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Comments from Scotland on politics, technology & all related matters (ie everything)/"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."Henry Louis Mencken....WARNING - THE LIBERAL DEMOCRATS HAVE DECIDED THAT THIS BLOG IS LIKELY TO BE MISTAKEN FOR AN OFFICIAL PARTY SITE (no really, unanimous decision) I PROMISE IT ISN'T SO ENTER FREELY & OF YOUR OWN WILL

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Friday, June 27, 2014

CAGW Not A Scientific But A Political Issue

Mike Haseler has written on his blog of the reasons why the global warming fraud grew. I think this is interesting enough to put up a long answer but that it must be long enough to post here as well. His full post is here and well worth it. My answers in italics. His assessment of the factors causing growth of the CAGW fraud and opposition is:

  • Climatology was a new discipline, where results took decades to come in. It had had very few of its ideas tested and had not the experience of other subjects of finding cherished theories were eventually disproven. So this new subject not only did not have an established culture, but the culture that was developing did not have the caution that comes from having established theories overturned by the evidence. - Though new, and thus also lacking good long term records, it is worth noting that Hubert Lamb, who founded the CRU, before his retiral, never believed the warming scare.. Climatology was not doing badly till the politicians came along, poured money into it and appointed  their own creatures. My opinion is that the reason "climate science", "social science" and "the science of economics" aren't science is because promotion is determined by what government wants and government wants results that support them rather than ones which are accurate. If promotion in astronomy were political it wouldn't be a science now either.
  • The manned space flights and lunar landings, were one of the first truly global events and created an entirely new perspective for humanity: that of us looking down on our planet as a single entity - The effect of the lunar flights and pictures of Earth were important but the effect of "environmental" scares such as DDT and the Linear No Threshold nuclear radiation one predate the Moon landings. LNT seems to have been faked in 1945. The growth rate in developed countries peaked in 1958/9 which I suggest can only be caused by government/eco parasitism at that point surpassing the increasing rate of technology growth. 
  • Global communication networks meant that the peoples of earth were no longer isolated from each other. - Agreed. perhaps the most scary thing is how close we are to a de facto world government since such a thing would mean there is no outside competition to keep government efficient and non-parasitic.
  • The internet strengthened that sense of global “unity”, but also very importantly, it bypassed traditional communication networks through the press and TV. - The internet was minor in the 1980s when CAGW was made the official "Pravda". It has been irreplaceable un the rise of scepticism as a movement.
  • As a result of the global perspective and globalisation of industry, Global environmental groups grew up, particularly aimed at air pollution and nuclear fears. - As the Indians have demonstrated the importance of western "N"GOs and established wealthy individuals (eg the Club of Rome founders and promoters has been extensive worldwide.
  • But by the late 1990s, air pollution was already being effectively tackled, and the end of the Berlin wall brought an end to the immediate fear of nuclear disaster. As such environmental groups were bereft of any serious threat on which to focus. - Not just "environmental" groups. Here I would like to direct anybody who hasn't read it to Michael Crichton's State of Fear, which, while masquerading as a thriller is a surgical dissection of not just the "environmental" movement but the carious government promoted campaigns designed to keep us scared and obedient. In particular the chapter Oct 13 9.33AM page 536 in the UK edition is simply a lecture on the history of the media promotion of scares - including how it was provably ramped up several fold  within days of the fall of the Berlin Wall when a (possibly) real scare was no longer available. It was not just, or even primarily, "environmental" groups who were bereft of a useful scare, it was all the apparatus of state bureaucracy. It is also likely that the fall of the USSR ("the end of history") removed the competition on government keeping it a bit honest and not wholly parasitic.
  • In the 1990s the internet (largely developed for academia by academia) was developing, and increasingly it allowed international communication between academics. As such subject specific inter-university “communities” of academics developed to replace the older intra-university communication which predominated before easy national and international communications. - Crichton's book, same chapter, develops the theory that, under the state pressure mentioned above, academia gave up its traditional role as a manufacturer of knowledge and became a manufacturer of scare stories. As can be seen our press, almost daily, report some silly new "report" by a "researcher" at some uni on how, having asked 20 students they have found that there is a 10% above average statistical correlation between smoking/getting laid/eating salt/owning a hat and feeling ill/having politically incorrect ideas/expecting to die before 100.  
  • These new international academic communities, being very focussed on their own area of interest, became very insular and inward looking. They found new freedom from the constraints of their old colleagues from other subjects (who hampered them with “traditional” standards) and started defining their own internal community methodologies, working standards, ethical standards with little reference to other subjects. So, those areas without a long history and so without an established culture or established standards of work, were quick to adopt new ideas and those included ideas such as “post normal science” – which rejects many of the traditional foundations of science such as the requirement for the scientific method as the standard for the validity of scientific theories. - Also if you want to be a scientist you can be one in a government approved "new" discipline, and better paid than those stuffy old disciplines - see Mike Hulme's article on how wonderful the Post Normal Science he does is, where all you have to do is say whatever politicians want and how it is able to prove things that, like CAGW could "self evidently" never have been discovered by traditional science. 
  • As environmentalists looked for new issues, some moved into campaigns for anti-globalisation, anti-industrial, and anti-oil (largely from the increase in oil use and the growing number of oil spills). The common thread here was that they were against an industrial economy powered by fossil fuel. - Even more against one powered by nuclear fuel. Essentially simply against anything that would allow human beings to control more energy because, as Mike and others have demonstrated, human progress marches in lockstep with increases (or reductions) in energy use. Inherently those at the top of society are conservative since any change in society can only take them off their perch.
  • From the 1970s-2000 there was a period when recorded temperature appeared to rise sharply. This coincided with the fall of the Berlin wall, the need for environmental groups to find new issues to campaign on, the rise of the internet. - I would say from 1979 - prior to that we had a decade of what appeared to be decline - which was used as a campaign scare story too.
  • When it was recognised global temperatures were rising, the scene was set. The environmentalists rushed into this new issue, encouraged by the academics (with no culture of holding back). - True.
  • The issue of global warming, quickly picked up momentum and unified the academics, environmentalists, and anti-fossil fuelers into one mass global campaign using the new power of the internet. Free from the old gatekeepers of the press, global warming was able to very quickly dominate public discussion. - I maintain that the unifying power was the state. The internet was not a major factor, except perhaps in academia, until well into the 1990s - for example NATO's Yugolsav wars were possible only because there was no internet competition to the state approved media, but this changed for both Iraq and Syria.
  • This created a new culture in which environmentalist felt free to use their access to the establishment press and their new freedom on the internet to engage  repression and “witch hunts” of any who questioned the idea of CO2 induced warming. - Again I think state power was far more important.
  • However, something else had changed. In the past, whilst the press often created such “bandwagon” scares, it was ironically often the huge investigative resources of the wealthy press that finally uncovered the truth and brought the scare to a shuddering end. But this time the scare originated from outside the press and after 2000, the internet began seriously eating into the advertising revenue of newspapers as online advertising began to take over. In the past, if one wanted to sell a house, a car, find out what was on – then there was no choice but to buy a newspaper. Newspapers therefore had huge revenues and could afford to employ many journalists to investigate stories to fill the news sections. After 2000, as the internet took over the newspaper revenues crashed. Serious investigative journalism was now a luxury that could only be afforded on major scandals. As the internet took over, newspapers found themselves unable to do much more than copy and paste press releases without checking. - I'm not sure the press was ever that good but you make a good point that now they cannot afford to even try journalism, rather than just rewriting press releases.
  • Not only did this stop newspapers investigating, it also meant that papers could only afford to print “copy and paste” news. This meant that they focussed on the large institutions whose size guaranteed credibility. This was important as the journalists did not have to waste their limited resources checking up on the source of these stories. Also these institutions were large enough to afford to employ the staff who began doing the journalists job and writing the stories in a  ready-to-print format. - Ok so they don't always much rewrite the press releases. The concentration on large institutuions, almost always officially part of the state or state funded sockpuppets. There are not likely to be more truthful but, because od state power they may be more "credible" - a self reinforcing process. In fact I would say most serious online sources are more reliable than most approved ones, if only because online you can check primary sources. Today even in matters of military intelligence online private sources have a better record of knowing what is going on than the CIA.  
  • Smaller, less credible groups, without the resources of PR staff, failed to get press coverage. This further exacerbated the divide because only the big established organisations could afford to get the press coverage that got establishment funding. This has always been the case.
  • As a result, these new campaign groups had no real alternative. They could not get heard in the traditional print media, and so went online. This established a very sharp division in social communication: On the one side the old press, now reduced to “copy-and-pasting” establishment press releases and stories fed to them. On the other the new “peer-to-peer” internet completely bypassing all the establishment and talking to the public directly. This new internet was a “wild-west” atmosphere where anything went and there was no controls over what was said and whilst a lot was said, much of it lacked authority and credibility. The great thing is that we now do have an online alternative.
  • This is where those opposed to the now establishment orthodoxy of climate now got their message across.

    • UPDATE - Mike's reply
    Neil, a great contribution. I kind of threw that together in a hurry. Yes, the time the internet started to come into play was 1990. Early on it was entirely academic (and military – but we don’t hear about that). What I assume is that environmentalists either through universities or because so many academics are environmentalists, was a very early adopter of the internet. In effect, they saw the internet as a way of bypassing the “oversight” of the press and that is how they campaigned. So, e.g. by the time wikipedia came along the environmentalists were so good at using the internet, that they just took over these websites. Finally, we saw the “old fogeys” like us skeptics starting to use the internet. Now, the internet is possibly dominated by skeptics.
     
    It would be interesting to compare the behaviour of “new” climate departments and old “climatology” type departments. If I’m right, then most of the worst “hot-heads” should be from universities that started up climate departments.
     
    Your point on nuclear power is correct. What I was trying to show is how “CO2″/fossil fuel, became a beacon around which a whole lot of disparate groups could unite. I suppose I should also have added “wind developers” and “oil companies – seeking to look green”.
     
    In terms of government, I tend to view what government & politicians do as a cock-up. I do think many politicians were extremely gullible and thought “being green” was a very cheap way to get votes. There was a time every government minister wanted to be photoed in front of a windmill – because they were falsely led to believe by the wind lobbyists that it was a no-lose way to be portrayed as “caring” and being “with it”.
     
    All politicians were told that wind was:
    a) free
    b) clean
    c) “wanted”
    d) attractive
    e) would create jobs
    f) They were left thinking it was just a few small windmills that no one would notice.
    g) had no drawbacks.
     
    Politicians and civil servants ALMOST ABSOLUTELY NONE OF WHOM ARE ENGINEERS. Were left believing it was total madness not to go all out for wind. And they left themselves be poisoned by the evil wind developers (whose biggest contributors were oil companies) and gullible “greens” into actively excluding anyone who questioned their policy as they were told we were “EVIL OIL-PAID/mad/deniers/witches/bogey men”
    No, the press were never that good. But as the lady from “No Fracking consensus” said to me – these days each journalist needs to get 10 stories out each and every day. They simply do not have the time even to rewrite a badly worded press release. Unless it’s word perfect — in the bin!!
     
    In the past, a journalist would expect to meet local campaign groups (and local campaign groups would be really keen to talk to journalists – as there was almost no other way to get their message to the public). What is more the people in the campaign – would buy the paper to hear the latest news.
     
    These days, if you need to organise a campaign – you go online. The press are an after thought, and less and less people buy newspapers to get updates from these types of campaigns.
     
    For a journalist, these local campaigners are a real nightmare – they really expect the journalist to write the story for them, that takes up a huge chunk of time (From what I saw, about a full man-day, when journalist and photographer are added together). That compares to perhaps 30mins for a professional press release.

    Labels: eco-fascism, global warming, Government parasitism


    // posted by neil craig @ 3:29 pm 170 comments

    Monday, June 23, 2014

    Greenpeace and Other Ecofascist Organisations Destroying 2-3% of India's gdp, Far More Here

         I saw this today regarding India's decision to stop Greenpeace using money raised in developed countries to act to prevent development in India.

    The Indian government last week banned direct foreign funding of local campaign groups, after a report by its Intelligence Bureau warned that organisations funded by Greenpeace and other international institutions were growing throughout the country and "spawning" mass movements which now pose a "significant threat to national economic security."

    The decision was revealed after the Indian government indicated it was ready to further exploit its large coal reserves and asserted its right to increase carbon emissions for economic development. Prakash Javadekar, the environment minister, said India had a "right to grow" and that it could not address climate change until it had eradicated poverty.
     
    According to the Intelligence Bureau report, Greenpeace and other environmentalist groups had stalled the development of new coal mines, challenged its plans for more coal-fired power stations, and delayed other vital infrastructure projects in campaigns which had reduced India's GDP growth by two to three per cent. Much of their work, it said, is funded by the US-based Centre for Media and Democracy, which the report described as a Democratic Party-oriented group supported by liberals like George Soros and "multiple far-left foundations".
     
         2 or 3 per cent a tear is a lot. A country's gdp would be half its potential after 28 years. Maybe, since India HAS been growing at near to China's 10%, they are exaggerating a bit.
     
        But  the influence of "environmental" groups here is far greater. Several times greater. Which suggests we are losing at least 4-6% annual growth.
     
        Here are 2 comments and a reply on Spiked on an article pointing out that, even if there were to turn out to be some truth to the claims of Russian gold funding ecofascists, western government gold is orders of magnitude greater:
     
     neilcraig • 2 hours ago
    What does not get media coverage is the extent to which western governments are funding alarmism. ( of the top 10 "environmental charities" (Greenpeace being, allegedly, the exception) get 70% of their dosh from the EU (the EU originally suggested 50% but they said they could not work with such stingy funding). There are also grants from UK government, councils quangos and "N"GOs. All in all it looks like the eco "charitable" movement is almost entirely funded by western governments to promote scares. Of the dozens of world destroying eco-scares, obviously, not 1 has proven truthful. On the other hand every one has allowed government to enhance its power.
    There may, or may not, be some truth to the attack on Putin (the lack of any actual evidence being produced suggests not) but the unreported but undisputed facts about our own government's totalitarian scaremongering is clearly far more important. The fact that it is being censored simply proves its importance

    gscales631   No one bats an eyelid when renewables companies invest in these protest groups. We almost seem to think that it is expected. They stand to make millions upon millions if fracking goes ahead though so there is still a clear conflict of interest. Now imagine if energy companies invested in protest groups outside wind farms, or Greenpeace HQ.

    I am a geologist. I have drilled about 115 wells including many in the UK. I know for a fact that the protesters mostly know nothing about drilling. It is easy to tell by what they say.

    What bugs me most though is that if an energy company makes a leaflet about fracking it is pretty much guaranteed to be sent to the ASA with a list of things they disagree with. Yet somehow they can stand in the middle of the street with posters and banners or in the middle of town centres with giant canvases saying things to scare people which are not accepted by the majority of scientists and they get away with it time and again.

      •  
        • in this conversation
        ⬇ Drag and drop your images here to upload them. 
        neilcraig  
        • Indeed. Those in power are always conservative in the small c sense since who wants change when you are at the top.
          Without massive government funding, massive support from the state owned BBC and the rest of the government influenced media and perhaps a certain amount from dead billionaires, there would be no Luddite movement. I don't say no environmental movement because it was there, passing Clean Air Acts and the like, long before the ecofascists came along and grabbed their flag. One way to tell real environmentalists is whether they would rather have clean nuclear or polluting coal and landscape destroying windmills.
          Government should be absolutely forbidden to fund scare stories that enhance their power. This is positive feedback and is virtually always destructive.

           I have previously called for that legal ban on state funding of ecofascist (or other) organisations being funded to raise scares which lead to the increase in government power. It is inherently totalitarian as well as being economically destructive.

      Labels: eco-fascism, Government parasitism, Rise of modern fascism


      // posted by neil craig @ 2:46 pm 38 comments

      Saturday, June 21, 2014

      More On Modular Housing

         I have, on a number of occasions, written about how we could have inexpensive, comfortable, high tech housing any time, and anywhere if we were allowed.

         In particular I have written of container homes, built out of shipping containers (10' X 10' X 40') which are widely in use already. Here are some more pictures.




         These have the great advantage that they can be converted easily and thus cheaply and are already available.

         However the real necessity for off site modular housing is simply that it be road transportable to the site.

        So what can legally be road transported - a width of 10' (3m) of 60' (18m) and about 20' (6m) in height (though bridges limit the last).
                  The book Why Construction Is So Backward by Woodhuysen et al contains a drawing of such a home. Being 20" tall means 2 floors. In fact I am sure it would be easy to do a fold up 3rd floor on top because it wouldn't be load bearing.

              18m X 3m by just 2 floors is a home of 108 m.

      British families are living in some of the most cramped conditions in Europe with more than half of homes falling short of minimum modern space standards, new research has found.
       
      The study found the UK has the smallest homes by floor space area of any European country with the average new build property covered just 76sq m compared with almost double that amount of 137sq m in Denmark.


      More here

            3 floors would be 162 m or "module" means you can have 2 together, or as many more as you want.

            Incidentally with that much space, doubled to allow infrastructure and small gardens you get 9,260 per km, with 3 per family that is 28,000 per km. London is 8,382 km which would mean a population of 230 million. That is without multi-storey living like Keetwonen. That is not a population level I would ever aspire to but it does show that there is no sort of space limitation on this.
      Keetwonen student apartments –
             One libertarian option is just to classify these as temporary structures, which they obviously are, and get all building regulators off them.

      http://howtobuildashippingcontainerhome.blogspot.co.nz/

      Labels: Fixing the economy, Government parasitism, Science/technology


      // posted by neil craig @ 2:15 pm 17 comments

      Tuesday, June 10, 2014

      Visit To The World's Fair 2014

         Isaac Asimov wrote this in 1964. I did a look at a similar 1900 article once before.
      My comments in italics:

      By ISAAC ASIMOV

          The New York World's Fair of 1964 is dedicated to "Peace Through Understanding." Its glimpses of the world of tomorrow rule out thermonuclear warfare. And why not? If a thermonuclear war takes place, the future will not be worth discussing. So let the missiles slumber eternally on their pads and let us observe what may come in the nonatomized world of the future.

       What is to come, through the fair's eyes at least, is wonderful. The direction in which man is traveling is viewed with buoyant hope, nowhere more so than at the General Electric pavilion. There the audience whirls through four scenes, each populated by cheerful, lifelike dummies that move and talk with a facility that, inside of a minute and a half, convinces you they are alive.  The scenes, set in or about 1900, 1920, 1940 and 1960, show the advances of electrical appliances and the changes they are bringing to living. I enjoyed it hugely and only regretted that they had not carried the scenes into the future. What will life be like, say, in 2014 A.D., 50 years from now? What will the World's Fair of 2014 be like?  I don't know, but I can guess.  One thought that occurs to me is that men will continue to withdraw from nature in order to create an environment that will suit them better. By 2014, electroluminescent panels will be in common use. Ceilings and walls will glow softly, and in a variety of colors that will change at the touch of a push button.  Windows need be no more than an archaic touch, and even when present will be polarized to block out the harsh sunlight. The degree of opacity of the glass may even be made to alter automatically in accordance with the intensity of the light falling upon it. OK on this he's wrong but the Good Doctor had a phobia that is clearly being reflected
      There is an underground house at the fair which is a sign of the future. if its windows are not polarized, they can nevertheless alter the "scenery" by changes in lighting. Suburban houses underground, with easily controlled temperature, free from the vicissitudes of weather, with air cleaned and light controlled, should be fairly common. At the New York World's Fair of 2014, General Motors' "Futurama" may well display vistas of underground cities complete with light- forced vegetable gardens. The surface, G.M. will argue, will be given over to large-scale agriculture, grazing and parklands, with less space wasted on actual human occupancy. ditto Gadgetry will continue to relieve mankind of tedious jobs. Kitchen units will be devised that will prepare "automeals," heating water and converting it to coffee; toasting bread; frying, poaching or scrambling eggs, grilling bacon, and so on. Breakfasts will be "ordered" the night before to be ready by a specified hour the next morning. Complete lunches and dinners, with the food semiprepared, will be stored in the freezer until ready for processing. I suspect, though, that even in 2014 it will still be advisable to have a small corner in the kitchen unit where the more individual meals can be prepared by hand, especially when company is coming. looking at any supermarket you will see how much of our earing is prepared meals, most of which only need a microwave (or futuristic microwave oven as it would have been called. Yet we still have kitchens, some of which look to posh to use.

      Robots will neither be common nor very good in 2014, but they will be in existence. The I.B.M. exhibit at the present fair has no robots but it is dedicated to computers, which are shown in all their amazing complexity, notably in the task of translating Russian into English. If machines are that smart today, what may not be in the works 50 years hence? It will be such computers, much miniaturized, that will serve as the "brains" of robots. In fact, the I.B.M. building at the 2014 World's Fair may have, as one of its prime exhibits, a robot housemaid*large, clumsy, slow- moving but capable of general picking-up, arranging, cleaning and manipulation of various appliances. It will undoubtedly amuse the fairgoers to scatter debris over the floor in order to see the robot lumberingly remove it and classify it into "throw away" and "set aside." (Robots for gardening work will also have made their appearance.) There are a number of robotic machines (ie not looking like robots, that can do vacuuming. We are, perhaps surprisingly in view of Moore's Law, a few behind in this.

       General Electric at the 2014 World's Fair will be showing 3-D movies of its "Robot of the Future," neat and streamlined, its cleaning appliances built in and performing all tasks briskly. (There will be a three-hour wait in line to see the film, for some things never change.)  saw Tom Cruise in 3d last week. Not much queue. 6 sales booths.


      The appliances of 2014 will have no electric cords, of course, for they will be powered by long- lived batteries running on radioisotopes. The isotopes will not be expensive for they will be by- products of the fission-power plants which, by 2014, will be supplying well over half the power needs of humanity. But once the isotope batteries are used up they will be disposed of only through authorized agents of the manufacturer. Highlighted because the very idea of vacuum cleaners powered by nuclear "waste" is beyond the pale. As indeed is supplying over half our power by nuclear. But it shows what was expected and indeed what is technically feasible (not automatically desirable because longer electric cords is much easier) but feasible. Well demonstrates how backward we have been made by false Luddite scares.


      And experimental fusion-power plant or two will already exist in 2014. (Even today, a small but genuine fusion explosion is demonstrated at frequent intervals in the G.E. exhibit at the 1964 fair.) Large solar-power stations will also be in operation in a number of desert and semi-desert areas -- Arizona, the Negev, Kazakhstan. In the more crowded, but cloudy and smoggy areas, solar power will be less practical. An exhibit at the 2014 fair will show models of power stations in space, collecting sunlight by means of huge parabolic focusing devices and radiating the energy thus collected down to earth. We don't have fusion but it is still promised for ---- years. The cost of solar power cells is dropping fast and is headed to be competitive (though not competitive to the cheap nuclear power we could have,

      The world of 50 years hence will have shrunk further. At the 1964 fair, the G.M. exhibit depicts, among other things, "road-building factories" in the tropics and, closer to home, crowded highways along which long buses move on special central lanes. There is every likelihood that highways at least in the more advanced sections of the world*will have passed their peak in 2014; there will be increasing emphasis on transportation that makes the least possible contact with the surface. There will be aircraft, of course, but even ground travel will increasingly take to the air*a foot or two off the ground. Visitors to the 1964 fair can travel there in an "aquafoil," which lifts itself on four stilts and skims over the water with a minimum of friction. This is surely a stop-gap. By 2014 the four stilts will have been replaced by four jets of compressed air so that the vehicle will make no contact with either liquid or solid surfaces. Hovercraft have proven less cost effective than conventional vehicles. The cost of road building is now overwhelmingly that of the political/bureaucratic costs of being allowed to do it. This gives little incentive for innovation

      Jets of compressed air will also lift land vehicles off the highways, which, among other things, will minimize paving problems. Smooth earth or level lawns will do as well as pavements. Bridges will also be of less importance, since cars will be capable of crossing water on their jets, though local ordinances will discourage the practice.  Much effort will be put into the designing of vehicles with "Robot-brains"*vehicles that can be set for particular destinations and that will then proceed there without interference by the slow reflexes of a human driver. I suspect one of the major attractions of the 2014 fair will be rides on small roboticized cars which will maneuver in crowds at the two-foot level, neatly and automatically avoiding each other. A few years early but only a few. Automated driving systems are being made and how long it takes for them to be available to all depends largely on politics

      For short-range travel, moving sidewalks (with benches on either side, standing room in the center) will be making their appearance in downtown sections. They will be raised above the traffic. Traffic will continue (on several levels in some places) only because all parking will be off-street and because at least 80 per cent of truck deliveries will be to certain fixed centers at the city's rim. Feasible but not done 

      Compressed air tubes will carry goods and materials over local stretches, and the switching devices that will place specific shipments in specific destinations will be one of the city's marvels. Feasible but would require political organisation

      Communications will become sight-sound and you will see as well as hear the person you telephone. The screen can be used not only to see the people you call but also for studying documents and photographs and reading passages from books. Synchronous satellites, hovering in space will make it possible for you to direct-dial any spot on earth, including the weather stations in Antarctica (shown in chill splendor as part of the '64 General Motors exhibit) All available. For that matter, you will be able to reach someone at the moon colonies, concerning which General Motors puts on a display of impressive vehicles (in model form) with large soft tires*intended to negotiate the uneven terrain that may exist on our natural satellite. No Moon colonies, entirely because it has been prevented.

      Any number of simultaneous conversations between earth and moon can be handled by modulated laser beams, which are easy to manipulate in space. On earth, however, laser beams will have to be led through plastic pipes, to avoid material and atmospheric interference. Engineers will still be playing with that problem in 2014. Engineers have long solved that one. Conversations with the moon will be a trifle uncomfortable, but the way, in that 2.5 seconds must elapse between statement and answer (it takes light that long to make the round trip). Similar conversations with Mars will experience a 3.5-minute delay even when Mars is at its closest.  However, by 2014, only unmanned ships will have landed on Mars, though a manned expedition will be in the works and in the 2014 Futurama will show a model of an elaborate Martian colony. As for television, wall screens will have replaced the ordinary set; but transparent cubes will be making their appearance in which three-dimensional viewing will be possible. In fact, one popular exhibit at the 2014 World's Fair will be such a 3-D TV, built life-size, in which ballet performances will be seen. The cube will slowly revolve for viewing from all angles. We have the TVs, we have the occasional robot on Mars, we even have the robots sending TV pictures from Mars.

      One can go on indefinitely in this happy extrapolation, but all is not rosy. As I stood in line waiting to get into the General Electric exhibit at the 1964 fair, I found myself staring at Equitable Life's grim sign blinking out the population of the United States, with the number (over 191,000,000) increasing by 1 every 11 seconds. During the interval which I spent inside the G.E. pavilion, the American population had increased by nearly 300 and the world's population by 6,000.  In 2014, there is every likelihood that the world population will be 6,500,000,000 and the population of the United States will be 350,000,000. Boston-to-Washington, the most crowded area of its size on the earth, will have become a single city with a population of over 40,000,000. US pop about 310 million

      Population pressure will force increasing penetration of desert and polar areas. Most surprising and, in some ways, heartening, 2014 will see a good beginning made in the colonization of the continental shelves. Underwater housing will have its attractions to those who like water sports, and will undoubtedly encourage the more efficient exploitation of ocean resources, both food and mineral. General Motors shows, in its 1964 exhibit, the model of an underwater hotel of what might be called mouth-watering luxury. The 2014 World's Fair will have exhibits showing cities in the deep sea with bathyscaphe liners carrying men and supplies across and into the abyss. Population pressure has not been such a problem because the green revolution means we are producing more food using less land. In turn no underwater living - not even any seateading beyond the experimental level - though that is coming - when the politics is squared

      Ordinary agriculture will keep up with great difficulty and there will be "farms" turning to the more efficient micro-organisms. Processed yeast and algae products will be available in a variety of flavors. The 2014 fair will feature an Algae Bar at which "mock-turkey" and "pseudosteak" will be served. It won't be bad at all (if you can dig up those premium prices), but there will be considerable psychological resistance to such an innovation.  Although technology will still keep up with population through 2014, it will be only through a supreme effort and with but partial success. Not all the world's population will enjoy the gadgety world of the future to the full. A larger portion than today will be deprived and although they may be better off, materially, than today, they will be further behind when compared with the advanced portions of the world. They will have moved backward, relatively. Nope, everywhere except maybe North Korea is much better off (& for NK it is because of politics)

       Nor can technology continue to match population growth if that remains unchecked. Consider Manhattan of 1964, which has a population density of 80,000 per square mile at night and of over 100,000 per square mile during the working day. If the whole earth, including the Sahara, the Himalayan Mountain peaks, Greenland, Antarctica and every square mile of the ocean bottom, to the deepest abyss, were as packed as Manhattan at noon, surely you would agree that no way to support such a population (let alone make it comfortable) was conceivable. In fact, support would fail long before the World-Manhattan was reached.  Well, the earth's population is now about 3,000,000,000 and is doubling every 40 years. If this rate of doubling goes unchecked, then a World-Manhattan is coming in just 500 years. All earth will be a single choked Manhattan by A.D. 2450 and society will collapse long before that!  There are only two general ways of preventing this: (1) raise the death rate; (2) lower the birth rate. Undoubtedly, the world of AD. 2014 will have agreed on the latter method. Indeed, the increasing use of mechanical devices to replace failing hearts and kidneys, and repair stiffening arteries and breaking nerves will have cut the death rate still further and have lifted the life expectancy in some parts of the world to age 85. Fortunately we didn't have to agree on lowering the birth rate. People did it voluntarily and individually. Anywhere women get the choice birth rates are falling.

      There will, therefore, be a worldwide propaganda drive in favor of birth control by rational and humane methods and, by 2014, it will undoubtedly have taken serious effect. The rate of increase of population will have slackened*but, I suspect, not sufficiently.  One of the more serious exhibits at the 2014 World's Fair, accordingly, will be a series of lectures, movies and documentary material at the World Population Control Center (adults only; special showings for teen-agers).  The situation will have been made the more serious by the advances of automation. The world of A.D. 2014 will have few routine jobs that cannot be done better by some machine than by any human being. Mankind will therefore have become largely a race of machine tenders. Schools will have to be oriented in this direction. Part of the General Electric exhibit today consists of a school of the future in which such present realities as closed-circuit TV and programmed tapes aid the teaching process. It is not only the techniques of teaching that will advance, however, but also the subject matter that will change. All the high-school students will be taught the fundamentals of computer technology will become proficient in binary arithmetic and will be trained to perfection in the use of the computer languages that will have developed out of those like the contemporary "Fortran" (from "formula translation"). Automation has gone further than that and computing much easier.

      Even so, mankind will suffer badly from the disease of boredom, a disease spreading more widely each year and growing in intensity. This will have serious mental, emotional and sociological consequences, and I dare say that psychiatry will be far and away the most important medical specialty in 2014. The lucky few who can be involved in creative work of any sort will be the true elite of mankind, for they alone will do more than serve a machine.
      Indeed, the most somber speculation I can make about A.D. 2014 is that in a society of enforced leisure, the most glorious single word in the vocabulary will have become work!       No it hasn't. Though there is disagreement between those who think the government should be providing more jobs and those who think government should be cutting benefits to those who refuse jobs. Surprisingly the number of hours worked hasn't greatly diminished overall - indeed because more wives are working (in jobs less strenuous than housework  once was) the workforce is far larger.
      --------------------------------
         It looks like the bad things generally haven't happened, the technical and even social problems foreseen have been far less than foreseen. And that government telling us what we can't do is a greater problem - indeed the main barrier on human progress.

      Labels: Errata, Government parasitism, Science/technology


      // posted by neil craig @ 2:13 pm 1 comments

      Sunday, June 08, 2014

      When Christopher Booker Takes You As A Source

         The above estimable Christopher Booker has a Telegraph blog discussing Anne Glover's criticism of the EU making scientific policy on political rather than scientific grounds.

         In it I am flattered to say he mentions this blog as his source. I assume he got it from his regular co-writer Dr Richard North of EU Referendum, where I mentioned it a few days ago:

      http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/10882714/EU-science-is-twisted-says-its-top-expert.html

      she launched into a trenchant attack on how the Commission routinely ignores scientific evidence when this contradicts some “political imperative” it has decided on for other reasons, such as pressure from lobby groups. On a whole range of issues, it has then hired reports from lavishly paid consultants to come up with the arguments it needs to support its political agenda.
      There may be little new about this to hardened Brussels-watchers, but what was surprising was its source.
       
      The only thing that rather weakened Prof Glover’s case was pointed out by her fellow-Scot, Neil Craig, who had reported on his blog (A Place To Stand) a speech he heard her make a while back on climate change. On this she had clearly bought the official groupthink line, lock, stock and barrel, explaining how rising CO₂ levels must inexorably lead to warming (even though world temperatures themselves have now managed to ignore this thesis for 17 years).
      She even suggested that global warming might lengthen the hours of daylight in Scotland. When it comes to brushing aside evidence, it seems, this biologist can be just as wonky as those she criticises in Brussels.

         This is the 2nd time something I blogged has been taken up by the Telegraph blogsphere. A few years ago James Delingpole followed up my interpretation of Sir Paul Nurse's BBC lecture on "climate change" as showing him trying to redefine his position as the one the sceptics have always held - that something may be happening but it isn't remotely catastrophic.

      Today (Sunday Telegraph) p26

      Labels: EU, Government parasitism, Media


      // posted by neil craig @ 10:54 am 1 comments

      Wednesday, June 04, 2014

      7/8ths Of Money For Scottish Government Projects Is Disappearing & No MSP Or Civil Servant Will Say Where

       This is a motion Glasgow branch agreed to put into our AGM. However the AGM has been postponed for the far indeterminate future, something I regret as among other things, issues of importance to the party can only be discussed by party members in such informal ways.

      UKIP policy paper #2
      -----------------------------------------------------
      UKIP objects to our government projects costing 8 times what they do elsewhere
      Proposed by Neil Craig Motion wording, suggested by Robert Malyn

        As a matter of law our elected MSPs and councillors are responsible for spending our money prudently but when I asked all 129 MSPs why the new Forth Bridge was so expensive only 2 replied. One said his party (Greens) had opposed it, which was true but not on the grounds of too much pork barrelling but because it wasn't all going to "Green" supporters and a LibDem of my acquaintance who got somebody to look up the record as discussed at the end. This did not result in any specific answer as to why they promote this massive disappearance of our money or where, specifically, it goes.

      Though an FoI reply underlined at the end does, if not giving any explanation of where the money goes, at least explain the formula applied to its going.

      Though the Forth Bridge is the most glaring example of most of the taxpayer's money going walkabout it is not abnormal as to the ratio of disappearing money that our politicians simply refuse to account for. Here are 20 examples:

      1 - New Forth Bridge, costing £2,300 million. Previous bridge cost £19.5 million which, converted for inflation means the new one could have been built for £320 million. To be fair to the SNP the previous Lab/Lib estimate was £4 billion.  [8 times]

      2 - Scottish parliament. Originally offered a fixed price contract for £40 million. Donald Dewar went on air to say "Tam Dalyell is wicked to suggest it will cost 1 penny more than £40 million". Officially costed at £431 million though there may be undisclosed landscaping costs.   [11 times]

      3 - Edinburgh Trams. If, after interest, they come out at less than 1 billion it will be surprising despite them being half the length originally promised. In fact if the cost the same as equivalent Australian examples the full length should have cost no more than £110 million. In the sole legal case on the overruns on what was originally said to be a fixed price contract TIE lost because the court found them responsible for at least 90% of overrun. TIE brought no further cases but enforced gagging clauses in the contract they had competently negotiated.   [9 times]

      4 - Aberdeen bypass. The average European or American road costs £2.4 million per mile. The average Russian costs £6.3 million, but that is said to be a mixture of the survival of Soviet style bureaucracy combined with rampant corruption. The Aberdeen bypass cost £23.3 million per mile.
      [10 times]

      5 - The M74 Glasgow bypass was (like the Olympics) proudly boasted as coming in under budget and on time. This remarkable feat, a mere £692 million)  was achieved by the simple expedient of continuously increasing the budget, which started at £177 million, and extending the completion date.

      £ 138 million per km. By comparison an FoI request showed motorways normally cost £6.8 million per lane per km, less than 1/10th of the price. As the minister in charge, Alex Neil, said "This is clear evidence of our robust and effective management of major projects such as this" and who could disagree.     [10 times]

      6 -  Skye Bridge. As this was a PFI project it was comparatively close to budget. When the Bridge contract was first awarded, the partnership estimated it would cost around £15 million, although delays and design changes required by regulators added significantly to the cost (to around £25 million) though ultimately after several years of politics the PFI contract was bought back for what is estimated to have been an overall cost of £56.8 million.     [4 times]

      7 - Forth Tunnel estimate. This makes the bridge look good, but if we were to assume that was deliberate we would have to accuse John Swinney of lying to parliament and parliamenr being happy to be lied to. He informed them that a Forth Tunnel would cost £6.5 billion, surpassing the world's longest - the 57 km Gothard Tunnel under Switzerland by £300 million. Even worse the Norwegians and Faroese have been cutting hundreds of km of tunnels at about £3 million per km which would make a Forth Tunnel cost under £30 million.
         [ 216 times]

       8 - Interconnector cable - A cable to take windmill electricity from the Hebrides to the mainland, a distance of about 30 km, is to cost £775 million. By comparison the Norwegians laid a 292 km table at a cost of £50m. My letter on this was published by 2 papers though I only learned about the 2nd months later from somebody so impressed that they had kept a copy and sought me out.   [15.5-152 times]

      9 - Shetland tunnel. Another unbuilt one. Shetland council got a quote for a Norwegian style tunnel to the island of Whalsay for £22 million which they redefined as £35 million - just above the cost of a new ferry. Except the ferry price turned out not to include a whole lot of necessary but unnoticed construction costs, taking it up to £53 million. Plus subsidised running costs. Plus improved port facilities. Thus,over the life of the ferry it is likely to cost ratepayers around £300 million. A few days after I wrote of this in the Shetland News the council executive wrote that they expected a decision to be made on a fixed link inside 2 months. That was July 2012.
       [13 times]

      10 - Glasgow's George Square. The council decided to get rid of all the Victorian statues and make it trendy. This was priced at £15 million. Because of a public outcry, to which UKIP Glasgow contributed significantly, this was scrapped and it was decided they would limit the rehab to changing the glaring red tarmac (trendily put in by the council a few years previously) to a traditional shade. However, getting the last laugh at the public, the councillors confirmed that this recolouring, which should have cost £10s of thousands, was going to cost all £15 million allocated.

      Incidentally the adjoining City Chambers were originally built for £580K, equivalent to £50 million now, only 3 times the cost of moving some statues.
        [150 times?]

      11 - Iconic bridge. Glasgow council decided they wanted "a project" so they decided on a footbridge across the Clyde 200 yards from the George IVth bridge which carries road and foot traffic. By going for a trendy design they managed to make it cost £40 million. Again public opinion brought it low (though I was told off in no uncertain terms by the chief LibDem councillor for opposing it - I was then a member of that party & they don't like people thinking for themselves). In the end a compromise was reached - they built a less silly looking but equally unnecessary bridge for £7 million.
      [worthless?]

      12 - Glasgow Airport Rail Link - This was a favoured project of the LabLib coalition. Originally promised at £130 million it inevitably crept up and was cancelled by the SNP government, at a cancellation cost of £40 million, when it had risen to £300-400 million.

            There was and indeed still is an alternative. An overhead automated rail link to Paisley station which has trains to Glasgow every few minutes and the bonus that it would link to Prestwick airport (which could have provided extra business allowing the 2 to work as a hub). The minister, Nicol Stephen, was a LibDem & I (have I mentioned I then thought the party liberal) suggested this. I got back a nice letter from his office promising that they were really interested but that, unfortunately, with no specific offer on the table, they could take it no further but would be really happy if I could come up with one. Buoyed up, even though I wasn't a committee with a £200,000 budget, I contacted ULTRA who were building a (now completed) much more complicated project of that sort at Heathrow Airport. They confirmed to both me and the ministry that this was perfectly feasible and they could contract for £20 million.

            I got a reply that when they said had been mistranslated from English and what they had really meant was that they would never, under any circumstances even look at any idea which had not originated from the heads of the 2 ruling parties.

            When the SNP came to power I contacted a senior minister (now retired) whom I knew and still respect to tell him of the offer. He passed it on the Transport and in due course I got a friendly letter telling me that unfortunately, until there was an official assessment proving this option "so clearly superior" they couldn't justify looking at it and until they had looked and done that assessment there was no such assessment.

            When the project was cancelled I did write to ask if doing the job for £20 million might now be considered clearly superior to doing nothing for £40 m but am still awaiting an answer.
           [20 times if it had been completed]

      13 - Forth Crossing - keep the old bridge. The original justification for the new Forth crossing was that the cables on the previous bridge were in such a poor state of repair that the bridge could not be saved. By the time the Bill was passed for the new one this had changed to - the cables might or might not be repairable but it will take 6 months to find out and anyway the current bridge is to congested to keep working. Six months later the report came in and said that (A) the cables were significantly less corroded than had been originally designed for (B) they needed no replacement and (C) dehumidification equipment could keep them safe essentially indefinitely. I should also point out (D) that materials technology has improved so much over the decades that we could replace the cables with new ones orders of magnitude stronger and not subject to rusting if we wanted.

           The question of congestion, insofar as the problem was on the bridge itself rather than just needing an improvement of approach roads, was solved by an engineer named Tom Minogue.

          He told them that it would be possible to put a new lane down the centre of the existing bridge. By making this tidal - southflowing in the morning rush, northwards in the evening - traffic capacity could be increased by at least 50%. This would cost about £10 million. Not £2,300 million.

          Almost as if our leaders simply wanted an excuse to grab our money and didn't care how untrue the excuse, he was shown the door. To be fair it is conceivable that there was some other credible reason but if so I wish some of the party politicians involved would say what.
         [230 times]
      ----------------------------------------------------


        These are cases I know of. They tend to be the large ones but I understand the cost of repairing potholes, per pothole, has gone way up too, which may explain why they are less repaired than they used to be. However it is not just an assumption that an average of 7/8ths of public construction money put up by the taxpayer goes walkabout.
      I mentioned earlier that one MSP, when prodded had had his assistant look up the records and it turned out that one committee had indeed asked why the new Forth bridge was going to cost so much more than similar bridges across the world (they hadn’t noticed the cost of the old bridge). The answer was that “there may be some geological reason” with which, I regret to say, they were satisfied.

      That is obviously not an actual reason but merely the assertion that there may be some unspecified reason. Nor, obviously, was it truthful since the geology of the Firth of Forth where the previous bridge was built is not different from that of the Forth Estuary where the new one is.

      I pressed on with a number of freedom of Information enquiries and got an answer marginally more responsive than that. I was told that for the intervening 40 years the costs of all public projects had been going up by an average of “4% more than the rate of inflation” for the rest of society. That does indeed mean every project. 4% a year compounded over those years does come out to an 8 fold increase beyond inflation. http://a-place-to-stand.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/scottish-tunnel-project-civil-service.html
        I suspect many of you could tell rumours of many many other cases which never get publicly reported. They are not isolated cases, they are how Scotland’s government works
       Every bridge; every new school; every pothole; every power line; every housing project; everything has an average of 7/8ths of the money unaccountable, not being spent on the necessary work. Billions, many billions of £s every year from the pockets of the people of Scotland. Our elected representatives, who are legally responsible, simply but resolutely refuse to discuss cui bono. Think what infrastructure we could afford if it only cost what it actually costs.

      I did do another FoI asking the obvious question – why is there this 4% annual rise? The answer was “ it might be the rise in oil prices in the early 2000s”. The law that effect follows cause is more basic than anything even Newton discovered so it was clearly impossible that this could be in any way true for the 40 years before then and improbable afterwards since oil price rises affect the real world as much as the governmental one.

      This motion has been deliberately left open to keep it simple and not tie the hands of UKIP elected representatives, when we get there but I hope when we do, and we will, we will be unrelenting in turning over all the rocks of government by the entire cartel of approved parties, and find what crawls out.
       
      Neil Craig
      ###############################################

           This is not entirely a Scottish problem but we do seem to be worse than average. London's Crossrail, which has not much more than 26 miles of tunnel is costed at 16 bn. Richard Rogers is on record as saying that of the £670 million the Millenium Dome cost only £46 million was spent building it. Our railways are far more expensive than continental ones because the infrastructure building and repair costs many times more. There are 2 possible explanations - incompetence and corruption. If there are more perhaps someone could say. Either way Parliament should be able to debate it and provide an answer. This is, historically, what they exist for.


       

      Labels: Government parasitism, Scottish politics, UKIP Policy papers


      // posted by neil craig @ 6:10 pm 3 comments

      Tuesday, June 03, 2014

      EU Chief Science Advisor - Bosses Say "Find me the evidence"

         Anne Glover, the EU's Chief Science Advisor has denounced the EU's rulers in a job destroying manner. Via Bishop Hill & EU Referendum.
      “Let’s imagine a Commissioner over the weekend thinks, ‘Let’s ban the use of credit cards in the EU because credit cards lead to personal debt’. So that commissioner will come in on Monday morning and say to his or her Director General, ‘Find me the evidence that demonstrates that this is the case.’”


          Quite remarkable since she is not some sort of competent, dedicated scientist. quite the opposite as I have previously described:

          Here is a review of a lecture on CAGW she did some years ago when she was still Scotland's Chief Science Advisor. http://a-place-to-stand.blogspot.co.uk/2010/03/scottish-governments-chief-science.html  Her assertion that warming would increase day length seemed to show a remarkable ignorance of science but it was clear the lecture she was giving was one used for her main job - going round schools frightening children with the CAGW scare.

          That she is less able to thole the eurocrats than 10 year old schoolkids, and has presumably decided to get them to fire her, is interesting.
      ---------------------------------
            I did invite her to answer this depiction apparent ignorance of orbital mechanics but she decided not to.
         

      Labels: eco-fascism, EU, Government parasitism


      // posted by neil craig @ 12:04 pm 0 comments

      Tuesday, May 20, 2014

      We Should Be 4 Times Better Off

          This graph was put up by Tim Worstall from an article in the New Yorker.

         He was making a point about rates of return being higher when property rights are insecure, as they once were, and are looking like becoming again.

         However I was interested in the yellow line which fits in with stuff I have been saying before about growth in western countries having peaked in 1959 and that, by all the normal rules of statistics we should expect such curves to rise at an increasing rate, as this did till the 1950s and then the rate of growth to tale off. If that yellow curve had continued at the rate of acceleration form 1950-2012 as up to 1950 we would have an average growth rate of 7-8% now.

           The further decline in growth after 2012 - is obviously not actual but only what the miserabilist who did it is extrapolating. Nonetheless valuable since it shows what is intended if we allow it.

          When you have different research coming to similar endpoints you can be fairly sure you are onto something. In this case that it is only because of the Luddism, primarily but not exclusively in suppressing the very cheap electricity we should all have now, and the growing degree of state regulatory parasitism that is responsible. Technologically we could have that 7-8% annual growth at any time. Actually probably quite a bit more for some years as we catch up on using technology that has been suppressed. 60 years of growth averaging 3.5% when we could have had 6% means the entire planet could have been 4 times better off by now.
      chart-06.jpg

      Labels: eco-fascism, economics, Government parasitism


      // posted by neil craig @ 3:20 pm 0 comments

      Friday, May 02, 2014

      Links - Mostly State Parasitism & Fascism

        James Delingpole is now daily on Breibart (online news provider) rather than the Telegraph blogsite. Worth your almost daily reading. Another nail in the coffin of the MSM.
      ================================
         Dan Hannan on why we have a liberal society (& can lose it):

      The real question is not why some places are corrupt but why some aren’t. How did we create a society where, for want of more monstrous malfeasances, we have the luxury of fulminating over an MP claiming a bath plug on expenses?

      The short answer is that we evolved law-based institutions which, uniquely, reward production over predation. Property rights, enforceable contracts, personal liberty and representative government: these things make it harder to live by extortion. In an open market, unlike in rival systems, you prosper by offering a service which other people want to buy, not by sucking up to emperors or commissars or high priests. That’s not to say that free enterprise is perfect, simply that it works better than any alternative yet tried.

      Constitutional freedom is rare outside Europe and the Anglosphere; rare, too, outside nation-states. Representative government and the rule of law operate best when everybody – or almost everybody – accepts the legitimacy of the state. When a significant body of the population wants to belong to a different country, or is otherwise alienated from the official institutions, you get Ukraine or Syria or Congo.
      ===================================
        An actual tape recording of the Irish bankers deliberately boasting of lying to their government that only a small bailout would be required so that they would get them on the hook for more subsequent payments until, as happened, they virtually bankrupted the country.

        Of course, while Britain also bailed out bankers to a far greater extent than initially said was needed you wouldn't catch the British government falling for something like that.

       See also initial budget promises for HS2, Scottish parliament, trams, windmills, the EU, Olympics, etc. etc.
      ================================
      A rather good letter in the Scotsman (not mine) on the falsity of radiation scares.
      =================================
      Renfrewshire SNP councillors and the "Health & Safety" Mafia clearly neither have real jobs to do if they can spend their days fighting over the flying flags.

      "Fuming SNP councillors hit out yesterday after they were ordered to remove the flag of Scotland from their office...because it breaks health and safety rules.

      The Nationalists had proudly displayed the Saltire in the window of their base at Renfrewshire Council’s HQ in Cotton Street, Paisley, but were left stunned when officials told them to take it down.....

      “As you will be aware, council offices operate a clear office and clean desk policy to promote good information management/security, good health and safety practice and efficient and effective cleaning and maintenance of the buildings, windows and general office environment.
      “Part of this is to keep the office windows clear and employees, trades unions, political groups and organisations who are tenants of the council should all be aware of this.”

         To be fair to the SNP are clearly, while not doing anything useful, doing no harm and the H&S stated reason, that they need to be able to escape through windows, is clearly a total 100% deliberate lie being promoted for purely totalitarian political reasons.

         It is, of course, conceivable, that there are parts of the H&S industry which are not 100% corrupt totalitarian parasites using H&S as a false excuse for their makework busybodying. In which case all of them will have publicly dissociated themselves from these parasites. Any bets? 
      =================================
        One of the "Non"-Government Organisations, paid by the US Government, puts up this interesting list of the very small portion of the $5 bn the US has admitted they spent supporting democracy in Ukraine by paying people to overthrow the elected government.

          I can see how $35K would "facilitate cooperation between NGOs & the media". It does here too.
      =================================
          The media (well state owned BBC) giving prominence to the Green Party NGO calling for a purge of anybody in government not committed to the catastrophic warming fraud.

          In their cooperative manner the BBC promote this totalitarian demand and manage to avoid any mention of how Stalinist it is.

         Note that this is only the Greens of England and Wales. It would be nice to think that our local lot are in some way less totalitarian but suspect that it is simply because the SNP, who have been busy politicising our "civil service" have already done all the Stalinist purging without having to be prodded.
      =================================

      Environment Agency – a large pension fund with more than 11,000 staff attached

      By johnredwood
      ===================================
      Book Review of the CIA. I am not saying that the corruption, dishonesty and lack of any concern for the defence interests of the country they are nominally protecting is unique to the CIA. I think, per Pournelle's Iron Law - that government departments are run to build empires not to carry out their nominal function - must apply with even greater strength to ordinary parts of the bureaucracy that do not directly impinge on national security or anything important.
       
      If the CIA are so corrupt we must assume the Departments of Uselessness are much moreso.

      "Although the book is not what the advertising promises, it really does provide an accurate picture of life inside CIA. Its exclusive focus on how bureaucrats jostle and feel about one another is entirely consistent with my eight years of experience dealing with CIA’s top levels on the U.S. Senate’s behalf. The substance of any matter notwithstanding, it always came down to which bureaucrat would gain or lose what. The bureaucrats’ personal interests come first. The welfare and reputation of the agency come second. Everything else is incidental. This book seems to describe a collective human ice cream cone licking itself."
      ===================================
      AGENDA 21 - UN proposals to wipe out 90% of us.

      All massive bureaucracies have some committed loonies and I wouldn't be entirely certain that everybody in the UN and the governments that pay it feel the same.

      On the other hand not everybody in the German government wanted to exterminate all the Jews (Goering actively protected Jewish pilots). All that is required is an enthusiastic minority and a majority unwilling to make the, relatively easy, effort of  opposing them.

      Labels: Government parasitism, links, Rise of modern fascism


      // posted by neil craig @ 3:27 pm 0 comments

      Friday, March 28, 2014

      More Statistical Proof - Recession Is Caused By State Parasitism & Ecofascism - We Should & Could Be 4 To 16 Times Better Off


          This graph was put up by Tim Worstall from an article in the New Yorker.
      chart-06.jpg


          Ignore the original article - it is about some economist complaining about rising inequality. Inequality is less important than overall growth unless you are one of those people who would rather have us all poorer than all of us better off, but some betterer off than others in which case you are motivated by hate and jealousy rather caring about society.

          Also ignore the purple line. It is about long term interest rates which is simply about how the wealth is divided up. The rate of interest is probably more a function of the reliability of the banking system before and after 1820. Also ignore the extension of the line beyond 2012 - that is just evidence free pushing of a political line.

          The important bit is the yellow line, which shows the long term growth rate in what is described as the world but I suspect is just the developed western world.

           This fits well with a previous graph on a previous post I presented. Indeed this post is pretty much a repetition of that one - but it is important enough to do so.

           Both graphs show that western growth rates have been going up throughout recorded history up until 1958.
      And have been falling since.

          Now that just doesn't happen without very good reason.
          It isn't inevitable because as the 2nd graph shows, growth outside the developed west has not been affected, indeed is faster than at any time.
          It isn't because we have reached the end of technological progress because, measured by things like Moore's Law or increases in strength of materials, progress is far faster than at any time inn human history.

          Rising graphs like that are indicative of being at the foot of an S curve - human wealth should be increasing not just at the 1913-1950 rate (which would mean 6% annual growth now - pretty much what the non-EU/US countries are doing) but well above it - a bit speculative but at least 12% seems likely looking at the increasing of the slope between 1820-1913 & 1913-1950. Had we had growth of 6% average over the last 62 years we would all be 4 times better off. If we had had growth starting at 3% and rising to 12% (ie averaging 4.5% ahead of reality) we would ALL average 16 times better off.

         The only reason we know of to explain that is the growth in state regulatory parasitism. I have also noted the same tailing off of growth in nuclear power where, had the pre-1980 trend continued we would now all have at least 4 times as much power and be 4 times wealthier. Government parasitism has banned cheap power; it has banned cheap GM foods, it has destroyed at least 75% of the economy we could have had. And so on.

         As I say a bit of a repetition of what I have said before but every bit of extra evidence supports the position.

          We could get back on the natural growth rate at any time. Indeed I think that government parasitism must have repressed our growth and if released, like a spring, we would expect it to go well beyond the average 12% rate for some years. Which in turn supports my 24 point programme out of recession plan which suggested a maximum of 23%.
      --------------------------------------------
            In a more modest vein John Redwood says that with cheaper power (the lack of which he wrongly blames on the EU) our industry would be 15% better off and creating half a million jobs. I have a comment.
          

      Labels: eco-fascism, economics, Government parasitism


      // posted by neil craig @ 4:37 pm 0 comments

      Monday, March 24, 2014

      How Science Fiction Introduced Me to Freedom

          Brian Monteith has put this up on ThinkScotland and also, with the speech edited as it uses a shorter format, on the Free Society blog Please put any comments there.


      WHEN I AND THE WORLD were much younger than now and both of us thought we were more “leftist” than today I read a book, set on the Moon, about a revolution where the very lowest in society rise up and overthrow the corrupt imperialist running dogs of the ruling class. By throwing rocks at them.

      With a fair bit of liberated sex thrown in, which played to one of my interests at the time, and an awful lot of slang dialogue, which was not such an interest, it definitely established itself as hip countercultural stuff.

      The book is The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein (whose picture on the cover astonishingly showed him with a military style crew cut.) It took me some time to realise that the absolute free market regime this underclass live under was not “left wing”. It exists only because the oppressors, an EU style world state, are too lazy to run society and the lack of any popular democracy means people cannot oppress each other in the name of democracy as we do today.

      As is normal with Heinlein the social engineering is as well thought out as the traditional sort of engineering. Only years later did I find out that the mentor character, Professor Bernardo de la Paz was closely based on the real life anarchist philosopher Robert LeFevre. There is no shortage of the action needed for an exciting story full of ideas from an intelligent computer to a remarkably simple and genuinely effective ultimate weapon - enough to satisfy anybody looking for such. Also, there are as many ideas per paragraph most writers give per book, but then that applies to most of the Heinlen’s  books.

      The philosophical heart of the book is this speech from the professor made to the Lunar Constitutional Convention: 

      “Like fire & fusion, government is a dangerous servant and a terrible master. You now have freedom - if you can keep it. But do remember that you can lose this freedom more quickly to yourselves than to any other tyrant. Move slowly, be hesitant, puzzle out the consequences of every word. I would not be unhappy if this convention sat for ten years before reporting - but I would be frightened if you took less than a year.

      Distrust the obvious, suspect the traditional ...for in the past mankind has not done well when saddling itself with governments. For example, I note in one draft report a proposal for setting up a commission to divide Luna into congressional districts and to reapportion them from time to time according to population.

      This is the traditional way; therefore it should be suspect, considered guilty until proven innocent. Perhaps you feel that this is the _only_ way. May I suggest others? Surely where a man lives is the least important thing about him. Constituencies might be formed by dividing people by occupation ... or by age ... or even alphabetically. Or they might not be divided, every member elected at large - and do not object that this would make it impossible for any man not widely known throughout Luna to be elected; that might be the best possible thing for Luna.

      You might even consider installing the candidate who got the least number of votes; unpopular men may be just the sort to save you from a new tyranny. Don't reject the idea merely because it seems preposterous - think about it! In past history popularly elected governments have been no better and sometimes worse than overt tyrannies.

      But if representative government turns out to be your intention there still may be ways to achieve it better than the territorial district. For example you each represent about 10,000 human beings, perhaps 7,000 of voting age - and some of you were elected by slim majorities  Suppose instead of election a man were qualified for office by petition signed by 4,000 citizens. He would then represent these 4,000 affirmatively, with no disgruntled minority, for what would be a minority in a territorial constituency would all be free to start other petitions or join in them. All would then be represented by men of their choice. Or a man with 8,000 supporters might have 2 votes in this body. Difficulties, objections, practical points to be worked out - many of them! But you could work them out ... and thereby avoid the chronic sickness of representative government; the disgruntled minority which feels - correctly - that it has been disenfranchised.

      But whatever you do not let the past be a straitjacket!

      I note 1 proposal to make this Congress a two-house body. Excellent - the more impediment to legislation the better. But instead of following tradition, I suggest one house of legislators, another whose single duty is to repeal laws. Let the legislators pass laws only with a 2/3rds majority ... while the repealers are able to cancel any law through a mere 1/3rd minority. Preposterous? think about it.

      If a bill is so poor that it cannot command 2/3rds of your consents is it not likely to make a poor law? And if a law is disliked by as many as 1/3rd is it not likely that you would be better off without it?
      But in writing your constitution let me invite attention to the wonderful virtues of the negative! Accentuate the negative. Let your document be studded with things the government is forever forbidden to do. No conscript armies ... no interference, however slight with freedom of press, or speech, or travel, or assembly, or of religion, or of instruction, or communication, or occupation ... no involuntary taxation. Comrades if you were to spend five years in a study of history while thinking of more and more things that your government should promise never to do and then let your constitution be nothing but those negatives, I would not fear the outcome.

      What I fear most are affirmative actions of sober and well-intentioned men, granting to government power to do something that appears to need doing. Please remember always that the Lunar Authority was created for the noblest of purposes by just such sober and well-intentioned men, all popularly elected. And with that thought I leave you to your labours."

      As a Scot, with our SNP government having made some comments about how, come the day, they will provide us with a constitution that will enshrine all sorts of rights (the second ‘draft’ is now available), not for us to restrain the state but giving the state a duty to restrain us in the name of the "environment", education or what have you, I wish any of them had as much understanding as the Professor's audience.

      I don’t want to upset any fans of Ayn Rand, who is a libertarian icon (rather a contradiction in terms) but she isn’t a fraction as good as Heinlein. Possibly her leaden prose and hammering the ideas home makes her better guru material. More likely the fact that Heinlein plays with all sorts of social ideas in different books; bureaucracy Star Beast; military rule Starship Troopers; absolute monarchy Glory Road; constitutional monarchy Double Star; by secret conspiracy Friday; dictatorship Time Enough For Love; theocracy Stranger in a Strange Land and this made him too big and unpredictable to be buttonholed as anybody’s guru.

      On the other hand his successful societies have at least as much freedom as we have seen in our lifetimes. What more should you ask for?

      “Political tags — such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth — are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire. The former are idealists acting from highest motives for the greatest good of the greatest number. The latter are surly curmudgeons, suspicious and lacking in altruism. But they are more comfortable neighbours than the other sort.”
      Robert A. Heinlen 1907-1988

      Neil Craig is proprietor of Scotland's largest independent science fiction bookshop http://futureshockbks.blogspot.co.uk/

      Brian also found the "Lone Wolf" picture which is rather cool of him

      Labels: constitutional amendments, Errata, Government parasitism, ThinkScotland


      // posted by neil craig @ 4:11 pm 1 comments

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      About Me

      Name: neil craig
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      Excellent letter from Mr Craig. He is like a lone wolf howling in despair in the intellectual wilderness of our politics.

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      • 14/11/2010 - 21/11/2010
      • 21/11/2010 - 28/11/2010
      • 28/11/2010 - 05/12/2010
      • 05/12/2010 - 12/12/2010
      • 12/12/2010 - 19/12/2010
      • 19/12/2010 - 26/12/2010
      • 26/12/2010 - 02/01/2011
      • 02/01/2011 - 09/01/2011
      • 09/01/2011 - 16/01/2011
      • 16/01/2011 - 23/01/2011
      • 23/01/2011 - 30/01/2011
      • 06/02/2011 - 13/02/2011
      • 13/02/2011 - 20/02/2011
      • 20/02/2011 - 27/02/2011
      • 27/02/2011 - 06/03/2011
      • 06/03/2011 - 13/03/2011
      • 13/03/2011 - 20/03/2011
      • 20/03/2011 - 27/03/2011
      • 27/03/2011 - 03/04/2011
      • 03/04/2011 - 10/04/2011
      • 10/04/2011 - 17/04/2011
      • 17/04/2011 - 24/04/2011
      • 24/04/2011 - 01/05/2011
      • 01/05/2011 - 08/05/2011
      • 08/05/2011 - 15/05/2011
      • 15/05/2011 - 22/05/2011
      • 22/05/2011 - 29/05/2011
      • 29/05/2011 - 05/06/2011
      • 05/06/2011 - 12/06/2011
      • 12/06/2011 - 19/06/2011
      • 19/06/2011 - 26/06/2011
      • 26/06/2011 - 03/07/2011
      • 03/07/2011 - 10/07/2011
      • 10/07/2011 - 17/07/2011
      • 17/07/2011 - 24/07/2011
      • 24/07/2011 - 31/07/2011
      • 31/07/2011 - 07/08/2011
      • 07/08/2011 - 14/08/2011
      • 14/08/2011 - 21/08/2011
      • 21/08/2011 - 28/08/2011
      • 04/09/2011 - 11/09/2011
      • 11/09/2011 - 18/09/2011
      • 18/09/2011 - 25/09/2011
      • 25/09/2011 - 02/10/2011
      • 02/10/2011 - 09/10/2011
      • 09/10/2011 - 16/10/2011
      • 16/10/2011 - 23/10/2011
      • 23/10/2011 - 30/10/2011
      • 30/10/2011 - 06/11/2011
      • 06/11/2011 - 13/11/2011
      • 13/11/2011 - 20/11/2011
      • 20/11/2011 - 27/11/2011
      • 27/11/2011 - 04/12/2011
      • 04/12/2011 - 11/12/2011
      • 11/12/2011 - 18/12/2011
      • 18/12/2011 - 25/12/2011
      • 25/12/2011 - 01/01/2012
      • 01/01/2012 - 08/01/2012
      • 08/01/2012 - 15/01/2012
      • 15/01/2012 - 22/01/2012
      • 22/01/2012 - 29/01/2012
      • 29/01/2012 - 05/02/2012
      • 05/02/2012 - 12/02/2012
      • 12/02/2012 - 19/02/2012
      • 19/02/2012 - 26/02/2012
      • 26/02/2012 - 04/03/2012
      • 04/03/2012 - 11/03/2012
      • 11/03/2012 - 18/03/2012
      • 18/03/2012 - 25/03/2012
      • 25/03/2012 - 01/04/2012
      • 01/04/2012 - 08/04/2012
      • 08/04/2012 - 15/04/2012
      • 15/04/2012 - 22/04/2012
      • 22/04/2012 - 29/04/2012
      • 29/04/2012 - 06/05/2012
      • 06/05/2012 - 13/05/2012
      • 13/05/2012 - 20/05/2012
      • 20/05/2012 - 27/05/2012
      • 27/05/2012 - 03/06/2012
      • 03/06/2012 - 10/06/2012
      • 10/06/2012 - 17/06/2012
      • 17/06/2012 - 24/06/2012
      • 24/06/2012 - 01/07/2012
      • 01/07/2012 - 08/07/2012
      • 08/07/2012 - 15/07/2012
      • 15/07/2012 - 22/07/2012
      • 22/07/2012 - 29/07/2012
      • 29/07/2012 - 05/08/2012
      • 05/08/2012 - 12/08/2012
      • 12/08/2012 - 19/08/2012
      • 19/08/2012 - 26/08/2012
      • 26/08/2012 - 02/09/2012
      • 02/09/2012 - 09/09/2012
      • 09/09/2012 - 16/09/2012
      • 16/09/2012 - 23/09/2012
      • 23/09/2012 - 30/09/2012
      • 30/09/2012 - 07/10/2012
      • 07/10/2012 - 14/10/2012
      • 14/10/2012 - 21/10/2012
      • 21/10/2012 - 28/10/2012
      • 28/10/2012 - 04/11/2012
      • 04/11/2012 - 11/11/2012
      • 11/11/2012 - 18/11/2012
      • 18/11/2012 - 25/11/2012
      • 25/11/2012 - 02/12/2012
      • 02/12/2012 - 09/12/2012
      • 09/12/2012 - 16/12/2012
      • 16/12/2012 - 23/12/2012
      • 23/12/2012 - 30/12/2012
      • 30/12/2012 - 06/01/2013
      • 06/01/2013 - 13/01/2013
      • 13/01/2013 - 20/01/2013
      • 20/01/2013 - 27/01/2013
      • 27/01/2013 - 03/02/2013
      • 03/02/2013 - 10/02/2013
      • 10/02/2013 - 17/02/2013
      • 17/02/2013 - 24/02/2013
      • 24/02/2013 - 03/03/2013
      • 03/03/2013 - 10/03/2013
      • 10/03/2013 - 17/03/2013
      • 17/03/2013 - 24/03/2013
      • 24/03/2013 - 31/03/2013
      • 09/06/2013 - 16/06/2013
      • 16/06/2013 - 23/06/2013
      • 23/06/2013 - 30/06/2013
      • 30/06/2013 - 07/07/2013
      • 07/07/2013 - 14/07/2013
      • 14/07/2013 - 21/07/2013
      • 21/07/2013 - 28/07/2013
      • 28/07/2013 - 04/08/2013
      • 04/08/2013 - 11/08/2013
      • 11/08/2013 - 18/08/2013
      • 18/08/2013 - 25/08/2013
      • 25/08/2013 - 01/09/2013
      • 01/09/2013 - 08/09/2013
      • 08/09/2013 - 15/09/2013
      • 15/09/2013 - 22/09/2013
      • 22/09/2013 - 29/09/2013
      • 29/09/2013 - 06/10/2013
      • 06/10/2013 - 13/10/2013
      • 13/10/2013 - 20/10/2013
      • 20/10/2013 - 27/10/2013
      • 27/10/2013 - 03/11/2013
      • 03/11/2013 - 10/11/2013
      • 10/11/2013 - 17/11/2013
      • 17/11/2013 - 24/11/2013
      • 24/11/2013 - 01/12/2013
      • 01/12/2013 - 08/12/2013
      • 08/12/2013 - 15/12/2013
      • 15/12/2013 - 22/12/2013
      • 22/12/2013 - 29/12/2013
      • 29/12/2013 - 05/01/2014
      • 12/01/2014 - 19/01/2014
      • 19/01/2014 - 26/01/2014
      • 26/01/2014 - 02/02/2014
      • 02/02/2014 - 09/02/2014
      • 09/02/2014 - 16/02/2014
      • 16/02/2014 - 23/02/2014
      • 23/02/2014 - 02/03/2014
      • 02/03/2014 - 09/03/2014
      • 09/03/2014 - 16/03/2014
      • 16/03/2014 - 23/03/2014
      • 23/03/2014 - 30/03/2014
      • 30/03/2014 - 06/04/2014
      • 27/04/2014 - 04/05/2014
      • 04/05/2014 - 11/05/2014
      • 11/05/2014 - 18/05/2014
      • 18/05/2014 - 25/05/2014
      • 25/05/2014 - 01/06/2014
      • 01/06/2014 - 08/06/2014
      • 08/06/2014 - 15/06/2014
      • 15/06/2014 - 22/06/2014
      • 22/06/2014 - 29/06/2014
      British Blogs.