Reflections on life at “De Witte Wand”…
I see that Adele is complaining that she has to pay 50% Income Tax on her earnings of, apparently, £8 million for last year.
I pay more tax (52%) on my earnings that, last year, amounted to less than 1% of her income. Somehow, if I were in her shoes, I think that I would be able to struggle by on an after-tax income of four million quid.
Feet of clay, feet of clay…
The appalling David Bahati is still pushing on with his abhorrent piece of anti-gay legislation in the Ugandan parliament. It would seem that it is now reaching a crucial point. This travesty has been going on since 2009. Perhaps it’s always useful to have scapegoats ready in order to deflect the population from the real problems at hand.
Update 14 May 2011: the current Ugandan parliament ran out of time to debate the bill, so it’s been shelved. Unfortunately, that probably means that Baharti will try and re-introduce it in the next parliament.
Adam Curtis makes documentaries. But these aren’t just plain documentaries, they are visual poems that contain much food for thought. His latest effort is All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace – to be broadcast on BBC2 on 23rd May at 9pm UK time. Can’t wait.
Oh, and it has Ayn Rand – the stinking fart in the face of the Enlightenment…
Here’s the background to the films.
Further to my entry about the fact that the Dutch Government is thinking of banning the concept of dual nationality here in The Netherlands, I see that the Dutch Central Bureau of Statistics is reporting that a majority of the Dutch are in favour of this change.
According to their survey, a large majority are in favour of banning dual nationality. Unsurprisingly, members of Wilder’s PVV party are 90% in favour of banning Cabinet Ministers from holding dual nationality.
It’s funny, when I first moved to The Netherlands in 1983, the Dutch had a reputation for tolerance, but now, in 2011, it seems to me that it’s no longer so self-evident. I would not be surprised if I will formally have to renounce my British citizenship in a few years time. Frankly, I think it reflects badly on the Dutch – a raising of the barriers to draw a line between “us” and “them”.
Via a post on PZ Myer’s blog, I have discovered the blog of a lesbian in Syria: A Gay Girl in Damascus.
She has courage, and a brave father. I hope that they both manage to come through the current troubles in that country.
Update 13 June 2011: Sigh, the internet strikes again. The lesbian in Damascus turns out to be a 40 year-old American married man studying in Scotland: Tom McMasters.
While I don’t like to be fooled, his idiotic actions have not helped genuine LGBT voices in the Middle East to be heard. Shame, shame on him.
Christopher Hitchens was due to address the American Atheist Convention, but had to cancel because of illness. So he wrote them a letter instead. Hitchens writes like an angel wielding a flaming sword, and the letter is an excellent example of his way with words. Example:
Our weapons are the ironic mind against the literal: the open mind against the credulous; the courageous pursuit of truth against the fearful and abject forces who would set limits to investigation (and who stupidly claim that we already have all the truth we need). Perhaps above all, we affirm life over the cults of death and human sacrifice and are afraid, not of inevitable death, but rather of a human life that is cramped and distorted by the pathetic need to offer mindless adulation, or the dismal belief that the laws of nature respond to wailings and incantations.
Do go and read the rest. By coincidence, his friend, Martin Amis has a biographical sketch of him in today’s Observer. Also worth reading to catch a flavour of the man.
That’s the title of a short story by Harlan Ellison, but it is also a reference given by Roger Ebert in his stunning presentation at TED last month.
Ebert is a brilliant critic of film, but cancer has removed his jaw and his ability to speak. His presentation at TED is an example that being born into this particular “box of time and space” where PLATO, HAL 9000 and the DEC Rainbow all occurred, together with advances in medical science, have ensured that Ebert’s voice, in all its manifestations, can continue to be heard. Wonderful.
Another thought-provoking post from Jan Chipchase – this time from Cairo. It’s about managing expectations in foreign situations, and being aware.
Reminds me of the time I went on a business trip for Shell to Cartegena in Columbia and being met by the Computing Manager at the small airport. His driver had a slight bulge under his left armpit, and I thought, hmm.
The Hilton hotel had been bombed a month before and two days after my arrival, the airport runway was blown up by guerillas. The pilot of the Shell plane announced that there was 1500 feet of usable runway left, and he could take off with 1350 feet. I remember thinking that 150 feet didn’t sound like an enormous margin for error. Still, as you can surmise, I lived to tell the tale.
The inestimable Adam Curtis has another blog entry that stops the heart, if not the tears. Such a steadfast view of humanity’s foibles is often more than I can bear. But bear witness, we must.
I was born in the Isle of Man and, as a result, hold a British Passport. Having lived in the Netherlands since 1983, I also became a Dutch citizen in 2006 – so I currently have dual nationality.
Today, the minister for home affairs, Piet Hein Donner, has introduced proposed legislation that will mean that anyone who wants to adopt Dutch nationality will soon have to give up their original nationality if that is legally possible.
Obviously, the question in my mind is: will this also apply retroactively?
Frankly, I see this move by Donner as a step backwards – a sop to the burgeoning nationalism fanned by the likes of Wilders and the PVV. I actually feel proud of the fact that I am able to hold dual nationality – I feel it gives me a broader horizon – a step towards being a citizen of the world. If Donner has his way, I’ll be forced to retreat to a narrower view of the world. I’m not happy about this.
Addendum: a friend of mine who’s in much the same boat (born a Scot, lived in the Netherlands for years and now has dual nationality) wondered if he could add a new word to the English language:
Wilderize
– to change a tolerant country into an intolerant country.
I think he has a point.
I’ve mentioned Hans Rosling and his artistry in showing statistics before. Here he is again, this time taking the humble washing machine as the springboard for an exploration on its impact on society and the environment. Great stuff.
Today’s title is a quote from Archbishop Silvano Tomasi. Apparently, according to Reuters,
People who criticise gay sexual relations for religious or moral reasons are increasingly being attacked and vilified for their views, a Vatican diplomat told the United Nations Human Rights Council on Tuesday.
Archbishop Silvano Tomasi said the Roman Catholic Church deeply believed that human sexuality was a gift reserved for married heterosexual couples. But those who express these views are faced with “a disturbing trend,” he said.
“People are being attacked for taking positions that do not support sexual behaviour between people of the same sex,” he told the current session of the Human Rights Council.
“When they express their moral beliefs or beliefs about human nature … they are stigmatised, and worse — they are vilified, and prosecuted.
“These attacks are violations of fundamental human rights and cannot be justified under any circumstances,” Tomasi said.
Oh, dear god, where to begin?
Well, perhaps with Russell Blackford:
The most important thing about this is its one small grain of truth: you should not be prosecuted for expressing such evil views as that engaging in consensual homosexual conduct makes you a “sinnner”, or “emotionally disordered”, or whatever else these bastards want to say. Freedom of speech should enable you to say, quite legally, all sorts of ugly, vicious things.
Freedom of speech also should enable others to point out that these are, in fact, ugly vicious things … and that only a vile person would say such things. When you say these things, it shows your true character.
Silvano wants his cronies to have freedom of speech. Fine. I agree. But he doesn’t want the rest of us to have it. He’s not only vile – he’s a hypocrite, like the rest of his kind.
And then, perhaps also Ophelia Benson has a point:
Or to put it another way, gay people are increasingly being attacked and vilified by reactionary religious fanatics who think they should have the power to tell everyone everywhere what to do down to the smallest detail.
But although I am disgusted by people such as Archbishop Silvano Tomani, I should perhaps take the line of Steve Zara, and laugh at Tomani:
I’m rather enjoying this, I have to say. I’m a relatively mild-mannered fellow who sort of muddles through life in a vague way, and now I’m becoming a threat to human rights and a source of evil. It’s all rather exciting. I need to think of an evil look. Perhaps I could wear sunglasses indoors or something like that. I have not put as much effort into being evil in the past as I might have.
Perhaps, when me and my partner had a civil partnership ceremony with our families and friends in attendance, we should have played the start of Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor with evil laughter rather than Tales from Topographic Oceans as we signed the register. Our small house on the borders of Coventry looks rather meek and harmless. Perhaps we should attach some gargoyles and Satanic symbols. We have a gentle Labrador, when perhaps we should have got a white cat to stroke.
Yes, I know what you mean, Steve. Our Labradors bounce around rather too much, instead of snarling and showing their fangs. But, I suppose when you get down to the heart of it, Russell nailed it: what Archbishop Tomasi said was ugly and vicious. It shows his true character. I see you, Archbishop.
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While I don’t pretend to be an economist, I do have this nagging doubt that the economic policy being pursued by the current UK government is not, shall we say, the wisest course.
Johann Hari puts it rather more forcefully, and a good deal better. Example:
I doubt there was a single person who woke up on Wednesday morning, looked out across Britain, and thought: “I know what’s wrong with this country. Vodafone pays too much tax.” But George Osborne has acted on this belief all the same – in part because he genuinely seems to have no idea what life in Britain is like. He said recently that his school, St. Paul’s (annual fees: £30,000 a year) was “incredibly liberal. It didn’t matter who your parents were. Your mother could be the head of a giant corporation – or a solicitor in Kew.” That’s his internal vision of the social spectrum in Britain, with those pauper solicitors in Kew begging at the bottom. No wonder he doesn’t understand that (say) slashing Housing Benefit will turn 200,000 poor people out of their homes in London alone. He thinks they can take it: the rich need more.
A couple of years back, I blogged about a documentary made by Andrew Tait. It was Trouble in Amish Paradise, and followed the lives of two Amish families. Last night, the follow-up documentary, also made by Tait, was shown on BBC2: Leaving Amish Paradise. It was an equally extraordinary and revealing piece of work.
It followed the fortunes of the same two Amish families: Ephraim and Amanda Stoltzfus and their children, and his brother Jesse Stoltzfus, his wife Elsie and their children. By the time of this second film, Ephraim and Amanda had already left their Amish church for an evangelical Christian church, and Jesse and Elsie were on the point of doing the same.
By my lights, of course, leaving the Amish for evangelical Christianity strikes me as jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire, but Ephraim had no doubts whatever. Indeed his total, and unshakeable, belief that God would provide was either admirable or utterly foolhardy, depending on where you stand. That said, it was rather curious how money apparently turned up in envelopes to keep the family afloat, and the film opened with Ephraim and his family on a trip to Britain, which had been paid for by people who had seen the first documentary.
As I wrote last time, both families were very personable, but every now and then, something would be said that brought one up short. Usually it would be Ephraim; as for example when he said (apropos his handing out of messages from the Bible to passers-by):
People are more receptive here than in England. In England they’ve been taught Darwin for [pause] quite a few years more than we have here. The Bible says that in the beginning, God created the world in six days, and that’s what I… that’s what the truth… That’s the truth, that’s what happened in six days. Darwin doesn’t believe that way. Or he didn’t. He does believe that way now. Darwin now is saying “Yes Jesus was the Christ, and I didn’t acknowledge it in the past, but he is. And I wish I would have, you know”. Darwin is in Hell, today, according to the scriptures.
That’s his reality.
I see that the Isle of Man will make civil partnerships available to gay couples living there as from next month.
This is only five years after civil partnerships were introduced into UK law. I find that surprisingly speedy for the Isle of Man. After all, it took until 1992 before homosexuality was no longer illegal on the Island – a full 25 years after the UK decriminalised homosexuality.
I was born and grew up on the Island, so bore witness to the anti-gay bigotry and prejudice that existed there. The atmosphere resulted in a number of suicides of gay people. It seems as though things have changed, although judging by the comments of Peter Murcott, a Methodist preacher, there are still some old style bigots knocking about there:
“It will have a fundamental change in due course on how the next generation is brought up to conceive family life and ultimately it is going to introduce an anti-Christian attitude and it will be contrary to the beliefs of many other religions as well.”
Of course, he’s right when he says that “It will have a fundamental change in due course on how the next generation is brought up to conceive family life” – people may come to realise that families come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, and that’s a good thing. But I rather think that Mr. Murcott sees the change only in negative terms.
Addendum: I came across this video with Alan Bell who does a good job explaining the background to the change in the law. Bell is a Member of the House of Keys (MHK) – a member of the Manx Government.
Johann Hari has another thought-provoking article posted. This time it’s on our addiction to cheap oil. Worth a read.
Following hard on the heels of the murder of Salman Taseer comes the murder of Shabaz Bhatti.
I see that the Archbishop of Canterbury is reported as condemning the murder of Bhatti, and quite right too. But I did find one statement of his slightly jarring. He is reported as saying that there was a faction in Pakistan:
“wholly uninterested in justice and due process of law, concerned only with promoting an inhuman pseudo-religious tyranny.”
Er, excuse me, but what’s that word “pseudo” doing in that sentence? The sentence is just as true without it. I suspect that the good Dr. Williams just cannot face up to, or is not willing to state in public, the simple fact that there’s nothing pseudo about religious tyranny, and that Bhatti’s murderers sincerely believe that they were doing the right thing.
On a related note, it’s worthwhile reading Eric MacDonald’s piece today. The key quote:
It is simply foolish and foolhardy to dismiss these extremists as merely extreme, as marginal expressions of their respective believing communities. What they stand for is always at the centre of the religious systems they espouse. Most people, with lives to live, and other goals to pursue, pay little attention to the intrinsically extremist language of their faith communities. But the language is always there. That’s why there are faith communities, because religions are essentially tribal and divisive.
Today is polling day for the provincial elections here in The Netherlands. It appears that us oldsters may have an effect on the outcome and impact the position of the current coalition government.
Meanwhile, the young appear to have swallowed the anti-Islam propaganda of the appalling Geert Wilders and his PVV party. You can guess who I won’t be voting for today.
I’ve written before that I worry about the popularity of Geert Wilders and his Freedom Party (the PVV) here in the Netherlands. While I find the demagoguery of Wilders extremely disturbing, I take some comfort from the fact that others in the PVV seem to be little more than political clowns.
We’re about to enter into an election for seats in the provincial governments. So all the candidates are out there and using every opportunity for campaigning. No problem about that. But when one of the PVV candidates for the Gelderland province (where I live) calls for repatriation of Highland cattle back to Scotland and Polish ponies back to Poland, then I have to wonder why anyone should take clowns like this seriously?
Since some people have commented that surely no-one could be that stupid; I give you PVV candidate Olov Wullink, in person, uttering his inanities (from 1:10 in the second video linked on this page here). Sorry, the full absurdity is only intelligible to those of us who understand Dutch.
However, I think it’s worthwhile to remember that, while events like this have their humorous side, the politics, and subsequent impact on all of us, are deadly serious. The rise of Wilders continues to concern me. I don’t think it is good for us.
The serious assault on a CBS journalist, Lara Logan, in Tahrir Square has rightfully drawn widespread condemnation from many quarters, including women’s rights activists and pro-change protesters in Eygpt.
Of course, there were some commentators, such as Debbie Schlussel, who got into the “blame the victim” game, saying that the attack was partly Logan’s fault. That deserves the contempt that Schlussel got for her comments.
However, there was a reaction from Heather Blake, of Reporters Without Borders, reported in the Guardian’s story that I found rather interesting. She said:
“At the moment, female and male journalists have the same training. The truth is that female journalists need to be taught about different cultures and the ways in which men behave in those cultures. They need to know about gender-specific expectations in different countries, from what they wear to how they interact with those they met.”
I’m not sure that I agree with that. I think that both men and women journalists need to be taught about different cultures and the ways in which men behave in those cultures. It seems to me that consciousness-raising is just as important, perhaps even more so, to members of the male gender, who are often blithely unaware of, or complicit in, the various forms that oppression of women can take.
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