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How to make Him/Her Fall in Love With You

US Glamour magazine has found itself under fire from the perma-outraged social justice warriors of Twitter and facebook for its guide to women who want to make a man fall in love with them. Outraged, single women have been sharing this list with the words “Wow! I can’t even…”. The scale of the outrage is directly proportional to how long they’ve been single.

Women, who think men want “strong, independent” women will probably stay single, because they’re guilty of projecting. “I want a strong, independent man” the thinking goes, “so he must want a strong, independent woman”. We mostly want a kind, stable, supportive woman. We like strength and independence, but they’re not first on the list as they are on a woman’s list for her ideal man. A thought developed more here.

Disappointingly, glamour has taken it down, which is a shame, because it’s actually a pretty good list. Far from being a “parody of a 1950s housewife”, If you do these 13 things it means you’re thinking about what your man wants, not, as women are encouraged these days, to think about what you’ve been brainwashed into thinking men should want. No-one’s suggesting this  list should form a daily routine, but that you should try to think about the list from time to time, and surprise your other half. And when you think about it, you could write a list aimed at men, and it really wouldn’t look all that different.

The list is as follows:

1. Stocking the Fridge with his favourite drinks. Bonus points: Bring him back to his fraternity days by handing him a drink as he steps out the shower.

Honestly, This works for ladies too. Bringing a glass of prosecco as she steps out the shower isn’t going to piss her off on a Sunday morning, is it?

2. Make him a snack after sex. Simple It doesn’t have to be a gourmet meal: Grilled cheese or milk and cookies will do.

Women don’t get hungry and sleepy after sex in my experience. I guess chaps, aftercare: cuddle her until your arm goes dead and long after you’re bored. Don’t check your twitter feed while doing so. No, nor watch telly. Think about whatever you want while you’re stroking her back, but when she asks say, “how in love I am” or something, not “whether Hamilton’s disastrous performance at the Hungaroring means he’s over-rated” or whatever it is you’re actually thinking about. That would piss her off.

3. E-mailing him the online gossip about his favourite TV show. You don’t have to have a BFF at HBO, just share applicable links from your twitter feed and pat yourself on the back.

It’s called taking an interest in the other person’s interests, and works for chaps too.

4. Bragging about him to your friends and family, the stranger on the street corner, whomever. Proclamations of pride will make his chest puff out and his heart swell.

Exactly the same for women. I mean really, what’s to be offended about here? If you’re going to fall for someone, you’ll be proud of them, and want to show them off to people important to you.

5. Answering the door in a neglige, or better yet, naked.

Yes. We chaps do like this. A LOT. Don’t you ladies like to be swept off your feet as soon as you walk through the door, and carried off to the bedroom by your chap too?

6. Be open to what he wants to try, in and out of the bedroom. An open mind is attractive whatever your playground.

Yes. Same goes for chaps: if (s)he wants to try public sex, sky-diving or a cookery course, even if it’s not your thing, try to enjoy it together. I don’t think my girlfriend is that into cycling. But she’s agreed to come on a 3-day battlefield tour of the Normandy beaches by bicycle with me.

7. Let him solve your petty work problems. Many men don’t do gossip, but they do like to fix things.

This is the best piece of advice in the list. Nothing makes a man feel better about himself than solving a problem for you. The flip side is Chaps! Shut the fuck up and just listen to her occasionally. She doesn’t actually want a solution; she want you to listen, agree and support.

8. Spitting out sports stats for his favourite team. Showing an interest in his favourite players will earn you points on and off the field.

Taking an interest in your other half’s interests is sexist is it?

9. Making a big deal out of his favourite meal. Does he like hotdogs cut up into his boxed mac n’ cheese? Serve it on a silver platter, and see him smile.

That sounds disgusting, but chaps! Bring her comfort food on a silver platter, with an ironic smirk. Really, doing thoughtful things for your other half will certainly not hurt the relationship, will it.

10. Treating his friends as well as you treat your own. If you win their affection, you’ll win his heart.

This would probably appear unaltered in an equivalent list for men. Nothing sexist to see here. Move along.

11. Sitting side by side while he vegs out to TV. It may not feel like quality time to you, but it’s the best time to him.

Yes, ladies. Shut up from time to time. We’ll marry the one who doesn’t need to fill every second with ceaseless prattle. The chaps list in this spot would probably say something like ‘turn the TV off and talk from time to time. It’ll make her feel special’.

12. Give him a massage. Happy ending optional. In fact a foot-rub works just fine.

Women don’t like a massage? Honestly “give her a massage” is on every “how to make her fall in love with you” list from FHM/GQ/Loaded/Nuts. Nothing sexist to see here. Move along.

13. Take him back to third grade with a gentle tease over how you’ll dominate him on the basketball court, to the weird way he just styled his hair.

Playfulness and teasing are important in relationships. You need to be friends as well as lovers and friends tease one another. It shows you’re equals.

The response to this list just shows how far from reality perma-outraged, petty-minded internet feminism is. The fact is men and women are, on average, different, and like different things, and this seems to offend them. Men like movies about explosions, whereas women like movies about people crying over relationships. Women like drama, men like sport. Men like great slabs of meat, women like salads, for some reason. That’s not to say men cannot like a watching a TV drama about relationships, while eating a salad; but women should remember that’s not what most men would choose, were they still a bachelor. And Vice Versa.

Stepping outside your preferences, and into those of your other half, is what makes a relationship work, for men and women. That perma-outraged internet feminists think men’s preferences should be the same as women’s, which shows hubris, arrogance and a staggering lack of self-awareness. But as this will lead them into a life of celibate cat-wrangling, it’s their loss not ours. Every feminist going on about how “strong” and “independent” she is, is one fewer to compete with for ladies who’re prepared to empathise with the other Gender.

The lady doth protest too much, methinks.

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On that One, last, Insurmountable Inequality Between the Sexes.

If the Pompeii Graffiti and Punternet agree, the price of a shag with a lady of negotiable virtue has remained about a working man’s daily wage for at least 2,000 years. With this in mind, let’s not try to pretend human nature has changed all that much. We are still the same upright Ape that wandered out of African savannah 100,000 years ago. And as such, modern life is not what we evolved for. It’s stressful enough without trying to alter what we are and what we find attractive in the opposite sex. And with Internet dating, those of us with an anthropological bent have been given an enormous amount of data to see what people actually want. It isn’t usually what they say they want, or what society pressures us to want.

Slavica totally married Bernie for 24 years because of his looks and famous charm.

Let’s think about human mating as a transaction, because it is. Men trade intimacy for sex, and women trade sex for intimacy. And then there’s the whole bio-mechanics of seeking a fertile mate. Females seek a provider, and males seek a fertile and healthy woman to maximise their mutual chances of offspring being successful. And then there’s the cost of Gametes: men will seek to spread their seed (cheat), while women face an incentive to get impregnated by a “better” mate should their provider be a bit unsatisfactory (cuckold). And the reason paternity isn’t routinely tested is often alleged to be because society couldn’t cope with the result.

We are not evolved to be monogamous, as there is significant sexual dimorphism. The hidden ovulation and permanent receptiveness of the human female is extraordinarily unusual.

We are a highly sexual animal. Yet both genders seem pathologically incapable understanding the simple fact that men and women want different things of each other. Any attempt to generalise about this invites ridicule. But, physically, broadly, women desire a man taller than they are. This is why so many women, if they put anything in their Tinder profiles at all, it’s their height, to male bemusement. Men simply are not interested in how tall a woman is. And men, displaying their abdominal muscles look faintly ridiculous. Physically most of what a man wants in a woman can be described as ‘not fat’ and they’re assuming women desire the same in men. Women desire a high status man (a man who can make people laugh is almost always in control of the room). Men desire youth, beauty, health and a caring nature.

I remember being asked recently by the friend of a lovely-looking girl who was thinking of breaking up with her nightclub bouncer boyfriend “are you an earner?”. I was shocked. Essentially it’s the female equivalent of going up to a woman and saying “show me your tits”. But it’s those unused to hiding their base desires who most often reveal what is in the human id.

The female lawyer, saying “I’m strong and successful, why don’t men find me attractive?” is making exactly the same mistake as the sad-act sending out pictures of his penis to women on the internet from his Parent’s basement and being confused by the responses. They’re both guilty of projection. I desire this of men/women, so they must desire this of me.

Women want a man they can admire. Men, broadly do not want to be competing with their other half and would rather be supported by someone they can cherish. Given this – it’s not a mis-match, is it? – complementary nature of desires, it’s not surprising that fewer women, having found their higher-status man and persuaded him to commit, give up on the rat-race. After all, what’s in it for them? Most women, in my experience do want to settle down, raise their children more than they want to become a partner in the law firm. And the man, to keep up his end of the bargain, will work his fingers to the bone for the rest of his life to provide for his wife and kids.

And this act of providing for a family provides the same deep sense of satisfaction to a man as motherhood does to a woman.

Women suitably qualified, often leave their professions, for long periods of time to raise children. And so the women who’re qualified don’t end up putting themselves forward for professorships or indulge in the savage politicking necessary to get to the top of a corporate pole. They are, like my mother, quite happily looking after people they love. And many such women, of enormous wit, intellect and brilliance take offence at the idea that this is a waste of their talents. The lack of female CEOs is certainly partly down to the choices many women make to not bother with the corporate game. So long as there is no discrimination against those women who DO choose to climb the pole, I fail to see why this is a problem.

There are costs to equality and women’s emancipation. At the other end of the social spectrum, with the welfare state providing for the women and children at least as well as men, the men become utterly worthless to their womenfolk, completely disposable sex-objects, valuable only for fertility. Which is why there is so much violence on the sink estates. Big muscles on the nightclub doorman give him status in a world where men, without economic or social pull, have little else but psychological and physical abuse to keep ‘their’ women in orbit.

Men who suddenly find themselves unable to provide for their women through unemployment are often quickly and efficiently ditched, whereas women’s relationships often survive unemployment. A man supports a woman, whereas a man isn’t “supported” by a woman, he “lives off her”. Society judges. Unemployment is a leading cause of male suicide. As is Divorce. To a married man, unemployment is therefore a much, much greater threat than it is to a married woman as it opens up a yawning chasm of social worthlessness. There are men who’d happily be taken on for the ride as a supporting player to a successful woman, but such a woman would find him revolting. You can send your much more successful wife off to work while you change the nappies, but she’d probably end up shagging the boss of a bigger firm. And when the divorce comes, she’s off, and he’s…. already been emasculated, has a gap in his CV and is worth little to employers or eligible women. This is why female breadwinner, male childcare families are rare and unstable and most female breadwinner families are single-parent.

So, the psychological, social and sexual rewards to men are greater for an equal degree of professional success, and the punishment for failure is far, far more severe. Is it any wonder men work longer hours, will take the shitty jobs with anti-social hours, and don’t prioritise family time and flexibility? And these incentives are innate to us. They are not social constructs. Women like wealth and status like men like a nice high, firm, round bosom.

“So Debbie McGee, what attracted you to Millionaire Paul Daniels?”

Measuring equality in society by the number of female MPs or FTSE100 CEOs is just stupid, because the cost, effort and time invested in becoming a successful politician/architect/CEO/Formula 1 impresario pays off  for men in the only currency I can find which has never depreciated: access to a desirable mate. But it doesn’t pay off for women in that currency, all that much. (Both Dennis Thatcher and Joachim Sauer were already successful when they met Margaret Roberts and Angela Merkel). Men are defined by their social status, for which earning power is a good proxy. Short, odd-looking rich men like Bernie Ecclestone and Paul Daniels do have their pick of attractive women, in a way Angela Merkel doesn’t have muscular hunks dripping off her arm (instead, a hugely respected research physicist). Wealthy, successful female lawyers who tell you they paid for their own BMW, thank you very much, are often single. Wealth and power is irrelevant to female attractiveness to men. Wealth and professional success enhances (is…?) male attractiveness to women.

Rich professional, single women like to think that men are intimidated by strong women. I think that’s a comforting myth spun by women whose biological clocks are ticking, but who haven’t worked out what it is men want. And old, short, odd-looking rich men like to think it’s their charm and wit, rather than their money and power, that’s attractive to the leggy amazon they’re escorting. Yeah.

And so, in the currency that matters, the one that ultimately drives us, access to a desirable mate, wealth helps men, but not women, achieve what they want. That which women can leverage to secure that high-status man is a wasting asset, drifting away while they’re chasing the career. Women can get through the glass ceiling, if they’re prepared to risk celibacy and loneliness with the successful women who have it all dangled as a tempting carrot, which is unlikely to ever be universal. Men do not face that trade-off, but they do face a great deal more pressure to succeed. Most people get this intuitively. That, not discrimination, seems to be the main reason a FTSE100 boardroom is a sausage-fest.

Please note, if you’re minded to comment, that I don’t believe this is as it SHOULD be, but how it IS. And I don’t imagine there’s a great deal that can be done about it. We are wired up how we’re wired up, and that’s that.

The author is currently single.

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2015 Is Going to be the Best Year in Human History

Last year I wrote some predictions How did I do?

The FTSE100 will reach an all-time high, for the first time since 1999, and will continue the bull-run. 7,000 will be left behind.
Thanks to tightening money, The Oil Price will fall below $100 and stay there. The Brent/WTI spread will narrow from 99/111.

Yup, I spotted the fall in oil price. But I didn’t bet on it, nor did I expect so precipitous a fall. I think the FTSE will break out in 2015

The Labour lead will fall from 6-8%. UKIP will win popular vote in the European parliament elections, then their support will drift back to the Tories thanks to a strengthening recovery. Scotland will vote ‘No’ to independence. Ed Miliband will remain a worthless union stooge. The voter-repelling and emetic Ed Balls will remain shadow Chancellor, because his boss is a spineless dweeb, with shit for brains and “Red” Len McClusky’s hand up his bum. Tories will post a lead, but I doubt it will be done consistently.

Labour’s lead has fallen, UKIP did top the poll in the Euros and are now fading. Scotland voted ‘no’. Ed Miliband’s utter unsuitability for Prime Ministerial office continues to be displayed every day.

The Syrian civil war will not end, but Assad will regain control of much of the country, leaving an islamist insurgency. The world will continue to look the other way.
China’s growth will slow. The rumblings of dissent new riches have smothered will start to grow louder. The Communist Party may seek to use Sabre-Rattling with Japan to detract domestic opinion from the looming economic crisis.
Something dramatic will happen on the Korean Peninsula.

I didn’t really predict anything specific, nor was I far from consensus. But Korea? Was I prescient?

So onto 2015.

  • I think 2015 will be the year the FTSE breaks 7000. One day it will, one day I will be right.
  • Oil will fall to $40, and maybe below and stabilise in the $40-60 range. USA becomes the world’s swing producer
  • The Conservatives will win a thin majority in GE2015. There maybe 2 elections. Don’t ask me how. no polling backs this up. But the country doesn’t want Miliband, and Cameron’s actually done a pretty good job under difficult conditions and doesn’t deserve to be sacked. UKIP to win 3-5 seats, Farage to fail in Thanet, the party’s national vote share in the 10-12% range.
  • China’s growth over the past few years will prove to have been overstated. China’s slowdown to get worse. India to continue to develop rapidly. Modi proving his critics wrong: He may be the man to get India working and taking its rightful place as a major economic power.
  • Russia will try to save whatever face it can for Putin, as it withdraws from Ukraine in response to the falling oil price and continued sanctions. Russia will be set up to rejoin the world financial system in 2016.
  • IS will be reduced to a rump by the end of the year, as having been stopped in their tracks on a number of fronts, they will find the supply of jihadis will dry up.
  • Darfur will be the international flash-point to watch.

We live in a time of miracles. 3-D printed lungs, and people landing space probes on distant orbiting rocks. The benefits of these miracles are unequally distributed. But they do eventually benefit everyone. Luxuries once unthinkable even to Louis XV such as the world’s knowledge at the touch of a button, are available to most, through the miracle of stable institutions, and the creative destruction of free-market capitalism.

This provides opportunity for self-improvement, but also can be a productivity-sucking distraction. Who manages to make the most of the opportunities will set the agenda. Wars end, elections happen. The relentless search for better ways to do things however doesn’t stop. Nations hold elections. But policies can be reversed, or turn out to be right all along. But people keep passing on knowledge, which is accumulating at an ever-accelerating rate. We will work stuff out. In time.

Meanwhile a billion people still subsist by patchy subsistence agriculture. Between the relentless march of new miracles, and the acquisition of already acquired technology by new users, there’s centuries of improvement in the human condition, economic growth, right there. Meanwhile Britain is climbing UP the economic rankings. Real wages appear to be growing sustainably and the growth returns.

Signal to noise ratio, people. Neither the world, nor Britain is ‘going to the dogs’, there’s no need to vote UKIP. 2014 was the best year in human history. 2015 will be even better.

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Landing a Probe on a Comet vs Tackling Poverty

On March 2, 2004, an Ariane 5 rocket took off from French Guiana containing the Rosetta spaceship. A few days later, having escaped the earth’s gravity and put into a heliocentric orbit, Rosetta commenced a 10-year 6,500,000,000 km journey which involved taking slingshots off the earth (three times) and Mars (once) to rendez-vous  with a rubber-duck-shaped snowball the size of Cambridge 300,000,000 miles away, moving at 42,000 kmh, Having achieved the rendez-vous, a dishwasher sized probe with three harpooned legs was to be released to float down to the surface of the comet, as it hurtled through space. Touchdown was achieved on 12th November 2014. 

This is, quite simply a technical and scientific achievement equivalent to putting man on the moon. To my mind it is enough that it’s there to do, but this isn’t just an everest for rocket engineers. We will get data on the origins of the early solar system, and possibly the origins of life on earth from this mission. We will know more about what comets are made of. Much of this is pure science of little immediate or practical use. Put charitably “Why are we firing rockets at snowballs in space?” is a question about opportunity cost. What did society forgo to achieve this soft landing on a comet. And the answer is “not much”.
There is a complaint that “we should be curing cancer” or “ending poverty” with the money spent on space exploration. “What good is it to me?” some ask. I’m tempted to dismiss such soulless utilitarianism as the bleatings of one who’s already dead inside. The point about pure science is that it leads to who knows what future advances that solve real problems. Perhaps vital resources can be recovered from comets cheaply. We might learn a bit about the composition of objects that might hit earth, potentially generating knowledge that saves life on earth from extinction. To ask “what is this for?” is to betray a total lack of imagination. If nothing else a nine-year old might be watching the probe land on a planet and be enthused to become an engineer, and go on to do something we haven’t even thought of yet.
“End Poverty”? Benefits paid to poor people are not where they are because they’re the most that can be afforded. We could afford to pay the unemployed more to live on, or top up low wages by more. The reason they’re low is because of the freeloader effect. The higher benefits are relative to work, the more attractive benefits become, and the lower the returns to work. People do not want to work hard to pay taxes to fund a comfortable life-style for those who don’t. More people would choose benefits over work. Thus benefits are set at a level which means live subsisting on them is pretty rotten. Any more would be politically impossible to sustain. Besides, poverty isn’t solved by cash transfers, but by work, and trade and free markets. This is the same thing that will ultimately cure disease. That and the application of pure science.
“Curing diseases?”Aids or Ebola will be cured by free trade with Africa, allowing their farmers access to our markets. Such trade will stimulate road building; roads, which unlike those to mines, go to where Africans live and work. Roads stimulate trade. With trade comes a cold-chain. That means vaccinations. Vaccinations mean healthier people. Healthier people do better in education, making them more productive. Being productive, means being richer, and being richer means people wear watches. And when people wear watches, they know when to take their anti-retrovirals. And if people take their anti-retrovirals, their HIV blood counts go down, making them less infectious. Less infectious means fewer infections. And fewer infections which become chronic rather than fatal conditions will lead to the steady decline in AIDS infection rates we’ve seen in the west. 
In developing all the above, a few decent health-centres and hospitals will mean Ebola will not spread when it’s first identified. How much will this cost us? Less than we spend stopping it happening now. (Farm Subsidies like the CAP are, you see, wholly, genocidally evil). Trade you see is not Zero-Sum. Africans get richer because the market for their produce increases. We get richer because more people are competing to supply our markets so we get things cheaper (and vice versa). We’re both richer. 
Cure cancer? It’s difficult to see how a rocket engineer could help there. There’s very little tangible that can be done in that regard that isn’t being done now. There’s already good money in curing cancer. So if we cannot give more money to the poor, cure Aids Ebola or Cancer with the money, why not give us something inspirational? To encourage us to let slip the surly bonds of earth and look out to the stars. That’s a public good, that is. But to cure poverty or whatever, we need to stop the Government doing bad stuff to Africans, not stop it doing wholly amazing, inspirational science.
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No, Abi, the Poppy Is Not associated with Racism, Nationalism and Islamophobia.

Abi Wilkinson, a generally thoughtful breed of lefty, has nevertheless, in this article, succumbed to the temptation of projecting her prejudices onto something she doesn’t understand and in doing so caused some offence. I said I would explain why thought she had written a bad article.

The fact is, poppies have become less a symbol of genuine grief and recognition of the soldiers who have fallen fighting in our country’s armed forces, and more a compulsory signifier that a person is on ‘our side’.

The phrase “The fact is” rarely comes before a fact. But it is easy to see why people could think the Poppy divisive. The men in uniform, the pageantry, the national unity, are redolent to the triumphalism of empire which makes much of the left uncomfortable. They’re wrong.

British history has its shameful moments, something the right is often guilty of ignoring, however Remembrance is not the season to dwell on these. Broadly, the British Empire was a force for good, trying to leave Cricket, the Rule of Law, democracy and Railways behind. That this was a stated aim of the British Empire is something the left is loathe to admit. Historians should not be seeking to impose a narrative based on today’s values or seek to “prove” something for the benefit of one political view today; rather we should learn the lessons of history, so the horrors can be avoided, and the triumphs learned from. That requires admissions of failure as well as a celebration of successes.

The armed forces who have for four hundred years fought in support of one of the most stable and prosperous democracies on earth, have every right to take pride in the successes, and remember that our freedom is bought with a heavy price. This country took part in, but then dismantled the Global Slave trade, fought European dictators from Napoleon to Hitler, offered a parliamentary model of democracy which has proved itself far more stable than the presidential  model exported by France or the USA. A British soldier has died overseas in the service of his country every year since 1666, with one exception: 1968.

I grew up with the Cold War raging. We, as part of the Alliance of democracies beat international communism, as we defeated European Fascism. The Army I joined was trying to put the former Yugoslavia and Sierra Leone together. And the Army I have served has been in Far off Dusty places for the last decade and a half. The world is undoubtedly a better place for it, taken as a whole, though the merits of each campaign can be debated. Recently the mother lode of bad ideas making people miserable round the world stems from the creed of Radical Islamism. Abi’s political ideas were formed when ‘the enemy our boys are fighting’ were mostly Muslims.

So from there it’s a simple mental jump to regard the British Armed Forces are mostly a tool to fight Muslims, conveniently forgetting previous decades, and centuries of idealogies and enemies defeated. And to a limited extent, amongst some people, the poppy has become a ‘them and us’ symbol. If you don’t wear the poppy you are one of “them”. This was as true, and to the same extent, for the leftists and communists and Irish, as it is for  Muslims now. It has never been significant.

Propaganda images pitting our soldiers (deserving of state support) and ‘immigrants’ (greedy, reviled and a drain on state resources) are the bread and butter of this [Britain First].

Britain first are capable of putting together emotive Internet memes, but little more. But theirs is not, and will not be the majority or even significant view, though they are tapping into genuine if misinformed hostility to immigration. Most soldiers I know find Britain First’s mawkish parasitism on their profession faintly ridiculous. The real experience of remembrance can instead be found at war memorials up and down the country you will see proud men and women, many wearing medal ribbons, remembering those they fought alongside who didn’t come home.

Remembrance isn’t about the  political posturing at the Cenotaph or people sharing memes on Facebook; and certainly not a Newspapers encouragement of a Poppy hijab. Instead it is about the smaller, more personal ceremonies at village memorials, regimental parade grounds and churches up and down the country. I think of the village on Skye where my Grandfather grew up. There are five houses and a pub. There are eight names on the war memorial. And five more from World War 2. You will not see any hostility there to anyone there. Just bow your head and reflect why we have the freedom to speak freely to our rulers and how dearly it has been bought.

Last year saw my Unit’s wreath laid at Westminster Abby. The year before that, I was on an Army base. The year before that, with my Brother in Yorkshire. So my experience of Remembrance is likely to be very different to Abi’s, who I suspect is not moved as I am by the sacrifices of our Soldiers, nor as proud of what they have achieved.

Wear a Poppy. Don’t wear a poppy. Wear a  white poppy if you think such private pride and grief is really something you feel needs challenging. Thousands of men died in Normandy 70 years ago in part for your right to do so. Abi’s journalistic mistake is to imagine her experience of Remembrance, filtered through a miasma of political beliefs, and distorted by selection bias and availability heuristic, and imagine it to be universal. I would invite her to Remembrance ceremony with me next year to see for herself.

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On “Assisted Dying”.

I don’t like Euphemism.

Let’s be absolutely clear what “assisted dying” is. It is asking a Doctor to kill you. Sure, a terminally ill patient, in theory, pulls the trigger, but it’s the doctor that sets up the drip, inserts the catheter and explains exactly how the drugs will kill you by suppressing your respiratory function after you drift out of conciousness. The principle that doctors don’t deliberately kill people is valuable, and should not be thrown away lightly.

I see no benefit in prolonging suffering. But equally, the fears that pressure will be put upon vulnerable old people to tidy themselves up, are not invalid. I think about my Late Nana who went into hospital shortly after her husband died, and who, at that time had very little interest in life, but who fought off her illnesses and went on for another quarter of a century of much-loved political incorrectness and cantankerousness. Would she have come out of hospital in the late ’90s were the pain too easy to take away?

Death isn’t tidy or comfortable. For some it is a blessed relief from suffering. But I suspect that is less widespread than campaigners for changes to the law believe. Life itself is precious. We shouldn’t create a situation where a neat, tidy death is expected of an old person, as soon as they become “a burden”. Whether this is as prevalent in the Netherlands as anti-assisted dying campaigners believe, I simply don’t know. I suspect it’s going to be very difficult to tease any truth from the statistics. There are families, tired of the burden of visiting an elderly relative who will be tempted to bump of granny before she spend the inheritance on care-home fees, even as the vast majority couldn’t even conceive of anything so vile.

I don’t think people who help terminally-ill loved ones, suffering unimaginable pain, to die with dignity should be convicted of murder. The relief of suffering by killing someone who clearly and demonstrably wants to end their lives should be a defence against murder. But I still think it should be tested in court, and taking lives shouldn’t be commonplace.

Do I support the change in the law? I simply don’t know. Both sides have compelling arguments. I’m not a religious man, but I don’t, in general, think it’s healthy to pick the time we die.

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The Tour De France in Essex

Yesterday, the world’s biggest sporting event (live audience measured in Millions… there’s nothing else that comes close) travelled through Cambridgeshire, Essex and into London through the rolling countryside that the Tour organisers call “flat” but actually sap strength with lots of short, punchy little climbs that tempt you into going anaerobic to keep your speed up and which eventually cause you to ‘bonk’, especially if you forget, as I did, to eat.

I set off from home just before 8, arriving in Finchingfield at about 11.15, just as the tour procession was about to go through, scattering bits of merchandising. I reckon there were 20,000 people in Finchingfield alone. Apparently Saffron Walden was packed to the rafters and the roads were lined with people. Everyone who owed a bike within 20 miles of the course had cycled to the route, and many thousands more had driven, the lanes were lined with cars for miles around. All I wanted was a coke, because I’d ridden 42 miles, I had an empty water bottle and no food, and needed some sugar. My bike and I got separated as the procession came through, and I watched helplessly as the floats squeezed past it. Thankfully, despite it being on the course, leant up against the railings, it wasn’t confiscated or crushed by a frenchman driving a float cart. I recovered it, and set about finding somewhere to watch the race, Jersey pockets bulging with haribo and coca cola.

I very kind Farmer had put a trailer next to the route, and when I asked whether I could join them on it, I was asked whether I wanted a beer. Talk about landing on one’s feet! A hot dog was subsequently thrust into my grateful hands and the only payment was to pass on my far-from-exhaustive knowledge of cycle-racing.

You can see my trusty steed, and the gang with whom I watched the race.

What’s remarkable is the length of the procession, there are cars and motorbikes passing through for a good hour before the first cyclists arrive, in this instance Jan Barta for NetApp Endura (in blue) and Jean-Marc Bideau of the Bretangne team (in white), who were around 4 minutes ahead of the peloton at this stage.

 Once they were through, there were a couple of service cars behind them, then another wait for the Peloton. Blink and you miss them. Then there’s the convoy of team vehicles, service vehicles and so forth, and a few groups of cyclists who’re drafting them to get back into the peloton following a comfort break.

Once they’re gone, it’s time to pack up and head home, after a stop in a pub to have a bite to eat and a few beers, and watch the rest of the race. I’d like to thank Miles and Stuart a couple of Enfield CC lads who then took it upon themselves to drag me me to Bruntingfield (halfway home for me, the location of their car) far, far quicker than I could have done it myself. It’s odd, pace-lining (OK, wheelsucking) on a fully-dressed touring bike. I descended quickly, but struggled as soon as the hill went uppy. I’d like to blame the weight, but also being a fat knacker didn’t help! 

Once they’d departed, I faced a long, lonely 20 miles or so in the rain, completely forgetting to eat, I started bonking with about 10 miles to go. I arrived home at around 7 o’clock. I sat in the bath eating a sausage roll and haribo. All in all a great day in the saddle, and amazing atmosphere around the course. If the Tour comes back to the UK, and I am sure it will, I highly recommend going to see it.

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Hankering after a Better Yesterday

When I was 19, getting pissed and partying, with school receding into distant memory, and university finals  still a long way away, hangovers were something that happened to other people, and I was made of rubber and kevlar. I could run the 2.4km of the British Army’s basic fitness test in a little under 9 minutes. I had enough money from loans, parental indulgence, holiday jobs and the TA to do more or less whatever I wanted. I had no responsibilities and the body as one ex-girlfriend said “of a Greek God”. Skiing seemed to be free – often provided by the Army, when it wasn’t by parents, and when you’re a 19 year-old officer cadet, chalet girls throw themselves at you in Dick’s T Bar. life couldn’t get any better.

Couldn’t and didn’t.

Life is a little more complicated now. Money vanishes, however quickly I earn it. I have little free time, and when I do, I am tired. I cannot party till 4 am, then go play rugby, which when I get trampled by a 20-stone prop, hurts more than I seem to remember. I no longer bounce. Shoulders have been dislocated many times. Knees ache. I wheeze round that same fitness test in around 12 minutes (which is a big, fat, freddy FAIL, even if I can do more press-ups than back then). People rely on me. I do have enough money, now, but it’s taken a decade to get there. If I look like a God, it’s Buddah. Or maybe one of the bad ones from the Disc World.

The fact is, for most people, the best time of your life is 15-25.

The reason most people think “life was better back in the day” is because for them, (and me and everyone else over 35) it was. People fondly imagine a better world, but its just that you felt less pain and responsibility as a teenager. No-one sets off brightly into the world wanting to sit at a desk and talk to people on the phone all day. No-one tells you the pressure of the mortgage, bills, the tax return and all the shit you deal with as an adult. The ability to have a fucking Mars bar at the supermarket checkout whenever you want is scant consolation for all the rest of the crap. Not only are people reliant on you, the fact you’re not PM, decorated war hero, racing driver, star of stage and screen, or billionaire entrepreneur you set out to be, is a itch at the back of your mind. Why didn’t I get there?

Yet, on any measurable metric, the world is better than it was in the 70’s and 80’s. People live longer, there’s less racsim, the world is not threatened by global thermonuclear war, crime is down, cars are better. People who wear flares or Euro-Fluro weightlifting pants are rightly laughed at. Yet people still hanker after that better yesterday they remembered. Because they were young and confident. And now they’re (we’re) washed up failures.

This is why I despise UKIP. This hankering for a better yesterday is futile. Bringing back grammar schools won’t make the baby-boomer’s lives pan out any better than it did. UKIP is about fetishising a few tokenistic policies, and blaming Eurocrats and immigrants for the fact that John from Solihull is now a small-town accountant, not a premiership footballer. It’s not David Cameron’s fault you’re no longer banging 19 year-old lovelies, any more than Gerhardt Shroeder is responsible for your pay-packet.

The UK isn’t “full”
The EU isn’t “ripping us off”
“LibLabCon” aren’t “all the same”
It doesn’t cost £50m per day. That’s a GROSS figure you dribbling morons.
There is no “political elite”, though there are professional politicians, this isn’t the same thing.
David Cameron isn’t “a closet Europhile”
There’s no conspiracy.

You’re just an angry twat who’s stopped listening because he doesn’t like the answer, and can’t tell the difference between personal and national decline. “Common sense” you say? That’s just what stupid people do instead of thinking.

It’s just Ano-Domini. We all grew up. All except UKIPpers who’re still stamping their feet, blaming whoever’s nearest for their own inadequacies. And boy, are there a lot of those.

UKIP: A contemptible party of by and for stupid, angry people.

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Why Evidence-Based Policy is a Bad Thing.

Who could possibly be against “evidence-based” policy?

Via Dr Brook Magnanti on Twitter.

The problem is very simple. It’s almost impossible to conduct experiments in the social sciences. No government can alter one economic variable and measure the outcome. The noise to signal ratio is absurdly high. What you’re left with is explanations of the data that may or may not stumble on the actual causality.

Some things are obviously and self-evidently stupid. Socialism for example – high marginal tax-rates, nationalisation, closing down markets where possible in favour of state monopolies failed. And in as perfect an economic experiment as any undertaken, two nations, both shattered by war and populated by Germans went head to head. The Capitalist system turned out to be much, much less shit than socialism. Yet many social “scientists” still seem intent on manufacturing evidence that the solutions once tried in East Germany are not only feasible, but that any other approach is both doomed to failure and wicked.

Instead of evidence-based policy, what you often get is policy-based “evidence”. You have the same political arguments, dressed up in a kind of pseudo scientific hocus-pocus.

Take the “debate” about minimum pricing as a classic example.

First make a heroic assumption. Assume a fall in alcohol consumption per head is desirable (it isn’t, what we want to do is reduce “problem” drinking). Second, ignore the fact that your desired outcome is happening anyway. Third, ignore all the evidence that “problem” drug-takers have a lower elasticity of demand and assume that minimum pricing will mostly affect the consumption by alcoholics. Fourth, express these assumptions in a spreadsheet, with no real-world evidence. Fifth, describe this spreadsheet as a “model“. The zeroth step is, of course to get a university to describe you as “professor” first. Then you’re able to tout your guesswork and call it “evidence”, to politicians, and unmolested by any critical thought on the Today program and be paid handsomely from tax-payers’ funds to make this “evidence” up into the bargain.

So you have an “evidence-based” policy to impose a minimum unit price on Alcohol. It’s regressive, and probably won’t work. It will reduce moderate drinking by sensible people, making them at the margin, unhappier. It is unlikely to reduce problem drinking, but may make problem drinkers substitute clothes, or food, or heating for their more expensive booze. Nice one. Everyone’s poorer.

The same is true with social services’ interventions in family. You can point to the number of successful interventions, but there’s no-one measuring the opportunity cost of responsibility not taken, or families broken up unnecessarily. Or regulation in Banking – it’s impossible to deliver a counter-factual, and everyone’s trying to defend their decisions.

Or climate-change. Whilst I’m almost convinced the climate’s changing, and we’re responsible, what’s preventing me being ACTUALLY convinced by the evidence for Anthropogenic climate change caused by C02 etc… is that no-one’s funding research into any other hypotheses. All research grants flow through councils who’re totally committed to a single theory. The lack of understanding of feedback loops, and the total lack of any predictive power of the models suggests our understanding of a chaotic system like the climate is limited. We’re probably on the right lines, but anyone who thinks otherwise is effectively shut out of funding. Therefore the shriller the POLITICAL consensus for wind-farms (for example) the less convinced I am by the SCIENTIFIC consensus. The obvious nonsenses from both sides (look at the weather – there’s climate change flooding your house/Ha! climate scientists stuck in the ice) means this is becoming less about science, and more about political articles of faith. There’s been too much policy-based evidence-making based more on distaste/support for big business, than any climate scientists’ actual views. And what does a climate scientist know about the economics of electricity generation anyway?

You can go through almost any area where government claims to be “evidence-based”. The evidence given to politicians is nearly always policy-based. This is why politicians make crap decisions, and they’d be better off just leaving us alone.

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Slavery

Perhaps slavery would have been abolished in the Americas nearly a century earlier, had the Colonists lost the war of Independence?

Most wars are about economic matters, and it’s difficult to over-state how central slavery was to the economy of early America. Yet in 1772, the Somersett Case brought before the King’s Bench which concerned a slave brought to England by a Customs official, and concluded that chattel slavery was unsupported by common law. “The air of England“, as was argued by Somersett’s council “is too pure for a slave to breathe“. Hundreds of American slaves attempted to make the passage to England and freedom following this ruling. Just four years later, the Colonists declared independence. I do not believe these facts are unrelated. George Washington was a major slave-owner as was Thomas Jefferson. Both men appeared to know the institution was wrong, but felt unable to do all that much about it.

The war of Independence was, as the US Civil War a century later, at least in part about slavery. Washington resisted free blacks in the Continental army in which around 500 served for fear of the principle it would set to slaves. America’s first Emancipation proclamation (in reality, a fairly desperate last throw of the dice by someone hoping a slave rebellion would carry the day for the Crown) was issued by the Governor of Virginia, Lord Dunmore in 1775. Thousands of freed slaves fought for the British side against the colonists. While the Dunmore proclamation may have hastened the end of slavery in the American colonies had the British won, the abolition of slave trade (1806) and the abolition of slavery in the British Empire (1833) may have had a much harder run. The abolitionists would have faced a greater array of more powerful economic interests.

It’s a comforting Narrative for the Englishman therefore that slavery was abolished in the British Empire before it was in most other European and American powers, and that having done so, the might of the Royal Navy was deployed in suppressing the trade. This does not absolve the UK, or the British Empire of the stain of slavery. While the British may have been the first power to end slavery, while the slave trade was legal, and for some time while it wasn’t, the British economy was enormously boosted by the trade in humans, which ceased when it was becoming less economically viable. The British and Portuguese were by far the biggest slave traders for over 200 years.

Around 11m (estimates vary hugely) Africans were forcibly removed over the 300 years of the triangular Atlantic trading route, of which slaves from West Africa to the Americas formed the “middle passage”. This devastated the societies and economies of the entire continent, and left much of Africa, even into the interior, a low-trust society to this day. Unlike the Black Death in Western Europe, an equivalent tragedy, which left the remaining people richer, the slave trade left societies in which people could not invest in land or technology because of the ever-present risk of kidnap. There is evidence that many tribes actually regressed, abandoning technologies such as crop-rotation and the plough in response to this onslaught. Much of West Africa is corrupt, violent and poor as a direct legacy of the Slave trade.

The societies which escaped the worst excesses colonialism and slavery, notably Namibia and Botswana, are doing much better than the rest of Africa to this day probably because their tribal institutions and societies weren’t ruptured by grotesque incentives of the slave trade. The south was poorer and remains poorer than the rest of the USA because of slavery and Jim Crow. The “special institution” has devastated Africa and left America uncomfortable in its soul following centuries of Race-laws, hate, fear and torture in the Southern states. It’s a special kind of evil that poisoned everything it touched and does so to this day.

And that’s before we consider the individual human cost. Millions of lives lost to sickness, violence, warfare and simply being thrown overboard should the middle passage prove longer than counted for in supplies. Think about that for a minute.

This may not have happened on the Tecora, on the voyage depicted in Amistad, but it did happen.

It’s not an exaggeration to conclude the industrial trade in Humans, at which the British once excelled, is a historic crime of an equivalent magnitude to the Holocaust. This is why I do not get angry when politicians talk about reparations for slavery. I am rich and free and many Africans poor, in part because of the enduring legacy of slavery.

Why am I writing this now? I read ’12 years a slave’ by Solomon Northup the movie of which is to be released in the UK shortly. The more I read, the more fascinating I find the entire grotesque, horrifying business. It’s a short book, and one I urge you to read before you go see the movie.

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