Archives for the month of: September, 2016

The National Interest

September 27, 2016 //

Voters in most countries elect politicians to work in the national interest. This means taking strategic decisions that advance the cause of that country, whether that be economically, politically, culturally, scientifically, you name it. Politicians, and particularly senior politicians, are put there to make the right moves; not necessarily the popular ones.

And then we have Brexit. A constitutional referendum in July returned a wish by a majority of voters in England and Wales (but not in Scotland or Northern Ireland) for the entire UK (including Scotland and Northern Ireland) to leave the European Union. The Tory Party in the UK, currently in government, has promised to make good on this wish and is threatening to pull the rip cord in 2017.

I ask myself how any of the following predictions are really in the UK’s national interest:

  • Scotland’s departure from the UK. The Scottish National Party are the largest political party in Scotland. They have already tried once to break their links with the UK. Under Brexit they would almost definitely do it again. And they would almost definitely win this time.
  • UK banks fear that they may lose “passporting” or ability to trade freely with the EU.
  • The CBI in the UK are reporting a significant year on year drop in sales in September.
  • London may lose its top spot in banking to other cities, including Singapore, New York and Zurich.
  • A European army might come into existence following a UK exit from the EU, contrary to British wishes.
  • Dramatic fee increases are on the cards for British university students as research funding becomes uncertain.
  • A consensus is forming that a hard Brexit would knock off 9 billion pounds in value from investment banking and capital markets.
  • New border posts could be required in Ireland, threatening a hard won peace. 

These are just a smattering of headlines from the last few weeks.

Flight of capital, brain drains, breakup of the UK, decline of strategically important industries, trade tariffs reimposed, worsened security situation: that’s one hell of a price to pay for restricting the number of Polish and Romanian migrants to England and Wales and putting one over on Johnny Foreigner.

If this is working in the national strategic interests of the UK, then I’m a Dutchman.

Goede Nacht.

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Categories opinions, politics

Alphas and Omegas

September 25, 2016 //

Among the things I think about sometimes is how we got here as a species, and where we’re going.

We tend to think of ourselves as a young species, having only discovered writing (and with it, history itself) in the past 5,000 years, and civilisation (with its permanent monuments) 5,000 years before that. Earlier than this, our history as a race of humans goes quite dark. Archaeology tells us a few things, but the further back we go, all we have are fragments from our past. We can quite easily forget that we are a very old creature indeed. How long ago was it since we discovered language, since we started singing, since we started praying, since we discovered a sense of humour? It’s hard to say, yet it’s quite probable that such traits predate homo sapiens, going back through multiple ancestral species. Were we to travel back a couple of million years, maybe we would still see ourselves in our austrolopithical forebears.

I remember reading a book some time ago, that one group of our ancestors (or possibly close cousins) spent over a million years fashioning an early stone tool with practically no development in all that time. That’s tens of thousands of generations just hammering away with little sense of innovation. They were rooted in the animal world – lives full of fury, struggle and passion, but not one given to legacy or creative accomplishment. Maybe there were stirrings there. Maybe, every so often, one of them came up with an idea, but they were quickly hit over the head, or eaten by a lioness, before that idea (or their genes) had a chance to spread. 

I ask myself if that’s where we’re ultimately going back to. If anything has been successful in the long term on this planet, it’s been that patient toiling away with little progress through the generations. Among all the animals, a sense of constructive wonder seems to be selected against. In the single case where it has succeeded, it’s lead to an exponential increase in technological development, resulting in a potentially untenable situation full of nuclear weapons, over-population, resource depletion, multi-species extinction and the prospect of disastrous climate change. Maybe our ultimate fate (if we survive this time at all) is a return back to the animal realm. Maybe, 90,000 generations hence, our distant children will be back in the trees, or scurrying around in holes, or hammering again on rocks with little thought for art and music. 

I think about the last person in that line, looking around at her species and wondering about it all, before death finally takes her away and the universe once again becomes dim and distant to humanity.

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Categories speculations, stuff, technology, thinking

The long shadow

September 19, 2016 //

Hundreds of years ago, people believed that the devil lived among them. Fearful people would witness their crops fail, their children get sick and die, their livelihoods destroyed by fire or flooding. They would look around for a cause of such evil. Particular attention would be paid to the convenient scapegoat – perhaps an old women, a stranger from out of town, or a Jew. Maybe these people were heard saying something, or maybe they were seen doing something just before the calamity struck. For the medieval mind, this was all that was needed. The devil was afoot, and because these people had done something suspicious beforehand, they had clearly channeled his evil for their own malevolent purposes.

“Because it happened beforehand, it caused it”. It’s called the’post-hoc fallacy’. Because the witch had cursed an official, she had brought on the sickness. Because the Jew had refused to give a loan to the alderman, he had been responsible for the great fire. It’s nonsense, right? It may have been a coincidence or a distortion of fact, but this, to the medieval mind, was beside the point. It happened before, therefore it caused it, therefore the witch is guilty.

The same medieval thinking persists today, except now its not witches and the devil. It’s vaccines and Big Pharma.

“Because my child received the HPV vaccine and subsequently got sick, the vaccine caused the illness”. The only evidence is a co-incidence, but to a fearful mind, this is enough. Why not other childhood vaccines like TDap, or MenC? Why not a genetic predisposition, or a viral illness? No. It was the witch, or should we say, the HPV vaccine. And the great evil behind it all: Big Pharma.

It’s the job of science to show that there is a correlation between two events. It’s the job of science to find cause amongst hundreds of probable causes. And the scientific results to date are clear: there is no connection between the vaccination and subsequent illnesses. Kids get ill at the same rate, irrespective of whether they have been vaccinated or not.

To the fearful mind, all this evidence is too much. Get away from us with all your studies and numbers and percentages. Let’s just burn the witch and be done with it. Why choose a rational course when ignorance and emotion will do?

Our medieval tale tells us something else. When the cause of the fearful is taken up by officialdom, by well-known celebrities and by politicians on the make, when fear overrides fact as official policy, things quickly get much worse. The fear is legitimised, stifling the voices of reason amid censure and threats. Official sanction permits it to metastatise into other areas of policy, thus multiplying the fear. In the case of HPV, perhaps we will not burn witches, but we will burn away our options, so that a now preventable cancer can continue to wreak damage on young lives.

Politicians, journalists and opinion formers must stand up, not for what’s popular, but what is true, based on the very best science and expertise. Following the route of least resistance and aligning with the fearful is not leadership. It is the opposite of leadership. We’ve seen these patterns before and the chaos they have caused. We cannot afford to repeat them.

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Categories opinions

Superpowers

September 12, 2016 //

One of the great benefits of being the dad of teenagers is my ability to use The Force at each and every opportunity. I am like a Jedi Knight, inhabiting a world of constant adventure, using The Force at every opportunity to fight evil and set the galaxy to rights.

Ok, that might be a bit of an exaggeration. When I say “Jedi Knight”, I really mean “Arsehole” and when I say “The Force”, I really mean “Arsehole Factor”.

I have this fantastic capacity to turn the once blissful world of my teens into a dystopia of pain and suffering in seconds. No light sabre needed. All that’s needed are magic words such as “have you started your homework?” or “put away your phone”. These are powerful enough to suck the air out of the room, leaving a mass of blistering resentment in its wake.

I have superpowers. At a single command, I can force my kids faces into their open palms. I can get them to roll their eyes upward into their skulls. My reverse magnetism ensures that when I enter the room, they leave immediately. I can get them to mutter swear words under their breath, and when I follow it by “what did you say?” I can predict exactly the answer I will get.

I have been practicing. Dropping them off to their friends fifteen minutes late. Serving them broccoli and carrots at dinner. Bopping to CHVRCHES at inappropriate moments. Do not underestimate the Power of my Uncoolness.

One day soon, I will lose my powers, so I’m going to revel in picking my teeth in their presence, asking them questions about Napoleon that I know they can’t answer, and starting each sentence with “when I was your age”. The Dark Side must be balanced eventually, but not just yet.

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Categories fun

That day, fifteen years ago.

September 11, 2016 //

On holidays in the UK when it happened. Hadrian’s Wall. I had no idea something big had occurred until I got back into the car for the trip back to the rented cottage in the Lake District. 
We picked up the thread of events from BBC radio. It still wasn’t clear whether the attacks were over or still ongoing. How many planes overall? Were there more horrors yet to unfold? Reports were coming in from Pennsylvania. Another plane, burning in the woods. Further collapses at the WTC. Who, what, why: unknown.
I remember that sinking, horrible feeling of powerlessness and fear; mystified at the depths to which humanity will go. Like staring into the abyss. I had felt this before, but never with such intensity. Thousands dead. How many thousands? They didn’t know. The journey was one of silence, interspersed with the occasional expletive. 
It was late that evening before we saw the TV images. The fires, the collapses. Images nailed into our collective consciousness forever.
I remember thinking: if this is what religion is capable of, I’ve had it with religion. I’ve since extended this to all kinds of political ideologies. A curse on all their houses.
I wish we could say this was the worst thing we would ever witness, but the catalogue of horror remains an open book. 
🌹

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Categories memories, stuff