A rant

Richard Murphy grits his teeth at the Daily Mail, which is fighting a rearguard action on its criticisms of Miliband père and has started a counterattack on the Guardian's Snowden releases.

Richard has done sterling work on tracking offshore capital and tax avoidance, but has fallen into the trap of political and newspaper tribalism. What Dacre and Rusbridger say about themselves, each other and their respective publications will just be talking their brief. But the DM is something of a bullyrag to people of certain convictions, and it seems (I hope to be proved wrong) that they can't help but respond entirely predictably.

For example, a comment from "Philip" says, among other things, "The DM may not represent the ‘centre ground’ of establishment ideology but they do represent its worst excesses, its dregs, its most toxic sludge. They are its gutter. Gutter press in the truest sense."

So I say:

"Not sure the left vs right dichotomy is clear or helpful. On key issues both sides of Parliament appear to agree, e.g. on economic migration, though one suspects for different reasons (the Conservatives because importing cheap labour undercuts the working class' attempts to maintain and improve wage rates, New Labour because it "rubs the Right's nose in diversity" and - they hope - brings in fresh supporters for the Big State).

"The hegemony is that of coldly calculating careerist politicians and hangers-on who now know how to make the psephological machine work. Bear in mind that only one-third of MPs get 50%+ of the votes cast in a General Election (true in 2007 and 2010, for example), and look how they cooperated across the floor of the House to rubbish the Alternative Vote. Dum and Dee. I shall never forget seeing Cameron lead the applause for Blair as the latter parachuted out of Parliament and into the arms of JPM, and how only 4 MPs sat on their hands.

"I read the Daily Mail, just as Philip appears to read Karl Marx - critically (BTW - reference for the quotation, please?). This is something Radio 4 comedians and their obediently sniggering audiences don't seem to understand. When they slag off the DM, perhaps for the sake of balance they can remind their sycophantic listeners how the journalists in the Guardian newsroom watched the Twin Towers burn live on TV and said the Americans had it coming to them. As far as I'm concerned no paper and no TV station represents "pravda" or "izvestiya"."

And, by the way, as with Assange, I'm glad Snowden has made certain documents public. It's not the Russians that our lot want to hide it from, it's us. In recent years we've begun to understand what our own governments are like - they are, as Charles Lamb said, "as bad as they dare to be" (10 March 1798).

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Max Hastings' devastating revelation of right-wing American sexual practices!

"They want to reset the clock to around 1955, when... sex was kept in its proper place under the carpet." (In the Daily Mail today)

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Reporting Heath's Treason (2)

(Pic source)

The adjective "superb" is often awarded too easily, but in this case it is fully justified. Last week, Albert Burgess recounted how he was shown classified documents that proved Edward Heath and others committed treason when they took us into the Common Market in the 1970s, and how he went straight to a police station in Oxford to report the crime. In today's instalment, he discomfits successive levels of police hierarchy by reminding them of their sworn duty to uphold the law.

Whether Albert will ever succeed in his primary aim is uncertain to say the least, but he feels morally bound, and the police are professionally required, to try. The greater issue revealed in this process is, on what does power in this country stand? If it is our constitution, laws, truth and logic, it seems Albert must prevail; if not, we have the dreadful prospect - some would say, a present reality - of arbitrary rule by tyrants.

A few days later I received a letter from one Superintendent Trotman saying he was not going to investigate, his reasons being it would be difficult to obtain evidence as all the witnesses were dead (not true), R vs. Commissioner of the Metropolis exparte Blackburn 1968 gave the police the right to decide which crimes they investigate and which they don't, and he was not prepared to allocate his resources.

I wrote him and told him that treason required him to investigate as a priority, that Blackburn was nonsense and that a lot of the people who worked with Heath were not only not dead but readily available.

A couple of days later a woman police officer who was Superintendent Trotman’s assistant phoned me and said, "What exactly do you want?"

I said, "I want to turn on the six o'clock news and see Douglas Hurd in handcuffs being helped into the back of a police car, and 10 months later I want to see him and others on trial for his life at the old Bailey."

She said, "I will put this through to Special Branch."

I said, "Give me their number so I can talk to them."

She said, “Hold on, he's just walked past my door, I’ll get him."

After a few seconds a Detective Inspector from Special Branch came on the phone. He said, "I know about this, and have allocated a woman detective constable to it, but she is very busy and will not get to you for three weeks."

I said. "Give her my number and tell her if I have not heard from her in five days I will submit a formal allegation of neglect of duty against her."

The following morning she phoned to tell me she had a two hour window and could come and see me. We arranged for her to come about noon and I phoned David Barnby to see if he wanted to be there; he did and he arrived about half an hour before two detectives. I explained what Heath had done and what the crimes were and handed over another set of documents, and then they left.

After a number of letters Superintendent Trotman wrote to say he was not going to conduct the investigation. So I submitted a formal allegation against him for neglect of duty under the police discipline codes and for Misprision of Treason at Common Law.

Two weeks later I had a knock on my door and a Chief Inspector Howard from the complaints department and his Sergeant were there. I invited them in and DCI Howard told me they had cleared the Superintendent.

I said "Did you read the documents?" He said, "I glanced at them." I said, "Did you read them?" He said, "I glanced at them." I said, "Without reading them and studying the treason laws, how can you clear him or convict him?" He said, "Well, we have because we don't want the Chief Constable’s photo on the front page of every newspaper as the Chief Constable investigating the government for treason." I said, "She hasn't got to be Chief Constable without having her picture taken, and I am not asking her to go topless on page 3."

Then he confirmed what I had been hoping they would not notice when he said, "The real reason we are not going to do this, is that if we get a conviction against any of Heath's people, which we probably could on the evidence you have supplied, we would have to go out and arrest every government minister for the last 35 years, and that we are not prepared to do." I said, "You are not allowed to make the decision on those grounds, you have to follow the evidence where it leads you."

He got up to leave and I said, "How do you like knowing I know you are a liar?" He said, "What do you mean?" I said, "You took an oath to uphold the laws of this country without favour, fear, malice or ill will. You have just told me because it means arresting government ministers you are not going to do it. That makes you a liar."

He left in a huff.
 

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Default Risk Zero

So the US government is having a little argument about the debt ceiling again. China and Japan have warned that a US default might be a little nasty and even the President himself has warned of financial Armageddon.

So why are the markets so sanguine? Where's the panic?

Well we all know there will be a last-minute deal, it's like those clichéd  cop dramas where you know the protagonist is in no real danger. If there was any doubt in your mind take a look at the appointment of über dove Janet Yellen to the chair of the Federal Reserve. A sure signal that they plan to print to infinity.

Back to sleep everyone, no story here.

However…

The US government have no option but default, the only question is when, but that my friend is another story.

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A graphic tale

This is a wee story of days gone by, imparted to me in the seventies.

Once upon a time there was a small laboratory on the edge of the great unknown. Not too far from Birmingham to be more precise. This little laboratory carried out basic tests on waste water such as sewage effluent, including a test for ammonia.

A simple chemical test was used where a colour develops in the test cell, the intensity of colour indicating how much ammonia is present in the water sample. Light absorbed by the colour allows an ammonia concentration to be read off from a previously prepared calibration graph.

In this case the calibration graph was kept in a drawer where it had been stored for so long that it had become tatty and disreputable as laboratory paperwork usually did in those days. It had never been checked either, until that fatal day when some keen person decided to recalibrate the test and draw a brand new graph on a fresh sheet of graph paper.

Oh dear.

The old calibration graph turned out to be wrong by a factor of two. For years, ammonia concentrations in the effluent had been reported as twice what they actually were.

What to do?

During the following few months, the scientists concerned made a series of small adjustments to their calibration graph, eventually bringing it into line with reality. Nobody was any the wiser, although a welcome improvement in the ammonia levels of the effluent did not go unnoticed.

Not a typical episode in scientific history I should add. It took place in the sixties too. Not a reliable period, yet by analogy it provokes a question. Do climate modellers intend to do something similar if the climate continues to misbehave? Of course in a sense the Met Office already has.

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Dead Man's Fingers

Xylaria polymorpha or Dead Man's Fingers growing on a dead tree near Cromford in Derbyshire. Good name isn't it? 

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Lentil-knitters of the world, unite!

If you haven't seen it, there is a fascinating finding from the CERN CLOUD experiment about the possible effect of amines on cloud nucleation in the upper atmosphere.

Amines are atmospheric vapours closely related to ammonia, and are emitted both from human activities such as animal husbandry, and from natural sources. Amines are responsible for odours emanating from the decomposition of organic matter that contains proteins. For example, the smell of rotten fish is due to trimethylamine. The CLOUD experiment's unique ultra-clean chamber allowed the collaboration to demonstrate that the extremely low concentrations of amines typically found in the atmosphere - a few parts per trillion by volume - are sufficient to combine with sulphuric acid to form highly stable aerosol particles at high rate

Source : http://www.interactions.org/cms/?pid=1033278

Animal husbandry eh? Maybe that's one small step for climate science, a giant leap for vegans.

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. 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.