Simply Class

The BBC drama ‘The Shadow Line’ has just finished being broadcast and, for me, has to be one of the best dramas in the last decade. Granted, I haven’t quite pieced all of the details together yet (and probably won’t until I watch it again on DVD!), and some of the morality is deliberately ambiguous (if not a little perturbing at times), but the slick style, gradual tempo, enthralling direction, absorbing characters, clever script, shocking storylines and terrific acting made it a joy to watch. I would highly recommend it to anyone who likes their drama to be intelligent, based on dialogue and characterisation, rather than special effects, exaggerated action sequences and explosions. And I must say it does feel nice to have something good to report for a change.

Categories Of Rape?

The understandably emotive issue of rape is in the news today because Justice Secretary Ken Clarke has stated his viewpoint that it is morally correct for some rapists to get different sentences from others. It was during a radio interview where the host suggested that quite simply, “rape is rape”. Clarke said it wasn’t because a predatory rapist who abducts a woman and subjects her to sexual violence is much worse than someone who has consensual sex with a person under the age of sexual consent. Personally, I think Ken Clarke is spot on; the context of rape should always be taken into account, and this does not have to mean that the seriousness of the crime would be in any way diminished. Yet since his comments, Ed Miliband has called for Clarke’s resignation, and Clarke has been made to clarify / toughen his comments in various interviews.
I have two main problems with the rather hysterical response that has been generated by Clarke’s original comments. First, I honestly think that we should stop using the term ‘rapist’ to describe someone having consensual sex with a person under sixteen years of age. The age of sexual consent is an arbitrary decision which changes from one country to another - it is thirteen in Japan, and twenty-one in some American states. As much as I appreciate that the law needs to be enforced and underage sex has to be punished in some way, it is not an act of rape, which the Oxford English Dictionary says has to entail “forcing another person…against their will”. And second, this furore has all come about because the Conservative Party want to reduce all criminal sentences by 50% if the offender pleads guilty; a ridiculous proposal considering they already get a reduction of a third which is quite enough incentive for someone to plead guilty. Quite who David Cameron thinks this policy is going to appeal to is beyond me. So let’s focus our bile on him and his policies rather than the more knowledgeable Justice Secretary.

Unnecessary Aid

Today the Minister for Defence, Dr Liam Fox, had an email leaked which stated his opposition to the budget for overseas aid becoming set in law at 0.7% of Britain’s gross national income. Downing Street is seemingly disgruntled by this leak, but I have to ask the question: why shouldn’t Dr Fox voice this objection? It seems perfectly reasonable to me when virtually all other government departments are having to cut their budgets due to the deficit crisis. Since when is international aid considered to be so much more important than domestic affairs? The only other main department which is being financially ring-fenced is health, but even that is having to endure the prospect of radical right-wing reform. And overseas aid from Britain was only 0.52% in 2009, so apparently other countries are worthy of a budgetary increase in these fiscally restrictive times!
Another serious problem occurs when we consider which countries are getting most of our aid. If I were feeling flippant, I would say that Pakistan doesn’t deserve much at the moment after having singularly failed to detect Osama Bin Laden’s fortified compound for over five years! But unfortunately, there is a much more disturbing receiver of British taxpayers’ money: the Democratic Republic of Congo. I’ve half a mind to put the word Democratic in inverted commas, because the continuing sexual violence that takes place by militias in that country is probably the worst in the world; and recent wars in DR Congo have created the deadliest conflict since World War II, with 5.4million people being slaughtered. Why should they get any of our money?!
Finally, Britain now spends more on international development than on the environment, energy and sport combined (and that’s with the Olympics approaching!). And even though 0.7% is the figure that has long been favoured by the UN, it is not implemented by many countries. The US, the richest country in the world, only provides 0.21%, and Italy can only be bothered to contribute 0.16%, so why should we have to foot the bill? Therefore I think Dr Fox is absolutely correct to raise this issue, as many more people should in the near future.

Vote For The Alternative

Tomorrow the British public will go to the ballot box for a referendum on electoral reform. Most people, I suspect, won’t actually vote at all, either because of a general disaffection with politics or because the condescending metaphorical bickering between the two camps has put them off (referring to the choices in terms of foodstuffs or sporting events has been bordering on the ridiculous at times). Personally, I urge people to vote Yes to the Alternative Vote (AV) for reasons of proportionality. It is too easy under the current first-past-the-post system for political parties to win more parliamentary / council seats when they have not got the majority of the votes; whereas AV, by taking into consideration second preferences of people who voted for other candidates will make sure that any winning candidate has more than 50% of the votes before winning the seat, thereby also ensuring that any aspiring politician has to appeal to a broader range of voters rather than taking any ‘safe’ seat for granted. I realise of course that most right-wingers will vote No because the current system benefits the Conservative Party, and most left-wingers (like myself) will vote Yes because they want to see more opportunities for smaller parties to have a chance of gaining some influence; but I honestly do believe that AV is a fairer system in distributing people’s votes, so no-one should refuse to vote Yes simply because they dislike Nick Clegg! You can still register your protest against him by (at the same time) voting for a different party in the local council elections. However, I fully expect to be disappointed when the results come in, as polls are currently saying that the right-wing elite in this country is taking control, as always.

I Hate Will And Kate

I know this is a predictable rant to have, but I really wish that the royal wedding would just fuck off. Not only is it costing the UK taxpayer millions of pounds for security arrangements (the exact amount remains undisclosed because the royal family and the British government know that it would kick up a shit-storm if working-class people discovered the exorbitant quantity they were being asked to provide), but also the news coverage is almost saturated with the event. I know that some people are monarchists and will enjoy ‘the big day’, but do even the most avid royalists truly care about when the wedding rehearsal is, and which royal family member has just left certain premises at any given time?! If they do, perhaps they need to learn how to socialise with other human beings. Personally, I’ll be getting drunk as soon as the pubs open on Friday (preferably in a pub without a huge TV showing the wedding!) and avoiding watching the loving couple at all costs in the vain hope that there will be some other likeminded people worth talking to in the local vicinity. And quietly - or more boisterously as the day wears on - I’ll be hoping that something bad happens to the grandiose occasion. Not anything extreme like a terrorist invasion; just something mild like Kate Middleton stumbling over on her way down the aisle, fracturing her ankle in the process and thereby being unable to continue her walk, causing the entire ceremony to be cancelled while Prince William literally pisses his pants in a state of panic. Yes, that should do nicely.

Simply Unfair

The ConDem government has announced its plan for tuition fees: at least £6,000 per student, with the option for universities to demand up to £9,000. So now students will be saddled with almost double what they were having to pay before, at least! There are some caveats saying that universities will be monitored to ensure that students from poorer backgrounds are being given ample opportunity to enrol, but in general the policies will simply further the economic repression that is so fundamental to right-wing greedy capitalism. Even students who wish to pay off their debts early will be financially punished with an extra repayment in return for not repaying the full amount of interest on their loan - talk about malicious!
This coalition has previously said it would be too time consuming to means-test everyone, but I reckon most students would be willing to give a bit more of their time if it meant a much fairer system was implemented where only richer students would have to pay the maximum tuition fees while poorer ones actually received financial help to attend the university of their choice and receive a worthwhile education. As for the expense of means testing? Well, we could take it from the overblown ‘international aid’ budget which seems to make clear that other countries are considerably more important than our own in these difficult economic times! The ConDems, as usual, should be ashamed; before young adults even have the opportunity to get involved with the property market, they are already carrying a huge pecuniary burden.

Chilean Overkill

So, all 33 of the trapped Chilean miners have now been rescued. But of course, you already knew that, because it’s been shown everywhere! Perhaps the producers of 24-hour news channels need reminding that the purpose of those channels is to be able to give a detailed overview of all the world’s main news, thereby preventing the need to cram everything into a half-hour TV slot; the purpose is not so that one story alone can be turned into a 24 hour documentary!
Yes, I know it was a dramatic event that the rescue was finally taking place after the miners had been trapped for so long; and yes, I know it was refreshing to have a story in the news that was reporting something good and heart-warming; and yes, I also know the rescue was a tribute to both human ingenuity and the philanthropic spirit of humanity. But just because these miners have been trapped for 69 days doesn’t automatically make them celebrity idols! I don’t need to know the back story of each of their average lives to date; I don’t need to see every single family reunion as they’re all pretty much the same; and the guy who proposed to his girlfriend perhaps shouldn’t have needed a life-threatening situation to convince him that he was in love!
Unfortunately, by the time the rescues were a third of the way over, news channels had become so mind numbingly boring with their blanket coverage of the story that I was beginning to hope that something bad was going to happen! It would almost have been entertaining if the cable had broken on the rescue pod, shooting the capsule back down the tunnel at 100mph to a colossal explosion at the bottom. Now that would have been worth covering! Or is that just my repressed rage showing through a bit too much? Either way, news channels need to realise what they are there for, and it’s not to bore people to tears.