Pic of the day: V&A

The spiral staircase in the Jewellery Collection at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, 04 July 2013. (Photo: author.)

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment.

Human history vs Earth's history

 

If we wrote the entire history of Earth on A4 paper at 1,000 years per page, the stack would reach up a bit over 1,533 feet - higher than the top of the antenna on the Empire State Building.

 

Of the 9,200 reams of paper, only the top 5 would have anything about humanoid creatures; the last ream (thinner than the top line of the column in this diagram) would contain the entire history of homo sapiens, and the uppermost 0.8 inches would record modern man (homo sapiens sapiens).

 

The final 10 leaves tell of what happened since the end of the last Ice Age, and the first writing by Man himself (in Sumerian) appears on the fifth-to-last page.

 

As you float in the air above, you reach out and pick up the top sheet, which is written in the language of the time. In the British edition, the first half of the page is unintelligible to the ordinary reader, as it's a mixture of Celtic and Anglo-Saxon, Latin, Norse, Norman French and Middle English. Even the early part of the second half, in Modern English, can be confusing, as it may contain words no longer used, and others whose meaning has since changed.

 

A standard A4 sheet contains 46 lines at 8 - 9 words per line, so the history of the globe since 1900 is covered in the last 5 lines - about 40 words. There are only 8 people in the world still alive who were born before then; all of them are female.

 

The last dinosaurs - wiped out by the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event, 66 million years ago - are to be found 22 feet further down the stack - still nearly 40 feet above the top of the antenna on the Empire State.

 

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.

Peasants

I recently ploughed through a collection of Chekhov’s short stories – 209 of them on my Kindle, although a few were duplicated – possibly alternative translations. Did he write more than 209 minus the duplicates? I don’t know, but by gum they’re good. 

I hadn’t read much Chekhov up until then, but what a writer! He found time to be a doctor too. Here he is writing a fictional, but one suspects all too real account of peasant life in late nineteenth century Russia :-

Only the well-to-do peasants were afraid of death; the richer they were the less they believed in God, and in the salvation of souls, and only through fear of the end of the world put up candles and had services said for them, to be on the safe side.

The peasants who were rather poorer were not afraid of death. The old father and Granny were told to their faces that they had lived too long, that it was time they were dead, and they did not mind.

They did not hinder Fyokla from saying in Nikolay's presence that when Nikolay died her husband Denis would get exemption--to return home from the army. And Marya, far from fearing death, regretted that it was so slow in coming, and was glad when her children died.

Above all, they were afraid of catching cold, and so put on thick clothes even in the summer and warmed themselves at the stove. Granny was fond of being doctored, and often went to the hospital, where she used to say she was not seventy, but fifty-eight; she supposed that if the doctor knew her real age he would not treat her, but would say it was time she died instead of taking medicine.

Anton Chekhov – Peasants (1897)

Russia has produced so much talent and to this outsider at least, seemingly wasted under the thumbs of mass murderers and autocratic wastrels. Why I don’t know, but we still need talent like Chekhov's.

There is one problem with him though. When I finally put aside my Kindle and looked around at modern entertainers and celebrities...

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.

Who is the Mail's "David Rose"?

UPDATE (3 June): It's NOT Hari:

 

Yet another excited boost for critics of the climate change lobby in the Mail on Sunday today, by David Rose, who sees our economic salvation in near-limitless shale gas and lambasts green ninnies and nimbies.

He may be right. But does he exist?

I can't find this "David Rose" on Twitter - it's not the deputy news editor by that name:

- or on Facebook.

Debate on his existence has swirled about the internet for at least a couple of years - in 2011 "Jack of Kent" seemed to be speculating that it might be Johann Hari in disguise.

He appears to have phoned cannabis legalisation campaigner Peter Reynolds last year, who includes this photo of him:

 

- which seems to have been taken by someone at the Guardian, if you look at the photo credit here.

 

And it looks like the David Rose in this video, interviewing Binyam Mohammed in (I think) 2009.

 

Yet he seems so elusive that I still suspect this climate-sceptic "David Rose" to be a dummy, a byline for thirdhand material from undisclosed sources that the Mail wants to put in as propaganda and disinformation.

 

A shame, because there's proper debate to be had. If you really exist, Mr Daily Mail Science Writer David Rose, please do step forward out of the shadows.

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.

Lions and donkeys

It's Armed Forces Day and concidentally I've just finished reading David Blakeley's "Pathfinder". This book is about a 2003 UK special forces mission behind enemy lines in Iraq and it's full of lessons, including a couple that the British Army should have learned long ago.

As the US Marines seized Nasiriyeh, a town that against military intelligence analysis had turned out to be strongly defended by some of Saddam's most committed troops, a small airfield at Qalat Sikar, some 80 miles behind the enemy's front line, became an important part of the battle plan. If this could be secured by the Parachute Regiment it would be a valuable stepping stone for the advance towards Baghdad.

The job of the elite Pathfinder (aka PF) platoon is to get vital on-the-ground intelligence while risking only a few personnel. The obvious tactic was for them to get to Qalat Sikar by para drop, but air resources were not available. So instead, they had to take three Land Rovers straight up the road, with a network of rivers and canals (not on our maps) on one side and wooded, difficult terrain on the other. They passed a number of previously unsuspected Iraqi positions but were spotted at last and a big Toyota pickup-borne Fedayeen ambush set ahead for them.

The team called HQ but were told that there was no possibility of air strikes or evacuation by helicopter. So the only option (other than a long, almost certainly fatal Bravo Two Zero-style foot-slog) was to drive back again, this time through a series of ambushes by a fully-alert enemy. This was running the gauntlet with a vengeance, and only a combination of acutely-honed mobile firing skills, courage, improvisation and luck got them back to the Marines alive and (scarcely believably) unhurt.

There had been far more enemy than the intel had suggested, maybe two thousand very well-armed troops in a number of locations along the road. They had not been spotted by satellite and were well dug-in and camouflaged. But thanks to the PF excursion their positions were now known and Blakeley and co. passed on the information to the Marine commander, who called in air strikes that cleared the way for the Coalition forces to speed northwards.

Blakeley comments more than once on the difference between resourcing for the Americans and the Brits, and how we are so often the poor relation. The whole gauntlet could have been avoided if we had had (or diverted) what was needed to do a HALO (high altitude, low opening) para drop; the adventure they had makes for a stirring story but luck and courage shouldn't be the core of your plan. I recall a programme about the early days of the special forces Long Range Desert Group in North Africa in WWII, and how when someone asked about food for the long missions behind and back from Rommel's lines, an officer said the men could "live on their fingernails". Is there something about British leadership that prefers Captain Scott to Ernest Shackleton?

And then there is the attitude of the Ministry of Defence to its own when they are most in need. Blakeley was severely injured in a vehicle rollover not long after the Qalat Sikar escapade, and on getting home to recuperate received a form letter warning him that if he was on the sick list for more than 18 months the Army reserved the right to terminate his contract. "It didn't even wish me a get well soon. Nice. I was a war-wounded soldier just a day out of hospital. I'd taken a look at the name of the MOD pen-pusher who'd signed it, and I'd memorised it. I resolved to meet up with him in a dark alleyway sometime in the near future, and get even. It's still on my list of things to do." His spirits were raised instead by a handwritten note from Prince Charles, accompanied by a vintage bottle of the Prince's own Laphroaig. What a contrast; and a similar MOD letter is presumably sent to many others in the same plight. All that Army training manual stress on morale and leadership, and not two minutes' thought given to standard official communication with men at their most vulnerable.

Penny wise, pound foolish. In his SAS memoir "Seven Troop", Andy McNab contrasts the mental health support given to US Special Forces personnel with its lack for their British counterparts, commenting that given the huge expense of recruiting and training elite soldiers, adequate psychological counselling for them would make sense merely from a coldly financial point of view.

The negligent attitude extends to soldiers' families, or used to. When our father broke his back in Aden in the Sixties and subsequently lay crippled in hospital, his pay was frozen until one day our mother packed some food and drink and took my little brother to the Army offices, and told them she and he were staying there until she got something to live on. It worked, but it shouldn't have had to.

It's nice that Mr Cameron has flown out to see the troops in Afghanistan, though I'm not quite sure who is gaining more. Our military commitments are heavy and the future darkly unpredictable, yet thousands of regular soldiers are being made redundant and TAs are expected to take up the reins and defend our country and our national interests on the cheap. Perhaps we should rely less on luck, pats on the back and sentimentality, and weigh the potential costs of defeat against those of adequate defence provision.

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.

Indolent charity

The only difference between Timmins's dinner and his neighbour's was, that he had hired, as we have said, the greater part of the plate, and that his cowardly conscience magnified faults and disasters of which no one else probably took heed.

...guilty consciences, I say, made them fancy that everyone was spying out their domestic deficiencies: whereas, it is probable that nobody present thought of their failings at all. People never do: they never see holes in their neighbours' coats—they are too indolent, simple, and charitable.

William Thackeray – A Little Dinner at Timmin’s

I suspect many of us have what Thackeray calls a cowardly conscience – imagining that other people pay more attention to us than they ever do.

Yet many people in public life appear to have no such thing, or rather they understand what Thackeray might have called the simple, indolent charity of their audience. They are well aware that their inadequacies may be obscured behind the crudest dishonesty, misdirection and sheer chutzpah so essential for serious political aspirants.

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.

Ethical investment in African farming

See Josh Altman's new piece on the Agriculture Page.

Oxford reunion, 40 years on

photo: H M Cotterill, 2007

See World Voices for this year's midsummer revelry under a magical moon.

BLOGGER ALERT: EU now makes its big power grab

The European Central Bank has given itself permission to take control of Europe via the economic system. The news comes via a small item buried in the Telegraph website, but John Ward sees this as a dangerous watershed.

Please read his article and if you agree, promote wider readership via your own electronic connections.

ANALYSIS: WHY THE REAL EU FUHRER IS NOW MARIO DRAGHI

Slipping quietly onto the Telegraph’s website at 10.45 pm Thursday night was this potentially earth-shaking piece (the italics are mine): ‘EU agrees rules on bank rescues by bailout fund: using the €500bn rescue fund to shore up struggling banks directly is a pillar of Europe’s so-called banking union, which seeks to hand European institutions the job of supervision and rescue rather than leaving weaker member states to fend for themselves.’ It came to nine lines in total, attracted six comments, and has now been reduced to a tiny sub-head 75% of the way down the Finance page.
History will come to see this as perhaps the outstanding media miss of the entire eurozone crisis.
It’s entirely contrary to the Lisbon Treaty of course – but let’s not worry about that: Gordon Brown never wanted to sign the bloody thing anyway. The more important point to make here is that the steam coming out of Bundesbank President Jens Weidmann’s ears yesterday will have been enough to power the Frankfurt U-Bahn for a year at least.

“Central banks in recent years have been pulled into the role of a crisis manager,” Herr Weidmann told Finnish newspaper Helsingin Sanomat in an interview four months ago, “Some think that central banks are the only able ones. I consider this thinking wrong and dangerous”. A consistent anti-ECB direct aid hawk, Weidmann is one of the few German élite members who talks consistent sense….and, privately, has come to realise that Chancellor Merkel is an unbalanced egomaniac.

But it’s beginning to look like the Anti-ECB Hawkeyes are being stitched up by Berlin.

What we’re seeing here is the megastate technocrats of Berlin-am-Brussels handing absolute power to the unelected….at the expense of the citizen. Merkel and Schäuble may dislike what the Demon Draghi has achieved at their expense, but that’s a tiff about power, not principles. The very fact that we are getting the direct ESM usage with no sign of Fiskalunion (which wasn’t what last year’s summit agreed) means that all the power now resides in the hands of the man with the printing machine: Mario Draghi.

The Merkeschäuble would prefer that power to lie with them, but they’re on the same mission as the Italian Machiavelli from Goldman Sachs.

Take the Karlsruhe ‘decision’ on the Constitutional or otherwise nature of the German Government partaking in eurozone OMT. The facts surrounding the case are beginning to suggest Merkeschäuble political interference on a grand scale. While the Court was meeting earlier this month, I was under the distinct impression that Karlsruhe would give a decision by the Friday of that week. Contacts across Europe and the US were of the same opinion.

So too were the German media.

This from Spiegel June 10th last: ‘alarm bells are again ringing inside the ECB tower — only this time it’s no drill. On Tuesday and Wednesday of this week, Germany’s Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe will rule on the euro crisis aid measure that Draghi announced last fall. As Draghi and his monetary experts on the executive floor of the bank were told by their constitutional experts long ago, this court decision could have an enormous impact on the bank’s policies — and potentially spell the end of the euro.’

But then three days later – the day before the decision was due – the June 13th, Time Magazine was saying, ‘The court will deliver its ruling in the fall, probably not before the German parliamentary elections on September 22.’

Very handy, that. Especially as it was widely known in German élite circles that the decision was on a knife-edge: Wolfgang Schäuble was briefing and spinning like an overactive Dervish for the entire week. He obviously didn’t think the portents were good.

Now the shroud around all this is getting increasingly diaphanous.

This is what it says on the Federal Court’s website today: “We regret not to be able to present to you the decisions of the Federal Court of Justice in English language. The court has no staff, capacity or equipment to do so.”

Sorry folks, but LOL or what?

Leading German anti-OTM camapaigner and eurosceptic Peter Gauweiler has led the Karlsruhe suit from day one. He seems able to afford English translation of his views….but not Germany’s Federal Court.

When I rang the Bundesbank press office this morning, they declined to comment. Funnily enough, so did the ECB.

We need to take this on board in a big way – even if the mainstream media are half-asleep on the EU’s fascist illegality, and Berlin’s willingness to ride roughshod over its Constitution.

We still await the ECB capital flight data. It was due for publication on June 17th. It’s now June 21st: where is it?

Get real, people: Mario Draghi is the most powerful human being in Europe, and he is a crook. He is subverting European democracy and breaking any law that gets in his way.

Mario Draghi is a former senior manager at Goldman Sachs. He recently gave a presentation to EuroFinMins openly encouraging a policy of reducing citizen incomes to cut production costs: that is antithetical to Article 3 of the Lisbon Treaty. He has now been given carte blanche to supply money direct to any eurozone institution, thus bypassing all democratically elected Assemblies in the region. This too is forbidden under the Lisbon Treaty. Mario Draghi is completely unaccountable to any body or institution – elected or otherwise. Under the ECB’s Constitution guaranteed by the European Commission he is totally immune from prosecution. He cannot be removed from his position. He is obviously censoring any and all information that might reveal the true situation in the eurozone. He illegally subordinated an entire class of bondholders over the second Greek bailout. He managed and spearheaded an overt heist to steal the banking expertise and economic wellbeing of Cyprus, and in so doing committed an act of grand larceny against innocent depositors in the Island’s banks.

As of today – following the FinMins’ disgracefully amoral decision of yesterday – Mario Draghi has more power than Hjalmar Schacht and Josef Goebbels combined in 1941. And he is a far better political strategist than Adolf Hitler. Slugging it out with this gargoyle to be the EU’s top money manager is Wolfgang Schäuble: a lying humbug and former Spook enjoying the political protection of a former DDR Communist Youth leader – a Stalinist hardliner who speaks fluent Russian….Angela Merkel.

This is not a queue for the showers, European nations. It is the line heading directly to the extermination of your democratic rights, individual liberties, and personal wealth. There may be 27 of you and only one Draghi; but your divisions just make his job far easier. Step in the way of the Beasts now, or you will have a jackboot stepping on your face forever. 
 
I try as much as possible to keep these appeals to a minimum, but I am asking anyone interested enough to please email, share, tweet, text, reblog, and otherwise give this piece a maximum chance of viral epidemiology. The mainstream media are obsessed with superficial news, gossip and settling political scores, but in giving this decision a low profile they are in complete dereliction of their duty.

How will shale gas impact the UK market?

See The Energy Page for Nick Drew's analysis of how even small amounts of shale gas could make the UK energy market cheaper.

A parade of Polish dragons

See World Voices for the Dragons of Krakow.

Nick Drew on energy market distortions

See The Energy Page for Nick's piece on why helping little energy companies compete isn't doing them or us any favours.

Bilderberg, Max Keiser, Alex Jones and Nigel Farage

Some comments on Max Keiser's latest piece indicate discomfort with Alex Jones' performance on Andrew Neil's Daily Politics show. My two cents' worth:

Jones' performance has been described as in "meltdown" (e.g. by the normally shrewd Guido) - but that's a serious misreading. This wasn't John Sweeney exploding impotently at the Scientologists.

The British approach is that you can say what you like because it makes no difference, so you may as well be cool about it, too, maybe even ironic, and we expect the usual ending: "Thanks for your input, it'll be interesting to see what happens".

Jones was pushing through that in forthright American style and when he (in effect) accused Neil of supporting the status quo I heard a little bell ring. Neil's "loopy" hand gesture suggested some frustration that he hadn't been able to dominate and kebab his guest as he had with Chris Mounsey of the Libertarian Party.

Some say of cars, "Drive it like you stole it"; this was "Do politics like you mean it." We've had mealy-mouthed twisters up to here (gesture: hand parallel to chin); I think Keiser is right to suggest that we're ready for brash. Keiser himself acts gonzo but is nobody's fool, and when you see what he's criticising you begin to perceive that reality has become so bizarre that the Oxford common room debating style just isn't up to the challenge.

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.

Womanly care

 Heaven knows what taste the lieutenant could boast of, but even he noticed one characteristic peculiarity about the whole place, which no luxury or style could efface--a complete absence of all trace of womanly, careful hands, which, as we all know, give a warmth, poetry, and snugness to the furnishing of a room. There was a chilliness about it such as one finds in waiting-rooms at stations, in clubs, and foyers at the theatres.

 Anton Chekhov – Mire (1886)

Do we say such things today? Or if we do, is it with a hint of embarrassment or defiance? Or like the fabled file in a prisoner’s cake, is it better to slip them in as Chekhov quotes?

I’m sure nobody is unaware of what Chekhov meant by the chilliness of public spaces. As to why they are chilly - moderns are not so likely to borrow his domestic ideal as an evocative contrast.

Yet our homes are not the private and highly personal spaces they were in Chekhov’s day. Corporate and government interests have seen to that.

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.

The PRISM Scandal: it gets worse

The ten o' clock news is full of distraction and non-denial denials from the Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary. The PM is vapouring on about the importance of the role of the intelligence services; and the FS is denying that GCHQ is breaking the law without denying that we have all our telecommunications spied on, thus confirming that the law here already permits what the Americans are doing.

I am not surprised, but I am disgusted. Caught with their pants down and without the courage to tell it like it is.

If only libertarians could leave off their trivial consumer obsessions and tackle the subject of the full-scale tyranny in front of us.

Gedankenexperiment

Caveat: I am not an economist, I just like playing with numbers.

Consider an economy with 3 classes of people.

Class C: 50% of the population, earning an average of $50,000 per year, and spending all of it.

Class B: 49% of the population, earning an average of $100,000 per year, spending $95,000, and investing $5,000.

Class A: 1% of the population, earning an average of $1,000,000 per year, spending $300,000, and investing $700,000.

Assuming equal rates of return, class A will receive 74% of any gain in wealth.

Take modest growth of 3.03% per year for 60 years. The total wealth W has now grown to 6W.

Even if they started with nothing, class A now has 3.7W, almost 2/3 of the total wealth.

Smoking: a question

Are we to give up smoking because it "causes fatal diseases", or welcome it because it provides much-needed tax revenue?

As Peter Cook said about his smoking, "I risk my life for my country on a daily basis." And it was liver disease that killed him.

Plain packaging for alcohol, anyone?

Costa permanence

Consider this Santayana quote on the deceptive desire for permanence

That the end of life should be death may sound sad: yet what other end can anything have?

The end of an evening party is to go to bed; but its use is to gather congenial people together, that they may pass the time pleasantly. An invitation to the dance is not rendered ironical because the dance cannot last for ever; the youngest of us and the most vigorously wound up, after a few hours, has had enough of sinuous stepping and prancing.

The transitoriness of things is essential to their physical being, and not at all sad in itself; it becomes sad by virtue of a sentimental illusion, which makes us imagine that they wish to endure, and that their end is always untimely; but in a healthy nature it is not so.

George Santayana - Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy

If we extend the idea, it is easy enough to see how a deceptive yearning for permanence may be used to justify all kinds of authoritarian trends. There are some curious byways one might explore with the idea too.

Take Costa coffee shops for example. After much vehement local opposition a new one has opened in Bakewell, Derbyshire. Bakewell is in the Peak District National Park but it made no difference in the end. Veni, vidi, vici as usual.

There are other factors of course, but do huge corporate bodies provide the illusion of beneficial permanence? Do we cosy up to the illusion via a cup of Costa’s second-rate coffee?

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.

Will fracking help us - or hinder us?

AK Haart asks the more penetrating questions about the benefits of shale oil, over at The Energy Page.

I beat Hitchens: Clegg to collect his reward as an EU Trojan Horse?

Peter Hitchens tells us today that he has long predicted the LD/Con spat and that it will result in Clegg getting the lucrative post of EU Commissioner.

Three years ago - long before Hitchens - I reminded readers of Clegg's early stint as a student at the College of Europe, and predicted the EU job for him:

"It is, I think, significant that Clegg's postgraduate learning included a spell at the College of Europe in Bruges, an outfit whose purpose was described by postwar Euro-idealist Henri Brugmans as "to train an elite of young executives for Europe." I read that as a sort of McKinsey for pliable idiots. Other British Isles alumni include former Tory MP Nigel Forman, Neil Kinnock's sprog Stephen, LD stiff Simon Hughes, ScotNat MEP Alyn Smith (how a nationalist and a federalist? explain!), and Irish-born ex-Gen Sec of the European Commission David O'Sullivan.

"Now, for a short spell, Clegg's playing with the big boys, and they're going to have his marbles and the bag they came in. [...]

"The best that can be hoped for by Nick Clegg, I think, is to do a Blair: sell out to powerful interests who will springboard him into some position less vulnerable to the people's franchise. Perhaps the reward for his long service to Europe will be a seat on the European Commission (maybe he still speaks to David O'Sullivan and friends - see above). He, and ultimately his descendants, will be accepted into that modern equivalent of the Hapsburg dynasty that is the nascent power support structure of the EU."

As with Peter Mandelson, doubtless Clegg's putative position will mean that he cannot criticise the EU (even if he wished to), because to do so will result in the loss of his pension.

I'm not sure whether these days, selling out to a foreign power that wishes to infringe or abolish our sovereignty could in theory provide grounds for a prosecution for treason. I also don't understand why there has been so much done since 1998 to water down or abolish the relevant legislation and punishments.

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.