Tuesday, May 30, 2006

A whole new ball game

The motto of the 2006 World Cup is 'A Time to Make Friends'. However, it won't be a time to make friends for the 3,000 English football fans who have to hand in their passports to police because a banning order has been imposed upon them. After the hooligan panics of the 80s and 90s, it seems no liberty is too fundamental that it can't be denied if there is a game of football involved. Even those who do get there can expect to be herded around like cattle and treated with the utmost suspicion - and woe betide those who dare to sing inappropriate songs or engage in Nazi salutes.

Still, at least fans can get in touch with their feminine side while the tournament is on. According to the Mental Health Foundation, men are much more likely to hug their mates during a game - although most of the men surveyed said they had never cried over a game. 'It is encouraging that football makes it easier for men to talk about their feelings as, traditionally, men are far less likely than women to share their innermost thoughts,' said Dr Andrew McCulloch, the Foundation's chief executive. 'It is important that men feel able to express their emotions in whatever way they find most comfortable.' The flipside of the MHF story is the one circulated a few years ago about domestic violence increasing after major football defeats. Presumably, that's not the kind of emotional expression the MHF had in mind.

While the Mental Health Foundation are engaged in a cynical but feeble attempt to attract some publicity by riding on the World Cup bandwagon, the story illustrates the way in which football can be used to perform all sorts of social engineering. Gone are the days when politicians despised football - although the authoritarian controls on fans are alive and kicking. Now, politicians all want to attach themselves to it in order to get their messages across - on the basis that unlike our leaders, we give a damn about our team.

Wednesday, May 24, 2006

Get them while they're young

The longest running children's TV show in Britain has decided to change its name for the day as part of BBC TV's 'Climate Chaos' season. Blue Peter - which is almost as much of a national institution as the BBC itself - will be called Green Peter on 24 May. The programme will feature explanations about climate change and what you do to prevent it. The team will apparently try to boil a kettle powered by a bike and plant a drought-resistant garden. (I look forward to this bit as it's forecast to pour with rain today in London.)

Editor Richard Marson said in a press release, 'We know from the thousands of emails we get from Blue Peter viewers that they are passionate and active about green issues. Many are understandably scared about the future of their planet and how this will affect them.' Scared? I wonder where they get that idea from?

It fits in neatly with the attitude towards environmentalism in schools, where Green ideas are presented as moral certainties and scientific facts rather than a political outlook which needs to be debated and questioned. Saving energy and recycling our waste have become uncontroversial parts of a new trend towards 'ethical living' where we can all find some common purpose. No wonder politicians are embracing such ideas wholeheartedly. In fact, this programme name change is worryingly close to the Conservative local election slogan, 'Vote Blue, Go Green'.

The programme is named after a flag. A 'blue peter' is a blue flag with a white square in the middle used to indicate that a ship is setting sail. The image was important to the programme creators - it indicated the idea of setting sail on a voyage of discovery. How ironic then that the effect of today's show is not to encourage open and questioning minds but to spin a lie that the debate about climate and society's future is closed.

Blue Peter to change title, BBC press release

Monday, May 22, 2006

The sin bin

Separate your waste or your local council will separate you from up to a grand. That's the lesson from the case of mother-of-three Donna Chalice from Devon. She is accused of committing a heinous crime - putting food waste in the recycling bin - and now faces trial later in the year.

Behind the fluffy talk about everyone getting together to save the planet, there are some good old-fashioned authoritarian measures being rolled out.

Woman in court on recycle charges, BBC News, 22 May 2006

A waste of time, by Rob Lyons

Sunday, May 14, 2006

Blair fails animal test

Tony Blair's has declared that he wants to make a stand in support of animal testing. Writing in the Sunday Telegraph, Blair announces that he will sign the People's Petition on animal testing, stating that this is 'a sign of just how important I believe it is that as many people as possible stand up against the tiny group of extremists threatening medical research and advances in this country.'

The problem is that the government's record on supporting experimentation is poor. As Josie Appleton points out elsewhere on spiked, the government singularly failed to back the building of a primate research lab in Cambridge, while the Labour Party itself has pulled investments from Huntingdon Life Sciences, a leading testing company. Far from the threat to medical progress coming from a handful of fringe protesters, it is the government itself - and to a degree, the academic and scientific establishment - which has backed away from a proper defence of this important work.

Even now, the government seems to obsess about the threat from a tiny band of anti-social animal activists. What is needed is a change of policy at the highest level that human life is worth more than animals and scientific research using animals is entirely legitimate.

Tony Blair: Time to act against animal rights protesters, Sunday Telegraph, 14 May 2006

Science that dare not speak it's name, by Josie Appleton