SUNNY DUBAI CASTS A DARK SHADOW

The serious consequences for stock markets in the UK and elsewhere of Dubai conglomerate DP World's request for a 6 month postponement of its debt repayments has been headline news.

However, there is another story underlying the collapse of the patently unsustainable Dubai asset bubble which has prompted my return to economic matters. This is a story about the darker side of the world's property hotpots in recent years, and how the good sense of one Senator Hilary Clinton has helped protect the United States economy from this latest episode of global financial turmoil.

Would Europe's new High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security, and, indeed, the Iraq Inquiry - see previous posts - please take note !

To begin with Iraq. Following the invasion of that country in 2003, the United States made the largest investment in re-construction since the Marshall Plan following World War II. Nevertheless, it was remarked upon by some commentators at the time that large amounts of this investment found their way out of Iraq and into increasingly speculative real estate markets in countries such as the US, UK and, you guessed it, Dubai.

On the back of this boom - to which key UK business interests, incidentally, have been critically exposed - D P World went on a global spending spree, a prize purchase of which was the British P&O Group. This group had a world-wide shipping and property portfolio which included strategic assets in North America. However, Senator Clinton took the lead in blocking the sale of key US facilities to DP World on grounds, amongst others, of national security.

What her counterparts in the UK and Europe were doing we can only guess, but the answer is clearly not a great deal, which is precisely why these matters need to be thoroughly investigated at the present time.

THE IRAQ INQUIRY

In my previous post I emphasised the need for "tough and fair" public hearings into matters of national and a strategic importance. It is very much to be hoped that the inquiry into events leading up to the war in Iraq - www.iraqinquiry.org.uk - will provide these.

Also, to any readers who feel that my blog has been unfair to members of the present British Government, I would respond that the prospect of fewer lawyers in senior political positions in the next administration offers the possibility of better national governance, and therefore a reduction in the need to blog much on the subject of politics....but I may be wrong.

CLIMATE CHANGE & INFRASTRUCTURE

The impact of flooding on infrastructure has been highlighted again by events in Cumbria, including the tragic loss a policeman's life due to collapse of a road bridge. The danger of similar collapses have made travel around the County extremely difficult, and a motorist interviewed on the radio this morning identified the particular difficulty of access to Sellafield, the location of Britain's major civilian nuclear waste installation.

Further capacity is proposed for Cumbria and the Sellafield area. and it is the task of the new Infrastructure Planning Commission (IPC) to assess issues arising from this and other proposed increases in British nuclear power capacity.

Now although the Government's Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has suggested that the flooding in Cumbria is on the scale of a once in a millennium event, I question whether he can really know this. Indeed, I would invite Mr Hilary Benn and some colleagues - weather permitting - to accompany me on a historical climate change tour of Britain, which will include site visits to areas which have experienced significant changes in sea levels.

Returning to the IPC and the need for "tough and fair" decision-making in public policy at the present time, highlighted in my previous post, I would remind the Chairman, Sir Michael Pitt, and his colleagues of the ruthless manipulation of the facts in which promoters of major infrastructure projects sometimes engage, historically leaving objectors to rely on "tough and fair" planning inspectors to hear their challenges.

I have to say in this context that my low estimation of the characters of political and business leaders (see below) would improve if resources were made available to those challenging the Government's proposed nuclear and other major infrastructure programmes, such as strategic road and bridge construction, which may well end up making this country more vulnerable to climate change, when local adaptation strategies are really what are most urgently required.

Ruthless & Manipulative vs Tough & Fair

Harriet Harman's reaction to being asked on BBC Radio 4's "Any Questions" about her attitude to the use of mobile phones whilst driving a car has prompted me to reflect on the subject of character. This is a subject apparently of much interest to policy-makers at the present time.

My own experience - direct and indirect - leads me to suspect that what might be termed "the ruthless and manipulative personality" is currently the dominant one in British business and public life. The attributes of this personality are perhaps more feminine than masculine, although it is by no means exclusive to women, with many - perhaps the majority - of men in positions of authority displaying some or all of its qualities. I would, incidentally, classify both the Leader and Deputy Leaders of New Labour Party as ruthless and manipulative people.

Ms Harman is a particularly good example of this character type. She conducts herself in an aggressive manner, reflected in a number of convictions for driving offenses, but when challenged on her latest entanglement with traffic laws, is extremely defensive.

Readers may gather from my description that I do not regard people like Ms Harman as exemplars of good character, and they would be right. This is because I have had the good fortune, particularly in my early career, to encounter some "tough and fair" authority figures.

The tough and fair personality type is still to be found in business and public life, although I believe there are far fewer of such individuals at present than in earlier times, largely because the prevalence of ruthless and manipulative people tends to bring out these qualities in others, thereby perpetuating them. This is a real problem for society, as great, I would suggest, as any of the other problems which we currently face, because it is precisely these other problems that need tough but fair solutions.

Lesson of Baroness Ashton's Appointment

Like most people, I was vaguely aware that Cathy Ashton had replaced Peter Mandelson as European Trade Commissioner, before her appointment yesterday as High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy. However, I didn't know - thankfully not being part of them ! - that in New Labour circles Baroness Ashton is best known for being the wife of journalist and YouGov founder Peter Kellner.

The lesson of this is that who you're married to matters in New Labour circles, except, of course, if your husband ends up charged with corruption in another European country, like Mr Tessa Jowell....when you separate from them as quickly as possible.

On this note, I would suggest that a key task for the new European High Representative will be tackling international corruption, and I very much hope that Cathy's Ashton's professional background in, amongst other things, chairing an English health authority has prepared her for this.

Paying For Education With Sex

The story of "Belle de Jour" has received much coverage in the middle class press this week. For those unfamiliar with this tale, it concerns a PhD student who moonlighted as a prostitute and thereby funded her studies, helped also by an anonymous blog which was turned into a television series. The lady in question now works as a science researcher in Bristol - or did until her cover broke.

Although this story may seem - and indeed is - rather sensational, the fact is that there have always been clever women who worked in the sex industry, as illustrated by the histories of royal courtesans across the world.

However, by far the majority of women engage in prostitution through necessity rather than lifestyle choice, often suffering injury, illness and death as a consequence. So whilst "Belle de Jour" may have made the right choice for herself, many young women - in countries such as Zimbabwe, for instance - would prefer not to have sex with their teachers to pay for their studies.

Tabloid Coverage of Environmental Issues

On Monday, I purchased a copy of The Sun newspaper : a first for me !

Inside was a copy the first tabloid edition of the paper, published on 16 November 1969. This was rather a good little read !

My feeling is that there is an opportunity for the likes of The Sun to provide better coverage - dare I say more balanced even ! - than the non Red Top broadsheets, which seem to have opted for the "let's take something straightforward and make it as complicated as we can" approach to environmental issues.

So here's my list of key issues needing some good old fashioned common sense reporting :

• Population & Health
• Resources & Nature
• Energy & Transport
• Waste & Pollution...

I look forward to the headline : "It's The Sun What's Done It !"

"Do Not Go Forth and Multiply" !

The following extract from Channel 4's website (18 November) highlights the importance of population issues in tackling climate change - please also also see my post of 14.11.2009

UN: educating women 'key to climate change'

'Do not go forth and multiply' is the conclusion of the UN's world population report, which says educating women may be the key to cutting carbon emissions - UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund

However, as my earlier post highlighted, the role of men is equally important !

WHY I SUPPORT THE SUN NEWSPAPER

Having never purchased a copy of The Sun, and having little time for the Murdoch Media Empire, I surprise myself in supporting the newspaper's coverage of Jaqui Janes vs the Prime Minister. The decisive moment in this story came for me when a BBC Radio 4 PM male presenter interviewed The Sun's editor, and suggested that Ms Janes was psychologically damaged - which she is by the circumstances of her son's death in Afghanistan - and therefore not fully in possession of her faculties. How deeply offensive to the woman ! Neither the former Deputy Prime Minister nor New Labour's former Director of Communications were, by their own addmission, fully in control of their faculties when running the country : a state which the Prime Minister may yet admit to himself. Perhaps it's only so-called alpha males who are entitled to feel psychologically damaged and give interviews to the Media.

Could Simon Cowell Do The X-Factor For Climate Change ?

Free thinking people in this country have long observed how New Labour has infantilised large sections of the public, who apparently now favour baby-faced politicians like David Cameron and Nick Clegg. Indeed, if anyone doubts that infantile politics are confined to the present government, they should listen to the latest edition of "Any Questions" where Mr Conservative Home refers to the importance of financial support for the struggling parents of babies and toddlers, as these early years are the most important in human life.

Frankly, it is precisely this kind of daftness which encourages people patently unsuited to parenthood to procreate in the first place, thereby adding to unsustainable population growth. This, rather than infrastructural issues, I would suggest, is the overriding challenge in the context of climate change. Put another way, the widespread availability and encouragement, through financial and other incentives, of the contraceptive "male pill" may be the most effective way of curbing population growth, and thereby reducing human pressures on the environment.

Moreover, it strikes me that Mr Simon Cowell who has remarked upon the tendency of the alpha male - and even the non-alpha one - to have multiple partners and offspring, may be right the man to front such a programme, and to show the nation that it's a sign of success to have 1 or 2 children, who are properly looked after, or even none at at all, where parenthood is likely to prove problematic. I suggest this because it seems to me that the onus for family planning, in this country and elsewhere, needs to be placed much more firmly upon the adult male of the species....if he still exists that is !

MORE ON SCIENCE AND RELIGION

Over the weekend, I felt that perhaps my previous post "On the Limitations of Science and Religion" needed some qualification. I was also reminded of one of my favourite essayists, the great English polymath Francis Bacon. In addition, Haye's boxing victory over "Beast from the East" Valuev is a reminder that the Davids of this world can still beat the Goliaths.

So to begin with the subject of science, on a day when the Government has announced a major expansion of nuclear capacity, with a Goliath-like fist shake to those Davids of the environmental movement who still oppose nuclear power, that it now has the Infrastructure Planning Commission (IPC) in its grasp ie this is going to be a fight, as things stand, with no independent referee ! Although the Conservatives have promised they will do something about this.

Unfortunately, nuclear power has always struck me a being a sort of technocratic religion, and it comes as no surprise that this relatively new religion has a growing number of environmentalist converts. I've previously noted in my other blog - http://janetmackinnon.wordpress.com/ in a post entitled From Forum for the Future to Fight the Future Forum - that I regard many so-called scientific environmentalists as repressed technocrats with a strong preference for top town centralised planning. Such Soviet-style planning has, incidentally, quite alot in common with most of the world's major religions where controlling edicts are passed down from on high to ordinary folk who aren't allowed to question them.

It has occurred to me, therefore, that in another life (whether previous, parallel reality, or future) that the entertainment impresario Simon Cowell may follow some kind of religious calling, or perhaps even convert to one in the later years of his present incarnation and establish a cult. Mr Cowell, it will be remembered, first came to fame with the show Pop Idol. However, following a dispute with the apparent "True Creator" of Pop Idol, he moved on to the X Factor.

The subject of idolatry brings me back to Francis Bacon and his own "Four Idols". Bacon is regarded by many as the first genuine philosopher of science, notwithstanding that he took a bribe whilst holding public office and died directly as a result of his scientific experimentation. However, whilst Bacon would have heartily approved of evidence-based policy making and, had he been alive today, might well have been a celebrity scientist like Professor Lord Winston, Bacon was too astute an observer of human nature to regard science as value free.

Thus he warns us against the following seductions or "idols", which I have adapted to present day culture and semantics and therefore advise readers to consult the original Bacon text. These "idols", which ever threaten to distort the facts, are as follows :

Idols of the Tribe - Scientific thinking is always circumscribed by the wider culture of individual and collective, including political and religious belief systems.

Idols of the Den - Science is subject to personal prejudice as evidenced by the cases of so-called "Expert Witnesses" whose evidence has turned out to be just plain wrong.

Idols of the Market Place - Society and economics ascribe more value to certain types of science than others, which may mean important research is not funded or funded properly.

Idols of the Media Circus - This does not just refer to the silliness which surrounds the likes of the X-Factor, but to the subjectiveness of the media in general on science and other subjects.

Moving on to the subject of religion, it may seem to some that my previous post expressed anti-religious or irreligious sentiments which I would have done well to suppress. In fact, I am, in general, a supporter of religions in their more spiritual forms, but not in the excessive materialism which most seem to support, and, indeed, encourage in their established forms. By materialism I do not mean only an excessive emphasis on the making of money whether through Western-style or state capitalism, but materialism in the Marxist sense which has no place for genuine spirituality. This said, I do not subscribe to the so- called "Doctrine of the Other Cheek" either, which some proponents of Buddhism, for instance, seem to favour, as an "Opt Out Clause" from tackling political and other worldly problems.

On the Limitations of Science & Religion

The tragic shooting of United States service personnel by one of their comrades - a Muslim Psychiatrist - has prompted me to reflect on the shortcomings of the scientifically-trained mind when combined with religious belief, or worse still, extreme ideology - please also see my post on the case of Radovan Karadzic and Dagan Dabic @ http://the-edge-of-town.blogspot.com/

Whilst these are extreme examples of the scientific mind, to all intents and purposes, gone mad, or just plain bad, there are, I feel, underlying issues which are relevant to the more everyday relationship between science, religion and society in this country and elsewhere.

Let's start with the explicit/implicit social status stakes which have become so important in countries such as Britain and the United States. In my experience, scientifically trained individuals tend to assume they are socially superior to other members of society, even if they do not follow a scientific profession. Many have, for instance, found work in better-paid positions within the financial services sector, and look where that has led us ! To systemic insanity and the edge of economic chaos, simple people like me might respond. However, the wider public must also share some responsibility for embracing such obvious charlatanism in the first place. In short, we have given our power away to those who professed to know better, but in actual fact didn't.

Turning again to the case of Johnson vs Nutt on the subject of drugs classification (referred to in my previous post), this has clearly ruffled the feathers of the scientific community with heavyweights such as Labour Peer Professor Lord Robert Winston coming to the defence of so-called scientific integrity.

Now Professor Winston is, in my view, far more of a danger to society than Professor Nutt. The fact is that science of the kind practiced by Winston is deeply value laden. In short, the right to have children supersedes just about every other kind of right and people who don't embrace this notion are socially and morally deficient. This has led to a generation of women - of which I am one, but not one who shares Professor Winston's sentiments - who are obsessed with the need to bear their own children and willing to go to any lengths to this end. Winston and his kind, I would suggest, have created a fertility neurosis amongst women in many Western countries, at a time when there are already many unwanted and uncared for children, and population growth poses one of the greatest threats to the sustainability of both nation states and the wider world.

It is noteworthy that Professor Winston is Jewish, and that unsustainable population growth in both the state of Israel, and, indeed, in neighbouring Palestinian Gaza, is one of the prime causes of instability in that region, although this is one of those truths that dare it's speak their name. For Jews and Muslims population growth is a weapon of mass destruction , which they would do well to focus on as much - if not more so - than other causes of insecurity.

This brings me on to the subjects of Roman Catholicism and Christian fundamentalism, which, like aspects of Islam and Judaism, pose threats to global security. These are also reasons why former British Prime Minster Tony Blair - a Catholic Convert with, I strongly suspect, leanings toward the Christian Right - should be, as far as possible, excluded from international politics, even if people in the business community want to pay alot of money to hear him speak.

Blair is undoubtedly a technocrat, which is precisely why many in the scientific community felt professionally, not to say socially, bolstered by his term in office, with people like Lord Winston accorded celebrity status. This may be one reason why the Professor's website has a colour-scheme which could have been designed by Katie Price. Maybe one of his medical colleagues was the designer of her so-called cosmetic enhancements, and perhaps they'll ghost author "Katie's Guide to Plastic Surgery" one day and make even more money.

The entry of Alan - Corporal or Captain according to your class politics - Johnson into this hitherto cosy relationship, occasional tiffle notwithstanding, between the political and scientific establishments seems to have come as quite a shock, or should that be reality check. Actually, I happen to quite like Alan Johnson, who bears a passing resemblance to David Bowie but is more down-to-earth than fell-to-earth, as he plainly doesn't do drugs. Johnson also seems to have wanted to tighten up on psychiatric drugs during his tenure as Secretary of State for Health, in favour of so-called "talking cures". Whilst I have some doubts about the likes of Cognitive Behaviour and other "State" Therapy - a bit too Soviet for my tastes - there's alot to be said for "Jaw, Jaw", particularly when the alternative is "War, War".

"Captain" Johnson vs "The Nutty Professor"

In recent posts I've reflected upon the importance of maintaining a sense humour in public life, and in the unseemly wrangle between the Home Secretary and Professor Nutt we may observe a classic failure in this regard.

At the time of the local government and EU elections earlier this year, when it became clear that New Labour had suffered a disaster, a Staffordshire councillor referred to "Corporal" Johnson : a reference to the character of Jonesy in Dad's Army who's famous by-line is "Don't Panic, Don't Panic". However, in his sacking of Professor Nutt from his position as a leading government advisor on drugs, Johnson comes across more like Captain Mannering who doesn't like to have his views challenged by sub-ordinates.

In some respects, nevertheless, the Professor is fair game. Nut must be one of the few people to have simultaneously succeeded in upsetting both New Labour and the Horse and Hound Magazine with his views on the relative dangers of drugs and equestrianism, even managing to bring in some class politics by accusing politicians of treating scientific advisers like "serfs".

Unfortunately, the Professor doesn't have the class act of Eddy Murphy in his role as "The Nutty Professor", a charming and talented scientist who is also extremely fat. Seeking a more svelte form - and in a nice take on the tale of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde - the Professor concocts a slimming drug which certainly reduces his girth, but at the same time unleashes a dastardly alter ego, also played by Murphy with much panache. The behaviour of this other personality is not socially acceptable, alienates the Professor's girlfriend and, ultimately, like his slimming drug, has to be suppressed.

"The Nutty Professor" could also serve as a cautionary tale on so-called recreational drugs, including alcohol and cigarettes, which can have unforeseen side-effects that need to be taken account by people contemplating their use. However, for many people a rational and sensible approach to intoxicants - and indeed horse management and riding - is not possible, and this is precisely why we need effective regulation of such activities, and, in this case, science mediated through policy.