Eloise's thoughts and fancies

So the Levenson Inquiry was published yesterday and contains approximately no surprises. It's stayed short of what I'd like to see with strong definitions of privacy and the like but it has made abundantly clear that the press is incapable of regulating itself and requires a statutory, independent body to make sure it behaves properly.

The press are bleating about this as a restriction on their freedom and a sure route to establishing a tyrannical, oppressive government. While I understand that they don't want to be regulated more - very few people and organisation do after all - it is clear to everyone except them, and apparently "Dave" that the will of the people - surely the definition of democracy - is for a clearer, more effective, properly applied set of protections against overly intrusive, and often illegal under existing legislation, journalism. Pointing out that phone hacking is illegal (it is) didn't stop the journalists at NOTW, and probably other newspapers - there are cases in court, doing it. The list of other insults and bending or breaking of the law continues but has mostly only emerged through the Levenson Inquiry.

Added to which, although the press are bleating about how any regulation leads instantly to the destruction of democracy it is worth pointing out that all of the UK television stations have an independently established license to do their job that, amongst other things, requires impartiality and high standards of journalism. It is clear that BBC News, ITN News, Sky News and the like are patsies of the government and never do investigative journalism, hold politicians to account. It's also pretty clear that although they do screw up, the process of correcting the mistakes is fast and relatively painless and cheap, certainly compared to Levenson. I'm sure licensing the media and the like can be abused but that doesn't mean it will be. Appointing a regulatory body with no journalists and no politicians - or using the existing one OfCom - makes it harder for the politicians to abuse the system. The judiciary have managed to remain independent for centuries after all.

The will of the people does matter. The press can't serve democracy in any meaningful way if they operate without the support and trust of the people. To strain a metaphor, we didn't have a situation where a bad apple ruined the barrel, we had a situation where at least one barrel with many bad apples is making the warehouse manager sit up and take note. Is this unfair on the good apples and the unspoiled barrels? Actually no. If the regulatory body ensures those that break the law or are suspected of breaking the law or otherwise transgressing good standards of work are bought to book, the good journalists have no problems. And bear in mind that although I usually side with the civil liberties side on these sorts of "if you're not doing anything wrong, you've got nothing to fear" debates, journalists are given many privileges and powers in our society and they are producing publicly accessed materials, indeed materials completely designed for the public. We expect the Police, who also serve the public, to be well regulated. Why should the press be any different?

For the first time I can remember I haven't voted in a major election. (I think I skipped voting in a few student union elections over the years but councils, MPs, MEPs, the STV referendum, voted in the lot. Not necessarily wisely, almost never for the winning candidate, but I exercised my democratic right - one I regard as a responsibility.) Yesterday my county, along with almost all the rest of England and Wales, elected a Police Commissioner (voting was on Thursday of course, but only Wiltshire counted overnight so the results came out yesterday). I didn't even know who won until I went to check (it was a Tory I've never heard of, as opposed to a Labour candidate I've never heard of either) and although I can't find the turn-out figures it's a good bet they were less than 20%, the overall turnout was only 14.7% which is about 8% worse than the previous worst ever and 40-50% worse than typical for local or national elections. One polling station in Newport infamously had no voters show up and in one city turnout only just broke 10%!

This was a headline policy for the Conservatives at the last election and something that the LibDems supported clearly enough that the coalition went for it. The idea was to take the unelected Police Authority and replace them with an accountable, elected officer. Phrased that way it sounds not unreasonable. But... the person that has just been elected holds office for 4 years. They will hopefully be fairly competent. In a strike for "hoped for competence" when an independent candidate who was a former senior policeman or senior member of the outgoing police authority stood, they were elected. A notable strike for people that know the systems they're meant to be working with over the politicians. However, they might be a complete disaster. We know in advance they won't have any sort of criminal record - in fact even very minor brushes with the law were enough to disbar some potential candidates. As I understand it, unless they break the law in future or are shown to be grossly negligent, we're stuck with them until then even if they're bad at the job. This is supposedly accountable. With the old system, if they did a bad job, there were processes to sack them and get new ones in. They were undoubtedly arcane processes (aren't they always) but they were present and certainly faster than four years! Plus, of course, the old authority was a committee. Committees can certainly prevent people with a clear, good vision making improvements but they also tend to stop incompetents making things a lot worse. That check, by inertia and multiple brains looking at the thing, has just been removed.

There's also the little issue of what difference they will make. I'm not claiming that policing in the UK is perfect. The recent news about Hillsborough and the failure to investigate Jimmy Saville properly and catch him while he was alive are pretty clear examples of that. The riots from a couple of summers ago too. But it's not clear how the new system will prevent similar - thankfully rare - things like any of those happening in future. Most cops aren't crooked enough to try and change the outcome of an inquiry as they did at Hillsborough. There will always be a few bad apples and this new system... won't magically cure that. The impact of Jimmy Saville will be some inquiries and changes in the law, probably to make police forces talk to each other more about what's going on. How will the new commissioners affect that process? Not at all is my guess, the law will be changed, the chief constables will organise the change is procedures. Someone different will make sure it's been done. So what?

Then there's the issue of what real choice is there. No one stood on the slate of "I'm going to dismantle policing, massively reduce the numbers of coppers we employ, save you all a fortune that way." I wonder why? So we have a choice between "I'm going to try and make us solve more crimes, reduce anti-social behaviour and maintain the numbers of police officers" and... the same on a different coloured leaflet. This is a slightly different slant on "what difference will they make?" It's not clear to me that these people can sensibly address serious issues where the police force messes up except in a small subset of situations but it's also not clear to me, save their allegiance to a particular ideology, what the difference between most of the candidates is. At least those with prior experience of the police or the police authority have some experience to back up doing... well pretty much the same as everyone else.

Finally there's the process. I'm a voter and, in case you haven't noticed, an aficionado and heavy user of those crazy interwebs. Finding out anything about the candidates in my area - even their names, let alone what they stood for - was tricky. There was no funding for leaflets to the door. OK, that's not a disaster for me but it influenced my parents not to vote in their equivalent election. The Home Office site that was meant to contain the details went live about a month ago. And didn't work properly for most of that month. THAT'S a disaster for me personally and for everyone in fact given it's the main route to find out about the candidates. There was coverage on the TV and radio but nothing like an election broadcast, or at least not that I ever heard of. If you're going to claim a democratic process, part of that process has to be engaging with the people so you can hear their voice. I was going to say informed voice but I don't really believe politicians want that, sorry if that's too cynical for you. Information online is becoming increasingly important - as long as you do it right. But even for me this was hard to find. And perhaps what is needed is less a website you can go to, more an email spam campaign. When someone fills in their voting form they should also give an email address. Push the ePamphlets and/or links to the websites. Not expensive, not technically challenging - just ask the spammers! Bet you get much higher engagement, even through spam filters, if you push the message into a virtual mailbox in the same way for other elections they shove bits of dead trees through physical ones.

Getting people like me who are both used to voting and think they should vote to not vote and that are used to finding information online to be unable to do so - that's a major cock-up. I might actually still not have voted - there are philosophical reasons I'm not sure it's a good idea too, as I've outlined. But roll them altogether and congratulations, you've just won the record for the lowest turnout ever!

Skyfall is a rather long addition to the Bond oeuvre, and it's probably fair to say in many ways the most filmic of them, rather than the most "Bond movie" of them. There are gadgets, cars, beautiful women (although a rather surprising 12A certificate so the veil is drawn even more discretely than usual), chases, explosions, some exotic locations and all so it clearly is a Bond movie, but there's other stuff in there too. High on the exoticism list: the delights of Glen Coe in winter. But for all that, there are elements that, if you have somehow become used to the cinema without seeing a Bond movie, will let you into the world you are watching in a way that the others never really had.

In the opening scene (and well covered in the trailer so not a spoiler) MI6 surprises the world by producing a female agent who is pretty much Bond's equal in the field. Including in one-liners. Yes!

Throughout the film, particularly the first half of the film, there are a string of jokes about dinosaurs and the way the world has changed. It's a rather different humour to the normal Bond witticisms but it's nicely handled and comes over as British co-workers and their sense of humour.

There's a plot that works nicely for today's world without some of the more extreme megalomaniacs of previous outings. That's not to say Javier Bardem's baddie is within touching distance of sane but he is believable and he has a plan that is mad but achievable. And more than that gets too close to spoilers - you knew there was going to be a baddie with a plan. He and Bond fight. Boxes ticked. But the nature of the plan has to be seen so I'll spare you the spoilers. And speaking of spoilers, from a going-forward point of view I understand the way they handled the female agent. But a bigger part of me wishes they'd made a different choice, that we would get a capable British female alongside Bond in the field over several stories. Ah well.

But, unlike most Bond films, we get those modern filmic elements. Rather specifically, we find out things that establish the characters outside of MI6, particularly M and Bond himself. It seems odd to introduce these elements in Judi Dench's sixth outing as M and Bond's twenty-something outing. Even if you think of Bond as an inherited title for spies (and it's clear that the film doesn't support that view) this is Daniel Craig's third outing, we'd expect to know a bit more by now wouldn't we? In some ways this is rather like the way Bond movies treat a villain - we've always found out just enough to try and understand how they've got to be villains, even when they're KGB assassins and the like and you would have thought not much backstory was needed! Being the 50th anniversary of the first Bond film, there are also some throwbacks - the original DB5 for example - mixed in. To my mind that adds to the filmic quality. How many modern films are there in a series without that tongue in cheek reference to previous things? Something to keep the true fans happy without being essential to the story. The DB5 fits that role (there are other things too).

I rarely see Bond films at the cinema. I can't remember the name of the last one I did, but I do remember there was a Silk Cut advert before it. It was that long ago! It was fun though. And, to my mind, made better by all those extra elements that Sam Mendes brought to the table.

We are often told that journalists perform an essential role in a democracy, keeping the politicians in check, informing us - the electorate - and exposing the truth. There are, in all fairness, some notable examples of this - if you live in the UK, the MP's expenses scandal is a great, fairly recent, example of it.

However, the news organisations seem to have forgotten that what they should be doing is reporting on the facts as best they can. I'm not saying there isn't a role for opinion pieces - there certainly is and they can be valuable - but if you are in the business of reporting the news you shouldn't be confusing the two.

I want to take two examples.

One is rather UK-centric. Jimmy Saville, it has emerged, was a serial paedophile. It is possible that there are over 300 survivors of his abuse. There is evidence his abuse happened at the BBC, Stoke Mandeville Hospital and Leeds General Infirmary. I suspect other places too. If you take in most of the news you would struggle to find any reporting of it happening anywhere except the BBC. Why? I don't know for sure - I don't read the mind of the editors - but a lot of the newspapers in the UK are being hauled over the coals by the Levinson Inquiry into poor journalistic standards and breaking the law to get the news. Phone hacking and so on. The BBC has been largely or completely blameless in this. Suddenly the papers have something with which to beat the BBC and they are enjoying it. At the expense of reporting the news. For example: no semblance of wondering why the police didn't take any action - it's almost impossible to believe that you can abuse over 300 people and have none of them report it to the police with some form of evidence; little reporting of how two hospitals let him abuse their patients over the years.

One thing is has done is reopened the stories about a ring of abusers based around care homes in North Wales. That, perhaps, is good news. I wasn't abused in any meaningful way as a child (I have argued and believe I had emotionally unavailable parents and was somewhat neglected by them but I'm not crying out about emotional abuse, my life being endangered or even particularly scarred beyond a terrible relationship with my parents). Despite not being abused, I think I can understand for some of the people that were abused, having closure, having their abuser named (can't do more in the Saville case) and jailed - generally held to account - is a cathartic, helpful thing. Getting these things out there, possibly others in the wake of them, ought to help. I am sure it will leave at least some reputations in tatters - more than Saville's. And you know what - good. Abusing children shouldn't be something you can get away with.

Before I move on, I really want to know why the police and social services aren't getting more of the blame here. I know that, under the current - most rigorous - rules the role of the person to whom the child discloses is to report it via their internal structures to the police and social services. I don't know what the law said in the 1970's and 80's but child abuse was still illegal and I'm pretty sure that the general rule of if you discover illegal activity you report it to the police still stood. The institutions that didn't spot the abuse have to be examined closely. Why didn't they spot and catch the abuse? Was it ever reported to them, and if so what did they do about it? These things can't change the past but might give indications of how systems should be changed to prevent it happening again. But the newspapers... really need to report the news.

The other is rather international. In the race between Obama and Romney, just about all the media told us it was a horse race, too close to call. The actual results - bollocks was it too close to call. The popular vote was pretty close - but in the US the popular vote doesn't matter for electing president. Indeed George W. Bush was elected with a minority of the popular vote. Pollsters polled the nation and reported on a close result in the popular vote as if it mattered. Various other experts looked at the system and analysed it that way. What matters for the outcome is how each state will vote, individually. This is where the swing states come from - many states have a pattern of voting that has stood for decades or longer. Although there can be changes in these places, they are rare. But about 10 states are typically close - this year it was 9 - and these states have enough votes to swing the outcome one way or another. Looking at the outcomes, state-by-state, enabled several groups of statisticians to predict the likely outcome in each state with a surprisingly high degree of precision - including that Florida is a "coin toss" and here we are, 36+ hours after voting closed and Florida has still not declared (although it doesn't matter any more). The high degree of precision simply reflects the range and intensity of the polling - the more people you poll the more accurate your predictions will be unless there's a confounding factor. (John Major's election success where, in hindsight, people were ashamed to say they'd vote tory but when push came to shove they did being a well known one over here.) And as soon as you do that, you can simply add up the numbers and get a good prediction for the size of the votes in the electoral college. Two groups doing this, independently, gave Obama an 80%+ chance of victory. That's nothing like a horse race. Incidentally, both groups called every state accurately. Because of the need for a result, they called Florida in different directions for their overall map while noting it was a coin toss. One got heads, the other tails, and we're still not sure which one was right in the final tally, but both are right it's a coin toss.

Apparently, and from YouTube clips, it's obvious that Fox news - staunchly Republican - was calling Romney clearly ahead, in both the popular and the college votes. Wilfully ignoring the facts to support their world view. How politician-like of them.

Come on, news organisations. Report the news. That's fact based. Get good facts - it was clearly possibly to get good predictions - and whilst, for sure, give us opinions sometimes, leave the weighing and the interpretation to the historians.

Frankenweenie, so the story goes, is an old short of Tim Burton's (from 28 years ago) now made into a full-length (although slightly shorter than typical) film. Although it would be fair to say that I felt it showed, that gives the wrong impression. The film is essentially a character study of Viktor and his relationship with his dog, Sparky. Sparky gets run over and the young Frankenstein (inspired by his science teacher) brings him back to life. Various other children find out, try to duplicate the experiment to win the science fair and chaos ensues. Viktor has to save the day! On that level it's an uncomplicated but entertaining story, good for the kids. The animation style is idiosyncratic and possibly naive but charming and worked well to my mind.

The thing that will ensure this film becomes at least a cult hit is the thing that makes this a film for adults, or possibly very precocious kids. This film is packed, possibly over-packed, with clever little references to other films, books, myths and the like. Some are obvious, some are played on multiple levels - Shelley, the reanimated pet tortoise for example - but the times when I went five minutes without catching a reference made me wonder if I was just being ignorant. If you wan to play a drinking game per reference, I'd recommend fingers of beer rather than anything stronger if you ever want to walk again.

The other thing I really enjoyed about this film is Tim Burton's rant about how poor America's attitude to science and scientists is. It made a strong section although I'm sure it will be missed by those who would gain most from being made to think.

For that reason alone I think this just edges Paranorman for me but I would suggest if you like one of these you'll like the other and if you don't you won't, even if you lean slightly more towards one or the other.

In the Scientific American blog recently there was a rather poor article about the science supporting different stances on homosexuality. In fairness, it starts with two quite popular questions: Is being gay a choice? and Is being gay determined by our genes? At this point the article turns poor because it suggests that the scientific answer to both of these questions is yes and that this is a quandary. The correct answer is "These questions are both too imprecise, especially as a pair, to answer scientifically."

If we rephrase them to remove that imprecise word "gay" we get some different answers. Gay, in this sort of context, has at least two meanings. One is "Are you predisposed to be sexually attracted to members of the same sex?" The other, rather more imprecise still is roughly "Are you actively interested in or involved in a sexual relationship with a member of the same sex?"

So lets try using those wordings. We get four questions:

1. Is being predisposed to be sexually attracted to members of the same sex a choice?


2. Is being predisposed to be sexually attracted to members of the same sex determined by our genes?


3. Is being actively interested in or involved in a sexual relationship with a member of the same sex a choice?


4. Is being actively interested in or involved in a sexual relationship with a member of the same sex determined by our genes?

And now some answers:

1. The answer to question 1 is no. There is no evidence, despite what you might like to believe, that the things you find sexually attractive, including the sex of your predilections, is a choice you can control. Trying to find an example of this that doesn't get too graphic is tricky but love bites (hickeys if you prefer) seem to be a possibility. Most people develop a predilection for being on one side or the other - they like biting or being bitten. This isn't on gender lines - I know, or knew, straight men and women, gay men, gay women on both sides of this. I've also met a few people who just don't like it and a few that like both sides of it. Although it's not something I've done a lot of research into, various discussions suggest biters can't choose to not like biting, nor to choose to like being bitten (although they can choose to accept it or experiment a bit to see and often do). OK, this is a somewhat trivial example - but whatever the implanting process it; to make us prefer biting, being bitten, both or neither; we can't control it, we can't choose to just change it. Why should anyone believe something rather more fundamental - do you fancy men or women - should be more susceptible to a simple choice?


2. The answer to question 2 is a yes. Our genes determine our sexual preferences. Indeed the so called 'gay gene' has been found. It is worth noting that, like all phenotypes (external presentations of behaviour or appearance), there is an environmental component. We do not understand what makes up that environmental component in the case of sexuality. We are sure there is no element of choice in it - what we experience at various critical moments sets our preferences is the best we currently understand it, but we don't know when those moments are, nor how what we experience triggers our sexuality. So qualified in the sense of "determined by only our genes in interaction with our environment" but still yes. Other aspects of our sexuality - fetishes and the like - make it clear there's a complex interaction here. Something environmental triggers the fetish, but the what and how is not yet clear.


3. The answer to question 3 is a yes. We do have a choice. We can honestly acknowledge and accept our interest and act on it. Alternatively, we can lie to ourselves and try to live with someone wrong for us at that fundamental a level. We can also choose to live a celibate life and use our fantasies, sex toys and whatever to relieve the needs of the body. I think option 1 is the healthiest of these for most needs, certainly for gay people, but the alternatives are a choice.


4. The answer to question 4 is unknown. I am unaware of any evidence that suggests the sex drive is genetically encoded despite concepts like the Selfish Gene suggesting it must be. If it is genetically encoded it seems to be one of the drives we have a lot of direct control over on top of whatever environmental factors affect the genetics. It might be hard for someone within a decade of puberty to believe but actually, for some years after puberty, despite their urges most of us live without the opportunity for a sexual relationship. Even when we have the opportunity in terms of no parental control and the like, we may not have the opportunity in terms of access to a willing partner. Despite that, most of us live, function and develop into adults. While there may be a genetic component it can be overridden by our social environment and our choice. Lifelong celibacy is an unusual choice though - and I rather suspect hard to actually live. I suspect there is a genetic element to this but our choices can override it in the short term: If I'm going to be celibate then I can say no today, but I will have to say no again tomorrow and the next day, every day I'm alive. Although I've no experience of being celibate, nor of recovering from addiction, I'm reminded of what I do know of the recovery from addiction. Every day it's a choice not to drink, smoke or whatever. And while we know people can manage that, we know a lot of people try and fail. I suspect the same is true of those who try to live a celibate life-style.

There is no quandary. There are badly worded, imprecise questions used to confuse people unwilling to actually think.

Another blog I read (tagged as NSFW although this article is SFW) recently complained about the confusion regarding love and fascination or rather their lack of precision. I found I disagreed with both of the examples given (although the conclusion regarding having a healthy, safe space for your fantasies is good). We very rarely use ambiguous words alone. Love! doesn't really make sense. Stop! does though. But we'd struggle to find a dozen shades of meaning for stop - or even three meanings. As soon as we have other words in the mix, in the sentence or in the paragraph we have a context. And that context gives us, if well written, at least some of the rest of the meaning. Having those ambiguous words lets us play word games, make puns and jokes - even bad ones like "Which do you love more, Daddy or chips?" - and use language in interesting ways. The story linked to in which the woman loves the Eiffel Tower - in a romantic, amorous sense - only works because love is ambiguous. If we saw "Woman has amorous, romantic interest in the Eiffel Tower" we might think she's a bit odd, but the story is suddenly less interesting to read than "Woman loves Eiffel Tower... and wants to marry it!" despite being the same story. The change is because the story about the amorous, romantic interest is plainly reporting an oddity. Leading with "Woman love Eiffel Tower" plays with our expectations and most of us like this sort of word game. Ambiguities like this can be fun, make communicating more interesting and engaging - which is surely good.

Sure, these ambiguities can be misused, as in the "Is being gay a choice? Is being gay determined by our genes?" example - but if we're daft enough not to be able to work out there's something wrong then, rather than a job blogging for Scientific American, I've got a bridge in London you might like to buy...