"... and German to my horse"

Many years ago, someone told me a sociology story. A researcher approaches three workers and asks what they are doing. The first is a Tory and answers "a fair day’s work for a fair day's pay". The second is a Socialist and answers "I'm having my labour exploited for profit by the capitalists". The third is a Christian and answers "I'm building a cathedral".

I can't remember who told me this, but I woke up this morning thinking about how it reminds me of a famous witticism of Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, often quoted as "I speak Spanish to God, Italian to women, French to men and German to my horse". He almost certainly never said it in that form. If he did say something like it, then the order would have been to emphasize Spanish, which he called the divine language: "... and Spanish to God". The translated order says more about the teller than it does about Charles, betraying an anti-Germanic prejudice by implying that only German is gruff and aggressive enough to discipline a horse.

And so it is with the sociology story. We could equally well put the Socialist last, to imply that the twin evils of religion and capitalism both brainwash people into inane satisfaction with their lot. Or end with the Tory, to suggest that the Socialist and the Christian are failing to see the wider picture of everyone having an equally valid place within the fabric of society. [Full disclosure: I was paid by the Conservative Party to put that bit in.]

Far from illustrating the nobility of a church stonemason, the tale exposes the partiality of a storyteller hoodwinked by the received traditions of a nominally Christian society.

Boris Johnson is a Pathological Liar

When I was a teenager, our class were caught gambling and the head decided to cane us. He lined us up to ask each child if they were involved. Nobody lied; the idea of dishonesty was much worse than the fear of corporal punishment. Boris Johnson is the exact opposite: a pathological liar; a delinquent who derives psychological satisfaction from the slightest deceit; from getting one over on people. And he covers up any exposed mendacity with further fabrications. He was unanimously found guilty of lying to the Head of State by eleven Supreme Court judges. He was fired from his job as a journalist for a campaign of systematic lies about the EU over a prolonged period and after multiple warnings. He conspired to deceive the nation before the Brexit vote with deliberately misleading financial propaganda, when the Treasury's own forecast for leaving was for significant long-term financial disadvantage. He knowingly lied about the difficulty of getting a Brexit settlement with the EU. W...

Ridiculous Snooker Competition Format

This year the format for the Championship League Snooker competition is very inequitable. It works like this. There are twenty-five entrants, of which seven are placed in Group 1. They play a round-robin tournament and the top four then play a knockout to decide the winner of the group. The winner qualifies for the Winners Group, and the remaining other four of the top five progress to Group 2, joining three other players from the original twenty-five. The bottom two are eliminated from the competition. This whole process is repeated until Group 7, when only the winner qualifies for the Winners Group, the other six players getting eliminated. The Winners Group then contains the seven players who won a group. Again, they play a round-robin and the top four play a knockout for tournament winner. Players win money by winning frames, getting through to the play-offs, winning a group or being runner-up, and by making the highest break in a group. The rates for these are differen...

Rescuing People from Cults

It isn't hard to imagine a child being brought up by parents within a small community of bizarre cult beliefs. The child would initially accept the programming without question no matter how damaging, because that is what small infants are hard-wired to do. Later they might begin to question the ideas, but everyone they know would profess conviction and it is easy to see the difficulty of snubbing their entire community and becoming a social outcast. If we were able to rescue the victim from the grip of the cult, then even as an adult it would be difficult to reverse the damage. We would need to train the critical thinking skills that all cults must suppress to exist. Our efforts might well look like the popular notion of 'brainwashing'. This is precisely what the Chinese are being accused of with the Uighurs. Some are calling it "psychological torture", and even the BBC are calling it "systematic brainwashing". "Wait a minute," you say, "...

Aniseed Balls

Search This Blog