The case against recycling

The author, Susan Hill, has a blog which I visit from time to time. She has just written a piece which touches on the subject of recycling.

I was in the process of launching into a major lecture on the evils of recycling in the comments, when I thought the better of it - it was becoming rather too long and possibly a bit of a rant. I've therefore put down my thoughts, such as they are, here.

At the risk of sounding like a grumpy old man, recycling is rubbish.

Firstly, there is no shortage of landfill space. We are quarrying a larger volume of stone each year than we produce of landfill. The reason we seem to have a shortage is that the EU has decreed that we should close most of our landfill down. Why they have done this is anyone's guess, but I imagine corruption has something to do with it. (I'm cynical like that.)

Secondly, packaging has very little to do with landfill anyway. According to Friends of the Earth, if you analyse landfill by type, packaging isn't even in the top ten. The biggest culprit is building waste.

Thirdly, packaging is your friend. If I recall correctly 40% of American rubbish is packaging. 40% of Mexican rubbish is food that's gone off because it wasn't adequately packaged - similar conclusions are reached here. The real waste of precious resources is throwing away food, not packaging, most of which is plastic - a by-product of the oil refining industry that would have to be burnt if it wasn't used. Put it another way: why do the rapacious capitalists who run the supermarkets spend all that money wrapping up cucumbers (which annoys their customers) if there isn't some benefit to them? The answer turns out to be very simple: it keeps fungal spores off the cucumber and so doubles the shelf-life. That's saving resources, that is.

Fourthly, recycling is a tremendous waste of resources, on the whole. We know this, because it requires subsidies to get anyone to recycle most materials. Commercial businesses will not produce, say, recycled paper without subsidy, because all the resources required to bleach and reprocess it outweigh the value of the end product. There are exceptions, like aluminium and some other waste metals. We have a long-standing, subsidy-free recycling industry (called scrapyards) for these things. 

Lastly, a modern landfill is a rather marvellous thing. It is lined with clay and plastic liners so there is no leaching of pollution into the water table. Any leachate is collected and metals can be extracted from it. The methane given off is collected too and can be used as a fuel. (Source).This is real, commercially viable recycling, as opposed to the woolly tree-hugging, spend-and-be-damned type that ruins the environment and impoverishes us all.

If you have a dull afternoon, try looking on the internet for scientific evidence to support the concept of recycling. There is nearly nothing, and what little there is appears to be outdated and conceptually flawed.

/rant

Basher for Liberty news 8

The debate

The Register reports on how the police are confiscating film from innocent photographers. In unrelated news, the police say that they are disappointed that David Davis thinks they are against civil liberties. Whatever can have given him that idea, eh officer?

DD was on You and Yours discussing detention without charge with the public and someone from the Royal United Services Institute. Finally, someone in favour of 42 days is willing to put their heads above the parapet. Audio here.

Dan Vevers, writing at The UK Libertarian Party blog, discusses attempts to prevent demonstrations and a possible use of agents provocateur.

Sparring partners

David Icke is to stand. As activity on the civil liberties debate gears up, I'm increasingly concluding that the quality of the opponents in H&H don't matter.

The campaign

Unlock Democracy are going to campaign for civil liberties in H&H. They need cash to do so and you can donate here.

LibDem Voice says its readers support Nick Clegg's decision not to oppose Davis.

Basher's been updating his website again, blasting Tony McNulty for attempting to rebut some of DD's criticisms now that DD is no longer in the House of Commons to answer him, having failed to do so in the parliamentary debates. He also responds to comments by the Association of Chief Police Officers about CCTV.

Yorkshire Guidon says that DD always refuses to debate with the LibDems.

Why did he do it?

Benedict Brogan reckons DD wants to be the next speaker of the House of Commons. Iain Dale isn't convinced.

Adam Smith in bronze

The long-awaited statue of Adam Smith is due to be unveiled in Edinburgh next month at a ceremony on the Royal Mile. To mark the occasion the ASI has organised a debate on the motion that "This house would prefer to be led by the invisible hand". For the motion will be Michael Forsyth, Madsen Pirie and a former world debating champion. Against are MPs Brian Wilson (Lab) and Alex Neil (SNP) together with a former Observer Mace champion.

Who knows, I might even drag myself away from my rural idyll for one of these.

For anyone interested, the details are:

RECEPTION AND DEBATE Thursday 3 July 2008 In The Caves, 8-12 Niddry Street South, Edinburgh EH1 1NS (off Cowgate) 6.30pm for 7pm

UNVEILING OF THE ADAM SMITH STATUE Friday 4 July 2008 High Street, Edinburgh, near Parliament Square and the Mercat Cross 12.00 noon for 12.15pm.

Climate cuttings 15

A reader on one of the Basher for Liberty posts said that he missed the Climate Cuttings roundups I used to do. By strange coincidence, there have been a couple of interesting developments recently, so here I am going to revive it, at least for one night. Who knows, maybe I'll get all enthusiastic again.

Here goes:

Today is the twentieth anniversary of James Hansen's famous speech to congress in which, foaming ever so slightly at the mouth, he told the assembled eminences that we were all going to burn. To mark the occasion, (and now slavering wildly), Hansen has called for oil company executives to be tried. Rumours that he screamed "Burn them! Burn them!" are, as yet, unsubstantiated. In an article at the Graun, he said (again) that we have to act now. Commenters were rude to him.

Readers at Climate Audit have been paying lots of attention to Dr Hansen's work. Having finally forced him to release his code, experienced programmers have been astonished at the sheer amateurishness of the way he has written the programs to create a global temperature record. "Like descending into the hell described in a Steven King novel" was one opinion on the experience of trying to make head or tail of Dr Hansen's work.

David Holland has been trying to get hold of IPCC review editors' working papers. The review editors are the guys who are supposed to go through the IPCC draft report to make sure that it reflects different opinions fairly. Having got hold of the comments of the review editors, he found that they pretty much all just sent in a form sign-off saying that everything was fine and dandy. Given the importance of their job, Holland took the view that there must be more, and asked to see the working papers of the Met Office's John Mitchell who was a review editor on a key chapter.  This opened up a can of worms. The Met Office has given Holland a disgraceful runaround, first of all claiming that all the working papers were destroyed, and when it was pointed out to them that this would contravene both IPCC and Met Office data retention policies, they changed their tune and said that Mitchell was performing this work on his own time.

Meanwhile Holland has been pursuing a completely separate Freedom of Information request to get similar information from Keith Briffa of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia. This time the excuse has been that the information is confidential. This is pretty extraordinary, because the IPCC reviews are all meant to be entirely transparent. It's hard to see how a reviewer can have expected his comments to be confidential. In a classic piece of bureaucrat-speak the CRU opined that

The public interest in withholding this information outweighs that of releasing it due to the need to protect the openness and confidentiality of academic intercourse prior to publication which, in turn, assures that such cooperation & openness can continue and inform scientific research and debate.

Academic openness requires confidentiality it seems.

Pollsters discovered that the British public doesn't believe the global warming hype. It's not surprising really - they've kept the story too black and white. It doesn't "feel" like the truth.

Basher for Liberty news 7

The debate

The Local Government Association has urged a review of councils' surveillance powers, amid fears that their overzealous use might cause the public to string up councillors from the nearest CCTV mast become alienated. James Forsyth reckons we should chalk this up as a victory for the Davis campaign.

Punk goes liberty. Guido points us to a punk band called Billy Ruffian who have penned a ditty in support of the Davis campaign. There's a video at Guido's.

I think that maybe I've been taking pills,
'cos David Davis is acting like John Stuart Mills,
And in taking on Brown, Dacre and Murdoch,
The establishment are in a difficult spot.

"I'm making out my political will,
By opposing the anti-terrorism bill,
But the government wish to rid us of Habeas Corpus,
So if you believe in freedom you'll have to support us."

The most unlikely civil liberties defender of all
What about Magna Carta? Did she die in vain?

The Basher Blog has been updated - and several times no less. He seems to be getting the hang of it now.  As well as this, DD wrote a piece for CommentIsFree about local council surveillance.

As others see us

American commentator Glenn Greenwald has been following the Davis story from across the water. In a second comment here, he compares American legislators unfavourably to DD.

Old Media

The Independent has a question and answer session with Davis, and the Spectator has lined up readers questions for him too.

The Guardian says that Cameron is hinting at a return to frontline politics for DD.

The Evening Standard says that Davis stopped two other MPs from resigning alongside him. One was a Tory and one Labour. (What, no Liberal Democrats?)

A new tool for bloggers

This looks like a useful tool for bloggers - WhatDoTheyKnow? - which publishes successful Freedom of Information requests. You can get all the answers on an RSS feed too.

It's brought to you by My Society, the people who created TheyWorkForYou, the website with the ironic title.

Respect.

Gordon says we're all lazy

The Times:

More people need to adopt the work ethic and aim high in life, Gordon Brown will say today in a keynote speech on social mobility.

In other words, work harder you lazy peasants, I need the tax revenues.

Basher for Liberty news 6

Sparring partners

The Observer reports that Labour didn't put up a candidate in H&H because it can't afford it. Financially and morally bankrupt, then.

The campaign

David Cameron has ordered the shadow cabinet to campaign in H&H on behalf of David Davis.

At Pledgebank, you can pledge support for the Davis campaign.

The Economist publishes a poll on the public's attitudes to civil liberties. This will be uncomfortable reading for anyone on Davis's side of the debate. Have all the civil libertarians left the country already?

The debate

Phil Hall wonders if Britain is slipping towards dictatorship. 

The Adam Smith Institute quotes Gibbon:

In the end, more than freedom, they [the ancient Athenians] wanted security. They wanted a comfortable life, and they lost it all – security, comfort, and freedom. When the Athenians finally wanted not to give to society but for society to give to them, when the freedom they wished for most was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free and was never free again.

Old media

The Sunday Telegraph prints another attack on Davis.

A bouncer speaks

Rob Fisher has posted a lengthy quote from a nightclub bouncer. It covers a range of issues including self-defence, knife crime and the attitude of the police to protecting the public.

A must-read.

The realignment

One of the questions which has occupied my idle moments in recent days has been whether l'affaire Davis might herald a fundamental realignment in British politics.

The fall of the eastern bloc at the end of the last century robbed the old Labour movement of much of its raison d'etre, a fact tacitly acknowledged by the scrapping of the old Clause 4 of the Labour party's constitution. With both Conservative and Labour agreeing that the ownership of the means of production should remain  with the private sector, the fundamental difference between the two was gone. Of course, most on the right would argue that New Labour has sought to control the means of production by dint of regulation and legislation, but, for the purposes of this posting, we can treat this as a lesser difference. It's surely true to say that the Tories and Labour both agree that business should be regulated but that Labour think it should be regulated more the Conservatives do. The more perspicacious would also note that their opinions on the matter are largely irrelevant anyway, because most business regulation comes from Brussels rather than Whitehall.

With David Davis's leap into the unknown, a number of commenters have wondered if we are about to see something more fundamental than a by-election, or a debate on civil liberties. Davis's actions have confused many, not least the political classes - both the MPs and their acolytes in the mainstream media. For any politician to take the step Davis did defies all their rational expectations. And to this observer, deeply cynical of both politician and journalist alike, it made little sense either. Many frustrated members of the public have made their support of Davis' actions known in defending DD from his many media critics. Their ferocity seems to have taken everyone aback. Where the media saw a stunt, the public saw a stand on principle.

I now wonder if, in some way, they are both right. 

Whether through frustration with his failure to win the Tory leadership or because of a profound belief in civil liberties, or because of Cameron's political direction or lukewarm support for civil liberties, Davis has made a stand. To my mind, it doesn't matter particularly what his motives are. At the end of the day he is doing the right thing and deserves support for that.

But what is his plan? As many have noted, it makes little sense for an undoubtedly ambitious politician to throw away a lifetime's chance of high office unless he has something pretty important in mind. Now, vital as Davis's chosen civil liberties issues are, it seems to me to be implausible in the extreme for Davis to resign over them. To misquote Adam Smith, it is not from the benevolence of politicians to which we must look for our civil liberties but to their own self-interest. Davis cannot hope, from a position of opposition, to reverse the mountain of legislation that has cut a swathe through British freedoms. And, as he does not expect to be reappointed to the Conservative front bench after his presumed return to Westminster, and also given that Cameron and much of the Tory party seems actively hostile to civil liberties, it is unlikely that Davis would be changing anything once a Cameron government was in place, either.

To me, the most plausible explanation is that this is a stunt, but a stunt with a noble end - to fundamentally realign British politics. Davis may well have concluded, like so many others, that left and right make no sense in a world where everyone (a few dinosaurs apart) understands that free trade and free markets are the only plausible way to run an economy. The Davis vision may well be of a world divided between authoritarian and libertarian and it's one that is shared by commentators from across the political spectrum.

In a way that's a good vision, a "noble cause", if you like.  Whether it's practical or not is another question altogether - readers might care to consider what kind of political platform could attract sufficient support from the three big parties to make it viable. Would the Liberal LibDems (there are some) be willing to make common cause with a hanger and flogger like Basher Davis? Would independently minded Labourites like Frank Field and Kate Hoey leave the Labour fold? Who would jump from the Tories? Where would such a party stand on the economy or the EU? These are big questions, and worthy of a posting in their own right. Whatever the platform though, it's a necessary step for Britain. Labour and Conservative appear to most thinking people to be irredeemably corrupt and inbred, and, what is worse, ready to bid away civil liberties in a despicable bid to win the approval of the tabloids. If a realignment is coming, it can't come a moment too soon.

(In passing, I should note that William Hill is now offering odds on Davis starting a new party before the next election (see the last post) - so perhaps this posting is not entirely idle speculation)

Basher for Liberty news 5

Sparring partners

The Green party has announced that they will stand against DD. Pollsters say that the public thinks that Labour should have put up a candidate too. It is not recorded what proportion thinks that Gordon Brown is a cowardy custard.

Cheering him on

Hull City Council have passed a motion in support of Davis's stand on 42 days. Even Labour councillors have fallen into line, apparently.

Handbags at dawn

Andy Burnham has written a letter of regret to Shami Chakrabarti. That's "regret", not apology. Ms Chakrabarti is being very dignified about it though.

Bemused onlookers

How an American sees the decline of civil liberties in the UK - Richard Reeves for Yahoo News.

The campaign

DD and Tony Benn are to debate civil liberties in Hull. 

The David Davis for Freedom website has undergone a redesign (already!). The masthead picture now includes the requisite ethnic mix.  A debate forum has been added, although don't expect to see Gordon Brown there.

NO2ID have welcomed the Davis campaign and are planning to campaign in H&H in the runup to the election.

The debate

DD has said that Gordon Brown has gagged ministers to prevent them discussing civil liberties in the run up to the H&H by-election.

Guy Aitchison thinks DD has made a decent fist of explaining why he supported 28 days but why 42 is a no-no.  He says that with post-charge questioning and allowing intercept evidence in court it may be possible to reduce the limit below 28 days.  Justin at Chicken Yogurt isn't impressed though.

David Duff wonders if this whole debate is part of a new zeitgeist.

And finally

William Hill are offering odds of 7-1 that DD will start his own political party in time for the next election.

Is Boris thick?

Sunny reckons that Boris Johnson doesn't "know his head from his arse". This is because he was apparently unaware of the whereabouts, or even sure of the existence of, a memorandum of understanding between London and central government. The memo turned out to be available on the Culture Department's website.

This strikes me as a bit odd.  I mean, the mayor's office presumably has civil servants working there. Why couldn't they tell Boris where to find a copy of the memo? Or didn't he ask? 

More to this than meets the eye, I would say.

Basher for Liberty news 4

The campaign

DD was on Question Time - video here. He was somewhat out-liberaled by UKIP's Nigel Farage who demanded to know how DD could support 28 days if he believed in habeas corpus. The liberal left needs to explain why it is that, among elected representatives, it's only the (allegedly) frothing-at-the-mouth right wing extremists who are making the case for civil liberties.

Jonathan Isaby wonders about the rule demanding equal media coverage for the three main parties during elections - what is to be done when two of them aren't standing?

Smears and innuendo

Harriet Harman said that Shami Chakrabarti shouldn't have supported David Davis, so Andy Burnham was quite justified in discussing her private conversations. Presumably she thinks that Liberty should be campaigning for indefinite detention without charge. Guido reckons DD is getting his own back by telling Gordon Brown to "come out" and argue his case. Yes, stop mincing around Gordon!

Meanwhile  Anthony Barnett thinks the BBC despise Davis and what he is trying to do.

Cheering him on

Tribune describes a strong body of "stealth" support for the Davis campaign among Labour MPs.

Sparring partners

Ex-LibDem spin doctor, Olly Kendall, reckons Greg Dyke should run against Davis. 

The debate

Home Office minister, Meg Hillier, says "we'll get to love ID cards".  Commenters say they feel sick.

DD has now got round to updating his blog (2 posts per week - that's almost as bad as me!), with an explanation of why 28 is OK but 42 isn't. I think I preferred the argument he had with Farage. Unity wonders about why Labour and Conservative won't tell us what their plans for a Bill of Rights are before we elect them.

Mark Lynas on economics

So is it time to follow in the steps of the UK environment minister Phil Woolas and reassess the potential of GM? As Woolas says: "There is a growing question of whether GM crops can help the developing world out of the current food price crisis. It is a question that we as a nation need to ask ourselves." So is he right?

I doubt it. For starters, the current food price crisis is only partly about supply. Yes, falling harvests have affected the amount of food available, and the recent severe flooding in the US midwest certainly won't help the situation. But, as with oil, rising demand is the biggest factor driving prices towards the stratosphere. As countries such as India and China get richer and adopt more western diets, they consume more meat, sucking grain off the market to feed growing numbers of livestock. The misconceived rush to biofuels has further intensified the problem, gobbling up vast quantities of corn and soya in order to produce the fuel Americans and Europeans need to feed their addiction to the car. Underlying all this, the human population continues to grow, adding another 80 million mouths every single year.

Lynas's article is another candidate for the hotly contested "Dumb Guardian Article of the Year" award. It's just ignorant verbiage to say "it's about demand rather than supply". If demand goes up, then either supply goes up to match it or the price goes up and pushes demand back down again. You can't separate the two. The price is changing because supply and demand are out of kilter. End of.

Basher for Liberty news 3

The campaign

Labour launched another attack on DD, and again managed not to mention the issues - this time it was Andy Burnham who said that DD should pay for the by-election. He also implied a romantic liaison between DD and Shami Chakrabarti of Liberty. Basher said Burnham was using smear tactics. Shami threatened to sue.

More sinisterly, Spy Blog wonders whether Burnham's description of "late-night, hand-wringing, heart-melting phone calls" between the two shows that the government is eavesdropping on the their phone calls. Burnham has previous form on this kind of thing,  it seems.

Meanwhile DD made a direct appeal to Labour voters with an interview on LabourHome. Report here.

Sparring partners

Donal Blaney reckons that Conservative Home's Tim Montgomerie, a fan of 42 day detention without charge, should stand against David Davis. Sounds like a good idea to me too.

Why did he do it?

Fraser Nelson reckons that there's a lack of mission at Conservative HQ with a number of senior Cameron lieutenants departing. DD may just be part of that trend.

What we're after

Unity at Liberal Conspiracy notes the latest case of left and right trying to outdo each other on tearing up civil liberties.