Capitalism Costs

The stock markets are taking a slump (again!), this time because Dubai has finally announced its high level of debt. Ah, Dubai; isn't that the one which set up Palm Island, a place where celebrities who are already extremely rich can stay with each other in order to feel even more financially superior and somehow morally rewarded for their lifetimes of greed? Yes, that's the one. And yet people are now seemingly surprised that this avarice has resulted in the accounts taking a turn for the red. How blinkered people can be sometimes. Unfortunately, I fully expect the perpetually wavering stockmarkets to make a full and swift recovery; but at least capitalist ways of obtaining false luxury have received another slap in the face.

Also relating to millionaires today, the Liberal Democrats have doubled the threshold at which people should pay annual mansion tax. It used to be their policy that anyone owning a house worth more than one million pounds would be subject to a 0.5% charge; only right and proper for those of us who believe in the redistribution of wealth. But now (for some reason wishing to give in to the excessively rich), the Lib Dems have said that (an albeit increased) mansion tax will only apply to properties over two million. At which point does any millionaire need to be felt at all sorry for? Nick Clegg says the increased rate will generate more income overall meaning that poorer taxpayers would have to pay less, but then why not implement that higher tax for more expensive properties without taking away the tax for houses between one and two million pounds? That would be the fairest outcome for less well off people. But then I'm not an economist, only a moralist.

BNP Accountability Failure

The hysteria this week has surrounded the BNP. First, there was the issue of whether Nick Griffin should even be allowed on Question Time. Well, of course he should. If his party's values (regardless of how abhorrent most of us find them) appeal to enough members of the British public to get them seats in the European Parliament, then they have earned their right to be on political talk shows. That's called democracy. One of the main reasons that Hitler was able to gain so much support from his entire nation is because Germany felt so severely repressed by the Treaty of Versailles that they would support anyone who was able to take them out of their economic and social depression, even if that person turned out to be the most evil man that's ever lived. To repress Mr Griffin by refusing him a QT seat would only have given him a louder voice to the tone of 'I stick up for the ignored Brits'.
However, after the sensible decision had been taken by the BBC to allow him on Thursday's show, it seemed there was a backup plan to appease all those who thought that public service broadcasting had begun to condone fascism. The plan was to subject Griffin to a partisan verbal massacre. Almost every question was about the BNP, the audience was as politically one-sided as it is possible to achieve, and even David Dimbleby seemed to forego his due impartiality commitment by having deleterious quotes at his beck and call. Eloquence was simply replaced by a mob mentality.
Now let's state for the record that I hate the BNP; I am in fact very left wing. I particularly loathe the BNP's use of World War II iconography and its suggestion that Winston Churchill would have joined their party; that statement doesn't take into account the old, blindingly obvious concept: times change. Churchill fitted into the Conservative Party of the 1940s and was able to fight fascism accordingly; there is no doubt in my mind that if he were alive today he would have the intelligence and the integrity to adapt his political viewpoints to modern times and changing moralities so that he could fit into the Conservative Party today and fight fascists like the BNP today. And it's that kind of considered retort which should be thrown at Nick Griffin, not just shouting and whooping from the crowd while spin doctor politicians from other parties do all they can to coerce the mob into granting them the dubious moral high ground. Griffin needs to be held to account by intellectual debate, not bully-boy humiliation which will only add more fuel to their apparently persecuted fire. Appearing on Question Time should have shown any disillusioned British voters that the BNP was not a suitable electoral alternative by calmly scrutinising and assessing that party's beliefs; an objective which should have been easily achieved considering how corrupt those beliefs are! Unfortunately, I believe that objective failed.

Race Perpetuates Racism

Barack Obama - the 44th President of the United States - is a Democrat. He is one of the most eloquent orators to ever grace the political landscape, and a man of true moral principle which has inspired a world. These are the headlines that should be grabbing people's attention. Yet instead a different headline has been plastered across the media: Barack Obama is the first black President! It is not wrong that this statement of fact should be mentioned; after all, this is a country where blacks and whites were segregated in all walks of life less than half a century ago, giving rise to racist persecution and death. But Martin Luther King, probably the greatest icon of those times, famously stated that his dream was to live in a country where people would "not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character". So if people are now hailing Obama purely because he is a black President, then they are not taking a moral standpoint; they have managed to take this man's immense achievement and lessen its worth by colourising it. If Obama is to be judged solely on the colour of his skin then the racist society that King condemned is still being perpetuated; if a black warmongering hateful Republican were President, that would not be a good thing just because he had overcome repression; and if Americans cannot judge a President on his policies then they have not yet overcome the past. Obama has already made some great decisions (having not yet been in office for a week); he has commenced closure of Guantanamo Bay prison camp, reinstated a pro-choice abortion law, and (best of all) given the go ahead for embryonic stem cell research so that future generations can benefit from massive medical breakthroughs. Let's judge the man on these social accomplishments, not on his race, which incidentally is mixed!

Spawn of Satan?

Dicephalus twins are a rare form of conjoined twins where two heads share one body. A mother-to-be in Portsmouth has decided to go ahead with a pregnancy involving dicephalus twins - against doctors' advice - because she is a staunch Catholic. That's right, she sees this mutated offspring as 'a gift from God'! Babies of this kind rarely survive inside the womb and are stillborn; those which are born successfully are usually given a severely reduced life expectancy; and of those who do manage to live, they receive a much greater chance of contracting other infections. As this mother (and I'm not going to name her and give her any more publicity than she's already had by flagrantly selling her story to The Sun!) believes so much in god, then I presume she also believes in the devil. Perhaps her foetus is actually a gift from Satan. If the children do live they will surely be bullied interminably at school, grow to hate the prejudices of the world which disables them, and maybe one day become the Antichrist. All the best!

Let 'em fight!

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict continues to dominate the news. Is it really necessary to deluge us with this unnecessary feud? I can't help feeling that both the Israelis and the Palestinians forgot a long, long time ago exactly what this war was about. Forget the territorial disputes (and that's what it was originally, purely territorial), the two countries simply desire - or indeed enjoy - vengeance, retaliation, and all out victorious demonstrations of power! The UN has been rendered redundant by the United States' unwillingness to condemn Israel because there is a large Jewish community in America. (The UN's veto system is another matter entirely!) But blame has to be apportioned equally between the two rival countries because neither of them has any moral high ground other than "they bombed us so we're bombing them"! It seems that no politicians have any recognition of an idealistic conflict of principles anymore. So, as far as I'm concerned, just let them fight it out amongst themselves. If Lebanon, Egypt, Syria, or any other Middle Eastern country wants to get involved, then let them. The morality disappeared long ago. Until these countries are able to realise the simple principle that killing is wrong, there is little hope left for any of them. Sorry if that sounds a little bleak, but perhaps we should focus a bit more on our own social morality.

Poor judgement

Gordon Brown has stated for the record that he is against any new legislation to make assisted suicide legal. He says that the government shouldn't "put pressure on people to end their lives". But that misses the point. Making a law stating that someone who is severely ill or disabled (but who is unable to commit suicide due to that illness or disability) can ask somebody else to help with the suicide without fear of legal repercussions, is simply not the same as coercing somebody to take their own life. Brown's opinion that they are the same thing reeks of political spin in an attempt to avoid getting too deeply involved in something that could have a detrimental effect on his popularity. It is not as if a law would result in people killing others and then using the defence of assisted suicide as an excuse to get away with murder! The law could easily be implemented around an institution like the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland where professionals and counsellors are on hand to ensure that the person wishing to die is in no way being manipulated into it before giving them the means to end it all. But of course, Gordon Brown stated these opinions when in discussion with Cardinal Cormac Murphy O'Connor (who for some reason always insists that his middle name is reported in news stories!), the head of the Catholic Church in England; I should have known that the dubious morality was coming from the religious lobby and decadent scripture; it's just terribly unfortunate that the Prime Minister of a country is so easily manipulated himself. Perhaps Brown is worried that if he did pass an assisted dying law someone would convince him to commit suicide. Or perhaps politics and religion are just far too intertwined for the occurrence of any social progression.