Harriett Harman and Madeleine McCann

Harriett Harman, the unflushable underachieving turd of the labour party has made her bid to be deputy PM. Her main selling point is that she feels there should be a woman at the top of government. Excuse me? You think you're the best person to help run the country, to take charge when Gordon goes on holiday because of your physiology? We should positively discriminate and give you the job even though you have been a dismal failure in the past just because of the configuration of your genitalia? Go away, step aside and let the best person get the job.

On another note an interesting point was raised today on Question Time about the Madeleine McCann abduction case. Her parents are both doctors. If they were unemployed would their two children have been taken into care because of their negligence? Many children go missing every day. MPs never wear ribbons for black kids that go missing in Peckham. A complete double standard because of the media attention and the location of the abduction (and our ability to sneer at local Portugese investigative techniques) and the status of the parents. Why people buy Rupert Murdochs mouthpieces I will never know. I guess it's to read in their white vans and on the train.

Tony Blairs legacy to me

1. Impossible housing market
2. Student debt
3. Pensions crisis
4. Failing NHS
5. Roads clogged with lorries

The Emperor Has No Clothes

Gilbert & George, artists based in East London since the mid 1960's have been exhibited at Tate Modern and last night the BBC did a show about them. One thing struck me; they are an intriguing and original pair of people, their artwork is provocative and they have stuck at it and defied all the odds but.... their work isn't any good. It's just all reaction and no content. They have been pretty much ignored all these years but now Tate has decided to exhibit them, the first British artists to have an exhibit (normally British artists exhibit at Tate Britain). And why? Just because they seem to have decided they are now trendy. But when I take a proper look at their work, past the reactionary, provocative content and just at the work I just feel that the Emperor Has No Clothes.

Fight the Power

My bank charged me £23 because one of my accounts accidently went a few pounds overdrawn even though there was more than enough money in my other account to cover it. I asked them to give me the £23 back, they said no. I then said I was going to go through the official complaints procedure to get my money back and that I would switch to their rival first thing tuesday morning after the bank holiday. They called me back and said that as a gesture of goodwill they would repay me the money.

The banks are in mess over charges they make. Interest charged on mortgages and loans is much higher than interest paid on savings and the banks make a killing (see my earlier post about banking and its profitability). The other way they make money is by overcharging people for going briefly overdrawn. The banks fold as soon as you show willingness to contest these charges officially. They don't want to go to court because a ruling against them would bring down their whole system of robbing money out of the cashflow situation of the poor working people of this country. So if they charge you unfairly complain and go through official complaints. I know loads of people who have won back money. Fight the power.

UK Elections

Nearly 40 million people got the chance to vote yesterday in local elections. I didn't vote. Not because I'm lazy. I have received no information about any of the candidates, no visits to my door and I have seen nothing on the web or in the local press. I don't know what any of the candidates would do for my village or for the city as a whole. I decided not to vote along party lines because I'm not interested in sending a message to No. 10 because that will be ignored or spun. I despair. My local council seems to be run for the benefit of the councillors and their business friends. In my village most people pay no local council tax so the ones who do pay tax pay more than people who live in equivalent properties in other areas. I would have liked a say about how my village and the wider city is run but I was denied a chance by inept and lazy campaigning.

On a lighter note soldiers in Iraq have been wearing t-shirts that bear the slogan "I'm Harry!" in a Spartacus like show of solidarity.

News Roundup

Last night the BBC Horizon science programme was fantastic. It was about the Large Hadron Collider, a $6 billion machine built underground to look for the Higgs particle, which is responsible for some particles having mass and others (like light particles) being zero mass. The content was superb, the explanations clear and interesting and the usual overegging of the CG effects was toned down. Great TV. Why don't horizon do programmes like this all the time (see my earlier posts about skyscraper fire safety and what if the dinosaurs were alive today).

I was at the Crucible yesterday to watch a quarter final session of the World Snooker Championships between Shaun Murphy and Matthew Stevens. I saw two century breaks and a comeback from 3-0 down. The BBC has an article up today describing what a visit to the crucible is like. Seeing snooker live is an absolute joy.

If English football fans are attacked tonight in Italy then Italian teams should be evicted from Europe for a few seasons. There is no excuse. AC Milan shouldn't be in the Champions League this season anyway after all the corruption last year. Travelling English fans have been warned not to use the subway, not to speak English in public and not to wear England flags or Man Utd shirts. I do hope the Italian police do their job and that they have some English speakers amongst their number this time. We shall see...

Atoms and surfaces

Think about it; every time you touch something solid you touch the surface. Any time something like light wants to penetrate a material it has to first get past the surface. This picture shows atoms on a surface of silicon. It was taken using a scanning tunneling microscope. This works by putting a sharp metal tip near the surface. A small voltage between the tip and the surface makes a current flow across the tip-surface gap. This current depends very sensitively upon the tip-surface distance. As the tip is moved across the surface it might hit a bump - an atom and the current goes up slightly. By recording where the tip has been and what the current was we can build up a contour map of the atoms on a surface.

We use our STM to look at how materials grow on semiconductor surfaces. This is important because metals grown on semiconductors are found in the little circuit boards in most electronic devices. When electricity passes from the metal to the semiconductor the interface region might have an effect on the current. Knowing how well materials grow on surfaces helps to clarify this. This is just one corner of surface science, whose influence stretches far and wide and whose applications involve multi billion $ industries.

BBC Horizon

The flagship BBC science documentary program Horizon last night broadcast a program about fire safety in skyscrapers.

Enough said.

Final Approval?

radiohead starts up again having finally caught up on some sleep next week
i have a cd of what we;'ve been up to...
and you haven't.
yet.
(sorry)

i must listen to it, after taking an ear break
that always makes me nervous
hope you're well

yours

Thom

The Time Of The Locust

Venture capitalists have decided to go for high street brands. Boots the chemist is next.

The locusts have no king, yet go they forth all of them by bands.

Bible: Proverbs 30:27

Football gossip

Rat faced England football captain John Terry hired top chef Marco Pierre White to cook a meal at a cost of thousands of pounds. What did he ask for? Steak and Prawn Cocktail! This proves that a) John Terry has more money than taste and b) that Marco Pierre White is a pretentious git for complaining that his skills were being wasted.

In other news the BBC have positively discriminated against shrieking football commentator Jacqui Oatley by fast tracking her to become a commentator for Match of The Day. This is PC hell. I've heard her commentate and she is just rubbish. Not because she is a woman, not because I fear change just because she is really bad and has an annoying voice. Gabby Logan is great as a presenter, a good journalist and belongs in football. Not Jacqui Oatley. There are some good commentators (Mark Lawrenson always spots things before I do) and some bad ones (droning sit on the fence man John Motson) and some compete dead ends (Mark Bright and David Pleat) and I think Jacqui Oatley belongs with the latter based on her Radio 5 performances. Shame on the BBC and credibility points deducted.

Virginia Tech

I'm amazed at how debate about gun control has been stifled in the US. A person with known mental problems was able to get a gun by simply ticking a box to declare he had no mental problems. Is it not one sign of mental illness that a person thinks they are sound and everyone else has a problem? The guy who sold him the gun said that if the students had been armed they would have been able to defend themselves. Can you imagine a world where a campus of 25'000 students each carry a gun like this? It's very simple; make guns freely available and people who are unhinged will make use of them and we will continue to see terrible events like Columbine, Virginia Tech, the Amish village and so on. Thank the stars guns are not so freely available in the UK outside of some small pockets of big city criminality.

Life, The Universe and Everything

When you think about it the Universe is a pretty odd place. I mean, here we are, stuck on this rock for no paricular reason completely at the mercy of any passing asteroids or black holes. We have little or no idea how the whole Universe thing is put together or how it works and if there is anything looking in from somewhere else and having a giggle at our stupidity. Chances are that it is all meaningless. This thought loop is so depressing that most people choose not to think about it most of the time and just get on with the being alive part or they make stuff up without proof to make them feel better and give them something to do on a weekend. The being alive part consists of breathing, food, drink, sleep, sex, house, job, car, sport, shopping, TV and pyramid teabags. Instead of getting together and working out how to pass things around evenly so we all have it half good the system is rigged so that some people get rich and powerfull and never have to worry about anything other than how to stay rich and powerfull and most of the rest of the world are just slaves of one form or another. The world gets by and keeps itself busy by having wars and terrorism and arguments over territory like two neighbours coming to blows over the height of a hedge. And the number one reason to fight is over which theory of it all based on no evidence is right which surely proves that we are just slightly smarter than chimps and confirms that it is all just meaningless evolution from some gunk in a puddle with no higher purpose. Still, you've got to laugh.

Goodbye XP

Microsoft has announced it will stop selling Windows XP from Jan 2008. They want everyone who buys a new PC from then on to move to Vista and existing users to upgrade. I wonder how long it will be before they stop looking after XP users? I will never buy a computer with Vista on or upgrade from XP. My next PC will be a Mac or a build with gentoo or Ubuntu or Debian on it. As soon as they stop supporting XP they will lose my custom forever. Judging by the response to Vista they might lose a few more customers too. If the stranglehold MS have on office PCs also starts to slip then maybe, just maybe the giant will start to wobble.

David James looks like Denzil

Portsmouth goalkeeper David James and his new beard look like Denzil from TV show Only Fools and Horses. Portsmouth beat Man Utd 2 -1 over the weekend but Man Utd beat Roma 7 - 1 last night in the best Champions League game since Liverpool came back from 3 - 0 down. Denzil used to carry around a ghetto blaster on his shoulder. The modern form is kids who play music from their mobile phones on the bus and in Meadowhall and the Trafford Centre. It's really annoying and doesn't make them look cool because a) they have poor taste in music and b) a discreet iPod is way cooler.

University of York money gouging

I have just found out that my employer, the University of York, is to charge me £154 to park my car outside my place of work. Each member of staff is charged a percentage of their salary for this right and it must add up to a fortune in revenue, much more than the cost of maintaining the tarmac. The aim is to encourage people to use public transport to get to work. Sorry. Tried this for six months. I live 35 miles from York and my daily round trip by bus train and bus takes 3 hours and costs me £71 per week. Absolute misery and a severe reduction in my quality of life. My only option is to move to York but they don't pay me enough to be able to afford this and I'm not paying £150'000 for a terraced house without parking or central heating or double glazing. My current house is clean and warm and has space. And they know all this. Which is why they can profiteer by raking money from their staff. It's not our fault the Universities are all in debt.

Internet baddies

Don't come too close. My computer has been infected by a nasty. I managed to get rid of most of it by cleaning the infected files from my registry and system32 folder and running sweeps with every manner of anti virus/spyware/malware tool. Why do people make these nasties? It's just pure vandalism. One theory is that these things are made by the people who then sell the cure. Or fraudsters looking for personal details. Anyway, I have got rid of the nasties but to be sure I now have to do a full backup and then shred my harddrive and reinstall Windows. On Easter weekend. What I wouldn't give to meet the swine who made the spyware/trojan/malware that got me.

Girls in Science

There are fewer girls studying Physics than boys. Is this a problem? Everyone seems to think so. Cue lots of silly suggestions like lowering the A-Level grades required of girls for admission to University Physics courses. This issue is very similar to the attempts to increase the number of people from working class backgrounds at Oxbridge. Barriers should be removed but positive discrimination should not occur. It should not be a case of 'it's OK that you went to a poor school and didn't learn much because we are going to let you in anyway because we think that if you went to a good school you would have got great grades in your exams'. Then what is the point of exams if subjective judgements and leftish social ironing are going to overrule them? The same applies to girls in science. Don't positively discriminate. Just remove the barriers. Like the notion that Maths and Physics are boys subjects. And Maths teachers who ignore the girls. Physics and Maths are hard subjects and they require a person with a specific set of skills. If a group of people are not studying the subject then so what? Just because there are few men doing womens studies or sociology doesn't mean that there fundamentally should be.

England football and the FA

People go mad over the England football team, especially when a big tournament is on even though they never do anything. In international terms we are the equivalent of Newcastle United - always a chance but never any silverware. What really gets me mad is how the FA sell the rights to show the England games on TV. It should be the right of everyone in England to watch their national team at no extra charge. But the FA cup and England games have just been sold to sky and ITV (which is full of adverts and crap commentary). The FA is a business. They change the shirts every so often not to freshen up the look and give the team a different identity at each tournament but to increase their profits. It makes me sick that the proposed youth training academy at Burton has been scrapped through lack of funds. What is £5 million to the FA?

Sven Goran Eriksson is still being paid £7000 per week. Why didn't they give him a contract that stopped after the World Cup? Wasn't it obvious what was going to happen when we got knocked out? Sven tried to make England play like an Italian team, which was never going to work. McLaren has us trying to play like Middlesborough. We have the best defence in world football and some excellent strikers at the minute. It's the midfield that sucks. The wide players aren't really doing their job. In the middle we have Gerrard who is good as an individual but who doesn't work well with the vastly overrated Lampard. OK he gets 20 goals a season for Chelsea but that's not hard with the quality they have. He shoots far too often. His passing is nothing like that of a Gerrard or a Beckham. We have trouble getting it into the box either as a through ball or a cross. We should have Gerrard and an ankle biter in the midfield. All the great squads had a fancy player and a tidier in the middle; Keane and Cantona, Zidane and Makelele and so on. So McLaren should play Hargreaves who is such a hard worker. And he should stop smiling and saying everything is OK. You're going to ruin it again you second choice incompetent sod. The truth is that the national side are rubbish and international football is too tight. Congratulations to Doncaster Rovers on their 3-2 win in the JP Trophy at Cardiff today. Saw the match on Sky and it was excellent.

Seventh Radiohead Album

Radiohead have announced that they have started mixing their new album. This is very exciting news. The last album came in 2003 and was the last in a cycle of 3 post OK Computer albums that had a very similar sound and aura. There has been a lot of speculation about how LP7 will sound. Will it mark a radical new direction with large-scale orchestration, will it be more computer effects and beats or will it be three minute rock songs? The band have been tight lipped and so far there have been no leaks of unmixed tracks. Likely new songs can be found on fansites like atease and greenplastic and mp3's of live versions of works in progress can be found on finefinemusic. Plank, the bands very down to earth guitar/instrument tech and general fixer has a lovely little blog which is very tight lipped about the band but very informative and good fun.

The band have been cryptically keeping fans up to date via their Dead Air Space blog which contains a Hodiau Direkton section (Japanese; 'todays direction') where the new ideas for the artwork are previewed. All the stuff to date can be found collected on this fan blog. As for a release date? Who knows. The band have no record contract so that could delay things. And a title? No idea. Probably something seemingly random with a cute hidden meaning as usual. 'Down Is The New Up' is a possible but this is a song name so.. And touring? Earns the band loads of cash and breathes new life into the songs that are on record (the Kid A stuff sounds just as good live even though entirely different). But... Thom is a Friends Of The Earth frontman and has been heavily criticised for his carbon debt from the massively polluting tours the band do.

At the next election I will base my vote on these issues

The Iraq war
Trident
Effective privatisation of NHS dentistry
The price of petrol
Road pricing and commuter charges
Green taxes and their use/flight price hikes
Target/table culture in the police/NHS/Schools
Funding and policy for scientific research and education
Road safety/traffic police/drink driving policing
Bus lanes/transport and congestion policy
Council tax and refuse collection (local issues but local councils are failing on this and Whitehall needs to step in)

and I'm sure I'll think of more

Funny (with sound)

Slave Trade Reparations

There has been some call this week for reparations to be paid to those whose ancestors suffered during the slave trade. This is an admirable sentiment but it changes nothing. The most we can do is to freely admit to what our ancestors did in order to build the British Empire and make sure we never do anything like this again. Handing out cash will not help. And anyway, the slave trade existed before British involvement. African kings were involved in the capture and sale of their own people. Should poor African nations be forced to pay reparations also?

A woman on BBC news this morning seemed to suggest that all modern social ills and deprivations that the black community suffer can be directly traced back to the legacy of the status of black people as being slaves. That is cod socialism. This lady must be doing an A-Level in sociology at evening school. Kids in London are not shooting and stabbing each other because they still feel social pressure from the slave trade. The idea of reparations is just like the idea of official pardons for those shot at dawn for cowardice during the first world war. It doesn't change anything or make it better for anyone. Those shot at dawn should stay labelled as cowards to make us feel eternally guilty for the horrible things done in our name over the years, from the World Wars to the days of empire building and concentration camps and genocide in Africa and back further to the days of slavery and conquest.

Football: the powers that be

Three interesting stories have emerged recently about the organisations that govern football. Manchester United were fined £6300 because of violent and improper conduct by their fans in the Champions league game against Lille. Lille were fined £42000 for improper security and organisation. What really happened was that the section of the stadium alloted to United fans was only half opened. A fence was left closed so that the fans were squashed into an area half the safe size. Some fans climbed the fence to stop being squashed and were hit with batons by the police who thought a pitch invasion was occuring. UEFA don't seem to know what really happened that night and their information seems to have been provided by Lille football club, who felt bitter about the manner of their defeat that night. A fine for United seems bizarre.

My home team Rotherham got into financial difficulties last year and the FA punished them by deducting 10 points. The people who got the club into trouble have since left and the legacy is a struggling club doing its best to survive. The team have had a good season and were mid table at one point despite the ten point handicap. Things have since proved too much and the team has slowly sunk down the table. They now sit at the bottom of the table and look certain to be relegated. Why has the FA done this? With those 10 points Rotherham would survive the drop and would not suffer further hardship by being relegated. The fans and players are being punished for something the money men did in the backroom.

The other story was the plan by the FA to settle score draws in the league by a penalty shoot out. All commentators on the game have derided this ludicrous suggestion. A drawn game is often more exciting than a win. Small clubs would play negative against the big clubs to try and get to penalties. Silly FA.

The colour coded budget

I'm sure you noticed the way the PM and the chancellor were colour coded yesterday. For every colour Brown was wearing Blair was wearing the equivalent but more subdued and pastel coloured. Brown had a vibrant red tie, Blair had a gentle pink tie. Brown had a crisp navy blue jacket, Blair had a nice greyish blazer. All deliberately done of course to promote the image of Brown as the fresh vibrant replacement for our PM. Shame he won't be elected by the people like Blair. As for the budget, meh. It was just shuffling piles of money from A to B with no net gains. The £1.5 bn in green taxes was interesting. I would very much like to see how this will be spent. Will the money be put back into green initiatives like wind farms? Or will petrol duty be reduced to compensate? What do you think?

Uplifting Songs

Scott Walker - On Your Own Again
Sibelius - Karelia Suite (Intermezzo)
Talking Heads - Heaven (Stop Making Sense version)
The Velvet Underground - I'll be your mirror
Dave & Ansel Collins - Double Barrel (This one gets a special *)
The Smiths - There is a light that never goes out
Radiohead - Lucky
R.E.M. - Electrolite
The Beta Band - Dry The Rain
The Beatles - Every Little Thing
Blur - Tender
The Delgados - No Danger
Keane - Bedshaped
Strauss - The Blue Danube
Philip Glass - The Grid

I know there are many more. Let me know what you think!

PhD viva success

In my oral exam today I successfully defended my PhD thesis which means I will be able to start calling myself Dr. as soon as it is formally confirmed. I would like to thank my external examiner Prof. Woodruff and my internal examiner Prof. Godby. Even more so I owe a huge debt of gratitude to my supervisors Steve and Matt and the other members of our group who have helped me so much along the way. Also big thanks to my family and friends for keeping me sane. There is one person who has done the most. During this past year my fiancee Nicola has been my stable foundation and I hope to repay her support over many years of marriage. That sounds like a car loan or something doesn't it... Erm I mean I'm glad I had you around Nic to share my highs and lows.

The Beta Band and Arcade Fire

The Beta Band were a great little band these past few years. 'Dry The Rain' is one of the most uplifting songs ever and Hot Shots II was a superb album in places and could have gone through the stratosphere. But it didn't quite have that anthemic zeitgeist enveloping quality. Eventually, mental illness and poverty broke the band up. Shame. Now the band have partially reformed as The Aliens and a new album is out


I had a listen and sorry guys but, meh. It's nothing special. God bless you for trying but as a commercial venture you stand alongside Gomez and the Super Furry Animals. A decent band at times but there are surer ways for the record buying public to Get Their Ya Ya's off.

At the moment The Arcade Fire are electioneering trying to shift copies of their new album Neon Bible. They are a decent band who put music first. The lead singer is an American rich kid who is married to the main instrumentalist in the band. Alas, every time he opens his mouth in interviews he comes across as a complete t***er. He tries to be appeal to some mystical wistfull ideal of the musician. The article in the Observer Music Monthly is not very flattering in this respect. What is funny is that the article is trying to build up his mystique. But, being written by the worst music journalist ever, Pretentious Paul Morley, the article could never succeed. This guy really is a drivel merchant. In the past he has attached himself to Joy Division and New Order and the stuff he has written there makes me cringe. An example of his style, describing Lou Reed watching Arcade Fire live;

'For song after song the infinitely impassive Lou doesn't move a muscle. He doesn't even seem to blink. He never taps his feet or shakes his head, and when a song crashes to a glowing climax he doesn't applaud. Perhaps he's working out what the trick is, if it can save him from the grave.'

*Retches* And his paragraph description of the band

'The group came from nowhere, like they were born yesterday, sonic sweethearts, a scholarly post-punk gospel choir merrily identifying the menace of the world, and it was a surprise. How they sounded, how they looked, the throbbing innocence, the way they swapped roles and instruments, hugged each other, hit each other, broke for cover, jumped for joy and swore on the Bible, the way they sang their hearts out whether there was a microphone near them or not, the way that Win sang, like a soft-hearted iron man, with dashing, rustic serenity, as if he still believed rock music and songs had the power to change the world, to burn down to reality, as if they could obliterate darkness with light and fury'

*Dashes for the bathroom*

I can't believe I ate the whole thing

My PhD viva exam is approaching and I'm hard at work preparing. My hair is getting long and I need a shave. At the moment I most resemble Homer in his highschool yearbook. During the exam on Tuesday I get quizzed at length about my work over the last four years. I have to convince the examiners that I wrote the 200 page thesis and that I have a good enough overall knowledge of Physics and my field to merit the qualification. Eek. See you on the other side.

Bus lanes and traffic chaos

Many cities are now setting up bus lanes. These are a good idea if they encourage people to get on the bus and not drive into busy city centres. One problem is when they hit traffic lights. Buses are given priority here and the main traffic stream is stopped. This is a bit annoying but what makes it supremely frustrating is when taxi drivers use the bus lane and the priority at the lights. A taxi is a commercial vehicle just like a delivery truck. They should not choke the main traffic stream up by using the bus lanes and turning the lights red. And taxis aren't green either; they often contain just one driver and a passenger.

While I'm at it another thing that really burns my waffles is when people park illegally (in my city often on a dual carriageway on double yellow lines) with their hazard warning lights on. Like that makes it OK. There is nothing more annoying than queuing to get round someone who is pretending to be broken down while they pop into a takeaway.

As you can probably tell I'm fed up with traffic. It's bad enough the roads are busy without sneaky or lazy motorists playing the system. The city of Doncaster has just moved its bus station on top of the train station and under a busy shopping centre. This has created CHAOS. The main road that feeds the train station is now severely choked and to make matters worse it has five sets of traffic lights in the space of a quarter mile. The problem here is that the buses don't go down the bus lane into the bus station. They go into the town centre to drop people off then cut into the main road to get into the station. Result; traffic lights going red every twenty seconds and the main road through Doncaster choked.

Doncaster has horrendous traffic problems. There is really only one way in or out and to get from one side of town to the other involves a trip into the town centre. There are partial ring roads but they aren't enough. One such road is unfinished and it will link two major traffic hotspots (the football stadium is in this area) and bypass the town centre, providing major relief. The reason this hasn't been completed and opened up is that the Asda supermarket nearby have objected on the grounds that customers will have easy access to the nearby Tesco and they will lose trade. How dare a supermarket dictate traffic planning and road building.

British Telecom profit gouging and Trident

British Telecom owns much of the telephone and internet infrastructure of the UK. Once upon a time it had a monopoly but in recent years it has struggled to compete as first mobile phones and then the home internet phenomenon took off. In an effort to encourage customers to pay by direct debit the company has just announced that it will charge customers £4.50 to pay their bill in cash. I can see their point; it costs more to process cash transactions and automated payment will save them money. But come on. It is the right of everyone to restrict access to their bank details. A person should be allowed to use money if they wish. As long as bills are paid on time then BT should not add penalty costs. It amounts to profit gouging to save costs in every part of the business by a desperate company who are prepared to inconvenience their customers if it will save them money. But this is Britain today. No consumer protests will happen. There will be no boycott. People will not notice or care. Vivienne Westwood hit the nail on the head yesterday when she said that people were too busy with their lifestlye/consumer interests to care about the fact that the governement is about to spend £20 billion on a renewal of our cold war defence system. £20 billion to provide the armed forces with pointless busy work in the form of nuclear warheads to maintain.

Britain decides to renew Trident nuclear missile system

A quote from Yes Prime Minister Series 1

Sir Humphrey: "Don't you believe that Britain should have the best?"

Jim Hacker: "Yes, of course."

Sir Humphrey: "Very well, if you walked into a nuclear missile showroom you would buy Trident - it's lovely, it's elegant, it's beautiful. It is quite simply the best. And Britain should have the best. In the world of the nuclear missile it is the Saville Row suit, the Rolls Royce Corniche, the Château Lafitte 1945. It is the nuclear missile Harrods would sell you. What more can I say?"

Jim Hacker: "Only that it costs £15 billion and we don't need it."

Sir Humphrey: "Well, you can say that about anything at Harrods."

Global Warming

Last night the environment secretary David Miliband was on Newsnight to explain the future CO2 reduction targets set out by the government of the UK. Asked if emissions trading would go ahead he explained that it could happen that one country might buy spare emissions from another but that this was OK because it doesn't matter if a tonne of CO2 is emitted here or there. How does the minister know this for sure? Has he studied global airflow patterns and concluded that CO2 dispersal does not depend upon the release location? Is he certain that there are no special release locations which might lead to pockets or bands of high CO2 density in crucial areas of the upper atmosphere?

This is the sort of hand waving science that derails the global warming argument. The document published in February by the IGPCC showed that the climate is changing and it considered many factors that might be helping/causing this process, one of which was CO2 emissions caused by human activity. There could be many reasons why the climate is changing (such as changes in the sun) and they all need to be considered objectively. Politicians need to let the scientists check everything and gather as much data as is needed before they come down on either side. There are those who believe that there is a conspiracy to hold back the economies of developing nations such as China and India by restricting their emissions. Others believe evidence is suppressed or not considered. When scientific data becomes a political football for liberals/capitalists then objectivity is suppressed.

The Trap - Adam Curtis

A new three part documentary has just started its run on BBC 2. Called 'The Trap' it seeks to paint an individualist picture of modern western society and seeks to explain how we are all caught in the trap of private self interest. It is argued that this is ruining our lives and destroying community ties. This ideology was sprung out of the game theory based cold war lose-lose strategy and is diametrically opposed to the communist eradication of individualism and the belief in the collective. Modern target/league table driven culture has ruined education and the NHS. The first application of target driven management was in the Vietnam war when targets were set for kills of enemy soldiers. The US army duly met these targets by shooting innocent civilians.

I have only seen the first part of this meisterwerk but that was enough to stun me. This was, quite simply, the best hour that I have spent in front of a television in years and years. Writer and director Adam Curtis will no doubt be showered with yet more awards. I knew about the individual pieces of the puzzle but I have never seen before how they all slotted together. Being from South Yorkshire hatred of Thatcherism is in my blood but it has now reached new levels of concentration. Charlie Brooker has blogged about 'The Trap' from a TVphile/media perspective.

The Old Boys Network

Photos have emerged of the party leaders in their student days when they were members of Oxford dining (drinking) clubs. Blair is seen making either a hilarious rude gesture or an air guitar pose.


Cameron is seen as a new romantic. In case you can't spot him without his perma-smile he's at number 2. Number 8 is good old Boris Johnson. This club used to get drunk in their thousand pound tails and then trash hotel rooms, pubs and dining rooms and then pay for the damage. I'm so glad I don't live in Oxford with p****s like that around. Then again they now run the country so there is no real escape.

All that this serves to underline is the levels of cronyism in politics. The old school tie. Harriet Harman has suggested that a woman is needed at the top of government to fill the quotas. How about a quota of non-Oxbridge ministers? How about a quota of people who went to state school?

There are no photos of Ming Cambell. Maybe his wild days were before the camera was invented. I voted for your party you useless sod. Do something! Make the news, anything. The way that Charles Kennedy was treated was shocking. They shouldn't have sacked him.

Guest blogger - Sideshow Nic on media regulatory fun

The current furore over the great TV phone in rip off has no doubt fascinated many media watchers. I was watching TV coverage on this yesterday (there was the promise of more scandal to come btw) and I found myself reminded of the last scandal that happened under the nose of a media regulator, which saw many members of the public ripped off.

The Auction World.tv scandal happened back in 2004 and I would consider it a result of the failure of the regulator responsible, Ofcom, to react to a fast changing world of multichannel TV. Auction and shopping TV channels were a relatively new addition to British TV, but Ofcom didn't keep up, and before long Aution World.tv were the focus of an unprecedented amount of complaints from members of the public who had paid over the odds for substandard jewellery - if they even received the goods that they'd paid for at all. Ofcom eventually reacted to the complaints, fined Auction World.tv a record £450,000 and finally revoked their broadcasting license. This sent the rogue TV channel into bankruptcy and left hundreds out of pocket, and it could be argued that had Ofcom been quicker to act more people may have been able to get their money back. You can read the final Ofcom adjudication here while Wikipedia sums up the whole sorry affair here.

The TV phone in rip off could be seen as a repeat of Auction World - ICSTIS, the regulator, has failed to understand the growing interactive TV market, with the result that all kinds of dodgy practices have crept in. This won't be as bad as Auction World and people stand some chance of getting their money back this time. But surely regulators themselves now need to be placed under the spotlight and asked why they seem unable to keep up with progress in their supposed fields of expertise.

History Lesson

An American chap was causing a fuss on the train this morning because his seat reservation had gone wrong. He asked the steward if they could help him out and said 'come on, I'm an American, we saved you in World War II'. Whoa there! Hang on. The US did help us with food during the war and they sacrificed many lives in the Normandy landings and thereafter. But WWII was won by the Russians. 80% of the German troops were engaged fighting the Russians. The Russians sustained such heavy losses because a few years earlier, in a fit of paranoia, Stalin had shot all of his top generals leaving his army with no top level experience. The main reason the US helped out in Europe was to make sure that the Russians didn't seize all of Europe after the war.

The other main reason the US entered the war was because of Japan, a growing economic rival in the Pacific. This is why the Americans needlessly bombed the hell out of many non-strategic Japanese cities: they simply wanted to set the Japanese economy back by a few decades (the later Japanese recovery was rightly dubbed the 'Japanese economic miracle'). And of course we have the atomic bomb, dropped to ruin a few cities and show the Russians that the US had the bomb. The first Uranium bomb was dropped even though the American generals knew that there were US prisoners of war in the drop zone. The second Plutonium bomb was dropped even though the US knew the Japanese were to surrender and it was done purely to test the technology. So, yes, the US helped the UK during WWII but the motives were not so altruistic.

Cream rises to the top or s**t floats?

Harriet Harman has just announced her intention to stand as deputy leader under Gordon Brown. One of the reasons she cites is that she believes a woman is needed at the top of government. Really? Why? Is there something unique that only a woman could bring to the job or is it just to fill the quota and make sure the balance of the sexes at the top of government matches that in wider society? A person should not get a job based on positive discrimination. The best person for the job should always be chosen and no other factors should be considered.

Another thing about Harman is that she has been given a second chance in frontbench politics. Her first stint at the Social Security department was a disaster. We've seen this in politics before with Mandelson. We also get to see it in the world of football. A few years ago rat-faced England captain John Terry was involved in a spot of bother and I remember some commentators saying he should be booted out of football for good. Now, all is forgiven and he is the responsible face of the FA and all the merchandise and crap that goes with it.

I'm all for giving people a second chance but they better not screw up again. It reminds me of the Simpsons episode where Grampa Simpson gets an award for the cartoons Lisa and Bart wrote under his name 'It is a tribute to this great country that a man who once took a shot at Teddy Roosevelt could win back your trust'.

Science on TV

Science is in crisis. University Physics Departments are being closed down. Just today we have a talk in our University Department about how to attract more students to study Physics at University. There could be many reasons for the slump but one factor is the way Science is portrayed in the media.

Take the TV. When I first got interested in Science there were three flagship science programmes. Documentaries were shown regularly and on the schools programmes. On the commercial channels there is now no science. We are just left with Horizon on the BBC. This used to be a good show but it has steadily been dumbed down in recent years with more explosions and CG effects. This series, in an effort to chase ratings, the science has been watered down to the point of being pointless.

The nadir is the episode to go out tonight which will examine what the world would be like if the dinosaurs had survived.

WTF

Cue a pointless excuse to show dinosaur CG effects in a modern setting. I am going to watch this show just because I know I will spend an hour shouting at the TV for being pointless. At least it'll make me react.

Coffee

A new study suggests that a morning coffee will not make a person more alert. The buzz is in getting the hit as the withdrawal symptoms kick in after a nights sleep. Nothing we didn't know already then. I don't drink coffee as a stimulant. I like the rich multi-facetted taste. It's nice and refreshing to drink warm liquid in a morning. It wakes the senses. There is a downside to being a coffee drinker; headaches, 50 calories of sugar and milk at a time and the diuretic effects driving me to the mens room every hour. But I can manage these side effects of my addiction. I won't be mugging anyone to pay for my habit. And my mantra of coffee in the morning and tea in the afternoon means I don't lose sleep. Unless coffee has long term mental effects like cannabis then I'll continue cleaning out my French press pot every morning.

Our era is one not of capitalism, but of rampant corporatism and consumerism, master and slave. The unavoidable end product is a company like Tesco. This faceless collective has grown by first offering the user the best alternative and then offering no alternative. The motto is 'everything, to everyone, everywhere'. How chilling. This cancerous market force has killed agriculture and millions of small and medium businesses. Poor quality, mass produced meat, fruit and vegetables have now replaced local produce and choice. Food shortages are common. Many times I have left without potatoes or bread or milk. There are often large queues at petrol pumps caused by the pulsing of shoppers and not by petrol supplies. Small town centres now contain just charity shops and building societies. My home village, once considered the 'queen of villages' now has a large polyp attached which has caused huge traffic problems, light pollution problems and has violated planning laws by expansion onto green land. This has happened everywhere, to everyone in every way. This is your prize for winning the cold war. Power over your life in fewer hands than ever before and with less accountability than at any stage. The Blue army has won.

Meet the Russian People

I know a lot about US culture and history, good and bad. TV, the cold war and American economic dominance have given me a sense of the good and history books like Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States and anti US policy protests by people like Noam Chomsky and Michael Moore have corrected the idyllic propaganda.

On the other hand I know nothing of the positives in Russian culture. Cold War propaganda and George Orwell's 1984 have left an impression of a totalitarian hell in which millions were slaughtered in Communist purges and in the death camps in Siberia. In modern times Russia is portrayed as a mafia ridden corrupt mess headed by a former KGB madman in which state assets were stolen by the oligarchs and the resulting country is left in a poor and crumbling state with whole cities blighted by AIDS and drug addiction.

I need to learn more. I want to know about some of the positives in Russian life now and then. What do/did people enjoy watching on TV? What literature/music encapsulates the Russian spirit? What good things happened behind the Iron Curtain? I am not prepared to let international politics blight my opinion of the people within a nation that has suffered more than most.

Random anecdotes from The New Shostakovich by Ian MacDonald.

'... in the interval between speeches by Stalin at a conference in the Kremlin during the forties, delegates were offered buckets of salt water to bathe their hands, swollen by hours of clapping.'

'Wife-beating was so thoroughly institutionalised in pre-Revolutionary Russia that a husband who refrained from it was thought abnormal. An old manual of etiquette published in Moscow included instructions to husbands on how to whip their wives 'courteously, lovingly' so as not to blind or deafen them.'

Good TV

At the moment I am mostly watching

Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations
Top Gear
Charlie Brooker's Screen Wipe
West Wing Season 2

PhD Viva

Three weeks today.

Rolling News Low Point

Last night a train derailed and slid down a steep embankment. I am a regular Virgin trains user and the experience must have been harrowing. Something happened last night on BBC News 24 that made me feel numb.

A BBC employee/reporter happened to be travelling in one of the coaches and she phoned in to give a live report from inside one of the stricken coaches. Around her we could hear the sounds of windows being broken as people made their exit and screams and shouts from hurt/scared passengers. She sounded most pleased with herself to be in such a career enhacing position.

Put yourself in that situation. As people are trying to evacuate a stricken train and help others to escape your first though is to phone your boss and enhance your career prospects. Why not get out of the train and help everyone else out and then do everything you can to look after injured people outside the train first? Then think about handing over an eyewitness report. These were tasteless and selfish first instincts.

Colours of nature (part 2)

The other major colours you see in nature are green from foliage and blue for water. The sea looks blue because it reflects the sky. Water itself is transparent. Small depths of water look transparent (like a bathfull) but if you look through enough water (like when you are underwater and can see a long way) things look blue because there are so many water molecules that they absorb most of the colours completely. The only colours that can can more than about 20 metres are blue and a bit of green - that's why things underwater seem blue-green. From land the sea looks blue because it reflects the sky. So when the sky is grey the sea looks grey.


Plants are green because they absorb all colours except green. They break up water and carbon dioxide molecules and fit them together to make oxygen and sugars. They do this using a molecule called chlorophyll. If you give a chlorophyll molecule just the right amount of energy it will give you an electron. This 'just right' energy just happens to be the same energy of a blue particle of light. You can also get an electron if you give it a red light particle. This will have a different energy to a blue light particle but it turns out that this energy is also just right to get another electron from a different part of the structure. When chlorophyll has all these electrons loose they get passed around between loads of chlorophyll molecules until eventually they hit water and carbon dioxide molecules and help them to break down and reform into sugars. So blue and red light get absorbed by chlorophyll and green gets scattered back - green particles don't have the right energy to release an electron. That's why plants are green. Not all plants use light to make food. Funghi and mushrooms decompose dead or living tissue to make food. They often grow in fields or woods where little animals die and rot or the leaves and bark from trees rot. They don't need light and are rarely green.

Rover and Scientific Research

£270m of taxpayers money was used to prop up the ailing Rover car manufacturing company, which is now Chinese owned. As a result £68m given to the scientific research councils by the DTI will now be taken back to help balance the books. This means that thousands of research grants will be turned down and thousands of PhD and Postdoc projects across all scientific disciplines will never come into being. The worst hit research council is the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) which loses £29m.

Science is the biggest thing in history. It has had a bigger impact than any king, politician, war, disease, political ideology or natural disaster. The changes in the world over the past 100 years have been science driven. Computers, TVs, mobile phones, space flight, electric lighting and much more have come directly from Physics. Hacking away at scientific research budgets in this country will cause it to fall behind. And it may prevent the spark of inspiration that will help find a cure for aids or cancer, develop the electric car or make clean nuclear fusion energy a realistic prospect.

Road Pricing e-petition

I am one of the 1.5 million people who has signed an online petition on the Downing Street website to ask the government to scrap plans for road pricing and road tracking. This morning I received a response e-mail from 'Tony Blair' which pretty much said that nothing had been decided and options were being checked but pilot schemes are going ahead and some form of congestion charging will have to be introduced. So the will of 1.5m voters and tax payers is to be ignored. Add these people to the list of attendees at the anti war marches a few years ago. Or the people who campaigned against the poll tax. This is not a republic; we don't elect people to make decisions on our behalf we elect them to enact our will. Democracy does not work in this country at the moment. But the masses are busy with their 'lifestyle'. No October revolution here.

The simple fact is that people have no choice; no-one willingly sits in traffic for tens of hours per week. House prices in this country prohibit many people from living close to where they work. The nature of the job market in this country also means at least one person per household has to travel. Give me a tax break to buy a house near to where I work and force the employers of my partner to let her work from home 3 days a week and that will cut four lengthy and 'unnecessary' journeys per day. But don't charge me to use the roads at peak times. I already pay to use them. Paying to congest the roads will not prevent congestion.

Mondrian

Piet Mondrian was a Dutch artist who contributed towards the De Stijl movement. He is most famous for his non-representational paintings and many examples are to be found on posters in student lodgings.

For some reason his early naturalist paintings have a deep effect on me when I look at them. Especially the two shown below. I think that for a long time I have been deep in the woods and now I can just start to see familiar things between the trees. Maybe. Or it could be that these are tremendously atmospheric paintings done by a genius in an early stage of his career.

Energy usage

I was given a gadget that will measure the energy use of my electrical appliances and help work out their monetary costs

Kettle 2890 W
Computer 130 W
Toaster 1010 W
Phone charger 0.002 W
Dishwasher 600 W
Big TV 110 W
Small TV 42 W (21 W standby)

Which means that £1 ($1.90) gets me

178 cups of tea (2 cups per boil, 800 ml water)
80 hours computer time
255 slices toasted bread
32000 charges of my phone
9 dishwasher loads (2 hrs per load)
100 hrs big TV
250 hrs small TV

I started a new job today.

Less Is More

A Quaker had this sign put up on a vacant piece of land next to his home: THIS LAND WILL BE GIVEN TO ANYONE WHO IS TRULY SATISFIED.

A wealthy farmer who was riding by stopped to read the sign and said to himself, "Since our friend the Quaker is so ready to part with this plot, I might as well claim it before someone else does. I am a rich man and have all I need, so I certainly qualify."

With that he went up to the door and explained what he was there for. "And are you truly satisfied?" the Quaker asked.

"I am indeed, for I have everything I need."

"Friend," said the Quaker, "if you are satisfied, what do you want the land for?"

And From Zen

There was once a stone cutter who was dissatisfied with himself and with his position in life.

One day he passed a wealthy merchant's house. Through the open gateway, he saw many fine possessions and important visitors. "How powerful that merchant must be!" thought the stone cutter. He became very envious and wished that he could be like the merchant.

To his great surprise, he suddenly became the merchant, enjoying more luxuries and power than he had ever imagined, but envied and detested by those less wealthy than himself. Soon a high official passed by, carried in a sedan chair, accompanied by attendants and escorted by soldiers beating gongs. Everyone, no matter how wealthy, had to bow low before the procession. "How powerful that official is!" he thought. "I wish that I could be a high official!"

Then he became the high official, carried everywhere in his embroidered sedan chair, feared and hated by the people all around. It was a hot summer day, so the official felt very uncomfortable in the sticky sedan chair. He looked up at the sun. It shone proudly in the sky, unaffected by his presence. "How powerful the sun is!" he thought. "I wish that I could be the sun!"

Then he became the sun, shining fiercely down on everyone, scorching the fields, cursed by the farmers and laborers. But a huge black cloud moved between him and the earth, so that his light could no longer shine on everything below. "How powerful that storm cloud is!" he thought. "I wish that I could be a cloud!"

Then he became the cloud, flooding the fields and villages, shouted at by everyone. But soon he found that he was being pushed away by some great force, and realized that it was the wind. "How powerful it is!" he thought. "I wish that I could be the wind!"

Then he became the wind, blowing tiles off the roofs of houses, uprooting trees, feared and hated by all below him. But after a while, he ran up against something that would not move, no matter how forcefully he blew against it - a huge, towering rock. "How powerful that rock is!" he thought. "I wish that I could be a rock!"

Then he became the rock, more powerful than anything else on earth. But as he stood there, he heard the sound of a hammer pounding a chisel into the hard surface, and felt himself being changed. "What could be more powerful than I, the rock?" he thought.

He looked down and saw far below him the figure of a stone cutter.

Tchaikovsky

In 1879 a large pro-slavic sentiment had built up in Russia after Turkish troops attacked and killed many innocent people in Serbia. A Red Cross benefit concert was arranged to help Russians who had volunteered to help in the resulting Serbo/Turkish war alongside their fellow Slavs. PT agreed to compose a piece for this. In it he referenced Serbian and Russian folk songs and anthems. It starts with a slow mournful marching rhythm which suggests a funeral procession which later becomes a war march as Russian and Serbian troops march to eke revenge. It is unclear how much of this was just hack work for PT, how strongly he felt about the issue and how much he relied on emotions from his personal life. He would only say that he felt the performance at the concert to be a great success.

Such nationalistic and vengeful concerns aside this is a great ten minute piece of work. In terms of orchestral music this would, at the time, have been pop music. In overall classical music terms it is heavy metal. It sits naturally alongside the 1812 Overture (which is even heavier since it contains cannon blasts). Much has been said (and not said) about the man and his work. Tchaikovsky afficionados tend to see these two pieces as too overt and vulgar. I find them exciting and I'm not prepared to be sniffy about the bombast, bluster and bravado. If PT was playing to the crowd then so what, it works. Here is an out of copyright version, for those interested.

Where's the Beef?

Many of you may be familiar with the phrase 'Where's The Beef?' without knowing where it is from. It comes from a 1984 advert for Wendy's, a US burger chain. It was subsequently adopted (even by politicians) as a means of questioning the substance of something and passed into slang.

Why is the sky blue?

Light particles come in all different colours and what that really means is that each different colour of particle has a slightly different energy. Red light is less energetic than green light which is less energetic than blue light and so on. If you go into space the sky is black and all the stars (including the sun) are white because the light particles they emit come in every different colour and when your eye averages them you see white. The light that they send out does not hit anything on its way to reach you because space is empty.

Down here on the earth we have tonnes of atmosphere between us and the sun. The white light comes in and most of it gets through. Except the blue light. That has a slightly higher energy than the rest and that makes it much more likely that when it hits an air molecule it'll get scattered. All this means that when you look at the sun it looks white MINUS the blue that has been scattered out - this means it looks yellowish. When you look elsewhere in the sky it is blue because the blue light gets scattered around everywhere and it hits your eyes from all directions at once.

Another interesting effect happens when you look near the horizon (when the sun isn't near it)- the sky looks paler here (whiter and not as bright). This is because blue light that goes near to the horizon and then back to your eye has to travel a long way. Chances are it'll get scattered again some other way. So from the horizon some of the blue light is taken out and the sky looks less of a deep blue and paler. When the sun is near the horizon it shines straight at you through more air than if it was above you and all the blue light scatters out so the sky is yellow during sunset. Dust and pollution in the air can take some of the green out too so that the sky becomes red. The same thing happens in the morning - shepherds warning! If you stand on Mars and look up the sky it should be blue but it is always red because there's so much dust in the air.

Clouds are different. They are made up of water and this scatters all colours of light the same. Any colour of light that goes into a cloud gets scattered in any direction so when you look at a cloud you see all the colours at once and it seems white to your eyes. Water weakly absorbs light so clouds don't appear brilliant white - they are a bit dimmer. Big wet stormclouds have more water in them and they absorb more light so they seem darker and greyer. Clouds are also very big and block out a lot of light from hitting their sides or their underbelly. When water freezes it doesn't absorb light very well. It transmits it or reflects it. Snow is white because it reflects all colours evenly and it doesn't absorb much light.

The colour of the moon is white. It reflects a bit of each colour of the light from the sun that hits it down to us. A bit of the blue can get scattered and make the moon yellow. Sometimes particles get into the air that scatter the red light very well and the light from the moon has all its red light taken out and it looks blue - a blue moon. It's a very rare occurence because to get these chemicals into the air you need a forest fire or a volcano. This effect never makes the sun seem blue because the sun is so bright - there is never enough of the chemical in the sky to remove enough of the red light.

Microsoft vs The Beatles

I have nothing against Microsoft (MS) as a software company. Windows works. It has flaws; over rigidity, security vulnerablities and instabilities but the typical PC user finds the interface with their hardware quick and easy. Linux does not offer the same level of support to its users. A Linux installation can take weeks to finalise. In the past I have been plagued by problems with such basics as getting my computer to play sound and obtaining drivers for my broadband modem.

I do object to the business practices of MS. The consumer did not choose Windows, because it is bundled with all new PCs. The situation is akin to that of a person baptised as an infant and raised as a Christian; all of this was decided for them without their consent. After decades of Windows ubiquity anyone who considers heresy must repel years of familiarity, habit and dogma.

A recent example is the smear campaign of The Beatles begun by MS. The Beatles back catalogue is to be made available online via software from Apple. Such a lucrative contract for the only significant commercial rival to MS has prompted them to lash out. Cue an article on the MS network website. It suggests that The Beatles are not above criticism and that there are deficits in some of their output and their personal behaviour. Fair enough. The article also suggests that The Beatles were not innovators and merely followed the tide. The Beatles have admitted that they borrowed mercilessly and there is no shame in this because 99.99% of all art works in this way. But The Beatles did innovate and lead the way at certain points. The article says that The Beatles were slow to emerge from psychedelia and that the song 'Get Back' marks their return to straight rock, hence the name. Wrong. The title of 'Get Back' reflected the desire of Paul to resume live performance. The real get back record was 'Lady Madonna' recorded in early 1968 before The Beatles went to India, a full year before 'Get Back'. The Beatles abandoned psychedelia at its peak and were one of the first mainstream groups to get back.

Factual innaccuracy renders any just criticism in the MS network article into a smear campaign penned by a lazy journalist with a hidden commercial agenda. Perhaps MS can explain on their mouthpiece website why MS Vista costs twice as much in Britain as in the US. Bill Gates gave a non answer the other day. The real reason is that the British consumer has been exploited by high prices for many years. The British economy is founded upon the idea that its own health is more important than that of the individual. This sort of ideology, in which the state is deemed more important than the individual is inherently totalitarian. Consumer debt is caused by excessive prices in all sectors. The banks then move in and pick the bones of the carcass by charging overdraft and credit card fees. Of course, the consumer has choice - no one forces the consumer to pay these prices. Yeah right. And billion dollar ad campaigns don't work in convincing people that they need this product and will fall behind and face social exclusion if they don't get it.

The Energy Balance

For a 200lb (14st or 90kg) person the energy burned per hour in kcal on the following activities is

Sleeping 82
Standing 106
Walking (3 mph) 388
Driving 3 *
Billiards 223
Housework 259
Sex (missionary) 376
Swimming 541
Cycling 350
Playing football 894
* not counting background calorie loss

Compare this with the calories in some foods

McD quarter pounder 500
McD fries 224
Pint coke 420
Dominoes Pizza (12") >2000
Pint beer 180
Glass Red Wine 80
Cup tea (milk & sugar) 30
1 chocolate digestive 90
1 mouthful donner kebab 42

So if you walk for about 3 hours each way to fetch your pizza you'll have earned it.

Weather forecasts; BBC vs Five

The BBC introduced a new graphics format for weather forecasts in 2005. The brightness of the map indicates cloud cover and temperature which means that most of the time the UK is a horrible sludge brown colour. The map was angled which made Northern England and Scotland disproportionatly small. This was supposedly to resemble the curvature of the earth but the effect suggested that the country should be viewed from the south and that the north was 'up there' somewhere ie away from 'us'. To rectify this the BBC decided to extend the length of time spent doing their 'flyby'. At a given time of day we visit each part of the country to see what the weather is like. This is highly bewildering and I soon switch off, especially during some of the more needlessly elaborate forecasts.

It should be simple. Map of UK, short summary, then talk about rain, wind, temperature, hours of light and any other relevant details. 'It will be mild tomorrow with a band of rain moving from the southwest across the country during the day'. Keeping an eye on a clock in the bottom corner could help me to figure out when the rain will hit me. The old system that the BBC used was great and they did the best forecast on TV, with isobars and everything. The new system claims an accuracy for itself that it does not possess and as a communication tool that relies on clear graphics it is fundamentally flawed. If you would like to complain then e-mail them.

The other TV channels attempt a weather forecast but I don't have much more to say about any of them except Channel 5, who do the best forecast on TV at the moment. Quick, simple and memorable, it does not indulge itself in a virtual, time accurate flyby of a brown bit of land. Five are also currently producing excellent kids TV and by showing the best of American TV they are providing quality TV in a cost effective manner. And Megastructures is one of my favourite shows.

You'll Never Walk Alone (pending good dividends)

Two american investors has just spent about £500 ($800 million) on Liverpool FC. When this club was established in 1892 six states were still to be admitted to the union with another six states having been added shortly before in 1889/1890. Grover Cleveland was elected President in the election of 1892. The Indians were still putting up a fight; the massacre at Wounded Knee was in 1890. The first US movie was made in 1889. In Britain Gladstone was elected Prime Minister and Arthur Conan Doyle published 'The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes'. Given the history of this football team the new owners Gillett and Hicks have pledged to respect the history of, and I quote, "the franchise".


Some facts about the new owners. David Gillet has made his money out of processed meat and ski resorts. He was declared bankrupt in the early 1990s but has since bounced back. Tom Hicks made his money from venture capital, investment firms and soft drinks. He also donated money to Ann Richards, the Governor of Texas, in the early 1990s but shifted his donations to George W. Bush when Ann Richards lost an election in 1994. Hicks has since become the number 4 career patron of Bush during his career. In 1998, Hicks made Bush a multi-millionaire by buying a Texas baseball team from a consortium headed by Bush.

The new owners have expressed an interest in selling the name of the new stadium to an advertiser "If the naming rights are worth one great player a year in transfer spending, we will certainly look at that as a serious option." Yeah, right. The name of the old stadium, 'Anfield', conjures up rich images of football heritage and success whereas modern 'branded' football stadiums have names like 'kit-kat crescent' which conjures up images of over-sugary chocolate bars mass produced in factory production lines staffed by workers on low wages in York whose jobs have been taken away and moved abroad where the cheaper workers are.

On the news tonight a Liverpool fan was heard to mutter that he preferred the club to be in American hands rather than the club be owned by the consortium from Dubai who recently expressed an interest. He never explained why. Maybe the fact that the Americans are white makes it OK that they are running a club in the hope of gaining "on-the-pitch success and economic success". The latter is the prime reason for investing in top-flight English football. They definitely don't know anything about football judging by the comment "this is the most important club in the most important sport in the world".

Epic tome

My fiancee insists that she does not take a long time to get ready in a morning. I admit, she is not an especially vain lady but in an effort to convince her of the cumulative time I have adopted a weapon; a one thousand page biography of Winston Churchill. I have been chipping away at this book, a few pages at a time, whilst she does her hair and makeup. I'm making good progress. The other day I managed to get all the way through the Tehran conference in one sitting. Anyway, the book is excellent, my time is being well spent and my lady can take her time to prepare for the day ahead.

New series of Charlie Brooker's Screen Wipe starts tonight BBC4 at 10pm.

Oil company profits are not the problem

Shell has just announced a record profit of $25bn. The knee-jerk reaction to this is to gasp and ask how they dare rip us off. In fact, oil companies make very little money at the petrol pumps.

Cost of a barrel of oil (159 litres) - £ 42
Petol yield per barrell 51.4% - 82 litres
Net earning at the pump per barrel of oil - £ 74 *
Estimated profit for oil company - 1.5p per litre (£2.39 or $4 per barrel)

The price of petrol is mostly comprised of >50% tax charged by the government. The oil companies make most of their money in the speculative and dangerous business of extracting the oil from the ground.

So where do the oil companies spend their profits? A small percentage of the profit goes into shareholder dividends and bonuses for employees. Most of the money is invested back into infrastructure and finding new oil reserves.

The profit margins aren't all that big either. To work this out divide net income by total revenue. This will give an indicator of the fraction of earnings that are lost due to costs and taxes. The graph below shows how the profit margin of the energy industry compares with other businesses
Banking comes out top. Banks do provide a useful service but there is a dark side. How many people have been charged a fine because bills have been deducted from their bank account before their cheques have been paid in? If this does happen don't let them get away with it. In most cases the charges can be appealed quite easily. Go to your local citizens advice office. They are experienced in dealing with cases such as this and will help you draft letters that will get your money back. It works, trust me.

Anyway, the knee-jerk reaction to oil company profits should be avoided. Get onto the chancellor about the price of petrol. The real problem with the oil industry is in the environmental damage caused by its day-to-day procedures and by accidents and, of course, by the contribution to global warming. Oil companies do not pay for the oil they take from waters owned by the UK. They pay for a license to operate but what they extract they keep. It all amounts to subsidy. And I haven't mentioned the practices used by oil companies to destabilise oil rich regions. The behaviour of oil companies in countries such as Nigeria is a whole other can of worms which you can open here.

Lord Levy of Royston Vasey

"This is a local House of Lords. For Labour party donors."

Coffee

Coffee is the second most popular drink (after water) and the second most traded commodity (after oil). There are about 70 species of plant in the genus Coffea but 2/3 of commercially produced coffee comes from the arabica plant because of the superior taste and quality. The remaining 1/3 is mostly from the robusta plant which produces a more harsh flavour with a higher caffeine content. The arabica bush is about 1.5-2 metres tall and it grows in temperate climates. It is very sensitive to its environment and grows best at altitude in soil with low acidity. The plant is native to the highlands of Ethiopia, grows for about 50-100 years and starts to produce fruit after 4 years. The fruit resembles red berries and inside there is a small seed or bean.


The chemicals that give coffee flavour are all introduced during the growth process and nothing can be done to the beans once they have been grown. Coffee cultivation is difficult and involves many variables such as plant genes, soil, rainfall, sunlight and temperature ranges. Coffee is grown in over 70 countries principally Brazil, Colombia, Vietnam, Indonesia, Costa Rica, Mexico, India, and Puerto Rico. Human taste and smell are so sensitive (they evolved to protect us from bad and rotten food) that a single bad coffee bean in a batch of 50 ground to make a cup of espresso will taint the flavour. For this reason the best coffee producers employ workers to hand pick healthy ripe fruits. Coffee pickers can each pick 50-100kg of coffee fruits per day. The coffee cherries are dried and a machine is used to extract the raw green coffee beans. Any beans that are mouldy or defective are removed.

The next step is roasting in which the beans are heated to about 200 degrees C for between two and forty minutes. This drives a series of complex chemical reactions inside the bean that enrich the flavour. Green beans are mostly made of sugars with acids, fats, minerals, caffeine, proteins and amino acids making up the remaining 1/3. The cell wall of coffee beans is very thick and remains intact during roasting. Green beans have a 10% water content which is reduced to 5% during roasting. This water turns to steam and the inside of a bean is like a pressure cooker in which the sugars react with fats, amino acids and proteins to make melanoidins and glycosylamine which are brownish, bittersweet chemicals that give roast coffee its dominant taste. So the roasting process is essentially a caramelisation process. Alongside this a series of volatile, low mass aromatic compunds emerge that give coffee its familiar smell. If the beans are not roasted for long enough the aromas do not emerge and the coffee tastes acidic. Poor quality beans are roasted for longer periods to drive out the poor smells and tastes. This leaves a tasteless, bitter bean. The accepted roasting time for good quality beans is 12 minutes. Instant coffee is made using the leftover, crap beans by dry roasting them. The taste is bitter and there are often all sorts of unwanted products from the harvest thrown in to bulk it up.

Once the coffee is ground it is ready to be brewed. There are many techniques. The coffee can be placed in a filter and have hot water percolated through it over about 5 minutes. It can be placed in a container with the coffee for 5 minutes and then a plunger can be used to strain out the grounds as the liquid is poured out. These two methods allow more caffeine to be extracted but they also result in the dissolution of more of the soluble acids. The espresso techinque is favoured by connoisseurs. Here the grounds are compacted to a dense, fine powder. Hot compressed water is squirted through for about 30 seconds. A thin layer of dense, foamy liquor or crema forms on the surface of the coffee in the cup. If this is too light in colour then the extraction time was probably too short, the grounds too coarse or the water was not hot enough. A dark crema with a hole in the middle signifies over fine grounds in too great a quantity. Overextracted espresso gives a white spot in the center of the cup if the brewing time was too long or a white froth with large bubbles if the water was too hot.

The final result is a colloid of gas bubbles, oil droplets and solid fragments less than a few microns in size with water molecules bound to them. The coffee fluid has lots of body and it is very viscous. It coats the tongue with emulsified oils that sit there for about 20 minutes and continue to release flavours and aromas. A good cup of coffee should stay with you for about a quarter of an hour after the cup is empty.