Scantily Clad Self Interest

Gentlemen's Venue
Originally uploaded by StefZ.

Years ago now, I was sitting through a lecture on evolutionary biology. Halfway through the lecture the subject of altruism came up. Altruism doesn't have very much to do with the mechanics of evolutionary biology. I think the lecturer was just bored and couldn'€™t resist the prospect of f*cking with a few fresh, nineteen year old minds.

Brazenly stating that there was no such thing as altruism, either in the world of animals or men, he asked us to give us some examples of situations where an animal, or man, had sacrificed its own well-being for the benefit of others; expecting nothing in return.

We couldn't, could we?

Every single incidence of apparent altruism that takes place in the World around us can be explained away as being an example of reproductive self-interest ...

• Worker ants in a colony serving their queen? Well, they are sterile siblings of the queen. Nature has arranged things such that they cannot reproduce so they do the next best thing and serve the needs of a relative who can reproduce
• A parent'€™s love? Reproductive self-interest pure and simple
• Religious charity? A ticket to Heaven
• A soldier sacrificing himself in wartime to save his friends? An example of someone who has been effectively conditioned to believe that honour is greater than personal survival. Their choice to sacrifice themselves is in accordance with their self-interested set of values

Having been educated in Catholic schools all my life, this came as a powerful revelation to me. The entire natural world was driven by selfishness, greed and lust. Not as some abstract philosophical concept but as a matter of hard science. I scampered out of the lecture and, on and off, for the next several years reinterpreted the world around me with fresh eyes.

Later on, much later on, a small penny dropped in my head and I am now a lot less convinced by this argument than I was twenty years ago. It undoubtedly includes a nugget of truth but, as with many supposedly scientific explanations of the world around us, it also includes a fundamental deceit in the way it is phrased. Even a genuinely altruistic act could be explained away as self-interest with the aid of a little intellectual dishonesty and a little playing with language.

What if there is such a thing as absolute Good? Or absolute Evil? What if I choose, as a reasoning creature, to do good, or bad, regardless of the impact that has on my personal well-being? I believe that I, and many others, do so regularly as a matter of course.

Before I move on from the particular lecturer I should also point that he was the man who made a living studying beetle fossils. On several occasions he mentioned to us, as if in passing, that his research indicated that beetles have not evolved at all over two million years. That's a lot of beetle generations, spread out over a lot changing ecosystems for nothing to happen. I distinctly remember on one occasion him sustaining a pregnant pause, whilst casting his one straight eye around the room to see if any of us would pick him up on that bombshell. None of us ever did, which says a lot about the intellectual calibre of the average Earth Sciences student. So, thank you Russell. On one hand you point out the brutal, mechanistic nature of the life, on the other hand you indicate that the mechanism doesn't actually work as billed. You successfully seeded two contradictory lines of thought that have f*cked with my head for over twenty years now. I hope you're pleased with yourself.

Anyway, there'€™s no getting away from it. The scientific view of the natural world is that all human activity is driven by individual self-interest, sometimes naked self-interest, sometimes fully-clothed self-interest. Sometimes self interest can be seen sporting novelty, polka dot boxer shorts but it's still self interest, just the same.

A few days ago I posted that atheism and left wing politics, particularly the politics of minority rights, are totally at odds with each other. I'll stand by that. They are. If you believe that human beings are just a sack full of goo, animated by electric charge, set upon this Earth by random forces, then they have no more intrinsic rights than any other lump of matter in your godforsaken universe.

However, in that godforsaken universe you CAN marry-up atheism and a form of left-wing politics, if you'™re prepared to be a tad dishonest about your motives.

All you have to do is acknowledge the de facto nature of your existence and also acknowledge that you are conditioned to dislike the idea of death or discomfort. The rest is easy. For example, as such a being you applaud the idea of support for the unemployed. It will be there when you need it and even when you do not need it, it is money well spent to stop the unemployed rising up and taking what they need from you. Another example; murder should be a crime, not because it's bad in any moralistic way but because you don't like the idea of living in a society where you could be murdered yourself. And so on. The same selfish thinking can be applied to education, healthcare and any other €'worthy'€™ programs you can think of. And for those situations where no obvious physical benefit comes your way well, you're just pleasing your conditioning aren't you?

And what do you do if an opportunity comes your way to grab a few bucks for yourself , in a manner that is arguably consistent with your selfish left-wing altruism? Why, you'll take them.

Welcome to the world of the champagne socialist.

Of course, if you think like that you'€™re no more virtuous or noble than the grubbiest capitalist are you? In fact, once you strip all the bullshit away, you have an awful lot in common.

Blogger, yum!

errors4
Originally uploaded by StefZ.

Yes, I know I said I would not slag off Blogger any more. No matter how rubbish it was. But a) I have just spent 20 minutes trying to post a reply to a comment and b) I've noticed that a US based blog has linked to this site as an example of someone hacked off with Blogger. So, as a special service to people following that link, I thought I would post another screenshot from my collection of Blogger error screens.

It is a very large collection.

The optimum blend of savagery and skill

Fun all the way
Originally uploaded by StefZ.

A couple of thoughts have been rattling around my head these last couple of days.

The first was a comment I read on another blog that maintained that the average IQ in Africa was 70. The second was a comment in this blog about the fact that Western economies are currently only propped up by money borrowed from the East.

Both of which observations are almost certainly true.

I am perfectly willing to believe that the average African IQ is 70; based on tests devised in Europe and the US that is. I wonder what we would score on a test put together by Africans?

I definitely know that we are heavily indebted to the Far East and that, one day, when they have enough consumers of their own to buy their goods, they will pull the rug on us.

It will hurt, and not a little. It will hurt a lot.

Anyway, this got me thinking. How is it we in the West have had it so good for so long? The Chinese have always been more numerous, smarter and harder working than us. Tribal cultures, from the Highland Scots through to the Zulus, were more militaristic. Yet we whooped them all.

The answer is obvious of course. For centuries now, Western culture has maintained the optimum blend of savagery and technological prowess. Clever enough to make effective weapons, vicious enough to use them.

Look at the Chinese. They discovered gunpowder then used it for parties or to scare away evil spirits. They invented the blast furnace but prefered to work with porcelain. We on the other hand knew exactly what to do with gunpowder and steel.

From the Crusades to the '€˜opening up'€™ of China in the 19th century, we were the barbarians; falling upon civilised nations from out of the wilderness in search of better food and softer fabrics. 'Oi! Gunga Din! Two chicken vindaloos, a plain nan bread and four pints of lager. Then Number One Boom Boom with Mama and Daughter San! Go on! Pull your finger out. Chop! Chop!' is a cry that has echoed down the centuries.

We haven't changed much. Still smart enough to create WMDs. Still daft enough to use them.

Even though the US economy is virtually bankrupt and the dollar sliding into a black hole, the trillion dollars a year the Americans spend on defence is still an awful lot of money. The more you think about what the bulk of that money is spent on the more bizarre the spending can be seen to be. Dozens of nuclear powered aircraft carriers, billion dollar stealth bombers and nuclear submarines are criss-crossing the Earth as I type. Hundreds of multimillion dollar Abrams tanks and Apache helicopters are whizzing around the desert, waiting for someone to put them out of action with a $15 RPG round. Million dollar cruise missiles are used to blow up mud huts.

All this hardware may have made some sort of made sense when the Russians were building their own crude versions of the same things, but now? Which other kids on the block have a box full of the same toys as us? Who are we going to play with?

Tony Blair illustrated my point nicely when he sent those light tanks to Heathrow as part of the wicked, cynical campaign to scare Joe Public into war. How were those tanks going to deal with a terrorist threat in an airport? Was the plan to blow an entire departures lounge away?

I am certainly not picking just on the Americans here. My country plays more than its fair part in this nonsense.

We could, of course, cut our military spending by, say, half. We could employ the same number of personnel. They could keep their tanks. There are plenty of ludicrous military projects out there we could close down without any impact on our frontline strength. We could then take all that money we have saved and construct some roads, purify some water, build some medical equipment and give it to all those people who hate us for free. Yes, for free. It would not cost us a penny more than we are already spending and larger proportions of our populations would actually be employed making useful things that benefited other human beings. $500bn spent on global aid and development every a year? After about five years, we'd be onto jacuzzis and swimming pools. The World would be a safer, healthier happier place.

Of course, barbarians don'€™t think like that.

Maybe, the Chinese will be doing everyone a favour when they do finally call our note in. Mind you, we could always nuke their ass.

The triumph of Rationalism

First Abandoned Sofa of the Day
Originally uploaded by StefZ.

In response to a comment on an earlier post, I spent a little time yesterday reading Johann Hari€'s blog. I must confess I've never heard of him before. This is probably something to do with me being 40, unhip and not inclined to waste my time or money reading mainstream newspapers. Johann is a British based journalist and appears to be both popular and controversial, in that contrived way that I find so boring.

Key points about Johann

- He'€™s gay
- He'€™s left wing
- He'€™s an atheist
- Lot'€™s of famous people appear to think he'™s a tool.

A direct quote from the 'About'€™ section in his blog / website

'€˜Johann has been attacked in print by the Daily Telegraph, John Pilger, Peter Oborne, Private Eye, the Socialist Worker, Cristina Odone, the Spectator, Andrew Neil, George Galloway, Mark Steyn, the British National Party, Medialens, al Muhajaroun and Richard Littlejohn. 'Prince'€™ Turki Al-Faisal, the Saudi Ambassador to Britain, has accused Johann of '€waging a private jihad against the House of Saud'. This is true. Johann has been called 'a Stalinist'€ and '€œbeneath contempt'€ by Noam Chomsky, '€œan uppity little queer'€ by Bruce Anderson, '€œfat'€ by the Dalai Lama and 'a cunt'€ by Busted. This makes him think he is doing something right.'

So, it would appear that f*cking people off is a measure of one'€™s worth. Except of course if you f*ck off any homosexuals or left wingers. Per the comments section in his website:

'Abusive or libellous messages will be deleted, as will racist, homophobic or otherwise-bigoted comments.'

This reminds me of watching my favourite activist, Peter Tatchell, on tele a couple of months ago. One day he was on a news program demanding equal rights for minority groups, the very next day he was asked for the justification for the ban on fox hunting. Without any trace or irony whatsoever in his voice he said 'Well, the vast majority of the British population are opposed to hunting ...'™

So, there€'s a journalist out there making a fine living practicing double standards and hypocrisy. What'€™s new?

The thing is, I got drawn into commenting on an article he wrote criticising the Pope. Like, wow, there'€™s a dark side to the Papacy, controversial or what? Some of the people responding to my comments were ignorant. A couple were not. Unfortunately, one person even started quoting Leviticus. Eventually, I got bored and stopped playing. A little later on I revisited the comments section. I noticed that the thread had veered off in an unpleasant direction and that some commentators were saying that Africans were too stupid too use condoms and only had an IQ of 70. Unsurprisingly, others took issue with this claim. Johann had also waded in to extol the virtues of atheism in comparison with superstition, i.e. religion, particularly organised religion

Now, here'€™s the problem. Johann represents a strain of thought that, whether Johann would admit it or not, is dominant in British Society, particularly the media. It's a strain of thought that manages to combine an atheistic viewpoint with left wing politics and a belief in the rights of minorities, well certain minorities anyway.

The problem is that this viewpoint just doesn't stack up.

If you really believe that all life, all existence is just the product of mumbo jumbo physics and blind chance nothing then matters at all, nothing. So what if I go outside and kick a few cripples? They'€™ll be dead in a few years anyway. They're just a collection of molecules. Their desperate screams are just a trick played by their DNA to fool me into allowing to them survive so that they can mindlessly continue to reproduce themselves.

I could follow the logical consequences of this atheistic viewpoint even further. We'€™re all here because of Darwinian selection. Within any group of species and within each species there are individuals more adapted to their environments than others. One group of human beings being inherently stupider than the others fits perfectly well within a Darwinian view. In fact, it is to be expected. It is also reasonable to expect that one group will triumph over others and replace them. Too stupid to invent the belt-fed machine gun? Then die f*ckers! Come to think of it, what evolutionary purpose is served by homosexuality? Or handicaps? Aren'€™t these people getting in the way?

Excuse me, but that's a seriously f*cked up view of life. And, sorry, it is the logical consequence of an atheistic world view. And that'™s why we live in a World driven by unhappiness. That's why so many desperate, lost people clung to the Pope, in spite of some of the cr*p he came out with.

I'€™d be the first to admit that there are answers to the issues I'€™ve raised but, to my mind they're not very good ones. But try it out for yourself. Next time someone like Johann or his ilk try to sell their particular bill of goods push them on the logical consequences of what they're preaching.

Be careful though. These people like to think they're part of an intellectual elite, set upon this Earth, presumably by random forces, to lead the ignorant mob along the path of true enlightenment. And this is where the Left and the Right meet. From Lenin to Hitler, from Trotsky to the Neocons. They'€™re f*cking with us and won'€™t let weaknesses like honesty or open mindedness get in their way.

I'm no Jesus freak but I'€™m onto their game. There'€™s a fundamental mystery to Existence that science cannot explain. I doubt if it ever will. To deny that mystery by pretending it doesn'€™t exist is a denial of our innate nature to believe, to see beauty and to love.

People are not just meat, well most people aren't anyway. People who are handicapped or disadvantaged in some way have an equal share in the mystery of existence and are not evolutionary impediments. We all have a right to live, love and be loved.

Now if Johann or his mates can explain to me how I can logically fit the sanctity of life and the rights of individuals in between Big Bang and Universal Heat Death, without me validly saying '€˜But so what?'™ at the end of their explanation, I'€™ll be impressed.

Get a Life. Get a portion.

JP2 pt4 (and out)

JP2 #5
Originally uploaded by StefZ.

So, there is a long established Polish community in London. They have been here for 60 years now. This country is their home. Their kids grew up, work and have raised their own kids here.

But their relationship with Britain, particularly the roots of their relationship with Britain, is complex and, in places, dark.

This kind of complexity undoubtedly applies to most immigrants, recent and not so recent, in this country.

And what is the standard of debate taking place about migration into the UK? Well, you can choose from:

We need immigrants to do sh*t jobs

Or

I dont like foreigners

The British can be a very ignorant people sometimes.

And that kind of ignorance does not happen overnight. It takes years of terrible education, puerile journalism and the tireless promotion of the trivial to produce a nation quite so ill informed and incapable of objective thought.

And that is why you can open the Guardian today and read that just everything to do with migration, for example, is peachy. Or turn to the Daily Mail and read the exact opposite.

After misunderstanding something I had said, my Hungarian friend with the Wales fixation once told me that I had little to fear from East Europeans coming into the UK. He assured me that they were surprisingly similar to people from the UK and no threat at all.

I know that, silly.

Though I have to admit that I am quite scared of scummy East Europeans. Sixty years of totalitarian rule tends to produces some really serious scummers. Moving over here and plying their various unpleasant trades in the relatively liberal UK, after years of dealing with some really serious law enforcement, must be like a holiday for those guys.

But, scumbags aside, nobody should have any real problem with anyone else, from anywhere else.

Except for one small issue.

What do we, in the UK, have to offer them? From China to India to Poland there are millions of people looking to match our standard of living. They are willing to work harder for less and their education systems are nowhere near as rubbish as ours is.

What do we have to offer them? What are our kids going to be doing to make a living?

I have my own ideas about what Britain could offer the World. For all their numerous faults, we were blessed with a series of institutions and traditions that maintained a framework of justice and freedom that allowed all sorts of other endeavours to flourish. But few people seem to rate these institutions very highly and they have been corrupted or discarded without so much as a tear.

Like the Americans, we in the UK have lost it big time. With each passing year we make less and do less. We buy Asian goods and employ migrants to do our dirty work. We, on the other hand, sit at desks doing biff. And really pointless biff at that.

We are soft and we are losing it. Again, like the Americans, just about the only thing we are still good at is projecting military force around the world. Between our two nations, we account for half of the World's military spending. Everyone else is making consumer durables and we are manufacturing death.

So, what's the game plan looking like then boys and girls? Maybe those guys I photographed last night were marching in Rome after all.

JP2 Pt3

JP2 #7
Originally uploaded by StefZ.

One of the other distinguishing features of the Polish kids at school was that their parents were sometimes quite old. When my Dad was in his early forties, the Polish kids Dads were in their early to mid fifties. Again, it took a while for the penny to drop.

No matter how cute their wives or girlfriends were a lot of the Poles in England took a while before they got round to starting families.

They had their reasons.

Without rehashing a huge swathe of history, many of the Poles who fetched up in England after the War had already experienced more than a lifetime's worth of hardship. Fleeing the German invasion in 1939 many Poles made their way to France then had to flee all over again when France was invaded. Some were captured by the Russians in 1939 and released to the British in 1941. Poles fought and died in the Battle of Britain, at Cassino, at Normandy, at Arnhem and dozens of other battlefields.

And, at the end of it all, the survivors did not have a home to go to. The Russians had taken over, as per an agreement with the British and the Americans. In the run-up to the Russian take over, all sorts of dodgy deals and atrocities had been committed. The massacre at Katyn, the conveniently accidental plane crash of the Polish Prime Minster in exile, the Russians sitting back and watching the Polish Home Army being slaughtered on the other side of the Vistula by the Germans in Warsaw. Yup, after six years of fighting for the Allied cause the Poles got screwed royally.

Curiously, few English history books or commentators remind us that the British joined the war supposedly to help out Poland, nor do those books or commentators mention that there were fewer European democracies left at the end of the war than at the start.

I do not think the Poles have forgotten. Whilst we are at it I do not think the Czechs or the Slovaks have forgotten that the British turned their country over to the Germans in 1938 either. I am pretty sure of this because I have sat in the company of drunk Poles, Czechs and Slovaks when the subject of conversation has drifted to these matters.

Yup, my country shat on their countries big time. True, this all happened 50 or more years ago but the residents of those countries and their exiles have been living with the consequences for much of that time.

Some of them are, understandably, a bit chippy ...

JP2 pt2

JP2 #2
Originally uploaded by StefZ.

London has a long-established Polish community dating back to the end of the last war. The last really big war that is.

Given that I attended a Catholic secondary in South London, I had a fair few classmates of Polish decent. They were usually quite easy to spot, coming as they did in two basic varieties; tall and blonde or small and brown. You could easily pick them out from the Irish kids, who were medium-sized and white with red tops or the Italian ones, who were also small and brown but did no€™t sport that curious, cropped pudding basin haircut so beloved of East European males since, presumably, the dawn of time.

The other way you could pick the Polish kids out was that they were so damn intense. I did not really click onto why until my last year or so at school. There had been clues though. Like when summer holidays were coming up and I would chat about spending the Summer with relatives in Italy and the Polish kids would say 'We are staying at home in Streatham as our parents are exiles from their homeland which is subject to the boot of Communist tyranny'. Yes, the penny really should have dropped sooner.

Then the Solidarity thing happened in the early 80s and the Polish kids perked-up immensely. They would come into school festooned with all sorts of Solidarity memorabilia, jabbering away about all the great things that were happening in Gdansk (where?) and raising money for and sometimes even travelling on aid convoys into Poland.

John Paul II was part of that process and, for Poles, he was a very big deal indeed.

Watching the procession last night reminded me of that time and I could not help wishing that I could turn the clock back and take the opportunity to get more involved. Partly because a major historical event passed me by without me really noticing it and partly because the Polish kids at school had some seriously cute sisters.

Who was it who started that whole genre of ugly Polish women jokes years ago? Stuff like 'What do you call a pretty woman in Warsaw? A Tourist'. And that unrepeatable one about the single sock? Was he mad?

Poland produces an apparently limitless supply of stick thin, doe-eyed women with forlorn expressions and husky voices that simultaneously cry out to be protected and, pardon me, rogered senseless all at the same time. Hitting just about every single button in the primeval male brain.

Having said that, it could be just attributable to the lure of the unknown. I recall, what to me was, a particularly bizarre conversation with an Hungarian friend who tried to explain to me that, to him, the Welsh were an exotic and compellingly attractive race ...

JP2 Pt1

JP2 #1
Originally uploaded by StefZ.

So, a couple of days after I decided not to take any more pictures at marches for a while and the same day I write a post about the large number of migrants who have moved into London, what did I end up doing last night?

Taking pictures of a group of migrants marching through London of course.

There was a candlelit procession in commemoration of John Paul II from Trafalgar Square through to Westminster Cathedral and being a serious lapsed Catholic I wanted to attend, with or without a camera.

Photography-wise it was not all that successful. I have not taken many pictures at night lately and am out of practice. Plus, I totalled some of my gear a week or two ago and I also spent far to long in an abortive stalk of a Vietnamese guy selling flashing neon crucifixes to a not entirely receptive crowd of devoted Catholics. I am still gutted that did not work out.

I was not the only person to make a balls up though. The police had initially estimated that something like 200-300 people would attend. I am no expert in crowd counting but, on the night, Trafalgar Square looked pretty full too me and, judging by previous gatherings I have attended, the true number of people was nearer the 20,000 mark.

The police line looked awfully thin. Obviously there wasn'™t much risk of any violence but shepherding 20,000 people through central London traffic on a weekday night needs a certain number of officials on the ground. And they were no€™t there. From what I could see there were more police at the 200 strong anti war march in quiet Clerkenwell on a quiet Saturday afternoon last weekend than on duty last night. There was much grumbling in the ranks, leapfrogging along the march route and piss-taking of senior officers going on into walkie-talkies.

Presumably, they got their estimates from the same guy who compiles the census figures...

Devotion

JP2
Originally uploaded by StefZ.

Theme Thursday Submission

Migration pt47

I spent part of today poring over ethnicity data for London taken from the last Census, particularly maps showing the spread of various ethnic groups.

Considering how important census data is in government planning, we take a surprisingly casual view when gathering census data in this country. I’ve been in other countries twice on national census days and it’s a very serious business indeed. People are encouraged not to leave the house on census night, keep their children close and not venture out on the streets. It’s all a bit like some kind of werewolf movie.

Anyway, we don’t do that sort of thing in Britain. We get a form in the post, some of us bother to fill it in, 1% of us claim to be Jedi’s, and then a few get returned in the post. A large proportion of the returned forms are illegible and it’s unlikely that people traffickers with two dozen teenage sex slaves or illegal labourers in the attic are going to be altogether truthful when completing their returns.

So, you have to take the resulting data with a shovel-full rather than a pinch of salt.

After poring over the maps I discovered such exciting information as:

• Jewish and Irish people live almost exclusively in North and NorthWest London
• There are a lot of Africans and Afro-Caribbeans in South London
• There are a lot of Indians and Pakistanis in Hounslow
• With a few exceptions North of the River, Whitey doesn’t live in the centre of town
  

How much did the census cost? For anyone who’s lived in London for any length of time, this information is more than a little under-whelming and reflects a pattern that’s been established for as long as I can remember; at least twenty or thirty years.

But the ethnicity of London has changed greatly, particularly over the last five to ten years. The census just doesn’t reflect it. There are a stonking number of new arrivals in town, many from groups not previously represented in large numbers before in London; East Africans, people from the ‘Stans’, SE Europeans, East Europeans, Central and South Americans, all sorts. Looking at the census data it’s as if they don’t exist. The Somalis are a good example. No one’s quite sure how many there are in London; the accepted range is somewhere between 70,000 – 250,000. I ask you, how can you lose up to 180,000 people from just one ethnic group in a city of ten million?

Immigration is a hot topic in the run-up to the general election next month. The Conservatives are playing up the undoubted mismanagement of immigration since 1997 and the Government is attempting to neutralise people’s concerns, real or imagined, with dollops of bullshit and spin.

I find this all very amusing. Our politicians are still debating whether to permit the rest of us to have a debate on the subject of mass migration when it has already happened. The mass migrants are here, now, and they’re not going anywhere. We really should help settle these guys in and make the best of it. An enormous and undeclared racial experiment is currently under way in London and it’s in everyone’s interests for it to work positively.

That’s not to say we shouldn’t debate the issue of continued mass migration. As a nation we might want to mull the subject over before our country is turned into one low-waged sweat shop; with half the population cleaning toilets and making ready-meals for £2 hour, the other half working for the government, and two blokes in kilts entertaining tourists as our only source of hard currency.

The problem with debating migration is that the big money is with the pro-migration lobby; from lawyers troughing out on legal aid budgets to companies having a ready source of cheap, easily exploited labour. 'Pay a decent wage for this sh@t job? Nah, let's employ some wetbacks instead. They work for peanuts and are scared sh@tless of being deported' .There’s no money to be made on the anti-side. Plus, in supporting mass migration, you can have your cake and eat it. Not only is it lucrative, you can also posture around claiming that you actually give a damn about the migrants being sucked in for exploitation. Profitable and virtuous – a winning combination in anyone’s book.

No, I don’t think there’s never going to be any rational debate. As soon as anyone starts to ask critical questions they are immediately labeled a racist. It doesn’t matter if the person is really being racist or not. The race card trumps all rational questions or arguments. A corking example of its power has cropped up over the last few weeks during the debate about Travelers.

The number of Travellers in this country is tiny. The fact that a minority of this minority abuse planning regulations and build on agricultural land, whilst irritating, is absolutely NOT a matter of national interest. That hasn’t stopped both political parties playing national politics with the issue.

What I find most interesting about the ‘debate’ on the issue of Travellers is that they're not called Travellers any more. Suddenly, and subtly, even though they’ve been referred to a Travellers for years now everyone’s calling them Gypsies again; Gypsy, Gypsy, Gypsy. Even though most UK Travellers are of Irish rather than Romany decent everyone’s calling them Gypsies. Why? Well if you refer to them as Gypsies rather than Travellers you can accuse people criticising them of being racist, clouding the issue nicely. And, most annoyingly, Joe Public doesn’t seem to notice how he is being subtly manipulated through the abuse of language. He never does.

Talk about 5% of the population controlling the other 95% …

Shame on all of our politicians. Shame on the Conservatives for ramping up such a trivial matter. Shame on Labour for turning it into a ‘race’ issue. F*ck them all.