Lessons in foreign policy

Every action has a reaction. This is a principle, based on common sense, that everyone involved in foreign affairs should internalise.  Only they don’t.

” If I put a line of so-called “defensive” rocket bases along the Russian frontier there is nothing the Russians are powerful enough to do about it at the moment.  But what would happen if a nationalistic regime sought to get  even for this humiliation in the future?”

“If I keep expanding the EU into the Baltic countries, Roumania, Bulgaria, even Ukraine,  I might be successful for a few years.  But how will the Russians react if and when they feel powerful enough to do something about it?  We are enfringing upon their sphere of influence . Is it necessary? Does Roumania, for instance,  fit comfortably into the EU, or are we empire building because we can?”

Well, we are now learning the lesson of hubris and arrogance.  West has done both of the above, and has forgotten that there is genuine nostalgia in Russia for the old Empire and for great power status.  Surprise! Surprise! Russians are hugely enjoying the discomforture of the EU as their country forces a huge number of Syrians to move to Western Europe.  Americans are aghast at the blatant interference in the election of Rusisn government hackers, who are demonstrating how to get even – and possibly get an American President to their liking, at little cost to themselves.

The relevance to Epicurus? Epicurus would at all, times advise going slowly, thinking things through, avoiding enfuriating the opposition, seeking friends out of enemies, not taking advantage of temporary weaknesses.  In other words, calm moderation.  Seems the establishment in the United States is getting its come-uppance both at home and abroad.  It isn’t surprising.

A moral scar upon the nation

The killing by police of innocent black Americans is a terrible running scandal. It can partially be explained by sheer fear on the part of the police – so many people now carry loaded guns that it is, maybe, understandable that policemen are tempted to shoot first and ask questions afterwards. But most shootings seem to be unprovoked and the result of poor training and lack of community connection and interaction.

At a time when violent crime is actually on a downward trend the gun lobby and politicians in general pretend that police violence has nothing to do with them. This while police forces throughout the country are being militarised to look like an occupying army. The police are no longer regarded as friends and protectors, but as rough and hostile to the people who pay their wages. And this comment comes from a white man.

The whole system of justice is being called into question.  Charles Blow of the New York Times thinks the problems stem from the way black people are represented in the media, the grimness of the ghettos, the joblessness, poverty and lack of education. Everywhere you look, whether it is bank lending, poor investment, mass incarceration for idiotic misdemeanors, inadequate public transport, poor schools, even sub-standard food shops – everything seems to disadvantage the black poor. It’s a miracle that some black people become wealthy enough to move out of the ghettoes. Social media and videos now bring these problems into our homes.

The cause of police violence cannot be simple racism because so many policemen are themselves black.  Control  of the police is vested in local authorities, not the Federal government, and all too often state politicians instinctively side with the police, whatever the circumstances.  Until they have the courage to hire police chiefs who have the courage to instill discipline, nothing much will change.  But, of course, guns and fear will remain the explanation for police shootings.  Horrifying.

Living forever? Most unlikely.

The maximum lifespan for most people may be around 115, because of the innate limits of the human body, according to new research. The few who have gone beyond this age are rare outliers, says Jan Vijg of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. (New Scientist, October 2016).

I can trace my family back to the early 16th Century.  Quite shortly, I will be the longest living male in the recorded history of my particular family.  But I am truly puzzled about the numerous people who say they want their lives extended well beyond normal human spans.  What for? Will anyone pay you any attention?  Will you feel in sympathy with the cultures of other generations or understand their new technologies?  Is extending your life a reasonable use of scarce resources?  Will you have any friends with whom you have anything at all in common?  What do you expect to  contribute to society at, say, an age of 120 or 130?

Epicurus had it right:  die gracefully at an appropriate time, causing as little disruption and heartache as possible, well thought-of by your fellow man, and with a smile on your face.

The Estate Tax

“What’s the number one driver of inequality? It’s not immigrants taking jobs, as some would have you believe. And it’s not bad trade deals or cuts to public programs, although these certainly play a role. According to one important new study, lower taxes on the wealthy have been inequality’s prime driver.

“One hundred years ago this month, Americans raised taxes on the wealthy by enacting the federal estate tax, the first significant levy on grand concentrations of private fortune. I chronicled this history last week in a US News & World Report column on the 100th anniversary of estate taxation.

“Seriously taxing our big estates would raise many billions in new revenue. Where could these billions go? Many ought to flow to the millions of family caregivers and home care workers whose work now goes so deeply undervalued”.  (Chuck Collins, Director, Program on Inequality and the Common Good, Institute for Policy Studies).

My message to the American super-rich and their friends trying to abolish the Estate Tax:

” In 1776 your forebears rebelled against Good  (I’m joking) King George III and his aristocratic government in London.  The issue ostensibly was the  tax on the colonists, designed to pay for the French wars, and waged by rich aristocrats in England who paid little or nothing . Today, you are yourselves , by trying to abolish the Estate Tax,  establishing an aristocracy that can pass money, free of tax, from one generation to another.  In our capitalist society it is fine that people can make fortunes, but they cannot make them without the whole structure of civilised institutions paid for by the whole community.  The Estate Tax is the “thank you”  to fellow citizens for making it possible to thrive and make a fortune.  Sons, daughters and grandchildren should stand on their own feet and make their own fortunes.  An aristocracy of money should have no place in this country’s system”.

Sorting the trash: the good news

In the recycling industry, waste materials are typically crushed and torn into tiny pieces to make them easier to sort. The mixture is then dumped into a pool where wood and plastic float, and metal and rock sink.  Salvage robots like those made by Zen Robotics in Helsinki, Finland, are making this process obsolete. The robots can spot items of value – like pieces of hardwood or copper – and pick them out as they pass by. This is quicker and larger items may be worth more whole than in pieces. In two years, Zen Robotics installed its robots at 14 sites around the world and collected 4200 tonnes of valuable material.

Apple has developed a phone recycling robot called Liam, which can pull apart a discarded phone in seconds, preparing the device for recycling. Zen Robotics wants a “Liam” for all kinds of waste, but this is too hard to program by hand.

Enter  machine learning, where robots can teach themselves and acquire the ability to monitor their own performance, adjusting their behaviour accordingly. The idea is that faced with a conveyor belt of unfamiliar electrical items, say, the robots might do a poor job of taking them apart to extract the copper initially, but through trial and error they would learn to complete the task efficiently without human intervention.

The robot drops salvaged items on to a second conveyor belt. Overhead cameras monitor what the robot has grabbed and essentially grade its performance. Each success and failure is used to tweak the algorithm controlling the robot, improving its performance over time.  Once the machine learning system is in place, the robots can be given more advanced hardware. With a flexible arm they could learn to sort and dismantle trash far more effectively.  (reported in the New Scientist)

Now this is automation that really benefits the planet.  My wife and I visited a recycling plant some years ago.  It was very labour- intensive.  Human beings stood next to a conveyor belt all day, sorting the trash by hand.  It seemed an incredibly boring and smelly job I wouldn’t want to do myself.   Roll on machine sorting.

Thoughts for the day

Thoughts for the day

Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.

If you do not change direction, you may end up where you’re heading.
Philosopher Lao Tzu, quoted in The Guardian

Work isn’t to make money; you work to justify life.
Marc Chagall, quoted on Bustle.com

The best things in life are free. The second-best things are very, very expensive.
Coco Chanel, quoted in the Financial Times

To delight in war is a merit in the soldier, a dangerous quality in the captain, and a positive crime in the statesman.

George Santayana, quoted in The Wall Street Journal
If God wanted us to vote, He would have given us candidates.
Jay Leno, quoted in the Observer-Dispatch (Utica, New York)

Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster.
Friedrich Nietzsche, quoted in The New York Times

Money doesn’t talk, it swears.
Bob Dylan, quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle

The days of the digital watch are numbered.
Tom Stoppard, quoted on The Browser

Architecture is the will of an epoch translated into space.
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, quoted on Forbes.com

Fame is only the sum total of all the misunderstandings that can gather around a new name.
Rainer Maria Rilke, quoted in The Guardian

TV drama is like the picture on the Quality Street tin, but with less quality and nothing of the street.Ken Loach, ibid

It is a good rule in life never to apologise. The right sort of people do not want apologies, and the wrong sort take a mean advantage of them.P.G. Wodehouse, in The Man Upstairs, quoted in The Times

Speaking in front of a crowd is considered the number one fear of the average person. Number two was death. Death is number two? This means to the average person, if you have to be at a funeral, you’d rather be in the casket than doing the eulogy.’’Jerry Seinfeld, quoted on Intelligence Squared

Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes.
Henry David Thoreau, quoted in The Tablet

A soul that is unbound is as mad as one with cemented borders.
Philosopher Gillian Rose, quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle

Events which cannot be prevented must be directed.
Count Metternich, quoted in The Guardian

Anger is the prelude to courage.
Eric Hoffer, quoted on Forbes.com

If only I had a little humility, I’d be perfect.
Ted Turner, quoted on Aeon.com

Tout comprendre, c’est tout pardonner, and tout pardonner makes dull copy.
Journalist Nicholas Tomalin, quoted in the New Statesman

The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings. The inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.
Winston Churchill, quoted in The Jerusalem Post

Life’s disappointments are harder to take if you don’t know any swear words.
Cartoonist Bill Watterson, quoted in The Wall Street Journal

I won’t insult your intelligence by suggesting you really believe what you just said.
William F. Buckley Jr, quoted on Medium.com

Weapons are like money; no one knows the meaning of enough.
Martin Amis in The New York Times

“We are happier in many ways when we are old than when we are young. The young sow wild oats; the old grow sage” (Winston Churchill

Nuance is the first casualty of politics and, too often, decency is the second.
Alex Massie, on Slate.com

The most dangerous world view is the world view of those who have not viewed the world.
Naturalist Alexander von Humboldt, quoted in the journal Nature

Most critics are educated beyond their intelligence.
Critic Kenneth Tynan, quoted in the Pasadena Star-News

Aim at simplicity, and hope for truth
Philosopher Nelson Goodman, quoted on The Browser

A baby is a loud noise at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other.
Ronald Knox’s definition, quoted in The Times

Who discovered we could get milk from cows, and what did he think he was doing at the time?­
Billy Connolly, quoted in The Daily Telegraph

Ageing is an extraordinary process whereby you become the person that you always should have been.
David Bowie, quoted in The Guardian

Life is full of misery, loneliness and suffering – and it’s all over much too soon.
Woody Allen, quoted in The Daily Telegraph

Montaigne

The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.

When I play with my cat, who knows if I am not a pastime to her more than she is to
me.

I prefer the company of peasants because they have not been educated sufficiently to reason incorrectly.

My life has been full of terrible misfortunes most of which never happened.

The strangest, most generous, and proudest of all virtues is true courage.
The value of life lies not in the length of days, but in the use we make of them… Whether you find satisfaction in life depends not on your tale of years, but on your will. Book I, ch. 20

Things are not bad in themselves, but our cowardice makes them so.

How many things served us yesterday for articles of faith, which today are fables for us

There are no angels and no devils. Montaigne

pStability is a mirage, nothing more than “languid motion”, because everything is in constant motion. Human behaviour istypical of nature, constantly changing.

Go out of the world as you entered it. The same passage that you made from womb to life, without feeling or fright, make again from life to death. Your death is part of the order of the universe, the life of the world

Fear of death is the cause of all our vices
e I have an interest in: the earth serves me to walk upon, the sun to light me; the stars have their influence upon me; I have such an advantage by the winds and such by the waters; there is nothing that yon heavenly roof looks upon so favourably as me. I am the darling of Nature! Is it not man that keeps and serves me?” Book II, ch. 12. Apology for Raimond Sebond
The value of life lies not in the length of days, but in the use we make of them… Whether you find satisfaction in life depends not on your tale of years, but on your will. Book I, ch. 20
——————————————————————————————-

Many people take no care of their money till they come nearly to the end of it, and others do just the same with their time.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, quoted in The Sunday Times

John Stuart Mill famously said that if just one man in the world thinks differently from all the rest, there’s still no excuse for silencing him.

I would rather be terrified occasionally than supervised continually.

Make envy your enemy.
Artist Marilyn Minter, quoted in NYMag.com

It is the summit of idleness to deplore actuality.
Martin Amis, quoted in The Atlantic

It takes a sharp tongue to speak bluntly (Actor Robert Eddison, quoted in The Times)

To describe happiness is to diminish it.
Stendhal, quoted on Forbes.com

Consistency requires you to be as ignorant today as you were a year ago.
Bernard Berenson, quoted on The Browser

Face up to death. Thereafter anything is possible. Albert Camus, quoted in The Guardian

Commitment is an act, not a word.
Jean-Paul Sartre, quoted in the New York Daily News

An old error is always more popular than a new truth.
German proverb, quoted on Forbes

They who are of the opinion that money will do everything may very well be suspected to do everything for money. English statesman George Savile, quoted in The Boston Globe

The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible. Arthur C. Clarke, quoted on BBC.com

In every calm and reasonable person, there is a hidden second person scared witless about death.
Philip Roth, quoted in The New York Times

It is part of human nature to hate the man you have hurt.
Tacitus, quoted in The Times

One of the many things nobody ever tells you about middle age is that it’s such a nice change from being young.
Author Dorothy Canfield Fisher, quoted on Forbes.com

Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not, and a sense of humour to console him for what he is. Francis Bacon, quoted in The Guardian

On the whole, human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the time.
George Orwell, quoted in The Independent

British university fees

The British government plan to increase University tuition fees in England to £9,250 per year from 2017. Thereafter, fees will increase by the rate of inflation in subsequent years. This represents a 2.8% increase and if that continued would mean fees rising above £10,000 (over $14,000) in the next few years. Other increases will be linked to evidence of high quality teaching, which will be decided by a new mechanism called the “teaching excellence framework”.  A government spokeswoman said: “The teaching excellence framework will allow universities to maintain fees in line with inflation only if they meet a quality bar, as set out in the recent Higher Education White Paper.”

As you can imagine, this dumb idea has met fierce political resistance. How do you rate a university on its teaching? Do you poll the customers? In which case teachers must be tempted to lower standards and inflate grades. By graduation rates and levels of degree attained?  We already have degree inflation, something that potentially misleads potential employers, lowers the value of university education, and lets students think they have had a good education when they (possibly) haven’t. Will there be a government inspector sitting in the room critiquing the approach of the teacher? A good teacher challenges a student, makes them think, is tough on them, trying to get the best out of them. This is not always appreciated by those students mostly intent on partying and boozing.

Conservatives everywhere are trying to apply the techniques of running a business to higher education. Efficiency, efficiency! You can imagine the business consultants crawling over the Modern History department of Oxford University. The fact is that once you charge for university you change the incentives. Because of the fees and the likely debt, the preoccupation is “can I get a job at the end of it”. This leads to emphasis on training, not education for a lifetime.  Training should be something undertaken after, not during, time at university. (Exhibit A: Business Studies as a first degree is a bogus moneyspinner. It recalls the old adage “If you can’t do it you teach it”).

Unrelated statistic (or is it?): 27% of undergraduates say they have a mental health problem: 34% of female students have mental health problems, compared with 19% of male students. (YouGov/BBC)

 

 

The hounding of the bee scientist (follow-on from Friday’s posting)

This is a disgraceful.

Dr. Jonathan Lundgren is the award- winning scientist, who discovered that Bayer pesticides were killing bees in huge  numbers, as discussed on this blog last Friday.

It appears that Dr. Lundgrun was told by the US Department of Agriculture to stop publicizing his research, which didn’t suit USDA at all.  When he refused  he was suspended, then fired.  He attempted to continue his research in the private sector, at which point the USDA is blacklisted him from USDA-funded research grants and pressured other scientists not to collaborate with him.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is notoriously friendly with giant corporate agribusinesses, and lobbyists for big pesticide companies like Monsanto and Bayer, who don’t want government researchers looking into the impact of bee-killing pesticides. USDA is not a normal government agency; it was created expressly to promote American agriculture, not as a service to the general electorate.  It is an open secret that what the big agribusinesses want they generally get.

What  USDA is doing is a blatant attack on to scientific freedom at the behest of lobbyists. It is against the interests of  both consumers and all food producers who rely on insect pollination.

As Epicureans we should hold the big corporations to account.  They got their formulations disastrously wrong, and, instead of taking the pesticides off the market, are trying to smother the news and destroy the career of the messenger. It is sad to see this happen under President Obama’s watch.

Dr. Lundgren has fought back by filing a whistleblower complaint, a scientific integrity complaint, and a federal lawsuit.  Dr. Lundgren’s case has gotten enormous press coverage, and he was personally honored with the Joe A. Calloway Award for Civic Courage—a prestigious award for public-interest activism. Meanwhile, USDA needs root and branch reform.

Latest news

A terrifying study has found that the exact same pesticides causing the massive global bee die-off are now killing birds as well.

The global bee die-off has been happening so fast that scientists are still scrambling to detect all the impacts. And now, this new study also finds that neonic pesticides are killing warblers, swallows, starlings and thrushes nearly as fast as the bees — at current rates, 35 percent of the bird population will disappear in just 10 years in the areas studied.

 

When God Lost the Planet

Recent news indicates that there are upward of 400 billion stars, a management problem, even for God. Where on earth do you start?

When God Lost the Planet

Each day unfurled
Another world!
God sits up there and gently nurses
Spanking, brand new universes.

Purblinding flash!
Oh, boom and crash!
A zillion atoms spun in space.
Where did they fly? Some place, some place.

For thirteen billion years, we’re told,
Did God his galaxies unfold
With neutron stars and cosmic rays.
Thus did God spend timeless days.

For goodness sake,
One needs a break.
Even those with mighty power
Like to relax for half an hour.

He thinks a thought!
Just what he sought
To liven up the daily grind – –
He has a unique scheme in mind!

Aha! Ambition!
Matchless mission – –
A scheme to create a race of men
With ethics and with acumen!

Experiment
Was his intent.
“I’ll pick a rock of random worth,
And, ah! I’ll call the planet “Earth”!

“And at its birth
I’ll make this Earth
As beauteous as an April sonnet
And place my new creations on it.”

“They’ll look like me
Be good like me.
And every man will love his wife,
And thank me for his daily life!”

And so it was, and in a trice
God created paradise,
And placed in it a married pair,
A test to see how they would fare.

But space expands
If left unplanned.
A planet whirls away in space,
And nothing’s left to fill the space.

Space grew too vast,
And God at last,
Taking years to get around,
Discovered Earth could not be found.

Thus men are left
On Earth, bereft,
Without a God to tell them “nay”,
Lost amidst the Milky Way.

It’s rather rare
To sit up there,
And even in ten billion years,
To lose a planet in the spheres.

“Oh, huge mistake
For me to make!
Where is that H2O and granite?
Where is my chosen little planet?

“Oh! Fractured hope!
How will they cope,
Lost in the vast ethereal sphere
Gripped by suspicion, greed and fear?

“Oh, doom, oh, gloom.
Not I? Then whom?
Who will be there to keep them moral,
To teach them how to love, not quarrel?

God searches here,
He searches there,
On moons, black dwarfs, dark energy,
But not a human could He see.

“Ah! Infinitesimal speck!
Hey, what the heck?
If men on Earth possess a flaw
Forget it! I’ll just make some more.

And thus time passed
Until at last,
While rambling through a group of stars,
Why, Earth appeared, alongside Mars.

Ah! Eureka!
Planet seeker!
He cried, “Aha, that’s where they’ve gone!
Let’s see how they are getting on.”

Amazed, He found his two creations
Had spawned a multitude of nations.
No one thought or spoke the same,
Or, if in the wrong, would take the blame.

“Jehovah! Lord!
(With one accord!)
We’re glad you’ve come as prophesied!
We thought we’d see you when we died”.

So saying, men
Proceeded then
To pepper God like proper pests
With thousands of inane requests.

Most were self-seeking,
Falsehood-reeking,
“Bless me, Lord, and kindly strike
And punish those whom I dislike”.

“Oh, God, to whom we genuflect
Mine’s by far the holiest sect.
We praise you more, and they are weird.
What’s more, we wear a longer beard”.

And God was pained
When people claimed
He’d picked upon a chosen few
And helped them win a war or two.

And God above
Said “Where is love?
I should have been around to ground ’em,
I rather wish I’d never found ’em”.


“When God Lost the Planet” is part of a collection of light verse, written by Robert Hanrott and published by ByD Press under the title “The Rueful Hippopotamus”, available from Amazon.com in the US and Amazon.co.uk in the United Kingdom .

 

Are we alone?

The Space Telescope Science Institute suggests that there are currently 1020, or 100 billion billion, Earth-like planets in the universe, with an equivalent number of gas giants. “Earth-like” doesn’t mean an exact replica of our planet, but rather a rocky world that, if blanketed by a suitable atmosphere, would hold liquid water on its surface. Applied to the solar system, this definition would include Mars and Venus but not Mercury or the moon.

If we find just one other inhabited planet in the Milky Way, the number of other such worlds rockets up. Such a discovery, together with the unlikeliness of our galaxy being the only one to host life, would make Earth at least the 10 billionth civilisation in the universe at present. But the likelihood of any of them being identical to ours is almost zero. A change of just a millimetre in the initial conditions can result in a huge difference. Adding just one extra molecule to the early solar system could mean the Earth never formed.

Slightly counter-intuitively, the simulated solar systems end up looking quite similar, the exceptions being the simulations with no gas giants. These end up with around 11 rocky planets, most of which are less than half the mass of Earth. Add the gas giants and you get around four rocky planets ranging from half an Earth mass to a little more massive than Earth – a pretty good match for our own solar system.So even if that extra molecule had been floating about, the result wouldn’t have looked that different. “Something like Earth would probably have come up, and maybe something alive would have developed. But not us.

Don’t let this desolate randomness get you down, says Rebecca Martin of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. “It’s exciting that we’re not special,” she says, because it means life is abundant in the universe and we can go looking for it. (adapted from an article in the New Scientist).

In this great and confusing mass of stars and planets how does God actually find us in order to encourage us, bless us and admonish us? Tomorrow I will tell you a story about this very subject. Come back and read it.

Killing the bees

Bees are dying in record numbers – and now the US government admits that an extremely common class of pesticide, called neonicotinoids (or neonics) are at least partially to blame. Neonics, of which there are five types, are marketed by European chemical giants Bayer, BASF and Sygenta.

Millions of acres of farmland are treated with neonics each year. The crops most likely to expose honeybees to harmful levels of imidacloprid, the worst type of neonic for bees, are cotton and citrus, while corn and leafy vegetables either do not produce nectar or have residues below the EPA identified level. However, corn and leafy vegetables get huge amounts of another neonic, clothianidin, whose EPA risk assessment hasn’t been released yet. Soybeans, attractive to bees, are also treated with dangerous levels of imidacloprid, but data on how much of the pesticide shows up in soybeans’ pollen and nectar are “unavailable.”

In addition to their impact on bees, neonic pesticides may also harm birds, butterflies, and water-borne invertebrates, recent studies suggest. Also, assessments of the other neonic products, that coat seeds and thereby kill other insects, have never been done.

The EU banned three of the bee-killers in May 2013, after a massive public campaign and a clear scientific finding from the European Food Safety Authority that neonics pose huge risks to bee populations. The current ban on bee-killing pesticides is up for review soon, but a EU report that could have banned dozens of pesticides has been buried — due to industry’s massive lobbying. The French parliament has meanwhile voted in favor of banning all neonics. Why can’t other countries do the same thing?

Bayer is an enormous company with many profitable brands. Neonics are a big part of its bottom line. As part of their answer to the threat posed by bans, Bayer and Monsanto are attempting to merge, creating a new corporate giant in the already consolidated market for seeds and agricultural chemicals, leaving farmers with fewer options and higher prices.

Monsanto is as bad as Bayer. Together Bayer they are wrecking our ecosystem and threatening a creature responsible for pollinating a third of all our crops, along with numerous others. Not only should the uncompetitive merger be stopped, but the company should be made to stop production Bees are at risk of global extinction. We have to show the multinationals that we won’t tolerate them putting their profits ahead of our planet’s health and our own.

Tomorrow: a related story that will make you very fed up indeed.

Why does Britain keep Gibraltar?

One of the sillier historical anomalies is the status of Gibraltar, ceded to Britain at the end of the War of the Spanish Succession under the terms of the Treaty of Utrecht of 1713. At that time Britain actually had a powerful fleet and could hope to dominate the Mediterranean. Gibraltar is still a strategic spot, but its importance to a Britain with just two aircraft carriers, and not much else, is small. In the time of Franco it might have been argued that Gibraltar was a safeguard in the event (unlikely after the devastating Spanish civil war) that Spain entered the war on the side of the Axis powers. But now Spain is integrated into the EU and its importance lies in the fact that it is concerned about both Gibraltar and Catalonian separatism, both of which inform its worldview. From the Spanish point of view anyone “leaving” anything cannot be tolerated.

What Britain should do is to offer Gibraltar in return for Spanish efforts to soften the term of Brexit. It would be worth it. It makes no sense to control a part of Spain from afar, even if the inhabitants want to remain British (something that can be fixed). Epicureanism is partly about not upsetting other people for no good reason. Let’s get along better with Spain. Britain needs all the friends it can get.

Are referendums a threat to democracy?

It often seems unfair that referendums are used to decide weighty questions of national policy, says Bruno S. Frey. We Swiss know all about this: we have a long history of big decisions made by tiny margins. Switzerland would be part of the European Economic Area had a proposal to join not been defeated in the 1992 referendum, by a margin of just 50.3% to 49.7%. In 2014, we voted to limit immigration – causing uproar in Brussels – by a similarly narrow margin. Last year, a controversial radio and television funding act squeaked through with a majority of just 50.1%. A similarly close result is currently causing political tension in Britain, which is planning a complete break with the EU – voted for by just 51.9% of its population. And in Colombia last week, a peace deal with the guerrilla group Farc was voted down by just 50.2%, a decision that could lead to renewed terrorist violence. No wonder that in these cases, the losers clamour for a new vote. (The Week, 15 October 2016, Bruno S. Frey, Neue Zürcher Zeitung (Zurich).

If we all had populations that were well-informed, educated and able to vote, not in a tribal manner or from the heart, but rationally, then I think referendums could be the last word in democracy. But we don’t live in Greek City States, where everyone knows each other and we don’t even teach civics. We collectively get our information from social media, which is roiling in lies and misrepresentations.

Moreover, Parliament is either sovereign or it is not. Referendums undermine parliamentary rule. But if you are to have referendums there should first, be a rule that insists on a minimum percentage of the population voting before a referendum is deemed constitutional. Secondly, the parliament should be able to review and reject any final settlement after negotiations – I am thinking here of Brexit. If something isn’t done, referendums will simply fuel a growing disillusion with democracy.

So, yes, I vote for Bruno S. Frey (above), and Epicurus, were he presented with the information we have, would probably have agreed.

The end of pandering to the super-rich

The American election and Brexit have illuminated one important point: “trickle down” economics have finally been exposed for the fraudulent nonsense it always was. The idea was that if you give the rich and the entrepreneurial their heads and allow them free rein to make money, their wealth will trickle down to mere mortals. Well, it doesn’t trickle down; it trickles out. The rebellions associated with Trump and Bernie in the US and the Leave voters in Britain show that the man in the street has seen nothing trickling down; on the contrary, society has become horribly unequal and has left millions with either no job or non-jobs, and little hope.

Right wing politicians loved trickle down. It was the ideology that “justified” the give-aways to corporations and the super-rich in return for election expenses and fancy jobs when they could no longer pull the wool over the eyes of their constituents. Now they are reaping the reward political whirlwind. Trump may not become President, but what he has been “articulating” is not going to go away.

Unless the establishment gets serious and addresses the general disaffection, especially in view of the automation of traditional jobs that is on the horizon – the instability will become very ugly. Already we have people who implicitly don’t mind if we have a dose of what used to be called fascism and autocracy. The establishment is under warning.

This is all a very long way away from the Epicurean ideal of moderation, tolerance and arranging things for the potential pleasure of all. It is alarming, but I think we have to have faith in the overall decency, good sense and moderation of the silent majority of decent people. What’s gone wrong can be put right.