Category Archives: Politics

Politics

There’s hope for Australia yet

August 6, 2006 – 9:14 am

Despite the rise of hideous American-style evangelical churches in the suburbs, fewer than half of young Australians believe in a god. Hopefully they’ll be joined by more of the young behind them and hopefully that will FINALLY mean the end of John Howard as PM. (He recently announced his intention to stand for a fifth term.)

He’s done such a good job on destroying Australia’s human rights – as illustrated by the treatment of child asylum-seekers, who have been thrust into detention, not given any help or support. Last year there was a small change made, so they would be only detained “as a last resort”. But now, the government is planning to change the law again, so they can be locked up in some Pacific Island hell, with little or no access to lawyers or support services…

Dozens of children were shipped to the island processing centres under the old “Pacific Solution” – whereby the navy intercepted asylum seekers before they had actually reached Australia. For the children processed offshore, the record of success in gaining refugee status has been much worse than for the children who made it to the mainland and were detained in centres in Australia. Of the 55 unaccompanied children sent to Nauru, more than half were sent back to Afghanistan, compared with none of the 290 unaccompanied children processed in Australia, Crock’s new book, Seeking Asylum Alone, reveals. The Government put the kids through hell in Australian detention centres, often over years, and none escaped emotional scarring. But in the end, they got to stay. It is not clear what happened to the children we sent back to Afghanistan.

Is it any wonder that young Australians are questioning “Christian values” such as Mr Howard’s….

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Feminism

Women judges to hear rape cases in India?

August 5, 2006 – 9:52 am

At the moment only a Bill to be presented to parliament, but it sounds like a great idea:

Women’s groups and rights activists have for long campaigned for reforming the judicial process that deals with sexual assault in a country where a woman is raped every 29 minutes.
The national capital, New Delhi, is the most unsafe Indian city for women, accounting for 30 percent of rapes, according to government data.
“This is a very positive step and will help get justice for the rape victim,” said Girija Vyas, chairwoman of the National Women’s’ Commission.
“Until now, male lawyers were able to threaten the victim and scare her. A woman judge will help build a sensitive atmosphere.”
The amendment would also allow the rape victim to have her lawyer with her during cross-examination. Earlier, this was in-camera, making it uncomfortable for the victim, Kumar said.

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Feminism

In memoriam

August 4, 2006 – 10:23 pm

Iris Marion Young – “one of the most important political philosophers of the past quarter-century”. And a feminist.

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Feminism Science

Brain sex?

August 4, 2006 – 1:42 pm

A quite balanced piece in the Economist about the differences between the brains of men and women.

There are a number of problems with these studies. One, according to Dr Hines, is science’s bias towards reporting positive results, so that research which shows no differences is likely to get lost. Another is that because differences between the sexes are so often popularised and played up in the popular media, people tend to pay them disproportionate attention.
For example, although it is commonly held that there are reliable differences between the verbal abilities of males and females, Dr Hines suggests this is not exactly correct. She says that the results of hundreds of tests of vocabulary and reading comprehension show there is almost no gap between the sexes. Though teenage girls are better at spelling than teenage boys, the only aspect of verbal ability that is known to show a sex difference in adults is verbal fluency (the ability to produce words rapidly). For example, when asked to list as many words as possible that start with a particular letter, women usually come up with more than men. Furthermore, even when there are differences in ability between the sexes, research suggests that the scale of these differences is often smaller than people generally believe.

I still think it underplays the cultural factors however. Last week after a friend had a baby I went out to buy a congratulatory card. I couldn’t find one, NOT ONE, specifically “congratulations on your new baby” card that wasn’t either definitely pink or blue. So in the end I choose a nice gender-neutral picture of a puppy, a card meant for any general purpose.

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Environmental politics

Green thoughts

August 4, 2006 – 9:24 am

The president of the Royal Society has called for an Apollo moon landings-style push to develop green energy.

“The Apollo project, like the Manhattan project, is an example where a goal was given a high priority and showed things can be done much more rapidly than would have happened in the normal course of events. The scale of funds needed is small in proportion to the scale of the problem and the trillions of dollars now being spent on energy,” he said.

Ben Macintyre in The Times has a constructive suggestion – bring back hitchhiking. (Given our risk-averse culture hard to see it happening in the traditional form, but perhaps if you did it in a semi-organised way – set up “stations” on the outskirts of big cities and record names it might work.

In the same paper there’s a sensible exploration of how to cool down a typical English hot-house – ceiling fans, shutters etc (with lists of stockists at least for the Southeast).

More simply, and most encouraging of all, a high street store (Curry’s) is starting to stock solar panels. If you’ve got the right sort of roof anywhere within reach of West Thurrock, Fulham or Croydon, why not explore the option?

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Feminism

A step in the right direction for children

August 3, 2006 – 10:39 am

The Indian government is to ban children under 14 working in restaurants and as domestic servants. No doubt the law is one thing and practice another, but still it is a step in the right direction, particularly for girls, who would make up a large proportion of this group.

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