Executing people

The BBC News website announced today that four prisoners on 'death row' in Japan have just been executed. In Libya, several health workers accused and convicted of spreading HIV / AIDS, from which children have died, are now sentenced to death. I have little hesitation in condemning without reservation these barbarities. Killing is wrong. It is as though a blood sacrifice is required to restore the balance of justice. In the Libyan case, the people found guilty are patently innocent of the crimes, but the local people (according to the BBC News website) want someone to 'pay the price' for their children being infected. Whether or not the Japanese prisoners were in fact guilty of the crimes for which they were convicted and sentenced to death I have no idea, and would make no difference. The only spirit served by executing them is brutality, thus increasing the sum of violence in the world. People throughout the world are in desperate need of less, not more, barbarity. As wars, and police death squads, and vigilante groups, and terrorist cells should become only of the past, so should executing people. Abolish the death penalty!

Wikipedia article about High Shincliffe

I have been busy: writing an article about the village in which I live. I have uploaded the article onto Wikipedia at the following address:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Shincliffe

Gifting

This weblog posting is, as many of my weblogs postings are, incomplete.

As Christmas 2006 nears, gifting becomes for me the source of considerable, increasing and unnecessary anxiety. I also feel apprehensive about being corralled into a ritual of elevated expectations awaiting the inevitable anticlimax and disappointment. It all feels like humbug to me. Yet gifting can be such a wonderful transaction that strengthens and deepens a relationship.

I am a hypocrite. The views I express here are those to which I aspire, not those I uphold in practice. As a result of writing this weblog posting, I intend to try to live more closely to my aspirations.

I have many things. If I desire some thing - food, an item of clothing, toiletries, a book, a DVD - I buy it. In both contemporary and historical contexts I am wealthy enough. I no longer require charity.

There are times in the year, such as Christmas, my birthday, and on your return from holiday, when I might receive a gift from you. It is kind that you should think of me. I do not require a gift from you at those times, although those are the occasions when a gift may be less unexpected. I like it best when I receive a gift unprompted by events or dates.

I have no right to receive a gift from you. Should I receive a gift from you, then I receive your gift to me as a mark of your caring for me. Should I receive no gift from you on a day when a gift might be less unexpected, then I am no worse off than on the day before. However, I might occasionally reflect on the quality of our relating.

I like it best when your gift to me shows that you know who I am, that you care who I am, and that you care for me.

I cannot dictate your gift to me, for to do so would seem to miss the point. I am aware, however, of my reaction to your gift. If you gave me money when I was poor, I was intensely grateful; but were you to give me money now, I would be left wondering how much you wish to know about me. Should you give me aftershave, I would be left wondering whether you notice that I have worn a beard for thirty years. Should you give me a silk tie, a leather wallet, a box of milk chocolates, or a book about football or about non-vegan cuisine, I would be left wondering whether you have heard me saying who I am. Sometimes I am left wondering whether your gifting might represent a ritual rather more than kindness, and I can find it easier to cope with you not giving me a gift.

Occasionally I wonder whether your gift might be more about you than it is about me. If you want something, then why not obtain it for yourself? If you want to give to charity, then give to charity - there is nothing for us in you gifting to charity. If you want something from me, then why not ask me for it. Even though I might refuse, and our relationship would be hurt a little, the honesty involved should stand us in good stead for the future.

There are occasions when I give you a gift, mostly to show my caring for you. I like best to give gifts when least expected of me, not least because then you can be certain that the gift and gifting were intended.

I like best to give a gift that speaks of my knowledge of you. However, I might not always get this right because my knowledge may be insufficient: I rarely buy clothes as gifts because I have little confidence that I know your taste well enough; I rarely buy books as gifts because I am unlikely to know whether you already have that book; I rarely buy wine for friends who know wine well because I have little confidence that I could distinguish between a good wine and a mediocre wine.

I try never to give a gift that might offend in some way, such as a book about how to manage your life better, or a bottle of whiskey if you are a recovering alcoholic, or confectionery if you have eating / weight issues. I try never to give gifts that might contravene your political / ethical / moral / spiritual sensitivities, such as a book about Islam if you are a devout Christian, or food that is not clearly labeled as Kosher if you are Jewish, or a T-shirt produced in a 'developing economy' sweat shop if I know you to be enthusiastic about Fair Trade. I risk getting this wrong, and however painful it might be for both of us, I should rather know that I had made a mistake.

In gifting to you, I am unlikely to contravene my own morality. For example, I would neither gift you animal flesh, nor a compendium of 'Irish jokes', nor items that result from the proceeds of crime or fund terrorism (state-sponsored or otherwise). This does not imply, however, that I would intend to promote my own political / ethical / moral / spiritual preferences, nor my own taste. I am unlikely to give you recipes for a vegan cuisine, unless I knew that you too are a vegan; I am unlikely to give you tickets for a Van Morrison concert unless I knew that you too especially enjoy his music. I am unlikely to gift you a subscription to an environmental magazine unless I knew that you too are enthusiastic about green issues. I am unlikely to gift you my donation to the RSPB (Royal Society for the Protection of Birds), although I am a member, because there is nothing of you, or for you, in that transaction. There are many gifts in the world awaiting my gifting to you about which we can both feel entirely comfortable.

One respect in which I am lately no longer a hypocrite is that my gifting is no longer ritualistic. However, I do not yet feel comfortable in my newly-attained position, and still feel a heavy social pull towards the ritual of gifting.

As a postscript in December 2007, I found this on the BBC News website:


To be continued ...

Oh My Newsnight

I have uploaded a short movie onto the YouTube website. The current address of the movie is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0XqoOZ4vik

The movie has many technological flaws, including a two or three second sound drop-out, that I wish to remedy. Each time I upload an amended version of the movie, I shall update this weblink.

The movie script is my posting in this weblog entitled Green Issues of 4 November 2006. I anticipate leaving the movie text unamended, because I intend to make several more short movies looking in greater depth at a wider range of green issues.

Cathy Come Home

I watched 'Cathy Come Home' on UK television yesterday (Sunday 26 November 2006) evening. On each occasion, including the first, I have watched Ken Loach's 'Wednesday Play' several times over the past 30 years I have felt a great reluctance to put myself through the unswerving inevitability (listen to Ravel's 'Bolero', or read the description by Simone de Beauvoir of Jean-Paul Sartre and herself watching US 'western' movies) and the mounting agony of the simple plot. On each occasion, however, I am enticed and drawn into the movie by Loach's unsentimental, unsensationalised docudrama treatment (contrast with the recent BBC 'Horizon' docudrama on pandemic 'flu).

Loach's characters are Everyman and his Wife, who we are not invited to love, interacting with characterisations of people employed to run 'the system', who we are not invited to despise. Both the subject matter and the acting seem to belong to unexceptional BBC television drama/soap. However, the camera-work and editing are much less languid than a contemporary soap such as Coronation Street. I love the devices of having the voice of Cathy looking back to provide a commentary; and of providing factual information about homelessness in various parts of the UK (as Manuel Pueg does about homosexuality in his novel 'Kiss of the Spiderwoman', and John Fowles does about prostitution in Victorian London in 'The French Lieutenant's Woman').

The movie rehearses a range of myths about the apparent fecklessness of people who become homeless, unostentatiously exposing the patent fallacy of such myths. The movie shows how easily (and even arbitrarily) people can be knocked out of society into an effectively disenfranchised underclass. The movie shows how a couple of ordinary people, with ordinary aspirations, can be driven to shout at (i.e. to behave impolitely towards) officials of 'the system' who fail to hear (won't or can't?) the increasingly desperate plight of Cathy and her family. On several occasions during the movie (such as at the meeting of the householders who live near the caravan site, and the subsequent arson attack on the caravans; and when the baliff comes to evict them from the squat), the hypocrisy of the characters is suggested, although the scene is never devoid of sympathy for them.

... to be continued ...

Infanticide (de facto)

Guidance recently issued to hospital paediatric units by the BMA (British Medical Association) upset me. It is proposed that UK babies born at 22 weeks or earlier should not be resuscitated because their chances of survival are only one per cent, and the likelihood of a surviving child being disabled is high.

Had I only a one per cent chance of living, I would take it without hesitation. I find it hard to believe that few people would say differently. If my daughter had a one per cent chance of survival, I would do all in my power to provide her with that chance.

It would appear obvious, therefore, that the issue for the BMA is not about the chances of survival but that the cost of intensive neonatal medical care is considered too high to make the expense worthwhile. I accept that there are prices that may not be worth paying for a human life, or even the chance of a human life: the sacrificial death of other people; a Chernobyl-scale environmental disaster; or the destruction of a national art gallery or national cultural / world heritage site. However, people, companies and governments the world over spend millions of pounds, euros, dollars and yen on armaments, on base entertainment and on conspicuous consumption. Whilst it would be fair to argue over the merits or otherwise of goods and services bought and sold the world over, a medical policy of refusing to save the life of a prematurely-born child in order to economise on resources seems to be turning medical ethics upside down.

I do not believe that whether a child is likely to be born disabled should be a consideration regarding whether to save the child's life. If the issue is about cost, the financial expense of caring for that child through life would be a drop in the ocean compared to building and launching a military satellite, making a blockbuster movie, or a constructing a cruise liner. However, maybe there is an implicit belief that the life of a disabled child is a life blighted. ("The child would be sensorily impaired, be in constant pain, and have a poor quality of life. We'd be doing it a favour, putting it out of its misery. Were it a dog we'd have little hesitation about putting it down.") It would be interesting to find out the differential suicide rates for disabled and able-bodied people: I doubt that there is much difference (I am ready to be corrected). Maybe the BMA's concern is for the inconvenience to blameless parents of being saddled with a child requiring medication several times each day; additional attention to needs; specialist care, equipment and schooling.

I have a strong belief that societies the world over are better, richer, more humane societies because of the engagement required of them to care for children and young people, older people, people with a learning disability, physically disabled people, people whose health is frail, emotionally vulnerable people, people who live on the edge. Societies that most of all prize and reward strength and excellence, and strive towards conceptual ideals and ideas of perfection, risk losing touch with warm humanity. It seems to me that the UK is already quite some way along that cold path.

I recognise that for many people the term 'family' is problematic, perhaps because of abuses that have taken place within their family. However, I like the term when used more broadly to refer to a group of people who struggle together to make life work. To quote from Lilo and Stich: "Family means no-one gets left behind." For me, that means no-one.

Killing Saddam Hussein

I permit no-one to take life in my name, for killing is wrong. Whether perpetrated by tyrants or democratically-elected governments, killing is wrong. Regardless of purpose, motivation or mitigation, killing is wrong. Whether executed as a crime in passion, in time of war, or judicially in cold blood, killing is always wrong.

Some cities in the US

Mahattan is the capital city of high culture; the most vibrant of cities in which to shop, eat and be entertained; and simply the centre of the world. The terrorist attack of 11 September 2001 prompted me to visit - four times to date. Were a year's job-swap ever possible, I should find it impossible to resist. In the meantime my next visit is being plotted.

DC, with its Smithsonians, its grand architecture, and the charming politeness of many of the people who live there, make it a worthy tourist city. Its pleasant weather, reasonably accessible public transport system, and several vegetarian eating places (all of which had vegan dishes) made the four days I spent there all too brief, and I should have preferred to have spent four weeks. DC is high on my list of cities to revisit.

Boston, on the other hand, is significantly over-rated as a tourist destination, and is worth avoiding until even Washington (Tyne & Wear, UK), Peterlee (County Durham, UK) and Harlow (Essex, UK) have been exhausted. Whereas it likes to trade under the name of 'Beantown', Boston's historical sites are few, poorly presented, and offensively partisan. Many of the people who inhabit central Boston behave coldly at best, some might say rudely. There is virtually no vegan food to be had anywhere near central Boston. On the other hand, Cambridge was pleasant in a very, very low key way, but nothing to Oxford (UK), Cambridge (UK) or ever Dublin (Eire).

Chicago has wonderful architecture stretching back to the nineteenth century. As well as the grand buildings, such as the Institute of Art, and the fascinating 1920s' skyscrapers (such as the Union Carbide building), and the imposing late twentieth century skyscrapers (such as the Sears Tower), Frank Lloyd Wright left his mark, several in fact, at Oak Park - essential viewing for anyone interested in architecture. A boat trip is an excellent way to view the architecture of downtown Chicago. The Instiute of Art, so lovingly featured in John Hughes' movie Ferris Bueller's Day Off, is world class, and is essential viewing. Several recent movies use the ambience of Chicago as though a chartacter: Fugitive, starring Harrison Ford, and While You Were Sleeping, starring Sandra Bullock. The public zoo is set in parkland on the lakeshore. There is vegetarian food in Chicago, including in the gay, bohemian suburb of North Halstead.

To be continued ...

The media mainstreaming of the language of the BNP

The political agenda of the UK appears no longer to be driven by elected representatives, but is being determined by the reationary politics promoted by News International (News Corporation) and the commercial imperative of the purveyors of what the news media chose to define as news. It used to be the case that although the national newspapers were politically partisan, political action took place in the political arena: Westminster, the soapbox and demonstrations. In May 1997 the news media wrested from the UK Consertvative Party the mantle of quasi-formal opposition to the newly-elected Blair government. I am unsure about precisely when the Blair government lost control of the agenda, possibly in the run-up to the most recent (5 May 2005) general election. Maybe control of the political agenda has been ebbing away from Westminster over a period of years. This current period reminds me of the time between Tony Blair's election to leadership of the UK Labour Party (21 July 1994) and his defeat of Conservative John Major (2 May 1997), except that it is now Rupert Murdoch for whom we are waiting to move into 10 Downing Street.

Current so-called revelations about the UK Home Office appear largely driven by an agenda of xenophobia. The rehtoric focuses on the deportation of foreign nationals, 'bogus' asylum seekers, 'economic' migrants, refugees and people trafficking. For reasons I find it difficult to understand many people in Britain have become addicted to this unpleasant, bunker propaganda that should be the sole preserve of Nick Griffin's British National Party, the Front National of Jean-Marie Le Pen, and paranoic, white-supremicist, North American redneck militias. (The one difference is that the UK media appear to be anti-Arab rather than anti-Jewish.)

The phrase that prompts my wry smile is "this island nation of ours". The UK is neither the most densely populated country in the world, nor the most densely populated country in Europe. The UK ranks 33 in the world league table, next to Germany, whereas the Netherlands (15) and Belgium (17) have considerably higher population densities. I am unfamiliar with people complaining about living in Jersey, Guernsey or Barbados: real islands with much higher population densities; and even London ranks well down the list in the world and in Europe.

I am not claiming that what is being stated in the headlines is necessarily factually inaccurate, but that it is being given a maliciously-twisted relevance.

... to be continued ...

However, vox pop suggests that not only is the UK population buying into this de facto deceit, but also appear immune to the facts and their significance. To illustrate this point, regarding law and order, to anyone in the UK it is self-evident both that there are fewer police officers and that crime is all but out of control - whereas despite better recording, recorded crime has been on the decline for the past 15 or more years, and there are more police officers, as well as civilians working for the police, than ever before. Regarding health, the UK public focuses on the fact there are one-third fewer hospital beds than at some point in the past, rather than the relevant facts that life expectancy has risen so much that there is a major crisis in pension savings; or that the rate at which new drugs to address this or that illness or condition are being introduced appears to be accelerating; or, perhaps most significantly, that medical procedures have advanced sufficiently that the need for lengthy stays in hospital has thankfully been signifiantly reduced. Regarding tobacco smoking, the UK public demand a right to damage the health of allcomers (smokers and non-smokers alike), whingeing plaintively about hospitals that ban smoking, and confetti-ing with cigartette butts the entrance to public buildings, when all the evidence for decades has unequivocally, adequately and graphically illustrated that smoking should be stopped immediately; as well as buying from the informal economy significant quantities of cigarettes on which no duty has been paid (are these the same people who buy newspapers that peddle myths about crime being out of control?).

... to be continued ...

Satisfaction: pleasure versus fulfilment

In pursuing thoughts about happiness from an earlier posting, I got to thinking that I am seeking to earn myself a sense of satisfaction by means of pleasure. I feel satisfied when I experience the pleasure of listening to Vivaldi ('Four Seasons), Sandy Denny ('Who Knows Where the Time Goes?' or Van Morrison ('Madame George'). I feel satisfied when I experience the pleasure of watching Spirited Away, Amelie or Koyaanisqatsi. I feel satisfied when I experience the pleasure of a well-prepared Indian, Thai or Chinese meal. I feel satisfied when I when I experience the pleasure of Monet's water lilies, Van Gogh's Provençal scenes, or Pollock's swirling rhythms. And what if I spent my life engaged only in consuming? As vital as each source of pleasure is to me (other than in matters of taste and preference, little different from football and soaps), and I should dearly love to have more of every source of pleasure-induced satisfaction in my life, something would be missing.

I have spent a significant part of my life volunteering, and I continue to volunteer in one respect or another. The paid work that I now do is about helping people, which makes my work much more satisfying to me than were people not helped as a result. It is important to me that my work (whether voluntary or paid) is meaningful in some way, so that while I am engaged in it, and also when I have completed a task, I enjoy a sense of fulfilment, and consequently satisfaction. Visiting cities overseas can be remarkably hard work, due to my travel sickness, difficulties in locating vegan-suitable food, and ensuring adequate wheelchair access to museums (I telephoned the Musée Marmottan in Paris, and was assured that access was no problem as there is a stair-lift at the entrance, but when we arrived the stair-lift was not only out of order, but looked as though it had been out of order for a long time), to hotels (I have discovered that the doors to most bedrooms in Holiday Inn hotels are too narrow to admit a wheelchair) and onto public transport (on each wheelchair-accessible bus for La Guardia that arrived over a 90 minute period the wheelchair lift was non-functional, generating considerable anxiety that we might miss our flight to DC). Perhaps because of having to overcome such difficulties, I can achieve a considerable sense of fulfilment, as well as pleasure, from visiting cities such as Paris, Berlin and Venice, New York, Washington and Vancouver, contributing to my overall sense of satisfaction with the experience. Constructing my website, or developing my photographic skills, or improving my ability to communicate in some other language, is often demanding in one way or another, and consequently offers the satisfaction of fulfilment, especially on those occasions when the discipline involved fails to generate pleasure in the experience.

In conclusion, I guess that I am motivated to achieve an only-occasionally fully-satisfied sense of satisfaction (who else but the Rolling Stones?), in part through pleasure, and in part through fulfilment, neither of which alone is sufficient, but in combination and balance can offer considerable satisfaction for a while.

Happiness and satisfaction

I read, today, on the BBC news website, that happiness is in decline in the UK. According to the report, compared with fifty years ago, significantly fewer people in the UK are very happy. Over the same time period, wealth in the UK has increased three-fold. A question was implied: being so much better off now, why are people in the UK less happy? A second, more explicit, question was asked: should government focus either on creating happiness or on creating wealth?

I feel uncertain about several points: what is happiness? is happiness made up from component parts, such as contentment, satisfaction and joy? does happiness exist other than as a generalised concept? how can blunt, ticky-box social surveys hope to understand the delicacy how each individual makes sense of their ever-changing human emotions? how can anyone imagine that it should be the business of government to attend to, and respond to, how people feel?

According to the BBC news website, it has long been recognised that it was many years ago that the US population ceased getting happier with increasing wealth. Whilst I understand what is intended by this statement, I also have many doubts about it. For example, apart from not knowing what happiness is, and what exactly was being measured, I have no knowledge of which social, demographic and geographical factors were correlated; nor of how much account was taken of wealth differentials (compared with wealth in the US and the UK, wealth in Scandanavia is more evenly distributed across the population). Were it the case that wealthy people get happier, poorer people become less happy, and wealth differentials have increased, then maybe there is nothing suprising to be discussed.

It has become a commonplace in the UK that winning millions of pounds (GBP) from the national lottery is more likely to result in a reduction in happiness. Yet the hope and belief of many people is that to become wealthy, or at least significantly wealthier, is sufficiently desirable that, for every child, woman and man in the UK, 75 GBP each year is handed over to Camelot (the company that runs the UK lottery). Accordingly to a Camelot press release from March 2005, weekly takings are between GBP 85,000,000 and GBP 90,000,000.

What is not a commonplace is that, over the past fifty years, the expectations of people in the UK have skyrocketed. Most people in the UK expect to be able to travel with ease at speed around the UK, probably in our own car; many people expect to be able to travel cheaply by air to tourist destinations throughout western Europe; it has become imaginable and feasible for many people to travel around the world. By contrast, the UK of Brief Encounter, shows a very different world. Regarding food, entertainment and recreation, expectations have changed out of all recognition. Regarding health, we have come to expect specialised medication (regardless of how expensive) as our right, and have become impatient for new techniques and cures. Regarding technology, we are so sophisticated that a cellphone without texting capability, a television incapable of receiving digital pictures, a laptop computer without wi-fi, would feel like a medieval throw-back. Regarding communication, we expect to be able to sit on a beach in Margate, Marbella or Miami, and call home, text our friends, maybe send a e-photograph or e-video; to find a means to post a weblog of our travels; to have booked our holiday on-line; to have e-mailed our pillow preferences to the hotel; and to have checked out the websites of cafes / bars / restaurants that serve food suitable for vegans or vegetarians, or food that is kosher or wheat-free or nut-free.

Were it the case that our expectations were being met faster than our expectations were being raised, life would feel more satisfying and we would become happier. However, the dual-fuel engine for the satisfactio of our expectations is powered by money and further-elevated expectations. Paradoxically, therefore, in a market-driven capitalist society the more we seek to have our expectations satisfied, the further out in front of satisfaction our expectations will streak. In western society, it is only by reining-in, or even reducing, expectations could satisfaction increase. In the later 1950s, a British prime minister, Harold Macmillan, famously told the British electorate that they had "never had it so good", reminding them of post-war shortages, rationing and inflation. However, the purpose of his message was for people to rein in their expectations about rising wages (http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/july/20/newsid_3728000/3728225.stm). Successive UK governments have attempted to deliver a message of wage restraint, and suffered for their pains at subsequent elections. Living in a globalised world, in which people in Connecticut, Chad and China are able to converse together in a chat-room, it would be barely possible for a country to attempt, unliaterally, to reduce the life expectations of its people - to my understanding, the Taliban regime attempted this in Afghanistan.

I am likely to feel happier when the bad things that have been going on in my life are being relegated to the past. This is about transition. Ironically, I may feel happier while recovering from a serious illness than when I am ordinarily healthy; when my bank balance is nearing solvency after a period of debt than when I have been sitting on comfortable financial cushion for some time; when the sun breaks through after a week of perpetual drizzle than when yet another day dawns with a clear blue sky.

Talking with a colleague, Jo, reminded me that when I have a self-imposed goal, the attainment of which would give me satisfaction, I tend to feel a contented anticipation. Simple examples of this include planning a holiday abroad; learning sufficient tourist language to get by in a non-anglophone country; re-organising and redecorating a room; and slimming.

How happy I feel may also concern the absence of bad things going on in my life. When I am healthy, feel safe at home, feel financially secure in my job, and feel supported by family and friends, I am less likely to feel unhappy. However, I may be bored and doubt where I am going in life, and consequently not feel happy.

I recognise different qualities of happiness. For example, I recall something of the overwhelming excitement and joy I experienced when I first attended a Promenade concert at the Royal Albert Hall in London; when I first piloted a Piper Tomahawk; and when I stepped out onto the observation deck of the Empire State Building in Manhattan. I recall something of the serene joy I felt when crossing by jetfoil from Vancouver to Victoria, on sighting a pod of orca whales. I recall something of the awe I felt, surrounded by the Canadian Rockies, witnessing the Perseid meteor shower (13 August 1993); and surrounded by darkness on the hard shoulder of a French motorway witnessing the totality of a solar eclipse (11 August 2000). I recall something of my intensely moving joy when my daughter was born.

To be continued ...