Politics and Human Rights.

Capitalism needs to grow, and if it does not grow, it dies. Production must increase, therefore consumption must do so, both driven by the imperative of increased revenues and increased profits, required by shareholders requiring increased dividends, banks and other financial institutions requiring increased interest payments, and owners of 'land' (which, in economics jargon, includes the sources of raw materials for industry) for rents. Workers, deprived of collective bargaining power by anti-trade union laws and firms preventing them from joining trade unions, struggle to keep wages in line with rising prices. Capitalism wants them to consume more, but doesn't want to pay them more!  Capitalism, in order to grow, requires an increased supply of energy. Some of that energy, it's true, is supplied by renewables and nuclear power, but the vast majority of it is still supplied by fossil fuels - by carbon. According to the Guardian on Monday 26th June 2023, citing a re...

A scientific paper , published in Nature Scientific Reports in July 2020, should have been more widely read than it has been (it has been cited 54 times). Its topic is 'Atmospheric CO2 during the Mid-Piacenzian Warm Period and the M2 glaciation', and it's by E. de la Vega et al . The Piacenzian , for those who don't know, is the last age of the Pliocene Epoch. The study focused on the period 3.35-3.15 million years ago (Mya), in other words covering 200,000 years (200 ky). The Earth was then in the same solar orbital configuration as it is today. During this period, atmospheric CO2 rose to a maximum of 428 ppm = 829 mg/m^3 =  3,340.25 GtCO2 (billion tonnes of CO2). Mean annual global near-surface atmospheric temperature, however, was +3  °C  above the pre-industrial (1750) Holocene norm, and sea-levels 20 metres higher than they are today. If such conditions were reproduced now, the impact would be catastrophic, with all coastal and many riverine cities inundated, a...

It's suggested that, in the forthcoming English by-elections in Mid-Bedfordshire, Somerset and Frome and Uxbridge and Ruislip, voters should vote tactically in order to "Get The Tories Out" (GTTO). This would mean Labour voters voting for the Liberal Democrat candidates in Mid-Bedfordshire and Somerset and Frome, given that the Liberal Democrats were in second place to the Tories in those two constituencies in 2019, and Liberal Democrat voters lending their votes to Labour in Uxbridge and Ruislip, as Labour came second in 2019 to the Tory former leader and Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, now out of the Commons in disgrace. There's one major problem with this. While it's fine for Labour voters to vote Liberal Democrat, it isn't fine for Liberal Democrat ones to reciprocate the favour, as it would mean voting for a Party in favour of austerity, Brexit, Tory policies on immigration and "law and order", locking up climate activists in prison for years - i...

The results for the British Labour Party at the General Elections held between 1945 and 2019 can be conveniently tabulated as follows:     Table 1.   YEAR.   VOTE (%).   SEATS (%).   WIN/LOSE.   1945   47.7   61.4   W   1950   46.1   50.4   W   1951   48.8   47.2   L   1955   46.4   44.0   L   1959   43.8   41.0   L   1964   44.1   50.3   W   1966   48.0   57.8   W   1970   43.1   45.7   L   1974 (1)   37.2   47.4   W   1974 (2)   39.2   50.2   W   1979   36.9   42.4   L   1983   27.6   32.2   L   1987   30.8   35.2   L   1992   34.4   41.6   L   1997   43.2   63.4   W   2001   40.7   62.5   W   2005   35.2   62.0   W ...