Comments on comment.

Mark Easton has blogged about some of the background to the Equal Pay act and what the gender pay gap situation is today. This is all of course in reaction to Harriet Harman's plan to allow positive discrimination. It is a reasonably interesting piece of writing, but as ever these days the comments in response to the article are almost more interesting. One that stands out particularly says:

Why does this Government do everything it can to discriminate agaisnt men. Why do they dislike us so much?
The bring in All women-shortlists banning men from standing for Parliament for them;
they fail to do much on the educational underacheievement of boys;
they do nothing about the suicide rate amongst men being three times higher than that of women;
they spend little money on dealing with male cancers;
they do nothing to help male domestic abuse victims;
they do nothing to create a family court system that treats men and women alike;
and now this.
Why do they hate men? — davidstrauss1

I obviously can't offer expert comment on all the sectors David is commenting on (and want to be careful in case I am treading on any personal issues), however I strongly suspect that a great deal of this is perception. In the same way that we get letters to the metro saying that any time a defendant mentions human rights the judge's hands are tied due to the Human Rights Act, because only the cases where it is used successfully are reported we also only ever get to hear the cases in family courts that cause controversy. I have commented on the fact that soon we shall need to make as much fuss about prostate cancer as breast cancer, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't stop caring about the latter. The cancer point, like domestic abuse and suicide rates also has the facet that it often isn't the government at all that is driving these services, the third sector is quite often the major player.

So how much of this is real and how much is due to fourth estate and their *cough* cheerful outlook on the world?

Climate change

I am not going to sit here and try and persuade you in one way or another on the issue of whether a) the climate is changing for the worse or b) if humans are causing it, really you are all intelligent people; you have probably made your mind up as to which side of this very contentious argument you lie. What I would like to share is this video and the viewpoint that if you are not 100% sure if it is happening or not, using an argument along the same lines as Pascal's Wager you should do something about climate change. Whatever little you can.

Darling and Brown, Undertakers, Est MMVII

Does my right hon. friend accept that the policy of nationalisation would lead to a slow lingering death for the jobs of the Northern Rock workers, its assets and Britain's reputation as a major financial services centre, with my right hon. friend the chancellor cast in the role of undertaker — Jim Cousins MP

I agree with my hon. friend. — Alastair Darling MP

Now this is just my own opinion as I am not an economist, but I bet that if they had done this right at the outset it would have done a lot less damage than it will do now. All because Darling and Brown decided that if the bank collapsed due to no fault of the government they would lose votes. So all of us now own a chunk of a bank to try and save this Labour government from losing votes.

Difficult subject

After someone linked to this post about self defence I was set off thinking about rape. This is another of those subjects about which I have doubt and uncertainty; not of course on whether it is evil, but how we get rid of it.

Actually I have even more doubt about if we can. How many more years of civil society and punishment will it take to eradicate it from society?

Sorry for anyone who was expecting anything erudite and informative on the subject but I am stumped basically because while it is utterly evil, all the things that have been suggested so far that are guaranteed to annihilate it are also in their way evil. Obviously (as far as I am concerned) the death penalty is right out. Something else often put forward is castration (in general chemical rather than physical) but will that really help, it will remove the ability but will it extinguish the desire, or will the frustration cause more violence? Life, meaning life, imprisonment is of course an option, well it would be if our prison system wasn't screwed royally, full of the disaffected that several governments have failed to educate. As opposed of course to those deserving of being banged up, the very politians themselves.

Much offal

Justin McKeating at Liberal Conspiracy has posted a quite rude and generalised riposte to the many outraged posts in response to the announcement that the Government is planning on reversing the consent relationship for organ donation. He has one interesting point about making pâté with your entrails instead of donating them, if I thought that a) my liver would be in a fit condition and b) anyone would actually eat it I would suggest this in my will, if I wasn't planning on being a donor (perhaps if there is a halfway house, liver too damaged for transplant but still good enough for making a nice Ardennes I still will).
Instead of just being rude at those opposing this, we should take on their arguments. Most of them are thumping the table and shouting about their rights, now "I'm not a lawyer"^[1] but I have read both the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Council of Europe's Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms and cannot find anything giving your corpse rights. You don't even have a right to be buried although in this country there is probably some clause in one of the Environment Protection acts that makes your local authority do something with otherwise undealtwith bodies, to stop them making to much of a mess.
While the old legal position boiled down to the old quote

By the common law of England a corpse is not the subject of property nor capable of holding property. It is not therefore larceny to steal a corpse

much was changed in the aftermath of Alder Hey with the Human Tissue Act 2004, but given the list of people who can consent to chopping you up is 14 relations long with a "friend of longstanding" tacked on the end it probably isn't really that difficult to get on with the scalpel. As with much modern legislation built in is the concept that everything is governed by code of practice enacted by the Secretary of State so there may not even need to be primary legislation to bring about the change in the consent methodology.
As an aside, while reading the act, I noted that breaking the law on live organ donation is only subject to a maximum of 51 weeks in prison!

^[1] Although I would like to be, probably not practising, but if I did have 10 grand knocking about and more free time and OU law degree is very tempting.

Opinion of the day

Rather than well thought out comment pieces or just blindly railing at the stupidity of the world and our current government; I thought I would write a few posts based on things I believe, what value you want to place in these 'faiths' is up to you.
The rest of the world should stick a metaphorical finger up at the People's Republic and their "One China Policy". If as postulated the Republic have a referendum vote in 2008 to back the Democratic Progressive Party's resolution for a new constitution, name change and status then key groupings should voice their support. The U.S. has key defence links with the Taiwanese, Russia should be looking to do what it can to keep the PRC in check lest it lose a fair chunk of its far east, the E.U. can't support the independence of Kosovo against the wishes of Serbia and not this? Can they?
For all the talk that the only result of all this is war, would the PRC really risk the loss of all its external trade for a small island? Shame it would take balls of steel or a huge tit for tat veto bargain to get them into the UN though, no matter what you think Resolution 2758 means for Taiwan as opposed to "China".