New parking regulations come into effect (permanent blog link)
The BBC says:
New parking regulations have come into force in England and Wales despite concerns over the use of CCTV footage to enforce rules and impose fines.
Varying charges can now be levied - with larger fines for serious offences and lower ones for minor misdemeanours such as overstaying at a parking meter.
The AA said it was concerned that using CCTV footage was unfair on drivers.
But the Local Government Association said motorists inconvenienced by errant parkers would "at last get justice".
...
Meanwhile, disability charity Mobilise said it is expecting "a flood of calls" from disabled motorists who get parking fines issued by CCTV because they believe cameras will not be able to distinguish whether they are blue-badge holders.But Transport Minister Rosie Winterton said: "There's a very clear appeals process, so people with a disabled badge would have very clear evidence that they were not contravening the rules."
One of the conditions of the new parking rules is that councils will not be allowed to use parking fines as a way of raising revenue.
...
The AA's head of road policy Paul Watters said he broadly welcomed the changes, but was hesitant about the use of CCTV, preferring "real-time" tickets given to drivers or fixed to their cars."It does introduce an element of delay, because these things won't land on people's doormats for a few weeks perhaps, so you've forgotten the offence probably," he said.
"It doesn't give you an opportunity to check the signs and lines and make sure everything's in order," he said.
The AA has (for once) hit the nail on the head. It is very difficult to collect evidence when you get a ticket after the fact. And Winterton's response to the disabled badge problem is disgraceful. It will be up to motorists to prove they are innocent rather than the State proving they are guilty. And the idea that this is not going to be used "as a way of raising revenue" is a joke. Parking fines are part of ripoff Britain, brought to you by the biggest and most obnoxious ripoff merchant of them all, the State.
WTO tells the EU their ban on North American beef is illegal (permanent blog link)
The BBC says:
The World Trade Organization (WTO) has ruled that the European Union (EU) flouted global trade rules in its ban on beef treated with growth hormones.
The US hailed the ruling in the long-running trans-Atlantic spat as an "important victory".
But the WTO also found fault with US and Canada because of sanctions they imposed on EU exports in retaliation for the beef ban.
The EU says beef treated with certain hormones poses a health risk.
But the WTO dispute settlement panel said that the EU's justification for its import ban was not backed up with scientific evidence.
It also said that the US and Canada were wrong to extend retaliatory measures on exports of European products such as Roquefort cheese, truffles and Dijon mustard.
Here the WTO, of all organisations, has made a sane ruling. The EU does not like North American beef for religious and commercial reasons, not for scientific reasons. Whether this ruling will actually change anything remains to be seen.
Flybe does creative marketing to avoid fine at Norwich Airport (permanent blog link)
The BBC says:
Budget airline Flybe advertised for actors to fly between Norwich and Dublin to boost passenger numbers and avoid a £280,000 commercial penalty.
The airline took the step to avoid a penalty charge from Norwich Airport if it did not carry 15,000 passengers on the route by 31 March.
The airport criticised Flybe for pointlessly damaging the environment.
Flybe, which did not use actors in the end, blamed the airport, calling it "intransigent and greedy".
Under the terms of the deal between the airline and the airport, the latter would impose a £280,000 penalty if Flybe did not carry 15,000 passengers on the Norwich to Dublin route during the 2007/2008 financial year.
Flybe, which is based in Exeter, was 172 passengers short with the 31 March deadline approaching and the two sides could not reach a compromise.
The airline laid on extra flights, offered 200 free return tickets, placed an advertisement on an actors' website for "extras" and warned staff to prepare to fly to Ireland.
Norwich Airport Managing Director Richard Jenner said: "It doesn't seem to be in the spirit of the agreement.
"But, more than anything, our concerns are about the unnecessary impact on the environment. We try here to justify the impact we have on the environment."
Norwich Airport is taking the piss. It is they who were not "in the spirit of the agreement". And if they were really so concerned "about the unnecessary impact on the environment" then they wouldn't have been so hardline about the passenger numbers in the first place. And in fact nothing in life is "necessary", except death. So if they really don't want to have any "unnecessary impact on the environment" then they should just shut the airport down.
"Open skies" agreement comes into effect (permanent blog link)
The BBC says:
The long-awaited "open skies" agreement between the US and European Union is coming into effect, aiming to open up trans-Atlantic air travel.
The deal ends limits on which airlines can fly between the US and EU, and it is expected to lead to a large rise in the number of carriers on the routes.
However, changes at big airports such as Heathrow will be minimised by the limited availability of take-off slots.
New trans-Atlantic services are likely to use smaller airports instead.
Irish low-cost airline Ryanair has already declared an interest in flying to North America.
It will be interesting to see what happens. In theory, in the short run we should have more competition, which means lower prices (and it's amazing the BBC does not quote the usual suspects complaining that this will mean the end of the world). But the Ryanair business model does not obviously extend to trans-Atlantic flights. For example, given the length of the flights, they will not be able to squeeze much more in the way of turn-around than any other airline. Of course they do have the advantage of not having to operate from Heathrow, and with a full list of destinations to Europe from both Luton and Stansted (both from Ryanair and other airlines), we might find more passengers willing to abandon the substandard conditions at Heathrow, in spite of its alleged importance as a hub.
The Tories would allegedly do better for science than Labour (permanent blog link)
The BBC says:
Science and innovation is being stifled by the government, say the Tories.
Shadow chancellor George Osborne said a UK government "stranglehold" on science funding meant over 20% was controlled centrally, up from 2% in 1997.
...
[Skills Secretary John] Denham responded by saying Labour had a better record at science funding than implied by Mr Osborne.He said that since 1997, Labour had built up a world-class British research base which ranked "second only to the USA".
"When the Tories were in power, they let science go to rack and ruin - so much so that scientists had to start a campaign to 'Save British Science'.
"Labour has doubled investment in science, and will be spending £6bn on science by 2010/11."
The last Tory government was far, far worse on science funding than Labour. And it would be interesting to hear what Osborne claims would actually be done differently by the Tories, since in almost all policy areas they say they would do exactly the same as Labour, only they would allegedly want to do things differently but for some obscure reason cannot promise they would.
The workers do not like the proposed "congestion charge" (permanent blog link)
The Cambridge News says:
Workers at Addenbrooke's have said a resounding no to the proposed congestion charge in Cambridge.
Three out of four employees at the hospital who responded to a survey by staff representatives say they are against the idea of paying for driving in the city.
...
Addenbrooke's has about 6,800 workers, and the staff side of its Management-Staff Forum organised the survey. In all, 1,750 workers responded.
...
[Martin Booth, staff secretary on the forum,] said the survey had asked people whether Addenbrooke's should be inside or outside the charging zone - and whether staff were in favour of the charge or not."More than 1,800 journeys would be made by staff during the proposed charge time, and 93 per cent of those who responded to the survey, more than 1,600 employees, said they felt the hospital should be outside the zone," he said.
...
Residents at Girton have also given road tolls the thumbs-down.A survey by county councillor John Reynolds, who represents the village, found that of 238 people who replied, 158 - three quarters - were against the proposed charge.
Almost all, 218 people, supported the idea of investment in buses and cycling facilities, but 196 felt that Girton should be outside the charging zone.
These are non-random surveys so the findings do not really count. But even if the results are relatively accurate, they are hardly surprising, since turkeys don't vote for Christmas. The only people who are for the so-called congestion charge are people who will not suffer as a result of its introduction, such as most of the academic middle class people who run Cambridge (including the cycling brigade). Pretty much everyone else is against it, especially the ordinary workers who drive to get to work, who are the real target of the charge. (Shoppers are spared the charge, just workers have to pay, because the time is going to be from 7-9 in the morning. Consumerism trumps working, which tells you a lot about the attitude of the people who run Cambridge.)
One hardly needs surveys to figure any of this out.
Goverment wants new college buildings to be "zero carbon" (permanent blog link)
The BBC says:
All newly or partly built colleges will have to adopt wind turbines, solar panels or other renewable energy, under plans to cut global warming. And all new colleges in England will have to emit no carbon by 2016, skills secretary John Denham has said.
...
Firms carrying out the building work will also have to employ local people.
The "local people" condition is silly. What is a "local" person? Do you have to be born in the town? Live in the town (and for how long)? Work for a company in the town? Or within X km of the town? It seems that on this score the government is more interested in political posturing than it getting the best school buildings constructed for the best price.
As for this alleged "no carbon" goal, well that is a complete fantasy. No building is "zero carbon" since it takes carbon to put up the building in the first place (and to maintain it as well). What the government means is that the operation of the building should be (theoretically) "zero carbon". Unfortunately, when you look at the total life system carbon emissions, solar panels are not at all suitable in Britain (with current technology). And wind turbines are not suitable in many locations. So in effect, this is just more political posturing, which will probably (at best) achieve very little (for a large cost). The one real benefit is that possibly the buildings will be insulated better than they might otherwise have been.
School Food Trust wants to force children to eat school meals (permanent blog link)
The BBC says:
Schools and councils are being urged to make it harder for children to swap their school meal for a takeaway.
Rising levels of obesity are being fuelled by the ready availability of fast food, said the School Food Trust.
It wants schools to close their gates at lunchtime and councils to stop new fast food outlets opening nearby.
But the Local Government Association said it could not force schools to shut their gates and that food retailers could challenge licence refusals.
The academic middle class in action. The so-called School Food Trust is just yet another quango stuffed full of earnest middle class types, who love to control freak over the nation. Closing school gates is one thing (no doubt the academic middle class can browbeat lots of schools into doing that). But refusing "fast food" outlets to set up shop anywhere near a school is just plain silly. Are local residents supposed to be put out just because the academic middle class do not like "fast food"? Indeed, you can just imagine that the next step will be to ban corner shops selling candy bars or crisps anywhere near a school as well. Like all quangos, the School Food Trust should just be shut down. The money that is saved could be spent on education.
Grand Arcade opens in Cambridge (permanent blog link)
After three years of work, the Grand Arcade shopping centre finally opened its doors to the public this morning. As to be expected, it is just Lion Yard Mark II, and the biggest entrance to the mall is via Lion Yard. The Lion Yard folk are perhaps feeling a bit left out in the cold (e.g. the car park is now called the Grand Arcade car park rather than the Lion Yard one) and put a brave face on it this morning by having a person dressed up as a lion walking around to try and remind people that Lion Yard still exists.
Amazingly enough, a large chunk of the space in the Grand Arcade was not ready
to be opened (so a lot of it seems not even to have been let). But that did not
stop the crowds descending. The main attraction early on seems to have been the
new Apple Store:
where there was a long queue of Mac weenies keen to get their hands on a free
t-shirt. And the staff replied in American gung ho fashion by cheering and
clapping everyone who entered the store (but they will soon enough learn that
that style does not go down very well in Cambridge).
Not surprisingly, most of the stores that are open so far are selling clothes. Presumably this is what the public wants. Other than the Apple Store, and the already opened John Lewis, the main shop of note is Swarovski (pretty much opposite the Apple Store, as it happens). Obviously someone thinks that Cambridge has a bit of money, but it will be interesting to see if they survive for long.
As for the building, it's pretty much as you would expect from a modern shopping mall. A big lobby down the middle with stores on both sides and on two levels (well, three levels if you count the toilets and one entrance to John Lewis). The entrance on St Andrew's Street features a large in-your-face gate and sign promoting the mall.
Having a large waist is allegedly linked with Alzheimer's in later life (permanent blog link)
The BBC says:
A big waistline in your 40s could almost triple the threat of dementia in old age, according to US research.
Obesity is a known risk factor for Alzheimer's, but scientists found even those of normal weight were more at risk if they had a large waist.
However, the study of 6,500 people, published in the journal Neurology, found obesity and bulging stomach was still the most dangerous combination.
An obesity expert said waist size was a good guide to future health problems.
Research linking obesity to dementia does not reveal precisely why being overweight can affect your ageing brain, but many specialists believe that associated problems such as high blood pressure, diabetes and high cholesterol levels may contribute.
As usual, all they have found is a correlation, not a causation, and given the further statement that "obesity and bulging stomach was still the most dangerous combination", it seems that even this correlation is a bit weak. But since it ties in with earlier research that links waist size with diabetes and heart disease (again, a correlation, not a causation), they can say pretty much anything they like and people will just take it as the gospel truth.
The marriage rate in England and Wales is allegedly still falling (permanent blog link)
The BBC says:
Marriage rates in England and Wales have fallen to the lowest level since records began in 1862, the Office for National Statistics said.
Provisional marriage figures for 2006 show that 23 out of 1,000 unmarried men were choosing to marry - down from 25 men per 1,000 the previous year.
The marriage rate for women fell from 22 to 21 per thousand for the period.
The number of marriages has been in decline. In 2006 there were 237,000 - the lowest annual number since 1895.
Jill Kirby, from the Centre for Policy Studies, the centre-right think tank, said: "It is obviously worrying that marriage rates have reached such a low ebb but it is not surprising in view of the lack of government policy encouraging marriage over the last 10 years."
She said the existing welfare system penalises against marriage.
"Marriage is in danger of being lost as the core institution of society. Research demonstrates how important marriage is to maintain the stability for children. The break-up of cohabiting couples is much higher than married couples," she added.
...
In 2006 the mean age for all marriages increased to 36.4 years for men - up from 36.2 in 2005, and 33.7 years for women (33.5 in 2005).In 2006 the mean age at first marriage was 31.8 years for men and 29.7 years for women.
Right at the end of the article the BBC gives a clue as to why the marriage rate as officially measured might be declining, namely that people are getting married later and later. So the headline statistic is misleading.
Even worse, of course, is that the usual suspects (here the CPS) have to claim the world is at an end because of this misleading statistic. And Kirby's specific claim that "research demonstrates how important marriage is to maintain the stability for children" is just a classic confusion between correlation and causation (but you would hardly expect anyone who works for a "think tank" to actually think). The existing welfare system might "penalise" marriage but the tax system penalises non-marriage (for example in inheritance tax and via capital gain transfers between married people). Needless to say, the tax and benefit system should be neutral with regard to marriage. Married people are not inherently worthy of tax breaks, whether or not certain people might want to arbitrarily claim that marriage is a "core institution".
NICE changes drinking advice for pregnant women (permanent blog link)
The BBC says:
Women should not drink any alcohol during pregnancy, NHS adviser the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) has said.
It says if they must drink, they should not do so in the first three months and should limit consumption to one or two units once or twice a week afterwards.
It brings NICE in line with government advice and replaces previous guidance saying small daily amounts were fine.
However, NICE concedes there is no evidence to support the change.
It is reasonable enough that the NICE guidelines are consistent with what the rest of the government is claiming. But the phrase "there is no evidence to support the change" is evidence that this idea is politically rather than scientifically motivated. So the academic middle class puritanical control freaks that run Britain have decided to target drinkers, having finished persecuting smokers.
HRT might help memory in women (permanent blog link)
The BBC says:
Hormone replacement therapy (HRT) may protect post-menopausal women against memory loss and Alzheimer's disease.
A study found women's memories are affected when their bodies stop producing the hormone oestrogen - as happens at the menopause.
However, the Institute of Psychiatry at King's College London found memory recovered when hormone supplies were restored - the effect achieved by HRT.
Women have a higher risk of developing Alzheimer's than men.
...
There is a theory that oestrogen may help prevent the build up of damaging protein tangles in the brain which are thought to trigger cell death, and Alzheimer's.But when supplies of the hormone are abruptly cut at the menopause, women may become more vulnerable.
A major US study found no evidence of a protective effect from HRT - and even suggested the combined form of the treatment might increase the general risk of dementia.
The trial was halted early when when results suggested some women taking HRT had an increased risk for breast cancer and cardiovascular disease.
However, UK experts argue that this study focused on older women, who did not receive HRT immediately after the menopause.
The latest research was carried out on 30 young, pre-menopausal women who were having surgery for benign womb growths called fibroids.
It's only one study, and it seems to contradict another study, perhaps because of the difference in age of the participants. So obviously it should be taken with a pinch of salt. And it suffers from the usual problems of these kind of health studies, in that it only considers one thing in isolation. So HRT might be good for Alzheimer's, but it's equally likely to be bad for other things. And the main point of taking HRT is not to prevent Alzheimer's, but to mitigate some of the potentially debilitating side effects of menopause. This idea seems somehow to be lost in the discussion.
Another big chunk of Antarctica about to break away (permanent blog link)
The BBC says:
A chunk of ice the size of the Isle of Man has started to break away from Antarctica in what scientists say is further evidence of a warming climate.
Satellite images suggest that part of the ice shelf is disintegrating, and will soon crumble away.
The Wilkins Ice Shelf has been stable for most of the last century, but began retreating in the 1990s.
Six ice shelves in the same part of the continent have already been lost, says the British Antarctic Survey (BAS).
Professor David Vaughan of BAS said: "Wilkins is the largest ice shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula yet to be threatened.
"I didn't expect to see things happen this quickly. The ice shelf is hanging by a thread - we'll know in the next few days or weeks what its fate will be."
Well, it's pretty obvious what its "fate" will be. And if the climate change predictions are anywhere near accurate, we are going to be seeing a lot more of this kind of phenomenon.
Climate change will affect lots of people (permanent blog link)
The BBC says:
A Greenpeace report on climate change says that if greenhouse gas emissions grow at their present rate, South Asia could face a major human crisis.
"More than 120 million people from India and Bangladesh alone will become homeless by the end of this century," the report says.
It estimates that 75 million people from Bangladesh will lose their homes.
It predicts that about 45 million people in India will also become "climate migrants".
Nothing really new here, but given the source of the report, there is obviously a certain spin put on the numbers. So, are these people really going to become "homeless" or are these people instead going to move before their homes are lost to the rising water? Emissions seem to set to grow at their present rate for quite a few years, but presumably by the end of the century not, so the likely future is complicated. And needless to say, any report looking a hundred years into the future is bound to be just plain wrong (except by accident).
UK tests and league tables allegedly responsible for making children unhappy (permanent blog link)
The BBC says:
UK tests and league tables have made children the unhappiest in the western world, teachers have claimed.
Even nursery-age children were being taught to spell and write in readiness for the tests waiting for them at primary school.
Very young children knew exactly what educational levels they had reached, and many stopped trying because they believed they were "dumb", they said.
Tests and league tables are obnoxious. But to claim they "have made children the unhappiest in the western world" is just plain silly, even if you believe that UK children really are the "unhappiest". Unfortunately both the government and the teachers' trade unions seem less interested in education than in political posturing.
UK chief enviornment scientist questions use of biofuels (permanent blog link)
The BBC says:
The UK's chief environment scientist has called for a delay to a policy demanding inclusion of biofuels into fuel at pumps across the UK.
Professor Robert Watson said ministers should await the results of their inquiry into biofuels' sustainability.
Some scientists think biofuels' carbon benefits may be currently outweighed by negative effects from their production.
The Renewable Transport Fuels Obligation (RTFO) is to introduce 2.5% biofuels at the pumps from 1 April.
Professor Robert Watson warned that it would be insane if the RTFO had the opposite effects of the ones intended.
...
Professor Watson does not advise the DfT - and said his thoughts as chief environment scientist on the sustainability of biofuels had not been sought.The DfT is itself under pressure from an EU policy demanding the inclusion of 5% biofuels in road fuels by 2010 in an attempt to cut carbon emissions.
The EU's Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas earlier told BBC News that this target should only be reached if the biofuels could be proved to be sustainably produced.
It is impossible to say yet whether any biofuels are truly sustainable or not as they are blended on the world market and their origins are impossible to trace.
Some scientists believe some biofuels - particularly ethanol from sugar cane - should be seen as sustainable.
But others fear the impact of biofuels on food prices. And recent articles from US scientists argue that the carbon debt incurred from carbon released from ploughing virgin soil often outweighed any potential carbon saving from the biofuels.
Professor Watson said some of the calculations on soil science were controversial - but agreed that carbon losses from soil were a serious concern.
He said that the UK was a leader in exploring the full sustainability implications of biofuels.
This is certainly true compared with the US which has set numerical targets for biofuels without consideration of their carbon impact.
But many will question why energy experts promoting biofuels in the EU were allowed to go unchallenged so long by the views on biofuels of agriculture specialists or soil scientists.
Just the latest person to express concern about biofuels. Unfortunately the EU is sleep-walking into the use of biofuels, all in the name of allegedly being good for the environment, when all the evidence suggests the opposite is the case for most biofuels.
Archbishop of Canterbury speaks more nonsense (permanent blog link)
The BBC says:
The Archbishop of Canterbury has warned in his Easter sermon against nations' greed for oil, power and territory.
Dr Rowan Williams said the "comforts and luxuries" we take for granted could not be sustained forever.
More nonsense from Williams, who seems to have a knack of saying rather stupid things. Of course nothing can be "sustained forever" since the universe will end some day (either by a big crunch or more likely by an entropic death), and long before that the human species will likely go extinct (since pretty much all species eventually go extinct). Of course this far-out-into-the-future view is not what he had in mind. He just wants to repeat the usual trite beliefs of the academic middle class that the world is at an end. Needless to say, it is the academic middle class, like Williams, who most enjoy the "comforts and luxuries" in life. And to equate the use of oil with "greed" is just plain pathetic. Let's see how far he would get about without oil. And oil just happens to be the most convenient source of energy in the world. No doubt 150 years ago he would have been attacking coal instead of oil. Humans do things by using energy. So perhaps the Archbishop thinks human beings should not do things. Well, presumably he really has in mind the ordinary people of Britain (and the world). They should not be allowed to do anything. It is fine for the academic middle class to do things.
Medical charities support Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill (permanent blog link)
The BBC says:
Leading charities have written to every MP urging them to support the controversial embryo research bill, the BBC has learned.
Cancer Research and the British Heart Foundation are among more than 200 charities in favour of the creation of human-animal hybrids for research.
The prime minister is facing dissent over the bill, from some of his Labour MPs and leading Catholic clergy.
But Health Secretary Alan Johnson said an "accommodation" would be found.
There is nothing wrong with an "accomodation" if in the end the views of these "Labour MPs and leading Catholic clergy" are ignored. Britain should be leading the way on medical research (even medical research that is over-hyped). It is fortunate that these charities have actually done something because the "Catholic clergy" have been rather dominating the headlines and it would be a pity if the impression was left that they somehow represent anyone other than their own narrow partisan followers.
Primary schoolchildren can cause disruption (permanent blog link)
The BBC says:
Primary schoolchildren spoilt by their parents can cause disruption in the classroom by repeating manipulative behaviour used at home, a report says.
Research for the National Union of Teachers (NUT) suggested a minority of children threw tantrums, swore and were physically aggressive.
...
Cambridge University held 60 interviews with staff and pupils in 10 schools.
Who would have thought. Indeed, they might as well just have said: "Primary schoolchildren can cause disruption". (And has it ever been any different in the history of the world?) But presumably the point of the exercise was to claim it is all the fault of parents, and thus really it is all the fault of society (for not throwing enough money at parents), hence the chosen spin. And a whole 60 interviews, how impressive, that has to be enough to construct a grand philosophical theory of the universe. The country would be far better spending money on education rather than on educationalists.
Letting cancer patients write about their feelings allegedly helps them (permanent blog link)
The BBC says:
Encouraging cancer patients to write down their deepest fears about the disease may improve their quality of life, according to a US study.
Nancy Morgan, a "writing clinician", approached patients waiting in a clinic at a cancer centre in Washington DC.
Half those who took part said the exercise changed the way they thought about the illness, according to the journal The Oncologist.
...
Her "expressive writing" exercise, lasting just 20 minutes, posed questions to leukaemia or lymphoma patients about how the cancer had changed them and how they felt about those changes.When those taking part were contacted again a few weeks later, 49% said that the writing had changed their thoughts about their illness, while 38% said their feelings towards their situation had changed.
While there was no evidence of direct impact of the session on their illness, where the patients had reported greater changes in their mindset during the writing, this could be linked to more positive reports of quality of life given to their doctors during follow-up appointments.
Ms Morgan said: "Thoughts and feelings, or the cognitive processing and emotions related to cancer, are key writing elements associated with health benefits, according to previous studies.
"Writing only about the facts has shown no benefit."
Yet another dubious health study. Surveys are pretty meaningless, especially ones which ask how people feel and doubly especially when the respondents knew that the purpose of the survey was to "prove" that these exercises were worthwhile. Presumably you could get the same kind of results from lots of methodologies, including just spending time with a patient letting them talk. All in all, the only question worth answering is whether there is actually real benefit that can be achieved in a cost effective way, i.e. what is the bang per buck?
David Cameron breaks the traffic rules just like everyone else (permanent blog link)
The BBC says:
Conservative leader David Cameron has apologised after being photographed ignoring red lights and cycling the wrong way up a one-way street.
Pictures in the Daily Mirror newspaper showed the politician breaching traffic rules as he cycled to work.
It's good to know that the media is concerned about the important issues of the day. Pretty much all drivers, cyclists and pedestrians break the traffic rules, because pretty much everybody thinks the rules are silly in many regards. Of course, Cameron, being part of the ruling elite, now has to pretend that the traffic rules make sense. Meanwhile, back on planet Earth, pretty much all drivers, cyclists and pedestrians will continue to break the traffic rules.
Catholic establishment does not like Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill (permanent blog link)
The BBC says:
The government faces a rebellion over embryo laws unless Gordon Brown allows a free vote, a Labour MP has warned.
Joe Benton, who is Catholic, said a "substantial number" of fellow Labour MPs were ready to defy the government.
It comes as the leader of the Catholic Church in Scotland has urged Mr Brown to let MPs vote with their conscience on laws allowing human-animal embryos.
Downing Street has said a decision on whether to allow a free vote will be taken "in due course".
The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill is designed to bring the 1990 regulatory framework for fertility treatment and embryo research in line with scientific advances.
Among its many clauses, the bill would allow scientists to create hybrid human-animal embryos for research.
In his sermon to be delivered on Easter Sunday, but released on Good Friday, Cardinal O'Brien described the plans as "monstrous". He warned Mr Brown against imposing a three-line whip on Labour MPs - which orders them to vote with the party line.
Benton is saying "If you do 'A' I will vote against it or if you do 'not A' I will vote against". So he's just being silly. And O'Brien is even worse. He uses extremely inflammatory language but refuses to say what exactly is "monstrous" about the plans (other than that he doesn't like them because he doesn't like them). Of course Brown, being weak, might give in. It will be a sad day for Britain when a retrograde organisation like the Catholic Church can dictate public policy.
MPs attack other European countries over Afghanistan (permanent blog link)
The BBC says:
US commitment to Nato risks being undermined because some European nations are unwilling to deploy more troops in Afghanistan, MPs have warned.
The Commons Defence Committee said there was a lack of political will among European governments.
In a report on the alliance's future, it said failure in Afghanistan would deal a severe blow to allied unity.
The committee urged Nato leaders to send more troops and with less caveats when they meet in Bucharest next month.
The MPs say they are also worried by what they see as the uncertainty over what Nato is really for these days, which is undermining public support for the alliance.
NATO currently has no purpose other than interfering in countries on the far side of the planet. That has nothing to do with its original purpose. So it might as well be shut down. It is an anachronism in the 21st century.
And Afghanistan is pretty much guaranteed to be a failure, because the US lost interest in Afghanistan pretty soon after it bombed the Taliban out of power, and Bush then diverted American attention into the disaster that is Iraq. Why should Europe be expected to pick up the pieces? America made the mess (in both places), let America sort it out.
Lack of folate allegedly linked with abnormal sperm (permanent blog link)
The BBC says:
A diet rich in the vitamin folate may protect men against producing abnormal sperm and children with genetic abnormalities, a study suggests.
Researchers found high dietary folate was linked to lower levels of sperm with the wrong number of chromosomes.
Folate, also protective against birth defects, is found in leafy green vegetables, fruit and pulses.
...
The researchers stressed they had not proved that folate had a direct impact on sperm quality, merely that there was an association between the two. They say more work is needed to investigate cause and effect.
Yet another health study which just finds a correlation, not a causation, but where (wink, wink, nudge, nudge) the top part of the story implies there is a causation, and then way down the story (if at all) we find that after all it is only a correlation. Well, it's pretty easy to find correlations, and of course not only can you get the media to then helpfully imply there might be a causation, but you can also then say "more work is needed".
Owning a cat is allegedly good for the heart (permanent blog link)
The BBC says:
Cat owners appear to have a much lower risk of dying from a heart attack than their feline-spurning counterparts, a study suggests.
Researchers looked at nearly 4,500 adults and found that cat ownership was related to a 40% lower risk of suffering a fatal heart attack.
The team speculated that having a cat may reduce stress and anxiety, and so protect against cardiovascular disease.
...
The study, led by Professor Adnan Qureshi at the University of Minnesota, suggested that even those who no longer owned a cat benefited from these protective effects.But specifically, some 3.4% of those who owned a cat during the duration of the study died from a heart attack, compared with 5.8% of those who did not.
The benefits held true even after the researchers adjusted for cardiovascular risk factors such as blood pressure, diabetes, smoking and high cholesterol.
However the authors warned against impulsive cat purchases.
They said while cats may indeed have a calming effect, it was unclear whether the kind of people who opted for a cat in the first place may have a lower risk of heart attack.
This study did not examine the advantages of having a dog, although previous research has suggested this too may have health benefits above and beyond taking them for walks.
The Pet Health Council notes "there is an increasing amount of research proving that contact with animals can bring real physiological and psychological benefits including reducing stress, helping to prevent illness and allergies, lowering blood pressure, aiding recovery and boosting fitness levels.
"Research has also shown that pet owners make fewer annual visits to the doctors than non pet owners proving the saying, 'a pet all day keeps the doctor away'."
Another silly health study. How does this stuff ever get funded? At least they have accepted that the only thing they have shown is that there is a correlation, not a causation. Unfortunately the Pet Health Council doesn't understand the difference between correlation and causation and so claims that "contact with animals can bring real ... benefits". That would only be true if the (implied) causation was correct. (And perhaps the reason that "pet owners make fewer annual visits to the doctors" is because they instead spend all their time at the vet.)
Stressed parents allegedly have stressed children (permanent blog link)
The BBC says:
Parents with stressful lives may be making their children as well as themselves vulnerable to illness, research suggests.
A University of Rochester study, reported by New Scientist, found sickness levels were higher in children of anxious or depressed parents.
It also found links between stress and immune system activity in the children.
...
The researchers conceded that allowing parents to measure the illness in their children could skew the results, as over-anxious parents were more likely to record higher levels.However, they said that the findings still strongly suggested a connection between parental stress and children's health.
Oh boy, they let the parents "measure the illness in their children"? Well of course that could "skew the results". But even without that serious defect in the study, all they have shown is a correlation, not a causation. So the problem here is that even assuming that the correlation is valid, could it be that the causation is the other way around, i.e. having stressed children causes parents to be stressed. And even if the parents are the problem, is it caused by some inherent (e.g. genetic) source which the children have inherited no matter what, or is it something that would be sorted if somehow the parents could be made less stressed?
Old Arctic ice allegedly being lost faster (permanent blog link)
The BBC says:
The Arctic is losing its old, thick ice faster than in previous years, according to satellite data.
The loss has continued since the end of the Arctic summer, despite cold weather across the northern hemisphere.
The warm 2007 summer saw the smallest area of ice ever recorded in the region, and scientists say 2008 could follow a similar pattern.
Older floes are thicker and less saline than newly-formed ice, meaning they can survive warm spells better
Ice more than two years old now makes up about 30% of all the ice in the Arctic, down from 60% two decades ago.
...
The loss of old, thick ice has continued through the winter months, despite the unusually cold weather deriving from La Nina conditions (the other extreme of the El Nino Southern Oscillation) in the Pacific.The winter ice loss is thought to be driven mainly by the transport of old floes from Arctic waters out into the Atlantic Ocean. The currents driving this are stronger than usual as a consequence of another natural cycle, the Arctic Oscillation.
The net result is that most of the cover consists of ice that has formed since last summer.
The scientists behind these findings believe this year's cooling should not obscure the long term warming trend, with temperatures across the Arctic rising about twice as fast as the global average.
An interesting set of data, but nothing that changes the overall view of the situation.
Religious people are allegedly happier (permanent blog link)
The BBC says:
A belief in God could lead to a more contented life, research suggests.
Religious people are better able to cope with shocks such as losing a job or divorce, claims the study presented to a Royal Economic Society conference.
Data from thousands of Europeans revealed higher levels of "life satisfaction" in believers.
However, researcher Professor Andrew Clark said other aspects of a religious upbringing unrelated to belief may influence future happiness.
What is meant by the last paragraph is that all Clark is claiming is that he has found a correlation, not a causation. And even worse, happiness is so subjective, it's quite possible that the prejudices of the researchers biased the analysis. On the other hand, you could also argue that religion is like a drug, and some drugs do cause people to be happier.
EADS wants to build rockets for space tourism (permanent blog link)
The BBC says:
Aerospace giant EADS says it will need a production line of rocket planes to satisfy the space tourism market.
The European company's Astrium division, makers of the Ariane rocket, has plans for a commercial vehicle to take ticketed passengers above 100km.
Its market assessment suggests there would be 15,000 people a year prepared to part with some 200,000 euros (£160,000) for the ride of a lifetime.
Astrium anticipates it be will be producing about 10 planes a year.
No doubt there will be space tourism some day. Whether it will be in EADS rockets is another matter. And it is amusing to see this marketed at a time when the world's financial system is on the verge of meltdown. And of course, ten nanoseconds after these kinds of ventures are mentioned, one can just hear the so-called environmentalists complaining that these trips are sinful and the world will end as soon as anyone ordinary can afford to fly into space. (Funnily enough, the academic middle class BBC always insists on quoting the complaints of so-called environmentalists when it comes to aviation, but not yet when it comes to rockets.)
Government wants to cut back on incapacity benefit (permanent blog link)
The BBC says:
A fundamental overhaul of the support given to workers who are off work through illness is needed, a government adviser says.
Dame Carol Black, the national director for health and work, said ill-health was costing the economy £100bn a year.
Her report, commissioned by ministers, called for a new fit-note system as well as fit for work schemes embedded in the NHS to help people back to work.
She said the reforms could help cut the numbers on incapacity benefit.
...
Some 175m working days are lost each year, costing the economy £100bn in lost productivity, benefits and taxes.
...
She said: "£100bn sounds a large figure. But I think the cost to human life is much larger."For most people their work is a key factor in their self-worth, family esteem and identity.
This report seems to be more concerned about the government's coffers than it does about the people affected. But as with all middle class control freaks, Black has to pretend that she's doing it for the good of the person affected. Right. Nothing Black has said leads one to the conclusion that she has any proposals how to reduce the (amazingly perfectly round) 100bn, only how to reduce the amount government will have to pay out in incapacity benefit (which is dead easy to do, since they define the rules).
Cambridge University drops foreign language requirement (permanent blog link)
The BBC says:
Cambridge University has dropped its requirement for applicants to have a language GCSE because too few pupils now take them.
Independent schools still tend to offer languages, despite them being no longer compulsory beyond the age of 14.
However, only 17% of state primary schools offer them and less than half of GCSE pupils overall take them.
Cambridge is constantly under pressure to increase the share of students it takes from state schools.
Currently, it takes 57% of students from state schools, but has a target to reach between 60% and 63% by 2011.
Experts have argued that at the present rate, Cambridge is likely to miss this benchmark by a year.
The university said one of the factors that has led to the review was the fact that from 2004 children were no longer required to take a foreign language after the age of 14.
It said having a formal entry requirement that at least half of all GCSE students are unable to meet "was not acceptable in the context of Cambridge's commitment to widening participation and access".
Well it does seem a bit gratuitous to insist that for many subjects (e.g. maths and science and engineering), students should have a language GCSE. And of course once upon a time, not very long ago, one had to have Latin to get into Cambridge, and dropping that requirement did not mean that the world had ended. On the other hand, this shows how political interference by central government is distorting (school and university) education in this country.
Glaciers are allegedly shrinking faster (permanent blog link)
The BBC says:
The rate at which some of the world's glaciers are melting has more than doubled, data from the United Nations Environment Programme has shown.
Average glacial shrinkage has risen from 30 centimetres per year between 1980 and 1999, to 1.5 metres in 2006.
Some of the biggest losses have occurred in the Alps and Pyrenees mountain ranges in Europe.
Experts have called for "immediate action" to reverse the trend, which is seen as a key climate change indicator.
The rate at which some of the world's glaciers are melting has more than doubled, data from the United Nations Environment Programme has shown.
Average glacial shrinkage has risen from 30 centimetres per year between 1980 and 1999, to 1.5 metres in 2006.
Some of the biggest losses have occurred in the Alps and Pyrenees mountain ranges in Europe.
Experts have called for "immediate action" to reverse the trend, which is seen as a key climate change indicator.
A not very surprising report for anyone who knows anything about (for example) Alpine glaciers (although, given the recent weather, the current year might not have such a dramatic shrinkage).
Of course we have the accompanying calls for "immediate action". Unless these "experts" mean the immediate shutting down of the global economy (something which seems to be nearly happening on its own accord) then they know it will be decades at best before the trend could be reversed, because under any plausible scenario, emissions are going to continue to grow (so not even coming close to dramatically declining) for the forseeable future, and then there is the in-built time lag.
Iraq has been a disaster (permanent blog link)
The BBC says:
The government did not fully consider the implications of the Iraq invasion, a former senior aide to Tony Blair has admitted.
Ex-Downing Street chief of staff Jonathan Powell said the preparation was for the "wrong kind of aftermath".
He said on BBC1's Andrew Marr show: "We probably hadn't thought through the magnitude of what we were taking on."
Meanwhile, the Tories have called for a Privy Council inquiry into the "origins and conduct" of the Iraq war.
Mr Powell told BBC1's Andrew Marr show: "We made lots of preparations for humanitarian disaster, for the lack of water and that kind of thing.
"What we hadn't, in my view, really thought through was the long-term nature of this."
He added: "I think we probably hadn't thought through the magnitude of what we were taking on in Iraq. This is something that will take many decades to sort out."
"Decades". So one of Blair's closest aides has now admitted we are stuffed for decades, all thanks to this illegal war. Unfortunately Blair put the interest of George W. Bush above the interest of Britain. Blair and Powell and all the other people involved with this decision should have their public pension taken away. And, needless to say, when you are digging yourself into a hole the best strategy is to stop digging, and Britain has not shown much inclination to do that yet.
David Cameron loves families (whatever that means) (permanent blog link)
The BBC says:
David Cameron has vowed to protect children from "ruthless marketers and shameless retailers" in a speech to the Tory spring forum in Gateshead.
Setting out his vision for a "family friendly" Britain, he pledged to double the number of health visitors.
Some Tories had concentrated too much on family structure, said Mr Cameron.
Being family friendly was not just about tax and benefits, but also making the UK a better place to bring up children, he said.
He told party activists being family friendly was "seriously Conservative" - but in the past some on the right had "got families wrong" by suggesting "that the only thing that matters is family structure".
He said the modern Conservative Party was "a party for all families" including single parents - and he argued that politicians had to take a lead in calling for greater responsibility from business.
Citing the campaign by parents to have a children's bed named Lolita withdrawn from sale by Woolworths. he told Tory party members: "Parents want to know that the freedoms they give their children won't be exploited by ruthless marketers and shameless retailers.
It would be useful if once in awhile Cameron told us what he means by a "family". Does it only include people with children? Or people with children under 18? Or people who live semi-permanently with at least one other person? Or what? It's almost the point where he's just saying "I love you all, please vote for me".
And it is rather amusing for him to speak about "ruthless marketers". His background is in PR, and if there is one thing you can say about his approach to being leader of the Tory party, it is that he is a ruthless marketer, willing to say anything to be elected. Presumably he believes that children should be protected from himself.
And the Lolita example is pathetic. Woolworths did not name the bed Lolita to try to "exploit" children (or their parents). They just chose a stupid name for a children's bed (presumably not being clued up about some boring novel from half a century ago, and so unprepared for the academic middle class hysteria). Mr Cameron could do with having less paranoiac delusional thoughts about the retailers of the country.
MPs want the BAA London near-monopoly to be broken up (permanent blog link)
The BBC says:
A committee of MPs has called for the break-up of airport operator BAA, saying that its dominance has proved stifling for competition.
BAA, owned by the Spanish company Ferrovial, runs London's Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted airports, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Southampton.
MPs said BAA's dominance is "bad for passengers" and the aviation industry.
...
The report by the House of Commons Transport Committee said BAA had "mismanaged resources" and competition was being "stifled by common ownership of several major airports".This, it said, resulted in the natural development of the market being "held back".
Hmmm, are British MPs for aviation or against it? They ought to make up their minds. Most of the time they say how horrible aviation is (the end of the world is nigh and aviation is the greatest evil facing the planet other than driving). Then they come up with this report complaining about how BAA's monopoly is bad for the aviation industry. (It is a completely vacuous report because everybody already knows that this near-monopoly is dreadful.) If MPs were trying to be consistent they would be praising BAA (along with the British government) for making air travel so inconvenient and unpleasant these days that it discourages people from flying (especially from Heathrow, one of the worst major airports in Europe, if not the world). Presumably the real point of the report is that while MPs hate the idea that ordinary people should be allowed to fly (at all, never mind so much), they hate corporations even more, especially corporations owned by Johnny Foreigner.
Surprise, buildings could be made more energy efficient (permanent blog link)
The BBC says:
Improving the environmental performance of buildings in North America can cut the region's carbon emissions more than any other measure, a study suggests.
The rapid take-up of current and new technologies could save the equivalent of the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by transport in the US, it concluded.
However, it added that developers and homeowners were not willing to pay the extra cost for energy saving measures.
Buildings are responsible for about 35% of the region's man-made CO2 emissions.
The report published by the Commission for Environmental Co-operation (CEC), an international organisation created by Canada, Mexico and the US, said it was possible for the most efficient buildings to consume 70% less energy than conventional properties.
Each year, it said, energy used by buildings in North America resulted in more than 2,200 megatonnes of CO2 to be released into the atmosphere.
But it said that it was possible to reduce this by 1,700 megatonnes, compared to a "business as usual" approach, by 2030.
...
The study also highlighted that "retrofitting" - improving the energy performance of existing buildings - was the most important factor when it came to reducing emissions in the region's property sector."It has been proven quite easily that new construction can perform much better for a minimal marginal cost, but we won't get anywhere unless we focus on existing buildings," Mr Westeinde said.
Almost three-quarters of the buildings that will be standing in 2050 have already been built, research shows.
On the one hand they at least recognise that the big problem is with existing buildings more so than with new buildings (which is not to say that new buildings should not be made energy efficient). On the other hand, if they believe that "homeowners were not willing to pay the extra cost for energy saving measures", then it is clear why they use words like "can" and "could" rather than "will": they don't believe the best-case glossy projection they are making will ever happen. Well, the one thing that will make a difference is if the rise in energy costs continues unabated.
Life expectancy gap widening between rich and poor (permanent blog link)
The BBC says:
Despite a pledge to cut the health gap between the richest and poorest, the difference in life expectancy is widening, a government report shows.
The aim is to reduce the differences in male and female life expectancy by 10% by 2010.
But the report shows the gap between those in the most deprived areas of England and the rest of the country is getting worse.
The government said inequalities were "difficult to change."
...
Life expectancy in the most deprived areas has increased by two and a half years for men and one and a half years for women over the last 10 years.
Is it up to the government to try and force the gap to narrow? Is the country crying out for the gap to narrow? Indeed, is life expectancy something the country should be worrying about that much in any case, given that it is so high already? Doesn't the country have more important things to worry about (some of which might have an indirect effect on life expectancy)? Unfortunately the BBC does not think to ask any of these questions of the government or the opposition parties, all of whom just gave the expected knee-jerk responses to the report.
Carbon Footprinting: Industry, People, The Universe and Everything (permanent blog link)
Adisa Azapagic (Professor of Sustainable Chemical Engineering at the University of Manchester) gave the fifth talk in the 6th Annual Lecture Series in Sustainable Development. Her title was the rather grandiose "Carbon Footprinting: Industry, People, The Universe and Everything".
The basic premise was that we should be calculating the carbon emissions (or to be more precise, CO2 equivalent emissions) of every good and service in the world. And her basic point was that to do so we need to calculate the carbon emissions due to the entire life cycle of a good or service. The Kyoto Treaty unfortunately only looks at the "direct" emissions (e.g. burning petrol to drive a car) and misses out the potentially large "indirect" emissions (e.g. refining oil to produce the petrol in the first place). Her analysis is perfectly valid and unfortunately it is one which is rarely made or even mentioned when discussing carbon emissions.
(The Kyoto Treaty is also flawed for other reasons, e.g. it looks at where the good or service is produced, not where it is consumed. Azapagic did not discuss this aspect.)
Now direct emissions are fairly easy to calculate, although even here there can be controversy. So, for example, for bus or train travel, how many passengers do you assume there are on average, since this has a proportional impact on the emissions per passenger mile. And focussing just on unit emissions, for example emissions per passenger mile, also misses out on the question of total miles. Taking a train from London to Cambridge to get to work might be more energy efficient per mile than taking a car from Histon to Cambridge to get to work, but taking the train is much worse in terms of total emissions because the journey is so much longer.
And indirect emissions are harder. For one thing, you have to look at the complete life cycle, from creation to transport to use to waste, and figure out how many emissions there are for each step. It is non-trivial and almost certainly open to vastly different conclusions. (One thing which Azapagic did not discuss is that there should be an open and free resource where people can deposit detailed analyses which can then be critically examined. As it is, an expert can say anything and nobody can really judge very well how good the analysis is, or even what the sensitivity is.)
And Azapagic ignored the indirect emissions due to labour. So, a railway needs employees to run the service and maintain the trains. These employees have to get to work (emissions), they have to eat to survive (emissions), they consume lots of products using their salary (emissions). These emissions ought to be counted against the emissions total for the train service. It never is. (For one thing, this is allegely even harder to account for. For another, it would make trains look not very efficient.)
When you look at the total life cycle emissions, you can come to some pretty interesting conclusions. Azapagic claims that wind, hydro, and concentrated solar power were the best (currently) and that nuclear was not far behind. Worse by some way were geothermal and biomass. But way worse still than any of those was ordinary solar power ("photo voltaics") as installed on houses up and down the country. (But still better by some way than gas or coal.)
Needless to say, the idea that solar power is not that great never makes it into the media. Of course the Azapagic analysis ought to be carefully examined to see whether the conclusions are safe. But it does show that life cycle analysis is worthwhile.
Azapagic pointed out that of course carbon emissions are only one very limited form of environmental degradation. There are plenty of other negative environmental impacts of producing goods and services. She mentioned two specifically, acidification and eutrophication. Here she claimed that ordinary solar power was in fact worse than gas. Well, needless to say, the media is totally focussed on carbon emissions, so ignore these other, important issues. At the end she was asked how you should weight the different factors, and she said there was no way, it was basically a political decision what to give what weight.
She gave some examples of emissions calculated using the total life cycle analysis. In transport she claimed that cars produced 180 gm / passenger km, buses 120, long-haul planes 120 and trains a fraction (circa 10 or 20) of this. As already pointed out, this ignores the indirect emissions due to labour, and is also assuming a certain passenger load and a certain base technology for each mode. So the sensitivity analysis is very important, and she did not have time to go into that.
The most amusing example was for tomatoes. She claimed that for British consumers, the total emissions for eating British-grown tomatoes is around 9.5 CO2 equivalent kg per kg of tomatoes. Supposedly the equivalent for Dutch-grown tomatoes is around 3.5 and for Spanish tomatoes (so even with all the transport included) is around 0.2. If you believe this analysis then you should not even consider buying British tomatoes (but presumably it is still ok to grow your own if you do it the old-fashioned way).
This was all good stuff, although it really needs detailed public debate by loads of experts to try and get these numbers confirmed (or not). Unfortunately at the end, in particular during the discussion period, Azapagic rather veered off script into some rather less sensible statements.
So she said she was against carbon sequestration because it was a "cleanup" technology rather than a "clean" technology, and it would just encourage people that "business as usual" was ok. Well, if you can reduce carbon in the atmosphere why should you care if it is done because people consume less (i.e. are poorer) or because we have found how to produce energy with less carbon or because we have found ways to remove carbon from the atmosphere? The ideal solution is "business as usual", in fact it is "business way beyond usual", since all the poor people of the world should have the same privileges as we do. Techno-fixes are by far and away the preferred option, if they can be achieved.
Unfortunately there are too many people who just want the world to consume less (i.e. to be poorer). Indeed, Azapagic mentioned the dreadful phrase "over consumption". And in the same context, when someone in the audience mentioned that there was a strong correlation between wealth and emissions, she jokingly said she was not wealthy. But of course she is wealthy, she's a professor. She might not be super-wealthy, like a banker, but she is wealthy. Certainly in comparison to the world average, but even in comparison to the UK average. And does she think that she herself "over consumes"? Well, she didn't address that question, but there are only two answers. Either "no", in which case why does she think that "over consumption" is a problem in the UK, when she is at the top end. Or "yes", in which case why doesn't she just ask her university to cut her pay. (And on top of salary, academics of course also enjoy lots of free travel all over the world, courtesy of the taxpayer. So the effective salary is higher than stated.)
A butterfly centre is supposed to open near St Albans (permanent blog link)
The BBC says:
Broadcaster Sir David Attenborough has launched a £25m conservation project in the UK with a stark warning on the plight of the butterfly.
The BBC presenter said three-quarters of butterfly species in the UK had declined in the past 20 years.
Sir David was talking at the launch of Butterfly World, in St Albans, Hertfordshire - a 26-acre site to house and protect thousands of butterflies.
...
Work is due to begin on the site in the next few weeks, with the visitor attraction due to open its doors in 2011.The site will be developed into the shape of a butterfly, with the dome as its eye.
It will incorporate underground caverns featuring tropical creatures including scorpions and spiders and there will be more than 10,000 tropical butterflies in flight at any one time in the walk-through centre.
Inspired no doubt by the success of the Eden Project in Cornwall, and of similar butterfly centres in the States, this at least has the advantage of being close to London and hence close to a sizeable fraction of the population of England. Although there seems to be some pretense that this project has something to do with conservation of butterflies in the UK, in fact its main attraction, not surprisingly, will be the tropical butterflies.
School-leavers might be forced to swear an oath of allegiance (permanent blog link)
The BBC says:
School-leavers should be encouraged to swear an oath of allegiance to Queen and country, says a report commissioned by Gordon Brown on British citizenship.
Report author, ex-attorney general Lord Goldsmith, says it would give teenagers a sense of belonging.
Council tax and student fee rebates are suggested for people who volunteer - as well as a "Britishness" public holiday.
The PM's spokesman said he welcomed the "interesting" review, adding that it had sparked "quite a lively debate".
However, John Dunford from the Association of School and College leaders said the citizenship ceremony was "a half-baked idea".
Dunford hits it in one. It looks like we might discover in a few years that most of the crackpot ideas emanating from the Blair government were not Blair's but Brown's. This particular idea of swearing an oath is more likely to breed total cynicism than "a sense of belonging", since teenagers will evidently be forced to mouth something they don't particularly believe, and they're not stupid.
And council tax rebates "for people who volunteer" is another crackpot idea. What does "volunteer" mean? Does publishing material online for the public free of charge count as volunteering? Does looking after stray animals count as volunteering? Does carrying out tasks associated with one's job but for which one is not paid count as volunteering? Who is going to decide what "volunteer" means? What kind of crazy bureaucracy are we going to have to introduce to vet all the claims of "volunteering"?
Fortunately for Goldsmith, he will not be remembered in a few years for this silly report. Unfortunately for Goldsmith, he will only be remembered for illegally allowing Blair to start an illegal war in Iraq.
Another useless consultant wants to hammer the British economy (permanent blog link)
Andrew Simms of the New Economics Foundation (nef) says on the BBC (with a large amount of padding, so you have to persevere through the verbiage to find out what he really wants to say):
Analysis by the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at Manchester University suggests that for the UK to play its part over the coming decades, we need to reduce the carbon intensity of our economy by between 9% and 13% year-after-year.
Any delay in hitting those targets - which already go far, far beyond anything achieved in recent history - simply raises the bar further for what needs to be achieved in later years.
...
The cost of carbon clearly has to go up. But taxes to change behaviour are a blunt tool that cannot guarantee that a particular emissions reduction target is met.Emissions trading is also meaningless unless it is part of an inclusive global system whose emissions budget is set in accordance with science-based targets for avoiding runaway warming.
...
the UK could learn from Norway's experience, and set up an Oil Legacy Fund, paid for primarily by a windfall tax on oil and gas company profits.Mr Darling could then re-commit to the fuel duty escalator which would help progressively change behaviour, whilst having the resources to invest in a range of measures to smooth the transition.
These might include:
- expanding the use of school buses to tackle both congestion and energy-inefficient private vehicle use on the school run
- lowering the age for free public transport, and allowing adults with children to go free
- helping local authorities with the complexities of managing new, decentralised renewable energy services and technologies
- the rapid roll-out of micro, small and medium scale renewable energy technologies that would create countless thousands of "green collar" jobs
Such a new fund, coupled with a new "Demand Reduction Obligation" placed on the energy utilities to manage better what is left, could help achieve the needed shift of policy gear.
...
While our economy has grown continuously over the last few decades, study after study shows that our sense of satisfaction with life has flat-lined.The economy should be there to help deliver long, satisfied lives, and it must do so within environmental limits.
The greatest mark of a conversion to new environmental realities in the Treasury would be the national adoption of a measure that showed the resource efficiency with which we help achieve good lives.
Such measures exist; the so-called Happy Planet Index devised by the New Economics Foundation (nef) is one.
The other message to take away is that there could be an upside to the downturn.
The financial crisis is driven by debt that has allowed us to live beyond our means. The climate crisis is connected because it is driven by the resulting over-consumption.
The problems and solutions appear linked. Because high levels of life satisfaction can be achieved at low levels of consumption, a new system of incentives to encourage thrift could help tackle the debt and climate crises simultaneously.
This is classic puritanical stuff from a typical so-called environmentalist (environmentalism just being another 21st century religion that plagues the world). Needless to say, Simms is academic middle class and earns far above the median UK wage. But his high consumption is just fine and dandy, it is just the consumption of others that is a sin. You can almost see him cheering as poor people are now finding it hard to afford to buy food because of growing inflation (part of the current "financial crisis"). Well, what he means, of course, by the patronising phrase "over-consumption" is the kind of consumption of which he doesn't approve (e.g. ordinary people flying abroad for a holiday). More consumption of the kind he approves of (e.g. throwing more public money at buses) is no doubt fine and dandy.
It's always rich people like Simms who talk about our "sense of satisfaction". Why doesn't he ask people if they are willing to give up their mobile phone, internet connection and car? He'll find the answer is "no". So what people tell pollsters about their "sense of satisfaction" is rather meaningless. But anyone who comes up with an index with the silly (two fingers in the throat) name of "Happy Planet" is obviously incapable of understanding that most people do not want to go back to life in 1850, even if a certain section of the ruling elite do. If "high levels of life satisfaction can be achieved at low levels of consumption" then perhaps Simms will ask his employer to cut his pay in half.
Fortunately Darling has voters to consider, so would do well to ignore unaccountable control freaks like Simms. Unfortunately, the only people who are given a public voice (e.g. on the BBC), are the academic middle class like Simms, so Darling will never hear an alternative. And the government is seriously in debt, so will likely take the opportunity in the budget to pretend that it is "green" by screwing the ordinary people of Britain, as requested by Simms. Needless to say, the ordinary people of Britain are not fooled by this.
Vatican introduces seven more sins (permanent blog link)
The BBC says:
The Vatican has brought up to date the traditional seven deadly sins by adding seven modern mortal sins it claims are becoming prevalent in what it calls an era of "unstoppable globalisation".
...
The new mortal sins were listed by Archbishop Gianfranco Girotti at the end of a week-long training seminar in Rome for priests, aimed at encouraging a revival of the practice of confession - or the Sacrament of Penance in Church jargon.
The Pope could do with slightly better marketing people. The "traditional" seven sins were short, sweet and to the point:
Unfortunately the proposed "modern" seven sins are not short, sweet or even much to the point:
With the original seven sins, you can imagine most people willing to admit to pretty much any of them as part of confession. But with the new seven sins pretty much none of them apply to anyone (unless "environmental pollution" includes having children, or driving a car). So how are these supposed to encourage confession?
And the Vatican is easily the top example in the world of "accumulating excessive wealth". Not even Bill Gates could imagine spending enough money to build the equivalent. So if the Pope finds this kind of wealth to be a sin, then he should perhaps consider moving out of the Vatican and turning it over to someone else.
Coal power in the UK (permanent blog link)
The BBC says:
Coal-fired power stations will remain a "key source" of British energy, Cabinet minister John Hutton has said.
Mr Hutton, who is considering proposals to build a new coal station in Kent, said fossil fuels were needed to back up nuclear and renewable energy.
He said the UK was playing a leading role in "clean coal" power generation.
The Lib Dems said without carbon capture and storage technology, clean coal was "a total myth" - the Tories said that technology was years away.
Well all three statements about coal by the political parties could be true. And it is amazing how much hysteria is generated by the decision over one coal power station. But of course so-called environmentalists have nothing better to do with their time than get hysterical (they certainly won't help the world by actually inventing any new technology to help solve problems).
And carbon capture and storage is an important technology not so much for the UK as for countries like China, which are more heavily dependent on coal, so if the UK by some miracle invented some worthwhile technology on this front, it could prove to be a valuable development. On the other hand, unless there is a global carbon tax, the Chinese will have no incentive to take this technology on board.
The EU produces another pointless report on climate change (permanent blog link)
The BBC says:
An EU report says climate change will have a growing impact on global security, multiplying existing threats such as shortages of food and water.
It warns that climate change could cause millions of people to migrate towards Europe as other parts of the world suffer environmental degradation.
Who would have thought? Thank god for the geniuses running the EU.
Nick Clegg wants the UK political system to be biased towards the Lib Dems (permanent blog link)
The BBC says:
Nick Clegg says he will never join a Labour or Tory cabinet - but will push instead for a "new type of government".
Lib Dem leaders have traditionally made proportional representation the price of a deal with other parties in the event of a hung parliament.
But in his first speech as leader Nick Clegg went further by demanding a shake-up of the whole political system.
...
"I will never allow the Liberal Democrats to be a mere annexe to another party."But am I interested in building a new type of government? Yes.
"Based on pluralism instead of one party rule? Yes.
"A new system, that empowers people not parties? Yes.
"We want a new, more liberal Britain."
The BBC seems to be reading far more into this speech than is justified. In particular, it is not obvious that Clegg wants anything else besides proportional representation. He certainly doesn't mention anything specific. And of course the Lib Dems want proportional representation not because it "empowers people not parties" but for exactly the opposite reason, namely that it empowers the Lib Dems. If there is anything worse than having a party with between 30% and 40% of the vote controlling the country, it would be having a party with less than 20% of the vote doing so.
Halifax wants stamp duty thresholds raised (permanent blog link)
The BBC says:
The average stamp duty bill for first-time buyers has almost doubled over the last five years, says a report from mortgage lender Halifax.
The average bill in 2007 was £1,751 compared with £960 in 2002.
In the South East, South West and East almost all first-time buyers paid stamp duty, while in Northern regions only 42% were liable, the report said.
The Treasury pointed out that half of first-time buyers will pay no stamp duty this year.
The lowest, 1% tax band hits homes worth between £125,000 and £250,000.
Homes valued between £250,000 and £500,000 attract a 3% charge and properties worth more than that are taxed at 4%.
Although the government has raised the threshold at which buyers pay 1%, it has not kept pace with the surge in house prices.
"Stamp duty has again become an issue for first-time buyers because the stamp duty thresholds have not kept pace with house price inflation," said Martin Ellis, Halifax chief economist.
"We call on all political parties to raise the stamp duty thresholds to compensate for house price inflation over the past decade," he added.
Stamp duty has been one of the government's favourite stealth taxes. The high house price inflation of the last decade has meant the government take from stamp duty has rocketed. This tends to indicate that perhaps the government likes high house price inflation. As do the banks (such as the Halifax) and estate agents and developers. For just about everybody else, high house price inflation is bad. And this is the real underlying issue here, not how much first-time buyers happen to pay in stamp duty on average.
Of course there is one issue about stamp duty that is worth mentioning, namely that the rate is absolute, not marginal. That is totally stupid, but funnily enough the Halifax doesn't seem too concerned about that.
Also, since the rate does not vary from region to region, it is also quite obvious that stamp duty represents a massive subsidy of the parts of the country with relatively low house prices by parts of the country with relatively high house prices. So, for example, as mentioned in the article, pretty much all first-time buyers in some regions pay stamp duty, while less than half in others do. But there is an analogous situation with respect to income tax, so stamp duty is not unique in this regard.
Lib Dems hate the rich but can't figure out what to do about it (permanent blog link)
The BBC says:
Vince Cable has told BBC News he was forced to ditch plans for an annual tax on homes worth £1m or more over fears it would alienate middle class voters.
In an interview with BBC Radio 5 Live's John Pienaar, Mr Cable said he was persuaded to drop the policy last year by Lib Dem party colleagues.
But he said he was now devising a new policy to address the "problem of extreme wealth in property".
Mr Cable earlier unveiled plans to tax the "super rich".
...
He said plans unveiled this time last year for an annual 1% levy on homes worth £1m or had been dropped after pressure from party colleagues.Asked if that was because such a move could damage the party in the eyes of middle-class voters, Mr Cable said: "Certainly that objection was made.
Let's see. If your house was worth £999999 you would have paid nothing. If it was worth one pound more you would have paid 10k per year. Well that's fair.
And in London if you are old enough then because of house price inflation you could quite easily own a million pound house and earn (say) 50k per year. So a 10k tax increase would not have been insignificant.
Funnily enough, the Lib Dems claim that council tax (upper limit circa 3k or so per year) is "unfair" because it is not based on income. Yet they wanted to introduce what amounts to a super council tax. Unbelievable.
The Lib Dems will never be in power so in some sense it doesn't really matter what they say. But the other parties have their own, equally silly, "soak the rich" schemes. Britain seems to be heading back to the 1970s.
Labour wants a stealth tax on energy companies (permanent blog link)
The Financial Times says:
Energy suppliers are under pressure from the Treasury to accept a levy to help people having trouble with fuel bills and fear the imposition of a windfall tax if agreement cannot be reached.
The levy, which Treasury officials described as "voluntary", would amount to a windfall tax in all but name, an industry source said. Government insiders say an industry contribution of between £100m-£200m is being discussed.
Negotiations are set to continue over the weekend, but the companies believe they are being pushed into signing up for an initiative that Alistair Darling, the chancellor, could announce in the Budget next Wednesday. They believe that if they do not comply with the Treasury plan, the government could impose a windfall tax, which could be even more onerous.
The measures could help pensioners and people using pre-payment meters. One proposal put by officials was for a £60 payment to everyone aged 70 or over.
However, the plan has been criticised by industry executives and fuel poverty campaigners, because it would not give direct help to those most in need.
So we have a government which believes that blackmail is the way we should deal with fiscal matters, just so that they can claim they are not raising taxes when of course they are. All very typical New Labour.
Latest action in the Tesco Mill Road planning application (permanent blog link)
The Cambridge News says:
Tesco bosses have vowed to forge ahead with plans for a store in Mill Road - despite a setback at a planning meeting last night.
Supermarket chiefs told the News today they "could open the store tomorrow" after being granted permission for two signs, a shop front and an ATM.
The tough talking comes after a vote last night against plans to extend the building, on the street famed for its small independent shops.
Tesco does not need planning approval to open the store - but wants the extra space which encroaches onto a car park for storage and deliveries.
Campaigners and residents came out in force for the Cambridge City Council East Area Committee planning meeting at St Philip's Church, in Mill Road last night.
...
But both sides in the battle are now claiming victory after the decision by councillors.Michael Kissman, Tesco's corporate affairs spokesman, said: "This is good news for Tesco. We can now put up the sign and the ATM which means we could open the shop tomorrow.
...
Tom Woodcock, publicity officer for the campaign, was equally defiant and told Tesco it should pack up and leave the site.He said: "I don't think Tesco can open the store whether it gets permission for the extension or not.
"It is just not viable for the area and in our calculations would take £2 million out of the local community as most independent traders plough money back into the local economy.
Needless to say Cambridge City Council had no real reason to turn down any of the Tesco planning application. But the academic middle class crowd was baying for blood, and the planning committee obviously, and not surprisingly, decided to throw them a few bones to try and keep them satisfied.
Woodcock is unbelievable. He claims the store "is just not viable". Well, if he thinks so then he should let Tesco open it and fail. Evidently he does not think so. Instead he wants to dictate that it should never open, because he thinks he has the right to refuse choice to the people of the Mill Road area about where they should shop. He does not like Tesco so nobody should be allowed to shop there.
You have to wonder why Tesco would want to bother now. They would be perfectly entitled to stick two fingers up to the academic middle class people who run Cambridge and let them stew in their misery. On the other hand, perhaps they want to prove to these people that they will not give into academic middle class ranting.
Whatever, this war is not yet over. The only good thing about the whole incident is that while large chunks of the academic middle class have been preoccupied with this, they have not been able to wreak so much havoc elsewhere in Cambridge.
Someone allegedly verbally abused an RAF person over a year ago (permanent blog link)
The BBC says:
Gordon Brown has condemned reports that RAF personnel at a Cambridgeshire base were advised not to wear uniform in public for fear of verbal abuse.
He said armed forces members should be "encouraged to wear their uniform in public and have the respect and gratitude of the British people".
The decision not to wear uniform was taken by the station commander at RAF Wittering near Peterborough.
Defence minister Derek Twigg blamed "a tiny minority" for the abuse.
It has been claimed that verbal abuse has been directed at service personnel by people opposed to UK involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Cambridgeshire police said they did not know of any abuse reported in the city.
The guidance was issued in January 2007 advising personnel to wear civilian clothes in certain areas for fears of abuse. It followed a verbal incident in December 2006.
Let's see. The police know nothing. There was allegedly one (presumably minor) incident over a year ago, and the (presumably bland) guidance was issued over a year ago. Yet somehow the story makes the news today, with Gordon Brown (and the BBC and the rest of the media and the Tories, etc.) furiously waving the flag. Evidently someone somewhere has an agenda and has decided to make a mountain out of a molehill. That is the real story. Unfortunately the BBC does not bother to tell us who this is, since they seem more concerned to cover the faux news.
Winy Maas of MVRDV gives a talk in Cambridge (permanent blog link)
The Cambridge University Arcsoc society is running a series of lectures by Dutch architects this term, with sponsorship by the Dutch Embassy. The third lecture was by Winy Maas of MVRDV.
Maas is evidently very bright and very confident, and on top of that he could have been a stand-up comedian. He makes lots of parenthetical remarks when he's speaking and you are never really quite sure what to take seriously and what not. When he was introduced as being a speaker in the series he immediately had to downplay his Dutchness (since "90% of [ MVRDV ] buildings are not in Holland ... I feel less Dutch than ever").
He then went on to complain that architects "have to make everything beautiful" but later admitted that more "beautiful" buildings tended to last longer. And although his buildings are not beautiful in any classic sense, they are obviously aesthetic enough. So he was not serious about this point.
Many of the projects he discussed have not been built. The first was one of the annual temporary pavilions at the Serpentine Gallery in London. In 2005 MVRDV proposed to cover the gallery buildings in a mound (of steel and glass, covered to look like a mound of earth except in various openings). More joking. Not surprisingly, the cost of this would have been ridiculous, and when the budget was attempted to be cut, the health and safety regulations allegedly stopped the project.
He made light of this, except to be scathing of the health and safety nutters. He said that "all" the money in architecture these days goes into health and safety and "sustainability". Again, not totally serious. Now one of the problems with the annual Serpentine Gallery pavilions is that they are indeed temporary, so get demolished at the end of the few-month summer season. And Maas' take on his failed project was that in some ways it was more significant than the Serpentine pavilions that had been built (by other architects), because this one "existed without existing" (the kind of phrase one expects from an architect).
In post-Katrina New Orleans, MVRDV have designed a school (Maas called it the Martin Luther King School but it seems to be called the Newer Orleans project on the MVRDV website). Maas showed a picture drawn by some kid with a mound and flood waters lapping at the bottom, and so has resuscitated the Serpentine Gallery mound proposal in a different guise. So the idea is to take some Katrina rubble and build up a mound, and stick class rooms into the mound (at various angles of course, and just sticking out), with grass covering the rest. Again, this sounds unbelievably expensive, so who knows if it will ever be built.
One thing Maas does seem to believe in (not just jokingly) is that we should be building super-high density cities, by building upwards. His strapline for this is that he is a "Spacefighter". He seems to have done some back-of-a-fag-packet calculation where he claimed that you could stuff a million people in a 5 km x 5 km x 5km box, including all the volume needed for food and energy production. Yes, the Corbusian nightmare has not gone away, architects just love it.
In 2005 Maas published a book called "KM3: Excursions on Capacity" where he concentrated on this density issue. This book runs to 1400 (!) pages, and the blurb you get on the MVRDV website is just typical architect babble:
KM3 is a story about a world that is densifying. Very dense. KM3 is a city that is continuously under construction, with space for limitless populations and possibilities. A city that continues to serve all desires, that enlarges our capacities. Beyond scarcity. Beyond separation. Beyond pessimism and protectionism. A city that will lead to a new programmatic "skin" around the globe, swelling beyond the horizontal, surging vertically. The 3D City. A free fall in endless space. Pure depth. Without escape. Yet. KM3 is a hypothesis, a theoretical city, and a possible urban theory. Three dimensionality can be seen as architecture's fundamental existence, the profession's acclaimed domain. In times of globalization and scale enlargement, an update of this definition seems needed: meters turn into kilometers, M3 becomes KM3.
Along this line, one of the recent MVRDV proposals is for a SkyPark in Pittsburgh. This consists of four fairly standard box towers, but with a park surrounding all four towers suspended halfway up the building, with the towers being residential above the park, and offices below. And allegedly the park should be able to be moved up and down in case more or less of the tower becomes residential. Now this has got to be unbelievably expensive to build. So just another Maas joke?
A slightly less fanciful version of that is a residential tower block in Madrid called Celosia, which has been built. This has a large open patio area in the centre of the building. The patio area is pretty bland (just a wide expanse with a few seating areas) and you have to wonder if people will actually use it much (unless they are allowed to break out barbecues). And the rest of the surrounding area is low-rise horribleness, so this modern tower does not sit comfortably in its environment (even though it looks cute enough).
And in Rotterdam there was realised a smaller scale densification project called the Didden Dorp. This consisted of adding a storey on top of an existing building. Well, that is not exactly that novel a concept. But MVRDV made the extension purposefully not fit in with the existing Dutch brick, and painted it all stark blue, so it sticks out like a sore thumb (but is actually not that offensive). Maas claimed that the district was now a UNESCO heritage site so nobody could change the extension (in particular the blue).
MVRDV also seemed to be involved with some housing reconstruction in New Orleans, in a project backed by Brad Pitt (amongst others). Now apparently the levees are not all back in place so there is still a chance of flooding so Maas proposes (sensibly) to lift at least some of the house off the ground. But how he does that is a bit silly. So his favoured proposal seems to be to have the center of the house be on the ground and both ends raised up perhaps 3 or 5 meters (and the house is long and thin so that much is sensible). But that still leaves the house subject to being wrecked by a flood, and is not exactly very practical. So seemingly another Maas joke.
Maas claimed that if all the pig farms that were in Holland were converted to an "eco" standard then 85% of the area of Holland would be running pigs. So it seems that the way the Dutch are actually dealing with this is to export pig production elsewhere (e.g. to Poland). But Maas instead thinks we should have a Pig City, which would consist of skyscrapers full of pigs (and an abattoir to boot). More fancifulness, but a low-rise version of this seems to be being designed for a corner of Amsterdam.
Maas said that the big MVRDV breakthrough was a building for the Hannover Expo in 2000. And the building looks reasonably interesting, complete with a "forest" in the middle floors. Maas claimed that all the other buildings for the Expo have been demolished except for this one, but that this one was now derelict (with squatters), in particular the "forest" was decimated. As Maas put it, "from utopia to distopia" in a few short years.
UK government still wants ID cards (permanent blog link)
The BBC says:
The government has set out changes to its planned identity scheme - including allowing people to use passports or driving licences instead of ID cards.
Most people will not now have to give their fingerprints when getting a passport until 2011/12 - three years later than had previously been planned.
And plans to force passport applicants to get an ID card have been dropped.
The exception will be airport and other workers in security-sensitive jobs who will need an ID card from 2009.
Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said students would also be encouraged to get identity cards from 2010, as part of plans to let "consumer demand" drive take-up.
A hodge-podge of proposals. Apparently what Smith means by students being "encouraged" is that she is hoping banks will make it difficult for them to open up accounts without the ID cards. But a good fraction of students probably have passports, so this seems like a poor strategy. But the idea seems to be that the government might be able to get mass take-up of the ID cards while still being able to pretend that they are "voluntary". Otherwise the proposals are seemingly just being made to try and save the government some face.
MPs want to tax motorists and air passengers a lot more (permanent blog link)
The BBC says:
The UK Treasury has "continually demonstrated a lack of ambition and imagination" when it comes to green taxes, a report by MPs has concluded.
The Commons Environmental Audit Committee says there is little sign that ministers have acted on the recommendations of the Stern Review.
They also call for a rise in air taxes, especially on long-haul flights.
Failure to act would undermine the government's environmental credibility, warned the MPs.
The committee of 16 MPs said green taxes, as a proportion of all taxes, has declined from its peak of 9.7% in 1999 to 7.6% in 2006.
"The Stern Review - published by the Treasury in late 2006 - helped change the debate on the economics of climate change," said committee chairman Tim Yeo.
"But the Treasury is itself not responding with the scale and urgency that Stern recommended.
As for the government's aviation policy, the committee welcomed ministers' decision to switch Air Passenger Duty from per passenger to per flight.
But the report said more still needed to be done: "It is vital that tax on aviation is not just reformed but significantly increased, so as to stabilise demand and resulting emissions.
"The Treasury should closely examine the merits and practicalities of varying rates by classifying journeys into three bands - short-haul, long-haul, and very long-haul - in order to reflect better the differing magnitude of emissions."
Tim Yeo has been known to hop on a plane just to go play golf in China. The country does not need lectures by the ruling elite about how evil the peasants allegedly are, when in fact it is the ruling elite that are the biggest part of the problem. Cut the salaries of MPs in half and let them take responsiblity for their excess consumption.
Since Yeo is willing to mention the Stern Review, perhaps he should have pointed out that Stern recommended a tax on petrol of around 13p per litre. The current UK fuel duty is around 59p per litre. But never let reality get in the way of an MP.
And there is no point contending that the British allegedly do not pay enough of what are laughingly described as "green" taxes. Stern didn't recommend that "green" taxes just go down the black hole of central government expenditure, which is what happens. These are not "green" taxes, these are just money grabs by government to help keep its budget from being even more massively in deficit than it is already.
Sure air taxes should cover the alleged environmental damage. Given the current level of air passenger duty it happens to be already around what many people suggest it should be already. But control freak MPs only want to limit demand, since the peasants should not be able to have the same privileges as MPs. The ruling elite believes that only the ruling elite should fly.
And if you believe that road and air should cover their alleged environmental damage, then so should rail transport. Funnily enough no committee of MPs ever suggests that. Instead they perpetually whine that more and more government money (which represents a negative tax for rail passengers) should be thrown at rail transport.
And domestic electricity and gas consumers should also pay a carbon tax. Again, never suggested.
Somehow the ruling elite only ever want to persecute car drivers and air passengers. Perhaps the BBC ought to do its job and ask why. (Well, of course the BBC is part of the ruling elite and so is part of the problem, and so is incapable of asking why.)
West Midlands councils shelve road pricing (permanent blog link)
The BBC says:
Plans for road pricing across the West Midlands have been shelved. Councils across the region had been debating introducing a charge for people driving into cities such as Birmingham or Coventry at peak times.
The government had promised funding for transport projects in exchange for a road pricing pilot scheme.
But councillors have rejected a £5 charge, saying it would have had an impact in Birmingham but nowhere else in the surrounding towns and cities.
...
The report concluded the technology to introduce a scheme would not be available until 2021.The report also said that without road pricing, congestion would get worse with journey times increasing by, on average, around 25% by 2017.
...
John McGoldrick, of the National Alliance Against Tolls, said: "It is good news that the councils in the West Midlands have accepted that the overwhelming majority of people do not want tolls in any form."What is needed now is that the government must be persuaded to spend some of the £50 billion that it gets in taxes from drivers on improving the roads system to help traffic flow more smoothly."
So in spite of all the bribes from central government, not many councils are still willing to introduce road pricing. Another small victory for ordinary people over the ruling elite. (Of course the ruling elite get their own back because they will never spend anywhere near the 50 billion on roads.)
Rail is allegedly the transport of the future (permanent blog link)
The BBC says:
The UK needs a "modal shift" from road to rail if greenhouse gas emissions from transport are to be curbed, a report concludes.
The Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE) says changes are needed to government policies on transport pricing, energy and town planning.
A train journey can produce about one tenth of the carbon emissions generated if the same trip is made by air.
The report's authors say substantial investment in the railways is needed.
"We have ambitious government targets for transport emissions, but transport emissions are static," said Cliff Perry, vice president of IMechE's Railway Division and a former head of Thameslink under British Rail.
"Eighty-five percent of transport emissions come from roads, so if we are serious about doing something, we must hit road transport."
Comparing emissions between various forms of transport is not a straightforward matter, as factors such as the efficiency of engines, the number of people on board and, for electric trains, how the electricity was generated all affect the final equation.
IMechE calculates that on average London to Paris trips, people travelling by car generate two and a half times more CO2 than those relaxing in a train, while an air passenger produces 10 times more.
But achieving a substantial shift from road to rail would need a coherent policy covering issues such as how secure passengers feel, the convenience of connections, the cost of tickets, and reliability.
Emissions from electric trains are of course much lower if the electricity comes mainly from low-carbon sources.
...
The report's authors acknowledge that the price of rail tickets can be prohibitive, sometimes costing many times more than the air equivalent.One remedy they suggest is proper pricing of all transport options to include environmental impacts.
Unfortunately this report does not yet seem to be available on the IMechE website (perhaps the BBC has been given a privileged copy), so one has to rely on the BBC report, which (not surprisingly) leaves more questions than it gives answers.
For example, if "eighty-five percent of transport emissions come from roads", the BBC also ought to tell us how much of GDP is associated with road versus non-road transport. Presumably it is around the same split. As usual, people focus on totals instead of bang per buck. It's like complaining about the total amount of emissions coming from cement manufacture without noticing how much use cement is put to. It's like saying that Formula 1 is environmentally friendly because their total emissions are so tiny in the general scheme of things. It's just plain silly.
The admission that calculating emissions is not a "straightforward matter" is fine, but then the BBC fails to mention the large indirect emissions of rail transport, namely that due to labour. So every pound that an employee is paid in turn is spent on other goods and services, and those goods and services are responsible for their own share of carbon emissions. This is also not a "straightfoward matter" to calculate, but all (so-called) public transport zealots always ignore this. (For some arbitrary reason, buses and trains are "public" transport, but planes are not.)
And the report allegedly suggests that we should have "proper pricing of all transport options to include environmental impacts". But "proper pricing" of transport means we should have no direct and no indirect subsidies. Rail transport receives massive direct subsidies. But equally it is of course true that not including "environmental impacts" represents (potentially massive) indirect subsidies for other transport options (e.g. road and air).
Funnily enough, the Stern report suggests a carbon tax on petrol of about a US dollar per US gallon, or about 13 p per lite. But the current UK fuel duty is around 4.5 times that figure. So car drivers already do pay for their "environmental impact". Needless to say, the ruling elite (including the BBC) conveniently ignore that fact. It is rail, with its massive government subsidy, that is the main form of transport that is not subject to "proper pricing".
Any subsidy, direct or indirect, represents an effective negative carbon tax. So anyone who does not pay the full cost of a good or service has more money to spend on other goods and services, and again, those are responsible for their own emissions. In short, road users pay a massive carbon tax, rail passengers pay a negative carbon tax.
The fact that this report seems to have been written by a former rail boss would of course suggest that the report is inherently biased, so even the basic sums are probably not trustworthy (that is, even ignoring the fact that they have ignored indirect emissions).
Will there ever be a day when rail users are expected to pay the full cost of their journeys? Unlikely.
If and when car engines are mainly electric rather than petrol, will the BBC and IMechE then be willing to admit that cars are just as "green" as they like to pretend that rail is? Unlikely.
Indeed, why is the BBC/IMechE pushing for rail instead of electric cars if they are willing to give the party line that "emissions from electric trains are of course much lower if the electricity comes mainly from low-carbon sources"?
UK national road pricing kicked into the grass (permanent blog link)
The BBC says:
Government plans to cut congestion via a national road charging scheme are "in tatters", the Conservatives have said.
The claim came as Transport Secretary Ruth Kelly admitted concerns about privacy, fairness and enforcement could not yet be satisfactorily answered.
More pilot schemes were needed with any scheme "many years" away, she said.
She said that a more immediate way of cutting congestion was to let drivers use the hard shoulder on parts of the M1, M6, M62, M27, M4 and M5.
The move follows a successful trial on the M42 near Birmingham, where the hard shoulder was used as an extra lane and the speed limit reduced to 50mph.
Shadow transport secretary Theresa Villiers said the government's policies on congestion "now lie in tatters".
The announcement was "further evidence that their flagship proposal for a spy in the sky national road pricing scheme is going nowhere".
"They should now rule this option out completely," she said.
Lib Dem Norman Baker described the measure as a "dogs dinner of a policy".
"A national road pricing scheme to replace other road taxes is undoubtedly the way forward, but this latest fudge from ministers will please nobody.
"It confuses the purpose of a hard shoulder, which we have been told for decades exists for safety reasons."
In a keynote speech, Ms Kelly said the hard-shoulder option would also include motorways which join the M25, such as the M20 and M3.
Other plans - such as having a motorway lane which could not be used by cars with only one person inside as well as HGV crawler lanes - were also being considered.
A further four years of funding for local road pricing pilot schemes - which have been described as forerunners for a future national road pricing scheme - was als