Crimson Autograph

Something that has been nagging at me for a while is the news media's ideal of "balance". I'm coming to the conclusion that it has become the enemy of truth.

Let me explain. Take a pair of hypothetical political issues. Issue A is complex and indeterminate, perhaps a matter of economic policy. There are different opinions on the best way to deal with Issue A, and in the absence of objective evidence they are equally valid opinions to hold and decisions will largely be down to what values on holds. Issue A works well with a media determined to give a balanced view, a range of opinions will be shown and the electorate can make an informed and reasonable decision upon it.

Now look at issue B. This is a more clear cut issue, perhaps something to do with the environment. Issue B has some clear cut facts. An event has happened and there are a choice of approaches of how to deal with it. Now if all the approaches suggested are valid and reasonable then Issue B can be handled in a balanced way too. However what happens if a political party decide to use Issue B to promote a policy that has been tried before and failed to deal with the issue, or what if they decide to claim that the event never happened at all. Now we have a problem.

The problem is this, balanced reporting means that an outright blatant lie must be be given equal time to the truth. It must be treated in exactly the same way as the truth, if it is challenged then the truth must be challenged too. When a journalist attempts to challenge a lie they will be attacked as being biased.

That's bad enough, but we've gone further over the last few decades. Now unscrupulous politicians have seen how effective the big lie can be, and they will approach Issue A by inventing a big lie that, if true, would conclusively prove their case and then challenging their opponents to disprove it in a situation where they aren't allowed a neutral referee. Instead of an issue that people will see as something inconclusive they now have a clear cut polarised issue that people can be mobilised around.

We've lost the idea of objective reality in politics. Any lie is seen as just as worthwhile as a truth if it is presented with passion and commitment. If the voter doesn't know the subject matter they will simply see two sides saying "oh yes it is", "oh no it isn't". If this was limited to a small number of issues then we could do a bit of research and make up our minds reasonably. However it's the standard technique of a huge number of politicians of all views. There just isn't the time to check it all. A lot of people now seem to think that objective reality plays no part in politics, what they choose to believe is as valid as factual evidence.

I'm pretty well up to speed on a wide range of political issues, and I feel I'm drowning in deliberate misinformation. I find that very scary. The more I learn the less I know, other than that an awful lot of people are prepared to lie in order to get their own way.

I'm watching the Vuelta again. Feeling full of flu and short of both breath and skin.

Yesterday Santiago did another round of heroics, breaking away from the peloton with Roberto Heras the race leader, and burning off Alejandro Valverde for over two minutes to take second place overall. That's not all though. He then went on to blow away Heras to the tune of half a minute. So he starts today one minute behind the gold jersey with only three days to go.

It's gripping.

One of the joys of warching the big road races is that no matter how you feel there is something comforting in watching a bunch of guys pedalling up and down mountains for several hours. Throw in the complexity of several individual competitions running simultaneously and a team competition, and you have a mix that throws up contant tension and drama, and there are few things to beat tense dramas involving people who are soaked in sweat and pushing the limits of their physical endurance.

It's particularly life affirming when taken with a nice meal and a large and very cold drink.

Absolutely nothing, say it again. War, what is it good for? Absolutely nothing.

Today is the third International Day of Peace. It's the brainchild of a chap called Jeremy Gilley who seems surprised and delighted that it's been adopted officially by the UN. Proof that a single individual can create a little gap that lets a lot of other individuals make small differences that may one day amount to a big difference. Proof that we aren't entirely powerless even though it often seems that way.

Teo other little inspirations over the last few days have come from the world of cycling.

A bit over a year ago Santiago Perez was just starting out on a very promising racing career and about to get married. He'd landed a few successes over his forst two seasons and was marked down as a rider with a lot of potential. Thn his finacee, Vanessa, was killed in a road accident.

He's continued riding, but understandably hasn't continued his development. Until the last few days. On Saturday and Sunday he won two stages of the Tour of Spain in a row. In particular his victory in the mountain time trial on sunday was extrodinary. It's good to see that there's life on the far side of grief. It's good to know that the worst of setbacks can be overcome.

However there's an even more inspiring little snippet from the velodrome at the Paralympics. Brothers Javier and Ricardo Ochoa were both top class road racers, both has taken part in the Tour de France, both were coming to the peak of their careers. In 2001, whilst out training together, thy were both hit by a car. Ricardo was killed, and Javier severely injured, spinal, nerve and brain damage. He also developed cerebral palsy as a result of his injuries.

Yesterday Javier Ochoa won the silver medal in the 3000m pursuit at the Paralympics. He was beaten by Britain's Darren Kenney, but for once I was cheering on the rider trying to stop the Brit getting the gold. Still, it's a hell of a come back.

My heroes for this month are Javier Ochoa and Jeremy Gilley.

Have a peaceful day.

That's what Frank Zappa claimed he made. It appeals to me as a description of music. It so perfectly removes absolutely everything that actually matters. I'm not listening to enough music. My hands are moulting at the moment so I can't play any music at all.

Partly I've been broke long enough that I've now built up a huge list of music I need to own now. The new Libertines album, anything by Franz Ferdinand or Tinariwen, Graham Parker's country album, a whole load of stuff I need to be able to hear now. It overwhlems the need to hear what I've heard before. I know it exists and I need to know what it's like.

Then there are the back catalogues. I've barely scratched the surface of Brenda Fassie or Angelique Kidjo's output, I need to get around to hearing what Martin Simpson has been doing.

I suppose I may have to get into the whole music download thing, but storage space is at a premium on my PC, so it'll have to wait a while yet. The other problem being that most of what I want to hear is fairly obscure. In the mean time I'll just have to settle for going over old ground again.

I have a rather up and down relationship with my muse. Not any blazing rows or fights, but sometimes we can't get enough of each other and I can write for hours on end, sometimes we just don't speak for days. At the moment she seems to have gone on a road trip.

I say she because I'm sure my muse is female. I have to assume that because when she finds something for me she tends to wrap it up with pretty paper and ribbons and leave it somewhere I'll find it later. A male muse would probably insist I stop what I;m doing and come and look at the new shiny thing. One of the problems I have is that when it's all wrapped up I can't tell if it's the germ of a short story, a one liner, or the answer to the logjam in the verylongthingthatwillpossiblyendupbeinganovel. Which is OK most of the time, but a bit of a pain when my mind is littered with the things and I don't know which to open first. They go off you see. They tarnish after a few hours in the open.

She's not the most reliable muse. I suppose I'll have to accept that. Though there's one thing that will generally get her attention no matter what. That's music. She can't get enough of that. She'll even skimp on the wrapping and hand me the boxes just as I need them. If I could get her to find writing that exciting I'd be well away, or if I was actually a good enough musician to make use of the inspiration then I could go that route. As it is I suppose I'm going to have to settle for living with a muse that doesn't really suit me.

More about why I call this blog "Crimson Autograph".

There's the political side of course. I'll no doubt post plenty of political stuff, and in today's world a lot of that is going to be about not understanding a need for violence and confrontation. I think "(Hey Lord) Don't Ask Me Questions" admirably covers what I feel at present. However that's not the only reason I picked it.

I also leave a crimsom autograph just about everywhere I set foot at times. I bleed. Literally.

Not all the time, it's something that comes and goes, generally for a few weeks every few years. Though at present it's been eighteen nearly solid months.

I have atopic eczema. At times that means my skin gets a bit dry. At times it means my skin flakes off in layers leaving me raw in places. At worst it bleeds even if I manage not to scratch at it. It bleeds on clothes and it bleeds on sheets, it bleeds on pretty much anything I touch. For a while.

That isn't the problem with eczema though. The worst symptoms generally go away in a week or two with the right treatment. It's not all that painful, and generally it isn't life threatening except in that it means ones immune system is otherwise occupied when then gugs come to call. The problem with eczema is what it does to your head.

Think about this. What separates you from the rest of the world? What is the boundary between yourself and everything else? What makes YOU separate from your surroundings? Your skin. Now try and imagine not only not trusting your skin to be there when you need it, but knowing that your own body is attacking your skin all the time. That's the problem with eczema. Throw in the fact that most of us who have it have a self image with the condition at its worst. We KNOW we look horrific all the time, even if we've just looked in the mirror and seen that we don't. And we don't have anything that we can trust between us and the outside world.

This year I've been in and out of Robert Willan Ward in St Thomas' Hospital. It's had a huge impact on me psychologically, since it meant spending my time with a group of twenty four people all pretty much in the same boat. I've gained some confidence in the fact that even wrapped up in bandages from head to toe, a human being is still a human being. I'm still me, and it's OK if the outside world can break in a bit now and again, and it's OK if I leave a bit of myself here and there.

You have to make your own fun in hospital. In the morning the psoriasis patients would get a treatment that involved various medicinal goos under a layer of bandages. By four o clock these would have soaked through to make a rather impresssive purple-brown staining on the bandages. So that's the time of day we'd take a mass expecition to have coffee and cakes in the posh tea room in the hospital lobby. "Hi! We all have skin diseases and we've come to have tea with you."

Anyway, I've started learning about how eczema has made me the person I am. So that's the other reason for the blog title, because part of the purpose of this blog is for me to find out who I am and why.

Just a few thoughts on US politics.

It seems to me that the "war on terror" is a misnomer. In terms of dealing with terrorism it's an abject failure. Terrorist incidents are happening more often than before it began. Yet it is central to Bush's election campaign and seems to play well with the voters. Since the war is being lost when it comes to terrorism the real target as far as most people are concerned must be something else. The question is what?

I offer this as a suggestion rather than a certainty. It is a war against the 21st Century.

Let me explain. What Bush seems to be saying is that if he has policies that assume that things are simple, then the world will become less complicated. At least that appears to be the subtext of much of what he says. It's a call for a return to simple cold war certainties, us and them, good guys and bad guys. It's a call for a return to world war two certainties. A determined attempt to return to the days when the nation state was the sole important unit of politics, and when you could identify the enemy easily and locate them geographically.

It is a war on ideas, and the ideas it is fighting are the complicated and difficult ones that a fast changing world produces. It is a war against economic reality, against global communication and trade, it is a war against understanding, it is a war against tolerance, above all it is a war against uncertainty and doubt. Yet we don't know how our world works at the moment. We don;t know what the Internet does, we don't know what it means, we don't yet know what it has changed. We don't understand globalisation, we haven't a clue about it's long term consequences. We don't know how climate change will work, we don;t know how far and fast it will go. We can't predict how our world will be in five years time. Bush is at war with that, and his plan of campaign is to persuade people that they would be happier if it was the early 50s.

If one looks at it in those terms, and if one sees it as a war fought purely in the heads of the American electorate, then it's a war that is being won. Of course that has nothing to do with anything real, but there's another war that it's merely a battle within. That being the war on Liberalism and social concern.

Which makes it hard for a socially concerned liberal sort of person like myself. You see the President of the USA is at war with me, and I think I may be a tad outgunned.

...adrift in the blogiverse. It looks fun and it may help me get a bit more discipline about my writing.

The blog title comes from the Graham Parker song "Hey Lord Don't Ask Me Questions", which has been echoing around my head for the last few years. At the moment it sums up far to much of what I think and what I feel.