andylockran's blog

Question Time Reflection

Now that I’ve had time to watch Question Time (albeit just the first 45 minutes), I can make an informed opinion regarding the goings on with Nick Griffin. Sorry for the belated post.

Despite the first question prompting a very emotional atmosphere within the studio, I think that Nick Griffin’s claim that it was just a ‘bash the BNP’ session is wrong.  Sure, there was a pretty negative view of the BNP, but that’s because the majority of people find their views abhorrent, therefore it’s right that this should echo in what is viewed.

I think the best bit of the programme was the confrontation between Jack Straw and Baroness Sayeeda Warsi.  Unfortunately Baroness Warsi hit the nail on the head and with help from the guy on the front row really stuck it to Jack Straw as to why some people in the UK voted BNP. No matter what ’systems’ the Labour government has in place to deal with it, many people are still unhappy.  It was nice to see the Baroness come up with some clear movement on addressing that issue, rather than sweep it under the carpet and carry on.  I don’t claim that I support the policy, but rather I support the fact that a political party are finally presenting an alternative to the current state of play, when up til now it appeared as though there wasn’t any other option (other than the BNP).

I have seen the video mentioned on Question Time regarding Nick Griffin and the former Klu Klux Klan leader, and it scared me to the core.  It’s exactly coverage like this which will wake people up to the true vision of the BNP, and hopefully prevent it from ever gaining further traction in the UK.  Hopefully more people will have watched this video now, and be able to provide an informed opinion when voting.

A nice little interlude between Question Time being broadcast and me getting around to watching it was a little bit of ideological sparring with Councillor Terry Kelly, Lab.  I happened upon a post by him and I think this man provides a very honest and calculated opinion regarding his position on not allowing any organisation such as the BNP airtime on British Radio.  Though I disagree with him, I respect his opinion, and I believe it is an opinion that many other people in the country may share.  It would be interesting to hear other peoples thoughts.

In conclusion, I would hope that the BNP’s support dwindles and the major political parties focus on the issues that the electorate are, whether rightly or wrongly, focusing on.  This whole episode has hopefully been a wake up call to get more people engaging in politics and seeing what a mistake it was to get this man to represent us in the European Parliament.  We may object to listen to him witter on national TV for 60 minutes, but we’ve subjected our European neighbours to this mans opinions in his position as MEP on a regular basis.  Let’s make everyone happy and make sure that the BNP representation of our country does not continue.

Tottenham Hotspur’s White Hart Lane

Does anyone else notice the ’slight’ inconsistency in their artist’s impression mock-up.

Where else would:
a) The ‘infamous’ BIG SCREEN be showing a goal celebration whilst Tottenham are on the attack?
b) 11 players on the pitch when the match is nearly over

Artist's Impression

I was amused, though it didn’t deserve a blog post.

Freedom of Speech & the BNP (part 2)

Working out in a foreign country, doing pretty intensive work doesn’t allow me much time for accessing all those things British.  There are many things which I currently miss out on, so having access to the BBC is a very understandable and important part of spending time back with my own culture.  It’s therefore not surprising to add that I regularly check the BBC News site where I can, and we get copies of many papers delivered by people visiting us from the UK.

This past week, things got slightly more interesting as I installed a little program on my machine called zsh – with this program, I can type bbc.radio2 and bbc.radio4 and it will connect and start streaming the radio for me.  Those of you using Windows and Mac (and even Ubuntu) might not see this as massively amazing – but when I’m spending 90% of my time using the commandline configuring servers, then having commandline tools for listening to radio becomes much more aesthetically pleasing.

So, I started using that this week, and there’s been an awful lot of coverage of this Nick Griffin Question Time saga.  Facebook was alive with people making anti-BNP jokes, saying things like “Nick Griffin stands for racial purity, but his name represents a hybrid of a lion and a phoenix” .etc .etc. People were engaging in politics, and I didn’t see one voice in support of the BNP. However, I did see a few voices in support of Freedom of Speech – and it’s essential that the distinction is made between the two.  Unfortunately, that’s the reason why politicians are attacking the BBC – it appears as though many politicians can’t distinguish.

One of the programmes I did manage to tune into was on McCarthyism in the USA.  I didn’t manage to catch enough of the programme to quote from it – but in the snippets I heard I ended up with a pretty good example of where we’re at today in the UK.  Unless there is clear freedom of speech, we’re in danger of following the same path and ending up with our own little version of McCarthyism.

The argument by the BBC is that Nick Griffin is a freely elected MEP, he’s representative of a big enough section of our society to have been elected, and therefore the people he stands for have the right to have him speak on their behalf on what is meant to be a political panel show which debates the views of the entire country.

Reading Peter Hain’s comments on the BBC this evening only go further to support my argument, and to lay the blame for the success of the BNP firmly on the shoulders of the politicians – who by being so scared of the BNP’s sudden appearance on the scene, have decided to try and heavy handedly deny them their right to free speech, rather than freely attacking the cause of their popularity.

If Mr Hain were to appear on Question Time, espousing Labour’s policies and attacking those of the Conservative government, then a rise of 1% in the poll the next day for Labour would be seen as disasterous.  Had Nick Griffin come on Question Time and put forward a cohesive argument in support of his views and had widespread agreement, there would have been a rise of decidedly more than 1%.

I believe the rise in support for Nick Griffin (by the fringes) is probably just an indication of the way in which his appearance was handled.  Those people whose vote relies on the government providing for the country (and America has also voted more selfishly since the recession) rather than looking at the bigger picture are placing their support behind the BNP.  Thank goodness for now that it’s just a small number, and hopefully through good policy-making and communication the less extreme parties can win back the trust of those fringe voters.

The solution therefore is not to stifle the BNP, treat them like animals and put them in cages – that will just give reason to their supporters to affirm their belief that ‘Us Brits’ are not being heard.  What needs to happen is for their position to be accepted, and for all parties to work hard at designing policies which will appease the section of the nation that seem to think the BNP is the only answer.

I’d urge anyone who is feeling anti-BNP at the moment to take time to understand this argument.  I may not agree with the opinion of every man whose path I come across, however, I intend to defend his right to say it, and my right to hear it.

Working in India, there are some communities we’ve come across who will prevent their sons and daughters from seeing or hearing anything ‘bad’ during their formative years.  They’ll read the papers, then burn them to prevent the children’s prying eyes.  They don’t have access to TV, not access to Internet, and are encouraged to read from a set list of books prescribed for them by their parents.  When they then come out into the real world, how do you think they handle it?

Most can’t cope with it and run back to the safe world their parents created, by working in their close community, marrying into it, and distancing themselves as much as possible from the outside world.  Others simply enjoy the freedom, and embrace everything that’s made available to them, ignoring morals, safety and self-respect.  Some then realise their mistakes and go back to their communities, tail low – whilst others burn themselves out, or get into a lifetime of destitution.

The way forward is the middle ground – not Gorbachev’s “third way” – but a balance of the two.  I’m learning my moral compass the hard way.  I’ve done things which I’m massively ashamed of, but also things that I’m massively proud of.  There’s not a day goes past when I don’t feel ill of myself for a mistake, nor pride for an achievement.  Were I not able to make the mistakes I did, I may have not made the mistake at all, or I may have ended up making an even bigger mistake.  However, what I now know to be the truth is that experience and knowledge are the best two weapons against extremism.  If you allow freedom for people to vote for the ‘wrong’ person, and expect them to vote the ‘right’ way each time – then you’re not giving them true freedom.

I hope that back in the UK, people will wake up to the fact that the country needs to re-engage in politics.  For too long the country has been drifting, by the apathy of her voters.  We need to get involved in politics again, start to clean up the mess in Whitehall, when in an attempt at defense of their jobs, politicians like Peter Hain are attacking civil liberties.  We also need to look at ourselves, and work out why we’ve created a society where a percentage of the electorate believe extremism is the way forwards.  This is OUR problem.  Fight it.

For my post-election response, see here.

Act on 3rd World Poverty

The majority of the following video shows a bit of the bad-side of America.  The main points made are about why America shouldn’t increase immigration, and it’ll upset the balance of their country, and that wouldn’t be good for them.

However, halfway through the talk, the speaker uses ‘gumballs’ to give an illustration about how much America need to do about 3rd world poverty.  It’s a pretty good demonstration of how much population increase is happening.. yet the numbers today are even greater than when the video is published.

I do not endorse these guys views on immigration or anything else, what I do want to look at though is the little gumball example, and wonder if you should be doing a little bit more to help the majority of the world living in poverty.

Back in Black

I’m not sure what came over me, but I found the last couple of weeks out here really difficult.  The thing that bothered me the most was internal though, rather than a particular event.  I’m ‘back in the black’ as far as positivity is related.

Hearing the children’s stories out here is a pretty difficult exercise in itself.  The stories of abuse and neglect are so much more severe and graphic out here than what you hear about day-to-day at home, that they soon become the ‘norm.’  What really brought it home to me was during a skype meeting with our supporters from Trent Vineyard, their faces showed the shock and disbelief at hearing the stories that have now, to me, become commonplace.

When I decided to come out here, I did so knowing that my role would be a supporting one.  I saw the difficulties that Dr. Mary and Dr. Cat faced in dealing with the corruption and abuse on a day-to-day basis, and I felt that my presence out here would help lower their workload and hopefully give them opportunity to relax more and improve their wellbeing.  I think the hardest thing I have to adjust to now is knowing that my initial reasons for coming out are moot.  There are so many problems and battles to fight, that my presence here is probably more an excuse to do more.  So now we’re all getting tired and upset together.

As you can imagine, when you take into account my reasoning for coming out here – feeling upset and drained about the whole thing wasn’t really in my remit – and as such for a time I felt like I was failing.  However, it’s great that the selflessness of Mary and Cat has allowed us all to have the children as our #1 priority.  It’s great to be able to spend days just slowly improving their situation, and positively affecting the community.  When visitors come and see the children, not only does it put smiles on their faces, but acts as an example to the community about how much these children are worth.

We spent Saturday afternoon at a local slum community.  Whilst Dr. Mary and Dr. Cat led the Medical Students in a medical clinic, I was able to go off with Sarah (and two of the students who weren’t currently seeing a patient) and play with the kids.  We sang some songs, in both English and മലയലമ് , then played tig, football, hide and seek, and other playground games.  Spending time with the children like this, (even when you know their stories,) is so valuable, as it shows that despite their trials and tribulation they are still innocent children – no different from those back home in school playgrounds all over the country.

These children deserve so much better than what they have, and in not doing enough to help them we deserve so much less.  I’ve had such a privileged upbringing – based purely on the chance that I was born where I was – and though there’s no use in feeling permanently guilty, I now feel like it’s my duty to make people aware of the situation and help these kids in any way possible.

I know this post gets aggregated on the Ubuntu-UK list – which is a computer-orientated site – but the Ubuntu message is so valuable when dealing with social situations too.  I’ll reprint it for those not aware of Ubuntu – but thanks to the community for making me aware of it.

Hopelessness

I guess hopelessness is one of the paradigmatic (new word maybe..) emotions of the trip out here to India. Looking at the bigger picture there’s so much corruption and sub-cultural issues that need overcoming before change can happen at a wider scale that it soon becomes overwhelming. That’s exactly why we focus on ‘One child at a time’ – to keep plugging away at individuals and finding solace in knowing that their lives have been positively affected by standing up and fighting for them.

For me, the feeling of hopelessness comes about during some pretty painful ‘eureka’ moments. One such example that when a lady has been raped, and has kept the child. Their ‘euphemism’ for the situation is that her husband left her when she found out she was pregnant. Such a statement is still a cause for much stigma, but less so than the truth. That so many women have to face the trauma of rape, and attempt to come to terms with it without the support of even their closest friends. I find that pretty hard to take, especially when we only recently realised that particular story was a euphemism, and have met countless kids who have repeated the same story to us ad verbatim.

These people need support and people to stand up for them so that they can get the support they deserve.  Whilst I sat back at home and watched TV or wasted time at the snooker club, there were people here facing such horrible situations, and many of them have not survived.  It’s a pretty big pill to swallow, realising that I could have done something to help these people, and through my own forced ignorance and inflated self-worth, decided that money was better spent elsewhere.

I’m pretty sure that in future I’ll still waste money that could have been used for a better cause, but at least now I’ll think twice.  I just hope that by doing the work out here that I get other people at home to also think about where their time and effort gets spent.

One of the things I really like about our effort out here, is that I know exactly where the money getting donated gets spent, and I have full confidence in our accounting and ethical stance regarding the spending.  If you’d like to get involved, there’s so much coming up that I’d like to do.  For the geek crowd, let me know if any of you have any ideas.  There are so many parallel problems to be drawn between open source volunteering and charitable volunteering, such as taking advantage of the long tail .etc.

Get back to me with comments.  Thanks.

Learning by Listening

One of the things which I firmly believe, is that spending time in the company of intelligent people allows your natural intelligence to develop more than if you spend time with less intelligent people. Now we have the medical elective students out with us, and a Social Policy graduate, I’m starting to feel like I’m pretty much the bottom of the academic pile – which is true.

Today they had a little off-hand discussion about International Development in terms of improving the conditions of the poor people we’re working for. Although the Dr’s may have the skills to do things at the ‘one child at a time’ level that we operate, they can’t help be put off by the bigger picture. Corrupt governments and the need for the health sector to be ‘commercialised’ so that some fat cats can make a load of money.

Seeing the difference that medics can make at a local level shows the need for trained medics to go into places as smaller teams and individuals. If change can’t happen through a top-down approach, then individuals need to take the responsibility to make it happen from a bottom-up one. Either that or the NHS has to expand to the IHS.

Many Doctors from less well off may migrate to the UK, but there needs to be a way for them to compensate their local community for the lack of medical skill, rather than just the financial compensation that the community gets from the Doctor sending back a % of their paycheck each month.

It’s great to hear people of my own age thinking through these problems and actually coming out here to do something about it, and investigate the problems more. Given that so many people are currently traveling around the world due to the poor economic climate, the awareness of these peoples’ struggles is increased. Let’s try and do something about it.. together.

P2P Local Network File Storage & Syncronisation

I thought I’d put this one out to the blog to see if anyone can offer me advice.

I’m trying to work out the best way to share files between 2 Macs, 1 Ubuntu box, and 3 XP machines.

Initially, I thought a central NAS drive would make sense, however, because of the need for backup (and the lack of a decent internet connection) – backing up remotely is going to be too costly.

My next thought was that the clients should sync the NAS locally, as to avoid disaster should the NAS be unavailable/broken. I’m using Ubuntu ONE – and something like this would be useful, providing I could run it on my local network w/out internet connection.

I’ve also looked at iFolder (by Novell) but haven’t got time to waste trying to get it to work and play nice..

So if anyone can offer me some advice, I’m ready to take it.

I have a Buffalo LinkStation acting as my NAS at the moment, but it’s simply serving a USB-attached 320GB Drive.

Reflections

Today we headed for a couple of days rest and recuperation from the hectic work schedule that we have to follow whilst out here in India. We’ve rented a couple of small cottages in a fairly tourist-oriented town, but far enough off the beaten track to provide a perfect opportunity for quiet reflection, and to catch up with our reading.

One of the things that I’m really enjoying about my trip out to India is the time I get for personal reflection. In the past, I was very much engrossed in getting myself through University, which I considered a simple rite of passage, and into a 9 to 5 so I could pay my bills and get on with living. Having done that for nearly two years, I’m glad I was able to get out of it when I could and take the time to reflect on what I actually wanted out of life.

Although a few weeks ago I had my first appraisal, and really enjoyed it. I don’t think I actually sat down and thought deeply about it. Sure, I did ‘think’ – it would be rude not to; as it was a one-on-one review I was completely engaged. However, tonight we had a frank discussion about the direction of my life – where it had been and where I wanted it to go. On reflection I’ve not really had much of a target for my life, no big aims or dreams, and this has potentially hindered me. When I realised that my results and grades were slipping, rather than get them in check I seem to have simply tried to speed through them, hoping that when I came out on the other side that I’d leave them behind me. What I didn’t realise was that when I reached the other side I would become what I have gone through, not what I had the potential to become.

It’s quite a liberating feeling finally admitting openly, not just to myself, that my life has gone in completely the wrong direction. That decisions were made unwisely, and though I may have to live with the repercussions of those decisions for many years to come, I am now able to address the problems and move to check them, rather than continually run away from them and have them hold me back. I’ve let people down, made many mistakes, ignored my moral compass and accepted my lot as a penance for my actions. It was stupid, in hindsight.

With the benefit of this wonderful gift, as well as a newfound confidence in being able to offer myself to a worthy cause with the work I’m currently doing – I’m starting to look at potential career paths in a more long-term light. Whilst never having before really had an aim, a vision, a dream to fulfil – now I feel as though I can help discover one – rather than having one simply appear on my lap. What am I passionate about? What are my best attributes? What are my worst attributes? What don’t I like?

All That Mo

I was pretty impressed when I heard about Movember – a competition which begins with a shave on the 31st October, followed by a month-long growing marathon, and topped off with a local event in your area.

Being a bit ‘off the path’ in India, I was already growing a Mo, and it turns out I did it just at the right time to help kick-start a friend’s team’s ‘Movember’ build-up.

Take a look here!

Of course there is a serious issue behind all this baloney.  It’s about raising the awareness in Men that they need to care about their health too – hopefully by reading this it’ll make you think twice about your own health.. so GROW THAT MO! and setup your team.  Ubuntu teams would be nice, as I already know a few facial hair growers.. just beware of BEARD DANDRUFF!!