Tannhauser

Just because poverty correlates with overpopulation doesn't mean poverty causes overpopulation. Most think it's the other way around. Once development and affluence arise, population growth starts falling. That's what happened in our own history: although contraception had an impact, the bigger influence on controlling population growth was rising affluence. Populations with falling infant mortality but no social support do increase. Again, this happened in the UK. One option to reverse this would be to deny the majority world any access to medicine or vaccinations. oes this strike you as an equitable solution? We got there first, so tough, your destiny is to stay where you are? The alternative is development and education, which is the aim of the majority of aid (for all its faults, and danger of creating dependency). The argument that nature should run its course is philosophically specious and morally bankrupt. However, it plays well to anyone who wears their callousness and tribalism like badges of honour.

Aww, poor you, having to look at images of people starving and dying in the ad break. The problems are very large, the debt is very large, few countries give the aid they promise, geography and climate make for a range of diseases we don't face in Europe, and for less reliable agriculture, corruption can be endemic in relatively new countries....and so on, and so on.

Only you could manage to shoe-horn illegal immigrants into a thread on hosepipe bans. I heard they're behind all these green taxes too.

Awww, cheers guys. But Col: not by a long chalk. I just write well, take my time and have a broad education. Now IanC - there's a clever chap.

Although this is widely believed, there's not much evidence that it really happens.

It's horrible. Wikipedia entry on Smolov Percentages are of your working one rep max. Plenty of spreadsheets available on the net, or herel You'll get legs like tree trunks, or possibly die.

This. Also, if you want to try something challenging with high volume, you could have a go at Smolov. It doesn't involve 25 minutes of curls, however.

Crikey. Make sure you give the buyer precise servicing instructions. Ones that he can follow to Valletta

Yeah, but Steve, that's my issue with it. It replaces action with gesture. It's a general trend in human interactions: A Mother's Day Card rather than a year long patient and forgiving attitude A bout of Christmas spirit rather than a persistent willingness to be forgiving A whip-round for Children in Need instead of understanding, debating and persuading others about the causes of poverty Every time we have an option, we replace genuine action with empty, publicly approved gesture.

In practice, that's the stance I would take for myself on these sort of things. However, I do defend someone else's right to withdraw without being subject to mob rule. Though I can see what you're saying about being deliberately provocative.

One last go at this. Personally, I keep quiet on minute silences if I'm in company and other people are doing it. This isn't so that I can reflect on anything at all - I'll do that in my own time, thanks - but just to avoid upsetting them. Anything for an easy life. My own feeling is that it's a tradition that I don't understand, dreamed up by someone long before I was born. To my mind, despite what Steve says, it doesn't do what it's intended to, because thinking 'on command' for two minutes about a subject in the middle of a particular day doesn't work. My strong feeling is that most people aren't remembering the dead, they're waiting for the two minutes to end. Here are some other ways to respect the fallen. You could read and learn about British conflicts and the reasons that led to them. You could visit Auschwitz, or Berlin, or a war grave, or somewhere like the JEATH museum at the River Kwai. You could educate youngsters about the things that you've seen and learned. You could question the motives behind possible conflicts and ask loudly and continually exactly what British troops are fighting for and if it is necessary. And you could offer time and money and support to veterans and families of those who have died. You could write to the government demanding proper and fair treatment of war veterans. To me, every single one of those is something that involves reflection and respect. A two minute silence makes as much sense as everyone clapping at the same time or throwing a piece of cheese in the air. It doesn't actually achieve anything - it's just someone, somewhere decided it was a good idea and it caught on. (On a side note, how are minute silences decided? It doesn't seem to be a democratic process. It's just suddenly announced that it will happen; no one seems to know where it comes from. I seem to remember silences for - say - 9/11, Boxing Day Tsunami and Princess Di (?). But I can't remember anything for Rwanda, Mother Theresa, or Kosovo). As you said yourself, the freedoms that we enjoy in this country are hard won. And like it or not, part of those freedoms is the choice whether to take part in a particular tradition or not. It's a tradition, not a law, and as distasteful as many find it, no one is obliged take part in it if they don't choose to.

I do agree with some of your points here, and I think the smoking analogy is a good one. If you have 98 people who want to observe a silence and two who don't, then a democratic arrangement might be that the majority takes precedence. However, I don't think that's the full story. Let's say you're trying to observe the two minute's silence and you can see ten people partyng in a soundproof room across the street. Or maybe someone quietly texting standing next to you. In both cases, that is in no way disturbing your own observance. All you have to do is turn away. Now to me, in this case I can't see anything wrong with that. If it's not disturbing me, then it's none of my damn business. But if I read Ian's first post correctly (and I may not have done), the objection seemed to be not that it was disturbing his own reflection, just that he thought everyone ought to be taking part. And there's a lot of people on here would agree with that view. So I suspect that many would disagree with your last line of 'if you don't want to join in then fine', it's more like "if you don't do it it's disrepectful. End of."

I think you're misrepresenting my point here. I'm by no means saying Armed Forces charities already get help - why do we need a silence too? By no means. And I agree that giving and silence aren't too mutually exclusive options. What I'm saying is that there are other ways of registering your feelings. As an analogy, I haven't celebrated Christmas since I was 16, but it doesn't mean that I don't give presents. I just give them when I want to. I also wouldn't argue that the two minute's silence has no function, but I don't agree that it does anything to make us think about war and the fallen. It makes us think about them for literally two minutes - assuming that's what people are doing. I'd prefer to see something more lasting and meaningful. What evidence do you have that without the two minute's silence, the scenario you mention will materialise? Did people fail to remember past conflicts before it was commonly observed? As to how many people are thinking about it at all - well, we'll have to differ on that one. Maybe I'm too cynical. And I think half a second's reflection is about as superficial as it sounds and not really better than nothing. But all this sounds like I'm in favour of abolishing the two minute's silence, which isn;t what I'm arguing at all. I can see what you mean. I think there's certainly an aesthetic power in everyone collectively doing nothing at the same time. But saying 'our tradition won't work unless you take part in it' seems back to front to me. I think your last sentence is revealing, in that it's all about showing your credentials as a card-carrying compassionate human. It's a gesture that says 'I care', whether you actually do or not. Or maybe it only says 'I'm afraid', because if you dare to challenge it, you'll get the reaction which this thread is all about. It's all about appearances, and nothing about substance. First point is a truism - without some level of conformity, society falls apart. But it does not need to dictate when and howwe reflect on death, heroism, war, suffering and so on. Those are personal things that we all have to come to terms with on our own, and in our own time. Oh, I'm sure your intuition (and MarbleApple's earlier) about these guys is right. Maybe they never think about this stuff, as you say. You may call it contempt - another word might be indifference. And what of that? People are indifferent to what I'm trying to achieve too, and what you are, all day every day. But you can't legislate to make someone feel something. If they don't, then they don't - their loss perhaps, but nothing to do with you or me.

A storm of protest and a lot of foaming at the mouth, but not much in the way of argument. I thought this was a good point, though. This goes to the heart of the matter: Another way of looking that is that it's pretty ironic to be remembering those who died to preserve freedom, and in the same breath effectively saying that the people who are saved can't have the freedom to observe or not observe a particular tradition. Arguments about length of time it takes etc irrelevant.

I respectfully disagree with Mr. Chisholm on this one. I know this won't be a popular view, but here we go. Firstly: If you feel strongly about a particular event, keeping quiet at a given time - that you haven't personally chosen - is only one way of showing your feelings. There are lots of other ways. You might feel that you would rather show your solidarity by, say, helping those remaining. With reference to other tragedies (not necessarily Remembrance Day), I know plenty of people who will happily observe a minute's silence - but that's all they will do. Try asking them to stick their hands in their pocket and actually do something, or give up a bit of time, and the empathy evaporates. Secondly, it's an attempt to legislate and enforce grief and remembrance. What proportion of those in the minute's silence are actually thinking about the events in question? What proportion are waiting for it to end so that they can get on with what they're doing? And what proportion are glaring round looking for someone who is not observing the silence, so they can get angry about it? Grief and remembrance are spontaneous personal things that you can't force people into at an arbitrary moment. Nor should you attempt to - it's something that they come to in their own time. And maybe some never do, but that's their business, not anyone else's. Thirdly, we've all been brought up to believe that a moment's silence for X,Y or Z is a mark of respect. Why this particular action, rather than anything else? What's the other collective action that involves keeping very still and quiet? It's prayer. There is an atheist objection to minute's silence that runs like this: separation of church and state, and a secular government, means that no one can force you into a religious observance. However, by calling it a 'moment of reflection,' and just announcing 'there will be a minute's silence', it's prayer sneaked in by the back door. Fourthly, I can't help feeling that it's an exercise in conformity. Regardless of what your personal feelings are, this is the behaviour that's been adopted by the group, and my God, you'd better toe the line. Not doing so marks you out as a deviant, who does not share the in-group values, and therefore a legitimate target for anger and attack. I guess we like to take arbitrary - often nonsensical - behaviours, imbue them with meaning and then vent our wrath against anyone who refuses to do the same. I can imagine a parallel universe where everyone has to put on a top hat to mark some terrible tragedy, and anyone who doesn't is disrepecting the dead with his unspeakable hatlessness. So essentially, my take would be this: if you want to mark someone's passing by standing silently at a pre-designated time: fine. But there is no law that says you have to, and there's no need to form some sort of grief police to make sure everyone else does. The assumption that they care less than everyone else is a dodgy one, for the reasons above. I'm dismayed to see Ian advocating some sort of retribution against people he doesn't know, for no other reason than his moral sensibilities are outraged.