In response to Ken’s little issue:
Ken doesn’t think he’s got anything to say sorry for and if that’s really his feeling, then I think that he should stick to his guns…..
But here’s old Ken – he’s been crass, he’s been insensitive and thuggish and brutal in his language – but I don’t think actually if you read what he said, although it was extraordinary and rude, I don’t think he was actually anti-Semitic.
The Virtual Gigolo has moved! A change of hosting company, a change of Movabletype version, and so a change of style. The style could do with some work though.
Mr Livingstone insulted a Jewish reporter by saying he was like a concentration camp guard. Now, two things come out of this. The first, is to question what exactly it is that upsets Jews about the holocaust, I honestly don’t get it. Why get upset about comments referring to something that happened to people related to you 60 years ago? Clearly I understand someone who was directly involved being upset, but everyone else in the strongly reactionary way things seem to be? No, that makes no sense.
Secondly, Ken’s comment was directed at a reporter from the Evening Standard, and was heavily backed up by the Daily Mail with comments about “sister paper” and so on. It is quite apparent that if the Standard has journalistic quality and integrity at the level of the Daily Mail, then the reporter probably deserved everything he got. Concentration camp guard is maybe too nice a description for someone who stoops to the level of working for the Mail, and maybe the Standard is the same.
What are ethics, and what are morals? Can we have ethics without morals, or vice versa. Do we require some sort of religion, a higher being, or something similar to have morals, and possibly the same does not apply to ethics?
People have suggested that to have morals requires one to believe there is some sort of source for them, some higher set of rules setting out the morals that one should live by. M-W’s definition of “moral” is suitably vague, although not centred on religion and defines ethics using morals, so this is not terribly helpful when it is considered that it is the views of the general populous we are looking at, not those of the authors of a specific dictionary.
Another way of looking at it is that morals are at some level lower level, more evolutionarily integrated into the mind, whereas ethics are intellectual and considered at the higher level of concious thought.
Maybe it just doesn’t matter…
After much dedicated googling I have obtained a copy of Robert Kilroy-Silk’s classic “Shafted” video, of Have I Got News For You fame.
I have to give credit to Kingy for this.
Here is the vid, I may re-encode at some point to fix the file format and aspect ratio, but it’ll do for now.
Daily Mail’s Integrity
Wednesday, February 23rd, 2005As you will know by now I do have issues with the Mail and Associated Newspapers generally on their journalistic integrity and other similar things. I have to wonder specifically about their anti-ken poll though. As I looked at it late in the day on which it was advertised in the paper the votes were 68 to 32 in favour of Ken. Now the votes are (conveniently) 60 to 40 against. A case of vote rigging, I wonder?
This is especially interesting noting that the vote spread on other polls does seem to indicate that the readership would support Ken on this issue. Maybe we’ll never know… however for a newspaper with a severe agenda, and a history of having poor integrity, maybe it is reasonable to suggest they are lying on this issue, too.
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