Category: Principles

First, to international readers, this is an ongoing internal issue in the UK. I wanted to put my thoughts down, but if you are outside the UK, this will probably not be of any interest, so please save your time.

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There’s a debate been rumbling on here for a while. It’s funny, I’ve heard the issue raised a few times these last few days, so I just wanted to get my thoughts down on paper.

The UK has a tax called the TV License. It is technically a tax on watching programmes from the BBC, but it dates from the time when BBC programmes were the only programmes out there, so the tax became, effectively, universal. In these days of 100s of channels, the BBC no longer has a monopoly, but they fudge around with this license so that we end up paying it anyway. There are various hoops you can jump through if you don’t want to pay, but most people just pay it.

That’s the general case. There is an exemption. The exemption is if someone is over 75. Your income does not matter, just your age.

There has been a storm in the UK because the BBC, who apply the tax, want to abolish that exemption. Over 75s would now need to pay.

Now, there are a couple of issues here.

The first one is the concern about poverty. Over 75s can be among the poorest in society, although this is not always the case. The most famous over-75, our queen, is worth an estimated £500 million. Even if you don’t understand £, that translates to a helluva lot.

Now, there has already been an attempt to tackle this problem. There is a state benefit, designed to help these poorest people by supplemenmting their income a little. It is arguable whether it hits the spot, and perhaps reform is required as very few people seem to qualify. But basically the rule will become that anybody in receipt of this benefit will continue to be exempt from the license.

The second thing is the isolation. It is common for elderly people to be isolated. It is common to claim that because of this isolation, TV is the only medium through which people can see/hear human beings. I do not doubt that this is true. But the argument continues that the BBC will therefore increase people’s isolation by starting to charge.

I don’t buy that. I don’t think that the BBC are increasing anybody’s isolation. What they are doing is saying that people must start paying for the service. If somebody is isolated and needs the TV for company, they still have it, they just need to pay for it. What if they can’t afford it? Well, people on the lowest incomes will still be exempt.

There is a further issue about whether the BBC is managing its finances properly. I think this is a valid point, but it is a different point to license fee exemptions. We shoulds be discussing both questions, but separately. Possibly the start point should be whether it is appropriate for the public sector (the BBC) to try to compete with the private sector.

Summary

• If we’re going to have a mechanism with any exemptions (which seems absolutely the right thing to do) then we should base those exemptions on wealth, not on age. This fits into the whole “social security” ethos.
• If the wrong people qualify as being exempt, then let’s fight that battle, and campaign for a change in the rules.

Lastly, did you notice how I got through the whole of this post without mentioning the cost of this tax? That was because its value is not really important to my argument. But if you are interested, it is about £150/year, which is roughly the same value in EUR and USD. I guess we will all have different views on whether that is a lot of money or not.

I read a post the other day, the author made pretty clear her view of porn, of all things. Made me think. Then somebody else said something about erotica this morning. While the two are different, it started me off again, so I thought I’d put some thoughts down.

I think (good) erotica is great, just because the whole purpose is let somebody’s imagination run riot. I bet every writer has that dream, no matter what their genre. Personally, I don’t know whether this is the stroke talking, but erotica holds no interest for me. I’m actually incredibly asexual now. But if somebody else likes it, who am I to say anything?

Porn is a bit more complex, just because it is so much more explicit. I think, for me, the issue boils down to one of consent.

There is a caveat right at the very start that somebody needs to be an adult (defining an adult is a post in itself!) who has, under their entirely own volition, made a choice for themselves. But beyond that, it boils down to consent.

A guy and a woman together? Consent.

Two guys together? Consent. And so on.

And, by extension, a person doing something sexual in front of a camera? Consent.

There is an obvious counter argument there. That “consent” might not truly mean “consent”. But that goes back to my original caveat. If somebody has said “yes” out of their own volition, what right do I have to say “no”? Even if there were a bunch of cash to sweeten the deal (which I guess would be the case with porn). As long as the deal is known up-front, what right do I have even to have an opinion?

In the past I have heard the “fraternal” (or perhaps that is sorority) argument. That one woman doing this cheapens women, as a gender. But at that point, well, being either a man or a woman is hardly the same as joining the golf club. Nobody is elected on the promise that they will uphold the rules. It’s not as though gender is a choice we make.

So I don’t think there is really any common ground between people of the same gender, beyond the gender itself. To expect one person to follow a set of principles, purely on the grounds that somebody else does, seems crazy.

By all means, somebody can be offended. But their offence gives them the right not to partake, or in the case of porn, not to watch it. In fact, that is probably the category I put myself in. But I don’t think one person’s offence means that somebody who wants to do something (like porn) should be prohibited from doing it. I think there is a world of difference between “I don’t like …” and “… is wrong”.

In Melanies Share Your World prompt the other day, I adopted what I think was a forthright tone. She proposed a statement, and I said that yes, with a couple of modifications, I could happily go along with it.

Her original statement was:

In your opinion, does patriotism require the belief that one’s country is the greatest on earth?

and with my modifications, it became:

In your opinion, does patriotism require the desire that one’s country is the best it can possibly be?

It has made me think some since (, so just in those terms, it was an absolutely brilliant post). At the time, I gave a couple of examples, largely to do with fighting for changes to society in order to hit that best it can possibly be goal. While I still feel that is a perfectly valid example, I feel I should probably have also given an example of how patriotism might also mean protecting – again, fighting for – our societies against elements that would harm them.

As a Britisher, for example, I am in absolutely no doubt that somebody like Hitler would have harmed my society, if he had been able to do so. Not just my society, but all our societies. Passage of time has only made clearer exactly what he was about.

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I could also not help thinking about Melanie’s word, believe, versus my word, desire. It is significant because just that one word made the difference between agree/disagree with her statement. It raises a bunch of questions for me.

First, if somebody believes their country to be the best, does that mean that it can do no wrong? Does that mean that everything there is already perfect, that nothing could be better? If we look around us, I would suggest that things are not perfect. That being the case, how do we highlight those things that are imperfect? Do we bother? Or, do we just suck it up and pretend everything is okay? If we all pretended, nothing would ever change. So if we do think things need to change, how do we go about that? If change is via the ballot box, what do we then do when the ballot box fails us? Where do we go?

Second, what exactly is their country? Well, that’s why we have politicians – to steer the country. So, the government chooses its diplomats to go out and represent the country in the big, wide world, or at the UN. Or at bilateral summits, say. Each time, the government is pulling the strings.

Governments are elected politicians, they can’t just want somewhere to be great, they must work out how to make it great, what buttons to push. And importantly, they are subject to periodic re-election; we will fire them if they are not up to scratch. So, given that the government might change, and given that the country is represented by its government, how comfortable are we just to say, sweepingly, I believe that my country is the greatest on earth?

I’m not, especially when my country might be run by a government I do not support, whose standards might be very different from my own. I am happy to decide on a case-by-case basis whether, in my opinion, my country is doing right or wrong, I am not at all happy to give a blanket affirmation that it always does right.

And I consider myself to be extremely patriotic.

Colin Kaepernick (centre). From cnbc.com.

A long while ago, a fellow blogger posted along the lines of a professional sportsman should not be pulling publicity stunts for political gain. They were talking about Colin Kaepernick, do you remember him? He was an NFL player – at one time he was the starting quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers, who went to one knee during the US National Anthem. It made mainstream news bulletins, even here, for a while afterwards – not least, we were all amused because it seemed to annoy Donald Trump!

It’s interesting to me because I broadly disagree, but it took a while to get my thoughts together, and a while more to knock a post into shape. So this one has been sitting in various stages of draft for a long while.

It boils down to two questions:

1. Did the guy have a right to hold a view?
2. Did he have the right to express that view while doing his job?

The first of those questions is easy. Of course he has a right to hold a view. Just the same as you or me. None of our societies say that because the guy is a sportsman, he doesn’t get to have a voice.

On the second question, I have a bit more sympathy. I can imagine that there are certain jobs where you need to put your personal view to one side. Be professional. Represent your employer’s interests, not your own. But does a footballer have such a job?

I can maybe understand that somebody might think they do, but I myself think not. I was never asked to leave my political views at the door, for one, so why should he? And the idea that the 49ers checked that the guy’s politics were sound before they hired him, a guy who became their starting quarterback…. It is just a hunch but I would wager that Kaepernick got the job because of his sporting prowess, not because of his ability to behave himself.

There are precedents here, too, where sport has been used as a weapon when we don’t agree with someone, at all sorts of levels. On the one hand, we just need to think back to the schoolyard – I’m not playing with Johnny because he’s an asshole. And, it gets bigger. Not playing sport with South Africa during the apartheid era, or the US boycotting the 1980 Olympics in Moscow, or the USSR boycotting the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles as a tit-for-tat. Furthermore, these boycotts transcended amateur/professional boundaries – I still remember the days when Rugby Union was amateur, and still, nobody would play against the Springboks.

So, there are all sorts of precedents for sportsmen to put politics over sport – we don’t like your behaviour toward such-and-such, so we will not play sport with you.

Maybe on that point we could argue that the sportsmen would have been happy to play, but it was the politicians who spoiled the show? But that is precisely my point – when sport and politics go head to head, politics wins out.

As regards the form of the protest, Kaepernick chose a form that many people hold dear. Maybe Kaepernick held it dear, too,and maybe that is just a measure of his dissatisfaction? Even if Kaepernick never gave a stuff about the flag, maybe he deliberately chose it because he know that other people did hold it dear? Does that not also give an indication of the level of Kaepernick’s dissatisfaction?

I think that a country can behave rightly or wrongly, just as an individual can behave rightly or wrongly. So, when people think it is behaving wrongly, what do they do? Do they call it out or let it slide? Does a country have our unequivocal support, no matter what it does?

There is a goal here of making a better society, and for me it is a no-brainer to call out the bad things, so we can try to improve them. Right and wrong is what matters here, not where we happened to be born.

I’d even take that a step further. A country is largely represented by its government. The way a country behaves towards its people, towards other countries, these things are basically the policies of its government. The government is political, and so we should we stop and ask ourselves whether the protest isn’t political too.

On the subject of the protest itself, I am happy to take Kaepernick’s view on board, and decide for myself (a) whether I care, and (b) what view I take. If the athlete withes maybe to raise my awareness of the issue, no problem. It’s only really the same as me using this blog to make people aware of my pet issues.

The last thing that I wanted to talk about was the #MeToo effect. My own experience after my stroke was to think along the lines that I was the only person on earth who could be going through what I was going through. I cringe at that now, because I know it was rubbish. In fact once I was well enough, I actively started looking for peers who might help me learn to live with myself. Knowing that there are other people who have been through, who are going through, what we’re going through, is important. Just look how #MeToo has raised the profile of sexual harassment.

So not only do I take my hat off to Kaepernick, but I salute him for being the first. If other sportsmen agreed with him, and subsequently followed his example, then maybe he highlighted a real problem after all?