The Unpleasantly Tribal Mr. Burnham

Mr. A Burnham, a lagging candidate for the Labour Leadership, has just denounced Mr. A. Milburn for agreeing to advise the Government on social mobility. His proffered reason seemed to be on the lines 'we are the Labour gang, so we don't talk to people in other gangs."

As the Labour party led the attack on the grammar schools which used to be one of the principal engines of social mobility, it is understandable that party members should be sensitive about social mobility, but I wish they could expiate their guilt less destructively.

A Confession from a Variably Energetic Blogger.

During the last year or so I've noticed that I seem to alternate between extreme laziness and at least moderate activity.

For a day or two, apart from a little reading which I rarely neglect, I'll do little but potter around the web, then there'll be a period when I blog, bring my web site up to date, garden and make jam. Then I lapse back into idleness.

That explains why contributions to this blog come in clusters.

David Cameron

Ever since he became Conservative leader I've felt uneasy about Cameron.

As opposition leader he seemed unnecessarily strident. When he shouted at the then prime minister in the house of commons, I sometimes felt for Gordon Brown a sympathy that I suspect Brown did not deserve. I should have liked more humour and subtlety, and less self righteous ranting.

Recently I've detected a worrying impulsiveness. His remark about Pakistan's hospitality to terrorists may have been carefully calculated as part of some cunning plan, but it sounded as if it just popped out, and I see no excuse for his recent declaration that no one should even examine the merits of free milk for nursery school children. Demanding cuts, and then objecting when people discuss the possibilities is absurd.

Surprised by a Network

Ever since I bought a new PC last year I've been plucking up courage to network it to my laptop. I even bought a special cable. Yet I held back, fearing that something I did to the IP settings would disable Internet access.

Then I recalled that people say that wireless router automatically sets up a network, so I created on each computer a folder that is shared, and discovered that each computer could see the other computer's folder.

There's only one shared folder on each computer. I use them only for transferring files from one machine to the other, so most of the time both are empty, because as soon as I put something in to the special folder on one machine, I remove it into the bowels of the other machine. Thus any miscreant who somehow penetrated the network would probably see just two empty folder, and if they did find anything it would probably just be a revised chapter of my Philosophy notes, which are available to all on my website.

No longer need I swap flash drives every time I want to move a file from one machine to the other.

I love it when an apparent problem just dissolves.

A Sign of Rising Inflation

The Government has just stopped selling Index Linked Savings Certificates. That suggests politicians may expect inflation to rise. Indeed they may plan for high inflation as a way of reducing the National Debt.

Megabyte Megalomaniacs

Twice recently I've received by email huge files, containing very little information.

Both were posters in jpeg format

Posters usually contain sufficiently few colours to permit storage in gif format, which will not corrupt text. However any picture format is poor for material containing text.

One of the emails suggested I print the poster. As it was in graphics format that would have involved a vast consumption of ink to print the background colour.

I suppose the offenders think they are being clever, but they strike me as pathetic, silly and inconsiderate.

I wish that, if people must make posters, they would just put them on a website, preferably as html files, and give people a link.

The Ill-managed Demise of Mr. Raoul Moat

Mr. Moat was armed, had already shot three people, and threatened to shoot more. After a search that lasted nearly a week, armed Police cornered him.

They then spent about six hours trying to persuade him to give himself up, providing him with food and drink to fortify him for a prolonged stalemate, thus increasing the Police overtime. Finally they shot him with a new sort of taser, not yet approved for use, and he shot himself with a more serious weapon.

Such time wasting could be avoided if, as soon as they have a fugitive surrounded, the police said 'You have 30 seconds to surrender, and then we shoot'. Feeding the offender is ridiculous, unless the food contains a sleeping drug.

Choose your Strawberry Seller carefully.

In the market yesterday I bought four 400g punnets of strawberries for a total of £2-00 - I plan to make jam. A little later I noticed that Sainsbury had a special offer - 400g punnets of strawberries reduced from £3-99 to £1-99, so still almost four times as expensive as those in the market.

Hidden Numbers

I recently bought a new washing machine. When I decided to activate the manufacturer's five year parts guarantee I needed the serial number, which is hidden away on the back of the machine, and so accessible only with great effort.

That reminded me of the time I needed a spare part for my cooker, and found that the model number and serial number, while on the front, were at the very bottom, so the only way I could read them was to lie flat on the kitchen floor and peer through a magnifying glass.

Does anyone check such things before equipment is put on sale ?

Keynes as Prophet

It is strange that people should still cite Keynes as an authority, 65 years after his death and 74 years after the publication of his General Theory.

Indeed, to anyone who considers Economics to be some sort of science, it should seem odd that its practitioners need to appeal to any prophet at all.

Scientific theories rest on their ability to survive  tests and provide a coherent account of phenomena. There is a dynamic interplay between theory and experience. We need not look back at observations made seventy years ago, because a useful theory will be used and tested all the time.

Recent appeals to Keynes supposed authority have not even been accurate.

Keynes famously advocated government deficits as a remedy for economic recessions, and opposed attempts to balance budgets during the recession of the 1930’s. He has recently been cited by people who oppose a reduction in our budget deficit. Yet there is this time no proposal to balance the budget.

The appeal of Keynes is his support for wishful thinking. Reduction in government expenditure and increases in taxes are disagreeable, so it is pleasant to have an ideology that tells us we needn’t bother. People who are usually hostile to what they call laissez faire seem willing to make an exception for the belief that the budget deficit will sort itself out without our doing much about it.

Demonstrations and Riots

The difference is of degree rather than kind, and it is easy for one to turn into the other.

There is something odd about a crowd of supposedly peaceful people marching on a line of soldiers or police. Do they really expect to be allowed through, do they intend to fight their way through, or are they just pretending ?

I have reservations about applying ‘peaceful’ to any large gathering of people that blocks streets or obstructs access to public buildings. Even if no force is actually used, force is implicit in such demonstrations, because such demonstrators are creating a physical obstacle to other people’s access.

Such demonstrations are justifiable only as part of an attempt to remove the government, or to change government policy, by non constitutional means. That is only justifiable if there are no constitutional means for achieving the same ends because the government is a tyranny.

Police and troops defending a constitutional government against coercion by a large group of people are justified in firing, whether or not members of the crowd fire first.

Soldiers defending a tyranny are likely to fire, because that is what the servants of  tyrannies do.

In neither case is it sensible to be shocked or outraged by the event. It is indeed reasonable to be outraged by the existence of a tyranny, but having recognised it for what it is, there seems little room for further indignation because it behaves as we should expect.

Those observations were prompted by the recent discussion of the so called ‘Bloody Sunday’ shootings of 1972.

It appears that soldiers fired without being given orders to do so. That is a serious failure of discipline. The deaths seem to have been counter productive, that is a good reason for the soldiers having not been ordered to fire. Therefore the soldiers should not have fired. However that does not show that those who died were innocent victims. The good reason for not shooting them is that their deaths were very inconvenient. The fuss and bother on the part of friends and families is quite unjustified.

Isaac Newton Apples at last

My Isaac Newton tree, a specially grafted clone of the tree that grew in the garden of Woolsthorpe Rectory in Newton's day, has at last set fruit.

I've had the tree for at least 15 years and it didn't flower at all until two years ago, and then only sparsely, but this year there were lots of flowers, and today I spotted several tiny apples.

Incidentally the variety is Flower of Kent, though I think the only ones grown are the clones of the Woolsthorpe tree.