X marks the spot

I do like voting, and today I made a point of going into the village hall and putting my X on the spot.  I have a clear memory of accompanying my Ma to another village hall several decades ago and watching her vote in a general election when I was knee-high to an opinion.  And then, four years ago, I was able to take someone to vote for the first time ever and see his excitement in taking part in the democratic process.  He expected queues, in a local election, bless him.  But in fact he had the right of it.

Voting matters.

It is the one thing that really frightens politicians.  For that reason alone, it matters.  But it matters for other reasons too.

People don’t believe there’s any point.  The anarchists used to say that if voting changed anything, it would be abolished.  The truth of that was brought home in London in the mid 1980s when Thatcher abolished the GLC and knocked out the only effective opposition, “Red” Ken in the glory days of County Hall.   The only act in recent western history that was worse than the abolition of the GLC was Bush’s theft of the Florida votes in 2000, and for the same reason.  It was politicians pissing on the electoral process.  It was politicians pissing on us.

Voting matters.

If it didn’t, Thatcher would never have abolished the GLC.  If it didn’t, Bush wouldn’t have needed to frig the results in Florida in 2000.

Voting matters.

This year, of all years, all over the world.  Most of the time, I will freely admit, it makes bugger-all difference to anything, but even so it matters because it’s the only way we have of reminding the bastards that it’s us they work for.

Surely this is the most interesting year for elections in decades, with the Obama / Clinton stand-off in the USA, Mugabe rigging the election in Zimbabwe and still failing to win, and our two most bizzarely characterful politicians arm-wrestling for London.

So today I voted, in an empty village hall with the spring sun shining benignly down on an idyllic view.

I voted because women died so that I can vote.

I voted because so many Kenyans were killed because they voted.

I voted because Mugabe so clearly lost, even though he’s claimed a victory.

I voted because that’s how we got rid of Portillo and Kinnock.

I voted because politicians hate elections.

I voted because I can.

The Privilege meme

I picked this up from the Singing Librarian, and decided that it was an interesting quiz to do.  Charlotte and Z have done it too.

It was devised by PhD students at Indiana State University - Will Barratt, Meagan Cahill, Angie Carlen, Minnette Huck, Drew Lurker, and Stacy Ploskonka. If you participate, they ask that you please acknowledge their copyright.

My parents were what’s now termed asset rich and cash poor. We lived surprisingly frugally in a great big house so we looked flash on little cash, and it’s left me slightly uneasy about privilege ever since. That, and the combination of being raised by women who spoke like Celia Johnson while growing up surrounded by the inverted snobbery of the 60s and 70s. I notice that today’s young hackerati are perfectly comfortable describing themselves as “middle class kids”, but I still feel slightly embarrassed and uneasy about it.

1. Father went to college.
2. Father finished college.

Sandhurst counts, presumably.

3. Mother went to college.
4. Mother finished college.

She was told she hadn’t studied hard enough to return for her second year, which left her with no good argument to put for me when I… Oh, never mind.

5. Have any relative who is an attorney, physician, or professor.

Well, my sister’s a solicitor and I’m stepping out with a doctor.  Oh, and my father-in-law was a university lecturer. I have to conclude that we’re as professional and middle class as all get out. So, despite the Americanisms, yeah, I guess.

6. Were the same or higher class than your high school teachers.
7. Had more than 50 books in your childhood home.
8. Had more than 500 books in your childhood home.

Had more than 5,000 books in my childhood home, though I doubt it was up to 50,000. As Scout says in To Kill a Mockingbird: “I did not love to read; you do not love to breathe”.

9. Were read children’s books by a parent.

Until I was over 18, graduating from Winnie the Pooh through to Jane Austin.  One of the formative experiences of my life.

10. Had lessons of any kind before you turned 18.

Private lessons I assume - my parents very sweetly paid for piano lessons and riding lessons.  Pigs were more likely to fly than I was ever likely to play the piano, and ponies and pony-girls just intimidated me, so it was a lovely gesture but a complete waste.

11. Had more than two kinds of lessons before you turned 18.

No.  The failure of the piano lessons and riding lessons probably put them off.

12. The people in the media who dress and talk like me are portrayed positively.

I don’t know what or who “people who dress and talk like me” are, and I never watch tv anyway.  Um. My family could have stepped out of an Agatha Christie in many respects (those Celia Johnson voices) or Morse, or the Midsummer Murders even. Is being a murderer with be-a-u-tifully en-unc-i-at-ed vowels a positive representation or a negative one?  You decide.

13. Had a credit card with your name on it before you turned 18.

No freaking way.  Credit cards for teenagers?  No. Absolutely not. My parents had more than enough problems preventing their own costs from turning into debts to give us little debt-lets of our own.

14. Your parents (or a trust) paid for the majority of your college costs.
15. Your parents (or a trust) paid for all of your college costs.

Local Education Authority Grant.  I didn’t realise at the time how lucky I was.

16. Went to a private high school.

Er.  Yes. It was pants though. A very nice school for the sweet but unintellectual daughters of doctors. Loathed it. Still get flashbacks.

17. Went to summer camp.

Mmm. Opera camp. Just typing it makes me blink in amazement.

18. Had a private tutor before you turned 18.

Nah.

19. Family vacations involved staying at hotels.

Do guest-houses and pubs in English and Scottish seaside towns count as “hotels”?  They do, don’t they.  In fact my parents were pretty frugal with regards to summer holidays, and we tended to lig off family and friends who lived nearer the coast than we did.

20. Your clothing was all bought new before you turned 18.

Hah! No. None of it was.  It was either second hand (school uniforms) hand-me downs (I had two big sisters) or home made.

21. Your parents bought you a car that was not a hand-me-down from them.

Surely a 10 year old Fiat 127 doesn’t count?

22. There was original art in your house when you were a child.

But all painted by relatives. Pretty good, some of it, though.

23. You and your family lived in a single-family house.

I’m not sure what this means.  We were a three generation household, grandparents, parents and kids.

24. Your parent(s) owned their own house or apartment before you left home.

Mmmm.

25. You had your own room as a child.

Mmmm.

26. You had a phone in your room before you turned 18.
27. Participated in a SAT/ACT prep course

28. Had your own TV in your room in high school.

I can remember being shocked by people who had TVs in their rooms at uni.

29. Owned a mutual fund or IRA in high school or college.

30. Flew anywhere on a commercial airline before you turned 16.

I’d never even been abroad before I was 16. In fact the first time I went to Europe I was 28 or so and married.

31. Went on a cruise with your family.
32. Went on more than one cruise with your family.

33. Your parents took you to museums and art galleries as you grew up.

Oddly enough, they didn’t, but that was more a matter of their own philistinism than anything else.  I think it was “educational” and so they delegated it to the school to do that. My Ma read a lot of pretty middle-brow stuff, and that was it.

34. You were unaware of how much heating bills were for your family.

I remember once, aged 5, being held in front of an open internal door and being told that I could feel the heat coming out of the room (I couldn’t) and that I should learn to shut doors. I also remember having baths by candlelight because of a mixture of powercuts and fuel prices.  I remember frost on the inside of the windows, though that was only one winter. I do remember lying in bed for an hour because it was too cold for me to want to get up. I may not have known how much the bills were, but I was very aware that fuel costs money, and still am.  I cannot leave a light on in an empty room to this day.

So 16 yeses out of 34.  I was raised and educated with middle class values but my parents were surprisingly uncultured: lots of books, but no trips to the theatre, art galleries, museums or concerts.  Privately educated, but definitely on the cheap.   There wasn’t, as I said, a lot of spare cash to go round.  However, I am irredeemably middle class. I’m nervous around plumbers and comfortable with lawyers, and I guess that proves it completely.

Oh well.

Emily’s EcoJustice Challenge - are you up for it?

I tumbled across Emily’s EcoJustice Challenge when reading Charlotte’s blog. Please read Emily’s whole post, in the meantime, I’m cutting to the chase and quoting verbatim.

So, here is how this challenge will work. The first step is for anyone who wants to participate to pass the link onto at least five other people (or even if you don’t plan to participate, if you like the idea, please pass it on). If you have a blog of your own, this can easily be accomplished merely by linking to this site in a post on your own blog. Below is a list of things you can choose to do. Once every quarter between now and April 21, 2009, I will add to this list. Your challenge is to choose something from this list, to experiment with it, and to post about it here. Or, if you’d rather not post, that’s fine. You can just choose what you want and leave comments on this blog. You can choose to implement as many or as few from the list as you would like. You can choose to stick with one (or more) for an entire quarter, or you can mix and match (one — or more — this month, a different one next month, etc.). My hope is that by the end of the year, at least one item from the whole list will have become a way of life for you and your family. And if you’re already doing some or all of these things, come up with others you want to do, share them with us, and post on them instead.

To join the blog as a posting member, please send an email to: ecojustice08 AT gmail DOT com with your user name and the email address you’d like to use for the purposes of this blog. I will add you to the list of users. Also, please post on your own blog, if you have one. That’s it. And now, here are your choices for this quarter:

1. Choose one day a week in which you will not use your car at all (barring a major emergency, like having to drive your spouse/child to the hospital for stitches). Before you immediately dismiss this one, because you have to drive to and from work every day, please think about it. Is there no one with whom you could carpool two days a week? If so, the day you’re not driving would be the perfect day not to use your car at all.

2. Choose one “black out night” per week. All lights and all electrical appliances are off by 7:30 p.m. and don’t go on again until the next morning. What will you do without lights, television, your computer? Well, the weather’s getting nice where many of us live. Sit out on the porch/deck and tell stories. Read by candle light. Write letters by candle light. Play games by candle light. You know, people did this sort of thing for thousands of years. My guess is that if you have kids, this will be an exciting and fun challenge for them.

3. Choose two days a week in which you are only going to eat organic and/or locally-grown food. Do you know that inorganic farming is one of the best examples of evolution that we’ve got going these days? All the pesticides that have been used to grow our food have helped to create “super bugs” who are becoming more and more resistant to our chemicals. We’re definitely losing this battle in more ways than one. Talk to the people at your local farmer’s markets. Many of them are growing their food organically anyway; they just aren’t certified, because it’s a difficult and expensive process to be so. Buying locally, of course, cuts down on the oil used to transport food long distances.

4. If you need to go anywhere that’s within a 2-mile round trip radius of your home, walk or bike. Where might this be? The first place that springs to mind for me is your children’s school bus stop. Perhaps the post office is close to your home. The library? For me, it’s both the post office and the bank. If you’re super lucky, maybe you have a farmer’s market that’s close by. Or maybe you don’t live close enough to anything, but you do work close by to that deli, say, where you always drive to pick up lunch.

5. Read that challenging book about the environment that you’ve been putting off reading, you know the one you don’t want to read, because it might make you a little uncomfortable (e.g. The World without Us, Diet for a Small Planet, Affluenza). Read it. Post about it. Maybe implement an idea or two based on what you’ve read.

6. Buy only those things sold in recyclable packaging and make sure you recycle that packaging.

None of it should be too hard, right?

But all of it really is hard, isn’t it?

I’m going for the two options I’m already nearly doing, I’m afraid, which are the organic and local veg and recycling the packaging.  But since I’m already 3/4ths of the way there with those two, I’m also going to go for the lights-out option one day a week because it’s summer and it should be easy.   The thing that would make the biggest difference is if I wangled a transfer and worked in t’city, because I could get there by public transport.  Hmmm.  Small steps, I think, for the time being.

Choosing art

I had the interesting experience of selecting paintings for an exhibition the other day.  I work for a Great Big Company and the local council contacted various Groups in the Community to ask for volunteers to pick paintings for a Peoples’ Choice exhibition.  (It’s Blairite, but is it Art?)  So I said “that’ll be me then” and volunteered.

There were seven or so of us, and we were given an enormous catalogue of the paintings in public ownership in the county, and told to pick three each and state our reasons.  (The catalogue turned out to be fascinating and desirable in its own right and, since it’s available from Amazon, I’ve just bought myself a copy.  Damn.) The chap was a curator at one of the local museums or art galleries and he encouraged us to be simple and direct in our reasons, giving examples of things that other groups such as school children had said.

Three?

Bugger.

It would have been easy to consult with others and pick a whole exhibition of social history, or local faces, or even specifically non-local work, but it was much, much harder to pick just three.

I resisted choosing damaged pictures just because they were damaged which gives them an added layer of meaning in my pretentious world.  I resisted picking the local views because that was all a bit too obvious.  I resisted two enormous and gloomy portraits of a grimly smug victorian couple which I wanted to pick on the ground that - hey look, these people are so freaking different from people today.

I discovered that when push came to shove I preferred portraits, which was rather depressing.  My brow is higher than that, surely?   I did steer myself away from just picking portraits and resisted the option to show off by going entirely for abstracts.

It was an interesting insight into the world of the curator and the choices involved in putting together an exhibition.  I’ve bought myself a copy of the catalogue of the county’s art collection, and I’m looking forward to the exhibition.  I should love it.  What better way could there be to arrive at an eclectic mix?

Just going outside

In what world does someone who dies of illness or in an accident leave their job “voluntarily”?  Suicides yes, if you push the logic that far.  But if I choke on a carrot in the canteen I haven’t left this vale of tears of my own free will, now have I?

However, I’d be classed as a “voluntary leaver” by most HR statisticians.

Phffah!

Large employers like to keep track of all sorts of things including the number of people they hire, the number of people who “don’t work out” in the first year, and the number of people who leave even though the company would prefer to keep them.  The “involuntary leavers” represent errors of judgement on the part of the people hiring them, and you can see the sense of tracking those numbers.  “Voluntary leavers” on the other hand are the people the employer will be put to the inconvenience of replacing because they have been offered a better job elsewhere, decided to return to full-time education, or left to set up in business for themselves.  Or selfishly gone and died.  Without giving notice.  Where’s their team spirit? (I exaggerate for cheap effect).

What the employer is tracking with these figures is the employer’s wish or intention (volition) not that of the employee.  But HR being the sweet and fluffy discipline it is, it doesn’t spell it out as crudely as that.  Ho no. How much nicer to pretend that what you are measuring is what your employees want.  The caring face of statistics.

War is peace.  Love is hate.  People are our greatest asset. The dead are voluntary leavers.

Quactitioners I - Sincerely WooWoo

Ben Goldacre’s recent Radio 4 programme seeks to place current food faddists (I assume he’s thinking of Gillian McKeith and Ian Marber) in the long tradition of American snake oil salesmen and mountebanks.  His programme discusses the history of these travelling showmen and also of food faddists turned businessmen such as Kellogg, Graham and the seller of Hadacol.  It’s a good programme, and I recommend  it.

However, it’s disingenuous of him to let his listeners infer that there are only two kinds of people providing health services - scientists and quacks.  He’s not alone: most of the sceptical commentators out there make a clear distinction between the good and the bad, the sheep and the goats, the disinterested practitioners of empirical science and the cynical and opportunistic pedlars of sugar-pills.  In fairness to Ben Goldacre, he’s more a much more subtle thinker than that, but even he tends to simplify the message to make it easy to convey.

It seems to me that there is no neat correlation between sincerity and science, and that it’s more useful if we consider that there might be four categories of people offering to help us with our health.

To make things snappy, I’m calling them the Good Doctors, the Celebrity Surgeons, the Profiteering Quacks and the Sincere WooWoos.

1. The Good Doctors are scientifically-minded as well as scientifically-trained, they are men and women of integrity who frequently work in shitty areas and research shitty diseases
2. The Celebrity Surgeons specialise in “diseases of the rich”, as Tom Lehrer put it and can be found practising perfectly good plastic surgery in Florida and dentistry in Harley Street.  Big Pharma can come into this category of profit-motivated scientists.
3. The Profiteering Quacks are the ones Goldacre really dislikes - they don’t let truth, logic or inadequate training stand in the way of getting tv deals and book deals and products on shelves - they know it makes cents.
   And finally:
4. The Sincere WooWoos are good people let down by a lack of critical thinking. They are troubled by modern medicine, particularly the cynical and profitable kind, so they they train as homoeopaths or acupuncturists or naturopaths, and then the Hawthorne effect and the Placebo effect builds them an anecdotal evidence base which reinforces their sincere belief in their success

The problem is that the debate ends up at cross purposes.  Too many sceptics restrict their criticism to the profiteering quacks without addressing the question of what is troubling about modern medical and surgical practice.  And likewise, far too many alternative practitioners throw out the baby of medical science with the bathwater of the profit-motive.

People like Ben Goldacre and John Diamond rightly argue that Profiteering Quacks are dangerous and leech on the vulnerable and insecure simply to make money out of them.  But those of us who defend science and evidence-based medicine need to accept that the group that I have flippantly categorised as “Celebrity Surgeons” do exactly the same thing, the only difference being that their interventions which are frequently unnecessary do in fact work - think of Jordan’s boobs and Michael Jackson’s nose if you doubt what I’m saying.

It isn’t enough to attack the woolly-thinking which leads trusting people to accept alternative practices like acupuncture and homoeopathy, we must also understand what it is about these practices which attract patients and practitioners, and what it is about “scientific” or “western” practices” which repel them.

Good Reading:

Bad Science - Ben Goldacre’s blog in the Guardian - eg his column about Gillian McKeith
Snake Oil - John Diamond’s searing criticism of alternative practitioners

Good Listening:

Skeptoid - a weekly 10 minute dose of evidence-based good sence
Bad Science - Ben Goldacre’s infrequent podcasts

The good, the bad and the ugly - part 3

Having been off work for a week, I’ve forgotten what it was like.  Here are a few of the folks I’m going back to.  But I’m not of course.  These are figments of my imagination, and all similarities to individuals living or deadly are entirely coincidental.

The graduate

One word. Plastics. The Graduate gets it. Instantly. He’s used to being the brightest person in the room, and is frustrated by what he sees as stupidity, arrogance and bullshit all around him. Everywhere. All the time. The fascinating thing about working with the Graduate is how someone so bright can be so stupid. The Graduate fails to contextualise his knowledge and he cannot read between lines or see shades of grey. He has no concept of experience, and dismisses other peoples’ caution as stupidity. He’s vastly impressed by himself, and is in denial about the fact that no-one else is. Female Graduates tend to be very pretty, and the brighter ones end up either as super-bitches or netball players.

The super-bitch

This woman has balls of steel. She delivers the goods and does not care who or what gets in the way. She’s Ms Perfection, so she’s physically attractive in photographs. In person, the combination of perfection and focus can be  off-putting. You’d rather not imagine her having sex: the thought is frankly frightening. On the other hand, if you do hear her talking to her beloved on the phone she often sounds like a completely different human being. Make that “like a human being”. She’s nowhere near as resentful of men as the Netball Player. Why bother? She’s overtaking them effortlessly anyway.

The dull boy

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. He’s probably a really nice bloke, and if he’s senior enough to send out updates to entire mailing lists then he’ll be all laddish and matey and finish up with a comment on the football. The thing is, he’s not a lad and you’re certainly not his mate. In his world, work’s for work, home’s for home, friends and colleagues never mix.  This ability to compartmentalise means that he’s may well run a discreet mistress for years, though whether he bores the pants off her or charms them off varies from dull boy to dull boy. At work, though, he shows no sense of humour. He doesn’t see why thanking people or upbraiding them in public is any different from doing so in private. He’s effective at what he does, but comes across as a teutonic version of Mr Spock.

The good, the bad and the ugly - part 2

Here are a few more corporate and business characters:

The Underminer

The Underminer seems to be the most helpful person in the room: they understand things quickly, they ask pertinent and clever questions, they contribute, smile and make the odd joke. However if you need them to do anything for you, at best they will do nothing and at worst they will sabotage you. To add insult to injury they won’t even bother to hide what they’re doing. They’ll criticise you for incorrect spelling but blithely fail to hand in their own homework, ever. Watch this failure to deliver: the underminer gets their greatest kick from humiliating you in public by letting you assume that the promises they made in private were true.

The proto-tycoons

Still at the stage of two porsches and a secretary, these young men live fast, drive fast, talk fast and pay slow. Your importance to them can be measured by the amount of attention they pay to you. If you are a minion in their world you won’t merit eye contact, if you can withhold something they need then you get their undivided attention. They are bright enough to stay within the law most of the time, but this is because they believe that only fools get caught, actually they think speeding fines, taxes and 30 day credit terms are for other people. Satisfyingly, a sub-set of them will spend their 60th birthday, and a dozen or so others, behind bars.

The working-class hero

It’s not a chip on his shoulder, it’s an entire timber-yard. In many ways he’s like the Netball Player, but he’s fighting the class war rather than the battle of the sexes. If you are more southern, more northern, older, younger or in any other way different, then you are - obviously - out to get him. He’s determined and will thirstily soak up new information and you will get loyalty for so long as you can teach him things. The moment he thinks he knows as much as you do, you’ll become “moody, unpredictable and impossible to work with”. Of course you will. On the other hand, if he sets himself a task, he’ll do it, no matter who or what lines up to prevent him. He’s a difficult but oddly likeable chap, life actually has dealt him some bum hands and he can be surprisingly supportive when women show vulnerability.

As before, these are of course entirely fictional.  I have a very active imagination.

The good, the bad and the ugly - part 1

I’ve been thinking about some of the people I’ve come across at work in the last couple of decades or so.  Here’s a wee taster:

The Explainer

Ask an Explainer the time and he’ll tell you. He’ll also explain the origins of Greenwich Mean Time, the legislative history of British Summer Time, the pros and cons of harmonising our time with Central European time and the origins and use of the 24 hour clock. Some Explainers will finally deliver a nugget of pure gold you’d never have found in any other way, others just talk till your eyes glaze over.  Explainers are kind-hearted souls and volunteer for tasks like being a first-aider.  Unfortunately they have kind-hearted larynxes too.

The Ducker and Diver

The Arthur Daley of the corporate world, the ducker and diver has an actual cupboard full off odd bits of hardware and software, bottles of wine, books and other bits and pieces. He also has a metaphorical cupboard full of favours owed. He’s great at fighting fires: if you have something that needs sorting out quickly, he’ll know who to ask, who to blackmail, who to bribe. Everything’s always changing in his world so planning’s pointless, but he’s the one destabilising it all. He’ll delegate activity but not control, which makes him hard to work for. However, he’s a useful employee because he’s good at getting things done even if “quick” and “dirty” are his middle names. Chances are you won’t even need to worry about internal audit coming along afterwards, he’ll know where they’ve buried their own bodies. He probably lent them the spade.

The Adrenaline Junkie

His mottoes are “JFDI” (just effing do it) and “don’t sweat the small stuff”. In his world, details cause delay. Work is an extreme sport, and he gets his kicks surfing the edge of chaos. He likes headlines and bullet points. He gets bored quickly and delegates as much as he can, though once he’s delegated something it stays delegated: he’d find picking it back up again - or even just checking on progress - to be frustratingly dull. More honest than the ducker and diver, he has the same restless energy, but for him work is a sport rather than a game.

The Netball Player

If you’ve got a problem she’ll be very supportive, but she can be critical and extremely bitchy when she chooses. She has a clique of female colleagues who form a mutual admiration society, and everyone else is on the outside. She appears very professional and very on top of her game, but her underlying brittleness makes working with her an interesting spectator sport. She’s very certain about everything and can be astonishingly judgemental, which seems at odds with her sense of sisterhood until you remember that in her world all men are bastards. She may be lesbian, she may be straight, but she’s far too fond of certainty to be bisexual.

I do wonder how I’d summarise myself, if I worked with me. All resemblance to persons living or undead is of course coincidental. Allegedly.

Reinstall

I’ve mentioned already that I work near an art gallery. I noticed a piece of opportunistic recycling as I walked into town today.

Apparently the artist

“creates new relationships, experimenting with unexpected combinations of materials creating objects and environments, which encourage us to see the everyday world with fresh eyes”

and she

“fashions monumental objects from scrapyard materials and throws them away after use”

Though I do wonder if a graffitied garage door is quite what she intended. It pleased me though.