Davy Jones' garbage

Look beneath your lid some morning,
See those things you didn't quite consume
The world's a can for
Your fresh garbage . . .

Spirit - Fresh Garbage[1] [2]

I loved that song when I first heard it in 1968, on the compilation LP “The Rock Machine Turns You On”[3] – Jay Ferguson’s distant, lost-sounding, disillusioned tenor voice, perfect for the teenager in turmoil.

It’s still relevant, and the biggest rubbish bin of all is the sea. A lot of this is plastic, not only on shores, where it represents 60% – 80% of all litter (Derraik, 2002[4]) but in vast swirling oceanic garbage patches[5] - and on the sea bed: in 1995 92% of debris on the floor of the Bay of Biscay was plastic[6]. A more recent article by Greenpeace says 70% of plastic litter sinks, and there is an estimated 600,000 tons of it at the bottom of the North Sea.[7]

The debris is unsightly, and can strangle or fill the stomachs of marine wildlife. It’s also toxic, so developing biodegradable versions doesn’t solve the problem – indeed, it could make it worse, since dissolved plastic is much harder to find and nearly impossible to remove.

James Higham posts a picture[8] of a cleanup device still under development. It’s a giant static filter that the inventor, Boyan Slat, hopes will trap surface garbage but allow plankton to pass safely through; work continues.[9] But even if it works perfectly, that still leaves the other, sunken 70% to deal with. Yet again, techno-fixes have limitations.

I can remember when we had shopping baskets and produce wasn’t shrink-wrapped. Will those days ever come again?

 

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[1] http://www.metrolyrics.com/fresh-garbage-lyrics-spirit.html

[2] http://youtu.be/k7MQ5rxUZsc

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rock_Machine_Turns_You_On

[4] http://www.caseinlet.org/uploads/Moore--Derraik_1_.pdf

[5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Marine_garbage_patches. There are in fact more than three of them, as the articles go on to explain.

[6] Derraik, Table 1 (see note 4).

[7] http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/campaigns/oceans/pollution/trash-vortex/

[8] http://nourishingobscurity.com/2013/09/09/plastic-gobbler-of-the-seven-seas/comment-page-1/#comment-221633

[9] http://www.boyanslat.com/plastic5/

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Honey traps

I like honey, so I tend to notice honey-related stories and it is surprising how much skulduggery there is in the world of honey. Take these comments from the head of a Derbyshire supplier.

"The honey industry is used to launder money, with people buying large quantities and then selling it at a loss. In the past, I've been offered payment of substantial bills with plastic carrier bags full of cash," said Tony.

He said: "There is a lot of cheap foreign product on the shelves, claiming to be honey. One retailer in Derby has a product on the shelves that is so cheap that by the ton it would cost £12,500. For 20 tonnes of unrefined product in a 40ft container the price would be £13,000 so the prices I see on the shelves are a physical and financial impossibility.

I know 70 tonnes of unlabelled synthetic honey is imported into the UK but I've never seen synthetic honey on sale and it can't just vanish into thin air," said Tony.

He has experienced problems with corruption in Italy and Greece and does not deal with either nation. He said: "In Greece, you can pay for official paperwork to certify your honey is whatever you say it is and this is what we're up against.”

It’s obviously a tough business because this same supplier’s name appears in an Australian article on fake Manuka honey. I've bought honey from this guy and suspect he was the victim of yet another honey scam.

In October 2011, Britain's Food and Environment Research Agency (FERA) tested a small sample of five brands of manuka honey from shop shelves. Only one, made by Comvita, was up to standard. The other four (from Nelson Honey, Honeyco Rainforest, Littleover Apiaries and Native New Zealand Manuka Honey) showed no detectable "non-peroxide activity", the anti-bacterial properties special to manuka honey.

Of course the issue of chloramphenicol in Chinese honey has been rumbling on for some time and still appears to be a source of concern.

How to detect fake honey? This article dating all the way back to 2007 has some simple tests, including one extraordinary piece of advice.

When poured very slowly honey will flow as a spiral in a clockwise direction. This is because the honey molecule is non-symmetrical with a right-hand bias which causes the stream of honey to spin.

Complete nonsense of course.

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.

How to price the British housing market?

http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/11/global-house-prices
 

The Economist magazine published an interactive tool at the end of last month, to show what's happened to house prices since 1975. They say that (thanks to Osborne's vote-buying house purchase schemes) "the British market is picking up even though its fundamentals—unlike America’s—suggest continued overvaluation."

This is just fun with statistics. Prices "in real terms" may change when food and fuel get more expensive and "average incomes" ignores widening regional and income-group disparities.

I have also suggested before now that we don't have a housing shortage, we have a housing misallocation. Rents would be lower if we had some properly enforced policy on economic immigration. And there is the vexed question of all those spare bedrooms - "taxing" them hits families that don't have it easy, yet very many old people are clinging on to property that's dauntingly difficult and expensive for them to look after (my wife's grandmother hadn't been able to go upstairs for decades).

But thanks to the fragmented family, people are less likely to take in their elderly relations. I know a doctor who, when a chap wanted to complain about how his old 'un was being looked after, agreed enthusiastically and offered to have the ambulance follow the chap home so she could be safely installed into his loving care; gosh, how fast the complaint went away!

Inflation is a matter of choosing A and B and comparing them. Unless Osborne plans to imitate Rudolf Havenstein then his (and the supposedly independent BoE's) pumping has to stop, probably after the 2015 General Election. My guess is that except for "hot spots", house prices will decline in cash terms, especially as unemployment and underemployment continue to undermine the workforce.

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.

John Ward: Co-op and TSB customers should seriously consider switching

John Ward looks at the split of TSB from Lloyds Bank and suggests TSB customers should get out - as well as Co-op customers, who look set for a "haircut".

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.

Damascus gas attack - "children were killed earlier by jihadists"

Syria: it's alleged that the children dying of gas poisoning in Damascus were in fact Alawites kidnapped by the jihadists - and that they were killed before the 21st August event.

(htp: Tap blog)

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Arctic freeze, Greenland melt

David Rose writes again in the Mail on Sunday, reporting a 60% increase in North Polar ice cover. Ha ha! That's one in the eye for all you global warming experts, etc.

On the other hand, Professor Jason Box continues his Dark Snow researches in Greenland and finds that the melting continues as predicted. About half of it, he thinks, is down to reduced albedo [index of light reflection] because of a soot layer from the burning of fossil fuel and forest, but there are other factors, too, including a secondary partial-melt effect that causes ice crystals to become more rounded.

And Rose's article ignores regional variation in air temperature, even within Greenland. "Heat transport into the Arctic bypassed Greenland to its east. Svalbard [an archipelago in the North Norway region] has had a warm summer."

Meltfactor blog: http://www.meltfactor.org/blog/?p=1222

Greenland had a record warm episode in July (not due to the North Atlantic airstream), but then there was fresh snowfall in the south that brightened the surface more than usual; yet in the northwest the albedo was unusually low.

Journalists, whichever side you take (should you be taking sides?): it's just not that simple. And the polar ice cap cover is only one of a wide range of measures being assessed and discussed in the climate change debate.

I don't suppose Rose is likely to listen - he's doing too well out of incompletely-researched contrarianism. Unfortunately, he's writing in the most-read newspaper in the UK.

He's not the only professional side-taker: look at Matt Ridley, the self-styled "rational optimist", whose home farm promotes organic and traditional farming while the lord of the manor makes a reputation by telling the world that there's nothing much to worry about. Seems like Greenland isn't the only place where it blows hot and cold.

"How they are related" footnote:*

"Environment Secretary Owen Paterson’s wife, Rose, is the sister of Viscount Matt Ridley."

Paterson is the Minister currently championing biodiversity offsetting so the developers can have a clear run at the land they want to build on.

Just so you know.

*Even more interestingly, this information appears to have been recently edited out of the Wikipedia entry, but the same fact appears in this Mail article: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2346246/Why-did-Tories-change-tune-GM-food-We-expose-secret-summit-slick-lobbyists-bio-tech-giants-seduced-willing-Ministers.html

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.

Islamic radicalisation - a straw in the wind

Several years ago I spotted a slogan painted on the door of a box of a building on Highgate Road: "KILL DA JEWS". The "da" was clever, designed to appeal to the would-be South Central LA homeboys. It was soon painted over, of course, but.

I used to work with a project not far from there, that got 15-year-olds off the streets who'd been out of school for some time. We gave them basic maths and English, and practical work in the form of carpentry and joinery (they made some great doll's houses). The idea was to settle them and get them ready for sixth form college so they could get some qualifications and vocational training. It worked well, and still does.

One boy was a very genial lad who wasn't that bright but corrected my bad work when I tried to clean the project's fish tank and filter. He was hooked on cannabis, "bud" or "Bu-ddha" as he would put it. He knew he wasn't going to get anywhere till he kicked it, but giving up was hard. He needed a core, something to surrender to, just as with the twelve-step program. In his case, he decided to get religion.

So he began his daily discipline through Islam, breaking off from study or play to pray at the right intervals. To help him with his meditations, he had an unlabeled recording he'd got from somewhere and we found him a portable player. It was devotional Islamic song and the voice was exquisite, a calm, pure tenor. I listened with him and our minds went into a blue space.

Maybe five or ten minutes after the start, another voice joined in, preaching hatred for the Zionists. The speaker, in his twenties by the sound of it, also had a pleasant voice, and timed the phrases to blend with the hypnotic beauty of the chant. On and on he went.

I was horrified. This decent lad, young, not academic, impressionable, in need of guidance and leadership, was being groomed, I thought. I spoke to the other staff, and they pooh-poohed it - he was such a good-hearted kid that we couldn't imagine him doing any harm to anyone; and they were probably right.

But the intention of whoever had burned that CD was clear. And with a cleverer adolescent, ambitious to get some adult status and respect, it would work, given time. There are many young people without jobs, money or much to do, but they can have coffee at each others' houses, swap recordings, surf the Net. It'll start from where they are, in a teen culture of ghetto-speak and weed, then it'll become more serious and focused, bending the twig as it grows. It's not Hitler's health and exercise bands any more, or the uniformed rallies; it's bedroom fantasyland gradually taking on reality.

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