Complicated good, simplified bad !

No run today, for knee-resting reasons.

Last night we watched a guy-movie, Seraphim Falls. A familiar format, with one man chasing another for revenge purposes, but unusually nuanced, with neither man being portrayed as particularly good or bad.

Too often in popular storytelling the narrative is polarised, whether through folk-tales, urban myths, movies, or news media headlines. This (usually us) is good. That (usually them) is evil. Contradictions and pluralities are conveniently forgotten because they don’t fit the script. Certain hegemonic societies, not least the US & UK, have been particularly enthusiastic polarisers in this respect. Monotheistic religions are also partly responsible or, at least, some adherents of those religions, in setting up meta-narratives of ultimate good and ultimate evil. And, of course, oversimplification leads to intolerance of diversity, and to conflict, which is why the prevailing “dumbing down”, or avoidance of complexity and contradiction, should be resisted.

Through the looking glass

And another beautiful morning and another delightful run.

Unlike the US economy, BP is keeping afloat with 3^rd quarter profits of $5.5 billion, and that despite being charged $40 billion to clean up their mess in the Gulf of Mexico. Pillaging global resources is clearly a very profitable enterprise.

Meanwhile the UK’s economy is in the hands of the rosy-cheeked young heir to the Osborne baronetcy, a man whose main work experience before joining the Conservative central office was allegedly folding towels in a fancy London department store. Confusingly, he claims that the UK is a safe haven in the stormy international waters (or something like that ), whilst at the same time blaming our under-performance on the royal wedding, the sunny weather, the previous Chancellor, and because a bigger boy told him to do it. So nothing to worry about there then !

Original sin

Another beautiful sunny morning and a fine woodland run.

This morning, on the radio, a speaker was discussing the current US national debt – a staggering 14.3 trillion dollars. He was a theologian, not an economist, and he questioned on moral grounds the widespread premise that the solution to profound debt is always for the economy to grow its way out of trouble. The fundamental problem of such growth is that it seems to be based on further borrowing, so settlement of the debt is effectively deferred for future generations to deal with. The radical alternative suggested by this speaker was for affluent societies such as the US & UK to say: not only have we grown far enough already, but we will pay our debts now. If an individual was in financial trouble, they would be expected to stop spending extravagantly, and to confront their own debts. Why not whole societies ? Being a theologian, he cited Adam & Eve as a parable of people being dissatisfied with what they had (Paradise, in their particular instance), asking for too much, and screwing things up for everybody.

The next discussion was also about facing uncomfortable truths – a brief debate on whether Breivik’s actions in Norway should be considered as madness or terrorism. Essentially the two experts (a professor of terrorism studies and an ex-Islamic extremist) agreed that in very few such cases are the perpetrators clinically mad but that society is inclined to opt for that definition in order to avoid confronting the underlying motivation – whether that be fascism, religious fundamentalism, extreme nationalism or anything else, when judging and punishing. By labelling such acts as madness, we neither have to look at ourselves too closely to see if there may have been some justification, nor care too much about how the perpetrator is treated.

For Norway

What happened on Friday is too shocking & too big to ignore, too recent to make sense of.
We light a candle for the victims.

The future is green or black

An interesting piece in today’s Guardian, responding to an earlier article which had concluded that “green capitalism” is the only way forward (I paraphrase). Today’s piece refutes that, arguing that the Green movement should try to find an alternative way forward, without embracing capitalism which, after over-population, is undoubtedly the biggest root cause of our eco-crisis. The comments following the piece show what a difficult task lies ahead in finding that alternative route forward. Perhaps it’s hopeless. One of the less hysterical comments probably nailed it: “Human society will continue to be run on the alpha-beta-and losers model we inherited from early times on the African savanna. It looks like destroying the ecosystem that produced us. And so it goes...”

That’s no reason to go quietly though. Dylan Thomas wrote “Do not go gentle into that good night…….Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” He was referring at the time to his elderly father who was going blind, but I can’t think of a better anthem for the Greens.

PS - beautiful morning & great run.

Fair fare

Another bright and promising morning and a good 25 minute run.

Yesterday’s post highlighted the unsustainable and parasitic chain of providing animal-based protein to the developed world. Following the logic leads unavoidably in the direction of vegan sources of protein, unless we are fortunate enough to keep our own free-range chickens/cows/goats, or to have access to wild meat like venison or rabbit. What is more, importing any basic food from the other side of the planet is not environmentally helpful either. So vegan and local.

The UK government advice is somewhat contradictory about how much protein we actually need, basing one guide on a proportion of body weight (0.75g per kg) and another on a proportion of total calories we should eat (15%, at 4 calories per gram of protein). Taking the average, for a 140lb person, results in a quota of 65g of protein per day.

In Scotland, living off the fat of the land has always been a bit of a challenge but here goes:

A bowl of porridge (1 cup of oats)             10g

2 slices wholemeal bread                            5g

1 medium potato                                         5g

150g beans/pulses                                    30g

1 medium bagel                                           9g

1 cup of broccoli                                          6g

Total                                                           65g

Dull fare perhaps, and obviously only the protein part of a balanced diet, but nevertheless an indication of how we should be eating if we are to stop acting as parasites in under-developed countries.

Bon appetit !

A beautiful silvery morning and another gentle 25 minute run along the forestry track, past some highland cattle grazing in the woods. All very pastoral and innocent.

Yesterday, the Independent reported some recent research by the US based Environmental Working Group showning the greenhouse gas emissions associated with the production of various basic foods, before & after they leave the farm. Surprisingly, lamb is shown as being the worst offender, with beef second and cheese third. Pulses, predictably, are best. The concluding message, especially to US carnivores, is help protect the environment by eating less meat. A very good conclusion, but one that glossed over an even more pressing reason to do so.

 In the US, 157 million tons of cereals, legumes and vegetable protein – all suitable for human consumption – is fed to livestock each year to produce just 28 million tons of animal protein in the form of meat. For every 10 tonnes of soya protein fed to US cattle, just 1 tonne of beef is produced. And it’s not just the US. Currently, farmed animals eat one-third of the world’s cereal production. In the industrialised world, two-thirds of the agricultural land produces cereals for animal feed. The EU imports 45 per cent of its oilseeds (soya) and, overall, imports 70 per cent of its protein for animal feed (1995-6). Millions of acres of prime agricultural land in developing countries are used to produce linseed cake, cottonseed cake and rapeseed meal for European livestock, eagerly encouraged by the global agribusiness corporations. (ref 1, ref 2)

As the world population continues to rise, as global food supplies are hit by increasing drought and flooding, and as a billion people are underfed, this is not simply unsustainable - it is probably the single most important issue we are currently facing as a species.

Profit & power

A grey and breezy morning, and a brisk 25 minute run along the loch-side. 

People are falling like skittles as a result of the News of the World affair, but it’s probably too much to hope that our travelling salesman Prime Minister will resign, despite his appalling lack of good judgement, and his apparent complicity in the media power games. Betting shops are offering odds of 16 to 1 that he'll be out of office by the weekend though.

My wife who remembers everything has reminded me that phone hacking isn’t a new phenomenon for newspapers. Twenty years ago His Royal Magnificence, Charles, Prince of Wales. Duke of Rothesay, had his phone hacked. At that time the news media in Australia, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Ireland, USA, & finally UK, were able to overcome their normally impeccable scruples and publish transcripts of his private conversations with the woman who was to become his second wife. 

The hacking by the News of the World is part of a continuum. Whether hacking the phones of celebrities and royal hypocrites or hacking the phones of bereaved families, it’s simply another step along the well trodden path of invading people’s privacy for the sake of selling “news”. In other words, ruthless and cynical marketising of people's lives for profit, and just as immoral as the underlying collusion between politicians, media barons & police.

More schaden, less freude

Another grey morning, and another gentle 25 minute forestry run.

When either Germany or the UK is down in some kind of trouble, the media in the other country will often take the opportunity to deliver a thorough kicking, with more or less justification. Given the shared Saxon roots of many English & Germans (ref), this seems a little unsupportive but, on the other hand, family arguments can last a long time.

A recent example in Spiegel Online, British democracy is a farce, is both justified and not. The title comes from Die Tageszeitung, which is suggesting that the revelations of complicity between News Corporation, government, and senior police officers have shown us Britons what a charade our democracy is. Well, frankly, some of us had one or two doubts about it already. Our famous mother of parliaments can sometimes easily be mistaken for a lumbering binary megalith which spends too much time cynically whoring itself, to the electorate when elections are in view, and to the real power brokers when they are not. Those brokers include of course the captains of News Corporation and other media groups, but also of banks & supermarkets, and of the nuclear, oil, alcohol, tobacco, armaments, & motor car industries. Even today, in the midst of this particularly sordid crisis, David Cameron is on a "trade mission" to South Africa with a planeload of CEOs (ref) to promote Western-style capitalism in sub-Saharan Africa. All in the interest of alleviating poverty, obviously.
Not being a political historian, it’s difficult to say definitively when the rot set in but, seen from the sidelines, the rise of this particular brand of free-market politics seemed to coincide with Margaret Thatcher's ascendancy in 1979.

Mickey, it's time to grow up

A grey and damp morning but a good run anyway.

I made a disparaging reference to the Walt Disney Corporation in a recent post, and should explain why, in case the Disney CEO is feeling offended. The largest media conglomerate on Earth, they dominate as a brand predicated on an infantilised world view where everything ultimately turns out well and, crucially, where pleasure and gratification of desire are seen as over-riding reasons for existence. Browsing their recent movie list demonstrates the forensic evidence, with projects such as Beverly Hills Chihuahua 2, and Tinkerbell & the Great Fairy Rescue. No, honestly !
Such infantile pleasure-seeking is the subtext behind our greedy wrecking of the planet, with the enthusiastic encouragement of multi-national commerce who see new marketing opportunities opening up on a daily basis in the developing countries, but refuse to see the damage they are causing. The world would clearly be a safer and more sustainable place if the media was dominated by the Ingmar Bergman Corporation instead.

Let's not hide behind our compost bins

Back in the Highlands, and an early and wet 25 minutes along the loch-side.

Continuing the recent religious theme, the established seven deadly or cardinal sins of the Christian church include gluttony. Gluttony, or excessive & wasteful consumption as it’s also known these days, clearly reaches beyond stuffing too much food down our gullets. One of my elite Special Research Agents has found an excellent essay in der Spiegel, by Harald Welzer, which looks at the appalling culture of waste in Western society in the context of Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, whereby "everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family” and highlighting the ludicrously wide range of indulgences that we have come to take for granted as our “right”.

Returning to the specifics of food consumption, many people point to the USA as the extreme of food gluttony – rightly so, since the average US citizen consumes 3770 kcal per day, compared to the other extreme of the Democratic Republic of the Congo at 1590 kcal per day, and compared to the 2720 kcal that everyone could have if it were shared equally. In Europe we shouldn’t be complacent either – average daily consumption in Germany is 3530 kcal per day, and in UK it’s 3440. (ref 1 ref 2)

The UK and Japan apparently share the gold medal for wasting more food than any other nations on Earth, discarding 30-40% of what is produced each year (ref). Incidentally, the UK also has the world bronze medal for obesity incidence, beaten only by the US & Mexico. And all this at a time when an estimated 1 billion people are suffering from hunger and malnutrition. Virtuously putting that waste into a compost bin isn’t quite enough to redress the imbalance. And neither is the high-profile change to the European Common Fisheries Policy, by which European fishermen will, if the bureaucrats can bring themselves to allow it, in 2 years time no longer be forced to discard 50% of all the fish they have caught and killed. This is being seen as a victory for common sense, which of course it is – in the same way that persuading a clinically insane person not to throw everyone’s food out of the window is a victory for common sense. 

The world according to Mickey Mouse

A very warm morning, and a slow 30 minute run.

The news seems particularly tedious today, so back to the metanarrative. According to the theory of dialectical materialism, every economic hegemony contains the contradictions which lead eventually to its own destruction, and change happens through a process of thesis/antithesis/synthesis. That romantic old optimist, Marx, assumed that the synthesis generally led to positive change, until the nirvana of utopian socialism is finally reached. As we watch the cracks appear in the international banking system, and in the world’s second largest media conglomerate*, we can at least see that the self-destructive bit seems broadly correct even if we still have some way to travel before we reach a socialist utopia. 

*The mind-boggling thing is that the world's largest media conglomerate is apparently the Walt Disney Corporation. Now I know we're all doomed !

We're all doomed, apart from the woodlice

A spirit-liftingly beautiful morning again and a very fine 25 minute run spent reflecting on food, warmth, and the Bible.

Compared to the starvation faced by millions of people in the Horn of Africa just now, the issue of whether people in northern Europe can afford to keep their homes at a healthy temperature is a relative luxury. Nevertheless, as the biggest UK energy provider, British Gas, announce an increase in annual profit of 50% and an increase in price of 18% (ref), it again begs the question of why something as fundamental, and finite, as fossil fuels should be in the hands of private corporations rather than properly controlled by the State, and why we sit paralysed like rabbits in the headlights allowing it to happen.

Discussion of profiteering and apathy leads neatly to the Bible. I should declare at this point that I am a committed atheist but not averse to finding good sense in the scriptures of any religion. Yesterday I referred to the Hindu exhortation to make only modest and unexploitative demands on the world's resources. Today I remembered the beatitude from the New Testament gospels, "... the meek shall inherit the earth". Now, Jesus probably wasn't referring to woodlice at the time but, given that humans still haven't learned the lesson 2000 years later, there is a strong case for reinterpretation.

Business as usual

Another beautiful morning and a gentle 25 minute run through the sweet-scented woods.

In contrast, more and more shit is hitting the fan as accusations and counter-accusations fly around between senior UK politicians, senior police officers, and the various newspapers controlled by News International. All very sordid and tedious, but giving the rest of the world a welcome schadenfreude distraction from their own woes.

On the radio this morning I heard a Hindu cleric suggesting, essentially, that all the beings on the planet have an entitlement to a share of its resources, based on modest need, and that human need should be in harmony with that of other creatures, rather than dominant. Obvious really, and until we achieve it then, arguably, all the higher profile human achievements won't have amounted to more than a firework display.

Fish today, gone tomorrow

A fine 25 minutes run yesterday but no time to write.

This morning the UK news is dominated by the collapse of the biggest private care provider ( for 31,000 people), the government's simultaneous plan to open up everything except the military and the judiciary for possible privatisation, and more wallowing in the sordid mess of Murdoch's News International.

And yet the most shocking report, in the Independent, was that the oceans around the UK are so over-fished they can only meet demand for 6 months each year, and the situation is even worse elsewhere in Europe. For the rest of the year our fish come from poorer developing nations, so depriving them of essential food supplies, which they then have to replace with expensive imports. A stark reminder that unsustainable food consumption is yet another way in which the "developed" world is sucking the life out of the planet !

News is news

A beautiful morning and a warm 25 minute run.

Last night the wife & I discussed how we all have an appetite for discussion of what is happening in the lives of the people in the community around us – in other words, for gossip. Probably it is a genetically programmed defence mechanism to keep us alert to potential threats. So far so reasonable. But, with the current culture of “celebrity”, and with the outpourings of 24 hour news channels, that appetite can be distorted into an addiction, nurtured by pimps and pushers like any other drug.

The News of the World has been caught with its staff diving to new depths in their efforts to find salacious titbits to feed that addiction. As a result Rupert Murdoch & News International have axed the newspaper, though not the editor, in a transparent attempt at damage limitation whilst they negotiate with the UK government to extend their monopoly of satellite broadcasting in the UK.  

Maybe I have a sheltered life, but for me one of the most depressing revelations to emerge from the whole sordid saga has been not the well known lack of ethics and morality in parts of the UK news media, nor the predictably cynical manipulation of the situation by News International, nor even the collusion between Rupert Murdoch and successive UK governments, but the fact that the News of the World was said to have more readers than any other English-language newspaper.

People like us

A wet 25 minutes this morning, mainly notable for the beautiful stag we passed, and for a brief exploration of snobbery and social elitism.

Apparently the more conservative and reactionary members of the UK population are still unwilling to accept that Britain neither rules one quarter of the world’s land mass, nor dominates global trade and industry – a loss of self-esteem which must be particularly difficult for those who believe that such dominance had somehow been based more on merit than circumstance. And that loss seems to be the clue.

In his Social Identity Theory Saul Mcleod suggests that in order to increase our self-esteem we enhance the status of the group to which we belong. Therefore we divide the world into “them” and “us” through a process of social categorisation (i.e. we put people into social groups). This is known as in-group (us) and out-group (them).  The central hypothesis of social identity theory is that group members of an in-group will seek to find negative aspects of an out-group, thus enhancing their self-image.

Taken to extremes of course, it leads to genocide. In moderation it leads inexorably to snobbery and social elitism, casual racism, support for a moribund monarchy, and quite possibly to an unhealthy obsession with the private lives of celebrities. All of which sounds very familiar.

Nuclear reactions

A speedy 25 minute run before the rain started.

Germany has opted to phase out nuclear power generation, so it was probably inevitable that Britain’s Conservative-led government would swiftly propose the exact opposite – “the biggest nuclear renaissance since the 1950s”, to the consternation of many people.

Even the rabidly right-wing, money-fixated Daily Telegraph is highlighting fears that the plans will include a deliberate transfer of financial support away from renewable energy sources to incentivise investment in the nuclear “opportunity”, upsetting all the prosperous green-tinged opportunists who have leapt on the chance to reap profit from investment in expensive photovoltaic panels.

Controversially, in the Guardian, George Monbiot argues again in favour of nuclear power, saying essentially that it’s the least harmful option that has any hope of meeting demand, since modern safety standards are much more stringent than those applied to the Fukushima Daiichi reactor. A second reactor nearby actually survived the tsunami, having been built 10 years later than the first.

In that context, the real problem appears to be the collusion and powerful vested interests which operate dishonestly throughout the energy industry, and the need to control them with unprecedented scrutiny and transparency in the same way that the equally toxic levels of radiation are already controlled.

Given the UK government’s track record of collusion with the world of corporate finance we clearly still have grave cause for concern. However, as Monbiot put it, there is no contradiction between favouring the machines and opposing the machinations. 
At the same time, at least some of Monbiot's assertions are questionable - not least regarding the relative harmfulness of nuclear & coal-based energy generation (ref) - and the debate clearly has a long way to go.

Mineralogy meets parasitology

A welcome 25 minute run this morning after a challenging and run-less weekend.

Further north, as the Arctic sea ice retreats in response to global warming, valuable mineral resources are becoming more accessible for large scale extraction. Inevitably this brings a conflict of interest between those who benefit from the substantial financial reward and those who value the as yet undamaged environment. Some indigenous communities appear to be especially conflicted, being faced with the seductive prospect of unprecedented wealth and at the same time being justifiably fearful of the corrosive impact of such wealth on their traditions and values (ref).

The language being used to describe the mineral exploitation is interesting. In an account in yesterday’s Guardian (ref), the richest man in the UK, Lakshmi Mittal, is reported to be building the largest iron mine in the Arctic in order to feed demand from the growing economies of India & China. Feeding demand sounds like a benign, almost nurturing activity, and one with a sub-text which implies that the demand must be met, for humanitarian reasons. Perhaps greedily grabbing an opportunity to exploit a demand in order to create yet more obscene levels of personal wealth despite the environmental consequences would have been a more accurate description. At 38 billion dollars, Mr Mittal's personal wealth  already exceeds the GDP of 100 entire countries, but he apparently needs more.

No run, just outrage

A few nuggets below from the website of Republic. At a time when the world population is spiralling out of control, and the global recession is hitting all but a privileged minority, perhaps the House of Windsor would be wise to be less of a burden to the rest of us when we start looking for candidates for euthanasia.

The Royal Travel grant-in-aid 2010/11 report reveals the following details:

* Prince Charles and Camilla charged the taxpayer £29,786 for a return flight from Clarence House to Balmoral for a private 4 day break on which no public engagements were undertaken.

* Prince Charles chartered a flight to a UN environmental conference in Oslo with a £25,534 cost to the public purse.

* The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh's trip from London to Crewe cost £17,248, more than fifty times the cost of the most expensive standard ticket.

* A three day visit to Wales by the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh's cost taxpayers £37,158.

* The Duke of York's trip to Italy and Central Asia cost £121,810 and his trip to the Middle East £88,612.

* The Duke of Kent charged the taxpayer £11,668 for a visit to Canada.

World Loan Sharks

A beautiful morning again, and a fast 25 minute run.

But then back to the World Bank again. In a well reasoned article in the Guardian, Rezaul Karim Chowdhury, convenor of the Equity and Justice Working Group Bangladesh, sets out the iniquities of the World Bank’s climate loan scheme, apparently devised by the UK. This scheme means that developing countries are offered costly loans to deal with the worst impacts of global warming, by the developed countries that are substantially responsible for the situation in the first place, thus driving them even further into poverty and dependence on the West. Money lenders have probably been doing this since money was invented, but the sheer scale and audacity of the World Bank's operation is breathtaking.

Meanwhile, in the interest of fair & balanced blogging, I should point out that, whilst Prince Charles’ income has increased recently, his mother’s is due to be cut by 9% over the next 3 years. She will have to struggle on with a mere £35,000,000 of UK tax payers' money (ref). Perhaps she will go on strike. After all, that's only 33,000 times the average annual income of someone in Bangladesh....