Saturday, June 23, 2007
NEW ECONOMIC LAWS
Fred of Fred on Everything has a good set of economic laws about why countries are rich or otherwise. His writings are always amusing & often perceptive - in this case I think by going for a very serious subject with less personal anecdotes I think it is perceptive enough for somebody at the World Bank to rewrite & get promoted for.
This isn't a rewriting it is merely heavy editing.
This isn't a rewriting it is merely heavy editing.
Suspected Economic Law: The easier it is to bribe a working-stiff cop, the poorer the country.
Suspected Economic Law: Prosperity varies inversely with the time between beginning negotiations to open a factory and getting first product.
Suspected Economic Law: National income is inversely proportional to the amount of trash in the streets.
Suspected Economic law: Per capita income correlates with the average number of minutes by which people miss appointments.
Suspected Economic Law: The more European or East Asian blood, the more money.
That’s Fred on economics - read the full thing
Friday, June 22, 2007
ARE BROWN'S INTENTIONS HONOURABLE
Gordon Brown has invited Nazi Ashdown to join his cabinet (OK I don't like him he was an enthusiastic supporter of ex-Nazis here certainly knew were involved in genocide & perjured himself in the Milosevic "trial"). The question is open how serious this was & how much an attempt to sow dissension with the LudDims.
The latest from Iain Dale is that he is also going to invite Sir Alan Sugar. Iain thinks that is a joke but I think he would be considerably more competent than the average minister.
However there were some other LDs mentioned & I would like to look at them as perhaps being a better way of seeing what qualities he is looking for.
She has been chief executive of the King's Fund "carries out research, policy analysis and development activities, by working independently, in partnerships, and through funding. It also serves as a resource to people working within health, including the National Health Service, offering leadership development, seminars and workshops, an information and library service and conference facilities." & has written a book The Moral State We're In which Amazon describe as
So generally on the hard edge of political correctness. Not radicals but strategic reforming thinkers rather than day to day managers. That could work. I could see them in a leaner & more efficient government. Not libertarian by any standard but not going to heap up one rule on top of another.
Now lets see what he does with Miliband whom I once described as having risen by spouting cliches because he is not equipped to understand what rubbish they are but whom Labour MPs seem to think of as an up & coming you man with ideas.
The latest from Iain Dale is that he is also going to invite Sir Alan Sugar. Iain thinks that is a joke but I think he would be considerably more competent than the average minister.
However there were some other LDs mentioned & I would like to look at them as perhaps being a better way of seeing what qualities he is looking for.
Several other Lib Dem peers were mentioned in the discussions in the context of Cabinet jobs when Mr Brown forms his first administration on Wednesday or Thursday next week.
They include former Rabbi Baroness Julia Neuberger at health, terrorism watchdog Lord Carlile as Attorney General, Lord Leicester and Lord Oakeshott
She has been chief executive of the King's Fund "carries out research, policy analysis and development activities, by working independently, in partnerships, and through funding. It also serves as a resource to people working within health, including the National Health Service, offering leadership development, seminars and workshops, an information and library service and conference facilities." & has written a book The Moral State We're In which Amazon describe as
A study of the moral state of the nation -- the acid test of this being how we treat the weakest among us. Rabbi Julia Neuberger will assess the situation in the UK from her own unique viewpoint, and promises to draw some challenging and thought-provoking conclusions. Just as Will Hutton looked at the political landscape at a turning point in Britain, Rabbi Julia will take the moral temperature of the nation by looking at the ways in which we treat the weakest amongst us. The National Health Service, government pensions and asylum seekers all make daily headlines, and here is a writer with the moral authority and mastery of the necessary information to undertake this timely project. The way we treat the weak and vulnerable members of society has long been an established way to judge how civilised a society is. In this book, Julia will look at the extent to which the elderly are thought a burden, the way we care for the mentally ill, attitudes to asylum seekers, support for ex-offenders as well as the care of children and the future of society in the UK. Her straight-forward approach to what has elsewhere proven highly esoteric, is here written with ease and fluidity and with a style that is highly approachable for those interested in the state of their nation with purely social, rather than academic, motivations. With her uncomplicated but extremely intelligent and candid take on the issues that make daily headlines, and with Julia's high media profile, this book is guaranteed to tap into the state of our nation.but by a negative reviewer
in particular her observation of how excessive bureaucracy continues to prevent people from becoming more willing to help out and lend a hand. She also makes a good point about how the elderly are treated. However, that aside, this reads like a manual for the politically correct. The author assumes that all child abuse takes place within two parent families, thinks everyone in Britain doesn't like children or other cultures and seems to find more sympathy for the perpetrators of crime rather than the victims.So somebody thoughtful without direct governmental experience (though this is almost automatic if going for LibDems), probably overly politically correct but definitely interested in non-bureaucratic reform.
Lord Carlisle, independent monitor of anti-terrorism legislation, has welcomed the four month consultation on the government's new proposals for preventing terrorism.So something close to approval of detention without trial but not a total yes man. Finally Lorrd Oakshott
The peer expressed happiness at a "genuine period of four months consultation" and urged all involved to not "rush to judgement" and "listen to the arguments".
The comments could be taken as an implicit criticism of the rushed manner in which the government has been accused of passing previous counter-terrorist legislation.
But Lord Carlisle also implied his approval of government plans to extend the period in which terrorist suspects can be held without trial.
Oakeshott worked in the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning of Kenya from 1968 to 1970; from 1972 to 1976, he was Special Adviser to the Member of Parliament Roy Jenkins. After this be became director of Warburg Investment Management, a post he held until 1981. Following Oakeshott worked as manager for Courtaulds Pension Fund until 1985Assistant to Roy Jenkins & then a merchant banker.
So generally on the hard edge of political correctness. Not radicals but strategic reforming thinkers rather than day to day managers. That could work. I could see them in a leaner & more efficient government. Not libertarian by any standard but not going to heap up one rule on top of another.
Now lets see what he does with Miliband whom I once described as having risen by spouting cliches because he is not equipped to understand what rubbish they are but whom Labour MPs seem to think of as an up & coming you man with ideas.
Thursday, June 21, 2007
"17,000 CHILDREN A YEAR IN HOSPITAL BECAUSE OF PASSIVE SMOKING"
That is exactly what we were told by Radio Scotland this morning on their 8.30-9.30 sequence this morning. It is, of course, quite obviously a total & deliberate lie. In real life the primary evidence against passive smoking - that it causes 19% more lung cancer than among non-passive smokers (however defined) is within, well within, the error limits of the study that "discovered" it.
So where does it come from. Well the BBC online say
Ash say
What ASH & the BBC have done is to take the figures for children who visit hospital with asthma & claimed that they are all the result of passive smoking. This is clearly a lie & a deliberate lie at that since it is known that asthma rates in young children are rising fast - nobody knows the real reason but the smart money is on them not getting to role in shit when they are babies & thus kickstart their immune systems. It certainly cannot be anything to do with smoking because smoking has been slowly declining over the years & thus cannot be the cause of this fast increasing illness.
I was amazed to hear the BBC stating this 17,000 figure as a fact without the sort of qualifications they usually make (ie scientists say......, or recent research indicates ...... which, since across the entire world there is statistically bound to be a person claiming scientific credentials who says anything allows them to tell any lie).
In light of the report issued yesterday on BBC achieving impartiality the BBC are clearly bound to start tomorrow's feature with a report stating as fact that "the BBC has been proved to have a history of lying about scares including catastrophic global warming & passive smoking for which there is absolutely no evidence. I can think of some scientists who have said such things.
I will forward this to the Beeb & look forward to tomorrows programm
They have just now (5.40PM) made the same claim stating it as fact rather than opinion - I guess this is their answer to this article. This has been based around a conference in Glasgow today & to maintain balance the BBC news interviewed half a dozen participants & supporters & nobody willing to express any doubt about the figure.
UPDATE
I have received this from the Royal College of Physicians. While they are not going to call the BBC & ASH liars it is clear that for the BBC to say that all these are directly caused by passive smoking (inner era infection?) is pure hockum worthy of the Chinese media who at one time proclaimed that the ability of Chinese to pick tea with both hands was thanks to reading the thoughts of Chairman Mao.
Thank you for your email. I can confirm that the figure comes from our 1992 report 'Smoking and the Young'. Since that was published, much more detailed research on the effects of passive smoking on the young has been published, summarised in chapters 2 and 6 of our 2005 report 'Going Smokefree: The medical case for clean air in the home, at work and in public places' - this is publicly available on our website:
http://www.rcplondon.ac.uk/pubs/contents/fe4ab715-2689-4a4a-b8c7-53e80386c893.pdf
The conditions resulting in emergency admission to hospital include lower respiratory tract infections such as bronchitis, pneumonia, and bronchiolitis, asthma, middle ear disease, and impaired olfactory function (p.66). Passive smoking in childhood also increases the risks of certain conditions in adults.
In addition, the recently published BMA Board of Science report 'Breaking the cycle of children's exposure to tobacco smoke' also looks at the effects of passive smoking on children - this is on their website here:
http://www.bma.org.uk/ap.nsf/AttachmentsByTitle/PDFbreakingthecycle/$FILE/Breakingcycle.pdf
Best wishes
In the event the BBC (or Chairman Mao) respond I will let you know.
So where does it come from. Well the BBC online say
Edinburgh University is now undertaking research on the issue, which will published later in the year. Every year more than 17,000 children under the age of five are admitted to hospital in Britain suffering from illnesses related to passive smoking, according to the Royal College of Physicians.which appears worse since it is limited to children under five - think of the proportionately 187,000 children aged 6 to 16 also in hospital.
Ash say
In its report, ‘Smoking and the Young, the Royal College of Physicians, estimates that 17,000 children under the age of five are admitted to hospital every year in the UK with illnesses resulting from passive smoking.[4] A recent study in Hong Kong found that babies living with two or more smokers were 30 per cent more likely to need hospital treatment than those who lived in smoke-free home.(note that that 30% more is another instance of using figures from a small sample which are well within the error limits of any such study - IE meaningless) Unfortunately the Royal College of Physicians site does not mention this alleged report which at least suggests that rather more weight is being put on it by the BBC than its producers believe justified. But follow it up with
Asthma is the most common chronic disease of childhood. There is now compelling evidence that passive smoking is a risk factor for the induction of new cases of asthma& I think we see what is going on.
What ASH & the BBC have done is to take the figures for children who visit hospital with asthma & claimed that they are all the result of passive smoking. This is clearly a lie & a deliberate lie at that since it is known that asthma rates in young children are rising fast - nobody knows the real reason but the smart money is on them not getting to role in shit when they are babies & thus kickstart their immune systems. It certainly cannot be anything to do with smoking because smoking has been slowly declining over the years & thus cannot be the cause of this fast increasing illness.
I was amazed to hear the BBC stating this 17,000 figure as a fact without the sort of qualifications they usually make (ie scientists say......, or recent research indicates ...... which, since across the entire world there is statistically bound to be a person claiming scientific credentials who says anything allows them to tell any lie).
In light of the report issued yesterday on BBC achieving impartiality the BBC are clearly bound to start tomorrow's feature with a report stating as fact that "the BBC has been proved to have a history of lying about scares including catastrophic global warming & passive smoking for which there is absolutely no evidence. I can think of some scientists who have said such things.
I will forward this to the Beeb & look forward to tomorrows programm
They have just now (5.40PM) made the same claim stating it as fact rather than opinion - I guess this is their answer to this article. This has been based around a conference in Glasgow today & to maintain balance the BBC news interviewed half a dozen participants & supporters & nobody willing to express any doubt about the figure.
UPDATE
I have received this from the Royal College of Physicians. While they are not going to call the BBC & ASH liars it is clear that for the BBC to say that all these are directly caused by passive smoking (inner era infection?) is pure hockum worthy of the Chinese media who at one time proclaimed that the ability of Chinese to pick tea with both hands was thanks to reading the thoughts of Chairman Mao.
Thank you for your email. I can confirm that the figure comes from our 1992 report 'Smoking and the Young'. Since that was published, much more detailed research on the effects of passive smoking on the young has been published, summarised in chapters 2 and 6 of our 2005 report 'Going Smokefree: The medical case for clean air in the home, at work and in public places' - this is publicly available on our website:
http://www.rcplondon.ac.uk/pubs/contents/fe4ab715-2689-4a4a-b8c7-53e80386c893.pdf
The conditions resulting in emergency admission to hospital include lower respiratory tract infections such as bronchitis, pneumonia, and bronchiolitis, asthma, middle ear disease, and impaired olfactory function (p.66). Passive smoking in childhood also increases the risks of certain conditions in adults.
In addition, the recently published BMA Board of Science report 'Breaking the cycle of children's exposure to tobacco smoke' also looks at the effects of passive smoking on children - this is on their website here:
http://www.bma.org.uk/ap.nsf/AttachmentsByTitle/PDFbreakingthecycle/$FILE/Breakingcycle.pdf
Best wishes
In the event the BBC (or Chairman Mao) respond I will let you know.
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
TRUST THE BBC TRUST
The BBC Trust have issued a report on BBC bias which is full of anodyne claimed good intentions & a shortage of instructions to actually do anything.This from page 40
During the KLA war they seriously debated both sides of the question whether Milosevic & the Serbs were evil people who ought to be bombed into submission (though that the casualties were 8)% civilian) went unmentioned, against the alternate view that Milosevic & the Serbs were evil & should be destroyed by a ground invasion. The fact that ever body knew a ground invasion from Albania over 5,000 ft high mountains was militarily nonsense was always censored & made the entire "debate" fake. This "debate" completely ignored the primary question of whether our KLA employees were not actually the evil ones (the government had admitted that they not the Serbs were responsible for the majority of racial murders) & therefore of whether it was right to go to war to assist in their genocide. The BBC deliberately censored the primary debate replacing it with a false choice.
It Is also impossible to dismiss this reprinted from Ian Dales Diary as an attempt at impartial reporting on Kosovo"....knew EXACTLY what she intended to say on that evening's news before the day had begun, and I can assure you that odd things were done to achieve it if the day didn't quite offer up the required backdrops. We spent one afternoon looking for a burning building and racing to get there before it went out!!". |Finally on the same subject there is the BBC's deliberate censorship of ANY mention of the genocide of 210 Serbs & Gypsies in the British sector in the suburb of Dragodan under direct UK command authority. Compare this with the US media's eventual reporting of the comparable My Lai massacre in Vietnam, though the German massacre of Lidice received comparable non-coverage under Goebbels. There is no question that this was deliberate censorship of UK government racial genocide. The BBC's Damian Whyte did promise to me that the BBC wouldn't do this & to get back to me with their defence - but still has not done so.
In a different instance BBC Scotland had a formal debate on our energy future between 2 people committed to more windmills & less nuclear power against 2 people committed to 100% windmills & other renewables & zero nuclear. That this did not quite run the full gamut of possible options is obvious.
Compare the language about David Irving "but Holocaust-denial is not a crime in Britain, and it is legitimate every now and then to challenge a maverick in person" with the recent introduction of Boris Berezovsky, a man who openly called for the violent overthrow of a popular democratically elected government as a guest on Question Time - this could hardly be described as "challenging him", particularly in light of Mr Dimbleby's supportive attitude. I suspect, that in the unlikely event of Nick Griffin, whose absence from a programme nominally giving an airing to all viewpoints, he would get such supportive questioning from the BBC.
By comparison where was the supportive reporting of Milosevic when Dr David Owen said, on oath, that he was a man to whom any sort of racism is "anathema". After all the BBC had spent years saying nice things about the Bosnian Moslems & their leader who, if the BBC is to be believed was a "moderate multi-culturalist Moslem" but in fact was a an unrepentant ex-Nazi publicly committed to the genocide of the Christian & Jewish communities.
If the BBC are to achieve their promised "balance" they will have to spend as many years on as many bulletins apologising or at least acknowledging their lies & censorship as they did making the censored or biased statements, both these statements were made in the cause of Ludditism & racism.
ADENDUM A few days ago on BBC radio they were reporting on the fighting in Paleastine between Hamas (currently being treated as the baddies) & Fatah (the goodies!). The interviewer in Britain said that Hamas were thought badly of because the media had been showing video tapes of them throwing people off buildings & we don't see Fatah doing that in the west bank. The person she was interviewing, a local journalist, said that such things were happening there & such videos did exist. He didn't quite say that it was just that the BBC was only going to show such videos from the side they were portraying as the baddies but no other conclusion was possible.
Climate change is another subject where dissenters can be unpopular. There may be now a broad scientific consensus that climate change is definitely happening, and that it is at least predominantly man-made. But the second part of that consensus still has some intelligent and articulate opponents, even if a small minority.IE nobody intelligent denies that climate change (by which they mean warming) is happening now despite the fact that temperatures have marginally declined since 1998The problem is the BBC always puts both sides, but first decides what these 2 particular permissible sides are.
The BBC has held a high-level seminar with some of the best scientific experts, and has come to the view that the weight of evidence no longer justifies equal space being given to the opponents of the consensus which implies they once did give equal space to sceptics like professor Singer - I would be interested to know when that was. Certainly not when Newsnight's reporter was saying they got beyond reporting warming with "due balance".........
dissenters (or even sceptics) will still be heard, as they should, because it is not the BBC’s role to close down this debate. They cannot be simply dismissed as ‘flat-earthers’ or ‘deniers’, who ‘should not be given a platform’ look at the loaded language here or will "deniers" that our government consists of war criminals also be grateful to learn that they are not going to be wholly excluded from the BBC
During the KLA war they seriously debated both sides of the question whether Milosevic & the Serbs were evil people who ought to be bombed into submission (though that the casualties were 8)% civilian) went unmentioned, against the alternate view that Milosevic & the Serbs were evil & should be destroyed by a ground invasion. The fact that ever body knew a ground invasion from Albania over 5,000 ft high mountains was militarily nonsense was always censored & made the entire "debate" fake. This "debate" completely ignored the primary question of whether our KLA employees were not actually the evil ones (the government had admitted that they not the Serbs were responsible for the majority of racial murders) & therefore of whether it was right to go to war to assist in their genocide. The BBC deliberately censored the primary debate replacing it with a false choice.
It Is also impossible to dismiss this reprinted from Ian Dales Diary as an attempt at impartial reporting on Kosovo"....knew EXACTLY what she intended to say on that evening's news before the day had begun, and I can assure you that odd things were done to achieve it if the day didn't quite offer up the required backdrops. We spent one afternoon looking for a burning building and racing to get there before it went out!!". |Finally on the same subject there is the BBC's deliberate censorship of ANY mention of the genocide of 210 Serbs & Gypsies in the British sector in the suburb of Dragodan under direct UK command authority. Compare this with the US media's eventual reporting of the comparable My Lai massacre in Vietnam, though the German massacre of Lidice received comparable non-coverage under Goebbels. There is no question that this was deliberate censorship of UK government racial genocide. The BBC's Damian Whyte did promise to me that the BBC wouldn't do this & to get back to me with their defence - but still has not done so.
In a different instance BBC Scotland had a formal debate on our energy future between 2 people committed to more windmills & less nuclear power against 2 people committed to 100% windmills & other renewables & zero nuclear. That this did not quite run the full gamut of possible options is obvious.
Compare the language about David Irving "but Holocaust-denial is not a crime in Britain, and it is legitimate every now and then to challenge a maverick in person" with the recent introduction of Boris Berezovsky, a man who openly called for the violent overthrow of a popular democratically elected government as a guest on Question Time - this could hardly be described as "challenging him", particularly in light of Mr Dimbleby's supportive attitude. I suspect, that in the unlikely event of Nick Griffin, whose absence from a programme nominally giving an airing to all viewpoints, he would get such supportive questioning from the BBC.
By comparison where was the supportive reporting of Milosevic when Dr David Owen said, on oath, that he was a man to whom any sort of racism is "anathema". After all the BBC had spent years saying nice things about the Bosnian Moslems & their leader who, if the BBC is to be believed was a "moderate multi-culturalist Moslem" but in fact was a an unrepentant ex-Nazi publicly committed to the genocide of the Christian & Jewish communities.
If the BBC are to achieve their promised "balance" they will have to spend as many years on as many bulletins apologising or at least acknowledging their lies & censorship as they did making the censored or biased statements, both these statements were made in the cause of Ludditism & racism.
ADENDUM A few days ago on BBC radio they were reporting on the fighting in Paleastine between Hamas (currently being treated as the baddies) & Fatah (the goodies!). The interviewer in Britain said that Hamas were thought badly of because the media had been showing video tapes of them throwing people off buildings & we don't see Fatah doing that in the west bank. The person she was interviewing, a local journalist, said that such things were happening there & such videos did exist. He didn't quite say that it was just that the BBC was only going to show such videos from the side they were portraying as the baddies but no other conclusion was possible.
BARRY GEORGE APPEAL
Barry George is going to get to go to a second appeal.
The only actual evidence against him was the remains of what was alleged to be a single miroscopic particle alleged to be from a gun in his pocket after policemen, seen though denied to be carrying guns, had handled it & had stored it near guns. The only eyewitness who could be persuaded to identify him said they had only glanced at him from a distance & had initially given a quitye different description.
I have written on this case among others & the way the media pressure the police into getting a cconviction at all costs before.
CRIMINAL CASES REVIEW COMMISSION News Release (CCRC 14/07) issued by TheThat he is getting a second appeal is clear evidence that the judiciary know perfectly well that he is innocent & was only arrested because the media pack required blood to provide an end to the Dando murder story.
Government News Network on 20 June 2007
The Criminal Cases Review Commission today referred the conviction for murder
of Barry George to the Court of Appeal, following a thorough and intensive
review. The referral is based on new evidence which calls into question
the firearms discharge evidence at trial and the significance attached to
that evidence.
Mr George was convicted at the Central Criminal Court on 2 July 2001 of
the murder of Jill Dando and sentenced to life imprisonment. The Court of
Appeal dismissed his appeal against conviction on 29 July 2002.
The only actual evidence against him was the remains of what was alleged to be a single miroscopic particle alleged to be from a gun in his pocket after policemen, seen though denied to be carrying guns, had handled it & had stored it near guns. The only eyewitness who could be persuaded to identify him said they had only glanced at him from a distance & had initially given a quitye different description.
I have written on this case among others & the way the media pressure the police into getting a cconviction at all costs before.
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
BEING PASSED BY CHINA
Nanotechnology and nano-bio-info-cogno converging technologies are becoming more and more the decisive factor of the race between regions and nations to win the future markets and society's wealth and political stability. The development shows that five nations are leading the competition today. China, as one of these five nations, has its unique advantage of high flexibilty, low labour costs, no barriers for new technologies, young and vibrant society, large amount of foreign venture capital, underestimated currency (today about 25 percent undervalue compared with the US Dollar), low taxes, goverment support and a home market with more than 1.3 billion people for applications.
China has a lot of comparative advantages in nanotechnology research:
Early starting in nanotechnology, China is among one of the few countries who has begun to explore nanotechnology since 1990s; a large and highly competent research team, with scientists trained in US, Europe and Japan, Some of which are leaders in their fields worldwide; a research and development network of three national centers and over 20 university institutes in nanotechnology; rich of several important mineral and biological resources which are important for developing nanomaterials; very competent, even leading, in the fields of nanomaterial research and application, tunnel microscopes, single atom operation etc; a huge domestic market, ideal for the growth of enterprises.
GM & Nanothechnology are closely related fields. GM is altering already existing reproducing molecules (ie DNA) while nanotech is starting from scratch.
Although millions of acres have been planted with GM crops & hundreds of millions of people eaten it there is no evidence whatsoever of anybody having suffering medical harm. However the Precautionary Principle which basically asserts that nothing new should ever be done, is strangling any progress here.
"Better 50 years of Europe," trumpeted Lord Tennyson, "than a cycle of Cathay." but that was then.
