That is the British pledge of allegiance which all immigrants now have to swear before being granted Citizenship. I myself would’ve had to swear it if I’d been over 18 when receiving my British citizenship; my parents have had to swear it,  and did so with good grace and only a small amount of cynicism, which I thought was nice of them. It’s not that as a family, we don’t appreciate all the things this country has done for us - on the contrary, I know for a fact that without all the opportunities Britain has given me, I wouldn’t be anywhere near the future I’m now working towards - but we don’t appreciate being told to swear loyalty to a largely defunct monarchy, which we don’t see as very relevant to the British way of life. And now they’re proposing to making every schoolchild swear it upon graduation. 

And I’m not foaming at the mouth about this. I do think that yes, our country (yes, ours, seeing as I’m British too, now) needs to be more cohesive, needs more of a national identity, but I’m baffled as to how that would be brought about by swearing allegiance to the Queen! 

Alright, the Queen is a national institution, and yes, the royal family are loved by many people (even I don’t think they’re doing much harm, I’m quite happy to let them be) but I’ve been told time and again that one of the amazing things about British politics was the way it moved from a rule by monarchy to that of democracy without a violent conflict. The Queen now has a purely symbolic role within the country as Head of State and a spiritual one within the Church of England, but she - and this is the most important thing - has no jurisdiction over the political laws that are passed in this country. The decisions that shape our taxes, our foreign policy, that determine where the money we make goes, how the country’s security is guarded - none of those are decided by the royal family. What I see as defining “Britain” is not crumpets and tea by the river, or parades to support our returning troops (though all those things are very very important), it is our political policies, our multi-cultural communities, our willingness to accept immigrants, our peace-keeping forces around the world. Britain, to most of the people I know, involves education and public health services, real things that are decided in Parliament rather than a wishful yearning for a unified country under the Queen. And it’s just patronising to suggest otherwise, that 18 year old kids, or recent immigrants cannot be told good, solid reasons to be faithful to our country, but instead focus on the nearest available symbolic figurehead.

Suggest an oath to the Parliament maybe (but not the Prime Minister - party politics need not be involved in this), to the values that Britain stands for, but not the Queen! If I’m swearing an oath, I’d far rather it were a meaningful one, sworn to values in which I whole-heartedly believe. I like their suggestion that “ceremonies should be staged in iconic buildings such as Tate Britain, the National Gallery and Edinburgh Castle.” I like that “[a] ceremony [be held] for new British citizens at least once a year - with the first at the House of Commons - to recognise those who have made special contributions to their new communities.” I think it’s important to promote a community, to recognise local achievements. It’s true that “people born and raised in this country are often far too cynical about being British” but to suggest that the answer is to shepherd everyone towards the monarchy, and give us yet more empty symbolism is just plain wrong.

So I’m presuming we’ve all heard about Tata’s new Nano car, the one that’s just come out in India, which has pretty much been universally denounced for it’s nasty, horrible, carbon-wasting properties. In fact, this is the only article I’ve read so far that points out the advantages of the Tata Nano, and I’m with Ethics Girl on this one because I feel this little car is the best option for the market at which it’s targeted.

Firstly, the issue about pollution. Morris rightly points out that an average Australian’s carbon footprint is 28 tonnes per year, the average Briton’s 11.01, whereas the average Indian citizen releases just 1.34 tonnes of carbon. Fine, you might say, but what of the fact that a sizeable part of India’s population still live in rural communities and don’t often use cars? That urbanisation is still going strong, and that the population, now estimated at over 1 billion, is still growing rapidly? Collectively, yes,  it might result in a larger net carbon output, but there is a constant focus on finding more energy-efficient cars and fuels, and there will be greener, safer cars available on the market soon enough. And the motorbikes and scooters driven by most families these days have considerable carbon emissions too.

Laterally speaking, more cars and less bikes tends to mean much fewer deaths that come about from road accidents. Taking into account that most of the Indian population choose cremation, and bodies are cremated using lots of wood, which releases lots of nasty carbon, it’s possible that these cars will also reduce carbon emissions in other parts of the country. So maybe not the soundest of reasonings, but it amused me. The point is, environmentally speaking, this car probably will cause more harm than good. But some things are a bit more important. Like the fact that other countries - China, as Morris points out, with it’s new fleet of larger cars and an ever larger population - possibly pose bigger reasons for concern. Or the safety of the families who at the minute, travel precariously balanced on the backs of motorbikes and scooters. Or the fact that safety and social mobility will always be prioritised over the concerns of the environment, especially when the benefits of this car far outweigh the possible damage it may cause.

Until the public transport systems get smartened up, and the smog clears, it’s far safer for individuals to use cars rather than bikes to travel through the thick smog that often descends on major Indian cities. Oh the irony.

I honestly do believe that, following a demand for greener cars, there’ll soon be better options on the market, which, even if slightly more expensive, will prove more popular with consumers. Until then, maybe we should look more to how to reduce our own footprints.

India’s taken some battering from the press the last few weeks. I’m still sorting out my feelings over the whole cricket controversy. Thoughts, anyone?

 One of my issues with life in general (and life in England specifically) is that people, I feel, spend too much time noticing the bad things and not enough appreciating the good. By no means am I saying we live in a Utopia where we can do nothing but watch in awe as life unfolds: my point is just that, you know, looking on the bright side of life is never a bad thing. So I’ll attempt to redress that by starting off the Glad Game.  Join in

 *Freedom Of Speech
I don’t mean complete and utter freedom of speech by any means (the 9pm broadcast watershed alone brings home the point that there’s a lot I don’t want people expressing into the general public spectrum. Things to do with National Security also come under the same umbrella) but I’m even more appalled by the fact that Chinese Google is still censored. But I love the ideals behind it.

*The Collective Consciousness
Those medieval nobles were, I feel, too right in fearing the many-headed monster. I love the fact that human nature is such that people who oppress and repress and take advantage of other people will, in some way or another, be overthrown and replaced, whether it’s violent like the Civil War, or passive, like the Industrial Revolution. Even today - I’m thinking of the Tibetan monks, of the students’ protests in Pakistan. (I do know there’s a grey area when it comes to terrorists/freedom fighters, but that’s possibly a post for another day).

*Plato’s Forms
Because to me, it’s a perfect example of why I love philosophy: a bastion of original thought and lateral thinking that is so absurd that no-one today takes it seriously, yet so logically sound that it just cannot be dismissed!

 *Words…
…are the underlying basic point of life. Communication and language and pretty much everything you can think of, is there in front of you because of the written or spoken word. As a Literature student, I’ve had it brought home to me many a time how phenomenally powerful a few lines on a page can be. And as for the spoken word - Hitler is a case in point. Repulsive as his ideals were, his charisma when speaking was scary persuasive. Words and language (especially the English language with all its peculiarities), I’m extremely extremely thankful for.

I think that’s it for now from me. But add on!

Guardian article.

The article raises important questions, most importantly “should the owner of TV-Links have been arrested?”. My view is simple, and here is the petition I have signed. This isn’t the important question to be asking though.

I think a more important question is what will the effects  on the internet be if this goes through? All he has done is link to copyrighted material, he has neither put it there nor allowed it to be there.  Does linking to a libelous article put you at risk of being convicted of libel? And what about a link to a page that links to a page that… and so on.

Before we make a link must we have full knowledge of the nature of the content the site includes or intends to include in the near future. Remember - a link will remain active after the content it links to changes.

The internet is based entirely on hyperlinks, without them it cannot survive. So can we allow an advocate of our freedom to link be arrested?

Also, if you feel that the case is only trivial and unimportant please look at the emails on this article by The New Freedom.

Article.

When I first heard about Yuwie I smelt a rat. What they say about users creating the content and users earning money for it is all very good, but that’s not what Yuwie is offering. If it were to not include the referral policy it would be but with it no one is going to concentrate on the content when they can just get other people to join it. And surely quite the contrary to encouraging people to create high quality content to attract pageviews it will just create spam.

What do we all think the result of it will be? Most people will not get rich from it, but I’d imagine a few people might. But will it survive? Will it be allowed to survive? Will it burn out once a large number of people have joined.

And above all: is it immoral to join?

It’s come up already a few times so I thought I’d blog about it.

My personal view is that there should be an allowance of maybe £1000-£5000 to cover immediate costs from the decease and then the rest should be very highly taxed. 90%+ maybe.

Redistribution of wealth moves us closer to equality one could argue. And as the inheritors have not worked for the wealth, surely it’d be better spent on hospitals, schools and roads.

Initiatives would have to be put in place for persons under the age of say 21,  so that they can afford to stay in education and whatnot.

What do we all think?

And carrying on with our theme of reliable news sources (or okay, departing from them completely), comes a brilliant new tax policy. Pay as much as you want. Yes, before you ask, I do know that Newsbiscuit is fake, but the worrying thing is that it’s just side of “believable story”. Especially the line about Alistair Darling.

Seriously however, it does highlight the need of a regulated tax system -not that anyone’s judging it, I just had a debate with someone about it the other day. Much as I hate to admit it, people won’t just give because there’s a need to give and no incentive will enforce that across the country, whether it be for taxes or for “worthier” causes like charity. One of the reasons I like Islam as a religion is because it specifically asks you to donate a proportion of your income to charity; it ensures that the disadvantaged people within a society are looked after, and that, arguably, is a measure of how good the society is as a whole.

On a completely different note, what do we think of the Radiohead idea? I personally feel people who do like it will want to pay (although nothing as much as the £10.00 or so an album would normally cost, because they don’t need to pay for the packaging and floor space, and so on) because it’s the artists reaching out and ‘trusting’ the audience to sustain their livelihood, as it were. Yes I do know that in reality, Radiohead’s finances probably won’t suffer even if nobody paid for the single, but the point is that I feel people will.

I don’t know, what do you guys think? Good/bad idea?

I wasn’t wanting this to be yet party political rant, seeing as my intention was to make this more of a current affairs blog, but Gordon Brown had to go crash my party with this little decision of his (yes folks, I apologise for it being yet another Guardian article, but it was the only online newspaper I could find with an article on this). Reading this made the inner Tabs throw a hissy fit, because a general election is kinda what this country needs right now (excuse the hyperbole and exxagerration that will undoubtably fill this post. I just feel strongly about this…).

It’s understandable that Brown doesn’t want an election - the recent News of theWorld Poll revealed that the Tories had an edge on votes in marginal seats and nobody’s pleased about the Inheritance Tax laws - and part of his job IS to keep the Labour party in power. But only part of it. Surely the part where he listens to the public and represents their views is more important? It’s also worth remembering that postponing the election now will only serve in damaging him very much in the long term. Because, to both his own party’s supporters, and to undecided voters, he seems insecure in his ability to hold onto the job, and makes Cameron out to be a greater threat than he may have been otherwise. The Labour party had a good Conference and they had the peoples’ confidence. But this postponement will just mean people will be determined to get his ass out of Downing Street as soon as they’re given the opportunity. I know that’s a bit simplified, but I also know he has political advisors who should pick up on these things, seeing as they’re blatantly obvious to me, who’s 17. So why isn’t he listening to them?

At this point, I’ve got to say that there’s a tiny bit of me which is glad because it means I actually will be old enough to vote in the next general election. But on the other hand, we need an election NOW, not in two years’ time. The system is very very twisted if you look at the fact that it’s the Prime Minister who gets to fix the date for the election (and why on earth do we not have fixed terms, anyway? It would make far more sense in a democratic society, as we seem to be). Gordon Brown didn’t win an election, and he didn’t get elected on his own terms - he’s only Prime Minister because Blair used to be one. And whilst I realise that we don’t elect direct representatives the way they do in the US, the fact remains that we vote for a party knowing that Person X is going ot be their figurehead. Nobody asked the public if they were ok with having Gordo, but the whole Gordo Thing was pretty much ok until this. 

What’s even more frustrating though, is the hypocrisy behind it. The Labour Party called for more interest in politics and political news from the common public. And yet, everytime we offer our opinion collectively, such as on Inheritance Tax or the EU, or the General Election, we’re politely told to go ,mind our own business. It’s a blinkered, bureaucratic argument that lets Citizenship lessons be wasted on “defining Britishness” (a concept wchih is so PC it makes me worried) rather than studying the structure fo the political systems, or actually find out what the EU treaty entails, or what their MEPs do. So yes.

I want an election, dammit!

Before writing my previous few posts I never imagined that I’d receive any comments, nevermind the enthusiasm we all saw. Thus, I am going to write this post with the aim of allowing some form of debate to develop. I have chosen a topic which is marginly less Left Wing vs Right Wing, on the grounds that I believe even Tories deserve an equal chance. Thus:

Have you ever considered how often you are watched?

When you use the roads, speed cameras photograph you.

When you make a call your location, the location of the other person, and the length and times of your call is recorded.

When you withdraw money from an ATM your location is recorded.

Your bank balance is constantly recorded.

If you pay by card in a shop, both the price and name of shop is recorded, sometimes even the names of the products.

You send emails in effectively unsealed envelopes: they can easily be read by your email supplier, their email supplier, or anyone else who knows how.

When you access the internet, or sign in using an individual username, you are disclosing your location.

The list goes on. The part I find most worrying, is that it is not only the government and the police who have all this surveillance, but that private companies do too. All the formentioned methods of observation, save the speed cameras, are owned by private companies. People who we have not elected, and have no reason to trust. Many companies make profit from selling on our personal data.

Is the constant observation we are put under necessary for our own protection, or merely a rampant breach of civil rights?

Propaganda Pacman!

Is it just me who can’t believe this one is still being used?

1. We all want increased government spending on Education, Health, Transport etc.

2. This requires additional income to the government.

3. Taxes are the government’s main source of income.

4. We all want tax cuts.

Points 2 and 3 are fact, therefore either Point 1 or 4 is wrong.

Which one could that be?

Urgh - Tories… Anyone with any common sense will see right through that joke of a policy.