If you have a spare £8 in the next few weeks, and you're vaguely either Liberal or Feminist, I urge you to spend it on this quarter's issue of The Journal of Liberal History, which is a special issue about the interactions between liberalism and feminism, and is going to be great fun for me, as both, to pick apart.

:D

There's a big pile of Tory bloggers who are always crowing about how awful and incompetent and corrupt and authoritarian the Labour government is, and how different the Tories will be when they get in. And if anyone brings up past performance, they point out that it was a terribly long time ago they were last in government, and anyway, look at David Davis!!!

Ah yes, David Davis. The man who thinks 42 days is worth resigning over, but 28 days is A-OK! Well, you know, you can paint him as a Tory champion of Liberty if you like - although pardon my disbelieving eye-pop - but Cameron and his little buddies, emboldened by the recent opinion poll leads, are distancing themselves from him at the speed of light. And yes, that is this Chris Grayling they're talking about. Oh how corrupt and incompetent and anti-liberty the Labour party are. Isn't there something Christians say about planks and eyeballs?

And then of course, there's today's news (broken by Jo Swinson) about Jack Straw disobeying a court order because he feels like it, and he's Judge Jack Straw! it might be embarrassing for various people. Surely the Tories were up in arms about this? I mean yes, cabinet meetings IN GENERAL should be confidential, but when there's a court order in place, you should obey it, right? The Tories, as champions of law and order, should have been saying this, right? Nobody is above the law, right? Er... Wrong. Dominic Grieve, the craven coward, signified the Tories' complete support for Judge Jack's flagrant disregard for the rule of law.



I don't know if it's Ming the Merciless - who pinched a line from Alex and told them that if they've done nothing wrong, they've nothing to fear from releasing the minutes - or Charlie Brooker who has called this best, but neither Labour nor the parliamentary Conservative party have the fragrant whiff of Roses here.

All of which makes one wonder why a bunch of people who are playing games of Authoritarian Grandmother's Footsteps with the current administration and trying to get as close as they possibly can without getting caught, are packing out the Convention on Modern Liberty? They couldn't POSSIBLY be attempting a figleaf of acceptability for their OWN Authoritarian tendencies, could they? All those of you who are saying the current government is evil, authoritarian, nannying, incompetent, and corrupt? You're right. You're absolutely right. But it does not follow in the slightest that the Tories would be any different.

Because I commented on their entries, they rememed me! Luckily some of the things were things they both mentioned, so here are eight more things for that five things meme:

( click for more than you ever wanted to know about Doctor Who, Motherhood, Feminism, Dogs, Bartending, Liberalism, Multicoloured hair, and my bottom )

And now I go to help Small Person tidy her room, and put up her solar system thing at long last, and then make buns.

Ah-LAY-DEEEEEZ AND GENNEL-MEN! Roll up, roll up, and purchase your tickets! This is a once in a LIFETIME opportunity to witness the strange, the weird, and the illiberal! To ride the rollercoaster of the British legislature! To experience the stomach-churning terror of the food stalls...

GASP at Mr Goldacre's Amazing Hydra in the Freak Show! Marvel at the gall of David Milliband on the Hook-a-Duck stall! SWOON as the beautiful, ethereal Madam Mortimer tells the future with uncanny accuracy (and salty language!)!

Enter the Carnival if you dare...

( ... by clicking the cut )

The travelling funfair is over now; hopefully your goldfish will survive the night, and you won't be sick from all the candy floss. Next week's ringmaster is probably going to be Matt Wardman, and if you want your ride showcased, the application form is here.

Farewell, young friend! Live in peace and freedom! If you can...

(I think I might have taken the carnival metty-for a bit too far, mightn't I? Oh well...)

Appropriately enough for Darwin Day, Small Person's free tree of life poster arrived today. We're hoping that the skies are clear above Huddersfield observatory, too, because it's one of their open nights tonight, and we're going to pay them a little visit.

YAY Skience!

Tomorrow, I shall be hosting the Carnival On Modern Liberty. Apparently I have to call it that, even though the Carnival of Liberty would make more sense, grammatically and purposefully. Still, host it I shall, over here in pedant's corner. You're welcome to contribute; if you think you've found something astoundingly Liberal that I should link to submit the form at the blog carnivals website. I know it says that the deadline for submissions was four o'clock this afternoon, but we're liberals, right?

There's a meme going around with the Americanised version of the Political Compass on. Shockingly, it pegs me as a right-wing authoritarian nutbag:

My Political Views
I am a left social libertarian
Left: 6.1, Libertarian: 4.85

Political Spectrum Quiz


Well, it pegs me as a right wing authoritarian compared to where I am on the original, which has me at Economic Left/Right: -7.50 and Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -6.56 ;)

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The ASA has ruled that the Atheist Bus Adverts are OK! Although they have shied away from ruling that God doesn't exist, damn them.

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Gordo climbs down on MPs expenses. YAY! Direct action sometimes has surprisingly direct results, then...

It's CARNIVAL TIME! YAY! Husky-Voiced Lust Object James Graham is ringmastering (no sniggering at the back there, you filthy perverts!) The Carnival on Modern Liberty.

He has many suggestions for things you can do to encourage people to think about Liberty, but one of them is to encourage five bloggers who normally don't go on about such things to do a post on what Liberty means to them. He suggests:

* Girl With A One Track Mind
* London Underground
* Neil Gaiman
* Bad Science
* New Humanist

I reckon GNeil is a bit of a cheat, given how much he's been blogging about the CBLDF recently, but... Anyway, I'll probably be doing something actionny at some point, but for right now? I can tag people in a meme, fur shizzle.

So consider yourselves tagged to blog about what Liberty means to you lonemagpie, Mitch Benn, caseytalk, j_rentoul, rhodri.

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Forbidden Planet sent me a sale brochure, and I am weak. HOWEVER! I only spent £7.50, and for that I got two Sarah Janes (plus ancillary figures - one for Small Person and one for the menagerie on top of the telly) and a Judge Death. Soon our telly will collapse from the weight of all the action figures... When young Sidney arrives, I shall take a picture.

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January the 19th would have been Edgar Allen Poe's 200th birthday. Have a bit of Vinny P to celebrate:





There. That's a cheery thing, isn't it?

We're watching The Devil Rides Out tonight. There's nothing quite like seeing Jim Hacker being forced to perform magical rituals... >:D Good old Charles Gray.

I am watching John Mortimer night on BBC4. We have had Rumpole, and are currently enjoying Larry's masterful performance in A Voyage Around My Father. I'd encourage all of you to watch as much of it as you possibly can. However, if all you can spare is an hour, and if you have the tiniest Liberal bone in your body, please, please, PLEASE watch John Mortimer: A Life in Words.

It might give you a little inkling of why I love him so much.

I know you mean well. At least, I hope you mean well, but this? This is not workable. Cinema age ratings work because there is a person on the door of the cinema who can judge the age of the person trying to get in and demand ID if necessary. Video age ratings work less well, because although shop assistants can enforce them at the point of purchase, they cannot be enforced once the video has been bought. The only way proper enforcement of video age ratings would be possible would be to have some sort of age detection system on the box, or perhaps the player, which would not let you open the box until you were old enough. I'm sure you will agree that this would be an incredibly expensive solution, and would create untold inconvenience for all concerned, and would still be circumventable by anyone determined enough.

Internet age ratings? Would work like videos, not like the cinema. There is no possible way to create a system which stops children seeing things that you have decided they ought not to see, without preventing adults also from seeing things which they are perfectly entitled to see. You are not my nanny, and I object to you behaving as though I want or need one. And, to be quite frank, I am pig sick of your government justifying every illiberal, intrusive, arsehole-ish measure with either we have to do this or the turrists will get you or won't somebody please think of the childrun!!!!

Seriously, just fuck off now, OK?

Over the last week or so I have been having a conversation over email with the very lovely alex_wilcock. It's ranged over many topics, but as you would possibly expect between he and I, a lot of it has been about Doctor Who (Alex is, of course, the author of the much-vaunted "How Doctor Who Made Me a Liberal"). A lot of the discussion has ranged around liberalism and sex and money, as well, but mainly, it's been Who.

A large part of what we've talked about is which is our favourite incarnation of the Doctor and why, and which eras of the show we like best and why (at the risk of annoying the good folks at the Indy - scroll down to "middle-aged Doctor Who fans" - this is not always the same thing). Inevitably, this has involved discussion of which are our least favourites, too. And while I can agree that the first season of McCoy was rubbish, and that Pip and Jane Baker were mostly awful (not necessarily positions Alex has advanced, but ones that are prevalent in fandom), both of those had more redeeming features, in my eyes, than the era of Who which started with Christopher Eccleston declaring he was going to wipe every last stinking dalek out of the sky to save his girlfriend. The final Christopher Eccleston episode was the tipping point, for me.

Doctor Who is probably the nearest thing to a religion I have. It's shaped my mind from a very early age, and I believe in it's core values and worship regularly. My first memory of anything is of Tom Baker turning into Peter Davison. Alex says that Doctor Who fostered a free spirit, encouraged me to start reading, instilled a passionate internationalism, made me think about ecology, and give me a lasting hatred of prejudice; green scaly rubber people are people too. And, of course, it made me want to change the world, and believe that an individual can make a difference, and I couldn't agree with that more. It's always been a show with a moral message, and that message is an essentially Liberal one - even if the world IS a horrible scary place full of fascistic monsters, one person can change that by doggedly doing the right thing, and this is what the right thing is.

It's ironic, then, that my first major issue with this era of Who is the Lonely God schtick. The Doctor isn't, shouldn't be, can't be a God. He's a hero because of his fallibility and weakness, not in spite of it. He's a hero because throughout time and space he tries to do the right thing; not always succeeding, but always trying. Think Tom Baker's Have I the right? discussion with Sarah-Jane Smith in Genesis of the Daleks. Think Jon Pertwee patiently explaining to UNIT that actually, Silurians and Sea Devils have as much right to live on this planet as we do. Think Colin Baker's monologue in The Two Doctors about how Peri is too focussed on humanity, and that other species are important too. Think Christopher Eccleston trying to negotiate with the Nestene Consciousness. My Doctor would not have flushed the Racnoss down the plughole without a second glance. My Doctor would not have committed genocide against even the daleks, especially not when he had been shown a mere six episodes earlier that daleks can be redeemed (and yes, I am awake of Sylvester McCoy's actions with the Hand of Omega. I think that's an aberration too). You can't imagine Tennant asking if he has the right, can you? He is the no-second-chances Doctor. The Doctor who can't see shades of grey. The Doctor who doesn't allow for the possibility of rehabilitation - just look at his eternal punishment meted out at the end of Human Nature/Family of Blood. He has appointed himself judge, jury and executioner to the whole of the universe like The Inquisitor in Red Dwarf, even though he KNOWS that there are mechanisms in place to do this via the rule of law. He believes in his own Godhood, and takes on the mantle willingly. My Doctor might have been an arrogant son of a bitch, but he knew he was mortal.

My second major issue with Tennant-Era Who is the racism. Not skin colour racism. Species racism. All the of aliens are bad guys. All of them. Even in Eccleston era, we get Jabe the tree-lady (who, although her species originates on earth, is definitely not human). In Tennant Era, like a dyed-in-the-wool Dacre-ite, The Doctor believes that humanity is the only race worth bothering with; and even then, not all of them. The Ood were a ham-fisted attempt at a not-evil alien, but even they are counted as Other, as disposable, by the show, and by their second appearance has become monster-of-the-week. Contrast this with earlier incarnations of Who, even up to and including Eccleston.

My third major issue with Tennant Era Who is Rose. In Eccleston's time, I liked Rose. I could identify with her. She was a ballsy, confident young woman with an enquiring mind and an adventurous spirit. Sure, she wasn't well-educated, but that didn't mean she wasn't intelligent. Yes, Eccleston!Doctor was a bit clingy to her, but you could understand that. She was the first person he had allowed himself to care about since the Time War. When he turned into Tennant, though, it all became a bit more worrying. She lost her independence and her adventuring spirit. She fell in love with him, and he with her. This led to a series of things which were completely unforgiveable, in my eyes. He endangered the universe, just to say goodbye to her. Contrast this with how he has behaved to the departures of other companions, even his own granddaughter, and you realise that it's a dramatic change in the nature of the character. On top of this, even after Rose had gone, he showed favouritism, something he has never EVER done before. He treated Martha Jones abominably, because he was still hung up on Rose. You might say that this is simply realism; showing the Doctor's humanity. But he's NOT HUMAN. He's an ALIEN. He treated Donna pretty shabbily too, twice over. And why is it that every female (and gay/bi/omni male) character in the show now has to make goo-goo eyes at him? He's not Captain Kirk! He's not sexually irresistible. Hell, I fancy him a hell of a lot less now than I did when he was a snuggly bloke with a blonde afro and a technicolour dreamcoat. A LOT less.

My fourth issue is the actor himself. I realise that this is a personal foible that not many will agree with, but I don't think David Tennant is all that. I didn't think much of him in Blackpool, I detested his Casanova, and I wanted to beat his head against a wall when he was Daft Jamie in Medicinal Purposes. I find his gurning and shouting annoying, and his flared nostrils Rimmeresque. I'm shallow enough that I would forgive this if I thought he was sexy, but sadly, I don't. It's a shame, really, because when he's NOT acting, he's lovely. In interviews, he is intelligent, considered, and attentive to detail. He's also very clearly a Who fanboy. It's just his acting is not to my taste at all (in this sense, he is the anti-Christopher Lee, whom I adore as an actor, but detest as an arrogant cock in real life).

So yes, all in all, the most recent era of Who has been my least favourite, and the current incumbent is my least favourite Doctor. I haven't even watched all of the last series. I'd say that perhaps this is a sign that I am growing up, and putting aside childish things, if I thought that was any way to proceed. But I don't, and if I did, I wouldn't be as glued to SJA as I have been.

You see, in the the Sarah-Jane Adventures, I see a lot of the things I miss about Who. Sarah-Jane has the moral centre which the modern Doctor seems to lack. She has more than one person in the "companion" role, and although one of these is her adopted son, she doesn't play favourites. She makes mistakes, but she owns up to them and faces up to them. There's no sexual tension, and there doesn't need to be because (and you can laugh at hearing this from a randy bisexual in an open relationship if you must) not everything in life is about sex. And, I must confess, the feminist in me loves watching (and sharing with my daughter) a science fiction show in which the lead character is a strong, capable, yet emotionally centred woman, and in which every single episode passes the Bechdel test. Which makes it a double crying shame that when The Grand Moff Sexist takes over the showrunner role in Who next year, Sarah-Jane's future is in doubt. You see, despite the fact that the show is the highest rated show CBBC has ever produced, if there's nobody to take over Rusty's role, the show will be axed...

At which point, a very small but very determined spawn of mine will be leading the protests.

Apparently "nobody ever wants to have sex with Liberals". Meanwhile, on planet earth, I have to go to work. If Newmania is interested, I haven't had any form of sexual activity for a whole 12 hours now, but that's only because Mat has been Mr Sleepy this morning...

I think really, that what my posts over the last couple of days boil down to is this: condemning other people because they are different from you, whatever direction that difference might be in, is wrong.

If they are hurting you? That's different.
If they are hurting someone else? Condemn away.
If all they are doing is doing things differently from you, and nobody is being harmed? Back that truck the fuck up and stop being a judgemental arsehole.

Now, I admit that there are legitimate debates to be had on the subject of what constitutes harm, and issues of education and informed consent and such, but the basic principle is easy: people should be able to do whatever they like as long as it doesn't harm others. If you condemn someone for doing something non-harmful, you are being a twat, and I will call you out on it. I hope that you will do the same for me.

I'm a bit late to Charlotte Gore's party, here, but we've been watching Yes, Prime Minister tonight and was reminded of wanting to post this. I see little that has changed in the last thirty years, except that there are less smokers, and yet they are paying more money into the treasury, and pretty much all of the regulation mooted in this episode has since come to pass. You want to watch from 4.01 minutes into this clip:



Yes, but smokers pay for a third of the cost of the national health service! We're saving many more lives than we otherwise could because of those smokers who voluntarily lay down their lives for their friends

Obviously the figures are out of date now. The last I heard was that smokers cost the NHS £1billion a year in treatment, but contribute £9.5billion in taxes. And if those taxes don't come from smokers, they are going to have to come from somewhere else - alcohol taxes have gone up a lot since smokers started giving up. But that won't be enough. How about fatty foods? Chocolate? Petrol? There are lots of things which are condemned as bad and unhealthy...

Next time you see a smoker, shivering in the cold outside some building, shake him or her by the hand. They are paying for your doctor, your hospital, and your pension. In these economic times, philanthropy like that should be applauded.

For Will: the blogging discussion on the Today programme, which is hilarious in its illumination of John Humphries as a technophobic dinosaur, bless him.

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burkesworks? I saw this and thought of you. Ten Very Good reasons to grow a beard. I am almost tempted to try...

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Can this be true? Are they finally going to make proper sex education compulsory? I am astounded that there are people who think that kids should not be taught about contraception till they are at least 13 though. I had lost my virginity by then, and I wasn't the first in my class either. Teenage pregnancies are better than talking to children about condoms, are they? I mean, we all know abstinence education doesn't work - largely for parallel reasons to those Mitch Benn talks about with regard to smoking today:

the greatest trick the tobacco corporations ever pulled was convincing parents to tell their kids not to smoke. That made sure that smoking became identified with rebellion and independence for ever.

The more adults tell teenagers not to do something, the more they are going to want to do it. What you have to do is present them with evidence of what the consequences will be and let them make their own choice - but make sure they know they will be living with the consequences - Mitch again:

"Hi kid, here's the plan. You give me a regular cash donation of a few pounds each day, and in return I will make you smell bad, slowly destroy your skin, reduce your fitness, turn your teeth and fingers brown and fill your whole system with toxins. In return for this, you will think you look a bit cool. Except you won't really. Oh, and I reserve the right, at some point in the future, to kill you. Maybe I won't and maybe I will. You'll never know until it's too late. It might be swift and unexpected, it might take months of agonising pain. Do we have a deal?"

I'm hoping that if I put it like that and tell my kids that if they still want to smoke, it's up to them, they'll steer clear of it.

Giving kids an informed choice doesn't ALWAYS work, but it for damn sure works better than being an authoritarian arsehole and just making them want to rebel.

Actually, our dear government could do with bearing that in mind, too...

Anyway, I know (and am happy) that there is some form of sex education going on at Shrubby's school, because the other day she told me that she knew about how babies happen. She said that I have to do something with Mat (she was hazy about this bit) and then I'll get really fat, and then I'll burst, and she will have a baby sister. This baby sister will either be called Ellie-Mae 2 (after her friend Ellie-Mae) or Mona, she hasn't decided. I, apparently, do not get a say.

Banning things is illiberal, yes? I don't understand why some people find this difficult to grasp. Sometimes you have to decide between liberalism and safety, or liberalism and religion, or the liberty of two different and conflicting groups in order to decide what is MORALLY RIGHT, but morally right and Liberal are NOT synonyms (sadly) and using them as such confuses people into thinking it's possible to ban a book, or a foodstuff, or whatever (because books and foodstuffs are bad and wrong and people must be saved from themselves by having them banned!) and still be completely liberal. It's BLOODY WELL NOT.

The idea of Liberalism is that you decide what is right for you, and you allow others to decide what is right for them. If you don't think it's right to eat pork, don't eat pork. But banning OTHER people from eating pork is not liberal. If you don't want to read a book, don't read the book. Try to discourage others from reading it if you want. But banning others from reading it because YOU think it's immoral? That's the very definition of illiberal.

FFS, people, read some Mill. It's not like it's not freely available on the interwebs; if you're reading this you can read that.

These are the tabs I have had open for several hours intending to write blog posts referring to them:

1, Quacks on the telleh. Shame on you, Andrew. Three links on this:

http://gimpyblog.wordpress.com/2008/10/10/bbc-gets-quack-to-speculate-on-mental-health-of-prime-minister-during-time-of-financial-crisis/
http://www.ministryoftruth.me.uk/2008/10/11/analyse-thi/
http://endless-psych.livejournal.com/290648.html

2, Healthy cigarettes are apparently not a contradiction in terms. As those of you who know my ongoing battle with the evils of tobacco will know, this is of interest to me (currently off the wagon, having managed a good month on it up till conference)

https://e-cig.com/shopping/shopcontent.asp?type=Home

As Charlotte Gore speculates, I'm willing to lay money down that they will be banned or taxed/regulated to the extent that they might as well be banned soon.

3, Yes, I would.

http://community.livejournal.com/dw_daily/9476.html

Today's Nemi is oddly fitting for the way my brain is going today:



Patronising blokes telling women not just what they are allowed to do, but what they are allowed to WANT to do don't half wind me up. For instance, via confusiontempst and dmatthewman comes the news that David Willets thinks that women ought to stop having aspirations to getting decent jobs and get back in the kitchen and make men some pie, preferably while giving birth...

Unlike David Willets, I actually LIKE the fact that women are allowed to use their intelligence these days. It makes for a more interesting world. Hell, it makes for more interesting drama, as anyone who watched yesterday's fab episode of Sarah-Jane Adventures could tell you. Also, radio Four was dull this morning so we put the CD of OHG series 6 on. Annette Crosbie is AWESOME. The character she plays is full of sharp wit, and gets one up on Satan quite regularly. Intelligent and pro-active women RULE.

Conservatives on the other side of the Atlantic seem to be having difficulty with this idea, too. OMG THE WOMAN MADE IT ALL GO WRONG!!

Hey, I have an idea! Instead of trying to push women as a whole back into the kitchen so that the poor mens can get back to the halcyon days of the 1950s, why don't we just let people make their own decisions about how they want to lead their lives, and point out to all humans that they aren't entitled to ANY sort of relationship without behaving like reasonable people and EARNING someone else's love? Oh yeah, sorry, that would be SENSIBLE, wouldn't it?

* headdesk *

The Honourable Lady Mark has reminded me of something that really, REALLY winds me up. Our Glorious Leader has recently started using terms like hard-working families which I had previously considered the preserve of the other two parties - The Labour because they want to think that they are helping the deserving poor, and the Tories because they are only bothered about net wealth creators. Every time I hear it, it makes me get that Stressed Eric throbbing vein.

I think: what about childless couples, and gay people, and widows, and teenage burger flippers? Their work's not good enough, isn't it?
I think: what about those who CAN'T work, through no fault of their own? Don't they get a say?
I think: hard-working families? What, like in the Gulag? All children must be sent up chimneys?
I think: I'm a LIBERAL! As long as people aren't hurting anyone else by it, and aren't expecting to live The Life of Riley at The Taxpayer's Expense (and anyone who has tried to live on benefits WITHOUT cheating will know that this is utterly impossible) why should I care if they are lazy, idle, shiftless buggers?

(I realise that last might be slightly controversial, mind)

Poll #1255408 Hard-Working Families
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

When a politician talks about Hard-Working Families it...

Since Liberal Conspiracy started there have been people complaining that you CAN'T be Liberal AND left, and that the conflation of the two terms is a bad thing for linguistic accuracy. I agree with the latter part of that, but not the former: I think that saying the former shows a misunderstanding of both terms. Left is an economic marker; liberal a social one. If you are in the bottom left quadrant of the Political Compass, you are both. This is why I don't have a problem with Sunny using both terms in the description of the site (although, for the record, I don't think Sunny is a Liberal anywhere near as much as he is a leftie).

Anyway, Liberalism can be both right or left or neither. That does not make it any less Liberal. Liberalism is about a small state and freedom and a lack of intervention in the lives of individuals, yes, but that is by no means incompatible with the idea that the state helps to level the playing field FOR the individual against enormous powerful corporations, however unfashionable that opinion might be these days (mostly because the two main political parties are paid for by enormous powerful corporations...). Both the left and right can be authoritarian (indeed, in Britain, both the main theoretically left wing and right wing parties ARE authoritarian, no matter what their posturing), too.

John Stuart Mill was a leftie, and so was Adam Smith. I'm not ashamed to call myself a leftie economically, because (in my view) one cannot HAVE individual freedom without some constraints on the corporatist juggernaut, unless it is the freedom to starve. The thing is, in terms of what is important to my personal philosophy, leftieness is a tiny proportion of the whole. It's kind of leftie feminist liberal. I share Charlotte's disquiet with seeing the word Liberal in red, but I disagree that the solution to that is to abandon the term.

Being a Liberal is very important to me, and (rather like feminism) I would rather challenge people who use the term wrongly than let it be lost to authoritarians as it has been in the US.