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LippyLippo

Listed below are comments made by LippyLippo between Wednesday, 19th August 2009 and Monday, 23rd November 2009.

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A balanced approach to climate change 1:24pm on 23 Nov 2009 Face it. We haven't a clue what's happening. As smart and as advanced as we think we are, we have no idea if our activities are messing up planet Earth, and still less idea of what to do about it. And even if we did, we would need to unite the whole world in order to undo the damage. We are merely showing how desperately primitive the human race is.

Stick two bunnies in a room and let them reproduce, and they will continue to do so all the time there is enough water, food, air and space. When they run out of any of these things they will start to die. What they will not do is attempt to forecast the future and modify their lives and/or consumption to prolong their existences. Why? Because they can't. And nor can we. We are running head-down into oblivion just the same, and the fact that we can see the edge of the cliff (or think we can) doesn't make any difference. We keep running just the same. Sad, but there you are. I'm sure those who scream about MMGW and running out of resources and global catstrophe are right, but they are like flies in the way of a juggernaut.
Britain lands key EU foreign policy post 1:18pm on 20 Nov 2009 It's almost impossible to have a reasoned debate about the EU leadership when there are so many rabid anti-Euro people demanding that it should all be torn down. What do they think will replace it? We need a strong EC to compete with USA and Asia, and hopefully to protect our European ways of life and standards of living. Britain simply cannot survive on its own. Neither Labour nor Conservative governments have made any difference. We still pursue the same dead-end monetarist policies. We have so little national pride and care so much about money that we've happily sold off all our industry, utilities, services etc. etc. to Chinese or other foreign concerns for short-term profit. No other major EC country as done this. Even our national team football manager is foreign, for Heaven's sake!! Paradoxically, I think we can learn about national pride by joining the EU properly instead of jeering from the sidelines. What wouldn't we give to have the same sense of civic pride that, say, the French have? For our kids to act like the Dutch children do? No, we've lost something in the UK, and only the EU can help us find it again. Left alone, we'd probably sell off the Bank of England to the Arabs and rebrand the Royal Family!!

As to the appointments - what's so wrong with employing people who can do a good job, rather than just talk loud and fast? Good luck to them both.
Why was David Nutt sacked? 1:26pm on 04 Nov 2009 I think some contributors are so blinded with their hatred of the Government and politicians in general, that they see any decision made by them as wrong, even when it isn’t. This was actually a good call. He was rightly sacked. It doesn’t matter whether your opinion is pro-legalisation or anti. He is an advisor to Government, which means he’s paid to do the research, file the report, and then get on with another project. He is not paid to offer his opinion on drug policy to the public. He must have known that his remarks would be taken up by the media, but some scientists, for all their theoretical knowledge, display a shocking naivety when it comes to the game of politics. This isn’t just a gaffe – it’s an incredibly irresponsible remark that could cause serious damage to the business of drug enforcement. It’s like the chief police officer proclaiming that shoplifting isn’t a very serious crime and doesn’t cause many problems, based on financial loss, cost of enforcement and increase in product price. Even if he were correct, it would be a stupid thing to say. It is still wrong. We still don’t want people to do it. Drugs cause massive social problems that can’t be described solely in terms of their chemical toxicity and ‘directly attributable’ death rate. What about someone who is kicked to death by a group of kids high on weed or wanting money for their next fix? What about a hit and run by an addled driver?

Often it isn’t what is said so much as how it’s interpreted through the Chinese whispers of media and by various demographic groups. This will be interpreted as saying ‘Cannabis etc is OK really’. It’s giving the green light to those who use it, or are considering using it. It’s effectively a thumbs-up from one of the highest scientific officials. He is condoning an illegal act, whether he intended to or not. This could cause damage that will take years to undo. You couldn’t expect a scientist to understand this, any more than you’d expect an MP to understand biochemistry. Whether through ignorance or wilful rebellion, he bit the hand that feeds him. We need his brains, not his mouth. Anyway, you can’t run society solely on the basis of scientific analysis or simple pragmatism. There is always much more to it than that. There are rarely simple solutions to complex problems, however compelling the argument seems.
Do you speak Race? 2:40pm on 28 Oct 2009 It's exactly this kind of uncertainty and 'walking-on-eggshells' that gets people's backs up. There are as many different terms for different races as there are races - in fact probably loads more. It's impossible for anyone to decide which are deemed offensive and which are OK. Black rappers use the n- word loads more often than any other race uses it, but I'm sure they're not anti-black!! The acid test should be whether you actually intend to give offence. If you do, then you can offend with any word you choose, even the 'nice' ones.
Is all publicity good publicity? 1:58pm on 22 Oct 2009 I don't support the BNP, but you have to admire how Mr Griffin has taken an anti-Iraq/Afghanistan-war stance. I don't think he is anti- these wars for one second, but I bet you anything he'll use this stance to accuse NuLab / Cons of being hypocritical and/or racist themselves. It's a no-brainer. We are basically killing thousands of non-white, non-Christian people because hey, there might be a terrorist or two in there somewhere - exactly the same blitzkrieg policy adopted by the Jewish Israelis in Gaza. Yet because these non-white, non-Christian people are far away in distant countries, we don't really care.

I'd like to see how those other panellists will answer him when he throws that one at them! I'm sure that the other panellists are looking forward to shooting fish in a barrel, but they could end up shooting themselves in the foot. They are so concerned about thowing stones at the BNP, hoping to make him squirm, that they can't see the rather large and delicate glass house that surrounds them.
Is all publicity good publicity? 1:42pm on 21 Oct 2009 '...It is worth remembering that the party remains a very small force.'

Yes it is. They probably have no more real support than the Christian parties, the Rainbow Alliance and umpteen other parties you could name. But we're not going to see these parties on the telly, are we? The BBC are quite disgraceful in their courting of the BNP just to be controversial. They have been given a platform to spout their beliefs, and more publicity than they could ever have dreamed of. And for what? They have no realistic chance of getting into power and no proper, workable policies. Putting them on the TV serves no good purpose and detracts from the serious business that does need to be discussed.

Wny the BBC insists on acting like commercial TV - going for the lowest common denominator to grab attention and ratings - when it's a publicly-funded channel that doesn't need to do this is shameful and totally beyond me. The media sometimes need to focus on the more mundane realities and keep the sensationalist stuff in context, or they risk damaging society even more than they already have.
What do women really want? 1:51pm on 09 Oct 2009 It'a real case of 'be careful what you wish for'. Women's groups have fought for equality in the jobs market, equality with sexual relationships, equality in behaving just as badly as some men. Now they've (mostly) got it, they are discovering that it's not all it's cracked up to be! I'm sure if they could afford it, gave up work and looked after the children full-time, many would get fed up with that too. It's a daft question really, as yoou can never come up with an answer that everyone culd accept. Some like work, some hate it, some just do it because they have to... exactly the same as us men.

In the context of today's society, I think 'essential' means something different to its literal meaning. You can of course live without a mobile phone, a car, expensive clothes and food, holidays, a house etc., but it's natural to compare oneself with those around you and with what you see and hear. As we are drenched the whole time with images of monied consumption, that is what people (not just women) will vie for.
Addicted to methadone? 9:38pm on 08 Oct 2009 What do these people expect? That we pay for them to have houses and jobs and pay for them to have great lifestyles just to stop them doing something that they shouldn't be doing in the first place? Why can't we just bang them up and use drugs confiscated from drugs busts to wean them off the stuff if they want to get off it? Then it'll cost less! Personally I'd let them take as much of the gear as they want. That's what they want isn't it? At least it'll keep them quiet and relatively safe whilst the rest of us are struggling to get on with our lives.
Women who abuse children 3:34pm on 02 Oct 2009 Why should it some as a surprise that some women can be every bit as vile, manipulative, violent, sexually deviant and just plain evil as some men? They do make up 50% of our population you know! Nastiness isn't an exclusively male trait any more than virtue is exculsively female.

I partly understand those who are blaming the wide availability of technology - when people can take and transmit images and videos with such ease what do you expect? What real good is there in having a camera, internet access and video in a mobile phone? If the women had had to cart around a video camera, stills camera and a computer with them, they'd have aroused suspicion! But a phone with all those functions is unnoticeable. Banning these devices from areas where children are looked after is surely a sensible next step.

The ease with which children can be abused have their images captured these days however, is partly offset by the fact that more is known about abuse, so children are more likely to report it, rather than suffer in silence as they had to do decades ago. The chilling side-effect of this is that that these people selected children too young to be able to report the abuse - this is a very worrying development. I pray that the widespread knowledge of child abuse these days doesn't drive exactly this kind of behaviour.

Finally, the sentencing needs to take account of the devastation that these subhumans have wrought. What a pity that our prisons are comfortable 'warehouses' where criminals can take time out in relative comfort before resuming their lives of crime. Why can't they be places where criminals have to admit to their crimes, apologise for committing them, and buy into their own rehabilitation plan, or face spending the res of their lives there? Why can't these people be made to face up to what they have done, to see and suffer the damage and the hurt, rather than loafing around playing video games?
Baby Peter and the uncertainty principle 08:52am on 19 Aug 2009 From my experience of the social care system, there is an increasingly quasi-corporate feel to it that is at odds with its caring remit. Business language, bureaucracy and jargon has infested a profession that is, at its root, about caring for people. The need to service this corporate monster with reports, KPIs, forms, ticked boxes and statistics has become so all-consuming that many social workers (and others in the public sector) lose sight of their very raison d'etre. A teacher can progress much more quickly by playing this system than by being a good teacher! A social worker soon learns that to move up the scale or to be left in peace, he or she must become more adept at the language of reporting than actually helping his or her 'clients'! It's getting this way in the police force too. After a couple of decades of this, both managers and front-line staff become almost entirely 'corporate' and the whole point of being in a caring profession is lost. Worse, the abusers and the criminals learn that the easiest way to be left alone to carry out their abuse is to play this game too. The quicker you tell the social worker or health worker what they want to hear, the sooner they'll be off your back. I've even seen low-achieving children in classrooms use the kind of pernicious 'education-speak' to weasel out of lessons and homework! Anyone exposed to care or social services for any length of time soon learns the lingua franca, believe me. I understand that the parents of Baby Peter, despite their low educational status, managed to hide their deeds very well by the simple technique of telling the professionals what they wanted to hear.

We have got to get to a position where carers care, teachers teach, and social workers help people. Not where they are all so crazily obsessed with forms, charts and tables that they forget all about people. It's a situation that is getting worse, not better. In order to reform it, we are going to have to deprogramme a generation of staff and managers who can see no further than the classroom door.

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