Quite a long way from Cairo

Lots of miles from Vietnam.
Spent the last couple of days in Finland, which has been significantly warmer than London this weekend. In fact, it hasn't snowed in the south for three weeks. Even Moscow is experiencing a winter heatwave of +7 degrees. This hardly constitutes climate change, but the Scandinavian experience is a little weird without snow.
The country came across as pretty quaint, without wishing to sound too snobbish about it. Wooden houses and birch forests (keep all those children in check), very sparsely populated, with lots of homemade Christmas trinkets being sold in outdoor markets; all contributed to the sense that you had stepped back in time 50 years.
Do you know what the two most popular Finnish names are? Matt
& Gloss.

Arsenal stadium mystery

Police investigations today cleared Ashburton Grove of any danger to the public. They had suspected contamination by Graham Poll-onium 2-pen, but only eleven people from Tottenham appear to have been affected.

Sunday bloody Sunday

Let's consider some of the problems we face in the UK these days: a consumer culture that leads to high levels of debt, pollution and excessive energy consumption, <i>low-order</i> social crime... Can we name the root of these ailments? Evil, thy name is out-of-town Sunday shopping!
Let's consider the evidence.
On an environmental level, who can doubt the negative impact of these retail monstrosities? Built on playing fields or flood plains, their tarmac testifies to our conservational negligence and irresponsible, unthinking short-termism. There's no creeping nostalgia in this observation: I don't believe that retail parks have corrupted arcadia. They have, however, usurped our breathing space to supplant it with an iron lung.
For now our weekend pursuit is to shop. We shop at weekends because we're too busy to find time in the week. Because there's nothing else to do. Because it's a social event; though there's rampant social exclusion. You can't partake if you have a poor credit rating, where a hoodie, or have to work at weekends...
Let me return briefly to the credit aspect. Consumer culture, to which these retail parks stand as temples, thrives -- indeed relies -- on our weekly devotion and on the widow's mite. Supermarkets don't care if you can afford to <i>taste the diference</i>, or need the latest gadget: you're there to buy, on anyone's money. Seven-day-a-week social shopping doubtless encourages this.
For this is the opportunity for people to herd around a water hole. The retail parks like to give us the impression it's all yummy mummies in Starbuck's, but in reality, it's mostly teenagers whose playing fields have been concreted over. They don't go to Starbuck's but head instead to KFC or McDonald's: so not only do they lose out on an environment in which to exercise, they gorge to obesity on trans-fatty acids. Then, high on sugars and preservatives, they roam the mobile 'phone stores until one can summon the courage to accost an off-licence.
So what we're looking at is an invention that ruins our environment, causes social and economic strife and ruins my Sundays. Can anyone rid us of this social blight?

Testing 1... 2... 3...

This is my first attempt at posting from on the move, via a 3G connection on my new converged device.
I'm also testing Blogger's mail facility, so if you're my guinea pig now, you should benefit from more posts in future.

When a rule is not a rule

Now we're being told by a member of the cabinet, the most powerful body in our government, who has never been elected, that human rights are relative. Lord Falconer wants to enshrine the principle that one person's rights cannot be used to "trump" the public's right to safety. In other words, there's no such thing as a fundamental human right. If you (i.e. the government) can demonstrate you're protecting public safety, you can do what you like to any number of individuals.
As I pointed out in my previous entry, the U.S. has already agreed a law that allows governments to define what constitutes torture; we're now only a short step from this ourselves. Perhaps when the Lord Chancellor tells us our rights are as British as beer he means that they don't apply to Muslims?
Let's extend this a little further. Do the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few? So, if I walk out onto a pedestrian crossing in front of a bus, should it stop? There are more people on the bus and their safety would be compromised by an emergency stop, even though I'm on a zebra crossing.
And does this apply just to safety? If the majority of a company's employees are male and the company is successful, why should it jeopardise its corporate culture by employing a woman?
The purpose of government is to benefit individuals in ways that they could not achieve as individuals: provide education, security, infrastructure that no single individual could implement. Constraining individual rights in the name of a common good is the complete antithesis of this principle.

Tortuous arguments

As the US introduces new legislation that effectively allows politicians to define what constitutes torture as it suits them, and a recent survey by the BBC shows increasing public support for abuse of suspects, I thought I'd point you in the direction of an interesting discussion on the subject.

Terrifying

This article from the Register says a lot about how I feel terrorism is being judged currently in this country.

My son on TV

I'm not grooming him for a career in television, but he's started anyway. Go to BBC London TV and Radio and follow the link to Nursing to be cut in Barnet.
Oh yes, and the missus is on there too.
It's an important story, so worth watching, if parochial.

Preoccupations

Paul Hunter gave generously to neuroendocrine tumour charities. He wasn't even 28.
I'm sick of being sick: bloody diminished neutrophils. Can't walk down the street without feeling knackered.
Like Paul Hunter, I can't do my job properly on the treatment. Unlike Paul Hunter, the interferon should be less intrusive and I should have fewer metastases. I hope to find the interferon working miracles so I can get back to my normal self.
I also hope Hunter's popularity draws some extra attention and resources a largely unknown problem.

What are our rights?

Is the irony not lost on anyone that a man taking his case to the European Court of Human Rights is being sponsored by the UK Independence Party?
The case concerns obliging car owners to identify the driver when caught on speed camera. Is this self-incrimination? If so, why has this case never been raised when the right to silence was withdrawn? And aren't those involved yet again confusing us with the U.S., where the fifth amendment would prevent this sort of thing? And what about protecting others from the law? Isn't there some degree of obligation to "shop" people who have behaved recklessly? I'd never speed myself, obviously.
It seems slightly fatuous that the payment of a speeding fine should be the trigger that defines whether we have a right to silence in criminal investigations. When are we allowed to protect ourselves and those around us from prosecution? What precedents will the impending ruling set? And at what point should we face up to the consequences of our actions?