I ran across this Wikipedia list of what electricity costs in various countries. The difference would be remarkable if I hadn't been preaching on the subject for years. Mostly they fit the trend of the most |Luddite countries being most expensive and those with most resources being cheapest. I assume Chinese "renewable tariff" figures are not close to the normal since Chinese electricity use is 3 times greater, per unit of GDP output than here.
 Global electricity price comparison - US cents/1kWh

Australia 19.67

Belgium 29.06

Brazil 34.18

Canada 10.78

China 16.0 (tariff for renewables - not true grid price)

Denmark 40.38

Dubai 07.62

France 19.39
Germany 36.48

Hungary 23.44

Hong Kong 12.04

Iceland 03.93

Ireland 28.36

Perú 10.44

Russia 09.58
Taiwan 07

UK 21.99

Ukraine 03.05

USA 11.20

  If Hong Kong, a country with no resources and no nuclear power can produce at 12c per KWh nobody can claim any higher cost is inevitable.
 
   It is clear that an international HVDC grid, as advocated previously, would bring competition into a market which shows great signs of the lack of it, considerably reducing prices for most of humanity..

Rates of multiple sclerosis are so "dire" in Scotland that essential foods should be fortified with vitamin D, according to an Oxford academic.
Professor of clinical neurology George Ebers has published a study showing a strong link between the condition and vitamin D deficiency.
He says the Scottish government could face legal action from people who go on to develop MS in future.

  The "legal action" threat is a clever one. It presupposes that government is respo9nsible when it doesn't regulate us enough, which is a slippery slope of an argument. On the other hand in the current atmosphere, mixing equal parts of big state fascism and bureaucratic inaction on all subjects it is probably relatively effective.

    Looking at the governmental responses to this adding vitamin D to Scots' food has gone from the stage
of being a left field idea which only the politically marginalised could ever support (ie me in 2008) to being so politically acceptable that no politician is willing to go on record as opposing it. The argument now is merely that we must never act with anything approaching speed but "would be guided by the Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition which was due to issue new advice on vitamin D in 2014" and "that trials of vitamin D supplements in large populations were needed before the Scottish government could act" which is remarkably similar to their position given to me on my proposal for a monorail at Glasgow airport - that because it hadn't been considered in detail one couldn't say with certainty that it was "so superior" to the (now cancelled) alternative and until such time as this superiority had been proven by detailed examination no such examination could take place. Really.

    Oh well, if progress is glacial and our political classes do everything possible to avoid any decisions, at least, in the vitamin D case there actually is a little progress.

  SpaceX may file with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission as early as next month, said one of the people, who asked not to be identified because the matter is private. The IPO may value the company at more than $1.5 billion,

  Which brings me to some advice Heinlein gave in To Sail Beyond The Sunset given by the main character in her Prudence Penny investment column 

‘THE MOON BELONGS TO EVERYONE - but the first Moonship will belong to Harriman Industries.'

I advised them to hang onto their Prudence Penny portfolio... but to take every other dime they could scrape up and bet it on the success of D. D. Harriman's great new venture, placing a man on the Moon.

From then on ‘Prudence Penny' always had something to say about space travel and Harriman Industries in every column. I freely admitted that space was a long-term investment (and I continued to recommend other investments, all backed by Theodore's predictions) but I kept on pounding away at the notion that untold riches awaited those farsighted investors who got in early in space activities and hung on. Don't buy on margin, don't indulge in profit-taking - buy Harriman stock outright, put it away in your safety deposit box and forget it - your grandchildren will love you.

  Not with a perfect roadmap written out - which is why the first SpaceX launch to the ISS, which when previously scheduled for the beginning of February I said would usher in the commercial space age. It is now scheduled for late April and will do so. The trend is certain but the footsteps variable which is why "Don't buy on margin, don't indulge in profit-taking - buy Harriman stock outright, put it away in your safety deposit box and forget it - your grandchildren will love you."
----------------------------------
  Some folks understand that all that is required is a little encouragement to the free market.

The Virginia General Assembly is soon to consider a bill that will allow an income tax deduction of up to $8,000 (£5,100) for burials in space, WTVR reports.
The tax break for families who decide to commemorate their loved ones by hurling their earthly remains as far away as possible is part of a plan to boost the prospects of the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport at Wallops Island, Virginia.

-------------------------------------
  And a question for American supporters of an X-Prize Foundation:

How would you feel about other countries joining in by providing the Foundation with a proportionate amount calculated by GDP? I suspect Canada would add happily add 6% & that Israel would be a net beneficiary.
If it is that good a deal why should America share it? One reason would be that if it were established by treaty it would be more secure from political fashion - back when NASA was preparing to launch Skylab it came close to being cancelled by the Luddites in Congress but a critical argument stopping this was that the Europeans had signed a treaty buying a module on it.
I would like to think that my own country, Britain, would be willing to switch our space effort (£275 million a year) from the European Space agency (a bureaucracy that makes NASA look mean and lean) to such a Foundation, but have doubts about our political establishment being smart enough to spot a no-brainer.

  There has been another ecofascist hoax on the blogsphere. Someone nominally unknown but stylistically identified as Peter Gleick, who is currently declining to deny it. Andrew Montford reports..

    What happened is that a faked paper was released together with a number of stolen genuine ones. The faked one was written in the subtle manner used in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion fraud.

  As Anthony Watts points out 

Key sentences are rather clumsily written and some make no sense. This contrasts with purposeful language in the other documents. This one sentence in particular has gotten a lot of attention:
"His effort will focus on providing curriculum that shows that the topic of climate change is controversial and uncertain – two key points that are effective at dissuading teachers from teaching science."

I can’t imagine pitching “…dissuading teachers from teaching science.” to a board of directors at a meeting. It is a sure recipe for a public relations nightmare.

  Clumsily written and makes no sense does point to a Green agenda. They might as well have quoted them as saying "Heh, heh this is how we Jews/Sarah Palin/scientific sceptics will run our secret plan to take over the world/abolish black people/take over the world will run.

    Some years ago I was one of only 4 bloggers worldwide who were, for a few hours, taken in by a similar fraud fronted by a Guardian journalist David Thorpe, though it subsequently became clear he hadn't read it. Who, in the ecofascist movement a minor Guardian apparatchik might take orders from remains a mystery to me and to George Moonbat.

     This appears to be wholly unrelated but while one fraud may be exceptional 2 (well there were attempts at fraud against the Oregon Petition) at least allows to show a statistical trend - namely that warming alarmists consistently have no compunction about fraud.

     This is supported by the enthusiasm with which the alarmists in the media pushed it.

     Within an hour of receiving it, with no attempt to contact the Heartland Institute Desmogblog had frontpaged it. 12 hours later, shortly AFTER Heartland had officially announced it was a fraud the BBC were pushing it, so presumably they also didn't check. Their claims have been rewritten in Orwellian tradition on the BBC site but are republished here.

"Denier-gate" is the label being applied in the blogosphere, in case you're interested.

    Incidentally a Google news search shows that the sole use of that term is by him so one assumes he simply made it up and is lying. Who woulda thunk the BBC would lie?

      Compare my behaviour when I found I had been hoaxed, I immediately acknowledged this publicly and followed this up with reporting how the fraud was being reported. At the time i suggested that, having been proven false it was more likely to get reported by the BBC & Guardian than similar real news would and was quickly proven right as they both hired Thorpe to detail the success it clearly wasn't. Clearly nobody honest could suggest that the entire BBC has remotely as much journalistic integrity as I have. Indeed even at the time I pointed to a silly story non-science "news" story the BBC were pushing which had already been proven a fraud (they didn't ever correct that either).

     Thorpe himself, it turned out, had been paid by the government to abuse children by writing a book aimed at them to scare them about catastrophic warming. This is an example of the very bottom of the warming alarmist food chain.

   Scottish Sceptic reprints an interesting article comparing the sums available to sceptics and alarmists.

      The other point the alarmists have been making is that the Heartland Foundation have, over time, received several millions in donations and that this can only mean that they are corruptly in the pay of "Big Oil" (though this is small beer by the standards of many thinktanks let alone the WWF's of the world. Of course, since the econazis themsleves have received many billions to push their story, thereby proving they are thousands of times more corruptly in the pay of the government. That is why every single person at the BBC who is not a wholly corrupt Nazi parasite has publicly pointed out that the BBC gets 33 billion a year from the aforementioned state. Should anybody ever met a single employee of the BBC who is not personally a wholly corrupt, racist, murdering, child raping Nazi animal, with less human decency than a rabid dog I hope they will let me know. Such a unique creature would deserve comment if it existed.

  This is from a British "Hostess Book" published in 1937. It says where the £500 a year, upper middle class, household budget went.

Rent, rates and taxes  - £80 = 16%
Food and small household expenses - £150 = 30%
Heating and lighting - £20 = 4%
Education - £45 = 9%
Insurances - £20 =4%
Clothes = £85 = 17%
Maid's Wages - £30 = 6%
Health (doctor and dentist) - £10 = 2%
Recreation and holidays - £30 = 6%
Miscellaneous (subscriptions, etc.) - £15 = 3%
Savings - £15 = 3%

Ah how things change.

I have, for some time, being trying to find rates figures for for the past without success. I think it would be reasonable to take rates as about £20 of the above and divide rent and taxes at £30 each.

Lets see what that would be in today's money, according to this inflation calculator site. First as a proportion of income and second on retail price equality and then as a proportion of per capita GDP.
Food and small household expenses - £150 = 30% £7,950 retail price index; £23,100 average earnings; £33,200 per capita GDP
Rent, rates and taxes - £80 = 16% £4240; £12,300; £17,700
(Assuming rates £1060; £3,075; £4,400
and Rent/Taxes each £1,590; £4,610; £6,640 )
Heating and lighting - £20 = 4% £1060; £3,075; £4,400
Education - £45 = 9% £2,380; £6,920; £9,960
Insurances - £20 =4% £1060; £3,075; £4,400

Clothes = £85 = 17% £4500; £13,100; £18,800
Maid's Wages - £30 = 6% £1,590; £4,610; £6,640
Health (doctor and dentist) - £10 = 2% £580; £1540; £2,200
Recreation and holidays - £30 = 6% £1,590; £4,610; £6,640

Miscellaneous (subscriptions, etc.) - £15 = 3% £800; £2,300; £3,320
Savings - £15 = 3% £800; £2,300; £3,320



Total £500 = £26,500; £76,900; £111,000 

I doubt if many families spend £23,100 on food and household expenses now.On the other hand you don't have to be upper middle to be paying £4,610 in income tax alone and people on the dole will probably be paying that much in other taxes today.Rates are probably only slightly up, for the sort of expensive house such a family would have but remember that at least 80% of council bills are paid from the rate support grant today.

The average British electricity bill is now £1,300, though it is intended to rise 60% to just over £2000. Again making comparison with the well off household here means that they will probably be paying more as a proportion of income (certainly far more as in RPI terms) than then, though to be fair they will have more electric goods.

Education - private schools can cost less than £6,920 though not for a family with more than one children so it looks like this is more expensive in real terms. Schooling is relatively labour intensive  and certainly more regulated so no surprise.

House insurance probably about the same but car insurance will be up. The major part of car insurance is public liability - however it is worth mentioning that deaths from motor vehicles are lower than in the 1930s even though the number of cars is 10s of times larger. I guess back then the dead and injured didn't sue.

Clothes - I couldn't spend £13,100 on clothes if I wanted to but I'm certain some women could.

Maid's wages. £4,610 would be about £2.30 an hour .Admittedly she will be getting full board on that basis and a modern employer would certainly charge for that. However it gives her £90 a week to spend on herself, or possibly send home (then to the working class neighbourhood, now to Slovakia). The killers are probably PAYE and the numerous regulations and paperwork any employer has to deal with
, which will probably take a lot more time than loading your own washing machine or dishwasher.

Health - OK so taxes are higher but we do have doctors, though in practice not dentists, on the NHS.

A £4610 family holiday would be a very expensive one. Even straight RPI comparison of £1,590 is high. Probably the falling cost of flying has greatly reduced it in real terms as well as improving it - that 1936 holiday was probably in somewhere posh like Bournemouth. People are also more likely to have more than 1 holiday and weekends away nowadays.

Subscriptions etc will also include Sky, AOL & so on.

Most savings will now be through pensions. Nominally national insurance payments  include pension savings.

The biggest proportional change is the massive differential change between average earnings being only 2/3rds of the GDP increase.I assume this is the increase in our tax burden, particularly the "stealth taxes which don't come directly out of ay packets but we do pay for - everything from VAT to corporation tax..

  I was sent this picture by Mike Darwin which I am largely reprinting with his permission, because I very much appreciate the words, based on the description somebody on the Scotsman online gave me.

I thought you might enjoy this pic, "The Lone Wolf" by Wierus-Kowalski.
It has been FORTY years since I, as an 18 year old kid, realised that most of the productive output of civilization is both stolen AND wasted, and yet I see no signs of that understanding ANYWHERE. Your work is the first evidence I've seen that anyone, other than myself, understands this critically important point....

I've thought long and hard on why no one gets this very obvious fact of economics, let alone its implications. I think one reason for this is that the diversion of wealth beyond that required for sustenance and security is difficult to sense. Historically, insurgencies and revolutions occur when the populace experiences any threat to their security and survival such as starvation, loss of civil order or extreme crime (predatory or terrorist) These thus serve as triggering mechanisms that alert the people that there is danger - and elicit action.
Technological civilization has generated unspeakable amounts of wealth relative to anything in prior human experience. There are thus no cultural or inborn biological tools(e.g., hunger) to allow for effective monitoring of predation and the waste of such a vast resource pool. As a consequence, the system is insensitive to theft or waste until it consumes most of the wealth it generates! It is very much the reverse problem that is seen with the obesity epidemic which is a complex, multi-factorial response to the heretofore unprecedented easy availability of almost unlimited quantities of highly addictive calorie dense foods, coupled with huge decreases in the need to take exercise - or indeed, in the need even to move about in the environment!
The theft and waste of the fantastic bounty of wealth generated by the scientific-technological-industrial revolution is, however, far, far more dangerous and deadly than obesity and sloth. Theft and waste on such a grand scale serve to corrupt and degrade the productivity and the pervert the moral direction of the civilization. Unarguably, it the perversion of civilization's moral direction that is the most damaging and deadly aspect of this phenomenon. There is a difference between a civilization preoccupied with understanding and exploring the universe, and one that is preoccupied with war, scandal, celebrity status and short-term hedonism. It is the difference between a civilization that is engaged in opening up the solar system to its peoples, whilst also granting them indefinitely longer lives, and one that is preoccupied with endless wars, religious madness, and Madonna and Lady Gaga.
Mike Darwin

  Looking at Mike's wiki page he seems to have done considerably more than his share to get us into the future that technology can take us to.

   However, so long as we don't establish a world government (which could suppress progress everywhere) I am not merely optimistic but confident thaty progressive societies will ultimately emerge and lead humanity. It is only my personal chauvinism that would prefer they be Scottish, British or Anglospheric.

   Mike I think you will find Jerry Pournelle's Chaos Manor, Al Fin or Next Big Future also understand these issues since I owe much to them.

    I also think that, because of the exchange of ideas the net has made possible and is displayed by such sites, for the first time in my lifetime we are seeing an enormous growth in popular understanding of the restraints government imposes on us. The rise of the Tea Party, Ron Paul and libertarianism generally would have been inconceivable even a decade ago. The rise of UKIP in Britain is more restrained because we and in particular our mainstream media are more controlled but even so it is rising fast.

The police have seized thousands of copies of a magazine with this joke on its back cover because "The consequences of taking no action could have resulted in public-order incidents" as "hundreds of thousands of people" might display them. Spiked has the full story & shows how you can censor absolutely anything in Britain with the most pitiful of excuses.
 Cover of the Sun the day NATO started bombing Yugoslav hospitals to help our very own terrorists in the campaign of mass murder, ethnic cleansing, genocide and the dissection of thousands of living people under our government's authority.

Obviously every single honest official or politician who has not denounced the police for the first bit of censorship is publicly on record as having called for the police to seize every issue of the Sun or any other paper supporting the Nazi atrocities of the Westminster politicians.

But only every single honest one- not the lying racist Nazi obscenities who will use any excuse to change our laws to censor absolutely anything.

Talking of lying Nazi filth, Dame Shirley Williams was on the BBC propaganda show Question Time last week where she said that the Kosovo war had achieved good results. Since the Nazi whore has previously publicly acknowledged that what they achieved was indeed mass murder, ethnic cleansing and the dissection of living people she clearly knows what she considers desirable. That is why every single member of her party, the LibDems, who is other than an obscene subhuman racist Nazi animal morally on a lower level than the guards at Auschwitz, has publicly dissociated themselves from her. But only all of the ones who aren't, so, so far, none.
-------------------------------
  And talking of Nazi filth here is the late Christopher Hitchens, whose death spawned much fawning coverage from the BBC & other "left wing" media, lying about Slobodan Milosevic after our government murdered him.
-------------------------------
How the "Srebrenica Massacre" fraud falls apart the instant you subject it to any examination on the most basic intellectual principle. Which obviously means that no non-Nazi could claim to know anything about it and still treat it seriously. Not a problem for our state propaganda "service" if one assumes everybody at the BBC is a corrupt, lying, racist Nazi. Otherwise inexplicable.
------------------------------
     Vojislav Šešelj still not convicted of anything and still in prison.
In late February 2003, Šešelj surrendered to the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) on the indictment of "eight counts of crimes against humanity and six counts of violations of the laws or customs of war for his alleged participation in a joint criminal enterprise. Since he wasn't part of the government but of the opposition the "joint criminal enterprise" can't actually be doing anything but simply means being a Serb.

"In February 2009, the prosecution had presented 71 witnesses against Šešelj. With seven hours left in the prosecution, his trial was suspended because of alleged witness intimidation. The trial was resumed on 12 January 2009, and Šešelj does not plan to call any witnesses in his defence, stating that there is no need since the prosecution has not presented a single worthy witness. On 24 July 2009, he was sentenced to a further 15 months in custody for disrespecting the court." As of now the "trial" is still not proceeding and the "court"  still has no actual evidence.

  So no case whatsoever, no witnesses, no evidence. The only reason NATO "indicted" him was that he was, at the time, 2 weeks away from winning a democratic election against NATO's hirelings.

  Obviously this is rather more important than the Abu Qatada farce and has, over the years received thousands of times more coverage by every journalist, "newspaper" or state propaganda organisation in Britain, or America that does not consist of wholly corrupt, lying, Nazi animals, less moral than the guards at Auschwitz.

  That would be none of the racist bastards since it is censored with a unanimity Goebbels would have admired..
-----------------------------
And here is James Delingpole on the BBC, speaking in the restrained manner that is his trademark.

The BBC is not a benign organisation. Indeed, it probably bears greater responsibility than any other institution for Britain's cultural, moral, intellectual and economic decline.

-----------------------------
  I hereby call on everybody in the "anti-racist"  movement to personally dissociate themselves from the members of what is legally a "joint criminal conspiracy" of the lying, genocidal organlegging Nazi who make up our main political parties & "journalistic" organisations to or be shown as undeniably wholly dishonest parasitic, racist, Fascist filth themselves. No offence to anybody in the "anti-racist" movement.

 
 On January 9th I asked for some clarification of previous statements made by SEPA in the previous FoI and today, just shortly after the legal limit of 20 working days, the final part of their answer came in.

  This is what I asked 

Your answer on the first point - what is the theoretical maximum amount of radiation present - implies that the MoD have refused to supply data they must have known. The Mod, however, have said they have co-operated with you. I would therefore like to see a copy of the communication from the MoD refusing this reasonable request - assuming it exists.
I would also like to know what "imprecise" estimate you have been using for all this time and what it was based on?

Since SEPA decline to give even an imprecise estimate of how much effort has been put into this does SEPA accept that the average square mile of land, to a depth of 1 foot, would yield 9 tons or uranium and thorium and 1 gram, vastly more than you have actually found - if SEPA were to put enough effort into searching for it. Obviously much more if it were done in any Aberdeen which is the closest thing SEPA have produced to a control area.

  On the first point SEPA have sent me copies of the information they requested (they made it under the Freedom of Information Act ;-) but redacted (ie censored) the MoD's reply. In theory that would mean we would just have to take their word that the MoD had refused to give information about the amount of radioactive material that could possibly be there, thereby breaking the law. Or not depending on the level of trust readers may have in the integrity of anybody at SEPA.

   Fortunately that is not the case because we know precisely what information SEPA ever asked from the MoD in support of their deeply scientific inquiry into this load of bull. They asked, in a letter dated 21/12/10 "Any information that the MoD may hold on radium contamination at at former MoD site,  Dalgety bay, Fife" "I am particularly interested in historic activities that may have gave rise to the contamination eg activities with radium paint, aircraft stationed that were repaired, salvaged or destroyed on site, waste disposal areas etc."

    This is remarkably late to first be asking such questions considering their "investigation" has been goi8ng on for nearly 2 decades. Moreover it is remarkably vague and generalised request, even for a fishing expedition. I would be ashamed to have gave rise to such an unspecific request. Moreoverer, even within that they have managed to exclude any request for information about the per cent of radium in the paint or amount of paint used so it is clearly a lie to suggest that the MoD have refused to answer that question.

   On the second part of the first paragraph - SEPA having said they could not give me a "precise estimate" of the amount of possible radiation exposure & my request that they give the imprecise estimate they would have had to have to even begin any scientific investigation. They replied "SEPA have not used an imprecise estimate".

   So no actual attempt at a scientific investigation and the use of the qualification "precise" was simply a deliberate attempt of obfuscate the fact that they had not done even the most basic investigation.

   SEPA's answer to the question of whether they accept that normal land contains 9 tonnes of uranium and thorium and 1 gram of radium was

"Several of the fragments of radioactive material "particles" recovered at Dalgety Bay over the previous few years are radium sources with no uranium present ... such sources are not natural"

  Which, since it doesn't even attempt to answer the specific question in the FoI, appears to be a breach of the Act. It can also be taken as a de facto admission that my figure is perfectly correct (which it is) and that they amount of radiation which could possibly have been added is far less than trivial.

   However the most interesting thing is this claim to have, over many years, recovered pure radium. Since it is going out under a legal duty, with plenty of time to consider it, this must be accepted as representing the very highest standard of honesty to which SEPA, or any employee thereof ever aspires. It also appears to be a deliberate lie.

     I am replying to them thus.

Dear SEPA,
                    In your letter on case FOI82465 of 6th Feb you made the claim that, over the "past"few years" you have recovered a number of particles that are "are radium sources with no uranium present".

     This seems strange since SEPA's previously first claimed that you had determined that radioactive particles had been identified not by radium but by chemical tests that proved they were paint and that therefore they were assumed to be manmade radium particle. (Byron Tilly BBC Radio Scotland 2/2/2009) While not wishing to dispute that such claims, maintained ever since by SEPA, represent the absolute pinnacle of honesty to which SEPA aspire several FoI's later it became apparent that no such tests had ever proven any such thing and that it was total lie. Obviously had you had evidence that the particles were radium it would have been redundant to attempt to prove they must be by linking them to paint.

     Later SEPA said "They claim to have found ‘radium and its associated daughters’ mixed together" - Dunfermline Press 11th June 2009 also represents the very highest standard of honesty anybody at SEPA ever aspires to. It is also, of course, a total and deliberate lie since the "daughter elements" of radium are the single element radon, which being a gas could not possible be rock. In any case if you had found pure radium there would be no point in having to claim the lesser target of having found impure radium.

      I therefore must ask you under the FoI for the independent chemical or perhaps simply spectrographic evidence of radium in these particles you claim to have. I will not insist on spectrographic evidence that none of the 9 tonnes of uranium and thorium naturally present had reached these bits of soil, which you claim, though this would be a most remarkable event.

     I must also ask you to say whether you have publicly retracted the claims to have found radioactive paint or the non-existent "daughter" elements whose existence also represents the highest standard of honesty SEPA aspires to.

    I must also ask you whether, after spending an estimated £4 million, you can dispute in any factual way the best (admitedly only, since you haven't even tried) calculation of the maximum possible original radiation exposure here - that any radium lost there could not exceed 1/4 of the radium naturally present in a square mile or 1/36 billionth of all the radioactive material.

      Finally I must ask if SEPA's remit has ever or will ever allow you to claim that any report whatsoever from SEPA ever has or ever will represent a higher standard of honesty than the total dishonesty that would be demonstrated by a failure to produce "daughter elements" of radium in solid form; WW2 era paint in the particles or pure radium particles.

  Joseph Friedlander has written a guest post on Next Big Future on why the astonishing scientific breakthroughs seen almost daily and reported on that site, haven't led, at least in the developed world, to fantastic growth rates.

   Spoiler alert - Joe has quoted later in the article from me several times and once from Adam Smith, so it may be argued that the fact that his conclusions are similar to mine is not fully independent support. On the other hand if he gets no factual or logical dispute either, just as I have not had either here or on ThinkScotland, it does tend to confirm that we have got our facts indisputably correct.

    "Tyler Cowen's 'Great Stagnation' (explaining the rather disappointing future we live in compared to projections of where we would be by now) makes (most famously) the ‘we ate the low-hanging fruit’ argument that the easy things have been invented and the high yield moves made, and thus the economy faces the point of diminishing returns--...

   My own understanding is that a number of things are necessary for economic growth and prosperity:
1. Freedom of endeavor (which I define more completely below, but basically an environment in which your every move is not checked in advance by powerful connected parties in government, professional associations, cartel-like groups in the economy, and in which your surplus is not siphoned away by the same parties) An environment in which endless permits are not required to start a business, nor endless bribes or legal maneuvering to keep it open, and in which you are free to make your decisions chiefly with reference to your customers’ needs with an eye to future business. The right of freedom of transaction, association and the right to decline unfavorable relationships and transactions.
2. Cheap energy and transport that is reliably available upon demand without political interference. (In some countries in the vicinity of Europe, for example, car prices are double USA prices (taxes and customs) and gas is $10 a gallon. In the USA many poor people get started salvaging junk with an old truck and driving it to a place they can get money for it. That would not really be possible with the $10 a gallon gas (and restricting the supply of new cars drives the cost of used cars sky high as well)
3. A tolerable administration of justice, taxation (and what ever governmental functions exist) in the area where economic operations are being undertaken
4. A rule of truth and true (rather than politically-dictated) equality of transaction and information, with no game playing. This means no rigged markets, that no actor is above the law, and that no unquestionable ‘high priesthood’ of favored people get to create lying statistics, (ask yourself why the site Shadowstats exists--)) dictate accounting rules that destroy the ability to discover truth by a simple examination of accounts, http://blog.jim.com/economics/economic-decline.html and it means that ONLY those who lose bets pay them, not the general public getting to bail them out.
5. Reasonable land prices. High land prices are not a sign of national wealth, but rather of real capital fleeing productive uses.
6. Capital that pools for easy investment in new ventures, and is not drained by deliberate inflation or games played by government or the favored connected players’ “patronage economy” or sapped by excess circulation. Capital is like blood or sap—produced at a certain rate, and easily drained out by vampire like parties with not as much interest in sustainability as the producing party. Note that restricting access to capital by elaborate SEC type rules makes it much harder to start businesses while apparently not doing much to stop fraud (Enron existed after SEC, Sarbanes Oxley basically stopped new startup and small IPO formation, http://blog.jim.com/economics/sarbanes-oxley.html "

     The Adam Smith quote is

Little else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice: All the rest being brought about by the natural course of things. 
Adam Smith

  with which I, or any but the most unbending libertarian would agree. The latter would remove would the "little else" qualification. I am confident that Smith formed his opinions entirely independently of my blog.

   I also added this comment

Taking the low hanging fruit analogy, technology is an extendable ladder. Before the taming of fire the resources of northern Europe and Asia were out of reach. Currently we have the technology, any time we decide to use it, to mine the asteroids. Where the analogy breaks down is that trees get smaller at the top whereas resources, both geographical and in the ability to manipulate them (silicon chips and flint axes are made of not dissimilar material but one can do more with the former) are much larger at the top.

  I strongly reccomend that anybody interested in a successful human race read the whole thing here.


  Bill Willingham, writer of the Fables comic books also wrote on the Great Stagnation, blaming it on the safety culture (not the same as the problem of overgovernment  but largely a consequence of it). He pointed out some interesting cases of where our technology, mostly computer related, is actually far ahead, even centuries ahead, of where we were promised it would be when we were being promised jetpacks, just not in the big visible stuff.
    It is also a good article and wholly independent of the others here.

  SEPA, while claiming there is a radiation risk at Dalgety Bay, through numerous FoI inquiries (the latest of which have will put up shortly) have gone to great length to not even estimate how much radiation was ever released there. By comparison we know that the average square mile to a depth of 1 foot, or 3rd of a mile to a depth of 3 feet which is a better comparison with the ground SEPA have been examining, contains 3 tonnes of uranium, 6 tonnes of similarly radioactive thorium and, as a consequence of the breakdown of these, 1 gram of radium.

  So if SEPA won't make the estimate of radium that could possibly ever have been dumped there lets try it ourselves.

  Assuming each of the figures on dials, painted in radium paint was 7mm long (1/3rd inch) and 2mm wide.
  That there are 20 figures on each dial and they average twice the size of a single line
  That there were 10 painted dials per aircraft (this may be high since we are dealing with relatively primative WW2 bombers)
  20 aircraft were broken up there

   Then the total area of paint would have been  {7 X2 X 20 X 2 X 10 X 20.) 56,000 square millimeters or 0.056 square metre.

    Commercial paint is advertised as covering 13 metres with a 1 litre can. I litre of water is 1 kg. I assume paint is similar.
    Commercial paint runs at "about 6 to about 13 percent by weight of a pigment paste composition". Since radium is very many times rarer and more expensive than normal dyes I would expect it to make up a much smaller proportion than that, perhaps mixed with other pigment or with some reflective backing, but to calculate the maximum possible amount of radium I will assume the 6%.

     So the weight of radium that could possibly ever have been dumped is { 0.056 X 6% /13 ) 0.00026 kg or 0.26 g. A quarter of the amount of radium to be found there naturally.

    By comparison SEPA already know that the amount of radiation in any street in Aberdeen is more than half as much again as at Dalgety Bay ie over half a gram.

    This is all as nothing compared to the 9 tonnes of uranium and thorium but SEPA have decided to ignore the science and pretend that radiation from radium has some magical effect makingb it more important than the 9 tons of other radioactives 9 BILLION times greater (1kg = 0.001tonne). However even ignoring SEPA's fraud in pretending to ignore 99.99999999% of the radioactives reveals that their scare story is still false.
      
     There was less radium, alone, in that ground, than occurs naturally up the road in Aberdeen.

     The operative word being "was". If the dials were not recycled, or taken by souvnir hunters this paint was still water soluble and over the intervening period it is virtually certain that, on a beach in Fife, it would have got wet and mostly washed away. SEPA's answer to that is that it is possible, though there is no evidence for it, that the dials might have been burnt and that this would, in some undisclosed way, have chemically altered the paint ot make it non-soluble. However if that had happened then obviously some ot the paint would also have been altered into smoke and blown away.

     If SEPA have been telling the truth in their responses to various FoI legal questions they have made absolutely no attempt whatsoever to quantify the alleged maximum possible exposure. In which case this estimate, by default, is the most (indeed only) credible one.

    I will be sending it to SEPA to see if they have any factual dispute of this estimate and any alternative. Or if they have not, if they dispute in any way that their entire scare story is proven false and that their threat to declare the beach "radioactive contamination" is wholly, completely and totally fraudulent and could never, under any circumstances, have been made by any organisation which was not wholly, completely and totally corrupt bureaucratic empire-builders or even any organisation which, while being so corrupt, was not wholly, completely and totally scientifically illiterate.

    I will also be sending this out as a press release to the Scottish and British press and a few politicians. Anybody want to bet on how much, if any, of our media are remotely interested in reporting wholesale fraud by government departments and the deliberate attempt to falsely smear a decent community. Over the next few days we will all find out if any part at all of the MSM is remotely interested in reporting corruption, scaremongering and lies.

    I will look forward to seeing if, after repeatedly answering FoI's by saying they have no estimate of the theoretical maximum exposure, they now produce some alternative to this one.

   So if promoting energy production promotes growth but government redirection of of economic resources is normally a very inefficient way of running an economy how do we go about it.

   Carefully.
 
   The early USSR is an example of doing it no holds barred. Stalin simply confiscated the peasants grain and sold it abroad to buy machine tools, generators etc etc. Now in its way that was successful, in that they did build a growing economy, but it also meant several million peasants starving to death. I think a market orientated approach can achieve the growth without the deaths. I think a market orientated approach would have worked better in the USSR at the time but that wasn't an option because the USSR, being poverty struck and coming out of a civil war, had no spare money to invest; because of western anti-communism wasn't able to borrow internationally; because of Soviet anti-capitalism, wasn't willing to allow investment either by foreigners or natives; and because they had grabbed the assets of both foreigners and natives nobody was going to be silly enough to invest there no matter how good the opportunities. The state having destroyed all other options had to do it itself.

   Fortunately none of this applies to us today (well ok there are some politicians ideologically opposed to sanity). There is no shortage of money in the world economy available for commercial investments. Companies are bulging with money. It is simply a shortage of such investment opportunities, at least in the slow growing Luddite economies of the EU and USA. So my proposals involve working with market incentives rather than against them.

   Even better, from our point of view, is the fact that there is a method of greatly reducing the cost of electricity production and producing it in far greater quantity without any technological breakthrough. That method is reducing the regulatory burden on nuclear power, which makes up most of its cost, and allowing/encouraging the mass production of reactors. It seems certain that wholesale electricity prices in Britain could be reduced by 93% by doing this. Since ours is some of the most expensive electricity in the world the effect elsewhere might be as low as only cutting 75%.

   So what should we do to bring this about.

1 - Set a target. I have previously given the calculations that showed a maximum theoretical sustainable growth rate of 23.8%. To achieve that would obviously require a minimum of that rate of increase in energy usage. In practice one would want more than that and suggest we should be prepared to support a growth rate 1 1/2 times that ie 35%.

   We use an average of 40GW per hour  Call it 50 to cover normal variation.

   So we should be wanting to produce 67.5 (increase of 17.5%) after 1 year.; 90 ((inc 22.5) after 2; 120 (30 inc) in the 3rd; 160GW (inc 40) in the 4th; 215 (55 up) in the 5th; 290GW (75 up) in the 6th; and 390GW (100 up) in the 7th.

  In fact, since it takes some time to build reactors I assume we would not get those increases in the first 3 years. However if a mass production reactor factory is involved able to turn out 100 Gigawatt reactors a year, at a flat rate, the production in years 3,4 & 5 should sufficiently exceed the target to catch up.

  However simply ending the subsidy of windmills would reduce prices immediately and investors, knowing that the increased supply/reduced prices were online, would start investing and growing the economy immediately.

   Up till now the normal assumption has been that it takes 3 years to build a new reactor so with building a factory mass producing them one would expect somewhat longer. However there are 2 alternatives. Firstly an X_prize for early completion and secondly the new Westinghouse SMR which is 1/4 GW but designed for mass production & easy delivery within 18 months - it is 1/4 the size but takes up only just over 1/4 the space of a traditional reactor, 1/4 the cost and presumably could be mass produced 4 times as fast.

   With mass produced reactors costing £800 million per GW retail I would expect such a factory, producing 100 GW a year , would cost not more than £200 billion - I'm assuming Westinghouse are expecting  that of the £80 billion they will make a year in turnover, 1/2 will be marginal profit giving them a 20% return on capital - highly profitable but by no means outstanding for a new product. A massive investment indeed but at 4% of GDP, not much to get an economy growing at 24%. In fact it would be in national surplus in a year if we only got it growing at 4.1%.

    It is also close to what the government insist they want to spend on windmills, for no obvious beneficial effect, so clearly they think we can afford.

   That is assuming government has decided they want the ownership and long term profits of the business If government decided it was happy to keep only about 20|% of ownership it could arrange this simply by providing Westinghouse with land, instant planning permission, the end of all unnecessary regulations, ministerial support in negotiating international loans, a guarantee to support purchasers in adding the power to the grid and a holiday on VAT & other taxes for the first 3 years. This would obviously cost virtually nothing since not collecting taxes on an industry which is currently not intended to be allowed to exist, is not a cost.

    I suspect the optimum would be somewhere between government paying the lot and owning it all and government paying nothing and owning 20%.

  A few other ideas which are less hands on:

• Planning permission to be decided for any power project in a matter of days and to go through unless they are very strong reasons against.
• Tax holidays or rebates for the entire industry so long as it isn't growing faster than the target rate.
• A state guarantee a minimum purchase price for up to the target amount of electricity which they then resell at whatever price the market will bear. This could be expensive if demand is seriously overestimated but it does greatly reduce the business risks of  investing in such expansion. (this idea is derived from a similar proposal for orbital launch cargoes and was used by me in a proposal to encourage the modular housebuilding industry.
• Strong programme of cutting unnecessary nuclear regulations.
• A constitutional right to demand the suspension of any regulation that imposes a heavier cost/safety ratio on one industry than comparable regulations in another. Again something previously advocated. With 5 people having died in Britain from windmills in the last 5 years and only 2, because of reactors, anywhere in the world, over the last 20, while nuclear produces orders of magnitude more power, it cannot honestly be argued that we have a level regulatory field.
• Government providing loans at the normal government borrowing rate.
• An X-Prize for the completion of the first new reactor. Smaller ones for 2nd & so on.
• Improving the national grid so that it can handle as much new power as wanted.
• X-Prize for the first commercial thorium reactor. This is based on what the Saltire prize is supposed to be doing for sea-turbines.
• Building links for an International Grid based on high voltage DC current (HVDC). Once such links are in place we have an export market ready to hand. One of the few things government appears to be able to do cost effectively is to improve transport infrastructure and since facilitating transport of electricity, while technically entirely different, follows the same economic arguments as those for facilitating the transport of lorries, this is something government can properly do.

And a number of X-Prize proposals to encourage other methods of power production not involving nuclear electricity. They may not be immediately competitive but good research always pays off, even in unexpected ways.

• Algal oil. The potential for producing oil grown from algae is virtually unlimited if done from mid ocean plants using nutrient heavy water from the ocean depths. Substantial prizes for early successes in developing this should work.
• The Saltire prize. I don't think it will work because i don't think ocean energy i has the necessary energy density to ever be competitive. But if the prize is properly run it will do no harm and might even prove me wrong. If it doesn't no prize is awarded. This is only part of the "renewable" industry that might prove worthwhile
• X-Prize for improved efficiency of solar power. Solar power units are dropping fast in price along with other electronic goods. At some stage, possibly quite soon, they may become cheaper than the electricity we now use. Of course our current prices are far above what they could be.
• X-Prizes for developments in the field of "conventional" fusion
• X-prizes for development in the field of low energy nuclear reactions (LENR) the more respectable & more accurate name for cold fusion.
• X-prizes for development of solar power satellites.
• Funding nuclear pulse launches - anything that can put 10,000 tons in orbit cheaply in one go can quickly fill the sky with solar power satellites .

  Over decades (or millenia if NASA and ESA do it) solar power satellites can produce more power than we can ever want. The radius of geosynchronous orbit is about 8 times the radius of the Earth. That means that the total energy available is 8^2 at least doubled to cover the light stopped by our atmosphere ie 120) times all the sunlight that reaches the planet's surface. SPS also have the advantage of being unaffected by weather and having few if any moving parts and can thus keep delivering power at around zero cost for at least millenia without repair.

   When energy is available in those quantities it will no longer be a limiting factor in growth. Perhaps something else will be. Perhaps wealth will cease to be an issue when we all have everything wealth can supply.

   And if demonstrating that, here and in part 1 and part 2 doesn't get me a Nobel in Economics nothing will ;-)

    Yesterday, in Part I of this, I discussed a particular paper showing the very close correlation between growth inn energy use, particularly electrical, and in GDP in America.

    However science requires results to be repeatable, particularly difficult with economics. But here are 5 separate examples:

1 - The original - that from 1900 to 1975 American energy use and GDP rose in almost precise lockstep.

2 - The original variant - that after 1975 GDP rose faster than energy use, at a time when energy production was being artificially restrained by the authority of an increasingly anti-technology government. I have previously described how, had political authority not been restraining the building of nuclear power plants and the previous trend continued we would have roughly 2.4 times more electrical capacity than we do. Note that though American growth was faster post 1975 than electricity production it was slower than it had been in the 1950s and 1960s.

3 - China's growth has been almost exactly 10% on average since 1980. As the graph under shows electricity production went up from 240 TWH to 2400 TWH between 1980 and 2005 - a rate of 9.64% annually. That correlation over that period of time is remarkable by any standards. China during this period has become a distinctly free market economy, unforced or restrained by overgovernment.


4 - From 1927 - 37 the Soviet electricity supply grew at an eye watering rate of 23% annually. The economy grew at a rate of around 10% annually, a level at that time almost unheard of in the world. It may be that other energy sources grew less fast but I suspect that the main reasons the economy did not reach 23% annually are the inherent inefficiencies of a command economy, even a newly formed command economy where the bureaucracy is not yet deeply entrenched, and that 23% was an even more astonishingly high target then, when basic technology was not growing as fast as it is today. This is therefore an example of government artificially pushing up the natural market rate of power production (at a horrifying cost in famine) and, again, the GDP growth rate following the power supply rate but not matching 100%.

5 - Tim Worstal not only making a case that electricity use worldwide, as shown by electric light emitted, very closely correlates with GDP but says that it does so better than official, GDP figures do. Not really possible to get a much better correlation than that
----------------------------------------------

   That evidence being accepted,  the conclusion seems inevitable

   That in a free market there is an almost exact correlation between energy use and in particular electricity use (it being the most flexible and high entropy supply of energy yet developed and thus the most useful).

   That government can greatly promote or restrain GDP by promoting or restraining the power supply. This does not exercise a complete one to one correlation, but it does work far more effectively, in both directions, than than the fiscal or even entrepreneurial encouragements or restraints it controls. This is exactly what we would expect if power production is not the sole vehicle of growth but is the predominant one, probably producing around half the total cause of growth. Thus the Soviet economy grew at just under half the rate of electricity growth (probably over half the rate of total power growth)  while, until the last few years the British economy has managed some growth, in good years 2.5% or half the world average, while electricity supply was actually being made to slightly fall.

    And so to part III.

   OK here is a pdf on the complete correlation in America between energy production and GDP from 1900 (before which we don't exactly have a big electricity industry) and 1970 (after which "environmental" regulation severely and artificially depressed power production.

   In economics, being at least as much art as science, let alone engineering, you simply do not expect to find such mathematically precise relationships. From page 20/21

Summary and conclusions


In the `standard’ model a forecast of GDP requires a forecast of labor L, capital stock K and the Solow multiplier – multifactor productivity or technical progress — A(t). We have shown that introducing energy and/or material resource (i.e. exergy) inputs does not significantly improve the explanatory power of traditional production functions. A time-dependent Solow-multiplier is still needed.

However a much better explanation of past economic growth can be obtained by
introducing exergy services (useful work) as a factor of production, in place of exergy inputs.
Exergy services can be equated to exergy inputs multiplied by an overall conversion efficiency
which, of course, corresponds to cumulative technological improvements over time. Based on
this hypothesis economic growth from 1900 to 1975 or so is explained almost perfectly, except for wartime perturbations.

   It then goes on to suggest that the rate of energy production has been less than that of overall growth since about 1975 and suggests that this may be because of improved efficiency or of the oil crisis in 1974 raising prices. Of course if the underlying cause of the diversion of effort to increased efficiency and the underlying cause of oil price hikes (though oil prices have varied widely in the interim and have at times been in real terms significantly lower than in the 1960s) is shortage of energy this would also explain it.

    The question then becomes whether the shortage of energy is because we are hitting peak oil/coal/gas/uranium/thorium/solar power satellite power/cold fusion etc. or whether it is because of political limitations on developing some or even all of these. Looking at that list in full it is obvious that there is no possibility of hitting peaks in some of them ( shale gas, nuclear SPS)  and that in all the others the reserves are still increasing so the limits on energy production and thus national wealth can only be purely political.

    Part II and part III to follow.

  This is a letter out to the entire Scottish press. It has not been published. I will, of course, acknowledge if it does get used but am fairly confident they will all live down to my expectastion of censorship.

Sir,


With Ruth Davidson joining the call for banning the SDL demo how glad we must all be that we live in a country where the leaders of all factions of the ruling party are in agreement about preventing our little minds being warped by this dreadful freedom of speech thing. I have no idea what the SDL actually stand for and since whatever it is won't get reported by any part of the mainstream media and (most unusually in any country west of China) even their website is unavailable, I am being protected from knowing.
However with leaders of all 5 parties in Holyrood combining to say they should not be allowed to express those opinions in a public demonstration, to preserve the innocence and purity of the Scottish people's minds, we do at least know what they stand for.
Apart from proclaiming catastrophic global warming, supporting criminal wars, the world's most expensive 'climate change" regulation & consequent ever higher electricity bills and more recession & getting us to pay 8 times as much for a useless new Forth Bridge than the last one cost, in real terms, that is.
We must be grateful that the old-fashioned chaos of the principles of the Scottish Enlightenment are so alien to the minds of the censors in Holyrood as they labour for the greater good of a free & democratic society so mericfully free from the ravages of differing opinions.

 This is the news item in question.

The Scottish Defence League (SDL) has applied to hold a public procession through Glasgow's streets on February 25.

The group has been branded "neo-Nazis masquerading under the flag of Scotland".
An open letter by SNP MSP Humza Yousaf calling on Glasgow City Council to refuse permission for the march has been signed by cross-party MSPs including Deputy First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, Labour leader Johann Lamont, Conservative leader Ruth Davidson, Liberal Democrat leader Willie Rennie and Green co-convener Patrick Harvie.

Other signatories are human rights lawyer Aamer Anwar, Church of Scotland church and society council convener Reverend Iain Galloway, Dr Salah Beltagui of the Muslim Council of Scotland and the Scottish Council of Jewish Communities
The open letter is also backed by the STUC and trade unions Unison, Unite Scotland, PCS, FDA and CWU.

Mr Yousaf said: "I am a firm believer in free speech, regardless of how unsavoury it may be. However, it is imperative freedom of speech is not at the expense of public safety.
"The SDL must not be given free rein on our streets to peddle their toxic hatred.

    You cannot be a believer in free speech and an opponent of it at the same time. Even those who support fascism should disapprove of lying fascist hypocrits like the SNP's Yousaf. Whatever arguments there may be for censorship there can be no argument for appointing a censor who proves himself to be personally wholly and completely devoid of any trace of personal  honesty. Clearly all those honest politicians and newspapers in Scotland who have any trace of the principles of Scottish enlightenment will publicly concur.

  Over the last few months we have had a lot of propaganda from our state broadcasters and "journalist" flacks about how Putin must have fixed the Russian election to win.

   My personal opinion is that the Russians vote for him because he has produced an economy growing at 7% annually. My further opinion is that at least an equally large majority would vote for a party in Britain that could credibly make the same offer if they were not going to be both prevented from hearing about it by media censors and disenfranchised by the electoral system.
  Lets see what Charles Crawford, Britian's former ambassador to NATO's various starapies in Yugolsavia, very loyal to to the FO line but nonetheless both intelligent and comparatively honest, has to say.

  "I played a modest part in the proceedings as an official international observer accredited to the elections under the auspices of the International Institute for Integration Studies, a Moscow-based grouping close to senior circles of power in Russia. The Institute supports various public conferences around the world, including the strange one I attended in Belgrade in June....
 In Nizhny Novgorod I was given excellent personal briefings by the Deputy Governor and the head of the local elections commission, who showed me one of the new electronic counting machines being used in a number of polling stations across the country....
International election observers have to try to do three things. They need to look at the rules-in-themselves to see whether they make sense and are reasonable and comprehensive. They need to look at how the rules are then applied to real life: are the procedures on paper being properly followed and interpreted? Finally, they need to look at the process as a whole and to see where it fits into the country's political life.
It cannot be said often enough. Russia is an unfathomably huge country with unique issues of command and control (and associated attitudes to governance) going back many centuries. Until the collapse of communism in 1991 there was no tradition of representative democracy. Setting up democratic institutions and practices (and, most important) creating democratic instincts had to be slow.
The arrangements laid down by Russia’s law for conducting elections are technically impressive, albeit detailed to the point of obsession. Russian procedures are better than ours here in the UK in at least three respects:
Votes are counted in the polling station concerned immediately after the polls close, in the presence of party and other observers (ballot boxes are not moved to central counting points with the risk of mischief en route)


No ID, no vote


No postal voting
Moreover, there are streamlined and well monitored arrangements for getting the election results sent fast to Moscow for central compilation. Amidst the complaints about Russia's elections, you don't hear the argument that the counting of the votes as cast has not been fair and accurate...
So what's the problem?
First, there inevitably are a large number of electoral violations of different shapes and sizes. When I wrote my book review for the LSE on Electronic Voting, I was struck at how we all take for granted the procedural complexity of voting. The following (and many more) are all essential:
voters lists compiled and kept up-to-date


secret voting


ballot boxes sealed throughout the process


accurate ballot papers printed and distributed under controlled conditions


identification for voters


meticulous and transparent counting, to make sure that all votes are counted and only votes properly cast have been counted


procedures for disputes as to what a messy mark on a given ballot paper might mean


arrangements for recording the final outcome and storing all ballot papers securely in case of future legal challenges.
At literally every stage of the process in any country there is scope for human error and/or deliberate mischief. Ruling out both 100% is impossible.
Thus we need to be careful in agreeing with those who allege “massive violations “of electoral procedures in Russia or anywhere else. If every polling station in Russia has only one complaint about some or other procedural violation, there will be 96,000 complaints! Massive violations! Yet many of those complaints (including two we heard: one party doing some campaigning on the “day of silence" before the elections and not printing its name on election materials) will have been trivial in themselves and quite irrelevant to the final outcome.
Some violations are deliberate and (as far as local conditions allow) systematic. One frequent claim again in Russia is that ‘captive’ voters in mental illness institutions and the Army were lent on hard to vote for the Putin party. (I used to see this in Britain where people from council run old folks homes were all delivered at once by "carers" who were clearly telling them who to vote for but now that we have postal votes it is much simpler - neil) Unofficial crowd-sourced election monitors Golos have put on the Web all sorts of other examples, some filmed as they happened.
Complicated official arrangements such as running a nationwide election work in good part because they are transparent. Yes, in formal terms Russia does all it needs to do to host international and political party observers. But this time round the blatant official and unofficial pressure put on Golos (including denial of service website attacks and the usual insinuations that foreign support for such organisations was illegitimate or sinister) created a very bad impression.
More generally the post-Communist ruling establishment in Russia has changed the law to make it harder for new political parties to make a breakthrough. (Note: UKIP has views on the subject here in the UK Charles' note not mine.) Smaller parties are not allowed to form a single voting bloc. The rules for forming a national party able to contest national elections are excessively strict and not easy to meet. An earlier, excellent option of including on the ballot paper a vote for “none of the above" has been withdrawn. And so on.
Add to all this the violence suffered by some journalists who try to expose official corruption, unrelenting pro-Putin media coverage and the way far too many Russian media outlets condemn or marginalise any liberal views, and you get the sort of outcome which the OSCE fairly criticises. (would that our media were willing to expose official corruption like the Forth bridge costing 8 times what it should  or the Muir Russell scandal they censor any mention of; would also that our state controlled "balanced" media did not deliberately censor or marginalise any UKIP or other free market opinions - Neil)
But…
Just look at the results. Four parties have made it into the national parliament, after roughly half the Russian population voted:...
Parties representing a more liberal policy-set involving reduced state control and better human rights either did not get into the race or (as in the case of Yavlinsky's Yabloko party) failed dismally once again. A new supposedly centre-right party Right Cause won only 400,000 votes.
Western commentators and some in Russia are claiming these election results show rising dissatisfaction with the performance of Vladimir Putin. They might even be right. But that dissatisfaction is rising from a low and apathetic base, and insofar as it translates into changed voting it boosts tendencies which are even worse. Compared with the other three national/socialist parties which crossed the threshold to enter the Duma, Putin's party look almost normal. Putin remains the favourite to be voted back in as Russia's president in the forthcoming elections next March....
Under current management Russia is getting steadily more prosperous and steadily more pluralistic, albeit in a specific Russian way. Russians en masse have a (for us) startling capacity for putting up with hardships, including overbearing and neurotic state power. They are not bothered by their leaders sneering at foreigners or homosexuals or liberal attitudes. They do want to see progress and get richer, and they hate corruption and get-rich-quick types....
Yet in Russia as in so many other countries the mass of people are getting more powerful vis-a-vis the state. Perhaps the main story of these elections is the way many Russians are now using cheap mobile technology to follow and record what is happening across their vast country - and Vladimir Putin's so far uncertain response."
----------------
   For Charles' background it is obvious that though he is broadly honest his biases are towards the British government "pravda"* yet, even on each of the relatively limited criticisms he makes of Russian democracy it comes out ahead of our own current system.

    Of course you aren't going to see such honesty on the BBC or in any significant part of our MSM.

   Which, as the OSCE's position implies, says more about the fascist parasites running Britain than it ever could about Russia.

Perhaps the British media would be closer to honest and impartial if they were to give as much coverage to the hundreds of EDL protesters in Britain arrested on charges of doing nothing or of being victims of racial attack, than to the very small number of western funded actual Russian rioters arrested. But then one might be drawn to the conclusion that Russia is a much better democracy than Britain.
  
* "Pravda" means truth. However, since it was the name of the main Soviet newspaper, it came to mean "official truth" rather than actual truth. The state controlled British media largely consists of such pravda.

 7 Alternatives to EU membership:
1. Join Nafta
2. Join Efta
3. Join Efta and the EEA

4. Forge closer ties with the BRICS economies
5. Make more of the Commonwealth
6. Consider Socialist alternatives
7. Go a la carte
------------------------------------------
Steve Sailer on "the consistently impressive performance of Northern European Jews—known as “Ashkenazi” Jews" which obviously cannot really exist because race and ethnicity don't exist.
------------------------------------------
Britain from space

------------------------
Taxpayer's Alliance on the NHS

Conclusions p31 "11,749 more deaths


occurred in the UK than would have if the UK had matched the average mortality

amenable to healthcare rates of European peers.

 This is more than four times the total number of deaths from road accidents

in 2008. It is equivalent to over 2,000 more deaths than those related to

alcohol in 2008.

 The UK has caught up with its European peers at a nearly constant rate between

1981 and 2008. In that time there has been a huge increase in spending on

healthcare since 1999. This suggests that money alone has no discernable


effect on mortality rates.
-----------------------------
50 deaths from the German organic farm e coli outbreak. That virtually equals Chernobyl and is 25 times greater than all the deaths from nuclear power production in the last 20 years. This is why every single politician, journalist, newspaper and broadcaster who are not corrupt fascist scaremongers deliberately lying and censoring have devoted as much time to calling for the closing of "organic" farms as  nuclear power stations. But only the one4s that aren't lying fascists.
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The Mercalli Intensity Scale - a more useful measure of earthquakes/tremors than Richter.
--------------------------------

Europe Can Only Envy U.S. Gas Miracle From Sidelines - WSJ - In fact it isn't a miracle it is a technological breakthrough which the EU and UK governments, being Luddite parasites, are preventing working here. The only thing we need envy is that, even under Obama, the US is not run by as dishonest parasitic thieves as we are.

-----------------------------------------
Telomere Tweaks Reverse Aging in Mice
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Computer viruses evolving without human intervention

,,,countries. And of how much the Luddite ecofascists in government are throwing away.And of how effectively we could come back if the politicians would stop hobbling us. After all Britain still has a significantly better rate of referred scientific papers per capita (the only really impartial way of measuring scientific competence) than the USA.

the Falkland War demonstrated that a nation that did not have small computers and people accustomed to using them was not going to have an effective military.

   And examples of what even a small government department with a budget tiny by the standards of the big departments can do when intelligently motivated. The department being America's DARPA, nominally a defence procurement agency but in fact a way of stimulating technological breakthroughs.

      I sent this letter out to numerous newspapers today, regarding the different standards applied to Sir Fred Goodwin and Sir Andrew Muir Russell who, unless he is lying to protect the politicos, is certainly guilty of a deliberate fraud of the Scottish people, worth £400 million. If he is lying he is, of course, still guilty of such fraud but so are a large number of Scotland's top politicians.

       The fact that they got off with this theft obviously encourages even greater thefts over the trams (probably about £1 billion) and the new Forth bridge (£2.3 bn)

       I suspect that our media is indeed so wholly censored that it is impossible to get any mention of frauds far worse than anything Goodwin is accused of anywhere in the MSM even simply in lettercolunns. However I am willing to test that assessment and will let you know if any newspaper feels able to publish anything on the subject that is not government approved.

    On a similar note of hypocrisy watch out for the shennigans we will see over Chris Huhne's forthcoming trial for perverting the course of justice. The facts in this case have been uindisoputable (and indeed not factually disputed even by Huhne) for many months, but already the rest ofr the political nomenklatura are lining up to say what a fine fellow he is.
------------------------------------------------------------
Sir,


Looking at the wide range of politicians enthusing over the decision to remove Sir Fred Goodwin's knighthood it is difficult to avoid seeing hypocrisy. These are the same politicians (and civil servants) who gave him total support on the way up. I personally find Jackie Stewart's public support of Sir Fred infinitely more honourable than the kicking when he is down being given by our "great and good" in politics.
Double standards are clearly evident evident when we compare the treatment of Sir Fred and Sir Andrew Muir Russell, formerly Scotland's chief civil servant. Nobody sensible suggests that Fred had deliberately broken his bank (or indeed could wish to) but Sir Andrew told the "Inquiry" into how £400 million was wasted on the Scottish parliament building, that he had personally concealed the overspend from the politicians in charge & was duly criticised for doing so.
It is true that be doing so he protected the good name of all the politicians involved, since they thus could not have known of the overspend unless they had read newspapers or spoken to any member of the public. Nonetheless Sir Andrew had thereby admitted to a deliberate deception robbing the Scottish people of around £400 million pounds - a morally far worse act than Sir Fred's honest errors.
Obviously every honest politician who supports this treatment of Sir Fred must have spent the last decade publicly calling for the removal of Sir Andrew's knighthood but I must admit no example of such political honesty springs to mind.
Indeed not only has Muir Russell not lost his honours he has been rewarded with a long series of other politically controlled appointments. These include Principal of the University of Glasgow where he attracted much criticism for his handling of the 2006 lecturers' strike, as well as attempts to close the University's Crichton Campus in Dumfries and for receiving pay rises which were much greater than the rate of inflation; also as Chair of the Scottish Judicial appointments Commission, which one might have expected to go to somebody not accused of such activities; and chair of the University of East Anglia's Climategate Enquiry where he managed to avoid taking evidence from sceptics and was thus able to say he had found no evidence of significant wrongdoing.
By doing so he protected the good name of the scientists and politicians promoting catastrophic global warming. However if a serious investigation of government integrity, competence or honesty were desired and the only candidates to run it were Sir Fred and Sir Andrew I know which one I would want to do it.


Neil Craig
Ref - The reference to Muir Rusell taking the blame for having hidden the cost from the innocent little politicians and the criticism of his subsequent record in Glasgow Uni is taken from wikipedia and is part of the public record. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muir_Russell Indeed anecdotally I can confirm that those at the university at the time are likely to express much more unfavourable opinions of his appointment.
I will be interested to see whether

(A) the same standards are used in media coverage of civil servants, supported by government and businessmen niot so supported bit certainly not guilty of deliberate dishonesty or

(B) the British medai are so wholly censored in the government interest that it is impossible to get any reporting at all, even if limited to the letters page which is the last refuge of governmentally unapproved views, of matters matching the stuff put in the headlines.

  Last night C4 News reported on Newt' Gingrich's speech in Florida calling for a serious space programme, run on commercial lines, with the aim of getting to Mars in his second term and without increasing the space budget, indeed taking 10% of the budget of the useless NASA bureaucracy and putting it into X-Prizes.

   My only problem with that is that, since X-prizes work 33 to 100 times better than conventional funding he should make that 80-90%.

   C4's problem was not that. Indeed in a report which consisted largely of snide remarks about how many other Presidents had promised to do something (the massiver difference being that they all promised it would be done after they had retired) they entirely forgot/censored the bit about X-prizes.

   I have yet to see a serious argument against X-prizes form anybody but if anybody has one please let me know. The Washington Post's argument comes from a resident "expert" who says prizes in the $2 billion range don't work, even though smaller ones do. Since there have never been any prizes of that level this is a perfect demonstration of what is required tom be a media "expert" - being willing to say whatever the media want combined with never needing "no steenking facts".

   This is a comment I made on Mark Wadsworth.

If your ambition is limited to air and a limited amount of food, space industrialisation would be pointless.
If infinite amounts of electric power with minimal to zero running costs were desirable you would want solar power satellites. If communication were of interest you would like communications satellites - the amount of information &/or size of the receiver at our end varies inversely with the size of the satellite. If you fancied unlimited supplies of all those "peak" metals we are about to run out of you would want asteroid mining. If you thought more new materials than have ever been constructed before, put together under zero G might produce some with useful properties you would want space industrialisation. If you wanted the human race to ever aspire to its potential you would certainly want this.
Of course that excludes virtually everybody in British politics - hence our problems.
The only thing wrong with this is that Newt is only promising to put 10% of NASA's budget into X-Prizes.

  Next Big Future has an admirable article on the subject with these proposals for future X-Prizes

Prizes that follow up


Have a $60 million prize for a robotic lunar base by 2017.

$300 million prize for more elaborate robotic lunar base by 2018.

$200 million prize for robotic and/or teleoperated base in earth orbit by 2015.

$500 million prize for manned inflatable base at earth orbit by 2016.

$1 billion prize for manned inflatable base at a lagrange point by 2018.

$2 billion prize for manned base on the moon by 2019 (not permanent but weeks at a time.)

$10 billion prize for the permanent manned base by 2020.

Have a lot more sub-prizes for other goals.

  That comes to $14 billion which is the budget we give to NERC (a quango you have never heard of - one of a number existing to raise awareness/lie about global warming) over 16 years. So let anybody who says we can't afford it explain that.