Wednesday, 8 November 2006
Geek vs Greek
Unsurprisingly, perhaps, not everyone thinks that yesterday's long fisking of Polly Toynbee was time well spent, either for writer or reader. PooterGeek says that I display "courage to rival that of Leonidas (the chocolatier rather than the king of the Spartans)" in taking on "intellectual giantess Polly Toynbee".
At this point I could imitate the approach Mr Eugenides took with Ms Toynbee and make crude sexual suggestions about what he and his admirers get up to in the ever-more-threatened privacy of their bedrooms, but I won’t because I’m not very boring indeed. I mean, do any of these all-lads-together types think that John Reid wakes up a cold sweat worrying that the Devil’s Kitchen is going to feature another post calling him a “cunt” or that broadsheet corporatists feel that their arguments are fatally undermined by Tim Worstall labelling them “morons”?
They probably don't, no. I won't do PooterGeek the justice of responding item by item to his criticisms, not because they aren't worthy of a response - it's a well-written and funny post by a blogger whom I admire - but because to do so would, I imagine, be missing the point.
I will say, though, that if he thinks that my contention that laws are, or should be, framed with one eye on their possible misuse by future governments betrays a "catastrophic failure to understand the nature of English law" then he and I are clearly not going to agree on a lot. (Just as an aside, who said anything about England?) I know that Parliament is sovereign and can tear up any law it pleases, whenever it likes, anyway; but that does not absolve lawmakers of the responsibility to draft laws carefully and well, lest they be misused in the future. Nor does it entail that critics of a proposed law are wrong to draw attention to concerns even at this supposedly relatively early stage. Indeed, one of the other things I know is that judges can, nowadays, declare laws to be incompatible with the Human Rights Act, but not overturn them. All the more reason to be very careful what our elected representatives permit onto the statue book.
It's worth pointing out the obvious: my opinion does not matter, but Polly Toynbee's does. She was named as Britain’s most influential columnist by a survey a few months back: her article yesterday will have been read by, what, half a million people? More? (Mine by a few hundred at most.) A lot of people take her seriously; even my mother couldn’t say the same about me. I write a lot of stuff which it would be horrifying to imagine people taking seriously, but that does not mean that this is not a serious issue.
The Information Commissioner, Richard Thomas, raised a number of interesting and important questions last week about the direction we are being taken by the proliferation of surveillance systems, databases, and their increasing centralisation and combination. I was at pains to point out in my blog post that you did not need to share the fears of the tinfoil-hatted fraternity to have genuine concerns about this trend, and feel that the rather curt dismissal of his argument by Polly was neither convincing nor sufficient, full of instances of her trivialising really quite serious issues, moving the goalposts, and when all else failed responding, twice, with the formula "I don't really care about that".
Both Toynbee and PooterGeek seem to take the view that ID cards may well not work effectively, and will quite possibly be a colossal waste of money, but since the opponents of the scheme are borderline lunatics who exaggerate the dangers in long letters composed in green ink, they can safely be ignored. I can accept this from PooterGeek, whose main concern in this context isn't really the policy itself, but taking an arrogant blogger to task for certain specific holes in his own argument; I can even understand it in Polly, who gives her basic concerns away in her final paragraph when she blames all this hysteria on the comfortable middle-classes not having anything real to worry about. But I don't accept it from the government, and still less from Parliament; I expect more than smooth bromides about security and "the desirability of being able to prove one's identity". At the moment, that's all we're getting.
As the state grows both larger and more powerful, with greater powers and rights to keep an eye on us and direct our behaviour, there is the potential for a significant shift in the relationship between state and individual, and this deserves more serious and intelligent discussion that Polly seems willing to give it. If my own efforts are hardly worthy of a Nozick or a Hayek, then let others, better intellectually equipped than I, take up the slack.
As for Tom Hamilton of Let's Be Sensible, who, though not wishing to be po-faced about it, considers the small excerpt of pornographic imagery in the middle of the post to be "quite staggeringly repellent", I will simply say that it will have to be for the reader to decide whether they find it funny or not, and their answer to that question will largely decide whether they think its inclusion devalues the post as a whole, enhances it, or just doesn't really matter.
Comments:
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Well answered. Even Pooter Geek will admit to that. On the subject of sexual imagery/violence, its up to the reader. When I read DK for the first time on Polly I was shocked but not outraged. Like vindaloo the extra spice is an acquired taste. As long as the argument or point being made has a logic and intellectual base, I couldn't give a fuck. Some would say the sexual fiskings are the best method of communicating the utter contempt we have for the views/persons under scrutiny.
Are you worried about what the geek says and thinks? New Labour cunts will alwsy from a crowd if let alone long enough.
Ignore them, they are all a bunch of lefty liberal, Tory wannabe cunts, but without the wit or intelligence to wangle a safe Tory seat.
Ignore them, they are all a bunch of lefty liberal, Tory wannabe cunts, but without the wit or intelligence to wangle a safe Tory seat.
I have just followed old crackers on R.S and I agree with him here as there. Give the sanctimoious halfwits all the vernacular you can muster for they know not what they do.
She was named as Britain’s most influential columnist by a survey a few months back: her article yesterday will have been read by, what, half a million people? More? (Mine by a few hundred at most.)
That's as maybe but you are read by hundreds and what's more, the majority agree and they blog and people read them and so on. The combined force of this can be telling in the end.
Another point is that many who read you are movers and shakers but those that read her are the ordinary voter.
That's as maybe but you are read by hundreds and what's more, the majority agree and they blog and people read them and so on. The combined force of this can be telling in the end.
Another point is that many who read you are movers and shakers but those that read her are the ordinary voter.
Hmm. Rather like PooterGeek complaining that there are tits and not reasoned analysis and comment in the Sun.
I can accept it if someone is offended the first time they come here if they didn’t realise what was on offer. They have the choice of not returning.
But, for aforementioned reasoned analysis and comment laced with 0 pH vitriol and graphic imagery, if not primus inter pares this blog is certainly amongst the finest. And Polly Pot really is such a cunt.
I can accept it if someone is offended the first time they come here if they didn’t realise what was on offer. They have the choice of not returning.
But, for aforementioned reasoned analysis and comment laced with 0 pH vitriol and graphic imagery, if not primus inter pares this blog is certainly amongst the finest. And Polly Pot really is such a cunt.
I noticed your phrase "smooth bromides" seems original as I find only 3 unique links on Google. The most use is recent in a WSJ LTE 5/15/09 about President Obama's "smooth bromides." Nice writing.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124234222681821343.html
Jim McCrory
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http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124234222681821343.html
Jim McCrory
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