I’m not sure why this annoyed me so much, but it did.
from today, the use of a hosepipe to water a garden, fill a pond or wash a car are now banned in areas from Kent, Sussex and Hampshire, throughout the Thames Valley, and many parts of the east Midlands and East Anglia.
I suppose that maybe it was because summer hasn’t started yet, and yet already we have a hosepipe ban. Ban, ban, ban. They’re always banning things.
I started thinking what a market-based approach to water shortages might be. And it seemed to me that it shouldn’t be too difficult, now that most people’s water supplies are metered, to just charge a low rate for the first few cubic metres of water, and then ramp it up sharply for higher amounts. That way everyone would get a minimum supply of cheap water. And if people really wanted to water their gardens or wash their cars, they’d have to pay more for it. And if, say, you’re growing tobacco in your garden, then you could work out for yourself whether it’s worth it or not. Some people want to wash and water things a lot more than other people. The choice would be up to them. But, nope, here comes another screw-you, one-size-fits-all ban.
Thing is, though: I don’t actually have either a hosepipe or a garden. And I’m not in one of the hosepipe ban areas either. So I’m really not sure why I got so annoyed. Perhaps it’s the word “ban” that set me off.
Speaking of water and weather, for some years I’ve been a regular viewer of the Met Office Visible Satellite. I’ve found it really handy for trying to figure out whether an afternoon at the pub will be sunny or not. Anyway, today there was a message on it:
We’ve upgraded
This page will be removed later in the year and may not contain the latest information. Please use our new pages:
UK satellite visible observations map
So I clicked on the link to the new site … and it didn’t work. There were no satellite pictures of anything. Wonderful, eh? It’s pretty much the only thing the Met Office does that’s any good, and they’re getting rid of it.
I then clicked to find out why they had done this, and found no explanation at all, but I did stumble across the Met Office blog en route to not finding out. And the blog was a bit of a revelation. The titles of the entries said it all:
Third warmest March.
Met Office scientists to feature in BBC Horizon programme ‘Global Weirding’
What’s causing the warm weather in the UK?
Why is it so warm?
Citizen science looks at future warming uncertainty
Yup, it’s heavily slanted towards Climate Change and Global Warming. The headline message from almost all these posts is: It’s Getting Warmer.
So now that we’re enduring some freezing weather, what did they have to say about that?
Some newspapers have made a lot of the potential for snow as we head through the weekend and into next week. Although this is possible it should be pointed out that any snow will be mostly over the tops of the Scottish hills and mountains, where a few snow showers are possible but no sizeable accumulations are expected. By Monday, even parts of the Pennines may see a dusting of snow over the peaks.
Although the chance of some snow flurries is a marked change to the weather of the last week or so, it is certainly not unusual for this time of year.
So those photos I saw from Scotland must have been taken on the tops of mountains.
Yes, that’s the top of Ben Nevis. And those cars must’ve lost traction going up it the previous day, before it started snowing. Ben Nevis is very steep, as you can see from the car at the front. Quite a few cars stall on the way up, whether it’s snowing or not. And it takes the ambulances absolutely ages to get up there, because they quite often stall on the way up too. Which would explain why they only arrived after it started snowing. But by then the motorists had probably walked on up to the service station at the top, and bought themselves a takeaway at the Indian restaurant that’s there as well, next to the laundrette. People go there for the view, although in this photo you obviously can’t see all the way to Sweden like you usually can.
See? It’s getting warmer.
Frank Davis 
I am always amazed at the people who simply accept year to year weather variations as being “proof” of anything. Even the most extreme models of Global Warming predict less than a tenth of a single degree difference year-on-year, and the more reasonable ones predict only a fraction of that.
Of course the Warmers simply ignore that and latch on to any individual snowstorm or lack thereof and claim it as “proof” of what’s happening to the world’s climate. I strongly recommend reading Michael Crichton’s “State Of Fear” to anyone who has not already done so. It’s a good techno-suspense type novel about Global Warming in classic Crichton style, but it pokes strongly at the True Believers and the Greedy who manipulate public opinion and fears for their own benefits. It’s just unfortunate that Crichton died before he was able to produce a similar piece of work about the Antismokers (There is however, somewhere online, a video of him blasting antismoking science in a similar vein.)
– MJM
Michael Crichton on the Unproven Dangers of Secondhand Smoke
Mike the emails left them grasping at anything……..perhaps jesus will return this sunday too!
That would be the best (and last) Easter ever!
I take it you’re still not entirely convinced by:
“The consensus view on climate change and the need to act quickly”.
Me too!
Heard that quote a couple of days ago (Greenpeace (US) talking head claims to have discovered that big polluters are spending a fortune to commission studies that show it’s all junk).
From places like C Frank Davis © I’ve learned to be very wary of words like “consensus”. Inevitably consensus = ban.
Consensus code word for the ”debate is over”.
I’m 52 – I remember watching that ‘Nationwide’ programme on the BBC when I was a kid. It was an early evening ‘news magazine’ type show…
Even then I found it fascinating that they’d have a reporter at the bottom of a dried-up lake (cracked mud, wading birds shuffling through the muddy puddle that was left in the middle) proclaiming that we were all going to run out of water… Then a few months later the same reporter would be standing on a river that was about to burst its banks (water rushing under bridge taking debris, depth pole with water at top mark) proclaiming that were were all going to drown…
Yet it seemed to me they never managed to do the obvious and join the two ‘stories’ together and realise that actually sometimes it was wet and sometimes it was dry.
As for water use – I fled the UK ten years ago and now live in Cyprus. Everybody has a water meter here and we are charged as you suggest – I think the first 20 tonnes are €1 and then it ramps up. So if you have a pool and a large garden you pay more.
It seems to me that such a system would provide more revenue in the UK and would be fairer on people that don’t use a lot of water. However, without upgrading the infrastructure the system still won’t cope with and ever increasing population.
I’m glad to know that my 2 minutes of thinking about how to price water actually corresponds to the way it’s done in some places. And in Cyprus I imagine that water is at a far greater premium than it is in wet and rainy and cloudy old blighty.
I agree that it would provide more revenue. It would also provide an incentive for water companies to compete to reduce costs.
It’s almost as if they’re sort of blaming us for using too much water. Truth is, the infrastructure is inadequate and poorly maintained – they are to blame for not providing an efficient service. They are private companies and should be brought to account.
Meanwhile we wasting £billions and young lives fighting a lost cause (whatever that is).
Yes, I think that’s about it. They blame us for using too much water, and smoking too many cigarettes, and drinking too much beer, and eating too many sausage and chips. It’s all our fault. Not theirs. No sir.
Frank, to be undeservedly fair to the bastard Met Office, the visible satellite animation is there:
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/public/weather/observations/?tab=map&map=SatelliteVis
They’ve just made it into an even more complex Java widget. Typical.
You’re right.
It wasn’t working yesterday. And it took ages to load today. (It just said ‘loading’ for a long time.)
I guess that on an initial assessment, it look like an improvement in some respects. It covers all of Europe. And you can pan and zoom. But there seem to be some down sides too. The image has lost contrast, and they’ve ‘helpfully’ shaded the land masses.
Here’s the old satellite pic.
And here’s the new one.
I think the old picture is clearer.
I had plans (of a vague sort) to use these images to work out cloud speed and direction, and give precise forecasts of when it would be sunny at the pub, and when not. e.g. 3 pm would be a good time, but not 4 pm or 2pm. I think it would be harder to do this with the new lower-contrast images.
Hah; you Brits are wimps, here is a idiotic ban for you.
http://townhall.com/tipsheet/helenwhalen%20cohen/2012/04/01/nyc_list_of_banned_words_goes_public
Here’s the full list of words that are banned from appearing on NYC school tests,
Abuse (physical, sexual, emotional, or psychological)
Alcohol (beer and liquor), tobacco, or drugs
Birthday celebrations (and birthdays)
Bodily functions
Cancer (and other diseases)
Catastrophes/disasters (tsunamis and hurricanes)
Celebrities
Children dealing with serious issues
Cigarettes (and other smoking paraphernalia)
Computers in the home (acceptable in a school or library setting)
Crime
Death and disease
Divorce
Evolution
Expensive gifts, vacations, and prizes
Gambling involving money
Halloween
Homelessness
Homes with swimming pools
Hunting
Junk food
In-depth discussions of sports that require prior knowledge
Loss of employment
Nuclear weapons
Occult topics (i.e. fortune-telling)
Parapsychology
Politics
Pornography
Poverty
Rap Music
Religion
Religious holidays and festivals (including but not limited to Christmas, Yom Kippur, and Ramadan)
Rock-and-Roll music
Running away
Sex
Slavery
Terrorism
Television and video games (excessive use)
Traumatic material (including material that may be particularly upsetting such as animal shelters)
Vermin (rats and roaches)
Violence
War and bloodshed
Weapons (guns, knives, etc.)
Witchcraft, sorcery, etc.
Texas Hospital Says Fat People Need Not Apply
By Eve Tahmincioglu, MSNBC.com
http://www.firstcoastnews.com/news/health/article/251100/10/Texas-Hospital-Says-Fat-People-Need-Not-Apply
There have been undercurrents of weight discrimination in the workplace for years, but a Texas hospital decided to go anti-fat full throttle.
A Texas newspaper recently reported about a fat-averse Texas hospital – Citizens Medical Center in Victoria, Texas – and its unheard-of policy of refusing to hire anyone with a body mass index of more than 35.
The policy, according to The Texas Tribune, states:
… an employee’s physique “should fit with a representational image or specific mental projection of the job of a healthcare professional,” including an appearance “free from distraction” for hospital patients.
“The majority of our patients are over 65, and they have expectations that cannot be ignored in terms of personal appearance,” hospital chief executive David Brown said in an interview. “We have the ability as an employer to characterize our process and to have a policy that says what’s best for our business and for our patients.”
Body mass index is calculated based on height and weight, with a measure over 30 qualifying as obese. A 5-foot-10 man who weighs 245 pounds would have a BMI of over 35, the hospital’s cutoff. A 5-foot-2 woman would be over the cutoff at 195 pounds.
The hospital’s policy may cause outrage, but it’s an extreme example of an obesity bias that has been percolating in the nation’s workforces, starting with seemingly benign measures such as encouraging workers to walk at lunch.
Companies are beefing up their efforts to make you healthier, and they’re taking out the big guns. You’re costing employers too much money for medical coverage, and increasingly firms are imposing penalties on workers who don’t get with the healthy program.
According to a report released this week by consulting firm Mercer:
“87% of large employers say they will add or strengthen programs or policies to encourage more health-conscious behavior.”
While this hospital is talking about the image heavier workers send to customers, what drives so much of these decisions is the cost fatter employees represent. Healthier workers cost less when it comes to insurance, sick time, productivity, etc., according to many business experts.
But are any these policies legal?
In fact, weight discrimination is one of the last types of bias that’s, for the most part, legal. Michigan is the only state that has any laws on the books protecting the rotund among us, and a handful of cities also have some restrictions.
The Michigan law, on the books in that state since 1977, has seldom been used but appears to be getting dusted off lately by overweight workers who believe they were given the shaft because of their weight.
For anyone who lives outside Michigan, the only recourse is going to the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and seeking help under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Don’t expect a lot. Simply being overweight generally does not qualify as a disability.
David Scher, an employment attorney with the Employment Law Group, said: “This issue was litigated extensively in the airline industry sometime ago. The bottom line is that it is not illegal to discriminate solely on the basis of weight provided the employer has a legitimate business reason.”
However, he added, the Texas employer has two problems here.
“The slippery slope for this hospital is that its reasoning may be questionable and (it) specifically states ‘appearance’ as its basis,” he said. “For example, in Washington, D.C., it is generally illegal to discriminate based on ‘any’ surface characteristic for its own sake, commonly called the ‘ugly law’. So a bold policy like this would likely be illegal in D.C. because it flat-out uses “appearance” itself as the basis for the policy.”
He said the hospital could be on shaky legal ground unless it can establish a job-related reason for banning heavy workers, such as the possibility that they would be unable to physically fit between hospital beds.
“Further, the hospital will either need to ‘eyeball’ an applicant or do an actual BMI test and obtain highly personal medical information about an applicant,” he said. “A hospital of all places should know that merely obtaining this information will likely violate privacy laws.”
The Texas example may seem over the top, but heavier workers have been hit in the wallet before.
In a study by John Cawley, an associate professor at Cornell University, he found that obese white women had worse labor market outcomes than any other overweight workers.
“The obesity penalty for wages was much greater for white than black females,” he told me a while ago. He pointed out that research has shown that obesity tended to lower the self-esteem of white women much more than black women. “That could end up affecting your work potentially,” he speculates.
It’s hard to make a case for such bias at work, especially in today’s economy where finding a job can be so difficult.
Who’s looking out for these portly citizens? Not Citizens Medical Center. Will they be turning away fat patients next?
A version of this story also appears on the website CareerDiva.
MSNBC.com
And so the New Eugenics period begins!
I note that there isn’t so much as a mention in Harley’s story about discrimination against smokers, when in fact there have been quite a few examples of US employers refusing to hire smokers for precisely the same real reasons (i.e. cost), and with precisely the same superficial reasons (i.e. image and “setting an example”) being given. And the rebuttals of any arguments against it are exactly the same, too – i.e. it’s a lifestyle choice, unlike race or sex, and could be changed if the employee really wanted to. It never ceases to amaze me how few people seem able to see the similarities.
It would do them good if they did, though, and maybe one day they will. One wonders how long it’ll be before they have a member of staff who gives up smoking in order to save (or get) their job, then piles on the pounds in the usual ex-smoker way, only to lose their job for being too overweight – and who then goes on to fight the case on that basis. I guess it would be the US’s equivalent of our “constructive dismissal” in that the company are imposing a condition upon an employee which necessarily then means that they break another condition instead, thus putting them in a situation in which it simply isn’t possible for them to keep their job. It’d be an interesting case, if any ex-smoking chubby ever makes the connection.
Yes. I have heard obese people say time and time again, ‘Well, at least I don’t smoke’. Hmm.
There’s still an official Michael Crichton website http://www.michaelcrichton.net/ where you can find videos and essays.
Not on the above is what I consider one of his best essays, Aliens Cause Global Warming. Besides GW, this also covers secondhand smoke. http://s8int.com/crichton.html