Hate, Not Hope

Weggis is annoyed. In fact he is exceedingly grumpy today. It seems that Weggis is not a "decent person". At least according to these people. You see, "decent people do not share platforms or debate with fascists, racists and nazis, whether at universities, during elections or elsewhere."

They are referring to the BNP, but who decides whether the BNP are "fascists, racists and nazis". It seems I am obliged to take their word for it and I am not allowed to engage with them and make up my own mind.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

This bit is even more annoying: "perhaps most shockingly, the Green candidate who has been active in local anti-racist politics took the view that he could win any debate against Evans, which is not the point." Well, excuse me but that is the whole fokking point. It’s not about convincing your opponent, it’s about convincing the audience – the electorate.

That’s what you do if you want to get elected.

What really gets my goat is that these are generally the same people who postulate that criminals are human beings and advocate rehabilitation rather than punishment. Who shy away from discipline in schools and wonder why we have feral children? Criminals and feral children they say are a product of their environment. We should condemn the behaviour but not the person.

Well, the last time I looked the BNP were made up of flesh and blood human beings just like you and me. They are people and just like you and me they are a product of their environment. These are the people who condemn others who refer to criminals and feral children as "Scum". But it’s OK when they call the BNP "Scum".

The way to deal with the BNP is to address the problems they feed of. Problems mostly caused by the party who refused to engage in the Hustings and the likes of those who supported them in that decision.

It is the problems, and not the BNP they should be attacking and their shyness is a product of their own failings.

I’m afraid I do not see any "Hope" here. All I see is Hate. Hate for the BNP.

When you fight someone, you take on that person's qualities. You become that person. You become your enemy. And your enemy wins because now there's another one of him in the world.

Every Party has One

The Guardian has got hold of a leaked Political Party Training Manual, which advises it’s members not to set up party blogs in the run-up to this year's European elections because "they can't write proper English" and "get carried away with conspiracy theories".

It also describes its own members as "oddballs", "Walter Mitty characters", "compulsive liars" and "born troublemakers".

Interestingly it also says that “independent sites exposing the wrongdoings and failings of the old parties and making subtly favourable references, will be much more attractive and convincing to the wider public than sites which are clearly ours”. Really?

Now, I expect you are wondering which Political Party it is. Well, it’s the one that has had their training manual leaked to the press.

The Bad, the Good and the Pretty

I am not what you might call a Politically Correct person. I refuse to divert from words like Chairman and Spokesman and I get annoyed when an actress is referred to as an actor. Strange though how words like "menstruation" don’t get the same treatment. I also have a huge hang up about positive discrimination and particularly women only lists.

The point is that where it is needed, it doesn’t work – just look at the mediocrity in the Labour Party. A Party born out of cloth cap, male dominated Trade Unionism just does not attract sufficient numbers of women of merit. And that is precisely why they need women only lists. Come to think of it they don’t seem to attract many men of merit either, but that’s another post.

The real question we should be asking is what is it about an organisation that attracts [or repels] quality women. Whilst the Green Party seeks what it calls "Gender Balance" it would seem to me quite rare that the rules have to be implemented, but I stand to be corrected on that.

It is not the rules of the Green Party that have resulted in women being elected to office. They have done it on merit and they have done it because the Green Party is women friendly, even me. Caroline Lucas, Jean Lambert, Jenny Jones, Sue Luxton, Ute Michel and Katie Dawson are just a few. [I am now going to get it in the neck from someone I’ve missed]. And I haven’t forgotten those in the background in support roles like Natalie Bennett and the Tracy double barrel lady.

So, having covered the bad and the good we now come to the pretty. You might be forgiven for thinking that the ascendancy of women in the Green Party is because us blokes aren’t up to the job but that’s not true. There are some pretty [good] blokes about too. There’s Darren Johnson, Philip Booth, Adrian Ramsey, Peter Cranie. [I am now going to get it in the neck from someone I’ve missed].

The point here is that while I notice things like legs, cleavage and shoes I also notice substance, and I’m sure that goes for the girls too, at least those mentioned.

The Limits of Thought

This post is for Rupert Read who promised us the occasional philosophical reflection on his blog.

I like questions too.

Science tells us that the absolute minimum temperature is −459.67° Fahrenheit. This is a theoretical figure assumed to be when atomic motion stops. We measure temperature by atomic motion, that is the agitative state of atomic matter – atoms, molecules etc. So when it stops we can’t measure it any more.

However, there appears to be no theoretical maximum temperature that I am aware of. But consider this. The laws of physics as we currently understand them tell us that there is a maximum speed – the speed of light, 186,000 miles per second. So, if the agitative state of atomic matter reaches the speed of light it can go no further, so there must be a maximum theoretical temperature.

The limitation here, of course is the way we measure it.

Now consider Relativity theory. Nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. But is that also a limitation based on the way we measure and experience it?

Let’s have a thought experiment. Let’s suppose that it is possible to travel faster than the speed of light and that a spaceship is travelling towards us at say twice speed of light. What would we see? The light emitted from the spaceship would be lagging it so it would arrive before we saw it. And what would we see while it is on its way here? We wouldn’t be able to see it or anything behind it. Would it therefore look like a Black Hole?

And how many Black Holes are out there?

The Price of Progress

It has just taken my computer 37 seconds to open a new word file to write this post. It may not sound like a lot but it is a long time, try it. When I first ventured into the realms of the interwebby I got my self Norton Security, a sort of PC condom to protect myself from all those nasty viruses. It does a weekly system scan. Back in them days it took 10 minutes and there was a slight slowing down of the system. Nowadays it takes 70 minutes and makes the PC almost unusable. And it's not like my hard drive is crammed full. I'm very choosy about what programmes I load onto it and I keep all my personal stuff on a spare.

Except of course on those Monday evenings when there is football on. On those Mondays I turn the fokker off and watch the football.

Moral: Innovation works for a while but when it gets too successful it chokes.

Happy Easter