Posted on 29 August 2010 at 3:53 am by Dickie
In the comments for my post on German Grand Prix, Jenny suggested the idea of an “idiot’s guide to motorsport”. That was a month ago and I’ve been meaning to follow it up, because as you may have noticed I quite like writing about that sort of stuff and I think it’s a pretty good idea.
So I will write it up at some point (probably…), but for now I thought it might be worth pointing out that coverage of the Belgian Grand Prix starts at 12:05 today on BBC 1. If you want to find out about motorsport then it’s probably worth watching a race, and I certainly recommend the Belgian GP because it’s generally one of the better ones on the calendar. And also, there’s been rain the last few days at the track, and the BBC website currently tells me that heavy rain is forecast for the race tomorrow. Wet races are always exciting, so probably worth having a look if you’ve never seen an F1 race before.
If you miss it live and still want to watch it, then it’ll be on iPlayer all week (along with the practice sessions and qualifying), here.
Posted In: Motorsport Tagged: F1, I should be asleep, Motorsport, Yay it's raining | No Comments
Posted on at 3:07 am by Dickie
So the government has announced that it’s going to axe NHS Direct and implement a new “non-emergency” helpline. The chief executive of NHS Direct says that the new service will be “better and more cost effective”. Which is nice; we want good healthcare, and we’re also a bit short of money at the moment. So an idea that could be better and cheaper is good.
If it isn’t a good idea, if it doesn’t really work, then ok. But it seems that the intention is to do what I just mentioned, better and cheaper.
Andy Burnham disagrees:
“It is yet more evidence that Andrew Lansley is on a vindictive mission to break up the NHS, ruthlessly dismantling services before alternatives are in place.”
It’s something that you see time and time again in political discussions and I find it bloody annoying. Not that he disagrees with the idea, but that he’s assigning some sort of malicious motive to it. It seems common; the whole “Tories are Evil” thing, for instance. And, well, really? I get that you might disagree with the idea, but do you honestly think that (with one or two honourable exceptions!) someone goes to the effort of getting elected into office, purely for the reason of making things worse for people?
It’s ridiculous and stupid. Even if you disagree with an idea, you can’t just decide that the person who came up with that idea deliberately wants to make things worse for people. I mean, I wasn’t the biggest fan of Gordon Brown, and I think that he made certain things worse throughout his political career. But it would be foolish of me to assert that he did things maliciously (except – allegedly – certain things to destabilise Blair), just because I disagreed with his policies.
The same sort of thing gets thrown at Lib Dems now that they’re in the coalition, talk about selling out for power, or other such nonsense. Is it really that controversial to assume that, actually, they’re doing what they think is best for the country, rather than they’re nasty people who just want their own ministerial Jag?
Posted In: Politics, Rant, Sleep Tagged: Grow up, Labour I'm talking to you, Politics | 2 Comments
Posted on 26 July 2010 at 2:18 am by Dickie
The result of the German Grand Prix this weekend was that Fernando Alonso finished 4.2 seconds ahead of his team mate, Felipe Massa, to win the race. However, to the vast majority of F1 fans, Massa was the real victor.
Alonso outqualified Massa on Saturday, but they both started behind the Red Bull of Sebastian Vettel, who qualified on pole position for his home race. At the start the two Ferraris got off the line better than Vettel, who immediately moved to the right-hand side of the track in an attempt to block Alonso. This left Massa to take the lead of the race, and ultimately Alonso got past Vettel to go second. The Ferraris were running 1st and 2nd, a great achievement given that they’ve been off the pace in recent races. It was also good to see Massa leading a race again, a year to the day after his near-fatal accident in qualifying for last year’s Hungarian Grand Prix.
During much of the race, the two Ferraris were not far away from each other, and it was fairly clear that Alonso was the quicker of the pair. Indeed, he made an attempt to overtake relatively early on, but Massa did a really good job of defending his position to keep the lead and then maintain it throughout the pitstop phase.
While he was being held up by his team mate, some of the radio messages that were broadcast sort of hinted towards Alonso’s frustration. He said that it was “ridiculous”. And then, on lap 48, Massa’s race engineer told him over the radio: “Fernando is faster than you“.
If you don’t follow motorsport, the significance of that phrase is probably lost on you. Because it has a very clear, distinct meaning: let him overtake you. Sure thing, a short time later, Massa miraculously slowed down coming out of a hairpin, allowing his team-mate past.
It was a team order. Ferrari wanted Alonso to win the race, so they told Massa to slow down.
The reasoning is clear. Alonso has a real chance of winning the championship this year, and Massa doesn’t. Therefore they want Alonso to score every point that he can, and doing this enables him to score 7 more points than if he had finished 2nd. Those points could be the difference between winning and losing a title. It’s a very good way to run a team if you want to maximise your chances of winning titles.
However, team orders are banned in F1. They have been since 2002, when Ferrari asked Rubens Barrichello to let Michael Schumacher through to win the Austrian Grand Prix. Accordingly, Ferrari have been issued a $100,000 fine after today’s race (which is essentially a non-punishment). But we’ve seen team orders used plenty of times, even after they were supposedly banned.
In some ways, team orders are a part of motorsport. It’s a team game, and the driver’s responsibility is to the team first, themselves second. There have been countless examples of this sort of thing over the years (indeed, in the early years of the sport, second and third drivers were sometimes required to give up their car part way through a race, if their team mate needed it). Almost every team does it, and I’m sure it’ll continue even after today.
I think the difference is timing. Mostly, team orders are used towards the end of the championship, when one driver is way ahead of the other and is in with a chance of winning the title. In that case, although it’s still slightly awkward, I think it’s a perfectly reasonable thing to do. The difference here though is that we’ve only just passed the halfway point of the season. Massa is way behind Alonso in the championship and so has no realistic chance of winning it, so logically this move makes sense. But even so, at this stage of the season it’s an incredibly bad thing to do.
There are two reasons why I say this. Firstly, it’s ridiculously un-sporting. Obviously the points are important for Alonso, but when we’re at this stage of the season it just feels really unfair to start using team orders. If Alonso was quicker than Massa, he should’ve made the pass on-track, and I was certainly looking forward to seeing that battle. Instead, Ferrari cheated Massa (and Alonso) of the opportunity to win the race (as opposed to having it gifted to them), and we were cheated out of the spectacle of seeing them do that.
Secondly, I think that Ferrari should’ve considered the damage this has done. Yes, 7 points are useful. But are they worth a demotivated Massa? I would say not.
This isn’t the first time that the issue of driver parity has reared it’s ugly head this season, as Red Bull have been accused of favouring Vettel over Webber a couple of times. In this case, it’s been because of things the managment have said, or by putting upgraded parts on Vettel’s car and not on Webber’s. But I reckon most of these are through mismanagement rather than anything more sinister. And anyway, it’s a very different scenario to ordering one of the drivers to let the other win a race.
It’s been a great season so far, and much of that has been down to intra-team battles. The Red Bull battle that I’ve just mentioned is one example, as is the contest between Hamilton and Button (the last 2 World Champions) at McLaren. I’m sure that the second half of the season will be just as enthralling, especially if Ferrari are able to join the title fight.
But whoever wins this year, it needs to be fair. Maybe Ferrari and Alonso simply want to win at all costs, and that’s their prerogative. Indeed, Alonso was happy with his “win” at Hockenheim, just as he still counts his (disgusting) result at Singapore 2008 as a fair win. But great champions do not need to throw their toys out of their carbon-fibre pram in order to get results; instead they just concentrate on winning in the proper manner.
A couple of years ago, Sir Jackie Stewart (World Champion in 1969, 1971 and 1973) released his autobiography. He entitled it “Winning is Not Enough”. It’s a shame if drivers and teams of the calibre of Alonso and Ferrari don’t share that sentiment.
Posted In: Motorsport Tagged: Alonso, F1, Fairness, Ferrari, Motorsport | 3 Comments
Posted on 14 July 2010 at 3:01 am by Dickie
To be honest, I was fairly sure that I probably wouldn’t get an iPhone 4 on release day. I know that stock was really scarce (and indeed still is), and I really couldn’t be bothered with getting up uber-early in order to go queue outside a shop for one. But I thought it was still worth going to the shops at 9 o’clock, just to see. It’s not as if I had anything better to do!
Sure enough, the first couple of shops I visited had about 5 each, and they were sold by the time I got to them. But one of the sales assistants tipped me off that the local Best Buy (!) had a decent number in stock, so I went down there. There were about 20 people queueing outside the entrance, so I thought “why not? Can’t take too long” and joined the line. And about 5 minutes later, an employee walked the queue to ask us what version we wanted, and to put our names on the list to allocate us phones. Yay!
I was somewhat wrong about it not taking long though. It was taking an age for the sales people to process each order, so I still had an age to wait. I really didn’t think I’d be there for more than an hour, but in fact I ended up spending 2 or so hours in the queue, then another three quarters of an hour with the sales assistant actually buying the damn thing. Because of course, there were 4 assistants dealing with iPhone sales, and each sale was taking ages because O2 was initially taking ages to sort out upgrades and the like.
Anyway, 3 and a half hours after I set out to get one, I returned home with a shiny new iPhone. I’ve had it a few weeks now, so I’ve had a decent amount of time now to get used to it.
The phone I traded in to get this was an iPhone 3G. I’d had that for a while and I really liked it, but this is definitely a massive step ahead. The software is obviously mostly similar because it uses the same OS. That said, there are obviously new features to iOS 4 and some of those aren’t available to the 3G. Multitasking is the most obvious thing, and it works really well on the iPhone 4. I know it’s taken ages to come to the iPhone in comparison to other platforms, but one of the things I like about the iPhone platform is that once Apple implement a new feature, it works really well. The implementation on the iPhone may not be “real” multitasking, but it works well for the way most people use their phones, and that’s the main thing. For instance the new version of Spotify for iOS 4 is excellent, and runs really well in the background without noticeably slowing things down.
Also, this iPhone is much quicker than my 3G. For instance, I always found that the Spotify app would take forever to load on the 3G, and is pretty clunky to use too. On the new iPhone it opens pretty much immediately, and is extremely responsive when you navigate around the app. The camera is also much better. The 3G camera was ok, it was usable for most things (indeed, the picture in the header of this page was taken with my old iPhone), but it was always a bit hit and miss as to whether the pictures would be any good. The new camera is much better in this respect; even low-light pictures are pretty good. Oh, and it records 720p video, which looks pretty snazzy.
I’ve not tried FaceTime yet because I don’t know anyone else with one of these phones, but I’m pretty keen to give it a go.
This is all pretty much peripheral though, because in my opinion there is one thing which really sets this phone apart from anything else: the screen. It wouldn’t be exaggeration to say that it’s pretty much the best screen I’ve seen in any device. I can’t see the individual pixels unless I hold the phone about a 20mm from my face, so everything is incredibly smooth. Reading on the old phone used to tire my eyes after a while, but this is much more readable because the text is so much smoother. Oh, and it’s brilliant for watching videos on. HD videos from YouTube look really, really nice. In fact the other day I did a comparison with a 3GS, both showing the same video from YouTube, and it was surprising how much clearer the new phone is. Honestly, this thing has to be seen to be believed.
I would love an iPad with this screen… (but that’s probably quite a way away)
I also think that the phone looks absolutely gorgeous. Photos don’t do this thing justice, I reckon. It’s pretty understated, but quite classy. That said, it’s also pretty badly designed.
Mobile phones are portable. In the real world, they get exposed to a pretty hard life, and in fact it’s more than likely that the typical phone will be dropped several times over its lifetime. So good phone design would look good in 12 months time as it does when it’s new. It should be able to weather the inevitable scrapes and knocks. Glass screens are pretty unavoidable on phones like this, but this has a glass back too. You don’t need me to tell you that glass shatters, so this phone is pretty damn fragile. That’s bad design.
But there’s another problem, and this one is amazing. The aerials for the iPhone have been placed on the outside edge, in order to save space and move them outside the case. Good thinking? No. There’s a point on the bottom-left corner of the phone, which if touched causes the network signal to be severely attenuated. You can literally place your finger on this spot and watch the phone signal decrease. If you hold the phone naturally, it’s easy to inadvertently touch this part of the aerial and have this effect. There’s no excuse for this, it’s just really poor design, and could have been easily sidestepped by applying a transparent coating to the aerial.
Steve Jobs’ response of “just don’t hold it like that” is really unhelpful as well…
Anyway. These problems are mostly solved by a case, which is something I would get anyway (and that doesn’t in any way excuse Apple for shockingly poor design, it just means that it doesn’t affect me massively). So I really like the new iPhone. Unless you’re still tied into a contract for a while, I think it’s an absolute no-brainer for current iPhone users to upgrade. Especially if you’re still using a 3G (or earlier)… Obviously if you don’t like the general iPhone model then this isn’t going to do anything for you, but lots of people just want a smartphone that’s powerful yet really easy to use, and the iPhone 4 does that brilliantly.
As long as you don’t hold it wrong.
Posted In: Technology Tagged: Geek, iPhone, Technology | 24 Comments
Posted on 5 July 2010 at 10:23 pm by Dickie
Nick Clegg retreats on no-confidence votes.
Nick Clegg today performed the first big U-turn of the coalition when he announced rules to guarantee that a simple majority of MPs will be able to vote down a government and trigger a general election.
The fuss about the dissolution of parliament (not the passing of no-confidence votes, which is a different thing) centred on the proposal for the requirement of a 55% majority to pass a vote to dissolve. The argument centred on how parliament should require a simple majority to dissolve, rather than the 55% limit. Opponents of this policy said that this limit was engineered to allow the coalition to decide when to dissolve parliament (which betrays a colossal misunderstanding of current parliamentary procedure, but that’s somewhat incidental at this point).
I really don’t understand how this is a U-turn. The opposing argument was that a simple majority would not be sufficient to dissolve parliament, and today Clegg has announced that actually the government will introduce a higher requirement – a 66% majority – to dissolve parliament. OK it’s different to what was originally proposed, but it’s not exactly a U-turn and it’s certainly not bowing to the opposition. I mean, they wanted it to just be a majority of MPs, so if they were thinking straight they would be even more opposed to the higher limit. As far as I can tell, the initial announcement back in May had nothing to do with changing the rules for no-confidence votes, and was all about moving power for dissolving parliament away from the Prime Minister and instead giving MPs that power. Today’s announcement doesn’t change that at all, so where’s the “big U-turn”?
I guess I shouldn’t expect anything else from the Grauniad though…
Clegg is currently trending on Twitter, in response to today’s announcement. A lot of it is negative, with some people saying things like “well I voted Lib Dem, and I won’t make that mistake again”. Huh? The Liberal Democrats have never been coy about their commitment to electoral reform, so the things Clegg announced today really shouldn’t come as a shock, especially to people who voted for the party. I mean, I’d sort of expect those people to have an idea that the people they voted for are committed to such major things!
Quite honestly, I can find nothing controversial in the announcement (except perhaps the date), so much of the negative reaction is a bit perplexing really.
Posted In: Rant Tagged: Electoral Reform, Politics, Stupidity | 7 Comments
Posted on 4 July 2010 at 11:14 pm by Dickie
Wimbledon finals this weekend. It’s been a really good tournament, so it’s a bit of a pity the singles finals were both fairly unexciting. Ho hum.
The subject of prize money in tennis majors is relatively controversial. This is because in men’s tennis, they play the best of 5 sets, whereas women play best of 3. Both get the same amount of prize money (£1 million this year), even though male players do more work and provide more entertainment.
I think it’s right that the male and female players get paid the same amount of prize money. I think it would also be right if they both had the same challenge; if they both had to play to 5 sets.
Yes, men and women’s bodies are different. Yes, men are generally stronger, but that’s why there are two tournaments. I don’t think that women are that weak and incapable of handling the extra sets, provided they trained for it. We’re talking about stamina here rather than strength, and women are hardly incapable of completing marathons and the like…
It amuses me when alleged “feminists” argue (correctly) that men and women should be equal and that women are just as capable as men, but then fail to see the irony when they argue that women aren’t strong enough to play for as long as men do. This is a relatively small example, but these sorts of people offer similar arguments to justify all sorts of other inequalities (in the name of “equality”!) and frankly it’s ridiculous.
Posted In: Rant Tagged: Feminism, Fuckups, Wimbledon | No Comments
Posted on 22 June 2010 at 7:55 pm by Dickie
Keynes’ central insight was that the economy is cyclical. That when observed over a long period of time, there are economy-wide fluctuations; that there are times when the economy is generally doing well and we’re all getting richer (expansion), and times when the economy doesn’t do so well and we get poorer (recession).
I suppose there is an argument against this; that the problems which occur aren’t generally structural issues to do with the economy, but rather specific issues to do with the way the economy is run. For instance the credit crunch which precipitated the current downturn was caused by the default of loans on assets which were overvalued (i.e. people not paying their mortgages), and you may say that this isn’t something which will always happen. That there doesn’t need to be a cycle, if only things were run better.
This is almost academic though; looking back through history, clearly there are cycles for whatever reason (there have been recessions in the 70s, 80s and 90s as well as the more recent one). Keynes said that the government should act in a manner which is counter-cyclic. That a period of recession is marked by a shortage of demand, and that the government should spend lots of money during that period in order to pick up some of the slack and help the economy at large. That, in essence, during a recession the government should run a deficit and spend more money than it takes in.
That was the rationale that was used to inform the response of the government to the downturn in 2007-8, but it’s not a complete analysis. Because Keynes said that the government should pursue counter-cyclic policy. By definition, running up a deficit in recessionary times is only half of the story; the other half is that the government should run up a surplus in the boom years, that it should save money. The previous government didn’t pursue this policy, instead they borrowed and spent more and more money. They then added to this with deficit spending in the downturn, which means that we now have a staggering level of public debt and we need to pay it off. The question that today’s budget is trying to answer is: how?
By the way, the costs of bailing out the banks aren’t entirely part of this problem. Because when the government did that, they mostly did it in exchange for shares in the business. As far as I remember, we should actually make a profit from this when the government sells those shares on in a few years, because the banks will be worth more then than they were when the government bought the shares.
Some people have offered the defence that the previous government “didn’t know there would be a recession”. I reckon that is an incredibly poor argument, because even without the recession it was really poor policy to run up such a large amount of public debt. In addition, I simply don’t buy the idea that the recession was unforeseeable. I was working in a retail bank during 2007, and even I had thoughts along the lines of “they’re giving money to people who can’t afford it… is that really wise?”. The causes of the crash were not rocket science, and I know that I’m writing with the benefit of hindsight, but I contest that the Chancellor of the Exchequer really should have shown a bit more foresight. Proclaiming “the end of boom and bust” is nice rhetoric, but seems somewhat blind to the economic reality (pun not intended :-P).
I’ve also heard the argument that people look at public debt in the same way as household debt but that really the two aren’t comparable. People seemingly use this to justify a deficit, to argue that it’s acceptable for the government to borrow large sums of money. This is disingenuous, because whilst there are differences, the fundamental principles are the same. When someone borrows money, they are giving up some money in the future in order to have some now. This isn’t a bad thing as it allows us to be more productive, but we have to be aware that this is what we are doing. And if we take on too much debt, then the cost of that debt can become crippling (I believe that the current figure is £80,000 per day in interest). Increasing debt reduces our future spending power, and if the costs of paying back loans is greater than we can afford, then we have a problem (see the issues presently facing Greece for an example). We need to make moves now to reduce our debt, to reduce the likelihood of that happening.
This budget is painful, but it needs to be. The grim reality is that we simply can’t afford for anything else, so the task was to cut the deficit in a manner which is least damaging. It’s very easy for the opposition and their supporters to snipe, to point out that the budget is tough, and to blame the big mean Tories for screwing the poor and the Liberal Democrats for “selling out” in exchange for cabinet positions, but that version of reality ignores who helped get us into this position to start with.
Posted In: Politics Tagged: Budget, Economics, Keynes, Politics | 1 Comment
Posted on 20 June 2010 at 3:07 am by Dickie
This is something which really annoys me, which I’ve noticed relatively frequently recently, and I’m wondering whether it’s just me who feels like this.
Right. So I generally enjoy arguing about things. I like having an opinion on something – be it politics, religion, motorsport, whatever – and listening to the opinions of others and generally discussing them, whether we hold the same viewpoint or not. It’s a satisfying experience, because it makes me look at my own thoughts more closely, and it obviously opens my eyes to other perspectives. This sort of analysis either leads to me reinforcing my initial opinion, or changing my mind partially or even completely. Either way I enjoy this because it broadens the way I view that subject.
I like to think that I am fairly logical in forming opinions. Whether or not that is fair to say is for other people to judge, but I like to think that it is. I find that I don’t come to a conclusion about something until I really feel as if I know a decent amount about it. I’m probably extremely pedantic about finding facts or evidence to form (or indeed judge) an opinion.
When that comes to forming opinions about things like politics, then yes I suppose to an extent that there is a certain amount of philosophy which enters into the equation. Questions about what we want to do – how we want society to be – are fundamentally philosophical. There’s not really any evidence to support the idea of freedom being good, for instance, it’s simply a philosophy which we generally find pleasing. I reckon that if you look across the political spectrum there is probably a great deal of commonality about this underlying philosophy; the real differences come from the development of political theories for building a society which delivers this, and this arena of thought is much more open to evidence. These theories are inherently testable – we can implement them and see which best deliver what we want. And in the course of human history (and especially in the last 100 years), many of these different theories have been tested to destruction and studied. So we can probably state with some confidence at this point, which political theories are most effective for delivering certain types of society.
The world is a complex place. It seems a bit simple to point that out, but I think people gloss over it sometimes. There is very rarely an unambiguous completely correct solution to something. Maybe this is something that’s been drilled into me through my engineering education; any scheme or solution has pros and cons, and the role of the engineer is to study the specific needs and to work out the solution which best balances the pros and cons to meet those needs in the most successful way. Which in most cases is really the “least worst” solution, in that almost every solution to every engineering problem is a compromise and will have downsides. It’s raw problem-solving (which is why I enjoy it) and its a way of thinking which I think is applicable to more than just purely technical problems.
So to come back to politics, I obviously have a certain opinion about which political theory is best. And by best I obviously mean that by the standards of what I think society should be like – someone who has a fundamentally different idea of this is likely to form a different opinion to me. In Britain though, I think there is probably general agreement that we want a fundamentally free and fair society. I don’t think many people have massively differing ideas of what this means, even if they disagree about what the solution should be to deliver it.
By way of example, a significant part of what I would consider to be a good solution is the idea of economic liberalism. That is, free trade in free markets. Or for want of a better word: capitalism. Now is not the time to explain the reasoning behind this, but I would say that it’s better for society if things are done in this way; if goods and services are generally provided through the market (I’m very much an Orange Book-er). And of course, the reason why I have come to this conclusion is because the evidence seems to support this (and also because I think it’s a wonderfully elegant concept). But, note the use of the word “generally”. I recognise that there are certain things that the market cannot deliver, or at least cannot (on its own) deliver fairly. And for these things, yes, we need a state.
(I intend to go into the thinking behind this in another post, so for now please don’t comment just to argue about the last paragraph!)
This is an example of what I mean about things requiring relatively complex solutions. I don’t think that my opinions tend to be straightforward “this is best”; generally I think that I recognise that many solutions are imperfect. But I find that when I try to explain what I think, occasionally people just ignore much of this and instead take what I say to an over-simplistic extreme. For some people, if I try to explain the belief in free markets, they seem to automatically assume that I’m some anarcho-capitalist nutjob who thinks that the state should be dismantled. They don’t seem to understand the nuance of the argument. Indeed in some cases, people don’t even seem willing to understand it…
The question is: has anyone else had this experience? I’m wondering whether it’s my fault for not communicating clearly enough; but then I’ve expressed the same opinion to different people, and some seem to understand what I’m saying (even if they disagree), whereas others seem to almost caricature what I say and leap to a simplistic conclusion about what I mean without really understanding my argument. And actually, from looking at comments on the various politics-y blogs that I follow, it does seem to be a fairly common occurrence on some of them. But I just don’t get it.
Whatever, it frustrates me massively when people choose to disagree with something before they’ve bothered to properly understand the argument they’re disagreeing with. It’s supremely arrogant.
Posted In: Politics, Rant, Stuff Tagged: Arguments, Being Reasonable, Frustration, Reflection, Stupidity | 11 Comments
Posted on 8 June 2010 at 7:07 pm by Dickie
I watched an absolutely fascinating programme the other day. It was “Hammond Meets Moss“, and you can perhaps guess the basis of the show from the title. Basically it’s Richard Hammond meeting Sir Stirling Moss. Duh.
These two men have had pretty different careers. One was a top-flight racing driver, the other is a TV presenter. But they have one thing in common: they have both suffered major brain injuries. You will probably know about Hammond’s injury, after he crashed a jet car at 300mph in 2006. Moss had a career-ending accident in an F1 race at Goodwood in the 60s, when he veered off the circuit and crashed into an embankment at 110mph (the car wasn’t fitted with seatbelts, so his head hit the steering wheel). Different accidents, but the effects were similar.
Incidentally I loved Moss’s reaction to seeing Hammond’s crash: “Rather you than me, old boy”.
Moss also talks about the racing driver “mindset”, which sort of follows on from the interview I mentioned recently. But it’s fascinating hearing about how their accidents affected them, and how they recovered (or are recovering, it seems). To me this sort of injury is one of the scariest things that can happen. Even the most hideous injuries to other parts of your body only affect that thing; if you’re in an accident and you break your legs, then it means you can’t walk for a bit and it’s incredibly inconvenient. But if you suffer a brain injury, that’s you. Your brain is obviously where your personality comes from, and where your memories and whatnot are stored. The idea of having an accident that can fundamentally change who you are is a pretty terrifying one.
I know I mention lots of motorsport-related things and say “you should definitely watch this”, and I’m sure most people don’t. But this time you really, really should. The documentary isn’t merely about racing, it’s about brain injury and the effects thereof. It’s not a pleasant subject by any means, but I think this is genuinely fascinating.
Posted In: Motorsport, TV Tagged: Hammond, Injury, Mind, Moss, Motorsport | 9 Comments
Posted on 21 May 2010 at 5:04 pm by Dickie
I read through the coalition agreement the other day, and on the whole it actually seems rather good. Of course it remains to be seen how well the coalition works, but as I’ve said before I’m quite optimistic. Especially when Nick Clegg makes speeches like this…
But when I read the document, there was one line in particular that I was unsure about. The promise that “we will extend anonymity in rape cases to defendants”. I did a sort of double-take when I read it (if that makes sense), because to put it frankly, there are almost definitely more important issues surrounding rape than whether or not the defendant is anonymous. Like the fact that a hideously low amount of rape victims even bother to report the crime, or the appalling way they are treated if they do report it. If it were me, that would be my priority to be honest.
Irrespective of that though, is this a good idea? The arguments in favour of anonymity are clear; rape (quite rightly) carries a certain amount of stigma, and I can imagine that even if someone is found not guilty of raping someone, it’s still a weight around their neck. There’s no smoke without fire, after all… This is a simple argument, but to my mind it’s an incredibly persuasive one. After all the fundamental idea is that someone is ”innocent until proven guilty”.
I can sort of understand the counterarguments though. In some cases - such as John Worboys – the naming of the person who has been accused has spurred other victims into reporting their cases, and this obviously increases the likelihood of the defendant being found guilty. I’m not sure how common this is though, and even if it is common I’m not sure if it’s a valid reason not to have anonymity. Because to my mind the underlying problem is still that most victims don’t report the crime, and this doesn’t really solve that issue all that effectively.
I read on the BBC that Labour introduced anonymity for rape defendants in 1976, and the subsequant Conservative government reversed this in 1988. I don’t know what the rationale was for the Tories doing that, and it’d also be pretty interesting to find out what – if any – effect it had.
Not surprisingly, shouty feminists have pointed out that this is a very bad thing. They say that it’s misogynistic, that it reinforces the idea that when a woman reports a rape, she’s obviously lying. To put it simply, I think that’s a complete load of bullshit. I think that all this aims to do is to address the effects of the accusation on those people who are innocent, and I don’t think that is a bad thing at all. Clearly there are valid arguments for and against, but I think the negative reaction is overblown. Yes, anonymity may have a negative effect in some proportion of cases, but isn’t it important to balance the rights of both sides?
No doubt someone will come along later and say “oh you would say that you’re a man” and put this down to “male privilege”. And to anyone tempted to say that, then just No. This is just trying to look at both sides of the argument in a balanced way, rather than simply jump to a conclusion. It’s very easy to over-react to things we disapprove of (and make no mistake, I think the way rape is dealt with in this country is atrocious), but I think it’s important to try to retain some sense of perspective.
Posted In: Politics Tagged: Fairness, Feminism, Politics | 2 Comments