Friday, September 30, 2011

The Wedding of River Song: Some Predictions

Some people love a bit of speculation when it comes to the next adventures of the nation’s favourite Time Lord. Others hate it. Some see it as ruining the surprise. Others see it as pointless geek speculation. Now, if you fall into the latter two camps, this post is not for you. Away you go until tomorrow, when (all being well) the review of The Wedding of River Song will arrive. But for all of those in the former camp, welcome to a bit of speculation about how one of the best seasons in the show’s history will be wrapped up.

First up, let’s do the easy bit. Rory and Amy will be back. Hell, they were even in the episode after the one that was meant to mark their departure from the TARDIS. And we’re going to see other familiar faces returning for the finale. River Song (obviously), Kovarian, the Silence and Winston Churchill. Oh, and at least one Dalek. That much can be gathered from the trailer. Charles Dickens will also be back.

What we have also seen a lot of is that footage of River Song wearing an eye patch, in the style of Madame Kovarian. Does this mean that River disguises herself as Kovarian? Or that she, in some way, becomes Kovarian? And in the prequel, soldiers are wearing the eye patches. Again, is there a reason for this? Does it perhaps help with the Silence in some way?

And we keep on hearing that “silence will fall when the question is asked”. Now, the idea that silence will fall can be interpreted in two ways. Firstly, it could mean that the world/universe fall silent, or fall to the silence. That’s probably the obvious way to take those words. But, there is another way – that the Silence will fall in the same way that the Roman Empire fell; in other words, this marks their last stand. Which then leads us to ask “what is the question?” Personally, I’ve spent a lot of the past few weeks thinking someone is going to ask the Doctor “who are you?” That’s a question that is as old as time (or the show, anyway). Now I suspect that the question could be, again addressed to the Doctor, “will you marry me?” After all, River is meant to be killing the Doctor – if she actually turns it on its head and proposes to him, that will end the schemes of the Silence pretty effectively.

On that note – it now seems almost certain that the impossible astronaut is River. Yet… I wouldn’t put it past Moffat to actually put someone else in that space suit. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if it is the Doctor in there. The Doctor killing the Doctor… to make his enemies, who have pursued him across time and space and done irreparable damage to so many people in the process, believe him to be dead. Can there be two different Doctors? Well, yeah – and ever since the ending to The Almost People I’ve been expecting the return of the Flesh Doctor (actually, the Almost Doctor sounds better than the Flesh Doctor…)

Of course, if it is the Almost Doctor being killed/replacing the Real Doctor, then I’ll probably be a bit disappointed. Then again, that is the biggest problem facing this episode – by killing off the lead character in the opening episode of this season, Moffat has made a rod for his own back. He’ll have to pull off something pretty astounding to avoid making at least some of the viewers feel cheated. Yet he is the king (at least in the world of Doctor Who) of involved plotting. I’d be surprised if he had entered into the idea of killing the Doctor without working out how to bring him back. If anyone can pull off something pretty bloody spectacular, it will be Moffat. And I’m very much looking forward to seeing what he has got to offer us.

And one final prediction? Lots of people will end up disappointed. Even if Moffat has written the single best episode of Doctor Who of all time, people will still find something to carp on about. Fine, that’s the nature of the beast. I just hope that people go into the episode with an open mind, and see what Moffat has in store for us. The general feeling should be one of excitement; not an expectation of disappointment.

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Thursday, September 29, 2011

Labour's Lack of Stars

Over at the perpetually shitty LabourList, some lackwit is arguing against the likes of Prescott appearing on TV to give the new regime a chance to hog the limelight:
Leaving Prescott's point aside for the moment, his Today programme appearance was almost entirely unhelpful. Throughout the interview he came across as a patronising parent ruefully dismissing the efforts of his offspring. What he may have thought was refreshing candour from an old hand, sounded more like a ghost of Labour past haunting its fledgling future. Or it might simply be that he finds the amorous approaches of the media too tempting to resist.

But resist the media he should, as part of the problem of the perceived silence of the Labour opposition is that old Westminster denizens continue to hog the limelight. Peter Mandleson, Jacquie Smith, Alistair Darling, John Reid and Prescott, to name but a few, have made regular media appearances, whereas the likes of Maria Eagle, Meg Hillier, Mary Creagh and Ivan Lewis have featured only sporadically. It's too easy to blame the media for continually seeking the opinions of well known former, or no longer front line, politicians. The media keep returning to Prescott et al because they know he is widely publically recognisable and will readily appear for them and provide comment. If Prescott really wants to give the new shadow cabinet the room to breathe he needs to make himself permanently unavailable for comment. And that goes for the rest of the old guard too.
In case anyone was wondering, Prescott's point was that the Shadow Cabinet should be speaking up and taking the fight to the Tories. Which in fairness to that fat, stupid lump of arrogant lard, is a valid point that should be made to the largely silent people making up her majesty's opposition.

Furthermore, Prescott et al are more then entitled to speak, not least to defend their record. Don't get me wrong, I think their record is completely indefensible. But at a time when this lot has either departed to the backbenches, to mediocrity outside Parliament or to the Lords, what else do they have to do other than try to defend their horrific records before the verdict of history is finally returned (no doubt against them).

Besides, from a pragmatic point of view, isn't there something that could be taken by the incumbent Labour party leadership from those who led the party over the past two decades? Like how to win three General Elections on the trot? Again, I'd like the Labour party to go on failing as badly as it did in 2010, but if I was leading it, then I would be looking to understand Blair's successes at the ballot box rather than dismissing the most successful Labour leader there has ever been.

And the very fact that Prezza et al can get into the media so often is not only a testament to their high visibility, but also to the complete lack of visibility of the Shadow Cabinet. Despite following politics closely, I've never really heard of Meg Hillier or Mary Creagh. I know of Maria Eagle because she is one half of Parliament's twins, while Ivan Lewis has only really crossed my radar for his outrageous opinions on journalists. And while I know it is difficult for members of the Shadow Cabinet to get the attention they might want or need, a crucial step in the rehabiliation of the Labour party in the eyes of the wider electorate is that they become visible as members of the opposition. Only then will people begin the process of seeing them as a credible alternative government.

So it is all very well for LabourList to snipe at the fading stars of Labour's yesteryear as they pontificate on the national stage. But until the supposed stars in Labour's current firmament actually start to make an impression, Labour's vacuous followers shoudn't expect anything more than the likes of Prezza clogging up the airwaves.

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Quote of the Day

"I have no respect for the passion for equality, which seems to me merely idealizing envy."

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr, 1841-1935

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Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Manic Street Preachers - This Is The Day

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Miliband Minor; Not a "Socialist Intellectual"

To most people, Ed Miliband is a pompous, indignant potato wearing a bad wig. Not for Labour "thinker" Maurice "Halt Immigration" Glasman. According to that weapons grade bellend, the failing leader of the opposition is best described as follows:
He described the Labour leader, whose Marxist father was a university lecturer, as "socialist and an intellectual" with an "angry insurgent side".
The final description is perhaps the most laughable. Ed Miliband, a vacuous political lightweight, is not a "angry insurgent" in any way, shape of form. He is not the political equivalent of an IED. He is the political equivalent of a jobsworth promoted well beyond his actualy level of ability.

As for socialist - if he is a socialist, then he shouldn't be in the Labour party. That party became a caricature of itself a long time ago, and while it remains statist to its core, it lost its socialism when Michael Foot demonstrated that socialism was about as popular as mass dysentry in the 1983 election. A true socialist would join the Greens. Or maybe waste their time in the SWP. The Labour party is for naked political careerists who want to be seen as slightly more touchy- feely than the Tories. The Labour party remains a dangerous, statist organisation that should not be in power. But that does not make it socialist. Whether it was truly a socialist organisation is a debate for another day; here it is worth noting that a socialist in the Labour party is someone in entirely the wrong organisation.

And intellectual? Please. Modern politics is no place for a true intellectual. Just as it is no place for someone who genuinely has principles or a moral compass. In order to be a modern politician you need to switch off your brain and compromise both your principles and whatever morals you might have. That is why we end up with bland, empty political ciphers as our party leaders. Y'know, people like Clegg, Cameron and, well, Miliband Minor.

Since the moment he declared his candidacy for the Labour leadership, people have been trying to make out that Miliband Minor is some sort of return by the Labour party to its roots - that he is a new radical who is destined to bring about a brave, new socialist dawn for his party and then for his country. This plan is, of course, fatally flawed in one crucial way - it has Ed Miliband at its centre. A loathsome little individual who is so lacking in charisma and conviction that his own brother - a total dweeb in his own right - thought that the best thing for the party was to continue to fight against him. The likes of Glasman can make up whatever shit they want to about Miliband Minor; the fact of the matter is that the sooner they wake up and realise that Miliband Minor is a fucking disaster, the sooner they can actually get around to electing a credible leader. Not a socialist intellectual (nor should they want one, given how that socialist intellectual Foot did as leader), but a credible leader.

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Monday, September 26, 2011

Labour: Still Not Getting It On Spending

A new Labour sound bite (apparently):
Indeed, the Labour leadership have come up with a sound bite of their own on spending - "Building schools and hospitals did not create the deficit."
If it is a soundbite, then it is quite simply a terrible one. Firstly, from a tactical point of view, it doesn't work as it is entirely defensive. It is highlighting one of the areas in which Labour is most vulnerable, and then defensively claiming that parts of their operation while in government where not responsible for it.

Secondly, it wilfully ignores that fact that it wasn't just spending on the NHS and the education system that fucked the British economy. What about bailing out failed banks? The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? They weren't exactly cheap, you know. And the Millennium Dome - that notorious, enormous breast built on the south bank of the Thames that once symbolised New Labour profilgacy - was actually the tip of an iceberg when it came to a government determined to spend as much as possible without it having any meaningful result.

Which is the third problem. Yeah, Labour spent a lot of money on education and health. Well fuck-a-doodle-doo. Such boasts would be far more impressive if that spending hadn't large been a waste of fucking money. The NHS remains largely fucked - a vast bureaucracy floundering under unthinking mangerialism that is capable of swallowing pretty much any amount of money thrown at it. The education system turns out school leavers unable to write a coherent sentence and utterly unprepared for adult life. Spending should only be championed if it has done something good; Labour should not be boasting about their spending in these areas since it was, with very few exceptions, utterly ineffective. Ok, so they are technically talking about building schools and hospitals. But what about those existing hospitals filled with overworked and underpaid medical professionals struggling to keep their heads above water? What about the fact that so many hospitals were so dirty that they actually became lethal for some patients? And what about the education system, which was focussed so much on hitting meaningless targets that it ceased to be effective at, well, educating? Yeah, you built new hospitals and new schools to throw into two failing systems. Well fucking done.

So this soundbite doesn't work on any number of levels, but there's a final problem that it is worth considering. The very fact that Labour remains unashamedly proud of its spending ways shows that it remains, as a party, utterly unfit for office. Labour needs to show that it understands the damage it did to this country while in power, and that it understands that the citizens of this country - and the majority of them never voted for Labour - are still paying for their idiotic spending in a number of different ways.

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Sunday, September 25, 2011

Elizabeth Warren and The Non-Existent Social Contract

There's a video that has been doing the rounds recently to much adulation from my statist friends. It is of Elizabeth Warren, a would-be Senator campaigning for that bloated old fool Ted Kennedy's seat, talking about "the underlying social contract". Take a look, and then we'll start to dissect what Warren has to say:



I'm not particularly interested in her analysis of the economic woes of the US - yes, Bush Junior was a profligate wastrel when he was in power, but his replacement has done little to reduce the size of the deficit facing the US. In fact, he's made things worse. Rather, I want to look at this sort of underlying social contract argument that Warren uses.

First things first, on an initial listen/read, it is actually quite persuasive. On a surface level, she appears to be talking some sense. Yes, we are fundamentally and crucially individuals. But I know my life would be unpleasant and really rather short were I not part of a community. I'm not fantastically wealthy, and I never will be, but I do know the fact that I can live in relative comfort is not solely down to my own abilities. I need the interactions with others and the infrastructure of wider society in order to be able to attain and maintain my lifestyle. The super-rich are no different. But this acknowledgement of the essential inter-connectivity of modern life does not do the heavy lifting that Warren seems to think it does within her argument. Because it is all largely smoke and mirrors; drill down, and you start to see a lot of holes. So let's drill down.
Well, this is class warfare, this is whatever. No. There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody.
Perhaps nobody did get rich on their own. But a lot of rich people have done so because of talents and skills that, while not unique, are very much the exception rather than the rule. There are three main ways in which people get rich: having a great, marketable idea; being willing to take risks; and/or being willing to work really hard. Yes, they need other people, but it is also something within them that allows them to differentiate themselves from other people and create something that makes them very wealthy. As such, their relationship with those who assisted them in making them very wealthy is symbiotic. This is a crucial point: no-one got rich on their own, but equally no-one got rich purely because of the benefits of the wider society around them.

It is telling that Warren never actually demonstrates that we're not dealing with class warfare here. Sure, she goes on to argue for a social contract, but since she does not convincingly demonstrate the existence of that social contract, her case that it isn't class warfare is not even implicitly made.
You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear: you moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for;
And, of course, the factory-owner himself almost certainly paid for, and owing to the fact that they earn more money, probably paid more for than the average worker in the US and maybe even a greater percentage of his/her income.

Furthermore, there is something a little naive (at best) in this idea that goods get out to market through a publicly funded infrastructure. This may well be true, but what choice does the entrepreneur have? They are expected, under threat of imprisonment, to pay tax to the state, which then goes out and builds roads etc. Now, it could well be that an entrepreneur may want to fund his/her own infrastructure, private to his business, that could work more efficiently for him/her. But they have no choice but to hand over the funds that could be used for such a project to the government. Thus, they have no choice but to use the publicly funded infrastructure. As such, Warren's argument becomes essentially circular - you give money to the state, therefore you can only afford to use the public infrastructure, therefore you should pay for that infrastructure. And that argument is predicated on the far too seldom challenged notion that there should be no opt-outs from the tax system for those who do not wish to avail themselves of certain public services. Even if our entrepreneur could still afford to fund his/her own transport network, they would still expected to pay for the public one. Their hand is almost forced; they may as well use the publicly funded roads as otherwise they're going to end up paying twice for the roads they use.
you hired workers the rest of us paid to educate;
A spurious assertion that assumes our rich person doesn't hire privately educated people and that public education is of a high enough standard to truly benefit our entrepreneur friend. And, once again, our entrepreneur is also paying for that system to educate his/her workforce through taxation.
you were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory, and hire someone to protect against this, because of the work the rest of us did.
Hmmm. Because, since the advent of publicly funded police and fire services, there has never been a burglary or a building burning to the ground, right? Of course not; that's yet more nonsense. But Warren here seems to be falling into the naive trap of thinking that if the state funds and runs something, it is going to make us safe. That is, of course, nonsense on stilts. As factories investing in security guards and fire prevention systems shows. And, again, that entrepreneur ends up paying twice - once for a public system that is often bloated, inefficient and unable to do what it is supposed to be doing. The second time for a private back-up system designed to compensate for the inefficiencies of the public system they are forced to contribute to.
Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea? God bless. Keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.
I love the "God bless". Wonderfully patronising. Wouldn't worry too much about approaching those wealthy, big-money donors any more, Elizabeth. On the flipside, hate the phrase "pay forward". Just doesn't work at all..

But at the heart of all this is a sweeping, intellectual and ideological power grab. Warren is arguing that there is a social contract that underpins all we do, and that we need to adhere to it because we are part of society. But she is trying to do something even more bold - she is trying to claim that not only is there an underlying social contract, but she is the one who understands it. Therefore, we all need to fall in line with her statist policies about the redistribution of wealth through tax. So we've gone from an apparently innocuous argument about fairness in society to a much broader, and more dangerous, argument that is predicated on the idea that Elizabeth Warren has found the real truth about our society.

The big problem is that social contracts - underlying or otherwise - actually don't exist in any practical way. They are theoretical constructs of political philosophers designed to either offer an alternative to the status quo or to explain the transition from some sort of state of nature to the status quo. They are illustrations rather than actually part of the reality of modern politics. Therefore, to claim one exists and should actually be the guide for how much the state intervenes financially in the lives of its citizens is problematic to say the least. In part because we never signed up to any such social contract. Nor did our parents, or their parents, and so on. In fact, the person who signs us up - whether we like it or not - is someone like Warren. And she decides how we should interact with each other within society through nothing other than her own spurious and contestable argument and her own arrogance.

Which is the big problem I have with Warren, or at least the way in which she depicts herself in this video. Once you get beyond the folksy presentation of the case for redistributive taxation to the actual meat of what she is saying, you get a level of arrogance that I find very troubling. She's found the underlying contract. She knows best; about what is good for society, her supporters and for you. It is only a small step from finding that social contract to what Rousseau termed being forced to be free. On the basis of a contract you never signed up to because it has just been created as a rhetorical device for a campaigning politician, the state can demand more from you. And I know I can't be alone in finding that deeply concerning.

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Saturday, September 24, 2011

Doctor Who: Closing Time

Well, I can confidently predict that some people really won't like this episode of Doctor Who. After the intensity and iconoclasm of the past few weeks, a sequel to The Lodger feels like a real change. And I'm all for it, quite frankly. Doctor Who has one of the most versatile story telling formats in the world. Why not have an episode about the trials of parenthood, working in a shop, the awkwardness of an alien in suburbia and the ways in which you can deal with a Cybermat with razor sharp, high-voltage teeth? Why not have the occasional episode that tries to be funny?

Especially since it succeeds in being funny. The baby called Stormageddon, the Doctor as toy shop owner, the confusion about his relationship with Craig, his ability to shush people - I could go on, but this was an episode based around banter and that banter worked. In the past, a lot of the comedy in Doctor Who has been based around, say, Tom Baker's inability to take the story seriously. The new series has instead employed genuinely funny writers - such as tonight's author, Gareth Roberts.

Yet it wasn't just about laughs. This was, in the few scenes they were in, quite an effective use of the Cybermen. Finally, perhaps for the first time since the series returned, someone clocked that the true horror of the Cybermen is in their conversion process. They will make you into monsters. Also, the damaged, worn out Cybermen somehow looked more effective than their perfect counterparts.

But for some, the relative lack of menace and the increased comedy quotient won't work. They'll complain and bellyache that it was all a bit silly, and that these episodes aren't a patch on The Doctor's Wife or Let's Kill Hitler. And in doing so they will miss the point that not every episode can be an iconoclastic classic, and sometimes you just have to let the good Doctor breathe, and have some fun in the process.

And if anything didn't work in this episode, it was the tacked on stuff about River Song. Yes, there was a need to remind people of the overall story arc, and there arguably was a need to create a cliffhanger for the no doubt epic season resolution next week. But do we really need a kid's nursery rhyme being sung in the background to point out what is, has, and will be going on? Why can't we just have the Doctor visiting his old mate and telling him that he is off to his death after this? Isn't that enough?

Still, this episode worked. I don't what every Doctor Who episode to be like this, but every now and again, it is a real delight to see my favourite show doing comedy so well.

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Consistently Opposing the Death Penalty

Over at the Telegraph there's a rather silly article accusing those who oppose the death penalty of being inconsistent. The gist of it can be summed up in the following paragraph:
The airbrushing of Brewer from yesterday’s heated discussions on the death penalty speaks volumes about the Troy Davis campaign. It seems pretty clear that it was motivated, not by a principled, across-the-board opposition to the state killing of citizens, but rather by campaigners’ desire to indulge in some very public moral preening. Unlike the Brewer execution, which was ugly and complicated, the Davis execution could be squeezed into a cosy moral narrative in which the state of Georgia was depicted as backward and racist and those who opposed the execution of Davis presented themselves as purer than pure, good and decent, and more than willing to prove it by writing tweets of concern every four or five minutes. What message should we take from this disparity in campaigning? That Troy Davis did not deserve to die but Lawrence Brewer did? Such moral flightiness, such brutal arbitrariness, reveals much about today’s very changeable campaigners against the death penalty.
Of course, I can only speak for myself, and I do concede that there may well be some people who oppose the death penalty who do fall into the description given above. But, even as I speak only for myself, I would like to say that the author is talking utter shit. Let me explain why.

I became aware of the execution of Brewer on the Thursday morning, when it was mentioned at the very bottom of an article on a news website on the Davis case (can't remember which one - think it may well have been the BBC site). I guess there wasn't quite the same publicity given to the Brewer case as there was to the Davis case. Gee, I wonder why that might be? Perhaps because Davis was almost certainly innocent while Brewer wasn't? Could that be part of the reason?

But that doesn't change the fact that I can categorically state that as repugnant and vile as I find Brewer and his crime, I don't believe that he should have been executed as the state should not have the right to kill its citizens, even if they have committed heinous crimes. Both Brewer and Davis should be alive today; one should be incarcerated for life, the other probably shoud have been released on appeal by now.

Does that mean that the anti-death penalty campaigners made a mistake in highlighting the Davis case rather than the Brewer one? No. There was an opporunity to save an almost certainly innocent man from the needle. It had to be prioritised over the other morally unacceptable death than happened on the same day. In part because there was a real chance that at least one execution could have been prevented, whereas I think nothing could have saved Brewer. But there is also a pragmatic side to publicising the Davis case over the Brewer one. People might sit up and listen to the ant-death penalty case when the hear the Davis story; the Brewer one will do little to change the minds of people if they think that certain people deserve to die. Just as in this country, the miscarriages of justice that were the Bentley case and the Evans case, not the executions of a Christie or a Haigh, that moved Britain away from hanging.

So there is no inconsistency in my personal opposition to the death penalty; but the pragmatist in me does understand that the way in which the US is most likely to leave the appalling and barbaric practice of executing criminals is through highlighting likely miscarriages of justice rather than the cases of thorougly unpleasant criminals.

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Friday, September 23, 2011

The Killing of Troy Davis

Now, my thoughts on the death penalty are on record, and there is nothing in the events surrounding the state-sanctioned murder of Troy Davis that has changed my mind in any way. In fact, the opposite is true. It isn't just the moral case against the death penalty that is brought into sharp relief by this execution, but also the extent to which the decision to execute, the run-up to any execution and the implementation of that execution all highlight how the death penalty is not about the emotionless and dispassionate administration of justice, but rather as tangled a mess as any system created and run by fallible humans inevitably ends up being.

Let's look at the evidence that led Davis - or more properly meant that Davis was led - into the execution chamber. The lack of a gun and of any DNA evidence meant the case against him at his original trial was far from conclusive. The fact that the vast majority of those witnesses who led to his conviction have recanted their testimony makes that evidence even less conclusive. And the fact that one of those two remaining witnesses who have not recanted is also a suspect in the murder that earned Davis the death penality is yet another indicator that all is not right in the conviction that led to the execution of Davis. Had I been on the jury at Davis' initial trial, I probably wouldn't have convicted. I certainly wouldn't based on the evidence (of lack thereof) floating around just before he got the needle. It appears a man who was most likely innocent was put to death in the state of Georgia. Of course, I can't know for certain that he was innocent - indeed, that level of knowledge is arguably impossible except for the murderer and the murdered. But we've not talking here about a sentence that can be reversed. Davis died. He was killed by the state. There is no going back on this. Now, I understand that it is perfectly possible that we will never come up with a justice system that can guarantee that it is not convicting the innocent. But that is precisely why we shouldn't have the death penalty - an innocent in prison can be released. An innocent in the ground can't.

Yet there are other reasons some argue should make us ok with the death penalty. After all, with the introduction of the lethal injection, it surely became just a case of putting people to sleep. Of course, the idea that humans should just be put to sleep, like sick dogs, is inhumane to some - even if they are (apparently) guilty of the most heinous crimes. But even the supposedly painless lethal injection can end up being anything but. Take the execution that had to be abandoned as the executioners couldn't get the IV line into their victim's veins. Or the prisoner whose execution lasted for 90 minutes. Or the condemned man who had to be given a double dose of the lethal chemical cocktail. Or even the poor sod whose execution went on for so long that he had to be given a toilet break*. I think all of these could be seen to be cruel and unusual punishments, but they also highlight that the notion of the clean, sterile, painless execution is a myth. And that's before we get onto whether the lethal injection is actually painless. Or the fact that its creator argues that it is flawed because he never realised when he helped to set up the execution method that "complete idiots" would be "administering the drugs." As for the deterrence argument, the research is far from conclusive. The experts can't agree. And when it comes to taking the lives of potentially innocent people, is a little consensus on the wider implications on society too much to ask?

So to summarise, we have a system that executes people who are almost certainly innocent. It isn't, at least in its existing forms, painless or humane - not least because it is implemented by people incapable of doing so properly. And is it a deterrent? Fuck knows. Yet it is something that doesn't make sense that can also carry an appalling cost, as the Troy Davis case shows. And as a result I can't help but think that we shouldn't be debating the potential reintroduction of the death penalty on this side of the Atlantic - rather, they should be debating it's abolition on the other side of that ocean.

*And isn't that a good indicator of the total insanity of executions? They pump the victim full of lethal drugs, but he get's a bathroom break so he doesn't piss himself.

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Wednesday, September 21, 2011

REM - Off to "The Great Beyond"

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Get involved, while you still can. Because with this one, it could end up being too late far too soon.

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Torchwood: Miracle Day: The Blood Line

Man alive, that final episode of what has been a tedious and largely pointless series was shit. A magical blood transfusion saved the day. Thank fuck that I’ve wasted circa ten hours of my life waiting for that utterly convincing and in no way bullshit resolution. Thanks, people, for putting on the small screen perhaps the perfect example of how not to close off ten weeks worth of TV. In years to come, those teaching script-writing at universities and colleges throughout the world should point to this episode as a perfect example of how not to do it. And by it, I mean pretty much everything this sorry farrago set out to achieve.

It seems almost pointless to sit here and pick through all the ways in which the final episode failed to work. Yes, it was shit, but that should be evident to all but the terminally stupid and RTD. Let’s instead try to take a helicopter view and figure out just why what at first appeared to be quite a promising series ended up being such a steaming turd pile of absolute bilge.

The first reason is that if you’re going to write a Torchwood story, you should probably place the Torchwood team at the very heart of it. Not on the outskirts of the story, and not so they end up appearing as a tacked on afterthought. For example, Captain Jack is meant to be the hero of the series – not some second rate action man who has to be removed from said action because he’s suddenly become all vulnerable. Likewise, Gwen started off as an interesting character trying to cope with the strange world in which she found herself. To turn her into a chippy Welsh bird who just wants to chin everything that moves is to remove any residual interest in her or her character.

The second reason is that if you’re going to have a high concept story arc, then work out all the logical ramifications of it and also think about how to dramatically present it. So, if you are going to have a story that is in part about politicians deciding to introduce death camps, then it is probably worth devoting some of your ample run time to depicting those politicians reaching such an egregious conclusion. Likewise, don’t reach episode six and then suddenly forget (to a massive extent) about said death camps. Your regular viewers – the poor sods who made this whole thing possible in the first fucking place – will notice.

And thirdly, think about the pacing of your piece. If your most nightmarish image is the cooking of the terminally ill, then don’t reveal all halfway through your series. Build up to it across all ten episodes – don’t spunk it away by episode five. Because once Vera was incinerated, the whole piece became a question of “ok, that’s where this is going – and can we get there already please?”

The fourth, and for this post final, reason is that if you are going to write damn near 10 hours of TV then you shouldn’t be fucking well making it up as you go along. Nothing wrong with plotting it all out and working out where you want to get to and how you are going to get there.

But the fact that this series of Torchwood turned out to be a ripe example of an arse biscuit shouldn’t really be a surprise given what has gone before. The excellent (but still far from flawless) Children of Earth now appears to be the exception rather than the rule. The simple truth is – if they haven’t already had the option taken from them by this sorry farrago of absolute shite – the producers shouldn’t make any more Torchwood. Their heart isn’t in it and/or they are not capable of it.

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Yes, because the problem is, and always has been, a lack of spending, rather than - say - an ongoing refusal to reduce taxes so people can actually spend their own sodding money.

Fucking, fucking idiots.

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Sunday, September 18, 2011

Doctor Who: The God Complex

Let's be very clear on this - in order to be good, Doctor Who does not have to be original. Much of the early output of the Tom Baker era clearly shows this - they merrily plundered the back catalogue of much of Hammer and Universal's horror films to great effect. Taking a familiar scenario and dragging it into the Doctor's world often works very well. And that's what The God Complex is - good without being original. Because anyone who has seen Kubrick's version of The Shining or, to a lesser extent, the film 1408 will feel that last night's episode is somewhat familiar. But by no means in a bad way. I've said it before about the adventures of the good Doctor and no doubt I'll get to say it again, but if you're going to plunder from the archives, plunder from the best. And given the fantastic success of Stephen King's books and (some of) the movies based on those works, Doctor Who would have been missing a trick if it never dipped into his canon of work.

The decor of the ersatz hotel, the different rooms containing different nightmares, the composition of the shots - this was clearly the Doctor staying in the Overlook. And, generally speaking, it worked. Partly because it was more than just rehashing The Shining. The story understood that nightmares take on different forms. Yes, clowns (the fear of one Sarah Jane Smith, oddly enough) and Weeping Angels were obvious choices. But the disappointed father and the mocking girls were very different, and summed up that it isn't just monsters that people fear. There was a certain poignancy as well in the idea that Amy's nightmare was having to be Amelia Pond again, and await the return of her Raggedy Doctor. Then the twist that it was about faith rather than nightmares helped to give what could have been a very simple story an extra layer of depth.

And there were some other good points as well. Rita worked well as a companion who never was - and the Eleventh Doctor's reaction to her death was far more effective than the likely response of his immediate predecessor (who probably would have stood around looking forlorn rather than raging). And Smith's Doctor continues to excel over all - witness his goading of Gibbis around the slyness of the coward (which was, of course, borne out by that character's actions).

That said, this was good rather than great. In part because it was so derivative. You want to be great? You need to be more original than this. Part of that originality is not stealing the resolution of another (genuinely great) Who story - in this case The Curse of Fenric (something possibly referenced in that fact that the Doctor forced Amy to lose faith in him in room 7). Likewise, I don't doubt that the Ponds will be back, despite their apparent departure at the end of this episode. There's no real problem with giving them a false leaving, but here it just felt anti-climactic - not least since Amy has been in near constant danger ever since she met the Doctor (as have all of his companions). Overall, perhaps the biggest problem is that this was essentially a mood piece, but it lacked the time to really build up that mood. One of the reasons why The Shining works is its run time. You can't create the same claustrophobic environment in just 45 minutes - especially when you've got to have a long departure scene at the end between two old friends.

But, before we go away to await the arrival of Closing Time, it is perhaps worth pausing for a moment to think about what the Doctor saw in his room - or, to be clearer, what the Elventh Doctor saw in Room 11. There was the sound of the Cloister Bell and the Doctor almost seemed to have anticipated what was in there. So what did he see? Himself? After all, he was pretty negative about himself in Amy's Choice. But the Cloister Bell signifies danger. Danger for what? Given the Doctor is rushing towards his death, it could well be a portent of that...

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Friday, September 16, 2011

Defending Sarah Palin

I'm guessing that if I looked out the window I'd see pigs looping the loop in the air, because I'm about to do something that I never thought I'd do and makes me faintly nauseous. I'm going to defend the crass Sarah Palin.

Defend her in a limited way, of course. Defend her against the recent allegations that are perhaps best summed up in this paragraph:
As for these disclosures, McGinniss claims that Palin snorted cocaine off an overturned 55-gallon drum during a snowmobile excursion, slept with college (and later NBA) basketball star Glenn Rice when she was an unmarried 23-year-old sports reporter (McGinniss talked to Rice for the book and he confirmed the relationship) and had an affair with Brad Hanson, Todd Palin's business partner, apparently as payback for her husband's infidelities. (Both Palin and Hanson, he notes, have denied the affair.)
Now I have no problems with these sort of allegations. The fact that Palin has snorted coke and slept around a bit is her own business, frankly. I don't even care if she has been having affairs behind her husband's back - that is between him and her. None of these reflects on her ability to be president. What does - and the reason why I think she is horrifically unqualified for high office - is her almost all-encompassing ignorance combined with the fact that she perfectly represents the empty and dangerous politics of style rather than substance. The problem is what she does in public, not what she has done in private. The problem, to put it in a much more profane way, is not who she has apparently been fucking, but the fact that she is a fucking idiot.

So there it is - a defence of Palin from someone who cannot stand her. But it is utterly depressing that what will probably finish the Palin show once and for all is not the fact that she has time and time again paraded her stupidity in public, but the utter irrelevancies of what she may have done in her private life.

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This article, which spoofs religion, intelligent design and Richard Dawkins while coming up with new comical euphemisms about breasts and bums, is an testament to the ongoing genius of The Daily Mash.

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Wednesday, September 14, 2011

A couple of house-keeping rules -

1. If you want a link here on the Strangeness, e-mail me your website/blog address and I will take a look. Bear in mind, though, that it will take more than just wanting a link to make me give you one. Being an interesting site that is generally relevant to the content of this blog would be a good way to start.

2. If you do insist on dumping a link in the comments section, please make sure that it relates to what the post is about. If it doesn't, chances are I will delete your comment without warning. I'm not here to promote your blog/site.

That is all. As you were.

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Car Insurance and Statism

The problem with a multi-author blog devoted to liberty is that people, almost by definition, have to be free to write what they want. And that includes, as this post at the Orphans of Liberty shows, giving them the right to write illiberal bilge.

At the end of a slightly rambling and definitely racist post, the Quiet_Man writes:
It strikes me that the system used if we must legally hold car insurance needs to be overhauled to a state where it would be difficult to own a car and not have insurance. Or more draconian would simply be the crushing of any vehicle found being driven without insurance or a license and jail time for the uninsured.
Yes I know that isn’t very liberal of me, but I do believe that if I abide by the rules (unfair as they sometimes are) then others should abide by them too, particularly when the cost of not abiding by the rules hits me in the pocket.
It strikes me that if the system needs to be overhauled the best way in which to do so is not to increase the ability of the government to seize private property and imprison its citizens - especially if that system of rules is unfair. Anything else is fundamentally statist, and fundamentally illiberal. Yeah, car insurance is far too expensive and yeah, the price is forced up by those who drive, and then cause accidents, while uninsured. But the answer is not greater state control, but rather a real attempt to reduce state intervention in the cost of getting cars and drivers on the road. Reduce road tax. Reduce the staggeringly high tax on petrol. And yeah, review the nature of car insurance in this country, which does play into the hands of insurance companies. But more car crushing and more people going to prison is nothing more than the solution of the draconian, illiberal statist.

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Tuesday, September 13, 2011

George Osborne and the Hooker

Guido, with his customary desire to pursue and publicise any political story that offers any sort of titillation whatsoever, has been pursuing the George Osborne allegations with his customary salacious zeal. If you want all the details then head over to his site and have a look around some of his more recent posts - I've no great desire to rehash it all here.

The questions is, though, whether Osborne will survive these allegations. Realistically, I think he will. If John Prescott can cling to office despite boffing his secretary at the taxpayer's expense then Osborne can survive allegations made about his conduct prior to attaining high office.

But it isn't just that. We're dealing with George Osborne here. There's something about George that makes him come across as deeply unpleasant. I think it is the fact that he has the appearance and demeanour of a bloated puff adder. Therefore, any scandal involving him doesn't really come as a surprise. Seriously, if I heard that he spent his spare time punching old women in the face, I wouldn't be surprised. And that will work in Osborne's favour. The expectations about his behaviour are so low that he could probably get away with just about anything. The Daily Mash have their tongue planted firmly in their cheek with this one, but there is more than an element of truth in the idea that this sort of scandal actually and perversely (no pun intended) humanise him a bit.

Make no mistake about it, this will be embarrassing for him - almost regardless of whether it is true or not. But career ending? I doubt it somehow.

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Monday, September 12, 2011

Torchwood: Miracle Day: The Gathering

So, stuff happened. The plot moved forward. We saw the Blessing, found out that Julie Kitzinger is right (about what we do not know), saw Oswald Danes (now a leering pantomime villain) get to Wales despite being the world’s most wanted man, and also witnessed the sluggish cliff-hanger to the previous week’s episode being utterly dodged. The incapable Esther managed to get Jack to Scotland. Yeah, and monkeys are flying out of my anus.

It would have to be something pretty bloody spectacular to impress me at this point given the general standard of this series – this episode was not that. It was largely scene setting for a finale I no longer care about. And it seems pointless to rant away further at what has been a grossly disappointing series of Torchwood. Yeah, it has been shit. But realistically, we’ve known that for weeks. Now it is, at long last, limping towards a final episode that, for a much less self-indulgent series, should have happened circa six episodes ago. Dare I hope for something interesting to round off the series? Well, yeah, I can hope – but that’s about it. Because we all know that, even if the finale is perhaps the best bit of TV all year, it is still going to come across as an anti-climax. This hasn’t been Children of Earth. It hasn’t even been Cyberwoman. And even if we have a finale that convincingly wraps everything up and perhaps even kills off a few regulars (Esther would be great) it won’t change the fact that the vast majority of this series has been tedious padding.

Because of “the Miracle” people live forever. Well, it feels like this series has been going on forever. The fact that it is about to end is a real blessing. Just shame that it comes with such a sense of tedium and anti-climax. Go on, Miracle Day, knock my socks off. But even if you do, chances are it will be too little, too late.

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Sunday, September 11, 2011

Doctor Who: The Girl Who Waited

Doctor Who never used to do this. Seriously, there would be all sorts of stories presenting all sorts of menace with varying degrees of effectiveness. But to genuinely have a story that messes with the idea of time travel and does interesting things as a result was more than a rarity – it barely happened. Now, in the era of Steven Moffat, it is fast becoming the norm rather than the exception.

Which is the biggest flaw The Girl Who Waited has. In just about any other era, this would have been a little gem of an episode. A lovely little rarity. A quiet classic. In this era, it is almost a case of plus ca change. A story where the companion effectively dies? Yep, Rory has comprehensively covered that off. A story where a companion waits for ages for the one they love? Yep, Amy is once again chasing her husband on this one. Put this story in Tennant’s first season and you have a classic. Put this in Smith’s second season and you have something that feels a bit too familiar.

Am I being curmudgeonly? Of course. There was so much to like here. The handbots were a great idea; they want to help, but in doing so are just as lethal as Daleks. The one converted into an ersatz Rory (the “disarmed” one) was a nice touch. The older Amy was perfectly realised, both in terms of the make-up and Gillan’s bitter performance. And that final scene for Older Amy – where she was effectively put to sleep by the robots – brought a lump to my throat. We now know the extent to which Amy loves Rory, (and it is Rory she loves, not the Doctor).

Furthermore, this was a Doctor-lite episode that did not let it show. The Doctor was constantly present, guiding Rory and being at the heart of the show despite the fact that the lead actor was mostly elsewhere (performing in Episode 12, in case anyone is interested). And he should wear his new(ish) coat more. It works for him. Hell, I’d like a coat like that. Much more so than a tweed jacket… But not only was this a Doctor-lite episode, but it was also one where clearly the cash was strapped and only really the leading trio were available – yet it still worked. And that is no mean feat. Don’t believe me? Well, just picture a 45 minute story that just contains the Sixth Doctor and Peri. If you’re anything like me, you’ve just been a little bit sick in your mouth.

So should I be griping at this episode? Possibly not. It was a stab at originality that worked on so many levels. In fact, its biggest problem was that it is in what I would strongly argue is a golden era for the show. Put this episode just about anywhere else in the show’s history and we would all be praising it for its story-telling ability and its desire to confound expectations. Put it in an era like this one and it becomes a little bit less special. But that’s fine. It is praising with faint damnation to say that this episode is not quite as original or as good as some of those that have preceded it. It may well be true that it isn’t as good as, say, The Doctor’s Wife or Let’s Kill Hitler. But so what? Very few Doctor Who stories are that good.

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Saturday, September 10, 2011

The Girl Who Waited...

...will have to wait a little bit longer. Review to follow, though, rest assured. And it will appear long before the review of the most recent - and utterly terrible - episode of Torchwood.

Friday, September 09, 2011

Quote of the Day

In general, it can probably be said that the conservative does not object to coercion or arbitrary power so long as it is used for what he regards as the right purposes. He believes that if government is in the hands of decent men, it ought not to be too much restricted by rigid rules. Since he is essentially opportunist and lacks principles, his main hope must be that the wise and the good will rule — not merely by example, as we all must wish, but by authority given to them and enforced by them. Like the socialist, he is less concerned with the problem of how the powers of government should be limited than with that of who wields them; and, like the socialist, he regards himself as entitled to force the value he holds on other people.
F.A Hayek, writing on why he was not a conservative (and explaining why I am not one either)

Thursday, September 08, 2011

A gentle reminder...

...to charities everywhere - if you employ aggressive, pushy chuggers to hassle me as I walk down the street minding my own business, you will never, ever get a penny from me. Ever.

Wednesday, September 07, 2011

No shit, Sherlock.

From the BBC:
Twenty high-profile economists have urged the government to drop the top 50p tax rate, which they say is doing "lasting damage" to the UK economy. In a letter to the Financial Times, they say it should be axed "at the earliest opportunity" to boost growth.
Of course, I'm always slightly suspicious when I hear any group of economists advocating any particular course of action. After all, economics is not as scientific as some of its practitioners would have us believe, and sometimes it seems if you find the right combination of economists you could get them to back just about anything. Right now, there's probably a cabal of left of centre economists plotting an intervention that states something along the lines of an elimination of the 50p top tax rate would lead to economic devastation.

But what is being cited in this instance is intuitively plausible. After all, it doesn't make sense to demand people spend more money to stimulate growth at the same time as taking more money from them. And any basic analogy can demonstrate how this is intuitively plausible. If you give your kid £1 rather than 50p, they can spend twice as much, no? Then we hear speculation that those around the Chancellor want to eliminate the top rate but haven't quite worked out how to do so.

Here's a hint: just fucking well do it. You're in government, for God's sake, and you have a good few years until the next General Election (in all likelihood). Take the plunge, and actually do something worthwhile. Because what will sink this government's economic strategy is not that tax cuts are bad (they're not - they are necessary and need to be wider and deeper) but the fact that spending cuts are not being matched by tax cuts. Which means that we, the poor bastard taxpayers, are being expected to pay the same or more for less. Cut taxes, cut spending and give us more of a chance to spend. Then the government will start to see the sort of growth that is currently eluding them.

Tuesday, September 06, 2011

Torchwood - Miracle Day - End of the Road

So, two good things happened in this episode of Torchwood. Firstly, someone died, and thus the overall story was advanced. As such, this episode created for the first time in weeks the feeling that there actually is going to be some sort of resolution to this story, and that the whole thing won't just stop suddenly when the series runs out of episodes. Of course, prior to that death we had a long scene of poorly written, directed and performed exposition, and afterwards we had a lot of pure padding that reached its nadir when three of the lead characters had to touch the magic floor in order not to be heard by the nasty CIA agents. But whatever. I'll happily cling on to the minor move forward in the overall story arc as a positive sign that things might get better.

The second good thing that happened in this episode is the arrival of Allen Shapiro, a sweary, intolerant type who rightly had little patience of Gwen and therefore came across as the most effective character in this otherwise rather sorry farrago. No doubt he'll vanish from the face of Miracle Day moving forward because he is just too interesting.

Two good things. In an episode that lasted for about 50 minutes, but felt far longer. Two good things - and then that's it. For the rest of the episode we had to watch Rex do very little other than remain close-minded and generally quite ignorant, Gwen doing little else that raging like an irate teenager (and just as effectively) and Esther deciding that the best thing to do with a mortally wounded Captain Jack was to drive him round the arse end of nowhere while sobbing. These people are meant to be the people saving the world yet they act like inept children. Christ.

Okay, let me break cover and say what has been on my mind for weeks but has reached bursting point after the eighth episode of this tedious series - this isn't working. It isn't working at all. It is at best lacklustre, and at worst seriously shit. It has been a massive disappointment. It has become an effort to watch it each and every week, let alone review it. The only thing keeping me going is the fact that I've already invested so much time in it that I may as well watch the final couple of episodes to find out where it is all going (if anywhere). I still hope (against hope) to be proven wrong in my assumption that this is just going to all be a massive disappointment by the final two episodes. But with each episode that goes by with no signs of real improvement that hope dies a little bit more. Prove me wrong, RTD. Prove me wrong, Torchwood. Although I suspect that this is beyond all of your abilities now.

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Monday, September 05, 2011

Blogging will be intermittent at best over the next couple of weeks. Posts may appear, they may not. I'm pretty sure that, either way, the world will keep on training.

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Saturday, September 03, 2011

Doctor Who - Night Terrors

First up, let me say this - there is nothing wrong with Night Terrors. Had I seen this as a kid, I would have loved it. I'd have wanted to watch it over and over again because it does have some striking images and, crucially, it is also very creepy in places. But the adult in me - the jaded critic who has somehow wound up writing Doctor Who for free each week (if anyone wants to pay me to do this, please feel free) can't help but think that Night Terrors was an entertaining way to spend 45 minutes but nothing more.

Part of the problem was it is incredibly derivative. It combines elements of Ghostwatch with Sapphire and Steel. It also robs the rich heritage of Doctor Who a lot as well. The whole thing - especially the human/doll transformation and the parent needs to love child resolution - is pretty much The Empty Child and The Doctor Dances rewritten once again. The dolls house thing has been done before as part of the Hornet's Nest series, and the music was very reminiscent of the creepy girl theme from Remembrance of the Daleks. Yeah, it is becoming increasingly difficult to write original Who, and if you are going to rob, rob from the best. But if you want to create something genuinely iconic, you need to come up with something more than a greatest hits package.

Then there's Daniel Mays. I don't know why so many people rate him as an actor. To me, he's not very convincing. And here that is brought into sharp relief by the fact that he is acting opposite Matt Smith, who is in his element once again as the Time Lord. The problem is that Smith - playing a young/old wise yet silly alien - comes across as far more convincing than Mays - who is playing a human father. Plus Mays is surely the very a much more deserving recipient of Amy's frequent jibe to Rory - he really does have a stupid face.

Speaking of Amy and Rory, way to write them out of the episode. They spent pretty much the whole time exploring a house. In the dark. Yeah, it is all very atmospheric and threatening, but they did nothing to drive the story forward and nothing to resolve it. They were basically given busy work to do. Plus, as soon as Amy was converted into a doll, the threat of such a conversion was neutralised. We instantly knew that the conversion would be reversed.

Which leads me to another gripe - why is it becoming increasingly the norm to have Doctor Who stories where no-one dies? The reason why it was so effective at the end of The Doctor Dances is because it was the exception, not the rule. The problem with a lack of death, though, is that it makes everything less threatening. The doll conversion is a classic example - why not have the greasy, odious landlord permenantly converted into a little wooden doll? That is both a fitting fate and a memorable one. And please don't tell me that it is because this is a family show - just go watch Earthshock or Revelation of the Daleks and look at the body count there.

I know, I know, it sounds like I am just whining and sniping at something that, while not perfect, is still the best thing on TV. And I'd like to stress again that there is Night Terrors isn't a clunker, and is a perfectly acceptable outing for the nation's favourite Time Lord. But it could have been a story for any Doctor at any point in the show's history. It is Doctor Who by the numbers. And coming after the iconoclastic and utterly mad Let's Kill Hitler, it can't help but end up being a little bit nondescript. It's fine, but as a hyper-critical adult, it's nothing more than that.

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Garry: Still failing to defend the death penalty

Over at the curiously named Politics on Toast, James Garry takes exception to one of my posts on the death penalty. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it is this post that provokes his article; the one that takes him to task. There is a lot in his article, and the vast majority of it I do not care about. However, there are some points that demand rebuttal and clarification. This first is Garry’s attempt to overcome my objection that some criminals commit their crimes without really considering the potential consequences on the grounds that they do not expect to be caught. He writes in response to this assertion:
Nonsense. TNL seems to suggest that criminals can only know the consequences of their actions after they are caught.
Nope. I suggest that criminals are not thinking about the consequences of their actions because they do not expect to be caught – a position that is intuitively plausible given how many people commit crimes that carry hefty sentences.
I think very few criminals are so boundlessly optimistic or boundlessly stupid not to impute the legal consequences of their illegal actions. We are all potential criminals. I am a potential criminal.
Yes, Garry, you are a potential criminal. We all are. But there are degrees of potential criminality, aren’t there? And there are degrees of the potentiality of all of us to actually commit crimes. Just as there are differences in the extent to which any one of us believe we will be caught for any crime that we might commit, and there are varying degrees to which we all understand the consequences of any potential crime. To argue otherwise is to deny the nature of the individual. Which, surely, Garry does not wish to do. Oh, wait:
I know the possible consequences of any given criminal action. I don’t see how actual criminals are any different.
Yeah, Garry. You are representative of all actual criminals. They all think in the same way you do. They all know the consequences of their actions. Except there is no-one quite like James Garry, and different individuals will have different motivations and perceptions.
For TNL’s argument to have a kernel of credibility then every single murderer would have to be completely blank about the consequences of his actions. If that were the case then we could agree that capital punishment is worthless because the criminal is impervious to its threat. Plainly this isn’t so. Some murderers may be so far removed from reality that they are oblivious to the promise of the noose, but most murderers are rational and aware of the law and of the consequences of their actions.
Nope, this is toss, I'm afraid. For my argument to “have a kernel of credibility” there has to be just one killer who does not take into account the potential consequences of their actions. Which, as the example of Ian Brady in my original post, demonstrates is possible. But Garry sort of acknowledges in his article, before going on to write:
There are no doubt others still who would not be deterred by the death penalty from murdering. I am not a Utopian. I do not believe in a perfect world of perfect solutions. If we did not use human systems because they were imperfect, we’d never use any of them. TNL, and people like him, do not understand this point:
We do not use deterrents against people who cannot be deterred. We use deterrents against those who can be deterred. To abandon the use of capital punishment because it does not deter the Ian Bradys of this world is as bit like not fitting your car with airbags because airbags are not 100% effective. I wonder, with the use of this easy-to-understand analogy, TNL might grasp this very simple point.
Oh, how I do love to be condescended and patronised by someone who thinks that they know better than me with no real evidence as to why they might actually do so bar their own stridently expressed opinions. I do understand that we have to use imperfect systems – not being a total fucking idiot makes understanding this point really rather easy. But it is one thing not to use an imperfect system and quite another to endow an imperfect political system with the right to take the lives of innocent citizens after going through the imperfect system of a jury trial. I’ll try to resist the cheap jibe that this sort of simple argument seems to be beyond Garry and his ilk.

Unfortunately, the analogy does not work as there is no real connection between airbags and an innocent person being hanged. It is a classic straw man argument, and deserves to be treated largely with contempt.
I don’t see how it is nonsense. It does make me angry when people say that capital punishment is wrong because it involves the State murdering its own citizens. It makes me angry because TNL – probably without much thought – gives parity to the murderer and the murderer’s victim.
No I don’t. This completely misrepresents my opinion and what I have repeatedly said. I give parity to the innocent killed by a murderer and an innocent killed by the state on the grounds that both are, well, innocent. The central point is the innocence, and until someone can provide a system whereby innocent people won’t face the noose, then this remains an essential point and a highly convincing rebuttal to those who favour the return of the death penalty.
And, for the record, I have given a lot of fucking thought to all aspects of the death penalty while researching and debating it across decades. This sort of cheap gibe from Garry really pisses me off. It is exactly the same as when he says that people have not read what he has written or not understood it. It is the fascinating arrogance of a man who assumes that he is right and that others cannot have an equally valid position. It runs the risk of making debating with him compellingly pointless.
The Nameless Libertarian’s ultimate objection to State execution is a libertarian one – that the State should not be vested with the power to murder.
No, my ultimate objection to state murder is a moral one – as explained here. But as an add-on, yeah, I don’t think we should give the state the right to murder their citizens.
I do not understand libertarians. They automatically think the powers of the State must be limited.
Nope. We argue that the state should be limited based on the fact that it has been historically shown that the state is more often than not inept, bureaucratic and inhuman.
Well, I believe that the State should be limited but I also accept that the State must have some power to do certain things some of the time. As much as I hated nannying New Labour, I think the only good thing they did was to implement the smoking ban. Of course, this is a State intrusion and many, including Claire Porthouse, think it is a horrendous act of State intrusion. Maybe it is. But I wonder if the ban extends into the future, that we might realise the goodness of this act of State intrusion in a hundred year’s time or so.
Of course, it is completely inappropriate to compare the potential state murder of an innocent person with the smoking ban. As for that ban itself, it is possible that in the future people do look back on the smoking ban as a great step forward, especially if biased history books present it as such. That won’t change the reality of the situation – that people are told that they cannot choose, despite being responsible adults, to smoke in certain places. It won’t change the fact that this policy seems to be almost intentionally trying to make the people of this country more bovine than ever. And there is a terrible irony in someone advocating the potential prolonging of the lives of some through the smoking ban at the same time as embracing the concept of the noose for some innocent people is good.
Giving the State the power to execute criminals who ruin the lives of innocent people is good.
But that is not the point, as surely Garry knows. The point is that innocent people as well as criminals will be executed. Is that OK? Of course it isn’t. But it is a fundamental point that Garry's sweeping statement ignores.
Why assume that all State power is bad?
State power is, for most libertarians, a necessary evil. Therefore, as an evil, it needs to be restricted as much as possible. And it certainly does not need to be extended to give the state the right to potentially kill innocent people if the right legal loopholes have been jumped through.
If that is so, why bother voting?
Err, to support the party offering the least state intervention in our lives?
Why bother supporting the political parties who become and organise the State.
I don’t support any party, but I’d imagine it is for the reason mentioned immediately above.
Why even bother pretending to be a “libertarian”? Just become an anarchist instead.
Because being a libertarian is different to being an anarchist. In fact, I’ve written about this in detail here. But put simply a libertarian sees minimal state intervention as a necessary evil. An anarchist sees the state as an unnecessary evil. This really is basic political theory. And to conflate a refusal to support the right of the state to execute innocent people with anarchism is a crude and ultimately unconvincing rhetorical position.

But that’s enough on Garry and the death penalty. It should be clear where Garry and I stand with regard to this issue, and I personally have better things to do moving forward than rehashing the arguments in my posts on the death penalty thus far. The death penalty is wrong and any attempts to bring it back should be rigorously fought.

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Friday, September 02, 2011

Doctor Who: The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood

Ah, The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood - I had such high hopes for you prior to broadcast. And you took those hopes and quite simply pissed them away. Because this two part story is, for me, the worst Eleventh Doctor story and the worst Silurian story. Yep, this one is, for me, worse than Warriors of the Deep.

There are two key reasons for this bold statement. The first is that this one is simply too long. The first episode, while aspiring to be atmospheric, is actually just elongated padding. There’s no point in basing your episode around a slow build up to the monster when we already know who the monsters are going to be. It’s a bit like one of those episodes of the old series that would be called something “…of the Daleks”, and then the cliff-hanger to the episode would be the supposed surprise of the Daleks being in it. The second episode is largely boring until the end when Rory is killed for the first time – but even that flash of genius seems bolted on for no real reason. Yeah, the Eleventh Doctor has other ropey stories. But at least Victory of the Daleks (Behold the menace of the fat Daleks!) and The Curse of the Black Spot have the decency to be half the length.

Then there’s the Silurians. Anyone who hasn’t been enthralled by the superb Doctor Who and the Silurians probably sat through this edition of the show wondering what all the fuss is about. Here, they are nothing more than the monster of the week determined to plough through as many monster related clichés as possible. Oh look, there’s the misguided scientist. The angry warrior. The kindly, wise old leader. Is this really Doctor Who or have I stumbled into an unusually half-arsed episode of Star Trek?

Yeah, there are other problems – including the script, which seems to turn plot holes and lapses of logic into an art form. I mean, who would honestly have the slightly chippy kissogram Amy Pond negotiating a peace deal between humanity and the Silurians? And this is probably Smith’s worst performance – although he’s not aided by a script that expects him to use the phrase “squeaky bum time” with a straight face. But what I really resent here is the wasted opportunity to do something interesting with the Silurians – who are genuinely one of the most striking of the Doctor’s adversaries. Every other returning monster to the new series has been reinvented in some way. The Silurians are just made blander than bland in this instalment.

If you want to see a decent modern interpretation of the Silurians, I’d recommend A Good Man Goes To War. Seriously, the limited screen time afforded to just one of that species in that episode does far more for that race than the whole of this two part misfire.

And that’s it for the clunkers. For the next five weeks they’ll be reviews of new Doctor Who stories – and here’s hoping that none of those episodes end up in the Clunkers categories. And after that? Well, I have an idea for another series of Who related posts to bridge the gap between The Wedding of River Song and the Christmas Special… But we’ll have to wait and see.

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Thursday, September 01, 2011

Idiot of the Day

Apparently, atheists are so dangerous that they need to be on a register
Internet pastor Mike Stahl has come up with an interesting idea to assist Christians in day-to-day life. According to Stahl, the nation should set up an “Atheist Registry” in order to provide an updated list of anyone who is a “self-proclaimed atheist,” just as you would do for people convicted of sex crimes or associated with terrorist groups.

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Although Stahl’s registry would only have a name and perhaps picture of the avowed, publicly declared atheist, and no physical address, he also believes that knowing who are the atheists in your neighborhood could lead to a wonderful opportunity to try and convert, too!
Yeah, put me on a registry for not believing in a mythical sky fairy and then come and try to convert me. See how well that goes!

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