A major feat

It is difficult to list groups of unpleasant people in order of detestability, classifying them from the utterly wicked to the merely sleazy. Everyone has his own idea about which are the worst: double glazing salesmen, pornographers, Tories, evangelists, bankers, homeopaths, muggers? Which of these most deserve to meet an unpleasant end?

I am not sure where I would have put rustlers; a certain romance about their crime still clings from the days when you could be hanged for it, though it's no joke for Farmer Giles, struggling to keep his farm going in difficult times, being robbed of some of his precious animals by townie gangs: a nasty surprise for him to find them gone after he has spent a long night wrestling with Defra and EU forms, but nowadays, of course, he is likely to be the CEO of a mammoth corporation with plenty of staff to do the paperwork, make the insurance claims and even look after the sheep.

I was amazed to learn that, according to the BBC and the always readable Farmers' Guardian, thieves recently stole 579 ewes and 901 lambs from a field in Lincolnshire.

Someone who knows about sheep (and rustling?) says that two articulated trucks and a number of men and dogs must have been involved, in the dark. The noise! And the people! It may have been a thinly populated area, but didn't anyone tumble to the fact that something was going on?

Then there are the crooked shepherds, slaughtermen, butchers, vets and officials who must have had a hand in the huge operation. This was a major crime, and it is to be hoped that one of the villains will grass and that the whole bunch will go inside, but one cannot help feeling some sneaking admiration for the highly competent and hardworking gang who carried it out.

Having a ball in Berlin, 1930

No 33 in an occasional series of extracts from The Postcard Century

May 1930   A  scene set for any amoral tale of Berlin's cabaret years. The couple occupy one of the 'postillons d'amour with curtains' advertised on the back of the card (as is table-to-table telephone). Then mood is sophisticated, liberated, modern, everything that makes Frank write My dearest Eva, Come to Berlin for a proper holiday. You cannot find the same in England. Amusement, weather, sights and all are good & I can act as guide. Was Eva (in Hounslow) tempted? Did she enter the novel whose opening lines this message could so convincingly supply?

Theft made easy

Did you know that if you want to get something for nothing you can do so quite easily? This is how:

You choose an internet retailer whom you know or suspect to be incompetent, negligent or just careless, and place an order with them for whatever you want, giving a name and address you have got from the telephone directory (or anywhere), an age, which can be your grandmother's if you like, and another address for them to send the goods to. They may well do so, though afterwards you might go to prison.

I am fairly certain that I would have little use for a Lipsy Built Up Shoulder Grecian Coral 8, even if I knew what it was, so when I received a statement from a company called Additions, of which I had never heard, telling me that they had supplied one to me, that I owed them £63.95 for it, and that late payments might incur a default charge, I guessed almost immediately that something was not right.

So I dialed the firm's premium rate number and after twenty minutes ("...Press 4 if you really really want to speak to someone..."), I spoke to someone. My news came as no surprise to them and the woman said calmly and without apologies that yes, it was clearly ID theft and they would cancel the account.

Then I had a letter from their Fraud Unit's "FPT Manager", saying: ..."after a thorough investigation, I can confirm that your name and/or address have been used fraudently by parties unknown....... I will be keeping a record of the account(s) for our own purposes to help us combat fraud. I look forward to hearing from you, Yours sincerely".

 So I wrote back to them as follows:
Thank you for your letter. This raises more questions than it answers.
It could hardly have taken a “thorough investigation” to establish that fraud had taken place; that was obvious from the information I gave you. What further investigations have you undertaken? You appear to be saying that you opened an account for someone who provided nothing more than (my) name and address, a false date of birth, and an accommodation address for delivery of the goods. Can this be true? Did you take no action at all to verify the details, for example by checking with the electoral register that someone with my name lives at the delivery address, or by other means? If not, why not?
If this is your normal policy then it means that anyone can look up a name and address in the phone book and order goods from you with no further verification of his identity, but perhaps there is something I do not know, in which case please enlighten me.
Anyway, I assume you have reported the matter to the police. If you have not, I will do so myself, so please provide me with the address of your local police station (or if you prefer I can do so through my local police) .

There was no reply, so I wrote again, twice, and still had no reply. Finally, after three weeks had gone by, I telephoned their Fraud Unit. Asking by name for the "FPT Manager", I was told that the person who had signed the letter was in fact their "Operations Manager" but never wrote letters or spoke on the phone (clearly she is a PR fiction and does not exist). I resisted the temptation to ask whether their Operations Manager's responsibilities covered only the waste bins and toilets, and instead asked why they had not replied to my letters. In reply I got an obvious lie: "Ah well, we tried to phone you but couldn't get through". In three weeks? And why didn't they leave a message?: "Not allowed to:  Data Protection Act".

By now I was getting a little restive, so I dropped this and asked my original question: whether it was true that they had sent off the goods without asking the thief for any proof of identity. She said yes, and that this was normal practice among internet retailers. I found this difficult to believe and said in quiet, measured tones: "Bollocks".

She took umbrage at this mild expletive and we parted with expressions of mutual distaste.

But I had asked Chelmsford Police about this and a week later, I had a phone call from a charming and able woman police officer. She told me that only the victim's local police could do anything about such an incident and since in this case it was not me who had lost any money then only the retailer could report it. And further, that this was indeed a very common occurrence: many retailers simply don't bother to make checks but reckon that if it's not a big item then it's better to suffer a small loss than get involved with an investigation.

So what the Applications woman who had last spoken to me told me was quite right and I perhaps I should apologise to her.  I don't feel inclined to do so because my comment was justified; it is appalling that this is allowed to happen; besides, I had spent money on the first phone call and wasted a lot of time writing letters.

Anyway, I didn't care for her tone.

Vulnerable men in danger

I have been closely following a worrying case which is currently being investigated by the state police in Massachusetts. A fifth grade student named Betty (to protect her family, her surname has not been published) has been accused of grooming a middle-aged man on the internet. His name is given as "Fatso" Schlegel, and he is an unemployed steel worker aged 54. For months, Betty had been carrying on an email correspondence with him, masquerading as an imaginary steel worker called "Plug" McCory, a man with an unpleasant skin disease and a criminal record.

She gained Schlegel's's confidence by pretending that her (Plug's) interests—shooting craps, pool and possum-hunting—are just the same as his, while concealing her real obsessions, which are Barbie, Sweetie Belle's Gumball House and Snickers.

Her object, of course, was to lure him into a meeting, and she even sent him a photograph of some of the men she tells him that she hangs out with, promising that she would bring them along so that they could all play seven-card stud together. She did not intend to molest him, but was intent on enjoying his disappointment when he came face to face with an adorable golden-haired poppet rather than the bunch of smelly overweight thugs with whom he had been hoping to bond.

Fortunately the police stepped in before the meeting could take place, and we may hope that a stiff custodial sentence for Betty will be a warning to others who might attempt such cruel impostures.

Shameful

One of the nastiest columns in the increasingly rabid Sunday Times is written by one Rod Liddle and consists mainly of cheap sneers targeted at anything he dislikes. This week, however, he was replaced by A. A. Gill, another hack in the Jeremy Clarkson mould, whose piece has outdone Liddle in offensiveness.

In a feeble piece sniping at the Olympic mascots, which are named Wenlock and Mandeville, Gill writes: "...Stoke Mandeville, the hospital where drunk ex-motorcyclists go to get fitted with head wands and bibs".

Anyone who knows what is done at Stoke Mandeville will find this an utterly despicable jibe. Gill should be ashamed of writing it, and the Sunday Times of publishing it.

Nothing new about it

In December 2008 the BBC reported on a repeat of the famous Milgram tests at Yale University, the results of which were published in 1968, in which volunteers were told to deliver electrical shocks to another volunteer played by an actor. Even after faked screams of pain, 70% were prepared to increase the voltage, the American Psychologist study found.

It is shameful that no-one concerned with a BBC news item put out today which excitably described a French TV game show in which exactly the same thing was done had taken the trouble to establish that the results of these tests were very old news indeed. Other researchers later got exactly the same results as Milgram, showing that apparently ordinary people can commit atrocities when instructed to do so by an authoritative figure. Clearly this applies whether those tested believe that they are helping with serious research or merely hoping to win a prize.

It was typical of the carelessness and frivolity of BBC News that they presented their piece about French show as if it had been a significant and newsworthy item, not even bothering to look up their own 2008 report.

Answers from the experts

The Guardian has a long-running feature called Notes & Queries in which readers send in questions on a range of topics, some frivolous and some recondite (this kind are often answered by world experts who disagree with each other). The one I sent in years ago was one of the less serious ones:
Is it true that there was once a distinguished Hollywood actor named Gustav Von Seyffertitz?
(He adopted an even more intriguing screen name.)

The query was answered clearly and authoritatively: Yes, there was.

The feature has spawned several paperbacks and is still running. A couple of months ago a fairly serious question:
Do any other animals, apart from humans, experience adolescence?
....evoked this admirable answer from Somerset reader Judy Crosher:

Yes, sheep do, but it's shortlived. For a few weeks the lambs skip and play, keeping well in sight of Mum. Then suddenly they seem altogether more muscular. The look in their eye changes. They escape under gates and over hedges, and hang about in small groups on the corner of lanes. The stance is unmistakable: huddled, heads together, mostly backs to the road and casting surly glances over their shoulders at passers-by. As a former teacher I have a strong urge to tell them off. Then, one morning, it's all over; they're back in the field, chewing monotonously.

Noblesse Oblige

Subtitled An Enquiry into the Identifiable Characteristics of the English Aristocracy, this is an anthology of writings published more than fifty years ago. It all seems rather quaint to us now, but for some years the concept of U and non-U speech patterns spread rapidly from London to provide conversational pabulum at the dinner-tables of English-speaking Paris and New York.

It all started with a paper written by Professor Alan Ross of Birmingham University and printed in Neuphilologische Mitteilungen in Helsinki in 1954. The professor pointed out that it is solely by their language that the upper classes nowadays are distinguished, since "they are neither cleaner, richer, or better-educated than anybody else". He invented the useful formula: U (for upper class) speaker versus non-U speaker, giving examples of each.

Then one of the Mitford sisters (The Hon. Nancy, not the unrepentant fascist Diana, who married Oswald Mosley, or Unity, who shot herself for love of Hitler, or the communist Decca) wrote an article in Encounter about Ross's piece, which was followed by 'Strix' with Posh Lingo in the Spectator and attacked by Evelyn Waugh (a more sophisticated kind of snob) in Encounter. Christopher Sykes joined in with a piece called What U-future and finally John Betjeman wrote a poem satirising the whole U/non-U idea.

All this must have led many social climbers to worry about the words they used but of course it was all nonsense, though good fun. Anyway, aping your betters in this way wouldn't get you anywhere. It had to come naturally, you had to be born to it. If you needed to think about the words you used then you were irredeemably non-U.

[My copy of Noblesse Oblige is the Penguin paperback. Some booksellers offer "slightly battered" copies of this at £51. Mine is not battered but the cover falls off and the pages are very yellow, so I probably wouldn't get more than £30 for it; it cost me 2/6d.]

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Lessons from the past

It is not surprising that a party which thinks so highly of traditional (i.e. nineteenth-century) values should want to introduce a Victorian flavour into our educational system, if not to the extent of bringing back the cane, or learning by rote, or dunces' caps for the low achievers, of course (though no doubt some party members would enthusiastically support the re-introduction of these).

The Tories have a plan to highlight allegedly failing standards in education by setting up an online library of past examination papers going back to Victorian times. It is not clear how this will raise standards, but at least it will show today's schoolchildren just how lucky they are not to have been born a hundred and fifty years ago.

Here are some sample questions to give an idea of the sort of things their forebears were expected to know:

Maths
If six children working nine hours a day can sweep fifty chimneys in a week, how long will it take ten children to sweep seventy chimneys of the same size? (You may not use your abacus.)

PE
Should children who walk more than twelve miles to school be excused drill? If so, what cleaning tasks should be given them instead?

Religious Studies
"Naphtha the Jebusite was a more godly man than Rehoboam the King of Judah." Discuss, illustrating your comments with not less that THREE passages from the Book of Joshua.

French
Où sont les neiges d'antan?

History
(a) Who was in whose what, and how many miles awhat?
(b) Cap'n, art thou sleeping there below?

Geography
Write 100 words on FOUR of the following: Basutoland, Mesopotamia, Cochin-China, Bohemia, Hohenzollern-Hechingen, Dahomey, Wallachia.

Social Studies
Explain in 200 words the social benefits of ONE of the following: workhouses, transportation to the colonies, the death penalty, press gangs

Food Technology
Give your recipe for TWO of the following: Boiled Griskin of Pork, Kedgeree, Jugged Hare, Gruel, Roast Haunch of Venison, Barley Soup

ID and DNA

It's not difficult to form an opinion about the proposal to introduce a universal ID card: reflecting on the enormous cost, the likelihood that, like most government projects involving advanced technology, it will be badly thought out and incompetently implemented, the probability that it will not serve much purpose, the possibility of misuse and the fact that our present government is greatly in favour of it, all help to lead to a definite conclusion.

It is not so easy to know what to think about the retention of DNA records. This is illustrated by the headlines of two articles which appeared in the same newspaper earlier in the month:

Dear Jacqui, please keep my DNA for as long as you like

and

Innocent will be sentenced to 12 years on the DNA database

In the first, the writer says he cannot see how a universal DNA database could limit his liberties or freedom, notes that there have never been any miscarriages of justice due to the presentation of DNA evidence, while there have been many—and there will be an increasing number—of injustices corrected by it, and that it is hard to imagine how anyone could be harmed by it. He asks what indignity is visited upon those whose DNA profile is kept on a database and points out that we surrender many pieces of information in order to make ourselves safer: we cannot get a passport without providing many personal details far more intimate than that.

These seem to me to be compelling arguments; the second article, and others in similar vein, have nothing much with which to counter them except the slippery-slope, the affront to our dignity, "No More State Intrusion" and so on, none of which are applicable in this context. This is harmless information with a potentially immense power to do good. There are real battles to be fought about our rights, about being innocent until proved guilty, against more state interference in our lives, but this is not one of them.

Provided, of course, that there is no discrimination, and that everyone's DNA profile is logged; then there would be no threat to the principle of the presumption of innocence.

So ID cards NO, universal DNA database probably YES. Unsurprisingly, the compromise now being proposed by the government will no doubt provide the worst of all possible solutions and please nobody.

Protecting us

In the groupblog BoingBoing I read the other day about a random stop-and-search carried out on a Londoner by two officers of the Transport Police Counter-Terrorism Proactive Unit, one polite and slightly embarrassed and the other surly and menacing.

The officers admitted that they had no suspicion of him and no reason to search him and told him he'd be arrested and handcuffed if he refused. They riffled through his books (looking for terrorist words?) and went through his bag.

BoingBoing's comment was: Welcome to Britain: now spread 'em.

The victim was carrying a videocamera and had the presence of mind (and the nerve) to record the encounter. His video is here; most people will find it both alarming and depressing. However, his name was Terence Eden and he doesn't look or sound remotely foreign, so it is good to reflect that this was a truly random search and there was no element of racism or xenophobia involved, though I suppose they might have disliked his hair style.

Thanks to Grumio for the link.

Finding the right address

We are all much more relaxed nowadays about how we address one another: your plumber won't care whether you call him Mr Chrascz or Sid, assuming that those are his names. Formality is acceptable in any circumstance and we can all judge when informality is considered improper—senior members of the royal family, for example would probably be a bit miffed if you used their first name on first acquaintance and you would be justifiably offended if they did it to you.

The other day I had to see a consultant surgeon (nothing serious), who introduced himself as "Mr Smith", and then proceeded to call me "Tony". Was he just socially inept, or trying to put me at my ease, or was he speaking de haut en bas? I do not know, but I failed to warm to him; next time I will ask someone else to give me an opinion on the surgical options for my obstreosis of the ductal tract (tertiary, but only mild), first looking him up in the register and then greeting him with an outstretched hand and a cheery "Hello, Arthur!"

This encounter was in the back of my mind a few days later when I telephoned the Council's Rubbish Disposal Hotline to ask about having the remains of our demolished garden shed taken away. The telephonist grasped the problem immediately, and said, "Right, I'll put you through to Bulky Waste".

This summoned up a mental picture of the honest fellow, a little overweight, certainly, but fit and alert, ready at a moment's notice to send out one of his crack teams to the aid of desperate householders unable to get out of their front doors because of all the broken boilers and old mattresses blocking their hallways.

However, the transferred call was answered very quickly so I didn't have time to worry about whether I should open the discussion with "Good morning, Mr Waste" or "Hi there, Bulky!"

Gentleman composer

The first in an occasional series of extracts from The Postcard Century

April 1904: HSL tells Arthur Deakin in Gravesend: "I have been staying in E'bourne for Easter".
Elgar was by now Sir Edward: a festival of his music had just taken place at Covent Garden. Here is the epitome and examplar of the Edwardian country gentleman: no nuance is missing, right down to the pipe in kid-gloved hands.

A century on a postcard

This is the book I wrote about the other day. With 452 large glossy pages and weighing in at nearly six pounds it would be merely a coffee table book, except that it is also a magisterial survey of the social history of the twentieth century. It tells its story year by year not only in the pictures, but also in the words, written in so many different hands, that accompanied the cards when they were posted.

Each year includes views of Piccadilly Circus and the New York skyline. Though centred on the UK and USA, cards come from every part of the world, from Los Angeles to Beijing, from Antarctica to Alaska. Several themes emerge strongly, most notably those which evolved with the century, for example transport, the cinema, the role of women, fashion and holidays. Changes in the English language as used informally by Britons and Americans are powerfully registered. Here is a unique glimpse into the hearts and minds of that turbulent century.

The choice was made from over ten thousand cards which were collected for the purpose. Selecting these by searching through nearly a million, providing a commentary on the pictures, giving a perceptive and thoughtful context for each of the two thousand messages and writing a lengthy introduction might be considered a creditable life's work but in fact is merely a tiny part of the enormous oeuvre of Tom Phillips, artist, poet, painter, musician, sculptor, stage designer, translator, critic and almost any other kind of creator you can think of.

Simon Callow wrote a brilliant piece about The Postcard Century and its remarkable author when the book was first published in 2000, and Tom Phillips has his own website.

I'll send you a PC

A hundred years ago, that is what you might have said to a friend when you were going away, and you wouldn't have been referring to any of the things for which we use this abbreviation today.

Picture postcards became legal towards the end of the nineteenth century and this one appeared in 1995 to celebrate their centenary. The publishers, Bamforth & Company, entered the postcard business in 1902 and could have produced both images from stock; they probably took some liberties with dates, for the girls on the left look more like early twentieth century bathers, and daring for their day.

Throughout the entire length of the twentieth century the postcard was in popular use, and it may be that this was the last as well as the first century of which that might be said. It is hard to imagine that anyone will be sending (let alone collecting and delivering) so physical an object in 2099.

One of the most worthwhile of all the projects inspired by the 2000 millenium was the publication of The Postcard Century, which tells the story of the previous hundred years in its own words and images: two thousand picture postcards and their messages give a vivid account of people's daily existence and a glimpse of what mattered to them, pleased them, shocked or amused them via the cards they chose to send and what they wrote on them.

Other Men's Flowers will try to do justice to the book over the coming months, but reading about it and seeing snippets is no substitute for owning it and passing many happy hours devouring its contents.

Vandalism then and now

We often wring our hands about today's widespread vandalism and yobbish behaviour, and speak nostalgically of the days when there wasn't so much of it. But there was never a time when there was none; a local newspaper described without much surprise how Derby day was celebrated in 1882:

As usual a large number of Croydon people attended the great race at Epsom on Wednesday, finding their way thither by road and rail. In the evening the main roads leading from Epsom were crowded both with returning racegoers and persons who had walked out from Croydon to see the 'sport'. This 'sport' consisted of the throwing of turf, dirt and flour bags at the drivers and occupants of vehicles and more than one accident was occasioned by this dangerous practice.

[From Croydon to Epsom and back is twenty miles, a long walk just to watch—or even to participate in—turf and dirt throwing. Flour bags would surely be useless as missiles; did they mean 'bags of flour'?]

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Then there is this, ten years later:


But this is by no means mindless vandalism, so 'wilfully and maliciously' seems a bit strong. Clearly this was just good honest theft. The evil-disposed person or persons were after illicit profit: seventeen cushions would yield an awful lot of stuff. Did they have a specialist horsehair fence standing by with a cart to receive it, or did they face the task of hawking huge armfuls of it round the shady sofa manufacturers?

Naughty boy

Extract from
The Proceedings of the Old Bailey, London's Central Criminal Court, 1674 to 1913
(You can search these HERE)

20th May 1681
Offence: pocketpicking
Francis Russel, a Boy of about 8 years of Age, was Indicted for picking eleven Guineas, and seven shillings in silver out of a Gentlewoman's Pocket near St. Dunstans Church, and Convicted of the same by his own Confession.
Verdict: Guilty
Punishment: Death

Many death sentences were not carried out and it is not possible to find out whether this one was. However, mitigation was usually through benefit of clergy or use of pardons, and respited sentences due to pregnancy, or in order to perform military or naval duty. To claim benefit of clergy it was originally necessary to appear tonsured and produce letters of ordination but by 1681 one could prove clergyhood by demonstrating an ability to read; pardons could only be given by the king.

Pregnancy and imminent call-up were obviously not relevant here, so it looks as if this offender was unlucky and never reached the age of nine. However, young offenders were sometimes fined and then sentenced to a period of imprisonment in the London Refuge for the Destitute which was, in effect, a juvenile reformatory. Perhaps this happened to young Francis.

Top columnists

Rupert Murdoch's Sunday Times, though still dressed up as a serious broadsheet, is actually a pale imitation of Hello!, largely concerned with celebrity gossip and the doings of the extremely rich. It has assembled a team of some of the worst columnists writing today; all of them are remarkably consistent in projecting their respective personalities, which range from the repellent to the merely dull.

Any Sunday one can marvel at the sort of thing which ST readers apparently enjoy. Most weeks, there are, for example, the cheap sneers of Rod Liddle, the banalities of India Knight, and several doses of the proudly oafish Jeremy Clarkson; a measure of the depths to which the paper has sunk is that it gives over a large part of the back page of its main section to the appalling Michael Winner.

But there is one who stands out even among this despicable bunch by his insufferable arrogance and stupidity. The former head of OFSTED, Chris Woodhead, was almost universally loathed by the profession—not only by the 15,000 teachers he described as incompetent—but survived in the post for six years until resigning to much rejoicing in 2000.

He is now chairman of a company that runs independent schools, and continues to write on educational issues. This week in the Sunday Times he had a long piece about the "reforms" he promoted; we still suffer from the effects of his ill-thought-out tinkerings but he explains that he believes that they "made basic sense" while admitting they have done more harm than good. This, he says, is because he did not fight hard enough to enforce their application.

I think it needs more than one photograph to do justice to Woodhead's qualities, and on the advice of someone familiar with the man's achievements I have selected these two, one clearly part of an expensive portrait, redolent of dignified self-satisfaction, and the other just a nasty smirk.

But perhaps he is best represented by the stunningly asinine statement he makes after asking the question "How much am I to blame...." in a feeble and disingenuous mea culpa attempting to show that he was right all the time: "With hindsight, what has happened is utterly predictable."

What Every Newly-Wed Should Know

This was the title of a publicity brochure distributed by a furniture-maker at the 1947 Ideal Home Exhibition. It included a 'Day-to-Day Plan' for new brides:

Monday. Is not essentially a day for laundry. Scour the kitchen after week-end catering activities, check up on rations and shop for vegetables, canned foods and breakfast cereals for a few days ahead.

Tuesday. Manage the light personal laundry laundry, leaving the sheets and bath towels. Get all items dried and ironed during the day whenever possible.

Wednesday. Clean thoroughly bedrooms and bathrooms and use early afternoon for silver cleaning.

Thursday. Change bedlinen, launder 'heavies'. While they dry, clean the lounge. Iron early afternoon.

Friday. Plan meals for week-end, making provision for Monday 'left-overs'. Shop. Give dining room or dining alcove a thorough clean and polish.

Saturday. Keep this free for the family as far as possible. Prepare vegetables for Sunday and manage some cooking in the morning. Then relax.

Sunday. Belongs to you and those who share the home with you. Confine all essential cooking to early part of morning.

Climate, energy and all that

Lewis Page in The Register writes about a book being written by Professor David J C MacKay, who has weighed into the ever-louder and more unruly climate/energy debate with several things that so far have been mostly lacking: hard numbers, willingness to upset all sides, and an attempt to see whether any of the various proposals made would actually work. Mackay, of the Cambridge University Department of Physics, holds a PhD in computation from Cal Tech and a starred first in Physics, so we can take it that he knows his numbers. And, as he points out, numbers are typically lacking in current discussion around carbon emissions and energy use.

He’s coming at the issues from a green/ecological viewpoint, but climate-change sceptics who are nonetheless concerned about the UK becoming dependent on Russian gas and Saudi oil—as the North Sea starts to play out—will also find his analysis interesting. Eliminating carbon largely equates to eliminating gas and oil use. “I don’t really mind too much what your plan is,” MacKay says. “But it’s got to add up.” He says he’s largely letting his machine-learning lab at Cambridge run itself these days, and is personally spending most of his time on trying out different energy scenarios.

The book is called Sustainable Energy—without the hot air, and you can download it here (a .pdf file of about 14MB, or there is a synopsis here). It isn’t quite finished yet, and Mackay says he’s always glad to hear from someone who has something to add or has spotted a mistake.

The Green Party, or Greenpeace, might want to give him their comments on one of the plans he discusses, starting on page 209 (Plan G, Producing lots of electricity):
Some people say ‘we don’t want nuclear power, and we don’t want coal!’ It sounds a reasonable goal, but we need a plan to deliver it. I call this plan ‘Plan G’, because I guess the Green Party don’t want nuclear or coal, though I think not all Greens would like the rest of the plan. Greenpeace, I know, love wind, so plan G is dedicated to them too, because it has lots of wind.

Mackay is not at all judgemental in comparing the various options: he just gives you the figures. But those for Plan G suggest that the Green Party hasn't studied them.

There is little point in arguing about these matters with anyone who has not taken the trouble to read Sustainable Energy right through and ponder its content. And, in case anyone asks me, no, I haven't. But I shall, any time soon.