Numbers Game

While browsing the internet over coffee this morning, I took a casual gander at some basic information about Angola. This snippet from Wikipedia is interesting as yet another hint that the game of made up numbers still has plenty of life in it.

 

Due to climate change, Angola's annual average temperature has increased by 1.4.°C since 1951, and is expected to keep rising[76] while rainfall is becoming more variable.[77] Angola is highly vulnerable to climate change impacts.

Presumably we are expected to believe that since 1951, Angola has been measuring surface temperatures accurately enough for a claimed 1.4.°C temperature rise to be reliable, although I'm not sure why there is another decimal point after the figure 4.

Alternatively, as the Wikipedia link indicates, the number comes from World Bank Group which of course is linked to the UN. In which case it may be a global UN number rather than a statistical output from accurate and reliable Angolan temperature measurements.

Hmm - made up number seems to be the safest assumption.

At least sometimes or often

I’m a psychologist. Here’s why 40 per cent of the world avoids reading the news

What’s the solution to news fatigue? Well, it’s not avoidance. A democracy depends on informed citizens

During several recent conversations, people have told me that they’ve stopped checking their phones in the morning. Not because nothing was happening, but because everything was. They described the feeling as standing under a waterfall of perpetual bad news.

This experience is far from an isolated one. According to the Reuters Institute’s 2025 Digital News Report, 69 per cent of Canadians at least occasionally avoid the news now.

Globally, 40 per cent report they at least sometimes or often do the same, the highest figure ever recorded. People shared consistent reasons for this: the news put them in a bad mood, they felt overwhelmed and powerless to act.


This story from an outfit which peddles climate doom as one of its doom staples. Don't they realise that at least sometimes or often many of us find it entertaining? Some of us couldn't enjoy our morning coffee without it.

I'm not a psychologist, but at least sometimes or often I check the Independent for a morning lift. It's a confirmation that all is as it was, nonsense hasn't been supplanted from its global throne and the world of mainstream media isn't likely to become disturbingly rational.

Lavish Lifestyle

Police: Peter Murrell abused position to bankroll lavish lifestyle he craved

Peter Murrell abused his privileged position to bankroll a lavish lifestyle “he craved but could not afford”, Police Scotland has said.

The former SNP chief executive has been remanded into custody at the High Court in Edinburgh after pleading guilty to embezzling £400,310.65 from the SNP.

He admitted the charges when he appeared at the court on Monday morning.

Media phrases eh? "Lavish lifestyle" is a popular one for stories where a wrong 'un takes money which isn't theirs and spends on what the media consider to be luxuries such as posh cars, exotic holidays, fancy tattoos and so on.

On the other hand, when a government spends many billions propping up a failing but politically important project such as HS2, we don't usually describe it as lavish politics.  

Maybe that's because we need new words such as hyperlavish for government largesse. This would give us Ed Miliband, Net Zero and the hyperlavish funding which keeps it tottering along. 

Green Data Centres Go AWOL

 

Government slammed for failure on hyperscale data centre emissions

The Scottish Government faces urgent calls to address "major shortcomings" in its data centre policy, as Action to Protect Rural Scotland (APRS) alleges a critical failure to account for the emissions of hyperscale AI facilities in assessments of "green data centres" and their contribution to climate targets.

Kat Jones, director of APRS, branded the situation "pretty shocking". The government’s NPF4 national planning framework states that "green data centres" will have an "overall negligible impact" on Scotland’s emissions reduction goals.


A chap is bound to wonder what a "green data centre" might look like within the strange, mysterious and eerily mystical minds of Green folk.  

  

Use of an abacus, as illustrated in
Margarita philosophica (1503)
Source

Remember this?

A few years ago there was some publicity about the Highway Code and various changes related to its hierarchy of road users. One change was Rule H2, giving way to pedestrians crossing or waiting to cross at a road junction

Rule H2 - Rule for drivers, motorcyclists, horse drawn vehicles, horse riders and cyclists

At a junction you should give way to pedestrians crossing or waiting to cross a road into which or from which you are turning.

At the time, Rule H2 was often illustrated like this -

 

Mrs H and I reckon the situation is now worse than it was before the change. Vehicles turning into a junction like this virtually never give way to waiting pedestrians. It would be suicidal for pedestrians to assume otherwise.

We encountered yet another example this morning while walking back from town. A chap driving with his mouth open didn't appear to see us at all. I'm not sure why it is necessary for pedestrians to be wary of people who drive with their mouths open, but it is.

Our plan is working

Keir Starmer insists 'our plan is working' and says he will 'keep pushing forward'

The Prime Minister has defended his government's plan, as he battles to remain in his position. Sir Keir Starmer said efforts to cut costs, reduce net migration and boost growth showed 'our plan is working'.

Sir Keir - who has insisted he will not walk away from number 10 if Andy Burnham wins the Makerfield by-election, triggering a leadership contest - has sought to highlight his own record.

European Union rejects Keir Starmer's Brexit reset demand in major setback

Brussels is said to have rejected Sir Keir Starmer's proposal to establish a single market for goods between the UK and EU in a major setback for Government's goal of improved relations.

The Cabinet Office's most senior official handling European relations, Michael Ellam, put forward the ambitious plan during recent trips to the Belgian capital as part of efforts to strengthen economic ties with the bloc.

To avoid or not to avoid, that is the question

We navigate through life by avoiding surprises, it a basic survival trait. The instinct to avoid threats or harm still dominates our lives, it is essential to what we are - obviously. 

As we should expect, there are numerous examples of how this essential instinct has moulded itself into modern life. We live in a world of avoidance, as we must.

Ideology seeks to avoid the messy unpredictability of life.

Political parties offer voters the opportunity to avoid their democratic responsibilities by passing it all on to a party.

The EU avoids many of the responsibilities of national government, that’s mostly what it is for.

Bureaucracy is a way of avoiding responsibility by diffusing it within the foggy realms of process and procedure.

The climate change narrative seeks to avoid the insoluble problem that the natural world never can be natural.

Gender politics even seeks to avoid the facts of human reproduction in what must be one of the most extreme avoidance ideologies ever concocted.

   

It's a long list because avoidance is part of life. Sceptics try to avoid irrational avoidance, but it is not the popular approach. Just avoid and have done with the messy responsibilities of analysis, that’s the popular way. As a philosophy of life, avoidance has a very long history. We can’t avoid avoidance.

To avoid a blog post which would go on forever, I'll finish with an old quote which points out that many things are well worth avoiding. Sceptics know that too.  

Do not make a Business of what is no Business. As some make gossip out of everything, so others business. They always talk big, take everything in earnest, and turn it into a dispute or a secret. Troublesome things must not be taken too seriously if they can be avoided. It is preposterous to take to heart that which you should throw over your shoulders. Much that would be something has become nothing by being left alone, and what was nothing has become of consequence by being made much of. At the outset things can be easily settled, but not afterwards. Often the remedy causes the disease. ’Tis by no means the least of life's rules: to let things alone.

Baltasar Gracian - The Art of Worldly Wisdom (1647)