How prejudice can destroy prejudice

There are so many political cliches and truisms it's quite difficult not to use them. Sometimes they help us understand the world, or more importantly offer us a starting point for analysing events and potential outcomes. A common one is that it's not Oppositions that win elections, but Governments that lose them. Take 1979, did Britain actively vote for a woman to be Prime Minister? Was she that far forward on matters of gender equality that she was ready for it and wanted it? Or was it just that Labour had become an absolute shambles and even the most ardent mysoginist ignored the handbag, dress and boobs and just thought 'that's it, I've had enough with these bloody socialists'?

I ask this question because as I look at the papers this morning and see who, at least for now, the momentum is with after the Iowa caucus I find myself asking a question that I've not seen asked readily (that's not to say it hasn't been asked, just that I have not seen it). That question is quite simple, is America ready for a black President? I realise that some people may find such a question insulting in itself. After all, the civil rights movement in the US was a cornerstone moment in that nations' immediate and conscious history.

To even ask the question assumes that the answer is unknown and crucially ponders upon whether that answer might still be in the negative. Personally I hope that it's not, but at the same time I am not foolish enough to think that prejudice does not exist. After all prejudice stems from the sum of human experience and if human experience has negative interaction with absolutely anything then inductive empicism kicks in. That is just human nature. I for example have never driven or owned a Ford that I like, so I'd never buy one. No manner of legislation to criminalise anti-Ford views would change that prejudice. in fact this is the case with all forms of prejudice.

To really tackle prejudices they need to be challenged with their opposites. That is why, when it comes to something as dangerous as racism the solution is not to criminalise the thoughts or words but to challenge the preconceptions of those that think in such a way by providing evidence that runs contrary to their sum of experience. In a sense Obama, whatever happens, is doing that already and that is a positive thing. But I still cannot help wondering if that alone will be enough should he go on to secure the Democrat nomination.

As I said earlier about Thatcher. Was Britain ready for a female Prime Minister or did the male part of the country just balance the options and supress it's prejudices in the face of Labour being a potentially worse route because of their previous failures? Was the prejudice stronger against Labour than it was against a woman? I think it may very well have been. The result being that the idea of a female Prime Minister is not even something anyone would bat an eyelid at today. in a way it is quite ironic that one temporally short prejudice, Labour, helped destroy a greater prejudice that was temporally long.

The question therefore - if we assume that electorally Obama will find it tough to win over certain parts of the electorate whose experience means they still harbour racial prejudice - is have the Republicans reached a point where the prejudice against them outweighs any simmering racial prejudice below the surface of American society? America was at least a nation split down the middle in 2000, is she still at the point after eight years and two (unpopular) foreign wars? Or has she reached an impasse where the desire for change overpowers everything else?

If she is, and if Obama wins the nomination, then it may just be that she will do the most significant positive act for race relations in the history of the Western World. She has never been shy about coming forward and astounding us all, in fact it is what makes what is such a young nation so endearing in a way. The election of Obama would, whatever his politics might be, do more than any hate crime legislation could ever hope to muster because it would challenge the preconception of racists and non-racists alike. The only drawback would be if Obama didn't win, because then the question of racism would rear it's head during the presidency of a Republican winner. Hanging chads would be replaced with allusions of other things hanging in the Deep South, in a way that could represent a bitterly divided step backwards.

Of course, all these questions remain hypothetical for now. But should Obama win the nomination the answers will have a massive impact on not just the next four years of America's political future but the wider Western world too. An Obama nomination win but presidential loss would provide fuel for sneering anti-Americanism abroad after all, and ironically we're back at that little thing called prejudice again aren't we (in two ways, with accusations of racism and sneering anti-americanism)? So is America ready for a Black President? I honestly don't know. I do think though that if anti-GOP prejudice is more resonant it won't matter anyway and the most powerful nation in the history of the world will change the world for the better yet again through the law of unintended consequence.

UPDATE: Having spoken with a long-standing American friend he thinks that there is an undertone to this piece that suggests I am saying that America is inherently racist. That is not my intention. More that should America still have racist undertones by virtue of social history, human nature and natural prejudice then it won't matter anyway if dissatisfaction with the status quo is strong enough, and the resulting unintended consequences of that will be a very positive thing indeed.

Has Nadine really watched much Ricky Gervais?

This morning, Iain took umbrage with Nadine Dorries about her dislike of the Cathrine Tate Christmas Special and all the swearing. Nadine has now responded to Iain and suggests that Iain "can’t really think Catherine Tate is in the same ball park as Ricky Gervais, can he?". What surprised me here is that Nadine says "the funniest comedy is entirely void of bad language and overt sexual innuendo" and then mentions Ricky Gervais as a shining example.

Presumably she has not seen his stand up where he explains to the audience how he mistook Schindler's List for a porno because the review on the case said he needed a box of tissues nearby. He then informs his audience that he still managed to masturbate to it anyway. He pauses for a while and says "Shower scene" whilst doing that Gervais look.

Still think Gervais is the height of comic genius against the crassly offensive Catherine Tate and her use of the word "fuck" Nadine, honestly?

Update: For the record, I laughed my head off when I heard the Schindler's List thing. Although the first half of it was apparently stolen from Roy Chubby Brown so I have been told. I am a sick puppy to be sure.

Briain Paddick makes joke about dead MP's sexual tastes

Interesting video I've just found on YouTube from ITV's The Wright Stuff just before Christmas. Brian Paddick, the Lib Dem Mayoral candidate was reviewing the newspapers on a panel with Tory MP, Ed Vaizey. Paddick says at one point,

"[A story] from the Telegraph, 'Tradition of Christmas in Danger of Dying Out'. Apparently people aren't putting oranges in stockings anymore....er Ed...? I seem to vaguely remember a story about MPs and stocking and oranges but I think that was something else.

Now, I love a good sick joke as much as the next person, and to be honest I thought it amusing that the Lib Dem candidate would make light of the sexual practices of a former Tory MP when they had a leadership candidate with, shall we say, "interesting tastes".

Still, Mark Oaten didn't die of course. It does pose an interesting question though. Imagine, if you will, if Boris Johnson had made a joke about an (almost) dead Liberal involved in a sex scandal and taken the mickey out of his sexual tastes? Oh I don't know, Jeremey Thorpe perhaps?

What do you think the Lib Dem and Labour reaction to it would be? Boris would be hounded as a homophobic hatemonger. Meanwhile, Paddick can happily take the piss out of a guy that died enjoying himself with his stockings and oranges, make a party political jibe, and no one bats an eyelid?

Crazy world huh?

Highways Agency lost in time ether

A rather amusing tale from The Register about how the Highways Agency website can only forecast last year's traffic because the drop down menu doesn't include 2008.


However, it's actually even more confused than originally thought. If you try and and select the dates it offers it says,


So it doesn't think 2008 exists, but at the same time it does know that it can't tell you anything from the past but wants you to enter dates that are in the past!?! What fool wrote that bit of code then?

The danger of Ron Paul and the peril of writing him off

At last the day arrives, the starting gun of the Iowa Caucus will soon be fired and the long months of pre-presidential campaign will be over. The consensus, at least on the Left, is that after 8 years of 'neocon' Bush (note that neocon is a perjorative now) , the US will at ast be able to return to sound Democrat rule. The Republican Party has imploded they say, evidenced by the diversity of its nomintion hopefuls.

Such analysis is of course nonsense simple because the nominees across the party's are actually diverse and always have been. Only a simpleton would make such statements because they would be trying to apply the notion of a nationally held party line of issues x y and z to a nation that does not, has not, and never will work like that. The amazing thing about Iowa in the years that I have observed the electoral marvels of the American Empire is that it almost always throws up surprises. A frontrunner will fall and an outsider will rise.

Occassionally an outsider will rise and then scream and shout in victory so insanely that everyone thinks he is nuts and photoshops pictures of him squeezing the life out of a kitten in his momentary fit of pique. That was the Democrat Howard Dean if you didn't know. A guy whose campaign was built almost exclusively online. This time round there is no Democrat like him and instead the Internet buzz nominee is Dr Ron Paul. A pure constutionalist libertarian who seems to make lots of people wet with excitement, at least on the blog and YouTube anyway.

Yet if you read much of the mainstream media you will find little out about him. Supporters of Paul, and I mean the serious supporters, will talk about a conspiracy against him. Even if commentators praise his Internet rise and meteoric fundraising if the write him off they are, as James Forsythe at the CoffeeHouse has found, be accused of being part of the Murdoch Empire. To not give Paul the time of day is too be against him for some darker, or more feared reason. Personally I think this is nonsense in almost all cases.

The fact is Paul, for all his resonance online, appears to only poll at a level nationally that means he has no chance of actually winning. Whilst supporters will say this is because of the media conspiracy against him, with the exception of some very specific incidents, many commentators still only have the polls to go in their analysis and have to take much of it at face value, especially foreign correspondants. Then there is the Dean Factor. Last time round the mainstream media got excited about Deam, and then they were left with egg on their face after the screaming incident.

This is not to say they think Paul, who is in his 70s, will do a Dean. But I think they are wary about how badly they are willing to get it wrong. Getting it wrong is one thing, getting it wrong and bigging up a nutter makes them look even sillier. They are simple being cautious ahead of Iowa, and if Paul does the unthinkable it will have to change, but they're waiting for that moment. Stick with the frontrunners and then reassess when the poll is over appears to be the editorial line for now, and there really is nothing wrong with that.

Writing Ron Paul off is undoubtedly dangerous. No one can be quite sure how his online campaign will translate into votes, and I know someone who is in Iowa today doing whatever is the equivalent of knocking on doors in a British Elections. But, and there is always a but, it's not only dangerous to write Paul off but it's dangerous to consider supporting a Paul Presidency (not that I have a vote of course). At least that is my outsider view and my frame of reference has to be how the Presidency relates to the outside world not the domestic arena. Paul, for all his small government domestic appeal, would be a nightmare internationally. This is because of all the candidates, across all the parties, he has the strongest of classic American imperial denial.

There is no doubt in my mind that America is an Empire you see. Not an empire in the colonial sense, but the post-colonial hyperpower that has the responisibilty on its shoulder to bring stability to the global order. The problems is almost all American reject the concept of empire thanks to its perjorative undertones. The Left are very goos at this of course. They have a tendency to think that if the world could just have a big group hug it would all be alright. The truth is though, if America is not the global power then someone else will be and, frankly, those other options are shittier than a shitty stick stuck inside a big pile of shit.

Ron Paul, who is on the Right but firmlyin the imperial denial world too, represents a literalist view of the US Constitution which makes him an isolationist. It might sound appealing when he quips that on matters of foreign policy he would consult the constitution rather than his counsel, but a world without America as the hegemonic power is a world with a different hegemon. That is worth remembering and repeating. An isolationist America would be a very bad thing for the world. Just look at the alternative choices of China and Russia. Real Politik may make you whince, it may make you uneasy, but remember this. The others will do it too, and they ain't the nicest of folks. In the end it comes down to this. Write off Ron Paul at your peril and desire a Ron Paul presidency equally so.

Note: Should any Ron Paul supporters read this post and get annoyed. I can confirm that News Corp have paid me money in the past. In fact paid two cheques into my bank yesterday. Feel free to dismiss the post on those grounds alone.

My Week in Media

That Dale has tagged me again in a meme. In truly traditional personal rules I will not be retagging anyone but merely inviting anyone else to do it and link back here. So, "My Week in Media".

What I've Read
Currently I am in the middle of Northern Lights by Philip Pullman. That's the one made into a recent film called The Golden Compass. I would be reading it now but someone made me do a blog post. I've also read most of the newspapers.

What I've watched
Extras Christmas Special, Monsters Inc, Madagascar, Thomas the Tank Engine, Finding Nemo, CBeebies. Dragons Den.

What I've Listened To
Today I've rediscovered Shoutcast after a few years of not listening on it. I have mostly been listening to trip hop and incidental drum n' bass.

Where I've Surfed
Mostly SourceForge and FreshMeat. Have also been doing some torrent browsing but not for any copyrighted content because that would be totally wrong, highly illegal and probably be helping terrorists. Jewlarious cracked me up earlier in the week, and there are a few Russian Bride sites out there that make me giggle every now and again.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have talking polar bears, daemons and other fantasy world things to get back too, so bye for now.

Brown spins New Deal figures

Just read this amusing press release from Gordon Brown and the Department of Work and Pensions that is pure spin. Apparently

Someone has moved off benefits and into work every three minutes thanks to the New Deal job-seeking programme, which is ten years old this week. More than 1.8 million people have found a job through the New Deal since its launch in 1998 - that's one person every three minutes, every single day.

The calculation is pretty much spot on, but it's totally meaningless because it doesn't tell you how many people remained in the short term work that the New Deal gave them for a start. take for example the Millenium Dome which has New Deal employees, that project was short term, so whilst those people got jobs, they didn't keep them.

In fact, the figure is actually work placed, not individuals placed in work. Some of them could and probably are duplicates bexcause of the way the YTS works. Did I say YTS? I meant New Deal obviously, unfortunately ever since I did my dissertation ont he renamed project I can't help but think of it in that way. I did appreciate some of the "Notes to Editors" though. Especially the one that said

Long term youth and adult claimant unemployment have fallen by almost three-quarters since 1997 - the New Deal and other labour market interventions have made a significant contribution to this success.

Note how they talk about "long term"? It;s the Gordon buzzword of the day plus of course they don't want to draw attention to their own figures published in Parliament that shows that the number of young people not in work, education or training is actually higher than it was in 1997.

Of course, whoever is in Government spins these sort of figures to make themselves look good. Then they tell us that people are unfairly cynical of politics and that we have to fund their political parties with our taxes.

Demos crticises Britiain's proportional representation voting system?

The video below is by the left-wing think tank Demos and they seem to be a little confused. Around two minutes into the video the narrator says

"You could argue that the proportional representation system skews us toward a crude two-party system that misrepresents the diversity of political opinion." [set against image of Parliament]

Well you could argue that I guess. That would of course require us to actually have a proportional representation system of voting though. Did no one at Demos check the video and say "errr when did we get rid of First past the Post then?"

Apples and Oranges, America and Britain

Has anyone else noticed that over the past year or so we have repeatedly seen and heard from commentators how Britain is so far behind America when it comes to using the Internet for politics? How Britain is failing to grasp the technology correctly and is maybe five years behind the seppos? It's starting to irritate me I can tell you, because each and everyone of them seems to come from the same silly starting premise that the way the seppos do it must be the direction of travel for Britain because they are successful and we are not (relatively speaking at least). The problem is that they're comparing apples and oranges.

Just think about this for a minute. Let's start with OFCOM and Electoral Law. The UK does not allow political parties to buy advertising space on television and radio whenever it wants too. The broadcasters and media are heavily constrained themselves and there is growing concern about spending arms races. The growing consensus - rightly or wrongly - appears to be that uncontrolled spending is bad for party politics. How therefore can Britain ever expect to be on the same page as the US with its use of the Internet for campaigning? Producing those online attack ad videos don't come for free, and nor does the work involved to make them fly up the YouTube rankings (and that point ignores the ethical questions of that work).

The commentators who make these grandiose statements about Britian's need to catch on seem to fail to understand that the Internet is only a small part of a much greater whole in a campaign in the USA as well. The deregulated media marketplace in the US enables candidates to push their web presence to a mass audience. It is all well and good to have great videos, actually marketing them to people so they gets watched is a different matter. The American political advertising culture is the complete antithesis of the British one. To try to make a comparitative analysis of the success of each is just silly.

But it is not just the cultural and political market place that makes the constant comparison by commentators and bloggers flawed, but the geographical and population difference too. An MP has to appeal to about 60,000 constituents. With turnouts down the reality is that he or she only has to hit about 17,000 people. That puts them on a par with an elected official on a US state legislature rather than a federal (national) instutition. Targetting such a small demographic means that even if there are successes most of them won't be known about. With limited spending capacity and entitrely local issues, it is not worth the time or effort to produce big production style videos and fancy web content.

There's also little point in them spending money even on regional television because the penetration rate compared to price and what they need isn't cost efficient. That means again that, if they have videos they want to campaign with, they have to rely on the very few people that matter looking for them. The best they can do is to take out local advertising pushing their web site. Of course, in real power terms, an MP is much more like a Congressman in the House of Representatives. However, look at the comparison again. A Congressman has constitiuent numbers in the millions, and operates at a state level in the already mentioned liberalised deregulated media market.

In a campaign there will be multiple television channels available to push their message and drive traffic to their online content. Spending the time and money on driving that content up online on a large scale probably wouldn't be cost-effective either. The point is though that the Congressman is very different to the MP, and it stands to reason that the campaign strategy with the Internet will be very different. In fact, the only comparable situation that Britain has to America where a single figure is elected by literally millions is the London Mayor. But, as already noted, that campaign will be constrained by spending limits and broadcasting regulations. Even if the web content for the candidates was superb, without the wider ability to push that content it is only web nerds that will probably watch it.

The fundamental point here is that the Net does not exist in isolation in a campaign, it is simply a complimentary part of a greater whole. As much I hope Ron Paul surprises people in the Republican nomination, his success to date as been almost entirely Internet based. It would be foolish to write him off completely, but his chances of actually winning are small to non-existent. What Ron Paul will actually do is show that the Internet alone does not win you elections, and, in a sense will also show that the obsession of commentators with the power of medium is as misplaced as the .com bubble was in the financial marketplace. That's not to say the medium won't become more important if things like IPtv become more commonplace.

Another area of false comparison comes with the party system in Britain. In the US, whilst there are political parties, they are far mroe disparately connected and they do not have a formal leader. Policy comes down to candidate convictions far more than a party line. As such what you are more liekly to end up with in the UK is lots of sameyness. Finally though, when it comes to comparing Britain and America's use of the internet and politics there is the structural political difference at the very top. Britian is not, technically at least, a Presidential system. Whilst Gordon Brown, David Cameron, Nick Clegg et al may be national leaders they are still only MPs that need about 17,000 votes to maintain their job.

They do of course have a massive impact on national views and do influence people beyond their constituency (as too do Cabinet and Shadow Cabinet ministers in media perfomrance). But again we come back to the culture in which they operate. They cannot just buy advertisement at will, and they cannot spend whatever they like. This makes them very different to a Presidential nominee or candidate. Our quasi-presidential system is such that they could make personal videos, or attack videos, but as WebCameron and LabourVision have found out, getting people to watch the things is not easy. More importantly, getting people to watch them and actually stay tuned requires creative thinking and that means spending lots of money. Yet again we come back to money it seems.

For as long as there are spending limits on party political campaigning. And as long as the ability to hype up an Internet presence is constrained by rules and regulations about when you can air or publish content, then we will always be "behind America". Actually though, we're not behind America really. We're on a different motorway. The Merkins are driving up the M1 whilst we're driving up the M6. Until we realise that we're on different roads surrounded by different landscapes we will continue to make the false comparison between the two.

If the NHS becomes a conditional service then it should be privatised

What would you think if a burglar broke into your home, took all your valuables and then came knocking on the door and said you could have them back but only if you promised never to eat beef on a Friday? Perhaps you'd make the promise anyway, but how would you feel about the situation?

That is what Gordon Brown wants to do with the NHS it seems. According to the Daily Mail (which is well placed to know Gordon Brown's plans thanks to it's editor's friendship with the PM) there are plans to make NHS services conditional upon lifestyle. So, if you're fat, or you smoke, or you drink, then the NHS will be able to refuse treatment.

The social authoritarian plans appear to now be that they will take your money in National Insurance contributions which you have no choice about, and then they will only provide you with services back if you follow their rules about how you ought to live. In other words, the Government will now not only reserve the legal right to take part of your earnings, but it will also reserve the right to give you bugger all back for the money as well.

Well excuse me for a moment, but that really does make my taxes closer to theft than ever before. No one particularly likes paying tax, but in the current NHS system at least there is a trade-off when you do it. You know that you have access to services because you are one of the people that is paying for them through your taxes.

Whilst you don't have a choice about whether you pay tax or not you do at least there is a principle at play that means you are "buying" something with it. However, if you're a smoker, what is now being proposed is that you're buying insurance that you have no choice about and being told that conditions of that insurance are being changed and that it's just "tough shit".

Don't get me wrong, I don't have a problem with the policy per se. Insurance always comes with conditions, but the crucial problems is that I cannot choose not to pay National Insurance. As such we're back to the burglar analogy. My money is being stolen from me and then the Government has the cheek to offer it me back with conditions.

If the Gordon Brown wants the NHS to act like a private medical system that has graduated insurance policies defining what is and what is not covered, then he might as well go the whole hog and privatise the whole thing and move to a genuine insurance based state system that people can be in or out by virtue of choice.