DEADLINES AND TO DO LISTS

DEADLINE!

I am writing this early in the morning of New Year’s Eve as 2022 draws to a close. It is often in the early mornings that I write best, with a cup of tea by my side before I have eaten breakfast. The mind seems freshest then as I get out of bed, slowly and sometimes reluctantly, but knowing that there are things to do before the sun comes up and the day proper begins. My to do list is next to me and the first item reads ‘Write and post blogs’. 

So I start the day at the computer and will tick off the above item before the more mundane ones beneath it. I have a self-imposed deadline of the first day of the week for my blog post about tourist guiding (link) and the last day of the month for an essay on some subject of interest to me. I make good money from my continuing career in tourism and my house in London. Writing is just about break-even but it keeps my brain alive, if not my bank account.

 

In the past I made a little money from freelance writing and I still occasionally pitch an idea to an editor but writing is an overcrowded profession and I do not have the chutzpah to stand out from the crowd or the contacts to inveigle my way into writing jobs. So I write for pleasure and do not worry about the money I might make from publication – even though I am convinced that a lot of what I write is better than what I read (said he modestly).

 

Occasionally I idly dream that in future times there will be a profession of e-archaeology and, instead of looking for physical objects buried underground, future archaeologists will surf the web looking for undiscovered treasures and writers who are obscure and unknown today will enjoy fifteen minutes of fame in the future, when people realise that they had talent but not the contacts or chutzpah to get published in their own lifetimes.

 

Not that we will be around to enjoy it, even from heaven above. I have never been able to believe in an afterlife in which our disembodied souls survive, while our physical bodies have ceased to work. When you go, that is it. I do not deny the importance or power of religion but, if God exists, he does so as much as a concept as a being. Not that human beings are worse for inventing a creator. It seems to fill a need and should not be despised.

 

Apart from anything else, an afterlife might be a bit dull – being stuck in a place where we are not able to enjoy the physical things which are so important in our lives – a decent meal, a drink in the evening after a day’s work, sex (frankly) and a good night’s sleep among other things. Even just buying clothes, as I did today in the sales, or warming up after being stuck in the rain are pleasures denied in an afterlife which presumably does not have weather.   

 

With only one life, it is important to make the most of it and deadlines and to do lists are one way I find of doing so. Once I no longer have a list of things to do, life will no longer be worth living and it will be time to stop. I may have more of my life behind me than in front but that stage has not been reached yet and so I will start ticking off items on the list as soon as I have uploaded this and written my other blog: diaryofatouristguide.blogspot.com

Edwin Lerner

 

SHOULD WE GIVEW THE MARBLES BACK TO GREECE?

 

The Duveen Gallery at the British Museum

I have been doing some writing – and thinking – recently about the Parthenon Marbles at the British Museum (BM) which Greece wants returned. We used to call them the Elgin Marbles after the seventh Earl of Elgin who brought them to London. The legality of their removal from Greece was a little dubious and, even if it was properly, authorised, it was done so by the Turks not the Greeks themselves. Greece at the time was part of the Ottoman Empire, which Elgin was ambassador to and they may – or may not – have allowed him to take them to London, where they ended up and can be seen in the Duveen Gallery of the BM.

 

As a young tourist guide, I mentioned the Marbles on a tour of London, knowing that there were a few Greeks on board. “Ah, those are the ones you stole,” said one of them, thus immediately puncturing my attempt to be inclusive. I have long since learned to get my retaliation in first and, if I go to the British Museum with a group, am not afraid to bring up the subject myself. My argument for keeping the Marbles in London is that they do not belong to the British, any more than to the Greeks. They belong to the whole world and they just happen to be in London.

 

In London they can be seen free of charge by over six million visitors a year to the Museum, most of whom will go into the Duveen Gallery (Room 18) where they are on display. In Athens you would have to pay to go to the new gallery in the Acropolis Museum where they have a space pointedly waiting for their eventual return. This will probably not happen in my lifetime as the Museum authorities say that, to return the Marbles, will effectively bring about the end of the BM as other countries queue up to reclaim “their” treasures from it.

 

The Greeks claim that returning the Marbles to Athens will not necessarily set a precedent for other countries to follow and should be considered in isolation. This is a born yesterday type of attitude in my view. You can just hear the other countries saying, “You gave the Marbles back to Greece. Now it is our turn.” The line will stretch around Russell Square and reach the British Library, which used to be inside the Museum, and will next on the list for repatriation of the various volumes they have “acquired” over the centuries. Take this process to its logical conclusion and people living in Britain will only ever be able to see British works of art, in Italy Italian works of art and in Finland Finnish works of art – which is surely the exact opposites of what museums are meant to be and will bring to an end the international flavour of these institutions which are supposed to bring people together.

 

The movement to return the Marbles to Greece puts ownership above accessibility. It says that it is more important that they are in the right place than that people should be able to see them. London is one of the most visited cities in the world and the rather badly named British Museum – most of its exhibits come from outside Britain – is right in the centre of the city, available for millions of people to visit. The Greeks cannot afford free admission to their museums and attract less than a quarter of the number of people who go to the BM. The Marbles are not only more accessible in London, but they are a great advertisement for Greece’s ancient culture and achievements. Why remove them in order to prove a point?

 

It would not be possible for Lord Elgin to act in the way he did today. He did not, incidentally, make a profit from bringing the Marbles to London, where he sold them to the British government for less than half of what it had cost him to bring them here. (If he did “steal” them, he was not a very smart thief.) His attitude was that, by removing the Marbles, he was saving them for civilisation, as they had been badly damaged while they were in Greece and needed to be looked after properly, which could only happen in a museum environment in London. They were originally destined for his home but he had to sell them to recoup some of the considerable amount he had spent to bring them here – not least as he was tied up in an expensive divorce at the time and had money problems.

 

Elgin’s approach – and that of others who filled the Museum with the treasures it displays – was shot through with racial assumptions that would not be considered acceptable today. It assumes that white British men should look after the treasures of the ancient world because darker-skinned locals were not willing or able to do so themselves. I always thought that Elgin had been given an unfairly bad press for his role and feel that he acted from a genuine desire to preserve them for posterity. This does not alter the sense that he felt entitled to do so using methods alien to current attitudes, when it is necessary to show respect to local cultures instead of looting them for the benefit of so-called superior ones who know better.

 

Would the Marbles still exist if Elgin had left them alone and merely had pictures drawn of them to show the world what they were like, as he had originally intended? I doubt it. He acted in a way that conserved them for future generations and prevented their eventual destruction. At least, in that sense, he was acting in a way that led them to being preserved. This at least is in tune with current trends and, instead of being condemned as a thief, his reputation should be rehabilitated as a preserver of some of the world’s greatest treasures.

 

My conclusion: the Marbles should stay in London and not be sent back to Greece. 

Edwin Lerner

My other blog is diaryofatouristguide.blogspot.com

NEW NAMES FOR OLD ILLS

Churchill who suffered from 'depression'

When I went to school, you could either spell or you could not. (I write as one who has sometimes misspelled words and relies on Word to tell me when I have got it wrong.) Then something called dyslexia appeared and, before long, what had once seemed mere incompetence had a fancy medical name attached to it and was nobody’s fault. 

Likewise, if you ran away from combat in the First or Second World Wars, you were considered a coward and were often shot for desertion. (Again, I write as someone who has never fought in a military conflict and am aware that I have little right to judge others.) Then we introduced shell-shock which meant that cowardice no longer existed. By giving something a medical name, we effectively stopped judging people for lack of moral fibre.

 

A mother once excused her child’s rowdy behaviour by saying that he was on the autism spectrum and had little self-control. It was not really his fault that he was behaving badly - and spoiling things for other people – because of a medical name for his condition. Pretty soon nobody will bear any responsibility for what they do because you can attach a medical name to what used to be a moral fault and thus remove the element of blame from it.

Similarly, nobody is ever in a bad mood now. Instead they suffer from depression, which never used to exist - although Winston Churchill did admit to being afflicted by the 'black dog'. Bruce Springsteen forgave his father for his bad moods because he was able to attach a medical definition to the process. He was not surly or bad tempered but suffered from 'depression'. 

 

I am, as those who have read this far may be aware, dubious about this whole process. We eventually won the First World War because of a variety of factors, not least American involvement, but also because men were expected to go ‘over the top’, sometimes to almost certain death from enemy fire. Being unwilling to do so meant that you were considered a coward and dealt with accordingly, which usually meant the firing squad.

 

This was the harsh reality of a war that cost the lives of nearly a million men in the British forces, less than a tenth of the total military casualties. And this does not include civilian deaths which brought the figure up to fourteen or fifteen million altogether. This is an unimaginable amount of death in today’s terms and begs the question of whether it was worth it in the end. Many parents were keen to send their sons into the conflict, not least Rudyard Kipling, whose only son Jack was killed in his first taste of combat, one that left a shadow over the life of the poet and short story writer, one that never really lifted. 

 

Kipling effectively sacrificed his own son who, like his father, suffered from poor eyesight and could easily have escaped military service. Yet both father and son were keen that Jack should ‘do his bit’ rather than be stained by the suggestion that he was a coward and could not face up to his responsibilities as a soldier. On such determination was victory eventually achieved against the might of a militaristic Germany that needed to be stopped from taking over Europe – and eventually the whole world – completely. Contempt for what soldiers called cowardice and the willingness to shoot deserters was sadly an essential part of this.

 

Do we lose something by being understanding of the causes of what used to be called cowardice but is now known as shell shock, what used to be called bad spelling but is now diagnosed as dyslexia and was once bad behaviour but is not called being on the autism spectrum? The inevitable end result of this is that nobody has to take responsibility for anything they do with their hands because they are suffering from a medical – rather than a moral – condition which affects what is going on in their heads.  

The end result of this was seen in an American trial when the perpetrator’s lawyers claimed that he had a gene that determined his actions – which were not disputed and involved killing a woman who was unable to defend herself. Yet what is a gene but a determinant of the actions by which we are judged. ‘Use every man after his deserts and who shall ‘scape whipping?’ asks Hamlet in Shakespeare’s plays. (He is talking about the players and Polonius’s promise to do just that.) We all have a lot to be ashamed about – not least this writer – and we should be grateful that we are not always judged too harshly.

 

This begs the question of who a human being is: a moral being who takes responsibility for his or her actions or a collection of genes who cannot be held responsible for such actions. Not only do I believe that we are the former but I think that we have to treat ourselves as such or else nobody can ever do anything simply bad and thus can never be judged.  

 

Yet, at a certain point, we have to subject ourselves to judgement or society ceases to function. Just as the British side would not have own the First World War if they had recognised the concept of shell shock rather than labelling it simply as cowardice, so no justice system could survive if the argument that we should be excused out actions because of our genes was allowed to hold sway. It did not in the end but it did allow the plaintiff to receive a life rather than a death sentence. He was white, incidentally, and I doubt if he would have been shown such understanding if his skin had been of a darker colour. 

 

By all means, use a person’s medical condition to extend understanding towards them. But there comes a time when you have to stop excusing people and start judging them. 

Edwin Lerner

My other blog is diaryofatouristguide.blogspot.com

 

ANTI-SEMITISM AND ISLAMOPHOBIA - WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE?

Crudely anti-Semitic - Mear One's cartoon...

  

 yet Charlie Hebdo was a hero

For people who just want to raise a quick laugh, cartoonists get into a lot of trouble. Mear One is a Californian street artist who drew a satirical anti-banker mural in Brick Lane in 2012. Many Jewish people found it offensive because it portrayed at least two of the bankers as Jewish and would not have looked out of place in Nazi Germany. The mural was defended by Jeremy Corbyn (who later removed his support for it) and taken down – not because it was considered offensive but because another artist was due to fill the spot. 

Three years later the Charlie Hebdo office in Paris was attacked by two heavily-armed Moslem terrorists who took offence at the depictions of the prophet Mohammed in the magazine and randomly killed twelve people and injured eleven others working there. The two killers, who were brothers, were killed by the police but not until after another piece of random anti-Semitism – the shooting of four innocent Jewish people in a supermarket.

 

Even the use of the word ‘innocent’ in this context causes problems because it implies that those who are active in producing images that some people find offensive are somehow ‘guilty’ of racist or offensive behaviour. The so-called crime of the French cartoonists was to show images of Mohammed which depicted him in a particularly offensive light. I have not seen them but understand that one showed him having sex with a thirteen year old girl.

 

Where do you draw the line between freedom of speech and religious hatred? Our society does not permit virulently racists to hide behind a freedom of speech defence. You are simply not allowed to stir up hatred against ethnic groups and then claim that you were exercising this right, just as you are not allowed to slander or libel someone and claim free speech protection. You have to justify your words by saying they were necessary - or true.

 

Although Mear One was not prosecuted for his alleged anti-Semitism (which he denied) he was heavily criticised and I think that he overstepped the mark by showing the bankers with obvious and unnecessary Jewish features like hooked noses. He was right to be challenged in this way and may have lost a case in court if it had been brought. Yet if Mear One was guilty of anti-Semitism were the Hebdo cartoonists also guilty - of Islamophobia?

 

Instead they were shot. Obviously, you cannot support those who use guns against writers. Being Moslem does not in itself give you a right to censor work you find offensive. If we went that way, then it is a power we would have to extend to all religions and even noted atheists might find themselves silenced. Then would come liberals and free-thinkers of all hues. Questioning religion is part of our civic right, even duty, and one we should preserve.

 

Where the line should be drawn between freedom of expression and inciting religious or ethnic hatred is a tricky question. However, one thing I have learned about discrimination is that the attitude of the person subject to prejudice is important. When someone says that he ‘does not have a racist bone in his body’ and is therefore entitled to make jokes about people from ethnic minorities, my immediate attitude is one of extreme scepticism.

 

You are judging (and acquitting) yourself with a phrase like that but it is the person with a darker skin colour who is the victim, not the one who is white, and it is he or she who gets to say whether he has been discriminated against. France is a secular country and has tried to ban head coverings burkinis (a kind of modest bikini) that Moslems regard as important. Surely it is they who should have the final say on whether a law or an image is insulting.

 

However, we do not promise in a western society to protect everyone from perceived insult. You have to roll with the punches sometimes and fighting back by killing unarmed people is obviously not acceptable in a law-abiding society. The action of the gunmen was counter- productive in any case as millions of people supported the cartoonists by wearing ‘Je suis Charlie’ t-shirts after the massacre and by buying future copies of the magazine.

 

Would they have worn those shirts if the cartoons had been perceived as anti-Semitic as Mear One’s mural was? Jewish people are good at spotting anti-Semitism, which is sometimes hidden behind innocent sounding notions such as ‘clubbability’. The person who does not suffer from discrimination is often the worst at spotting it. They think that if they help the child of a friend or mix with their own sort then they are not being discriminatory.

Sometimes they are, however, and are exercising their privileges by subtly excluding people from a different ethnic or religious background from their circle. It is often hard for the discriminator to spot this and he sometimes needs the help of the discriminated to do so. 

 

Jews tend to be more successful than Moslems in our society because they work hard and know how to open doors, while Moslems might go to the mosque and lick their wounds. This, incidentally, is why anti-Semitism is considered an acceptable discrimination by some on the left. It is looked on as punching up rather than punching down – although it is hard to be much farther down than if you are in a gas chamber with the taps about to be turned on.

 

I am still troubled by the lionisation of people who are perceived to be Islamophobic and the demonisation of those seen to be anti-Semitic. I know there is a difference between satirising obvious Jewish bankers and making fun of Mohammed. Yet Moslems say that, if you insult my prophet, you insult me. And one thing that I have learned about prejudice is that it is the person who is discriminated against who should have the final say.

My other blog is diaryofatouristguideblogspot.com - with lots of posts about royalty.

Edwin Lerner

ARE ZIONISTS RACIST?

The Star of David - a Jewish and Israeli symbol

 ‘All Zionists are racists. Every single one.” So said the t-shirt of a man I saw recently at the Tower of London. He was there with his daughter and looked like a right-on person rather than a right-wing one – long-hair, jeans and boots, the typical left-winger’s uniform and the last person you would expect to be a sympathiser with anti-Semitism or Nazism. Nevertheless he identified Zionism with racism utterly, completely and without exception.

I looked up Zionism in Wikipedia and it identified the movement as supportive of a Jewish homeland, a concept that was recognised by the United Nations in 1948 after the Holocaust had killed six million Jews, many in gas chambers but others just gunned down – men, women and children – and left to die. It is said that the piles of dead bodies kept moving and breathing after the killing until death came, perhaps mercifully, to the victims.

 

If you are an anti-Zionist therfore that surely means you are automatically in favour of the abolition of Israel as a nation state and the relocation of its Jewish population elsewhere. That means seven million Jews will have to find new homes or else be absorbed into a non-Jewish state which would probably not welcome them with open arms. Israel has not been shy about attacking Arab countries who have been quite open about wanting to destroy it.

 

An increase in the size of Israel’s population to nine and a half million today – around three quarters of whom are Jewish – means that the figure of Jews who will be effectively homeless is no longer that potent number of six million but, in any case, it is a large number of people to rehouse, certainly not all of whom would fit into Florida or anywhere else that will take them in. It looks as if they will stay where they are - for the time being at least.  

 

There is surely a difference between disagreeing with Israel’s aggressive policy of defending itself, which all too often involves killing innocent Arab children and destroying their family homes, and accepting that Israel exists as a state and here is to stay. If the latter attitude constitutes Zionism, which I assume it does, then I would have to be a Zionist and, according to the man’s t-shirt, automatically a racist. This, not surprisingly, is a charge I reject.

 

The first duty of any state is surely to protect its citizens. Israel does this aggressively, probably inspired by the memory of how Jews were killed by the Nazis, who led their victims into believing that they were being given showers when they were being taken to the gas chambers. This was not out of compassion but because non-panicking people were easier to kill than those who knew what was happening to them and were more likely to resist.    

 

The policy of many who sympathise with the Palestinians, who were often ruthlessly driven from their land, is to undermine sympathy with Israel and to make anti-Zionism fashionable. They would surely deny it but there is an element of anti-Semitism in this. It is a prejudice is thought of as punching up rather than punching down - although you cannot be much further down than when you are in a gas chamber and the taps are about to be turned on.

 

Jews throughout the world have a tendency to succeed. They have won an astonishingly high proportion of Nobel prizes – nearly a quarter from a fifth of a per cent of the world population. This represents a far higher proportion than people from Arab and Moslem backgrounds who tend to be anti-Zionist. Likewise, Israel is a successful modern country with the highest number of patents in the world by the size of its population.

 

Israel will remain isolated an unpopular in many circles. They are losing what I call the saloon bar in the west: moderate middle-class opinion which would normally favour a small country that struggled to survive among hostile neighbours. Unpopularity does not mean extinction, however, and most Israelis would choose survival in their own sphere over popularity in the west, which did little to protect the Jews while the Nazis killed them.

 

It seems to me that what the Palestinians lack is a Mahatma Gandhi or a Nelson Mandela, someone who realises that their enemies must be adapted to rather than conquered. The best way to do this is surely through non-violence rather than an attempt at annihilation, which will never realistically happen. It may make a good slogan or a song but Israel is going nowhere and the sooner the Palestinians realise this, the better their chance of statehood.

 

At present, most Israelis believe that granting the Palestinians their own state will simply move the rocket launchers closer to the borders with Israel. They put survival for their own people above justice for their enemies and are prepared to live in a state of perpetual semi-warfare in order to ensure that survival rather than give up hard-won territory in exchange for a nebulous – and almost certainly mistaken – hope that it might bring them peace.

 

Most people want to live peacefully with their neighbours but need those neighbours to recognise their right to exist in order to do so. As long as Palestinians and their supporters want to see Israel destroyed, its inhabitants will not believe that the country will be allowed to continue. Calling someone who believes in the right of Israel to continue to exist a racist is not the way to convince them that of the rightness of your arguments.

My other blog is diaryofatouristguide.blogspot.com

Edwin Lerner

 

TRANS RIGHTS AND WRONGS

... and Giles Fraser

Unlikely allies: Andrea Dworkin

The late feminist writer Andrea Dworkin said that every man was a potential rapist. I rather took exception to this, thinking that I ought to be judged on what I do rather than what I might do. All women are potential nags or shrews. That does not make any individual female one. Judge a person on their actual character not their potential crimes – or sins. 

However, I have finally realised what Dworkin was meaning by this. She lived in an era before trans rights was an issue and most people stuck to their birth sex. They were what are now called ‘cis gender’ in their outlook and approach to life and she obviously found something unappealing about the heterosexual male – her own partner was openly gay.

 

Women need protection against the threat of rape: that much seems obvious. You cannot prevent crime happening altogether without locking up every potential rapist – nearly half the population according to Dworkin. (We can eliminate men who are gay or too old or too young to manage sex.) Nevertheless, you can reduce the chance of rape actually happening. 

 

Yet now we are in a situation in which it is possible for a trans male to redefine themselves as women simply by stating that they are one. No medical procedures or proof of the process are needed to make this statement. Put bluntly, you do not have to have your penis removed before you think that you are entitled to be regarded by the world as a woman.

 

‘Self-identification’ is increasingly considered enough to change your gender and everyone is expected to accept your decision without question. Yet, like a very vocal set of traditional feminists, I do question this right when it comes to men transitioning to women. They have gained the nickname TERFs – Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists. It is not a compliment. 

 

Many previously lionised feminists like Germain Greer, Julie Bindel and J K Rowling have been attacked for their anti-trans views and subjected to what seems like a very male form of bullying by people who were previously males and now identify as female but seem not to have left male habits of mind – and action – behind as they adopt a new gender identity.

 

(See Giles Fraser's piece on Terfs being bullied here)

 

Self ID may make things a lot easier for the increasingly large number of people who feel they are born in the wrong body. However, it also make it much easier for a potential rapist to prey on his mainly cis victims. He simply has to declare himself a woman in order to gain access to female only spaces where he can then wreak havoc on vulnerable women. 

 

This has happened on more than one occasion and Dworkin, I feel sure, would be horrified. The phrase that comes to mind is letting the fox into the henhouse, leaving often vulnerable women in shelters for battered women, for example, open to the prospect of being raped by a man who has identified as a woman simply so he can exploit real (or ‘cis’) women. 

 

If you do not believe me, check out this example here  - there are other examples as well.

 

If someone wants to identify as a member of the opposite gender he or she was born into, that should not present a problem. A friend, who knows several trans people, has said that they are usually the most gentle, unaggressive people imaginable. However, it only takes one person to wreck the system and spoil it for everybody else, who has no sinister motive.

 

It is not that being trans is the problem in itself. It is more of a case of what trans peope are allowed to do – or forbidden from doing. The law does not concern itself with the vast majority of law-abiding people, the gentle transitioners, who want to lead lives they feel more suited to. Laws are needed to protect the vulnerable, who are usually women.

 

They may be children as well. There seems to be a fashion for accepting, even encouraging, the process of transition amongst parents of young children. I have no problem with someone dressing up as a member of the opposite gender when young. If they want to act as a member of a different sex, I like to think I would be fully supportive of them

 

However, I do have a major problem with the idea of allowing life-changing surgery - which would affect a person’s ability to reproduce later in life - to people who are not yet adults.  We have an age of adulthood – generally eighteen, sometimes sixteen – for a reason. It is to protect young people from making decisions that they may well regret later in life.

 

Take voting, for example. You have to be eighteen to vote in most elections, the age of adulthood. That does not mean you are not allowed to have political opinions prior to reaching that age. Plenty of young people do and campaign for causes and become involved in discussions. They are just not allowed to cast a vote before their eighteenth birthday.

 

You can always change your mind about the party you vote for – plenty of people do – but you cannot reverse the removal of a womb or a penis. That is a serious business and definitely not one to be undertaken lightly, certainly not as a young teenager who thinks he or she knows all the answers. These ‘answers’ may well be different next week or month.

 

I once saw a sign saying simply “Trans Rights Now’ in the window of a house. That depends on the rights being demanded I thought. There should be no problem with acceptance of people who want to transition once they have reached adulthood. Those who are not yet adults may have to wait until they are before they can be allowed to choose their gender.

 

At least this gives them a chance to change their minds before they change their bodies.

Edwin Lerner

My other blog is diaryofatouristguide.blogspot.com

 

ROE IS NO MORE

Merrick Garland (Wikicommons)

Remember Merrick Garland? He was nominated for a seat on the American Supreme Court by former President Barrack Obama in 2016 after the death of one of the sitting judges, Antony Scalia. He was considered a liberal - although a pretty mild one - by most observers but this was too much for conservatives in the American Senate, who blocked his nomination for almost a year. He was eventually replaced by a conservative choice for the Court, Neal Gorsuch, by incoming President Donald Trump. Gorsuch was quickly confirmed by the Senate.

Do not feel too sorry for Garland, by the way. He is now Attorney General of the USA, having been appointed by Joe Biden. The fact that his nomination was shamelessly and ruthlessly blocked by the conservative Republicans in the Senate, however, shows how factions who are prepared to ignore the accepted norms of behaviour in support of a cause can often achieve results that leaves those who obey the rules fuming with frustration. The fact that they are impotent to alter the result only increases their sense of annoyance.

 

Sure enough, the Supreme Court has now overturned the right to an abortion that was never enshrined by statute but was accepted after a previous ruling, the famous Roe versus Wade, was reversed by the current Court. While it does not directly affect people in Britain, the ruling has gathered a lot of publicity here and highlights the contrast between the British and American justice systems. In a nutshell, in the USA the Supreme Court has the final say, while in Britain Parliament rules supreme and can override the Court if it wants to.

 

After he had been in power for a short time and wanted to bring Brexit on, Boris Johnson decided to suspend (prorogue) parliament but the court told him that it would be against the law to do so. Cue lots of muttering about arrogant remainer judges frustrating the will of the people. However, as Prime Minister, Johnson could have altered the law to give him the necessary power if he wanted to. The only problem was that he knew he would never get parliament to agree to this so it was the politician who was frustrated by the courts and the rule of law.

 

Quite right too. Democracy should always take priority over the courts but politicians have to obey the law and do not wield absolute power. In America some judges are called ‘originalists’, ie they say that what the Founding Fathers wrote in the original Constitution should be followed to the letter. Yet, these were human and fallible men living in the eighteenth century. Abortion simply did not exist then so it is technically right that there is no constitutional right to an abortion in it. That does not mean the right to one should be utterly abolished by the Court.

 

Yet this is what is happening in the USA right now. It shows how a well-organised and ruthless group of people, who are convinced they are in the right, can sometimes exploit the system to further their own agenda while more reasonable and moderate people are left powerless. The great majority of Americans think that abortion should be legal yet most of them will not have access to it now because conservative Republicans refused to even discuss the nomination of a man to the Supreme Court who might have allowed it.

 

My own position on abortion has always been that it is valid to regard it as a sin but that it is unwise to treat it as a crime. The word sin is not very fashionable because it has biblical overtones but it provides a useful way of distinguishing between what should remain in the area of personal morality and what should be treated as illegal by the state. In fact, it is slightly more nuanced than this because a foetus/unborn child (whatever you want to call it) has rights that kick in at a certain stage when aborting it would be criminal - as well as (possibly) sinful. 

 

I also think that these rights are absolute and should not be denied to a foetus in the case of disability, when the time limit on abortion is waived. That currently stands at twenty four weeks, which is taken as the time when viability starts. There is discussion about changing this to twenty weeks as medical science advances. I am fairly agnostic about where the line should be drawn but I am certain it has to be drawn somewhere. At that point abortion is no longer a possible sin and becomes a crime, whatever the condition of the foetus.

 

Yet, those who oppose abortion are determined that it should always be treated as a crime rather than as a sin. Many of those who support abortion rights do so reluctantly and with the feeling that a termination is the least worst option in the case of an unwanted pregnancy. They know that it might be wrong but ending a pregnancy is probably a better option for a poor mother than bringing another unwanted child into the world. The absolutists who regard this as murder entertain no such doubts and are prepared to do anything to achieve their ends.

 

I wonder if they would be better off trying to persuade pregnant women that it might be a sin to kill an unborn child but that it should not be treated as a crime. This is what happened in the Republic of Ireland when they had the debate about allowing abortion. (Discussed here.) The people had a chance to vote on the matter and decided that an individual should be allowed to choose whether to end a pregnancy or not. They, not the state, would decide on the morality of the matter so abortion might be called a sin but would not be treated as crime.

 

This was a mature and considered decision and would almost certainly be repeated if a referendum were held in the USA. However, the American constitution does not allow for referendums and leaves these matters to be decided by the Supreme Court. The way the system is organised gives conservatives an inbuilt advantage which they have ruthlessly exploited to thwart majority opinion. The British system is better. It may not be perfect but it beats leaving it to the fanatics who use every method in their power to achieve their ends. 

Edwin Lerner

My other blog is diaryofatouristguide.blogspot.com

AATITUDE TO ANIMALS

Animal free now - the big top circus tent

The only thing on at the theatre was Murder on the Orient Express, which I had seen twice at the cinema so I knew what happened. Agatha Christie works better if you do not know whodunnit so, despite having the excellent Henry Goodman as Poirot, I gave it a miss and decided to go to the circus instead. I like to go to a live performance about once a week; it was just a short walk away and so I coughed up my twelve pounds and went along.

 

The last time I had been to see a circus must have been over half a century ago and my memory of it is inevitably hazy. What had changed in the meantime was our attitude to animals. Today it is considered unacceptable to exploit animals by using them in circuses where they perform for the public who gawp at the way they do human things and seem to threaten the lives of performers who put their heads into the mouth of a lion or tiger. 

 

It is certainly hard to argue in favour of animal cruelty and there is definitely something exploitative and undignified about elephants on tiptoe, which has now ended, leaving the human performers to keep the circus going without any help from animals. Before we celebrate, however, I want to know what happened to those animals who were released from the humiliation of performing in public. Did they just end up being sent to the abattoir? 

 

In our haste to free these same animals from performing in public, are we in effect abolishing them altogether? I have the same reservations about vegetarianism. We are often told that eating animals is an “inefficient” way of using the land and we could certainly feed a bigger population if we adopted a vegetarian – and eventually a vegan – diet. But this cutting out the middle man (or creature) must result in more people and less animals. Is that what we want?

 

Societies that adopt vegetarianism tend to be ones which are densely populated – India, Ireland in the period leading up to the potato famine, when the population was well above what it is today (eight million as opposed to six million) and, controversially, Nazi Germany. Of course, the Nazis did not give up meat universally but I am convinced that Hitler, who adopted a vegetarian lifestyle, considered a meatless world an essential part of lebensraum.

 

This literally means “living space” and was how he envisaged a future for a Germanic people who would dominate the world and eliminate all the unnecessary and inferior peoples – Slavs, the disabled, homosexuals, gypsies and Jews – who were occupying space that would be used by pure Aryan stock. Animals would eventually follow these people into oblivion. The difference between Hitler and a sentimental vegetarian is that he was honest about it.

 

My own daughter and several others in my family are vegetarians and my brother and his wife are moving towards a vegan lifestyle now. I do not love them any the less because I disagree with their choices – and I certainly think that we eat too much meat in our society – but I wonder what the future is for animals once we cease to eat them. Vegetarian societies certainly do not seem to be ones in which animals and humans live in peaceful harmony.

 

It is a long way from Nazi Germany to a visit to a modern circus which has to manage now without animals. The human performers certainly gave it a go. They performed magic and acrobatic tricks, made jokes, brought in a clown who encouraged the many children in the audience into making lots of noise. The ringmaster gamely played his part but I had the feeling that something was missing and that was the non-human element in the event.

A similar thing happened on a smaller scale on a visit to Osborne House on the Isle of Wight recently. I had been looking forward to see the horse and carriage that took us down to the Swiss Cottage but this had been replaced with a minibus. The new vehicle is quicker, more efficient and cheaper than a horse-drawn carriage but what has happened to the horses meanwhile? They have been abolished and another small step in human control is taken.

 

When – eventually – we decided to abolish slavery it was necessary for former slaves, who had previously been considered the property of their white owners, to find a new role as freed people. It would be stupid to say that this has been plain sailing since then but enough black people have prospered, such as politicians like Barack Obama and sportsmen and singers like Marcus Rashford and Aretha Franklin, to show that such a thing is at least possible.

 

There does not seem to be such a hope for animals who are destined for a one-way trip to the abattoir once they do not have a role either entertaining or being eaten by humans. This is the fundamental difference between racism and what is known as speciesism, the belief that some species are inevitably superior to others. It is up to those who refuse to eat or be entertained by animals to find a role for them that allows them to survive and even prosper.

 

There is precious little sign of that happening at present. While the short, cramped and uncomfortable life of a battery chicken may not be worth preserving, that of the performing animal might have been kept going if we had not been so absolutist in wanting to abolish all trace of it. It takes a lot of time, money and effort to feed and care for a large animal and there is little likelihood that anyone will do this if there is no economic reason for it.  

 

So what happened to the animals that used to perform in the circus or take the children on a carriage ride? Put down I bet, for the sake of a misplaced compassion. That is just another way humans have found of dominating the planet for themselves.

My other blog is diaryofatouristguide.blogspot.com

Edwin Lerner

 

ABSOLUTE OR ABSENT

Chad Varah, founder of The Samaritans
(Photograph downloaded from Wikipedia)

As I have already written in a previous post (which you can read here) one of the things I have been doing with my time recently is to answer the telephone for The Samaritans, an organisation that provides a free listening service for people who are unhappy, and are suffering from depression or desperation, many of whom might be on the verge of committing suicide.

 

One thing I learned was that we are not supposed to use the phrase “commit suicide” when doing a Samaritans shift. (Each lasts three hours and you are expected to do one a week.) Since suicide was decriminalised in 1961, the phrase has gone out of fashion and we are meant to say something like “end - or take - your own life” instead. 

 

This seems like the ultimate euphemism to me. “Suicide” is obviously a word that cannot be avoided when talking about taking your own life and “commit” is a simple English word which basically means “do”. If you cannot talk about doing something which, virtually by definition, you are talking about as a Samaritan, then we have come to a pretty pass.

 

However, rather than making a fuss about wokeness of political correctness, I have quietly shelved the phrase and use ones that are considered more acceptable these days. Chad Varah, who founded The Samaritans in the year I was born – 1953 – never shied away from saying “commit suicide” but I will obey the dictates of head office and drop it now for good.

 

However, I have my doubts about the issue of confidentiality which is paramount for all Samaritans. Although I can say that I am a Samaritan, I cannot write about particular people I have talked to and certainly will not boast that I persuaded Charles not to end his life or talked Clarissa into thinking that life was worthwhile after all. (Their names are invented by the way.)

 

Under the Samaritans code of confidentiality, conversations remain secret between the caller and the listener. It helps people to open up if they know that I will not blab about them to someone else after I have put down the phone. I debrief at the end of each session so a Samaritans leader hears what I have to say but then I shred my notes and go my way.

 

Yet confidentiality can come into conflict with safeguarding, the duty to protect people from sexual exploitation. If a caller tells me that they have raped their daughter (God forbid) then I have to warn them that I will need to report this to the authorities. There is no need for a caller to identify themselves, however, so there is little Samaritans can do if they refuse.

 

The whole issue of safeguarding has an element of covering your back, showing that you will reveal the details of a terrible crime without forcing the criminal to identify themselves. This means that, by keeping his (usually) identity secret, he can unburden himself without having to face the legal consequences of his confession. You cannot charge if you cannot identify.

 

There is a contrast in the degrees of confidentiality offered by a Samaritan and a Roman Catholic priest in the confessional. The sanctity of the confessional is absolute as is demonstrated by a Catholic priest here So you could confess to being the Yorkshire Ripper and not be betrayed by the priest as you are talking to him (always) in total confidence.

 

The same degree of absolute confidentiality does not apply to Samaritans. Not only does the safeguarding policy exist to protect children and other vulnerable people, but Samaritans will obey a court order to reveal the identity of a criminal. If I am “required by law” my duty of confidentiality can be suspended. Not so for a Roman Catholic priest.

 

This actually happened when a killer confessed to his crime to Samaritans no less than forty five times. The forty sixth listener, however, felt that he could not keep the secret and told the police who then apprehended the killer with the co-operation of the local branch. They effectively caved whereas a priest would have held out and kept the confession confidential.

 

Which is the correct approach? To maintain total confidentiality so that people can feel safe in confessing and unburden themselves or to put the protection of an innocent person first? This is an extremely difficult question to answer and I will probably be accused of hedging my bets when I say that each approach is probably right for the organisation concerned.

 

Whether you agree with the premise or not, a church will distinguish between a crime, which society judges and punishes you for, and a sin, which may be perfectly legal but goes against what God allows. Being unfaithful to a spouse is not a punishable crime but it is wrong in the eyes of the church and should be owned up to as a sin in the confessional.

 

Although it was founded by a priest, The Samaritans is a secular organisation and volunteers are forbidden from preaching the gospel to callers, who do not want to hear that God loves them, even (especially) if nobody else does. The Samaritans are concerned with life on earth and what happens in Heaven (or Hell) is not going to be uppermost in their minds.

 

For believers, however, God is the ultimate judge. They are released from the confessional with the words, “Go and sin no more”. Of course, people go on sinning (and confessing) but you have owned up to what you have done to God and can expect absolution from Him. What that means to society is not the concern of the person hearing your confession.

 

The Samaritans cannot expect to play this get out of jail free card. They have to think of the loved ones of a child who has been abused or killed and may be obliged to act in such a way that at least seems to be protecting the child from further abuse – or even worse. Therefore they impose limits on confidentiality so as not to be complicit in harming innocent people.

 

Remember this if you want to call The Samaritans to make a confession of having killed or abused someone. A Roman Catholic priest will offer you a greater degree of confidentiality so you may be better off telling all to him than to a secular Samaritan. They do not offer total secrecy and you could argue that, if confidentiality is not absolute, it is absent.

Edwin Lerner

My other blog is diaryofatouristguide.blogspot.com

THE STATE HAS NO CONSCIENCE

The ubiquitous yellow and blue flag of Ukraine

What is the connection between Vladimir Putin's invasion or Ukraine - for it is very much his project - and the Post Office scandal in which many sub post-masters were unjustly convicted of fiddling the books by a faulty computer system? It is that you cannot expect the state to control matters with fairness and decency. The state itself is neutral and has no conscience.

This is what struck me about the Post Office scandal. And it is a scandal. Hundreds of sub-postmasters were cut adrift by an organisation they would have expected to back them up. A faulty computer system was installed and they were forced to take the blame when money went missing despite it obviously not being their fault. Many paid with prison sentences, broken marriages, bankruptcy and even suicides. And what punishment did the bosses get? Nothing.

The magazine Private Eye backed up the sub-postmasters but there was a deafening silence from Fleet Street and the mainstream media until the brown stuff hit the fan, when they showed a belated interest. There were no big names or celebrities attached to a high profile campaign in their favour and nobody seemed to care about them except for an independent magazine.

Thank God for a free press. No such thing exists in Russia, the last non-state controlled television station having been closed down and journalists facing fifteen years in prison for even calling Putin's invasion of Ukraine a 'war'. A few thousand brave souls have gone out onto the streets to demonstrate but they can expect little mercy from the justice system in Russia.

Putin and his wife wedding photo

I blame divorce for a lot of the problems with Putin. He ditched his first wife ten years ago and has not replaced her but had various mistresses since. There is no-one at home to say to him, "Vladimir, this invasion of Ukraine is a stoopid idea which the Russian people do not want, I am sure. Mark my word, it will end in tears." Advisers cannot afford to talk with that sort of honesty.

Putin has surrounded himself with flunkeys and yes men. One columnist wrote that, if he was an advisor to the Russian president, he would think very carefully about what advice he gave to him lest he incur his displeasure. There is something ironical about a country that promotes the idea that the state is all-powerful being run by one man whose whims are like laws of iron while the west, which promotes the individual, relies far more on a group acting together.

We are between a rock and a hard place with Putin. If we provoke him too much, there is a real chance he will unleash nuclear weapons. If we cave in to him, he will simply continue with his aggression until we belatedly try and stop him. Think Hitler and Chamberlain, whose reputation has been partially rescued by Robert Harris and the book he wrote about the Munich agreement. We may call it 'a piece of paper' but it bought us an extra year before war inevitably arrived.  

'War' was inevitable once Putin decided to take over Ukraine to stop it falling into the hands of the west. He may not want me to call it that but I am not facing fifteen years behind bars for doing so. Try telling the parents of the children killed by Russian missiles that they are not engaged in a war. Try telling the Russian soldiers killing, being killed or surrendering.

The only hope is that, when the body bags start returning to Russia with the corpses of young soldiers inside them, the people of Russia will turn against Putin and he will have lost so much support that the end is inevitable. A tyrant is only as strong as the support he enjoys in his country and it is not the intellectuals who will bring down the dictator but the ordinary people.

Will that happen or has Putin's grip on power become so strong that the opposition has been effectively neutralised? Putin shows no hesitation in locking up or murdering those who oppose him and his strength and ruthlessness probably attract enough support for him to survive for the time being but, if his Ukraine invasion fails completely, things may change and do so quickly.

Putin got away with invading Chechnya and virtually flattened the country in subduing it. Russia, however, did not succeed in Afghanistan and its failure there effectively led to the collapse of state run communism to be replaced by a kind of state sponsored kleptocracy. Which way will it go in Ukraine? Most Ukrainians seem to want the freedoms of the west but Putin And Russia want to keep them in the east. At present it does not look good for the eastward facers.

I will not mourn Putin if he is a victim of his own ambition. Russia does not have much of a democratic tradition and seems to prefer being ruled by a strong man. Every strong man, however, has his limitations and I do hope that Putin overreaches himself and falls with an almighty crash to earth (or beneath it). We shall see how it pans out. Watch this space.

Edwin Lerner

My other blog is diaryofatouristguide.blogspot.com