Morts Musings

It’s strange how a holiday celebrating a man who denounced materialism has been turned into an orgy of shopping, it just feels wrong.

Refreshing to read a review on the Wall Street Journal – Scroogenomics: Why You Shouldn’t Buy Presents for the Holidays,” by a Wharton professor named Joel Waldfogel.

He says the deadweight loss to society from all of this frivolous spending — an “orgy of wealth destruction” as he calls it — is about £10 billion. Imagine if that money was given to charity instead?

“Throughout the year, we shop meticulously for ourselves, looking at scores of items before choosing those that warrant spending our own money. The process at Christmas, by contrast, has givers shooting in the dark about what you like… to make matters worse, we do much of this spending with credit, going into hock using money we don’t yet have to buy things that recipients don’t really want.”

Instead of delving into the ideas in depth, the interviewer seems to focus more on trying to portray Mr. Waldfogel as a scrooge when he has excellent reasons for suggesting that wealth destruction is the result of ill-considered holiday spending. Perhaps the trend towards charity gift cards, and eliminating their non-use fees, isn’t such a bad thing after all. Give to charity this Christmas by sourcing and sending genuine/ ethical charity Christmas cards

Christmas has been whored out as a gift giving orgy for decades and now, with the recession, hopefully we can break the habit.

A lot of economists say that not spending / buying gifts on Christmas hurts the economy etc etc, but ultimately where do most of the presents we buy for loved ones come from? Where does the majority of the money flow to? CHINA.

How about, this year, we start to think about stopping this shopping madness. Take a second look at those useless toys you’re planning on buying and use some of that money towards paying off your credit card. The economy will be stronger for it and there will be less toys in the dustbin come next year.

Money is completely wasted in undesired gifts. In gift giving, you received tremendous benefit – spiritually, mentally, emotionally, and physicially. This benefit is specifically derived when you give to someone you love or strong friendship and enjoy the experience of their enjoyment of the gift. That is the benefit.

The benefit of giving charity gifts is just as valuable and absolutely should be done. In fact, it would help to reduce the dependence upon government assistance in many ways.

Dubai – according to many writers and under informed travel blogs it’s a place that is good for beaches, sun and shopping; I don’t think people expect much else.

Dubai is soulless and lacks charm and culture, but I also agree that there is something snobby about Western writers bashing it for those reasons.  Germain Greer writing in the Guardian earlier this year triggered heated debate from the readers after she rubbished the city following a four hour visit.

Dubai is tacky for sure, the construction insane and it’s future, when all high-earning western expats have returned home, is shaky at best. But, like all teenagers (Dubai is still in that difficult period) one day it will wake and with an appropriate sense of embarrassment clean up it’s act and get on with it.

So, sneer at the tallest building, yes, but what has the UK got to offer back? What have you got that stacks up against the beauty of Dubai Mall or the world class vision of the Burj al Arab? Exactly. Squat Diddly. You look at the iconic vision and world class ambition of the leaders there – who give a hell of a lot to charity – and you see these are great men who could teach Gordon Brown and his mob a thing or two about running a country.

Abu Dhabi and Dubai are fast becoming international hubs for airline travel – their airports offering service and standards second to none. As a result flights to Dubai are frequent and affordable so if the opportunity arises it is a city that should be visited and your own opinions formed.

What are your thoughts on Dubai – please leave your comments

This latest conference season seems, to my eye, to have been influenced somewhat by American ways of doing politics, and in particular by Obama’s campaign to become president.
For a start there’s been a great deal of talk about “change”, not that I’m necessarily opposed to some serious changes, there is a lot that needs fixing with this country’s political, and electoral, systems.
It’s clear that I’m not the only one to think that change is needed, apart from the feel-good resonance this message might have with Obama’s aspirational speeches, I think that it’s a message which many of the UK population want to believe in, after all things seem pretty messed up at the moment so the promise of something different is bound to be attractive! The list of things which look broken is pretty stark: MP’s abusing the trust placed in them by the electorate, fiddling their expenses & breaking the rules which they expect us to live by, but rarely seeming to take responsibility, or resigning, when they do get caught; Putting the interests of big business before those of the electorate, as most clearly demonstrated by the economic crisis last year; Erosion of our civil liberties, in the “fight against terror”; Wasting resources on PFI & other projects which hand tax payer money over to big business, while our doctors, nurses & armed forces go short of funding which would allow them to perform their jobs properly; The list seems to go on and on. So, yes, change is needed.
The question really is, for all the fine words, from both sides, how much of the talk is pre-electoral rhetoric, which will be quietly forgotten once whoever wins the next election is safely entrenched in No 10? and how much of it is likely to amount to real substance?

I’m an unrepentant cynic so I tend to lean on the side that most of the talk is just that. On one side you’ve got Brown who’s track record is far from inspiring, while on the other you have Cameron, who models himself a little too closely on the Blair style of politics for my liking, in the sense that he’s clearly trying to be everything for everyone; a trick which Blair managed to pull off in ‘97, but, just like Blair, Cameron can’t possibly be all things for all people, so the question is, is he lying to his core voters, as Blair did when he sold out socialism to serve that all important electoral trophy, “Middle England”, or is our mate Dave going to revert to classic Tory form when/if he gets into power?

It’s hard to buy in to Dave and George’s “we’re all in this together” rhetoric when they’re both millionaires, from privileged backgrounds, who’ve never done a decent days work in their lives, and really, even if they tried, can’t have a proper appreciation for how hard the recent recesssion has been for the vast majority of hard working Brits; Sorry davey boy, but for all that M&S dresses are a solid British middle classed brand, getting your missus to parade around conference in one isn’t convincing anyone that you’re just another hard pressed Brit; You’re a spoilt toff with no idea what it’s like to live in the real world, and you’re not fooling anyone!
On the other hand though Gordan has a pretty shocking track record too. I feel for the man slightly in the sense that Blair stiched him right up with promises of taking over the leadership when he was done, but only handing over the reins once things were well and truly in decline; Kinda like Dr Frankinstein telling Igor that he could have the castle once the baying, pitchfork armed mob, was already at the front gates. Still, Brown’s period as PM hasn’t exactly been inspirational, he gives the impression of being a slightly awkward, but principled chap, who wants what’s best for all of us, but in this age of spin one has to look at actions more than words, and if one does Brown’s term in office doesn’t look good. Abandoning good policies to kow-tow to media driven public opinion, and allowing ministers who have clearly screwed up to keep their jobs, when the honourable thing to do would be for them to resign, doesn’t exactly reinforce the quiet but principled image.

In short this country seems to face only bad choices at the next election; Both parties are promising that they have what it takes, but it’s hard to believe in Labour, given their track record, & some of the policies which Osbourne unveiled as the cure to our economic woes seem very unpalatable to me; It’s easy for him to talk about raising the retirement age when, as a millionaire, it’s something which is never going to effect him greatly, and it’s hardly surprising that he’s all in favour of scrapping 50% income tax for top earners; It all sounds a little too much like the traditional Tory values of looking after the well off at the expense of the rest of the population.

Time will tell of course, but right now I’m not expecting much from whoever wins the next election- any party who’s capable of winning under the current system just doesn’t have that great an incentive to change things too much, and, in essence, I believe that to a large extent that’s the crux of this country’s current political woes.

While doing my rounds of various news sites during a quiet spot earlier, I came across an article called Study Predicts Effect of Global Warming on Spring Flowers, on NASA’s Earth Observatory site.

The study in question was carried out by British and Australian academics & investigated the likely effects of global warming on flowers, and other plant species. My first reaction was actually pedantic rage brought on by NASA’s use of the phrase “Global Warming“. All too often this term is used incorrectly as a synonym for climate change, and it’s one of my pet hates, since the label “global warming” implies that climate change will lead to warmer weather globally; whereas the reality of climate change is that some places will get hotter while others get colder, or that specific locations will become hotter in the summers but get colder winters than they’ve previously experienced.

In short, climate change comes down to much more than the idea that everythings going to get warmer, & I believe imprecise use of the term “global warming”, when one is talking about climate change as a whole, only adds confusion to a debate which is already bogged down in misunderstanding, statistical chicanery, &, at times, downright dishonesty.
For a start it implies that everywhere is going to get warmer, which makes some people wonder “What’s the problem, hotter summers would be nice!”, but it also gives especially ignorant anthropogenic climate change sceptics an excuse to crow on about how “global warming” is a myth, whenever it snows badly, or there’s a cold snap. Of course, what the poor fools are missing is that climate change could very well lead to much hotter, wetter summers for us in the UK, but leave us (in worse case scenarios) with winters they’d be more familar with in Moscow; London’s only a few degrees of latitude south of Moscow, and if the Gulf Stream &/or Jet stream were to pack up it’s likely that the UK would become a good deal colder!

In anycase misuse of “global warming” to mean “climate change” it’s one of my pet hates, and it especially grates when a source which should know better does it, hence my initial reaction to the piece. However, on reading through it I discovered that I had perhaps been too hasty, as the piece in question appears to be looking at a “global warming” scenario, rather than climate change as a whole; Of course how much validity there is in a study which is predicting an overall warming pattern, rather than considering the possibility that weather will become more extreme, and erractic, all round is another question entirely, and one which I’ll maybe rant about another day.

OK, “sloppy use of precise terms” rant aside, what did the study actually conclude. Essentially the results shouldn’t be a surprise to anybody, in the sense that generally speaking, it found that warmer winters would lead to plants flowering earlier; However, the predicted scale of these changes is quite surprising. Roughly speaking, for every 1^oC that average air temperature rises, plants will start flowering 11 days earlier, although this figure could vary between 7 and 16 days per ^oC, depending on whether the local climate is oceanic or continental, and how exactly it’s effected by climate change in the longer run.
Near the start of the article it’s stated that flowers could be appearing “as much as 50 days” earlier, than they currently do, by 2080, but, cynic that I am, I assume this figure is based on more extreme climate change predictions, in order to produce an eye-catching headline.

“So what’s the problem?” you may be asking; how do flowers appearing earlier in the year have a negative impact on anyone, except for possibly shops which sell flowers losing sales around Valentine’s day. The answer is that, most likely, there wouldn’t be any direct negative effects for humans, but when one thinks about the numbers of other species, particularly insects, whose life cycles rely in some way on flowers, and other species who, in turn, rely on those species, it’s clear that ecologically this could be a pretty big deal.
A great deal of effort is spent on highlighting how climate change might end up directly effecting humans, and while that is definitely a worthy goal, I think that too often it’s wider ecological effects are only vaguely touched upon. The stark truth is that, despite all of our scientific advances, humanity’s welfare is still, very much, tied to the ecosphere which we inhabit, and if other species which play important roles in the ecosystem start to fail then the overall impact of climate change could be far greater than many realise.