Quotulatiousness

November 22, 2010

“Anti-racism” is not the same as being opposed to racism

Filed under: Britain, Liberty, Media, Politics — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:33

Ed West responds to reader complaints about a recent column:

The conventional definition of racism is the belief that “race” (however one defines that) is a primary or significant cause of differences between men; that some of these races are superior to others; and that it is acceptable to discriminate on grounds of race, or to behave unpleasantly to someone because of their race. The term dates to the 1930s, although “racialist” and “racialism” go back to the Edwardian period.

“Anti-racism” means something altogether different, and is best explained by the Civitas book Racist Murder and Pressure Group Politics, an account of the Salem-like events that gripped Britain in the 1990s. The authors cite the example of the Central Council for Education and Training in Social Work (CCETSW), which in 1991 set out the implementation of its new Diploma in Social Work.

The first tenet was “the self-evident truth” that “racism is endemic in the values, attitudes and structures of British society”.

The training manual then stated “steps need to be taken to promote permeation of all aspects of the curriculum by an anti-racist analysis”. All “racist materials” had to be withdrawn from the syllabus and CCETSW would decide what was racist.

In the rules there would be no freedom of speech for opinions that can be constructed as “racist” or favourable to “racism”, and “anti-racist practice requires the adoption of explicit values”. The first value is that individual problems have roots in “political structures” and “not in individual or cultural pathology”. (In other words, if different groups have different outcomes in terms of education or crime levels, it is all the fault of British racism, not of individuals).

A second value is that racial oppression and discrimination are everywhere to be found in British society, even when invisible. In other words, impossible to disprove!

November 19, 2010

The A400M is a “Euro-wanking make-work project”

Filed under: Britain, Military, Politics — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 10:32

Gotta love those unbridled opinions in British politics:

A peer and former defence minister has described the A400M military transport plane — which is being bought by the cash-strapped UK armed forces for a secret but outrageous amount of money — as a “Euro-wanking make-work project” in the written Parliamentary record.

The straight talk came from Lord Gilbert, who held various ministerial portfolios in the 1970s – including a defence one – and did another spell in the MoD as a peer in the first years of the Blair government. Last week he made the following remarks in the House of Lords:

I regard the decision on the A400M as the most bone-stupid in the 40 years that I have been at one end or other of this building. It is an absolutely idiotic decision. We have a military airlift fleet of C-17s and C-130s. We have total interoperability with the United States… six or seven countries altogether will be flying the A400M. Flying the C130, which it is intended to replace, are 60 countries, with 2,600 or so C130Js currently being used. That is the interoperability that we are losing…

November 17, 2010

Nuclear ghouls unmasked

Filed under: Britain, Bureaucracy, Government, Science — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:04

Tabloid headline is in this case completely justified:

Organs of nuclear workers secretly harvested for 40 years, report finds
The families of scores of nuclear power station workers whose hearts, lungs and other organs were secretly stored and tested over a period of almost 40 years were let down by the authorities, a report said yesterday.

Relatives were seldom told that their loved ones’ organs were to be removed, and as a result families buried or cremated incomplete bodies.

In many cases the truth that their organs had been illegally removed and then destroyed in the testing process emerged only many years later.

The three-and-a-half year investigation conducted by Michael Redfern, QC, covered events spread over almost four decades.

This is the sort of thing that retroactively justifies some of the weird paranoias of the last fifty years. It becomes more difficult to dismiss worries that “they” are doing shady and unethical stuff when it turns out that that’s exactly what they’ve been doing.

November 16, 2010

It was such an urgent threat that only a week later, the authorities reacted

Filed under: Britain, Bureaucracy, Law, Liberty — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 08:29

A good round-up of the “Twitter bomber” case:

It all started with a moment of grumpy sarcasm on Twitter. Frustrated that his planned trip to Northern Ireland was put in jeopardy by heavy snow at Robin Hood Airport in Doncaster, Mr Chambers whipped out his iPhone and posted the following message on the social networking site: ‘C***! Robin Hood Airport closed. You have got a week to get your s*** together, otherwise I’m blowing the airport sky high!’

A week later, he was in a police ­station being quizzed as a potential terrorist. He was eventually prosecuted under a law aimed at nuisance calls rather than under legislation for bomb hoaxes, which requires stronger evidence of intent.

After all, it was plain as a pikestaff that Mr Chambers didn’t have any intent to bomb anything at all. Even so, he was hauled before magistrates, found guilty of sending a menacing electronic communication and fined £385. A few days ago, Mr Chambers lost his appeal against his conviction and sentence.

He will now have to pay £2,600 legal costs as well. Judge Jacqueline ­Davies, who was sitting with two magistrates, ruled the tweet was ‘menacing in its content and obviously so’, claiming ‘any ordinary person’ would ‘be alarmed’ by it.

A child protection service with too many failures

Filed under: Britain, Bureaucracy, Law — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 08:18

Christopher Booker says that Britain’s bureaucracy to look out for the interests of children is badly off-mission:

For parents who fall foul of this system, often on no more evidence than malicious hearsay, the first shock is to find themselves treated like dangerous criminals. To seize children, social workers seem able to enlist the unquestioning support of the police, who arrive mob-handed, six or eight at a time, beating down doors, tearing babies from their mothers’ arms, holding parents in custody for up to 36 hours while their children are removed into foster care.

The parents must then wrestle with a Kafka-esque system rigged against them in every way. They find themselves in courts where every normal principle of British justice has been stood on its head. Social workers may give written evidence to a judge which the parents aren’t allowed to see. The most outrageous hearsay evidence may be accepted by the court without the parents even being allowed to cross-examine on it.

A key part is played by evidence from supposed “experts”, psychiatrists or paediatricians who may be paid up to £35,000 for their reports, and who receive regular work from the social workers involved. Parents are forbidden to call their own independent experts to challenge a case made against them. They are, all too often, pressured into being represented by lawyers who, again, work regularly for the council, who fail to put their case and who turn out to be just part of the same system.

Parents may be forbidden to testify on their own behalf, but must listen for hours, even days, to everyone else involved — including their own lawyers — putting what amounts to a case for the prosecution. The guardian appointed to represent the interests of the child may never have met the child and merely endorses whatever the social workers say.

Not surprisingly, these bizarre practices are so geared to the interests of a corrupted system that, in the latest year for which we have figures (2008), of 7,340 applications for care orders made by social workers, only 20 were refused.

Meanwhile, the children themselves are handed over to foster homes, which receive £400 a week or £20,000 a year for each child, and where many are intensely unhappy and not infrequently abused. Foster carers and social workers routinely conspire to tell bewildered children that their parents neither love them nor want them back. Children and parents meet at rigorously supervised “contact sessions”, where any expression of affection or attempt to discuss why the children have been taken from home may be punished by termination of the session or denial of further contact.

November 12, 2010

Another call to keep the Harrier in operation

Filed under: Britain, Economics, Military — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 08:33

The Economist sums up the arguments in favour of retaining the Harrier over the RAF’s preferred Tornado:

Francis Tusa of Defence Analysis, a newsletter, reckons that retiring the much more maintenance-heavy Tornados instead of the Harriers would have saved £4 billion-5 billion, while keeping Ark Royal going would cost only about £120m a year. He adds that getting out of the strike-carrier business for ten years means that critical skills will be lost. Others, including the letter’s authors, fear that the “carrier gap” will mean Britain loses the ability to carry out autonomous expeditionary missions. Among other things, that would, they say, leave the Falkland Islands (and their valuable oilfields) vulnerable to attack.

What appears to have changed the new (and inexperienced) National Security Council’s mind at the last moment was the air force’s claim that the Tornado was more effective than the Harrier in Afghanistan. It is odd that this was regarded as a clinching argument, as there are more than enough jets in Afghanistan. It is true that in terms of range, payload, speed and its ability to hit moving targets, the Tornado wins. On the other hand, the Harrier can operate from makeshift landing sites, is more flexible and reliable and could easily be equipped with the advanced Brimstone anti-tank missiles carried by the Tornado. And for five months of the year in Afghanistan, when the weather is hot, the Tornado can only take off with a similar weapons load to the Harrier.

The RAF’s enthusiasm for the Tornado is understandable. It does not have to share it with the navy (the Harrier is operated by a Joint Strike Wing) and it needs a lot more people to operate it (saving air-force jobs). Mr Tusa suggests a sensible compromise that would still save billions of pounds: get rid of half the Tornados, keeping 60 until they are not needed in Afghanistan; retain 20 Harriers for carrier duty until their replacements arrive in 2020; and accelerate the deployment of the strike version of the Typhoon. Time for a rethink.

November 11, 2010

In memorium

Filed under: Britain, History, Military, WW1, WW2 — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 08:03

A simple recognition of some of our family members who served in the First and Second World Wars:

The Great War

  • Private William Penman, Scots Guards, died 1915 at Le Touret, age 25
    (Elizabeth’s great uncle)
  • Private David Buller, Highland Light Infantry, died 1915 at Loos, age 35
    (Elizabeth’s great grandfather)
  • Private Walter Porteous, Northumberland Fusiliers, died 1917 at Passchendaele, age 18
    (my great uncle)
  • Corporal John Mulholland, Royal Tank Corps, died 1918 at Harbonnieres, age 24
    (Elizabeth’s great uncle)

The Second World War

  • Flying Officer Richard Porteous, RAF, survived the defeat in Malaya and lived through the war
    (my uncle)
  • Able Seaman John Penman, RN, served in the Defensively Equipped Merchant fleet on the Murmansk Run (and other convoy routes), lived through the war
    (Elizabeth’s father)
  • Private Archie Black (commissioned after the war and retired as a Major), Gordon Highlanders, captured at Singapore (aged 15) and survived a Japanese POW camp
    (Elizabeth’s uncle)

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD (1872-1918)

November 10, 2010

“Don’t you know who I am?” UK style

Filed under: Britain, Bureaucracy, Law, Liberty — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 14:34

It’s all very well to pass restrictions on the peons, but when those restrictions are applied to your aristocratic self, you’re apparently entitled to rant:

Britain’s anti-terror chief launched an astonishing attack on airport security staff after they stopped her taking a banned amount of liquid onto a plane.

Home Office minister Baroness Neville-Jones, in charge of national security, was en route to a Washington summit when she was found to have an over-sized aerosol can in her bag.

[. . .]

The Baroness was ticked off by border staff, who did not recognise her. But she took offence when they told her how important security is.

The 71-year-old Baroness, known for being haughty, ranted: “Of course I know how important it is, I’m the Security Minister.”

It’s so tedious to have to put up with back-chat from the peasantry, isn’t it?

UK schools to include study of Paganism with other religions

Filed under: Britain, Bureaucracy, Education, Religion — Nicholas @ 12:10

The Lincolnshire school authorities have decided to allow local schools the choice of including the study of paganism with the existing study of religions:

If you’re looking to improve your child’s chanting skills or enhance their moon dancing, Lincolnshire may soon be the place to go — as the county decided this week to let individual schools decide on the teaching of pagan doctrine.

At present, some six world religions are studied in that County’s schools.

According to the minutes of a meeting of the Standing Advisory Council on Religious Education (Sacre) the county’s RE advisor fed back the results of her investigation into Paganism.

I’m not a fan of teaching any religious beliefs in any public school, but if you’re going to cover any of them, you can’t exclude one arbitrarily. “Paganism”, in this instance is a superset of Druidry, which is now officially recognized as a faith (that is, all Druids are pagans, but not all pagans are Druids):

This makes 2010 a very good year for UK Paganism, following the recognition of druidry as a religion in Britain for the first time in October, when the Charity Commission accepted it as a faith and gave it the charitable status afforded to other religious groups.

Critics — who have been slow off the mark so far on this issue — may also be relieved to learn that modern pagans, unlike ancient druids, are more concerned with focussing personal energies through ritual than human sacrifice. Then again, that allegation was laid by the Romans, who also accused early Christians of eating babies.

Retired RN admirals warn of risks of scrapping Ark Royal and Harriers

Filed under: Britain, Military — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:08

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, the British government announced that they were giving up on being a country with a navy and just wanted a medium-sized coast guard retiring HMS Ark Royal and eliminating the Harrier VTOL aircraft from service. Even if the current Admiralty staff were willing to go along with this, some retired admirals point out that it’s a risky decision:

A group of former Royal Navy chiefs urged the government today to reverse its decision to scrap the aircraft carrier Ark Royal and the fleet of Harrier jets, which they described as “the most dangerous of the defence cuts” announced by the coalition.

In a letter to the Times, the former commanders said the cuts would leave the oil-rich Falkland Islands open to a fresh Argentinian attack “from which British prestige … might never recover”.

The signatories, who include former navy chief Lord West and admiral of the fleet Sir Julian Oswald also said they believed David Cameron had been badly advised before agreeing to the measures, which they said “practically invited” Argentina to attempt to inflict a national humiliation on the British on the scale of the loss of Singapore in 1942.

Of course, the administration of the Falkland Islands knows that any hint of agreement with the dissident admirals is likely to be punished by the government and is rushing to distance itself from any taint:

But a spokesman for the Falklands government said it was not concerned that defence cuts would leave the islands vulnerable to attack. “The Falkland Islands government is satisfied and grateful for the levels of defence on the islands which are suitable to maintain an effective deterrent,” a spokesman said.

Update: Lewis Page thoroughly agrees with Julian Thompson’s letter to the Times:

     Harrier could still use Kandahar runway if half of it were blocked by Taleban action; can use any make-shift landing site; has a response time of less than 10 minutes, as against 30 [for the Tornado]; performs better in hot weather; requires fewer ground crew; and has better availability.

     Harrier can deliver close air support of ground forces anywhere from the existing carriers … [it] has nearly twice as many airframes provided with precision-guided ground attack capability [as Tornado]; will not require a further £1.4 billion to re-engine in 2014; and can remain in service until 2023 without significant investment.

     The existing Tornado force will cost, over 10 years, seven times as much to keep in service as Harrier …

     The decision to axe the entire Harrier force is strategically and financially perverse.

The letter is signed by former Royal Marine major-general Julian Thompson, who should be the best-known of the signatories. Thompson commanded the UK’s Commando brigade, mostly made up of Marines (reinforced for the occasion by troops from the Parachute Regiment) during the Falklands campaign, when it acted as the primary unit in the victorious land fighting.

November 9, 2010

Submarines, and the things they run into, literally

Filed under: Britain, Military — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 12:49

It’s always a subject of uninformed joking, but submarines can and do have collisions with all sorts of things. HMS Astute is the most recent case of this, fortunately with only minor damage and no reported casualties. Strategy Page puts this and other incidents into perspective:

British media and politicians made much of the recent grounding of their new nuclear submarine HMS Astute. On October 22nd, the sub got snagged on a sand bank off Scotland for ten hours. This was during sea trials, and after it was freed, Astute collided with one of the tugs, causing more damage. Members of Parliament demanded to know, among other things, how often this sort of thing happened. They were told there had been seventeen collisions since 1988. One in that year, two in 1989, one in 1990, one in 1991, two in 1996, one in 1997, two in 2000, one in 2002, one in 2003, one in 2008 and two in 2009 and two, so far, this year. This made it clear that such collisions are not as rare as most people think.

This has to do with how the media deals with these events. For example, five years ago a U.S. SSN (nuclear attack sub) collided with an underwater mountain. The sub survived, but its sonar dome was smashed in, and one sailor died. This was big news, but most collisions are minor, and don’t make it to the media. The navies involved like to keep it that way, if only to keep secret where, and when, their submarines operate. Most of the American collisions involve snagging fishing nets of large fishing vessels, or other lines (towing, anchor) hanging from surface ships. There were also lots of bumping into piers or buoys. Bumping into other ships or subs was also common. Most of the time, damage was minor, making it easier to keep such incidents quiet.

After all, submarines don’t have windshields or portholes you can look out to see obstructions . . .

November 5, 2010

Banned from visiting Afghanistan due to weight

Filed under: Asia, Britain, Humour, Politics — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 10:07

John Turner sent me this link, which could be said to point out fitness requirements for lawmakers:

Britain’s defence ministry says two lawmakers from Northern Ireland have been barred from visiting troops in Afghanistan until they can find flak jackets big enough to fit their bellies.

The ministry says Ken Maginnis and David Simpson were scheduled to fly to Kabul this week, but army-issued body armour doesn’t exceed 49 inches (124.5 centimetres), too snug for both.

A ministry spokesman said Thursday the British army offers “a wide range of sizes but, regrettably, none was suitable on this occasion.”

Alternatively, you could just roll ’em up in kevlar carpets, or something . . .

Now the sale of bogus explosive detectors makes more sense

Filed under: Britain, Law, Middle East, Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 08:58

Remember a couple of items from earlier this year about a British manufacturer being arrested for selling fake bomb detection devices called the ADE-651? These devices were claimed to be so sensitive that they could even “detect elephants, humans and 100 dollar bills”. I figured that it was all just a kickback scam, but Strategy Page explains how the scam was not only possible but easy:

But it wasn’t just bribes that made the ADE 651 survive over a year of use in Iraq. Arabs, more than many other cultures, believe in magic and conspiracies. After the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States, many Moslems again blamed Israel. A favorite variation of this is that, before the attacks on the World Trade Center, a secret message went out to all Jews in the area to stay away. Another variation has it that the 19 attackers (all of them Arab, 15 from Saudi Arabia) were really not Arabs, but falsely identified as part of the Israeli deception.

[. . .]

American troops arriving in Iraq go through a real culture shock as they encounter these cultural difference. They also discovered that the cause of this, and many other Arab problems, is the concept of “inshallah” (“If God wills it.”) This is a basic tenet of Islam, although some scholars believe the attitude preceded that religion. In any event, “inshallah” is deadly when combined with modern technology. For this reason, Arab countries either have poorly maintained infrastructure and equipment (including military stuff), or import a lot of foreigners, possessing the right attitudes, to maintain everything. That minority of Arabs who do have the right attitude towards maintenance and personal responsibility are considered odd, but useful.

The “inshallah” thing is made worse by a stronger belief in the supernatural, and magic in general. This often extends to technology. Thus many Iraqis believe that American troops wear sunglasses that see through clothing, and armor vests that are actually air conditioned. When they first encounter these beliefs, U.S. troops think the Arabs are putting them on. Then it sinks in that Arabs really believe this stuff. It’s a scary moment.

However, many troops learn to live with, and even exploit, these odd beliefs. Troops at one base discovered that they weren’t being attacked much, because many of the locals believed that the base was surrounded by a force field, so the troops would casually make reference to their force field, when they were outside the wire and among the locals. This reinforced the force field myth, and made the base safer. Other troops would invent new fantasies, like a pretending that a handheld bit of military electronics was actually a mind reading device. That often made interrogations go a lot quicker. Not all Arabs believe in this stuff, and those that didn’t and worked for the Americans, often as an interpreter, could only shrug their shoulders when asked about it.

November 2, 2010

James Delingpole: “Thank God for the Tea Party!”

Filed under: Britain, Bureaucracy, Government, Liberty, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:02

James Delingpole clearly wishes he could vote in today’s American elections:

Arriving back at Heathrow late on Sunday night I felt — as you do on returning to Britain these days — as if I were entering a failed state. It’s not just the Third World shabbiness which is so dispiriting. It’s the knowledge that from its surveillance cameras to its tax regime, from its (mostly) EU-inspired regulations to its whole attitude to the role of government, Britain is a country which has forgotten what it means to be free.

God how I wish I were American right now. In the US they may not have the Cairngorms, the River Wye, cream teas, University Challenge, Cotswold villages or decent curries. But they do still understand the principles of “don’t tread on me” and “live free or die.” Not all of them, obviously — otherwise a socialist like Barack Obama would never have got into power. But enough of them to understand that in the last 80 or more years — and not just in the US but throughout the Western world — government has forgotten its purpose. It has now grown so arrogant and swollen as to believe its job is to shape and improve and generally interfere with our lives. And it’s not. Government’s job is to act as our humble servant.

What’s terrifying is how few of us there are left anywhere in the supposedly free world who properly appreciate this. Sure, we may feel in our hearts that — as Dick Armey and Matt Kibbe put it in their Give Us Liberty: A Tea Party manifesto — “We just want to be free. Free to lead our lives as we please, so long as we do not infringe on the same freedom of others”. And we may even confide it to our friends after a few drinks. But look at Australia; look at Canada; look at New Zealand; look at anywhere in the EUSSR; look at America — at least until things begin to be improved by today’s glorious revolution. Wherever you go, even if it’s somewhere run by a notionally “conservative” administration, the malaise you will encounter is much the same: a system of governance predicated on the notion that the state’s function is not merely to uphold property rights, maintain equality before the law and defend borders, but perpetually to meddle with its citizens’ lives in order supposedly to make their existence more fair, more safe, more eco-friendly, more healthy. And always the result is the same: more taxation, more regulation, less freedom. Less “fairness” too, of course.

November 1, 2010

This will come as a surprise only to drug warriors

Filed under: Britain, Health, Law, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 07:10

A recent British study totted up the effects both on the individual and costs to society of various legal and illegal drugs:

Alcohol is more harmful than heroin or crack, according to a study published in medical journal the Lancet.

The report is co-authored by Professor David Nutt, the former UK chief drugs adviser who was sacked by the government in October 2009.

It ranks 20 drugs on 16 measures of harm to users and to wider society.

Tobacco and cocaine are judged to be equally harmful, while ecstasy and LSD are among the least damaging.

H/T to DarkWaterMuse, who writes:

An interesting result, no doubt, but one thing the researchers failed to do is to aggregate the harm due to all illicit drugs, or even a handful of drugs frequently abused by the same users. Seems to me this would likely reveal alcohol as relatively benign though it’s not clear how additive the effects are.

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