It's very PC, safe and conciliatory for politicians (and others), when faced with a dispute of some kind between two opposing sides with opposing arguments, to say, "Well, it's a question of finding a balance between the two."

Sometimes, it is reasonable to seek this "balance" between opposing concerns, but, very often, all this balance-seeking by politicians is just a bullshit smokescreen to cover up for their lack of principles and general gutlessness. It's simply a case of them resorting to expediency when they haven't been thoughtful or courageous enough to recognise and follow fundamental principles and decide upon clear priorities.

For example; "We've got to find a balance between allowing freedom of speech and preventing people being caused offence." Bollocks! No we don't! We just have to decide what is more important - Freedom of Speech or pandering to people who want to dictate to the rest of us what we are or aren't allowed to say. Principles, for fuck's sake! You allow freedom of speech and anyone who wants it to be abandoned in order to protect their precious sensitivities can take a running jump - there's no fucking balancing to be done!

Or, when religious people express "negative" views about homosexuals, "We've got to find a balance between people's religious freedoms and people's rights not to be discriminated against." Bollocks! No we don't! There are clear principles involved!

Homosexuals should have every right to engage in whatever sexual practices they like amongst consenting adults, and religious people should be totally free to criticise them or deride such practices as sinful and abhorrent. And if a homosexual ridicules Islam or if a Muslim hotel owner refuses to give a room to a homosexual couple, what business is that of the state?

In such cases, the state only has a balancing dilemma because it has started down the slippery slope of interfering in people's private lives and seeking to dictatorially impose its own value systems on private individuals.

Our political leaders seek a "balance" because they've been pandering to disparate interest groups, offering them all sorts of "rights" they can never deliver (including the absurd idea that you can have a right not to be discriminated against by anyone, ever!) and now they're in a quandary because two or more of these ridiculous "rights" have been shown to conflict with each other. They're left having to find a "balance" that avoids any extreme backlash from either side, but resolves nothing.

Occasionally, on some more practical issues, an optimal solution can be found at some sort of midpoint. Often, however, this "middle way" is merely the result of dithering, cowardice and fruitless compromise that seeks to avoid serious debate or conflict rather than to find solutions that might actually work!

Very often, "balance" does not lead to an optimal, or even desirable, outcome. Indeed, it is often the case that decisive action in one direction or decisive action in the completely opposite direction can bring results - but 'umming and ahhing' in between brings only disaster!

For example, it may be politically-incorrect, but if our schools reintroduced the cane and had old-fashioned iron-fisted discipline, this could bring enormous dividends in terms of educational attainment. No longer would bright students be continually interrupted by the poor behaviour of others.

On the other hand, if we took completely the opposite approach and said that children didn't have to turn up to classes if they didn't want to and didn't even have to turn up to school, this would also bring enormous dividends because pupils who want to learn would no longer be hindered by the mindless yobs who messed around all the time because they didn't even want to be in school in the first place.

The middle way, however, is a disaster. Yes, yobbish children are forced to go to school, but they aren't interested in learning anything and the discipline is not sufficient to make them learn - so they spend their time in school disrupting the lessons of children who do want to learn.

Another problem is that "balance" often ends up splitting valuable resources between two (or more) divergent objectives, neither of which is ultimately achieved. It would have been better to have made a decisive decision about which objective to pursue and to have put all available effort and resources into that - and thus, perhaps, actually achieving something!   For example, we provide aid to dozens of countries around the world - but that aid is spread so thinly that it is doubtful whether it makes any lasting difference to any one of them.

Wouldn't it be better to pick a single country - one that was actually grateful for our help and was willing to fully cooperate with us in order to make the most of our investment? Maybe then we could actually solve some of that country's problems. Instead, the government spreads aid around so that it can make endless announcements, jump on every passing bandwagon for a short trip and claim to be everyone's friend whilst, ultimately, failing to actually solve any problems at all or achieve anything of lasting consequence.

The idea of "balance" has a place, but all too often it is the expedient resort of lily-livered, fudge-seeking, compromise fanatics, too afraid of upsetting people to express any clear values and principles and too indecisive even to decide upon priorities. The "midpoint solution" is reached for only because the people involved just don't have the balls to make clear, principled, decisive decisions that could actually make a positive and meaningful difference to our lives and the future wellbeing of our society or the world in general. 

Why do we have women's sports? Why can't women just compete with the men?

"But that would be unfair!" some might argue. They may say that, in many sports, especially the ones that require physical strength, women are genetically disadvantaged. So? Lots of people are genetically disadvantaged. You wouldn't expect a 5ft 2in man to win the men's 100m - but you don't get a special Olympic event for short people.

You might get a paralympics event for people with "dwarfism" - but then, if women need a special event because of the genetic disadvantages that handicap them, perhaps that should be in the paralympics too!

In the Olympics, the men's 100m and 200m track events are almost always won by black men of West African descent. They have a genetic advantage, so everyone else is at a genetic disadvantage, but you don't have a special 100m for white men or for Asian men, so why have a special race for women?

We even have separate women's events in many sports where there is no obvious physical disadvantage anyway.

Thinking about it rationally, most women's events don't make much sense in a world where we are supposed to have put patronising sexism behind us. I'm not suggesting they should be banned by law - but I think it's ridiculous to insist that such events should have equal prominence as the "men's" events.

Of course, in many sports, the women-only events aren't treated with the same respect as the open-to-both-sexes main tours. For example, women are free to compete with the men at the top level of golf or snooker or motor racing if they can. There are women-only events, but these don't get anything like the news coverage, prestige or money that the "men's" events get.

In other sports, however, the story is different. Tennis is a good example. The women often seem to assume that they ought to get the same coverage, the same prestige and the same money as the men, even though they often play fewer sets - but why should they? They should have to compete directly with the men. "But women can't compete with Roger Federer or Rafael Nadal!" So? Neither can I - but I don't expect a special event to be invented just so I can win Wimbledon anyway!

Why shouldn't the best women just compete with the men? If they're not good enough to compete with the best men, then they can compete lower down the leagues like everyone else has to.

In an applaudably non-sexist way, spectators generally want to see the athletes with the highest levels of skill, the greatest speed and strength and the most cunning - regardless of whether they are male or female, black or white. We want to see the people with the skills to compete at the highest level. For the paying public, lower leagues or women-only events are of less interest and importance - and we ought to be allowed to treat them as such without being irrationally and unreasonably accused of being sexist.

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Other chapters include: Inappropriate - Islamic Extremism - Rape - Tits - Torture - and many more! 

Governments are often suspiciously keen on setting up independent inquiries, independent regulators and independent watchdogs or asking for independent investigations and independent reports. They'd have their arses wiped by an independent body if anyone would take any sort of moderate payoff to do the deed for them. Independent inquiries and investigations have become the accepted method of settling an argument.

Faced with a scandal or any serious question mark over their policies or their government's behaviour, the Prime Minister (or the president) assures us that we have nothing to worry about, because he/she has asked for an independent investigation or has set up an independent inquiry.

It's all nonsense, of course - a complete lie! You can't pay for something and then claim it's independent of you. You can't appoint someone and claim they're independent of you. You can't commission a report and claim it is an independent report. Well you could claim it was independent, and politicians often do, but you would be talking utter bollocks! You're obviously exerting influence by the fact that you were the person who asked for the report to be made. You're patting someone on the back by appointing them and indicating your trust in them. You're enhancing their prestige. It's only natural that they might return the favour. In any case, you're only likely to appoint someone you think will produce the sort of report you're after.

The politician who appoints an investigator is saying, 'This is what happens to people I like. They get a nice cushy number - a cushy, well-paid, prestigious appointment.' If the appointed person wants to have other appointments, then they know they need to show that the person who appointed them won't regret their decision. This encourages other people (or perhaps the same person) to appoint them again for other jobs and positions.

Let's stop being obsessed with such things and such people being independent - because it's not true.

That's why countries have an adversarial system in their courts and parliaments. We have the government versus the opposition. We have prosecutor versus the defence. We allow the biased people from each side of an argument to make their case and poke holes in each other's arguments.

Why do we have prosecution versus defence? We do so because we accept and acknowledge that total independence and impartiality is largely a myth. The prosecution and defence are both extremely biased - and we actually rely on their bias to get a fair result. We counteract the bias of one with the bias of the other. If either side is untruthful, the other side's bias spurs them on to expose that untruthfulness. It's not a perfect system, but it is far better than trying to pretend that the case can be presented in a totally unbiased way by a totally independent figure of some kind.

What politicians and others want to do, is absolve themselves of responsibility and blame. 'No, it's not me - I'm just following the recommendations of the independent review!' They may frequently rig the review or apply pressure to get the answer they want, but that doesn't stop them claiming the decision is not theirs. They've imposed a barrier between themselves and responsibility - the very responsibility they're paid to accept.

Pretending things are independent when they're not, is diabolically misleading, but, more importantly, it is also terribly dangerous. Trying to have some sort of definitive, official view from an independent inquiry is a very dangerous thing, especially when we are talking about issues on which there is no definitive 'truth' to be found. The official verdict is given so as to imply that the matter is settled and only one view will be tolerated or taken seriously from then on. It's the dictatorship of the official view that we're all expected to bow down to.

We set up some official inquiry to decide upon a final answer, when, in truth, it is often on matters where we'll never really know the 'truth,' and on which there are always going to be a variety of differing opinions.

Often, we can't really be certain whose fault a particular mistake was, but some official investigator chooses to apportion blame in a particular way, perhaps to a particular person. That doesn't mean they were the only person to blame - they're just the official scapegoat. Doesn't it all stink of Big Brother when you have an official view that demotes all other views to not being taken seriously. It allows dictatorial people to point to the 'independent' inquiry or the verdict of the 'independent' regulator and thus ridicule any alternative viewpoints.

Independent reports are the means to absolve politicians of responsibility. Independent inquiries are a means to delay public consideration of issues to a more convenient time, to bring debates under strict government control and, ultimately, a means to strangle argument and censor or ridicule opinions that don't coincide with the official results of the 'independent' investigation. They are a key instrument of the modern Big Brother state.

When people are biased, that can be a problem, but it can be a far greater problem and a threat to our freedoms when such people and their reports are officially designated as 'independent.'

Why is the term, 'sexual predator' used, pretty much exclusively, as an accusatory and derogatory term? What, when you really bother to think about it, is actually wrong with being a sexual predator?

It is ridiculous the way people are referred to and smeared through the use of the term, 'sexual predator' as if that's a bad thing. Since the dawn of mankind, people have gone on the hunt for a sexual partner. They've had to. The survival of the species depends on such activities. Aren't nearly all of us sexual predators at some time in our lives? Isn't it the primary job of a male to hunt down and ensnare a fertile young woman to act as an incubator and mother to his offspring - and thus enable them both to continue their genetic lines? Is he taking advantage of the natural attraction the young female feels for him? In a sense, yes, but what's wrong with that? That's how the species is continued. That's how the reproductive urge works.

Generally, when people use the term, 'sexual predator,' it isn't because they think there is anything wrong, as such, with the idea of someone seeking out a mate. They just disapprove of certain people or certain match-ups and they want to be able to claim that their objection to a particular relationship is something to do with an overarching principle rather than the symptom of their base prejudices - which is what it actually is! When they approve of a man's quest for a mate and the way he goes about it, that's fine, but when they disapprove, they want to call him a sexual predator. They're just trying to put a sinister spin on something they don't approve of.

Very often, the term, 'sexual predator' is just a tool for propagating and excusing ageism. People don't usually use the term for two similarly-aged people, but when a middle-aged man has a relationship with a much younger woman, they call him a sexual predator. They like to assume, without any evidence, that the older man must in some way be preying on - being abusive towards - the younger woman. That's just straightforward prejudice that is no better than outright racism or sexism.

Similarly, the term 'pervert' is used almost exclusively in a derogatory way - people are derided for being 'perverts.' In particular, older men who enter relationships with much younger women are often derided as 'perverts' - but what's wrong with being a pervert?

What is a pervert? A pervert is someone with unusual or abnormal sexual tastes. They deviate from the norm. Well, what's wrong with deviating from the norm?

Consider homosexuals for example. According to the dictionary definition, they're perverts because their sexual tastes deviate from the norm. This doesn't necessarily mean they've done anything wrong. They're just different. Someone with a shoe-fetish is a pervert. They have unusual tastes - but that doesn't mean they are evil. They're just different. And if a middle-aged man's sexual preference happens to be for much younger women, then he may be deviating from accepted norms, but that doesn't mean he's done anything wrong - so why should he be treated as if he has?

Throughout history, there have always been deplorable examples of people being discriminated against simply because they are different. We've fought against racism, sexism and homophobia. So, on the same principle, why don't we campaign against prejudice towards perverts? A pervert is just someone whose sexual tastes deviate from the norm. Using the term 'pervert' as a form of abuse suggests that there's something fundamentally wrong with being different and having unusual tastes - but there isn't, so why do we do it?

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Other chapters include: Feminism - Gay Marriage - Turbans - Naturism - The Paralympics - The Right to Discriminate - and many more!