I am listening to CBeebies on BBC Radio 7 with the small one, and Charlie and Lola was just on. This episode could quite easily have been titled "Clever, Resourceful and Brave Little Girl Repeatedly Outwits Dim and Meanspirited Older Brother". It's unusual for it to be this way around in adult entertainment, but I seem to recall a proliferation of it on CBBC when I was a youngster... What happens in between kids' and adults' entertainment, I wonder?

And then I remembered Maid Marian and Her Merry Men, in which a woman does all the work and is brave and resourceful and funny, and a vacuous and feeble bloke gets all the credit, and thought that maybe not so much has changed after all. I mean, even though Lola is clearly the star, Charlie gets top billing...

Hey ho.

The first was an advert on "Dave" for a partwork featuring Strawberry Shortcake, teaching young girls how to make cakes "just like mum". You knew it was for girls because of the squeaky woman doing the over-excited voice-over, the fact that everything in sight was a putrid shade of pink, and that lovely phrase cook just like mum.

I know what my reaction to that would have been as a child:

But I don't want to cook like mum! Mum is a crap cook!^# I want to cook like DAD! He's a professional chef!

Why is this shit still allowed? Why is it still permissible to attempt to close cooking off from fifty per cent of the population? I mean, I'm not complaining in this regard, because my ability to cook paid a lot of my way through uni; especially since most of the boys couldn't cook a slice of toast without help. But really, cookery is a valuable life skill, and should not be restricted to one gender or the other.

The second thing that annoyed me was this entry by elliphant. Seriously, how difficult is it to understand?

If it has fish in it, IT'S NOT VEGETARIAN
If it has gelatine in it, IT'S NOT VEGETARIAN
If it has anything that had to be killed in it, IT'S NOT VEGETARIAN

I'm not even a veggie, and I can understand that if something had to die to make a product then it's not veggie. Why is it so difficult for so many people? What happened to those poor ladies made me feel ashamed of the entire British hospitality trade.

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^# Having experienced lots of other people's cooking since I was a child, I can now confidently assert that my mum's cooking is actually quite good compared to pretty much everybody else, it's just that in comparison to my dad, most people's cooking looks crap.

So many people are bitching about Uncle Gordon's plan to make organ donation opt-out instead of opt in. I really, really don't understand. The state won't own your body when you die, because if you don't want to donate YOU CAN OPT OUT. Jehovah's witnesses won't be forced to donate if they don't want to, because THEY CAN OPT OUT. Anybody who has an objection, however slight, to their organs being used after death can opt out. Even if you just want to opt out to make a political point, you can (although, to be fair, endangering other people's lives to make a stupid political point seems a little churlish to me).

I would agree with the position that the individual should have final say over what happens to them. This proposition does not take that right away. You still have final say over what happens to you; the only difference is that for those who can't be arsed to make a decision, the presumption will be that they do want to save lives, rather than that they don't.

Somebody explain to me what the problem is?

Defiance in Dewsbury. I am getting cold shivers down my spine hearing things like well, you want your kids to get the best education you can, and there's all them Asians there... And they keep talking about Muslim and Christian... :(

Religion is a force for good and not divisive at all. Yeah, right.

I know my fondness for Clarkson is viewed as incongruous by lots of people. I know that lots of people take him seriously when he makes his ridiculous comedy pronouncements (and often wonder if the same people think Al Murray's pub landlord is a real person too). I know that he's a hate figure for a lot of environmentalists and bikers (both of which groups I count myself among). I know that there's a sense of satisfaction for these people when they see their favourite bete noire suffer. But the almost universal "point and laugh" reaction of the blogosphere to this news story makes me very worried.

He might have been making it in his usual over-the-top fashion, but he had a serious point. All the information on the discs lost by the HMRC is publicly available information. Lots of people have my bank details, and my address, and my date of birth. A fair few of them even know my mother's maiden name. This should not enable them to take money out of my account, only to pay it in. The fact that someone DID manage to take money out of Clarkson's account is not an opportunity for mirth, but for sheer bloody terror. Because if someone can do it to an eminent celebrity, they can sure as shit do it to you.

The point of this news story is not ha ha, Clarkson got stung!, it's holy fuck, people can take money out of your bank account with information that is accessible to the general public!.

Now, yes, there is an argument that publishing one's details in a national newspaper is asking asking for trouble, but it's not akin to leaving one's keys in the ignition of the car and then being surprised that it was stolen, because that would involve someone actually looking in the car. It's more akin to painting please steal this car on the side of a car with state of the art security and alarms, only to discover that the local car thief has a special security-system-disabling remote control.

How the hell did we get to a place where someone can take money out of your bank account without your knowledge or signature, using only publicly available information? THAT is the point of this news story, not the humiliation of a celebrity.

... are divided into two groups. Firstly the OMG you're INSANE! petitioners:

FFS stop my neighbour's cat crapping in my yard! (I adore the url of that one!)
I have no clue about my own bloodline, let alone anyone else's. Seriously, you have to read the full text of this one, it's comedy gold.
The human body disintegrates at thirty miles an hour! This one really shows the damage that stupid speed limit legislation has done.
Parents should teach their children dangerous occult practises, not schools!
It looks like English, but is it? If anyone can work out what this one is actually asking for, I'd be grateful...

Secondly the nice idea, but it'll never happen ones:

I'd love to see this happen. Sadly, too many rich people in positions of power. But, the way to bring state schools into line with private schools is to tax private schools like buggery and use the proceeds to fund state schools. Not removing choice, but evening the playing field.
Make public transport free! Well, IMHO a renewable deposit for a pass would be a good plan; then if you vandalise, you lose your pass and your money and can't use public transport.
Give MPs a taste of their own medicine. We're actually seeing the fruits of this locally with councillors; I don't see it happening in Westminster any time soon, though. Still, there's always the fabulous TheyWorkForYou
Footballers get paid too much! Well, yes, they do, but this is because idiots are willing to pay stupid prices for tickets and strips. Stop buying the Man U shirts and suddenly they'll stop making as much money It =/= rocket science.
I've been saying this for years. Sadly, vehicle excise duty is more about the database than the tax, these days, so this will never happen. But, for pay-as-you-go road tax, it can't be beaten, and certainly won't cost billions like Darling's madcap plan.
This is a far better solution, IMHO ;)

Why do people support "positive" discrimination? (a.k.a Affirmative Action for those across the water). I say this after reading the comments to alixmortimer's post here.

Because I'm tired (work-dogs-small child) I'm just going to copy and paste my comment (#27):

I may be being simplistic, here but:

- allowing yourself to believe that the ends justify the means allows you to do all SORTS of unpalatable things.

- you KNOW that any woman/black person/etc. who got a job on the basis of positive discrimination would face “you only got that job to fill a quota” accusations throughout their working life (as my local MP still does) and that this would increase, not decrease, the amount of resentment felt to those groups by the dominant group.

Apart from anything else, is it not insulting to women/black people to suggest that they can only compete on an unlevel playing field? Because to accept that women can only compete with men if there is positive discrimination is to accept that women are less valuable.

I WILL NOT vote for any party or candidate who endorses positive discrimination.

Why do we have to import the bad American ideas like the Silver Ring Thing and Creationist Zoos and entrenching discrimination by legitimising it as a course of action? Why can't we import the good ones like the fruit of the poisoned tree doctrine and Soul Food and separation of church and state (OK, so it hasn't actually happened over there, but it's a good idea).

I want to talk about the process of argument and the mechanics of debate today, and I'm going to use the "Intelligent Design" debate to illustrate it, purely because a couple of my friends have been talking about it recently. I'm using "Intelligent Design" as an example, but it could equally apply to the recent fracas at the Oxford Union, or any number of other political hot potatoes. It certainly applies to Prime Minister's Question Time.

There is a hierarchy of evidence. This applies in law as well as science. The most reliable evidence is evidence that you have observed yourself, especially if you have observed it many times. This is empirical evidence. The next most reliable evidence is the empirical evidence of other people, especially if there are lots of them and they all agree. Getting towards the unreliable, there is "I read it in a book", with citations to show how reliable the book is. Then we have hearsay. Hearsay is when you (or your witness) haven't actually observed anything yourself, but you sort of recall someone else saying they have observed it, only you can't quite remember where or when... Then there is bald assertion. This is when you say that something is so, and you don't NEED evidence, it just IS, and you know it!

If you are watching or listening to a debate, you will often see/hear horrendously bad debating tactics used in order to derail the opposition. Both sides of the "Intelligent Design" debate can be guilty of this, and it makes me very very cross. Muddying the waters to make your opponent look bad makes you look bad too, and we need to teach this to children (and politicians) so that proper reasoned debate can be had.

- If you use ad hominem arguments, YOU LOSE.
- if you try and assert a position with no evidence to back yourself up, YOU LOSE.
- if you think that because you read it in a book or saw it on TV it's true, YOU LOSE.

I actually physically head-desked at this comment to Mat's entry. Not because of the position the commenter takes (she's been a friend for ages, and I love her dearly, before you think I'm just attacking a random person, too!), but because of the phrase accepting without question all the evolution stuff we learn in high school. The whole point of science, or research, of good debate, is that you don't accept ANYTHING without question! You look at the evidence, weigh it and evaluate it, see if there is research to back up or contradict your position. Just because your teacher says so, doesn't mean it's right. Just because the government says so, doesn't mean it's right. Just because an eminent scientist says so, does not mean it's right. If LOTS of eminent scientists AND your teacher AND the government say so, then it's PROBABLY right, but this is still not enough to be certain.

I know people like certainty; I know most people feel comforted and reassured by someone who is absolutely certain that X is true. But if that person has no basis for their certainty, or a very shaky basis ("it says so in the bible" or "my priest says so") and they are arguing against a person or group with lots of very good evidence on their side (a couple of millennia of empirical research by thousands of scientists, much of it church-sponsored) then how is that the person with the shakiest evidence gets the most credence? How in the name of monkey bollocks have the creationists even got to the point where the "Intelligent Design" debate is even called a debate? I don't understand why so many people give as much weight to "well, we've believed this for years and anyway God says so" as they do to "We've shown that this is true by experimenting and replicating the results many times".

* sigh *

This is descending into rant. I am happy to promise that I will teach my daughter to question, to research, to not accept things without question, and to always look for the motivation of the person asserting bald facts to her. But how many others are willing to do the same? People like certainty. Most people don't actually WANT to think, they want to be told what to say and do because it's easier. This makes me profoundly depressed.

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So, onto more cheering subjects: Vince Cable watch

Today's Cable fangirling comes courtesy of Mike Smithson on politicalbetting.com and Charlotte Gore. Gratified that I am that so many people seem to be coming round to my point of view, the scenario Mike Smithson postulates, that whichever of the two posh boys wins the Lib Dem leadership election will be overshadowed by the towering Collossus of Vinceness, might be a bit of a worry for my Lib Dem friends. Happily, Millennium Elephant has the solution:

Clearly the PROBLEM with the Liberal Democrat Leadership contest is that there has been a TRANSPORTER ACCIDENT and Captain Kirk has been split into his AGGRESSIVE KILLER side and his FLUFFY BUNNY side. The ANSWER is obviously that we need Mr Scotty to FIX it so that we can RE-COMBINE him.

Anyone got a spare transporter?

OK, so whenever some media dude interviews a Lib Dem (there's another Chris 'n' Nick debate going on on the telleh right now) they always want to know which of the two main parties the Lib Dems would ally with in the case of a hung parliament.

Now, obviously, no sane Lib Dem would say "Tory" or "Labour" because you then automatically alienate a subset of voters (as Millennium Elephant explains in detail here). But can anyone explain to me why they can't just say We'll vote how we want to vote on whatever issue comes up, and they can choose how they are going to ally with us.? Why does it always have to be an organised coalition? Why can't it be an issue-by-issue, sometimes we agree with one, and sometimes we agree with the other, and sometimes we agree with neither thing? I mean, that's what it actually is, isn't it? In policy terms, sometimes the Lib Dems agree with Labour, and sometimes with the Tories, and sometimes with neither. So why can't they do that in a hung parliament?

(also? Nick is doing better in cosy sofa interview setting than he did on Question Time, but I still prefer Chris. He's being more substantive and detailed and less soundbitey and... Oh dear. Chris just admitted that he has no idea where a briefing document that supposedly came from his office came from and he's not seen it before. He's doing a passable save, but...

At least they both appear to be having some passion today. Nick is now doing his very attractive ID Card spiel, and looks better than Chris on that issue...

* sigh *

I'm really glad I aren't a party member, and I don't have to decide between two options I'm not really attracted to. I'm also leaning towards the view of lots of other people. Can't the Lib Dems junk them both and keep Vince? I like Vince.

* polishes Vince's head affectionately *)

ETA: James Graham at Quaequam Blog has a good dissection of the Lib Dem leadership contest so far. Plug plug. I am linking because I liked the line about Mill at the bottom.