Greta’s Laws of Irreplaceable Utility.

Actually these were going to be Billothewisp’s laws of Irreplaceable Utility. 

But as little Greta Thunberg has gone to such lengths of personal privation on her two week crossing to the USA to prove these laws I just had to give her the credit.

Of course young Greta (and her puppet masters) had no deliberate intention of proving these laws. But she has done such an amazing job she just has to get the credit.

So what are Greta’s Laws of Irreplaceable Utility?

Here dear reader, we will address the three laws one by one.

Law One:

Usage of a particular technology only dominates when that technology is far more utilitarian (i.e. quicker/better) than the competing technology it replaces.

Young Greta’s proof here is stunning. I stand in awe.

It took her two weeks to sail to the USA. If she had flown it would have taken her eight hours. That is an amazing 42:1 improvement.

Remember this was pitting a state of the art racing yacht with minimal concessions to humanity – no toilet (except a bucket) not enough bunks, crew of six, two passengers and no beer against a Jumbo jet also with a crew of six, 250 passengers, reclining seats, eight toilets (no buckets) and lots of gin and beer.

However you like to cut it, except for a publicity stunt (and maybe a holiday adventure), sailing the Atlantic as a viable method to get to the USA is a no-hoper.

True: People did do it in the past.

But that was because they had to. 

Relatively few ever did sail to the USA and even fewer ever sailed back. All that sailing stopped when they invented passenger airliners.

Even today flying the Atlantic in (say) a 1950’s Bristol Britannia airliner (like this beauty below) would be far more utilitarian (i.e. quicker and better) than sailing it in the latest state of the art yacht.

Bristol Britannia on maiden flight to USA 1958
Courtesy Wikipedia and RuthAS

Law Two:

The level of utilitarian advantage to humanity of a particular technology is directly proportional to how much cheaper it is than the technology it replaces.

I would bet that the cost of sailing, crewing and maintaining a high performance yacht for two weeks while it crosses the Atlantic is much about the same as fuelling and crewing a Jumbo jet for a single eight hour crossing.

Again young Greta plays a blinder here.

The Yacht: Two passengers. Six crew.

The Jumbo: 250 passengers and six crew.

That is a 125:1 advantage for the later technology.

Both the sailing yacht and the Jumbo (I would guess) will have a useful life of about twenty years.

Assuming the Jumbo takes one day for a return journey and the yacht four weeks and both run for ten months of the year (the rest being soaked up by maintenance) that means a Jumbo will do 6000 crossings in twenty years to a yachts 200. 

A diesel engined ocean liner could manage about 500.

Clearly and obviously:  The later the technology, the more effective it is.

Law Three

The unitised level of pollution of utilitarian advantage is directly proportional to its age.

A candle wastes about 60 Watts of as heat to produce 12.5 Lumens.. A 60 Watt incandescent bulb produces 860 Lumens while six LED lamps each consuming about 10Watts (i.e. 60 Watts total) produce a blinding 5200 Lumens.

Guess which is the newest technology.

However much you improve your candle or even your incandescent bulb it simply cannot compete with the new kid on the block – LED lights. The same applies for yachts and air liners.

Supposedly Greta’s one way crossing was Carbon free. Sadly that is simply laughable. So dream on.

The replacement crew (to sail the yacht back) have all flown out to take her over. I imagine also that the six crew that sailed young Greta to the USA will also all fly back. That’s twelve flights.

For individual crew members, grandstanding on the political stage is not an option. They have to live in the real world – and to do so entails using the latest, most cost effective and least polluting technology available.

How young Greta gets back is also of interest but as yet unannounced.

It is at this point worth remembering that whatever the level of vilification of air transport, when calculated on a per capita per mile basis it is in fact pretty damn economic.

We all know Greta could have really done it with zero emissions. That would have meant that Greta would have stayed at home and used a telecommunication link. Yet another aspect of high technology.

But how can your minders get you to promote their agenda when you are not there in person to press the flesh? How can you personally chastise all those bad people who have never been on a racing yacht and had to share a bucket for a toilet for two weeks?

And that is the rub.

Whatever the cost, for this event, even little Greta Thunberg had to go to the USA in person.

Just like Mrs Smith from down the road has to go to America to see her new Grandson. 

Or a surgeon has to go to a conference to find out and share information about new life saving techniques.

Or like the other millions upon millions of journeys to and from the USA every year that are as important if not more so than that of a child-star political puppet.

Unlike Greta they cannot afford to lose two weeks. Nor can they afford to pay for a racing yacht, six crew and a strong plastic bucket.

So if Greta’s Laws prove one thing it is this:

High technology is our friend - and the planets friend.

Going backwards is not an option.

---------

p.s. As a side issue, I do have to ask: What happened to the contents of the bucket after use? It wasn’t just thrown into the ocean I hope! You know raw sewage, pristine oceans and all that.

Fiddling while the Forests Burn.

It appears from this NYT article that most of the fires in the Amazon basin are actually on land that has already been cleared. They are mostly the equivalent of the now abandoned UK practice of stubble burning, or using fire to clear the land of the previous years residue before re-planting.

NYT image. red is fire, yellow is farmland, green is rain forest.

True, (regarding air pollution in particular) using fire to clear farm land of crop residue to make it ready it for new planting is not good. But it is not the same as catastrophic slash and burn of virgin rain forest. Poor farmers, scraping a living, have little else to fall back on than fire to clear land for the next crop.

Meanwhile the wild fires in the Congo rage. Especially wildfires in virgin rain forest. (See Here) It appears the Glitterati and their fellow travellers find them somewhat less engaging.

Yet if this were some form of pyromaniacal competition then today the Amazon wild fires are an also-ran.

But compared to what has been going on with the Indonesian Peat fires over the last ten years both the latest Amazonian and Congo fires almost pale into insignificance. (I first blogged about them in 2013 Here)

Not heard of the Indonesian Peat fires?

I am unsurprised. In fact I can only remember one UK news report on the Peat fires way back about six years ago when the smoke closed an airport in Malaysia.

The Indonesian peat fires are dying down now. Today they are at about 20% of their peak in 2015.

(See Here and See Here)

At their peak (2015) the Indonesian Peat fires were dumping more emissions into the atmosphere (for no practical gain at all) than all sources from the entire European Union. These Peat fires peaked out at 11.9MT of CO2 per day whereas the EU only manages a mere 8.9MT a day.

For a significant period in 2015 the peat fires produced even more Carbon Dioxide that the entire USA economy! Let alone the EU.

So how does this ugly Indonesian record compare with the fires in the Amazon? It looks like the Amazonian fires are producing around about one megaton of Carbon Dioxide a day. (See Here)

In other words the virtually unreported Indonesian Peat fires were (in 2015) an order of magnitude (over 10x) as bad as the hysterically reported Amazonian fires.

Even today with the peat fires down to a mere 20% of their 2015 peak they pump double the Carbon Dioxide into the atmosphere compared to the Amazon fires.

Yet the western media along with European leaders are silent about them. I wonder why. Is it the wild fires they don’t like? Or Mr Bolsonaro? Or maybe the EU-Mercosur trade deal?

Of course you may argue that it is not all about emissions. After all burning peat is in essence burning dead matter, burning rain forest is burning living oxygen producing vegetation.

That is true. So lets look at how much rain forest is actually being cleared in the Amazon. Here’s a graph showing annual deforestation in Brazil over the last thirty years.

 True the loss of rain-forest has up-ticked. But it is nowhere near the value in 2004.

So, while the Western elites may think Mr Bolsonaro, (the President of Brazil) is a very bad man, clearly his ability to level the rain forest is positively third division stuff compared to his much loved predecessors.

I suppose some criticism of Brazil would be reasonable if it was not for the rank hypocrisy of the European leaders issuing it. 

In 2017 Germany produced 8.7% of its electricity from biomass or 47.4 TWh.

From this document we can work out that 47.4 TWh from wood requires about 100 million tonnes of green wood which equates to levelling 25 million acres of forest.

Two tonnes of green wood contains about 500Kg of carbon. One tonne of green wood equates when burnt, to approximately one tonne of Carbon Dioxide.

So over a year the Germans are pumping into the atmosphere about 100 million tonnes of carbon dioxide by burning wood for electricity alone. All this while they are decommissioning perfectly fine, safe and carbon free nuclear plant.

So far I’ve not even looked at German biomass burning for heat.

But in Germany biomass is the least of it.

Germany with its fatuous Energiewende fashion statement is in fact addicted to lignite – the dirtiest form of coal. They have destroyed over 50 villages and displaced over 40,000 people just so they can rip out forests and agricultural land to get at the filthy stuff. (See Here)

This is not just a German problem. All over Europe forests are being decimated, people up-rooted and bio-diversity wrecked. Read this report and weep (Here)

So when it comes to slash and burn perhaps sanctimonious Europeans should look in a mirror before vilifying poor farmers in Brazil.

The Brazilians are not the ones decommissioning nuclear plant while burning wood and lignite in its place.

They are not the ones destroying ancient forests and demolishing churches simply to get at the dirtiest fuel known to man.

If the European elites want to help stop the wild fires, maybe gaining a little sympathy for the dirt poor farmers in Brazil would be a good place to start.

As well as putting their own house in order.

Extinction Rebellion, the BBC and a Deadly Embrace

A Little Historical Background (skip this if you like)

In 1957 a world renowned Social Scientist named Leon Festinger  studied an end-of-the-world cult to see what would happen when their end-date came and went.

He was particularly interested in what would happen after their prophesy failed ( a disconfirmation as he called it). Surprisingly the disconfirmation did not destroy the cults belief but rather the cult tended to re-direct and reinforce it with some pseudo-rationalisation as to why the disconfirmation occurred.

Before the end-date the cult was utterly convinced that the end-of-the-world was at hand. The primary members fed off each others belief in a bizarre social embrace which annihilated
any prospect of disbelief and locked them into the cult. While the leading members were middle aged, the "foot soldiers" were almost exclusively young. Most were teenagers.

Intelligence did not appear to be a criteria in cult membership. The cult included a PhD Astro-physicist, one of the leaders was a qualified medical doctor and another was a degree qualified electrical engineer.

Yet their cult belief was laughable. They believed that the world was going to end in a flood and that they (as the chosen) would be picked up by flying saucer.  As the end-date approached they saw every calamity affecting the world (in that year there were severe earthquakes in Iran) as proof of their belief.

When the end-date came and went, the cult were presented with the painful truth that their mutually inflated prophesy had failed. Festinger later on defined this state as one of "Cognitive Dissonance" . Instead of what most people would expect to happen (i.e cult members would realise their error and move on) the cult leaders pseudo-rationalised that the disconfirmation was due to their commitment. In fact in their view the cult had saved the world from certain annihilation.

Preposterous as it was, this pseudo-rationalisation drove the cults proselytising into over-drive. The press lapped it up.

The editorial policy for almost all newspapers was (then as now) to boost circulation.

The stories of a world about to end, governmental conspiracy and a "higher calling" boosted circulation and so played directly to the newspaper's editorial policy. The fact that the cult was based on an absurd premise was irrelevant.

The editorial policy came first.

So, what has it got to do with Extinction Rebellion and the BBC?

Unfortunately, in my opinion, quite a lot.

I hate to use  25 minutes of your time but if you have a chance please watch at least a few minutes of this video of one of the founders of Extinction Rebellion in an interview on BBCs Hard Talk. (starts one minute in)

Notice the end-of-days style prophesies with "6 billion dying from wars/starvation".  Notice the impending "social collapse", how "nobody was listening". Then we have the "lying elites" and "lying experts". It could be Festinger's flying saucer fanatics talking. And of course, like Festinger's cult, only Extinction Rebellion have the answer.

So what about the BBC?

Watch the interview. While it is perfectly reasonable for a public service broadcaster to interview fanatics, the interviewer allows the Extinction Rebellion founder to get away with just about any hair brained statement he cared to mention.

He continually refers to "the science" though what he quotes is out-and-out dark fantasy and bore no relation to anything from the IPCC let alone from any other reputable scientific source. Nobody asks what science he is referring to. Let alone requesting verification.

Unchallenged, he repeated several times that 6 billion would die. At one point early on he predicts mass starvation within ten years. No scientific references were given or sought. Each time the BBC presenter nodded it through.

When the interviewer does briefly corner him the Extinction Rebellion founder then declares the interviewer was not "emotionally" connecting to the problem. (Whatever that means.) Again this ludicrous assertion is given a free pass.

The BBC interviewer appears to be solely interested in the disruption this group causes and how it may threaten the established order. The only scientific query the  presenter focused on was their crazy concept of making the UK "carbon free" by 2025. (Even the journalist finds this risible)

Other than this, in a quite shocking dereliction of journalistic enquiry the journalist simply fails to challenge the pseudo-science spouted out by this individual. Particularly, nowhere is the reduction of the planets population to just one billion by starvation and war in 60 years questioned.

I worry that this dereliction is in fact driven by BBC policy rather than simple editorial incompetence. I got the continual impression that the journalist was trying at every opportunity to align with the Extinction Rebellion founder. The scientific basis for the absurd claims went totally unchallenged. The silence implied agreement. It was in effect a discussion between two like minds. It was just one of them was more extreme than the other.

Like Festingers cult, where journalistic integrity came a distant second to editorial policy, I suspect the BBC deliberately ditched the hard (and vital) questions. To them it is better to flatter the crazies. Just as long as they more or less align with the BBC editorial policy on Climate Change.

While all cults are potentially dangerous this abomination called Extinction Rebellion makes Festingers flying saucer fools look positively benign. The social embrace from Extinction Rebellion (especially to the very young) is far more sinister, destructive and totalitarian in nature.

I fear that one day soon the followers of Extinction Rebellion may well find the "cause" has turned from a call to civil disobedience into a crushing deadly embrace that could easily cost them (and many others) their lives.

While Climate Change may well be a problem, it is NOT an end-of-days problem.

It is wholly irresponsible of an organisation like the BBC to sit back and give unchallenged airspace to (any) organisation that presents pseudo-science as fact. Even if the pseudo-science is more palatable to the BBC than asking the hard and verifiable questions.

We need a public broadcaster that is prepared to ask the hard questions. Even if the BBC themselves do not like the answers, and even if the questions go against BBC editorial policy.

Otherwise we simply have a propaganda channel.

Extinction Rebellion: When Prophesy Fails

[quote from Factfulness by Hans Rosling page 229]

"We need to create Fear!" That's what Al Gore said to me [Hans Rosling] at the start of our first conversation about how to teach climate change.

[unquote]

Hans Rosling declined Al Gore's invitation.

(By the way if you want a really excellent view on what is really happening to the world read Factfulness by Hans Rosling it is HERE)

But not everyone has the same scruples as Hans Rosling.

Unable to galvanise people to their cause by rational discourse many politicised proponents of "doing something" about Global warming/Climate Change/Climate Emergency have done exactly what Al Gore suggested to Hans Rosling.

They have deliberately gone out of their way to create a climate of fear. As an example today in the UK every out-of-the-ordinary weather event is somehow blamed on Global Warming.

Even when a reservoir Dam gets badly damaged by a ten year event (see here) it is somehow blamed on Global Warming rather than substandard maintenance.

I have to ask: SHOULDN'T a dam withstand a ten year event intact? Global warming or no global warming?

But all this fear mongering gathers like puss in a sceptic wound and now we have the inevitable result: Extinction Rebellion.

Extinction Rebellion is one of the more alarming cults to emerge in recent years.

The invisible controllers behind the organisation appear to target children. These children are then used in much the same way as African War lords use child soldiers or Drug dealers use child runners. To ensure loyalty to the cause they feed them panicky end-of-days predictions along with a sense of grievance about a "lost" future "stolen" by selfish seniors.

Let us look at the central prophesy promoted by Extinction Rebellion and their camp followers.

So, do we have only 18 months to "Save the Planet"?

The statement appears to have coalesced in this BBC article .

To be fair this 18 months is not actually a hard deadline where we all drop dead at the end of it. It is a deadline where "something has to be done".

That something appears to involve a lot of rich and powerful folk descending in Lear Jets on a few resorts and making some fatuous political statements.

So it is perhaps one of the easier prophesies to achieve. It is also one that can be successfully used to draw away from the failed climate prophesies of the last twenty years.

Take this statement from the above BBC article:

[quote]
But today, observers recognise that the decisive, political steps to enable the cuts in carbon to take place will have to happen before the end of next year. 
[unquote]

So, who are these "observers"?
What are these "political steps"?
Who finally makes the call in 18 months time as to whether the planet is saved?

This all seems somewhat less clear.

What is clear is that (short of a Global recession) Carbon emissions are not going to stop rising in the  next 18 months, let alone decrease.

China and India who together make up the bulk of coal users in the world are not going to stop improving the lives of their peoples. Nor should they.

So should the West then do the "decent" thing and abandon their peoples to poverty?
Should we revert to some pre-industrial idyll? (that never existed) and do all this to prevent (so the theory states) a rise of more than 1.5 degC over the next century?

Personally I don't do poverty.

Even the IPCC doesn't do poverty. Their more sober predictions amount to a reduction in the rate of increase of the world's prosperity NOT a decline.

Really we need to put the risk from Global warming into perspective. According to the IPCC it may impact the rate of improvement in the world economy but it will not stop that improvement. Let alone reverse it.

Carbon emission reductions or not, the world is not going to collapse into some form of dystopian ecological catastrophe. Whatever the likes of Extinction Rebellion get their child soldiers to say.

The only way it may collapse into a nightmare of increasing poverty, reduced opportunity and blighted futures is if we allow the True believers and their disciples to call the tune.

So what should we do about Global Warming??

All the progress that has been made over the last two centuries has hinged around cheap effective energy. What has been shown time and time again is that if energy supply is not long-term cheap and 24/7 effective, it is not worthwhile.

While the effects of Global Warming may be bad, they would pale into insignificance if we allowed the billions recently lifted out of dollar-a-day poverty by cheap and plentiful energy to slide back down into it again.

Yet there are viable alternatives to coal and oil (aka: gas and nuclear) that will (and do) reduce emissions without pushing people into poverty. But sadly they are not fashionable or extreme enough for the likes of Extinction Rebellion.

Whatever we do, we must not throw two centuries of progress down the toilet simply to appease a cult.

Today I read that some elements with Extinction Rebellion are going on what they laughably call a baby strike. In other words they will not be having any children.

That is of course their choice. Personally I would consider their choice a wise one bearing in mind their lack of stability.

But worryingly this nihilism is only one step away from the next cult fantasy: The ultimate sacrifice.

Like all cults, the the young and gullible are the foot soldiers. Frightened little girls and boys swept up into an apocalyptic cult by the "fear" as prescribed by Al Gore.

If we keep appeasing the zealots running this cult then one day we will find we have another Jonestown or Heavens Gate to deal with. An avoidable tragedy where the victims will be kids. Kids who will have been in a perverse way, scared to death.

For them there really will be no future.

Al Gore: When Prophesy Fails.

Back in 2006 Al Gore made the following statement:

“And politicians and corporations have been ignoring the issue for decades, to the point that unless drastic measures to reduce greenhouse gases are taken within the next 10 years, the world will reach a point of no return … A true Planetary emergency.”
[CBS News "Al Gore Does Sundance" 2006]

For those who doubt the CBS report and deny he actually said this, may I just refer you to this Al Gore Interview YouTube Video from 2017.

and this Snopes Fact Check.

I’m actually not snarking at Al Gore. But clearly as it is now 2019, 10 years have been and gone.

What I’m interested in is his response (and that of others) to this failed prophesy. 

It looks to me that the responses fit (rather alarmingly well) with Leon Festinger’s concept of “Cognitive Dissonance” which he demonstrated with his interactions with a 1950's dooms-day cult in the USA. Its recorded in his book "When Prophesy Fails" (book link: Amazon HERE)

Festinger showed that under certain circumstances, rather than reducing belief, a failed prophesy (or disconfirmation as Festinger calls it) can not only significantly increase belief but also lead to enhanced proselytising on behalf of the belief.

Festingers rules for this to happen were as follows

1. The belief must be held with deep conviction and be relevant to the believer's actions or behaviour.

2. The belief must have produced actions that are arguably difficult to undo.

3. The belief must be sufficiently specific and concerned with the real world such that it can be clearly disconfirmed.

4. The disconfirmatory evidence must be recognized by the believer.

5. The believer must have social support from other believers.

Lets apply that to Al Gore.

1. I would suggest that he strongly believes in the righteousness of his cause.

2. He (and many others) had taken drastic and costly action.

3. The belief “10 years… point of no return” is clear.

4. In the video he clearly acknowledges the failure of the prophesy.

5. As the ad-hoc head of a movement, clearly he has lots of social support.

So rather than questioning the parameters of his failed prophesy, Al Gore (along with many of his supporters and co-followers) doubles down on his primary belief and pseudo-rationalises the disconfirmation.

Take Al Gore in the video interview above. When confronted with the disconfirmation he justifies the failed prophesy roughly as so:

“We have seen a decline in emissions (on a global basis) so they’ve stabilised and in some cases have started to decline.... Some of the responses of the last ten years have helped but unfortunately a lot of damage has been done…...”

His statement that somehow greenhouse gas emissions FELL from 2006 to 2016 is a palpable nonsense. But it fits with exactly what you would expect with cognitive dissonance from a true believer.

Incidentally Here’s the emissions graph 2006 -2017

Meanwhile others seek to minimise their cognitive dissonance by denying that Al Gore ever said such a thing!

It becomes “nasty” propaganda by “trolls”. See this Guest Piece on pro-AGW Skeptical Science blog. 

Ironically all the references the author rages at with a cut-paste from Facebook are in fact fairly accurate renditions of what Al Gore really did say on January 25th, 2006 in a speech, while at the Sundance film festival. 

The author identifies the original source as a  "Climate Denial Blog". I am sure CBS News would be mortified. (original CBS News story link: Here ) 

Unfortunately this cognitive dissonance seriously affects both out ability to continue improving the world and also prevents us from moving away from panic responses to Global Warming. It stops us taking a viable approach to reducing pollution and world emissions.

But I fear worse is to come. (though not from Al Gore who I believe is an honourable man)

As item 5 from Festingers list (social support grouping) gets more intense, Climate Emergency proponents are going into over-drive proselytising their extremist view. As each day goes by they look more and more like a dangerous cult.

With groups like Extinction Rebellion focusing on the most easily led in our society (i.e. children) I fear we may be in a deadly downward spiral.

As discomfirmation follows disconfirmation some of the less gullible may escape. But others will be held in an ever tightening grip of the cults fanaticism.

I fear that one day we may not wake up to just another silly protest in London or New York.

But to another Jonestown Massacre or Heavens Gate death pact.

Planetary Extinction: When Prophesy fails

I changed the tag line to my blog recently. Now I’ve changed it back again.

I had changed it to the a leading quote from a famous doom-laden apocalyptic treatise from the 1970’s called “The Doomsday Book” (Its still here on these links Amazon UK & Amazon USA)

The quote was:

“If you believe that you will survive the next 30 years think again!”

I tagged it with the author and the date of publication

“Gordon Rattray-Taylor (1972)”

I had hoped that the “1972” would be an amusing give-a-way and that people would realise that since publication 47 years have elapsed.

But sadly no.

It seems at least one of my readers thought Billothewisp had himself turned into a doomster.

Of course I hadn’t. It was just my joke had fallen flat.

But then I wondered why people cling to unmodified theories that are delineated with failed prophesies and yet still find them compelling.

Take a look at the reviews for the Doomsday Book on Amazon. The book is very old and vastly pre-dates the internet so there’s only 1 electronic review in the USA and 4 in the UK.

Surprisingly you will find all but one of these reviews (all written more than 30 years after publication) are supportive. Even though the base prophesy of the book was plainly wrong and expired well before the reviews were written, the reviews for this dark tome show the reviewer still clinging to the core armageddon-esque beliefs of the book.

So why, in a world that is clearly and measurably getting better on almost every metric available, do people (in essence) hold to Mr Rattray-Taylors prophesies of doom?

Mr Rattray-Taylor departed this earth in 1981. No doubt he firmly expected that the rest of us would be following him down the dark tunnel in short order.

But of course, that has not happened.

In fact, by just about every metric that matters, the world has become a much, much better place.

But many are in denial about this improvement in the world.

In addition to this denial we have various new/reworked Armageddon predictions which declare that “something must be done”.

The timescale for that “something” ranges from one year (Prince Charles), eighteen Months (Extinction Rebellion), to more plausible but still tenuous timescales of ten years and thirty years.

To give that “something” a name is somewhat difficult as it keeps changing. It was Global Warming, then it turned to Climate Change. But now “Climate Change” no longer appears to be urgent enough. So it has been modified to a “Climate Emergency”.

My posts are not against the concept of the “something” known as Global Warming. Nor are they against any other section of science that gets exploited with dubious reasoning.

The purpose is to explore the exploitative dubious reasoning itself and see how it stacks up.

So lets look more closely at these predictions and monitor their progress. I also want to look at earlier predictions associated with this “something”.

But most importantly I want to see what happens when a prophesy concerning this “something” fails. Then I want to examine how that failure changes (or not) the attitudes to the core beliefs on which that prophesy is based. As well as that I want to see how (or not) the theory gets modified to accommodate reality.

From what I’ve seen so far, the social results are clearly identifiable using the work of legendary Social Scientist Leon Festinger. They are also somewhat disconcerting.

So my next post will concern Al Gore and his 2006 statement that the Arctic would be Ice free in Summer by 2016. I will also expand out Festingers key analysis and see how this fits with Mr Gore.

Later on (next week?) I intend looking more closely at Extinction Rebellion. Extinction Rebellion is an organisation which really worries me. It has all the hallmarks of a cult and I would be very worried if any of my family got tied in with it. It needs closer examination.

Then sometime in the dim and distant future I’ll finish off with more mainstream and respectable organisations like the BBC.

Parish Councils are Dying. So What?

This is the last in a series I’ve posted on how a new party could gain and maintain power at the lowest level of UK democracy. That is at the Parish Council/ Town Council level. 

A committed party could do this literally in a few months. In many cases without even standing for election. (See this post)

But then you have got to ask: Why would any party want to do this?

Why bother?

It would involve a great deal of effort. For what gain?

Parish/Town councils all over the country are dying. So what would be the point in gaining power in failing councils?

If a party placed candidates to fill the rows of empty Councillor seats and then walked away without providing further support then little would be achieved. In fact in all likelihood it would be an utter and complete waste of time.

Nothing would change. There may be a brief blip on the heart monitor for these councils but they will not be resuscitated. The death spiral will continue.

So how can local councillors make headway against the political apathy that engulfs their locality? 

The only way out of this is to target issues affecting the locality and to do this vocally. Get your councillors to make a lot of noise about local issues. Let people know you're party is standing up for them. Especially on issues they are concerned about. 

Yes. I know. 

That's stating the bleeding obvious.

But I’d bet that most issues affecting one Parish Council are almost identical to those affecting its neighbour or even a similar sized Parish council 300 miles away. 

Few problems at the Parish Council level will be unique.

The issues struggled with by Council A may well have been solved by Council B. Often many years before.

But nobody knows. Like the Parish Councils themselves, all the little victories are anonymous. Re-inventing the wheel is the norm, while leveraging progress made elsewhere is rare.

I mooted an idea that each councillor could have the support of a number of lay-supporters and even other non-local councillors. (Here)

Now imagine a forward looking party that links all these motivated and engaged individuals into a forum. A forum where problems can be posted specifically to find out if similar problems have been solved elsewhere.

Instead of one councillor and 2 or 3 lay-supporters grappling with a problem suddenly you have a central army of 100’s of people. 

An army ready to address a single Councillor's otherwise intractable problems and find out how they have already been fixed elsewhere.

In essence you use your small national political party as a force multiplier for your otherwise isolated and under-informed Parish Councillor. 

Couple that with courses for councillors in using social media, film editing and generally making a lot of fuss and you have a seriously effective and popular Parish Council.

Then you have a route forward. You will gain popularity and support from the community. You have a strong political base to build on.

And its all stamped with the initials of your party.

Realistically no new party is going to miraculously get an opportunity to break into the higher levels of UK politic unless it builds a solid political base first.

I firmly believe Parish/Town councils offer that opportunity.

I hope you agree.


Heres the full set of posts on this topic:

The Social Democratic Party - Where Now?

The SDP and the Brexit Party

Local Politics and the Low Hanging Fruit

Arming the Parish Councillors

Parish Councillors: Party Affiliated or Independent?

Parish Councils are Dying. So What? (this post)

Parish Councillors: Party Affiliated? Or Independent?

Independent councillors make up the bulk of Parish/Town Councils. At the local level, people like local independents not party apparatchiks.

In my earlier posts (Start Here) I have discussed how a small party could gain significant influence at the Parish Council level right across the country without even having to win a vote. I've often used the Social Democratic Party as an example.

What should such a small party brand their councillors as? 

Do they put them up on a party ticket?

Sad as it may seem, many view small party's with suspicion. Meanwhile standing on a ticket for larger party (and taking on the Parliamentary baggage that comes with it) would in all likelihood be even worse. 

At the Parish/Town council level, a candidate that describes themselves as "Independent" is viewed positively.

But there is no rule or law against standing as an independent candidate while then qualifying your independent status. 

In fact many councillors qualify their independent status already. 

Today you often get candidates stating they are Independent but representing a residents association, or independent but "standing up" for this or that local campaign.

So there would to be no reason that a candidate could not stand as: 

“Independent – affiliated to this or that Party.” 

But so what? 

They ARE independent. Just using the facilities on offer from a party they align with to service their job. That does not compromise their independence but clearly gives an strong idea where they are coming from politically.

This has another by-product.

Many (most?) of the country's Parish Councillors who stand as independents would love to benefit from a party support base. But they would not want to compromise their independent status by standing on a party ticket.

Wouldn’t be nice to be able to offer them some support from the party support base as well? (See last post) Many would jump at it and as a result would probably become valuable supporters.

No strings. No towing the party line. But if your views mostly align with the party in question you get the support.

Just change “Independent” to “Independent – affiliated to this or that party”.

But it all hinges on their being a proper structured support for Parish councillors from the party wishing to implement this. 

Otherwise it is a waste of time.

Here's the full set of posts on this topic:

The Social Democratic Party - Where Now?

The SDP and the Brexit Party

Local Politics and the Low Hanging Fruit

Arming the Parish Councillors

Parish Councillors: Party Aligned? or Independent? (this post)

Parish Councils Are Dying: So What? 

Arming the Parish Councillors

In my last post ( HERE ) I hope I proved that any political party with the drive to improve the failing bottom tier of UK local government could gain a significant representation in Parish/Town councils across the country without really trying. 

In most cases their candidates would not even have to go though the process of being elected. (Yes. Things are that bad!)

But what happens then?

If a party wanted their councillors to do more than simply “get by” they would need to arm their councillors with some form of structured support. Support that is sadly lacking today. Irrespective of what party (or none) you are in.

Yet people join political partys to make a difference. So I think it would be reasonable to assume that the average party member is pre-disposed to helping out. 

While many (the majority - in any party) would not wish to become actively involved to the extent of (say) actually being a Parish Councillor, they may well be willing to provide support to those that are.

Just as MPs have "staffers" running their office, maybe there should be mini "staffers" for Parish Councillors. People providing a couple of hours a week to letter-write/research and read through reports. 

This would significantly reduce the Parish Councillors work load. More importantly it would give the Councillor a base of support to whom they can turn to for ideas, advice or simply a chat.

This support would itself make the prospect of becoming a councillor less daunting and increase supply of candidates.

After a while as the lay-supporters also gain experience they may themselves feel more confident and put themselves forward as councillors.

However, this would entail considerable commitment and organisation from any party that tried to implement it. If the party in question sees only Parliamentary success as important then this is a waste of time.

Sadly I don't think there is ANY political party around today that has either the will-power or the inclination to rescue this vital bottom tier of UK government. 

Everyone is focused on the top of the tree while the bottom rots away.

Next: It's Parish Councils and political branding. Also whether a party ticket can sometimes be a hindrance rather than a help.

Heres the full set of posts on this topic:

The Social Democratic Party - Where Now?

The SDP and the Brexit Party

Local Politics and the Low Hanging Fruit

Arming the Parish Councillors (this)

Parish Councillors: Party Aligned? or Independent?

Parish Councils are Dying: So What?

UK Local Politics and the Low Hanging Fruit

What if I told you that there is one tier of UK government that is so poorly supported that most (sometimes all) “elected” representatives are not elected at all.

To hold an election you obviously need at least two candidates. If you only have one candidate then holding an election is just a waste of time and money. The single candidate gets the job by default. No election is held.

That may sound bad. But, in fact the situation with the bottom tier of local government is far, far worse.

Many (not a few, or even some) of these Parish/Town councils have empty seats where nobody has put themselves forward as a candidate.

Going to the extreme, there are a significant number of these councils that are completely devoid of candidates. They literally have no-one who wants to do the job.

Here is a BBC report on this from April 2019

So why is this?

The UK is (mostly) controlled by three tiers of elected representatives.

• Member of Parliament. The top level. All seats are always contested in general elections and by-elections.

• County or District Councillor. Almost always  (with rare exceptions) all seats are contested. I have not come across any seats that are left vacant due to a lack of candidates. Though I have come across the occasional uncontested seat (i.e.one candidate)

• Parish (and Town) Councillors  This is where the problem lies. A large majority of Councillors do not have to face an election simply because nobody else wants to do the job. Even worse there are literally thousands of  Parish Council seats across the country where nobody wants to do the job at all.

Along with the BBC piece above I have done a little data scraping (currently incomplete - more to come) regarding the May 2019 local elections for my own county (Dorset - more counties to follow) I found the following:

In May 2019 the local elections in Dorset revealed the following:

Parishes with contested seats: 53

Parishes with no contests:166

Parish Councils with no candidates at all: 24

By the way, there is nothing unusual about Dorset.

I've yet to process one of the documents before I can work out how many of the councils with contested and uncontested seats actually also have vacancies but the BBC piece above indicates it is over 80% of the councils. I know my local Parish council has four vacancies. I do not suppose it is at-all unusual.

Surprised? Shocked even?

But (I hear you say) Parish councils have no power. 

Maybe you think Parish councils are just golf club cliques who argue about the hanging baskets down the shopping arcade. Or act like commissars when deciding who gets an allotment.

Well, first off, Parish/Town Councils do have power - and responsibility. 

While the powers of a Parish council are limited, they are important. Most do not exercise anywhere near their full capability, and that is because they collectively do not have the drive, the manpower or the expertise to do so. 

Most Councillors (despite the caricatures) are earnest community orientated individuals who do the job for nothing  and receive little or no praise for doing it. They do the job quietly and anonymously without seeking praise or reward.

The majority of Parish Councillors are independents. While a party aligned Councillor would gain the support and publicity from his/her party, independents have no such support. 

So they simply do a lonely job and do not brag about it. 

Even though they are a fabulous asset to the community, nobody knows they are there.

So, how could a small party (say - the SDP) make a big inroad into this dying layer of our democracy? How could they use Parish/Town Councils as a lever to improve peoples lives and so gain popularity and support?

The first (but most certainly NOT the last) requirement is to gain seats on Parish Councils. 

This is easy! It can be done almost immediately.

How?

Remember all those empty seats from the May 2019 local elections? Most of them are still empty. In fact (although this is a bit anecdotal) I expect there are even more empty seats now than in May as some people will have pulled out and resigned. 

I’d bet there are well over 1500 easy-to-fill empty seats across the country today. Anyone living within 3 miles of one can apply to be a Parish Councillor and fill the seat.

(In fact this is almost certainly a massive underestimate. There are 9000 parish/town councils in England alone. If 80% have vacancies then that is a minimum (one seat per parish) of 7200 vacancies. Bearing in mind many have multiple vacancies and some no Councillors at all I would suggest my 1500 easy-to-fill seat is probably an order of magnitude too small)

How do you get elected to one of those seats? 

You don’t. You submit your CV, get nominated and co-opted. 

Unless someone else actually applies at the same time no election is held. 

Parish councils are desperate to fill vacant seats. If you have enough enthusiasm to have a go then you are in.

So that is why in my last post I said that the SDP (or any other party with enough committed members) could gain a significant number of seats and local power within 2 months. 

Even with its hugely increased membership I would fully expect that there will be far more vacant seats than there would be SDP members willing to stand as Councillors.

And not a vote has to be cast.

But that is most definitely NOT it. 

Unless those new Councillors get support (and lots of it) nothing would improve. 

Any party that tried this without ensuring there was a strong support infrastructure for these new Councillors would end up with a lot of lonely, isolated and disillusioned people ruing the day the signed up for local government.

So how a political party avoid such a calamity and revive this failing tier of local government?

That's the next post.

Heres the full set of posts on this topic:

The Social Democratic Party - Where Now?

The SDP and the Brexit Party

Local Politics and the Low Hanging Fruit (this post)

Arming the Parish Councillors

Parish Councillors: Party Aligned? or Independent?

Parish Councils are Dying: So What?