Categories
All in the Mind Power Dynamics

Question Time on Rise of UKIP

How would members of the panel deal with the rise in UKIP support among working class whites?

Dame Penelope Guardian Reader

This may surprise you, but on my mother's side I'm of White English working class extraction myself and have some friends and relatives who still live in white working class communities. A great aunt of mine stills reads the obnoxious Daily Mail and has indeed occasionally raised uninformed concerns about the scale and speed of inward migration to our wonderfully progressive and welcoming island. Like many people in her age group she's prone to mild forms of xenophobia, which can be a very debilitating condition if left untreated.

Recent research by the University of Northwest Tescotown, has shown the same kind of recalcitrant thinking that leads some people of Middle-Eastern descent to sympathise with ISIS may trigger reactionary anti-immigration thoughts in those of white Northwest European descent. In the Enlightened Guardian Readers' Party we believe xenophobia sufferers deserve all the help we can give them. That's why my party is committed to not only increasing spending on mental health, but allocating 20% of the mental health budget to combat the kind of unenlightened thinking that leads people to vote UKIP or join ISIS in the first place. I've heard of a range of therapeutic treatments, including a new generation of Selective Critical Thought Inhibitors and intensive Equality and Diversity Training sessions.

Terry Trendy of UK Uncut
We believe the spread of evil racist views among some sections of our wonderfully diverse community is a direct result of the government's shameful cuts in social welfare and mental health services. We clearly have a massive shortage of qualified and trained multicultural awareness therapists in this country and should relax our absurdly strict immigration controls so we can bring in the right professionals to tackle this endemic disease before it's too late.
Polly Pontificator of Spiked Online
I really don't think we have anything to worry about. The previous two speakers clearly overstate the problem. UKIP support is highest among older indigenous White Anglo-Saxon protestants and is not spreading to the new ethnically diverse and internationally minded younger generations. As long as this dying breed of old-timers is kept amused through repeats of 1970s comedy shows, plenty of booze, bingo and Mediterranean cruises, UKIP will remain a minority sport.
Aaron Aardvark of the Green Monster Raving Loony Party
UKIP supporters are just a bunch of primeval climate-change-denying Jeremy CLarkson fans. We would simply withdraw their driving licences until they pass a mandatory Diversity and Environmental Responsibility Awareness Training test.
Categories
All in the Mind Power Dynamics

Why Labour will not bring about a fairer Britain

In less than 5 years, the Labour left seemed to have forgotten the sheer treachery of the last Labour administration. Rather than focus their attention on the real ruling classes sitting in corporate boardrooms or relaxing on Caribbean yachts, they prefer to demonise the bunch of overgrown public school boys and girls in the current governmental management team. You see national governments don't really have much power these days. Big decisions are made elsewhere. More important, to any rational and emotionally detached observer New Labour and the Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition are just two brands of the same product marketed at different sections of the voting public. The Conservatives like to appeal to the common-sense middle classes, a demographic that has shrunk considerably since the 2008 banking crisis. While Labour hold on to some of their core traditional working class vote in Wales and parts of Northern England, they appeal increasingly to the Guardian-reading managerial classes as well as ethnic minorities and welfare dependents who feel uneasy about Conservative rhetoric on tougher immigration controls or welfare cuts. Ironically the LibDems share much of the same demographic, but are tarnished by their support for the ConDem Coalition government. This leaves much of the tradional working and lower middle classes without a voice. Their jobs have been outsourced and their wages compressed, while their taxes fund massive corporate largesse and social engineering. For now, UKIP is filling this vacuum, but are unlikely to challenge the hegemony of the same bankers who corrupted New Labour or address the fundamental economic imbalances that causes much unbalanced migration. The Greens appeal mainly to wishful-thinking Bohemian intellectuals disaffected with New Labour, but offer an unworkable mix of high-tax and high-spending neo-keynsiansian and environmental measures that could only work in a zero-growth steady-state economy unable to fund the welfare state in its current guise. Let's just look at the some of the policies the last Labour government forgot to detail in its 1997 manifesto.

  1. Tuition fees, within months of being elected Labour reversed its previous opposition to replacing university grants with loans. The old system worked when only 15 to 20% of school leavers went to university, but the employment market now requires most office workers to have a degree. Indeed as the further education sector grows, degrees are devalued, but without a degree many young people cannot even get on the career ladder, unless they turn their minds to practical manual jobs. It would have made much more sense to keep grants for STEM and medicine students and for top-performing students from poorer backgrounds in other academic subjects, while withdrawing subsidies from non-essential degrees and encouraging more to learn practical trades.
  2. Bombed Serbia (1998). Throughout the 1990s we witnessed ongoing civil wars in the former Yugoslavia. The Western Media had decided to blame it on the Serbian leadership, which served as a convenient test case for the new humanitarian interventionism, especially as many of the alleged victims of Serbian nationalism were Muslims, whose votes Labour would later rely on. Blair could then pose as the saviour of Kosovan Albanians. We now know the death toll between rival groups was much more evenly balanced than presented in the mainstream Western media and the purported Kosovan freedom fighters (KLA) were armed and funded by the CIA.
  3. Supported US destabilisation of Middle East with regular depleted uranium airstrikes on Iraq. The Blair government remained loyal to US foreign policy in the Middle East, joining regular airstrikes over Iraq to enforce the No-Fly Zone imposed in the aftermath of the first Gulf War.
  4. Let banks issue loans to low-paid and unemployed to boost consumer spending while manufacturing migrated abroad.
  5. Sold gold when at its historical low in 2001 to boost US dollar
  6. Allowed massive expansion of retail and entertainment sector.
  7. Failed to train millions of long-term unemployed people to do all those essential jobs that any country needs.
  8. Subsidised low-pay through working family tax credits.
  9. Hid real unemployment by broadening definition of disabilities and encouraging more young people to undertake useless degrees. Since since 1997 we have seen a proliferation of pointless non-productive managerial, marketing and surveillance jobs. Few jobs are directly associated with the things people really need. If you want to have your imported washing machine fixed, in our brave New World you'll probably call a service company who will dispatch a ready trained technician authorised to identify and possibly replace an inexpensive component. For every hand-on tradesperson or engineer, there appear to be many more pen-pushers and client relations managers. Official unemployment may be much higher in Spain, but at least Spain not only exports more food and cars, but has a booming tourist industry. However, if we look not at the official jobless count, but at the number of people with a real full-time job, then over 8 million UK adults of working age are not in employment, education or training or classified as stay-at-home parents. The UK also has the highest number of part-time employed workers who rely on tax credits to make end meet.
  10. Allowed a massive rise in unbalanced immigration leading to a huge oversupply of cheap labour and a population rise of 5 million in just 13 years. Since the end of WW2, the UK had accommodated many immigrants from its former empire. However, with many Britons migrating to Australia, Canada or the USA, net migration averaged under 30,000 a year and for a few years in the mid 1970s and early 80s was subzero. Since 1997 these numbers changed rapidly, as migratory pressures and cheap travel enabled millions to seek their fortunes in wealthier countries. At the same time, British workers lacked both key practical skills such as plumbing, bricklaying or catering and incentives to accept low-paid jobs, leaving a gap in the market for keen young labourers willing to work antisocial hours on little more than the minimum wage. This set the scene for Labour's 2003 decision to allow workers from Eastern European countries the same rights as any other EU countries. Since 2004 net migration has consistently topped 200,000 a year, dipping only briefly 2008 and 2011 and the country's population has risen from 58 million in 1997 to 64 million in 2014. Whole employment sectors, especially catering, construction and food processing, came to be dominated by new migrants. Yet New Labour pretended nothing had changed. Immigration had long been a side issue. While most politicians agreed balanced and gradual migration could benefit society, they now had to defend rapid and increasingly unbalanced migration, i.e. although many Britons migrated to the rest of Europe, they were mainly skilled professionals, English language teachers or retirees. As the New Labour decade progressed, more and more ordinary voters began to realise a disconnect between politician's rhetoric about building a new global future, and reality on the ground where whole neighbourhoods were transformed and job security became a distant memory. While the metropolitan elite discussed equality, diversity and anti-racism, the marginalised indigenous working classes were more concerned with job security and social cohesion.
  11. Allowed property prices to rise exponentially to over 10x average salaries. While official retail inflation remained low, housing accounted for a growing percentage of people's outgoings. Indeed Labour continued to sell off council housing stock to housing associations. As the number of low-paid and under-employed households continued to rise, the government's housing benefit rose to over £20 billion a year. In much of the South East of England, a married couple on average wages (approx. 25 to 30k) could no longer aspire to buy a house worthy of calling home.
  12. Obsession with growth led the UK to increase its carbon footprint largely through consumption of goods manufactured elsewhere. While British consumers continued to buy cars, washing machines, furniture, electronic entertainment gadgets and other household accessories, manufacturing jobs drifted abroad as UK workers proved unable to compete with East Asia. However, the service sector, especially retail, media and entertainment, kept expanding. Every week would bring news of factory closures and supermarket openings.
  13. Supported US occupation of Afghanistan in 2001. Within months of the tragic 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center, New Labour joined forces with the US to attack Afghanistan, initially to hunt down the perpetrators of this dastardly act of terrorism, but latterly to promote women's rights and democracy. While they succeeded in killing tens of thousands and capturing eventually Osama Bin Laden in neighbouring Pakistan, the Afghan civil war continues to rage with much of the country still controlled by the Taliban.
  14. Deregulated booze and gambling. While Labour banned smoking, they made it much easier for people to get drunk and gamble away their devalued salaries. Indeed, not only did New Labour allow a massive expansion of casinos, they allowed the gaming industry to advertise on prime time TV.
  15. Enforced PFI contracts in the health service. Labour has long claimed to be the party of the NHS, yet under New Labour, the preferred way to fund new hospitals and facilities was through Private Finance Initiatives, which for short-term financial gain will burden future generations with £200 billion of debt.
  16. Expanded surveillance and tried to introduce identity card
  17. Supported US occupation of Iraq. Despite the largest demonstration in British history, with some 2 million travelling to Central London to protest the imminent US-led invasion of Iraq, the Labour government sent British armed forces to
  18. Oversaw massive rise in prison population. While nowhere near US levels of incarceration, England now has the highest imprisonment rate in Western and Central Europe.
  19. Passed 2007 Mental Health Act leading to massive rise in number of adults sectioned (detained) without consent. Note how mainstream politicians of all hues have championed mental health awareness, while in reality mental illness spending has continued to rise apace with the diagnostic rate for personality disorders. Yet few have linked this trend with other forms of invasive surveillance.
Categories
Power Dynamics

Propaganda Wars

For too long an unholy alliance of North American and European media outlets, principally BBC, CNN, Fox News, but also their French, Spanish, Portuguese and German-language equivalents, ensured coverage of evolving world events reflected the message that NATO, the EU and the leading global corporations wanted us to hear.

Not only do they set the agenda, i.e. decide which news stories are worthy of our attention, they can choose how to present complex regional conflicts, exclude inconvenient voices and promote opinion leaders who support their version of events. Resource wars are portrayed as battles between outmoded dictatorships and enlightened progressives willing to participate in our globalised utopia.

The trouble is their changing stories have failed to convince everyone. Not all Europeans actually believed the Afghan and Iraq wars were really about women's rights or deposing evil dictators. Some politicians publicly disagreed with the US/UK occupation of Iraq, but then still did business with the same multinationals, banks and military alliances that pushed for war in the first place. The sad fact is to keep the illusion of democracy alive, the mass media could only convince the US and UK electorate to vote for parties that supported the war. As it happens opinion polls in the run up to the 2003 invasion show a clear majority of British voters opposed to military action, but this changed as Parliament approved military intervention. France and Germany stayed out, but only a few years later the French happily intervened in Haiti, Libya and Mali.

Now the European Union and NATO have set their eyes on further eastward expansion and have backed a coup in Ukraine, some of us are not quite buying the latest outburst of self-righteous propaganda. Why should we trust the same media pundits who sold us the Iraq occupation to promote freedom and democracy in a country whose tortuous history remains a mystery to outside observers. Why do they loathe Russia, yet fail to criticise Saudi Arabia or China responsible for human rights abuses on an infinitely greater scale? Did any BBC pundit explain how the oil-rich Saudi Arabian regime now has the world's 4th largest military budget (USD 67 billion a year ahead of the UK at 57.9 billion) and is the biggest client of UK-based arms dealer BAE Systems ?

The apparent evilness of Putin's Russia allegedly has something to do with limited free speech and gay rights. But despite a deceptively vast range of media outlets in the West, they all seem to promote the same basic set of ideas, i.e. we need more free trade, more economic growth and more social engineering to uproot us from our traditional mores.

However, the Russian Federation is now reasserting its independence, and learning to play the West's game. They have studied the techniques deployed by the BBC, CNN at al for decades and launched their own channel, Russia Today, to challenge BBC propaganda head-on. So whom should we trust? Neither, but now the BBC / CNN cabal have lost their monopoly on English-language news. On some issues Russia Today seems more balanced, but on the others as biased as the BBC. the global balance of power is clearly shifting away from the North Atlantic to vast expanses of resource rich Siberia and resource-hungry hyperactive China. I will be watching, but will trust no-one.

Categories
Computing

Now for something different: Web Fonts

You may wonder just how I added these custom font types. I'm the last person to believe your choice of font should affect the message you wish to convey. Alas Web designers love custom fonts and often spend countless days wrestling with various technical solutions to reproduce the graphic designer's wishes on all browsers. Back in the day, they had to resort tricky Javascript libraries such as Cufon or, heaven forbid, Flash-based solutions such Sifr. These solutions could actually crash some browsers. Some will even buy special fonts and then waste more hours testing them on different browsers and devices. Luckily with Web fonts those days are over.

As a backend Web developer (I do all that Geeky database and data-mining stuff in my day job), I'd be very pleased if everyone could just make do with Courier, ideally using a text-only browser like the venerable Linx. However, now thanks to openfontlibrary.org, you can easily jazz up your site. All the fonts here are available in font packs to support all modern browsers. If you combine this resource with the free FontPrep application (sadly available only for Mac) or a Web service such as everythingfonts.com or freefontconverter.com , you can even support older versions of IE.

FontPrep and everythingfonts.com will even generation the @font-face CSS for you. Then just reference your new custom font in your stylesheet by applying font-family: MyCustomFont, Helvetica, Ariel, sans-serif; either to the body tag or a specfic region or set of tags. It is that simple.

If you fancy creating your own font, you can download and install the free BirdFont app. This is available for Windows, Linux and Mac. It seems to import best from the newer OTF font types and let you import SVG files for individual glyphs.

I then resorted to a little javascript magic to load a random custom font on each page load. Doesn't change the meaning of anything I write and you can always change it in the accessibility toolbar on the right.

Categories
All in the Mind

Huxleyan School Report

This may seem a parody of postmodern social reality and eerily suggestive of a future dystopia, but it is only a slight exaggeration. Schools tend to focus more on mainstream socialisation, engaging with mass-marketed youth culture and pastoral care than with reading, writing, maths and real science.

Self Confidence
Sam's self-esteem has grown throughout the year. His phenomenal X-Box gaming skills have earned him respect from other class members.
Team-bonding Skills
Sam has participated in a number of activity-related team bonding sessions. He especially enjoyed the school's annual virtual first person shooter competition, where he engaged in a marathon Call of Duty: Liberation session as a UN peacekeeper in Paddistan liberating gay teenagers from a repressive regime.
Sexual Awareness
Sam has taken an active interest in the wonderful diversity of sexual orientations and family structures in our local community.
Self-marketing skills
Sam has begun to learn how to market his diverse skills to potential employers
Equality and Diversity
Sam joined the rest of the class in our exploration of the enormous benefits of the recent arrival of so many newcomers in our diverse neighbourhood. Sam also learned how to deal with misguided anti-immigration feelings.
Mathematics
Sam enjoyed a captivating interactive documentary about the history of mathematicians and computer programmers, laying the foundations of modern game development. Sam also learned how to interact with calculators and spreadsheets to solve common mathematical problems without unduly taxing his delicate brain or interfering with his other pursuits.
Language
Sam enjoyed interacting with our state of the art voice recognition software. He can now successfully use this application to tweet his views about the latest first person shooter games. His broad vocabulary has now extended to concepts such as humanitarian intervention and intellectual property.
History
Sam enjoyed several virtual re-enactments of historical events. He learned about many evil regimes of the past and about the wonderful progress towards a better world that we have made recently.
Self-care Skills
Sam has learned about the importance of personal hygiene, sartorial presentation and supermarket shopping. Hopefully, as he approaches his 18th birthday, we can fast-track him on our driving course so can simulate travel on wide open roads and shop independently online.
Project Management Skills
Sam learned how to manage personal and business projects, design cutting-edge PowerPoint presentations and gantt charts using special voice-activated wizards. Sam learned how to delegate difficult tasks, which he may not be able to undertake personally, to human resources. We investigated some common scenarios such as how to find a technician to repair one's washing machine or how to proofread a report with limited manual reading skills.
Sport
Sam is a keen Laser shooter and paintballer.
Technological Innovation and Environmental Sustainability
Sam is very enthusiastic about new technology and hopes to drive a solar-powered Ferrari when passes his test. He also has an extensive collection of game consoles and smartphones.
Social Awareness
Sam took a keen interest in our social inclusion project, in which we showed young people how to claim job seekers' allowance, incapacity benefit, child benefit, working family tax credits and single parents' allowance.
Mental Health Awareness
We have been very impressed by Sam's positive attitude to his ADHD and worked closely with him to ensure he keeps up to date with his medication.
Communication Skills
Sam interacts very well with classmates on a wide range of game-related subjects. He has also participated in a ground-breaking RFID chip implant pilot scheme, so he is regularly in touch with researchers from Neurological Research Trust.
Information Technology
Sam has familiarised himself with the leading brands of proprietary software applications and understood the key importance of copyright protection.

Categories
Power Dynamics War Crimes

Left, Right and Plain Wrong

When political analysts first chose to classify opinions on a left-right spectrum during the French Revolution over 210 years ago, the left stood up for the underprivileged working classes, while the right defended the interests of the aristocracy and the emerging class of entrepreneurs. That was long before the emergence of the welfare state, mass consumerism and the globalisation of labour markets. During the latter half of the 19th century the left became identified with socialism and the transfer of ownership of the commanding heights of the economy to the workers. In the early 20th century the aspirational left branched into advocates of an international workers' state, often calling themselves Marxists, and social anarchists. The latter group saw no role for big business or central government and believed power had to be devolved to small communes and cooperatives as any large organisation, whether nominally public or private, is destined to subjugate both its employees and users.

As workers' organisations grew and their influence spread, the left came to be associated with many other social struggles of a rapidly industrialising world, from women rights to anti-imperialism. However, there was no default left view on each and every lifestyle issue. By and large the workers they claimed to represent were, and indeed still, are a fairly conservative lot tied to their homeland's traditions and often very religious. In a way leftwing thought grew out of the liberal enlightenment, the idea that human ingenuity can lead to infinite technological, social and economic progress and thus put an end to the evils of poverty and class division. In the early years of industrialisation, many radicals would despise the extravagance of the rich because so little was shared with the working poor and social welfare was limited to begging and charity. Social progress clearly meant extending the benefits of technology to the workers without whose labour the great imperial powers would never built their empires. Consumerism, i.e. the pursuit of economic growth through greater consumption of non-essential lifestyle products, remained the preserve of wealthy professional classes in most parts of the world until the 1950s, the automotive revolution and the advent of affordable television sets for all.

The Russian Bolshevik Revolution saw the emergence of a rival economic model to the laissez-faire free-market capitalism that had prospered in France, Great Britain, the US and later in Germany. Before 1917 much of the Russian Empire had remained a feudal agrarian society and industrialisation was mainly concentrated around Moscow and St Petersburg. The leadership of the new Soviet Union set about to industrialize the rest of their country through central planning. The whole federation was run as one large multinational monopoly in the guise of an enlightened workers' state progressing towards a socialist future and presenting itself internationally as a champion of workers' struggles and a fierce opponent of imperialism. While many self-declared Marxists and Leninists have written of the betrayal of the Russian Revolution and the failure of similar revolutions in other more advanced European countries, most notably in Germany, the left was tarred by its association with the excesses of Stalinism.

In reality laissez-faire capitalism, as envisaged by Adam Smith, namely peaceful trade among entrepreneurs with well nourished and educated skilled workers, had always been a myth. In the early stage of the industrial revolution, former peasants flocking to the mines and factories suffered a marked decline in living standards with very high infant mortality, not only through disease but workplace accidents, very long working hours (12-16 hours being the norm) and little time for leisure. The infrastructure required for rapid industrialisation and the growing need for a skilled workforce could only be provided through state intervention. No capitalist was powerful enough to coordinate the construction of the railways, roads, houses, schools and plumbing on which industry relied to thrive. As capitalism expanded, it relied on state intervention to gain control of resource-rich colonies and open up new markets. Many predicted the end of capitalism after Wall Street 's Great Crash of 1929, but the state intervened to save not only capitalists, but social order through a fledging welfare state. Ironically, both fascist Italy and Nazi Germany implemented the same kind of Keynesian economics, i.e. close partnership between big government and big business, that first Franklin Delano Roosevelt and then European social democrats have hailed since.

The outcome of the Second World War set the stage for a new era of mass consumerism alongside a benevolent welfare state. Most European countries were governed by Social Democrat or Conservative parties, who would argue merely over the extent of state intervention and various lifestyle issues as technological progress saw rising living standards and more leisure time. Before the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, this model of development was restricted to North America, Western Europe, Japan, Korea and Australasia.

While the left appealed to notions of social progress and various struggles against prejudice and injustice advocating greater social equality and solidarity, the right appealed to god, country and family. Ironically this struck a chord not only with religious leaders, who before the advent of the welfare state saw themselves as upholders of social justice, but with common folk too especially in more ethnically homogeneous regions outside the main metropolises that had attracted millions from diverse regions. Commoners also tend to hold greater national and regional loyalties than their more expensively educated and better-paid compatriots, often much more cosmopolitan and internationalist in outlook. Honest working people have long taken a very tough stance against fraudsters, gangsters and thugs in general, whether these hail from the privileged property-owning classes or at large among the underprivileged working classes. Last but not least, ordinary people have tended to have more traditional values on issues such as women's rights, sexuality and even ethnic diversity.

Not surprisingly, throughout the 20th century we saw apparent sudden swings and alternations from left to right and vice-versa. Mussolini started his political career in the Italian Socialist Party, coined the term corporatism, believed in a strong partnership between Italian industrialists and the state and advocated social solidarity. Was he a product of the left or right? Indeed how did Stalin's Soviet Union differ from Hitler's National Socialist Third Reich other than their purported ideologies?

The end of the cold war around 1990 and China's embrace of Western consumerism in the late 1980s also saw a rapid acceleration in corporate globalisation, i.e. the transfer of power away from nation states to large transnational corporations and nongovernmental organisations. For a fleeting second, some pundits believed the great ideological conflicts of the 20th century had come to an end. In 1992 Francis Fukuyama wrote "the End of History" announcing to the world that liberal democracy had triumphed over communism and fascism, a vision supported by other global developments such as the end of Apartheid in South Africa. Now, the old left-right moved onto more social and lifestyle issues, more a battle between liberals and conservatives than between aristocrats and workers.

Yet, as Francis Fukuyama later admitted, history hadn't ended at all, the new ruling elite had merely adopted the internationalist and progressivist rhetoric of the old left. While the new rulers of the world had really just evolved from the old imperial rulers and capitalist bosses, the public perception of this brave new world may well be remembered in years to come as one of the best rebranding exercises in history. New global brands such as the United Colors of Bennetton, Starbucks, McDonalds, Apple Computers, Sony, Microsoft, VW, Exxon, Coca Cola, Nike and Adidas hid their true business practices behind a mirage of youthful, multicultural, shiny, happy consumers enjoying their products.

After the tough postwar years, Western Europe enjoyed over 3 decades of relative peace and social cohesion. I emphasise the adjective, relative, because the period had its fair share of crises and struggles, but by and large Europeans had never enjoyed such a high standard of living and the gap between rich and poor narrowed considerably. By 1970 most Western Europeans could read and write, had a home with water and electricity and a job. Most households had at least one car and ordinary people could afford goods and holidays that once seemed the exclusive preserve of the upper middle class. However, contrary to conventional wisdom, such social peace, based on near full employment and widespread prosperity, could not be achieved without significant commercial protectionism and state intervention.

To be continued....

Categories
All in the Mind

How to argue with awkward purveyors of home truths

Here are just a few strategies you can adopt when confronted with troublesome individuals who insist on expressing politically incorrect opinions that cannot be refuted by facts alone.

  1. Suggest any inconvenient belief is just "their opinion" and by implication at odds with "received opinion" as endorsed by mainstream experts or opinion leaders. Decent people merely choose among a narrow array of officially certified opinions, e.g. phoney debates between mainstream political parties.
  2. Suggest you have your own preferred sources of information or have just read a report indicating otherwise. Of course, your awkward adversary also has access to these sources because they are broadcast and published so widely or even given away for free on the way to work.
  3. If your opponent suggests that the globalisation of labour markets may not be such a good idea for medium to long term socio-environmental stability, do not hesitate to call her, or him a racist. No doubt only racist‚ Australian Aborigines opposed European colonisation and only racist Black Africans opposed French and British imperialism. And what about all those xenophobic Chinese who fought the British imposition of free trade in the opium market and isolationist Bengalis who opposed cheap British textile imports in the 18th and 19th centuries?
  4. Suggest your adversary's views are mere conspiracy theories, e.g. Aren't you verging on conspiracy theory territory there? Of course, conspiracies never happen because all public and private institutions are totally upfront about their true motives. MPs never lie, at least in the United Kingdom and big businesses are philanthropic organisations. Pigs also fly.
  5. Contact a psychiatrist to help your friend overcome her or his belief issues.
Categories
Power Dynamics War Crimes

Let’s Disown Tony

Has anyone actually read Tony Blair's much publicised memoirs. Well within 3 months of the book's release and despite all the media, half-price copies were on display on Waterstones. Don't get too angry with this guy, for he has only ever been a politician in the sense of a polite public relations guy. He liberated Kosovo from Serb nationalists only to put in place a bunch of Kosovar Albanian gangsters, still supervised by NATO troops. Then in the wake of 9/11 he supported the liberation of Afghani women and the hunting down of Osama Bin Laden. Nearly ten years later Osama Bin Laden is still at large, Afghani women are still subject to Sharia law and Afghanistan is still plagued by civil war. But our multinationals gained privileged access to the world's largest supply of lithium. Tony went on to campaign for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein evil regime. Over one million deaths and $3 trillion later, Iraq is still quagmire, but our multinationals gained easy access to the world's cheapest oil supply. Libya has oil too ( see Libya, All About Oil), but only a small malleable population and a leadership willing to do business with the West. So in 2008 Tony flew out to cut a deal with Muamar Gaddafi. Three years later his successor, David Cameron, decides to support military action to overthrow Tony's friend and let in another bunch of gangsters willing to do business with BP Amoco.

I just couldn't resist reproducing this gem from Ken Silverstein:

Is there any way this country can officially disown Anthony Blair? Those of us who were never fooled by him now have to watch as he cashes in on his time as Prime Minister in ways which are actually shaming. His dishonesty, his lack of embarrassment and his greed are all so great that it is now possible to imagine him ending up munching gonads on I'm A Celebrity, perhaps trying to restore his fortunes after yet another failed property speculation.

I had to watch the ludicrous transformation of this man, who to my personal knowledge did not know in 1997 that they spoke Portuguese in Brazil, into a supposed World Statesman, the victor of Kosovo and the scourge of Saddam. These two wars, one dubious, the other indefensible, were conducted on the basis that Mr Blair is a dedicated foe of tyranny. Quite a lot of people still believe this piffle. But how can they now, after Mr Blair's trip to Azerbaijan, there to open a formaldehyde factory?

Categories
All in the Mind

BBC Drama Promotes Schizophrenia Myths

TV programmes promote agendas behind of smokescreen of wishful thinking. Waterloo Road is no exception.

Over the last three years Waterloo Road has sought to raise awareness about certain social issues with varying degrees of success and misinterpretation. Considering the programme's main appeal is to teenagers, it comes as a shock, but sadly not a surprise, that the last episode focussed the attention of millions of youngsters on one of the most poorly misunderstood psychiatric labels, schizophrenia, a dated term that should really be replaced by something more specific like psychosis. However, it is commonly referred to, in polite circles, by the euphemism "mental health" (shouldn't we all aspire to good mental health?"). Thus if this programme has done nothing it has instilled in people's minds that when teachers and social workers talk about "mental health", they really mean "schizophrenia" or plain English "madness".

Not only was the portrayal unrealistic, it perpetrated the myth that psychosis just bedevils someone out of the blue. As misfits are increasingly labelled with Aspergers and ADHD (and often diagnosed by the same so-called professionals), this excuses the behaviour of bullies against weirdoes. In the not too distant past, weirdoes were just kind of different, but nonetheless valid human beings. Now thanks to psychiatrisation, their deviant behaviour is considered pathological. If many teenage kids did not know what schizophrenia means, they do now and it will, thanks to the BBC, become the latest playground term of abuse.

In the vast majority of cases of real psychosis, either drugs, whether recreational or indeed prescribed, have been involved or there have been significant environmental factors, such as physical and emotional abuse, traumatic events, bullying, poor diet, exposure to hallucinogenic chemicals or, minor brain damage after an accident. In many cases psychosis represents the final stage in a downward spiral of alienation and rejection.

It seldom appears in well-balanced teenagers with a good diet, not into drugs, with a stable family background and plenty of friends. Out in the real world, over 50% of cases of psychosis in London are related to skunk, yet in the mythical world presented by the psychiatric/pharmaceutical lobby it is a hereditary "endogenous" disorder that merely has environmental triggers. Sure, some people may be more susceptible to manifest psychotic behaviour, but the potential is there in all of us. Everyone is a potential psychopath and all men are potential rapists.

In all likelihood you sought advice from so-called charities that promote the biogenetic model of madness.

In all honesty programmes like Waterloo Rd should steer well clear of "personality disorders" and focus on real social problems, not least the alienation of uncool children who fail to fit in with an increasingly conformist dumbed-down hive mentality. We are not disordered as individuals, society is...

Response:

Dear Mr Gard[e]ner

Thanks for your e-mail regarding 'Waterloo Road'.

I understand you had concerns that the programme focused on mental health issues and schizophrenia. I note you feel that this is an area that the programme should avoid.

As you are aware the programme focuses on its teachers and students, and confronts social issues, including affairs, abortion, divorce and suicide.

The show has been designed to be entertaining but at the same time we do hope that it has some real things to say about the experience of teaching in an inner city school, the barriers to that being an easy place to work and how hard teachers work to change the lives of some children.

Nevertheless, feedback like your own helps to inform the discussion about a programme's tone and content and the reactions of our audiences are closely studied by our producers and senior management to ensure the right judgement is being made about what is acceptable to the audience in general.

With your complaint in mind I can assure you that I've registered your comments on our audience log. This is the internal report of audience feedback which we compile daily for all programme makers and commissioning executives within the BBC, and also their senior management. It ensures that your points, and all other comments we receive, are circulated and considered across the BBC.

Thanks again for taking the time to e-mail us.

Regards

name withheld for legal reason

BBC Complaints

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All in the Mind

Dental Health Scandal: Playing Politics with Genes

Few empiricists would deny that both environmental and genetic factors determine subtle variations in the physical health, performance and behaviour of human beings. After repeatedly telling us that diet and lifestyle are largely to blame for the obesity epidemic, the popular media now inform that genetics plays a crucial role in our susceptibility to gaining weight, e.g. two different people eating the same intake of junk food may have very different weights. Our genes do after all provide us with blueprint for future development and as noted elsewhere determine largely physiological features. However, to pretend diet plays no role in our health would equally be a travesty of the truth. There are surprisingly few obese people in poor agrarian communities where most people get plenty of exercise in the course of their daily struggle for survival and have little time or resources to indulge in the wonders of convenience food, like microwaveable ready-meals or take-out pizzas, yet many of their genetic close cousins in the prosperous world would put on weight quickly. Often sensationalist media reports simplify our understanding of key issues like emotional well-being, intellectual performance, behavioural problems, dental health and eating disorders. It`s interesting how the establishment media highlight or suppress extensive research into the causes of very real human problems to promote their agendas or defend key interest groups.

We are led to believe that genetics plays a huge role in the determination of psychiatric illnesses, but only a minor role in dental health. We tend to be much more tolerant of severe acne, facial burns and balding than evidence of bad dentistry or bad oral hygiene. One cannot exactly shake hands, smile and discretely inform a new acquaintance that contrary to appearances one brushes and flosses one`s teeth twice a day. One has to have white teeth or hide one`s dental fixtures from general public view. As a result it`s easier to get a psychiatric diagnosis on the NHS than personalised dental treatment. Make no mistake, the consumption of sugary drinks and food, especially refined sugar and lactose, and poor oral hygiene, e.g. a failure to brush one`s teeth regularly and correctly, cause caries in the same way as eating Big Macs cause obesity. If you have a balanced diet, with plenty of vegetables, and consume the occasional hamburger made from premium beef, you may enjoy good health, but a diet of nothing but junk food, consisting mainly of carbohydrates, diary products and cheap meat, makes you extremely susceptible to all sorts of illnesses. However, that`s not the whole picture. The human body has evolved to cope with extreme variations of dietary intake. Our distant hunter-gatherer ancestors became omnivores as a survival strategy with a seasonally variable diet. Our teeth evolved in the pre-toothpaste era to cope with a diet of vegetables, fruit, nuts, fish and meat. In terms of human evolution milk and refined sugar were a very late addition to our diet. Indeed northern Caucasian peoples developed antibodies in order to digest cow`s milk. Later in the 19th century our diet transformed with advent of refined sugar and wider availability of tea, coffee (both served with milk and sugar in Britain), cakes and other confectionaries. Before the mid 19th century dentistry was a dark art confined to the aristocracy, who also happened to be the biggest consumers of sugary delights. By the turn of the 20th century (1900) most working class British adults had severe dental decay with many missing most of their teeth, but as films and photographs from the period can attest many actresses and models retained healthy smiles in age without toothpaste, fluoridation or artificial dental crowns. Dentures were a poor substitute for natural teeth that fooled no-one, but the toothless. In the early twentieth century the streets of British cities teemed with people exhibiting little shame in their visibly decayed, missing or badly patched gnashers. Abroad this became known as the British mouth. The masses could simply not afford restorative dental treatment and had not yet acquired the custom of brushing their teeth.

If we compare the smiles of post-modern image-obsessed young adults with a strict dental hygiene regime, regular dental check-ups and even tooth whitening sessions with Africa`s rural poor, we are struck only by the greater authenticity and relative lack of alignment of the latter group, for caries are exceedingly rare in black Africans with a traditional diet. Open your eyes in a busy cosmopolitan city and observe the huge variation in people`s mouths and dental structures. Some will casually and nonchalantly show the full splendour of their naturally white teeth, while others feel more at ease in more tight-lipped facial gestures barely revealing their teeth, but few of us react very well to an unashamed display of discoloured and crooked teeth. Yet, it seems illogical that we would have evolved in antiquity to suffer perennially from persistent tooth aches, that would inevntably result with the same diet, but in the complete absence of dentistry and toothpaste, with only tooth picks and water. The most critical age for dental health tends to be adolescence when our adult teeth have replaced our primary teeth, our wisdom teeth begin to emerge and we are less likely to care about diet and oral hygiene.

Letter to Ms Keen, Minister for Health

Dear Assistant of the Right Hon. Ms Keen,

In my recent correspondence about the state of NHS dentistry and my pragmatic, but costly, decision to spend over £6000 on private treatment, I stated quite categorically that I do not wish to be persuaded mercury amalgams are somehow safe. I`ve read and heard it all before. Believe it or I am an intelligent 44 year-old programmer, and have within the limits of normal human imperfection, taken good care of my teeth since early childhood. I did not eat excessive amount of sweets or chocolates as a youngster. Mars bars were a rare treat in my family and have not eaten hardly any chocolate since associating it with acne as a teenager. This was also the period when I has 10 mercury amalgams, only two of which now remain thankfully having had three removed in the last two weeks, others went with tooth extractions. If I had followed the advice of an NHS dentist, not only would I have retained two of these back teeth (one to be replaced with an implant), but it would have impossible to realign my teeth for what is today an essential cosmetic procedure so my front teeth can look vaguely normal. I do not have unreasonable pretensions. You are not addressing some mars-bar chewing, fizzy drink guzzling ignoramus who forgets to clean his teeth twice a day. There are only two reasons I have delayed this essential dental treatment. One financial and the second a psychological aversion to the practices of NHS dentists. I have a complex dental structure, crowded teeth in a small mouth. This makes restoration much more time-consuming. X-rays, of which I finally obtained electronic copies, quite clearly reveal the extent of bad dentistry. My back teeth were drilled and filled in adolescence with little regard to wisdom teeth that had not yet emerged and when two did emerge, they were promptly drilled and filled, and were thus gradually pushed to the left. Do I need lectures on oral hygiene? No I had those 30 years ago.

No amount of official denial of the adverse effects of this crude technique or reports from distant organisations, known to be under pressure from numerous lobbying groups, can replace what is for me a very personal experience. I may rely on remote scientific data to establish the mass of the planet Pluto, but the state of my teeth and my experience with NHS drill-and-fill conveyor belt dentistry are facts I can judge very well on my own.

The so-called evidence you cite is extremely selective. The name of the game is public relations and damage control.

It seems clear to me that your replies did not take into account the actual content of my letters, but were merely treated as another case of a humble subject unconvinced of the purported safety of mercury amalgams. As it is unlikely that you would have spent much time on one individual case, you simply recycle material prepared for other humble subjects. Don`t ever forget, in a democracy you are our servants and should not defend the vested interests of powerful lobbies who do not have the best interests of humble subjects at heart. So if we the people don`t want mercury amalgams because we refuse to believe your pseudo-scientific denials, provide us with alternatives. If those alternative don`t work, then we`ll look into something else. Mercury amalgams are technologically superseded. Currently the NHS wastes money on all sorts of things, overpriced proprietary software, where perfectly functional free alternatives exist, psychoactive drugs and Viagra. In this context the cost of alternatives such as porcelain onlays and inlays in back teeth would be minimal. We pay taxes and national insurance to receive medical treatment to meet our needs, not to be brainwashed by biased lobbying groups.

I also disagree fundamentally with your one-size-fits-all mentality, which underlies NHS policy making. I`ll take my family as a case in point. My mother lost her upper teeth at around my age and can never remember her gorging cakes, chocolate and fizzy drinks. She`d drink plenty of tea, but stopped adding sugar in the early 70s and as far as can recall always brushed her teeth. She now has none of her own teeth. My father on the hand retains all his own teeth to this very day, yet grew up in the same period with a similar diet. The point is oral hygiene and diet are only part of the story. Some of us are simply not blessed with a very resilient dental structure and hence will fall victim to caries much more easily than others.

If major dental associations such as the BDA admitted the neurological and physiological damage caused by mercury amalgams, it would open a can of worms with potentially millions of Europeans claiming damages. A beneficial side effect of the current obsession with cosmetic dentistry is leading all but the most underprivileged and misinformed sections of the European population to avoid mercury amalgams like the plague. As an aside, the downside to this obsession is that anyone with naturally crooked or stain-susceptible teeth (i.e. where enamel turns translucent rather than white revealing the dentin beneath) is likely to suffer from an inferiority complex. The only people I have ever heard defend amalgams are dentists and lobbyists, not ordinary citizens. Some are lucky with resilient well-placed amalgams, but so many others have experienced cracked molars and progressively uglier amalgam replacement fillings. Whenever a back tooth needs a new filling, patients that can afford it almost always choose white fillings, which are of course much larger than they would be had an amalgam never been placed at the outset. Why force people to go private, rather than provide this basic level of care on the NHS. In most cases old amalgams can be replaced with composites (in the case of small cavities), onlays, inlays or crowns. Only in the most severe cases would an implant be required.

Your latest reply simply regurgitates industry propaganda. That it has made its way to the highest echelons of the EU bureaucracy is of some concern but rest assured where democracy works at a local level mercury amalgams are on their way out. It has been completely banned in Sweden and Norway and is being phased out in Denmark and Germany with an absolute ban on mercury amalgams in under 21 year olds. In most of Southern Europe the state does not subside dentistry at all or not to the same extent and so when given the choice most parents will pay extra to have white fillings. In the UK the prevalence of mercury amalgams in adolescents is largely a class and ethnic issue. It is much more common among the white lower working classes, practically the only group with a high risk of dental decay (owing to diet and genetics) unable to afford private dentistry. The logic behind mercury amalgams is that patients will not take good care of their teeth.

"Only 300 studies published since 1996 had sufficient merit to be included in their report -- studies that analyzed mercury in urine samples as a marker for mercury exposure. Methyl mercury from fish is not found in urine samples, explains Karol."

The panel is wrong in using urine mercury levels as a measure of mercury exposure. Science has shown this. In fact, most studies on children indicate that the ones with the highest urine, blood or hair levels of mercury were the healthiest. That is because of those exposed to mercury, the ones with the highest urine, blood and hair levels are the ones effectively excreting the mercury. Three different research groups have shown that autistic children have much lower mercury in their hair, yet have higher body burdens of mercury. This implies that an inability to excrete mercury by a subset of the population represents those that will respond badly to a low chronic exposure to mercury.

I suggest this subset is much larger than the government would like to believe. Consider a simple analogy, many people get away with smoking 20 cigarettes a day into old age, so if we applied the same logic to smoking, we would conclude it`s safe except for people allergic to nicotine inhalation. Clearly absurd, but some smokers die early from lung cancer or heart failure, while others miraculously live into their 90s.

Apparently you cannot read your own Web site, the last place I`d expect to find evidence exposing the dangers of mercury in dentistry. May I refer you to http://www.dh.gov.uk/en/Researchanddevelopment/A-Z/Primarydentalcare/DH_4002164, which states quite clearly.

"A pilot study conducted by ourselves has shown that reductions in memory functioning were measurable amongst a group of dentists using a computerised package of psychomotor tests."

Ie. in the subset of humanity that fails to excrete mercury efficiently (hence the reason why researchers should measure blood mercury rather than urine mercury levels) the neurological effects of low-level mercury exposure has long been scientifically attested.

Let`s be honest the only group that actively defends mercury amalgams is organised dentistry and its army of litigation-aware lobbyists.

Don`t waste another penny defending it. At the very least, let people have white fillings on the NHS if they pay a little extra. But best of all, follow other European countries and ban it completely.