Science, and religion as magic, by 'Alexander'

An educated man decides to travel around the world. After going to many places and seeing many things he ends up in a small coastal village where he is invited to eat by the local shaman.

The shaman is a perfect host and after eating they begin to discuss various things about the village and nature.

Inevitably the conversation turns to the ocean.

“Ah, yes.” the shaman begins “The Ocean Goddess is a wonderful being. Through her grace we can sail without fear of wrecking, fish in safety, and sleep without worry of hurricane. For everything from the tides to the currents is within her power. All we have to do to ensure her favor is keep to the proper rituals and make the correct sacrifices.”

This gives the educated man pause.

“Surely” the educated man says slowly, “you must have heard that the moon controls the tide, and that the currents are caused by wind and heat and a dozen other natural things. There is no Goddess that directs these things, only natural processes.”

The face of the shaman tightens into a scowl. He points a single finger at his guest.

You are an evil man,” the shaman hisses. “You would make the ocean into an evil thing. If you got your way the ocean would care nothing for our prayers, our rituals, our sacrifices. Storms would arise without warning, boats would capsize for reasons other than lack of faith.”

“In fact” he continues “it is because of men like you that we still have storms, still lose ships to the tides. If it wasn't for men like you the ocean would never kill anyone. You should be ashamed.”

Not knowing what else to say the educated man leaves the house.

WEEKENDER: Council Tax - Fair or Not? by Wiggia

The annual rise in council tax will this year only add to the forthcoming misery of the majority of households facing enormous rises in energy prices, NI contributions, fuel for their cars and way above the published figures for staples as anyone who goes for a weekly shop can see, never mind rises that will almost certainly be added later in the year.

Council Tax has been a bone of contention for as long as it has been charged.The problem with it is it is loaded on those who do not qualify for benefits, credits, tax handbacks etc., which today is an enormous slice of the population. It’s a dog's dinner of a charge.

I quoted some time ago that the Suffolk financial secretary. in answer to 'who pays?' (this was just after the poll tax was axed and he had recently retired), stated that only 37% of households in the county paid the full rate. That leaves nearly two-thirds who get rebates or do not pay at all. This figure obviously varies across the country but try as I might to get that information today, it has proved impossible. One can understand why: with the new rates due to come into effect in a couple of weeks that sort of information would not go down well alongside all the other costs being heaped on those that actually work for a living.

As with all these taxes it is those marginally above the benefit line who get hit hardest, and also why a fair percentage decide it is not worth working.

This request to Haringey council gives a fair indication as to how far they will go to not reveal the details. After much to-ing and fro-ing they finally revealed how many households pay full tax and how many single person households pay the reduced tax; no figures for, what was asked about, those who pay nothing or much reduced rates.

It is quite despicable that any council can hide matters concerning monies paid by the public in this way. We pay their wages and their pensions yet they deny requests for information about our money and who pays what.

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/cy/request/how_many_households_in_haringey?unfold=1

However, there are plenty of published guides on how to obtain rebates. The current £150 rebate ‘help’ with the cost of living is being given to 20 million - yes, that figure is correct - households in bands A-D.

‘  20 million households to benefit from £3 billion scheme to help with cost of living pressures

• Comes as part of a £9 billion package to help spread the cost of rising energy bills

• 4 out of 5 households will benefit including around 95% of rented properties

• Households encouraged to set up council tax direct debits to ensure payment is made automatically from April ‘

So once again the few will be paying for the many. It could be said that the rebate to help less well-off households is a sensible government measure in times like this, but as usual the government has no money; it is simply giving to an ever increasing relatively poor sector money from the ever smaller full paying sector, and since has when council tax been a conduit for fuel rebates? Council tax is supposedly for local services, which are in serious decline; it has nothing to do with energy pricing. It would have been far more equitable to simply freeze council tax rises this year; with a cost of £3 billion pounds for this scheme they are not that far off going the full Monty anyway.

Maybe with the resentment of many who pay council tax with ever diminishing returns, this is a way of putting a ‘good’ show on for the councils as they have had their grants continually cut.

Councils are landed with paying for social care, something judging by many councils' performance including my own, they really should not be doing. As with so much, councils have little knowledge of business matters and the huge amount of waste shows it: many of the cuts forced on them when the government started cutting the grants were easily accommodated, which begged the question why in the first place? Now it is a different story and the government is simply robbing Peter to pay Paul.

This is a comment from elsewhere….

"The corporate councils operating for profit like to take 30+% for their private pensions, then another 30-40% for their wages, expenses and dodgy redundancy deals, leaving approximately 30% for 'services'. Some councils are spending more on the interest on the illegal private debts (LOBO loans) than they are spending on 'services'. But they've all received millions-billions during the last 2 years of restrictions, to pay for furlough payments, extra policing, extra child stealing, extra evictions, large payments to schools for testing and jabbing, money that was created out of thin air by "borrowing" from the privately owned Bank of England, extra money in circulation that is creating rampant inflation and damaging millions of lives and businesses even further.

"But the corporate councils still have the power to write off Council Tax debt whenever it is requested and deemed appropriate."

Remember that of the amount left for services the amount for social care is included, which is significant.

The generosity shown by the nation to immigrants legal and illegal, is not unique to us, but has become a not insignificant drain on resources. You only have to look back in history and see the numbers that came into the country say in the early 1900s and compare with today to realise the enormous difference.

Again local councils open their arms and accommodate large numbers who have to be fed, housed and generally looked after using local resources and money. Like social care. this comes largely out of council tax, heaping more on to those who pay but having no effect on those who don’t, a category that has just been enlarged and continues to grow.

Governments for reasons of their own decline to admit there is a problem with immigration generally. The figures on all things migrant are to a point, as in the case of Haringey council, hidden or diluted to suit, but then it is not their money they are using to solve or rather handle the problem, so they can be casually offhand about it.

Council tax also suffered a freeze under this government, but with the brakes off some are now asking for ridiculous rises for non services. It appears that pensions are top of the list in most councils when it comes to priorities.

The tax is fast approaching the silly levels of the last days of the old rating system, in truth it is the same under a different name. The only way any fairness can be brought to tax based on property is to make it one that all householders pay as the poll tax offered. The collapse of the poll tax was not because it put an undue burden on those that would not have paid previously but on a cack-handed apportioning of the levels, but instead of revising the tax they abandoned it under pressure.

There is something very wrong when a family of any number can be paying for services the same as a single person household and using a lot more of them. The poll tax shared the costs among all who used them but sadly those who never pay caused riots which turned the whole thing around, so now we are fast approaching the out-of-control rates pricing at a time of enormous pressure on household budgets from all angles.

The single person discount is in fact a poll tax of sorts, though 25% off the full tax is hardly a fair payment if next door is in the five or more family members paying the equivalent of one member in the house.

                      Those that never paid protesting about maybe having to pay something!

Abandoning the poll tax was in the long term the worst thing the then current Tory party could have done, as now any suggestion of a change is met with howls of ‘poll tax’ and it rather like the NHS has become untouchable despite its obvious inequalities among those that actually pay.

Nothing was more more ridiculous than Rod Stewart making a fuss, though rightly, about the potholes outside his home making his Ferrari imprisoned in his home. Yes, he highlighted the fact that councils no longer do much that we pay them for, yet coming along two days later to do the job because a celeb made a fuss is just showing how unequal the whole tax is. Why should he get special treatment when his borough is no doubt riddled with similar potholes that will remain unfilled?

The Institute of Fiscal Studies included this among a review of inequality of tax and benefits:

‘But council tax is regressive. Even after accounting for council tax support (which reduces council tax liabilities for low income families), the poorest tenth of the population pay 8% of their income in council tax, while the next 50% pay 4-5% and the richest 40% pay 2-3%.'

That is a very simplistic way at looking at the council tax. In many cases, the council tax band you live in bears no relation to how wealthy you are: many retired people live in higher band properties but receive ever lower incomes when inflation is taken into account, many high wage earners don’t live in high council tax band properties, much depends on housing costs and areas you live in, and vice versa in places like London where house prices are high and the banding matches but the property is quite basic.

There are so many items that make the council tax not fit for purpose. There are many suggestions, such as a Labour party statement not long ago that suggests the lower bands should (though there were no figures to suggest what that change would achieve) all get a permanent lowering of their charges and the higher bands pay even more.

There have been suggestions that all properties should be revalued as they were last valued in 1991. That is a ridiculous claim as all properties have paid more annually ever since, it has no relation to the properties' current value as they all have risen during that time, so in effect the prices are static for the purposes of charging. If you have extensions or modify your home giving it a higher value then you stand the chance of being moved into a higher band anyway.

I don’t see any of the myriad changes put forward making any real difference unless a form of poll tax is revived.

The difference with the poll tax - with the usual exceptions for those who really can’t pay anything, the infirm etc. - is that everyone who is of working status will pay their bit towards services used. 

Martin Lewis compiled this list of those who will get rebates or discounts, many up to 100%. The list seems endless, many are justified in a socially caring country, but all…?

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/family/council-tax-discounts/

It is no surprise, and I have done an extensive search to try and find figures regarding how many households actually pay the full tax and there is not a single lead I could find other than the saga to get Haringey to reveal virtually nothing it was asked. The 37% they quoted those years ago is almost certainly now on the wrong side of the truth. There appears to be an industry telling and offering people help in claiming rebates or reducing their payments, and all the time those who do pay are paying for more and more of the cake they don’t really get a bite of. I wonder if anyone will have the guts to lay out a route to the revival of a poll tax that is fairly proportioned; I won't hold my breath.

 

Finally, a wonderful example of not getting what you pay for. We moved last year to a no through road, the narrow road at the entrance to ours is a through road with two inclines, one at each end and both ends are heavily tree lined.

In the autumn upon returning from a shopping trip we came across notices at each end that declared “warning: slippery road ahead; 10mph.” Being new to the area I assumed the warning signs were because of impending road resurfacing, but no, it appears that these signs go up every year now because of the huge amount of leaf drop on the road which when wet and with the incline can make driving dangerous; but do they send a road sweeper, which by the way is around locally in the summer? Oh no, they now just put a sign up, the leaves stay for several months rotting away and helping to destroy the road edgings as leaves do when they rot; round of applause for the council who have just managed to get my council tax bill over the £3k mark.

This is the same council who having spent millions doing up County Hall which resembles Ceaucescu’s  palace and have now admitted it was known there were structural defects going back decades which will require more millions to be spent, most people would be happy to have Fred Dibnah, if he was still around, detonating large charges and demolishing the monstrosity.

FRIDAY MUSIC: Chelters and Irish festivity

It's that time of year again when thousands if Irishmen and women 'invade' England and descend on Cheltenham for a week long festival of horse racing. And they usually win most of the trophies, 23 last year. And by a strange coincidence(?) St Patrick's Day is always celebrated during this week.

So to join in the celebrations here is a random selection of Irish music most of it being spontaneous musical sessions in pubs as well as in airports, on buses or trains and even in the middle of a flight on Ryanair. And why not - "The cares of tomorrow will wait until this day is done!"

Ukraine: a completely avoidable tragedy, by Sackerson

My brother and I are sons of a war refugee. When the Red Army swept through East Prussia our mother, twentyish daughter of a gentleman farmer, took the two horses he gave her and rode west. He said he hoped they would see each other again; it took ten years. Much later in West Germany, her now-widowed mother told me how they had had to pack up what they could take on a cart and join the fleeing crowds. A farming couple grudgingly let them sleep in their barn, not knowing that they themselves would soon be on the road.

Other members of our family headed for the Baltic states and were caught behind the Iron Curtain; we have no idea of their names and addresses. Axel, the cousin our mother loved, was killed on the Eastern Front. The farm, annually buried in winter so deep in snow that the family were locked in and lived off stored provisions, warmed by the high tiled oven (a coffee cup went missing for months because a tall relative had left it on the top), furnished with art and fine furniture including an amber-topped table: who knows if it still stands, or who lives in it.

Mother got to Hamburg, where displaced people were surviving by stealing from the ships in harbour; her sack of swag turned out to be tobacco, so she bought a pipe – she had used to half-smoke cigars for a fat old uncle to concentrate the tar and nicotine in the other half for him. An American GI tried to strangle her in revenge for the death of his buddy; mother broke his hold, climbed over a wall and came to see his CO the next day so no-one else would be killed. Then she met a British soldier.

Her parents made it to Holstein, where father, pushing sixty, worked with his hands for the first time in his life; we still have a painting by her mother of haystacks. Then Wiesbaden and a flat paid for out of government compensation, where Opa helped refugees reunite; we have an oak plaque from his former neighbours, with the motto ‘Die Treue is das Mark der Ehre’ (fidelity is the mark of honour.) A big man, squashed down from 600 acres with dozens of farmworkers, to four rooms in an apartment block.

Survival; but a permanent shattering of community and shared history.

This is what has been wished on the Ukrainians, and not just by the Russians. A word inserted by PM Johnson (among others) early into the narrative of the invasion is ‘unprovoked’, presumably with an eye to dragging President Putin to a war crimes tribunal. I can hardly wait for that day, so that the other third parties whose meddling has caused this tragedy can be exposed. Provocation does not exonerate violence, but can mitigate the punishment; who would be coming to the court with clean hands?

Not the EU, gobbling one ex-Warsaw Pact country after another like a Labrador with no appetite off-switch, even though nations it has already digested have reason to regret their membership; so letting them into NATO, which has played ‘What’s the time, Mister Wolf?’ for thirty years after the Soviet Union’s collapse, bringing military threat ever closer to Russia’s borders despite promises that it wouldn’t. Not the offshore-billionaire Zelenskyy, almost a prisoner of his ultranationalists, trying to draw the wider West into a conflict that raises the ghost of 1962 and surprised when, like the Syrian Armenians, his supposed friends have left him high and dry. Not the countries that have stood off but poured in money and weapons (what a bonanza for the arms manufacturers who spend so much on lobbying) to ‘help’ Ukraine, so prolonging and intensifying the conflict.

Now, months after Putin’s demand that Ukraine remain out of NATO https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/dec/17/russia-issues-list-demands-tensions-europe-ukraine-nato was rejected out of hand, Zelenskyy has agreed, saying (he is his own spin-doctor) that Russia is becoming more reasonable in negotiations; perhaps the hawkish commentators detecting imminent Russian military collapse are mistaken. Will we get back to Minsky II, but only after a reported three million refugees and the vast, heart-breaking wreckage of the nation’s property and infrastructure?

On the road again, the ordinary people played with by war planners and geopolitical strategists.

WEEKENDER: Has Nigel Overreached? by Wiggia

                       One of the so so green energy by products.

If you have followed Nigel Farage’s career it has shown a dogged determination in his quest to get us to leave the EU and triumphing. It has come at a cost: the bile and sheer hatred that has been thrown his way has on occasions been off the scale, he was never afforded the protection he needed and had to pay for his own security but not before he was publicly threatened physically.

Despite all that he persevered and revealed through intimate knowledge the failures within the EU. Some of his Brussels speeches were seat squirming for the political elite in charge there, in particular the unelected bureaucrats that ran the show.

Nigel then appeared to lose the plot a little after Brexit was achieved. He seemed not to know to do with UKIP and the party disintegrated with infighting and curious, to put it mildly, leadership choices. He also allowed himself to be used by the Conservatives by not standing in certain seats during the election, a fact that they were extremely ungrateful about afterwards; that was naive at best.

Now he is a wasted force shuttling between TV presenting and flirting with comebacks and new parties, so it has come to pass that he sees an opportunity to hold the climate scam up to the light and the effect that government green policies are having on energy supplies and prices.

All well and good one would say, these policies are with the rising energy prices likely to drive many consumers to the 'heat or eat' camp, not something any government wants to be accused of creating during its tenancy of Westminster.

So we have ‘Nigel's Crusade on net zero’…

https://climatechangedispatch.com/brexit-leader-farage-launches-crusade-against-net-zero-madness/

Unfortunately his Talking Pints on GB News on Monday night was not a good start. I did not see all of it but the majority that I saw did not put Nigel in the driving seat. If you are going to invite green zealots with fingers in the green pie on to your program for discussion you need to do your research, they have had years to formulate answers to questions on climate change and energy production. Nearly all presenters who interview these people either go along with the thesis or are not readily equipped to put points that contradict the mantra; sadly, Nigel fell into the later group.

If your guests come back with questionable answers then you have to have the relevant facts at your fingertips, Nigel didn’t; saying ‘Well, we will have to disagree on that one’ is not an answer without those facts and he didn’t have them.

See here…

The ideologue he was interviewing would as with all others who are in this field put forward reasons for green energy; fine, but his simplistic answers were never challenged,. To trot out the '40% of our energy now is green' is a bare faced lie, several weeks this winter there has been no wind and very dismal skies, so no solar, and we had many days when when wind was contributing just over 1% to the national grid and solar less, meanwhile we imported energy and our diminishing nuclear plants were almost into the red supplying what was needed.

This graph from Grid Watch shows the enormous fluctuation in energy supplied by wind. To talk of 40% and more on those few good days is pure hype, the troughs when virtually nothing was being produced are evident and of course during the winter to rely on such unstable supply would mean rolling blackOUTs or worse. Solar in the northern hemisphere is not really justifiable as a grid contributor during the winter months, the troughs easily outweigh the peaks.

The rebuff from Dale Vince, carefully groomed to look every inch the eco warrior, about smart grids is a nod to the fact that green energy alone cannot supply energy in a way that could ever be acceptable to the population or industry. Talk of breaks in supply and getting up in the middle of the night to use your energy ‘allowance’ is a step back in to pre industrial revolution times; why should anyone accept that and pay through the nose for it?

Smart meters are of course now revealed as a way to implement rationed energy when the time comes, not as a way of saving mone; water meters led the way on that one.

Dale then waffled on about new technology giving us storage to overcome the lack of wind. Once again Nigel had no facts on this and sat there looking lost, yet there is plenty of material out there refuting the claims of Dale Vince. Maybe one day they will crack the problem but this is mystic Meg territory at the moment and if there is no solution we should not rushing into a state where rolling blackouts become the norm. Somehow Dale seems to think this is all OK - maybe it is, for him: his warm feeling about what he is doing may well be enough to stave off freezing to death in the winter as many old people undoubtedly would. Still, if that resulted in saving the planet no doubt Dale would think it all worthwhile.

The earlier predictions from the likes of the National Grid that we would need a sixty percent increase in base load to satisfy all the new clean electric devices including EVs and heat pumps blows the whole green thinking on the matter out of the water.

Boris believes that increasing windmills fourfold will solve all our problems, but of course having four times the 1% we now get on a windless day means we get 4%; not exactly a game changer, is it?

Dale then made himself wide open to ridicule when he wanted all nuclear to be phased out and no new plants built. This revealed  his thinking on the lines of the old CND campaigns - wind good, nuclear bad - and again no solution to how the unreliability factor in supply is solved.

Naturally not all is good about wind production  in an environmental sense either.

• https://www.thegwpf.org/publications/the-appalling-environmental-cost-of-wind-energy/
• https://www.ref.org.uk/ref-blog/365-wind-power-economics-rhetoric-and-reality
• https://www.academia.edu/71023588/Batteries_Renewable_Energy_and_EV_s_The_Ultimate_in_Environmental_Destruction

This article also shows how reports on what so called renewables are producing and actually contribute are being manipulated…

https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2020/04/07/renewable-capacity-rose-slightly-last-year-guardian-gets-excited/

Plus Dale would not like any competition for renewables as another form of energy is being systematically trashed after it was discovered to be reliable and cheap to produce, any more than he would admit to being paid, as the contracts allow payment when windmills are feathered down in adverse conditions and cannot produce anything; I think that is called a subsidy.

https://www.thegwpf.org/publications/uk-media-coverage-of-shale-gas-is-hopelessly-biased/

Wind already has a chequered history in other countries, none so headlining as in California with its rolling blackouts; now that ridiculous placement in the White House Kamala Harris wants to extend the failed California model to the rest of the country…

https://newenergyreport.com/2020-09-21-kamala-harris-wants-to-export-californias-disastrous-renewable-energy-model.html

Dale has obviously not seen what is going on there or doesn’t want to see.

Much was made of the old nuclear plants being buried for thousands of years at great cost and the inherent danger. That money, he said, should be put into research in sustainable energy instead. There was no mention, because it hasn’t happened yet on a scale to be noticed, about disposing of solar panels, something I referred to in an earlier piece. The same problem pertains to the short life carbon fibre off shore windmills and the coming very high cost of the same off shore wind units exposed to sea ravages. The cost of disposal of the short lived windmills, especially off shore has never ben mentioned anywhere other than by those who are not involved in the industry but it is significant.

https://stopthesethings.com/2021/10/13/permanent-legacy-wind-industry-plans-to-abandon-millions-of-500-tonne-concrete-wind-turbine-bases/

Dale spoke of the cheapness of wind power and how it receives less subsidy than other forms of energy, not quite the whole picture though…

https://www.thegwpf.org/publications/british-public-faces-huge-electricity-price-rises-to-bail-out-wind-farms/

There have been several studies on the true costs of wind power, none of which support Dale's statements, but then he runs runs a green power company and as they say if you have skin in the game…

https://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2019/07/WindPokerWeb-1.pdf

https://www.briefingsforbritain.co.uk/the-costs-offshore-wind-power-blindness-and-insight/

And the UK government reinstated subsidies in 2021 for wind and solar; in Australia the turn of phrase on the costs is a little more aggressive.

https://stopthesethings.com/2021/11/01/staggering-waste-counting-the-obscene-cost-of-wind-solar-subsidies/

True this is a biased web site but there figures are official.

This is part of the introduction to a paper on solar energy production below:

“Publications in increasing numbers have started to raise doubts as to whether the commonly promoted, renewable energy sources can replace fossil fuels, providing abundant and affordable energy. Trainer (2014) stated inter alia: “Many reports have claimed to show that it is possible and up to now the academic literature has not questioned the faith. Therefore, it is not surprising that all Green agencies as well as the progressive political movements have endorsed the belief that the replacement of the fossil with the renewable is feasible”. However, experience from more than 20 years of real operation of renewable power plants such as photovoltaic installations and the deficient scientific quality and validity of many studies, specifically aimed at demonstrating the effective sustainability of renewable energy sources, indicate precisely the contrary.”

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421516301379

There is as an aside the belief that the recent steep rises in the price of ICE auto mobiles is not just from the price of materials and supply, but a deliberate move by the industry to try and create a market for overpriced EVs by levelling up to a degree; a fallacy maybe but as with so much these days conspiracy theories appear to be coming home to haunt those who talked about misinformation in spades; no doubt more will be revealed.

Dale would also like to go back to the vexed question of tidal power; this has been dammed (!) as being hugely costly and while being reliable it is only producing power at the high tide times, not as and when we might need it, and it is only ever going to be a niche contributor for geological reasons.

https://www.linquip.com/blog/disadvantages-of-tidal-energy/

Dale has a belief all the problems could be overcome in time. That is no solution to our current problems and anyway there is no guarantee with any any of them coming good in any meaningful way at this moment in time. The battery storage belief is so far fetched as to be laughable; maybe just maybe, the capacity needed to have any bearing on demands is not even on the horizon never mind a reality.

All of this Nigel should have researched, it is not difficult, yet he thought a headline popular banner would see him become a leader against eco zealots. He failed miserably at the first hurdle, he really should have known better.

And hovering above all this is Climate Change which drives all these changes we need to save the planet. As with Covid the right sort of scientists have declared that man is evil and we have to change our ways come what may. Maybe we do have to revise the way we live within certain parameters, but the question of how much man is making a difference to the weather is despite the science not very convincing against a background of the way the weather has shaped the earth over the millennia.

The science over Covid is bit by bit being shredded, but the enormous cost in all senses and the damage has been been done. A repeat over climate change could be equally catastrophic, and the west seems to be heading that way; we never learn.

And don’t expect much deviation from the agenda by politicians, they rarely if ever these days admit they are wrong on anything, plus why should they worry? They can claim heating bills on expenses, kerching!

And finally if you Nigel Farage are going to pursue this attack on net zero, get your ducks in a row, it is not that difficult.

Must do better.

FRIDAY MUSIC: Tina Turner, by JD

 "Start every day singing, like the birds."

- Tina Turner

Anna Mae Bullock was born in 1939 into a sharecropping family in rural Tennessee. She began singing as a teenager and, after moving to St. Louis, Missouri, immersed herself in the local rhythm-and-blues scene. 

She met Ike Turner at a performance by his band, the Kings of Rhythm, in 1956, and soon became part of the act. She began performing as Tina Turner, and her electric stage presence quickly made her the centrepiece of the show. In 1966 the Phil Spector produced record "River Deep Mountain High" made the band, and particularly Tina, world famous. She divorced Ike in 1978, alleging years of physical abuse and infidelity. 

She then embarked on a very successful solo career which ended in 2009 because of illness; a stroke and a kidney transplant. She now lives in Switzerland but she will never be forgotten thanks to her 'electrifying' stage presence and performances.

http://tinaturnerblog.com

Tiddles: a counterblast, by Sackerson

Yuval Noah Harari is a ‘public intellectual, historian’ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuval_Noah_Harari but since he is also said to be Klaus Schwab’s top adviser I shall refer to him as Tiddles, Blofeld’s cat (anonymous in the Bond films, Tiddles was producer Cubby Broccoli’s pet in real life.)

Embarrassingly, Tiddles completed his D.Phil. at my old college in Oxford in 2002 and I am sorry to say that for an intellectual his thinking on religion and transhumanism appears jejune and he does not seem to realise its implications. On the whole I prefer the anarchic yobs and Welsh drunks of Jesus in the late Sixties and Seventies, whose Junior Common Room once elected a goldfish as President on the grounds that like other leaders it went round in circles opening and closing its mouth (an interpreter was appointed to convey its rulings.) Bawling fools tend not to do much harm; it is the theoretical systematisers and world-reformers that led to the killing of countless millions in the last century.

Consider Tiddles’ facile remarks on religion in his 2017 Guardian article: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/08/virtual-reality-religion-robots-sapiens-book

‘What is a religion if not a big virtual reality game played by millions of people together? Religions such as Islam and Christianity invent imaginary laws, such as “don’t eat pork”, “repeat the same prayers a set number of times each day”, “don’t have sex with somebody from your own gender” and so forth. These laws exist only in the human imagination.’

The Abrahamic religions postulate a God who both made the world out of nothing and set the rules for our behaviour: the Creator and Law-Giver; but according to Nick Spencer https://www.abc.net.au/religion/the-problem-with-yuval-noah-harari/12451764 , Tiddles’ position is that ‘There are no gods, no money, no human rights, and no laws beyond the “common imagination of human beings.”’

if we accept that moral laws have no basis, then consider what this implies for a thoroughly consistent rationalist: a world entirely without moral laws that are binding independently of our wishes and opinions. David Hume said in effect that one cannot reason from an ‘is’ to an ‘ought’; you can describe what people think is right and wrong, and even why they may think so, but there is no reason why you should privately adopt their view. In fact, it is convenient if you don’t: I should like everyone else to believe in queuing for the bus, so that I can jump the queue; this helps to explain why psychopaths are over-represented in positions of power. All that matters (if you have any care for yourself, and there is of course no reason why you should) is to work out how to minimise the negative consequences for yourself of society’s disapprobation of your actions.

This nihilism being so, it is difficult to explain why Tiddles is in Schwab’s caressing embrace. Schwab may have a grand vision for future society, but as nothing matters, there is no reason to help him bring it about.

Tiddles has expressed concern https://www.cbsnews.com/news/yuval-harari-sapiens-60-minutes-2021-10-29/ that in an AI data-gathering world humans are ‘hackable’, can be manipulated more comprehensively than ever before. Is this not the WEF’s plan, to design an environment full of blandly contented Stepford https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Stepford_Wives  people? Isn’t this what the Chinese are up to with their ‘social credit’ system https://www.businessinsider.com/china-social-credit-system-punishments-and-rewards-explained-2018-4?r=US&IR=T , intended to nudge their citizens relentlessly towards absolute conformity with the CCP’s commandments? What is the point of creating a perfect world, but not for us as we have previously and in differing ways understood ourselves?

The resistance to this nightmare heaven may have to come from the irrational, the superstitious, the emotional, the capricious, violent, stupid, human-hearted humans.

Dig your claws in, Tiddles, and leap off Schwab’s lap.