Veils and Belgium

On May 22 I videoed the demonstration outside the Belgian embassy in London. The protest was about the decision by the Belgian parliament to ban the wearing of the veil in public places. Similar rules exist in Turkey, a Moslem country with an Islamic governing party, and the French have also been talking about a ban. So not all that controversial, probably.

As it happens I more or less agree with the protestors. I think women should be allowed to wear veils or masks or pretty much anything they want to in public, but I am less keen on children, particularly young children, wearing veils. I don't like girls of 11 or 12 being artificially introduced to the adult world of sexuality (which is what this is all about).

On the whole I agreed with the very small but highly passionate protest. I was quite proud of being British when I heard that a similar protest in France had been banned. Even if I had completely disagreed with the protest I would have thought it proper that they should have the right to demonstrate.

But they were very difficult people to agree with. Inflamed by the Belgian ban, speakers called for the introduction of Sharia law quite clearly to replace the current legal code in Belgium, not to run alongside it. In addition they wanted to roll back feminism, and speakers also made it clear that they could not tolerate homosexuality.

Of course, I know that there are feminists who wear the veil in some circumstances and there are even Islamic women who support the general wearing of the veil but describe themselves as feminists.


The argument that women are exploited in the west is a very strong one. Sexual images of women are freely available everywhere and are even used to sell everything from vegetables to sports cars. But that is the nature of freedom. If you give people freedom they are liable to do things you don't like.

There were two really striking things about this demo. Firstly, some of the protestors took time off to pray, which was quite endearing. Secondly, the protest was segregated with a portable fence erected between the men and the women. The idea, no doubt, was to protect the women from any unpleasantness. There were even placards pointing out that the idea behind the veil, Sharia law and Islamic philosophy was to honour women.

Well, maybe. No doubt there were many proponents of separate development in apartheid South Africa who said that what they were doing was protecting black culture and enabling the blacks to fulfil their own unique destinies. I don't believe you can honour someone unless you accord them full civil rights, including the rights to marry who they like and dress any way they want without fear of persecution. Islamic societies like Saudi Arabia do not tend to define honour in this way.

Since the demo was about the wearing of the veil I made sure I got a lot of video of the veil wearing women. But this alarmed one of the young bucks on the demo. He warned me to stop videoing the women and to point my camera at the male speakers. "This is England mate," I said. "People who demonstrate can be videoed." Though, I am far from convinced this is actually the law.

He warned me that he would complain to the police about me. No doubt he did, but the police seemed to be taking a robustly sensible attitude. One officer was positively apologetic when he asked me what I intend to video. Considering the fuss there has been about section 44 (Anti Terrorism Act) this was quite refreshing. The officer also asked me to avoid videoing him: 'I've told my friends I'm in the SAS so I don't want them to see me in a policeman's uniform." A good joke and there was something very British about it.

Clearing the skies

The eruption of the volcano in southern Iceland's Eyjafjallajokull glacier is one of those remarkable moments, like the destruction of the twin towers in New York or the fall of the Berlin Wall. The skies above London have been clear of aircraft for days and it is possible to hear the sound of birdsong: a timely reminder of just how much we have lost thanks to cheap air travel. Where I live the birds used to sing at night since they had given up trying to compete against the traffic and the roar of jet engines. We are also promised spectacular sunsets. Quite wonderful.

But it is not all good news. The World Health Organisation has warned people suffering from asthma to stay indoors and wear masks if they really have to go out. Are they going to have to do that for 18 months (the length of time the last major eruption lasted in 1821-23)?

The economic impact could be even worse. According to one of the most famous economic papers (written by Robert Fogel) the railways played a major role in America's development in the 19th century. Are the airlines playing a similar role in the global economy in the 21st century? If so the consequence of a prolonged shutdown of airports in northern Europe would be devastating. Coming so soon after the worst economic downturn since the 1930s with most economies at best in a fragile state of recovery, the consequences could be appalling-- especially if Governments set about reigning in public expenditure that was allowed to balloon as a Keynesian remedy to the destruction caused by the bursting of the American housing bubble.

Then there is the environmental impact. Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines is believed to have caused a 0.5°C drop in global temperatures as well as the depletion of atmospheric ozone, when it erupted in 1991.

Right now no-one knows how long this volcano will continue to erupt or how serious the impact will be. Even if it stops today, the affect will last a long time. For one thing it will take weeks to sort out the world's airlines and rescue passengers stranded far from home.

Some of the insurance companies have been throwing their hands up in horror and saying this it is not their fault but an act of God, presenting stranded passengers with the prospect of paying huge sums to get home. As a consequence I wonder if we will ever trust cheap flights again. So now that we know that it is riskier than we imagined, will we continue to dash across the globe in search of a few days of sun, sand and sea? Since we have seen that the skies can be cleared I'd certainly like to see perhaps a month a year in which air traffic is completely banned and all the London airports shut down. I believe there would be massive support for this idea, not least from the environmentalists who worry about air transport exacerbating climate change.

Malthusianism and all that

Malthusians are people who if they discovered a silver mine would go running around panicking about the dark cloud they expected to envelope them.

No matter how good things get they always view it as a sign that things are about to get worse.

Imagine the scene. It is Victorian London and a group of scholars is meeting to debate the forthcoming shortage of horseshoes. We have reached peak horseshoe production, one says. By the middle of the 20th century, perhaps as early as 1940, there will be no more horseshoes. London will come to a standstill. Agriculture will virtually cease!

One of the problems with predicting trends based on past events is that things change.

A century and a half ago there were towns in northern England with hundreds of factory chimneys pouring out an appalling cocktail of poisonous chemicals.

Even thirty years ago there were scare stories about acid rain (as a result of the smoke pollution) destroying the forests of Scandinavia.

But these days in England there are few large factory chimneys and many of those that remain are protected by preservation orders. There is still a lot of talk about acid rain (more than 4 million pages mentioning it can be found listed in Google) but somehow it is not the hot topic it once was.

Another problem with predicting trends is that people are not very good at it. When it comes to building computer models, for example, they seem to need a lot of tweaking to make them work. Just think of dark matter or the Higgs Boson, in astrophysics, for example. These are just correcting factors thrown into the pot to make the maths work.

Of course, just because Malthusians have generally proved to be wrong in the past, it doesn't mean to say they will be wrong in the future. But there does seem to be a pessimistic, fearful streak in human nature that needs to be factored into these discussions.

Sexing up a campaign?

Silvio Berlusconi, would be the richest and most powerful man in Italy, even if he wasn't president. But maybe he would be in jail.

Many believe that his prime motive for becoming a politician was to avoid prosecution.

From a British perspective he appears to be far too much like Mussolini, the war time fascist dictator of Italy. Of course, Berlusconi is no fascist: he just happens to own or run most of the Italian tv stations and use them to promote his business and political interests.

Despite his virtual stranglehold over the media, he has recently been the subject of several sex scandals. Proof positive that Italy still has a flourishing media capable of exposing even the most powerful to scrutiny? Well, maybe.

At the age of 72 it is possible some might suspect that Berlusconi was getting a bit old for the job. Possibly the best way to counter such a slur would be to have a few sex scandals. After all no ordinary septuagenarian gets attacked for having too many lovers.

Certainly the stories seem to have done him no harm. His supporters did extremely well in recent Italian regional elections.

In a general election in the 1860s, Benjamin Disraeli was running against Lord Palmerston, who was still Prime Minister well into his 80s. Palmerston had fathered an illegitimate child with a working class woman in his constituency. Disraeli's campaign manager urged him to reveal Palmerston's shocking debauchery to the electorate. Disraeli refused categorically. "If we do," he answered, "the old man will win a landslide!"

Expect British political spin masters to learn the lesson: look out for unexpected sex scandals.

My cat can tell the time!

I have scientific proof that my cat, Charlie, can tell the time. He knows that it is his feeding time at about 6pm and every day at about that time he seeks attention, by doing charming things like tripping me up.

What's remarkable about that? Nothing really, except when the clocks change. On Sunday they went back an hour. Summer time and the living is easy, as the song says. Well maybe!

Anyway, to get back to the plot: you'd imagine that Charlie would wait until 7pm before starting the kamikaze cat routine. After all, the Government didn't bother to notify cats about the time change. But nothing doing: Charlie is up to his usual range of tricks bang on time.

How does he know? Ironically, he adapts to the new time quicker than I do (I find it tough to get up at a reasonable time in the morning on the first week of summer time, as opposed to summertime, because, of course, British Summer Time starts in spring. Genuine summertime is a long way off. I hope you are getting this, I may ask questions!).

Since he adapts quicker than I do, he can't be taking his cues from me. And as a house cat (he has cat aids, so he's not supposed to go out), he only meets me.

Proof, I believe that he reads the clock! Now if only I could teach him how to use a keyboard....

Another night in Leyton

Last night on the way to the pub was passed by an ambulance. It sped by a parked police car just as the officer dangerously jumped out and rushed across the road, fishing a much larger man than himself out of a take away and pinning him against a wall. In the pub one bloke said: "that's the man who hit your father."A little later the pub was disturbed by a blood spattered woman who burst in, fell over, muttering incoherently. Another night in Leyton.

Marketing by passwords

A friend of mine is going through a crisis. Her computer won't let her get access because it's suddenly decided she has to enter a password and she doesn't know what the password is. It all happened because someone installed a USB card (it's a very old computer).

She will probably need to get a new (or at least a newer) computer. What an effective method of marketing the password is. So far as data protection is concerned, it is more or less useless. It probably won't stop your computer being hacked via the internet. And your data is unlikely to be at risk from physical attack unless your home (or office) is burgled. 

No doubt some keep secret stuff on computers but how valuable is this material? Is someone really going to spend hours (probably days) trawling through a stolen computer to find secret information. Perhaps, but very unlikely. In any case if the computer has been removed, you've lost the data (password or not).

Since it is extremely hard to back up a computer (I find about half of my back up DVDs fail, especially any aged about two years or more), the whole philosophy that you can keep data safely on computers is thrown into doubt by passwords.

But companies who sell software and hardware, have a lot to gain from them. A lot of people make the final decision to buy something new because they are locked out of their old system.