Red Biddy

I've been reading the Hansard report of the Second Reading of the Methylated Spirits Bill from 1934.  It's an interesting read, a battle between the desire to control a comparatively minor but distressing evil and a desire not to interfere with the legitimate uses of methylated spirits. The purpose of the Bill was to reduce the highly unpleasant effects of methylated spirit addiction, succinctly stated by Miss Horsbrugh. 

But in bringing forward this Bill I would point out that it is not a temperance measure. Already the Government and all right-thinking people have realised that it is bad for health to drink mineralised methylated spirits, and they wish to have that stopped. 

However, Miss Horsbrugh also seems to be convinced that the Bill is only necessary because other spirits are rendered too expensive by alcohol duty.

I ask the representative of the Government and those who are opposing this Bill to give me any real reason why we restrict all these other alcoholic beverages as to the hours in which they are sold and the methods under which the public can obtain them, and yet allow an unrestricted sale in many of our shops of this poisonous alcohol? Why should the Government frown on "Johnnie Walker" and give the glad eye to "Red Biddy"? Why is the tax so excessive on whisky when up and down the country social workers tell us that if only the methylated spirit drinker could get away from this poisonous spirit and get a taste for a decent spirit, there is some chance of him being cured of his appalling vice.

A Mr Frederick Macquisten also supported the Bill and made some interesting additions to Miss Horsbrugh's observations.

I listened with interest to the evidence that was said to be given by the principal Excise Officer. He has a good salary, and no doubt he drinks good whisky. It is very unlikely that he drinks methylated spirits, and it is extremely unlikely that anybody who could afford to buy whisky would drink methylated spirits. No doubt the same applies to the hon. Member for London University (Sir E. Graham-Little), but everybody is not so refined as he is, and liquors which appeal to other people would not apeal to him or to me. The practice of drinking methylated spirits is the illegitimate child of the Whisky Duty. If that duty were not so high, this evil would never exist, but it does exist because the duty hits the poor at the expense of the rich, and nobody seems to care what happens to the poor— Rattle his bones over the stones, He's only a pauper whom nobody owns. Nobody seems to remember that a definite temptation is put in the way of the very poorest of the population. This Bill will prove to be a hindrance to the sale of this stuff...

Methylated spirit drinking is a definite evil. It is no use telling us that the convictions of people for getting drunk on methylated spirit are infinitesimal in number. People do not get it in public houses. They buy a bottle of it and get a bottle of Spanish red wine, and in that way make their own "Red Biddy" and get intoxicated in their own homes, and as they do not venture out—because they are in a state of coma for twelve hours or so afterwards—the police do not find out...

Generally I object to restrictions of all kinds. I believe that if we had perfect and absolute freedom in all matters the difficulties would soon solve themselves. The degenerates, the people who cannot control themselves, would all pass out, and we should be purged of them in a generation—a rather hectic generation, I admit. Look at the mass of restrictions against the drinking of wholesome whisky and wholesome beer...

The Bill should have a Second Reading and if any Clause gives trouble it can be dealt with in committee. I have great pleasure in supporting the Bill, but I would say that it lies in the hands of the Chancellor of the Exchequer to make the Bill unnecessary by the reduction of the whisky duty.

What strikes me about all this is the way it straddles two very different social attitudes. On the one hand we have a desire to leave ordinary people in peace and allow them to live their lives as they see fit. On the other hand, even the hard-nosed Mr Macquisten was in not in favour of doing nothing if something constructive could be done.

Yet could this be said today?

Generally I object to restrictions of all kinds. I believe that if we had perfect and absolute freedom in all matters the difficulties would soon solve themselves. The degenerates, the people who cannot control themselves, would all pass out, and we should be purged of them in a generation—a rather hectic generation, I admit.

No I don't think so either.

The whole thing is both a harbinger of meddling times to come and an interesting insight into our own bureaucratic tangles and taboos. The Salvation Army was in favour of the Act of course, but they saw Red Biddy in action.

A nuanced climate

The orthodox climate debate seems to be spinning off some nuances in the face of static global temperatures. Subtle changes in emphasis and a leaching away of previous enthusiasms. A split seems to be developing between the old climate orthodoxy and a newer, more nuanced approach.

Even the BBC seems less enthusiastic about climate stories these days. For example, tonight there is a new Horizon programme, the first of a three part series about cats.

Will the moggy series be more popular than another airing of alarming climate forecasts? Very likely, because political polling suggests the general public have also lost much of their enthusiasm for the climate narrative.

This slight change in attitude by the BBC is more than a straw in the wind too. The BBC originally adopted the bog standard orthodox climate narrative, shorn of even the most obvious caveats. These days it seems less keen, as if even its internal narrative is cooling off – pun intended. 

This is significant. The BBC has been a major player in the orthodox climate narrative and even though it hasn’t defected, any change in tone is presumably significant. Although without being a fly on its well-funded walls one can never be quite sure of these things.

Yet there has always been an important divide between the public climate narrative and the science behind it. Take this well-known example from the IPCC 2001 Assessment Report (TAR), issued when the orthodox narrative was in full swing.

The climate system is a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible.

Prediction is not possible it says, but that’s not what the general public heard and not what organs such as the BBC reported. There is a nuance here though. The predictions we hear about via the BBC and others are actually scenarios, not predictions.

These scenarios were endorsed as predictions by activists and many scientist who should have known better. Instead they threw professional caution to the winds and now there are early signs that the winds are no longer favourable. From the IPCC Special Report on Emissions Scenarios published in 2000.

What are scenarios and what is their purpose?

Future greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are the product of very complex dynamic systems, determined by driving forces such as demographic development, socio-economic development and technological change. Their future evolution is highly uncertain. Scenarios are alternative images of how the future might unfold and are an appropriate tool with which to analyse how driving forces may influence future emission outcomes and to assess the associated uncertainties. They assist in climate change analysis, including climate modeling and the assessment of impacts, adaptation, and mitigation. The possibility that any single emissions path will occur as described in scenarios is highly uncertain. [My emphasis]

As to why these scenarios and the orthodox narrative were constructed in the first place – try this from the UN in 1996.

Energy production and use is the main source of many of the threats to the Earth's atmosphere. Despite tremendous increases in commercial energy use to date, the majority of the global population still has inadequate access to the kind of energy services enjoyed by the inhabitants of the industrialized countries. A lack of adequate energy services is one of the symptoms of poverty. The inequalities are so large that it would be virtually impossible for the majority of the world's population to enjoy similar resource intensive energy-use patterns as those prevailing in the industrialized countries. More sustainable energy patterns throughout the world and the protection of the atmosphere are recognized as important policy objectives at both the national and international levels. International environmental agreements are being extended from the local and national to international levels.

COMMITTEE ON NEW AND RENEWABLE

SOURCES OF ENERGY AND ON

ENERGY FOR DEVELOPMENT

Second session New York, 12 -23 February 1996

Climate change is and always has been a question of tying a knot between global equality and global energy policies. As the above document made clear enough back in 1996. If there are scientists prepared to say that CO2 causes this or that problem with this or that level of certainty then that's fine as far as the policy-makers are concerned - welcome aboard. These people are professional bureaucrats.

So the nuances are there, they always were.

A stuffed bear in the hall

There that poor unfortunate woman lay, with her unconscious tyrant of a husband snoring beside her, desolately wakeful under the night-light in the large, luxurious bedroom — three servants sleeping overhead, champagne in the cellar, furs in the wardrobe, valuable lace round her neck at that very instant, grand piano in the drawing-room, horses in the stable, stuffed bear in the hall —
Arnold Bennett - The Grim Tale of the Five Towns – (1907)

Bennett's list of of upper middle class material aspirations one hundred years ago. Which of them do we value now and which will we still value in another hundred years?

Three servants sleeping overhead.....who knows how social policies will go?

Champagne in the cellar....................certainly.

Furs in the wardrobe..........................unlikely.

Valuable lace.....................................only in museums.

Grand piano.......................................possibly.

Horses in the stable...........................depends on energy policies.

Stuffed bear in the hall......................?

The last British Prime Minister

Who was the last British Prime Minister? The question is worth asking because the role seems to have faded away to the status of provincial governor. The process of governing the UK has acquired at least three features which make much of the Prime Minister's traditional role redundant.

Firstly we are largely governed by those who run global businesses, global bureaucracies and global pressure groups. In other words, a host of global CEOs are in charge – not our provincial governor, or Prime Minister as we still insist on calling him. Global CEOs have become a uniquely powerful social class. Local politicians merely deliver the PR - the democratic narrative with its jingoistic fairy tales.

Once we have free enterprise which isn’t free and isn’t enterprising, once we blur the distinction between the corridors of government and corporate power then we have a class of people who can’t be shifted except by members of their own class. They share the power, they share the money and spend enormous sums to keep things that way.

In short we are being milked and controlled by money - but not sucked dry. It has taken only a few decades for the CEO class to realise that only a modicum of comfort is necessary for social control. Not comfort in itself, but the bovine acquiescence which comfort brings with it. 

A warm hut, a full belly and 24/7 entertainment. That does it.

Secondly and similarly, policy-making has gone global. Treaties, international laws and heavyweight bureaucracies such as the EU and UN have taken over the policy role of national government to such an extent that local political parties are barely relevant except as PR vehicles.

Thirdly we have complexity, a key reason why nobody, not even UKIP is ever likely to put these trends into reverse. The situation is too complex to be resolved with the puny political levers we have left, too intricate to be untangled by negotiation or new laws.

The complexity isn’t merely political or legal, but also cultural. We have to want change and want it badly en masse. Otherwise there are too many threads, too many reasons not to resolve malign trends, too many incentives not to see that they are indeed malign, too many reasons to oppose beneficial change, too many people doing just that.

So who was or will be the last British Prime Minister? 

St Custard’s goes green

Nigel Molesworth by the late great Ronald Searle
as any fule kno

Gosh chiz st custard’s hav decided to go green. Well i mite hav expected it, just when i thort we were safe from globule worming old grimes have decided to GO GREEN and build an elektric windmill to power the hole skool. 

Fotherington tomas call it a wind turbin and dance with joy when he hear the news. The little wet clap his hands and skip about trilling “we are saving the planit, we are saving the planit. The flowers will be saved the trees will be saved”. He is just like a little parot who just discuver the world is made of nuts.

Grimes order the skool janitor to build a windy turbin and make it big enuff to suply the whole skool with elektricity for ever and ever amen. Janitor mutter and grumble and slouch off in a huff as per ushual becos he has to do sum work like the rest of us hem hem.

Later he is spotted by peason sneaking awa with bits of wood from the fence at the back of the bike shedds. This will not end WELL.

Later.

Much later.

Well the windy turbin is built rite in the middle of the foopball pich which sends grimes into a wild bate. He foam at the mouth and swings his best kane like a wild demon who drunk too much BEER in the village pub witch we pore boys never visit hem hem.

Even later.

The grand swich on

Chiz chiz no speshial treets for the pore boys to celebrate st custards new green windy turbin. We hav been lined up on the frozen wastes of the foopbal pitch to watch the grate green triumpf. Fotherington tomas is allowed to pull the swich the pore wet.

BOOM! CRACKLE! BLAM!

A big flash lite up the sky and all dive for cover even tho there isnt anywhere to hide on the freezing wastes of the foopball pich. As i kno too wel chiz chiz.

After a wile a few of the bravest boys hem hem dare to raise our heads from the skool mud. We take a horifid look at the disaster wich has befallen us. Ho ho. O horror.

The windy turbin have burn rite down to a pile of ashes and sum black wires wich look like telefone wires to an xpert eye .like mine. The windy turbin didnt burn long becos the janitors wood was all roten and burnt too qwick for my liking.

O wel lessons learned as they sa.

Dumb

From the BBC

From the BBC

The EU's next digital head has refused to apologise for saying celebrities were "dumb" for taking intimate pictures that were later leaked.

Günther Oettinger was highly criticised for comments including: "Stupidity is something you can only partly save people from."

He will become the EU's digital economy and society commissioner in November.

One MEP, Julia Reda, laid into the commissioner: "The statement is unbelievable," she said.

Oh dear, the guy has been castigated for saying what everyone knows. 

In his position that's dumb.

Frozen pizza

There is nothing wrong with automation per se, but for me this feels like a step too far. Doesn't do much for my appetite either.