Monday 8 August 2011

Caught flat footed...

Sorry I've been away so long - (just in case someone cares) - it's been a question of keeping the home going while my nephew was staying, and coping with other demands on my time. But I hope the blog will prosper.

What's got me going again is John Humprhies, the doyen of BBC Radio Four, interviewing a senior police officer this morning, following rioting in Tottenham over the weekend. 'Don't you think the police were caught flat-footed?' aked Humphries. 'No, I don't' (in effect) said the officer, and continued giving a measured response to the questioning. The next BBC Radio Four news bulletin headlines included 'The police denied they had been flat-footed in dealing with the riots' (I'm paraphrasing a bit, but you'll get the gist of it). Anyone switching on for that news bulletin hears the words 'flat footed' associated with the police response to the rioting and may well go through the day talking to friends and acqaintances about the police apparently being 'flat footed'. Next off there may be those who justify what went on by saying 'Well, how can you blame people for protesting when the police are so flat footed!'. And so it goes.

Seems Humphries couldn't get a good headline out of the police officer, but that hasn't stopped either him or the BBC. Well, I'd like to thank him for providing such a nice little example of cheap - but dangerous - journalism.

Thursday 3 February 2011

Resources and Public Resources…

I recently had an animated conversation with the son of a friend – a young Brazilian with a public-sector job as an administrator in the local Emergency Services. In pretty sharp contrast to his father, who works in the private sector, he is a self-declared socialist. We had a pretty wide-ranging session, running, inevitably, out of time before we had exhausted the topics of interest. We didn’t even get round to religion!
Bob – that is what I’ll call him – talked about use of ‘public resources’ to promote social well-being in Brazil. And I’ve since heard the new President, Dilma Rouseff, refer to the fact that Brazil is a huge exporter of soya while part of its own population goes without enough to eat. These are emotive issues that all responsible people would like to resolve. Of course, the government could just buy up soya (or rice, or beans, or maize, or beef) and distribute it to the hungry. But Bob, and no doubt others, want to go further. Bob wants the government to provide education, healthcare and improved transport links to people who live in isolated rural communities. “How else can these people be helped?” he asked. I told him I wasn’t sure how to answer that question.
I asked Bob what was the difference between ‘public resources’ and plain old ‘resources’. My point was that all resources ultimately derive from the private sector (where wealth is created). What was strange is that he refused to answer. Clearly in his mind it is legitimate to spend ‘public resources’ but he was in denial about the origin of those resources. All ‘public resources’ are taken in taxes from the private sector – clearly Bob thinks it’s fine to confiscate some private money although he was fairly clear that it would be wrong to expropriate all private sector resources. Bob certainly wants to be a Socialist, but he wouldn’t dream of being a Communist!
As a humanist I would certainly like to eradicate poverty, but I’m not about to sanction the plans of Brazilian socialists. For one thing, everyone I speak to in Brazil accepts that the political system is corrupt from bottom to top. The problem is not as bad as in much of Africa, where political systems do not function, but it is a constant drain on the nation. The beneficiaries of the corruption are the politicians themselves (and their families), friends of politicians, businesses with government contracts, and the government apparatchiks in Brasilia. Boy, does money flow in Brasilia!
So, if we take R$100 from private resources into ‘public resources’ and then spend it to help the rural poor, it looks like only (say) R$60 or R$80 ends up doing any good. Hmm, not ideal – but then perhaps some help is better than none? The trouble with corruption is that it’s the hard-working, less-well off, who end up footing the bill. So, is there a viable alternative? I’m not sure.
What I do know is that my own (Brazilian) parents-in-law (and many other relatives of their generation) were once the rural poor. They were barely-literate agricultural workers but learned to sew and make clothes. This allowed them to move to a local town and, after many changes in search of a better life they eventually succeeded in allowing all of their children to get enough schooling. Four went on to higher education. Along the way my in-laws were sometimes without food and/or shelter, they suffered from ill-health and had sometimes to rely on money earned by their young children. I think that most of what they achieved was done without many ‘public resources’, and they were respectable, hard-working and honest people. I can’t help feeling that the difficult road they travelled is a better one than would have been achieved had they been the beneficiaries of socialist good intentions. It’s good that Bob wants to have a view on these things, but I find it ironic that he’s the beneficiary of a safe job and is paid out of ‘public resources’.

Wednesday 2 February 2011

Chinese whispers…

A Brazilian friend just told me he doesn’t much feel like making an effort to reduce his ‘carbon footprint’ because he keeps reading that China is pushing out more and more CO2 from the burning of fossil fuels.
The Chinese are certainly industrializing at breakneck speed and building coal-fired power stations at a prodigious rate. And this at a time when the biggest macro-political problem the world faces is said to be global warming. Western governments are committing their economies to reducing carbon dioxide output by forcing through technological changes and increasing taxation on their populations without any specific mandate through the ballot box: I was never yet offered the choice of a political party that would impose CO2 restrictions on me and one that would not.
Yet Western governments seem to swallow the hype that the Chinese should be allowed to pump out rising quantities of CO2: when Western countries industrialized, it’s said, that’s what they did so it’s ‘only fair’; the Chinese are only ‘catching up’.
No one seems to point it out, but this is absurd. Let’s see why:
When Britain (for example) was industrializing there was neither awareness that carbon dioxide emissions might be harmful to the earth’s atmosphere nor was there available any mitigating technology. Early industrializing nations had to inch their way forwards to scientific knowledge and technological innovation. Vast amounts of both are now available as a common heritage of mankind to currently industrializing countries effectively at no, or minimal, cost. These great boons allow them to industrialize rapidly and efficiently. Furthermore, western-based companies are falling over themselves to take the latest technologies into the newly industrializing countries in an effort to continue to grow profitably.
China is a political dictatorship with a market-based economy and Chinese leaders make fools of western bureaucrats and politicians with specious arguments about CO2 emissions. Why is there such a silence on these matters in the western media? My friend is clearly smarter than the average bear.

Wednesday 19 January 2011

Atheists, Deists and Theists.

In debates between atheists and the religious, the latter often cite the existence of scientists who are said to have religious beliefs as some sort of rebuttal of atheism and justification of religion. Particular names are mentioned and statements made suggesting that a significant proportion of scientists adhere to one or another religious faith. I think this approach misses the point.
Atheists, and I note Richard Dawkins as an example, are often careful to state that they cannot prove the non-existence of a god, or gods, partly because proving a negative is practically impossible in itself and partly because they recognize that at the start of time conditions were so extreme that science has been unable to gather sufficient evidence about what took place.
Religious believers can broadly be considered under two headings – deists and theists. The former believe, or are prepared to believe, that a Creator set the universe in motion, but then left it to run on its own, the natural processes of cosmological, planetary and biological evolution leading to the universe as we know it today. The latter believe that after initiating the Creation their god continued to exercise an influence on the processes, intervening when thought necessary. Theists believe (or assert they believe) that to this day their god can be induced to change the course of events in response to prayer or other representation.
Innumerable sects of theists exist, each maintaining that only their own sect has ‘the truth’, each collecting financial or other contributions from its adherents and each seeking control over the lives of its own faithful.
Deists can understand, though they lament, the occurrence of natural disasters (such as earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, floods and hurricanes). Theists are forced to make awful excuses about why a divinity who is capable of changing the course of events should allow such catastrophes to happen.  
When the existence of a god or gods is under discussion, it seems to me that the real division is not between the religious and atheists, but between theists and those who simply do not believe in the existence of a spirit that intervenes in the natural order of events, be they atheists or deists.

Sunday 16 January 2011

Where on earth?

We like to think that who we are and what we have depend pretty much on ourselves. To an extent that’s probably true. A complex mix of Nature and Nurture goes a long way to explaining each of us. But sometimes things happen that make us see life in a broader context. It matters quite a lot where a person is born. Life chances are going to be very different for someone born in England or Brazil, or in Haiti.
We English tend to be pretty smug about our country and think we’re clever. After all we’ve contributed a great deal to Western art, politics, technology, economics, and so on. We’ve given a lot and it’s easy to feel a bit superior. It’s true that a lot of good stuff has come out of England but I’m not sure we should be taking much credit for it. We’ve actually inherited all those good things free, gratis and for nothing and we have a responsibility to be good custodians of them and pass them on intact to future generations. Plus we will enjoy our lives more if we are able to add to them as we go.
If you were born in Haiti, or some god-forsaken hellhole in Africa, you’re not as lucky as the English. It doesn’t matter how smart you are, or how hard you work, you’re not likely to enjoy such a comfortable life – and if you do get ahead by working hard there’s a good chance that someone will come along and either steal from you or kill you, out of jealousy or avarice.
I’m not about to go down the Socialist road of saying that we lucky people from the West must give to the less well-off around the world to even things up – I think there are better ways to help than compulsion. But there are a few things I think we should try always to be aware of. First, we are lucky – often more lucky than clever. Second, the discoveries that make our lives comfortable and rewarding are boons that, once made, are available to all humankind. Third, social stability is a blessing that comes from willing cooperation among moral individuals. Fourth, it takes time to make anything worthwhile. Fifth, once civilizing progress has been achieved it is our duty to value it and never let it slip away.
Where on earth we are born matters hugely. Let’s not be complacent about our luck.