[mediawatch] Fundamentally Decent Citizens

So on Wednesday there was a protest at Parliament about the bill to ban fox hunting. Quite apart from the issue at hand, it has been disturbing to see how it was covered.
There has been a lot of comment about the protest. Ten to twenty thousand people were involved and it turned nasty, with some violence and blood flowing. Most importantly (in the eyes of the press) a bunch of protestors breached the House of Commons.
Luckily for all, these protestors were fundamentally decent citizens who have been treated appallingly and are sticking up for themselves. In fact, here are some fawning profiles of these brave citizens.
(Trust me, it was worse in the print media – loads of snazzy photos of handsome young men looking upstanding, with royals in shot if possible.)
Hmm. I seem to detect a slightly different flavour to the coverage of this protest than that accorded a certain other protest in recent memory. That one against the Iraq war?
It almost makes one suspect that, here in the UK, there are unresolved issues of class.

Oh If I Were A Fiver And Sixpence

Oh, if I were a fiver and sixpence
I know just what I’d do
I’d spend and die for a bridie pie
And a custard square or two
(Yes a custard square or two)
Oh if I were a fiver and sixpence
I know just what I’d need
Hire a balladeer to sing everywhere
and be famed in word and deed
(Yes be famed in word and deed)
Oh if I were a fiver and sixpence
I know just what I’d try
I’d buy you out of your finest stout
And I’d drink the bottles dry
(Yes I’d drink the bottles dry)
Oh if I were a fiver and sixpence
I know just where I’d be
I’d face no fuss on a country bus
For I paid my way with me
(Yes I paid my way with me)
For a fiver and sixpence is me
—
No, I don’t know what I’m doing either.

I’ve Got Some Lovely Comments

to some of these last few entries. Check ’em out.
(Getting a comment from my grandmother was a special treat 🙂
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Officemate Lesley came back from maternity leave today. Teresa bounced around a bit more about the wedding. Lesley and Kerry talked creches.
I’ve long-ago perfected my ignore-all-surroundings skills (essential for my schooling at St Bernards College). My smile-and-nod skills, however, are somewhat rusty right now.
But probably not for long.

Blair on Environment: a welcome surprise

Wow.
Tony Blair has called for the UK to face the reality of human-caused climate change.
This is a huge deal. Governments have traditionally said ‘we can’t know for sure’ – the same magic thinking I ranted about a few posts below, only writ large – out of motivation to avoid doing anything and make hard choices or cross big business. For the British PM to stand up and make such a claim as this will change the rhetoric a great deal.
Cal mentioned that Tony sounds like he is, personally, scared. And I think she’s right. That speech came out of his own realisation that his children are screwed if nothing is done.
He’s going to be under massive pressure to moderate his position. I hope he stands strong – he’s been bloody-minded enough over Iraq, after all. And I don’t think he’s going to achieve terribly much in concrete terms. He can kiss any Washington influence he actually has goodbye if he tries to make this an issue over there.
But it shifts the balance of power in the public debate, and that is a wonderful thing.

Milestone

Finished part one (first four chapters) of Ron today. Hurrah. That clocks in at somewhere around 30,000 to 35,000 words. In the first draft of Ron, part one was about 5,000 words. I knew I was doing a second draft before finishing the first one for a reason – the whole piece was being thrown out of whack by the too-short opening.
Anyway, there are four parts, plus ‘bonus’ chapters between the parts. If this wordcount is any guide, I’m gonna hit (4x30k + 3x7k=141k) about 140,000 words for the first completed manuscript.
Just like In Move.
And just like Fell Legacy.
Hmmm. There seems to be a pattern forming here.
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In other news, I seem to be entering the category of published RPG writery guy.
Appearing in next month’s Signs & Portents is ‘Breakdown Control’, a crazy game setting thing written for Gar Hanrahan‘s OGL Horror. It’s a good piece. I’m proud of it. I tried to make it something that Warren Ellis (careful – Warren’s site isn’t worksafe) would look at and say: “This is good.” I think I managed a “this doesn’t suck,” which is good enough for me.
Here’s the blurb for those to lazy to click:
“Breakdown Control – A violent world of brutal terror opens up in this new campaign toolkit for OGL Horror. One minute you are nobody special, then you receive a briefcase and inside a cellphone is ringing. Well, are you going to answer it? Of course you are.”

If that doesn’t seem like my writing, you’re right. But it does the job well enough. No-one’s gonna buy it for the OGL Horror stuff – it has a Paranoia XP adventure within and that’s gonna be the big drawcard, methinks.

But my article’s gonna be the best thing in it.

(I have to say that.)

MMR and autism

In the papers today, the Lancet’s report on the MMR-Autism link. Or absence of link, actually.
The huge public suspicion of these innoculations is driven by the human tendency for magic thinking. This can cause real problems, undermining the health of whole populations. And the only way out is not to provide more evidence, but to properly educate people as to what the evidence demonstrates and how science actually works.
Here’s the problem in action, the reaction of Bill Welsh of Scotland’s Action Against Autism pressure parents group, to the news that the Lancet study found no convincing evidence of a link between MMR and autism:
“They may have found evidence that did show a link, but they did not find it convincing . It is just clever language and we have had enough of it. What parents want to know is what causes autism, not what does not cause it.”
Someone needs to take this guy aside and explain that:
(1) unconvincing evidence is not evidence
(2) that sort of clever language is needed to talk about the process of science, which operates with precision
(3) it is impossible to demonstrate what causes something – science works by ruling out things that are not causes, and saying what’s left is the most likely explanation.
I suspect someone’s already tried to do this, of course. Probably their clever language was dismissed in short order. Clever language can’t stand in the way of magic, after all.

Cesspit

American election politics is a cesspit.
We know this.
What frustrates me is that the cesspit is dominating the election. Which is the point, of course.
In some sense, the election could be decided by whether swing voters believe Kerry won his purple hearts in Vietnam fraudulently, or Bush concealed his failure to meet his national guard obligations. In frikkin’ Vietnam.
Yep, this sure is the most important issue on the US plate today.
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Shot around on an outside hoop in glorious sunshine yesterday. Damn, that felt good.