http://www.anenglishmanscastle.com/ en-us tdaw@cix.co.uk 2012-05-16T06:51:32+00:00 hourly 1 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00 http://www.anenglishmanscastle.com/archives/010373.html The Wages of Sin Taxes by Chris Snowdon ...Although there is ample evidence that sin taxes of this kind do not work, we run the risk of accepting the medical establishment’s terms of debate by even discussing it. The real argument against this kind of state interference is that what we eat and drink is simply no one’s business but our own. As he shows in The Wages of Sin Taxes, the claim that obesity is an economic time-bomb which forces the slim to pay for the sins of the fat is fallacious. Without that justification, the meddlers are exposed as the ugliest brand of paternalists. It is time to call these taxes what they are - fines for living in a way that displeases the British Medical Association. But since it is clear that these doctors won’t be happy until they can issue us with ration books, perhaps it time to remind these public servants who their masters are. It might be worth printing out a copy or two and leave them in your Doctor's waiting room...... 10373@http://www.anenglishmanscastle.com/ Health and Safety 6 2012-05-16T06:51:32+00:00 http://www.anenglishmanscastle.com/archives/010372.html WikiLeaks cable ‘may have led Tehran to hang kick-boxer for scientist’s murder’ | The Times An Iranian who was hanged yesterday for allegedly murdering a nuclear scientist on behalf of Israel might have lost his life because of a confidential US Embassy cable that was published by WikiLeaks, analysts said yesterday. Majid Jamali Fashi, 24, was arrested one month after the unauthorised publication of a cable from the embassy, in Azerbaijan, which described one of its sources as an Iranian martial arts expert. Mr Fashi had visited Azerbaijan the previous month for a kick-boxing tournament. The leak “could have raised Iranian suspicions” about Mr Fashi, Scott Lucas, a Birmingham University professor and an authority on Iran, told The Times. “Alternatively, it could have been used as a pretext against him; to set him up as a person who could take the fall for the assassination.” Ali Ansari, head of the Institute for Iranian Studies at the University of St Andrews, said: “I have always considered the release of the WikiLeaks files, without consideration for those consciously or unconsciously named in them, to be grotesquely irresponsible.” Strange, I couldn't find anything about this story on Wikileaks biggest fan site The Guardian.... guardian.co.uk | Search | Majid Jamali Fashi wikileaks You searched for 'Majid Jamali Fashi wikileaks' 0 results... 10372@http://www.anenglishmanscastle.com/ The World 3 2012-05-16T06:38:42+00:00 http://www.anenglishmanscastle.com/archives/010371.html New houses are too small, research finds - Telegraph A study of people’s living spaces by RIBA found that people are going to “extreme” and “absurd” lengths to cram their belongings into their houses. The research found that many British homes lack the storage space for basic day-to-day items, such as rubbish bins, household appliances and food. Ben Page, the chief executive of Ipsos Mori, said: “The research graphically shows just how cramped and poorly planned much of our housing is today, and the extraordinary lengths people go to cope with it.” And why? It is not the cost of building bigger houses, that is minimal. It is the cost of the land with planning permission. It is an artificial shortage created by planners backed by NIMBYs. (There is also an element of green thinking here with the belief that no one needs more than one car per family and that we like to huddle up to our neighbours to keep warm.)... 10371@http://www.anenglishmanscastle.com/ UK Politics 6 2012-05-16T06:31:54+00:00 http://www.anenglishmanscastle.com/archives/010370.html Energy and Economic Crises SOLVED! | Watts Up With That? This story is from the “you can’t make this stuff up” file. Some of our British cousins have figured out a way to solve it all. They have set up the One Million Jobs Caravan, as part of a “Campaign Against Climate Change” … I’m not sure how they plan to stop the climate from changing, but apparently it takes a million people to do it. To fight against CO2 emissions, the backers plan to get into fossil-fueled vehicles and drive, the lot of them, from city to city all around England and Scotland. And then back again.... Unfortunately the website seems to be down at the moment as I would love to read their pamphlet http://www.climate-change-jobs.org/sites/default/files/1MillionClimateJobs_2010.PDF explaining how creating one million unionised government jobs to do "green" things is going to rescue the economy and world. But I do note the date of the report is 2010 and it has taken them two years to organise a couple of caravans to publicise it. And haven't we learnt over the last two years how effective creating green jobs is?...... 10370@http://www.anenglishmanscastle.com/ Greenery 4 2012-05-15T06:43:34+00:00 http://www.anenglishmanscastle.com/archives/010369.html Whitehall gets seven weeks off for Olympics | The Times Civil servants have been told they can work from home for seven weeks during the Olympics, prompting incredulity from ministers, MPs and business leaders. Tens of thousands of civil servants based in Central London will be allowed to work from home from July 21 — six days before the opening ceremony. Flexible working arrangements will remain for the 15 days between the Olympic Games and the Paralympics, ending on September 9 after the second closing ceremony. On one hand having the bureaucrats lounging in their gardens with a laptop might prevent them interfering with the country's recovery on the other wtf?... 10369@http://www.anenglishmanscastle.com/ Olympics 2012-05-15T06:33:39+00:00 http://www.anenglishmanscastle.com/archives/010368.html "I was devastated to hear the news that my good friend and esteemed monitor engineer John 'Grubby' Callis had been diagnosed with prostate cancer, but relieved that it was discovered relatively early and that he had received fantastic treatment from all concerned. I immediately agreed to support him and perform at 'Concert at the Kings' on Saturday 26th May which Grubby has organised 'with a little help from his friends'. He has pulled out all the stops for what I know will be a fantastic show; after about 30 years in the music business he certainly knows what that demands, and has the expertise to put it together. If all goes well we hope to raise up to £50,000 for cancer charities. I will be playing some songs with the fabulous Kerry Ellis, and I'm looking forward to meeting some old friends with the SAS band including Midge Ure, Madeleine Belle, Chris Thompson, Tom Robinson, Patti Russo and the fantastic Fabba Girls. Plus a strong possibility of some other great and very well known artists who may surprise you all on the night, but you'll have to be there to see for yourselves! Cheers Bri" Secret special guests? I'm not allowed to say any names but trust me and buy a ticket....... 10368@http://www.anenglishmanscastle.com/ The Englishman 2 2012-05-11T17:14:36+00:00 http://www.anenglishmanscastle.com/archives/010367.html Whoops! I bet the original Olympic Flame wasn't allowed to be blown out... The Nazi Origins of the Olympic Flame Relay - Max Fisher - International - The Atlantic Though dressed up as an ancient Greek tradition, the torch relay ceremony was originally designed to further Hitler's nationalist propaganda.... 10367@http://www.anenglishmanscastle.com/ Olympics 2012-05-10T18:32:41+00:00 http://www.anenglishmanscastle.com/archives/010366.html Olympic Arctic art project Nowhereisland deserves to sink | Leo Hickman | Environment | guardian.co.uk Just what was the Arts Council thinking when it agreed back in 2009 to hand over £500,000 to the artist Alex Hartley in order for him and 18 volunteers to create Nowhereisland? The creative idea itself is actually rather captivating: find an Arctic island that has recently been exposed by melting ice and then break off some rocks to form a new "island nation" which can then be transported to the waters off the UK in time for the 2012 Olympics. During its conception, Hartley billed it as a "travelling embassy" intended to highlight issues such as climate change and land ownership.... So bad even Leo is against it! http://nowhereisland.org/ should be on the National Health as it is such an effective emetic... and there is more... I feel purged now.... 10366@http://www.anenglishmanscastle.com/ Olympics 2012-05-09T18:25:26+00:00 http://www.anenglishmanscastle.com/archives/010365.html Conservative thinktanks step up attacks against Obama's clean energy strategy | Environment | guardian.co.uk "These documents show for the first time that local Nimby anti-wind groups are co-ordinating and working with national fossil-fuel funded advocacy groups to wreck the wind industry," said Gabe Elsner, a co-director of the Checks and Balances, the accountability group which unearthed the proposal and other documents. Conspiracy! shouts a secretive group with undeclared funders. They claim to be "Holding government officials, lobbyists and corporate management accountable to the public" but reveal nothing about themselves.... 10365@http://www.anenglishmanscastle.com/ Greenery 4 2012-05-09T07:15:22+00:00 http://www.anenglishmanscastle.com/archives/010364.html Left brain good, right brain bad? I’m not so sure . . . | The Times Ben Mason In his recent book The Master and his Emissary, the neurologist, psychiatrist and philosopher Iain McGilchrist highlights some intriguing differences between the right and left hemispheres of the brain when it comes to certainty. The left-brain, it seems, demands it. Only the right-brain is adept at holding several ambiguous possibilities in suspension. So far, so good. ...Straight answers to questions are, after all, no bad thing. Or are they? There is a dark side to this drive for certainty. Unchecked, the left-brain rejects information that doesn’t fit with its accepted theory, is an expert at denial and has a penchant for delusional optimism.... Nuanced understanding and a circumspect position are signs of weakness. Take the “uncertainty” and “unprovenness” that climate sceptics assure us exists around climate science. No matter how patiently scientists talk of overwhelming likelihoods and near-total consensus, there’s a lingering sense that the sceptic has still won the argument.... Unreasonable demands for certainty are met with bogus claims of it. While happily disregarding inconvenient evidence, the left-brain not only shows exaggerated optimism about outcomes but also about its own ability.... Let’s suppose that today we are facing a set of unprecedented challenges. Reaching for the same old solutions won’t help; nor will denial.... If it is true that these challenges require new thinking, it could be that a move away from our sinister obsession with certainty is important. Of course decisions still need to be made, but it’s legitimate to make the best judgment on the evidence and the understanding that we have. So demanding boring old evidence is a left brain problem, but so it seems is Alarmism... One researcher studying head injuries writes: “Children with right-brain deficit disorder ignore task obstacles, accept impossible challenges, make grossly inadequate efforts and are stunned by the poor outcomes.” The left-brain is dogmatic, preferring to rely on theory rather than evidence. Researchers experimenting on split-brain sufferers showed them a series of lights, mainly green and occasionally red; the patients had to predict what came next. Those with access only to the right-brain adopted the most successful strategy of picking green every time; those stuck with the left developed complex theories and insisted upon their merit, despite much lower success. When the researchers then rigged the experiment, so that the guesses all turned... 10364@http://www.anenglishmanscastle.com/ Greenery 4 2012-05-05T07:31:00+00:00 http://www.anenglishmanscastle.com/archives/010363.html Joyce McMillan: Rulers ill at ease with Engerland - News - Scotsman.com RULING metropolitan elite are not only out of touch with the ‘provinces’, but find Englishness alarming too IT HAPPENED again, one evening last week. I’m in a bar in Edinburgh, chatting to a high-powered, Left-leaning woman from London about life and politics; the conversation turns towards Scotland’s independence referendum, and she begins to tell me that she is “not really English”. That she is English doesn’t seem in much doubt, to me; she was born there, she lives there, she has an English accent. Yet among the English people I meet – mostly, I suppose, creative or academic types on the centre-left of the political spectrum – this denial of the word “English” is so common as to be almost universal. As soon as the issue of identity comes up, they start talking about the Scottish granny, the Welsh roots, the Irish or Caribbean migrants a few generations back; it seems they have lived all their lives in England, without ever acknowledging to themselves that they belong there. So it’s hardly surprising that when they hear talk of the break-up of Britain, they experience it as a huge existential threat; it’s as if they were suddenly being forced to take up residence not in the vague borderless Britain of their minds, but in some “Engerland” that they would rather not think about, full of face-painted football fans with dodgy views on race. “Don’t leave us,” pleaded the woman in the bar, towards the end of the conversation. “We’ll be governed by the Tories for ever!” And when I protested that the English people, given their history, would hardly put up with an eternity of one-party rule, she shook her head sadly, as if my confidence was woefully misplaced.... ...Yet in the end, the cultural deafness of Britain’s metropolitan elites – their assumption that their identity is “normal”, and that all others are in some way irritating or suspect – is part of a much bigger picture of contempt for ordinary people in all their local diversity, and of sheer presumption that Westminster and Whitehall know best. It’s against that culture of contempt, and of arrogant government collusion with the self-interest of an overweening economic elite, that all the peoples of Britain now need to begin a long, democratic rebellion. And along with the continuing debate on Scottish independence,... 10363@http://www.anenglishmanscastle.com/ The Englishman 2 2012-05-04T08:54:20+00:00 http://www.anenglishmanscastle.com/archives/010362.html Get ready to join euro, says Mandelson | The Times Britain should be ready to join the euro within a decade, Lord Mandelson will say today when he calls for a referendum to reshape the UK’s relationship with Europe for the next generation. “A nation of ‘reluctant’ Europeans will have to confront a choice between taking part in greater integration, including joining the euro, or an uncertain future.” Staying outside such a bloc or quitting the European Union altogether would amount to the same thing, Lord Mandelson will say. Either way, Britain would have to meet EU standards to trade with Europe but would have little or no voice in defining them. The peer is also expected to say that the public needs to engage with what is at stake. He is the most senior Labour figure to back a referendum on Britain’s future relationship with Europe, arguing that the mandate secured by Edward Heath in the 1970s has run out. “It belongs to another time and another generation.”... 10362@http://www.anenglishmanscastle.com/ Europe 4 2012-05-04T07:40:28+00:00 http://www.anenglishmanscastle.com/archives/010361.html I see more death and less life — but I’m happy to get $120m for a Scream | The Times The seller was Petter Olsen, whose father was a friend of the artist. Mr Olsen grew up with the image hanging on the wall of his family farm south of Oslo. “The Scream for me shows the horrifying moment when man realises his impact on nature,” he said, as the hall emptied. He foresaw greenhouse gases triggering “feedback mechanisms that lie latent in the physics of nature”, leading to the doom of mankind. “More death, less life,” he said. “And very few lifeboats left as we go down.” On the other hand, he had just sold a painting for $120 million. “Yeah, I’m pleased with that,” he said.... 10361@http://www.anenglishmanscastle.com/ Greenery 4 2012-05-04T07:37:46+00:00 http://www.anenglishmanscastle.com/archives/010360.html Stick up for fags, booze and porn, you Liberals | The Times Philip Collins Alone of all the people in Downing Street at the time, I opposed the ban on smoking in public places. I derided the legal anomaly by which smoking would join flashing as one of those activities that are legal (indeed, rather fun) in private but illegal (and wrong) in public. I pointed out that most of the damage done by smoke happened in the home, not the pub. And I deplored the arrogant assumption of power. I have never smoked, but nothing makes me want to start more than the Government telling me that I have to stop. I never liked the Labour Methodism that tolerates spontaneous fun only so long as it is properly planned. I can’t abide the do-gooders who try to bully me into being better. Before you can say “leave me alone” you find the gentleman in Whitehall is giving you a nudge and, when the nudge doesn’t work, he’s following up with a smack. And if you still don’t listen, he uses the law. Conservatives are strangers to doubt about whether they have the right to govern your smaller pleasures and this is now a subject on which they are splitting from their Liberal Democrat partners in the coalition. Yesterday the Prime Minister hosted a summit on internet pornography at which these meddlesome instincts were on display. The Government is investigating what one insider has called “the Chinese option”, by which a device is installed in every new computer .... ...The desire to make everyone conform to your prejudice is the cachet of the authentic Conservative. Mr Cameron has bravely moved his party on issues such as gay marriage. But there is a streak of the socially severe magistrate about him too. There is a genuine chasm here between the top Conservative and the top Lib Dem. This is not exactly the high road to popularity for Mr Clegg. On a demolition day for his party in local government. I bet he will be delighted to be told that he should become the champion of lap dancing, tab smoking and binge drinking. But these are tests of his credentials as a liberal. The virtue of liberals in government is that they are there to stop conservatives from trying to tidy up the mess.... 10360@http://www.anenglishmanscastle.com/ UK Politics 6 2012-05-04T06:48:14+00:00 http://www.anenglishmanscastle.com/archives/010359.html Sea-level rises 'may not be as high as worst-case scenarios have predicted' | Environment | guardian.co.uk Jonathan Bamber, a glaciologist at the University of Bristol, and not part of the research team, said: "The study provides a lot of rich detail about the variability in ice sheet dynamics, but does not dramatically change our overall understanding. The new work shows the situation is not as bad as the worst possible case, but it is still serious for future sea level rise and is certainly more complex than many of the models suggest." Other recent satellite science has revealed complexities in other parts of the world, with the world's greatest peaks in the Himalayan mountain chain revealed as having lost no ice in the last decade. Another study showed the Karakoram glaciers as having grown over the last decade. However, the contribution to sea level rise of these and other mountain chains such as the Andes and Alps are dwarfed by Greenland and Antarctica and, globally, 443-629bn tonnes of meltwater are added to the world's oceans each year. This is raising sea level by about 1.5mm a year, in addition to the 2mm a year caused by expansion of the warming ocean. Earlier analyses of Greenland's glaciers found their speed has doubled in 10 years and were accelerating. Extrapolation of that doubling implied glacier loss in Greenland would drive up sea level by 9cm by 2100, leading to an overall rise of 80cm. Another extrapolation imagined a tenfold rise in glacier speed, leading to 47cm of sea level rise from Greenland and 2m overall. The new research shows glacier acceleration remains "well below" even the lower scenario. "A doubling in all glacier speeds was never a prediction for Greenland, it was a thought experiment, a "what if" scenario," said Bamber. It wasn't a prediction so it wasn't wrong. See.... 10359@http://www.anenglishmanscastle.com/ Greenery 4 2012-05-04T06:40:43+00:00