Currently EU exporters to us have an easy time of it because we are not doing any checks. It is our exports to them which are being hampered by our own government. This would seem to be the complete opposite of what you want.
That's quite rightly a teething problem.
When the UK is ready to do checks we can do whatever checks suit us best. Unless or until we determine we're in a position to do those checks, there's no point cutting off our own nose to spite our face.
How is it a teething problem? Exporters can't export because the cost and complexity of the new EU rules - which we demanded as part of our preferred 3rd country status - makes it commercially unviable to do so.
This isn't something which will get resolved unless our government climbs down and agrees a co-operation deal which removes the 3rd country barriers. That we will eventually be in a position to impose the same disaster on imports isn't us punishing the EU, its us punishing us.
Did you read what I was responding to? The "teething problem" is the fact that "EU exporters to us have an easy time of it because we are not doing any checks". We aren't doing the checks because because the infrastructure wasn't built by Hammond despite his government pledging to leave the Customs Union, but is getting built now. When the infrastructure is ready, the checks will start.
As for our exporters, they need to adapt. Remember that the majority of our exports, despite the EU membership, despite distance, actually go to the rest of the world already. The EU is closer so for the minority of trade going there, there's little reason why it can't be adapted to besides some edge cases that might die off. Changes happen.
Have you ever run a business Philip? This is cloud cookooland stuff. See my post earlier today. I ran a business for which it would have been impossible to go longer distances (except for a a very few instances). Dealing with America was not profitable, similarly Australia.
Try listening to the people who actually run these small businesses. Boy am I glad I retired before the shit hit the fan because I would have gone under. Less than 5% of my business was outside of Europe (not EU).
Yes I have.
Your business is frankly not representative of our overall balance of trade. The majority of exports by value go to the rest of the world already - despite all the advantages Europe have such as the closer distance, as well as frictionless trade as these figures date from EU membership.
Ultimately politics comes down to a choice. All actions have consequences, all decisions have costs - if no other cost there will always be an "opportunity cost" for every decision. All changes have externalities. Anyone who denies there will be a downside to any decision is a fool or a liar.
I don't deny there will be problems for some. I just believe, coldly, that overall it is the right thing to do. That the benefits outweigh the costs. But it was not an easy to decision.
But there are so many businesses that are. You only have to see the numbers reporting they are giving up on exporting, not looking to expand further afield.
Did you see the example I gave of Lawnsmith re NI. Just look at their website. I only saw it because I am a customer. This isn't political grandstanding. They have ceased selling to Irish customers. This was a UK and Ireland business. Maybe they would have expanded further, now they are going backwards because they can no longer export to Ireland nor ship to NI (because of the so called non existent border down the Irish sea) because it isn't viable.
Just out of interest what sort of business did you run that this would not have been a concern?
One thing I remember from the time is there were a lot of small business owners who were pro Brexit and the one thing they all had in common was all their customers were UK based and local to them. Never actually met one who actually exported. I ran a company where all my customers met up regularly (it was the nature of the business), not one was in favour of Brexit because they all traded with Europe or were from Europe.
Most small businesses are UK based with UK customers. An estimated 91% of UK SMEs don't export.
Those who were against leaving the European Union were free to make their case in 2016 and many did. They had valid arguments. Those arguments lost. It happens. Changes happens and all changes come with costs.
If all changes could only be made if they were cost-free then we'd never change anything. That is a Luddite attitude.
Can anyone point me to a good and detailed account of the cartoon imbroglio at Batley Grammar School?
I'm really interested in the content of the lesson, and the particular cartoons published - which seem to be from one of the Charlie Hebdo sets.
But we seem to have the usual rabbit hole - "we are going to spend ages talking about this, but it's sooooooooooooooooooo offensive that we will not show the picture / read out the tweet" etc.
I wonder if those Hebdo cartoons - those specifically - have become like the N word for Muslims? Regardless of context and intent, deployment by an outsider risks enormous offence and therefore the best and safest approach, the default in almost all circumstances, is to not. Find another way.
And yes, I know, "blasphemy law by the back door" and "where do you draw the line?" bla bla, I do get that point, and it's a good one, but still. A civilized society is not driven by absolutist principles. Absolutist principles are for extremists and zealots and this includes "free speech" extremists and zealots.
We "draw the line" with things all the time. We weigh up competing interests and values, micro vs macro, long vs short term, theory vs practice, and we decide where the sweet spot lies. We don't always get it right, but we have a bash. It's one of the many things that make this country a very amenable place to live.
So - its fine to buy a post card in Iran with a picture of their prophet on it - but it must be banned in the UK because of the risk of violence?
Feck that
Did I say anything should be banned?
Things can be not banned but nevertheless have a default of "avoid". There are plenty of examples of that.
There seems to be something increasingly banned on here however when it comes to these matters - any semblance of insight or nuance.
Good, because there is no nuance here. Beliefs must face rigorous scrutiny, nothing is off limits, nothing should be avoided.
There is no belief it is wrong to scrutinise.
Yep. And what I'm scrutinizing here is the belief that if the Hebdo cartoons are avoided it means that Islam is getting a free pass and we're on the slippery slope to a theocracy in which free speech is a thing of a past.
Right now the Batley teacher is in hiding after unsubtle threats against his life. It is conceivable he and his family might have to move and adopt new names. Because he showed some children a cartoon about a religious figure.
Free speech already is a thing of the past. All we are doing is discussing the shape of the post-Enlightenment future
To say that free speech is "a thing of the past" in this country is ludicrous. It's such a precious and dim thing to say. Borderline offensive too. I wonder what the billions of people who live in the many parts of the world where free speech IS forbidden would make of it? I think you might get the raspberry.
We have a de facto blasphemy law. It is simply the case. Everyone self censors out of fear, the odd person who crosses the line - like the teacher - gets threatened with death and runs into hiding. No one repeats the mistake. The unspoken blasphemy laws are enforced and hardened.
It’s not just blasphemy of course. On any number of issues - race, sexuality, transgender - there are many things you can no longer publicly say, even though they are scientifically true. Saying them gets you cancelled - which is a real and painful thing, involving total loss of career, status, income.
Perhaps we never had absolute free speech; there is no doubt the free speech we once had (however imperfect) is now in headlong retreat. Sadly, this is also true of America, which enshrined the right to free speech in its constitution, yet now eagerly surrenders the same.
Should BBC breakfast presenters be allowed to give factual comments on govt ministers flags without threats to not just their careers and income but the whole BBC?
Can anyone point me to a good and detailed account of the cartoon imbroglio at Batley Grammar School?
I'm really interested in the content of the lesson, and the particular cartoons published - which seem to be from one of the Charlie Hebdo sets.
But we seem to have the usual rabbit hole - "we are going to spend ages talking about this, but it's sooooooooooooooooooo offensive that we will not show the picture / read out the tweet" etc.
I wonder if those Hebdo cartoons - those specifically - have become like the N word for Muslims? Regardless of context and intent, deployment by an outsider risks enormous offence and therefore the best and safest approach, the default in almost all circumstances, is to not. Find another way.
And yes, I know, "blasphemy law by the back door" and "where do you draw the line?" bla bla, I do get that point, and it's a good one, but still. A civilized society is not driven by absolutist principles. Absolutist principles are for extremists and zealots and this includes "free speech" extremists and zealots.
We "draw the line" with things all the time. We weigh up competing interests and values, micro vs macro, long vs short term, theory vs practice, and we decide where the sweet spot lies. We don't always get it right, but we have a bash. It's one of the many things that make this country a very amenable place to live.
So - its fine to buy a post card in Iran with a picture of their prophet on it - but it must be banned in the UK because of the risk of violence?
Feck that
Did I say anything should be banned?
Things can be not banned but nevertheless have a default of "avoid". There are plenty of examples of that.
There seems to be something increasingly banned on here however when it comes to these matters - any semblance of insight or nuance.
Good, because there is no nuance here. Beliefs must face rigorous scrutiny, nothing is off limits, nothing should be avoided.
There is no belief it is wrong to scrutinise.
Yep. And what I'm scrutinizing here is the belief that if the Hebdo cartoons are avoided it means that Islam is getting a free pass and we're on the slippery slope to a theocracy in which free speech is a thing of a past.
Right now the Batley teacher is in hiding after unsubtle threats against his life. It is conceivable he and his family might have to move and adopt new names. Because he showed some children a cartoon about a religious figure.
Free speech already is a thing of the past. All we are doing is discussing the shape of the post-Enlightenment future
To say that free speech is "a thing of the past" in this country is ludicrous. It's such a precious and dim thing to say. Borderline offensive too. I wonder what the billions of people who live in the many parts of the world where free speech IS forbidden would make of it? I think you might get the raspberry.
We have a de facto blasphemy law. It is simply the case. Everyone self censors out of fear, the odd person who crosses the line - like the teacher - gets threatened with death and runs into hiding. No one repeats the mistake. The unspoken blasphemy laws are enforced and hardened.
It’s not just blasphemy of course. On any number of issues - race, sexuality, transgender - there are many things you can no longer publicly say, even though they are scientifically true. Saying them gets you cancelled - which is a real and painful thing, involving total loss of career, status, income.
Perhaps we never had absolute free speech; there is no doubt the free speech we once had (however imperfect) is now in headlong retreat. Sadly, this is also true of America, which enshrined the right to free speech in its constitution, yet now eagerly surrenders the same.
Should BBC breakfast presenters be allowed to give factual comments on govt ministers flags without threats to not just their careers and income but the whole BBC?
Can anyone point me to a good and detailed account of the cartoon imbroglio at Batley Grammar School?
I'm really interested in the content of the lesson, and the particular cartoons published - which seem to be from one of the Charlie Hebdo sets.
But we seem to have the usual rabbit hole - "we are going to spend ages talking about this, but it's sooooooooooooooooooo offensive that we will not show the picture / read out the tweet" etc.
I wonder if those Hebdo cartoons - those specifically - have become like the N word for Muslims? Regardless of context and intent, deployment by an outsider risks enormous offence and therefore the best and safest approach, the default in almost all circumstances, is to not. Find another way.
And yes, I know, "blasphemy law by the back door" and "where do you draw the line?" bla bla, I do get that point, and it's a good one, but still. A civilized society is not driven by absolutist principles. Absolutist principles are for extremists and zealots and this includes "free speech" extremists and zealots.
We "draw the line" with things all the time. We weigh up competing interests and values, micro vs macro, long vs short term, theory vs practice, and we decide where the sweet spot lies. We don't always get it right, but we have a bash. It's one of the many things that make this country a very amenable place to live.
So - its fine to buy a post card in Iran with a picture of their prophet on it - but it must be banned in the UK because of the risk of violence?
Feck that
Did I say anything should be banned?
Things can be not banned but nevertheless have a default of "avoid". There are plenty of examples of that.
There seems to be something increasingly banned on here however when it comes to these matters - any semblance of insight or nuance.
Good, because there is no nuance here. Beliefs must face rigorous scrutiny, nothing is off limits, nothing should be avoided.
There is no belief it is wrong to scrutinise.
Yep. And what I'm scrutinizing here is the belief that if the Hebdo cartoons are avoided it means that Islam is getting a free pass and we're on the slippery slope to a theocracy in which free speech is a thing of a past.
Right now the Batley teacher is in hiding after unsubtle threats against his life. It is conceivable he and his family might have to move and adopt new names. Because he showed some children a cartoon about a religious figure.
Free speech already is a thing of the past. All we are doing is discussing the shape of the post-Enlightenment future
To say that free speech is "a thing of the past" in this country is ludicrous. It's such a precious and dim thing to say. Borderline offensive too. I wonder what the billions of people who live in the many parts of the world where free speech IS forbidden would make of it? I think you might get the raspberry.
We have a de facto blasphemy law. It is simply the case. Everyone self censors out of fear, the odd person who crosses the line - like the teacher - gets threatened with death and runs into hiding. No one repeats the mistake. The unspoken blasphemy laws are enforced and hardened.
It’s not just blasphemy of course. On any number of issues - race, sexuality, transgender - there are many things you can no longer publicly say, even though they are scientifically true. Saying them gets you cancelled - which is a real and painful thing, involving total loss of career, status, income.
Perhaps we never had absolute free speech; there is no doubt the free speech we once had (however imperfect) is now in headlong retreat. Sadly, this is also true of America, which enshrined the right to free speech in its constitution, yet now eagerly surrenders the same.
Should BBC breakfast presenters be allowed to give factual comments on govt ministers flags without threats to not just their careers and income but the whole BBC?
Yes.
The BBC deserves threats to the licence fee because the licence fee is wrong in principle, not because of flags.
On Batley - Whether the teacher did the right/wrong thing I hope that the full force of the law is brought upon those who have threatened violence against him (If the can be found).
There does seem to be a reluctance to consider these people as thugs.
What's the general opinion on compulsory RE? Most countries manage without it. In many it is outlawed. My teachers rotated between preaching zealots and clearly bored under informed NQT's who'd got the short straw. Seems to cause no end of bother, and almost no student I can recall enjoys it. I certainly didn't emerge from years of it finding my horizons or general knowledge broadened particularly.
About 18 months ago my friend's 12 year old daughter had a knife pulled on her (in the classroom!) by a boy in her class. My friend was up north on business so it was his wife who was called to the school. When she got there, she asked "where are the police?" Hadn't been called, so she called them.
Clearly schools don't want negative press, so it wouldn't surprise me if schools have been trying to hush up things like this.
Can anyone point me to a good and detailed account of the cartoon imbroglio at Batley Grammar School?
I'm really interested in the content of the lesson, and the particular cartoons published - which seem to be from one of the Charlie Hebdo sets.
But we seem to have the usual rabbit hole - "we are going to spend ages talking about this, but it's sooooooooooooooooooo offensive that we will not show the picture / read out the tweet" etc.
I wonder if those Hebdo cartoons - those specifically - have become like the N word for Muslims? Regardless of context and intent, deployment by an outsider risks enormous offence and therefore the best and safest approach, the default in almost all circumstances, is to not. Find another way.
And yes, I know, "blasphemy law by the back door" and "where do you draw the line?" bla bla, I do get that point, and it's a good one, but still. A civilized society is not driven by absolutist principles. Absolutist principles are for extremists and zealots and this includes "free speech" extremists and zealots.
We "draw the line" with things all the time. We weigh up competing interests and values, micro vs macro, long vs short term, theory vs practice, and we decide where the sweet spot lies. We don't always get it right, but we have a bash. It's one of the many things that make this country a very amenable place to live.
Absolutely not.
Skin colour is something people are born with and can't change.
Religion is a belief system and like all belief systems should be able to face rigourous, fierce and offensive scrutiny and challenge.
If you can't be offensive about someone's beliefs there is no such thing as free speech.
Free speech is freedom to express your views without hindrance, and that includes people not going out of their way to sneer at you. They can disagree with you in forthright terms and it works better than Scarfe-style cartoons.
I don't think it should be illegal to be offensive - but it's nearly always going to lose you the argument by upsetting both your opponents and neutral bystanders. And the cartoons aren't trying to make a point, they are all about being offensive for the fun of it, like that exhibit of a crucifix in urine called "piss Christ" which stirred people up some years ago. I absolutely defend their right to do it, but I think it's a pity to want to upset someone's faith, very like vandalising their garden.
Absolutely agree Nick. Freedom of speech is extremely important, but it is often used (particularly by those on the hard right and hard left) as an excuse to be offensive, when the real motivation is that they don't like religion per se (which is pretty childish in most cases) or the ethnicity or skin colour of those that generally espouse the religion.
Why is not liking religion childish? Sounds like you might be sneering there!
I probably was, but I didn't say not liking religion was childish, just that many who express such views do so from a very childish perspective. Most people who get a kick from debunking other peoples' faith are often as prejudiced and simplistic as many Christian evangelicals or devout Muslim , and often more so. They are often closed minded. A belief in atheism is as much a belief as a belief in a deity. Neither positions are genuinely provable, so require "faith". Those that mock others for having faith are simply underlining their own insecurities.
I agree, but with a distinction.
I am an atheist who was brought up in a very religious (Christian) household and works with many very religious people (mostly Muslim), and who respects those who are religious.
For me, atheism is a belief, but not one that requires faith. Belief in a deity(s) does require faith.
Not quite. Belief that there is a deity (say, on the best explanation of why there is something rather than nothing) may be just that, without any sort of personal trust or trust in the saving power or whatever of that deity.
Belief that there is or is not a God are in this sense equal positions. Neither can possibly be demonstrated by proof of a logical variety, and any amount of inductive style proof either for or against God can either be dismissed as insufficient (Russell) or dismissed as an intellectual mistake (Kant).
I don't get what the cost savings are by running two on the same day vs two on different days. They are so far apart that there can't be any efficiency savings, surely?
X election stations all need to be paid for. Y members of election staff need to be paid for
Votes need to be counted (and the people doing it paid for)
On Batley - Whether the teacher did the right/wrong thing I hope that the full force of the law is brought upon those who have threatened violence against him (If the can be found).
There does seem to be a reluctance to consider these people as thugs.
I don’t know about ‘thugs’ but these guys standing on the wall, on the right, certainly look quite menacing
The police know no such thing. Very little of this stuff ever comes before the police. This has come out because girls have been speaking up about what has happened to them in schools - both state and private - and how this has been largely ignored, glossed over, described as banter etc.
Clearly all those "respecting women" classes that people on here assured me were happening when I raised this issue in the wake of the Everard case have not worked out as hoped.
Can anyone point me to a good and detailed account of the cartoon imbroglio at Batley Grammar School?
I'm really interested in the content of the lesson, and the particular cartoons published - which seem to be from one of the Charlie Hebdo sets.
But we seem to have the usual rabbit hole - "we are going to spend ages talking about this, but it's sooooooooooooooooooo offensive that we will not show the picture / read out the tweet" etc.
I wonder if those Hebdo cartoons - those specifically - have become like the N word for Muslims? Regardless of context and intent, deployment by an outsider risks enormous offence and therefore the best and safest approach, the default in almost all circumstances, is to not. Find another way.
And yes, I know, "blasphemy law by the back door" and "where do you draw the line?" bla bla, I do get that point, and it's a good one, but still. A civilized society is not driven by absolutist principles. Absolutist principles are for extremists and zealots and this includes "free speech" extremists and zealots.
We "draw the line" with things all the time. We weigh up competing interests and values, micro vs macro, long vs short term, theory vs practice, and we decide where the sweet spot lies. We don't always get it right, but we have a bash. It's one of the many things that make this country a very amenable place to live.
What an interesting perspective! Bearing all that in mind, I'm sure you'll have no objection if all discussion of socialism and its adjuncts is 'avoided' in the public sphere under penalty of force - after all, socialism is pretty damned offensive to those who don't believe in in, who in this case actually form a majority.
Regardless of context and intent, deployment by an outsider risks enormous offence and therefore the best and safest approach, the default in almost all circumstances, is to not.
And yes, I know 'fascism by the back door' and 'where do you draw the line?' bla bla, I do get that point, and it's a good one, but still. A civilized society is not driven by absolutist principles. Absolutist principles are for extremists and zealots and this includes "free speech" extremists and zealots...
I'd say that was the situation pre 2015 and we show every sign of returning to it. I certainly self-censor myself these days. I carry out no end of contortions - some of them quite taxing and painful - to avoid the "S" word.
Lol - I take it I've made my point. Now imagine that every time you failed to self-censor those offensive words and concepts - a casual reference to the need to nationalize Eton, for example - an angry mob turned up outside your door and you were lucky to get away with a grovelling apology for your wrongthink.
It's very easy to sneer at absolute principles when you don't think the unpleasant consequences of their being compromised will happen to you.
It's similar to the discussion on racism the other day. Universal concepts are great but in the real world need to be flexed and tempered for best understanding and results. If I was doing a philosophy exam paper, I'd probably roll out a lot of this "first principles" stuff that you are attracted to (when it suits you), I can do it, but it just feels like a waste of time. Maybe I'm getting old.
You're right it is just like racism, with the protesters being like racists: intolerant against others.
"Flexibility" in the face of intolerant bigots threatening violence to enforce their own view of the world is not a strength.
If instead of religious zealots trying to chase away "blasphemy" these were were white supremacist zealots trying to chase away those with a different skin colour, would you call for us to kowtow before them? Would you be calling for us to "flex" and all all those with a different skin colour to be chased out of the school so they can have a pure white only school?
I'm not defending the protesters or saying we should kowtow to them. So I must assume you're talking to someone other than me. If they reply, please pass it on. I'm as interested as anyone.
Can anyone point me to a good and detailed account of the cartoon imbroglio at Batley Grammar School?
I'm really interested in the content of the lesson, and the particular cartoons published - which seem to be from one of the Charlie Hebdo sets.
But we seem to have the usual rabbit hole - "we are going to spend ages talking about this, but it's sooooooooooooooooooo offensive that we will not show the picture / read out the tweet" etc.
I wonder if those Hebdo cartoons - those specifically - have become like the N word for Muslims? Regardless of context and intent, deployment by an outsider risks enormous offence and therefore the best and safest approach, the default in almost all circumstances, is to not. Find another way.
And yes, I know, "blasphemy law by the back door" and "where do you draw the line?" bla bla, I do get that point, and it's a good one, but still. A civilized society is not driven by absolutist principles. Absolutist principles are for extremists and zealots and this includes "free speech" extremists and zealots.
We "draw the line" with things all the time. We weigh up competing interests and values, micro vs macro, long vs short term, theory vs practice, and we decide where the sweet spot lies. We don't always get it right, but we have a bash. It's one of the many things that make this country a very amenable place to live.
Absolutely not.
Skin colour is something people are born with and can't change.
Religion is a belief system and like all belief systems should be able to face rigourous, fierce and offensive scrutiny and challenge.
If you can't be offensive about someone's beliefs there is no such thing as free speech.
Free speech is freedom to express your views without hindrance, and that includes people not going out of their way to sneer at you. They can disagree with you in forthright terms and it works better than Scarfe-style cartoons.
I don't think it should be illegal to be offensive - but it's nearly always going to lose you the argument by upsetting both your opponents and neutral bystanders. And the cartoons aren't trying to make a point, they are all about being offensive for the fun of it, like that exhibit of a crucifix in urine called "piss Christ" which stirred people up some years ago. I absolutely defend their right to do it, but I think it's a pity to want to upset someone's faith, very like vandalising their garden.
Absolutely agree Nick. Freedom of speech is extremely important, but it is often used (particularly by those on the hard right and hard left) as an excuse to be offensive, when the real motivation is that they don't like religion per se (which is pretty childish in most cases) or the ethnicity or skin colour of those that generally espouse the religion.
Why is not liking religion childish? Sounds like you might be sneering there!
I probably was, but I didn't say not liking religion was childish, just that many who express such views do so from a very childish perspective. Most people who get a kick from debunking other peoples' faith are often as prejudiced and simplistic as many Christian evangelicals or devout Muslim , and often more so. They are often closed minded. A belief in atheism is as much a belief as a belief in a deity. Neither positions are genuinely provable, so require "faith". Those that mock others for having faith are simply underlining their own insecurities.
I agree, but with a distinction.
I am an atheist who was brought up in a very religious (Christian) household and works with many very religious people (mostly Muslim), and who respects those who are religious.
For me, atheism is a belief, but not one that requires faith. Belief in a deity(s) does require faith.
Not quite. Belief that there is a deity (say, on the best explanation of why there is something rather than nothing) may be just that, without any sort of personal trust or trust in the saving power or whatever of that deity.
Belief that there is or is not a God are in this sense equal positions. Neither can possibly be demonstrated by proof of a logical variety, and any amount of inductive style proof either for or against God can either be dismissed as insufficient (Russell) or dismissed as an intellectual mistake (Kant).
Belief and absence of belief are not equivalent positions.
I don't believe in invisible pink unicorns, is that position equivalent to those who do believe in invisible pink unicorns?
Is believing that aliens are real and have visited the earth equivalent to not believing that?
Belief in something and the absence of belief are not equivalent.
What's the general opinion on compulsory RE? Most countries manage without it. In many it is outlawed. My teachers rotated between preaching zealots and clearly bored under informed NQT's who'd got the short straw. Seems to cause no end of bother, and almost no student I can recall enjoys it. I certainly didn't emerge from years of it finding my horizons or general knowledge broadened particularly.
Depend on whether it is religious indoctrination - in which case, no. But if it is to teach about the role religion has played in human life and history, the main tenets, their similarities and differences, etc then - yes - because much of history, art and literature is incomprehensible without such knowledge. Whether it is in a separate class or as part of something else, is a matter for discussion.
The police know no such thing. Very little of this stuff ever comes before the police. This has come out because girls have been speaking up about what has happened to them in schools - both state and private - and how this has been largely ignored, glossed over, described as banter etc.
Clearly all those "respecting women" classes that people on here assured me were happening when I raised this issue in the wake of the Everard case have not worked out as hoped.
The classes is question rather remind me of the numerous multiple choice "courses" you get to sit through in finance......
"Someone comes up to you and suggested committing financial crime."
Do you
1) Enthusiastically commit the crime 2) Suggest he talks to Dave as well, since Dave is always up for a bit of fraud 3) Call compliance.
Can anyone point me to a good and detailed account of the cartoon imbroglio at Batley Grammar School?
I'm really interested in the content of the lesson, and the particular cartoons published - which seem to be from one of the Charlie Hebdo sets.
But we seem to have the usual rabbit hole - "we are going to spend ages talking about this, but it's sooooooooooooooooooo offensive that we will not show the picture / read out the tweet" etc.
I wonder if those Hebdo cartoons - those specifically - have become like the N word for Muslims? Regardless of context and intent, deployment by an outsider risks enormous offence and therefore the best and safest approach, the default in almost all circumstances, is to not. Find another way.
And yes, I know, "blasphemy law by the back door" and "where do you draw the line?" bla bla, I do get that point, and it's a good one, but still. A civilized society is not driven by absolutist principles. Absolutist principles are for extremists and zealots and this includes "free speech" extremists and zealots.
We "draw the line" with things all the time. We weigh up competing interests and values, micro vs macro, long vs short term, theory vs practice, and we decide where the sweet spot lies. We don't always get it right, but we have a bash. It's one of the many things that make this country a very amenable place to live.
Absolutely not.
Skin colour is something people are born with and can't change.
Religion is a belief system and like all belief systems should be able to face rigourous, fierce and offensive scrutiny and challenge.
If you can't be offensive about someone's beliefs there is no such thing as free speech.
Free speech is freedom to express your views without hindrance, and that includes people not going out of their way to sneer at you. They can disagree with you in forthright terms and it works better than Scarfe-style cartoons.
I don't think it should be illegal to be offensive - but it's nearly always going to lose you the argument by upsetting both your opponents and neutral bystanders. And the cartoons aren't trying to make a point, they are all about being offensive for the fun of it, like that exhibit of a crucifix in urine called "piss Christ" which stirred people up some years ago. I absolutely defend their right to do it, but I think it's a pity to want to upset someone's faith, very like vandalising their garden.
Absolutely agree Nick. Freedom of speech is extremely important, but it is often used (particularly by those on the hard right and hard left) as an excuse to be offensive, when the real motivation is that they don't like religion per se (which is pretty childish in most cases) or the ethnicity or skin colour of those that generally espouse the religion.
Why is not liking religion childish? Sounds like you might be sneering there!
I probably was, but I didn't say not liking religion was childish, just that many who express such views do so from a very childish perspective. Most people who get a kick from debunking other peoples' faith are often as prejudiced and simplistic as many Christian evangelicals or devout Muslim , and often more so. They are often closed minded. A belief in atheism is as much a belief as a belief in a deity. Neither positions are genuinely provable, so require "faith". Those that mock others for having faith are simply underlining their own insecurities.
I agree, but with a distinction.
I am an atheist who was brought up in a very religious (Christian) household and works with many very religious people (mostly Muslim), and who respects those who are religious.
For me, atheism is a belief, but not one that requires faith. Belief in a deity(s) does require faith.
Not quite. Belief that there is a deity (say, on the best explanation of why there is something rather than nothing) may be just that, without any sort of personal trust or trust in the saving power or whatever of that deity.
Belief that there is or is not a God are in this sense equal positions. Neither can possibly be demonstrated by proof of a logical variety, and any amount of inductive style proof either for or against God can either be dismissed as insufficient (Russell) or dismissed as an intellectual mistake (Kant).
They are not equal. There is no more requirement to prove there is not a God than there is to prove there is not a Tooth Fairy or a Flying Spaghetti Monster (All Hail His Noodly Appendage). The burden of proof lies with the claim of existence not with the rebuttal.
Can anyone point me to a good and detailed account of the cartoon imbroglio at Batley Grammar School?
I'm really interested in the content of the lesson, and the particular cartoons published - which seem to be from one of the Charlie Hebdo sets.
But we seem to have the usual rabbit hole - "we are going to spend ages talking about this, but it's sooooooooooooooooooo offensive that we will not show the picture / read out the tweet" etc.
I wonder if those Hebdo cartoons - those specifically - have become like the N word for Muslims? Regardless of context and intent, deployment by an outsider risks enormous offence and therefore the best and safest approach, the default in almost all circumstances, is to not. Find another way.
And yes, I know, "blasphemy law by the back door" and "where do you draw the line?" bla bla, I do get that point, and it's a good one, but still. A civilized society is not driven by absolutist principles. Absolutist principles are for extremists and zealots and this includes "free speech" extremists and zealots.
We "draw the line" with things all the time. We weigh up competing interests and values, micro vs macro, long vs short term, theory vs practice, and we decide where the sweet spot lies. We don't always get it right, but we have a bash. It's one of the many things that make this country a very amenable place to live.
This is not about free speech "extremists" - and what a weaselly phrase that is - a thoroughly dishonest attempt to put those who want to extend freedom and critical thinking on a par with those who want to limit it and close it down.
It's about saying that I - a non-Muslim - should not be expected to pay any regard whatever to the precepts of Islam. It is simply of no interest to me what the rules are on depictions of Mohammed or indeed anything else about him. If I want to draw him or refer to him I can do so in whatever way I choose. There is absolutely nothing special about him as far as any non-Muslim is concerned.
Whereas what is being attempted is to try and make him special to non- Muslims by making us pay regard to Islamic strictures about him. On the entirely spurious grounds of offence or hurt. Spurious - not because the hurt isn't real, it may be, though quite a lot seems confected - but because someone's personal hurt is an utterly irrelevant consideration.
Can I require Muslims to start saying the Our Father and going to confession because I am hurt that they don't recognise Catholicism as the One True Faith? No of course not. It is an utterly silly idea. And it is just as silly when Muslims demand that we pay attention to the tenets of their faith.
The really silly thing is people try to advance the perhaps reasonable point of 'there's usually no need to be a dick and be pointlessly offence', as if it is in some way related to whether it was 'right' that someone was a dick who was pointlessly offensive. The former is being generally polite, but has no bearing on it being ok for someone to do it, for any reason, nor on whether people who protest are being reasonable.
I really cannot understand why this issue causes some people to equivocate so much. I'm a huge fan of equivocation, but some things actually are black and white. Whether the provoking actions are a good idea or necessary is actually irrelevant (which is the weaksauce diversion seen here), when the reaction is so much more unreasonable. Indeed, every time people seek to walk on eggshells because of the reaction it just makes it easier to defend people who provoke because they are dicks.
Which specific issue do you mean is black and white?
For example, take this statement -
Display of the Hebdo cartoons, whilst rightly not illegal (unless blatantly violating the hate crime laws), should usually be avoided. If an alternative way of achieving the objective is available, this should be taken.
Agree/Disagree.
You think that's a slam dunk no-brainer?
I do disagree and I do think it's a no brainer, since I don't think it would be possible to agree on 'usually'.
I'd look down on people who offend for offensiveness' sake, but I'd much rather such people feel free enough to do so than other people restrict their self expression because they are worried about offending people.
When drawing the line, I think it indisputably better to err on the side of risking offense than to play it safe and curtail one's own speech. And people aren't choosing caution if its because of threats.
Better an arsehole be free to be an arse, than everyone feel they cannot say what they think. This isn't yelling fire in a crowded theatre.
Well if you disagree because of a possible difference in what "usually" means, I suggest it's not such a no-brainer.
To get more specific - what about the "hate speech" laws?
What's the general opinion on compulsory RE? Most countries manage without it. In many it is outlawed. My teachers rotated between preaching zealots and clearly bored under informed NQT's who'd got the short straw. Seems to cause no end of bother, and almost no student I can recall enjoys it. I certainly didn't emerge from years of it finding my horizons or general knowledge broadened particularly.
Depend on whether it is religious indoctrination - in which case, no. But if it is to teach about the role religion has played in human life and history, the main tenets, their similarities and differences, etc then - yes - because much of history, art and literature is incomprehensible without such knowledge. Whether it is in a separate class or as part of something else, is a matter for discussion.
The RE at my daughters schools seems to be wide ranging and interesting - more a History of Religion. Though I note that there is absolutely no component of *questioning* anything.
What's the general opinion on compulsory RE? Most countries manage without it. In many it is outlawed. My teachers rotated between preaching zealots and clearly bored under informed NQT's who'd got the short straw. Seems to cause no end of bother, and almost no student I can recall enjoys it. I certainly didn't emerge from years of it finding my horizons or general knowledge broadened particularly.
But you can’t understand humanity without understanding religion - origins, beliefs, conflicts, internal conflicts. More wars have been fought over religion than maybe anything else. And they are still being fought.
So kids need to learn. The only question is the context
It is more profitable to ask if there was any way we could have avoided a de facto blasphemy law, once we allowed large scale Muslim/Sikh immigration (which unhappily coincided with Islam itself taking a fundamentalist turn)
That's straight out of the Enoch Powell guide to misinformation.
The law of blasphemy had nothing to do with immigration. It was a Christian derivation and arose out of canon law, becoming enshrined in 1841. It was part and parcel of the Christian fabric of this country. Nothing whatsoever to do with Muslims or Sikhs.
It was most famously used by that architect of all things censorious, Mary Whitehouse. Gay News dared to publish in 1977 the rather wonderful poem by James Kirkup, The Love that Dares Not Speak its Name. The gay author gets off on the naked male figure nailed to the cross but in so doing he's actually very close to the same sentiments of erotic love expressed by George Herbert in 'Love Bade me Welcome' or, indeed, the Song of Songs or, indeed, the writings of Julian of Norwich.
Whitehouse instigated prosecution under the blasphemy law and in that case was successful. All because someone wrote something vaguely sexual about Jesus on the Cross. Nowt to do with Islam. She also tried to get Life of Brian banned under the same blasphemy law.
Amusingly from 1975 a pornographic magazine was published under the title Whitehouse ...
She was a dreadful old bat of the Ann Widdecombe variety.
The police know no such thing. Very little of this stuff ever comes before the police. This has come out because girls have been speaking up about what has happened to them in schools - both state and private - and how this has been largely ignored, glossed over, described as banter etc.
Clearly all those "respecting women" classes that people on here assured me were happening when I raised this issue in the wake of the Everard case have not worked out as hoped.
The classes is question rather remind me of the numerous multiple choice "courses" you get to sit through in finance......
"Someone comes up to you and suggested committing financial crime."
Do you
1) Enthusiastically commit the crime 2) Suggest he talks to Dave as well, since Dave is always up for a bit of fraud 3) Call compliance.
😀
I tended to meet those who thought 1 and 2 were correct, sometimes even after doing 3.
It is more profitable to ask if there was any way we could have avoided a de facto blasphemy law, once we allowed large scale Muslim/Sikh immigration (which unhappily coincided with Islam itself taking a fundamentalist turn)
That's straight out of the Enoch Powell guide to misinformation.
The law of blasphemy had nothing to do with immigration. It was a Christian derivation and arose out of canon law, becoming enshrined in 1841. It was part and parcel of the Christian fabric of this country. Nothing whatsoever to do with Muslims or Sikhs.
It was most famously used by that architect of all things censorious, Mary Whitehouse. When Gay News dared to publish in 1977 the rather wonderful poem by James Kirkup, The Love that Dares Not Speak its Name. The gay author gets off on the naked male figure nailed to the cross but in so doing he's actually very close to the same sentiments of erotic love expressed by George Herbert in 'Love Bade me Welcome' or, indeed, the Song of Songs or, indeed, the writings of Julian of Norwich.
Prosecution under blasphemy law in that case was successful. All because someone wrote something vaguely sexual about Jesus on the Cross. Nowt to do with Islam.
Amusingly from 1975 a pornographic magazine was published under the title Whitehouse ...
She was a dreadful old bat of the Ann Widdecombe variety.
A fundamentalist i.e. no fun and half mental.
The blasphemy law was abolished in 2008.
And now the law is back. But it only applies to Islam
I really don't think the Batley issue is much about free speech. Teachers are trained to teach controversial issues, and of course they should do. But the teaching of controversial issues should be done sensitively and without unduly antagonising any particular group. Sometimes teachers get it wrong, and offend students unnecessarily; that's happened to me in a previous life.
If the teacher in this case deliberately chose a provocative cartoon (rumour is the one of Mohammed with a bomb for headgear) to wind (Muslim) students up, he and the school are right to backtrack, because that is wholly unnecessary to having the blasphemy debate. If it was just a misjudgement, a simply apology would do. The point being that such a cartoon is unnecessary for the purpose of the lesson: e.g. you can describe it without showing it. I'd also argue that age is important: the Charlie Hebdo stuff may well be appropriate for sixth formers, rather than for 11-16s.
None of what I've said, of course, justifies any parental protest, particularly not of an intimidatory nature; nor does it justify disciplinary action against the teacher (unless s/he has already had warnings about the quality of their teaching). But it's not a major free speech issue.
The point being that such a cartoon is unnecessary for the purpose of the lesson: e.g. you can describe it without showing it.
Do you possess the slightest sense of irony? This whole furore is itself the lesson - namely that a de facto blasphemy law now exists in this country, enforced not by democratic consent or Act of Parliament, but by fear.
But apparently that's 'not a major free speech issue' on your planet.
My planet is the same as yours (I hope). The point is that teachers are forever making decisions about teaching materials - is the violence in this history video too graphic; are the materials for this sex education lesson too salacious - and so on. This is no different. Similar decisions have to be made on teaching about blasphemy, and most teachers manage it just fine most of the time.
If you want to look at seriously curtailed education and free speech, you're looking in the wrong place. The real problem is in many faith schools (C of E, Islamic, RC, Jewish) where controversial issues are jettisoned or rarely discussed, with students being fed a diet of beliefs in line with their faiths. Not in most, I accept, but in a large minority.
There's also some cynical vote buying happening in Scotland at the moment.
Leaving aside the 4% NHS pay rise afaik without knowing where the £200m is coming from, we also have "under 22s exempt from Council Tax".
Funny proposal - how many under 22s live in their own home?
Also a free laptop to every primary school child.
(Although, tbf, that one's backfired a bit, as people are wondering why wait for an election before divvying those out. After all, the need for at-home schooling began a year ago.)
But we can safely it's Xmas and your birthday all at once if you fall within a key SNP voter demographic.
Can anyone point me to a good and detailed account of the cartoon imbroglio at Batley Grammar School?
I'm really interested in the content of the lesson, and the particular cartoons published - which seem to be from one of the Charlie Hebdo sets.
But we seem to have the usual rabbit hole - "we are going to spend ages talking about this, but it's sooooooooooooooooooo offensive that we will not show the picture / read out the tweet" etc.
I wonder if those Hebdo cartoons - those specifically - have become like the N word for Muslims? Regardless of context and intent, deployment by an outsider risks enormous offence and therefore the best and safest approach, the default in almost all circumstances, is to not. Find another way.
And yes, I know, "blasphemy law by the back door" and "where do you draw the line?" bla bla, I do get that point, and it's a good one, but still. A civilized society is not driven by absolutist principles. Absolutist principles are for extremists and zealots and this includes "free speech" extremists and zealots.
We "draw the line" with things all the time. We weigh up competing interests and values, micro vs macro, long vs short term, theory vs practice, and we decide where the sweet spot lies. We don't always get it right, but we have a bash. It's one of the many things that make this country a very amenable place to live.
Absolutely not.
Skin colour is something people are born with and can't change.
Religion is a belief system and like all belief systems should be able to face rigourous, fierce and offensive scrutiny and challenge.
If you can't be offensive about someone's beliefs there is no such thing as free speech.
Free speech is freedom to express your views without hindrance, and that includes people not going out of their way to sneer at you. They can disagree with you in forthright terms and it works better than Scarfe-style cartoons.
I don't think it should be illegal to be offensive - but it's nearly always going to lose you the argument by upsetting both your opponents and neutral bystanders. And the cartoons aren't trying to make a point, they are all about being offensive for the fun of it, like that exhibit of a crucifix in urine called "piss Christ" which stirred people up some years ago. I absolutely defend their right to do it, but I think it's a pity to want to upset someone's faith, very like vandalising their garden.
Absolutely agree Nick. Freedom of speech is extremely important, but it is often used (particularly by those on the hard right and hard left) as an excuse to be offensive, when the real motivation is that they don't like religion per se (which is pretty childish in most cases) or the ethnicity or skin colour of those that generally espouse the religion.
Why is not liking religion childish? Sounds like you might be sneering there!
I probably was, but I didn't say not liking religion was childish, just that many who express such views do so from a very childish perspective. Most people who get a kick from debunking other peoples' faith are often as prejudiced and simplistic as many Christian evangelicals or devout Muslim , and often more so. They are often closed minded. A belief in atheism is as much a belief as a belief in a deity. Neither positions are genuinely provable, so require "faith". Those that mock others for having faith are simply underlining their own insecurities.
I agree, but with a distinction.
I am an atheist who was brought up in a very religious (Christian) household and works with many very religious people (mostly Muslim), and who respects those who are religious.
For me, atheism is a belief, but not one that requires faith. Belief in a deity(s) does require faith.
Not quite. Belief that there is a deity (say, on the best explanation of why there is something rather than nothing) may be just that, without any sort of personal trust or trust in the saving power or whatever of that deity.
Belief that there is or is not a God are in this sense equal positions. Neither can possibly be demonstrated by proof of a logical variety, and any amount of inductive style proof either for or against God can either be dismissed as insufficient (Russell) or dismissed as an intellectual mistake (Kant).
Spot on. Always found it amusing how performative atheists think believing the Universe spontaneously popped in to existance from a prior zero dimensional nothingness beyond comprehension is any less insane than the idea of a Deity creating it - they're equally bonkers, there is no common sense option available.
Can anyone point me to a good and detailed account of the cartoon imbroglio at Batley Grammar School?
I'm really interested in the content of the lesson, and the particular cartoons published - which seem to be from one of the Charlie Hebdo sets.
But we seem to have the usual rabbit hole - "we are going to spend ages talking about this, but it's sooooooooooooooooooo offensive that we will not show the picture / read out the tweet" etc.
I wonder if those Hebdo cartoons - those specifically - have become like the N word for Muslims? Regardless of context and intent, deployment by an outsider risks enormous offence and therefore the best and safest approach, the default in almost all circumstances, is to not. Find another way.
And yes, I know, "blasphemy law by the back door" and "where do you draw the line?" bla bla, I do get that point, and it's a good one, but still. A civilized society is not driven by absolutist principles. Absolutist principles are for extremists and zealots and this includes "free speech" extremists and zealots.
We "draw the line" with things all the time. We weigh up competing interests and values, micro vs macro, long vs short term, theory vs practice, and we decide where the sweet spot lies. We don't always get it right, but we have a bash. It's one of the many things that make this country a very amenable place to live.
What an interesting perspective! Bearing all that in mind, I'm sure you'll have no objection if all discussion of socialism and its adjuncts is 'avoided' in the public sphere under penalty of force - after all, socialism is pretty damned offensive to those who don't believe in in, who in this case actually form a majority.
Regardless of context and intent, deployment by an outsider risks enormous offence and therefore the best and safest approach, the default in almost all circumstances, is to not.
And yes, I know 'fascism by the back door' and 'where do you draw the line?' bla bla, I do get that point, and it's a good one, but still. A civilized society is not driven by absolutist principles. Absolutist principles are for extremists and zealots and this includes "free speech" extremists and zealots...
I'd say that was the situation pre 2015 and we show every sign of returning to it. I certainly self-censor myself these days. I carry out no end of contortions - some of them quite taxing and painful - to avoid the "S" word.
Lol - I take it I've made my point. Now imagine that every time you failed to self-censor those offensive words and concepts - a casual reference to the need to nationalize Eton, for example - an angry mob turned up outside your door and you were lucky to get away with a grovelling apology for your wrongthink.
It's very easy to sneer at absolute principles when you don't think the unpleasant consequences of their being compromised will happen to you.
It's similar to the discussion on racism the other day. Universal concepts are great but in the real world need to be flexed and tempered for best understanding and results. If I was doing a philosophy exam paper, I'd probably roll out a lot of this "first principles" stuff that you are attracted to (when it suits you), I can do it, but it just feels like a waste of time. Maybe I'm getting old.
You're right it is just like racism, with the protesters being like racists: intolerant against others.
"Flexibility" in the face of intolerant bigots threatening violence to enforce their own view of the world is not a strength.
If instead of religious zealots trying to chase away "blasphemy" these were were white supremacist zealots trying to chase away those with a different skin colour, would you call for us to kowtow before them? Would you be calling for us to "flex" and all all those with a different skin colour to be chased out of the school so they can have a pure white only school?
I'm not defending the protesters or saying we should kowtow to them. So I must assume you're talking to someone other than me. If they reply, please pass it on. I'm as interested as anyone.
Except you are. You have called in the face of these protests for:
Free speech to be "flexed and tempered"
"where to draw the line"
"the best and safest approach, the default in almost all circumstances, is to not" show these cartoons.
What you have not done is face down the protesters.
On the wider point however, it's always the case that in order to protect freedom you have to restrict it. The 1st Amendment, building on J.S. Mill's ethic was always predicated on the notion that you should be free providing your freedom does not cause harm to others.
Hence it's entirely right and proper to restrict freedom of speech on such areas as incitement to terrorism or sex with animals and children.
It's not rocket science to be frank. Unless you live in Camden in which case it vexes you beyond measure.
The police know no such thing. Very little of this stuff ever comes before the police. This has come out because girls have been speaking up about what has happened to them in schools - both state and private - and how this has been largely ignored, glossed over, described as banter etc.
Clearly all those "respecting women" classes that people on here assured me were happening when I raised this issue in the wake of the Everard case have not worked out as hoped.
The classes is question rather remind me of the numerous multiple choice "courses" you get to sit through in finance......
"Someone comes up to you and suggested committing financial crime."
Do you
1) Enthusiastically commit the crime 2) Suggest he talks to Dave as well, since Dave is always up for a bit of fraud 3) Call compliance.
😀
I tended to meet those who thought 1 and 2 were correct, sometimes even after doing 3.
Do you get a chance to see what they wrote in their exams?
On a serious note - given my observations of children, they will rapidly adapt to score 100% on their Respec' The Ladies courses/tests.
And I am quite sure that Constable Savage gets 100% on his Racial Sensitivity Training courses. Probably arrests people at BLM protests for being in possession of Black Coffee, now...
It is more profitable to ask if there was any way we could have avoided a de facto blasphemy law, once we allowed large scale Muslim/Sikh immigration (which unhappily coincided with Islam itself taking a fundamentalist turn)
That's straight out of the Enoch Powell guide to misinformation.
The law of blasphemy had nothing to do with immigration. It was a Christian derivation and arose out of canon law, becoming enshrined in 1841. It was part and parcel of the Christian fabric of this country. Nothing whatsoever to do with Muslims or Sikhs.
It was most famously used by that architect of all things censorious, Mary Whitehouse. Gay News dared to publish in 1977 the rather wonderful poem by James Kirkup, The Love that Dares Not Speak its Name. The gay author gets off on the naked male figure nailed to the cross but in so doing he's actually very close to the same sentiments of erotic love expressed by George Herbert in 'Love Bade me Welcome' or, indeed, the Song of Songs or, indeed, the writings of Julian of Norwich.
Whitehouse instigated prosecution under the blasphemy law and in that case was successful. All because someone wrote something vaguely sexual about Jesus on the Cross. Nowt to do with Islam. She also tried to get Life of Brian banned under the same blasphemy law.
Amusingly from 1975 a pornographic magazine was published under the title Whitehouse ...
She was a dreadful old bat of the Ann Widdecombe variety.
A fundamentalist i.e. no fun and half mental.
The blasphemy law was abolished in 2008.
You are absolutely right. But you have missed the "de facto" in @Leon's post. You and he are talking about different things. Blasphemy - as an offence against Christianity has been abolished legally - and had largely fallen into disuse before then apart from mad old bats like Mrs Whitehouse. But @Leon's concern is that a de facto one has arisen in its place driven by Islamic and subsequently Sikh concerns.
There's also some cynical vote buying happening in Scotland at the moment.
Leaving aside the 4% NHS pay rise afaik without knowing where the £200m is coming from, we also have "under 22s exempt from Council Tax".
Funny proposal - how many under 22s live in their own home?
Single parents with adult children living at home are probably the biggest beneficiaries.
Would that actually make much difference - students are already exempt and how many people would be left who aren't working so could contribute as part of their "rent"
Can anyone point me to a good and detailed account of the cartoon imbroglio at Batley Grammar School?
I'm really interested in the content of the lesson, and the particular cartoons published - which seem to be from one of the Charlie Hebdo sets.
But we seem to have the usual rabbit hole - "we are going to spend ages talking about this, but it's sooooooooooooooooooo offensive that we will not show the picture / read out the tweet" etc.
I wonder if those Hebdo cartoons - those specifically - have become like the N word for Muslims? Regardless of context and intent, deployment by an outsider risks enormous offence and therefore the best and safest approach, the default in almost all circumstances, is to not. Find another way.
And yes, I know, "blasphemy law by the back door" and "where do you draw the line?" bla bla, I do get that point, and it's a good one, but still. A civilized society is not driven by absolutist principles. Absolutist principles are for extremists and zealots and this includes "free speech" extremists and zealots.
We "draw the line" with things all the time. We weigh up competing interests and values, micro vs macro, long vs short term, theory vs practice, and we decide where the sweet spot lies. We don't always get it right, but we have a bash. It's one of the many things that make this country a very amenable place to live.
Absolutely not.
Skin colour is something people are born with and can't change.
Religion is a belief system and like all belief systems should be able to face rigourous, fierce and offensive scrutiny and challenge.
If you can't be offensive about someone's beliefs there is no such thing as free speech.
Free speech is freedom to express your views without hindrance, and that includes people not going out of their way to sneer at you. They can disagree with you in forthright terms and it works better than Scarfe-style cartoons.
I don't think it should be illegal to be offensive - but it's nearly always going to lose you the argument by upsetting both your opponents and neutral bystanders. And the cartoons aren't trying to make a point, they are all about being offensive for the fun of it, like that exhibit of a crucifix in urine called "piss Christ" which stirred people up some years ago. I absolutely defend their right to do it, but I think it's a pity to want to upset someone's faith, very like vandalising their garden.
Absolutely agree Nick. Freedom of speech is extremely important, but it is often used (particularly by those on the hard right and hard left) as an excuse to be offensive, when the real motivation is that they don't like religion per se (which is pretty childish in most cases) or the ethnicity or skin colour of those that generally espouse the religion.
Why is not liking religion childish? Sounds like you might be sneering there!
I probably was, but I didn't say not liking religion was childish, just that many who express such views do so from a very childish perspective. Most people who get a kick from debunking other peoples' faith are often as prejudiced and simplistic as many Christian evangelicals or devout Muslim , and often more so. They are often closed minded. A belief in atheism is as much a belief as a belief in a deity. Neither positions are genuinely provable, so require "faith". Those that mock others for having faith are simply underlining their own insecurities.
I agree, but with a distinction.
I am an atheist who was brought up in a very religious (Christian) household and works with many very religious people (mostly Muslim), and who respects those who are religious.
For me, atheism is a belief, but not one that requires faith. Belief in a deity(s) does require faith.
Not quite. Belief that there is a deity (say, on the best explanation of why there is something rather than nothing) may be just that, without any sort of personal trust or trust in the saving power or whatever of that deity.
Belief that there is or is not a God are in this sense equal positions. Neither can possibly be demonstrated by proof of a logical variety, and any amount of inductive style proof either for or against God can either be dismissed as insufficient (Russell) or dismissed as an intellectual mistake (Kant).
Spot on. Always found it amusing how performative atheists think believing the Universe spontaneously popped in to existance from a prior zero dimensional nothingness beyond comprehension is any less insane than the idea of a Deity creating it - they're equally bonkers, there is no common sense option available.
Ditto parallel universes. Possibly an infinite number of them, meaning every conceivable universe must abide somewhere, including a universe created and guided by a benevolent and omniscient Deity, ergo God exists.
Speculative cosmological science is so extreme it goes round the back and overlaps with religion. Oddly similar to the way the extreme left, at its outermost fringes, shades into the extreme right - making the political spectrum a circle
The police know no such thing. Very little of this stuff ever comes before the police. This has come out because girls have been speaking up about what has happened to them in schools - both state and private - and how this has been largely ignored, glossed over, described as banter etc.
Clearly all those "respecting women" classes that people on here assured me were happening when I raised this issue in the wake of the Everard case have not worked out as hoped.
The classes is question rather remind me of the numerous multiple choice "courses" you get to sit through in finance......
"Someone comes up to you and suggested committing financial crime."
Do you
1) Enthusiastically commit the crime 2) Suggest he talks to Dave as well, since Dave is always up for a bit of fraud 3) Call compliance.
😀
I tended to meet those who thought 1 and 2 were correct, sometimes even after doing 3.
I've spent an awful lot of time looking at loan scheme tax avoidance schemes.
It's remarkable how often even when you think you've met the stupidest person yet the next one does something even stupider.
And the number of times I've heard the excuse that it seemed a good idea because everyone else was doing it....
It is more profitable to ask if there was any way we could have avoided a de facto blasphemy law, once we allowed large scale Muslim/Sikh immigration (which unhappily coincided with Islam itself taking a fundamentalist turn)
That's straight out of the Enoch Powell guide to misinformation.
The law of blasphemy had nothing to do with immigration. It was a Christian derivation and arose out of canon law, becoming enshrined in 1841. It was part and parcel of the Christian fabric of this country. Nothing whatsoever to do with Muslims or Sikhs.
It was most famously used by that architect of all things censorious, Mary Whitehouse. Gay News dared to publish in 1977 the rather wonderful poem by James Kirkup, The Love that Dares Not Speak its Name. The gay author gets off on the naked male figure nailed to the cross but in so doing he's actually very close to the same sentiments of erotic love expressed by George Herbert in 'Love Bade me Welcome' or, indeed, the Song of Songs or, indeed, the writings of Julian of Norwich.
Whitehouse instigated prosecution under the blasphemy law and in that case was successful. All because someone wrote something vaguely sexual about Jesus on the Cross. Nowt to do with Islam. She also tried to get Life of Brian banned under the same blasphemy law.
Amusingly from 1975 a pornographic magazine was published under the title Whitehouse ...
She was a dreadful old bat of the Ann Widdecombe variety.
A fundamentalist i.e. no fun and half mental.
The blasphemy law was abolished in 2008.
You are absolutely right. But you have missed the "de facto" in @Leon's post. You and he are talking about different things. Blasphemy - as an offence against Christianity has been abolished legally - and had largely fallen into disuse before then apart from mad old bats like Mrs Whitehouse. But @Leon's concern is that a de facto one has arisen in its place driven by Islamic and subsequently Sikh concerns.
Yeah but he's talking drivel.
See my second post. There are always some limits to freedom of expression. J.S. Mill's freedom ethic was to defend it at all costs providing in so doing you are not causing others harm. Standing up in a school and advocating sex with children isn't permitted. Nor is incitement to cause acts of terrorism.
An it harm none, do what thou wilt. The key here with the crap and unfunny Hebdo cartoon is whether it falls foul of the former.
But certain denizens of Camden would love to have the idea of an entirely free wheeling freedom of expression.
Can anyone point me to a good and detailed account of the cartoon imbroglio at Batley Grammar School?
I'm really interested in the content of the lesson, and the particular cartoons published - which seem to be from one of the Charlie Hebdo sets.
But we seem to have the usual rabbit hole - "we are going to spend ages talking about this, but it's sooooooooooooooooooo offensive that we will not show the picture / read out the tweet" etc.
I wonder if those Hebdo cartoons - those specifically - have become like the N word for Muslims? Regardless of context and intent, deployment by an outsider risks enormous offence and therefore the best and safest approach, the default in almost all circumstances, is to not. Find another way.
And yes, I know, "blasphemy law by the back door" and "where do you draw the line?" bla bla, I do get that point, and it's a good one, but still. A civilized society is not driven by absolutist principles. Absolutist principles are for extremists and zealots and this includes "free speech" extremists and zealots.
We "draw the line" with things all the time. We weigh up competing interests and values, micro vs macro, long vs short term, theory vs practice, and we decide where the sweet spot lies. We don't always get it right, but we have a bash. It's one of the many things that make this country a very amenable place to live.
Absolutely not.
Skin colour is something people are born with and can't change.
Religion is a belief system and like all belief systems should be able to face rigourous, fierce and offensive scrutiny and challenge.
If you can't be offensive about someone's beliefs there is no such thing as free speech.
Free speech is freedom to express your views without hindrance, and that includes people not going out of their way to sneer at you. They can disagree with you in forthright terms and it works better than Scarfe-style cartoons.
I don't think it should be illegal to be offensive - but it's nearly always going to lose you the argument by upsetting both your opponents and neutral bystanders. And the cartoons aren't trying to make a point, they are all about being offensive for the fun of it, like that exhibit of a crucifix in urine called "piss Christ" which stirred people up some years ago. I absolutely defend their right to do it, but I think it's a pity to want to upset someone's faith, very like vandalising their garden.
Absolutely agree Nick. Freedom of speech is extremely important, but it is often used (particularly by those on the hard right and hard left) as an excuse to be offensive, when the real motivation is that they don't like religion per se (which is pretty childish in most cases) or the ethnicity or skin colour of those that generally espouse the religion.
Why is not liking religion childish? Sounds like you might be sneering there!
I probably was, but I didn't say not liking religion was childish, just that many who express such views do so from a very childish perspective. Most people who get a kick from debunking other peoples' faith are often as prejudiced and simplistic as many Christian evangelicals or devout Muslim , and often more so. They are often closed minded. A belief in atheism is as much a belief as a belief in a deity. Neither positions are genuinely provable, so require "faith". Those that mock others for having faith are simply underlining their own insecurities.
I agree, but with a distinction.
I am an atheist who was brought up in a very religious (Christian) household and works with many very religious people (mostly Muslim), and who respects those who are religious.
For me, atheism is a belief, but not one that requires faith. Belief in a deity(s) does require faith.
Not quite. Belief that there is a deity (say, on the best explanation of why there is something rather than nothing) may be just that, without any sort of personal trust or trust in the saving power or whatever of that deity.
Belief that there is or is not a God are in this sense equal positions. Neither can possibly be demonstrated by proof of a logical variety, and any amount of inductive style proof either for or against God can either be dismissed as insufficient (Russell) or dismissed as an intellectual mistake (Kant).
Spot on. Always found it amusing how performative atheists think believing the Universe spontaneously popped in to existance from a prior zero dimensional nothingness beyond comprehension is any less insane than the idea of a Deity creating it - they're equally bonkers, there is no common sense option available.
They're not equally bonkers.
The idea that the Universe was created by a specific deity mankind has invented is equivalent to the belief that the sun rotates around the earth pushed by a scarab beetle.
As for the origins of the Universe the correct scientific thing to do is to postulate theories and look for evidence and to acknowledge what we don't know or understand yet, not to insert in a deity invented by people thousands of years ago to explain the unknown.
The police know no such thing. Very little of this stuff ever comes before the police. This has come out because girls have been speaking up about what has happened to them in schools - both state and private - and how this has been largely ignored, glossed over, described as banter etc.
Clearly all those "respecting women" classes that people on here assured me were happening when I raised this issue in the wake of the Everard case have not worked out as hoped.
The classes is question rather remind me of the numerous multiple choice "courses" you get to sit through in finance......
"Someone comes up to you and suggested committing financial crime."
Do you
1) Enthusiastically commit the crime 2) Suggest he talks to Dave as well, since Dave is always up for a bit of fraud 3) Call compliance.
😀
I tended to meet those who thought 1 and 2 were correct, sometimes even after doing 3.
Do you get a chance to see what they wrote in their exams?
On a serious note - given my observations of children, they will rapidly adapt to score 100% on their Respec' The Ladies courses/tests.
And I am quite sure that Constable Savage gets 100% on his Racial Sensitivity Training courses. Probably arrests people at BLM protests for being in possession of Black Coffee, now...
Yes. But by then it was far too late. The UK's biggest fraudster, for instance, failed his Ethics course and his Derivatives exam. Not that it stopped anyone giving him the job of course. The idiot managers and idiot HR people also got to be interviewed by me.
These courses, especially the online ones, are easy to game.
It is more profitable to ask if there was any way we could have avoided a de facto blasphemy law, once we allowed large scale Muslim/Sikh immigration (which unhappily coincided with Islam itself taking a fundamentalist turn)
That's straight out of the Enoch Powell guide to misinformation.
The law of blasphemy had nothing to do with immigration. It was a Christian derivation and arose out of canon law, becoming enshrined in 1841. It was part and parcel of the Christian fabric of this country. Nothing whatsoever to do with Muslims or Sikhs.
It was most famously used by that architect of all things censorious, Mary Whitehouse. Gay News dared to publish in 1977 the rather wonderful poem by James Kirkup, The Love that Dares Not Speak its Name. The gay author gets off on the naked male figure nailed to the cross but in so doing he's actually very close to the same sentiments of erotic love expressed by George Herbert in 'Love Bade me Welcome' or, indeed, the Song of Songs or, indeed, the writings of Julian of Norwich.
Whitehouse instigated prosecution under the blasphemy law and in that case was successful. All because someone wrote something vaguely sexual about Jesus on the Cross. Nowt to do with Islam. She also tried to get Life of Brian banned under the same blasphemy law.
Amusingly from 1975 a pornographic magazine was published under the title Whitehouse ...
She was a dreadful old bat of the Ann Widdecombe variety.
A fundamentalist i.e. no fun and half mental.
The blasphemy law was abolished in 2008.
You are absolutely right. But you have missed the "de facto" in @Leon's post. You and he are talking about different things. Blasphemy - as an offence against Christianity has been abolished legally - and had largely fallen into disuse before then apart from mad old bats like Mrs Whitehouse. But @Leon's concern is that a de facto one has arisen in its place driven by Islamic and subsequently Sikh concerns.
Yeah but he's talking drivel.
See my second post. There are always some limits to freedom of expression. Standing up in a school and advocating sex with children isn't permitted. Nor is incitement to cause acts of terrorism.
An it harm none, do what thou wilt. The key here with the crap and unfunny Hebdo cartoon is whether it falls foul of the former.
But certain denizens of Camden would love to have the idea of an entirely free wheeling freedom of expression. Which is drivel.
P.I.E. used the same argument ...
I fear it falls upon me to point out to you, very gently, that saying ‘yeah but youre talking drivel’ does not necessarily constitute a cohesive argument
The police know no such thing. Very little of this stuff ever comes before the police. This has come out because girls have been speaking up about what has happened to them in schools - both state and private - and how this has been largely ignored, glossed over, described as banter etc.
Clearly all those "respecting women" classes that people on here assured me were happening when I raised this issue in the wake of the Everard case have not worked out as hoped.
The classes is question rather remind me of the numerous multiple choice "courses" you get to sit through in finance......
"Someone comes up to you and suggested committing financial crime."
Do you
1) Enthusiastically commit the crime 2) Suggest he talks to Dave as well, since Dave is always up for a bit of fraud 3) Call compliance.
Ah, I see you've met Dave as well then.
Re: thread subject. Entirely agree. That's why I've been tipping it here for months.
Here's a slightly more off the wall tip. Paddy Power are giving 8/1 on Meghan/Harry baby being born in May. With no insider knowledge, this seems a decent punt to me. Briefly, there was the court case delay in October due to "personal reasons" for "at least 9 months" which to any one with a brain meant she was pregnant. You don't do this sort of thing when you're a little bit late with your period. In other words she likely 8-12 weeks pregnant at that point. But the favourite is July? I'm not having it. She looks quite pregnant in the Opera interview too. And even if the above analysis, such as it is, is completely wrong, there's a chance of prematurity. Just wish I could get April at circa 25/1 to cover. You read it here first.
The police know no such thing. Very little of this stuff ever comes before the police. This has come out because girls have been speaking up about what has happened to them in schools - both state and private - and how this has been largely ignored, glossed over, described as banter etc.
Clearly all those "respecting women" classes that people on here assured me were happening when I raised this issue in the wake of the Everard case have not worked out as hoped.
The point is rather that the police have been forced to acknowledge it (as we've seen on previous occasions in other contexts), surely ?
Mr. Light, the idea that non-Muslims should be bound by Islamic rules is unacceptable.
Do you think gay people should be able to demand the bible and quran are burned because they contain anti-gay passages?
Those holy texts have some wretched parts. But I would not see them burned, nor adherents of those faiths subjected to threats of murder.
And nor should the great and dreadful blasphemy of drawing, or showing, a cartoon be seen as just cause for death threats, and nor should such threatening barbarians be indulged by those who should know better.
Free speech with limits imposed by the threat of murder is no free speech at all.
And I'll shoot anyone who disagrees into the heart of the sun using a gigantic cannon.
[You can smile if you want to. Unlike the choppy choppy nutcases, I don't really mean it.]
The police know no such thing. Very little of this stuff ever comes before the police. This has come out because girls have been speaking up about what has happened to them in schools - both state and private - and how this has been largely ignored, glossed over, described as banter etc.
Clearly all those "respecting women" classes that people on here assured me were happening when I raised this issue in the wake of the Everard case have not worked out as hoped.
The classes is question rather remind me of the numerous multiple choice "courses" you get to sit through in finance......
"Someone comes up to you and suggested committing financial crime."
Do you
1) Enthusiastically commit the crime 2) Suggest he talks to Dave as well, since Dave is always up for a bit of fraud 3) Call compliance.
😀
I tended to meet those who thought 1 and 2 were correct, sometimes even after doing 3.
Do you get a chance to see what they wrote in their exams?
On a serious note - given my observations of children, they will rapidly adapt to score 100% on their Respec' The Ladies courses/tests.
And I am quite sure that Constable Savage gets 100% on his Racial Sensitivity Training courses. Probably arrests people at BLM protests for being in possession of Black Coffee, now...
Yes. But by then it was far too late. The UK's biggest fraudster, for instance, failed his Ethics course and his Derivatives exam. Not that it stopped anyone giving him the job of course. The idiot managers and idiot HR people also got to be interviewed by me.
These courses, especially the online ones, are easy to game.
Someone *failed* an ethics exam. Why wasn't this written in the sky with search lights? How? WTF?
Did he really answer the questions honestly?
Falling the derivatives exam is all too likely. Did he think that risk didn't move with underlying interest rates, by any chance?
Can anyone point me to a good and detailed account of the cartoon imbroglio at Batley Grammar School?
I'm really interested in the content of the lesson, and the particular cartoons published - which seem to be from one of the Charlie Hebdo sets.
But we seem to have the usual rabbit hole - "we are going to spend ages talking about this, but it's sooooooooooooooooooo offensive that we will not show the picture / read out the tweet" etc.
I wonder if those Hebdo cartoons - those specifically - have become like the N word for Muslims? Regardless of context and intent, deployment by an outsider risks enormous offence and therefore the best and safest approach, the default in almost all circumstances, is to not. Find another way.
And yes, I know, "blasphemy law by the back door" and "where do you draw the line?" bla bla, I do get that point, and it's a good one, but still. A civilized society is not driven by absolutist principles. Absolutist principles are for extremists and zealots and this includes "free speech" extremists and zealots.
We "draw the line" with things all the time. We weigh up competing interests and values, micro vs macro, long vs short term, theory vs practice, and we decide where the sweet spot lies. We don't always get it right, but we have a bash. It's one of the many things that make this country a very amenable place to live.
Absolutely not.
Skin colour is something people are born with and can't change.
Religion is a belief system and like all belief systems should be able to face rigourous, fierce and offensive scrutiny and challenge.
If you can't be offensive about someone's beliefs there is no such thing as free speech.
Free speech is freedom to express your views without hindrance, and that includes people not going out of their way to sneer at you. They can disagree with you in forthright terms and it works better than Scarfe-style cartoons.
I don't think it should be illegal to be offensive - but it's nearly always going to lose you the argument by upsetting both your opponents and neutral bystanders. And the cartoons aren't trying to make a point, they are all about being offensive for the fun of it, like that exhibit of a crucifix in urine called "piss Christ" which stirred people up some years ago. I absolutely defend their right to do it, but I think it's a pity to want to upset someone's faith, very like vandalising their garden.
You are describing politeness and good manners. But what you ignore is that these cannot be demanded by means of threats. If I am polite it is by my choice not because I fear being attacked if I am not...
Rather stricter requirements than you impose on yourself are mandated for teachers in their professional standards, though. ...Teachers uphold public trust in the profession and maintain high standards of ethics and behaviour, within and outside school, by: treating pupils with dignity, building relationships rooted in mutual respect, and at all times observing proper boundaries appropriate to a teacher’s professional position having regard for the need to safeguard pupils’ well-being, in accordance with statutory provisions showing tolerance of and respect for the rights of others not undermining fundamental British values, including democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty and mutual respect, and tolerance of those with different faiths and beliefs ensuring that personal beliefs are not expressed in ways which exploit pupils’ vulnerability or might lead them to break the law...
Of course none of this in any way justifies violent protest, but I think you are conflating two issues here in a way which does not justify the teacher's original decisions.
(Of course there is a separate issue of whether the cartoon was included in the curriculum materials for the school, which I don't know.)
So I can conclude that no one can point me at an account identifying (and ideally publishing) the allegedly problematic cartoons?
Looking at that list of standards, @Nigelb, they are presumably not in place in Australia where they subject 13 year old boys to ritual group humiliation in class.
Things that interest me in this account are that the Head wrapped up the conclusion of his inquiry before he had even started it - "these materials are clearly inappropriate for class".
And that no one knows what he was teaching, or how, but that it was the second year that it was done and no one launched campaigns the first time around. Yet now a chilling effect has been created.
That is reminiscent of the original Mohammed Cartoons in 2007 (?). I published them on my blog out of disgust with the media self-censoring under threats. But I published a photo of the Cartoons as they appeared in an Egyptian Newspaper months before the thing went wild. And it went wild because of a further campaign by Imams, who had themselves made further cartoons to outrage their co-religionists. I think it would be an excellent RE: lesson encouraging kids to think about offence, perhaps alongside some iconoclast Christian material.
They could even include the NSS in how not to protest.
We saw this with Rushdie. Years later publishers were refusing or censoring books that they thought might be "offensive".
Which seems to me similar to the process around complaints about "unacceptable words" - where dialogue is impossible because the offensive thing cannot be mentioned.
I agree with a lot of that, but... I'd struggle to see how the cartoons could be usefully used as curriculum materials for that age group. On the other hand, reading around this, it seems that the materials had previously been used by other teachers in the school. So the school seem to have been disingenuous in their communications, and done a significant disservice to the teacher in suggesting it was his sole responsibility.
Similarly government (and the local authority) have somewhat distanced themselves from the row, at the same time as asserting the principle of free speech.
The 13 is a ref to the Australian controversy.
I have no idea of the Batley age group.
13-14, apparently.
At that age I think it should be fine .. though I would personally prefer the Motoons to be used rather than the Hebdo Cartoons.
The Charlie Hebdo cartoons have involved multiple murders, which I would want to consider more carefully I think. Including a teacher murdered after a pupil lied about having been shown the cartoons.
The context of deception and exploitation by religious leaders, mixing politics with religious teaching, is very important - setting simple looking declarations in a proper complex context, and encouraging kids to reflect on that.
On the wider point however, it's always the case that in order to protect freedom you have to restrict it. The 1st Amendment, building on J.S. Mill's ethic was always predicated on the notion that you should be free providing your freedom does not cause harm to others.
Hence it's entirely right and proper to restrict freedom of speech on such areas as incitement to terrorism or sex with animals and children.
It's not rocket science to be frank. Unless you live in Camden in which case it vexes you beyond measure.
As far as I can tell, the teacher in question was not inciting anyone to commit criminal activity.
Can anyone point me to a good and detailed account of the cartoon imbroglio at Batley Grammar School?
I'm really interested in the content of the lesson, and the particular cartoons published - which seem to be from one of the Charlie Hebdo sets.
But we seem to have the usual rabbit hole - "we are going to spend ages talking about this, but it's sooooooooooooooooooo offensive that we will not show the picture / read out the tweet" etc.
I wonder if those Hebdo cartoons - those specifically - have become like the N word for Muslims? Regardless of context and intent, deployment by an outsider risks enormous offence and therefore the best and safest approach, the default in almost all circumstances, is to not. Find another way.
And yes, I know, "blasphemy law by the back door" and "where do you draw the line?" bla bla, I do get that point, and it's a good one, but still. A civilized society is not driven by absolutist principles. Absolutist principles are for extremists and zealots and this includes "free speech" extremists and zealots.
We "draw the line" with things all the time. We weigh up competing interests and values, micro vs macro, long vs short term, theory vs practice, and we decide where the sweet spot lies. We don't always get it right, but we have a bash. It's one of the many things that make this country a very amenable place to live.
So - its fine to buy a post card in Iran with a picture of their prophet on it - but it must be banned in the UK because of the risk of violence?
Feck that
Did I say anything should be banned?
Things can be not banned but nevertheless have a default of "avoid". There are plenty of examples of that.
There seems to be something increasingly banned on here however when it comes to these matters - any semblance of insight or nuance.
Good, because there is no nuance here. Beliefs must face rigorous scrutiny, nothing is off limits, nothing should be avoided.
There is no belief it is wrong to scrutinise.
Yep. And what I'm scrutinizing here is the belief that if the Hebdo cartoons are avoided it means that Islam is getting a free pass and we're on the slippery slope to a theocracy in which free speech is a thing of a past.
Right now the Batley teacher is in hiding after unsubtle threats against his life. It is conceivable he and his family might have to move and adopt new names. Because he showed some children a cartoon about a religious figure.
Free speech already is a thing of the past. All we are doing is discussing the shape of the post-Enlightenment future
To say that free speech is "a thing of the past" in this country is ludicrous. It's such a precious and dim thing to say. Borderline offensive too. I wonder what the billions of people who live in the many parts of the world where free speech IS forbidden would make of it? I think you might get the raspberry.
We have a de facto blasphemy law. It is simply the case. Everyone self censors out of fear, the odd person who crosses the line - like the teacher - gets threatened with death and runs into hiding. No one repeats the mistake. The unspoken blasphemy laws are enforced and hardened.
It’s not just blasphemy of course. On any number of issues - race, sexuality, transgender - there are many things you can no longer publicly say, even though they are scientifically true. Saying them gets you cancelled - which is a real and painful thing, involving total loss of career, status, income.
Perhaps we never had absolute free speech; there is no doubt the free speech we once had (however imperfect) is now in headlong retreat. Sadly, this is also true of America, which enshrined the right to free speech in its constitution, yet now eagerly surrenders the same.
It's the lurid and ridiculous hyperbole I object to. It adds nothing. It gets in the way. Also the ignoring of the other side of the coin. People, previously marginalized, who now have a voice. The erosion not of free speech but of default white and male entitlement. People in erstwhile comfortable groups can screech all they like but this is a great part of what is going on.
Also this thing "I love free speech", is often just a facile, virtue-signalling applause line for people running from serious thought. Untramelled free speech is NOT an unalloyed treasure to be defended to the death. We have free speech under the law. The law rightly recognizes that words can be as violent as swords.
What would you rather be on the end of, a relentless torrent of dehumanizing abuse or a punch in the nose?
These things are not "no brainers". They're only no brainers to those lacking one.
Can anyone point me to a good and detailed account of the cartoon imbroglio at Batley Grammar School?
I'm really interested in the content of the lesson, and the particular cartoons published - which seem to be from one of the Charlie Hebdo sets.
But we seem to have the usual rabbit hole - "we are going to spend ages talking about this, but it's sooooooooooooooooooo offensive that we will not show the picture / read out the tweet" etc.
I wonder if those Hebdo cartoons - those specifically - have become like the N word for Muslims? Regardless of context and intent, deployment by an outsider risks enormous offence and therefore the best and safest approach, the default in almost all circumstances, is to not. Find another way.
And yes, I know, "blasphemy law by the back door" and "where do you draw the line?" bla bla, I do get that point, and it's a good one, but still. A civilized society is not driven by absolutist principles. Absolutist principles are for extremists and zealots and this includes "free speech" extremists and zealots.
We "draw the line" with things all the time. We weigh up competing interests and values, micro vs macro, long vs short term, theory vs practice, and we decide where the sweet spot lies. We don't always get it right, but we have a bash. It's one of the many things that make this country a very amenable place to live.
Absolutely not.
Skin colour is something people are born with and can't change.
Religion is a belief system and like all belief systems should be able to face rigourous, fierce and offensive scrutiny and challenge.
If you can't be offensive about someone's beliefs there is no such thing as free speech.
Free speech is freedom to express your views without hindrance, and that includes people not going out of their way to sneer at you. They can disagree with you in forthright terms and it works better than Scarfe-style cartoons.
I don't think it should be illegal to be offensive - but it's nearly always going to lose you the argument by upsetting both your opponents and neutral bystanders. And the cartoons aren't trying to make a point, they are all about being offensive for the fun of it, like that exhibit of a crucifix in urine called "piss Christ" which stirred people up some years ago. I absolutely defend their right to do it, but I think it's a pity to want to upset someone's faith, very like vandalising their garden.
Absolutely agree Nick. Freedom of speech is extremely important, but it is often used (particularly by those on the hard right and hard left) as an excuse to be offensive, when the real motivation is that they don't like religion per se (which is pretty childish in most cases) or the ethnicity or skin colour of those that generally espouse the religion.
Why is not liking religion childish? Sounds like you might be sneering there!
I probably was, but I didn't say not liking religion was childish, just that many who express such views do so from a very childish perspective. Most people who get a kick from debunking other peoples' faith are often as prejudiced and simplistic as many Christian evangelicals or devout Muslim , and often more so. They are often closed minded. A belief in atheism is as much a belief as a belief in a deity. Neither positions are genuinely provable, so require "faith". Those that mock others for having faith are simply underlining their own insecurities.
I agree, but with a distinction.
I am an atheist who was brought up in a very religious (Christian) household and works with many very religious people (mostly Muslim), and who respects those who are religious.
For me, atheism is a belief, but not one that requires faith. Belief in a deity(s) does require faith.
Not quite. Belief that there is a deity (say, on the best explanation of why there is something rather than nothing) may be just that, without any sort of personal trust or trust in the saving power or whatever of that deity.
Belief that there is or is not a God are in this sense equal positions. Neither can possibly be demonstrated by proof of a logical variety, and any amount of inductive style proof either for or against God can either be dismissed as insufficient (Russell) or dismissed as an intellectual mistake (Kant).
They are not equal. There is no more requirement to prove there is not a God than there is to prove there is not a Tooth Fairy or a Flying Spaghetti Monster (All Hail His Noodly Appendage). The burden of proof lies with the claim of existence not with the rebuttal.
Belief in a God is about faith, you either have it or you don't.
A majority of the world's population still have it whether via Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism etc they just differ in culture and how they worship and in the case of Hinduism how many Gods they have.
Can anyone point me to a good and detailed account of the cartoon imbroglio at Batley Grammar School?
I'm really interested in the content of the lesson, and the particular cartoons published - which seem to be from one of the Charlie Hebdo sets.
But we seem to have the usual rabbit hole - "we are going to spend ages talking about this, but it's sooooooooooooooooooo offensive that we will not show the picture / read out the tweet" etc.
I wonder if those Hebdo cartoons - those specifically - have become like the N word for Muslims? Regardless of context and intent, deployment by an outsider risks enormous offence and therefore the best and safest approach, the default in almost all circumstances, is to not. Find another way.
And yes, I know, "blasphemy law by the back door" and "where do you draw the line?" bla bla, I do get that point, and it's a good one, but still. A civilized society is not driven by absolutist principles. Absolutist principles are for extremists and zealots and this includes "free speech" extremists and zealots.
We "draw the line" with things all the time. We weigh up competing interests and values, micro vs macro, long vs short term, theory vs practice, and we decide where the sweet spot lies. We don't always get it right, but we have a bash. It's one of the many things that make this country a very amenable place to live.
Absolutely not.
Skin colour is something people are born with and can't change.
Religion is a belief system and like all belief systems should be able to face rigourous, fierce and offensive scrutiny and challenge.
If you can't be offensive about someone's beliefs there is no such thing as free speech.
Free speech is freedom to express your views without hindrance, and that includes people not going out of their way to sneer at you. They can disagree with you in forthright terms and it works better than Scarfe-style cartoons.
I don't think it should be illegal to be offensive - but it's nearly always going to lose you the argument by upsetting both your opponents and neutral bystanders. And the cartoons aren't trying to make a point, they are all about being offensive for the fun of it, like that exhibit of a crucifix in urine called "piss Christ" which stirred people up some years ago. I absolutely defend their right to do it, but I think it's a pity to want to upset someone's faith, very like vandalising their garden.
Absolutely agree Nick. Freedom of speech is extremely important, but it is often used (particularly by those on the hard right and hard left) as an excuse to be offensive, when the real motivation is that they don't like religion per se (which is pretty childish in most cases) or the ethnicity or skin colour of those that generally espouse the religion.
Why is not liking religion childish? Sounds like you might be sneering there!
I probably was, but I didn't say not liking religion was childish, just that many who express such views do so from a very childish perspective. Most people who get a kick from debunking other peoples' faith are often as prejudiced and simplistic as many Christian evangelicals or devout Muslim , and often more so. They are often closed minded. A belief in atheism is as much a belief as a belief in a deity. Neither positions are genuinely provable, so require "faith". Those that mock others for having faith are simply underlining their own insecurities.
I agree, but with a distinction.
I am an atheist who was brought up in a very religious (Christian) household and works with many very religious people (mostly Muslim), and who respects those who are religious.
For me, atheism is a belief, but not one that requires faith. Belief in a deity(s) does require faith.
Not quite. Belief that there is a deity (say, on the best explanation of why there is something rather than nothing) may be just that, without any sort of personal trust or trust in the saving power or whatever of that deity.
Belief that there is or is not a God are in this sense equal positions. Neither can possibly be demonstrated by proof of a logical variety, and any amount of inductive style proof either for or against God can either be dismissed as insufficient (Russell) or dismissed as an intellectual mistake (Kant).
Spot on. Always found it amusing how performative atheists think believing the Universe spontaneously popped in to existance from a prior zero dimensional nothingness beyond comprehension is any less insane than the idea of a Deity creating it - they're equally bonkers, there is no common sense option available.
They're not equally bonkers.
The idea that the Universe was created by a specific deity mankind has invented is equivalent to the belief that the sun rotates around the earth pushed by a scarab beetle.
As for the origins of the Universe the correct scientific thing to do is to postulate theories and look for evidence and to acknowledge what we don't know or understand yet, not to insert in a deity invented by people thousands of years ago to explain the unknown.
But there's no 'yet' to it. If you don't see that science can't possibly give a complete final answer to that question, you haven't yet understood the question. It's perfectly reasonable to think a specific deity is laughable, or that a diety in general is an unnecessary middle step, but there's no getting away from existance itself being utterly fucking crazy.
Can anyone point me to a good and detailed account of the cartoon imbroglio at Batley Grammar School?
I'm really interested in the content of the lesson, and the particular cartoons published - which seem to be from one of the Charlie Hebdo sets.
But we seem to have the usual rabbit hole - "we are going to spend ages talking about this, but it's sooooooooooooooooooo offensive that we will not show the picture / read out the tweet" etc.
I wonder if those Hebdo cartoons - those specifically - have become like the N word for Muslims? Regardless of context and intent, deployment by an outsider risks enormous offence and therefore the best and safest approach, the default in almost all circumstances, is to not. Find another way.
And yes, I know, "blasphemy law by the back door" and "where do you draw the line?" bla bla, I do get that point, and it's a good one, but still. A civilized society is not driven by absolutist principles. Absolutist principles are for extremists and zealots and this includes "free speech" extremists and zealots.
We "draw the line" with things all the time. We weigh up competing interests and values, micro vs macro, long vs short term, theory vs practice, and we decide where the sweet spot lies. We don't always get it right, but we have a bash. It's one of the many things that make this country a very amenable place to live.
So - its fine to buy a post card in Iran with a picture of their prophet on it - but it must be banned in the UK because of the risk of violence?
Feck that
Did I say anything should be banned?
Things can be not banned but nevertheless have a default of "avoid". There are plenty of examples of that.
There seems to be something increasingly banned on here however when it comes to these matters - any semblance of insight or nuance.
Good, because there is no nuance here. Beliefs must face rigorous scrutiny, nothing is off limits, nothing should be avoided.
There is no belief it is wrong to scrutinise.
Yep. And what I'm scrutinizing here is the belief that if the Hebdo cartoons are avoided it means that Islam is getting a free pass and we're on the slippery slope to a theocracy in which free speech is a thing of a past.
Right now the Batley teacher is in hiding after unsubtle threats against his life. It is conceivable he and his family might have to move and adopt new names. Because he showed some children a cartoon about a religious figure.
Free speech already is a thing of the past. All we are doing is discussing the shape of the post-Enlightenment future
To say that free speech is "a thing of the past" in this country is ludicrous. It's such a precious and dim thing to say. Borderline offensive too. I wonder what the billions of people who live in the many parts of the world where free speech IS forbidden would make of it? I think you might get the raspberry.
We have a de facto blasphemy law. It is simply the case. Everyone self censors out of fear, the odd person who crosses the line - like the teacher - gets threatened with death and runs into hiding. No one repeats the mistake. The unspoken blasphemy laws are enforced and hardened.
It’s not just blasphemy of course. On any number of issues - race, sexuality, transgender - there are many things you can no longer publicly say, even though they are scientifically true. Saying them gets you cancelled - which is a real and painful thing, involving total loss of career, status, income.
Perhaps we never had absolute free speech; there is no doubt the free speech we once had (however imperfect) is now in headlong retreat. Sadly, this is also true of America, which enshrined the right to free speech in its constitution, yet now eagerly surrenders the same.
It's the lurid and ridiculous hyperbole I object to. It adds nothing. It gets in the way. Also the ignoring of the other side of the coin. People, previously marginalized, who now have a voice. The erosion not of free speech but of default white and male entitlement. People in erstwhile comfortable groups can screech all they like but this is a great part of what is going on.
Also this thing "I love free speech", is often just a facile, virtue-signalling applause line for people running from serious thought. Untramelled free speech is NOT an unalloyed treasure to be defended to the death. We have free speech under the law. The law rightly recognizes that words can be as violent as swords.
What would you rather be on the end of, a relentless torrent of dehumanizing abuse or a punch in the nose?
These things are not "no brainers". They're only no brainers to those lacking one.
Can anyone point me to a good and detailed account of the cartoon imbroglio at Batley Grammar School?
I'm really interested in the content of the lesson, and the particular cartoons published - which seem to be from one of the Charlie Hebdo sets.
But we seem to have the usual rabbit hole - "we are going to spend ages talking about this, but it's sooooooooooooooooooo offensive that we will not show the picture / read out the tweet" etc.
I wonder if those Hebdo cartoons - those specifically - have become like the N word for Muslims? Regardless of context and intent, deployment by an outsider risks enormous offence and therefore the best and safest approach, the default in almost all circumstances, is to not. Find another way.
And yes, I know, "blasphemy law by the back door" and "where do you draw the line?" bla bla, I do get that point, and it's a good one, but still. A civilized society is not driven by absolutist principles. Absolutist principles are for extremists and zealots and this includes "free speech" extremists and zealots.
We "draw the line" with things all the time. We weigh up competing interests and values, micro vs macro, long vs short term, theory vs practice, and we decide where the sweet spot lies. We don't always get it right, but we have a bash. It's one of the many things that make this country a very amenable place to live.
What an interesting perspective! Bearing all that in mind, I'm sure you'll have no objection if all discussion of socialism and its adjuncts is 'avoided' in the public sphere under penalty of force - after all, socialism is pretty damned offensive to those who don't believe in in, who in this case actually form a majority.
Regardless of context and intent, deployment by an outsider risks enormous offence and therefore the best and safest approach, the default in almost all circumstances, is to not.
And yes, I know 'fascism by the back door' and 'where do you draw the line?' bla bla, I do get that point, and it's a good one, but still. A civilized society is not driven by absolutist principles. Absolutist principles are for extremists and zealots and this includes "free speech" extremists and zealots...
I'd say that was the situation pre 2015 and we show every sign of returning to it. I certainly self-censor myself these days. I carry out no end of contortions - some of them quite taxing and painful - to avoid the "S" word.
Lol - I take it I've made my point. Now imagine that every time you failed to self-censor those offensive words and concepts - a casual reference to the need to nationalize Eton, for example - an angry mob turned up outside your door and you were lucky to get away with a grovelling apology for your wrongthink.
It's very easy to sneer at absolute principles when you don't think the unpleasant consequences of their being compromised will happen to you.
It's similar to the discussion on racism the other day. Universal concepts are great but in the real world need to be flexed and tempered for best understanding and results. If I was doing a philosophy exam paper, I'd probably roll out a lot of this "first principles" stuff that you are attracted to (when it suits you), I can do it, but it just feels like a waste of time. Maybe I'm getting old.
You're right it is just like racism, with the protesters being like racists: intolerant against others.
"Flexibility" in the face of intolerant bigots threatening violence to enforce their own view of the world is not a strength.
If instead of religious zealots trying to chase away "blasphemy" these were were white supremacist zealots trying to chase away those with a different skin colour, would you call for us to kowtow before them? Would you be calling for us to "flex" and all all those with a different skin colour to be chased out of the school so they can have a pure white only school?
I'm not defending the protesters or saying we should kowtow to them. So I must assume you're talking to someone other than me. If they reply, please pass it on. I'm as interested as anyone.
Except you are. You have called in the face of these protests for:
Free speech to be "flexed and tempered"
"where to draw the line"
"the best and safest approach, the default in almost all circumstances, is to not" show these cartoons.
What you have not done is face down the protesters.
There are two separate things here, though.
Free speech in schools is not absolute - as is made clear by (eg) the Teaching Standards. There are clearly more constraints (both for pupils and teachers) than exist in wider society.
The behaviour of protestors - and the ridiculous claims that parents should have a say in disciplining the teacher - are quite another matter, and should be the subject of pushback. Government cannot leave that to the school.
What's the general opinion on compulsory RE? Most countries manage without it. In many it is outlawed. My teachers rotated between preaching zealots and clearly bored under informed NQT's who'd got the short straw. Seems to cause no end of bother, and almost no student I can recall enjoys it. I certainly didn't emerge from years of it finding my horizons or general knowledge broadened particularly.
But you can’t understand humanity without understanding religion - origins, beliefs, conflicts, internal conflicts. More wars have been fought over religion than maybe anything else. And they are still being fought.
So kids need to learn. The only question is the context
Yeah. I agree. But that wasn't my experience of RE. Neither was it for my kids. If it were I'd be all in favour.
That’s not too bad at all. In fact, really quite good for a Monday (Sunday)?
I was worried our vax numbers would plunge as we head into April. Let’s hope they keep this up. If we can average half a million a day that would be dandy
Can anyone point me to a good and detailed account of the cartoon imbroglio at Batley Grammar School?
I'm really interested in the content of the lesson, and the particular cartoons published - which seem to be from one of the Charlie Hebdo sets.
But we seem to have the usual rabbit hole - "we are going to spend ages talking about this, but it's sooooooooooooooooooo offensive that we will not show the picture / read out the tweet" etc.
I wonder if those Hebdo cartoons - those specifically - have become like the N word for Muslims? Regardless of context and intent, deployment by an outsider risks enormous offence and therefore the best and safest approach, the default in almost all circumstances, is to not. Find another way.
And yes, I know, "blasphemy law by the back door" and "where do you draw the line?" bla bla, I do get that point, and it's a good one, but still. A civilized society is not driven by absolutist principles. Absolutist principles are for extremists and zealots and this includes "free speech" extremists and zealots.
We "draw the line" with things all the time. We weigh up competing interests and values, micro vs macro, long vs short term, theory vs practice, and we decide where the sweet spot lies. We don't always get it right, but we have a bash. It's one of the many things that make this country a very amenable place to live.
Absolutely not.
Skin colour is something people are born with and can't change.
Religion is a belief system and like all belief systems should be able to face rigourous, fierce and offensive scrutiny and challenge.
If you can't be offensive about someone's beliefs there is no such thing as free speech.
Free speech is freedom to express your views without hindrance, and that includes people not going out of their way to sneer at you. They can disagree with you in forthright terms and it works better than Scarfe-style cartoons.
I don't think it should be illegal to be offensive - but it's nearly always going to lose you the argument by upsetting both your opponents and neutral bystanders. And the cartoons aren't trying to make a point, they are all about being offensive for the fun of it, like that exhibit of a crucifix in urine called "piss Christ" which stirred people up some years ago. I absolutely defend their right to do it, but I think it's a pity to want to upset someone's faith, very like vandalising their garden.
Absolutely agree Nick. Freedom of speech is extremely important, but it is often used (particularly by those on the hard right and hard left) as an excuse to be offensive, when the real motivation is that they don't like religion per se (which is pretty childish in most cases) or the ethnicity or skin colour of those that generally espouse the religion.
Why is not liking religion childish? Sounds like you might be sneering there!
I probably was, but I didn't say not liking religion was childish, just that many who express such views do so from a very childish perspective. Most people who get a kick from debunking other peoples' faith are often as prejudiced and simplistic as many Christian evangelicals or devout Muslim , and often more so. They are often closed minded. A belief in atheism is as much a belief as a belief in a deity. Neither positions are genuinely provable, so require "faith". Those that mock others for having faith are simply underlining their own insecurities.
I agree, but with a distinction.
I am an atheist who was brought up in a very religious (Christian) household and works with many very religious people (mostly Muslim), and who respects those who are religious.
For me, atheism is a belief, but not one that requires faith. Belief in a deity(s) does require faith.
Not quite. Belief that there is a deity (say, on the best explanation of why there is something rather than nothing) may be just that, without any sort of personal trust or trust in the saving power or whatever of that deity.
Belief that there is or is not a God are in this sense equal positions. Neither can possibly be demonstrated by proof of a logical variety, and any amount of inductive style proof either for or against God can either be dismissed as insufficient (Russell) or dismissed as an intellectual mistake (Kant).
Spot on. Always found it amusing how performative atheists think believing the Universe spontaneously popped in to existance from a prior zero dimensional nothingness beyond comprehension is any less insane than the idea of a Deity creating it - they're equally bonkers, there is no common sense option available.
They're not equally bonkers.
The idea that the Universe was created by a specific deity mankind has invented is equivalent to the belief that the sun rotates around the earth pushed by a scarab beetle.
As for the origins of the Universe the correct scientific thing to do is to postulate theories and look for evidence and to acknowledge what we don't know or understand yet, not to insert in a deity invented by people thousands of years ago to explain the unknown.
But there's no 'yet' to it. If you don't see that science can't possibly give a complete final answer to that question, you haven't yet understood the question. It's perfectly reasonable to think a specific deity is laughable, or that a diety in general is an unnecessary middle step, but there's no getting away from existance itself being utterly fucking crazy.
Even if you never get a complete and final answer the myths humanity invented thousands of years ago are not an equivalent answer.
It's like the old riddle of what was the tallest mountain before Everest was discovered?
Just because there are some questions humanity doesn't know the answer to, just because we might never know the answer, doesn't make myths that were invented an accurate answer.
That’s not too bad at all. In fact, really quite good for a Monday (Sunday)?
I was worried our vax numbers would plunge as we head into April. Let’s hope they keep this up. If we can average half a million a day that would be dandy
They have to. 400K a day for second doses, quite soon.
Can anyone point me to a good and detailed account of the cartoon imbroglio at Batley Grammar School?
I'm really interested in the content of the lesson, and the particular cartoons published - which seem to be from one of the Charlie Hebdo sets.
But we seem to have the usual rabbit hole - "we are going to spend ages talking about this, but it's sooooooooooooooooooo offensive that we will not show the picture / read out the tweet" etc.
I wonder if those Hebdo cartoons - those specifically - have become like the N word for Muslims? Regardless of context and intent, deployment by an outsider risks enormous offence and therefore the best and safest approach, the default in almost all circumstances, is to not. Find another way.
And yes, I know, "blasphemy law by the back door" and "where do you draw the line?" bla bla, I do get that point, and it's a good one, but still. A civilized society is not driven by absolutist principles. Absolutist principles are for extremists and zealots and this includes "free speech" extremists and zealots.
We "draw the line" with things all the time. We weigh up competing interests and values, micro vs macro, long vs short term, theory vs practice, and we decide where the sweet spot lies. We don't always get it right, but we have a bash. It's one of the many things that make this country a very amenable place to live.
So - its fine to buy a post card in Iran with a picture of their prophet on it - but it must be banned in the UK because of the risk of violence?
Feck that
Did I say anything should be banned?
Things can be not banned but nevertheless have a default of "avoid". There are plenty of examples of that.
There seems to be something increasingly banned on here however when it comes to these matters - any semblance of insight or nuance.
Good, because there is no nuance here. Beliefs must face rigorous scrutiny, nothing is off limits, nothing should be avoided.
There is no belief it is wrong to scrutinise.
Yep. And what I'm scrutinizing here is the belief that if the Hebdo cartoons are avoided it means that Islam is getting a free pass and we're on the slippery slope to a theocracy in which free speech is a thing of a past.
It depends why the Hebdo cartoons are avoided.
If they're avoided because nobody likes them or wants to share them then that is one thing.
If they're avoided because of a climate of fear and threats of violence, then that is an enemy to freedom that needs to be faced down.
As I put in my other post, I think the Hebdo Cartoons are awkward because multiple people have been murdered over them.
How would I handle it? Not sure depending on curriculum requirements. Perhaps via an historical lens.
The problem I have with the 'no one wants to share it' vs 'climate of fear' argument, is that it is very difficult to draw lines. Therefore I think the only possible place to put the principle is free speech is the ruling principle.
That’s not too bad at all. In fact, really quite good for a Monday (Sunday)?
I was worried our vax numbers would plunge as we head into April. Let’s hope they keep this up. If we can average half a million a day that would be dandy
Indeed positive. Today's numbers, reported tomorrow, is the first day centres were told not to add any first dose bookings to the system so we'll get a first feel for how bad the slowdown is tomorrow
I really don't think the Batley issue is much about free speech. Teachers are trained to teach controversial issues, and of course they should do. But the teaching of controversial issues should be done sensitively and without unduly antagonising any particular group. Sometimes teachers get it wrong, and offend students unnecessarily; that's happened to me in a previous life.
If the teacher in this case deliberately chose a provocative cartoon (rumour is the one of Mohammed with a bomb for headgear) to wind (Muslim) students up, he and the school are right to backtrack, because that is wholly unnecessary to having the blasphemy debate. If it was just a misjudgement, a simply apology would do. The point being that such a cartoon is unnecessary for the purpose of the lesson: e.g. you can describe it without showing it. I'd also argue that age is important: the Charlie Hebdo stuff may well be appropriate for sixth formers, rather than for 11-16s.
None of what I've said, of course, justifies any parental protest, particularly not of an intimidatory nature; nor does it justify disciplinary action against the teacher (unless s/he has already had warnings about the quality of their teaching). But it's not a major free speech issue.
The point being that such a cartoon is unnecessary for the purpose of the lesson: e.g. you can describe it without showing it.
Do you possess the slightest sense of irony? This whole furore is itself the lesson - namely that a de facto blasphemy law now exists in this country, enforced not by democratic consent or Act of Parliament, but by fear.
But apparently that's 'not a major free speech issue' on your planet.
My planet is the same as yours (I hope). The point is that teachers are forever making decisions about teaching materials - is the violence in this history video too graphic; are the materials for this sex education lesson too salacious - and so on. This is no different. Similar decisions have to be made on teaching about blasphemy, and most teachers manage it just fine most of the time.
If you want to look at seriously curtailed education and free speech, you're looking in the wrong place. The real problem is in many faith schools (C of E, Islamic, RC, Jewish) where controversial issues are jettisoned or rarely discussed, with students being fed a diet of beliefs in line with their faiths. Not in most, I accept, but in a large minority.
I have no truck with faith schools of any description, so they can all have that element of their character removed as far as I'm concerned. About 50 years ago, a former headmaster of my old school, in the teeth of the governing body's opposition, lifted the requirement that scholars had to profess the Christian faith, making the rather obvious point that several of the best candidates would otherwise be excluded from election.
Regardless, the analogies you apply to this case are entirely inapposite. Teachers who make particular educational decisions in most areas of the curriculum in most schools are not subjected to intimidation or forced to go into hiding. But in this one, they are. Why exactly is that, if an undemocratic - and very selective - blasphemy law is not now in force?
That’s not too bad at all. In fact, really quite good for a Monday (Sunday)?
I was worried our vax numbers would plunge as we head into April. Let’s hope they keep this up. If we can average half a million a day that would be dandy
Better than the last 2 weeks. They are clearly messaging now that April is almost entirely about 2nd doses. Those of us in our 40s are out of luck for the time being I think.
Yep. In parachuting her in they lose their ability to attack Paul for being parachuted in.
The last MP was a Lancastrian and I think Paul William's biggest flaws are nothing to do with where he's from. I still expect the Tories to narrowly take Hartlepool.
It is more profitable to ask if there was any way we could have avoided a de facto blasphemy law, once we allowed large scale Muslim/Sikh immigration (which unhappily coincided with Islam itself taking a fundamentalist turn)
That's straight out of the Enoch Powell guide to misinformation.
The law of blasphemy had nothing to do with immigration. It was a Christian derivation and arose out of canon law, becoming enshrined in 1841. It was part and parcel of the Christian fabric of this country. Nothing whatsoever to do with Muslims or Sikhs.
It was most famously used by that architect of all things censorious, Mary Whitehouse. Gay News dared to publish in 1977 the rather wonderful poem by James Kirkup, The Love that Dares Not Speak its Name. The gay author gets off on the naked male figure nailed to the cross but in so doing he's actually very close to the same sentiments of erotic love expressed by George Herbert in 'Love Bade me Welcome' or, indeed, the Song of Songs or, indeed, the writings of Julian of Norwich.
Whitehouse instigated prosecution under the blasphemy law and in that case was successful. All because someone wrote something vaguely sexual about Jesus on the Cross. Nowt to do with Islam. She also tried to get Life of Brian banned under the same blasphemy law.
Amusingly from 1975 a pornographic magazine was published under the title Whitehouse ...
She was a dreadful old bat of the Ann Widdecombe variety.
A fundamentalist i.e. no fun and half mental.
The blasphemy law was abolished in 2008.
You are absolutely right. But you have missed the "de facto" in @Leon's post. You and he are talking about different things. Blasphemy - as an offence against Christianity has been abolished legally - and had largely fallen into disuse before then apart from mad old bats like Mrs Whitehouse. But @Leon's concern is that a de facto one has arisen in its place driven by Islamic and subsequently Sikh concerns.
Yeah but he's talking drivel.
See my second post. There are always some limits to freedom of expression. J.S. Mill's freedom ethic was to defend it at all costs providing in so doing you are not causing others harm. Standing up in a school and advocating sex with children isn't permitted. Nor is incitement to cause acts of terrorism.
An it harm none, do what thou wilt. The key here with the crap and unfunny Hebdo cartoon is whether it falls foul of the former.
But certain denizens of Camden would love to have the idea of an entirely free wheeling freedom of expression.
P.I.E. used the same argument ...
But standing up and asking students to consider, for instance, whether a belief system should be mocked or challenged and, if so, whether it is right or wrong for the mocker to be killed or suffer punishment is not remotely the same as inciting crimes. You could, for instance, discuss this topic by reference to the many instances when Christianity did this eg Galileo, heresy trials, the old blasphemy laws etc, the treatment of Catholics during Elizabethan times when they were seen as agents of a foreign power plotting against the monarch. You could then bring it up to date and use the examples when it has been Islam under attack or challenge because these raise many of the same issues - the separation of church and state, which should take precedence (the Thomas Becket question). You don't have to use the Hebdo cartoons - save that they are a very good example which illustrate all these issues very well.
But you could use others - the Satanic Verses for instance or the Danish cartoons or cancelled plays. And the question I have is this - if the issues around blasphemy and challenge had been centred around a book, a book which didn't even need to be read or even shown to the class but the title of which was mentioned in class, would this imam and all the others protesting have been ok with that?
I wonder.
I think that this is not about the awfulness or otherwise of cartoons but about the fact that there are people who do not want their world views challenged and, in particular, do not want what they have taught their children to be challenged. It's about control and their fear of losing control over their young.
Free speech and free thinking is a challenge to that which is why people like this imam should not be allowed to win this argument. Education is about opening people's minds to stuff that might be heretical, dangerous, challenging, difficult, even frightening.
I really don't think the Batley issue is much about free speech. Teachers are trained to teach controversial issues, and of course they should do. But the teaching of controversial issues should be done sensitively and without unduly antagonising any particular group. Sometimes teachers get it wrong, and offend students unnecessarily; that's happened to me in a previous life.
If the teacher in this case deliberately chose a provocative cartoon (rumour is the one of Mohammed with a bomb for headgear) to wind (Muslim) students up, he and the school are right to backtrack, because that is wholly unnecessary to having the blasphemy debate. If it was just a misjudgement, a simply apology would do. The point being that such a cartoon is unnecessary for the purpose of the lesson: e.g. you can describe it without showing it. I'd also argue that age is important: the Charlie Hebdo stuff may well be appropriate for sixth formers, rather than for 11-16s.
None of what I've said, of course, justifies any parental protest, particularly not of an intimidatory nature; nor does it justify disciplinary action against the teacher (unless s/he has already had warnings about the quality of their teaching). But it's not a major free speech issue.
The point being that such a cartoon is unnecessary for the purpose of the lesson: e.g. you can describe it without showing it.
Do you possess the slightest sense of irony? This whole furore is itself the lesson - namely that a de facto blasphemy law now exists in this country, enforced not by democratic consent or Act of Parliament, but by fear.
But apparently that's 'not a major free speech issue' on your planet.
My planet is the same as yours (I hope). The point is that teachers are forever making decisions about teaching materials - is the violence in this history video too graphic; are the materials for this sex education lesson too salacious - and so on. This is no different. Similar decisions have to be made on teaching about blasphemy, and most teachers manage it just fine most of the time.
If you want to look at seriously curtailed education and free speech, you're looking in the wrong place. The real problem is in many faith schools (C of E, Islamic, RC, Jewish) where controversial issues are jettisoned or rarely discussed, with students being fed a diet of beliefs in line with their faiths. Not in most, I accept, but in a large minority.
I have no truck with faith schools of any description, so they can all have that element of their character removed as far as I'm concerned. About 50 years ago, a former headmaster of my old school, in the teeth of the governing body's opposition, lifted the requirement that scholars had to profess the Christian faith, making the rather obvious point that several of the best candidates would otherwise be excluded from election.
Regardless, the analogies you apply to this case are entirely inapposite. Teachers who make particular educational decisions in most areas of the curriculum in most schools are not subjected to intimidation or forced to go into hiding. But in this one, they are. Why exactly is that, if an undemocratic - and very selective - blasphemy law is not now in force?
CofE schools rarely have faith as anything beyond a slight prioritising factor - unlike Catholic schools where I've seen numerous conversions as the question of where will little Johnny go to school in 3 years start to be asked.
Can anyone point me to a good and detailed account of the cartoon imbroglio at Batley Grammar School?
I'm really interested in the content of the lesson, and the particular cartoons published - which seem to be from one of the Charlie Hebdo sets.
But we seem to have the usual rabbit hole - "we are going to spend ages talking about this, but it's sooooooooooooooooooo offensive that we will not show the picture / read out the tweet" etc.
I wonder if those Hebdo cartoons - those specifically - have become like the N word for Muslims? Regardless of context and intent, deployment by an outsider risks enormous offence and therefore the best and safest approach, the default in almost all circumstances, is to not. Find another way.
And yes, I know, "blasphemy law by the back door" and "where do you draw the line?" bla bla, I do get that point, and it's a good one, but still. A civilized society is not driven by absolutist principles. Absolutist principles are for extremists and zealots and this includes "free speech" extremists and zealots.
We "draw the line" with things all the time. We weigh up competing interests and values, micro vs macro, long vs short term, theory vs practice, and we decide where the sweet spot lies. We don't always get it right, but we have a bash. It's one of the many things that make this country a very amenable place to live.
What an interesting perspective! Bearing all that in mind, I'm sure you'll have no objection if all discussion of socialism and its adjuncts is 'avoided' in the public sphere under penalty of force - after all, socialism is pretty damned offensive to those who don't believe in in, who in this case actually form a majority.
Regardless of context and intent, deployment by an outsider risks enormous offence and therefore the best and safest approach, the default in almost all circumstances, is to not.
And yes, I know 'fascism by the back door' and 'where do you draw the line?' bla bla, I do get that point, and it's a good one, but still. A civilized society is not driven by absolutist principles. Absolutist principles are for extremists and zealots and this includes "free speech" extremists and zealots...
I'd say that was the situation pre 2015 and we show every sign of returning to it. I certainly self-censor myself these days. I carry out no end of contortions - some of them quite taxing and painful - to avoid the "S" word.
Lol - I take it I've made my point. Now imagine that every time you failed to self-censor those offensive words and concepts - a casual reference to the need to nationalize Eton, for example - an angry mob turned up outside your door and you were lucky to get away with a grovelling apology for your wrongthink.
It's very easy to sneer at absolute principles when you don't think the unpleasant consequences of their being compromised will happen to you.
It's similar to the discussion on racism the other day. Universal concepts are great but in the real world need to be flexed and tempered for best understanding and results. If I was doing a philosophy exam paper, I'd probably roll out a lot of this "first principles" stuff that you are attracted to (when it suits you), I can do it, but it just feels like a waste of time. Maybe I'm getting old.
More likely you can sense that the foundations of so much of the postmodern moral edifice you've invested yourself in are so rotten that you'd rather not inspect them for fear of what you might find...
If you refer to Woke, absolutely not. The more I go into it, and in particular clock the shallowness and special pleading of the objections, the more I buy in, both intellectually and emotionally. I am not a Woke person, far from it. I'm a Yorkshireman of late middle age, with all that that entails. But the movement, I am four square behind. It's a reckoning with two of the forces that have moulded the western world - white supremacy racism and misogyny. They've had their own way for a long time. Time to reappraise and reset. It's bound to be a rocky ride.
Can anyone point me to a good and detailed account of the cartoon imbroglio at Batley Grammar School?
I'm really interested in the content of the lesson, and the particular cartoons published - which seem to be from one of the Charlie Hebdo sets.
But we seem to have the usual rabbit hole - "we are going to spend ages talking about this, but it's sooooooooooooooooooo offensive that we will not show the picture / read out the tweet" etc.
I wonder if those Hebdo cartoons - those specifically - have become like the N word for Muslims? Regardless of context and intent, deployment by an outsider risks enormous offence and therefore the best and safest approach, the default in almost all circumstances, is to not. Find another way.
And yes, I know, "blasphemy law by the back door" and "where do you draw the line?" bla bla, I do get that point, and it's a good one, but still. A civilized society is not driven by absolutist principles. Absolutist principles are for extremists and zealots and this includes "free speech" extremists and zealots.
We "draw the line" with things all the time. We weigh up competing interests and values, micro vs macro, long vs short term, theory vs practice, and we decide where the sweet spot lies. We don't always get it right, but we have a bash. It's one of the many things that make this country a very amenable place to live.
Absolutely not.
Skin colour is something people are born with and can't change.
Religion is a belief system and like all belief systems should be able to face rigourous, fierce and offensive scrutiny and challenge.
If you can't be offensive about someone's beliefs there is no such thing as free speech.
Free speech is freedom to express your views without hindrance, and that includes people not going out of their way to sneer at you. They can disagree with you in forthright terms and it works better than Scarfe-style cartoons.
I don't think it should be illegal to be offensive - but it's nearly always going to lose you the argument by upsetting both your opponents and neutral bystanders. And the cartoons aren't trying to make a point, they are all about being offensive for the fun of it, like that exhibit of a crucifix in urine called "piss Christ" which stirred people up some years ago. I absolutely defend their right to do it, but I think it's a pity to want to upset someone's faith, very like vandalising their garden.
Absolutely agree Nick. Freedom of speech is extremely important, but it is often used (particularly by those on the hard right and hard left) as an excuse to be offensive, when the real motivation is that they don't like religion per se (which is pretty childish in most cases) or the ethnicity or skin colour of those that generally espouse the religion.
Why is not liking religion childish? Sounds like you might be sneering there!
I probably was, but I didn't say not liking religion was childish, just that many who express such views do so from a very childish perspective. Most people who get a kick from debunking other peoples' faith are often as prejudiced and simplistic as many Christian evangelicals or devout Muslim , and often more so. They are often closed minded. A belief in atheism is as much a belief as a belief in a deity. Neither positions are genuinely provable, so require "faith". Those that mock others for having faith are simply underlining their own insecurities.
I agree, but with a distinction.
I am an atheist who was brought up in a very religious (Christian) household and works with many very religious people (mostly Muslim), and who respects those who are religious.
For me, atheism is a belief, but not one that requires faith. Belief in a deity(s) does require faith.
Not quite. Belief that there is a deity (say, on the best explanation of why there is something rather than nothing) may be just that, without any sort of personal trust or trust in the saving power or whatever of that deity.
Belief that there is or is not a God are in this sense equal positions. Neither can possibly be demonstrated by proof of a logical variety, and any amount of inductive style proof either for or against God can either be dismissed as insufficient (Russell) or dismissed as an intellectual mistake (Kant).
Spot on. Always found it amusing how performative atheists think believing the Universe spontaneously popped in to existance from a prior zero dimensional nothingness beyond comprehension is any less insane than the idea of a Deity creating it - they're equally bonkers, there is no common sense option available.
They're not equally bonkers.
The idea that the Universe was created by a specific deity mankind has invented is equivalent to the belief that the sun rotates around the earth pushed by a scarab beetle.
As for the origins of the Universe the correct scientific thing to do is to postulate theories and look for evidence and to acknowledge what we don't know or understand yet, not to insert in a deity invented by people thousands of years ago to explain the unknown.
But there's no 'yet' to it. If you don't see that science can't possibly give a complete final answer to that question, you haven't yet understood the question. It's perfectly reasonable to think a specific deity is laughable, or that a diety in general is an unnecessary middle step, but there's no getting away from existance itself being utterly fucking crazy.
Even if you never get a complete and final answer the myths humanity invented thousands of years ago are not an equivalent answer.
It's like the old riddle of what was the tallest mountain before Everest was discovered?
Just because there are some questions humanity doesn't know the answer to, just because we might never know the answer, doesn't make myths that were invented an accurate answer.
I don't disagree - people have to make their own judgement on what they believe to be true.
But trying to apply scientitific rigour to a subject that is explicity forever outside the possibility of a scientific explanation does rather induce the same sort of groan you clearly make when you see a religious fool.
It's indisputable that something exists, and science can never explain why the alternative default of no matter, no dimensions, not even no nothing isn't the case. You're free to simply say we can never know to my satisfaction, so we shouldn't speculate, but either way we're left with the discombobulatingly odd fact of existance.
That’s not too bad at all. In fact, really quite good for a Monday (Sunday)?
I was worried our vax numbers would plunge as we head into April. Let’s hope they keep this up. If we can average half a million a day that would be dandy
I don't think they will plunge, but there will be a big shift to second doses. Frustration for the unvacinnated (like my wife), but still progress overall.
Can anyone point me to a good and detailed account of the cartoon imbroglio at Batley Grammar School?
I'm really interested in the content of the lesson, and the particular cartoons published - which seem to be from one of the Charlie Hebdo sets.
But we seem to have the usual rabbit hole - "we are going to spend ages talking about this, but it's sooooooooooooooooooo offensive that we will not show the picture / read out the tweet" etc.
I wonder if those Hebdo cartoons - those specifically - have become like the N word for Muslims? Regardless of context and intent, deployment by an outsider risks enormous offence and therefore the best and safest approach, the default in almost all circumstances, is to not. Find another way.
And yes, I know, "blasphemy law by the back door" and "where do you draw the line?" bla bla, I do get that point, and it's a good one, but still. A civilized society is not driven by absolutist principles. Absolutist principles are for extremists and zealots and this includes "free speech" extremists and zealots.
We "draw the line" with things all the time. We weigh up competing interests and values, micro vs macro, long vs short term, theory vs practice, and we decide where the sweet spot lies. We don't always get it right, but we have a bash. It's one of the many things that make this country a very amenable place to live.
What an interesting perspective! Bearing all that in mind, I'm sure you'll have no objection if all discussion of socialism and its adjuncts is 'avoided' in the public sphere under penalty of force - after all, socialism is pretty damned offensive to those who don't believe in in, who in this case actually form a majority.
Regardless of context and intent, deployment by an outsider risks enormous offence and therefore the best and safest approach, the default in almost all circumstances, is to not.
And yes, I know 'fascism by the back door' and 'where do you draw the line?' bla bla, I do get that point, and it's a good one, but still. A civilized society is not driven by absolutist principles. Absolutist principles are for extremists and zealots and this includes "free speech" extremists and zealots...
I'd say that was the situation pre 2015 and we show every sign of returning to it. I certainly self-censor myself these days. I carry out no end of contortions - some of them quite taxing and painful - to avoid the "S" word.
Lol - I take it I've made my point. Now imagine that every time you failed to self-censor those offensive words and concepts - a casual reference to the need to nationalize Eton, for example - an angry mob turned up outside your door and you were lucky to get away with a grovelling apology for your wrongthink.
It's very easy to sneer at absolute principles when you don't think the unpleasant consequences of their being compromised will happen to you.
It's similar to the discussion on racism the other day. Universal concepts are great but in the real world need to be flexed and tempered for best understanding and results. If I was doing a philosophy exam paper, I'd probably roll out a lot of this "first principles" stuff that you are attracted to (when it suits you), I can do it, but it just feels like a waste of time. Maybe I'm getting old.
More likely you can sense that the foundations of so much of the postmodern moral edifice you've invested yourself in are so rotten that you'd rather not inspect them for fear of what you might find...
If you refer to Woke, absolutely not. The more I go into it, and in particular clock the shallowness and special pleading of the objections, the more I buy in, both intellectually and emotionally. I am not a Woke person, far from it. I'm a Yorkshireman of late middle age, with all that that entails. But the movement, I am four square behind. It's a reckoning with two of the forces that have moulded the western world - white supremacy racism and misogyny. They've had their own way for a long time. Time to reappraise and reset. It's bound to be a rocky ride.
Can anyone point me to a good and detailed account of the cartoon imbroglio at Batley Grammar School?
I'm really interested in the content of the lesson, and the particular cartoons published - which seem to be from one of the Charlie Hebdo sets.
But we seem to have the usual rabbit hole - "we are going to spend ages talking about this, but it's sooooooooooooooooooo offensive that we will not show the picture / read out the tweet" etc.
I wonder if those Hebdo cartoons - those specifically - have become like the N word for Muslims? Regardless of context and intent, deployment by an outsider risks enormous offence and therefore the best and safest approach, the default in almost all circumstances, is to not. Find another way.
And yes, I know, "blasphemy law by the back door" and "where do you draw the line?" bla bla, I do get that point, and it's a good one, but still. A civilized society is not driven by absolutist principles. Absolutist principles are for extremists and zealots and this includes "free speech" extremists and zealots.
We "draw the line" with things all the time. We weigh up competing interests and values, micro vs macro, long vs short term, theory vs practice, and we decide where the sweet spot lies. We don't always get it right, but we have a bash. It's one of the many things that make this country a very amenable place to live.
Absolutely not.
Skin colour is something people are born with and can't change.
Religion is a belief system and like all belief systems should be able to face rigourous, fierce and offensive scrutiny and challenge.
If you can't be offensive about someone's beliefs there is no such thing as free speech.
Free speech is freedom to express your views without hindrance, and that includes people not going out of their way to sneer at you. They can disagree with you in forthright terms and it works better than Scarfe-style cartoons.
I don't think it should be illegal to be offensive - but it's nearly always going to lose you the argument by upsetting both your opponents and neutral bystanders. And the cartoons aren't trying to make a point, they are all about being offensive for the fun of it, like that exhibit of a crucifix in urine called "piss Christ" which stirred people up some years ago. I absolutely defend their right to do it, but I think it's a pity to want to upset someone's faith, very like vandalising their garden.
Absolutely agree Nick. Freedom of speech is extremely important, but it is often used (particularly by those on the hard right and hard left) as an excuse to be offensive, when the real motivation is that they don't like religion per se (which is pretty childish in most cases) or the ethnicity or skin colour of those that generally espouse the religion.
Why is not liking religion childish? Sounds like you might be sneering there!
I probably was, but I didn't say not liking religion was childish, just that many who express such views do so from a very childish perspective. Most people who get a kick from debunking other peoples' faith are often as prejudiced and simplistic as many Christian evangelicals or devout Muslim , and often more so. They are often closed minded. A belief in atheism is as much a belief as a belief in a deity. Neither positions are genuinely provable, so require "faith". Those that mock others for having faith are simply underlining their own insecurities.
I agree, but with a distinction.
I am an atheist who was brought up in a very religious (Christian) household and works with many very religious people (mostly Muslim), and who respects those who are religious.
For me, atheism is a belief, but not one that requires faith. Belief in a deity(s) does require faith.
Not quite. Belief that there is a deity (say, on the best explanation of why there is something rather than nothing) may be just that, without any sort of personal trust or trust in the saving power or whatever of that deity.
Belief that there is or is not a God are in this sense equal positions. Neither can possibly be demonstrated by proof of a logical variety, and any amount of inductive style proof either for or against God can either be dismissed as insufficient (Russell) or dismissed as an intellectual mistake (Kant).
Spot on. Always found it amusing how performative atheists think believing the Universe spontaneously popped in to existance from a prior zero dimensional nothingness beyond comprehension is any less insane than the idea of a Deity creating it - they're equally bonkers, there is no common sense option available.
They're not equally bonkers.
The idea that the Universe was created by a specific deity mankind has invented is equivalent to the belief that the sun rotates around the earth pushed by a scarab beetle.
As for the origins of the Universe the correct scientific thing to do is to postulate theories and look for evidence and to acknowledge what we don't know or understand yet, not to insert in a deity invented by people thousands of years ago to explain the unknown.
But there's no 'yet' to it. If you don't see that science can't possibly give a complete final answer to that question, you haven't yet understood the question. It's perfectly reasonable to think a specific deity is laughable, or that a diety in general is an unnecessary middle step, but there's no getting away from existance itself being utterly fucking crazy.
Even if you never get a complete and final answer the myths humanity invented thousands of years ago are not an equivalent answer.
It's like the old riddle of what was the tallest mountain before Everest was discovered?
Just because there are some questions humanity doesn't know the answer to, just because we might never know the answer, doesn't make myths that were invented an accurate answer.
I don't disagree - people have to make their own judgement on what they believe to be true.
But trying to apply scientitific rigour to a subject that is explicity forever outside the possibility of a scientific explanation does rather induce the same sort of groan you clearly make when you see a religious fool.
It's indisputable that something exists, and science can never explain why the alternative default of no matter, no dimensions, not even no nothing isn't the case. You're free to simply say we can never know to my satisfaction, so we shouldn't speculate, but either way we're left with the discombobulatingly odd fact of existance.
That’s the question which led Ludwig Wittgenstein to a certain kind of tortured religious belief. ‘It’s not the how or the where of the universe, it’s the Why. Why is there anything at all?’
Again from my oil company days. They actually had a grading system for the countries we did business with...
- The Norwegians etc. simple, straight down the line, high standards and kept them themselves. - {} - The Americans. Would start the lawsuits before the contract was signed... - {} - Right at the bottom, the countries who had to lodge a big wedge of money in Switzerland under third party escrow before anything would be done....
Opposes strictly come dancing....with that I am in total agreement....
The rest not exactly shocking that religious fundamentalist believes in the absolute interpretation of their religion on things like gay marriage. Where many on the left / "progressives" seem that have a big blind spot, they will go to town on a Christian who is say anti-gay marriage on religious grounds, cancel them, boycott their business etc, but would never dare to raise such objections about this guy....something something, oppression, hierarchy, patriarchy, only punch up, or something.
I have no problems whatsoever in criticizing conservative Islam for illiberal and primitive beliefs and practices.
Can anyone point me to a good and detailed account of the cartoon imbroglio at Batley Grammar School?
I'm really interested in the content of the lesson, and the particular cartoons published - which seem to be from one of the Charlie Hebdo sets.
But we seem to have the usual rabbit hole - "we are going to spend ages talking about this, but it's sooooooooooooooooooo offensive that we will not show the picture / read out the tweet" etc.
I wonder if those Hebdo cartoons - those specifically - have become like the N word for Muslims? Regardless of context and intent, deployment by an outsider risks enormous offence and therefore the best and safest approach, the default in almost all circumstances, is to not. Find another way.
And yes, I know, "blasphemy law by the back door" and "where do you draw the line?" bla bla, I do get that point, and it's a good one, but still. A civilized society is not driven by absolutist principles. Absolutist principles are for extremists and zealots and this includes "free speech" extremists and zealots.
We "draw the line" with things all the time. We weigh up competing interests and values, micro vs macro, long vs short term, theory vs practice, and we decide where the sweet spot lies. We don't always get it right, but we have a bash. It's one of the many things that make this country a very amenable place to live.
Absolutely not.
Skin colour is something people are born with and can't change.
Religion is a belief system and like all belief systems should be able to face rigourous, fierce and offensive scrutiny and challenge.
If you can't be offensive about someone's beliefs there is no such thing as free speech.
Free speech is freedom to express your views without hindrance, and that includes people not going out of their way to sneer at you. They can disagree with you in forthright terms and it works better than Scarfe-style cartoons.
I don't think it should be illegal to be offensive - but it's nearly always going to lose you the argument by upsetting both your opponents and neutral bystanders. And the cartoons aren't trying to make a point, they are all about being offensive for the fun of it, like that exhibit of a crucifix in urine called "piss Christ" which stirred people up some years ago. I absolutely defend their right to do it, but I think it's a pity to want to upset someone's faith, very like vandalising their garden.
Absolutely agree Nick. Freedom of speech is extremely important, but it is often used (particularly by those on the hard right and hard left) as an excuse to be offensive, when the real motivation is that they don't like religion per se (which is pretty childish in most cases) or the ethnicity or skin colour of those that generally espouse the religion.
Why is not liking religion childish? Sounds like you might be sneering there!
I probably was, but I didn't say not liking religion was childish, just that many who express such views do so from a very childish perspective. Most people who get a kick from debunking other peoples' faith are often as prejudiced and simplistic as many Christian evangelicals or devout Muslim , and often more so. They are often closed minded. A belief in atheism is as much a belief as a belief in a deity. Neither positions are genuinely provable, so require "faith". Those that mock others for having faith are simply underlining their own insecurities.
I agree, but with a distinction.
I am an atheist who was brought up in a very religious (Christian) household and works with many very religious people (mostly Muslim), and who respects those who are religious.
For me, atheism is a belief, but not one that requires faith. Belief in a deity(s) does require faith.
Not quite. Belief that there is a deity (say, on the best explanation of why there is something rather than nothing) may be just that, without any sort of personal trust or trust in the saving power or whatever of that deity.
Belief that there is or is not a God are in this sense equal positions. Neither can possibly be demonstrated by proof of a logical variety, and any amount of inductive style proof either for or against God can either be dismissed as insufficient (Russell) or dismissed as an intellectual mistake (Kant).
Spot on. Always found it amusing how performative atheists think believing the Universe spontaneously popped in to existance from a prior zero dimensional nothingness beyond comprehension is any less insane than the idea of a Deity creating it - they're equally bonkers, there is no common sense option available.
They're not equally bonkers.
The idea that the Universe was created by a specific deity mankind has invented is equivalent to the belief that the sun rotates around the earth pushed by a scarab beetle.
As for the origins of the Universe the correct scientific thing to do is to postulate theories and look for evidence and to acknowledge what we don't know or understand yet, not to insert in a deity invented by people thousands of years ago to explain the unknown.
But there's no 'yet' to it. If you don't see that science can't possibly give a complete final answer to that question, you haven't yet understood the question. It's perfectly reasonable to think a specific deity is laughable, or that a diety in general is an unnecessary middle step, but there's no getting away from existance itself being utterly fucking crazy.
Even if you never get a complete and final answer the myths humanity invented thousands of years ago are not an equivalent answer.
It's like the old riddle of what was the tallest mountain before Everest was discovered?
Just because there are some questions humanity doesn't know the answer to, just because we might never know the answer, doesn't make myths that were invented an accurate answer.
I don't disagree - people have to make their own judgement on what they believe to be true.
But trying to apply scientitific rigour to a subject that is explicity forever outside the possibility of a scientific explanation does rather induce the same sort of groan you clearly make when you see a religious fool.
It's indisputable that something exists, and science can never explain why the alternative default of no matter, no dimensions, not even no nothing isn't the case. You're free to simply say we can never know to my satisfaction, so we shouldn't speculate, but either way we're left with the discombobulatingly odd fact of existance.
We may not know why the Big Bang happened, but we have plenty of evidence now that it did.
What we do not have any evidence for is that the heaven and earth was created on one day and then five days later humanity was created.
Myths were invented in the past. Those myths were products of man, not deities. Believing in these myths today are not the same as not believing in them.
Can anyone point me to a good and detailed account of the cartoon imbroglio at Batley Grammar School?
I'm really interested in the content of the lesson, and the particular cartoons published - which seem to be from one of the Charlie Hebdo sets.
But we seem to have the usual rabbit hole - "we are going to spend ages talking about this, but it's sooooooooooooooooooo offensive that we will not show the picture / read out the tweet" etc.
I wonder if those Hebdo cartoons - those specifically - have become like the N word for Muslims? Regardless of context and intent, deployment by an outsider risks enormous offence and therefore the best and safest approach, the default in almost all circumstances, is to not. Find another way.
And yes, I know, "blasphemy law by the back door" and "where do you draw the line?" bla bla, I do get that point, and it's a good one, but still. A civilized society is not driven by absolutist principles. Absolutist principles are for extremists and zealots and this includes "free speech" extremists and zealots.
We "draw the line" with things all the time. We weigh up competing interests and values, micro vs macro, long vs short term, theory vs practice, and we decide where the sweet spot lies. We don't always get it right, but we have a bash. It's one of the many things that make this country a very amenable place to live.
What an interesting perspective! Bearing all that in mind, I'm sure you'll have no objection if all discussion of socialism and its adjuncts is 'avoided' in the public sphere under penalty of force - after all, socialism is pretty damned offensive to those who don't believe in in, who in this case actually form a majority.
Regardless of context and intent, deployment by an outsider risks enormous offence and therefore the best and safest approach, the default in almost all circumstances, is to not.
And yes, I know 'fascism by the back door' and 'where do you draw the line?' bla bla, I do get that point, and it's a good one, but still. A civilized society is not driven by absolutist principles. Absolutist principles are for extremists and zealots and this includes "free speech" extremists and zealots...
I'd say that was the situation pre 2015 and we show every sign of returning to it. I certainly self-censor myself these days. I carry out no end of contortions - some of them quite taxing and painful - to avoid the "S" word.
Lol - I take it I've made my point. Now imagine that every time you failed to self-censor those offensive words and concepts - a casual reference to the need to nationalize Eton, for example - an angry mob turned up outside your door and you were lucky to get away with a grovelling apology for your wrongthink.
It's very easy to sneer at absolute principles when you don't think the unpleasant consequences of their being compromised will happen to you.
It's similar to the discussion on racism the other day. Universal concepts are great but in the real world need to be flexed and tempered for best understanding and results. If I was doing a philosophy exam paper, I'd probably roll out a lot of this "first principles" stuff that you are attracted to (when it suits you), I can do it, but it just feels like a waste of time. Maybe I'm getting old.
More likely you can sense that the foundations of so much of the postmodern moral edifice you've invested yourself in are so rotten that you'd rather not inspect them for fear of what you might find...
If you refer to Woke, absolutely not. The more I go into it, and in particular clock the shallowness and special pleading of the objections, the more I buy in, both intellectually and emotionally. I am not a Woke person, far from it. I'm a Yorkshireman of late middle age, with all that that entails. But the movement, I am four square behind. It's a reckoning with two of the forces that have moulded the western world - white supremacy racism and misogyny. They've had their own way for a long time. Time to reappraise and reset. It's bound to be a rocky ride.
People who have their life-long world view horribly challenged, as is clearly happening to you (“OMG maybe wokeness can be bad after all?!”) often react, at first, by investing even more in their faith-system, as it simultaneously totters. It’s a known phenomenon in cult members when they initially experience doubts.
The police know no such thing. Very little of this stuff ever comes before the police. This has come out because girls have been speaking up about what has happened to them in schools - both state and private - and how this has been largely ignored, glossed over, described as banter etc.
Clearly all those "respecting women" classes that people on here assured me were happening when I raised this issue in the wake of the Everard case have not worked out as hoped.
The point is rather that the police have been forced to acknowledge it (as we've seen on previous occasions in other contexts), surely ?
Yes - the cynic in me says that they will do the same half-arsed investigations into these as they do with many of the others.
The police know no such thing. Very little of this stuff ever comes before the police. This has come out because girls have been speaking up about what has happened to them in schools - both state and private - and how this has been largely ignored, glossed over, described as banter etc.
Clearly all those "respecting women" classes that people on here assured me were happening when I raised this issue in the wake of the Everard case have not worked out as hoped.
The classes is question rather remind me of the numerous multiple choice "courses" you get to sit through in finance......
"Someone comes up to you and suggested committing financial crime."
Do you
1) Enthusiastically commit the crime 2) Suggest he talks to Dave as well, since Dave is always up for a bit of fraud 3) Call compliance.
😀
I tended to meet those who thought 1 and 2 were correct, sometimes even after doing 3.
Do you get a chance to see what they wrote in their exams?
On a serious note - given my observations of children, they will rapidly adapt to score 100% on their Respec' The Ladies courses/tests.
And I am quite sure that Constable Savage gets 100% on his Racial Sensitivity Training courses. Probably arrests people at BLM protests for being in possession of Black Coffee, now...
Yes. But by then it was far too late. The UK's biggest fraudster, for instance, failed his Ethics course and his Derivatives exam. Not that it stopped anyone giving him the job of course. The idiot managers and idiot HR people also got to be interviewed by me.
These courses, especially the online ones, are easy to game.
Someone *failed* an ethics exam. Why wasn't this written in the sky with search lights? How? WTF?
Did he really answer the questions honestly?
Falling the derivatives exam is all too likely. Did he think that risk didn't move with underlying interest rates, by any chance?
Oh there's much worse than this I promise you! Why wasn't it in searchlights? Because people collected information, ticked the boxes but never bothered to read it or understand it or act on it. Once the box was ticked the job was done - or so people thought.
The only person who ever read this stuff - and the CVs - and the lies contained in them - and the appraisals and the lies contained in them - and the emails and chats etc was me - and when people like me are reading this stuff you already have a problem.
Can anyone point me to a good and detailed account of the cartoon imbroglio at Batley Grammar School?
I'm really interested in the content of the lesson, and the particular cartoons published - which seem to be from one of the Charlie Hebdo sets.
But we seem to have the usual rabbit hole - "we are going to spend ages talking about this, but it's sooooooooooooooooooo offensive that we will not show the picture / read out the tweet" etc.
I wonder if those Hebdo cartoons - those specifically - have become like the N word for Muslims? Regardless of context and intent, deployment by an outsider risks enormous offence and therefore the best and safest approach, the default in almost all circumstances, is to not. Find another way.
And yes, I know, "blasphemy law by the back door" and "where do you draw the line?" bla bla, I do get that point, and it's a good one, but still. A civilized society is not driven by absolutist principles. Absolutist principles are for extremists and zealots and this includes "free speech" extremists and zealots.
We "draw the line" with things all the time. We weigh up competing interests and values, micro vs macro, long vs short term, theory vs practice, and we decide where the sweet spot lies. We don't always get it right, but we have a bash. It's one of the many things that make this country a very amenable place to live.
Absolutely not.
Skin colour is something people are born with and can't change.
Religion is a belief system and like all belief systems should be able to face rigourous, fierce and offensive scrutiny and challenge.
If you can't be offensive about someone's beliefs there is no such thing as free speech.
Free speech is freedom to express your views without hindrance, and that includes people not going out of their way to sneer at you. They can disagree with you in forthright terms and it works better than Scarfe-style cartoons.
I don't think it should be illegal to be offensive - but it's nearly always going to lose you the argument by upsetting both your opponents and neutral bystanders. And the cartoons aren't trying to make a point, they are all about being offensive for the fun of it, like that exhibit of a crucifix in urine called "piss Christ" which stirred people up some years ago. I absolutely defend their right to do it, but I think it's a pity to want to upset someone's faith, very like vandalising their garden.
Absolutely agree Nick. Freedom of speech is extremely important, but it is often used (particularly by those on the hard right and hard left) as an excuse to be offensive, when the real motivation is that they don't like religion per se (which is pretty childish in most cases) or the ethnicity or skin colour of those that generally espouse the religion.
Why is not liking religion childish? Sounds like you might be sneering there!
I probably was, but I didn't say not liking religion was childish, just that many who express such views do so from a very childish perspective. Most people who get a kick from debunking other peoples' faith are often as prejudiced and simplistic as many Christian evangelicals or devout Muslim , and often more so. They are often closed minded. A belief in atheism is as much a belief as a belief in a deity. Neither positions are genuinely provable, so require "faith". Those that mock others for having faith are simply underlining their own insecurities.
I agree, but with a distinction.
I am an atheist who was brought up in a very religious (Christian) household and works with many very religious people (mostly Muslim), and who respects those who are religious.
For me, atheism is a belief, but not one that requires faith. Belief in a deity(s) does require faith.
Not quite. Belief that there is a deity (say, on the best explanation of why there is something rather than nothing) may be just that, without any sort of personal trust or trust in the saving power or whatever of that deity.
Belief that there is or is not a God are in this sense equal positions. Neither can possibly be demonstrated by proof of a logical variety, and any amount of inductive style proof either for or against God can either be dismissed as insufficient (Russell) or dismissed as an intellectual mistake (Kant).
Spot on. Always found it amusing how performative atheists think believing the Universe spontaneously popped in to existance from a prior zero dimensional nothingness beyond comprehension is any less insane than the idea of a Deity creating it - they're equally bonkers, there is no common sense option available.
They're not equally bonkers.
The idea that the Universe was created by a specific deity mankind has invented is equivalent to the belief that the sun rotates around the earth pushed by a scarab beetle.
As for the origins of the Universe the correct scientific thing to do is to postulate theories and look for evidence and to acknowledge what we don't know or understand yet, not to insert in a deity invented by people thousands of years ago to explain the unknown.
But there's no 'yet' to it. If you don't see that science can't possibly give a complete final answer to that question, you haven't yet understood the question. It's perfectly reasonable to think a specific deity is laughable, or that a diety in general is an unnecessary middle step, but there's no getting away from existance itself being utterly fucking crazy.
Even if you never get a complete and final answer the myths humanity invented thousands of years ago are not an equivalent answer.
It's like the old riddle of what was the tallest mountain before Everest was discovered?
Just because there are some questions humanity doesn't know the answer to, just because we might never know the answer, doesn't make myths that were invented an accurate answer.
I don't disagree - people have to make their own judgement on what they believe to be true.
But trying to apply scientitific rigour to a subject that is explicity forever outside the possibility of a scientific explanation does rather induce the same sort of groan you clearly make when you see a religious fool.
It's indisputable that something exists, and science can never explain why the alternative default of no matter, no dimensions, not even no nothing isn't the case. You're free to simply say we can never know to my satisfaction, so we shouldn't speculate, but either way we're left with the discombobulatingly odd fact of existance.
We may not know why the Big Bang happened, but we have plenty of evidence now that it did.
What we do not have any evidence for is that the heaven and earth was created on one day and then five days later humanity was created.
Myths were invented in the past. Those myths were products of man, not deities. Believing in these myths today are not the same as not believing in them.
The big bang is neither here nor there - it's not a theory that remotely touches the question I'm trying to point out.
That’s not too bad at all. In fact, really quite good for a Monday (Sunday)?
I was worried our vax numbers would plunge as we head into April. Let’s hope they keep this up. If we can average half a million a day that would be dandy
I don't think they will plunge, but there will be a big shift to second doses. Frustration for the unvacinnated (like my wife), but still progress overall.
I was asking when we should start the April Vaccine PANNNNNNNIC!! the other day - on just this topic. Sounds like it may start tomorrow. I am expecting days where 1st vaccinations drop to very low numbers.
We will see Thursday or so, but on the 21st, there were only about 5 million over 50's without a first vaccination and 2.9 million more vaccinations since then.
I can sympathise. I was at one time seriously wondering if I would have to make provision in my will for my tortoise (had since I was 4). In the event, he predeceased me, but ...
One wonders if they should be given extra allowance for hibernation, too (like dog years vs humans, only in the other direction).
Specially for TSE, here is the best Suez container ship story to date, care of the New York Post:
"As the operation to free the leviathan reaches a climax, a ship bearing about 20 containers of dildos, vibrators and male masturbators may finally continue its voyage and get the adult toys into the eager hands of frustrated customers, the UK’s Metro reported.
"EDC Retail — a Dutch company that runs the biggest online sex toys shop in the Netherlands and Belgium — predicts it is losing millions because it has been unable to replenish its stocks after huge sales during the coronavirus lockdown and Valentine’s Day, according to the outlet."
Can anyone point me to a good and detailed account of the cartoon imbroglio at Batley Grammar School?
I'm really interested in the content of the lesson, and the particular cartoons published - which seem to be from one of the Charlie Hebdo sets.
But we seem to have the usual rabbit hole - "we are going to spend ages talking about this, but it's sooooooooooooooooooo offensive that we will not show the picture / read out the tweet" etc.
I wonder if those Hebdo cartoons - those specifically - have become like the N word for Muslims? Regardless of context and intent, deployment by an outsider risks enormous offence and therefore the best and safest approach, the default in almost all circumstances, is to not. Find another way.
And yes, I know, "blasphemy law by the back door" and "where do you draw the line?" bla bla, I do get that point, and it's a good one, but still. A civilized society is not driven by absolutist principles. Absolutist principles are for extremists and zealots and this includes "free speech" extremists and zealots.
We "draw the line" with things all the time. We weigh up competing interests and values, micro vs macro, long vs short term, theory vs practice, and we decide where the sweet spot lies. We don't always get it right, but we have a bash. It's one of the many things that make this country a very amenable place to live.
Absolutely not.
Skin colour is something people are born with and can't change.
Religion is a belief system and like all belief systems should be able to face rigourous, fierce and offensive scrutiny and challenge.
If you can't be offensive about someone's beliefs there is no such thing as free speech.
Free speech is freedom to express your views without hindrance, and that includes people not going out of their way to sneer at you. They can disagree with you in forthright terms and it works better than Scarfe-style cartoons.
I don't think it should be illegal to be offensive - but it's nearly always going to lose you the argument by upsetting both your opponents and neutral bystanders. And the cartoons aren't trying to make a point, they are all about being offensive for the fun of it, like that exhibit of a crucifix in urine called "piss Christ" which stirred people up some years ago. I absolutely defend their right to do it, but I think it's a pity to want to upset someone's faith, very like vandalising their garden.
Absolutely agree Nick. Freedom of speech is extremely important, but it is often used (particularly by those on the hard right and hard left) as an excuse to be offensive, when the real motivation is that they don't like religion per se (which is pretty childish in most cases) or the ethnicity or skin colour of those that generally espouse the religion.
Why is not liking religion childish? Sounds like you might be sneering there!
I probably was, but I didn't say not liking religion was childish, just that many who express such views do so from a very childish perspective. Most people who get a kick from debunking other peoples' faith are often as prejudiced and simplistic as many Christian evangelicals or devout Muslim , and often more so. They are often closed minded. A belief in atheism is as much a belief as a belief in a deity. Neither positions are genuinely provable, so require "faith". Those that mock others for having faith are simply underlining their own insecurities.
I agree, but with a distinction.
I am an atheist who was brought up in a very religious (Christian) household and works with many very religious people (mostly Muslim), and who respects those who are religious.
For me, atheism is a belief, but not one that requires faith. Belief in a deity(s) does require faith.
Not quite. Belief that there is a deity (say, on the best explanation of why there is something rather than nothing) may be just that, without any sort of personal trust or trust in the saving power or whatever of that deity.
Belief that there is or is not a God are in this sense equal positions. Neither can possibly be demonstrated by proof of a logical variety, and any amount of inductive style proof either for or against God can either be dismissed as insufficient (Russell) or dismissed as an intellectual mistake (Kant).
Spot on. Always found it amusing how performative atheists think believing the Universe spontaneously popped in to existance from a prior zero dimensional nothingness beyond comprehension is any less insane than the idea of a Deity creating it - they're equally bonkers, there is no common sense option available.
They're not equally bonkers.
The idea that the Universe was created by a specific deity mankind has invented is equivalent to the belief that the sun rotates around the earth pushed by a scarab beetle.
As for the origins of the Universe the correct scientific thing to do is to postulate theories and look for evidence and to acknowledge what we don't know or understand yet, not to insert in a deity invented by people thousands of years ago to explain the unknown.
But there's no 'yet' to it. If you don't see that science can't possibly give a complete final answer to that question, you haven't yet understood the question. It's perfectly reasonable to think a specific deity is laughable, or that a diety in general is an unnecessary middle step, but there's no getting away from existance itself being utterly fucking crazy.
Even if you never get a complete and final answer the myths humanity invented thousands of years ago are not an equivalent answer.
It's like the old riddle of what was the tallest mountain before Everest was discovered?
Just because there are some questions humanity doesn't know the answer to, just because we might never know the answer, doesn't make myths that were invented an accurate answer.
I don't disagree - people have to make their own judgement on what they believe to be true.
But trying to apply scientitific rigour to a subject that is explicity forever outside the possibility of a scientific explanation does rather induce the same sort of groan you clearly make when you see a religious fool.
It's indisputable that something exists, and science can never explain why the alternative default of no matter, no dimensions, not even no nothing isn't the case. You're free to simply say we can never know to my satisfaction, so we shouldn't speculate, but either way we're left with the discombobulatingly odd fact of existance.
We may not know why the Big Bang happened, but we have plenty of evidence now that it did.
What we do not have any evidence for is that the heaven and earth was created on one day and then five days later humanity was created.
Myths were invented in the past. Those myths were products of man, not deities. Believing in these myths today are not the same as not believing in them.
The big bang is neither here nor there - it's not a theory that remotely touches the question I'm trying to point out.
I'm sorry but it is relevant, since the discussion began as to whether belief in a specific deities existence is equivalent to not believing in any specific deity.
Because the myths mankind invented detailed not just who created the universe but how too and the how was wrong; because it was invented by men to explain what they didn't know, not dictated to man by the deity that created the universe.
The police know no such thing. Very little of this stuff ever comes before the police. This has come out because girls have been speaking up about what has happened to them in schools - both state and private - and how this has been largely ignored, glossed over, described as banter etc.
Clearly all those "respecting women" classes that people on here assured me were happening when I raised this issue in the wake of the Everard case have not worked out as hoped.
In fact that was an all-time legendary PB thread.
You did your potent header (on misogyny) and within one hour the main point of discussion BTL was on the best pickup techniques and how many "notches on the belt" people had.
Specially for TSE, here is the best Suez container ship story to date, care of the New York Post:
"As the operation to free the leviathan reaches a climax, a ship bearing about 20 containers of dildos, vibrators and male masturbators may finally continue its voyage and get the adult toys into the eager hands of frustrated customers, the UK’s Metro reported.
"EDC Retail — a Dutch company that runs the biggest online sex toys shop in the Netherlands and Belgium — predicts it is losing millions because it has been unable to replenish its stocks after huge sales during the coronavirus lockdown and Valentine’s Day, according to the outlet."
Hmm, didn't know the NYP had a British tabloid line in double entendres!
Can anyone point me to a good and detailed account of the cartoon imbroglio at Batley Grammar School?
I'm really interested in the content of the lesson, and the particular cartoons published - which seem to be from one of the Charlie Hebdo sets.
But we seem to have the usual rabbit hole - "we are going to spend ages talking about this, but it's sooooooooooooooooooo offensive that we will not show the picture / read out the tweet" etc.
I wonder if those Hebdo cartoons - those specifically - have become like the N word for Muslims? Regardless of context and intent, deployment by an outsider risks enormous offence and therefore the best and safest approach, the default in almost all circumstances, is to not. Find another way.
And yes, I know, "blasphemy law by the back door" and "where do you draw the line?" bla bla, I do get that point, and it's a good one, but still. A civilized society is not driven by absolutist principles. Absolutist principles are for extremists and zealots and this includes "free speech" extremists and zealots.
We "draw the line" with things all the time. We weigh up competing interests and values, micro vs macro, long vs short term, theory vs practice, and we decide where the sweet spot lies. We don't always get it right, but we have a bash. It's one of the many things that make this country a very amenable place to live.
Absolutely not.
Skin colour is something people are born with and can't change.
Religion is a belief system and like all belief systems should be able to face rigourous, fierce and offensive scrutiny and challenge.
If you can't be offensive about someone's beliefs there is no such thing as free speech.
Free speech is freedom to express your views without hindrance, and that includes people not going out of their way to sneer at you. They can disagree with you in forthright terms and it works better than Scarfe-style cartoons.
I don't think it should be illegal to be offensive - but it's nearly always going to lose you the argument by upsetting both your opponents and neutral bystanders. And the cartoons aren't trying to make a point, they are all about being offensive for the fun of it, like that exhibit of a crucifix in urine called "piss Christ" which stirred people up some years ago. I absolutely defend their right to do it, but I think it's a pity to want to upset someone's faith, very like vandalising their garden.
Absolutely agree Nick. Freedom of speech is extremely important, but it is often used (particularly by those on the hard right and hard left) as an excuse to be offensive, when the real motivation is that they don't like religion per se (which is pretty childish in most cases) or the ethnicity or skin colour of those that generally espouse the religion.
Why is not liking religion childish? Sounds like you might be sneering there!
I probably was, but I didn't say not liking religion was childish, just that many who express such views do so from a very childish perspective. Most people who get a kick from debunking other peoples' faith are often as prejudiced and simplistic as many Christian evangelicals or devout Muslim , and often more so. They are often closed minded. A belief in atheism is as much a belief as a belief in a deity. Neither positions are genuinely provable, so require "faith". Those that mock others for having faith are simply underlining their own insecurities.
I agree, but with a distinction.
I am an atheist who was brought up in a very religious (Christian) household and works with many very religious people (mostly Muslim), and who respects those who are religious.
For me, atheism is a belief, but not one that requires faith. Belief in a deity(s) does require faith.
Not quite. Belief that there is a deity (say, on the best explanation of why there is something rather than nothing) may be just that, without any sort of personal trust or trust in the saving power or whatever of that deity.
Belief that there is or is not a God are in this sense equal positions. Neither can possibly be demonstrated by proof of a logical variety, and any amount of inductive style proof either for or against God can either be dismissed as insufficient (Russell) or dismissed as an intellectual mistake (Kant).
Spot on. Always found it amusing how performative atheists think believing the Universe spontaneously popped in to existance from a prior zero dimensional nothingness beyond comprehension is any less insane than the idea of a Deity creating it - they're equally bonkers, there is no common sense option available.
They're not equally bonkers.
The idea that the Universe was created by a specific deity mankind has invented is equivalent to the belief that the sun rotates around the earth pushed by a scarab beetle.
As for the origins of the Universe the correct scientific thing to do is to postulate theories and look for evidence and to acknowledge what we don't know or understand yet, not to insert in a deity invented by people thousands of years ago to explain the unknown.
But there's no 'yet' to it. If you don't see that science can't possibly give a complete final answer to that question, you haven't yet understood the question. It's perfectly reasonable to think a specific deity is laughable, or that a diety in general is an unnecessary middle step, but there's no getting away from existance itself being utterly fucking crazy.
Even if you never get a complete and final answer the myths humanity invented thousands of years ago are not an equivalent answer.
It's like the old riddle of what was the tallest mountain before Everest was discovered?
Just because there are some questions humanity doesn't know the answer to, just because we might never know the answer, doesn't make myths that were invented an accurate answer.
I don't disagree - people have to make their own judgement on what they believe to be true.
But trying to apply scientitific rigour to a subject that is explicity forever outside the possibility of a scientific explanation does rather induce the same sort of groan you clearly make when you see a religious fool.
It's indisputable that something exists, and science can never explain why the alternative default of no matter, no dimensions, not even no nothing isn't the case. You're free to simply say we can never know to my satisfaction, so we shouldn't speculate, but either way we're left with the discombobulatingly odd fact of existance.
We may not know why the Big Bang happened, but we have plenty of evidence now that it did.
What we do not have any evidence for is that the heaven and earth was created on one day and then five days later humanity was created.
Myths were invented in the past. Those myths were products of man, not deities. Believing in these myths today are not the same as not believing in them.
The big bang is neither here nor there - it's not a theory that remotely touches the question I'm trying to point out.
I'm sorry but it is relevant, since the discussion began as to whether belief in a specific deities existence is equivalent to not believing in any specific deity.
Because the myths mankind invented detailed not just who created the universe but how too and the how was wrong; because it was invented by men to explain what they didn't know, not dictated to man by the deity that created the universe.
At this point we're just talking past each other - I only posted to note the repeated habit of enthusiastic atheists to have failed to grasp the wonder/insanity of existance under any explanation or none. You clearly find your arguments persuasive, and I certainly feel reinforced in the point I was making.
It is more profitable to ask if there was any way we could have avoided a de facto blasphemy law, once we allowed large scale Muslim/Sikh immigration (which unhappily coincided with Islam itself taking a fundamentalist turn)
That's straight out of the Enoch Powell guide to misinformation.
The law of blasphemy had nothing to do with immigration. It was a Christian derivation and arose out of canon law, becoming enshrined in 1841. It was part and parcel of the Christian fabric of this country. Nothing whatsoever to do with Muslims or Sikhs.
It was most famously used by that architect of all things censorious, Mary Whitehouse. Gay News dared to publish in 1977 the rather wonderful poem by James Kirkup, The Love that Dares Not Speak its Name. The gay author gets off on the naked male figure nailed to the cross but in so doing he's actually very close to the same sentiments of erotic love expressed by George Herbert in 'Love Bade me Welcome' or, indeed, the Song of Songs or, indeed, the writings of Julian of Norwich.
Whitehouse instigated prosecution under the blasphemy law and in that case was successful. All because someone wrote something vaguely sexual about Jesus on the Cross. Nowt to do with Islam. She also tried to get Life of Brian banned under the same blasphemy law.
Amusingly from 1975 a pornographic magazine was published under the title Whitehouse ...
She was a dreadful old bat of the Ann Widdecombe variety.
A fundamentalist i.e. no fun and half mental.
The blasphemy law was abolished in 2008.
You are absolutely right. But you have missed the "de facto" in @Leon's post. You and he are talking about different things. Blasphemy - as an offence against Christianity has been abolished legally - and had largely fallen into disuse before then apart from mad old bats like Mrs Whitehouse. But @Leon's concern is that a de facto one has arisen in its place driven by Islamic and subsequently Sikh concerns.
Yeah but he's talking drivel.
See my second post. There are always some limits to freedom of expression. J.S. Mill's freedom ethic was to defend it at all costs providing in so doing you are not causing others harm. Standing up in a school and advocating sex with children isn't permitted. Nor is incitement to cause acts of terrorism.
An it harm none, do what thou wilt. The key here with the crap and unfunny Hebdo cartoon is whether it falls foul of the former.
But certain denizens of Camden would love to have the idea of an entirely free wheeling freedom of expression.
P.I.E. used the same argument ...
And if I recall my history, it was the "mad old bat" Mary Whtehouse who was instrumental in exposing P.I.E the Pasdophile Information Exchange.
Can anyone point me to a good and detailed account of the cartoon imbroglio at Batley Grammar School?
I'm really interested in the content of the lesson, and the particular cartoons published - which seem to be from one of the Charlie Hebdo sets.
But we seem to have the usual rabbit hole - "we are going to spend ages talking about this, but it's sooooooooooooooooooo offensive that we will not show the picture / read out the tweet" etc.
I wonder if those Hebdo cartoons - those specifically - have become like the N word for Muslims? Regardless of context and intent, deployment by an outsider risks enormous offence and therefore the best and safest approach, the default in almost all circumstances, is to not. Find another way.
And yes, I know, "blasphemy law by the back door" and "where do you draw the line?" bla bla, I do get that point, and it's a good one, but still. A civilized society is not driven by absolutist principles. Absolutist principles are for extremists and zealots and this includes "free speech" extremists and zealots.
We "draw the line" with things all the time. We weigh up competing interests and values, micro vs macro, long vs short term, theory vs practice, and we decide where the sweet spot lies. We don't always get it right, but we have a bash. It's one of the many things that make this country a very amenable place to live.
What an interesting perspective! Bearing all that in mind, I'm sure you'll have no objection if all discussion of socialism and its adjuncts is 'avoided' in the public sphere under penalty of force - after all, socialism is pretty damned offensive to those who don't believe in in, who in this case actually form a majority.
Regardless of context and intent, deployment by an outsider risks enormous offence and therefore the best and safest approach, the default in almost all circumstances, is to not.
And yes, I know 'fascism by the back door' and 'where do you draw the line?' bla bla, I do get that point, and it's a good one, but still. A civilized society is not driven by absolutist principles. Absolutist principles are for extremists and zealots and this includes "free speech" extremists and zealots...
I'd say that was the situation pre 2015 and we show every sign of returning to it. I certainly self-censor myself these days. I carry out no end of contortions - some of them quite taxing and painful - to avoid the "S" word.
Lol - I take it I've made my point. Now imagine that every time you failed to self-censor those offensive words and concepts - a casual reference to the need to nationalize Eton, for example - an angry mob turned up outside your door and you were lucky to get away with a grovelling apology for your wrongthink.
It's very easy to sneer at absolute principles when you don't think the unpleasant consequences of their being compromised will happen to you.
It's similar to the discussion on racism the other day. Universal concepts are great but in the real world need to be flexed and tempered for best understanding and results. If I was doing a philosophy exam paper, I'd probably roll out a lot of this "first principles" stuff that you are attracted to (when it suits you), I can do it, but it just feels like a waste of time. Maybe I'm getting old.
More likely you can sense that the foundations of so much of the postmodern moral edifice you've invested yourself in are so rotten that you'd rather not inspect them for fear of what you might find...
If you refer to Woke, absolutely not. The more I go into it, and in particular clock the shallowness and special pleading of the objections, the more I buy in, both intellectually and emotionally. I am not a Woke person, far from it. I'm a Yorkshireman of late middle age, with all that that entails. But the movement, I am four square behind. It's a reckoning with two of the forces that have moulded the western world - white supremacy racism and misogyny. They've had their own way for a long time. Time to reappraise and reset. It's bound to be a rocky ride.
People who have their life-long world view horribly challenged, as is clearly happening to you (“OMG maybe wokeness can be bad after all?!”) often react, at first, by investing even more in their faith-system, as it simultaneously totters. It’s a known phenomenon in cult members when they initially experience doubts.
The vast majority of those being challenged to their core, and reacting by clinging ever tighter to old shibboleths, are people like you.
Comments
Those who were against leaving the European Union were free to make their case in 2016 and many did. They had valid arguments. Those arguments lost. It happens. Changes happens and all changes come with costs.
If all changes could only be made if they were cost-free then we'd never change anything. That is a Luddite attitude.
Sexual abuse rife in UK's state and private schools, say police
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/mar/27/sexual-abuse-rife-in-state-schools-say-police
The BBC deserves threats to the licence fee because the licence fee is wrong in principle, not because of flags.
There does seem to be a reluctance to consider these people as thugs.
Most countries manage without it. In many it is outlawed.
My teachers rotated between preaching zealots and clearly bored under informed NQT's who'd got the short straw.
Seems to cause no end of bother, and almost no student I can recall enjoys it.
I certainly didn't emerge from years of it finding my horizons or general knowledge broadened particularly.
Leaving aside the 4% NHS pay rise afaik without knowing where the £200m is coming from, we also have "under 22s exempt from Council Tax".
Funny proposal - how many under 22s live in their own home?
Clearly schools don't want negative press, so it wouldn't surprise me if schools have been trying to hush up things like this.
Belief that there is or is not a God are in this sense equal positions. Neither can possibly be demonstrated by proof of a logical variety, and any amount of inductive style proof either for or against God can either be dismissed as insufficient (Russell) or dismissed as an intellectual mistake (Kant).
Y members of election staff need to be paid for
Votes need to be counted (and the people doing it paid for)
That rapidly adds up.
Obviously just concerned parents
https://twitter.com/spikedonline/status/1376504524798636035?s=21
Clearly all those "respecting women" classes that people on here assured me were happening when I raised this issue in the wake of the Everard case have not worked out as hoped.
I don't believe in invisible pink unicorns, is that position equivalent to those who do believe in invisible pink unicorns?
Is believing that aliens are real and have visited the earth equivalent to not believing that?
Belief in something and the absence of belief are not equivalent.
"Someone comes up to you and suggested committing financial crime."
Do you
1) Enthusiastically commit the crime
2) Suggest he talks to Dave as well, since Dave is always up for a bit of fraud
3) Call compliance.
To get more specific - what about the "hate speech" laws?
Ditch them? Just take religion out of them?
So kids need to learn. The only question is the context
The law of blasphemy had nothing to do with immigration. It was a Christian derivation and arose out of canon law, becoming enshrined in 1841. It was part and parcel of the Christian fabric of this country. Nothing whatsoever to do with Muslims or Sikhs.
It was most famously used by that architect of all things censorious, Mary Whitehouse. Gay News dared to publish in 1977 the rather wonderful poem by James Kirkup, The Love that Dares Not Speak its Name. The gay author gets off on the naked male figure nailed to the cross but in so doing he's actually very close to the same sentiments of erotic love expressed by George Herbert in 'Love Bade me Welcome' or, indeed, the Song of Songs or, indeed, the writings of Julian of Norwich.
Whitehouse instigated prosecution under the blasphemy law and in that case was successful. All because someone wrote something vaguely sexual about Jesus on the Cross. Nowt to do with Islam. She also tried to get Life of Brian banned under the same blasphemy law.
Amusingly from 1975 a pornographic magazine was published under the title Whitehouse ...
She was a dreadful old bat of the Ann Widdecombe variety.
A fundamentalist i.e. no fun and half mental.
The blasphemy law was abolished in 2008.
I tended to meet those who thought 1 and 2 were correct, sometimes even after doing 3.
If you want to look at seriously curtailed education and free speech, you're looking in the wrong place. The real problem is in many faith schools (C of E, Islamic, RC, Jewish) where controversial issues are jettisoned or rarely discussed, with students being fed a diet of beliefs in line with their faiths. Not in most, I accept, but in a large minority.
(Although, tbf, that one's backfired a bit, as people are wondering why wait for an election before divvying those out. After all, the need for at-home schooling began a year ago.)
But we can safely it's Xmas and your birthday all at once if you fall within a key SNP voter demographic.
- Free speech to be "flexed and tempered"
- "where to draw the line"
- "the best and safest approach, the default in almost all circumstances, is to not" show these cartoons.
What you have not done is face down the protesters.Hence it's entirely right and proper to restrict freedom of speech on such areas as incitement to terrorism or sex with animals and children.
It's not rocket science to be frank. Unless you live in Camden in which case it vexes you beyond measure.
On a serious note - given my observations of children, they will rapidly adapt to score 100% on their Respec' The Ladies courses/tests.
And I am quite sure that Constable Savage gets 100% on his Racial Sensitivity Training courses. Probably arrests people at BLM protests for being in possession of Black Coffee, now...
Speculative cosmological science is so extreme it goes round the back and overlaps with religion. Oddly similar to the way the extreme left, at its outermost fringes, shades into the extreme right - making the political spectrum a circle
It's remarkable how often even when you think you've met the stupidest person yet the next one does something even stupider.
And the number of times I've heard the excuse that it seemed a good idea because everyone else was doing it....
https://twitter.com/mattsteinglass/status/1376442411489107970?s=21
See my second post. There are always some limits to freedom of expression. J.S. Mill's freedom ethic was to defend it at all costs providing in so doing you are not causing others harm. Standing up in a school and advocating sex with children isn't permitted. Nor is incitement to cause acts of terrorism.
An it harm none, do what thou wilt. The key here with the crap and unfunny Hebdo cartoon is whether it falls foul of the former.
But certain denizens of Camden would love to have the idea of an entirely free wheeling freedom of expression.
P.I.E. used the same argument ...
The idea that the Universe was created by a specific deity mankind has invented is equivalent to the belief that the sun rotates around the earth pushed by a scarab beetle.
As for the origins of the Universe the correct scientific thing to do is to postulate theories and look for evidence and to acknowledge what we don't know or understand yet, not to insert in a deity invented by people thousands of years ago to explain the unknown.
These courses, especially the online ones, are easy to game.
Asking for a friend.....
{sotto voce : where are my nomination papers.... }
Re: thread subject. Entirely agree. That's why I've been tipping it here for months.
Here's a slightly more off the wall tip. Paddy Power are giving 8/1 on Meghan/Harry baby being born in May. With no insider knowledge, this seems a decent punt to me. Briefly, there was the court case delay in October due to "personal reasons" for "at least 9 months" which to any one with a brain meant she was pregnant. You don't do this sort of thing when you're a little bit late with your period. In other words she likely 8-12 weeks pregnant at that point. But the favourite is July? I'm not having it. She looks quite pregnant in the Opera interview too. And even if the above analysis, such as it is, is completely wrong, there's a chance of prematurity. Just wish I could get April at circa 25/1 to cover. You read it here first.
Though if the latter is the case then Harris may not run either and the Democrats might seek a younger candidate
Do you think gay people should be able to demand the bible and quran are burned because they contain anti-gay passages?
Those holy texts have some wretched parts. But I would not see them burned, nor adherents of those faiths subjected to threats of murder.
And nor should the great and dreadful blasphemy of drawing, or showing, a cartoon be seen as just cause for death threats, and nor should such threatening barbarians be indulged by those who should know better.
Free speech with limits imposed by the threat of murder is no free speech at all.
And I'll shoot anyone who disagrees into the heart of the sun using a gigantic cannon.
[You can smile if you want to. Unlike the choppy choppy nutcases, I don't really mean it.]
Did he really answer the questions honestly?
Falling the derivatives exam is all too likely. Did he think that risk didn't move with underlying interest rates, by any chance?
The Charlie Hebdo cartoons have involved multiple murders, which I would want to consider more carefully I think. Including a teacher murdered after a pupil lied about having been shown the cartoons.
The context of deception and exploitation by religious leaders, mixing politics with religious teaching, is very important - setting simple looking declarations in a proper complex context, and encouraging kids to reflect on that.
Also this thing "I love free speech", is often just a facile, virtue-signalling applause line for people running from serious thought. Untramelled free speech is NOT an unalloyed treasure to be defended to the death. We have free speech under the law. The law rightly recognizes that words can be as violent as swords.
What would you rather be on the end of, a relentless torrent of dehumanizing abuse or a punch in the nose?
These things are not "no brainers". They're only no brainers to those lacking one.
A majority of the world's population still have it whether via Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism etc they just differ in culture and how they worship and in the case of Hinduism how many Gods they have.
https://twitter.com/keiranpedley/status/1376481734326386690?s=20
Because you will. And you know it.
Free speech in schools is not absolute - as is made clear by (eg) the Teaching Standards. There are clearly more constraints (both for pupils and teachers) than exist in wider society.
The behaviour of protestors - and the ridiculous claims that parents should have a say in disciplining the teacher - are quite another matter, and should be the subject of pushback. Government cannot leave that to the school.
I was worried our vax numbers would plunge as we head into April. Let’s hope they keep this up. If we can average half a million a day that would be dandy
It's like the old riddle of what was the tallest mountain before Everest was discovered?
Just because there are some questions humanity doesn't know the answer to, just because we might never know the answer, doesn't make myths that were invented an accurate answer.
How would I handle it? Not sure depending on curriculum requirements. Perhaps via an historical lens.
The problem I have with the 'no one wants to share it' vs 'climate of fear' argument, is that it is very difficult to draw lines. Therefore I think the only possible place to put the principle is free speech is the ruling principle.
Regardless, the analogies you apply to this case are entirely inapposite. Teachers who make particular educational decisions in most areas of the curriculum in most schools are not subjected to intimidation or forced to go into hiding. But in this one, they are. Why exactly is that, if an undemocratic - and very selective - blasphemy law is not now in force?
https://twitter.com/nadhimzahawi/status/1376523946330370048
Wouldn't it be easier just to plant an oak or some such ?
I can see Johnson liking the idea of the Boris Oak...
https://twitter.com/jonworth/status/1376523318635995136?s=21
But you could use others - the Satanic Verses for instance or the Danish cartoons or cancelled plays. And the question I have is this - if the issues around blasphemy and challenge had been centred around a book, a book which didn't even need to be read or even shown to the class but the title of which was mentioned in class, would this imam and all the others protesting have been ok with that?
I wonder.
I think that this is not about the awfulness or otherwise of cartoons but about the fact that there are people who do not want their world views challenged and, in particular, do not want what they have taught their children to be challenged. It's about control and their fear of losing control over their young.
Free speech and free thinking is a challenge to that which is why people like this imam should not be allowed to win this argument. Education is about opening people's minds to stuff that might be heretical, dangerous, challenging, difficult, even frightening.
Biden was quite clear about how old he is.
But trying to apply scientitific rigour to a subject that is explicity forever outside the possibility of a scientific explanation does rather induce the same sort of groan you clearly make when you see a religious fool.
It's indisputable that something exists, and science can never explain why the alternative default of no matter, no dimensions, not even no nothing isn't the case. You're free to simply say we can never know to my satisfaction, so we shouldn't speculate, but either way we're left with the discombobulatingly odd fact of existance.
This is (very long read) critique* with which I have some sympathy:
https://www.americanpurpose.com/articles/the-tolling-bell/
*It's making a far larger point, too.
- The Norwegians etc. simple, straight down the line, high standards and kept them themselves.
- {}
- The Americans. Would start the lawsuits before the contract was signed...
- {}
- Right at the bottom, the countries who had to lodge a big wedge of money in Switzerland under third party escrow before anything would be done....
What we do not have any evidence for is that the heaven and earth was created on one day and then five days later humanity was created.
Myths were invented in the past. Those myths were products of man, not deities. Believing in these myths today are not the same as not believing in them.
The EU have made their bed now.
The only person who ever read this stuff - and the CVs - and the lies contained in them - and the appraisals and the lies contained in them - and the emails and chats etc was me - and when people like me are reading this stuff you already have a problem.
We will see Thursday or so, but on the 21st, there were only about 5 million over 50's without a first vaccination and 2.9 million more vaccinations since then.
French pharma firm found guilty over medical scandal in which up to 2,000 died
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/mar/29/french-pharma-firm-found-guilty-over-medical-scandal-in-which-up-to-2000-died
One wonders if they should be given extra allowance for hibernation, too (like dog years vs humans, only in the other direction).
"As the operation to free the leviathan reaches a climax, a ship bearing about 20 containers of dildos, vibrators and male masturbators may finally continue its voyage and get the adult toys into the eager hands of frustrated customers, the UK’s Metro reported.
"EDC Retail — a Dutch company that runs the biggest online sex toys shop in the Netherlands and Belgium — predicts it is losing millions because it has been unable to replenish its stocks after huge sales during the coronavirus lockdown and Valentine’s Day, according to the outlet."
Because the myths mankind invented detailed not just who created the universe but how too and the how was wrong; because it was invented by men to explain what they didn't know, not dictated to man by the deity that created the universe.
You did your potent header (on misogyny) and within one hour the main point of discussion BTL was on the best pickup techniques and how many "notches on the belt" people had.