politics » Cai Wingfield

Look at that. You can see fetid cogs in his tiny brain grinding against each other, spraying his cryptoreligious, sub-Victorian horseshit propaganda across the nation's children.

If those unwealthy masses want to learn something, they can damn well learn some family values. Look at them, breeding and scrounging. Single mothers and fags — the buck of every problem in this Broken Britain stops with them. Maybe if we can get their birth rate down they'll stop rioting, get docile and let us keep the money we worked hard to earn, dammit. That's what a conservative government ought to do. Protect the interests of those which make this country great.

Apparently there are no bounds on the lack of respect I have for this corrupt party.

This is a bit of an old video (the "decade" in question is the one before this one) but you should still watch it. I LOVE this guy.

[link if the embed doesn't work]

You should go watch all his videos on the TED site.

I was talking to a couple of friends of mine about politics the other day. The conversation ended in a disagreement about whether or not one ought to adhere to principles of cultural relativism. That is, whether it is fair or legitimate to criticise the practices of members of another culture from the inescapable perspectives of ones own. I was arguing against cultural relativism but in the course of the discussion some arguments were raised which I hadn't considered before and which made me stop and reconsider my position.

My purpose in writing this is partially in order to get my thoughts in order and partly in the hope that the discussion can continue, 'cause it's one that interests me. I wish to wear my ignorance of many relevant topics on my sleeve and, as always, I'm completely open to the prospect of changing my mind.

My feelings were that open criticism of other cultures should be permissible. I felt that if we had carefully examined our own reasoning and motives, we ought to be allowed to criticise the practices of others, even if we understood that those practices may be the product of another culture and its historical context.
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The Guardian reports:

The Strasbourg court ruled it was unlawful for police to use the powers, under section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000, to stop and search people without needing any grounds for suspicion.

The widely-drawn ruling said that not only the use of the counter-terror powers, but also the way they were authorised, were "neither sufficiently circumscribed, nor subject to adequate legal safeguards against abuse".

Vindicated!

India has apparently legalised homosexual relations. Progressive! You should read about it over at Koel's blog, because she's put the time into thinking about it, and knows a lot more about the situation than I do.

Dear Jacqui.

It is clear from all independent observers that the UK government don't really understand the technological developments of the last 6 or 7 years.

Those who don't want to be tracked in their communications can EASILY avoid it. This maximises false-positives on human and automated telecommunication surveillance. Ever heard of RSA? It really is a truly marvellous piece of mathematics, you might want to check out sometime. Wikipedia (heard of that?) has a good introduction here. Look at this one too. This, too. Isn't technology fascinating?

I hear many modern universities teach courses in computers and technology, so there's probably a lot of fairly knowledgeable people around for you to talk to, if you felt so inclined. Oh, the stories they could tell you!

As a non-terrorist, I'm afraid you have no right to know who I associate with.

Emergency powers!

Faith Schools Free to Preach Against Homosexuality

Oh fucking hell. The Guardian writes:

[Sir Alasdair] Macdonald said: "What we're trying to do, and I accept it's difficult, is find a balance between young people having an entitlement to knowledge, facts, information but where schools, particularly schools with a particular faith interest or other disposition, also have a right to put that in context of their particular institution. "

Why?

Think about that — a balance between young people having an entitlement to knowledge, and an institution's particular faith interests. This is just so irresponsible.

Berlin Rejects Religious Lessons

That was fairly close...

BBC News writes:

A referendum in Germany has failed to give children a choice between classes in secular ethics or religion. ... Opponents said that any changes to the curriculum would be divisive.

Sanity is preserved.

Referendum Pits Ethics against Religion

What a beautifully irony-laced headline from Spiegel Online International.

From the article:

Since 2006, ethics has been a compulsory subject for all high school students in Germany's capital city, while religion is an optional course. The "Pro Reli" campaign wants to change those rules so that pupils would have to choose between ethics and a faith-based religion class. Those classes would be strictly divided along religious lines, with Protestants, Catholics and Muslims being taught separately.

I actually can't believe this. It's like a piece of science fiction.

As the title suggests, this short article is about faith schools, and why they're a really bad idea.

To begin with, I'm going to have to make some assumptions. I don't want to have to argue everything through from first principles, so let me first detail my starting point. I think I'll need just three ideological presuppositions to argue my case. First, pluralism is good. By this I mean that we should have some respect and tolerance for other cultures and opinions. Notice here that I don't mean that all cultures and opinions are equally valid. In fact, this is my second assumption — cultural relativism is bad. By this I mean that no matter how strongly a person or group of people believe something, that doesn't make it true. Some things really are universally and objectively wrong. I'm sure we can all agree that genital mutilation and smacking children are not only wrong, but that people who disagree with us are actually incorrect, by some objective metric. If we don't submit this point, then right from the start anything goes. Rape, murder, anything. If rape is wrong, it's wrong objectively. This second assumption may seem to be in tension with the first, but I don't think it has to be. We can find the point of agreement by saying that everyone's entitled to their opinion, but that we don't have to take them all seriously; though we certainly shouldn't be dogmatic about which ones we do and don't. Finally, I'm going to assume that needless human suffering should be avoided. Hopefully this maxim won't require me to defend it. I should also point out that I'm speaking as a British citizen here, so my knowledge and analysis relate to faith schools as governed by UK law.

I'm basically going to address three things in this essay. I'm going to detail what I think's wrong with faith schools; outline some criticisms. I'm going to try to look at arguments put forward in defence of faith schools, and dismantle them. Then I'll try and come up with some suggestions about what should happen.
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Look at that.

Cultural Relativism and Technology

UK stop and search powers are illegal

Dear Jacqui

Faith Schools: Why They're a Really Bad Idea

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