Jenny Walks-Riise: A New Hope: June 2009

Sunday 14 June 2009

Political Reform Necessary

Image by .craig via Flickr

Gordon Brown has pledged to reform the electoral system. Is this a desperate attempt of a failing government to hold onto some power, or a genuine recognition that the system at present is flawed and unfair? Whatever the reasons, one cannot doubt that the latter is true - the system at present is totally unfair and unrepresentative.

At present, the UK parliament has two houses, the House of Commons (or lower house) and the house of Lords (Upper House). In contrast to many Western democracies, only one of these - the House of Commons - is elected by the people. The house of Lords is made of hereditary peers (who may pass their title onto eldest sons), Life peers (those made by parliament, for example all past Prime Ministers) and spiritual peers (the 26 Bishops of the Church of England). However, since the House of Lords Act 1999, all hereditary peers must enter an election for one of 92 seats. This means that many members of our Upper Chamber have no political experience, or have been appointed by a government voted out several terms ago. This surely flies in the face of the principle of a democratic government?

There are already a few very good books out there on the subject, and if you're interested, I'd highly recommend 'UK Elections and Electoral reform' and 'Principles of Electoral reform'.

I would like to see both Houses of Parliament fully-elected, with the Lower House elected by SVT (single transferable vote) in a single-member constituency, and the Upper house elected by PR (proportional representation). This would means that we still have a directly-elected MP in the Lower House, as well as a fairly system of representation in the upper house, whilst our MP would be able to command majority support, where at the moment a seat with 5 candidates could easily send a member to Westminster with 20.1% of the vote. hardly the will of the people is it?

References:
Smith, Neil (2006) UK Elections and Electoral reform, Phillip Allen
Dummett, Michael(1997) Principles of Electoral reform Oxford: Oxford University Press

Stop integrin to reverse cancer?

Just a quick discussion here - I've got other things I want to talk about!

it seems that scientists have discovered how tumours move around in the brain. It was always thought that they latch onto the neurones, glial cells and oligodendocyctes, but it would now appear that they used the blood vessels instead.

In order to do this, they need to make use of the protein integrin. This means that the next stage of treatment would be to find an integrin inhibitor drug.

With one fifth of all cancers eventually progressing to the brain, and almost all of these eventually resulting in death, a treatment of this kind could boost cancer survival rates significantly.

A drug to act against integrin is still a long way off yet, and sadly, probably too far away for those who already have advanced disease, but nonetheless, it is an exciting avenue for future cancer therapies.

What is Britishness anyway?

Lancaster Unity: The BNP may have been elected to Europe but on football they founder

How do we determine one's nationality? Specifically, how do we determine "Englishness" or "Britishness"? Drinking tea, bad teeth, and always the valiant loser?

Image via Wikipedia

Probably the best book on the subject is Watching the English by Kate Fox. She is a social anthropologist and director of the Social Issues Research Centre. In it, she spends a lot of time, well, watching the English in an attempt to discover the social rules that govern our society. She explains why we talk about the weather so much, the rules of drinking in a bar, the importance of not being earnest and our need to always support the underdog. Even so, she is looking at the traits of the English, not what it is specifically that makes us English or British.

Heading back to the Lancaster UAF post, around half of the England football squad selected to play against Andorra would not be permitted entry into Britain's party of the people. The first black professional footballer in England was Arthur Wharton, playing way back in 1886 - over 120 years ago, and only 29 years after the formation of the world's first football club (and 19 years after the formation the the first football association). This BNPs notions of nationality are over a hundred years old!

Britain has long been a multicultural society, and that isn't going to change. the vast majority of immigrants in this country are from former colonies. Many of them moved here when we still had close links with our Commonwealth, and some probably when they were a part of the British Empire! These days, many immigrants are from countries such as Afghanistan, Iraq and the Former Yugoslavia, because our war against their (often legally elected) government forced them to leave in the first place! How long must these people live here before we may call them Brits? Could the BNPs successor gain power in three or four generations time and throw out the descendants of today's legal asylum seekers?

So, what makes someone British? For me, it's simple. Can you vote in Britain? Can you get a British passport, Driver's Licence or other legal document? Can you work in Britain? Do you feel British? If you answered yes to any one of these questions, and want to be British, I see no reason why you shouldn't be, and no one - not even a politician - has a right to tell you you're not.

The British National Party and Freedom of Speech

So, following the egg attacks yesterday, Nick Griffin it seems did get his rally, albeit in a small pub in Manchester. He managed to avoid too much attention, but a small contingent of anti-fascists were in position.

Assuming that you want to fight the BNP (and why would you not? Nick Griffin is a racist and White Supremacist), how can this be done?

Many groups, notably the ANL used to proclaim "no platform for the Fascists". This is all well and good, but we cannot proclaim freedom of speech for all and yet similarly try to ban a legitimate political party.

However, I would argue that having the BNP in power would be a bad thing. Therefore, just as with other events or groups I have disagreed with in the past (such as the war in Iraq and Students top-up fees), I am willing to take action, be that protesting or direct action, and even if this means civil disobedience.

The anti-fascist movement has two opposite routes down which to travel; Allow the BNP to speak, and then argue against them, or bully harass and make lots of noise whenever they are around, stopping them from being heard. The former will not attract any opposition, nor will it attract attention to the BNP, but it will allow them to better spread their message, whilst the latter may stop the message from being heard, but will also give the BNP the media attention they crave, afford them the chance to play the victims and may turn sympathisers away, seeing the ant-fascist movement as violent. Already this week, a protest called by UAF in London has resulted in at least two people being hospitalised, although it is unclear how the injuries happened.

So, how can we stop the BNP? Bizarrely, Mr Griffin himself had some pearls of wisdom for us here:

"They are entitled to demonstrate, but not to use violence or stop me from talking to constituents." he said, before going on to say "If we are so evil and bad, expose us, don't shut us up using violence."

Jon Cruddas, Labour MP for Dagenham agreed, telling Sky News "They want to pit themselves as victims, the only ones to challenge the Westminster bubble. As soon as they come here, they have eggs or whatever thrown at them. This reinforces the image they have tried to set up to set up. We should be challenging them in terms of policy, ideas and their views about black people, rather than reinforcing the sense that they are victims and outsiders."

What is needed is not simply to harass, but to provide an alternative. UAF has made significant headway in one area traditionally very difficult - Left Unity, but is currently a negative, rather than a positive campaign. The time is right for the the parties, factions and sub-factions on the left to unite in one grand coalition. Bring Together the Socialist Labour Party, Socialist Workers Party, AWL, CPGB, International Socialist Group, Revolutionary Democratic Group, Socialist Party, Workers Power, Broad Left, Left List, Communist Party of Britain, Respect Renewal and all the others under the old Socialist Alliance label, and let's explain to the public why they should not vote BNP, but who they can vote for instead.

The time to switch to evidence-based medicine is now

The NHS is facing a massive shortfall. So what else is new? It can simply join the pile, along with education, local government, transport, the UK economy in general...

The answer was merely touched upon in the report, but it was there nonetheless. Privatisation - even part-privatisation - is not the answer (just look at the mess they made of the railways (privatisation without competition is corporate monopoly). The answer (or at least a good part of it) is cutting funding for non-essential services.

The article touched on two prime examples, homeopathy and IVF. There are two separate, but very good reason why these ought to be first on the lists of cuts.

There is no evidence-based for homeopathy working. The two basic principles, in case you are unaware, are that firstly you give a compound designed for the symptoms, rather than the pathogen, and you give the smallest possible amount of that compound. This means that, for example, a cold can be treated in many different ways depending on whether the sufferer has 'just a sniffle', a blocked nose and sore throat, a chesty cough or a nasty head-cold - even if they are all caused by the same strain of the rhinovirus, and you will only give them a very dilute compound (measured in parts per million, ppm, rather than a percentage).

Now, this may sound like it's never going to work to you and me, but that's not good enough - it may work. So, it needs to be tested. This means a double-blind randomised controlled trial, ie one group of patients getting active homeopathy drugs, and one getting placebo instead. If it is proved to work, then it need to be tested against the current standard therapy to see if it is more effective, or more effective per unit cost. This trial should, like all other drugs trials, be funded by the company making these pills, not the NHS. If it is proven to work, great! Bring it in, I'll eat my words, and we can stop using the current expensive treatments. Until that day, homeopathy has no place in our hospitals.

The second area for cutbacks - IVF. To me, this is a lifestyle choice, not a health condition. We'd not advocate performing breast augmentation, collagen lip enhancement or hair replacement on the NHS, so why IVF? Fair enough, some people cannot conceive naturally, and all they want in the world is to have a child. This is very upsetting for them, but why should the rest of us forgo our herceptin, insulin and salbutamol for them to bring another child into an already overpopulated country? The horrible fact is that some people are probably infertile for a reason. Now, I'm not one to utilise Darwinian theory to advocate eugenics and Fascism, but it is a fact that IVF produces a higher incidence of genetic disorders and malformations than natural conceptions, disorders which then need to be treated by the NHS, costing us again. Whilst I believe that the mark of a society is the ability of the whole to look after it's weaker members, rather than allowing them to die off, we should not be actively encouraging nature where it simply does not wish to co-operate.

The problem is that by not funding IVF, we give up the right to control it, and when it goes into private practice, who know is the prospective parents will stop at simply growing eggs? Will they select for blue eyes, brown hair or height? Will they ever be able to select for a musical ear, a sporting body or a scientist's brain? And what about if they can select against Down's Syndrome, Muscular Dystrophy and Haemophilia, or even protect against diabetes mellitus, breast cancer or heart disease? Will stopping public money for IVF create a private-sector elite?

So what to do? We need to keep pouring money into the (if not bottomless certainly very deep) pit that is the National Health Service, whilst simultaneously looking for ways to plug the leaks throughout the system. One of the better ways would be a fully evidence-based approach to drugs in the NHS, to block the sink that is homeopathy, acupuncture and all the other new-age unproven methods. Banning 'personal choice' treatments may be more controversial, but do remember the old saying; "As long as you've got your health, that's all that matters".

Pirates in the EU!

The Pirate Party has picked up a seat in the European Parliament in Sweden. No, they aren't the swashbuckling, cutlass-carrying, West-Country-accented kind sporting wooden legs and parrots, rather anti-copyright activists.

You may be aware of the long-term disputes over bittorrent (file-sharing) website thepiratebay.org, which is hosted on Swedish servers. Earlier this year four men, Peter Sunde, Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm and Carl Lundström were found guilty of assistance to copyright infringement. An appeal is being mounted now, but the Pirate party gaining ground set me thinking.

What is the future for peer-to-peer (P2P), BitTorrent, file-sharing and downloading music and films? Will outlawing it simply drive it underground, or make it even more popular? (they say the best way to get a teenager to do what you want is to tell him not to!) Well, many services already use P2P technology - the BBC's iPlayer a notable example. Similarly, not all Bittorrent trackers or torrents are illegal. Shareware software and software or content released under the GNU General Public License may be distributed by Bittorrent. This may include any Free OSs, such as those in the Linux/Unix family, virus scanners such as AVG and Avast! and media players such as Musiic and Winamp. In general, anything that is free to download may be downloaded any way you wish - including bittorrent - but be careful to read the licences to see whether you may redistribute it yourself (GNU can be altered and distributed as much and by whatever method you wish).

So, what actually is the illegal aspect here? It's purely the content. Albums are copyright, films are copyright, TV series are copyright. These are illegal to distribute via bittorrent. But what is the difference between getting album by P2P and borrowing a CD from your friend and recording it on cassette tape? Or how about downloading South Park from thepiratebay.org onto your computer and recording the series onto VHS and keeping it longer than the legally permitted six months? People have always circumvented the need to pay for the content, all that's happened is the technology involved. On the other hand, is it any different from walking into HMV, dropping the CD into your rucksack and walking out again?

Gluing the hairs back together for a moment, we come to the conclusion that downloading is theft. But ought it be? Sticking firmly to the issue of music now, I do not mind admitting to having downloaded a few albums illegally in my lifetime. However, I do not think that this has hurt anyone. When I get an album, one of two things happens. Either I like the band, or I don't. If I like them, I'll buy albums and T-shirts and go to gigs. For example, from downloading one album by the band Modest Mouse, I've since paid for eight of their CD's (including the one I downloaded in the first place) and been to three gigs. If I dislike the band, I'll not buy any CD's, and the band is not deprived of any revenue as I'd not have bought a CD anyway.

What can be done? The options are endless, but more independent record labels and cheaper legal downloads would make a good start. The price of legal downloads via iTunes/Tesco/Amazon etc, is a real bugbear of mine. I object to paying 79p/track to download a 10-track album when the physical CD would only cost me £9.99. This £2.08 difference seems to magically include the CD's artwork, the CD and case itself and the distribution costs, plus a larger profit for HMV to cover these overheads (and what if the CD has 14 tracks?). Add to this the DRM issue, that you may only be allowed to put the mp3 you have paid for onto five or six devices (doesn't leave much room to manouvre if you have your desktop PC, a laptop, an mp3 player, phone, and mp3 player in you car) and the far poorer quality (the mp3's you download are usually around 192kbps for most mp3s, and even the best are only around 320kbps, compares to a 'CD quality' of 1.4Mbps, or 1440kbps, at least 4.5 times higher than an mp3 - see what the audiophiles think), and downloaded mp3's begin to look like a ripoff. Whilst we're paying almost as much for an inferior product, with terms and conditions attached and without it's artwork, I'm afraid illegal downloading will continue.

Good luck to Sweden's Pirate party!

Over-logging our logging on?

So, just as the votes were being counted in the European elections, just hours before we were to learn that we were about to elect a Fascist to an MEP position here in Yorkshire, Sir David Pepper comes out with this little gem, worthy of Messrs Hitler and Göring themselves! Of course, this is perhaps only to be expected for the (only recently departed) ex head of GCHQ, but nonetheless, it is quite shocking to read such a statement.

Sir Pepper parallels logging our personal and private phone calls, text messages and emails to an arms race. Call me stupid, but I fail to see the similarities. An arms race is an imperialist show of strength against another nation or nations. This is an unacceptable invasion of our personal freedoms.

That is, of course, unless you take the rather more sinister interpretation - that Sir Pepper means for the government to use these data as weapons against it's own people - in a complete destruction of our civil liberties. That, I think, is a rather scary prospect indeed.

Jenny Walks-Riise: A New Hope

Pages

Sunday 14 June 2009

Political Reform Necessary

Stop integrin to reverse cancer?

Saturday 13 June 2009

What is Britishness anyway?

Friday 12 June 2009

The British National Party and Freedom of Speech

Thursday 11 June 2009

The time to switch to evidence-based medicine is now

Tuesday 9 June 2009

Pirates in the EU!

Over-logging our logging on?

This month's position in the 'blogosphere'

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