Category Archives: current affairs

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!

current affairs, freedom of speech, topographical

Open Government

There’s an excellent short post over at Evolving Thoughts which succinctly addresses the need for open government. In fact it is so good I’m going to quote the key two paragraphs here:

Whenever a government […] wants to be free from oversight, the motivation, whether they are aware of it or not, is empire building and control. No government activity, not even those pertaining to that hold-all of rights denial, national security, should automatically be free from supervision. Democracy only works when government is done in the open. Otherwise it simply becomes a matter of who can rort the system most effectively, as we see with the Bush administration today.

No special powers are required to prevent terrorism, just good old fashioned police work. No special acts of parliament are needed to prosecute them, for insurgency and murder are already crimes. And no special politicians are needed to “lead us out of this mess”, because either every political authority can do this, or we have no hope. And a democratic government, legislature or judiciary knows this already, and will act to protect our rights in a time of stress.

Precisely what I’ve been saying for years.

current affairs, topographical

Going to the Dogs

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Going to the dogs is what a lot of children in Shropshire might be doing today. Why? Because Shropshire County Council have apparently closed a lot of schools today because it might snow later in the day. For heaven’s sake what are these people on? We now have disruption because it might snow – not even because it’s the wrong type of snow.

In my school days (1956-1969) school was never closed, and, unlike now, we were guaranteed snowfall every winter. Even during the very bad winter of 1962-63 my school didn’t close. For almost the whole of that winter term we had up to 2″ (5 cm) of ice on our playground, but school never closed; we came very close to being sent home (within 2-3 hours) as we were running out of heating oil but were saved by the arrival of a tanker at the 11th hour. Boo! Hiss!

How have we got to the situation where things are shut down “because it might snow”?

amusements, current affairs, thoughts

Camel Cavalry

This wonderful picture appeared in today’s Times, in their “Image of the Day” series.

It is captioned “Members of India’s Border Security Force rehearse … for the Republic Day parade in Delhi on Saturday”. This is the sort of pomp and fancy dress which only the British, and the Raj, do so brilliantly.

beliefs, current affairs, freedom of speech, thoughts

Depressing and Predictable

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Following on from yesterday’s post about the views on drugs of the Chief Constable of North Wales … Needless to say said Chief Constable has today come in for the “usual intemperate attack” from the Daily Mail and other papers (eg. this relatively well tempered article in the Daily Telegraph).

Bystander over at The Magistrate’s Blog comments in his usual forthright and perceptive style:

… what is most depressing about this is the entire lack of any reasoned debate. Whenever the drugs issue comes up, the tabloids and some of the rent-a-quote politicians … go into a knee-jerk rant mode …

We have now reached the position where there is no chance of any rational approach to our fellow citizens’ increasing appetite for chemical stimulation.

Our politicians long ago gave up leadership, in favour of a marketing-led approach dependent on focus groups and polls.

… elected politicians … are terrified of upsetting anyone.

The ‘War on Drugs’ has become like the later stages of the Vietnam war: it’s unwinnable, but nobody has the guts to admit it …

I really couldn’t have expressed it better myself, even with all day to think about it!

However the “intemperate attacks” are precisely why I think Brunstrom is wrong. The legalisation he is advocating won’t happen; the tabloid press and the tabloid politicians will ensure it doesn’t; they’ll drown out anyone who dares to think about the subject.