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  • Gordon Brown and the “Bigoted Woman”

    So this lunchtime, Gordon Brown was being interrogated by an ordinary voter. Fair enough. But later after getting into his car without checking his microphone was off, was heard calling her a “bigoted woman”. He has already apologised, but the damage has allegedly been done.

    It is certainly the kind of mistake no politician would like to make – an easy boost to all the others.

    It has been seized on as an example of how Gordon Brown has no sympathy with the interests of common people. Possibly.

    But it could also be his way of dealing with stress – to insult someone in “private” (and he thought it was in private) is a way of letting off stream. Anyone who has worked in IT will undoubtedly be familiar with the strategy. And a politician meeting with a member of the public who is asking aggressive and unscripted questions is likely to get a little stressed.

    And who is to say he is unique in this ? Gordon Brown has been caught out by making two mistakes – expressing his feelings out loud, and not making sure he was really in private. Other politicians have so far in this election have not been caught out, but who is to say that they do not do exactly the same ?

    Looking back a day later, and what now ? I would say that nobody is really interested in Brown’s “disastrous” mistake – despite all the fuss in the media. Is his mistake more an opportunity for the media to make a fuss ? The subject hasn’t come up in conversation and nobody has encountered this page through a search. Perhaps to the ordinary voters out there, there are other factors far more interesting than whether Gordon Brown sometimes is a little less than diplomatic in private (or what he thought was private) ?

  • Are Vegetarians Allowed To Eat Meat ?

    Goo … sorry I meant searching for some information on the mythical vegetarian saveloy, I came across a mildly interesting discussion revolving around whether vegetarians were allowed to eat meat-based sausages (and saveloys). The suggestion was that of course vegetarians are allowed to eat meat products because it is a personal choice.

    Rubbish.

    First of all, the choice of becoming a vegetarian may be made for religious or health reasons. The relevant discussion ignored the possibility of being vegetarian for such reasons and specifically mentioned Muslims not being allowed to eat non-Halal meat. Of course becoming a Muslim or one of the “must not eat meat” religions (such as Buddhism) is a matter of choice, but once made you are not allowed by religious “law” to eat what is prohibited.

    But it goes further than that. The word “allow” implies an external authority which dictates what is and what is not allowed. Indeed there are such authorities, such as your neighbourhood government’s laws. But this ignores that you can be your own authority – I can allow myself to write blog entries in the evening and prohibit writing them at work. It does not matter that nobody enforces these restrictions other than myself.

    Indeed, whatever the authorities may say, almost all restrictions they impose are in the end “enforced” by the individual – it does not matter who says that killing people is wrong, it is my decision whether I kill somebody or not.

    Nobody has told me that I cannot eat meat; it is a decision that I have come to – that I am not allowed to eat meat.

    Trivialising vegetarianism by saying that vegetarians are allowed to eat meat is extremely insulting to those vegetarians who are very devoted to the cause. If people say that vegetarians are allowed to eat meat, it implies that vegetarians are just being awkward in refusing to eat meat (we’re not) and that (for example) it’s perfectly ok to feed vegetarians meat as a joke.

    Not the sort of joke any vegetarian would find funny.

    Hill Conquered

  • Tactical Voting Is Smart Voting

    Under our current voting system, voting for the candidate who represents the party you wan in government is not necessarily a smart way to vote. In some cases, choosing the party you want in government is throwing you vote away on a party that is very unlikely to win in your constituency. For instance in the constituency that I live in – Portsmouth South – anyone who votes Labour is pretty much throwing their vote away. The effective choices are between Liberal, or Conservative candidates.

    With a transferable vote system (which of course we do not have), a Labour supporter (which isn’t me!) may well vote Labour as their first choice, and Liberal as their second choice to reduce the possibility that the Conservative candidate would win. Similarly, a Tory supporter in Scotland may choose Liberal as their second choice to reduce the chance of a Labour candidate winning.

    Under our current system, it is probably better to choose between the two (or rarely three) leading candidates, picking the one that you least dislike the least. Whilst it may go against the grain to vote for somebody other than your preferred candidate, it does mean that your vote against the candidate you dislike the least is more effective.

    Smart tactical voting is more complex than this of course – it involves checking the details of your constituency (you may also want to check the Voting Power details for your constituency, and the relevant Wikipedia article), and working out from the previous election results which two (or three if the third is within about 5% of the second placed candidate) and working out which one you would least dislike.

    The Tories are warning that a vote for the Liberal party is voting to keep Gordon Brown in power – which is effectively saying that smart voting can accomplish something, but obviously slanted towards favouring voting Tory wherever you are. Whilst no party will encourage tactical voting, it can be for the benefit of whatever party you would prefer.

    Vote tactically – it’s the smart thing to do!

  • Government Bailout Of The Airlines? Hell No!

    Now that the ash cloud is no longer looming over the UK and Europe, and aircraft are criss-crossing our skies again, it is time to look at some of what has happened.

    Of course the airlines are complaining about all the unexpected expenses they have had to undergo and are beginning to hint that the governments (and Europe) should think about paying out some form of compensation. Sounds reasonable doesn’t it ? After all it was not the fault of the airlines that they could not fly and it certainly cost them lots of lost business.

    Well hang on a minute. It was hardly the fault of any of the governments that a volcano in Iceland blew up and spewed ash across the skies of Europe. So why should we as taxpayers bail out the airlines?

    There has been a hint that the relevant authorities were being a bit cautious closing the skies because of the ash cloud. Well perhaps, but they were only following established procedures. If the airlines think that the governments were being too cautious when it comes to the safety of passengers, perhaps they should have complained about it well before now.

    And it seems a bit peculiar that the airlines are complaining about a risk to their business that is known well in advance. The single-man ice cream van that sets up shop on the seafront every day is not likely to get compensated by the government because the weather is bad one summer, so why should the airlines get compensated for something that is very similar ? If your business has a particular risk you have two options.

    You can shoulder that risk and use whatever funds you have available to get through the rough time.

    Or you can buy an insurance policy that keeps you going through a rough time.

    There is another aspect to this that need considering too … airlines are supposed to pay for accommodating inconvenienced passengers on the second leg of their journey, and to arrange transport when it becomes available. From the EU website FAQ on the volcanic ash cloud situation (the “you” means “you the airline customer”) :-

    • You have the right to either reimbursement or re-routing
    • You have the right to information – there is an obligation for airlines to inform you about rights and flight schedules
    • You have the right to care- that means food, drinks, accommodation as appropriate

    It is hard to get concrete evidence on exactly what the airlines are doing in this situation; many airlines are paying through the nose to treat their customers fairly. But there are plenty of indications that other airlines are either ignoring their obligations entirely or trying to get away with the minimum possible.

    Looking around the Internet you can find plenty of indications that various airlines are :-

    1. Refusing to pay for any accomodation
    2. Putting an arbitrary limit on the length of stay that they will pay a hotel for – 3 or 4 days.
    3. Not providing information. Even going so far as to close their desks to avoid passengers.

    Some are worse than others – the worst offender seems to be Ryanair. Which is understandable given they first tried to insist that their responsibility began and ended with merely refunding the cost of the ticket. They rapidly backtracked from this, and tried to claim that their statement was misunderstood. Yeah right!

    Of course because of their actions many of us are of the opinion that Ryanair are a bunch of money-grabbing vampires with nothing but contempt for the people who travel in their cattle-class shuttles. And there are a few other airlines that are not a whole lot better

    Some of the other airlines are saying that the European Union should compensate their costs for taking care of the stranded travellers. Well that might be a reasonable request if the airlines had been fully compliant with EU regulations regarding the care of the stranded travellers.

    Perhaps the EU should offer to compensate the airlines solely for the cost of customer care only for those airlines who took proper care of their customers. A difficult task but perhaps it could be accomplished by simply compensating those airlines who have received no complaints that have been found to be reasonable. As for Ryanair, “No fscking chance” 🙂

  • Apple’s “Walled Garden” App Store – Good Or Bad?

    If you get yourself one of Apple’s iThingies (an iPhone, iPad, or iTouch) you are officially restricted to installing software onto it from the selection in Apple’s App store. Which is hardly news, as is the news that geeky types do not like this – which is why the iThingies have been “jailbroken” to allow the addition of unauthorised software.

    At this point I would like to point out that I am not an Apple hater – I own an iPhone 3G and intend to upgrade to an iPhone 4G (when it comes out). I also use a Macbook Pro as my work laptop. I like Apple products. But Apple gets and deserves some criticism …

    Much of the criticism of Apple’s software model for the iThingies has revolved around the continual censorship of the applications allowed into the App store. This is fair enough, and indeed Apple has made itself a laughing stock with inconsistency applied standards with applications rejected for breaching conditions not applied to other applications. In addition even Apple’s published standards can be become more restrictive leading to situations where you can find it impossible to restore an application that you have paid for!

    But despite these disadvantages, the App Store method of software distribution does on the surface offer something genuinely advantageous to the average consumer. The applications in the App Store have been verified by Apple as being appropriate for use – reducing the malware problem considerably. One of the regulations is that applications should not be capable of interpreting code (approximately) which reduces if not eliminates the damage a compromised application can cause.

    But a single source of applications is limiting and potentially dangerous. Indeed it can even be considered to be a restriction on trade as Apple is the gatekeeper (and insists on a rather large toll) for any developer who wants to develop for the iThingies. Perhaps ordinary consumers do not care about this especially when you consider that many applications have a very reasonable cost.

    But it is still of some concern. The restrictions make experimentation more difficult.

    But perhaps more seriously it prevents tinkering by ordinary consumers. This can be an advantage but is also a significant disadvantage as the very people who developed the iThingies would have tinkered with consumer devices as children on their way to becoming developers. By restricting tinkering by children we restrict the size of possible people who go on to become the techies of the future.

    The obvious counter to this are the existence of other devices that are far more open – even equivalent devices to Apple’s iThingies such as the various Google Android devices. But if Apple’s App store model is successful enough (and it certainly seems to be heading that way), we could find ourselves with the same model being extended to not only competitors to Apple’s iThingies, but to more general purpose computing devices – netbooks, laptops, desktops, or even servers.

    We could end up in a situation where the only devices you can buy are devices that can only run software sanctioned by the vendor. A dangerous possibility.