Quotulatiousness

May 16, 2012

Scotland’s latest moral panic, soon to spread to England

Filed under: Britain, Government, Health, Liberty — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:00

A spectre is haunting Scotland: the spectre of cheap booze and binge drinkers. The most recent regulatory answer, raising the minimum price of alcohol, won’t solve the problem.

Scotland announced minimum pricing for alcohol this week, at 50p a unit; the price of the cheapest spirits will now rise by almost 50%. It will arrive in England soon, although possibly at the more timid rate of 40p per unit. It will only make a tiny difference, says the government, as it contemplates raising prices for a commodity almost all citizens enjoy (86% of the adult population drink alcohol), and at a time when prices are rising everywhere.

So why bother doing it? The government says it will save lives, even as it announces the speed limit on some motorways will be raised to 80mph, which will cost lives. I am not sure if the deaths created on the roads will be offset by the lives saved from gin, but it seems that more deaths on the roads are acceptable, but more deaths from alcohol are not. Do I smell snobbery? David Cameron says that alcohol “generates mayhem on our streets and spreads fear in our communities” — so I suppose I do.

Minimum pricing is a result of a national moral panic about alcohol, which follows on the trail of moral panics about tobacco and obesity, which are created by the tabloids and their beloved pictures of girls vomiting into gutters with their skirts hitched round their waists; there is a whole crocodile of moral panics, squeezing its way into Downing Street as more important issues are ignored.

[. . .]

Drinking is something that terrifies some but delights many. Drinkers can be ghastly, but so can politicians, and so can sober politicians. Minimum pricing comes from an ancient place – the desire for a neat society – and it expresses Cameron’s desire to appear to be doing something, while he does nothing elsewhere. Where one stands on minimum pricing depends entirely on whether you believe it is a person’s unalienable right to get shit-faced drunk at the market price, no matter what your income. When so many rights are threatened, who would dispute it?

May 14, 2012

Scottish minimum alcohol pricing: “Health fascism is back with a vengeance”

Filed under: Britain, Bureaucracy, Government, Health, Liberty — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:30

A released statement from Sam Bowman, Head of Research at the Adam Smith Institute, responding to Scotland’s minimum alcohol price decision:

“Minimum alcohol pricing is a miserable, Victorian-era measure that explicitly targets the poor and the frugal, leaving the more expensive drinks of the middle classes untouched. It’s regressive and paternalistic, treating people as if they’re children to be nannied by the government.

“To make things worse, all signs suggest that the minimum price will be successively raised once it’s in place. This is what happened in the UK with alcohol and tobacco taxes, which are now among the highest in the world. It’s like boiling a frog – bring in a low minimum price that only affects the most marginalized part of society, the poor, and raise it gradually every year without people noticing.

“The reality is that Britain does not have a drink problem. The definition of “binge drinking” has been redefined so that a grown man drinking more than two pints of lager is considered to be “binging”. The number of diseases defined as “alcohol-related” has tripled in the last twenty-five years. In fact, we drink less than we did ten years ago, less than we did one hundred years ago, and far less than we did in the 19th Century. Hysteria about drinking alcohol is a red herring invented by the health lobby. Health fascism is back with a vengeance, and minimum alcohol pricing is just another brick in the wall.”

May 12, 2012

What’s in a name? Just centuries of military tradition

Filed under: Britain, Bureaucracy, Military — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 11:33

The military bureaucrats and their civilian masters are well on the way to stamping out all those awfully old-fashioned names and symbols of the Scottish highland regiments:

Senior Downing Street sources said David Cameron is not yet at the stage of overruling Philip Hammond, his Defence Secretary, over his proposal to replace iconic names like the Black Watch with battalion numbers.

But they were keen to emphasise that no final decision has been made and the Prime Minister is aware of the potential political damage to the campaign to prevent Scotland separating from the UK.

[. . .]

Fury has been mounting since the Defence Secretary told the Daily Telegraph earlier this week that the “ancient cap badges have largely gone” and some traditional regimental names are now just “attached in brackets”.

Under Mr Hammond’s proposals, the Black Watch, 3rd Battalion the Royal Regiment of Scotland (3 SCOTS), would become just 3 SCOTS and the Argyll and Sutherland Highlands would be names 5 SCOTS.

[. . .]

The former Labour Government faced a fierce backlash when the battalions were amalgamated in 2005 to form the Royal Regiment of Scotland, but they were promised they could keep their historic names.

Jeff Duncan, who managed the Save Scotland’s Army Regiments campaign, said yesterday it had restarted and nearly 1,500 had signed up in only 48 hours using the social networking site Facebook.

April 27, 2012

Michael Ignatieff’s incautious remarks prove he was the wrong leader for the Liberal party

Filed under: Britain, Cancon, Media — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:05

Matt Gurney on the media kerfuffle over Michael Ignatieff’s perhaps-quoted-out-of-context remarks on Quebec and separation:

Michael Ignatieff is not entirely right when he claims his now infamous remarks on the inevitability of Quebec’s independence, made during a BBC interview discussing Scotland’s possible exit from the United Kingdom, were taken out of context. He is correct that the sound bites that aroused so much media interest in Canada did not do justice to the full interview. But, in the final analysis, he did indeed say, in clear terms, that Canada and Quebec are essentially two counties, that they have little to say to each other and that Quebec is at a “way station” on its inevitable road to full sovereignty. Ignatieff, a brilliant man whose political instincts remain as faulty as ever, may regret saying what he did, but he did say it.

Separatist politicians welcomed his comments, as it “confirms” that Quebec’s independence is inevitable. Federalist politicians, particularly those unkindly disposed toward the Liberals, slammed Ignatieff, and the party he led for good measure. It was all premised upon the idea, whether sincerely believed by Ignatieff’s critics or not, that his comments may in some way encourage Quebec to leave.

That’s unlikely. But it might — just might — hasten along the day when the Rest of Canada (the ROC, as it’s called) decides to rid itself of Quebec.

Ignatieff described the situation we face as Quebec and Canada having nothing to say to each other. That’s not exactly it. It’s not that we don’t have anything to say, it’s just that we don’t have anything in common. And the more we talk to each other, the clearer that becomes. But that growing distance between Quebec and the ROC is not, as Ignatieff described it, a “contract of mutual indifference.” If it was, that would be fine. But that isn’t the system we built. Quebec’s indifference to the ROC comes at a cost — almost $7.4-billion in transfers from other Canadian provinces a year. That’s effectively half of the total sum dispersed through the equalization process. That’s not indifference, that’s bribery. And the price Quebec is willing to settle for is not necessarily the price the ROC will be willing to pay indefinitely.

April 13, 2012

Mapping 18th century shipping patterns

Filed under: Africa, Americas, Asia, Economics, Europe, History, Science — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:06

An interesting post at the Guardian on tracing historical shipping patterns:


(Larger version at the original URL)

James Cheshire, of Spatial Analysis, has taken historical records of shipping routes between 1750 and 1800 and plotted them using modern mapping tools.

The first map, above, shows journeys made by British ships. Cross-Atlantic shipping lanes were among the busiest, but the number of vessels traveling to what was than called the East Indies — now India and South-East Asia — also stands out when compared to Dutch and Spanish records.

I was surprised to see how many trading voyages there were to and from the Hudson Strait — fur trade traffic, I assume.


(Larger version at the original URL)

This second map shows the same data for Dutch boats. The routes are closely matched to the British ones, although the number of journeys is noticeably smaller.

You can also see the scattering of journeys made by Dutch ships to Svalbard, off the North coast of the Norwegian mainland

March 29, 2012

Edinburgh may be killing the cultural golden goose

Filed under: Britain, Bureaucracy, Liberty, Media — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:46

Tiffany Jenkins talks about the origins of the world famous Edinburgh Fringe Festival and the powers-that-be who seem to be determined to strangle it with red tape:

In 1947, eight theatre groups turned up to perform at the newly formed Edinburgh International Festival, an annual event established to celebrate and enrich postwar European cultural life. The theatre groups had not been invited, and were not part of the official programme. So instead they created a spontaneous festival on the side. Growing year on year, with the theatre groups encouraging others to participate, this alternative to the Edinburgh International Festival eventually established itself, in 1959, as the Festival Fringe Society.

Today, Scotland is home to some of the top cultural events in the world. Many take place in Edinburgh during the August months, attracting high-profile authors, artists, comics and theatre companies from all over the globe. At the heart of this cultural firmament is the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, an event now funded and supported by government and local councils. Yet, in a nasty twist, those very same central and local authorities, currently enjoying the prestige of being associated with a world-renowned festival of culture, are seemingly intent on stifling the spontaneous, do-it-yourself impulse that originally gave birth to the Fringe.

[. . .]

From 1 April 2012, it will become necessary to have a ‘Public Entertainment License’ to undertake any kind of public art in Scotland. Previously a licence was only required for events charging admission. Starting next month, even the smallest local events being run for free — say in a café or a bookshop — will require one, which must be applied for six weeks beforehand. This will include exhibitions in temporary places, gigs in record shops, free film screenings, music in pubs. You know, even really dodgy stuff — like poetry readings to 10 men and a dog.

Apart from the form-filling and curtailment of spontaneity — you cannot just ring around a few friends and suggest a performance at the weekend — this will cost money too. In the past, fees for a ‘public entertainment licence’ have ranged from £120 to £7,500, requiring several months’ notice to be given to the council and three weeks public notice. Nothing will happen without long-term planning. Small venues, like cafes, which support artists and performers by hosting free events, won’t be able to cover the costs. And they shouldn’t have to. Art doesn’t need a licence, and nor do we to enjoy it.

What we are seeing is the hyper-regulation of everyday life where anything we choose to do spontaneously and between ourselves is seen as dangerous or threatening. The authorities want to monitor, codify and regulate the most normal, everyday interactions and behaviour.

January 24, 2012

Scottish Americans: nostalgia compounded of Braveheart, whisky tours, and castles

Filed under: Britain, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:35

The BBC looks at the views of Scotland held by Scottish Americans:

It’s the time of year when Americans everywhere get in touch with their Scottish roots, however tangled and distant they might be, as they celebrate Burns Night.

The concept of Scottish identity has recently been invigorated as plans for a referendum on independence take shape in Holyrood. So what do Americans with Caledonian ancestry make of the debate?

[. . .]

Their vision of Scotland is mostly taken from movies like Braveheart, Mel Gibson’s 1995 tale of Scottish rebel William Wallace, who leads an uprising against an English tyrant, says Mr Forbes.

Few have any idea what modern Scotland is like, he adds, and if they do it will have been picked up from dark and twisted tales like Trainspotting or Shallow Grave.

“There are elements of truth in what people believe the whole of Scotland to be but it is not the whole truth. If you look at the marketing of Scotland, you see these broad mountainous vistas, these sparkling lakes, these old castles.

“They don’t talk about the Silicon Glen, they don’t talk about the industry around the northern oil fields.”

[. . .]

Members of a Gaelic speaking society are, apparently, still smarting after their inquiries about promoting the language in Scotland were batted away by Scottish government officials, who told them that more people speak Farsi than Gaelic in modern Scotland.

John King Bellassai, former president of the DC St Andrews Society, says Scottish Americans tend to let romance cloud their judgement when it comes to an independent Scotland

January 10, 2012

Scottish independence on the front-burner

Filed under: Britain, Government, History — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:31

An interesting summary of the independence debate in Scotland from The Economist:

Put up or shut up. That is the risky (but arguably rather canny) message that David Cameron has sent to the pro-independence head of the Scottish devolved government in Edinburgh, Alex Salmond. Specifically, Mr Cameron has announced that the British government and Westminster Parliament are willing to give Mr Salmond the referendum on Scotland’s future that he says he wants — as long as it is a proper, straight up-and-down vote on whether to stay in the United Kingdom or leave, and is held sooner rather than later.

It is not that Mr Cameron wants to break the three hundred year old union between London and Edinburgh. Both emotionally and intellectually, he is fiercely committed to the union as a source of strength for both Scotland and Britain, insist Conservative colleagues who have discussed the question with him. Publicly, he has pledged to oppose Scottish independence with “every fibre” of his being.

But Mr Cameron and his ministers also feel that Scotland has been drifting in a constitutional limbo, ever since Mr Salmond’s Scottish National Party (SNP) won an outright majority at Scottish parliamentary elections in 2011 (a feat that was supposed to be impossible, under the complex voting system used in Scotland). The SNP campaigned on a simple manifesto pledge to hold a referendum on the future of Scotland. But after his thumping win Mr Salmond slammed on the brakes and started talking about holding a consultative vote in the second half of his term in office, ie, some time between 2014 and 2016.

January 5, 2012

The quest to re-create Shackleton’s whisky

Filed under: Britain, History, Science — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 14:01

Your wee dram of SCIENCE! How they managed to re-create the whisky from Mackinlay & Co. that Ernest Shackleton’s Antarctic expedition took along in 1907:

How was the re-creation carried out? Dr. James Pryde, chief chemist at Whyte and Mackay, subjected the samples to a comprehensive chemical analysis, in conjunction with a rigorous sensory analysis (that is, sniffing and tasting). Firstly, it was established that the alcoholic strength of the whisky was high enough that it very likely never froze over the years it spent interred in Antarctica. In winter, the hut reached a minimum temperature of -32.5°C, but, at 47 percent alcohol, the whisky remained liquid down to a couple of degrees cooler than that extreme. This eliminated what had been a significant source of concern about the quality of the sample, that decades of freezing and thawing had altered or ruined it. Carbon dating verified that the whisky did indeed date from the Shackleton era.

Phenol and related phenolic compounds show up in Scotch whiskies, giving them the unmistakable character that’s referred to “peaty,” because the flavor is introduced when the grain is exposed to peat smoke during the malting process. Chemical analysis revealed not only the quantity of phenolics in the Mackinlay — surprisingly low, given that era’s reputation for heavily peated malts — but also the particular balance of compounds, which enabled the experts to pinpoint what region the peat used had likely come from. The answer? Orkney.

Similarly, analysis of the compounds that result from barrel-aging was able to finger the barrels in which the whisky was aged as ones made from American oak and probably used once before to age wine or sherry. Gas chromatograph olfactometry, in which the spirit is broken down into its volatile components and each of these smelled individually by experts, gave clues as to details of the fermentation and distilling process.

November 23, 2011

Sing a song, go to jail

Filed under: Britain, Law, Liberty, Soccer — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:09

This is rather disturbing:

Imagine the scene. A dawn raid. A vanload of police officers batter down a front door. A 17-year-old boy is dragged from his home and driven away. He is charged with a crime and appears in court. His lawyers apply for bail, but the court decides his crime is too serious for that. So he is taken to a prison cell and remanded in custody.

What was his crime? Terrorism? Rape? No, this 17-year-old was imprisoned for singing a song. Where did this take place? Iran? China? Saudi Arabia? No — it was in Glasgow, Scotland, where the 17-year-old had sung songs that are now deemed by the authorities to be criminal. The youth was charged with carrying out a ‘religiously aggravated’ breach of the peace and evading arrest.

Why haven’t you heard about this case? Why aren’t civil liberties groups tweeting like mad about this affront to freedom? Because the young man in question is a football fan. Even worse, he’s a fan of one of the ‘Old Firm’ teams (Celtic and Rangers), which are renowned for their historic rivalry, and the songs he sang were football ditties that aren’t everyone’s cup of tea. Draconian new laws are being pushed through the Scottish parliament to imprison fans for up to five years for singing sectarian or offensive songs at football games, or for posting offensive comments on the internet, and this 17-year-old fell foul of these proposed laws.

November 12, 2011

Scottish Conservative Party goes non-conservative with new leader

Filed under: Britain, Politics — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 11:09

It sounds like the set-up to a joke, but it really is true: the new party leader is a lesbian kick-boxer:

The 32-year-old former BBC journalist edged out Murdo Fraser by only 566 votes in the bad-tempered contest after he argued the Tory brand was too mistrusted north of the Border for the party ever to succeed.

But Miss Davidson, who is openly gay and a kick boxer, said she will unite the deeply-divided party and attract new support from sections of Scottish society that have stopped listening to the Conservatives.

The result marks the culmination of a remarkably rapid political ascent. She joined the party two years ago and only won election as a Glasgow MSP in May after the Tories’ first-choice candidate was forced to stand down over his financial history.

She won the endorsement of only two other MSPs during the campaign, with the largest group backing Mr Fraser and his plan to replace the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party with a new organisation.

November 8, 2011

30 minutes of fireworks in 1 minute

Filed under: Britain, Randomness — Tags: — Nicholas @ 08:35

A technical glitch caused the Oban community fireworks display to be a bit more compressed than the original plan:

H/T to Roger Henry, who quipped “I imagine the fireworks guys realized that it was 30 minutes to closing time.”

September 25, 2011

View some Scottish scenery, with Danny MacAskill riding all over it

Filed under: Britain, Randomness — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 10:56

H/T to Roger Henry for the link.

September 4, 2011

Scottish Conservative party too tainted to survive, claims leadership candidate

Filed under: Britain, Politics — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 11:10

Scotland has not been kind to the Conservative party for the last few decades, and a candidate for the leadership thinks the solution is to destroy the party in order to save it:

The Scottish Tory party could be scrapped and replaced by a new centre-right party, under radical reform proposals drafted by the favourite to become its next leader.

Murdo Fraser, deputy leader of the Scottish Conservatives, will launch his campaign to head the party on Monday by claiming that its only hope to attract greater popular support would be to split off from the UK party led by David Cameron.

Fraser, a former chairman of the Scottish Young Conservatives, will argue that creating a new Scottish centre-right, tax-cutting party would allow it to build up a fresh political mandate and attract voters disenchanted by the current party, which has failed to recover significantly from 25 years of decline.

After losing every Scottish seat at the 1997 Westminster election, the party now has only one MP at Westminster, David Mundell, the Scotland Office minister. It won just 15 out of 129 seats for the Scottish parliament at the last Holyrood elections and has failed to benefit from the collapse in Liberal Democrat support in Scotland.

July 1, 2011

Duleep Allirajah: “The Most Pointless Sporting Argument Ever”

Filed under: Britain, Soccer — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 11:32

He’s quite right: this has to be the nadir of international sporting debates:

Where do you stand on the controversial issue of a Great Britain football team? Disgusted that the British Olympic Association is threatening the independence and proud traditions of the home football nations? Angered that the Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish associations are trying to thwart the Olympic dreams of their young players? Or, like me, do you want to be woken up when The Most Pointless Sporting Argument Ever is over?

If you’re wondering why the proposal for a unified British football team has caused such controversy, let me explain. There has never been a single UK football association. Instead, all four countries — England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland — have their own football associations. Each country is recognised by FIFA as a separate entity even though they are not sovereign nations. It’s one of the residual privileges enjoyed by the nation that invented the game. Although the Brits have minimal influence within FIFA, as the 2018 World Cup bid and the farcical presidential election demonstrated, all four UK nations are represented on the eight-member International Football Association Board (IFAB), which is the sport’s law-making body. The home nations also retain the right to appoint a FIFA vice-president. Although the English FA is keen on fielding a British team in the 2012 Games, the other national associations fear that their independence and FIFA privileges will be jeopardised as a result.

The debate took a farcical twist this week when the British Olympic Association (BOA) announced that an ‘historic agreement’ had been reached with all the home nations to field a Great Britain team at the Olympics. However, no sooner had the BOA made its announcement than the Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland football associations angrily denied that any agreement had been reached. Oops!

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