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Statistical legerdemain

November 7, 2014 in Life as we know it | Permalink

Image from Wikimedia Commons This week’s depressing mid-term poll results from the US of A – as a result of which the Republicans have been (distressingly) able to declare possession of a mandate that all the evidence suggests the American people had no real wish to hand to them – reminds me that it is but a matter of months before we in the UK will also be subjected to an interminable period of electioneering by our own oleaginous political pretenders.

We face the prospect yet again of having to pick the bones out of the endless reams of misinformation, half truths and evasions that are the stock in trade of the office-seeking hustler. Each of the political parties has – of course – its own agenda and its own target demographic – and can inevitably be expected to distort the same basic facts in an effort to make its case. As the saying goes there are – “lies, damned lies and even bigger damned lies“… or something to that effect.

The rise both of the nationalist parties in Scotland and Wales and of the newer groupings of the extreme right (the extreme left being no-where to be seen these days!) has predictably thrown all into a state of panic and confusion. The battleground will – as ever – comprise the usual fertile conflation of the economy and the size of the State – the two being inextricably bound together, particular in times of austerity.

All of those even slightly to the right of centre will once again bang the drum for further swinging cutbacks to the welfare state – and their half (or even less) truths will as usual play upon the basest emotions of the masses… anger over benefit cheats, scroungers and feckless wastrels – and fears about the over-running of this fair land by hoards of illegal asylum seekers, eager to sup deep at the well of our state largesse.

In search of some balance I found this most useful article on the BBC’s website:

The truth about welfare spending: Facts or propaganda?

…by Brian Milligan, the BBC ‘s personal finance correspondent.

The Treasury is apparently sending to all 24 million UK taxpayers a document purporting to show the breakdown of the government’s tax spend – with particular emphasis on the welfare spend. The gist of Mr Milligan’s article is that the easy-to-digest pie charts that are clearly intended to strike a chord with disgruntled tax payers are in fact highly misleading. As ever with statistics it all depends on how the counting is done and on which criteria are used to categorise the outcome. By tweaking the methodology it is possible to demonstrate that the areas of welfare spending that might be the subject of cutbacks could comprise anything from 14% to 56% of public spending. Naturally the figures chosen – highly selectively – by those from each political camp will ‘prove’ exactly what those concerned most desire.

I have myself printed out a copy of the article to keep to hand throughout the campaign, as a prophylactic against the seductive siren voices of our would-be masters.

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A slow perversion…

October 7, 2014 in Life in England | Permalink

ballot-box-32384_640“Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.”

Thomas Jefferson

The final UK party conference season of the current parliamentary term draws creakily to close with the Liberal Democrats somewhat bravely gathered in Glasgow. The extravasate of the drab convocations that we have had thus far to endure has left us – frankly – numb with disbelief at the grim prospect of the eight months of campaigning that will now follow – in the run-up to the election next May.

The recent referendum on Scottish independence – along with the concomitant hullabaloo south of the border – has provided us with several excellent examples – in both positive and negative veins – of exactly what is wrong with the current political process.

My previous post on the referendum provided the positive illustration. It is quite clear that the splendid and unprecedented turnout on that occasion was the result – not of the frankly ludicrous posturings of the political parties – but of the Scots recognising that, for once, they actually had a say in something that mattered – a chance that they took with both hands.

The flipside side of the coin was – true to form – all too clearly demonstrated by the parties at Westminster. Having until this point remained nervously aloof from the proceedings they were finally galvanised by the single, erroneous poll a week or so before the event that suggested against all the odds that the ‘Yes’ campaign might actually triumph. The panicky political denizens of the capital at once scrambled to Euston station, took to Virgin Trains and headed north.

Once there the three main parties – Tories, New(ish) Labour and the Lib Dems – cobbled together a shaky agreement to dangle before the Scottish people an orange(ish) vegetable in the shape of an extension to the devolved power that they already had – in return for their remaining in the Union. Thus far all entirely predictable – the only surprise being that the consensus held just about for long enough for the poll to actually take place.

What happened next was – sadly – just as predictable. Scarcely had the Scots taken the bribe accepted this generous offer than Tory leader David Cameron scurried from the door of 10 Downing Street to issue this breathless edict. The government would – he insisted – most certainly honour its pledge to the Scots, but in the interests of fairness it would at the same time legislate for a devolution of powers to the poor downtrodden English – which latter must be effected concurrent with the former!

Was this mayhap a noble gesture – the righting of some ancient wrong – the far-sighted act of a great statesman?? Not a chance! It was a piece of shameless, shabby political maneuvering!!

Cameron knows all too well that this belated resolution of the West Lothian question would deprive Labour of its healthy rump of 41 Scottish MPs – and thus of any real chance of a future Commons majority. He further knows that Labour therefore must needs oppose the issue, and that when the Devo-Max process inevitably breaks down as a result he will be able to place the blame on them for the resultant broken promises to the Scots. This has nothing to do with the desires of the English for self-determination. It has everything to do with Cameron and Osborne’s desire to fatally wound the Labour party.

“So what” – I hear you say? “That’s just politics. If you can’t stand the heat…”

“Well” – say I – “that’s just not good enough!”

Had Cameron announced his intention before the referendum – instead of after the count – not only would there have most likely been no agreement to ‘save’ the Union at all, but also a fair chance that the Scots – seeing which way the wind was blowing – would have modified their thinking and given Cameron and Co the kicking at the poll that they so richly deserve!

And these are the men that want us to entrust them with our precious votes?!

Don’t get me wrong – I have no more truck with the shameless hucksters from any of the other parties either – that dare to perch so precariously on the shoulders of giants – those worthy statesmen of yore who so richly decorate the tapestry of the history of this land. It comes as no surprise that the impossibly patient inhabitants of these fair isles now clearly regard politicians as ranking even lower on the scale of pond-life than do tabloid journalists! How many now must be wishing fervently for a ‘None of the above‘ option on the ballot paper?

 

I would like to think that our forth-coming emigration to Canada will lead to our escaping into clearer air. Sadly – everything I read about Canadian politics suggests that things are just about as bad there as they are in the UK.

Sigh!

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Brave hearts

September 19, 2014 in Life in England | Permalink

Photo by W. L. Tarbert on Wikimedia CommonsI have – to this point – made no comment on this blog or anywhere else regarding the recent campaign which culminated in yesterday’s referendum on Scottish independence.

I am a Scot by (slightly remote) ancestry. Though I have never lived in Scotland I know parts of the country pretty well. I was rightly not entitled to vote in the referendum and therefore thought it appropriate to maintain a dignified distance and to say nowt!

I know that the nationalists will be hugely disappointed by this morning’s results. I really do believe – however – that the outcome will in the long run prove to have been for the best for of all of the constituent parts of the United Kingdom.

What has been fascinating has been to observe how the referendum has re-invigorated political debate in Scotland. The Scots have given the rest of us an object lesson in how to address, debate and resolve complex issues. They have done so in the main in spite of the blandishments of the politicians rather than because of them. Voting has quite clearly not split on party lines but rather with disregard for them.

The fact that the turnout was more than 84% – from the massive 97% of the population that had registered to vote – is truly staggering – particularly given that disenchantment with the political process has over recent years become endemic throughout these blessed isles. The Scots showed the rest of us how to energise an issue – how to take debate away from the political elites and to return it to the drawing rooms and kitchens – to the bars and cafes – to the street corner and to the garden fence!

The challenge for the political classes now is to work out out how to enthuse voters throughout the UK with similar passion, enthusiasm and commitment for the regular electoral process. Perhaps the now almost inevitable movement towards a federal framework for this patchwork nation will have the desired effect? Perhaps a re-focusing away from the whims and fancies of the 1% would help? Perhaps a determined ambition to renounce cynicism and self-interest would do the trick? Who knows…

In any event, it is good to see the Scots – as so often in the past – showing the rest of us the way. This evening I will – I believe – raise a glass of good cheer to them…

Here’s tae us, wha’s like us? Damned few an’ they’re a’ deid.

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Unequal

June 27, 2014 in Life as we know it | Permalink

Uneven_scalesWhat started out as a single post has now miraculously morphed into a series of four!

This eclectic assemblage of ramblings has thus far encompassed cricket, the demise of socialism and sun-worship.

What can it all mean?

Time to wrap it up…

My theme is – of course – inequality. I have addressed the topic a number of times before (here, here, here and here) and the gentle reader will doubtless have deduced by now that it is a subject that exercises me greatly.

Simply put – excessive and increasing inequality in any society is a bad thing and can only – in the long run – lead to disaster.

The free market is a valuable tool. It generates wealth, encourages competition and promotes progress. It is also – however – a completely amoral device. It is not of itself a good – even though good can come from it. For the benefits that can accrue thereby to be put to good purpose – the advance of society as a whole and the elimination of those evils of deprivation – lack of education – poor living standards – low life expectancy and unfulfilled promise – it is essential that the tool be managed, purposed, regulated and generally focused on the overall good. The market cannot achieve these aims unassisted.

Those who insist on the market being given its head – on its being allowed to exercise untrammeled influence on all areas of society – are in effect proposing an order entirely free from moral compass. This way madness lies. Events demonstrate time and time again that venality and criminality are not confined to the ‘lower orders’. When the powerful succumb to corruption they frequently do so absolutely. Human nature being what it is, the mere accumulation of wealth is no guarantee of altruistic or even acceptable behaviour.

By way of justification of their imperfect belief system those on the right may point to the fact that – in a period in which the rich have become the mega-rich, then the hyper-rich and ultimately the ultra-rich – living standards of those at the bottom of the pile have also risen marginally. It matters not – they protest – that the 1% own an ever increasing percentage of global wealth – just as long as everybody else’s living standards have also crept up.

Well – they are wrong… and it is just not good enough!

History teaches us that the the ultimate outcome of ever increasing inequality is revolution. That the West has not in recent decades experienced a greater degree of rebellious unrest can be attributed to three facts:

  • living standards for even the poorest segment are higher than they once were
  • in a globalised economy it is considerably more difficult to identify and locate the guilty parties
  • many in the West subscribe to the lottery mentality, by which – however long the odds – they still believe that they can hit the ‘wealth’ jackpot and join the 1%

The bad news for the ultra-rich is that it is all just a matter of degree. We don’t yet know where the tipping point will be, but be it will.

And at that point things will turn nasty!

 

OK – enough of this now…

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Heliolatry or pyrodulia – 2

June 21, 2014 in Life as we know it | Permalink

Photo by Luc Viatour on Wikimedia.orgWith the despatch of Socialism to the sidelines of history (see my previous post) and the resultant almost inevitable hegemony of the market, one could be forgiven for thinking that – for those with a social conscience – the game was up. Rabid marketeers and their fellow travelers on the right did what all good ideologues do when in a similarly victorious position – they plunged the knife in and twisted the blade!

These people would have us believe that there is no power – no authority – but the market. They are not to be trusted. Any notion that the market represents the ultimate form of democracy just doesn’t stack up. True democracy requires universal suffrage – something that the market can never provide, the rich holding the equivalent of a block vote.

Time for an allegory!

Those who worship the sun (and I refer here not just to those with a vitamin D addiction!) do so because they see the incalescent orb as the source of all life on earth and the origin of all power – which must be honoured accordingly. The Aztecs for example – as is well known – believed that regular human sacrifices were necessary to ensure that the sun repeat its transit of the heavens each new day – turning its face the while beneficently upon the earth.

It must be remembered though that not all that the the brightest star provides is propitious. The sun can burn and otherwise mutilate unprotected flesh – it can scorch the earth – it can bring the drought – can deliquesce the insubstantial. Nor are its favours bestowed equally upon all. This all-powerful sun-god must be appeased – apotheosized. Those who make the biggest sacrifice – or erect the most lavish temple – may expect to reap what they sew as the god smiles upon their endeavors. Those who do not – or cannot – must expect just to burn… burn… burn…

Adherents of Social Darwinism – and those who are in fact so even should they reject the term – have much in common with these heliolatrists. They might protest that their belief in the need for us to earn our rewards  – coupled with an avowed espousal of philanthropy – stands them firmly on the moral high ground. Unfortunately – as inequality continues its dizzying increase – the evidence suggests otherwise. Are these high achievers really working harder than ever before, whilst the remainder of us get lazier and lazier? And how much of that hard work actually just goes into the blackmailing of institutions such as the banks to hand over ever larger bonuses?

In fact the fine sentiments of those enthusiasts for market freedom ring as hollow as do those that they despise from the opposite end of the spectrum – from the social engineers. The truth is that human nature makes fools of us all just as soon as ever we try to codify our preferred social science.

There is an alternative…

Time for a different allegory!

Regarding fire-worship Wikipedia informs us thus:

Although the term “fire-worshippers” is primarily associated with Zoroastrians, the idea that Zoroastrians worship fire is originally from anti-Zoroastrian polemic. Instead, fire — even in a Fire temple (the Zoroastrian terms are more prosaic and simply mean “house of fire”) — is considered to be an agent of purity and as a symbol of righteousness and truth. In the present day this is explained to be because fire burns ever-upwards and cannot itself be polluted.

The Zoroastrians’ ‘agent of purity’ is indeed a powerful tool and bestows many benefits on humankind. The Promethean gift is also capable – of course – of bringing calamity but – unlike the sun – can and indeed must be controlled and contained.

Treated with respect fire is thus clearly in the service of man and not the other way around!

Here surely is a better model for the market – a tool for the benefit of all humanity rather than a Mammonian god that must be served.

This is where we now draw the battle lines…

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Heliolatry or pyrodulia – 1

June 17, 2014 in Life as we know it | Permalink

Photo by Violetta on PixabayIt would be a brave man – or indeed woman – who would attempt to argue the continued existence of Socialism in any nation state on this delicate blue/green planet.

We can discount – I think – any of those one-party (or one-man!) ‘dictatorships’ that have done their utmost to appropriate the philosophy – or even a pretense of it – just as we can any suggestion of a tenuous link with those well-meaning social democrats, who – when all is said and done – just don’t go for the whole ‘social ownership of the means of production and co-operative management of the economy’ thing.

The use of the term itself as an insult by those on the right wing of American politics when referring to anyone marginally to the left of their own position would be laughable – were it not actually somewhat scary. That such occurs is – sadly – all too redolent of the offensively patronising tone taken by the majority of those who practice politics just about anywhere on the globe these days, and helps to explain why they are – in so many parts of the world – held in such low esteem.

No – Socialism is dead! In much the same way that democracy – famously said by Churchill to be “the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried” (mind you – he also said “The best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter”!) – has come to be accepted by the majority of nation states as the fairest form of political organisation, so Capitalism has won the battle against all other forms of economic organisation. Most – even – of those nations that had once believed fervently in what the British Labour Party particularised in the fourth clause of its constitution had – by the end of the last century – reluctantly reached the conclusion that Capitalism in some form – along with its essential tool, the market – was the only game in town.

Was this – as posited by Francis Fukuyama in his 1992 book – ‘The End of History’?

As it turns out – it was not!

In British politics the decade whose culmination was marked by the fall of the Berlin wall and the vaporescence of Communism also saw the belated realisation by the majority of those on the left of the political spectrum that to remain true to their erstwhile ardently held beliefs was to render them effectively unelectable – quite possible ad infinitum! The fall from power of the rebarbative Margaret Thatcher was – as a result – rapidly followed by an unseemly scramble to appropriate the central tenets of her political philosophy, whilst at the same time abhorring the inevitable outcomes thereof. The centre ground was becoming a particularly crowded space.

What followed over the subsequent decade and a half – culminating in the world’s worst financial crisis for the greater part of a century – has already been widely documented. Those of us in the UK are not alone in the struggle to come to terms with the after-effects thereof and it will take much study and deep thought before a clearer picture of the future landscape will emerge. There is much to be done indeed if the political systems of the rainbow nations are ever to be rehabilitated.

A battle has been lost (or won – depending on your point of view!) – there is still a war to be fought.

 

And the title of this post? All will become clear…

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Envy!

December 14, 2013 in Flotsam and Jetsam | Permalink

Envy_Plucking_the_Wings_of_FameRegarding which topic Wikipedia offers this:

Envy (from Latin invidia) is a resentment which “occurs when someone lacks another’s quality, achievement or possession and wishes that the other lacked it.”

On the same subject Bertrand Russell – in ‘The Conquest of Happiness’ – wrote:

Envy undermines happiness – it generates pain from what others possess, instead of pleasure from one’s own possessions, and might even motivate measures to deprive others of perceived advantages.

The key here for me is the manner in which this resentment manifests not just in desiring something that others have, but also in wishing to deprive them of it, or in some other way to punish them for possessing it. Envy is thus clearly a trait truly to be deprecated.

The subject has been on my mind of late for two reasons – both associated with the Tory party here in the UK. The first runs thus:

It is – nowadays – impossible to make public any observation regarding the increasing gap between the richest and the poorest in our society without provoking accusations of a resort to the ‘politics of envy’. This – naturally – pejorative, with the (frequently not so…)sub-text that this destructive emotion be of itself damaging to our economic and social well-being. Such vituperative judgement is – of course – designed to stifle rational debate by appealing to base instincts. The indictment scarcely stands up to scrutiny in any case – but as this is not its true purpose this hardly matters.

I was minded to track down the origins of the phrase but they turn out to be as nebulous as its meaning. Google offers many repetitions of the recent Mitt Romney quote, but its use clearly goes back considerably further. Reagan used the phrase in a number of speeches…

“Since when do we in America endorse the politics of envy and division?” – Ronald Reagan, February 26, 1982.

…and indeed it does have a strong whiff of the 80s about it. I could – however – find no definitive source for the phrase, and if there are earlier instances of its use they were not immediately apparent. Whatever its origins the idiom has been certainly been widely adopted and its usage has increased markedly since that turning point in the 1970s when the long-standing historic trend was reversed and the gap between highest and lowest earners started once again to widen. This is – clearly – no co-incidence.

The second trigger for my reverie was the reportage of this year’s Margaret Thatcher Memorial Lecture, which was delivered in typically bombastic style by the Tory Mayor of London – Boris Johnson. His customarily confrontational address included this startling quote:

“Some measure of inequality is essential for the spirit of envy. Keeping up with the Joneses is, like greed, a valuable spur to economic activity.”

Hang on a minute! Is that the same ‘envy‘ that is the subject of critique when it is directed by the ‘have nots‘ at the ‘have yachts‘? Surely some mistake?

Apparently not! If one is an entrepreneur or a banker (or suchlike) or finds oneself by any other means towards the top of the food chain – then envy is good! Capitalism ‘red in tooth and claw’ encourages alpha-males (and females) to compete for ever greater rewards and this is – we are invited to believe – beneficial for the economy and thus for the country.

When – on the other hand – envy is directed by the 99% at the 1%… then it is to be derogated as mean-spirited, negative and destructive – and thus bad, bad, bad!

So – it’s one rule for the rich… etcetera, etcetera!

Well – who would have thought it?

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The world turned upside down – 2

October 10, 2013 in Life in England | Permalink

earth-upside-downYou must know that for those destined to dominate others the ordinary rules of life are turned upside down and duty acquires an entirely new meaning. Good and evil are carried off to a higher, different plane.

Pope Alexander VI to Lucrezia Borgia

I will be brief!

Chancellor Osbourne’s speech to the Tory party conference in the UK last week included one announcement that had not – contrary to what has somewhat sadly become widely accepted practice – been trailed to the media in advance. The gist of this statement was that – should the Tories be allowed another term in office – once the recovery had stabilised and the structural deficit been reduced the Tories would then focus on running a surplus on the nation’s budget.

This would appear at first glance to be a good thing. One should live within one’s means and it is – of course – good practice to put something aside during the ‘fat’ years to see us through the ‘lean’. What went unsaid was that this would of necessity be achieved by extending – apparently indefinitely – the current policy of austerity, with all that that implies as a brake on growth leading to the further erosion of living standards.

This bitter medicine – though difficult to swallow – might just be accepted as an essential part of the cure for our ills were it not for one glaring omission – one extremely large and utterly disregarded (by the Tories!) elephant in the room. This perpetual belt-tightening will clearly not apply to the Tories’ favoured sons – the one percent!

The bankers – the speculators – the masters of the universe… will all be free to carry on awarding themselves inflationary pay rises, exorbitant bonuses (apparently regardless of performance) and eye-watering severance packages. The stateless corporates will continue to play off nation against nation for their favours, effectively deciding for themselves what – if any – tax they will pay and to whom. Whilst the ‘ordinary’ man (and woman) must take in another notch in their belts and watch as their standard of living slowly dissolves – castles of sand washed away by the incoming tide – the rich aboard their hyper-yachts will simply sail off into the sunset, the income gap between us and them growing ever wider and wider as it has been doing since the 1970s.

I have never understood why it is that – whilst at one end of the spectrum workers are expected to ‘price’ themselves into a job – at the opposite extreme these ‘supermen’ – these Übermensch – are apparently incapable of carrying out the jobs (of which they have had their pick!) for which they are already extremely well paid unless they are further bribed so to do – for what are bonus and incentive schemes but bribery – plain and simple. I have nothing at all against those who enrich themselves through their honest toil and creativity – those who build something which is ultimately of the benefit to all. For far too many of the one percent – however – this is simply not the case.

These men must be truly exceptional to be rewarded as they are. They must indeed be exceptional to be feted so by those who represent us. They are also apparently exceptions to the rule by which the rest of us must live. I feel sure – however – that they will not give a fig that we take exception to them!

Which we do!

Flame off…

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The world turned upside down – 1

October 8, 2013 in Life in England | Permalink

World_upside_downThe modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.

John Kenneth Galbraith

Many of us in the UK breath a hearty sigh of relief at this point of the year – for the party conference season has finally shuddered to a close. Those of like vintage can probably just about recall when party conferences actually meant something – when policies were proposed, debated and then voted upon according to whichever greater or lesser degree of democratic process the party in question espoused. It wasn’t perfect. It was very rarely pretty – but at least there was a feeling that the entire farrago had some sort of purpose.

Nowadays these annual gatherings in corners of the kingdom seldom otherwise visited by many of those in or on the fringes of power, are merely tightly choreographed PR exercises, the prime function of which is to garner headlines in the media and to ‘get the message across’. It is a particular bugbear of mine (one of many, you may have noticed!) that ‘getting the message across’ is now considered to be of such import that it is apparently perfectly acceptable to patronise horribly those of us who make up the great unwashed – presumably on the basis that we possess between us no intelligence whatsoever!

We are unfortunate in the UK currently to suffer what is fundamentally a Tory administration. From the Kickass Canada Girl’s pithy epithets on perusing the news from home I deduce that Canada finds itself in a similar position. Now – for the Tories the ‘message’ that must be ‘got across’ is that the entire global financial meltdown – as well as the subsequent and ongoing international credit crisis – was caused solely by the profligacy of the last Labour administration. (Strangely the inverse now applies – any current woes being the fault of those beyond these shores).

Whereas I can just about understand the Tories holding this view – and indeed trying to make political capital therefrom – it is abundantly clear that every single member of the administration that has been given permission to communicate through the media has been briefed to ram this point home at every conceivable opportunity. As a result there is no question to which the answer is free from this mantra – the recitation of the same hackneyed dogma – an endless repetition of the same trite phrases, presumably in the belief that if a thing is said frequently and loudly enough the rest of us will eventually accept it as the truth.

COME ON!! – for pity’s sake… This is the way that a child ‘communicates’ when it wants something that it can’t have. Show us at least some respect!

Lest anyone – at this point – accuse me of getting ‘party political’ I should make it clear that I consider all parties and pretty well all politicians to be equally guilty in this regard. It comes as little surprise to me that the electorate is increasingly and justifiably disenchanted with those who purport to represent us. The Tories – being currently in power – must inevitably, however, be the prime recipients of our disapprobation.

Oh dear! What was intended to be a brief but pithy commentary on the Chancellor – George Osbourne’s – conference speech, has morphed instead into two less than temperate virtual diatribes. I really shouldn’t let these things get to me, but I do find these preening popinjays so very irritating…

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‘Epic fail’

September 27, 2013 in Life as we know it | Permalink

Photo courtesy photos-public-domain.comI do not much care for the recent InterWebNet ‘meme’ that goes by the soubriquet ‘Fail’, or even (apparently in extremis) – ‘Epic fail’. This – frankly bizarre – fad would seem to comprise the sourcing of images or video clips of others’ misfortunes or mistakes, the attaching of a caption – in bold capitals – proclaiming this to represent some brand of failure and then the posting of the result onto the InterWebNet.

Being of advancing years I don’t imagine that I would be expected to ‘get the point’, but I do have to say that I find the whole notion baffling. The nearest analogue that I can think of would be the suggestion that the pratfalls and banana-skin-slips so beloved of enthusiasts of physical comedy might somehow be rendered more funny by the gratuitous presence of a small child pointing a finger and pronouncing – “Ha, ha!”…

It would seem that – in this case – less in no longer more.

I can only imagine that the subtext of this strange behaviour is the implication that the poster is – by some inverse association – superior to the object of the ridicule; an attempt – it would seem – at establishing elevated status in circumstances in which there would otherwise be no connection.

I was moved to this reverie (…and I know that the gentle reader will have been wondering to what exactly this particular rant might be attributed) by the recent disclosure of an incident that would truly have been a failure on an epic scale – and which was apparently avoided by the smallest possible margin and by sheer good fortune.

I refer – of course – to the incident which took place on 23rd January 1961 in which a USAF B-52 Stratofortress carrying two Mark 39 nuclear bombs broke up in mid-air over Goldsboro, North Carolina – dropping its nuclear payload in the process. The arming sequence of one of the two devices was initiated as the bomb fell from the disintegrating aircraft and three out of four safety mechanisms were found subsequently to have failed. On impact the firing signal was sent to the nuclear core of the device and the sole reason that a detonation did not occur was that the single remaining safety system – a simple, dynamo-technology, low voltage switch – remained uncompromised.

Some sceptics claim that a nuclear explosion was never actually a possibility; others that the safety mechanisms as a whole clearly operated as they should have done. All I know is that the incident was just too close for comfort and that the disaster that was so narrowly averted would have changed the course of world history – not to mention the contours of the North Carolina coast.

Some rudimentary reading on the InterWebNet suggests (though it must be borne in mind that when it comes to national security none of the sources are entirely to be trusted!) that in early sixties there was indeed a brief window during which several incidents took place by which the world came within a whisker of calamity – the Goldsboro event simply being the closest call. For much of the first decade of the nuclear age bomber-carried nuclear devices were kept safe by the simple expedient of carrying some of the components separately until the last possible moment – final assembly of the devices being effected at the point of arming. By the early sixties this practice had changed – in response to the increasing complexities of the systems concerned and the time constraints imposed by the escalation of the Cold War – and the devices were fully sealed and armed electronically.

At the height of the Cold War the Strategic Air Command (SAC) kept a number of B-52s in the air at all times to counter the possibility of a Russian first strike catching the fleet on the ground. The dangers inherent in maintaining such an airborne presence with nuclear-armed craft became all too clear as a result of the chain of incidents to which I have already alluded. The Goldsboro mishap took place less than a month after the inauguration of John F Kennedy as president of the US and inquiries subsequently initiated by that administration lead ultimately to the extensive enhancement of nuclear safety procedures – including the implementation of launch codes to verify arming and firing sequences.

The advent of the Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile should thus – somewhat paradoxically – have made the world a safer place, though the later admission that the coded locks demanded for all Minutemen missiles by the then US Secretary of Defence – Robert McNamara – were subsequently set by the SAC to all zeros (00000000) so as not to hold up any prospective launch hardly inspires confidence. Those too young to have lived through this perilous era are encouraged – if they have not already done so – to grab a copy of Stanley Kubrick’s ‘Dr Strangelove‘ – which biting satire still surely goes a long way towards ensuring that the defensive strategy of Mutually Assured Destruction will ultimately be regarded as the lunatic gamble that it undoubtedly was.

With the ending of the Cold War the immediate threat has – of course – somewhat diminished, though this should not blind us to the fact that there yet exist in the world in excess of 17,000 nuclear warheads of various types.

Given mankind’s propensity for hubris perhaps this fact alone might legitimately be accorded the tag – ‘Epic fail’!

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