Category Archives: current affairs

current affairs, freedom of speech, topographical

On Parliament and the Executive

Head of Legal earlier in the week deals with the Law Lords’ judgement in the case of R (Gentle) v Prime Minister and Others. It wasn’t the judgement which caught my eye, but one of the comments in which Peter Hargreaves observes:

If we had a true Parliament instead of a House of Muppets controlled by the executive then we would have the inquiry. Under our constitution it is supposed to be Parliament which holds the executive to account but as Lord Denning once said – “Legal theory does not march hand in hand with political reality” – [Attorney-General v Blackburn 1971]. The reality is that the executive controls Parliament.

As usual the late lamented Lord Denning hit the nail on the head so many years ago; he should be living yet!

current affairs, environment, freedom of speech, topographical

Perspective

The BBC reports today that Zimbabwe’s President (aka. dictator), Robert Mugabe, has described UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown as ‘a little tiny dot on this world’. Much as it pains me, for once I have to agree with Mugabe.

In the same report South African President Thabo Mbeki said there was “no crisis” in Zimbabwe. Hmmm. I think that makes it fairly clear which mast his colours are nailed to. I’ve been saying for years that South Africa will degenerate into a blood bath; I suspect the only reason it hasn’t yet done so is because Nelson Mandela still has a lot of influence behind the scenes. But once Mandela dies I have a horrid feeling South Africa will go much the same way as Zimbabwe, Uganda, and others. Let’s hope I’m wrong.

current affairs, freedom of speech, history, medical, pleasures, science, thoughts

Save GMT Campaign

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For years – and I mean like 40+ years, since I was at school – there have been campaigns and continual sniping to keep the UK’s clocks one hour ahead of GMT around the year. I don’t just not get it, I fundamentally disagree with it. It was tried in the 1960s, when I was at school, and was a complete failure, So we had lighter afternoons in winter coming out of school, but we also had darker mornings and days when it didn’t get properly daylight until 10AM. As someone who suffers (albeit marginally) from SAD I need that early morning light to get me going and reset my body clock.

Jilly over at jillysheep has suggested in a post today that we should preserve GMT all year round. And I have to say I agree. I don’t see the point of continually changing the clocks with the seasons. Every time we move the clocks an hour (in whichever direction) it throws everyone’s body clocks; it isn’t just me who notices it; I hear many people commenting that their body clock is out of kilter with the our artificial time.

Now I can understand why the government thought it a good idea to put the clocks forward in summer during times of war (which if I recall correctly was a significant part of the rationale for its use; tho’ not the original reason for the idea). But I do not see the least necessity for it today. What does summer time give us? Longer and lighter evenings; nothing more. And while I love long summer evenings as much as anyone, in these days of flexible working we could achieve the same effect just as easily by adjusting our working hours if we need to. (Already some of us frequently have to start early or finish late because we are dealing with colleagues or clients on the continent or in the Americas.)

I wonder if anyone has ever worked out the (notional) cost of changing the clocks twice a year on business? I would think it is rather large. And certainly not something worth paying to get longer light evenings when there are other cost-free options available.

There’s the usual good article about Daylight Saving Time over on Wikipedia. What is interesting, that I didn’t know, is that a large swathe of the world has used summer time and has now abandoned it. Basically it is only the “western industrialised nations” (and some of South America) which use summer time. Large chunks of the globe have either given it up or never used DST in the first place.

Anyway … we really should keep GMT alive. It is, after all, a cornerstone of our heritage. Universal time was “discovered” in England, yes at Greenwich, which is why the Meridian is there! Universal time has been a great thing: the world equivalent of “railway time”. But let each country keep its own time zone. And let us keep and celebrate the heritage which is ours and is GMT!

Now who feels like starting a campaign to preserve GMT? Hands off our time zone! 🙂

current affairs, environment, pleasures

Heathrow Luggage Mountain

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Absolutely unbelievable!

According to this BBC News item there are now at least 15,000 (and maybe 20,000) pieces of luggage now stranded at Heathrow Airport’s brand spanking new Terminal 5.

And for a third day BA have cancelled around 20% of their flights out of Heathrow with many more apparently leaving without any luggage loaded.

What an unbelievable shambles.

When BA and BAA file for bankruptcy I wonder if the government will have the gall to pay off their shareholders? They’d just better not even think about it!

current affairs, environment, freedom of speech, pleasures

Yo, Ho, Ho and a Bottle of Duty Free

So after less than one day Heathrow’s sparkling new Terminal 5 has ground to a halt, despite all the much trumpeted testing which was done on the systems using thousands of volunteer members of the public. BAA and the staff appear to be blaming a crap luggage conveyor system. BA are blaming problems with “staff familiarisation”. That’s right; let’s blame the staff when our shiny new technology doesn’t work. Talk about appalling management; I was always taught that the first thing you do is defend your staff publicly (whatever you may have to do behind closed doors) – but that clearly isn’t good enough for BA.

Oh and all this after BAA has been forced to suspend it’s plan to fingerprint every passenger using T5 because the Office of the Information Commissioner says it’s illegal. And why were they going to thus abuse our civil liberties? Because they have been stupid enough to build T5 such that international and domestic passengers (aka. terrorists) can mingle after security checks and could swap boarding passes!

I wonder why I won’t be flying BA any more?

Full BBC News report.

current affairs

Constitutional Renewal Bill

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Simon Carr in today’s Independent isn’t impressed. “Bilge” and “fudge” are about the politest things he has to say about Jack Straw’s proposed Constitutional Renewal Bill. See the full article: The Sketch: The PM’s constitutional renewal Bill is just PR and weep.

current affairs, thoughts

Regulation of (Financial) Markets

Stability in financial markets is unattainable; anyone who believes they can make it otherwise is pissing into the wind. Sadly many governments, banks and indeed market makers are included in this afflicted group. There’s a good article with the title “More regulation will not prevent next crisis” by John Kay in Financial Times of 25/03/2008. The key passage is:

… in financial services, the demand today is for more regulation. That call should be resisted. The state cannot ensure the stability of the financial system and a serious attempt to do so would involve intervention on an unacceptable scale. But to acknowledge responsibility for financial stability is to assume a costly liability for failure to achieve it. That is what has happened.

Since financial stability is unattainable, the more important objective is to insulate the real economy from the consequences of financial instability. Government should … ensure that the payment system for households and businesses continues to function. There should be the same powers to take control of essential services in the event of corporate failure that exist for other public utilities …

We cannot prevent booms and busts in credit markets, but today’s regulation of risk and capital – which is more reflective of what has occurred than of what may occur – does more to aggravate these cycles than to prevent them. Regulation in a market economy is targeted at specific market failures and should not be a charter for the general scrutiny of business strategies of private business. Banking should be
no exception.

How true. Not that politicians have a hope of understanding this. And not that bankers would want them to understand it.

[Hat tip to Wat Tyler at Burning Our Money.]

beliefs, current affairs, environment, food+drink, science, thoughts

Super-Cows and the Redesign of Farming

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I always see Focus, the BBC’s science and technology magazine, and mostly I find it too superficial to satisfy to my scientific mind (not surprising really, it’s designed for interested amateurs, not former science professionals). But occasionally they have an interesting and thought-provoking article or comment. One such is in the current issue (April 2008) where Colin Tudge, zoologist, science writer and broadcaster, makes the case for the redesign of farming rather than the current trend towards super-livestock. Unfortunately the BBC doesn’t put the whole of the printed magazine online, so here is a heavily edited (but I hope undistorted) version of Tudge’s article; to read the whole thing you’ll have to buy the magazine.

The US government has approved the cloning of high-performance cattle, pigs, and goats … The idea is to make genetic copies of ‘elite’ animals: the ones that grow quickest, or give the most milk … Commercially, this sounds good.
…
But the decision … has been met with protest.
…
[A] few decades ago, traditional dairy cows in the western world yielded between 600 and 800 gallons per year, and were productive for at least five to 10 years … Modern herds are expected to average more than 1000 gallons a year [and some even 2000 gallons] … These high-performance cows average only 1.8 lactations, after which they have mastitis and are crippled.
…
Worse, though, is the mindset behind this use of cloning. For elite animals do not perform well except in cosseted conditions, and are … force-fed on high-grade feed. This requires huge capital – so such animals are intended only for rich countries whose consumers already have more than enough.
…
Worst of all, the frenetic search for the high-yield animals completely misconstrues the role of livestock. Already we are failing to feed the world’s population. An
estimated one billion out of 6.5 billion people are chronically undernourished while another billion suffer from excess.
…
The central task is to produce the most nourishment possible from the available landscapes. Food crops produce far more food calories and protein per hectare than livestock, so they should be our priority – cereals, pulses, nuts, tubers, fruit, and vegetables … Cattle and sheep should feed on grass or … trees that grow in places where we cannot easily raise crops … The omnivores like pigs and poultry can feed on surpluses and leftovers.

So farming that is designed to maximise food output produces a lot of plants, with modest amounts of livestock … Plenty of plants, not much meat and maximum variety is precisely what modern nutritionists recommend.
…
But modern, industrial, high-tech farming has nothing to do with feeding people. It is designed to generate cash.

beliefs, current affairs, freedom of speech, nudism, sexuality

Unintended Consequences

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The Law of Unintended Consequences is alive and well! Diary of a Nudist has blogged about the reaction to recent attempts to clamp down on perceived indecent images. In two cases, ABC being fined for showing female buttocks before the watershed (see here and here) and the charging of a store for using almost revealing photographs (see here), the result has been that the images in question are now far more widely spread that they otherwise would have been. Moreover some parts of the US are also cocking a snook at their “stripper” laws. Such activity is always one of the possible outcomes of censorship. Great that the officious have had their bluff called. Let’s keep it up chaps and expose this stupidity for what it is!