and deceit. The cornerstone of liberalism is the ability to exercise our freedoms so long as we do not restrict the freedoms of others. But the corollary of such a maxim is that you must be prepared for dissent and debate. If we are not proud of our actions then we should not partake in them. If we are proud and true to our convictions then what does it matter when the baying crowd decry them - they are what we believe to be true and just. We make our own privacy and we get the final say on what is said and what is not by virtue of our actions. The moment that anybody is able to circumvent this simple responsibilty then the focus on such a person necessarily increases. To put it another way, the more you seek to protect your privacy, the further you thrust yourself in the public eye. What do you have to hide?
Wednesday 4 May 2011
The AV Referendum is not the 'be all and end all' of political feform but it will certainly set the tone of future efforts
'A miserable little compromise' is how Nick Clegg defined the Alternative Vote. No one can claim that he is the victim of quote mining, these were his actual words, and the 'No to AV' campaign have been repeating the phrase with almost reckless abandon. However, any man who walks into the negotiating room with the lowest possible result as his opening bid is not going to win many favours. Clegg was right to deride it then, just as he is right to support it now. We always assumed that the Tories wouldn't budge on Proportional Representation, but if we had given up before the fight had begun, we would only have ourselves to blame for failure.
And failure, if the polls are to be believed, is where we are still heading. With the majority of polls firmly putting the 'No' Campaign furlongs ahead, scathing attacks on the No Campaign's strategies have been present for at least a week - and it's hard not to see why. There are good reasons for not adopting the Alternative Vote system, such as the strength of any resulting government, for example, but the No camp seem quite happy to settle for the lowest common denominator and spread misleading information and lies
The amount of money that the Alternative Vote would cost is a good example of a claim by the No camp being both misleading and false at the same time. The claim that it would cost £230 million is misleading since £91 million of the total has already been spent (on the referendum), and false because another £130 million of the total is allocated for voting machines which no-one is asking for. Taken at face value such a claim would understandably concern a number of voters, especially those who are losing jobs, finding their local services cut etc. The No camp are also quite happy to use extremist parties as an additional bogeyman to the mix, serving to frighten voters more. And this is where the Yes campaign will have failed, in it's inability to fight dirty.
Obviously, by the nature of its title ('Yes to Fairer Votes'), the campaign would have struggled to fight fire with fire, but there are a number of equally low arguments which could have frightened voters in the opposite direction. They could have for instance linked the 'MP's Expenses' scandal with the 'safe seat' phenomenon and played that ace repeatedly. They could have played the extremist card themselves, since the BNP are campaigning for a 'No' vote. But most importantly, they could have claimed, loud and clear, that voting 'No' will set back voting reform for a generation. Admittedly, all of these things have been said, loosely, by the Yes camp, but none of them have been their central arguments, and perhaps they should have been.
Whilst dismissed as scaremongering by some, it is a concern that a 'No' vote tomorrow will put the reform genie back in the bottle, and you only need look at the language used by politicians to see why. When Labour and the Conservatives both promised (and failed to deliver) a referendum on Europe in the run up the election, one phrase was repeated ad nauseum. "The voters will decide once and for all" was what MPs promised, and it is this very language that we should be wary of. The notion that a referendum can decide an issue, any issue, once and for all is a very seedy one, and implies of course that any negative result is likely to be taken into account regarding any future referendums for some time to follow. Indeed, it would not be unwise to suspect that future referendums would need to be triggered by a suitably large cry for one in parliament, rather than by a progressive elected government. This should worry all of us who are in favour of reform.
The Conservatives and Labour are unlikely to call for voting reform once in power. It is going to take a minority party to make particularly vocal stand (or a second coalition government) to bring this issue back to the table. Even then it is unlikely that such a party would have the clout to be able to successfully get one. Once past that hurdle, the years since the last referendum would have to be sufficient in number to successfully argue that the mood of the public has changed. As you can see, it will not be easy, and the Conservatives are well aware of this. Were they really committed to electoral reform, they could have enacted an AV-style referendum, offering the public a variety of different voting methods - but they didn't. Instead they offered one alternative, and picked the one which was most likely to fail at the ballot box. We should not be at all surprised if a 'No' vote is proclaimed as a ringing endorsement for First Past The Post - my only hope will be that the 'No' voters who get stung in this way will still be around to draw on the experience for the next referendum on voting reform - whenever it may come.
And failure, if the polls are to be believed, is where we are still heading. With the majority of polls firmly putting the 'No' Campaign furlongs ahead, scathing attacks on the No Campaign's strategies have been present for at least a week - and it's hard not to see why. There are good reasons for not adopting the Alternative Vote system, such as the strength of any resulting government, for example, but the No camp seem quite happy to settle for the lowest common denominator and spread misleading information and lies
The amount of money that the Alternative Vote would cost is a good example of a claim by the No camp being both misleading and false at the same time. The claim that it would cost £230 million is misleading since £91 million of the total has already been spent (on the referendum), and false because another £130 million of the total is allocated for voting machines which no-one is asking for. Taken at face value such a claim would understandably concern a number of voters, especially those who are losing jobs, finding their local services cut etc. The No camp are also quite happy to use extremist parties as an additional bogeyman to the mix, serving to frighten voters more. And this is where the Yes campaign will have failed, in it's inability to fight dirty.
Obviously, by the nature of its title ('Yes to Fairer Votes'), the campaign would have struggled to fight fire with fire, but there are a number of equally low arguments which could have frightened voters in the opposite direction. They could have for instance linked the 'MP's Expenses' scandal with the 'safe seat' phenomenon and played that ace repeatedly. They could have played the extremist card themselves, since the BNP are campaigning for a 'No' vote. But most importantly, they could have claimed, loud and clear, that voting 'No' will set back voting reform for a generation. Admittedly, all of these things have been said, loosely, by the Yes camp, but none of them have been their central arguments, and perhaps they should have been.
Whilst dismissed as scaremongering by some, it is a concern that a 'No' vote tomorrow will put the reform genie back in the bottle, and you only need look at the language used by politicians to see why. When Labour and the Conservatives both promised (and failed to deliver) a referendum on Europe in the run up the election, one phrase was repeated ad nauseum. "The voters will decide once and for all" was what MPs promised, and it is this very language that we should be wary of. The notion that a referendum can decide an issue, any issue, once and for all is a very seedy one, and implies of course that any negative result is likely to be taken into account regarding any future referendums for some time to follow. Indeed, it would not be unwise to suspect that future referendums would need to be triggered by a suitably large cry for one in parliament, rather than by a progressive elected government. This should worry all of us who are in favour of reform.
The Conservatives and Labour are unlikely to call for voting reform once in power. It is going to take a minority party to make particularly vocal stand (or a second coalition government) to bring this issue back to the table. Even then it is unlikely that such a party would have the clout to be able to successfully get one. Once past that hurdle, the years since the last referendum would have to be sufficient in number to successfully argue that the mood of the public has changed. As you can see, it will not be easy, and the Conservatives are well aware of this. Were they really committed to electoral reform, they could have enacted an AV-style referendum, offering the public a variety of different voting methods - but they didn't. Instead they offered one alternative, and picked the one which was most likely to fail at the ballot box. We should not be at all surprised if a 'No' vote is proclaimed as a ringing endorsement for First Past The Post - my only hope will be that the 'No' voters who get stung in this way will still be around to draw on the experience for the next referendum on voting reform - whenever it may come.
Friday 22 April 2011
The 'No to AV' Campaign's arguments rely on condescension and scaremongering, with nothing to say about principle
A pamphlet dissected:
As May 5th draws nearer I of course should not be surprised if I were to be submerged in a wash of campaign leaflets, but if the truth be told only one solitary leaflet has so far appeared on the doormat, from the 'No to AV' campaign.
Purple seems to be the colour of the month at the moment - census forms, 'Yes to Fairer Votes', and also the 'No to AV' camp seem to have taken it up, but only the 'No' camp seem to have additionally opted for this rather sickening off green colour to compliment it. This is probably to portray some sort of party political neutrality but quite frankly it makes me feel a little queasy.
None the less, the first thing to notice on the front cover is the rather spasmodic claim that 'None of your taxes have been used to print this leaflet'. I say 'spasmodic' since the thought had genuinely never entered my head - the question of campaign funding was not asked by me of anyone. But of course, once I opened this quasi-psychedelic leaflet the purpose of the outburst on the front cover becomes all too apparent - by stating the bleeding obvious immediately before stating a piece of obfuscatory nonsense the campaign hope that you, the reader, will conflate the two into one congruent and unassailable truth, that AV will cost a fortune.
The first problem with this imaginary £250 million is that it heavily relies on the notion that £130 million will be spent on electronic voting machines, something which neither the Yes campaign is advocating, nor anyone else for that matter. The exact mechanics of how a vote will be taken is beyond the scope of this referendum, and is well out of the hands of either side of the debate.
And so begins a subtle subtext of extreme condescension and insult which litters the entire leaflet. The very fact that the No campaign assert that electronic machines must be used in order to conduct a vote implies that marking an 'X' on a ballot paper is easy, but to write the numbers 1 through to 5 in sequence requires some sort of state of the art technology.
The No Campaign then append a veritable shopping list of things that could be bought using such a sum of money (forgetting of course that £91m of their £250m is already being spent in the form of the referendum itself) which fails as a cogent point in its entirety. There are any number of things which the government spends money on which inevitably are diverted from public services, the Olympics for example. The question is whether you can justify your alternative spending in terms of the net benefit it may bring to nation as a whole and whether it suitably offsets the noted sacrifices (I would argue that the Olympics is likely to be the greatest waste of money since the Millenium Dome but that's for another day). Following in this vein, the price of the Alternative Vote is, in accordance with your political standpoint, the price of a greater democracy. If you believe AV will provide an enhanced level of democracy then of course the cost is worth it, if you are against AV then the cost is obviously not worth it. The cost of the change itself is irrelevant to the argument at hand.
The literature then goes on to explain the Alternative Vote system relatively simply, in fact it does it a much better way than some of the Yes campaign's own literature, and does absolutely nothing to state why this system is deserved of opposition. Except scanning across the page, it appears they do have a second argument (hurrah!) centered around the popularity of the AV system. The first line of the page reads "AV is not a fair system. That's why only three countries in the world use it..." This is of course something of a leap to make this connection. No quotes are included from other world leaders to say that the reason they do not use the system is because it is unfair - indeed our own country has not proposed an alternative voting method in any serious context until now, and so we can safely say that at least one reason the United Kingdom does not use AV is more likely because it has never been in the offing.
The next page displays a side-by-side comparison of how the two systems work. Here is where obfuscation is taken to a higher level. The First Past The Post system is explained in just over 10 words, the AV system in over 230 words (in direct contradiction with the previous explanation which managed to do it in 20-something words with a few diagrams). A brief read of the explanation of the AV column reveals the most bizarrely constructed and protracted sentences ever written, in a deliberate attempt to make the explanation harder to follow. It should be noted that the Yes campaign's explanation of the system uses 100 fewer words to describe the same event. But as a piece of visual trickery it is at least inventive if completely devoid of a note worthy point.
Now we come to the page that most bothers me. At the top of the page is a picture of a running race with a caption indicating that second place is the winner. Obviously, politics is not an athletics event, and no runner is ever going to win because he has the majority of the crowd support - if they were, then we can expect a mountain of gold medals next summer. False analogy, move on.
Underneath this picture comes the scaremongering, in the form of a brief but vacuous paragraph. Apparently it's wrong for the person in second or third to overtake the person with the most votes because the "lower choices of supporters of extreme parties such as the BNP are counted again..." The sheer affront to democracy of this paragraph is staggering. Firstly, it appears that if you vote BNP you are not entitled to have a second preference. In fact the implication of this sentence is that because the votes of extremist parties are included that somehow makes the whole thing much worse, that in fact we would prefer to disenfranchise voters of such parties. The subtext of this is a naked argument against representation and democracy itself. When an organisation actively wishes our voting system to discriminate against the votes of BNP supporters what they arguing for is for a voting system which is palpably, and unarguably rigged.
Incidentally, the next line makes a throw statement about AV being 'the end to equal votes' but, as the pamphlet has already disclosed, they doesn't necessarily regard all votes as equal anyway.
The final page essentially attacks Nick Clegg's integrity. I'm not going to spend much time on this, since I have very little sympathy with Nick Clegg. Deriding his motives for advocating the Alternative Vote is a waste of time, and completely irrelevant to the debate. Even if I hadn't voted Lib Dem in the past I would still be in the Yes camp, and I wouldn't be remotely concerned with Clegg's performance in government.
And so to round off, the No Campaigns arguments seem to fall into four categories - 1) AV is expensive, especially if you demand voting machines to conduct it, which nobody is of course. 2) Fifteen million smokers can't be wrong. 3) Extremist votes shouldn't be counted and we want to do everything we can to rig the system against them (note that Nick Griffin is supporting a No vote) and finally 4) You don't want to side with Nick Clegg, do you?
You didn't happen to spot any major democratic principles in there did you?
As May 5th draws nearer I of course should not be surprised if I were to be submerged in a wash of campaign leaflets, but if the truth be told only one solitary leaflet has so far appeared on the doormat, from the 'No to AV' campaign.
Purple seems to be the colour of the month at the moment - census forms, 'Yes to Fairer Votes', and also the 'No to AV' camp seem to have taken it up, but only the 'No' camp seem to have additionally opted for this rather sickening off green colour to compliment it. This is probably to portray some sort of party political neutrality but quite frankly it makes me feel a little queasy.
None the less, the first thing to notice on the front cover is the rather spasmodic claim that 'None of your taxes have been used to print this leaflet'. I say 'spasmodic' since the thought had genuinely never entered my head - the question of campaign funding was not asked by me of anyone. But of course, once I opened this quasi-psychedelic leaflet the purpose of the outburst on the front cover becomes all too apparent - by stating the bleeding obvious immediately before stating a piece of obfuscatory nonsense the campaign hope that you, the reader, will conflate the two into one congruent and unassailable truth, that AV will cost a fortune.
The first problem with this imaginary £250 million is that it heavily relies on the notion that £130 million will be spent on electronic voting machines, something which neither the Yes campaign is advocating, nor anyone else for that matter. The exact mechanics of how a vote will be taken is beyond the scope of this referendum, and is well out of the hands of either side of the debate.
And so begins a subtle subtext of extreme condescension and insult which litters the entire leaflet. The very fact that the No campaign assert that electronic machines must be used in order to conduct a vote implies that marking an 'X' on a ballot paper is easy, but to write the numbers 1 through to 5 in sequence requires some sort of state of the art technology.
The No Campaign then append a veritable shopping list of things that could be bought using such a sum of money (forgetting of course that £91m of their £250m is already being spent in the form of the referendum itself) which fails as a cogent point in its entirety. There are any number of things which the government spends money on which inevitably are diverted from public services, the Olympics for example. The question is whether you can justify your alternative spending in terms of the net benefit it may bring to nation as a whole and whether it suitably offsets the noted sacrifices (I would argue that the Olympics is likely to be the greatest waste of money since the Millenium Dome but that's for another day). Following in this vein, the price of the Alternative Vote is, in accordance with your political standpoint, the price of a greater democracy. If you believe AV will provide an enhanced level of democracy then of course the cost is worth it, if you are against AV then the cost is obviously not worth it. The cost of the change itself is irrelevant to the argument at hand.
The literature then goes on to explain the Alternative Vote system relatively simply, in fact it does it a much better way than some of the Yes campaign's own literature, and does absolutely nothing to state why this system is deserved of opposition. Except scanning across the page, it appears they do have a second argument (hurrah!) centered around the popularity of the AV system. The first line of the page reads "AV is not a fair system. That's why only three countries in the world use it..." This is of course something of a leap to make this connection. No quotes are included from other world leaders to say that the reason they do not use the system is because it is unfair - indeed our own country has not proposed an alternative voting method in any serious context until now, and so we can safely say that at least one reason the United Kingdom does not use AV is more likely because it has never been in the offing.
The next page displays a side-by-side comparison of how the two systems work. Here is where obfuscation is taken to a higher level. The First Past The Post system is explained in just over 10 words, the AV system in over 230 words (in direct contradiction with the previous explanation which managed to do it in 20-something words with a few diagrams). A brief read of the explanation of the AV column reveals the most bizarrely constructed and protracted sentences ever written, in a deliberate attempt to make the explanation harder to follow. It should be noted that the Yes campaign's explanation of the system uses 100 fewer words to describe the same event. But as a piece of visual trickery it is at least inventive if completely devoid of a note worthy point.
Now we come to the page that most bothers me. At the top of the page is a picture of a running race with a caption indicating that second place is the winner. Obviously, politics is not an athletics event, and no runner is ever going to win because he has the majority of the crowd support - if they were, then we can expect a mountain of gold medals next summer. False analogy, move on.
Underneath this picture comes the scaremongering, in the form of a brief but vacuous paragraph. Apparently it's wrong for the person in second or third to overtake the person with the most votes because the "lower choices of supporters of extreme parties such as the BNP are counted again..." The sheer affront to democracy of this paragraph is staggering. Firstly, it appears that if you vote BNP you are not entitled to have a second preference. In fact the implication of this sentence is that because the votes of extremist parties are included that somehow makes the whole thing much worse, that in fact we would prefer to disenfranchise voters of such parties. The subtext of this is a naked argument against representation and democracy itself. When an organisation actively wishes our voting system to discriminate against the votes of BNP supporters what they arguing for is for a voting system which is palpably, and unarguably rigged.
Incidentally, the next line makes a throw statement about AV being 'the end to equal votes' but, as the pamphlet has already disclosed, they doesn't necessarily regard all votes as equal anyway.
The final page essentially attacks Nick Clegg's integrity. I'm not going to spend much time on this, since I have very little sympathy with Nick Clegg. Deriding his motives for advocating the Alternative Vote is a waste of time, and completely irrelevant to the debate. Even if I hadn't voted Lib Dem in the past I would still be in the Yes camp, and I wouldn't be remotely concerned with Clegg's performance in government.
And so to round off, the No Campaigns arguments seem to fall into four categories - 1) AV is expensive, especially if you demand voting machines to conduct it, which nobody is of course. 2) Fifteen million smokers can't be wrong. 3) Extremist votes shouldn't be counted and we want to do everything we can to rig the system against them (note that Nick Griffin is supporting a No vote) and finally 4) You don't want to side with Nick Clegg, do you?
You didn't happen to spot any major democratic principles in there did you?
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