Good Grief!

Courtesy of Al Jahom, an article by Simon Jenkins (Not every adult is a paedophile, a terrorist or a mass murderer) in The Guardian that I agree with, every word. That has to be a first.

There is now a widespread belief that the bonds of private responsibility that should tie together neighbourhoods and nations alike have eroded. This is put down to everything from the nanny state to benefit dependency, risk aversion, disrespectful youth, too much money and obsessive security. When the bossy Labour minister Ed Balls banned pictures of children in schools and vetted parents for sex crimes, the bounds of public sanity were strained. Yet no one stopped him. People muttered, "Well, you can't be too safe."

...

The public should be invited to reject the politics of fear, that sees life as a perpetual terror of what might happen and a perpetual investigation of what has. It should not be asked to regard every child as a victim and every adult a paedophile, a terrorist or a mass murderer. The government should stop spending stupid amounts of money on a security lobby now running amok through the public sector.

There is no such thing as safe. There is only safer, and safer can require the greater watchfulness that comes with taking risks, witness new theories of road safety. Removing risk lowers the protective instinct of individuals and communities, and paradoxically leaves them in greater danger. But there is no government agency charged with averting that danger. There is no money in it.

Go and read it. It should be required reading for our new coalition government, too. Light is dawning in all sorts of unexpected places. Perhaps it's the good weather.

Blathering punditry

The Independent, desperate to find something to say on the Cumbria shootings, hires Keith Ashcroft, an "investigative psychologist" from Manchester, to fill a column by making remarks about someone who he has never met, and an incident that he did not witness. It is, therefore, a singularly unenlightening read.

Most of it is boilerplate psychology 101, about low self-esteem and lacking control over one's own life (although how he knew that this applied to the gunman isn't clear - a remote-control psychic interview chaired by St Peter?), and there is little to disagree with as what he writes is banal and obvious. But there are a couple of bits towards the end - clearly, he was getting into his stride, and delighted to have been commissioned by a National Newspaper - which deserve some comment.

Many people have feelings of low self-esteem and may mistrust those around them or even suffer paranoia. But they don't go on a killing spree. What makes the few that do, flip? Access to firearms is one factor. Guns are, fortunately, not easy to get, but if people have lethal means of causing violence close at hand there will be more violence. How many people would be killed if every household had a gun? That, thank goodness, is not the case in this country.

A complete non-sequitur. 'If people have guns, there will be more violence.' Perhaps, but not necessarily. What about the counter-argument that if the people walking the streets of Whitehaven had all been armed, the incident might have ended after the first shot? Imagine opening up your rifle in a crowded street, only to find everyone turning towards you with pistols drawn. What about the inhibiting effect of knowing that some people might be armed, even if no weapons are visible? As they say, 'An armed society is a polite society'.

This argument that the availability of guns causes violence is hogwash. The Swiss are allowed to keep weapons, and you would struggle to find a more peaceful place to live.

An incident like this should make us question our values. We need to think about our exposure to videos and violence – does it make us immune to the effects? We see images of violence every day, and through repetition they lose their power to shock.

Again, this presupposes something which is far from obvious. Ashcroft assumes that our natural state is peaceful and violence-free, and that images of violence degrade our natural abhorrence of it to a point where we become immune. I would argue that the opposite is the case. We live in a lucky part of the world, and at a charmed period of history, where most people, for most of the time, do not encounter violence at all. Go back a hundred years, or go to any number of less fortunate nations today, and you see that violence is and was an all-too common part of everyday life. You could argue that we have become infantilised, where to most of us the intrusion of violence into our lives is a rarity, and something that we demand that Nurse remove as soon as possible. You could argue that images of violence are the only thing stopping us returning to the womb, sucking our thumbs and demanding some of that nice sweet milk and a comfort blanket to shield us from the world. I'm not saying this is necessarily so, just that to assume that the natural order of things is peaceful, and that violence is an unnatural intrusion, is a pretty naïve way of looking at the world.

It raises wider issues too. We define ourselves through jobs, power and money. People are so driven they have no other sense of who they are. They can't go to the doctor or the priest, so they take a gun and kill people. It really is shocking.

For the first three of these sentences, I would agree. We live in a world where the trivial assumes huge importance for most people, and things that really matter are sidelined. And the doctor and the priest no longer have the authority and ability to absolve that they once did. Why this should lead people to kill other people is a mystery. I'm left wondering if a couple of crucial sentences haven't been edited out of this passage. It makes no sense.

The most rational comment I have read on this issue is by Charlotte Gore. Knee-jerk reactions not required. 'Something Must Be Done' not required. These things are very rare and often cannot be explained, but they happen, and we should learn to live with it.

Google Maps - it had to happen

From the storytellers at The Sun:

A WOMAN is suing Google after claiming its maps application gave her directions to a motorway where she was run over.

Lauren Rosenberg is seeking more than £70,000 in damages from the internet search engine claiming they were directly at fault for the accident.

Mrs Rosenberg used Google maps in January last year to get directions by foot to a pal's house.

The application told her to walk for half a mile along "Deer Valley Drive" — which turned out to be a section of the Utah State Route 224 — a motorway with no pavements.

So the route took her to a road that was clearly not a pedestrian route - and she walked along it, because Google told her to?

The case claims that Mrs Rosenberg wasn't warned about this by Google — making them responsible.

Ah, the old excuse. I have no responsibility for anything I do, so if someone doesn't warn me specifically not to do something and I get hurt, it's their fault. It's the logic of the spoilt and not very intelligent child.

Google say the directions came with a warning for pedestrians — but Mrs Rosenberg claimed her Blackberry screen was too small to display the caution.

Ah, I see. It's BlackBerry's fault for having a small screen, so that Mrs Rosenberg didn't see the warning NOT TO WALK ON FUCKING MOTORWAYS. I hope she sues them too. For a million dollars. No, make that ten million. Corporate America must learn that they can't just play with people's lives like this.

Actually, I hope the driver of the car that hit her counter-sues for reckless endangerment, or whatever they call it over there.

One of them will win, surely. My money, sadly, is on Mrs Rosenberg.

Pets 2

All done. The cat went semi-willingly into her transporter box and was easily dealt with by the experienced vet. Funny, she usually won't let us near her (she's a rescue cat and we think she must have had some bad experiences). The dog was relatively well-behaved and has a new best friend - the vet had a stash of biscuits for post-jab restorative purposes, and a biscuit is enough to earn undying devotion.

Prospective burglars, please note.

Sadly, I left the health records for both animals at home, so I will now have to return to the vet's with them to get them stamped up to date. And it's sunny and the roads are dry.

I have just had an idea.

Pets

Oh dear. In a few minutes I have to take both dog and cat to the vets for their annual injections. The kennels where we are taking them for their 'holidays' insist on up-to-date certificates, and rightly so.

The dog will be his usual over-enthusiastic self. The cat - well who knows?

First I have to catch her.