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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Are you saying Bangkok is not sinking? Not sinking a cm a day? That they can cope if it is. I note that you do not say whether you agree with the diagnosis. Presumably buildings have been there since the eighteenth century. High rise might be new, but would only affect the very limited high rise areas. Why are they extracting groundwater when Bangkok is at the confluence of five rivers providing more water than they know what to do with?
I am very pleased you were put off by the gongs. I was worried it was just me being an old fogey. Now it is two old fogeys.
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Boreades
In: finity and beyond
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I'm willing to believe the narrative.
| According to some estimates, parts of Bangkok are sinking by two centimetres annually. |
After all, if you built your heavy houses and office blocks on sand or soft clay, what would you expect?
But clearly there are plenty of people (outside of AEL) who cannot grasp simple logic or consequences.
And, if the water is rising round your ankles, it's easy to get distracted and lose track of the distinction between sinking land and sea level rising.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Please, Borry, treat this seriously or not at all.
Every building has a known weight per square inch. It is easy enough to measure, over time, what sinks and what doesn't sink, and design building codes as appropriate. There are plenty of Thais--in fact all Thais--who can grasp this. Nobody is losing track of what is (a) sinking land and (b) rising sea level.
I accept that it is all sufficiently gradual that all Thais have chosen to be, in that favourite word of yours, complacent. But that is not what you are saying.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Battle of the Bins (ITV)
Refuse collection is becoming an AE matter. Cash-strapped local authorities are changing once-a-week to once-a-fortnight or even once-a month. Non cash-strapped ones like my own dear K & C are still grimly holding the line at twice a week.
Since this is a statutory duty, the town hall jobsworths are not saying it's because they're broke but to 'encourage rate-payers to recycle' and to 'force local supermarkets to be less luxuriant with packaging'. AE-ists say, 'Enough'. Jewish AE-ists add 'already'.
| Rubbish is a national problem and should be dealt with nationally. |
Since fly-tipping costs more (both financially and aesthetically) to deal with than to prevent, and is not created within any local authority area, the first port of call is to create a national network of big-job collection points, free at the point-of-use. Then it's prison-time for first-time offenders.
Domestic rubbish should be removed from local authority responsibility--they have demonstrated they are not up to the job--and weekly bin collection made a clause in the Bill of Rights. No dustbin made by mortal man can contain more than a week's rubbish. Then, as soon as my proposal that recycling be outlawed is enacted, it can all go off to a national network of properly supervised landfills.
And it will be back-to-whence-you-came for all those organised crime gangs that presently run them and are slowly killing us via PCB's and the rest.
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Grant
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Recycling is a sacred rite in our modern Gaia worshipping society.
The reality is that a large percentage of recycled waste is burnt, so what was the point?
In my office in London we have to put our waste in three separate bins and only today had an email reminding us of the importance of following the rules. But our two office caretakers have admitted to us independently that all three categories of waste get put into the same superbin! I assume they end up in one of those barges heading down the Thames.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Let us consider the recycling of plastics Nov 24, 2024
“Do we have to? I’m still eating breakfast?”
Well, if you have any kids at the table you’d be wise to give the subject at least your passing attention. There is only one statistic you have to remember
| Nine per cent of the world’s plastics gets recycled |
“Ooh, that doesn’t seem much. You’re going to urge us to up the figure, am I right?” Not entirely, no. But finish your breakfast while I talk to decision-makers. The reasons for the low figure are well enough known, but I’ll itemise them:
1. It is extremely difficult to separate plastics from general waste.
2. Once separated, plastics are difficult to separate into the different kinds of plastic.
3. This is essential because some plastics are recyclable and some aren’t.
4. Once the recyclable ones are recycled you end up with recycled plastic
5. Which is worse than the equivalent plastic made for the purpose.
6. All plastics are dirt cheap to make anyway.
7. They are made from readily available natural deposits — coal, gas etc — for which there is less and less demand because their current use — for making energy — is deprecated as it contributes to global warming.
8. So there will never be a need for recycled plastic, which is always more expensive and less fit for purpose than plastic made de novo.
9. So why does anybody bother recycling plastic at all?
10. It is because human beings are extremely stupid people.
When people are faced with a difficult problem they prefer a solution that satisfies them, not a solution that solves the problem. What are the problems with plastics? They are well enough known but I’ll itemise them:
1. Plastics are so cheap and so useful they are manufactured and consumed in vast quantities.
2. They have a short — or at any rate, a finite — utilitarian life so they have to be thrown away in vast quantities.
3. The qualities that make plastic useful render them difficult to dispose of.
4. Since people cannot easily be separated from their plastics, and since plastics cannot easily be separated from people, this has created a problem that people cannot easily solve.
5. They have as usual sought a solution that will satisfy them but will not solve the problem.
6. They are told to separate their plastics so they can be recycled even though only nine per cent will be.
7. The rest is either put in landfill (a relatively benign solution), incinerated (a relatively non-benign procedure) or left to find their way into the environment (a truly disastrous fate).
8. Or exported to countries (Malaysia is the leading one at the moment) who will promise to recycle them but will actually do (7) and do it worse.
9. So, as you can see, the problem is being addressed satisfactorily.
10. Or not as the case may be.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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I suddenly realised what the 'new' Newsnight requires. It should go AE. Nobody may sit on the couch who has predictable views. This lets out all official spokespersons, including all but a few politicians. (Which does not include standard dissidents.) Talking head interviews should not be shown live but should be screened to exclude anything 'everyone already knows'.
This will mean the Newsnight researchers junking their filofaxes and doing some proper legwork. But the real stumbling point is finding presenters who aren't lefty clones. Come back, Evan Davis.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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This was prompted by
Labour twat: blah blah
Poppy Coburn: Zing zing
Faisal Islam: I'm surprised to hear that from the Assistant Comment Editor of the Daily Telegraph.
She was just saying what I have been saying ever since Robert Peel repeeled the Corn Laws. Free trade is not good, tariffs are not bad. It's pick'n'mix.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Having been compulsorily signed up to Netflix by Virgin is not the least factor in my epic battles against the 100% digibox. I have recently discovered a whole new tranche of interest on YouTube, the Times podcasts. For instance I had to spend half an hour finding out why they have never built a bridge across the Straits of Messina. Only two miles wide, so it is definitely an AE matter.
I wasn't satisfied with the Times's explanation however. Apparently the Mafia vetoed it on the grounds it is easier to exploit poor people rather than Sicilians newly enriched by contact with the mainland. Now I'm going to have spend another half-hour working out the real reason.
One of these days I'm going to find out what they mean by '110%'.
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Boreades
In: finity and beyond
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Talking of Netflix...
| Within hours of Adolescence being released on Netflix, our Prime Minister was demanding the film be shown “in Parliament, and in schools”. |
Was this some important documentary we'd missed?
Err, no, it's fictional.
| Adolescence is a 2025 British crime drama television mini-series created by Jack Thorne and Stephen Graham and directed by Philip Barantini. It centres on a 13-year-old schoolboy named Jamie Miller (Owen Cooper) who is arrested for the murder of a girl in his school. |
Why does Starmer want to encourage school children to watch fictional nastiness?
Is it more fear-porn?
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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His predecessor but one made a career out of citing Audrey Barlow's many ups-and-downs in Parliament. Of course his father-in-law was probably in early episodes so he had inside knowledge.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Boreades
In: finity and beyond
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Re that "Adolescence" series on NetFlix. It is complete fiction in the most literal and illustrative senses.
And yet (as mentioned elsewhere):
| My children’s primary school are already issuing warnings to parents about the dangers of online radicalisation of boys ‘as depicted’ in the series. Our society would actually rather legislate fantasy than reality. |
It would be bad enough if it was secondary schools. But primary schools? This does not promise to end well.
It even makes me wonder if it was all a put-up job.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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| Mick wrote: | | She was just saying what I have been saying ever since Robert Peel repeeled the Corn Laws. Free trade is not good, tariffs are not bad. It's pick'n'mix. |
By the usual serendipitous coincidence I just had experience of this.
Last night's bridge partner: Trump is daft putting on all these tariffs. Free trade is always best.
Mick Harper: How do know that?
BP: I've studied nineteenth century British history.
MH: Yes, free trade is always best if you happen to be the most efficient producer around, but you need tariffs to protect your industries if they're not.
BP: It's your deal, Mick.
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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| Mick Harper wrote: |
MH: Yes, free trade is always best if you happen to be the most efficient producer around, but you need tariffs to protect your industries if they're not.
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Why? What exactly is the point of protecting industries that cannot compete. Tariffs might make sense protecting profitable industries during recessions, so we arguably should be sympathetic when other nations apply them during their domestic downturns, eg India, China....
But what is the point in the UK or the US doing this when they are simply not that competitive and not in recession? The US steel industy already has all the inbuilt advantages of the Build America Buy America Act, ie the domestic content procurement preference requires that all iron, steel, manufactured products and construction materials used in covered infrastructure projects are produced in the United States. That's about as protectionist as you could get, all federal infrastructure contracts are now legally obliged to buy US, with all content produced in the US. They have eliminated by law all foreign competion on large Govt funded internal infrastructure projects. (It's much worse than tariffs)
Still, the US steel makers need more tariffs......to survive....
This protectionism is really about as bonkers as it gets.
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