I'm heartened to see that during my absence from the country all seems to have suddenly come right with the snooker world once again. The short-match format of the World Open at the SECC really seems to have put a bit of zing into what would otherwise have been a routine and quickly-forgotten second-tier event, Ronnie O'Sullivan's antics have yet again given the lie to the hoary old complaint that "there are no characters in the game anymore", and most importantly of all, the nightmare of the world number one being handed a lifetime ban from the game for match-fixing has been averted. Many will be sceptical about the circumstances in which John Higgins' name has been "cleared", but personally I've always been much more troubled by the many cases where sportsmen and women have seen the principles of natural justice turned on their head, and have found that they were essentially guilty until proved innocent. A classic example from our own shores was Alain Baxter, who for making an innocent mistake with a nasal spray had his career blighted, lost his Olympic medal, and had to suffer disgraceful slurs from senior administrators who really should have known better, all the way up to the IOC chief Jacques Rogge.
*
There was a bizarre incident in Stephen Maguire's match last night, when he was warned by the referee for conceding a frame in a situation where he did not yet require snookers. Now if ever there was an irrational rule, surely that must be it. Warnings are appropriate for non-specific offences like unsportsmanlike conduct, but if you don't want players to concede too early, where is the barrier to simply banning it? A rule stating that a player cannot concede a frame in those circumstances without also conceding the match ought to do the trick.
Thursday, September 23, 2010
Extending life - on an ever-expanding timetable?
If you happened to see the umpteenth repeat of BBC 4's (peculiar but rather good) comedy/science crossover show It's Only a Theory the other night, you'll have seen the unforgettable figure of the epically-bearded Dr Aubrey de Grey expounding his provocative proposition that the first 1000-year-old human being has probably already been born, due to supposedly imminent breakthroughs in regenerative medicine. I think the first time I heard of de Grey was a number of years ago when he briefly appeared on an episode of Horizon about the prospects for expanding human lifespan. I have to say - perhaps due to the way he was edited - he came across on that occasion as rather deranged, comparing the thousands of daily deaths from aging to 9/11, and angrily demanding that something be done to stop the "carnage". So it was interesting to see him given the time to make his case in a much more measured and logical way. He doesn't actually claim that the technology that might enable people to live for centuries is just around the corner, but he does suggest that it will be possible within a few decades to extend healthy lifespan by approximately thirty years, and - crucially - that this will buy enough time for further breakthroughs in rejuvenation techniques to be made, which in turn will buy yet more time, and so on. He calls this process "longevity escape velocity", and it's upon this that he bases his conviction that people currently alive might go on to live unimaginably long lives.
I was sufficiently intrigued by all this a few months ago that I decided to read up on the general subject and see just how far to the fringe de Grey's views actually are within the scientific community. The answer was slightly surprising. While (as you might expect) his particular blueprint for the rapid conquest of aging is well beyond the bounds of mainstream thinking, there does seem to be a genuine sense that some kind of breakthrough is forthcoming, with leading experts talking confidently of a more modest seven year increase in healthy lifespan in the foreseeable future. For the avoidance of doubt, this would not be achieved by the conventional means of tackling specific illnesses, but by genuinely contriving a way in which someone who is, say, chronologically 60 years old, could be biologically a few years younger than that. So does this mean that the only difference between de Grey and the mainstream scientists is scale of ambition - seven years versus thirty? Not quite. There is in fact an almost total divergence of approach, with the majority of scientists in the field working more or less exclusively on the slowing of the aging process, while de Grey intends to reverse it. His elaborate plan for achieving this ("Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence" or "SENS") is, his critics contend, nothing short of pseudo-science, as there is currently no firm evidential basis for believing it will work - in contrast to the possible methods for slowing aging, which have repeatedly shown their promise through laboratory tests on animals. Dr de Grey counters that his is a goal-directed engineering approach, something which many curiosity-driven scientists simply cannot understand. He cites as an example the Wright Brothers, who in the design and construction phase had no way of knowing for sure that their flying machine would work - but if they'd needed that certainty to proceed, they'd never have bothered trying to work towards their goal in the first place.
So it's a kind of theological dispute, but one that matters immensely, because the believers in each approach are in competition for funds and credibility. Some - although not all - of the mainstream biogerontologists are furious with de Grey, believing his high-profile promotion of what they see as "quackery" is hindering their own chances of progress. As a non-scientist, I'm clearly in no position to judge if they're right about the unscientific nature of de Grey's ideas, but having read some of his papers and interviews from the last few years, one very simple thing does repeatedly leap out and bug me. He always seems to state exactly the same timescale for 'longevity escape velocity' - that there is a 50/50 chance of proof-of-concept in mice within ten years, and of the first therapies being available to humans within 25 years. Clearly, with seven years or so having elapsed since he started making this claim, those numbers should have come down accordingly - instead, they have remained absolutely static. With no real trace of an explanation for this, the claimed timescale does start to look suspiciously like a sleight-of-hand, solely designed to grab public attention.
Anyway, I'd heard that de Grey was reasonably approachable and might respond to emails, so a few weeks ago I decided to chance my arm and go to the horse's mouth with my concerns. I think I was also slightly hoping I might get a rare Scot Goes Pop 'exclusive' out of it! In the end one of his research assistants was kind enough to send me a long and detailed response which, while repeatedly slipping into sales patter, does to be fair address the points I had raised in a very full and frank way -
Hi James,
My name is Michael Rae; I'm one of Dr. de Grey's research assistants, and coauthor of his recent book, "Ending Aging"
(This is the new, paperback edition, which has an Afterword covering some of the advances in SENS science that were made after the publication of the hardcover).
With all of his duties in research, promoting engineering-based biotechnologies to arrest and reverse biological aging, and the promotion the book, Dr. de Grey has for some time been unable to keep up with most of his correspondence; when he received your email, he asked me to send his apologies, and answer your question as best I can.
You wrote:
> I've
> recently read a lot about your work on aging, and while I'm
> obviously not in a position to judge for myself the scientific
> plausibility of your ideas, there is one simple problem that leaps
> out at me (and I'm sure many others) about the credibility of your
> claims.
>
> In every article and interview I've seen going back to at least
> 2003, you've given exactly the same estimated timescale - a 50/50
> chance of robust mouse rejuvenation within ten years, and of the
> first therapies being available for humans within 25 years. But if
> you'd been right about that in 2003, we should of course by now be
> just three years away from proof of concept in mice, and eighteen
> years away from the human breakthrough.
>
> Perhaps what you really mean is that there would be a 50/50 chance
> of meeting these ambitious timescales IF the $1 billion you need
> magically became available right now?
In fact, that's exactly what it means: we could well be as little as 25 years away from the goal *once we get started* . So far, unfortunately, the world has not begun to push for it. While SENS Foundation is doing the greatest amount of leveraged, critical-path work that we can on our limited research budget, and while most of the challenges that need to be tackled for achieving comprehensive rejuvenation are being funded and pursued to one degree or another by government and industry research, still there is nowhere near the level of intense, single-minded commitment worldwide required to achieve this goal.
> If so, that puts a completely
> different complexion on things, because - for better or worse - that
> scale of investment is surely not going to be forthcoming in
> anything close to the foreseeable future, and the chances of hitting
> those timescales in the real world is therefore not 50/50, but
> essentially zero.
Wow, and I thought I was a pessimist! But the idea that there is NO chance that this scale of investment could be forthcoming strikes even me as entirely unreasonable. The 2010 Haiti earthquake got commitments of US$3.3 bn to help out 3 million victims; the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami got commitments nearly twice that; and to use an hackneyed example, the TARP fund is catechismally invoked as the "$700 bn bailout."
Right now, there are 100,000 people dying of aging worldwide every single day, and many times this number needlessly sliding further down the progressive slide of age-related disease, disability, dependence, and dementia. $1 bn (or several times this) per year is a pittance, even within biomedical research: the NIH got US$$30.5B for FY. 2009, for goodness' sake!
But of course, that doesn't mean it's inevitable, or easy to mobilize. Surely you didn't think that Dr. de Grey was saying that we could all sit on our butts, and business-as-usual would give even odds of human rejuvenation in a quarter century.
> Or, if that's not the case, was there some other factor that was
> holding back the progress of research in 2003 or 2006 that doesn't
> apply now?
It still applies now: it's simply funding, and proactive refocusing of biomedical research and (soon thereafter) some regulatory tweaks.
> I suppose what I'm really asking is this : doesn't it
> seem overwhelmingly likely to you that in 2015 or 2020, you'll still
> be giving media interviews in which you're saying "we could be just
> ten years away from doing this in mice, and 25 years away in humans"?
Overwhelmingly, no -- but very possible in 2015, and plausible in 2020.
So what are you going to do about it >:) ?
If you're ready to help us to hasten progress in SENS science, we have quite a few listed here:
http://sens.org/help-us/volunteer
Also, you can pick up a copy of Aubrey's and my book (link above) and, after having read it for your own further understanding, get the word out by passing your copy around to others you know, and/or by donating it to a library, and/or by picking up extra copies for the latter 2 purposes.
Another one: have you checked out _Rejuvenation Research_ ("an international, interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed academic journal that covers all aspects of biology and biomedicine relevant to the combating, and ultimately the reversal, of age-related physiological and cognitive decline in nonhuman species and eventually in humans"), of which Dr. de Grey is Editor-in-Chief)? If you're a student or academic, and your institution has a subscription, you should be able to get direct online access -- and if it doesn't, you can recommend it here:
http://www.liebertpub.com/library.aspx?pub_id=127
This would not only give you access to the journal, but would help to disseminate its high-quality biogerontological research at your institution. You would need to get your library's contact info, preferably for the collections department; these are usually available on the 'contact' page, or one can ask a librarian about the right person to contact about a subscription recommendation.
And (naked plug!) remember that you can help to ensure that real age-reversing biotechnology becomes available as soon as possible, alleviating the most age-related suffering and death, by making a donation to support SENS research:
http://sens.org/donate
I leave it to you to choose how you will take on the moral and scientific challenge of biological aging. However you proceed: live long -- live young!
-Michael
So many thanks to Michael for taking the time to respond so thoroughly. While he clearly genuinely feels there are more grounds for optimism on the funding front than I can conceive of, I do still think Dr de Grey should be fronting up about that crucial caveat to a much greater extent when speaking to the media. And to address Michael's question (ie. did I really think de Grey was saying his 25-year timescale was in no way contingent on some fairly dramatic changes in thinking on the part of policy-makers) - well, whatever I may have thought, frankly I do believe that is the misleading impression he has been leaving his audience with on many occasions. As for my own "contribution", since I'm not actually a student, nor an academic, nor a millionaire, I think writing this post will probably have to do to be getting on with!
I was sufficiently intrigued by all this a few months ago that I decided to read up on the general subject and see just how far to the fringe de Grey's views actually are within the scientific community. The answer was slightly surprising. While (as you might expect) his particular blueprint for the rapid conquest of aging is well beyond the bounds of mainstream thinking, there does seem to be a genuine sense that some kind of breakthrough is forthcoming, with leading experts talking confidently of a more modest seven year increase in healthy lifespan in the foreseeable future. For the avoidance of doubt, this would not be achieved by the conventional means of tackling specific illnesses, but by genuinely contriving a way in which someone who is, say, chronologically 60 years old, could be biologically a few years younger than that. So does this mean that the only difference between de Grey and the mainstream scientists is scale of ambition - seven years versus thirty? Not quite. There is in fact an almost total divergence of approach, with the majority of scientists in the field working more or less exclusively on the slowing of the aging process, while de Grey intends to reverse it. His elaborate plan for achieving this ("Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence" or "SENS") is, his critics contend, nothing short of pseudo-science, as there is currently no firm evidential basis for believing it will work - in contrast to the possible methods for slowing aging, which have repeatedly shown their promise through laboratory tests on animals. Dr de Grey counters that his is a goal-directed engineering approach, something which many curiosity-driven scientists simply cannot understand. He cites as an example the Wright Brothers, who in the design and construction phase had no way of knowing for sure that their flying machine would work - but if they'd needed that certainty to proceed, they'd never have bothered trying to work towards their goal in the first place.
So it's a kind of theological dispute, but one that matters immensely, because the believers in each approach are in competition for funds and credibility. Some - although not all - of the mainstream biogerontologists are furious with de Grey, believing his high-profile promotion of what they see as "quackery" is hindering their own chances of progress. As a non-scientist, I'm clearly in no position to judge if they're right about the unscientific nature of de Grey's ideas, but having read some of his papers and interviews from the last few years, one very simple thing does repeatedly leap out and bug me. He always seems to state exactly the same timescale for 'longevity escape velocity' - that there is a 50/50 chance of proof-of-concept in mice within ten years, and of the first therapies being available to humans within 25 years. Clearly, with seven years or so having elapsed since he started making this claim, those numbers should have come down accordingly - instead, they have remained absolutely static. With no real trace of an explanation for this, the claimed timescale does start to look suspiciously like a sleight-of-hand, solely designed to grab public attention.
Anyway, I'd heard that de Grey was reasonably approachable and might respond to emails, so a few weeks ago I decided to chance my arm and go to the horse's mouth with my concerns. I think I was also slightly hoping I might get a rare Scot Goes Pop 'exclusive' out of it! In the end one of his research assistants was kind enough to send me a long and detailed response which, while repeatedly slipping into sales patter, does to be fair address the points I had raised in a very full and frank way -
Hi James,My name is Michael Rae; I'm one of Dr. de Grey's research assistants, and coauthor of his recent book, "Ending Aging"
(This is the new, paperback edition, which has an Afterword covering some of the advances in SENS science that were made after the publication of the hardcover).
With all of his duties in research, promoting engineering-based biotechnologies to arrest and reverse biological aging, and the promotion the book, Dr. de Grey has for some time been unable to keep up with most of his correspondence; when he received your email, he asked me to send his apologies, and answer your question as best I can.
You wrote:
> I've
> recently read a lot about your work on aging, and while I'm
> obviously not in a position to judge for myself the scientific
> plausibility of your ideas, there is one simple problem that leaps
> out at me (and I'm sure many others) about the credibility of your
> claims.
>
> In every article and interview I've seen going back to at least
> 2003, you've given exactly the same estimated timescale - a 50/50
> chance of robust mouse rejuvenation within ten years, and of the
> first therapies being available for humans within 25 years. But if
> you'd been right about that in 2003, we should of course by now be
> just three years away from proof of concept in mice, and eighteen
> years away from the human breakthrough.
>
> Perhaps what you really mean is that there would be a 50/50 chance
> of meeting these ambitious timescales IF the $1 billion you need
> magically became available right now?
In fact, that's exactly what it means: we could well be as little as 25 years away from the goal *once we get started* . So far, unfortunately, the world has not begun to push for it. While SENS Foundation is doing the greatest amount of leveraged, critical-path work that we can on our limited research budget, and while most of the challenges that need to be tackled for achieving comprehensive rejuvenation are being funded and pursued to one degree or another by government and industry research, still there is nowhere near the level of intense, single-minded commitment worldwide required to achieve this goal.
> If so, that puts a completely
> different complexion on things, because - for better or worse - that
> scale of investment is surely not going to be forthcoming in
> anything close to the foreseeable future, and the chances of hitting
> those timescales in the real world is therefore not 50/50, but
> essentially zero.
Wow, and I thought I was a pessimist! But the idea that there is NO chance that this scale of investment could be forthcoming strikes even me as entirely unreasonable. The 2010 Haiti earthquake got commitments of US$3.3 bn to help out 3 million victims; the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami got commitments nearly twice that; and to use an hackneyed example, the TARP fund is catechismally invoked as the "$700 bn bailout."
Right now, there are 100,000 people dying of aging worldwide every single day, and many times this number needlessly sliding further down the progressive slide of age-related disease, disability, dependence, and dementia. $1 bn (or several times this) per year is a pittance, even within biomedical research: the NIH got US$$30.5B for FY. 2009, for goodness' sake!
But of course, that doesn't mean it's inevitable, or easy to mobilize. Surely you didn't think that Dr. de Grey was saying that we could all sit on our butts, and business-as-usual would give even odds of human rejuvenation in a quarter century.
> Or, if that's not the case, was there some other factor that was
> holding back the progress of research in 2003 or 2006 that doesn't
> apply now?
It still applies now: it's simply funding, and proactive refocusing of biomedical research and (soon thereafter) some regulatory tweaks.
> I suppose what I'm really asking is this : doesn't it
> seem overwhelmingly likely to you that in 2015 or 2020, you'll still
> be giving media interviews in which you're saying "we could be just
> ten years away from doing this in mice, and 25 years away in humans"?
Overwhelmingly, no -- but very possible in 2015, and plausible in 2020.
So what are you going to do about it >:) ?
If you're ready to help us to hasten progress in SENS science, we have quite a few listed here:
http://sens.org/help-us/volunteer
Also, you can pick up a copy of Aubrey's and my book (link above) and, after having read it for your own further understanding, get the word out by passing your copy around to others you know, and/or by donating it to a library, and/or by picking up extra copies for the latter 2 purposes.
Another one: have you checked out _Rejuvenation Research_ ("an international, interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed academic journal that covers all aspects of biology and biomedicine relevant to the combating, and ultimately the reversal, of age-related physiological and cognitive decline in nonhuman species and eventually in humans"), of which Dr. de Grey is Editor-in-Chief)? If you're a student or academic, and your institution has a subscription, you should be able to get direct online access -- and if it doesn't, you can recommend it here:
http://www.liebertpub.com/library.aspx?pub_id=127
This would not only give you access to the journal, but would help to disseminate its high-quality biogerontological research at your institution. You would need to get your library's contact info, preferably for the collections department; these are usually available on the 'contact' page, or one can ask a librarian about the right person to contact about a subscription recommendation.
And (naked plug!) remember that you can help to ensure that real age-reversing biotechnology becomes available as soon as possible, alleviating the most age-related suffering and death, by making a donation to support SENS research:
http://sens.org/donate
I leave it to you to choose how you will take on the moral and scientific challenge of biological aging. However you proceed: live long -- live young!
-Michael
So many thanks to Michael for taking the time to respond so thoroughly. While he clearly genuinely feels there are more grounds for optimism on the funding front than I can conceive of, I do still think Dr de Grey should be fronting up about that crucial caveat to a much greater extent when speaking to the media. And to address Michael's question (ie. did I really think de Grey was saying his 25-year timescale was in no way contingent on some fairly dramatic changes in thinking on the part of policy-makers) - well, whatever I may have thought, frankly I do believe that is the misleading impression he has been leaving his audience with on many occasions. As for my own "contribution", since I'm not actually a student, nor an academic, nor a millionaire, I think writing this post will probably have to do to be getting on with!
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Can the Lib Dems have their coalition and eat it?
In a couple of posts a few weeks ago, I explained my theory that a reconstituted Labour-Liberal Democrat coalition was an unlikely outcome after next May's election. However, Professor John Curtice's views clearly need to be taken seriously, and in his appearance on the BBC's Politics Scotland this afternoon, he seemed fairly convinced that both Iain Gray and Tavish Scott were inching towards that outcome (assuming the arithmetic allows them to, which of course remains a very big if). Certainly there can be little doubt from Tavish Scott's increasingly hysterical Nat-bashing rhetoric of late that he at least is positioning his party for the possibility of coalition with Labour. But I still struggle to see how all this stacks up from Labour's point of view. Yes, I can see Curtice's point that they will not want to be hobbled by the limitations of minority rule as the SNP have been. But there's surely another consideration that easily trumps that concern. The very life-blood of any new Labour administration will be in portraying itself as Scotland's protector against the Tory-led UK government. How can they do so if they effectively relinquish their licence to demonise that government's man in Scotland, ie. the Lib Dem Secretary of State for Scotland? Even more general attacks on the UK government would have to be somewhat nuanced if they weren't to risk breaking an alliance with the Lib Dems apart.
My guess is that the Lib Dems' best (and perhaps only) hope for a stable partnership with Labour in Scotland is, ironically, that Hamish Macdonell in the Caledonian Mercury turns out to be right, and that their Westminster coalition with the Tories is already doomed.
My guess is that the Lib Dems' best (and perhaps only) hope for a stable partnership with Labour in Scotland is, ironically, that Hamish Macdonell in the Caledonian Mercury turns out to be right, and that their Westminster coalition with the Tories is already doomed.
When did autocracy cease to be 'conservative'?
Over at my old haunt Political Betting, Mike Smithson is off on one again, implying that it is in some way self-evident that Labour's procedure for electing the Shadow Cabinet in opposition is an anachronism. Noting that the Labour parliamentary party soundly rejected an opportunity to change the system (ie. by allowing the leader a free choice) just two weeks ago, he suggests that "there is nothing as conservative as a Labour MP". Ironically, that would of course have been a very shrewd observation had he illustrated it with a thousand other examples, but not this one. An unwillingness to concentrate yet more powers in the hands of the elective dictatorship that is the Labour party leadership is not so much 'conservative' as...well, faintly democratic. It's a nod to what the Americans would call "checks and balances" - and there's been precious few of those in the sixteen years since the Labour rank-and-file last had some kind of meaningful say over their own party's destiny.
Indeed, an authentic modernisation would have been to transfer the power to select the Shadow Cabinet from the limited electorate of Labour MPs to the broader party membership.
Indeed, an authentic modernisation would have been to transfer the power to select the Shadow Cabinet from the limited electorate of Labour MPs to the broader party membership.
Fringe benefits
I've just completed a survey on my experience of the Edinburgh Fringe this year. It was the first time in my life I'd actually got round to attending any shows at the festival, and I had a very nice day - the two plays I saw were excellent, and the organisation much smoother than I anticipated, so I was more than happy to give positive feedback. However, when I was asked to agree or disagree with the following statement, I did begin to wonder if the organisers might just have a slightly inflated notion of the potential impact of their endeavours...
it made no difference to my well-being (e.g. emotional, social)
When days out in Edinburgh affect my emotional well-being, it's usually got more to do with surly bus drivers.
Incidentally, in case you're wondering, Lockerbie : Unfinished Business wasn't one of the plays I saw - I thought that might be taking one of my fixations of the summer a step too far! Instead I saw a vivacious performance of Brecht's The Caucasian Chalk Circle by a young theatre group (who I presume hailed from the West Country, unless the choice of accent was totally random) and then a very good contemporary Irish play called Dead. The latter gave me a taste of the famed rough-and-ready character of the Fringe, with an actor drafted in at the last minute who read his lines direct from the script, and an audience of about ten, half of whom seemed to be either professional reviewers or to have their own shows. Before the performance started, the reviewers mentioned that they were particularly interested in covering plays about death, at which point two other members of the audience leapt into action and started thrusting leaflets into their hands. "A character definitely dies in our play," one said, "I promise you". The other one (a rather sprightly-looking elderly gentleman) thought for a moment, and then triumphantly announced - "You must come to my show. You see, I'm almost dead..."
it made no difference to my well-being (e.g. emotional, social)
When days out in Edinburgh affect my emotional well-being, it's usually got more to do with surly bus drivers.
Incidentally, in case you're wondering, Lockerbie : Unfinished Business wasn't one of the plays I saw - I thought that might be taking one of my fixations of the summer a step too far! Instead I saw a vivacious performance of Brecht's The Caucasian Chalk Circle by a young theatre group (who I presume hailed from the West Country, unless the choice of accent was totally random) and then a very good contemporary Irish play called Dead. The latter gave me a taste of the famed rough-and-ready character of the Fringe, with an actor drafted in at the last minute who read his lines direct from the script, and an audience of about ten, half of whom seemed to be either professional reviewers or to have their own shows. Before the performance started, the reviewers mentioned that they were particularly interested in covering plays about death, at which point two other members of the audience leapt into action and started thrusting leaflets into their hands. "A character definitely dies in our play," one said, "I promise you". The other one (a rather sprightly-looking elderly gentleman) thought for a moment, and then triumphantly announced - "You must come to my show. You see, I'm almost dead..."
Monday, September 20, 2010
Voting rights for prisoners is about the character of the country, not the character of the criminals
I suspect this will be a popular view in very few quarters, but I have to say I'm delighted to hear the reports that the UK government is finally prepared to comply with the European ruling that the blanket ban on voting rights for convicted prisoners must be lifted. Despite the emotive response this issue always provokes, it isn't actually primarily about the character of those affected, or whether they 'deserve' the right to vote - indeed, once you start thinking of the vote in terms of a privilege that has to be earned (or at the very least can be easily forfeited) you've already undermined the fundamental principle of universal suffrage. We need look no further than the US to see where that particular slippery slope can lead, with no fewer than five million adults now denied the right to vote - many of whom are not even currently incarcerated. Needless to say, a hugely disproportionate number of them are from ethnic minorities. And what else do they have in common? Well, on the whole, they probably wouldn't be voting for Sarah Palin as President, given the opportunity...
In its US guise, the ban on voting rights for felons is nothing short of selective disenfranchisement (and gerrymandering) on a mass scale, cleverly dressed up as law enforcement. With the UK prison population already at a historic high, there can hardly be a better moment to take decisive action to ensure we never follow that terrible example.
In its US guise, the ban on voting rights for felons is nothing short of selective disenfranchisement (and gerrymandering) on a mass scale, cleverly dressed up as law enforcement. With the UK prison population already at a historic high, there can hardly be a better moment to take decisive action to ensure we never follow that terrible example.
Catching up...
I've just arrived back from two weeks out of the country, and quite literally the only fragment of information I've had about UK politics over that period was the tantalisingly brief sight of a headline in a British newspaper reading "Shock poll gives Ed Miliband the lead". Having finally caught up with the figures, my gut feeling is still that David Miliband will win (on name recognition as much as anything), but could there just be a glimmer of hope that Labour is finally ready to move on from Blairism and rediscover a little of its soul?
The other snippet of news I heard overnight was the outcome of the Swedish election. It's a supreme irony that the success of the far-right could move the administration to the left by forcing Fredrik Reinfeldt to include the Greens or the Social Democrats in his governing coalition, but of course almost the exact reverse has happened in Germany's recent past - in 2005 the left won a natural majority, but the unwillingness of the Social Democrats to work with the ex-communists necessitated a grand coalition of right and left. I suppose some will predictably leap on results like this as an argument against PR, but the solution to extremist politics can never be to rig the ballot system - it has to be to defeat the arguments, such as they are.
The other snippet of news I heard overnight was the outcome of the Swedish election. It's a supreme irony that the success of the far-right could move the administration to the left by forcing Fredrik Reinfeldt to include the Greens or the Social Democrats in his governing coalition, but of course almost the exact reverse has happened in Germany's recent past - in 2005 the left won a natural majority, but the unwillingness of the Social Democrats to work with the ex-communists necessitated a grand coalition of right and left. I suppose some will predictably leap on results like this as an argument against PR, but the solution to extremist politics can never be to rig the ballot system - it has to be to defeat the arguments, such as they are.
Friday, September 17, 2010
A Cornish solution
Just a quick post to confirm that the answer to the fourth quiz was Mebyon Kernow.
This is yet another pre-scheduled post as I'm still away on my travels!
This is yet another pre-scheduled post as I'm still away on my travels!
Thursday, September 9, 2010
Summer (OK, Autumn) quiz no. 4 : Find the political party!
The answer to the third quiz was Pete Wishart.
OK - this, you'll be delighted to hear, is the last of the quizzes! Or at any rate it's the last of the four I wrote as a batch back on the 19th of July (ie. right now in my own time-zone), and pre-scheduled for publication with the assistance of my Blogger Tardis. This one is maybe a touch trickier - you're looking for the name of a political party. As ever, you need to find the answers to all the following clues, take the first letter of each answer, and jumble those letters up until they spell the name of a political party. Remember - if the answer to a particular clue is a person's name, you are looking for the first letter of their first name, not of their surname.
Clues :
1. A former Cabinet minister who stands a theoretical chance of being the wife of the next leader of the Labour party - but I do emphasise "theoretical".
2. A current Tory member of parliament - but John Bercow isn't Speaker in her name.
3. Four of the last eight UK general elections have taken place during this calendar month.
4. An anti-slavery campaigner who the current Foreign Secretary has written a biography of.
5. A minister in Ramsay MacDonald's Labour government who had previously been a Conservative MP, went on to form his own party, and was interned during the Second World War.
6. One of the three previously rock-solid Labour heartland seats that fell to Plaid Cymru in the 1999 Welsh Assembly elections, along with Islwyn and Llanelli.
7. The former SNP parliamentarian defeated by Kenneth Calman for the Chancellorship of Glasgow University.
8. The soap opera in which the Mayor of London made an uncharacteristically humble appearance.
9. The parliament in which Ian Paisley achieved the high point of his career - heckling the Pope.
10. The paper on which MPs find the parliamentary business of the day.
11. The Welsh birthplace of Australia's Prime Minister.
12. The former tabloid editor who 'accused' Gordon Brown on Question Time of being "a Scot, but worse than that, a socialist Scot".
OK - this, you'll be delighted to hear, is the last of the quizzes! Or at any rate it's the last of the four I wrote as a batch back on the 19th of July (ie. right now in my own time-zone), and pre-scheduled for publication with the assistance of my Blogger Tardis. This one is maybe a touch trickier - you're looking for the name of a political party. As ever, you need to find the answers to all the following clues, take the first letter of each answer, and jumble those letters up until they spell the name of a political party. Remember - if the answer to a particular clue is a person's name, you are looking for the first letter of their first name, not of their surname.
Clues :
1. A former Cabinet minister who stands a theoretical chance of being the wife of the next leader of the Labour party - but I do emphasise "theoretical".
2. A current Tory member of parliament - but John Bercow isn't Speaker in her name.
3. Four of the last eight UK general elections have taken place during this calendar month.
4. An anti-slavery campaigner who the current Foreign Secretary has written a biography of.
5. A minister in Ramsay MacDonald's Labour government who had previously been a Conservative MP, went on to form his own party, and was interned during the Second World War.
6. One of the three previously rock-solid Labour heartland seats that fell to Plaid Cymru in the 1999 Welsh Assembly elections, along with Islwyn and Llanelli.
7. The former SNP parliamentarian defeated by Kenneth Calman for the Chancellorship of Glasgow University.
8. The soap opera in which the Mayor of London made an uncharacteristically humble appearance.
9. The parliament in which Ian Paisley achieved the high point of his career - heckling the Pope.
10. The paper on which MPs find the parliamentary business of the day.
11. The Welsh birthplace of Australia's Prime Minister.
12. The former tabloid editor who 'accused' Gordon Brown on Question Time of being "a Scot, but worse than that, a socialist Scot".
Sunday, September 5, 2010
Blairite Brodick
On a bit of an impulse, I visited Arran a couple of weeks ago. I wasn't quite sure how best to spend my few hours on the island, but as all the tourist websites seemed to agree that Brodick Castle is the leading attraction, I decided that was as good a place as any to start (in spite of the typically exorbitant National Trust for Scotland admission price). Little did I realise what I was letting myself in for. My first mistake was to attempt to walk to the castle, rather than simply hopping on the rather inviting-looking open-top bus that was waiting by the ferry terminal. Don't get me wrong, it was a very pleasant walk in the sunshine, but I was naturally quite hot and thirsty by the time I got there. Didn't seem a huge problem, as I was fully stocked up with bottled water - but if only someone had warned me that I was about to step inside a building more comprehensively policed than Buckingham Palace, I might have seen the wisdom of taking a good few sips before I actually went in. The horrific reality that there isn't a square inch of the castle where you're not liable to be glared at from a distance of five feet hit home rather quickly. It's the age-old dilemma, isn't it - is dehydration a greater enemy than the National Trust bouncers? I decided on balance it probably was, and so took a crafty few sips from my bottle while the nearest member of staff was engrossed in a conversation with another visitor.Well, yes, you're probably way ahead of me here - that conversation came to an abrupt and ill-timed end.
To be fair, he handled the whole thing in an immaculately low-key and jovial way - after reminding me of the rules, he hushed his voice and said "don't worry, I didn't see a thing", and a few seconds later added "you got away with that one", which I presume was intended to drive home the sheer gravity of the offence I'd just got away with. I can of course understand the need for the rules, as there's always a danger of spillage - but, there again, where does it all end? Do they start checking people's shoes for mud? There's every chance there'll be some, given that there's a network of woodland and mountain paths nearby that the NTS openly encourage people to take in during their visit.
Needless to say, I was on my best behaviour afterwards, but I can't say I enjoyed myself much from that point on - and not just because of the pangs of thirst. Narrow corridors to navigate with precious items on either side wired to alarms, chairs that will apparently disintegrate if you so much as brush against them with your trousers (let alone sit on them), and - most of all - attendants who look ready to pounce if you move more than half an inch to your left or right at any given moment. In a nutshell, the visiting experience in these places is so oppressive that you begin to wonder if it's even worth the bother of opening them to the public in the first place. Looking at photos or videos of the interior would probably be a rather more relaxing experience, and one that would at least afford a meaningful opportunity to take it all in. I can't have been the only person trying my level best to admire a painting or a dolls house, whereas in fact the sole thought going through my head was "I am being looked at, I am being looked at, I am being looked at". Heaven only knows how they cope with children.
Still, chuck in a few dozen extra CCTV cameras to assist with the mammoth surveillance regime, and you've got a little Blairite paradise in the making there. For my own part, I think I might be sticking to ruined castles for a little while.
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