oh look, a meme

Blame him for this:

1. One book that changed your life - the hardest question first.

George Orwell's 1984 - an edition which I believe had some of his essays on language in the back, including Politics and the English Language which you should all go and read right now. I like words.

2. One book that you've read more than once

Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale. Often poorly taught at schools: the curse of any landmark novel.

3. One book that you'd want on a desert island

The New Larousse Encyclopedia of Mythology: a great read and big enough to use as a raft.

4. One book that made you laugh

Anansi Boys, by Neil Gaiman. It made me laugh the good, snorting laughter that makes it hard to breathe for a whle.

5. One book that made you cry

The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields. Someone has my copy; if it's you, I need it back.

6. One book that you wish you had written

Right now, it's Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake.

7. One book you wish had never been written

Many people give Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci" code a hard time - mainly because they've never read Dan Brown's "Angels and Demons". I've never been so disappointed that the central character didn't die horribly at the climax of what could only charitably be called the "plot" and was able to survive through what could only charitably be described a "concatenation of extremely improbable and sluggishly written events." And yes, I'm a snob when it comes to cheap thrillers: I like to be able to read them aloud without sounding like I've had a stroke.

8. One book that you are reading at the moment

Included as a book due to girth and fancy binding, I'll nominate my thesis in preparation for my viva. For those of you unfamiliar with the subject, it's a rollercoaster ride about an albino monk who's a member of secret religious organisation and falls in love with Audrey Tatou.

9. One book that you've been meaning to read

I have a book about the origins of blasphemy law in Europe that I bought about six months ago. I have another one about the Salem witch trials which reproduces a huge amount of period source material. I also have Ian McEwan's Atonement sitting open at page 10 since mid-June. I've been quite busy recently, so any one of those would be nice.

fire crew disciplined over issue of pride

The nine firemen who objected to handing out information at a Pride event have been disciplined:

Nine firefighters who refused to offer safety advice to people attending a gay pride march have been disciplined.

A watch manager in Glasgow has been demoted to crew manager with a £5,000 salary cut. The remaining firefighters were given a written warning. [...]

The fire service spokesman said: "Firefighters cannot, and will not, pick and choose to whom they offer fire safety advice.

"Strathclyde Fire and Rescue has a responsibility to protect every one of the 2.3m people it serves, irrespective of race, religion or sexuality."

The disciplinary procedure is not yet complete, however, as the decision may be appealed.

paternity leave and other cruelties

There must be a special brand of idiot logic available to newspaper columnists that allows them to use research showing that not all men are the same to decide that - actually - all men are the same. The latest example is Quentin Letts' diatribe against paternity leave, the starting point of which is the assumption that if he was useless with his newborn chlidren then the same must be true of all other men.

Having decided that the modern man is actually an unreconstructed Neanderthal, Letts hauls out the golden standard of tabloid logic to argue that giving people a choice is the same thing as "ramming it down their throats." You'll have enjoyed it in the past with the issue of sex between consenting adults - you'll enjoy it again with the phantom spectre of... *gasp*.. paternity leave.

For over the past few years, the New Labour establishment, in which the Economic and Social Research Council is an important breezeblock, has been trying to ram paternity leave and other such ‘family-friendly’ initiatives down the gullet of the British male. Parliament has passed pious new laws to force employers to allow fathers to take time off from work so they may attend their milky-breathed infants.

Allowed to take time off from work to see their children? Outrageous. What cruel governance is this, that a man might voluntarily take leave to see their new born child?

The study from Bristol University which is claimed to show that 'men aren't interested in paternity leave' and thus somehow support the argument men have no role to play when are chldren are born says nothing of the sort. It seems to have found that the existing model of paternity leave - a block of leave - was less desirable than the prospect of more flexible working hours in general.

Missing this notion that balancing work and home might not simply be about choosing one over the other (and skipping over the notion of choice altogether) Letts concludes:

A few lads said they wouldn’t mind slightly more flexible working hours, but the general message was: "We’re Dads, so we’ll go to work, thank you."

Dr Esther Dermott - who actually carried out the research - says:

‘What professional men value most about their jobs is their ability to control their working hours so that they can leave early to go to school functions or parents’ meetings – and this flexibility was also what other men most wanted.’

In the rush to reject a perceived feminisation of men (seemingly by offering them paternity leave and thus making their penis invert) Letts also manages to belittle men in general - again, basing male foolishness on his own hi-larious ineptitude:

I must confess that I didn’t light up a cigar in the maternity ward, as they used to in 1940s films - but that is because the NHS takes a dim view of smoking. (And anyway, cheroots make my chest a bit wheezy).

But I did take champagne into the delivery room, certainly with baby number one. Mrs Letts took one whiff of the bubbles and promptly threw up all over the sheets.

This is par for the course. [...] We men are almost entirely useless.

Hey, who needs those dangerous feminists when you have one of the guys running you down, when uselessness is somehow held aloft as a sign of being a true man?

Amongst the things completely ignored by Letts is the fact that paternity leave often doesn't have to be taken immediately after birth; it can be taken when it suits the needs of a particular family, a flexibility that men seem to want more of, rather than less. It's also voluntary: no-one is cruelly being sent home from work to spend time with their families.

Secondly, the fact that being a parent is something that is learnt by both men and women - something that is hard work and yet somehow still not "a man's work" - is skimmed over for the assumption that the male inability to breast-feed reduces his responsibilities to wage-earning. The idea that there might be other work involved in taking care of a child disappears under a wave of patronising essentialism: men are cash-dispensing neanderthals and women are milk-machines.

If you're looking for reasons why men and women might feel uncomfortable in their roles as mothers and fathers, you might want to start with attitudes like that.

and another thing..

After a triumvirate of sex and religion posts, is there anything else I should have read over the last month?

archbishop u-turns on gays in church

I seem to have left my secret Anglican decoder ring in the font this morning, because Rowan Williams latest attempt to avoid schism requires a little unravelling before it makes sense:

The archbishop of Canterbury has told homosexuals that they need to change their behaviour if they are to be welcomed into the church, The Sunday Telegraph can reveal.

How tremendously discrete. Change their behaviour, while the behaviour of bigots stands uncorrected, of course. I wonder - is this the lie about promiscuity and disease, or is it about that pesky claim on equal treatment and marriage? Or is it just a general aversion to cock-suckery?

The revelations came in a newspaper interview last week in which the archbishop denied that it was time for the church to accept homosexual relationships, suggesting that it should be welcoming rather than inclusive. "I don't believe inclusion is a value in itself. Welcome is. We don't say 'Come in and we ask no questions'. I do believe conversion means conversion of habits, behaviours, ideas, emotions," he told a Dutch journalist.

A "conversion of habits and behaviours." Could this be "converted so that you are no longer gay"?

"Ethics is not a matter of a set of abstract rules, it is a matter of living the mind of Christ. That applies to sexual ethics."

Leaving aside how the Archbishop can read the mind of Christ (and find within it the Anglican Guide to Approved Sexual Practices) he's also come tremendously close to saying that "homosexual practice" - still so very coy - is by definition unethical. Could it be that Williams has performed a gigantic u-turn?

The archbishop said that he was determined to preserve the unity of the church from being destroyed by the warring factions in the gay crisis. He said he has backed a resolution which says that homosexual practice is incompatible with the Bible.

Yes, yes, it most certainly could.

Oh, and in totally unrelated news, there's this:

Homophobic bullying is an "effective and powerful" form of abuse and a growing cause of concern for youngsters, according to research due to be published this week by the NSPCC children's charity.

Calls about homophobic bullying accounted for 27% of the April 2006 calls relating to sexual orientation issues to the NSPCC's child protection helpline, ChildLine, the report reveals. [...] Homophobic bullying was the most common single problem cited by this group of young people.

The report says: "There is a sense from callers that homophobic bullying may be an especially effective or powerful form of bullying, because victims are particularly unwilling to seek help, as this would force them to discuss why they are being bullied." It warns that this kind of bullying may be more successful because it is often not taken as seriously as other forms of bullying.

I wonder where these children get the idea that such bullying is acceptable from?

pope to jump shark

As I read that the Pope is about to embrace intelligent design, I'm reminded that - as a rule - it's better to jump on the bandwagon of a given theory before it is comprehensively debunked and found to be the refuge of the foolish.

On that note:

Adolf Hitler and Russian leader Stalin were possessed by the Devil, the Vatican's chief exorcist has claimed. [...] According to secret Vatican documents recently released wartime pontiff Pope Pius XII attempted a "long distance" exorcism of Hitler which failed to have any effect.

For bonus crazy:

Father Amorth, who is president of the International Association of Exorcists, said of the JK Rowling books:"Behind Harry Potter hides the signature of the king of the darkness, the devil." [...] Father Amorth is said to have carried out more than 30,000 exorcisms in his career and his favourite film is, according to Italian newspapers The Exorcist.

Once more, are these the people we want determining our public health policies?

the cervical cancer vaccine: putting religion before public health

Good news as we move toward nationwide vaccination against the virus that causes cervical cancer. Bad news as we discover that the Catholic Church prefers cancer to pre-marital sex - and wheels out the "seat belts encourage people to crash cars" brand of logic for which they are justifiably famous:

A spokesman for the Catholic Church last night warned health boards against using the vaccine as part of their sexual health strategies.

He said: "Our concern would be that this vaccine is seen as giving a green light to promiscuity on the grounds that the vaccination protects young people from developing the virus that is the main cause of cervical cancer."

Wow. He just argued that removing the threat of cervical cancer is a bad thing because someone, somewhere might have cancer-risk free pre-marital sex. How much does the Catholic Church hate sex? So much that it prefers women to develop cervical cancer than have sex outside of marriage.

Aside from the vast arrogance on putting a specifically Catholic sexual morality ahead of the general (and determinedly non-Catholic) public health - and the wrongheadedness of the logic of what makes people have sex - the tragi-comic thing is that being married is no protection against cervical cancer, HPV or any other sexually transmittted disease. Even the faithful can get warts.

While the Church might adopt the wishful thinking of abstinence until marriage, the truth is that only effective and comprehensive sex education (including, where appropriate, vaccination) can protect the health of the general population - adults and young people alike.

the further tales of fun with intolerance

I'm waiting for the usual round of accusation and recrimination to surface as four firefighters go before a disciplinary hearing over their refusal to hand out leaflets at a gay pride march in Glasgow.

It might help to remember that support might be less forthcoming for a group of firemen who refused to leaflet during the Notting Hill Carnival because their religous beliefs teach them to object to non-white people, or that they're "embarassed" by Black-British culture.

The question of whether firemen should be used to leaflet at carnivals is a rather different one from the implicit suggestion of homophobia, though the claim that such work falls outside of the "core duties" will most likely be compared to other non-fire related duties: visiting church and other community groups.

If the same firemen had attended other public events to hand out information about fire safety, then we need to look at the specific reasons why they felt justified in refusing an order to do the same on this particular occasion.

In short, we may once more be deciding which forms of prejudice are unacceptable, and which ones you can wear on your sleeve as a sign of personal integrity. We're also faced with a conversation about the limits of such "integrity" - would it be acceptable for a fire-crew to refuse to put out a house fire because they objected to the sexual practices of the inhabitants on religious grounds and felt that they were being punished by God? It's a stupid question, but then this is a stupid discussion: either we tolerate mindless prejudice in public servants, or we don't.

For what might become my boiler-plate response to the religious belief defence of homophobia, there's this, courtesy of Talk Origins:

The Biblical objection to homosexuality is hypocritical, because those who condemn it do not condemn just as vigorously other prohibited behaviors such as wearing clothing made of two kinds of material (Lev. 19: 19), trimming or shaving sideburns (Lev. 19: 27), getting tattoos (Lev. 19: 28), and charging interest (Deut. 23: 19-20). People who condemn homosexuality do so not because the Bible tells them to, but, ultimately, because they want to. People who condemn others should first examine the morality of their own judgments.

I'm baaack

So, I'm back. It's been a ferociously busy Fringe but a successful one, having proved that with the right team and a lot of preparation that a company can make money staging comedy during the festival.

Thanks to everyone who came to see the show(s) - even if I didn't recognise you in the first pass. :)

"terror websites" and further fun with liberty

More legislation-by-panic:

WEBSITES that incite acts of terrorism or contain instructions on how to make a bomb could be blocked under counter-terrorism plans announced by European ministers yesterday.

How, precisely? And who will decide which websites are going on this danger list? And will circumventing these blocks to merely read such content be an offence?

A person could be forgiven for thinking that this sounds like untenable, illiberal bollocks - seemingly designed, as with so many other sweeping measures proposed in the name of "security" to deter the casual, weekend terrorist: "Oh no, I can't find a recipe for a bomb on Google, time to call off the religious war." While such thinking fits into John Reid's mantra of danger ("As we face the threat of mass murder we have to accept that the rights of the individual that we enjoy must and will be balanced with the collective right of security and the protection of life and limb that our citizens demand.") it is profoundly unbalanced; it should also be recognised as a means of managing terrorism rather than addressing root causes - a realisation which challenges Reid's claims that such a trade of liberty is only temporary.

For the rhetoric of a trade between liberty and security to make sense, the surrender of liberties actually has to be met with meaningful, pragmatic action - rather than that which empowers national and international police forces with sweeping powers to monitor our lives.

sense of proportion duly lost

From the letters page of The Times:

Sir, The businessman, like the tourist, can adapt to limited hand luggage. A damaged laptop can be replaced. The historic instruments with which a lot of musicians travel are not so easily found, however, and indeed amount to our European cultural heritage. They can be up to 350 years old, worth tens, frequently hundreds, of thousands of pounds and are indispensable to the players' livelihood.

Unless a method is found to bring musical instruments into the cabin of aircraft, music touring will be substantially reduced and invaluable cultural exchange lost. The terrorists will indeed have defeated us.

Because the first sign of a defeated culture, crushed underfoot - its people slaughtered and its religions disbanded - is a lack of touring symphonic orchestras.

further fun with dissent

Let me be the first to shout "bollocks" at John Prescott - at least today, anyway. Well, it's nearly 11am, so at the very least I'm in the top thirty or maybe the top one hundred. Anyway, in response to David Cameron's criticism of the goverment's handling of "teh war on terrar" we have this:

Mr Prescott, led Labour's counter-attack, accusing Mr Cameron of undermining the fight against terrorism and failing to support earlier security measures introduced by the Government. The Deputy Prime Minister said: "David Cameron's remarks are almost beyond belief. At a time when we should all stand united in the face of alleged terrorist threats, he seeks to undermine that unity."

What is this bollocks? Mere criticism of a policy is enough to undermine our national security? If you'll excuse a moment of local colour, exactly what the dry-humping fuck does Prescott imagine is going on in the planning meetings of terror cells? "Sorry, fellow holy warriors, the jig's up. While their port security is weak and the lines of communication between security forces is flawed, the entire country is surrounded by an impenetrable shield of rhetorical Unity."

Fans of rhetoric will recognise Prescott's argument as an extension of the "dissent is dangerous" logic. Rather than responding to specific criticisms, Prescott attacks the fact that criticisms have been made at all. Somehow, even if you're an opposition party politician, or a journalist, or a milk man - all of whom who have almost no impact on foreign or security policy - the mere act of challenging the government's shaky reasoning is the moral equivalent of inviting Osama around for tea and buns.

This position is traditionally accompanied by the claim that said critics are "politicising terror." In fairness, you have to make that claim or less everyone will realise that's exactly what you're doing.

Ho, and indeed, hum.

another victory for the evil forces of irony

A person could be forgiven for thinking that during a state of maximum security alert that airlines would pay more, rather than less, attention to luggage. But they'd be wrong:

Around 10,000 bags checked in by British Airways passengers have gone astray during the travel disruption over the last week, the airline said. [...] A BA spokesman said the problem affected people returning to the UK as well as those flying overseas.

Flights coming into and out of the UK. So that's everyone, then.

abstinence, morality and good sexual health

Despite posturing to the contrary, good sexual health and good sexual morals are not exactly the same thing. Failure to recognise this produces entirely different responses to the same piece of news - that a third of Britons in a particular survey had sex before the age of consent.

On the side of accepted public health policy:

Vicky Field, of the Terrence Higgins Trust, said: 'Despite the continued rise in sexually-transmitted infections, safer sex messages just aren't getting through to young people. Many are still taking risks through ignorance, embarrassment or too much alcohol.

'Without changes in the way we talk to young people about sex, rates of sexually-transmitted infections will continue to increase dramatically.'

On the side of public morality:

Norman Wells, director of Family and Youth Concern, said: 'This survey presents a disturbing picture of high levels of promiscuity that are clearly not being addressed by the Government's insistence on promoting a "safer sex" message.

'The emphasis should not be on normalising condom use, but on normalising sexual restraint outside the context of a lifelong and faithful marriage, which is the only sure way to prevent the spread of sexually-transmitted infections.'

It should strike you as to how incredibly specific the latter solution is: not only that contraception shouldn't be put front and centre but that only (Christian) marriage is an acceptable venue for primarily procreative sex. I often wonder if anyone has asked Mr Wells if he had sex before he got married - presuming, of course, that he has taken his own advice.

But the primary problem with the "restraint then marriage" formula isn't the narrow definition of social acceptability that it draws - the main problem is that "abstinence first" programmes have proven to be tremendously bad for sexual health.

The problem isn't comprehensive sex education that features condoms - the problem is when such programmes are not effective, when they are watered down by religious or other influences and presented alongside directly contradictory messages about abstinence-based morality.

the showbusiness of terror

Terrorism, as in the use of violence or the threat of violence to achieve certain ends:

The terror threat to the UK has been downgraded from "critical" to "severe". Home Secretary John Reid said the change was made because an attack was "highly likely" but not "imminent".

Meanwhile, a British Airways flight from Heathrow to New York has been turned back because a mobile phone - banned at the time - was on board. [...]

Speaking at a press conference on Monday, the home secretary warned that "the change in the threat level does not mean that the threat has gone away". He said: "The public needs to know that there may be other people out there who may be planning to attack against the United Kingdom.

That "there may be other people who may be planning to attack" is enough to qualify a "severe" threat level tells you that that the safest thing a person can do is ignore John Reid.

Given that this piece of advice is as useless as it is nebulous - given that if we were taking the imminent threat level seriously a siren would sound and we'd take cover at "critical" moments - a person finds themselves looking for a reason for such posturing:

Mr Reid said the "challenge to all of us" means "we may have to modify some of our freedoms in the short-term in order to prevent their misuse and abuse by those who oppose our fundamental values and would destroy our freedoms and values in the long-term".

Ah. Interesting. I wonder if some new legislation will spring into view after the summer recess?

Of course, to suggest the timing and handling of this recent alert has been deliberately stage-managed would be a paranoid fantasy, no?

A senior British official knowledgeable about the case said British police were planning to continue to run surveillance for at least another week to try to obtain more evidence, while American officials pressured them to arrest the suspects sooner. The official spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the case.

In contrast to previous reports, the official suggested an attack was not imminent, saying the suspects had not yet purchased any airline tickets. In fact, some did not even have passports.

There's no business like show business, like no business I know..

the metrosexual is dead, long live the metrosexual

Hurray - another piece of marketing passing as research, this time on one of my favourite subjects:

Modern men are ditching the carefully-groomed culture of David Beckham in favour of a more rough-and-ready "Rooney" look, a study has found.

Despite the rise of "metrosexual" fashion symbolised by the sarong-and-jewel-wearing Beckham, men appear to be reverting to type, private medical insurer PruHealth said.

This could all be very interesting if the phantom metrosexual was not largely an invention of the media in the first place. You might also notice that the generic "reverting to type" is, in fact, extremely specific and decidely ungeneric - the "average" man is not a highly trained sporting legend, paid vast amounts of money to wear certain items of clothing on pitch and relentlessly pursued by the media off it. Somehow, all factors of class or region are swallowed whole and the best measure of what men are like is which footballers are popular.

Saving discussion of that semi-homoerotic revelation for another time, what's the "study" that reveals this ground-shaking bit of news?

A study for the group by pollster YouGov found that little more than one in 10 men (12 per cent) now bothers to spend time on "male grooming" practices such as moisturising. The study [...] found that 88 per cent of British men say they just shower and shave.

And how does this compare with five years ago, at the height of metrosexual features in the broadsheets? Is this part of some great historical trend? Do we know how many men were interviewed, or why it should be treated as representative? Is it patronising to assume that all men are alike? Or is this a private telephone poll with no point of comparison, which is ultimately a load of bollocks?

We can only hope that a new "study" will reveal the answers to these and other questions.

the lying liars of the daily mail

If you're going to lie, you might as well make it a big one - as in the Scottish Daily Mail's screaming headline "Schools told to teach gay sex," followed up inside by "Gay sex lessons in primary schools." Neither of these claims are true.

The most generous explanation is that this is speculative scare-mongering rather than rabid homophobia: the effect, however, is the same. It's a deliberate attempt to whip up homo-bigot angst about chlidren being "polluted," that being gay is something that be taught or learnt.

Hidden - as ever - in the final paragraphs of the story is the detail of what will actually be taught: "it is appropriate to discuss sexual health services for homosexuals and the emotional side of gay relationships ." The mechanics of gay sex will not be taught in primary schools, despite the claim to the contrary, leading to the limp response from the Catholic Church:

Catholic Church spokesman Peter Kearney said: "If a law comes into force telling Catholic teachers to teach gay sex, we will simply refuse to do it beause the Church's view is that teaching homosexuality is sinful."

Kearney can rest easy: no such law exists.

It should be mentioned that the moral conservative taste for sex education regarding homosexuality isn't restricted to the queers: it's an opposition that includes all forms of comprehensive sex education that might discuss pre-marital sex, safe sex and contraception, abortion and sexual transmitted infections. This position is pro-morals: it's anti-education - it clings to ignorance like a safety blanket.

The only thing under attack here is the possibility that young people will grow up without the burden of decades of religious intolerance passed as fact.

widening the id card project: more bad ideas made worse

There's no terrible government project that can't - with a little effort - be made unimaginably worse:

PERSONAL details on the identity card database will be sold to private-sector companies to offset the soaring cost of the scheme, Gordon Brown has indicated. In a dramatic change to his previous scepticism over the scheme, the Chancellor is now embracing the spread of surveillance to routine transactions.

Fact fans will remember that such surveillance will a) have no real impact on credit card crime because of the prevalence of card-not-present fraud and b) have nothing whatsoever to do with fighting terror and/or benefit fraud - the standyby excuses for intrusion into our lives.

Anyone not spitting with rage over this god-awful plan will find fresh venom in the knowledge that:

The Chancellor has set up a taskforce, headed by Sir James Crosby, former HBOS bank chief executive, to study identity management which will consider widening the ID card project.

A source close to the Chancellor said: "This is going to be a key issue over the next ten to 15 years about identity management right across the public and private sectors."

That's whether government or business gets access to your personal information, not whether that personal information should be traded at all. That's widening a project that barely looks able to meet its primary aims. Well, fuck that: join No2ID.

male feminists and functional coalitions

Natalie Hanman has an interesting - if all too brief - article on the rise of male feminists in today's Guardian:

But can a man ever really be a feminist? Some say it is inappropriate for men to call themselves feminists, arguing that feminism is a movement developed by and for women, and that men can never really understand what it is like to be a woman. Furthermore, critics claim that by jumping on the feminism bandwagon, men could eventually dominate the movement.

Organisations such as Oxfam, however, think the risks of involving men are far outweighed by the benefits. Its Gender Equality and Men project, launched in 2002, has incorporated men into work on issues as diverse as reproductive and sexual health, fatherhood and poverty reduction.

I think this conclusion might adress two slightly different issues. The first is whether the participation of men in defining the agenda a women's movement would damage the ability of that movement to address the needs of its base - a kind of tension between feminism as a universally applicable social agenda, and feminism as a social agenda born of a specific set of social circumstances which recognises discrimination against a particular class of person.

The second is whether such a movement can achieve its ends without the participation of men, particularly when certain issues (promoting fatherhood, sexual health) are either deeply male-oriented or rely on the whole-hearted involvement of men for their success.

My feeling would be that it's not an either-or situation and that the presence of male-feminists or feminist-positive men should not be an issue of factionalism. Instead, it may be more productive to think of the role of male feminists in terms of functional coalitions - where disparate groups come together to work toward mutually beneficial ends but without assuming that collaboration is based in the same life experiences.

Put simply, just because men and women might work together on feminist issues, it doesn't mean that they share the same lives. Nor does it follow that the richness of individual (and gender specific) experiences is automatically lost in such collaboration. Instead, such collaboration may even produce a better understanding of our shared but persistently diverse lives.

biometric passports hacked

The insecurity of the biometric systems which will supposedly "prove" our identities is not a suprise, but rather heavily predicted and anticipated :

Hi-tech biometric passports used by Britain and other countries have been hacked by a computer expert, throwing into doubt fundamental parts of the UK's £415m scheme to load passports with information such as fingerprints, facial scans and iris patterns.

The Home Office's response demonstrates a horribly familiar lack of competence:

The Home Office said yesterday that the UK biometric passport was one of the most secure in the world and while it might be possible to copy the chip data it was not possible to modify or manipulate any of the data.

And we all know that cloned information (phones, credit cards and, hey, passports) have nothing to with identity theft. What's that? They do?

Time to raise the terror alert system to "distraction pink," methinks.

wang magic and other anti-feminist tales

All good straw-feminist attack pieces begin with a singular anecdote from which the collapse of mankind can then be extrapolated. Nirpal Dhaliwal's piece in the Daily Mail doesn't disapoint:

At a dinner party recently, I encountered the depressingly familiar sight of a dynamic thirty- something woman accompanied by a nerdy male sidekick that she'd browbeaten into proposing to her.

The mismatch in power was obvious. She was successful, ambitious and confident; he was a diffident, overweight, shrinking violet who measured every word he spoke in case he said anything remotely contentious that might offend her.

Ah, the dinner party: the microcosm of all (middle-class pundit) human life.

Dhaliwal's article is a superb piece of paranoid anti-feminism, based in the iron-clad belief that for a woman to be the dominant partner in a relationship with a man is a slight against all reason.

Let's go down the check-list:

1. The accusation that feminists have emasculated men and made them powerless, unintentionally casting men as weak and powerless to resist in the first place. It's a circular argument: men are weak because they were took weak to resist becoming weak.

Back in the Nineties, emboldened by the successes of feminism, women sought to slay the dragon of patriarchy by turning men into ridiculous cissies who would cry with them through chick-flicks and then cook up a decent lasagne.

All true men know that cooking and crying will make your testes invert. It's true - and all part of the diabolical feminist plan for global sissification. Men: show your independence and strength of character by being the same as all other men. Homogeny is strength!

2. Casting a failure of men to be interesting as a failure of women:

Now, over a decade later, women are waking up to the fact that these men are drippy, sexless bores. The feminisation of men hasn't produced the well-rounded uber-males women were hoping for.

Instead, women are now lumped with flabby invertebrates, little more than doormats, whom they secretly despise but are too proud to admit it.

I am a particular fan of this argument of self-loathing: I don't like me, and therefore you can't like me either. It's the desperate screed of someone who doesn't understand why people who aren't like him could possibly be happy.

It's also an argument that totally avoids any male responsibility for their identities, lives or relationships - they have, haplessly, been moulded by the feminists.

3. Use of iconic, fictional men to describe true masculinity:

After decades of uncompromising movie heroes like Marlon Brando and Clint Eastwood, we were asked to fall for stuttering, floppy-haired fops like Hugh Grant; touchy-feely and hopelessly embarrassed around women.

Enjoyable, slight moment of unintentional homoeroticism, given that "we" (the reader and the author) includes Dhaliwal. Bonus marks for making universal claims about what all women find attractive, and presuming a similarly universal distribution of cultural values. Bravo.

3. The claim to be a "true feminist":

Let's see if anyone can spot the cognitive dissonance in the following passages:

Young women have a crystal-clear agenda: they want the career, the wardrobe, the smartly furnished house, the 4x4 and the cute kids they'll ferry in it to expensive schools. No man is going to get in their way; and the men they choose for themselves are pliant and feeble enough to facilitate that programme.

and

I'm always telling my wife, the writer Liz Jones, to shut up. She gets into a prissy huff about it, but I know she respects me for not indulging her neuroticism. Long ago, I realised it is unhealthy for a man to embroil himself in arguments with women.

then, having established a loathing of independent women:

I am a true feminist, because I only want to be with a powerful and capable woman. No sexist could cope with having a wife as intelligent and independent as mine.

I imagine he'd have to cope by ignoring her and inventing some kind of self-serving rationale that makes him look good. Speaking of which..

4. My penis is God.

The female orgasm is the natural mechanism by which men assert dominion over women: a man who appreciates this can negotiate whatever difficulties arise in his relationships with them.

...

Oh. My.  The female orgasm is the natural mechanism of male dominance?

Angry that I'm not helping in the home? Pissed that I ignore your thoughts and feelings? Suspect that you're in a relationship with a collossal arse? Let me bang away your anxieties!

Oh.. my brain is almost.. wait.. there's more..

Last Christmas, my wife threw me out after discovering I'd been cheating on her. On the night we got back together, I made strong, passionate love to her. Unfaithful as I'd been, I was not going to let her have me over a barrel for the rest of our marriage. I needed to keep a sense of self and not allow her to mire me in guilt and a desperate quest of forgiveness.

So the definition of manliness is to cheat on your wife and then refuse any of the consequences of your actions? Isn't that the definition of being a total douche-bag?

Dhaliwal even manages some indignant rage: how dare my wife expect me to feel guilty for cheating on her. It even seems that to be truly manly is to re-frame your own treachery as proof of your desirability:

I needed to let her know what she would be missing if we broke up for ever. I gave her a manful bravura performance that night, and at the height of her passion, I asked her: 'Who's the boss?'

The question threw her. Initially she wouldn't give me a reply, but I enticed it from her. 'You are,' she finally gasped. 'You are!'

*gag*

This is a stunning bit of wish-fulfilment: that the penis has powers that cannot be resisted or duplicated, tying every piece of anxiety about success and identity back into Wang Magic. Dhaliwal's real problem with feminism, it seems, is that it threatens the mastery of the penis - or, in egocentric style, threatens the mastery of his penis.

Unfortunately for him, no amount of feminist-bashing is going to help with that particular problem. If your sense of worth is tied in dominating another with your dick, then you're always going to be in trouble when that other refuses to sit down and shut up - or worse still, laughs at your posturing.

£300 million for sexual health leads to funding and staff shortfall: your nhs at work

There's no point in spending money on sexual health unless you actually spend the money on sexual health:

A £300m programme to tackle England's epidemic of sexually transmitted infections is in danger of collapse because the money has been siphoned off by NHS trusts to reduce their financial deficits, government advisers warn today. [...]

Two years ago, a public health white paper entitled Choosing Health promised £300m to improve contraceptive services, sexual health clinics and chlamydia screening. But ministers did not ring-fence the money to ensure it was used to implement the policy.

The most stupid things about this situation is not that such a problem should have been easily anticipated and that the funds should have been ring-fenced. It's not even that improving sexual health is supposed to be one of the top six priorities for the NHS and that some existing services are now finding themselves underfunded and understaffed:

The survey found 51 PCTs had absorbed the entire allocation into the general budget this year, and 33 withheld some or most of the sexual health funding. Forty PCTs said the funding had not reached contraception services, 31 admitted withholding cash earmarked for chlamydia screening and 40 said genito-urinary medicine (GUM) services were being affected by funding problems, resulting in recruitment freezes and understaffing.

The most stupid thing is that in a few months, someone will write an article pointing to a lack of results from this particular programme, arguing that spending money on sex education and health-care has no impact on bringing down STI rates and that only abstinence can possibly help.

We need to spend more money on sexual health and comprehensive sex education. However, for that to actually work, we have to spend the money and not just talk about doing it.