Tag Archives: politicians

What Is Truth?

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I’m sceptical (or skeptical if you’re in the US). It’s a legacy of my years of believing the promises of Christianity. Preachers, pastors, Bible study leaders told me for 25 years that the promises of the bible, of Jesus himself, were all true. And like a fool I believed them. Jesus had made a new creature out of me; he loved me; he was guiding my life; he was returning soon; I’d be resurrected; I’d live in heaven forever… and on and on.

What a preposterous set of propositions! It took my Great Realisation, my own personal revelation that there was no God, to make me see how ridiculous they were.

It is this that left me with a legacy of scepticism. If I’d been misled all this time by people I respected and admired, what else was I accepting as true that very well might not be? I wasn’t going to be fooled again and so began to question practically everything I was told by authorities, experts and the media. If it seemed ‘off’, as we say these days, not quite right or too good (or bad) to be true I asked, ‘Who says so?’, ‘How do they know this?’, ‘What is the evidence?’, ‘Do they jump to conclusions or is their reasoning sound?’, ‘Why should I believe what they say?’ It’s exhausting, I assure you, having to search out the evidence – the primary sources of information – and to sift through it, recognising any bias that has been imposed on it. It’s either this or I must accept without question that everything I’m told is true. I can’t do that any more.

Here are a few examples of claims that I’ve been sceptical of on the recent past:

We are being guided by the science, said politicians during Covid to ensure compliance with whatever lockdown measures were being imposed. Did this really just mean was ‘we are being guided by our interpretation of some rather suspect data’? It became clear after we emerged from the hysteria surrounding the pandemic that this was the case.

Tens of thousands will die of Covid unless you comply: this based on computer predictions which turned out to be very far from accurate: the suspect data that ‘guided’ politicians.

A woman can have a penis. A man can have cervix. Yes, our politicians told us this during our recent fixation with transgenderism. Whatever you think of people changing sex, these two statements, designed to change hearts and minds, if not penises and cervixes, are patently false. Whatever was guiding those who said such things, it certainly wasn’t ‘the science’.

No more irresponsible, undeliverable promises. So said the Prime Minister exactly a year ago. I’m not going to be sceptical or cynical about this. I feel sure it’ll turn out to be true. Is he implying though that promises made earlier than this were indeed ‘irresponsible and undeliverable’. Surely not.

We will not raise taxes on working people (and energy prices will fall by £300 in the long term), Labour politicians, now the government, said only last year in an attempt to gain our votes. I was sceptical about this, as with much they said, and for the first time in many years Labour did not get my vote. Taxes have increased considerably for working people and everyone else in the last year and are set to rise again this week. The price of energy has risen too, by 18%, and will do so again in January. A £300 reduction by 2030, if it happens at all, is not really going to offset this by much. This was all very predictable; since when do politicians tell us the truth in order to get us to vote for them?

Anything Donald Trump says. Insert your selection here.

The NHS is the envy of the world. Pundits and politicians are very fond of this one. They like to add too that the NHS is underfunded. But the NHS is expensive, management heavy and wasteful. Is it really the envy of the world, and if it is, so what, when it’s constantly in crisis at home?

The BBC is the envy of the world. It is impartial and balanced. Is it? A number of independent reviews have determined that it has its own agendas and biases. During lockdowns it fuelled hysteria and now contributes to climate change panic. Rather than reporting facts, it tells us too often what we’re meant to think about issues. It has also been rocked over the past dozen years by sleaze and scandals.

Islam is a religion of peace. So many questions about this one. Many Western politicians have claimed something like it. President George W. Bush did, shortly after 9/11. Perhaps ordinary Muslims are committed to peace but there are many Islamists (the term now used for Muslim extremists) are evidently not: as well as 9/11 there have been acts of Islamist terrorism in London (7th July 2005), at Charlie Hebdo in Paris, in Manchester, the slaughter in the street of an off duty soldier, the massacre of Israeli young people in October 2023, the killing of Christians and others in Nigeria.. Is ‘Allahu Akbar’ really a cry of peace?

We can halt or reverse the climate changes we ourselves have caused. Can we? Who says? (Greta Thunberg, yes, but no actual scientists that I can find.) We can perhaps mitigate and slow down the change, and we should. But the climate will continue to change. Are these changes solely the fault of us humans – we’re contributing to the pace of change, certainly – when the climate has been in constant change from time immemorial?

I was accused of trying to be a maverick in a recent comment on an old post. Honestly, I’m not. It’s more a case of ‘once bitten, twice shy’; I’m not going to be told ever again what to think, especially not by those who don’t present good reasons why I should (I’ve Jesus to thank for this). Everything needs to be questioned, otherwise our minds are not our own. Be sceptical.

Two Ways of Knowing

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A Christian friend told me recently that there are two ways of knowing: science and faith. I don’t agree with him of course and, while I expressed my scepticism, I didn’t argue. It seemed unlikely he would change his mind.

Faith and science have different, incompatible concepts of reality. The first – and faith was first historically – is that there is an invisible realm beyond this one, populated by powerful beings who influence and manipulate the humans who live here below. This reality, though invisible and largely undetectable, is actually more real than the one we see around us. Glimpses have been had of it, however, by those finely attuned to it, in dreams, visions and messages delivered during heightened emotional states. These visionaries – prophets – then pass on to others what the beings of the hidden realm expect of them. Life is then to be lived according to the instructions so conveyed, which usually consist of attempts to appease these gods by doing their bidding. In return for this obsequience, you’re allowed to believe you will live on after death

The other epistemology – actually the only true epistemology in this instance – is empirical, knowledge-based science. A later arrival, historically speaking, than the gods of the invisible realm. The scientific method is the best tool we have for sifting knowledge from superstition and emotion. These, particularly the latter, often impede us in our pursuit of knowledge, which is why science strives to eliminate them from its investigations, taking an objective approach to evidence. Unfortunately, the findings of science are occasionally contradictory (can a man become a woman or not?) and very often misinterpreted by non-scientists. Politicians and the media frequently over-simplify science’s findings and interpret them in ways that suit their own agendas.

Then there are those who masquerade as scientists but are not. During the pandemic, the UK was locked down for almost two years on the basis of computer predictions of what might happen if certain conditions prevailed. These predictions were taken as a scientific conclusion when in fact they were hypotheses, which by their very nature, could not be tested. Needless to say, they turned out to be drastically wrong. Computer projections are not, in themselves, science.

Science, through its practical offspring, medicine and technology, has undoubtedly been a boon to humankind, in a way religion never has. It has also sometimes been a curse too, inflicting us with, amongst other things, an arsenal of ever deadlier weapons, the means of destroying the environment and Covid itself. Science is a tool and like any tool can be wielded both constructively and destructively.

So, perhaps the gods will save us from our own folly after all. If only they and their invisible realm existed. Alas (or thankfully) they don’t; there is zero evidence for them, and visions, dreams and wishful thinking as reliable means of knowing about them. We’re on our own. Science is the best hope we’ve got, our only sure-fire way of knowing. If only politicians and the media understood it more than they seem to.

On my Mind

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After a lifetime of voting in national and local elections I think it unlikely I will ever vote again. I am disillusioned with politicians of all stripes and at every level. Their decisions over the last few years have been disastrous and certainly not for the betterment of the British people. After so many broken promises I can’t find it in myself to believe in them any more.

Leaders and politicians take us into war but it is always ordinary people, quietly going about their everyday lives, who suffer. Religion lies at the heart of the conflict in the Middle East, motivating terrorist acts of unimaginable brutality. A god at war with himself, with innocents paying the price.

The human capacity for overreaction does not solve problems. Every unusual event is now classified as a crisis to which we respond irrationally and without resolution. In the UK during the 21st century, we (or rather politicians and leaders) have failed to address or resolve:

The so-called millennium bug (came to nothing after unnecessary panic and the waste of millions of pounds);

Foot and mouth disease (millions of healthy animals slaughtered, many lives ruined);

Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction (never located and never used; non-existent. The irrational insistence by western powers that they did exist led to war and the destabilisation of the world);

Covid pandemic (lockdowns did not protect the vulnerable and elderly but successfully crashed the economy, from which the UK has still to recover);

Net-zero (electric cars, heat pumps and Ulez zones will not save the planet, yet they and similar measures will impoverish millions. We do not have the technology to halt, let alone reverse, climate change; it is hubris to think we will);

Illegal immigration (the UK and other European nations cannot cope with the strain on our infrastructure. Meanwhile the tax payer funds the accommodation of people who are here illegally, the system fails to process legal asylum seekers and politicians dither).

The narrative of the day, be it trans/gender issues, racial identity or climate change must not be challenged. Get with the agenda or be abused and cancelled. Whatever happened to free speech? I’m concerned about the attempts to control our thinking here in the UK.

Alarmist media that spend more time espousing their own opinions and endlessly speculating than reporting facts.

AI: More artificial than intelligent, AI is a disaster so far. Imagine Alexa handling the complexities of your business transactions or your banking and data security: ‘I don’t know the answer to that. Please try asking a different question (I.e. one that has no bearing on what you need to know but which fits my algorithmic agenda.)’ Does the human intelligence foisting AI on us bother to test the interface of AI and real, frustrated people?

Does bureaucracy exist only for its own self-perpetuation?. It certainly seems so.

 

 

On Climate Change

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Climate Change is happening.

But, like young Sheldon, I have questions.

The UK’s carbon emissions are, according to the government’s official figures, 1.1%, while China, USA, India, Russia and Japan produce 58% between them: will the UK reducing its output by 1.1% to zero make any substantive difference to carbon levels and the climate?

Why, as Tony Blair asked last week, are ordinary households being expected to foot the bill for the UK government’s net zero measures? Why not those who produce the most carbon?

When China alone produces 28% of the world’s emissions, and is doing nothing to reduce these – in fact it is increasing them year on year – what use will it be if the UK impoverishes itself in its drive to net zero?

Why does the UK government feel the need to regard itself as a world leader in the drive to net zero when no-one cares what the UK is doing?

Is net zero achievable when the generation of power always produces some level of pollution? How is global net zero achievable when powers like China and Russia refuse to reduce their carbon emissions?

If there is widescale changeover to electric vehicles by 2030 (a UK target for new cars) will there be enough electricity to power them? How will all this extra electricity be generated?

Given most carbon emissions worldwide are from electricity plants, why is the population being ‘encouraged’ to change from oil powered vehicles to electric ones that require electricity plants to create their fuel?

Why do Just Stop Oil and other eco-activists travel to their demonstrations in transport powered by oil and other fossil fuels? Why do they heat their homes using these same fuels? Why do they have mobile phones made from plastic derived from oil, to communicate with each other? Why don’t they demonstrate themselves the kind of behaviour they demand from everyone else?

Why does one of Just Stop Oil‘s leading spokespersons, Dr Grahame Buss, take a £1 million pound pension from Shell Oil while demanding ‘the masses’ must be the ones to make radical changes?

Why do politicians travel by private jet and in motorcades to Climate Change conferences? Why don’t they demonstrate themselves the kind of behaviour they demand from everyone else?

Why, when climate is defined as weather over prolonged periods of time, does the media show us pictures of isolated weather conditions to illustrate climate change?

Do forests spontaneously and naturally combust?

Did the recent wildfires in Greece and elsewhere spontaneously combust as the direct result of high atmospheric temperatures or were they, as the evidence suggests, started either deliberately or through human carelessness? If so, why does the media portray them as examples of the effects of climate change?

Who decided that scrub and undergrowth in forests should no longer be cleared? Why did they, when layers of scrub and undergrowth, once alight, ensure fires spread more rapidly?

If, according to NASA, there has been a decrease in the total number of square kilometers burned each year (and) between 2003 and 2019, that number has dropped by roughly 25 percent’, why are recent, highly localised fires being represented – even by NASA! – as an increase attributable to climate change? 

According to UN Secretary General António Guterres, ‘the era of global warming has ended. The era of global boiling has arrived’. What exactly is it that is ‘boiling’? Is it oceans, rivers and lakes? Soil and rocks? Animal bodies? If so, where is the evidence that this is happening? Is such alarmist hyperbole persuasive or remotely helpful in combatting climate change? Or does it lead ‘the masses’ to believe politicians exaggerate the extent of climate change?

Can we slow down or even reverse climate change when it is a natural, inevitable part of nature’s cycle and, in terms of our own contribution, the biggest polluters are not interested?

Are we all doomed?  

The Only Truth

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I long ago lost my Christian faith – though it was more of a conscious uncoupling than carelessness. It simply didn’t make sense any more; it wasn’t the Truth it claimed to be. It wasn’t even a truth.

The legacy of Covid-19 for me has been more loss of faith: in science and scientists, as suggested in the previous post, in the media (as I discussed here) and also in politicians and the police. My faith in politicians was, admittedly, never all that great, but the pandemic delivered the death blow. It’s not that I found the numerous parties at 10 Downing Street and in Whitehall a betrayal of the British people, who were under strict lockdown (though they were); it wasn’t the revelation that those who control our lives do so only with a steady supply of alcohol (though that is also true). It was because they were and are so utterly incompetent. None of the measures taken by the British government, nor the Scottish and Welsh assemblies, halted the spread of Covid. Yet like a dog returning to its vomit (Proverbs 26.11) they returned to the same old measures as if they worked. They imposed universal lockdowns and restrictions, making normal social behaviour a crime, when they should have been protecting the elderly and vulnerable, who then died in their thousands in care-homes and hospitals where many of them picked up the virus in the first place. Meanwhile, over-zealous, heavy-handed police officers fined people for sitting on park benches, threatened to arrest people for not wearing face-masks, stopped and questioned drivers they suspected might be breaking Covid rules and broke up ‘illegal’ gatherings while Downing Street partied on.

What a travesty of a democratically free society the last two years have turned out to be. I doubt I will ever vote again, after a lifetime of doing so. The opposition in the UK, the Labour party, exposed themselves to be as spineless and as cravenly zealous in oppressing people as the Conservative government. They opposed none of its draconian, futile measures. They wanted, in fact, for them to be more extreme. Will we ever return to those freedoms we enjoyed and which were our entitlement before the pandemic struck? Or will politicians cling onto the powers they granted themselves and the police to control the largely compliant hoi polloi? Knowing politicians, I think I know the answer. It’s a spoilt ballot paper for me next time and from now on.

All we have, we ordinary folk, is ourselves. The only ones we can possibly have faith in are our loved ones; partners, family and friends. See yourself through life. Take care of these others. Call upon anyone outside of this circle only when necessity dictates. Never believe that government, religion, science, the media or police are on your side and are going to do anything for you.

As Paul Simon wrote many years ago:

And so you see I have come to doubt
All that I once held as true.
I stand alone without beliefs;
The only truth I know is you.

He was talking about his then girl-friend, Kathy but the sentiment is applicable to you and your loved ones. If you’re doing anything but relying on and looking after these people, you are pursuing an illusion.

Very Naughty Children

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Remember when you were a child in primary school and the whole class was kept in at playtime because one or two individuals couldn’t behave themselves? Remember how unjust that felt? You’d done as you were told, as had most of your classmates, and yet there you were, stuck inside while other groups played out. All because of the actions of a few. When I became a teacher myself I vowed I would never do this to whole classes of children. Those who couldn’t behave would be the ones to face the consequences of their actions, not those who had. To the best of my memory, I kept this promise.

The sense of injustice I felt as a child when I was punished because of others’ misdemeanours returned this week, when UK health secretary Sajid Javid threatened the entire country with a Christmas lockdown if more eligible people didn’t take up their Covid booster jab. The ‘booster’ amounts to a third shot because, it turns out, the effects of the first two vaccinations last only six months. I have my booster booked for tomorrow. And yet, having done the right thing for myself and others, I could still be faced with the prospect of having Christmas curtailed because, according to Sajid Javid, too many people have been naughty children and haven’t done as they were told.

If this is the case, might it not be because the populace as a whole has grown tired, not to mention altogether sceptical, of politician’s promises about Covid?

       ‘Lockdown for three weeks to flatten the peak of the epidemic’ we were told by the Prime Minister in March 2020.

       Lockdown again, for a month, in November 2020, this time to protect the NHS.

        Stay locked down for over six months.

     Keep your distance, wear a mask, get tested – with which we all complied – and we’ll stop the infection from spreading.

       Get the injection and we’ll soon see off this pandemic;

       Get a second and save grandma;

     Vaccinate your children and erm… we’ll soon see off this pandemic (again).

      Get the booster jab and you can have Christmas. (What will it be after another six months? ‘Have your fourth shot or we won’t let you go on holiday’?)

While these measures may have been effective (the fact we’re still being threatened with lockdowns might suggest otherwise), the means by which we have been coerced into compliance has been through blackmail and bullying. Only a couple of days ago, NHS chief Amanda Pritchard claimed that hospitalisations are currently 14 times higher than they were this time last year. This was a lie. They are considerably lower, as the government’s own data shows. (Regrettably, Ms Pritchard neglected to mention that the NHS itself has been responsible for the deaths of about 11,600 people who caught Covid while in hospital for other ailments.)

I’ll be having my booster and I’ll be having Christmas too, regardless of what an authoritarian career politician and inept NHS chiefs tell me. If we have learnt anything as a result of the pandemic about those who govern us it is that they really do not have the first idea what they are doing. Nor do they know how to manage people. Bullying, blackmailing and punishing the whole class because of a few naughty children is not the way.