This Blog has become impossible to use.

It used to be STRAITFORWARD and easy, now difficult and frustrating. I have lost several posts

Can't raise the page up to see what I am writing. Why do these people think they are making things easier when they are doing the opposite!!

 My Short Stories

Readers  of this occasional blog may think I am a serious guy who only blogs about politics, ethics and religion and I must admit that is one side of my personality. I am ninety years old, and have lost much of my sight doe to eye disease, but have done many things since I retired as a social worker, including writing and publishing two collections of short stories, that have received many favourable comments. If you like short stories, and they are very wide-ranging, you may like mine.  The details are as follows:

The Girl on the Beach and other Stories. Also The Feel-Good Factor ansd other Stories, my Michael Jimack.  Available from Amazon Books and also from

www.fast-print.net/bookshop  The books cam also be ordered from any bookshop.

I think you will like them.

The Saudis and international Humanitarian Law

A court action by campaigners has resulted in a judgement that licences should be reviewed  before any further military equipment is exported to the Saudis.

This is because the Saudis have violated international law by targeting civilians and even at least one hospital in the Yemen conflict. The International Trade Secretary Liam Fox, and the government have been complacent about these violations, cynically accepting worthless Saudi assurances that they have carried out their own investigation, and that any 'violations' were accidental, or the result of collateral damage. I have no doubt that the review of licences will result in a government finding that the Saudis had no intention of targeting civilians, and that it is perfectly safe to continue with the exports, thereby ensuring that realpolitik, pragmatism, and expediency wins the day over ethics and morality.

Woman-Hating Fashion Designers

I could be accused of being a grumpy old man. Well I am old and I do get grumpy about this modern world and some of the stupid people that inhabit it.  One of the things that has caught my attention this week relates to fashion models.

We know that over the years fashion designers have encouraged models not to look like normal healthy girls, and the latest example of their woman-hating excesses has been to encourage models to develop stick-like thighs with a pronounced gap between them. The fact that this looks neither natural or womanly is of no consequence to these egocentric designers. They are mostly male, and they don't like curvy women. They prefer their models to be boy-like. In case anyone gets the wrong idea let me say right now that I hold no prejudice against gay men, but if you are designing for women the honest thing to do is to consider women's shapes. Designing for shapeless stick-insects may be easier (You don't have to fit fabric around curves) but it is not good for the models, it is not good for young impressionable women concerned about self-image, and it's not good for society.

Michael Jimack  (1st March 2019)

 

Ethics and pragmatism

The murder of a Saudi dissident  at their consulate in Turkey, and the indiscriminate bombing of civilians, including many children in Yemen raises questions not only on how Britain should treat the Saudi regime, but whether there is an element of double standards in the way we treat regimes with poor human rights records. The UK reacted strongly to the killing of a Russian former spy and his partner in Bristol, but we hesitate to fall out with the Saudis because we want there cooperation, and next to the USA we are their largest supplier of arms. The argument goes like this: cancelling arms contracts would put many people out of work, and anyway if we don't sell arms to the Saudis, the United States would. But that is like saying if we don't aid and abet a country in carrying out an illegal act, someone else will! 

China also has a poor human rights record and recently Chinese Muslims have been persecuted and imprisoned simply for practising their religion. most other Chinese can go about their business without interference, unless you do or say anything against the government or its policies, and of course what people can read is censored. However we engage with China on many levels, and our government hopes that with Br exit trade will increase. Pragmatism wins out every time!

Men, women, and unwanted sexual advances

Harvey Weinstein's alleged sexual misdemeanours, and as some allege, rape has led to the issue of sexual abuse and sexual harassment being discussed in the media. Sometimes these terms are used interchangeably, so let me state at the outset that they are not the same- the former is much more serious.

Let us accept that times have changed from the days when I was a young man. In those days in an office any young woman could be subjected to unwanted attention, and if they had the temerity to complain to the boss they would be told that 'boys will be boys' and not to make a fuss.

I am ashamed to say that when I worked in an office in the mid nineteen fifties, and had to ask a young typist to do something for me, I put my arm around her. She told me in no uncertain terms to remove it, and called me a creep; that put me in my place!

And that is what worries me about the present debate.  It is in the nature of young men to try and make it with young women, and if the women don't want the advances they should, like my typist,  make their feelings clear. It only becomes harassment if they persist.

There is another problem however, and that is the problem of power. Lord Acton famously said 'All power corrupts' and men (it is nearly always men) sometimes use their power to gain sexual favours. An obvious example of this is the casting couch, but of course it can occur in any industry where women want to seek advancement, and men have the power to impede their progress.

Clearly this behaviour is an abuse, and little short of blackmail.

On the other hand it must be said that some women are drawn to powerful men, and others will use their sexuality to gain their objectives.

What is also worrying about the present situation is the ability of people to make wide-ranging and unsubstantiated allegations, often on social media, followed by a consensus that there is no smoke without fire. This goes against the important principal that a man (or woman) is innocent until proven guilty, and smacks of a witch hunt.

Unless he is guilty of more serious offences (and we don't know this) there is something odd about the Defence Secretary being forced to resign over an incident 15 years ago when he patted a journalists knee an number of times. As the woman herself said, 

it must be the strangest reason for a resignation in political history.

Michael Jimack

The Church's Dilemma

Although I am an atheist, albeit one with a Jewish heritage, I have always had a soft spot for the Church of England; for its' eccentricities and its' pick and mix attitudes. I remember the Red Dean Hewlett Johnson, and David Jenkins the Bishop of Durham, who didn't believe in the virgin birth or the resurrection.

This latest controversy over gay marriage is typical of the knots the church ties itself up in, due in my opinion to a lack of intellectual clarity and woolly thinking.

Apparently the Archbishop of Canterbury has said the church needs a twenty-first century understanding  of being human, and being sexual.

This of course is what those who want the church to accept gay marriage believe. The traditionalists base their objection on the scriptures, the word of God. Presumably they still believe that all anal intercourse is an abomination, although hopefully not agreeing to the punishments that in the past were meted out to transgressors.

The modernisers use semantics and words like reinterpretation, or continuous revelation, or even 'that passage is not so important and is negated by other more compassionate passages.' And therein lies the problem, who decides what is important? If one part can be discounted or updated, why not others, the virgin birth and the resurrection for example?

Personally I am not against same sex couples getting married, if that is what they want to do, but I am at a loss to understand why they would want a Christian ceremony considering the historical attitude of the church to homosexuality from ancient times to the twentieth century.

I think you either have to accept that the bible was written by fallible human beings who reflected the prejudices, culture, science, mores and world view existing at the time, or that these scribes had a direct line to God. In which case everything is true, although why the Creator should have such a poor knowledge of his own creation is beyond my understanding.