May for the Neo-Führer?

 Politics  No Responses »
Apr 222017
 

May continue to cut public sector salaries year on year.

May continue to pillage the public services we all use to pay for the bankers mistakes.

May continue to make tax cuts for the rich.

May continue to cut welfare payments to the poorest families in our society causing a huge increase in child poverty.

May continue to stumble and fumble around during the Brexit negotiations in all likelihood resulting in a poor deal for Britain.

May continue to antagonise the non-English countries of the union increasing the likelihood of a break-up.

May continue to add powers to the secret policemen until we’re living in a police state (hint: it’s not that far off).

Time to look past May to June and choosing anyone other than May.

Westminster Attacker: Cowardly, Pathetic, and Incompetant

 Politics  No Responses »
Mar 232017
 

It may be a bit early to comment in this way with 5 dead, and 40 injured after the attack in Westminster yesterday.

But it could easily have been so much worse.

For those who are not aware, every afternoon Westminster is crawling with hundreds or thousands of pedestrians. Any half-competent attacker armed with a vehicle would have a hard job keeping the casualty figures down to 50-odd.

And then to leap out of a hired car armed with a couple of knives just makes the attacker look pathetic.

Yes this is the worst terrorist attack in London for a decade – which just goes to show just how little terrorism there really is.

Yes there were deaths and terrible injuries, but to me it seems that mocking the attacker is an appropriate reaction.

If you look at recent terrorist attacks in Europe, most of the terrorists turn out to be pathetic petty criminals, and it won’t surprise me if this latest attacker also turns out to be a petty criminal. He’s certainly cowardly, pathetic and incompetent.

The New Defence

GCHQ Spying On Trump?

 Politics  No Responses »
Mar 182017
 

There is a media commentator (Andrew Napolitano) in the USA who has solved the mystery of who was spying on Trump during the election. Apparently it was GCHQ after being asked to by Obama. If it had remained just a commentator on Fox News which is well known for letting kooks, weirdos, and the generally insane spout all sorts of garbage, that would have been it.

But Sean Spicer then repeated the claims in a White House briefing.

And GCHQ have denied it.

But can we believe them? In this case almost certainly.

There is a very long standing convention within British intelligence agencies of neither confirming nor denying any action. Refusing to comment no matter how embarrassing is better than being caught in a lie, so the extremely unusual denial by GCHQ is believable because it is so unusual. But there’s more.

Firstly, Obama as president didn’t have the phone number of GCHQ (which is after all a British agency). A request from the president directly to GCHQ would probably be (and should be) answered with something along the lines of “Wrong number pal”. If he wanted to make a surveillance request it would go to the NSA who would then make an inter-agency request to GCHQ.

Which would of course result in a very secret paper-trail.

And if the request did make it through to GCHQ, the only surveillance data they are likely to have access to is international data (phone calls, Internet, etc) from Trump Tower to places abroad (with probably particularly good capture rates when passing through Europe). Which may well be of interest, but to actually put surveillance equipment inside Trump Tower?

That’s the job of a domestic intelligence agency, and whilst GCHQ could get involved in such an operation on foreign soil (and probably have), it is exceptionally unlikely in this case because it would put the intelligence co-operation agreements between the US and the UK at risk.

Whilst believing statements of an intelligence agency is a risky business, in this case it is probably true that GCHQ had nothing to do with any supposed surveillance of Trump Towers given the number of reasons why GCHQ wouldn’t be involved.

 

 

Veganism & The “Carrying Capacity” Of Different Diets

 Media, Politics  No Responses »
Mar 052017
 

There is an article being advertised around that uses a scientific report detailing the carrying capacity (how many people agriculture can support) of different diets. The article itself is titled in a way to bash vegans for not being as environmentally friendly as they claim to be. Which is odd because the scientific report does show that a vegan diet is more efficient (in terms of how many people can be fed) than a normal diet; it’s just not quite as efficient as some diets – specifically diets that make use of grazing land that cannot be otherwise used.

So a relatively mainstream article is bashing vegans because?

Well the usual reason is because of the holier than thou attitude of vegans. Actually it’s the militant fundamentalist wing of the vegans who do the whole holier than thou thing; just like an iceberg most of the vegan population isn’t visible.

Of course any reputable news organisation would know this, so only resorts to demonisation of vegans as click-bait. Obviously desperate.

The interesting thing about the report is that they have actually shown that different diets can be more efficient (in terms of the number of people that can be fed) than others, and that the average diet is probably one of the least efficient possible diets. Even more interesting (especially for the meat eaters out there) is that omnivorous diets (admittedly with significantly reduced meat intake) can be even more efficient than a vegan diet.

This is apparently due to the fact that a vegan diet will not make use of marginal grazing land which can only be used for raising meat.

If the doom-mongers are right about climate change and rising population, all those dedicated meat eaters out there should probably be encouraging vegans (and vegetarians) so when things get marginal, there are still a few animals to share out.

Should Politicians Be Profiled?

 Politics  No Responses »
Feb 282017
 

With the enfant terrible Trump in charge of the USA and petulant Putin in charge of the Russian bear, it seems like an interesting idea to subject politicians to psychological profiling to determine their suitability for public office and power over us.

When you look at the list of monstrous political leaders we have had over just the last 100 years – Hitler, Pol-pot, Stalin, etc., the idea of testing politicians to find out if they are psychos or loonies starts to make a great deal of sense.

The first complaint about this would be that it would be an invasion of privacy. Well we don’t need to know the details; we simply need to have a trustworthy organisation certify that person A is suitable (or unsuitable) candidate.

The second issue is determining just what makes a suitable or unsuitable candidate which is something we need to persuade a bunch of psychologists and psychiatrists to propose.

The final issue is to get politicians to agree to it, and there we can simply refuse to vote for any candidate who has not been certified.

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