It’s true that none of these projects saved Covid patients dying of respiratory failure. But in the long run, the pandemic may give proponents of the humanities an unexpected opening to change the way we train doctors and think about health care.
So the same tossery – post-modernism and critical studies essentially – that has destroyed the humanities should now be extended to technical fields.
Oh Joy.
Alex Cobham, the chief executive of the Tax Justice Network, pointed out that under the Companies Act it was an offence for a person “knowingly or recklessly to make a statement that is misleading, false or deceptive in a material particular”, with potential penalties including imprisonment.
He said: “Mis-registering companies with sometimes very substantial assets or transactions as ‘dormant’ would certainly appear to be material. For an outside observer, it is difficult to see how this error could have been made for multiple companies and over the course of so many years, in a way that was neither knowing nor reckless – so an explanation from Mr Drax is badly needed.”
The explanation being that they were unlimited companies which don’t need to file accounts except when they’re subsidiaries of a limited company in which they do. Once drawn to attention the accounts were filed within a week or two. No doubt very naughty.
Also, yes, pretentious git.
And we need to recall the story about Zambia and copper. Alex Cobham, when working at CGD, released a report insisting that Glencore was ripping off Zambia over copper prices. He’d done this by comparing the customs price of copper leaving Zambia in tens of thousands of tonnes lots, by railroad, with the price of copper in 10 and 20 kg lots leaving Switzerland by courier. His result was that Glencore was ripping off Zambia to the tune of multiples of GDP or some such.
The problem with this being that customs prices are, by definition, inclusive of transport costs. So, a $3 kg of copper (about right, right order of magnitude at least) leaving Zambia might have 14 cents of transport costs (again, about right, $5,000 per 40 foot container from anywhere to everywhere for 36 tonnes) and a $3 kg of copper leaving Switzerland might have $10 (a DHL package of 10 kg of copper at $100 say) of transport costs.
On that and that alone was his accusation of massive fraud based. Of course, this was not due to malevolence nor the desire to construct some fatuous claim, it was just massive, gross, ignorance.
I think we should, every time we see Alex Cobham pronouncing upon this or that remind ourselves – and others – of that CGD report. Seems only fair. Especially here – people can get into the most lovely fuss over financial numbers, can’t they?
Playgroup teachers need an “understanding about white privilege” so toddlers can learn to “recognise racist behaviours and develop anti-racist views”, according to new guidance.
The new advice, drawn up as an alternative to the Government’s statutory guidance by representatives from unions and charities, said it was “time to challenge the widespread notion that ‘children do not see race’ and are colour blind to difference”.
That march through the institutions is long, innit?
Broadcaster David Olusoga, professor of public history at Manchester University, made the comments in an article for the Guardian, as hundreds of experts on race, education, health and economics joined the criticism of the report for brazenly misrepresenting evidence of racism.
Of course, a truly institutionally racist society would not have a mixed race man as a professor now, would it? Actually, it would not have someone mixed race if the racism was being truly enforced……
I can imagine the reaction of people of colour to the publication of the government’s race disparity commission. Many will either have screamed with anger or cried with sadness.
The commission’s chair, Dr Tony Sewell, told the BBC: “This is a truly historic report.” On that we agree: it is a truly historic denial of the scale of race inequality in Britain, delivered precisely at a moment in our national history when the opposite is required.
No, it’s not. It’s a discussion of the causes of the inequality that exists. And the claim is – whether you agree with it or not – that it isn’t racism causing the inequality.
“The last half-century may be considered the age of fitness, and it is no accident that it coincides with the age of neoliberalism,” Martschukat writes. “Rather than a generalizing call to arms, here neoliberalism denotes an epoch that has modeled itself on the market, interprets every situation as a competitive struggle and enjoins people to make productive use of their freedom.”
Umm, yeah, right. It’s the classical liberals – not, in any manner, the socialists, at all – who have had the population out in the streets doing physical jerks, right?
That’s the gain to be had from shredding civil liberty:
Ban on online junk food ads will see equivalent of 62m fewer doughnuts eaten each year, say campaigners
One doughnut per person per year. That’s the gain for which we should give up on that civil liberty.
OK, OK, that’s extremist rhetoric for:
A total ban on online adverts for junk food would see children eat the equivalent of 62 million fewer doughnuts a year, researchers have said.
It’s just the kiddies that would eat less. At 700,000 births a year, wastage through disease is pretty low these days, call that 13 million under 18s then. So, that’s a reduction in consumption of less than one doughnut per child every two months then.
Hmm. No. They can fuck off then, can’t they?
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s new strategist has claimed all white people are “rife with internalised racism and unconscious bias.”
Genevieve Roth said she realised she was “racist” after marrying her black husband.
“Race is an issue in our marriage because as a white woman of privilege, I have racist tendencies written in at a cellular level,” she said.
It also rather doesn’t work. If the racism is written in at the cellular level then it’s as with sexual attraction, innate. So, just as the gays were – righteously – told to get on with it without societal limitation or even disapproval then so must racists.
It’s only if the racism – as with the gay bit – is a choice that behaviour should righteously be moderated, no?
It is a disquietingly existential exhibition, big on abstract ideas but with little by way of actual buildings to show. The organizers contend: “We take up the question of what architecture can be – not a tool for imperialism and subjugation, not a means for aggrandizing the self, but a vehicle for liberation and joy.”
We all thought it was a manner of making buildings that don’t suck. But then architects did leave that behind long ago….
On Tuesday night, a 21-year-old man named Robert Aaron Long allegedly went on a deadly rampage at three Atlanta spas, killing eight people, including six Asian women. Long’s shooting spree, police say, began at Youngs Asian Massage Parlor on the city’s outskirts, where he killed four people, two of whom were Asian, and injured one; he then allegedly fled the scene and proceeded to Gold Spa, killing three more people, all Asian women; and then he entered a spa right across the street, Aromatherapy Spa, where he killed his final victim.
Following an interview with authorities, the Cherokee county sheriff, Frank Reynolds, maintained that Long “gave no indicators” that his crimes were racially motivated. “We asked him that specifically and the answer was no,” Reynolds said on Wednesday.
The bloke who – allegedly – did it says it weren’t about race.
This idea is ludicrous to many who have observed the surge in racist violence against Asian Americans during the pandemic: in the past year, there have been 3,800 reported incidents of anti-Asian violence, roughly 503 of which took place during 2021 alone, according to the group Stop AAPI Hate. Women make up the vast majority of those attacked. And some argue that it is equally absurd to exclude discussion of anti-sex-work sentiment from the conversation about these most recent attacks on the Asian community.
But of course the race hustlers know better.
As Admiral Hopper has been pointing out the race thing is rather different. It’s not white boys killing toms, it’s about black lads beating up old folks.
So, what’s a race hustler to do? Obviously, combine the two so that it can be white boys blamed for what the black lads are doing….
That inauguration poem, apparently a Catalan speaking bloke isn’t the right person to translate it into Catalan:
“It is a very complicated subject that cannot be treated with frivolity,” said Obiols, a resident of Barcelona.
“But if I cannot translate a poet because she is a woman, young, black, an American of the 21st century, neither can I translate Homer because I am not a Greek of the eighth century BC. Or could not have translated Shakespeare because I am not a 16th-century Englishman.”
Having a black who did speak Catalan would, of course, be cultural appropriation….
In July 2019, Cori Crider, a lawyer, investigator and activist, was introduced to a former Facebook employee whose work monitoring graphic content on the world’s largest social media platform had left deep psychological scars. As the moderator described the fallout of spending each day watching gruesome footage, Crider was first struck by the depth of their pain, and then by a creeping sense of recognition.
After a 15-year career defending detainees of Guantanamo Bay, Crider had learned the hallmarks of post-traumatic stress disorder. But unlike Crider’s previous clients, the moderator had not been tortured, extradited or detained. They had simply watched videos to decide if they were appropriate for public consumption.
The people who have to watch what the rest of us can’t see might well suffer from having done so. An argument against the death penalty is what it does to those who must execute. Lord knows what the sex lives of film censors are like.
So, having diagnosed this problem what should we do?
A month earlier, Crider co-founded Foxglove, now a four-woman team of lawyers, community activists and tech experts dedicated to fighting for “tech justice”. It wages legal battles against the increasing use of opaque and discriminatory algorithms in government decision-making; the spread of harmful technologies, such as facial recognition software; and the vast accumulation of power by tech giants.
Campaigning against the use of AI doesn’t quite sound like the logical solution.
In July 2019, Cori Crider, a lawyer, investigator and activist, was introduced to a former Facebook employee whose work monitoring graphic content on the world’s largest social media platform had left deep psychological scars. As the moderator described the fallout of spending each day watching gruesome footage, Crider was first struck by the depth of their pain, and then by a creeping sense of recognition.
After a 15-year career defending detainees of Guantanamo Bay, Crider had learned the hallmarks of post-traumatic stress disorder. But unlike Crider’s previous clients, the moderator had not been tortured, extradited or detained. They had simply watched videos to decide if they were appropriate for public consumption.
The people who have to watch what the rest of us can’t see might well suffer from having done so. An argument against the death penalty is what it does to those who must execute. Lord knows what the sex lives of film censors are like.
So, having diagnosed this problem what should we do?
A month earlier, Crider co-founded Foxglove, now a four-woman team of lawyers, community activists and tech experts dedicated to fighting for “tech justice”. It wages legal battles against the increasing use of opaque and discriminatory algorithms in government decision-making; the spread of harmful technologies, such as facial recognition software; and the vast accumulation of power by tech giants.
Campaigning against the use of AI doesn’t quite sound like the logical solution.
In July 2019, Cori Crider, a lawyer, investigator and activist, was introduced to a former Facebook employee whose work monitoring graphic content on the world’s largest social media platform had left deep psychological scars. As the moderator described the fallout of spending each day watching gruesome footage, Crider was first struck by the depth of their pain, and then by a creeping sense of recognition.
After a 15-year career defending detainees of Guantanamo Bay, Crider had learned the hallmarks of post-traumatic stress disorder. But unlike Crider’s previous clients, the moderator had not been tortured, extradited or detained. They had simply watched videos to decide if they were appropriate for public consumption.
The people who have to watch what the rest of us can’t see might well suffer from having done so. An argument against the death penalty is what it does to those who must execute. Lord knows what the sex lives of film censors are like.
So, having diagnosed this problem what should we do?
A month earlier, Crider co-founded Foxglove, now a four-woman team of lawyers, community activists and tech experts dedicated to fighting for “tech justice”. It wages legal battles against the increasing use of opaque and discriminatory algorithms in government decision-making; the spread of harmful technologies, such as facial recognition software; and the vast accumulation of power by tech giants.
Campaigning against the use of AI doesn’t quite sound like the logical solution.
In July 2019, Cori Crider, a lawyer, investigator and activist, was introduced to a former Facebook employee whose work monitoring graphic content on the world’s largest social media platform had left deep psychological scars. As the moderator described the fallout of spending each day watching gruesome footage, Crider was first struck by the depth of their pain, and then by a creeping sense of recognition.
After a 15-year career defending detainees of Guantanamo Bay, Crider had learned the hallmarks of post-traumatic stress disorder. But unlike Crider’s previous clients, the moderator had not been tortured, extradited or detained. They had simply watched videos to decide if they were appropriate for public consumption.
The people who have to watch what the rest of us can’t see might well suffer from having done so. An argument against the death penalty is what it does to those who must execute. Lord knows what the sex lives of film censors are like.
So, having diagnosed this problem what should we do?
A month earlier, Crider co-founded Foxglove, now a four-woman team of lawyers, community activists and tech experts dedicated to fighting for “tech justice”. It wages legal battles against the increasing use of opaque and discriminatory algorithms in government decision-making; the spread of harmful technologies, such as facial recognition software; and the vast accumulation of power by tech giants.
Campaigning against the use of AI doesn’t quite sound like the logical solution.
By 2023, petrol stations in the UK above a certain size should be
required to have at least three rapid chargepoints, which would be
financed in-part by petroleum companies which ultimately own
the trade-marks and business models of all petrol stations. Setting a
date of 2023 would provide petrol stations with ample time to lay the
necessary cabling and complete the installation of a rapid chargepoint.
Chargepoints should be rapid so that they are able to deliver a quick
charge and keep time spent recharging to a minimum.
With a cost of between £20-40,000 per rapid chargepoint,
petroleum companies – who ultimately own the trade-marks and
business models of all petrol stations – can and should be able to
make a reasonable contribution to their installation, in an effort to
decarbonise passenger vehicle transport and support BEV uptake.
Petroleum companies should be required to fund the installation of
the chargepoints themselves in each relevant petrol station, whilst
the UK Government could pay for the necessary grid connections
through the existing Rapid Charging Fund, described in detail in
Chapter Four
Why? Why should the people who don’t own the station have to install something that doesn’t sell their product?
The report, supported by the UN environment programme (Unep), focused on three solutions. First is a shift to plant-based diets because cattle, sheep and other livestock have the biggest impact on the environment.
More than 80% of global farmland is used to raise animals, which provide only 18% of calories eaten. Reversing the rising trend of meat consumption removes the pressure to clear new land and further damage wildlife. It also frees up existing land for the second solution, restoring native ecosystems to increase biodiversity.
The availability of land also underpins the third solution, the report said, which is farming in a less intensive and damaging way but accepting lower yields. Organic yields are on average about 75% of those of conventional intensive farming, it said.
We should use less land to save wildlife. Hmm, OK.
We should use organic farming, which uses more land, in order to save wildlife.
They’re insane.
The activists have been underground since Tuesday night in a network of tunnels dug over several months beneath Euston Square. They are protesting against the construction of HS2, the high-speed rail link that, if constructed, will come into Euston station.
Accusations and counter-accusations are flying between the protesters and the HS2 eviction team. The activists say HS2’s eviction techniques are putting their lives at risk while HS2 blames the protesters and the way the tunnel has been constructed for putting their own lives at risk.
Larch Maxey, one of the activists in the tunnel, said: “HS2 are endangering our lives yet again. They need to help us make the tunnel safe. They have made this an urgent situation. We haven’t got the air supply.” He said the eviction team were preventing the tunnellers from clearing soil and water from the tunnel, which was making it very dangerous.
They’ve got to help you disrupt their own plans? Rilly?
This inequality is the product of a flawed and exploitative economic system, which has its roots in neoliberal economics and the capture of politics by elites. It has exploited and exacerbated entrenched systems of inequality and oppression, namely patriarchy and structural racism, ingrained in white supremacy. These systems are the root causes of injustice and poverty. They generate huge profits accumulated in the hands of a White patriarchal elite by exploiting people living in poverty, women and racialized and historically marginalized and oppressed communities around the world.
That’s quite a long way from feeding the hungry, isn’t it?
Cancel your direct debits and standing orders now.
David Olusoga explains it all to us:
In the second half of 2020, one strategy for filling the post-Brexit blame vacuum was tried, tested and war gamed, all of it executed with levels of proactive forward-thinking and strategic planning that the government struggled to muster when dealing with the pandemic. New enemies were identified and the attack lines against them fine-tuned in the focus groups.
Firmly in the crosshairs are black and brown working-class people, who are to be stripped of their class identity so that their interests and their histories can be falsely presented as a dangerous threat to those of working-class white people. Hence the demonisation and deliberate mischaracterisation of the Black Lives Matter movement. But among the new enemies are academics and, in particular, historians, whose work focuses on the histories of empire and slavery. They and the institutions that have commissioned research from them have been subjected to a new order of hostility. Expect more of the same in 2021.
What he actually means is that some people have been Meanies to him and not wholly, entirely, unquestioningly, accepted his view of past events. And how Blue is that?