On the latest BNP business

I've been a lazy-arse blogger lately, so I'm sure I'm not breaking the news to anyone that BNP members are not to be banned from teaching in schools. I have to admit to being a bit conflicted about this. I hate the BNP, but in general also hate the idea that someone could lose their job because of their beliefs, especially if they are generally quiet about those beliefs. To give an example, I honestly don't believe that Simone Clarke should be chucked out of any given ballet production due to her BNP membership. Boycott her performances, sure, maybe picket outside because any opportunity to get the anti-fascist message out is good, and if the ballet company want shot of her because she's bringing them adverse publicity I will have no sympathy for her, but it isn't like she's getting much of a chance to preach racist crap from the stage.

A school, however, is a very different scenario. Teachers can exert a whole lot of influence on young people. And BNP members are not known for keeping their gobs shut about their beliefs. Even if they do, there's the deeper issue of merely holding a racist attitude in a classroom - if a teacher objects, even without speaking these objections out loud, to the presence of black, Asian, or any immigrant children in a class or to friendships (or more than that, if we're talking high school) between children of different races, it is far from impossible that the children will pick up on the bad vibes anyway.

I hope John Dunford is right when he claims that 'Teacher racism is rare', but to be honest any racist incident in a school classroom is unacceptable, even between the children themselves, and especially if instigated by the teacher. And, as above, there's the question of attitude and unspoken racism and the effect that could have.

Oh, and there's also the small matter of giving the BNP respectibility, which while a bit of a side issue in this case is certainly never a good thing...

Hitchhiking through animal ethics

For reasons that may become clearer, I've been taking an interest lately in Douglas Adams' Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy, and in particular The Restaurant at the End of the Universe.

This book contains what is now a popular thought experiment, relating to an animal that wants to be eaten and can clearly express that desire. You could say it goes against the popular animal rights slogan 'animals can't speak for themselves'. This is a bit dubious, we'll get to that in a minute though. The interesting thing for now is the humans' (loose sense of the word - humanoids?) reaction. Arthur, the hero of the story, is horrified that a talking animal is offering 'its'* own body parts for consumption. It is, he says, 'heartless' to eat an animal that asks to be eaten. At which point Zaphod raises the question of whether it is worse than eating an animal that does not want to be eaten. Thinking about it, this is a very strange response and one which doesn't come up often - Arthur is not a vegetarian that I know of, he didn't object during his 'normal' life on Earth to eating animals and there is no indication that he questioned farming practices. It is almost like the consent acts as a provocation to him to think about these issues for the first time, with a suicidal bovine at the table and the destruction of the universe as a backdrop.

This is strange, as I have tended to encounter the thought experiment in question as something pushed at me by meat-eaters who wish to know if I would a) compromise on my vegetarianism (actually veganism but that isn't the question here) if I were not forcing death on an animal or b) respect an animal's 'right' to be killed and eaten. The answer being, no I wouldn't. I don't have to dirty my hands (well, mouth) to respect a desire I don't agree with.

Of course the waters are muddied when the creature lets slip that s/he has been specially bred to a) want to be eaten and b) be able to express that clearly. Is it really a desire, or even consent, if it has been conditioned? I'd be inclined to see this as a more insidious form of exploitation than standard animal farming practices - and argue, tongue almost in cheek, that maybe it would be better to breed humans with no desire to eat animals!

*I prefer not to call animals 'it'. This is the designation given in the story. I'm repeating it to save guessing about gender.