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George Monbiot on journalism

Not sure he\’s quite got the point of it all:

Our primary task is to hold power to account.

No it isn\’t.

It\’s to produce something to go in the blank spaces in between the adverts.

So what can be done? Because of the peculiar threat they present to democracy there\’s a case to be made for breaking up all majority interests in media companies, and for a board of governors, appointed perhaps by Commons committee, to act as a counterweight to the shareholders\’ business interests.

Seriously? You want to put the politicians in charge of what a newspaper or TV channel can report?

Are you mad?

Stephen Chu: lying slimeball

However the energy secretary, Steven Chu, has argued that the 2007 law does not amount to a blanket ban on all incandescent bulbs. But it does require those bulbs to be more efficient. \”These standards do not ban incandescent bulbs,\” Chu told a conference call with reporters. \”You\’re still going to be able to buy halogen incandescent bulbs. They\’ll look exactly like the ones you\’re used to. They can dim. They cut out instantly. They look and feel the same.\”

Look, yes, I know, you\’ve a Nobel and I don\’t.

However, I supply the lighting industry and you don\’t.

Halogens are not the same as incandescents. The latter, the light comes from that piece of tungsten heating up in a vacuum. The former, there\’s a gas in the bulb (that\’s the halogen bit, see?) which is then heated by the tungsten wire.

Different technology. And, as you should also know, the gas in the halogens is actually mercury. The halogens themselves (EuI3, ScI3 and the like) are dopants in miniscule amounts.

The really important point about this (apart from the fact that people using more halogens is just great for me) is that that mixture of halogens and mercury costs more than the entire incandescent bulb does to manufacture.

So you\’re still insisting that people go off and use a more expensive tehnology to the detriment of their pocket books.

 

Update: And I am of course entirely confusing halogen bulbs with metal halide bulbs. Silly Timmy.

Who should front the advertising campaign?

Rio de Janeiro aims to become world capital of gay tourism

Brazilian city\’s diversity week follows series of gay-friendly government schemes to capitalise on growing market

I hear Peter Mandelson* is out of a job currently.

 

 

*Yes, yes, I know, slightly unfair but couldn\’t resist.

Chris Huhne: gargantually stupid onanist

He\’s done it again:

Our fossil fuel habit leaves us hostage to global energy markets. The days of North Sea self-sufficiency are long gone.

Please Chris, could you go and spend more time with your mistress? Stop pleasuring yourself with these inanities?

You were, once, an economist, after all and you know these things.

We always sold N Sea production at global prices. Yes, gas is less fungible than oil but we always priced the gas in relation to the oil price anyway. So whether oil or gas came up out of the British sector of the North Sea, or the Norwegian, or Dutch, or was shipped in from Nigeria, Angloa, Venezuela or friggin\’ Timbuctoo by camel, we always paid the world price for our energy supplies.

As such, whether the stuff was bubbling up from under our own feet or was bought from Johnny Foreigner we were always \”hostage to global energy markets\”.

For fucks sake, we never did power ourselves off our own oil anyway, Brent\’s not the right type for the mix of fuels we want. We\’ve always sold half of our own consumption of N Sea oil overseas and replaced it with other differently densitied and differently sulphured oils so as to get that right mix out of our refineries.

And here\’s my problem: when Tony Benn was Minister for Energy we all knew that he didn\’t have a clue. You do so will you please stop fiddling with yourself behind that Ministerial desk and get with the real world?

Tosser!

It really isn\’t the banksters you know

Or at least, not the banksters alone.

There was no housing bubble, as Italian banks demand copper-bottomed collateral before they will lend the ordinary housebuyer a cent. There were almost no toxic assets, as banks are amazingly conservative in their investment policies.

Once upon a time, few Italian bankers spoke a word of English; today most speak the words and grammar, but to their credit they don’t speak the language of the City or Wall Street, or that of the innovative financial operators who filled the market with dubious products over the past decade.

And they\’re still fucked.

There\’s actually an argument that we should be grateful to the banksters. Assume that the lefties are correct. It is only the City, what with their ratings agencies, demands for liquid markets and profits, outrageous bonuses and all the rest: this is all that has stopped the UK Government from Keynesing our way out of this mess.

The national debt could be well on its way to 100% of GDP by now and everything would be sweet roses in the garden of England.

And, given that we don\’t, unlike Italy, have a high private savings rate, we\’d be even more dependent upon foreign money than they are. And close, oh so close, to proper national bankruptcy, where the debt burden simply cannot be paid by any rational or likely set of manouvres.

So, what\’s better? The financial markets calling a halt to such piling up of debt with a recession? Or we carry on to the Italian, or even the Greek, scenario?

I think the recession sounds like the better idea actually. Certainly less pain over time.

But the real point about the Italian example is this: even if the lefties are correct, that the City has done the damage to hte UK economy. Italy shows that politicians and debt can still be a greater problem than banksters.

Murdoch\’s a canny one, inn\’e?

Phone hacking scandal: Murdoch pulls Sky News plan to force inquiry
Rupert Murdoch has withdrawn a promise to spin off Sky News in a desperate attempt to rescue his plan to take full control of BSkyB.

Force them to consider the plan under the law as it stands, rather than allowing the decision to be taken in hte current maelstrom of politics.

Not a bad plan at all.

There\’s also all the talk about selling off the remaining UK newspapers (the Times and Sun essentially). If they did that, what would be the media concentration argument about his owning BSkyB?

None that I can see really…..and a year for the commission investigation would give time to try and engineer such a sale.

Plus, of course, time for the investigation into who else (and do not for a moment believe that other papers have not been paying coppers) has been making bungs to infect other media outlets making the \”fit and proper person\” a bit of a difficult argument.

All still to play for I would say.

From the obituary of the Earl of Harewood

Two little nuggets:

From his earliest days, George Lascelles was blessed with an extraordinary ear for music and interest in facts about music, an eccentricity which prompted his uncle, the Prince of Wales (later the Duke of Windsor), to remark: “It’s very odd about George and music. You know his parents were quite normal — liked horses and dogs and the country.”

And this shows quite how near a long time ago can be:

At his christening, held at his parents’ home, Goldsborough Hall in the North Riding of Yorkshire, his godparents included King George and Queen Mary, Princess Alexandra, and General Sir George Higginson, a noted veteran of the Crimean war, then aged 96.

The godfather of a man who died this week fought in the Crimean war, 160 years ago.

On this subject, the last US civil war pensions were still being paid out in 2003 and 2004.

Questions to which we might be able to essay an answer

And how is that there are no widely read democratic socialist publications whatsoever?

Because there aren\’t enough democratic socialists to make such a publication widely read?

The same problem that \”Wicca Today\”, \”First Great Western Trains Daily\” and \”Knobwarmer Knitter\’s Weekly\” face?

Their offering is to a minority interest market?

Perhaps more people ought to be interested in democratic socialsm but there\’s been all sorts of attempts to provide newspapers and magazines to those who are: New Society is the last subsumed title that I can think of that tried it. Tribune the last extant one.

It is one of the glories of this market based system. If no one gives a shit enough to purchase the output then probably better not to waste the inputs in the production, eh?

What an absolutely fascinating argument from the Murphmeister

The truth is simple: we cannot afford competition in basic services: as I pointed out that means we have to pay for ex ess wasted capacity instead of the best full capacity.

There\’s so much wrong with it\’s difficult to know where to start.

Every health care system will always have excess capacity most of the time. For we have, at the very least, this thing called \”winter\” which brings with it flu epidemics.

We can\’t know whether we\’ve got \”best\” unless we\’ve got something to compare it with. Meaning that there must be a competitive system to measure against.

You\’re invited to add your own corretions in the comments.

Proof perfect of PJ O\’Rourke\’s contention

That contention being of course, that when legislators get to decide what is bought and sold then legislators will be the first thing to be bought and sold.

What is now happening with News Corp and BSkyB? Yes, there\’s that screaming that politicians, legislators, shouldn\’t let him buy the bit he doesn\’t currently own.

And those very same people are also the ones screaming that Murdoch, News Corp, bought and sold politicians in the past, no?

I\’d say the contention is conclusively proven myself.

 

And now the Financial Activities Tax is screwed as well

First, banks are likely to pass on the burden of this tax almost completely to their customers through higher bank interest margins and bank fees. This makes the Financial Activities Tax a tax on bank customers rather than on bank shareholders.

Since the Financial Transactions Tax (ie, Tobin, or Robin Hood) also falls on customers, then that\’s both of them screwed then, eh?

There\’s no point in taxing us when we think we\’re taxing them now, is there?

Complete nonsense from @richardjmurphy

Complete knobgobbling stupidity on display here.

From the Guardian this morning:

One of America’s biggest healthcare providers, McKesson, gave its chief executive, John Hammergren, a 190% pay rise last year to $150m.

Welcome to the new NHS.

Welcome to the corruption at the core of modern capitalism.

Err, no. We do get that statement in The Guardian, true.

One of America\’s biggest healthcare providers, McKesson, gave its chief executive, John Hammergren, a 190% pay rise last year to $150m.

But then everyone knows that we shouldn\’t believe numbers that we see in The Guardian.

It\’s not difficult to find out what CEOs in America are paid. Here for example.

His pay, as pay, was $1,664,615 last year. A healthy sum to be sure, but some $148,400,000 or so short of the sum alleged.

We can also see that there is a $150 million number there on his pay page. That\’s the entire value of his stock options over the period.

That period, I assume, being since he took over as CEO back in 2000. From the low point of $15 the share price has risen to $84.  Note that that low point was just about when he did take over. Current market cap is $21 billion, meaning that he\’s, well, OK, perhaps he hasn\’t produced, but his term as CEO is at least correlated with, a rise of $15 billion in value to shareholders.

Which is pretty good really. And he\’s got 1% of the value created for shareholders on his watch.

This is what we want to happen isn\’t it? That shareholders pass on to the workers some of the surplus value extracted from them?

The original allegation comes from Phillip Inman the \”economics correspondent\” for the Observer and Guardian. Wouldn\’t it be nice if someone in such a position were able to distinguish between \”pay\” and \”options\”? Further, between \”pay rise this year\” and \”earnings over more than a decade\”?

And wouldn\’t it be even more interesting if one of the country\’s leading accountants, leading tax experts, were actually able to read a pay report?

And just to put the icing on the top of the cherry of the cake sitting atop the entire ice cream sundae, do you know what it is that McKesson does?

It\’s not a healthcare provider that\’s for sure. It\’s a pharmaceutical wholesaler and distributor. You know, a competitor in a market which in the UK is already entirely private sector? Its other division provides computers and software to the medical industry. And believe me, it would be cheap at the price to pay someone $150 million to provide something that worked, rather than this £12 billion and rising we\’ve pissed away on Connecting for Health.

So, not a healthcare provider, not a 190% pay rise and absolutely sweet fuck all to do with any changes proposed for the NHS.

Well done lads, you can be proud of your research skills here. Took me all of 15 minutes to work this out.

Allowing schools and hospitals to fail

It opens up the potential for schools, hospitals, social care systems and nurseries to fold without the government stepping in to prop them up. Labour called it an \”appalling revelation\”.

Appalling revelation?

But that\’s the damn point!

\”This problem is mitigated if the system allows for provider exit as well as entry – and indeed the evidence suggests it is exit which drives efficiency … There is also evidence from the private sector that a significant share of productivity growth is due to entry and exit processes.\”

Yes, this is one of the major differences between market and non-market systems. Market systems punish the shite very strongly: shite suppliers go bust, for which we should all say Hurrah!

We do want shite suppliers to be driven from the health and education sectors, don\’t we?

\”But exit of providers (eg school closure) may be controversial and unpopular and an appropriate failure regime must be designed,\” it warns.

Very much so. The basics of the structure already exist in the various forms of administration and bankruptcy we have. Administration might be the most appropriate: we\’re not likely to say that a bust hosptial should be razed to the ground. Rather that the management, that shite part, should be replaced and the investors should lose all their money. So that other investors can have another go with different management.

This is known as an incentive to investors and management not to be shite.

Concludes there is a benefit in choice and competition in driving up standards, but that it works best where there are fixed prices in health for operations, or in education per pupil, otherwise there is a risk that companies will simply compete by undercutting each other.

This is indeed part of recent research.  I\’m unconvinced that it holds true over the long term but in the medium it does seem to. (The difference being that in the long term we can have technological change which leads to competition on price between the new and old technologies: in health care, say, the ideas of that Indian heart surgeon who does it on a production line basis.)

Highlights the potential for \”market failures\” in the public sector, saying some areas may not be appropriate. \”In particular, it is worth noting that if the service is complex; time-critical; and used infrequently, (for instance accident and emergency services), it may be difficult for users to make an informed choice.\”

Sure, no one is saying all markets all the time markets is the solution to anything: only that more markets than we currently use might be a good idea.

Tessa Jowell, the shadow cabinet office minister, said that the potential for allowing schools and hospitals to collapse was \”an appalling revelation\”.

She said: \”The education of children and the treatment of the sick should not be treated as a commodity to be traded, as if healthcare and educations were chocolate bars or washing powder.\”

Do fuck off you ghastly old cow.

We already have evidence that competition, as above, improves quality. What is it? You don\’t want to improve quality or something?

Nobody, but nobody, is suggesting that you select your treatment after a car smash (yes, this is an important and significant part of the health care system: around 0.5% of all deaths are from this cause) from a shelf like you do your washing powder.

Rather, we want those who are shite at providing care after car accidents to lose their money and their jobs: so that they work hard to become less shite at doing so.

Labour complaining that a market will mean that suppliers are allowed to fail is simply their own gross stupidity shining through. This is the whole point: we want the shite to fail.

Well, this is an advance

The 2011 Tour de France, which flirted with madness last week, lost the plot altogether yesterday when an official French television car smashed into Sky’s Juan Antonio Flecha just as he and Johnny Hoogerland launched an attack off the front of a five-man break 35km from the finish.

Talking about the Tour de France and not mentioning drugs* is a step forward, isn\’t it?

 

*See first comment

So, mars bar ice creams

The assorted boxes of mars, snickers, bouty and twix ice creams have just hit rural Portugal.

Hmm.

Think I prefered putting the original choccy bars in the freezer to be honest….

Can we hang them, please?

Above all, it will be the governments of poor countries which are likely to object to any planetary-scale project. Two years ago, all countries except the US agreed to a de facto voluntary moratorium on geo-engineering projects and experiments. Apart from the unpredictability of the science, there was mistrust that western-northern-driven technological solutions to climate change would be fair or equitable. Two weeks ago, 160 organisations from around the world sent an open letter to Rajendra Pachauri, the Nobel prize-winning chair of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, after it had hosted a meeting of geo-engineers in Lima, Peru.

\”Geo-engineering is too dangerous to too many people and to the planet to be left in the hands of small group of so-called experts,\” they warned. \”The IPCC has assured us it will go forward carefully in this work. We will be closely following the process.\”

Because they\’re worried that implementation would not be \”fair or equitable\” they\’re insisting that we don\’t bother to find out whether it can be done at all?

What?

Jeebus: take what seems to be (but of course we don\’t know because we\’ve this ban on science, see) the most efficient of these technologies, iron fertilisation.

Yes, there\’s a lot of controversy over whether it works at all. Works in the long run that is.

We do know that there are parts (very large parts in fact) of the ocean that are near lifeless. Almost all of the various chemicals and elements necessary for life are there but there\’s a shortage of iron. Add iron to the warer and we get an algal bloom: this in turn attracts the things which eat algae, the things which eat the things which eat algae and so on: those latter beasties being what we normally call \”fish\”.

We know this bit works.

One of the reasons we know it works is because we can see it happening naturally: sandstorms in the Sahara are known to pick up iron rich dust (heck, we sometimes get it dumped on us here in Southern Portugal) and such clouds, when hitting parts of oceans, have been seen to be creating such algal blooms.

We also know that as the algae which we\’ve fertilised with the iron grow they absorb CO2 from the ocean/atmosphere (doesn\’t matter much which, if from the ocean then the ocean will absorb more from the atmosphere).

Now, obviously such teenie beasties have a life cycle. The truth about the effectiveness of this technique in long term reduction of CO2 is what happens at the end of that lifespan. If they\’re all eaten and pooped, or when they die they rot, then the CO2 will end up back in the ocean/atmosphere. We\’ve created a sink, just as with a forest, but not a long term solution for we have to keep replenishing that sink.

However, we also know that some portion of such beasites don\’t end up being recycled back into the ocean/atmosphere. They sink to the bottom and end up in layers: what we then call millions of years later things like chalk and limestone (both forms of CaCO3….that\’s the C being sequestered, you see?).

Now, what we don\’t know, with any accuracy at all, is what portion recycle and what portion become rock. But we would rather like to find out.

Ages ago I ran through the numbers using what were, at the time, reasonable figures for everything. As I recall, I came up with a number of 3 cents US per tonne of CO2 stuck into rock. Note, please, that this number could be out by two, three, five even, orders of magnitude. Which is why we want to do the research: to find out whether this is a mind-garglingly cheap method of reducing atmospheric CO2 or not.

And thus we would rather like to have a few girt big ships wandering around the oceans throwing iron overboard. Iron powder in one area perhaps, iron ore in another. Heck, if we don\’t need elemental iron then we could throw the wastes from alumina production overboard: that\’s 40% Fe.

Wouldn\’t take much, a few tens of millions of $ and a few years and we could find out whether we can both save the planet and get lots of sushi.

And yet on the basis that such might not be fair or equitable we\’ve a de-facto ban on the experiments which could find out whether this is true or possible?

Please, can we hang them all?

(Can someone remind me of the Planktos story? Didn\’t they actually set out to try this and find themselves stopped by lawsuits at every turn? Their website now seem to be a spam haven.)

Dear Mr. Lindh

John is entirely innocent of any involvement in the terror attacks, or any allegiance to terrorism. That is not disputed by the American government. Indeed, all accusations of terrorism against John were dropped by the government in a plea bargain, which in turn was approved by the US district court in which the case was brought.

Paternal concern is indeed honourable.

But seriously, using the \”we\’ve no evidence\” part of a plea bargain just doesn\’t prove that there\’s no evidence.

As you go on to point out, your son was a trained and armed soldier in the service of the Taliban.