Money vs. reality

I've just listened to James Howard Kunstler's latest podcast[1], an interview with "ecological economist" Eric Zencey, whose book “The Other Road To Serfdom”[2] came out late last year. I give below a loose summation and interpretation of what I saw as the main points.

Zencey gives a good definition of sustainability: a system that doesn’t undermine the preconditions of its existence. (I recall a TV programme about farming in Norfolk, where thanks to centuries of intensive arable agriculture and other erosion factors the soil level had dropped so much that an old farm house had to have extra steps added, to let the occupants get up to its front door.)

He says that money is not always a good measure of what is going on, or what is beneficial, in an economy. Money is an abstraction, like a mathematical model, and reality is the energy and matter of the Earth, which we transform to suit ourselves. When fiat money is essentially infinite, but the world is finite, there is the potential for dangerous modelling distortions that will lead to seriously incorrect choices. Zencey like the idea of increasing bank reserve requirements until we get “100% money” (but I fear that might cause a depression that would result in a backlash that casts off all restraint).

GDP is flawed: it measures what he calls the “general commotion of money”, but it has no column for debits.  (This reminds me of a presentation I heard at the BAAS[3] in Birmingham in 1977, where an economist noted that eating more sweets and going more often to the dentist both raised GDP. ) Real growth, in the sense of more net benefit to us, is not the same as increased activity. So he calls for the adoption of an alternative yardstick, the Genuine Progress Indicator.[4]

Zencey suggests that instead of the classical –theory  tripartite division of economy into land, labour and capital, we should consider four classes of resource or capital: the built infrastructure, plus natural, social and cultural capital. (I emailed Mr Kunstler last month to say that the prospects for the US are still good, since the ratio of population to arable land is higher than anywhere else except Russia. He agreed, but said in effect that US culture has degraded and the infrastructure has seriously weakened, so that Americans are not the same people they were in 1943.)

Our current rate of consumption of “natural capital” is several planets’ worth; we will, he says, eventually get a sustainable system, it’s just a question of what kind, and so our task is to give future generations as many options as possible. The world is not infinite, and our current agricultural system “turns oil into people”. When the oil runs out (and like many other commentators he scorns the “100 years of shale” story) we’re back to the natural resources of 1800 (when the world fed maybe a billion humans) plus whatever modern technology we can employ to make best use of them. Perhaps a sustainable human population of 2 or 3 billion?

Current economic measures generally don’t  factor-in ecological degradation, but Zencey notes that the Failed States Index[5] includes an element for demographic pressure on resources. (And not just local-demographic, I’d say, if we think about what’s happened in the Middle East.) One of his chapters is provocatively entitled “Got terrorism? Blame economists”.

But he agrees with Kunstler that the young, much-maligned Millennial generation are hopeful, care, are passionate to use their knowledge to engage with the challenges we’re leaving them.

---

[1] http://kunstler.com/podcast/kunstlercast-246/

[2] http://www.upne.com/1584659617.html

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

[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genuine_progress_indicator

[5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Failed_States_Index

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.

Stop the play and save your life

Stop reading Liz Jones' diary!

For those who don't know, Liz Jones is a fashion columnist with a weekly confessional page at the back of the colour supplement of the UK's Mail on Sunday. Her life is the emotional equivalent of one of those slow-motion gorefest sequences in a Sam Peckinpah Western.

The dirty secret is that she wants it that way.

It'll go on as long as you are suckered into watching. You are part of it; you are complicit. Though your face is hidden in the dark beyond the footlights, the performance is for you. “You! Hypocrite lecteur! – mon semblable, - mon frère!” said T.S. Eliot in The Waste Land, inviting you to share his nervous breakdown.

There's a parody of Eliot's drama-queen gloom somewhere in Richard Adams' rabbit-saga Watership Down, where one of the bunnies takes on the manner of a prophet and foresees inevitable disaster - I can't track it down quickly but it's there, I promise you. Adams' book started (like some other great children's stories) as a series of adventures told to his children as he drove his car, and, sane and sensible man that he is (he lives yet, praise the Lord), he wanted to give them a positive outlook and so mocked the wrong-headed negativity of the doomster. Similarly, H.G. Wells' Mr Polly discovers:

"... when a man has once broken through the paper walls of everyday circumstance, those unsubstantial walls that hold so many of us securely prisoned from the cradle to the grave, he has made a discovery. If the world does not please you - you can change it."

To break through the paper walls, the first thing you have to change is you. Easy to say, so hard to do. But until you start using your egg tooth to peck at your shell, it doesn't matter what's going on outside, for the inside will always be the same.

One reason it's so difficult is that what you think of as your essential self is a pattern that's wrapped around your innermost consciousness, and even though it may keep on driving you towards unhappy results, you're afraid to get rid of it because it kids you that to lose part of your identity is to die. So it redirects you to externalities - once I'm rich/thin/famous it'll all be OK. And off you and I go into displacement activities, acquiring skills, knowledge, possessions, money, status etc; and somehow it's never enough. Because however wonderful the car, if the person behind the wheel is self-destructive he's going to wrap it round a tree.

No wonder childhood is so important. "You belong, you are loved, you're going to be just fine": that's what we need to hear. First train up the driver.

Eliot's French quotation is from Baudelaire, whose decadent poem makes Boredom the chief devil. But from what I've seen in life, and in what I do as a teacher of "special needs" children, that's not the driver. It's anger: anger at being cheated emotionally, leading to a lifelong desire for self-justification and revenge. It's a Ring Cycle, though in real life the ring is forged not because love was renounced but because it was withheld. The pattern is set, and unless it's broken it will lead not just to slow-burning personal tragedy but to Götterdämmerung.

Which is where we, the audience, come in. I once took part in an amateur dramatic production which, owing to publicity failings, got just two people on the auditorium seats. When they left at the interval, the show stopped (I was for carrying on, out of sheer stubbornness). Every actor knows that even if the public doesn't clap or cheer, they're participating; it's a dialogue with their energies. "Waves of love", the old variety performer would say as he got his applause, giving it back with outspread arms. So we're partly responsible for the performance.

Which is the central insight of Eric Berne's book "Games People Play" (may it never go out of print). You don't have to get into Transactional Analysis and the Child/Adult/Parent diagrams that echo Freud's Id, Ego and Superego. Man is greater than anything than comes out of him, goes the ancient Chinese saying, and such is our wish not to be imprisoned that if there was a perfect answer to anything I'd be looking for a second option.

The main observation in Berne - the thing you can take away with you and apply elsewhere - is that we write scripts. These have a part for the author, but parts for others, too, and the writer tries to recruit actors for the drama. The "play" itself has an agenda, like feelgood or downer films: the conclusion is that the principal is right, attractive etc. But he or she must be seen as such by others, without any essential change in the star of the show (because change is death). And so the play is good for an indefinite number of performances, like The Mousetrap, so long as the audience keeps the secret.

All the plays have at their core the principle that inner change must not be allowed to happen. The useless offerings pile up at the altar as, one after another, the bit players come in and perform their parts, some of them ending themslves discomfited, wounded. Over the past few months we've read how Jones has taken up with an old musician she call the RS (Rock Star) and once she's got him to declare his love and admit his vulnerabilities, she's rejecting him in various ways, including taking up with another person she had a crush on when she was young. It's compelling reading, but the reason why that is so for us - for me - is worrying.

Berne says, spot the script and ruin the punchline. Don't act Part B to Part A. Break the pattern. It needs to be more than that, of course. That will save you, the secondary actor, from an emotional mugging, but the scriptwriter still needs what we all need and should have had from the start: unqualified love.

Not love flavoured with pity - Jones wrote some time ago about having no cash and was highly embarrassed when loads of readers sent in bits of money from their own much more constrained budgets. Not love based on shared weaknesses, or common elements of unfortunate past life histories. That's why it's so hard to be a therapist - so many traps to fall into.

The hope is that if you don't play along, you make little breaks in the shell that the occupant can widen and climb through. The children that I see come to us very anxious, angry, disruptive and full of defiance and resentment. We try (and don't always succeed, because we're human) not to react to them as other people have before; to accept them while addressing their toxic behaviour patterns; and gradually, most calm down a bit and begin to respond. It doesn't happen all in one go, and there are backward as well as forward steps; but you can't give up. Essentially, though we have to follow the godawful National Curriculum and its bureaucratic assessment and recording procedures, this isn't about education in the academic sense; it's about an opportunity to heal.

And no, I'm not saint or angel. It's damn tiring and I'm not sure how much more of it I can do. Remember that as in psychology, many working in special needs education came to it as catchers in the rye who first needed saving themselves. You have to be careful not to work off your own neuroses onto others - and who is completely free?

We can't directly help Liz Jones. The audience is not a personal friend. But we can perpetuate her difficulties, by rewarding this weekly display. I choose not to be complicit any longer; I still get the paper, but I'm not reading the column. I hope someone throws her a lifebuoy, and that she chooses to reach out for it.

Same for you, same for me. Go save your life.

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The limits to protest

A couple of weeks ago I was arguing that we should deplore the increasing isolation of our rulers and suggesting that it could be a justification for other kinds of feedback to them.

The video above (from LiveLeak) is one: former general David Petraeus, going to lecture at the City University of New York, is being pursued by a shouting mob of students protesting his involvement in the Iraq war.

How far should this go, and for how long? At what point will viewers feel that the protestors no longer represent a voiceless cohort of the population and are then acting unreasonably, or rather too self-righteously? Should the students be allowed to continue in "every class", as they threaten?

If Simon Wiesenthal could pursue Nazi war criminals without  a time limit, should others feel empowered to hound those that they consider unpunished wrongdoers?

Is "it was all a long time ago" a sufficient excuse?

UPDATE (14:15): Coincidentally (I think), The Tap blog draws our attention to George Monbiot's "Arrest Blair" campaign. The site and its wording are carefully considered, not one of those wild and amateurish efforts.

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Global toilet quiz

How are you on lavatorial recognition these days? 

Can you place a toilet’s global location with no more than a cursory glance at a single photographic clue? Are you really that well-travelled?

The linked quiz below is multiple choice so you probably won’t score zero and some answers can be guessed anyway. 

Although come to think of it, toilets are no place for guesswork are they?

http://toys.usvsth3m.com/crapper-mapper/

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5:95

An anecdote I heard years ago concerned prisoners of war captured by the Chinese in Korea.

When a new contingent was caught, the men were taken to an initial holding facility, officers not segregated but mixed with other ranks. Then they were all carefully watched, to see who showed any signs of initiative.

Only 5 per cent demonstrated get-up-and-go; these were put into small, heavily guarded units. The rest went into large, lightly patrolled POW camps.

A small minority starts everything, and if it's tightly co-ordinated, runs everything, for good or ill. So the challenge is how give rein to the good and restrain the bad - and who is going to do this?

Many of the 5 don't understand the 95. Some, judging by their own lights, fear competition and oppress people who generally wouldn't dream of challenging them anyway. For the same reason others set up schemes, imagining that the majority can't wait to take advantage of new opportunities, and then become irritated:"Why don't they get up off their backsides and do x?" Still others understand that there is a divide, and simply despise the 95 for not being like themselves.

We hope that someone among the five per cent will lead, yet understand and value the majority. We look for someone with heart.

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"Western secret services connived at the Syrian gas attack" - Voltaire Network

Why so few women victims? Why were the dead children not pictured with grieving parents? How were atrocity videos made before the events allegedly occurred?

See this article by Thierry Meyssan:

http://www.voltairenet.org/article180221.html

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Frogs In Space

Pic: Yahoo News

Poor old frog. But Classic fm asked for frog-themed titles of science fiction movies and one wit suggested "I, Ribbit".*

*For non-fans of SF: see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I,_Robot_(film)

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Flywheel energy storage

 Beacon Power has updated the old idea of short-term energy storage via flywheels:-

Flywheel energy storage works by accelerating a cylindrical assembly called a rotor (flywheel) to a very high speed and maintaining the energy in the system as rotational energy. The energy is converted back by slowing down the flywheel. The flywheel system itself is a kinetic, or mechanical battery, spinning at very high speeds to store energy that is instantly available when needed.

The primary use at the moment appears to be frequency regulation for electricity generation, a well-known problem with wind and solar, especially solar. As Beacon Power says:-

To ensure a functional and reliable grid, the Independent System Operators (ISOs) that operate the various regional grids must maintain their electric frequency very close to 60 hertz (Hz), or cycles per second (50 Hz in Europe and elsewhere). When the supply of electricity exactly matches the demand (or "load"), grid frequency is held at a stable level. Grid operators, therefore, seek to continuously balance electricity supply with load to maintain the proper frequency. They do this by directing about one percent of total generation capacity to increase or decrease its power output in response to frequency deviations.

Not all generators can operate reliably in such a variable way. Changing power output causes greater wear and tear on equipment, and fossil generators that perform frequency regulation incur higher operating costs due to increased fuel consumption and maintenance costs. They also suffer a significant loss in "heat rate" efficiency and produce greater quantities of CO2 and other unwanted emissions when throttling up and down to perform frequency regulation services (my emphasis).

Flywheel storage technology must add substantial frequency regulation costs to wind and solar. In the case of wind in the UK, these are costs which its proponents have so far succeeded in spreading around elsewhere.

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.

EU vs UK: an email to Mr Christopher Booker at the Sunday Telegraph

Dear Mr Booker

I should be very grateful for your, or your contacts', opinions re the authority of the EU over the UK. My MP, John Hemming, emailed me (22.03.2011) to say this, and I don't know how right he is:

"The EU has no power over parliament. In fact the Lisbon Treaty included a change for a provision to leave the EU. Parliament can simply refuse to incorporate EU law and in my view should be a bit more critical.

"People also get confused between the EU and the Council of Europe."

Is this correct? And if so, isn't Parliament the problem, rather than the EU?

Yours sincerely

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The Last Post

Newsnight tells us the Royal Mail is set to be privatised. Look at our bus services, our rail, our medicine, our education - making a mint for a few is bound to make services better for everyone.

I've never voted for Labour. Not when it was run by a narcissistic psychopath, nor afterwards by a Stalinist depressive. I can't vote for a party led by a gobbling Marxist-lecturer's-son hereditary-leader sixth-form-debater Tweedledum or his simmeringly resentful Dee brother.

But how can a supposedly fragile Coalition be so bold? It must be the recklessness of despair. Après leurs, le déluge.

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.

My Long Walk To Freedom

Almost five years have passed since I cracked open an eyelid and looked at the world anew.

I live in Scotland, in a wee village where not much has changed for decades. Crime is almost non-existent, my two sons received a goodish education, my wife works full-time, and I continue to use the village to launch my visits to Africa and beyond. Life was good, all were happy and all were feeling relatively secure.

In late 2005 I learnt about the impending smoking ban which was slated to kick off on March 26th 2006. I was incensed. I was outraged. I knew the damage it would bring to the hospitality industry, so I read, and I read, and I read. I studied the proposed law and I was stunned at how easy it was to get an abomination like this through Holyrood. The law was flawed. In fact, according to a QC I know in Edinburgh, it contained five major flaws and two minor flaws. He was, he said, quite happy to launch a Judicial Review to overturn the law but he also said he needed 250 thousand pounds to achieve it. Game over. It was, in fact, game over for nearly 12,000 pubs and clubs. They still shut down at a phenomenal rate.

In 2008 I discovered the Freeman Movement and I was enthralled. The principles were sound, the theory was sound, so I threw myself at reading statute after statute. My head was bursting with a million facts and I was now on the warpath. I was an enemy of the state. This was okay, because the state was always my enemy. They hate me. They hate you too. If you doubt that, take a brief look at the many thousands of things they do not do in our name.

Later on I started reading Magna Carta (1215 as well as 1297) and I knew the answers lay within. MC1215 is unique. It is a Treaty between the King and his people. It was for all time, and it could not be amended, repealed, rewritten, or undone in any way. This Treaty was not created by parliament-it was written and enacted 50 years before the first English parliament was even born. De Montfort and his early parliamentarians only got started in 1265-and as MC1215 was not created by them, they, and successive governments, had/have no right to fiddle with it. As far as I am concerned, the document is lawfully extant. Every word of it.

In June 2008 I entered Lawful Rebellion. I invoked Article 61, as is my right as an Englishman, although the Scots, the Welsh and the Irish also have the same right: Barons from all four corners of what is now the UK came together to add their autographs to this world-changing Treaty. This Treaty serves us all. In 2001 a Barons Committee was formed following the horrendous House of Lords Act 1999. Some 70 Peers entered Lawful Rebellion and advised Mrs Windsor accordingly. I did the same thing using a series of Affidavits between June and September of 2008. In essence, I am no longer beholden to any statute bearing Mrs Windsors name, nor am I obliged to obey any of her agents, or indeed, anyone who has sworn an Oath of Allegiance to her. My allegiance is to the Barons Committee. I am not alone in this. Some 800,000 people in Britain have sent the same documents, and made the same oath: to distrain and distress Mrs Windsor and her agents until redress is obtained.

I have been distraining and distressing like billy-oh ever since.

It is not a comfortable life, seeking confrontation with the state at every turn, but I enjoy it. I have learnt to say "No", forcefully, politely, and often. It may surprise you to learn just how powerful this word is.

One of my tasks (part of the distraining and distressing thing) is to withhold taxes as often as I can. So when I got a demand from HMRC for 5K 'owed' to them in Corporation Tax I thought I would try my new found skill. They sent me letter after letter, demand after demand and threat after threat. It went on for a while and in order to stay in honour (very important in law) I continuously made them a "Conditional Agreement To Pay". This staved off court action because I never said I would not pay, just that I needed them to answer a few simple questions before I did so.

I ended up writing to their Solicitors Office when they were handed the problem. It took me three letters to remove their interest in me completely. What voodoo did I use? Which particular words threw them into a tailspin?

Just these:

"Please prove that I, Captain James Ranty*, a living, breathing man, owe you a single penny".

*my nom de guerre

The letters stopped. The demands stopped. The threats stopped. Everything stopped. I have not heard a word since 2009.

As daft as it sounds, the words 'human being' do not appear in any tax statutes. Not once. The word 'person' appears hundreds of times, I grant you, but I am not a person. Their definition of person is: "corporation sole, limited company, or legal fiction".

I am none of those and I am therefore not obliged to pay tax. That, plus my obligations as a Lawful Rebel, put me way beyond their reach. To date, I have withheld over 15K in taxes and fines.

The courts are very different. I have not had a good outcome there. I am not a habitual criminal, by the way, but I did decide to treat a speeding 'offence' a little differently than most. I refused to complete the Notice of Intended Prosecution form. It allowed me only to plead guilty and that is not right. Not according to the Bill of Rights 1689 or the Scottish version, Claim of Right 1689. There is a maxim that states "A man cannot be hanged by his own evidence" (I have paraphrased) and I told the courts this. They did the only thing they could do: they ignored me, and kept sending policemen to my home. They got short shrift as well, but I eventually ended up in magistrates court and I was 'awarded' 9 points. 3 for speeding, and 6 for not hanging myself.

Along the way I learnt many things, including:

1. Mrs Windsor abdicated in 1972 when she gave Assent to the European Communities Act.
2. Because of that, every police officer acts unlawfully, as does every court in the land.
3. Parliament is both an illegal and an unlawful gathering.
4. We have been bankrupt since the Napoleonic Wars.
5. America remains a British colony, and still pays taxes to Mrs Windsor.
6. Washington DC is NOT part of the USA.
7. The City of London is NOT part of the UK.
8. ALL law comes from the Vatican, this includes Islamic and Judean Law.
9. The Vatican owns every living being on the planet-See Unam Sanctam of 1302.
10. We are all dead-See the Cestui Que Vie Act of 1666.
11. Our money is worthless. It is fiat currency, and operates only on faith.
12. Banknotes are promissory notes. According to the Bill of Exchange Act of 1882 I can also create promissory notes. So can you.

I could go on, but I have discovered that the only way to know a thing, is to research it for yourself. Some of this stuff seems utterly unbelievable at first glance, but that is mostly because we have been misled by corrupt governments for hundreds of years. Most of them have no idea how deep the rabbit hole is, and I think that very, very few of the proles (myself included) have no real idea either.

Like it or not, we are cash cows. We will be milked until we squeal. Looking around me, at Generation Meh, it will be quite some time before the Establishment hears any significant noise from us. They have a Black Belt, Fifth Dan, in the Art of Distraction.

To wrap up, consider this:

In what world would the master/servant relationship be reversed and condoned? In ours, of course.

We pay these public servants to run the country. No more, and no less. They lie, cheat and steal from us on a daily basis. They take our money and waste it in new and disturbing ways. We pay THEM yet we stand looking sheepish as they punish US. We pay our policemen and women to kick the crap out of us. We pay them so well, and protect them so well that they have killed almost 1,800 of us in the last nine years and guess how many were prosecuted for wrongful death? None. Not one. Those 1,800 who died after coming into contact with the police? Just coincidence. Nothing more.

Our taxes pay for bombs and bullets which are rained down on innocent brown men, women and children in foreign climes. We are supporting massacres with our tax dollars, in direct contravention of the laws which came after the Nuremberg Trials, and in direct contravention of the Terrorism Act of 2006. Their own statutes tell us that anyone sponsoring illegal wars and insurrections is as guilty as those prosecuting them. And yet we pay.

We pay because we feel we cannot refuse. If we do, they promise to send burly men to come and haul us off to the courts. They don't. I am living proof of that.

One definition of slavery is doing work for no recompense coupled with the threat of force if you do not comply. Every single employer is enslaved. Every single employer collects your tax from source for absolutely no reward. Slavery never ended. They just introduced a new subtlety.

It isn't all about money. It is essentially about freedom. Freedom from thuggish police, from inept, greedy, self-serving politicians, freedom to shop in a large town or city without being captured on video more than 300 times in a three hour visit, freedom to travel the highways and byways without let, hindrance or charge. This right was granted to all in the Bor/CoR 1688/9. The freedom to live, rather than merely exist. The freedom to ignore a snooping, tracking, eavesdropping, nannying government.

In short, I want to be left alone. The very moment they leave me in peace, I will stop being a thorn in their side.

Captain Ranty.

PS-If I were you, I would disbelieve every word in this piece. I would click my way around the interwebs in an effort to locate some the facts mentioned here. I would question everything, and I would default to my number one priority, which is to follow the money. Do that, and you should find yourself wondering how the hell you were deceived for so long. Good luck and Godspeed.

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.

Big US banks are making people homeless through secondary loansharking

Read this outrageous story from Michael Snyder. JPM and others are buying up local government tax debts, multiplying them with their own charges and forcing homeowners onto the street.

Some people are losing the roof over their heads for a debt that costs no more than a good meal in a restaurant: "big banks and hedge funds keep tacking on interest, penalties and legal fees until the tax bills are many times the size that they originally were."

http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/how-big-banks-can-steal-your-home-from-you-even-if-your-mortgage-is-totally-paid-off

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.

Time to ease the Green Belt a couple of notches?

Professor Paul Cheshire thinks so; I beg to differ, but not because I'm a rich Nimby. Doubtless the Professor knows vastly more than I do, but the debate is taking place on a new site called The Conversation and as they say, "two views make a market".

Here's a link to what he says, and here is what I say in the comments below his article:

Sorry to quote myself, but it's quicker if I give a couple of links to posts I've offered on this:

1. Per square kilometre of arable land, the UK has some 1,077 people to feed - more than twice what is sustainable without food imports. Just as we are now beginning to worry about energy security, we also need to make food security a higher priority.

http://theylaughedatnoah.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/britains-food-security-future-challenge

2. You could say that we do not have a housing shortage, but heightened expectations of personal living space:

http://theylaughedatnoah.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/what-housing-shortage.html

Best wishes...

 I look forward to the riposte.

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.

Syria: a situation reading by David Malone

In the last of his 3-part series on Syria: Cui Bono? David Malone looks at the geopolitics and ends with a dark theory or two: the French are teaming up with Qatar in order to be freer from Russian use of energy as a political weapon, and powers outside Syria would be content to have a permanent multifactional revolutionary ferment there so that nobody ever gets the control, while the territory continues to be used as a conduit for oil and natural gas.

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Energy efficiency: method vs. objective

Alzetta's petrol-driven mechanical horse (Pic: http://cyberneticzoo.com/?p=2595)

Is our thinking radical enough? Imagine if all we had done in the twentieth century was to replace living horses with mechanical ones to pull carts and waggons.

Similarly, making internal combustion engines more efficient and cleaner is good, but this still focuses on cars as a method rather than re-examines what they're for. ATOC reckons rail is better:

"... on average, passenger rail currently emits approximately half the carbon dioxide per passenger kilometre of cars and around a quarter that of domestic air... This analysis is based on average figures. Quite clearly, in any specific example, the occupancy of the vehicle is key. A fully-loaded car will perform well on a CO2 per passenger km basis compared to the most efficient train with very few people in it. Similarly the averages quoted here cover a range of traffic conditions and may well differ from those of individual operators running specific services. Nonetheless these average figures clarify the starting position. Further work is needed to consider the effect of practical policy options open to us to reduce emissions from transport."

Shame about Beeching, then; and about the way that rail travel has become so expensive on certain routes. Privatisation may have helped certain entrepreneurs and (indirectly) some politicians, but there was nothing much wrong with the old transport system in Birmingham in 1975, and the lower level of car ownership then. Now, some of my young colleagues prefer to run a car instead of building a pension and saving up to buy a house - this DM article says that lower earners can be paying 27% of their disposable income in this way.

On the other hand, there is a welcome new realism about "green transport" in the air. This week there will be an EU vote in Strasbourg on revising targets for the contribution of biofuels to energy production, as London MEP Mary Honeyball explains. This is, it seems in response to growing awareness of the impact of corn ethanol production on food prices; plus the relative expensiveness of alternative fuels. The EC Commissioner for Energy Günther Oettinger also admits that electric vehicles will contribute less to the solution than previously expected (see this video at 1:20 in).

Rather than design better mechanical horses, it would help more if we and our stuff were in the right places to start with. To quote Douglas Adams, one of the finest philosophers of the twentieth century:

"Bypasses are devices that allow some people to dash from point A to point B very fast while other people dash from point B to point A very fast. People living at point C, being a point directly in between, are often given to wonder what's so great about point A that so many people from point B are so keen to get there, and what's so great about point B that so many people from point A are so keen to get there. They often wish that people would just once and for all work out where the hell they wanted to be."

Many of our current solutions are a sort of Marie Antoinette washed-sheep playing with a fantasy version of reality; alternative technologies can be cute and clean without really being green.

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.

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?

 

---

[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.

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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".

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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

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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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Syria update

Looks as though the West, through the Saudis, is trying to buy off the Russians to clear the ground for an attack on Syria:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/oilandgas/10266957/Saudis-offer-Russia-secret-oil-deal-if-it-drops-Syria.html

(htp: Tap blog)

But in that case, why bother?

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404: Democracy not found

In 404 BC Sparta, a militaristic kingdom, defeated Athens, a democracy run by an assembly composed of all its free men. Tyranny 1, Freedom 0.

Syria may not be a democracy in the mould of Athens - Index Mundi classes it as a "republic under an authoritarian regime" - but under its 2012 Constitution it does have (as well as a President) a Prime Minister, a unicameral legislature and multi-party elections.

Now look at the alternative, as illustrated by this Facebook video from SyriaOnline (CAUTION: contains graphic scenes of murder). The putative Al-Nusra Front terrorists in that compilation state cheerfully that they intend to kill the Syrian Alawites (the sect to which the Assad family belongs) and re-establish the Muslim Caliphate - all the way to Spain.

Human rights in Syria have long been a concern. However, consider the challenges of running a country where many people don't "agree to disagree" or consider themselves bound by the will of the majority, but will kill to have their way and glory in the slaughter.

What would you do? It's not like governing Britain or America - not that either of those is slow to use force to maintain internal authority. So, a black-leather-glove democracy versus a violent theocratic revolutionary horde - your choice?

Then there's a fog of conflicting assertions about the use of chemical weapons, the artillery strike on eastern Turkey (from which, allegedly, the Free Syrian Army is waiting to invade) and so on. It seems as though people have become far more skeptical since Iraq - and Libya.

Underneath the fog seem to be economic and geopolitical motives - Qatar wishing to extend the Arab Pipeline northwards through Syrian territory and into Turkey, Assad wanting to refresh the east-to-west Kirkuk-Banias Pipeline, the Saudis and the US keen to complete and make secure the Nabucco pipeline in competition with Russia's Gazprom network in Europe (connected with the alleged 2008 "Pythia" plot against the then Greek Premier Kostas Karamanlis, who was negotiating with the Russians re a branch of the South Stream to cross northern Greece - see the Gazprom site here).

According to a Turkish colleague of mine, Erdogan's out at the next election, having upset so many of the populace - but if Turkey should ever decide to throw in her lot with the Islamists, we might wish Karamanlis had concluded the South Stream deal, after all.

South Stream: http://www.gazprom.com/about/production/projects/pipelines/south-stream/2012/

The old Trans-Arabian Pipeline: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Arabian_Pipeline

The Kirkuk-Banias Pipeline: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirkuk%E2%80%93Baniyas_pipeline

 

Nabucco and others: http://www.economist.com/node/14041672

Would you send your son to risk his life in a fight there - and what for, and on which side?

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Order for the Service of Holy Communication

Collect from the Revised Book of Common Interaction (2013):

ALMIGHTY GOVERNMENT, unto whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid; Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of thy Special Advisers, Public Relations and News Media, that we may perfectly love thee, and worthily magnify thy holy Name…

Cum privilegio gubernatorum
________________________

http://gizmodo.com/the-nsa-can-crack-almost-any-type-of-encryption-1258954266

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/05/nsa-how-to-remain-secure-surveillance

http://armstrongeconomics.com/2013/09/06/nsa-breaks-encryption-here-we-go-again-there-is-nobody-and-nothing-they-have-not-tapped/

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Global warming continues

A new videopost this week revisits the contention that global warming has stopped (htp: Paddington).

Not so, it seems: there are many different measures being used to assess climate change and one of them is the temperature of the upper levels of the oceans, which is rising. The seas are acting as the reservoir for most of the heat gain so far -

(Image from above video)

- and the heat is expanding their volume (a point I hadn't thought of). So it's not just ice melt that will affect sea level rise.

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