Gay rights?

So, I just read this post on a blog this afternoon., and I have to say, I was as shocked as the publisher. However, it is not as though homosexuals have the same right as heterosexuals in the rest of the UK either.

The decriminalisation of homosexuality in the Republic of Ireland (hereafter simply "Ireland") was greatly down to the campaign by Irish David Norris, the Campaign for Homosexual Law Reform (wiki link).

However, even in the relatively liberal United Kingdom, homosexual prejudice still exists. Homosexual men are grossly under-represented in schools and children's services (oddly enough, lesbians show less of a disparity). These are men who fancy other men we're talking about here - not paedophiles!

Men who have ever had oral or anal sex with another man, even with a condom or other protection, are banned for life from giving blood. So too, are women who have have vaginal, oral or anal sex in the past year with any man who has ever had sex with another man. This, to me, is simple discrimination.

Related articles

• I'm not Gay, really I'm not! says Nancy (seantheblogonaut.com)

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Sustainable development

The Green family realised that their success was exacting a high price. Their country farmhouse was their home as well as their business premises. But while their enterprise was creating a healthy profit, the vibrations caused by the heavy machinery used on site was slowly destroying the fabric of the building. If they carried on as they were, in five years the damage would make the building unsafe and they would be forced out. Nor were their profits sufficient to fund new premises or undertake the necessary repairs and structural improvements required.
Mr and Mrs Green were determined to preserve their home for their children. And so they decided to slow production and thus the spread of the damage.
Ten years later, the Greens passed away and the children inherited the family estate. The farmhouse, however, was falling to pieces. Builders came in, shook their heads and said it would cost £1 million to put right. The youngest of the Greens, who had been the accountant for the business for many years, grimaced and buried his head in his hands.
'If we had carried on at full production and not worried about the building, we would have had enough money to put this right five years ago. Now, after ten years of under-performance, we're broke
His parents had tried to protect his inheritance. In fact, they had destroyed it.

Source: Baggini, Julian. (2005) The Pig that Wants to be Eaten and ninety-nine other thought experiments, London: Granta Books
Original Source Lomborg, Bjørn. (2001)The Skeptical Environmentalist, Cambridge University Press

I love this little story. It is a greal analagy for climate change and global warming. Is acting to reduce emissions today going to affect our abilities to deal with the situation we create tomorrow, by way of causing economic deflation? Of course, When bankers and hedge fund managers are out there causing economic deflation for us, this parable has less weight, but that is not the issue here. Should we rely economic growth to provide us with the tools to fight global warming at the risk of increasing global warming, or should we try to prevent gloal warming, risking slowed or negative growth and the lack of the economic tools necessary to fix the earth? Can we ever win? Are we doomed either way? Is there a right way, or will both option work for us? Can we slow growth by a little bit and cause a lttie bit less pollution? Here is Baggini's follow-up to this story:

This parable could be taken simply as a lesson about forward planning in business. But it is more interesting than that, for the tale can be seen as mirroring a serious dilemma of much wider concern: how do we respond to the environmental threats facing us today?
Take climate change. Experts agree that it is happening and that it is probably man-made. But there are no measures we can realistically take now that will stop it altogether. The Kyoto agreement, for example, would only delay it by about six years. However, the cost to the United States alone of implementing the agreement would be the equivalent of the money required to extend provision of clean drinking water to all the world's population. You have therefore to ask whether the cost of Kyoto is worth paying.
The point is not that, without Kyoto, the US would in fact provide clean water for all. The point is rather in the parallel to the Greens. Could we end up with a situation where we merely delay the inevitable at the cost of economic growth, thus depriving future generations of the funds they would need to sort out the problems they will inherit? It can't be better to postpone the problem of global warming if doing so merely leaves us less well equipped to confront it when it starts to hurt.
That is not to say that we should do nothing about global warming. It is merely to point out that we should make sure what we do is effective and doesn't inadvertently make things worse. That requires us to take into account more than just the spread of environmental damage, but future generations' ability to deal with it. A lot of green campaigners seek to avoid damage to the environment at all costs, but that is as shortsighted as the Greens' strategy of minimising damage to their farmhouse at all costs.
This would seem to be just common sense, but it is intuitively unappealing to those who care about the environment, for three reasons. First, it suggests it is sometimes better to let the Earth get more polluted in the short term. Second, it emphasises the role of economic growth in providing the source of solutions to problems. That emphasis on finance and economics is anathema to many greens. Third, it is often linked to the idea that future technologies will help bring solutions. And technology is seen by many environmentalists as a source of our problems, not their solution. Those three reasons might explain why Greens resist the argument, but not why they should.

The Pig that Wants to be Eaten can be bought at Amazon.co.uk and other good bookstores from £3.80 used.

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So, what am I doing here?

Well, I have a few opinions. Nah, a lot of opinions! I'm starting this blog because, basically, I'm pissed-off with this country and the world at the moment. Bankers have taken away our jobs, the police and a so-called labour government are taking away our freedoms, and MP's across all parties are fiddling their expenses in a way that'd make Fred Goodwin blush. Well, not quite.

This is to be a varied collection. I shall mostly post links to news stories and make my own comments, and on occasion I shall write a story myself.

I am mostly interested in politics, health and education, so the majority of my posts will be in these areas, and will be national (UK) and well as international. I live in Yorkshire in Northern England, so a few local news stories may also creep in (I was particularly disgusted by the Children's Services failings in Doncaster) as well as the odd sports story (I'm a football fan) and some philosophical musings (I see myself as a bit of an amateur philosopher!) I've basically been doing this kind of thing on Facebook (friends-only) anyway, so the jump to making a public blog ought to be easy!

I hope you enjoy reading it, and I hope to generate some heathy debate in my small corner of the internet

- J

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