The level of excess winter deaths in the UK is higher than Siberia’s. This is why.

Cold-Hearted

Posted December 27, 2010

The level of excess winter deaths in the UK is higher than Siberia’s. This is why.

By George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian 28th December 2010.

Were you to list the factors that distinguish civilisation from barbarism, this would come close to the top: that the elderly are not left to die of cold. By this measure, the United Kingdom is a cruel land. Although we usually have one of the smallest differences between winter and summer temperatures at these latitudes, we also have one of the highest levels of excess winter deaths. Roughly twice as many people, per capita, die here than in Scandanavia and other parts of northern Europe, though our winters are typically milder(1). Even Siberia has lower levels of excess winter deaths than we do(2). Between 25,000 and 30,000 people a year are hastened to the grave by the cold here(3) – this winter it could be much worse.

Why? Inequality. We have an economic elite untouched and unmoved by the ills afflicting other people. It survives all changes of government. Its need for profit outweighs other people’s need for survival. Here’s how our brutal system operates.

Fuel poverty is defined as having to spend 10% or more of your income on keeping your home at a decent temperature. Between 2003 and 2008 (the latest available figures) the number of households in fuel poverty here rose from 2 to 4.5 million(4). That’s not people; that’s households: this blight now afflicts 18% of the UK’s population. Yet, since 2000, over £25bn of our money has been spent on programmes ostensibly designed to prevent it(5). Admittedly, much of this spending doesn’t really have anything to do with fuel. The winter fuel payment is, in truth, a universal pension supplement which people can spend as they wish: it helps large numbers of the elderly to get by. But most of the other spending programmes are ill-conceived, unfair and unfocussed.

Even before the coalition took office, the government’s statutory advisers estimated that 7m households would be fuel-poor by 2016(6), which happens to be the date by which New Labour pledged to eliminate fuel poverty. As the incomes of the poor fall and the Tories deregulate still further, it could get even worse.

The main reason is that the privatised, liberalised utility companies have been allowed to get away with murder. In her excellent new book Fixing Fuel Poverty, Brenda Boardman shows that fuel poverty has risen so steeply in the UK because public control over the energy companies is so weak(7). In 2002 the regulator, Ofgem, decided that it would stop regulating consumer prices. The energy companies immediately increased their profit margins: 10-fold in one case(8). When world energy prices rise, the companies raise their tariffs, often far more steeply than the wholesale price justifies. When they fall, domestic prices often stay where they are.

The price rises are exacerbated by policies which penalise the poor. People who use pre-payment meters to buy gas and electricity (who are often the poorest) are stung for an extra £120 a year(9). Those who consume the most energy (generally the rich) are subsidised by everyone else: they pay a lower tariff beyond a certain level of use. It ought to be the other way round: the first units you consume should be the cheapest. Before the election, both the Tories and the Lib Dems demanded an inquiry into competition in the energy market. They’re not demanding it any more(10).

There should be a perfect synergy between climate change and social justice policies. As the Commons Energy and Climate Change Committee points out, “improving the energy efficiency of homes is the most effective way of tackling fuel poverty.”(11) But the government’s green policies are grossly unfair and regressive: everyone pays at an equal rate for reducing energy emissions, yet those who need the most help to green their homes and reduce their costs don’t get it. Policies such as the European emissions trading system, the carbon emissions reduction target and the feed-in tariff are, according to the government’s Climate Change Committee, likely to throw another 1.7m people into fuel poverty by 2022(12). This is an outrage.

The main scheme for improving the homes of the fuel poor, Warm Front, is so leaky and badly constructed that, if it were a house, it would be condemned and demolished. Only 25% of the money it spends relieves fuel poverty(13). There’s no requirement that the worst homes are treated, or that they are brought up to an acceptable level of energy efficiency. Boardman discovered that “the proportion of expenditure going to the fuel poor is less than they contribute”(14).

Now the scheme has been suspended. The government has launched a consultation on how it could work better when it resumes, but there will be much less money(15): even if it starts to work, it will address only a fraction of the escalating problem.

Nothing will be done to reduce fuel poverty until governments discipline one of the least regulated energy markets in the rich world - controlling profits and prices - and help those who need it most. Green policies must be funded by transferring money from richer consumers to poorer ones. It’s a scandal that none of this was addressed by the Labour government. It would be little short of miraculous if it were tackled by the Tories. But until something is done, the cold will keep killing, at levels which even the Siberians don’t have to endure.

www.monbiot.com

References:

1. Brenda Boardman, 2010. Fixing Fuel Poverty, p168. Earthscan, London.

2. As above, p168.

3. As above, p168.

4. Department of Energy and Climate Change, 2010. Annual Report On Fuel Poverty Statistics 2010. Table 1, Page 3. http://www.decc.gov.uk/assets/decc/Statistics/fuelpoverty/610-annual-fuel-poverty-statistics-2010.pdf

5. House of Commons Energy and Climate Change Committee, 30th March 2010. Fuel Poverty:
Fifth Report of Session 2009–10, Volume I, Page 6. http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200910/cmselect/cmenergy/424/424i.pdf

6. The Fuel Poverty Advisory Group, cited by the House of Commons Energy and Climate Change Committee, as above, Page 7.

7. Brenda Boardman, as above.

8. In 2002, Centrica raised its profit margin on domestic energy sales from 0.4% to 4.2%. By 2008, it had risen again, to 8.8%. Brenda Boardman, as above, Page 77.

9. Brenda Boardman, as above, Page 82.

10. http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/oct/29/energy-bills-rise-price-increase?INTCMP=SRCH

11. House of Commons Energy and Climate Change Committee, as above, Page 3.

12. Cited by Brenda Boardman, as above, Page 92-93.

13. Cited by Brenda Boardman, as above, Page 148.

14. Cited by Brenda Boardman, as above, 92.

15. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/consumertips/household-bills/8206453/Warm-Front-abolished-for-this-year-and-cut-back-in-the-future.html

Doug Stanhope on 'Why Your Opinion Doesn't Matter'.

The 1914 Christmas Truce: A Plum Pudding Policy Which Might Have Ended The War (The Independent 24/12/10)

A private's letter from the trenches has resurfaced after 95 years to add colour to the World War I story that still resonates down the decades.


The following letter from Private Frederick W. Heath, first printed in The North Mail on 9 January 1915, has been resurrected by researchers at christmastruce.co.uk, which is edited by Alan Cleaver and Lesley Park. Alan says it stands out among the many letters on the site, although research into Private Heath is still ongoing.

A Plum Pudding Policy Which Might Have Ended The War, written in the trenches by Private Frederick W. Heath:

The night closed in early - the ghostly shadows that haunt the trenches came to keep us company as we stood to arms. Under a pale moon, one could just see the grave-like rise of ground which marked the German trenches two hundred yards away. Fires in the English lines had died down, and only the squelch of the sodden boots in the slushy mud, the whispered orders of the officers and the NCOs, and the moan of the wind broke the silence of the night. The soldiers' Christmas Eve had come at last, and it was hardly the time or place to feel grateful for it.

Memory in her shrine kept us in a trance of saddened silence. Back somewhere in England, the fires were burning in cosy rooms; in fancy I heard laughter and the thousand melodies of reunion on Christmas Eve. With overcoat thick with wet mud, hands cracked and sore with the frost, I leaned against the side of the trench, and, looking through my loophole, fixed weary eyes on the German trenches. Thoughts surged madly in my mind; but they had no sequence, no cohesion. Mostly they were of home as I had known it through the years that had brought me to this. I asked myself why I was in the trenches in misery at all, when I might have been in England warm and prosperous. That involuntary question was quickly answered. For is there not a multitude of houses in England, and has not someone to keep them intact? I thought of a shattered cottage in -- , and felt glad that I was in the trenches. That cottage was once somebody's home.

Still looking and dreaming, my eyes caught a flare in the darkness. A light in the enemy's trenches was so rare at that hour that I passed a message down the line. I had hardly spoken when light after light sprang up along the German front. Then quite near our dug-outs, so near as to make me start and clutch my rifle, I heard a voice. there was no mistaking that voice with its guttural ring. With ears strained, I listened, and then, all down our line of trenches there came to our ears a greeting unique in war: "English soldier, English soldier, a merry Christmas, a merry Christmas!"

Friendly invitation

Following that salute boomed the invitation from those harsh voices: "Come out, English soldier; come out here to us." For some little time we were cautious, and did not even answer. Officers, fearing treachery, ordered the men to be silent. But up and down our line one heard the men answering that Christmas greeting from the enemy. How could we resist wishing each other a Merry Christmas, even though we might be at each other's throats immediately afterwards? So we kept up a running conversation with the Germans, all the while our hands ready on our rifles. Blood and peace, enmity and fraternity - war's most amazing paradox. The night wore on to dawn - a night made easier by songs from the German trenches, the pipings of piccolos and from our broad lines laughter and Christmas carols. Not a shot was fired, except for down on our right, where the French artillery were at work.

Came the dawn, pencilling the sky with grey and pink. Under the early light we saw our foes moving recklessly about on top of their trenches. Here, indeed, was courage; no seeking the security of the shelter but a brazen invitation to us to shoot and kill with deadly certainty. But did we shoot? Not likely! We stood up ourselves and called benisons on the Germans. Then came the invitation to fall out of the trenches and meet half way.

Still cautious we hung back. Not so the others. They ran forward in little groups, with hands held up above their heads, asking us to do the same. Not for long could such an appeal be resisted - beside, was not the courage up to now all on one side? Jumping up onto the parapet, a few of us advanced to meet the on-coming Germans. Out went the hands and tightened in the grip of friendship. Christmas had made the bitterest foes friends.

The Gift of Gifts

Here was no desire to kill, but just the wish of a few simple soldiers (and no one is quite so simple as a soldier) that on Christmas Day, at any rate, the force of fire should cease. We gave each other cigarettes and exchanged all manner of things. We wrote our names and addresses on the field service postcards, and exchanged them for German ones. We cut the buttons off our coats and took in exchange the Imperial Arms of Germany. But the gift of gifts was Christmas pudding. The sight of it made the Germans' eyes grow wide with hungry wonder, and at the first bite of it they were our friends for ever. Given a sufficient quantity of Christmas puddings, every German in the trenches before ours would have surrendered.

And so we stayed together for a while and talked, even though all the time there was a strained feeling of suspicion which rather spoilt this Christmas armistice. We could not help remembering that we were enemies, even though we had shaken hands. We dare not advance too near their trenches lest we saw too much, nor could the Germans come beyond the barbed wire which lay before ours. After we had chatted, we turned back to our respective trenches for breakfast.

All through the day no shot was fired, and all we did was talk to each other and make confessions which, perhaps, were truer at that curious moment than in the normal times of war. How far this unofficial truce extended along the lines I do not know, but I do know that what I have written here applies to the -- on our side and the 158th German Brigade, composed of Westphalians.

As I finish this short and scrappy description of a strangely human event, we are pouring rapid fire into the German trenches, and they are returning the compliment just as fiercely. Screeching through the air above us are the shattering shells of rival batteries of artillery. So we are back once more to the ordeal of fire.

* Transcribed by Marian Robson.

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/history/the-1914-christmas-truce-a-plum-pudding-policy-which-might-have-ended-the-war-2167090.html

Funny Irishman

I'm Doug Stanhope, and that's why I drink.

Assange's lawyer leaves Westminster Magistrates' Court 14th Dec 2010 (by our intrepid reporter)

Reflection On Experience by Kathleen Sawisky

Greetings and Salutations fellow Scoliotics!

Life has been fairly hectic lately, with an oddly high ratio of disagreements between myself and the people in my life (more than willing to admit I am half responsible for all of them. Half. Because it takes two, you see?) So I thought today I would sit down and do some therapeutic blogging about the detrimental effects, something like scoliosis, or indeed any medical problem, can have on a person in a psychological manner.

Ignoring the many psych terms I've learned over the last three months (although I like to think my psych prof would be thrilled if I even attempted to use them) the effects of scoliosis can be summed up thusly:

They suck.

I'm also willing to suggest They stink, They're driving me mad, and the often thought of but little used Argh!

Growing up with scoliosis during the time of adolescent development gave me a fairly negative outlook to the support systems that extended beyond my family. Friends were pretty useless. That's not to say they didn't care, I think they genuinely did, but hey, when you're a teenager you're more inclined to be worried about your own crap, and perspective can often be lost. The same goes for those of us who were suffering from any medical issue during that time, whether it be in the past or going on right now.

Perspective is absolutely vital, but disappears quicker than a snow drift in Chinook country (yes, I'm Canadian.) We tend to forget that outside of our cozy homes, our suburban neighbourhoods, our war-less countries, that people exist with the clothes on their back and nothing less. Don't get me wrong, hearing 'At least it's not cancer' still drives me mad. After all, surgeons are physically moving our spines. That is they are actually taking the spine, a rather vital piece of your body, and actually moving it. Moving it. Sorry for thinking that something like that is sort of intense.

Then again, it isn't cancer. It's a double-edged sword. While they don't always know the cause of scoliosis, there is something they can do about it most of the time, if you're lucky to live in a country with public health care and surgeons with the abilities. That doesn't mean it always ends well. I'm one of the many living examples that it doesn't. But the fact that something can be done, or even attempted, is a plus. Does that mean that I want to sit quietly while people who have never experience scoliosis tell me that it could be worse? Hell no. It probably could be worse, and if it ever get to that mythically 'worse' place that I've heard so much about, they will still insist on telling me "Well, it could be worse. It could be cancer."

So what do we do? We can't exactly beat logic or perspective into a person, and manslaughter is still a crime. All we can do is continue to exist day to day with our chronic pain and pray it won't get worse. It will, that's inevitable, but while I can still live and breathe and stand, I'll do my best to keep perspective.

Don't think I'm discounting all that we've experienced. No one should be allowed to, and of course, they do. But by getting angry with the naysayers in the world who think they're doing us a favor by reminding us once again, that we don't have cancer, all we do is lose our own perspective on our situation.

We get angry because they don't understand what its like. We get angry because they're minimizing our experiences as if they're nothing. We get angry because we have to suffer and these ignorant people don't.

The fact of the matter is that medical traumas, be it scoliosis, cancer, amputations, whatever you want to put in there, all of it, has a level of trauma associated with it. And every person experiences that trauma differently. No one has any right to suggest that the experience is anything less than what it is, and yet here we are, day after day, fighting to find one person outside of our web-circle who's willing to accept that the pain, the loss of our dignity at the gloved hands of total strangers, the never ending surgeries and the miracle cures that are anything but, has come to alter us forever.

We'll never know what sort of people we might have been if scoliosis hadn't become part of us in the most literal way imaginable. Maybe I would have been a sweet girl with a pleasant disposition. Maybe I would have been a cop after all, or pursued my singing to a professional level. Maybe my whole life would be different compared to what it is now if genetics hadn't gotten in my way.

Then again, maybe I'd have been a sweet girl with a pleasant disposition, or a cop, or a pro-singer. Looking at my life as it is now, beyond scoliosis, I know and understand that my life is as it is meant to be, which is a very Zen outlook if I do say so myself.

I guess the point of this post, if I really had to sum up, is that it may suck, and we may be essentially alone in our experiences, but it's those facts that actually make us who we are today. And beyond the chronic pain, I'm pretty happy with myself.

POSTED BY KATHLEEN SAWISKY AT TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 16, 2010

Captain SKA - Liar Liar (wonky view but still worth posting)

I was going to write something, but then I played this...

I know how to embed Youtube at last.

Gil Scott-Heron - The Revolution Will Not Be Televised [Early Version] - 1970 (with thanks to Toronto Kate)

Fun

Billy Bragg - "NPWA"

Young Jews Disrupt Netanyahu at Jewish General Assembly

Mark Steel: Socialists? You've got to be joking

Everyone seems to agree that the Labour party is better off having the polite contest taking place now, rather than its old ideological fights. But the result is a series of debates about nothing, with no one daring to say anything, let alone disagree with the nothing someone else has said.

It's so predictable that if an interviewer asked the candidates what they thought about while masturbating, you know that David would say, "I think about the future", his brother would say, "I too think about the future, but also a bit about the past", Diane would say we mustn't forget what we used to think about, Andy Burnham would say reconnecting with the voters, and Ed Balls would utterly refute the rumours that he did it on Tony Blair's desk to annoy him as he was preparing notes for the Cabinet.

The lack of wit, imagination and purpose seemed most obvious when they were all asked if they considered themselves to be a socialist. David Miliband said he was a socialist, "because what we can do together is more than what we can do separately". And that's socialism is it? Even Sarah Palin and General Franco would agree with that. But presumably the founders of socialism worked this out. Maybe Karl Marx suddenly turned to his friend Engels and said, "Friedrich, I've noticed that if I wash and you wipe we get through these dishes quicker than if I do it on my own. Once we've finished the cutlery we must start an international movement".

The younger Miliband added that he was a socialist because "we must be free to criticise the injustices of capitalism". So everyone in the world's a socialist, except people who think that if someone says "Ooh those bankers are greedy so-and-sos", they should be arrested.

Next time he'll say, "I am very much a socialist in as much as I believe it's very important that there are people. I believe strongly that if there were no people, and the world was just rocks and some fish, that could prove highly damaging to our economy and seriously affect our ability to compete in a global market, and in that sense I am, yes, a socialist".

If they said they disagreed with socialism, or felt it was no longer relevant, they would at least be making a statement, but to reduce it to some meaningless phrase that would be rejected in a 12-year-old's homework suggests they're incapable of discussing any ideas at all. Someone should ask them if they're a Hindu, and they'd all say something like, "In as much as I would modernise the Post Office to bring it in line with other industries I am a Hindu, yes".

Ed Balls answered that he was a socialist because "together we are stronger", which could suggest a hint of socialism, depending on who we means by "we". As a slogan for a trade union or campaign against a military dictatorship it would fit, but as his government meant Bush and Blair together with Murdoch and Berlusconi it's probably not what the founders of the Labour Party had in mind.

To mean anything, socialism has to be a desire for the means by which society produces things to be held in common, by the whole of that society, rather than by a clique of people who become very rich. But Labour's potential leaders have no idea what they stand for, to the extent that they daren't say they don't agree with the socialism they've clearly rejected. To pick an example at random, if your party has been in government and boasted that it's reduced regulation on bankers to a historic low so they can pay themselves record bonuses and arse up the country in the process, that errs gently away from the socialist model.

Similarly the statement, "I am intensely relaxed about people who are filthy rich", as said by Peter Mandelson, is not entirely socialist in an orthodox sense, just as an organisation that claimed to be Christian while one of its leaders said, "I am intensely relaxed about the Devil", and then went on holiday with the Devil on his boat, might be in danger of contradicting itself.

Even so, the New Labour era came close to the old constitution's aim of "securing the fruits of society's wealth". It's just that instead of going to the masses, most of it's been secured by their ex-leader and his wife.

Tory Boy Racers

The Conservative war on road safety has begun.

By George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian 27th July 2010

In every other sector, Conservatives insist that it is daft for human beings to do the work machines could do. In every other instance they demand that police officers be freed from mindless tasks to spend more time preventing serious crime. In all other cases they urge more rigorous enforcement of the law. On every other occasion they insist that local authorities should raise revenue and make their schemes pay for themselves. But it all goes into reverse when they are exposed to the beams of a fiendish instrument of mind control.

The moment they pass through its rays, Conservatives turn from penny-pinching authoritarians into spendthrift hoodie-huggers. They demand that a job now performed consistently and cheaply by machines should be handed back to human beings, who will do it patchily and at great expense. They urge that police officers be diverted from preventing serious crime to stand in for lumps of metal. They insist that those who break the law should not be punished or even caught. They clamour for councils to abandon a scheme that almost pays for itself, and replace it with one that requires constant subsidies.

What is this cunning device for reprogramming conservative brains? It is of course the speed camera. The government hates it just as much as the moronic petrolheads who dance with glee whenever one is torched.

It hasn’t yet announced a general policy of turning off speed cameras, but it knows that this is the likely consequence of its assault on road safety grants. After losing 40% of its government safety funding, this week Oxfordshire will turn off all its cameras(1). Buckinghamshire says it is likely to follow(2). All the other local authorities in England will have to start counting their options. The roads minister, Mike Penning, leaves us in no doubt about what he wants them to do. Local authorities, he says, “have relied too heavily on safety cameras for far too long.” By cutting the grant, he claims, the government is “delivering on its pledge to end the war on the motorist.”(3)

There is and has never been a war on the motorist. Motorists are handled more gently than anyone else: they are the only people who can expect to get away with breaking the law on almost all occasions. A war is an event in which people are injured and killed. Which circumstance most closely resembles one: an occasional £60 fine, or the daily carnage on the roads?

You can see the victims of the real war that’s being waged – the war against road safety – in every hospital and mortuary. Seven killed, 71 seriously injured, every day(4). About 120 children killed in Britain every year: 120 families plunged into lifelong grief(5).

Every two or three weeks I visit a spinal injuries unit in which a close friend is confined. He wasn’t hurt on the roads, but many of the other patients were. Every time I walk though that hospital I see the broken bodies, the shattered hopes, the endless complications, both physical and psychological, caused by the war being waged on the roads. You will see something similar in wards which specialise in the loss of limbs and eyes, the smashing of faces, the crushing of brains. This is the closest most of us will get to seeing the aftermath of war, a shattering of lives that bears no relationship to what Penning so crassly describes as the war on the motorist.

In other cases – climate change for example – the government has so far been able to resist the junk science peddled by the lunatic fringe of the Conservative party. But not here. The positive impact of speed cameras in reducing accidents is unequivocal. A study for Penning’s department shows that 19% fewer people were killed or seriously injured at accident black spots after speed cameras were introduced, above and beyond the general decline in accidents on the roads(6).

Yet the conspiracists in the Sun, the Express and the Daily Mail, on Top Gear and throughout cyberspace, insist that speed cameras exist only to tax and control us. They point to the example of Swindon, the first place in Britain in which the cameras were shut down, at the behest of a Conservative council. In the year before they were switched off, there was one death and eight minor accidents at the camera sites; in the year after, there were no deaths, two serious accidents and seven minor ones(7). “These figures”, the council’s leader, Rod Bluh, maintains, “completely vindicate our position”. They show that “fixed speed cameras are more about fund-raising than road safety.”(8) In reality they vindicate the proposition that he is innumerate, as they fail all tests of statistical significance. A study conducted by the Wiltshire and Swindon Safety Camera Partnership, across the whole county over three years, found that after speed cameras were installed there was a reduction at those sites in deaths and serious injuries of 69%(9). Mr Bluh’s hostility to the cameras might have more to do with the fact that he was banned for speeding(10).

As for the fund-raising issue, the Treasury takes some £85-90m a year from speed camera revenues(11) and shells out £110m to local authorities to run them(12): the cameras are almost self-financing, but not quite. So when Mike Penning maintains that “the public are concerned about whether they are there for safety or to raise money for the Treasury”(13) he’s engaging in a subtle deception: the public might be concerned, but he knows it’s not true.

Turning off the speed cameras, on the other hand, is a staggeringly expensive policy, if similar levels of safety are to be maintained. Oxfordshire is having to switch off its cameras for want of £600,000: a pittance by comparison to the £13.6m that Thames Valley police already spend on traffic enforcement(14). Penning’s own department reports a cost-benefit ratio for speed cameras of 2.7:1(15). The House of Commons Transport Committee examined the alternatives and found that “a more cost effective measure for reducing speeds and casualties has yet to be introduced.”(16) This Tory cut has nothing to do with saving money.

And even if speed cameras did make more money than they used, wouldn’t that be a good thing? Why shouldn’t there be a tax on breaking the law?

Penning might have fallen for another tabloid myth: that speed cameras are unpopular. The most recent poll whose results I can find show that 82% of British people surveyed approve of them, and that the percentage has been rising(17). The horror and fury being expressed by parents in Oxfordshire will be voiced wherever they are switched off.

The real reason why conservatives hate the enforcement of speed limits is that this is one of the few laws which is as likely to catch the rich as the poor: newspaper editors and council leaders are as vulnerable as anyone else. The conservative reaction to speed cameras suggests that they love laws, except those which apply to them.

www.monbiot.com

References:

1. Jamie McGinnes, 25th July 2010. Government axes speed cameras. Sunday Times.

2. http://www.thisislocallondon.co.uk/news/8291805.Transport_chief__Speed_cameras_could_go/

3. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-10755509

4. Department for Transport, September 2009. Reported Road Casualties Great Britain: 2008 - Annual Report. http://www.dft.gov.uk/pgr/statistics/datatablespublications/accidents/casualtiesgbar/rrcgb2008

5. Department for Transport, 2010. Fatalities in reported road accidents: 2008. Road Accident Statistics Factsheet No. 2. http://www.dft.gov.uk/pgr/statistics/datatablespublications/accidents/casualtiesgbar/suppletablesfactsheets/fatalities2008.pdf

6. The headline figure is 42%, but once regression to the mean is taken into account it falls to 19%. See page 155. UCL and PA Consulting Group, December 2005. The national safety camera programme: Four-year evaluation report. http://www.dft.gov.uk/pgr/roadsafety/speedmanagement/nscp/nscp/coll_thenationalsafetycameraprog/ationalsafetycameraprogr4598.pdf

7. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/election_2010/england/8636654.stm

8. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1268392/Town-scrapped-speed-cameras-sees-increase-accidents.html

9. http://www.safetycameraswiltshire.co.uk/

10. http://www.swindonadvertiser.co.uk/news/8290743.Oxfordshire_decides_it_will_turn_off_its_speed_traps/

11. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/news/7909246/Treasury-set-to-cash-in-on-speeding-fines.html

12. Department for Transport, no date given. Road safety grant - the allocation process. http://www.dft.gov.uk/pgr/roadsafety/secroadsafetygrants/secspecificrdsafetygrants/pagerdsafetygrantallocation

13. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/news/7838300/RAC-local-authorities-cutting-back-on-speed-cameras.html

14. Chris Walker, 24th July 2010. “We will still police roads”. Oxford Mail.

15. Department for Transport, no date given. The national safety camera programme: Four-year evaluation report. http://www.dft.gov.uk/pgr/roadsafety/speedmanagement/nscp/nscp/thenationalsafetycameraprogr4597

16. House of Commons Transport Committee, 31st October 2006. Roads Policing and Technology: Getting the right balance. Page 40. http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200506/cmselect/cmtran/975/975.pdf

17. Claire Corbett, School of Social Science and Law, Brunel University, 2006. Memorandum submitted to the House of Commons Transport Committee, 31st October 2006. Roads Policing and Technology: Getting the right balance, Ev 73. http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200506/cmselect/cmtran/975/975.pdf

Why Socialism? By Albert Einstein.

Why Socialism?

By Albert Einstein

This essay was originally published in the first issue of Monthly Review (May 1949).

Is it advisable for one who is not an expert on economic and social issues to express views on the subject of socialism? I believe for a number of reasons that it is.

Let us first consider the question from the point of view of scientific knowledge. It might appear that there are no essential methodological differences between astronomy and economics: scientists in both fields attempt to discover laws of general acceptability for a circumscribed group of phenomena in order to make the interconnection of these phenomena as clearly understandable as possible. But in reality such methodological differences do exist. The discovery of general laws in the field of economics is made difficult by the circumstance that observed economic phenomena are often affected by many factors which are very hard to evaluate separately. In addition, the experience which has accumulated since the beginning of the so-called civilized period of human history has—as is well known—been largely influenced and limited by causes which are by no means exclusively economic in nature. For example, most of the major states of history owed their existence to conquest. The conquering peoples established themselves, legally and economically, as the privileged class of the conquered country. They seized for themselves a monopoly of the land ownership and appointed a priesthood from among their own ranks. The priests, in control of education, made the class division of society into a permanent institution and created a system of values by which the people were thenceforth, to a large extent unconsciously, guided in their social behavior.

But historic tradition is, so to speak, of yesterday; nowhere have we really overcome what Thorstein Veblen called "the predatory phase" of human development. The observable economic facts belong to that phase and even such laws as we can derive from them are not applicable to other phases. Since the real purpose of socialism is precisely to overcome and advance beyond the predatory phase of human development, economic science in its present state can throw little light on the socialist society of the future.

Second, socialism is directed towards a social-ethical end. Science, however, cannot create ends and, even less, instill them in human beings; science, at most, can supply the means by which to attain certain ends. But the ends themselves are conceived by personalities with lofty ethical ideals and—if these ends are not stillborn, but vital and vigorous—are adopted and carried forward by those many human beings who, half unconsciously, determine the slow evolution of society.

For these reasons, we should be on our guard not to overestimate science and scientific methods when it is a question of human problems; and we should not assume that experts are the only ones who have a right to express themselves on questions affecting the organization of society.

Innumerable voices have been asserting for some time now that human society is passing through a crisis, that its stability has been gravely shattered. It is characteristic of such a situation that individuals feel indifferent or even hostile toward the group, small or large, to which they belong. In order to illustrate my meaning, let me record here a personal experience. I recently discussed with an intelligent and well-disposed man the threat of another war, which in my opinion would seriously endanger the existence of mankind, and I remarked that only a supra-national organization would offer protection from that danger. Thereupon my visitor, very calmly and coolly, said to me: "Why are you so deeply opposed to the disappearance of the human race?"

I am sure that as little as a century ago no one would have so lightly made a statement of this kind. It is the statement of a man who has striven in vain to attain an equilibrium within himself and has more or less lost hope of succeeding. It is the expression of a painful solitude and isolation from which so many people are suffering in these days. What is the cause? Is there a way out?

It is easy to raise such questions, but difficult to answer them with any degree of assurance. I must try, however, as best I can, although I am very conscious of the fact that our feelings and strivings are often contradictory and obscure and that they cannot be expressed in easy and simple formulas.

Man is, at one and the same time, a solitary being and a social being. As a solitary being, he attempts to protect his own existence and that of those who are closest to him, to satisfy his personal desires, and to develop his innate abilities. As a social being, he seeks to gain the recognition and affection of his fellow human beings, to share in their pleasures, to comfort them in their sorrows, and to improve their conditions of life. Only the existence of these varied, frequently conflicting, strivings accounts for the special character of a man, and their specific combination determines the extent to which an individual can achieve an inner equilibrium and can contribute to the well-being of society. It is quite possible that the relative strength of these two drives is, in the main, fixed by inheritance. But the personality that finally emerges is largely formed by the environment in which a man happens to find himself during his development, by the structure of the society in which he grows up, by the tradition of that society, and by its appraisal of particular types of behavior. The abstract concept "society" means to the individual human being the sum total of his direct and indirect relations to his contemporaries and to all the people of earlier generations. The individual is able to think, feel, strive, and work by himself; but he depends so much upon society—in his physical, intellectual, and emotional existence—that it is impossible to think of him, or to understand him, outside the framework of society. It is "society" which provides man with food, clothing, a home, the tools of work, language, the forms of thought, and most of the content of thought; his life is made possible through the labor and the accomplishments of the many millions past and present who are all hidden behind the small word “society.”

It is evident, therefore, that the dependence of the individual upon society is a fact of nature which cannot be abolished—just as in the case of ants and bees. However, while the whole life process of ants and bees is fixed down to the smallest detail by rigid, hereditary instincts, the social pattern and interrelationships of human beings are very variable and susceptible to change. Memory, the capacity to make new combinations, the gift of oral communication have made possible developments among human being which are not dictated by biological necessities. Such developments manifest themselves in traditions, institutions, and organizations; in literature; in scientific and engineering accomplishments; in works of art. This explains how it happens that, in a certain sense, man can influence his life through his own conduct, and that in this process conscious thinking and wanting can play a part.

Man acquires at birth, through heredity, a biological constitution which we must consider fixed and unalterable, including the natural urges which are characteristic of the human species. In addition, during his lifetime, he acquires a cultural constitution which he adopts from society through communication and through many other types of influences. It is this cultural constitution which, with the passage of time, is subject to change and which determines to a very large extent the relationship between the individual and society. Modern anthropology has taught us, through comparative investigation of so-called primitive cultures, that the social behavior of human beings may differ greatly, depending upon prevailing cultural patterns and the types of organization which predominate in society. It is on this that those who are striving to improve the lot of man may ground their hopes: human beings are not condemned, because of their biological constitution, to annihilate each other or to be at the mercy of a cruel, self-inflicted fate.

If we ask ourselves how the structure of society and the cultural attitude of man should be changed in order to make human life as satisfying as possible, we should constantly be conscious of the fact that there are certain conditions which we are unable to modify. As mentioned before, the biological nature of man is, for all practical purposes, not subject to change. Furthermore, technological and demographic developments of the last few centuries have created conditions which are here to stay. In relatively densely settled populations with the goods which are indispensable to their continued existence, an extreme division of labor and a highly-centralized productive apparatus are absolutely necessary. The time—which, looking back, seems so idyllic—is gone forever when individuals or relatively small groups could be completely self-sufficient. It is only a slight exaggeration to say that mankind constitutes even now a planetary community of production and consumption.

I have now reached the point where I may indicate briefly what to me constitutes the essence of the crisis of our time. It concerns the relationship of the individual to society. The individual has become more conscious than ever of his dependence upon society. But he does not experience this dependence as a positive asset, as an organic tie, as a protective force, but rather as a threat to his natural rights, or even to his economic existence. Moreover, his position in society is such that the egotistical drives of his make-up are constantly being accentuated, while his social drives, which are by nature weaker, progressively deteriorate. All human beings, whatever their position in society, are suffering from this process of deterioration. Unknowingly prisoners of their own egotism, they feel insecure, lonely, and deprived of the naive, simple, and unsophisticated enjoyment of life. Man can find meaning in life, short and perilous as it is, only through devoting himself to society.

The economic anarchy of capitalist society as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of the evil. We see before us a huge community of producers the members of which are unceasingly striving to deprive each other of the fruits of their collective labor—not by force, but on the whole in faithful compliance with legally established rules. In this respect, it is important to realize that the means of production—that is to say, the entire productive capacity that is needed for producing consumer goods as well as additional capital goods—may legally be, and for the most part are, the private property of individuals.

For the sake of simplicity, in the discussion that follows I shall call “workers” all those who do not share in the ownership of the means of production—although this does not quite correspond to the customary use of the term. The owner of the means of production is in a position to purchase the labor power of the worker. By using the means of production, the worker produces new goods which become the property of the capitalist. The essential point about this process is the relation between what the worker produces and what he is paid, both measured in terms of real value. Insofar as the labor contract is “free,” what the worker receives is determined not by the real value of the goods he produces, but by his minimum needs and by the capitalists' requirements for labor power in relation to the number of workers competing for jobs. It is important to understand that even in theory the payment of the worker is not determined by the value of his product.

Private capital tends to become concentrated in few hands, partly because of competition among the capitalists, and partly because technological development and the increasing division of labor encourage the formation of larger units of production at the expense of smaller ones. The result of these developments is an oligarchy of private capital the enormous power of which cannot be effectively checked even by a democratically organized political society. This is true since the members of legislative bodies are selected by political parties, largely financed or otherwise influenced by private capitalists who, for all practical purposes, separate the electorate from the legislature. The consequence is that the representatives of the people do not in fact sufficiently protect the interests of the underprivileged sections of the population. Moreover, under existing conditions, private capitalists inevitably control, directly or indirectly, the main sources of information (press, radio, education). It is thus extremely difficult, and indeed in most cases quite impossible, for the individual citizen to come to objective conclusions and to make intelligent use of his political rights.

The situation prevailing in an economy based on the private ownership of capital is thus characterized by two main principles: first, means of production (capital) are privately owned and the owners dispose of them as they see fit; second, the labor contract is free. Of course, there is no such thing as a pure capitalist society in this sense. In particular, it should be noted that the workers, through long and bitter political struggles, have succeeded in securing a somewhat improved form of the “free labor contract” for certain categories of workers. But taken as a whole, the present day economy does not differ much from “pure” capitalism.

Production is carried on for profit, not for use. There is no provision that all those able and willing to work will always be in a position to find employment; an “army of unemployed” almost always exists. The worker is constantly in fear of losing his job. Since unemployed and poorly paid workers do not provide a profitable market, the production of consumers' goods is restricted, and great hardship is the consequence. Technological progress frequently results in more unemployment rather than in an easing of the burden of work for all. The profit motive, in conjunction with competition among capitalists, is responsible for an instability in the accumulation and utilization of capital which leads to increasingly severe depressions. Unlimited competition leads to a huge waste of labor, and to that crippling of the social consciousness of individuals which I mentioned before.

This crippling of individuals I consider the worst evil of capitalism. Our whole educational system suffers from this evil. An exaggerated competitive attitude is inculcated into the student, who is trained to worship acquisitive success as a preparation for his future career.

I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals. In such an economy, the means of production are owned by society itself and are utilized in a planned fashion. A planned economy, which adjusts production to the needs of the community, would distribute the work to be done among all those able to work and would guarantee a livelihood to every man, woman, and child. The education of the individual, in addition to promoting his own innate abilities, would attempt to develop in him a sense of responsibility for his fellow men in place of the glorification of power and success in our present society.

Nevertheless, it is necessary to remember that a planned economy is not yet socialism. A planned economy as such may be accompanied by the complete enslavement of the individual. The achievement of socialism requires the solution of some extremely difficult socio-political problems: how is it possible, in view of the far-reaching centralization of political and economic power, to prevent bureaucracy from becoming all-powerful and overweening? How can the rights of the individual be protected and therewith a democratic counterweight to the power of bureaucracy be assured?

Clarity about the aims and problems of socialism is of greatest significance in our age of transition. Since, under present circumstances, free and unhindered discussion of these problems has come under a powerful taboo, I consider the foundation of this magazine to be an important public service.

My faith in mankind is restored, and it's the French what done it.

I was pottering around northern France yesterday on yet another WW1 genealogy trip, only this time I wasn't my usual organised self and had somehow neglected to bring a map with me. The towns and villages in this area are very pretty, in that tidy Lego-like, litter free way, but the one thing that always strikes me is the lack of people and the number of businesses which seem to be permanently closed - it's as if a nuclear bomb has gone off, or the scene in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang when they realise there's no children to be seen. So anyway, I was getting more than a little lost (and irate); I knew the war cemetery was somewhere in this settlement they call Merville, but bugger me those Frenchies weren't making it easy to find.


The tourist information office was, naturally, closed. As were all the shops. And the town hall. That only left the police station. At this point I should add that my French is more than a little rusty, in fact my progress in learning the language ground to a halt somewhere around 1982 when I discovered that Mrs Diffy's lessons were much more fun when we concentrated on her refereeing of food fights and spent less time even pretending to learn some complicated foreign language. Unsurprisingly, the boys in bleu charged with protecting the good (yet invisible) citizens of Merville had a correspondingly inadequate command of English (and no doubt threw their food with a little 'je ne sais quoi') - cue several minutes of us all staring blankly at one another making various noises which may or may not have stemmed from one of our languages, until I grabbed a pen (un stylo, see) and scrawled '1914-1918' on the nearest piece of paper to hand.


What happened next was one of those out of the blue moments that you know you'll remember for the rest of your life yet will mean fuck all to anybody else.


They decided it was far quicker to actually show me where the cemetery was, and so within minutes I found myself trying to keep up with their car through the predictably empty streets. This was beyond the call of duty I thought, but when we got there, instead of just pointing and disappearing, as is usual when guiding someone somewhere, they got out of their car and came in with me. They showed me where the visitor book was, helped locate the grave on the map, and then spent a quarter of an hour helping me find the grave (no easy task in cemeteries this size). The language barrier came tumbling down with our enthusiasm to somehow communicate, and they asked about the grave (my great uncle's), where he was from (Southampton, and proud), his age when killed (19, as in Paul Hardcastle, millions of them). I felt like bursting into 'I'd like to teach the world to sing' and spliff up and talk about the brotherhood of man, man.


In short, my little afternoon was fucking brilliant.


They didn't have to do that. I don't know if they thought I was particularly stupid, or if they just had even more than the usual amount of time on their hands. Maybe they help everybody who visits the war graves. I don't know, I don't know how I'd treat foreign visitors if the roles were reversed (although there's plenty of Polish graveyards near me, hey that's a point). I like to think that my town, including myself, would behave like those French policemen did yesterday, but I can't be sure. But I do hope so.

Question Time

Tonight, on Question Time, Salma Yaqoob of Respect got applause after nearly all of her answers. So how come when I was a member of that party people looked at me as if I'd joined The Flat Earth Society?

Toby Young is a smug c**t - I'd never seen him before. He's way too sure of himself.

And another thing, on this most annoying of nights, I think the Red Arrows should be disbanded if we're going to cut the deficit. They're merely a tax funded PR instrument for the defence industry. They refuse to publish the annual cost on their website; instead they leap head first in to a defence (no pun intended) of the argument for keeping them. Since they were formed in the 60s they have been responsible for the deaths of on average one pilot a decade. Those pilots were trained at the taxpayer's expense too. And those expensive planes didn't just fall out of the sky either (pun very much intended). I hate them.

There. I've said it.

Israel

The Israeli claim that the international Gaza relief flotilla was an 'armada of hate' and 'well known for their ties with global jihad and al-Qaeda' is absurd. 


In this new upside down world it's refreshing to see Hague condemn the attack. Blair or Brown would have either kept quiet or openly supported Israel.

Sweaty Murdoch Pig v Campbell

I hate them both, but this was fantastic - it gets more heated the longer it drags on.

How the US helps al-Qaida

US foreign policy brings terrorism to American shores, costs taxpayers billions of dollars and destroys cherished liberties

By Matthew Harwood

May 04, 2010 "The Guardian" -- Ever since 9/11, American society has had the self-destructive tendency of primarily seeing jihadist terrorists as monsters intent on devouring our social experiment in human liberty and popular rule. Rather than listen to what motivates the individual terrorists that have attacked the United States here and abroad, Americans only hear a convenient narrative left over from the Bush years: "They hate our freedoms." This belief, however, is nothing more than a collective delusion that continually feeds a foreign policy destructive of our homeland security. Nothing proves this more than examining the motivations of three men who have punctured Americans' sense of security over the past year.
In September, federal authorities arrested 25-year-old Najibullah Zazi who was planning to suicide bomb the New York subway system. The Afghan immigrant recently pled guilty of conspiring to murder innocent commuters. According to the New York Times, Zazi rationalised his motive to kill innocents this way: "I would sacrifice myself to bring attention to what the United States military was doing to civilians in Afghanistan by sacrificing my soul for the sake of saving other souls."
A little more than two months later, Americans were shocked when Major Nidal Malik Hasan, a Muslim army psychiatrist, murdered 13 people – 12 service members and one civilian – at the military base at Fort Hood, Texas. Much like Zazi, Hasan's motivation to massacre his fellow comrades seems to have arisen from his horror at US foreign policy, a policy he was entrusted to carry out. Two years before his crime, Hasan lectured colleagues that American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were an assault on Islam. "It's getting harder and harder for Muslims in the service to morally justify being in a military that seems constantly engaged against fellow Muslims," Hasan said in a self-fulfilling PowerPoint presentation. And while Hasan didn't blow himself up at Fort Hood, there seems little doubt that he never intended to walk away from his attack. And he didn't, an officer's bullet left him paralysed.
Finally on Christmas Day, 23-year-old Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a rich kid from Nigeria, stashed powdered explosives in his underwear and attempted to blow up Northwest Flight 253 on its way to Detroit. Fortunately he failed. After his botched attack, National Public Radio investigated why the son of a prominent banker would choose the path of a suicide bomber. One reason, it seems, was the treatment of Muslim detainees at Gitmo. NPR's West African correspondent Ofeibea Quist-Arcton said the anger motivating Abdulmutallab was unique in its violence but not in its sentiment. "I have to say that a lot of people I spoke to in northern Nigeria, if it wasn't specifically Guantánamo, were also talking about the fact of US foreign policy, the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Middle East, Palestinian-Israeli crisis, how they felt so personally that the US was attacking not only Muslims, as they felt, but even Nigerian Muslims."
It's time for the American people to realise that jihadist suicidal terrorism isn't primarily the product of religious fanaticism, but a logical response to US imperialism. "The central fact is that overwhelmingly suicide-terrorist attacks are not driven by religion as much as they are by a clear strategic objective: to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from the territory that the terrorists view as their homeland," Robert Papes, the pre-eminent US expert on suicidal terrorists, told The American Conservative Magazine in 2005. Religion, according to the author of Dying to Win: The Logic of Suicide Terrorism, only factors into suicide terrorism when the occupying power is of another confession. Say hello to the US-led invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq.
The tragedy of it all is that Osama bin Laden bet the United States would take his bait and lash out in revenge and hubris. By invading and occupying predominantly Muslim countries, undermining the rule of law through preventative detention and torture, and delivering death by drone, the United States proved Bin Laden's narrative of Christian crusaders and holy war. This accomplished two necessary goals for al-Qaida: it manufactured more jihadists and it economically and militarily weakened history's greatest hegemon.
This positive-feedback cycle of imperialism and jihadism leaves Americans poorer, less secure, and more afraid. But rather than dig for the root, Americans continue to address the sprouts. Zazi's plot draws Congressional calls for more mass transit security spending. Hasan's massacre leads the Pentagon to develop policies to identify and address violent extremism (pdf). Abdulmutallab's underwear bomb leads to rapid deployment of full body scanners critics call "virtual strip searches".
Almost nine years after 9/11, the United States has spent approximately a trillion dollars to fight this global "war on terrorism" as well as hundreds of billions of dollars of escalating expenditures on homeland security. In return, American taxpayers continue to jeopardise their economic future for an imperium few benefit from and which brings the war to American shores while simultaneously eating up cherished liberties.
The United States, however, has an easy and moral way to rip out the root and make itself more secure and fiscally sound in the process. It should immediately begin to responsibly draw down its empire by withdrawing from Afghanistan and Iraq, shuttering its worldwide archipelago of military installations, and bringing home its service members. This will help dampen the allure of the jihadist narrative the likes of Abdulmutallab, Hasan, and Zazi latched onto. These men weren't born jihadists, they were made jihadists. The tragic irony is that the United States helped al-Qaida to do it.
And because of that, we spend evermore on security but continue to feel less and less safe.

Interlude

Cameron is concealing his inner Bush

I liked this article by Johann Hari in The Independent.

Ypres 2

Ypres

From an unlikely source...

I don't usually have a good word to say about Switzerland, but this article in today's Independent is surely good news. 

Public Transport

To reach Stockbridge from Winchester on public transport for a 12:30 meeting, a distance of 9 miles, I need to leave two hours beforehand and then kill an hour and a quarter. Honestly, you'd think some of these so called do-gooders would be campaigning for better public transport.

George Monbiot

I keep wondering what the reaction would be if George Monbiot wrote for one of the tabloids. His latest article on tax avoidance should be compulsary reading for anyone who falls for The Mail's headlines about benefit cheats.

Power 2010

Power2010 is a 'unique campaign to give everyone the chance to have a say in how our democracy works for us'. People vote for the top electoral reforms that they believe will fix UK politics. Proportional Representation is currently in the lead (and quite right too). The campaign started in September 2009, and the vote closes in forty seven minutes. Don't say I never told you.

Bully Brown?

Yet again Guido comes up trumps with quotes:

Mandy’s Porky

Mandy just told a press conference that “we’ve seen no evidence of bullying in Number 10.” He is on the attack and spinning away. Perhaps though he should have reconsidered his choice of words given the fact Tom Watson told the House in March 2009:

“I can confirm that in the period specified (2007-2009), there were fewer than five cases in the Department where staff were disciplined for bullying and harassment of colleagues. It would not be appropriate to provide a further breakdown.”

So there have been confirmed cases, while Gordon was PM, that were investigated. Sounds like evidence of bullying no?


What's more, I'd say that Watson's response to the original question suggests he was struggling to give a precise answer.