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Sarah (Steve)

What links both men is a disquiet about the media 'going too far' at a time of dwindling circulation and revenues. Max Mosley and Gerry McCann will both be on the programme as we debate issues of privacy and free speech.

I have to agreed with both Mr.(s) Mosley and McCann commentaries about the issues of privacy and having a free speech rights....

There should be a balance...on both sides of the story....

~Dennis Junior~

There are issues for and against privacy laws as everybody knows.

But I think what disturbs people is the cynical contempt for the subjects and a disregard for whether the reporting is useful and true (McCann says they printed knowing the facts were rubbish) and in the public interest (Mosely).

Perhaps though if the papers die out in favour of the internet arena its a non-issue in the long run.

'US Federal Reserve chief Ben Bernanke says the world is suffering from the worst financial crisis since the 1930s.'

No, really?

Why do people try to talk up the economies when they are still falling and then come out and announce what everybody knew. It does not inspire confidence.

To save time they are though light years ahead of those far right irritants who think a planned economy Hitler style would benefit the country.

thegangofone (#2) In the McCann case, the police arrested them as suspects. How could the press have known that the 'facts' (whatever they are) were rubbish? Is it not the case that the police didn't have enough reliable evidence to make a prosecution stand a good chance of getting a conviction in court? How did Gerry McCann 'know' that the press 'knew' that what they were printing was 'rubbish'?

The protest in Luton today, albeit small, makes me wonder were we right in allowing Islam to florish on these shores...me thinks it was always a mistake.

The McCanns obviously missed Paxmans interveiw with their spokeman after the reports about DNA found in the hired car.
Paxman, in his most supercilious manner asked him if he could explain how the DNA had got there, talk about throwing stones in glass houses. Surely this is about printing the truth, to knowingly print lies should be a criminal offence with custodial sentence, that just might make the Press/Media think twice before reporting lies.

XY TEXTING COMES TO 'INNOVATION NIGHT'.

The newing-up of news took an exciting turn tonight. (Another award in the offing?) Someone had the truly wonderful idea of PRINTING THE WORDS ON THE SCREEN, AS SPOKEN! Not just that, but no possible axis was neglected and balletic rotations added to the sheer, sparkling novelty. It was beyond 'edgy'. The words I type here look so dull and static - I feel inadequate.

Blogmeister: any chance you can add some facility so that we can make our posts more dynamic and sparkly?

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The protest in Luton today, albeit small, makes me wonder were we right in allowing Islam to florish on these shores...me thinks it was always a mistake.


yer like putting all the jews next to the arabs and expecting them to get on..........

more frank zappa - he told it as it really was -(bet) he never mimed....

This was not well covered by media or TV, I think, but it's an interesting piece of the UK's current affairs jigsaw nevertherless

invasion of privacy - the problem is not so much the media as the impossibly high cost of legal representation in this country. If the ordinary citizen could get cheaper legal services a good many institutions not just the media would have to behave themselves in a more conscientious manner. The legal system should be there as part of a system of social accountability but instead it is a world unto itself along with the corporations and westminster village.

the point about freedom is not that it has failed as a philosophy but rather that it is still in its infancy with freedoms still to be achieved. but those who would abandon what has thus far been achieved are, i suggest, weaker of will than those who embrace experience and confront the demon of ideology. understanding is freedom, denial is enslavement.

Hhhhmmm so Mr Brown is looking good to win the next election?

#11 doctormisswest. Thanks for the video, I've never seen anything about it, and especially their quote "one law for all", I wonder why the beeb didn't report it?

#11 12 13 On nights again doctor?! ; )

AM I MY BROTHER'S NEIGHBOUR? (#9)

I think you might be on to something there Colin.

STOP TAKING THE 'TABLETS'? (#13)

" . . . the point about freedom is not that it has failed as a philosophy but rather that it is still in its infancy with freedoms still to be achieved."

Hi doc (Lizzie is a tease with the 'nights' gag eh?) might I tweak you point slightly?

I want to suggest that your word 'infancy' applies to us - hence we are incapable of 'doing freedom'. Freedom needs understanding, tolerance, philosophy, and you don't find those in a bunch of squabbling kids.

Ad nauseam: To succeed in rectification, with leadership inexorably drawn from the most aberrant - in the current culture - it is impossible to start from here.

OR DIE IN THE ATTEMPT? (#14)

"Hhhhmmm so Mr Brown is looking good to win the next election?"

A bloke in a shop referred to Brown's Blairish phone-in, on You and Yours, as: "Going down like a lead balloon." And, indeed, he looks EXACTLY like a lead balloon that has gone down. Not a well man.

(Incidentally he felt the need to chuckle audibly over the World banking collapse. Will Sarah NEVER tell him, the political smile/chuckle is not his forte?)

30. At 4:16pm on 03 Mar 2009, barriesingleton wrote:
DEMOCRACY REALISM (#28)

"Yo Gango! I lost my deposit because I stood as me. PARTY POLITICS devalues the individual. If all Parliamentary candidates were unaffiliated, local individuals, of some repute, intent on representing local needs and issues, democracy would function the better. But surely you know that"


My old reply, well some of it! ; ) Yes I saw your 86 votes Barrie! ; )

I know understand what you mean about "Spoil party games", it's taken me a while to work it out! Yes a very good position to have, pity governments never think about the local issues. But then I suppose it would mean some very stange people in parliament. ; )

Outstanding interviews By Jeremy last night - particularly with Max Mosely & Simon Jenkins and Gerry McCann.

CAN'T GET ANY STRANGER (#19)

Thanks Lizzie. I haven't got 86 friends so . . . Also, were I not thoroughly British, I would have voted for me (such disgrace!) and had 87!

As for Westminster's strange people, show me one who isn't. There is one MP regularly on TV who, I swear, has a bolt through his neck; amazing what those make-up persons can hide.

Oh blimey - I always thought the SPOIL PARTY GAMES one was obvious. Did you think it was a reference to parents hanging about and joining in? (:o)

THERE'S A BIT OF GOLD HERE

doctormisswest (#13)

barrie (#17) "I want to suggest that your word 'infancy' applies to us - hence we are incapable of 'doing freedom'."

Have a look at the article by Rachlin on discounting and think about Chung and Herrnstein 1967 titrating one parameter of reinforcement against another (think economics, it's just a different language-game - hence Behavioural Economics).

Appreciate that cognitive ability ('g') is highly correlated with short-term memory span (especially reverse digit span - it's harder). Then think of cognitive ability as Gaussian (normally, i.e. Bell Curve) distributed and how it used to be not expressed in Standard Deviation units relative to peers at the same age as it is today, but as a quotient relating mental age to chronological age. You will then better appreciate the relational nature of child-like behaviour and intelligence, and alas, older age as the pattern is an inverted U. SOME are more like children. Some groups are more child-like than others because of the group's low mean IQ etc.

This bears on governance and much more that we're now with.

energy companies still ripping off the public. oil prices have been low for 6 months yet electricity bill is now triple of what it was when the oil price was higher?

this is a national scandal. energy bills going up during a recession. where is the regulator? are they like the banking regulator was? too frightened to act?

tabloids

max is right. for people with no public interest they should be able to stop it.

everyone can tell the difference between the public interest that involves a company or govt and that in ordinary people's personal lives.

the reality is that is how media makes money. its not about public interest but private profit.

ecolizzy / barrie

If you really want to show these incompetent Corporate Nazi politicians " where to stick it " hold your nose if you have to and do what they most fear and vote BNP at the forthcoming EU elections. If you are anti EU anyway forget UKIP, they have been proven to be just a corrupt as the rest of them.

It not as if MEP's have a huge influence over UK government policy but voting BNP at the EU elections could teach the mainstream parties a valuable lesson. ID cards, Bin Tax, Toll Roads and other potential infringements of personal freedom have not gone away despite the theoretical temporary suspension or none take up of policy by local authorities. If you don't like the members you get you can always throw them out at the next election.

barrie yesterday (#39)"JJ, you know VERY WELL that I cannot understand either the language of Quine, or his thinking. Thus, in directing me to his output, you demonstrate perversity.

Not at all, what is the point of telling people things they already know or urging people to do thing that they can already do?

Chapter 2 of 'Word and Object' 1960 (it should take weeks to read, it's like a maths/logic book) is about the indeterminacy of translation and inscrutability of reference (gavagai) - i.e what we talk about. It's about the problem of meraning. Chapter 6 explicates why the critical choice in language is between refering to physical reality/behaviour vs mental life, the latter comprising intensional (I would say superstitious) language. he points out that these mentalistic (intensional) verbs are always explained in terms of one another, i.e. in one great vacuous circle which never caches out into the physical world!

For a practical, current, irritating (to me), illustration, if one points out that x% of the population has very poor literacy/numeracy skills, or that some people are prone to make a mess of their lives through drugs/alcohol, some (well meaning?) people will say that money should be spent on anti_drug_taking_education_programmes/courses/therapy, you name it - snake-oil. They belong to the school of 'if you spot A apply anti-A'. None of it works! Do you see why? It makes some people money though, it gives some parasites jobs.

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barrie (#17) .

Intensional idioms but do they make us distinctly human? ;-)

ON HAVING A ROUGH IDEA (#26)

Oh JJ! You are a caution (as we used to say) we also used to call some people 'incorrigible'; we all knew what was meant in Old English.

I might have posted to the effect that I used to print out Blair speeches and attempt to make sense of his (or his approved writer's) syntax. I now do the same with Obama and Brown but I do it half-heartedly, as the speaker's true being is masked.

But with Skinner, Quine, Jaded Jean et al, I make the assumption that I am 'reading the person'. Would that be reasonable?

If I am rowing my little boat through life, thinking my oars control it, but below the water a great sea monster is in fact shoving me around, I will go where the monster wills. If I dare to look into the depths and even have a chat with the monster (perhaps he just wants someone to give him a bit of praise for being good at monstering) he might allow me more 'purchase' with the oars?

(Whatever you do, don't rise to that, I am being incorrigible myself!)

I am off to look up 'gavagai' and 'meraning'
though I am not sure they will go down a bomb at parties. (:o)

My Personal views -

Media Laws

No No No

If you need to seek redress for smears or untruths , that's for the courts with it's jury to decide !

Tho' I do wonder with some of the media how they dramatize stories these days , just give us the facts and we will draw our own conclusions.

Conservatives and the European Parliament

You might sneer at the Conservatives , but the Conservatives did vote for the Referendum that they promised in their 2005 General Election Manifesto , unlike Labour who cheated their voters and the Lib Dems who abstained in the Commons vote only to vote against a Referendum in the Lords (hoping no one was looking).

And if we are to talk about being taken seriously on Europe.

What has the ´óÏó´«Ã½ received from EU institutions in the last 10 years ?

AN EXERCISE IN CRITICAL INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

I take it everyone can see what's being fomented and [Unsuitable/Broken URL removed by Moderator]here?

Some won't see/accept it for what it is, as they assume that everyone has the same nationality/allegiances - it's so much simpler that way - especially if globalisation (as anti-nationalism/anti-protectionism) is being peddled as a panacea by Socialist Internationalists.

The same, no doubt, happened back in the 1930s?

It gets . Who is in the frame? which holds so much US debt?

Bad Journalism
I have a lot of sympathy for people who are wronged in the media limelight and have their reputation permanently damaged as a result. It doesn’t matter whether press stories lead to suicide or not (suicide may even be the easy way out in some cases). The agony endured by the victim and his/her family are usually painful and long lasting. A modern, responsible society should have proper laws in place that prevent these tragedies from happening.

Tories’ European Dilemma.
Am I the only one who increasingly finds the EU Project a joke these days?

Great interviews with Max Moseley and Gerry McCann - I really enjoyed watching it.

This ability to prepare for the future was previously thought to be confined to human beings, although not in the banking sector obviously.

barrie (#29) 'me[r]aning' - sorry about that :-(

"But with Skinner, Quine, Jaded Jean et al, I make the assumption that I am 'reading the person'. Would that be reasonable?"

Yes. Interested in Pursuit of Truth they are.

Trustworthy types.

THE EU PROJECT WAS ALWAYS A JOKE. (#32)

We hear much of the 'coming together' in Ireland but when they set up the EU they could not even settle on one place, nor recognise the bizarre spectacle of the 'Two Venue Solution'. Lewis Carroll or Jonathan Swift must 'count themselves accursed' they did not think up such ridiculous plots to illustrate the extreme of man's folly.

But the EU Project does prevent intra-European wars; we are all to bloke, paying for its excesses, to fight.

#25 brossen99

Looks as though you could well be right!



Standing room only for us soon, and plenty of concrete for everyone!

I want to suggest that your word 'infancy' applies to us - hence we are incapable of 'doing freedom'. suggest away, but speak for yourself Freedom needs understanding, tolerance, philosophy, and you don't find those in a bunch of squabbling kids. if you are referring to parliament, the childlike basis of debate belies the least of all evils, ditto for the existence of a vestigial monarchy, ditto for the establishment of a benign church; if you are referring to yout', kids can be pursuaded not to squabble if given incentives, we just don't provide the incentives/distractions/sphere of independence.

Ad nauseam: To succeed in rectification, with leadership inexorably drawn from the most aberrant - in the current culture - it is impossible to start from here.
at your age, no disrespect intended, i don't wonder that you feel defeated but whether we achieve understanding now or in the future, it is impossible not to start from here

wellies - bless. our national emblem is 'pik n' mix' - a 1000 year old nation with an emotional age of 6 :)

ACROSS YOUR DREAMS WITH NETS OF WONDER? (#33)

Ah! Truth JJ? Or might you all be 'pursuing something your not sure of'?

Sorry - couldn't resist that. (:o)

PS I had rumbled 'meaning' as it is a constant theme (lack of, that is) but the heavy bold type had fooled my small mind into believing it must be as intended! How pathetically human-failing is that?

As Frank Spencer said with pride: "I'm a failure!"

barrie (#34) "But the EU Project does prevent intra-European wars; we are all to bloke, paying for its excesses, to fight."

You appear to have drifted into Chinese English, have you joined the SCO?

#37 There appears to be a note of anarchism in your respect for Pursuit of Truth (aka scence). It does worry me that given our expansion of Higher Education, all too many take what Feyerabend
preached literally (it was allegedly a heuristic Socratic exchange with Lakatos), not appreciating that all we ever know is pragmatically what works best as prediction/control. As such, there's always room for improvement/research. For an ex R&D man, I thought you might have taken to the Quine line like a duck to water.

If one looks around today, we appear to have hordes of 'highly educated'people who don't appear to know (or care about) the difference between reporting reality as it is, and just creatively making things up in pursuit of expediency rather than truth.

Now THAT is why we're in such a mess in my view. Yesterday's lamentable carnage, like the earlier cases, may be seen as sadly symptomatic of the alienation which it breeds, I conjecture.

LOGIC DOCTORATE (#36)

You are, of course, right doc. We DO have to start from here; I must resist my penchant for badspeak.

I am actually posting to sing the praises of
PI'K 'N' MIX (note ALL the omission marks). It is a delightful concept. It trumpets our juvenile state exquisitely. However: I wonder if the 'con' in concept is that we are ACTUALLY more a country of 'TAKE WHAT YOU GET AND DON'T MIX'?

PS Just heard that the guy who threw shoes at Bush (on our behalf) has got three years in prison. Any chance Barack ("I'm not Dubya") Obama might invade Iraq and free him? (Perhaps he has a small WMD in his pocket - he won't have a shoe-bomb, that's for sure!)

CHILD PROTECTION REPORT

Note how the focus is on Social Workers and Social Services/Child Protection failure rather than bad parenting. Meanwhile we have (unwittingly anarchistic) people complaining about the intrusion of the (Fascist/Nazi/Nanny) state on the freedom of the individual.

on AIPAC/Freeman again (#31).

This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.

40

perhaps because it is the social worker's stated and state-sponsored role to identify, and protect children from, poor parenting - as referenced in post 42

I don't really understand the moderation. Is it because 42 was solely a quote with no message from me or is it that some websites like govt websites cannot be posted orrr is it because too much text was included and so it was in breach of copyright, but can there be copyright on govt aims and objectives? all very mysterious