David Edmonds’ Posts

Other things being equal, killing two people must be worse than killing one, and killing three people worse than killing two. Right?

But a new study by Loran Nordgren and Mary McDonell, published in Social Psychology and Personality Science, suggests people don’t respond in such a rational way to the scope of a criminal act.

The study finds that people judge criminals who’ve harmed more people less harshly than criminals who’ve harmed fewer people. What’s more they’d punish them less severely. What’s more more, subjects turned out to be less willing to blow the whistle on a crime if there are more victims. What’s more more more, these results were not just produced with hypothetical examples in the laboratory: when the authors examined how juries in the US had reacted in real court cases they discovered a similar pattern. Juries handed out more lenient punishment to those responsible for harming more people.

Read More »KILLING 100 IS LESS BAD THAN KILLING 10?

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’.

Read More »Un-Mixing the Sexes

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.

Read More »The Rational Bigot

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.

Read More »The Brainy or the Rich: who should inherit the Earth?

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… Read More »Holidays in Death Camps

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… Read More »Breakfast with Satan

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.
 

Read More »The Racist Shopper