Basically, her premise is that many Islamic people find it difficult to hold on firmly to their religion in a country which she sees as having no morals, and therefore they turn to extremism, and that therefore to combat extremism it is necessary to rein in some of the worst excesses of society. She references Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab (the ‘underpants bomber’):

At university he apparently cut himself off, tried to hold on to Islamic Puritanism in a country of no shame, no restraint. Millions of Britons of all backgrounds are alarmed by the dissipation and debauchery that now defines Britain.Yasmin Alibhai-Brown

Don’t get me wrong — she is not in any way supportive of violent extremists and is critical of a lot that is wrong:

Sexual abuse, rape and forced homosexuality remain the dirty secrets of British Muslim communities, kept under wraps as it were, while they flap around proclamations of purity. I cannot stand these false virtues and self-reverential pieties nor am I pleading on behalf of screwed-up men who would murder us naming Allah.Yasmin Alibhai-Brown

However, whilst I understand what she is saying– that a society seen as permissive may make it difficult for people used to a much stricter regime — I cannot agree with the conclusion she arrives at. I find it very difficult to separate her arguments from these other two…

• A society with a lot of sexual permissiveness is ‘pushing some Muslims to the edge of reason’ (her words). Therefore we must change our society to avoid having problems with extremists
• A woman who goes out wearing a short skirt knows the effect that this will have on men. Therefore she cannot complain if someone rapes her as she was ‘asking for it’
• Some British people don’t like Muslims, and don’t want them in their communities. Therefore Muslims should not be allowed to go in those communities

Basically, all of these arguments are along these lines.

• A doesn’t like B. Therefore B is at fault and must change

It’s utter nonsense. I don’t particularly approve of people binge-drinking and sleeping around and being sexually permissive but — and here’s the important point — it’s none of my damn business.

It’s none of my damn business if someone wants to binge drink. It’s none of my damn business if someone wants to wear revealing clothes. It’s none of my damn business if someone wants to sleep with someone else.

If they do these things in such a way that another person is brought to harm, then society has a right to stop them, and indeed you will find that we have laws in place. But if you’re not hurting anyone else: if what you are doing is mutual, and consenting, then what right have other people to stick their noses in because they don’t like it?

But to be honest, it was the holier-than-thou, ivory tower, let’s sneer at the estate folk attitude which really annoyed me. See if you can guess which was the key word or words that told me there was a problem with Yasmin’s argument.

A list was sent home to the parents of girls at a middle-class school in London last week sternly reminding non-uniformed sixth-formers that there were still rules of decorum to follow. A list followed of garments henceforth disallowed: no tops that show the midriff or cleavage, no tight mini-skirts, no underwear showing, no clothes with holes in them, etc, etc.Yasmin Alibhai-Brown

Yes, that’s right. Middle-class. This word is entirely surplus to requirements if you’re trying to make the point that this is happening at a London school. It’s only required if you’re trying to say “and it’s not just the vermin from the estates, you know”. I mean, I knew people were saying that the Independent was going downhill, but I hadn’t expected it to turn into the Daily Mail quite that quickly.

I have a perfectly simple rule for racial, ethnic, and religious harmony. Whenever someone tries to convince you that there is something wrong with a particular group, remind yourself of it. It’s easy to remember, it can be applied to members of almost any grouping, and if everyone followed it, the world would be a much nicer place.

Live and let live.

And if that one’s too difficult for you, may I instead refer you to the fall-back rule I mentioned earlier: what other people are doing — so long as they aren’t hurting anyone else — is none of your damn business.

And that, not sexual inhibition (or exhibition), or religion (or lack of it) ought to be the one thing enshrined in society.

It would appear however that this wasn’t quite as much of a “spoof” as previously imagined.

Workplace bullying of the clergy has become “rife”, according to the union Unite which says priests are being picked on by bishops [...] “Bishops have got a lot nastier”, says the Reverend Gerry Barlow, chair of the faith workers branch of Unite. BBC News

When Chris Morris talked about it on the day today, it was a joke. It was a joke because this is not the way Christians — let alone people who have devoted their lives to Christianity — are supposed to behave.

It is disgraceful that people are allowed to represent a religion — any religion — whilst consistently behaving in a way which undermines the tenets of that religion. While I would suggest that as forgiving seems to be one of the important points, it may be appropriate, depending on circumstances, to allow people who are willing to change their behaviour another chance.

Of course, it’s not just those within the church who are capable of acting shamefully, but just as we expect police officers to uphold a higher standard of behaviour than the general public because it’s their job, then exactly the same should apply to those in the church.

Discuss.

Since then, I have found differing services advising of snow-related disruption to be of somewhat variable quality, so I thought I’d look specifically at Bigger Lad’s school, my Local Authority, and Go North East, the local bus company, and tell you what precisely I’ve thought about their updates.

Success

So at seven a.m. on wednesday morning, I checked the school website to discover a message informing me that the school was closed owing to the fact that the staff couldn’t get in. By about eleven p.m. on wednesday evening, they had already updated the site to inform parents that the school would also be closed the following day.

Timely, useful updates. Well done.

Failure

Of course, my local council wasn’t quite so quick on the uptake… with their severe weather page stating (as at 09:10 on Wednesday morning — in other words some time after the time at which children would be required to be at school):

Are any schools closed due to the adverse weather?

No. At present, all schools are open as normal.

Local Authority

I was a little incredulous that this information had not been updated — the BBC had managed it easily enough, and after all, by half past eight, people will be setting off for school so if you are unable to update the information by then you are not capable of being a source for that information, so I mentioned it online. It was updated with school closures by 09:30, and there was also a tweet at around 09:40 but by then the information was too late to benefit anyone.

I was even more shocked when someone responded informally to tell me that they would be updating this information as soon as they got into work — but it might take them a little time to get in, because of the weather conditions.

WTF? Surely if your plan for extreme weather conditions is to tell the public about the extreme weather causing transport disruption and/or school closures only after your staff have made it into work then it is very seriously flawed. I’m sure you can all work out for yourselves the flaw in this.

They did manage to improve it considerably over the course of the day, putting in a list of all schools and their open status for Thursday and Friday (or at least, as far as they were aware) and for that reason I’ve refrained from publicly naming them.

The Snow Updates Medal: Success

However, I think that the most credit probably deserves to be pushed in the direction of the local bus company Go North East. Their website suggests that you head over to their Facebook page for the latest updates on bus services. The Facebook page was updated with thirty-four separate updates on Wednesday 6th.

And it’s not just been one way traffic either: Go North East actually have grasped how social media is supposed to work and have responded to people who have made comments:

As you can see, when Luke and Gareth have asked further questions, Go North East have not only responded to their enquiries (which many organisations seem to forget is part of the expectation of social media — it’s not a one-way communication broadcast, it’s a conversation) but they have responded to those enquires — made outside normal office hours — within fifteen minutes. Now that’s impressive. And so for me, the people responsible for Go North East’s social media streams deserve my award for the best snow-related updates.

Mind, that doesn’t help you a great deal if it turns out your route is one of the ones currently off!

Aside

It’s important to remember however that not necessarily everyone has internet access (although the vast majority do) and so the information about things such as school closures and travel disruption should be made as widely available as possible — lots of people will still expect to hear these things on local radio, whether or not Tony Horne likes it — although he does make a point (which I made last year) that if schools are able to text (or otherwise directly inform) parents, this is probably preferable.

The key thing is to make the information available to people through the channel they want, not the channel you want to feed them…

So, at a time of year when politics seems to be even more back-biting and bitter than usual, and political bloggers are desperate to put the knife into someone on “the dark side” (although of course which is the dark side rather depends upon your own standpoint), I thought that we needed something a little more jovial to lighten the mood.

Let’s remember politics isn’t just about MP’s expenses, bitching backbenchers, and bile-spewing bloggers. It’s also about facial hair. So I’ve combed Parliament’s list of MPs in order to investigate which MPs are ‘tached up — at least according totheir parliamentary photo (the theory being is that if they can’t be bothered to keep their parliamentary photo up to date, I can’t be bothered to chase down recent photos either).

During this process I have learned a number of things. Firstly, when it comes to electing a government in the election this year, if you want facial hair to be a priority for the next government, you must vote Labour; over 12% of all Labour MPs were ‘tached up, compared to less than 1% of Conservatives. As you might expect, the Liberal Democrats sit somewhere between these two, with just under 7% having sporting a moustache.

…finally, having looked through photos of all of the male MPs (I’ve made the assumption that none of the females have a moustache, or at least one they are proud of) I’ve discovered that there is no requirement for someone to be even remotely physically attractive in order to become a member of parliament. Vaguely humanoid seems about the limit.

I went through some early rounds to determine exactly who would go through to the ‘final’. This was based on grouping those MPs with clearly visible ‘taches (bumfluff that the MP appears to be hiding is automatically disqualified) into 8 alphabetical groups, and picking the ‘tache which, in my opinion, is of the best quality for some reason of that particular group. My working is available here (word doc, 25 kb).

But for the finalists for ThePickards Parliamentary Tache Of The Year 2009, read on…

Tache	Owner	Vital Statistics
	Dave Anderson	2005-5335
	Colin Challen	2001-12343
	Wayne David	2001-15359
	Elfyn Llwyd	1992-6614
	Doug Naysmith	1997-8962
	John Thurso	2001-8168

Place your vote for your Parliamentary Tache of the Year 2009 by leaving a comment to the desired effect. Please note that as I’ve specifically said the competition is to lighten the mood and as an antidote to the backbiting and sniping, any comments which are unpleasant will be removed and associated votes will not be counted. The competition will close on Friday 15th January, please ensure your votes are in by then…

This colony of animals — all 4.5 million kilos of ‘em — turned up shortly after the 1989 earthquake in the San Francisco area, and since november they have been gradually drifting off, until now there are only about 20 of them left.

Obviously some people will have drawn the inference that bloody hell! there’s going to be a big earthquake! and obviously these animals can tell and have quite sensibly pissed off to avoid being involved in said natural disaster. Other people are more sceptical, with the BBC describing this notion as ‘outlandish’.

But really, unless anyone has actually asked the sea lions, or knows and understands something about their behaviour, and whether these animals are able to sense certain signals given off before a major event, it’s difficult to know whether they’ve gone off following a food source (as some chap from the Marine Mammal Center suggests), whether they’ve gone off because there’s going to be a ruddy great earthquake, or…

Part of me would quite like the earthquake prediction to be true (or at least the parts of it which would thumb the nose at the people who had been dismissing the idea of the sea lions being able to sense something we can’t, whilst hopefully avoiding the parts of the earthquake which tend to be associated with death and destruction). On this side of the argument, I was telling BTP only yesterday about the San Andreas Fault and that it was quite conceivable there could be a fairly big earthquake on it, even in the next year or so, and you know what I’m like for accidentally predicting natural disasters. But I have my own personal theory…

I think these intelligent marine mammals have finely tuned senses able to detect future events which are outside the normal scope of their experience; I think they’ve spent sufficient time interacting with humans to pick up a rudimentary grasp of our language (“say cheese!” and so on), which has led them, from overhearing conversations, to understand what sort of events might occur in this area. And that, finally, despite there not seeming to be any public research which relates to this in any way whatsoever, sea lions don’t like you to make too much of a fuss.

And I think the sea lions could sense what was coming, and have buggered off…

Officials hope the departure is only temporary – as a 20th anniversary party had been planned for 15 January. The director of public relations for Pier 39, Sue Muzzin, told The Times newspaper: “With animals, you never know. If they are not back on January 15, we’ll party with the ones who are here.” BBC News

So, if the animals immediately start drifting back after the 15th of January (maybe a week or two later to make sure all the cake has gone), you’ll know I was right…

And now 2009 has come to a close, there’s a few things that I’d like to bring back to the public attention and ask, in a sort of a semi-polite but jabbing finger kind of a way, what the fuck is going on?

So here’s my shit-list for 2009…

• How come Trafigura and Carter-Ruck haven’t been more publicly hauled over the coals for attempting to silence debate about what is being discussed in parliament? If they’ve done nothing wrong, let them provide their side of the story.
• Does anyone know what — if any — disciplinary or criminal action has been taken against any of those police officers in the G20 who — to my untrained eyes at least — certainly appeared to have done something which I would have taken to be assault?
• Does anyone know what — if any — disciplinary action has been taken against those police officers who misled the media about the conditions under which Ian Tomlinson was first encountered, was treated, and so on?
• Does anyone know what — if any — action has been taken to prevent similar police tactics — that’s the kettling as well as the lying — being used in the future?
• Can anyone explain to me why no-one seems to be able to draw a line between MPs claiming perfectly reasonable expenses (“look at this cheeky fucker — wants to have a chair in his house, does he?”) and the slightly more outrageous ones (duck islands, moat cleaning, home-flipping). Can anyone explain to me why no MPs are yet facing criminal prosecution when Joe or Jane Muggins on a council estate who had lied for their benefits would already have seen the inside of a courtroom?
• Can anyone explain to me why the taxpayers should have bailed out the banks? I don’t recall the banks propping up the public sector when times were better for them. I don’t recall the banks telling taxpayers not to worry about their mortgages — they’d bail them out if needs be. So why should the taxpayer look after them? (Yes, I know we need a banking system: but I don’t see why it needs to be in private ownership)
• The fact that Tony Blair no longer seems to even care that the flimsy excuse for a war only his mate Dubya wanted hasn’t held up to even the faintest of scrutiny — and he’s still living the high life despite all the people that have died as a direct result of his actions. Scum.

These stories have been allowed to die. It has been in the interests of various parties to allow these stories to die. Do not forget. We will have a general election in 2010, and it’s in the interests of the great british public (whether washed or unwashed) to show that we’re sick of being pissed about and we’re not going to stand and have this shit.

And we’ve proved with the Christmas number one that when the British Public take a stand against something, we can actually achieve something. So let’s take a stand as a nation and do the same thing with our political system. Let’s vote in Rage Against The Machine for Government! (unless anyone has any better ideas…?)

But, on a lighter note, my award for the biggest cock-up of the year goes here. Although I would give my second place vote to that slightly surreal clown they had on question time, who was pretending to be a real politician but didn’t really fool anyone.

I’m not going to go into the scientific evidence for man-made global warming here. I’ve read arguments from both sides, and for me the crucial factor is that the vast majority of scientists, while they might disagree about the amount of man-made global warming, all seem to think that it is something critical which needs to be addressed.

But even if you don’t believe it’s man made — or only believe a tiny proportion of it is man made — then what you’re doing amounts to a bet. I’ll stake paying a few quid less tax against the potential loss of large areas of the planet becoming uninhabitable for humans.

Personally, in this sort of circumstance I don’t care what the odds are, I don’t like the stake we’ve just put up.

So I’d like to say something to all the governments of the world for failing to reach any sort of meaningful deal over carbon dioxide emissions — they’ve failed to cut them enough, and they’ve failed to make any sort of binding agreement.

Fuck you. Fuck you very much indeed.

On the plus point though, I live on a hill 128m above sea level. Or, as we’re risking it being called in the future, ‘an island’.

Firstly, here’s the Observer online:

Championship

---

Barnsley 1 Colace 53
Scunthorpe 1 Hayes 58

---

David Hopps at Oakwell
guardian.co.uk, Saturday 12 December 2009 20.09 GMT

---

The other membersof the Championship’s top three, West Brom and Cardiff, had already come a cropper at Barnsley this season, and Newcastle will be relieved they did not join them. It all looked straightforward: a goal up at half-time, Newcastle’s superiority unquestioned, and a routine 45 minutes away from what would have been their eighth successive win. It proved to be nothing of the sort as Barnsley summoned a zestful second-half performance.

Championship: Barnsley 2-2 Newcastle (Observer)

I hate to be picky about it, but as the text makes quite clear, it was Newcastle who were playing at Oakwell, and whoever has put this page together — presumably using a previous Barnsley game (possibly this one against Scunthorpe, methinks) as a template — has done David Hopps somewhat of a disservice by giving the impression that he can’t remember which team was playing Barnsley for more than five minutes.

Still, at least while they got the goalscorers wrong, the actual score of both teams wrong, and the away team wrong, they were correct in that Barnsley drew at home.

Having said that, the BBC’s report into Brian Laws leaving his job at Sheffield Wednesday seems to make Brian out to be something of an egomaniac self-publicist with a tendency to speak about himself in the third person… or they’ve got the author of the quote wrong:

Sheffield Wednesday manager Brian Laws has left the struggling Championship club by mutual consent. The Owls lost 3-0 at Leicester on Saturday to slip into the bottom three and have not won since 17 October.

Laws, 48, left Scunthorpe to take charge at Hillsborough in November 2006 and academy boss Sean McAuley takes temporary charge following his exit. “We believe a change at this time can deliver fresh energy and direction,” said chairman Lee Strafford. [...]

“Brian Laws has done a very good job at Sheffield Wednesday in the light of the low level of resources at his disposal in the first two years of his time with the club,” added Laws.

BBC Sport: Laws Leaves post as Sheffield Wednesday manager

…I also spotted online someone seeming to suggest Liverpool were a “team packed with quality”, where it would seem to me that the words “not exactly” have been accidentally omitted between the words “team” and “packed”, but it is always possible that this one was intended as satire…

And when I say a bit, I mean that, if measured against the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane scale, we are to experience winds more than double the speed of those required to reach the strongest recognised category of hurricane.

Like I said, a bit windy.

This is taken from Metcheck’s 7 day look at NE1, and with winds varying between 25 mph in the morning, 316 mph in the afternoon, and up to 344 mph in the evening, it’s little surprise that they expect a considerable wind chill factor, saying that (in the afternoon) an actual temperature of 1° centigrade will feel like -19°C because of the wind.

Never mind how cold it feels, I’m slightly more concerned about all of the buildings in the North East being torn from their foundations by the winds and blown away.

Of course, it’s always possible that either their forecast model is a teensy bit wrong, or that there is a problem with their calculations program somewhere…

The UK Met office also hints at it being somewhat windy (my emphasis):

It will be cold or rather cold at first, with showers which may be prolonged at times across northern and eastern parts and perhaps moving into central areas at times. Some showers likely to fall as sleet or snow. Overnight frost is likely in many areas with fog in places. By the end of the week and over the weekend, staying cold or perhaps even turning very cold, with an increased risk of longer spells of sleet and snow. It is also likely to be windy at times making it feel even colder.Met Office forecast for NE England, 15-24 December

See … it is likely to be windy. Although as yet, the Met Office haven’t mentioned anything about hyper-hurricane wind speeds, presumably because they don’t want to frighten everyone. But we’re all going to dieeeeeeeeeeee!

Unless of course MetCheck is wrong, since certain other sites, such as WeatherOnline and NetWeather are suggesting that the wind speeds will be considerably lower — admittedly, still what you might term ‘windy’, but not reaching gale conditions, let alone 50% more than the world’s previous record wind speed.

So I’ll probably just for the time being assume that MetCheck’s calculations are wrong: but I’ll maybe keep my eye out on the 16th for super-huge storms or hurricanes building up over Newcastle, just to be on the safe side…

That’s the theory. Actually, there’s a number of these points that I can’t disagree with. The tree cost seventy quid, and is currently serving it’s fifth Christmas, so price-wise I think it’s worked out well. You don’t have soil and insects all over the floor. It’s not really generated much in the way of waste so far.

But as for less hassle…

Okay, here’s the procedure:

1. 5th December: Send wife into loft to locate boxes of Christmas decorations and bits of tree
2. Wife passes various bits down through loft hatch
3. Sorting procedure begins to sort tree bits from ornament bits and card-holder bits and tinselly bits
4. Finally, tree sorted; it consists of about forty six different bits
5. Assemble base unit and tree ‘trunks’ (four pieces in total)
6. Sort out artificial branches according to size and letter code (for those where this is still visible)
7. Start putting branches onto correct height slots around Christmas tree
8. Get covered in scratches from trying to squeeze round back of tree against wall in order to put branches on around this side
9. Finish loading the forty two branches on
10. Discover tree is now slightly lopsided
11. Mess on with base of tree to adjust position of ‘trunk’
12. Finally decide I’ve got it vertical
13. Locate wife, inform her of tree status
14. Adjust tree to make it vertical to wife’s satisfaction
15. Open out artificial branches and spread mini branches to create ample ‘leaf’ cover
16. Finish spreading out branches. Inform wife tree is ready for decorations, if such are sorted
17. Wife explains patiently that branches need to be spread out, and spends time spreading out branches
18. Wife asks if I’d like to place decorations on tree
19. Decline politely, suggesting that they might not be placed altogether satisfactorily if I do it
20. Wife places decorations on bottom 2/3 of tree, asks me to finish, while she does something else
21. Finish loading decorations on top 1/3 of tree
22. Wife advises that I’ve not loaded on decorations properly and proceeds to make appropriate corrections
23. Tree finished
24. Hoover small bits of artificial ‘needle’ off floor
25. Re-bag remaining decorations, replace all boxes and bags back in loft
26. 7th December: Hoover small bits of artificial ‘needle’ off floor
27. 9th December: Pick up ornaments which have been knocked off tree by cats or children and replace
28. 10th December: Hoover small bits of artificial ‘needle’ off floor
29. 12th December: Hoover small bits of artificial ‘needle’ off floor
30. 14th December: Pick up ornaments which have been knocked off tree by cats or children and replace
31. 16th December: Hoover small bits of artificial ‘needle’ off floor
32. 19th December: Hoover small bits of artificial ‘needle’ off floor
33. 20th December: Pick up ornaments which have been knocked off tree by cats or children and replace
34. 21st December: Realise base of tree is not properly fixed and needs to be screwed in properly before it falls over
35. 22nd December: Hoover small bits of artificial ‘needle’ off floor
36. 23rd December: Hoover small bits of artificial ‘needle’ off floor
37. 24th December: Pick up ornaments which have been knocked off tree by cats or children and replace
38. 25th December: Hurrah! It’s Christmas. Start contemplating earliest possible opportunity to take tree down and reclaim living room
39. 27th December: Hoover small bits of artificial ‘needle’ off floor
40. 30th December: Hoover small bits of artificial ‘needle’ off floor
41. 30th December: Hoover small bits of artificial ‘needle’ off floor
42. 2nd January: take down Christmas tree
43. Tape various branch ‘groupings’ together to make them easier to sort next year
44. Get bags or boxes down from loft
45. Sort decorations by type and place into appropriate bags or boxes
46. Replace boxes and bags in loft
47. Hoover small bits of artificial ‘needle’ off floor
48. 4th January: find further decorations behind/under sofa
49. Return to loft to replace remaining decorations
50. 17th January: Hoover small bits of artificial ‘needle’ off floor
51. 22nd March: Notice that infrequently considered picture frame still has piece of tinsel draped across it
52. 9th April: Hoover small bits of artificial ‘needle’ off floor
53. 16th August: Hoover small bits of artificial ‘needle’ off floor

I wonder if it’s possible to get a poster of a Christmas tree that I can just stick on the wall for thirty days or so, and then roll up and stick it in the cupboard again.

Right. Rant over. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll have to go: I think I hear Marley’s ghost rattling at the door…