Red Biddy

I've been reading the Hansard report of the Second Reading of the Methylated Spirits Bill from 1934.  It's an interesting read, a battle between the desire to control a comparatively minor but distressing evil and a desire not to interfere with the legitimate uses of methylated spirits. The purpose of the Bill was to reduce the highly unpleasant effects of methylated spirit addiction, succinctly stated by Miss Horsbrugh. 

But in bringing forward this Bill I would point out that it is not a temperance measure. Already the Government and all right-thinking people have realised that it is bad for health to drink mineralised methylated spirits, and they wish to have that stopped. 

However, Miss Horsbrugh also seems to be convinced that the Bill is only necessary because other spirits are rendered too expensive by alcohol duty.

I ask the representative of the Government and those who are opposing this Bill to give me any real reason why we restrict all these other alcoholic beverages as to the hours in which they are sold and the methods under which the public can obtain them, and yet allow an unrestricted sale in many of our shops of this poisonous alcohol? Why should the Government frown on "Johnnie Walker" and give the glad eye to "Red Biddy"? Why is the tax so excessive on whisky when up and down the country social workers tell us that if only the methylated spirit drinker could get away from this poisonous spirit and get a taste for a decent spirit, there is some chance of him being cured of his appalling vice.

A Mr Frederick Macquisten also supported the Bill and made some interesting additions to Miss Horsbrugh's observations.

I listened with interest to the evidence that was said to be given by the principal Excise Officer. He has a good salary, and no doubt he drinks good whisky. It is very unlikely that he drinks methylated spirits, and it is extremely unlikely that anybody who could afford to buy whisky would drink methylated spirits. No doubt the same applies to the hon. Member for London University (Sir E. Graham-Little), but everybody is not so refined as he is, and liquors which appeal to other people would not apeal to him or to me. The practice of drinking methylated spirits is the illegitimate child of the Whisky Duty. If that duty were not so high, this evil would never exist, but it does exist because the duty hits the poor at the expense of the rich, and nobody seems to care what happens to the poor— Rattle his bones over the stones, He's only a pauper whom nobody owns. Nobody seems to remember that a definite temptation is put in the way of the very poorest of the population. This Bill will prove to be a hindrance to the sale of this stuff...

Methylated spirit drinking is a definite evil. It is no use telling us that the convictions of people for getting drunk on methylated spirit are infinitesimal in number. People do not get it in public houses. They buy a bottle of it and get a bottle of Spanish red wine, and in that way make their own "Red Biddy" and get intoxicated in their own homes, and as they do not venture out—because they are in a state of coma for twelve hours or so afterwards—the police do not find out...

Generally I object to restrictions of all kinds. I believe that if we had perfect and absolute freedom in all matters the difficulties would soon solve themselves. The degenerates, the people who cannot control themselves, would all pass out, and we should be purged of them in a generation—a rather hectic generation, I admit. Look at the mass of restrictions against the drinking of wholesome whisky and wholesome beer...

The Bill should have a Second Reading and if any Clause gives trouble it can be dealt with in committee. I have great pleasure in supporting the Bill, but I would say that it lies in the hands of the Chancellor of the Exchequer to make the Bill unnecessary by the reduction of the whisky duty.

What strikes me about all this is the way it straddles two very different social attitudes. On the one hand we have a desire to leave ordinary people in peace and allow them to live their lives as they see fit. On the other hand, even the hard-nosed Mr Macquisten was in not in favour of doing nothing if something constructive could be done.

Yet could this be said today?

Generally I object to restrictions of all kinds. I believe that if we had perfect and absolute freedom in all matters the difficulties would soon solve themselves. The degenerates, the people who cannot control themselves, would all pass out, and we should be purged of them in a generation—a rather hectic generation, I admit.

No I don't think so either.

The whole thing is both a harbinger of meddling times to come and an interesting insight into our own bureaucratic tangles and taboos. The Salvation Army was in favour of the Act of course, but they saw Red Biddy in action.

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A nuanced climate

The orthodox climate debate seems to be spinning off some nuances in the face of static global temperatures. Subtle changes in emphasis and a leaching away of previous enthusiasms. A split seems to be developing between the old climate orthodoxy and a newer, more nuanced approach.

Even the BBC seems less enthusiastic about climate stories these days. For example, tonight there is a new Horizon programme, the first of a three part series about cats.

Will the moggy series be more popular than another airing of alarming climate forecasts? Very likely, because political polling suggests the general public have also lost much of their enthusiasm for the climate narrative.

This slight change in attitude by the BBC is more than a straw in the wind too. The BBC originally adopted the bog standard orthodox climate narrative, shorn of even the most obvious caveats. These days it seems less keen, as if even its internal narrative is cooling off – pun intended. 

This is significant. The BBC has been a major player in the orthodox climate narrative and even though it hasn’t defected, any change in tone is presumably significant. Although without being a fly on its well-funded walls one can never be quite sure of these things.

Yet there has always been an important divide between the public climate narrative and the science behind it. Take this well-known example from the IPCC 2001 Assessment Report (TAR), issued when the orthodox narrative was in full swing.

The climate system is a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible.

Prediction is not possible it says, but that’s not what the general public heard and not what organs such as the BBC reported. There is a nuance here though. The predictions we hear about via the BBC and others are actually scenarios, not predictions.

These scenarios were endorsed as predictions by activists and many scientist who should have known better. Instead they threw professional caution to the winds and now there are early signs that the winds are no longer favourable. From the IPCC Special Report on Emissions Scenarios published in 2000.

What are scenarios and what is their purpose?

Future greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are the product of very complex dynamic systems, determined by driving forces such as demographic development, socio-economic development and technological change. Their future evolution is highly uncertain. Scenarios are alternative images of how the future might unfold and are an appropriate tool with which to analyse how driving forces may influence future emission outcomes and to assess the associated uncertainties. They assist in climate change analysis, including climate modeling and the assessment of impacts, adaptation, and mitigation. The possibility that any single emissions path will occur as described in scenarios is highly uncertain. [My emphasis]

As to why these scenarios and the orthodox narrative were constructed in the first place – try this from the UN in 1996.

Energy production and use is the main source of many of the threats to the Earth's atmosphere. Despite tremendous increases in commercial energy use to date, the majority of the global population still has inadequate access to the kind of energy services enjoyed by the inhabitants of the industrialized countries. A lack of adequate energy services is one of the symptoms of poverty. The inequalities are so large that it would be virtually impossible for the majority of the world's population to enjoy similar resource intensive energy-use patterns as those prevailing in the industrialized countries. More sustainable energy patterns throughout the world and the protection of the atmosphere are recognized as important policy objectives at both the national and international levels. International environmental agreements are being extended from the local and national to international levels.

COMMITTEE ON NEW AND RENEWABLE

SOURCES OF ENERGY AND ON

ENERGY FOR DEVELOPMENT

Second session New York, 12 -23 February 1996

Climate change is and always has been a question of tying a knot between global equality and global energy policies. As the above document made clear enough back in 1996. If there are scientists prepared to say that CO2 causes this or that problem with this or that level of certainty then that's fine as far as the policy-makers are concerned - welcome aboard. These people are professional bureaucrats.

So the nuances are there, they always were.

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Ebola and the UK's lax border controls

The Sunday Mirror reports an estimate that the first human carrier of the Ebola disease could reach Britain by the end of the month. "It’s only a matter of time before one of these cases ends up on a plane to Europe," says the virus expert.

One of the things that makes this plague fearsome, apart from the terrible suffering of its victims and the high mortality rate, is the long incubation period of up to three weeks, which means that infection can spread very widely before it is detected.

This highlights the need for border security and as chance would have it, last Tuesday's edition of Radio 4's "File on 4" was on that subject:

"Border Security: All at Sea

"How well are Britain's borders patrolled and defended at a time when the authorities are battling to stem the flow of illegal immigrants coming across the Channel and tightening national security because of fears of a terrorist attack by extremists returning from fighting in Syria and Iraq?

"Allan Urry assesses the vulnerability of our ports, struggling with cuts to Border Force personnel and problems with a computer system that was supposed to have identified all those coming into and going out of the UK. The programme reveals how security checks on cargo are being compromised and hears concern about the gaps in surveillance of our coastline."

Click here to access the programme.

So, not just by air, but also by sea perhaps - in a container full of stowaways who've paid a fortune to get here, or under a lorry coming over the Channel from Calais, or through the Tunnel.

Will we have to wait until COBRA meets on some remote Scottish island while plague rages in the country, or will our political elite finally put away their surfboards and get down to some serious work?


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Sheer joy: Bruce Forsyth on HIGNFY, 2003

HIGNFY S25E08 - Bruce Forsyth, Marcus... by bobalmighty

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The Conservative Party: illusion and collapse

You might have the impression from some newspapers - maybe even the TV - that the British Conservative Party is prospering and that this week's party conference in Birmingham was a success.

Here is a graph showing Party member numbers over time:

Source: House of Commons Library (pdf) - via Wikipedia

Last year, only a third of those attending the Party Conference were members. It's getting like football: the fans no longer matter - they only supply images and sound effects for the edited, televised version. The real money is in sponsorship and deals.

Was the hall packed for Cameron's speech? Easily done: Birmingham Symphony Hall's seating capacity is 2,262 at most (less for rock and pop). For comparison, let's look at previous Party Conference venues. The Winter Gardens at Blackpool accommodates 3,500; Bournemouth International Centre's Windsor Hall seats 4,045; Brighton's Auditorium 1 takes 4,500.

I read where one of Elvis' concerts didn't sell out, so the organiser ripped out the front row of seats and replaced them with a bank of flowers; the Colonel was most pleased with this ingenious device. How far back would the bank of flowers have reached in Birmingham?

The seating capacity at Manchester Central Hall seems hard to discover,  as does the number of Labour members attending this year's conference, but Labour boasts a mere 10,000 attendees (less than the 14,000 expected by the Tories at the ICC), so how many card-carrying members actually crowded in to hear Miliband himself I can't say.

It's not just the Liberals that are having their "Kodak moment".



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Illegal NSA surveillance, Ronald Reagan and after

"The Smoking man"
Source: Wikipedia

Ronnie endorsing smoking
(Source)

Do dee do do, do dee do do... It would be funny - or a good X-files plotline - if it weren't true. James Bamford has been investigating - and fighting, bravely, more than I think I could do - the NSA since the 70s.

He didn't come to this as a journalist at first, but as a security-cleared part-time operative for the Naval Reserve who became a whistleblower when he found things that played on his sense of right and wrong. Especially when the NSA lied to the Church Committee in 1975 about having wound up its illegal surveillance:

"Soon after, committee staffers flew down to Sabana Seca for a surprise inspection. Surprise, indeed. They were shocked to discover the program had never been shut down, despite the NSA’s claims."

Post-Watergate, it was thinkable to consider prosecuting a Government agency - but then there was a change of Attorney General when Ronald Reagan became President:

"If the first shock to top officials at the NSA was the discovery that they were being investigated as potential criminals, the second shock was that I had a copy of the top secret file on the investigation. When the NSA discovered that the file was in my possession, director Bobby Inman wrote to the attorney general informing him that the documents contained classified information and should never have been handed over to me. But Civiletti, apparently believing that the file had been properly reviewed and declassified, ignored Inman’s protest.

"Then, on January 20, 1981, Ronald Reagan was sworn into office. At the Justice Department, Civiletti was replaced by a new attorney general with a much more accommodating attitude when it came to the NSA: William French Smith..."

The NSA wanted to retrieve embarrassing evidence from Bamford, and the President was gung-ho to help them:

"Despite the threats, I refused to alter my manuscript or return the documents. Instead, we argued that according to Executive Order 12065, “classification may not be restored to documents already declassified and released to the public” under the Freedom of Information Act. That prompted the drama to move all the way up to the White House. On April 2, 1982, President Reagan signed a new executive order on secrecy that overturned the earlier one and granted him the authority to “reclassify information previously declassified and disclosed.” "

Since then, of course, and since the Internet and supercomputers, the - some say unconstitutional and illegal - spying has become much worse:

"The agency’s metadata collection program now targets everyone in the country old enough to hold a phone. The gargantuan data storage facility it has built in Utah may eventually hold zettabytes (1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes) of information. And the massive supercomputer that the NSA is secretly building in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, will search through it all at exaflop (1,000,000,000,000,000,000 operations per second) speeds."

For the whole of Bamford's account on NewsTrust, please see: http://newstrust.net/stories/9841512/toolbar

We need to do this to get at our, er, your enemies, says the apologists, here in the UK as in the USA. But remember the words of Sir Thomas More in Robert Bolt's play, "A Man For All Seasons":

"What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil? ... And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you – where would you hide, [...] the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws from coast to coast, Man's laws, not God's, and if you cut them down [...] do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!"


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Cragside

Sackerson says: An inaugural post by our new contributor, Cherry, about a part of England I've wanted to visit for some time.

Cragside House

Whenever I visit Northumberland I am always drawn to visit Cragside, the home of industrialist Lord William Armstrong.

He initially built the house as a weekend retreat, but in due course went to live there permanently. Over the years the house was added to giving it an unusual appearance and leading to the building having the look of a baronial castle and to it sometimes being referred to as the “palace of a modern magician”. The house which is perched on a craggy hillside overlooking Debdon Burn, contains many of Armstrong’s innovations and inventions. Surrounding the house on three sides is Europe’s largest rock garden. He and Lady Armstrong also turned the craggy hillside into a mass of greenery by planting thousands of trees and mosses.

Cragside has many constituent parts. I always visit the formal garden first ensuring peace and quiet before the garden gets busy. It is a perfect example of a Victorian formal garden. Within it is a restored orchard house believed to have been built circa 1870. The fine structure, with its timber base and cast-iron glazing bars in the roof, is a quite distinctive landmark in the surrounding district. The orchard house was built to grow hardy and tender fruits protecting them from the Northumbrian climate.

Carpet Bedding and Clock Tower

Carpet bedding can be found next to the orchard house and in summer months it has diminutive foliage planed in geometric patterns. The plants are clipped fortnightly using sheep shears to form a flat carpet-like surface. Each bed requires 10,000 plants which have been raised in the nursery at Cragside. My favourite time of year to visit the garden is September because the Dahlia walk is spectacular.

A clock tower is just outside the formal garden. It originates from the 1860s and was previously the estate’s timepiece (and pay office), chiming the start and finishing times for the estate’s workers.

View over holiday cottages towards Rothbury

The formal garden also provides an ideal viewing point over the market town of Rothbury. If you venture down into the town, you will see a pleasing mix of old stone and newer brick built properties either side of a wide main street. Rothbury has a number of small and interesting retail businesses including a very nice ladies clothes shop.

From the garden you can walk to the house by crossing the historic iron bridge which was designed especially to provide walking access between the house and the formal garden. In 2009 the bridge was restored and reopened for the first time in nearly 30 years. The 19th century grade II listed bridge spans the Debdon Burn providing magnificent views of the house and rock garden along with views of the Debdon valley with its waterfalls.

From the iron bridge the house is approached through the rock gardens, which extend all around the house covering 4.5 acres. Most of the rock has been man-laid, using sandstone from the local area. 

Within Cragside itself you can see several of Lord Armstrong’s engineering achievements including a hydraulic lift which lightened the load for the servants when carrying coal to the upstairs rooms.

Lord Armstrong was a collector of contemporary British art, furniture and natural history. Some of his collections are still displayed in the house, which was the first house in the world to be lit entirely by hydro-electricity. This was done by using water from Black Burn and Nelly’s Moss to provide a head of water to turn a turbine in the Power House. The National Trust has recently completed the installation of a new hydro-turbine, the Archimedes Screw, which will produce 12kw of electricity over the course of a year providing around 10% of electricity required to power Cragside. This will light the house for a year, continuing the aspiration of Lord Armstrong to illuminate his house by hydro-power.

Cragside has its own holiday cottages offering spectacular views of the garden and Rothbury. The cottage building was once known as the Cottage in the Park and was built around 1865 for the estate manager. The cottage has many features in common with the original part of Cragside and is thought to be designed by the same ‘unknown’ architect.

Nelly's Moss

There is a delightful leisure drive around the estate. The highlights for me are the Nelly’s Moss lakes which are beautiful. Behind the lower lake a labyrinth has been cut among the rhododendron trees to entice children of all ages. The drive is most spectacular when the rhododendrons are in full bloom.

If ever you pass in that direction I can thoroughly recommend a visit, there is something for everyone and something for all seasons.

More information can be found via the following links:

• National Trust – Cragside
• Cragside Facebook page

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