Just discovered the Rumpus Room’s video for the Pet Shop Boys’ Integral, complete with QR-coded web links to be read with camera phones. It’s a wee bit cheesy and bombastic, as you might expect, but it’s not without a point.

More. And.

In a previous post regarding the strangely airless Liberal Conspiracy blog, we saw how the obligation to substantiate political claims with logic and evidence induced fatigue in contributor Zohra Moosa. Ms Moosa told us she was “tired” and “distracted” by defending her assumptions and wished instead to “actualize” her beliefs, unhindered by ethical challenges or reference to harsh realities:

What I need is a safer space where I don’t lose so much energy justifying why social and environmental justice are worth spending a lot of society’s money on.

Another item, by Guardian contributor and Fabian Society mouthpiece Sunder Katwala, is noteworthy insofar as it too makes assumptions that are grand, fairly commonplace and oddly unanalysed. Mr Katwala has written at length about “equality” and “social justice”, which appear to be regarded as synonymous, though neither term is defined in any satisfactory sense. In his Liberal Conspiracy piece, titled How Do We Get a Fairer Society?, Katwala argues,

In Britain today, where we are born and who our parents are still matters far too much in determining our opportunities and outcomes in life. And so our own choices, talents and aspirations count for too little. The vision of a free and fair society would be one which extends to us all the autonomy to author our own life stories… This ‘fight against fate’ – breaking the cycle of disadvantage to make life chances more equal – could provide the lodestar to guide future action and campaigns for equality.

If one strips away the tendentious phrasing, questions soon begin to occur, most obviously regarding “who our parents are” and why it so often matters. Does the “fight against fate”, so conceived, acknowledge the role of parental agency – specifically, the efforts made by many parents, not least by working class parents, to optimise their children’s “choices, talents and aspirations”? How do Katwala’s assumptions of “social justice” and “equality” – as ill-defined yet unassailable virtues – relate to the foresight, care and sacrifice which some parents demonstrate, often heroically, and which others, alas, do not?

If what parents do for their children “matters far too much”, would Katwala prefer the efforts of conscientious parents to be thwarted in the interests of “equality” and “social justice”? In Mr Katwala’s ideal, corrected, society, would the role of parenting in the outcome of a child’s prospects be rendered trivial, perhaps irrelevant? And, if so, is that really for the greater good? Unfortunately, such questions hang in the air, unanswered. Katwala is, however, keen to “deepen” this egalitarian agenda “within and beyond the education system.” To which end, he lists four points to “narrow the gaps in life chances” – all of which sideline parental responsibility and presuppose even greater interference by the state:

1. Ending child poverty.
2. Get family policy right.
3. Target increased resources on disadvantage.
4. Start a rational debate about the impact of private education.

Some readers may, of course, wonder why it is we have a “family policy” to “get right”, and others may have views on the role played by parents’ values and decisions in their children escaping poverty. Most will note that Katwala, like Ms Moosa, is keen to spend even more of “society’s money” on those deemed “disadvantaged”. But Katwala’s fourth point is perhaps the most telling. Note that Mr Katwala is far more interested in the (implicitly negative) “impact” of private education on those who don’t experience it. Much less concern is expressed for the rather more obvious, and much more negative, impact of state education – specifically the Socialist ideal of comprehensive education – which is, after all, where the “disadvantaged” tend to be schooled.

Here’s a little something for fans of the outlandish and uncanny. BBC4’s documentary series on British science fiction, The Martians and Us, can now be viewed online. Part one, Apes to Aliens, takes evolution as its theme and traces a brief and entertaining history, from H.G. Wells’ anonymous time traveller to John Wyndham’s unearthly schoolchildren. The three-part series covers the obvious and the obscure, the inspired and the unhinged, and teases out what has often made British science fiction different from, and darker than, its American cousin.

Here’s a taste.

Online Videos by Veoh.com

Part 2, Trouble in Paradise, and part 3, The End of the World as We Know It, are also online. Well worth watching. (h/t, The Thin Man.) Related: The original 1960 trailer for Village of the Damned. And here’s George Sanders having trouble keeping secrets.   

But funny, I think.

Men who look like old lesbians.

Among them, Tony Curtis, Roger Ebert, Kyle MacLachlan, Mick Hucknall and, of course, Mark Wallinger.    

It’s beneath me, I know. Yet I cannot look away.

Via. 

Infrared landscapes by Gary Robertshaw.   

More infrared photography by Andy Finney. (h/t, Dark Roasted Blend.) 

Further to recent comments on the curious overlap of ecological hysteria and authoritarian urges, here’s another example. Via Kate, from Local Transport Today:

Transport policy-makers should start preparing now for a dramatic reduction in motorised travel that will be brought about by carbon rationing, one of the country’s leading environmental thinkers told LTT this week. “Just start reading the runes because what’s going to happen is the demand for road, rail and air travel is going to start falling away just as soon as we have rationing,” says Mayer Hillman in an interview with the magazine.

Hillman, senior fellow emeritus at the Policy Studies Institute, says carbon rationing is the only way to ensure that the world avoids the worst effects of climate change. And he says that the problems caused by burning fossil fuels are so serious that governments might have to implement rationing against the will of the people. “When the chips are down I think democracy is a less important goal than is the protection of the planet from the death of life, the end of life on it,” he says. “This has got to be imposed on people whether they like it or not.”

Hillman’s anticipated Tyranny That Cares™ will, reassuringly, also apply to its author, as reported in a glowing Guardian profile from 2002:

He and [wife] Heidi have an old Citroën 16 in which they’ve driven 150 miles so far this year. Yet still he exceeds the carbon ration he expects to be allocated, and says that they ought to consider sharing their family home with others because, despite its solar panels and low heating levels, it now accommodates only the two of them.

According to his own publicity material, Mayer Hillman is a “thorn in the side of the political establishment” and is noted for his willingness to “speak truth to power.” Mr Hillman’s stated areas of expertise include “walking and cycling”.

Related.