Author: Andrew Gold

Fatbergs, Recycling, and Non-Joined up Thinking

Andrew Gold Random Thunks

I expect that most of us think “recycling” is a good thing, and so we do our ‘bit’.  By “we” I mean the “most of us” who recycle – at all. Our local authorities provide us with multiple bins, into which we sort our discards, which are collected at variable intervals.  Those of us who live in small towns, or the country, generally have somewhere inoffensive to keep these bins but millions live in streets of terraced, or flatted, housing with no private outside space.  In consequence the bins clutter the pavement, or are kept inside between collection days.  Opportunist wildlife, like urban foxes and gulls, make quite a job of feeding from these bins.  A different kind of recycling. A lot of this recycling process is based on the technology, and economics, of roadside refuse collection – we are stuck with various designs of “wheelie bin”, and vehicle, because that’s best for the industry, not the consumer.  In rural Italy they have bigger communal bins, kept on public land, and they are emptied by bin trucks the size of a big Transit van; great for getting round little roads (or down streets clogged with parked cars).

“We” make full use of the charity shop industry, to recycle unwated but still useful items.  “We” join community schemes (like Freecycle”) to up, down or sideways cycle stuff.  Repair cafes are starting to appear all over the country, to help us extend the life of things which otherwise would be discarded.  This is great because it also brings people together and friendships are formed.  But not everything is, or can be, repaired or passed on, and stuff has to be “dumped”.    Now, our own local council may not happen to deal with one or other item of refuse: the whole matter of what can, or cannot, be recycled by each authority is a confusing maze, but one thing they all seem to agree on is that food containers must be clean.

We diligently wash out our yogurt pots, our food trays, our baked bean tins, empty olive oil bottles, margarine boxes, soup tins etc., etc.  In so doing we use one of the scarecest resources on the planet: water.  Not only that, but it’s clean water that’s had to be extracted and processed (at whatever cost).  Much of this water is also heated, because you can’t clean a lot of the ‘gunk’ with cold water.  We use gas or electricity to heat the water – more scarce resources.  As soon as a lot of this stuff gets into our drains it cools and solidifies again, welded into fatbergs along with wet wipes and other in-sanitary items.

The stuff that has to go direct to the council “Recycling Centre”, because the bin men won’t take it, generates masses of road journeys by individual vehicles, more pollution, more road wear, more fuel.  Many of the measures are designed “top down” and address very individual, specific, environmental issues like reducing the amount of land fill.  The consequences are, it seems to me, not entirely thought through and, overall, not environmentally friendly.

We need more joined-up thinking on environmental policy: industry, food producers, consumers, and governments all have something to offer but not if they only tackle the one bit they are interested in (or can make money out of).  In many cases I fear the problem they solve individually just creates a different problem for someone else.

Another ‘Own Goal’ by Jeremy Corbyn

Andrew Gold Politics

I despair.  I watched a bit of BBC “Question Time” (‘QT’) last night. For my ‘friends’ out side the UK, ‘QT’ is a current affairs Q&A programme with a selected panel facing a public audience. Naturally enough, just now, it was dominated by Brexit. I hate to say this, but it demonstrated just how broken our Parliamentary democracy is. It’s all about holding on to power, or gaining it. You couldn’t get a straight answer to “Is the ship sinking?” if the programme were held on the Titanic as it was sliding under the waves!

‘QT’ also showed (again) why Diane Abbott should never represent the Labour Party in any public forum, how inept the Labour Front Bench team is, and how Jeremy Corbyn couldn’t score a goal, except an own goal, even if he were the only person on the pitch. By refusing to talk to Theresa May unless she “takes No Deal off the table”, he just looks playground petulant and out of touch. A number of other party representatives (including some of his own senior back benchers) have managed to go through the door of 10 Downing Street to say much the same – but at least they can’t be accused of not engaging. As it is Theresa May can come back to the house on Monday with whatever ‘Plan B’ she decides, and criticise the Labour Party for not helping shape it, and Jeremy Corbyn won’t be able to say that, although he met with the PM, her Plan B ignores his contribution. “I’m not playing unless we can use my ball”.  Pathetic.

Ras Putin and the new Russian Empire

Andrew Gold Politics

Let me say, up front, that for most of my early adult life I was a supporter of the Soviet Union.  I filtered my experience of the ‘Cold War’, because I was aware of the machinations of the state apparatus of the USA and UK, sometimes affecting me personally, to discredit and undermine the Soviet Union (and its allies).  Then along came Mikhail Gorbachev, Glasnost, Perestroika.  It seemed we all basked in his personal warmth as he thawed, it seemed personally, the cold war.  Those of us who had lived for 30 or 40 years under the threat of global nuclear anihilation were relieved.  Then came the collapse of the Soviet system, the dissintegration of the USSR and the rise of a new Russian Federation (for which now read Russian Empire) and, by the way, the influence of the Russian Orthodox Church.  It seems to me that some of the older Russian generation (by which I mean those who lived through the Soviet era) still harbour nostalgic and proud feelings for the achievements, and crucially certainty, of that system.  The younger generation, who focussed more on the hardships, constraints and, yes, the abuses of that time, were only too thrilled to discard collectivism in favour of individualism.  Here, in the UK, we are still reaping the consequences of ‘buying into’ the philosophy of putting yourself, rather than ‘society’, first even though, arguably, we had a better developed sense of when we were being ‘sold a crock’.  Then along came a new Tsar, Vladimir Putin: ex-KGB.  The writing was on the wall, but over the same time we had the global financial crash and we took our eye off the ball as successive UK governments set about eviscerating, amongst other things, our military capability.  We became embroiled in war in the Middle-East and Putin saw, and learned from, our effectiveness and weaknesses.  He had also learned from the debacle of Russian miitary intervention in Afghanistan. He set about modernising his military inventory and thinking: no more full frontal invasions to extend Imperial influence, but cyber warfare and proxy wars.

Put that into the context of a rise across Europe, especially in the east, of far-right nationalism.  Patriotism is, I would argue, a good thing; nationalism (which is not the same thing at all) is very dangerous.  Just now Putin’s “approval rating” in his own country is, we are told, on the slide.  There is a real danger of creating conditions where he could whip up support for patriotic / nationalistic support for external action.  1930s all over again?

 

Another Brexit Referendum?

Andrew Gold Politics

There are strong arguments for and against holding a second UK referendum on Brexit (UK leaving membership of the EU).  To be clear I was, and am, passionately against Brexit but, in this blog post, I’m not arguing one side or the other.  I’m questoning process, and possible outcomes.

In my opinion the UK government made a fundamental mistake by not setting a majority threshold for the Ist (2016) referendum.  To me it seems crazy that such a significant and long lasting change could be, theoretically, decided on a simple majority of 1.  All of the angst, downstream of the vote, about “the will of the people” or “democracy” could have been avoided if a majority of, say, 60% one way or the other had been set.  Instead we were left with a relatively small majority in favour of changing the status quo.

Now, after 2 years of negotiating the terms of our exit (the “deal”), we know more about what Brexit means.  Some of the myths, and gaps in our understanding, that underpinned the referendum result have been clarified.  The UK is still on track to leave the EU on March 29th but the government, and Parliament itself, is split from top to bottom and has failed to ratify the terms.  There are calls for this impasse to be resolved by returning to a referendum.  Would demographics come into play? There are two more years worth of young people who have reached voting age since the last referendum; there are two years worth of older voters who have fallen off the roll.  It is widely believed that young people voted to Remain and older people voted to Leave.

I ask what the referendum question, or questions, could be?  It can’t again be as simple as asking to vote to stay or leave but what, short of a vote to rescind the decision of the first referendum completely, would resolve the question of the border between Northern Ireland (part of the UK) and The Republic of Ireland (part of the EU)?  Obviously there are other EU member countries with land (or sea) borders with non-EU countries,  How do they manage?  They have border controls.  Whatever we decide it seems highly unlikely that an open border in the island of Ireland can survive a no-deal Brexit.

It’s a mess; I can’t see how this is going to resolve unless there is a general election which returns a big Labour majority, and therefore a government with some authority.

 

 

“Snakes and Ladders” – a fictional story of predatory behaviour

Andrew Gold Short Stories

‘Snakes and Ladders’

 “What goes around comes around”.  It’s a common enough aphorism, but God knows there is precious little evidence for a perfect karmic system of justice.  It has served me well enough though, helping me suck up the slights of life in the belief that the perpetrator, the cause of my angst, would one day ‘get’ his, or hers.  Taking the high ground, I used to call it.  It kept me out of a few confrontations but when it failed, bloodied and bruised, whether literally or metaphorically, I took comfort from belief in a future of righteous redress.  Until, that is, I met Nadine.

Nadine must have been born manipulative because even at 19, when we first met, she was already the finished article.  She had all the physical and intellectual assets one could want in a woman, except one: she had no scruples. She could make you feel you were in the wrong, and even apologise for getting in her way, as she put the boot in.  Fortunately for me our paths only crossed tangentially, but from time to time we had mutual friends and colleagues.  I heard from them about the damage she did but never that she’d been called to account.

I first came across her at a flat warming.  Three first year student friends of mine, Niki, Simon and Ella, were sharing a sunny first floor in Clapham.  Nadine came along to the party with a mutual friend of theirs.  Niki and Simon were a loose item, rather more loose to Simon than Niki it transpired when Nadine made a blatant play for him.  She was taller, more athletic, and cleverer than Niki and it didn’t take her long to ease the heartbroken girl out of the flat and take over her room.  Shortly after that she dumped Simon over some fabricated dalliance between him and Ella and, in three months from start to finish, she had the flat to herself.

By these and similar methods she clawed, inveigled or dissected, her way to an underserved first class degree (leaving her tutor’s marriage in tatters in the process) and then an MBA.  By the time she was ready for the snakes and ladders of business she’d ‘hopscotched’ her way across London from flat to maisonette to house, and along the way had accumulated a rather nice Alpha Romeo Spyder, a time share in Gleneagles, a pony (stabled) and more jewellery than could be decently worn in polite company.

The infuriating thing was that Nadine didn’t need to be this way; she was actually über competent, at everything.  She never climbed over someone into a qualification, a job, or a bed that she didn’t then occupy with more success and ease than the rightful incumbent.   Her reasoning seemed to be that there was no point in wasting everyone’s time, especially hers, proving that she was better at, or more deserving of, something someone else already had.  She just took it, used it, and then abandoned it when the next opportunity came her way, leaving someone else to pick up the pieces.

We were 5 years out of university before I saw her again.  I was with my, then, girlfriend Elaine at the British Film Institute; a season of Balkan avant-garde movies.  When the lights came up, there she was in the seat in front.  I tapped her on the shoulder.  We walked out to the foyer together, she chatting superficially in the way you do when you’re struggling to remember the name of someone you’ve met out of context.  She introduced us to her companion Boris, an under-something in the Croatian embassy, before we went our separate ways.  Later I heard she had a flat in Korcula and Boris had been demoted and transferred to a consulate in Bolivia.

We met a couple more times, just passing through the same airport departure lounge, or a reception somewhere, but the next occasion after that was different.  I was diligently, if tediously, working my way up the ladder in a private bank.  I even had a chic office on a favoured 35th floor corner in Canary Wharf.  Well, to be more accurate, it was my boss Dave that had the corner office, I was next door.  Anyway, one hot May I was sitting with my door open, for the illusion of cooler air, and looked up to see Nadine standing there, being introduced by Dave as his new P.A.  She was casually dressed in a tailored silk blouse and slacks, but every inch the powerful corporate animal.  There was just the merest flicker of recognition from her before she turned away and I knew right then that, whichever way the dice fell, poor Dave was about to land on a succession of squares with snake heads and slide right off the game board.

In a way Nadine counted me as a friend, well at least not an enemy, because I’d never had anything she wanted, nor stood between her and her next objective.  Nevertheless it was prudent self-preservation that stopped me from trying to warn Dave.  Instead I watched her, in the way a fascinated child watches a python in the zoo, as she undulated her way into position for her next live meal.

Her first coil was simple and subtle: a presentation to a new client went unaccountably wrong.  A brochure was bound with some pages upside down, a name tag was misspelled, some annual account figures didn’t quite add up.  The outsourced printers took most of the blame, but the CEO noticed the beads of sweat break out on Dave’s upper lip, and the adroit way that Nadine gathered up the loose ball and ran with it.  She knew exactly what to say, and how to say it in such a way as to leave the unmistakable impression of a man out of his depth being rescued by a loyal and undervalued assistant.

The second coil wound on quickly afterwards, at a Wimbledon-week garden party for some minor-royal Saudi client.  Of course there was no alcohol on offer with the post- match strawberries, but ever-attentive Nadine saw to it that, as he networked the clients, Dave’s glass of fruit punch was always topped up, but with a little hidden extra.  When he was found face down in the shrubbery Nadine was tending him wearing a Royal teal-blue hijab she had secreted in her handbag.  The contrast between her chaste modesty and her disarrayed drunken boss ensured that control of the account passed to her, and she was being tipped to head up the Dammam office the following year.

The only time she came even close to being exposed was when Ranjit, the night security guard, found her going through Dave’s desk and laptop.  She was copying and deleting files, leaving a trail of incompetence for her coup de grâce.  Ranjit was no match for Nadine and easily fell victim to her blushing embarrassment; he was “paid in kind”, then blackmailed, for his silence.  And so it went on; little by little the life, and job, was squeezed out of Dave.

About 6 months later I happened to be sharing the lift with Nadine, by then my boss, when it shuddered to a stop between floors.  Ordinarily being trapped in a lift with a more-than attractive predatory female would be the stuff of many a male fantasy, but the barely nascent thought was stifled by the realisation that, at last, what had gone around was about to come around in spades: Nadine was obviously very scared, and she began to unravel.  This time it was her doing the sweating, her with a look of non-comprehension on her face, and her out of control as she crumpled into a corner hugging her knees and gabbling.  It wasn’t hard to get her to talk about herself at any time so it only took gentle prompting, purely as a way of calming her nerves you understand, to get her to review her successful career and catalogue her victories and victims.  By the time we got to the juicy details of poor Dave’s fall she was standing again, head back in full flow, assured and confident as ever.

After about an hour power to the lift was restored, and downward travel resumed.  Nadine checked herself over in the mirrored wall of the lift car, adjusted her neck line, smoothed down her skirt, and flicked her hair before turning and thanking me for helping her keep calm. At the 8th floor, where she was going to a wine and canapés ‘do’ for future vice-presidents, she gave me a peck on the cheek, at the same time digging her finger nails ever-so gently into my hand to tell me, as if I needed telling, that she intended her ‘performance’ to be our little secret.

Me?  I was on my way home to Elaine, but I got out of the lift as well.  I thought that walking the last few floors would give me time to think, about what I should do and how it might play out, and I was right.  By the time I had reached the lobby, I knew.  I ran the last flights to the basement security office and Ranjit, and the recording from the in-lift CCTV camera.  Despite the emergency lighting in the stranded lift, the dim images were perfectly usable, and the sound crystal clear.

Don’t you just love ‘YouTube’?

 

© Andrew Gold 2015

Harvey Weinstein – are we all to blame?

Andrew Gold General

Anyone who knows me will know how repugnant I find this man’s behaviour and, by extension, all such behaviour. It is hateful. Intolerable. However, outside the bright spotlight focussed on Weinstein, there is something uncomfortable we shouldn’t ignore. Something in the mirror. Ourselves. Men and Women. Parents. Colleagues. Employers.

Some men and women in powerful positions over others will always try to abuse their power.   Sex is a basic human drive, for men and women, and we are never going to change that.  Predatory behaviour in business practice is encouraged, is celebrated.  Put all that together and you have the context for a Weinstein to operate.  However since the 1950s, when the advertising gurus on Madison Avenue (USA) declared that “Sex sells”, we have become progressively inured to the sexualisation of everything from selling M&Ms and hair care products, to the cult of celebrity, in “Strictly Come Dancing” or even animation programmes on childrens’ TV.  It is acceptably normal for popular music to be performed, and promoted, by overtly sexual behaviour.  In fact, when someone just stands there and sings, or plays, it is remarkable.

For as long as WE think it is is OK for men to tolerate (even encourage) sexual inuendo as harmless banter, for as long as it is OK for women to be encouraged to wear sexually revealing / provocative clothes, the bar for the likes of Weinstein is raised.  Business executives who want female employees to wear open blouses, and high heeled shoes, to work are complicit.  The producers of childrens’ films as diverse as ‘Beauty and The Beast or ‘The Incredibles’, that idealise female image as big breasted, large hipped and wasp waisted, are complicit.  The moderators of the BBC Breakfast facebook page, that allow posts that refer to the tightness of a presenter’s dress, are complicit.  We are all, to some degree, complicit.

I am absolutely not saying that women who dress ‘provocatively’, or just take a pride in their appearance, are “asking for it”.  Nor am I blind to the fact that women are just as capable of coercion and predatory behaviour, or that some ‘transactions’ of this kind are consensual.  What I am saying is that we all need to look in the mirror when we point an accusatory finger at high level perpetrators: while we put up with the sexual objectivisation of women (yes, and men) in our daily lives it is easier for the likes of Harvey Weinstein to exploit their power.

 

“Brexigration” – or how to conflate two undeliverable ideas, UK style

Andrew Gold Politics

I watched the Prime Minister, yesterday, commenting in the House on a ‘leaked’ government draft paper on future (post Brexit) immigration policy;

As I understand the PM, in the context of Brexit, the “British People” accept immigration is broadly beneficial but “just want to have control over it”.  Actually I think many people do not accept immigration is beneficial and want it stopped, period.  To be clear, I do not share this view.

Be that as it may, I cannot see how the proposals, whatever they turn out to be in detail, can deliver control without an effective means of detecting, detaining, and removing those immigrants who do not comply with the requirements of their registration / residency / work entitlement.

The focus seems to be, in the first instance anyway, on immigrants from EU countries by putting in place controls for them which are, broadly, like those already in place for non-EU citizens.  However, the controls in place for non-EU citizens demonstrably fail:  it appears the Border Agency (and whoever else) cannot keep track of,  and remove when necessary, those already here.  Ignoring the unknown number of illegal immigrants (from wherever), whether settled or itinerant, working in the black economy or trafficked, our immigration detention centres already seem to be full, with a mixed bag of illegal immigrants, failed asylum seekers, criminals awaiting deportation and visa ‘overstayers’.  One consequence of this seems to be those identified as ‘illegal’ are bailed to report, or reappear in court, and immediately disappear back into the populace at large.  What a surprise.

Whenever there is a TV news story about police resources, they often use a bit of film of two police officers walking along.  It makes me smile, all that is missing is the theme music from “The Bill”.  When did anyone outside London last see two police officers on foot?  Or even in a car?  We live on an island but I don’t see how, without massively increased resources in coastal and land border patrols, in police numbers, in courts, in detention and removal facilities, this is going to work.  And, given the continuing vice-like squeeze on budgets generally, who in government is going to argue for that?  In my opinion this is just one more bit of “oh shit, we’ve promised this so we’d better do something” policy making.

Dear God, not again…

Andrew Gold Politics
“Steve Bannon, the ousted White House chief strategist, is reportedly considering starting a television network which would allow him to “go nuclear” as he settles vendettas with moderate advisers in the White House and pressures President Donald Trump to pursue a populist agenda of economic nationalism.
 
Allies of Mr Bannon compared him to a “tiger freed from his cage,” suggesting things would get “ugly” as he targets the Republican establishment and what he calls “West Wing Democrats”. (source Daily Telegraph 20 August 2017)
 
I don’t know what this feels like in the USA, but for those of us on the European side of the ‘pond’, with memory and some history education, this all sounds horribly familiar and quite scary. Bannon’s CV is not so dissimilar to that of Josef Goebbels in pre-war Germany. Like Goebbels, Bannon understands the power of the media, and his ‘Breitbart’ website looks set to spawn a TV channel. Like Goebbels, he plays on the disappointment of a marginalised electorate. By ‘firing’ Bannon, I suspect Trump is really unleashing him to stir up the so-called ‘Alt-Right’, because he is continually baulked by more moderate forces. It is all frighteningly reminiscent of the creation of the Black Shirts, and later the SS, taking politics out of the debating chamber and into the street, with violence. Unlike pre-war Germany, the populace in the US has the constitutional right to bear arms, and don’t they know it: already turning out to rallies in paramilitary gear and carrying automatic weapons. 10 years before the outbreak of WW2, Goebbels couldn’t get elected to save his life.  In 1923 Hitler was in prison and on trial for Treason. You all know what happened after that. Trump may be a bufoon, or he may not. Either way his backers, and populist supporters, are dangerous. If Trump becomes a liability, I don’t think the likes of Bannon will think twice about moving him out of the way.  .

LYME disease IN UK – 2019

Andrew Gold Lyme disease

Lyme disease is one of several bacterial infections which can be passed to humans by the bite of an infected tick.  It is important to be aware of it, and the potential risks posed by a tick bite, because it is a multi-systemic infection which can affect the central nervous system, muscles (including the heart) and cognitive function of the brain: it can be severely disabling, long lasting and potentially fatal.  Therefore early diagnosis, and prompt treatment, is crucial to minimising the effects of disease.

Knowledge about Lyme disease in the UK NHS is patchy. Although N.I.C.E, The National Institute for Care and Health Excellence, issued a guideline in 2018, knowledge at the “coalface” of NHS Primary Care  remains inconsistent, and prompt diagnosis and effective treatment are not assured.  Therefore the first line of defence is to avoid being bitten.  Nobody wants to stop people enjoying the open air.  The physical and psychological benefits of enjoying the countryside outweigh the risks, but you need to take sensible precautions.  Wear appropriate clothing: long sleeves, trousers with cuffs tucked into socks, not shorts, sandals and sleeveless ‘crop tops’.  Use a DEET based tick repellent on exposed skin, but remember it may need to be re-applied if you are out all day.

If you might be at tick risk, say on a day out in the countryside, it is good practice to check yourself thoroughly at the end of the day, and at intervals through the day to check your clothes for ‘questing’ ticks.   You may need the assistance of a good friend: ticks can hide in places hard to see.  Remember that a tick which can carry disease may be as small as a poppy seed, but if you find a tick attached don’t panic: they don’t all carry disease.  Although disease transmission can begin in as little as 6 hours, it is as important to remove an attached tick correctly as it is to remove it promptly.  Use of the correct technique, preferably with a purpose designed tick removal tool or needle-nosed tweezers, is vital to avoid crushing the tick and provoking it to pass any bacteria to you. Do not use your fingers, apply creams, Vaseline, alcohol or attempt to burn it off with a match head or cigarette end.

Ticks are not “spreading north”, as has been rather sensationally described recently.  The UK has, and has had for many millenia, ticks widely distributed.  Although we know their preferred habitat is leafy woodland, heathland, and long vegetation, anecdotally ticks are becoming more active over a wider geographical range and longer across the seasons.  Again, anecdotally, 2018 seems to have been a ‘bad’ year for ticks.  It is not known whether this is because of global warming, changes in land use, changes in agricultural practices or some other reason.  Some say that a so-called “Mast year”, when a big crop of tree nuts is produced, or an abundant autumn results in survival of more vector species like mice.  While there are so-called ‘hot spots’, even within ‘tick country’ like the Highlands, or the New Forest, it is not really known where they are in greater or lesser numbers or whether the ticks there are proportionally more or less infected than elsewhere.  In fact there is no reliably accurate information on the proportion of UK ticks that carry disease.  Estimates range from 2-15%.

The fact is you don’t need to be wild walking or camping to find a tick.  You could get bitten by an infected tick in your urban garden, allotment or an urban park, because they can travel on mice, hedgehogs, domestic pets, urban foxes and even migrating birds.  At present there is no mandatory check for ticks on pets returning from a foreign ‘holiday’ and some species of imported ticks can survive indoors, unlike our ‘domestic’ ticks which need moisture to survive, and they can carry disease pathogens not normally present in the UK.

The official estimate of new cases of Lyme disease, in the UK, annually is about 3000.  Until very recently the Centre for Disease Control (CDC) in the USA estimated cases there as 30,000.  They have revised that to 300,000.  There appear to be more cases Lyme disease (and other tick borne diseases) in mainland Europe than the UK, but that may be because other countries collect data differently.  The wide range of estimates of new UK cases is, regrettably, just estimates.  Any apparent increase in cases may be down to increased awareness, both in the public and the medical profession.  Since 2010 Lyme disease has not been a notifiable disease in the UK, unless acquired occupationally when it would be reported to the HSE (Health and Safety Executive) under the RIDDOR regulations, or in military service.  Data are not collected in the UK unless the disease is confirmed by a UK laboratory blood test.  An unknown proportion of cases are treated on clinical judgement without a confirming blood test.  This needs to change if we are to understand the scale of the incidence of UK acquired Lyme disease.

Both Public Health England (PHE), and The Big Tick Project (based in Bristol) receive ticks collected by members of the public in the UK.  PHE will examine the ticks it receives to see what disease pathogens they carry.  Anything, like an app, that more reliably records where, and in what numbers,  ticks are found may be helpful.  Indeed there have been apps developed in the UK before, and there are a number of so-called ‘tick MAPS’ to be found on the internet.  Unless the information is properly recorded, in a standard format, it may not provide scientifically reliable data.  Incomplete information can also lull people into a false sense of security if they are led to believe they are in a low risk area.

There is, as yet, no vaccine against Lyme disease.  Scientists and Doctors are beginning to accept that their previous certainty about detection and treatment of Lyme disease is less secure.  There is more open-mindedness about the sensitivity and reliability of standard tests.  The 2018 N.I.C.E guideline acknowledges continuing uncertainty, including about the potential for complete cure, about relapses or about the persistence of the bacteria.  At least there is more willingness to consider different drugs, doses, duration and method of delivery of treatment.

Whatever the accurate number of new UK cases, every year there is a fresh cohort of victims: new blood samples, new prescriptions of drugs, new outcomes.  Because there is no centrally directed or co-ordinated recording, monitoring of diagnosis, treatments or outcomes, there is no dataset of Lyme disease victims available to researchers to see whether one treatment works better than another, whether there is a measurable treatment failure rate, or for evidence of relapse or post-treatment persistence.

A large number of Lyme ‘victims’ have, over many years, reported persisting illness despite approved treatment.  Naturally, in desperation, and with the help of the internet, they look elsewhere for help.  This has led to a rise in the number of ‘alternative’ or ‘unorthodox’ treatments being offered and tried, some of them positively dangerous.  While, for the most part, there is little evidence that these work it is well to remember that “absence of evidence does not mean evidence of absence”.  In due course it may be proven, by more research and clinically controlled double-blind trials, that there is scientifically replicable evidence.  Without such evidence the orthodox medical community, and regulatory bodies, will always rely on the official guidance.

The longer someone has disease without treatment, the more intractable it can become.  Given the potentially large number of under, or undiagnosed, victims there may need to be more work on so-called late stage, or disseminated, Lyme involving referrals to specialist clinics and a multi-disciplinary approach.  One of the things we do know is that, amongst recorded and confirmed cases, the age group most at risk of developing the disease appears to be 45-64.  We do not know why this is, but we do know that we have an ageing population so it is not unreasonable to extrapolate from this that, if for no other reason, there will be more cases in future.

I Robot, You Robot.

Andrew Gold Uncategorized

I’ve just been watching a worrying short item on the BBC’s technology prgramme ‘CLICK’.  It was about robots replacing humans in more and more jobs. Nothing new there, you might think.  After all, we have become used to robots in manufacturing, where they have been replacing repetitive manual tasks since as long ago as the industrial revolution, improving the human condition by replacing humans in jobs where the environment is hazardous.  However it is predicted that by 2030, yes 17 years from now, 30% of all jobs currently performed by humans, in America at least, will be performed by robots.  There is already a debate going on, predictably led by California, about…..wait for it…..the loss of tax revenue from people no longer in work.  One suggestion is that the robots should, themselves, be taxed and the revenue raised used to retrain the displaced humans.

The problem, as I see it, is that the social consequences of, and reaction to, increasing automation are now potentially as serious as those faced by the cotton weavers who were confronted by the invention of the ‘Spinning Jenny in the 18th century.  And this is why.  The ever-increasing rate of technological ‘advance’ is allowing ‘robotisation’ of tasks that are not repetitive but require decision making, adaptive (learning) response and predictive ability:  we are talking not about robots but artificial intelligence.  We’ve already seen the squeezing out of clerical jobs formerly held by the moderately educated working class.  Face-to-face interactions have been largely replaced by menu driven telephone and internet contact.  Even those that retain jobs where customer contact is required are subject to the sort of reliance on automation as parodied by David Walliams’ comedic character who says “Computer says no”.  Everything is subject to automation: farming, retailing catering, even fighting wars, are already being stripped of humans.  Robot delivery of goods bought from an entirely automated warehouse is being trialled, along with driverless cars.  Pilotless airliners are, and have been for years, entirely technically feasible.  Even nursing and some medical interventions are being automated.  The upward pressure of artificial intelligence is moving inexorably on to squeeze the educated middle class.  The technically competent will be deployed devising and maintaining the robots, but what will the ‘thinkers’ do?

The idea that humans doing low grade, low income, low satisfaction work, will somehow be released by automation into a utopian world of creativity is laughable.  It’s not, and never has been since the days of Spinning Jenny, about  change for the benefit of society: it is, and has always been, about productivity and profit.  How to make more money for less investment. What then of those whose educational attainment is not suited to this world?  How will the politicians, the industrialists and the financiers, ensure that the displaced still have a living wage?  If they have been superseded by a machine, on the basis that the machine will be cheaper per transaction (whatever that ‘transaction’ is), how will they be paid more than the machine ‘earns’?  It makes no sense.

And so I return to the title of my piece.  “I Robot, You Robot”.  Isaac Assimov wrote “I Robot”, but from H.G. Wells’s “Time Machine” to Philip Dick’s “Blade Runner” and James Cameron’s “Terminator” the world of literature and film has been describing a dystopian future where a disatisfied underclass rebels against the machines and their guardians.  It used to be called Science Fiction, but look around; it doesn’t seem much like fiction any more.