ooh-ahh

It was snowing the other day, but not so much here, so I paid little attention to the radio news stories of panic-buying of petrol. When I went to fill my three-quarters-empty tank at the local all the pumps were closed so I gave up, figuring I probably wouldn't need to go anywhere for the couple of days till it got back to normal. I gave DH a lift to Cambridge and on the offchance made a detour via Sainsbury's - they were out of petrol too. I took this as a sign not to bother. I don't tweet; I don't even do Facebook much, so I didn't pick up on any of the panic. But if it had been cash...

Eric Cantona was a brilliant footballer. I don't know so much about his grasp of economics. He wants to bring the banking system to its knees. He wants people to draw money out of the banks tomorrow to prove - gasp - that there isn't enough cash to pay everyone should they all demand it at once. Apparently, this makes banks teh evil. There are plenty of reasons to imagine (some) banks are teh evil, but this isn't one of them. Taking your money and using it to do something else, making a profit on that and giving you a bit of the profit for the opportunity to use your money - that's what banks do. It helps build roads and factories; it helps generate power and pay wages.

But hey, what do I know? If you were the elderly blind person over the road who can't get to the bank, maybe you wouldn't be so keen on this stunt. If your mortgage payment was due at the end of the month maybe you wouldn't be so keen either. Or a shopkeeper wanting to bank your takings and pay wages. Hey, you're capitalist scum, who cares about you?

So far, there are only a few thousand people signed up for Cantona's grand gesture. It would take a lot more than them to destabilise anything - until you think about the turbo-charging effect of social networking. How many tweeted queues does it take to make a crisis?

Uh-oh, maybe I should have kept quiet. All I know is that a bunch of sovereigns in a sock is jolly handy if a burglar smashes in your bedroom window.

London and the Provinces

NASA: Snow across Great Britain 7 January

This picture was on the front page of at least four daily papers this morning. They are full of how difficult it is to get to the office, and occasional complaints that compared with last February the London snow is frankly a bit disappointing.

Back in the seventies I was an articled clerk in Lincolnshire and set out after work one Friday to catch the train from Grantham, 30 miles away, to join my boyfriend visiting his big sister in London. The roads were thick with snow and I was dubious about making the journey. Oh don't be silly, Rosamund said on the telephone, there's no snow here. We're expecting you and it's roast lamb. From my small market town office window I looked at the tyre tracks neatly laid out in the street below and realised she thought I was a wimp. Snow is evanescent. There was no snow in London so the snow in Lincolnshire didn't really count. I drove carefully, staying in the tracks. Twenty miles out from home, coming downhill near Ancaster, I collided with a road sign warning of the bend.

The front end of the car crumpled.

It wouldn't start.

I was rescued by a policeman who took me to his house where his wife cleared the toys from the carpet and made me tea. The snow walloped down outside. When he'd finished his paperwork, the policeman gave me a lift to the station.* Rosamund was annoyed that I was late for supper, but amused that I'd pranged my car.

Lesley is a Devon farmer. Read her account of working through snow, if you think this latest lot is frankly a bit disappointing.

Seriously.

As I write the farmer is trying to dig the milk tanker lorry out of the lane a mile away so he can get to their tank and take milk to the processors. It’s currently 19.30 and that lorry has been on the road since 6am. Apparently only 40 out of 400 hundred dairy farms in the region have had collections in the last few days. There has been no lorry taking animals to the abattoir. Beef and sheep are not going to market either. Three people including us have not had a requested visit from our vet – also without a 4 wheel drive car. Fortunately my sick goat is stable but I need a blood test on her to assess what is going on. Others with animals needing immediate caesarians for example will have to watch them die.

Let's hear it for the farmers.


*Crikey, that policeman and his wife were wonderful. Would that happen now? Do village policemen live in police houses any more? Is there even such a person as a village policeman?

I work for your credit card company, you can trust me

I'm in town with OH when his cellphone rings. It's for you, he says, puzzled, handing me the contraption.

I do not know anyone who would contact me on that number.

When I've figured out which way round to hold it, there's a voice from the depths of southern Asia telling me that this is my credit card company calling and they must check a few security details with me before they can tell me what it's about. They won't tell me anything until I answer their questions, as they want to be sure they are talking to the right person.

Huh? Someone rings me out of the blue about my credit card, on someone else's telephone, and wants to check my security details?

- How do I know you are who you say you are? I don't want to give any information over the telephone to a stranger. Can you tell me what this is about?

- I am sorry madam, I am not permitted to discuss anything about the account with you without first clearing your security details.

(Things like the colour of my grandmother's eyes, and the check digits on the back of the card. Things that would be jolly useful to someone wanting to use my card.) This really isn't a good time to call. OH and I in the middle of trying to buy a car. She is insistent. She suggests I call their customer service department, and starts to dictate a number.

- Sorry, I don't know who you are. I will ring the number on the back of my card.

It's a joint account, that's why they rang on OH's telephone. It transpires that someone had been trying to use my card to buy goods online "in the Pacific area" and the credit card company wanted to check it wasn't me. No, it wasn't. (Where in the Pacific area, I'm dying to know. Anchorage? Honolulu? Shanghai?) My card is now cancelled, a new card is on its way and I must let them know if it doesn't arrive within ten days. Lucky I have another credit card, what with Christmas coming up and everything.

Honestly, I'm grateful that they checked, rather than just paying out and not telling me my credit limit was up until I tried to check out the latest bit of black goods for the offspring's pressie. But what is the mentality of these institutions? They are forever asking us to be vigilant against fraud, yet they act as if they didn't know what it was like to be a customer. Imagine that you'd just paid for a meal in a restaurant where there happened to be a dodgy employee. I know I know, but it does happen. The employee has your name and credit card number, he has the telephone number from the booking; all he needs now are the answers to the security questions to be able to exhaust your unasked-for credit limit.

Ars longa, vita brevis

Petition for Roman Polanski

We have learned the astonishing news of Roman Polanski’s arrest by the Swiss police on September 26th, upon arrival in Zurich (Switzerland) while on his way to a film festival where he was due to receive an award for his career in filmmaking.

He's a great film maker.

His arrest follows an American arrest warrant dating from 1978

an awfully long time ago. Don't you think we can just let bygones be bygones?

against the filmmaker, in a case of morals.

We don't judge other people by standards of bourgeois morality.

Filmmakers in France, in Europe, in the United States and around the world are dismayed by this decision. It seems inadmissible to them that an international cultural event, paying homage to one of the greatest contemporary filmmakers, is used by the police to apprehend him.

He's a great film maker. We all think so. You can't go around arresting great guys like that. Film festivals are sacrosanct. This is tantamount to arresting a priest in church.

By their extraterritorial nature, film festivals the world over have always permitted works to be shown and for filmmakers to present them freely and safely, even when certain States opposed this.

We claim diplomatic immunity for our event. Otherwise, what next? They will be arresting people for showing films that someone doesn't like. This is like McCarthysism.

The arrest of Roman Polanski in a neutral country,

Switzerland was neutral in WWII, and is not a member of NATO or the EU and it's um we think it's probably therefore neutral in the enforcement of cases of morals

where he assumed he could travel without hindrance,

He's been able to get away with it for so long he thought he could get away with it this time.

undermines this tradition: it opens the way for actions of which no one can know the effects.

What next? They will be arresting people for showing films that someone doesn't like. This is like McCarthysism.

Roman Polanski is a French citizen, a renowned and international artist now facing extradition.

He should be immune from your bourgeois American moral judgements.

This extradition, if it takes place, will be heavy in consequences and will take away his freedom.

And he should be free, because he's a great film maker.

Filmmakers, actors, producers and technicians—everyone involved in international filmmaking — want him to know that he has their support and friendship.

He is one of us. He is our friend.

On September 16th, 2009, Mr. Charles Rivkin, the US Ambassador to France, received French artists and intellectuals at the embassy. He presented to them the new Minister Counselor for Public Affairs at the embassy, Ms Judith Baroody. In perfect French she lauded the Franco-American friendship and recommended the development of cultural relations between our two countries.

We appeal to all enlightened French-speaking people

If only in the name of this friendship between our two countries, we demand the immediate release of Roman Polanski.

* * *

If a friend of mine were threatened with jail I'd go to some lengths to help keep them out, and if they went to jail I'd go and visit. (Assuming they hadn't done something so gross I didn't want to stay friends.) I'm not going to boycott anyone for signing this petition. There are many people I like and admire who support it. I just think their arguments are woolly.

It's a long time ago.
OK, so you want a statute of limitations for rape. Some jurisdictions have that. No doubt some elderly clergymen wish they had the benefit of a statute of limitations. But you will have to make a better argument than this. He's hardly Jean Valjean is he.

Hollywood, rock stars, the golden days - everyone was messing around with kids back then.
There have been powerful people indulging their urges since time immoral, and society sometimes lets them get away with it. Then people start thinking you can get away with it if you're rich and influential enough. There is never a shortage of victims. There should have been a lot more prosecutions. Why should an auteur be treated differently from a priest, or someone who lives in a trailer?

Her mother knew all about it.
The victim was thirteen. I don't know what her mother has to do with it. (It's a pity she didn't stay around during the shoot.) The sexuality of children isn't - in western society at least - the property of their parents. How many times did that kid say No? I've lost count, but it was a lot.

The victim wants it dropped.
And some offences are so difficult or humiliating that the victim may not want to talk about them. But unless the offence is really trivial, the victim shouldn't have a say in the matter. Otherwise the perp would be able to intimidate the victim into dropping charges, or if they were rich enough, buy the victim off.

But he's Roman Polanski! He makes great films! What about Chaucer, Villon, Marlowe, Byron, Wilde, Eric Gill &c, &c?
Let's separate the man from his work.

And why focus on him when there are all these other guys running around evading prosection?
Because of the petition. People like me are sounding off because we don't think the petition should be unchallenged. We may speculate on why it's taken the US so long to catch him, and why now. They need to catch the other guys as well.

Feelings are running high. There's wild talk of witch hunts, of pitchforks and torches, of lynch mobs. This isn't Salem, it isn't McCarthyism, and it trivialises what the Ku Klux Klan did. It's not even as if Polanski can be claimed an innocent man. It's not totally unreasonable, is it, to call these celebs out on their assumption of entitlement to immunity?

[Edited to remove link to victim's testimony.]

Weblog

As any fule no, a blog is a weblog, and it started out by being a list of sites visited. As an antidote to Blytonia, here are some of the more interesting items I've come across in the past few days.

Jim Murdoch ponders the dearth of modern nursery rhymes.

Lorna Watts is refused the loan of scissors by a north London librarian: They are sharp, you might stab me.

Anton Vowl suggests what Gordon Brown should have answered to that question from Andrew Marr.

Belle Waring has an impassioned post on Crooked Timber about sexual harassment in the academy, with a sideswipe at "look but don't touch" Kealey from Buckingham. Mary Beard isn't so bothered. Is Terence Kealey as misunderstood as Juvenal? (Or as contemporary? I'm inclined to add.) Yes, it may have been satire, but it's pretty lame satire.

In a post entitled Because Men are Stupid and Shallow, That's Why, Jeff Fecke demonstrates that some men are capable of seeing the person beyond the breasts. He challenges the Canadian Rethink Breast Cancer campaign (aimed at raising men's awareness by concentrating on breasts):

the thing about breasts that I generally like the most is that they’re usually attached to living, breathing women, and I like women, because, you know, they’re people. Many of them are people I like, and consider friends. All of them are worth far more than the breasts attached to them; that should go without saying.

Ben Goldacre considers the AIDS-denialist film House of Numbers, which was shown at Cambridge Film Festival and (temporarily) hoodwinked rationalist sceptic Caspar Melville. Goldacre starts a lively discussion about how to deal with moonbats - exposure, ridicule, debate? Or by ignoring them? (There's no widely accepted noun for that, but ignoral might suit.) This comment in particular struck me:

The best advice my late Dad ever gave me was; “Never argue with an idiot, because people watching lose track of which is which”. The older I get, the more I appreciate his words. Several times a week, I’m given cause to think of them.

Teach the debate is what creationists say.

Jack of Kent argues why English libel law is a danger and makes a proposal for reform.

Shuggy has a go at performative theists aiming for the class prize.

no man ever forsook his father, mother, brother, sister, son or daughter and took up his cross in order to support the nuclear family, preserve the work ethic, reduce crime in the neighbourhood or foster charitable giving as an important ingredient in civil society.

Terry Glavin doesn't know how to handle the human tide, except that the handling should be humane. Who could disagree?

Right, I'm off to Oxford now for the launch of See How I Land.

Purity patrol update

I was so incensed by the behaviour of security guards aired on last Sunday's Broadcasting House that I went onto the BH website and filled in a comments form with some intemperate language, demanding to know the exact location of the petty tyranny that seeks to suppress midriffs and buttcracks, so I could deny the proprietors the dubious benefit of my custom.

I forgot about my outburst. Several people had pretty well convinced me that I'd been a victim of a classic BH wind-up, but I still nursed a sense of grievance that these public places are being privatised by prudes and worse.

But this morning, lo! There was a message in my intray from the great Paddy O'Connell himself. After thanking me for writing, he tells me

the pathway in question was on the South Bank of the Thames, leading from the London Eye to the road to Waterloo Station. It runs perpendicular to the river.

I wonder if I should go back there and see what happens.

Fantastic! (My original message was attached. I'm rather ashamed of it. The word "Taliban" was used. Dear me.) I'm impressed and very pleased that Paddy O'Connell replied. It is a serious issue.

Meanwhile, I've been doing a bit of research, and arguing with friends. I have had difficulty in convincing some people that there is any real difference between a nightclub and the South Bank when it comes to the legitimacy of enforcing standards of dress and behaviour from visitors.

I've have been meaning to post a measured analysis of the issues of public space/private ownership, taking in reviews of books and articles that cover the issue. That will take some time. The privately owned public space concept is complex and evolving. The law can't keep up with the models, let alone how people's behaviour adapts. I haven't even read Anna Minton's book yet.

[edit...] Here are some links to get you thinking.

Liberty discusses private ownership of "public space" in relation to the right to protest, in a submission to JCHR (see esp p 5 et seq)

Cities for sale
The enclosure of urban space (extract from Paul Kingsnorth's Real England: The Battle Against the Bland) from The Guardian

Urban public space is at the heart of city and town life. It is the essence of public freedom: a place to rally, to protest, to sit and contemplate, to smoke or talk or watch the stars. No matter what happens in the shops and cafes, the offices and houses, the existence of public space means there is always somewhere to go to express yourself or simply to escape.

Chris Webster: Property rights, public space and urban design (pdf)

Policing the retail public - keeping out the "less well-heeled"? Guardian article

Shopping Malls: The New Village Green by Robin Fox

Private Policing: A View from the Mall
Abstract of an article by Alison Wakefield that sounds interesting but is v expensive to download. If anyone has more information about it, I'd be most grateful.

Police Partnership at Cribbs Causeway (pdf)

Ecotowns given the go-ahead

Update

And no, I have been assured that the Broadcasting House recording was most certainly not a wind-up:

If you could have seen the look on the face of the female security guard you would know that she was very serious indeed.

She looked as if she had been suddenly struck by a very old kipper, just above the top lip, and she kept summoning assistance on her lapel radio.

Can't have people telling the truth about things like this, can we?

Purity patrol

If you're down on the South Bank showing flesh, a man in a uniform can tell you to pull your jeans up, and if you don't like it he can summon up reinforcements to run you off the premises. Did you know they were "premises"? Neither did I.

I don't normally listen to Broadcasting House, but caught the tail end this morning. The fascists are out in force.

Listen again (for seven days only):
The bit I'm interested in concerns the discussion of public space at the end of the programme. It segues from discussion of the 4th plinth, which starts at around 52.30. Anna Minton (who's just written Ground Control) discusses public space and private ownership, starting at 54.30 minutes, and the clip ends with security guards hassling the interviewer away from the "private" area on the South Bank, after a guard has just asked a girl to pull her jeans up as she was showing a gap... The girl was sitting with her family - it's not as if she was cavorting around drunk with her trousers round her ankles. The goons want the interviewer to stop recording.

We've had it already with hoodies banned from Bluewater, which I thought was was just a weird fascistic aberration, all of a piece with that dystopia. But when you start getting blokes in uniform telling girls to cover themselves on the South Bank, for heaven's sake, I feel a sense of indignation. Who is making these rules, and with what authority? Should people with no mandate other than someone else's money dictate how we conduct ourselves in public?

The Royal enclosure at Ascot, Glyndebourne, the Ritz - most people wouldn't even dream of going there in the first place, so any who choose to can take the dress code deal. This is on an altogether different scale, so the principle is different too. The South Bank looks like a public space. We all feel as if we're entitled to be there. We may not all care to see a butt crack when someone sits down wearing hipsters (I'm assuming that's what the little hitler was complaining about) but I certainly don't want to see people stopped from showing it, especially when they're sitting down with their parents minding their own business.

This is only a symptom of a deeper malaise. As the Guardian headline has it, they sold our streets and nobody noticed.