News round up

Been overseas on a business trip the last couple of weeks (in Asia of all places), so I thought I’d catch up on some news that came up while I was away.

Rayner Units

So the media continues its circus surrounding Angela Rayner. Since then some actual tax experts have given their option of the whole affair. And those opinions range from “plain daft” to “a non-issue”. And of course there’s the rank hypocrisy of it all, quote:

“Central to the Mail/Tory pursuit of this Rayner non-story is the belief:
“When you derive a benefit you’re not entitled to, however small, it’s because you’re dishonest, when we derive a benefit we’re not entitled to, however large, it’s a trifling oversight to be forgiven.” — Nick Pettigrew (@Nick_Pettigrew) April 7, 2024

Its let to use of the term “Rayner units” comparing how much tax Rayner was alleged not to have paid to the amount of money the Tories, or party donors, have squandered (or stolen), yet the media and the police haven’t made a big deal out of it. In fact they’ve gone out of their way to bury the story.

Why are the police (the police chief who is investigating Rayner having spoken at a previous Tory conference) suddenly pursuing a case where they have very little chance of securing a conviction (worse case scenario, the tax experts say a small fine) on an issue involving a few thousand pounds, yet ignoring the numerous cases of fraud on the Tory side, that amount to tens of billions defrauded.

The response from Rayner and labour should not be to offer to resign. This is appeasement, and it will just mean the press will hound every left wing MP relentlessly until they get their pound of flesh. Instead labour should be calling out what is clearly a politically motivated investigate by the police and the media. While also making it clear that once labour is in power a new body will be setup to investigate political corruption.

And its first task will be to begin investigations into the conduct of Tory MP’s over the last 14 years. There will also need to be serious questions asked as to why police took such a biased pro-Tory position (e.g. are senior officers on the take?). Which, might prompt them to try and jump the gun and arrest a couple of Tories before the election (which should cause the Tory press little plan to backfire).

Similarly, labour should be promising a ban on foreign ownership of UK news media and tightening up the regulations to stop political client journalism (I’d make clear that on day one all of the right wing client media lose their press passes, the government won’t do interviews or issue statements to said papers, but will instead focus its attention on less right wing media outlets instead).

But none of this is happening. And one has to conclude its either A) because Starmer wants to lose the election. Or B) he wants to see Rayner damaged, as his goal is to shift labour and the UK permanently to the centre right. Any sort of meaningful progressive policies are now off the agenda in the UK.

Manufacturing descent

Speaking of policing, we had a situation where there was a pro-Palestine demo in London. And a member of a pro-Jewish group (wearing a Jewish skull cap & escorted by body guards one of whom is known to have worked in the past for the Israeli government) tried to disrupt the protest and was stopped by the police. This was clearly an attempt to try and provoke an otherwise peaceful crowd and force the police to intervene. And in fact there were a bunch of friendly journalists standing by waiting to film it all (and immediately they’d label this crowd of thousands as a violent mob, because a handful got provoked).

I’d note this is not an uncommon tactic used by counter protesters. The far right are known to use these tactics all the time (they’ve shown up to BLM protests wearing full KKK regalia). It’s a common feature of sectarian marches in Northern Ireland too, where either loyalists or republican counter protests will run around waving Irish/British flags, hoping someone will throw a punch (upon which, they’re mates will all dive in and a start a full blown riot). And indeed, there’s reports from the US of right wing groups paying people tens of thousands to counter protest pro-Palestinian marches in the hope of kicking off a riot.

So its also not that unreasonable for the police to say, no you are clearly trying to provoke a riot. And I’d rather not get bricks thrown at me, or spend the next 2 weeks filling out paperwork. Granted the police officers in question (as there was more than one incident, the mainstream media simply focused on the more spicy encounter and didn’t report on the others) weren’t exactly very diplomatic about it (then again, the met police are hardly famous for such things), but its no worse than what other protesters have to put up with.

So why is in that there’s now calls for police chief’s to apologise or even resign? Are they also going to apologise for everything they’ve done to left wing protesters as well? Keep in mind the police have often brutally put down such protests. Why are we giving one group a free pass?

And while the media were quick to make a big deal about this, it being top of the headlines for several days (so much so, it was being reported where I was in Asia). The minute more details started to come out that revealed it was a setup, the story disappeared from the headlines. Suggesting that those journalists who reported it weren’t simply duped but entirely complicit.

Its right privilege. They want a police state, just one that cracks down on everything they don’t like. In short, the right in the UK have lurched towards full blown fascism.

More Nazi tourettes

In other news, a Malaysian university invited a conservative professor from the US to speak at an event. And he accused Malaysia (as in the whole country!) of being antisemitic and supporters of a new holocaust. Needless to say this went down like a lead balloon, forcing him to flee the country. He claimed he did so based on US government advice that Malaysia isn’t safe, forcing the US state department to intervene and refute this claim.

I’d note that this particular author has previously praised colonialism (so who in their right mind thought inviting him would be a good idea I do not know). So he has form here. The thing is that such nazi tourettes are entirely counter productive. Going around accusing everyone you disagree with of being antisemitic cheapens the term, which is exactly what the real nazi’s have been trying to do for the last 80 years (in fact given this same author has also said nice things about German colonialism too, that could be his ulterior motive).

Spanish tourist protests

There’s been more protests in Spain against tourists, this time in the Canary Islands. As with similar protests in Barcelona or the Balearic Islands this has to be put in the correct context.

For example, the issue in Barcelona is tour groups, often off of cruise ships, following a set route and they end up swamping parts of the city, the Rambles, the Boqueria, the Sagrada Familia, old town, etc. In fact the best way to avoid the crowds as a tourist is to avoid these areas at certain times of the day (so go in the early morning or late evening and it will be just you and the locals), or go to places the tour groups avoid (such as the Columbus monument, as there’s only one small lift, so its not compatible with groups of large American tourists).

Similarly the issues with these islands is they are often seeing large groups of tourists coming in on cheap package holiday’s. And let’s be honest, a lot of them aren’t exactly going out there for the culture and food. Instead they are aiming for two weeks of sea, sun, sex & a ton of booze/drugs. So I think you can see what the problem is.

My concern is that the solution local governments are coming up with, that of limiting numbers or charging tourist taxes aren’t really going to work. It will just squeeze out the independent travellers (including quite a large number of Spanish), as the tour groups will monopolise those selected places. In fact this is sort of what happened in Barcelona, they started taking measures against tourists, which just meant more enrolled with a tour group and opted for safety in numbers.

The solution is thus to crack down on the tour groups. Five euro a day might not mean much to them, but a few grand per month in fees to operate, plus a limit on the numbers per tour group would.
The problem with this solution is who benefits from these tour groups? Why the local bigwigs, whose hotels, restaurants and coach services make quite a bit of money. So it looks like what the locals are going to get is some window dressing that doesn’t actually solve the problem.

Electric vehicle bubble?

According to a number of news sources, there’s an electric vehicle bubble that’s just burst. Actually, I’d argue its more that the hype train behind electric cars has met with reality.

As I’ve long pointed out, electric vehicles are part of the solution to climate change and future transport, but they are simply one piece of the puzzle. They cannot provide a like for like replacement for existing cars. Not least because one has to question whether we even WANT to have such a thing (replacing bumper to bumper traffic with petrol powers cars, with bumper to bumper electric vehicles is hardly progress).

For example, while there’s been a drop in EV sales in the US, there’s still strong growth in Asia. And its not hard to see why. They have opted for electric vehicles that are smaller and more affordable, such as two seater cars and electric scooters. Or gone for vehicles with less expensive battery technology (sodium rather than Lithium), or just make do with a smaller battery. Which is fine, if you are only commuting in and out of town. I’d say, based on my recent visit, the majority of vehicles on city centre roads in China these days are electric or hybrid vehicles.

But what if you want to drive long distance? While yes there are nice wide roads between say Beijing and Shanghai, or Osaka and Tokyo, but nobody is going to be stupid enough to drive between these cities. Not when there’s a perfectly good high speed line representing a faster and vastly more convenient alternative. Never mind the problem of where do you plan on parking when you get to the other end.

Then there’s the matter of repair costs. While you’ll see plenty of workshops in Asian cities where people can get their electric scooters & cars mended at a reasonable cost, in the west we’ve gone for an anti-repair model, which will expect customers to fork out for essentially a new battery (often costing as much as the car costs) for the most minor of defects, without even attempting a repair. Inevitably word’s gotten out about this and put off buyers.

So the issue with electric vehicles has little to do with the technology, but what the car companies are trying to do with it. And saving the planet is pretty low on their agenda.

Growing racism in Ireland

There has been a worrying rise in racism in Ireland. There’s been racist attacks of foreigners, including a Croatian who was killed for not speaking English (remind me, when did English become the Irish national language? I must have missed that one), arson attacks of migrant accommodation centres, as well as various protests (often organised by certain people with a less than honest agenda…who seem to be a bit too close to certain foreign powers).

Ireland is full apparently (well if that’s the case how about the people whinging about it leave and make room for the rest of us, or maybe we should stop subsidising their children, that would solve the problem!). As usual, unwilling to admit that they are just xenophobic bigots, they’ve tried to come up with an excuse for their racism, notably the housing crisis.

Excuse me but Ireland’s had a housing crisis for the last two decades. Are these time travelling migrants? And one of the major flash points is accommodation for migrants, often in hotels (during the boom they built far more hotels than the country needs, so there’s dozens of so-called “zombie hotels” across Ireland that don’t make any sort of financial sense and are are often run at a loss). But surely putting them up in hotels will free up housing for locals? Surely this is something that should be encouraged?

As always its a convenient excuse, for bigots, but one that goes unchallenged as it hides a wider uncomfortable truth. To go into detail about Ireland’s housing crisis would fill an entire blog post (might do that in future), but the TLDR is Ireland’s had a massive boom in economic growth and population (more due to people having kids, or returning home from overseas, than foreigners arriving) but there’s not been a commensurate rise in housing stock. Successive governments have relied on laissez faire to magically provide a solution and, spoiler, its not worked (cos developers & landlords are trying to make money, not run a housing charity).

Then there’s also issues like NIMBYism. Everyone agrees we need more homes….just not in my backyard. Which is hardly helped by the fact those who own homes already, often don’t want to see more built (as it would bring down house prices). And outside of the big cities there’s a lack of good public transport, which means many affordable homes are of no use unless you have a car and are willing to drive for several hours into work.

To be clear, successive Irish governments have made some efforts to improve the situation, but just not nearly enough, for a wide variety of reasons. Most notably that by getting involved in housing (e.g. building thousands of affordable council homes, putting in new light rail lines, etc.) they’d be upsetting a lot of apple carts and vested interests. And it would cost money, which would mean taxes going up. And nobody wants to pay for that (there’s been protests about local rates, often from the same people now whinging about migrants).

But unfortunately a comforting lie will always be accepted instead of an uncomfortable truth. But just because the government hasn’t got an immediate answer, doesn’t mean you get to fill in the blanks with whatever fairy story most appeals to you. After all, brexit was sold as the snake oil that would “solve” migration, the housing crisis, farming, the NHS and give everyone a free unicorn. How did that work out? The migration rate has risen dramatically, the housing market is worse than ever, the farmers are all broke and the NHS is collapsing….and I’m still waiting on that unicorn.

AI Deception

Cold Fusion have a vlog post out about how much of the hype surrounding AI might be just a marketing stunt, but one with very damaging consequences. For example, they highlight Amazon’s “just walk out” stores, which supposedly used AI to monitor what customers picked off the shelves and charge to their card. Well in turns out, they have thousands of people in India monitoring these stores using CCTV and then manually inputting the purchases (leading some to claim that AI actually stands for “All Indians” or “Abused Indians”).

Its called AI washing, where by companies claim (Elizabeth Holmes style) that AI is central feature of their new product, when it has little to nothing to do with it. Or they are using a back office in a developing world country to act as a substitute for AI instead. While some are getting caught and charged, many are not. And some of these include fortune 500 companies.

Some worry this is creating a large and dangerous bubble in the tech industry. Indeed some are comparing it to the dot com bubble of the 2000’s. In the mean time however, its having real world effects as company CEO’s have been swept up by the AI hype train.

For example, a couple of months back Hasbro, who own the rights to D&D, fired a whole bunch of their game development staff, likely on the assumption they can just now use AI to generate art and game modules (good luck with that one!). Spotify has been accused by a whistle blower of quietly laying off thousands of employee’s with the goal of replacing them with AI.

So one has to ask, what’s going to happen when the AI bubble pops? Because so far, it just looks like an excuse to replace well paid jobs in west, with low wage exploitative work in the global south. And its not like that’s not happened before, nor backfired on us!

SNP maths

I think I’m starting to understand why Scotland’s not gotten independence, despite many decades of trying. And why their football and rugby teams are so unreliable. Its this common tendency for Scot’s to press the self destruct button.

Take what’s going on in Holyrood. Now when I heard that the SNP had withdrawn from their power sharing agreement with the Greens I assumed this was all part of some clever plan. And that the first minster had access to a calculator. Hence they’d understood the consequences of not having enough votes to win a no confidence motion. Well its looking increasingly likely the answer is no. They went ahead with this without doing some elementary maths first.

This could trigger an early election. The SNP are still in the lead and would likely be the largest party after an election, but its likely they’d lose seats and thus have to go into coalition with either labour or the lib dems (who are a lot less sympathetic to the independence argument than the greens). And that’s assuming such a vote takes place independent of the general election. If they take place at the same time, its likely the SNP will lose quite a lot of support in both elections (as people intending to vote labour to oust the Tories will vote labour in both elections).

Its possible FM Yousef is playing 3D chess, while the rest of us are playing drafts. But I suspect he’s just winging it and he’s managed to snooker himself and likely kicked independence into the long grass for sometime to come. In short, its a mess entirely of their own making.

Farm protests and the dangers of conservatism

Farmer protests and the dangers of conservatism

The closure of Port Talbot is due to brexit, not net zero

The closure of Port Talbot is due to brexit, not net zero

More news

The UK is worldbeating

We keep on being told how the UK is worldbeating. Or that the cost of living crisis is a Europe wide thing, nothing too do with brexit or Tory party policy. Well they are wrong….but also right!

The inflation rate in the UK is much higher than it is in Europe or any other G7 country. And the graph above reflects average figures from a few months ago. The inflation rate is actually stabilising in parts of Europe and in the US, while in the UK its forecast to go up to 22%. Admittedly there are outliers regarding certain individual countries in the EU and certain products (notably anything dependant on gas), but for what should be obvious reasons. Not to mention inflation is effectively higher the poorer you are. Meanwhile the energy price rises in the UK are well ahead of those in Europe by some margin (again there are some outliers), at +200%.

So the Tories are right, the UK is worldbeating….just for all of the wrong reasons! Not that the media will dare report this.

Uk energy options some black coffee analysis

I was talking to some people who work in finance about the options available to the UK to end the energy crisis. As I mentioned in my last post we are looking at an extra cost burden of between £100 to £167 billion a year (according to Carbon brief). Long story short, a lot of the more populist options simply won’t be effective. In fact, with the Tories in charge, they could actually be counter productive.

For example, nationalising the energy industry. On the one hand with the industry under government control we can set the price of energy at any level we want and just run the industry at a loss. This is basically what the French are doing, which explains why their bills are only going up 4%. However, that would still require a significant government subsidy, in the order of tens of billions of pounds per year, so it won’t be cheap.

In fact buying the industry in the first place would be cripplingly expensive. An estimate from the centre for policy studies put the cost of nationalising the energy industry at between £55-185 billion. And a lot of that fiddle factor boils down to what exactly you are nationalising (everything down to the electricity meters, or just the power stations?) as well as the debts the various energy firms will have run up over the years. In short, buying out the energy industry and subsidising bills could cost more than the UK spends on health per year.

Also the key benefit of nationalisation is the ability to set policy and undertake the much needed investment the energy industry hasn’t been undertaking while privatised. However, with the Tories in charge, it seems doubtful they will do that (nor spend tens of billions subsidising bills). A more likely outcome is they put one of their mates in charge, and use government money to fund fracking and coal mining ventures that never seem to yield any actual results (like the PPE contracts during covid).

Starmer’s plan (likely to be Dizzie Lizzie’s too, as she can hardly be expect to come up with something intelligent) is for a price freeze and subsidising bills. This seems more sensible. The devil however, is in the detail. i.e. how do you make sure that the energy industry will implement it? And you’re still talking a figure of between £29 billion for 6 months and £100 billion for a year in costs to the UK taxpayer. Where’s that money going to come from? And cutting taxes too (as Truss proposes, I mean she’s got to give the rich some sugar as a reward for backing here), would add another £40 billion to this bill. That level of annual spending could easily trigger a sovereign debt crisis….right about 2024 when the Tories lose the next election (this could be their plan, elect a pea-brained simpleton, knowing she’ll crash and burn, then deliberately run the country into the ground (while enriching themselves) and blame labour for the mess).

A windfall tax could be one option (just this time without lots of loopholes). However, that isn’t going to yield as much as people think. If you hit the energy industry with a heavy tax on their profits, they just won’t declare any profits. They’ll invest the money in infrastructure, or pay off some of their debts, or buy back shares from shareholders. Now while some of those actions are what we want them to do (it won’t produce lower bills today, but it might mean do so tomorrow), its not going to yield as much as people assume. And the Tories sure as hell aren’t going to do it (those loopholes are there for a reason….to give the illusion they are doing something when in fact they are doing nothing).

One other option would be low/zero interest loans to the energy industry to cover the costs of the current price rise, which are then gradually repaid over several years (essentially spreading the costs of this winter’s bill out over several years). However, the trouble is getting the energy industry to stick to their side of the bargain. They could just wait for this to blow over, keep bills high and put the money in their pocket, not bothering to pay of the loans (which would make it harder for them to be re-nationalised by a future labour government, making it a sort of poisoned pill).

Ultimately the reason why we are having an energy crisis is because of the Tories. And with the fox in charge of the hen house there’s no real measures that can be taken that will be effective.

From Russia with flare towers

So the Russians have finally done it and turned off the gas. Firstly, I won’t believe any excuses they are coming out with about a faulty turbine and an oil leak (normal protocol is to have a backup system, so there should be another turbine ready to go next to the faulty one, plus the two for North stream 2 up the road). Clearly this is just them trolling the EU, as well as avoiding the risk of lawsuits later.

Now the Kremlin will probably think that this will work out okay for them, but I believe they’ve made a fatal error. The one bargaining chip they had to limit NATO & EU support for Ukraine was gas supplies. Now there is no reason for the EU to hold back as it is now in their interests to see the war ends as quickly as possible with a favourable outcome for Ukraine.

And while Europe’s going to have to undergo some hardships in breaking their addiction to natural gas, in the long term if they succeed, this is a vital source of revenue that the Russia has just lost. Fossil fuel production is 30% of the Russian economy, with fossil fuel exports making up 70% of their export revenues. As the joke goes, take away oil and gas and all the Russians have left are Kalashnikov’s, Vodka, Caviar and suicidal novelists…and the Polish Vodka is better! Along side their declining population, its a recipe for a declining economy to go with it. A permanent Brezhnev style slide into oblivion.

But can’t they just sell the oil and gas to developing world nations, or China/India. Well yes and no. The pipeline infrastructure to allow this level of export doesn’t yet exist. And they will face direct competition from central Asian states (who aren’t trying to fund a war and thus can afford to undercut them on price). And, as I noted in my last post, developing world nations are much more sensitive to price. If gas prices go too high that can’t simply absorb those costs like Europeans can. This effectively puts a ceiling on the gas price and limits the profitability of such operations. And longer term, the lower the price the less of Russia’s oil and gas is actually economic and will be produced. So in effect they’re proven reserves will now be reduced, meaning they’ll eventually run out of gas much more quickly.

Now for sure the Chinese (and Indians) will buy gas off the Russians, if they can get a favourable deal and a good price. But, given that the Chinese aren’t stupid enough to get addicted to Russian gas (unlike us in Europe!), they’ll probably want certain concessions. Seats on the board, or that Chinese firms can invest in or conduct future drilling. That creates a problem for Putin’s mafia state. Because while he can intimidate the Oligarchs by have them arrested, or arrange for them to fall out of a hospital window (in Putin’s Russia health insurance drops you!), that’s not going to work on the Chinese. In short, he could be getting more than he bargained for.

Indeed its worth remembering that while China and Russia might seem natural allies, that’s not always been the case. They had a serious falling out during the cold war and actually fought proxy wars against one another. And you can bet the US / CIA will be in there like a shot stirring up trouble.

China in your hands

And speaking of China, Dizzie Lizzy was talking about designating China as “an enemy” of the UK. She also said she wasn’t sure if France was an ally or an enemy. Where to start.

Well firstly, even suggesting that France isn’t an ally will have Putin rubbing his hands with glee. After all, the whole reason why he wanted brexit was to sow discord within the NATO alliance. Imagine if Corbyn had said something similar. The Tory press would have claimed it disqualifies him from high office. But when a Tory says it, ya stick it to the snail eaters!

As for China, well she ain’t going to be opening pork markets in Shanghai with that sort of attitude. Inevitably the Chinese will retaliate, likely by restricting trade. And we’ve got enough economic problems as it is (she’s also taking about blowing up the northern Ireland protocol and starting a trade war with Brussels).

It also feeds directly into Chinese propaganda, which is quick to remind everyone about Britain’s colonial past. And in particular the lead up to the Opium wars (when Britain became a drug cartel). So to say its counter productive is an understatement. But it probably sets the tone for what we can expect from this new ERG Puppet PM….who was elected by 0.12% of the population.

Maitlis no mates

Emily Maitlis recently confirmed what we all knew – that the BBC has become less the bastion of balanced media and little more than the Brexit Broadcasting Corporation. She highlighted how the BBC before the referendum failed to provide a balanced argument. For example, practically every economist was saying that brexit would be disastrous for the UK economy (and they’ve largely been proved right). But instead of putting a panel of economists on to talk about it, they’d put one (often moderate) economist on against some crackpot, whose various lies and half truths would then not be challenged.

And after the referendum the BBC began to self censor. The many lies of the Tories went unchallenged and were reported as fact. When Maitlis broke the news about Cumming’s little jolly to Barnard’s castle, the BBC issued an apology simply because he’d denied it happened. And they didn’t even consult with her first (in fact she was off air for 2 months). Yes, they took the word of a man whose known to be a compulsive liar over one of their own journalists.

And if anything it looks like its going to get worse. They are talking about major changes to BBC news that will eliminate most of the local news teams. Which suits the Tories, as its often those local reporters who dig up the stories that show how Tory policy is failing at the local level, not to mention various scandals which have brought down politicians. It also makes it easier for the Tories to disseminate their propaganda without facing awkward questions.

They’ve also been cracking down on political satire, cutting popular shows like Mock the week and the Mash report. The reaction to some fairly mild satire about Liz Truss from Joe Lycett on the BBC the other day, just goes to show how far the BBC have slid. An inability of a country’s leadership to be able to take a joke is the sort of thing we associate with tin pot dictatorships.

And while alternative media on the internet might well report these stories (as well as newspapers such as the Independent and the Guardian) they don’t have the same audience figures as the BBC. Its all very dystopian.

Crap on the beach

And one of those stories the Tories have been trying to hide is the literal crap washing up on beaches. This is due to the fact that post-brexit its harder for the water companies to get their hands on the chemicals they need to treat sewage. Plus they know that with the Tories in charge, nobody in government literally gives a crap anyways, so why should the water companies? I mean its not like they are going to get in trouble over it!

Which raises the question, how come if you let your dog poo on the street and don’t clean it up you can get fined. While if a water company does it, they don’t get fined. Can dog owners set up their own water company?

UK flagship grounds itself

A rather embarrassing event saw one of the UK’s aircraft carriers ground itself and damage its propeller as it left port recently. If they can’t even steer a ship out of their own harbour how much of a threat do they pose to the Russians (or Chinese). That was a few billion of taxpayers money well spent.

Well there’s a bit more to this story. Firstly they are using a Dutch yard to do the repairs (those damn European allies helping out when we are trying to be mad at them for brexit!). Secondly how the grounding occurred. There are a couple of possibilities.

One is simply poor seaman’s ship on the part of the navigator or helmsman. They made a mistake and ran over a sandbank. However, I won’t rush to blame any sailors (presumably they’ll be punished by being put in a long boat until sober, or shaving their belly with a rusty razor….early in the morning). Ports, particularly those in estuaries, are prone to filling up with sediment and thus require regular dredging to keep a channel clear for ships. If the dredging wasn’t being down, possibly due to Tory cutbacks, then this could be the reason for the grounding.

Also given the low water levels (thanks to climate change) and the fact that we now have literally crap floating down river, this could also be a factor. Essentially the dredgers went and did the usual job, failing to account for the lower water levels and increased sediment. And as smaller vessels would have passed back and forth without issue, the problem won’t have been apparent. So we’ll have to wait and see what the outcome of any investigation is….if they actually report it of course!

Pyongyang on the Thames

The Tories like to claim that post-brexit they want to turn the UK into Europe’s Singapore. Well firstly this ignores the fact that the “fine” city of Singapore (fine, as in you can be fined for practically any little thing) is fairly authoritarian (even talking politics with a taxi driver has been banned on occasions!). It has a ruling party that’s been in office for decades, with virtually no serious opposition and most of the industry is state owned.

However, I’ve long noted that if there’s any Asian regime the Tories are most similar too it would be North Korea. As one is an authoritarian xenophobic regime that constantly breaks international law, has cut itself off from world trade and survives on the back of propaganda and myths…..And the other is in Asia 🙂 .

And we have yet another example of this in the form of a brain fart from Transport secretary Grant Shapps. He talked about making it compulsory for bikes to all have number plates. I’ve talked about this before and pointed out it would be impractical (what if I only cycle off road? What if I’m carrying or walking with the bike rather pedalling it? What about a children’s tricycle?) and authoritarian (as to be effective you’d also have to issue ID cards to everyone in the country and make carrying them compulsory).

But there is one country in the world who does have a requirement that bicycles have number plates – north Korea. Why is it that the Tory party, the supposed party of small government, has a dangerous habit of emulating the policies of authoritarian regimes? Or is this just the Tories trying to open a front on the culture wars, rather than doing something useful.

Quiet quitting

A new term has come along what CEO’s call “quiet quitting”. This is where an employee just does the bare minimum of work needed to fulfil their job requirements. They don’t check their emails after work hours, out at five and don’t come in at weekends. Several bosses were arguing that this is a sign of laziness and they are within their rights to fire employees who do so.

Well there is another definition for this “doing your job”. Yes there are times in many jobs where you might have to put in some extra work at busy times or burn the midnight oil. E.g. you work on an oil rig and a gas leak starts a few minutes before knocking off time. That’s sort of something that needs to get sorted asap, it can’t wait till tomorrow (unless you work on a Russian oil rig of course). In other jobs you might need to keep your phone on throughout the night in case of a sudden emergency that demands your input.

But these sort of incidents should be the exception rather than the rule. If something needs to get done at midnight on Tuesday, won’t it have been sensible to bring this up Tuesday morning so the staff could sort it out during work hours? Whose fault is that, the staff? Or the boss? And if it keeps happening all the time, maybe the boss should consider hiring more staff to cover the night shift?

I think the problem here is that, since the decline of unions, bosses have gotten used to treating employees as a commodity, rather than an employee. They expect you to devote yourself completely to the job, yet still get paid peanuts by a company who will fire you when you’ve exceeded your usefulness. Employees were more loyal in “the good old days” but that’s because it was a two way street e.g. an ex-BA pilot once told me that basically if you worked for BA, the company owned you. They told you at short notice that you were flying a jumbo to Sydney, well I guess its going to be Fosters & Kangaroo burgers for dinner. On the other hand they looked after their own, all the crew got put up in a nice hotel, free flights, good pension.

If modern bosses aren’t loyal to staff and aren’t willing to put in that extra effort, can they really be surprised when the staff reciprocate?

Why the left keeps on loosing

So despite the fact brexit is clearly becoming an ever growing clusterfuck, the labour party are still silent on the matter. They have had an open goal with which to attack the tories for a year now. They could be pointing to the obvious failures of Tory brexit policy, how its causing real and crippling hardship for many and then explain to the public what labour would do differently (such as going into a customs union or getting a free trade deal). That after all, is how you win elections. You identify the problem and thus why a vote for your party will make things better.

But no, labour isn’t doing any of this. Supposedly because Starmer doesn’t want to piss off the leave supporters in so called “red wall seats”. This unfortunately ignores certain realities and is just a repeat of Corybn’s failed brexit policy that led labour to a history defeat. As I’ve pointed out before, this myth of the working class brexiter is somewhat exaggerated. Yes some did vote leave, but the vast majority of leave voters in these constituencies were “comfortable leavers” (i.e. retired, middle or upper class Tories & UKIPer’s) as well as those who don’t normally vote (but had been promised £350 million if they voted for a leaf). And besides, the primary reason the red wall flipped is more down to demographics than anything to do with brexit (as they represent an ageing population, who are more likely to vote tory).

Among labour supporters support for remain runs at between 90-70% depending how you phrase the question (i.e. labour voter or labour party member, pro-single market or back in completely). And this figure has been getting higher over time not lower. And generally what lexiters do exist tend to be on the softer side of leave (i.e. they’d be willing to accept a customs union if it means they can buy food again at a reasonable price). So Starmer’s master plan is to give the Tories a free pass on an potentially election winning issue, piss off 90-70% of labour supporters (and hope they don’t go and join the lib dem’s), just to avoid offending the ego of a mostly Tory voting bloc in the north.

But ok, maybe I have it all wrong. Maybe this lexiter voting bloc is the key to winning the next election. And that its even possible for labour to get them to back Starmer (cos polls say otherwise!). Well there are rail strikes on right now, being led by the RMT union, who famously backed leave (and thus managed to get several hundred of their workers fired as a consequence). If this voting block is so critical, why isn’t Starmer out there showing solidarity with the rail workers? Why isn’t he promising that labour will improve working conditions for all blue collar workers. Notably, by closing the loopholes that have allowed companies to become even more dependant on migrant workers since brexit, the opposite of what the Tories promised. Again, this is how you win elections.

But no instead, he told senior labour MP’s not to go near the strikers with a barge poll. This may have something to do with the fact that the Tory tabloids tried to blame labour for the strikes. Yes, 12 years of Tory government and a rail strike is labour’s fault. That’s how demented they are. And how brainwashed Tory voters are, in that the tabloids can get away with making such a ludicrous claim. I’m pretty sure if Starmer tackled a suicide bomber and prevented a major attack they’d accuse him of being Islamophobic and failing to respect social distancing rules.

But either way, it would appear that actually Starmer’s “don’t mention the war brexit” policy is more about image and avoiding nasty attack articles from Tory tabloids, than actually trying to win over lexiters. Spoiler, that’s not going to work either! The tabloids are ideologically committed to the Tories. They will always attack labour and cover for the Tories no matter what happens. You’ve got more odds trying to talk the Pope out of being catholic.

In fact its interesting to note that the RMT’s leader Mike Lynch has managed the press far better than labour recently. How? By not playing the media’s game. They try to trap him with some “gotcha” and he just ignores them and points out he’s here to talk about the issues. He ends up coming off sounding fairly reasonable, while the mask falls off the reporter (exposing them as a fanatical Tory shill).

That’s how labour should be handling the press. Announce policies that will win votes. And, far from sugar coating them, instead I’d make sure they are as provocative to the Tory press as possible (e.g. banning foreign billionaires living in tax havens from owning newspapers). This will provoke them into go on a rant, exposing their bias. And I’d use alternative media to get the message out, bypassing the main stream media as much as possible (do the bare minimum of interviews on the BBC and don’t even bother talking to the Tory press at all).

Yes I’m sure the Daily Fail/express editors would cough up their skulls, but so what. In some respect’s that work’s in labour’s favour. Under a FpTP electoral system you don’t win by getting a majority to vote for you (no government in the UK has actually achieved that since 1930’s). You win by promoting policies that are attractive to the people who might actually vote for you and making sure you get the vote out. You do deals with other parties to ensure tactical voting, while making sure the other side are left conflicted and divided (i.e. the other reason to bring up brexit is to get the Tories fighting with each other again). If labour can get in, what the Tory press think won’t matter anymore (not after their owner is banned from owning them and a public enquiry into press conduct means they are forced to shut down). But instead he’s letting Tory newspapers decide labour policy. Let me know how that one works out for you.

The Handmaiden’s tale

Meanwhile, over in the US we had the inevitable overturning of Roe v Wade. This is something the republicans have been openly working on for several decades. And too be clear this was a political decision, not a legal one…with a touch of racism (inevitably it dove tails into the usual white power stuff). Which means everything in the US constitution is now at risk, from basic civil rights to gun rights.

Unelected lackeys of the republican party are in a position to re-write the constitution and ignore public opinion (which is overwhelmingly pro-choice). In fact you can tell it was politically motivated by how they announced a pro-gun ruling right before the abortion one, specifically to distract the gun lobby, even thought it changes nothing (if Roe v Wade can be overturned, then if ever a liberal majority gets control of the court, they can overturn many of the pro-gun rulings too).

The democrats have done nothing to stop the GOP’s plans, despite multiple opportunities to do so. They had a high enough majority several times to pass a law at least (if not a constitutional amendment) codifying Roe v Wade into US law, but they didn’t. They could have reformed how justices are picked (none of these justices would even be allowed on the bench in most other countries, as justices are supposed to be impartial and not biased towards one party), but they didn’t.

And there are measure they could still take to reign in the republicans. In Ireland for example we resolved the abortion debate with a national referendum. Why don’t the democrats do the same? There’s a massive majority who are pro-choice, even among republicans. Even a non-legally binding vote would be very damaging to the republican party, as they would have to campaign on a single issue at odds with the views of the majority of their supporters (this was one of the factors in the collapse of labour support in Scotland, the party backed a no vote in the indyref and Corbyn hid in his shed during the brexit referendum, destroying their support base). But nope the democrats aren’t going to do that.

The democrats could also exploit the fact that it is mostly democrat voting states like California or NY that fund the US federal government. In fact even with red states you’ll often find the major cities (who also pay the bulk of the taxes) are firmly blue. America’s welfare queens are the GOP. So draw up budgets that cuts funding to anything that benefits republicans, such as farm subsidies, mining/oil exploration, rural road construction, military defence contracts & bases (often awarded on the basis of pork barrel politics rather than what delivers the best value for money, so such cuts won’t even necessarily impair America’s defence, just save money). Gut it all and starve the beast. This would very quickly force the republicans to change course, as such cuts would literally destroy the republican party, by eliminating their natural majority in rural areas.

And another factor in the politically motivated timing of this announcement was how it happened in the middle of the January 6th hearings. It looks like Trump might have led an insurrection and broken the law (nooo! really??? well no $hit Sherlock!). Which raises the question – why isn’t he in jail? Maybe I’ve watched too many cop shows, but my understanding was that if a crime is alleged to have occurred, the police (or in this case the justice department) investigate. If they find sufficient evidence for a prosecution they make arrests and only then do we get a public hearing (otherwise known as “a trial”), where we get to hear all the evidence. A jury then decides on the verdict. If congress does get involved, its usually after the trial, as part of a postmortem to avoid this happening again.

But no, instead we are getting it ass backwards, which likely means Trump and the republicans will get away with it, and will be free to take their revenge after they win again in 2024 (and they will win, I don’t see how the democrats are going to avoid that given the pig’s ear they are making of things right now). But how would we avoid these mistakes? Well by political reform. Introduce proportional representation, to counter GOP gerrymandering. Amend the constitution so that neither justices nor politicians can alter it (only the people via a referendum) and de-politicise the supreme court. But again, nope none of that’s going to happen. Its not even on the agenda.

Instead the democrats master plan is to piss in the wind and hope they can guilt trip the republicans into doing the right thing. Well, you can’t guilt trip someone who has no guilt, shame nor a shred of honesty. Republicans see thousands murdered yearly as a result of their pro gun policies, yet do nothing about it. Do you honestly think appealing to their better nature is going to get you anywhere? Instead republicans see this stance of the democrats as a sign of weakness. Like Putin (who must be very happy with this ruling) the republicans think they can get away with anything and they will continue to test the limits of that up to the point of ending democracy altogether.

The problem with the left is they don’t think strategically. Instead they seem to assume everybody else feels the same way as they do and will do the right thing (how’s that been working out for you?). They don’t even seem to realise they are effectively in the middle of an undeclared civil war with republicans for the very future of the US as a democracy.

And there’s a certain lack of ruthlessness. Yes good politics is about good compromise. But a compromise requires both sides to make concessions….and its certainly not going to work when one side’s is trying to destroy democracy itself. In such situations, you have to give them a reason to come crawling back to the negotiating table. Else they’ll just keep walking all over you.

Roe v’s Wade being overturned is a symptom of a wider problem: American democracy is broken

So it looks like the conservative majority in the Supreme court is about to overturn Roe v’s Wade, sending abortion rights in America back to the 1970’s. But this is about way more than abortion rights. If those can be overturned, then so can pretty much anything else, such as LGBT rights, freedom from discrimination (back to the Jim Crow days) and freedom of speech and the right to protest.

And while some on the right might not see the problem with that, the issue is it cuts both ways. A precedent is being set. If the left ever get control of the court again (and a few dead justices is all that takes), they can also overturn gun rights (until the last few decades the Supreme court viewed the 2nd amendment as provisions for civil defence not personal defence). Or the right of corporations to incorporate. So this is crossing a Rubicon into very dangerous territory for the US. It could well mark the point where the US ceased to be even a partial democracy and instead became more autocratic. And it might not always be the right who are pulling those autocratic levers. Particularly as overturning Roe v Wade will likely radicalise the left.

Consider that in Ireland, we recently resolved the abortion question via a public forum followed by a referendum. Why don’t the republicans just do the same? Because they know they’ll lose! Support for Roe v’s Wade runs at up to 77% nationwide and even 60% among republicans, although support does drop to closer to 60% overall if you phrase the question differently (such as allowing abortion, but applying more restrictions). And, given that there’s lots of other things the republicans know the vast majority of Americans are in favour of, but they and their corporate masters are against (such as paid maternity leave, higher minimum wages, free college tuition), the last thing they want is to set a precedent (the people? What have they got to do with how the country is run!).

So instead they are using an undemocratic approach by perverting the supreme court. And thus undermining its authority as a supposedly unbiased and politically independent entity. In short, the republicans have just crapped on the US constitution and are using the bill of rights to wipe their ass.

In contrast to this most other democracies have gone out of their way to stop this happening. In Ireland for example the careers of politicians have been ruined and governments have fallen over attempts to get an inappropriate justice onto the high court (Ireland’s version of the Supreme court). And said justice’s have generally resigned pretty quickly (as in less that 48 hrs), as they understand the risk they run in destroying the reputation of the court, quite apart from the potential damage to their own career (in Ireland you aren’t allowed to serve as a barrister in a lower court in which you’ve previously served as a judge. Meaning an ex-high court judge is essentially disbarred. The bar association can overturn this, but they are unlikely to do this for any judge whose brought the entire legal system into disrepute).

So the republicans are crapping on the constitution and the democrats are angry about it. To which I have to ask, why? I mean its not like they’ve been quiet about it. They’ve been openly talking about subverting the supreme court for decades. It goes back to a point I made before, about the main reason why the left is failing in America, the complete and utter political illiteracy of so many progressive’s who don’t seem to have a clue how politics works.

Recently they tried to force a vote enshrining abortion rights into US law….why didn’t you do this sooner, like decades ago, when you had a majority in both houses in favour of it? It sounds like you are trying to close the stable door after the horse has bolted. Or we have the fact that Ruth Bader Ginsberg, who must have surely known she wasn’t long for this world, arrogantly remaining on the bench, when there was an opportunity for Obama to replace her. And how the republicans refused to replace Scalia and Obama just sort of went along with that, rather than trying to force the issue.

Then we have the Bernie or bust brigade….who ended up getting a bust….of Trump! Yes Hilary was never my cup of tea, but once it became obvious it was a choice between her and a Putin wannabe, it was pretty clear who everyone needed to get behind. If you voted against Hilary in 2016, well this is as much on you as it is on the republicans.

Then Mr Vanilla comes along….and falls asleep at the wheel. Sleepy Joe had many options, ranging from packing the supreme court, to launching an investigation into the justice’s appointed by Trump and seeing if they could be removed from office (likely they’d jump before being pushed). But he did nothing. And why they hell is Trump, who tried to launch a coup on January 6th, still wandering around and not in an orange jump suit. Do you know what would happen to any democrat who tried to launch a coup? They’d have been wired up to old sparky by now.

This is as much a consequence of democratic ineptitude and incompetence, as it is the undermining of US democracy by the republicans. How can this happen? Because neither side in congress really cares about it. Do you think the sons and daughters of GOP or democratic politicians are going to be personally effected by the overturning of Roe v Wade? Of course not. Much as in Ireland “taking the boat” became a euphemism for going overseas for an abortion, they same will be true in the US…only it will involve a private jet to a Swiss clinic for most of the elites. This judgement only effects poor people.

The only reason the democrats are even pretending to care is because they have to for the sake of appearances (if they really cared they’d have done something about it sooner or be threatening to organise an Irish style referendum on it). Its the unfortunate reality of America’s broken political system, where politicians can royally screw up, or commit the most awful crimes and not only get away with it, but not suffer any consequences.

Case in point, its often not understood that support for abortion rights isn’t a simple matter of democrat v’s republican, red state v’s blue. There is stronger support for abortion rights in Alaska (63%) than in California (57%). Have a guess which way the two republican senators from Alaska voted in the recent vote in congress. Similarly Susan Collins was shocked to discover that Brett Kavanaugh (a sex offender) or Amy Barrett (a pro-life wacko), would lie under oath during their confirmations (I mean if you can’t trust a rapist or a religious fanatic who can you trust!). Again, even thought she represents a state that is 64% in favour of abortion rights, she voted against the abortion bill (and after some protesters scrawled a message about this outside her house, she called the police, so she ain’t too keen on freedom of speech either).

This happens because of the ridiculous US two party system that means the vast majority of US members of congress are in extremely safe seats, with virtually no chance of being unseated, regardless of what they do in office. I mean do you honestly think Alaskan’s who’ve just been screwed over, their abortion rights crapped on (which, as I mentioned, raises the risk of other rights, such as gun ownership rights, going eventually), that they are going to go and vote democrat? They’d sooner pull out their own teeth!

On the other hand, what would get a senator fired would be going against the party (who will inevitably have dirt on them). Hence why so many in both parties often toe the line, even when its clearly goes against the wishes of their constituents (in other words, they are more loyal to their party and corporate sponsors than they are to voters). Similarly there is no real system in place to investigate corrupt congressmen or judges (who’ve been known to go out and buy shares in a company before granting a favourable ruling) and punish them for their misdeeds (they investigate themselves, which is like putting the fox in charge of the hen house).

By contrast, in Europe, any politician who behaved like this would be committing political suicide. There’s no way they could hope to survive re-election under a PR voting system after pulling a stunt like this. And there are mechanisms in place to investigate political corruption. Case in point, Denmark’s former immigration minster was recently jailed for separating migrant families (something that routinely happened under Trump). And France jailed its former Prime minster, for a job’s-for-the-boys scam (again the sort of thing that was been practically routine under Trump).

So perhaps the real lesson from all of this that Americans need to learn is just how dirty, corrupt and undemocratic America truly is. Its not the shinning city on the hill, its a shotgun shack in swamp filled with alligators.

Should doping be allowed in sports?

So the Olympics has seen more than a few positive drug tests, not to mention positive covid tests as if the athlete’s didn’t have enough to worry about (you do have to feel for these athletes, they are essentially prisoners within the Olympic village). But it raises the question, why is doping banned, and should that continue?

Firstly doping is not new, even in ancient Greece athletes weren’t against taking a few liberties. There’s also the famous case in the 1904 marathon where the winner was given an injection of strychnine as he struggled to finish (and if you think that counts as cheating, the original winner was disqualified for hitching a lift in a car for much of the route).

The logic behind banning doping is that it takes away from the athletic performance. Athletes were expected to be amateurs. They were supposed to compete unsupported, else it becomes a competition between doctors, trainers and sports scientists. And to give you an idea of how seriously this was taken, in the 1913 tour de France one rider broke the front forks of his bike. The race officials won’t allow him to get a new bike, he had to find a village forge and repair it – himself. He was required to weld the forks back together with his own hands. However, because he allowed a local boy to work the bellows in the forge, he was given a 10 minute time penalty.

Contrast that with sports these days. Now there are few if any amateur athletes at major sporting competitions. Athletes receive a significant level of funding (private sponsorship or government funding) and lots of support, ranging from custom made equipment, support technicians, personal trainers (one climber said she had a trainer for her fingers and another for her arms!), sports doctors, sports scientists, dietitians, physio’s, computer analysis to improve performance, etc.

And these measures come with a significant advantage. Indeed, it would be very hard for an amateur to compete, given they’d lack the same level of support. Plus an amateur won’t be able to cover the costs associated with all of the above. Often times the main reason for a professional athlete retiring is because they’ve lost their funding and can’t afford to pay all of these bills out of their own pocket.

By way of example, there’s controversy with a new type of supershoe at the Olympics, which significantly improves performance (by about 2-3%). In cycling bikes have gotten so advanced, in 1997 they briefly looked at splitting the hour record into two categories, one for traditional bikes (using a similar bike to the one used by Edie Merckx in 1972) and a 2nd one for more modern bikes . While this ruling was reversed in 2014, the difference between the two sets of records is about 10% (which is within the ball park for the benefits you’d get from doping).

The other factor is of course the risks associated with doping. It introduces both short term risks (heart attacks, strokes, exhaustion, etc.), as happened to Tom Simpson, who died in during the 1967 Tour de France on a mountain stage (due to amphetamines and heat stroke). As well as the longer term health risks, which can include cancer, mental health issues, liver damage and, some what ironically, reduced athletic performance over time (as they leave an athlete more susceptible to injuries that end their career).

That said, these risks have to be put in context. Many of performance enhancing drugs were originally developed for medical use and suffice to say we wouldn’t be using them if they were unsafe (I mean they give the same stuff to kids and old granny’s!). The exact level of risk is a matter of debate (in part because we don’t exactly know how many athletes dope, making it hard to correlate the risks), but its generally agreed that the more you take and the longer it goes on, the greater the risks. Of course that would suggest banning doping and driving it underground is part of the problem, as this means you are creating an unregulated free for all.

And there is an ever growing list of banned substances, given that its a game of whack-a-mole between the testers and the dopers. Its gotten to the point where athletes have been banned for taking cold medicine or a dodgy burrito. One of the athletes absent at this year’s games was banned for marijuana (even thought she lives in a US state where’s its legal and only smoked a joint after hearing some bad news about her mother). Many athletes live in fear of inadvertently taking something that yields a positive test. And naturally this means they are heavily dependant on a knowledgeable sports doctor (i.e. the sort of people who can help them dope without getting caught). Plus most of the items on these banned lists are what the rest of us would call “medicine”.

Then there’s the testing process itself. Athletes can be subjected to surprise tests at almost any time. Which pretty much means athletes have to give up their privacy and let testing officials know where they will be 24/7, weeks in advance (if you are an athlete big brother is literally watching you). And, somewhat ironically, given that there’s so much money at stake (if not national pride), if an athlete is doping, elaborate measures will be taken to hide this. So much so that doping controls are unlikely to detect it. Its worth noting how many of the recent scandals (such as Lance Armstrong or the Russian doping scandal) were not detected as a result of failed tests, but through detective work, or investigative journalism.

Plus any danger from doping has to be balanced with the dangers of the alternatives to doping. For example, blood doping in cycling largely came about due to the banning of EPO and improved tests for it. However, while EPO is dangerous, blood doping is worse. All it takes is an athlete mixing up their blood with a team mates and you’ve potentially got two dead athletes.

Another tactic is to use altitude chambers to simulate a higher elevation, in order to improve performance when training or sleeping. However, I’d argue that’s fairly dangerous. Firstly altitude sickness is a tricky illness to pick up on. Usually its symptoms give you enough of warning to descent (or exit one of these chambers) but not always. I’ve heard stories of mountaineers who were fine one minute and then keeled over unconscious the next. And keep in mind hypoxia impairs judgement (so you can’t rely on being able to think straight if you succumb to it) and the quicker you go up (such as stepping straight into a faulty chamber set to too high an elevation) the worse the effects and the faster symptoms begin to appear.

More importantly, any mechanical system that relies on a pressure sealed environment is by definition dangerous. You can die inside a confined space like that scarily fast. All it takes is a few grams too little oxygen, (or too much carbon dioxide) and you’re dead. So you’d have to question why are these are allowed, but performance enhancing drugs are not.

My point is I can’t see how you can say that smoking weed in your free time isn’t allowed, nor is taking medicine to cure an illness. But all of these other measures are ok, even thought some of them come with a much higher risk (and offer a much higher improvement in performance). If anything the rules now favour a professional system of well sponsored athletes rather than amateurs. We’ve gone full circle.

To my mind this raises the question as to whether doping should be allowed, but carefully regulated. This would permit some use of performance enhancing drugs, so long as this use is declared and managed by doctors, whose priority is the athlete’s long term health (no licensed doctor is going to risk a six figure salaried job so some athlete can run a half a second faster).

There would still need to be doping controls, but that’s more a matter of an audit to confirm they are only being administered safe doses and prevent the proliferation of unsafe practices. Thus an unexplained positive test, while it would need following up, it doesn’t mean suspending an athlete immediately (innocent until proven guilty, it could just be some other medicine they took). Of course, repeatedly failing tests which show high doses, or evidence which suggests they are using dangerous tactics (such as blood doping) would prompt a ban.

This would also use a form of honour system. For teams with a good reputation for sticking to the rules, it can be more light touch regulation. However, those with a history of heavy doping and unethical practices would be more heavily regulated. On which point, while Russia would be on that list, so to would the US (Lance Armstrong, Tyson Gay, Floyd Landis, Marion Jones, need I go on?).

And this idea of regulation at a team level is particularly important considering what’s coming in the future – genetic doping or genetic engineering. One of the reasons for sport is to inspire kids. Well if they are up against athlete’s with this level of advantage, no amount of dedication and training is going to make up this deficit. Hell at this point you may as well abolish national teams and compete on the basis of pharmaceutical corporations (team USA is replaced by team Monsanto, team GB replaced by team GSK).

And speaking of which, while its probably a bit too late to resurrect the old amateur athlete system, trying to remove the profit motive would help reduce the incentive to cheat (Ben Johnson’s probation required him to go around to schools and tell kids don’t do drugs…while driving a ferrari!). Rather than sponsors buying the athletes a fancy watch or having them do TV ads, how about they pay their college tuition and offer them an internship (or better still a job). That way, they have a post-athlete career mapped out, something that doping would put at risk, thus removing the incentive to cheat (or cave in to pressure from unethical coaches).

But certainly, ignoring the issue isn’t helping. The current system is completely hypocritical. It doesn’t actually make athletes safer, nor does it level the playing field. All it does is punishing those who get caught, for the crime of getting caught.

The paradox of sustainability

One of the obstacles to sustainability can be human nature. Scientists and engineers have a habit of seeing everything as a numbers game. If we reduce the carbon footprint of something by X amount an apply that across the board that will be good….right? Well sometimes not, sometimes such measures can increase pollution by making it easier and cheaper to consume more. We are not factoring in cause and effect.

For example, back during the 80’s it became a bit of trend to install conservatories in houses, either purpose build or retrofitted to existing homes. One of the arguments for this is that by absorbing solar energy in spring and summer, they can reduce the heating bill for the house as well as providing somewhere to grow plants. Similarly, office buildings can use large glazed facades to cut down on heating and lighting costs. And its worth noting that historically, before we had oil fired central heating and electric lighting, many Victorian era homes would have a conservatory for these very reasons.

However, in order to prevent overheating in the summer (and glare from too much sunlight), its important that such areas have shading devices. And in the winter they can get quite cold, so you’ll need to have a way of isolating them from the rest of the house (Victorian houses would often shut off such areas of the house for the winter). However, many modern buildings didn’t have shading devices (so you’d come in to the office and find all the blinds down and the lights on in the middle of the day) or the buildings were open plan, so any energy savings in heating were cancelled out by more energy devoted to cooling in the summer. And some homeowners took to install radiators in their conservatories, effectively increasing their heating bills.

Different types of shading devices, critical if you are using glazed facades in buildings

Energy efficiency improvements haven’t always produced the level of gains expected. For example, we have the effect of low energy light bulbs. While they have reduced electricity demand, but not by as much as was hoped. Why? Because people are more likely to leave light on. Case in point, its daytime while I’m writing this and I’ve just realised the light’s are on in my kitchen, even thought there’s nobody in there. When I was growing up the instruction was that if you were the last person to bed, you turned off all the lights (and there would be hell to pay if you forgot). Now when I’m back home its that you should turn off most of them.

Similarly improvements in building energy efficiency have led to average indoor air temperatures to increase in cold countries and decrease in hotter countries (I remember having to wear a hat to bed in Singapore because it was so cold inside the bedrooms!). And more fuel efficient cars have run hand in hand in an increasing number of driving miles in some countries (thought not always and these increases might be related to other factors such as new roads encouraging driving, or more cars making it less safe to cycle).

My point is, its important to consider the consequences of any action and look at how it may effect patterns of behaviour. Some of these can be positive, e.g. plastic bag taxes very rapidly led to a reduction in plastic bag use. But that’s not always the case (at the same time in the UK that the plastic bag came in, there was a large increase in trolley or shopping basket thefts!). It also serves to highlight that, while energy efficiency is important, on its own it can’t solve the problems of climate change and sustainability. Only by moving away from fossil fuel altogether can these problems be solved.

With sustainability the devil can often be in the detail. Biofuels for example can lower carbon footprints, but this largely depends on how the plants are grown, processed and then transported. Even a slight change in how they are grown, for example draining bog land to create area for the trees (which results in a big pulse of green house gases) or transporting them long distances, can significantly increase the carbon footprint.

With biofuels there can be quite a wide variation in the carbon footprint, which are often governed by very small changes in production methods

We see a similarly issue with alternatives to plastics. On paper by moving away from fossil fuels this can can lower the carbon footprint. But if you are growing material, how is it grown? Does it require fertilisers? (which come from fossil fuels) or climate control (which might also require energy input from fossil fuels). If its much heavier and bulkier that’s going to make it harder to transport (more fossil fuel’s burned). If its harder to mould into shapes compared to plastic (which can be injection moulded), again more waste. And how is it disposed of? If its not recyclable that’s going to be a problem unless we have a means to collect and incinerate it safely (and that incineration process is also going to produce some emissions).

Its here were life cycle analysis is key. This is a process by which engineers can undertake an accounting exercise to work out the carbon footprint of each step of a product’s life cycle, from the extraction of raw materials, its production phase, transportation to customer, its use phase and its end of life (is it recycled, incinerated, or does it go into landfill).

This data not only allows for good decision making, but also tends to highlight where the main issues are. For example, with a car, the main source of carbon emissions is going to be the usage phase when its driven around for hundreds of thousands of miles. Anything you can do to cut this down is generally going to be a good idea, for example by making the car lighter. Even if this pushes up the carbon footprint of the production phase, this will be off-set by lowering the impact of the usage phase. By contrast, in some consumer products it can be either the material production phase or the end of life phase that has the most dramatic impact. This tells engineers where to focus their efforts next in improving the product.

But again, this can have the problem that engineers are working in isolation and not understanding what’s going on in the real world. The cautionary tale of Jatroba is a good example. This appeared (at least on paper) to be an excellent potential source of biofuels with a low carbon footprint (in some cases negative as it helped to lock away greenhouse gases into the soil). It could grow on non-arable land (thus not taking away land from food production), with little need for fertiliser. However, the yields from Jatroba grown under such conditions were low, leading to it being grown on arable land with fossil fuel based fertilisers used to increase its grown rate (largely negating the supposed benefits).

And the switch from meat to vegetarian foods has created a high demand for such foods as asparagus, avacado’s and coconuts, all of which have quite a high carbon footprint and water demand, at least compared to other vegetarian options. While this doesn’t mean that a vegan diet is worse than a meat based one, it again serves to highlight its a trade off, a least worse option. And the benefits are going to depend a lot on how and where its grown, e.g. out of season fruit in green houses (which is then imported long distance by truck or air) is going to be a lot more carbon intensive than fruit grown in season in a field locally.

The problem with climate change and sustainability is that they are very large and complex problems. If there was some easy silver bullet solution it would have been implemented ages ago. There are solutions, but they require a bit more of a complete understanding of what the problem is and how people are likely to react to the proposed solutions.

The life cycle analysis of any product can become quite complicated

This had led some to suggest the solution is to use smart technology. So for example if a driver has a heavy foot (lots of acceleration and heavy braking) the cars computer could be programmed to recognise this and switch to a more energy efficient driving style (so it won’t allow the car to accelerate as quickly, de-rate the engine, and if a hybrid, try to extract as much energy from the braking phase as possible).

Similarly home appliances could be programmed to de-rate at night to reduce energy consumption. If you dial up the thermostat and your home heating system knows you feeling cold has nothing to do with temperature, but instead its the humidity, so it ignores your request and adjusts the humidity instead.

I’d note that this sort of technology is nothing new, its used in aviation where the planes computer is programmed to fly the plane in as fuel efficient and safe a manner as possible, by interpreting the pilot inputs and not necessarily doing exactly what they ask it to do. If the pilots do something they are not supposed to do (e.g. try to pull off a manoeuvre the computer knows would exceed the aircraft’s envelope) the computer will adopt a more moderate response, or even override the pilots completely.

However, I’m not sure how people would react to this. Some might argue its an affront to their freedom (just look at the anti-vaxx / anti-mask brigade). Already there’s a people who have been hoarding incandescent light bulbs or insist on rolling coal. In short we need to appreciate that human nature is as much a part of the climate and sustainability problem as anything else.

Bitcoin crackdown

Inevitably, a push back against crypto, by several goverments, seems to be starting. China is planning to outright ban several crypto currencies, starting with Bitcoin. While the US DoJ, in the wake of the colonial pipeline attack, has started a crackdown against crypto. They have shutdown crypto exchanges and are making efforts to recover funds stolen by hackers and scammers. The FBI & Europol even set up an elaborate sting operation using their own dark web encrypted messaging service. (Can only imagine the google reviews for this service won’t be great…then again I don’t think you get access to google in prison!).

But then we have news that El Salvador wants to make bitcoin legal tender. So what gives? Well firstly I think we need to understand that most crypto currencies, bitcoin in particular, aren’t really currencies as we’d define them. The price volatility and the lengthy time to process transactions (60 minutes to a day or two…long time to wait for a coffee!) means its not really a convenient currency that could ever be used by the majority of people. It would be more accurate to describe them as a sort of digital bearer bond.

Now while yes, you can pay for goods in services with bearer bonds, but generally you don’t, as they likely won’t be accepted and the costs on your end (not to mention the processing time) means its not practical. Similarly, given the issues with crypto, only a few companies are willing to accept payment in crypto and then only really for ideological reasons (as the boss is libertarian bitcoin bug). If more customers actually used crypto as their main means of payment and companies were forced to bare the financial costs of delayed/fraudulent payment & price fluctuations themselves (which would become exponentially worse with more transactions), they’d quickly abandon it. This is pretty much what happened with Musk and Tesla recently. Causing Musk to go from libertarian hero to Bernie Sanders socialist in the eyes of bitcoin bugs (and as if to aid insult to injury a recent bitcoin conference has turned into a covid superspreader event).

The other problem with bearer bonds is that you are going to get more than a few odd looks if you try to use them. While there were some legitimate uses for them, notably as regards investing and money transfers between countries. But an awful lot of the time they are used to launder money or help dodge taxes. And similarly, while yes there is some use of crypto is for legitimate investment purposes. But they have also become increasingly the tool of choice for criminals looking to launder cash, move it overseas or as payment for extortion (bitcoin being used 95% of the time).

So you certainly understand why this crackdown is ongoing. As for El Salvador, well its one of an number of offshore hubs who profit from the more shady aspects of offshore financial activity, crypto being a particular speciality. So you can see why they wants to try and give bitcoin some legitimacy and avoid it being banned completely. Although one should note, they just want to make it legal tender, they are not adopting it as a national currency or anything like that.

Now crypto advocates would say that this shows why banning it will never work. Ya, until being in possession of bitcoins, or accessing a digital wallet, becomes a crime in of itself (similar laws with regard to cash, jewels, bonds or other assets means that if you can’t prove they were acquired legally, they can be confiscated under anti-money laundering legislation and you can be prosecuted as well, just for being in possession of them).

But suppose a country actually tried to use bitcoin as its national currency. What would happen? Probably several months of chaos and then collapse! The government’s ability to borrow, issue bonds, or control its money supply would be effectively impossible. And the rapid and volatile swings in its value would result in all sorts of problems. e.g. you pay the public service in bitcoin, but in between collecting taxes on a Friday and paying them on a Monday the price drops 20% so either you have to cover those costs out of the state coffers or the workers would have to be happy to accept an effective pay cut.

Now libertarians would say, but this is the point. We don’t like central banks (and there will be no public sector employees in the libertarian workers paradise) and we want to stop banks just printing money and borrowing recklessly. While I’d agree governments have gone a bit crazy with the money printers and borrowing over the last few years (you should be saving in the good times for a rainy day). But the pandemic (a rainy day!) shows why this is sometimes necessary.

Without central bank intervention, the response to covid would be very different. No lockdowns to flatten the curve (meaning hospitals get overwhelmed), no furlonging of workers (so mass unemployment, means massive claims for unemployment benefits) and no money to pay for medical PPE or the fast tracking of vaccines. In short you’d be looking at millions of extra deaths and a far more serious level of economic damage.

In fact, somewhat ironically, crypto being backed by a major government would be the last thing libertarians would want to happen. The first thing the US, the EU or China would do, is acquire large amounts of this digital currency, enough to allow them to gain control over it (either individually or collectively via the IMF). And note that when I say “acquire” I don’t mean buy. They’ll just confiscate it off criminals (about half of all bitcoin transactions involve criminal activity). Or pass some law allowing them to seize privately held accounts and set the price for compensation (if the bother paying compensation at all). This is pretty much what happened to US private gold reserves in 1934 and in other countries on various occasions (one of those pesky facts libertarian gold bugs tend to ignore, the gov’mint can just take your gold…and bragging about it online btw makes that alot easier, or they’ll make its sale or transfer illegal/heavily taxed).

The banks would join in and you’d be left with a monetary system even more under the thumb of the regulators, the government and the banks than the current financial system. Which is probably wants going to happen eventually. There are already proposals from various financial institutions to launch their own crypto currencies. Given that these will have the backing of the banks and, eventually governments, they can offer a level of convenience, security and price stability that existing crypto’s cannot.

Bitcoin and other crypto’s might survive for awhile, as a sort of digital gold, but only if they can clean themselves up. Crypto advocates need to accept that this criminal activity is going to result in unwanted attention. They need to start taking measures to contain the problem. You fight the law, the law tends to win.

Debunking right wing myths: Ancient aliens

I once caught a programme called “ancient aliens” on the History channel (given that they seems to show nothing but pawn stars and sensationalist nonsense, I’m not sure why its called “History” anymore). Anyway, I thought it was a hoot (I’m laughing at you, not with you), but I was unaware until recently that this wasn’t merely a couple of episodes, that they presumably show on the 1st of April, but that there’s actually been 16 seasons of this rubbish! Thus I was completely unaware than anyone, other than a few tinfoil hat wearing conspiracy wackos…..or Musk…..took this seriously.

“Ancient Aliens is some of the most noxious sludge in television’s bottomless chum bucket. Actual experts are brought in to deliver sound bites that are twisted and taken out of context while fanatics are given free reign. Fiction is presented as fact, and real scientific research is so grossly misrepresented that I can only conclude that the program is actively lying to viewers….” —Brian Switek, Smithsonian

The basic punchline of “ancient aliens” is to simply connect aliens to every event that has ever happened in human history. Who built the pyramids? Ancient aliens! The Nasca lines? Ancient aliens! Great wall of China? Ancient aliens! The great flood? Ancient aliens! The Bronze age collapse? Ancient aliens. Rinse and repeat.

Well needless to say this falls into the category of “not even wrong”. How do we know the pyramids were build by the ancient Egyptians? Well the short summary would be: because they are in Egypt, they are shaped like a pyramid and they are made of stone.

Given the building technology available at that time this was pretty much the only way to build something that tall. The problem with any building is that the taller you go, the more weight presses down on the foundations and the bricks towards the bottom have to carry a heavier load. Eventually either the building starts to subside and sink (essentially being pushed into the ground by its own weight), or the blocks at the bottom start to crack and fail. So you angle the structure, such that each layer of blocks occupies a smaller area than the next, reducing the load on the blocks at the base and spreading out the weight of the building over a larger area.

Or in other words, you end up with a pyramid. And accounts from the time, evidence from numerous archaeological digs and modern day experiments corroborate historians theories of how the pyramids were built. The AA brigade, chose to ignore all of this evidence in favour of contrived and biased studies that set out to provide the answer they want. Not unlikely climate change deniers or young earth creationists.

So we are being asked to believe that these ancient aliens, despite having the advanced technology to get to the earth, would choose to use an extremely slow, inefficient and expensive means of pyramid construction. And this has to be contrasted with what can be built using modern building techniques (nevermind those available to ET). It is theoretically possible, using existing concrete and steel to building structures several km’s tall, although there are practical reasons why you probably won’t want too (e.g. most of the structure’s interior will just be stairs, lift shafts and service risers).

Imagine the conversation at ET’s Egyptian HQ. We can build a massive 4 km tall pyramid out of something cheap like concrete & steel, which we can throw up in a few years….or we can build a piddly little stone one which will be a fraction of the height, take decades to build and cost many times more. Seriously, you think they’d choose the latter option?

Furthermore different pyramids build before the great pyramid show signs of a learning curve. So we go from the step pyramid of Djoser (one of the oldest surviving pyramids), to the so-called bent pyramid (which was built at too steep and angle, resulting in a change in construction plans half way through building process), before the first of the great pyramids at Giza was raised.

Of course when pushed, the ancient aliens brigade will say, ya but you see the aliens were trying to cover their tracks. Why? There are uncontacted tribes here on earth, the occupants of North Sentinel Island being a good example, and while we are trying to avoid interference, its not like we are going out of our way to hide from them. They have witnessed large steel hulled ships passing by the Island (or even crashing into their Island), seen helicopters hovering overhead, etc.

Aliens would be no different, not least because they’d know the impossibility of actually hiding in this universe. We already have the technology to pick up any alien radio traffic from nearby star systems and can determine the orbits of nearby planets. Within a few decades we’ll be able to study the atmospheres of nearby exoplanets. So its basically impossible to hide, short of building an entire Dyson sphere around your solar system (and even that’s not guaranteed to work, as it would have a gravitational effect that would be observable, plus a heat signature which would show up in infrared).

But why did the practice of pyramid building change after the great pyramids? For the same reason such practices changed anywhere else in the world – times changed. Egyptian civilisation lasted for the best part of 4000 years. The date of Cleopatra’s death is closer to the present day, than it is to the completion of the pyramids at Giza. Egypt went through periods of collapse, when ancient knowledge was lost, or where afterwards the culture was very different (and building a massive pyramid as a rulers tomb was considered excessive and impractical).

But what about all these other pyramids build around the world? the Maya, Aztec’s, Angkor Wat. Well firstly these were built many thousands of years apart. Secondly, they faced the same engineering challenges the Egyptians faced. And, given that the laws of physics hadn’t changed, its no surprise they came up with a similar solution. And thirdly, these are very different structures with only a passing resemblance to one another (e.g. the Mayan pyramids tend to be smaller and more steeply build using smaller but more precisely cut stones).

Also why is it that we ascribe ancient aliens to having built the pyramids, but don’t question that the Romans built the Colosseum, or question that the ancient Greeks built the pantheon? There is a certain element of cultural racism at play here, which seeks to undermine the achievements of ancient peoples. Its like trying to claim NASA didn’t go to the moon, they hitched a ride from a passing Vogon. Or that D-day never happened, its all just fake news.

If you want to destroy a civilisation you erase the truth about its past. And that is effectively what this whole “ancient aliens” madness is doing. Its unscientific nonsense that promotes many racist and dangerous ideas. While undermining the achievements of past civilisations and their people.