Not All Cockroaches Are Pests

Sometimes this world bewilders me, and one bewildering thing at the moment is an electronic backpack for cockroaches which allows the insect’s movements to be controlled by a mobile phone app. It’s about to go on sale in America, and is ostensibly intended to get more youngsters interested in neuroscience. Unfortunately, in order to attach the backpack, the cockroach has to be placed in icy water to subdue it before sandpaper is used to remove the waxy coating on the shell of its head; an electrode connector and electrodes are then glued on to the insect's body and a needle is used to poke a hole in its thorax in order to insert a wire; its antennae are then cut and electrodes are inserted; a circuit is attached to its back, and signals are received through the mobile phone app allowing users to control the cockroach’s movements to the left and to the right. How on Earth did this make it on to the market?! This is clearly cruel! I find all animal cruelty abhorrent, but I accept that there will always be some psychopaths in the world; what I don’t accept is animal cruelty being promoted (and seemingly accepted by retailers!) under the veil of education! I hope there is some sort of backlash against the company producing these insect backpacks (a company I’m not going to dignify by naming), and that the products are taken off sale as soon as possible.

Saving Lives Should Not Be Optional

Firefighters have recently gone on strike (and will continue to go on strike) because of pension age requirements; at the moment, they are able to retire at 55, but the government wants to extend that to 60. Neither side is willing to compromise, and that is the problem. One solution could be to say that at 55 a health check can be administered so that those who are physically unable to fight fires can retire on a full pension, but those who are capable must continue. This would be reasonable negotiation which should satisfy both sides, but they are all unwilling to recognise pragmatism! Firefighters are there to save lives, not to have political issues; I’m sorry if that seems narrow-minded to some people, but I don’t want even a small risk of my house being burnt down without succour from all the resources available rather than just from ‘contingency plans’. If a person chooses to be a part of the emergency services then they should take that responsibility more seriously than financial conflict. I am very disappointed by the strike action; there should be a more concerted effort towards mutual agreement. But that isn’t to say that the government is let off the hook (far from it, they are often the demonisers of workers’ rights!), it’s just that I think firefighters should have a certain morality which says that they never risk letting a fire harm anybody, even if politicians are shits!

Petty Republicans

So the U.S. government has finally gone into shutdown, but not like the last couple of times it was threatened when it was the issue of budgetary constraints which was the primary sticking point; the issue now is universal healthcare. That’s right, a significant portion of the Republican Party is appalled that hard-working Americans should be entitled to visit a hospital for treatment without paying extortionate amounts of money or enrolling in private insurance programmes which can often go to great lengths to not pay out on claims. I imagine these right-wing politicians think that the British National Health Service – one of the fairest healthcare systems in the world – represents some form of communism! It’s time that American citizens were put before party politics, and the Republicans need to grow up and understand that this level of petty immaturity will only cause their party to eventually disintegrate from within.

Historic Parallels

Paddy Ashdown has said that the decision to not take action against the use of chemical weapons in Syria will make England “be a country that shrugs its shoulders and says ‘nothing to do with me’”. I agree. Of course I understand that there are many well-intentioned people who disagree with Syrian military intervention, mainly because they do not fully understand the difference between the Iraq conflict and that which is going on now – i.e. U.N. democracy, or lack thereof – and I fully accept that British democracy has been proven functional in its resistance to warfare. But unfortunately, Syria now stands alone, just like Britain once stood alone, and tyranny will have to take its toll before decent human beings realise that allowing Assad to commit torture is almost as bad as when America refused to fight dictatorship in 1939. This is not sensationalist, it is historical relevance that many people have seemingly forgotten.

Mandela Was Average

It’s Nelson Mandela’s 95^th birthday today, and most people think that he won’t see 96. When he dies, the news is sure to give blanket coverage on what a hero he was. As an anti-apartheid crusader Mandela was one of the best, and that part of his legacy is deserved; but as a political leader people have generally fawned over him seemingly for the sake of it. Of course he helped to stem the racist trends in South Africa, and he pumped a lot more money into social welfare, but those achievements must be remembered alongside his political failings. AIDS has been a terrible problem in the country for a generation; Mandela decided not to bother focusing on one of the worst health issues of all time, and admitted himself that he left it for his successor to deal with (something that didn’t happen either!). At the time Mandela left office South Africa had one of the world’s highest crime rates, and as much as apartheid structures have been deconstructed, there are still plenty of ghettos left in poorer areas demonstrating how the great rush for equality didn’t quite materialise as expected. As a man, Mandela received understandable high praise for his ideologies, but as a politician, he was average, and I hope more people will try to remember that.

The Red Line Is About Time

Most people I speak to about the news (and most politicians that I see on the news) tend to be rather tentative about getting involved in the ongoing Syrian civil war. This mainly stems from the unnecessary war with Iraq, but I think there is a significant difference between the conflicts. Before the invasion of Iraq in 2003, Hans Blix and his U.N. weapons inspectors were doing a good job, albeit a little slowly; they would have eventually determined that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction and rendered him militarily impotent. I know that it wouldn’t have been particularly moral to leave a previously brutal dictator like Hussein in power, but further political measures would hopefully have been deployed (e.g. harsh economic sanctions) that may have forced a new Iraqi dawn – as in Egypt and Tunisia – without having to resort to warfare. But Syria is different: it is the U.N. Security Council that has been rendered impotent this time with Russia / China and Britain / America / France in a seemingly permanent stalemate that prevents political implementations. So now that today it has been revealed that President Barack Obama’s ‘red line’ has been crossed (proof has been shown that Bashar al-Assad has been using chemical weapons), I’m pleased that the U.S. government has taken the decision to arm Syrian rebels; in fact, it’s about time. Just because Russia and China have their own immoral agendas to keep Assad in power, doesn’t mean that the rest of the world should sit idly by while tens of thousands of people are massacred, many of them innocent civilians. As much as it may be reasonable to avoid sending in the soldiers (so that we don’t get dragged into another Afghanistan) we still have a moral duty to intervene somehow. We were able to get rid of Colonel Gaddafi by helping rebels in Libya (though that was with more political consensus), and that country is certainly better off without him. So I hope that Obama is strong in his decision-making, and forces Assad to back down from genocide.

Madness Comes To Brum

A disused mansion house in Birmingham is to be converted into the local headquarters for the ‘Church’ of Scientology. That’s all we need; don’t we already have enough Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons in the area who are more than willing to stop us in the street to preach? The scientologists released a statement saying that its following in the West Midlands had apparently increased by 25% in the last ten years, but that is slightly misleading without the specific figures because an increase as little as four members to five members would count as 25%. But most disturbingly hilarious of all, one wing of the building is going to be named after the founder of scientology, the science-fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard. That’s right, the man who plucked this ‘religion’ out of thin air used to write sci-fi – what a coincidence! I mean it’s almost as if he was able to make the whole thing up! How this six million pound building redevelopment got approval is beyond me.