tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-91929222024-03-14T06:15:06.116+00:00Mabinogogiblog
<b>Richard Lawson. On how not to saw off the branch on which you are standing. </b>DocRichardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08903964792092284406noreply@blogger.comBlogger2542125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9192922.post-80736372184840870892024-02-07T12:53:00.001+00:002024-02-07T12:53:13.984+00:00Escalating the Israel - Hamas conflict<p> Today's MP Letter </p><p><span style="text-align: right;">07/02/2024</span></p><p align="right" class="Textbody" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: right;"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p align="right" class="Textbody" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: right;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="Textbody" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">John Penrose MP<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="Textbody" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">House of Commons<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="Textbody" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">London SW1A 0AA<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="Textbody" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="Textbody" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="Textbody" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="p1"><span style="font-family: "Freestyle Script"; font-size: 24.0pt;">Dear
John<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="p1"><span style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="p1">I write to express my deep concern regarding your Government’s escalation
of the conflict in Gaza. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="p1"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="p1">I will make clear at the outset that I support the right of the
State of Israel to exist and I condemn the foolish and inhumane attack carried
out by Hamas on October 7<sup>th</sup>. I also condemn the ongoing massacre and
destruction that Netanyahu is carrying out in Gaza. I feel deeply ashamed that
my country is supporting Netanyahu’s inhumane assault on the civilian population
of Gaza. Like the majority of British citizens, I am on the side neither of Netanyahu
nor Hamas, but on the side of humanity.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="p1"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="p1">You will claim that Israel has a right to defend itself. Netanyahu’s
offensive is the opposite of a defence of Israel. It is creating hatred and resentment
across the world, not just against Israel as a state, but against Jewish people
everywhere. Even if Netanyahu could kill every last member of Hamas, he is acting
as a recruiting sergeant for the Hamas terrorist operation of the future, whatever
it may be called.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="p1"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="p1">As you know, the Houthi attacks on shipping will have a devastating
effect on world trade and economy, including the UK economy, with another round
of fuel price inflation to be expected. The declared aim of the Houthi attacks on
shipping is to bring an end to Netanyahu’s attack on Gaza. Your Government’s
attacks on Houthi missile capability will not mend the situation in good time, as
it is the mere possibility of attack that makes shipping avoid the Red Sea. Instead,
your action is just going to make the outlook for global security worse.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="p1"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="p1">During the recent ceasefire, Houthi attacks were reduced. It is
likely that a ceasefire in Gaza, coupled with intense diplomatic efforts, could
succeed in restoring shipping through the Suez canal far more quickly than military
action. Needless to say, ceasefire and a new round of serious diplomacy and peace
talks is what the world needs to end the agony of Gazan civilians massacred on
a daily basis.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="p1"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="p1">The other problem with your Government’s chosen course of action is
that it represents an escalation of conflict in a time of generalised international
tension, with Putin already engaged in Ukraine and both Putin and the West
engaged in Syria. Escalation is the last thing that the world needs right now. If
escalation does not stop, global nuclear war is a distinct possibility. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="p1"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="p1">De-escalation is clearly the best path to take.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Polls on October 19<sup>th</sup> 2023 showed
overwhelming support for a ceasefire (58% believe we definitely should have a ceasefire,
3% believe we definitely should not have a ceasefire <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>http://tinyurl.com/bdzjr9rx ). <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All wars come to an end eventually. A just and
sustainable <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>peace is the only realistic
future for the Middle East and indeed for the entire world. It can only be
obtained when political attention shifts away from the theoreticians of war to
those who have realistic plans for how human societies everywhere can work to
produce the water, food, energy, shelter and waste management in a sustainable
way.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="p1"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="p1">I would be grateful if you could outline how, in your view, the
British Government can defend its support for Netanyahu and its policy of
escalation of the Netanyahu-Hamas conflict.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Sincerely<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Freestyle Script"; font-size: 24.0pt;">Richard<o:p></o:p></span></p>DocRichardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08903964792092284406noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9192922.post-68300868888470576852023-10-19T15:33:00.003+01:002023-10-19T15:33:18.111+01:00Netanyahu's broken concept of defence<p></p><p><span style="color: black; font-size: 13.5pt;"> "Israel has a right to
defend itself" has become the mantra that Sunak uses at all media
opportunities.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: black; font-size: 13.5pt;">But what does
"defence" mean? Does "defence" give Netanyahu
permission to reduce the northern half of Gaza city to rubble along with
any people in the area in order to bring about the annihilation of all members
of Hamas? Is that what "defence" means?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: black; font-size: 13.5pt;">No, defence in this context
means anticipating the terrorist attack mounted by Hamas on October 7th, using
the world famed intelligence skills of Mossad. Defence means realising that
Hamas was going to react to the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/10/07/world/israel-gaza-attack#the-militants-statement-cited-the-aqsa-mosque-heres-why-it-matters">perceived
outrage at what was happening at the Al-Aqsa mosque</a>. Defence means
listening to and acting upon the advice <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/12/israel-hamas-war-egypt-warned-foreign-affairs-gaza">given
by Egyptian intelligence agency</a> three days before the attack. Defence
means closely monitoring the physical fence between Gaza and Israel, and
reacting swiftly to repel any invasion. In all of these defensive moves,
Netanyahu failed.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: black; font-size: 13.5pt;">Instead, Netanyahu believes
that he has a right to operate a definitive solution for Hamas: he wants
to annihilate them by bombing their buildings and - presumably - gas them in
their tunnels (because how else can he get them out?). He is trying first to
clear the human shield used by Hamas, which is why he has ordered the civilians
in northern Gaza to leave their homes before he flattens them.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: black; font-size: 13.5pt;">Netanyahu believes that this is
a fine solution to his problems. His calculations are simple. If Hamas has
10,000 members, and he kills all 10,00 of them, then Hamas has zero members,
and the Hamas problem is solved. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: black; font-size: 13.5pt;">The reality is not so simple.
Not only will many Hamas members will have moved out of North Gaza City with
the civilians, but also for every Hamas member killed, another Hamas member
will be created because of the grief and hatred caused by the killing. "He
that is killed will always kill again". Hamas, or another hate-motivated anti-Israeli
movement will arise from the ashes and rubble of Netenyahu’s “solution”.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: black; font-size: 13.5pt;">Netanyahu's actions are not
defensive, they are designed to relieve emotions of anger and hatred and
express the desire for retribution, but they are not going to solve the
problems of Israel in the long term. Defence means long term planning to reduce
hatred on both sides, for instance, collaboration in <a href="https://greenerblog.blogspot.com/search?q=water+harvesting">meeting
the needs of both communities in Israel-Palestine for water</a>. Defence means
working with peace-loving citizens with both communities. There are at least
nine cross community citizens’ organisations in Israel Palestine – The One
Voice Movement, the Parents Circle family forum, Hand in Hand – Centre for Jewish-Arab
Education in Israel, <br />
Peace Now, Combatants for Peace, The Peres Centre for Peace and Innovation,
EcoPeace Middle East, The Palestinian-Israeli Journal, and Women Wage Peace. If
these organisations were given a louder voice in broadcast and written media,
hope might be a slightly stronger emotion. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p><span style="color: black; font-size: 13.5pt;">There is more, much more, to
defence than bombing people and houses to smithereens.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p><br /><p></p>DocRichardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08903964792092284406noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9192922.post-69374010366550034062023-10-14T21:15:00.005+01:002023-10-19T11:19:31.627+01:00Doing the same thing and expecting a different result<p> </p><p><br /></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 18.2px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1" style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 18.19px;">Israel has a right to defend itself - yes, for sure</span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 18.2px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1" style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 18.19px;"><br /></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 18.2px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1" style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 18.19px;">But Israel does not have a right to break international law in a misjudged process of <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>revenge and destruction in an attempt to stamp out terrorists once and for all.</span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 18.2px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 23.5px;"><span class="s1" style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 18.19px;"></span><br /></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 18.2px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1" style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 18.19px;">Netanyahu must realise that he cannot exterminate Hamas physically. Even if he could magically destroy every member of Hamas tomorrow, it would not solve his problem, because Hamas is an expression of hatred, nor a finite number of people.</span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 18.2px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 23.5px;"><span class="s1" style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 18.19px;"></span><br /></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 18.2px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1" style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 18.19px;">By killing Hamas, Netanyahu is generating yet more Hamas. </span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 18.2px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 23.5px;"><span class="s1" style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 18.19px;"></span><br /></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 18.2px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1" style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 18.19px;">This issue can and must be solved by dialogue. </span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 18.2px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 23.5px;"><span class="s1" style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 18.19px;"></span><br /></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 18.2px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1" style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 18.19px;">They may say “But there have been dialogues before”. </span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 18.2px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1" style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 18.19px;">True, but also there have been wars before, and we still have wars.</span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 18.2px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 23.5px;"><span class="s1" style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 18.19px;"></span><br /></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 18.2px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1" style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 18.19px;">Einstein said “Insanity is when you do the same thing over and over, expecting a different result”. </span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 18.2px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1" style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 18.19px;">These wars always create more wars.</span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 18.2px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 23.5px;"><span class="s1" style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 18.19px;"></span><br /></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 18.2px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1" style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 18.19px;">War is irrational. Negotiation involves reason. </span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 18.2px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 23.5px;"><span class="s1" style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 18.19px;"></span><br /></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 18.2px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1" style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 18.19px;">By going to war, Netanyahu is expecting too much of his generals and his soldiery. </span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 18.2px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1" style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 18.19px;">The risk for the world is too great. </span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 18.2px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 23.5px;"><span class="s1" style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 18.19px;"></span><br /></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 18.2px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1" style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 18.19px;">If “War is the continuation of politics by other means”, the “other means” here is in fact the abandonment of rationality. Real politics, great politics, statesmanship, involves intense thought and vision. </span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 18.2px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 23.5px;"><span class="s1" style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 18.19px;"></span><br /></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 18.2px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1" style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 18.19px;">Let us hope that somewhere in the political world there is a group of people who have the vision, intelligence, and communication skills to get us out the highly dangerous tragedy that is the Middle East in 2023.</span></p>DocRichardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08903964792092284406noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9192922.post-57251233192510276762023-10-12T09:43:00.002+01:002023-10-13T14:16:18.597+01:00Israel-Palestine: three options<p> We have three options with regard to the tragedy in Israel-Palestine. </p><p>We can be on the side of the Israelis. </p><p>We can be on the side of the Palestinians. </p><p>Or we can be on the side of humanity, which puts us on the side of both (as communities of humans) and neither (as political groupings).</p><p>Wars divide public opinion in a binary way. The majority will reject the “humanity” option as naive, and will produce a seemingly endless reel of historical facts and factoids to back the case of one side or the other.</p><p>We need to be knowledgeable about the history, to understand the motivations of both sides, especially the intensity of Israeli intention never again to be passive subjects of genocide. </p><p>But we need to focus with great determination on the future. What is the future of the “Holy Land”? </p><p>Is it simply to be laid waste by a never ending series of manifestly unholy wars?</p><p>Or is it to be an inspiration to the whole world, as a place where people decided that hatred is not a helpful emotion, and that cooperation is better than conflict in creating a better life for all humans?</p><p>When we look at I-P from the latter point of view, the first and most striking feature of the land is that it is semi arid. Water is in short supply, and this limits the amount of food that can be grown. </p><p>Already Friends of the Earth Middle East are working on cross community projects relating to water, especially around Jordan. https://ecopeaceme.org</p><p>This approach can be taken further in a water harvesting project, where the EU and UK could supply kit for communities to gather water https://greenerblog.blogspot.com/search?q=Water+harvesting+Israel</p><p>There are numerous organisations which promote cooperation between the two communities. Here is a Chat Gtp link for nine of them https://chat.openai.com/share/92954bae-1ffb-450c-a43c-cf55e66c0291</p><p>If we look to the past, there is no solution, just endless war.</p><p>If we ask how two peoples can life together in the future, we find that it involves cooperation in constructing adequate amounts of water, food, energy, housing. sanitation, health, education and social care for everyone living in the land.</p>DocRichardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08903964792092284406noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9192922.post-89202540786576737992023-10-11T20:23:00.002+01:002023-10-15T19:10:00.950+01:00WAR AS MADNESS<p>\\\\\\\\</p><p><i>Wars do not usually result from just causes but from pretexts. There probably never was a just cause why men should slaughter each other by wholesale, but there are such things as ambition, selfishness, folly, madness, in communities as in individuals, which become blind and bloodthirsty, not to be appeased save by havoc, and generally by the killing of somebody else than themselves - </i>General Tecumseh Sherman, Speech to the graduating class of the Michigan Military Academy 1878</p><p><i style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 18.19px;">"Insanity is when you do the same thing over and over, expecting a different result” </i><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 18.19px;">- </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody;">Albert </span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody;">Einstein </span></p><p><span style="color: #333333; font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 18.19px;"><br /></span></p><p>“War is madness” is a cliche, but it is a true cliche. </p><p>First, war is madness in the US sense, of mad as in angry. War is a political expression of frustration, anger and hatred. Anger is an outgoing reaction to perceived threat. As it is an emotion, anger can bypass reason. There is an immediate feeling of wishing to destroy the threat immediately, although history, reason and psychology teach us that in the process of destroying perceived enemies, the destroyer is creating yet more enemies. </p><p>Second, war is involves detachment from reality. In war, we humans divert from the everyday central human purposeful work, that of trying to create healthy and happy human communities by addressing our individual and societal needs. In war we are expected to turn our hand instead to destroying the lives, health and structures of our perceived enemies. War is a state of mutual paranoia and mutual destruction. War is the exact opposite of what the human race needs to be doing in 2023, which is of course, to be working to normalise Earth’s greenhouse effect, to satisfy our human needs for health, education and security, and to protect and restore ecological systems.</p><p>Third, war is insanity in the sense that Einstein pointed to when he said “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results”. This applies very much to the Israel/Palestine situation, where both Hamas and the Israeli Government are participating in an upward spiral of hatred, violence, killing and destruction.</p><p>What can we ordinary humans, do? We may raise our voices in protest, we may call for a ceasefire and an end to violence, but this call is not likely to be heard by leaders who are in the grip of war fever. </p><p>We may hope that our Governments and diplomats are doing what they can to avoid escalation, but we have little influence on diplomacy, apart maybe in a slight way through the United Nations Association. <a href="https://una.org.uk/">https://una.org.uk/</a> </p><p><br /></p><p>We can give humanitarian aid to the victims of war, carefully balancing our donations to both Palestinian and Israeli causes. This will be controversial I know, but to me it is essential to give to both sides. (In writing that, I realise that I should personally give to Russian humanitarian causes as well as Ukrainian).</p><p><br /></p><p>Can we influence the situation, or do we just have to wait for this phase of political insanity to come to an end, before we can put in suggestions as to how to prevent the next outbreak of insanity?</p><p>If we all spoke with one voice, our leaders would at least hear what we are saying, even if they do not listen. </p><p>However, they might listen if we have something helpful to offer, because, behind the mask of confidence, our leaders are as terrified as we are. They know, as we know, that this conflict could end up with a global nuclear war.</p><p>If this war is not solved with some brilliant diplomacy, it could which would put an end to human civilisation. </p><p>It is as simple as that, </p><p>This thought should motivate us to come up with a cunning plan.</p><p>I am asking my readers to put their cunning plan in the comments in 40 words or less into the Comments section below. Thank you</p><p><br /></p><p><span style="font-size: xx-small;">[minor edit 15/10/23]</span></p><p><br /></p>DocRichardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08903964792092284406noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9192922.post-1668311069195189732023-07-06T07:08:00.002+01:002023-07-06T07:13:00.661+01:00A few select deniers’ talking points<p> Here are a few of the more common current talking points deployed by the #NetZeroDelayers (a.k.a. Man Made Climate Climate Change Deniers, Mild MMCMinimiser, “Independent” climate science proponents, etc). </p><p><br /></p><p>They are put here for identification purposes only; a kind of shorthand which may prove useful briefly to identify the notion being put forward. I have put the key answer in brackets after a few of the denial claim, but if you want to debate the whole question, SkepticalScience.com is the place to go.</p><p><br /></p><p>1. It’s the Sun, stupid (correlation between solar activity and ST has diverged)</p><p>2. Climate has always changed (Modern CC is rapid and correlates with our CO2)</p><p>3. CO2 is 0.04% of the atmosphere (Tiny things can cause big changes in physical systems. Magnesium is about 0.000035% human body. Too little or too much, and things go severely wrong)</p><p>4. CO2 increases lag surface temperature (ST) (CO2 is a feedback as well as a forcing) </p><p>5. Carbon dioxide is good for plants (Nobody said it wasn’t. CO2 is a tiny negative feedback, overwhelmed by positive feedbacks)</p><p>6. It’s snowing outside, so GW isn’t happening (Hasty generalisation fallacy)</p><p>7. This factor that I have read about, affects climate, so CO2 has no effect (Climate is multi factorial) </p><p>8. What about China then? (Kant’s Moral imperative)</p><p>9. Deaths due to natural disasters are down. (Agreed. Forecasting and rescue services have improved)�</p><p>10. The Net Zero pushback: Greens want us back to the Dark Ages</p><p> 1. Renewable energy RE is intermittent (So we will do storage)</p><p> 2. RE needs minerals & energy to make technology (we are in transition), and see here:</p><p> 3. RE mfrs use child labour (then intervene in the free market, set standards and regulate)</p><p> 4. RE causes pollution (Then stop the pollution)</p><p> 5. Greens are hypocrites because they use fossil fuels (we are cutting as fast as we can while living in this FF-based economy, and some of us offset our residual FF use by reforestation)</p><p>11. I dislike Greta Thunberg, therefore changing Earth’s greenhouse effect will not have any impact on surface temperatures.</p>DocRichardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08903964792092284406noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9192922.post-38235228309506765172023-07-01T13:37:00.001+01:002023-08-04T08:23:44.497+01:00Pressing the BBC to commission Interruption Rate Studies<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHx0kJ0OZITLSc9T4H6NhNOWYIapeAU_ImCNXxDq0GiND-YVLXeZnVhiAy9NBYZaIX5x3cyyAXiZMLmyG20bNPk2gPtSW35N4y8qtJ47ahieWvyOLwifFqb4_yRzp6whry0QudjT28171H8pzOYvtQJSW_fDXTunvSzXok8otZgSEyweCom5yEIQ/s1160/Deborah-Turness.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="629" data-original-width="1160" height="174" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHx0kJ0OZITLSc9T4H6NhNOWYIapeAU_ImCNXxDq0GiND-YVLXeZnVhiAy9NBYZaIX5x3cyyAXiZMLmyG20bNPk2gPtSW35N4y8qtJ47ahieWvyOLwifFqb4_yRzp6whry0QudjT28171H8pzOYvtQJSW_fDXTunvSzXok8otZgSEyweCom5yEIQ/s320/Deborah-Turness.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>< Deborah Turness<br /><br />I have written several times to Deborah Turness, CEO of BBC News and Current Affairs, since February, and she has been ghosting me, so I hope that friends will join me in writing to her, and will keep pressurising her in various ways until she sets up Interruption Rate studies.<p></p>The pro-Tory bias of Laura Kunessburg, Fiona Bruce and others is legendary. We have been grumbling about it for ages. Enough grumbling already; let us do something about it.<br /><br />I hope that friends will copy what I have written to her, add and amend as you wish, and consider other actions. <br /><br />I am considering a pledge to stop paying the licence fee until the BBC complies, but this is a big step, and the Tories would actually covertly love it, because they would actually like it if the BBC crashed, so that they could privatise it and sell it off to one of their mates.<br /><br />Anyway, please, at least, write to Ms Turness to try to get her to engage.<div><br /></div><div><br />_____________________________________<br /><br />Deborah Turness<br />CEO News and Current Affairs<br />BBC Broadcasting House<br />Portland Place <br />London W1A 0AA<br /><br /><br />*Testing BBC Impartiality by Measuring Interruption Rates*<br /><br />Please respond to the points made below.<br /><br />1. You must agree that democracy is absolutely vital to the health of Britain as a nation, and that the BBC has a hugely important role to play in the democratic process. <br />2. Voting can only be meaningful if the electorate has access to clear and impartial information. <br />3. It is of paramount importance that the BBC should have no political bias and should present news and commentary in an even-handed way as far as is possible, as is written in the BBC Charter. It is your responsibility as CEO of BBC News and Current affairs to ensure that this is the case.<br />4. You will be aware that the BBC is criticised from both ends of the political spectrum, and this fact is commonly used to maintain that it is therefore steering a correct and moderate course. <br />5. This argument is too simplistic. It sets aside questions of the content and quality of com-plaints made against the Corporation, but even if a study were to be made of these factors, the result of that study would still be a matter of judgment and opinion. <br />6. What is needed therefore is an objective measure of the presence or absence of political bias in BBC political and current affairs programmes.<br />7. One way of obtaining such an objective measurement would be for the Corporation to com-mission an arms-length retrospective study by a respected academic group of the Interrup-tion Rate (IR) on BBC political news and current affairs programmes. <br />8. The term Interruption Rate is self explanatory: it is the rate at which an interviewer interrupts his or her interviewee. <br />9. Interruptions can be assigned a grade, from cutting in on the last few words of the interviewees’ sentence (which in itself interferes with the audience's assimilation of a point) to cutting across the middle of an important point, and to non-verbal vocalisations and even body language. [contd.<br />10. The result of this study would be to demonstrate in a robust way how interviewers treat in-terviewees of different types; not just speakers for different political parties, but also of gender and race. <br />11. Hopefully the results will demonstrate that the BBC has in fact been living up to its aims and claims of impartiality, but this is not a foregone conclusion.<br />12. Interviewers who show clear bias in their IR analyses should be retrained, and all interview-ers should be told that their IR will be assessed on an ongoing basis. <br />13. If it is argued that the BBC cannot afford the financial cost of such studies, the answer is that Britain as a nation cannot afford the threat to its democracy posed by politically partial broadcast media. <br /><br />I look forward to discussing with you the details of how the BBC will implement the Interruption Rate studies when the campaign has generated sufficient pressure on yourself and on the Corpora-tion.<br /> <br /><br />With best wishes for the recovery of public confidence in the BBC<br /><br />Yours sincerely <br />........</div>DocRichardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08903964792092284406noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9192922.post-57426367523665386622023-06-29T12:21:00.006+01:002023-06-29T12:21:51.220+01:00ChatGTP on Net Zero<br /><br />A couple of days ago I went to ChatGPT (<a href="http://chatgpt.com/?fbclid=IwAR29E20ATVH-eZC1nDVVpSbJxezOpku9VmPvZUpSUdGiyLAnYCbG_JITSv0">ChatGPT.com</a>), the artificial intelligence, AI , ask-me-anything site, and asked it:<br /><i><br />“What are the pros and cons of Net Zero?”</i><br /><br />It came back with an answer. I read it, and asked a subsidiary question about the jobs potential in Net Zero, which it answered immediately, apologising for leaving out the jobs in Net Zero, although it mentioned job losses in the fossil industries. <br /><br /><br />Today, I went back, couldn’t find my question so I signed up and put the question again. The response is below. It was similar, but not identical in wording, and this time, the jobs value in Net Zero was included, so ChatGPT had learned from my subsidiary question.<div><br />I found this all pretty interesting. It was a useful learning experience for me, and definitely much much more illuminating than asking a politician, especially a Tory politician, the same question. <br /><br /></div><div><br /><br />RL: What are the pros and cons of Net Zero?</div><div><br />ChatGPT: Hi! Net Zero refers to the concept of balancing the amount of greenhouse gases emitted into the atmosphere with the amount removed or offset. There are several pros and cons associated with this approach.<br /><br /></div><div>Pros:<br />1. Climate Change Mitigation: Net Zero aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, which can help mitigate climate change and its impacts.<br />2. Renewable Energy Transition: Achieving Net Zero requires a shift towards renewable energy sources, which can lead to a more sustainable and cleaner energy system.<br />3. Technological Innovation: The pursuit of Net Zero can drive technological advancements in areas such as renewable energy, energy storage, and carbon capture and storage.<br />4. Job Creation: The transition to a Net Zero economy can create new job opportunities in sectors like renewable energy, energy efficiency, and sustainable infrastructure.<br />5. Health Benefits: Reducing greenhouse gas emissions can also lead to improved air quality and public health outcomes.<br /><br /></div><div>Cons:<br />1. Cost: Transitioning to Net Zero can involve significant costs, including investments in renewable energy infrastructure and carbon capture technologies.<br />2. Economic Disruption: Certain industries, such as fossil fuel extraction and processing, may face challenges and job losses during the transition to Net Zero.<br />3. Technological Limitations: Some technologies required for achieving Net Zero, such as large-scale carbon capture and storage, are still in the early stages of development and may not be commercially viable yet.<br />4. Land Use and Resource Constraints: Scaling up renewable energy sources like wind and solar may require significant land use, which can have environmental and social implications.<br />5. Equity and Distributional Impacts: The costs and benefits of transitioning to Net Zero may not be evenly distributed, potentially exacerbating existing social and economic inequalities.<br />It's important to note that the pros and cons of Net Zero can vary depending on the specific context and implementation strategies.<br /><br /><br />RL: So this is a good summary of the position. We should do some work on answering the Con points that Chat puts, as they are being pushed by the delayers like Net Zero Watch.<br /></div>DocRichardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08903964792092284406noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9192922.post-6457661791361907542023-03-17T11:48:00.005+00:002023-03-20T16:03:39.769+00:00Covid Means that the NHS Needs 6000 More Beds <p>Figure 1</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEir0s8gj8Ker3S10gUTzfm8BlBfBfhqul-9MBBjyaMVzkix0IOyuHSqEaRJA3FsaqnUMjh-9jL_xhDZ0riOQhnZEL3jM-YPalJrgbIzmzEglFs-9JiZJrqm6u-hSBZXxbUyYSbVLKzocThSGjDQoR8nVjZt-2fHbJp8I3F4-7pxw-IDX8hjzlk/s2360/CovidHosPat.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1640" data-original-width="2360" height="222" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEir0s8gj8Ker3S10gUTzfm8BlBfBfhqul-9MBBjyaMVzkix0IOyuHSqEaRJA3FsaqnUMjh-9jL_xhDZ0riOQhnZEL3jM-YPalJrgbIzmzEglFs-9JiZJrqm6u-hSBZXxbUyYSbVLKzocThSGjDQoR8nVjZt-2fHbJp8I3F4-7pxw-IDX8hjzlk/s320/CovidHosPat.jpg" width="320" /></a><br />
<p><span data-tt="{"paragraphStyle":{"alignment":4,"writingDirection":1}}" style="white-space: pre-wrap;">Figure 1 shows that the number of hospital inpatients suffering from Covid is going to settle out at at least 100 NHS hospital beds per million, that is 6,000 beds. This represents an increase of approximately 5% on the present number of beds in the NHS. </span><o:p></o:p></p><p><br /></p>
<p><span data-tt="{"paragraphStyle":{"alignment":4,"writingDirection":1}}" style="white-space: pre-wrap;">There is no slack in the provision of NHS beds to cope with this extra demand. Bed numbers have fallen by 53% since the 1980s, while the number of patients treated has risen. International comparisons (see Fig 2) show that our bed ratio is smaller than those of comparable countries, although we are not quite as poor as Mexico. </span> Click on the figure to enlarge it.</p><p><br /></p><p>Figure 2</p><p><o:p></o:p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSWjtN2KzA0K9sP4Cy1_cDsCImoUFDbAa-D0DLXoPoXhtcoqB2v-OCPSXkuE0Lzq_by0mYq-1tURAHsBIF8X84uHM2lTCrGTbgDgpga-nSvVqQTiqIgmO9AhzrLxB4R-cYu5f-dwAbR2DwOSn6Rmbxu23u_ptBkzM28abwXeXQuwjsMef4aaw/s825/HosBedIntComp.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="602" data-original-width="825" height="234" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSWjtN2KzA0K9sP4Cy1_cDsCImoUFDbAa-D0DLXoPoXhtcoqB2v-OCPSXkuE0Lzq_by0mYq-1tURAHsBIF8X84uHM2lTCrGTbgDgpga-nSvVqQTiqIgmO9AhzrLxB4R-cYu5f-dwAbR2DwOSn6Rmbxu23u_ptBkzM28abwXeXQuwjsMef4aaw/s320/HosBedIntComp.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p></p><br />
<p><span data-tt="{"paragraphStyle":{"alignment":4,"writingDirection":1}}" style="white-space: pre-wrap;">To make matters worse, the extra 6,000 Covid patients in NHS hospitals are more demanding in terms of staff time, danger and stress, in that they need barrier nursing because of the highly infectious nature of their illness. Nurses and doctors have to use full PPE when attending the patient, and some of them will succumb to the infection, which will take them out of action for a significant amount of time. </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p><span data-tt="{"paragraphStyle":{"alignment":4,"writingDirection":1}}" style="white-space: pre-wrap;">Further, it is not just a case of providing another 6,000 physical beds. Each bed needs more personnel and other resources.
</span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p><span data-tt="{"paragraphStyle":{"alignment":4,"writingDirection":1}}" style="white-space: pre-wrap;">It is highly unlikely that the present Government is going to respond to the extra demand created by Covid, so NHS waiting lists are going to continue to increase, along with stress on NHS staff, and the
quality of health care for the British nation will continue to spiral downwards. </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p>So what can we do?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p><span data-tt="{"paragraphStyle":{"alignment":4,"writingDirection":1}}" style="white-space: pre-wrap;">There is one approach that could slightly mitigate this situation. Of the Covid cases in hospital, 10-30% caught the infection while in hospital. Therefore the demand for extra beds could be reduced down
from 6,000 to between 5,400 and 4,200 by cutting the spread of Covid in hospital. This can be achieved by using the Melbourne Isolation Hood, or Medihood (https://medihood.com.au), which works by drawing off the virus-laden exhaled air from the Covid patient and capturing the virus in a HEPA filter. The unit costs about the same as a two-day stay in ICU bed, so it is an excellent investment. Even cheaper options are available. I engaged in a protracted and ultimately circular correspondence
with a sequence of Government decision makers during the pandemic about adopting this technology. <a href="https://greenerblog.blogspot.com/2021/01/virus-that-causes-covid-19-is-spread.html">More here </a></span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p><span data-tt="{"paragraphStyle":{"alignment":4,"writingDirection":1}}" style="white-space: pre-wrap;">The other measure that will slightly lower the burden of Covid, and other infectious diseases like influenza and RSV, on our economy, society and NHS is to reduce the circulation of viruses in the general population. Unfortunately measures such as vaccination, social distancing, ventilation,
masking, and staying home if ill are opposed by a highly influential cohort of mainly right wing journalists and social media writers who have succeeded in convincing everyone that Covid is not a problem. This is despite evidence that suggests that <a href="https://tinyurl.com/4r5w5h5r">Covid causes more serious sequelae with each reinfection</a>.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p>In view of this famous victory on the part of media influencers, we should try another
line of defence. We can install air purifiers in as many public spaces as
possible, whether it be offices, restaurants, or public transport. HEPA air
purifiers are effective at filtering viruses out of ambient air and trapping
them in the filter, where they die. HEPA filters remove all airborne viruses: Covid,
irrespective of mutant variants, influenza, RSV, the lot. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p>An added advantage of such filters is that they could have a small filtering
strip applied to them which could be removed and tested intermittently with a
standard Lateral Flow Test to detect whether virus is present in the room. In
an office, this test could indicate that someone in the room is exhaling virus
particles. That person can then be identified and sent home to recover. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p><span data-tt="{"paragraphStyle":{"alignment":4,"writingDirection":1}}" style="white-space: pre-wrap;">Air filtration is already in use in the Houses of Parliament but inexplicably their use has not been rolled out or even discussed in other places. The only drawback of air purifiers is its energy usage, but in
that they will be keeping people out of hospital, there will be a net reduction in energy demand from their use. We must hope that concerted push from medical and health professionals as well as from concerned lay people will bring about trials of filtration as a means of reducing Covid infection rates in the general population. </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p><span data-tt="{"paragraphStyle":{"alignment":4,"writingDirection":1}}" style="white-space: pre-wrap;">In conclusion, it is clear that Covid is imposing a quantifiable extra burden on the NHS which will further diminish its ability to cope. There are some effective measures that may improve this problem, and we must hope that the next Government will step up to meet this challenge.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p><span data-tt="{"paragraphStyle":{"alignment":4,"writingDirection":1}}" style="white-space: pre-wrap;">I hope that others will join with me in obtaining a commitment from the parties who will form the next Government to implement the policies </span>suggested here.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p>Richard Lawson<o:p></o:p></p>
<p>17/03/2023<br />Edited 20/03/2023<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br />DocRichardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08903964792092284406noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9192922.post-19850678339058880702023-03-03T15:51:00.000+00:002023-03-03T15:51:00.302+00:00The Economics of Medical Science<p> Complementary medicine is commonly dismissed with the words "There is no scientific proof that it works", as if that is the end of the matter. But it is not.</p><p>Leaving aside the nitty point that there is no such thing as "scientific proof" because, technically no scientific hypothesis is proven, the best that a hypothesis can do is not-yet-disproven, according to the great philosopher of science, Karl Popper, there is often a fair amount of scientific literature covering topics in complementary medicine such as manipulation or herbal medicine. Some of this is poor quality but not all. Some complementary research is very carefully carried out - so why is it not taken seriously?</p><p>One of the problems is the size of the trial. To get any credibility in modern medical science you need a massive number of subjects in the trial, the more the merrier. A typical randomised controlled trial will have n=20,000, where n is the number of subjects in the trial, because you need that many to get robust statistics. So, for comparison, if your aunt Vera recovered from her cold after eating a hot curry, n=1. Aunt Vera lacks credibility. </p><p>Of course, to do a trial where n=20,000 costs a lot of money. there will be professors, doctors, nurses, data gatherers and statistician aplenty all working on the project. This will cost many millions of pounds, and the only people who can find this money are pharmaceutical corporations. They can pay the salaries, providing that there is a licensed pharmaceutical at the end of the process, because they will get a 20 year monopoly on a patented licensed new medicine. </p><p>It is perfectly possible to do a similar sized randomised controlled trial on, say, Saffron in early dementia. At the end of the trial, it may be found that Saffron emerges with evidence of benefit on memory performance. Great, say the families of people with memory problems. Great also say the competitors of the group that did the research. Without having to pay out for the research, the competitors can sell in the reflected glory of the research, because Saffron cannot be patented.</p><p>So this is why there is not so much scientific evidence for complementary therapies as there is for patented, synthetic medicines. </p><p>Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. </p>DocRichardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08903964792092284406noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9192922.post-14496996621743345572023-03-02T18:38:00.000+00:002023-03-02T18:38:54.094+00:00It's Curtains for Wasted Room Heat<p>Central heating radiators are usually sited under the window in order to avoid flows of cold air from the window into the room (Fig 1). Unfortunately this results in a lot of rising warm air from the radiator getting behind the curtain and going out the window, double glazed or not.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYfLrqbW_sAmeZqPubOdcIpz18HSfRsyVrfRXouwOnKAyo6Hf7erEDD8YEul_G_W7-ny0QiFmH4c8m35Eifo4YLx3Eey8CaRVV5LBhBAdrzAgjQ8_r0PFbIT61lzLropxQNyGoa4mZCu8s0o9Gg5JpvLl1E1pWb1B_OfdHWsJCx3XWUinNzIc/s1025/HEAT%20LOSS%20FIG%201.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="528" data-original-width="1025" height="267" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYfLrqbW_sAmeZqPubOdcIpz18HSfRsyVrfRXouwOnKAyo6Hf7erEDD8YEul_G_W7-ny0QiFmH4c8m35Eifo4YLx3Eey8CaRVV5LBhBAdrzAgjQ8_r0PFbIT61lzLropxQNyGoa4mZCu8s0o9Gg5JpvLl1E1pWb1B_OfdHWsJCx3XWUinNzIc/w517-h267/HEAT%20LOSS%20FIG%201.png" width="517" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>I have overcome this problem by fixing a shelf to extend the window sill out into the room, allowing me to place the drawn curtain on the shelf, which effectively separates the warm room from the cold glass (Fig 2).</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh240XJeprIfso4zPW8ixBiqjM438l7ZqOLa4xgZYu7BqEohjFGkhmMnj9milCYscLfSGTktNlA4MZzsqlIJp6pyoEkbCClwwOcuFgHkiq33SjCox3WI971w84_ALIWQhw79lRg_46bRS3fsKKydH4bGppqzfmiRMWNlrlNMWa0YLFzybIoZK0/s1025/NO%20HEAT%20LOSS%20FIG%202.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="528" data-original-width="1025" height="238" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh240XJeprIfso4zPW8ixBiqjM438l7ZqOLa4xgZYu7BqEohjFGkhmMnj9milCYscLfSGTktNlA4MZzsqlIJp6pyoEkbCClwwOcuFgHkiq33SjCox3WI971w84_ALIWQhw79lRg_46bRS3fsKKydH4bGppqzfmiRMWNlrlNMWa0YLFzybIoZK0/w462-h238/NO%20HEAT%20LOSS%20FIG%202.png" width="462" /></a></div><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>We've had them up for four months now, and they work fine. There are no drawbacks (see what I did there?). Nearly all the heat from the radiator comes into the room.</p><p>Here is what it looks like:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpsiLZP0tzwlRHJ0Y_F9ckMP8x_G-7r_ore0EQyh_Yq7FiBKFXpoql6C0Cndru2iCEHwhu6UzTNxpmxbKS8z9eqCF6Xg0PP9JpaDzbZLTr4X4czoZBMBhrLSDQKGpjn3qis7AP9x6h8UsO24oEBh9n0r72Y786lc_0Vh2WUVOPk19V5nWQ4lU/s4032/CURTAIN1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpsiLZP0tzwlRHJ0Y_F9ckMP8x_G-7r_ore0EQyh_Yq7FiBKFXpoql6C0Cndru2iCEHwhu6UzTNxpmxbKS8z9eqCF6Xg0PP9JpaDzbZLTr4X4czoZBMBhrLSDQKGpjn3qis7AP9x6h8UsO24oEBh9n0r72Y786lc_0Vh2WUVOPk19V5nWQ4lU/s320/CURTAIN1.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>Before<div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgn9U2SiNl_WFeBiNn-tAi9-UCfQwQdKY2fJXsLAStntoZy0l0byaJClsazYOWKNjHHYPAKiFbenWzNzgWiCJ9YAF9HQpZ_LFfvsgGxIxP9JTTtyh9bsmikgqol2QSmI9Rlsdn0WkkSXPvD-gJtObg_Isl9wo6Gi5vlsRwma4TbmTaV4gtvyvY/s4032/CURTAIN2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgn9U2SiNl_WFeBiNn-tAi9-UCfQwQdKY2fJXsLAStntoZy0l0byaJClsazYOWKNjHHYPAKiFbenWzNzgWiCJ9YAF9HQpZ_LFfvsgGxIxP9JTTtyh9bsmikgqol2QSmI9Rlsdn0WkkSXPvD-gJtObg_Isl9wo6Gi5vlsRwma4TbmTaV4gtvyvY/s320/CURTAIN2.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>Shelf in place<div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-x9JBj3PESA2rehrRzol5DyTcqM7usKfaOrwo72JixEnO-BQ71yDOqsAs-vBimNZR_Q5tOCFFs3HQujLWo3VkoYev1jJVx9YgIb5esUlkgG0tr4AnmrWGslkY9FFUt3vsxVAwvdtgOIPD_XNQhkNQHOKA2fzJclpQEL8wXwKAlhIhz6PuID4/s4032/CURTAIN3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-x9JBj3PESA2rehrRzol5DyTcqM7usKfaOrwo72JixEnO-BQ71yDOqsAs-vBimNZR_Q5tOCFFs3HQujLWo3VkoYev1jJVx9YgIb5esUlkgG0tr4AnmrWGslkY9FFUt3vsxVAwvdtgOIPD_XNQhkNQHOKA2fzJclpQEL8wXwKAlhIhz6PuID4/s320/CURTAIN3.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>Curtain shelf in action, saving heat.<div><br /><div><br /><div><br /><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>I hope this may inspire others to cut their fuel bills a bit</p></div></div></div>DocRichardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08903964792092284406noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9192922.post-24837496402175003192023-01-03T13:00:00.002+00:002023-01-03T13:00:37.008+00:00If you oppose climate change, join the 50/60 campaign <p><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">It is hard, even for us activists, to face up to the enormity of what our fossil fuels are doing to Earth's climate. There are thousands of things that we need to do, starting with kicking this worthless, incompetent and corrupt bunch of "Conservative" free market fundamentalists out of office, but here is one thing that we can all do, right now (that is, those of us who still drive cars):</span></p><p><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"><b><br /></b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"><b>knock 10mph off our top speed.</b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">As a nation we face a challenging task to reduce our
impact on the planet’s energy system. The targets of 50% reduction of
greenhouse gases on 1990 levels by 2025, and net zero by 2050 are not going to
be easy to achieve, and we activists have a responsibility to take a campaigning
lead.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">
<br />
The campaign needs to be high profile and simple, of low cost and beneficial in
its side effects. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">It needs to involve as many people as possible, to signify
that we all have to play our part in avoiding this serious global problem.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">It helps if participating in the campaign reduces our fuel bills at this time of economic hardship.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">It also helps if it takes a bit of pressure off the NHS.<br />
<b><br />
A national speed limit of 50mph, stretched to 60mph on motorways, meets these
criteria.</b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Road
transport produces about 15% of total CO2 emissions. A car travelling at 60mph
max <a href="https://www.licencebureau.co.uk/reducing-maximum-speed-to-60mph-reduces-fuel-consumption-by-10/">can save 10% of its fuel</a>.<br /></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"> . <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Here are nine other benefits:<o:p></o:p></span></p><ol style="text-align: left;"><li>
<span style="font-family: "inherit",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">it would lead to lower fuel bills for motorists</span></li><li class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; tab-stops: list 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "inherit",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">it would lead to fewer, and less severe, motor vehicle accidents<o:p></o:p></span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; tab-stops: list 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "inherit",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">this would lead to reduced demand for new vehicles, and so save CO2
emissions from motor manufacture<o:p></o:p></span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; tab-stops: list 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "inherit",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">it would lead to fewer, and less severe injuries and deaths on the
road<o:p></o:p></span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; tab-stops: list 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "inherit",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">this would lead to a reduced burden on our struggling NHS<o:p></o:p></span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; tab-stops: list 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "inherit",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">driving at lower speeds is a more relaxing and pleasant experience</span></li><li class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; tab-stops: list 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit, serif;">it would lead to rail travel being more competitive</span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; tab-stops: list 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "inherit",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">we will be able to stress that this would only be a first step in
many others to get to grips with the challenge of man-made climate change.</span></li><li class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; tab-stops: list 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "inherit",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">above all, it would deliver a message to everyone that man-made climate change is a real and serious problem for everyone on the planet, both now and even more in coming years</span></li></ol><div></div>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 36pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Lower
national speed limits have been used in the past at the time of energy crises,
and climate change is nothing if not a massive, long-term energy crisis.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">It can be
enforced by speed cameras, and increased fuel consumption at speed can be added
to the curriculum of Speed Awareness courses.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Naturally, there will be
objections from the fossil fuel lobby, some motorists and the libertarians, but
these groups will object to any and all measures to meet our climate
commitments, and so their protestations can be viewed as routine, and safely
set aside. Indeed, their protests can be used as a vehicle to expose the role
of libertarians and neo-liberals in delaying all climate action.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">The
beauty of this measure is that it is a money saving, CO2 saving, beneficial,
nationwide, energy saving measure that is high profile, a sign of the many
other beneficial changes that we are about to bring about. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Not only
that, but Green activists do not have to wait for Government to act. <b>We can
produce a 60/55 sticker in a green circle to put on our cars as we drive </b>(and
yes, I know that we ought not to drive at all, but few of us are perfect).<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">I hope
that everyone that reads this will give sympathetic consideration to this idea<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><br /></p>DocRichardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08903964792092284406noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9192922.post-10306577354500882242023-01-02T16:33:00.002+00:002023-01-02T16:38:32.465+00:00Democracy, Dictatorship and Journalism <p>The style of governments is ranged on a spectrum between <a href="https://greenerblog.blogspot.com/2022/02/solving-chimpanzee-poblems-that-lead-to.html">optimal democracy and the very worst dictatorships. </a></p><p>Democracy is government chosen by the people that works for the welfare of the people.</p><p>Dictatorship is government by a tiny group of people clustered around one Leader who arranges things to benefit himself (it usually is a man) and his group. </p><p>Democracy is what we want, dictatorship is not wanted.</p><p>For democracy to work the voters need to be as well informed as possible so that they can make rational choices. They need information that is accurate, truthful and unbiased as possible. </p><p>So the media is integral to the proper functioning of democracy, and if the media is unreliable and biased to right or to left, democracy is undermined, becomes weak, and will drift in the direction of dictatorship.</p><p>So how are we doing here in the UK? Not good. Our media is strongly biased towards the right. </p><p>As far as the printed news goes, people are reading 3 right leaning news articles for every single left leaning news article. <a href="http://greenerblog.blogspot.com/2012/08/uk-newspaper-readership-rightleft-31.html">That's right, 3:1.</a> Times, Telegraph, Mail, Express, Sun, Star, all right wing, all putting Conservative political leaflets through the door every day. </p><p>As for broadcast media, the BBC political and news channels are so far to the right that often Sky, ITV and Channel4 are more unbiased. BBC people will respond that they get criticism from both left and right, so they must be steering the correct course. That is such a thin argument it just shows that they do not care. </p><p>If the BBC were interested in steering an unbiased course, they would commission arms-length <a href="https://greenerblog.blogspot.com/search?q=Interruption+rate">Interruption Rate </a>studies of their news programmes, and these would show objectively that BBC anchors routinely interrupt Tories far less than they interrupt non-Tories.</p><p>The dire state of British journalism mirrors the dire state of British democracy. In FPTP we have an electoral system that is not fit for purpose. We have an absurd House of Lords, an unelected Head of State, a Home Office that is well on the way to outright fascism and a chumocracy that is haemorrhaging billions of public money into the pockets of western oligarchs.</p><p>This will all change one day. Unfortunately it will not happen because enough people read enough well reasoned articles about democracy in the press, or anywhere else. </p><p>It will happen when the Tories have well and truly run UK plc into the ground and people are so desperate that they ignore the Tory Press and bring about real change.</p><p>What change would that be? We need full, radical reform of our electoral, political and economic systems, but the media reforms we need are relatively simple. We need laws to change ownership so that the maximum number of new outlets that any one oligarch owns is one. Or possibly zero.</p><p>The other media reform is that corrections should be given the same level of prominence that was given to the original error.</p><p>Not much to ask is it? Considering the result is a fair press that is fit for purpose and underpins a safe and secure democracy.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>DocRichardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08903964792092284406noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9192922.post-16200666427325355422023-01-01T15:54:00.001+00:002023-01-01T15:54:42.614+00:00After Putin's war, the UN should introduce an Index of Democracy and Human Rights<p>At the start of 2023 the world is not in good shape. War in Ukraine is at the forefront of our minds, though there are many other problems: unaddressed climate change, the energy crisis, biodiversity loss, inequality, dictatorships and generalised political anger, to name a few.</p><p>The war on Ukraine shows the terrible damage that one man can do if he gets himself into a position of dictatorship. Putin chose to invade a year ago. Wars always have multiple causes, and <a href="https://greenerblog.blogspot.com/2013/08/separatism-is-behind-nearly-half-of.html">separatism</a> (which is an issue in the Ukraine situation) is a common factor in many current wars. Putin's apologists cite other causal factors, sometimes reaching far back into history, but quoting in recent years the mismanagement by the West of the collapse of the Soviet Union, with the lack of an economic rescue plan, with the expansion of NATO, and with the absence of work on further reducing nuclear weapons and militarism generally. </p><p>If Putin had genuine grievances about a threat from NATO, he could have asked for action by the UN under <a href="https://www.un.org/en/about-us/un-charter/chapter-6">Articles 33-38 of its Charter</a>. He chose not to, and in the end, the war is Putin's choice. Putin initiated the invasion because he is a dictator, and his officials and Cabinet dared not question his plans and his decisions. Putin is responsible.</p><p>Politicians must act to make the world a safer place, to make sure that there is no repeat of the Ukraine tragedy. </p><p>There are many things that need to be done, but the UN needs to prioritise two things: </p><p>First, to address separatism actively by <a href="https://greenerblog.blogspot.com/2013/08/separatism-is-behind-nearly-half-of.html">sponsoring long-term negotiations</a> wherever separatism is an issue.</p><p>Second, the UN must measure and track the position of all political leaders to see where they are on the spectrum that lies between optimal democracy on the one hand and unacceptable dictatorship on the other. We must identify leaders and countries that are tending to drift towards dictatorship and help them to reverse that trend.</p><p>It is possible to measure the performance of any state with regard to democracy by counting their actions in many areas, such as freedom of the media, the count of political prisoners, the use of torture and in the area of human rights.</p><p>The excellent Our World in Data site ranks the countries of the world in terms of the quality of their democracy <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/democracy">here.</a> <i>Go to the first image, click TABLE, draw the slider from left to right, and click on the central estimate. </i></p><p>We find that the UK is 14th from the top, USA is 28 from top, and Russia is 40th from the bottom in terms of electoral democracy. In terms of liberal democracy, a slightly different metric, UK is 18th from the top, USA is 28th from the top, and Russia is 28th from the bottom.</p><p>The UN should adopt this approach of measurement and ranking. The only real objection that I have encountered in discussing this proposal is that it would entail a bit of work in setting up and maintaining the official Index of Democracy. This expense would be repaid many times over by the beneficial effects of the Index, not least in reducing warfare.</p><p>Once in place the effects of the Index would be </p><p>1. To raise consciousness of regular people, as non-scholars would be able to tell at a glance the relative position of any and every country. This would undermine the political ploy of politicians as they tell people to believe that one country is "democratic" and another is "the new Hitler".</p><p>2. There will be an immediate improvement in some cases. The publication of the Index of Democracy would inevitably lead to objections from some countries that their position is too low, and that their performance is not that bad. To this, the UN can respond by appointing rapporters to go to the country and re-evaluate the situation. Before they arrive, we can be pretty certain that a few political prisoners will be released in order to improve the score.</p><p>3. The Index will produce a continuous upwards pressure on Human Rights performance of politicians everywhere. In time, there will be fewer dictators and more democracies in the world, which in turn will mean less warfare and more human welfare.</p><p>Finally, let us remind ourselves and our MPs that the purpose of government is to improve the security, prosperity and happiness of the people not just in our country, but throughout the world. The Index of Democracy is one of the ways that this can be brought about.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>DocRichardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08903964792092284406noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9192922.post-40623309998627547542022-12-29T13:07:00.003+00:002022-12-31T16:02:12.414+00:00 Current climate change denial memes<div style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikR9wmki8eCEYTDhKbNY45JiRgKb83wF4TdoG5WTNfeVbybY-Ed4GPS1DD4EA6xFyu_jfjuEiFn8uWMYiMLPZhMq2nUrXQUMFOrqGsYl1oFZDWYxSQrExWKEWfM2qPqXwm3Of_fktVZGXREXEVjom5Vww57ATLrnvS1ZqPhdzADzNbbgFuYBU/s680/TempVSolar%20activity.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="516" data-original-width="680" height="243" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikR9wmki8eCEYTDhKbNY45JiRgKb83wF4TdoG5WTNfeVbybY-Ed4GPS1DD4EA6xFyu_jfjuEiFn8uWMYiMLPZhMq2nUrXQUMFOrqGsYl1oFZDWYxSQrExWKEWfM2qPqXwm3Of_fktVZGXREXEVjom5Vww57ATLrnvS1ZqPhdzADzNbbgFuYBU/s320/TempVSolar%20activity.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times;"> #ClimateScam has been trending on Twitter for a few days.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /><span style="background-color: white; color: #0f1419; white-space: pre-wrap;">A scam is a fraudulent business scheme.<br /></span><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0" style="background-color: white; border: 0px solid black; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0f1419; display: inline; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; min-width: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; white-space: pre-wrap;">The </span><span class="r-18u37iz" style="-webkit-box-direction: normal; -webkit-box-orient: horizontal; background-color: white; color: #0f1419; flex-direction: row; white-space: pre-wrap;"><a class="css-4rbku5 css-18t94o4 css-901oao css-16my406 r-1cvl2hr r-1loqt21 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0" dir="ltr" href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/ClimateScam?src=hashtag_click" role="link" style="background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); border: 0px solid black; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1d9bf0; cursor: pointer; display: inline; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; list-style: none; margin: 0px; min-width: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; text-align: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; white-space: inherit;">#ClimateScam</a></span><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0" style="background-color: white; border: 0px solid black; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0f1419; display: inline; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; min-width: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; white-space: pre-wrap;"> is the conspiracy theory promoted for 40 years by fossil fuel business corporations, spreading doubt about climate science in order to protect their profits at the expense of the stability of humanity’s wellbeing.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0" style="background-color: white; border: 0px solid black; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0f1419; display: inline; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; min-width: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0" style="background-color: white; border: 0px solid black; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0f1419; display: inline; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; min-width: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Meanwhile, if you are seeing climate change denial memes, here is a little list of current climate change denial memes:</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0" style="background-color: white; border: 0px solid black; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0f1419; display: inline; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; min-width: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span face="-apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Segoe UI, Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #0f1419;"><span style="font-size: 23px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span><div class="moz-text-html" lang="x-unicode"><div dir="ltr">
<div>1 It’s cold outside my house therefore the whole world is cold</div>
<div> 1a Extreme weather events are recorded in old newspaper articles therefore climate is not changing<br /><br /></div>
<div>2 Climate always changes therefore climate sensitivity is very high. (See 8)<br /><br /></div>
<div>3 Greenies have computers and some go to conferences, therefore they are all hypocrites</div><div><br /></div>
<div>4 Climatologists get paid, therefore climatology is a money making scam</div><div><br /></div>
<div>5 Climate change is a conspiracy involving [insert people here] in order to tax us into oblivion</div><div><br /></div>
<div>6 No point in our decarbonising, because China won’t*</div><div><br /></div>
<div>7 As an old man, I do not like Greta Thunberg therefore all climate science is wrong</div><div><br /></div>
<div>8 The changes we are making to Earth's greenhouse effect do not matter because Climate Sensitivity is very low (see 2 above).</div><div>9 "It's the Sun!" (No it isn't, see the image at the top of this post)</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>*<span face="-moz-fixed" style="font-size: 14px;">Climate: the China gambit</span></div><div class="moz-text-plain" graphical-quote="true" lang="x-unicode" wrap="true"><pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap=""><span style="font-family: times;">
6 No point in our decarbonising, because China won’t.
No 6 in my #climatedenialmemes
Of the first six memes, 6 is the one where it begins to get interesting.
Deniers have a genuine struggle with China, because deniers are mainly individualists, which means that they do not understand that humans are social animals, and therefore that we have the ability to act collaboratively. They cannot see that if the world decarbonises, China will want (so some extent) to join in the decarbonisation - not least because it will find a market for its decarbonising products.
China is aware of the risks that climate change poses for China, and is already taking steps to decarbonise its economy, even while it builds coal fired power stations. China leads the world in <a href="https://asiasociety.org/policy-institute/chinas-response-climate-change-study-contrasts-and-policy-crossroads-0">solar power, wind power, and electric vehicle deployment, but also in coal consumption </a>
Part of the cause of China’s increase in coal consumption is that China has taken on the manufacturing of a great part of the world. So the UK has off shored its manufacturing, which lowers UK CO2 emissions, but increased Chinese emissions.
China may end up decarbonising faster than the West, because its history of a command economy may give it an advantage in changing away from carbon.
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</div></div>DocRichardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08903964792092284406noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9192922.post-81860539429104850522022-10-30T11:21:00.005+00:002022-10-30T11:27:07.013+00:00Clocks go back, Mogg Darkness spoils our winter days<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj03Ca1yUB7mYqHOSnE4SaQh8tZiTXYcoqnOSwaU4wArDYISa9rBvzBjP1qdQcw5KrDuPB7S8YawKvEaMQYfAHQcT1KvHg4Tdi2lN1T5kjJMpFadUsDGEu7oTblqkBTIWgCXqOMIBgVs6SGdu0MNo7U8lInj7oIWyHgD_9P2tZV7BcPt1HB1Hk" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="315" data-original-width="474" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj03Ca1yUB7mYqHOSnE4SaQh8tZiTXYcoqnOSwaU4wArDYISa9rBvzBjP1qdQcw5KrDuPB7S8YawKvEaMQYfAHQcT1KvHg4Tdi2lN1T5kjJMpFadUsDGEu7oTblqkBTIWgCXqOMIBgVs6SGdu0MNo7U8lInj7oIWyHgD_9P2tZV7BcPt1HB1Hk" width="320" /></a></div><br />Today, the clocks went back. Come 4:45pm it will be dark already. This is Mogg-Darkness, brought on by the neoliberal extremist MP for North East Somerset, who talked out the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Summer_Time#Daylight_Saving_Bill_2010%E2%80%9312">Daylight Saving Bill </a> 2020-2012 , a modest Private Member's Bill that would have required the Government merely to analyse and test the effects of stopping the gloom of dark evenings.<br /><br /><br />The <a href="https://1010uk.org/">10:10 climate action campaign</a> promoted the <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20111010024432/https://services.parliament.uk/bills/2010-11/daylightsaving.html">Daylight Saving Bill,</a> arguing that it would save the UK from emitting about 447,000 tonnes of CO2 per year, along with these claims :<br /><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>100 lives lost due to road traffic accidents in dark evenings</li><li>NHS costs to the tune of £140,000,000 per year</li><li>high electricity bills</li><li>70,000 job losses</li><li>increased crime rates</li><li>the misery of thousands who suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder</li></ul>Note that the Daylight Saving Bill would have only required Government to investigate and test daylight saving; it would not have been bound to implement it. Yet even this was offensive to Rees-Mogg, and he filibustered it, talked it out. Stopped Government from even discussing the question of the impact of dark evenings on public life.<br /><br /><br />That he could do this is a shame on antiquated and anachronistic rules and procedures of the House of Parliament, and another blot on the name and behaviour of Jacob Rees-Mogg. <br /><br />That he could do this is a shame on antiquated and anachronistic rules and procedures of the House of Parliament, and another blot on the record of Jacob Rees-Mogg. <br />DocRichardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08903964792092284406noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9192922.post-23333648797103664542022-09-25T19:02:00.006+01:002022-09-25T19:03:40.276+01:00General Tea Break as a lead up to the General Strike<p>Liz Truss has no democratic mandate. She was backed initially by only about one third of Conservative MPs, and voted in my a tiny fraction, less than 1% of the electorate. Kwarteng's budget was a budget for the rich that will leave the majority of tax payers worse off. She is an ex-Shell employee who has taken money from fossil fools, and she is going to frack the countryside. With their Police Crime Bill, the Tories are edging ever closer to authoritarianism.</p><p>This is intolerable. We cannot wait until a General Election, we need a new Government, one that is led by concern for the long term wellbeing of the people, which means a Sustainability, Democracy and Equality.</p><p>#GeneralStrike has been trending on Twitter for a good few days, and a General Strike could cause the downfall of Truss' regime. However, at the moment we are a long way off a General strike.</p><p>So let us start with a General Tea Break. Here's the plan</p><b style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.61px;"><div><b style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.61px;"><br /></b></div><div><b style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.61px;"><br /></b></div></b>Every Friday morning, at 9 am, people who are conscious of the political threat posed by Truss' regimemeet up at work at the water cooler or someplace, and talk about the political situation for 5 minutes. That's all. Talk about the cuts for 5 mins. Anyone who comes along "Hello, we are just discussing the cuts. What do you think". <br />After 5 mins they get to work. <br />As numbers gather, the time slowly extends.<br /><br />If management comes and says "Why aren't you at your stations?" the response is "We are talking about the cuts. They are going to wreck this country, do you not agree?We were just going back to our stations, but since you are here, we would like to know what you think? Do you think it will end up with a General Strike?"<br /><br />Management will get the idea, as soon as they realise it is happening in other companies. They will realise we are tooling up for a General Strike, on the QT. They will have a word with the Treasury, which will have to calculate on the economic costs of a General Strike.<br /><br />I do not promise that this will bring down the Government at a stroke, but it is a useful weapon. <br />The thing is, it is so small (5 minutes, growing) that waverers will be encouraged to join. <br /><br /><br />It could go viral.<br />DocRichardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08903964792092284406noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9192922.post-75023958939799241382022-09-02T12:44:00.007+01:002022-09-03T11:29:15.488+01:00<p> Now this is odd. I had an email a few days ago from Blogger saying that 2 of my posts have been removed for "breaking community guidelines". Their letter did not contain the content that had been removed, but I have found one post that was removed from the excellent http://archive.org/. I have sent it to Blogger for review. The post clearly does not offend community guidelines, so the Blogger algorithm has erred.</p><p>The other post that was unpublished was titled <b> </b>'Isl*mophobes and Isl*mists locked in an embrace of mutual h*tred'. I had to use the asterisks because using the full word was getting this present post blocked from publication. So far I have been unable to find it on Archive.org, but the content is as the title suggests, and presumably the complaint came from an Islamophobe or an Islamist. I will continue to search for it.</p><p>Blogger have reinstated the Frugal Queen post. <a href="https://greenerblog.blogspot.com/2010/09/from-freezer-to-fridge-in-homage-to.html">It is here</a>. It is worth reading, and the subsequent comments, which are edifying.</p><p>I'm still blocked on the Islamophobe post, because I cannot find the original post in order to amend it and put it on Blogger for review</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>DocRichardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08903964792092284406noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9192922.post-27172735298719633712022-04-08T13:36:00.003+01:002022-04-09T09:32:21.783+01:00Letter to QUNO 1.5<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times;"><b><span style="color: #333333; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Letter to QUNO from Meeting for
Worship for Ukraine </span></b><span style="color: #333333; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Draft 1.5</span><span face=""Trebuchet MS",sans-serif" style="color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: times; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Dear Friends</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="background-color: transparent;">This correspondence is addressed to you on behalf of the undersigned </span><span style="background-color: transparent; white-space: pre-wrap;">participants in the Daily International Friends Meeting for Worship for </span><span style="background-color: transparent; white-space: pre-wrap;">Peace who are in Unity with this request. The undersigned have been </span><span style="background-color: transparent; white-space: pre-wrap;">regular participants in the daily online Meeting for Worship out of </span><span style="background-color: transparent;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">concern for the tragic situation in Ukraine.</span></span><span style="background-color: transparent;"> </span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="color: #333333;">After discussion and consideration, we wish to draw to your attention a </span><span style="color: #333333;">simple measure which would provide a continuing and universal</span><b style="color: #333333;"> </b><span style="color: #333333;">incentive
for every Government to improve its human rights (HR) performance, and which
therefore would to some extent reduce the probability of similar tragedies in years
to come.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="color: #333333; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">This is that the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for
Human Rights, (OHCHR) should publish annually the contents of its Universal
Human Rights Index in a quantified and tabular form, providing an accessible listing
which would summarise the HR performance in the previous year of all
Governments, give their relative position in the range of governmental
performance, and give an indication of whether their performance is static,
improving or worsening.</span><span face=""Trebuchet MS",sans-serif" style="color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: times; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">This would amount to a modest development of the presentation of the
Universal Human Rights Index data already present in the UN website. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: times; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">The effect of this measure will be to take the HR data out of the
recesses of the UN website, known only to students of international politics<i>,</i> simplify
it, and bring it forward into the public domain, so that anyone considering
travelling to, or doing business with, a particular country, will be able to
form a reasonably accurate impression of its HR performance at a glance, with
the facility of digging deeper into the data as necessary.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: times; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Please see the Appendix to this letter where we present images from the
Our World in Data website to give an idea of how the UN data could be
presented.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="color: #333333; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">We therefore recommend this measure to QUNO for your consideration. We
recognise that you will need to explore and weigh up and test the proposal in
detail and we would be happy to discuss this matter with you.</span><span face=""Trebuchet MS",sans-serif" style="color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="color: #333333; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">With grateful recognition of your valuable work</span><span face=""Trebuchet MS",sans-serif" style="color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="color: #333333; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"> </span><span face=""Trebuchet MS",sans-serif" style="color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: times; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">In friendship<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: times; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: times; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">(Signed)…………….</span><span face=""Trebuchet MS",sans-serif" style="color: #333333; font-size: 9.5pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span> </p><p class="MsoNormal"><b>Letter to QUNO – APPENDIX<o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">These screenshots are taken from tabular data on the Our
World in Data website </p><p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://ourworldindata.org/human-rights">https://ourworldindata.org/human-rights</a>
><a href="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/human-rights-protection" target="_blank"><b> </b><span style="text-decoration-line: none;">All our charts on Human Rights > Human rights protection, 2019 > Table</span></a>. </p><p class="MsoNormal">The scores displayed there capture the
extent to which citizens' physical integrity is protected from government
killings, torture, political imprisonments, extrajudicial executions, mass
killings and disappearances. Higher scores mean fewer such abuses. <span style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 107%;">Source: Bastian Herre and Max Roser (2016) - "Human Rights". <i>Published
online at OurWorldInData.org.</i> Retrieved from:
'https://ourworldindata.org/human-rights' [Online Resource]</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Screenshot of the countries with the best scores:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZfnYXGIKdTuMyX64e6L3V0t9-kpAnVuXvyEtTomJG43jXDWrBhNB_HzM2g_D5oq_R3Jinu3vmenJBn45uXAxHWSpLfQdZFLQJlNKFFiYd0x1hnttLhfN5MLcJEBs6zcdDmuchI8eQPBDkdHDDinmFEnAfvASr9AHCpQTLyw3n_tIzUzC8XZ4/s793/HROWiDHighScore.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="592" data-original-width="793" height="239" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZfnYXGIKdTuMyX64e6L3V0t9-kpAnVuXvyEtTomJG43jXDWrBhNB_HzM2g_D5oq_R3Jinu3vmenJBn45uXAxHWSpLfQdZFLQJlNKFFiYd0x1hnttLhfN5MLcJEBs6zcdDmuchI8eQPBDkdHDDinmFEnAfvASr9AHCpQTLyw3n_tIzUzC8XZ4/s320/HROWiDHighScore.png" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">And these are the countries with the lowest scores:</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: left;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-1NSjHkSeTCzR3MT7QZ4_4kbh9Z39zITchMGLFALD9kdhY4WI_kl6XcEa2t4BVG3R961T9-dgZw32i289TUrEOmfx6_mw-i6Rho7qQhIj54a3ET06mLlUBlWUo9WTZXNtes6VRvCVsRbHq78ZB1kBwD_cNxLW2bO1FwGs0ofOoe1CO_szSN8/s797/HROWiDLOW.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="510" data-original-width="797" height="205" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-1NSjHkSeTCzR3MT7QZ4_4kbh9Z39zITchMGLFALD9kdhY4WI_kl6XcEa2t4BVG3R961T9-dgZw32i289TUrEOmfx6_mw-i6Rho7qQhIj54a3ET06mLlUBlWUo9WTZXNtes6VRvCVsRbHq78ZB1kBwD_cNxLW2bO1FwGs0ofOoe1CO_szSN8/s320/HROWiDLOW.png" width="320" /></a></div><br /><span style="text-align: left;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">The live table allows us to scroll through the entire rankings.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">This gives an indication of how countries would appear on the UN website. The UN would be able to design its own criteria and parameters.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><br /></p></div><br />DocRichardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08903964792092284406noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9192922.post-60207991116921961962022-04-03T14:28:00.006+01:002022-04-11T17:24:22.335+01:00Preventing a repetition of the Ukraine tragedy<p></p><div style="background: white; line-height: normal; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><i>This is an old draft of the letter. <a href="http://greenerblog.blogspot.com/2022/04/letter-to-quno-from-meeting-forworship.html">Please go here for the latest draft</a></i></span></span></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><b><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Letter to QUNO from Meeting for
Worship for Ukraine </span></b><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Draft 1.4</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Dear Friends</span><span face=""Trebuchet MS",sans-serif" style="color: #333333; font-size: 9.5pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">We are a group of about 100 friends from many nations, who have been
meeting daily online over the last month out of our concern for the situation
in Ukraine which has impinged on the human rights of so many people.</span><span face=""Trebuchet MS",sans-serif" style="color: #333333; font-size: 9.5pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">We recognise that the invasion of Ukraine is the result of a large
number of interrelated factors operating on both sides of the divide.</span><span face=""Trebuchet MS",sans-serif" style="color: #333333; font-size: 9.5pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">After discussion and consideration, we wish to draw to your attention a
simple measure which would provide a continuous and universal<b> </b>incentive
for every Government to improve its human rights (HR) performance.</span><span face=""Trebuchet MS",sans-serif" style="color: #333333; font-size: 9.5pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">This is that the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for
Human Rights, (OHCHR) should publish annually the contents of the Universal
Human Rights Index in tabular form, providing an accessible listing which would
summarise the HR performance in the previous year of all Governments, give
their relative position in the range of governmental performance, and give an
indication of whether their performance is static, improving or worsening.</span><span face=""Trebuchet MS",sans-serif" style="color: #333333; font-size: 9.5pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">This is a modest development of the presentation of the Universal Human
Rights Index data already present in the UN website. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">The effect of this measure will be to take the HR data out of the
recesses of the UN website, known only to students of the UN<i>,</i> simplify
it, and bring it forward into the public domain, so that anyone considering
travelling to, or doing business with, a particular country, will be able to
form a reasonably accurate impression of its HR performance at a glance, with
the facility of digging deeper into the data as necessary.</span><span face=""Trebuchet MS",sans-serif" style="color: #333333; font-size: 9.5pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">We therefore recommend this measure to QUNO for your consideration. We
recognise that you will need to explore and weigh up and test the proposal in
detail and we provide a summary of our discussion in the Appendix to this
letter. </span><span face=""Trebuchet MS",sans-serif" style="color: #333333; font-size: 9.5pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">With grateful recognition of your valuable work</span><span face=""Trebuchet MS",sans-serif" style="color: #333333; font-size: 9.5pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"> </span><span face=""Trebuchet MS",sans-serif" style="color: #333333; font-size: 9.5pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">In friendship<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">(Signed)…………….</span><span face=""Trebuchet MS",sans-serif" style="color: #333333; font-size: 9.5pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"> </span><span face=""Trebuchet MS",sans-serif" style="color: #333333; font-size: 9.5pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"> </span><span face=""Trebuchet MS",sans-serif" style="color: #333333; font-size: 9.5pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><o:p></o:p></span><b style="background-color: transparent;">RANKED HUMAN RIGHTS INDEX (RHRI) : DISCUSSION</b></p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal">The virtual meeting convened by Friends House Moscow has
discussed the GloHRI proposal in a number of sessions. This is a summary of the
main points raised in these discussions.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b>Description of the RHRI<o:p></o:p></b></p><p class="MsoNormal">The proposal is that the Human Rights (HR) performance of every
government should be quantified and presented in ranked order and tabular form
by the UN, refreshed annually.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">The aim of the RHRI is to provide a gentle, continuous, and
universal incentive for all governments to improve their HR performance, to
reduce the tendency to form into dictatorships, and therefore to reduce the
likelihood of a repetition of the invasion of Ukraine.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">This aim will be realised by publicising the relative human
rights performance of all regimes. At present this data exists on the UN
website in searchable form, the Universal Human Rights Index - https://uhri.ohchr.org/en/search-human-rights-recommendations. RHRI brings this data forward, making it far more
accessible, and makes the relative position of each government clear.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">The fact that countries are positioned in ranked order will almost
certainly evoke complaints from some governments that they have been placed too
low in the table. The UN Human Rights Commission can respond by sending in
rapporteurs to review the position. While waiting for the rapporteurs to visit,
it is very likely that governments will discharge political prisoners and take
other actions to improve their position in the Index.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">One accepted principle of effective behaviour management is
consistency. At present, unwanted behaviour in the international community is
responded to on an <i>ad hoc </i>basis, with peers condemning or defending the
behaviour according to subjective criteria such as political positioning and
trade relations. The RHRI system introduces a measure of objectivity to the
international relations environment. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">States who are placed low on the Index ranking can be
offered constructive advice, being advised, for instance, that allowing a
diversity to media and freedom of journalism does not necessarily provide an
existential threat to them. This approach offers an evolutionary pathway away
from dictatorship towards democracy, and is an attractive alternative to
revolution, coup, or invasion, which are the other ways that a dictatorship may
come to an end. Iraq and Libya show that a violent termination of a
dictatorship does not necessarily end well.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">It is possible that the very lowest functioning states could
be subjected to a tariff of sanctions targeted on the ruling circles. The
problem here is that if the tariff is too stringent, and/or the number of sanctioned
states should be too numerous, the integrity of the international community
could be threatened. The UN always has to balance the need to maintain unity
with the need to influence behaviour in a positive way.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">The relative movement of the score for each country is an
important parameter, both with regard to the country’s performance in previous years
and in regard to its position in the rankings. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">It should be noted that RHRI is a useful adjunct , to the
Responsibility to Protect, which otherwise has little power short of war.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Some questions raised in discussion<o:p></o:p></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"> Many were supportive,
some had questions, and a few found the proposal contentious<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b>How can qualitative descriptions be reduced to a single
number?<o:p></o:p></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"> Academic
institutions have been practicing this method successfully for many years. There
are a variety of indices for measuring human development, freedom and
corruption. The Ibrahim Index of African Governance has been functioning for
many years. https://mo.ibrahim.foundation/iiag<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b>Would abusive countries not just ignore their ranking?<o:p></o:p></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b> </b>Esteem
is very important to humans, possibly more so for some personality types who
get themselves in positions of leadership. It remains to be seen how each will
respond.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b>What should be measured in the Index? <o:p></o:p></b></p><p class="MsoNormal">The present proposal is that the characteristics measured in
the present UN Universal Index of Human rights should be used. This would
require summarisation and quantification.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b> </b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b>What is the relationship between HR observance and
democracy?<o:p></o:p></b></p><p class="MsoNormal">It may be supposed that democracies generally have better HR
performance than autocracies, but this is
a matter that deserves further study. It is expedient to keep HR performance
and democratic performance under separate consideration in order to avoid reducing
acceptance of the Index. “Democracy” is often spoken of in public as a binary
thing, but the reality is that democracies exist on a spectrum from strong to
weak, good to imperfect.<br />
<!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--><br />
<!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b>Is there a model of this proposal in action?<o:p></o:p></b></p><p class="MsoNormal">A model of this approach can be seen in the Ibrahim Index of
African Governance <a href="https://iiag.online/data.html">https://iiag.online/data.html</a>.
It is wider in scope than the ranked Index of Human Rights, but is using the
principle of quantification and presentation in tabular form.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">There are a number of other approaches to measuring Governments’
HR performance, notably the Political Terror Scale <a href="https://www.politicalterrorscale.org/Data/">https://www.politicalterrorscale.org/Data/</a>
which classifies states into 5 categories.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"> <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b>Discussion continues<o:p></o:p></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p><p>
</p><p class="MsoNormal">.<o:p></o:p></p><br /><p></p>DocRichardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08903964792092284406noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9192922.post-20582780122398654112022-02-24T11:46:00.002+00:002022-03-03T14:27:59.756+00:00 Solving the Chimpanzee Problem that led to the invasion of Ukraine <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhWMIBi62nDK8j4GDDYOHeYtJwUAc_q6C4bqQsu864chhy-TldoPOM5kszSSUdPfMyu5KKfdm5J9tajYat_1eEqljrj6vDuG8huFtBtinhrd8EqmxJ232zxibMXWj5_9n5Kci9HLpuwlA7CgxZqdbKCFYZIYv3j6uJ8e7J4y_-62oMYXbfsD10=s620" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="413" data-original-width="620" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhWMIBi62nDK8j4GDDYOHeYtJwUAc_q6C4bqQsu864chhy-TldoPOM5kszSSUdPfMyu5KKfdm5J9tajYat_1eEqljrj6vDuG8huFtBtinhrd8EqmxJ232zxibMXWj5_9n5Kci9HLpuwlA7CgxZqdbKCFYZIYv3j6uJ8e7J4y_-62oMYXbfsD10=s320" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>Humans
are an amazingly clever species. In 2022 our knowledge of and mastery
over the physical and biological systems that surround us is
unparalleled, but the way we manage ourselves and our societies has not
moved on much since we came down from the trees. We still organise
ourselves pretty much in the same way as a group of chimpanzees, with an
alpha male at the top who rules by brute force. Putin is just the
latest example of this. The world can see the foolishness of his
invasion, but it is very difficult to dislodge a dictator, as we have
seen in the case of Saddam Hussain in Iraq, and dislodging them by force just leads to more problems.</p><div class="moz-text-html" lang="x-unicode"><div dir="ltr" id="AppleMailSignature">The Ukraine crime will run its course. The Ukrainians, many of them, will fight the
invaders. Putin may reduce large parts of Ukraine to rubble as a result.
Some Ukrainians will not cooperate with the invaders, and try to make the
country ungovernable. Other Ukrainians will collaborate with the
invaders, and help Putin to rule. In the end Putin will die. He may be
deposed. Ukraine will inevitably become free again, the only question is
when, and after how much suffering.</div><div dir="ltr" id="AppleMailSignature"><br /></div><div dir="ltr" id="AppleMailSignature">Let
us stand back from the Ukrainian question. Let the media obsess about the appearances, about the current symptom, and let us look again at the basic
problem - humanity’s chimpanzee troop heritage. Let us address address
the cause of the disease. How can we cure our tendency to allow a few
people to become obscenely rich and powerful to the extent that they
become detached from the condition of non rich and non powerful people? Note that this is not just a matter for Russian "oligarchs". We in Britain have our own oligarchs, but we call them "billionaires". </div><div dir="ltr" id="AppleMailSignature"><br /></div><div dir="ltr" id="AppleMailSignature">How can we create systems of government that are intelligent, that
understand that the condition of humanity is 100% dependent on our life
support systems, health of our water, soil, air, weather and fellow
humans?</div><div dir="ltr" id="AppleMailSignature"><br /></div><div dir="ltr" id="AppleMailSignature">How
in other words can we redesign our political and economic systems so
that they serve the long term interests of ordinary people, rather than
the narrow short term interests of the elite, the super-rich, the
oligarchs and billionaires?</div><div dir="ltr" id="AppleMailSignature"><br /></div><div dir="ltr" id="AppleMailSignature">There
is no quick and simple answer to this question. It has many aspects. In Britain we need radical reform of our systems - electoral, Parliamentary and economic. </div><div dir="ltr" id="AppleMailSignature"><br /></div><div dir="ltr" id="AppleMailSignature">But there is one modest solution that offers a long-term, continuous,
global pressure towards good governance, and against the formation of
dictatorships. It is called the Global Human Rights Index. It just
requires the UN to publish yearly an assessment of the performance of
all Governments in the field of human rights. It is <a href="(IP332-5 https://policy.greenparty.org.uk/ip.html)">Green Party policy </a> and the full plan <a href="https://www.greenparty.org.uk/assets/files/reports/ReportHRI_-4-2.pdf">can be found here : </a></div><div dir="ltr" id="AppleMailSignature"></div>
</div>DocRichardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08903964792092284406noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9192922.post-43057341664695905062022-02-05T16:21:00.005+00:002022-02-05T16:21:52.615+00:00Examining the Covid claims of Dr Robert Malone <p> Neil Young and Joni Mitchell have pulled their music from the Spotify platform because of an interview that Joe Rogan had with Dr Robert Malone, a highly influential pathologist who casts doubt on the need to vaccinate children against Covid. He claims to be the inventor of mRNA vaccines, though it is more accurate to say that he was one of the team that invented them. He has been vaccinated.</p><p>Dr Graham Walker, and A&E specialist has written a trenchant criticism of Dr Malone on Twitter, based on what he said in the Joe Rogan interview. Walker's piece can be viewed on Threadreader <a href="https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1489429245520580608.html">here</a>.</p><p>Dr Malone made a <a href="https://www.newsr.in/video/20220123/14209320/Dr-Robert-Malone-Full-Speech-At-Defeat-The.htm">speech at an anti-vaccination mandates rally</a> where he sets out a series of claims about his view of Covid. Let's take a look at his claims.</p><p></p><ol style="text-align: left;"><li> "We should not have politicised the public health response to the virus". I am not sure what he means by this, and <a href="https://www.rwmalonemd.com/">his blog</a> does not have a search facility, so all we can say it that there is a mainstream public health response to the pandemic which is supported by the vast majority of doctors and scientists and there is a political response of Governments to the pandemic which ranges widely from highly successful (New Zealand, Japan, South Korea and others who have managed to keep cases and deaths low, to Governments like the US and UK who have to a greater or lesser extent failed to control the disease. These states often have an active population of Covid deniers and anti-vaxxers.<br /><br /></li><li> "The 'genetic' vaccines are not working". This is false. Vaccines have been effective in reducing transmission, infection, severity, hospitalisation, ICU admission, and death. This has been established by a large number of studies. Malone touches on this later in his speech, and implies that they may have made sense for protecting the "elderly and frail" but dismisses this as "irrelevant". He is making a grave underestimate of the importance of vaccines in saving hundreds of thousands of lives.<br /><br />Often, sceptics take evidence of breakthrough infections in vaccinated people as evidence of their not working. They do the same with masks. The underlying thinking is that "working" must mean 100% effectiveness, whereas science and medicine does not deal in these binary categorisations. In almost every treatment, we look for statistical reductions in disease indices. Dr Malone must know that as a scientist, but his scientific thinking here seems to have become politicised.<br /><br /></li><li>"The vaccines are not completely safe". This is true, because no vaccine and no treatment is completely safe. The vast majority of vaccine side effects are mild and short lived. It is true that some people unfortunately do have serious and even fatal side effects. This happens with all treatments and all vaccinations. It is also true that the incidence of these effects is far smaller in vaccination than it is in the case of Covid itself. It is possible that people who die of, say, thrombosis due to vaccination would probably have died of thrombosis if they had the disease itself, though that is of course impossible to test. What we could do is look at the genome of people who died of vaccination and who died of the same syndrome after a Covid infection and see if there is any common feature that might have determined their reaction. I very much hope that this is being done.<br /><br />One thing that can be done in the case of vaccination fatalities is that the bereaved family could be given a financial settlement by the State. Obviously money can never adequately compensate for a bereavement, but lawyers have worked out formulae for this kind of event.<br /><br /></li><li>"Vaccines do not work against Omicron". Partially true. Vaccines have a weak effect on Omicron. But this does not matter, because Omicron is pretty mild in its effects.<br /><br /></li><li>"Natural immunity is long lasting and broad and highly protective". False. Natural immunity, unfortunately, <a href="https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/natural-immunity-covid-19/">is less effective than vaccination.</a><br /><br /></li><li>"If there are risks, then we must have choice". True. He is at a rally against vaccine mandates, which I take to mean compulsory orders for vaccination. It is totally impossible and impractical to hold someone down and vaccinate them against their will. People must be allowed to refuse. They should be given accurate information (which Dr Malone is not doing) and it is not unreasonable to withhold a proportion of sick pay when a vaccinated person is off work, but compulsory vaccination is not on.<br /><br /></li><li>"Vaccines damage children" Malone claims that vaccination causes permanent damage to children's hearts and brains. So far I have been unable to find his evidence for this claim. If I do find it I will add it here. <br /><br />Meanwhile, <a href="https://medical.mit.edu/covid-19-updates/2021/06/will-kids-have-long-term-effects-covid-19-vaccine">here is a reassuring piece about vaccination of children</a> and here is the <a href="https://www.who.int/news/item/24-11-2021-interim-statement-on-covid-19-vaccination-for-children-and-adolescents">WHO on children and adolescents.</a><br /><br /></li></ol><div>In conclusion, Malone is wrong to say that vaccines do not work, wrong to say that natural immunity is better, partially right on safety, and on vaccines effectiveness on Omicron, right to oppose mandatory vaccination, and needs to evidence his claim that vaccines damage children.<br /><br />I very much hope that we will be able to close this debate, because Omicron will become the dominant strain, and is mainly a reasonably mild illness. We must hope that another strain that is both more transmissible and more virulent than Omicron does not come along.</div><p></p>DocRichardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08903964792092284406noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9192922.post-73833997921120524822022-01-17T11:44:00.003+00:002022-01-17T11:46:28.325+00:00Sophi Raworth on #Marr: her Interruption Rates analysed <p>The BBC gets criticised from both sides. The Right accuse it of being a nest of leftists, and the Left accuse it of being a coterie of Tory political appointments. </p><p>The BBC reasons that it must be doing all right then.</p><p>This is not good enough. We need an objective assessment of the situation. One way of doing this is by examining major interviews and counting the Interruption Rate - the rate at which the interviewee is interrupted. Any decent university Politics department would be able to do this without too much effort and expense.</p><p>I have chosen to do an Interruption Rate on the interviews that Sophie Raworth conducted on the Marr Show yesterday, 16/1/2022. She interviewed Oliver Dowden, Chairman of the Conservative Party, and Keir Starmer, Leader of the Labour Party.</p><p>https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0013mkw/sunday-morning-16012022</p><p>There are different grades of interruption. </p><p>Grade 1 can be called the "Blurt", when the interviewer puts out a few words while the other is speaking, often the first words of the next question. The effect is to distract the interviewee and the listener in a minor way.</p><p>Grade 2 can be called the "Minimal", where the next question begins while the interviewee is finishing their point. Its effect is just slightly to prevent the listener hearing the totality of the point being made, and suggests that really the point they are making is not really that important.</p><p>Grade 3 is a full interruption, where another question is interjected while the speaker is still halfway through a response. It suggests that the speaker is totally off the point.</p><p><b>Dowden</b> got 13:93 minutes. </p><p>He received </p><p>4 Grade I (Blurts)</p><p>3 Grade 2 (Minimal)</p><p>5 Grade 3 (Full Interruptions)</p><p> </p><p><b>Starmer</b> got 13:28 minutes</p><p>He received </p><p>7 Grade 1 (Blurts)</p><p>3 Grade 2 (Minimal)</p><p>12 Grade 3 (Full Interruptions)</p><p><br /></p><p>It is very clear then that on this occasion the Labour speaker was disrupted significantly more than the Conservative speaker. </p><p>If this simple process (that has taken me about an hour) were to be repeated on more Marr programmes, and on more of Sophie Raworth's work, we will have a body of objective evidence about the impartiality (or not) of the BBC and other broadcasters.</p><p>Tthis is the third Interruption Rate that I have carried out. the others are <a href="https://greenerblog.blogspot.com/2021/11/interruption-rate-marr-show-31102021.html" target="_blank">here</a> and <a href="https://greenerblog.blogspot.com/2015/01/sunday-politics-andrew-neil-natalie.html">here</a>.</p><p>All of them show that the interviewer is more easy on the Tory speaker.</p>DocRichardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08903964792092284406noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9192922.post-67885567677370899312021-12-12T18:23:00.000+00:002021-12-12T18:23:04.593+00:00The campaign to press MPs to reverse the privatisation of the NHS has started<p> Well that was fun. This grey Sunday afternoon I went round my neighbours with two sheets of paper, one a double sided page of A4 setting out the evidence that the NHS is being privatised, and the other a voting slip saying </p><p>I WANT MY MP TO HALT AND REVERSE THE PRIVATISATION OF THE NHS . </p><p>Put your X against the word that fits your opinion:</p><p>AGREE</p><p>DISAGREE. </p><p>They have a week to make up their minds, as I will collect the voting slip next week.</p><p>It was very pleasant meeting and chatting with neighbours, especially as we don't see much of each other in the winter.</p><p>This is the first step of a campaign in North Somerset, and I (and I hope a few others) will be plodding round our neighbours over the coming months, collecting views. I am hoping that the result will be a clear majority wanting John Penrose MP, and Liam Fox MP, who is in the other constituency in North Somerset, to be faced with the fact that their stance (denial that NHS privatisation is taking place) is in directly opposed to the wished of the vast majority of their constituents. This is politically embarrassing, to say the least.</p><p><br /></p><p>Here are the papers I am giving out:</p><p><br /></p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><b><span style="font-family: "Arial Black",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">NHS PRIVATISATION: THE EVIDENCE </span></b><b><span style="font-family: "Arial Black",sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">It is a
commonly claimed that the NHS is being privatised. Privatisation is defined as
the transfer of services or assets from public ownership to private
corporations.<br />
Politicians often try to deny NHS privatisation is taking place, or <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>try to confuse the issue, so here are the
plain facts in a very brief summary. <br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--><br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="line-height: normal; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">1.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">In 1987 Margaret Thatcher
introduced the “Internal Market” in the NHS, creating a division between purchasers
and providers of care services. This immediately increased complexity into the
NHS, with more administrative work needed to calculate (or estimate) the costs
of everything from brain surgery to a cardboard bedpan. This administrative
work has imposed a serious cost burden on the NHS.<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--><br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">2.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">The Private Finance Initiative
(PFI) <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>which used private money to build
hospitals, ran from 1992 until 2018. It provided £13bn, but will cost the NHS £80bn
by the time the debt is repaid. This benefits the private sector, but cripples
the NHS.<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--><br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">3.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Foundation Trusts were introduced
by a Labour Government, which breaks the NHS down into smaller chunks which can
be sold off. This was attempted in the case of Hillingdon Hospital, but the
experiment failed.<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--><br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">4.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">GPs have been re-organised into
consortia, which again are capable of being sold off. <br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--><br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">5.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Lansley’s Health and Social Care
Bill in 2012 removed the responsibility for the Secretary of State for Health
to care for the NHS, and obliged NHS Trusts to put contracts out to tender.
Since then, contracts worth billions have gone to the private sector. In the
five years to 2015 the private sector was awarded the majority of the contracts
for the following: Pharmacy, patient transport, diagnostics and GP out of
hours. <br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--><br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">6.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">In the course of negotiations of
a post-Brexit trade deal, US corporations were very keen to reduce the ability
of the NHS to control drug prices. Their plans could increase the cost of drugs
to the NHS by a massive £27 billion.<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--><br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">7.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Integrated Care Systems were introduced in 2017,
and are very similar to US Accountable Care Organisations. Their aim is to
reduce spending. If a private partner in the ICS manages to reduce spending, it
is allowed to keep the savings. This is an incentive to cut corners.<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--><br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">8.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Sir Simon Stevens, (until recently, CEO or head of
NHS England), introduced Sustainability and Transformation plans. These aim to
reduce NHS beds (the UK has among the lowest ratio of beds to population in the
developed world), save £5 billion a year in NHS spending, and reduce the number
of A&E departments in the UK from 144 to 50. Sir Simon opposed Obamacare
when he was CEO of a US healthcare corporation.<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--><br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">9.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Car parks, cleaning, portering and catering have all
been privatised. <br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--><br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">10.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Hospitals are increasingly renting space and
facilities to private health care organisations.<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
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<!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">11.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Increasing numbers of private centres are being set
up to do things like hip replacement surgery, which are simple and relatively
predictable. If anything goes wrong subsequently, the NHS is expected to put
things right, not the private corporation who did the operation.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 18.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">All of this is evidence of a
gradual process of privatisation of the NHS.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 18.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">On the next page we discuss the
debate about privatisation.<br />
</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
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<!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 18.0pt;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">The Debate about NHS
Privatisation</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 18.0pt;"><b><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><br />
</span></i></b><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Politicians argue</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"> that GPs, pharmacists, dentists and opticians have
always been independent sub-contractors. This is true, but this arrangement was
stable, whereas since 1987, the changes that Conservatives (and to a lesser
extent, Labour and LibDems) brought in have been causing the role of private
agencies to expand steadily. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 18.0pt;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Politicians
argue</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"> that privatised healthcare is more
efficient than care provided by the NHS. <b>This is just not true</b>. Private
provision is far more expensive because of all the bills and invoices which have
to generated. Different sections of the NHS, which just used to cooperate, now
have to send each other itemised bills. <b>In the US, administration costs
amount to about 40% of total healthcare costs; in the UK before privatisation
began, administration costs were 6%.</b> In addition to administrative
costs, private corporations will always cream off some of the money they get
from Government to run the service as profits to give dividends to their
shareholders.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 18.0pt;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Politicians
argue</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"> that it does not matter who owns
the bricks and mortar of the place where treatment takes place, so long as the
treatment is delivered. PFI <i>(see other side)</i> proves this to be wrong. It
is more efficient for the NHS to own its own hospital than to pay rent or
interest to a corporation. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 18.0pt;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Politicians
argue</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"> that health care costs are
rising unsustainably, so something must be done. Rising costs of health care is
a universal problem in the modern world, and the NHS is placed in the middle
the range in international comparisons regarding cost. Privatisation will
only add to the cost. Health care in the USA is about twice as expensive as the
NHS, and it serves fewer people, proportionately. Real social and economic
reforms will reduce health costs, not privatisation.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 18.0pt;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">If we,
the people, do not stop</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"> the
process of privatisation, we will be left with a rump NHS that does emergency
care while anything that is remotely profitable will have been sold off. Private
care facilities may be able to perform procedures like cataract surgery to hip
replacement, but they do not have A&E departments. Any emergencies in these
facilities will be shunted over to the NHS to be sorted out.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 18.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">At the
end of the privatisation process lies insurance-based health care. Insurance is
always based on risk assessment, which means that high-risk patients, and those
unable to afford the premiums, will be left to fend for themselves. In other
words, they will be left untreated, maybe to die.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 18.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Protect
Our NHS is conducting an opinion poll in North Somerset. You will have received
a polling slip with this page.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 18.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Please join
in and cast your vote, so that we can tell your MP exactly how much local opposition
there is to the Government’s NHS Privatisation Plans.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 18.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">If you
have any questions about this initiative, or if you want to help, please email rlawson@gn.apc.org<o:p></o:p></span></p>___________________________________________________________________________________<p></p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;">YOUR NHS:
DO YOU WANT TO KEEP IT PUBLIC AND FREE?<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;">This survey
is being carried out by the North Somerset branch of the Keep Our NHS Public
organisation to find out what local voters want to happen to the NHS. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;">We have
given you a sheet titled “NHS Privatisation: The Evidence” which sets out in briefly
what has been happening to the NHS since 1987, and deals with the arguments politicians
give for NHS privatisation.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Now it is up
to you, to state your opinion.<b> </b>Please vote by putting <b>X</b> by the word
which matches your opinion:<b><o:p></o:p></b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;">I WANT MY
MP TO WORK TO HALT AND REVERSE THE PRIVATISATION OF THE NHS<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Agree
…<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Disagree<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>…<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;">All people
in the household who are of voting age can vote.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Just put one <b>X</b> per voter.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;">We intend to
publicise the results of this survey in local press and radio.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;">If you would
like to help our campaign to protect the NHS by writing to your MP, or by
helping to distribute this survey, just add your telephone number or email to
your address, and we will get in touch with you.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><br />
We will not share your details with any other person or organisation.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Thank you
for participating<o:p></o:p></span></p>_________________________________________________________________________________<p></p><p>Please feel free to copy and join in if you wish</p>DocRichardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08903964792092284406noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9192922.post-3071744461803702042021-11-01T11:36:00.002+00:002021-11-01T12:04:06.052+00:00Interruption Rate, Marr Show 31.10.2021<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2IO9BNOc6mC_G-w40RbCJ4hXnGLB1SSd-2fqu-XAPpt1EBJtS7GIhHKK5X86e89e2VsuySk5r7ReIxgLTv456QotBAuWPlrJbb5vRqsOkGJ5CS3pXcsf6ehtI1pQq-_pnSX7Rcw/s650/marr.jpg.gallery.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="365" data-original-width="650" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2IO9BNOc6mC_G-w40RbCJ4hXnGLB1SSd-2fqu-XAPpt1EBJtS7GIhHKK5X86e89e2VsuySk5r7ReIxgLTv456QotBAuWPlrJbb5vRqsOkGJ5CS3pXcsf6ehtI1pQq-_pnSX7Rcw/s320/marr.jpg.gallery.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /> The clue is in the name: The Interruption Rate for broadcast interviewers is the rate at which they interrupt their interviewees.<p></p><p>On the 31st October, Andrew Marr interviewed Alok Sharma, the Tory Minister who is President of the COP26 event, and who trousered a £10,000 donation from a company with interests in oil drilling. </p><p>Marr also interviewed Ed Miliband, past leader of the Labour Party, Shadow Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. </p><p>There are two main kinds of interruption: Minor, which are vocalisations made while the interviewee is talking such as "yes" and "ok" towards the end of a sentence that indicate another question is on its way, and Major, which are sentences that cut across the flow of the interviewee.</p><p>Method: I listened to the recording of the <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m00116q5/the-andrew-marr-show-31102021" target="_blank">relevant Andrew Marr Show</a> and noted interruptions of both kinds. </p><p>The duration of the Sharma interview was 10min 21 sec, and the Miliband interview was 8 min 34 sec. </p><p>Marr interrupted Sharma with 2 Major and 4 Minors. </p><p>Marr interrupted Miliband with 10 Majors and 12 Minors. </p><p>Miliband interrupted Marr once with a Major, so let us subtract that from Marr's score, giving 9.</p><p>To account for the different lengths of interview, we will divide the Majors by the number of seconds in the interview giving an Interruption Per Unit Time (InPUT)</p><p>InPUT for Sharma = 0.0048</p><p>InPUT for Miliband = 0.0175</p><p>Ratio of InPUTs = 3.647. </p><p>The conclusion is that the Interruption Rate that Marr used on Miliband was 3.6 times greater than the rate he used for Sharma.</p><p>In a democracy, the aim of interviewers should be to have an Interruption Rate that did not vary significantly between politicians regardless of party, gender, race or belief.</p><p><br /></p><p><a href="https://greenerblog.blogspot.com/2015/01/sunday-politics-andrew-neil-natalie.html" target="_blank">I carried out a similar study on interviews by Andrew Neil in 2015</a></p>DocRichardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08903964792092284406noreply@blogger.com3