He described a post-war Britain in which people had learnt the value of working together. His idea was that working together meant State ownership and, far from debating the whether the mines needed to be closed, he attacked the individualist world that was created by the destruction of the destructive unions.

I thought that intellectual socialism was dead in the UK. I thought that the young who would have joined the CND and marched in protest at anti-Union laws in the 1970s and 80s, had now moved on to supporting (un)Fair Trade and complaining about Global Warming (while simultaneously defending people who don’t believe in science when it suits them). But it appears there are a still few stalwarts the BBC can dig out to attack the consensus and provide ‘balance’.

Far from causing an age of selfishness, a period of genuine capitalism would have increased charitable giving and would have enabled all in society to benefit from the fruits of economic growth. Those fruits, which come from being competitive, do not just benefit the so-called fat cats, they also provide employment to the masses through direct employment by the successful companies but also through employment providing services to those employees. By working against each other in a competitive spirit (which isn’t nasty and aggressive) everyone benefits. I imagine a deeply depressing world inside Ken Loach’s head and I feel pity in a way which I am sure would cause him to become angry at me for patronising him.

But Newsnight tried to suggest that the ideological age was behind us; tried to imply that consensus politics had arrived and the debate was over a smaller middle-ground. I think that is dangerously naive. Aside from the obvious dangers of extreme left-wing players in the form of the BNP, Respect and Islamic Fascism, we also have the idealogical split between those who believe in freedom and those who do not.

The truth is there are three major parties two of which claim to believe in personal freedom to some extent (Conservatives, Liberal Democrats), and one which does not (Labour) and there are three minor parties that believe in freedom (Libertarians, UK Independence Party, Cannabis Alliance) and countless that do not.

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But at any election, if a member of the public believes in the repeal of RIPA (nationally) or in the abolition of Civil Parking Enforcement (locally) or in a withdrawal of Council services that would be better served by charities (nationally or locally) who should someone vote for? Cameron’s new Bill of Rights is more promising than the offers from other parties hence my affiliation, but there’s really no chance of the Road Traffic Act being amended.

Socialism has been mortally wounded but environmentalists, Fair Trade advocates (you know it’s being promoted in schools?) and europhiles still pose a significant danger.

Classical liberals are now fighting on two fronts and it is by no means certain that we will win eventually. It is important that debates continues, that good science (biology, chemistry, geology, palaeontology, physics) is allowed freedom from attack by the religious, and that good people do not hide behind the most frightening phrase of our time: “If you have nothing to hide…”

Irritable Bowel Syndrome is one of those. I am absolutely positive there is no such thing. Nor is there such a thing as Ulcerative Colitis. Don’t get me wrong, these symptoms are definitely real and destroy or seriously hamper people’s lives, but what I believe is that these ailments are actually descriptions of symptoms of an as-yet not understood illness or disease. I am sure, for example, that some people diagnosed as having IBS actually have Coeliac Disease, and others have other conditions.

Similarly, in physics and mathematics we are told that some systems are so complex that they cannot be modelled mathematically — the climate is one. To such an extent that a butterfly flapping its wing in Africa could make the difference between a hurricane developing or not in on the way to Florida. This, it seemed to me, was admitting defeat. We are, by calling a system chaotic, I thought, saying “That’s too hard.”

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But it turns out, not for the first time, I was wrong. What chaos theory actually says is that for a sufficiently complex system minute changes to input can make no difference for a long time. Much later in time the difference in input can suddenly manifest itself in a different result. Far from saying “This is too hard” Chaos Theory says that we can expect different results but without knowing all the parameters, we cannot know the outcome due to the massive influence of minor changes to conditions. It is not defeatist, it just describes a counter-intuitive mathematical phenomenon.

But this blog is mostly about politics, why am I telling you this?

Actually, I am telling the lay-people in the hope of getting an answer from a non-lay person. Climate models that predict climate change (and, according to some, global warming) cannot have all the necessary inputs for obvious reasons: no climate model could monitor the flap of every butterfly’s wing, nor could any model monitor the location even of local gusts of wind. To try to get around this flaw, scientists have used models that accurately report the past from the early 1800s to today.

If a model successfully models temperatures for 200 years, they assert, then that model must be a reasonable approximation of actual events and so can be used to predict future events. If a model is ‘right’ in this sense, then if it says the climate will warm by a certain amount with a particular amount of carbon added to the atmosphere, that is what will happen.

I don’t know enough about the climate to know whether they will be right or wrong, and surely evidence to date does point towards an increase in global average temperatures but doesn’t chaos theory suggest that these climate models cannot possibly have a clue?

If the tiniest inputs to the climate models could have unexpected results at unpredictable times in the future, and if we are using approximations by necessity, doesn’t that mean that even the best model could spike wildly in one direction or another? And if the inputs are slightly (1 tenth of one percent even) different, doesn’t that throw into doubt any results that come out of those models?

Wouldn’t it be great for humanity if space was more accessible? A little time thinking about the possibilities should excite all but the least imaginative. Imagine the implications of being able to mine asteroids or deploy vast solar arrays in space, for example.

So with NASA’s US$17bn budget you’d think there would be some room to do some basic work in this area. And I’m sure there is.

Doesn’t it make you proud, though, that some seriously promising work is being done in Oxfordshire and that so far it has consumed just US$7m?

Read more on Scientific American magazine’s blog.

Seeing on Faith
Religion might literally influence how you view the world. Scientists in the Netherlands compared Dutch Calvinists with Dutch atheists, looking for any effects potentially imposed on thinking by the neo-Calvinist concept of sphere sovereignty, which emphasizes that each sector of society has its own responsibilities and authorities. The researchers hypothesize that Calvinists might therefore not be as good as atheists at seeing the big picture. Participants were shown images of large rectangles or squares that each consisted of smaller rectangles or squares.
In some tests, volunteers had to quickly identify the shapes of the smaller parts; in others, the larger wholes. The Calvinists scored slightly but significantly lower than atheists did in correctly identifying whole images. The investigators plan to study other religions for similar influences. See more in the November 12 PLoS ONE.
—Charles Q. Choi

This from Scientific American’s January 2009 issue.

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Offensive material: The site linked to below is definitely for mature people only.

That will not always be the case, though. Let’s hope that before humanity is wiped out, it has escaped this planet and that whatever commands the Earth when that has happened, has not lost the information we have now; let us hope, then, that the legacy of humanity is to teach those that follow, whatever they may be!

What am I on about? Well, did you miss the link above? Read about the future cosmologists on Scientific American.

One chapter of the book covered specifically the affect of society on the accepted morality of the time. One example he gave was a quote of Abraham Lincoln.

Before I share it with you though, I should point out the parallels that observers are making between Barack Obama and Abraham Lincoln (even before he takes office tomorrow!).

But if a parallel is to be drawn we should be careful of viewing historical figures through rose-tinted glasses:

“I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in anyway the social and political equality of the white and black races – that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race. I say upon this occasion I do not perceive that because the white man is to have the superior position the negro should be denied everything.”

To be clear, I’m not suggesting that Lincoln didn’t do some great things for the slaves of America, and I’m not suggesting he was anything but a moral man by his day’s standards, but we must know the person before we can claim to be following in his footsteps (not that Obama is).

I hope Obama lives up to America’s, and the world’s, hopes. But I hope he is a moral man by today’s judgement, and not moral as Lincoln would be judged by today’s standards!

I have a profile on Facebook and, heck, a website here where I occasionally say something that I feel needs saying (less frequently recently). I also use Google to search and only rarely delete anything from my search history. But the article I was reading that triggered the ‘must write’ response was one on RFID tags.

When I first decided to get an Oyster card it was after a long period of thinking about it. To me having the Mayor of London able to see where I’m going seemed like a bit of an imposition. Why should he need to know where I’m going? And can I trust a man who leaves the Congestion Charge cameras on on Sundays? Eventually I decided that as it was voluntary it wasn’t unreasonable to help them manage the network and, anyway, it’s cheaper for the right reasons.

But as I read the RFID article I realised how many things I was carrying had an RFID tag in them. I was going to an examination so I had my new-style passport with me as ID. This contains a passive chip that is encrypted (I believe) using my passport number as a key. But also on my person I had said Oyster card and also my new Barclaycard that has PayPass.

If I wander into a shopping centre, the article explained, an array of RFID tag readers in appropriate places may just be able to read my RFID tags and find out where I go, where I stop or dally and where I don’t go. While, at the moment, this would not necessarily identify me as me, it wouldn’t be too hard for that to happen and it would be much easier to integrate that data into a useful database than are images on CCTV.

I have to admit, despite my concerns about freedom I am not worried about the implementation of RFID in the West yet (China’s another matter: China to issue RFID ID cards) but it is an area we need to keep an eye on.

For example, is it better to drive at 45mph in fifth gear or 39mph in fourth gear if both make the engine do 2000rpm? Is it better to go slowly, change gear less but stay in a low gear or go slightly faster (where the engine is more efficient) but need to change up and down gears regularly? Is it better to keep an old inefficient, working boiler or waste the manufacturing effort of making a new efficient boiler (without mentioning the associated waste costs)? Is it better to throw out a massive, old cathode ray television and replace it with an LCD TV, or keep using it until it dies? Or should you replace your TV with an LCD one at all because of the metals used in their manufacture (even though they’re massively more efficient)? Should I use my unused energy-wasting lightbulbs or skip them for the energy saving ones I have in the drawer and throw the old-style ones away?

Now some of those questions are obvious, and I do know the answer) but some are not and there’s no single place where I (Joe Public) can find the answer easily. Those thousands of volunteers that Rob is hoping for need this information.

I think most people these days are a little cynical about green taxes. Isn’t it true, they say, that green taxes are about revenue rather than behaviour? Isn’t it true that outside of London there is no viable alternative to private transport? And isn’t it true that a tax meant to disincentivise a behaviour, in the absence of an alternative, serves only to hurt the lower and middle earners?

Well Osborne’s solution is to create price stability — ensure the effective price of oil maintains a certain level and there will be a realistic chance of people investing in alternatives. Make long-term guarantees about the minimum level of landfill tax and then companies can be sure that it is worth investing in making money out of the situation.

While we would all like to believe that people and companies do the right thing because it’s the right thing, there’s absolutely no harm in allowing companies to profit from environmentally friendly practices. Even though there are arguments about the ‘green-ness’ of the Toyota Prius, no-one can claim it has been bad for the Toyota company.

Our current government announces things at pre-budget report stage and if they’re unpopular, changes its mind on the day of the budget. Osborne and co. have promised that there won’t be a raft of surprise new measures on the day of the budget which will allow companies and early-adopter consumers to know that their purchases and money-making exercises are going to have a sound-business case in five years time.

Like social welfare and the NHS, the Conservatives have taken the lead on another policy area — environmental realism.

The other day I was filling the kettle and accidentally overfilled it. So in an effort not to waste electricity I emptied the kettle down to the level where it contained enough water for the two cups I was making. My girlfriend asked whether I had done the right thing: Had I wasted more energy in wasting cleaned water than I had saved in not causing the kettle to stay on longer?

The question is a reasonable one. And it is a similar question to many others we all must ask as we go about our daily lives. So if human-caused climate change is such a big issue, why isn’t the results of research into these things being made available?

One final comment: I would like to apologise; my stats tell me that a small number of you have visited here almost every day since my last post — thank you and sorry for the delay in resuming service. Oh, and if you saw the Netherlands, Italy game last night, lucky you. Wasn’t it great?!