A word about the Millibands

Irrelevant.

There, that's a good word for them. Now I can address something almost as absurd as the Millibands (but perhaps not as absurd as the unions appointing Brother Ed to head their political party).

Apparently the BBC has commissioned a survey about how its programmes portray people of a homosexual disposition. My first reaction is "why"? Why should a broadcaster think it necessary to portray people of any sexual tastes in any particular way? The whole concept strikes me as bizarre. Allow me to let them into a secret. Homosexual people are just like heterosexual people except in their choice of bedroom partner. There are happy ones and sad ones, friendly ones and icy ones, sociable ones and loners, placid ones and violent ones, some can sing in tune while others can't, excellent sports players and hopelessly uncoordinated specimens, clever ones and thick ones, loud ones and quiet ones, law abiding ones and mass murderers. Find a human character trait and you will find homosexuals who have it. You see, sexuality is not character it is only one facet of character.

How does the BBC portray heterosexuals? That's easy to answer. It doesn't portray heterosexuals as such, it portrays people of widely different character who happen to be heterosexual. Their sexuality doesn't get a mention because no one cares (or even thinks about) it. No one would think of asking whether heterosexuals are portrayed positively or negatively in BBC dramas because they are not portrayed. People are portrayed. They are portrayed as kind or unkind, intelligent or stupid, fit or unfit; they are portrayed as each drama requires in order to tell the story.

There will always be a problem in dramas portraying minorities of any particular ilk because drama requires exaggeration. Happy couples must be that little bit more happy than they ever would be in real life otherwise they would appear ordinary rather than happy. Misery must be constant or it will risk losing impact with the audience. After all, real life is pretty drab and no one will be entertained by thirty or sixty minnutes of actors being drab. Drama has to catch the attention of the audience and that necessarily requires little foibles to be magnified and specific traits to be dominant features of the character.

It is said that the survey concluded that "lesbian, gay and bisexual people wanted to see more authentic depictions of their lives". What does that mean? More scenes of people doing the washing up, struggling to pair socks after doing the weekly laundry or waiting two minutes for someone to answer the door rather than four seconds? Strictly Come Dancing to be cancelled and replaced by Strictly Come Fisting?

Obviously one would have to know what questions were asked in order to know how that conclusion was formed but it seems to be inevitable that the expressed desire could never be met because of the need to exaggerate for dramatic effect. The conclusion, as expressed in the quote I have just given, suggests that the true conclusion is somewhat different. I would suggest that it would be more accurate to say "lesbian, gay and bisexual people don't like their sexuality being portrayed predominantly by camp and promiscuous stereotypes". That's fair enough and allows the BBC to save a lot of money by not employing hugely expensive artistes like Graham Norton and Dale Winton to mince all over the country's Saturday evenings. But it is nothing but a dream if it is really a desire to avoid exaggeration of a trait that is central to the character being portrayed.

Of course the biggest error the BBC makes is to assume that there is such a thing as a standard opinion held by homosexuals, still less that they can have a shared view of how persons of their sexuality should be portrayed on screen. I might be wrong because I don't have inside knowledge, but my guess is that the vast majority of them just want to be treated as people and will see exaggerated portrayals as necessary dramatic devices rather than insults.

The thing that tickled me most in the report of the survey was a quote attributed to the head of a pressure group called Stonewall which claims to have the right to speak on behalf of homosexuals. He is reported as saying this about BBC programmes: "it's right that everyone in modern Britain should be reflected in its output". How refreshing it is to hear the head of a special interest group insisting that those who condemn the activities of his group should be given airtime by the BBC. Religious fundamentalists who believe homosexual activity to be so wicked that it should be outlawed can now expect to be portrayed in a positive light by the BBC and, indeed, by Stonewall. No? Why not? It's what he said. And I would guess that the numbers holding those fundamentalist views aren't much different from the numbers of a homosexual inclination.

That's the problem with picking on a minority interest and treating it as something worthy of special treatment. Whether it is sexual proclivity, pigmentation, physical infirmity or any other of the selected minorities chosen for special treatment by the self-proclaimed "progressive" elite, it is impossible to make a principled stand for special treatment for one minority without extending the same privilege to others. Exclude others and you undermine the case for your own cause. There is an unassailable case for equal treatment but no case for special treatment

Incidentally, this exercise is a classic illustration of how tax-funded spending can be cut without necessarily affecting the delivery of "front-line services". If the BBC is fed less money it can stop wasting cash on commissioning idiotic surveys, it can abandon the backroom teams dedicated to ensuring "diversity" in its programme output and thereby save a packet. I wouldn't mind betting a packet (of pork scratchings) on it also having a department dedicated to reducing its "carbon footprint". That can go too. More on that another day.

Further apologies for absence

It appears it wasn't a stroke, just an inability to use the old pins properly due to lack of oomph in the old ticker (apparently exacerbated by the most recent bout of cellulitis, which was itself in part the result of lack of cardiac oomph). Quite why that should also cause me to be unable to concentrate for long enough to write my usual drivel will remain a mystery until the trump of doom. But there it is.

Long brisk walks to get the pump working a little harder seem to have had an effect on what I laughably call my brain and next month's appointment with a quack and a balloon on a tube might improve things further.

Recovery is now sufficient to allow for a further piece of twaddle, which will appear shortly.

The graduate tax might be rather cunning

There have been renewed mutterings over the last few days that an additional income tax might be levied on university graduates. It's all rather vague at the moment, presumably because it is a novel idea to introduce an income tax surcharge for one group of people so the government is letting out little hints in order to see what reaction they receive. Obviously the usual suspects are against it - trades unions, Labour politicians, quangocrats and university employees. The proposal could be to expand university places by fifty percent and these members of the awkward squad would condemn it for not being sixty percent, so we needn't take much notice of them ... unless they support their objections with sound reasoning.

As I understand the present system students are required to pay tuition fees each year and to provide for their living costs. Indeed I remember having a pupil about twelve to fifteen years ago who had gone through university and the Bar course under that system and left with debts approaching £40,000. It is the spectre of young people being saddled with hefty liabilities that invites examination of alternatives. Now, it shouldn't be thought that all students incur big debts, many go to their local university and live at home, many receive grants, scholarships or bursaries to help defray the costs; nonetheless with the student contribution to annual tuition fees currently set in excess of £3,000 (it's said to be a maximum, ha ha ha) that's still the best part of ten grand for a three year course.

The massive expansion of the university sector over the last fifteen years has provided the benefit of call centre workers having some specialist knowledge of media, fashion and football but it has also meant that the old system of grants for those without the means to pay became unaffordable. When the last government increased the tuition fee contribution they consistently justified their position by arguing that graduates earn more on average than non-graduates. That argument only goes so far because there are only so many jobs for which a university degree is actually necessary (or, at least, of significant advantage). Increasing the number of graduates does not increase the number of graduate jobs. It might allow someone to join a business one rung up the ladder but the difference in lifetime earnings for someone in manufacturing or retail cannot be calculated. I know graduates working in retail who did join a rung or two up the ladder but further promotion depended on experience so by the time they reached the third or fourth rung they were on a par with their non-graduate contemporaries. They had earned a little more for a few years while their colleagues had been earning for the three years they had incurred debts.

Essentially the same argument seems to be being put forward by the current government but in a slightly different way. The clearest hint given of current thinking was by David Willetts last weekend who is reported as having used the phrase "higher contribution to the benefits of the university education they have received". That is deliberately vague but it has been interpreted by some as the graduate tax expounded by Vince Cable a few weeks ago (reported here). Cable's proposal was quite wide-ranging and expressly kick-started a debate rather than being a fully formed policy. There is much to be said for it although it's not without its difficulties.

As with so many problems the current government has to address the first observation is that they really shouldn't have to start from here. This is just one more in the long list of utter failures concreted in place by Labour over the last decade to try to buy votes regardless of the longer-term consequences. However, we are where we are so the first question should be to ask what is wrong with the current system. I have identified the two main problems already - students leaving university with heavy debts and insufficient graduate jobs being available to provide the added earnings required to pay back those debts. These are both consequences of one thing and one thing alone - political interference. In this instance the same type of interference has caused both, namely the desire to buy votes by promising university education (almost) regardless of the suitability of individual students. It started when John Major turned the Polytechnics into Universities and has been a boast of every government since that young people have better educational opportunities than ever before. All that has really been achieved is the opportunity for many to get worthless pieces of paper when previously they would have had to earn a living for three years.

The ideal situation is that each University should be wholly independent and should sink or swim according to its ability to attract students. If the university is able to raise funds from graduates or businesses or elsewhere to provide bursaries it will have more students, apart from that it's pay-as-you-go. How many would offer courses in Football Studies or Feminist Sociology? I've no idea, if they can get the business that's fine if they can't they'll have to offer something useful.

This will require a massive culture-change, one that will take many years of small steps, weaning the universities off the tax teat and leaving them to "struggle" for students just like the University of Buckingham and BPP University College. I see the graduate tax as a step in the right direction albeit for a somewhat quirky reason. It seems to be the case that current students are not put-off university by the threat of debt, perhaps the lie of higher earnings has not been exposed sufficiently or they think they will be among the lucky few who will secure a true graduate job. It's rather different if there is a long-term tax consequence because liability will not (on the face of it) end when the cost of their tuition has been repaid. Perhaps there will be a long-stop but it is, after all, a tax and we all know they rarely go down, indeed once established the possibility for expanding them has been seized by every government in living memory.

Given the choice of having your fees paid by the taxpayer and then facing an unlimited tax or securing private funding, I know which I would find more attractive. Private funding might involve the need to reimburse part or all of the money but you can be as sure as the Stoke-on-Trent College of Art is now Staffordshire University that it will be cheaper than the new tax.

What is the quirk? Here's where I think Mr Cable and Mr Willetts are being rather clever. As the availability of non-tax bursaries for able students expands so incurring debt will be less attractive. It's not attractive now but lots are in the same boat. so they don't see themselves at a disadvantage compared to their peers. The fewer in that boat, the more they will be forced to examine whether incurring debt is right for them. I see this plan as a back-door way to reduce undergraduate numbers and weed-out pointless courses at third rate institutions, and to do so not by having students sign-up to it but by having them follow a different path. The taxpayer will not lose out because the universities will be funded by government only for those students who volunteer for the tax.

As I say it's one step in the right direction, albeit one that comes at a price for the students caught by it. Sufficient lead time will focus universities' attention on raising funds privately to entice quality students and should mean relatively few choose to commit economic suicide in order to get a fancy certificate signed by the Vice Chancellor, Professor M Mouse.

Still alive, just

Apologies for absence. Same as last year, but the other leg.

True climate threat - Addendum

In the comments to my last piece Mr Choos suggested that the Himalayas cause no problems to the climate so we shouldn't be concerned about buildings. I'm sorry to have to say this but he displays a desperate ignorance of the modern approach to science. Let me take you back to first principles.

In fact, let me start with an example drawn from different fields of study, zoology and modern anthropology. We all know that when lions need food they kill a nice antelope or zebra then tear off lumps of warm flesh and feast until sated. On occasions they might accidentally take a bit while their prey is still alive, but usually they ensure it is dead and the heart has stopped beating because they don't like to drink a lot of claret with their dinner. All aspects of the conduct of lions are to be applauded because they are natural beasts and do what Mother Nature intended they should do. We know she intended them to do it because they do it out of instinct, no television chefs or recipe books lead them from the path of natural righteousness.

Human beings on the other hand are subject to the wicked and unnatural forces of western commerce, a branch of what is mistakenly known as western "culture". Modern anthropology has established that the natural state for human beings is to live exclusively at ground level and eat only vegetative matter. You might have heard some "nature deniers" dispute this fact by reference to human canine teeth which, they claim, evidence a natural inclination to eat meat. Like so many of the denialist smokescreens applied in a vain attempt to deflect from the true path of modern climate science, this is a deliberate misinterpretation of basic facts in order to promote the interests of Big Oil. The true position is that human beings have canine teeth in order to allow them to make holes in babies earlobes prior to the insertion of raffia earrings as a sign of obeisance to Mother Nature and Her most bounteous crop.

We know that this is so because it was tested on computers. To be precise, in 1985 three Commodore 64s were used at the same time in different rooms at the Polytechnic of Mid Sussex and each produced an identical printout saying "yes" when asked "are human canine teeth designed for use in piercing babies' ears (glory be to Gaia)?" They had each been programmed by the Polytechnic's foremost expert in modern anthropology, Miss Camomile Tea, to provide the truth as disclosed in her seminal work Mother Nature's Labia. Of course we could just look the answer up in the book, canine appears in the index between camping and clitoris; but that would only provide partial proof. Those who wish to adopt old-fashioned methodology would assert that it is just Miss Tea's theory (although on this particular point her sister, Rich, helped with the basic analysis). To support her theory it was necessary that computers said the same thing, so she got some computers, set them up to test the hypothesis and they agreed with it. And there you have it, conclusive proof, computers have settled the science.

Having established this fundamental difference between human beings and lions it is necessary to identify the significance and what it tells us about human behaviour. On the one hand we have lions killing with aplomb in order to satisfy their natural instinct for food. On the other hand we have human beings murdering chickens, pigs, sheep, horses and cows in pursuit of an unnatural urge to consume the flesh of other creatures. The difference is that the former is natural and the latter is unnatural. They might seems like the same activities at heart - ending the life of another animal and eating it's flesh - but in fact they are completely different. One complements Gaia's great plan and the other does violence to it. One maintains the natural pattern of things, the other disturbs that pattern and necessarily causes other consequential damage in the process.

So it is also with the natural Himalayas and unnatural human-created buildings. When the Himalayas were developed Mother Nature took rock as only she can and turned it into a perfect form. In doing so she enhanced the balance of nature that, after all, is her job - she is incapable of doing anything else. It cannot be that the Himalayas interrupt the flow of air or cause Earth to rotate otherwise than perfectly because they are natural. The truth is that they steer air to where Mother Nature wants it and they stabilise the rotation of the planet. By definition, because they are natural they help create a perfect system. Human-caused protuberances above ground level, however, are a different kettle of ballgame. They are unnatural because they are the result of conscious decisions of human beings under the influence of Big Oil in comparison to the instinctive reactions of lions under the influence of Mother Nature.

The great Miss Tea has long since passed to the recycling centre in the sky but her book is still available. As far as I know there is now only one source (here).

The true climate threat from industrialisation

Concern has occasionally been expressed in the comments to some of my scribblings about the ability of our planet to sustain many more human beings than are in existence today. Can enough food be grown? Where will they be housed? How will sufficient electricity be generated? Will we run out of plastic for all the additional roll-on deodorants? The questions never end. There is even a body supported by one of the Attenboroughs calling for huge reductions in world population and citing alarming guesses about the dire consequences of allowing lesser beings to have children. Although these modern day eugenicists overstate their case quite pathetically there is a smidgen of truth behind what they say.

Resources are finite and occasionally we run of stuff. At my local fish and chip shop it is usually fish at about ten o'clock on a Friday night. On a larger scale the world has run out of mammoth skins for coats, dodo eggs for omelettes and any number of reptile skins for shoes. So far ingenious humans have found alternatives and we have been able to sustain more and more people in more and more comfort as the years have passed. But it seems to me that along the way we have done far more damage to the earth than has yet been reported. No doubt it is just too frightening a prospect for the powers-that-be to allow it to be known. A recent paper has quantified the damage but it's very technical. Hours of work have resulted in my humble self being able to distill the gist of the problem. Please bear with me while I explain.

Calculations that are central to our understanding of the physical world make certain assumptions - sometimes broad and sometimes narrow. It is, for example, assumed that the planet orbits the sun once a year (or so), that it turns on its axis once a day (or so) and that there are small wobbles in its movement. These assumptions lie behind our calculations of time but, more importantly, they underpin all assessments of how our climate will change.

The problem, recently explained at length in the paper I mentioned, is that human beings have affected each of these assumptions. They have done so by disturbing the weight-balance of Earth and by interrupting natural air flows so as to change both the rate of rotation of the planet and many other things beside. One thing and one thing only that has done this damage - building.

As weight is transferred from on or under the planet's surface in the form of clay, rock, stone, slaked lime, slate and pozzolans into above-ground structures in the form of buildings, the natural balance between that which is at or below ground-level and that which is above ground level is altered.

Artificial height blocks the air that would otherwise flow freely above the ground, pushes it higher and causes it to increase its speed in order to reach its destination at the originally planned time. The buildings themselves act as buffers, slowing the rotation of the planet just as a parachute fired from the back of a fighter jet slows its progress after landing.

In addition removing natural products from the surface thins the crust of the planet and creates man-made hollows that attract water not intended for that place. As time progresses these artificial lakes will erode the surface further because a hollow created anthropogenically is a very different thing from a natural crater. Being a forced tear in the surface of the planet it cannot heal as a natural crater heals and will not retain water because it will not have the natural seal that forms on the surface, of nature's craters. Instead the surface will be weak and flaky and will be eroded quickly by water that settles in it, especially if that water is agitated by human activity such as boating, fishing and ducks-and-drakes.

If that is not already enough, the news gets worse. Where these materials, ripped from the very womb of Gaia, are piled high into monstrous icons to the wickedness that is industrialisation they add weight to the surface, weight for which it was never designed. Albeit it very slowly, ground level at the edges of our largest cities is rising as the weight of the city presses down; but that is a minor problem. Of far greater concern is the effect it has on the balance of Earth's rotation.

It is not by coincidence that we measure rotation by examining what happens to the Greenwich Meridian. When such matters were first thought about it was clear to all that London led the way. Just as a dancer executes a spin by moving the lead shoulder first (the right shoulder for an anti-clockwise spin and the left if turning clockwise) so our planet spins by moving London first. The more weight we add to London, the more difficult it is for the turn to start and the more difficult it is for it to stop at the expected time. Even a minor delay or overshoot can upset the balance of the climate throughout the planet.

Unless we spread weight more evenly and, in particular, reduce the weight of London, we can expect ever more floods, hurricanes, droughts and pestilence because the natural balance will remain disturbed and Mother Nature will take her revenge.

This might seem somewhat far-fetched to those who have not studied the source materials in detail. But if you think this is silly, you should read what people say about carbon dioxide. I urge you to read the detailed paper to which I refer, I think you will be persuaded, you will find it here.

What's wrong with prostitution?

I've met a lot of prostitutes in my time. The first encounter was as a student looking around Leicester Square. It was one of those places I'd seen on the Monopoly board, so I thought I should take a look. I couldn't see what all the fuss was about, a shabby square full of tramps and litter with a big cinema at one side and nothing else of note. As I wandered back towards the tube station, safe in the knowledge I never need go there again, a woman aged about thirty walked towards me, stopped and said "Hello, nice to see you again, how are you?" Unlike today, at the tender age of twenty my brain was not addled by decades of booze. I was able to discern that I'd never seen her before in my life. I was also able to discern a bra strap hanging from the corner of the bag she was carrying. She must have been pretty desperate to think a fat slovenly twenty year-old would have enough cash to make the exercise worthwhile, but there it is, each to their own.

A few years later my encounters were almost daily as I plied my trade in the Magistrates' Courts of central London learning the rudiments of advocacy. As I waited for my tiny case to be called I would witness the old Toms being dragged up from the cells to face the Stipendiary Magistrate they had faced so many times before. The charge of soliciting as a common prostitute would be read out and met by a guilty plea, all the prosecution advocate had to say was "last appearance three days ago, £30 fine" or "three days in a row, £50 fine yesterday".

Stipendiary Magistrates still exist although they are now called "District Judge (Magistrates' Courts)" - actually the apostrophe might be omitted, but it should be there so I'll keep it. It was so much better when they were "Stipes", there's no handy abbreviation for their new title.

They know about prostitution. They know there are women working the streets who will always do it because they can't find anything better. They are at the bottom end of the trade and the fines are a business overhead. Some of them are funding cripplingly expensive drug habits but far more are funding children. It's their job. The Stipes know it's their job and they know they will go out again to earn the money to pay the fine, so they are realistic. For so long as soliciting is a crime they have to enforce the law but they try to do it realistically. London's cheapest and mankiest tarts might charge £20 for a sight of their boobs and a few moments in which their calloused hand is in contact with the punters excited member, then a wipe with a Kleenex and they're off looking for another customer. Five such deals will be required to pay today's standard fine and some nights won't earn them even that.

There's a better class of business to be seen in so-called "massage parlours". The girls have to look appealing or they won't be selected - unlike the street girls who encounter the punters with very little cash those who own the parlours know their customers will have rather more to spare so they must be offered a better quality of product.

More lucrative still are private arrangements which have been made much easier since the advent of the interwebnet. It is more risky for the girls than the massage parlours because they won't even see the punter until he turns up or she gets to his front door. But the money is better so they can turn way from a deal that doesn't feel right and still earn a living. And, of course, there is a top end as in any service industry, expensive girls for rich clients.

The street girls are arrested frequently and given small fines that reflect their circumstances. The massage parlour girls are in trouble only when the place is raided. It happens, but not often. Private arrangements hardly ever trouble the courts unless the girl steals something or the punter gets violent, and even then the matter is only reported if the punter doesn't mind people knowing he uses prostitutes or the girl doesn't fear loss of her future livelihood.

I raise this topic today because last night I went to my favourite Thai restaurant and found that two of the usual waiting staff were not present, one male one female. They are both students and had been working there for over a year. Being a polite sort of fellow I asked the manager about them and was told they had left in order to do other work. I asked him to pass on my good wishes if he heard from them again, but there was something in the way he said it that set my mind whirring.

Later I collared one of the supervisors and requested further details. He divulged that both were finding it difficult to make ends meet on what they earned from the restaurant so they had started advertising more intimate services on websites a few months ago. Both found it sufficiently lucrative that they could give up their old job. It wasn't surprising to hear that. A couple of years ago the Brazilian chap who made deliveries for the Chinese takeaway close to FatBigot Towers did the same thing. Once he was established it was a choice between six-midnight for £50 or one punter for a hour and £80 the tax man would never know about.

The cheap street girls and boys are often pitiful creatures. They scrape small fees from the lowliest punters because they can't attract a better class of custom. Most are simply unfit or unqualified for any better paid job, so it suits them to work as prostitutes whether or not they are on crack cocaine. The rest are doing very much the same thing albeit without the additional risks associated with working from the streets and having to sell to dubious customers.

Most importantly, each of them is providing a service for which there is a demand. They don't create the demand, they satisfy a demand that is already there. What's wrong with that? We usually think of prostitution involving men hiring women for sex, but women also hire men, men hire men and (I suppose, although I've never heard of it) women hire women. In each case there is a willing customer who is prepared to pay a certain fee for a certain service. He/she is prepared to pay that fee because they want the service.

Say it costs £100. A person has £100 available and is prepared to pay that sum for nookie. They are not prepared to pay it for a curry because it is not their curry money, it is their nookie money. It has been set aside to spend on satisfying a need that can only be met by someone offering nookie. The punter's desire for nookie is not going to subside if prostitution is outlawed. Nor is it going to be satisfied without payment - if it could be he/she wouldn't be throwing a ton at it. So, it's going to happen anyway either within or outside the law. In any situation like that prohibition is absurd. America saw it with booze and every country that outlaws prostitution and/or homosexual activity sees it also. It's going to happen anyway.

I then ask the question that is the title of this piece: "What's wrong with prostitution?" Today's Puritans - you know the sort, they bleat about smoking, drinking and eating meat - claim it's rape in disguise. If it is rape then it's rape and not prostitution, if it's not rape it's consensual conduct between two adults and none of anyone's business.

Others claim is contravenes their god's law. Fine, if your god doesn't like it don't do it, but do mind your own business because your god probably has something to say about those who interfere in things that are none of their business.

My money's on the girl from the restaurant making more money than the boy. He has sticky-out ears. Then again, you never know. What I do know is that I can't think of a single thing wrong with prostitution.