Calling all Billionaires: Please read this blog

John Caudwell[1] is no fool. Anyone who has started a company like Phones4U and turned it into a multibillion pound company must be pretty well endowed in the brains department. Yet he has one particularly intriguing belief. He believes in meritocracy: he is deeply suspicious of the idea of inherited wealth. If you want to know more about why you can hear home talking to Tony Hawks in this podcast [2] Tony Hawks is Giving Nothing Away on the BBC. But essentially Caudwell thinks that in the long run his children will lead healthier, happier lives if they have to make their own way. Like he did.

We don’t know about individuals. But we know societies function better if the follow Caudwell’s prescriptions. Old LSS hands will recall our long time advocacy of the works of Thomas Piketty [3] and Wilkinson and Pickett. [4]Who show that societies with more equal economic structures have better health outcomes, lower crime, more scientific innovation and much higher social mobility, than less equal peers. One of their key findings was that wealth hoarded into family dynasties is one of the key blockers of healthily mobile societies.

Which is why Caudwell has joined the Giving Pledge. [5]No it’s not a marxist commie plot: it’s run by some of the richest people on the planet. In the words of the organisation’s own website:

Pledgers support a wide array of issues in every corner of the globe and give in a multitude of ways. What unites them is a shared promise and a commitment to creating an impact.

Wealth can be spent in two ways. It can be wasted in endless competitions as to who drinks the best bottle of wine, drives the fastest Rolls Royce or has the biggest yacht. Or it can be re invested like this creating a healthier better world, with-who knows?-maybe even enough antibiotics. if you really want to spend your money to make your children safe, this is the way to do it. If you are a billionaire, thank you for reading. If you are not-find one gentle readers, and press the works of the Giving Pledge into their hands.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Caudwell

[2]https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/brand/m002fj92

[3] Thomas Piketty Capital in the 21st Century Harvard University Press 2014

[4] Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett The Spirit Level Penguin 2009

[5]https://www.givingpledge.org/pledger/john-caudwell/

#john caudwell #the giving pledge #economics #philanthropy # equality #social mobility

Weekly Round up: Air Pollution, Gene therapy and raspberries

Air pollution is the new smoking Stopping smoking has led to massive falls in rates of lung cancer. But this fearsome disease is still lurking out there. The current cause? Air pollution ,as Ian Sample explains for the Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2025/jul/02/air-pollution-lung-cancer-dna-mutations-study

Gene therapy chalks up another win Ok,today it’s one particular form of deafness, attributable to one particular gene, as Maoli Duan explains for the Conversation. But: the more science you do the more you learn. Meaning other disabilities may one day prove susceptible as well. And the more you spend on scientific research the more you get benefits like this. A lesson rapidly being forgotten in the United States of America

https://theconversation.com/gene-therapy-restores-hearing-in-toddlers-and-teenagers-born-with-congenital-deafness-new-research-258112?utm_medium

Machines that out think humans It’s the scary nightmare of science fiction films from Blade Runner to the Terminator series. Up until recently the idea still seemed to be fiction. All that may be about to change as Nature Briefing reports

An artificial-intelligence system called Centaur can predict the decisions people will make in a wide variety of situations — often outperforming classical theories used in psychology to describe human choices. Trained on data from 160 psychology experiments in which 60,000 people made more than 10 million choices, the system can simulate human behaviour in tasks from problem-solving and gambling, and even those it hasn’t been trained on. Using Centaur, “you can basically run experimental sessions in silico instead of running them on actual human participants”, says cognitive scientist and study co-author Marcel Binz.

Nature | 4 min read
Reference: Nature paper

Friday Night Feast Raspberries and Ice cream We are not all gloom and serious stuff here. Thinking it was time for a quick Friday Fun feature, we realised that we’d done strawberries several times (LSS passim), In which case the humble raspberry can make a really pleasant alternative, especially if combined with ice cream instead of cream. After all, even if we are on a diet-you, gentle reader may not be. So- eat a bowl for us we used to love it.

#cancer #AI ~pollution #gene therapy #raspberries

Why a falling population will solve most of our problems

Photo by Kostiantyn Stupak on Pexels.com

Back in the 1970s we used to worry about rising population the way we worry about antibiotics now. Problems like pollution, energy shortages and even climate change were being discussed in the better pubs in the area where we grew up. Birth rates were soaring around the world. Everyone agreed that by 2010 there were going to be far,far too many people for the planet to support (and you wondered why you weren’t invited to more parties?-ed)Since when the situation has changed. Rulers, particularly of the more authoritarian sort, are fretting that their populations are actually starting to fall. The reason this keeps them awake at night, they asseverate, is that thereby there will not be enough young workers to keep pensioners in the style of living to which they have become accustomed (although we privately suspect they have darker motives) “Make women have more children!” is their cry. How about “the pram is the tank of the Home Front!” Or has that one been used already?

The reality is rather different as Larry Elliott points out so limpidly in this short piece for The Guardian [1] A falling population means less pressure on oceans, air and land. Less need for antibiotics! More seats in cinemas and restaurants! And, quite quickly, a rising GDP per head of population. As for the economic thing: a single modern worker produces and consumes far more GDP and products than a hundred medieval farm hands. To keep the economy growing you just need to raise the standard of living, you don’t need more workers

But as committed feminists we have another sort of worry. If you really want women to have more children, you will have to take them out of universities and higher education generally. Re- structure the wage market so men are again the main breadwinners. Recreate ideologies of patriarchy and submission, a bit like those currently popular in Afghanistan. is that what you really want?

[1]https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jul/02/britain-falling-birthrate-economy-politics

#feminism #pollution #population #economics #ecology

The terror of the male Time for a Lively debate

Every so often something comes along that plugs like a mains cable into the heart of our thinking. That articulates what we have been groping to articulate for years. That explains not just the problem it addresses, but much else besides. Professor Harper on why the Roman Empire fell, or Amy Chua on the intractable nature of tribal hatreds were two such, as our readers recall. Now we think Sophie Lively of the University of Newcastle may have done the same for the neuralgic topic of Masculine Identity.[1] Far from being some idle construct of the Sociology schools, we think that masculinity and the toxic psychological flows around it are at the heart of the problems which this blog has been discussing for years, with such remarkable lack of success. Things like climate change, inequality, hostility to learning(and thereby scientific research) hyper-consumption and even health and traffic management (that’s enough problems-ed)

Let’s start with Sophie . She has been avidly researching social conditions in the city of Newcastle in North east England. Formerly a region of heavy industry it is undergoing profound economic change. English people will recognise the stereotype of its characteristic inhabitant:- a hard-working no-nonsense Geordie who loves his beer and football and has no time for fancy intellectuals. He can be glimpsed in TV shows like Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads?, as Biffa Bacon in the Viz comic strip or in songs like Lindisfarne’s Meet me on the Corner. He is proud, he is brave, he is tough he can be kindly and amusing. And like working men across the world, he is in deep, deep crisis As Sophie explains

“Traditional” views of masculinity were particularly prevalent during the height of industry in the area. These views centred around ideas of men as providers and ideas of toughness. Value was placed on a willingness (or need) to do physical and often hazardous labour.

And now that’s needed less and less. Are we surprised they find themselves bewildered, alienated, anxious? In need of quick easy assurances that everything about them is still alright. How would you feel, gentle reader, if you were told that University graduates are not needed any more?

And so we come to the light this sheds on the big problems this blog poses but has never satisfactorily answered. Why have progressive parties so utterly and completely lost the support of working men? Why do so many poor people vote for people whose aim is to make the rich richer and the poor work harder? Why are so many young men drawn to the cults of rap music, football hooliganism and religious terrorism? Why all the cults of nostalgia around Spitfires, country houses and the urge to go back down horrid coal mines? (LSS 8 12 22) Why do men in lorries feel impelled to chop down trees, flowerbeds and every other measure designed to curb pollution? Why do simple lies trump complex truths? In the next few weeks we will be running a series of blogs designed to look at these issues We hope all of you, whatever your age, class, sex and preferred form of relaxation will enjoy it and feed back in what we hope will be a lively debate. Thanks to Sophie for at last getting us started.

[1]https://theconversation.com/class-and-masculinity-are-connected-when-industry-changes-so-does-what-it-means-to-be-a-man-258857?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=

#climate change #sociology #feminism #masculinity #populism

Is Donald Trump a Socialist? #2: some readers responses

A few months ago(LSS 7 4 25) we published a blog called Is Donald Trump a Socialist? It was one of those end-of -the -day tired pieces which we expected to be soon forgotten, by ourselves and everybody else. Instead it turned out to be one of the most read, and remarked-upon pieces we have put out in months. Sadly, much more so than our ones on antibiotic resistance ones which was what this blog is supposed to be all about.

The essence of the piece boiled down to this. Capitalists, Liberals, Neo-liberals, call them what you will, believe that individual liberty is the only true basis of a healthy society and a prosperous economy. People making their own choices on how to spend their money, whom to hire and whom to fire, where to live, etc will allow the optimum possible outcome in the supply of Capital, Goods and Labour. The essence of socialist belief is that people cannot be trusted to make those decisions and that the state must often step in to ensure the best possible social and economic outcomes. In that sense, Mr Trump’s attempts to control the supply of Labour by immigration controls, and of Goods by tariff controls are socialist policies, not capitalist ones. The responses have been coming ever since. Here are a few which are broadly representative . (We protect the respondents anonymity for all sorts of reasons)

MC from Edinburgh pointed out that if a Communist like Mr Xi could run a capitalist economy in China, why shouldn’t a Capitalist like Trump run a socialist one in America? (intriguing!)

DG from Texas said that Mr Trump’s policies were not Socialist, they we Nationalist (that doesn’t make them Capitalist, we thought)

JS from Massachusetts said he had studied economics at Princeton. And that essentially we had “placed Trump on a New Deal continuum, with fewer unions and more nationalisation” (We are still struggling to understand this)

V. from Mumbai wondered “if all leaders become Socialist when it comes to steel and swing states”

As we write an actual self-proclaimed Socialist called Zohran Mamdami is running for Mayor of New York, that Holy Ground Zero of Capitalism. If we are right, he and Mr Trump may find more in common than they realise. Maybe it’s all about what you do, not what you call yourself, that counts.

But we feel exceedingly grateful for your reactions. Keep ’em coming.

#Donald Trump #Xi Jinping #Capitalist #communist #socialist #liberal #neo liberal #free market #tariff #immigration control

Can you help the Phage Collection Project? It’s citizen science against antibiotic resistance

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels.com

What if you could actually do something to solve the problem of antibiotic resistance. Instead of just reading about it, and keeping your fingers crossed? It’s possible that a project at the UK’s University of Southampton will give you the chance. [1]

The Phage Collection Project aims to make a vast collection of bacteriophages, those handy bacteria-killing viruses whose praises we have sung many a time and oft on these pages. But, and here’s the killer app-they’re trying to involve ordinary citizens like you, gentle reader, to go out and collect them! You can read much much more about how to help on their website, which we have so handily posted. But for a really good take on what it’s like to participate, James Gallagher of the BBC takes part and makes his contribution. It’s a great little read [2]

So why not at least think of taking part? We spent the early years of this project tramping round pharmacies and pubs handing out leaflets. Or spoiling by election hustings by changing the subject to antibiotic resistance. (If Zac Goldsmith is reading this-sorry, but thanks for listening) We did our bit. Go on- read the website at least!

Thanks to M Foster-Boltz

[1]https://www.phage-collection.org/

[2] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/czryvm3nlvdo

#bacteriophage #antibiotic resistance #citizen science #zac goldsmith #medicine #health

Why the Crash of 2028 was worst of all-and why we should have seen it coming

Croydon January 11 2029

Looking back to the events of last autumn they were so very huge and happened so very fast it is still hard to believe they occurred at all, let alone been seen coming. But no market crash happens out of the blue . The causes of had been building up for years And just like 1929 and 2008 they were centred on the property market. With one new deadly ingredient: climate change.

By 2024, 2025 at the latest, it was clear that accelerating climate change was posing a systemic risk to the balance sheets of insurance companies.[1] [2] Vast areas of housing and other real estate close to coasts and along river valleys were becoming too vulnerable to justify the potential payouts, however astronomical the premiums .But spurred by President Trump’s tax cuts, house prices soared: and people extracted money to binge on one last great consumer boom. Yet after the series of giant hurricanes in the Gulf in the summer of 2028 , it was not surprising that several insurers went effectively bankrupt: and others required government help of such size as to seriously weaken the dollar and cast doubts on the value of US Treasuries. Suddenly everyone paused spending. And as potentially uninsurable houses represent no value at all the property market turned down. Just as in 1929 and 2008,a collapse in spending followed, turning the situation from downturn into recession and recession into depression in a few short months. Stock market crashes and massive bank failures followed by the same inexorable logic as in those earlier years. And this time there was no way back

For unlike 2008 there’s no benign community of co-operating nations to pool resources to the rescue. As much due to the efforts Trump administration as anyone else , the world is now divided in to hostile trading blocks. It is in the interest of each to see others fail, as they accrue power and status thereby. So China laughed as its American rival staggers to final ruin , opening a sure and bloodless way to Taiwan. But worse still, unlike previous recessions there can be no return via the normal business cycle. Climate breakdown is the norm: and the conditions it has produced cannot go away, at least in our lifetimes. We ignored the warnings because it was said to do anything about climate change would be bad for business and spoil our prosperity. How ironic that sounds in view of the poverty we must all now endure. Forever,

[1] https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/financial-services/our-insights/climate-change-and-p-and-c-insurance-the-threat-and-opportunity

this piece by pitilla clark of the Financial Times is well worth jumping the paywall:

[2]https://www.ft.com/content/9e5df375-650d-492e-ba51-fb5a34e6ddd6

#global warming #climate change #financial markets #stock market crash #investor #economics

Round Up: Gulf Stream collapse. stem cells rule the world, and much more

an ever-so-slightly flippant look at stories from near and far:

Gulf Stream Collapse If the Atlantic currents fail, life as we know it in western Europe will be pretty much unsustainable. The very fact that this comes from the impeccably right-wing Mail shows it is not climate change zealotry https://mail.yahoo.com/d/folders/86/messages/AA5iTI1EuaNWaFvEagvLiAbCFXc?.intl=uk&.lang=en-GB&.partner=none&.src=fp

The new political landscape Believe it or not, we feel a bit sorry for all those avid class warriors of the last century (both sides) as all their efforts now seem a waste of time. The world runs on identity, not economics as the immensely learned Professor Curtice shows in the Conversation

https://theconversation.com/how-britains-new-political-divide-delivers-voters-to-reform-and-the-greens-259613?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Latest%20from%20The%20Conversation%2

Stem Cells #1 An eye to the future Over twenty years ago, The Most Intelligent Man Whom We Have Ever Met was predicting a rosy future for stem cells. Today’s first proof he was right comes from this marvellous new treatment for blindness in the Mail

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-14839199/Man-blinded-Fourth-July-fireworks-grows-new-eye.html

Stem Cells #2 The sweet smell of success More proof of the prescience of the this same Most Intelligent Man Whom We have Ever Met is again from the Mail(our researchers seem to read little else) with this rather nifty advance in diabetes therapies

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-14842321/Major-breakthrough-10-patients-diabetes-CURED.html

Genes back in fashion Full twenty five years ago, and more (that’s enough declamation-ed) we used to delight in boring Police Officers and other uninterested visitors how important the human genome project was going to be. Proof we were on to something comes in this intriguing article in the Guardian where scientists are trying to recreate the whole thing from scratch in a test tube

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2025/jun/26/synhg-uk-synthetic-human-genome-project-dna-genetic-code

And the music? Although never giant fans of the work of Mr David Dundas-we tend to prefer JS Bach and the Baroque lot) we cannot, in the light of the foregoing, avoid putting up his famous ditty about “waking up in the morning putting his old blue jeans on”, or something like that Jeans/genes-geddit?

https://www.bing.com/videos/riverview/relatedvideo?&q=davis+dundas+blue+jeans&&mid=9C6E36DE4376CDB2E74D9C6E36DE4376CDB2E74D&&FORM=VRDGAR

#genes #dna #diabetes #eye #blind #stem cells #climate change

Why Keir Starmer can never be Clement Attlee

We apologise to overseas readers for the parochial references in this blog: but are our problems so different from yours?

As we write BBC Radio 4 is running a series about the 1945 General Election and the marvellously successful Labour Government that followed it.[1] For six years the United Kingdom had the most serendipitously achieving administration it had experienced since Elizabeth I. As he listens (assuming he has time) our current Prime Minister must ask himself “Why can’t I do what Clement Attlee did? Why is the concatenation of problems-defence, economy, social policy- so absolutely, stupendously overwhelming that even my own backbenchers are in such overwhelming revolt? [2]

No one doubts Starmer’s intelligence. Or courage. Or good intentions. However,the problems run too deep, and in our opinion are insoluble if the nation state is the means chosen to solve them. Clement Attlee inherited a world where companies, and the financial structures that supported them essentially existed at a national level (or within the imperial frameworks those nations had created) So the writ of Westminster really did run, and no one could afford to ignore it. Legislation passed by a British Government really did have the power to shape lives. Improve them sometimes,even, as the creation of the NHS and NATO so admirably demonstrated.

If Starmer’s government fails it will fall to Reform UK to make the necessary budgetary adjustments which Labour could not. A hint of the difficulties they may face comes from Warwickshire where a brave 18 year old has bravely taken the reigns of their new Council.[3] He states his belief as “Brexit, sovereignty and a strong and united family unit”.

Perfectly admirable and defensible beliefs, even if one disagrees with one or more of them intellectually. Unfortunately his manifesto raises many questions. Like : what is sovereignty? How far can it be sustained in a world where almost half of all available investment capital is in private hands? Can a country the size of the UK create and sustain its own industries against production runs in the power of giant corporations, or countries the size of China and India? How long did City States like Milan and Florence sustain their sovereignties against giant antagonists like Spain and France? Your Renaissance history will help here, but don’t worry: you won’t have to read it for long.

Antagonists they may seem, but both Starmer and Reform are two of a kind. A national government may have some power to alleviate, sometimes, if enough of its supporters let it. Its days of initiative and creation are long gone. Keir Starmer will never be Clement Attlee. And no one will be Winston Churchill either.

[1]https://www.bing.com/search?q=bbc+radio+series+1945+election&form=ANNTH1&refig=6F075FD8E25341758E4FFB72C8969982&pc=HCTS

[2]https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/jun/26/no-10-government-talks-labour-rebels-attempt-quash-welfare-bill-revolt

[3] https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/jun/26/reform-warwickshire-council-head-rob-howard-quits-after-five-weeks-leaving-18-year-old-in-charge

#Labour #Reform UK #politics #economic #nationalism #finance #trade #economics

Could a humble fungus cure cancer?

We have a of a confession here. We’ve always neglected fungi, that third mighty kingdom of life in favour of their more photogenic relatives, the animals and the plants. It’s a stupid oversight, as anyone who has enjoyed a glass of beer along with a bite of cheese can tell you. Not to mention Penicillium which was, after al the raison d’etre, the very fons et origio of these blogs which we so selflessly pen every day for your common benefit, gentle readers. Well now that’s all going to change. Fungi are on their way in from the cold starting with this intriguing piece from Emily Stern of the Daily Mail. Intriguing because it turns a bit of a baddie into a very Good Thing indeed.[1]

For many years researchers into old things like dead Pharaohs and dead Kings of Poland had a problem. A number of them kept dropping dead, due to the activities of a fungus called Aspergillus flavus[2] that lived in the shrouds and wrappings on the bodies of the extinguished rulers. Normally it performs a useful role in places like gardens and allotments by breaking down plant matter of all kinds. But get too close, breathe it in-and you could be a goner. So it has always been treated with a a wary circumspection. However, the ingenious Dr Sherry Gao and her co workers have discovered something else. Hidden inside the tissues of the meek mould are chemicals called asperigimycins. They seem to have anti leukaemia potentialities on their own: but, if combined with certain classes of lipid, they can get very good at it indeed. Read this from Emily’s matchless prose

They then added a lipid that’s also found in royal honey to another variant of asperigimycins and found the method killed just as many cancer cells as the drugs cytarabine and daunorubicin.

There’s a few lessons here for those who like a good moral tale. Firstly that Nature is full of hidden goodies about which we have no clue. Secondly even dangerous things can be turned to our advantage if you handle them with due care and caution(remember our old blog on Komodo dragons and antibiotics?) And thirdly, as in nature as in people: you never know which one is the one who saves your life. Treat them all with respect.And stop chopping down all the forests.

[1]https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-14839831/deadly-ancient-fungus-turns-cancer-fighting-powerhouse.html

[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspergillus

#cancer #leukaemia #fungus #medicine #health