Has anyone read Henrich's 'The Secret of our Success'? It's a Harvard professor's argument that our collective social and cultural intelligence is at least as important a causal factor as natural selection in our ecological dominance.
I am halfway through it and finding it fascinating, but I don't have enough knowledge to critically assess his arguments, other than to have a vague feeling that he is picking and choosing research to favour his argument. Any evolutionary biologists around with a view on his claims?
Thanks.
No but at a hand-wavy level the prof is right. Natural selection is not responsible for war, agriculture or computers. They are different categories. As my old psychology professor put it – do you explain someone signing their name in terms of neurons and muscles or in terms of gas bills and banks?
Agreed, but he pushes the argument further - with some frankly fascinating anecdotes as well as references to lots of studies - to claim that culture and genes co-influence one another (rather than just culture affecting our behaviour).
One anecdote that sticks in the mind: human ability to digest lactose is so unevenly distributed globally because of the uneven development of cheese production. Whilst milk has high lactose content, (most) cheese doesn't, so cultures that discovered how to make cheese at the same time as they tried to digest milk never favoured the mutations that allow us Europeans (and some west Africans) to digest milk as adults. (We worked out how to make cheese much later on).
The most surprising thing (to me) is that the ability to digest lactose can vary hugely within small geographical areas, depending on when the cultures in question discovered and implemented cheese production.
Well I was fascinated, anyway.
And that too is natural selection. A gene mutation which enabled the ancestors of people in those areas to out compete those who did not have that gene.
Agreed on both your posts. I phrased my first poorly - it should have read "our collective social and cultural intelligence is at least as important a causal factor as genetic mutations in our ecological dominance." He argued that culture and genes co-evolve.
His point about lactose tolerance is that the gene mutation was selected or not depending on the prevailing culture at the time, and so natural selection can be culture-specific, rather than species-wide. I'm insufficiently well versed in the science to understand whether his point is (a) not true (b) obvious or (c) interestingly controversial. He claims that other evolutionary biologists tend to see intra-species culture as too ephemeral to impact on natural selection in the long-term.
I think (and I am not an expert nor have I read the book) that it is true, not obvious, and while not interestingly controversial, certainly interesting.
Natural selection is absolutely engrossing. I didn't particularly enjoy biology at school and dropped it as soon as I could in favour of physics and chemistry. It was only some time later I realised that in natural selection, biology actually has its own unified field of everything and it is much more graspable than anything which comes close in physics. It is so elegant and simple - yet every real world example of it is fascinating.
Sending British offenders overseas to serve their sentence.
Sounds barmy to me.
Prison is punishment and rehabilitation. But part of that would be family visits. This would unduly penalise prisoners family members and how does it help rehabilitation.
Sounds a bit ‘back of a fag packet’ to me.
Yes agreed. On the other hand we should be trying harder to have foreign nationals serving their sentences in their country of origin. And if that turns out to be less salubrious accommodation , well, I guess I can cope with that.
But that's not what this policy is about. This policy is about sending UK nationals serving their sentences overseas because... it sounds cruel???
Sending British offenders overseas to serve their sentence.
Sounds barmy to me.
Prison is punishment and rehabilitation. But part of that would be family visits. This would unduly penalise prisoners family members and how does it help rehabilitation.
Sounds a bit ‘back of a fag packet’ to me.
Once all the asylum seekers have been sent home, there will be plenty of empty hotels. HMP Epping will hold a few prisoners.
Convert that hotel outside Aberdeen into a prison - Skean Dhu??
From what I remember of it, reoffending in Scotland will drop to zero.
Water is treated differently from the other utilities. You can be disconnected from the power and gas lines (subject to a Magistrate agreeing) but it is a criminal offence to cut off a water supply. And since it is so different, why was it privatised in the first place?
And as customers, we can choose who to buy our gas and leccy from. Poor service or rocketing prices? Shop around. Dodgy suppliers go out of business, and somebody else steps in.
With water, I have no choice but to buy from Yorkshire Water. Privatised monopolies are just crazy.
Privatisation wasn't about your choices.
Privatisation was about the choices of the firms, to either end pollution (and end fines) or to continue with pollution and continue to get fined.
Privatisation worked. Our water has been cleaned up immeasurably post-privatisation.
WTAF?
Well I'm not sure, but what Bart says passesthe sniff test. British rivers were absolutely foul when I was growing up. Dead. And now you get fish in the Mersey and people swim in Salford Quays.
The Water Act set out standards. But that could have been set out whilst still in public ownership.
But after the assets (land and real estate) were stripped by the owners and the Companies could no longer afford to both operate their water treatment facilities and pay the shareholders their bonuses, they started pumping sewerage into the rivers contrary to acceptable levels, and water systems for both the collection of waste water and the distribution of clean water (the losses via leakage is phenomenal) were seldom properly maintained and updated.
The fact that you couldn't swim in a river, then you could, and now you can't, does not suggest lasting progress.
If your argument is party political, blame the failure on Steve Reed. Feargal Sharkey has today asked for his resignation.
I'm not conflat at all. All I'm saying is that rivers seem cleaner than in the early 80s.
They were. All sorts of industrial effluent was pumped into rivers, streams and canals in the 1970s and 80s, that was stopped. Now the rovers are once again filthy because the water companies are pumping all kinds of e-coli laden untreated effluent into your local river and often above regulatory limits.
So fine them.
If they were in public ownership that would be meaningless, since they could pollute to their hearts content since fines are just a Treasury accounting trick that mean nothing.
But they're not, they're in the private sector, so it works. They have teeth. Fine them. If they don't clean up their act, feel free to fine them enough they go bankrupt. That's the market working.
The law changed. Factories, like tanneries could no longer pump industrial effluent into rivers. The Environmental Protection of 1990 also came onto force, re; the prevention of industrial pollution and statutory nuisance.
There were supposed to be safeguards in place to prevent disease ridden sewage being pumped into rivers by privatised water companies. That went by the way in recent years.
I've been away for several days. Where are we with Afghani immigrant scandal? Is it civil war yet?
Oddly, like dressgate and the Chagos Islands, it's turned out not to have the same traction with the public as some on PB thought.
Yes, that's why Labour's polling is at unprecedentedly appalling levels, and Starmer's polling, in particular, is so far down the toilet it's re-emerged at the Barking Outfall
It's all because "none of these issues have any traction with the public"
I assume lots of comments like this reflect the fact that other posters' media preference of choice aren't talking about these issues.
Come to a pub in the countryside and the levels of disquiet at this government are far, far higher than under Sunak.
Yes, it's so stupid it's insulting
But then, it's @bondegezou so that's a given. He probably spends 19 hours a day with the two other people left on Bluesky
Water is treated differently from the other utilities. You can be disconnected from the power and gas lines (subject to a Magistrate agreeing) but it is a criminal offence to cut off a water supply. And since it is so different, why was it privatised in the first place?
And as customers, we can choose who to buy our gas and leccy from. Poor service or rocketing prices? Shop around. Dodgy suppliers go out of business, and somebody else steps in.
With water, I have no choice but to buy from Yorkshire Water. Privatised monopolies are just crazy.
Privatisation wasn't about your choices.
Privatisation was about the choices of the firms, to either end pollution (and end fines) or to continue with pollution and continue to get fined.
Privatisation worked. Our water has been cleaned up immeasurably post-privatisation.
WTAF?
Well I'm not sure, but what Bart says passesthe sniff test. British rivers were absolutely foul when I was growing up. Dead. And now you get fish in the Mersey and people swim in Salford Quays.
The Water Act set out standards. But that could have been set out whilst still in public ownership.
But after the assets (land and real estate) were stripped by the owners and the Companies could no longer afford to both operate their water treatment facilities and pay the shareholders their bonuses, they started pumping sewerage into the rivers contrary to acceptable levels, and water systems for both the collection of waste water and the distribution of clean water (the losses via leakage is phenomenal) were seldom properly maintained and updated.
The fact that you couldn't swim in a river, then you could, and now you can't, does not suggest lasting progress.
If your argument is party political, blame the failure on Steve Reed. Feargal Sharkey has today asked for his resignation.
I think we have multiple issues. We now have much better data on the condition of the rivers through monitoring and reporting. I believe that many of our rivers in the middle of the last century were functionally dead - industrial run off, sewage etc. I can recall stories of 'first salmon seen in the river X' as things are massively better now. And yet public perception is that things are worse, and I think its the measurement and the reporting of such that is misleading. Plus some very bad examples of pollution (often linked to heavy rain causing overflows).
As a society we have been quick to urbanise areas and concrete over drives etc. This then adds to the run off issues in heavy rain. Add in some climate disruption with more frequent and heavier storms, add in more people and we are where we are.
I believe that our rivers are vastly better than they were, but we need to be better still. But Bart's comment does indeed pass the sniff test on this regard.
As someone who rows in the tidal Thames (Tideway)
You've got two problems passing each other. Industrial chemical pollution has essentially vanished.
The Thames is now full of wildlife. You've got seals at Hammersmith, herons, salmon the works.
The other issue is that expanding London (population) has reached the limits on the major structure of the sewer system. The Tideway Tunnel (AKA Super Sewer) is helping with that, but will not completely stop sewage discharges.
The Sewage discharges have always been there - they are what happens when the system overloads. They have been there since the system was built - pre Bazalgette.
So you have one issue that has vanished as another has risen to prominence. The actual problem is No Infrastructure (Livingstone blocked reservoirs and a desalinisation plant, for example) multiplied by the issue of runoff rain water being directed into the sewers.
Interestingly, the Thames is generally less polluted than many other European capital city rivers. The Seine, for example.
Hence the old joke:
"River swimming in Paris? That would be in Seine!"
I've been away for several days. Where are we with Afghani immigrant scandal? Is it civil war yet?
Oddly, like dressgate and the Chagos Islands, it's turned out not to have the same traction with the public as some on PB thought.
Yes, that's why Labour's polling is at unprecedentedly appalling levels, and Starmer's polling, in particular, is so far down the toilet it's re-emerged at the Barking Outfall
It's all because "none of these issues have any traction with the public"
I assume lots of comments like this reflect the fact that other posters' media preference of choice aren't talking about these issues.
Come to a pub in the countryside and the levels of disquiet at this government are far, far higher than under Sunak.
I would be wary of using countryside pubs as a barometer of opinion. You might just as well go stand on Primrose Hill.
Sending British offenders overseas to serve their sentence.
Sounds barmy to me.
Prison is punishment and rehabilitation. But part of that would be family visits. This would unduly penalise prisoners family members and how does it help rehabilitation.
Sounds a bit ‘back of a fag packet’ to me.
We are not allowed to do anything that our judges seem infringes on the right to a family life. And since we have a ton of bleeding heart liberal judges who put foreign rapists above victims we are forever hamstring against any policy that would be an actual deterrent.
Water is treated differently from the other utilities. You can be disconnected from the power and gas lines (subject to a Magistrate agreeing) but it is a criminal offence to cut off a water supply. And since it is so different, why was it privatised in the first place?
And as customers, we can choose who to buy our gas and leccy from. Poor service or rocketing prices? Shop around. Dodgy suppliers go out of business, and somebody else steps in.
With water, I have no choice but to buy from Yorkshire Water. Privatised monopolies are just crazy.
Privatisation wasn't about your choices.
Privatisation was about the choices of the firms, to either end pollution (and end fines) or to continue with pollution and continue to get fined.
Privatisation worked. Our water has been cleaned up immeasurably post-privatisation.
WTAF?
Well I'm not sure, but what Bart says passesthe sniff test. British rivers were absolutely foul when I was growing up. Dead. And now you get fish in the Mersey and people swim in Salford Quays.
The Water Act set out standards. But that could have been set out whilst still in public ownership.
But after the assets (land and real estate) were stripped by the owners and the Companies could no longer afford to both operate their water treatment facilities and pay the shareholders their bonuses, they started pumping sewerage into the rivers contrary to acceptable levels, and water systems for both the collection of waste water and the distribution of clean water (the losses via leakage is phenomenal) were seldom properly maintained and updated.
The fact that you couldn't swim in a river, then you could, and now you can't, does not suggest lasting progress.
If you argument is party political, blame the failure on Steve Reed. Feargal Sharkey has today asked for his resignation.
Barty and you are conflat
We had regulations pre-privatisation. We had standards pre-privatisation.
The regulations were routinely flouted and the standards weren't enforced.
The state-owned firms were theoretically fined pre-privatisation for flouting the rules, but it was meaningless since it was all ran from the Treasury anyway and the Treasury didn't want to invest in infrastructure (plus ca change!).
By privatising the firms the regulations were given teeth. Get fined, that fine comes from your bottom line.
Would you like to go back to pre-privatisation levels of pollution?
Regulation was by the NRA or local authorises. The Environment Agency came into effect in September 1996. More robust regulation would correspond to your dates.
Sending British offenders overseas to serve their sentence.
Sounds barmy to me.
Prison is punishment and rehabilitation. But part of that would be family visits. This would unduly penalise prisoners family members and how does it help rehabilitation.
Sounds a bit ‘back of a fag packet’ to me.
Yes, if I were writing on Nige's fag packet, it would be for foreign prisoners only. Take a convict who is, say, Albanian. Pay the Albanian prison service to lock up said Albanian wrong'un in an Albanian prison eating Albanian food and visited by his Albanian family. Cheaper than Rwanda and meets a lot of Reform tick-boxes. Then do the same for the next country on the list of foreign-born prisoners and work down the list.
Farage promises to build “Nightingale prisons” to house 12,400 inmates, send 10,000 of the most serious offenders to overseas jails, including in El Salvador and recruit 30,000 more police officers in five years.
He should have a whole bunch of primary legislation prepared in his top drawer to be run through parliament if he wants to make these sorts of changes & a plan to get it all through the Lords (Whether that's through abolition, packing or tieing everything to money bills)
Must admit though given experience of gov't in recent years I'd be pleasently surprised if he's done the prep. Of course if he doesn't get a majority and is in a minority administration that's another matter.
He won't have done a single thing.
Here's a thought experiment.
You are Nigel Farage and it's April 2029. You're riding high enough in the polls.
You like the adulation, of course. And who wouldn't like the title PM and the victory over all those little lanyard people? But you also know that being PM would be hellish, hard work and cause people not to like you. And, bluntly, Reform aren't going to be ready.
(Because I think that NF has that degree of self-awareness that BoJo and DJT don't have. Anyway, it's a thought experiment.)
What do you do? Go on proper national TV and drop such a clanger that you throw the election?
I think he would be immune. Unless he reverted to Islam or something else that wouldn't happen.
Sending British offenders overseas to serve their sentence.
Sounds barmy to me.
Prison is punishment and rehabilitation. But part of that would be family visits. This would unduly penalise prisoners family members and how does it help rehabilitation.
Sounds a bit ‘back of a fag packet’ to me.
We are not allowed to do anything that our judges seem infringes on the right to a family life. And since we have a ton of bleeding heart liberal judges who put foreign rapists above victims we are forever hamstring against any policy that would be an actual deterrent.
We are trapped.
Sack all the judges and half the lawyers. Start again. Bosh
The alternative is actual revolution/civil war - we are heading that way. But a firm alt-right government should prevent that. I hope
So it was finally time to say goodbye to sun-drenched Norway, and move on to Lapland, the Realm of the Insects. Where currently it is warmer still.
Although only slightly to the south, while Tromso had five more days without sunsets to enjoy, here the sun is due to dip below the horizon, for an hour or so, at 0050.
The photo was taken in Finland but the background hill to the left is in Sweden and to the right is in Norway. Somewhere in the middle distance there is a cairn where all three meet, but I didn't have time to hike out to it. There's nothing much out there, as you would expect, and the road border was unmanned. But had tons of cameras on the Norwegian side.
Russia is only a few hours away, so hopefully Putin has enough on his plate and Finland will stay safe.
Reform's crime plans today are said, by Reform, to cost £17 billion or so over 5 years. And it is good they are talking money in these ways.
But their overall image is about small state and low tax, while also in fact talking large state which inevitably means tax at or above current levels.
It is not sensible to expect them to cut £X00 billion from total managed expenditure (TME) in their first year, but it is realistic to ask for some longer term projections. If they don't exist or are not going to we can be clear they are not serious.
Obviously all projections are about an unknown future, but the OBR expects this government to make 5 year projections about such matters, while aware that black swans happen, and about debt to GDP ratio.
So, two questions I have not seen Reform tackle: By how many % points do they plan TME to fall as a % of GDP in the fifth year of a Reform government
and
By how many % points to they plan debt to fall as a % of GDP in the same five year period?
Even Leon will want to know whether they are a low spend and low tax party or a high spend and high tax party. I suggest they are in fact a high spend party, and will continue to be. As they may be governing, it now matters.
Sending British offenders overseas to serve their sentence.
Sounds barmy to me.
Prison is punishment and rehabilitation. But part of that would be family visits. This would unduly penalise prisoners family members and how does it help rehabilitation.
Sounds a bit ‘back of a fag packet’ to me.
We are not allowed to do anything that our judges seem infringes on the right to a family life. And since we have a ton of bleeding heart liberal judges who put foreign rapists above victims we are forever hamstring against any policy that would be an actual deterrent.
We are trapped.
I think too many Telegraph (or Mail or social media) articles may have distorted your sense of what is actually happening. About 4,000 foreign offenders were deported in 2023. The Labour government has increased the number, with a 14% year-on-year rise to June 2025 and very recent new rules to deport more: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/foreign-prisoners-to-be-deported-sooner
So it was finally time to say goodbye to sun-drenched Norway, and move on to Lapland, the Realm of the Insects. Where currently it is warmer still.
Although only slightly to the south, while Tromso had five more days without sunsets to enjoy, here the sun is due to dip below the horizon, for an hour or so, at 0050.
The photo was taken in Finland but the background hill to the left is in Sweden and to the right is in Norway. Somewhere in the middle distance there is a cairn where all three meet, but I didn't have time to hike out to it. There's nothing much out there, as you would expect, and the road border was unmanned. But had tons of cameras on the Norwegian side.
Russia is only a few hours away, so hopefully Putin has enough on his plate and Finland will stay safe.
Whereabouts in Finland are you staying? I was there in winter a couple of years back and look forward to hearing your views on what it is like in summer.
Water is treated differently from the other utilities. You can be disconnected from the power and gas lines (subject to a Magistrate agreeing) but it is a criminal offence to cut off a water supply. And since it is so different, why was it privatised in the first place?
And as customers, we can choose who to buy our gas and leccy from. Poor service or rocketing prices? Shop around. Dodgy suppliers go out of business, and somebody else steps in.
With water, I have no choice but to buy from Yorkshire Water. Privatised monopolies are just crazy.
Privatisation wasn't about your choices.
Privatisation was about the choices of the firms, to either end pollution (and end fines) or to continue with pollution and continue to get fined.
Privatisation worked. Our water has been cleaned up immeasurably post-privatisation.
WTAF?
Well I'm not sure, but what Bart says passesthe sniff test. British rivers were absolutely foul when I was growing up. Dead. And now you get fish in the Mersey and people swim in Salford Quays.
The Water Act set out standards. But that could have been set out whilst still in public ownership.
But after the assets (land and real estate) were stripped by the owners and the Companies could no longer afford to both operate their water treatment facilities and pay the shareholders their bonuses, they started pumping sewerage into the rivers contrary to acceptable levels, and water systems for both the collection of waste water and the distribution of clean water (the losses via leakage is phenomenal) were seldom properly maintained and updated.
The fact that you couldn't swim in a river, then you could, and now you can't, does not suggest lasting progress.
If you argument is party political, blame the failure on Steve Reed. Feargal Sharkey has today asked for his resignation.
Barty and you are conflat
We had regulations pre-privatisation. We had standards pre-privatisation.
The regulations were routinely flouted and the standards weren't enforced.
The state-owned firms were theoretically fined pre-privatisation for flouting the rules, but it was meaningless since it was all ran from the Treasury anyway and the Treasury didn't want to invest in infrastructure (plus ca change!).
By privatising the firms the regulations were given teeth. Get fined, that fine comes from your bottom line.
Would you like to go back to pre-privatisation levels of pollution?
Regulation was by the NRA or local authorises. The Environment Agency came into effect in September 1996. More robust regulation would correspond to your dates.
Regulations that can be enforced on private firms as a firm has a profit motive not to be fined.
Regulations being imposed on state-owned firms don't mean much if the state-owned firm flouts the regulations since fines then mean nothing.
Regulations existed pre-privatisation, they were just ignored since there were no consequences to ignoring them. Take away the profit motive of avoiding fines and why should a state-owned firm not lapse back into just ignoring regulations? Especially when the Treasury does not wish to invest.
Reform's crime plans today are said, by Reform, to cost £17 billion or so over 5 years. And it is good they are talking money in these ways.
But their overall image is about small state and low tax, while also in fact talking large state which inevitably means tax at or above current levels.
It is not sensible to expect them to cut £X00 billion from total managed expenditure (TME) in their first year, but it is realistic to ask for some longer term projections. If they don't exist or are not going to we can be clear they are not serious.
Obviously all projections are about an unknown future, but the OBR expects this government to make 5 year projections about such matters, while aware that black swans happen, and about debt to GDP ratio.
So, two questions I have not seen Reform tackle: By how many % points do they plan TME to fall as a % of GDP in the fifth year of a Reform government
and
By how many % points to they plan debt to fall as a % of GDP in the same five year period?
Even Leon will want to know whether they are a low spend and low tax party or a high spend and high tax party. I suggest they are in fact a high spend party, and will continue to be. As they may be governing, it now matters.
Reform are a low tax, high spend party because that is what their supporters won’t and reality isn’t something those voters care about
Water is treated differently from the other utilities. You can be disconnected from the power and gas lines (subject to a Magistrate agreeing) but it is a criminal offence to cut off a water supply. And since it is so different, why was it privatised in the first place?
And as customers, we can choose who to buy our gas and leccy from. Poor service or rocketing prices? Shop around. Dodgy suppliers go out of business, and somebody else steps in.
With water, I have no choice but to buy from Yorkshire Water. Privatised monopolies are just crazy.
Privatisation wasn't about your choices.
Privatisation was about the choices of the firms, to either end pollution (and end fines) or to continue with pollution and continue to get fined.
Privatisation worked. Our water has been cleaned up immeasurably post-privatisation.
WTAF?
Well I'm not sure, but what Bart says passesthe sniff test. British rivers were absolutely foul when I was growing up. Dead. And now you get fish in the Mersey and people swim in Salford Quays.
The Water Act set out standards. But that could have been set out whilst still in public ownership.
But after the assets (land and real estate) were stripped by the owners and the Companies could no longer afford to both operate their water treatment facilities and pay the shareholders their bonuses, they started pumping sewerage into the rivers contrary to acceptable levels, and water systems for both the collection of waste water and the distribution of clean water (the losses via leakage is phenomenal) were seldom properly maintained and updated.
The fact that you couldn't swim in a river, then you could, and now you can't, does not suggest lasting progress.
If you argument is party political, blame the failure on Steve Reed. Feargal Sharkey has today asked for his resignation.
Barty and you are conflat
We had regulations pre-privatisation. We had standards pre-privatisation.
The regulations were routinely flouted and the standards weren't enforced.
The state-owned firms were theoretically fined pre-privatisation for flouting the rules, but it was meaningless since it was all ran from the Treasury anyway and the Treasury didn't want to invest in infrastructure (plus ca change!).
By privatising the firms the regulations were given teeth. Get fined, that fine comes from your bottom line.
Would you like to go back to pre-privatisation levels of pollution?
Regulation was by the NRA or local authorises. The Environment Agency came into effect in September 1996. More robust regulation would correspond to your dates.
Regulations that can be enforced on private firms as a firm has a profit motive not to be fined.
Regulations being imposed on state-owned firms don't mean much if the state-owned firm flouts the regulations since fines then mean nothing.
Regulations existed pre-privatisation, they were just ignored since there were no consequences to ignoring them. Take away the profit motive of avoiding fines and why should a state-owned firm not lapse back into just ignoring regulations? Especially when the Treasury does not wish to invest.
Fines still mean something if your budget is affected. But, yes, they may not have the same impact... but you can introduce different enforcement mechanisms.
Water is treated differently from the other utilities. You can be disconnected from the power and gas lines (subject to a Magistrate agreeing) but it is a criminal offence to cut off a water supply. And since it is so different, why was it privatised in the first place?
And as customers, we can choose who to buy our gas and leccy from. Poor service or rocketing prices? Shop around. Dodgy suppliers go out of business, and somebody else steps in.
With water, I have no choice but to buy from Yorkshire Water. Privatised monopolies are just crazy.
Privatisation wasn't about your choices.
Privatisation was about the choices of the firms, to either end pollution (and end fines) or to continue with pollution and continue to get fined.
Privatisation worked. Our water has been cleaned up immeasurably post-privatisation.
WTAF?
Well I'm not sure, but what Bart says passesthe sniff test. British rivers were absolutely foul when I was growing up. Dead. And now you get fish in the Mersey and people swim in Salford Quays.
The Water Act set out standards. But that could have been set out whilst still in public ownership.
But after the assets (land and real estate) were stripped by the owners and the Companies could no longer afford to both operate their water treatment facilities and pay the shareholders their bonuses, they started pumping sewerage into the rivers contrary to acceptable levels, and water systems for both the collection of waste water and the distribution of clean water (the losses via leakage is phenomenal) were seldom properly maintained and updated.
The fact that you couldn't swim in a river, then you could, and now you can't, does not suggest lasting progress.
If you argument is party political, blame the failure on Steve Reed. Feargal Sharkey has today asked for his resignation.
Barty and you are conflat
We had regulations pre-privatisation. We had standards pre-privatisation.
The regulations were routinely flouted and the standards weren't enforced.
The state-owned firms were theoretically fined pre-privatisation for flouting the rules, but it was meaningless since it was all ran from the Treasury anyway and the Treasury didn't want to invest in infrastructure (plus ca change!).
By privatising the firms the regulations were given teeth. Get fined, that fine comes from your bottom line.
Would you like to go back to pre-privatisation levels of pollution?
Regulation was by the NRA or local authorises. The Environment Agency came into effect in September 1996. More robust regulation would correspond to your dates.
Regulations that can be enforced on private firms as a firm has a profit motive not to be fined.
Regulations being imposed on state-owned firms don't mean much if the state-owned firm flouts the regulations since fines then mean nothing.
Regulations existed pre-privatisation, they were just ignored since there were no consequences to ignoring them. Take away the profit motive of avoiding fines and why should a state-owned firm not lapse back into just ignoring regulations? Especially when the Treasury does not wish to invest.
If you check out the biggest serial polluters on the EA web pages you will find they are the water companies, and not just recently. A fifty grand fine would barely trouble a CEO's monthly expense account total.
Reform's crime plans today are said, by Reform, to cost £17 billion or so over 5 years. And it is good they are talking money in these ways.
But their overall image is about small state and low tax, while also in fact talking large state which inevitably means tax at or above current levels.
It is not sensible to expect them to cut £X00 billion from total managed expenditure (TME) in their first year, but it is realistic to ask for some longer term projections. If they don't exist or are not going to we can be clear they are not serious.
Obviously all projections are about an unknown future, but the OBR expects this government to make 5 year projections about such matters, while aware that black swans happen, and about debt to GDP ratio.
So, two questions I have not seen Reform tackle: By how many % points do they plan TME to fall as a % of GDP in the fifth year of a Reform government
and
By how many % points to they plan debt to fall as a % of GDP in the same five year period?
Even Leon will want to know whether they are a low spend and low tax party or a high spend and high tax party. I suggest they are in fact a high spend party, and will continue to be. As they may be governing, it now matters.
At the moment, as I see it, they're simply saying that they'll cut Government waste. So far, and to be fair it's still very early days, they haven't found much to cut in the County Councils, although, if we're being fair, any savings probably won't be individually large. More likely to be a lot of small ones.
I do wonder, looking at what's going on round here, whether cutting out Parish Councils might be an option.
Reform's crime plans today are said, by Reform, to cost £17 billion or so over 5 years. And it is good they are talking money in these ways.
But their overall image is about small state and low tax, while also in fact talking large state which inevitably means tax at or above current levels.
It is not sensible to expect them to cut £X00 billion from total managed expenditure (TME) in their first year, but it is realistic to ask for some longer term projections. If they don't exist or are not going to we can be clear they are not serious.
Obviously all projections are about an unknown future, but the OBR expects this government to make 5 year projections about such matters, while aware that black swans happen, and about debt to GDP ratio.
So, two questions I have not seen Reform tackle: By how many % points do they plan TME to fall as a % of GDP in the fifth year of a Reform government
and
By how many % points to they plan debt to fall as a % of GDP in the same five year period?
Even Leon will want to know whether they are a low spend and low tax party or a high spend and high tax party. I suggest they are in fact a high spend party, and will continue to be. As they may be governing, it now matters.
Reform are a low tax, high spend party because that is what their supporters won’t and reality isn’t something those voters care about
I did snort out loud in derision when I was in the car and heard Farage say he would cut crime in half.
Water is treated differently from the other utilities. You can be disconnected from the power and gas lines (subject to a Magistrate agreeing) but it is a criminal offence to cut off a water supply. And since it is so different, why was it privatised in the first place?
And as customers, we can choose who to buy our gas and leccy from. Poor service or rocketing prices? Shop around. Dodgy suppliers go out of business, and somebody else steps in.
With water, I have no choice but to buy from Yorkshire Water. Privatised monopolies are just crazy.
Privatisation wasn't about your choices.
Privatisation was about the choices of the firms, to either end pollution (and end fines) or to continue with pollution and continue to get fined.
Privatisation worked. Our water has been cleaned up immeasurably post-privatisation.
WTAF?
Well I'm not sure, but what Bart says passesthe sniff test. British rivers were absolutely foul when I was growing up. Dead. And now you get fish in the Mersey and people swim in Salford Quays.
The Water Act set out standards. But that could have been set out whilst still in public ownership.
But after the assets (land and real estate) were stripped by the owners and the Companies could no longer afford to both operate their water treatment facilities and pay the shareholders their bonuses, they started pumping sewerage into the rivers contrary to acceptable levels, and water systems for both the collection of waste water and the distribution of clean water (the losses via leakage is phenomenal) were seldom properly maintained and updated.
The fact that you couldn't swim in a river, then you could, and now you can't, does not suggest lasting progress.
If you argument is party political, blame the failure on Steve Reed. Feargal Sharkey has today asked for his resignation.
Barty and you are conflat
We had regulations pre-privatisation. We had standards pre-privatisation.
The regulations were routinely flouted and the standards weren't enforced.
The state-owned firms were theoretically fined pre-privatisation for flouting the rules, but it was meaningless since it was all ran from the Treasury anyway and the Treasury didn't want to invest in infrastructure (plus ca change!).
By privatising the firms the regulations were given teeth. Get fined, that fine comes from your bottom line.
Would you like to go back to pre-privatisation levels of pollution?
Regulation was by the NRA or local authorises. The Environment Agency came into effect in September 1996. More robust regulation would correspond to your dates.
Regulations that can be enforced on private firms as a firm has a profit motive not to be fined.
Regulations being imposed on state-owned firms don't mean much if the state-owned firm flouts the regulations since fines then mean nothing.
Regulations existed pre-privatisation, they were just ignored since there were no consequences to ignoring them. Take away the profit motive of avoiding fines and why should a state-owned firm not lapse back into just ignoring regulations? Especially when the Treasury does not wish to invest.
If you check out the biggest serial polluters on the EA web pages you will find they are the water companies, and not just recently. A fifty grand fine would barely trouble a CEO's monthly expense account total.
Which is why there should be a robust mechanism that gives a profit motive not to be fined.
A fifty grand fine once-off may not be troubling. A £100k fine every time you do a discharge might be extremely troubling.
You have to get the balance right and ensure the teeth are sharp enough to bite. There's no bite though without the profit motive if a state-owned firm simply doesn't give a shit.
So it was finally time to say goodbye to sun-drenched Norway, and move on to Lapland, the Realm of the Insects. Where currently it is warmer still.
Although only slightly to the south, while Tromso had five more days without sunsets to enjoy, here the sun is due to dip below the horizon, for an hour or so, at 0050.
The photo was taken in Finland but the background hill to the left is in Sweden and to the right is in Norway. Somewhere in the middle distance there is a cairn where all three meet, but I didn't have time to hike out to it. There's nothing much out there, as you would expect, and the road border was unmanned. But had tons of cameras on the Norwegian side.
Russia is only a few hours away, so hopefully Putin has enough on his plate and Finland will stay safe.
Whereabouts in Finland are you staying? I was there in winter a couple of years back and look forward to hearing your views on what it is like in summer.
At the moment I am in a place called Hetta, but will be working my way south. Southern Finland is flat with trees (a peneplain ground flat by an ice sheet, for those of us who remember our geography from school); northern Finland is rolling hills, so as well as the trees on either side of the road, you get to see more trees on the hills to the sides, and ahead. With the occasional lake. And, so far, one wandering reindeer.
Currently, it's much hotter than usual, and there are swarms of insects everywhere. I picked up a couple of growing bites just going from car to hotel.
Sending British offenders overseas to serve their sentence.
Sounds barmy to me.
Prison is punishment and rehabilitation. But part of that would be family visits. This would unduly penalise prisoners family members and how does it help rehabilitation.
Sounds a bit ‘back of a fag packet’ to me.
Yes, if I were writing on Nige's fag packet, it would be for foreign prisoners only. Take a convict who is, say, Albanian. Pay the Albanian prison service to lock up said Albanian wrong'un in an Albanian prison eating Albanian food and visited by his Albanian family. Cheaper than Rwanda and meets a lot of Reform tick-boxes. Then do the same for the next country on the list of foreign-born prisoners and work down the list.
Water is treated differently from the other utilities. You can be disconnected from the power and gas lines (subject to a Magistrate agreeing) but it is a criminal offence to cut off a water supply. And since it is so different, why was it privatised in the first place?
And as customers, we can choose who to buy our gas and leccy from. Poor service or rocketing prices? Shop around. Dodgy suppliers go out of business, and somebody else steps in.
With water, I have no choice but to buy from Yorkshire Water. Privatised monopolies are just crazy.
Privatisation wasn't about your choices.
Privatisation was about the choices of the firms, to either end pollution (and end fines) or to continue with pollution and continue to get fined.
Privatisation worked. Our water has been cleaned up immeasurably post-privatisation.
WTAF?
Well I'm not sure, but what Bart says passesthe sniff test. British rivers were absolutely foul when I was growing up. Dead. And now you get fish in the Mersey and people swim in Salford Quays.
The Water Act set out standards. But that could have been set out whilst still in public ownership.
But after the assets (land and real estate) were stripped by the owners and the Companies could no longer afford to both operate their water treatment facilities and pay the shareholders their bonuses, they started pumping sewerage into the rivers contrary to acceptable levels, and water systems for both the collection of waste water and the distribution of clean water (the losses via leakage is phenomenal) were seldom properly maintained and updated.
The fact that you couldn't swim in a river, then you could, and now you can't, does not suggest lasting progress.
If your argument is party political, blame the failure on Steve Reed. Feargal Sharkey has today asked for his resignation.
I think we have multiple issues. We now have much better data on the condition of the rivers through monitoring and reporting. I believe that many of our rivers in the middle of the last century were functionally dead - industrial run off, sewage etc. I can recall stories of 'first salmon seen in the river X' as things are massively better now. And yet public perception is that things are worse, and I think its the measurement and the reporting of such that is misleading. Plus some very bad examples of pollution (often linked to heavy rain causing overflows).
As a society we have been quick to urbanise areas and concrete over drives etc. This then adds to the run off issues in heavy rain. Add in some climate disruption with more frequent and heavier storms, add in more people and we are where we are.
I believe that our rivers are vastly better than they were, but we need to be better still. But Bart's comment does indeed pass the sniff test on this regard.
As someone who rows in the tidal Thames (Tideway)
You've got two problems passing each other. Industrial chemical pollution has essentially vanished.
The Thames is now full of wildlife. You've got seals at Hammersmith, herons, salmon the works.
The other issue is that expanding London (population) has reached the limits on the major structure of the sewer system. The Tideway Tunnel (AKA Super Sewer) is helping with that, but will not completely stop sewage discharges.
The Sewage discharges have always been there - they are what happens when the system overloads. They have been there since the system was built - pre Bazalgette.
So you have one issue that has vanished as another has risen to prominence. The actual problem is No Infrastructure (Livingstone blocked reservoirs and a desalinisation plant, for example) multiplied by the issue of runoff rain water being directed into the sewers.
Interestingly, the Thames is generally less polluted than many other European capital city rivers. The Seine, for example.
Pharmaceutical (sp) pollution is unmonitored.
Our local brook has levels of antibiotics that are expected to lead to the creation of superbugs. Quantities of beta blockers and statins that have unknown impacts. Levels of hormones likely to block the breeding cycle of invertebrate and vertebrate beasties.
The EA does not monitor these chemicals. Neither do the water companies. And they don’t treat for them.
I’ve spoken to our local GPs and pharmacists and asked them whether or not they take any account whatsoever in the levels of secondary pollution produced by their prescriptions and they have no grasp of the issue. Zero oversight and they seem to have very little interest.
In the EU there is a move to ‘upstream’ the problem. Involving the drugs manufacturers as stakeholders. (We have around an 80% personal pass through of a lot of medications.) Polluter pays being the implied threat.
Reform's crime plans today are said, by Reform, to cost £17 billion or so over 5 years. And it is good they are talking money in these ways.
But their overall image is about small state and low tax, while also in fact talking large state which inevitably means tax at or above current levels.
It is not sensible to expect them to cut £X00 billion from total managed expenditure (TME) in their first year, but it is realistic to ask for some longer term projections. If they don't exist or are not going to we can be clear they are not serious.
Obviously all projections are about an unknown future, but the OBR expects this government to make 5 year projections about such matters, while aware that black swans happen, and about debt to GDP ratio.
So, two questions I have not seen Reform tackle: By how many % points do they plan TME to fall as a % of GDP in the fifth year of a Reform government
and
By how many % points to they plan debt to fall as a % of GDP in the same five year period?
Even Leon will want to know whether they are a low spend and low tax party or a high spend and high tax party. I suggest they are in fact a high spend party, and will continue to be. As they may be governing, it now matters.
Reform are a low tax, high spend party because that is what their supporters won’t and reality isn’t something those voters care about
I did snort out loud in derision when I was in the car and heard Farage say he would cut crime in half.
I had two thoughts on that target:
a) what is he going to decriminalise?
b) how many Reform MPs will he have to imprison?
The trouble with our prison system is that it's a university for crime. It's just punishment; there's no meaningful effort at 'reforming' anyone. So too many people go in as evil b*stards and come out, because of whom they've met inside, as very evil b*stards.
So it was finally time to say goodbye to sun-drenched Norway, and move on to Lapland, the Realm of the Insects. Where currently it is warmer still.
Although only slightly to the south, while Tromso had five more days without sunsets to enjoy, here the sun is due to dip below the horizon, for an hour or so, at 0050.
The photo was taken in Finland but the background hill to the left is in Sweden and to the right is in Norway. Somewhere in the middle distance there is a cairn where all three meet, but I didn't have time to hike out to it. There's nothing much out there, as you would expect, and the road border was unmanned. But had tons of cameras on the Norwegian side.
Russia is only a few hours away, so hopefully Putin has enough on his plate and Finland will stay safe.
Whereabouts in Finland are you staying? I was there in winter a couple of years back and look forward to hearing your views on what it is like in summer.
At the moment I am in a place called Hetta, but will be working my way south. Southern Finland is flat with trees (a peneplain ground flat by an ice sheet, for those of us who remember our geography from school); northern Finland is rolling hills, so as well as the trees on either side of the road, you get to see more trees on the hills to the sides, and ahead. With the occasional lake. And, so far, one wandering reindeer.
Currently, it's much hotter than usual, and there are swarms of insects everywhere. I picked up a couple of growing bites just going from car to hotel.
That is a long, long way north. I have just Google streetviewed it and in October at least it looks a tad bleak. Its remarkable there are settlements at all that far north. Keep us posted.
So it was finally time to say goodbye to sun-drenched Norway, and move on to Lapland, the Realm of the Insects. Where currently it is warmer still.
Although only slightly to the south, while Tromso had five more days without sunsets to enjoy, here the sun is due to dip below the horizon, for an hour or so, at 0050.
The photo was taken in Finland but the background hill to the left is in Sweden and to the right is in Norway. Somewhere in the middle distance there is a cairn where all three meet, but I didn't have time to hike out to it. There's nothing much out there, as you would expect, and the road border was unmanned. But had tons of cameras on the Norwegian side.
Russia is only a few hours away, so hopefully Putin has enough on his plate and Finland will stay safe.
Whereabouts in Finland are you staying? I was there in winter a couple of years back and look forward to hearing your views on what it is like in summer.
At the moment I am in a place called Hetta, but will be working my way south. Southern Finland is flat with trees (a peneplain ground flat by an ice sheet, for those of us who remember our geography from school); northern Finland is rolling hills, so as well as the trees on either side of the road, you get to see more trees on the hills to the sides, and ahead. With the occasional lake. And, so far, one wandering reindeer.
Currently, it's much hotter than usual, and there are swarms of insects everywhere. I picked up a couple of growing bites just going from car to hotel.
That is a long, long way north. I have just Google streetviewed it and in October at least it looks a tad bleak. Its remarkable there are settlements at all that far north. Keep us posted.
It's not over-long, is it, since the Inuit started being Inuit?
Reform's crime plans today are said, by Reform, to cost £17 billion or so over 5 years. And it is good they are talking money in these ways.
But their overall image is about small state and low tax, while also in fact talking large state which inevitably means tax at or above current levels.
It is not sensible to expect them to cut £X00 billion from total managed expenditure (TME) in their first year, but it is realistic to ask for some longer term projections. If they don't exist or are not going to we can be clear they are not serious.
Obviously all projections are about an unknown future, but the OBR expects this government to make 5 year projections about such matters, while aware that black swans happen, and about debt to GDP ratio.
So, two questions I have not seen Reform tackle: By how many % points do they plan TME to fall as a % of GDP in the fifth year of a Reform government
and
By how many % points to they plan debt to fall as a % of GDP in the same five year period?
Even Leon will want to know whether they are a low spend and low tax party or a high spend and high tax party. I suggest they are in fact a high spend party, and will continue to be. As they may be governing, it now matters.
Reform are a low tax, high spend party because that is what their supporters won’t and reality isn’t something those voters care about
That's fine in the past. They are now a serious contender for power. So 'Low tax, high spend' doesn't answer the question of how they actually plan to govern.
Reform's crime plans today are said, by Reform, to cost £17 billion or so over 5 years. And it is good they are talking money in these ways.
But their overall image is about small state and low tax, while also in fact talking large state which inevitably means tax at or above current levels.
It is not sensible to expect them to cut £X00 billion from total managed expenditure (TME) in their first year, but it is realistic to ask for some longer term projections. If they don't exist or are not going to we can be clear they are not serious.
Obviously all projections are about an unknown future, but the OBR expects this government to make 5 year projections about such matters, while aware that black swans happen, and about debt to GDP ratio.
So, two questions I have not seen Reform tackle: By how many % points do they plan TME to fall as a % of GDP in the fifth year of a Reform government
and
By how many % points to they plan debt to fall as a % of GDP in the same five year period?
Even Leon will want to know whether they are a low spend and low tax party or a high spend and high tax party. I suggest they are in fact a high spend party, and will continue to be. As they may be governing, it now matters.
Reform are a low tax, high spend party because that is what their supporters won’t and reality isn’t something those voters care about
I did snort out loud in derision when I was in the car and heard Farage say he would cut crime in half.
I had two thoughts on that target:
a) what is he going to decriminalise?
b) how many Reform MPs will he have to imprison?
The trouble with our prison system is that it's a university for crime. It's just punishment; there's no meaningful effort at 'reforming' anyone. So too many people go in as evil b*stards and come out, because of whom they've met inside, as very evil b*stards.
What is the purpose of prison? Is it to punish the guilty; rehabilitate offenders; or to protect the public?
The answer should be all three. But IMV the current system doesn't do any of them very well.
Water is treated differently from the other utilities. You can be disconnected from the power and gas lines (subject to a Magistrate agreeing) but it is a criminal offence to cut off a water supply. And since it is so different, why was it privatised in the first place?
And as customers, we can choose who to buy our gas and leccy from. Poor service or rocketing prices? Shop around. Dodgy suppliers go out of business, and somebody else steps in.
With water, I have no choice but to buy from Yorkshire Water. Privatised monopolies are just crazy.
Privatisation wasn't about your choices.
Privatisation was about the choices of the firms, to either end pollution (and end fines) or to continue with pollution and continue to get fined.
Privatisation worked. Our water has been cleaned up immeasurably post-privatisation.
WTAF?
Well I'm not sure, but what Bart says passesthe sniff test. British rivers were absolutely foul when I was growing up. Dead. And now you get fish in the Mersey and people swim in Salford Quays.
The Water Act set out standards. But that could have been set out whilst still in public ownership.
But after the assets (land and real estate) were stripped by the owners and the Companies could no longer afford to both operate their water treatment facilities and pay the shareholders their bonuses, they started pumping sewerage into the rivers contrary to acceptable levels, and water systems for both the collection of waste water and the distribution of clean water (the losses via leakage is phenomenal) were seldom properly maintained and updated.
The fact that you couldn't swim in a river, then you could, and now you can't, does not suggest lasting progress.
If you argument is party political, blame the failure on Steve Reed. Feargal Sharkey has today asked for his resignation.
Barty and you are conflat
We had regulations pre-privatisation. We had standards pre-privatisation.
The regulations were routinely flouted and the standards weren't enforced.
The state-owned firms were theoretically fined pre-privatisation for flouting the rules, but it was meaningless since it was all ran from the Treasury anyway and the Treasury didn't want to invest in infrastructure (plus ca change!).
By privatising the firms the regulations were given teeth. Get fined, that fine comes from your bottom line.
Would you like to go back to pre-privatisation levels of pollution?
Regulation was by the NRA or local authorises. The Environment Agency came into effect in September 1996. More robust regulation would correspond to your dates.
Regulations that can be enforced on private firms as a firm has a profit motive not to be fined.
Regulations being imposed on state-owned firms don't mean much if the state-owned firm flouts the regulations since fines then mean nothing.
Regulations existed pre-privatisation, they were just ignored since there were no consequences to ignoring them. Take away the profit motive of avoiding fines and why should a state-owned firm not lapse back into just ignoring regulations? Especially when the Treasury does not wish to invest.
If you check out the biggest serial polluters on the EA web pages you will find they are the water companies, and not just recently. A fifty grand fine would barely trouble a CEO's monthly expense account total.
Which is why there should be a robust mechanism that gives a profit motive not to be fined.
A fifty grand fine once-off may not be troubling. A £100k fine every time you do a discharge might be extremely troubling.
You have to get the balance right and ensure the teeth are sharp enough to bite. There's no bite though without the profit motive if a state-owned firm simply doesn't give a shit.
Depends.
If you own a water company in order to provide water and sewage services, fine.
If you own a water company as a thing that generates cashflow in order to allow you to borrow enormous sums of capital that you can then extract for yourself, irrespective of the performance of the underlying company, that's a bit different.
With sharp enough lawyers, the feedback from poor performance to the poorhouse is slow enough to be ignored.
Reform's crime plans today are said, by Reform, to cost £17 billion or so over 5 years. And it is good they are talking money in these ways.
But their overall image is about small state and low tax, while also in fact talking large state which inevitably means tax at or above current levels.
It is not sensible to expect them to cut £X00 billion from total managed expenditure (TME) in their first year, but it is realistic to ask for some longer term projections. If they don't exist or are not going to we can be clear they are not serious.
Obviously all projections are about an unknown future, but the OBR expects this government to make 5 year projections about such matters, while aware that black swans happen, and about debt to GDP ratio.
So, two questions I have not seen Reform tackle: By how many % points do they plan TME to fall as a % of GDP in the fifth year of a Reform government
and
By how many % points to they plan debt to fall as a % of GDP in the same five year period?
Even Leon will want to know whether they are a low spend and low tax party or a high spend and high tax party. I suggest they are in fact a high spend party, and will continue to be. As they may be governing, it now matters.
At the moment, as I see it, they're simply saying that they'll cut Government waste. So far, and to be fair it's still very early days, they haven't found much to cut in the County Councils, although, if we're being fair, any savings probably won't be individually large. More likely to be a lot of small ones.
I do wonder, looking at what's going on round here, whether cutting out Parish Councils might be an option.
In truth councils set a different test from government. Council are creatures of statute and their powers and duties are nearly all set in stone by parliament/government. While they will garner bad publicity for failure to cut £N billion it was always a vain boast. But in government the test is different. They set the rules and decide what to spend and what not to spend.
Has anyone read Henrich's 'The Secret of our Success'? It's a Harvard professor's argument that our collective social and cultural intelligence is at least as important a causal factor as natural selection in our ecological dominance.
I am halfway through it and finding it fascinating, but I don't have enough knowledge to critically assess his arguments, other than to have a vague feeling that he is picking and choosing research to favour his argument. Any evolutionary biologists around with a view on his claims?
Thanks.
No but at a hand-wavy level the prof is right. Natural selection is not responsible for war, agriculture or computers. They are different categories. As my old psychology professor put it – do you explain someone signing their name in terms of neurons and muscles or in terms of gas bills and banks?
Agreed, but he pushes the argument further - with some frankly fascinating anecdotes as well as references to lots of studies - to claim that culture and genes co-influence one another (rather than just culture affecting our behaviour).
One anecdote that sticks in the mind: human ability to digest lactose is so unevenly distributed globally because of the uneven development of cheese production. Whilst milk has high lactose content, (most) cheese doesn't, so cultures that discovered how to make cheese at the same time as they tried to digest milk never favoured the mutations that allow us Europeans (and some west Africans) to digest milk as adults. (We worked out how to make cheese much later on).
The most surprising thing (to me) is that the ability to digest lactose can vary hugely within small geographical areas, depending on when the cultures in question discovered and implemented cheese production.
Well I was fascinated, anyway.
And that too is natural selection. A gene mutation which enabled the ancestors of people in those areas to out compete those who did not have that gene.
Agreed on both your posts. I phrased my first poorly - it should have read "our collective social and cultural intelligence is at least as important a causal factor as genetic mutations in our ecological dominance." He argued that culture and genes co-evolve.
His point about lactose tolerance is that the gene mutation was selected or not depending on the prevailing culture at the time, and so natural selection can be culture-specific, rather than species-wide. I'm insufficiently well versed in the science to understand whether his point is (a) not true (b) obvious or (c) interestingly controversial. He claims that other evolutionary biologists tend to see intra-species culture as too ephemeral to impact on natural selection in the long-term.
I think (and I am not an expert nor have I read the book) that it is true, not obvious, and while not interestingly controversial, certainly interesting.
Natural selection is absolutely engrossing. I didn't particularly enjoy biology at school and dropped it as soon as I could in favour of physics and chemistry. It was only some time later I realised that in natural selection, biology actually has its own unified field of everything and it is much more graspable than anything which comes close in physics. It is so elegant and simple - yet every real world example of it is fascinating.
Interesting speculation coming out of Ash Dieback. The genetic response has been said to be more flexible than people thought possible.
So it was finally time to say goodbye to sun-drenched Norway, and move on to Lapland, the Realm of the Insects. Where currently it is warmer still.
Although only slightly to the south, while Tromso had five more days without sunsets to enjoy, here the sun is due to dip below the horizon, for an hour or so, at 0050.
The photo was taken in Finland but the background hill to the left is in Sweden and to the right is in Norway. Somewhere in the middle distance there is a cairn where all three meet, but I didn't have time to hike out to it. There's nothing much out there, as you would expect, and the road border was unmanned. But had tons of cameras on the Norwegian side.
Russia is only a few hours away, so hopefully Putin has enough on his plate and Finland will stay safe.
And would anyway have to contend with the watchful hound.
Reform's crime plans today are said, by Reform, to cost £17 billion or so over 5 years. And it is good they are talking money in these ways.
But their overall image is about small state and low tax, while also in fact talking large state which inevitably means tax at or above current levels.
It is not sensible to expect them to cut £X00 billion from total managed expenditure (TME) in their first year, but it is realistic to ask for some longer term projections. If they don't exist or are not going to we can be clear they are not serious.
Obviously all projections are about an unknown future, but the OBR expects this government to make 5 year projections about such matters, while aware that black swans happen, and about debt to GDP ratio.
So, two questions I have not seen Reform tackle: By how many % points do they plan TME to fall as a % of GDP in the fifth year of a Reform government
and
By how many % points to they plan debt to fall as a % of GDP in the same five year period?
Even Leon will want to know whether they are a low spend and low tax party or a high spend and high tax party. I suggest they are in fact a high spend party, and will continue to be. As they may be governing, it now matters.
Reform are a low tax, high spend party because that is what their supporters won’t and reality isn’t something those voters care about
I did snort out loud in derision when I was in the car and heard Farage say he would cut crime in half.
I had two thoughts on that target:
a) what is he going to decriminalise?
b) how many Reform MPs will he have to imprison?
The trouble with our prison system is that it's a university for crime. It's just punishment; there's no meaningful effort at 'reforming' anyone. So too many people go in as evil b*stards and come out, because of whom they've met inside, as very evil b*stards.
What is the purpose of prison? Is it to punish the guilty; rehabilitate offenders; or to protect the public?
The answer should be all three. But IMV the current system doesn't do any of them very well.
I say we should export convicts to the moon. Make them dig tunnels to grow food for export to Earth underground. Ship it to Earth via coilgun.
You could run the whole thing with one big central computer.
Water is treated differently from the other utilities. You can be disconnected from the power and gas lines (subject to a Magistrate agreeing) but it is a criminal offence to cut off a water supply. And since it is so different, why was it privatised in the first place?
And as customers, we can choose who to buy our gas and leccy from. Poor service or rocketing prices? Shop around. Dodgy suppliers go out of business, and somebody else steps in.
With water, I have no choice but to buy from Yorkshire Water. Privatised monopolies are just crazy.
Privatisation wasn't about your choices.
Privatisation was about the choices of the firms, to either end pollution (and end fines) or to continue with pollution and continue to get fined.
Privatisation worked. Our water has been cleaned up immeasurably post-privatisation.
WTAF?
Well I'm not sure, but what Bart says passesthe sniff test. British rivers were absolutely foul when I was growing up. Dead. And now you get fish in the Mersey and people swim in Salford Quays.
The Water Act set out standards. But that could have been set out whilst still in public ownership.
But after the assets (land and real estate) were stripped by the owners and the Companies could no longer afford to both operate their water treatment facilities and pay the shareholders their bonuses, they started pumping sewerage into the rivers contrary to acceptable levels, and water systems for both the collection of waste water and the distribution of clean water (the losses via leakage is phenomenal) were seldom properly maintained and updated.
The fact that you couldn't swim in a river, then you could, and now you can't, does not suggest lasting progress.
If you argument is party political, blame the failure on Steve Reed. Feargal Sharkey has today asked for his resignation.
Barty and you are conflat
We had regulations pre-privatisation. We had standards pre-privatisation.
The regulations were routinely flouted and the standards weren't enforced.
The state-owned firms were theoretically fined pre-privatisation for flouting the rules, but it was meaningless since it was all ran from the Treasury anyway and the Treasury didn't want to invest in infrastructure (plus ca change!).
By privatising the firms the regulations were given teeth. Get fined, that fine comes from your bottom line.
Would you like to go back to pre-privatisation levels of pollution?
Regulation was by the NRA or local authorises. The Environment Agency came into effect in September 1996. More robust regulation would correspond to your dates.
Regulations that can be enforced on private firms as a firm has a profit motive not to be fined.
Regulations being imposed on state-owned firms don't mean much if the state-owned firm flouts the regulations since fines then mean nothing.
Regulations existed pre-privatisation, they were just ignored since there were no consequences to ignoring them. Take away the profit motive of avoiding fines and why should a state-owned firm not lapse back into just ignoring regulations? Especially when the Treasury does not wish to invest.
The solution is fairly simple - keep the assets state owned, and contract there management to the private sector. As it is, the state (or public) finances the assets, and their upgrades, while the "owners" expect to collect rent on them.
Reform's crime plans today are said, by Reform, to cost £17 billion or so over 5 years. And it is good they are talking money in these ways.
But their overall image is about small state and low tax, while also in fact talking large state which inevitably means tax at or above current levels.
It is not sensible to expect them to cut £X00 billion from total managed expenditure (TME) in their first year, but it is realistic to ask for some longer term projections. If they don't exist or are not going to we can be clear they are not serious.
Obviously all projections are about an unknown future, but the OBR expects this government to make 5 year projections about such matters, while aware that black swans happen, and about debt to GDP ratio.
So, two questions I have not seen Reform tackle: By how many % points do they plan TME to fall as a % of GDP in the fifth year of a Reform government
and
By how many % points to they plan debt to fall as a % of GDP in the same five year period?
Even Leon will want to know whether they are a low spend and low tax party or a high spend and high tax party. I suggest they are in fact a high spend party, and will continue to be. As they may be governing, it now matters.
Reform are a low tax, high spend party because that is what their supporters won’t and reality isn’t something those voters care about
That's fine in the past. They are now a serious contender for power. So 'Low tax, high spend' doesn't answer the question of how they actually plan to govern.
Given that the current government and the previous two governments didn't bother to answer that question, either.....
Water is treated differently from the other utilities. You can be disconnected from the power and gas lines (subject to a Magistrate agreeing) but it is a criminal offence to cut off a water supply. And since it is so different, why was it privatised in the first place?
And as customers, we can choose who to buy our gas and leccy from. Poor service or rocketing prices? Shop around. Dodgy suppliers go out of business, and somebody else steps in.
With water, I have no choice but to buy from Yorkshire Water. Privatised monopolies are just crazy.
Privatisation wasn't about your choices.
Privatisation was about the choices of the firms, to either end pollution (and end fines) or to continue with pollution and continue to get fined.
Privatisation worked. Our water has been cleaned up immeasurably post-privatisation.
WTAF?
Well I'm not sure, but what Bart says passesthe sniff test. British rivers were absolutely foul when I was growing up. Dead. And now you get fish in the Mersey and people swim in Salford Quays.
The Water Act set out standards. But that could have been set out whilst still in public ownership.
But after the assets (land and real estate) were stripped by the owners and the Companies could no longer afford to both operate their water treatment facilities and pay the shareholders their bonuses, they started pumping sewerage into the rivers contrary to acceptable levels, and water systems for both the collection of waste water and the distribution of clean water (the losses via leakage is phenomenal) were seldom properly maintained and updated.
The fact that you couldn't swim in a river, then you could, and now you can't, does not suggest lasting progress.
If you argument is party political, blame the failure on Steve Reed. Feargal Sharkey has today asked for his resignation.
Barty and you are conflat
We had regulations pre-privatisation. We had standards pre-privatisation.
The regulations were routinely flouted and the standards weren't enforced.
The state-owned firms were theoretically fined pre-privatisation for flouting the rules, but it was meaningless since it was all ran from the Treasury anyway and the Treasury didn't want to invest in infrastructure (plus ca change!).
By privatising the firms the regulations were given teeth. Get fined, that fine comes from your bottom line.
Would you like to go back to pre-privatisation levels of pollution?
Regulation was by the NRA or local authorises. The Environment Agency came into effect in September 1996. More robust regulation would correspond to your dates.
Regulations that can be enforced on private firms as a firm has a profit motive not to be fined.
Regulations being imposed on state-owned firms don't mean much if the state-owned firm flouts the regulations since fines then mean nothing.
Regulations existed pre-privatisation, they were just ignored since there were no consequences to ignoring them. Take away the profit motive of avoiding fines and why should a state-owned firm not lapse back into just ignoring regulations? Especially when the Treasury does not wish to invest.
If you check out the biggest serial polluters on the EA web pages you will find they are the water companies, and not just recently. A fifty grand fine would barely trouble a CEO's monthly expense account total.
Which is why there should be a robust mechanism that gives a profit motive not to be fined.
A fifty grand fine once-off may not be troubling. A £100k fine every time you do a discharge might be extremely troubling.
You have to get the balance right and ensure the teeth are sharp enough to bite. There's no bite though without the profit motive if a state-owned firm simply doesn't give a shit.
Depends.
If you own a water company in order to provide water and sewage services, fine.
If you own a water company as a thing that generates cashflow in order to allow you to borrow enormous sums of capital that you can then extract for yourself, irrespective of the performance of the underlying company, that's a bit different.
With sharp enough lawyers, the feedback from poor performance to the poorhouse is slow enough to be ignored.
And we're beyond that point with Thames Water, it's hit the buffers because the original beneficial owner has extracted the capital, sold it on and the cashflow no longer covers the loan repayments.
Reform's crime plans today are said, by Reform, to cost £17 billion or so over 5 years. And it is good they are talking money in these ways.
But their overall image is about small state and low tax, while also in fact talking large state which inevitably means tax at or above current levels.
It is not sensible to expect them to cut £X00 billion from total managed expenditure (TME) in their first year, but it is realistic to ask for some longer term projections. If they don't exist or are not going to we can be clear they are not serious.
Obviously all projections are about an unknown future, but the OBR expects this government to make 5 year projections about such matters, while aware that black swans happen, and about debt to GDP ratio.
So, two questions I have not seen Reform tackle: By how many % points do they plan TME to fall as a % of GDP in the fifth year of a Reform government
and
By how many % points to they plan debt to fall as a % of GDP in the same five year period?
Even Leon will want to know whether they are a low spend and low tax party or a high spend and high tax party. I suggest they are in fact a high spend party, and will continue to be. As they may be governing, it now matters.
Reform are a low tax, high spend party because that is what their supporters won’t and reality isn’t something those voters care about
I did snort out loud in derision when I was in the car and heard Farage say he would cut crime in half.
I had two thoughts on that target:
a) what is he going to decriminalise?
b) how many Reform MPs will he have to imprison?
The trouble with our prison system is that it's a university for crime. It's just punishment; there's no meaningful effort at 'reforming' anyone. So too many people go in as evil b*stards and come out, because of whom they've met inside, as very evil b*stards.
What is the purpose of prison? Is it to punish the guilty; rehabilitate offenders; or to protect the public?
The answer should be all three. But IMV the current system doesn't do any of them very well.
I say we should export convicts to the moon. Make them dig tunnels to grow food for export to Earth underground. Ship it to Earth via coilgun.
You could run the whole thing with one big central computer.
Water is treated differently from the other utilities. You can be disconnected from the power and gas lines (subject to a Magistrate agreeing) but it is a criminal offence to cut off a water supply. And since it is so different, why was it privatised in the first place?
And as customers, we can choose who to buy our gas and leccy from. Poor service or rocketing prices? Shop around. Dodgy suppliers go out of business, and somebody else steps in.
With water, I have no choice but to buy from Yorkshire Water. Privatised monopolies are just crazy.
Privatisation wasn't about your choices.
Privatisation was about the choices of the firms, to either end pollution (and end fines) or to continue with pollution and continue to get fined.
Privatisation worked. Our water has been cleaned up immeasurably post-privatisation.
WTAF?
Well I'm not sure, but what Bart says passesthe sniff test. British rivers were absolutely foul when I was growing up. Dead. And now you get fish in the Mersey and people swim in Salford Quays.
The Water Act set out standards. But that could have been set out whilst still in public ownership.
But after the assets (land and real estate) were stripped by the owners and the Companies could no longer afford to both operate their water treatment facilities and pay the shareholders their bonuses, they started pumping sewerage into the rivers contrary to acceptable levels, and water systems for both the collection of waste water and the distribution of clean water (the losses via leakage is phenomenal) were seldom properly maintained and updated.
The fact that you couldn't swim in a river, then you could, and now you can't, does not suggest lasting progress.
If you argument is party political, blame the failure on Steve Reed. Feargal Sharkey has today asked for his resignation.
Barty and you are conflat
We had regulations pre-privatisation. We had standards pre-privatisation.
The regulations were routinely flouted and the standards weren't enforced.
The state-owned firms were theoretically fined pre-privatisation for flouting the rules, but it was meaningless since it was all ran from the Treasury anyway and the Treasury didn't want to invest in infrastructure (plus ca change!).
By privatising the firms the regulations were given teeth. Get fined, that fine comes from your bottom line.
Would you like to go back to pre-privatisation levels of pollution?
Regulation was by the NRA or local authorises. The Environment Agency came into effect in September 1996. More robust regulation would correspond to your dates.
Regulations that can be enforced on private firms as a firm has a profit motive not to be fined.
Regulations being imposed on state-owned firms don't mean much if the state-owned firm flouts the regulations since fines then mean nothing.
Regulations existed pre-privatisation, they were just ignored since there were no consequences to ignoring them. Take away the profit motive of avoiding fines and why should a state-owned firm not lapse back into just ignoring regulations? Especially when the Treasury does not wish to invest.
If you check out the biggest serial polluters on the EA web pages you will find they are the water companies, and not just recently. A fifty grand fine would barely trouble a CEO's monthly expense account total.
Which is why there should be a robust mechanism that gives a profit motive not to be fined.
A fifty grand fine once-off may not be troubling. A £100k fine every time you do a discharge might be extremely troubling.
You have to get the balance right and ensure the teeth are sharp enough to bite. There's no bite though without the profit motive if a state-owned firm simply doesn't give a shit.
Depends.
If you own a water company in order to provide water and sewage services, fine.
If you own a water company as a thing that generates cashflow in order to allow you to borrow enormous sums of capital that you can then extract for yourself, irrespective of the performance of the underlying company, that's a bit different.
With sharp enough lawyers, the feedback from poor performance to the poorhouse is slow enough to be ignored.
You're forgetting the chain of holding companies, which deliberately complicates and diffuses responsibility.
The structure of the privatised water companies is often completely indefensible from the tax/bill payers' point of view.
The government could very easily pass a bill defining what a relative meant in the sense of immigration law. I wonder why they don’t.
What does it mean? I suspect once you get to defining that the term will become quite broad
As I said earlier, if you want to get a family visa in Canada the following are the options.
Spouse of sponsor Parents/grandparents of sponsor Unmarried, dependent children of sponsor under the age of 22.
That is it. Cousins, nephews/nieces or any other relations including children who are either married or adults 22 or above are simply ineligible.
Are you comparing like with like? This isn't a regular family visa situation. It's about whether these people are at particular risk of persecution from the Taliban government because the individual worked with the British.
So it was finally time to say goodbye to sun-drenched Norway, and move on to Lapland, the Realm of the Insects. Where currently it is warmer still.
Although only slightly to the south, while Tromso had five more days without sunsets to enjoy, here the sun is due to dip below the horizon, for an hour or so, at 0050.
The photo was taken in Finland but the background hill to the left is in Sweden and to the right is in Norway. Somewhere in the middle distance there is a cairn where all three meet, but I didn't have time to hike out to it. There's nothing much out there, as you would expect, and the road border was unmanned. But had tons of cameras on the Norwegian side.
Russia is only a few hours away, so hopefully Putin has enough on his plate and Finland will stay safe.
Whereabouts in Finland are you staying? I was there in winter a couple of years back and look forward to hearing your views on what it is like in summer.
At the moment I am in a place called Hetta, but will be working my way south. Southern Finland is flat with trees (a peneplain ground flat by an ice sheet, for those of us who remember our geography from school); northern Finland is rolling hills, so as well as the trees on either side of the road, you get to see more trees on the hills to the sides, and ahead. With the occasional lake. And, so far, one wandering reindeer.
Currently, it's much hotter than usual, and there are swarms of insects everywhere. I picked up a couple of growing bites just going from car to hotel.
That is a long, long way north. I have just Google streetviewed it and in October at least it looks a tad bleak. Its remarkable there are settlements at all that far north. Keep us posted.
It's not over-long, is it, since the Inuit started being Inuit?
I'm not 100% sure what you mean by this? Are you referring to the origin of the word 'Inuit' (ISTR it means 'fish eaters'?) In any case, no Inuit in Northern Finland. The indigenous population - the Lapps - are still reasonably well represented, but they started to be pushed out by Finns from about 500 years ago. I find this process quite interesting: the Lapps were nomadic (reindeer) herdsmen, who started to be displaced as Finns managed to successfully practice agriculture further and further north. Lapland is the furthest north place in the world where it is possible to live the lifestyle of a settled agriculturalist: the winters are long and cold, but there is enough in the summer and the soil that even at this latitude a farmer can grow and raise enough to survive. And so the land available to the reindeer herders grew less and less.
Reform's crime plans today are said, by Reform, to cost £17 billion or so over 5 years. And it is good they are talking money in these ways.
But their overall image is about small state and low tax, while also in fact talking large state which inevitably means tax at or above current levels.
It is not sensible to expect them to cut £X00 billion from total managed expenditure (TME) in their first year, but it is realistic to ask for some longer term projections. If they don't exist or are not going to we can be clear they are not serious.
Obviously all projections are about an unknown future, but the OBR expects this government to make 5 year projections about such matters, while aware that black swans happen, and about debt to GDP ratio.
So, two questions I have not seen Reform tackle: By how many % points do they plan TME to fall as a % of GDP in the fifth year of a Reform government
and
By how many % points to they plan debt to fall as a % of GDP in the same five year period?
Even Leon will want to know whether they are a low spend and low tax party or a high spend and high tax party. I suggest they are in fact a high spend party, and will continue to be. As they may be governing, it now matters.
Reform are a low tax, high spend party because that is what their supporters won’t and reality isn’t something those voters care about
I did snort out loud in derision when I was in the car and heard Farage say he would cut crime in half.
I had two thoughts on that target:
a) what is he going to decriminalise?
b) how many Reform MPs will he have to imprison?
The trouble with our prison system is that it's a university for crime. It's just punishment; there's no meaningful effort at 'reforming' anyone. So too many people go in as evil b*stards and come out, because of whom they've met inside, as very evil b*stards.
What is the purpose of prison? Is it to punish the guilty; rehabilitate offenders; or to protect the public?
The answer should be all three. But IMV the current system doesn't do any of them very well.
I say we should export convicts to the moon. Make them dig tunnels to grow food for export to Earth underground. Ship it to Earth via coilgun.
You could run the whole thing with one big central computer.
Reform's crime plans today are said, by Reform, to cost £17 billion or so over 5 years. And it is good they are talking money in these ways.
But their overall image is about small state and low tax, while also in fact talking large state which inevitably means tax at or above current levels.
It is not sensible to expect them to cut £X00 billion from total managed expenditure (TME) in their first year, but it is realistic to ask for some longer term projections. If they don't exist or are not going to we can be clear they are not serious.
Obviously all projections are about an unknown future, but the OBR expects this government to make 5 year projections about such matters, while aware that black swans happen, and about debt to GDP ratio.
So, two questions I have not seen Reform tackle: By how many % points do they plan TME to fall as a % of GDP in the fifth year of a Reform government
and
By how many % points to they plan debt to fall as a % of GDP in the same five year period?
Even Leon will want to know whether they are a low spend and low tax party or a high spend and high tax party. I suggest they are in fact a high spend party, and will continue to be. As they may be governing, it now matters.
Reform are a low tax, high spend party because that is what their supporters won’t and reality isn’t something those voters care about
That's fine in the past. They are now a serious contender for power. So 'Low tax, high spend' doesn't answer the question of how they actually plan to govern.
Populist right parties all around the world are ignoring the problem of their unrealistic plans by ignoring the mainstream media and focusing on social media. It matters what Reform UK's actual plans are, but they'll probably go on ducking the contradictions. Opposition parties and the media should be pinning them down.
So it was finally time to say goodbye to sun-drenched Norway, and move on to Lapland, the Realm of the Insects. Where currently it is warmer still.
Although only slightly to the south, while Tromso had five more days without sunsets to enjoy, here the sun is due to dip below the horizon, for an hour or so, at 0050.
The photo was taken in Finland but the background hill to the left is in Sweden and to the right is in Norway. Somewhere in the middle distance there is a cairn where all three meet, but I didn't have time to hike out to it. There's nothing much out there, as you would expect, and the road border was unmanned. But had tons of cameras on the Norwegian side.
Russia is only a few hours away, so hopefully Putin has enough on his plate and Finland will stay safe.
Whereabouts in Finland are you staying? I was there in winter a couple of years back and look forward to hearing your views on what it is like in summer.
At the moment I am in a place called Hetta, but will be working my way south. Southern Finland is flat with trees (a peneplain ground flat by an ice sheet, for those of us who remember our geography from school); northern Finland is rolling hills, so as well as the trees on either side of the road, you get to see more trees on the hills to the sides, and ahead. With the occasional lake. And, so far, one wandering reindeer.
Currently, it's much hotter than usual, and there are swarms of insects everywhere. I picked up a couple of growing bites just going from car to hotel.
That is a long, long way north. I have just Google streetviewed it and in October at least it looks a tad bleak. Its remarkable there are settlements at all that far north. Keep us posted.
It's not over-long, is it, since the Inuit started being Inuit?
I'm not 100% sure what you mean by this? Are you referring to the origin of the word 'Inuit' (ISTR it means 'fish eaters'?) In any case, no Inuit in Northern Finland. The indigenous population - the Lapps - are still reasonably well represented, but they started to be pushed out by Finns from about 500 years ago. I find this process quite interesting: the Lapps were nomadic (reindeer) herdsmen, who started to be displaced as Finns managed to successfully practice agriculture further and further north. Lapland is the furthest north place in the world where it is possible to live the lifestyle of a settled agriculturalist: the winters are long and cold, but there is enough in the summer and the soil that even at this latitude a farmer can grow and raise enough to survive. And so the land available to the reindeer herders grew less and less.
So it was finally time to say goodbye to sun-drenched Norway, and move on to Lapland, the Realm of the Insects. Where currently it is warmer still.
Although only slightly to the south, while Tromso had five more days without sunsets to enjoy, here the sun is due to dip below the horizon, for an hour or so, at 0050.
The photo was taken in Finland but the background hill to the left is in Sweden and to the right is in Norway. Somewhere in the middle distance there is a cairn where all three meet, but I didn't have time to hike out to it. There's nothing much out there, as you would expect, and the road border was unmanned. But had tons of cameras on the Norwegian side.
Russia is only a few hours away, so hopefully Putin has enough on his plate and Finland will stay safe.
Whereabouts in Finland are you staying? I was there in winter a couple of years back and look forward to hearing your views on what it is like in summer.
At the moment I am in a place called Hetta, but will be working my way south. Southern Finland is flat with trees (a peneplain ground flat by an ice sheet, for those of us who remember our geography from school); northern Finland is rolling hills, so as well as the trees on either side of the road, you get to see more trees on the hills to the sides, and ahead. With the occasional lake. And, so far, one wandering reindeer.
Currently, it's much hotter than usual, and there are swarms of insects everywhere. I picked up a couple of growing bites just going from car to hotel.
That is a long, long way north. I have just Google streetviewed it and in October at least it looks a tad bleak. Its remarkable there are settlements at all that far north. Keep us posted.
It's not over-long, is it, since the Inuit started being Inuit?
I'm not 100% sure what you mean by this? Are you referring to the origin of the word 'Inuit' (ISTR it means 'fish eaters'?) In any case, no Inuit in Northern Finland. The indigenous population - the Lapps - are still reasonably well represented, but they started to be pushed out by Finns from about 500 years ago. I find this process quite interesting: the Lapps were nomadic (reindeer) herdsmen, who started to be displaced as Finns managed to successfully practice agriculture further and further north. Lapland is the furthest north place in the world where it is possible to live the lifestyle of a settled agriculturalist: the winters are long and cold, but there is enough in the summer and the soil that even at this latitude a farmer can grow and raise enough to survive. And so the land available to the reindeer herders grew less and less.
Water is treated differently from the other utilities. You can be disconnected from the power and gas lines (subject to a Magistrate agreeing) but it is a criminal offence to cut off a water supply. And since it is so different, why was it privatised in the first place?
And as customers, we can choose who to buy our gas and leccy from. Poor service or rocketing prices? Shop around. Dodgy suppliers go out of business, and somebody else steps in.
With water, I have no choice but to buy from Yorkshire Water. Privatised monopolies are just crazy.
Privatisation wasn't about your choices.
Privatisation was about the choices of the firms, to either end pollution (and end fines) or to continue with pollution and continue to get fined.
Privatisation worked. Our water has been cleaned up immeasurably post-privatisation.
WTAF?
Well I'm not sure, but what Bart says passesthe sniff test. British rivers were absolutely foul when I was growing up. Dead. And now you get fish in the Mersey and people swim in Salford Quays.
The Water Act set out standards. But that could have been set out whilst still in public ownership.
But after the assets (land and real estate) were stripped by the owners and the Companies could no longer afford to both operate their water treatment facilities and pay the shareholders their bonuses, they started pumping sewerage into the rivers contrary to acceptable levels, and water systems for both the collection of waste water and the distribution of clean water (the losses via leakage is phenomenal) were seldom properly maintained and updated.
The fact that you couldn't swim in a river, then you could, and now you can't, does not suggest lasting progress.
If you argument is party political, blame the failure on Steve Reed. Feargal Sharkey has today asked for his resignation.
Barty and you are conflat
We had regulations pre-privatisation. We had standards pre-privatisation.
The regulations were routinely flouted and the standards weren't enforced.
The state-owned firms were theoretically fined pre-privatisation for flouting the rules, but it was meaningless since it was all ran from the Treasury anyway and the Treasury didn't want to invest in infrastructure (plus ca change!).
By privatising the firms the regulations were given teeth. Get fined, that fine comes from your bottom line.
Would you like to go back to pre-privatisation levels of pollution?
Regulation was by the NRA or local authorises. The Environment Agency came into effect in September 1996. More robust regulation would correspond to your dates.
Regulations that can be enforced on private firms as a firm has a profit motive not to be fined.
Regulations being imposed on state-owned firms don't mean much if the state-owned firm flouts the regulations since fines then mean nothing.
Regulations existed pre-privatisation, they were just ignored since there were no consequences to ignoring them. Take away the profit motive of avoiding fines and why should a state-owned firm not lapse back into just ignoring regulations? Especially when the Treasury does not wish to invest.
If you check out the biggest serial polluters on the EA web pages you will find they are the water companies, and not just recently. A fifty grand fine would barely trouble a CEO's monthly expense account total.
Which is why there should be a robust mechanism that gives a profit motive not to be fined.
A fifty grand fine once-off may not be troubling. A £100k fine every time you do a discharge might be extremely troubling.
You have to get the balance right and ensure the teeth are sharp enough to bite. There's no bite though without the profit motive if a state-owned firm simply doesn't give a shit.
Depends.
If you own a water company in order to provide water and sewage services, fine.
If you own a water company as a thing that generates cashflow in order to allow you to borrow enormous sums of capital that you can then extract for yourself, irrespective of the performance of the underlying company, that's a bit different.
With sharp enough lawyers, the feedback from poor performance to the poorhouse is slow enough to be ignored.
And we're beyond that point with Thames Water, it's hit the buffers because the original beneficial owner has extracted the capital, sold it on and the cashflow no longer covers the loan repayments.
It should just be allowed to go pop with both creditors and shareholders wiped out then; happens every day to private businesses.
When it comes to losing colleagues, Pete Hegseth is the Nigel Farage of the Pentagon.
Indeedy-doody. However the defenestrato is also a bullshitter on a significant scale:
Mr Fulcher suggested there was no ill will behind his departure.
“Working alongside the dedicated men and women of the Department of Defense has been incredibly inspiring,” Mr Fulcher said.
“Revitalising the warrior ethos, rebuilding the military, and re-establishing deterrence are just some of the historic accomplishments I’m proud to have witnessed.
“None of this could have happened without Secretary Hegseth’s decisive leadership or President Trump’s continued confidence in our team.”
So it was finally time to say goodbye to sun-drenched Norway, and move on to Lapland, the Realm of the Insects. Where currently it is warmer still.
Although only slightly to the south, while Tromso had five more days without sunsets to enjoy, here the sun is due to dip below the horizon, for an hour or so, at 0050.
The photo was taken in Finland but the background hill to the left is in Sweden and to the right is in Norway. Somewhere in the middle distance there is a cairn where all three meet, but I didn't have time to hike out to it. There's nothing much out there, as you would expect, and the road border was unmanned. But had tons of cameras on the Norwegian side.
Russia is only a few hours away, so hopefully Putin has enough on his plate and Finland will stay safe.
Have been to Lapland (Inari) and had an interesting chat with the local Sumis. Basically along the lines of you are 200km from the nearest hospital so you better learn to sew yourself up if you have an accident.
Have you taken enough thread, needles and alcohol (for sterilising)?
It seems like JD Vance had a secret meeting with Rupert Murdoch
And Rupert Murdoch published the Epstein letter story
Trump exit date 2025 available at 20/1...
With all these year of exit bets, keep an eye on the calendar. There is less than half of 2025 left, and a lot of that will be taken up with routine admin.
So it was finally time to say goodbye to sun-drenched Norway, and move on to Lapland, the Realm of the Insects. Where currently it is warmer still.
Although only slightly to the south, while Tromso had five more days without sunsets to enjoy, here the sun is due to dip below the horizon, for an hour or so, at 0050.
The photo was taken in Finland but the background hill to the left is in Sweden and to the right is in Norway. Somewhere in the middle distance there is a cairn where all three meet, but I didn't have time to hike out to it. There's nothing much out there, as you would expect, and the road border was unmanned. But had tons of cameras on the Norwegian side.
Russia is only a few hours away, so hopefully Putin has enough on his plate and Finland will stay safe.
Whereabouts in Finland are you staying? I was there in winter a couple of years back and look forward to hearing your views on what it is like in summer.
At the moment I am in a place called Hetta, but will be working my way south. Southern Finland is flat with trees (a peneplain ground flat by an ice sheet, for those of us who remember our geography from school); northern Finland is rolling hills, so as well as the trees on either side of the road, you get to see more trees on the hills to the sides, and ahead. With the occasional lake. And, so far, one wandering reindeer.
Currently, it's much hotter than usual, and there are swarms of insects everywhere. I picked up a couple of growing bites just going from car to hotel.
That is a long, long way north. I have just Google streetviewed it and in October at least it looks a tad bleak. Its remarkable there are settlements at all that far north. Keep us posted.
It's not over-long, is it, since the Inuit started being Inuit?
I'm not 100% sure what you mean by this? Are you referring to the origin of the word 'Inuit' (ISTR it means 'fish eaters'?) In any case, no Inuit in Northern Finland. The indigenous population - the Lapps - are still reasonably well represented, but they started to be pushed out by Finns from about 500 years ago. I find this process quite interesting: the Lapps were nomadic (reindeer) herdsmen, who started to be displaced as Finns managed to successfully practice agriculture further and further north. Lapland is the furthest north place in the world where it is possible to live the lifestyle of a settled agriculturalist: the winters are long and cold, but there is enough in the summer and the soil that even at this latitude a farmer can grow and raise enough to survive. And so the land available to the reindeer herders grew less and less.
I'm thinking about the ancestors of the present Inuit that (?) moved out of (relatively) temperate areas and into the much colder areas they now occupy.
AIUI, the Sami moved, like much of the European population, North-East-wards, until blocked by the Arctic Ocean.
Reform's crime plans today are said, by Reform, to cost £17 billion or so over 5 years. And it is good they are talking money in these ways.
But their overall image is about small state and low tax, while also in fact talking large state which inevitably means tax at or above current levels.
It is not sensible to expect them to cut £X00 billion from total managed expenditure (TME) in their first year, but it is realistic to ask for some longer term projections. If they don't exist or are not going to we can be clear they are not serious.
Obviously all projections are about an unknown future, but the OBR expects this government to make 5 year projections about such matters, while aware that black swans happen, and about debt to GDP ratio.
So, two questions I have not seen Reform tackle: By how many % points do they plan TME to fall as a % of GDP in the fifth year of a Reform government
and
By how many % points to they plan debt to fall as a % of GDP in the same five year period?
Even Leon will want to know whether they are a low spend and low tax party or a high spend and high tax party. I suggest they are in fact a high spend party, and will continue to be. As they may be governing, it now matters.
Reform are a low tax, high spend party because that is what their supporters won’t and reality isn’t something those voters care about
I did snort out loud in derision when I was in the car and heard Farage say he would cut crime in half.
I had two thoughts on that target:
a) what is he going to decriminalise?
b) how many Reform MPs will he have to imprison?
The trouble with our prison system is that it's a university for crime. It's just punishment; there's no meaningful effort at 'reforming' anyone. So too many people go in as evil b*stards and come out, because of whom they've met inside, as very evil b*stards.
What is the purpose of prison? Is it to punish the guilty; rehabilitate offenders; or to protect the public?
The answer should be all three. But IMV the current system doesn't do any of them very well.
I say we should export convicts to the moon. Make them dig tunnels to grow food for export to Earth underground. Ship it to Earth via coilgun.
You could run the whole thing with one big central computer.
Reform's crime plans today are said, by Reform, to cost £17 billion or so over 5 years. And it is good they are talking money in these ways.
But their overall image is about small state and low tax, while also in fact talking large state which inevitably means tax at or above current levels.
It is not sensible to expect them to cut £X00 billion from total managed expenditure (TME) in their first year, but it is realistic to ask for some longer term projections. If they don't exist or are not going to we can be clear they are not serious.
Obviously all projections are about an unknown future, but the OBR expects this government to make 5 year projections about such matters, while aware that black swans happen, and about debt to GDP ratio.
So, two questions I have not seen Reform tackle: By how many % points do they plan TME to fall as a % of GDP in the fifth year of a Reform government
and
By how many % points to they plan debt to fall as a % of GDP in the same five year period?
Even Leon will want to know whether they are a low spend and low tax party or a high spend and high tax party. I suggest they are in fact a high spend party, and will continue to be. As they may be governing, it now matters.
Reform are a low tax, high spend party because that is what their supporters won’t and reality isn’t something those voters care about
I did snort out loud in derision when I was in the car and heard Farage say he would cut crime in half.
I had two thoughts on that target:
a) what is he going to decriminalise?
b) how many Reform MPs will he have to imprison?
The trouble with our prison system is that it's a university for crime. It's just punishment; there's no meaningful effort at 'reforming' anyone. So too many people go in as evil b*stards and come out, because of whom they've met inside, as very evil b*stards.
What is the purpose of prison? Is it to punish the guilty; rehabilitate offenders; or to protect the public?
The answer should be all three. But IMV the current system doesn't do any of them very well.
I say we should export convicts to the moon. Make them dig tunnels to grow food for export to Earth underground. Ship it to Earth via coilgun.
You could run the whole thing with one big central computer.
Reform's crime plans today are said, by Reform, to cost £17 billion or so over 5 years. And it is good they are talking money in these ways.
But their overall image is about small state and low tax, while also in fact talking large state which inevitably means tax at or above current levels.
It is not sensible to expect them to cut £X00 billion from total managed expenditure (TME) in their first year, but it is realistic to ask for some longer term projections. If they don't exist or are not going to we can be clear they are not serious.
Obviously all projections are about an unknown future, but the OBR expects this government to make 5 year projections about such matters, while aware that black swans happen, and about debt to GDP ratio.
So, two questions I have not seen Reform tackle: By how many % points do they plan TME to fall as a % of GDP in the fifth year of a Reform government
and
By how many % points to they plan debt to fall as a % of GDP in the same five year period?
Even Leon will want to know whether they are a low spend and low tax party or a high spend and high tax party. I suggest they are in fact a high spend party, and will continue to be. As they may be governing, it now matters.
Reform are a low tax, high spend party because that is what their supporters won’t and reality isn’t something those voters care about
I did snort out loud in derision when I was in the car and heard Farage say he would cut crime in half.
I had two thoughts on that target:
a) what is he going to decriminalise?
b) how many Reform MPs will he have to imprison?
The trouble with our prison system is that it's a university for crime. It's just punishment; there's no meaningful effort at 'reforming' anyone. So too many people go in as evil b*stards and come out, because of whom they've met inside, as very evil b*stards.
What is the purpose of prison? Is it to punish the guilty; rehabilitate offenders; or to protect the public?
The answer should be all three. But IMV the current system doesn't do any of them very well.
I say we should export convicts to the moon. Make them dig tunnels to grow food for export to Earth underground. Ship it to Earth via coilgun.
You could run the whole thing with one big central computer.
Archive.org has gone funny, so I'll take a punt: is that a "The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress" reference?
Yes
Yay! My copy is roughly 2 feet from my laptop in its present location. I just cracked it open and damn, it's delicate. I haven't read it in decades and the pages are all yellow and tentative. I went thru a phrase of getting rid of my Heinleins but sentimentality dictated I keep a few.
Reform's crime plans today are said, by Reform, to cost £17 billion or so over 5 years. And it is good they are talking money in these ways.
But their overall image is about small state and low tax, while also in fact talking large state which inevitably means tax at or above current levels.
It is not sensible to expect them to cut £X00 billion from total managed expenditure (TME) in their first year, but it is realistic to ask for some longer term projections. If they don't exist or are not going to we can be clear they are not serious.
Obviously all projections are about an unknown future, but the OBR expects this government to make 5 year projections about such matters, while aware that black swans happen, and about debt to GDP ratio.
So, two questions I have not seen Reform tackle: By how many % points do they plan TME to fall as a % of GDP in the fifth year of a Reform government
and
By how many % points to they plan debt to fall as a % of GDP in the same five year period?
Even Leon will want to know whether they are a low spend and low tax party or a high spend and high tax party. I suggest they are in fact a high spend party, and will continue to be. As they may be governing, it now matters.
Reform are a low tax, high spend party because that is what their supporters won’t and reality isn’t something those voters care about
I did snort out loud in derision when I was in the car and heard Farage say he would cut crime in half.
I had two thoughts on that target:
a) what is he going to decriminalise?
b) how many Reform MPs will he have to imprison?
The trouble with our prison system is that it's a university for crime. It's just punishment; there's no meaningful effort at 'reforming' anyone. So too many people go in as evil b*stards and come out, because of whom they've met inside, as very evil b*stards.
What is the purpose of prison? Is it to punish the guilty; rehabilitate offenders; or to protect the public?
The answer should be all three. But IMV the current system doesn't do any of them very well.
I say we should export convicts to the moon. Make them dig tunnels to grow food for export to Earth underground. Ship it to Earth via coilgun.
You could run the whole thing with one big central computer.
Archive.org has gone funny, so I'll take a punt: is that a "The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress" reference?
Yes
Yay! My copy is roughly 2 feet from my laptop in its present location. I just cracked it open and damn, it's delicate. I haven't read it in decades and the pages are all yellow and tentative. I went thru a phrase of getting rid of my Heinleins but sentimentality dictated I keep a few.
It's funny how the made up patois sticks with you - "yammerheads" is perfect for most politicians today.
Keir Starmer tells MPs that many councils have 'lots of housing' that could be used to accommodate asylum seekers. Asked if he can provide any examples, he replies: 'No'
Keir Starmer tells MPs that many councils have 'lots of housing' that could be used to accommodate asylum seekers. Asked if he can provide any examples, he replies: 'No'
A little vague, quite probably in certain areas of the windswept North, accurate.
So it was finally time to say goodbye to sun-drenched Norway, and move on to Lapland, the Realm of the Insects. Where currently it is warmer still.
Although only slightly to the south, while Tromso had five more days without sunsets to enjoy, here the sun is due to dip below the horizon, for an hour or so, at 0050.
The photo was taken in Finland but the background hill to the left is in Sweden and to the right is in Norway. Somewhere in the middle distance there is a cairn where all three meet, but I didn't have time to hike out to it. There's nothing much out there, as you would expect, and the road border was unmanned. But had tons of cameras on the Norwegian side.
Russia is only a few hours away, so hopefully Putin has enough on his plate and Finland will stay safe.
Whereabouts in Finland are you staying? I was there in winter a couple of years back and look forward to hearing your views on what it is like in summer.
At the moment I am in a place called Hetta, but will be working my way south. Southern Finland is flat with trees (a peneplain ground flat by an ice sheet, for those of us who remember our geography from school); northern Finland is rolling hills, so as well as the trees on either side of the road, you get to see more trees on the hills to the sides, and ahead. With the occasional lake. And, so far, one wandering reindeer.
Currently, it's much hotter than usual, and there are swarms of insects everywhere. I picked up a couple of growing bites just going from car to hotel.
That is a long, long way north. I have just Google streetviewed it and in October at least it looks a tad bleak. Its remarkable there are settlements at all that far north. Keep us posted.
It's not over-long, is it, since the Inuit started being Inuit?
I'm not 100% sure what you mean by this? Are you referring to the origin of the word 'Inuit' (ISTR it means 'fish eaters'?) In any case, no Inuit in Northern Finland. The indigenous population - the Lapps - are still reasonably well represented, but they started to be pushed out by Finns from about 500 years ago. I find this process quite interesting: the Lapps were nomadic (reindeer) herdsmen, who started to be displaced as Finns managed to successfully practice agriculture further and further north. Lapland is the furthest north place in the world where it is possible to live the lifestyle of a settled agriculturalist: the winters are long and cold, but there is enough in the summer and the soil that even at this latitude a farmer can grow and raise enough to survive. And so the land available to the reindeer herders grew less and less.
Lapps are now called Sami
Yes, and their flag is commonly seen, here and in northern Norway, and roadsigns here in Lapland are dual language - although mostly it seems pretty modest spelling changes from Finnish.
Driving through the Lyngen Alps this morning I came across more wartime history of which I was unaware. In 1944, fearing invasion from Russia and Finland, the Germans forcibly drove the Sami population off most of Finnmark, burned all the buildings, and built a series of defensive points, as well as using another batch of Soviet prisoners to build a permanent road there. In the event neither the USSR nor Finland bothered to invade northern Norway and it was all fruitless effort. The Lyngen Line, it's known as, for anyone interested
I presume once in Government Reform will seek to redefine the relationship between council officers and members. Farage’s gripe (amongst many, he comes over as a right moaning grumpy sod) on Laura K yesterday was Reform councils were being “obstructed” by officers.
If he expects Council officers to slavishly and unthinkingly follow the diktats of Reform councillors, then he’s more naive than even I expected.
Officers obviously have to take forward the policy decisions of the ruling administration but it’s also their job to point out where said decisions could lead to legal challenges and where any decision contravenes existing national statute. In addition, it’s also incumbent on Officers to point out where decisions could be counter productive or not achieve what is designated as the desired objective.
Sometimes Members don’t like to hear issues with their policies whether the issues are legal, financial or whatever but it’s for Senior Officers to advise of the consequences of decisions and if that advice is ignored or disregarded for that in turn to be properly recorded and Minuted so some Councillor down the line can’t say “we weren’t told”.
This is why the Member-Officer relationship isn’t the same as CEO and Manager for example and why it’s difficult for those who come in to local Government from arenas where they could command and cajole whereas in Councils you have to argue and convince.
It goes wrong when that relationship goes wrong - the Councils which have gone into Section 114 have often been those when Members think they are Officers and Officers think they are Members.
So it was finally time to say goodbye to sun-drenched Norway, and move on to Lapland, the Realm of the Insects. Where currently it is warmer still.
Although only slightly to the south, while Tromso had five more days without sunsets to enjoy, here the sun is due to dip below the horizon, for an hour or so, at 0050.
The photo was taken in Finland but the background hill to the left is in Sweden and to the right is in Norway. Somewhere in the middle distance there is a cairn where all three meet, but I didn't have time to hike out to it. There's nothing much out there, as you would expect, and the road border was unmanned. But had tons of cameras on the Norwegian side.
Russia is only a few hours away, so hopefully Putin has enough on his plate and Finland will stay safe.
Whereabouts in Finland are you staying? I was there in winter a couple of years back and look forward to hearing your views on what it is like in summer.
At the moment I am in a place called Hetta, but will be working my way south. Southern Finland is flat with trees (a peneplain ground flat by an ice sheet, for those of us who remember our geography from school); northern Finland is rolling hills, so as well as the trees on either side of the road, you get to see more trees on the hills to the sides, and ahead. With the occasional lake. And, so far, one wandering reindeer.
Currently, it's much hotter than usual, and there are swarms of insects everywhere. I picked up a couple of growing bites just going from car to hotel.
That is a long, long way north. I have just Google streetviewed it and in October at least it looks a tad bleak. Its remarkable there are settlements at all that far north. Keep us posted.
It's not over-long, is it, since the Inuit started being Inuit?
I'm not 100% sure what you mean by this? Are you referring to the origin of the word 'Inuit' (ISTR it means 'fish eaters'?) In any case, no Inuit in Northern Finland. The indigenous population - the Lapps - are still reasonably well represented, but they started to be pushed out by Finns from about 500 years ago. I find this process quite interesting: the Lapps were nomadic (reindeer) herdsmen, who started to be displaced as Finns managed to successfully practice agriculture further and further north. Lapland is the furthest north place in the world where it is possible to live the lifestyle of a settled agriculturalist: the winters are long and cold, but there is enough in the summer and the soil that even at this latitude a farmer can grow and raise enough to survive. And so the land available to the reindeer herders grew less and less.
I'm thinking about the ancestors of the present Inuit that (?) moved out of (relatively) temperate areas and into the much colder areas they now occupy.
AIUI, the Sami moved, like much of the European population, North-East-wards, until blocked by the Arctic Ocean.
So it was finally time to say goodbye to sun-drenched Norway, and move on to Lapland, the Realm of the Insects. Where currently it is warmer still.
Although only slightly to the south, while Tromso had five more days without sunsets to enjoy, here the sun is due to dip below the horizon, for an hour or so, at 0050.
The photo was taken in Finland but the background hill to the left is in Sweden and to the right is in Norway. Somewhere in the middle distance there is a cairn where all three meet, but I didn't have time to hike out to it. There's nothing much out there, as you would expect, and the road border was unmanned. But had tons of cameras on the Norwegian side.
Russia is only a few hours away, so hopefully Putin has enough on his plate and Finland will stay safe.
Have been to Lapland (Inari) and had an interesting chat with the local Sumis. Basically along the lines of you are 200km from the nearest hospital so you better learn to sew yourself up if you have an accident.
Have you taken enough thread, needles and alcohol (for sterilising)?
All the wine I brought, to dodge Norwegian prices, has gone, but I have rum from Flensburg, which would work best, and a couple of bottles of ice cider from Norway as fallback. And a visit planned to the distillery in Lahti to pick up some whisky, further south.
But I doubt the hotel mending kit I have would be up to the rest of the job anyway
Water is treated differently from the other utilities. You can be disconnected from the power and gas lines (subject to a Magistrate agreeing) but it is a criminal offence to cut off a water supply. And since it is so different, why was it privatised in the first place?
And as customers, we can choose who to buy our gas and leccy from. Poor service or rocketing prices? Shop around. Dodgy suppliers go out of business, and somebody else steps in.
With water, I have no choice but to buy from Yorkshire Water. Privatised monopolies are just crazy.
Privatisation wasn't about your choices.
Privatisation was about the choices of the firms, to either end pollution (and end fines) or to continue with pollution and continue to get fined.
Privatisation worked. Our water has been cleaned up immeasurably post-privatisation.
WTAF?
Well I'm not sure, but what Bart says passesthe sniff test. British rivers were absolutely foul when I was growing up. Dead. And now you get fish in the Mersey and people swim in Salford Quays.
The Water Act set out standards. But that could have been set out whilst still in public ownership.
But after the assets (land and real estate) were stripped by the owners and the Companies could no longer afford to both operate their water treatment facilities and pay the shareholders their bonuses, they started pumping sewerage into the rivers contrary to acceptable levels, and water systems for both the collection of waste water and the distribution of clean water (the losses via leakage is phenomenal) were seldom properly maintained and updated.
The fact that you couldn't swim in a river, then you could, and now you can't, does not suggest lasting progress.
If your argument is party political, blame the failure on Steve Reed. Feargal Sharkey has today asked for his resignation.
I think we have multiple issues. We now have much better data on the condition of the rivers through monitoring and reporting. I believe that many of our rivers in the middle of the last century were functionally dead - industrial run off, sewage etc. I can recall stories of 'first salmon seen in the river X' as things are massively better now. And yet public perception is that things are worse, and I think its the measurement and the reporting of such that is misleading. Plus some very bad examples of pollution (often linked to heavy rain causing overflows).
As a society we have been quick to urbanise areas and concrete over drives etc. This then adds to the run off issues in heavy rain. Add in some climate disruption with more frequent and heavier storms, add in more people and we are where we are.
I believe that our rivers are vastly better than they were, but we need to be better still. But Bart's comment does indeed pass the sniff test on this regard.
As someone who rows in the tidal Thames (Tideway)
You've got two problems passing each other. Industrial chemical pollution has essentially vanished.
The Thames is now full of wildlife. You've got seals at Hammersmith, herons, salmon the works.
The other issue is that expanding London (population) has reached the limits on the major structure of the sewer system. The Tideway Tunnel (AKA Super Sewer) is helping with that, but will not completely stop sewage discharges.
The Sewage discharges have always been there - they are what happens when the system overloads. They have been there since the system was built - pre Bazalgette.
So you have one issue that has vanished as another has risen to prominence. The actual problem is No Infrastructure (Livingstone blocked reservoirs and a desalinisation plant, for example) multiplied by the issue of runoff rain water being directed into the sewers.
Interestingly, the Thames is generally less polluted than many other European capital city rivers. The Seine, for example.
Pharmaceutical (sp) pollution is unmonitored.
Our local brook has levels of antibiotics that are expected to lead to the creation of superbugs. Quantities of beta blockers and statins that have unknown impacts. Levels of hormones likely to block the breeding cycle of invertebrate and vertebrate beasties.
The EA does not monitor these chemicals. Neither do the water companies. And they don’t treat for them.
I’ve spoken to our local GPs and pharmacists and asked them whether or not they take any account whatsoever in the levels of secondary pollution produced by their prescriptions and they have no grasp of the issue. Zero oversight and they seem to have very little interest.
In the EU there is a move to ‘upstream’ the problem. Involving the drugs manufacturers as stakeholders. (We have around an 80% personal pass through of a lot of medications.) Polluter pays being the implied threat.
The Tories chose not to enact that regulation.
Pharmaceutical pollution is a huge challenge for the industry. If you can find a way to generate a medicine that has the desired effect but is broken down when it hits the toilet you will be on to a winner. Many of our medicines can both survive their time in the body and significantly persist in the environment.
Its possible that we have so many homosexual men now because of all the female sex hormone in the drinking water.*
*That's a joke, but there are concerns re water fowl and the use of hormones.
Keir Starmer tells MPs that many councils have 'lots of housing' that could be used to accommodate asylum seekers. Asked if he can provide any examples, he replies: 'No'
Comments
Natural selection is absolutely engrossing. I didn't particularly enjoy biology at school and dropped it as soon as I could in favour of physics and chemistry. It was only some time later I realised that in natural selection, biology actually has its own unified field of everything and it is much more graspable than anything which comes close in physics. It is so elegant and simple - yet every real world example of it is fascinating.
From what I remember of it, reoffending in Scotland will drop to zero.
There were supposed to be safeguards in place to prevent disease ridden sewage being pumped into rivers by privatised water companies. That went by the way in recent years.
But then, it's @bondegezou so that's a given. He probably spends 19 hours a day with the two other people left on Bluesky
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckg3de0zdjno
Natural selection, prison policy, education standards. PB summarised in one story.
"River swimming in Paris? That would be in Seine!"
We are trapped.
The alternative is actual revolution/civil war - we are heading that way. But a firm alt-right government should prevent that. I hope
Although only slightly to the south, while Tromso had five more days without sunsets to enjoy, here the sun is due to dip below the horizon, for an hour or so, at 0050.
The photo was taken in Finland but the background hill to the left is in Sweden and to the right is in Norway. Somewhere in the middle distance there is a cairn where all three meet, but I didn't have time to hike out to it. There's nothing much out there, as you would expect, and the road border was unmanned. But had tons of cameras on the Norwegian side.
Russia is only a few hours away, so hopefully Putin has enough on his plate and Finland will stay safe.
But their overall image is about small state and low tax, while also in fact talking large state which inevitably means tax at or above current levels.
It is not sensible to expect them to cut £X00 billion from total managed expenditure (TME) in their first year, but it is realistic to ask for some longer term projections. If they don't exist or are not going to we can be clear they are not serious.
Obviously all projections are about an unknown future, but the OBR expects this government to make 5 year projections about such matters, while aware that black swans happen, and about debt to GDP ratio.
So, two questions I have not seen Reform tackle: By how many % points do they plan TME to fall as a % of GDP in the fifth year of a Reform government
and
By how many % points to they plan debt to fall as a % of GDP in the same five year period?
Even Leon will want to know whether they are a low spend and low tax party or a high spend and high tax party. I suggest they are in fact a high spend party, and will continue to be. As they may be governing, it now matters.
Regulations being imposed on state-owned firms don't mean much if the state-owned firm flouts the regulations since fines then mean nothing.
Regulations existed pre-privatisation, they were just ignored since there were no consequences to ignoring them. Take away the profit motive of avoiding fines and why should a state-owned firm not lapse back into just ignoring regulations? Especially when the Treasury does not wish to invest.
I do wonder, looking at what's going on round here, whether cutting out Parish Councils might be an option.
I had two thoughts on that target:
a) what is he going to decriminalise?
b) how many Reform MPs will he have to imprison?
Spouse of sponsor
Parents/grandparents of sponsor
Unmarried, dependent children of sponsor under the age of 22.
That is it. Cousins, nephews/nieces or any other relations including children who are either married or adults 22 or above are simply ineligible.
A fifty grand fine once-off may not be troubling. A £100k fine every time you do a discharge might be extremely troubling.
You have to get the balance right and ensure the teeth are sharp enough to bite. There's no bite though without the profit motive if a state-owned firm simply doesn't give a shit.
Currently, it's much hotter than usual, and there are swarms of insects everywhere. I picked up a couple of growing bites just going from car to hotel.
Farage: I’ve agreed deal to deport Albanian criminals
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2025/07/21/nigel-farage-reform-plan-cut-crime/ (£££)
Our local brook has levels of antibiotics that are expected to lead to the creation of superbugs. Quantities of beta blockers and statins that have unknown impacts. Levels of hormones likely to block the breeding cycle of invertebrate and vertebrate beasties.
The EA does not monitor these chemicals. Neither do the water companies. And they don’t treat for them.
I’ve spoken to our local GPs and pharmacists and asked them whether or not they take any account whatsoever in the levels of secondary pollution produced by their prescriptions and they have no grasp of the issue. Zero oversight and they seem to have very little interest.
In the EU there is a move to ‘upstream’ the problem. Involving the drugs manufacturers as stakeholders. (We have around an 80% personal pass through of a lot of medications.) Polluter pays being the implied threat.
The Tories chose not to enact that regulation.
Defence secretary ‘in full paranoia mode’ as he loses sixth senior adviser in as many months
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/politics/2025/07/20/aides-abandon-hegseth-pentagon-in-turmoil/ (£££)
When it comes to losing colleagues, Pete Hegseth is the Nigel Farage of the Pentagon.
The answer should be all three. But IMV the current system doesn't do any of them very well.
If you own a water company in order to provide water and sewage services, fine.
If you own a water company as a thing that generates cashflow in order to allow you to borrow enormous sums of capital that you can then extract for yourself, irrespective of the performance of the underlying company, that's a bit different.
With sharp enough lawyers, the feedback from poor performance to the poorhouse is slow enough to be ignored.
And to his horror it does not contain alcohol.
It may be relevant.
You could run the whole thing with one big central computer.
As it is, the state (or public) finances the assets, and their upgrades, while the "owners" expect to collect rent on them.
The structure of the privatised water companies is often completely indefensible from the tax/bill payers' point of view.
In any case, no Inuit in Northern Finland. The indigenous population - the Lapps - are still reasonably well represented, but they started to be pushed out by Finns from about 500 years ago. I find this process quite interesting: the Lapps were nomadic (reindeer) herdsmen, who started to be displaced as Finns managed to successfully practice agriculture further and further north. Lapland is the furthest north place in the world where it is possible to live the lifestyle of a settled agriculturalist: the winters are long and cold, but there is enough in the summer and the soil that even at this latitude a farmer can grow and raise enough to survive. And so the land available to the reindeer herders grew less and less.
https://archive.org/details/1965-12_IF/page/n7/mode/2up?view=theater
https://archive.org/details/1966-01_IF_modified/page/42/mode/2up?view=theater
https://archive.org/details/1966-02_IF/page/102/mode/2up?view=theater
https://archive.org/details/1966-04_IF/page/92/mode/2up?view=theater
https://archive.org/details/1966-03_IF/page/110/mode/2up?view=theater
And Rupert Murdoch published the Epstein letter story
Trump exit date 2025 available at 20/1...
Triple lock ruled out of scope for new pensions commission.
I despair, I really do.
Mr Fulcher suggested there was no ill will behind his departure.
“Working alongside the dedicated men and women of the Department of Defense has been incredibly inspiring,” Mr Fulcher said.
“Revitalising the warrior ethos, rebuilding the military, and re-establishing deterrence are just some of the historic accomplishments I’m proud to have witnessed.
“None of this could have happened without Secretary Hegseth’s decisive leadership or President Trump’s continued confidence in our team.”
*
Have you taken enough thread, needles and alcohol (for sterilising)?
AIUI, the Sami moved, like much of the European population, North-East-wards, until blocked by the Arctic Ocean.
Keir Starmer tells MPs that many councils have 'lots of housing' that could be used to accommodate asylum seekers. Asked if he can provide any examples, he replies: 'No'
It's not Peppa Pig level incompetence.
Driving through the Lyngen Alps this morning I came across more wartime history of which I was unaware. In 1944, fearing invasion from Russia and Finland, the Germans forcibly drove the Sami population off most of Finnmark, burned all the buildings, and built a series of defensive points, as well as using another batch of Soviet prisoners to build a permanent road there. In the event neither the USSR nor Finland bothered to invade northern Norway and it was all fruitless effort. The Lyngen Line, it's known as, for anyone interested
NEW THREAD
I presume once in Government Reform will seek to redefine the relationship between council officers and members. Farage’s gripe (amongst many, he comes over as a right moaning grumpy sod) on Laura K yesterday was Reform councils were being “obstructed” by officers.
If he expects Council officers to slavishly and unthinkingly follow the diktats of Reform councillors, then he’s more naive than even I expected.
Officers obviously have to take forward the policy decisions of the ruling administration but it’s also their job to point out where said decisions could lead to legal challenges and where any decision contravenes existing national statute. In addition, it’s also incumbent on Officers to point out where decisions could be counter productive or not achieve what is designated as the desired objective.
Sometimes Members don’t like to hear issues with their policies whether the issues are legal, financial or whatever but it’s for Senior Officers to advise of the consequences of decisions and if that advice is ignored or disregarded for that in turn to be properly recorded and Minuted so some Councillor down the line can’t say “we weren’t told”.
This is why the Member-Officer relationship isn’t the same as CEO and Manager for example and why it’s difficult for those who come in to local Government from arenas where they could command and cajole whereas in Councils you have to argue and convince.
It goes wrong when that relationship goes wrong - the Councils which have gone into Section 114 have often been those when Members think they are Officers and Officers think they are Members.
But I doubt the hotel mending kit I have would be up to the rest of the job anyway
Its possible that we have so many homosexual men now because of all the female sex hormone in the drinking water.*
*That's a joke, but there are concerns re water fowl and the use of hormones.
We want them all to leave.