UK Election: we predict a narrow win for Labour

_{Note for overseas readers:The UK election will be decided in a single day, July 4th. 650 Parliamentary constituencies will each elect a single MP on a one-adult, one vote system. Hence 326 seats are enough to ensure a simple majority in the new Parliament}.

Ok, this is a shot in the dark. But we have always been suspicious of opinion polls (we’ll explain why below) If you have been following the UK general election, and tracking the polls, you might be forgiven for thinking this election will result in a very large majority for the Labour Party. [1] as this link and story from the Guardian might suggest. This is why we think that those predictions are wildly inaccurate

1 The Labour lead has been shrinking If you look at link one in this post you’ll see it peaked just after the disastrous Premiership of Liz Truss. Whatever other mistakes the Tories have made, she has been carefully kept out of the campaign by both the Party and mainstream media, which is largely Tory owned and dominated. Memories have faded: and Liz’s days as recruiting sergeant for the Left are well and truly over

2 Shy Tories If you were an ordinary decent person, with a strong awareness of the last 14 years, would you admit to being a Tory, especially of some earnest faced young pollster is bearing down on you with a tablet computer? Perhaps not, in public. But old loyalties flood strong and hard, particularly in the privacy of the polling booth. England (not Scotland nor Wales) is a deeply Conservative country, where strong memories of Empire linger in many corners. Don’t be surprised for a strong showing from this quarter, as happened in 1992.

3 Don’t know/undecided Much as above, especially for the cultural reasons we have alluded to. Even if this group break several ways, it’s still quite a reservoir of Tory votes

4 Returning Reformers /Shy Reformers Despite an early strong showing by Nigel and the boys, there are signs that their vote is fading. This time. It’s possible that at the last moment loyalty to the Squire and the traditional hierarchy will cause many to cast their lot in with the Tories, rather than let in a Labour government. However, if the Reform vote does hold up, it may well bite deep into Labour [2]

5 The Tory Media Newspapers like the Mail and the Sun do not circulate as well as they used to. Gone are the days when the could simply whistle up 150 Tory seats. But the right wing news ecology, incredibly well-oiled and funded, has simply shifted to social media and outlets like GB News. The last few days have witnessed a hysterical and well co-ordinated attack on Starmer and all things Labour. Expect this to sway more than a few of the voters in the groups above.

So, perhaps a bit unscientifically, with one finger in the wind we predict

Labour 350 Conservative 208 Lib Dem 20 SNP 40 DUP 7 Sinn Fein 9 Reform 3 Plaid Cymru 2 SDLP 1 Other/Speaker 10

By Friday morning, you will know.

And this is our firm and unshakeable pledge: if we are wrong to any substantial degree , we will buy the office cat a tin of the finest tuna, to dispose of as he wishes

[1]https://www.theguardian.com/politics/ng-interactive/2024/jul/02/uk-general-election-opinion-polls-tracker-latest-labour-tories-2024
[2]ttps://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/jul/03/labour-expects-surge-of-shy-reform-voters-in-some-northern-and-midlands-seats

#general election #united kingdom #parliament #opinion polls #shy tory

Fifty years on, we still Love Lucy

Photo by SK Movies & Photos on Pexels.com

Fifty years ago, Paleontology was mired in a series of unanswered questions. When did humans first walk upright? What came first-a big brain, or two legs? Where did it happen, and above all, when? The oldest Australopithecines seemed to date less than 2 million years BP, but the first intriguing signs of molecular evidence (it was proteins, bless ’em!) suggested origins back before 5 million. Then one day in 1974 a team led by Don Johannsen in the Afar region of Ethiopia changed everything.

The excellent Robin McKie in the Observer tells the story much, much better than we can, and you should read it here [1] Suffice to say that they had stumbled on a tiny, erect walking creature with a brain the size of a chimpanzee. And apart from the bipedal gait it was an ape in all essential respects. They named the species Australopithecus afarensis for science. It it lived at was was, for then, the startlingly early date of 3.2 million years BP. Other specimens have been found subsequently, both of this species and others. Some are older. But nothing sits quite so squarely in the middle of our paradigm of human evolution, around which all other thoughts must revolve.

And the name? Well if you call something Australopithecus afarensis, it doesn’t exactly trip off the tongue of the public. But as the researchers returned exalted to camp and spread out the bones, they turned on their tape recorder. It began to blast out a song called Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds by a musical group called The Beatles, who were popular around that time.[2] As the skeleton was clearly female, they named their little lady “Lucy” And it has stuck, in all but the most formal scientific publications. And so we hail one of the great finds of all time. And remember a lesson from 1974. Whatever you think you know, there’s something buried in the ground that will completely up end it. It’s a lesson we could all learn.

[1]https://www.theguardian.com/science/article/2024/jun/30/fifty-years-on-how-lucy-the-mother-of-humanity-changed-our-understanding-of-evolution

[2]https://www.bing.com/videos/riverview/relatedvideo?&q=beatles+lucy+in+the+sky+with+diamonds&&mid=ED669A112ADD84C9D3CDED669A112ADD84C9D3CD&

#paleontology #human evolution #don johannsen #afar hominins #molecular biology #rift valley

US Decline: Natural Process or Divine Retribution?

The decision of the United States Supreme Court [1] is so nakedly partial that it marks another terrible stage in that country’s decline. Which, all things considered, has been precipitous for the last 20 years or thereabouts. So much so that it has prompted one or two of our religiously- minded friends to wonder if it is in fact Divine Justice. The retribution being for the Invasion of Iraq in 2003, as clear an example of arrogant stupidity as any latter-day Aeschylus could wish for. However, we at LSS are cautious about invoking mystical explanations when more prosaic ones might do. We think that when the US triumphed in the Cold War between 1989 and 1991, the seeds of its own destruction were sown by the economic and cultural processes thereby unleashed.

The defeat of the USSR, it was asserted, marked the final triumph of Liberal Capitalism. All countries would now be open to the free flow of goods, capital (financial and human) and the services and technologies which would ensure a slowly rising tide of prosperity . Yet its architects, optimistically, overlooked one part of the deal. Most people, in most countries, most of the time, don’t like Foreigners. This is a central and ineluctable part of human nature. To deny it is as futile as to deny the urges to breathe, eat or have sex. Anyone with eyes to see and ears to listen was aware of these tendencies building long before the rise of the internet or the Crash of 2007-8. These things merely provided opportunities, and speeded up, processes of resentment and suspicion which were long in gestation.

That America was the leading Capitalist nation placed it at the forefront of these trends. Which are now playing out in the form of institutions and communities riven along political lines, and where the notion of Objective truth is now almost forgotten. If this was the Enlightenment-founded nation par excellence, what hope for the rest of us?

The task now for anyone with a hold on education, reason or logic to see that those virtues are now preserved in some way, and gifted to future generations. For currently political power is passing to a series of Autocrats who will soon style themselves as Kings and Emperors. In such regimes, what is the precise value of a scientific reading or a tonne of cement, beyond what The Leader says it is? In such circumstances, trade will shrivel, learning become futile and any hope of advancement lost. But until we confront the truths about human nature (or at least about 99% of it) progressives. will be doomed to failure. Because the autocrats understand it better than we do.

[1] Was Donald Trump a king as president? The US supreme court thinks so | Moira Donegan | The Guardian

#USA #Supreme Court #Liberal #law #enlightenment #trade #objective truth #justice

50 truly offensive adverts (you have been warned)

“What is intelligence?” We have sometimes pondered that question here, but it begs a question: “what is stupidity?” One possible answer is to be so confident of the assumptions of your own group that you discount those of others altogether. Effectively saying they have no worth. It can happen in all classes and at all educational levels. There’s no fool like an over-educated one, in our experience. But our examples today are chosen from a different field.

Nothing reveals the deep inner psychological fixations, obsessions and and assumptions of a society as well as advertising does. Especially those of the power groups to whom they’re selling. The excellent site we bring you day, called Canvas Art Rocks [1] have put together a collection of poster/press ads that are so very crass, offensive and in some cases potentially dangerous that is a tribute to the way their researchers held their noses. However-these ads are not really that old, and we are certain that senior readers will have seen something like them in the colour magazines of the nineteen seventies.

So, hold on to your seat and prepare your sick bag to enter a world of folksy old doctors selling tobacco. Of women depicted as stupid and inferior , so that they can be turned into sex objects. Of cheerful racism. And scariest of all to us, the gleeful promotion of firearms. It’s easy to laugh now. But remember-many of your fellow citizens had their minds formed in the era of these ads, and the culture they floated upon. And what unconscious assumptions do YOU make, gentle reader, as you smile indulgently at the follies of the past? The biggest fool of all is the one who knows, and knows best.

[1]https://www.canvasartrocks.com/blogs/posts/102141062-51-shocking-vintage-adverts-that-would-get-banned-today

#advert #mores #racism #sexism #tobacco #collective unconscious

Goodbye CRISPR and epigenetic medicine. Two genuinely exciting developments in one day

Far in the future when the current crop of elections in France, the UK, Iran and the USA are lost in the dusty pages of history books, people will remember this sunny weekend . For it was when Nature Briefings published not one but two stories (count ’em!) about learning and technologies which will still be shaping the lives of those yet unborn. And you read about them here, gentle reader!

Epigenetic Advance From one time Cinderella to starring role, the science of Epigenetics(all that stuff hanging around DNA but isn’t your honest to goodness genome)[1] has started to come of age. Proof of this lies in the fact that it’s starting to become the basis of real cures, in this case for Prion-based diseases “Epigenome Editor” blocks bad proteins

A molecular-editing tool that’s small enough to be delivered to the brain shows promise for warding off prion diseases, a rare but deadly group of neurodegenerative disorders. The system — known as coupled histone tail for autoinhibition release of methyltransferase (CHARM) — changes the ‘epigenome’, a collection of chemical tags that are attached to DNA and that affect gene activity. In mice, CHARM silenced the gene that produces the disease-causing proteins in most neurons across the brain without altering the gene sequence. This system is the first step towards developing a safe and effective ‘one and done’ treatment for reducing the levels of harmful proteins that cause prion disease, says bioengineer Madelynn Whittaker.Nature | 5 min read
Reference: Science paper

Goodbye CRISPR, welcome Bridge RNA Remember how this blog used to wax lyrical about CRISPR back in the ancient days of 2022? Well, there’s a new kid on the block “Jumping Gene” enzyme edits genomes

A technique that harnesses ‘jumping genes’ — mobile genetic sequences naturally found in bacteria that can cut, copy and paste themselves into genomes — could hold the key to redesigning DNA at will. Guided by an RNA molecule called a ‘bridge’ RNA or ‘seekRNA’, the system has been shown to edit genes in a bacterium and in test-tube reactions, but it is still unclear whether it can be adapted to work in human cells. If it can, it could be revolutionary, owing to its small size and its ability to make genetic changes that are thousands of bases long — much larger than is practical with the CRISPR — without breaking DNA.Nature | 6 min read
Reference: Nature paper 1, Nature paper 2 & Nature Communications paper

You’re a funny old species, aren’t you? When you use your inherent qualities of curiosity and intelligence you can achieve things like this. The rest of the time you divide yourselves into imaginary groups and spread destruction, holding yourselves back by centuries from a better life. Will someone pray tell us why you do it?

[1]https://www.wob.com/en-gb/books/nessa-carey/epigenetics-revolution/9781848312920?msclkid=f5800b66adbb110d62696d196c3d84a0&utm_source=bing&utm_m

#medicine #epigenetics #genetics #prions #gene editing

Yes, it really is Climate Change this time

Every so often we still meet some tap-room philosopher in the bar of the Dog and Duck who trots out the old line “Wurl, no one’s never PRUVED dis bad wevva is dahn ter cloimit chainge, ‘av dey?” We talk about droughts in Africa or floods in America; and the ancient 33 player arm comes out, drops into some pre-recorded groove: and the old song plays again. You can’t blame them really. The other side may be terrible at science, but they sure know how to run a media campaign, and they quickly fill the empty notebooks and studios of busy journalists before the careful, reasoned opinions of scientists have even been sketched out.

World Weather Attribution [1] is now trying to remedy this aching void. Run by a group of experts in disciplines like meteorology and physics, they carry out studies of extreme weather events, and try to tease out how the likelihood of each being caused by global warming, and what the extra impact of human activity was in each case. Unlike their well-funded opponents their work is peer-reviewed and carried out by people with professional training. They have built an impressive portfolio of rigorous case studies and try to build links with journalists who might want to build a balanced investigation of these complicated issues.

We hope their work is not too late. We fear it may be. If an organisation like this had been around at the time of the vaccine controversies, many lives might have been saved. If similar organisations could inform the arguments on migration, many more might be saved in future. We hope that, by visiting their pages, you will wish them well too.

[1]https://www.worldweatherattribution.org/

#climate change #global warming #weather event #drought #flood #disinformation

Time to Tax the Billionaires?

Imagine that every country was so prosperous that there was little need for migration. That the climate crisis was fixed, with wind turbines and electric cars in every land you visited. New drugs for every conceivable illness were not just freely available, but there were active substitutes for each of them waiting in laboratories. There were no hungry children at all, and everyone in the world had an old age pension. Would about $250 billion* a year about cover it?

That’s what could be obtained if there was a single world effort to fairly tax the planet’s 3000 or so billionaires, according to a report by Gabriel Zuchman, helpfully written up for us by Larry Elliott of the Guardian [1] At the moment this gilded class pays about 0.3% of their income in tax, which compared to most of us is nugatory indeed. But we’ll let Larry’s article cover the details-(you must read it), and instead riff on a theme of our own. The case for tax is not moral, nor Marxist nor religious, nor based on Natural Justice . It’s actually historical, and its about survival

The 18th century, or Enlightenment, or whatever, was full of learned economists who preached the gospel of lower taxes as the source of the wealth of their nations. The country that really put this in to practice was Imperial China, then the world’s largest economy. But the western barbarians-nations like England, Portugal and so on, kept their taxes high, despite all the domestic preaching. The result? Huge fleets and armies, able to dismember poor China’s attenuated defences, and open them to the enlightened benefits of trade. The chief result of which was a mass opium addiction. The moral? You need taxes if you are going to survive. remember that next time you read a bit of propaganda from a billionaire think tank or news outlet.

*in these pages billion=10⁹

[1]https://www.theguardian.com/news/article/2024/jun/25/international-scheme-to-tax-billionaires-wealth-technically-feasible-study-finds

#china #opium war #tax #billionaire #G20 #Gabriel Zuchman

Pancreatic Cancer-the brave ladies who offered hope

Escaping the concrete canyons of Croydon recently, we took a short break in the Sussex town of Worthing. (Which has been compared to Nice in Provence ; but only by people who have never been to Nice). While strolling along the Promenade at Worthing, we ran into a group, mainly comprising ladies, who were dressed in a variety of outre costume, including those of Pink Panthers and Star Wars Galactic Warriors. It turned out to be one of those happy occasions when we learned, not something new, but when something which we were dimly aware of was moved sharply up our agenda . For they were campaigning to gather money for the rising disease of Pancreatic Cancer. [1] And this is what we learned (overseas readers- we bet the UK is pretty representative of your jurisdiction too)

The pancreas is a vital organ, standing at the crossroads of both your digestive and endocrine system. So getting cancer in it is a pretty bad state of affairs. There are several types of this cancer. But last year, overall, saw 10 500 new cases in the UK. Actually, its among the 10 most common forms of cancer in these islands. The risk factors? You guessed it. Being overweight., smoking and diabetes are among the highest. All the features of a civilisation focussed too much on quick-fix marketing, and not enough on quality of life. If you want to drill down, here’s another link from the Charity Pancreatic Cancer UK. [2]

So these ladies, and the charity which they represent means that, even if your family is struck with this terrible affliction, you will not be alone. And, as we parted from the ladies, we closed on a moment of hope. For Pancreatic Cancer UK works closely with the other cancer charities in this country. And we agreed how useful it was to set up laboratories with ethe money raised. Who knows what other discoveries could be made with all those scientists and all that kit? Apparently these ladies intend to run the whole of the seafront down there, and back again. Good luck to them, we say. And thanks.

[1]https://www.pancreaticcancer.org.uk/information/just-diagnosed-with-pancreatic-cancer/what-is-pancreatic-cancer/

[2]https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0424/0949/2641/files/221123PC01_PCUK_What_is_Pancreatic_Cancer_Factsheet_Updates_Web.pdf?v=1670945787

#pancreatic cancer #cancer #research #health #medicine #charity

Offshore wind: a rare success for the Tories

Bertrand Russell always counselled : “don’t be so keen to diss the other guy. Much of the time you will be less right, and he less wrong, than you imagine.” That is the rough gist of what he said and we have alluded to it before in these pages. Nowhere have we seen the doctrine better echoed than in an article by Professor Rebecca Willis (Guardian 20 June 2024).[1]For when historians come to write the history of the Government first elected in 2010, they will do well to consult her piece.

Professor Willis is clear: the UK is the number two superpower in turbine energy generation. Second only in fact to the Peoples’ Republic of China, a somewhat larger political entity. How was this done? Rebecca tells us:

growth in offshore wind can be traced back to a 2014 decision to establish a new support mechanism for low-carbon generation. ……..;.;. it guarantees a set price for units of electricity. If the market price falls below the set price, the generator receives a top-up payment. If the market price rises above the set price, the generator pays back the difference.

It essentially stabilises the market and provides certainty for power generators, making it worth their while to invest for the long term. As a result of this and similar policies, the cost of offshore wind in Europe has fallen by 60% over the past decade, to become a cheap source of electricity.

They had a plan. They aligned it with economics. The result was not only a boost for manufacturing, but a strategic success , as was shown when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022 and gas prices skyrocketed. But even this far sighted achievement was badly compromised, as Rebecca explains:

But then Tory politicians began to listen to siren voices from a small but powerful anti-net-zero lobby, funded by dark money from fossil-fuel companies

Now certain oily politicians are pushing back on net zero itself, as if ignoring reality will somehow make it all more bearable. And they are full of venom to towards those who disagree. Our view at LSS is that of Russell. You can’t like everyone; but try to be polite. You never know from what corner salvation is going to come. Even the Conservative Party.

[1]https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jun/20/tories-green-legacy-labour-government-climate-green-energy-uk-offshore-wind

#wind turbines #oil money #net zero #renewables #climate change #global warming

Processed Foods: Reader Feedback

Photo by Anna Tukhfatullina Food Photographer/Stylist on Pexels.com

Today we reproduce the comment of our regular reader Ms Gaynor Lynch, on our recent piece about processed foods. Many thanks to her for taking the time to contact us:

Ultra-processed foods are bad for you – full stop. They are highly addictive and affect your brain chemistry so that you crave them more. Emerging research suggests ultra processed foods are particularly bad for not just the gut but the heart and brain as well, with mood and cognition badly affected.

Professor Tim Spectre is the go expert on the gut https://zoe.com/post/tim-spector-gut-tips,

There is an excellent excellent article in National Geographic on brain health but there is a pay wall. It may be available through your library service.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/premium/article/ultra-processed-foods-damage-brain-depression-anxiety-cognitive-decline#:~:text=Although%20many%20ultra-processed%20foods%E2%80%94soda%2C%20candy%2C%20energy%20bars%2C%20fruit-flavored,brain%2C%20with%20mood%20and%20cognition%20taking%20a%20hit.

Abstract of research article in the journal Neurology on associations between ultra-processed food consumption and adverse brain health outcomes. Free, paywall to full article.

https://www.neurology.org/doi/10.1212/WNL.0000000000209432

We at LSS think that this whole issue is only going to grow in the next few years and welcome the thoughts of any other readers who might care to join the debate

#nutrition #obesity #food #diet #sustainability #health #heart