Utilitarianism

 Subject: Utilitarianism

Fortitude used to be valued as that human temperament in which you bore the vicissitudes  of life with courage and equanimity, in other words you adjusted to changing circumstances with some sort of stoicism, valuing the good things in your life whilst accepting the misfortune that often goes hand in hand with it.

COP24 is an example of a political inability to shuffle around our prejudice in the search for a new reality, like waking up after a boozy weekend on Monday morning and having to face the demands of a job which paid for the extravaganza. The best thing is that you still have a  job, the worst is not letting go of your memory of the good time  as if it were a new reality. Life can be difficult at times but it’s still life, the alternative, death is unknown but in terms of our planet and it’s warming we have at hand a dreadful scenario, just around the corner which will force change on all of us,

Firm leadership would put in place the necessary adaptation we need to prevent the worst of the effects but the politicians, always wishing to sugar the pill make it appear that there will be no pain and they have the answers. The inability of China and Russia to turn up at COP 24 is politics at its worst, it’s a blind refusal to think of the planet as a whole and the need to inflict the new reality on their people. In the boardroom of the banks the investment in new coal fired generating plants or the exploration for new oilfields is too financially tempting and anyway if we don’t others will.

The structural imbalance created by refusing to burn fossil fuels is enormous, it’s been the centre of our economic survival since the 18th century as we coalesced into cities and manufacturing units producing goods for people to buy.

Consumerism is a drug which is hard to relinquish in this predominantly consumerist world, ‘doing without’ is de rigurur, it seems to highlight some sort of personal inadequacy in your potentiality to provide which is a deep routed aspiration in us all. The essence of our western way of thinking is a ‘competition for resources’, we have something, you don’t. The BMW, appliances, holidays in exotic places, the very exploitative almost venal, one up man-ship displayed almost everyday in our lives. If we could learn to downsize and de clutter though rejecting the unnecessary purchase of  things, the effect on the  paper trail of our profligate nature would improve and our drain on the planets natural resources greatly diminish.

Perhaps we need ‘ration books’ again, a limit on what we can spend. There have been times in the past when circumstances determined stringent government action, the ration book was one, the limits on overseas currency another, maybe the number of flights or air miles, all would reduce our carbon footprint. We could reign in by ourselves but my bet is there’s not enough magnanimous spirit to ensure success and certainly in international politics, window dressing is a fine art.

Turn down the heating and your consumption. Learn to do without and make your resource stretch further. Tax profligate spending on lifestyle purchases and usher in the concept of utilitarianism, taking in society as a whole and reducing our obsession with jealous individualism.

Kramer v Kramer, a real life dilemma

 Subject: Kramer v Kramer, a real life dilemma.

Are women more touchy, more liable to 'fly off the handle' than men or is it always down to circumstances. Cultures differ enormously in the attitude to the role gender plays in a society. From the Islamists control and assumption of total guardianship of women, (women becoming a possession), to the acute 21st century sense of a women's rights vis a vis men, promulgated in many western societies but not across the world.

Men over the ages bore the responsibility of protecting and providing, economically  for women who were seen as physically weaker and this was accentuated in the union of marriage where assumptions on protection are made and codified in a church. The instinct to fight and protect was also accentuated throughout childhood where it was implicitly right for women and children to be  ushered into the lifeboat first, leaving the men to survive as best they could. On a more plebeian level men were expected to give up their seats to a woman and only men were conscripted to fight and if necessary die for their country.  They were expected to do the work thought unfit for a woman and since the dawn of man, role -play was clear both in the military and in civilian life, men do the heavy lifting and women were (at least in the Bronte books) placed on a pedestal and admired for their beauty not their brains.

All this was built on an assumption of a common respect and compromise but in this new age, equal rights has dissolved the roles into what is more akin to an adversarial relationships where men and women are assumed to be equal and opposite and the work they do is similar if not the same. Its only in childbirth and child rearing are the traditional norms retained, if not strengthened by the law being more specific in defining the rights of the child.

The brilliant film Kramer v Kramer highlighted the prescriptive nature of the law when it came to matrimonial rights, particularly the rights of custody of a child. We were mystified by the laws lack of empathy for the man (Dustin Hoffman) who had after a shaky start had been exemplary in bringing up his son when his wife (Meryl Streep) walked out on him. Her decision to return and demand full rights for the repossession of the child left us emotionally troubled.  That the law advocated her rights, whilst so easily repudiating his rights seemed so wrong.

The cult of femininity which seems to demand not only equality but superiority has made enormous strides such that many men feel cuckolded by the opposite sex, so indebted are we by motherhood. The confusion young men feel being first attracted and then rejected by a girl, in law, irrespective of the signals she originally put out, insists it's her choice which makes the relationship one sided. The disaster of rejection is made worse by the accusation of coercion, not the threat of physical force but through sexual allure the women is in a position to control where what was deemed appropriate, is now  inappropriate and becomes an indictable offence.

Sexual attraction is an ambiguous minefield. The straight, the gay, the bisexual all have a different focus when it comes to being attracted. Attraction itself covers such a wide range, it can be physical or their poise, their movement their voice or accent even their smell or the clothes they wear, each contributes to a sense of  attractiveness. Even the tricky subject of hormonal changes which trigger responses in women and  underly  natures procreation are a factor. Attraction has a moral, ethical and a religious aspect which govern us depending on our faith or the lack of.  Is it any wonder then that what seems simple, perhaps the most natural and emotional fulfilling event in our lives it can become controversial and litigious when  the sexual act is seeped in a cultural misappropriation.  In some cultures having intercourse is as uncomplicated as washing your hands, in others it's the most reverential thing you can do magnified by its ties to family and upbringing.

Holding hands is an outward example of the displacement of 'self' into something wider and  argued, more fulfilling but it's not without a warning.  This is new territory which holds its own dangers. It's not a benign event since it has an effect which is different for men as for women. It's not equal and never has been, it's not only the physical difference but also the psychological difference in the value men and women place on a relationship, one searching for economic security the other emotional security which is often obscured by a lack of cultural objectivity.

Men are often categorised as stronger yet in so many ways they find themselves disadvantaged by social norms and the presumption that women are more fragile. It is clearly wrong when one observes in the world at large  women carrying by far the largest burden and only in the West women were deemed delicate.

Kramer v Kramer taught us the lie of that proposition.

Why cant I get a face to face appointment anymore

 Subject: Why can't I get a face to face appointment anymore.

When did the medical profession devolve into being apothecaries. I know I'm being unfair to the pharmacy trade but the reliance on drugs alone to heal sickness is an acute disservice to patients with many complex ailments. The dentist who pulls a rotten tooth or the doctor who applies a splint to a broken leg is healing using old fashioned analysis and even older remedies. Today when we visit the doctor, (if we can get a face to face appointment), to also discus the deeper issues around which our suffering is linked.

Our medical complaint is often only the tip of an iceberg which a telephone consultation can only do poor justice too. A stammering often inarticulate description of where the pain is located amongst that jumble of organs which make up our body is only revealed by a hands on investigation the doctor pushing and probing to find the cause of the pain. Broad spectrum drugs are not the answer and since the doctor is seldom held accountable for their failure and you are personally expected to have read the warnings  in the fine print of the accompanying leaflet to avoid the danger of adverse effects.

How often having started a course of drugs you find the side effects are worse than the original illness. From statins to asthma inhalers these things are handed out like sweets at Willy Wonka's Factory, try one get one free. The follow up and the precautionary advice from the prescribing doctor is missing, feel free to abuse your body, the doctor advised you to use it.

How did we get here. The pandemic is initially blamed for doctors wanting to keep their patients at a distance but as the authorities, led by medical advice now feel it's ok to mix at a football match or in a pub,  how come we are not allowed to mix with them. I'm only describing GPs not the doctors in our hospitals who "bravely went where no man went before" dealing with very ill patents. No it seems our GPS are hesitant to get back to working as they used to for other reasons. Perhaps they never liked the unending stream of smelly poorly educated people who continually turned up at their door complaining of things which the patient, could do more about with a change of lifestyle.  Perhaps this "free at the point of use" has gone too far and certain classes of people should be reminded of their place in the order of things, after all the 'better off' are catered for with private medicine (as they are in education with private schooling) and the philosophy of "let them eat cake" is just starting to work its way through the ranks.

Getting old

 Subject: Getting old

When we were very young we needed guidance, lots of guidance from our parents because we were new to the world and knew little of its dangers. When we grow old apparently we need the same amount of guidance, not because we don’t know but because although we do know our knowledge doesn’t fit in with the the current fashion

There is also a deferment of our common sense approach since now we are judged, not by our accumulated knowledge but by our lack of mobility and balance which creates a picture of general degeneration. Our minds still hold the key to many occasions in the past when we were faced with similar situations and it’s human nature to evaluate that previous set of events with the current one. It’s not being unkind or disrespectful to differ with what one is told is a more modern better way if your experience leads you to question what is happening around you since questioning and having a different opinion is the essence of your identity. The fine balance between being assisted when you need assistance and being assisted when you don’t is a problem.  As you move from being an adult pillar to a crumbling post, the outward appearance often hides a steely resolve not to give in to the vicissitudes of life, to pull your weight and not be a burden. The trick is to convince those around you that you are not unmindful of their concerns but that, for today at least, you are much as you were yesterday and that though there will come a time when help is needed, hopefully it’s still some way off.

There is a desperate urgency not to fall out with your children in the belief that the bond is far too precious to tamper with in some silly display of hubris. And yet it's nor easy to hold yourself to that commitment when, for a host of reasons the gulf in reasoning has grown since the children first opted for their own persona. We egged them on to be strong minded and independent. We assumed they would end up sharing a great deal  of commonality and that arguments wouldn't spoil the relationship.  Unfortunately it's part of the divide we experience is our growing frailty, we the parents usually experience in virtually all aspects of our demeanour. From shaky limbs to a shaky memory, old age  charges the son or daughter with remorse at this irreversible demise from a strong forceful role of guardianship and a sense of providing security whilst growing up they are suddenly left holding the proverbial baby who now needs more and more of their attention just at a time when they have enough troubles of their own to contend with.

For the parent it's equally disturbing, this loss of a positive role to play in their children's lives. With their authority gone and in a greatly weakened state they cling to some sort self respect by insisting on their independence and self sufficiency. The problem is it's sometimes it's too late to find a compromise before stiff intransigence and harsh words damage a beautiful thing, the love between a parent and their child.

Live and let live

Subject: Live and let live.

Our obsession with the past and it's different values to those present today has spawned a host of critics each failing to acknowledge that cultures change with the passage of time and holding the current crop of people responsible or even in some cases indictable is plain silly. Books abound detailing the inferior position black people in this country held 60 years ago and its argued still hold even in today's society. But It fails to confront the plight of "the other" a black person, a foreigner or more prosaically, the under nourished, poorly educated white person living in towns where they have always been exploited and today, even worse,  ignored as the need for them to labour in the fields or factory  has passed.

This bias in the media regarding the views of people wishing to grind the grist of racial profiling to the detriment of white people and is so counter productive if the complainers wished to gain the ear of the majority white folk. No one likes to be cast in a mould, not the black person nor the white person since stereotypes are nearly always harmful. There are of course truths within the stereotype but the essence of the individual is missed when indulging in preordained prejudice.

Currently there is a serious spat going on with the Yorkshire Cricketing Board accused of institutional racism. Racism and banter are close bedfellows in that things are said in a jokey way without any malice intended. The comedians of the 50s reflected a view  held in parts of our cities regarding the changing face of those inner cities as people arrived invited by government without any provision for them to be accommodated let alone assimilated in the existing environment. One way to let off steam about this influx of what was seen as cheap labour with alien customs, is to make the situation comedic, laughter after all is a great healer so long as the butt of the joke is not hated. It was a time when opinions were very divided as to the size and extent of the immigration and its repercussions on the way of life of the people who had just emerged from the depredations of a world war and all the pain it had brought the towns now inundated with what were then foreign people.

The phrases used to describe the in coming people were out of context derisory but often when used as a form of banter between friends not so. This was especially true when people drawn together in a team use nicknames to illustrate their friendship. The red head, the overweight, a large nose or balding head all draw  banteresque comments from mates in the dressing room. The Pakistan batsman Azeem Rafiq has accused Gary Balance, the Zimbabwe born player, both playing for Yorkshire of using racial slurs against him. Balance says that it was all banter and that Rafiq had responded with his own name calling. What a sad place we are in when teammates can't joust with each other for fear of litigation and surely if Rafiq had been peeved about it he could have spoken up at the time. As we walk on eggshells, ever fearful of being called racist, ever mindful that whilst  the terms used towards Balance and his Zimbabwe heritage were not classed as racist,  those towards a Pakistani player were. Words are thrown about in the heat of the moment but there was no heat, only banter and along with the robust sledging commonly used by the Aussies one has to ask why this is raised now and not then or is there an active force afoot determined to trawl through comments made years ago in a context very different. Is the white person being made to  squirm for his heritage and history if so perhaps we should take a closer look at  for-instance blasphemy laws which to most white people living in the UK, horrific. Do we call out the Muslim for claiming the visual representation of the Prophet Mohamed is indictable with a death sentence or that women are stoned to death for being unfaithful. Do we follow this injured party in his renouncement of us and retaliate or do we say, let's live and let live if this complex multicultural society like ours is to function.

 

Alain de Button another gem to store away

Subject: Alain de Button, another gem to store away

I have often said that to find pleasure, information and above all education you have to search around and try many outlets. Be it food and a different cuisine (I'm not so good at that) or girlfriends (I'm certainly not so good here) be it entertainment or enlightenment you have to stretch out and sample what's available and not only drink at the same water hole.

I'v just finished watching a program on RT where the philosopher, Alain de Button was describing his exploration into the human psych regarding empathy and love between two people. It was a fascinating program tenderly teasing out the problems and opportunities in life long relationships which it seems the main ingredient is communication. Setting out your thoughts and desires and listening to your partners thoughts and desires, not as we usually do, by making assumptions but what are our goals, yours and hers and how do you see the route to attaining them and importantly will your  paths converge or diverge along the way.

If at the beginning of the journey we interrogated those goals and set out guidelines on achieving them instead of relying on amorphous assumptions bound up in  love and lust we would have a better framework to work with, in what's a difficult complex story. Our lives at a point in time were caught up in the awareness of each other and of our having some sort of acceptable continuity based on a route which was acceptable to both. Better to thrash out the route and the destination before setting out but of course this  relies on courage and honesty and importantly, overcoming the fear of destroying the relationship with too much information about your own dreams and your own inadequacies.

Communication is not about winning but explaining where your thoughts and opinions come from and for that to happen you must have a receptive ear to hear the objections, too many objections and you better back off because it's hardly likely to improve over time as a blame game emerges over virtually everything.

In a corporate meeting minutes are kept to hold the decisions of the meeting and in this a marriage councillor or psychologist who listens and reiterates points of agreement amongst the disagreement is crucial.

Listening to Alain Button was a rewarding experience but so is listening to someone trying to unravel the economic and political chaos in this country or the lifecycle of a penguin. All exposure to new knowledge is good. Some of it is relevant to our lives but much is peripheral, unless of course we wish cultivate our minds to know more and in my world knowledge is imperative to keep the brain ticking over.

 

Yorkshire Cricket Club under stress

Subject: Yorkshire Cricket Club under stress

Our obsession with the past and it's different values to those present today has spawned a host of critiques each failing to acknowledge that cultures change with the passage of time and holding the current crop of people responsible or even in some ways indictable is plain silly. Books abound detailing the inferior position black people held and its argued, hold, even in today's society. It fails to confront the plight of "the other" be it a black person, a foreigner or more prosaically, the under nourished, poorly educated white person living in towns where they have always been exploited and today, even worse,  ignored as the need for them to labour in the fields or factory  has passed.

This bias in the media regarding the views of people wishing to grind the grist of racial profiling to the detriment of white people is so counter productive if the complainers wish to gain the ear of the majority white folk. No one likes to be cast in a mould. Not the black person nor the white person since stereotypes are nearly always harmful. There are of course truths within the stereotype but the essence of an individual is missed by indulging in preordained prejudice.

Currently there is a serious spat going on with the Yorkshire Cricketing Board accused of institutional racism. Racism and banter are close bedfellows in that things are said in a jokey way without any vitriol intended. The comedians of the 50s reflected a view which whilst held in parts of our cities regarding the changing face of those inner cities as people arrived from overseas invited by the government without any provision for them to be accommodated let alone assimilated in the existing environment. One way to let off steam about this influx of cheap labour with the then alien customs was to make the situation comedic, laughter after all is a great healer so long as the intent  of the joke is not hateful. It was a time when opinions were very divided as to the size and extent of immigration and its repercussions particularly on the way of life of the people who had just emerged from the depredations of a world war and all the pain it had brought those towns were now being inundated with what were foreign people.

The phrases used to describe the in comers were in some cases derisory but often not and were used as a form of banter between friends who perhaps drawn together in a team use nicknames to illustrate their friendship. The Pakistan allrounder  Azeem Rafiq has accused Gary Balance, the Zimbabwe born player, both playing for Yorkshire at the time of using racial slurs against him. Balance says that it was all banter and that  Rafiq had responded with his own name calling. What a sad place we are in when teammates can't joust with each other for fear of litigation. As we walk on eggshells, ever fearful of being called racist, ever mindful that the terms used towards Balance and his Zimbabwe heritage were not classed as racist, he was after all white. Words are thrown about in the heat of the moment but here it’s suggested by one side at least there was no heat only banter. One has to ask why this is raised by Rafiq, (who was no wilting violet) now and not then or is there an active force afoot determined to trawl through comments made years ago in a context very different. Blasphemy laws which effect Muslim people, (example, the pictorial depiction of the Prophet Mohamed) but deemed normal by the non Muslim are respected here by dint of our wishing to enable the two societies to live together  

Do we follow this injured party Rafic in his renouncement by a counter renouncement or do we say let's live and let live for a complex multicultural society like ours to function. If the flood of resentment doesn’t stop we might soon live in a country riven by real strife much like the homelands of many who wish to live here. The placid temperament of the bulk of people who were born here after generations of conditioning as well as the general confidence in the laws which govern us will probably see us though but it’s no help if a vociferous minority keep demanding their exclusivity.

 

Simmering with discontent

 

Subject: Simmering with discontent

As we continue to try to get the best out of mankind in the pursuit of common ground between the peoples and their cultures in a  world made so much smaller by the internet and we now know so more about our world and the societies which make it up our opinions are now formed by what we see on our screens, the videos released every few minutes by amateur recordists  who record what they see in front of them. It's not a picture of what we read, usually  a second hand opinion of a story pressed on the newspaper columnist to write further distorted after going through the filter of the sub editors desk.

What our eyes tell us is that the variations within and between countries are enormous and it’s often at odds with what we are cajoled  to believing by the backers of a global ‘common humanity’ ideology in which we are all the same.  

It’s a fine thought,  we are, after all essentially flesh and bone, the same as each other yet physiology aside, our brains and the experiences that people accumulate in their lives makes a mockery of the claim we are all the same. If therefore we are fundamentally different and practice different ways of thinking and acting, if these human actors when brought together in one place then their opinions will differ as to who is right and who is wrong. Leaving aside the thorny issue of should populations from such diverse backgrounds be expected to coexist as one nation, the philosophy that rules they should must be questioned.

Nowhere else is the cultural mix such as in the UK  put under such pressure. Japan, Indonesia, Argentina or Peru, Russia or China, Pakistan or India, any country you choose from the Middle East, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia the list goes on. What is it in our psychology, our sense that we can invent solutions and expect our people to go along with what ever social concoction they are offered. Perhaps the people who are closest to the changes, not those in the fine houses who’s ancestors first traded the slaves and set up the companies who sought to exploit the  locals overseas, who’s great grandchildren are now vehemently protesting their rights in the UK, but perhaps our own locals should be asked their opinion or is it too late and that melting pot, humanity will continue for evermore to simmer with discontent on all sides.

The confidence in our ability to survive

 

Subject: The confidence in our ability to survive.

The world of economics moves like a weather pattern, in phases. Perhaps like weather, the tiny eruptions of pressure variation which create the highs and the lows in a weather system are similar to the complex forces at work in the market place and the flighty fluidity of the money market which every so often creates a crisis of confidence.

In 2008 the banks lost confidence in each other's ability to cover the daily transactions to balance their book at the end of each day the whole system fell apart, only a massive intervention, largely by western governments, created  a massive transfer from the public to the private sector a  credit swop of taxpayers money onto the books of the beleaguered  banks so the financial sector could  continue with its business.

The 1930s Depression was due to a similar lack of confidence in the machinery of commerce this time by a steep fall  in virtually all stock market prices caused by a panic of confidence.

These cyclical adjustments which undermine confidence prove that the most regulated markets are frail and our financial markets plunged into a deregulated mess the moment Richard Nixon started the deregulatory slide by taking the dollar off the gold standard. If people loose confidence in the value of their holdings much like the glue which allows political parties to carry the people with its political promises, once that confidence is blown, so is its credible effectiveness.

The future looks grim but so it did when Covid 19 struck a couple of years ago it was for the scientists to figure out a vaccine which gave hope again. Perhaps with scientific intervention and the global warming scare we can restore that delicate CO2 balance in our upper atmosphere, not only by the finite steps to cut back burning fossil fuel but also the financial scaling down of the cost of alternatives. Carbon capture, tree planting, renewable energy through wind and solar are all now well entrenched as is the massive move from the internal combustion engine to electric. 

Perhaps  "the end of the world is not nigh" but is due to sustain substantial shocks both financial and climatic which will usher in new standards. The poor, as always will have to suck it up but reading the dreadful conditions of the poor living in Calcutta over the last hundred years one begins to understand the tenacity of humans to survive. The scale of the horror  regarding the inhuman conditions living in the 'bustee' (an Indian shanty town) is to our western comprehension  unimaginable as the people there hover between life and death living (if it can be described as living)) on the pavements. They have no hope, only the task of staying alive one more day.

The scale of the problem is unimaginable in a place like Calcutta with a density of 102,000 people per square mile compared to New York at 28,000 per square mile and with an average city density of around 3400 per square mile in the US as a whole, the logistics of living are incomparable. When the international traveller lands in Dum Dum the  airport near Calcutta, as in so many airports in the third world his gaze is diverted from the slum spilling out onto the highway by the limo sent to greet him and guide him to some glitzy hotel where again, shielded from the reality of the surrounding city they retire behind their G&T to compose his initial reactions to the meeting tomorrow. He fears no discomfort as his car passed the dystopian interposition of consumerism, blatantly proffered on the billboard an advertisement of something so removed from the people who inhabit the squalor all around.

The traffic makes the place unique, the noise and the volume, people hanging on to vehicles, even clinging on the roof, the crescendo of horns demanding a vehicles presence, the fumes get into the throat the intensity of it all get into the mind and make one uneasy and very foreign.

How will the people of Calcutta cope with global warming as harvest fail and starvation ramps up a notch. Will the scale of death not simple reassert the population to a more sustainable level, some sort of biblical remedy for our profligate nature and the angel of death reasserts the balance.

Calcutta is a long way away, as is Tripoli and Benghazi. The ills reigning down on Nairobi or Lagos, Bogota or Santiago will be reported and filed away but what of London, or Paris,  New York and Toronto or Bishops Stortford will we be as sanguine or will the uplift of humankind as it moves around to escape the drama at home  not turn our world on its head, or is this too apocalyptic. 

Perhaps the billionaires know something we don't ploughing billions of dollars into space travel and visualising an environment elsewhere. Now that's what I call forward thinking. 

Even handedness

Subject: Even-handedness



Red lines are drawn and continually redrawn on the basis that many people with a white skin are now being asked to rehash their opinions regarding race and cultures which were once upon a time foreign to us.

Yorkshire cricket is currently in the firing line with some of our best loved cricketers being accused of crimes that weren’t crimes when comments were first made such as the so called heinous crime of calling a Pakistani cricketer a Paki. According to the man in question he was so distraught he was near to taking his own life because of the debasement he felt as a person and yet it is only years later that he has voiced his anguish. Perhaps I can gain some compensation from Australia where I was often referred to as a “Pommy Bastard”, but I’m not holding my breath.

The Pakistani cricketers family arrived here in 1947 amidst a backdrop of extreme violence in India and Pakistan, which  carries on to this day His parents probably found that in general to enter a society which, though not perfect was governed by law and not the sectarian violence back home, millions having died, was a paradise. Their integration into the society here was held back, not by the resentment of the locals, who were resentful but because they were not informed of the reasons why thousands of immigrants were arriving to displace the local society with a society of their own.  By the arrivees  adherence to maintaining their old cultures and a religious view which was in many ways very alien to our own. The women in each family, (then as now), kept separate and isolated by patriarchy, a  diktat of coded dress and a lack of English. Even today to visit a Muslim house as a male the wife of a Muslim man is not allowed to communicate with you except through their children and the exposure of Pakistani men praying on young white girls in towns and cities in the north was hushed up by the authorities, afraid of upsetting the social balance of a minority now in many instances a majority voice voting themselves into positions of power by the use of a community inspired vote. The insistence of using Shira Law which goes against allowing two legal systems to be accredited and our separation of religion from politics is blatantly ignored and runs counter to our belief in democracy where even the taint of religious cohesion is avoided .

The trauma  of religious reprisals such as honour killing, the awful extremism practiced in Jihadism are at conflict with what we accept as common practice but our inability to offer this unpalatable aspect of Muslim practice whilst making such a fuss over name calling is disturbing. We are castigated by the very people who, if not overtly, tacitly remain largely silent  when atrocities are carried out in the name of Allah. Our media rise as one when decade old accounts of name calling come to light but last nights stoning of a woman in Karachi is not mentioned.

My call is for even-handiness not craven submission to popularism.