Robinson Crusoe: contrarian and dreamer, but right

In October 1704 Alexander Selkirk was marooned on Mas a Tierra, an uninhabited island some 400 miles off the coast of Chile.

From Google Maps

But this probably wasn't the first time he had left his ship, the Cinque Ports, one of a pair of licensed privateers. Some months before, many of the crew (including, it's surmised, Selkirk, who as the ship's master was an expert) had quarrelled with the replacement captain over the worm-eaten condition of the vessel and, it's said, Selkirk had been warned in a dream that it would fail and be lost. Two-thirds of the company went ashore at the Juan Fernandez islands (of which Mas a Tierra was the largest) before being persuaded to return.

The next time, Selkirk (whose real name was Selcraig) went ashore on what is now known as Robinson Crusoe Island, but the others didn't follow and the captain, to make an example of him, refused to have him back.

The ship was lost soon afterwards. Some sources say it sank with the loss of most of the crew; Partington (The British Cyclopedia of Biography, 1838, p. 918).says it was surrendered to the Spaniards because it was perilously unseaworthy.

The curmudgeonly Scot was right, after all.


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MPs - a proper job?

"Members of Parliament work for an average of 70 hours a week, representing their constituents and performing their duties in the House of Commons," says this Guardian article.

In the 2013/14 session, Parliament sat for 162 days. Based on a 5-day week, that's 32.4 weeks, or 62% of the year. If each week was indeed a 70-hour week, that would be 2,268 hours a year, or the equivalent of 49 hours a week for the ordinary worker's 46.4-week working year.

That's assuming, of course, that 70 hours on site is 70 hours' work. I find it hard to believe that MPs work solidly for 14 hours per day, but perhaps they have amazing stamina. My brother tells me that he thinks the most you can expect to do is 6 hours' effective work per day, and that sounds more plausible.

Not that the average means everybody. Following an article about Sir Stuart Bell, who hadn't held a surgery in his constituency for 14 years and spent more time in France than in England, The Guardian surveyed MP absenteeism from the House in the first two months of 2011: 45 Members managed no more than 50% attendance, and the leader among these was Roger Godsiff - my former representative! - at 88.5% absence. In 2008, average absenteeism ran at about 36%.

The Government-Opposition pairing system liberates many from having to attend debates, but why should it be assumed that one side must automatically vote Aye and the other No?

And of those who do attend, how many follow the debate all the way through, and have read and understood the legislation they are passing? The Boiling Frog's sidebar quotes former Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd on the Maastricht Treaty: "Now we've signed it - we had better read it."

No wonder MPs made £7 million in outside interests last year, and 20 of them earned more than their Parliamentary salary.

Richard North says windmills "are built to run, on average, for less than ten percent of the time." Perhaps we could replace a substantial number of MPs with windmills - at least the hot air in the Debating Chamber might finally be put to productive use.

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Why do the Western news media promote ISIS?

"Islamic State.. Islamic State..."

ISIS is not a State, nor in the opinion of most fellow-Muslims, is it Islamic.

Can the news media please stop handing them the gift that keeps on giving? Perhaps "Blackshirts" would be better.


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Some Christians are "mad, bad and dangerous to know" - and not in a sexy Byronic way

On the site of former Republican Congressman Ron Paul, a committed Christian, is reprinted a sharp attack on the homicidal bigotry of some fundamentalist Christians.

"Final solution... Muslim death wish [of victims of Muslim extremists].. Syrians under siege by ISIS have pleaded, “Please bomb us!... kill them... God’s sworn enemies...  mass sterilization, mass expulsion, or some combination of the two... crush the vicious seed of Ishmael in Jesus’ name... Islam shall be outlawed in the United States..."

Orators and hotheads like this make one wonder whether more democracy would really be a blessing.

Byron in 1814.

"Don't blame me," says the ghost of Lord Byron, "I loved the Sufis."

"The fifth session was chaired by Professor Naji Oueijan from Notre Dame University in Lebanon. The speakers were his students Rouba Douaihy, Hala Halaoui, Tracey El Hajj, and Grace Nakhoul. In “Byron and the Sufi Poets” Douaihy discussed the influence of Sufi poetry on the works of Lord Byron. She stated that the Orient was a source of inspiration for Byron’s works and that Byron looked to the East for escapism, peace of mind and spiritual elevation and that Byron’s extensive readings about the East along with his later travels to Albania, Turkey and Greece as well as other Eastern countries are at the very heart of his Oriental tales. His readings of Persian Sufi poetry by figures such as Firdausi, Sadi and Hafiz, inspired many of the themes in his Oriental tales, including“the triple eros”of power, wisdom and love. To Byron, Firdausi’s works represent the power of the East, Sadi’s represent wisdom, and Hafiz’s represent love."

- Messolonghi Byron Society international conference (2011)


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ISIS vs CHERWELL

ISIS now faces formidable resistance from a new force called CHERWELL. The latter's acronym stands for Corporate Hellcats' Endless Robot Wars Extending from Libya to Lebanon.

A General Atomics Predator deploying an AGM-114 Hellfire Missile

Unfortunately, since the remote operators are unworldly youngsters recruited from GTA5 and Minecraft fanboards, the prospects for peace in Oxford have dimmed. After Mesopotamia, Jericho? Then the Bodleian?


(Click to enlarge)

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The informed patient

Every now and then we hear about people who look up their medical condition on the web and even tell the doctor what needs to be done. 

However, GPs could be said to mediate between patients and their own bodies and they certainly mediate between patients and the wider health machine. So patients who research their illness beforehand are trying to shortcut or at least understand part of the doctor’s mediation service. Presumably doctors don’t approve.

With the growth in information technology, this trend can be no great surprise to anyone including the medical profession, but what does it imply? If we look at the role of mediation in service industries then it could imply something of wider significance than healthcare.

As with doctors, the status of a mediator and the service they offer is often backed a certain mystique which also tends to be based on arcane knowledge. 

In times gone by this kind of mediation was almost entirely in the hands of the established church via its priests and high officials. Established churches offered the ultimate mediation service – mediation between the faithful and God - a very ancient form of social control.

A decline in religious observance seems to have coincided with a rise of a whole plethora of alternative mediation services still based, at least in part, on mystique and arcane knowledge. We call them service industries but the parallel with priestly mediation is striking. Potentially just as fragile too - in the face of information technology and the simple human desire to know.

So when patients arm themselves with knowledge before consulting their doctor, maybe we are seeing a fracture in the mystique of arcane knowledge. It’s not that the doctor has little to offer, but more interestingly, a possible crumbling of the doctor’s mystique and a recognition that his or her knowledge is accessible and not arcane.

The issue is complex because this is a subtle social and technological shift rather than a quantifiable economic trend. Even so it could have a profoundly negative impact on any service industry where the price and/or demand for mediation are sustained by an element of mystique and arcane knowledge.

Bankers we already know about, but how much of their trouble was caused by their inability or unwillingness to mediate between their customers and financial complexities? How much of an improvement would follow from a drastic simplification and demystifying of what bankers do? Has the mystique disappeared anyway?

Lawyers mediate between their clients and the law. On the surface there is nothing wrong with that, but what about the element of mystique and arcane knowledge which always seem to go with mediation?

To take an example from the entertainment industry, BrianCox offers mediation between TV viewers and the whole universe. Some folk don’t do things by halves do they? Lots of mystique and arcane knowledge behind that one.

Psychologists and psychiatrists offer mediation between a client and their own mind. Surely an example of professional chutzpah worth savouring.

Politicians offer mediation between voters and the hazards of the real world. Their credibility is crumbling to dust mostly because of their inability to mediate as claimed. 

However, their political failures could be the harbinger of wider failures. The failure of politicians to mediate as claimed, their obvious lack of arcane knowledge and the tarnished mystique of power may have implications well beyond politics.

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Red Biddy

I've been reading the Hansard report of the Second Reading of the Methylated Spirits Bill from 1934.  It's an interesting read, a battle between the desire to control a comparatively minor but distressing evil and a desire not to interfere with the legitimate uses of methylated spirits. The purpose of the Bill was to reduce the highly unpleasant effects of methylated spirit addiction, succinctly stated by Miss Horsbrugh. 

But in bringing forward this Bill I would point out that it is not a temperance measure. Already the Government and all right-thinking people have realised that it is bad for health to drink mineralised methylated spirits, and they wish to have that stopped. 

However, Miss Horsbrugh also seems to be convinced that the Bill is only necessary because other spirits are rendered too expensive by alcohol duty.

I ask the representative of the Government and those who are opposing this Bill to give me any real reason why we restrict all these other alcoholic beverages as to the hours in which they are sold and the methods under which the public can obtain them, and yet allow an unrestricted sale in many of our shops of this poisonous alcohol? Why should the Government frown on "Johnnie Walker" and give the glad eye to "Red Biddy"? Why is the tax so excessive on whisky when up and down the country social workers tell us that if only the methylated spirit drinker could get away from this poisonous spirit and get a taste for a decent spirit, there is some chance of him being cured of his appalling vice.

A Mr Frederick Macquisten also supported the Bill and made some interesting additions to Miss Horsbrugh's observations.

I listened with interest to the evidence that was said to be given by the principal Excise Officer. He has a good salary, and no doubt he drinks good whisky. It is very unlikely that he drinks methylated spirits, and it is extremely unlikely that anybody who could afford to buy whisky would drink methylated spirits. No doubt the same applies to the hon. Member for London University (Sir E. Graham-Little), but everybody is not so refined as he is, and liquors which appeal to other people would not apeal to him or to me. The practice of drinking methylated spirits is the illegitimate child of the Whisky Duty. If that duty were not so high, this evil would never exist, but it does exist because the duty hits the poor at the expense of the rich, and nobody seems to care what happens to the poor— Rattle his bones over the stones, He's only a pauper whom nobody owns. Nobody seems to remember that a definite temptation is put in the way of the very poorest of the population. This Bill will prove to be a hindrance to the sale of this stuff...

Methylated spirit drinking is a definite evil. It is no use telling us that the convictions of people for getting drunk on methylated spirit are infinitesimal in number. People do not get it in public houses. They buy a bottle of it and get a bottle of Spanish red wine, and in that way make their own "Red Biddy" and get intoxicated in their own homes, and as they do not venture out—because they are in a state of coma for twelve hours or so afterwards—the police do not find out...

Generally I object to restrictions of all kinds. I believe that if we had perfect and absolute freedom in all matters the difficulties would soon solve themselves. The degenerates, the people who cannot control themselves, would all pass out, and we should be purged of them in a generation—a rather hectic generation, I admit. Look at the mass of restrictions against the drinking of wholesome whisky and wholesome beer...

The Bill should have a Second Reading and if any Clause gives trouble it can be dealt with in committee. I have great pleasure in supporting the Bill, but I would say that it lies in the hands of the Chancellor of the Exchequer to make the Bill unnecessary by the reduction of the whisky duty.

What strikes me about all this is the way it straddles two very different social attitudes. On the one hand we have a desire to leave ordinary people in peace and allow them to live their lives as they see fit. On the other hand, even the hard-nosed Mr Macquisten was in not in favour of doing nothing if something constructive could be done.

Yet could this be said today?

Generally I object to restrictions of all kinds. I believe that if we had perfect and absolute freedom in all matters the difficulties would soon solve themselves. The degenerates, the people who cannot control themselves, would all pass out, and we should be purged of them in a generation—a rather hectic generation, I admit.

No I don't think so either.

The whole thing is both a harbinger of meddling times to come and an interesting insight into our own bureaucratic tangles and taboos. The Salvation Army was in favour of the Act of course, but they saw Red Biddy in action.

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