THAT'S not what you said in the Jeffries' Tube

Wednesdays always make me really depressed about politics. The unedifying spectacle of PMQs, and the journos frantically fapping about who "won" and "lost" when it's plain for everyone to see that everybody loses from this example of Westminster theatre. A parade of non-questions not-answered with added shouting and wankery... The entire British public and most non-Westminster politicians view PMQs as the horrific embarrassment it is. Some journos and Westminster politicians are dimly aware of this, but none of them seriously tries to do anything about it, Bercow's occasional chidings of the chamber aside.

Political gameplaying can maybe, sometimes, be justified as a means to an end (and I'd debate that most of the time). Political gameplaying to be enjoyed as an end in itself, for the entirety of PMQs, week after week, for entire parliaments? That's not democratic accountability, that's just being 650 arseholes shouting.

Luckily for them all, I am here to offer my unsolicited opinions like a sealioning mediocre cis white man. PMQs should be reformed in the following ways:

1. If the PM doesn't give a proper answer to a question, the speaker should pull him up on it and not let him leave untill he has given a proper answer, even if it's "I don't know".


2. Any shouty arseholes get thrown out of the chamber. Yes, even Cameron. The more shouty and arseholey they are the longer the sanction - several days of not being allowed to vote would soon stop this happening.


3. Interventions should be taken by the speaker, so that lack of shouty arseholeness doesn't mean lack of challenge to lies at the despatch box. He's supposed to be chairing anyway. Chair properly, Bercow.

Now, that's probably not going to be a panacea, but it's a start.

I'm not going to give these people the publicity they clearly crave by linking to their poisonous words, but those of you who think it's acceptable to use someone's death to rake over old coals or score cheap political points - Salmond, Oakeshott and (inevitably) Öpik among them - need to take a good long look at yourselves.

A man has died. Even if he wasn't the much-loved person he clearly was, even if everyone hated him, it is not appropriate to use a person's death for your own ends, even if you think those ends are the noblest ends there are. When someone has just passed you need to leave some time for people to process it before you start making snide little asides or even blatantly laying into them. As matgb just said to me, they could leave it till tomorrow. Or even the afternoon.

And finally, if your comments lead people to say things like this:

52 and considering mortality. Thinking of adding to membership card a "DNO": do not allow Opik/Oakeshott to comment on my passing.

— Olly Grender (@OllyGrender) June 2, 2015

...it's maybe a sign that you do the classless thing a bit too often. Grow up and let people grieve before you loose your poison on the world. Thank you.

ETA: this post from Dr Nerdlove has some good advice for you guys and your ilk.

So there are a bunch of Labour PPCs and assorted others today doing a coordinated clamour for renationalisation of the railways. This is a superficially attractive idea, and one that up until recently I might have agreed with myself, so I want to go into why I now believe it would be bloody stupid.

The way that privatisation was done was a cock up. You'll get no argument from me on that. The current franchise system for Train Operating Companies (hereinafter TOCs) is the worst of both worlds. Also, I have no issues with the fact that after the collapse of Railtrack, the infrastructure was basically brought back under state control in the guise of Network Rail. Land and track beds are a natural monopoly, and thus state control makes sense**. The actual rolling stock, though? Why does that have to be a monopoly? It doesn't.

The reason people still feel like it does is because of the afore-mentioned stupid franchise system, which means we basically have several regional monopolies rather than one national one***. We have competition on the railways in the same way we have competition for huge government contracts in other areas, and it's always the same usual suspects who bid for contracts because they are the only ones who can, and we end up with a cartel who fleece both the consumer at the ticket barrier and the taxpayer on the subsidies****.

In the few cases where some little company has managed to get an Open Access Rail contract, you can see how TOCs' contracts might work under a properly Liberal system. The example local to me is Grand Central, who run a service from various West Yorkshire stations to King's Cross. Their trains are beautiful, their service makes sense, and their prices are great. Contrast this with the Byzantine and delapidated system run by Northern Rail (my local franchise holder), or BR when the railways were still under state control, and you start to see what I'm driving at.

Train services aren't shit because they were privatised, they were shit under BR too. Train services are shit because they weren't privatised enough. You can't have proper competition under a franchise system. If there was proper competition there would be room for lots more companies like Grand Central to bid for (say) one or two slots on the timetable, start small, and build up really great services, instead of the monolithic state-in-all-but-name services we have now. There would be room for community-run and co-op run services to start up and (hopefully) flourish. Under the current system there's no way that can happen.

What is it that convinced me that all this is true? The NHS. NHS England operates under a much more liberal market structure than NHS Scotland, NHS Northern Ireland, or NHS Wales. This is consistently painted as a Bad Thing by many groups on the left. And yet, I am a Liberal, and I don't care what system of ownership something has on idealogical grounds, I care what works to deliver the best outcomes for people. On pretty much every measure - from life expectancy to waiting times - NHS England outperforms the other three. Proper liberalisation of the market WORKS, and that is why I am for it in the case of the railways.

In political terms, of course, the problem with this is that renationalisation makes some superficial sense. The current system is shit, does cost us more in subsidies and buggering about than the nationalised system did, and is in urgent need of reform. I actually think that in terms of winning votes, the Labour party might be onto something, because one of the types of person this will appeal to is the type of politically illiterate pub bore who has an opinion on everything, doesn't care that many of his opinions are mutually contradictory, and doesn't think about the consequences of what would happen if his ideas all came to pass. This type of person will look at the current system, see it's shit, shrug and say "well, renationalise the railways. That'll solve it." and move on to talking about how lazy immigrants who came over here to claim benefits have stolen his job by working more hours than him.

This is the type of voter that Labour are currently haemmoraging in droves to UKIP*****, so appealing to them is a good survival tactic for them. The type of person who cheers when Labour think of yet another thing they are going to fund with the bankers' bonus tax which they currently plan to spend many times over.

Of course I have no doubt that were renationalisation to make it into the Labour manifesto it wouldn't actually happen were they to get in******, but that won't really matter in electoral terms. There are a lot more reactionary pub bores than there are people who actually pay attention to what works. The problem for Lib Dems is: how do we package sensible policies in a way that makes sense to the reactionary pub bore? This, I think, is a problem which I would make a LOT of money if I could solve...

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*with a little help from matgb and Alisdair, with whom I regularly have discussions about political stuff, both online and off.
**similarly with roads, etc.
***The reason we have it is because John Major had romantic notions about the golden age of rail and wanted to bring back GWR etc. and went about it in a cack-handed way. I have a soft spot for Major, and think he is harshly judged as a PM, but he really did make an arse of privatising the railways.
****just like in the arena of justice and security it's always G4S and Serco who end up with government contracts because of the ridiculous preffered bidder system and the size of the contracts being drawn up, but that's a blog post for another day.
*****whose entire policy platform is designed in this reactionary way - "X is a problem. How do we solve X? Y might work." with no consideration of the fact that Y doesn't work with any of the other policies they propose, and indeed, actively works against some of them... -_-"
******Don't even get me started on the rank hypocrisy of a party which introduced tuition fees against a manifesto promise that they wouldn't, and then raised them against a manifesto promise that they wouldn't attacking US on the fact that we kept tuition fees lower than they would have been under either Labour OR Tories governing alone... -_-"

Our Environment Secretary thinks that if you "have to" destroy ancient woodland to build something, you can offset that by planting lots of trees elsewhere. This is so utterly wrong-headed I barely know where to begin. I mean the clue about the importance of biodiversity is in the name - bioDIVERSITY. IT'S NOT JUST TREES, OWEN. The fragile ecosystem of ancient woodland might have trees for its foundation, but it's insects, birds, fungi, ferns (oh God, you wouldn't believe how important ferns are), flowering and non-flowering plants... Some trees won't even grow unless a woodland has been established for a century. Some small mammals can only live in woodland where there is an established balance of the plant and insect food they need. All of these things depend on each other, and this cannot be replaced by a monocultural plantation of trees, however native those trees are.

This blinding stupidity on the part of our environment secretary is illustrative of a wider problem within the thinking of people who are not Liberal by inclination. Not just biodiversity, but diversity in all areas is seen as a box-ticking exercise. So to replace woodland you only need plant trees. Bollocks to the other forms of life, we've got trees, that's a woodland, right? To have diversity in the government you need more women. It doesn't matter if those women are from the same tiny, public-school-educated, Oxbridge upper class set as the men, cos they're WOMEN, right? Diversity means having x number of people from y groups which are considered underrepresented. So you need some women, a black person, a gay, maybe if you're REALLY right-on a trans+ person... but if you don't think like a Liberal the actual PEOPLE don't really matter as long as they fill a quota.

This is BULLSHIT, people. Utter, stinking, steaming bullshit.

Every single person is an individual. Sure, they might be a part of some group or other, but that does not mean they are representative of that group. And more often each person is a member of more than one group. If I am going to be a token on a diversity agenda, do I tick the box for woman, or LGBT, or Northern, or low income, or poly? Or, more likely, in the case of a box ticker, do I tick every single one of those boxes so they think they've filled their diversity quota and every single other person in the room can be a rich cis het white man?

I keep saying this, but I'm going to say it again: diversity is not an end in itself, it's a means to an end. Biodiversity in woodland is important because if you don't have it you have a monoculture, and monocultures are at massive risk from disease. Ash die back and Dutch Elm disease are but two examples. If your woodland is composed entirely of one type of tree and that tree gets a disease, the entire woodland dies and you get environmental collapse. If you want an example what a huge problem monocultures are, take a look at what will happen to the banana supply if the Cavendish banana fungus that has been spreading really takes hold... Similarly, if you don't have diversity in government, you get monocultural thinking. You get a breed of politicians who all look and think and speak the same, and that's very prone to the intellectual equivalent of a devastating disease.

We have had a political monoculture in this country for far too long and intellectual Dutch Elm disease has taken hold. Owen Paterson's bone-headed remarks about biodiversity merely illustrate this problem. We need to break the system open and acheive true diversity and then all the good that comes from that will follow. Hopefully that will include not having an environment sectratary as clueless as Owen Paterson ever again.

I'm composing this on my phone so it's going to be quick and dirty, but I have the following things to say:

1, asking someone to consider what impact their words will have is not censoring them or banning anything
2; being told you have hurt someone is not fun; but it's better than hurting people
3, people with privilege are used to not considering other people's feelings and get upset when they are asked to consider other people. On one level this is understandable because considering other people is work. But it's nowhere near as much work as living with total lack of consideration all the time.
4, if you use a word that upsets people without knowing it will upset people that is qualitatively different from knowing it will upset people and using it anyway.
5, you are perfectly free to say whatever you like BUT THAT IS NOT THE END OF IT. Once you have said what you like other people are free to react how they like and judge you how they like in consequence of what you have said.
6; there is NO point 6
7, All words cause reactions. If you don't like the reaction your words cause it might behove you to consider your words more carefully in future, especially if you're getting paid for writing them; rather than railing at people you have upset for reacting in am entirely predictable way.

This post brought to you by today's twitter storm. Further reading:

http://www.sarahlizzy.com/blog/?p=150

I intended this slot to be for Youtubes of Monty Python and daft jokes, but nothing today is going to beat the silliness of the former minister for health, who wants to ban Frosties.

Yes, childhood obesity is an issue.
Yes, Frosties are high in simple carbohydrates.
Yes, it'd be nice if people chose to eat things the establishment approves of (from the point of view of the establishment, anyway).

Why the instant Labour response to anything like this is bansturbation is beyond me, though. Surely it's treating a symptom rather than a cause? People choosing unhealthy foods is not a cause of poor diet, it's an expression of it. If you wanted to treat the cause rather than the symptom, though, you'd need to look at why people choose frosties over (say) muesli:

- because they taste nice
- because they're much cheaper
- because they're used to them.

Banning frosties won't solve any of those things (black market frosties would still be cheap; that's how markets work). If you want people to choose "healthy" foods, you need to:

1, educate them on what healthy foods are (people are mostly fairly well informed on this) - the traffic light food labelling scheme is part of this too.
2, make healthy foods cheaper and/or more convenient than unhealthy ones. You can do this by either taxing unhealthy foods, or subsidising healthy ones (commence argument about which is preferable now). The problem is that the reason unhealthy foods are cheap is because good quality ingredients aren't, and that's not a simple thing to solve.
3, make sure that all public utilities which sell food (schools, hospitals, canteens, etc) offer a variety of healthy foods so people can get used to things other than frosties.

And that's without even going into how unworkable such a ban would be. If you ban a specific product, the manufacturers will bring out the same product under a new name. If you ban a certain percentage of sucrose, the manufacturers will find other, potentially much less healthy options (fructose, for example). And even then, how do you stop people adding extra sugar in their homes?

Like most Labour proposals, this is ill-thought out and if it is ever to work will require massive bureaucracy for a tiny gain.

Still, now they've demonised nicotine, alcohol, fat, salt and sugar, it'll be interesting to see what's next. Puritanism is never satisfied...

The most mutually satisfactory conclusion to an argument is for both parties to reach agreement by methods of persuasion and by each side learning new things. Another, less satisfactory, way of concluding in argument is to agree to disagree. In neither of these cases, though, can either person really say they have won. I mean, an old hippy like me might try to suggest that in the first scenario, everyone wins, but surely the true joy of winning is in grinding your opponent's shattered ego into the dirt, and then pointing and laughing at their paltry remains?

How, then, does one Win an Argument?

There are many tactics which one can employ to win an argument, but I find that one of the most consistently successful is to get your opponent into such a frothing rage that they can't think straight. The methods that you can employ to do this are legion, and the legendary Conversational Terrorism is a fine place to start your research into methodology, but I would like to highlight some of my favourites.

1. If you want to set your opponent's teeth on edge right from the get-go, start with an appeal to authority. Assert that you are older, wiser, more educated, more experienced, and gosh darn-it, all round better than your opponent. It doesn't matter if the assertion is true or false; in fact, it's almost better if it's false because that's bound to annoy them even more.


2. Continue by building a series of straw men. Take your opponent's words and twist them, distort them, and wilfully misinterpret them. If your opponent tries to object to this, simply appeal to authority again, and again, and again, till they give up. This is especially useful if you can pretend to agree with the distorted position.


3. Supplement your appeals to authority with ad hominem attacks. While you are painting yourself as the fount of all knowledge make sure to denigrate, insult and patronise your opponent at every opportunity you get. This will really wind them up.


4. If you need further ammunition, throw in a few ad populums. Everybody knows that this is a winning tactic.


5. Assert your opinion as if it is fact, without a shred of evidence to back it up. Bonus points if you can do this while simultaneously complaining that your opponent has done it


6. Red herrings and tangents can also be employed if you feel matters are slipping away from you. Ramble on for several minutes about something totally irrelevant to the point at hand, and if anyone tries to stop you, insist that you'll be getting to the point soon, or that they are wrong in thinking that you are straying from the point.

By this point your opponent should be so thoroughly pissed off with you that they will explode into fury (whether verbal or physical) and you win by default. You can then sit back, secure in the knowledge that you roused someone to anger with the Power of Your Brain and you must therefore be a far better person than they are. Tell all your friends. If you have any.

Who will find these tactics useful?

Some people - mansplainers, for example - find these techniques come naturally. Often people with political or legal training will use these methods to dismiss an opponent they feel is unworthy, even though they know such underhanded tactics to be without real discursive merit. The people who really need to gen up on these techniques are the sort of people who don't feel at home in smug condescension. This is not because they need to know how to use them, but how to spot when they are being used by someone else against them.

At this point, the non-smug-bastard should hold up a series of flash cards with the name of the logical fallacies being used by their opponent on them each time one is employed. This should somewhat turn the tables of enragement...


NOTE FOR THE HARD OF THINKING: I am fully aware that several of the nasty techniques I list above have been used in this post. This is intended to be for humorous effect. Irony does not mean "largely composed of iron". Also, I am aware that I have used these methods in other posts and on other occasions. I am not claiming to be perfect. Not at the moment, anyway.

And yes, since you ask, this is a follow-up to the previous post. You will be returned to normal service shortly. As, indeed, I do all things. Because I am short.

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... Click here (hat-tip Cath Elliot). Yes, that is a link to the original article in the Daily Fail. Sorry about that. But I link to the evil website of doom because, unusually for the Fail, the comments actually give me hope.

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