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| Privacy and
Meghan Sparkle 7 November 2021 |
Until the judgement last week by the
Court of Appeal, I had rather lost track of the
case brought by Meghan against Associated
Newspapers, the publishers of the Daily Mail. It
all related to a letter which she had written to
her father asking him, in effect, to stop cashing
in on her new-found fame and fortune. With the
father’s encouragement, the letter was duly
published, almost in full, by the Daily Mail -
presumably accompanied by a payment to the
impecunious father. The normal royal response of
doing nothing was abandoned by the rather more
litigation-minded American Duchess. She sued under
two headings.
Secondly, and more controversially, she claimed a right to expect that her letter would be treated as a private matter. It was sent to her father privately and it was he who revealed its contents. In the UK we are in an odd position. Unlike most of Europe and Canada and, I think some states in America, we didn’t have a law entitling people to privacy unless there was a contract in place which imposed confidentiality – usually only the case in connection with business arrangements. We did though start to accept the concept of privacy when the European Court of Human Rights extended the scope of the “right to privacy” under Article 8 of the Convention...(continue) |
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| Asylum 30 November 2021 |
After more than three weeks of tough
legal wrangling, delegates on 28 July 1951 adopted
the ‘Convention relating to the Status of
Refugees’, the ‘Geneva Convention’. It allowed
people displaced during the second world war and
its aftermath to apply for asylum in the countries
where they had ended up. Although World War II had
long since ended, very many refugees still
wandered aimlessly across the European continent
or squatted in makeshift camps. This was a more
far-reaching convention that those previously
adopted in response to the 1st world war and to
the purges carried out by the USSR. But in its
original form it only applied to people who had
been displaced in the period up to 1951, and the
right to make a claim for asylum was to last only
for 3 years after the convention came into force.
The size of the problem was then
estimated to be in the hundreds of thousands.
Things have unfortunately continued to develop. In
1951, the world’s population stood at 2.5 billion.
It is now almost 8 billion. According to the UN
High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), in 2018
more than 70 million people worldwide were living
in countries other than their own, having been
forcibly displaced because of persecution,
conflict, violence, or human rights violations. So
then the problem has vastly increased and the
reality is that the principles behind the Geneva
Convention have been overwhelmed. What was
initially a reluctantly agreed, but limited,
requirement to accept people from other countries
into your society is now on a wholly different
scale....(continue)
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| Suitability
for the job 21 November 2021 |
 This is a somewhat
delicate subject for a man to deal with, so I
shall tread carefully. But it has to be reported
that a complaint has been made to an employment
tribunal in France of discrimination and so breach
of employment law. It has been made against the
organisers of the ‘Miss France’ beauty pageant.
The complaint is that they have selected
contestants based on their appearance and marital
status. Who knew? According to
reports in the French press, three Miss France
contestants who failed to make the grade have
joined a leading feminist group in starting this
action. Osez-le-Féminisme (Dare to be
Feminist) said it had filed a complaint with an
employment tribunal on behalf of the former
contestants. They said that they had done this
because they had not been able to succeed in
getting Miss France banned in any other way -
presumably because there was no general public
support for their argument.
The plaintiffs allege that the organisers are breaching French employment law by forcing aspiring beauty queens to be more than 1.70 metres tall, single, and "representative of beauty”...(continue) |
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| The Owen
Paterson affair 14 November 2021 |
Following the Commons vote on 3 November
and their screeching U turn the following day, I
sent an email to my MP, Craig Tracey. The Tories
had been whipped to vote in favour of a motion
that had the effect of postponing consideration of
the Report of the Committee on Standards regarding
the (now) former MP Owen Paterson, he of the
consultancy fees paid to him by Randox and Lynns
Country Foods, or should that be the ‘egregious
breaches of the rules against paid lobbying’?
It also meant the setting up of a committee parallel to the Standards Committee, one with a Tory majority, designed to create a new system for investigation of MPs’ conduct, including that of Owen Paterson. So then a blatant attempt to move the goalposts in order to protect one of their mates. All opposition parties refused to cooperate with this underhand attempt to game the system: Dear Mr Tracey Re: The Standards Committee vote last night And so Boris, the Conservatives’ answer to the Grand Old Duke of York, led you up the hill and is now running back down as fast as his legs will carry him, having seen the reaction on the front page of the Daily Mail, not to mention the leaders in the Guardian and the Times. You really should be aware of the danger of being party fodder. You get abandoned by your own leader when it suits him. Paul Buckingham I received a
reply, no doubt created by Conservative Central
Office, also dated 4 November, but not received
until 13 November. This is the relevant part:
As I am
sure you are aware, the MP that has been linked to
this motion, Owen Patterson, has now resigned as
an MP after 24 years in the role...(continue)"… Yesterday's vote was not based on any one case heard by the Standards Commissioner, but in relation to a culmination of failings in the system that have been reported over a period of time. In any matter such as this, it is important that a fair hearing is given so that there can be confidence that the decision reached and the punishment handed out are correct. |
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| Collective
Narcissism 9 November 2021 |
We think of narcissism as a solitary
activity. Narcissus didn’t apparently invite
anyone-else to gaze with him at his own
reflection. But there are different types of
narcissism. They do not all revolve around
admiration of our own physical beauty.
Fortunately, for those of us not obviously endowed
with beauty of form, there are alternative ways of
admiring ourselves. And others can get involved
too.
In 2005, the psychologist Agnieszka
Golec de Zavala was trying to understand what
leads people to commit acts of terrorist violence.
She began to notice amongst extremist groups what
other psychologists, Theodor Adorno and
Erich Fromm, had previously described as “group
narcissism”: “a belief that the (exaggerated)
greatness of one’s group is not sufficiently
recognized by others.”. This means that the thirst
for recognition is never satisfied. She helped to
develop the Collective Narcissism
Scale to measure the severity of
group-narcissistic beliefs, including statements
such as “My group deserves special treatment” and
“I insist upon my group getting the respect that
is due to it” with which respondents rate their
agreement.
At first, she thought it was just a
fringe phenomenon, but has since realized that
it’s widespread. It can happen in any kind of
group, whether religious, political, gender-based,
racial, ethnic or in sports teams or clubs of
any sort...(continue)
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| Long-termism 2 November 2021 |
The Alpine valley along which we were
travelling a few years ago was perhaps a mile wide
and more or less flat. We were on our way back to Annecy from
Chamonix, where we had taken a look at the glacier
which comes down from Mont Blanc. This has carved
out its path over millions of years and, in the
summer, when it is not covered in snow, it looks
grey and rocky because it has boulders strewn all
over it, marking its continued determination to
let nothing stand in its way.
The valley leading away from Chamonix was no longer the subject of these forces, but clearly had been created by the immense rush of billions of tonnes of water, ice and rock which marked the end of the ice-age. It was the beginning of January. It was cold and there was snow at the edges of our road. Along the way, there were one or two small lakes with some very puzzled ducks; they were sitting on ice instead of paddling in water. Granted the short life of a duck and the lack of the parent ducks’ ability to pass on their experience of this strange time of year, it is surprising that the young cope with it at all. They must have very bruised undercarriages from when they first try to land on what had previously been soft and giving rather than hard and unyielding...(continue) |
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| Democracy
under attack? 12 October 2021 |
Although in favour of democracy in general terms, clearly it has its problems. The main problem is that it depends upon the information available to voters and their ability to understand and process it. They, after all, ultimately determine which government policies are adopted, whether actively or through lack of interest in the entire process. Governments tend not to adopt unpopular policies for reasons of self-preservation. That also means that governments tend to look to the short term – what will get them elected the next time the people go to the polls – rather than what would actually be good for the country in the longer term. In that sense, they are behaving like most people do in their daily lives. They tend to look to the short and not the long term. Keynes famously said: ‘in the long run, we are all dead’...(continue) | |||
| Extreme academe |
Lots of radio stations play music. Most
of it is pop music, but there are quite a few
which play classical music and so are a bit more
to my taste. Some specialise in a particular
composer, such as 'Vivaldi FM' or 'Bach FM' which
do what they say on the tin. Most though play a
mixture of classical music, albeit mainly those
with the more memorable tunes.
There is a
Swiss station which plays classical music with,
between tracks, just a simple statement of what is
being played and who the artists are. Others, like
Classic FM, try to engage with the listener and so
use biographical detail about the composer or
artists in order to make it more interesting.
Musicology provides that biographical detail, and
stations such as Radio 3 and France Musique take
it even further with the often very detailed
information given to the listeners and the
in-depth discussion of performances and
compositions.
For all this information, obviously we need musicologists, although perhaps not to the extent that musicologists would want us to believe. Most of us would actually be quite happy with a relatively superficial knowledge of the subject. But then that’s true of many aspects of academic life. One of our leading musicologists is Professor J. P. E. Harper-Scott of Royal Holloway, London University. He has though now resigned his post. This is because he no longer sees academic freedom as normal in universities...(continue) |
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| Living longer 13 September 2021 |
It’s been said
that young people dream of being rich, and rich
people dream of being young. It is perhaps not
surprising then that the latest news from Jeff Bezos
is that he is putting squillions of dollars into a
company trying to develop editing of the human
genome. He expects that it will enable us to
achieve immortality. It is not though to provide
immortality just for embryos yet to be formed. It is
anticipated that a living person’s entire body will
be able to be reprogrammed. I suppose that it’s
marginally less obvious as an example of middle-aged
angst than launching a phallic symbol into space. The money is going to Altos Labs, a young start-up trying to reverse ageing by reprogramming human cells. The technology has been shown to rejuvenate cells in a lab, and it is thought that it might eventually help revitalize entire bodies. The Company was formed after a series of short-term grants had been awarded to longevity researchers by Yuri Milner, another middle-aged billionaire. When it became evident that a dedicated, well-funded start-up could pursue research more efficiently, Altos was born, in the spring of 2021. And the company hasn't stopped growing since, poaching a who's who of the world's top longevity scientists...(continue) |
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| Sentience 15 August 2021 |
Now, I’m sure that there are many
sentient beings on this planet, although I do
sometimes wonder about the human kind, particularly
football supporters. Our beloved leader’s new wife,
though, has decided that, as a matter of priority,
in the middle of all the other problems we are
trying to resolve, we should have an Act of
Parliament which recognises that all vertebrates are
sentient. The Animal Rights (Sentience) Bill when
passed will do just that.
She’s apparently not though
concerned with invertebrates. Perhaps they’re not
cuddly enough. Neither octopuses nor lobsters would
make good pets as far as I’m concerned, but then
most people don’t find rats or mice particularly
attractive as companions either. So it’s all a
little bit odd as an approach to what I assume is an
attempt to increase our concern for the welfare of
other species. The background to it appears to be
our old friend Brexit...(continue)
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| Falsification
- right or wrong? 2 August 2021 |
The process of science, according to
Professor Sir Karl Popper, was the creation of a
hypothesis followed by an attempt to falsify it:
you needed to set up an experiment to try to prove
your hypothesis wrong. If the hypothesis
was
disproved, you had to reject it. Simple.
Popper came to this conclusion at a time when the general view was that the scientific method was all about verification. Whilst verification intuitively sounds like the best way to go, it really isn’t. As Popper saw with Freudian and Adlerian psychoanalysis, Marxism and astrology, a wish to provide verification generally meant that people looked only for evidence to support their view of things, rather than looking for inconsistencies. Now you might think that verification and falsification are two sides of the same coin, but they’re not. In fact verification, in philosophical terms, was an example of trying to impose standard philosophical methods on science without really understanding the role of science. Verification is fine if you have a logical puzzle: you can check for errors in logical reasoning because it follows pre-defined rules. If there are no flaws, then the proof is accepted. It is verified. Unfortunately, the real world, the world about which science is trying to inform us, doesn’t work like that. It’s very different because we don’t start off knowing what the rules are. We start off from a set of observations of what is going on and then try to infer from our observations the underlying rules which govern what is happening. If logic alone had been sufficient to give us the structure of the atom and otherwise sort out all the problems of science, then the ancient Greeks would have had mobile phones and been talking about the Big Bang, rather than Zeus and his bolts of lightning...(continue) |
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| Freedom of Speech - the Bill 23 July 2021 |
Cancel culture seems, for some time now,
to have been affecting who is invited to speak at
Universities or who will be employed by them. Many
high profile people have been disinvited from
speaking to student groups at our institutes of
higher education. They appear to come not only
from the right wing, but to include many others,
particularly those who have not accepted the
purist 'trans' line that sex is a social
construct.
The government has therefore introduced a Bill (the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill) which would impose on Universities and other institutes of higher education (and their respective student unions) an obligation to support freedom of speech. This would include making sure that accommodation for meetings on the campus is not denied simply by reason of the opinions to be expressed. As it happens,
flipping between channels, I briefly saw the
Educashun Secretary, the Right Honourable Gavin
Williamson, at the dispatch box during its second
reading. At the time though, I think I had
something more pressing to do, like cutting my
finger nails. Obviously I should have paid full
attention to the no doubt penetrating and subtle
analysis of a particularly difficult aspect of our
constitution by a former fireplace salesman and
also the wisdom of the other similarly
well-informed speakers on all sides in the debate.
The difficulty with imposing a right is that it not only has to be defined positively, but also provided with limits. All very difficult without subscribing to the passing fads of society....(continue) |
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| Patriotism
and nationalism 12 July 2021 |
For the last few weeks,
patriotism has been on show. During Wimbledon we had
an unusually good performance by the Brits. Although
we lost Andy Murray early on due to his metal hips,
Dan Evans, a player from Solihull, did very well in
the opening rounds. And then there was 18 year old
Emma Raducanu, born in Toronto of a Chinese mother
and a Romanian father, but living here since
2004. Granted her success in getting through
to the fourth round as a wild card entry, although
previously unknown, she was instantly adopted by
almost all the country as a true Brit. Of course
when she had to withdraw in the next round, Piers
Morgan, that bastion of Britishness, said that she
should “man up!” It’s nice to have such a well
thought-out suggestion from an expert in the field.
And then there was the football.
There have been so many flags on display and so much
excitement, but also dread at the thought of losing,
particularly to Germany by way of penalties: the
curse of the penalty shoot-out. And of course all
was well, with England actually beating Germany
without the need for a penalties. Cue great
celebrations and talk of Gareth Southgate becoming
Sir Gareth if they won the final against Italy. But,
of course, they didn’t. Which means that football is
not “coming home” any time soon (whatever that
means), and that Gareth will remain Gareth. The
Italian ambassador before the match had indeed said
that perhaps football, as his country’s national
sport, had already found itself a new home! But it’s
all a bit of a shame, because here we encounter the
unforgiving nature of many sports, and particularly
football. You have to win. From a field of 24 teams,
even getting what would be the silver medal, if we
were talking about the Olympics, is just not enough.
Of course, the Scots were delighted and, if I am
typical of the Welsh, then they simply don’t care.
But England went into mourning....(continue)
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| Mind the Gap 29 June 2021 |
The phrase "Mind the gap" was coined in
1968. It was an automated announcement to warn
tube passengers of the danger awaiting them. As
London Underground had chosen to use solid state
equipment and as data storage capacity was
expensive, the phrase had to be short. The danger?
Because some platforms on the London Underground
are curved and the rolling stock that uses them
are straight, there is an unsafe gap when a train
stops at a curved platform. Sound engineer Peter
Lodge recorded an actor reading "Mind the gap" and
"Stand clear of the doors please", but the actor
insisted on royalties. Lodge, however, had already
read the phrases to line up the recording
equipment for level and so those were used
instead. 'Mind the gap' has now though become a
part of the tourist scene in London. Tourists,
especially Americans, regard it as being
quintessentially British.
Unfortunately, the idea of a gap is also becoming very British in another sense – it is the gap between how we say that we should act and what we actually do. Hypocrisy has always been with us. People have had affairs, claimed to be acting in the interest of others when lining their own pockets and done many other things which they would have condemned in others. That doesn’t mean, though that we should simply ignore it when it happens now. |
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| Cancellation 21 June 2021 |
It came as something of a shock to read
that the latest person whom we should be
cancelling is the artist formerly known as Georg
Friederich Händel. When you next listen to the
call to devotion of Messiah, or the melodies of
Water Music, you may feel somewhat conflicted
knowing that their composer was involved in the
slave trade. It was not just that he was being
paid for his work by people involved in the slave
trade. He was an actual and successful investor.
Historians have
recently discovered that Handel invested in the
Royal African Company, one of Britain’s two
official slave trading enterprises. The National
Archives at Kew hold a set of the company’s “stock
transfers” for 1720, signed by the composer: these
are purchase and sale orders for actual human
beings, not stock in the sense of stocks and
shares. The
Royal African Company shipped more Africans into
bondage than any other company in the history of
the Atlantic slave trade. At the time he was
writing Water Music, he was making money from
slavery....(continue)
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| The paradox of
environmentalism – do future generations
actually have the right to inherit a sustainable
world? 14 June 2021 |
We live in apocalyptic times. We are
having meetings and signing treaties to try to
encourage world leaders to take global warming
seriously. If we don’t, then greenhouse gas
emissions will continue to climb, putting the
Earth on track for a catastrophic 3ºC rise above
pre-industrial levels by the end of the century.
At the same time, we are hacking down trees,
paving over green areas and polluting more and
more of the natural systems upon which we depend.
It is not surprising that species extinction rates
have leaped to levels not seen for millions of
years, with some scientists concluding that the
Earth’s sixth mass extinction is now underway.
Meanwhile, the human population is expected to swell to 9.7 billion by 2050. It is not clear that a world of 3ºC heating and irreversible species loss could support anything like that number. Even if humanity is not a casualty of the mass extinction, we seem certain to face a period of miserable retrenchment if we do not change course radically in the next few years. As a result, we have numerous protest groups who are trying to impress on us how serious it is. They want us, as electors, to use our votes to have governments which will do what is necessary to avoid the inaction which would lead to such a disaster. However, it
proves surprisingly difficult to explain what
exactly would be wrong with bequeathing a burning,
environmentally exhausted world to future
generations. The roots of the problem were
identified more than 30 years ago by the British
philosopher Derek Parfit in his book ‘Reasons and
Persons’. He pointed out that, identity, the
particular person you are, is a precarious thing.
Small differences in circumstances can make very
big differences to who exists. Even minor changes
in your parents’ behaviour, physiology or
environment before your conception would probably
have resulted in someone else’s birth rather than
your own – someone who, alongside billions of
others will, as a result, never exist...(continue)
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| Stoicism
v Epicureanism 9 June 2021 |
The fight between Stoicism and
Epicureanism may seem rather old fashioned or even
quaint but, unexpectedly, it has become quite
relevant again. For the last 18 months we have,
without realising it, lived in a way which can be
seen as being in accordance with the tenets of
Stoicism rather than any other philosophy. Perhaps
not altogether voluntarily, we have reduced our
enjoyment of the pleasures of the world around us.
We have been
very limited in our activities and have only left
our homes to go out for walks in a circumscribed
area. Restaurants have been out of the question,
as have theatres, concerts and night-clubs. Even
meeting friends became possible only in two
dimensions. Admittedly we did not spend nights on
mountains exposing ourselves to night-time
temperatures in order to make ourselves more hardy
or learn how to handle a sword, but in a lot of
respects, our way of life became a Stoic’s dream.
Indeed, we have mostly borne our changed condition quite stoically, and have even shown a stoical desire not to go back to our old way of living too soon in case we bring the plague back to our doors. Which means that our present way of living has that faint allure of self-sacrifice and so self-righteousness. However I hope that we can now put all of that behind us and respond to the allure of Epicureanism instead...(continue) |
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| Big
companies and their
moral influence 2 June 2021 |
Small businesses
are traditionally started by a person or a few
people in partnership. Very often there is a family
connection between those involved. As businesses get
bigger, however, there is a need for people with
skills that family members don’t have and often for
outside money to enable expansion to take place. To
raise the money, you need to be able either to
borrow or to have a structure such that people can
actually invest in the business. The model which has
emerged is that of ‘joint-stock companies’. There
are records of them being formed in Europe as early
as the 13th century. However, beginning in the 16th century, they multiplied significantly when adventurous investors began speculating about fortunes to be made in the New World. Indeed, European exploration of the Americas was largely financed by joint-stock companies. Although governments were eager for new territory they were reluctant to take on the enormous costs and risks associated with these ventures...(continue) |
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| ‘ocracies 24 May 2021 |
We were trying to declutter the house.
In the course of this, I came across a
 notebook containing
notes written by my mother’s father. It contains
numerous pages of information about how the human body works
and what to do in the case of injury, hanging,
strangulation or poisoning. This was all from
his days as a trainer of St John’s Ambulance
volunteers. However, starting at the back of the
notebook he wrote down, on the other sides of
the pages, his thoughts about his Christian
faith, his views on one or two minor religious
controversies and quotes from religious
magazines which he had found helpful or
inspiring. Altogether, there are about 80 pages
of his literate and well expressed thoughts, in
pencil and in pen. They seem to cover the period
from  about 1920 to 1930.
As the eldest child in a large, single-parent
family, he used to have to go fishing for eels
in the local river (the Taff) in order that they
had something to eat. As a consequence, as a
child, he received very little formal education
and so subsequently was largely self-taught. But
clearly reading and writing were very important
for him and, according to my mother, reading and
writing were very much encouraged in the family. As I have mentioned before, my mother
seemed to have inherited her father’s penchant for
writing and, with his encouragement and that of
her school teachers, wrote essays and actually won
prizes for them. Although I learned to read early
on, as a child I received little encouragement to
write actual essays and never met my grandfather.
So then perhaps my own late-flowering efforts at
expressing my thoughts have a genetic basis...(continue)
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| Decision making
and 'Noise' 18 May 2021 |
I’m sure that during my professional
life my decisions always were always of the
highest quality and totally consistent. At least,
that’s what I’d like to think! The reality was, I
imagine, somewhat removed from the ideal. I don’t
think that my judgements on the law were far out,
but being a lawyer is also about running a
business. And it is there that problems can arise
far more easily.
The more people
who are involved in the business, the more there
is room for difference over how it should be run
and for variation in the performance of those
employed. Lawyers do vary in their ability – not
so much in giving the right answer, but in
actually getting the job done or being better at
dealing with clients than others. When it came to
the partners who were ultimately responsible for
the business, we sometimes had significant
differences. Should we expand and if so where?
Should we instead close branch offices and
concentrate on our main office? Which types of
legal work should we try to develop? When we had a
vacancy, whom should we hire? And of course none
of these decisions had easy answers.
The latest book
by Daniel Kahneman with fellow psychologists Cass
Sunstein and Olivier Sibony, is called
‘Noise’. Confession first: I have not read
it. But I have heard two half hour interviews with
Kahneman and read some of the longer reviews, so I
have a reasonable grasp of what they’re saying.
Noise in this context is unwanted variability in
making decisions. Their research shows that the
most banal things cloud even the best expert’s
judgment...(continue)
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| Piety
– religious and secular 11 May 2021 |
It is not by chance that the three different parties in power in England, Scotland and Wales were all winners in the elections last week. They have obviously benefited from a vaccine bounce. The early response to the pandemic cost a lot of lives, but that has been forgotten in the euphoria generated by our emergence from our period of isolation. The scientists who provided us with the guidance and the vaccines to enable us finally to look forward to a more normal life have, of course, been praised. It seems though to be the political leaders, those leading the press conferences telling us what was going on, who have been the big winners. They have been able to look as though they were statesmanlike, even when giving us bad tidings. And of course, now they are able to give us good tidings and so are basking in what is really only reflected glory. (continue) | |||
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A shot across the bows of the French
government by retired generals
At the
initiative of Jean-Pierre Fabre-Bernadac, a
retired general in the gendarmerie, twenty
generals, a hundred senior officers and more than
a thousand other military personnel have signed an
appeal for “a return to honour and duty within the
political class.”. One of the generals was also a
leader of the ‘Gilets Jaunes’.
(My translation of their letter published on 21 April 2021) Mr President, Ladies and gentlemen of the government, Ladies and Gentlemen of the Parliament, This is a serious time, France is in
peril, several mortal dangers threaten her. We
who, even after retirement, remain soldiers of
France, cannot, in the present circumstances,
remain indifferent to the fate of our beautiful
country.
Our tricolour flags are not just a piece of cloth, they symbolise the tradition, through the ages, of those who, whatever their skin colour or creed, have served France and given their lives for her. On these flags we find in gold letters the words "Honneur et Patrie". Now, our honour today lies in denouncing the disintegration that is affecting our country...(continue) |
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| Secular
fundamentalism 26 April 2021 |
A few years ago,
a woman in the US, Rachel Dolezal, who had been a
senior member of the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People, resigned when her
claim to be a person of colour turned out to be a
lie. Richard Dawkins tweeted earlier this month: “In 2015, Rachel Dolezal, a white chapter president of NAACP, was vilified for identifying as black. Some men choose to identify as women, and some women choose to identify as men. You will be vilified if you deny that they literally are what they identify as. Discuss.”I imagine that Dawkins finds incoherence in pressure groups’ statements to be annoying. I sympathise. The American Humanist Association, however, said his statements on transgender rights “demean marginalised groups” and so withdrew the ‘Humanist of the Year’ award they had given to him in 1996. The AHA said that he was no longer “an exemplar of humanist values” because his tweets appeared to question whether people could choose their gender...(continue) |
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| Digital Art and
its protection 20 April 2021 |
This essay is written by me. It is an example of
my 'particular' writing style and uses my normal
vocabulary in a way common to all my essays. I would
hope that you will find that, thanks to spell-check,
it contains no spelleing mitsakes, that because of
my grammar school education it uses apostrophe’s
correctly and contains no other significant
grammatically errors. I admit that I do get a kick
out of the feeling of rebellion when I play with
grammar by, e.g., starting a sentence with a
conjunction. But, despite these common features,
this essay is different to all others. It is unique.
I have not written another using the same words in
the same order. But how do you know that this essay is indeed mine? We could look at my somewhat idiosyncratic style, but that is easily imitated. Instead, we could perhaps look at provenance. This is essentially a matter of probability. As no money is involved, it is unlikely (the Bayesian prior probability) that anyone-else would want to pretend to be the writer of my essays. Secondly, it has appeared on my own web-site: it is even more unlikely that someone-else would have bothered to hack my domain in order to carry off the deception. So, I think it’s a pretty safe assumption that it’s a genuine Paul Buckingham. What a relief! ...(continue) |
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| Gossip 13 April 2021 |
Last Autumn, in his weekly address from
a window above St Peter’s Square, the Pope spoke
about gossip. “The devil is the great gossip," he
said. “He is always saying bad things about others
because he is the liar who tries to split the
church.” The Pope added: “Please brothers and
sisters, let's try to not gossip. Gossip is a
plague worse than Covid. Worse.”. Far be it from
me to remind the Pope of his own church’s history,
but I seem to recall that the major splits in the
Catholic Church – which created the orthodox
churches – were not caused by gossip, but by
doctrinal difference. The Anglican split, of
course, came about because a priapic Henry VIII
wanted a son rather than daughters. I wouldn’t
want to cast doubt on the Pope’s medical
credentials either, but I’m not sure I’d entirely
agree with his assessment of the relative gravity
of gossip and Covid. I don’t think gossip has ever
seriously vied with plagues for the highest
numbers of people killed - for the Covid virus so
far around 3 million people world-wide. But then,
for the Catholic Church, perhaps splits are
actually a fate worse than death, since normally
the other faction was excommunicated after a
split, and thus condemned to meet the fires of
hell.
In fact, I’m quite sure that gossip has been a part of our society since the beginning. I imagine that, even in the Stone Age, there was gossip about someone's laziness in the hunting groups or unwillingness to chip away at flint stones and someone else's wandering eye. If so, then it probably has an overall evolutionary benefit. I would guess that there would be a benefit for the community because the fact that there is gossip means that there is pressure on everyone to act in an acceptable way. It actually promotes morality, something of which I would have expected the Pope to approve...(continue) |
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| Truth
- a slippery concept 6 April 2021 |
Mahatma Gandhi said:“Many people, especially ignorant people, want to punish you for speaking the truth, for being correct, for being you. Never apologise for being correct, or for being years ahead of your time. If you’re right and you know it, speak your mind. Speak your mind. Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is still the truth.”I came across this quote by chance in a blog headed “In these dark days…speak your truth”. Not, on the face of it, quite the same thing, even if what Gandhi said could also be interpreted as making a belief the same as truth. But it seems that it’s a confusion of thought which has royal approval - from the Queen of American TV, Oprah Winfrey. It was exemplified in her interview with those other minor royals, Harry and Meghan, when Meghan was encouraged to tell her truth about her hellish life as a part of the British royal family. Obviously it’s very easy to make fun of all this Californian posturing, but it shows that we’re not making much progress as a civilisation when truth is a relative concept. Traditionally, Easter is the time to reflect upon the idea of truth. During the questioning of Jesus by Pontius Pilate, Jesus claimed that he had come into the world to testify to the truth. Pilate then famously asked "What is truth?". As a Roman, governing a very fractious and divided colony, I can quite see why he would be somewhat cynical about the quality of the information he was being given, but for us to follow his example and allow such an important word to lose its meaning does seem rather unfortunate. We no longer have the daily twitterings of Trump to remind us how far out of sight truth can sink...(continue) |
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| The Right to Protest 31 March 2021 |
MPs have given a second reading to a Bill intended to increase the ability of the
police to, well, police demonstrations. It includes
greater powers to rein in demonstrations that cause,
amongst other things, “serious annoyance, serious
inconvenience or serious loss of amenity”. It is of
course intended to please the right wing and so give
the Home Secretary a better chance of the highest
office should Boris one day cease to be our glorious
leader. it is also an attempt by the Home Secretary
to play to her image as a hard-liner on crime and
punishment, and probably compensation for the
psychological harm caused to her in her school days
by being named ‘Pretti’. But it is worth noting that the official reasoning for the introduction of these new powers is that existing powers had not proved sufficient to control new ways of demonstrating, as exemplified by Extinction Rebellion. It pioneered forms of protest causing mass inconvenience to the public in ways the police found it difficult to handle under existing legislation...(continue) |
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| Empathy, invention and autism 21 March 2021 |
Last week, there was a report about a female
bonobo living in the jungle in the Democratic
Republic of Congo. She had decided to take a two
year old orphaned bonobo from a different social
group under her wing. According to the Japanese
researchers who have been watching this jungle since
the ‘70s, such an action had never before been seen.
It means that the adoptive mother is looking out for
the infant and having to find food for it and, as
far as I’m aware, bonobo offspring, whether actual
or adopted, don’t support their mothers in old age.
Her action is therefore, on the face of it, to her
disadvantage. It looks like a display of altruism.
We tend think of altruism as particular to the human
species, but if you go on to the web - to the
click-bate sections – you won’t actually find it
difficult to see dogs befriending cats or cats
befriending chickens, so I’m not sure that we do in
fact have a monopoly. When looking at ourselves as a species in contrast to others, we can easily believe that we really are different, when in fact we are on a continuum with them. However, particularly in the case of our much vaunted intelligence, the result of being further along the continuum can mean that we benefit from a step change in what that ability can do for us, as compared to others...(continue) |
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| The Census 15 March 2021 |
We’re all due to provide our personal
details to the Census Office on 21 March. The
National Census is a ten-yearly exercise in
collecting data but, every time, the data
collected are slightly different. We are told that
they are required by the great data controller in
the sky so that the civil service will have the
knowledge needed to govern us better – or
something like that. The first post-Domesday Book
census was carried out in 1801 by ‘enumerators’,
as most people couldn’t read or write. It was also
based in part on Church records of baptisms,
weddings and burials for that year and the
previous 100 years to give comparisons. Some say
the census was to find out how many able-bodied
men there were who could fight in the long-running
Napoleonic wars, while others say that it was to
enable the government to know if there would be
enough food to eat. Whatever the reason, the
Census found that Great Britain then had a
population of 9 million.
The 1841
census, though, was the first census
recognisably similar to the ones we now fill in.
For the first time it recorded people's names,
alongside their age, sex, occupation and
birthplace. Thirty years later, another column in
the census asked whether anyone in the household
was blind, deaf and dumb, imbecile or idiot, or a
lunatic. Subtle. From 1951 until 1991, households
were asked if they had an outside toilet...(continue)
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| Consent 8 March 2021 |
In the New York Times last week there was an
article on consent. The idea of consent, certainly
in sexual relationships, has taken on a much greater
prominence in recent years. Many of the cases, of
course, involve activity after a lot of alcohol. But
the writer of the article, a law lecturer at
Michigan University, is more concerned with whether
we think that consent, in any context, is
invalidated, simply disappears, where we have been
persuaded to do or not do something as a result of a
lie. Obviously there are implications for the law if
we think that consent to actions based on a lie
should automatically be wiped off the record, rather
than simply giving rise to a remedy. This research was conducted amongst samples of people apparently representing society as a whole. It consisted of presenting (fictional) scenarios to the interviewees for them to judge. The examples given in the Yale Law Journal, which is behind the NYT article, are constructed so as to present the story as unambiguously as possible - the person asking for consent is lying and the person asked for that consent would supposedly be absolutely determined not to give consent if he or she knew the truth. Surprisingly to the researcher, most people, in the circumstances portrayed, decided that consent was still consent even though fraud had been deployed to obtain it...(continue) |
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| Vaccines, data and
human rights 2 March 2021 |
When asked about
the Covid vaccination programme, the Queen suggested
that citizens should “think about other people
rather than themselves”. A commentator in the Times
this week went rather further, saying that she felt
frustration at the “vaccine refuseniks who plan to
free-ride their way out of this pandemic on the back
of the jab-taking majority.“. Of course, we now hear
from the European Commission that vaccine passports
will become de rigueur for those wanting to travel
within the EU, and also for those wanting to enter
that zone. Although it has now decided to bow to
what most of the rest of us thought was inevitable,
our own government was at first opposed to the very
idea. It would cause ‘discrimination’ - a very
odd word to employ when for the last year the
government has demanded self-isolation, surely an
extreme form of discrimination, for those who’ve
tested positive for our cheeky little
virus. But it now seems likely that the House of Commons will have to debate the whole question. An online petition opposing vaccine passports has gained 200,000 ‘signatures’. It says that the vaccine passports could be "used to restrict the rights of people who have refused a Covid-19 vaccine". Hmm...(continue) |
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| Purpose in life 21 February 2021 |
Set into one of
the inside walls of a restaurant in the medieval
part of Annecy, there is a very large  aquarium. It divides the
main part of the restaurant from an overspill area.
The last time we were there, the aquarium had
lots of different fish in it, some big and some
small. But it was the little fish which fascinated
me. Sitting where we were, they passed between the
left shoulder of a man at one table and the right
shoulder of a lady sitting at another. It seemed
that every time I looked at the aquarium, the little
fish, perhaps 15 of them, passed in a shoal from one
person's shoulder to the other, instinctively trying
to resemble a big fish and so ward off the dangers
of the seas. If only they realised that the rules of
the ocean are reversed in a restaurant. In a
restaurant, of course, it is more dangerous to be a
big fish, for it is the big fish which we normally
eat and not the minnows. If only I could find some
way to convey this knowledge to them, they could
breathe a collective bubble of relief, get their
deck chairs out and enjoy watching us perform
instead.As a nation we have had to learn quite a few new things as a result of the changed situation brought about by the pandemic...(continue) |
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| Statues – what’s the
point? 10 February 2021 |
William Morris, born in 1834, was a
British textile designer, poet, novelist,
translator and socialist activist. He was a key
person in the British Arts and Crafts Movement.
His legacy can be seen in various National Trust
homes. He is also remembered for his 1880 maxim:
“Have nothing in your house which you do not know
to be useful, or believe to be beautiful”. So
then, in my house, I have to try to be useful. As
for the contents of the house, I regret to say
that they are far from uniformly useful, and few
of the things which are not useful manage to be
beautiful. Even during this period of enforced
idleness, we have not succeeded in making more
than a token effort to rid ourselves of the things
which occupy space, but do nothing to earn their
keep. We excuse ourselves by saying that we would
need to make an appointment at the tip and, even
then, would only be permitted to go to dispose of
things if it was an essential journey. Having had
many of these redundant objects for very many
years, it’s difficult to argue that they’ve now
suddenly become a matter of life or death. After
this is over, though, I think that we shall need
to hire a professional declutterer to carry out
regular raids on our junk.
But it is not only in our private space
that we need to heed William Morris’s maxim. It is
also in the public space. It is now proposed
that we should make space for one more statue,
this time of Captain Tom with his walking frame...(continue)
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| Scottish
independence 1 February 2021 |
It seems that the war of words over Scottish independence is heating up. A week ago, the SNP revealed a "roadmap to a referendum" on Scottish independence, setting out how they intend to take forward their plans for another vote. It says a "legal referendum" will be held after the pandemic if there is a pro-independence majority at Holyrood following May's election. In other words, if the SNP win a majority of the seats. There is of course the small matter of their actual ability to hold a ‘legal referendum’, or even what the term means. Let us assume it means a referendum which would give independence to Scotland if there were sufficient ‘yes’ votes. If so, then, most lawyers consider that the Westminster government would have to give its consent under Section 30 of the Scotland Act 1998 before the Scottish government could put the arrangements in place. Obviously, the Conservative and Unionist Party, currently led by Boris, is not very keen to see the break-up of the UK. The clue is in the name. And of course after the last referendum in 2014, everyone agreed that result would be binding for ‘a generation’. A rather indeterminate term, which seems to be only 7 years in Scotland. They age quickly there...(continue) | |||
| Value of life 28 January 2021 |
In my previous essay I wrote about value, mainly in the context of Bitcoin. But, we attribute value not only to currencies, objects or services, but to our very lives. And it is here that there can be quite a lot of argument and very muddled thought. A supposed absolute value of life is used to support a religious view that neither abortion or euthanasia can ever be justified. Despite very significant public protest, Poland's extreme and autocratic government has very sadly decided to implement law bringing the practical possibility of abortion virtually to an end. By contrast, at the end of last year in Argentina, another predominantly Catholic country, mainly because of huge protests on the street, a more enlightened view gained sufficient ground to enable a change in the law. Now, abortion for any reason up to 14 weeks of pregnancy will be permitted, so diminishing the agony and deaths caused by back-street abortionists. It makes Argentina something of an exception in Latin America...(continue) | |||
| Value and
Bitcoin 24 January 2021 |
The value of an
object we buy or the services we consume is
subjective. It is in the eye of the beholder,
although it often reflects the general opinion of
its worth. Ultimately, though, it’s our decision
whether or not to buy something at the price asked.
At a rarefied level, we see this every time there is
an art sale at Christie’s and, at less stratospheric
prices, during every episode of the Antiques Road
Show. Very often, there are valuations which leave
me astonished. But it also applies to things we buy
for everyday consumption, when we choose between
brands. So then, we are a value driven society. We
are encouraged in this by the many price comparison
websites which purport to give us information about
the quality of the items and the relative prices
asked by different vendors. The Welsh tenor “Gio
Compario” has made a fortune out of representing
just such a web-site for insurance. But when we want
to know how much we can get from selling something,
our own valuation of it is not exactly the last
word. We need to know how others see it. And such
estimates of value are not easy. A particular example of the difficulty
valuation presents us is the phenomenon, or
as some would say, the Ponzi scheme, known as
Bitcoin. In early January of this year, it hit the
headlines because it had attained its greatest
value since its creation. Although having no
material presence, a single bitcoin was trading at
just over £30,000 on 8 January...(continue)
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| Changing
morality 18 January 2021 |
The same two books, both with an anti-British tone, have recently been reviewed together in numerous magazines. The review I first saw was by journalist Mihir Bowes for the Irish Times. The one book, by a Professor at Stanford University, tells us that the idea of British exceptionalism as a driver of Brexit, was based on a wholly unjustified view of our empire as a triumph. In fact, from the conversations I have heard, the motivation for Brexit and so the justification for our exceptionalism wasn’t the empire, but an exaggerated view of our courage compared to the nations conquered during the second World War and, as far as the French are concerned, our victories at Agincourt and Waterloo. There is also the failure amongst exceptionalists to recognise that the plucky British spirit of WWII, was forced on us by the malign force known as Hitler. It resulted in privation during the war years and for years afterwards. And it is obvious that the own goal of voluntarily leaving a large trading block has no moral equivalence to declaring war on Hitler. It is a category error to compare the two, although the economic consequences may be similar....(continue) | |||
| Censorship in the age of
Twitter 11 January 2021 |
I see that because Meghan
is the most trolled person in the world, she and
Harry are now reported to have quit social media
(Instagram etc). So how will they achieve their
aim, through Archewell, to “unleash the power of
compassion to drive systemic cultural change” by
non-profit work and “creative activations through
the business verticals of audio and production”? …
No, me neither. But in practical terms it seems
that they have decided not to share with their
devoted public their opinions and photographs of
what they’ve been doing. They have engaged in
self-censorship in order not to attract the sort
of vicious comments and threats that I can well
imagine they receive.
Of course, they could simply have turned off the comments section of their Instagram site. The Queen is on Instagram and has hundreds of thousands of likes, but I can find no means of commenting on what is displayed. There is of course no ‘dislike’ option. But then, not enabling comments on such a site means that it’s less attractive to visitors and so less attractive to the Companies and organisations wanting to make money out of their internet offerings. And then there’s Twitter...(continue) |
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| Trump’s attack on democracy 9 January 2021 |
I was
transfixed by what was going on on Wednesday in
the United States, but did eventually go to bed
and actually had a good night’s sleep. It must
have been the Chianti. I wonder how well the
Donald slept. This was the man who, in concert
with one of his sons and others during the morning
had whipped up a crowd of around 30,000 people to
march on Capitol Hill to ‘Stop the Steal’. So many
slogans, such great slogans. He told them that
they had to be strong as they would get nowhere by
showing weakness. His lawyer, Rudy Giuliani had
called for trial by combat to be re-introduced, so
no incitement to violence there either. Vice President Pence,
although presiding officer at the official
certification of the Electoral College votes, had
already told Trump that there was nothing that he
could do to prevent Joe Biden being declared
President. And so the protestors took them at
their word and stormed the Capitol building
itself. That it happened was shocking, but should
not be surprising. Since before he was elected as
President his mantra has been that in any vote he
will be the winner as he is sooo popular and if he
does not win, then it means that fraud has
deprived him of what is rightfully his.
What
happens now?...(continue)
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Brexit agreement - December 24, 2020 26 December 2020 |
We regain our sovereignty and have a free trade agreement – for just as long as we don’t exercise that sovereignty to diverge from European norms. But as from 1 January 2021, we shall be able to sign up to trade deals with countries around the world and cease to be subject to the decisions of the ECJ and thus have reacquired our sovereignty. We shall have a free trade deal and no tariffs or quotas with the EU. It is the largest free trade deal ever signed by the EU and by us. It is worth £650 billion (2019 figures). That £650 billion is made up of £295 billion by way of exports to the EU and £355 billion by way of imports from the EU. Now £650 billion as a figure is big, but essentially meaningless - only 57% of our exports consist of goods (£168 billion) and so subject to the deal, while the remaining 43% (£126 billion) consist of services, not the subject of ‘free trade’. The export of services from the EU is worth less - £105 billion - and so only 30% of their total, spread around a number of EU countries, such as Germany, France and the Netherlands. This means that 70% of their exports to us consist of goods - £250 billion - and so considerably exceeds the value of goods we export to them. The EU therefore gains more from the free trade deal than we do. And they are less disadvantaged overall by the lack of a deal regarding services. And any disadvantage is in any event spread between 27 different countries, whereas our disadvantage is ours alone. But it goes further. The EU was concerned that we might not continue to comply with their standards for the goods exported to the EU and so be able to undercut their producers. We have therefore reciprocally agreed to maintain at least the same standards (both now and in the future) to ensure there is no trade distortion which might have an adverse economic effect on the other party. If we don’t, then we (or they) suffer the consequences by way of the imposition of tariffs - taxes. But, in maintaining those standards, we will have to continue to comply with EU law. If we don’t, it is quite true that we shall not be subject to sanctions adjudicated upon by the ECJ. Instead, there will be an independent arbitral body to decide our fate but, necessarily, based upon the definition in EU law of those standards. So then, we’ve taken back control!? ...(continue) |
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| Science 7 December 2020 |
The latter part of this year has been a
period of triumph for science. We had a series of
positive results for Covid vaccines, in
development only since March and all done at an
unprecedented speed. We have seen the production
of artificially created chicken tissue, although
at the moment only for supermarkets in Singapore.
We saw the announcement of a programme run by
'Deep Mind' capable of predicting the
three-dimensional structure of a complex protein.
This allows the creation of other molecules
capable of interacting with the protein in a
predictable way. It could therefore allow, for
example, with a speed that has been impossible
until now, the development of drugs or, perhaps,
chemicals to degrade otherwise non-recyclable
plastics. A Japanese mission to an asteroid to
recover some rock (which returned to Australia
last Sunday morning) may shed light on how the
earth came into existence. After 7 years of
observation, the Gaia satellite has created the
first accurate 3D map of the Milky Way. This can
help resolve the question of whether or not dark
mass and energy exist. The Chinese have put a
probe on the moon to collect even more lunar rock
and return to earth with it - although I'm not
sure why. And the latest news is that some Oxford
researchers - from the same Jenner Institute that
produced the vaccine against the Covid virus -
have also produced an effective vaccine against
malaria, a disease that is at least 10 times more
dangerous than Covid.
At the same time we know that there are many who do not have a positive attitude towards science. They have doubts...(continue) |
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| The Rule of Law - Part 2 28 November 2020 |
I have for
some time now been promised a reply to my letter
of 24 September by my MP, the member for
North Warwickshire, Craig Tracey, but, nothing
so far...
In the circumstances, I have now sent the following ever so slightly tongue in cheek e-mail to Mr Tracey's assistant - Thank you for your e-mail of 18 November. I appreciate that you and Mr Tracey will be very busy dealing with the effects of the Covid 19 virus, particularly with North Warwickshire going into Tier 3 as from next Wednesday. In contrast, as a retired person in lock-down, I have plenty of time on my hands. So then, to save you time and effort in dealing with my concerns, I have prepared for Mr Tracey two alternative replies, either of which he could send to me regarding the rejection by this government of the Rule of Law. He could then mark my file as closed, which I’m sure would be a relief. There is precedent for such an approach. You will recall that the Prime Minister adopted just such a solution when deciding which way to swing on Brexit. My suggestions are as follows: Alternative A Dear Mr Buckingham, Thank you for your emails of 24 September and 12 November 2020. The first questions my justification of the Internal Market Bill and its provisions enabling a government minister to ignore our treaty obligations under the Withdrawal Agreement signed by Boris only a year ago. In your later email you point to Dominic Raab's apparent hypocrisy in criticising the Chinese government over its failure to abide by its treaty obligations in respect of Hong Kong. The reply which I had sent to you dated 18 September was, I accept, a rather obvious attempt to obfuscate and confuse. I should perhaps have read the letter more carefully before sending it out but, hey, who am I to say no to a letter produced, as you guessed, at the instance of The Dom - Cummings that is. Of course, Dom and his mates have now left us and instead are doing spectacular deals in cardboard box futures. This means that before the next enforcer comes in to No. 10, I can slip this reply out to you under the political radar....(continue) |
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| Memes and
genes 22 November 2020 |
The
idea of a meme was first put forward by Richard
Dawkins in his 1976 book, ‘The Selfish Gene’. He
explained later how it had come about. The
entire book had of course been about the genetic
code and how natural selection selects for the
most adapted version in the circumstances at
that time. Of course nature doesn’t have any
purpose in this. It’s just that the organisms
endowed with genes more adapted to their
circumstances tend to survive and pass their
genes on to the next generation. But he tells us
that he wanted to explain that the particular
chemical composition of our genes was not the
only possibility in our vast universe. Who knows what may work in other circumstances? Perhaps something based on silicon, for instance, would work. The essence of genetics for him was not the chemicals involved, but that there was something which coded for a particular structure or outcome. Any way that this could be achieved would be the equivalent of our genes. To illustrate it, however, he introduced an abstract example - the idea of the meme...(continue) |
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| Space,
the final frontier 17 November 2020 |
This week, we have seen Space X, an Elon Musk
company, take four space travellers to the
International Space Station. In time past, it would
have been NASA itself which would have developed and
launched the rockets, but now it has decided that
it’s better to ask private enterprise to do the
development work and take the risk. They say
it works out cheaper for NASA than the old approach
to space travel. Obviously at the beginning it was
only governments who were capable of taking on the
immense cost and risk of doing something with no
obvious financial benefit. The main benefit, after
all, was in the time of the Cold War to demonstrate
that the USA was at least the equal of the USSR and
could, ultimately, fly the American flag on the
moon. Even after 60 years of space travel and the
great experience that has gained, it still costs a
great deal of money to send people to circle the
earth in space for months on end, or to send them to
the moon (and bring them back). In an attempt to
justify the immense cost of the space effort, NASA
often points to the spin-offs from the advances in
science which were required to enable man to be put
on the moon and, later, for information to be sent
back by robots from Mars. For some reason the
scientific advance cited always used to be the
development of Teflon! I am not sure, however, that the
need to use less fat when cooking and greater ease
of washing up the saucepans afterwards is
justification for the billions of dollars spent by
NASA....(continue)
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| Extremism –
at both political extremes 10 November 2020 |
Articles
in the Times last Saturday and this Monday took us
to task for being so down on President Trump and
his supporters. The writers, Matthew Parris
and Clare Foges, say that even though they
personally dislike him (of course), someone needed
to stand tall on the world stage and look after
the interests of the USA. They point to the fact
that the only country paying the agreed percentage
of GDP for NATO, other than the USA, was the UK.
And so he was right to demand more from the
countries benefiting from America’s contribution
to their protection. A fair point. At home, though
he whipped up outrage over immigration – that
beautiful wall, still only partly built. He quite
absurdly encouraged his followers to believe that
coal and oil were the fuels of the future and so
pulled out of the Paris Agreement on climate
change, so denying the overwhelming weight of
scientific opinion. He criticised the WHO for
having failed to point the finger at China, pulled
out of the organisation - and then let the virus
run rampant in his own country, again completely
ignoring the science and inviting us to drink
bleach instead. He has denigrated all of America’s
institutions, including the fourth estate with his
rallying cry of ‘Fake News’. And he has done his
bit to overturn the rule of law with obviously
partisan appointments to the Supreme Court. He has
lied and lied and lied again. Some have counted
22,000 lies. So then I’m a bit puzzled as to what
we should praise Mr Trump for....(continue)
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| Political
sectarianism 1 November 2020 |
Political polarisation is not a new phenomenon.
It has taken many forms over the centuries and has
sometimes led to violence. It seems though that,
particularly in America, this polarisation has
become far more pronounced over the last 40 or so
years. The study now published offers an
international comparison of the degree of love for
one’s own party and the degree of hatred of the
opposing party. Data from 1975 through to 2017
in nine Western democracies was looked at. Four
nations - America, Canada, New Zealand, and
Switzerland - exhibited increasing sectarianism over
time, with the rate steepest in America. By
contrast, Australia, Britain, Norway, Sweden, and
Germany exhibited decreasing sectarianism over time.
Although positive feelings toward members of
peoples’ own party remained relatively constant over
that period, the degree of hatred felt for other
parties showed a strong increase. By 2017, the
strength of hatred between opposing parties was
stronger in America than in any other nation. But what has really changed is that attitudes have gone from being mostly a dislike of the other party’s policies, to being an active dislike of the people who are members of that party....(continue) |
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| Knowing me, knowing you
... AHA! 20 October 2020 |
It is still quite normal to say that men are from Mars and that women are from Venus. It seems to be common sense to many people. It is also based on various studies done over the years which seemed to show differences in the way things were looked at and thought about as between the sexes. This remains the abiding impression even though a metastudy was carried out some years ago which puts a different perspective on the situation. It turns out that although there are differences, they are very small compared to the variation which already exists within each of the genders. Indeed, rather than men being from Mars and women from Venus, it would be nearer the truth to say that men are from Chipping Norton and women are from Chipping Campden, the difference is so small...(continue) | |||
| Conjectures
and Refutations 14 October 2020 |
Having been reminded of Karl Popper and his influence on others, including George Soros, I decided to take another look at some of his writings which have been sitting in my bookcase for very many years. It’s been a long time since I first read, for instance ‘Objective Knowledge’ and ‘Conjectures & Refutations’, books which for me were quite eye-opening at the time. They showed me another way of looking at the world, one not dependent on religion or indeed received wisdom. However, what I would like to discuss mainly is the approach taken by Karl Popper as regards governance set against a little of the background to the development of his main philosophical ideas. Winston Churchill said that ‘democracy was the worst form of government - apart from all the others’. Popper arrives at a similar conclusion, but shows his workings. In order to see what he is saying, however, we need to go back to the whole idea of ‘conjectures and refutations’, or, more exactly ‘conjectures which can be refuted’...(continue) | |||
| The Open
Society 7 October 2020 |
Apocryphally or not, it is said that an obituary of Alfred Nobel which appeared in a newspaper in 1888 described him as a “Merchant of death”. The obituary had actually appeared in error as Mr Nobel was still very much alive. But he took warning about his reputation from this and founded the Nobel Institute in Stockholm to ensure that his name was not just associated with explosives and death. The Nobel prizes were intended to reward those who, during the preceding year, had “conferred the greatest benefit on mankind”. The peace prize was to be awarded to someone who had rendered “the greatest service to the cause of international fraternity, in the suppression or reduction of standing armies, or in the establishment or furtherance of peace congresses”. The latest recipient is due to be announced this Friday. I don’t have any inside knowledge as to who the recipient may be, but there has been quite a lot of discussion in advance of this event about past winners. Many are uncontroversial, at least now even if not at the time. Names such as Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela come to mind. Others remain controversial...(continue) | |||
| WEIRD - Western,
educated, industrialized, rich and democratic 29 September 2020 |
It seems that
there is not only a physical effect to
intermarriage between close relatives. A new
book by Joseph Henrich, a Professor of Human
Evolutionary Biology at Harvard, shines a light
on the more widespread effects of the rules
about who you can marry and who you can’t marry.
When suggesting
a new way of looking at things - and wanting to
sell a book - I suppose that having an acronym can
be quite useful. It tells the reader that there is
something different on the way, something novel
and so worthy of a new ‘word’. This essay will
refer to the rules around who was entitled to
marry whom in the middle ages. But such rules had
their origin long ago, possibly as a result of
seeing the unfortunate result of successive
marriages between close relatives - as the Pharaohs
found out when trying to preserve power within the
family. Consanguineous
marriages placed offspring at risk of nasty
deformities and early deaths....(continue)
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| An exchange
of views with my conservative MP regarding the
government's decision to flout the Rule of Law 24 September 2020 |
My initial e-mail to Craig Tracey MP - 8 September 2020 I note that your colleague Brandon Lewis has now admitted to Parliament that the government’s proposed Brexit legislation will infringe International Law in a "specific and limited way". If a burglar were to say that he had only broken into one house rather than a number of them - so only infringing the Theft Act in a ‘specific and limited way’ - would that justify his conduct? I note that the permanent secretary to the Government Legal Department, Sir Jonathan Jones, has announced his resignation as a consequence of the government’s intention to ignore their legal obligations under international law. There is such a thing as the Rule of Law. It is currently being ignored in many countries around the world to the extreme detriment of the peoples of those countries. I had hoped that the United Kingdom would continue with its tradition of abiding by the Rule of Law in order to preserve our democracy...(continue) |
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| The Rule of
Law 16 September 2020 |
It may seem
strange, but there is no internationally agreed
definition of the Rule
of Law. Of course, there are many countries
which have constitutions and so abiding by these
might seem to be fundamental to abiding by the
rule of law. But not always. For example,
although China has a constitution, we do not
normally think of it as a country which abides by
the Rule of Law. The constitution itself excludes
the exercise of what we would regard as normal
democratic liberties. There is an absence of, for
example, the right to free speech, the right to
protest or the right to put yourself forward as a
candidate at an election without the consent of
the government. This would be seen by most people
as creating a system which was far removed from
the rule of law and so turn it into its
antithesis, a dictatorship...(continue)
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| Blessed are
the... 8 September 2020 |
Bill and Melinda Gates have for many years run a major charitable foundation into which, at the outset, they put $31 billion. Warren Buffet, the ‘Sage of Omaha’ and one of the richest men in the world is a trustee of the Gates Foundation and promised in 2006 to give 85% of his fortune to it. This will ultimately cost the American tax-payer the amount of estate duty which would otherwise have been payable had these vast amounts gone to their heirs. Since that promise, payments by Buffet have been made in annual tranches of $1.5 billion. They are though conditional upon Bill and Melinda Gates continuing to run the foundation. The secret of Mr Buffet’s incredible success as a professional investor is always to make his money work hard - and that requires good ideas and the best management you can get. The same principles apply to running charities. Obviously the Gates represent to Warren Buffet the best that’s available. Which is hard to argue with. And so this mega-foundation will ultimately have double its original worth. Currently it is worth in excess of $40 billion and is able to make grants of over $3 billion per year. This means that on its own it is able to tackle some of the biggest and most intractable problems the world has. As some measure of its importance, it now has the same disposable income as the World Health Organisation....(continue) | |||
| The New Season 3 September 2020 |
As far as the Met Office is concerned, it seems that Autumn has started. It began on 1st September. I can hardly believe it. Time passes. But despite the social distancing required to avoid Covid 19, the end of Summer and the beginning of Autumn has been accompanied by quite a lot of events involving quite a lot of people. The children have gone back to school, as witnessed by the line of their parents’ parked cars in our road at school closing time. We can now see and hear large orchestras and choirs at the Proms concerts, even if only because they have the whole of the otherwise empty Royal Albert Hall in which to spread themselves out. There is talk of some theatres reopening, but so far nothing significant has happened. On the other hand, over the week-end live and recorded music (all in the same key) was beamed down to the streets and bemused citizens of Bristol from loudspeakers attached to seven hot-air balloons floating in the relatively becalmed air over the city. It’s true that football matches have restarted, but are watched with only the echoing sound of recorded audience reaction - presumably both applause and boos at the same time from different ends...(continue) | |||
| Reflections
on the coming, politically correct, Spitting
Image 23 August 2020 |
 Because of the
somewhat baffling concept of wokeness, it seems that
things are far from straightforward in the normally
devil may care world of satire. We learnt from the
Times last week that the producers of the new
Spitting Image for ITV are worried about certain
aspects of the programme due to air in the Autumn.
They’ve already produced Spitting Image puppets of
people in the public eye, like Prince Harry and his
dear wife, and the probable next President of the
United States of America, Kanye West. What
they’re stuck on is whom they ought pick to voice
them and who should write the scripts. You may think
the answer is simple - actors and scriptwriters
respectively. But no...(continue) |
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| Morality – the downside | We have often
discussed the concept of morality. Obviously for
someone without a belief in a supernatural authority
but, instead, a 'belief' that natural selection is
the main factor in the creation of our social code,
it is possible to see how morality can work
unexpectedly. To function well in our age, a social
code depends on encouragement from a combination of
law and social pressure. And as we can easily see,
where the law does not work very well and where
social pressure is not benign but actually
malignant, local morality can be a contradiction in
terms - at least for those who look at it from the
outside. The pressure of your group can have very variable consequences. To be accepted, some groups require as part of their social code the commission of what would normally be considered immoral, or even illegal, actions. If I am in a disadvantaged area, I am likely to find that stealing cars or dealing drugs would be considered necessary behaviour if I wanted to be part of a gang. I'm expected to lie to the police for my friends...(continue) |
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| Coleshill
– waves and a Wall of Answered Prayers 5 August 2020 |
Land designated as Green belt in the
local plan cannot be developed. Except of
course when it can.
The planning laws say that it can be developed for outdoor leisure use, “where this preserves the openness of the Green Belt”. This though is just an example of the overriding possibility of approval where there are ‘Very Special Circumstances’ and ‘where the potential harm to the Green Belt is clearly outweighed by other considerations’. So then what does the future hold for us here in Coleshill?  Firstly there
is the idea of a Wave Park in what is roughly
the centre of England. It has just been
approved and will be constructed on a 15-acre
site on the other side of the M42 from
Coleshill. Features will include a 5.4-acre surf
lagoon with artificially generated waves, an
outdoor heated swimming pool (very carbon
friendly), a perimeter track for one wheel
self-balancing electric skateboards and a 1,600
sq metre hub building. The park, to be called
Emerge Surf Birmingham, will also be home to a
surf school, surf shop, café and restaurant, a
multi-purpose fitness studio, a physiotherapy
and massage room and a children’s play area. It
is said that it will be a haven for landlocked
surfers and those keen to try the sport for the
first time. For we residents, it will attract
more traffic, but I suppose that it will prevent
further expansion of urban Birmingham. So then
probably on balance a good thing. I shall have
to iron my wet suit ready for action.
Then there is Coleshill's answer to the Angel of the North - the 'Eternal Wall of Answered Prayer' - yes indeed!...(continue) |
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The carbon neutral essay 14 July 2020 |
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| The Tower of
Babel - its side effects 6 July 2020 |
...Creating
groups of people dispersed throughout the world,
however, who spoke different languages was not,
perhaps, an action that was destined to produce
a very peaceful world. It was a somewhat
short-sighted decision on God's part.
Differences between different groups of people
promote suspicion and therefore hostility. It is
perhaps a minor example but, many years ago, we
were on holiday in Wales, not far from where my
father was born. We went into a small shop.
People were speaking to each other in English,
but after they spotted our presence they changed
languages and continued in Welsh! I was very
offended.
My father spoke Welsh as a little child because it was the normal language in the small town of Llanelli in South West Wales. After a few years the family moved to Cardiff where the national language was almost extinct. It wasn't taught at school. So then after a few years my father became an English speaker and could no longer remember any of his Welsh. They say it's not easy to learn another language when you're older. There are many who believe that they are not capable of it, that they do not have the necessary ear. I suspect, however, that it is not only 'the ear' that they lack, but also the need for it and the willingness to deal with the grammar. The grammar of your own language is not a very popular subject at school. So spending even more time as an adult learning foreign grammar is perhaps not a very attractive prospect. Which means I'm probably a nerd...(continue) |
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| The danger
of slogans 29 June 2020 |
 Slogans are
part of our everyday lives. They enable an
important point to be made in a few words. In
2000, some bookshop owners found an old government
wartime poster asking the citizens to Keep Calm
and Carry On. They framed it and hung it their
shop, but it created such interest that they
started having copes printed. Now we have an
entire industry producing reproductions
of the slogan on mugs, tea towels, deck chairs,
T-shirts and anything else which can be printed
on. There have also been numerous derivatives,
from ‘Keep Calm and Drink Tea’ to ‘Keep Calm and
Marry Ron’. But the lack of words in a slogan can
also lead to a lack of clarity, rather like the
existing government slogan telling us to ‘Keep
Alert’. A slogan is a headline rather than a
fully argued statement. There is always a much
fuller message which the slogan is intended to sum
up. And so its success is judged by how well it
conveys the real message and at the same time how
memorable it is....(continue) |
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| Ecocide
– now to be made a crime, whatever it may be... 23 June 2020 |
In France at the moment there is a major attempt to shift opinion and the law itself in favour of environmentalism. It has come about because President Macron had to try to pacify the 'Gilets Jaunes' protest movement. He wanted to persuade them that he was giving power back to the people. And so for 9 months now, a group of 150 people, randomly chosen by the government, has been discussing during long weekends what their country should do in order to play its part in the struggle against global warming by reducing their CO2 emissions by 40%. 'The Citizens Convention for the Climate' has now come to a decision on lots of measures which they consider are necessary or desirable...(continue) | |||
| Money 16 June 2020 |
I
have in front of me a 50 Euro note. When you
draw money out of a French hole in the wall, you
are almost invariably given one of these.
Using it to buy anything is slightly embarrassing,
as the amount of change you will normally receive
will be significant. I wouldn’t usually
expect to buy anything at a price even close to
that amount with cash. Indeed, if you draw any
money from an English ATM, the biggest note you
will receive is £20. I’m not sure that I’ve
ever handled a £50 note and if I tried to use one
in a shop, I would be looked at with suspicion;
they have a reputation for being fakes and used
only by drug dealers. But what I was trying to do was to see what the 50 Euro note actually says. The information recorded on it is rather sparse. It says ‘50’ and ‘Euro’ and has its serial number. It also has the initials of the European Bank on it in 10 languages and the signature of Mario Draghi beneath the European flag. But nothing else. The £20 note has similar information on it, and with pictures of the Queen and of the artist Joseph Turner. But it also famously goes on to say: “I promise to pay the bearer on demand the sum of twenty pounds”...(continue) |
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| Prejudice - good or
bad? 7 June 2020 |
We
are continually told that prejudice is a bad
thing, but research has come to what should be an
unsurprising conclusion: that prejudice can in
fact confer an evolutionary advantage. Why else
would we have it as part of our psychological
make-up? And of course it exists not only in us as
humans, but also in the ‘lower’ orders. The
suggestion is that our benefit from and so
tendency towards prejudice may come from two
things - the constant need to make decisions about
the danger we face from others and the need to
know whether someone can be relied on to help you
when needed. If you feel that you belong to a
group, then it seems that you have a short-cut to
making those decisions, whether as a human, a
chimpanzee or a vampire bat. As members of a
group we have a tendency to favour other members,
for no other reason than that they are members of
our group. So then, if you are prejudiced in favour of people in your own group, you will also feel instinctively that the other members are similarly prejudiced towards you. And largely you will be right. This means in turn that the need to make assessments of reliability or danger will be simplified. Instead you can be reasonably sure that you will be able to trust each other. Trust facilitates co-operation and your group will benefit accordingly. Prejudice can be beneficial....(continue) |
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| Why we
believe what we want to believe: Part II - the
lingering influence of fake news 1 June 2020 |
A few weeks ago I wrote about the conspiracy theorists, those who make causal connections out of correlations. The research suggests that they are motivated to do this by the enhancement in their social standing amongst others in the conspiracy community when they find previously unknown links to ‘support’ a particular conspiracy theory. There are though many others who don’t engage in this sort of behaviour but who, nonetheless, believe things which have been shown to be untrue. Politicians rely on their ability to persuade such people in order to gain power. The brand leader for untruth amongst politicians used to be Hitler or Mussolini, but is, these days, Mr Trump. ‘Fake news” is Donald Trump’s favourite catchphrase. Since the election in 2016, it has appeared in some 180 tweets by the President...(continue) | |||
| Celluloid,
Chinese laundries and racism 26 May 2020 |
When I was in secondary school, I developed an interest in chemistry. My brother and I had a chemistry set that we'd add to whenever we could. And it was pretty easy to do so, because at the time there weren't a lot of restrictive rules about what a shopkeeper could sell to two kids. It wouldn't be hard to imagine the kind of experiments we were interested in. Yes, those that produced an explosion. There were two main suppliers of the necessary chemicals in Smethwick: a garden shop on the Oldbury Road and the pharmacy on the opposite side of the road owned by Mr. Carr BSc, MRPS. For gunpowder you need sulphur and carbon as the fuel, and potassium nitrate to provide oxygen to accelerate combustion and thus, in a confined space, to cause an explosion...(continue) | |||
| Conspiracy
theories - why do people believe in them? 18 May 2020 |
The case of Carlill v the Carbolic Smoke Ball Company (1893) is well known to all law students in the UK and other common law jurisdictions. The Company said that its ‘smoke balls’ would provide protection against what we now know as the Russian flu. The smoke actually consisted of finely ground phenol powder of the type then used in soap as disinfectant. So now we know where Mr Trump got his idea from. The advertisement said that the smoke should be inhaled 3 times per day for two weeks. The smoke balls would last for two or three months and could then be refilled for the princely sum of 5 shillings. So not cheap. Fortunately though it all came with reassurance. If, after you had inhaled the vapours as prescribed, you actually caught the malady, then such was the Company’s confidence in its product that they would pay you £100 (equivalent to about £35,000 now). To reassure potential sniffers further, the Company said in its advertisement that they had deposited £1,000 in a bank to show their faith in their product. Mrs Elizabeth Carlill became ill, despite having inhaled the smoke for at least two weeks, and requested the promised compensation. The Company refused to pay, saying that it was only an advertisement and so not to be taken seriously...(continue) | |||
| Originals or
copies - which are better? 12 May 2020 |
In an article in the Times last week, there was a suggestion by leaders from the museum and art gallery world that reproductions of artistic masterpieces should be put on display while the originals are stored out of sight. It seems that with modern scanning and reproduction techniques, the imitations would only be distinguishable from the originals because they could be colour-corrected to show what they had been like when originally painted. No longer would they have to be displayed in semi-darkness in order to protect them from damaging light. No longer would they need to be behind shatter-proof glass to protect them from attack. So then the proposal would have the benefit of preserving the originals from further deterioration and the risk of theft and, at the same time, enabling the public to view those great works currently considered to be too fragile to be displayed or displayed as we would like to see them – in the light...(continue) | |||
| Change 3 May 2020 |
We were in Annecy and the world had just become a year older. I looked up at the mountains though and saw that nothing had changed since the last time I’d looked at them - in the previous year, the night before. Nothing changed in the millions of years before we started going there either. The sun still rose over the same mountains and set in the same place. They cast the same shadows. The lake remains an ever present feature in the valley lying at their foot. Of course that is not quite true. If we were to go back, say, 100,000 years, we would find the mountains to be very slightly taller and the shadows they cast to be slightly more jagged. But the change, the erosion of the mountains, takes place so slowly, that it is undetectable to the human eye. Other changes take place more obviously - such as the trees growing on the mountain-sides which change colour with the seasons...(continue) | |||
| I
may have many faults, but being wrong isn't one
of them 21 April 2020 |
Some time ago, we went to the dry cleaners in a town called Flers in Normandy. Having handed in the clothes to be cleaned, the lady at the counter naturally asked for our name. Heather gave it to her - Buckingham - and then, as the lady, unsurprisingly, looked uncertain, spelt it out in her best French accent. Everything was fine except that we could see that the first letter was a P and not a B. So we both pointed to it and said, in French, ‘no, the first letter is a B'. ‘Yes', she said, ‘a P'. ‘No', I said, ‘B as in...', and as my mind had gone blank and I couldn't think of anything simple, I said ‘Baignoire' (bath). ‘Yes', she said, ‘P as in Peignoir' (dressing gown). Her younger colleague, perhaps with better hearing, sitting a few metres away was muttering ‘no, its B, not P'. Eventually, by reference to Buckingham Palace and then actually writing the letter down, we managed to convey to her what letter it was. Clearly, though, she did not want to accept that we probably knew better how to spell our name than she did, and so carried on insisting that her spelling of it was in fact correct...(continue) | |||
| Privacy
and getting our lives back 14 April 2020 |
I
was pleased to hear from the Catholic church on
Easter Sunday that we should rely on Science,
inspired by the Holy Spirit, to beat the
coronavirus. It’s just a shame that the Holy
Spirit doesn’t reveal some hard facts on the
nature of the beast we’re trying to overcome.
After all, it is one of God’s creations, so the
Holy Spirit should have inside knowledge, unless
the members of the Trinity are maintaining social
distancing from each other. Such information would
help a lot, just as it would have helped with the
Spanish flue and the black death. However, with or
without the inspiration apparently on offer, we’re
going to have to try to find ways to restart our
lives and our economies as best we can. The
virus is not going to go away any time soon; it is
unlikely to commit suicide. Of course, there is an argument from evolutionary theory that we can expect it to mutate into something less virulent. The most successful, the most enduring parasites, don’t do too much harm to the host, but keep it as a long-term source of nourishment – rather like the tape-worm....(continue) |
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| Human
rights in a time of coronavirus 6 April 2020 |
To say that we live in unusual times is something of an understatement. We are under attack by a very large, mindless, molecule which, despite its ignorance of its own existence, is multiplying at an alarming rate and, in the process, doing considerable damage to us. The damage, however, is not only physical, but also political. Not only have we, at least temporarily, lost our Prime Minister, but he has been replaced by his deputy, the Karate Kid – the rabid right-winger Dominic Raab. Let’s hope that he doesn’t get to make any significant decisions. In fact, BoJ is looking like a safe pair of hands in contrast to the man now in charge. Maybe Matt Hancock and Rishi Sunak as health secretary and chancellor will carry on as before actually running the parts of government which count....(continue) | |||
| Coronavirus
– the financial effects 26 March 2020 |
It
seems that the Americans have now decided to sign
up to the idea of Universal Income, at least for
the time being. As part of the $1.8 trillion
stimulus package, $250 billion has been allocated
to enhanced unemployment benefit. In this country,
we have the government agreeing to pay 80% of
salaries of those not working as a result of
Coronavirus. We’re still waiting to find out
how much the government will pay the self-employed
during the time they cannot work. But we expect
that, in the short-term, the amount of financial
hardship which will result from the virus
close-down will be minimised. No-one should go
hungry and no-one should be thrown out of their
home as a result of inability to pay the mortgage
or the rent. We even have an extra 6 months in
which to take our cars for an MOT. But there have already been significant effects and there will undoubtedly be even more significant effects in the aftermath of all this. An immediate effect was that the stock-markets around the globe dropped precipitously, although following the announcement of the US aid package, the stock-markets have rebounded quite a lot....(continue) |
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| Covid
19 – who’s to blame? A look at some of the wilder ideas now circulating 19 March 2020 |
According to Isis, the reason that
the Covid virus is so widespread in Europe is
because of our immorality. God has
inflicted the virus upon us in order to punish
our wicked behaviour. In fact so much is
this the case, that the leaders of Isis have
told their followers to keep out of Europe and
let off their bombs elsewhere. Which, if
true, is something of a relief for us, if not
the other parts of the world affected.
Of course, since that statement was announced,
a few weeks ago now, the virus has become
prevalent in Iran and various other good
Muslim countries, so I’m not sure what’s
happening there. Maybe the Christian god has
decided to engage in reprisals against Allah
and his followers. It must be really confusing
in Israel for the various gods, bearing in
mind the mixture of Muslims, Jews and
Christians.
Others are not pointing to religion
as being at the root of all this. Many
are claiming that China has a covert bioweapon
establishment in Wuhan where the virus was
being developed in order to wipe out Western
capitalist civilisation. Something apparently
went wrong and the virus was accidentally
released amongst their own people, a mistake
they at first tried to cover up and then
claimed was a natural occurrence having its
origin in a market which sold the meat of wild
animals. Obviously a front for their high tech
laboratory....(continue)
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| Coronavirus -
a little local difficulty 3 March 2020 |
We
seem to have quite a number of difficulties at the
moment. There’s the flooding which has been
greater and more widespread than we’ve seen in the
past. There’s the apparent incompatibility between
the negotiating positions of the UK and the EU.
The dispute between Pretti Patel and her former
chief of staff has been such a major difficulty
that the anticipated arrival of the Prime
Minister’s new baby has been deployed in order to
deflect criticism from the Home Secretary. And of course, there’s the small matter of the coronavirus. This is nearer to home for me, at least, granted that we’ve decided to cancel our fortnight in Sicily as a consequence of its appearance on that Island (now 9 cases in different areas). The owner of ‘Il Giardino di Oliver’ has kindly agreed to let us, as old folk at greater risk of infection, postpone our trip to later in the year, although of course subject to payment of any price difference. That of course presumes that there will be flights available. Which is looking somewhat doubtful. I suppose we could always try to hitch a lift on a cruise liner - there are likely to be quite a lot of spare berths this year - although it might be best to wear a haz-mat suit at all times...(continue) |
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| The thought
police and secular morality 17 February 2020 |
It
seems that of the Labour candidates for the
leadership, the two female candidates have signed
up to a series of 10 declarations regarding the
trans community. The third, Sir Keir Starmer
QC has not, at least not yet. It may be a
relief to know that I don’t intend to look at all
10 declarations. But there is one of the
declarations which is more than somewhat
controversial. It says: ”I will
campaign for reform of the Gender Recognition
Act to introduce a self-declaration process and
for the introduction of legal recognition for
non-binary gender identities. I believe that
trans women are women, that trans men are men,
and that non-binary genders are valid and should
be respected.”.
Another version of this adds: “there is no
material conflict between trans rights and
women’s rights”.
Essentially what they are asking is that the law should accept that a person is of whatever gender they say they are for all purposes and that the belief that this is so should be a protected characteristic, just like, as we saw recently, the ‘philosophical belief’ of veganism. As always, however the assertion that something is so does not necessarily make it so. The word ’oversimplification’ comes to mind....(continue) |
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| Climate
change – the practicalities 12 February 2020 |
Although not
covered by the national press at the time, we
now know from the Sunday Times that students
with tents, banners and placards occupied the
15th-century quad of St John’s College, Oxford
on Wednesday, 29th January. They said they
wouldn’t leave until the college agreed to sell
its shares in those prolific producers of
hydrocarbons, BP and Shell. The College is very
rich. It was reported at the time in two student
newspapers, but not it seems elsewhere.
Dominic Lawson is a columnist for the Sunday Times and a climate change sceptic. He is also a Brexiteer, although his father, Nigel Lawson, a former Conservative Chancellor with similar views to his son, has lived in France for many years. So people I don’t really take very seriously. On this occasion, however, I have some sympathy with the conclusion which Dominic draws from what happened. It seems that on the day of their occupation, the protesters e-mailed Professor Andrew Parker (an eminent research scientist and the principal bursar) to demand a meeting to address their demands. These were that St John’s “declares a climate emergency and immediately divests from fossil fuels”. His answer was not what they expected. “I am not able to arrange any divestment at short notice,” he wrote. “But I can arrange for the gas central heating in college to be switched off with immediate effect. Please let me know if you support this proposal.”.....(continue) |
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| Discontent
with democracy 4 February 2020 |
Going shopping for clothes for Heather in France can be an interesting experience. Not only is there the consideration of what would suit her but, from the numerous items of different sizes picked from the rails, there is then the need to narrow down the choice by trying them on. By Heather that is, not me. During these lengthy periods, there is usually a shop assistant standing by waiting for the verdict and, of course, ready to say how good it looks or, if that ploy is unsuccessful, to suggest alternatives. Standing with the assistant outside the changing room in silence during all of this is a little embarrassing, and so I generally try to engage in some sort of conversation. It normally starts with something quite innocuous, but can then take various twists and turns. And so this last week I have ended up discussing Brexit, which the French find completely incomprehensible, the pension reforms being imposed by the French government as compared to our system, the 35 hour week, where to buy the best fruit and vegetables (‘Le Grand Frais’ at Seynod) and which is the best cheese shop in town – confirmed to be the Fromagerie Gay...(continue) | |||
| Decision
making for the long term 20 January 2020 |
We quickly learn that short-term decision making, our day to day decisions, are the most important for us. If we ignore them or get them wrong then they soon come back to bite us. They have an immediate effect on our lives. And so we tend to concentrate on them. There are though many aspects of our lives which we don’t immediately even recognise as decisions in the same sense, even though they are. Many aspects of our lives - dress, speech or tattoos - which we adopt consciously or unconsciously, are used to determine what part of society we belong to. An even less likely piece of behaviour, altruism, is part of this same group. Acting altruistically always used to be thought of as an example of acting out of goodness, a genuine wish to help others with no thought of a return, something of the moment – and so a short term decision. Of course there were always some cads - very much frowned upon by society - who would pretend to be helpful in order to worm their way into someone’s affections. I imagine in fact that most people would still explain altruism in these terms, even though we know from lots of research on us and other animals, and our own common sense, that it is far from true...(continue) | |||
| Anthropomorphism,
imagination and creativity 12 January 2020 |
As human beings, we seem to have a tendency to attribute human characteristics to inanimate objects and imaginary beings. Ancient civilizations were well aware of this strange habit of human psychology. Xenophanes invented the word "anthropomorphism" 2,600 years ago. He realized that people worshipped gods that looked like them - the Greeks had white gods, while the Ethiopian gods were darker. From this observation he predicted that if horses and donkeys believed in God, their god would trot on all fours. He may have been right. Some time ago, primatologists documented a type of behaviour among chimpanzees, called 'the rain dance': when a storm begins, sometimes they climb a tree, then they tear out its branches and brandish them while they cry out to the clouds - as if they were facing a male rival. It seems to be a kind of 'chimpomorphism' about the storm. They shake their branches at the alpha male they assume to be throwing flashes from the sky...(continue) | |||
| Philosophical
belief and veganism 5 January 2020 |
The
world has apparently gone mad. Alright it’s
continued with its madness. We now have not only
crazy religions, but crazy non-religious
‘Philosophical Beliefs’, given the benefit of
protected characteristics under the Equality Act
2010 by a Court in the UK. Jordi Casamitjana, a zoologist by training, with a speciality in wasps, is someone who refuses even to travel on buses as they are likely to kill insects. Obviously he travels on buses which go faster than the ones I’ve been on. As we know, a vegan is someone who does not eat or use animal products. People may choose for supposed health purposes simply to follow a vegan, and so exclusively plant-based diet. They would therefore exclude all meat, fish dairy and eggs from their consumption. But self-described ‘ethical vegans’ go further and try to exclude all forms of animal exploitation from their lifestyle...(continue) |
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| 2020
- The next decade 31 December 2019 |
Traditionally,
we mark the end of one decade and the beginning
of another by reflecting on what has happened in
the past and what is likely to change in the
next 10 years. We might even celebrate the
change. Well, quite a lot has happened in the
period since 2010 dawned. The year 2008 had seen
the financial crash brought on by recklessness
in the banks. And so the end of the first decade
of this century was taken up with attempts to
prevent the banks’ foolishness from affecting
the lives of ordinary people. It was not though
something easily achieved and so the aftermath
of the crash continued well into the next
decade.
Indeed, it continued until 2019. We were told that austerity was the key to our survival and that public expenditure had to be cut, and cut quite savagely in some areas. Which, of course, had an effect on the lives of those same ordinary citizens, if not on those of the billionaire bankers who had caused the problems in the first place. And so the decade we have just lived through did not start well. Neither did it end well, bearing in mind the upheaval caused by David Cameron’s decision to hold a Brexit referendum which he, and so we, lost. But what now?...(continue) |
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| Brexit and
the General Election - December 12, 2019 |
My Blog during the run up to the December 12, 2019 general election. | |||
| Trust 25 November 2020 |
The other evening we were watching a
nature programme narrated by the real monarch of
our isles, Sir David Attenborough, the person we
all trust to tell it like it is. As it
happened, it concerned somewhere called
Australia, a land mass cut off from all the
other continents since before the time when the
dinosaurs died out. As a result, the
animals which took over when the dinosaurs
departed this world were rather different to the
animals with which we are familiar on the other
landmasses of our globe. They became even
more different because of the working of
evolution over the last few million years,
mainly as a result of the fact that Australia
has gradually moved from the colder South to
nearer the equator....(continue) |
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| World Trade Organisation 13 November 2019 |
OK, so the
World Trade Organisation may not seem very
relevant to our everyday lives, but stay with
me. We are
told that a no-deal Brexit would be on WTO
terms. Indeed, should Boris win an
actual majority in this election, it will
include many Conservative MPs who would
actually favour a no-deal Brexit, and so on
WTO terms, rather than even contemplate
extending the one-year transition period his
agreement allows for negotiation of a
bi-lateral agreement with the EU.
But unless something seismic happens, then the WTO will cease to be a functioning organisation on 10th December - in just one month's time....(continue) |
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| Making
up perfection 10 November 2019 |
Perfection is something which is never actually achieved in real life. I was put in mind of this a little while ago when we went to a concert at Symphony Hall in Birmingham. It included Saen-Saens' second piano concerto. We have it on disc. In fact we have two different recordings of it. I like them both and have listened to them quite often. So often, that when I heard it played live, I was only too aware of a few wrong notes. It was not that it was cacophonous or played badly. I think that if I had not been so familiar with the recordings of it I wouldn't even have noticed. The point is that the versions on disc are highly edited and not a single wrong note is allowed to remain....(continue) | |||
| Remembrance 6 November 2019 |
On
Sunday, the Anglican church at Coleshill will be
unusually close to capacity or even perhaps
completely full. And of course the reason is that
it is Remembrance Day. There are local and
national remembrance ceremonies at which
dignitaries take part and where we, as a nation,
remember the victims of the last two wars
regardless of our personal involvement or not in
them. In Coleshill, the Town Band will take
part with the usual mix of tunes used for this
occasion and of course all the Town Councillors,
members of the Servicemen’s associations and
generally the great and good of Coleshill will be
in attendance to lay poppy wreaths on the war
memorial outside the Church. Even Heather and I
will be there, with a poppy wreath to lay on
behalf of the Twinning Association. Other countries, with other histories remember their war dead at different times and in different ways. But it is something which virtually every country does. Of course, in some countries, major conflicts relate not so much to wars with other states, but to civil wars of various kinds, whether to try to achieve independence or to try to get rid of a dictator, such as in Spain. In these circumstances, how or whether to celebrate can be quite contentious....(continue) |
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| Eugenics 12 October 2019 |
The BBC4 documentary in October this year on the subject of eugenics was very informative, Eugenics was proposed as a system of improving the ‘quality’ of the human species. Over the millennia, dog, pigeon and plant breeders had taken major steps, by cross-breeding, to select for desirable traits in their subjects. It meant that not only could homing pigeons fly home from greater distances, but that plants could become more productive of the food we need to survive. Dogs, well, it seems that you can never have enough different sorts to appeal to their devoted ‘owners’. When it comes to humans, however, it all becomes a little more difficult....(continue) | |||
| Speciesism 28 August 2019 |
...
We now have ‘Speciesism’ being compared to racism,
sexism and fascism. Speciesism, the
doctrine hated by vegans, was
described in a book called
‘Animal Liberation' (1975) by an
Australian philosopher, Peter Singer. He defined
it as ‘a prejudice or bias in favour of the
interests of members of one's own species and
against those of members of other species.’
People who oppose speciesism say that giving human
beings greater rights than non-human animals is as
arbitrary (and as morally wrong) as giving white
people greater rights than non-white people.
As always, there is a fundamental confusion in the
Olympian pronouncements of the Animal Rights
fraternity even though, or perhaps because, based
on a book written by a philosopher. They assume
that morality can be justified and understood as
part of a carefully constructed rational
framework, instead of its being simply the outcome
of evolutionary pressure which we then, for
psychological reasons, try to justify
rationally....(continue) |
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| Decisions,
decisions 7 October 2019 |
The other day, some research was
published which showed that mice, faced with
choosing between two identical (tasty) rewards,
took longer to start eating than where there was
only one such reward. It took them time to
decide. Who’d have thought it? In fact, we all
know that it's difficult to make decisions of
this sort. To choose between chocolate cake or
lemon meringue pie is not an easy thing for
me. The equality of desire makes the
choice very difficult and time-consuming, even
when the outcome of the choice is not, at least
to an outsider, very important. But if there are
in fact things in life which are more important
than dessert then, surely, we would make choices
about them based on a rational consideration of
the benefits and disadvantages for our
lives? Well maybe not...(continue) |
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| The
precautionary principle, bananas and pigs 21 August 2019 |
...
The fruit and vegetables which we now eat look and
taste very different to those our ancestors ate.
Over the centuries, by hybridisation of the
various varieties, plant breeders have succeeded
in making fruit and vegetables which are far more
resistant to disease, grow much better and,
sometimes, even have a better taste. All
this is by means of genetic manipulation. But this
has been ‘natural’ genetic manipulation, perceived
to be carried out by ‘gardeners’ wearing gardening
gloves, rather than scientists in white coats
using CRISPR gene editing. Of course the end
result is the same, it’s just that the ‘natural’
variant is not subject to checks to see if it
affects our health in the long term, whereas the
genetically modified variants are. Except in
Europe, where they are banned because of the
precautionary principle. So
what is the precautionary principle?...(continue) |
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| The Silly
Season 14 August 2019 |
Every
year, when the MPs go off to the seaside with
their buckets and spades, we seem to enter a
season when nothing much of importance happens, or
at least is reported by the newspapers. Instead,
the sorts of stories which might normally only
make it on to page 15 find a place on the front
page. This year seems to be no
exception. We have had the reported death of
‘Grumpy Cat’, a cat famous on the net for looking,
well, grumpy. The world mourned. There were
the discoveries in New Zealand of 30 million year
old fossils of 4 metre high emus and of penguins
the height of a human. There was then the
declaration by someone who has recently married an
actress that they are going to have at most two
children in order to minimise their impact on the
environment. The proposed changes to the rest of
their somewhat lavish lifestyle and their use of
private jets seem not to have been reported...(continue) |
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| Words
we may not use 29 July 2019 |
The English language tsar, Jacob William Rees-Mogg esquire, has spoken and told us what we may and may not say. We may not use words such as ‘very’, ‘unacceptable’ ‘lot’ (we don’t know which meaning is proscribed – a large quantity, destiny, something put up for auction, a film set etc), ‘ascertain’, ‘disappointment’, ‘speculate’, and ‘equal’. Now for a multi-millionaire Conservative M.P. I can see that the word ‘equal’ may be an unacceptable (oops) socialist concept. I suppose that a lot of his clients would not want to be reminded that to speculate is the essence of the business of which he was CEO, a fund management firm, Somerset Capital Management. He is still a partner in the business. They would not wish to have the disappointment of learning that the firm which he co-founded necessarily follows an investment strategy based on speculation...(continue) | |||
| The
power of positive thinking and a can-do attitude 26 July 2019 |
It
seems that our new PM (the Piffle Minister)
believes that a can-do attitude and positivity
will gain us the prize of a deal with the EU
without the need for an Irish backstop. I’m
sure that he’s right, as he is with so many other
things, such as figures on the sides of buses and
the source of the regulations governing the
sending of kippers through the post. But what I wanted to think about was the power of positive thinking. Every so often in the past century there has been a self-help book which has caught the public imagination and sold in millions...(continue) |
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| An
excess of Human Rights? 18 July 2019 |
On Wednesday this week I happened to hear ‘Thought for the Day’. It is part of the Today programme but, when I hear it come on, I generally find something else to listen to as it is normally too full of platitudes. On this occasion, however, the speaker was not a Bishop, but a Parliamentary lawyer, Daniel Greenberg, and so I decided to give it a go. He said that Article 2 of the 1st Protocol to the ECHR, which makes a right to education a human right, also provides that the State must "respect the right of parents to ensure that the education of children is in conformity with the religious and philosophical conviction of the parents". (continue) | |||
| Honesty,
Wallets and Humanism 10 July 2019 |
A research paper appearing at the
beginning of July this year in the American
Academy of Science magazine, a
magazine called, with creative flair,
‘Science’, reports an international
experiment into our honesty. It
says in the introduction:
...
Psychological models based on self-image
maintenance, however, predict that people
will cheat for profit but only so long as
their behaviour does not require them to
negatively update their self-concept.
However, it is unclear, without evidence,
whether self-image concerns will become more
or less important as the incentives for
dishonesty increase and also what form that
relationship will take.
In other words, even if I will not be caught, does being able to continue to think of myself as an upright citizen, and not a thief, outweigh the benefit of nicking the cash? (continue) |
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| The influence and effects of CO2 25 June 2019 |
The other day we were on our way to a recycling centre which, ironically, is not accessible by public transport. On the motorway we overtook a lorry. On its side it advertised the fact that it was delivering the sort of oil we use in our cars, made, or perhaps I should say refined, by BP. After the problems encountered by the Sackler family in giving away money in sponsorship of the arts, we now have Sir Mark Rylance bringing to an end 30 years of involvement with the Royal Shakespeare Company because of its continued sponsorship by BP. Sir Mark’s involvement with the RSC was in any event rather strange as he considers that the works attributed to Shakespeare were in fact written by another knight, Sir Francis Bacon. But although BP subsidises tickets for the under 25’s, he is concerned that BP in its day job is also one of the main ‘sponsors’ of global warming. He finds this unacceptable...(continue) | |||
| Populism 14 May 2019 |
We have just witnessed an unusual event. The Emperor of Japan has abdicated and his son has taken over the role. The outgoing Emperor and his son are of course descendants of the Japanese Sun God and so are deities in their own rights. Even though Japan is a society which depends on industry and technology for its position as one of the richest nations on earth, evidently they have a regard for the traditions of the past, as their ceremonies, little-changed over the centuries, still invoke the god-like status of their rulers. But the royal family has changed. Emperor Hirohito, in power during the second world war, was a strong supporter of Japanese aggression, encouraging a form of extreme populist nationalism which resulted in an early version of suicide bombers and brutal treatment of prisoners of war. His son Akihito is a pacifist, as is probably his grand-son, the new emperor, Naruhito. The just-abdicated Emperor is very much respected by his people for his efforts in changing the attitude of his country from that of populist hostility to the outside world to that of friendship...(continue) | |||
| The proceeds
of slavery 5 May 2019 |
Cambridge University has announced an inquiry into the way it benefited from the slave trade. It seems that those who have profited from injustice should compensate their victims even unto the seventh generation. After the Second World War, Germany was called upon to restore stolen property to its owners or compensate them for its loss. The identities of the Jewish families wronged, the Nazi wrongdoers and the relationship between original victims and surviving family members, were all the subject of good evidence. The loss claimed for was quantifiable. Compensation made sense. As time passes, however, the connection between the descendants of the wrongdoer and wronged becomes more tenuous. I’m not sure how any individual descendant of a slave could show a justifiable claim to compensation from any particular person or institution at this stage. More recent events, good or ill, occurring well after the abolition of enslavement will have had a major effect on peoples’ lives making them richer or poorer and so will have made any serious attempt to show an individual’s right to compensation for the enslavement to be impossible...(continue) | |||
| Philanthropy 28 March 2019 |
I was fascinated to read a 4 page spread in Hello! about Ariana Rockefeller, the well-known philanthropist and heiress of the immensely rich Rockefeller family. It took a while for the garage to balance my new tyres and I’d finished the Daily Mail provided in the reception area. In the profile she told the reporter how important a work ethic was to her, something which she’d learned from her family, and how much time she spent dealing with her philanthropic organisations. When in New York, she lives not in her own house or apartment, but in a huge suite at the Mark Hotel - “the most boldly lavish hotel in New York City”. She is quoted as saying: “They make my favourite cocktail as soon as I walk into the bar. They save my favourite table in the restaurant for me. They do everything for me. You can’t put a price on that.” The $57,000 a night apparently charged for the penthouse suite by the Mark may be a clue as to how the system functions. Poor little rich girl; nice to be cosseted for love, not money....(continue) | |||
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27 February 2019 |
I have never thought that what
the world really needed was another Paul
Buckingham. I have always thought that one
was more than enough. I am conscious,
though, that I am in a minority when it comes to
being (or not) family-orientated. Although
families aren’t generally as big as they were,
there is still a desire to produce a Mini-me or
two. From my rather selfish point of view, that
is a good thing as, hopefully, when I am
exceedingly old there will be younger people
around who will be able to look after me – for a
fee of course. Although a family in the UK tends on average to have just under two children, there are of course exceptions. The super-rich seem to have numerous children, rather like the potentates of old. And then of course, at the other end of the income scale, there is the perception that people on benefits have lots of children. This appears to be such a problem that the Universal Credit System will not make any additional payment to parents in respect of a 3rd or subsequent child born from now on...(continue) |
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| Conspiracy
theories
- the business model. 25 February 2019 |
What is really happening in the world? Of course, for enlightenment, we cannot depend on the traditional press and their fake news. Our friend Mr Trump tells us that all the newspapers and media outlets (apart from Fox News) are in the pockets of the super-rich and, obviously, these billionaires have their own agenda. This is even more clear now when, thanks to the internet, we know that the super-rich are a part of the 'deep state', the group of characters that truly control the world - also known as the "Illuminati". There are those who pour scorn on such an idea. Fortunately though, there are others ready to defend the truth about this state within a state...(continue) | |||
| Pseuds Corner 7 February 2019 |
In the
satirical magazine Private Eye there is a column
called ‘Pseuds Corner' which pokes fun at
pretentiousness in the arts and the media. There
have been such gems as Sir Paul McCartney's poem
-
"We (women)
are just as obsessed and infatuated as men. We
love music just as hard. It's just that we don't
exhibit that obsession, that love, through an
alphabetised record collection. You want to know
how I store my records? I put the ones next to
each other that I think would be friends. I
suppose that you could call that
emotional; I call it
womanly." (continue) |
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| How
to spend the Science budget 21 January 2019 |
It seems that
CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC), just outside
Geneva, is not large enough. When it was
constructed, with its 28 km circumference
tunnel, it was designed to be big enough to find
out whether or not the Higgs boson existed. This
had been predicted to exist, as theory said that
it was the particle needed to give mass to all
the other sub-atomic particles. No, I have no
idea either. Where we once just had protons,
electrons and neutrons, we now have a menagerie
of particles. They came into view when
physicists started to fire the particles they
knew about at each other to see what happened.
The LHC is the latest and most powerful version
of the technology used for the task...(continue)
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| Sovereignty 1 January 2019 |
It seems that
the concept of sovereignty is very much to the
fore amongst Brexiteers. Apparently they are
determined we should regain it. It seems it has
not been available to us since we joined the
EEC/EU. If I’m honest about it though,
it’s not something I'd thought about very much
over the years. Indeed, as a concept, it seems
to me to relate more to the time when we had
kings and queens, colonies and outposts of
empire – a time when we had actual sovereigns
and ruled a large part of the globe. An
exception, Oliver Cromwell, who did for Charles
I and became “The Lord Protector”, was regarded
merely as a dictator, rather than a sovereign
because he was not of kingly lineage. He did in
fact try to create a lineage. The army wanted
him to ensure a succession and so he nominated
as his successor as Lord Protector his eldest
surviving son, Richard Cromwell. Richard,
however, rather unwisely reduced the amount of
money going to the army and so the army decided
it was time to go back to real kings instead. But any
sovereign worthy of the name was, by
definition, a dictator. And as we
can now see, there is no such thing as a
kingly lineage, just children who have
succeeded in taking over from their
parents as the dictator of the moment. The
‘royal line’ has in fact been a succession
of ‘royal lines’ over the millennia....
(continue)
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| A Christmas
Story 23 December 2018 |
It had been a restless night, and suddenly I awoke with a feeling of premonition. At that moment, the radio came on and the sonorous chimes of Big Ben could be heard, as if portending something of great moment. As they stopped, the Radio 4 newsreader began the midnight news-bulletin with words which shook me to the core. She said “the Government has decided that Mr Paul Buckingham, the well-known philosopher of Coleshill, someone generally accepted to be a person of great wisdom, has been given the responsibility of deciding whether or not the concept of Father Christmas should be abolished. He will announce his decision in 24 hours time.”. I was at first utterly at a loss to know what to do, but then, having decided that I should accept this responsibility in the national interest, I started to think over the questions which it raised.. (continue) | |||
| Referendums 19 November 2018 |
It
is
generally accepted that the idea of democracy
originated in the city of Athens. I am not
convinced that this is true, however. There
are, even now, some tribes found in remote forests
that work by consensus - i.e. democratically -
rather than being subject to the diktat of a
leader or a group of "potentates", and there's no
reason to think that this is a modern
phenomenon. But we can, I suppose, accept
that the Athenians were the first occupants of a
city to adopt such a system. There was, however, a
recurring anxiety for the Athenians: were the
people in fact hopeless at making decisions,
incapable of intelligent consideration? Were they
instead all too easily influenced by spurious
arguments and manipulated by unscrupulous
rhetoricians hungry for power? After all, Boris is not a
new phenomenon...(continue) |
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| The Perils of
Perception 27 November 2018 |
... In principle this approach - theory, experiments, modification of the theory and ... repeat - can be used not only in science but also in other spheres of life. The difficulty, however, is that we have preconceived ideas of how the political world works and how it should work. This difficulty exists in the fact that our prejudices have the status of a religion (in the broadest sense) and therefore prevent us from wanting to challenge them or to believe the results of each "experiment", or detailed investigation of what happened in the past, that would indicate something contrary to our prejudices. We say that everyone has the right to believe in what he wants to believe and therefore there is no real motivation, as in science, to correct our mistakes. We admire those who stick to their beliefs or their principles and criticize those who are without principles....(continue) | |||
| Self-driving
cars
and morality 4 November 2018 |
... The New Scientist article gives the example of an autonomous car travelling along a road when its brakes fail. Should it carry straight on and hit a pregnant woman, a doctor and a criminal on a pedestrian crossing, or swerve into a barrier so avoiding the people on the crossing, but instead killing all the occupants of the self-driving car, a family of four? This, the article tells us, is the kind of scenario included in the 'Moral Machine’ experiment, a survey on the internet of millions of people in 233 countries and territories worldwide, the results of which were published on 24th October in the much-respected science journal Nature. Participants were asked to consider different scenarios in which those saved by the car’s decision might be, for example, fat or fit, young or old, pets or criminals or those with important jobs. In total, 40 million decisions in 10 languages were collected. So, an impressive gathering of data. ... (continue) | |||
| Political agitation and violence | ... But the question of civil disobedience continues to be important. The film "Suffragette" encourages its audience in thinking that civil disobedience is justified because it produces a just end. Obviously, now, the vast majority of people accept that women are as intelligent and as capable of making rational decisions as men (which doesn't say much!). Giving them the right to vote, therefore, is seen as a fair and just outcome. But in the past? Before the changes in the 20th century, the vast majority (including most women) would have thought otherwise. Why? Because it was received wisdom. It was only in the light of the obvious evidence of their true abilities that 'received wisdom' was brought into question. And so finally there was a general acceptance that the 'wisdom' of centuries made no sense. But it had been a realisation that came in parallel with the realisation that the right to vote should not be limited just to land-owners either. Therefore there was a general evolution in the thinking of that era. Now it seems to me that for somebody of a contrary opinion, violence is not a convincing argument...(continue) | |||
| Brexit - conservative and
liberal thought 10 October 2018 |
....
But. But it seems to me that there is now a
political situation in which conservatives
from all sides of the political spectrum are
in a position to triumph, and this in a very
costly way. I am talking, of course, about
Brexit and the possibility of a Brexit without
agreement or a Brexit 'Lite' agreement. The
history of the European Union and the United
Kingdom has been very fractious. Political
parties have adopted various policies at
various times. Churchill and the Americans,
after the second war, encouraged the formation
in 1950 of the Coal & Steel Community.
This was of course an attempt to encourage
commerce, but not only to promote economic
growth. It was also intended to decrease the
likelihood of another war. Churchill did not
see the need for us to be part of this group.
We had the 'Commonwealth' to trade with...(continue)
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| Identity
politics and "The end of history" 3 October 2018 |
Francis Fukuyama has written another book, to be published in October this year (2018). In one of his previous books, the much discussed "The End of History and the Last Man", Fukuyama saw the end of the Cold War and the fall of the Berlin Wall as the end of ideological conflict in the world. He said that Western liberal democracy was the final ideological phase of human evolution. Democracy had won. A courageous belief. He warned us in the book, however, that he may have overestimated the ability of liberal democracy to provide peace and personal satisfaction. He says in "Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment" that we can now see that this expression of uncertainty was necessary. He has decided that the main difficulty we have is the perception among people that peace and relative prosperity, which normally accompany liberal democracy, are not sufficient. People also want dignity; recognition of their personal difficulties. The absence of this recognition creates resentment. And so we come to the politics of identity so common today. His new book apparently describes the difficulties we have as a result....(continue) | |||
| Artificial
Intelligence 14 September 2018 |
... now, we have emerged from the impasse, because scientists have taken the next step - the neural network. They have simulated our brain’s neural structure in order to allow a computer to learn from first principles how something functions or the essence of a collection of things. From the information furnished, the network is capable of deriving common factors, just as we and our brains do. They can then apply this knowledge to situations which were not included in the original examples. For example, given thousands of photos of lots of different varieties of dogs and cats, all labelled correctly, the network can distinguish dogs from cats in other unlabelled photos with a very high success rate. We have seen though that they can be used for other more useful things. They can identify cancer cells, or identify the changes at cellular level which will result in blindness if not diagnosed very early. Often, it is not obvious how the network has arrived at its conclusion. Thus, these networks give the impression of an actual intelligence, rather than the traditional computer which we know to be incapable of freeing itself from the bounds of its prescriptive software. Although we are only at the beginning of this new approach, we are even now seeing notable results.... (continue) | |||
| The polluter should
pay - quite a lot 21 August 2018 |
There
is an island off the coast of Virginia, USA. It
has the unlikely name of Tangier. Almost
100% of the
inhabitants are descendants of immigrants
who came mainly from Cornwall in the eighteenth
century. They speak a form of English that,
according to some, still reflects its ancient
origins. In the sense that they don't need a
policeman or locks on their doors it is a kind of
utopia - albeit at the price of not having alcohol
for sale on the island! They are religious
fundamentalists. The island is quite small, with an area of only 3.2 square kilometres. There was a population of 727 people in 2010, which has now decreased to only 460, and it's population is getting older, in view of the difficulty young people have in finding a job on the crab fishing boats. But the main difficulty for the island is that it now has a maximum height of one and a half meters above sea level. It has already lost at least half of its surface area to the sea over the years, and the risk of global warming to its existence is obvious. But not to them. They believe that it is not a matter of rising sea levels, but of coastal erosion. They don't accept the science relating to climate change. For this reason they propose a stone wall around what remains of the island. But not too high - they don’t want to disturb their view...(continue) |
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| Evolution, politics
and democracy 22 March 2018 |
Having lived for the vast majority
of our existence as a species under a system
of government which depended on a chief of
some type – a tribal chief, a king or a
dictator – we live now in an era in which
democracy is the most widespread political
system. It seems to have taken over. I am
though concerned about its longevity and how
firmly rooted it is. It is worth noting that the
original UN constitution made no reference
to democracy until the fall of the Berlin
Wall and the end of the cold war. It was
only in 1999 that the UN’s Universal
Declaration of the Rights of Man was
modified to include:
“the right to full
participation and other fundamental
democratic rights and other liberties
inherent in any democratic society.”
The result?
Almost every government now proclaims itself
to be a democracy. This is hypocrisy for many,
but they think that they ought to pretend
because it is the preferred international
model. They can often lie with impunity
because it is difficult to show that a country
is not in fact a democracy....(continue)
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| Privacy - Sir Cliff Richard v BBC |
The High Court has now issued its judgement in the case of Sir Cliff Richard v BBC. Sir Cliff was suing for damages for breach of privacy. He had already received a payment of £400,000 from the South Yorkshire Police who had revealed to the BBC in 2014 that they were going to search his penthouse in a gated development in Berkshire. The BBC turned out in force to cover the search, complete with a helicopter filming overhead. It was on the TV on all channels throughout the day and in the press, both here and abroad, for a long time afterwards....(continue) | |||
| Sport - World Cup
2018 |
On the terrace of the apartment in France where I am writing this, I can hear the horns of the cars being driven into town in advance of the World Cup Final. It’s between France and Croatia this afternoon. We’re almost alone in the building here in Annecy. I imagine that our neighbours are in the bars, the hotels or the piazzas (where big screens have been put up) in order to watch the game with others who share the same passion. At the restaurant where we had lunch today, even while we were having our dessert, the restaurant itself was being prepared around us to receive a hundred or so supporters for the match, with supplies of beer and a huge screen – obviously all that was necessary for a match. Sport is, of course, principally a group activity. Obviously there are the other participants necessary for an activity which is inherently competitive in nature. But there aren’t many participants who would take part without a public, small or large, to cheer for them. In England, there were around 25 million watching the TV during the England - Croatia semi-final, each one at the final whistle in a state of nervous exhaustion...(continue) | |||
| Take the Train - railway time and execution excursions | I’m not really into trains, but a little while ago there was a programme on BBC4 concerning the story of the train and its effect on all our lives. I found it unexpectedly fascinating. When I think of a train, I think of a timetable. It’s difficult to manage a rail system without one. Overtaking is rather difficult because all the trains depend on the same railway tracks. In fact this limitation was at the root of the standardisation of time across the nation. Initially it was known as ‘Railway Time’ a concept introduced by Great Western Railways in 1849. It was the first recorded example of the standardisation of local time and it spread throughout the entire rail system in that year....(continue) | |||
| Definitions
and Transsexuality 23 January 2018 |
It seems that transsexuality is now a particularly delicate subject. There is a determination by a vociferous part of the transsexual community to be seen simply as women, even though they are not, whether genetically or by their experience of life. But these distinctions are not apparently important. We now have various self-proclaimed spokespeople for the movement. They insist that we recognise as women every person who self-identifies as a woman. And this regardless of their genes, their secondary sexual characteristics or even if they have decided to live in any real sense as a woman. Thus after or before a transition and with or without the intention to make a transition. And this self-identification is apparently to be for all purposes. Obviously this is something which produces a series of difficulties....(continue) | |||
| Asymmetric relationships | When parents produce a child there is from the beginning, and for very many years, an asymmetry in their relationship. Normally the parents provide everything which is necessary until the time when the adult can maintain himself. Exactly when this moment will arrive is very variable. In England, although we have a problem relating to affordable housing, there is a tendency amongst the young to fly the nest as soon as they can, something not necessarily replicated in other countries, like France and Italy. The difference can be explained in part, at least, by the law. Here in the UK, responsibility for a child finishes at the age of 18. In other countries, where the law is based on the Napoleonic Code, it is more generous. In 2016, an Italian court decided that a father should continue to be responsible for the maintenance of his son (a ‘child’ of 28) until he had finished his doctorate in, I think, sociology. But it is not totally asymmetric because, in those countries, the children are legally obliged to maintain their parents...(continue) | |||
| Poverty
& inequality - a local TED talk giving the
French perspective |
...And so I chose the video of the talk recorded at the TED conference in the Haute Savoie supporting the idea of universal Income, in the hope that I would at last find something convincing in the argument. The person giving the talk asked us to keep in mind the importance of the number 9 – apparently wealth in France is held as to 90% by the 10% of the people at the top and the remaining 10% of the wealth is in the hands of the other 90% of the population. He continued on the same theme, with 9% unemployment in France and the 9 million who live in poverty. To solve all these problems and several others, he said that the answer was Universal Income. I wasn’t convinced by his arguments as to the solution or of his explanation of the problems.....(continue) | |||
| "I
was here before you" - some thoughts on
patriotism 13 February 2018 |
You hear this in the play area and elsewhere where kids want to stake out their territories. Taken literally, it’s simply a statement of fact, but it brings with it a claim to the right to be there to the exclusion of everyone else. I don’t know why the fact of being there gives a right to exclude others. There’s no obvious logic to it, but it seems to be a common conception. And it’s not confined to kids. The very idea of a queue depends on the same principle and, in view of our reputation for queuing, we can say that we British must be very territorial. On the other hand, we teach our kids to be courteous, to say “No after you, I insist”. So then, to maintain at all costs our position in a queue seems to be a bit inconsistent....(continue) | |||
| Brexit - why
the Germans are unlikely to cut us any slack |
Following the decision to leave the
EU and agreement on the so-called divorce
settlement, the question now is the terms upon
which we will be able to continue to trade
with our former European partners. The
Brexiteers have told us that the EU countries
will be eager to do a deal with us in view of
the fact that we import more from them than
they import from us. This they say applies
especially to Germany which exports so many of
its cars to us.
But since the vote, Germany has
consistently told us that when Britain leaves
the EU access to the single market for trade
will be restricted unless the UK both accepts
the four freedoms which underpin the whole
concept of the Single Market and also makes a
financial contribution to the EU....(continue)
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| Brexit - the divorce
settlement |
... and so with the conclusion of this agreement, we now know quite clearly that: Goods & services a. We're
definitely leaving the Customs Union and the
Single Market and so can adopt any regulatory
framework we like; and
b. Unless the Irish government and the Northern Ireland Assembly agree otherwise. we're going to maintain alignment (i.e. comply) with all the regulations required for membership of the Customs Union and the Single Market. And, of course, there is no Northern Ireland Assembly at the moment to give its agreement. Just MLAs being paid to kick their heels. ...
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| Memes, Dodos & Donald Trump | That
ideas
spread is not a new insight. But it was given new
impetus in 1976 by Richard Dawkins’ book ‘The
Selfish Gene’. In this, he coined the word ‘meme’
which he defined as "an idea, behaviour, or style
that spreads from person to person within a
culture". He saw it as analogous to a gene and so
subject to the same evolutionary pressures as
them. In particular, he said that they were
subject to natural selection based on their
fitness to survive. Now, as we know, fitness to
survive in organisms is not a quality which is
easy to recognise in advance. There are so many
variables that we normally take the easy path and
simply recognise that such fitness must have
existed in those organisms which have in fact
survived. And so it is with memes. Who would have thought that gin would becomes so popular again? Gin was known as “mother’s ruin” in the 18th and 19th centuries, the preferred drink at golf clubs and amongst the upper middle classes in the 20th century and increasingly out of fashion in the 21st century. But since 2010 it has had a resurgence with the production of a swathe of craft gins popular with hipsters. Apparently the effect is a result of the influence of one part Downton Abbey and one part James Bond - shaken not stirred....(continue) |
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| "The past is a different country, they do things differently there” | In his novel “The Go-between”, Leslie P Hartley wrote: “the past is a different country; they do things differently there”. I don’t know anyone who has read his book, but this phrase has become very well known – because it tells us a truth. Our morality has changed very much, not just over the course of millennia or centuries, but even over the last few decades. I’m reminded of this because this year we have seen the homosexual community celebrating the 50th anniversary of the passing of a law to decriminalise the practice of homosexuality in private between consenting adults. But if we look more closely at the effect of this Act of Parliament, we can see in retrospect that 1967 marked only the beginning of a slow change which would take a long time to unfold....(continue) | |||
| Diversity and
Inclusion - a concern |
In the beginning was the Race
Relations Act 1965. It was quite revolutionary
for its time and made unlawful a new category of
behaviour which for millennia had been regarded
as perfectly acceptable - looking after your own
at the expense of the incomer, the foreigner (in
the widest sense). For the first time, the
law banned racial discrimination in public
places. For the first time, also, it made
illegal the encouragement of an emotion - hatred - on the grounds of
“colour, race, or ethnic or national
origins”. Of course, as a moral statement, it
had something of the magician’s ‘smoke and
mirrors’ about it, as controls on immigration
remained. So then we were against
discrimination, but only for those already here
or for the relative few permitted to come here
by our immigration laws. Which meant that
most of the world was in fact kept out of our
newly-benign regime. But although our
new-found morality began and stayed at home, the
Statute was criticised
by some for being little short of the
introduction of ‘thought crime’...(continue)
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| Wealth | Certainly, there are many who argue
that equality is something to be aimed at,
although when you ask people if they really
mean equality
or simply less
inequality, they are likely to choose
the second. Defining how far to take the
lessening of inequality then becomes an
exercise in the measuring of the length of a
piece of string. The concept of
inequality, however, was given fresh impetus
when this year's wealth comparisons were
issued by Oxfam. They told us that the 8
richest people in the world (all men) have
wealth equal in value to the bottom 50% of the
world’s population. Last year it took the top
64 wealthiest people to achieve this rather
strange form of equality. So then the
world is in this sense becoming less
equal. It’s a striking comparison. But
..(continue). |
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| The regulation of information |
I imagine that we are all in favour of freedom. This is something our ancestors fought for and that we keep in mind when deciding who to vote for. But, at the same time, over the centuries, we have agreed to many laws that limit what we can do. There are of course our many criminal laws, but there is also the law of defamation - this penalizes us if we falsely accuse someone-else of doing something naughty. But until quite recently, there was no privacy law in this country. That has changed in our computer age with its ability to spread information around in ways unheard of before: privacy is no longer just a problem for a few individuals, but for millions of people...(continue) | |||
| A somewhat forlorn wish for 2017 | St Paul defined faith or belief, rather poetically, as “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen”. Belief is a strange thing. It is an acceptance that something is true even though there is a lack of evidence to support it. Beliefs though are a normal part of our lives. We mostly have faith in our nearest and dearest that they will act in our best interests. We believe that the food we buy will be fit to eat if we consume it before the use-by date. We (most of us) accept that going on a plane is highly likely to get us to our destination in safety, even if the same cannot be said about our luggage. Mainly we base our beliefs on past experience. Indeed, living our lives would be so much harder and time-consuming if we did not rely on our past experience. We would have, somehow, to check everything out from scratch to see if it was safe or advisable. Our reliance on past dealings in fact brings with it a continuity in our actions and thinking. And the world-wide business model depends upon it...(continue) | |||
| How to handle a Brexit | So
now we have a decision of the High Court saying
that the government cannot use the Royal
Prerogative to trigger Article 50. The howls of outrage from the Brexiteers have had to be heard to be believed - how could the Courts possibly justify interfering in the democratic process? Michael Fabricant said in the Commons on the day of the announcement that the decision was 'deplorable'. Did he think that our judges were acting politically or was he saying that his knowledge of the law was so superior to that of our judges that he could be contemptuous of their reasoning? Or was he perhaps alleging that they had been got at in some way? I think we should be told...(continue) |
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| How (not) to become Prime minister | Obviously there are many attributes necessary for becoming the head of a country like the UK. Having self-confidence is a fundamental quality but this needs to be allied with intelligence and the knowledge appropriate to the post. But according to Andrea Leadsom, it is also necessary to be a mother or, perhaps, a father. She complained loudly that the article in the Times was not a true reflection of the interview with the journalist Rachael Sylvester. Fortunately it was recorded and this showed that there was no inaccuracy. Without doubt, Mrs Leadsom’s decision to withdraw from the contest had a number of reasons behind it. Not the least of these was the lack of support amongst the other MPs and the resulting risk of a situation similar to the problem now suffered by the Labour Party – a leader with the support of the members, but with the support of only 20% of her colleagues in parliament. The exaggeration in her CV also played a part, but I am persuaded that the fallout from the interview with the Times played the principle role in her decision...(continue) | |||
| The (dis)United
Kingdom 23 June 2016 |
We were never
unconditional friends of the European Union, but
now our country has decided to engage in
collective self-harm. The majority has decided
to quit the EU with no idea of the consequences.
Having taken the view that Europe has nothing to
offer us and that all the experts and all the
organisations with the knowledge necessary to
inform us of the consequences were liars, they
have voted for an isolationist future. Our Prime
Minister has decided to resign and we will
probably have Boris Johnson as his successor,
someone very popular with his fan base, just
like Donald Trump, and just as much a deceitful
opportunist as Donald Trump...(continue)
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| The end of illness – thank you Facebook! | It seems that as a result of a donation of $3 billion from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Ms. Chan, we can anticipate the end of disease. To be precise, they say that their goal is "to treat, prevent or manage" all the diseases to which we are subject by the end of the century. They are promising to spend $3 billion - over the next ten years. But last year they said they had decided to bequeath 99% of their fortune (estimated at $55 billion) not to their children, but to charitable purposes able to benefit humanity in general. I suppose therefore that this promise must be taken into account in their grand vision. But since they are not exactly old, we have to hope that they will have a fairly short life expectancy - for the greater good, of course...(continue) | |||
| Anger and the post-truth era | Anger is a strange emotion. It is a reaction to what we perceive as a wrong done to us or to someone for whom we care. Anger wants to inflict some sort of payback, revenge. That this is not always possible or even desirable is something which we have to learn as children and probably then again as adults. Some people are more inclined to feel or show anger than others. Some make a virtue of its control. Others are proud of their unwillingness to control it. Martha Nussbaum, a professor of law and ethics at the University of Chicago, argues that anger makes little sense. She says:...(continue) | |||
| Self-driving cars, accidents and the trolley problem | The trolley problem, a thought experiment, is famous for making us face up to difficult choices. What is proposed is that a heavy trolley is coming along a railway track, at speed, in the direction of a set of points. You can decide to leave things as they are and so just let the trolley carry on, in which case it will kill 6 people who are, by chance, tied to the line. Alternatively, you can switch the points so that the trolley goes down a side line instead. This choice would mean that there would be only one person killed, someone who had the misfortune to be tied to that other line. Most people say that they would send the trolley hurtling down the side line. ...(continue) | |||
| Insults, real or imaginary | We live in a world where racism is a real problem for many people, but I'm not convinced that the attempts to combat it by their self-proclaimed champions always make a lot of sense. For example, it seems that, for an English person to put on a sombrero in a university bar to accompany drinking a tequila is a gross insult to the Mexican nation. It diminishes them. It is an example of micro-aggression which is now unacceptable in civilised society – or at least in a sub-group of that society – the academic community. There are other people, however, who consider that taking the Mickey out of a nation or an individual is not always an act of racism....(continue) | |||
| Populism | Why is it that every so often we have the triumph of a Corbyn or a Tsipras, a Marine Le Pen or a Nigel? What is that they offer which mainstream politicians fail to provide? First of all, we should note the obvious fact that the new pretenders are not all of the same political persuasion. The first two are of course on the far left and the other two are far to the right in standard political language. But whether left or right they each have something which resonates with their audiences. But I would suggest however that it is not the political programme which they propound which wins them their popularity. Obviously their words enshrine their political thoughts, such as they are, but It seems to me that these are a secondary factor. The more important one is the nature of the people to whom they are talking. It seems to me that they all think in the same way. They wish to live in a fairy-tale world....(continue) | |||
| Charlie Hebdo | In the English newspapers, there was a near unanimity of opinion after the massacre at the offices of Charlie Hebdo and then the supermarket, Hyper Cacher. Obviously all the journalists thought that there was a need to support the principle of freedom of expression, the right to offend included, and horror at the attack on the Jews in the supermarket simply because they were Jews. But. But there are many questions raised which don't have an easy answer...(continue) | |||
| A Slippery Slope? |
July 2014 ...But what we see in opposition to the Assisted Dying Bill is the deployment of an argument which I have never understood – "we're on a slippery slope" or “one thing inevitably leads to another”. They predict a free for all, with death upon demand...(continue) |
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| Politics & principles and getting elected |
June 2014
This week, we have seen a prime minister acting out of principle, apparently. He has opposed the appointment of Jean-Claude Juncker as the President of the Commission of the European Union. This was not just for immediate political gain within his party, but because he says that Mr Juncker will take Europe in the wrong direction. He has been a part of the European clique of federalists who have wanted to diminish the identity and importance of individual nations and transfer that power to the centre – to Brussels. It seems that David Cameron sees Mr Juncker as wanting to be a powerful supra-national President, rather than a civil servant helping to serve the individual nations by ensuring that Brussels has the minimum of power needed to enable the EU to act as a successful trading bloc...(continue) |
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| The Nasty Party- Mark 2 |
...it seems that now we have another candidate for the title "the Nasty Party": my favourite cartoon party – UKIP. The MEP Godfrey Bloom said the other day: "How we can possibly be giving £1bn a month, when we're in this sort of debt, to Bongo Bongo Land is completely beyond me. To buy Ray-Ban sunglasses, apartments in Paris, Ferraris and all the rest of it that goes with most of the foreign aid. F18s for Pakistan. We need a new squadron of F18s. Who's got the squadrons? Pakistan, where we send the money.". All the journalists criticised him for his use of the pejorative term 'Bongo Bongo Land', to describe the third world. But opinion was divided on the question of continuing to give foreign aid when we ourselves need to borrow so much to continue to survive as a country...(continue) |
| A Petition |
I was waiting for Heather who was looking for a new handbag in a shop in Annecy. I decided not to be involved. Opposite the shop there was a big catholic church. It's an old church which has been renovated recently at our expense – i.e. the rate payers of Annecy. And so I decided to go in and have a quick look at the inside. As usual in French churches it was a bit dark, but in the shadows I saw a leaflet entitled “One of Us”. It continued:
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| Inertia
- conservative and liberal thought |
Newton's
laws of motion tell us that a body will continue
to travel with the same velocity unless acted on
by another force. That force may accelerate it or
slow it down. But the tendency to carry on in a
straight line is, of course, its inertia. Inertia
is not though confined to the realm of physics.
Economics, too, has its own brand of inertia -
goodwill. Goodwill has been defined as the
likelihood that a customer will return to do
business with you again and again. It is, or ought
to be, a very valuable part of any company’s
balance sheet. But like so many aspects of
economics, we are not here looking at some
abstract mathematical notion. We are looking at
the way that we as human beings act. ... (continue) |
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