Not quite as simple as that, John.

I wake early these days, and lie in bed listening to Today on Radio 4, waiting for something to give me a kickstart. Nuclear power (NP) is the motivating force this morning. Not the perennial boring problem of we-don't-know-where-to-put-the waste-products (the answer to that one is obvious - just put it Somewhere Else), but the casual remark by the interviewer that NP is the solution to the global warming problem.

It is the casual remarks of broadcasters that are if anything more influential than their fangs-bared attacks, because they set the frame of reference to peoples' view of the world.

So I start the day with an email to John Humphrys, Today programme, BBC radio.

Dear John

This morning you mentioned in passing that nuclear power is going to have to make a comeback in order to let us meet our commitments on global warming.

This is coming to be a common view, but I am sorry to say it is not quite as simple as that. When all the energy costs of nuclear power - mining, construction, ore refinement and decommissioning - are taken into account, electricity generated by NP does indeed produce CO2.

"The use of nuclear power causes, at the end of the road and under the most favourable conditions, approximately one-third as much CO2-emission as gas-fired electricity production. The rich uranium ores required to achieve this reduction are, however, so limited that if the entire present world electricity demand were to be provided by nuclear power, these ores would be exhausted within three years. Use of the remaining poorer ores in nuclear reactors would produce more CO2 emission than burning fossil fuels directly." - ref: here.


And for NP to produce a historically significant amount of electricity requires that we kiss goodbye to any notion that we might keep nuclear weapons out out the hands of terrorists.


Sorry to disappoint.

Yours

Richard

So. The day is under way. Off to work we go.

..or fill the gap up with our English dead.

Scoop: Complete US Exit Poll Data Confirms Net Suspicions

La lutte continua. It is noticable that there is an increase in media coverage of the Votergate/Election Fraud/2/11 Attack on Democracy - call it what you will - issue, perhaps due to the fact that Jesse Jackson and, belatedly, the Democrats, have joined the Greens and Libertarians in challenging the Ohio vote.

The key point is that the integrity of the electoral process be preserved. A most pleasant side effect would be that the world be relieved of the domination of Dubya and his gang of neocons.

And to the 50% of Americans who find that statement offensive, I say "Please understand us: Bush makes us Non-Americans feel very very insecure. It is not just the illegal, oil motivated invasion of Iraq; not just the rejection of the International Criminal Court: not just Kyoto; not just the Patriot Act ("Patriot" Ha!);not just his mangling of the English language; not just that he has a little box on his back to tell him what to say, and his tailor is paid to tell us that it's a crease( so that's all right then, but will anyone ever buy a suit from him again?):

It is Because It Looks As If Bush's Party Consistently Cheats At Elections, And you Cannot Win War against Terrorism and For Democracy If Your Party Looks As If It Cheats At Elections. Because The Next Thing Is That It Will Cheat At Cards, And That Would Be The End Of Civilisation As We Know It."

There. I hope that is clear. So it is in everyone's interests - Green, Libertarian, Republican, Democrat, American, Brit, Ukrainian, whoever - that we get this electoral integrity issue sorted out once and for all in the courts. OK?

Hawkeye on a Roll

The letter on the Index of Governance (see Monday 6th, below) got printed in the paper today! Nice surprise.

And I find an email from a physician who is embarking on a parallel project to the Index - she is looking to cover the whole topic of war, using the same framework we use to tackle pathological states. This is right, because war not only causes widespread injury and disease, but also is a product of psychopathology, a specialised form of psychopathology involving both leaders and mass psychology.

The challenge will be to find the balance point between brevity and comprehensiveness. It is a huge topic.

Reminds me of the M*A*S*H episode where Hawkeye goes psychotic through lack of sleep and decides to speak to the governments in Hanoi and Washington to get them to stop the war because people are getting hurt.

Hmm. Maybe I should be careful to get more sleep...

Down the Pub

No work tomorrow. Great. I love being retired. I had a surgery this afternoon, full of the milk of human kindness, because not tired out and not run off my feet.

Learned to speak Philipine from the nurses at the local nursing home today.
Good bye = "Pa Alam" and Thank you = "Salamat".

Went to pub after work to talk about a way of producing hydrogen from spare electricity. I quite like pubs and beer in moderation. The conversation is interesting. We got talking to a farmer about the 2001 Foot and Mouth Disease crisis - the first time I have been able to talk about it for years.

I found out how to make your beasts behave as if they have BSE so you can get £1000s of pounds compensation. Once the Govt inspector has gone away convinced your beasts are mad, let them out, and shine them up before the valuer comes so that you get the best price for them.

Farmers are not as daft as they look.

And government inspectors are much dafter than they seem.

Reading the news with a knife in your hand. &c.

Today, a letter to the Independent: (pepped up a little for this page)

To the Editor:
The UN plan to exercise its responsibility to protect people from oppression, mass killings and genocide by their own government is welcomed by Jack Straw as it gives him and his neoconservative bosses in the White House the opportunity to plunge headlong into war without the nuisance of having to try to give their actions a veneer of legality.

There is crucial element missing from the UN's plans to invade "rogue" or "failing" states - the prior application of non-violent persuasion. There should be a statutory instrument in place that measures objectively the performance of all states, along the lines of the Index of Human Rights, and a set tariff of smart sanctions designed to hinder and disable the ruling elite. Will Jack Straw be as swift to welcome this proposal as he is to welcome the opportunity to wage war failing states?

Yours &c
RHL

But what does London put in?

Phew. Just back from the Big Smoke, the Great Wen, London, the place where fields and cows are not, but where human species abound. Iraq Occupation Focus Teach-in. Serious stuff. Troops out definitely, no question, they are part of the problem, not the solution. But what then? More of this later.

London takes it out of you.

The poetry reading went well. Five of us read. No-one talked, coughed or argued during my poem for which I feel relieved and grateful, and an Iraqi came up and shook my hand after so it was all worth it.

One of the poems was an Army spokesman explaining the shooting of a child. V powerful. I will try to find it and put it up here.

Virginia is better still, took her out in the wheelchair to the park, another first.