Month of November
Diary: Social Stuff
Went to Industrial Fallout @ Talking Heads on Sat 6th, although it was disapointingly quiet. I was worried that, because of the cold weather, it would get cramped inside. However, not that many people turned up so it ended up being very spacious. In some ways that was quite nice; no trouble finding seats to sit down in (spent a fair amount of time slouched in one of the couches by the bar with some friends) and plenty of space on the dance floor. Still would have been nice to see a few more people though. I suppose I got to see a few more people on the Sunday over at LittleCyberAlex's but I'm still a bit surprised that people didn't make the effort for IF. It'll be interesting to see whether this marks the beginning of a decline or was just a one-off.
I was around my younger brother's on the Friday 13th to play Battle of The Bands and CoD: World at War, which was fun. Spend the Saturday morning printing and cutting out cards for us with the Ideology board game (we found that using the cards provided meant running out too quickly!). We didn't manage to finish quick enough to actually play a game as I'd arranged to be down Dungeon to see Ophelia_Machina, which was fun. After Dungeon a bunch of us went down to Edge afterwards and then Bert turned up with another bunch of people as well, making it the best crowd I've been down at with Edge for some while. Somehow we ended up in the VIP area, which was odd (although not as odd as Edge having a VIP area...). Spent the night at FraggleOnSpeed's (rather sticky) house. Bert did come back with us for a while but no one else remembers him being there. :o)
Did try to motivate people to go to littlecyberalex's on the Sunday but it took forever before I even got people just to leave the house for food... and then they decided they couldn't be bothered to come anyway :o/ Played CoD: Black Ops at LittleCyberAlex's when I got there, which was good although I dislike the way that local splitscreen games no longer require you to earn upgrades to your profile (I was looking forward to trying out the new system of buying upgrades as well!)
I was planning to skip Dungeon on the 20th in order to help lose some more weight (which has slowed down a little since when I first started going to the gym) but then my younger brother decided to go down so I thought I'd join him, although he ended up at Hobbit most of the night anyway :oP Turned out that Dungeon was a bit quiet as well, I knew that there was an Industrial Fallout gig on but I don't tend to go to their gig events, possibly mistaken about that (especially as you can get in for free if you turn up afterwards apparently).
I did successfully skip Dungeon on the 27th but it just ended up leaving me feeling very bored; I went to bed at about 9pm just for lack of anything to do! :oP Not really good enough. I did go to LittleCyberAlex's on the 21st and 28th, which helped me stay a little bit more occupied :o)
TV: The Indian Doctor & Lip Service
The Indian Doctor is a five-part comedy drama that was recently on iplayer (and probably will be for a short bit more). The premise is that an Indian doctor and his wife have travelled to a Welsh town in the 1960's in response to a shortage of doctors. Sanjeev Bhaskar and Ayesha Dharker star as the doctor and his wife.
I've obviously no idea how true to life the comedy drama is but it doesn't (to me) come across as disrespectful, although I did see someone on the imdb boards complain about there being another comedy about Welsh people and how it would never be allowed to happen about black people (which isn't true as there are lots of very common comedy black man archetypes, it also seems very strange to suggest that the Welsh are being singled out given the leading character is played by someone who is best known for his work in a comedy show about British Asians). There is a lot of comedy about misunderstandings by the Welsh inhabitants of the town, who often seem completely ignorant of the fact that the Doctor and his wife are actually of a higher class status than them. It also doesn't shy away from less funny prejudiced attitudes mind.
The overall plot line is a somewhat unlikely mystery crime drama but it works well, although I was probably more interested in the characters than the plotline.
Lip Service is the BBC's new drama about lesbians living in Glasgow (although at least half the case seem to be English anyway). Some people on imdb have been debating it's similarities to The L-Word, which I can't really speak too authoritatively about because I've not watched much L-Word (nearly none). The impression I've got of L-Word is it's that typical American style of drama that makes it hard too connect with it as it's too far away from real life, as opposed to something like the original Queer as Folk, which seemed comparatively natural. In that respect, I think L-Word is more similar to Queer as Folk than L-Word but I might be entirely wrong.
Some people have also complained about the show being composed of 'Lipstick Lesbians' and there being an absence of 'butch lesbians'. It shouldn't surprise anyone that all the characters fall within a certain standard of 'conventional attractiveness' but it surprises me to hear them all labelled as 'lipstick lesbians'. Okay, so none of the characters fall into the stereotype of a butch lesbian as being short, over-weight and far from conventionally attractive but Heather Peace as DC Sam Murray clearly comes across as 'butch' in both appearance and character, certainly not a 'Lipstick Lesbian' in any case. The character Frankie (often compared to Shane from L-Word) does wear make-up but otherwise does not fall neatly into the category of 'feminine'.
I think it's nice to see the BBC to take a stab at making something like this but I do strain to find things to recommend it. The characters are interesting enough to keep you watching. The biggest plot line deals with Frankie and seems surprisingly unlikely for the tone of the rest of the show but is still interesting enough to keep you watching. However, unless you have not much else to do then I can't think of much reason for anyone to want to start watching, even though they're probably become interested as they get into it (but you could say that about Eastenders...)
Thoughts: Job Seekers = Community Service
Community service could become compulsory for the unemployed
Compulsory labour for jobless: Your comments
I have a natural wariness to any Tory attempt to 'tighten up' benefits but this does deserve serious thought.
I've personally been looking at voluntary jobs recently. I've been struggling to find much appropriate but I have discovered that the Hampshire constabulary is looking for volunteers to do various admin roles so that the police can spend less time paper-pushing and more time policing. I was originally looking for a more typical charity to volunteer for but that seems a fairly good cause too. My main doubt has been that I don't want to commit to something that I might have to drop as soon as I get given a job.
That's obviously a shame. At the moment, I seem to have managed to become 'long-term unemployed', which I'm not keen on. All that time I've been hoping for the next job to be 'just around the corner' but it means that I've spent a lot of time not contributing economically as much as I'd like (although I like to think that some of my more recent contributions help make up for that). I think it would be great if the job centre could help put people to work.
Those sorts of opportunities could well be a great thing for job seekers. It keeps them busy, helps with self-esteem, makes their CVs look nicer and might even help remove the stigma of being a Job Seekers claimant (because you are still contributing).
Of course, phrasing it as an 'opportunity' does put a nice gloss on it but we have to remember that the idea is that it's compulsory. There is a difference between getting a job that you've chosen and/or volunteering for a charity that you support and being forced to do community service. An employer offers you a job opportunity and a charity asks for your help... what we are talking about here is the state demanding you to complete certain tasks. I could easily see the entire atmosphere of the whole thing becoming very sour.
In that sense I can understand the 'it's demeaning argument'.
There is another sense that I'm sceptical of.
Whilst I was looking for voluntary positions to keep me busy and feel good about myself, I was looking for admin and clerical work. In fact, my whole job seeking has been in search of admin and clerical work as well. The idea of returning to the sort of work-life I had during college and getting a job in a fast food restaurant doesn't strike me as very appealing. So... bearing that in mind... what sort of 'community service' is likely to be handed out? Somehow I suspect it won't be admin work.
Faced with the reality of what 'community service' probably means, some people have suggested that forcing job seekers to earn their benefit by doing things like cleaning up litter is 'demeaning'.
Of course, the thing to remember is that some people have jobs that are similar to that and no one thinks that it's outrageous that someone should have to earn their money by cleaning streets or similar when it's a paid job, even if it's their only available option other than claiming benefit. It makes me wonder whether there's an element of classism involved... the problem being that so many of us think we're 'too good' to do certain jobs and thus shouldn't be expected to. However, if we're 'too good' to do those jobs, what does that say about our attitude towards people for whom those jobs are an actual career? Are the 'less good' than us?
I can't say I'm particularly in love with the idea of potentially being forced to do work that I would turn down as a career but is my snobbery really a good argument?
I suppose the problem may be partly solved by allowing us to opt for voluntary work for whatever charity will accept us instead of community work. It could even have the surprising effect of making charity volunteers an 'in demand' role. Knowing my luck, it would just mean that I'd apply to do nicer admin work for charities and be turned away :oP
I don't know really. The whole thing makes me uncomfortable but I'm not confident about how to challenge it, especially because I'm currently claiming job seeker's allowance myself (which would make the whole argument feel rather self-serving).
Thoughts: Should Prisoners be allowed to vote?
UK 'obliged' to allow some prisoners to vote
So the European Union has ruled that the UK is obliged to give prisoners the vote.
I was discussing this on a debating community recently, although it didn't get as much response as I would have liked linky
Some people may be concerned about the issue of national sovereignty. Personally, I think this is a case where I'm okay with this; the UK being bound by EU human rights laws seems a largely good thing to me. We can always avoid those obligations to human rights by pulling out of the EU but not even the Tories seem to think that's a good idea.
I think the right to vote is an obviously important one. It doesn't give us complete protection and there are flaws with democracy but it's definitely better than not having it. Whilst the state may still pass unjust laws and unfair policies, at least the public get some say in it, which is some consolation. At least when I'm taxed, it's taxes that I've (theoretically) helped to decide on. At least if I'm getting punished by the state, it's according to laws that I've had a say about. That's good stuff.
The other important thing to remember is that it's a right and not a privilege. It's not something we give out to people who we think deserve it but that is given out to all citizens as standard. The thing about rights is you don't have to justify why you deserve them; for instance, no one has to justify why they deserve the right to free expression, you just have it as standard. You don't need to 'earn' rights.
However, sometimes exceptions have to be made and the state, by necessity, has to remove certain rights. It's these exceptions that need justification.
Imprisonment is inevitably a removal of the right to free movement, justified by necessity. Some people have to be removed from society in order for society to remain stable; we have no option. We might debate whether we should be imprisoning as many people as we are currently but I can't imagine how we can avoid imprisoning completely; if someone is a serial killer then clearly some form of restraint on their free movement becomes necessary.
But what is the justification for removing a criminal's right to vote? It's clearly not a 'necessity' in the same way imprisonment is.
The most popular line is 'people who break the law doesn't deserve the vote', as if it's an obvious truth.
Obviously, that's not enough justification. It's never going to be okay for the state to take away rights 'because it's obvious'. Whether a person thinks 'its obvious' that prisoners shouldn't get the vote, that the BNP shouldn't be allowed to stand for election and that Nambla shouldn't be allowed to broadcast the vile things they believe is never going to be a good argument for removing their rights.
;
Shami Chakrabarti on the 04/11 episode of Question Time also pointed out what ought to be the obvious flaw here. As soon as we start thinking about it, it becomes obviously problematic because we clearly don't believe that all people who break the law shouldn't have the vote.
She used the example of ID Cards, which were very nearly compulsory. If compulsory ID cards were introduced, there would doubtless have been many people who would have refused to use them in protest and those people may have faced jail. Does it really follow that because they, based on their political beliefs, refused to obey the law that they should now have no representation in government?
We could also talk about drug laws. There are plenty of people who believe that some drug laws are unjust, particularly cannabis laws. There are some people who believe they are justified in using cannabis for medicinal reasons, despite the fact that it is illegal. If they act on this convictions, does that mean that should forfeit their right to vote?
And there are of course historical examples... homosexuality... atheism...
I strongly suspect that most, if not all, of the people reading this will concede that the statement 'people who break the law don't deserve the right to vote' is false.
So, with that out of the way... what is the justification then?
We do need one. The state can't be allowed to strip away prisoner's rights just because we disapprove of prisoners; it needs a very strong and very convincing justification. I'm just not hearing it.
Thoughts: How Important is Grammar?
In a conversation recently, I was quite surprised that a few people had assumed that I was the type of person to be annoyed at bad grammar, misspelt words or misused words.
Obviously, there are things I am passionate about and that I will even get annoyed at. I find it almost tautological that I'm passionate about my moral convictions; my moral beliefs would have to be fairly weak if I didn't really care about them. For not dissimilar reasons, I care quite a lot about certain political issues; the protection of liberty (etc) has an impact on people's welfare, so of course I care about that. I can also admit to a somewhat irrational annoyance/frustration with people who are, essentially stupid, especially those who go on to set themselves up as experts on a subject that they clearly know nothing about.
Those three things pretty much cover most, if not all, of the things that are likely to set me off. Two out of those three are quite reasonable with the third being more of an irrational pet hate (stupid people can't help being stupid). Perhaps the problem is that these are also quite broad areas, thus people might assume that I like arguing for it's own sake. That much really isn't quite true.
I do like a good-natured argument/discussion from time to time, where it's all polite and no one leaves feeling upset and annoyed. However, my enjoyment of such discussions decreases the more bitter and angry they are. That's not to say that I avoid all such arguments because some arguments need to be had. I've certainly been in the situation where it would be easier and more pleasant not to call out a certain issue of prejudice but I've felt that it really needs to be called out anyway.
So... where does grammar (etc) fit in? Well, I'm not sure it does.
I can admit that sometimes if someone is trying to insult me and they misuse a word (or similar) then it's very tempting to point it out to make them look a bit silly, however, nine times out of ten, I'll just ignore a mistake (unless I'm genuinely confused by it). I remember once that I had a very long series of debates with someone whose sentence structure was really confusing and who seemed to mispell every other word but I never ended up mentioning it; I just focused on working out what he was trying to say and responding to that (which is the important thing, obviously)
It's not that I don't think grammar (etc) isn't an important part of language. Severely bad grammar can make conversations harder, really awful spelling can make reading very difficult and misused words can be very confusing. I suppose that if I feel that a person isn't making any effort at all to be clearly understood then that would be a little irritation but I suspect most bad grammar isn't at all intentional.
I've noticed that facebook has lots and lots of groups about the distinction between 'their/there/they're', some of them are very rude and cruel about the people who don't know the distinction.
Even if we assume that not knowing the distinction was a sign of stupidity then I'm not sure that justifies the reaction. I can get why stupidity may be annoying but it's not immoral. Worse than that, bad grasp of grammar is not a sign of stupidity... there are a number of learning difficulties that may cause a person to struggle with grammatical distinctions that the rest of us find obvious and this most certainly does not mean they're stupid. For this reason, there's something rather ableist about the whole affair.
So what is the obsession with things like 'their/there/they're', especially from people who don't seem to show much interest in more serious moral and political issues?
Well, excuse me for being cynical, but I can't help but think that it's just a tool for rather average people to feel superior. I really can't think of any reason grounded in morality to be passionate about this issue to the extent of mocking or being cruel to people over it so I think that just leaves ego; it's an attempt to mock others to make yourself feel better. I don't think there's any reason for anyone secure in their intelligence and themselves to engage in such behaviour.
The precise example that came out of the discussion was misuse of the term 'ironic'. My response was simply 'I think that's been covered well enough already without me having to say anything' and it clearly has. Whatever importance you might think that using the term 'ironic' correctly has (and I'd say 'not much'), the response has been wholly disproportionate; it's a silly little error that doesn't require the sort of venom that it has received.
As I said before, good-natured and non-hostile discussion about it is fine... there's nothing wrong with having a keen interest in grammar, proper word use or spelling just as there's nothing wrong with having a keen interest in anything, however, getting angry over whether a particular word is used right or over a small matter of grammar (which often doesn't harm legibility anyway) feels a bit like getting annoyed over any matter of trivia; silly.
So, just to clear things up, I do usually like to spell correctly and use correct grammar but I don't particularly care. If you ever expect me to be ashamed over a mistake then you're kidding yourself (in fact, if anyone expresses any level of annoyance about these sorts of things, I'm likely to just keep repeating the mistake until you get over it) :oP
Link: Now This Is Gothic - linky
Link: Youtube discussion about Star Trek's Prime Directive - linky
Went to Industrial Fallout @ Talking Heads on Sat 6th, although it was disapointingly quiet. I was worried that, because of the cold weather, it would get cramped inside. However, not that many people turned up so it ended up being very spacious. In some ways that was quite nice; no trouble finding seats to sit down in (spent a fair amount of time slouched in one of the couches by the bar with some friends) and plenty of space on the dance floor. Still would have been nice to see a few more people though. I suppose I got to see a few more people on the Sunday over at LittleCyberAlex's but I'm still a bit surprised that people didn't make the effort for IF. It'll be interesting to see whether this marks the beginning of a decline or was just a one-off.
I was around my younger brother's on the Friday 13th to play Battle of The Bands and CoD: World at War, which was fun. Spend the Saturday morning printing and cutting out cards for us with the Ideology board game (we found that using the cards provided meant running out too quickly!). We didn't manage to finish quick enough to actually play a game as I'd arranged to be down Dungeon to see Ophelia_Machina, which was fun. After Dungeon a bunch of us went down to Edge afterwards and then Bert turned up with another bunch of people as well, making it the best crowd I've been down at with Edge for some while. Somehow we ended up in the VIP area, which was odd (although not as odd as Edge having a VIP area...). Spent the night at FraggleOnSpeed's (rather sticky) house. Bert did come back with us for a while but no one else remembers him being there. :o)
Did try to motivate people to go to littlecyberalex's on the Sunday but it took forever before I even got people just to leave the house for food... and then they decided they couldn't be bothered to come anyway :o/ Played CoD: Black Ops at LittleCyberAlex's when I got there, which was good although I dislike the way that local splitscreen games no longer require you to earn upgrades to your profile (I was looking forward to trying out the new system of buying upgrades as well!)
I was planning to skip Dungeon on the 20th in order to help lose some more weight (which has slowed down a little since when I first started going to the gym) but then my younger brother decided to go down so I thought I'd join him, although he ended up at Hobbit most of the night anyway :oP Turned out that Dungeon was a bit quiet as well, I knew that there was an Industrial Fallout gig on but I don't tend to go to their gig events, possibly mistaken about that (especially as you can get in for free if you turn up afterwards apparently).
I did successfully skip Dungeon on the 27th but it just ended up leaving me feeling very bored; I went to bed at about 9pm just for lack of anything to do! :oP Not really good enough. I did go to LittleCyberAlex's on the 21st and 28th, which helped me stay a little bit more occupied :o)
TV: The Indian Doctor & Lip Service
The Indian Doctor is a five-part comedy drama that was recently on iplayer (and probably will be for a short bit more). The premise is that an Indian doctor and his wife have travelled to a Welsh town in the 1960's in response to a shortage of doctors. Sanjeev Bhaskar and Ayesha Dharker star as the doctor and his wife.
I've obviously no idea how true to life the comedy drama is but it doesn't (to me) come across as disrespectful, although I did see someone on the imdb boards complain about there being another comedy about Welsh people and how it would never be allowed to happen about black people (which isn't true as there are lots of very common comedy black man archetypes, it also seems very strange to suggest that the Welsh are being singled out given the leading character is played by someone who is best known for his work in a comedy show about British Asians). There is a lot of comedy about misunderstandings by the Welsh inhabitants of the town, who often seem completely ignorant of the fact that the Doctor and his wife are actually of a higher class status than them. It also doesn't shy away from less funny prejudiced attitudes mind.
The overall plot line is a somewhat unlikely mystery crime drama but it works well, although I was probably more interested in the characters than the plotline.
Lip Service is the BBC's new drama about lesbians living in Glasgow (although at least half the case seem to be English anyway). Some people on imdb have been debating it's similarities to The L-Word, which I can't really speak too authoritatively about because I've not watched much L-Word (nearly none). The impression I've got of L-Word is it's that typical American style of drama that makes it hard too connect with it as it's too far away from real life, as opposed to something like the original Queer as Folk, which seemed comparatively natural. In that respect, I think L-Word is more similar to Queer as Folk than L-Word but I might be entirely wrong.
Some people have also complained about the show being composed of 'Lipstick Lesbians' and there being an absence of 'butch lesbians'. It shouldn't surprise anyone that all the characters fall within a certain standard of 'conventional attractiveness' but it surprises me to hear them all labelled as 'lipstick lesbians'. Okay, so none of the characters fall into the stereotype of a butch lesbian as being short, over-weight and far from conventionally attractive but Heather Peace as DC Sam Murray clearly comes across as 'butch' in both appearance and character, certainly not a 'Lipstick Lesbian' in any case. The character Frankie (often compared to Shane from L-Word) does wear make-up but otherwise does not fall neatly into the category of 'feminine'.
I think it's nice to see the BBC to take a stab at making something like this but I do strain to find things to recommend it. The characters are interesting enough to keep you watching. The biggest plot line deals with Frankie and seems surprisingly unlikely for the tone of the rest of the show but is still interesting enough to keep you watching. However, unless you have not much else to do then I can't think of much reason for anyone to want to start watching, even though they're probably become interested as they get into it (but you could say that about Eastenders...)
Thoughts: Job Seekers = Community Service
Community service could become compulsory for the unemployed
Compulsory labour for jobless: Your comments
I have a natural wariness to any Tory attempt to 'tighten up' benefits but this does deserve serious thought.
I've personally been looking at voluntary jobs recently. I've been struggling to find much appropriate but I have discovered that the Hampshire constabulary is looking for volunteers to do various admin roles so that the police can spend less time paper-pushing and more time policing. I was originally looking for a more typical charity to volunteer for but that seems a fairly good cause too. My main doubt has been that I don't want to commit to something that I might have to drop as soon as I get given a job.
That's obviously a shame. At the moment, I seem to have managed to become 'long-term unemployed', which I'm not keen on. All that time I've been hoping for the next job to be 'just around the corner' but it means that I've spent a lot of time not contributing economically as much as I'd like (although I like to think that some of my more recent contributions help make up for that). I think it would be great if the job centre could help put people to work.
Those sorts of opportunities could well be a great thing for job seekers. It keeps them busy, helps with self-esteem, makes their CVs look nicer and might even help remove the stigma of being a Job Seekers claimant (because you are still contributing).
Of course, phrasing it as an 'opportunity' does put a nice gloss on it but we have to remember that the idea is that it's compulsory. There is a difference between getting a job that you've chosen and/or volunteering for a charity that you support and being forced to do community service. An employer offers you a job opportunity and a charity asks for your help... what we are talking about here is the state demanding you to complete certain tasks. I could easily see the entire atmosphere of the whole thing becoming very sour.
In that sense I can understand the 'it's demeaning argument'.
There is another sense that I'm sceptical of.
Whilst I was looking for voluntary positions to keep me busy and feel good about myself, I was looking for admin and clerical work. In fact, my whole job seeking has been in search of admin and clerical work as well. The idea of returning to the sort of work-life I had during college and getting a job in a fast food restaurant doesn't strike me as very appealing. So... bearing that in mind... what sort of 'community service' is likely to be handed out? Somehow I suspect it won't be admin work.
Faced with the reality of what 'community service' probably means, some people have suggested that forcing job seekers to earn their benefit by doing things like cleaning up litter is 'demeaning'.
Of course, the thing to remember is that some people have jobs that are similar to that and no one thinks that it's outrageous that someone should have to earn their money by cleaning streets or similar when it's a paid job, even if it's their only available option other than claiming benefit. It makes me wonder whether there's an element of classism involved... the problem being that so many of us think we're 'too good' to do certain jobs and thus shouldn't be expected to. However, if we're 'too good' to do those jobs, what does that say about our attitude towards people for whom those jobs are an actual career? Are the 'less good' than us?
I can't say I'm particularly in love with the idea of potentially being forced to do work that I would turn down as a career but is my snobbery really a good argument?
I suppose the problem may be partly solved by allowing us to opt for voluntary work for whatever charity will accept us instead of community work. It could even have the surprising effect of making charity volunteers an 'in demand' role. Knowing my luck, it would just mean that I'd apply to do nicer admin work for charities and be turned away :oP
I don't know really. The whole thing makes me uncomfortable but I'm not confident about how to challenge it, especially because I'm currently claiming job seeker's allowance myself (which would make the whole argument feel rather self-serving).
Thoughts: Should Prisoners be allowed to vote?
UK 'obliged' to allow some prisoners to vote
So the European Union has ruled that the UK is obliged to give prisoners the vote.
I was discussing this on a debating community recently, although it didn't get as much response as I would have liked linky
Some people may be concerned about the issue of national sovereignty. Personally, I think this is a case where I'm okay with this; the UK being bound by EU human rights laws seems a largely good thing to me. We can always avoid those obligations to human rights by pulling out of the EU but not even the Tories seem to think that's a good idea.
I think the right to vote is an obviously important one. It doesn't give us complete protection and there are flaws with democracy but it's definitely better than not having it. Whilst the state may still pass unjust laws and unfair policies, at least the public get some say in it, which is some consolation. At least when I'm taxed, it's taxes that I've (theoretically) helped to decide on. At least if I'm getting punished by the state, it's according to laws that I've had a say about. That's good stuff.
The other important thing to remember is that it's a right and not a privilege. It's not something we give out to people who we think deserve it but that is given out to all citizens as standard. The thing about rights is you don't have to justify why you deserve them; for instance, no one has to justify why they deserve the right to free expression, you just have it as standard. You don't need to 'earn' rights.
However, sometimes exceptions have to be made and the state, by necessity, has to remove certain rights. It's these exceptions that need justification.
Imprisonment is inevitably a removal of the right to free movement, justified by necessity. Some people have to be removed from society in order for society to remain stable; we have no option. We might debate whether we should be imprisoning as many people as we are currently but I can't imagine how we can avoid imprisoning completely; if someone is a serial killer then clearly some form of restraint on their free movement becomes necessary.
But what is the justification for removing a criminal's right to vote? It's clearly not a 'necessity' in the same way imprisonment is.
The most popular line is 'people who break the law doesn't deserve the vote', as if it's an obvious truth.
Obviously, that's not enough justification. It's never going to be okay for the state to take away rights 'because it's obvious'. Whether a person thinks 'its obvious' that prisoners shouldn't get the vote, that the BNP shouldn't be allowed to stand for election and that Nambla shouldn't be allowed to broadcast the vile things they believe is never going to be a good argument for removing their rights.
;
Shami Chakrabarti on the 04/11 episode of Question Time also pointed out what ought to be the obvious flaw here. As soon as we start thinking about it, it becomes obviously problematic because we clearly don't believe that all people who break the law shouldn't have the vote.
She used the example of ID Cards, which were very nearly compulsory. If compulsory ID cards were introduced, there would doubtless have been many people who would have refused to use them in protest and those people may have faced jail. Does it really follow that because they, based on their political beliefs, refused to obey the law that they should now have no representation in government?
We could also talk about drug laws. There are plenty of people who believe that some drug laws are unjust, particularly cannabis laws. There are some people who believe they are justified in using cannabis for medicinal reasons, despite the fact that it is illegal. If they act on this convictions, does that mean that should forfeit their right to vote?
And there are of course historical examples... homosexuality... atheism...
I strongly suspect that most, if not all, of the people reading this will concede that the statement 'people who break the law don't deserve the right to vote' is false.
So, with that out of the way... what is the justification then?
We do need one. The state can't be allowed to strip away prisoner's rights just because we disapprove of prisoners; it needs a very strong and very convincing justification. I'm just not hearing it.
Thoughts: How Important is Grammar?
In a conversation recently, I was quite surprised that a few people had assumed that I was the type of person to be annoyed at bad grammar, misspelt words or misused words.
Obviously, there are things I am passionate about and that I will even get annoyed at. I find it almost tautological that I'm passionate about my moral convictions; my moral beliefs would have to be fairly weak if I didn't really care about them. For not dissimilar reasons, I care quite a lot about certain political issues; the protection of liberty (etc) has an impact on people's welfare, so of course I care about that. I can also admit to a somewhat irrational annoyance/frustration with people who are, essentially stupid, especially those who go on to set themselves up as experts on a subject that they clearly know nothing about.
Those three things pretty much cover most, if not all, of the things that are likely to set me off. Two out of those three are quite reasonable with the third being more of an irrational pet hate (stupid people can't help being stupid). Perhaps the problem is that these are also quite broad areas, thus people might assume that I like arguing for it's own sake. That much really isn't quite true.
I do like a good-natured argument/discussion from time to time, where it's all polite and no one leaves feeling upset and annoyed. However, my enjoyment of such discussions decreases the more bitter and angry they are. That's not to say that I avoid all such arguments because some arguments need to be had. I've certainly been in the situation where it would be easier and more pleasant not to call out a certain issue of prejudice but I've felt that it really needs to be called out anyway.
So... where does grammar (etc) fit in? Well, I'm not sure it does.
I can admit that sometimes if someone is trying to insult me and they misuse a word (or similar) then it's very tempting to point it out to make them look a bit silly, however, nine times out of ten, I'll just ignore a mistake (unless I'm genuinely confused by it). I remember once that I had a very long series of debates with someone whose sentence structure was really confusing and who seemed to mispell every other word but I never ended up mentioning it; I just focused on working out what he was trying to say and responding to that (which is the important thing, obviously)
It's not that I don't think grammar (etc) isn't an important part of language. Severely bad grammar can make conversations harder, really awful spelling can make reading very difficult and misused words can be very confusing. I suppose that if I feel that a person isn't making any effort at all to be clearly understood then that would be a little irritation but I suspect most bad grammar isn't at all intentional.
I've noticed that facebook has lots and lots of groups about the distinction between 'their/there/they're', some of them are very rude and cruel about the people who don't know the distinction.
Even if we assume that not knowing the distinction was a sign of stupidity then I'm not sure that justifies the reaction. I can get why stupidity may be annoying but it's not immoral. Worse than that, bad grasp of grammar is not a sign of stupidity... there are a number of learning difficulties that may cause a person to struggle with grammatical distinctions that the rest of us find obvious and this most certainly does not mean they're stupid. For this reason, there's something rather ableist about the whole affair.
So what is the obsession with things like 'their/there/they're', especially from people who don't seem to show much interest in more serious moral and political issues?
Well, excuse me for being cynical, but I can't help but think that it's just a tool for rather average people to feel superior. I really can't think of any reason grounded in morality to be passionate about this issue to the extent of mocking or being cruel to people over it so I think that just leaves ego; it's an attempt to mock others to make yourself feel better. I don't think there's any reason for anyone secure in their intelligence and themselves to engage in such behaviour.
The precise example that came out of the discussion was misuse of the term 'ironic'. My response was simply 'I think that's been covered well enough already without me having to say anything' and it clearly has. Whatever importance you might think that using the term 'ironic' correctly has (and I'd say 'not much'), the response has been wholly disproportionate; it's a silly little error that doesn't require the sort of venom that it has received.
As I said before, good-natured and non-hostile discussion about it is fine... there's nothing wrong with having a keen interest in grammar, proper word use or spelling just as there's nothing wrong with having a keen interest in anything, however, getting angry over whether a particular word is used right or over a small matter of grammar (which often doesn't harm legibility anyway) feels a bit like getting annoyed over any matter of trivia; silly.
So, just to clear things up, I do usually like to spell correctly and use correct grammar but I don't particularly care. If you ever expect me to be ashamed over a mistake then you're kidding yourself (in fact, if anyone expresses any level of annoyance about these sorts of things, I'm likely to just keep repeating the mistake until you get over it) :oP
Link: Now This Is Gothic - linky
Link: Youtube discussion about Star Trek's Prime Directive - linky