SWLH: Democracy Under Threat?

I go to most of the South West London Humanists (SWLH) discussion meetings but I remain bad at writing them up afterwards, despite always taking notes. 

The exception this time is more an attempt to get back into the habit of posting something that a response to this particular topic; though democracy is something I think and talk about a lot so I was particularly interested in this opportunity to discuss it further.

Oddly, despite my interest in this topic I took no notes during the discussion. I will try to explain why.

The discussion was seeded by a short presentation on the history and status of democracy and we were then asked to consider the threats and opportunities for it. What I felt was missing was any definition of democracy or any argument for why it is necessarily a good thing and without that foundation the conversations were very superficial. 

There was also the false assumption that democracy is ok now but is threatened by people like Trump. Whereas we already have a system where a lot of people do not register to vote, even more do not vote at all, the Government frequently breaks its own laws, media is controlled by a few billionaires with very firm agendas and the judicial system is ineffective because it is swamped.

Yes, we should consider things like maximum terms for elected officials, people's panels and other voting systems but they are all just minor tweaks to a failed system. 

For me, the bottom line is the world is in a nasty state (global warming, poverty, oppression, etc. etc.) and democracy has no answer to any of these and may well have caused most of them. We should judge democracy on the results it achieves for society and not on whether we like the people who get elected or not.

South West London Humanists: Discussion on Climate Change

Despite what the lack of postngs to this blog suggests, I have continued to be a good attender at South West London Humanists monthly discussions and it is only a lack of time that has stopped me from writing them up.

It was all a lot easier before I retired because then I could do things in the office and the activity I was displacing was work but now I have to give up something nice, like walking, to make time to do these write-ups.

It was made easier for me this month as we split into three sub-groups for the main discussion and as I was asked to feedback on one group and I had to take some sensible notes! What follows is a summary of the discussion that uses those notes and also my subsequent thoughts. It is a write up of my thoughts on the topic rather than a report on the meeting.

The question we were asked to conjure with was: How can countries do enough to tackle climate change if it makes today's citizens poorer?

Before the discussion the scene was set with a short presentation on climate change. This probably helped to level the understanding but I think that we all already believed that climate change is a significant threat and needed a significant response, one that is lacking so far.

In our group we spent sometime disputing the framing of the question, yes we need to tackle climate change but why should this make us poorer?

What needs to be done and how it is paid for are two different questions and there are plenty of ways to pay for tackling climate changes apart from raising general taxation, e.g. wealth and windfall taxes.

Also some of the measures we should take will actually make most people richer, e.g. renewable energy is cheaper that gas/oil so was can expect energy prices to fall in future. Similarly if we Reduce and Reuse what we buy then we are spending less and Right to Repair will enable us to keep devices for longer.

We also queried the meaning of "poorer". Is someone who wears a jumper rather than switching the central heating poorer? Or someone choosing to cycle to work rather than driving?

And even if we do become poorer we will still be richer than we were, say, twenty years ago (which felt pretty good at that time) and richer than most people on the planet.

We veered slightly off topic (as good conversations often do) to discuss how to make the changes. We thought that changes should be introduced to make it easier for people to move to greener lifestyles, e.g. have more public transport (free!) before banning cars. 

We also felt that any changes should not penalise people who had made what seemed like reasonable decisions at that time and the ULEZ car scrappage scheme is an example of how to do this.

It was a good discussion in which everyone in our group participated enthusiastically and which reached a broad consensus. That does not always happen!

A Wandle walk

This month, the South West London Humanists walk took us about 8km up the Wandle from near its mouth by Wandsworth Town station to Morden Hall Park in, er. Morden.

I saw an opportunity to turn this in to a bigger walk by walking to Wandsworth and back from Morden. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

The quickest route to Wandsworth is to leave Richmond Park at Robin Hood Gate but that then means walking along A3 so I took the usual Roehampton Gate instead, which explains the rather indirect route.

The planning worked quite well and I arrived at Wandsworth Town (last one there) just after the scheduled 10:30 start. They kindly let me get a coffee before we set off.

I had done the Wandle a couple of times and wanted to do it again because of the variety along the way. 

The river gets lost a couple of times in Wandsworth and Earlsfield, goes through a large park and forms a green corridor through some heavy industry with pylons before emerging into the delights of Morden Hall Park.

We finished with lunch in an Irish pub in Morden. I did not fancy the carvery so I just had a Guinness while I watched Newcastle score 5 goals before saying goodbye to my SWLH colleagues and starting the walk home. I was quickly on known territory so it was an easy walk and a chance to listen to some podcasts.

Having skipped the carvery I needed to eat so I went back to Babylon in Raynes Park (I had had a coffee there a few days previously) and indulge in the veggie breakfast. It was a bit modern for my taste, plenty of avocado but no baked beans, but I was hungry and it did the job.

I took the opportunity to go back through Richmond Park and managed to find a slightly different path to the one I had used earlier in the day.

It was a great day out and the three walks worked well together. In total I did 34km in about 8 hours 

20km Embankment to Gunnesbury

Like all of my best walks this one was a combination of routes brought together serendipitously.

The start was a group walk arranged by South West London Humanists and covered some of the parks in Central London and the ending was a less organised solo walk heading to a friendly Tube station via some Pokemon Go target gyms in Hammersmith and Chiswick.

I do the South West London Humanists walks most months mostly because it is an excuse for a walk but also because the banter is fun. The routes tend to be familiar ones but that is no great problem, they are familiar because they are routes worth taking regularly. 

We met at the Riverside Terrace Cafe in Southbank Centre and then headed out to Victoria Tower Gardens, St James's Park, Green Park and Hyde Park where we stopped for another coffee.

From there it was a short and simple walk to the famous The Churchill Arms in Kensington where I had a quite impressive beed and lunch. They do Thai food and I went for a vegetable Jungle Curry (their hottest) which was a very modest £12.

Meal consumed I said farewell to my fellow humanists and started the solo part of the walk.

The first section, down to the river at Hammersmith, was mostly driven by adding new roads to my Citytstrides map and, as a result, I discovered Brook Green and plenty of nice houses.

From there I was on auto-pilot along the river and through Chiswick before finishing at Gunnesbury station. I stopped for yet another coffee (and cake!) at Jajo as the afternoon was drawing on.

Overall the walk was just over 20km and took me about seven hours, including the extensive stops for coffee and lunch. A day well spent.

South West London Humanists: Discussion on Far Right Terror

I love intelligent discussions on interesting subjects and that is why I try to get to the South West London Humanists (SWLH) monthly meetings.

This month we were really luck to get Simon Murdoch, from Hope Not Hate, talking about 'Hate in Britain: anti-Semitism, anti-Muslim bigotry and the Far Right threat' and were doubly lucky in that it coincided with their just published report State of Hate 2020.

I found the presentation before the talk fascinating. I had come across some of this before the breadth and depth of the information was exceptional. It is always good when a talker is fully on top of their subject like that.

My main takes from this part of the evening were:

Far Right organisations (BNP, NF, etc.) are in decline but the Far Right is still very able to get people out for demonstrations and protests. Some of this is built around "personalities" like Tommy Robinson and fuelled by social media.

The rhetoric and arguments of the Far Right have been mainstreamed by the Centre Right including major figures like Nigel Farage, Theres May ("Go home or face arrest") and Boris Johnson ("piccaninnies").

Conspiracy theories are a good way in for recruits; the report gives examples like a gunman who attacked a restaurant because he thought that it was being used by a child sex-trafficking ring led by Hillary Clinton. Conspiracy theorists tend to believe lots of strange things and from there it is a short step to blaming immigrants (or women) for all sorts of things.

There was far more to the talk than that (writing notes while listening is still a skill that I have not mastered) and the report is worth a read to get more details.

The following discussion was less good. There were a couple of people there who wanted to talk about Islamic terrorism despite that not being the subject of the meeting and a couple more who asked questions beyond the expertise of a researcher who contributed to a report - as he tried to explain more than one, the report outlines the current situation and it is up to other people to decide how to respond.

There were some good questions too, and I hope that mine was one of them! I was interested in the mechanisms of the mainstreaming of Far Right memes and mentioned the many appearances of Nigel Farage on BBC Question Time and the way that the programme had highlighted strongly racists comments by a NF Parliamentary Candidate on a recent show. I was pleased that the speaker agreed with me.

The disappointing discussion did not diminish from the presentation and I was glad to learn more about the subject and even gladder that organisations like Hope Not Hate are peering analytically into these dark places.

South West London Humanists: Discussion on Overseas Aid

I like to go to the South West London Humanists monthly meetings because the debates there are interesting and cover an unusual range of topics.

This month the topic was "Why spend so much on overseas aid?" and we were very lucky to have the discussion led by Matthew Rycroft CBE, Permanent Secretary at the Department for International Development, and former British Permanent Representative to the UN.

Matthew Rycroft started his talk with the very good news that the number of people in extreme poverty had halved in the last ten years. But that still meant that 10% of people, that is 700,000 persons, are living in extreme poverty today.

asking us three multiple choice questions on the improvements made in recent years on things like girls' education. In all three cases the most positive answer was the correct one and all three times few, or very few, of us knew that.

The point here is that one of the reasons that Overseas Aid is criticised is that its success is not generally known.

While the picture was positive overall not all countries had made the same progress in all areas and, in particular, progress in sub-Saharan Africa has been lagging.

Matthew then gave us more details of the UN's 17 Sustainable Development Goals which he explained could be summarised as People, Planet, Prosperity, Peace and Partnership.

Having explained what Overseas Aid is for, how it is delivered and what it has achieved, Matthew then opened the floor to questions which led to an interesting discussions. What follows are my views of what various people said.

Corruption is in the eye of the beholder and there is a big difference between government officials siphoning large amounts out of aid projects and poor people having to pay other poor people to get simple things done, like get an appointment with a doctor.

There were various questions suggesting that aid recipient should behave as we tell them and not as we do, e.g. introduce population controls or divert spending from other areas (space programmes were mentioned but are not relevant; India and China do not get any aid from DfID). I think that is a modern form of imperialism, we know what is best for you, and said so. My passion was noted.

The spending of 0.7% of Gross National Income (GNI )is an historical number with no hard science behind it, e.g. it is not the right answer but it is a good one. It may have come from a starting point of 1% with the other 0.3% meant to come from other sectors, notably charities, within the donating countries.

That 0.7% equates to circa £14bn for the UK. To compare, our defence spending target set by NATO is 2% of GDP (a slightly smaller number) which makes that almost three times as big.

Several countries match or exceed that target headed by Sweden who give 1.4%. Given the success story we heard earlier I think that this is clearly money well spend and I would rather the UK was planning to increase the percentage donated rather than spending effort trying to justify what is already spent.

It was a very interesting discussion on an important subject and Matthew Rycroft was a very able and knowledgeable speaker.

South West London Humanists: Discussion on Effective Altruism

I go to the monthly South West London Humanists monthly meetings for intelligent conversations on topics that interest me and in February that was Effective Altruism.

The conversations were seeded by a TED talk given by Peter Singer.

In this he made three main points:

1. We should give more money away than we do
2. We should give it where it has most impact, and that means saving lives in underdeveloped countries
3. We should check that our money is spent wisely.

In his talk he gave several examples to make his point, such as for the cost of rearing and training one guide dog to help one blind person in the USA we could do 2,000 simple eye operations to restore sight to people in Africa.

He also cited the Gates Foundation several times for the amount that they had given and the effectiveness of how it was being spent, e.g. in tackling malaria which kills thousands each year (an estimated 438,000 in 2015).

The arguments having been made we split into small groups and started the conversations. As is my rule, what follows is a mix of comments made by various people and edited by me after the event; it is my summary of the topic and not a record of the evening.

I was not convinced by the praise heaped on the Gates. Despite giving a vast fortune away they still had a fortune left. They had only given away money that they could not spend. Jesus got that right with the Widow's Mite.

While it is easy to say that we should give away all the money that we do not need the problem is we do not know how much money we may need in the future, particularly if we, or somebody else in the immediate family, has a long term illness. Most of us in the room were saving money just in case and would die relatively rich.

I was also concerned about the democratic aspect. Why should the Gateses get to decide where large sum of money should be spent? If we had more taxation and more foreign aid then the process would be both more democratic and more inclusive, i.e. we would catch all the very rich people who are not doing what the Gateses are.

I was interested in the politics behind the initial assumptions. Rather than address altruism I was more interested in addressing the inequality that makes it an issue, i.e. why are we rich while they are poor?

Most, if not all, of the people in the room gave to charities that deal with quality of life issues, e.g. the arts, as well as those that deal with health and well being. While one person said at the end that they might change their mix of giving to spend less on arts most of us felt that quality of life is as important as quantity of life and that we should remain members of the National Trust, Kew Gardens, etc.

In talking about the efficiency of charities Peter Singer wanted as much money as possible to go to the needy but I deliberately give to charities that also do political campaigning, e.g. Shelter, as we need to fix the problems not just help the people caught up in them.

I also felt that charities were under more scrutiny to be efficient than most organisations. I can see waste all around me at work but nobody is monitoring us.

It was an interesting and lively set of conversations but I left with the view that Effective Altruism while much better than no altruism at all fails to address the real point which is the inequality of wealth and health.

Humanist Debate on the Refugee Crisis

I had not managed to get to a South West London Humanists discussion meeting for a few months mainly because the move from Mondays to Tuesday gave me a clash with Big Ideas but that had gone dormant (or had finished) so the SWLH meetings came into the reckoning again. That did not mean that I was certain to go, it needed a reasonable topic too.

The refugee/migrant crisis was a topic I was keen to discuss having done so many times on Twitter while listening to Any Questions on Radio 4. It's a subject I feel passionate about for the same reason that I am a Humanist. These are real people dying and suffering severe hardship and they have as much right to a decent life as anybody else. They are not numbers and being foreign does not make them less important.

The logistics should have been good as Richmond is easy to get to from home and easy to get back to from working in London or Reading. Unfortunately on the day I was working in Leatherhead which means a long walk to the station to catch a train to Clapham Junction and then another one out again to Richmond. I got to The Cricketers soon after 7pm and while the others started to troop upstairs for the socialising I stayed down to have a spicy bean burger and my first pint. Both were good.

I got myself a second pint and went upstairs to join the others. Just in time it transpired as, with fifteen minutes or so to go until the start of the discussion almost all of the chairs was taken and I gratefully grabbed one of the last ones.

The debate was kicked-off by our chairman, Jeremy Rodell, who presented a few slides of numbers taken from the ONS etc. The introduction finished with some more numbers, this time from the Radio 4 programme More or Less. The technology failed so I stepped in and found the programme using my iPad (connected to the pub's wifi) and we plugged it into the speakers to listen.

We then took to table groups to have the discussion before coming together at the end to swap our main points. What follows is a mix of my notes from the time and some subsequent comments mostly things I tweeted during Any Questions a few days later when this topic came up again.

There was consensus that governments should work together both to try and resolve the situations in Syria etc. and to address the refugee problems arising from these conflicts. We do not help these countries or their people by building barbed wire fences in Calais.

But this will take time and I suspect that some countries (ours?) are hiding behind the need for mulit-country agreement as an excuse not to act now.

There was less consensus on what we should do about the immediate problem of the boats crossing the Mediterranean and refugees walking through Turkey. The UK is taking far fewer refugees than most European countries, especially when taking into account our relative population and wealth, and we should take more immediately.

Much as we have with foreign aid, I would like us to commit to being in the top-quartile of refugee takers in Europe. That would be leadership, which is sadly lacking at the moment. We claim to be a compassionate and rich country, now is a good time to prove it.

I was a little surprised, and somewhat disappointed, that a lot of the discussion was about the impact on us and largely ignored that refugees are dying in large numbers. Even if taking in a few refugees made things a little worse for a few people here, and I am not sure that it would, then surely that is a fair exchange for saving lives and giving people a second chance at a decent lives. Surely that is what Humanism means.

The headline from all this is I am deeply ashamed that so many people in this country, including the Government, are willing to watch many people die rather than have the possibility of suffering any discomfort themselves.

Humanist Debate on Nuclear Power

April's monthly debate organised by South West London Humanists  tackled the controversial subject of Nuclear Power.

We went led in our discussion by John Gallop, a physicist working at NPL who had an interest in the topic. He gave a thorough presentation on the history and technology of Nuclear Power and of the UK electricity market that it feeds.

What follows is my usual mix of statements made during the talk, comments made during the subsequent discussion and my further analysis which I do when writing up my notes, and that is the main reason that I do write them up.

Nuclear Power has been used for around 70 years in UK and has been (largely) uncontroversial for most of that time. It has become a current topic of discussion again because of Climate Change (where Nuclear Power is seen as a good thing, or at least a less bad thing) and the Fukushima Daiichi incident in Japan in 2011 (clearly a bad thing).

The European Pressurized Water Reactors (EPWR) used in the UK generate c 11 gigawatts (GW) of power. This compares to the two coal fired power stations that I worked at which each had 4 units producing .5 GW, i.e. 2 GW per station and 4 GW overall.

Baseload demand is around 20 GW. This is the amount of electricity that we consume irrespective of the time of day, the weather or other factors driving demand.

Nuclear Power is well placed to provide baseload electricity but it is difficult (i.e. expensive) to modify generation capacity whereas it is quite simple for piped fuel generators like coal and gas.

Taking all factors in to account, coal is the most dangerous fuel. This is bad both because of the safety issues with mining and the pollution produced. Nuclear Power incidents are rare and do not necessarily kill many people. Nobody has yet dies at Fukushima.

We've already released more CO2 in to the atmosphere than required to meet the relatively safe 2% temperature increase. The need to act is growing.

While it is tempting to move to more Nuclear Power it takes a long time to bring on-stream, well over ten years, and is also very expensive. The recent deal with EDFE to get them to commit to Hinkley Point C guarantees them a price of £92.50 per Mwh for thirty years against a current markey price of around £50/Mwh. There are other hidden costs and subsidies on top of this.

Nuclear Power is a very long-term commitment because of the time they take to build and then need to run to be profitable and this does not fit well in a world where we are moving away from a few large central generators to very many small local generators that operate at the house, street or community level.

Things like smart meters, electric cars and LED lights have the potential to be a game changer by dramatically changing the pattern of demand, i.e. only using electricity when it is freely available, and by giving homes local storage that can be used when electricity is more expensive.

Nuclear Waste is another issue. The only solution we have is to put it into storage for a few thousand years in the hope that it will stay safe all that time or that somebody finds a technical magic wand to get rid of it. Perhaps we'll throw it in to the Sun one day.

The Sun is also a possible solution to most of our energy problems. For example, we could put a large number of solar panels in the Sahara, something around the size of Wales which is a small fraction of the desert area, and that could provide enough energy to power the world.

Most of the discussion in the room was on ways to reduce or manage electricity demand and so remove the need for Nuclear Power or on ways that renewable forms of generation could be used instead. There were no obvious fans of Nuclear Power in the room, which was a shame as we might have had a more rewarding debate if a more diverse range of views had been presented.

Personally the debate helped to shape my view that Nuclear Power is a reasonable technology but it is neither the short-term nor medium-term solution that we need now. And any debate that helps to form views has been a good debate.

Humanist Debate: The Decline in Violence

The monthly debates at organised by the South West London Humanists Group have quickly established themselves in my calendar as they are proving to be very interesting and thought provoking.

April's meeting was no different when we packed in to the upstairs room of the Old Ship in Richmond to discuss the decline in violence. This is a theory from Steven Pinker that has had much coverage in recent years thanks to his talks at TED and the RSA etc. We used one of his videos to spark our debate.

Pinker's talk was wide-ranging and delivered quickly so there was little time to understand, much less challenge, any of his points.

I was happy to accept his general theory that our chances of dying a violent death are now much less than they ever have been but less convinced on some of the reasons that he gave.

I think that there are three possible reasons why violence has reduced:

1. We have got nicer (enlightened) and no longer accept violence as the means to solve conflicts.
2. We have better policemen, including the UN, who stop us from being violent.
3. It is just an accident arising from other changes, e.g. better trade has reduced the need for wars.

It is important to understand the causes for reduced violence if we wish to keep the peace. It is hard to undue enlightenment, though people like Hitler have had a good go at it, but it would be a simple matter to remove global policing.

In our discussion we also looked at what was meant by "violence". Pinker's focus was rather narrow in that he was taking about violent deaths but there are other ways to threaten, subjugate and defeat people. These include bullying at the individual level up to cyber wars at the national level.

Violence may have reduced but that does not mean that conflict has.

I suspect that violence has reduced because we have found better, not nicer, ways of fighting our battles, e.g. an internet troll can abuse somebody with virtual impunity.

There must be a risk that as we plug the holes that allow other forms of conflict, e.g. financial sanctions, that we will return to violence as the best (or least-worst) option for resolving disputes.

The example that most tables came up with was Crimea with Russia seemingly impervious to the sanctions imposed on it which may force the West to consider some for of military engagement. Incidentally most tables also thought that Russia was not as guilty on Ukraine as the West is claiming.

And being Humanists we had to consider the role of religion in this. One argument is that most religions tell us to be nice and that has led to a fall in violence but all the major religions are centuries old and and we are becoming less religious so that does not explain the continued fall since they were established.

A more worrying thought was religious fanaticism (from any religion) could create more conflicts and the promise of life after death could reduce the fear of using violence to resolve those conflicts. Many religions have martyrs.

Or, is religion, like war, a solution to a problem that is now being solved in other more enlightened ways?

Humanist Debate: Ethical Consumerism

I had to make a mad dash back from working in Birmingham for this discussion and it was worth it. The three trains ran on time and I arrived just before the 8pm start with a pint in one hand and a dish of peanuts in the other.

Instead of the usual speaker, the discussion was sparked by a film of a conference where strong views for and against the fair trade model of ethical consumerism were presented.

Please note that when I say "fair trade" I mean all schemes that aim to improve the deal for the local farmers of which FAIRTRADE is but one example.

After watching the film from the side I was able to join a table in the main room for the discussion that followed. I started the evening thinking that fair trade was a no brainer but the discussion showed that it was a complex problem with many aspects to it.

As always I juggled participating in the debate with taking notes and tweeting some of them so what I managed to capture is just my partisan view of part of what we covered.

Fair trading requires intelligent and rational consumers. Which we're not.

Is our new found desire for fair trading White Guilt at how we exploited these countries in the past, and does it matter if it is?

Most of the arguments against fair trade are the much the same as those used to justify attacks on the benefits system here, e.g. taking a grotty low paid job is better than nothing, the money children earn helps their families, etc.

Fair trade is not us doing things to them (the farmers and their communities), not doing fair trade is us doing things to them. Not buying fair traded goods is as much a statement as buying them and if we must but something, e.g. coffee, then we must make a decision between fair traded or not.

Can we export our poverty and close our eyes? We stopped bad working conditions in this country, including child workers and health and safety, because we want better for ourselves and I think it is wrong to expect other countries to adopt a standard that we rejected just to provide us with cheap goods.

Can technology help people more than we can? Or is that just our excuse for dong nothing? This argument is also put for doing nothing about Climate Change, i.e. the scientists will sort it all out somehow before it becomes a real problem so there is no need for us to do anything about it. This may be true (we won't know until we get there) but there is a risk that it does not work and is it fair for us to take that risk when it is other people who will suffer more?

Government's have more power but that does not mean that we should not do what we can. Buying fair trade coffee is one small thing and while it is only a small imperfect step it is better than doing nothing. Do we need more, such as insisting that our pension funds are only invested in ethical companies, and are we prepared to pay the price for this in lower pensions? Sacrificing a few pence on a jar of coffee may be one thing that many people would be prepared to do but how many would sacrifice a few thousand pounds?

Economics is the real problem, again. By that I mean that money incentivises children to work and farmers in Kenya to grow flowers for us rather than food for themselves, etc. We are also encouraged to spend money on things that we do not need (and to borrow to do so) because that boosts the economy.

The root cause is that we have the capital. The local farmers need this capital to invest in their farms and their communities (schools etc.) so they need to sell things to us. And one of the reasons that we have so much capital is that we stole wealth from their countries.

I found the debate fascinating because starting from the simple concept of buying fair trade coffee we quickly got in to some much larger and more difficult subjects.

Humanist Debate: Fair Admissions

My second debate with South West London Humanists took me in to familiar territory. Not that long ago I was on Kingston Council's Schools Admissions Forum, I was Chair of Governors of an LEA Primary School at the time, and the issue of faith schools came up there when a local boys' school wanted to become a C of E school and was denied (twice) by the Forum with me voting against both times.

The debate was led by Richard Thompson, a BHA Education Officer who is working on their Fair Admissions Campaign. He started off by giving us some information to explain the problem.

One third of. Schools are faith schools, circa17% of primary and 13% secondary applications are faith base. As an example,London Oratory has 9 different Categories of Catholic in their admissions policy, this is followed by other Christian groups then, er, nobody. Children cannot go to one Jewish school if have a TV in the house.

Some church schools maintain their ethos without a religious slant to their admissions.

The BHA opposes faith based admissions as segregation reinforces divisions. It also gives non-religious people less of a choice and, in some cases, no real choice at all. If you live in a village with just one school and it gives preference to, say, Christians then other people have no local school to go to.

Faith schools are state funded so this inequality is being done in our name as tax payers.

The BHA have produced a map of faith schools that show just how big the problem is.


Only three other countries allow religious selection, these are Ireland, Israel and Estonia. This is not a club that the UK can be proud of belonging to.

Some faith schools vastly skew intake when looking at the demographics of the local area, e.g. FSM or EAL.

Free Schools can only have 50% faith selection and the Government could easily make this apply to all schools. That would not completely solve the problem but would go a long way towards it and would be a relatively minor change of policy, i.e. something that politicians should be argue for easily.

The scene having been set we then had the debate, first in groups around our tables and then, having gathered our thoughts, we shared the main points with the whole room.

After pursuing several avenues, our table kept coming back to one basic principle, state-funded schools should not be allowed to select children on the basis of the alleged faith of their parents.

Other good points were made but we kept coming back to this one and there is a risk that by arguing against lots of little points in the schools' admissions policies that we win some of those but lose sight of the big one.

South West London Humanists Christmas Party

We Humanists are a sociable lot and the SW London Humanist Group has several events each month where like-minded people can meet and talk.

I am new to the group (but not to Humanism) and had only been to a couple of talks prior to the Christmas Party. It seemed like a good opportunity to get to know the group better and, besides, The Old Ship is one of the better pubs in Richmond (they sell Young's) and is easy for me to get to.

It all went rather well.

The ice-breaker was the "who am I game" which I did not win on time but as I was Nelson Mandela I am claiming a moral victory. I felt sorry for the people who were Margaret Thatcher (unpleasant) and Dr Who (confusing). The game worked well and I spoke to several people about more than just the names written on our backs.

The drinks were kept flowing via the small upstairs bar. They did not have Winter Warmer on tap but the Ordinary was good enough, as always. I am fairly certain that our barmaid was Sandra Bullock but other people were less convinced.

The buffet was neatly arranged in three sections, Vegan, Vegetarian and Meat, of equal size which meant plenty of choice for me as a vegetarian. I played fair initially and took just from the vegetarian table as I hate it when, in the more usual buffets, there is a limited vegetarian option and meat-eaters take most of it. I forgot to take a picture of my food but I think I had a leek tart, some breaded mushrooms, an onion ring or two and some bread and cheese.  Later on I went to the vegan table to help myself to some spicy chickpea bites.

We all sat down to eat and that helped the conversations to get deeper. I was a little (but only a little) surprised how left-wing my table was and there was a ringing endorsement for the nationalisation of key public services like energy, railways and the rapidly-privatising NHS.

Somehow it was suddenly 10pm and people started to drift away. I did so too but rather slowly speaking to more people on the way out.

With the South West London Humanists Group I have found another friendly tribe of interesting people and I look forward to spending more time with them.

Humanist Debate: Irrationality in Healthcare

I joined the British Humanist Association (BHA) recently, too add my voice to those opposed to the inappropriate imposition of religion into many aspects of our lives, and have started to get involved a little by attending lectures and debates.

The BHA has a regional organisation and I am in the South West London Humanists Group which runs its own events, including a monthly discussion in the conveniently located Old Ship pub in Richmond.

The discussion in November was led by Dr. Ed Presswood from The Secular Medical Forum and was on Irrationality in Healthcare.

He described a range of non-scientific practices used by the NHS, from not having A&E beds numbered 13 through to performing circumcisions on babies.

Along the way we learnt that a hangman's noose has 13 knots, some Irish do not like to be discharged on a Saturday as "a Saturday flit is a short sit" and religion still interferes with health by, for example, blocking right to die campaigns.

We were then asked to consider where the NHS should draw the line on irrational behaviour and we did this in small groups before coming back together for a summary at the end.

What follows are some scraps of notes taken during the discussion embellished by some further thought.

Science and Religion have their own views of what is right and it is impossible for one to persuade the other of their version of the truth. Therefore we often have to work in the middle and accept that we are not going to agree. If you are worried about number 13, or any other superstition, then I need to respect that. I might want to convince you of your folly but, in a health situation, this is secondary to your wellbeing.

If we are to be intolerant of the number 13 then perhaps we should stop lying to children about the Tooth Fairy and Father Christmas.

I am very much on the side of science but we have to accept that our science changes and what was right, say, ten years ago is not always right now. Thalidomide was right once.

Patients are allowed to refuse a good treatment but cannot demand a bad one. If the good treatment is refused this could be traced back to bad education in which case we have to consider whether the patient is truly making an informed choice. Does an informed choice ever exist in this context?

If scientific logic is important to the NHS then we should beyond the simple medical. For example why do they serve meat when this is a grossly inefficient use of the planet's resources and is unnecessary for wellbeing.

I was somewhat surprised at how often money was suggested in the discussion as a means of moderating behaviour, e.g. getting people to pay for things that the NHS would rather not do. This approach always means that the rich can (continue to) do what they like and only the poor have their behaviour moderated.

I guess that just because we were all Humanists that does not mean that we agree on everything else too.

I enjoyed the conversations but I think that the question we were asked to consider was a little to side for us to get anywhere near any meaningful conclusions. Not that that mattered, I was there for the ride not the destination.

I'll be back there for another ride on another topic when my diary allows me to do so.