There have always been some good feminist messages in The Titanic. An independent Rose defies her parents expectations, refusing to marry for wealth. She casts aside society’s class and gender restraints to dance in 3rd class. She doesn’t let Jack get too cling either. I’m not sure what to make of her dogging on the car deck, but the lady was nothing if not a free spirit.

Talking of the real ship, Titanic captain Smith revealed his feminism when he gave out specific orders to keep men from taking all the life boats. A paper published by Elinder and Erixson titled “Every man for himself!” has found that the policy of ‘women and children first’ saw a children with a higher survival rate than adults and a survival rate of 73.3% for women over 20.7% for men.

This tradition sank along with The Titanic. Elinder and Erixson continued their investigation to find that in 11 out of 18 shipwrecks, women had a significantly lower chance of survival, getting worse in more recent times. With the sinking of the MV Bulgaria in 2011, the survival rate of women was 26.9%, just over a third of 60.3% for men. We shouldn’t pretend that the case is different for British vessels. When MV Princess Victoria sank on the Irish sea in 1953, there was not a single female passenger among the survivors.

In recent maritime history, the survival rate is lowest for children.

Is it fair to give priority to women and children in these disasters? Many people will disagree on the more general principle. If women are seeking equal treatment, they say, why should they have priority like this? More generally, why should men offer to carry things for them, why should women be exempted from conscription?

Without entering into a discussion of gender, we can say without too much controversy that there are biological differences between the sexes. These not only include reproductive functions but also, as a generalisation, I higher level of strength in males. If we are seeking to achieve equality of safety, then we must accept that providing the same level of protection to women will require differences of treatment. A frenzied scramble to the life boats and a fight to the death would mean no female survivors, this is why we seek to avoid it! We could consider this a privilege, but no more than we should say building taller doorways is generally a privilege for men, or providing gynaecologists is a privilege to women.

If feminists start arguing against the provision of prostate cancer screening as sexist male dominance, then perhaps those arguing against difference of treatment would have a point. Captain Edward Smith’s egalitarian behaviour aimed to preserve life, not prioritise it.

One Law for All is a campaign that calls on the UK government to bring an end to the use of Sharia or other religious based legal systems. The campaign is at its heart opposed to the extension of cultural relativism to include justice. The UK does not use Sharia law in criminal matters of course, but many British Muslims will use Sharia tribunals for family law and those judgements are legally binding under the Arbitration Act. I first heard of the campaign from Anne Marie Waters at an event ‘Religion conflicts with Gender Rights’ hosted by OxASH. (Oxford Atheists, Secularists and Humanists)

Many aspects of Sharia law should concern us as feminists: A woman’s testimony is worth, at best, half a man’s; A woman’s marriage contract is between her father and her husband; A man can have up to four wives and attain divorce by simple repudiation, whereas a women must give reasons backed up with a man’s testimony; Child custody defaults to the father, even in cases when he is abusive; Women lose custody claims to children if they remarry and sons are entitled to inherit twice the share of daughters. Even if you think that women should have the right to choose a legal system that discriminates against them, it is questionable whether any such free choice can ever exist. Women who choose to not use Sharia tribunals become apostates, losing family and community support. Muslim women in socially isolated conclaves will lack the skill, knowledge or possibly even language necessary to live outside of their community.

Those who voice these objections are branded racists and islamophobes. Particularly by the left wing and liberal media who – quite rightly – are defending multiculturalism and freedom of religion. This is characterised as a debate between cultural relativism and absolutism, whenever it should really be viewed as an issue of whether or not we consider human rights to be universal. A belief that every human being and every woman was entitled to their Universal Rights used to be common place among the left. Recently one human right, ‘freedom of religion’, seems to have become dominant and seems to be taking priority over other rights.

As an aside, this dominance was visible even among a non-religious audience at another OxASH event with Richard Dawkins. When commenting on gender rights, Dawkins referred to the burka at one point as a ‘bin bag’. A shudder ran through the Town Hall audience and sure enough, Dawkins was heavily criticised for making such an offensive comment. What was the problem with it though, why did anyone care that the burka had been offended? Dawkins had said nothing about the women who wore it; he had said nothing about Arabic culture or race and nothing against multiculturalism. The more we think about it, the more we should realise that the burka is an aggressive subjection and oppression of women and we should make our distaste for it perfectly clear. To ignore it is to make a statement far more offensive, it is to make the statement that Arabic women are not deserving of the same rights as British women. Now that is racist!

One Law for All is not a racist or islamophobic campaign, they include arab Muslims amongst their active members. Neither is opposing the burka islamophobic, for example 96% Muslim Turkey has banned the burka from public buildings. But both these causes will struggle to receive mainstream press, despite actively distancing themselves from the EDL and BNP. One Law for All instead relies on tabloid coverage, alongside the very organisations they object to. Feminists opposing religious misogyny will also find that only The Sun will print their articles. Hopefully not on page 3, talk about uncomfortable bedfellows.

A photo of UAF (United Against Fascism) protesting in favour of Sharia law. The UAF (note the lack of any females who are ‘against fascism…) are themselves fascist. On the opposite side of the protest were the EDL and BNP, another two fascist organisations. It’s all rather confusing; perhaps One Law for All and any feminists should loiter awkwardly in the corner.

If you like it, put a Burka on it.

Top and Bottom: Beyonce rocks her two variations on the self oppressed look.

Beyonce gives me many reasons to be confused. How on earth she manages her energetic self-spanking in ‘Single Ladies’ is one such mystery, but her unique brand of ‘bootylicious’ feminism is just as baffling to me.

“There was a woman sitting on top of a man’s shoulders in her full, traditional burka. Only her eyes and hands were visible. She was waving her hands ‘To the left, to the left’ and singing every word which I could see because the veil around her mouth was moving. I was shocked she was even there, that she had been allowed to attend the concert, because after it gets dark you don’t see many women on the street. So her presence alone was moving. Witnessing the power, beauty and strength of women, especially those living in places where their liberties are limited, is what moved me the most.”

Hear hear! The significance of it is increased by the fact Irreplaceable is what Beyonce considers a feminist anthem. Personally I didn’t find a description of helping a philandering boyfriend to pack his stuff and leave all that empowering, but then I’m not the most perceptive person with lyrics. ‘Single Ladies’ isn’t much easier for me, is the wealth to purchase a ring really the top priority in Beyonce as she chooses a husband? As for ‘putting a ring on it’ – all sounds rather possessive and male dominated to me.

What’s of more concern is how she finishes off her comments in the interview.

“I felt she had her beliefs and they were important to her, but music also had a place in her life and she made a choice to be there.”

I am possibly reading too much into this, but saying “her beliefs” seems to acknowledge that the burka is a belief owned by the women who wear it. This is a contentious point. Would a woman who woke up and opened her closet under now social pressure, free of indoctrination and fear, choose to put on the burka? I can’t imagine it at all, and neither can most Muslim women!

Giving Beyonce the benefit of the doubt, she follows this up with something more agreeable.

“Some of the men got really upset! They were like to their women, ‘We have to get you out of here!’….I guess some of them [men] do get annoyed. But I never want to do ‘the banner thing’.”

Until she confuses me all over again when she is asked if she is a feminist,

“I don’t really feel that it’s necessary to define it. It’s just something that’s kind of natural for me, and I feel like…you know…it’s, like, what I live for.”

A yes would have been nice, but ok, she’s still with the cause isn’t she?

“I need to find a catchy new word for feminism, right? Like Bootylicious.”

No Ms. Knowles, you don’t. There’s nothing wrong with the word we’ve got. I’m not sure what led Beyonce to this comment, fears that people might apply their stereotypes to her and think she’s a hairy legged lesbian? Or perhaps the ‘aggressive’ perception of feminism is what she wants to avoid.

Here is how a typical conversation might go.

Theist: “Do you believe in God?”
Me: ”No I’m an atheist.”
”So you think God is impossible?”
”Possible, just so extremely unlikely that I don’t believe he exists.”
”You’re not an atheist then, you’re agnostic.”

It is completely accurate that I am agnostic. I’m agnostic about God in the same way I’m agnostic that the sun rose this morning and will rise again tomorrow morning, I’m agnostic about the existence of the clangers and moomins.

On the other hand, I consider it a >99.99% probability (Dettox style) that the sun will rise. The probability of clangers and moomins existing would be a very low <0.01%. In this sense I am an ‘a-moominist’, but also, an ‘atheist’.

So let’s take a look at how my definitions differ from those of the imagined theist above. I have created a line up below to see how fits into each category. First up is Gorge Georg the Popes very attractive PA, we can assume he is Catholic and therefore a theist. We then have a baby, which we can assume is not an active believer in God, but nor has it considered the concept. We then have myself and Sam Harris, I think it would be a struggle to pick someone more identifiably atheistic than the last member of the line-up.

Neither the baby, myself nor Sam Harris has a belief in a God, so using my definitions all three of us are atheists.

I have had people point out to me that by this definition, a coffee table or television set could be called ‘atheist’. Go ahead; I don’t really see the problem with that, though I don’t see the point of doing so either. If you wanted to you could describe a coffee table as unmarried or uncreative but I think reasonable people understand that certain characteristics (especially those that end in ‘-ist’) are intended for humans.

I’m assuming Georg claims to have certain belief in God. He has no doubt. He doesn’t think God is probable, he says he knows God exists. This makes Georg ‘gnostic’ (as in, the opposite of agnostic) Meanwhile despite being atheists, neither the baby, myself nor Sam Harris would claim that God is impossible. Just that he is so improbable that we don’t believe. That makes us, in a very limited and uninteresting way, agnostic.

As you can see, in this case it seems that Atheist and Agnostic are virtually interchangeable. But we can imagine cases where they aren’t. Some Theists do not claim certainty of their God. While some atheists (though I have yet to meet them) could claim that God is impossible, making them Gnostics.

The point remains that Agnosticism will tell you only about what sort of knowledge someone claims to possess, not what they actually think. When it comes to discussing the existence of God, this isn’t particularly interesting. Imagine the above table, especially if you add in a few Theist agnostics, it doesn’t really tell you very much.

So why is it that people are trying to redefine atheism to mean a belief that God is impossible?

Defining atheism to be something that is so much harder to defend makes it easier for theists to dismiss atheists as irrational. It also gives theists a much lower standard of evidence, they only need to prove that a God is possible, not that their God and their Bible/Quran/Torah really exists and really cares. This is very frustrating for the rationally minded amongst us, theists and atheists; because we could all create a case for the ‘possibility’ of any number of ridiculous unworthy concepts.

Secondly I think some people want to define atheism in this way because they wish to portray it as just another statement of ‘belief’. If atheism was a faith and belief statement of the same sort as theism, then it would be self-refuting by denying such belief statements. I think on a certain level it may also be that many theists recognise that belief statements based on faith are actually less convincing than statements of probability and rationality. Unfortunately they see fit to apply this weakness to their redefined atheism, but not to theism.

This tool, providing mere pastime curiosity for me, was rightly scrapped after being used for brutal repression by others. Homophobic religious fundamentalists querying facebook for Saudi Arabian lesbians, such new technologies that had gone a small way to liberating these women, was turned and used to help their persecution.

Though I can’t delve into the same level of detail now, there is still enough information available from facebook to provide an evening of amusement. Or as I call it, research, into the data set of people I’ve met.

MyFNetwork

The first thing I noticed about this graph was that the majority of my friends, or certainly a large minority, were very disconnected. The large clusters, identifiable by the grey, include friends from secondary school (~350), friends from university (~100) and friends from Global Young Leaders Conference (~50) respectively. This adds up to around 500. Only just over half of my friends list. What about the other 400 or so friends, are they just totally disconnected from each other? Before I look at that, I’ve received some amusing comments on facebook about this one already.

Lee Sharkey Philip bell is such a bridge between your cool friends and your oxford ones.

 

Rachel Watters I wish I could say the same about you Lee…

Phil Bell’s prominence is an endorsement of MyFNetwork, with him being the sole link between my school and my college. These two groups are very closely knit within themselves but have next to no relations between each other. To guesstimate what sort of scientific words I might use here, they are closely intrarelated but distantly interrelated. Perhaps over my time at Oxford, some other school friends at other colleges will begin to become more prominent too, or my friends at Oxford who were involved in GYLC and MUN will become more prominent.

To a certain extent the 400 disconnected friends, that is, people I’m friends with but who aren’t friends with my other friends, can be explained from people I have met at particular events, such as my week and a half holiday at oxford interviews or from many MUN conferences, or even just from one particular concert I played/sang in or something. There may be many small groups that MyFNetwork simply failed to detect, my primary school friends list contains about 30 people and they are nearly all mutual friends (indeed most of them, except for myself, went on to Belfast High School and Belfast Royal Academy, so they are more likely to be friends with each other than with me!) The Whiteabbey Primary School group doesn’t seem to show up here though. Other groups such as my Scandinavian and other European friends from the Rybak community don’t seem to have emerged, though I can spot their names among the dispersed entries around the edges. Nor was MyFNetwork looking for family links though that would count for only comparatively small number of friends. A few other online communities as well as groups such as the Belfast School of Music friends aren’t accounted for. Ultimately, it seems that an unusually large number of my friends do just seem to be unrelated to each other and I’m not really sure what to make of that.

Social Graph and Friend Wheel

… sadly would not work with my number of friends, bad news for their developers, given that over 900 friends is soon becoming relatively normal in the facebook world.

Touch Graph

This would be the analytical tool I would recommend. 25 clusters was still not enough for me, but it certainly was an improvement on what other apps were offering. The Lime Green of oxford can be spotted easily, while this time my primary school is visible down on the bottom right, in Green. In the large ‘Methody’ cluster, we can actually see it is made up of a variety of different clusters (in fact, many non Methodians have been dragged in.) GYLC is visible in the dark green, whilst most of the left hand side is made up of the MUN and Rybak clusters. In the bottom left, quite a few of the purple are either family or family friends, I’m impressed that Touch Graph picked them out. There would seem to be much less noise in this graph. That is mostly because Touch Graph is designed to show clusters, those who have few or no mutual friends, simply aren’t present in the graph. I suspect more people are linked up that were in the past graph though, suggesting Touch Graph is much better at following at least a few steps of degrees of separation.

Dare I say it but it also seems that within the Northern Ireland community, there are occasional hints of clustering by religion, or more to the point, denomination. I suppose this can be expected, but I’ll readily admit the possibility makes me uncomfortable.

How much have I really learnt from these? I can’t go into details, without giving things away/offending people, but I have had all my facebook friends neatly categorised into over a dozen different friend lists for about 2 years now and I have been hiding/showing statuses and other posts to different friend lists on the basis of their content, relevancy and privacy for all this time. My facebook friend lists have always had organised what these apps manage only in a more crude form. I think the interest is in that by looking at links alone a computer can approximately spot the same friendship groups that I can, when I have the benefit of my personal relationship with the people and background knowledge of how they know each other (knowing about the links, not just that they exist.) If these sorts of tools could access similar knowledge to us, through statistics on our interactions and messages with social network friends, then how much more accurate and subtle could these automatic analyses be! Accurate and subtle information that will be stored in the cold chip of a server, not our minds.

Having looked at how my friends seem to relate to each other, I think I will try again to delve back into their politics, religions, ethnicities and other background information. That shall be for another post on another day.

All this talk of Cameron’s bull dog attitude has reminded me how thin advocates for the European Project are on the ground. Not only is defending the current state of the EU painful, but advocating further integration seems inconceivable. Not being prone to patriotism myself, much of the Euro bashing rhetoric goes over my head. Patriotism? Those who argue agaisnt further integration or even for complete withdrawal don’t seem to suspect patriotism is involved, no, the term ‘national interest’ has been bandied about quite a lot. The coalition government has from its formation depended a lot upon the argument “yes university fees are wrong, but sometimes in the national interest…”, ‘national interest’ features heavily in any discussion of economic policy, it is used to justify policy more often employment or recovery, becoming suspiciously synonymous with ‘the market confidence’. In the latest Europe spat, the national interest seemed suspiciously similar to the interest of the City. The deciding factor in Blair’s persuading the country to go to war in Iraq and Afghanistan was also the national interest. (Suggestions that women’s rights would be protected appeared only retrospectively.)

I’m wary of ‘national interest’ arguments in general, it seems politicians fall back on the phrase when they aren’treally willing to discuss technical detail or deeper ideological issues. When I hear Europe and the National Interest mentioned, I’m reminded of a very alternative view of the National Interest advocated by a British prime minister (a conservative one too)

“We argue about fish, about potatoes, about milk, on the periphery. But what is Europe really for? Because the countries of Europe, none of them anything but second-rate powers by themselves, can, if they get together, be a power in the world, an economic power, a power in foreign policy, a power in defence equal to either of the superpowers. We are in the position of the Greek city states: they fought one another and they fell victim to Alexander the Great and then to the Romans. Europe united could still, by not haggling about the size of lorries but by having a single foreign policy, a single defence policy and a single economic policy, be equal to the great superpowers.

Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, who initiated the UK’s application to join the EEC, The Listener, London, Febuary 8, 1979.

Christmas music, how fantastic, my favourites this year are Rutters orchestral arrangement of I saw three ships, then Gardner’s Holly and the Ivy (so jiggy). My all time favourite remains Elaine Paige’s “thirty-two feet and eight little tails”

Fierce cold for that baby jesus in his crib so it is.
A cheeky bottle of Baileys from the wise men.
Wishin’ ye a merry Christmastide.

A few weeks before setting off to Rome I’d read a few amusing news stories about ‘gladiator fights’ happening outside the Colosseum. Apparently the gladiator impersonators had formed gangs and were using violence and intimidation against other would-be gladiators, as well as against tourists to force them to pay up for photographs.

In response, the Italian police sent in agents, undercover in gladiator costumes and togas. Sure enough, a ‘sword fight’ did ensue, other undercover police then stepped in to make arrests as reported by The Guardian and the BBC.

There was no such drama when we visited the Colosseum and Forum, though the gladiators were around and not looking authentic at all. We avoided being coerced out of our money anyhow, though we did in the end decide to dodge the queue by signing up for a tour.

The system was very much geared for tours. By buying a ‘large group’ ticket, the tour guides paid a much reduced cost per person, so some of them charged a very similar price for a guided tour as was charged for a normal ticket but could still have made a profit even on that. On top of this, for just a few euro, tourists could effectively skip the queue. This was the case in the Forum, the Colosseum and even in the Vatican.

There’s not much I can say about the Colosseum that you shouldn’t figure out for yourself from a decent google search and a decent documentary on the Romans, but the impressiveness of the scale of building is something that must be seen first hand to be appreciated. I can add that to my surprise, the Colosseum underwent a conversion fairly recently to a) bear the name of a Pope who restored it, b) include a chapel and c) be set up for the stations of the cross.

Enter Gelato Numero Treis. Dark dark dark chocolate fondant and Baileys.

Next up was the Forum, an eccentric mix up of rubble. There was an impressive capacity for recycling, a temple had been recycled first as a basilica and then as a church vestibule.

Even the smaller fragments of ancient marble had been recycled, proving useful as foot stools and resting spots for tourists. So plentiful is the priceless heritage, that you don’t even feel bad resting muddy feet on them.

The tour guide for the forum was surprisingly informative, though he did insist on ‘tour guide bant’ which I find one of the most painfully cringe worthy experiences. I did appreciate his explanations of where things were missing, “and that, is in the Vatican.” or “on your left you would see this – but it’s currently in the Vatican.” It was surprisingly refreshing to discover that “the death place of Nero, not the forum but a palace, is now a cat sanctuary.” We passed by the cat sanctuary later on in the week, supposedly all hundred or so cats have been tested and vaccinated, given their freedom to wander the city though, I wouldn’t have taken my chances with any of them. Rome perhaps has a problem with animal disease, not just cat FIV AIDS but also rabies, the ‘dog police’ for want of a better description had sirens, so I’m assuming something justified them.

Rome had a great many different types of place, on one embassy entrance we counted at least 4 different forces. Not a particularly efficient way to run things. The police were allowed to smoke while on duty too, something my dad had to point out before I noticed, but having noticed it I would now agree there was something slovenly about it.

I digress. My point behind all this talk of cats, dogs and polizia is that the sheer abundance of historical artifacts in Rome means they are treated with a nonchalance that would be simply unimaginable anywhere else in the world, except perhaps Athens were much of it got blown up (by the Turks admittedly, but still.)

Questioning the Coalition narrative of Labour’s profligacy and cuts’ necessity.

Isaiah Berlin said that people can be divided into two categories of thinkers, summarised thus by the Greek poet Archilochus.

“The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing”

This aphorism is easily observed by anyone who chooses to question government policy.
Take Student Fees. Ask why the cap on fees has been tripled and you will be told that the government can no longer afford to fund higher education. Ask why higher education funding must fall and you will be told it is to tackle the deficit. Ask why deficit reduction is priority and you will be told, “we’re having to make difficult choices to clean up the mess left behind by the party opposite” Honestly, I didn’t even bother looking for an exact quotation of that message, it has been repeated so many times in so many different (but the same) iterations that I can simply make it up and be sure that a coalition minister will have used that variation at some point.

The whole thing reminds me of Aldrous Huxley’s dystopian ‘Brave New World’, in which “62400 repetitions make one truth.”

The cabinet hedgehogs one big idea, their answer to every question, is that policy x is necessary, because of the legacy left behind by the Labour party.

The fact that a political party has one common answer to many questions is not itself damning or a flaw. After all, most political groups share some common ideology, which is essentially the ‘one big thing’ they view the world through. However the current coalition answer is not an ideal or vision, but rather a very practical, pragmatic and ‘facts of the situation’ sort of answer, which I think in many ways makes it very vulnerable as a foundation for policy. Unlike Berlin’s ideological hedgehogs, the government ministers seem to be hedgehogs who only know one small thing.

Labour’s Legacy

AKA: The mess left behind, the shocking inheritance, the debt problem.

This is vital to the argument. What was Labour’s legacy? Whilst the deficit and debt were indeed high by the election in 2010, this was in a situation that according to Vince Cable is the economic equivalent of war. It makes more sense therefore to judge the Labour governments alleged profligacy by their entire time in office, rather than the effects of a recession.

According to the above graph, between 1997 and 2003, Labour had in fact been reducing the debt, through their comparatively restrained increases in public spending and the use of incomes such as the sale of the 3G spectrum to cancel debts. Some notable debts, such as that owed to the US government from WW2, were finally cleared by the Labour government.

For those who assume that Labour’s profligacy set in only during the financial crisis from 2008, a fair comparison then would be as Vince Cable says, to a time of war. In the case below, it’s fairly clear that UK Debt is far less significant after this ‘economic war time’ than after the real WW1 and WW2.

Those who still consider Labour’s spending to have been profligate, will easily find evidence that the Conservatives pledged to match Labour’s spending right up until the financial crisis.  In 2007 Cameron was still criticising Gordon Brown for introducing cuts in his Budget, “He has spent all year attacking our policy and making ludicrous figures for cuts in public spending, but now he is introducing it.”

Necessity

The facts undermine the ‘inherited mess’ part of the coalition’s “one big idea”, but that does not mean there are no arguments for their course of action, it’s simply a shame they choose to not bother making them.

In the case of Student Fees, they could have focused their argument, as some Labour MPs did, on the unfair situation of non graduate tax payers having to fund what are called “mickey mouse degrees” They could even have argued that too many students were doing degrees simply for the sake of qualifications and that a labour market should accommodate more practical displays of experience and skill in the many areas of work where a degree is simply not very useful.

In general, a real hedgehog outlook would be if the Coalition could provide a persuasive argument for their big idea that contractionary fiscal policy being a route to economic growth. Perhaps the frontbench do hold such beliefs and arguments but instead choose to force a narrative onto their opposing party. They had better hope their ‘profligate labour’ narrative sticks, because with cuts and unemployment, labour’s ‘thatcherite tory’ narrative for Cameron certainly will.

Curtis argues strongly against market advocates and figures such as Hayek, but does borrow from some of their analyses. The suspicion that Curtis feels holds progress back, he explains is in the fear of the language of “positive liberty” which is left over from it’s use by the Soviet Union. In the Road to Serfdom, Hayek’s fears of ‘positive liberty’ he explains derive from what he observed as the consequential rise of Fascism and Totalitarianism. The difference emerges between Curtis who considers it an over reaction, and Hayek who considers it a wise reaction.

I’d recomend any of Adam Curtis’ documentaries to anyone, agree or disagree with him, he can certainly link together a fascinating bundle of stories in a way that will make them seem so interrelated that it’s easy to underestimate the depth of perception Curtis displays to find them in the first place.

What I’ve been listening to:

Tom Lehrer’s “The Vatican Rag” got me in the mood for visiting the real thing last week. 2-4-6-8 time to transubstantiate!

Whitney Houston, how cheesy predictable and mainstream I hear you say. In fairness to me, I don’t tend to watch much of the XFactor, Pop Idol sort of TV shows that this song is probably sung so often in, so Whitney Houston is novel to me at least, if not to you.

What I’ve been watching…

For all that it’s from nearly two decades ago, these Spitting Images satires of the Murdoch Press and Tony Blair (if you subscribe to the Tory story about Labour’s spending) are impressively relevant even in ‘2Kay11’.

Also, just as a small update to my past posts about chauvinism on the Tory Frontbench, I think the abortion amendment is a double edged sword of evidence against Cameron. For starters, an anti-abortion and – if you’ll let generalise to the extreme – anti-women’s rights, amendment should never have been encouraged and allowed to get so far. But even when Cameron rebuked Nadine Dorries, he managed to do it in a way that was Chauvinistic.

Regardless of school boy humour, her question should have been answered.

Oh, I’ve also been watching this, but from a Matt Baker fan perspective rather than a political perspective.

Where I’ve been!

The sharp pain behind my eyes as the plane climbed the sky should have been a warning of the delights awaiting me on descent. I paid little heed to it though and watched out the window as Aer Lingus, the most cliché Irish airline imaginable, flew us over the French Alps. This glimpse out the window would in fact turn out to be the closest I would come to our family’s traditional alpine climbing holiday. That’s not to say this holiday required any less physical exertion, on the contrary cities normally take more out of me, or maybe I’m just becoming less fit. Eventually the blissful alps slipped over the horizon and dusty Rome came into sight. Mild aerosinusitis hit, the pain of air pressure differences between the sinuses and the cabin. I feel sorry for anyone else who has it on flights, sorry for the pain but more for the alarming sensation that your brain is about to explode. Despite my best attempts to clear my nose or balance the pressure it took a few hours for the headache to clear.

Medical digression, but Aerosinusitis is likely to occur when people have colds or other allergies, posing a serious risk of complications to only the most regular flyers. Interestingly, often the strikes among Cabin Crew that we so often here about often focus on reductions in their paid sick leave. BA managers or their equivalents will attempt to turn public opinion against the crew, with figures presented such as how much more sick leave they are entitled to compared to the public. Of course, this is because if an air hostess has a cold, they can’t just slog through work like the rest of us, as they would be risking far more serious health consequences. Just something to bear in mind during the next BA strike.

It’s rare to fly to or from Belfast without meeting a familiar face on board. My delightful chance encounter this year was with a fellow ‘Greek Scholar’ Vicky, apparently her earlier flight had been cancelled due to air traffic controllers strike in Rome (they don’t even have Aerosinusitis as an excuse.) It was a far better meeting than the time I sat next to a guy whose school bag, revision notes and exam card I had accidentally lifted from the library on the morning of his Maths A level back when I was in 3rd year, I still feel so bad about that.

After being hurtled around Rome by our taxi man, who enjoyed described the scenary as, “Vatican wall” … “Still Vatican wall”, we finally got to our apartment. It was already late in the evening, but I was still sweaty and uncomfortable in jeans and a shirt. Thankfully, help was on the horizon.

The Vatican Wall and I, it’s a love hate thing.

Enter Gelati Numero Uno. <applause> Primo scoop Kinder (Nocciola) Hazlenut Praline, Secondo Scoop Baileys Cream.

The ice-cream in Rome was beyond compare, a vast selection of flavours. Quality flavours too, not the artificial tasting syrup produced flavours we normally get at home. In Rome the sprinkled Kinder was not even necessary to convince me the flavour was authentic.

I noticed a few things on our first late night stroll through Rome. (Other than the ever present heat)

One was the adorable use of “SPQR” (Senatus Populusque Romanus ) on the phone booths, post boxes and manhole covers. Admittedly the SPQR has somewhat slipped down the leagues of power, but to have such a historical title is enviable for a local council and certainly lends them more gravitas than the purple lorries of my own Newtownabbey Council.
Next I noticed the many obelisks, most of them originally from North Africa, or North Africa via Greece. These always had an iron cross clamped on the top of them and usually a claim by some Pope to have made some admirable contribution. Any one of these obelisks could have been a clue as to how the Vatican had stamped its mark across most of the ancient treasures of Rome.

The cross topped obelisk – the Vatican’s way of saying, “Pius was ‘ere”

Finally I noticed how many people, Romanus as well as Barbericus, were happy to mill around the city, eating or just socialising, right up until the small hours of the morning. If only British cities could have such a night culture.

Sadly the night culture did also keep me awake, I was forced into many midnight ‘cost benefit analyses’ of stifling heat vs. Italian sirens and car horns coming through the open window.

If I manage to deliver any more installments of the antics of this puer romanus this week then you might actually get to hear a bit more about the city.

Until then,

divertiamoci

The Portsmouth Sinfonia rightly deserve their title, take a listen to www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b013fj17/In_Living_Memory_Series_14_Episode_4/ for the history of it.

They had an impressive repertoire that they recorded multiple records with and even performed in the Royal Albert Hall. Their numbers ranged from pop hits such as “Satisfaction” …

To the Dance of the Sugarplum Fairy and other popular classics.

They even made a pointed rebuttal of the trend for “Classical Medleys” complete with Disco Clap sound effects, such as the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra’s “Hooked On” series.

‘We’d been claiming to be the worst orchestra for decades, and suddenly the RPO was beating us, we had to do something’

Hence the Portsmouth Sinfonia created their “Classical Mudley”

But on second thoughts, I don’t take back all my viola jokes.

This morning I noticed a bee had become entangled in a spiders web outside my window. With significant courage (for me) I freed it, fed it and got it out of the rain so it could dry and take off. I booked my theory test for the 20th of September (first available date, things must be busy.) Everyone talks about how easy the theory test is, but I’m really not very good at it. I don’t really care if that makes me an idiot because it’s not really an intellectual pursuit for me. But still, it would be nice to not have to do practice tests for the next three weeks.

This tree was the opposite direction from the ancient stone tomb that we were meant to be photographing, so it looked as though we had missed the whole point of the location.

Leaving aside the scenic journeys for a minute, the Irish road experience itself is a compilation of all my worst driving nightmares. The roads were narrow and bumpy with sharp bends, perhaps to ensure the longest possible route between any two locations. This worked out well though, as viewing the Irish scenary whizz (or bump) past while being inside a warm car was probably the most pleasant way to see it.

Navigation was not always the easiest thing. Even our dedicated "Sally Satnav" was confused by the lack of postcodes, expressing her dismay through frequent voice changes. Sally’s wandering accent, from British to American English did not make finding our way around Ireland any easier. At one point on the SatNav a small bay was labelled as the "Atlantic Ocean" – giving the amusing impression that in 30mins we had driven around the ocean.

The Irish Postal Address system (or lack thereof) combined with the SatNav and roads were still only minor contributors to our transport difficulties. Some of the time, we just didn’t really know where we were going. One such example was when we had guesstimated the location of "SAP Business Park". As we followed Sally’s directions we found ourselves on an increasingly narrow road, eventually it began to go through the middle of farms and we got stuck behind a moving herd of cows. By the time grass verges had begun to appear in the middle of the road I was really struggling to visualise an HGV making any deliveries this way. Either this was a very Irish sort of business park, or it was not a business park at all. After nearly driving off the end of the peninsula into the ocean, we accepted the latter.

Other amusing sites we passed on our travels included a church with a car parking area outside. This church was in the middle of nowhere and the car park was completely unsheltered but still carried numerous "maximum height" warning signs and barriers. But whatever for? Of course, the answer should have been fairly obvious – it was to stop farmers bringing their tractors along to mass.

On the topic of the church, we came across at least a dozen "Mary" schools and colleges. I should be careful what I say in a country were blasphemy is still constitutionally illegal and punishable by a maximum fine of €25,000! However, ‘hypothetically’, I may have spent some time on the holiday pondering why schools and churches would be so uninventive in their naming. Any string of adoring adjectives could be attached to Mary to create an institution, it’s like a bizarre liturgical form of MadLibs, "Holy Lady Mary of the Children", "Mary Immaculate College", "Mary Cause of our Joy and Mercy" "Mary Fairy Contrary" any sort of ‘Mary Epithet’ you could dream of.

With so many of these pious place names, Sally SatNav could undergo a conversion. Though normally a secular GPS device who offers ‘direction temporal’, Sally SatNav seemed to be offering ‘direction spiritual’ for a change "Follow the road to Damascus for 5.6 miles and arrive at destination". Maps are the same, being about as geographically useful as a contoured printing of the Hail Mary, which, now that I imagine what that would look like, is exactly what they were.

I’m exaggerating of course, there are actually many signs of changing attitudes to religion in Ireland. Walking past a small village pub I saw that it was "Match Making Night", naturally I took a peek in, not to check out my prospects or anything, just because I can be nosy like that. Given that the attendance seemed to be made up of 3 men and two women, I can only conclude that Ireland, or County Clare at least, has adopted a much more liberal view of what a ‘match’ can be. That, or I’m expecting too much of rural Wednesday night life and giving too much credit to the brogue allure.
I may even have been staying in a bastion of tolerance and liberal attitudes myself, the delightful hostel we stayed in, complete with peat stove fire, was named "Rainbow Hostel" which I thought (quietly to myself…) sounded rather like some sort of LGBT spa. Rainbow Hostel was host to an impressive number of tourists from Europe and even as far afield as Newfoundland. This was the case in Galway and Limerick too, all around were accents and languages from abroad, I’m sure this is unremarkable in other places, but its quite unusual to see tourists in Belfast, so I always find myself strangely impressed and enthused by it.

The modernisation of Ireland was visible in the architecture too, with exceptionally nice buildings, especially schools and higher education buildings.

Despite what the last few paragraphs might have implied, I do have a respect for many aspects of Ireland’s spirituality.

<performs mime staircase into ancient tomb> Yes, that much respect.

We’re pretty lucky we managed to spot the turnoff for this portal. The rocks were sourced locally and were of pretty standard size for the area, as I said at the time, “it’s not exactly stonehenge” but it had far more of the authenticity and atmosphere.

I think the above photo was taken just as Alice stumbled into a “coke holder” in the ground. These were soft drink can shaped and sized holes in the rocks underfoot that functioned as cup holders for neolithic men and women when they were having their barbecues, under the convenient wind shelter. We had to move off pretty soon after this, about a dozen tourists who wanted more serious photos had started giving us ‘looks’.

One of the most interesting things about the Burren and also about Doolin Harbour area was the strange ‘scifi’ looking rocks underfoot. In Doolin harbour this was most obvious, with large areas that looked very chiselled.

Dejavu – junior boys basement lockers

Geography squee – wave cut platforms

We managed to arrange our visit to the cliffs of Moher for a day where we could at least see the cliffs themselves, if not far onto the ocean. Stunning sites, though we did think that they were less entitled to be one of the ‘7 natural wonders of the world’ than the giants causeway. I remembered reading Eoin Colfer’s book “The Wish List” in which one of the characters life time ambitions is to spit over the edge of the cliffs of Moher. Despite facing a strong inland wind, I managed to spit over the edge and not have it blown back into my own or anyone elses face. However a google for “spit over the cliffs of moher” seems to show that this was not as common a tradition as I thought, so, I may have looked a bit strange. I’m proud of myself anyway.

Here’s something I’ve been listening to this week, thanks to Eavan Prenter for the recommendation.

Does anyone here ever use “SUPER video converter”? It’s a very good piece of software, or, it’s a useful front end anyway. But the website melts the mind. For some strange reason the developer has created a maze of links and inane comments on the software’s abilities. Such is the direness of the website that even after about 4 years using the software I’m not entirely convinced it doesn’t contain some sort of spyware.

It’s not that the website developer is unaware of what he has done, in fact, s/he’s even created a "how to download” page. Yes, a website explaining how to use the other dysfunctional website. Why not just spend that time fixing the other website? He could probably be making money from it if he got the site fixed.