Jim Stewart's Blog

Struck me today that the message Biden delivered and the message Trump delivered was essentially the same “Make America Great”.

The difference was in the definition of “great”.

And what a difference.

So what does great mean for a country?

Trump said he was proud that he didn’t start a new war. Is that great? Is that greatest?

Theresa has said Boris has made us less great because we are no longer keeping our aid budget at 0.7%.

BREXIT is the “big opportunity” – so what changes can we make that will make us great?

I spotted somebody the other day said they still wear black socks on workdays. As usual my mind wandered – he hadn’t mentioned any other clothes – did he still wear them?

Switch to another conversation – about how waste energy from a computer can heat a house.

Move forward to a conversation about setting personal environmental goals. I mentioned the black socks guy and joked I had not changed clothes since lockdown (JOKE!!!). I just left my clothes on until they wore out – it reduced my environmental footprint.

Okay, a joke. But it got me thinking a bit more about carbon emissions. I remember a friend being proud that they used candles on world environment day instead of electric lights. It can be hard to work out the carbon footprint of a lightbulb, but it would need to be pretty massive to be worse than a candle (or rather enough candles to light a room).

Maybe a good example is the modern electric bike. What releases more carbon – a bike co-powered by a person and electricity or a bike powered by a person?

Choosing to use manual power rather than a modern alternative is not always a way to reduce carbon – the human engine is a carbon emitting device (and sometimes less environmentally friendly gases). The efficiency of a human body is not amazing if we only look at kinetic energy production.

There are some interesting calculations around, see MPG of a Human by Tom Murphy. The crucial issue seems to be around things like the energy of food production.

The inference is that either energy efficient food production or a thoroughly modern energy efficient lifestyle are more beneficial than many of the middle options. Being lukewarm seems to be the option to avoid.

“When we had a [Brexit] deal, I thought, we’re saved all the rigmarole and hassle, it’ll work sweet as a nut, but it hasn’t happened,” says Mr Flannigan. Instead, he says, it feels like the clock’s been turned back 30 years.

BBC News

Actually nearer 50 years. A complaint was that the load was incorrectly marked – the VRI code they used on the pallets was “UK”. Okay – the requirement was to mark it with the same mark we all use on our cars. We started using GB in 1910 (although driving licences retained UK till 1922).

As part of my job I have had to look at reasons loads don’t move, and a large number of the problems are because people get the paperwork wrong. I have suggested to industry bodies that they need to provide help for their members – with little response.

So yes I have sympathy for the fish rotting on trucks, but actually I have little sympathy. You see a lot of companies have been using a lot of the new paperwork for a year already. So there has been a lack of preparation by some companies.

But even going back further and looking at who caught which fish where and sold it to which country it was obvious that the ability to make money from exporting fish was going to be much harder with Brexit. But Nigel led his flag waving flotilla on the Thames and they all believed.

In America Trump waved the flag and told them he would do things for them and they believed.

In Scotland Nicola waved the flag and said they would all be better if she was president, and they all believed.

You would think COVID might be a tool to combat the blindness, but it doesn’t seem so. This is a religion, a cult, where faith supersedes facts. But it has been growing for a long time – the hippy greens are an excellent example – “the man” was the enemy.

Watching the film about the Watergate cover up it was quite obvious how blind faith in politicians and an evil corrupt press (sound familiar) was the tool of the criminal (and when I say criminal I guess I include a lot of good meaning people that facilitated evil).

One of the old sayings effectively implied that we bought the newspaper that supported our view of the world. Now we use the social media that supports our view as well.

As I walked around Greenbelt festival last year (2019) I was impressed by the number of speakers that were there to encourage people to keep on with their thinking, and how few were there to challenge us to change our thinking.

We need to make sure we live in a world that includes people that disagree with us.

I woke up with a start. Mild panic. Where is my library card?

There is absolutely no way I will be needing it for a few months, and I have not needed it for the last 9 months, so why it popped into my head in the middle of the night I will never know.

Anyway – I couldn’t get it out of my head, so from time to time today I searched for where it might be. I finally found it (sitting on the desk next to where I am right now).

While I was looking in all the nooks and crannies it was amazing all the stuff I found that I used to use weekly, but had been put to the side.

Was my life really that complicated?

I think it probably was.

The question is – if we get over this pandemic – what will I do? Will I fill my life with the business, or is there something else I’ll do?

I think sitting on a chair in the sun reading a book sounds like a good start.

Remember those pesticides that people were concerned could harm bees? We banned them 2 years ago didn’t we?

Have you spotted that last week an emergency exemption from the ban was issued for one of them for sugar beet seed?

A lot of people used to campaign against GMO products. But what about GE products (that’s gene edited)? GE products used to be included in the regulations covering GMO products. Now there is a consultation to exclude them if they “could have been produced by traditional breeding methods”.

But the press are just full of problems with fish exports.

Why not take a couple of minutes to express your views on GE products?

Ozzy on University Challenge

I don’t understand the question

I don’t understand the answer

And I don’t know why this is still on TV

Some four letter words edited out

It struck me that sometimes deep thinking about a subject can end up with us not seeing the wood for the trees. There are lots of specialist experts out there that can give you ideas on how to think through overthinking.

There are tried and tested ways of dealing with overthinking. The most obvious are the methods for getting to sleep – counting sheep to distract the brain. I was taught to picture windscreen wipers clearing away thoughts. It works.

I decided to apply it to Facebook this week. Instead of reading the details of posts I focussed on the feelings posts generated. I then hit the snooze button on about 6 people. Suddenly Facebook is a much more pleasant place.

The interesting thing is I am not talking about people I disagree with – it has more to do with attitudes. It is interesting how attitudes can transfer.

In the past I found myself walking down roads that were unhealthy – just because of the attitudes around me. One workplace was filled with people in it for themselves at any cost – and I found myself taking that on. I ended up leaving – and I found myself changing for the better.

Sometimes we need to make a point of surrounding ourselves with people we want to be like.

A lot of people have been calling for more regulations. Maybe even a curfew. Let me think – why would it stop virus spread if we stopped people going outside when hardly anybody is outside? Hmm.

But I understand. There are two ways to write regulations, and us frail humans like to be told “What does local mean?” “How far can we walk?” “What is the definition of exercise?”

I remember driving in the USA and when I got to Montana the speed limit sign said “Reasonable and Prudent” for cars in the daytime. That was it – no mph. So how fast could I drive? Well daytime was half an hour before sunrise to half an hour after sunset. Just to help this is part way between the normal definitions of civil and nautical definitions of twilight.

Many of us like numbers – a clear right and wrong.

Just look at the reports – what number of vaccines – what number of infections. There was a God of Number is Egypt, Seshat. One of the early Gods by all accounts, so one of the first things to be deified.

What % do you like somebody? Sounds silly, but I just found an assessment from work recently, and it put a % against all my characteristics.

I like numbers, numbers are important, but we can, like the Egyptians, treat them like a God. Sometimes we need to ignore them for our sanity. And sometimes things like sanity and mental health should not be given a number.

Watching a game show today the question was “What will you buy if you win?”

In all my time I have never heard a response “I’ll be putting it in to my saving account”.

Okay, that isn’t likely to be given as an answer. But I was actually thinking about the question – the encouragement to blow it all. To eat, drink and be merry because tomorrow we die.

I remember working with young people in the Thatcher years – and the on thing that struck me was the way so many of them stopped thinking about the future. It was now, now, now.

A lot of business was looked at in the same way. The city set rules for how to account for the future, purely based on profit now.

But finance is not the only way we should be looking at business in my view – we need to balance other factors. The effects on the environment we are seeing today come from the change in the way electricity generation was planned. Without a change in how we see the bottom line of businesses like the electricity industry we stand little chance of meeting our carbon goals.

But are we prepared to spend more for the same product, or is money still leading us by the nose.

I’ve been watching the news recently. As the virus gets bad we seem to have been looking inward more and more.

How many articles have there been about £5.20 worth of groceries (most of which were wrong BTW). How many articles are there about whether you should travel 5 miles to exercise.

At the same time the USA is burning – okay we get a few reports of that.

But did you read about the outcome of the December elections in Venezuela?

What about that white tiger born in Nicaragua?

This isn’t just about interest in other parts of the world – it is about the need to look up to stop ourselves spiralling downward.

So why not pick a country in the world and do a bit of studying about their recent news – give yourself a challenge – just to get your head in a different place.

A lot of people have been coming up with wonderful options for reducing virus transmission. So I crunched some numbers.

According to the briefing today there are around 1 in 150 people asymptomatic. What does that mean for us – well it would suggest there are 2 MacDonalds with an asymptomatic infector handing out food. It means there are around 750 Tesco deliveries each day from a driver or packer that is an asymptomatic infector.

I had been wondering if testing of people like that would make a difference. But lets be honest – even if these companies have poor hygiene it is unlikely to be a big driver of infection.

Today was my drive the car day (at least once a month I give it a tour of the village to heat up the oil, charge the battery and rotate tyres). So I took the chance to look at all the open take away places in the village. Virtually all of them had staff taking precautions (Busy Bee looked best). It was clear to me that even if the staff were asymptomatic it would be a challenge for the virus getting passed on (that is if the customer follows the guidance of plating up at home and washing hands).

However there were two where none of the staff were wearing any protective gear, and one of them had somebody eating in. The good news is that COVID would be the least of my worries in those two places.

But the message is the same – the real safety is all about how we all behave, not about rules and regulations.

Everybody seems to think “the government should”, but in reality “you should”.

Why do I say that? Well, I have had to replace my toilet seat during lockdown. Try writing a set of regulations that allows you to get a toilet seat delivered (only if you need it, not if you are just redecorating). Then stretch those rules to everything. The pandemic would be over before we finished reading the rules.

I’ve often thought the law has been becoming too prescriptive, and I think this is a good example.

The 10 commandments are a good example of simple, basic rules. “Thou shalt not kill”. Do we really need to be any more specific than that? Yes there is deliberate murder, accidental death, but do we need to separate them to know if it is right or wrong – maybe we need to discriminate when it comes to what actions you take with somebody that kills.

But there is that other one – “Don’t lie about people”. I just wonder how many of us manage to get that one right on Facebook.