politics – Page 8 – The Daily Opinion

News in Briefs 27/05/12

The heat is on, literally, and quite frankly I can’t stand it. That’s why it took me a while to write this column without making use of the overused four-letter word on a repeated basis. I feel quite calm at the moment so I’m giving it a try. Anyway, the saving grace is that I’m not short of material to write about this week.

Political Oops of the Week

This week it’s all about the sport of football, and that’s not just because the European Championships are already upon us. We all know that Sepp Blatter is one of the most corrupt individuals in the world. I’m not going to act like a corrupt official is anything new, but what is shocking is just how corrupt and how biased he is. At least world governments try to hide it to some degree.

This week Sepp Blatter came out and said this: “Football can be a tragedy when you go to penalty kicks… Football should not go to one to one. When it goes to penalty kicks football loses its essence.” Fair enough, he’s voicing his opinion. But he lacks consistency as he said this about the World Cup in 2010: “If there is no winner at the end of 90 minutes of play, we would proceed directly to penalty kicks.”

And what’s more, he made things even worse by appointing a team headed by Franz Beckenbauer to come up with an alternative. Yes, that same figure who’s also the honorary president of Bayern Munich. The same team that just lost on penalties to the Premier League team that finished in sixth. Sometimes I wish that he would just come out and say that he hates English teams.

We can even go back to the decision to hold the 2018 World Cup in Russia. That was a good decision to hold it in one of the most racist countries in the world. Just look at the European Championships, only 3,000 England fans are travelling and some of the players have even told their relatives to stay at home due to their fears of racist attacks.

The Painful…

This week it’s the sun, that dodgy English summer. This is going to be quite controversial as many people seem to love the sun, but why is this such big news? Every year the news is filled with comparisons to other hot countries to show how we are hotter than them. I’m sure those in paradise are wishing that they were surrounded by a group of topless chavs in Swindon because of a slightly overcast day. And that brings me to my next point. What is it with British people and taking their shirts off when the weather turns like this? It’s made even worse as it’s always the fatties and the drug addicts who have to do it.

I can already hear your silent protests that our English summer allows you to have fun outside. Yes, it does allow you to have fun outside, but have you ever tried sleeping at night in this heat? You could sleep in a museum exhibition named ‘The Arctic Wasteland’ and you would still be watching as your testicles dissolve into a gloopy mess. This lack of sleep leads people to becoming hot and bothered, before they finally snap and everyone is praying that the rain and the clouds will come. It happens every year, and quite frankly I’m tired of it.

Summer 2012 — Filled with rain, storms, and an ice cream truck strike!

…And the Pointless

This week a Doncaster vicar came under investigation because he apparently used bad language on Facebook! Oh no! The sad thing is that some sad parasite actually reported him to…well everybody. They sent messages to the Bishop of Sheffield, the Bishop of Doncaster, the Right Reverend Peter Burrows, and a whole host of other figures. Of course, this coward decided to remain anonymous so everybody else wouldn’t know how much of a stain on the underwear of society they really are.

This actually made the news as well. What shocks me is how some people are so out of touch that they think that vicars don’t swear and vicars are beacons of morality when they are away from work. We all do it, your mother does it, you do it, David Cameron does it, and, evidently, he does it. The fact that this was made into a major issue just goes to show that either the news is getting boring or more and more people need to find a surgeon to get those metal rods out of their rectal tunnels. I just hope this Doncaster vicar walks free.

The So Outrageous That It’s Borderline Hilarious

The Highland Council’s Independent Group is concerned about low voter turnouts in the recent council elections. That’s understandable, I mean recent years have shown that it doesn’t matter if the people don’t like something because it will happen anyway. It sort of makes voting a little pointless, does it not? But it’s also important to mention that Scottish councils use the Single Transferable Vote (STV) system. This basically means that voters rank the candidates in their order of preference. Pretty simple, right?

Not according to this group who are claiming that people didn’t vote because the system is too complicated. Strangely enough, this was supposedly one of the reasons why people voted against the Alternative Voting system last year. But what strikes me is how can people find STV complicated? How can people be so stupid that they don’t understand such a basic system?

I would be spending less time complaining about the amount of people voting and more time complaining about a dire education system, if this is true. Of course, it could be just because people are disillusioned with politics, but if it’s true then George Bush would be considered a frickin’ genius if he lived in this country.

So maybe next week won’t be so bleak and irritating after all…

A Question of Sport Sponsorship

On Saturday 19 May, at 11.30am (or thereabouts), the Olympic Flame was borne down the central street of Falmouth, a small but busy student town in Cornwall. The golden torch was held aloft by Gavin Cattle, captain of Cornwall’s only professional rugby team, the Cornish Pirates. The street was lined both sides with excited spectators; police officers had their work cut out just trying to keep people out of the path of approaching vehicles. The air of anticipation was palpable, yet restrained, as we Brits are wont to be.

With half a dozen others I watched the proceedings from the first-floor window of a flat on the main street, which afforded front-row seats, as it were. (Well, front row and up a bit. You could say we were in the Gods, in fact. I’m sure the original Olympians would have approved.) I had been feeling cynical about the Olympics (cynical? As a Londoner, I’ve been positively dreading it), but sitting here, looking out at the smiling faces in the sunshine, I had to grudgingly admit to feeling a little bit excited – feeling as though I were about to witness history.

The Olympic torch was scheduled to pass by our window at 11am, but (as is common with such events) it turned up a little later than expected. It probably could have reached us a good few minutes earlier, however, had Mr Cattle not been preceded by the Games’ ridiculous sponsorship entourage, comprising The Coca Cola Bus (replete with weary employees waving half-heartedly and shouting “Woo!”), the Samsung wagon, the BMW contingent, the Lloyds TSB truck, and several other vehicles marked simply “London 2012”, each bearing their own little glut of grinning, waving who-are-theys. The torch-bearer, bless ‘im, bringing up the rear, was almost an anticlimax by comparison.

My earlier cynicism was back. I could’ve sworn the Olympics was supposed to celebrate athletic excellence, not capitalist might…? We had gathered at this window to watch one of 8,000 honoured members of the British public take part in the Torch Relay, which was meant to be a way of saying that it is Britain, not just London, that is hosting the 2012 Olympics. To be blunt, what the blue hell does Coke have to do with that?!

I realise the Games is a massive event and that the money to pay for it has to come from somewhere, but these huge displays of corporate wallop are tacky and embarrassing. One of my friends pointed out that the small British flags being handed out during the procession had Samsung branding on the reverse, and opined that America, for example, would never dare deface its own flag in the name of corporate sponsorship. (The Cornish flags among the crowds were unadorned, by the way.) I’m not particularly patriotic, but I must admit, my friend had a point. However, as the Olympic Games is itself a brand (we all know the five rings logo), I doubt that we’ll ever see a return to Olympics free from intrusive corporate content. Perhaps I should just be glad that the money still exists to fund the Games. I just wish that the sponsors could be a bit more… restrained.

It’s time to end the drug war

According to a fairly recent Gallup poll, 50% of Americans are now in favor of legalising marijuana, a number that is up from the 12% that supported legalisation back in 1969. A growing number of Americans are also in favour of decriminalising the simple possession of all illegal drugs. Growing support for the legalisation of marijuana is so wide in fact, that support now includes endorsements from some very unlikely public figures. It’s hard to believe, but television evangelist Pat Robertson has come out not only in favor of decriminalisation, but for all out legalisation. “Regulate it like alcohol”, he says emphatically. Indeed, we are living in changing times, for it is clear that we are witnessing a monumental sea change in public opinion that has expanded exponentially beyond that of young liberals and libertarians. The common denominator has become such: End the drug war!

Marijuana possession is a victimless crime wherein the only real solution, both economically and morally speaking, is to tax and regulate it as we would any other commodity. We need substance abuse treatment rather than incarceration. Many people of sensible means now recognise the war on drugs for what it has become: a drain on society both socially and fiscally. In this time of budget cuts and furloughs, it is time for us to take another look at how we deal with drug use and abuse amongst otherwise law abiding citizens. The costs have simply become too onerous a burden for cash strapped states to endure. Many people want to know why we continue to dump so much time and money into a war that has clearly failed to achieve its objective.

Whilst we have witnessed a sea change in public opinion in the United States, many of our elected government officials do not appear to mirror the needs and interests of their own constituents. President Barack Obama and Vice President Joseph Biden recently came out against the decriminalisation of drug possession while attending the sixth annual Summit of the Americas that was held in Cartagena, Columbia in April. When questioned on the current status of the drug war, President Obama replied: “I, personally, and my administration’s position is that legalisation is not the answer.” Several South American leaders, however, have highlighted the need for a return to a more pragmatic approach in dealing with drug use and abuse by declaring the need for drug decriminalisation. This is the type of enlightened thinking that harbours the potential to usher in an era which has long been overdue. It is time to alleviate some of the pressure that has been foisted upon our neighbors and friends that live and die in many of the war torn nation states that lie directly south of the American border. They have quite clearly had enough of what’s not working, and we should support them in this new endeavour to curb the violence that has claimed so many lives.

Though this sea change may appear to be a new and novel idea, there used to exist a time in pre-prohibition America where one could openly patronise opium and tea dens, free of legal and moral retribution. Amazingly, the sky did not fall and though there were addicts, no plague of mass indoctrination to the counter drug culture was exhibited. This little known history disavows the prohibitionists’ argument at its core, for legalisation does not equate with higher consumption. It didn’t then and it doesn’t now. We only need to look to the likes of Portugal, where all drugs were decriminalised 11 years ago. As a result of this bold move, drug abuse in now down by half. That’s a fact and no one can dispute it.

We have witnessed a direct correlation with the proliferation of the industrial prison complex industry in conjunction with the dawn of the modern drug war. Law enforcement can no longer focus solely on what’s important: public safety. What the people have been subjected to is a stark increase in violent crime, human rights abuses, and blight in many of America’s impoverished neighbourhoods and beyond. One in 10 African American men in their 30s is incarcerated on any given day. Blacks and Latinos account for three-fourths of those imprisoned for drug related offenses. Arrests for drug offenses have increased exponentially since 1980, but I and everyone else knew that already. All that we need to do is to take a look around and there lies the truth in bold neon lights.

I had the pleasure of engaging in a thought provoking conversation with an acquaintance of mine recently. We talked mostly about violent crime, the proliferation of gun homicides, and the seemingly never ending dilemma of violence in our cities. In describing the neighbourhood that he grew up in, he mentioned how there only used to be about one shooting a month, as opposed to what we are now witnessing on the nightly news. The murder rate has statistically become closer to almost one a day in some cities like New Orleans. “It just never used to be this bad; there used to be more black owned businesses, and now we just have all of this shooting going on all around us all of the time; this is because of the drug war”, he stated emphatically. My acquaintance is not a criminologist (nor am I), nor is he a statistician; he doesn’t need to be. He has lived and grown up in the lower ninth ward of New Orleans for all of the 50+ years that he has inhibited this green earth. He has witnessed firsthand the war on drugs, therefore I believe him when he tells me that he knows what he’s talking about.

So while the failed experiment of alcohol prohibition has hopefully been left to the dustbins of historical reference, the idea of prohibition itself has not officially been dealt its final death blow, for it continues to proliferate despite the massive change in public opinion. It is easy to naively assume, however, that we are moving ever more close to achieving the objective of a post-prohibitionist world, for public has made it clear what the trajectory of the 21^st century should entail. Though we have witnessed many signs of hope that appear on the surface to indicate that we are in fact moving ever closer to the decriminalisation of drug possession, it is clear that the opposing forces are as strong and as determined as ever. As of 2012, 16 states, along with the District of Columbia, have legalised medical marijuana and 14 states across the county have decriminalised the simple possession of small amounts of cannabis.

At the federal level, a very different approach has been taking place under the Obama administration. Thus far, there have been more than 100 federal raids on medical marijuana dispensaries across the country, an impressive track record that makes the efforts of Obama’s predecessor pale in comparison. So while the public perception of the war on drugs continues to evolve, it appears that there are two very distinctive and opposing forces currently at work. In the meantime, gross injustices continue to be foisted upon many of our nation’s poor and un-connected in what appears to be a feckless war with no end.

America has the highest incarceration in the world, beating out such countries as Iran, China, and Germany. Among the 50 states, Louisiana is ranked at number one, with the highest incarceration rate in the United States, and thus the world. This shocking statistic seems to coincide with the observations of my acquaintance from the lower ninth ward, for he lives in one of the most dangerous places in the world where it is an exception, rather than the rule, not to have a brush with the law. The blight in some neighbourhoods that has resulted is simply unfathomable in a country that claims to be as advanced as ours. Something clearly has gone wrong, for instead of progressing into the 21^st century with dignity, it is clear that in many ways we continue to revert backwards. The drug war is largely responsible for this disparity; it’s time that we end it once and for all.

Student Loan Debt, Insert Sarcastic Slow Clap Here

We all remember the student protests and everything else that came with the government’s decision to boost tuition fees up to £9,000 a year. And the Liberal Democrats are paying for most of it. But there was something that was forgotten in the debate over education: the government promised that these additional costs to the state would peak at about £50bn in 2030.

Well that may have been a little bit of a miscalculation/error/blatant lie as a new study by Andrew McGettigan, for the Intergenerational Foundation, has revealed that it could be around the £100bn mark instead. And he did this by measuring the potential impact of allowing students to pay back only if they are earning at least £21,000 a year.

If this is true – which at the moment it looks like it’s turning out to be – then we can easily see why. Let’s look at why there are so many people going to university in the first place. This originally started a few years ago when the Labour Party thought it would be a good idea to get around 50% of all British teenagers into university. So they did that. But when the economic situation deteriorated they realised that allowing so many students to enter university at £3,000 a year wasn’t really that sustainable anymore as universities generally can’t afford to take on that many students at that level whilst sustaining themselves.

So the latest government took a little bit of a u-turn and decided to let universities charge up to £9,000 a year; with only a few universities with special consideration being allowed to charge the full price. So what happened? Inevitably, the main universities charged the full amount, but then everybody decided to follow and “special consideration” seemed to melt away like recent voter turnouts. Ok, that didn’t go to plan. That then led to a 9% reduction in the number of people applying to university on the next application cycle.

But the problem is they have also raised the level at which students have to start paying back their £9,000 a year student loan, to £21,000. This would be fine if economic times were great and people were riding to work on golden horses, but that’s not the case. So now the government is lending out £9,000 a year to students who won’t be able to ever pay back that loan.

Let’s look at the facts. £9,000 a year + maintenance loans for many = £27,000 minimum for the minority of students who didn’t need maintenance loans. Students need to have a job paying £21,000 a year in order to start paying back their student loan. Now take a look at the starter jobs these days. Those jobs are offering salaries of between £16,000 and £18,000, most of the time. So the student would have to remain in that job for quite a few years before hitting that £21,000 threshold.

The government now has to wait for their loan.

Another problem, though, is that many students have been misled. They are taking degrees that are completely worthless. And, yes, media studies is a worthless degree, and no I don’t care about which teacher made themselves a success from it, they are in the tiny minority. Those degrees won’t get them jobs. And that’s not all, even those students who are doing a degree that happens to be worth a damn have been misled as they believe that a degree warrants them a job. This means they will have absolutely zero experience as they are thinking that they are going to swagger in the door and kick that poor uneducated, working class buffoon out.

I read a BBC report last year that talked about how many employers find that graduates are not ready for the real world of work and can’t even do basic things. That sort of thing is rife, and it’s precisely why many graduates are out of work. Employers are rarely interested in students with a degree and little experience. A degree is a piece of paper, and not a lot else.

The unemployment rate for young people in this country is disgraceful, and many of them are graduates. So how does the government think it’s going to get its money back anytime soon? The economic crisis isn’t going to fix itself, and developments in the Eurozone only look to be making things worse. The answer is that the government won’t be getting its money back at all. Instead, the burden will be shifted back to the public, so now you’ve just increased the deficit due to your pathetic handling of the student loan situation.

It makes me wonder why they just didn’t keep university funding up and then leave the fees alone instead. Or, alternatively, they could have just stopped promoting the idea that every teenager should go to university. That’s nothing but a blind effort to get these young people off of the unemployment figures. The lower the figures the better the political situation for the government. You have to pity the saps who fell for it, though, don’t you?

What do you think about the current situation with university education, and how do you think they should have gone about it?

A Measure of Confusion

The increasing panic to get the UK – or at the very least London – looking spruced and respectable in time for the Olympics has shown itself in the somewhat unexpected form of Lord Howe of Aberavon (former Foreign Secretary under our own rust-topped Iron Lady of the 80s, Maggie Thatcher), as he demanded that the UK stop “dithering” and make the full switch from the imperial to the metric system of measurement before our Continental guests come over and laugh at us.

In a rant worthy of Enoch Powell (well, almost), Lord Howe claimed that the UK’s reluctance to pick one system over the other and stick to it “increases cost, confuses shoppers, leads to serious misunderstandings, causes accidents, confuses our children’s education and, quite bluntly, puts us all to shame.”

Aside from the laughable irony of a Lord calling for Britain to cast off the shackles of the Empire, I think that perhaps Howe is overreacting. I grew up with both systems and, whilst I couldn’t immediately tell you how many gallons to the litre (or even how many pints to the gallon, if I’m honest), I know well enough the measurements I need to use regularly and I can look up the ones I don’t (mille grazie, Google). Metric has been gradually replacing Imperial without children coming home from school in floods of tears, and presumably it will continue to do so until we’re all working exclusively in units of ten. If things have been happening organically and with minimal trauma, why try to push through a change now?

As a member of Howe’s “rudderless and bewildered majority”, floundering helplessly in a sea of grams and ounces, I would also call into question the wisdom of attempting to rush such a huge change through in time for the Olympics – if this were to happen, I imagine that foreign visitors really would see a lot of confused and befuddled Brits. Personally, the uncertainty over whether London’s transport network will be able to cope with the massive influx of humans is more than enough to be worrying about at this late stage (particularly if you’re a regular commuter into the capital). Add to that the allegation that someone recently challenged the security of the Olympic site by smuggling a fake bomb in, and I doubt that complaints over the serving of pints vs half-litres will even make the Oddly Enough column. It’s too big an undertaking to attempt in too little time. It’d be like deciding to repaint the kitchen an hour before the dinner-party.

Home Office minister Lord Henley, who was involved in the recent debate over the use of these two systems, was quoted as saying that he wasn’t convinced that the British public saw any real need to change the status quo. I would go further and suggest that the British public doesn’t even care.

The image of an esteemed Life Peer and experienced politician worrying that smug visitors from the mainland will be wandering around London this summer, discussing the failings of our measurement system in hushed tones behind cupped hands, is bizarre and ridiculous. Moreover, Howe’s assertion that our dual system will confuse visitors is nothing short of offensive.

Perhaps Lord Howe’s zeal is fuelled solely by a selfless desire to help strangers; more likely, though, his national pride is the driving force (another spot of irony, there).

Or maybe he just objects on aesthetic grounds to those rulers that have inches up one edge and centimetres down the other.

The Multimillion Pound Art Sale and the Joke that is Contemporary Art

If you take a look at the picture I have provided you just below this paragraph then what would you say about this example of contemporary art? Painted by an eight-year-old, bland and boring, basic and amateurish? I would say all of those things, but what would you say if I told you that someone paid £53.8m for it?

Red, Orange, Yellow — The 'masterpiece' on show.

It’s no joke; somebody broke the record for the highest price ever paid for a piece of contemporary art at auction.

The piece itself was painted by Mark Rothko and is entitled “Orange, Red, Yellow”. And if you look at some of his other work then you will discover that he has made a fortune on the same idea. This is just different shades of colour on a canvas in quite frankly basic and pathetic shapes.

When I want to see art I want to see skill. And that’s what one of the dictionary definitions of art is: “Skilled.” Leonardo Da Vinci, Picasso, Cezanne, Botticelli, all of these were skilled at what they did. This is an insult to art and this is precisely why many people believe that contemporary art is utter trash. I’m one of these people and I just hope that whoever paid for this realises how stupid he is.

And I know that fans of this are going to try and put people off with their elitist rhetoric about how some people are too stupid to see the true meaning in it. But you can find meanings in anything if you like, it doesn’t make the item you are taking a meaning from art, though.

Take a stereotypical yellow, number two test pencil, with eraser, and here is my meaning for it:

“This pencil demonstrates the transitioning of the past to the modern day as this tool has been transformed from the creative purposes it was once instilled with to the rigid structuring of modern day life. The point is the crowning glory of what can symbolise the pointlessness of the modern educational system and the stifling of creative thought. And, yet, at the same time, the fact that it creates these feelings is a demonstration of artistic genius in itself.”

I could go on, but it demonstrates that you can see a meaning in even the most mundane things.

I’ve also noticed something else quite interesting as well. If we look back to the past, and I mean centuries prior to this one, the skilled were praised. The skilled were praised in a society that was rather primitive. And those skilled artists of today are still incredibly difficult to replicate in our modern age, without the aid of computers. But as we have advanced throughout the ages we have actually opted for more primitive forms of art; and this is what we call contemporary art.

The only thing that is skilled here is the fact that Mark Rothko managed to convince someone to pay that much for something that was most likely painted within a day.

This is nothing but a few colours splashed on to the page in a childlike manner. As we advance further, are artists just going to debase themselves further in a sad attempt to seem different?

That’s something that has always bothered me about the art industry. They are so desperate to move away from mainstream society that they are willing to damage their own art because of it.

This further enhances my view that contemporary art is based off of nothing but connections and who has the most cash. Granted, to an extent, it was always like this. But no artist can succeed with things like this without having powerful and influential connections and lots of money to do the talking.