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TALLRITE BLOG
You can write to me at
blog2-at-tallrite-dot-com |
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| February 2008 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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I've become a newspaper columnist with the (subscription-only) Irish Times. My first column appears on 27th February, titled “Don't sign an EU contract you can't even understand”. The Lisbon Treaty is unintelligible and for that reason alone should be rejected. For a (non-subscription) HTM version click here, or a PDF version click on the image below. Readers may recall an expanded version here (on which you can comment). |
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ISSUE #170 - 5th February 2008 [561+ = 1527 = 2088]
Click here for PDF Version of Issue #170 (236kb) |
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Occasionally I have written about oil supply matters, notably a piece entitled “When Will the Oil Run Out?”, which I have periodically updated. My view is that oil will, in effect, never “run out”, because whenever it appears to be running low, the price goes up which instantly prolongs supply by
Depending on the success of these efforts, the resultant increased production and more efficient consumption have often prompted the oil price to drop again, which puts everything back into reverse. Except that the new technologies, new discoveries and conservatory habits don't just disappear; they stay with us and continue to provide payback. Furthermore, the huge transfers of wealth from consumers to
producers caused by a prolonged and severe price-hike, like the ones in the
1970s, can trigger a global economic downtown which cuts oil consumption as
energy-hungry industries go bust, and this of course also prolongs supply.
Indeed, we may well be seeing the beginnings of this process at the moment. In the early part of this century, the price stood at around $25 per barrel. Since then, it's screamed up and up and even briefly touched $100. This is explained by increased demand and supply fears, due to
The quantum of the associated wealth transfer depends on different estimates. These vary, but if you take as base 2003 when the rise really began (in phase with the Iraq war), and you interpolate between the reported windfalls of 2004 ($300 billion - [link gone! - Oct 08]) and 2007 ($2 trillion), you can calculate that over this period a monumental $5.8 trillion has lined the pockets of producers that they never expected to see. And that is money that consumers had expected to be able to splash out on iPods, Crystal champagne and Porsches (OK, food and shelter as well) that now they can't. It represents by far the biggest cash confiscation in the history of mankind, and it's made worse by the fact that most of the lucky recipients include the most inhumane, repressive, corrupt, authoritarian regimes in the world - the likes of Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Iran, Russia, Libya, Nigeria, Sudan,
So we should not be surprised at some of the economic turmoil of recent months - subprime defaults, housing market crashes, bank wobbles (Northern Rock, Société Générale), stock price falls - considering how much spending and investment money has simply been removed from the wealth-creating engines of the West. If indeed the West is now in recession, led by America, the rest of the world will surely follow as financially constrained customers stop buying. And the consequential industrial downturn, will in its turn, reduce energy consumption. So we will certainly see oil prices also tumble, though I would be surprised if we ever enjoy $25/bbl again.
Many scaremongers talk of “peak oil”, as if current production levels represent the edge of a precipice. Some have even formed their own international club ASPO - the Association for the Study of Peak Oil & Gas. But they often neglect the dynamic relationship between oil production, oil reserves, oil price, technology, energy alternatives and overall economic health. For example, ASPO espouses a Malthusian-type of zero-sum theory that says oil shortages are simplistically proportional to GDP: they both get bigger in unison. But, as you can see from this chart, the data disprove this, doubtless because there are so many of those other variables pulling in different directions.
A further factor that analysts often overlook is the role of the state-owned integrated National Oil Companies (NOCs) within the producing countries. For world oil today is no longer controlled by the those villainous multinational oil companies (Oilcos), but by the NOCs. Last century, the major Oilcos famously numbered seven (the “Seven Sisters”), but only four now remain - Exxon, BP, Chevron and Shell. The Seven Sisters title has passed instead to gigantic NOCs - Saudi Aramco, Gazprom (Russia), CNPC (China), NIOC (Iran), PDVSA (Venezuela), Petrobras (Brazil), and Petronas (Malaysia). To see how the mighty (Oilcos) have fallen, have a look at who's got the world's hydrocarbon today:
On the other hand, what the Oilcos - and indeed a huge slew of Western companies, contractors and suppliers - still possess in abundance and the NOCs lack is efficiency, expertise and technology, for which they are crucially (and grudgingly) dependent on the West. So the good news is that there is plenty of scope for finding and producing plenty more oil (and gas) from their huge acreage. All it takes is sufficient willingness and humility (or greed) to invite and entice the Oilcos and other Western technological organizations to help, in a vastly more enlarged fashion than they do at present. But the tsunami of oil waiting to be released by this expedient is rarely factored in to any doomsday peak oil scenarios. Nor is the enormous transfer of wealth the other way when (not if) it eventually comes to pass. I wrote previously about the excessive gloominess of some oil analysts, whose pessimism about moving beyond peak oil consistently fails to take account of human ingenuity coupled with human greed. For, as I earlier remarked, oil is found not in the ground but in that unfathomable, inexhaustible reserve, the human mind. There are plenty of clever ways left to satisfy the world's thirst for energy, that need entail neither economic impoverishment nor military adventurism. Beware the peak-oil salesmen: don't let them seduce you.
Do Fathers and Mothers Matter? Following on from my recent involvement in the debate on gay marriage, an interesting new (to me) dimension emerged in Ireland last week, with a visit from Elizabeth Marquardt, who is a noted US researcher into the effect of divorce on children. I attended a talk which she began by observing that
She maintains that redefining marriage (for example by opening it to gays) means redefining parenthood along such lines. More and more people who are unable for whatever reason to conceive children (eg infertile, too old, same-sex couple, singleton) are turning to IVF technology to procreate them. There are three alarming developments that arise out of this -
1. Erosion of Conventional Family Structures A convention is emerging that says any arrangement of parent(s) is OK provided they are good people, and to argue otherwise is to be prejudiced. Around the world, laws are being put into place to give effect to this.
It is hard to think of ways by which the law could do more to erode the natural position of natural parents within society than through such pernicious measures as these. 2. Effect on IVF Children Louisa Browne, born in 1978 was the first ever child conceived using IVF. Within a few years, more and more people were trying it. Thus the first generation of babies born in any numbers thanks to IVF has now reached adulthood, mostly raised by heterosexual couples. It's the first chance to gain a perspective on how they might be affected by the miracle technology. And there is growing evidence of shared a disquiet that they know nothing of their biological fathers or siblings, and are desperate to learn about the hidden half of their very identity and origin. These are eminently rational aspirations that most of us take for granted. One of them laments, “I don’t understand why it’s legal to just donate when a child may be born”, since the child's informed consent to be separated from one or both of its biological parents cannot be obtained. One can only expect such problems to multiply in number, severity and complexity as IVF becomes ever more capable and commonplace, not only among married heterosexual couples, but among unmarrieds, singletons and gay/lesbian partnerships. So surely the onus is on promoters and users of IVF to first demonstrate that a donor-child is not materially disadvantaged in life compared to a naturally conceived one. It is ironic that users of IVF, who behave as if the biological origins will be unimportant to the resultant children, are so keen to produce biological offspring themselves that they will use IVF rather than adopt a child with no biological connection. It's not unlike the fact that the only supporters of abortion are people who have already been born. The UN's Convention on the Rights of the Child is uncharacteristically clear. Article 7 states, “the child ... shall have ... the right to know and be cared for by his or her parents”. IVF, other than when executed between a married couple without non-parent donors, is thus in flagrant breach. Yet to say something like “it's a tragedy for a child to lack a parent” is today considered controversial. Who's concerns are foremost? Certainly not the child's. 3. IVF Advances; Moral Dilemmas IVF began as a means for married but infertile couples to conceive. It now has potential to do much more and its customer base is much wider, which has created all sorts of new moral dilemmas. Some examples.
If current IVF children are already having trouble and suffering from identity crisis, imagine how the progeny resulting from the above list will cope with understanding who they are, plus the difficulties they will face when they try to trace their origins, or form a relationship with a distant (and perhaps impoverished) donor abroad. ++++++ At the moment we have no real data on how these developments will affect children. But you'd have to be perverse indeed to believe that the child will grow up as well-balanced and content as one raised by its own married, biological mummy and daddy. The children of every other alternative family form in which they lack a mother or father at home (eg due to divorce, death, IVF, same-sex) routinely do worse in social and economic circumstances, and always say that the loss matters in their lives. The essence of IVF is that it is conceived, so to speak, to satisfy the wants of adults, but without regard to the needs and rights of the children that result. Do mothers and fathers matter to kids? Whatever the answer, Ms Marquardt argues that it is morally indefensible to experiment on a new generation of innocents in order to satisfy the entirely self-centred demands of grown-ups. I agree. You can read and download her paper here, and listen to a 7½-minute interview here.
No not me! Easyspace.com is the company which rents me my domain name, tallrite.com. I was amused to note that it recently ran a competition to find the “ugliest” website on its servers, but since it doesn't host my site I, an otherwise obvious finalist, was not eligible to join the five hundred eager contestants. After extensive online polls and short-listing, the coveted award eventually went to the boring and functionless www.advertising-calendars.com, whose prize is a much-needed re-design to the value of £3,000. Mr Godding, the owner of the winning - if that's the word - site is reportedly “thrilled” and “delighted” with his historic achievement. But last time I checked, Mr Godding's coveted online possession was still pretty grim. Maybe he's found a more wastrel use for his three grand.
FXB Monkstown - Restaurant Review Also available at tinyurl.ie/fxb FXB (Francis Xavier Buckley) was for many decades a very successful butchers shop - indeed, a small chain - in Dublin, one which I often patronised, mainly for their mouth-watering steaks. In the 1980s, I used to fill a bag with these, specially vacuum-packed for me, whenever I flew back to Nigeria, where I was then living. Then it branched out and opened a restaurant. I went there once. It was a disaster. Knowing how to source, cut and chop meat is a totally different set of skills from cooking and serving it. So they took first class cuts of meat from their shops, and then wrecked them in the kitchen. I vowed never to go back, even though FXB were successful enough to be able to open several other similar outlets (Dubliners are not very discerning). Anyway, my bad experience was two decades ago. Even murderers with life sentences get paroled in less than twenty years, so I thought maybe it's time to grant parole to FXB. So I returned last week to FXB's restaurant in Monkstown, about seven miles south along the coast from Dublin. It's basically a pub downstairs, with a restaurant on a mezzanine floor above. But unlike most Dublin pubs, the place is bright, clean and cheerful. Confusingly, the building is labelled “The Pub” rather than its actual name, FXB.
Downstairs, if you can get one of the few good tables for eating, they have a simple menu with (to my taste) one outstanding item: a slow-roast hock of pork covered in very crackly crackling, served with spring onion mash, apple and raisin compôte and a bordelaise sauce, for €17.50. It's absolutely delicious and so big I have never been able to finish it, and not through want of trying. And if your doctor has told you to do something about your chronic cholesterol deficiency, the luscious crackling on the hock will put a smile on his face as well as your greasy lips. Upstairs, the mood changes a bit. The mezzanine is elegant, sophisticated, and has a cantilevered balcony that looks out over the pub below. The menu is much more comprehensive, and my three companions and I couldn't resist the steaks, specifically the 16 oz T-bones at €29.50. We all agreed they were incomparable, cooked to perfection on what must be a very hot chargrill (three rares and a medium since you ask), and in size a challenge to any man. We drank too much beer and wine of course, shared a sinful chocolate roulade replete with Grand Marnier sauce and fresh cream, and downed several coffees. I should explain we were in training for an international rugby match next day (as spectators not players, surprisingly). The service throughout was attentive and unobtrusive. Including a ridiculous tip, the bill came to €55 per head, and no-one was complaining. My assessment: 90%. Can't wait for a return engagement. You'll find FXB Monkstown at 3 The Crescent, Monkstown, Co Dublin, tel +353-(0)-284.6187. Those arriving by cruise missile can locate it at Latitude 53°17'38.21"N by Longitude 6° 9'12.21"W. Issue 170's Letter to the Press Only one letter again this week, and it again went unpublished. It was written as a follow up to three posts I have written on the same subject. It was, perhaps, a little too pointed for printing.
Quote: “If I convene a meeting of Muslim leaders to try to bridge the divide between Islam and the West, I do so with the credibility of someone who lived in a Muslim country for four years when I was a child.” It was, perhaps, a little too pointed for printing.
Barak Obama polishes his credentials as a child
of 6-10 years old, Quote : “It is not correct. If I said so, I wasn't correct, so I can't recall if I did say, but I did not say, or if I did say it, I didn't mean to say it, that these issues can't be dealt with until the end of the Mahon tribunal. “That is not what the Revenue said. What Revenue said, that they were in the part of the normal process with dealing with these issues and that in the meantime, under the law and they and both the Public Offices Commission believe that there, it is a similar in law, that you do not get a tax clearance cert, that they deal with the other process while the issue is ongoing, and hopefully these issues will be cleared up as soon as Revenue can do so.” Irish Taoiseach (prime
minister) Bertie Ahern Eight
days
earlier, he had
said, This all, to remind, refers to his time as Finance Minister, when he was responsible.
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to Tallrite Blog As always, “ill-informed and objectionable” - Comment by an anonymous reader |
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Now, for a little [Light Relief]
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Gift Idea |
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Good to report that as at
FREED AT LAST, |
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BLOGROLL
Atlantic Blog (defunct) Blog-Irish (defunct)
Jihad
Religion
Iona Institute
Leisure
Blog Directory
My Columns in the
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What I've recently
But it's not
entirely honest in its subtle pro-Palestinian bias, and therefore needs
to be read in conjunction with an antidote, such as See detailed review +++++
BP's ambitious CEO John Browne expanded BP through adventurous acquisitions, aggressive offshore exploration, and relentless cost-reduction that trumped everything else, even safety and long-term technical sustainability. Thus mistakes accumulated, leading to terrifying and deadly accidents in refineries, pipelines and offshore operations, and business disaster in Russia. The Macondo blowout was but an inevitable outcome of a BP culture that had become poisonous and incompetent. However the book is gravely compromised by a litany of over 40 technical and stupid errors that display the author's ignorance and carelessness. It would be better to wait for the second (properly edited) edition before buying. As for BP, only a wholesale rebuilding of a new, professional, ethical culture will prevent further such tragedies and the eventual destruction of a once mighty corporation with a long and generally honourable history. Note: I wrote
my own reports on Macondo +++++
A horrific account of:
More details on my blog here. +++++
After recounting a childhood of convention and simple pleasures in working-class Aberdeen, Mr Urquhart is conscripted within days of Chamberlain declaring war on Germany in 1939. From then until the Japanese are deservedly nuked into surrendering six years later, Mr Urquhart’s tale is one of first discomfort but then following the fall of Singapore of ever-increasing, unmitigated horror. After a wretched journey Eastward, he finds himself part of Singapore’s big but useless garrison. Taken prisoner when Singapore falls in 1941, he is, successively,
Chronically ill, distraught and traumatised on return to Aberdeen yet disdained by the British Army, he slowly reconstructs a life. Only in his late 80s is he able finally to recount his dreadful experiences in this unputdownable book. There are very few first-person eye-witness accounts of the the horrors of Japanese brutality during WW2. As such this book is an invaluable historical document. +++++
This is a rattling good tale of the web of corruption within which the American president and his cronies operate. It's written by blogger Michele Malkin who, because she's both a woman and half-Asian, is curiously immune to the charges of racism and sexism this book would provoke if written by a typical Republican WASP. With 75 page of notes to back up - in best blogger tradition - every shocking and in most cases money-grubbing allegation, she excoriates one Obama crony after another, starting with the incumbent himself and his equally tricky wife. Joe Biden, Rahm Emmanuel, Valerie Jarett, Tim Geithner, Lawrence Summers, Steven Rattner, both Clintons, Chris Dodd: they all star as crooks in this venomous but credible book. ACORN, Mr Obama's favourite community organising outfit, is also exposed for the crooked vote-rigging machine it is. +++++
It is really just a collation of amusing little tales about surprising human (and occasionally animal) behaviour and situations. For example:
The book has no real message other than don't be surprised how humans sometimes behave and try to look for simple rather than complex solutions. And with a final anecdote (monkeys, cash and sex), the book suddenly just stops dead in its tracks. Weird. ++++++
It's chapters are organised around provocative questions such as
It's central thesis is that economic development continues to be impeded in different countries for different historical reasons, even when the original rationale for those impediments no longer obtains. For instance:
The author writes in a very chatty, light-hearted matter which makes the book easy to digest. However it would benefit from a few charts to illustrate some of the many quantitative points put forward, as well as sub-chaptering every few pages to provide natural break-points for the reader. +++++
The author was a member of Britain's V Force, a forerunner of the SAS. Its remit was to harass Japanese lines of command, patrol their occupied territory, carryout sabotage and provide intelligence, with the overall objective of keeping the enemy out of India. Irwin is admirably yet brutally frank, in his descriptions of deathly battles with the Japs, his execution of a prisoner, dodging falling bags of rice dropped by the RAF, or collapsing in floods of tears through accumulated stress, fear and loneliness. He also provides some fascinating insights into the mentality of Japanese soldiery and why it failed against the flexibility and devolved authority of the British. The book amounts to a very human and exhilarating tale. Oh, and Irwin describes the death in 1943 of his colleague my uncle, Major PF Brennan. +++++ Other books here |
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After
48
crackling, compelling, captivating games, the new World Champions are,
deservedly,
England get the Silver,
No-one can argue with
Over the competition, |
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