Randomly Selected Article or Link

Ruth Gledhill, in her regular religious spot in the Times blogs touches again on these regulations to outlaw discrimination in the provision of goods and services against people on the basis of their sexual orientation:

Yet more on s*x******:

Sorry folks. It depresses me to have to come back to this subject again as much as I expect is depresses some of you. But I would be remiss in my duty if I ignored it. With the introduction of yet more bureaucratic red tape, or should that be pink tape, under the heading of the Sexual Orientation Regulations, the Government is bending itself into yet more unorthodox contortions in its attempt to do right by this country's minorities. Inevitably, orthodox, Catholic, traditionalist and almost all other Christians save the liberal and most of the Anglican establishment are once more on a crusade against what is perceived as yet another demon of secularisation. The danger they fear is that, once again, in its attempts to appease one particular lobby group, the Government will end by discriminating against another, the religious.

Now some will probably see this as making complete my journey into a reactionary old fuddy-duddy, but I can't get too excited about this. Why are we having such regulations at all? Certainly is respect of private businesses. I can understand and wholeheartedly agree that if any such religious based institution or individual is receiving even a penny of public money to deliver a service that would otherwise be delivered by a public agency then yes, they should not be permitted to discriminate.

But on being refused a hotel room for being gay and wanting to spend the night with my lover? Why on earth would I want to line the pockets of a bigot against his and my will?

But that, I suppose, brings us in particular to education and social services, where religious charities are often involved, and in particular in state funded faith schools where the religious institution concerned tends to pay in a very small proportion of the cost of funding the facility with the tax payer picking up the vast majority of the cost. If these religious institutions can't live with these regulations, they should get out of the business of rent-seeking - getting public money and exerting more than their fair influence over what is done with that money.

Spotted this on Guardian Unlimited today: Mac adverts on behalf of exploited Chinese workers

You know those artsy Mac adverts where a couple of people explain why they have a Mac against a white background - well a group has done one highlighting the plight of workers in the electronics manufacturing industry in the far east mostly. As you watch it, of course, bear in mind that since Macs basically use the same bits inside as any other PC they're not particularly worse than anyone else - just that the slightly "holier than thou" (I'm a Mac user - I can say that) advert style is easy to spoof.

But it puts me in mind of another one of my unrealised "inventions" - the "Fair Trade PC". We get Fair Trade clothes, footwear, foods. We can try to buy locally produced goods. But with computers and most other consumer electronics we're more or less stuck with what we're given. Why not a "Fair Trade" PC? People pay a premium for Jonathan Ive's beautiful designs, why not for better conditions for the workers?

You know what it's like, when you haven't been sat on your arses listening to the blather from the podium, you've been trying to remain upright enough to sort out the world in the conference bar.

So now it's all over, if you're travelling back passing anywhere within range of Oxford today, why not call in and help ensure that Nathan Pyle gets elected to the city council?

I myself failed dismally this morning for which I am still trying to work out how to apologise - having said I would do some good mornings, after delivering eve of polls last night and thinking I was getting to bed early enough to get up and five I slept right through my alarms at both 5am and 7am.

Since I am at work, the best way to put this right for me I guess is to encourage you all, freshly inspired by your week away, to spend an hour or so here on your way home. You know it's better than a Welcome Break.

From FlockTogether it's the only thing on today so there are no excuses. Catherine Bearder is the contact but more details on FlockTogether above.

Whilst I accept that some of the Clarkson protestors objected because they think he’s a boor with a (deliciously) “un-PC” sense of humour, the main concern appeared to be his supposed environmental record.

In this respect, it’s the environmentalist lobby (I rather like Clarkson’s own word, “eco-mental”), that has it dangerously wrong. It is not the search for quality, for fun, for pushing technology to the limits that is the environmental culprit. But the economic system that continually forces more vehicles on the roads travelling further and further.

The traditional green response to “too many cars” seems to be to get people on buses, bikes, anything but cars. And on a small, localised scale, this may be superficially right. Congestion makes our towns seem as if they are choking.

Rather, we must ask why people need to hurtle around day after day and resolve pressures that will add to this. They are pretty fundamental economic questions.

For example, we are, in the developed world, the wealthiest we have ever been. And yet we are about to tell people they need to work for an extra five years at least to be able to afford to retire. That’s an additional 10%+ of rush hour traffic.

The amount of debt-money swilling around our system means that for much of our working lives we work two days a week for the government and one for the bankers, before we ever get to work for our own financial security. Solve that and we could finally see those 30-year old predictions of life in the 21st century, of 70% leisure time and such like, fulfilled.

Each working person in the country is permanently slaving to pay the interest on around £50,000 of systemic debt. Not necessarily their debt, but the trickle-down effects of corporate and government borrowing on top of personal borrowing.

25% of road haulage is just keeping the haulage industry moving – fuel, parts etc. 30% of all transport is shunting food ever increasing distances around the planet. Raw cotton, subsidised in the US, is flown to China and India before arriving here as £2 tee-shirts – all barmy, with diminishing returns and frightening consequences.

Take all that unnecessary debt-fuelled traffic off the roads and we’ll find we can respect the planet and still have fun with Ferraris.