Prophile

Although Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab's underpants may have failed to go off, they have certainly ignited the debate around the use of profiling to assess the risk passengers pose to aircraft security. This has been the elephant in the room ever since 9/11, but this week the British government admitted passenger profiling was "in the mix". Is this simply a detached, dispassionate practice, or is it also subject to unhelpful cultural bias?

As the press sifted through the known facts from his time spent studying in the UK, The Times noted last Wednesday that Mr Abdulmutallab was the fourth head of a Muslim Society from a college of the University of London to be arrested on terrorist offences. It's the sort of statistic that actually says very little, because on its own, its a dead end: does that put all Muslims in the frame, heads of Muslim Societies at UK universities, or, indeed, anyone at all? It's an innuendo in search of significance. But it has power in the mind because of the power of the crime of terrorism. It only takes one person to panic an entire nation. If we were to find that, statistically, several heads of the Rugby Society at University of London colleges had been arrested for drunkenness, it would be just as insignificant as a statistic, but we are likely to take a measured view because of the perceived threat to ourselves posed by drunks versus terrorists.

Does the activity of Mr Abdulmutallab put us in the clear to consider Muslim devotion a threat to our bodies regardless of the individual or to insist on more rigorous searches at airports? The fact that high-profile recent terrorist incidents in our sphere of interest have been committed by Islamists leaves those of us outside the faith conducting our own unconscious profiling whenever we are at an airport. But it is interesting how this form of cultural risk assessment is reported, when compared with something closer to home.

At about the same time as Mr Abdulmutullab was buying his special y-fronts, the Murphy Report was released in Ireland, as a follow up to the earlier Ryan Report published in May. Between them these reports set out in depressing detail the astonishing levels of abuse perpetrated by officers of the Roman Catholic church in Ireland upon children, decade after decade, and how that behaviour was covered up, denied and explained away with complicity at the highest levels of the church.

It would be possible to argue that, given the numbers of victims involved, the Church in Ireland has destroyed more lives than Abdulmutullab ever could have - though that would be to create a sick competition. However, we do feel able to idly speculate whether being a Muslim makes you more likely to be a terrorist - yet at the same time, I hear no debates in the press about whether being a Catholic priest makes you more likely to be a child abuser or pederast. In the one case, we can see beyond the collective to the individual, in the other they are all tarred with the same brush.

Returning to our original question, it seems about the only thing Mr Abdulmutullab didn't do was print a "I'm a Terrorist" T-shirt, since he was granted an entry Visa to the USA, despite being on at least one list of suspicious or undesirable persons, paid cash for the ticket and took no luggage with him. The nonsense reactions of those in charge of US air security reflect a desperate desire to reassure people than actually any useful precautions, not to mention to deflect a degree of political embarrassment. Under the precautionary principle, I am reasonably happy to accept a degree of profiling based upon intelligence and statistcal evidence, and sorry if that upsets a few people who fit an unfortunate profile. On the other hand, I'd also insist on the same level of scrutiny being applied to all religious zealots put in a position of where they are capable of causing harm.

Fin de siecle

As befits a rubbish year, the end of the decade has felt something of an anti climax. In fact, I didn't even realise it was going to be a new decade until last week. Yet before we know it, we'll be having Noughties Nights at nightclubs, when people can dance to Girls Aloud wearing Ugg boots, drinking bottle of blue WKD.

I wonder when we became quite so self-conscious about bundling up the years into neat packages to be consigned onto certain shelves, as though on New Year's Day 1980 we went from being striking punks to greedy Spandau Ballet fans. I suppose the idea of the Roaring Twenties was the first, with the Wall St Crash to put clear daylight between the delicious abandon of 1929 and the sobering depression of 1930. Looking back on this first decade of the 21st century, what will we say were defining themes? And looking forward to the next, what on earth will we call it?

The Noughties sort of stuck in the absence of anything better, but how will we collectively refer to the years 2010-2019 when we come to look back at the end of the century? The Teens? Teenies? The Wunies? All horribly twee and silly - too much so for what looks set to be a serious time.

If the aforementioned 1920s can also be known as The Jazz Age, then I suggest the next 10 years hereby be known as the Teen Age. First, because we are about to go through a horrible transformation, where our comfortable existence is turned upside down, the lack of money will make us collectively grounded, plus where everything will seem so unfair, what with taxpayers subsidising bankers' bonuses. And by the end of it, we may just be able to afford to buy our own drinks.

The final countdown

This week there has been a bit of a ding-dong, and not just from Santa's sleigh bells. Forget Copenhagen, the nation has been gripped by whether X-Factor winner Joe Schmo will get his Tiny Tim dream of a Christmas number one, or whether a spoiler campaign will propel another group to the top of the seasonal chart, in the form of a Rage Against The Machine song from 1993, "Killing in the name of". Simon Cowell has been harrumphing like a bad loser in tones of such unwitting irony that my head almost turned inside out with the mental gymnastics it took to realise he wasn't joking.

For me the most interesting thing is the passion aroused on both sides (or as near as Simon Cowell can come to it) about what is really a curate's egg. I mean, why does anyone give a toss what happens to be the best-selling song at the time of a public holiday? It's not as if there is a religious dimension to the rivalry, reclaiming the feast from the heathen hoards, a la Cliff Richard. The papers will not be filled with speculation as to what is the best-selling book, or the most popular movie on release. Is the Christmas single meant to say something about us as a nation, the aural equivalent of the Queen's Speech? If so, it may explain the sense of national decline.

Once upon a time, of course, it mattered financially. When singles came in vinyl format and you had to shift three quarters of a million units to hit the top, it was the biggest week for sales, thanks to their popularity as gifts. This habit has always puzzled me - you want to buy a record as a Christmas present for someone, but you know so little about them that you have to guess at a song. And if you had used the number one single as some sort of quality benchmark, more often than not the recipient would have been disappointed, as this accolade is won, as often as not, by the likes of Bob the Builder and Westlife - and going back further Shakin' Stevens and Benny Hill. You may as well select number 18 every year and hope for the best.

These digital days, when more people own soft copies than hard copies, actual singles sales are a tiny proportion of revenue for an artist, and given there is not even a Christmas Day Top of the Pops anymore, the question remains as to why people actually care. No-one strives to achieve an Easter Number One or August Bank Holiday hit. Have we let the nation down if the X Factor machine secures its fifth consecutive Christmas number one? What about if it's number one for New Year, not to say a new decade, as it almost certainly will be?

Where do we go from here? Is this the sign of Cowell's waning influence after four consecutive hits? Are the charts of the future going to represent the results of random social media campaigns rather than the current favourite tunes? I'd like to think it marks the end of the idea of a singles chart, which smacks of the bad old days of no commercial radio, three TV stations, and a waiting list at the GPO to get a phone installed. In the multi-channelled world we live in today, a monopoly system that claims to signify something of importance to everyone is an anachronism, and irrelevant to most people. Let's hope Simon Cowell goes the same way.

Voting in the name of

As the steroid-injected, bloated cash cow that is X-Factor collapsed off the TV schedules, no doubt ITV executives were cheered by the advertising and phone-vote revenue raised, and Simon Cowell is calculating the precise number of burgers the carcass will make. And newspapers anxious about the sudden lack of stories can fill some time this week by talking up the viewing figures - 15 million on average, apparently, across the weekend's shows. The Evening Standard described the fact that more people voted for the final's contestants over the weekend than elected the current government at the last election as "the most interesting statistic".

No doubt the Daily Mail will join this chorus tomorrow, as a fitting subject for much tutting about lack of interest in politics (all Gordon Brown's fault) and the dumbing down of the population (also Gordon Brown's fault), probably as part of a dismal A N Wilson piece. But even if we ignore the millions of citizens ineligible for the electoral role who do vote for TV talent shows (the under 18s), it seems an odd comparison to make, much as the media loves to do it.

If, in order to vote for Bill or Ben (or whatever the finalists' names were), viewers had to go to their nearest school with a registration card between 7am and 7pm on a Thursday, as opposed to sending a text or ringing a premium rate number, the number of votes polled on X-Factor would diminish considerably. I'm sure over the weekend more people ordered takeaway pizzas than voted Labour in 2005, but that doesn't necessarily represent a collective expression of disillusionment.

But it does seem to have given Simon Cowell an idea for greater political engagement, as he says he wants to organise X-Factor style shows involving politicians ahead of the general election. Debating issues, fortunately, not singing (story here). According to the BBC, he wants to create a "bear pit" atmosphere, with a live studio audience and viewers voting via telephone. He wants to put on a show where a large studio audience was divided up according to its view on an issue, and then "a red telephone would allow politicians to ring in to state their case", which leads me to believe that he's gotten Prime Minister's Questions mixed up with Deal or No Deal.

Although I would welcome Mr Cowell's creative involvement in organising such an event, my greatest fear is it would spark a counter-campaign on Facebook, and before we knew it, the lead singer of Rage Against the Machine would be Prime Minister.

As you like it

"Shakespeare? I'd rather stick pencils in my eyes". So runs the quote on an ad I saw today, promoting the new Jeremy Clarkson book, presumably as an example of the author's wit and wisdom. Which is uncanny, because, faced with the prospect of Shakespeare, I too would rather stick pencils in Jeremy Clarkson's eyes. Actually, I don't even need to hear Shakespeare.