Category Archives: current affairs

current affairs, environment

Enviroconcern

Two articles on environmental concerns in the Guardian during the week caught my attention.

First George Monbiot slices into agriculture and our habit of eating meat in The best way to save the planet? Drop meat and dairy. While he may be technically correct, I don’t see this being very practical – although of course most of us could happily eat much less meat than we do.

Secondly Simon Jenkins inserts quite a few daggers between the ribs of Heathrow’s proposed Third Runway in Heathrow airport’s polluting new runway is a macho folly. Jenkins doesn’t say it in as many words, but it is essentially just a vanity project and willy-waving by the erstwhile BAA. To be sure, the alternatives aren’t too wonderful either, but then as I’ve been saying for a long time we have to get to grips with our fetish for flying everywhere – two, three, four long-haul holidays a year are just not sustainable.

current affairs, ramblings

It’s not Cricket, or is it?

So, a couple of Aussies have been banned for tampering with the match ball.

This should not be a surprise, except that they were using an artificial aid to do so – which, however tempting, is frankly stupid as well as cheating. And they got caught.

Ball doctoring goes on in cricket at all levels, it is very easy and it isn’t new.

Some dust on the hand can easily rough up one side of the ball, as can boot studs or a fingernail, while shining the other side with hair gel to help the ball swing. Shining the ball on the trousers/shirt/handkerchief is legal. Using hair gel, dust, fingernails or studs isn’t.

It is also very easy to lift the seam with just a thumbnail and some sleight of hand while (allegedly) removing dirt from the seam. Removing the dirt is legal but lifting the seam isn’t.

And that is just the tip of the iceberg.

I was never more than a jobbing club third XI cricketer, and yet I was shown some of the techniques on more than one occasion. I never doctored a ball during a match – I wasn’t good enough that it would have made any useful difference anyway – nor did I ever spot it happening when I was umpiring, but I did use it to prolong the useful life of practice balls.

current affairs, freedom of speech, science

Trickery from PC Plod

There was a sneakily released Home Office press release in the early hours of last Saturday:

Police trial new Home Office mobile fingerprint technology
New mobile fingerprinting technology will allow frontline officers across the country to use their smartphones to identify people in less than a minute …

Needless to say Liberty are up in arms as there is no parliamentary oversight nor any proper public consultation.
Anyone who is stopped and fingerprinted on the street (and anyone could be at the whim of PC Plod) will have no opportunity to seek legal advice beforehand, there does not seem to be any discussion of consent, nor is there any indication of whether the information obtained will be retained and if so for how long or for what.
PC Plod is all too good at being ham-fisted and over-zealous with such initiatives, which is why it is important there should be oversight and consultation.
I find this especially disturbing as there is no scientific basis for the certainty with which fingerprints are used for identification. See, for example, this October 2017 article from Science Daily which reports this scientific examination.
As Liberty’s blog post says:

If you have been affected by these new measures, please tell Liberty about it and get legal advice quickly.

beliefs, current affairs, freedom of speech, personal, thoughts

Thoughts on #metoo

I’ve been thinking about all the recent posts. While in one way I’m not surprised, in another it is frighteningly disturbing to realise the level of abuse that we men inflict and remain totally unaware of. But from what I’ve seen (and I may be misinterpreting) I don’t think most women are saying that every man harasses them or is a sex offender.
(On the other hand, in some senses maybe we all are offenders, if only in our heads. Be honest, which of us doesn’t look at a pretty girl and think some variant of “I wonder what she’d fuck like?”. But then there is a line between thinking it and grabbing it.)
However if even 50% of women have experienced men being inappropriate (and 50% seems to be a very low estimate) then it isn’t just a tiny minority of men doing it.
We are all thoughtless and stupid towards others at times, whatever our gender and whatever the gender of the other person. (This isn’t just men on women, although that is almost certainly the vast majority or the “action”.) That’s not an excuse – there are no excuses – but a fact of life. We will never totally eradicate it, just as we can never be completely certain that our actions can ensure “X never happens again”. There will always be outliers. But we can all work hard to ensure our thoughtlessness and stupidity is reduced to an absolutely minimal level and those few outliers are all that remain.
I’m not conscious of ever having done anything wrong physically – though I will concede I probably have unknowingly. But I know that at times I have said, either verbally or in writing, and mostly without meaning to, something stupid, thoughtless or just plain badly worded. At times I’ve been called for it; at times I’ve realised myself I’ve overstepped the mark. I hope that on all such occasions I’ve apologised, learnt something, improved; and hopefully we have all been able to move on with some level of dignity restored. Even so there are a few of these occasions which still haunt me.
And for those occasions where I still don’t realise I’ve overstepped the mark, I apologise now!
Obviously as, I hope, a considerate being I would never deliberately set out to harass or abuse anyone; something I outlined in my post earlier in the year on my personal ethics and morals.
I feel sure that very often men don’t realise they’re behaving inappropriately; but I don’t buy the “that’s just because it’s the way men are” non-excuse. I suggest it’s because we’ve never been taught to be aware of such things – how can we have been when previous generations of men haven’t been aware of the problem and women have been too frightened to speak up, so no-one could teach us – and we’ve been too lazy to think about it for ourselves?
Hopefully the new, heightened, awareness can help change this, but realistically it isn’t going to happen overnight. Hopefully men can start to trust and believe what women say; they can start thinking about how they behave; and they can learn about being generally more sensitive, considerate and thoughtful human beings. Many – the more thoughtful men – will. But I do worry that the majority, who go through life relying only on their animal cave-man instincts, are just going to say “fuck off” and carry on regardless. They are going to need a lot of work by the rest of us – men and women. We all have to be brave and stand up to them, and that in itself isn’t always going to be easy – but if we’re being considerate human beings we have to try, pro bono pubico.

current affairs, environment, topographical

The Garden is Dead

Yes! Some common sense has prevailed. The London Garden Bridge project is being abandoned.


It was a nice idea, but in the wrong place and wrongly conceived as a commercial project which would feed off the public purse. How much better to use the concept and the funding to green London’s abandoned railways tracks and other such to increase London’s green space as the Mayor, Sadiq Khan, has pledged to do. That would make the money go a lot further, but then it’s not “willy waving” is it!
Let’s hope this is the first of many vanity projects to bite the dust – yes I’m looking at you Brexit, HS2, Heathrow Runway 3 …

current affairs, quotes

Monthly Quotes

Our round-up of quotes interesting, amusing and thought provoking encountered in the last few weeks. And oh so many at the moment are rooted in current affairs …
I think there never was a bureaucracy – royal, parliamentary, democratic, autocratic, whatever – that didn’t naturally seek to grow. They all do it. One may as well condemn human nature for being acquisitive. 
As for the Ponzi scheme aspect, that is also part of nearly every national government. That is, they spend more than they take in and pass the deficit on to future generations, who will be able in their turn to bear the debt for two reasons. First is that in a well-regulated economy the debt decreases in value due to inflation. Second is that what remains of the debt will in its turn be passed on to the future. 
So, if socialism is the tendency for a organization to grow, and a Ponzi scheme is so-called because it passes the cost of doing business into the future, then all organizations are socialistic, Ponzi schemes, businesses as well as governments. It is not a reason to condemn them – though it might be a reason to rein them in every so often.
[Prof. Michael Henle]
There is much more outside your area of influence than inside it. This is true no matter if you’re a two-bit writer of trashy Zen blogs or Leader of the Free World. None of us has very much individual power to control the external world. That’s another one of our silly illusions. You can, however, learn how to change your habit of obsessing about stuff you can’t change.
[Brad Warner at http://hardcorezen.info/zen-and-obsessions/5209]
A free Press is the unsleeping guardian of every other right that free men prize; it is the most dangerous foe of tyranny. Where men have the habit of liberty, the Press will continued to be the vigilant guardian of the rights of the ordinary citizen.
[Winston Churchill, 1949]
The truth is hard.
The truth is hidden.
The truth must be pursued.
The truth is hard to hear.
The truth is rarely simple.
The truth isn’t so obvious.
The truth is necessary.
The truth can’t be glossed over.
The truth has no agenda.
The truth can’t be manufactured.
The truth doesn’t take sides.
The truth isn’t red or blue.
The truth is hard to accept.
The truth pulls no punches.
The truth is powerful.
The truth is under attack.
The truth is worth defending.
The truth requires taking a stand.
The truth is more important now than ever.
[New York Times]
Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.
[Voltaire]
The best teachers are those who show you where to look, but don’t tell you what to see.
[Alexandra K Trenfor]
If you understand, things are just as they are. If you do not understand, things are just as they are.
[Zen Proverb]
All babies look like Winston Churchill.
[WH Auden]
I refuse to answer that question on the grounds that I don’t know the answer.
[Douglas Adams]
Human beings are animals. Animals don’t like change. Lots of animals will die if their environment undergoes rapid change, even if that change could be defined as an improvement. Humans are more adaptable than most other animals, but we are not infinitely adaptable. And we respond just as badly to sudden change as any other species.
[Brad Warner at http://hardcorezen.info/i-vow-not-to-destabilize-society/5250
A democracy relies on an electorate of critical thinkers. Yet for­ mal education, which is driven by test taking, is increasingly failing to require students to ask the kind of questions that lead to informed decisions.
[Dennis M Bartels; Scientific American, March 2013]
White men are prized by poachers for their thin skins and their enlarged sense of entitlement, which is used in some traditional medicines.
[From https://twitter.com/_L_M_C_/status/840583019828256770]
We must wholeheartedly believe in free will. If free will is a reality, we shall have made the correct choice. If it is not, we shall still not have made an incorrect choice, because we shall not have made any choice at all, not having a free will to do so.
[Edward N Lorenz (1917-2008); The Essence of Chaos]
Not all cultures are created equal. Any culture that sweepingly and maniacally oppresses half their population is what I would call evil. Moral relativism be damned: that kind of crap is wrong, plain and simple.
[Phil Plait; ; 26 April 2010]
Our attitude towards what has happened to us in life is the important thing to recognize. Once hopeless, my life is now hope-full, but it did not happen overnight. The last of human freedoms, to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, is to choose one’s own way.
[Victor Frankl; Man’s Search for Meaning]
And finally, boys and girls, remember the (alleged) words of Abraham Lincoln:
Whatever you are, be a good one.

beliefs, current affairs, sexuality

Message Getting Home

At long last a few UK politicians are getting the message about the need to decriminalise sex work. This is from the Independent a few days ago.

Liberal Democrats move to quash all historical sex-work convictions
of prostitutes and punters


What I find especially interesting, and slightly surprising, is that ex-senior policeman Lord Paddick is in favour. The police aren’t generally considered to be forward thinkers, but then Paddick has always been an outlier.
Now to get the message home to the rest of our politicians that New Zealand seems to have the best model.