Here you come again

Professional northerner and ex-Home Office minister Bob Ainsworth is the latest ex-person-in-position-of-responsibility to come out and state the bleeding obvious - all drugs should be de-criminalised. Of course when he was at the Home Office, the drugs laws were a good thing, or at least he believed they were a good thing. Otherwise he would have said so, right? Right?

Anyway, better late than never I suppose. It adds a little weight to the very necessary movement to de-criminalise drugs. Actually, that is a nicety. My thing is for full legalisation, but baby steps, Clarice, baby steps....

Since Ainsworth has brought the question into the public domain once again I note that ex-Spanish Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez is also calling for the debate to be re-opened. Gonzalez's specific concern appears to be the violence associated with the illegal drugs trade, particularly in Mexico. He points out that the ultra-violence that prevailed during prohibition-era Amercia ended not with Capone being put behind bars, but when prohibition finally ended. 'Nuff said.

Did I say ten to twenty years? Make that five to fifteen.

Fahrenheit 451

A teenager has reportedly been arrested in the West Midlands for burning a copy of the Quran and posting the video footage on YouTube. This, apparently, is the crime of "inciting religious hatred".

It is silly to burn a book given the symbolic significance of such an act. However, the Quran is exactly that - a book. Burning it is no worse than burning a Dan Brown novel. Well, intrinsically no worse. Obviously, the consequences for the burner may be somewhat different, given the world-renowned tolerance of the faithful. But that is their problem, not ours. I am horrified that the police could consider this a crime.

Presumably if I declare the Guinness Book Of Records to be a holy text it will become a "hate crime" to burn a copy. After all, there is no difference between me doing such a ridiculous thing and Muslims believing in the devine provenance of the Quran. Or perhaps the West Midlands police believe that the Quran is the actual word of god? If so, we should be told. I wasn't aware I was living in a theocracy.

But you may say that this is different. Burning a copy of the GBOR simply says: "people who believe in that are idiots" whereas burning the Quran says: "kill all muslims". And I would disagree.

Saying "kill all muslims" is arguably a hate crime in the same was as saying "kill all tutsis" or "kill all bald people" are (arguably) hate crimes, at least if said with conviction and not satire. At most, burning the Quran says "I'm angry that something that is so obviously a work of fiction is treated with such reverence and that its rather unpleasant instructions are treated as a guide to life for many people (many of whom wish to impose it on everyone else on the planet)." That's just common sense.

Plagiarism

People say that you can't criticise something until you have tried it for yourself. Nonsense. I am about to criticise Dan Brown and I have never read one of his novels. So what are my qualifications? Well, a resort to authority, or perhaps pseudo-authority. An over reliance on authority is a terrible thing ("I was just following orders"). However, who would wish to argue with this collection of thoughts on Mr Brown's oeuvre:

Stephen King: "the intellectual equivalent of Kraft Macaroni & Cheese"
John Humphreys: "the literary equivalent of painting by numbers, by an artist who can’t even stay within the lines"
Salman Rushdie: "so bad that it gives bad novels a bad name"
Stewart Lee: "there is nothing of any value in Dan Brown"
Stephen Fry: "complete loose stool-water"
New York Times: "primer on how not to write an English sentence"
Anthony Lane: "unmitigated junk"
Geoffrey Pullum: "(one of the) worst prose stylists in the history of literature"

So imagine how pleased with myself I was this morning when I saw a fellow passenger reading Brown, and thought to myself "something to do while you wait to die." (The smug commuter mentally criticised the bespectacled fat man.)

Did I steal that from somewhere? It came to me unbidden, which is always a hint that something isn't original thought. But it felt original. And it felt good.

Que Sera Sera

This question just popped up on Yahoo! Answers:

"How do you think the universe came into existing?
I want your own theories/ideals about how the universe was created within absolutely noting?I know we may never know.. its fun to think about it. Your ideals on anything like this whether it be how planets were made, life, space or anything like that I would like to hear it. so please and thank you for your time"

This is my answer:

"There is overwhelming evidence that our Universe was contained within a tiny, extremely energetic point around 13 billion years ago. Therefore, we can say with confidence that a "Big Bang" happened, in the sense that we know that our Universe expanded extremely rapidly from that point. After that, the reasons for the formation of stars and planets are very well understood (basically gravity), and the cause of life is fairly well understood (if the laws of chemistry applying across ten thousand billion billion planetary systems over billions of years did not lead to the formation of life, it would be pretty surprising).

"However, there is still the rather significant question of what caused the existence of that tiny point of massive energy that became our Universe? There are various theories such as the "Big Bounce" or a series of "bubble universes" within a greater "multiverse", but all are highly speculative and rather unsatisfactory since they leave open the question "but what caused that?"

"One answer can almost certainly be ruled out - God. There are no meaningful reasons to believe in a god other than (arguably) the existence of our Universe. But if we believe that "God" is the cause of the Universe, we have achieved nothing since we are left with the question "but what caused God?" and we are back to square one. In fact, we would be left asking why we bothered suggesting God in the first place since it explains nothing and only adds pointless complication.

"Some people may answer that God is causeless. However, that argument is self-defeating. If something can be causeless then, by definition, the Universe could exist without cause. Using the philosophical argument known as Ockham's Razor, we would then conclude that the Universe just came into existence for no reason and your original question would become meaningless - pretty unsatisfactory, I think you will agree! We would also conclude that there is no longer ANY reason to believe in God and could dimiss his existence for the same reasons that we do not believe in fairies or Darth Vader. So whichever way we look at it, God is a pretty useless explanation.

"I think a far more likely answer to your question is that even within a void, there is some essential 'thing' that makes the existence of Universes like ours either a necessity or at least a possibility. If either of those scenarios is correct, then there is no longer a mystery and we are simply left to work out the precise details (the "how" of your question). Regarding what such a 'thing' might be, I would assume it would be some law of mathematics or logic. However, I appreciate that someone could respond to that with "but why do mathematics and logic exist and why are they the way that they are?" Well I'm sorry, but no one knows the answer to that yet. I expect that given enough time our species will work it out one day, or maybe we will make contact with a more advanced species that can explain it to us."

I'm up against some intellectual giants (sample: "I think that somehow the Universe is the aftermath of erosion/decay/death of something that we will never understand") but I'm hopeful of getting that treasured 'Best Answer' prize.

Don't Pray In My School And I Won't Think In Your Church

Two news stories today with a whiff of the metaphysical about them.

Confirming the conviction of a woman who killed her severely disabled and brain-damaged son, Lord Judge said ".... however disabled Thomas might have been, a disabled life, even a life lived at the extremes of disability, is not one jot less precious than the life of an able-bodied person." http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-11742526

Hm? I wonder how many people would whole-heartedly agree with that when obliged to consider it rationally. Of course, we don't all think rationally all of the time. I gather Igor Judge is a catholic (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:British_Roman_Catholics)

And good old Iain Duncan Smith is at it as well (http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/nov/11/coalition-backlash-hardship-payments-scrapped).

IDS kindly informs us that it is a "sin" for people to fail to take up work. Well, that may be true in a broad, vague'ish sense, but it may not be the most considered thing the former leader of the Conservatives has said. But then again, he too is a catholic.

IDS is entitled to his opinions and I suppose he is entitled to voice them in his role as a member of Government. But we should be very wary of these opinions when it comes to the next General Election. Obviously the same went for Blair in spades.

However, Lord Judge's catholicism quite possibly disqualifies him morally from passing judgement on matters of life and death. The Vatican's ex-cathedra pronouncements in this area makes it impossible for any observant Roman Catholic to make rational decisions here. And without rational thought, what is left of our society? Might as well hand it over to the mullahs or the bishops.

I Am Not A Number

Lovely stuff: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-11719764

The new Government is spending a fortune (quite rightly in my view) destroying the data compiled for the ID database. Two particular amusing/horrifying facts:

“... if the data it collected had been stored centrally as it was meant to be. But there is evidence that some was accidentally stored locally”

“Accidentally stored locally”??? So reassurances about the security of the data were... bullshit. Exactly as anyone with 3 brain cells insisted all along.

“Anti-ID card campaigners often warned about the dangers of storing all of the ID data in one place - making it potentially vulnerable to hacking, only to be assured by ministers from the previous government that this would not happen. So it is fascinating to read that there are two separate locations in the UK where all of the biometric and biographical information gathered by the ID card scheme is, or has been, stored.”

So ministers just lied. They said the data would be spread around to make it less vulnerable. But it was all stored together in one place. Two actually, so doubly risky.

It does make me really angry when I remember all the reassurances from Labour about how the data would be safe. Turns out it was all absolute bollocks. We knew they were lying to us, but they still smugly did it, knowing that they would never be held to account. Bastards!

It's The Only Way To Live

This isn't a the usual rant, this is a brief love letter. I have just taken delivery of a BMW 325i Coupe thanks to LingsCars.com. Ling Valentine runs an online business providing car leasing. I can't guarantee that it is the cheapest you can find, although I think it might well be. I certainly feel that I got a brilliant deal. Ling acts as agent, a go-between, between finance companies, car dealerships and the consumer. Well, her website says it all. It is a little mad, but I received a brilliant service from Ling and her small team, and I thoroughly recommend them.

But to the car! I fell in love with the design two years ago and would have bought one then if circumstances had allowed. As it was, I waited two years to lease one. I still love the design - the car looks gorgeous - and I am happy to say that the car drives every bit as well as I remember from the test drives two years ago. "The ultimate driving machine" indeed. Put your foot down in 6th gear at 50mph and the car feels like it is in 3rd.

But it is the gadgets, always the gadgets. Load a CD and the iDrive system asks you if you want to save it in the car's 12Gb hard drive. At the same time it will download the track details from Gracenote using the in-car telematics. It doesn't matter if someone has adjusted the driver's seat - open the car with your own remote and the seat automatically goes back to your preferred settings. Tell the satnav where you want to go and it will guide you, as well as point out items of interest such as petrol stations, restaurants and museums. Tell it mind, there's no need to press any buttons!

Well, what can I say? I'm easily pleased.

Mind The Space

Classic case of a corporation gaining gazillions of dollars of free promotion simply by inventing a story: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-11520930.

To be fair, there may be more than a kernel of truth in the original 'story', but boy has Gap successfully milked it for all it was worth.

So are the media outlets suckers? No, they're just playing the game. They know it is far cheaper to simply recycle a press release than to approach it with journalistic scepticism. The former is just commercial sense. The latter would be... like... ethical or something.

Oh, Just Grow Up!

Hurrah. Ed Miliband is urging the media to be 'grown up' in its political reporting. He illustrated his point by saying: "Red Ed? Come off it".

Media soundbite - check.
Grown up politics - er...

Won't Someone Think Of The Children?

Apparently To Kill A Mockingbird is one of the most objected-to novels on US curriculae, due largely to the language used.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-11417672

As one 'commenter' points out, use of the word "nigger" reflects in part the era in which the book was set. However, we can make a broader statement. In order to excuse particular forms of language in novels, it is enough to recognise that reported speech is just that. If we want authors to write honestly and meaningfully, we need to accept that characters in novels will sometimes use language that we do not approve of. If parents object to that, they are in effect saying they want their children to be sheltered from certain aspects of reality. That is OK to a point, of course, but it sounds as though there are an awful lot of censorious parents out there who cannot tolerate any version of reality that doesn't look and sound a lot like Disneyland.

Catcher In The Rye is also on the list for similar reasons. A shame. It should be on the list because it's rubbish.

Dope

The Pope is coming, lock up your children!

Alright, I admit it, I'm not a fan. After all, the Pope apparently believes in 'God', so it would be somewhat difficult for me to be an admirer. I don't generally hero worship the mentally ill.

I could go on about how El Papa's visit to the UK is going to cost me and my fellow taxpayers £10m plus all the policing costs. But so what? We frequently host vile heads of state (although I note that Joe Ratzinger's status as such is highly debateable - something to do with an illegal agreement signed by Mussolini). Anyway, £10m is nothing in the scheme of things. What is it compared to, say, the molestation of nine boys by a priest in one case in one diocese in one country (the scale of paedophilia in the Catholic church is such that Wikipedia lists 10 separate cases involving hundreds of children in the UK alone - not even a catholic country. I refer specifically to the case of Father Michael Hill, jailed for abusing nine boys over 20 years, so take your own guess at the true number he abused.)

Actually, most of the things worth saying were summed up slightly obliquely by Ben Goldacre a few days ago in The Guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/sep/11/bad-science-pope-anti-condom), so I leave it to him:

"You will have your own views on the discrimination against women, the homophobia, and the international criminal conspiracy to cover up for mass child rape. My special interest is his role in the 2 million people who die of Aids each year."

Filth

Most puzzled by this comment on bbc.co.uk about Channel Five: "Plans to invest £1.5bn in the channel for programming over the next five years were also confirmed." Wow! That's the UK's fifth terrestrial television channel? The one recently acquired (subject to Ofcom approval) by Richard Desmond? One-point-five billion pounds?

Sounds pretty amazing. That much cash could produce an awful lot of quality drama. Or educational documentaries. Or top drawer news output. Or it could buy in the very latest and best of US programming. But this is Richard Desmond, the owner of Northern and Shell; the publisher of OK! Magazine, The Daily Express and The Daily Star? That much money sounds just a little unlikely given the editorial values at Express Group Newspapers. This is a publisher that doesn't believe in journalists, cribs most of its stories from the internet, makes the rest up, and the main purpose of whose newspapers is to plug OK! and sell premium rate phone competitions to premium rate stupid people?

Well I never. Perhaps I'm being unfair on Des (Dirty Des to his friends). £1.5bn! Let's have a closer look at what sort of programming we might expect. This is easier than you might think. After all, Des already broadcasts numerous satellite/cable channels, so he's not new to the game. let's have a look at the sort of programmes his other channels produce. Rim Junkies. Hmm. A programme about golfers who actually enjoy missing puts? Strange. What's this? Man Bitch. Er, a nature documentary about a lesser known bread of asexual canines? More and more puzzling. But what are the television channels called? Dirty Talk.... Red Hot Fetish....

Now it makes sense. You see Desmond is a pornographer. Nothing wrong with that in my mind, but is it really appropriate that one of the UK's five terrestrial television stations is owned and run by a man who made his millions publishing porn magazines such as Asian Babes? Maybe? OK, what about a man whose businesses have: -

- been reprimanded by the television regulator on numerous occasions for broadcasting R18-rated material which can only legally be sold in sex shops;
- had numerous complaints upheld by the Advertising Standards Authority regarding dubious reader offers in its publications;
- been censured by the Press Complaints Commission for failing to provide adequate apologies for arroneous or inappropriate stories on six occasions;
- made numerous libel settlements for false stories, including "more than 100 articles (about Madeleine McCann's parents) which were seriously defamatory to the couple"; and
- received a criminal prosecution for printing a misleading cover line on OK!?

The man who has in the past associated with the New York mafia; the man who has paid compensation to a ex-employer for physically assaulting him; the man who has just paid off a female member of staff to avoid an accusation of sexual harrassment?

Ofcom has the power to overrule the acquisition, but it seems highly likely that they will wave it through, deeming Desmond a "fit and proper person". Sigh!

£1.5bn! Amazing. Another rquote from the story: "The £20m cost-cutting drive is past of an 'ambitious new investment plan that will see the channel go toe-to-toe with the biggest players in the TV world,' a statement from the channel added." (emphasis mine). This is the true story. Desmond will come in and slash costs wherever possible. To the maximum extent permissable by the regultor, programming will consist of plugs for Desmond's other business (see The Daily Express for a sample), cut-price celebrity nonsense (you ain't seen nothing yet), 'tasteful' soft pornography and late night t&a. The "£1.5bn" investment story is, how does one say.... 'bollocks'.

In case you were wondering, "Filth" is the title of another one of Desmond's existing television channels, but seems an appropriate heading for slightly different reasons.

It's the ship that made the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs

I started this blog entry back in July. I only got as far as a title and now (in September) have no idea what it was supposed to be about. I expect it was something to do with what a knob George Lucas is, or the decline of mainstream cinema after 1977, or how Jennifer Aniston should win a lifetime achievement Oscar for her diligent and repeated interpretations of the character 'Jennifer Aniston' in the increasingly little-known genre 'RomComs featuring Jennifer Aniston as Jennifer Aniston'. Or something like that.

Drugs Are Bad, M'kay?

Heroin will be legalised and regulated within several developed countries within the next 20 years. Within 50 years the idea of criminalised heroin will be as anachronistic as 1920's alcohol prohibition in the USA.

I just wanted to get this prediction down for posterity. I've been saying it to anyone that will listen for several years, but it seems that the tide is truly now starting to turn.

We know that retired policemen, back-bench politicians, and anyone who has ever studied the subject without regard for the views of the Daily Mail have increasingly been saying the 'unsayable': drugs should be legalised. Good grief, even The Economist has been making the case since at least 1993 (http://transform-drugs.blogspot.com/2009/03/economist-revisits-long-standing.html). However, when even the incumbent President of Mexico says it should be considered, you know the writing is on the wall. As it happens, President Calderon has qualified his comments by saying that he doesn't agree with it personally (weasel words if ever there were any: imagine David Cameron saying "we need to have a discussion about cutting the public budget and raising taxes; I don't personally believe we should, but..."). But a former President has no such concerns - he doesn't need to kowtow to the church or the USA, hence Vicente Fox has said it straight: (http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gMi5B2USfJStXxfqgWWr2xjRYpOgD9HFMD5O0)

Of course, despite my opening comment, this isn't a debate about heroin. It is a debate about all 'illicit' drugs (marijuana, cocaine, etc). However, I specifically mentioned heroin for two reasons.

Firstly it is the uber-bogeyman of drugs. According to popular imagination, even being in the same room as heroin will cause you to lose your mind and descend into debauchery and depravity, if indeed those are two seperate things. Despite this lofty position as the bete noire of chemical substances, I maintain that heroin will be amongst the drugs that are legalised.

My second reason for specifically mentioning heroin is that it needs to be legalised more urgently than anything else. Illegal heroin is very dangerous. It is highly addictive (although nowhere near as much so as tobacco) and as such commands particularly high prices. This drives many users (although by no means all) into a spiral of criminality that ruins their lives and the many people effected by them. It is also a highly dangerous drug as users often resort to injecting. As we all know, in a illicit environment this carries a grave risk of HIV and other infections. It also means that the multivarious cutting agents that are inevitably passed off in street heroin can frequently be dangerous and/or deadly.

Did you see the "illegal" qualifier in the second sentence of the previous paragraph? Here's the rub. Heroin itself is a very safe substance. Pause. Deep breath. Let's try that again. HEROIN ITSELF IS A VERY SAFE SUBSTANCE. I know the vast majority of people who come across that statement simply won't believe it. The simple truth is that they would be wrong. A brief reading of the facts will explain all, and I can think of no better place to start than http://www.flatearthnews.net/media-falsehoods-and-propaganda/heroin. This is not a screed by some hippy drop out or conspiracy theorist, but careful research by an "award-winning" (aren't they all) journalist.

And if I need to provide one piece of evidence, one little factoid that might make people open to reconsidering their deeply held Daily Mail opinions, it would be this quote from Davies: "(Martindale, the standard medical reference book,) records that heroin is used for the control of severe pain in children and adults, including the frail, the elderly and women in labour. It is even injected into premature babies who are recovering from operations. Martindale records no sign of these patients being damaged or morally degraded or becoming criminally deviant or simply insane. It records instead that, so far as harm is concerned, there can be problems with nausea and constipation."

Isn't it hilarious that in the popular imagination, heroin is about as safe as arsenic. Isn't it a terrible indictment of our media and our politicans that the truth has been so comprehensively suppressed. This is in large part (although typically indirectly) a result of pressure from the USA to maintain the global war on drugs (very useful cover when you want an excuse to send hundreds of millions of dollars to a client state). In the past, any country attempting to liberalise drugs laws came under intense pressure from Uncle Sam. It seems those days are gone.

I don't expect that a UK Prime Minister will make the case for legalisation anytime soon. The Daily Mail and the prejudices of its readers are too powerful to allow that (have I mentioned the Daily Mail before?) However, the public will increasingly become aware that the drugs laws are a pathetic joke - the single biggest blight on the world since malaria. They will become aware that legalistion and regulation will: -

- slash (and I mean SLASH) crime;
- not lead to a huge increase in drug use;
- generate savings for NHS budgets as existing users become healthier;
- provide a massive source of new tax revenue;
- create a whole new field of legitimate employment;
- strangle funding to terrorists;
- Kick the feet away from organised crime (at least until they find a new source of revenue); and
- generate more wealth and social cohesion in developing nations, who will be able to legitimately profit from the trade.

And they will demand change. One day. Within the next 20-50 years.

Them Rappers

I have owned Straight Outta Compton for about 10 years, probably since a period around my 30th birthday when I decided it was important to own every seminal rap record ever made. While that appears as, and probably was, a slightly sad early mid-life crisis thing, it does mean that I have early efforts by Afrika Bambaataa, Melle Mel, Run D-M-C, Public Enemy, The Beastie Boys, Wu-Tang Clan, Nas, Jay-Z, The Roots, Outkast and Roots Manuva on CD and on my iPod (sorry, MP3 player). However, I have never really got around to listening to Niggaz With Attitude's only album that counts. I set that straight this morning on the train.

It happens that I had been listening to a couple of Public Enemy's less obvious albums a few days ago - Yo! Bum Rush the Show and Muse Sick-n-Hour Mess Age - so given the traditional critical contrast between the two groups I was well primed. To cut to the chase, I find that SOC is almost unmitigated rubbish. Even some of Public Enemy's more laboured efforts have passion and ambition in them. SOC sounds like a BBC children's television director's idea of what rap music is. With added profanity.

There is another rap band that comes to mind and they were notable for two reasons. Firstly they had the first ever pure rap hit. Secondly they are widely renowed for being a pathetic, watered-down, lilly white, half-hearted excuse for a facsimile of the street music that was being produced in the late 1970's. I am talking, of course, about The Sugarhill Gang. The title of their hit almost says it all - Rapper's Delight.

(I found a wonderful 'fact' on Wikipedia about Rapper's Delight, the track being based around a sample (or perhaps copy) of Chic's Good Times: apparently "the song currently holds the record of sampling a previously recorded song in the shortest period of time, less than two months." I now intend to become the new world record holder by going into a record shop later today and buying any of this week's new releases - doesn't matter what - and recording it on my mobile phone or any other handy recording device. While not obviously necessary, I will then avoid any dispute with the Guinness Book of Records by creating a further recording of myself talking over the top of the first recording and copying this second recording onto a CDR. So long as I can manage to achieve all of this within two months I will then become the new world record holder for sampling a previously recorded song in the shortest period of time, and perhaps someone will write a Wikipedia entry about me. Idiots.)

Anyway, the only shocking thing about the supposedly shocking SOC is that it sounds like it could have been recorded by The Sugarhill Gang. Although to be fair, with extra "fuck"s and "bitch"es and "I don't believe in foreplay, just spread ya legs"s. Actually, there is one other shocking thing about SOC. 8-Ball (Remix) by Eazy-E sounds exactly like the title music to The Fresh Prince Of Bel Air -you know, where Will Smith raps about "a couple of guys, they were up to no good, started making trouble in my neighbourhood". It is to my great disappointment that Will Smith's track was recorded a couple of years after SOC, so i can't accuse Eazy-E of ripping it off. However, if Will Smith can copy your music undiluted, then I think it says rather a lot about your music (apologies there to Stewart Lee).

I said that SOC is almost unmitigated rubbish. Express Yourself remains a thoroughly enjoyable romp and, tellingly, quite atypical of the record as a whole. It was primarily rapped by Dr Dre. Now, as everyone knows, Dre is not considered a good rapper. His flow is ponderous and devoid of inflection unlike... well, unlike Calvin Broadus or Marshall Mathers. Even Express Yourself suffers from this failing, but the funk in the backing track and the humour in the lyrics is enough to carry the day. The same cannot be said of the rest of SOC. And where does that leave the revered production abilities of Dre or the supposedly sublime rapping skills of Ice Cube?

Shocking indeed. 1 out of 10. I'll be listening to It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back on the way home, to remind myself what rap music can aspire to.

"I got a letter from the Government the other day. I opened and read it, it said they were suckers."

We Have A Technical

Charting. Sounds like something to do with astrology, doesn't it? It isn't, but it might as well be.


There's a theory that future stock prices can be predicted based on the shape of the historic price graph. For example, a simple form might say: if the line went down yesterday (i.e. the share price fell) then it will go up today (i.e. the share price will go up). Of course, in those terms it isn't much of a theory, so the details followed by practitioners are somewhat more complex than that. And open to interpretation. And dispute. Just like astrology.


But can such a thing be true one may ask. Surely the price of an equity is based on real things like sales, profitability, the amount of debt repayments that need to be made, the state of the economy, etc, etc? Fundamental stuff. Well yes, says the charter/chartist/chartographer, but what about the market. What about all of the people that buy and sell shares? Their actions will most directly determine a stock's value, and why do we assume that they act rationally?


Fair point. Fundamental analysis is flawed. Possibly fatally so when it comes predicting the future value of a company's shares, at least in its ability to outperform random guesswork. So what is the alternative, asks the chart devotee rhetorically.

Their answer: a system in principle incredibly simple, but in practice requiring great skill, diligence and, dare we say it, secret knowledge available only to the true disciples.

'Bollocks' says I. You are no different to the alchemists or the cabalists. You believe something because it sounds elegant and arcane, while at the same time being incredibly simple to grasp (in principle, but oh, most definitely not in practice). You believe this thing because it promises untold power or riches, and it promises them at the expense of the non-believers who will continue to flounder under the weight of all that common sense, 'fundamental' information that you have no time for. Ah, the poor misguided non-believers. How you scoff at them.

Yeah, well just piss off to your yacht in the Caribbean then. What? You don't have one? Why on earth not? Oh, I see...

Never mind. Here, have a copy of The Bible Code on me. You'll love it.

Strangers in our town

They're not like us, are they? Tennis fans that is. I've often thought this, but never felt compelled to say anything about it until I saw that the term for the response of a certain group of people to the appearance of the British no.1 on a tennis court is called 'Andymonium' (see for example http://andymonium.com/archives.html). That it is a Friday afternoon may also have something to do with it.

Obviously I appreciate that Andymonium was in all probability thought up in a Sun editorial meeting. However, it only works because we can mentally associate it with people whose response when a ball girl is hit by a 180mph 1st serve is "ooh, do you think she's alright?" rather than "HA! HA! HA! DID YOU SEE THAT?" The sort of people who are filmed in the crowd at Centre Court whispering behind their hands to their neighbouring chums. The sort of people who have soft toys on the parcel shelves of their Citroen Xsaras. And that's just the boys.

I'll be mentally cheering Andy Murray on as he takes on the mighty Nadal this afternoon (Nadoration anyone?) It's just that I won't be literally cheering him on. And I won't be wrapping a Union Flag around my shoulders or wearing a baseball cap that says "Come on Andy" and has integral fizzy pop holders.

Kin hell

So Microsoft has withdrawn its new mega phone after selling only 500 of them. Maybe their mistake was admitting that the Kin was a phone. Sure, a smartphone, a social phone, the latest advance in mobile telecommunications, but still a telephone for making telephone calls. Perhaps they should have taken a leaf out of Apple's book and created something really new like the iBook or the iPod. Or the iPhone. Now those guys are truly innovative with a little 'i'.

There's no real evidence for it, but it's scientific fact

I'm not a fan of DJ Neil Fox. 'Dr. Fox' I think he styles himself. As is so often the case with personal dislikes, it is hard to pin down precisely what one finds so repulsive. However, in Fox's case he kindly provides me with a beautifully concise quote with which to defend my feelings. It is so beautiful I have used it as the title for this entry. To give it a little more context, Fox was one of several unwitting celebrity dupes on a satirical television programme. The 'celebs' were given scripts reporting supposedly true facts about a very serious subject. After stating one such patently ridiculous 'fact', Fox's script concluded: "That's scientific fact. There's no real evidence for it, but its scientific fact." And he read it aloud. Into camera. And it was broadcast on national television.


One of the points of the programme was to demonstrate how stupid people can be, in particular how famous people will often act without thinking when they sniff an opportunity to prolong or extend their fame. Another point of the programme was to demonstrate how funny paedophilia can be.


Well, that's not exactly true, but it is what the tabloid papers as well as several very senior politicians claimed was the message. Their outrage was... predictable. In truth, the main point of the programme was to illustrate how ridiculously hysterical the media's and politicians' responses to serious subjects can be and how that hysteria can be deeply hypocritical. So perhaps irony died the day after broadcast when the Daily Mail reported that the show was "Unspeakably Sick" next to a story featuring pictures of the 11 and 13-year old princesses Beatrice and Eugenie in bikinis.


The Brass Eye episode 'Paedogeddon' was first shown in 2001, but of course it made little difference. Many politicians still jump on any moral bandwagon going and our media continues to plumb new depths of hypocrisy (see for example the prudesh self-righteousness of the Daily Express, whose publisher is porn-magnate Richard Desmond). But the one topic guaranteed to unite the stupid and the reckless in precipitate calls to arms remains paedophilia. In 2001 Brass Eye fooled people into stating as fact that paedophiles were using "an area of the internet the size of Ireland" and that they could make a child's computer emit smells that would make them more suggestible. So I was momentarily amused in 2010 to read today's BBC headline: "Paedophiles'increasingly access images from webcams'".


Something called the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (Ceops) is the source of this story. They use language such as "cross-sector expertise", "bespoke front line services", "new ways of thinking" and "truly holistic", which I suppose you would if you wanted to defend your little corner of the Government budget. Having said that, it isn't clear where Ceops's funding comes from since their website (http://www.ceop.gov.uk/about/) is silent on the question. However, given the .gov domain name, one assumes we are paying for the bulk of it. I can't see too many companies wishing to lend their brand to an organisation targeting the sexual abuse of children, although Ceops tells us that VISA, SERCO and Microsoft provide support, and that the police force and the NSPCC provide some personnel.


But what does Ceops do exactly? Surely any successes in preventing child abuse are to be applauded?* Again, the details are hazy, but they boldly tell us they are "dedicated to eradicating the sexual abuse of children" (hmm, wonder if they know what 'eradicating' means?) They do however give us STATISTICS. And as we all know, you can't argue with STATISTICS. Ceops say that "new ways of tracking offenders and better tactical intelligence gathering had seen 58 arrests, deportations or warrants issued." Unfortunately they don't say precisely what part Ceops played in this. In fact we should re-read that statement. Does it actually say that Ceops had anything to do with any arrests, deportations or warrants? But here's a positive claim that we can definitely grasp: "(Ceops has) safeguarded a total of 624 children since its launch in 2006". In case we're in any doubt what this means, we're assured this activity is delivering "significant results" in the fight against child sexual abuse.


But wait, what's that? I smell something emanating from my computer. Could Brass Eye have been right all along? Can computers be made to emit odours? Perhaps so, but so far the only thing I smell is bullshit. What precisely does 'safeguarded' mean? Does it mean extracting a young child from the clutches of a paedophile at the very last moment? Or could it perhaps mean something a little less impressive, say giving common sense advice in response to a query from a child or concerned parent? One specific claim that Ceops makes is that it disrupts or prevents the international travel plans of known paedophiles. Thailand has 13 million children under 15, so I guess that if Ceops prevents one paedophile from flying to Bangkok they have "safeguarded" 13 million children (since there are 10 million children in the UK, one could argue that only a net figure of 3 million had been 'safeguarded', but it is in the nature of these things that the more impressive figure is always used).


I hesitate to dismiss Ceops as a quangocratic waste of time and money. To be fair, their website does provide some more specifics about their actions in preventing abuse (e.g. http://www.ceop.police.uk/mediacentre/pressreleases/2010/ceop_08062010.asp), but they fail to mention whether this is only possible due to the existence of Ceops. Isn't this a job for, like... well... the police? As it is, Ceops only seems to act as a conduit for gathering and disseminating information. It seems to come down to the police or other enforcement agencies to act on that information, so what is Ceops adding that couldn't be done in house? Having a nice logo? How much did that cost? And how much is the "CEO" paid compared to, say a Chief Superintendent?


I may be wrong about Ceops, but there is absolutely nothing in the BBC News report to counter my suspicions. It is a classic example of modern non-journalism as described in frightening detail in Nick Davies's Flat Earth News. This is journalism by press release. An agency, company, charity, celebrity, etc puts out a press release and the media reports it as news. Ceops tells us they are doing an excellent job in a vitally important area, protecting children, and there is no attempt made to find out if there is any truth in their claims. If it is all bullshit, how many children will suffer as a result of our credulity, our failure to act effectively?

So I suppose, ultimately, this is a critique of the media. I do wish they would do their jobs properly so that we don't have to doubt everything we read.



* Strictly speaking and as with everything else, this depends on cost. If we threw our entire national budget at the problem, presumably at least one child would be saved from abuse, but no one is suggesting that. Anyone who disagrees should answer this question: should we close all our hospitals and schools, disband the army and the police force, and reduce rubbish collections to less than once a fortnight in order to protect one child from sexual abuse? If they answer yes, they really haven't understood the question.

Hell is other people

Another day, another prurient headline. But this time it's not the Telegraph or the Mail, it's the BBC (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/wear/10453199.stm).

It seems that Caroline Cartwright has been upsetting her neighbours. Not just her neighbours, but also the postman and even random passing strangers. The lovely Caroline (married, 49) was initially given a noise abatement notice. An Asbo followed in 2005 after she reportedly breached the notice five times. Not one to be deterred, Cartwright went on to breach the Asbo as well on at least three occasions before finally being convicted and receiving a suspended sentence this January. I say 'at least' as it seems unlikely that there were only three incidents during the four years from the Asbo to Cartwright being brought to trial*.

That, sadly for her neighbours, was not the end of it. Cartwright was found to have offended again in March and was up before the beak once more. A further suspended sentence followed, with the judge using the immortal line "this court is giving you one last chance" and promising that a further breach would definitely lead to jail time.

Now for the punchline. What was the cause of the ruckus? We're told that one of Cartwright's crimes was playing loud "dance music", and I would guess this was what really caused most distress to the neighbours. However, what makes this story notable, what actually makes this a story at all, is that Cartwright was also found to have engaged repeatedly in noisy sex. "Shouting and screaming" noisy sex. With her husband, perhaps I should add.

Now that's out of the way, my point - did the judge make the right decision? Not legally, since I assume his decision was legally sound. But was it the right moral decision?

It seems to me that imprisonment serves three purposes: revenge on behalf of society, punishment as a deterrent, and the protection of others. This provides two of my several reasons for not being a fan of locking people up. Firstly, revenge is one of the most ignoble sentiments and a terrible basis for a civilised criminal justice system. One imagines that it is the basis for Daily Mail readers' "throw away the key" mentality, but they're not civilised so don't count (the subject for a seperate blog entry perhaps?) Secondly, punishment as a deterrent clearly does not work (another topic ripe for its own entry). So that leaves the protection of others, something that I am in favour of. But how often is society made safer by locking up a heroin dealer? Hardly ever is the slightly surprising answer (ah, the War On Drugs - the biggest blog entry of all). So all in all prison is pretty rubbish, with the relatively rare exceptions when locking someone up actually protects other people.

Now consider Cartwright's neighbours. This wasn't just a recent or rare phenomenon. It has been going on since at least 2005. Anyone who has endured a neighbour's pumping bass lines knows how unpleasant and frustrating it is. It also tends to be habitual. A knock on the door may be sufficient to fix the problem, at least temporarily, but why should anyone have to ask their neighbours to have a modicum of human decency? And how do we know that our polite request won't be met with abuse, verbal or physical? The unfortunate fact is that noisy neighbours cause great harm. In the words of Cartwright's judge, her neighbours endured her "thoroughly selfish behaviour", making their lives "thoroughly miserable".

So why is she still free? I can only imagine the dispair of the poor people who have endured this destruction of their home lives for over five years. It is horrible to think about. Five years of being woken in the night. Five years of feeling a sense of dread every time you go home. Having gone down the proper legal route they now find that Cartwright is free to return home and carry on making their lives miserable. What's more, being unemployed she's free to do it at any time of the day or night. Isn't it about time the system did something meaningful?

The prison system is horribly overloaded, a stupid situation caused by the desire of political parties to outbid each other in the 'tough on crime' stakes. This has to change and there is at last a hint that it might. Justice Secretary Ken Clarke has said the previously unthinkable: locking people up for the sake of it is not a good idea and other penalties should be used. I passionately agree, but there must always be room behind bars for people who harm others, and in those circumstances we should not hesitate to act.

Cartwright has been destroying her neighbours lives for years. Who knows, perhaps it will never happen again, but that question has been posed too many times already. She should be in jail now.


Unanswered questions: -

- Why wasn't the husband equally guilty?
- How much has the legal process cost taxpayers?
- Why was a 49 year-old woman listening to dance music rather than Robbie Williams?


* The BBC reports that Cartwright received an Asbo (presumably a further one) in April 2009, but breached it three times within 10 days. I assume the number of breaches since the initial 2005 order was much greater. If the April 2009 rate was typical there would have been over 400 breaches in four years.