Sunbathers burden on society, official cause of death, tools have morals

Mainly from BBC today, and some bleedingly obvious comments.

1. Singapore Bans Gay Rights Forum. Aiyah. Singapore, why do you embarrass us expats so? How can we explain to others why Singapore is so uptight we can’t even talk about OTHER countries’ stance on homosexuality?
2. Hardcore sunbathers ‘know risks’. I take it sunbathers who deliberately get burned for a tan and know it increases their risk of skin cancer will be using private healthcare when they are diagnosed, and won’t be expecting the NHS (and the taxpayer) to pick up the tab? Ha! As fucking if.
3. Post-mortem on airport attack man. Will they be calling witnesses who will confirm the man set himself on fire, and shock horror, burned? He then went to hospital with 90% burns and subsequently died. It’s not exactly a covert Russian-style poisoning. So he’s an idiot, but how he died isn’t exactly news.
4. Firms withdraw BNP Facebook ads. I’m not really interested in the Facebook news (although Facebook should surely be able to control what ads go where), but it brought up a discussion over how sites like YouTube should censor content, while I would argue that these sites are simply tools (discussed previously), and while they should be attentive to what gets posted — especially if there is a criminality issue involved — it is not their responsibility. The responsibility lies with the parents (if the posters are children) and those who upload the content. The more consequences for bad behaviour are divorced from the occurrence of that behaviour (i.e. someone else being forced to take the blame), the worse the problem will be.

• 6 Aug 2007

• Thinking