Traditional value

A few days ago, my son found some money in the road outside our house. A few tens of pounds. It was a little soggy, which suggested to me with my CSI:Woking hat on, that one of the local drunken louts had dropped it on the way back from the pub on Friday night. He came back in with the money and asked what to do. I told him that we would hold it for a couple of days to see if anyone came round or put a note through the door asking about money lost in the street, and then we would give it to charity, and he could choose the charity. All fair enough.

After he left though, I got a lump in my throat: we raised a good kid. I'll bet a lot of broke teenagers who desperately want every penny they can get to funnel to Phillip Green's wife via the local branch of Top Man would have just put the money in the their pocket and said no more about it.

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.
[posted with ecto]

The whole "law" thing is very confusing

I am not a lawyer, hence I don't understand the English legal system in the slightest, since the system is constructed by and for them.

There was a fuss among the twitterati, led by Stephen Fry, because a chap twittered that he was going to blow up Nottingham airport. The police, who presumably monitor twitter diligently, arrested him and he was found guilty.

A man who posted a Twitter message threatening to blow up an airport is facing a £3,000 bill after losing an appeal against his conviction.

[From BBC News - Man in Twitter bomb threat against airport loses appeal]

A few days later there was another case, involving the journalist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, following on from some of her typically deranged ranting on the BBC.

A Conservative Birmingham City councillor has been arrested over allegations he called on Twitter for a female writer to be stoned to death.

[From BBC News - Tory councillor arrested over Twitter stoning post]

Now, in both of these cases, the person arrested was clearly joking, although the "joke" was pretty poor. Contrast this with the treatment of some people who don't appear to be joking at all.

On November 12, he wrote: ‘Burn your apartment with your family tied to the couch. And slit your throat, so when you scream, only blood comes out.’

[From Facebook death threats: 5 Muslim boys and white girl excluded from school | Mail Online]

Facebook "is the problem"? Oh please. I couldn't find any reference to this story on the BBC, so I've posted the Daily Mail link instead. But I'm curious: why weren't these people arrested? Could a lawyer please help me to understand the difference between the cases? I really don't want to fall foul of the law, but there is a possibility that I may call for someone to murdered in the future, and i want to make sure that I do it the right way. So am I on safe ground if I tweet that I'm going to cut your throat, but not if I tweet that I'm going to blow you up or stone you?

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.
[posted with ecto]

Blitzed

Well I have to say that the blitz spirit was very much in evidence at Woking during the whiteout. It's not surprising, since commuters used to dealing with South West Train during clement weather are already used to standing up in overcrowded, cold trains. Therefore people were friendly, helpful and understanding. Since I had work to do, and suspected that the trains might be intermittent, I opted for a 1st class ticket. What a waste of money. The first train that arrived was full and standing even in 1st class so I couldn't get on it at all, the second train that arrived had space in 1st class so I got on but there was no heating. Oh well. On the way back, the 1st class carriages were completely jammed full, since the proletariat had (correctly) determined that there was not the slightest chance of a ticket inspection. I was crushed into the middle of an economy-class cattle truck in conditions that would be illegal if employed to move cows around.

Coming back from Waterloo was an eye-opener. First of all, it was total chaos. But second of all, it was most un-British chaos. This must be something to do with New Labour's policy on uncontrolled mass immigration over the last decade. But people were - literally - fighting to get on to trains (to the point where the police were called to try and keep order) and as people were jamming themselves on to any train they could find heading in the right direction there was considerable unpleasantness. There were voices raised, abuse and jostling. It was very disappointing. I don't understand why people don't understand that an orderly queue is that natural state of affairs.

What turned it into a natural disaster, though, was that because it took so long to get home - I was on a slow relief train that stopped at every station - my iPhone battery ran out. I was instantly cut off from Mott the Hoople Live in Los Angeles (Welcome to the Club) and forced to listen to the people around me. Aaargh. I woman behind spent at least twenty minutes yelling into a mobile phone in a language I couldn't identify (it sounded South Asian) while the guy that I was crushed up next to was talking to a loved in an unfamiliar slavic tongue, perhaps Bulgarian. I couldn't read my book with one hand standing up so i ended spending an our vowing to never, ever get on a train again with a fully charged backup battery for my iPhone. Never, ever, again.

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.
[posted with ecto]

This is where I live

What's the big news in my neck of the woods? World War III? Couldn't care less, North Korean ballistic missiles can't reach Surrey. The collapse of the euro? Serves them right, that's why we never joined. Tory peer moaning about the poor breeding? What do you expect, it's basic economics. What will get us out on the streets? Well, nothing really. But some of us will be outraged on twitter for a while.

Simultaneously outraged, ripped-off and illiterate.  This is where I live.

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.

[posted with ecto]

 

Left or right?

In the October 2010 edition of Prospect magazine, there is a fascinating article about a simple experiment to explore moral perspectives. I won't go into all the details, except to note that the thought experiment rests on notions of railways, tracks and switches: essentially, people are asked to make choices about life and death. In one experiment, you can set the switch to send an out-of-control train down one branch, where it will kill five people, or down another branch, where it will kill one person. That sort of thing. Quite the most surprising result of the experiments concerns the difference between liberals and conservatives.

In an experiment where subjects could save a Philharmonic orchestra by pushing an African American on to the tracks or could save the Harlem Jazz Orchestra by pushing a WASP on to the tracks, the liberals showed a marked propensity to make different choices, whereas conservatives did not. The lesson that I took from this is that conservatives make decisions according to a set of moral principles and are "colour blind" in the sense that they do not modify their position according to the race, gender, age, nationality or sexual orientation of the actors. A true commitment to equality. I think I fall into that category: things are right or wrong and it doesn't depend on who is doing them. Does this condemn me as a reactionary, permanently out of phase with the world from now on?

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.
[posted with ecto]

Connections

There are two stories next to each other in the local paper this week. I wonder if there might be some connection between them? The first was a story about an elderly gentleman who has been burgled repeatedly over the last three years. He was commenting on the most recent theft (of a motorbike) and said that he had given the police detailed descriptions of the thieves, but so far the police had not found either the thieves or the bike. The second story was about a day-long police crackdown on drivers on a particular road. They gave out a couple of speeding tickets, a ticket for using a mobile phone, found someone driving uninsured (and fined him £200 -- much less than the cost of insurance) and a few other minor offences. Quite how many policepersons and time this all took isn't mentioned.

Someone has to make choices about what the police do. I have no idea whether they should spend time looking for motorists without insurance or reducing burglaries -- but I know that I wasn't asked.

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.
[posted with ecto]

Streets and shame

So the public sector are going to "take to the streets" we're told, over efforts to keep their pension bill from bankrupting the nation. Well screw them. We should be taking to the streets to complain about the public sector.

A council which paid out more than £500,000 making 12 human resources staff redundant hired 11 new employees to replace them

[From £500,000 pay-off to staff then council hires 11 new people | News]

I happened to go to a meeting today near Parliament and there was some sort of demonstration going, with a lot of Unison banners going on about education.

The average gap in achievement in science, mathematics and reading between those attending state and independent schools is indeed larger in Britain than in any of its allies in the OECD.

[From Article | Full Fact - FullFact.org]

I didn't have the time, but I would have enjoyed making my own banner calling for all schools to be privatised immediately as the only way to stop us from sliding into a new dark age.

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.
[posted with ecto]