Liberal self-censorship Part II

A man is charged with stabbing his baby son to death. How is it reported ?

BBC
"His father, Shahajan Kabir, 39, appeared at Carlisle Magistrates Court ..."

Sun
"AN ILLEGAL immigrant appeared in court today charged with murdering his 10-month-old baby. "

Guardian
"A 39-year-old father appeared in court today ...."

Times
"He arrived in the UK in the mid-1990s and had been working at a local Asian restaurant as a chef. He had recently been interviewed by immigration services and was due to be deported in the next few days."

Independent
"A 39-year-old man from the Carlisle area ...."

Daily Mirror
"Dad Kabir, said to be facing imminent deportation from the UK, was driven from hospital to be quizzed about the attack ..... he came to Britain in 1995."

Ananova
"An illegal immigrant has appeared in court charged with murdering his 10-month-old baby."

Do we detect a pattern here ?

Goodbye Call Centres II

George Monbiot catches on.

"The impact on British workers will be devastating. Service jobs of the kind now being exported were supposed to make up for the loss of employment in the manufacturing industries which disappeared overseas in the 1980s and 1990s. "

Funny, wasn't Randeep Ranesh arguing in the Guardian that we'd just move up a technical gear ?

For once George is right.

IT jobs will continue to go to India because

a) there are some clever people out there
b) there are rather a lot of them
c) they are rather better educated

And a large proportion of their schools do all teaching in English, the language of IT and of world business.

Schools in India would be thought of as highly old fashioned over here.

There are still right and wrong answers.
Kids stand up when teacher walks in. Most time is spent teaching rather than maintaining order.
Pupils' self-esteem isn't a big issue for staff.
Self-expression is not the be-all and end-all.
Weird arts, long vanished in the British State system, like essays, comprehension, grammar, precis, spelling and public speaking are practised.

But they're not code gods. I worked alongside 50-odd Indian contractors a year or so ago. Good, but not superhuman. Though their work ethic is something else. 3 hours on the train to work, 9 hour day then 3 back ? That's in India of course. But on the 10K that paid he could afford servants to cook and clean, so he never had to tidy the flat, wash clothes or get his own food.

What's interesting is that the vanishing jobs are at a higher and higher level. Fund managers and stockbrokers are starting to contract out their research there.

And at the bottom end, UK call centres are doomed. In the Indian call centre my current employer operates, all the staff are graduates. Real degrees, too, not Diana Studies at University College North London (formerly Neasden Institute).

John Humphrys Speaks

Well - the world and his wife seem to be abusing John Humphreys today, so I'll just add my two-penn'orth, shall I ?

On Sunday Britain's greatest thinker since Simon Jenkins pronounced on the Church of England brouhaha.

"When Rowan Williams was given the job he captured the imagination of the nation."

Wrong. He captured the imagination of Guardian and Indie readers and BBC researchers. Middle class liberals if you like. I didn't hear many people at work discussing his appointment. My brickie made no remark, nor did the plumber or electricians.

"People who normally showed no interest in church affairs perked up and took notice".

Same people, John.

"Here was a man who would drag the ailing church into the 21st century and revitalise it, make it relevant to the lives of ordinary people, imbue it with a passion it had lost over the years."

Here was a man who looked as if he agreed with us. Sod ordinary people. They read the Mail and the Sun.


"There was just one small problem. The evangelicals did not trust him. He was a liberal in a church where the conservative wing has been steadily growing in strength. He was the enemy. They declared war on him. That was less than a year ago."

Wrong way round, John. The Church's (admittedly idiotic) position was that uphill gardening was unacceptable in a pastor, though allowable for laity. By appointing Bishop Elton John, Rowan Williams started 'the war'.

I guess the thing that makes me particularly cross is that, by his own admission, he doesn't give a monkey's about the Church. It simply offends him deeply that any large UK organisation isn't signed up to the liberal agenda.

Mr Humphrys devotes the rest of his article to a crack at the Pope for his outrageous suggestion that chastity and fidelity may help prevent Aids. Such an attitude 'verges on the wicked'. John isn't heavily into youth culture, so I don't think that's a compliment. But Mr Humphrys is heavily involved in a campaign that will kill more people in the UK than any number of Papal pronouncements - the campaign for doctors to be allowed to kill elderly or terminally ill patients.

Last year Mr Humphrys senior died, after a long and painful illness. During this time he frequently expressed the wish to die - hence the campaign. No one who has seen a loved one in pain can doubt his sincerity. But as he himself writes

"The oncologist who treated my late wife (wonderfully) wrote of “the two opposing perilous interventions between which we need to steer”. On one side, he said, is “the inappropriate intervention to wrongly sustain life as it approaches its natural end”. On the other are the “increasingly strident calls to intervene to actively end life . . . that would increasingly put at risk many of the most vulnerable in our society”. "

It is this second strand of thought which is so dangerous and against which (among others) the Pope has spoken so strongly so often. No-one wants 'inappropriate intervention' - though one man's inappropriate ntervention is another man's life-saving intervention. This isn't what Humphrys wants, though. He wants "a competent adult who is suffering unbearably as a result of a terminal or a serious, incurable and progressive illness to have "the freedom to ask a doctor to bring their suffering to an end by assisting them to die at a time of their choosing”. In other words, it would allow a doctor to kill us. "

No thanks. To quote H.P. Lovecraft, "that way lies madness and the void". Estate-hungry relatives, budget-conscious hospitals or those with a desperate shortage of beds, a Dr. Harold Shipman clone. After all, we routinely kill unborn infants who may have a disability.

And if it really gets to you, as I accept it might - you can put the responsibility where it should be - and do something yourself, like Mrs Morel's loving children in "Sons and Lovers".

I re-read this tonight, a year after my brave mother's death from cancer. First time I've read it since she died. Brings it all back.

"She had morphia every night, and her heart got fitful. Annie slept beside her. Paul would go in in the early morning, when his sister got up. His mother was wasted and almost ashen in the morning with the morphia. Darker and darker grew her eyes, all pupil, with the torture. In the mornings the weariness and ache were too much to bear. Yet she could not--would not--weep, or even complain much.

"You slept a bit later this morning, little one," he would say to her.

"Did I?" she answered, with fretful weariness.

"Yes; it's nearly eight o'clock."

He stood looking out of the window. The whole country was bleak and pallid under the snow. Then he felt her pulse. There was a strong stroke and a weak one, like a sound and its echo. That was supposed to betoken the end. She let him feel her wrist, knowing what he wanted.

Sometimes they looked in each other's eyes. Then they almost seemed to make an agreement. It was almost as if he were agreeing to die also. But she did not consent to die; she would not. Her body was wasted to a fragment of ash. Her eyes were dark and full of torture.

"Can't you give her something to put an end to it?" he asked the doctor at last.

But the doctor shook his head.

"She can't last many days now, Mr. Morel," he said.

Paul went indoors.

"I can't bear it much longer; we shall all go mad," said Annie. "

One night Annie and Paul were alone. Nurse was upstairs.

"She'll live over Christmas," said Annie. They were both full of horror. "She won't," he replied grimly. "I s'll give her morphia."

"Which?" said Annie.

"All that came from Sheffield," said Paul.

"Ay--do!" said Annie.

The next day he was painting in the bedroom. She seemed to be asleep. He stepped softly backwards and forwards at his painting. Suddenly her small voice wailed:

"Don't walk about, Paul."

He looked round. Her eyes, like dark bubbles in her face, were looking at him.

"No, my dear," he said gently. Another fibre seemed to snap in his heart.

More manufacturing jobs going .....

This time from Scotland to the Far East (Hoover), Puerto Rico and Brazil (Johnson and Johnson).

NeoCons and PaleoCons

Hadrian Wise with a thoughtful piece in RightNow on the neocons and Iraq - throwing light on the strange inversions which have 'righties' saying 'democracy for all' and 'lefties' saying 'hang on, these aren't people like us at all', previously documented so elegantly by Ian Buruma and more clunkily by yours truly.

But Wise doesn't mention the 'lefties' at all. It's all about the difference between neocons and true Tories (in the US 'paleocons'). But what is remarkable, to me at any rate, is how closely the 'left' arguments against intervention in Iraq match the paleocon argument. 'Not in our national interest' has in fact been the chief argument of the Stop The War campaign - especially in the days when it was getting a million on the streets.

"His (Fukayama's) theory that capitalistic liberal democracy is so much better at promoting peace and prosperity than any other socio-economic order that it will and should conquer the world and last for ever, is the core belief of neoconservatism. Once we recognize this, it is easy to see why so many former Marxists have adopted it, for it has much in common with Marxism: historical inevitability, the fusion of prediction and prescription, the primacy of economics, permanent victory to the best socio-economic system, and, most fundamentally, the idea that there is a ‘best’ socioeconomic system, best for everybody everywhere, an idea that generates the somewhat sinister excuse that those who fail to recognize what is best for them are suffering from ‘false consciousness’. The difference is simply the socio-economic system chosen: for the Marxist, it is communism, enforced by a totalitarian state, for the neoconservative, Western capitalism, nurtured by a liberal democracy."

"In America, virtually every neoconservative supported the war on Iraq, and virtually every paleoconservative opposed it. The paleoconservatives had one reason for opposing the war – that it was against American interests; the neocons had many reasons for supporting it, but most of these – Saddam’s apparent weapons programme, his defiance of the UN, his alleged dealings with terrorists, his oppression of his people, even his oil - were incidental. Their real aim was the establishment of a capitalistic liberal democracy in Iraq, an apparently insane project that makes sense when you remember that the neocons, as befits their Marxist heritage, believe human nature to be infinitely malleable. Rather than happy outgrowths of Western civilisation and tradition, capitalism and liberal democracy are the blueprint for the good society everywhere. Everybody should have them; it is the job of the United States to give it them."

The Timeless Wisdom of Richard Littlejohn

On Michael Portillo. There are an awful lot of careerists in politics who trim their sails to the prevailing wind (90% of the Labour Cabinet to start with), but few who are as open and dramatic about it as the one-time darling of the hard-faced Thatcherite right, now reborn as sensitive bisexual liberal. I've gone more the other way myself ...

"Following the success of his week as a single mum, TV chiefs have come up with a new format for Michael Portillo.
They want him to spend a week as a normal backbench MP, living on his official salary, dealing with mundane constituency problems, attending debates in the Commons, going through the division lobbies and speaking in support of his party leader.

Unfortunately, no one thinks he could cope with the role. "

Goodbye Call Centres .....

HSBC are moving 4,000 jobs to the Far East. Service jobs seem to be chasing manufacturing offshore. Losing your job ? Turn misfortune to good account and join a booming industry - counselling. You can start with your (ex)colleagues.

It does make one wonder where it will all end. David Farrar wonders too - pointing out that of the 25 top earners in Scotland, 11 are footballers or managers. Where have all the entrepreneurs gone ?

And Camilla Cavendish wonders aloud in the Times "How many bureaucrats do you need to start an enterprise revolution?", following the news that the government now employs 354,000 more people than it did five years ago.

BBC and the Guardian - all the news we think you need to know ...

The main Radio 4 news item all yesterday was the conviction of Mohammed Dica for passing HIV to two of his partners.

Yet strangely they don't mention that he's an asylum seeker. Neither does the Guardian, though they call him a "Somali living in Mitcham", whereas to the BBC he's "father-of-three Dica, from Mitcham, south-west London".

Liberal self-censorship at its best. Don't want to encourage xenophobia, do we. Best leave that bit out.

Never thought I'd say it, but we actually need the Sun.

Gay Bishop-Bashing latest

As 38 primates gather at Lambeth, ranging from mighty gorilla Rasputin himself down to the lowliest lemur, the Guardian find yet another cleric who fears the Church of England may be taken over by Christians, who wish to ignore its historic mission to fight the Tories and social exclusion in favour of some ridiculous Bible-based theology.

"Gay Christians are silenced and scared" says Rev Giles Fraser - so scared in fact that he only gives his name, email address, his parish and the Oxford college where he lectures.

"Funded by rightwing extremists in the US, some of whom believe that homosexuals should be stoned, and egged on by the Vatican, conservative evangelicals are exploiting the crisis to mount a takeover bid for the soul of the Anglican communion."

The main evangelical group is Reform. Does he have any evidence for his claim of US funding (never mind being stoned - I've known homosexuals and straights who were permanently that way) ?

After all, only a few months ago another Guardian writer was bemoaning the way the rich Reform parishes were holding the Church to ransom.

And how about the Vatican - any evidence of egging ?

Or is the good vicar over-egging the pudding, to coin a phrase ?

Oh - the pain ...

If the BBC and Guardian are to be believed, one in seven of us suffer excruciating pain which isn't caused by listening to the Today programme.

I think they're right. On my day off today I walked up the lane, and could hardly hear the birds for the moans and screams of the villagers. As the wild geese flew overhead, I noticed that quite a number of them were honking in a particularly agonised manner.

And in the towns the cries of pain are so piercing that sensitive young men are forced to drive with their stereos on full at all times.

Some of the more socially conscious youths even open their windows so that passers-by can get some relief by hearing the latest from the Paedophile Crew or new rapper Fukubich, whose 'roasting' style is all the rage among wealthy young Londoners.

Sorry we ate your great-grandpa .....

I'm used to being told that as a Brit I should apologise for slavery/potato famine/colonialism/Sting albums/Amritsar massacres etc.

So what a refreshing change this story is.

I trust that liberals will be agitating for the unfortunate missionary's surviving boot to be returned to the UK from the Fiji Museum.

Bringing back the Marsh Arabs - well some of them, anyway

I wondered a few months back if anything would be done about this by GWBs boys, hoping the Toxic Texan would be able to give the finger to his green critics, but it looks as if Iraqis are doing it for themselves.

But alas the Euphrates isn't what it was, thanks to the huge dams in Turkey and Syria which divert so much of the water. Come on, Israel - you must have a few spare missiles left over from Hamas to help these people. Or do we need 617 Squadron ?

Come Back Miss Nightingale

Mrs Tall is currently taking a 'back to nursing' course in the UK after 8 years as a full time mother. She trained at Barts under the ancien regime and is puzzled by the 'coursework' she's being given now.

She's currently looking at three set texts

"Nursing Rituals" by Mike Walsh and Pauline Ford

'... the unquestioning tradition of obedience ... Victorian legacy ... this involves obedience to hierarchy and also to men, who, according to Victorian values, are seen as inherently superior to women. It is no accident that most nurses are women and most doctors are men.'

A later work by the same pair 'New Rituals for Old'

'being powerless is synonymous with being oppressed (tough being a baby then - LT) and one of the principal tenets of feminism is that women are an oppressed group. About 85% of nurses happen to be women. It is hard to ignore making a linkage (sic) betwen these two statements, and, in addressing the issues of empowerment, feminist perspectives therefore deserve our immediate attention.'.

The theme of this book appears to be that 'we've thrown out all that stuffy old tradition and we're STILL oppressed'.

And 'Nursing Models and Nursing Practice' by Peter Aggleton and Helen Chalmers.

.. until relatively recently many nurses believed that nursing is best carried out when based on instinct, intuition and empathy, elements that make up 'the calling' ... such an approach ...has since come in for considerable criticism.

It was not until 1967 that Yura and Walsh argued that nursing care ... should be likened to a problem-solving process in which nurse and patient
1. together identify the causes of problems requiring intervention
2. make plans to remedy this problem
3. take the necessary steps to alleviate them, and then
4. reflect on what has happened '

Love that 'reflect on what has happened'. Presumably only if you're still alive. My mother was subjected to this last approach (known as "the nursing process") when she was dying of cancer a year ago - a charade of equality. It was a pity that during this dialogue her night nurses made plain to her their displeasure at having to take her to the toilet several times a night.

When I was studying sociology and annoying my tutors, my wife was learning nursing at the sharp end in London casualty units.

It looks as if the 'return to nursing' courses are not designed to update the returnees in clinical practice, new drugs or techniques, but to reprogram them into a new nursing ethos, one in which the nurse and her status are all-important. All for the patient's good, you understand.

Tony Martin 'I Love America' Shock Horror

Well I'm not sure how Rummy would react to being told that "America is an extension of this country" but I'm sure he'd have loved the rest of Tony Martin's address to the annual UKIP conference, which gave him a standing ovation.

After stating that if we had to have a single currency it should be the dollar, Mr Martin said this :

"The only reason I'm living here today is the Americans and two World Wars.

"It's not an insult to the British people who fought for this country to say that without the Americans help, the world would not be a free place ... it's as good as you're going to get."

Oliver Bloody Letwin .....

You just had to go and blow it, didn't you. You spoke truth from the heart - such a rare thing for a politician.

Surprise surprise - the BBC and Guardian didn't like it. Wow.

And then you had to climb down.

Why didn't you just make a public statment to the effect that you were sorry if the state schools were upset, that you had great respect for the difficult jobs the teachers were doing - but that you'd still walk on broken glass to send your children somewhere else.

Sometimes form is as important as content.

I can’t ever remember hearing the Japanese national anthem before today’s Scotland game, but the mournful, beautiful version sung by the choir and two singers was deeply affecting. Words like ‘Heimat’ floated unbidden into my mind. Shaven-headed Japanese props had wet faces and some others were only just holding onto it (my observation, based on years of watching Wales, is that players who cry during the anthems are also doomed to cry after the game).

The choir then did ‘Flower Of Scotland’ in EXACTLY the same style. It was bloody awful. Just as if the Mike Sammes Singers (older UK surfers will remember and perhaps shudder) had given it the inimitable ‘Sing Something Simple’ treatment. The players sang along but looked embarrassed.

Yet the tune and words hadn’t changed. It’s just that ‘Flower Of Scotland’ simply cannot be sung like a lullaby - not at a rugby match anyway. It needs to be sung as by a marching army.

If they sang the World Cup version at Murrayfield England would put sixty points past them. When they’d stopped laughing.

UPDATE - just heard a Talk Sport presenter (English) saying that it sent shivers down his spine. Does he mean it or is it a plot to emasculate the song ?

Radio 4 is heading downmarket fast....

Lead by Eddie Mair and Dan Damon, who moved from Radio 5’s ‘Sunday Service’ to PM and Broadcasting House respectively. Mair is essentially a R5 presenter and always will be, a less hideous Nicky Campbell, while Damon’s Broadcasting House seems to be simply a transplant of Sunday Service. I’ve just listened to a studio discussion on who may become the new Dr. Who. Will it be Eddie Izzard ? Perhaps Alun Davies or Bill Nighy - maybe Derek Jacobi - for heaven’s sake - this is Radio Four !

Thank God for Andrew Rawnsley - he may be another public school socialist a la “Andy” Marr but I think it unlikely that I’ll tune in tonight to hear ‘Oasis - when exactly did they lose it ?’.

Keep St George in my heart .....

So the overpaid, drug-addled "roasters" of Olde England managed not to lose - let rejoicing be unconfined.

But while I agree with her on the hypocrisy of some feminists, I must take issue with Jackie when she writes I've always heard of it as "spit-roasting". That particular phrase refers to a particular act, not to be described in a family blog, but one which could not involve more footballers than, say, a couple of Newcastle or Charlton strikers.

The 'moral' of the roasting incident is that the rock generation of the 60s and 70s (or in Peter Hitchens' phrase 'the suburban revolutionaries now occupying the corner offices') have passed some attitudes on to today's youth, the 'celebrity generation' - and anyone with enough fortune and/or fame/nice hotel suite/VIP table can now do rock star things (Parental Advisory), though perhaps with less gonzo style.


UPDATE - Jackie responds in robust fashion on the great debate of our times.

Back at last ....

Though no-one seemed to notice the absence, save only Jackie, who dropped me from her 'Required Reading' list. No deluge of emails demanding a return of service. Perhaps I should put an address on the site. Or something.

Apologies. The builders are extending the house, I'm selling another (my late mother's), and above all the earning a living thing have used up all my time. But the house sold today (STC), the Project From Hell is at last getting into shape, and Susan is at Warren's Malthouse for the evening - or is it the PTA ?

What's strange is that nothing really seems to have happened in politics over the last few weeks.

The Lib Dem conference was just like last years. Then it was porn at 16 and let the burglars out, this year it's ban smacking, compulsory porn (sorry, sex education) at 7, and let the burglars out. And people are still voting for them, showing that if you have no prospect of power, policies aren't important as long as you present well. Which they do. The Brent by-election was just a gigantic 'Not In My Name' directed at Labour and the Tories.

The Labour conference was only noteworthy for the dog that didn't bark in the night - said dog being the anti-Blair revolt. Better men than I have commented on this, but the lesson is that today's Labour activists simply have too much to lose too quickly. The old working class, the steelmen, miners, metalbashers have mostly disappeared. Plaintive pleas to save what's left of UK manufacturing are ignored. In the olden days activists could be as left as they wished. British industry would still be there, under Tories or Labour. I doubt very much if anyone really thought that it would vanish - and in fact it took decades to kill it.

But let's say you're one of the social workers employed on an anti-truancy project as part of Labour's great crusade against social exclusion. They were still recruiting them last month in my local education authority. You may have read the figures - that 600 million pounds worth of expenditure later the level of truancy has hardly altered - that each extra day in school for one child has cost over £1,000. Do you think your job would survive a change of government ? There are huge numbers of polytechnocrats whose jobs depend on Labour continuing to spend. They may hate Blair but they know open warfare would be electorally disastrous.



And the Tories ? Presumably they'll be trying not to shoot themselves in the foot Theresa May-style, while Ken Clarke and Portillo snipe from the sidelines.

But what a great story this is. Should get them all hot and bothered at the Guardian and Indie.

Rising Tory star Tim Metcalfe galvanised the Tory conference yesterday by asking for three cheers for Tony Martin, the farmer who shot a burglar dead, and demanding the return of hanging. The IT consultant, who hopes to become an MP, received a warmer ovation during the debate on crime than any other speaker, including Shadow Home Secretary Oliver Letwin.

He won the biggest cheer of the conference so far when he said it was time to stop being soft on criminals.

"Make prison a genuine punishment, bring back solitary confinement, take away their TVs and snooker tables and let them earn privileges," he said. "Bring back birching for young tearaways that terrorise council estates and vandalise graveyards, castrate paedophiles and bring back hanging!"

And there was an equally enthusiastic response at the end of his speech when he shouted: "Let us show the country that we really do mean business on crime by showing our support for Tony Martin."

Mr Metcalfe three times said "hip, hip" and thousands of delegates responded with "hooray!"

I could do with an IT consultant like that on the Project from Hell.

Don't Kill The BBC

Says Peter Hitchens in the Spectator.

"The time has come for sensible reactionaries to rally round their old enemies at the BBC, and for the BBC to seek support among those moral and cultural conservatives it has spent too long despising. Those who think that such an alliance would be as unprincipled and doomed as the Nazi–Soviet pact are mistaken. There is a real community of interests here, if only both sides would see it. Unless the BBC makes some new friends rather quickly, it will not survive much longer in anything like its present form. If it does open itself to people and ideas it now excludes and scorns, then it will become better as well as stronger. And if the BBC goes, the things conservatives really value will suffer. "

His solution ? For the BBC to drop its pretence of impartiality and encourage partisanship and open debate in its current affairs programmes - hence opening up the airwaves for cultural conservatives. I think he has as his model the late lamented 'Grilled On Both Sides' - the Sunday morning Talk Radio show which caused me to desert the Archers Omnibus after 20 years. Presented with the Labour MP Austin Mitchell, it was compulsive listening.

Only one problem - I just don't think the BBC are institutionally capable of reforming themselves. It just won't happen. They're like a much-loved dog suffering from an incurable and fatal disease that has to be put down. You know you won't ever have another dog like it, you know you'll be losing a friend and part of the family - but you still take that trip to the vet.

And the reason it won't happen ? A world-view which says that it would be better to be abolished by a future Tory Government than to admit that conservative ideas have any cultural validity.