Abortion as caring for your offspring

Reading through the heated comements under a Telegraph piece on the issue of abortion, I found this beauty explaining the benefits of abortion. Allow me to quote:

"Such a smug comment suggests that you frown upon people not caring for their offspring, yet you disagree with a persons choice to abort their pregnancy because they will not be able to care for the child"

So caring for your offspring now includes killing them if you doubt - as every parent alive probably does more than once - that you'll be able to look after them.

I wonder at the idea that this is caring for the child. Is it not possible that some of the mothers are in fact, looking after themselves, sadly. These are people who are in many cases as able physically and intellectually, as anyone else to look after a child - do they just choose not to?

And someone has to die because of that?

Watch the Jimmy Saville evidence crumble away..

It's a long read, but how about this for proper investigative journalism. Anna Raccoon has read through and analysed (you know, like journalists are supposed to...) the Leavitt report on an aspect of the Saville witch-hunt.

We are unable to see much of the evidence against Saville, nor can we know who is making the allegations of course, because of their nature. But why are these complainants being called 'victims' already, by the press and by the police? Why are allegations, after someones death, being called 'crimes', without challenge?

Read through the comments as well. Some of the comenters know the people involved, and frequented internet forums where the women (particularly one) discussed the issue for a year before it came out in the press. Each element of the story is examined.

Reading this was like watching the film Twelve Angry Men. A case that initially looks indisputable slowly crumbles as the evidence is actually looked at, item by item. Quite gripping.

- - -

A further note in this sorry tale. Another blogger was a little skeptical when the Sunday Express ran a main headline screaming in big capitals: "SAVILLE WAS PART OF SATANIC RING". It turns out that the lone source for this story was a psychotherapist named Valerie Sinason who has relentlessly fed the press stories including "hair-raising accounts of diabolical rituals", she "was, indeed still is, the leading proponent of the view that SRA is widespread in Britain".

These stories tend to be quite hard to verify, and should perhaps be treated with a little caution. If you think I'm being unfair, here is a sample of Sinason's very scientific method from an interview in the Observer newspaper. Read it and weep:

'Sinason insists she doesn't use recovered-memory techniques. "I'm an analytic therapist," she says. "The idea of that is someone showing, through their behaviour, that all sorts of things might have happened to them." Signs that a patient has suffered satanically include flinching at green or purple objects, the colours of the high priest and priestess's robes. "And if someone shudders when they enter a room, you know it's not ordinary incest."

Another warning, she says, is the patient saying: "I don't know." "What they really mean is: 'I can't bear to say.'" A patient who "overpraises" their family is also suspicious. "The more insecure you are, the more you praise. 'Oh my family was wonderful! I can't remember any of it!'"'

Woman's hour tells us how it is!

You've got to love Woman's hour on Radio 4. Apparently there needs to be some balance with the rest of  the station's content, supposedly largely male-biased - though a quick glance at the schedules, or a cursory listen to programmes like Generations apart -  feminist output presented as mainstream - would seem to give the lie to this.

I used to find it hard to put into words exactly what made me so uncomfortable about Woman's hour, concluding that it was the sheer abundance of unchallenged assumptions which makes it such a politically charged programme - on  a channel that proudly boasts of its 'impartiality'.

Yesterday Jane Garvey and guests covered "slut-shaming" and the "sexualisation of girls" at school. One of her guests was Labour MP Dianne Abbott, Shadow Public Health minister. (do the Labour party leadership think everyone has forgotten Ms Abbott's last public relations triumph?). Now Abbott said nothing that surprised me or made me any fonder of her politics (as Public Health minister, would she devote any thought at all to boys? because she doesn't give the impression that she would) But more important, I think, is the nature of the discussion of the topic.

Of course, Woman's hour is a show designed to be by, for and about women. The problem comes with the sniping references to men. They are no longer simply giving a woman's view, but have moved onto different territory: making statements about men and women that need to be verified or not as may be the case. The makers of Woman's hour do not seem to get this point.

Put another way: once you start telling people how much easier men have it, or how they are entirely responsible for a perceived unfairness in sexual politics, then it is (or ought to be) necessary to provide some evidence, or some of the bigger picture that does include how men see things. You can no longer justifiably hide behind the idea that you're giving the "female viewpoint".

Abbott told us with relish (apparently talking about promiscuous sexual activity) that such behaviour is celebrated for men and how unfair it is that women have to suffer for it. This is a rather old and carefully chosen comparison that ignores the big picture of sexual politics.

A student representative joined the discussion to tell us what was going on "on the ground", as Ms Garvey put it. She similarly thought that it was always the girl who was blamed for 'sexting'. If this is true (any evidence?) you could argue that the act of sending a text is slightly more proactive than the act of receiving it, but hey ho. 

Interestingly, the student said, with regard to slut-shaming "but..girls do it to other girls as well. It's not just boys". This was off-message, and the conversation was hurriedly moved along. In actual fact, don't girls in fact care far more what other girls think of them, and compete with each other over how grown-up they are? Then there are the magazine's they read, the music videos they watch. Just how much of this new 'sexualisation' is caused by boys who desperately want sex - and have always been the same way?

Abbott seemed to think that if the adults were as internet-savvy as the kids it might help. But how exactly? She didn't believe in snooping, nor did she suggest how to make porn invisible to kids. The magazine's/TV/music and new attitudes among girls were only obliquely referred to by the discussion. Garvey and her guests skirted around them by talking in the passive - saying vaguely that "pressure was being put" on girls, and that girls were being "victimised by a pornified culture", whatever that means. 

Quick as they were to say how easy men had it, and to imply that all was the fault of men, they deliberately chose unclear ways of talking about where the pressure was actually coming from. This isn't an honest and impartial discussion of an issue, it's propaganda. Myself I prefer education. But I don't think people can tell the difference any more..

Testing tweets

testing testing. Forgive me. All in a good cause :)

— henrymcg (@henrymcg) November 30, 2012

Jobspeak. Or "Every day I dream the same dream"

Just reading the online portfolios of what I suppose I should call the competition, ie: other Web-developers.

Ye Gods but they talk some nonsense. If I ever publish anything talking about my "proven track record" in "providing robust solutions" etcetc I think it would be a good idea for somebody to call the cops.

And all this stuff about being a "people person", "a good team player", who is also good at working on their own, just to cover all bases. I am sensitive, but don't take things personally, thoughtful and constructive, but not bossy. I tell good jokes and will be good for office morale, whilst most of the time exuding such . By God, I seem to miraculously fit that professional-shaped hole in your organisation, without quite falling into the cringing-dogsbody category.

There are all these people about, purporting to fit the description above. How can I compete with these tail-wagging, performing poodles?

I'd forgotten how bad this all was. The unimaginative posturing of these morons! Myself I just like to turn up and say "gissa job". Surely that would be simpler?

I shouldn't laugh. If I'm not very careful I'll be doing the same myself one day

The Apple cult. Why it is the way it is

The Daily Telegraph have, momentarily, abandoned their Apple-enthusiasm and published an article on the ridiculousness of Apple-fandom. One feels a curious sensation of deja vu about this: the huge surge in popularity of a name or brand which can do no wrong, followed in time by a flagging of interest, and then eventually the doubters and complainers become more numerous - the obvious flaws become more apparent.

I've been one of the doubters for about 5 years, entirely coincidentally that is since just before the iPhone came out. I had my first taste of Apple zealotry from some people I was working for - truly nice people, but who behaved like unpaid volunteer advertisers for a product, as though they were promoting a way of life. Now I'm well aware that associating your product with a way of life is a standard advertising/PR strategy. And I think this goes a long way to explain the particular strain of snobbery surrounding Apple.

Let me explain. Part of the image we've been given to associate with Apple is this elitist image, there are two facets to this that I'll talk about: firstly, that they attempt to appeal to those who 'think outside the box', and secondly the idea that Apple products are for creative types.

On the first point, I remember finding out about cold-reading, part of a group of methods that confidence tricksters, fortune-tellers, mediums and sometimes salesmen, use. Basically the trick is - when you meet someone you've never met before - to say things about them that apply to many people, but sound very personal. One particular sentence that is often used is to say "you like to be accepted by the crowd, but at the same time you feel you are a little bit different, and think differently from the herd"

This is brilliant because it applies to every single one of us. I think it about myself, you think it about your self, We all do ('I don't' says a voice). It's incredibly common to self-justify in this way and people who are trying to persuade you to do or think something have known this a loooooong time. So saying that your product is for people who "think outside the box" is a very old trick in advertising.

Secondly, it's asking for trouble to try to appeal to creative types, or people's hidden creative side. I live in the UK and I've seen pathetically tiny amounts of the class snobbery that people associate with us. But that's not to say I've never seen snobbery here. Snobbery is alive and well in the UK, in fact it's rampant. In Music. And I strongly suspect in Art and Literature circles, and probably in theatre and film too. It is hard to credit the posturing, toadying and clique-culture that exists in these social circles. Seeing oneself as 'creative' seems to be inextricably linked with a strong tendency to ego-gratifying self-image. Not universally, but it happens a lot. People who wouldn't be like this normally are sucked into this mode of behaviour just so that they can exist and hopefully prosper in musical circles.

So there you have my thesis, perhaps not a new one: advertising techniques and cultures which emphasise that you are creative or "thinking outside the box" are in great danger of encouraging snobbery. I think that's what's happened with some Apple aficionados. There is a certain irony in hundreds of people who think they are different and special, but as in the link I gave above, Monty Python captured that pretty well for us already.

Celebrating an ex-PM's death? Really?

So the big story in the UK media today, it seems, is not Andy Murray winning the US Open (congratulations to him, btw) but the printing of T-shirts - for sale at the TUC conference - celebrating Lady Margaret Thatcher's anticipated demise. The messages on the T shirts include "Hey ho the witch is dead".

The story was most read on the BBC website for a while, and attracted over a 1000 comments in a few hours on the Telegraph website. But there's little more to say. It does, I suppose, look like more nastiness from the Left - the self-professed nice people in politics.

But what are we to make of the level of hatred and the standards of behaviour? Do we want to live in a country where it is acceptable to celebrate the death of another? It was bad enough when the tabloids crowed over Myra Hindley's passing - it is a hundred times worse in this case, to say this about someone who devoted her life to serving her country. Yes someone who made some mistakes - unlike the rest of us no doubt...

It is a sign of civilization to maintain the best standards of behaviour you can during political debate - the most divisive, passionate area of discussion there is. Those of us debating can get angry precisely because we become so involved in the issues. But the point is that we're arguing so we can attain a more civilized society (aren't we?) So if we can't behave like compassionate human beings then I would like to know what the point is of listening to fine words spoken by politicians, or indeed debating anything.

I imagine TUC leaders may get quite pompous over the course of the conference (will they condemn these Tshirts? Have the Labour party done so?) But I don't know what these fools, or any other bunch of fools, can do with a country full of people who think it's acceptable to celebrate the long, undignified death of another human being.