Brexit And Burkinis

Brexit

The Huffingon Post, a rare example of a reasonable and responsible press publication in the UK, even if online only, recently published an article on the best response to Brexit for the UK. As a criterion it took the words of Jeremy Bentham, an 18^th century philosopher and social reformer who said that the best distinction between what was morally right and wrong was the test of what brought the greatest happiness to the greatest number of people. It applied this test to Brexit and measured known voter preferences and found, essentially, that a “hard” Brexit (absolute control of borders and no trade agreement with EU) would please only a minority of the population, a “soft” Brexit (minor control of borders and an EU trade agreement) would please virtually no one and that the status quo, no Brexit, would please all but a small majority and would make of PM Theresa May the most popular PM in decades. So what is the UK going to do? Probably the first of these, according to PM Theresa May herself. So, economic suicide, political suicide (and don't ask about the morality); a death wish or what?

As a footnote, Jeremy Bentham advocated (in the 18^th century) individual and economic freedom, the separation of church and state, freedom of expression, equal rights for women, the right to divorce and decriminalisation of homosexual acts. He called for the abolition of slavery, the abolition of the death penalty and the abolition of physical punishment, including that of children. He has also become known in recent years as an early advocate of animal rights.

Burkinis Etc

There has been a recent brouhaha in the press in France over the fact that various notable holiday resorts alomg the Mediterranean riviera and Corsica have banned on beaches the so-called burkini, a garb that covers most of the body.  Personally I don't care what, if anything, people wear when on beaches but, being male, am all in favour of attractive exposure of female form. But that is incidental and purely a personal preference. The French justification for the ban has been overt public display of religious affiliation, which is against French law, and thereby justified. But, the argument rages, is it anti-Islamic? It turns out that the Burkini is also banned, in public swimming pools, in no less an anti-Islamic(?) state as Morocco, for hygienic reasons, and bikinis are specifically allowed. I think that if you want to argue on what is anti- this or that religion you can argue forever and will probably never arrive at any point on which most people agree. If that is the death of political correctness, I'm all in favour.

On a humourous note I caught some footage on the Internet of purported coverage of the Olympics on strict Islamic TV channels. I've no idea whether the images were in fact taken from some nations official TV channels or not but the results were hilarious. Since sight of most of the female form is banned, womens' races consisted of black blobs with hands and feet flaying rushing in a line; and how anyone made sense of the gymnastics I'm at a loss to know. How can one black blob be seen as more precise, elegant or artistic than another identical black blob? It was hilarious viewing if true but I have a strong suspicion that any channel operating under such constraints would simply not broadcast these events at all. That in turn raises an interesting point: if these events are not broadcast in some countries, does this mean that for citizens of those countries such events don't exist? What happens if one of the country's participants wins a medal….? Alice in Wonderland territory.

As a further footnote, an Islamic extremist in the UK has now been convicted of inciting terrorism, with the incriminating evidence accumulating over many years. The Islamic hierarchy in the UK has reacted to this by saying they have been arguing for this conviction for a decade. So why did it take so long for the UK authorities to act? Political correctness again.

Tests And Racism

Test Results

I was reminded of something I did when teaching at Summerhill by a post by friend Roy Terry on Facebook. Roy's post was a warning against testing children too early. He was quite right, I thought, but with reservations. The problem I see is not so much in the tests themselves, provided there aren't too many of them, but in the treatment of the results.

At Summerhill, wanting to know how much of what I had been teaching the kids had actually been understood, I told them I would give them a test. Consternation all round! We don't have tests at Summerhill, I was told. So I explained why I wanted to give them a test and said they needn't take it if they didn't want to. In the event, all the classs did take it and I corrected their papers and returned them. More consternation! I hadn't given them any scores and they wanted to know who had come first, last, etc. I said I didn't know and wasn't interested; I'd found out what I wanted to know, which was what they had understood and what they hadn't. They hadn't wanted to take the test because they had been afraid of being ranked low but, having taken the test, wanted to know how they were ranked. The test taught me that kids had learned to expect test results to rank them and, possibly, show they had succeeded or failed. But I see no reason why that should be so. In the general education system it is so only because the authorities want league tables and tick boxes which, in my view, have very little to do with education (or anything at all come to that, except tick boxes and meaningless numbers).

Racism In The UK

Post Brexit there has been a measurable and worrying increase in the UK of race-related hate crimes. That disturbs me and tends to confirm my suspicion that the referendum result was basically decided by at best xenophobia and at worst outright racism. Many Leave voters have said that it was not immigration but taking back control that was the key issue for them; but taking back control of what? Theresa May seems clear that the message was to take back control of the borders; and what does that mean? It means keeping out foreigners.

Most of the popular press in the UK which campaigned for a Leave vote is now engaged in what I can only describe as incitement to race hatred. Positive stories on immigrants are simply not reported and any negative stories, however singular, are given headlines with implications that such stories are widespread. This has an exact analogy with Germany in the 1930s and the rise of Hitler and I think any decent lawyer could make a good case for a complaint to IPSO, the Press Complaints body, for inciting race hatred. There are laws in the UK against that so why has no complaint (to my knowledge) been made? There's no prima facie case, the popular press is too clever for that, but I can't see how the cumulative body of evidence could lead to any other conclusion. Maybe it's a question of who has the will and the courage.

As an ironic footnote, recent figures show that the UK has more emigrants in Europe than any other European country. In other words, the UK has more immigrants in other European countries than other European countries have elsewhere. So who exactly is against immigration?

Muslims, The Press And Summer

Muslims And The Press

I have been struck by a couple of recent newspaper articles, or perhaps rather the absence of them. In London recently there was a demonstration by thousands of muslims against the violence of Daesh. However, you could easily have missed that fact if you weren't there. It wasn't reported in most of the UK press; anyone who reads the Mail, Express, Star, or Sun remember reading about it? Here in France a large number of muslims have attended a Catholic service at the church in Normany where the Catholic priest was murdered, to show sympathy and solidarity with the congregation. Any chance of that being reported in the Mail, Express, Star or Sun, as the murder of the priest of course was?

In my youth I remember being shocked when no lesser a paper than The Times (a reputable newspaper at the time, incidentally) was hauled before the Press Council, the UK body then responsible for press ethics, and found guilty of distorting the truth by not reporting a signifcant event: the Sharpeville massacre somehow escaped its attention. In fact, I believe that that was only the second time that The Times had been found guilty by the Press Council, the earlier time being for the same offence and, I think, something to do with Hitler; it might have been Crystal Night that was somehow overlooked. I note this only to make the point that omission, failure to report an event, can be as much a distortion as misrepresenting whatever has happened. However, I believe the Press Council had jurisdiction over newspapers only, not comics and I'm not sure about the current body or whether it is able to distinguish between the two.

Summer Rolls On

We've had a few days of storms and some rain but the excessive heat is still with us; 38 degrees in the shade this afternoon. So I've been watering frantically to keep plants alive. The formal village festivities are already over for this year and its grandchildren time for the older residents. I seem to have acquired a pet masonry wasp, the type with a thin thorax and bulges at both ends. It has been buzzing around my head as I sit at my PC for a couple of weeks now and goes into the book shelf beside me, presumably building the little masonry pots in which it stores an egg and a paralysed spider. It must go out at night because every morning when I open the door onto the balcony it comes buzzing in to continue its work. The end result is rather gruesome. When the egg hatches the grub eats the spider, turns into a wasp, breaks the pot and flies off. But that's nature. When I go to my books I'll try not to disturb the pots until they are empty.