Good for them.

Springer opera is offensive, says Springer

What a bizarre story. Jerry Springer doesn’t like Jerry Springer: The Opera. So why the heck did he stick his name on it?

The fact that he uses the word “don’t” may possibly suggest that he’s on the defensive, don’t you think? My favourite quote, though:

I don’t make religious jokes…
I don’t know if they should have had it on television but, good Lord, if you don’t like what’s on television, that’s why God gave us remote controls.

But I must thank Jerry for clearing up a huge point of confusion:

I don’t own the BBC

As I say, this is the one of the most bizarre interviews I’ve ever read.

Abusive calls give BBC chiefs a Jerry Springer moment (Guardian)

Christians complaining about fictional abuse in an Opera screen on BBC Two make threatening and abusive phone calls to BBC Executives, meaning that they now have to be protected by guards? If they’re doing it themselves in real life, why do they complain about it in fiction?

1: Alan Bennett had open-heart surgery in Spring 2019 and the news completely passed me by.

2: A paucity of Papal patience provides problematic publicity for a Pontiff preaching peaceful pacifism to pious pilgrims.

3: Norovirus probably causes about two-thirds of care home outbreaks of gastrointestinal disease.

4: Fewer than 20% of schools in Texas teach children about safe sex. Texas is among the States with the highest teen pregnancy rate. Any connection is disputed by conservatives.

5: I’m reading Matt Haig’s Reasons to Stay Alive at the moment, and there’s a line advocating for greater ‘mood literacy’ which I found a rather lovely turn of phrase. It reminded me of this blog post advocating examination of one’s own response to the outside world to better understand one’s mood. Both taught me something about self-examination.

6: One of the room booking systems at work requires me to “invite” a given room to attend a meeting. I’ve now learned through bitter experience that rooms can decline invitations… which felt a little humiliating, even if it does open up a whole new seam of entertaining insults (e.g. “that meeting sounds so pointless that even the room declined the invitation”).

7: Populist ‘knee-jerk’ reactions in politics are commonly discussed and clearly dangerous. I’ve been reminded today by an article on the lack of legislation around in vitro fertilisation research in the USA that the opposite—a complete failure to react because issues are complex and divisive—can be just as dangerous.

8: Merely possessing a placebo analgesic, without even opening it, has been shown to reduce pain intensity.

9: The average age of a BBC One viewer is 61. If one considers that a problem, as the BBC seemigly does, then I suppose one might conclude that removing children’s programmes from the channel was not the right approach.

10: The Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh is only a short walk from the city centre and is a great place for a winter stroll. The uphill walk back to the city centre is a touch more tiring.

11: Over the past decade, the proportion of the UK’s electricity generated from wind and solar power has increased from 2.4% to 20.5%. The proportion from coal has fallen from 31% to 2.9%. (As reported in Positive News, though the specific article isn’t online.)

12: Aspiring comedians often go on ‘introduction to stand up’ courses. I’d never thought about these sorts of courses existing, but of course they do.

13: More than half of Luxembourgers speak four languages. The best-selling newspapers in Luxembourg have articles in two languages. This makes me feel inadequate.

14: In the 1990s, John Major mooted renaming Heathrow airport after Churchill, while Lindsay Hoyle and William Hague fancied naming it after Diana.

15: I have long known the North East is an outlier for antibiotic prescribing in primary care, but hadn’t fully realised until a meeting today that the North East isn’t an outlier for antibiotic prescribing in secondary care.

16: I was surprised to read that a survey suggested that only one in three people on the UK knows the standard VAT rate is 20%, and one in ten knows the basic rate of national insurance is 12%. But then, on reflection, my own surprise surprised me, because I don’t really know how or why I know those figures myself. I’m sure there are plenty of similar figures on which I’d have no idea myself!

17: Since last September, Monday to Friday, the City of London Magistrates’ Court has been filled by Extinction Rebellion defendants from around the country.

18: The developers of Morecambe’s Central Retail Park have “put an extraordinary amount of effort into stylising the car park” including quirky themed artworks, sculpted steel waves and effigies of seabirds diving for fish.

19: In the US, a broadly similar amount is spent on treatment for back pain ($88bn) and treatment for cancer ($115bn).

20: Office for National Statistics Travel to Work Areas are an interesting way of dividing up the country.

21: Civil servants in China cannot ordinarily be dismissed. One wonders what Dominic Cummings makes of that.

22: Over 70% of 12- to 14-year-olds in China are short-sighted. The Communist Party has set targets for reducing that, leading to some slightly strange practices in schools, including compulsory twice-daily eye massages and dressings-down for those whose sight worsens over time.

23: It’s not a public health emergency of international concern.

24: Blinded trials are not always best. I remember having to write an essay or answer an exam question on this topic at some point in the past, but haven’t really thought critically about it in years.

25: The attendance fee for the 2020 World Economic Forum in Davos is 27,000CHF (£21,400). I will never complain about medical conference registration fees again!

26: Luxury branded homes—as in, “I live in a Bulgari residence” or “I’m in the Porsche apartments”—are now a thing. Is it possible that this is a global conspiracy to see how far the definition of “gauche” can be pushed?

27: “We fill our days with doing laundry, replacing our brake pads at the auto shop, or making a teeth-cleaning appointment with the dentist, in the expectation that everything will be fine. But it won’t. There will be a day that kills you or someone you love.”

28: “To err is manatee. A manatee might mistake a swimmer’s long hair for shoal grass and start munching away, oblivious to the attached figure. To err is baby elephant, tripping over her trunk. To err is egg-eater and moonrat and turnstone and spaghetti eel, and whales, who eat sweatpants.“

29: Pulmonary tuberculosis can be detected in babies by doing PCR tests on faecal specimens. Sensitivity of the test varies according to the exact methods used, and this is an active area of research.

30: It’s a public health emergency of international concern.

31: The TV series Love Island has an unexpectedly innovative business model which involves selling items seen on the show via the app which viewers download to vote for contestants.

I’ve said before that Caffè Nero is my natural third place. I don’t think I’ve admitted online before that I like their tea blend so much that I once bought a whole box of teabags from them… Mmm!

Mark Oaten has been forced to resign as the Lib Dem Home Affairs Spokesman, as he has some, erm, Home Affairs of his own to take care of, after some Away-from-Home Affairs to be reported in tomorrow’s News of the World.

The 41-year-old father of two allegedly had an affair with a 23-year-old rent boy. If you’re going to screw up your career, I guess you should do it in style – and a homosexual affair with someone half your age is about as far as one can credibly go, I guess.

Some will no doubt claim that it’s unfair he’s had to resign over something which says nothing about his professional competance, and I have some sympathy with that point of view. But it’s just not a realistic stance to take in today’s society, sadly. He had to resign, because he would never be allowed to talk about the issues.

More surprising is that he gave a classic non-apology in his statement, of the type perfected by New Labour:

I would like to apologise for errors of judgement in personal behaviour and for the embarrassment caused, firstly to my family but also to my friends, my constituents and my party.

He apologises for errors in judgement – that is, getting caught – and the embarrassment it caused, but not actually for the incident itself. Which is surprising, because I thought he’d be the kind of guy to give a grovelling apology practically for being born. But then, I guess he’d have had to resign as an MP as well if he’d gone down that route, so perhaps it’s not so surprising.

On something of a sidenote, it’s been an amazing couple of weeks for the NoTH – Sven allegations last week, more promised this week, a journalist in the Palace, and Oaten allegations this week. Certainly not bad going on their part.
One Springeresque final thought on Mr Oaten: His website hasn’t been updated yet. It says

It’s been an eventful past couple of weeks … I’m looking forward to a quiet weekend with my family before making any decisions on what the future may hold.

Somehow, I doubt he got his wish.

One of the stories which dominated this site earlier in the year has finally reached a resolution: The good people at Ofcom have taken a proper objective look at the Opera, and decided that the BBC were right to screen it. Hurrah for sanity!

Going off now at something of a tangent, the more I learn about death, and the more I listen to cases of people who are dying, the less I like the idea of Christianity. What’s the point in life if it goes on forever? Surely it’s much more special and valuable if you only get your three score years and ten? Besides which, isn’t it far more beautiful as an idea that you simply return from ashes to ashes, and complete the natural cycle of life, returning to the earth and nature, rather than some fanciful idea that you ascend to an effectively pointless eternal life?

And doesn’t evolution – the idea that by pure chance, nature has produced an species with the ability to philosophise – make life far more precious than it simply being the result of some deity’s day-job?

I know which belief I prefer. But that’s not to say it’s any better than anybody else’s.

I can’t believe this battle is still raging. I’ve extensively commented on my views in the past, so I won’t rake over old ground again. Suffice to say, what ever happened to tolerance and living in peace with your fellow man? Especially when your fellow man is actually standing up for your values, albeit in a comic way, borrowing imagery from your religion.

Frankly, The Passion of Christ should be much more offensive as far as I can see, what with that elevating Mel Gibson to the level of God, and actually portraying the Biblical characters – unlike The Opera, which only portrays a corrupt individual’s disturbed imagination of the characters.

The moral minority (Guardian)

An interview with Stephen Green, director of Christian Voice, on the subject of his crusade to stop this ‘tidal wave of filth’ and Jerry Springer: The Opera.

I’ve not chuckled to myself for this long in ages.

“Nobody can deny that the last 50 years of legislation have turned us away from the laws of God. We say that God knows best and if we go away from God we’re going to bring judgment upon ourselves.” What kind of judgment? “Read Deuteronomy 28 – that tells you.” Deuteronomy 28 says many things. Verse 17, for example, says that if you do not obey the Lord your God and do not carefully follow all his commands and decrees, “your basket and your kneading trough will be cursed” – not something that would compel many 21st- century sinners to adhere to the straight and narrow.

Perhaps Mr Green isn’t as familiar with The Bible as he claims?

How many members do they have? “We’re bigger than David’s band, but not as big as Biblical armies,” says Green, gnomically … According to 1 Samuel 29:6, David, the future king of Israel, had a 600-strong band of followers, though their leader was not, as the Christian Voice is, based in Surbiton.

It surprises me that this group has more than 600 members. Who are these people?

The website also complains that Britain has “abolished the death penalty but legalised the murder of children in the womb, enacted no-fault divorce on demand and forced mothers out to work, legalised trading on the Lord’s day and instituted a national lottery, legalised pornography and homosexual acts and taught evil to our children in school, and given away the Queen’s sovereignty – owed to Almighty God alone – to the EU …

The spur for Christian Voice’s establishment was Edwina Currie’s 1994 amendment to reduce the age of consent for gay sex to 16, the same as for heterosexual sex.

He should be a Daily Mail columnist! Or maybe he is Melanie Philips in disguise!

This is an interesting take on the reaction to the broadcast of Jerry Springer: The Opera. I do hope that, up to now, I’ve not said anything which people will consider offensive, because that’s simply not what this blog is about. I certainly hope I don’t come over as dictating what people can and can’t be offended by. However, the blog post I point to makes me slightly uneasy, simply because of quotes like this:

Blogging should be something that adds to this world’s knowledge and understanding, not a means of disseminating predjudice.

Just as I should not dictate what offends him, why should he dictate what blogging should be about for me? Especially when posts such as this prejudge the opera. I do not pretend to understand why people would find this opera offensive, unless they take specific parts completely out of context. And, let’s face it, we can do that with the Bible and be mortally offended.

I used to attend church quite regularly, until a particular question occured to me – not a question, I hasten to add, that is meant as an insult to Christians, more a question that exposes my ignorance. How can people who claim to believe that what they do in their life of about 70 years could result in eternal damnation possibly lead anything like a normal life? If they truly believed that there was a possibility of spending an infinite amount of time in unbearable suffering, surely they would spend a relatively tiny seventy years in abject squalor, dedicating every second of their life to the service of God. Surely they would have followed Jesus’s example and given up all of their possessions and wealth to dedicate their life to their religion. And yet very few Christians, and almost none of the clergy, do this. Why have large church buildings when the Bible tells us that we best serve God when serving others? Surely the buildings should be sold, and the money distributed to the poor? So my, no doubt ignorant, conclusion from this is that very few people actually believe in the God portrayed in the Bible. Certainly none of the people threatening to burn their TV Licences can truly believe in God, because how do they consider that sitting watching TV is dedicating their life to their Lord?