Not Your Parents Conservatives (nor grand, nor great, great either)

I grew up in a fairly conservative environment.  Broxbourne in Hertfordshire is basically a North London suburb, 20 minutes from Liverpool St Station.  In the Conservatives worst year, when they lost all but 2 local governments in the UK, Broxbourne went from 34 out of 36 Tory Councilors down to 32...  One of the 4 was a BNP one.  As I said, it's fairly conservative there.  One of the Tory ones was my mother.  She served on Broxbourne Borough Council for over 20 years including 8 on Herts County Council too.  She stepped down last year, as she was determined not to take the accepted means of retiring from the council of dying in office, ideally in your sleep in the council chamber as, I think, one of the men did at 86... (NOTE: this might not be strictly speaking true, but a lot of councilors die in office there.)

My mothers family are Eastenders - she was born within the sound of Bow Bells, and based on the research I've done, her family were in the East End from at least the 1780s, which is as far back as I've been able to get before I run out of records.  They were conservatives too, my grandfather quite militantly so.

Anyway.  I only say this to point out that I've had more than a passing acquaintance with conservative thought and conservatives in my life.  Which is why, when I come across an argument on FB which includes a couple of American Conservatives PROUDLY stating that they don't have medical insurance and don't want to be forced to by it, I think my grandfather would have boxed them around the ears and told them to grow the hell up.

Churchill (Winston S) was known to say a lot about insurance.  He was anti-national healthcare, but didn't get it repealed after he got back into power in the 50s.  But he was very pro insurance.  Wandering around without a means to deal with the unforseeable is pretty dumb.  Unless you're so rich it doesn't matter. (Mitt Romney for example.)  However, for the average person, not having medical insurance isn't a conservative position to have, it's criminally irresponsible. There are very few medical things that will happen to you these days that can creep up without symptoms that you can afford to treat.  My wife's niece, at University in the US, had a bad kidney infection...  she had emergency insurance, and duly got it approved to go to ER.  ER saw her, did a CT scan and a follow up appointment and got sent a bill for $7000....  yes, that's right, one ER visit and a follow up cost $7000 - oh and we're still fighting the insurance company on this one because they're denying they approved the emergency treatment.

She HAD insurance.

And while data is not the plural of anecdote, I keep coming back to the fact that US medical costs, for VERY similar or worse outcomes in most areas are significantly more than those in the rest of the world where they use single payer systems where they risk pool the entire population.

Being against single payer systems is not conservative thinking in 2012, it's radical nonsense that only serves the very rich who don't have to care whatever happens.  It makes things worse for everybody else.

Same for the tax system.  Looking to tax people earning under $50,000 a year more because you want to have a $100,000 tax break rather than a $10,000 one, isn't conservative.  It's radical.  It will increase poverty and make society worst off.  It will not improved things.

My parents, misguided as I think they were, believed that hand in hand with personal responsibility there was a duty of care of society to be there and be sensibly run and managed and that changes should be slow.

Modern American Conservative thinking is dangerously radical and in thrall to vested interests in a way which would shock even the 19th century industrialists...  at least they used to spend their money on the social good.  

Last bit: I went to University in the North of England.  Almost every major public building, including the main University building was called the Harris something after Edmund Harris, an industrial revolution lawyer who built libraries and schools and other buildings, and left trusts to build public roads and set up other institutions.  That was my ancestors conservative.  A man who spent his money on great things and legacies that are still there 130 years after his death.

The Koch Brothers have given us the Cato Institute and the Heritage Foundation.  I somehow don't think they'll be around in the 2140s...

Readercon Thoughts: Fandom as a Safe Place...

The 2002 Eastercon, Helicon 2, was held in Jersey and due to the location, a lot more women than I think had attended an Eastercon in years came.  This included a number of non-fan wives.  Including mine.

We snuck off to the pool and jacuzzi for a bit and while there a bunch of other Fen came in.  One guy offered M a foot rub.  She was not impressed.  She politely declined, even when he pushed the point, but he backed down.  The things that interested me in this was a) he persisted in pushing the foot rub option even after it was declined, b) he did it in front of her partner, something that was pretty obvious and c) he offered a woman he had not met before a foot rub in a public place...

M was not impressed and raised the point that in other company or other situations he'd have been lucky to a) not get ejected from the hotel spa and b) not get punched in the face by an irate partner/husband.

I only raise this because of the stuff I'm seeing around the incident at Readercon and the recent problems at Skeptic Events.  

There's a fannish narrative that Fandom is a safe place.  I'll be honest and say that my non-fan other half has never really felt that to be the case and has found conventions quite disturbing on occasion, partly due to situations like in the hot tub in Jersey.  She's pretty good at looking after herself and nothing reached a point where I needed to do anything nor raise it with the convention.  I had to intervene in a situation at the British room party in Montreal where a <redacted> was behaving inappropriately with another fan - this one shocked me, as even after she'd asked him to stop, he'd basically cornered her and was stroking her hair.  If that had happened in a public place, he'd have probably been ejected/hit or both.  In this case, it was strongly suggested that he go somewhere else...  but should we have called con security?  Does he realise he was behaving like a dick?

Which comes to my point/concern.  It's a great thing that more women are going to conventions these days, 50/50 parity at Eastercon is a great achievement.  But I worry very deeply that this will, over the short term, lead to more incidents as people end up in social situations like parties without having, frankly, learned to deal with social situations like parties with people who don't know them.  

Historically I think we've been very forgiving of certain behaviours, I'm thinking of those of some big name authors of the past, and we all have/know friends who are awkward in group situations...  but I suspect that means that we're going to have to be hyper vigilant about self policing for a while.

The core principle is simple.  If it's not acceptable behaviour in the world at large, it doesn't automatically become acceptable at a convention.  Staring at a women even after she's asked you not to isn't acceptable in a Starbucks or a Pub, so it isn't acceptable at  a convention.  Standing close to somebody in a public setting and talking to them when they've asked you not or touching them when you've not been invited to could get you arrested or into serious trouble with a friend or partner.

Just because we have a common shared set of interests doesn't make behaving like that acceptable.  Period.

Where I'm going to be...

Tomorrow off to Vancouver.  I may stay the night.  Some meetings are still up in the air.

Next week: Bay Area... probably

Still looking at Worldcon - depends largely on getting a meeting arranged in Chicago.

October: Probably back in the UK.