Mark would have loved this - I think - 'where does money come from'

 From the Cobden Centre

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-cSyctENy3A&t=81s

This Blog

What do readers think should happen to this blog, now that Mark has died? Suggestions as to what to do and, especially, how to do it, very welcome.

Mark

For those who were wondering, like me, where Mark had got to, it appears, sadly, that he has died.

There is an obituary by Thomas B Hall here

Censorship

I've just received the following two emails:

From: Blogger
To: blah
Subject: Your post titled 'Take that, Ms Harman!' has been deleted
Date: Tue, 21 Mar 2023 12:15:45 +0000

Hello,
As you may know, our community guidelines (https://blogger.com/go/contentpolicy) describe the boundaries for what we allow – and don't allow – on Blogger. Your post titled ‘Take that, Ms Harman!’ was flagged to us for review. We have determined that it violates our guidelines and deleted the post, previously at http://markwadsworth.blogspot.com/2011/10/take-that-ms-harman.html.

Why was your blog post deleted? Your content has violated our Illegal activities policy. Please follow the community guidelines link in this email to learn more.

If you wish to request a review of the post, click the following link: https://www.blogger.com/go/appeal-post?blogId=1141932539860553199&postId=2949364971607555706. This will trigger a review of the post.

We encourage you to review the full content of your blog posts to make sure that they are in line with our standards, as additional violations could result in termination of your blog.

For more information, please review the following resources: Terms of Service: https://www.blogger.com/go/terms Blogger community guidelines: https://blogger.com/go/contentpolicy

Yours sincerely,
The Blogger Team

and

From: Blogger
To: blah
Subject: Your post entitled 'Nuts Magazine' has been put behind a warning for readers
Date: Tue, 21 Mar 2023 11:03:54 +0000

Hello,
As you may know, our community guidelines (https://blogger.com/go/contentpolicy) describe the boundaries for what we allow – and don't allow – on Blogger. Your post titled 'Nuts Magazine' was flagged to us for review. This post was put behind a warning for readers because it contains sensitive content; the post is visible at http://markwadsworth.blogspot.com/2014/04/nuts-magazine.html. Your blog readers must acknowledge the warning before being able to read the post/blog.

Why was your blog post put behind a warning for readers? Your content has been evaluated according to our adult content policy. Please follow the community guidelines link in this email to learn more.

We apply warning messages to posts that contain sensitive content. If you are interested in having the status reviewed, please update the content to adhere to Blogger's community guidelines. Once the content is updated, you may republish it at https://www.blogger.com/go/appeal-post?blogId=1141932539860553199&postId=443624183410766575. This will trigger a review of the post.

For more information, please review the following resources: Terms of Service: https://www.blogger.com/go/terms Blogger community guidelines: https://blogger.com/go/contentpolicy

Yours sincerely,
The Blogger Team

Have we been hacked? Does anyone know what is going on?

Oil - a fossil fuel or a mineral?

This is in the nature of a question.

Wandering around the interweb I have found quite a bit of debate as to whether crude oil is actually, or entirely, a fossil fuel.  There is some speculation that oil is - possibly in part - a mineral created abiotically at depths where heat from the mantle and pressure synthesizes carbon and other elements into crude oil.

One of the arguments is that crude has been recovered at depths below the lowest fossil depths.  The latter being about 2,600 meters down.  Whereas crude oil has been recovered from depths way below that.  maybe 8,000 to 10,000 meters down.  I do acknowledge that one cannot simply take the length of a bore as a guide to depth because of the horizontal drilling that oil exploration is capable of (Deepwater Horizon was doing that - apparently).

Anyway, has anyone else any thoughts or evidence or whatever?

More evidence that AGW is a scam

Whilst the Greta Thunbergs of this world have been wringing their hands and wailing about the disaster that will follow if we don't cut back on CO2 emissions, the planet has been quietly making the most of a good thing.

The planet is greening. Not only has this implications on shrinking the deserts, but it also means that yields of crops have been going up as well.

We are supposed, however to disregard the benefits of additional CO2 in the atmosphere because of a hypothetical disaster that it might cause in the future. Is this not the essence of a scam? For a definite cost in the present, you are promised large but uncertain rewards in the future. It's the same whether it is a "pump and dump" scheme or a ground source heat pump: the promoter walks away with a nice profit and the customer might or might not see their money again some time well into the future.

The Inner Ring

Like me you might have been wondering why the EU persists in its sanctions against Russia, despite it now being completely obvious that not only are they not working against Russia, but that they are hurting the EU countries more than they hurt Russia. It seems unlikely either that all the politicians concerned are too stupid to notice or that they are being bribed by some other country. Some, perhaps, but not all. However, there is a possible third explanation, as set out in this 1944 talk by C.S.Lewis, The Inner Ring

As he puts it "Of all the passions, the passion for the Inner Ring is most skillful in making a man who is not yet a very bad man do very bad things." What C.S.Lewis calls the Inner Ring is simply an exclusive grouping of people, generally, but not necessarily, people with power and influence. It's worth reading the whole talk to get the flavour of the concept. Politics consists almost entirely of such rings, each ring touching another more inner, stretching from local to national to international to supranational. How many aspiring politicians have been faced with this scenario,

Over a drink, or a cup of coffee, disguised as triviality and sandwiched between two jokes, from the lips of a man, or woman, whom you have recently been getting to know rather better and whom you hope to know better still—just at the moment when you are most anxious not to appear crude, or naïf or a prig—the hint will come. It will be the hint of something which the public, the ignorant, romantic public, would never understand: something which even the outsiders in your own profession are apt to make a fuss about: but something, says your new friend, which “we”—and at the word “we” you try not to blush for mere pleasure—something “we always do.” And you will be drawn in, if you are drawn in, not by desire for gain or ease, but simply because at that moment, when the cup was so near your lips, you cannot bear to be thrust back again into the cold outer world. It would be so terrible to see the other man’s face—that genial, confidential, delightfully sophisticated face—turn suddenly cold and contemptuous, to know that you had been tried for the Inner Ring and rejected. And then, if you are drawn in, next week it will be something a little further from the rules, and next year something further still, but all in the jolliest, friendliest spirit. It may end in a crash, a scandal, and penal servitude; it may end in millions, a peerage and giving the prizes at your old school. But you will be a scoundrel.

and fallen for it? Of how many politicians can it be said that they seemed to talk sense until they were part of the government and how many retired generals or senior spies suddenly start coming out with opinions, once they have retired, that you know they didn't express when they were in office? Could it all be down to kompromat, or is it just the lure of the inner ring at work?

AGW and the war in Ukraine, what's it all about?

At first sight, it seems hard to link the war in Ukraine with the theory of AGW (Anthropogenic Global Warming, now rebranded as Climate Change), however this article makes points that appear to put forward quite a compelling case.

The fact is that the resource base on which our world developed has now been severely depleted. And every year the situation will only get worse. The so-called “green” technologies that the West imposes on less developed countries by order will not help the planet’s ecosystem in any way without changing the paradigm of economic development of the whole world. This is most clearly described in the concept of “Planetary Boundaries”, based on the anthropogenic factor of human impact on the environment. Three processes have already gone beyond reasonable limits, provoking irreversible changes in the planet’s ecosystem in the near future:

- the extinction of species, depending on their habitats, began to occur 100-1000 times faster than it was before the industrial revolution 250-300 years ago;

- the degradation of natural freshwater reservoirs has begun: if 2.3 billion people do not have access to fresh water today, then in 30 years 4.5 billion people will not have access.;

- degradation of rural land, lack of irrigation water and acidification of the world’s oceans inevitably lead to a decrease in access to food in the world on a per capita basis.

Note that AGW is not there, and it seems to me that the reason for this is that the "green agenda", which the AGW myth is designed to promote, is about increasing the access of the developed nations of the West to energy and food resources. So, as the article shows, is the war in Ukraine. Neither is about countering a real threat, indeed the real threats to life on Earth, both geopolitically, geographically and economic, are almost never mentioned. Only the phony threats, those that serve the interests of the sort of people who go to Davos every year, are blazoned across our news media with monotonous regularity.

Ukraine / NATO / Russia

Does anyone else find it strange that there appears to be no diplomatic effort at all by the NATO powers, or the EU, to engage with Putin and Russia and try and talk our way out of the Ukraine conflict?  Not in the least because - in my view - if cornered Russia will use nuclear weapons.

And then no-one will win.

Thoughts?

Disappearing Homes Conundrum Revisited (cont'd)

Serendipitously, the BBC had an article on this very matter.

Whilst second-home owners and retirees were rightly held up as the prime culprits, there was another reason mentioned for the lack of ability of local people to find a home in the area, (but not mentioned very loudly, this is the BBC after all):

"It is like a perfect storm - there's a lack of social housing, a lack of affordable homes, rising prices, not enough well-paid jobs.

Yes, the Tories' political masterstroke of the 80s, the great sell off at undervalue of the country's social housing, is still having its malign effects to this day.