Nothing to hide, nothing to fear

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I must admit that I’m terribly amused to hear that Jenny Jones of the Green Party has just discovered that the Police have been watching her. Now from where I’m sat any time a member of the great and good gets a taste of what happens to the rest of us it’s a good thing. What puzzles me though is that this was news to Ms Jones, after all she’s hardly the first politician the security forces have held files on. Just search for “MI5 files politicians” to see, or I suppose she could have asked Jack Straw or Peter Mandelson who’ve also had the same honour. Also apparently this was a secret file, so secret that she could only get the contents by having paid £10 and filled out a very long form.

To be fair to Ms Jones and the Green Party she has protested about the powers of the police to put people under surveillance, especially it seems if they’re Journalists, politicians or artistic pensioners.
“When the police’s work on domestic extremism involves spying on elected politicians and artistic pensioners, they have lost sight of what they are there to do.”

“Putting journalists under surveillance is an alarming development in a country with a free press.”,/cite>

She even asked quite a few questions about it back in 2009 following the Kingsworth demonstration, so I can’t help but suspect that she had an inkling that the police might have such a database as she’s found herself on. She does though seem to be learning as her only interjection back in 1197 when debating counter terrorism legislation was to ask that terrorist organizations have their assets confiscated, I guess back then she hadn’t thought that maybe we’re all terrorists now.

I shall look forward to Ms Jones maybe extending her concerns about surveillance to broader examples, such as people that aren’t artistic pensioners or one of her friends. The Met after all were transparent they gave her the contents of their “secret” data base and the Ms Jones’ party doesn’t seem to be calling for much more than that except where it concerns people they like.

So I’m afraid that given the Green Parties general authoritarian penchant until they issue an unqualified call for everyone, even people they don’t like, to be free from this sort of state surveillance I’m going to enjoy her mock discomfiture. after all she didn’t even include details as to where one can find that “very long form”.

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The terrible tale of Tuam

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Continuing my usual practice of being late to press has the advantage of letting more details of a story emerge, being very late means that other people still cover the fuller picture before I do but I can cope.

A little while back a tale of terrible cruelty from Ireland’s past emerged involving as always the Catholic church and cruelty to children. Stories about bad things the Catholic church is alleged to have done in the past, much like accusations against aging celebrities, causes even usually calm heads to discard their usual rigor and leap upon the most sensationalist headlines of the churnalistic machine.

Due to the saving grace of cynicism and idleness the fuller story emerged before I said anything. So I shared the more accurate story which was really an awful lot less shocking with the book of face as surely people would be glad to know that terrible things hadn’t actually happened. I will admit that I did take the moment to advise people that they might want to “check their narrative” before leaping upon headlines.

I was somewhat surprised (but only somewhat) that the general reaction was that it was still terrible and we couldn’t possibly believe the more accurate story.

So what if the only witness of the “skeletons in the septic tank” said there was “about 20” skeletons it could still be “50-100 dead kids in an old sewage tank”. Yep the only witness said about 20, but because they saw it a long time ago and were of a young age at the time they are unreliable witnesses so the body count must be far more. No possibility that it could be less or even that it might not even be human skeletons, nope it must be more. All of the children invovled in this manufactured horror had a death certificate so really not much of a cover up, and a bit of research quite quickly revealed that the average death rate for the home wasn’t actually unusual for the time and area concerned, they were in fact doing a bit better than the average.

Nope still doesn’t matter there must be an inquiry into all historical children’s homes, presumably to see if they also correctly recorded deaths for the lower than average death rate. I’m sure the great and good and much concerned will be queuing to jump on that gravy train to ensure that defunct state and Catholic Children’s homes can be thoroughly investigated to reveal the horror of low death rates and proper death certificates.

That cynicism aside I was at a loss to why people still considered it to be horrific and why an inquiry was a good thing. After all better than average survival rate and properly recorded deaths doesn’t sound to bad to me. Ah apparently it was because they children didn’t have “dignity in death”. quite how this is known given that apart from the sensationalist headlines we’ve no data at all. I suspect it’s that ever so evocative phrase “sewage tank” conjuring up scenes from cheap horror films of recently deceased babies thrown by the ankles into bubbling sewage. The idea that an empty concrete vessel but be reused to provide a grave to poor children and they might be laid to rest with tenderness and all the relevant rights doesn’t seem to be a possibility. It was once a sewage tank so the poor babies must have been just thrown in my callous evil Irish Catholic nuns, after all we’ve all seen Angela’s ashes (or the Blues Brothers), we all know that the church is purely a vehicle of evil right?

Much easier to discount the new story and stick to the horrific headlines of top notch churnalism than admit that maybe once again the press has been less than accurate and that there isn’t a story. Nope why check your narrative when it’s so clear that another witch hunt into Ireland’s Catholic past can be unleashed.

Spiked goes into Tuam rather better and looks at the myth of evil Ireland, which seems rather to resemble how much of the British past is recast as unrelentingly evil and all celebrities from the 60’s and 70’s. Finally over at the Telegraph there’s a few more inaccuracies with Tuam listed and gone into more details, including such gems as “The home never left the hands of the County Council”, but hey as is said in Ireland why let the facts get in the way of a good story, let a lone a profitable inquiry.

Update As ever Anna Raccoon has a few words of clarity to say about this, and do read the comments for such relevant information as:
“The Gardai have issued the following statement:

The grounds in Tuam were being surveyed in 2012 and bones were found, they are historical burials going back to Famine times, there is no suggestion of any impropriety and there is no Garda investigation. Also there is no confirmation from any source that there are between 750 and 800 bodies present.”

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Halal and labeling

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There’s been quite a bit of talk about halal meat being served by popular fast food chains of late. Quite a few people have tried to frame this as a racist attack on Muslims (conflating as ever a religion with a race, or are Saudi Muslims, Pakistani Muslims and all other Muslims all the same race?). Other people have taken the view that it really doesn’t matter as long as the welfare of the animals are the same, and apparently some of the food vendors do tell you that they use halal meat if you go to their website and look for such information.

I’d like to suggest an alternative view, serving halal meat is of course a matter entirely for the businesses concerned if it makes good business sense then obviously it’s something they’d should do. However I would say that they do need to improve their labeling, especially the various schools that reportedly only use halal meat, and for one simple reason – consideration to peoples religious beliefs. I’d assume that the move to serve halal meat was to cater to the needs of Muslim customers, however if one is concerned about your customers religion then clear labeling is vital as people follow other religions such as Sikhs are prohibited from eating halal food, and I can well imagine that adherents of other religions may not be so keen on eating meat offered to a different god. So serving Halal food without labeling it is hardly being culturally sensitive, unless the only culture you’re concerned about is Islam. In this case as well dismissing those other religions as superstitious beliefs (a common argument against making allowances for any religion) won’t work as the problem is making allowance for one religion over and above others.

So as is so often the case, if it makes business sense to use halal meat then do so, but advertise it as such so that those that have objections to eating such meat know that you don’t want their custom and so that your potential customers can make an informed choice without being expected to track down the information hidden away on corporate web sites. After all if it is a sound business decision there can surely be no reason to not clearly advertise it?

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