UK Local Elections – History Books Review Analysis

As I blogged recently, I don’t follow the news very much on the grounds that I am better informed if I don’t.   But there are some stories I make a conscious effort to keep up on, one of which is what is happening in politics.  But I try to take a broad view.  I want to know what is going on, not just what has happened and certainly not what an overpaid drunk with the attention span of a chipmunk that needs the loo thinks.  So let’s have a look at the recent local elections in the UK.
First off, all the important parties will claim that the results have some good news for them.   This is actually true for this particular set (except for the Lib Dems).  The Conservatives didn’t do too badly for a mid-term government with a poor economic background.  The headline is winning the mayor’s post in London, the biggest non-Westminster political job going.  The Conservatives are nothing if not survivors and although no doubt they would have preferred to do better they have everything to play for.

Labour did the best mathematically but probably got the biggest psychological boost from the election and that is probably the biggest long term effect.  Labour has a vision of a society that is fairer than the current one, and this is the thing that keeps the activists going year in and year out.  This enables the party to endure long periods of lack of success and is a source of great strength to it.  But everyone does better with a bit of encouragement.

UKIP didn’t have much to show for their efforts, but their large share of the national vote at over 10% (it was projected to be 13% when I last looked) makes them a serious contender for the first time and compels the other parties to include them in their calculations.  This is good for the political debate.  The European project is the big one and we should be talking about it.

The Greens can also point to a breakthrough in London where they finished in third place.  This is a stunning achievement.  Again, the environment is a huge issue that British politics does not take anywhere near seriously enough.  The Greens should now be able to inject a bit more urgency into the debate.

The Greens’ success in London was helped greatly by proportional representation.  This is of course the signature policy of the Liberal Democrats, though it seems to have done them absolutely no good at all.  I have a feeling that in the long run the Lib Dems are the party that has most to fear from PR.  The Conservatives, Labour, UKIP and the Greens all have political ideas that matter to them.  If you support those ideas you will stick with them regardless of the ebb and flow of the political cycle.  Election results matter, but you don’t abandon your worldview just because your team didn’t score highly enough in the most recent match.

This is the real weakness of the Liberal Democrats.  What exactly does it mean?  Nearly everyone is a liberal of some kind, and nearly everyone is a democrat.  The party’s history shows that its origins are in the needs of a group of Westminster politicians in the 1980s.  They really only exist because they exist, they don’t represent anything in particular.  So uniquely among political parties in Britain they simply have to win elections consistently.  So although they will no doubt be around for a bit longer, they will have been hit hard by their poor showing.  It is hard to see them ever getting back to where they were and even harder to think of any reason why anybody might want them to.   Ultimately I think their days are numbered.

So overall, I am pleased with the election results. Local election results are soon forgotten, but this set has promoted a couple of parties that have something to say, kept both the big parties on their toes and made a step to clearing out the dead wood.  Thanks to everyone involved.

Planet Narnia by Michael Ward

This book reads a bit like a PhD thesis.  (And may well have been exactly that in fact. I have done any research to find out.)  But  if you like your books full of references and with a very precise structure you are in for a treat.  And it is a double treat if you like a rather tortured academic style of writing.

The trouble is that as the subject matter is the writing of C.S.Lewis, the academic style seems more than a little misplaced.  Don’t get me wrong, I am a great lover of Lewis’ writing, and I know very well that he was himself a considerable scholar by any standards.  It’s just that for me his writing is not really the kind of stuff that calls for in depth analysis.  It is entertaining and enjoyable, which is about the hardest thing to achieve when you are putting words together.  But it was written for the general public with a very clear purpose to put forward a particular point of view.  I don’t begrudge Lewis his opinions and I like that he writes about them so enthusiastically.  I just think that it is all straight forward enough and not really in need of any further interpretation.

Or so I thought.  But it turns out that the Narnia series in particular but Lewis’ writing more generally has held a secret that nobody prior to the author has picked up on.  Why are there seven books in the Narnia series?  (I am sure Lewis himself would find the notion of referring to them as the “Narniad” just as vomit inducing as I do.)  According to the author’s proposal, each corresponds to one of the celestial deities of the classical cosmology.  For example The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe is devoted to the god Jupiter and many of the themes in the book reflect the personality of Jupiter himself.

It is an interesting idea and it seems to fit the facts well enough.  I am quite prepared to believe it.  I grew up with Lewis – the Narnia books were much in vogue when I was a kid and I had read them all by the time I was 12 some of them several times.  It always seemed to me that his Christianity was a bit at odds with the official version.  It seemed a lot richer and deeper, and absolutely crucially seemed to require a lot more personal effort than what we got in Sunday school and assembly.  I always felt that Lewis was taking it back to basics a bit more than the representatives of Christianity I met in real life.  And as to writing stories about mythical creatures, well that seemed not just unorthodox but positively going against the grain of organised religion.  So I have never regarded Lewis as a pure Christian.  To discover that he was in fact a bit of a closet neoplatonist suits me just fine.

Is Planet Narnia correct in its assertion?  The case is well made in the sense that lots of evidence has been marshalled to support its central argument.  And it all seems to work on examination.  It even explains the otherwise rather bizarre Horse and his Boy, which has never really fitted into the narrative of the rest of the books.  I recommend this book to anyone with a deep interest in Lewis.  You will find it illuminating and thought provoking.  But as a book it is a nightmare.  It is hard to follow and much too convoluted.  It is hard work to read.   I have a feeling that Michael Ward probably could write a much more readable version if he put his mind to it.  And to do justice to Lewis, whose easy to read to prose is his biggest asset, this book really should have been written in a much more readable style.

The Retreat of Jovian – Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Chapter 24 Part 3

The death of Julian left the Roman army in a tight situation.  They were still 200 miles deep in Persian territory and were running low on provisions.  Julian’s eccentric decision not to name a successor left them with an immediate practical problem.  Who was to lead them?  And needless to say the decision had to be made quickly – a crisis like this required decisions to be made without delay.

There were two obvious candidates.  The trusty Salust had been Julian’s faithful second in command and was widely respected.  A long serving soldier, he had exactly the qualities the army needed at that moment.  When surrounded by enemies you need a safe pair of hands.  But the one man who had doubts was Salust himself.  He thought himself too old for such a burden.  I think that shows pretty clearly how suitable he actually was, but there was nothing that could be done to change his mind.

The man who Julian really ought to have named as his successor, and who he probably imagined would actually succeed him, was his cousin Procopius.  He was the last surviving member of the house of Constantine.   He was nearby in charge of 30,000 fresh troops and so ought to have had not only a reasonable claim on the throne but also no particular difficulty in enforcing that claim.

But instead in a twist that is hard to explain, a man called Jovian found himself being acclaimed,  first by a few soldiers then steadily by more and more until the whole camp was clamouring for his elevation. He was a young and popular captain of the emperor’s guards.  His family had produced some good soldiers in the past, though Jovian had not yet had the opportunity to show whether he was cut from the same cloth as them.  He may well have been mistaken for another more senior general with a similar name by some of the troops who appeared to be supporting him.  Whatever, he was a most unlikely emperor and his sudden promotion cannot have been something that either he or anyone else was expecting.

The news of Julian’s death spread rapidly.  The Persians soon got wind of it and Shapor ordered an immediate attack on the rearguard.  The Roman’s were hard pressed but their courage and discipline held.  Unable to dislodge them by force, Shapor switched from military to diplomatic means to get the Romans out of his empire, and offered talks.  This was when he finally found the weak spot.  Not surprisingly for someone with no experience or even any opportunity to mentally prepare himself for the role, Jovian was not really a match for the Persian when it came to the arts of negotiation.  The discussions were prolonged by every trick that could be contrived.  Every day that passed depleted the Romans’ provisions and weakened their bargaining position.  Jovian’s personal position was also being strained.  His legitimacy was distinctly questionable and he had to get back to Constantinople as quickly as he could to establish himself before a rival took advantage of his absence.

So Shapor was in a position to drive a hard bargain, and boy did he ever do so.  The agreement they reached was one that was highly favourable to the Persians, a huge turn around in the fortunes of an empire whose capital city had been under siege only a few weeks before. Once terms had been agreed the Roman army was still not out of trouble.  They had to get across 200 miles of barren desert to reach safe territory and fresh provisions.  The deal struck did not provide for the Persians to resupply the army, nor were they allowed to use the Persian held bridge across the Tigris.  The Romans were getting steadily hungrier and weaker, and a great many of them drowned trying to swim across the river.  But eventually they arrived at the fortress city of Nisibus and safety.

Jovian’s priority remained to get back to the capital to start securing his hold on his unexpectedly attained power.  He may have been weak on military matters and international diplomacy, but he understood court politics well enough.   And he was quite right to feel anxious about his new subjects’ reception.  The news of Julian’s death was met with disbelief and despair.  Libanius in Antioch could hardly bear it.  He looked at his sword and considered suicide.  He stopped himself only when he realised that it was his duty to write the eulogy for his hero.  In Carrhae the unfortunate messenger bringing the unwelcome news was buried under a pile of stones.  Everywhere pagans were horrified by the fear that the alters to their gods, so recently restored, would soon once again be desecrated.

And when the terms of the peace treaty became known, grief turned to despair and anger.  Jovian had given up all claim to influence in Armenia.  He had handed over 5 provinces to the Persian empire.  His calculation was no doubt that he was giving up some provinces to ensure peace while he installed his grip on the rest.  But while this was rational for him, it was a humiliation for the Romans.  Since the foundation of the empire, indeed since the time of the republic, Terminus the god of the borders had never been forced from any part of the boundaries by a victorious enemy.  No leader in Roman history had conceded such dishonourable terms.  In fact they prided themselves on putting the public interest before the private. The story of Regulus, a Roman general in the war against Carthage would have been well known at the time.  Regulus was captured and sent back to Rome with Carthage’s terms for peace.  He announced the conditions to the Senate, urged their rejection and then in accordance with his promise to his captors returned to Carthage to be executed.

Jovian was not a Regulus, as he was soon to prove.

In a further humiliation, Jovian had agreed to hand over five frontier fortresses including Nisibus itself.  This was a major alteration to the balance of power between the two empires.   It would now be the Persians that had a well defended frontier.  The large cities of the region like Antioch would now be at risk from Persian attack at any time.

Politics was a very direct personal business in the ancient world.  Jovian himself was in Nisibus and had to answer the pleas by its citizens for the treaty to be repudiated.  They had resisted the Persians in three great sieges, and the idea of being handed over without a fight was horrifying.  When Jovian would not agree to break his agreement with Shapor, they requested permission to take up arms themselves.  But Jovian’s priority was peace and he insisted on honouring the terms of the treaty.  He got out of Nisibus as quickly as he could.  Most of the population left as well, carrying as much as they could but leaving behind homes that many of them had lived in all their lives, refugees not from a scene of battle but from a deal between monarchs.  It was a grim and shameful start to Jovian’s reign.

Jovian did know what he was doing though.  Shapor could only take over some provinces.  His more deadly enemies were internal ones.  He rapidly moved to get people he could trust into positions of authority.  He was himself a Christian and he announced his intention that Christianity would be restored to its old privileged position.  This was a move that gave him the support of a powerful faction.  The still influential pagans were likely to resist the new regime and so they were shunted out of the way.   Some were just killed, with no excuse even being given.  The most dangerous figure was Procopius who was relieved of his command under the pretext of being given charge of the arrangements for the funeral of Julian.

This was quite a neat political move.  The genius of Julian and his personal popularity demanded that his death be marked by a significant ceremony.   Even his enemies in general agreed, although one leading churchman proposed that his body should be fed to the dogs.  Christianity has never been particularly strong on morals, but even so every age seems to produce someone who cannot even meet those modest standards.  But there was never any question of desecrating Julian’s body and he was buried with some ceremony as he had requested, in Tarsus.  In a previous age the Senate would have had to vote his inclusion into the number of the gods.  Times had changed and whatever its feelings the Senate could not flagrantly ignore the official religion.  But in Julian’s case official recognition was hardly necessary.  No previous emperor deserved this honour more and for the few remaining years that the pagans would be allowed to practise their faith, Julian was worshipped in the temples he had restored.

Gibbon is above all a superb writer, and the chapters on Julian in particular are amongst his best.  I have to give Gibbon himself the last word.

The remains of Julian were interred at Tarsus in Cilicia; but his stately tomb, which arose in that city, on the banks of the cold and limpid Cydnus,  was displeasing to the faithful friends, who loved and revered the memory of that extraordinary man. The philosopher expressed a very reasonable wish, that the disciple of Plato might have reposed amidst the groves of the academy; while the soldier exclaimed, in bolder accents, that the ashes of Julian should have been mingled with those of Caesar, in the field of Mars, and among the ancient monuments of Roman virtue. The history of princes does not very frequently renew the examples of a similar competition.

Going Dutch: How England Plundered Holland’s Glory by Lisa Jardine

The events of 1688 have been remembered in British history as the Glorious Revolution.  A tyranical Catholic king was out of control and was destroying the country’s constitution, its liberties and its religion.  In desperation William the Third was invited across to rescue the British and replace the unacceptable James the Second.  William of Orange landed unopposed.  He drew support to himself from the disaffected subjects of James and advanced slowly on London, carefully giving the British plenty of time to come round to his side and so to avoid any bloodshed.

As he closed in on the capital James’ troops abandoned the cause that they never believed in in the first place.  James was forced to flee and ended up at the court of the arch enemy of England, Louis the Fourteenth.  A bill of rights was enacted, a new parliament elected and Britain now had a fully fledged constitutional monarchy.  Everyone could light bonfires and throw their hats in the air in celebration.  What a splendid episode in the island’s history, truly a glorious revolution.

This may not have been the real story at all of course.  James had a very effective navy which he had personally lavished care and attention on which was quite prepared to intercept William’s fleet.  Had the wind been a bit more favourable that November in 1688 it might well have been impossible for William to land, or even to get back to Holland again.  It was the most enormous gamble.  And when William landed, did the British – or rather the English – flock to him?  Not in great numbers to begin with. Most of them cautiously waited to see which way things were likely to turn out before actually committing themselves to one side or the other.  And although the invitation to intervene was certainly genuine, hasn’t every invading army managed to contrive some kind of pretext for their actions?

William certainly took plenty of troops with him.  He had around 40,000 which was more than enough for a pitched battle with the British army if ti had come to that.  It looks a lot more like an invasion than a liberation when you pick over the details.  This isn’t very flattering to Britsh feelings.  But the military invasion was just the start of it.  Dutch culture was to suffuse Britain for decades afterwards, much of which has become so well integrated that we can hardly distinguish it from the native stuff.  

To be honest, the first chapter of this book is far and away the most interesting.  Subsequent ones read a bit like an extended museum guide to artefacts.  But it is an interesting spotlight on a chapter of British history that is more usually glossed over.

I am better informed about current affairs if I read history and ignore the news

I think it must have been about 2004 that the penny dropped.  But habits are strong things, and it probably wasn’t until around 2008 that I had modified my behaviour.  Following the news makes you less informed than reading history.  I still watch the news when something is going on that has caught my attention.  Who wouldn’t want to hear Barak Obama’s first speech as president?  And long running events like the Arab Spring and the financial crisis have a sort of soap opera like ability to keep you tuning in to see what happens next.  And it pays to know the name of the head of state of countries in Europe.  But I no longer feel that I need to consume the news every day or follow every twist and turn of what is going on with any great degree of attention.  Instead, I have increased the amount of history I read.  As a result, I feel better informed.

How can this be the case?  Surely reporting is the first draft of history and if I want to be a good citizen I should keep up to the minute with current events?  I don’t think this has ever in fact been true, but it certainly is not true in the age of 24 hour news and always on internet connections.   The trouble is that close and continual observation does not increase understanding.   Biologists don’t find out more about animals by watching them around the clock for years on end.  Economists don’t get any better an idea of how markets work by checking on the latest market index every few minutes.   To really know what is going on you need to step back and get the bigger picture, which is exactly what the news media doesn’t do and in its current format does even less well than it used to.

There is no category of news story that undermines your true understanding of events than opinion polls.  Political junkies, of whom I used to be one, study these with great interest.  Small changes in the figures are talked over, analysed and discussed.  Whether a particular politician is doing well or badly is often debated purely in terms of how well he is perceived to be doing in the polls.   But how much do they really tell us?  When I look at polls in the UK (please excuse my UK bias here) over the last 40 years it is interesting just how little they really tell us.  At any point in that period I would probably be able to give you a pretty good estimate of the standing of the two main parties in the polls, and most of the time of the minor parties as well.  But really there have only been a few occasions when the polls have shifted.  Labour lost a huge chunk of its support to the centre party when some of its MPs changed party in the early eighties.  For the next 15 years Tory support was pretty solid and they won all the elections.  In 1992 the Pound was forced out of the exchange rate mechanism and Tory support took a huge dive, within days.  It stayed low until 2007.  In 2007 Gordon Brown took over from Tony Bair as leader of the Labour party.  This had no effect until the party conference of that year where he hinted that he was about to call an election and then did not do so.  This simple enough bit of political gamesmanship seems to have really cheesed people off and Labour’s poll rating plummeted almost overnight.   It hasn’t recovered yet.

Or has it?  The most recent polls have shown a sudden drop in Tory support following the budget.  This is just the pattern that I have seen before.  Something triggers off people to consider their political allegiance.   This is leads to a large and very rapid change in the poll numbers. Once changed, it stays changed for some time – a time measured in years.

So my prediction is that the Tories may have a real problem.  From now until the next election the media will make the poll rating the story.  Small changes and statistical variations will be pored over.  Meetings will be held by party leaders.  Initiatives will be launched.  Columns will appear in newspapers.  But none of it will make the slightest difference.

An Appeal to Reason by Nigel Lawson

I have written before in my review of Bjorn Lomborg’s book about how I am a climate change skeptic. I believe climate change is a huge problem, but I am open to changing my mind presented with an argument against it that makes sense.

Nigel Lawson is not someone I am naturally sympathetic to. I was an environmental science student a the time that he was the UK’s Environment Secretary.  I was appalled at the way he ignored the Flower’s report.  Shortly after he became chancellor of the exchequer I started my family and I am convinced I had a much rougher time of it thanks to the policies he pursued.  Just to be absolutely clear, I am not a supporter of his party but even so I think that there were policies he could have pursued that would have been completely consistent with its philosophy, traditions and mandate that would have been a sight better than what he actually did.  I must find a book about his career that I can review and use as a basis for a sustained rant against someone I really don’t like very much.

If I am honest, I read this book primarily with the intention of finding fault with it.  But in the event I find myself compelled to praise its clear thinking and careful marshalling of a very strong argument.  As you would expect from someone whose main achievements in life were in the field of finance, it is primarily an economic argument.  This is quite a strength, because although the science is key to understanding the problem, any solution must make economic sense.

But his lack of scientific knowledge doesn’t stop him having a crack at climate change models.  The heavy reliance on mathematical modelling really is the Achilles Heal of the argument in favour of man made global warming.  Modelling has a dismal track record, especially when carried out on a global scale.  Ask the Club of Rome. It is well known that statistics can be manipulated to prove almost anything by people who understand how statistics work.  Modelling is much the same, but without the almost bit.  As chance would have it, Lawson would have been doing his research in 2006 and 2007 when despite the models the Earth’s temperature had been stable for half a decade.  But he doesn’t overplay his hand here.  His critique is measured – the odd people who inhabit internet forums swapping conspiracy theories about global warming will not find a soul mate here.

Like Lomborg, Lawson is quite happy to accept the fact of climate change.  His argument is that climate change is going to pan out slowly and that it is quite possible to adapt to it.  Indeed he is sure that adaptation is not only possible but will inevitably happen.  He admits that there will be losers, but is optimistic that there will be a comparable number of winners.  As a believer in the free market I suppose that is what you would expect him to say, but he makes the case strongly.

And it is just as well that he thinks that way, because he sees not the remotest chance of countries actually reducing their carbon emissions.  The advanced countries already produce prodigious quantities and can only change that with enormous cost and disruption which they have so far shown not the slightest inclination to do.  Developing countries have even more motivation to burn cheap fossil fuels than richer ones.  And how, in all conscience, can anyone tell them they shouldn’t when they look at the advantages that the richer countries have got from doing so.  As a politician Lawson knows the difficulties of getting agreements across national boundaries, and it would be churlish to ignore this side of his expertise.

So can we adapt to climate change?  There are a couple of key points.  First humans do seem to be able to thrive in a wide range of temperatures.  Lawson highlights Helsinki and Singapore, which both manage to sustain a highly desirable standard of living with more than 20 degrees difference in average temperature between them.  It is also the case that the richer you are the easier you find it to adapt.  Both points cannot really be argued against.

Lawson accepts the notion that climate change is real, even though he is less convinced of the science behind it than some of us.  So the next question is whether the change that is predicted is too large to cope with.  He selects the most authoritative prediction – that of the United Nation’s  Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and works through it.  He finds that the actual predictions are nowhere near as blood curdling as some media coverage would suggest.  Also, the predictions take no account of adaptation.  This is a reasonable thing to do in a report of course – which is ultimately intended as a guide for policy making.  But it really is inconceivable that as the climate changes humans won’t adapt to that change in the same way that they have to other climate changes throughout history.

So the nub of the argument is that controlling carbon dioxide emissions is too difficult to realistically be achieved, but the consequences for global warming are not so bad.  We can adapt to these changes by investing appropriately.  There will be some winners and losers, but overall the cost is significant but with economic growth the cost can be met.

The only let down was the last chapter where he chooses to abandon arguing logically and switches to casting doubt on the rationality of the climate change proponents.  This is the appeal to reason of the title.  He suggests that climate change has replaced religion for many.   Environmentalists are drawn to an apocalyptic vision of a world destroyed by calamities brought on by the ignorance of its inhabitants.  We can only atone for our sins by confessing the true cause of global warming and making sacrifices.  Well there probably are people like that around if you look hard enough for them, but the case for climate change is based on solid enough science.  If the conventional wisdom is wrong and does need to be overturned, insulting people is hardly going to help.  I am impressed by Nigel Lawson the rational man looking carefully at the evidence with an open mind.  In the last chapter we see the partisan politician trying to discredit his opponents.  I never liked that side of him and I still don’t.

Libya – What does the West Really Want from it?

Libya was the first country in which bombs were dropped from an aircraft during a conflict.  The year was 1911 and the bombers were Italian fighting the Ottoman Empire for control of what was at that time one of their provinces.  The use of this advanced technology gave the Italians a distinct advantage over the Turks, but led to a huge escalation in costs making the war much more expensive than had been anticipated.

To pacify their newly conquered territory, which was now a drain on their resources, the Italians continued to use bombing missions against tribesmen and imprisoned tens of thousands of Libyans in concentration camps – the methods of Muammar Gaddafi might have been reprehensible but they weren’t particularly original.

But it was the use of air power as a cheap and effective way of maintaining power that caught the attention of other powers.  The British took particular note and developed their own skills in the techniques in Iraq.  One of the students of the new science there was ‘Bomber Harris’,  who later put what he had learned to good use in the fight against Germany.

The Libyans were able to get rid of the Italians following the Second World War, but not of Europeans with aircraft.  Both the US and the UK had air bases in Libya in the fifties and sixties.  It was Colonel Gaddafi put an end to this, so the use of British airpower to get him had a bit of the character of a grudge match.

It is an obvious idea that the Western allies so keen to see the Colonel go were motivated by the desire to get control of Libya’s oil.  And that may well have been what they were mainly after, though it doesn’t seem to have been a problem getting oil out of Libya at any point in the last 40 years.  But given the history of Libya’s role in helping train people in the art of bombing I wonder if there is maybe another reason?

Would Libya make a convenient airbase again?  Technology has moved on.  The big thing now is drones.  Drones are much cheaper than manned fighters, and can be automated to astonishing degrees reducing the need for manpower.  Or alternatively by supporting them with large crews on the ground, they can carry out functions that would be impossible for aircraft with only as many men as can be got into the machine itself.  Either way, it reduces the cost of fighting overall.  And in addition to the economic savings, the political savings are large.  The men flying the plane are thousands of miles away in Nevada.  There is no risk of facing pilots captured and held hostage or returning home in body bags.

This was always the appeal of air power.  You can fight a war without coming into direct contact with the enemy, and they aren’t able to fight back.  The development of drones just makes this even more pronounced.   The enemy can be made to suffer with no more effort than that involved in playing a particularly long video game.

So the process that the Italians started in Libya continues apace.  Is it possible that Libya is once again going to be at the centre of developments?   Drones based in Libya could rapidly be deployed to some of the world’s trouble spots.  While the Middle East is an area of strategic significance, Africa has some hot spots.  Places like the Horn of Africa might not hold resources crucial to developed countries, but they do provide some great training opportunities. Is this what has lured the planners in the Pentagon to get involved with regime change in an otherwise not particularly troublesome country?

Reference

More about drones from the Economist

http://www.economist.com/node/21531433


Sven Lindqvist – The History of Bombing

Britain’s Six Greatest Enemies

Six of biggest threats to Britain over the years

Britain has had many enemies over the years, here are a few of the ones that posed the biggest threat to the British way of life.  Here are half a dozen of my favourites.

Adolf Hitler

No need for much of an introduction to the most famous man in the history of the world.  He obviously got around a bit and picked fights with quite a lot of people, but Britain really was his nemesis.  It wasn’t that he necessarily disliked Britain.  He was quite impressed when he visited Liverpool as a young man.  It was just that Britain blocked all his plans.  After all, if you want to rule the greatest empire that the world has known it is a bit inconvenient having to cope with a country that already has the biggest one going.

Napoleon Bonaparte

Another man that needs no introduction.  He assembled a huge fleet of flat bottomed boats in an attempt to land an army on the island of Britain.  There is a pretty good chance he would have succeeded if he could have kept his focus on the job and commissioned a few more warships.  In the event, he was tempted away by other projects.  It is hard to imagine that the invasion of Britain ever actually got crossed off his to do list though.  Had he returned from Russia with his army intact the story could have been very different.

Phillip II of Spain

Phillip could just as easily be described as Phillip the First of England, given that he was married to Mary the First. His head appeared on coins and his name was quoted on acts of parliament.  But this episode has been pretty firmly expunged from English history by the English.  There were too main objections to Phillip.  He was a conscientious Catholic – which was distasteful to the largely Protestant English.  This wasn’t helped by his wife burning some Protestant martyrs.  There was also his very possessive attitude to Spanish treasure.

Archduke Ferdinand

There are few people whose main claim to fame is being shot.  It is an ironic twist that he himself was quite keen on shooting.  Some estimates put the numbers of animals he shot as high as half a million, including being the only man in recorded history who bagged a duck billed platypus.  Murdering monotremes is no longer socially acceptable and I imagine a lot of people nowadays would regard his untimely death as a just retribution on behalf of the animal kingdom.

Although his death at the hands of a Serbian nationalist which led to the First World War is what he will always be remembered for, Archduke Ferdinand was actually a fairly significant figure while he was still on two legs.

As the heir to the Austrian throne what he thought was significant.  He was distinctly anti-British but very pro-Russian.  He was also very pro-Catholic and wanted to re-establish the pope’s rule over the papal states, something which would have split the relatively new country of Italy in half.  He was very much in favour of the imperial system and against democracy.  He was also the leading spirit behind the Austrian construction of a fleet of dreadnoughts to overcome British naval supremacy.

Despite this distinctly reactionary position he was also very much the champion of the peace party in Austria.  I imagine this was not so much because of any humanitarian impulse but more that he couldn’t figure out exactly who he actually wanted to fight.

Cetshwayo

It was very rare for Africans to beat Europeans in a pitched battle in the Nineteenth Century.  Cetshwayo was the Zulu chief who pulled off this difficult feat at the battle of Isandlwana.  The professional British soldiers were armed with the latest rifle technology, a few artillery pieces and even a battery of rockets.  The Zulus had spears and beautiful plumage.  Despite their obvious advantages the British were outmanoeuvered and suffered huge losses.

The Zulus have kept their reputation for warrior prowess ever since.  They were inevitably defeated when the British sent even more troops to occupy their country.  Cetshwayo himself was cheered by crowds on his visit to London to negotiate the peace terms.   He had showed spirit.  

Rupert Murdoch

While other enemies have attempted to bring Britain down to size with ships, rockets, bombs and even spears, Murdoch’s approach has been more underhand and far more successful.  He has bought newspapers and ruined them. His money and influence have perverted not just justice but the democratic process itself.  Out of the six, he is the one that has done the most lasting damage.

The Skeptical Environmentalist by Bjorn Lomborg

I am a climate change skeptic.     I am a scientist and I think skepticism is crucial to the way the scientific method works.  Seek out the key facts – not all the facts just the key ones.  On the basis of these come to a decision.  Then look for any reason to junk the decision.

This isn’t perhaps how non-scientists imagine scientists work, and I dare say not even all scientists work that way.  But that is how I work, and it gets the job done.  It means ignoring a huge amount of apparently relevant information.  And the information I do select doesn’t need to be very detailed.  But it seems to work pretty well.  As a chemist working in product development the problems I work on are generally not too important to anyone other than the guys paying my salary.  But they let me know when I am wrong pretty quickly, so it’s a good discipline for developing decision making skills as well as a reasonable way to make a living.

Let’s apply my method to climate change.  There are a few key facts.  Carbon dioxide is a green house gas.  If you put more of it into the atmosphere you would expect it to make the planet warmer.  We know that we have increased the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere, and we know the planet is indeed getting warmer.  It seems pretty obvious that climate change is real and man made.  This could well be disastrous and we ought to take action to stop it.  Having come to that decision, I have no interest whatever in looking at piles of data that simply confirms this. I want to hear arguments against what I believe.  If I am wrong, I want to know about it.

So I am very grateful to someone like Bjorn Lomborg who has taken the time to marshal a strong case against the idea that climate change is the biggest single problem facing mankind.  He does a great job and everyone who has, or has at least tried, to modify their behaviour in the light of the climate change issue owes it to themselves to read this strong counter-argument.  (The book is quite a bit broader than just global warming, but that is the most controversial bit and the one that has attracted all the attention.)

First off – he is not a conspiracy theorist or a flat Earther.  He accepts the scientific consensus that climate change is man made and real.  He deals in facts and data not hyperbole and backs up his argument with references to respectable studies and journals.  His case is not that climate change is not happening, nor even that it is not a problem.  He accepts it is real, and that something needs to be done about it.  His case is simply that the magnitude of the effect is small enough to cope with and we should devote our resources to other problems.

This book is a very visual one with lots of graphs summarising huge amounts of data. The approach is forensic and clinical.  If you are generally sympathetic to the causes dear to the hearts of environmentalists you will find many of your sacred cows slain before your eyes.  For instance, is global warming causing more extreme weather events? More heat in the system driving more tornadoes and gales and the like?  It sounds plausible and I would be ready to believe it. But it turns out there is no actual data to support it. Sea water levels are going to rise?  A bit maybe, but not enough to drown low lying cities.

His case is a strong one and it is not one that is easy to dismiss.  However I am going to proceed to dismiss it, without much in the way of counter-evidence. I think there is one aspect of climate change that he has underestimated.  It isn’t just that the climate is changing from one regime to another.  The risk is that we are facing a higher degree of variability.  

I am inclined to agree that if the climate changed slowly it is quite likely that we could adapt to the change.  And there is absolutely no reason to think that a slightly warmer planet would be any harder to live on than the one we currently live on.  It might even be more productive.

As Lomborg points out, the world will be richer in the future and so will be even more able to cope with the problem than we are.  But suppose that the change in the climate is modest, but the variability of the climate increases.  This would be very hard indeed to adapt to.  Imagine food crops worldwide facing totally unexpected weather year after year.  You would need one heck of a lot of technology and wealth to cope with that.  The Skeptical Environmentalist is a great book and well worth reading.  Ultimately it didn’t convince me on global warming, but you always need to keep an open mind.  There is a lot of other interesting stuff as well. If you are a firm believer in global warming you should read the global warming chapter of this book.  If you are convinced global warming is a myth, I suggest you find a good book that puts the case for global warming clearly and convincingly.

  

How Tall Are You? How Tall Should You Be?

Short Japanese Surrendering to Tall Americans (thanks to Wikipedia)

I have been very interested lately in a branch of economic history that until recently I knew nothing about, but which seems to offer a way of looking at the past that has never crossed my mind before.  And it is surprisingly simple, suspiciously so in fact.  You can tell a lot about changes in society simply by looking at average height.

That is all, just how tall people are.  This seems too easy, but when you think about it, it does make sense.  For an individual the biggest factor affecting his or her height is of course genetics.  But the gene pool doesn’t change over time, so if one generation is taller than another there must be something going on to explain it.  In fact it isn’t too hard to work out that the key thing is levels of nutrition in childhood, with a bit of an effect coming from exposure to disease.

Height is a fairly straight forward thing to measure and there is plenty of historical data.  Heights have been measured for all manner of reasons.  The most poignant data is that on slaves in the US.  The children of slaves were tiny, amongst the smallest human infants that have ever been measured.  The explanation is as obvious as it is unpleasant.  Babies and small children were not productive and were fed the minimum amount to keep them alive.  Once they grew up and could start working it became economically viable to feed them properly and their heights recovered, but even so the effects of neglect early in life meant that they never reached their full height and probably never developed their full mental abilities.  It is worth bearing this in mind when reading nineteenth century commentaries on race.  What seems incredibly racist to us may have seemed a lot more realistic at the time.  It also might explain why it took a generation before the campaign for equal rights to get started after the end of slavery.

There are other cases where height was a visible sign of what was going on.  During the war of 1812 between the United States and Britain it was noted that  American sailors were a good deal taller than British ones.  In a naval battle at the time this was far from an academic observation.  Americans continued to be taller than Europeans for a long time, getting taller still as their economy developed.  Height and longevity are linked so the well fed Americans were able to enjoy a long life as well as a prosperous one.  The idea of Americans as tremendously tall was something I grew up with as a given.  One image that reinforced it in particular was the photo of the Japanese delegation surrendering at the end of the Second World War, dwarfed by the Americans.

The Japanese at the time were indeed remarkably short, but this was an aberration in Japanese history.  Historically the Japanese are no different in height to any other humans and modern Japanese are only a little shorter than modern Americans.  What was different in the early Twentieth Century was that the Japanese chose to devote a very large proportion of their national resources to building up their military power, resulting in a level of malnourishment among their children.

The most intriguing thing is that the Americans are no longer the tallest.  In fact since towards the end of the twentieth century average height has actually been falling.  The giants of the world now are the Dutch, with the Scandinavians not far behind.  It is interesting that the tallest human beings come not from the most powerful countries or even from the most technologically advanced, but from ones that are peaceful, well organised and have a high degree of equality.

References

This isn’t a field that is very clearly defined but the leading author is Richard Steckel.  This is a good review of his work with plenty of further reading at the end.

http://eh.net/encyclopedia/article/steckel.standard.living.us

And here is a good example of the kind of question this approach raises.
http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/medimen.htm