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I'm a little confused. (I'll be a big confused when I grow up, (c) Nat Gertler).
So, last year, the European Court of Human Rights ruled it was unlawful to keep on record indefinitely the DNA profiles of innocent people.
Confusion 1: People in the British Legal system may be innocent until proven guilty, but once they've been to court, they're no longer 'innocent'; they're either 'guilty' or 'not guilty', or in Scotland, possibly 'not proven'.
So the Government, in order to fall into line with the ruling of the European Court of Human Rights, are to say that DNA Profiles will only be kept for six years.
And here's where the confusion really sets in.
Because as far as I can see, this genuinely is one of the few issues in politics where there's an either/or situation. If you're going to keep them at all, then why not keep them indefinitely? Keeping them for one day is just as "bad", in principle, as keeping them for twenty years.
And the other 'side' of the argument is just as messy. The people who are most opposed to deleting the profiles seem to argue the case that "if you've got the profile, then it can be used to check the profiles both against future DNA samples taken from crime scenes, and to compare the profiles against profiles taken from past crime scenes."
It's the old "if you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to worry about" argument. But if that is taken to its logical conclusion, then everyone's DNA profiles should be compulsorily taken and stored in a huge DNA database. And to say that it's ok to keep innocent people's DNA profiles for six years, but that it's not OK to have everyones' profiles in the database is discriminatory, and it's just lazy thinking.
I'm confused because neither side seems to have the courage to say what they actually want. (And sorry, but saying "It may be that we need to think about a national database" ain't point out saying "we should have one".)
It seems to me that it's fairly simple: Either you want to have a database against which you can compare DNA samples taken from crime scenes (and bugger the privacy issues), or you don't.
Some figures from the home office:
The National DNA Database
Profiles: 5.9m
Individuals: 5.1m
Estimated proportion of replicate profiles: 14%
Estimate for people neither charged nor convicted: 20%
Crimes solved with database's help: 32,200 (0.68% of all crime)
Profiles removed March-Oct 2009: 255
Source: Home Office/Parliamentary questions
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I've mentioned a forthcoming tv show called The Bubble a couple of times previously; it's a simple but staggeringly good concept: The Bubble asks three celebrity contestants to separate true news stories from fakes after spending four days locked away in a country house with no phone, TV or internet access.
Host David Mitchell will present them with a mix of news reports, headlines and images from TV, newspapers and celebrity gossip magazines. And "all" the contestants have to do is say which stories are true and which have been made up. And occasionally, when I tell this to people, I get the reaction: "ok, some stories are obviously going to be true and some are obviously going to be false, it's going to be the one that could be true that will be the tough ones..." And I always think in response "No, it won't. It'll be the utterly ludicrous ones..." Let's say that the people are given the following: - The Prime Minister handwrites a letter of condolence to the mother of a dead soldier. - Not only does he misspell the surname of the soldier, but a few other words as well. - The mother tells The Sun all about it. - He phones the mother, then tells the press that he apologised. - The transcript is released and there's no actual apology. - It becomes the biggest political story in the media for about 48 hours. I think a few people would be pushing the "Made Up Story" button, don't you?
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I'm a little bit in shock. I just watched the final part (part 6, all parts five minutes or so...) of Girl Number 9, the web-only thriller written by James Moran, and starring Gareth David-Lloyd, Joe Absalom and Tracy Ann Oberman. It's dark. And I don't know how to tell you anything about it that won't give the plot away, so I'm going to go with the official site's lines of: Vincent Boylan (Joe Absolom) has just been arrested, suspected of being the man behind the brutal murder of seven girls, but the team only have a limited time to get a confession out of him. If they can't make him talk, he could slip through their fingers.
Detective Matheson (Gareth David-Lloyd), who led the investigation, is sent in to try and get some answers. But things soon take a horrifying turn for the worse, as Matheson and his boss Lyndon (Tracy-Ann Oberman) are about to find out that all is not as it seems. Here's the trailer: Episode One was good enough to make me want to watch Episode Two. With Episode Two, I was hooked. Warning though. The show comes with its own warning saying it's not suitable for anyone younger than 15. To be honest, I'm surprised that left it that low... Girl Number 9 - all is not as it seems...
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The older I get, the more I come to the conclusion that the Colonies have it right: a written constitution is a good idea. There's a myth that the UK doesn't have a written constitution. We do have one. We just have it in umpteen (a technical term, you understand) different laws, statutes, statutory instruments, etc. What we don't have is a single codified document entitled "The Constitution". And not only do I think we should have such a single codified document, I think that we could do a lot worse than look at our American cousins' one as a general guide. Now, sure, I can't stand the second amendment, or at least the interpretation that's been put on it since the US created a standing army, which never existed at the time the Bill of Rights was ratified. And I still prefer a parliamentary system rather than the entire separation of the executive and legislature... And yes, I know that for a couple of hundred years, people have been arguing about the precise meanings of not only the second amendment but the entire document. After all, that's what the Supreme Court spends almost all of its time doing. Well, that and paperwork. And ok, they sometimes have to give the Chief Justice a few days off to supervise the occasional Presidential impeachment. But I do like a lot of it, particularly the first amendment. You remember that? It's the one that goes: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. Of course, as fans of Alistair Cooke will recall, he never tired of reminding people of the qualifier "peaceably". However, I am long past tired of people, ignorant, stupid people, who - whenever a message board censors something they've written, or (as happened today) Twitter removing what they considered to be an offensive hashtag trend - complain that their first amendment rights have been infringed. I'd ask if they were so ignorant of their own bloody Constitution that they don't know that the first amendment does not apply to any private organisation, only Congress, but the answer is obviously, sadly, yes.
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A year ago today, I wrote "My son Phil is thirteen years old today, and in six days, he's going to be bar mitzvah." I'm having difficulty processing the implications of it being a year later than that today. He's fourteen, and his bar mitzvah was a year ago? Impossible. And yet, as I've said before, the calendar doesn't lie (although I do have severe doubts about that at times.) Philip Samuel Barnett - known to everyone bar his mum as 'Phil' and currently known to me as 'do your homework!' - was born on 2 nd November 1995, at half-nine in the evening if you were curious. And it's today 2 nd November 2009. Fourteen years old. Wow. This year ain't been the easiest for Phil - cutting his hand open in April, and then having the bone broken a couple of months later - but he's handled it incredibly well and with a maturity that belies his years, and makes us all the more proud of him. I've several friends who are pregnant at the moment; when they're daft enough to ask me what being a parent is like, (and that's not pejorative, I was just as daft when I was an expectant father) I tell all of them that being a father is the most fun thing I've ever done, bar none. Sure, there are times when it's hard - any parent who says otherwise is lying - but the fact that it's Philip who's my son makes it incredibly worth it. As I watch him walk the road towards adulthood my emotions are those of pride and pleasure in the young man he's turned out to be (the credit for most - if not all - of that must go to Laura; she's a wonderful mother) and justifiable hope and confidence for the young man he's still to become. I was about to write 'young adulthood' earlier, you know, but realised he's already well along that path... Although as with every year, I have no idea how he went from:  to  to  in what seems like an astonishingly short space of time. 'Appy birthday, Phil. I love you, son. Dad
x[Feel free to add your birthday greetings and wishes here, I'll make sure he sees them...]
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Title: Never Mind Mummy
Word: composted
Challenger: ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) bevismusson
Length: 200 words exactly
She’d never get better, he knew; the doctors had made that more than plain over the years. And with every visit, his impatience with their incompetence grew and was expressed in more forceful terms. He was obviously so sick of hearing the medical explanations for her condition, the scientific descriptions of an excess of this chemical or a deficit of that substance. This last visit, his anger had been palpable.
The doctors knew that he was still learning to live with the loss of his wife occasioned by the woman they looked after but still attempted on each occasion to link her current condition and mental state with the horrific events of that evening.
All that mattered, he knew, as he pointed the long nose of the car towards the exit was that she would never recover what the doctors would judge as even within a sniffing distance of sanity.
If they ever figured out how he’d done it, the methodology he’d used to repeatedly cross-breed the genetic material and then liquefy the composted material, he’d have to worry.
Insanity was hereditary, he believed; his mother became insane because of him.
He giggled quietly, then loudly, and continued to drive...
© Lee Barnett, 2009
This story is part of the 2009 Fast Fiction Challenge. New challenges can be made here.
The Fast Fiction Challenge - The Book; now available from lulu.com and, if you're in the US, via Amazon.com here; 180 of the best fast fiction challenge stories from the first three challenges... Buy it now.
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I've been rereading an old favourite this week. I didn't quite realise how many times I must have read it in the over twenty years since I purchased it as a first edition hardback... until I pulled it out from the bookshelf. Hmm, the book jacket's seen some mileage:  After posting the above, I took a look on the Wikipedia pages for Yes, Minister and the characters therein and discovered, to my delight, the following:Upon [Nigel Hawthorne's] death, the following appeared on the Editorial page of The Ottawa Citizen under the heading 'No,minister'."It is sadly that we report on Sir Nigel Hawthorne, elsewhere referred to as Sir Humphrey Appleby. While it would be premature to commit ourselves to a definitive position on his merits or even his existence, a committee is being struck to consider the possibility of a decision, in the fullness of time, to regret his passing, if any."
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Everyone I know has stock phrases that they use more often than they realise, and I'm no different. I'm sure that friends of mine could recite them more easily than I could, and that's the point. At some stage, as the old saw has it, the onlooker sees more. Anyone who works for me or has worked for me has heard the following: The one thing I hate? It's people thinking we're stupid. Either an individual, the department, the company. I hate people thinking we're stupid. And the only thing worse than that? Us proving them right. Point being that, like the boy in the story, it doesn't matter whether in the end there is a wolf, it's your own damn fault for people not believing you. And so we come to The Grauniad. A few years ago, I realised - when he stopped writing as regularly for The Times as he had been - that the only reason I was buying the newspaper was because of Matthew Parris. And with the online site, I could pick up his column whenever I wanted to. So I tried out The Gaurdion and The Observer, and to something of my surprise, I found I actually enjoyed reading it. The writing's enjoyable to read, and the various analysis pieces, while I didn't always agree with the sentiments, were equally enjoyable to read, as were the columnists. The writers, on the whole, seemed to enjoy writing. Now I know - and knew - that The Guaradian wasn't exactly pro-Israel, but that's ok, neither are most of my friends. And that's also ok. I can think of only two friends where there's been a kind of agreement not to even touch on the subject because we'll end up in a row. The rest? Quite happy to debate stuff, and leave the personal out of it. (Much, to be honest, like how me and one very close friend never discuss male circumcision because he feels so strongly against it, and another friend and I agreed never to discuss Cromwell. He may have let the Jews back into England, but he was a racist thug regarded by many in Ireland as evil incarnate.) And then there's The Guuardioan. Despite the protestations that they're not ant-Israeli per se, and certainly not anti-Jewish, they made a cock up today that has had Jewish friends of mine wondering just how genuine their protestations are. They stuck up on the web a list of Nobel Peace Prize winners since 1901. Every Nobel Peace Prize winner. All of them. Except three. And what did these three have in common? Oh, just that they're Israeli. Oops. Having read the explanation, after someone had spotted it, (and the Grauardina News Editor effectively said "Arrgh, cockup on our part, fixed it now") I'm not entirely convinced either by the actual technical explanation, or by the arguments that it must have been a deliberate omission. I'm genuinely unsure either way. However that's the point - if you don't want people to think you're stupid or incompetent, don't bloody act like it.
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I was chatting with Kieron Gillen earlier about parental responsibilities, and said that one of the best father/son scenes I've ever seen in movies is when Sidney Poitier's character erm... remonstrates... with his father in Guess Who's Coming To Dinner.
If you don't know the story, it's this: 1967. A white girl brought up in a liberal family arrives home from holiday in Hawaii accompanied by a black man (a doctor) and announces that they're getting married, and they're flying out that evening to do so... His parents arrive, and neither set of parents are, it's fair to say, delighted at the prospect. The girl's parents, by the way, are played by Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn, who in real life was the young woman's aunt.
Here's that scene with Poitier's character and his father:
The final scene, indeed the final dialogue, is spoken by Tracy and... it's incredible. Even moreso when you know that this was the final time he spoke in front of the cameras. He was dying, and Hepburn (the woman he'd spent, on and off, the past 26 years in a relationship with) knew it... and it shows.
He died seventeen days after shooting wrapped on the movie.
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Early part of last year, I wrote about the tv programme The Bubble, and said I was seriously impressed with whoever came up with the idea for the show. Well, it's coming our way. From Broadcast magazine: Hat Trick brings Israeli panel format to BBC2
MIPCOM: Hat Trick Productions is adapting Israeli news panel show format The Bubble for BBC2.
In a twist on the UK indie’s BBC1 show Have I Got News For You, The Bubble asks three celebrity contestants to separate true news stories from fakes after spending four days locked away in a country house with no phone, TV or internet access.
Host David Mitchell will present them with a mix of news reports, headlines and images from TV, newspapers and celebrity gossip magazines.
Mitchell, who has guest hosted HIGNFY, fronted a non-broadcast pilot earlier this year featuring Katy Brand and Frank Skinner.
The format was devised by Israeli company Armoza Formats, which has previously sold it to Israel’s Channel 10, Denmark’s DR1 and Poland’s TVP2.
[more in link] My only wonder now is whether or not anyone will boycott it because it was devised by an Israeli company...
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alasdair mentioned something a while back regarding a photographic project about paying attention when walking in the street, because you don't know what you'll miss otherwise. And every so often, I'll see something that'll engage me, or tickle me, or just plain intrigue me, and I'll take a photo and stick it up here. This afternoon, while walking back to the office, I passed an alleyway at the back of what used to be The Ben Crouch pub, near my office in Central London. I knew it had recently changed hands and is now an Adam and Eve, but figured I'd take a look. But walking to it, I noticed... well. Here's a shot of the back of the place.  Nothing much to see, eh? Except that little dot on the street at the bottom of the picture. Here... here's a close up of it:  Hmm...
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Title: The Figurehead Wept
Word: wrapped
Challenger: glittermouse
Length: 200 words exactly As the television news related the results of the election, the man wept.
It had been a hard campaign: the politicians knew it, those in the media knew it, and the public knew it. Despite the government being among the most unpopular in recent years, the length of their continuous service lent a veneer of respectability to their fervent cries of being the only people the voters could trust.
As he heard the noise in the streets, the man wept.
Marketed as the only way to vote for true patriots, wrapped in the flag, the government had fought the dirtiest and nastiest crusade for vote-gathering that any alive could recall. Nothing had been beyond those charged with winning the election: blackmail became by the end of the campaign the first option rather than the last resort it had once been.
As he thought of the past few weeks, the man wept.
The past and soon to be reconfirmed Prime Minister, leader of his party, looked at the death list he’d prepared. And wept.
And then, as he considered the future, the man wiped his eyes dry.
Then, unable to help himself, the laughter recommenced, his eyes filled, and he wept.
© Lee Barnett, 2009 This story is part of the 2009 Fast Fiction Challenge. New challenges can be made here.
The Fast Fiction Challenge - The Book; now available from lulu.com and, if you're in the US, via Amazon.com here; 180 of the best fast fiction challenge stories from the first three challenges... Buy it now.
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Title: Don't Look Back
Word: cannonball
Challenger: absinthe_delacy
Length: 200 words exactly Lifting the grey suit jacket from its hanger on the back of his door, he shrugged his way into it, every action deliberate and methodical. He took a long look around his office; there were the photographs of his family, the small cannonball paperweight, and on the table were pads, a laptop computer, and his mobile telephone which he picked up and slid into his trouser pocket.
Reaching for the pad, he scribbled a few words, read them, and then tore the top page away, folding it and putting it into the pocket next to the telephone. He pondered a moment, and rewrote the message, happier this time with its phrasing: much better, conveying a definite impression of work to be completed tomorrow.
He exited his office, switching off the lights, the last in the building, not unusual for him.
He left the firm for the last time, switching off the telephone and dropping it in a litter bin once he reached the street.
This would be the third time he’d embezzled and then walked before it was discovered. It was a pity. He genuinely liked his colleagues. He always did.
Walking away should have been easy; it never was.
© Lee Barnett, 2009 This story is part of the 2009 Fast Fiction Challenge. New challenges can be made here.
The Fast Fiction Challenge - The Book; now available from lulu.com and, if you're in the US, via Amazon.com here; 180 of the best fast fiction challenge stories from the first three challenges... Buy it now.
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