Beer tax increases cost 20,000 jobs -really?

The report here Beer tax increases cost 20,000 jobs so far | Politics | guardian.co.uk tells us that the brewing trade would have us believe: "A record 2,000 British pubs have closed with the loss of 20,000 jobs since the chancellor, Alistair Darling, increased beer tax in the 2008 budget," Now come on: where's the in-depth journalism on this? We need to know answers to questions like this:
Since pubs have been closing rapidly for a number of years, what is the adjusted effect of the increase in tax? And if the appeal is to jobs in the UK, what is the effect in terms of jobs created or lost elsewhere? For example in hospitals and other health care areas mopping up the effects of alcohol consumption: ditto, police time, courts' time, probation services etc. Not to mention the effect that money that might otherwise have been spent on alcoholic drinks being spent on, say, DVDs or gyms or pizza ... so let's have a bit more contextual thinking about this and some more incisive journalism.

And then there's the paradox of some things improving GDP but maybe not being good for the nations health in a holistic sense. Cleaning up pollution adds to the monetary economy, for example, but it would be far better not to produce it in the first place and to encourage different kinds of employment and manufacture.

Israel and Palestine in the media

Now this is a challenging and thought-provoking post which shows how bias in newsreporting works (though of course it begs the obvious question about whose bias). It's here: Undercurrents Alternative News: Israel and Palestine in the media And here's a snippet to get you going: "the BBC tend to sit on the fence or lean more to the the right when reporting about Palestine. The Israeli organised media saturation campaign seems to be working. They wage a word war against anyone with an opinion about the middle east (the comments on this posting will probably be lively). Anyhow here is a compilation of how the BBC can report the Israeli attacks on Gaza in a more honest way.

BBC Reporting- 'Palestinians say Israeli F-16 bombers have launched a series of air strikes against key targets in the Gaza Strip, killing and injuring dozens of people.'
UNBIASED - The Palesting government has confirmed that Israel has used f16 bombers, funded by the USA, to launch attacks against key targets in the GAZA strip, killing over 100 and injuring 400 .

BBC reporting - 'Missiles destroyed security compounds run by the militant group Hamas in the centre of Gaza City, killing at least 120 people, Hamas officials said.'
UNBIASED - Missiles destroyed security compounds (such as police stations) in civilian areas, run by the democraticly elected government Hamas, in the centre of Gaza city, killing at least 120 people, government officials said."
Whether or not you agree with the word 'unbiased' in there, it is certainly a kind of role reversal in that it tends to grant the palestinian authority similar 'rights' in reporting that are granted to the Israeli government; and that's the eye-opener; suddenly we realise what assumptions are being routinely smuggled into the reporting.

Church owes Charles Darwin apology over evolution theory?

Another example of journalistic oversimplification making a charged headline out of something really rather mundane. It's here: Church owes Charles Darwin apology over evolution theory, says senior Anglican | World news | guardian.co.uk; "A Church of England spokesman said Brown's piece was a 'personal view' of Darwin's contribution to science and did not amount to an official apology by the church."
That's the important bit to start with really (the article has it last). The only reason that it gets the official apology treatment is that it appears on the CofE's website as one of a series of articles on Darwin, the Origin of Species and related matters. I'm not sure one can offer an apology, except rhetorically, to a dead person. Regret could be expressed, a change of heart and attitude can be testified to, amends might even be made where applicable. But in this space-time continuum, it's too late to apologise. So I really don't know which box to dot in this survey.Because, apart from anything else, it may appear that to say 'no' to the question "Should the Church apologise to Charles Darwin?" is to say some church reactions (and this is the other difficulty, not all by any means) were justified in their dismissiveness and even venom. Whereas I want to say 'no' because of the reasons I give above.

I guess the other thing we can do is learn to be slow to judge and careful to listen more fully and to think more carefully about new stuff.

Rowan's Sharia remarks: a BBC set-up

In line with the way that I was reading the media but opening up the matter to more concerning scrutiny, Wardman Wire does a fairly in-depth examination of what happened. And it contains many implied caveats for all of us news consumers. Here's the nub of the allegations.

1. The story was trailed at the top of the news programme with the headline: The Archbishop of Canterbury has said that the adoption of Sharia Law in some parts of Britain is inevitable. (No he didn’t, or not in the way that your headline was inevitably going to make people think.)
2. The BBC was running an article before it broadcast the interview under the heading: Sharia law in UK is ‘unavoidable’, with the first paragraph: The Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams says the adoption of Islamic Sharia law in the UK is “unavoidable”. (ditto)
3. The BBC website is a key source of news for ALL the media, and has 13 million unique visitors per week.
4. Reactions from bloggers to the headlines were coming in before the 9 minute interview had even finished .
5. As far as I can tell, most of the initial abusive reaction and vitriol (from “idiotic” to “bonkers” through various less gentle insults) has been linked to this story on the BBC website.
6. “Sharia” in this country is as much a “red-rag to a blood-blind-bull” as is “paedophile”. It excites similar extreme and irrational “shoot from the hip” reactions.

Of course commentators were going to react to the headline, not the interview - especially as speed of response is such a differentiator. The reality is that the way the BBC handled this story guaranteed that the furore would happen.

We are then treated to a careful deconstruction of the 'official' line from the BBC on what happened. It ain't pretty but it is important for anyone interested in commenting on news to read.

Archbishop and Sharia law

I keep highlighting areas where news reporting seems to be giving a different story in the headlines to what the details seem to tell. Well it seems to me that this is another. This is a fairly accurate reportage of what the ABC said. Taken from this reportArchbishop ignites Sharia law row - Home News, UK - Independent.co.uk: "'We already have in this country a number of situations in which the internal law of religious communities is recognised by the law of the land as justifying conscientious objections in certain circumstances. ... There is a place for finding what would be a constructive accommodation with some aspects of Muslim law as we already do with aspects of other kinds of religious law. It would be quite wrong to say that we could ever license a system of law for some community which gave people no right of appeal, no way of exercising the rights that are guaranteed to them as citizens in general. But there are ways of looking at marital disputes, for example, which provide an alternative to the divorce courts as we understand them. In some cultural and religious settings they would seem more appropriate.'"
In other words he was not proposing or defending sharia law, merely saying that, in line with other 'conscience' clauses recognised in British law, some provisions might be accommodated where they don't conflict with existing legal principles or human rights. He was most certainly not defending amputations, the legal half-value of women as witnesses or stonings for adultery or blasphemy. However, to read the headlines you'd think that he had defended and proposed those things.

Shame on the Christians (eg the first few comments on this post) who weighed in on the side of secular headlinists without honouring a brother in Christ with a proper hearing first.
Sheesh.

PS I think my position is vindicated by what is said in this article. And if you want a view of why some people of a Muslim background are wary read Yasmin Alibhai Brown's article (but note that here emotionally understandable engagement with the issue means that she attributes to Rowan what he is careful not to say). And I think Deborah Orr is spot on when she says; "if we are to think intelligently about the relations between Islam and British law, we need a fair amount of 'deconstruction' of crude oppositions and mythologies, whether of the nature of sharia or the nature of the Enlightenment". I think it's safe to say that hardly a soul is heeding his warning. Crude oppositions and mythologies are exactly what people are rushing headlong to display. ... robust as all of these rebuttals are, the fact is that none of them really contradicts what Williams was actually attempting to say. ... far from the setting up of sharia courts that Williams has been painted as advocating, ... Williams is more concerned about other, more challenging elisions of religious and cultural belief in British Muslim communities. He is worried that "recognition of 'supplementary jurisdiction' in some areas, especially family law, could have the effect of reinforcing in minority communities some of the most repressive or retrograde elements in them, with particularly serious consequences for the role and liberties of women"
PPS Faith and Theology also has a nice comment in this post. Particularly apposite, and reflecting one of my own unpublished thoughts, was this: "the Archbishop’s biggest problem is simply that he’s so much smarter than anyone else in the Church, and of course infinitely smarter than the poor news media, who haven’t the faintest idea what he’s actually talking about. The result is a public spectacle of stunning, breathtaking misunderstanding. (Today, some outraged nincompoop in the English Church was even calling for Williams’ resignation...)" And illustrating my point about editors writing or outlining stories before they know the facts: "Kim Fabricius going head-to-head on BBC radio with Peter Hitchens (editor of the Sunday Mail) – the best moment is where Kim forces Hitchens to confess that he hasn’t even read the lecture for himself!"