MP Steals Disabled Car Parking Spot

 General, Politics  No Responses »
Jun 012007
 

A UK Member of Parliament named Anthony Steen has hit the news headlines for leaving his car in a disabled parking bay for three days. He has come out with some sort of excuse for this blaming disabled people somehow. Probably not quite like that, but I don’t care.

Come out with some genuine argument about how there are too many disabled parking bays and I might pay attention.

But pay attention to some drongo who came out with some sort of argument after he has been caught parking illegally ? Not a chance. This is an example of behaviour that gives politicians a bad name. He’d be far better off by saying “Oops! I shouldn’t have done that”, paid his parking fine, and keep his mouth shut about any criticism of disabled parking.

Funnily enough he’s a member of the political party that used to bang on so much about their being the party of “law and order”. Breaking the parking laws is funny sort of behaviour for an MP from that party isn’t it ?

I guess this little rant makes me one of those “whingers and whiners” that he’s now going on about.

The Motorist, The Pedestrian, Roads and Council Tax

 General, Politics  No Responses »
May 262007
 

A bit of an odd mixture, but this all occurred to me when I was waiting 2 minutes at a pedestrian crossing for a chance to cross the road in 10 seconds; at which point I would have to do this all over again.

It occurred to me that most of the cars whizzing past my nose were being driven by people who didn’t pay the local council tax which funds the local roads whereas I do. Seemed a little unfair that they get more time to get across the crossing than I do, when it is my money paying for everything. Don’t get me wrong … whilst I might like the roads to be a bit cheaper, and we should spend more money on public transport, I still think the roads are worth having.

Of course it is not a simple matter where every pedestrian is a tax payer and every motorist is an outside who doesn’t pay the council tax. And motorists will say that their road tax is being used to pay for the roads … which is true for motorways (which I’m not commenting on here), but not the case for local roads.

I just think we need to redress the balance between the pedestrian and the motorist a little more.

Historically we have gone to an enormous amount of effort to keep traffic moving, and it is time to accept that it just isn’t possible with the levels of traffic we can have in today’s cities. And giving pedestrians a bit more priority on the roads is the polite thing to do given that we are helping pay for the roads. We need equal time to cross the roads that motorists have to cross the pedestrian crossings, and we need more pedestrian crossings.

If it takes a motorist 20 minutes to traverse my city rather than 15 minutes, so what? The motorist will still be well ahead of the pedestrian who will take an hour or more for the same journey so they will still be well ahead.

The Arms Are Out Of Reach

 History, Politics  No Responses »
May 032007
 

The UVF made a little announcement today, saying that they’ve put violence behind them and their arms are “out of reach” … whatever that phrase is supposed to mean. This is of course great news after all the UVF is one of the organisations that began with the “troubles” in Northern Ireland/6 counties. And from the beginning they were one of the most violent … the first killing of a policeman was them, and they gloried in sectarian killings far more than most paramilitary organisations.

But there is one thing that has always puzzled me about the peace process in NI. Whilst the IRA was still armed, all the pressure on disarmament was directed towards them with only occasional mention of organisations such as the UVF. It seemed very one-sided especially when you consider the origins of the “troubles” where peaceful protests by catholics was met with increasing violence by “loyalists” (I’ve always hated that description). It is easy to forget that British troops were first sent to NI to protect the catholic community.

Anyone who knows the history of the IRA knows that after the border wars of the late 1950s/early 1960s, they had stopped using violence and were interested to see what the independent peaceful protests about the atrocious treatment of the catholic community could achieve. The loyalists claim that these protests were wholly controlled by the IRA … not so! Sure there were IRA members who took part … as (mostly) catholics themselves they had some interest in seeing the aims of the protest movement succeed, but it was never an IRA cover organisation.

So why were the loyalist paramilitaries treated so leniently by the peace process ? Why were the loyalist politicians allowed a voice when the republican politicians gagged ? Well, part of it is because the loyalists politicians managed to maintain a better illusion of distance between themselves and the paramilitaries … I guess you could say they were better politicians. And perhaps the British and Irish governments took the rantings of a certain loud and vile politician too seriously.

The peace process tends to give the impression that the republicans were more responsible for the troubles than the loyalists. They are certainly not without fault, but hopefully history will spread the blame more evenly.

Iranian Video Of Prisoners

 General, Politics  No Responses »
Mar 282007
 

Today (or to be more precise just an hour or two ago) Iran released a video containing images of the British navy prisoners they took in dubious circumstances. The contents of the video seem to show the prisoners being relatively well treated, and it is possible (I’m being very charitable here) that the Iranian government intended to use it to demonstrate that the prisoners are being well treated.

So why is there so much condemnation of the video ? Well ignoring any other issues, it is against international law in respect to prisoners.

So the Iranians need to understand that whatever their motives, the release of this video is a public-relations disaster for them. They have come across as a government that has no respect for international law. It does not matter if the Iranians believe this bit of law is wrong, or if they do not have respect for international law, breaching the law it in this way will come across very badly.

The Americans and the British have been accused of the same thing themselves, and there is some grounds for complaint here … although our system makes it difficult to do anything with a media industry that is effectively out of control. But two wrongs don’t make a right. The Iranians will not look good whatever they do with regard to the prisoners they hold, but releasing the video makes them look considerably worse.

It would have been better by far if they really thought such a video was needed, to release it privately into the hands of the British government and allow them to decide what to do with it.

The Media, Slavery, and Rascism ?

 General, History, Media, Politics  No Responses »
Mar 242007
 

I have written on slavery before in a more general sense, but this time it is more about how media represents slavery at a time when slavery is in the news because Sunday is the 200th anniversary of the British attempting to abolish the slave trade as the first step in abolishing slavery which is something that is still not finished.

Well, actually the campaign for the abolition of slavery in Britain/England is actually quite a bit older than that act in 1807; the first step was allegedly the abolition of serfdom in 1102. There were many steps forward and many shameful steps backwards (such as the start of the transatlantic slave trade). But I’ll stop there before I get carried away and just point you to the Wikipedia article on the history of slavery … [w:History of Slavery]

What this little rant is about, is how the media portray slavery as an institution where only blacks were slaves and only whites were slave owners and traders. Wrong!

Even ignoring the earlier history of slavery, it is clear from various statistics that slaves could be white or black :-

Group Number
Africans in the transatlantic slave trade 11.6 million
Africans in the Eastern slave trade 11-16 million
Europeans in the Eastern slave trade 1-1.5 million

These figures are hardly likely to be accurate … slave traders do not appear to be good record keepers for some reason, but it would appear that from these figures approximately 6% of the slaves in early modern history were European. That seems like a relatively small quantity in comparison to the number of African slaves taken from their homes, but each individual forced into slavery is a crime against humanity, and a tragedy for the individual whether the individual was black, white or any other colour.

These figures probably vastly underestimate the number of slaves throughout history even if we exclude serfs (a serf is a slave owned by the land and not a person … a distinction likely to make a difference to a lawyer but not the serf). The colour of a slave is irrelevant; it is the fact that he is a slave that is important (and important to free him). The colour of a slave owner is irrelevant; it is the fact that she owns slaves and abuses them that is important (no matter how kind a slavemaster is, she is still abusing other humans).

It is easy to overlook the African involvement in the slave trade … we are given the impression that it was solely white Europeans who threw black Africans into chains. There was certainly plenty of that going on, but in the early days at least many black Africans were involved in the slave trade.

The media needs to stop getting carried away with the easy job of portraying the transatlantic slave trade where images are relatively easy to come by, and make it plain that all slavery is wrong and that it was not just black Africans abused in this way. Given how widespread slavery has been in the past, it is almost certain that everyone alive today is descended from someone who was a slave and probable that they are descended from slave owner.

There are those who say we should compensate the descendants of slaves for the crime against their ancestors. If everyone is a descendent of a slave, this could be somewhat expensive to do! However there is some that we must do and that is to do everything we can to stop present day slavery … yes it still goes on. I am sure that many if not all of history’s dead slaves would cry out that any money that could be put into compensation should be first spent on stopping anyone else being subject to slavery in any form … that is the first priority.

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