The Bewilderness

Forgotten heroes of Brown's war

Other bad news for the Labour Party concerns the number of casualties in Helmand: even higher than the number of those killed. 

More than 157 soldiers were treated at the field hospital at Camp Bastion in Helmand province last week, according to army medics. Numbers were so high that medics have been forced to break their own rules by accepted more wounded than the hospital is designed to take.

"The last few weeks have been an extremely busy period. There have been injuries like you've probably never seen or experienced," one medic told BBC Radio 4's Today programme, referring to the horrific wounds explosions roadside bombs can inflict.

The latest figures officially published by the Ministry of Defence reveal a significant increase in the number of wounded even before the latest fighting, which has produced the highest recorded so far. Forty-six soldiers were admitted to field hospitals in Afghanistan in June, compared with 24 in May and 11 in April. The figures are to some extent seasonal, they were higher last summer than in the winter.

Shane McGowan referred to the wounded as 'forgotten heroes of a forgotten war', and more soldiers now survive in a mutilated form than heretofore due to improvements in battlefield medicine. The casualty figures and disfigured futures present another testament to the consequences of under-resourcing..

A cynical bad news day from the Labour party

Ten out of ten for stupidity: headlines of bad news for Labour, all rushed out on Parliament's last day to avoid the Commons holding the executive to account. They must have had their fingers crossed for a terrorist attack. It is not as if the news is surprising: the tax take is far less:

Stamp duty receipts dropped by £6.1 billion from 2007-08. Corporation tax take fell by £5 billion, and VAT went down by £5 billion. Income tax and national insurance contributions fell by £5.7 billion, as the Government increased personal allowances to compensate those hit by the abolition of the 10p tax rate. 

There is a report criticising the Equalities Commission for enriching consultants and Treasury paid twenty-four billion pounds to sustain the banking industry without parliamentary approval. This is the most serious breach for me: a reversal of authority as Treasury decides what is right and demands the rubber stamp later.

This cynical manipulation and deployment of euphemism only hardens the electorate's distaste for Labour. The new Populus poll in the Times demonstrates an appetite for lower spending and lower taxes. Cut and cut hard in this damp squib of a summer.

Demands that shari'a is given a hysteriaectomy

My understanding is that Shari'a courts are subject to English Law and that their powers are only derived from the consensual recognition of their judgments under the Arbitration Act 1996. So, binding arbitration under English law allowing two parties to resolve disputes under a separate and informal system. What is wrong with that?

Anti-Sharia campaigners, who claim that the Islamic system is radical and biased against women, expressed alarm at the news. Denis MacEoin, who wrote a recent report for the think-tank Civitas examining the spread of Sharia in Britain, said that MAT’s claims about non-Muslim clients “raises all sorts of questions”.

He added: “You really need to ask why. What advantages could that possibly have for them going to an Islamic court? Any [Sharia] court is going to be implementing aspects of a law that runs contrary to British law, because of the way it treats women for example.”

The process of formalisation within a statutory framework may resolve some of the issues that have arisen over the spread of such impromptu institutions. Where examples should be made is if the shari'a courts trespass upon criminal law or prove unable to demonstrate that all parties to their judgement were consensual. Given the cultural contexts of their operation, there is room for doubt that these can meet the standards necessary. Where that is the case, why don't we set the equality Commission on them?.

Forecasters search the entrails for a way out of the Depression

I don't think anyone believes the almost magical imprecations of the new consensus, mainly based upon the same people as the old consensus: the ones who missed what was going on. Their totem is confidence and, unable to take a detached role, they adopt the trappings of a priesthood. Their role is not to observe but to stimulate, with lunatic interventions spun from the coarse weave of their delusions. One would root their motivation in a fear of the alternative and an egoistic assumption that their announcements matter and have an impact in the economic decisions of others. Or belong to interest groups that have a hand in talking the economy up: politicians facing elections, banks, anyone selling to consumers etc.

Merrill’s old analyst David Rosenberg is not calling for an end to the economic malaise.  To me he is one of the few economists out there that seems to really get it.  He said “what I see is a forecasting community that continues to make predictions based upon linear data that have been completely interrupted by the secular change in the credit cycle. And I think because this is all so far beyond our own collective experience, the tendency has been to underestimate the role that asset deflation and debt repayment plays in the economy...

The Depression continues and those who state the opposite are no better than Roman priests, searching through the entrails of lost jobs and red ink to divine a world now lost.

An example of unconscious bias within evolution and economics

Interesting economic arguments can be skewed by short-term cultural precept. A good example is the paper entitled "Individual and social discouting in a viscous population" by Dr. Peter Sozou, published in Transactions of the Royal Society B. Sozou examines a limited model and concludes that

...'This analysis shows that the social discount rate is generally lower than the private discount rate. An individual's valuation of a future benefit to herself is governed by the probability that she will still be alive in future. But she may value future benefits to her community over a timescale considerably longer than her own lifespan.

'Evolution is driven by competition. Caring about the future of your community makes evolutionary sense to the extent that future members of your community are likely to be your relatives.'

The ability of kin relations to foster long-term perceptions concerning the good of the community may exist though more than one model of organisation is required to confirm this. After all, the diversity of social organisation in the human envelope has been remarked upon in most basic primers of anthropology. So, to undertake a leap from limited evidence and a possible predisposition towards long-term perceptions on communal welfare to this:

In which case why do we care at all about the long-term future of humanity? The answer, Dr Sozou suggests, is that we have evolved to value social benefits because in our ancestral environment they tended to deliver local benefits – helping our kin to survive. However in the modern age, it is this biological preference for social good which gives us an interest in the future of the planet: 'In the modern, global environment, such preferences may cause people to care about global problems such as climate change.

I have seen many leaps of faith from insufficient evidence but the ideological assumptions required during peer review to pass this paper does lead one to question whether certain scientists lack a critical faculty. TO instantly assume that a belief or an acceptance of global warming is rooted to a belief in global welfare and the future of mankind simplifies and reduces, without any evidence to confirm that this is the case.

An odd example of bias that denotes a wierd marriage of evolutionary psychology and the prevailing orthodoxy in the dominant culture: a distortion just as subjective as those that we have seen in the past.

Quote of the day

"We were taken to the National Library, which must have been a very suitable and handsome structure when it was built in 1931, but was in 1985 (like many libraries around the world) awaiting more commodious quarters. The rooms were filled with readers save for the one reserved for the works of Marx and Lenin, which was as quiet as an undiscovered tomb".

Owen Gingerich, The Book Nobody Read: Chasing the Revolutions of Nicolaus Copernicus, p. 149.

Have we avoided slump?

Link to an interesting map at Mint showing the set of declines against the US Dollar. Britain is in good company with Mexico and Russia: though the declines are mostly commodity linked, and other industrial heartlands head upwards, which is another sorry story for them.

The hollowing out of Europe and Japan is continuing apace. Now, the decline in commodity prices has begun to hurt Australia. Export prices have plunged whilst an increase in the value of the Australian dollar will begin to put a following behind the contraction.

As the trends continue without any sign of abatement, are we facing a round of protectionism and beggar thy neighbour devaluations? It seems that both the Euro and the Japanese yen could be subject to collapse at some point, as the economic fundamentals are upset by economic and demographic decline.

The consensus views sharp contraction, followed by a floor and an anaemic recovery in 2010. Nobody wants to consider the alternative: slump, though it has already hit Ireland and some other countries.

It's an ethical dilemma: requires a regulation then

The oldest woman to give birth has died of the Big C three years after her twins were born. The obvious and telling argument, from the ethical side, is that the age of the mother leads to an lower life expectancy and a greater chance that the children will be orphaned: therefore, they should not be allowed to. This argument is based upon a possible outcome and equally applies to high-risk occupations such as soldiers.

In Spain, where family values are important, Ms Bousada’s case provoked fresh calls last night for a legal limit on the upper age for fertility treatment. There is none at present in Spain. Nuria Terribas, from the Borja Bioethics Institute, a think-tank in Barcelona, said: “We think a limit of 45 should be established in law. Cases like this not only create physical dangers for the mother but many family complications.”

Josep Torrence, of Iglesia Plural, a progressive Catholic group, said: “The most important thing is the children are left unprotected, which should not be allowed. What is needed are stricter controls to stop this happening again.”

The usual calls for control, prohibition and punishment are invoked. But, the woman lied about her age to gain treatment: a testament to the lengths that people will go to for their needs and desires. Sadly, families are required to pick up the slack, but it is for each to onclude what is desirable for them and their potential offspring. Only Maria Carmen del Bousada can say if it was worth it and she has gone to the grave. 

Darling's Directive No. 1

The government decided that the banks were too large to fail and then nationalised two of them in a corporatist buy-out. Since then, the bankers have used taxpayer largesse to rebuild their balance sheets and make reserves against the toxic waste that their models exuded. This sits at odds with Darling Tractor Directive No. 1:

At Treasury questions in the House of Commons, Mr Darling said: "It is important, particularly if we're going to see a recovery, to make sure credit starts flowing, particularly to SME. It is important that banks honour their commitments.

"We do have lending agreements with those banks in which we have substantial shareholdings.

"Sometimes the instructions don't appear to have got down to regional and local level and we need to make sure high-level agreements filter down.

"I'll be meeting with the banks very shortly to discuss this further."

The banks do not appear to be listening to the Chancellor, who has the strange notion that he can say and it is so. The real world does not work like that. Understandably, the current holdings are losses, and politics now dictates that these are sold at a profit. You will be whistling for that for many years in a world of anaemeic growth and zombie debts.

Better to break up the nationalised banks, sell them off and return some competition to the sector than wait for a notional profit that you can declare with some statistical prestidigitation and a hoo-la of hats.

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Germany draws red lines through the Lisbon Treaty

Germany's Constitutional Court may have paved the way for ratification of the Lisbon Treaty but the conditions set out in their judgement could hail the end of 'ever closer union'. Wolfgang Munchau in the FT, fulfilling the reporter's role of outsourced inquiry for pay, has read ythe dense 147 page judgement. Thank God someone did. I suspect that German constitutional court judgements are quite turgid and refined affairs, courtesy of the Rechtstaat (a noble principle that Brown could recognise).

Munchau identifies three conclusions that spell doom for the EU, in Germany's eyes. The Court concludes that national sovereignty remains paramount, that the European Parliament is not a legitimate democratic institution (a Toy Parliament, as referred to in another place), and outlines which powers remain the preserve of the nation-state:

Third, and perhaps most important, the court has given an explicit opinion on the question of European integration. Where does it end? The answer is: right here. The court said member states must have sovereignty in the following areas: criminal law, police, military operations, fiscal policy, social policy, education, culture, media, and relations with religious groups. In other words, European integration ends with the Lisbon treaty. It is difficult to conceive of another European treaty in the future that could be both material and in line with this ruling..

The laughing federasts will shake this off and any legal judgement is only worthwhile if observed. However, Germany has drawn some strong red lines and the Basic Law would have to be dismantled or neutered before a European Federation could arise. Will the Germans ever vote for that? Only if Turkeys vote for Christmas.