Category Archives: Op-eds

Figures carried on the Liberal Democrat’s national website reveal some quite shocking statistics. Over 70,000 young people have been admitted to hospital for self-harm related injuries in the last four years, an increase of 35%; 4,000 have been admitted for eating disorders, which represents an increase of 10%.

Defining self-harm can be problematic. I have seen websites which define it broadly enough to include smoking and the use of narcotics. A broad definition is not helpful because there are clear differences.

For example, a smoker or a drug addict will become chemically addicted to their particular vice (although they …

Battlestar Gallactica, the cult science-fiction television show, starts its fourth and final season this week. Since 2004 it has won some critical acclaim and a cult following despite being confined to satellite TV.

Although reading too much into what remains a fictional show produced for entertainment is tricky, it’s hard to avoid the imprint made on the show by the ‘war on terror’. Other big issues are tackled but the underlying premise of the show is undoubtedly dealing with a post 9/11 world. The premise, of a civilisation on the brink and on the run is unquestionably one that dominates political dialogue day in and day out. Impending economic upheavals are only likely to deepen this feeling of drift and in some quarters of outright despair with the ‘state we are in’.

BSG ‘ReImagined’ began back in 2004 with ‘humanities’ children’, the robotic Cylons, who can now take on human appearance launching a massive strike against the Twelve Colonies of Kobol. William Adama’s Battlestar Gallactica, a relic from the first Cylon war due to be pensioned off as a museum, is the only Battlestar left standing after the Colonies’ defence system is crippled. Nuclear holocaust ensues and the Colonies are set aflame. This is definitely how 9/11 felt to a lot of people – like it was the end of the world, the ‘end of everything’. Terrorism’s great power has always lain in it’s ability to inflict damage, but, more potently, also in the shadows it creates in people’s minds.

In reality, it was not the end of the world or anything even remotely like it but it was the end of a sense of security that ‘our’ way of doing things would be left permanently unchallenged having survived the Cold War.

50,000 survive, and the subsequent episodes follow those 50,000 in their quest to find a mythical 13th colony, Earth. Of course, with the Cylons being able to assume human form this causes a mass questioning of identity Here we have a discourse on the ‘war on terrors’ recruitment to the side of the terrorists of many people who ‘look like us’, or else share our nationality. The ‘enemy’ is not a foreign state – it is stateless – and this in and of itself is challenging us to think outside of the box.

The question of legitimate grievance is also raised. Some of the Cylons are religious zealots, hell-bent on imposing their ‘god’ on humanity (something that is emphasised in series 3 as the Cylons occupy New Caprica) while others harbor serious anger towards humanity for the enslavement and abasement of their race.

Values and established ways of doing things are constantly questioned as the fleet finds itself fighting not just the Cylon’s but it’s own demons; the savagery and baseness of the struggle to survive, the difficult choices that are faced it in that struggle.

We need to be asking ourselves those same questions.

Is it good enough for us to present an image of ourselves as a faultless enduring force for good? Or should we be honest about the times when our foreign policy has shown a callous disregard for the human consequences of our actions?

I am sure I speak for everybody reading this when I express disgust at the recent actions of the Chinese government in Tibet; however what to do in response is far from a given. Calls for an outright boycott of the 2008 games, hosted by Beijing, remain relatively few and far between at the present time with more serious consideration being given to a call for a boycott of opening ceremony are more wide-spread and have been given an airing by prominent politicians like Nancy Pelosi, speaker for the US House of Representatives.

Meanwhile European politicians are making noises in favour of boycotting the opening ceremony. The President of the European Parliament, Hans-Gert Pöttering, told Germany’s Bild am Sonntag that ‘boycott measures’ could be justified. French President Nicolas Sarkozy has hinted he may not attend the opening ceremony and it is a French organisation, Reporters Without Borders, that is at the forefront of the campaign for a ‘political boycott’ of the opening ceremony. It conducted a poll which found a clear majority (53%-42%) in favour of Sarkozy boycotting the opening and a large minority (41%) in favour of a total boycott by French athletes.

Olympic committees have however opposed the boycott; complaining variously that the athletes and Chinese people will be the ones to suffer or that such issues simply should not be allowed to interfere with sport. Russian and Australian ministers have joined the opposition camp; the Russian government said that it would like to;

underscore that efforts to politicize the holding of the 2008 Summer Olympic Games in China are unacceptable,”

and Australian Foreign Minister Stephen Smith added:

I very strongly believe that we should not in any way bring the Olympics or call the Olympics into question.”

Politics spilling over into sport is not, of course, without precedent – there are numerous instances of the Olympics themselves being involved in political brinkmanship. China itself put pressure on Canada to not allow the Taiwanese team to compete as the ‘Republic of China’ at the Montreal games in 1976. It is hard to avoid the impression that politicians opposed to the boycott are taking as much a political position as it’s proponents. Russian memories no doubt reach back to the 1980 Moscow games and Australia no doubt seeks to cause the minimum offence to a near-neighbour and trading partner; Beijing itself will no doubt use the games to promote not just China but also bolster the credibility of it’s regime. Therefore we can dismiss out of hand the facile arguments of the Olympic committees whose own athletes are uncomfortable and want the International Olympic Committee to make a stand.

If the IOC wished for a non-political games then it is hard to see why it chose China in the first place with its government that is rightly bitterly disliked by people who hold democratic ideals close to their heart.