Politics – Page 46 – More Zonkyness

The Government’s “Anti-Business” Bias …

Feb 062012

If you read certain articles, you might believe that the current UK government is anti-business. The Tories ? Anti-business ? That is simply preposterous – the Tories would never let the government be anti-business. They are after all in politics to help their business buddies.

What certain bankers don’t understand is that there is a certain level of anti-banking here – which is not anti-business. Banks are merely a subset of business, and given that many banks are “too large to fail” comprise a rather special category of business that is not very business-like.

And the government is not really anti-bank at all, but anti-preposterous banking bonuses. Banking bonuses seem to have risen out of proportion to the value that people add to a bank. As mentioned before, no person is wholly responsible for the success or failure of a bank – a CEO may come up with a great plan, but his or her underlings have to carry out that plan. And the success of the CEO is dependent on how effectively his or her plan is carried out.

Personally I do not have a problem with bankers earning millions in bonuses (and I’m very unlikely to ever get such a bonus), providing that :-

They are properly taxed.
They are proportional to the bonuses given to every other employee in the firm.

It is interesting to see that the bosses of National Rail have voluntarily given up their bonuses into a fund for improving the safety of railway crossings. Whilst there was some pressure about the potential size of their bonuses, it was nowhere near as much as that received by the banking bosses, and they gave up their bonuses a lot quicker – nice to see that some business leaders see that their bonuses may be a little excessive after all, rather than whinging about how the government is “anti-business”.

ICT To Include Programming! At Last!

Computing, Politics No Responses »

Jan 112012

According to the BBC it has been announced that the current curriculum for computer training (ICT) in schools is to be torn up and replaced. And curiously enough the new curriculum is to include programming to a certain extent – as people have been urging for decades.

The first programming language intended for use by children was the Logo programming language first developed in 1967. So it is not as if this is a new idea.

To many of us, the most interesting aspect of computers is not that they allow us to use applications such as word processors, web browsers, and the like – all very useful tools that I would not want to give up – but that they can be controlled by programming. This could be as low-level as writing a device driver in C, or could be using some application macro language to automate a tedious task.

It is perhaps an over simplification to say so, but to a certain extent programming is that last bit – automating tedious tasks. Computers are good at tedious tasks; humans are not. We should be “teaching” computers to perform tedious tasks for us, and that is called programming.

Programming can of course get rather tricky particularly the lower the level you are getting to, but it can also be quite easy with an interactive language with more or less immediate results. For instance the old BASIC :-

10 for i = 1 to 80
20 print "Hello"
30 next i

Can be quickly typed in and then run gives an immediate result – the computer “says” hello to you. A simple example that can be typed in quickly, modified to give a more personal result … or enhanced to give different and slightly more interesting results. The immediacy is important to hook people in and interest them in programming.

And programming is not just useful for those who want to become programmers. Someone who has been introduced to programming may well be better able to :-

Better specify to an IT department what they need, or the error they’re encountering. This will save time and money.
Better appreciate what is and what is not possible.
Be capable of automating computing tasks themselves – not quite programming, but very similar.

John Terry’s Potentially Risible Penalty for Racism

Politics No Responses »

Dec 232011

In the news this week was the announcement that the Crown Prosecution Service will prosecute John Terry (apparently a famous footballer) for an allegedly racist verbal assault during a football game. Now I have no idea whether the alleged offence took place, whether John Terry is or is not the kind of person to make such remarks, or much idea on what football is.

What prodded me into thought was the potential fine he faces for his offence – as much as £2500. That’s quite a bit of money for me – certainly I’d think twice about doing something that might cost me that much. And there are those for whom such a such is much more significant. Yet for John Terry, such a sum is risible – according to one report, it is about the amount of money that he earns in an hour!

This is not the place to go into the ridiculously high salaries that some footballers earn for an activity whilst it brings enjoyment to some, is really just kicking a ball around. But to point out that the variation that a particular fine means to different people on different incomes, effectively means our criminal justice system punishes the poor rather more heavily than it punishes the rich.

Fines should be a proportion of our daily income – a racist remark should cost us 30-days worth of income whether that means 30-days worth of income support, of 30-days worth of John Terry’s salary. Similarly for other fines.

Is The Aidan Burley Sacking Going Too Far ?

Politics No Responses »

Dec 182011

Now as you may have guessed by now, I’m hardly the Tories biggest fan; on hearing the news this morning of a Tory getting caught doing something embarrassing, I couldn’t help but give a nasty smirk. It is always a bright start to the day when the Tory party is caught out demonstrating beyond any shadow of a doubt that they are the party of the über-rich which only gives lip-service to the middle-classes and has nothing but contempt for the working-class.

And running around dressed up as a member of the Nazi party is no joke – which is why certain foolish young people do it of course. Running around offending the sensibilities of their parent’s and grandparent’s generations is one of the all but irresistible pleasures of youth. These things go too far sometimes – it’s all very well running through the centre of a town naked, but dressing up as a member of the Nazi party is a step too far.

But Aidan was merely at a party where the offensive actions took place – he didn’t himself dress up as a Nazi, and it is not claimed that he did anything offensive himself. If you lined up all of the people who have ever been at a party where someone has done something incredibly foolish and offensive, then not many of us would not be lined up – and one suspects that most MPs would be in the queue trying to look inconspicuous.

Parent’s Rights to Their “Pets”; Sorry, “Children”!

Politics No Responses »

Dec 112011

From time to time, I dip into another blog whose principle author is even more opinionated than I am (and as far as I’m concerned, that’s a good thing). And recently I encountered this article on the the “rights” of parents to be informed of their offspring’s sexual activities – arising from the requirement for underage girls to get what we in the UK term the “morning after” pill on prescription. Now it took a while for me to get that last point, but of course in the US, you don’t get anything on prescription without insurance; and an underage girl is going to get that on her parent’s insurance.

Or in other words, an underage girl has to ask her parent’s permission to take the morning after pill … and admit to the people she’s probably least inclined to, that she’s been fucking.

It seems that the politician’s excuse for this, is that there might be some health risks associated with underage girls taking the morning after pill despite there being no evidence to indicate so. But the suspicion is that this is pandering to the right-whingers who want to punish those teenagers who break the rules and have sex below the age of consent.

The article I mentioned of course (as it is a feminist blog) points out that this is an attack on women’s rights. I don’t disagree, but there is also something else lurking behind the support of parent’s rights over their children’s sex lives. Many of the parents who support the parent’s rights over their children’s lives would be horrified to think that they are being accused of eroding women’s rights because that is not their intention.

They believe that their right to control their children’s lives overrides any rights their children might have.

Most of us believe that there are certain rights that all people have certain human rights. Not adult human rights but human rights – so that includes both children and teenagers (who are not really children as we are talking about people with the physical maturity to impregnate, or become pregnant).

Now it is true that it may be necessary to restrict the rights of children, and to a lesser degree teenagers. But that should be a step we always take with extreme reluctance. And parental rights should not override human rights – children don’t belong to their parents, but to themselves.

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