We're not really sure what Polly's point is here

Of course reasonable people can differ on the merits or not of Brexit. It’s just that this reason being given by Polly Toynbee seems to us to be most odd:

As Downing Street asserts through a source to Robert Peston: “Britain is out of all EU laws. We will be able to change our laws in a huge number of areas from product standards to fishing rules and farming subsidies where we are currently bound by EU rules.” Just so. That is precisely what the Europhobes always wanted, the deregulated purpose of the whole Brexit fandango. Food safety and working conditions, traditionally well ahead of UK standards, will now be at the mercy of this Brexit government. Very few in Labour could tolerate that.

The government of the UK is the one elected by the people of the UK. It seems reasonable enough that it should be those people of the UK who get to decide the rules that they’ll live under. This is rather the point of democracy we think.

But to be specific here. With both food safety and working conditions the insistence that “these are the rules” is an agreement, a priori, that people would prefer lower standards. To take that bete noire de nos jours, chlorinated chicken. If British people really don’t want it then if available no one will buy it. It’ll sit on the shelves until it rots and no more will be placed upon the market.

The only justification of a ban on its availability is that some people would in fact like to purchase and consume it. At which point of course what’s the justification for banning what people desire?

So it is with all such bans and standards and insistences. The only justification for “higher standards” however derived - note that this is not exclusively about the EU, or Brexit - is that some useful portion of the people don’t want them. That’s why they must be imposed.

Which leaves us somewhat confused. For that means Polly’s point is she supports any system - EU, Labour, whatever - which ensures that the plebs are controlled into doing what they damn well should be doing. Which can’t, obviously, be right at all. So we’re rather at sea as to what the point is.

[Image credit: Carnivore Style]

The start of the BBC

The BBC began life as the British Broadcasting Company, formed on October 18th 1922. Only in 1926 were the company’s assets transferred to the non-commercial (and Crown Chartered) British Broadcasting Corporation. Shortly after the new company made its first broadcast, John Reith (later Sir John Reith, later Lord Reith) was made its first General Manager.

A Scottish Calvinist, Reith put his moral tone onto everything the BBC did. Anything lighthearted and frivolous was frowned upon, and anything ‘popular’ was treated with suspicious reserve. Reith was determined to avoid what he saw as the free-for-all of American radio, where stations competed to cover events that attracted large audiences, and therefore drew in advertising revenues.

The BBC, when it was a company, never carried paid adverts, but did carry sponsored programmes funded by British newspapers. When it became a corporation, it banned advertising or sponsorship of any kind. The BBC came to be funded out of taxation, called a licence fee, which everyone using a radio, and later a television, was obliged by law to pay, or face criminal prosecution. The advent of the transistor radio in the 1960s killed off the radio licence as unenforceable. 

The BBC maintained a fierce independence, but expressed Reith’s own beliefs. It pretended neutrality in the General Strike of 1926, but banned broadcasts about it by the British Labour Party, and delayed a peace appeal by the Archbishop of Canterbury. Its moral tone reflected Reith’s, banning all mention of sex or infidelity.

Reith’s outlook was firmly highbrow. He believed it was the BBC’s duty to educate its audience into refined, as opposed to popular, tastes. It covered middle and upper class interests, featuring the Oxford and Cambridge Boat races, along with tennis and equestrian events, but severely limited air time covering football and cricket.

The BBC today attracts much criticism. It made a bad judgement that still influences its output, thinking that it could only justify the continuation of its compulsory licence fee if it attracted mass audiences. Once it was competing for listeners and viewers with commercial stations, people questioned whether they should be taxed to provide mass audience shows that were provided at no cost to them by independent stations. The BBC spends a great deal of money trying to win weekend audiences from commercial stations. Had it made its brief public service broadcasting, not readily fundable from commercial sources, it might have made a case on cultural and educational grounds.

A more serious charge levelled today is that BBC personnel, editors, producers and presenters, overwhelmingly represent a narrow metropolitan left wing outlook. Its recruitment adverts are placed in the Guardian, and what it thinks are the only ‘respectable’ views never look beyond the Westminster and Media bubble. Its ‘bubblethink’ pursues a relentless anti-tory, anti-business and pro-EU stance. Its presenters see themselves as a political opposition, interrupting speakers before they can answer questions, and it engages in ‘investigative journalism’ that does not belong in an impartial public service institution.

The BBC licence fee’s days are numbered. It will become a subscription service, and those who do not pay its fees will be disconnected, rather than imprisoned. Its politically correct ‘woke’ agenda might change when it loses viewers and subscriptions from an audience no longer forced by law to fund it. Lord Reith would no doubt turn in his grave at that prospect, where he not already spinning there in disbelief and shame at what his creation has become.

History might not repeat but it does rhyme

The UK has a target to have only electric cars joining the fleet by 2040. The Labour Party would bring this forward to 2030. Which is rather a nice rhyme. From NAM Rodger’s naval history of Britain:

In 1690 Parliament voted money to build 17 Third Rates and ten Fourth Rates, specifycing not only the tonnages, as in 1677, but the number of guns as well. This generated a major problem, for the figures were not based upon actual designs or expert assessment. In particular, it was impossible to build satisfactory eighty-gun Third Rates of only 1,100 tons as the Act demanded…..The result was a bad class of ships: cramped, weak, unstable and overgunned….

…after 1688 innovation in ship design was stifled…

In the long run, a successful Navy needed to combine political support with technical autonomy, but in 1714 the machinery to make this possible did not yet exist.

And apparently not in 2019 either. For Parliament just decided that no new housing should contain gas boilers from 2023 onwards. No, not even if fed on biogas or hydrogen.

That is, having the centre prescribing the detailed technology doesn’t work. On the basic grounds of the ignorance of the centre. Fortunately we did once overcome this problem and so go on to rule the waves. Perhaps we should pick up on that echo and once again avoid the repeat of the mistake?

That is, set the incentives to reach a desired aim but leave the details to people who actually know something?

Einstein and the bomb

On October 17th 1933, Albert Einstein arrived in the United States to stay. He and his wife had been returning to Europe by ship in the Spring, when they heard that Germany had passed the Enabling Act that gave Hitler dictatorial powers. They decided it would be unwise and unsafe to return to Berlin as planned, but went instead to Belgium, and six months later to the United States.

Their precaution was justified, in that they learned that the Nazis had raided their cottage, confiscated and sold his sailboat, and later converted his cottage into a Hitler Youth camp. Einstein accepted an offer from the Institute for Advanced Study, a body that became a haven for refugees fleeing Nazi Germany. Other big-name US universities had minimal or zero Jewish faculty or students at that time.

Einstein’s decision to make America his new home - he became a citizen in 1940 - had deep consequences. A group of Hungarian scientists tried to warn Washington that an atomic bomb might be possible, and might be put together by the Nazis and used against their enemies. Their warning was not heeded, so they tried a more serious effort. Leó Szilárd and Eugene Wigner went to see Einstein to explain the possibility. Einstein, already a known pacifist, had shown that a small amount of matter could be converted to vast quantities of energy, but had never envisaged a chain reaction, or had ever considered the possibility of nuclear energy being harnessed for weaponry. Nonetheless, he agreed to join them, along with Edward Teller, in alerting the White House.

Einstein joined with Szilárd in writing a letter to President Roosevelt, and such was his prestige as a scientific genius that the letter was put into Roosevelt’s hands. He met with Roosevelt, and historians suggest it was that letter and the meetings that led the President to initiate the Manhattan Project, committing immense financial and scientific resources to develop an atomic bomb before Nazi Germany might do so.

Einstein did not participate in the project that saw America successfully make two types of nuclear bomb, and use them to end the war against Japan with far fewer American or Japanese casualties than an invasion would have entailed. He did not comment at the time, but did express regret that the bombs had been used, and had unleashed a new and deadly era of warfare upon the world.

Einstein wrote to Linus Pauling, his old friend, in 1954, a year before his own death. He said, "I made one great mistake in my life - when I signed the letter to President Roosevelt recommending that atom bombs be made; but there was some justification—the danger that the Germans would make them."

He was certainly correct about the last part. The Germans were producing new weapons that took warfare to new dimensions. They produced the V1, the world’s first cruise missile. The launched the V2, the first ballistic missile. And they made the Me262, the first operational jet fighter. They had skilled scientists, and might have produced the atomic bomb. Had they done so, the consequences would have been catastrophic for the world. Einstein’s letter was, in retrospect, a wise precaution.

We entirely agree with Bernie Sanders

Bernie Sanders has hit the nail right on the head here. This is entirely correct:

For too long, these greedy corporate CEOs have rigged the tax code, killed market competition, and crushed the lives and power of workers and communities across America.

Well, OK. perhaps not entirely. But we do agree that killing market competition is a very bad idea. It’s the abnegation of everything that makes an economy work too. Sure there are problems with Bernie’s analysis:

While the corporate profits that presently go to a small number of ultra-wealthy families are at or near an all-time high, wages as a percentage of our economy are near an all-time low.

The American statistical system has its faults. One of which is that overseas profits earned by American corporations are included in that profits number but so also are US profits earned by foreign corporations and persons. This shouldn’t be so, that statistical system isn’t properly distinguishing between GDP and GNI. It’s also true that the wage share isn’t the correct part to be looking at, rather the labour share. Which is wages plus employment benefits (like pensions contributions, health care) and, crucially, taxes paid upon employment like Social Security and Medicaid. And which hasn’t dropped by anything like the amount the wage share has because those health care, pensions and Social Security contributions have been rising.

But OK, monopoly and oligarchy are leading to a less than optimal society. We’d agree that such market power is a bad idea and that more market competition will make the society a better one.

Our problem is with what comes next. Quite how nationalising the entire health care financing system - Bernie does intend to make private sector health care insurance a thing of the past - is an increase in market competition eludes us.

As with so much else that is proposed in fact. We entirely agree that setting the rules in order to foster competition is an excellent proposal. But once that’s done we don’t see how getting that ultimate monopoly, the government, to produce and provide more things improves matters.

Solving environmental problems

The Extinction Rebellion protesters say the world is in crisis, and that emissions must be reduced to zero by 2025. To achieve that would mean we’d have to drive much less, eat much less meat, and use much less energy. We’d rise with the sun and go to bed at sunset. We wouldn’t heat our homes in winter or cool them in summer. We probably wouldn’t fly at all, and certainly not take cruises. We’d have to stop using fossil fuels almost straight away, since their target date is just over 5 years away. Most shipping and freight would have to stop. We’d be eating locally grown turnips instead of mangoes from afar. Most people would never travel abroad.

Fundamentally it’s a programme to abandon the Industrial Revolution and the growth that has lifted most of humankind out of subsistence and starvation. At heart it’s a rejection of the modern world, of its growth, its wealth, its aids to comfort and convenience as well as to survival, and above all to its progress, its science and technology. It is as foolish and misguided as it is unattainable.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), made up of thousands of scientists from across the world, had recommended that we reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) to net zero by 2050.  This would enable us to limit any warming to a maximum of 1.5 degrees Celsius, rather than the billions of dead and the extinction of human life forecast by the current protesters.

There is every chance we can achieve the IPCC goal, and we are already taking steps to do so. We are rapidly phasing out coal for power generation, and replacing it with renewables, using natural gas as a bridge between the two in order to speed up the replacement of coal and oil by renewables. Last year UK electricity was one-third produced by renewables, and the proportion is climbing as solar and wind power become cheaper.

The proportion of electric vehicles increases each year, making it highly likely that petrol and diesel cars, trucks and buses will all be replaced by electric ones well before 2050. We are steadily reducing the energy demands of domestic appliances, and phasing out incandescent bulbs for LED ones.

New methods of carbon sequestration are being developed, and more and more trees are being planted as part of a process of active carbon extraction. Moves are under way to introduce a carbon tax based on emissions, as recommended by the IPCC, and the UK already has a fuel duty set above the recommended level.

Several genetically modified crops are already being grown, ones that increase yield per acre and require fewer pesticides and fertilizers to leach into the environment. New ones are being developed that can grow in otherwise infertile areas, ones currently unavailable because of excess salinity or drought. These developments reduce the pressure on rainforest land, as does the development of hydroponic ‘vertical’ farming that uses minimal land.

It is predicted that within months cultured ‘lab-grown’ meats will be as cheap as those from animals. Their taste and texture are now said to be very good, meaning that mass production can go ahead. Cultured meats do not emit methane, and do not require forests to be cleared to produce animal feed. The same is true of the non-meat alternatives that give vegetable products the taste and texture of animal products.

The plastic problem is being tackled by the increased use of recyclable plastics, and of biodegradable ones. And microorganisms are under development that can feed on the non-recyclable plastic that is already out there.

In short, there is no crisis of extinction. Instead there is a pollution problem, one that is well on the way to being solved. Science and technology have proved more effective than hysteria at achieving this. We do not need to turn our back on the modern world and its prosperity, but can instead continue to drive, to fly, to move humans and freight around, and to eat meat. We do not have to stop doing what we are doing, we just have to do it in different ways.

Thirteen October days of missile crisis

The Cuban Missile Crisis began on October 16th 1962 when US President John F Kennedy was shown photographs taken by a U2 spy plane that gave proof that the Soviet Union was building missile launching sites in Cuba from which it could launch a nuclear attack on the US. This began a 13-day tense confrontation that brought the world to the brink of nuclear war.

A U2 spy plane took photos that showed that the Soviets were constructing launch sites in Cuba for medium and intermediate range missiles targeted at US cities. The significance was that they could reach that targets in only a few minutes, giving the US no time to launch a counter-strike before they hit. The Soviets were this about to acquire a first strike capability and upset the balance of forces. Evidence suggested they were planning 40 launchers. Ground-based intelligence had alerted the US, and led it to conduct the spy flights that confirmed the Soviet plans. Intelligence from Oleg Penkovsky, a Western agent within the Kremlin, about Soviet missiles enabled the CIA to identify the types of missile and confirm their offensive capability.

The USSR disastrously miscalculated the US response. They thought that President Kennedy’s lukewarm response after the failed Bay of Pigs incursion would lead him to avoid confrontations and accept the missiles as a fait accompli. In fact there was no chance that the US would accept so aggressive a move so near to its territory.

The US military wanted either an attack from the air to destroy the bases before they became operational, or a full-scale invasion of Cuba to eliminate the threat. There is no doubt that they had overwhelming superiority in firepower, both in missiles and in warheads. Kennedy opted, however, for a more cautious response, declaring a quarantine around Cuba that would intercept any Soviet ships bringing missiles or supplies, and demanding that missiles already there be shipped out and the launch sites dismantled.

The Cuba-bound Russian cargo ships drew closer each day to the US-declared exclusion zone, and the world awaited a confrontation. The US fleet prepared to fire warning shots to make the cargo vessels turn back, and to board them or sink them if they failed to respond. Khrushchev backed down when he realized that the Americans meant business. An agreement was reached under which the missile sites would be dismantled in return for a public US pledge not to invade the island. Under a secret clause the US agreed to dismantle intermediate range missiles it had based in Turkey. In fact these were already past their usefulness since they had been a stop-gap until the US had acquired intercontinental missiles, which it now had deployed.

The world watched as the Russian ships turned back, and as missiles loaded onto freighters were shown on the decks of their cargo ships leaving Cuba. The crisis was a victory for the US and a setback for the USSR. Fidel Castro was furious that Russia had backed down, and had been quite ready to see a nuclear war if it meant the destruction of capitalism and the subsequent victory for communism.

The lesson was that there would be no appeasement of Soviet aggression, and this fact tempered their subsequent actions. Khrushchev was fatally weakened by the affair and deposed within 2 years. Ronald Reagan took note, and when he was elected President, initiated an update of US military power that the Soviets could not compete with. The missiles of October almost precipitated a world nuclear war, but the success of the firm US response led it to pursue policies that ultimately won the Cold War.

President Putin no doubt regrets that Khrushchev backed down just as he regrets the fall of the Soviet East European puppet tyrannies, but there is no doubt that he takes on board the major lesson of the Cuban Missile crisis. If you push too hard against the West, they will push back.

If only Extinction Rebellion actually understood matters

An interesting report in The Guardian:

The world’s rising reliance on fossil fuels may come to an end decades earlier than the most polluting companies predict, offering early signs of hope in the global battle to tackle the climate crisis.

The climate green shoots have emerged amid a renewable energy revolution that promises an end to the rising demand for oil and coal in the 2020s, before the fossil fuels face a terminal decline.

The looming fossil fuel peak is expected to emerge decades ahead of forecasts from oil and mining companies, which are betting that demand for polluting energy will rise until the 2040s.

But energy experts are adjusting their forecasts as clean energy technologies, including wind and solar power, emerge faster than predicted and at costs that pose a direct threat to coal-fired electricity and combustion-engine vehicles.

We don’t insist that this is actually true, only report what is being, umm, reported.

The thing is this isn’t compatible with the insistence from all those climate change campaigners, Greta, Extinction Rebellion and the rest. That nothing has been done therefore we’ve got to do everything right now.

If it is true that renewables are all ready to replace fossil fuels, as claimed here, then we’ve already dealt with climate change, haven’t we? We’ve already put in the effort required, all we’ve got to do now is sit back and allow markets to chew through the costs and benefits of the varied technologies and see that bright new dawn being built.

No, really, if renewables are already replacing fossil then we’re done, we’ve solved the problem.

We can even talk in more detail. Those predictions of doom rely upon RCP 8.5, that model of the future in which we use ever more fossil fuels, ever more coal in fact, to power civilisation. If we’ve already designed, tested and are beginning to install, preferentially purely on cost grounds, renewables then we’re over in that other casting of the runes about the future, RCP 2.6, where climate change itself is something that doesn’t happen. Because we’ve dealt with it.

Right here right now we’re not stating that either or any of those points are actually correct. That renewables are taking over, that they’re not. We’re only insisting upon the underlying logic here. If it is true that we’ve already created the renewables that solve the problem then, well, we’ve solved the problem, haven’t we? And if we’ve not created those usable technologies then we’d be better off not installing them right now. But working rather more to create them before roll out.

As the PM has pointed out, we must always be aware of cakeism. It is not possible that renewables are both solving the problem and also that the problem remains to be solved.

The 1987 storm before the stock market storm

The storm hit the UK on the night of October 15th 1987. Earlier on television, weather presenter Michael Fish had reassured viewers: “Earlier on today, apparently, a woman rang the BBC and said she'd heard there was a hurricane on the way. Well, if you're watching, don't worry, there isn’t."

I suppose that technically, hurricanes cannot reach this far North, but the UK certainly had hurricane force winds, the most violent since 1703. Winds reached 120 mph, causing major damage, with trees and power lines brought down. Britain lost an estimated 15 million trees, and hundreds of thousands of people were left without electricity, some for up to two weeks, as the National Grip suffered heavy damage.

Buildings were damaged in London, and falling trees smashed onto parked cars and blocked roads. I was woken up in the night, not only by the howling winds, but also by a huge crash of masonry onto the street just outside my window, which I discovered next morning was caused by chimney pots being blown off the roof of my building. Public transport in London and the Southeast was mostly out of action the next morning as trees were strewn across roads and railways, and people were advised not even to try to go into work.

It was described as “a violent extratropical cyclone,” as a major depression in the Bay of Biscay headed Northeast. It hit Britain, France and the Channel Isles, leaving 18 dead in Britain, and with damage estimated by the insurance industry to be upwards of £2 billion. As happens with most disasters, lessons were learned, and major improvements were put into effect to improve atmospheric observation, relevant computer models, and the training of forecasters. This may have included Michael Fish, who might otherwise have had a relatively undistinguished career, but was immortalized by that one major forecasting error.

There was a further consequence. Few City traders and dealers managed to make it into work on Friday 16th, and market trading was suspended twice, with the market closing early at 12.30 pm. This meant light trading, with the City unable to react adequately to the late dealings on Wall Street, where the Dow Jones Industrial Average recorded what was then its biggest-ever one-day fall, in a major market correction. After a weekend spent clearing up after the storm, UK City dealers came in on the Monday, Monday 19th, known as Black Monday, to a sea of red as markets collapsed. It was a reaction to the exuberance of the 80s boom and bull run. The bears had a field day as over-valued stocks plunged South, and screens remained red for weeks afterwards.

The events of the Great Storm and of Black Monday still bring shudders to those old enough to remember. Britain recovered from the physical damage and repaired it, and trees were planted to replace those lost. The markets recovered from the psychological damage, and stocks recovered from their losses within two years. Some of the crash was put down to automated trading, so new regulations were put in place to limit the degree to which this might happen in future.

It was a correction, and a major one, but they happen, and the markets resumed their steady upward climb until the next one. I still sometimes wear a bow tie a friend gave me, a pink one with black printing featuring a section of the Financial Times stock prices for October 19th 1987. Occasionally I wear it when I attend City functions and receptions to remind my friends in the finance sector that all men are mortal.

It's a happy, but incorrect, thought

If only this were true:

Free-market capitalism is supposed to be hard-wired into Tory DNA; the Conservative constant in an ever-changing world.

There’s nothing either conservative nor Tory about free market capitalism. Obviously not conservative, for rather the point of the free market part is that the old must be open to being destroyed by the new. We’d also hesitate to describe capitalism as being dear to Tory hearts, given the social opprobrium so long aimed at those in mere trade.

It was, after all, the Liberals - back that century and more - that were the party of trade and industry rather than land and reaction.

Another way to look at much the same point is to note the battles Maggie Thatcher had with the Wets. Wet being rather the definition of not in favour of free market capitalism.

Thus the task before us all, that reminding the Tory Party that free market capitalism is the method of gaining the desired goal, a rich and free people and nation. There being far too many who forget that point thus the necessity of continually reminding them.