News

A couple of news stories that have taken my attention lately. Firstly, the death of the Australian naturalist Steve Irwin; it seems a bit unfair to call him a "nutter" now he is dead, but I don't think I am saying anything revelatory when I say that I think a lot of people felt he was a bit mad to take as many risks as he did. He always maintained he knew the physical and behavioural limits of his animals and perhaps he did, but the manner of his passing - effectively being stabbed by a stingray he was probably holding at the time - suggests that he could be overconfident or even arrogant about it. I liked his shows but in a voyeuristic sort of way (though I guess that was the point of them) and I feel a bit guilty for being part of his enthusiasm for such dangerous activities. He knew what the audience tuned in for. We knew what we wanted. He went to get more of it. He died. It's all very well saying he was an environmentalist and a naturalist and so on - fair enough- but it wasn't for that he gained his global reputation: it was for doing risky stunts with dangerous creatures.
And there is often a reason why people aren't afraid of things that should inspire fear. It's not fame or fortune either.

Another story that has caught my eye today is the ICC telling Pakistan to shut up and stop crowing about Darrell Hair and the inquiry into ball-tampering and bringing the game into disrepute. Is this the ICC showing teeth, or is just to fool us into thinking anything will actually happen? Since I last posted on the subject, the ICC have shown themselves, through the unexplained activities of Doug Cowie, to have been effectively entrapping Darrell Hair over the payoff incident. Such evidence would be dismissed in a court of law, which is why we have been told that Pakistan will win any ball tampering case (Hair's evidence practically inadmissable). So now will Hair be allowed to umpire as normal, as Pakistan can play as normal? Will he bunnies.

The third story is the firemen punished for not attending the gay rights parade story. In common with other conservative inclined bloggers, this concerns me. For one thing, I have yet to see any evidence at all that, as Stonewall have claimed, gay firemen have been sent to (say) Christian Voice meetings and accepted it as part of their job. I don't remember any firefighters at any of the church fetes I've been to, nor am I aware of their regularly turning up to masses to hand out leaflets. Secondly, the men would have been forced to watch their religion being lampooned. How is such a thing legally enforcable? The fire service doesn't need to discriminate; it could have sent people who weren't bothered. But it didn't want to. Which leads me to the third point. That is exactly it. The men are being punished for having religious views and attempting to live by them. This is why they are being punished by being sent on diversity awareness courses (do atheists ever get sent on these, I wonder. As we know, religious belief is a choice, so it is ok to be hateful towards people who have it. Abitrary reasoning, but it seems to work). It is the same with laws discussed recently in Europe to remove a doctor's right of conscience over performing abortions. If you have different views you may not express them or live by them in the public sphere. But there is no point in having a right of freedom of conscience if you are not allowed to act on it or to live by it. The alternative is to say that religious people cannot work in the public services. This itself constitutes a ridiculous breach of human rights; people who wish to fight fires or be medics should not have to sign up to the demands of gay rights groups or pro-abortionists. There should be space and opportunity for diversion of thought. Of course, once you accept the principle, as we seem to have done, that the positions these firefighters have taken are based purely on hate, there is no reason to give that space.

Incidentally, have made clear that matters of conscience are private, I wonder if Stonewall is supporting the policeman who wants to wear a stud in his ear to work as an overt statement of his sexuality, and I assume they would not support conscientious objection in wartime.