Un-Mixing the Sexes
The coalition government is finalizing plans for swingeing cuts in the public sector. Nonetheless, in one part of the National Health Service costs are set to rise: for the Health Minister has confirmed that the government is phasing out mixed-sex wards.
Almost all wards are now segregated by sex, but those mixed-sex wards that remain are thought to be difficult and expensive to convert. Surveys suggest that although it’s not the most significant concern patients have about hospital care, it ranks quite high – especially for female patients. The BBC quoted a woman treated on a mixed-sex ward: ‘I didn’t feel comfortable with men there. You weren’t properly dressed and sometimes they did procedures at your bedside and the curtains weren’t properly closed’.
The Rational Bigot
There are a few old white ladies in their 80s who might wish to blow up a plane, but on the whole, if your job is in airline security and security is your only concern, it would be rational to pay closer scrutiny to passengers who are single, young males, probably of south Asian or Middle Eastern or East African appearance. In yesterday’s Comment Is Free, Simon Woolley wrote disapprovingly about the Equality and Human Rights Commission. The EHRC had written to several police forces because it had identified that ethnic minorities in their areas had been disproportionately stopped and searched.
The Brainy or the Rich: who should inherit the Earth?
Does it matter if Britain is ruled by toffs?
Nineteen British Prime Ministers attended one extremely expensive boarding school for boys on the far western outskirts of London, an astonishing statistic. David Cameron is the latest Old Etonian Prime Minister.
Tomorrow the nominations close for the Labour Party leadership and commentators (many of them Oxbridge-educated) have decried the fact that the main candidates ‘look the same’: white, forty-something, and, most damning of all, graduates of Oxbridge. Cameron, like almost his PM predecessors, studied at Oxbridge (Oxford, in his case). Two thirds of his Cabinet are products of Oxbridge. And you are much more likely to get into Oxbridge if you are from a wealthy background.
George and the British election
Politics is the art of compromise, but rarely has compromise been so necessary a political virtue in Britain as it is today.
Very soon we’ll know who’s done a deal with whom. The Liberal Democrats are the king-makers: ultimately they’ll decide whether to prop up a Tory or a Labour-led government. Let us be exceptionally generous and take the politicians at their word: let’s assume that what’s currently weighing on their minds is not personal interest, or party interest, but national interest. They may disagree about what constitutes the national interest, and how it is best achieved, but they agree that it’s what really matters.
Political and moral theory has a lot to say about compromise. And one character it’s worth remembering is George.
Holidays in Death Camps
The paradox of tragedy, one that has puzzled philosophers for over two millennia, is that people like to go to watch tragedies at the theatre – and tragedies are depressing. How can one enjoy being miserable?
This weekend I went as a tourist around Sachsenhausen, a vast complex just outside Berlin. Sachsenhausen was one of the earliest Nazi concentration camps and was used as a model for the construction of others. It has several particular features and for various reasons is of unique historical interest (e.g. it was the place in which the Nazis undertook the mass counterfeiting of British currency) – but it shares with all the camps in being a site of benumbing, ineffable cruelty.
This Sunday the camp was full of tourists wandering around alone with their audio guides or being led around in groups. It takes 6/7 hours to absorb the mass of detail that has been collected, described and displayed. Here were visitors devoting a precious day of their holidays – a period usually expected to be about fun and relaxation – to the deadening and dismal experience of learning about the barbarism of mankind. It is, if nothing else, a refutation of psychological hedonism – the theory that all action is about the pursuit of pleasure.
For a fascinating take on the paradox of tragedy, listen to Alex Neill’s interview at www.philosophybites.com
Breakfast with Satan
At the beginning of my journalistic career I went to interview a chap called Magnus Malan. It was in Pretoria, and early in the morning. General Malan had been at the heart of South Africa’s apartheid government. He’d been head of the army and the Minister of Defence. He had, no doubt, been responsible for some horrendous actions on behalf of a racist state.
I think when I walked into General Malan’s office I expected to be confronted with a stinking ogre with fangs (no doubt this reflects my own prejudices), because I can still recall leaving the meeting in shock. He’d been polite and attentive, had worried that I hadn’t had time for breakfast and had tried to order food on my behalf (I refused).
The story comes to mind because this weekend I attended a lecture by a friend and colleague, Allan Little, on ‘Dictators I Have Known’. Allan has known – or observed – a vat full of dictators and spoke brilliantly and movingly on their methods of control and the devastation they’d wrought.
He didn’t, however, address a question that has always bothered me. It’s perhaps not surprising that some dictators and high officials in totalitarian regimes are charming, charismatic, and smart: they’re unlikely to have achieved power through force, brutality and fear alone.
Is it a moral flaw to find oneself beguiled by such men? Presumably the answer depends on the scale of the crimes in which the individual is implicated. But I think somehow it must be. A truly virtuous person should have an automatic off-switch on their charm receptors – triggered by the knowledge of another’s evil deeds. I seem to be missing that switch.
The Racist Shopper
By: David Edmonds
The Equality Bill is currently making its way through the two unequal chambers of the British parliament. It’s radical and wide-ranging and the debate about it has been heated, but the most interesting contribution has come from the upper chamber, the House of Lords. In a thoughtful speech, Bhikhu Parekh, a political theorist, advanced an argument in support of positive action. He said that in some circumstances one’s sex could in itself be a qualification for a post.
Take a hospital whose obstetrics and gynaecology department is all-male. Many women would like to be seen by a female gynaecologist, but there is none. A vacancy occurs. We have two candidates, a male and a female, with equal medical or academic qualifications and equal professional experience. The woman doctor could be appointed, either as a form of positive action, or by simply saying that the needs of the organisation require that her gender is an important part of the qualification itself. In other words, what is called positive action here is not simply an add-on in a situation where there is equality of qualification or experience, rather it is built into the structure of the assessment criteria themselves, so that she is appointed because she has an additional qualification, by virtue of her gender, which others do not have.
LIES AND THE IRAQ WAR
By: David Edmonds
The
current British inquiry into the Iraq war – led by Sir John Chilcot – is a
cathartic exercise. No issue since New
Labour was elected in 1997 has been so divisive. The war split friends, families and
political parties. While the
catastrophic impact of the war is still being felt in Iraq, in Britain the
inquiry – it is hoped – will bring some closure.
Many
critics of the war are looking for one finding.
They don’t want to hear that the former Prime Minister Tony Blair
miscalculated. They want to have
confirmed their belief that he intentionally misled – even that he lied. Oddly, a verdict of ‘lie’ would be regarded
as incomparably more serious than a verdict of ‘miscalculation’. The ‘Liar’ headline would curdle the
nation’s blood.
Happiness and the Dragon King
By: David Edmonds
As so often, I’m with
King Wangchuck. The former King of
Bhutan, the fourth ‘Dragon King’, coined the term, Gross National Happiness
(GNH). Governments, he thought, should
aim to boost the nation’s well-being, rather than target Gross National Product
(GNP). He used the phrase after his
coronation, an event which, unfortunately, his citizens couldn’t follow on the
box – because, until a decade ago, Bhutan didn’t have TV. The erstwhile King appears a happy man
himself – which may, or may not, be connected to his being married to four
queens.
The least bad mass murderer
By: David Edmonds
One man murdered 270 people, but his release from prison caused only moderate outrage. Another murdered 13 people and it is unlikely he will ever be released because the public would not stand for it. Why the difference?
I am puzzled by a comparison of intuitions about Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi and the Yorkshire Ripper, Peter Sutcliffe. Put aside doubts about al-Megrahi ‘s guilt; let us assume his conviction was sound, and that he did plant the bomb on Pan Am Flight 103. Did he not cause more harm than Peter Sutcliffe?
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