There’s a song I still listen to by an artist called Fish, it’s called “Vigil” from the “Album in a Wilderness of Mirrors”.  I’m watching the news, reading the newspapers and wondering when the truth died and where they buried the body.  I have to say that this song comes more readily to mind these days.  I was having a similar conversation with a friend this morning, so I now I’m not the only one who feels this way.

I was looking at the unemployment figures earlier today, given my current situation they have special resonance now.  The figures are next to useless, people are pushed off onto incapacity benefit or into an unpaid work placement scheme to get them off the figures and in any event if you’ve been there for more then 6 months you don’t count.  The idea that the true figures are far higher than the official ones is not new and I’ve read claims of up to 26% unemployment for the UK.

I’ve been keeping an eye on UK house prices for a while as well, what’s interesting is the changes in prices.  The actual headlines are meaningless as the actual number of houses sold is so low historically and the data includes London, where the prices are buoyant.  As soon as you start investigating the individual regions outside London, a very different picture appears than the headline figures would have you see.  We must also avoid the mention of the word bubble at all costs, even though that’s exactly what the huge rise in prices over the years up to 2008 was!

Oil prices rises are blamed on speculators, greedy schemers out to ruin us all.  But not on a growing demand in the face of a constrained supply.  Not on the ever increasing cost and difficulty of extraction, the increased cost of refining.  Again, smoke and mirrors all the way.

I imagine every reader can add something of their own to this short list above.

It seems to me that increasingly nobody is addressing the truth, just their spin on it.  They construct a strawman of reality and then address it as if it were the world.  Of course, it’s not, and this failure to engage with reality is something we really can’t afford.  Since beginning Buddhist practise, I’m noticing this stuff more and more.  The Buddha reaches to us across 2500 years with a timely warning about our behaviour.  I only hope that enough people are listening.

Well, we thought we’d seen the back of this one when the previous Labour government left office.  It seems we were wrong and the temptation to start snooping and prying has now taken hold in the current coalition government as well.  I know it says 1st April on the date, but this is no April Fools joke.  I wish it were.

This proposal would enable complete and constant interception of all calls, texts, email and web traffic in the UK without a warrant or reason for suspicion.  I’ve gone into the reasons I think our privacy is important before, so it will come as no surprise that I am absolutely against these proposals

There are two petitions I know of about this for people in the UK to try and get it stopped.

The UK government e-Petition. (http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/32400)

The 38 Degrees Campaign. (https://secure.38degrees.org.uk/page/s/stop-government-snooping)

Here’s hoping we can work together to get it scrapped!

My previous Peak Oil post was linked on Facebook in The Secular Buddhist group, and one of the criticism was that I offered no solution. Rather than post this text on Facebook, which is a walled garden and violates the principles of the open internet, I’ve opted to post it here.

I have previously gone into where I think the solutions will start, but I don’t believe for a minute that there is anyone who can say for sure what the ultimate solution will be to the Peak Oil problem unless they have a working Crystal Ball.

Let’s be clear there is no single solution.  The problems will have to be solved more locally and with a mixture of technologies and methods.  We’re probably going to find ourselves using low tech solutions to some problems.  Things like biofuels are a solution in some things, solar, wave and wind in others; but oil contains a lot of energy per barrel and I think the question is whether we can produce enough alternative energy to meet our current and future demand.  My opinion is that we won’t be able to and we’re going to need to live to our newly reduced means.  There is a site called “Wolf at the Door” which goes into the energy content of various fuels.  It’s worth a read and I think that not only will the fuels used vary from place to place, but from application to application.

Personally, I think the solutions will start with smarter energy use, this will mean walkable cities, more cycling, greater use of public transport by which I mean rail and trams/metro systems.  In terms of computing and the internet we are heading towards ever greater energy efficiency and I don’t see the end of the technology industry, given that solar smelting can produce glass, metals, ceramics and even silicon chip and solar panels.  I think we’re looking at a greater localisation of everything, goods won’t be transported large distances to the same degree, so we’re looking at greater use of local produce in season and other locally sourced goods.  I’m not saying that long distance travel and transport won’t happen, it will, but it will be on the railways and not to the degree that it happens today.

It’s true that oil products are used heavily in agriculture (pesticides, fertilisers, fuel for machinery), but it’s worth pointing out that organic farming methods are quite capable of feeding everyone, so while I think we’re looking at a far more labour intensive farming process and a big upheaval in farming industry, in the long term I’m not so sure we’ll all starve.

For my part, I am trying to reduce my fuel use.  I walk, cycle and use the train when I can instead of taking the car.  I support local shops and use local services and as at least part of the problem we face is caused by the overproduction and consumption of goods, I try to minimise my consumerism as far as I can.

I can see that this is going to be a painful process, no argument there, but I don’t agree with people who hold visions of a “Mad Max” style survivalist hell.  We’ve gone for millennia without the sort of fossil fuel power we enjoy now and we can do it again and thrive.  It may mean things taking longer, a change in availability of some items and goods, it will mean a readjustment of the workforce and the skills required by our economies and our society.  But I don’t think it’ll be Mad Max by any means.

This has been quite a hot topic in the UK recently, I decided to wait till a little of the heat seemed to have gone out of it before airing my views.  We have made considerable progress on the rights of Gay people and the differently gendered, in my view we should be pleased with how far we’ve come.  That doesn’t mean we can let ourselves become complacent though.

The opposition to Gay marriage seems to me to be religious conservatives, I’ve seen no secular opposition or religious liberal opposition.  This opposition seems to be based on two arguments.  The first is an argument from religious dogma, which boils down to what the religious book says.  The second is based on an idea of the ownership of marriage by the religious.  Note that I avoid naming a specific religion, this is a deliberate choice on my part as I think my comments are applicable to more than one faith.

Let’s look at the first argument, the argument from dogma.  This really isn’t an argument, I’ve taken aim at religious dogma so often in the past that you can probably guess what I’m going to say here.  This dogma is the unverified writings of a stone age priesthood, whatever it says was not written with a modern audience (or the modern world) in mind.  I can assert this as the writer could not have known the future and so couldn’t be expected to anticipate the world these writings now find themselves in.  What we have is two people in love, trying to be happy together, being blocked by some stone age writing of highly dubious origin and transmission.  Remember, the only claim this dogma has to authority is the idea that it’s the unaltered world of a god.  I’ve aimed at that before, so will simply link to my previous writings.  On a personal level, I am mystified why it should be called “Gay Marriage”, or even “Marriage”, wouldn’t you want to lose the religious baggage that this label brings with it?

The second argument: they think they own marriage, no, I am not making this up.  The argument is that because the word “Marriage” is defined in their religious texts which pre date the state, then the state cannot redefine them.  The notion of marriage is recorded by the ancient Greeks, but we know that the Sumerians (3000 – 2000 BCE) had marriages. I think this casts doubt on the idea being exclusively owned by any current “in play” religion.  Same sex unions are recorded during the Zhou (1046 – 260 BC) and Ming (1368 – 1644 AD) dynasties in China and in also Rome (the Emperor Nero).  I think this disproves any idea that it’s purely a modern phenomenon.

As a Buddhist I know that the world is in constant change, the evolution of the definition of marriage is simply one part of that change.  It has changed between civilisations over time and will, no doubt, continue to do so.  The institution of marriage is defined by the people in the marriages, they do this every day with the Karma they create through their actions and interactions.  It is not owned by either a religious institution or the state.

This is about the right of two people in love to join together and make a formal commitment.  That love and that commitment are what’s important, not the arguments surrounding a religious institution or secular state based view of marriage.

Finally, a quick note on the religious definition of marriage as “one man and one woman”.  In the Bible, the old Testament prophets are show as having more than one wife.  In both Exodus (21:10) and Deuteronomy (17:17 & 21:15-17) instructions are given for how they are to be treated. So, even the bible violates that definition.

This came through my Twitter feed yesterday and I couldn’t resist opening it, like a moth to a flame.  It seems that a group of British Christian MPs are going to try to overturn a ban on adverts promoting the healing power of prayer.

The football player Fabrice Muamba has begun to make a recovery after his collapse last week and these MPs have decided that as he was the recipient of many prayers and good wishes, this means that prayer works.  Oh, really?  So in their opinions, does this have nothing to do with the prompt actions of the medical staff from both team and the expensive professional medical care he received afterwards?

They then challenge the UK Advertising Standards Authority as follows:

We write to express our concern at this decision and to enquire about the basis on which it has been made. It appears to cut across two thousand years of Christian tradition and the very clear teaching in the Bible. Many of us have seen and experienced physical healing ourselves in our own families and churches and wonder why you have decided that this is not possible.

On what scientific research or empirical evidence have you based this decision?

Let me be clear, having looked at the ASA judgement itself, their position seems to be that there is no evidence in support of the claims of healing. These MPs have got the cart firmly before the horse here.  As the ones making the claims of divine healing, the responsibility is with the advertiser and themselves to provide the empirical evidence of such healing, it does not lie with the ASA.

There have been studies conducted into the healing power of prayer, some even funded by religious groups.  These studies drew a blank, no scientific evidence has yet been found to conclude that prayer has any healing power whatever.  Oddly, some patients got worse, which was put down to a form of performance anxiety on their part.  I think that in light of this, the most reasonable conclusion at this time is that the healing power of prayer has no supporting evidence and is unproven.

Yesterday, I re-nailed my colours to the Peak Oil mast.  I am firmly of the opinion that a huge change in our energy use patterns is coming, this will be a result of the end of our access to cheap energy.  To be honest, I believe that this will bring about the end of our car-centric society.

The question that this occurred to me the other day was “From the perspective of a Secular Buddhist, what is my view here?”.  I specifically say “Secular Buddhist” because in non-secular Buddhism offerings may be made to various Buddha’s, all of which is magical thinking and not at all secular.

Well, the first thing to say is that we need to evaluate things without our wishful thinking getting in the way.  This is the whole notion that some super technology or untapped energy reserve is going to save us, it’s highly unlikely because if was, we’d have needed to start developing it and building the infrastructure before now.  The alternate energy sources on offer will give us a future, but they can’t provide anywhere near our current energy needs.  This shoots down the electric car right there, where do people think all the extra power will come from to run a fleet of these vehicles?

As I said yesterday, part of the wishful thinking is that the world should change to accommodate us.  This, or course, isn’t happening and never has.  It amounts to asking that the laws of nature be annulled on our request.  Let’s be very clear, we are on a finite planet, with access to only some of the finite stock of resources in the crust.  We’ve been going through those resources like it’s going out of fashion, there are no more resources coming to the Earth unless somebody makes a huge development in asteroid mining.

So we need to accept the reality, until we do, we can’t see clearly.  If we can’t see clearly how do we expect to be able to navigate any kind of path through this situation?  Once we accept this, we can how Annica (impermanence) meant this was always coming.  Situations change, the world is impermanent and we must change to suit the situation, because the situation can’t change to suit us.  Or did we really think the Earth’s stock of oil and the minerals would last forever in the face of constant depletion?  We can then consider Karma, our actions and our heedlessness led us to this point and if we don’t smell the coffee then worse is coming.  We can consider our future Karma (and that of our descendants) and start making the changes we need to in order to boost our (and their) chances and make this transition only as painful as it needs to be and no more.

Canal Locks

The weather has perked up recently and I took the opportunity to get my trusty mountain bike back into operation.  This morning I went out for a couple of hours and broke it back in properly, while I was out I noticed the number of other people doing the same thing has increased recently.  I snapped this photograph of the canal locks along my route and was pleased with the resulting photograph, you can see the full size by clicking it.  You can also find a couple more that I took on my Flickr account.

While out and about I exchanged greeting with other tow path users and noticed the waterfowl were pairing off ready to nest.  Ducks watched me warily as I cycled past them and I watched male Geese chase off competitors on more than one occasion.  Once the Geese nest, this will make the tow paths a slightly more hazardous place as they will be on their guard against tow path users.  Watching other cyclists led me down a few new stretches of tow path and made me aware of new ways around the old routes I was using.  All of this is nothing spectacular, but what struck me again was how much of this world we miss when cocooned inside a car.

I’ve nailed my colours to the Peak Oil mast already, but to reiterate things, I’m of the opinion that the age of the motor car is entering its twilight.  The cost of Oil extraction is rising, the Oil we are getting is more expensive to refine and more expensive to transport.  The era of cheap energy is over and it will mean the slow end of our car-centric society.  I am seeing much commentary on this, but a lot of it seems to be along the lines of “somebody should change the world so that I don’t have to change my lifestyle”.  When you think about that, it doesn’t make much sense as the world isn’t going to change for us and there is little we can do regarding the underlying reality of this situation.  The only question is how we manage the decline of cheap energy.

A new report from the Church of England caught my eye today, courtesy of the British Humanist Association.  It seems to be pushing for a stronger evangelising of state funded Church schools, while complaining of the attack of secularism.

How are these publicly funded schools supposed to be inclusive when they make children of other faiths or no faith whatsoever feel like outsiders?  Let’s be clear, the landscape in the United Kingdom is changing and has been for years.  Secularism in this country has now strengthened to the point that it is challenging the established Church, which poses some very difficult questions for the powers that be.  The British Social Attitudes Survey shows that  50% of the population are secular and this is even higher in the under 24s.  These schools are state funded, which means they are paid for from the taxes levied on non-Christians and Christians alike.  With this thought in place, you have to ask how you can justify using public money to promote one faith over all the other alternatives?

I’ll switch focus towards the technology side of things starting with this post.  We’ve been regularly seeing stories in the online media about the internet and privacy.  It does seem to me that there is a slow erosion of the basic expectations we all have of privacy, this is magnified by the ease with which information held in networked systems can be cross-referenced.  An example I remember is a time that a neighbour was incensed that he’d had a letter from the government regarding his car tax, he’d not paid it and was convinced that somebody had “grassed him up”.  It never occurred to him that the various government agencies had all of his information held electronically and that a simple SQL query would turn up his details in seconds.

Regarding our Internet privacy, things are equally worrisome given the amount of data that we carrying with us in our browsers and that flows between our computers and the networked systems we access regularly.  What can we do to help us reclaim a little bit of control?  Well there is the option of Tor and also darknets,  but I’m going to look at a few simpler options over the next few posts, all of which are free or Free Software.

For this post, I’ll cover search engines.  Google keeps quite a bit of information on your activities, it’s not the only one that does this and our choice of search service is the first place we can go to start to reclaim some control over our online lives.

The first one I’d like to mention is reasonably well known, it’s called DuckDuckGo.  It’s a search engine that doesn’t track you and doesn’t keep records of what you do.  If you want a privacy minded chat system, they also rung an XMPP server which can be accessed by any Google Talk compatible client and there is a community forum for help.  I recommend that you hit the options on DuckDuckGo and turn the “” to off, otherwise anyone with access to your proxy server logs or who is sniffing network traffic will be able to tell what you’re searching for.

The next service is a European site called Startpage.  Startpage seems to be a service that takes results from Google, but protects your privacy while doing so, they are the first search engine to have EU approval from EuroPrise.  Although they don’t seem to have a community forum, they do offer a useful proxy service for each search result they return and they use HTTP POST for searches by default which keeps the search terms out of the URL.

Both of the above search engines support the use of https connections for improved privacy and I encourage you to give them a test drive.

“A nation’s greatness is measured by how it treats its weakest members.” ~ Mahatma Ghandi

I’ve been watching the furore about the upcoming public services reforms and have been signing petitions to try to help stop the gutting of our public services.  To be honest, I can see us being steered towards a system of private health insurance, with all that this entails.  In addition to this, we’re looking at cuts to the availability of legal aid and also cuts to the assistance given to sick and disabled people.

Now, I don’t believe for a minute that the money can’t be found to preserve these things and this whole thing makes me wonder about the commentary this provides on the people running the show in this country.  Let’s be clear, these reforms will hit the poor and sick the hardest and we all know the old maxim that a society should be judged by how it treats the weak and vulnerable.  There are many variations on this theme and in my opinion, the most apt quote is the one above from Ghandi.

We must understand that the presence of these things shows our compassion for others in action, to just slash them would be a betrayal of this compassion for others and would also ignore the very real Karmic consequences of this act.  All of our actions have very real consequences, Karma is not a mystical thing and it can be readily observed in action.  The cumulative and ongoing negative effects of these shortsighted decisions will cause an enormous amount of harm to the life of our nation.  It’s not just the person who is refused treatment who suffers, it’s the family and friends, it’s the carers who have to take up the slack.  These effects ripple outward, in the same way that the closure of a large factory (e.g. the Rover plant at Longbridge) has an effect on the local community and the supply chain.

Let’s hope common sense prevails, before we all suffer.