Get back to the office, you plebs!

From The Telegraph:

Home workers are likely to be driven back to the office en masse this winter, experts have suggested, because of the added cost. Ofgem, the energy regulator, confirmed on Friday its energy price cap would jump by 80 per cent to £3,549 per year in October.

As a result, average monthly energy bills will hit £789 in January for home workers compared with £580 for those going into work, according to price comparison site Uswitch. This equates to £209 a month and £2,508 a year. Remote working will still add £131 to energy bills each month from October, Uswitch found.

Sure, for a single person in an average home, which they could leave empty and unheated during the daytime, and whose extra commute costs would be materially less than £2,500 a year, this might tip the balance towards going to the office.

That is a small subset of all workers. What if there is another adult who would be at home most of the time (working from home or raising kids)? Or kids who come home early from school every day or are an school holiday? Or whose extra commute costs would be materially more than the vaunted £2,500 utility saving (if you include cash cost plus time wasted each day)? That's a lot of people.

"Find the area of the square"

Another one from Mind Your Decisions that YT suggested I watch a week or two ago:
He then does it the obvious and quick but rather boring way, using Pythag.

I watched the first minute (so that I didn't know his method or the answer) and then decided to drift off to sleep to see whether my subconscious could work out how to do it using the 'co-ordinates' method. At four in the morning, I dreamed that I knew how to do it and was explaining it to my daughter (who's doing a maths degree). So I woke up and tried it; my subconscious had cracked it for me!

First, redraw the picture, mentally at least:
The formula for a circle is X^2 + Y^2 = 1.
The two blue outlined squares touch the origin (0,0) and point D.
The equation for the green line is Y = X/2.
Point D has co-ordinates that satisfy both equations.
So (X^2)/4 + X^2 = 1.
Point D has co-ordinates X = √0.8, Y = √0.2.
Point B has co-ordinates (0,√0.2).
Length AB = √0.2.
The orange triangle must be a 90-45-45 triangle, so length AC also = √0.2
Length BC (using Pythag) = √0.4.
BC is the side length of the square, so the area of the square = 0.4.

Groupthink

I've just come across a reference to this book, Victims of Groupthink, A psychological study of foreign-policy decisions and fiascoes. Written in 1972, it investigates the decision-making involved in the Bay of Pigs fiasco, as well as the policy debacles of the Korean War, Pearl Harbour, and the escalation of the VietNam War.

The book sums up Groupthink as a process of three main parts:

First, a group of people come to share a common view, often proposed by a few individuals deemed to be credentialised have authority in the subject. It is a view however, not based in reality. These adherents may be convinced intellectually that their view is right, but their belief cannot be tested in a way which could confirm it – beyond doubt. It is simply based on a picture of the world as they imagine it to be, or more to the point, would like it to be.

The second rule is that precisely because their shared view is essentially subjective and not provable, Groupthinkers go out of their way to insist that it is so self-evidently correct that a ‘consensus’ of all right-minded people must agree with it. Any contradictory evidence, and the views of anyone who does not agree with them, can be disregarded entirely.

Third, and highly significant, is the rule which states that in order to reinforce the conviction of the ‘in-group’ that their viewpoint is right, they need to treat the opinions of anyone who questions it as wholly unacceptable. These latter people are considered to be obtuse, and who should not be engaged with in any serious dialogue, but rather should be shut down. Those outside the bubble must be marginalised and if necessary, their views mercilessly caricatured to make them seem ridiculous.

If this is not enough, they must be attacked in the most violently contemptuous terms, usually with the aid of some scornfully dismissive label – such as ‘bigot’, ‘prude’, ‘xenophobe’ or ‘denier’. Dissent in any form cannot be tolerated. Some members of the group take it upon themselves to become ‘mind guards’ and correct dissenting beliefs.

Remind anyone of anything?

"Like a bull in a china shop"

I've always imagined it much like this, from the BBC:

So that makes it OK to blow her up, does it?

The BBC reports the death of Darya Dugin when her car was blown up. After half a page on which neither disapproval of the act, nor any sympathy for the relatives of the victim is expressed, the article comes out with this:

Darya Dugina was herself a prominent journalist who vocally supported the invasion of Ukraine. Earlier this year she was sanctioned by US and UK authorities, who accused her of contributing to online "disinformation" about Russia's invasion. In May, she described the war as a "clash of civilisations" in an interview and expressed pride in the fact that both she and her father had been targeted by Western sanctions.

Doesn't seem much of a reason for murder, does it?

Call that a consensus? This is a consensus!

It looks like real scientists have just about had enough of the crap that the climate "scientists" spout.

The so called "consensus" on the anthropogenic nature of climate change, which was based on a meta-study of papers published on climate change was flawed as the vast majority of scientists who can be bothered to or are paid to, publish papers about climate change can only be bothered to or are only paid to, because they, or their patrons, feel that climate change is anthropogenic, hence it is something that man can and thus should do something about. The ‘World Climate Declaration (WCD)’ shows the consensus amongst non-climate scientists that what the climate "scientists are doing isn't real science:

Particular ire in the WCD is reserved for climate models. To believe in the outcome of a climate model is to believe what the model makers have put in. Climate models are now central to today’s climate discussion and the scientists see this as a problem. “We should free ourselves from the naïve belief in immature climate models,” says the WCD. “In future, climate research must give significantly more emphasis to empirical science.”

The WCD also points out that the "consensus" is, to a large extent, enforced by its own adherents:

The scale of the opposition to modern day ‘settled’ climate science is remarkable, given how difficult it is in academia to raise grants for any climate research that departs from the political orthodoxy. (A full list of the signatories is available here.) Another lead author of the declaration, Professor Richard Lindzen, has called the current climate narrative “absurd”, but acknowledged that trillions of dollars and the relentless propaganda from grant-dependent academics and agenda-driven journalists currently says it is not absurd.

Unfortunately, I suspect it will take more than this to change the tide of bigotry. There's none so blind as them that don't want to see.

Sadiq Khan - does he actually believe the crap he spouts?

From The Telegraph:

Sadiq Khan blamed the cost of living crisis for the crimewave sweeping London as police faced a backlash over a recent spate of murders...

“Before the summer holidays began, the police, myself and others were warning about what we’ve seen in previous summers – we have seen an increase in violent crime and the cost of living crisis exacerbates this,” he said, “Why? Because one of the complex causes of crime is deprivation, poverty, lack of opportunities and so forth."

The 'crime wave' started shortly he took over as London Mayor six years ago. Why not blame Brexit, global warming and the war in Ukraine? At least he can't blame 'the obesity epidemic', which he claims to have single-handedly solved - based on the most made-up statistics ever.

And it's "I", not "myself" in that context, so he's either pretentious or badly educated or both.

First Rule of Home-Owner-Ist Club

House prices may not fall, whatever the cost (to the taxpayer). From The Torygraph:

Government failure to provide support for struggling homeowners will trigger a “tsunami of repossessions” which will damage house prices, experts have warned.

And who are these experts, pray tell?

Andrew Wishart, of Capital Economics, a research firm, said: "We now forecast that the unemployment rate will rise from 3.8pc to over 5pc, which will push up repossessions, though they should remain well below the levels reached in the house price crashes of the early 1990s and 2008." Capital Economics has forecast a 7pc house price drop over the next two years...

The article does not say on whose behalf they did this research, he who pays the piper calls the tune. And there are another three years to go before it all collapses again, they should know that by now.

A Government spokesman said: “We recognise people are struggling with rising prices which is why we are protecting the eight million most vulnerable families with at least £1,200 of direct payments this year, with a £150 top-up payment for disabled people.”

Why would banks lend shed loads of money to the "eight million most vulnerable families", knowing that any rate rises would tip them over the edge? Because they know the government will bail them out? It works out far cheaper (i.e. saves the taxpayer money and makes a reliable small surplus year on year) just building council housing for them.

And it's another reason for simply nationalising all lending to home buyers. Why let commercial banks make hay while the sun shines and bail them out when it starts raining? That way the taxpayer gets the profits in the good times, as well the losses in bad times. Without house price/credit bubbles and reckless lending, banks would be far more resilient and there'd be no need for taxpayer-backed bail outs.

The English Rain Dance

In some cultures, if there's not enough rain, they do ritual dances and so on, I doubt very much that they work. Apart from attracting tourists.

The English appear to have stumbled across the secret - if a drought threatens, the water suppliers announce hose-pipe bans, and hey presto, within a couple of days we don't need them any more. We've seen this happen often enough in our lifetimes.

Clearly, it will take months for aquifers, rivers and reservoirs to get back to normal, and I do not know whether or when the farmers will have had enough rain to harvest their crops, bearing in mind they have to dry out a bit first, but I'm glad to see the back of the heatwaves.

Home-Owner-Ism and rent seeking taken to its logical conclusion

Excellent article about a specific case from the BBC with lots of gory details.

Worth reading in full, there's no point me summarising.