It Stinks And Air Pollution

The Guardian went big today in a lead article on the subject of air pollution which is certainly a major problem. It attributes this to cars, traffic and other outside forms of pollution that have grown during the years.

The article is here and is both short and clear to read. The main issue are the effects on children that are emerging.

So what are people urged to do about this especially as vehicle pollution does not smell nice? The media etc. is full of advert's for fragrances as "air fresheners" in the home and as part of a whole range of household and personal products.

But these are made from the same petro-chemicals as in vehicle fuels. The synthetics added are powerful and hit hard adding to effect. The "get out" is that they are not regulated and may have one or two per cent of natural content to allow the advert's to make claims to that effect.

If anything those in the home and on the body make an even more poisonous chemical concoction than the stuff being pumped out of the back of a truck.

Project Finance The Good And The Bad

In the pantheon of great men of the 19^th Century there are few engineers. Most of the men who built the Britain of that age are forgotten. Some are remembered, but mostly in specialist histories rather than the general history.

One notable exception is Isambard Kingdom Brunel who dominates the attention almost to the exclusion of others One known name is Bazalgette, possibly because a descendant is prominent in the media and of his work on London’s sewerage system. Then there are the Stephensons and occasional others.

Joseph Locke (Wikipedia) is rarely mentioned. He is commemorated in Barnsley by a named park, a school and a block of new offices inhabited by HMRC, the taxman, an ironic comment on his career. In his listing in the 1851 Census, which I came across when looking for a brewer, he gives as his occupation “Engineer and Member of Parliament”. I like the “engineer” being first.

He is living in Lowndes Square, Knightsbridge, London, about as good as it gets and the presence there of people associated with the High Raj of India, City men and others has made me wonder about his role in the promotion of Indian railways.

But Locke was a man who delivered value for money, tried to stay inside the budget and who avoided expensive engineering works on the railways if possible. If not, he usually tried for the most economic solution. He was not the only engineer with this approach to the work in hand.

The Brunel Obituary from "The Engineer" of 1859 is of direct interest. Essentially, it is a “warts and all” look at his career and achievements. Apparently, the man who wrote it was a friend. It is clear that Brunel was certainly a man of immense energy and ideas, but like all of us stood on the shoulders of others. Also, he had a crop of failures and was a high cost man to employ.

The writing of history is often, of necessity, on the basis of major figures. The consequence can be if care is not taken is that some become virtually “stars” or “celebrities” of the past. There is a great deal about King Henry VIII and little about King Henry VII and even less about his mother, Margaret Beaufort.

But in dealing with the history of the economy and especially the structures and infrastructure we have inherited this can lead to a warped view of the reality of the time. Also it has the danger of limited perspectives and this may have a lot to do with our modern penchant for the big, the flashy and the expensive way of dealing with new projects.

Because of the way governments and finance developed over the 20^th Century what we see as a “free market” would have been alien to the world of Brunel. Major projects are no longer simply in the hands of entrepreneurs and based on the savings of small investors or prudent financial establishments. All too often now such projects are in the hands of government and the finance men.

So when the bills start coming in and the figures mount it is the assumed bottomless pit of the taxpayers’ money that has to pay and to carry the debt and the defaults. It is also assumed that almost nothing can be done without direct government intervention and political supervision.

This may explain why so little gets done properly at so much expense; a lot of which cannot be fully accounted for.

Sixty Years Later

We have been here before. In January 1958 a beleaguered Government under a non-elected Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, lost three senior ministers in a row over economic management and fiscal policy. “Supermac” brushed the major policy disagreements and resignations aside by referring to it as a “Little local difficulty”.

Despite the howling of the press, adverse bye-election and local election results, Macmillan carried on with his high spend policies of public services expansion to create employment. He ignored calls for fiscal restraint and caution. A host of learned economists were summoned to recommend that an annual rate of inflation of 3% compound would be entirely manageable.

It would lead to sustainable economic growth, maintain the value of the power, enable increased public spending, and last but not least keep the UK as a world economic and military power. Well, we all know what happened in the next two decades don’t we?

But do not forget that Macmillan won the election in the next year, 1959. I recall at the count I attended the astonishment and despair of the Gaitskellite Labour followers when the results were announced. It was clear that against all the odds the Conservatives had survived, and were there for another five years.

Except that Macmillan wasn't, because of the Profumo Affair and his prostate failed in 1963. But  when asked by the new President Kennedy of the USA (they were related by family marriages) what the main problems he faced were, answered, “Events, my dear boy, events.”

In the meantime we have a fiscal problem that will not go away, and needs difficult decisions to be taken very soon, and not after the next General Election.

Taking Steps

Still going on about Stalin etc. Russia was a very strange place to be in his time. In the middle of all the mayhem, the political and the military struggles and conflicts the Bolshoi Ballet danced on and Stalin watched.

This was a favourite among the performers, Olga Lepeshinskaya, and her history tells us a great deal about what it was like to live and work in the Moscow of that period. Youtube has clips of Stalin at the ballet.

At the top you have a protected and absolute elite which then included the ballet and we now know what it was like for those at the bottom and especially in the gulags and housing blocks.

And all the never ending queues.

The Wisdom Of Lenin

In the history of the 20th Century, among Russia's major figures are Stalin and Lenin who both visited London in the first decade of the 20th Century and met there. This has attracted interest, but as they were both mobile revolutionaries keeping clear of the forces of law and order the archive material is scant.

There is information on these visits and a debate about their purpose and what happened. For example in the case of Lenin, Sidney and Beatrice Webb, founders of the LSE, London School of Economics in 1895, were admirers of his theorising based on his studies of Karl Marx. They were also central to what became The Labour Party later.

One thought is that as the lectures were open whether either Lenin or Stalin turned up to mix with the students of the time. Also, who else might be around. Picking up on one aspect of this in 1907 Lenin is said to have visited Stalin at 77 Jubilee Street in Whitechapel. The street was largely working class typical for the period.

In 1901 the Census has this address as yet to be built, but in 1911 it has five families, probably Jewish fleeing the pogroms of Tsar Nicholas II. Of the 26 names the parents were of Russian origin but the children, with one exception were born in London. In the general area there were other families of this background.

In the early 1900's Lenin was at several addresses including Tavistock Place. It is intriguing that these were upmarket if you look at who else was there. For example, in 1901 there is Alexandre Genee, Ballet Master at Covent Garden, a leading figure in European ballet at the time.

There is also an Italian Professor of the Violin, a Covent Garden tenor etc. If Lenin was at Covent Garden in a standing place at the back of the stalls then I have stood where Lenin stood. If he could run to a seat in the gallery then it may well be sat, especially if he was one of the then front row gang.

Come 1917 when it all happened in Russia, one of the first nationalisations was the theatres and concert halls and during the eras of Lenin and Stalin the state had a firm grip as to what went on there. Culture you got and at low prices. But so much of left wing politics is theatrical, the congresses, conferences, demonstrations, mass meetings, the film archives are full of them with speakers waving their arms about urging The People forward to revolution.

Among the neighbours at his addresses one surname that appears is familiar. It is a Wisdom whose 1915 born son was Norman Wisdom, the famous mid 20th Century comedian of film whose work is highly regarded in Albania.

Could I interest the LSE in a thesis about Lenin being the cheeky cheerful cockney chappie of political philosophy?

An Extra Splash Of Water

The debate on climate change and just what where and how will it all take place goes on. The difficulty is that the technicalities, the theorising and differences of opinion leave most of us well behind despite any urgency.

The complications are many and this article from Science Daily from Columbia University does not make easy reading, although short. A key issue it suggests is hydrology and in particular levels of soil moisture. We know water is critical to life on earth, especially our own. This takes the idea a step further.

But what matters is that the article suggests this is not a long term matter, it is short term and we can expect change to be more rapid and extensive than previously thought.

Another Wet Day

In May 1917 under the heading of "Water Water Nowhere" I posted an item on the subject of fresh water supplies and our vulnerability in the UK to possible shortages. Now it is suddenly occurring to some thinking people that the growth of population, wealth and the economy implies increased demand for many things, including water.

To the astonishment of many, fresh water cannot be created on the web or for that matter by simply spending money. It might be done by filtering and treating sea water, but that is not cheap needs substantial energy inputs and requires extensive investment and industrial plant to do it.

In the UK happy in the past with all those wet centuries delivering from the sky the water we need, we do not understand that we can and do have shortages as in the past. But the future is looking grim.

All that extra population doing wonders for the economy cannot be sustained with a lot of extra water, in England in London and the South East particularly. At present there is no sign of any real policy or action from government and time is beginning to run out.

A couple of long hot summers could leave us all very thirsty, smelly and out of pocket because of the cost of imported supplies.

This is the 2017 post:

Just along the road a man has had an external car wash fitting put on the front of his garage. Retired without a job to do he has made his car the centre of his universe. So it is washed after almost every outing. He must use in a month on his car etc. the same amount of water as a village in one of the drier parts of the world.

In 1976 in the UK there was a serious drought; a long dry spell followed by a hot period when temperatures were high. During our holidays we went to the South of France to cool down. It was a sweaty ride up the A1 home. On return our lawn was a scanty brown, but some neighbours had managed a green and pleasant land despite pleas and restrictions.

One rose at after midnight to get in an hour or so to water his lawn secretly but oblivious to the fact that the sounding of swishing water in the quiet was all too obvious, let alone the hedges dripping with water as dawn broke and the bright fresh shine of morning.

There was at first a panic, then a blame game and a cry for something to be done. When the rain returned it was soon forgotten. Since then we are into our tenth General Election, in all the promises and made and policies declared I do not recall much if anything at all to do with water supplies.

There was vague talk about desalination plants, but these were expensive and needed energy. More to the point they had to be somewhere on the coastlines and nowhere wanted them. The greenies threw mega wobbles at the very idea.

The population is now rather greater and more properties have been built and more cars and vehicles are on the roads etc. The call is for us to increase population rapidly, put up millions more properties and all of us to enjoy the benefits of an advanced society.

One of these is "free" or cheap water in unlimited supply. It is just assumed and is a powerful incentive for many from the hotter places where it is not cheap or indeed easy to access. We are arguing about climate and about energy policy. But water supply has been low on the agenda, if there at all.

The few of us that look across the millennia at climate and weather patterns and their effects on food supply, population and economic matters will be aware that the last century has been but a brief blink of time. What happens next we can only guess and hope. What we in the UK have been doing with water policies is simply hoping.

We could use our imaginations. A high pressure here, a low pressure there, a few marginal shifts in winds and changes in temperatures and there you go. The Atlantic Isles becomes a dry desert region that can support limited life who can survive. The politicians, financiers and techies have fled leaving a population that depends on the nearest well for its supply of the most vital commodity.

Go to Youtube and put in "There's a hole in my bucket" for the children's nursery rhyme that is probably an accurate summary of our present policy for water supply and management.