Religion

As it’s the time of a large number of festivals (but don’t say Winterval!), people have been talking about the whole religion business, so let's get it out of the way.

I have a problem with religion:

1. There is no evidence to support their beliefs; so why should I believe?
   
2. A religion builds itself on claims of moral authority, and with promise of enlightenment imposes it on others in society. (*)

You cannot ignore everything that is done under the name of a particular religion, or assume that removing religion would solve all of the world’s problems. We’re much more grown up than that. What I am saying is that I am not prepared to suspend rational thought without good reason. Unsubstantiated claims of enlightenment aren’t good enough. If I suspend rational thought, that is a vulnerability that can be exploited. Hitchens says that religion makes good people do bad things, pointing to (somewhat humorously) genital mutilation - maybe that's the exploitation of the vulnerability in practise?

I will always use Occam’s Razor. The simplest claim that is reinforced by evidence is probably right. Notice the word probably. I use this when I say that there is probably no God. I can never prove otherwise (and it is a religion’s responsibility to back up their claims!). However, we have a whole load of evidence (~) to show we arose not out of Creationism, but as a process of evolution via natural selection. Until the Heabenly Jebus comes down from his Sky Palace with a portable laboratory and conclusively proves that a god exists, then I’m gonna go with what evidence we have.

Pascal’s Wager (that you should believe on the off chance god exists, then if the god doesn’t, you’ve lost nothing) is not a criticism of this stance, as it implies the suspension of rational thought. It’s also a fairly biased wager. I prefer the following:

There is probably no God.

• If I die and there isn’t – I’ve lost nothing, and also wasted nothing!
  
• If I die and there is – then I will simply say “sorry, you didn’t give me enough evidence to believe in you”. If I’m eternally damned from this stance, then this god is a right self-centred bastard and I would have been disgusted in my belief in that deity.

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Footnotes

* Interestingly, these claims have no evidence, relating back to point one.

~ I don't normally take evidence from Wikipedia - but the article is very good, and most likely because it's heavily moderated by a very highly regarded set of professionals and Wikipedians alike. Read this for a more detailed look.

Merry Fucking Winterval

Although, seeing as this post is rather late into the night, I hope you’ve had a merry implausible birth day. I hope that you’ve got sufficiently pissed, enjoyed Doctor Who, laughed at the ridiculousness of the Queen’s speech this year, and stuffed yourself so full that tomorrow’s toilet session is going to hurt.
More importantly, I hope that you have enjoyed your time with your family. That’s all I can really say about that, I hope you make up the rest.
My issue with Christmas is twofold. First and foremost, it can be accurately be summed up by the following image:

(Yes, there is some degree of lulz to that statement).
Secondly, it is the way the press report that Christmas is being diminished by a holiday, to be banned by people who don’t have the authority to ‘ban’ anything, all in favour of tolerating other people’s cultures. The main manifestation of this is the Winterval myth.

Winterval

The Winterval myth is something that has been annoying Birmingham City Council workers ever since its conception: a month long celebration to promote a wide variety of events, all with the idea to create one large, generic campaign. This was dubbed Winterval. It happened in 1998.
I want to get this out in the open now. Winterval did not replace Christmas. Primly Stable has evidence of this. See how large ‘Christmas’ appears on that brochure, with respect to the positioning and the size of the Winterval logo?
This hasn’t stopped politicians, journalists, far-right groups of football hooligans and even the Fucking Pope from turning this into an outright attack on Christianity itself. Once this ball is rolling, references can be made to other stories (“it’s like WInterval all over again!”), casually building up into a loony left politically-correct muslim-friendly health and safety-mad Christmas-hating wheely-bin stealing bunch of council workers who give everyone benefits.
It’s truly shocking how these things snowball.

There Is Another Way

So, you have a choice. You can take the red pill, and follow DiCaprio:

To begin the fight against this bullshit that is blighting our society, I highly recommend reading Kevin Arscott’s (Angry Mob) Winterval essay in its entirety.
As well as Angry Mob and Primly Stable, I’d also recommend following these blogs on a regular basis:

• Anton Vowl’s Enemies of Reason
  
• Tabloid Watch
  
• Minority Thought
  
• Five Chinese Crackers
  
• Wrestling Emily Dickinson
  
• Daily Mail Watch
  
• Express Watch
  
• The Sun - Tabloid Lies

Merry fucking Winterval!

The BBC Fucked This One Up

Jody McIntyre

Jody McIntyre is a 20 year-old man who has cerebral palsy and has to use a wheelchair. He attended the most recent student protests with his brother, who was pushing his wheelchair. The Police, in any situation, are supposed to use force which is proportional in response. Take a look at how the police dealt with McIntyre, and see if you think the response is proportional:

(This is an edited version which has been lightened for clarity)

According to McIntyre, this was his second encounter with the police, with the office from the first encounter running over to join in with the events in the video above.
McIntyre was ‘interviewed’ on BBC News, which I’d advise you watch in full:

BBC Interview

McIntyre handled himself well with a hostile interviewer, he got his point across and made Ben Brown seem like a ranting fingers-in-ears type of guy.
Ben Brown’s ‘argument’ revolves around two main points:

• You said you were a revolutionary.
  
• You must have given the police some valid reason for them to hit you, pull you out your wheelchair and drag you across the street.

I’d like to quickly address both of those points individually.

Revolutionary

So McIntyre said he was a “revolutionary” on a website. This is irrelevant to the events. Sure, it might make him on some form of a wanted list, but the police have other ways to remove these people. Being a revolutionary does not necessarily correlate to violence at a demonstration.

It Must Have Been You

Brown tries to force some form of confession out of McIntyre, using some form of backward logic in which McIntyre must have been the one to blame. The video makes it unclear what happens, as the camera turns to see another officer run towards McIntyre. McIntyre responds with an interesting response – how can a wheelchair user with cerebral palsy pose a threat to a group of armed officers? Clearly the proportional response is to drag him out of his wheelchair and across a street.

Littlejohn Alert!

<I know Littlejohn doesn’t work for the BBC; thankfully>

I found this little gem from Twitter user @clubofonedotcom. Richard Littlejohn, a proven compulsive liar, decided to air his take on the matter. The image is too big to display here, so I have directly linked and will quote below.

“Jody McIntyre is like Andy from Little Britain.”

Why? Because he’s in a wheelchair and has cerebral palsy? Are we sinking that low now? Oh, I forgot, it’s Richard Littlejohn in the Daily Mail.

“But if he’s looking for sympathy, he’s come to the wrong place.”

He hasn’t went anywhere, Littlejohn decided to hitherto condone police brutality by saying he should have been kept out of sight. In a kettle, there’s nowhere to go. We all know that Littlejohn is a lying reactionary cloaca, however he is just a puppet in a larger media campaign to belittle the efforts of the student cause.

EDIT: Thanks to @uponnothing (of Angry Mob fame), I've found the cartoon the Daily Mail associated with this Littlejohn bile. We can now safely establish that the Daily Mail institutionally does not like disabled people. I would say shame on them, but they won't give a shit. Neither will the PCC, although be my guest if you'd like to join in with the complaints.

How To Properly Report This

The Guardian does a better job, showing a longer video. However they are careful to protect their backs by saying the video does not show the moment McIntyre leaves his wheelchair (technically right, you do see the police drag him to the ground and then across the street, however).

I’m not sure what the correct way to report this would actually be. I can definitely say the way the BBC and the Mail have reported this is out and out wrong. McIntyre is speaking to a lawyer regarding making a formal complaint, and apparently has the officer’s ID numbers, so hopefully when this is settled (and if the police don’t decide to just let their officers off as with happened with Ian Tomlinson) we’ll see some better reporting.

In Other News

Another protester, Alfie Meadows, underwent brain surgery after protesting. His family claim this is due to a truncheon attack, and the Guardian are reporting the Police tried to move Meadows to another hospital, despite him needing urgent brain surgery.

Conclusion

It is hard to form any form of conclusion at the time of writing. Investigations are pending, after all. However some aspects of the media are clearly interested in reducing the student shouts to whispers and trying to justify allegations of police brutality. This should be totally condemned.

Update 27/5/2011

It turns out that the complaint against the police made by Jody McIntyre was rejected, and that an officer dragging him out of his wheelchair was lawful based on a perceived risk. Make of that what you will.