politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Reflections – Part One
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Reflections – Part One
Sometimes, it’s apparently minor decisions in politics which can annoy the most. Here is my list.
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https://theconversation.com/if-you-think-the-millennium-bug-was-a-hoax-here-comes-a-history-lesson-129042
Has the Russia report been published yet?
One other perhaps positive point is that Johnson has now commissioned the Tory Party anti-Islam inquiry as promised. Better late than never.
On the subject of peerages, I would hope Ken would be awarded one very soon. It is a terrible omission from this year's list.
Edit: though on reflection your straw man linkage to Climate change debate is fatuous and wrong.
If you let climate change stay a canvass for their anti capitalist, anti western social justice agenda you'll never get a broad base of support.
The annoying thing about the protests was the pretence it was about one thing when it was clearly about another, as comments from protestors revealed when they slipped.
Seems possible to me.
To be blind to the problem because 'the left' has taken it up is just plain stupid.
Until you are - as some innocents have been - and then it is a living nightmare.
...Alison dedicated over 30 years to public service and is noted for her commitment to law and order. She was appointed as DPP in 2013, the first lawyer from within the CPS to hold the position, and led the CPS during one of its most challenging periods. She is to be commended for her work during and after the London Riots and on the retrial and conviction of the killers of Stephen Lawrence, among many other achievements.
"The document is the work of Dentons, which says it is the world’s biggest law firm; the Thomson Reuters Foundation, an arm of the old media giant that appears dedicated to identity politics of various sorts; and the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer and Intersex Youth & Student Organisation (IGLYO). Both Dentons and the Thomson Reuters Foundation note that the document does not necessarily reflect their views.
The report is called ‘Only adults? Good practices in legal gender recognition for youth’. Its purpose is to help trans groups in several countries bring about changes in the law to allow children to legally change their gender, without adult approval and without needing the approval of any authorities. ‘We hope this report will be a powerful tool for activists and NGOs working to advance the rights of trans youth across Europe and beyond,’ says the foreword.
As you’d expect of a report co-written by the staff of a major law firm, it’s a comprehensive and solid document, summarising law, policy and ‘advocacy’ across several countries. Based on the contributions of trans groups from around the world (including two in the UK, one of which is not named), it collects and shares ‘best practice’ in ‘lobbying’ to change the law so that parents no longer have a say on their child’s legal gender."
https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2019/12/the-document-that-reveals-the-remarkable-tactics-of-trans-lobbyists/
Back to Firefox for the first time in a while.
On-topic: some good picks, particularly Ken Clarke's absence from the Lords. I think it's less than stellar that Saunders got a gong following the collapse of rape trials for inexcusable reasons (turns out the defendants get to see evidence too. Whhoever would've guessed).
Speaking of that sort of thing, the Cypus story sounds dubious. A woman withdraws her allegation and says it was made up affter the police spoke to her without a lawyer present... not sure that stands up. Or the other hotel (Spanish?) claiming that the case of the three drowned tourists is now closed.
Dodginess all round.
Their voters now have someone they can require to follow their instructions.
Never mind whether Ken Clarke deserves it more than Zac Goldsmith and Nicki Morgan. WTF did no-one in Number 10 suggest it rather undermined Boris's whole "people's parliament" schtick if his very first act was to appoint this pair, unelected and in Zac's case actively rejected by the people, to the Cabinet?
It's almost as if Boris would say anything to get elected.
I'm not holding my breath for the report on Russian interference in our politics, especially as (a) Russia probably helped Boris, and (b) both main parties use many of the same techniques.
So I’ve had no letters or phone calls from the NHS so hopefully that means my surgery tomorrow isn’t being cancelled or delayed further...
Fingers crossed for a positive start to 2020!
Think how bad the FCA would have been if George Osborne had not changed its letterhead thoroughly reformed it after Gordon Brown smashed up City regulation (according to the CCHQ 2010 version of history).
Whatever your opinions on the issue, the selective quotations from the report are very clearly made to support the case of the author, and they omit the parts which don’t.
Which is mildly ironic, as this is more or less one of the things the reports is accused of.
It's not that complicated to do what we're doing now. To tighten up building standards so that - for example - new construction has better insulation, automatically dimming lights and solar panels integrated from the start.
Or to put in place ever rising fuel economy standards. Or subsidies for electric vehicles.
In other words, what we're doing now is using capitalism to iterate, to use fewer resources, year on year, without affecting our standard of living. (That this also lowers our economic reliance on people who want to kill us is an added bonus.)
But many* Greens aren't really interested in this. They are really anti-progress, anti-science, anti-capitalism. They read The Silent Spring, and instead of correctly regarding it as complete tosh, they believed every word.
* Not all greens. Perhaps not even most greens. But certainly a great many greens.
See Stephen Spielberg's documentary of this phenomenon, when a shark attacks the small town of Amity.....
But it's dumb even from that perspective. Who would be likelier to go to Cyprus based on the story?
It doesn't necessarily engender confidence in the authorities.
It starts with a lament for the loss of the coal and oil industries (and is illustrated with a picture of coal miners) and then ends with a call for a Green Industrial Revolution.
Tory assault on coal industry=a horrifying destruction of working class communities
Labour assault=guaranteeing the future of the planet.
It is fair to say that he in particular is a South African man. No gender politics. Strong interest in rugby.
They had a son. From the age of two or three, their son may have had a penis, but identified in every way as a girl. How he wanted to look. What he wanted to play with. He told his parents - and this is a three year old - that he's a girl. For five years they fought him. They made him dress as a boy.
I don't want to share too many details, but eventually, they realised it wasn't working. At the age of about nine or ten, the boy started dressing as a girl and taking a female name. And is 100x happier.
This wasn't the parents pushing some lefty agenda. This was a girl in a boys body. And I would have been sceptical if I hadn't seen it myself.
Has the Jezziah been on here recently? Or justin124?
States must ensure that the best interests of the child are analysed during legal transition procedures, and that the minor’s view is given proper weight, taking into account their individual maturity and development...
Which seems a not unreasonable principle to me.
I think this is a pretty common reaction in such cases, and often that of the parents.
On the other hand, maybe they just had fun Christmases. I hope that's the reason.
Because it's an agenda being pushed by people with whom you disagree on other things. The people who believe in trans rights tend also to be Green, tend also to be pro-EU migration and the like.
But until you know the hell (and it really is hell) of having a child who is trans, than frankly, you know shit.
I'm wary of that, on children, because (I believe) it sterilises them.
So Osborne did a hell of a lot more than merely changing the letterhead.
Still it doesn't surprise me that over a decade later we still have Labour supporters screeching that "Brown did nothing wrong!" No wonder you are unelectable when up against even a lying buffoon like Boris.
Can't help feeling that we will look back at Mark Carney's time as governor as something of a golden age for the Bank. Osborne worked hard to get him. He was right.
I said she would make a splash.
But I don't think it always is. Friends of mine have a trans child (the third of three boys) and they seem fine with it and report no significant problems.
Those pushing hormone therapy on young children may be creating a new scandal down the line, with thousands being sterilised over time.
Did a bit on extra genders etc at university. There was a tribe of native Americans that had a third gender: berdache[sp]. Essentially, a chap who plucks his beard out and lives with a married couple as a sort of second wife (including imitating the menstrual cycle by cutting his legs open).
In the modern world, Iran's a pioneer in transgender surgery.
Unfortunately this is because being gay has consequences including hanging from a crane, so many gay couples take the decision that one of them will 'become' transgender (which is legal) because it's better for life expectancy.
A problem is that those at the bonkers end of the spectrum sometimes assert that sex is a construct or a fiction and that differences don't exist or matter, which is fundamentally untrue. It's why transgender people (male to female) in sport is not, generally, right. Male muscle is simply superior to female muscle. Men have more of it, and even if you transition that doesn't alter the structure of your chromosomes. There is, after all, a reason why almost all sports are segregated based on sex.
And seeing as you were sceptical until you saw it yourself, why am I any different now to how you were then?
For the the record, I believe in conserving fossil fuels, and in using beneficial forms of renewable energy, and in preserving our beautiful planet for future generations. But I also disapprove of unthinking puritanism and diminishing personal freedom.
I think they will prove very successful, but not on their own terms - there is pushback and many people don't go along with the most alarmist of claims or seek the overthrow of society, but the desire to attempt to become a lot greener does seem to have turned a corner with many people and organisations, so I think those concerned about puritanism and diminished freedom can rest a bit easier in that the XR and similar success will not as they themselves wish.
https://twitter.com/Ale_Mussolini_/status/1211315773786009600?s=20
The reason for my being wring is that I see, when I look around, remarkable degrees of correlation in belief. In the US, being evangelical correlates very strongly with climate change scepticism. Why?
In the UK, being very environmentally aware correlates strongly with being anti-capitalist. There are strong degrees of correlation between Euro-scepticism and other things that have nothing to do with Euro-scepticism.
It's like people, on average, find themselves on a "side" and then have to swallow all that side's views, whether accurate or not. Where's the critical thinking? Can't I be Eurosceptic, but recognise the EU has done some good things? Can't I be sceptical about AGW, but believe that it's in our interests to use fewer natural resources?
I'm just acutely conscious that most of us (certainly me, anyway) come at this from a position of relative ignorance, and I was wondering whether any of the surprisingly-widely learned PB.com readership know of any kind of definitive studies on this area they could point towards.
That pesky tortoise.
There's actually a massive overlap between stuff we should do if warming enthusiasts are right and stuff we should do if they're wrong.
Geothermal and solar energy exploitation, energy efficient devices, heat efficient homes and so on.
My suspicion comes from two main reasons. There's a claim of scientific credibility by some warming enthusiasts but if you challenge them they react as if their religious orthodoxy has been disputed by a blatant heretic. You can have the authority of science or the dogma of religion, but you can't have both and I distrust anyone who simply dismisses any scepticism as if it's invalid (especially those affecting a scientific mindset when scepticism is the bedrock of scientific inquiry).
My other suspicion arises from the desire by certain true believers to dictate to others and impose their views on them. Whether that's meat taxes, meat bans, bans on this or that, a desire to remove from all public discussion those with the temerity to hold a different view. And it's also highly dubious how a lot of this plays into white middle class guilt, a hangover, a fetish for redemption after the evils of empire and redistribution to try and buy virtue by throwing money from the rich nations to the poor, and anyone who disagrees gets accused of not caring the world's ending.
The world's always been ending. From Ragnarok to zombies, Chicken Licken's always been scared the sky is falling in.
I'm unpersuaded. And the main reason is that the climate has always changed and will always change. I've not seen anything that persuades me, and people just saying "The science agrees" when the likes of David Bellamy vanished from screens for refusing to go along with that don't convince me at all.
The use of 'deniers' is particularly wretched. Disagreement on science is not the moral equivalent of pretending the genocide of six million Jews never happened. [It will be remembered I condemned Osborne for his use of 'deficit deniers' also].
Edited extra bit: sorry, bit rambly.
As for David Bellamy -
"In his foreword to the 1989 book The Greenhouse Effect,[25] Bellamy wrote:
The profligate demands of humankind are causing far reaching changes to the atmosphere of planet Earth, of this there is no doubt. Earth's temperature is showing an upward swing, the so-called greenhouse effect, now a subject of international concern. The greenhouse effect may melt the glaciers and ice caps of the world causing the sea to rise and flood many of our great cities and much of our best farmland.
Bellamy's later statements on global warming indicate that he subsequently changed his views completely. A letter he published on 16 April 2005 in New Scientist asserted that a large proportion (555 of 625) of the glaciers being observed by the World Glacier Monitoring Service were advancing, not retreating.[26] George Monbiot of The Guardian tracked down Bellamy's original source for this information and found that it was from discredited data originally published by Fred Singer, who claimed to have obtained these figures from a 1989 article in the journal Science: however, Monbiot proved that this article had never existed.[27] Bellamy subsequently accepted that his figures on glaciers were wrong, and announced in a letter to The Sunday Times in 2005 that he had "decided to draw back from the debate on global warming",[28]
Also, oceanic heat content is naturally slower moving than some other measures, and therefore you avoid either rapid spikes upward (or downward).
It's certainly made me more convinced by the GW part of AGW.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3jxx8Yyw1c
But it was no Empire Strikes Back.
There was a similar massive leak in California in 2015. We are testing the coping mechanisms of Gaia to the very limits.
'Mum & dad say this is the way girls behave so that's how I'm going to behave, even if they don't like me doing it.'
No idea if it's the case here but I guess it's a possibility.
Nobody knows exactly when a point of no return will be reached, but positive feedback loops do exist and if we get into one that may well wipe the smile off your children or grandchildren's faces.
In any case offshore wind is cheaper than coal now and gas won't be far behind. Why not make the changes for reasons of clean air if nothing else.
The 'A' part less so. As long as the data continues to match or fall short of previous natural warmings in its rate and extent (which it undoubtedly does) then all the arguments are unfounded.
But - and this is where I differ from other sceptics - that doesn't make me opposed to any of the measures we are taking. We may be doing them for ill founded reasons (and I do fear for the reputation of science if that becomes obvious) but reducing or eliminating the use of fossil fuels, reducing energy consumption and moving to a mixed renewables energy economy is entirely sensible and desirable. Hydrocarbons are a finite resource with many very important uses and burning them -whilst it had its part to play in our development as a civilisation - is now a very poor way to waste them.
https://twitter.com/KatyushaBoom/status/1211688935270817792?s=20
Which of course is at risk because such honours would traditionally include the speaker and hence there may not be one this time which would discriminate against Clarke and others.
I will be at the NHS on Monday for a different reason. Many moons ago I signed up as a potential bone marrow donor and was called last week to say someone who needs a transplant is a match for me. Which will I hope be a good news story.
Like others on here I think we should be changing our behaviour anyway. Funnily enough I think we will have a mahoosive global recession, which will help in this regard. Quite how the XR lot will react to that I don't know.
I've looked at date formats frequently over the years, particularly for timestamps. You find yourself writing yyyy-mm-dd-hh-mm-ss and then you get tripped up by those which use milliseconds as well.
[This is expanded universe stuff, doesn't feature in the main franchise, although I've not seen the Mandalorian or Rebels, so could be in there].
It's a billion dollar franchise and they've just opened a (bit of a) theme park. They won't let it go until you kill them with a brick.
https://www.gamesradar.com/uk/upcoming-star-wars-movies/