Garrulous Geek

I had my interview with BDO in Manchester on Monday. It was a bit of an ordeal, really. Getting there was a slog, and I got there just 10 minutes early, which was a bit of a pinch. The interview itself was hard work, and I really didn't think it went too well at all. I couldn't answer a few of the questions, and the lady interviewing me didn't give much feedback or write much down so I figured that what I was saying wasn't of much interest to her.
After that was done I went to the Trafford Centre where Ali had gone to meet up with her mum and sister. We had a coffee and a chat then said our goodbyes and we drove back towards Leicester, with a brief stop at Pizza Hut in Stoke for supper. Good stuff.

Anyway... it turns out the interview didn't go as terribly as I thought, as they've invited me for the assessment day in a fortnight, which is encouraging.

The job sounds pretty interesting, though there is a lot of training in London involved - one week a month for 3 years! Pretty serious stuff. The salary is also lower than I'd like, but we could get by on it. To be honest, given the fact that I've got through to the next stage at all, I'm wondering if God is up to something and wants me to have this job, as I doubt I'd have hired me on the strength of that interview. Perhaps this is what I'm supposed to be doing.

More as things develop... Still no news from Barclays by the by.

Update: Barclays don't want me. So - their interview goes great, but they don't want me. The interview with BDO goes badly (in my mind) and they do. Weird.

So, I went down to London yesterday for my interview with Barclays. The journey was fine, though I found it slightly freaky that it's possible to get from Canary Wharf tube station to the Barclays building without going outside - you go through a big shopping complex, through a load of tunnels, up and escalator and bam! you're in the Barclays HQ. Weird. I was an hour early, which meant I had to wait around, but that's better than an hour late so I can't complain.

The interview went well, apart from a couple of questions that I stumbled on, and the fact that I nearly choked on the biscuit I was kindly offered along with my coffee. Still, on balance I think it was OK. I did my best, and I was well prepared, and I think I got on pretty well with the interviewer. It's out of my hands now. Oh yeah, and he said that the next stage actually involves a whopping 8 interviews. This just gets better and better...

London was as overwhelming as ever, even if the only time I spent outside was the few hundred yards between St. Pancras and Kings Cross tube station. I'm not sure I could ever cope with living there. Not long term, anyway. It's just mind boggingly large, really. I think it'd freak me out a bit. I'd want to know it better than I ever could, if that makes sense. I don't think there'd be time to see everything, so part of me would rather not bother trying. Perhaps that's a bit of a pity, now that I look at it that way.

Anyway. Next up is BDO on Monday. Yesterday's interview gave me a few pointers for things I need to look into a bit more, and answers I need to work on, so that should help. I'll let you know how it goes.

I've upgraded the Wordpress backend that runs this site. If you can't tell the difference, then things are probably working just fine. If you can, let me know.

Next Friday I have an interview with Barclays for an IT job. The following monday, I have an interview with BDO Stoy Hayward, a big accountancy firm, for a tax advisor job.

This milk round graduate job lark isn't too hard so far... So far anyway. If I get through the first round of Barclays interviews, the second round involves going to London for dinner with everyone, staying overnight, then having 6 interviews the next day. Good grief. Still, I guess £30K is worth 6 interviews.

I'll keep you all posted on what happens.

Question: What is it that Christians had, Jews have and Muslims want?
Answer: Special protection under the law.

Recently there's been all kinds of furore over various people insulting Christians, Jews and Muslims in various ways. There's been varying degrees of protest and backlash to the incidents and a lot of ideas have been thrown around. I find myself rather confused by the various arguments, as many of them seem rather contradictory, so I thought I'd write a bit about it and see if anyone else has a view on these things.

Let's start with the Muslims. We've probably all read or heard about the Muslim cartoon controversy. Long story short, a Danish newspaper (and subsequently newspapers all over the world) printed cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad; including some more provocative ones with bombs and such like; and soon after, the Muslim world got quite angry about it. Cue protests, including some fairly ironic ones with threats of bombings, murders and so on. Various leaders said that it was utterly unacceptable for such things to be published, as they were against Islamic law and were offensive. Those responsible for publishing the cartoons argued that they were merely exercising their right to free speech.

So who's right? I'm inclined to say that the newspapers and magazines were well within their rights to publish the cartoons. They were satirical, and some did make valid points about such things as the disparity between peaceful Islam and the wing that blows people up and flies planes into buildings. Yes, they were offensive, but that's not a crime, is it? It's also not an issue of libel, as it's not possible to libel a religion or similar institution. The only point at which it can be seen as an issue of law is that in Islam, it's forbidden to depict the prophet. Yet the Danes and the French and all the rest of them are not bound by Islamic law, so how can they be held culpable under it? Islam can't expect to accuse people of crimes that are not recognised in the state where they took place.

Now, one thing the Islamic leaders complained about which did carry some credence, was that there were double standards at work. After all, Jews are protected by laws prohibiting anti-Semitism and some countries in Europe go as far as to make it illegal to question the severity or occurence of the holocaust during the Second World War. Why should it be OK to publish cartoons criticising or even mocking Islam, when it's forbidden to question war crimes committed against the Jews?

As if to illustrate this, David Irving was promptly sentenced to 3 years imprisonment in Austria for holocaust denial, in this case during a speech he made about 20 years ago. Is that right? Should a man be jailed for questioning a historical event? History is based around the interpretation of sources pertaining to a given incident. It is inevitable that a historian's interpretations will be biased to some degree by their own personal views, and it is pretty obvious that Irving's views are somewhat coloured (pun intended) by his racist beliefs. His historical research does not hold up to much scrutiny, and is not well respected by more credible historians. However, while his work may be fairly crummy, it's surely not actually illegal to be a bad historian. Now of course we know it's not illegal, but in the case of the holocaust it is. You could pick any other event in history and produce any crackpot theory you liked about it, and you would simply be denounced as inept and biased, but you wouldn't face jail for it.

Holocaust denial is a crime in various countries in Europe, and also in Israel. The laws have been instated on the basis that it is important that the terrible events be remembered in the hope that this will prevent such things from happening again. After all, if it is an accepted fact that 6 million Jews died because of a fascist regime in Germany, we will all remember to be wary of similarly totalitarean governments in the future, right? Now, this makes sense, but it irks me that we need it put into law. The holocaust is accepted as fact as it is, without any laws about it. We have plenty of evidence for it, not least testimony admitting to it in war crimes trials after WW2 finished. Historians agree that it occurred and that it was a horrendous crime against the Jews and against humanity. Why should we need the government to make it so? If you'll allow me a bit of hyperbole, it's a bit too close to the historical revisionism that takes place in Orwell's 1984, with unwanted pieces of history disappearing down the memory hole, and only the government's version of history being accepted. It is not the government's place to stipulate what is accepted as historical fact - it is the job of historians.

Lastly, we come to the Christians. Recently there was a big fuss over the government's proposed laws regarding Incitement To Religious Hatred, as part of the Serious Organised Crime and Police bill. Many Christians were against this, on the basis that it would limit free speech and prevent them from criticising other religions. That's all well and good, and the bill was a threat to that, so it's probably a good job that it didn't get through. On the flipside, at about the same time, lots of Christians were making a big fuss about the now infamous Jerry Springer Opera, claiming it was blasphemous, protesting against the BBC, and so on. It appears Christians want to be able to criticise other religions, but don't want someone to produce a silly opera about theirs.

Now, obviously the difference between the two situations is that in one situation a religion is being criticised, whereas in the other it is being mocked and blasphemed. The problem is in discerning quite where this line lies. A Christian promoting their faith is, by implication, criticising all other religions and stating that they are untrue. Now, to say that Allah is not God, and that Mohammed is not his prophet, probably qualifies as blasphemy in Islam, right? Likewise, portraying God and Jesus as anything but perfect in the Opera, is also pretty blasphemous from a Christian point of view, yeah? One is OK, the other is not.

The problem, as far as I can tell, is in the blasphemy law, and the application of it. The law is archaic to say the least, having been part of Canon Law, the law of the church. It has stuck around as common law since the 17th Century, and is still part of our laws today, although it is worth noting that the last time anyone was even arrested for blasphemy was 1925. These days our country is extremely secular, very mixed, thoroughly postmodern and generally not very Christian. However, Christians seem to want to cling on to the blasphemy law, and cling on to times past when the Church was the governing authority. This is no longer the case, and it is somewhat absurd to try to hold Christianity in some sort of privileged position and protect it in this way. Christians can not expect the protection of the law from criticism, mockery or blasphemy. They certainly can't expect such protection and then wish to deny other religions the same thing.

As an aside, I also find it a bit odd that we think it unacceptable that we suffer any form of persecution, even something as comparably minor as a puerile opera with tangential connections to our religion, that was obviously only out to get a knee-jerk reaction. Christianity was born out of persecution. Christ was beaten, whipped, scorned, spat on, and nailed to a cross. Paul and his cohorts were frequently imprisoned, and several were killed. The early church was subject to such horrors as being fed to the lions, and being wrapped in wax and set alight as candles, by certain deranged emperors. These days Christians in the Middle East and China and other far flung places are victims of violence, imprisonment and death. And here we are worrying about the effects of this opera. It leaves something of a bad taste in my mouth to be honest.

As far as I can tell, blasphemy laws simply can not work in anything but a theocracy, which is not something we find ourselves in. It is absurd to try to protect the Gods of umpteen religions, when most of them explicitly denounce all the others. It's also a very difficult area to legislate on, as one man's criticism is another man's blasphemy and so on. Who decides what is and what isn't offensive? The system is also very much open to abuse, as if all are to be protected, then it can't be too difficult to demand protection for patently ludicrous ideas. Is the Flying Spaghetti Monster to be protected? Will the Pastafarians sue everyone for saying that their God doesn't exist, and that they were in fact not touched by his noodly appendage?

I should probably come to a conclusion on all of this, as it's taken me weeks to write as it is...

As a Christian, I would actually quite like to live in a Christian theocracy. All our laws would be well established, and we would know exactly where we stood on everything. We could all agree that the laws were good, and we could get on with obeying them and living happily. The trouble is, such a thing is not possible when we are all so mixed and varied. My office alone contains people of 3, or arguably even 4 different religions, and there's only 4 of us in the room. The situation is irreconcilable, short of setting in stone what people are to believe. With that in mind, I think it's fair to say that blasphemy laws, and any other laws seeking to write religion into the system are doomed to failure. Abolish them, and move on. I'm a big proponent of the separation of church and state, and I think this is just one more situation that would be helped by it.

It irks me, that we as Christians are seeking the protection of the legal system where no crime besides the defamation of our religion is taking place. Are we saying that our God is unable to defend his own honour? That our conduct will not speak highly enough of our religion to garner respect? I'm inclined to believe that the reason the opera, and similar things, targeted the Christian faith, is that we are seen as irrelevant, or an easy target. What I don't understand, is how our crying to the law is supposed to change that. All it does is make us appear whiny and irrelevant, while all the time providing further publicity for the stupid opera, or whatever, that started it all. Now I'm not saying that we shouldn't protest against this sort of thing, or at the very least declare it as defamatory and wrong, but we can't hope to seek legal protection for something that most people in the country don't believe. That's not going to make our religion appear any more credible. I doubt the early church expected to make their case based on their standing with the law. The law was out to get them! They earned respect through their lifestyle and their good deeds. I think the church here could do to remember that.

It was my birthday on Saturday. Alison and I went out for lunch at Pizza Hut and I ate all that I could, which amounted to 9 slices of pizza and some garlic bread. Not bad. After that we went to the cinema to see Syriana. It was confusing as anything. It was obvious from watching it that it was well made and well acted, but I couldn't understand what was going on half the time. Large chunks of it were like watching the business segments on News 24, being as they were utterly incomprehensible to someone with no knowledge of economic jargon. Still, I guess you win some and you lose some. Well done, by the by, to George Clooney for his Oscar win.

As an aside, I was extremely pleased that Crash got Best Picture and Best Screenplay. As I blogged a while back, I thought it was excellent, so it's great to see it honoured like this. I must admit I was also slightly pleased that it beat Brokeback Mountain, as I was concerned it might win a shedload purely on the basis of it covering such a push-button issue, never mind whether it was any good or not.

In the evening, we had a few friends round for drinks and cake and played the CSI board game which was a good laugh.

So, a pretty good birthday all round.

Gifts-wise I was mainly given cash, which is cool as I'm saving up for a digital camera at the moment. Good stuff. I also got a book, some chocolates and - bizarrely - some cheese. I think that was about it.

I'm still working on my big long free speech rant... it's taking forever. By the time I've finished writing it I probably won't be allowed to publish it.

For lent, I have given up any computer games that involve killing people. I just barely managed to complete Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory on Tuesday night. For the record, it was an awesome game. Anyway. It looks like all I'll be playing over lent will be my Rollercoaster Tycoon games. Good stuff, nonetheless.

My stomach hurts. I think my thermos is impregnated with poisonous death. Perhaps I should get a new one.

I'm currently working on my big long rant that I mentioned in my last post. It'll take me a few more days as it's getting quite long.