Talking past one another

Posted by on

Prime Minister Teresa May has called the visit  of President Trump to London “a significant week for the special relationship and an opportunity to further strengthen our already close partnership”. She stressed the need to build closer trading ties (she is a out to depart, unmourned).

Trump’s US ambassador in the UK, Woody Johnson, has meanwhile suggested that the National Health Service  should be ”on the table” in future trade negotiations with the US. Trump’s man in London also indicated the UK would need to allow US agricultural products, including chlorinated chicken, onto the UK market as part of any post-Brexit trade deal.

Firstly, there is no “special relationship” between the US and the USA.  This is a fantasy on the extreme Right. The special relationship (very special) is with Israel.  Secondly, if there is any move to allow American companies to take over the NHS there will be riots on the street.  American health corporations, ( by the way, in the midst of consolidation, with a huge number of takeovers  and mergers), already have a presence in the UK market, pushing up costs, and their undermining of the NHS is unpopular.  Lastly, chlorinated chicken is shorthand for what is perceived abroad as mass produced, chemically treated, tasteless and unhealthy food.  Further riots would ensue.

How can one achieve ataraxia with such idiots talking past one another?

 

The olive oil bird “massacre”

Posted by on

My wife and I have been in Sicily.  During our visit we stayed at an olive farm, set in beautiful countryside.  The farm produces five varieties of olive oil, plus a blend, all of which we tried while enjoying the wonderful food for which Sicily is famous.  What we didn’t know while we stayed there was the following bit of information, which I have just found in the magazine “Nature”:

“The global demand for olive oil is having a catastrophic effect on wildlife. On some farms, olives are still harvested by hand, but in these days of mass production, machines are taking over. Between October and March, many farmers use powerful tractors to strip the trees of their fruit and, in the process, vacuum up hundreds of thousands of birds that have migrated south for the winter. The tractors operate after sundown (to take advantage of the cooler temperatures that help preserve the olives’ flavour), starting just as the birds have roosted in the trees. Dazzled and disorientated by the machine’s lights, the birds are sucked up on a “catastrophic scale”. Researchers found as many as 100 dead birds in each trailer, including large numbers of British species such as robins, greenfinches, warblers and wagtails. It is estimated that 96,000 birds die this way each winter in Portugal alone.” “Nature” calls on governments, in its article, to ban night-time harvesting.

The olive oil makers have kept that quiet.  Wish we had known and could have quizzed the obviously very energetic and successful owner, who has a thriving business.  No mention was made by her of mechanical picking at night, as opposed to mechanical processing, and I still don’t know how her picking is done.  But had a great time testing the different offerings.    Maybe Epicurus, faced with this bit of news about olive picking might say, “One doesn’t know what one doesn’t know.  You can’t put everything right in this world”.

 

What a mess we are making of our planet!

Posted by on

Microplastics have been found dropping from the sky in a remote stretch of the high Pyrenees – a stark illustration of the way that the pollutants, carried on the winds, have the potential to accumulate “anywhere and everywhere”.  Humans and other animals are consuming microplastics via food and water (including tap water), and there is evidence that we may also be breathing them in from the air.

The long-term effect of ingesting this material is not yet clear, but its sheer ubiquity means that the issue must be taken seriously, said Steve Allen, of the EcoLab institute near Toulouse, France. “If it is going to be a problem, it is going to be a very big problem,” he warned. “I don’t think there is an organism on Earth that is immune to this.” The researchers calculate that microplastics can travel 60 miles in the air. But as Saharan winds can carry particles of sand for hundreds of miles, this is likely to be a low estimate. The plastic was found in a part of the Pyrenees that is four miles from the nearest village and 15 miles from the nearest town.  (The Guardian and The Week, 27 April 2019)

What can we do about those who despise science and scientists, shrug their shoulders and call the growing threat to the planet fake news?  We can try to vote them out, but they have the support of rich corporations and individuals who are corrupt and who will protect their fortunes at any cost – to others, of course.  Money is more important than other people and the planet itself.  When the crunch comes they will blame someone else – they always do.  We are slipping into deep crisis, and it may need another wrenching and violent world upheaval to eventually help the human race to survive.  What we want is ataraxia and happy lives.  Collectively we cannot see beyond our noses.

 

138 surgeries close their doors

Posted by on

GPs have blamed under-resourcing and recruitment difficulties as surgery closures across the UK reach an all- time high, affecting an estimated half a million patients last year. According to research by the medical website Pulse, 138 surgeries shut their doors in 2018, compared with just 18 in 2013.

Data released under freedom of information by 186 out of 217 clinical commissioning groups and health boards revealed that smaller surgeries – those serving 5,000 or fewer patients – were the worst affected in 2018, accounting for 86% of closures.

One doctor told how after 26 years he gave up his GP surgery in Brighton, where he and his partner were run off their feet looking after 6,500 patients. “The money was just falling away,” he said. “We gave the staff six months’ notice and we walked away.” NHS England said its figures showed fewer practice closures and patient dispersals in 2017/18 compared with 2016/17. But those figures are only for England, and cover the financial year, whereas Pulse’s figures cover the whole UK and calendar years.  ( The Guardian, 31 May 2018)

What the British government is doing is accepted conservative practice – starve the beast and replace it  with contracts offered to private companies.  Much of the current health privatisation benefits large American corporations, who may reward politicians financially at an appropriate  moment (no, I am not inferring corruption.  Corruption is in the eye of the beholder.  Use your own judgment).  Whatever health experts in the US claim, the British NHS has done a fantastic job on ( in comparison with the US, with limited resources.  As service declines so the public is expected to support private intervention.  It’s  a form of malicious robbery, if that isn’r a tautology.

The Pentagon could learn from Agincourt

Posted by on

During the Battle of Agincourt,  the “humble and effective English longbow made short work of the expensive and vulnerable French cavalry”. Is America at risk of suffering the same sort of military humiliation?

Christian Brose, the former staff director of the Senate armed services committee, believes so. The traditional model of US power – based on large, expensive and heavily manned systems – has, he says, become a dangerous anachronism. It no longer makes military or economic sense to invest in $13bn aircraft carriers and $89m fighter jets when the US is fighting technologically primitive enemies in the Middle East, and when its “relatively small number of ultra-sophisticated platforms are increasingly vulnerable to detection and destruction” by rivals such as China and Russia. The US should instead create many more, cheaper military platforms, “and – within ethical limits – enhance their autonomy”. That would put fewer soldiers in harm’s way and reduce the risk from swarm attacks. But alas, this change is unlikely to happen any time soon: the “military-industrial-congressional complex” will resist any disruption to its business model. “In the meantime, the risk of being on the losing side of our own Agincourt” grows greater by the day.   (Bret Stephens, New York Times, The Week 4 May 2019).

There is nothing moderate (or Epicurean) about the money and resources thrown at the American military.  They get everything they want, crowding out the needs of all sorts of other aspects of American life.  Under Trump the money devoted to military effort rises by the day.  And yet we cannot win a war, Afghanistan being the prime, and most scandalous example.  Meanwhile the deficit careers upwards as if there could be no possible economic consequences.  All hail Mr. Christian Brose for pointing out what should be obvious, but which , I am sure, is an unwelcome point of view to the score of special interests wanting an ever more bloated and clumsy military.

A nice, harmless report that isn’t about wrecking civilisation!

Posted by on

The use of birdfeeders in gardens has dramatically increased the diversity of the birds living in Britain’s urban areas, a new study has found. The British Trust for Ornithology said that at least half of home-owners feed garden birds – a trend that started to take off in the 1970s – and this now supports an estimated 196 million birds a year, and more than half of the country’s species. While many common birds such as blackbirds and robins have maintained a steady presence at feeders, sightings of others, including great spotted woodpeckers, sparrowhawks and wood pigeons, have dramatically increased. Goldfinches were spotted at just 8% of feeders in 1972, but at 87% of them by 2012.

Relevance?  Well, it is a little thing, but caring for other living creatures is surely Epicurean, rewarding for the giver , who has the joy of seeing a greater variety of visitors visiting his or her garden, and good for the planet , which is losing its natural diversity.  I wish we did a better job at feeding and protecting the elephant and the pangolin, to name but two species at risk from humans.

Don’t do it! (anyway, not yet)

Posted by on

Epicurus counseled us to avoid politics and politicians, and watching the antics of politicians in the US, the UK (and, come to think of it the majority of other nations ) he was right. But we are experiencing another attack of world-wide irrational rage and lust for careless and cruel destruction last seen in the age of Hitler.  We have to be wise and strategic to avoid a burst of violence.  It has happened before.  Epicurus wanted us to seek and find ataraxia, and would have advised us to restore an atmosphere of moderation at all costs.

 Mueller clearly thinks he cannot, under the rules he operated under, indict the President , but hints that he would done so had the rules allowed.  Notwithstanding this,  I think we should support  US Senate Democrats who want the House to cool it on impeachment.  They see an impeachment drive as hurting more than helping their efforts to win back the Senate majority and generally back Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s efforts to keep a lid on the issue.

Even Senate Democrats running for president who back impeachment aren’t pressing Senate Democratic Leader Charles Schumer to take a more aggressive approach to the issue. Democratic senators say the subject of impeachment rarely even comes up in caucus-wide meetings and that it distracts from issues like health care they see as more important to voters.   

Impeachment is just what President (poor me, look at the wonders I am single-handedly achieving for the nation) Trump would like.  It would redouble the efforts of Republicans  to re- elect him and sharpen the already dire divisions, created, yes, single-handedly by him.

There is a moral issue here.  If a crime or crimes were committed (and Trump behaves as if he is guilty of something),  then he should be out of office.  But, pragmatically. it  is better to elect  a new President in 2020 who is honest, has some integrity and believes in the. Constitution (someone who has read it would be reassuring).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Brexiteer living in a bogus, imaginary past

Posted by on

Jacob Rees-Mogg is a very rich Conservative Brexiteer politician (who has parked his fortune in an offshore tax haven to demonstrate his patriotism.  (Irony intended).  He has quaint ideas about “making Britain great again”.  The following is a review of his book on British 19th Century history.  The views of the reviewer seem to be shared by everyone who knows any history:

“The accolades distributed to Rees-Mogg’s subjects are framed in clichés that no half-way intelligent or discerning writer would dream of handing out. Prime ministers are “great statesmen” and therefore to be treated with due deference. Albert and Victoria and their children, including the repulsive Bertie (later Edward VII), were a “happy family”. General Gordon (a mercenary soldier) was “a paragon of Victorian manhood”. General Napier was “heroic” and “daring” and won a “famous victory” at the Battle of Miani. Pugin is “remembered today with respect and admiration” because “he emphasised the notion of truthful and honest living, with buildings to match”.

Patriotic, enthusiastic and celebratory, it recalls nothing so much as Henrietta Marshall’s 1905 children’s history of Britain, Our Island Story (though Marshall was a much better writer than Rees-Mogg). This is the kind of history that Michael Gove, as education secretary, wanted to be promoted in the national history curriculum for schools, until he was forced to withdraw his proposals after a deluge of criticism and ridicule from the Press and those who know any facts.  Rees- Mogg’s celebration of the Victorian age is plodding, laborious, humourless and barely readable. (adapted from an article by Richard J. Evans,  New Statesman, 22 May 2019) 

I have mentioned this man Mogg before. The book is unimportant, very unimportant, but I do so because you can’t devise a successful future for a country if you know nothing about its history.  It’s like trying to work out on a map where you are going when you don’t know where you’ve come from or where you are.  Whatever happened to knowledgeable, canny politicians?

Painkillers and corruption

Posted by on

The billionaire founder of a leading US drug manufacturer has been found guilty of bribing doctors to prescribe a highly addictive painkiller to patients, many of whom did not need it.

John Kapoor, of Insys Therapeutics, was convicted of fraud and racketeering, charges stemming from the tactics his firm used to sell Subsys, a spray manufactured from fentanyl, a synthetic opioid far stronger than heroin. Insys’s marketing strategy revolved around inducing doctors to prescribe the drug in ever higher doses by offering them lucrative fees for giving speeches about Subsys at phoney events.

Although Subsys was designed for cancer patients suffering unbearable pain, many of the people to whom it was prescribed were not cancer sufferers. The firm’s staff also posed as healthcare providers to mislead patients’ insurers about their need for the drug. Four other executives were convicted alongside Kapoor.  (The Week 11 May 2019)

As a former worker for a pharmaceutical company I am somewhat cynical to start with about the ethics of some of the drug marketing and the huge profits made by manufacturers.  They tell us that the cost of research and development are huge, and failures are frequent.  They fail to mention that very often at least part of the research is done by governments and universities, and it is they who profit.  But the above behaviour is simply disgusting and immoral..  It seems the big profits earned have attracted straightforward crooks.  At least I never had to work for crooks.

The NRA is now an extreme political party

Posted by on

Earlier this year, the National Rifle Association opposed a bill that would prevent convicted stalkers and abusive boyfriends from possessing guns. “Why? Because any gun purchase increases profits for gun manufacturers, and any regulation – even common-sense measures – is to be opposed.”

Having brought the group to this indecent and immoral policy the NRA leadership deserves everything it gets, and it is starting to get it.  It is losing money to the tune of $40m a year, and at its recent annual meeting an ugly power struggle broke out among its leadership. Long-time CEO Wayne LaPierre accused the NRA’s now-ousted president, Oliver North, of trying to blackmail him into resigning, with a dossier of alleged financial improprieties. This followed a devastating New Yorker exposé revealing a culture of “secrecy, self-dealing and greed” in the organisation, with NRA executives awarding themselves high six-figure salaries and lavish benefits. To add to the NRA’s woes, it’s also facing an investigation into whether Russian agents used it to funnel money from a Kremlin-linked banker to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.

It gets worse.  The attorney general for New York state (where the NRA is chartered), has announced an investigation of the NRA’s tax-exempt status, stating that the group, which holds itself up as a charitable body, is more akin to a “terrorist organisation”. It was originally designed to help marksmen with firearms training and safety. Lobbying for gun rights only became central to its mission in the 1970s: even then the group pursued that end in a “notably bipartisan” way. Today though, it cleaves to the Republicans and goes “all in for the culture war”. Where once NRA leaders concerned themselves with safe, responsible gun ownership, they now inveigh against “socialists” and hold forth about issues such as immigration, race and healthcare, a virtual surrogate for the current White House. It has no hint of empathy for the the scores of people killed by gunfire, or their families – the guns count more than the people.  (Adapted from a variety of articles in the press, including The Week, 11 May 2019)

To the best of my knowledge the NRA has never expressed concern or sympathy with the thousands of people, especially children, who have been murdered with guns, designed for foreign wars, and acquired by madmen without due care as to their record or mental condition.   That lack of care and empathy renders them beyond contempt.

As we await the results of the EU Parliamentary elections…..

Posted by on

Support for remaining in the EU is above 80% in most EU countries. Asked how they would vote in an in-out referendum, 94% of people in Luxembourg said “in”, as did 92% of people in Portugal, and 91% in Ireland and the Netherlands. In the UK, the poll found that 55% want to remain, making it the most Eurosceptic country; followed by the Czech Republic on 66%, and Italy (72%).  ( reported by Kantar/The Independent, the Observer and The Week, 24 May 2019)

I was  reading an article in The Spectator (right-wing) about Brexit, written by a former Australian Prime Minister.  He couldn’t understand what the fuss was about a “no agreement “ exit from the EU  -Australia trades with the EU successfully, he wrote,  without being a member.  What’s the problem?

Well, the fuss isn’t just about trade, business and money, money, money (which obsess conservatives) It’s also about European security and peace ( justification in itself) at a time when Russia is trying to dissolve it and America is unreliable, to say the least.  It’s about trying to ensure such civilised things as safety at work, fair employment, the development of poor regions of the EU, fair business competition, and the many things that constitute a decent, modern set of rules of behaviour.  Big money hates constraints and discipline.

 

 

 

Engine idling while parked

Posted by on

 

“The Swiss have long been aware of the problem of leaving cars idling for ages. My brother, a young research scientist at the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule in Zurich in the early 1970s, used to tell me that even if he just left his engine ticking over at traffic lights ,he would get a knock on his window and an angry shout of “umweltschutz!” (environmental protection). We used to joke about Swiss officiousness, but times change.” (John Dover , Glasgow, in letter to The Times)
 My take:  People come from out of town, park at no expense, and leave their engines idling while the driver waits for (usually his) appointment or time to be off to the office.  The air gets filled with fumes on a still morning.

Suggestion: if the weather is cold, wrap up!  Put on a sweater or an overcoat!  Why should the air be fouled by you and your car.  In Europe, people who sit there, their engines ticking over, are fined, often on the spot.

What has this do with Epicurus?  Well, it’s about thinking of other people and consideration for their health. This is basic to the teaching of Epicurus.  The American health system is expensive enough without having to be treated for lung disease caused by a casual lack of consideration for others.

Where I live the parking attendants are seldom encountered and even defenders call the system “weak”.  We must allow shoppers to park and visit the shops, mustn’t we?  It’s bad enough that residents cannot park, but to have in addition to fill ones lungs with gas fumes is too much. Who cares? Nobody –  until they have. breathing difficulties.  As for the deteriorating environment, that’s someone else’s problem, bogus news according to some.

Now will you believe the science?

Posted by on

This planet of ours is beginning to burn — and not just last week or month either. It’s been smoldering for decades now. Last summer, for instance, amid global heat records (Ouargla, Algeria, 124 degrees Fahrenheit; Hong Kong, over 91 degrees Fahrenheit for 16 straight days; Nawabsha, Pakistan, 122 degrees Fahrenheit; Oslo, Norway, over 86 degrees Fahrenheit for 16 consecutive days; Los Angeles, 108 degrees Fahrenheit), and wildfires have been raging within the Arctic Circle.

This March, in case you hadn’t noticed — and why would you, since it’s gotten so little attention? — the temperature in Alaska was, on average, 20 degrees, yes, that is not a misprint) above normal and typical ice roads between villages and towns across parts of that state were melting and collapsing , with deaths ensuing.

Meanwhile, in the Antarctic, ice is melting at a rate startling to scientists. If the process accelerates, global sea levels could rise far faster than expected, beginning to drown coastal cities like Miami, New York, and Shanghai more quickly than previously imagined. Meanwhile, globally, the wildfire season is lengthening. Fearsome fires are on the rise, as are droughts, and that’s just to begin to paint a picture of a heating planet and its ever more extreme weather systems and storms.  (Excerpt from Tom Dispatch April 25, 2019)

The Guardian newspaper has just announced that it is banning the phrase “global climate change” and substituting “global climate crisis”.  But the American government, whose priority is protecting special interests (and particularly special donors) has been busy effectively dismantling the Environmental Protection Agency.  If there is anyone left on Earth in a century’s time I hope people will gaze at memorials to the shortsighted, money- grubbing people who commit such an appalling act, sitting on their hands, hoping to get through their own selfish lives comfortably and to hell with everyone else, presumably their own children into the bargain.  Do they have no shame at all?

Epicurus, who believed in the pleasant life, would be appalled.

A Polish church stuck in the past

Posted by on

In Poland a simple poster distributed by an LGBT activist featuring an image of the Virgin Mary with a rainbow halo has got Catholic leaders in a lather.

Elzbieta Podlesna allegedly put up the posters near a church to protest an anti-gay Easter message that denounced words like “LGBT” and “gender” as “aggressive” and “deviant”. She has been arrested for offending religious beliefs and faces two years (!) in jail. The poster was pretty mild stuff and even apparently had some aesthetic charm. But with elections coming up this year, the ruling Law and Justice Party seized this as a golden opportunity to win favour with “hysterical” Church spokespeople, for whom the LGBT campaigners’ rainbow motif acts like a red rag to a bull. The party is now doubling down on the threat of “sexual deviation” to Catholic values.  It’s going to be a tough few months for Poland’s LGBT community. (Piotr Sarzynski,  Polityka, Warsaw, and The Week. 17 May 2019).

I picked on this particular piece of old- fashioned intolerance  to illustrate the fact that extreme right- wing activity is mounting everywhere in the Western world, encouraged by the example of Trump and what I personally see as a creeping right- wing coup in the United States, together with the crass stupidity of Brexit, to name but two instances. Copycats are everywhere in the Western world, replaying the Hitler- Mussolini-Franco reaction to economic hardship and “bring- all- their- houses down” attitudes prevalent in the 1930s.  A novel way of portraying the Virgin Mary should be treated at worst with a simple shrug.  It’s called free speech and, as far as this non- Catholic is concerned, just a statement about the humanity of the LGBT community, which can’t, for heaven’s sake, help the sexual orientations of its members.  They  were born LGBT, like it or not.  Leave them alone and focus on the sexual deviations among some priests in the most reactionary  Catholic church in Europe.

 

Hard to comprehend such a massive difference in values!

Posted by on

Earlier this year, the National Rifle Association opposed a bill that would prevent convicted stalkers and abusive boyfriends from possessing guns. “Why? Because any gun purchase increases profits for gun manufacturers, and any regulation – even common-sense measures – is to be opposed.”

Having arrived at this indecent and immoral policy the NRA leadership deserves everything it gets, and it is starting to get it.  It is losing money to the tune of $40m a year, and at its recent annual meeting an ugly power struggle broke out among its leadership. Long-time CEO Wayne LaPierre accused the NRA’s now-ousted president, Oliver North, of trying to blackmail him into resigning, with a dossier of alleged financial improprieties. This followed a devastating New Yorker exposé revealing a culture of “secrecy, self-dealing and greed” in the organisation, with NRA executives awarding themselves high six-figure salaries and lavish benefits. To add to the NRA’s woes, it’s also facing an investigation into whether Russian agents used it to funnel money from a Kremlin-linked banker to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.

It gets worse.  The attorney general for New York state (where the NRA is chartered), has announced an investigation of the NRA’s tax-exempt status, stating that the group, which holds itself up as a charitable body, is more akin to a “terrorist organisation”. It was originally designed to help marksmen with firearms training and safety. Lobbying for gun rights only became central to its mission in the 1970s: even then the group pursued that end in a “notably bipartisan” way. Today though, it cleaves to the Republicans and goes “all in for the culture war”. Where once NRA leaders concerned themselves with safe, responsible gun ownership, they now inveigh against “socialists” and hold forth about issues such as immigration, race and healthcare, a virtual surrogate for the current White House. It has no hint of empathy for the the scores of people killed by gunfire, or their families – the guns count for more than people, a stance that is greeted with disbelief everywhere else in the world.  (Adapted from a variety of articles in the press, including The Week, 11 May 2019)