Panic Petrol Buying Causes Injuries ?

 General, Media, Politics  No Responses »
Mar 312012
 

No of course it doesn’t.

Despite the claims of the media who like to imply that the government is to blame for the injury of someone who tried decanting petrol in her kitchen. However stupid the government advice was, they did not suggest people keep petrol in their kitchen in inappropriate containers. They explicitly mentioned “jerry cans” – being the generic name for appropriate petrol containers.

To steal a title from Pink Floyd, what is to blame here is a “momentary lapse of reason” by the woman herself. It is the kind of thing that can happen to anyone – not so much general stupidity, but a temporary ability to disregard the stupidity of some action. We all have been known to do it – you, me, and that daft bloke down the street.

Try to claim otherwise and I’ll laugh at you.

And sometimes that stupidity can have drastic consequences.

It is possible that the government’s rather stupid advise to top up cars and jerry cans has led to an increase in stupid and nasty accidents, but that is no reason to blame the government for accidents. If the government has to avoid issuing advice on matters involving dangerous substances because of the potential for accidents, we need an alternative “government” who will issue such advise.

Of course what the government is responsible for is issuing advise that encouraged panic buying. They obviously paid so little attention to the potential for panic buying that you have to suspect whether it was deliberate – did they want fuel shortages in the middle of the working week rather than during the Easter weekend ? Did they want people blaming the Unite union for causing woes?

Probably not. Even though the “scheme” backfired, the conspiracy theory would credit the government with too much in the way of brains to be possibly true. When issuing advice in such matters the government needs to :-

  1. Get the timing right so that if there is panic buying, it occurs at the least damaging time. Easter (despite the pain of not being able to go away) is better than in the middle of the week.
  2. Phrase advice so that panic buying is less likely.
  3. Point out that diesel or petrol are dangerous substances where a “momentary lapse of reason” can have drastic consequences.

Zimmerman To Face Arrest …

 Politics  No Responses »
Mar 242012
 

Or at least he should.

In a bizarre and alarming incident illustrating the stupidity of the US attitude to guns and gun law, George Zimmerman shot and killed Trayvon Martin in “self defence”. And then the police took his word at face value, and did not arrest him.

There a whole bunch of really strange about this issue :-

  1. Zimmerman was apparently running around as a self-appointed “neighbourhood” watch guard. Now I’m not sure what the attitude towards people like that is in the US, but I would label such a person as a “vigilante” and say that his behaviour is a clear indication of his lack of fitness to carry a gun. That’s not to criticise real neighbourhood watch volunteers – just that someone who runs around who is not part of such an organisation but acts as though he is.
  2. He wasn’t arrested. Whatever the legal situation is, it seems to me that anyone who kills someone – even a policeman who kills the neighbourhood serial killer in the act – should be arrested. Killing someone is always wrong; it may sometimes be less wrong than the alternative, but there’s no getting around the fact that killing someone is always wrong.
  3. The self-defence argument is interesting because it is entirely possible that Treyvon Martin could also quite legitimately make a self-defence claim if he had killed George Zimmerman. After all from his point of view, he was followed and then apparent confronted by this “strange man” when he was going about his legitimate business. Perfectly entitled to some self-defence there.
  4. The whole self-defence argument is a little weak though – it has been implied that in Florida killing is perfectly legal if the perpetrator believes it was necessary for his or her self-defence. Where is the “reasonable” in that ? To illustrate this, I might believe it is necessary for my self-defence to kill you because I’m unhinged – that does not make it reasonable however. Of course the sensible way of testing the self-defence argument is through the old-fashioned method of letting juries decide using their common sense.
On that last point, it only seems to be unreasonable to let a jury decide if Zimmerman acted in self-defence because our present legal systems grind away so slowly. Ignoring the issue of time, it seems perfectly sensible to put Zimmerman on trial to let a community of his peers determine if he acted in self-defence … or not.

Why All The Fuss About The “Granny Tax” ?

 Media, Politics  No Responses »
Mar 222012
 

You know anyone would think the media isn’t capable of adding up to more than 10 without taking their socks off given all the fuss about the so-called “granny tax”. By which they mean the gradual elimination of the increased tax allowance that older people get once the increased personal allowance reaches that level.

Either the complaint is that pensioners are paying the same level of tax as working people, or that the tax allowance for pensioners is not going to go up by the level of inflation for a couple of years. Neither are exactly catastrophic for pensioners – the poorest pensioners are not going to reach that level of income anyway, and those that will be effected will hardly notice the difference.

After all there is no guarantee that the tax personal allowance will increase by the level of inflation every year … neither the normal personal allowance nor the “bonus” allowances that older people get on top of their personal allowance. And why should older people get a special taxation allowance merely for being older ?

Eliminating that special case will make the taxation system just a little bit simpler – something to be encouraged.

I’m more likely than most to throw rocks at the Tories and their policies, but I don’t see this as being worth picking up a rock for. There’s quite a few other things about the recent budget to get excited about.

Like reducing the income tax rate for the wealthy from 50% to 45%; whilst the Tories are quite possibly right about it not being a great revenue raiser, it sends out the message that the Tories are on the side of the wealthy. Whilst they have also done a bit of tinkering with tax avoidance, and added a top rate of stamp duty (on residential property purchases), reducing the income tax rate for the top earners feels wrong.

So why is the media making more fuss about the non-issue that is the “granny tax” ? Someone more suspicious than me might suspect that the media is deliberately drawing attention away from the income tax issue – just how much do these journalists earn anyway ?

Gay Marriage? Why Not?

 Politics, Religion  No Responses »
Mar 172012
 

Given that I’m not exactly a fan of state-sanctioned marriage and in the unlikely event of me marrying someone, it is not going to be a man (sorry guys!), I’m pretty disinterested in if gay marriage becomes legal or not. Just like anyone else who is heterosexual, the only effect that legal homosexual marriage has on me is that I might just find myself attending such a marriage as a guest.

But given that it makes no great difference to me, I’m in favour of the recent plans of the UK government to legalise gay marriage – if something has no harmful effects on anyone else, why should it be illegal? If two people want to make the public commitment of marriage, what right has anyone to forbid that?

The religious conservatives are up in arms about the plans of course – anything that sanctions anything to do with homosexuality is going to cause them to come out of the churches up in arms, and frothing at the mouth.
Of course they have a perfect right to protest against this. And they have a perfect right to forbid homosexual marriage amongst their own congregations.

But they do not have the right to impose their views on the rest of us.

One Murdoch Down, One To Go

 Media, Politics  No Responses »
Feb 292012
 

According to the news, James Murdoch has decided to resign from his post as the head of News International. About time! But :-

  1. Why was he allowed to resign rather than being fired ?
  2. Why is he being allowed to take up a cushy number with News Corp ? It hardly seems much of a punishment for him to resign from a job in an industry he dislikes only to take another job in an industry that he likes in what is effectively the same corporate empire.
  3. Why didn’t he go ages ago ?
  4. And when is Rupert Murdoch going ?

The two Murdochs (and their countless minions at News International) were the people in charge of a corporate empire that allowed one part of it to break the law not just occasionally but routinely for stories that were not in the public interest (in the sense of stories that the public should know rather than just what they want to know). Whether or not they knew what was happening, they set the tone for a corporation that apparently valued results over ethical behaviour.

They are responsible for allowing such a corporate culture to grow unchallenged for at least a decade.

Did they know what was going on ? Perhaps not – particularly in the case of Rupert Murdoch, but they should have known. And in the case of James Murdoch, it seems probable that if he did not know what was going on, he intentionally avoided knowing.

Both should go.

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