Thursday, November 16, 2006

 

Wrong things

Two wrong things.

The Zito Trust is not a mental health charity. It is a charity with "a primary focus on supporting and advising victims of mentally disordered offenders and highlighting gaps and failures in service provision." Or in other words a charity aimed at ensuring that mad people are kept safely locked up.

Atheism is not a faith position.

That's all. More some time soon.

Saturday, November 11, 2006

 

Poppies of places other than Flanders Fields

We always had poppies for Remembrance Day.

My mother would give us a suitable donation and we would buy them at school. I was very fond of them; I liked the way they came apart and reassembled, albeit in only two possible ways- leaf in front or leaf behind. I liked the black button in the front.

As a pacifist and Quaker teenager I flirted with white poppies for a couple of years. But I never really saw the red ones as glorifying war and I felt rather guilty not to support the fund raising. So I went back to red ones.

I never gave them much mind after that. I would tend to pick one up most years but I didn't feel self conscious about having or not having one.

This year I observed the 2 minute silence for the war dead along with the rest of the queue in Starbucks. That's just weird.

In general I am in favour of Armistice Day. The further away we move from the two world wars, the more useful it is as a reminder.

However I don't have a poppy this year, or last year, or the year before. Not in fact since I read some of the Royal British Legion's leaflets.

I have no objection to the RBL. What they do is genuinely charitable, and no doubt they do a lot of good. But the passage of time means inevitably that the 10p I took into school back in 1977 went to a rather different organisation than my £1 would go to now.

The poppy appeal used to mostly be used to support the ex soldiers of the two world wars and their families. I do feel a genuine debt to those soldiers, conscripts and volunteers, ripped out of their normal lives to face a horrible threat to their country and in many cases suffering, along with their families, the effects for the rest of their lives. They are quite entitled to 2 minutes of my time once a year and a bit of spare change.

But they are, mostly, dead. And the poppy appeal now goes, to a great extent, to supporting the modern day UK soldiers. A couple of years ago this involved things like schemes to retrain soldiers choosing to leave the Forces for civilian careers. Now, sadly, I am sure the appeal supports those damaged by our current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. And while the job of the modern soldier is unenviable, I cannot see that professional soldier who chooses his occupational hazards is in the same position as the conscripts of WW1 and 2.

I don't like the idea of donating to one type of cause in order to show solidarity with another one. I don't like the blurring of Armistice Day to include any sort of army related good cause. I don't like the idea that the poppies somehow show our support for Our Boys overseas. I don't particularly support Our Boys any more than I support Our Diplomats or Our Food Inspectors. I do believe that they should have proper treatment and compensation from their employer for their employment-related mental and physical injuries, just like anyone else but I don't think a charity appeal is the appropriate way to supply these.

So no poppies.

Labels: ,


Sunday, November 05, 2006

 

End of the weekend

Another weekend mainly taken up with getting wet. Fell in the River Leam (a nice change from the canal) yesterday. Today I took the boat out towards Birmingham through the suburbs; followed a kingfisher all the way up the canal and down again. It only flew about 20 -30 yards at a time and I was able to stop paddling and glide up to it each time so I got within 5 yards of it several times; eventually it picked a high perch and let me pass underneath so I let it alone.

5 minutes further on I encountered my first ever mink. He was intrigued by the boat; he swam up to paddle distance and gave me a look over, then decided that I was harmless and he swam around me for the next 10 minutes doing his strange and minky things. I was most impressed by the way that I could track him underwater by watching the bubbles coming up. Since they are territorial and stay in the same area I shall look out for him again; it was only a couple of bridges up from home. I know they are interlopers and blamed for the water vole decline (I haven't seen any water voles since I started paddling) but he was very appealing. Boat appears to be great for wildlife watching.

I have come off the fence re Robin Hood. Although it is outrageously anachronistic in places I remain remarkably amused by it all, and I like all the main characters, which helps.

I did think that the iron mines were an example of anachronism but it appears that shaft mining was a feature of medieval times, albeit generally shallow shafts, and one would have expected a the bottom to be a bit wetter.

Read Tony Blair's interview about science in the New Scientist. The man is an idiot, or at least not a rationalist. His suggestion that scientists should ignore examples of bad science such as homeopathy and creationism and instead only debate important topics such as MMR jabs and global warming demonstrates a basic misuderstanding of the idea of scientific thinking. Why should people who believe in homeopathy and creationism believe science about the socalled big topics? Science is like religion in one respect at least; you either buy into the package or you don't. But for Blair science is primarily a useful source of technology.

Torchwood (I have almost finished calling it Touchwood) tonight. Last week a great improvement, and no sex, if you don't count the gun practice (I think I probably do). This "what's happened to Jack" thing is being done quite nicely. Didn't manage to avoid the spoilers for this week- Radio 2 ran one and radio spoilers are far harder to deal with because generally one doesn't have a remote control for the radio in one's hand (and because there is less warning).

Off to a "gig" on Thurs; Flaming Lips at the NIA arena. Yes, I know you've never heard of them. Nonetheless they are very good.

This week I watched the boaty thing; Master and Commander. I can see the Star Trek comparisons. Liked the iguanas. Found it very watchable but not sure what the point of it was. And Sin City, which was not quite what I was expecting but was very good in a gruesome sort of way. I loved the colour effects. Son and I watched a Sharpe episode; the series is new to him and he was very impressed so we shall try to remember to watch the rest of the series.

Son informs me that his WoW character has reached level 60. Apparently this is deeply significant. I tend to feel that it is less significant than the fact that he tried to write a 2,000 word essay for his GCSE coursework assignment the evening before it was due to be handed in. Stress ensued. We have agreed slightly closer supervision of his coursework timetable in future.

(It was quite a good essay, and this was apparently the draft rather than the final effort, but it was still more exciting than I really wanted.)

Waiting for Beloved to finish watching the American football so that I can watch Planet Earth. Back to Spider Solitaire (which I am playing an awful lot of) for a bit.

Labels: , ,


This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?