We look forward to Danny Dorling's next article on inequality and mortality

Danny Dorling has been prominent among those blaming the recent rise in UK mortality upon, variously, inequality and Brexit. This is, as we all know, proper peer reviewed science from a man eminent in his field.

The CMI’s latest quarterly figures also show that the cumulative improvement in mortality rates recorded so far in 2019 is higher than it has been for the previous 10 years.

Based on data from the Office for National Statistics, the CMI forecasts an annual improvement of 4.9% if the last quarter of this year corresponds with the final three months of 2018.

This comes after a decade of slowing mortality progress, with life expectancy increases since 2011 considerably lower than in the earlier part of this century.

Conor O’Reilly, head of analytics at Club Vita, said that it is now looking “increasingly likely” that 2019 will see the lowest deaths total recorded since 2014.

We look forward to the explanations of how inequality has suddenly reversed, or Brexit uncertainty has become less of an issue. For of course such a change in mortality will gain the same attention as the previous one, won’t it? And be ascribed to the same causes?

When Bolsheviks destroyed parliamentary rule

They called it the October Revolution because in the pre-calendar-change style it was October 24-25, 1917, but the actual dates, post-change, are November 6-7. Many Communist sympathizers like to imply that the Bolshevik Revolution which started on November 6th, 1917, swept away the Tsar. In fact, the Tsar had already been forced to abdicate after the 1917 February Revolution that began in Petrograd, (later Leningrad and now St Petersburg again), then Russia’s capital city. That revolution replaced the Tsar’s rule with rule by Russia’s Parliament, the Duma.

The Bolshevik Revolution substituted rule by the Soviets for rule by Parliament, and established the dictatorship of the Communist Party. Lenin had made his view clear in his 1902 pamphlet, ‘What is to be Done?’ namely that revolution could only come about via the rule of one strong, dedicated leader or group, and that once it had overthrown the government, the leadership would give up power to allow for the full development of socialism.

The Bolsheviks harried the provisional government that replaced the Tsar, finding ready ears among soldiers who deserted the incompetently fought war against the Kaiser’s Germany, and among the urban poor suffering from wartime food shortages. Their slogan “peace, land and bread” resonated with the dispirited and the angry. The Bolsheviks seized power in November by taking over government buildings, telegraph stations and strategic sites. They convened a second All-Russian Congress of Soviets packed with Bolsheviks and formed a new government.

Far from giving up power, the Bolshevik leadership set up the means to retain it permanently, setting up the Red Army, the secret police, and the street thugs who intimidated and murdered their opponents. They murdered the Tsar with his wife and children to forestall any attempt to restore the monarchy and outlawed all political parties except the Communist Party. Elections could feature only Communist candidates.

Their reign of terror lasted 72 years, as Lenin was succeeded by Stalin and then his successors. It featured mass murder, deliberate starvation and constant shortages of food and shoddy, inferior goods, if they made it at all to the empty shelves of the state shops.

European countries, barring the Communist ones in Central and Eastern Europe the USSR controlled by military might, prospered, especially in the recovery that followed World War II. Analysts speculate what might have happened in Russia had there been no Communist Revolution. It had been developing economically, with industry building up, notably aircraft manufacture. It is likely that modern agricultural methods imported from the West would have boosted food production, in place of the disastrous collective farms that were instituted instead.

It is possible that democracy might have developed as a new middle class enjoying economic success sought to exert political influence and spread liberal values. All of these are speculative “what ifs,” because the Bolshevik Revolution thwarted any chance they had of developing. The 72-year nightmare of aggression and oppression that began on November 6th, 1917, ended with the collapse of the Communist system and, ironically, it was on the same date, November 6th in 1991 that President Boris Yeltsin finally outlawed the Russian Communist Party.

A fundamental misunderstanding about modern agriculture

The usual suspects have lined up to insist that European farming must become less efficient in the raising of food. At the same time, more efficient at the raising of wildlife. The two, obviously enough, being ends of the possible spectrum. We can use “wildlife friendly” farming methods on a particular piece of land and that will mean some amount of the production of that land feeding said wildlife. Or, clearly, “wildlife unfriendly” on that same piece of land and as we’re not feeding the birdies the production is feeding us.

The EU’s common agricultural policy (CAP) should be overhauled urgently to stop the intensification of farming practices that is leading to a steep decline in wildlife, scientists from across the bloc have urged.

Five organisations representing more than 2,500 experts have written to Ursula von der Leyen, the incoming president of the European commission, and the European parliament, to demand major changes to the way the CAP operates.

In isolation there’s nothing wrong with either the facts or the logic here:

Proposed changes that would place more emphasis on such measures are still inadequate, the experts found. Instead, they want to see fundamental reforms that support smaller farms that use sustainable methods and maintain high biodiversity.

Who doesn’t like to see the flutterbys mobbing the meadow?

But the fundamental misunderstanding is still there. It is to think of the wildlife on the land we farm, rather than to consider the totality of the land and the wild. If each piece of land we use is used more efficiently for food production then we need to use less land for that food production. If we, for example, returned to properly medieval farming methods* then we’d all be dead even as we ploughed the entirety of Eurasia flat.

It is that very intensity of our use of farmland, that absence of wildlife feeding off it so that we may, which creates the surplus land upon which the wild can and does thrive. A decrease in efficiency would lead to the cropping of all the marginal land in a manner which would make the WWII ploughing of the uplands look mild.

We are continually urged to think holistically these days. Something we should indeed do. Modern industrial farming, precisely because of its intensity and absence of anything other than human food production, is what creates the space for there to be that wider environment.

*One estimate is that around 1300 AD the seed corn to harvested wheat ratio was some 1 to 4. Today it is more like 1 to 60, perhaps 1 to 100. Think how much more land we’d need for bread production if we reverted to the old methods.

An anonymous letter saved King and Parliament

The Gunpowder Plot of 1605 is commemorated on November 5th, when it was uncovered and prevented following a tip-off by an anonymous letter to Lord Monteagle warning of “a terrible blow” to be inflicted, and urging him not to attend Parliament. The letter was handed to Lord Monteagle’s servant by a stranger in the street.

The Gunpowder Treason Plot was an attempt by a group of dissident Catholics to assassinate King James I & VI and his Cabinet by blowing up the House of Lords during the State Opening of Parliament on 5th November. They intended to initiate a popular revolt and to install Elizabeth, James’s 9-year-old daughter, as a Catholic monarch to succeed him.

The plotters, led by Robert Catesby, smuggled 36 barrels of gunpowder into the Palace of Westminster. This was not difficult in the early 17th Century, because the place was a rabbit warren of assorted chapels, stores and chambers, and had merchants and lawyers, plus others, living and trading in the lodgings, shops and taverns within its precincts. Guy Fawkes, a 10-yar military veteran, was put in charge of the explosives.

A search of the buildings at the King’s request found Fawkes, whom they assumed to be a servant, next to a large pile of firewood in an undercroft below the House of Lords. Fawkes said it belonged to Thomas Percy. Alarmed at the name, a known Catholic agitator, the King ordered a more thorough search, so the party returned. They found that the firewood concealed the barrels of gunpowder, and in Fawkes’ pocket were several slow-burn matches and touchwood.

The explosives would have totally destroyed the House of Lords and probably killed most of those inside it, but the plot was thwarted. Catesby was killed when they attempted to round up the plotters, but Fawkes and the others were tried and convicted and subject to the ritual hanging and disembowelment of the day. A Jesuit, Father Henry Garnet, was tried, convicted and executed for knowing of the plot, possibly via a confessional which he could not divulge.

Historians have speculated the “what if it had succeeded?” The actual result was some tightening of laws against Catholics, but many important and loyal Catholics were allowed to continue in their posts throughout King James's reign. The historian Ronald Hutton concluded that the plot, if successful, would have caused an angry backlash and persecution of Catholics. Most English people were loyal monarchists, making a successful rebellion unlikely. He suggests that England might have become more Puritan in its Protestantism, like several European countries. Instead it went on to pursue civil and parliamentary reform, and eventually, over 200 years later, to enact full Catholic Emancipation.

The failed plot was commemorated for centuries with the ringing of church bells and the lighting of bonfires on November 5th. It has morphed into ‘bonfire night’ or ‘Guy Fawkes night’ and is celebrated with fireworks and bonfires. Children used to make Guy Fawkes figures by stuffing old clothes to make dummies. They would go on the streets with them, asking passers-by for “a penny for the guy.” It is less common now, though I did it as a child to collect money for fireworks. Fawkes came to achieve another immortality because the word “guy” came to mean an oddly-dressed person in the 19th Century, after these ill-dressed figures. It is now used to refer to any male person, presumably because all of them are now oddly-dressed.

It's amazing what people will refuse to understand

Saudi Arabia is about to float a small portion of Aramco, the state oil company. Well, OK, their company, if they wish to sell a few percentage points then it’s theirs to sell. This is then triggering howls from the uninformed:

Scientists warn that fossil fuels and money will soon need to divorce because carbon emissions must be slashed by half over the next decade if the world is to have any chance of keeping global heating to a relatively safe level of 1.5C. Despite this, Aramco expects to receive the greatest infusion of cash in history.

As far as we’re aware at least Aramco isn’t going to receive an infusion of anything.

Until now, the company has been state-owned, influenced by the Saudi royal family, and has disrupted, delayed and diluted international efforts to cut carbon emissions. The flotation will not change this dramatically.

The bigger questions are who is going to buy the shares, how will the money be used and will a public listing make the company more transparent and less of an obstacle to climate action. So far, the indications are less than reassuring.

The point being that the money isn’t going to Aramco. It’s going to the Saudi state. That is, the IPO will not involve issuing new shares in Aramco, the funds from which go into the company. Rather, the Saudi state is going to sell some of the extant shares which it owns. The money flow will be from investors to Saudi Arabia, entirely bypassing the actual oil company and its investment plans…

….the crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman is getting positive global attention for his Aramco selloff plans.

He said the sale would raise money for the state’s sovereign wealth fund to invest in a diverse range of businesses across the globe, which would make Saudi Arabia less dependent on oil.

Yes, quite. The investment isn’t going into new oil at all.

Climate campaigners believe it is reckless to pour such money into a petrochemical giant when fossil fuel firms should be scaling back.

But as has just been pointed out, that’s not where the money is going.

It is just astonishing what people will refuse to understand, isn’t it?

Very different Presidents

US voters choose their President on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November. This means that different Presidents can share the anniversary of their election. It was on November 4th, 1952, that Dwight D Eisenhower was elected. Ronald Reagan was elected on the same day in 1980, and Barack Obama on November 4th, 2008. The three Presidents faced different circumstances and challenges, and were very different in their style and their achievements.

Eisenhower is remembered mostly for foreign policy, for ending the Korean War and confronting Soviet expansionism, but he did successfully push through the Interstate Highway System. He gained the support of right-wing Republicans for it by claiming it was essential for security, needed to evacuate cities in the event of nuclear war, and to provide possible runways for military aircraft.

He authorized reconnaissance flights over Soviet territory to assess the military threat they posed. He knew from these that they had the ability to launch a satellite into orbit with a year, but was concerned to keep space for civilian purposes, and refused to allow von Braun's army team to beat them to it, as they could have done. The Soviets had no such reluctance, and used a military rocket to do it first. Only after the humiliating public failure of the civilian Vanguard rocket did he give von Braun the go-ahead.

Eisenhower's foreign policy was to contain any further Soviet expansion in Europe, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia, and to make it clear that the Cold War would turn hot if they attempted armed aggression. The 'Eisenhower Doctrine' held that the US would be "prepared to use armed force to counter aggression from any country controlled by international communism."

Reagan faced the challenges of a weak economy and an assertive Soviet Union. He revitalized the US economy with a series of tax cuts that stimulated investment, yet drew in more revenue than the previous higher rates had yielded. The 'misery index' of high inflation and high unemployment under President Carter was reversed as inflation went down and employment increased.

His military build-up, including his endorsement of the Strategic Defence Initiative, confronted Soviet military power, and his rhetoric spoke of a stiffened American resolve. His talk of "Tear down this wall," and his description of the "evil empire" made clear his determination to oppose unyieldingly everything that Communism entailed. History records that he succeeded, and that within a year of his leaving office, the wall came down and the evil empire crumbled.

Barack Obama, another November 4th President, was elected on that day in 2008. His record is mixed, with the economy dominated by the Financial Crisis of 2008 and its aftermath, and by foreign policy dealing with the fight against international terrorism, and the ongoing struggles in Iraq and Afghanistan. Entering office with a pledge to end partisanship and work in a spirit of co-operation with his political opponents, Obama presided over a period of intense polarization, with an America bitterly divided, as it still is. The healthcare reform he saw as his greatest achievement still provokes hostility as well as support, with his Democrat successors struggling to extend it and their Republican opponents seeking to replace it.

Obama's achievements include the fact that he was the first African American President, providing a role model to young African Americans. He also took a successful gamble by sending Special Forces in to kill Osama Bin Laden, an accomplishment that Jeremy Corbyn called "a tragedy." While it may be too early to settle on a verdict on Obama's presidency, it seems unlikely that he will be remembered as successful as Presidents Eisenhower and Reagan.

This doesn't surprise us in the slightest

It would surprise us immensely if the incentives had worked the other way:

While boys have long trailed behind girls in their reading aptitude, the gender gap is closing at last because they prefer reading on a screen to reading the pages of a book.

Since the Pisa education rankings in maths, science and literacy began nearly 20 years ago, girls have done better than boys at reading in every country in which the exams have been held.

Next month, however, the rankings, based on tests taken by teenagers in 80 countries, are expected to show how boys are finally catching up, according to Andreas Schleicher, the man known as “Mr Pisa” because he set up the rankings.

“Boys are doing better in the digital world. Books put off boys. But reading online changes that. There is greater digital learning by boys. They do not like books [as much] as screens,” he said.

We’d perhaps differ on the reason why but the effect we think is obvious. The existence of social media, all that stuff available on screens, makes literacy more valuable. Humans do more of things which are more valuable - therefore literacy rises as the value of being literate does.

As one of us explained it some time ago:

Economics works – social media makes basic literacy more valuable so more people will have it.

How could it be any other way?

When Chile chose a Marxist leader

On November 3rd, 1970, Salvador Allende was inaugurated as President of Chile. A Marxist activist at university, Allende ran with the support of the Communist and Socialist parties, with the Christian Democrats split into two factions. In a three-way race, Allende gained 36.3 percent of the vote. Because no candidate had reached 50 percent, the decision was left to Congress, who would normally choose the one with the highest popular vote. This time, however, there was suspicion of his intentions, and Congress only confirmed him after he had agreed to 10 constitutional amendments to limit any abuse of power.

Allende immediately began his socialist programme, but keeping initially to the constitutional limits, and respecting democratic institutions, the rule of law and civil liberties. He seized without compensation the US copper companies that operated in Chile. This angered the United States, and undermined any confidence in Chile that foreign investors might have had.

Under Allende's rule the government nationalized significant industries in the mining and manufacturing sectors, and took over large agricultural estates to turn them into peasant co-operatives. Land grabs continued throughout his rule, many by unauthorized gangs of his supporters. The government put huge wage increases into effect, while passing laws to freeze prices. The government's purchase of basic industries from private hands had created a fiscal deficit which Allende met in the time-honoured way of printing extra money with nothing to back it.

Although Allende remains a hero to the Left, who have rewritten history to hail him as a success, as they did earlier with Stalin and later with Chavez and Maduro, the facts are that after two years of his rule, production had stagnated, exports had gone down, private investment had nose-dived, and financial reserves were exhausted. The economy was bowed under by rising inflation and shortages, especially of food. There was a wave of strikes and civil protest. Although he had established friendly relations with China and Cuba, credit from the US and Western Europe had stopped. Allende-supporting street thugs alienated the middle classes by expropriating their farms and attacking their businesses. There was concern that Chile has heading toward becoming a typical Communist state with a barely functioning economy and deceasing respect for civil liberties and democratic institutions.

This all came to an end in September 1973 when Allende was overthrown in a military coup staged by General Augusto Pinochet, claiming he was acting to save the country from ruin. Allende killed himself in the Presidential palace, using the AK47 that Fidel Castro had given him. Although there were allegations that he had been murdered, an independent autopsy on his exhumed body in 2011 confirmed that it had been suicide.

Pinochet's rule was controversial. Under his term of over 15 years, Chile prospered and became the richest country in Latin America. The ailing state industries were privatized, the currency stabilized, and a private pension savings scheme was established to give most Chileans a good retirement pension from a fund that was their personal property. Since the pension funds bought the shares in the privatized state industries on behalf of their members, within a few years most of Chile was owned by most of its people, making it the least unequal country in the continent.

But economic success came at the price of political repression. Estimates suggest that perhaps 3,000 opponents of the government were illegally killed over those 15 years. This figure is well below the deaths that took place under the Argentinian junta, or under other Latin American dictatorships over a similar period, but it drew widespread condemnation. Pinochet held a referendum in 1990 to decide whether he should have more years in power. It was an honest referendum; we know that because he lost it and withdrew from office, restoring democracy.

Salvador Allende enjoyed popular support, as do many who dole out free goodies without the means to fund them. There is an almost universal tendency for people to want free stuff that somehow others will pay for. It always ruins the economy, but people continue to fall for it. It is one of the drawbacks of democracy that it encourages such behaviour.

Contrary to protestations climate change is at least partially solved

We know very well, because Extinction Rebellion and St Greta keep telling us so, that the perils of climate change mean that the entire society must be overturned. For, despite our having had decades of warning we’ve not done anything yet.

This is, as the phrase goes, being economical with the truth:

Low-carbon power generated more than half of all electricity in the UK for the first time this summer in a major milestone as Britain seeks to become greener, new figures show.

The share of energy generated from wind, solar, hydroelectric and nuclear sources grew to 51pc of total output between June and August, while fossil fuels fell to 48.5pc.

Fossil fuel use hit a record low in the UK over the three-month period, as the country attempts to switch to cleaner energy and rid itself of a reliance on oil, gas and coal by 2050.

The predictions of sea rising terror come from models in which we don’t develop non-fossil fuel sources of power. Indeed, we not only use ever more fossil fuels we use ever more coal within that mix. Which isn’t, as we can all note, what is actually happening. Here in the UK at least we’re on the cusp of entirely ceasing to use thermal coal. As above, half our energy is coming from non-emitting sources.

Note what we’re not discussing here - whether climate change itself is a real problem or not. Whether electric cars are the solution, all of that sort of detail. Instead, we are simply pointing to this reality.

We have been told that we must develop non-fossil energy sources in order to beat climate change. We have done so. Therefore we are at least partially beating climate change. The protestations that we have done nothing, that all remains to be done, are simply wrong therefore, aren’t they?

In the technical jargon of these things the assumption used to describe the coming terror is that we’re on Representative Concentration Pathway 8.5. We are insistent that we’re doing much better than that. As a matter of opinion we’d argue that we’re on RCP 2.6 already - the one where climate change is a just a minor annoyance for a few decades. We’re open to a more scientific analysis which estimates whether we’re really on 2.6, or perhaps RCP 4.0 and so on. But the one thing we really do know, and all should agree upon, is that we’re not on RCP 8.5. Thus we should stop planning the world as if we are.

The difficult question becomes how do we convince the mob gluing itself to tube trains of this?

George Bernard Shaw, the gradual revolutionary

George Bernard Shaw, who always preferred to be known as Bernard Shaw, died on November 2nd, 1950, at the age of 94. He had achieved fame in two fields, as a writer and as a political activist. A left-winger who had flirted with Marxism, Shaw joined the Fabian Society in 1884 and embraced their policy of gradualism.

After a Trafalgar Square rally was broken up by police violence, Shaw decided never to challenge police power, but to pursue a policy of what Sidney Web  called 'permeation,' the infiltration of socialist ideas and people into existing political parties.

Shaw edited the 1889 publication of Fabian Essays in Socialism, writing two of them himself. In one of them he wrote that, "the necessity for cautious and gradual change must be obvious to everyone." And in the new version he wrote of the Fabian handbook, he wrote that "socialism can be brought about in a perfectly constitutional manner by democratic institutions."

He became an investor and co-founder of the new weekly magazine pioneered by Sidney and Beatrice Webb in 1913. It was called The New Statesman, and still publishes today. Most of Shaw's articles for it were contributed anonymously.

His acceptance of Fabian gradualism faded somewhat in the 1920s, and he began to favour more robust approaches to change. He was fascinated by Mussolini, and spoke favourably of him, as he then did of Stalin. He visited Stalin and described him as "a Georgian gentleman with no malice in him." When the Nazi Party came to power in Germany in January 1933, Shaw described Hitler as "a very remarkable man, a very able man."

He also endorsed some controversial policies such as eugenics, and opposed vaccination, including that against smallpox. He described vaccination as  "a peculiarly filthy piece of witchcraft." He was quite eccentric in his writing, too, refusing to accept modern spelling, and eschewing apostrophes in words such as don't and can't. In his will he left most of his assets to a body that was to reform the English alphabet into one featuring 40 letters, but the will was poorly drafted and subsequently voided.

It is unlikely that socialism can be brought in gradually, as the Fabians wanted, for the very good reason that it doesn't work. In democratic societies that introduce socialist measures, their failure will probably lead to the electoral defeat of the party that introduces them, and their subsequent reversal by a succeeding government. The socialist measures brought in by the Atlee government returned in 1945 condemned Britain to a downhill slope of low growth, an appalling strike record, loss-making state industries that performed poorly, and punitive tax rates that discouraged investment. These were all such obvious failures that the Thatcher governments were able to reverse them all and win re-election by doing so.

The no less catastrophic failures of socialism in other countries provide more evidence of the fact that it doesn't work. Socialism might be difficult to install gradually, but it can be imposed by swift and brutal repression. Even then it doesn't work. This means that Shaw spent a large part of his political activism in pursuit of a lost cause, and could explain his admiration for the dictators who dispensed with democracy to impose fascism, communist socialism and national socialism, all of which turned out to be disastrous.