Question BNP hard

I had a letter publish in the Church Times a handful of months back. In it I said that we shouldn't be banning the BNP but rather making sure its arguments are heard and their refutation is heard and they have the hard questions posed and are held to answer them. And in this article: Question Time's BNP opportunity | Hugh Muir | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk Hugh Muir identifies a good set of questions to start with: "with his hands on the tiller and the nationalist courts his supporters speak of in place, who would he see thrown out of the country? The party now says it favours voluntary repatriation rather than the rounding up of minorities in the middle of the night, but what if no-one goes? What next? A reign of terror to drive them out or an acceptance of the hated multi cultural status quo?

And who would be invited to leave? The BNP isn't very keen on miscegenation, so all the mixed heritage relationships it sees must be driving it crazy. 'Native' Britons should have priority, it says, in terms of housing and employment. So would a mixed heritage couple fall back while the claims of an all white couple are accelerated? To what extent would the whiteness of the white partner protect their position in the pecking order. Would they be housed separately, for example? Perhaps the white partner could have a nicer flat on the floor above the non white.

What would qualify as white? What about a white person with black ancestors? There is more of that than you might think. How might this differ from apartheid?"
And there's more; go and look.

PM etc 10:10 yay

I find this somewhat encouraging: Gordon Brown turns down heat and Peter Mandelson gets on his bike to support 10:10 campaign | Environment | The Guardian: "The prime minister said he would turn down his central heating by one degree, ensure his appliances were not left on standby and recycle more. 'It is these small changes that, if everyone does them, will make a big difference,' Brown said, 'With fewer than 100 days until [UN climate talks in Copenhagen], this is a great opportunity to show we are all prepared to take action.'"
Just as long as they don't think that's all they have to do: but the solidifying effect of taking action and doing so publicly is probably a Good Thing.

Eco-justice and ecological debt

This is from a recent WCC introduction to the statement Statement on eco-justice and ecological debt. I reckon that the term 'ecological debt' might be the one least familiar to readers, so here's what it says: "The concept of ecological debt has been shaped to measure the real cost that policies of expansion and globalization have had on developing nations, a debt that some say industrialized nations should repay. Dr Joan Martinez Alier, a professor at the Universidad Aut�noma de Barcelona in Spain, said climate change, unequal trade, 'bio-piracy', exports of toxic waste and other factors have added to the imbalance, which he called 'a kind of war against people around the world, a kind of aggression.'"
It's hard to see that one 'flying' of course, but it is important for us to acknowledge the truth of the matter. It's of a piece with the probable fact that developed nations 'owe' a lot of development to having been able to asset strip former empire. Of course the issue of the justice of asking people now to pay for the sins of their ancestors (or, worse, for the sins of their ancestors' oppressors) is also something that needs to be taken on board. Full statement here.

Then you go an spoil it all by saying something stupid like ...

... "'So this is what it's all about', I thought. 'A social worker showing no understanding, no dialogue – secularism and spiritual differences are to be fought against, and children subtly coerced into believing?'
That was the end of the atheist Guardian correspondent's close encounter with Greenbelt this year. such a shame, because up till then she'd been doing quite well. Okay, we might forgive her for the repeating the common mix-up of 'evangelism' and 'evangelicalism' (so she writes about 'post-evangelism', which is not really the same thing as post-evangelicalism which is what I think she actually meant). However, it may be symptomatic of a mindset in approaching the exercise, perhaps? Especially as she then ends the article rather abruptly with "This kind of discourse, I couldn't deal with. I turned around at once, and left." (Oh, and there shouldn't be a comma in the middle of that first sentence: berate the sub-editor).

The reason why I characterise the quoted response as 'something stupid' is that it does look like it rests on a probably misunderstanding: earlier she says that the two guys she's reacting to are "youth workers". You'll need to check out the article, particularly the last three or four paragraphs to get what I'm on about -An atheist goes to Greenbelt | Jessica Reed | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk:. In the quote, note, we have "social workers". But hang on: 'youth workers' are likely to be church-based and working for church youth outreach programmes. The attitude expressed is perfectly consonant with that job: he's not a 'social worker' any more than a vicar is. To take umbridge at his wanting to encourage young people to take the Christian message seriously is no more 'offensive' than atheists writing books and holding lectures to not-so-subtly rhetorically co-erce the sometimes frail-minded or pre-judiced to reject theism. I digress ... if the guy had been using a position as a secular social worker to do what he said, she'd have good reason; but that isn't what's going on I think.

The sudden exit seems to have been about being confronted by the possibility that some people at least would want others (including potentially the writer herself, obviously) to change their mind, and may believe that they would be better off with another belief system. This, I take it, is meant to offend against some notion of 'laissez-faire' tolerance where one is not allowed to believe that ones own views may be 'superior' in some respect to someone else's and so wish, in appropriate circumstances, to change people's minds.

I think we have to recognise that such a viewpoint is naive and impossible to hold consistently. We all believe what we do because we think it's right. Therefore the reflex of that is that we believe that others are to some degree wrong. In practice then, everyone tends to make some efforts sometimes to change others' minds. Heck, human communication is one long exercise in changing each others' minds. So I guess that the real issue is the interpretation (and I stress that word) in terms of what must be a strong understanding of 'coercion'. But this won't stand up to scrutiny either. We all agree that coercion is wrong and that relatively free responses are important. I would guess, had Ms Reed talked to the guy, she would find that he agreed. But like all of us, Ms Reed included, he is within his rights to use his influence to encourage people to consider a particular way of looking at things. By writing her article Ms Reed has done the very same sort of thing. In the youth worker's case, if he's operating from a church-base, then most of the people he will have been dealing with will have known the score.

Jessica Reed; I applaud you're going into the lion's den, so to speak. I celebrate that you found degrees of commonality with people you had misgivings about beforehand and I'm delighted that you found that some Christians are capable of being open-minded and enquiring (and did I catch a glimpse of a hope that some might, thereby, come to share perspectives you hold?) However, I'm disappointed that you haven't, seemingly, thought through more thoroughly the implications of pluralism and secularism in relation to competing truth claims (including your own) and the need to live together asd share a public sphere. I'm also disappointed that you seem not to have taken a spot more care in noting some of the important distinctions including between coercion and influence. If it weren't so distressing or tragic, the symmetry between the assumed superiority of atheism and that of many Christians as played out in their mutual exposure in this article would be amusing...

School Put-downs tegatively affect learning

It's perhpas no surprise: after all, it is a regular part of courses for teachers about learning and classroom behaviour issues. However, the study is further confirmation that inclusive classrooms and schools are more likely to be helping learning and improving their results. Report here: High School Put-downs Make It Hard For Students To Learn, Study Says Summary statement from the article: "classroom disruptions and psychologically hostile school environments can contribute to a climate in which good students have difficulty learning and students who are behind have trouble catching up."
Of course, it's worth considering the wider significance: if this, as seems likely, applies to workplaces and other human groups (including, say, Alpha groups or church councils) ...

10:10

I've already been doing many of the things that are involved in cutting my carbon emissions, so before signing up I need to find out whether there are further things I can do, but if you haven't really started on this, well, can I ask you to consider starting now with this? (Ideas to help on the site here). 10:10: "By committing to cut your emissions by 10% in 2010, you will join thousands of individuals, schools, hospitals, businesses and organisations all actively helping to combat climate change by making simple changes to their lifestyles, homes and workplaces. More importantly, your voice will help to put pressure on the politicians to cut Britain’s emissions as quickly as the science demands. If we in the UK can prove that fast, deep cuts can be made at a national level, then we may just inspire all the other big polluting countries to follow suit."

!! ?? !!

Speechless: even having seen these claims before ... It makes me so cross that people can lie so outrageously and not be effectively challenged. ... shakes head sadly ... Obama is losing the health debate – but he can still mobilise and win | Gary Younge | Comment is free | The Guardian: "They have argued that if Steven Hawking were British he would be dead, even though Hawking is British and alive. They insist that under the NHS the state decides whether to 'pull the plug on grandma'."

For a little light relief, the article goes on to say this:

In a blend of the comic and the tragic one protester, who was hospitalised after he got into a fight at a town hall meeting in St Louis, had to have a whip-round to pay for his medical bill – it turns out he had no health insurance.

And, assuming these figures are about right; then there is a huge (but in this case very misplaced) trust in the USA's rightist population that if it's 'America' it must be best because ...

life expectancy in the UK is higher than the US, meaning that even with our supposed state-sponsored euthanasia our grannies still live longer than theirs... As a percentage of GDP the US spends twice as much on it as the UK, and yet one in six aren't even covered. According to government figures, life expectancy for women is lower than in Albania and infant mortality is higher than Cuba. This national disgrace conceals a regional outrage. Black infant mortality in Louisiana is on a par with Sri Lanka; in the very city where the reforms will be decided, Washington DC, life expectancy is lower than the Gaza Strip