New Year, New Blog

This is my last post in this blog...

I've moved over to WordPress.

The new blog is in development, but to ease things it appears in the same place as the old blog, however, with some techy magic (mod_rewrite for those who care) old links will still work (apart from to the main page).

The old blog in its entirity can be found at http://www.eridu.org.uk/blogger/

The new feeds are at http://www.eridu.org.uk/wordpress/feed/

and there's a comment feed at http://www.eridu.org.uk/wordpress/comments/feed/

I will be getting these added to the LibDem blogs feed too.

Tories and the working class vote

Much indignation has been voiced at 'Dave' Cameron's claim that the Tories are the party of the working class.

For the best part of the 20th Century I think this was largely correct, it was the working classes who gave the Tory government's their vote, through a conservative sentiment in much of the population as well as populism and at times imperialism.

The Labour Party to contrast was a party, not of the working classes, but of the unionised classes, and has always had its fair share of middle-class and upper-class followers.

Socialism is also not a working class doctrine, it is a middle-class construct, much of it being a fusion of 19th Century Liberal radicalism and 19th Century Tory radicalism. The main part of the Tory radicalism is the condescending view that those in power, the state, should be the means to correct all the ills of the poor.

Neither party could ever truly claim to be the party of the working class, and no party can today. The Tories will appeal to large proportions of the working class, Labour to less I would think (in today's climate of less union power).

There is one thing all parties represent however - that is the political classes. More and more MPs come from a party background - they've been researchers or PR consultants for the party. This is the true state of political parties today, they represent the system and those who work in it.

Patriotism

Reading an article about the Anti-Imperialist league in late 19th Century USA, I came across a quotation which seems to have much bearing on the current state of play in the US and the administrations definitions of patriotism:

This Club [the Massachusetts Reform Club] never met under circumstances more calculated to create the gravest anxiety in every patriotic man than tonight, and by patriotic man I do not mean him who measures his country's greatness by the extent of her territory, the size of her armies, the strength of her fleets, or even by the insolence with which she tramples upon her weaker neighbors, but him who knows that the true greatness of a nation, as of a man, depends upon its character, its sense of justice, its self-restraint, its magnanimity, in a word upon its possession of those qualities which distinguish George Washington from the prize-fighter — the highest type of man from the highest type of beast.

- Moorfield Storey - April 1898 - on the eve of the Spanish-American War.

Rather than those who slavishly support the administration in support of the 'war on terror' the real patriots are those who are concerned with the justice and character of their nation, those who see the abuses of Guantanamo Bay and criticise them, those who campaign for justice and the rule of law, not their circumvention.

Says it all really:

Generation after generation has been told that all idealists go into politics and government, whereas greedy people go into business. It is not only untrue; the truth is the opposite. The market is not the only place that permits idealists to serve society, but it does provide a test to make sure their ideals conform to reality.

The politician may claim to have ideals, but they mostly serve as a mask for the desire to exercise power. If you doubt it, look no further than programs such as Social Security and the Iraq War. They continue long after they have obviously failed, because they serve the interests of the politically powerful.

Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.

(okay, I would say greedy people go into business too, as evidenced by lobbying by businesses for regulation in their interests, but the general point about politicians remains).

Administrivia

Hmmmm... blogger doesn't send me emails when people comment (despite me asking it to)

Which means I never find out if people comment.

Apologies if you think I'm ignoring you... (of course, I am also incredibly bad at replying anyway).

I never get round to checking via the blogger interface either.

Anyone else having this problem? Probably best to email me if you have ideas - as I doubt I'll get any comments left...

Also, I am massively behind with reading blogs... managed to get down to below 400 posts to read.
I may randomly be posting links to ancient stories or comments on ancient posts as I gradually reduce the backlog.

Computer profiling

I've just found a post on Light Blue Touchpaper about the trouble a research student in Cambridge had with HSBC.

He had what the bank termed a 'suspicious transaction', which was simply his student grant coming in from a foreign account (quite natural as he's a foreign student), so they terminated his account. Of course this had been okay for the previous 2 years, and he'd had other small transfers from foreign climes (from his parents and a savings account).

He, being a security researcher and naturally inclined to find out what's going on, contacted HSBC and sorted it out, but not everyone would do that. This could have impacted many students.

This sort of thing will unfortunately become more and more frequent as we rely on computer profiling much more.

It would surely become commonplace in the event of the National Identity Register being established, it is very difficult to believe that there will not be profiling based upon the data held: Deviate from your usual routine in some way deemed suspicious and you could have the police knocking on your door... (which, will of course be recorded in a linked database, if not in the NIR).

This is also very troubling from a crime fighting and terrorism prevention point of view. Criminals will learn to work outside the NIR, their actions will not be recorded, but the temptation will be to rely on computer profiling, thus missing out on the vast majority of criminals (and clever terrorist networks will offer a few sacrificial lambs to get caught through computer profiling to increase confidence in it).

There is nothing which can replace 'old fashioned' human intelligence.

When bloggers don't engage their brains

Okay, I admit it, I sometimes rant without thinking too hard about it...

A key example is the Sandra Gidley post. Although I disagree with her still, I realise she wasn't quite calling for abolition of sports days, but her comments are not exactly helpful.

Quite honestly, it should be up to the school to choose what sports they do, quite why Parliament needs to discuss this I don't know. My biggest annoyance is that this shouldn't have been said at all, nor should those statements made by others in the house on this subject.

The key is really diversity. I think children should be encouraged to compete in school. Within a year group, house or form competition can be very healthy if approached correctly.
Picking for teams in games lessons should be done by teachers to avoid the 'always picked last' problem.
As a whole school, sport should be celebrated, but not to the exclusion of anything else. My school had a lot sport, but over the years a more inclusive ethos was developed and we had inter-house play competitions, a technology competition (given a problem and 1 day to solve it), music competitions (I remember the choir well) as well as lots of other extra-curricular activities and awards in subjects and just for general academic achievement.

When MPs don't engage their brains

Iain Dale is reporting that Sandra Gidley has called for competitive sports to be banned from schools. Apparently on the basis that someone must lose.

This is absolute nonsense. We all engage in many things which we could lose at, we need to learn this and how to cope with losing (and winning).
Rather than banning competitive sport, why not encourage children to do their best, praise them for that and encourage all children to find what they are good at. Some will be better at sport than others, that is natural. Others are more academic, others best with art or crafts or mechanical things. This is natural and healthy.

To isolate children from competition risks damaging the very foundations of a liberal society, the recognition of the differences between people and the enourmous value of those differences. Also the function of competition in driving progress. Without competition we would be static at the very least.

If this stems from hating sport at school, well I hated it. Not because I was poor at sports, which for the most part I was, but because of the crass nature of some of the teachers, who were little more than bullies (I'm thinking of a certain ex-England cricketer in particular). The better teachers did not get annoyed with you for failure, they got annoyed with you for not trying. I also didn't like the cold in winter, or to be honest, exerting myself. This has nothing to do with competition, the competitive aspects were often the best. They bound us together in houses, teams or as a school and helped foster a sense of community.

This sort of utterance from an MP is the equivalent of Tory MPs muttering on about Europe or sexual morality or religion, they reinforce stereotypes about the party, which are simply not true for most of the party. They are singularly unhelpful. This will get us classed as the loony-left (the stereotype of the sort of teacher who would call for this has to be the lefty, feminist, misandronist, NUT member, primary school teacher, not the image we want for our party).