Symbolic Forest

I often don’t agree with the writing of Julie Bindel, the left-wing feminist who apparently believes that everyone should have full control over their own body, unless they were born male, or want to prostitute themselves. Today, though, I thought she was along the right lines when she wrote about diet and classism: it’s easy to criticise poor people for being unhealthy, when they don’t have the time or the money to eat well.^*

She falls down, though, by jumping on something that’s a common Scottish stereotype. The Deep-Fried Mars Bar.

Having lived in Scotland, I can assure you that hardly anybody actually eats these things. They do exist, usually in about one chip shop per city. I’ve had one myself, from Pasquale’s in Edinburgh.^** I’ve had one. That’s my point – nearly everybody who has had one, has only had one, just to try.

Everyone in England thinks the Scots survive on the things, but hardly anyone down here has heard of something that’s almost unhealthy, but far more common. The deep-fried pizza. Hard, greasy, fat-soaked, they sound just as horrible but they do exist. They’re real. People eat them regularly. People live on them. People get fat on them; they’re more than just part of a national stereotype.

* And this isn’t a new problem, of course: the British government originally brought in compulsary school PE lessons because they were worried about the poor health of Army recruits. That was during the Boer War.

** I’m not sure if Pasquale’s is still there – it was on Clerk St, near the old Odeon, and opposite the greengrocer’s that’s now a vintage clothing shop.

Keyword noise: classism, Clerk St, deep-fried Mars Bar, deep-fried pizza, diet, Edinburgh, feminism, food, Julie Bindel, Mars Bar, Pasquale's, pizza, poverty, Scotland, takeaway.

As it’s Sunday, let’s think about religion for a moment. More specifically, let’s think about Norman Kember, the peace activist rescued last week after spending several months as a hostage in Iraq.

The big news story since his release, of course, is that he didn’t seem particularly happy to be freed. His gratitude to the SAS seemed rather forced, and he repeated his anti-war position. And that, in itself, is an admirable thing – I’d respect him much less if he had switched to say: “actually, now, I think the SAS are doing a damn fine job out there.”

Whether he was right or wrong to go out there is something that can be debated for hours, but it isn’t what I want to talk about. I’m more interested in whether he wanted to be rescued or not, and how that might be down to his religion.

There’s no doubt that Kember was deeply religious.^* His behaviour, it seems, is classic for deeply religious people – it’s a case of self-martyrdom. Since the earliest days of Christianity – well, since the days of St Anthony, at least – the devout have flocked to non-deadly varients of martyrdom. St Anthony himself favoured hermeticism, but not all of us, particularly today, could cope with living on our own in the depths of the desert. So, people have found other ways to suffer in the name of Christ,^** particularly by self-denial and “mortification”. Kember accidentally found an excellent modern way to suffer and mortify himself, and serve his favourite political cause along the way: be a hostage. No wonder he didn’t particularly want to be rescued.

* And the two Canadians who were captives along with Kember look, in the pictures shown on the BBC site, to have a bit of a fanatical gleam in their eyes.

** The best-known being the Stylites, probably because they sound rather silly.

Keyword noise: captives, Christianity, fanaticism, freedom, hostage, Iraq, martyrdom, monasticism, Norman Kember, pacifism, peace, religion, war.

Well, I was glad Gordon Brown did take my hints on a couple of things.^* I’m just disappointed that he didn’t single out blue cars for rebates.

Current small reasons to feel pleased with myself: I’ve managed to completely avoid watching anything at all to do with the Commonwealth Games, even though one of the medal-winners is a teacher at my old school. Hopefully I’ll manage to keep avoiding it until all the fuss is over again.

Current small reasons to get pissed off: the computer keeps crashing, usually at the most inappropriate moments. I know what the problem is: a very obscure bug in the disk controller driver which very few people have come across, and nobody seems to know the cause of.^** Bah.

On the other hand, I do have a large box of biscuits on my desk at the moment. But not for long, I suspect. Hurrah!

* although, to be fair, everyone else in the country had already vaguely guessed the road tax changes.

*** it only comes up if you have a Promise SATA disk controller, a Maxtor SATA disk, and are running one of some Linux 2.6 subversions. But not all – the problem apparently disappeared in one revision of the driver, only to come back in the next.

Keyword noise: biscuits, budget, Commonwealth Games, computing, crash, economics, Gordon Brown, Linux.

As that nice Mr Brown of Ferryhills Road is going to deliver his budget this afternoon, I thought it would be a good idea to give him a few tips. So, in nice easily-digested bullet-point form, here’s the Symbolic Forest Budget 2006 – quick, clear the BBC1 schedule and get Evan Davies on standby!^*

• Higher taxes for married people.
• and anyone else who can get a date at the drop of a hat (sorry, Big Dave)
• Lower taxes for single people
• especially ones who are doomed to stay single for all eternity (it’s only fair).
• Higher taxes for big cars. You only need a 4×4 to take the kids to school if you live in, say, the tiny Welsh hill village of Llwybr Cyhoeddus.
• Smaller taxes for little cars. Especially blue ones.
• Lower taxes on beer produced by small independent breweries.
• Higher taxes for carbonated urine beer produced by big industrial ones
• No tax at all on gin
• Or tonic.
• No taxes on any expensive cameras or other gadgets I might want to buy in the next year.
• More cake

That should get the economy nice and stimulated. There you go, Gordon; hope this helps.

* But don’t mention the rumour about his body piercings.

Keyword noise: budget, economics, Gordon Brown, taxation, Big Dave.

As I drove to work this morning I was listening to Today on the radio, and I heard them play the sound from the video of UK troops abusing Iraqi civilians.

The soundtrack, and the voices of the British soldiers on it, were self-evidently sadistic. Moreover, they weren’t just violent; they sounded as if they were enjoying it. The unseen soldier sounded to be getting a thrill out of humiliating his helpless captives. This was his way to have fun. It sounded to me as if he’d be replaying the scene over and over again in his mind, to get every little bit of pleasure back again. Replaying it over and over, faster and faster, in his own private time.

Or maybe that’s just my own interpretation of it. Getting pleasure from people like that without their own agreement is always wrong, whether you enjoy it or not.

Keyword noise: abuse, Army, captives, Iraq, prisoners, sadism, soldiers.

Being a normal, well-adjusted, modern person, I sometimes forget how bigoted and backwards other people tend to be around here.

Today, I was over at one of our branch offices in Another Part Of The Forest for a few hours. Whilst I was there, one of the staff popped across the road to the local chip shop to get us all dinner. She came back, and we tucked in.

“These are good fishcakes,” said the branch manager. He’s in his mid-30s, he knows how to cook well and dress well, and I assume he’s fairly intelligent.^* “You wouldn’t think they were made by a couple of gayboys.” I choked on my coffee, but managed not to say anything. We get on badly enough already.

* Well, his writing is barely functional – I’ve received memos from him, and they’re very badly written, bad enough to be very hard to understand sometimes. But, if you manage to become a branch manager, you can’t be too stupid.

Keyword noise: bigotry, colleagues, homophobia, management, stupidity, Scunthorpe.

According to yesterday’s Observer, Boris Johnson is planning to stand for election as Rector of Edinburgh University.^*

I’m not among the relevant electorate, but I don’t think it’s a good idea. Aside from the fact that he can hardly spend much time on the job, it’s hardly going to do very much for the university’s reputation. Edinburgh is already known as the university for posh, rich English kids who aren’t bright enough for Oxbridge; voting for someone who carefully cultivates a reputation for being posh and bumbling is hardly going to help.

* I’m quite pleased that I managed to avoid the cliché of adding “…is planning to follow in Gordon Brown’s footsteps by…” Aaargh, damn, I’ve spoilt it now. At least Brown’s Rectorship had a lasting effect: he annoyed the University management so much that they banned students from standing for the post.

Keyword noise: Boris Johnson, Conservatives, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University, Gordon Brown, posh, reputation, Tories.

Back in the mists of time, I wrote about Jakob Nielsen‘s top ten blog design mistakes. Including: not having your own domain name. My response: there are several sites I read and respect that do do this, but if you want to be completely sure you control your own reputation, you need to control your domain name too.

One thing I didn’t consider, though, is that the people who host your site can, if they want, control what you put on it. Filter out things they don’t like. You could, for example, do what News Corporation subsidiary Myspace have been caught doing: censor links to video-hosting sites, presumably because these sites will soon become News Corp’s competitors when Myspace introduces its own video-hosting service. You might think you can say anything you like on the internet – but if you’re a Myspace user, that apparently doesn’t apply.

Keyword noise: blogging, censorship, Jakob Nielsen, Myspace, News Corporation, Rupert Murdoch, usability, web design.

Lots of controversy in the news at the moment about George Galloway, the far-left MP currently competing on Big Brother. The Guardian tried hard to find out who was dealing with constituents’ issues whilst George is busy being on the telly,^* but could only get hold of his PR agent, who said she couldn’t really help.

Given that whilst he’s on Big Brother he can’t really be carrying out his day job of attending to Parliamentary business, I wondered if there’s anything in the parliamentary rules that specifically says you have to be available and contactable. The MPs’ Code of Conduct says:

Holders of public office should not place themselves under any financial or other obligation to outside individuals or organisations that might influence them in the performance of their official duties.

However, I’m not sure if this covers Mr Galloway’s antics. For one thing, although I’d think he could hardly be carrying out any official duties at the moment, “prevent” is hardly the same as “influence”. Moreover, this isn’t actually a rule. It’s merely a General Principle, which “will be taken into consideration when any complaint is received of breaches of the provisions in other sections of the Code.”

The only rule in the Code which might be cover “going on a game show for up to three weeks” is “bringing the House into disrepute”. Which, of course, is a catch-all clause which could cover virtually anything; it’s entirely down to the Standards and Privileges Committee‘s opinion. It seems that, as far as the letter of the law is concerned, there’s no problem with what Galloway is doing.^**

* and is out of contact with the outside world, of course.

** and I have no idea of who to complain to if there was.

Keyword noise: Big Brother, George Galloway, parliament, representation, television, reality tv.

The new Tory leader has jumped right in to the job, and is trying to persuade Liberal Democrats to cross the floor and join his party. Presumably he thinks that the Tory party itself has no hope of attracting new blood – or that politics itself is always a zero-sum game – so is trying to mind-meld. Maybe it’s working. Although there’s sometimes national-level talk of Labour and the Lib Dems working on a similar wavelength, out in the country they are usually fighting like rabid wolves, and Lib Dem-Tory alliances are far more common. In fact, my own local council – the worst local council in the country – is one.

Not only does Cameron’s plan imply he’s given up on attracting new people into politics; but it also makes it look as if he’s already given up on winning the next election outright. His current “I’m more liberal than the Liberals” positioning is paving the way for a hung parliament in 2009 or 2010. In case that happens, he wants to be first in line in the Lib Dems’ doorway. He seems to be hoping that modern politics is all about words, not deeds.^* If Cameron says: “I’m a liberal!” he hopes that the voters will all believe him, even though there is little evidence for it in his present and past policies.Mind you, there’s little evidence there for any sort of true conviction at all.

* to be fair, this is after all what governments have been getting away with for the past 25 years.

Keyword noise: alliance, coalition, David Cameron, government, Liberal Democrats, liberalism, local government, Tories.