Starting Again Again

I've finally left my job. I've finished my exams for the year. (Hurray!) I've no idea what on Earth I am going to do with my time. I guess I'll probably be blogging quite a bit. And at least there's the World Cup.

Causation No.3

More Google antics to write about today. I apologise but searching Google has been an important part of my work for the past few years and I still find it fascinating to explore. In my last job, which finished on Thursday, I was often called upon to delve into psychological research and to attempt to break it down to its barest essentials. The problem, as always, is that the truth is both obscure and complicated while that which is straightforward and accessible tends to be a load of over-simplified nonsense. Such is the joy and the agony of life.

In my last few days, I was given a particularly tricky problem to solve - what causes people to become competitive? The academic literature was of no help. There were some murmerings of genetic inheritance in a few twin studies, and a note was made of the difference between cultures in this trait. However, no-one was willing to speculate as to which social factors bring about this contrast. As is often the case, the intellectual fraternity prove disappointingly relunctant to indulge the quest of the populariser for boil-in-the-bag truth. There are some people, of course, with fewer scruples but these are not the sort who publish articles in scientific journals. This is where Google comes in.

As a bit of a Google-whizz (if I do say so myself), I have mastered the art of the search term in the form of a phrase fragment, as a way of getting to the nub of the matter. So I began to tackle this conundrum by choosing some plausible fragments for which to search. The first one I tried was "makes people competitive" and I was gratifyingly rewarded with the following list, all in the first two pages of hits:

globalization makes people competitive
compound interest makes people competitive
kiasu makes people competitive
and (several times) the Bloody Mary, like barbecue sauce or oatmeal cookies, makes people competitive

The second attempt "causes competitiveness" produced these results:

a vacuum of values in people's lives causes competitiveness
a certain golf training kit causes competitiveness
the lust for Cinderella-wear causes competitiveness

Well, that clears that up then. Case closed.

Maybe Tomorrow I'll Wanna Settle Down

OK, so here goes. Yesterday, I went to Oxford to play in my very first tournament for Bec Korfball Club. I didn't score but I managed to referee a semi-final, which I was pleased with, and I had a throroughly enjoyable day. In the evening, we returned to London, to watch a strange bunch of Finnish rockers win the Eurovision Song Contest.

Korfball, as I know most of you will want me to explain, is something of a minority sport that originated in Holland about a century ago. It has superficial similarities to basketball and netball but is tactically rather different, not least because it requires mixed teams of men and women who are not allowed to mark one another. It is also specifically designed to minimise the height advantage which blights the other sports, and to reward teamwork rather than individual play. I chose to adopt it because, scarred by school games lessons, I wished to find a growing sport in which I would be welcome, despite my general ineptness, and in which, if I am marked out of the game by my own teammates, they will at least be punished by the opposition.

I played for four and a half years for one club, in which I became heavily involved in the committee, and made lots of friends, and then decided to leave for Bec a couple of months ago. I did this for a number of reasons but primarily because a sinister presence came into the club and created a rather unpleasant atmosphere. When this happens, I always feel compelled to challenge it and there are two possible consequences. Either the problem with be resolved, and a compromise reached, or the manipulation and put-downs will intensify and start to get nastier. Because I am immune to victimisation (unusually as it turns out) this means that I have no choice but to make my excuses and leave, so that is what I did.

Hence I find myself, once again, making a brand new start, trying to build new friendships, while desperately clinging onto the old ones as they begin to drift away. I now understand why others do not make the choices that I do, why they choose not to fight and just go with the flow. I am no longer surprised by that attitude although it still disappoints me. If they were prepared to do so, then perhaps I would no longer be like the Littlest Hobo, and have to keep moving on.

When I was younger, I was incredibly needy, and desperate to be liked. I always assumed that, as I became older, wiser, and more confident, I would find it easier to form the really strong long-term friendships that I desired. I have gained hugely in self-confidence, but increasingly, I wonder whether my development will go the other way and, like Dawn from Big Brother, I will decide that I no longer need people in my life at all. This no longer seems like a tragedy but perhaps the pragmatic solution that will make me the happiest.

But I still hope not. The situation at my new club is going well and, while I certainly still have trust issues, I feel that they are winning me over. Maybe, with any luck, I am feeling weirdly disoriented in a way analogous to the experience of people who finally give up their pathological love interests for a stable and healthy alternative. However, unfortunately, I wouldn't know because that is also a sensation for which I am still waiting. But that is another story.

Glass Half Full?

I am an optimist. I know this because, every time I happen to see a single magpie, I always stop and look around for a few seconds, in the hope that I will see another one. It's surprising how often it works.

Opening Soon - My Soul

It's happening again. I've resolved on numerous occasions to talk more about myself and my feelings, as well as my thoughts about the world at large, and yet, since it restarted last month, my blog has largely retained the same sarcastic tone. There has been some good analysis, if I do say so myself, but very little of a personal nature. I don't know how other people feel about this but I know that I would be annoyed with such an approach if I saw it on someone else's blog.

In the past, I have had plenty of excuses for not opening up. I have been bound to silence about certain important happenings in my life and, frankly, there has not always been a great deal else going on that I have felt would be of much interest. Also, I do not want to present my thesis to the world on "My Life as an Autistic Person - What it is Like to be Me". However, I do want to give some non-generalisable sense of the unique individual that I am, and there have been recent events which provide some insight and are not bound by the Unofficial Secrets Act. So, why am I still so reluctant to talk about them?

I have always considered blogs, like columns in Sunday newspapers, to be somewhat self-indulgent. Why should anyone be interested in the personal life of a third-rate hack? The genre was brilliantly satirised by Chris Morris, writing in the Observer as Richard Geefe, a man who had decided to commit suicide and wanted to relate in great detail the impact of his decision. However, now that I am about to have more time on my hands, I suppose I can afford to be a little more self-indulgent, hopefully without going to such extremes.

On Saturday, I finally make my debut for my new korfball club, having abandoned my old one after four and a half years. This will give me an opportunity to discuss the reasons for my defection, and what they say about my attitudes to self-improvement, commitment and relationships. I will try to get my thoughts in order over the next few days and then I promise I will do so on Sunday. I can't back out now.

Clinging to Life

I was pleased to read yesterday's story that the House of Lords voted against a bill to allow assisted dying. It seemed a bit extreme to me. I'm all for constitutional reform but there are better ways to make the upper house more democratic. It was one of those few occasions when I have been glad that most of its members are incredibly old.

Oxymoron Corner

I have been revising defamation this week, for my law exams in nine days time (ulp!) and I am still slightly perplexed by one of the ideas. It goes by then name of the 'responsible journalism' defence, seemingly coined without irony, and is based on the principle that you should not be able to sue a newspaper for libel if they have properly investigated the truth of a story, and have presented both sides using a balanced tone. It's not a huge surprise that the defence has never succeeded.

Bald Cheek

I am a very anxious person. I am very insecure about many things - my career, my love life, my friendships, and indeed many aspects of my physical appearance. However, there is one thing about which I am not and I have never been insecure, and that is the fact that I am prematurely bald. It seems like such a trivial thing, which is why I find Mark Oaten's claims so ridiculous. He must have had a very easy life indeed if something so small has led to such an extreme reaction.

I would also like to say that I offer no excuse for any indiscretions, sexual or otherwise, with which I may have been involved, and I am willing to take full moral responsibility for all of them.

A Dangerous Shuffle?

So Charles Clarke has been sacked, after refusing a demotion. I should be pleased given my earlier comments, but I can't help but feel a little uneasy. Things have moved on since last weekend and I'm no longer sure whether he went because of his original undoubtedly gross mismanagement, or because of these copycat front pages. The incident described here is completely unrelated to the prisoners who were not deported due to an administrative error, but rather concerns someone who was not deported to Somalia because he would have been at risk of suffering inhuman and degrading treatment had he done so. He was later named as a suspect in the investigation of the murder of the policewoman, Sharon Beshenivsky, although this would have been impossible to predict because his original conviction was only for robbery. Therefore, not only was Charles Clarke's action not a mistake, it would actually have been illegal for him to have done anything else. Was he the first minister to be dismissed from his job for refusing to breach the Human Rights Act?

Moving on to the case of Ruth Kelly, I've no doubt that you remember this so-called scandal from a few months ago (I prefer this version). As with Charles Clarke, the action demanded by the right-wing press, a blanket ban on all people on the sex offenders register from teaching in schools, would have been illegal. This is because the law gave her the discretion to make exceptions and, when such discretion is given, some exceptions must be made. If the law was a bad one, this was the fault of Parliament, not of Ruth Kelly. Furthermore, because many of the people on the list had not been convicted of a criminal offence, to have banned them from teaching could have contravened their right to a fair trial. However, this did not prevent Tony Blair from sidelining her into a new department responsible for local government. Was she the second minister to be dismissed from her job for refusing to breach the Human Rights Act?

Causation No.2

By contrast, in science (or at least in pseudo-science anyway), an awful lot of people think that causation is really easy. It is often assumed that, if there is any sort of association between two things, then one of them must have caused the other. Richard Lathe is a crackpot scientist who once said that the evolution of complex life was caused by the gravitational pull of the moon. His latest wheeze is to claim that autism is caused by pollution, based primarily on the basis that both seem to have been increasing over the last century or so. Certainly, he does not feel the need to propose any sort of plausible neurological or physiological mechanism to justify his wild theorising. By the same token, I could argue that global warming has been caused by the recent decrease in the number of pirates in the world, and so we must reinstate piracy to regain a stable climate.

All hail the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Bless his noodly appendage.

Causation No.1

In law, everyone knows that causation is difficult. When studying negligence, it is by far the most difficult part of any problem question to try to work out whether the injury was actually caused by the negligent act or not. It is so complicated, in fact, that the courts are sometimes forced to award compensation when they cannot know with absolutely certainty whether the defendant is actually to blame. I have spent the last week or so trying to get my head round this disorienting reality only to discover that the House of Lords have suddenly decided to change the law only three weeks before my exam. Aaaargh!

Blogging Against Disablism Day 2006

The topic of my contribution to this year's event is disablism in the media. We all know that there are numerous problems in this area. Disabled people are portrayed in stereotypical ways, as tragic victims or as brave heroes, and disability rights issues are almost completely ignored. However, rather than enumerating once again the many ways in which these issues manifest themselves, I will focus on the tricky subjects of why things remain that way and how a solution can be found. Is there anything that we can do to bring about a change?

It is usually assumed that the problem will go away as soon as more disabled people are employed by the media sector. The idea is that they will bring their knowledge and experience to bear, raise issues of portrayal with their editors, and find new and challenging stories. In my opinion, this reassuring viewpoint misunderstands the relationship that the media has with its consumers. It is clear that the Daily Telegraph would become more progressive in tone if it employed more left-wing journalists, and the Guardian more right-wing if it employed more Tories, but the point is that they choose not to make such appointments, for precisely these reasons. By and large, people do not consume media in order to gain new perspectives from people with different outlooks to themselves. Rather, they want to be comforted that the way they think is largely correct. Conversely, while the papers know that they have considerable power to shape the views of their readers, they also know that it would be very detrimental to their circulation figures if they seriously attempted to do so.

There are always fifth-columnists who find their way into the media of the other side. I was recently shocked to discover that Melanie Phillips, now discharging bile at the Daily Mail, once worked for the Guardian. However, when dealing with minority politics, these kinds of infiltrations are rather easier to avoid. There are many exceptions of course, but it is obvious that a woman is more likely to be a feminist than a man, a black person more interested in racial equality than a white person, and someone who is disabled keener on disability rights than someone who is not. In order to maintain their editorial purity, all that media organisations need to do is to avoid giving any important jobs to members of these high risk groups.

To be fair, minorities are not all dealt with in quite the same way. It may even be true to say that the majority of the people working in the media today are women. However, except for Rebekah Wade at the Sun, this is not true of people in high-level positions of editorial influence. And of course, one or two people from ethnic minorities are allowed to slip through the net into very minor roles, as long as they provide convincing evidence of not being troublemakers. Disabled people have to have very brown noses indeed in order to advance but it is just about possible, as David Blunkett showed with his political success (notwithstanding his weakness for blondes). Nevertheless, this had the serious disadvantage that he was completely unwilling to give public support for disability rights. If disabled people must leave their values at the door in order to be allowed to pass through, then there is little point in encouraging more of us to do so.

But what about newsreaders, I hear you cry? Aren't Little Englanders always writing to complain that there are not enough Caucasians reading the news any more (by which they presumably mean people from Azerbaijan, in the Caucasus mountains)? Yes, there are a few ethnic minority anchors and I am confident that, within a few years, there will be disabled newsreaders too. However, do not mistake this statement for optimism about the future. It will take much longer before black, Asian and disabled people will have the opportunity to actually write what is to appear on the autocue, rather than simply to read the words out into the camera.

It is also the case that the media sector are beginning to employ more disabled people in auxiliary positions, where there is no danger that they will be able to influence editorial policy. There are some very talented journalists working as glorified accountants for media organisations. We should applaud this to some extent, while realising that it is motivated by fear of litigation rather than by morality, and not be fooled that it will be of any benefit to disabled people as a whole, in terms of raising awareness of the issues that concern us.

I'd like to finish on an upbeat note by thinking about the area in which we do have power. We are also consumers, and form a considerable portion of the market share. If anything is to change, we must be more demanding about the way in which we want the media to behave. We must not be fooled by tokenistic gestures, such as weak attempts by non-disabled people to engage with disability issues. We must insist upon journalists, columnists, presenters and actors who are themselves disabled. We should also be more sceptical and critical of employment targets, and demand that they be broken down in more detail, in terms of the people who actually work in producing the media itself, as well as in support roles. We need to challenge sloppy language and stereotypes, not because we want to be politically correct, but simply because they are evidence that disabled people have not been consulted. If we make no objections, we simply confirm to the media that they do not need to give us jobs.

Finally, there is another ray of hope. The media is fragmenting, and the dominance of the big players is diminishing. We all write blogs without the need for an editor and soon we will be able to broadcast TV programmes online, without having to go through a channel commissioner. This is why events such as Blogging Against Disability Day are so important. We have the chance to address precisely those issues that the media so readily avoids and, perhaps, to begin to have a small effect on the way that they do things.