Scientist Befuddled By Climate Change
A scientist, William J Ripple (who he? – Ed) tells us what really needs to be done about climate change. There’s a little phrase in there that should act as a warming. One of those big, red, flashingtopofthecopcar warning signs. ecological economics Or, in context: transitioning to a carbon-free economy using ecological…
Ignoring The Compared To What In The Meat System
Well, yes, this is true: And they sense the real threat to their way of life – including Saturday night sirloin – is an ossified oligopoly food system that teetered on the brink of collapse last spring when its workers were overcome by Covid. Meat prices shot up 50% when the Waterloo and Sioux Falls pork plants shut down for a week. There…
George Monbiot Says Put Not Your Faith In Government
George Monbiot’s parents are in fact staunch Conservatives. Party loyalists, functionaries even. Which is fun because he seems to be finding out that at least part of the Conservative ideology – the Burkean part – has teeth to it: It was a classic insulation scam. The conman had targeted a vulnerable elderly person,…
So That’s Every Japanese Housewife To Be Jailed Then
There’s a base error in this assumption here. Controlling behaviour is now a crime – well, we can have our views on that – but the assumption is that it will be men and men only that are jailed for it. Men who use coercive control to abuse their partners could face up to 10 years in jail under a government review that…
Norway and Electric Cars
From our Swindon Correspondent: From The Guardian “Once you are well over 200 miles per range, and you’ve got a really good charging infrastructure, it becomes a no-brainer. We’ve seen that in Norway,” said David Bailey, a professor of business economics at the University of Birmingham. Norway is selling something like 50% electric cars.…
Tradeoffs Of Privacy
From our Swindon correspondent: From the BBC The NHS is revising the booking system for Covid-19 jabs in England after complaints that it could reveal individuals’ vaccination status. By entering details such as their name, date of birth and postcode it may be possible to work out if another person has been given both doses, one or…
We Must Have More Climate Change Propaganda Comrades!
Isn’t this a lovely demand from the usual sources? One of the key lessons of the Covid-19 pandemic is that strong policies require strong public engagement: people needed to understand the nature of the virus before they would tolerate constraints on their lives or provide the government with a mandate for action. Yet the world faces…
Just Who Should We Believe On Economics, No, Really, Who?
There are many ideas out there. Some of those ideas might be true and most of them will be wrong. This requires, if we are to make sense of that human capital that is civilisation, that we have a method of working out which is which. It is not necessary for an idea to be reality, of course it isn’t. Models and close approximations…
The Idea Of Rising Market Concentration Is Quite Literally Insane
Marginal Revolution tells us of a new paper looking at the possible rise in market concentration in the US economy: This paper uses new data to reexamine trends in concentration in U.S. markets from 1994 to 2019. The paper’s main contribution is to construct concentration measures that reflect narrowly defined consumption-based product…
As Ever The European Union Is Decades Behind The Curve
The European Union is telling Ireland that they’ll only get a share of the money pot if they stop allowing international corporations to avoid paying into the money pot. This is a bargain that Ireland would do well to reject – leaving business be is likely to lead to a better economic outturn than depending upon grants from the…
At What Point Does An English Independence Party Appear?
From The Sun BORIS Johnson is planning on spending billions of pounds on Scottish infrastructure in a desperate bid to save the Union, according to reports. The PM is set to unveil a strategy to fight Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP amid growing concerns that the party could call a new independence referendum following next week’s…
Migration Watch Probably Can Go Boil Their Heads
Migration Watch are the folks who insist that we shouldn’t supply our silver girt island with dirty foreigners. When considering the French they are of course correct but other than that? There’s perhaps just a little bit too much of the insistence about Johnny Foreigner about them for any rational adult to be comfortable. Take…