Charles Dickens. Our Mutual Friend. Whew. Two down, only nineteen to go.

( Books bought and borrowed )

ETA: I'm behind the ball on this one: the government has offered to resettle the refugees here, they've accepted, and they've disembarked.

(Cut and pasted from email. Why these don't go up on their Web site puzzles me muchly.)

November 17, 2009

AUSTRALIA CANNOT WATCH IDLY WHILE ASYLUM SEEKERS FACE RETURN TO SRI LANKA

The Australian Government cannot remain a passive bystander while asylum seekers on the Merak boat face the risk of return to Sri Lanka, the Refugee Council of Australia (RCOA) says.

RCOA president John Gibson said the organisation was alarmed by media reports that the Indonesian Government was considering returning asylum seekers whose claims were yet to be examined.

"Given our Prime Minister's much publicised intervention to prevent the boat now in Merak from reaching Australian waters, Australia has a moral responsibility to do everything it can to ensure that refugees and asylum seekers on that boat are not returned to a situation where they may face persecution," Mr Gibson said.

"Australia must now urge the Indonesian Government to allow UNHCR officials full access to the asylum seekers on the Merak boat and consider what actions Australia can take to rebuild trust and goodwill with the government and people of Indonesia.

"Australia is increasingly being regarded as a wealthy nation which has no qualms about shifting its responsibilities for refugee protection to neighbouring countries with fewer resources. Not only is this perception damaging Australia's reputation in the region, it threatens to undermine longer term efforts to build regional cooperation on refugee protection."

Some background, from Kate: HRW recently reported on the tendency of ethnic Tamils to "disappear". The asylum seekers in question say they're fleeing torture, rape, and murder at their government's hands. Some of them have already been verified as genuine refugees by the UNHCR. If Australia forcibly returns these asylum seekers, we may be sending them home to die - and it won't be the first time we've done so.

( Doctor Who SPOILERS, conceivably )

Obviously, in a population of millions, there must be some young people who match the "feral animal" stereotype. But the danger of that stereotype is that, when you see someone who looks and sounds like a "chav", you immediately connect them to theft, violence, breeding like rabbits, etc - when in fact you almost certainly know nothing about them at all.

Previously I pointed out that statistics don't match the idea that British mothers on welfare are popping out more kids. I'm still trying to find specific information on the victims of crime committed by young people (basically, who robs whom?) But what I have managed to find so far doesn't lend much support to an image of kids "preying" on the rest of society. Britons are more likely to be the victims of violent crime if they are young, single, unemployed, live in a deprived area, and/or live in "social-rented accommodation" (council flats, etc). ETA: And here's a picture (thanks, Lance!).

Just as a side note, one of the odder comments made about "chavs" in the GB thread was the half-joking suggestion that they'd vote for the BNP because they were "first on the ballot". May as well set this one straight too. BNP supporters are more working than middle class, but by income aren't much worse off than the average Briton - and three quarters of them are older than 34. Which said, since voting isn't compulsory in the UK, you might imagine lazy, ignorant voters of any stripe wouldn't get as far as the actual ballot anyway.

After much banging and crashing around in the National Statistics Online site, I finally found what I think are the relevant statistics on welfare and childbearing:

Dependent Children, 2004

In the UK in 2004, married couples were the most likely to have three or more children. Most single mums had only one child. This does not support a picture of "chavs" "vomiting babies" in order to gain welfare benefits.

Even from my cursory rummaging today, I can see that the question of who has how many kids and why is a complicated one affected by multiple factors (including ineffective sex education). Anyone who insists there's a single, simple explanation for Britain's high rate of teen pregnancy is selling something.

What the capsule endoscope saw is "consistent with mild Crohn's disease". I'll learn more when I see the doc again in December. I have no idea what our next step is - if any.

I fell ill in late 1987. The capsule endoscope didn't come into medical use until 2001. I may be wrong, but it's possible that this actually could not have been diagnosed before then!

A discussion of British identity on GB promptly disintegrated into chav-bashing. For a start, they dress flashily and show off their expensive cars, violating middle class standards of taste. What's more, they're "violent feral animals vomiting kids", "collecting ASBOs like trading cards". In fact, "They are a 'cultural' section of british society that chooses to alienate itself from the rest of the nation by preying upon it, making its life miserable, robbing, mugging, and vomiting out more kids when they want a bigger house or more benefits."

Now. When someone's merely making a mouth like a cat's bum, you can't exactly quantify it, but crime and birthrates are a different cup of tea. How well do UK statistics match this picture?

Firstly, there's the huge gap between how much crime is actually going on, and how much people think it's going on. Crime in Britain has dropped steadily since the mid-90s; violent crime has dropped by a half. But our perceptions of crime are shaped not by studying statistics, but (quite naturally) by our personal experience and the media. In the British Crime Survey, about 1 in 6 people surveyed thought it was likely they'd be victims of burglary or violence; their actual risk was about 1 in 20. Almost everyone said there was an increase in knife attacks nationally, but less than a third thought there was an increase in the area where they lived. Half of people surveyed said they personally lived in a low crime area. And so on. Obviously, if there's all this crime in the papers, but we can't actually see it in our own neighbourhood, then it must be happening somewhere else!

More on this later. I'm particularly interested in seeing how much crime committed by young people is committed against other young people; and what the birthrates are for different sections of British society. (If anyone can quantify how many children one has to bear in order to qualify as "vomiting" them out, I'd be obliged.)

But before I go: if I'm honest, I think ASBOs are a joke. "Anti-social behaviour" covers not just actual crimes like drug dealing, but incredibly minor annoyances like noisy parties, abandoned cars, and littering. These are real problems that have to be dealt with somehow, but how on earth did they end up in the crime statistics?!

When I write, I am not in pain.

When I am not writing, I am worrying about washing up cleaning house garden real estate agents too many books not enough reading getting to the gym what's for dinner now what's wrong with me I never meditate travel shopping laundry and why I always feel that, no matter what I'm doing, I'm cheating and failing and malingering and slacking because there is something else I'm supposed to be doing.

Which I am. This. *typing noises*

But I failed.

Australia Puts Its Refugee Problem on a Remote Island, Behind Razor Wire. New York Times, 5 November 2009

"The arrival of illegal boats filled with Asians evokes a primordial fear here, one that has been instilled over past decades of anti-Asian immigration policies."

(The NYT errs here, of course: seeking refuge in Australia is 100% legal.)

Girl Number 9 is a Webcast of six five-minute-ish parts, written by James Moran, with Gareth David-Lloyd. So I would have to go and take a peek, wouldn't I, even though I would normally run a mile from this sort of horrible serial killer thingy. And I would have to get hooked, wouldn't I!

Last episode tonight! I am hopping from foot to foot. Do you want to know how I think it will end?

( Possible ENORMOUS SPOILERS for Girl Number 9 )