Pork-barrel proletariat

Many people fear the vertiginous debt mountain piled up the US federal government, but, at least with the dollar as the world’s reserve currency, they can still keep racking it up for the foreseeable future.  For many American cities and states, there is no future – they’re going bankrupt.  Which is why the record lottery win in the USA of $640 million is good news for local legislatures.  At odds of 176 million to one, purchasers were more likely to be crushed to death by a machine vending the ticket falling on top of them than they were to actually claim the prize.  But that didn’t deter people from piling in to pile another $100 million onto the rollover $540 million.  The three ‘lucky’ figures could either get a lump sum of $462 million - i.e. $154 million each - or get staggered yearly payments of the amount (a cool $178 million is divvied out in smaller amounts to people who got some but not all the numbers).  But that figure of $154 million is misleading because each winner only gets a little over half of that, with roughly 15 per cent detailed to retailer and lottery operating costs and, here is where the dollar signs pops up in politicians’ eyes, 35 per cent is allocated to state governments.  Man, that’s going to fill a hole (though a financial black hole will just keep on eating away at budget margins).  With the trillions of dollars of debt held by the US government, significant inroads could be made into that if they set up a state-run lottery and their slice of the fortune explicitly allocated to paying down the deficit.  After all, a lottery is often described as a tax on the ignorant.  Then again, it’s unlikely to get past a Republican-dominated House of Representatives because they would see it as an expansion of the role of government.  If only Swift were alive today.

Go West

George Galloway has seen off many foes, Tony Blair, Christopher Hitchens and the US Senate but as he romped home with a 10,000 majority in the Bradford West by-election, this is surely his greatest triumph yet, especially as Labour had held it since 1974.  Note to Liberal Democrats wincing about losing their deposit and worrying about the future – AV would not have applied here as Galloway won more than half the vote and in a very high turnout for an urban by-election (if 50.7% of the eligible electorate can be considered high in these jaded times), making the aberration even less.  Still, watching footage of Gorgeous George shaking hands with Howling Laud Hope, the Monster Raving Looney Party candidate, at the declaration, I wondered who was better placed to represent this latter ‘political’ outfit.

Quizzical

In the field of human contact, man has often pitted his wits against a multitude of foes and rivals.  It is mooted that sporting conflict will supersede military demonstration of prowess but the purest distillation is filtered through the mind, the place that nature has imbued with women the ability to compete (and excel) on a level playing field with the menfolk.  The competitive identification of trivia can be seen as an advance over bashing each other over the head with clubs and swords, the useful expulsion of such energies along the plane of mental acuity.  Hence the popularity of the quiz format.

Wine and wisdom might seem counter-intuitive to the achievement of unlocking the relevant portals of memory, dulling the senses at the expense of enhancing bonhomie. Such lubrication can lead to new ideas illustrating the human experience – fermentation of the grape bringing fermentation of the intellect.  In the 4^th century AD, during China’s Period of Disunion, the Seven Sages in a Bamboo Grove certainly took this to heart in their philosophical discourses, one of their number, Liu Ling, being always accompanied by a servant with a bottle of wine and a spade with which to dig his grave.  Is it a sign that we live in a more classless age given that we now carry our own wine?

As I open the third paragraph (and, was this a graphic novel, comprehensively demolish the fourth wall), one might have deduced from this peroration that I am toiling under a heavy yoke to expand on what is essentially a question and answer forum.  When the crucible of interaction is confined to a self-identified grouping, each isolated from all others in an archipelago of tables, it is hard to get an overview of the entire tumult, bar what is boiled down to the scoring sheet.  I would not be alone in thinking ‘I am not a number, I am a free man’ (granted, not many would have that spark, but I would not be alone).  The anecdotes can only ever be from a personal perspective than a collation of the best rapier-like verbal forays of the night.  So, as now declared, under such limitations I do hereby labour.

The Friends of St. Mary’s (really that different from the Seven Sages in a Bamboo Grove?) pulled out the stops in organising their event.  In November’s staging, less than a dozen teams could be mustered.  But last Saturday, 24^th March, there was a bumper crop of eighteen parties to the cause, one social set even permitting themselves to be labelled thirteen.  Maybe the clement weather or being very close to British Summer Time made people more outgoing.  There was added spice for us as our pre-defined panel had sheared in two, with one of our principals asking a hitherto outsider to join us who asked another and, before we knew it, there was a new squadron ranged against us, comprised of several with whom we had long association at these gatherings.  A grudge match was therefore in the offing.  They were Team One and we were Team Two but in this particular context, we were determined to reverse the order of things.  After all, it was the Rump Parliament that held the upper hand in the English Civil War.

What was left of us stared at the listed rounds with grave faces.  None appealed, much less so to allocate our joker in order to double our haul of points on the requisite subject.  There was no capital cities, Christmas Number Ones or somesuch as fitted our range upon which to nail the bunch’s colours.  Excursions into matter as regarding ‘airports named after people’, ‘body parts’ or ‘time, gentlemen, please’, whilst on the surface self-explanatory, seemed fraught with uncertainty and hidden shoals.  As if to compensate for those befuddled, a ‘general knowledge’ harbour offered succour to tossed ships’ crews.  We alighted, with reluctance, on ‘London (old and new)’ given that my parents and I had once lived there (they longer than I) and that a book detailing the history of London had formed my reading matter some years back.

There was a welcome return of the table round, absent on the last few wine and wisdom occasions.  Though it did not add to the overall points total this time, there was a prize for the family-and-friends combination who answered all the riddles correctly (such as “What can go up a chimney down but not a chimney up?”  No, not Santa in flared trousers, rather an umbrella) and in the quickest possible time.

Clive, our genial question-master, Nicholas Parsons run close in the avuncular stakes, proceeded at a lickety-split, sharpening our brains to extract swiftly the right rejoinder.  Clive was ably assisted by Brian squiring the floor and the band of markers behind the former on the stage.

There was the odd rick, not of Clive’s own making as he was reading out what was presented to him.  The answer to whose name adorned New York’s airport was a bit tricksy as there was more than one airport in the district of Queen’s, let alone the city or state.  JFK, a man with no strong connection to the Big Apple, was announced and it is true.  But what of Fiorello La Guardia, New York’s doughty, probably greatest, mayor, who served three times between 1934 and 1945?  Suffice to say, we respected the question-master’s pronouncement as final (as alluded to on the introductory sheet).  Further into the evening, the question of who was British prime minister during the years 1880 to 1887 was another taxer.  William Ewart Gladstone fitted the bill most closely, though did not serve the whole period.  Yet Benjamin Disraeli was delivered as the head of Her Majesty’s Government for the era, which was impressive, seeing that he died in 1881.  To pull at a loose strand of a flaw here or there does not unravel the complete edifice, however and is akin to a football manager criticising the referee to deflect blame from the players.  Certainly for my team’s part, we got more questions wrong than was comfortable.

The second half of the quiz went somewhat better than the first, which was disappointing as the Joker was squandered on a half-measure of points, even though I prevailed against a welter of opposition that Tyburn Gallows was now Marble Arch ( I travel past it when leaving London for the north on the National Express coach service and am stirred to think of what once it was).  A happy occurrence was felt in ‘time, gentlemen, please’ when naming a cocktail of whisky and Drambuie as a Rusty Nail – a hopeful punt as I had never consumed this beverage.  This is the serendipity that can arise at wine and wisdom conclaves – I really pulled that one out of the bag, as would have been dangerous in the literal sense to do so.  After the interval, we had a few either/ors on ‘food and drink (geographical)’.  Scotland or Japan as home to the biggest malt whisky distillery?  Jamaica or Cuba as the biggest exporter of sugar cane?  Although we divined such options ourselves out of the poser put to us, in both cases we plumped for the wrong option (i.e. Scotland and Jamaica, the latter ironically being the answer to another question in the round – the home of Red Stripe beer).  On the ‘money’ lap, my friend who was with us and who is an intense James Bond aficionado, was gratified with a 007 query (which actress played Miss Moneypenny from Dr No in 1962 to A View to a Kill in 1985? Answer: Lois Maxwell).  In ‘general knowledge’ the title of the Cher record Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves was asked from the quotation of a line and, as it happened, I had been listening (and watching) that very song on YouTube earlier in the week (after years without hearing it).  The home straight of ‘sweeties’ was a confectionary or delight as we did well there.

The winning team (numbering only four members) racked up 80 points out of a possible 90.  After finishing in second place in November, we had a bit of a comedown, languishing in joint 13^th position with 61 spots to our credit, though ten ahead of bottom.  And who shared our ranking?  None other than the turncoats of table one!  A draw then.  We got more answers correct though they were more judicious in playing their Joker, reeling in a maximum 20.  I must dismiss my first paragraph and sharpen my sabre to decide it once and for all – or try to do better on the next fixture after the clocks have gone back.

So that leaves the raffle and at least we were victorious in some aspect, my wife’s ticket emerging second from the bag (she chose a red body throw).  Pauline was doubly successful, though as she and her husband, Kevin, had donated a fair shake of the prizes, her choices were limited.  And Clive, after all these years as compère, won a goodie too.  With the conclusion, there was a clattering chorus of packing and stacking, as he tables and chairs were cleared in short order and put away by those still left with the energy.  After, we dispersed into the night, ruminating on what had gone before.

Slippery statistics

On You and Yours today on Radio 4, with a drought order (i.e. hosepipe and sprinkler ban) imminent in the south and the east of England, they quoted a car magazine expressing the view that using a hosepipe on cleaning one’s car can actually use less water than a bucket and sponge.  I was not overly surprised, given that it is held that a dishwasher can use less H₂O for cleaning the dirt from a pile of washing-up than manually with a bowl.  The programme makers set a challenge between one of the magazine’s contributors and a bod from the charity WaterWise.  Using a hosepipe with a trigger (other modulators also available), the auto enthusiast used his spray for a grand total of two minutes on the three stages of pre-rinse, wash and rinse, consuming 24 litres of water – the charity guy managed to use 22 litres but had only cleaned half the car with that by the time the magazine writer had finished, the implication being that more water (and time) would have eventually been expended.  This efficiency makes a mockery of government restrictions on hosepipes.  However, if people with garages used it to house the car (as my grandfather does) instead of annexing it as another houseroom, they would only need to clean their car once a year instead of every two weeks and that is the best way to conserve water.

Ban the bombing

Much talk in international circles regarding Iran’s nuclear programme is if and when Israel launches a strike to disable, if not destroy, Iranian fission facilities and impair future development.  The unabashed right-winger Dr Azriel Bermant said in yesterday’s Daily Telegraph that Israeli opinion coalesces around the belief that a military attack on Iran is inevitable.  He cites the destruction of the Iraqi nuclear reactor at Osirak in 1981 in that the consequences were politically and diplomatically fraught but as the Cold War is over and the Soviet Union no more, there would be little disgruntlement outside the borders of Iran were it stymied in developing plants that could lead to nuclear weaponry.  As a supplementary case, Dr Bermant throws in the obliteration of a proto nuclear complex in Syria in 2007.

It doesn’t surprise me that Dr Bermant is an Assistant Editor of the Margaret Thatcher Foundation as such analysis reflects the doddery-ness of Baroness Thatcher than the steel of Prime Minister Thatcher.  It is initially a seductive argument until one takes a closer look at the intricacies, not least through the lens of the foreign policy dictum ‘everything is local’.  Let’s take Osirak or rather Operation Babylon, as the Israeli Self-Defence Force termed it.  In 1981, Saddam Hussein was involved in a bitter, attritional war of his own making with the ayatollahs in Tehran and the last thing he needed was a two-front war, especially as Israel was not engaged in active hostilities at the time.  Iraq may not have had a contiguous border with the Jewish State but to try and launch missiles at Israel would have wrought a terrible reply from nuclear-armed Tel-Aviv, as well as forfeiting all the western help it was covertly receiving in its battle over the Shatt el-Arab waterway.  Moreover, this was not a declaration of war by Israel because Baghdad had never signed a cease-fire, let alone a peace treaty.  Further, many are convinced that Israel could not have achieved such a precise hit with the munitions of the time and that the air overfly was cover for Israeli-sponsored saboteurs on the ground.  Is Israel’s hesitancy now that it does not yet have such penetration of the Iranian research team?

Flash forward to 2007, the surge in Iraq is very much working and neo-cons haven’t given up hope of invading Syria before George W Bush leaves office.  Damascus knows that it can’t win a war against Israel and would have feared US intervention had it tried its luck.  Syria therefore chalks the event up to experience and razes the site completely.

Dr Bermant ascribes Mrs Thatcher’s indignant reaction over Operation Babylon to the fear of communism becoming more pervasive in the Middle East and the Soviet Union wielding more influence among the Arab states.  But even Francis Fukuyama no longer agrees that we are living in an End of History times.  To replace communism as the foreign bogeyman, the neo-cons used Islamism and an Israeli strike would fire up the Arab street (why else did the US force restraint on Tel-Aviv in the 1991 Gulf war).  Al-Qaeda, on its knees currently, would get an adrenalin shot in the arm.  Then there are logistics – in 1981, Israel only had to fly over western-friendly Jordan.  This time it would have to go over Iranian proxy Iraq as well.  Tehran would long know that the fighter-bombers were coming.  And this would be a declaration of war as Israel has never been in conflict with Iran for the need for a peace treaty.

For Iran, Iraq did not have nuclear weapons and the regime was toppled, North Korea did and the regime is still in power.  Unnerving as it was, North Korea’s Nuclear Club membership has not prompted Japan or South Korea to follow suit.  Might not Arabs also do the same?  An Iranian nuclear warhead would be a bad thing but this may be deployed as defence than aggression.

Game over

Troubled computer game retailer, Game, has an interesting euphemism for going into administration.  The reason it is selling its merchandise at cut-price discounts is because of 'spring cleaning'.  Even in its death throes, the managers of Game still manage to marketise their policies.

Pensioners put on a tight Budget

The Budget commended to the House by George Osborne, whatever it may be economically, is politically savvy.  To accommodate changes to income tax, Osborne came down relatively hard on pensioners (smokers and alcoholic drinkers too but they are seen as responsible for reducing or quitting their habits).  By freezing the tax-free allowance for OAPs, five million pensioners will be worse off.  However, older people are more predisposed to voting Conservative than for other parties, so while they may grumble and grind their teeth at this hit, they won’t be driven into voting for Labour in forthcoming elections.  Also, pensioners tend to save money in their bank accounts rather than splash out on it and spending is one component of what the economy needs to return to robust growth.  Essentially, despite all the hoo-ha about a ‘Granny Tax’, this section of the population can be taken for granted by the Chancellor (up to a point).

The Liberal Democrats got part of what they wanted with a raising of the threshold for income tax.  Not that this will benefit them at the ballot box as the young and the poor have notoriously poor voting records.  They may be grateful at having extra moolah in their pockets, but they won’t be taking their hands out of them to put a cross on the ballot sheet next to the Lib Dems at elections.  The party will bleat about social justice and hope to twang the heartstrings of their erstwhile middle-class support.

After the ‘Granny Tax’ (which despite the soundbite is a masterstroke), the headline was the reduction in the top rate of income tax from 50 per cent to 45 per cent for those earning above £150,000 per annum.  John Cridland, Director-General of the Confederation of British Industry, other business leaders and a large section of Tories, were all pushing for a cut, primarily because they and their friends were having to pay it.  There is also an economic theory that it encourages entrepreneurs to innovate as if these nebulous individuals would just stew in their garden sheds or conservatories at the prospect of having to pay into a partially progressive tax system.  There wasn’t enough evidence to say that the 50p in the pound rate had failed.  There was an initial exodus of high-fliers to Switzerland but this year they have started to crawl back, finding the land of Heidi not as culturally vibrant as London and the south-east.  Up to the late 1980s, the top rate was 60 per cent before being cut to 40 per cent by Nigel Lawson, so there were higher rates in the Thatcher era.  It would have been a travesty had Osborne followed suit.  Giving over half your earnings to income tax alone is symbolically a heavy blow and so just as symbolically, I would have found a drop to 48% acceptable, so top rate taxpayers aren’t crying into their whisky and sodas at losing exactly half their income but still they are funding a decent rate and it feeds slightly into that economic theory.  45% looks like a halfway house arrangement, a Janus-like sop to both the bankers and corporation executives who fund the Conservative party and the wider electorate – Osborne after all is a Machiavellian, two-faced sod.

Tying the knot and tied up in knots

As the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, steps down, he leaves a church with many open sores and centrifugal forces, most of them intractable and not of his own making.  Whether he will be remembered as a great Archbishop in the manner of Lanfranc or Anselm, he can at least be reflect he did not have to suffer in the same manner as St Thomas á Becket or Thomas Cranmer.

One of the issues to have riven the Anglican episcopacy is the issue of homosexuality, with its American brethren (and sistren too) in open revolt.  The fissures have widened under Archbishop Rowan’s tenure, yet they were present before he took up his post and will continue to be divisive under his successor.  So The Church of England’s approach to the government ‘consultation’ on gay marriage has been ill-defined.  Much like on the issue of a major new airport in the Thames Estuary, the government seems determined to consult people – to create a veneer of public engagement – and then do its own thing.  The Roman Catholic Church has a monolithic (if probably hypocritical given the suspected nature of a good deal of its priesthood) stand and can lead a charge unencumbered by the need for caveats and clever-clever formulations.  The Muslim, Jewish and Sikh communities also express their consternation in cut-and-dried terms.

As to myself, I am ambivalent.  It won’t be the end of the world, as those countries that have adopted gay marriage have not seen an unravelling of their moral fabric.  Opposition to lowering the age of consent and civil partnerships were wrong-headed.  It was a farce that gay people could not serve in the armed forces.  At root, I think people are born with a certain sexuality and should not be persecuted for something over which they have no control and certainly not for engaging in whatever relationships they choose. That 37 African countries have outlawed homosexuality is disappointing from an outside perspective and dangerous for those inside who wish reform but Britain was the same not so long ago.  The monstrous treatment of Alan Turing is a prominent example of darker times.

Not that gay marriage represents sunlit uplands, though to suggest it will plunge the country into an ethical funk is a tad hysterical.  Religious leaders talk of being forced to officiate weddings to which they are fundamentally opposed.  Judges at the European Court of Human Rights suggest that any place of worship that refuses to allow a couple to marry based on their sexuality could be prosecuted for discrimination, while at the same time stating that ‘gay marriage’ was not a human right.  I think the religious leaders are chasing a red herring.  Being married should be a happy day and only the most wilfully obtuse would choose to have a ceremony in a place where they knew their union was not welcome to be performed.  Indeed, priests can opt to not marry anyone of whom they do not wish, irrespective of sexuality; they turn so few away because it brings in a significant portion of income.  They could claim that they were busy on a proposed set of days (a vicar’s schedule is indeed very packed) and who could prove otherwise?  The priest can do what they like with their time.

I am a little bemused at why the British government sees gay marriage as such a hot-button issue, a boil to be lanced forthwith.  Minorities need to be protected and valued but the homosexual community accounts for only 2-3% of the general population (with a far bigger footprint in media impact).  The Liberal Democrats are very much inclined to libertarianism anyway, so they would see it as a feather in the cap.  For the Conservatives, it is overtly political, at attempt to detoxify the Tory brand, which Francis Maude made abundantly clear.  David Cameron Gay marriage ties up a few loose ends on rare occasions, such as the French woman who cannot adopt the child of her lesbian partner because they are not married (the EHCR ruled against them) or not being allowed to attend the hospital bedside if a partner fell ill abroad.  But whereas minority rights were in vogue in the Inter-war years, they were dropped after being exploited on grounds of ethnicity.  After World War Two, the emphasis was on human rights – the rights of the individual.  Those of a homosexual or bisexual position have had all their individual rights granted in western democracies. 

Equalities Minister Lynne Featherstone says that homosexual couples have no way to formalise a commitment of love, which is bunkum, as civil partnerships are there, with all the legal protections inherent in them.  Who’s to say gay marriage will be recognised anymore than civil partnerships in countries that frown upon both, if a partner were to become sick whilst travelling? If only they could admit that it’s all to do with local politics.  David Cameron, maybe after watching the episode of American Dad that showed homosexuals could be very right-wing, declaimed “I support gay marriage not despite being a Conservative but because I’m a Conservative.”  In addition to alleviating the ‘nasty party’, Cameron obviously thinks that it is an own goal to force gay people into the arms of the Liberal Democrats and Labour. For her own domestic politics, Nobel Peace Prize winner and Liberian president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf defends the ban on the practice of homosexuality.  Both Cameron and Johnson Sirleaf have too much acumen to be upfront about their motives.  Religious establishments will gnash their teeth with sound and fury and continue to define marriage as between a man and a woman.  Yet the gay marriage bill will be passed in this parliament and Britain will wake up the day after this is signed into law much the same as it did the day before.

Due date, not use(ful) by date

A couple of weeks ago, I mused on a submission to the Journal of Medical Ethics that newborn babies are not ‘actual persons’ and ‘have no moral right to life’, indeed that from the philosophical perspective of the authors there was no difference between a foetus and a recently delivered child; ergo, the killing of babies who are ‘unfortunate’ should be as permissible as abortion.  I disagreed with their proposition vehemently and stated I was happy with the abortion laws as they stand.

Dr Max Pemberton, writing in The Daily Telegraph, recognised the polarised nature of the debate and I’m sure he wanted to add an opinion from his own professional experience.  He stated that the laws were muddled, given that the current legal limit for terminating a pregnancy is 24 weeks, though doctors will try to save the life of a premature baby born at 23 weeks.  Though most abortions occur at 13 weeks or before, 2 per cent take place after 20 weeks (Dr Pemberton cited this at about 3,000 terminations a year, which translates at 150,000 abortions in total over a twelve month period – an astonishing figure, if true, that there should be so many unwanted pregnancies, that so many people could be so careless).  Neatly sidestepping Roman Catholic MPs who seek to lower the official sanction to 22 weeks, the good doctor also mentioned that there is legal procedure for abortion after 24 weeks if there is grave risk to the life of the woman, evidence of severe foetal abnormality or risk of grave physical and mental injury to the woman.  Though this accounts for just 0.1 per cent of cases, Dr Pemberton states that this makes the law illogical.

He goes on: “While the baby remains in utero, it can be aborted, but as soon as it passes through the birth canal and enters the world, actively terminating the life is considered murder [sic – it is murder, as legally defined].  How does the mere process of birth suddenly mean that something has human rights and is deserving of protection?”  He finishes: “Every way I turn, I feel uncomfortable with the logical conclusion.”

Well, there is good reason why the prick of uneasiness should be tangible.  Dr Pemberton has taken a path of logic but as any philosopher worth their salt should know, there are many paths to logic.  Dr Pemberton has walked through the field of thought that chimes with him.  In previous articles, I deduce in him that raising children is not a personal priority and though this in no way reflects badly on him, it perhaps gives a clue as to how his subconscious would resolve mental conundrums (cod psychology, patented 2012).  Moreover, taking matters of life and death to logical conclusions has, on occasion, led to abhorrent crimes of great magnitude and should be treated carefully.

Why must life be a binary choice?  It may help those who wish to plot trends on computer models or those who regard it as light switched on and then switched off, but I think there is greater depth than that.  The whole history of jurisprudence has leant itself to greater complexity in tandem (or sometimes a little behind) the rest of society.  So the laws are a fudge but the art of politics is compromise to find the least unacceptable course.  My conclusion is that as long as the baby is inside the mother, it is entirely dependent on the mother’s body, which includes the brain, thus the mother has choice over whether to proceed.  This is not suggesting a charter for late-term abortions as the trauma of such an option would not be approached lightly.  However, once the baby had “passed through the birth canal” as Dr Pemberton put it, the world has a duty of care to it, specifically the medical staff in the delivery ward.  Like a canal, there is a moral lock on what can be done, since the baby is no longer solely reliant on the mother for sustenance.  Therefore, no matter if a disability is present, it does not disqualify this child for life.  That is why a doctor would be charged with murder for ending the infant’s existence.  The Hippocratic Oath primary ethos is seen most commonly as to never do harm to anyone (hence why there are no qualified doctors in American penitentiary execution chambers).  It is now rendered to take into account whether a life support machine should be switched off but that is in the case of people believed to be in permanent vegetative states, not premature babies on ventilators.  Thus, the law should reflect no harm to the mother first, given she is the bearer.  After 24 weeks, the child has a high chance of survival if properly attended and can be reasonably cared for by others if the mother does not want the infant. At 23 weeks, say, the baby is detached from the mother so early that if it lives, it was the way nature intended it but most babies would not, hence the longer gestation period.  Thus the responsibility reverts to the mother until 24 weeks.  I could have emailed Dr Pemberton this cogitation or posted it on the online thread of his column, but I think it is a useful corollary to my original posting on the subject.  This issue is not black and white, much as proponents on either side might want to paint it as such.  If the law is inconsistent, it is done so in order to recognise the vagaries of life.

Silence is golden

Bagging many of the top awards going (Oscars, BAFTAs, Césars, The Artist finally made a reappearance at my local cinema after a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it run earlier this year (though curiously a sister branch in Maidstone was running it every weekday).  It is a cinéaste’s treat, not just in tribute to the silent era but also to Orson Welles, with action taking place inside a single frame at a time instead of the camera following the subject about (or even moving), Great Garbo, Sunset Boulevard, even Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, where his placing of the glass is as jarring to George Valentin (Jean Dujardin) as the stamping clerk in the Venetian library.  Most pointedly, the male protagonist’s name evokes Rudolf Valentino and his film action is akin to that of Douglas Fairbanks Jnr.

That reference to the clinking glass is an indication that the film is not entirely silent.  When Jean Dujardin accepted his Best Actor Oscar, he said, “If George Valentin could speak, he would say, ‘I love you all very much.’” Thus, I was intrigued to see if we would hear his voice or not, especially as we moved deep into the 1930s.  I won’t give that away though.

The acting is delivered with chutzpah and completely wins you over.  You forget nationalities - Dujardin being French, actress Bérénice Bejo – the wife of director Michel Hazanavicius – being Argentinean, Malcolm McDowell being English and the rest of the cast essentially American.  This is one of the beauties of the silent period, that such distinguishing distractions like accents are dissolved and replaced with the acting on the screen.  The intelligent use of the inter-titles (a brilliant conceit, largely allowing for a roll-out across the world, with little need for extraneous subtitles) makes us concentrate on the features of the company present to discern emotion and thrust.  The script is obviously in English, as we can tell by the movement of the lips.  John Goodman is a Louis B. Mayer studio boss (here Arnold Zimmerman) and James Cromwell makes his usual outstanding contribution, as a loyal and self-effacing chauffeur, first to Valentin, then to Peppy Miller (Bejo).  The dog Uggy is wonderful and makes the film that bit more lighter.

Starting off in 1927, there are the historical quirks that the film likes to reference, with the sign Hollywoodland still present before it was decided to abbreviate it.  The sets are adorable really capturing the era, not just of the time, but of the style of movie-making as well.  The deployment of music is both post-modern and classic.

The story turns on how hard it was for a lot of silent actors to adapt to the ‘talkies’, often émigrés from persecution or poverty in Europe, their voices were hard to understand on the screen.  Men of action were rendered impotent in their subsequent box office by their squeaky voices.  The plot has fantastical scenes and serves as a meta-drama for Valentin’s own struggles to adapt.  Stairs are a key part of this, people on the way up meeting others on the way down, both in actuality and in the direction of their lives.

I doubt the movie will be greeted so warmly in the Kremlin.  A flick for Valentin ends with his spy character flying off in to the sunset, exulting in ‘free Georgia’.  Given that we then find out the motion picture is called A Russian Affair, it is obvious that the ‘Georgia’ in question is the Caucasian country, not the US state, making a sly dig at Russian policy towards Georgia.  The follow-up is A German Affair.  This is reminiscent of the work that Dujardin and Hazanavicius did together on the OSS series – the French version of James Bond, although The Artist is not strictly historical as From Russia With Love was (coincidentally) the first true movie sequel.

If there has to be a criticism, it is that some metaphors are rather transparent.  In the silent film he bankrolls himself after the studio refuses to get involved, Valentin sinks into the quicksand as it bombs with audiences.  Then a flyer with his beaming face that lies disconsolately on the ground gets casually walked on all over (this will resonate tremendously in the Arab world, where this action has been an insult for millennia).  As his fortune is wiped out in the Wall Street Crash, there is an absolute deluge from the sky (was it really raining in that part of California, the day after the Crash?  Something for the bloopers committee to investigate).  With his possessions auctioned off, he strolls morosely, a cinema front billing A Lonely Star.  When he burns projectionist reels in his own home, this act of self-destruction is depicted with him standing as consumed by the flames too.

It is a minor quibble in an outstanding work of art, that contains both pathos and humour in the story of our age, how to be relevant when technology is improving so quickly.  The end of the printed edition of Britannica Encyclopaedia, to become purely a digital resource, illustrates that.  No matter what changes though, The Artist will remain a sublime delight down the years.

The boys with the Dragon tattoo(ed on their mind)

Congratulations Wales and Warren Gatland on beating the French and sealing another glorious Grand Slam!  Happy St Patrick's Day for Irish rugby!  It was only a margin of three scores for England.

Eurotrash

It has been a very disappointing season in Europe for British clubs.  This has been highlighted by both Manchesters, United and City, being dumped out of the Europa League, having been demoted there last December.  Channel Five’s bonanza on Thursday nights has been unexpectedly cut short.  Tottenham Hotspur, Birmingham City and Fulham failed to even make it past Christmas in the competition.  Arsenal were lambasted for failing to finish top of the group last season and going down to aggregate defeat to Barcelona – this season, they did finish ahead of all their group rivals and were rewarded with a Serie A champions-elect AC Milan, then turned in an awful performance at the San Siro that sealed their fate.  Unless Chelsea make at least the semi-finals of the Champions League, only Stoke City have exceeded expectations and they were given the horrendous draw of Valencia.  For Scotland it was even worse, with all clubs bar Celtic failing to make it to the group stage of any competition and the Hoops only got there on a technicality, after the club that beat them fielded an ineligible player and were disqualified.  Next season, Rangers won’t even be competing as they struggle to avoid meltdown.

All this could just be written off it was contained within the season, but it severely damages the UEFA co-efficient i.e. how the leagues are ranked.  The Premier League has been number one recently, though I’m sure it will slip below La Liga for the season after next.  This affects how teams from these leagues are ranked and eventually it affects how many teams from each association can take part in European competitions.  Italian clubs were seen in the 1990s as near near-invincible but now Italy is ranked fourth in Europe, with only three possible entrants into the Champions League.  It could happen to England.  The quarter-finals of the Champions League has a distinctly Mediterranean basin flavour, with Real Madrid and Benfica from the same climes.  Bayern Munich are a rarity north of the Alps and Chelsea are a far northern outpost and who would have thought that of London?  There are no teams from north or central regions of England, Germany and France in the quarters, as are the Dutch who are nowhere, when once so dominant.  A warning to the Wild West Premier League.

Looking under the weather, lighting up on the radar

As the Lib Dems are convulsed by whether to support the Health and Social Care Bill making its tortuous path through parliament, public support has eroded faster than a cliff prone to subsidence and political capital is being washed into the sea.  I think everyone recognises that the NHS needs reform to meet the coming challenges of the near-future with an ageing population.  But after adopting a wait-and-see policy, given that I’m a generally optimistic guy who believes that people muddle through in the end, the steady drip-drip of division and ominous warnings of irreparable damage have swayed me against it.  Having only a cursory knowledge of the internal workings of the NHS, I was content to leave it in the hands of ‘experts’ who you would hope would be acting in the general interests of society yet after the ideological captives of New Labour, who saddled the country with the mortgages of public-private partnership Foundation Hospitals, whose future costs were conveniently off-balance sheet, it appears dogma cannot be detached from such an emotional subject (small mercies that the Conservative Party did not have a parliamentary majority to push through a more radical/threatening overhaul).

I was never enthralled by the prospect of local General Practitioners having control over the purse strings of the health budget – one of the main planks of the Bill.  Aside from plonking an extra dose of paperwork on the surgeries for no increase in numbers, my GP is kindly but myself and my wife have little confidence in his medical abilities.  I have had troubles with my sinuses my whole life.  When as a teenager we enquired of this, he diagnosed with nervous asthma and prescribed me an inhaler (which I never had cause to use).  This line of enquiry petered out for a few more years, until we forced the issue that there had been no improvement.  I was given a hospital appointment and after the operation on my nose, the consultant told me I had incurable rhinitis (a form of sinusitis), that it was genetic and that I had a lactose intolerance.  It is impossible to judge the success of the operation since from that point I have generally avoided dairy products.  So much for nervous asthma.  My wife was suffering from a skin rash on her back and the GP gave her a moisturising lotion, even though it was not from dry skin she was suffering but some sort of allergy.  Predictably, the prescription had no effect.  When the GP was not present for some reason, my wife was seen by a locum who prescribed her a lotion which specifically tackled the rash and it cleared up.  I wouldn’t say my GP is incompetent as all GPs do a lot of guesswork with patients who come to see them, but it would be fair to say he is not one of the leading lights of his profession.  To take responsibility for money as well seems a gamble at best.

Delta Forced-out

Eric Joyce – the Chuck Norris of the House of Commons Bar.  He’s now resigned in disgrace from the Labour Party, perhaps to avoid a party challenge to his right to represent the constituency of Falkirk.  The indignity of being banned from every pub in the country for three months may hit him harder.  He was silly saying to police officers “You can’t touch me, I’m an MP,” forgetting the experience of then-shadow immigration minister Damian Greene several years ago.   

But when one hears über-right-wing arseholes, such as Douglas Carswell or Dominic Raab, pronounce conceitedly and with such thwarted entitlement on issues, whilst wiping the foam from their mouths, Joyce’s line “There are too many f*****g Tories in here,” before he launched a one-man take-down of the entire Conservative Parliamentary Party present, seems distinctly appropriate in both tenor and substance.

Boris and brouhaha

Typical Bozza.  He can’t make a jolly spiffing argumentum without resorting to some lurid balderdash that emanates from his lustful loins.  Or, London Mayor Boris Johnson is unable to frame a debate without recourse to erotic rambling.  There is little doubt which is the more intelligible sentence but to affect ‘Boris’ can be irresistible (cf. Private Eye).

In his column for The Daily Telegraph, which is worth ‘peanuts’ apparently, Johnson weighs into the controversy of government lawyers backing the decision of British Airways to dismiss Mrs Nadia Eweida for wearing a small crucifix on a necklace, even though BA eventually backed down and admitted it had over-reacted.  This may sound like a situation of after the horse has bolted, but the government is clearly looking for a test-case to decisively settle the matter for future court scenarios and hence their decision to push on to Strasbourg, dragging Mrs Eweida into the spotlight again.

Whilst symbolising his man-of-the-people credentials (against all prior evidence) – “As it happens, I met the good lady, by chance, on a crowded train in south-west London. I had a long conversation with my constituent…” – he drew a distinction between the original ban on a small cross and the privileges given to those who insist on wearing a burka, going further with an argumentum ad absurdum, to riff on a member of cabin crew who, believing in the Jedi order, posited “that her personal convictions demanded that she dress as Princess Leia.”

Okay.  Where did that come from?  A member of the cabin crew who happens to be female.  Given the vast preponderance of male pilots to female pilots and vice versa for stewarding staff, why did he instinctively suggest a female member?  And why this memeber of the Star Wars fraternity?  Why not Luke Skywalker and his pyjamas or Darth Vader with his helmet and cowl or even, with some green face paint and a stoop, Yoda?  It had to be Leia and for a man of Johnson’s monarchist leanings, a princess to boot.

And what is a standard Princess Leia ‘outfit’?  Would it be the skimpily-clad garments when she was a prisoner of Jabba the Hutt (or was her captor Eric Pickles), that is the most popular among Star Wars fans?  Given Johnson’s amorous adventures in the past, I wouldn’t bet against that image bumbling beneath that blond barnet.

Aside from this, he presented quite a lucid defenestration of the government decision.

March (and the other months) Madness

As Japan commemorates one year on after a massive earthquake triggered a tsunami that killed tens of thousands of people and provoked a partial meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear plant, a series of programmes has been commissioned by the BBC and others.  Worthy and insightful, on one occasion in a programme the day was referred to as ‘3/11’.

This is one of my greatest bugbears – that an immense tragedy (indeed, one that is still ongoing) can be boiled down to a few numbers, as it was just another date in history.  It is also confusing for a British audience because it uses the back-to-front American dating system.

It started with one day in September eleven years ago.  The enormity of the attacks and their scope meant that it was hard to encapsulate into a bite-size portion for the 24/7 (see what I did there) media.  There is a mania for abbreviation these days, enhanced by text messaging and Twitter, e.g. the permanent five members of the UN Security Council are known as the P-5 and so on.  My take on the events of 11^th September 2001 would have been to call it the East Coast Massacres or Eastern Seaboard Air Attacks or some such formulation.  As the Bush Junior administration was in charge of the White House, its war-mongering cadre coined September 11 or ‘9/11’.  It is a militaristic term, stripped of all humanity and date-ordered so as to give a reference point before pressing on to the next battle.  You would find it in a sergeant-major’s logbook – you would not find it in Herodotus, Thucydides, the Venerable Bede, Edward Gibbon, Arnold Toynbee, Lord Macaulay, no less the whole panoply of histories. 

Until now, when it has passed so pervasively into the vernacular.  There is good reason for this, for in one hundred years it will signify nothing and tells us less.  People don’t chronicle the outbreak of World War One in Europe as 28/7 (or 7/28 for Americans); the Visigothic sack of Rome is not 8/24; and Napoleon Bonaparte’s defeat was not 6/18 thereby ending the 100 Days War – it was the Battle of Waterloo.  Even Remembrance Day adds the details with ‘at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, we shall remember them’, not ‘something 11/11 something something’.  Stephen King’s fantasia on JFK’s assassination at least appends a year to give the merest sliver of context, though he is also succumbing to (or riding, however you see it) modern mores with his use of it.  With interplanetary exploits, the terrain becomes trickier.  Depending where you were in the world, Neil Armstrong set foot on the Moon on either 20^th or 21^st July.  The date cannot be localised to the event because we do not work on a lunar calendar.

I’ll concede grudgingly that the phrase ‘9/11’ became an emotionally-charged touchstone given the sacrifices of the New York emergency services and the 911 is the American dial to reach them.  But before a hundred years is out, nay, fifty, will people even remember in what year it occurred?  It marched in lockstep onwards, the Bali bombings in 2002 became 10/12 and those of 2005 10/1.  The London transport suicide bombings in 2005 are 7/7 (and the failed follow-up 21/7).  But a tremendous flaw in this naming is that the Atocha train bombings in Spain in 2004 happened on – that’s right – 11^th March or 3/11.  Who gets to claim that moniker – Spain or Japan?  How about we ditch it altogether, express the full human experience of what happened and give a slap to any journalist, commentator or politician who uses this system - their lazy cataloguing an affront to what it means to be human.

Curious linkage

Strange how sometimes you can be thinking of something completely at random, without even a prompt to the subconscious, let alone being actively aware of it, then, in a short space of time after conceiving of it, it is a news item.

This can be of a sad nature.  I was thinking back to a particular scene in Eastenders, the Harold Pinter of soap operas, just before I stopped watching it regularly eleven years ago.  Yesterday, one of the main actresses in that scene – Gemma McCluskie – or at least her limbless torso was found in Regent’s Canal in east London.  She was only 29.  As Kerry Skinner, McCluskie played a slut, cheating on her fiancé so completely that the man she was having an affair with also proposed to her, unaware that she was already engaged.  My mind was harking back to the scene when she got her comeuppance with Robbie (played by Dean Gaffney).  Tragic that she had so much life ahead of her when in real life she was murdered.

I was also ruminating on Alan Turing, coming to the view that Steve Jobs gave his company the name Apple not because he worked in an apple orchard when he was in his early twenties or once subsisted purely on a diet of apples for one week.  No, I am convinced it was because Turing, the father of the modern computer, ate an apple laced with cyanide, in imitation of Snow White, after he was chemically castrated for being found out to be a homosexual.  This monstrous treatment induced Turing to take his own life.  That is why the Apple logo has a bite taken out of it.  Strangely, in all the tributes to Steve Jobs, this was never even hinted at.  Not being an overly tech-savvy person, the new iPad was released within days and I didn’t even know it was going to happen.

(Shogun) castles in the sky

I like Homebase’s new television advert, with the interlocking shipping containers peeling away to reveal interior design, that is a tribute to the Japanese Metabolism architectural movement.  It is a coincidence that the driving force behind this philosophical-structural cause, Kiyonori Kikutake, died last month, since advertising campaigns are planned so far in advance.  It is especially poignant since the inspiration for the consultants who created the ad - Kurokawa Kisyo’s Capsule Tower built in Tokyo in 1972 and one of the few Metabolist schema actually built - is currently scheduled for demolition.  I remember from the Dorling Kindersley book on Buildings I received when I was eight or some such age, which posited that the Capsule Tower could well be the future of dense inner-cities.  Well, that didn’t exactly pan out.

Disrespect for the past, disharmony for the future

In the tumult of the Arab Spring, a fear pressed itself repeatedly into the minds of those who wished to see liberal, secular democracies emerge.  The object of their horror was the Muslim Brotherhood, who it was thought would set up a theocracy in all but name.  But the fright was misplaced.  Though it is early days, the Brotherhood are acting as a force for stability in the region in general and are open to dialogue with coalition partners in Egypt.  It is the Salafists, who garnered a quarter of the Egyptian vote, that are the ones of whom we should terrified of ever attaining power.

A dangerous mix of Lutheranism and the Khmer Rouge, with an Islamic twist, they make Rick Santorum look like a beacon of open-mindedness.  In their quest for religious and cultural purity of an austere kind, they are quite prepared to institute a Year Zero in their domains.  In Saudi Arabia, their Wahhabi sect dominates the policy of the government, imbuing the kings of Saud with religious imprimatur as long as social norms do not deviate from their prescription, otherwise proscription will be enacted.  In the last ninety years, they are responsible for the destruction of all but a handful of historic buildings in Mecca, many that had been more than a thousand years old, all because they ‘distract from the true message of Islam’.  The Taliban were condemned for the destruction of the Buddhist statues at Bamiyan but the architectural assault on Mecca receives little prominence, probably because non-Muslims are forbidden from entering and those Muslims from western countries are on Hajj, not investigation. If the Salafists ever came to dominance in Egypt, they would probably tear down the pyramids and the Sphinx and blow up the Valley of the Kings and Abu Simbel.

Salafists were believed to be behind the recent attack on a western military cemetery in Benghazi, most likely in ‘revenge’ for the unfortunate and accidental committing of Korans to the flames at a US detention centre in Afghanistan.  Their closed and padlocked mindsets and resultant inflammatory intolerance cannot conceive of respect for other ‘Peoples of the Book’ i.e. Jews and Christians, hence the gleeful desecration of graves belonging to followers of each faith who had fallen in Libya in World War Two.  Such are the fruits when ignorance is not tackled.

Yet, boorish iconoclasm and contempt for the dead exists in Britain.  Let him who is without sin cast the first stone, except they don’t care that they are doing wrong.  While some steal metal plaques from war memorials and remembrance gardens for scrap metal money, youthful hooligans delight in exercising the power to hurt by breaking grave stones and tombs with a vigour that might be applauded in eastern Libya.  At my local church, one tomb has had its covering stone slab levered off and smashed.  The body had long been removed and it may be the council that picks up the tab for maintenance (these kids don’t pay taxes yet) rather than the church’s PCC, but it is senseless vandalism.  It’s not as if the church hasn’t tried to embrace them, with allowing use every Tuesday night of a side chapel for recreation of their choice (within bounds), though a small minority has forced its abandonment by using it as a means to steal items from other parts of the church.  The parents of these children are either overwhelmed by the cares thrust upon them or are wilful in their neglect.  It is indicative of the fragmentation of social cohesion as the kids seek familial loyalty and fellowship in gangs that can be little more than mini-dictatorships.

Business as usual

Vladimir Putin re-elected as Russian president - who'd have thought?  'Sovereign democracy' in action.

Rewarding forebears

Last week, the genetic analysis of Ötzi the Iceman was published and it was revealed that he had lactose intolerance.  Clearly not the preserve of fashionistas who crave soya products for their vegan properties, this is a man with whom I feel a genetic kinship, figuratively if not actually.  I too have a condition manifested in intolerance for dairy-based products and if this makes me pre-modern, in that I came from an age before the era of widespread pastoralism (as was suggested of him), then so be it.  I am a relic from a bygone era when people would not be surprised that I am (generally) declining products that contain milk.  Ötzi (or whatever your real name was), I understand you and salute you.

20,000 Leagues Under Credibility

When Jules Verne was in his pomp, the Industrial Revolution was in full swing and his flights of fancy were spurred on in the imagination by science making the impossible possible.  Now, computer-generated effects are our mode of transportation to a land of wonder rather than our imagination, yet the tantalising prospects of the future have been rendered ridiculous by how far science has advanced.

Journey 2 the Mysterious Island is the purported sequel to Journey to the Center [sic] of the Earth and wins cheesiest title for a follow-up.  It’s clever but at the same time it shouldn’t really work at all.  One can’t say it doesn’t prepare us for the overall tenor of the film.

Like crime in multi-storey car parks, it’s wrong on so many different levels (thanks, Tim Vine).  One could poke holes in it at every turn.  I didn’t realise how much of a movie for kids it was (despite talk of liquefaction), hoping for some action escapism with a few nods and winks.  There is a current of surreal deadpan humour breezing through the whole enterprise and Michael Caine certainly plays to the absurdity – so many pictures (which were more po-faced in their dumbness) like this have helped pay the bills down the years, he’s a natural.  Snakes on a Plane successfully adopted a similar approach.

The plot defies logic, let alone physics.  It’s as if they included giant ants to ram the point home.  Definitely, the value of this flick is doubled if seen in 3D (I saw in 2D).  And why do the Americans have more tattoos than the Polynesians with whom they consort?  Never mind.

Like Tom Cruise’s career, this needed its star to inject financial heft into it and what muscle that is.  The script moved the Rock and rolled did the cameras.  Can you hear what the Rock is saying?  Only with a chorus line of dead presidents.  What director is going to tell Duayne Johnson that the latter mucked up the keynote scene – “It’s a mysterious… island.”  Huh, why the pause?  Trying to act?  Never mind.  To be fair, Johnson hams it up well in the context of the general lunacy, ably assisted by Caine and an assortment of stars just below the A-list firmament, such as Vanessa Hudgens and Carlos Guzman.

There is an element of tartness to the proceedings, with topics of absent parents and poverty barring the way to self-betterment, combined with scenes including where a huge bird of prey gets caught in a web and an equally humungous spider moves in for the kill.  This leavens the unbelievable near misses – indeed (is this really a spoiler?), that no matter what the peril, no character will die, as each has their heart in the right place.  Even Johnson’s role as ‘Hank’ has a nice neutral profession as head of a construction firm (with unusually close links with the police of Ohio.  Is Dayton that small?  Never mind).

One can’t say that the scriptwriters were poorly read.  They merge Journey to the Mysterious Island with 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and Robert Louis Stephenson’s Treasure Island, not forgetting Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels.  One should approach Journey 2 with tolerance, to let a spirit of ‘never mind’ permeate oneself, accepting it for what it is.  Not a slice of hokum, but something that goes beyond hokum. Two and a half out of five.

Liberal Daleks

There has been a great hoo-ha in the right-wing press about three academics who have ‘thought outside the envelope’ when declaring that killing newborn babies is no biggie, therefore “morally irrelevant” and comparable to abortion.  They are intelligent people and they knew that they would get this reaction.  Yet they present themselves as satirical caricatures of the kind of scientist one might find in Brave New World, even wearing the death threats as a badge of honour and validating their thoughts, as if just because psychopaths oppose you, what you say must be true.  Those who place the threatening posts are “fanatics opposed to the very values of a liberal society” and who could possibly be against the values of a liberal society, ipso facto, what I say is correct.

I find it amusing that they criticise ‘fanatics’ whilst expounding (they would say propounding) liberal dogma, which, ironically, can be profoundly illiberal.  When Family Guy invited the likes of Rush Limbaugh to make guest appearances, fans were aghast, but Seth MacFarlane argued cutely that what defines liberals is a willingness to hear both sides of the argument.

When it comes to values, everyone, knowingly or not, is seeking to establish the primacy of what they believe.  Merely publishing in The Journal of Medical Ethics doesn’t give one any greater cachet to your views.  To argue “The moral status of an infant is equivalent to that of a fetus [sic] in the sense that both lack those properties that justify the attribution of a right to life to an individual,” is just your point of view – it has categorically nothing to with science. 

Worringly, they seem to adopt the attitude of poorly educated Chinese peasants who dump baby girls on remote mountainsides, by constantly referring to a newborn as female. They posit “We take ‘person’ to mean an individual who is capable of attributing to her [my italics] own existence some (at least) basic value such that being deprived of this existence represents a loss to her [my italics].” Thus, it was “not possible to damage a newborn by preventing her [my italics] from developing the potentiality to become a person in the morally relevant sense.”  Are they trying to make those who take extreme measures regarding female babies feel better?

Even more disturbingly, they talk about destroying newborn babies who have Down’s Syndrome, as the condition is not detected in a third of cases by prenatal scanning.  This is eugenicist talk much in vogue in the 1930s.  Who are the fanatics now?

Clearly, Prof Julian Savulescu and Dr Alberto Giubilini can converse flippantly about abortion since, as men, they will never have to go through the procedure, but is flippancy the right tone for a medical publication where you are talking about extermination?  I would very much doubt that Dr Francesca Minerva has ever had to abort a child, sorry, foetus, if indeed she has ever been pregnant.  It is not surprising that they are in favour of euthanasia, another fashionable subject of the 1930s. 

Even as a man, I find their statements on babies as repugnant.  Were a child of mine to have Down’s Syndrome, it would be very hard to take care of them but my love for them would be absolute.  I recognise a woman’s right to choose and respect it – I find the current UK laws on abortion fair, but I would never advise it should be entered into lightly, even were the child disabled.  It is not about left- or right-wing or conservative or liberal.  It is about human dignity, for parents and child(ren). Unlike the arrogant academics, I believe that such people who have conditions seen as debilitating are not ‘morally irrelevant’ – they can make a contribution in who they are.