Man, I’m a little bit excited that President Obama is in London. I’ve already invited him out, but he hasn’t got back to me yet. It seems a little silly, considering that the Prime Minister and Arctic-Monkeys Fan Gordon Brown is always living about five miles away from me, but to have the most powerful man in the world a mere two miles-ish from me (I worked it out), is exciting.
Apparently Barry is staying with the US Ambassador in his house in Regent’s Park. Top tip: if your garden has it’s own zoo, you’re probably a little bit too showy.
It must be an interesting visit though – I wonder who gets the bed and who has to sleep on the floor? Not that they’ll be doing much sleeping – they”ll get to stay up late into the early hours of the morning, sneaking into the kitchen to see what’s in the fridge, and discussing boys. The ambassador could tell Barry about what a bully Vladimir is, and Barry could taunt the ambassador about Hillary, who he probably used to fancy.
I bet they’re talking about how they deliberately didn’t invite me too, the bastards.
At risk of my blog turning into a list of TV programmes that I’ve appeared somewhere in the background of, I was in the background on telly again last night!
Last year I went to see four episodes of Dave Gorman’s Genius being recorded – I think it was during perhaps my second or third week living in London. The episode shown last night on BBC Two – actually the fourth to be recorded – had Frank Skinner as the guest and brilliantly, myself and my friend Katy were visible in a few of the shots:
That’s us on the right. Bottom row of the seating. I’m wearing brown trousers and I’m slouching, as usual.
There we are again! Enjoying watching a maths teacher do a dance!
Just to prove I haven’t been photoshopping myself into the audience… here’s another picture!
And another!
If you watch the whole thing, there’s some pretty good shots of us when the camera is on Dave at the desk – we appear just to his right.
Whilst perhaps not as exciting as appearing in shot at a political protest, or y’know, on the Weakest Link, I still think it’s exciting. If I appear on anything else, maybe I should start invoicing TV companies for my work as a supporting artist?
I like to think of myself as the anti-Amish. Not only do I love technology and hate Amish people, but I think that rather than steal your soul, only photography or being filmed can truly validate your existence. It’s why I moved to the CCTV capital of the world, and why today, I appeared fairly prominently in the background of a news report.
No, I wasn’t in Austria sticking up for Joseph Fritzl (though I’d still argue that the default reaction to “secret underground dungeon” is “that’s cool” rather than “that’s horrible”), but I went to a protest organised by TV’s Mark Thomas. That’s right, TV’s Mark Thomas. Not the other one.
The cause was noble: it was calling for the government to invade Jersey.
Jersey is known to be harbouring billions of pounds, having spent years avoiding tax inspections, and is thought to have links to a number of rogue corporations and shadowy groups known as hedge-funds. What makes the need for this action even more imminent is that the UK government has in fact sold off various buildings to private companies (who then lease it back) based in Jersey – in practice, this means that HMRC, the tax inspectors who collect tax and track down people who are avoiding and evading tax rent a building from a company who avoid paying tax. You don’t have to be a genius to realise that this is not on and thus support the military action.
Brilliantly, the story made More4 news tonight. Here’s their report, in which if you look closely you can see me in a suit:
Obviously though, what with this being the future and all, it was I, the citizen journalist who beat Channel 4 to the studio. In fact, I did a live broadcast to the internet. Here’s my report, as it was broadcast live:
The Taxpayers’ Alliance, a tedious pressure group formed by some failed Tory candidates have succeeded in getting what looks like another one of their press releases printed almost verbatim in the paper again – or at least that’s what it looks like. The Telegraph are reporting that “EU membership costs each Briton £2,000 a year” – though to give it some credibility, they’ve added “Taxpayers’ Alliance claims” to the end of the headline and included a small counter quote at the end.
Whilst I can’t dismantle the story entirely – the source material is a book and the TPA haven’t put their data online as far I can detect, what I can tell is that the Telegraph’s story certainly has some demonstrable signs of playing with the numbers and is somewhat dishonest in its portrayal of the truth.
First of all, the headline is pretty misleading, and I’m struggling to work out how they’ve derived it. It seems this figure is based on this, which is explained in the following paragraph:
However, according to a Matthew Elliott, the TPA chief executive, the total cost across the EU is £495 billion or £1,968 for every man woman and child in Europe
Obviously they’ve rounded up £1968 to £2000 to make for a neater headline – but if you do the maths, then it implies that the EU has a population of about 251,524,390 – about 251 million people. Unfortunately, this means that someone’s maths (and to be fair, it could be mine) is bad – the population of the EU is approaching 500 million. “Maybe it’s just the EU15″, I thought – EU15 being the term used to refer to EU members prior to the “Big Bang” enlargement of 2004 which brought in all of the “spongeing” Eastern Europeans. But a quick Google reveals that the EU15 population has never been that small.
In fact, the only reference to the EU having a population of 251 million I can find is a line in this document about the number of people in the EU of working age – and that isn’t “every man, woman and child”.
What bothers me most though is that even if we assume that the TPA’s numbers are correct, is the distortion in the way that it has been reported. I don’t even doubt that there’s a lot of waste and mismanagement in the EU – they have two separate Parliaments and a high-speed rail line linking them for Christ’s sake, but what is happening is that it is being reported in such a needlessly emotive way that it is misleading.
Obviously from the perspective of the individual, paying £2,000 for anything sounds like a lot of money, but this not only tries to create the misleading impression that it’s £2,000 from each of our pockets (obviously though, higher earners pay more tax) It would be wrong to view it as £2,000 out of an annual salaries of the general public though – the EU isn’t just a big bucket, it’s £2000 worth of economic activity. That £2000 is going to be spent back into the European economy, and is constituted not just by income tax, but by every other sort of government income – such as VAT and fuel duty (sorry, “steal tax” in the TPA vernacular) and corporation tax. And £2000 per person viewed a percentage of a GDP of about £1 trillion suddenly doesn’t seem like so much.
Even the £4.1bn in 2007-9 going to Europe that the TPA moans about as a percentage of the UK government budget doesn’t seem like very much when you consider that for 2007-08, the UK government budget was £519,229,000,000 – the EU contribution making up 0.79% of it.
And when you don’t cloud things with the near-meaningless figure of £2,000 per person, it makes the EU seem a lot more reasonable – and though more difficult to calculate, it’s a shame the article doesn’t include any of the benefits of us paying into the EU and retaining our membership of the bloc – such as the immeasurable economic benefits of being part of the free trade area, our ability to participate in the market and so on and so fourth.
To paraphrase the comedian Chris Addison, the sad thing about “Euroscepticism” is that it contains the word “sceptic” – which implies a great philosophical tradition of inquiry and critical thought. In every other area of discourse to be a “sceptic” tends to mean that you’ve actually thought about it.
A few hours ago now Paul Dacre, editor of the Daily Mail poured a Molotov Cocktail and sat back, ready to watch the PC brigade scream. Today (Monday)’s Daily Mail frontpage has one of those frontpage stories that’ll make you tut and say “typical Mail“. But it’s so typical in fact, that I think it’s worth digging a little deeper into it.
It screams “ANOTHER BLOW TO FATHERHOOD” in that way only the Mail can do. No – it’s not a sympathetic piece supporting say, Fathers 4 Justice and their campaign for father’s rights – the Mail branded those “morons” long ago. It’s in fact some thinly-veiled homophobia, of course. “Now IVF mothers can name ANYONE as ‘father’ on birth certificate – and it doesn’t even have to be a man”, the paper tells us.
Now obviously the Mail can’t just outright attack homosexuals – even it knows these days that it isn’t really on – and besides, the Mail is the voice of silent majority – shouting would be to surrender to the politically correct Brussels bureaucrats that really run this country. So it has had to opt for some euphemistic language instead.
Critics said a woman could list her best friend on the birth certificate. The word ‘father’ may even be replaced with the phrase ’second parent’.
Don’t worry they’re not lezzers, they’re just good friends.
The second parent, who will have to consent to being named, will take on the legal and moral responsibilities of parenthood.
This raises the spectre of a legal minefield in which female ‘fathers’ will fight for visitation rights and be chased for child support payments if their fragile relationship with the mother breaks down.
Obviously any relationship between women is going to be fragile because who’s going to beat them into behaving?
Making its agenda slightly more obvious, the paper tells us:
The regulations are part of the controversial Embryology Bill passed by Parliament last year. The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority said they will give lesbian couples in civil partnerships who undergo IVF the same rights as married heterosexual couples.
So we get it, this is a Bad Thing, right? But how can we know for sure – what we need is an expert opinion. Maybe a Doctor could give us some insight:
Dr Trevor Stammers, a GP and lecturer in healthcare ethics, questioned the strength of the relationships or friendships between the mother and ‘father’.
He said: ‘There is no doubt from sociological evidence accumulated over the past few years that children do best in a two-parent married family with heterosexual couples being the married parents.
‘It probably will be the child that is the loser but by the time we find that out, in 15 or 16 years, a huge amount of damage will have been done.’
Dr Stammers, has been described as a GP and lecturer in healthcare ethics. He makes quite a damning judgement of the moves here – I wonder what informs his ethics? Oh, he wouldn’t happen to be the same Dr Trevor Stammers who is head of the Christian Medical Fellowship, would he? Oh, he is. I wonder how much of his “sociological evidence” was found in his Bible?
The Mail also cite another professor:
David Jones, a professor of bioethics, likened the role of second parent to that of godparent. He added: ‘This sounds like social engineering on the hoof.’
David Jones is a professor of bioethics – that’s an important sounding role. He must definitely be an expert. Oh wait, here he is – it looks like he isn’t a scientist, or a professor of say, sociology, both which would make his contributions relevant – he’s a Professor of Theology. He’s a Professor at St Mary’s University College, Twickenham – which when you look at its mission statement, reveals in it’s first line to be aiming “To advance education, in such manner as befits a Catholic foundation” and that “The mission of St Mary’s is to provide high-quality academic and professional higher education within a collegial ethos inspired and sustained by Christian values”. The website also reveals that Jones doesn’t have anything even resembling a science qualification, having stuck with theology. No wonder the anti-abortion Society for the Protection of Unborn Children are such big fans of Prof Jones’ bioethics course.
There’s a name on the St Mary’s website that sounds familiar too. Dr Trevor Stammers? Why do I recognise that name from somewhere? It makes me wonder how much of this story is verbatim from a press release.
Still, maybe the Mail’s other sources of commentary are more objective?
Philippa Taylor, of Christian charity CARE, said: ‘We are going to get to the point where a birth certificate is not going to be a true statement of anyone’s biological heritage.’
Oh. At least they’ve admitted that this lady is head of a Christian charity. Though what a quick Google reveals is interesting: the evangelical organisation started life as the Nationwide Festival of Light – which Mary Whitehouse had a prominent role in. No surprises there then.
So what about our elected representatives – what do they have to say? I hear that there’s some cross-party concern about this change for birth certificates.
Geraldine Smith, Labour MP for Morecambe, said a birth certificate should be a true record of a child’s genetic heritage. She added: ‘I don’t think the state should collude with parents to conceal the true genetic identity.’
Former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith said a father played an essential role in the development of a child. He added: ‘The present Government seems not to care a damn about families.
At least Ann Widdecombe, a woman who quit the Church of England and joined the Catholics because it was too liberal for her, is fairly honest about her intentions:
Tory MP Ann Widdecombe said the change would destroy the ‘basic nature’ of a man and a woman bringing up a child together as parents.
These are MPs in the Commons though. What about the other Chamber, the Lords? That’s where respectable peers, who are able to take time and deliberate in a calmer, less confrontational manner are able to go over bills with a fine tooth-comb to make sure all of the technical details are sound.
Baroness Deech, a former chairman of the HFEA, said the practice would lead to the ‘ falsification of the birth certificate’.
A bureaucratic concern – falsifying birth certificates could create some problems. On a completely unrelated note, Baroness Deech has happened to be absent on every vote on equal gay rights.
So I’m not saying that the Daily Mail is homophobic or anything – well actually I am. It’ss just funny how every source of comment in a story happens to come from either an anti-gay (not to mention anti-abortion, etc) member of the legislature, or a couple of Christian sources (a religion that doesn’t exactly have a tradition of tolerance). What makes this even worse is that Mail have deliberately hidden the affiliation of these people to various religious organisations and the like, which makes the whole thing fundamentally dishonest.
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