What this shows is league ranking - ie if you’re first in the Premiership you get a ranking of 1; if you are first in the Championship you get a ranking of 21 etc - versus the percentage of seats occupied.

The blue line is an Excel-generated trend line.  And it would appear to show that the better you are doing the better you fill your ground.

Interesting outliers.  The one furthest away from the line right down there at the bottom is Darlington.  25,000 stadium, restricted to 10,000 due to inadequate roads.  And they can’t even fill that.  The big outlier above the line is Norwich.  No idea why.  Support for Delia Smith or something.

In this podcast we find out:

• that the Premier League is a big deal in Asia
• that it’s really big
• how it got that big
• why the 39th game is going to happen
• and how it might be done fairly

On a technical note, this was another Skype recording. To me it sounds as if we are in the same room rather than at opposite ends of the internet.

Oh, and apologies for the rather abrupt ending.

This podcast was recorded on Friday, 12 February 2010.

Update Michael sends a picture of a Hawker centre (with Premier League game in progress?)

I love this sort of thing: Average Attendance Rankings for the Premiership for the 2009-2010 season to date.

One of the guys in the office - a Liverpool fan - was complaining about, well, Liverpool.  Which got me thinking.  Should Liverpool really be doing any better than, say, Newcastle?  My belief is that the chief determinant of a team’s success - in the long run at least - is its attendance.  So, how do Liverpool and Newcastle compare?  Well, it’s pretty close: 43367 average attendees playing 42199.  My colleague should thank his lucky stars.  Having said that I wouldn’t hold out much for Liverpool’s long term prospects. 

So, what else do these stats tell us?

Well, for starters, attendance is indeed a pretty good indicator of success.

Arsenal must wish they’d built a bigger stadium.  99% occupancy.

I really wouldn’t want to be a Chelsea fan when Abramovitch walks away.

They don’t half like their (not terribly good) football in Sunderland [and the North East generally - see the table for the Second Division]

And they really like it in Cardiff.  So much so that they would appear to watch it sat upon one another’s knees.  How else does one explain a 107% occupancy rate?

I wonder if an ability to get bums on seats is a factor in team success.  Certainly, if I were a player I’d prefer to play in front of a packed audience.  There is something dispiriting about the sight of empty seats.  And it would seem that those teams that have high capicity utilisation like Hull, Stoke and Wolverhampton are doing well this season.  Oh, but hang about, the places with the spaces include Wigan and Blackburn who are doing fine and Birmingham who are doing brilliantly.  So, that would be a “no”.

From Guido:

By all means stand Conservative and Unionist candidates, but a readiness to do a back room deal with what [ie unionists] remains a bigoted and sectarian political force is not something of which to be proud…

The Orangemen have played off the mainland parties for decades, trading their votes for favours…

First of all, it has nothing to do with religion.  It is an ethnic/national dispute. 

Secondly, I spent a year working for Unionists as a researcher.  If they were indeed a bunch of bigots (on either religious or ethnic lines) I think I would have noticed.  Mind you, bearing in mind the intimidation unionists have had to put up with over the years (and to the best of my knowledge still goes on albeit at a lower level), along with the fear of what might happen if Republicans ever got into a position of real power I think a certain amount of bigotry is excusable.  Guido’s, on the other hand, is not.

Thirdly, seeing as the year I spent as a Unionist researcher was the year the Major government lost its majority, then if the unionists were indeed adept at playing the parties off against one another, again, I think I would have noticed.  If memory serves the total haul from that year was an extra 200 tons of fish for Down fishermen.  During the hung parliament of the 1970s (again if memory serves) all the unionists got was an increase in the number of seats to bring Ulster in line with England (not even the over-representation of Wales and Scotland).

You know that rule about how the names of juvenile offenders can’t be reported?  Well, I thought I’d have a rootle around in old editions of The Times to see if I could find out when and why it was introduced.  The “when” was pretty straightforward: 1933 in the Children and Young Persons Act.  Actually, it seems that the press had ceased reporting names some time beforehand.  The last example I can find in The Times was about 1923.  But the “why”?  Beats me.  It seems there was absolutely no debate on the matter.  Certainly, no evidence of a problem to which it was supposed to be the solution.

In no particular order:

• Recycling bins, containers and collections
• Car recycling laws
• The ban on incandescent light bulbs (incidentally, I will say one good thing for energy-saving ones: they start off dark which is really good when your eyes need time to adjust)
• Wind farms
• High-speed rail schemes
• Some of the fuel duty
• The law that demands that energy info is displayed on white goods.  (That’s the law not the actual display which I suspect is actually quite useful)
• Carbon trading
• All those academics living high off the AGW hog
• Toyota Piouses

Can anyone think of any others?

You got to like them when they come up with a scheme like this:

Which with any luck will get 60,000 rugby fans going to the wrong place.  What’s not to like?

There’s some sort of EU commission into Greece’s finances.  Or is it the IMF?  Or both?  And Greek Prime Ministers and Finance Ministers keep getting interviewed on CNBC.  And the whole issue keeps making the number one slot on the financial news.  And there are ominous rumblings about Greece being chucked out of the Euro.  The sort of ominous rumblings that can turn into ominous realities really quickly in much the same way that that ominous and ludicrous rumbling about sterling leaving the ERM all those years ago turned out to be ominously and ludicrously prescient.

But the deficit is “only” 12.7% of GDP.  And it’s the overall debt level that matters.  When that gets up to 200% then you’re in trouble.  I don’t know where Greece is.  And apparently, neither do they - lots of dodgy statistics and off balance sheet accounting making things very foggy.

But, hey, who cares?  If Greece cannot finance her debts eventually no one will lend her money and she will simply have to stop spending the stuff.  Problem solved.

At least, you would have thought so.  I mean, at least I would have thought so.  But all this activity suggests that something’s up.

I wonder if the fear is that if Greece goes bust, the Italians, Spanish, Portuguese and Irish might start to think they’re next.  When that happens they might warm to the idea of the ECB printing money to pay off their debts (monetizing the debt as it is known) hence creating inflation.  And they might lobby for it.  If you’re German there’s a good chance you don’t want to pay for Greek pensions through inflation and perhaps you feel that now would be the best time to draw a line in the sand.

Thought:  this shows that the real purpose of central banks is to finance government debt.  In normal circumstances that is done by selling bonds.  In extreme circumstances that is done by printing money.

Apologies for that rather cryptic posting. Let me try to explain.

It was written in response to the decision to ban Islam4UK.

And also the LA's condemnation of it, ie the decision.

I suppose the point is that if you are fighting a war, then the time for talking and debate is over. So banning organisations like this sounds sensible.

I suppose it begs the question why we (or should that be the state?) didn't ban pro-IRA propaganda during the Troubles.

If you are at war with someone can you allow your enemy to propagandize for his cause even if he does so peacefully?

There’s a motoring forum I like to read and over the past week or so lots of the participants have been singing the praises of winter tyres.  I must admit I’d never heard of such things until last week’s snows but it seems they really do do the business.

Here’s an unimpartial video:

Biggish difference and given the Met Office’s forecast of a mild winter likely to be matched with precisely the sort of conditions they were designed for.  The only obstacles are the cost and finding somewhere to store the summer tyres.

I hate arguments.  Especially political ones.  They almost invariably end up in a slanging match.  Lots of heat and very little light.  Which is why, when I get the opportunity - which is becoming increasingly rare these days - I like to ask the question: “What would change your mind?” Because it gets to the point.  If the guy I am arguing with can come up with some reasonably plausible answer to this then I know he’s being rational.  If not then it’s a religious belief and there’s no point in continuing.

However, what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.  If I demand rationality in everybody else then I have to demand it of myself.

So, let’s try it out.  What would change my mind when it comes to Climate Change? 

What is my mind for that matter? 

I think I am neutral.  I really have no idea whether climate change is happening or not, if it is whether it is caused by man or not or even if it’s a bad thing.  And I have no real way of finding out.  I don’t know enough about the physics, the measurements, the models or the statistics.

I am not, however, neutral on the politics.  The idea that state violence - for that is what it is being proposed - is going to succeed here when it has failed everywhere else, is absurd.

And the fact that I have such a downer on state violence tends to colour my opinions on the science.  Most of that - at least the warmist stuff - is funded by the government.  So I have two problems.  First, that it’s not independent (just imagine what would happen to their funding if they came out saying that everything is just fine).  Second, that it’s done by the state (effectively) so it probably isn’t being done very well - something that the Harry_Read_Me.txt file would appear to confirm.  [Hmm, climate science: the Austin Allegro of our age.  Heh!]

So, there are almost no circumstances in which I would believe the output of government scientists, statisticians and modellers.  However, if it were being done by people with no particular axe to grind and little or no political or profit motive then that would be a different story.  If Steve Macintyre or this guy going through the code or, possibly, Bishop Hill came out and said: “I think it’s happening.” then I might well start to change my opinion.

It’s a Watford sore.  Lloyd Doyley’s been at the club for 10 years, made 200 and something appearances, had no end of chances but never actually scored. 

Until, that is, Monday night.

Now, I can’t quite claim that I was there when Doyley scored but I can claim that I was there in the pub when Doyley scored.

Marvellous.

Writing about the actions of democratically-elected leaders in wartime with particular reference to the bombing of cities such as Dresden, Robert Higgs says:

Killing the innocent, for example, carries no stigma; nor does wanton destruction of property, unjust punishment or imprisonment, and a thousand other actions that would be regarded as flagrant crimes during peacetime.

Now Higgs doesn’t quite say that Dresden was a war crime but he comes close enough to make me think that he probably does.  Which makes my hackles rise as I’ve never really seen the issue.

Anyway, the only way to work out whether it was justified or not is to work it out from first principles.  So, let’s have a go:

Someone bombs your house.  Are you allowed to defend yourself?
Yes you are.

Someone bombs your neighbour’s house.  Are you allowed to defend him?
Yes you are. 

Do you have to?
No, you don’t.

The enemy drops his bombs on your house and returns to base.  Are you allowed to attack the bomber, the base and its staff?
I suppose it depends on the threat.  If there are reasonable (I know horrible, slip-slidey term) grounds to believe that you are going to be attacked again, then you have the right to attack the base.  If, on the other hand, he or his representatives immediately apologize and offer compensation, then no.

But if he doesn’t and you choose to attack him the situation we have here is a war.  And oddly enough, a war without a state.

What about the factory where the bomber’s plane is made?  Are you allowed to attack that?
Well, if you are allowed to attack the plane at the base why shouldn’t you be able to attack the plane at the factory?  Now, if the factory owner has said that he was no longer going to supply bombers to your enemy and he would accept whatever fine was coming his way for breach of contract then maybe you would be wrong to attack the factory.  But if not then I don’t see a problem.

What if the enemy forces the factory owner, his employees and contractors to build planes?
Intuitively, one feels that anything you may do is the enemy’s responsibility.  He, after all has created the situation.  Not pleasant for the civilians involved, for sure, but an argument for resisting state coercion at all costs.

What if your means of attack aren’t very accurate?  What if those means might mean not only the destruction of the base but also the destruction of the local town?
I think you can reasonably argue again that this is the enemy’s problem.  He’s put his base near a centre of population.  He has chosen to start a war.  He has to accept the consequences of his actions.

Let me put it another way, if it were wrong under all circumstances to kill civilians what would there be to stop the enemy driving civilians in front of his forces at gunpoint?

Getting back to the collateral damage issue, does the same apply to the factory?
In that case it has not been the enemy’s decision where to site the factory but the factory owner’s.  But it has been the choice of the inhabitants of the town to live near the factory.

[As an aside, it occurs to me that exactly the same arguments could be made about gun sellers.  So, if you sell a gun to someone you suspect to be planning a murder then don’t be surprised if someone blows up your shop.]

What if you don’t know where the factory is and your enemy won’t tell you?
I think under those circumstances you can pretty much bomb anything you like so long as its either on enemy territory or associated with his war effort.  Which in the case of a total war is pretty much everything - dams, houses, flocks of sheep, marshalling yards, take your pick.

Right, now the fun part.  How, in any way does this differ from the situation surrounding the decision to bomb Dresden?  I am damned if I can see a difference.  Poles were attacked, Britons came to their defence.  Factories were bombed as accurately as they could be (which wasn’t very).  The enemy declined to tell the Allies where their factories were and so the Allies were allowed to bomb just about anything they chose.  Which included Dresden.

There is, however, one difference.  The Area Bombing Directive ordered Bomber Command to attack areas of population.  This was wrong.  But it didn’t make much difference.  Had Bomber Command been ordered to attack factories or likely factories it would have ended bombing almost exactly the same targets.

"The consequences, in time, could prove catastrophic. But, then again, maybe not." The concluding words of Sky News's first report (and the first news report I have seen anywhere in the UK's MSM) on ClimateGate.

One of the aspects that I find interesting about ClimateGate - I think we're going to have to accept that FraudAnglia (see comments) isn't a runner - is how increasingly unimportant the actual hack/leak is becoming. There's a good chance that it has already been milked dry. But the story keeps going because it has acted as the catalyst for the airing (or re-airing) of a whole bunch of other climate change frauds and cover-ups.

Lots of people have been pointing to George Monbiot’s oh-my-god-this-is-really-awful article.  And why not?  Who wouldn’t want to see Moonbat’s mouth full of humble pie?

However, to my mind much more interesting is the second part of the article:

The greatest tragedy here is that despite many years of outright fabrication, fraud and deceit on the part of the climate change denial industry, documented in James Hoggan and Richard Littlemore’s brilliant new book Climate Cover-up, it is now the climate scientists who look bad. By comparison to his opponents, Phil Jones is pure as the driven snow. Hoggan and Littlemore have shown how fossil fuel industries have employed “experts” to lie, cheat and manipulate on their behalf. The revelations in their book (as well as in Heat and in Ross Gelbspan’s book The Heat Is On) are 100 times graver than anything contained in these emails.

In other words: “OK, so we’re a bunch of lying shits but our opponents are even worse.” I am going to guess that this is the fall back position.  The defence line at Kharkov to ClimateGate’s Stalingrad.  And I think we’re going to hear a lot more of it.

Which got me thinking.  Does it really matter if the warmo-sceptics are a bunch of lying shits?

Let’s look at the case for Copenhagen:

1.  Humans are changing the content of the atmosphere.

2.  The climate is changing

3.  This change is for the worse

4.  The change in the climate is caused by the change in the atmosphere

5.  We can model to a reasonable degree of accuracy both the change in the atmosphere and its effect.

6.  The model shows that this change to the climate, if unchecked, will be catastrophic

7.  The only solution is stop humans changing the content of the atmosphere.

8.  The only way to do that is by the introduction of global socialist economic polices enforced by a global government.

You will notice that 7 and 8 (which are pretty dubious in and of themselves) are entirely dependent on 5 and 6.  But 5 and 6 have (surely?) been blown out of the water.  Hey, they weren’t looking great before the leak but now it is difficult to see how anyone can give them the slightest credence.  And none of this has anything to do with warmo-sceptics.  In other words warmo-sceptics can have been as shitty as you like and it won’t have mattered a bit.

So, George, I’d abandon Kharkov as quickly as you can.  The next stop for you is Berlin.

This Climategate business all rather puts me in mind of the Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion. For those of you who don't know this was a late-nineteenth century Tsarist forgery which purported to show that there really was a worldwide Jewish conspiracy.

If memory serves it was exposed as a forgery fairly early on but that didn't stop people believing it for decades afterwards. With results we all know about.

Let's just hope that history does not repeat itself.

Update. Thought I'd do some fact checking at Wikipedia. It appears I am slightly out on the title - it should be The Protocols of the Elders of Zion - and the date - it was early 20th Century. Oh and some people still believe in it.

Good News from Zimbabwe

Price controls and foreign exchange regulations have been abandoned. Zimbabwe literally joined the real world at the stroke of a pen. Money now flows in and out of the country without restriction. Super market shelves, bare in January, are now bursting with products.

All this after they abandoned the policies ie printing money, that we in Britain have just adopted. Are we to learn the lessons? Don't hold your breath.

Michael’s theory is that one of the consequences of the current recession/depression/end-of-civilisation-as-we-know-it, is that a whole bunch of industries that have been around of donkeys years are going to disappear.  He reckons that this will include: book shops, newspapers and opticians.

This podcast marks a first.  It is the first to be recorded down the line using Skype.  I think it works pretty well.

I am not quite sure how this came about but you know how it is: you start rootling around in the numbers and before you know it you’ve produced a table with the gold price divided by the GDP deflator for every year the 20th century. 

And then you do a graph (click to enlarge):

Now parts of this graph are easy to explain:

Why is the number for 1900 almost exactly the same as it is now?  Easy, gold preserves its value.

Why the huge upsurge in the 1970s?  Because people were scared of inflation.

But some are not so easy:

If the 1970s inflation caused an upsurge why not the Great War inflation?

What was going on in the 1930s?  Sure there was an initial upsurge after Britain abandoned the Gold Standard in 1931 but after that nothing.

Why the gradual decline after the Second World War?  I offer as a possibility that people had confidence in their currency even though it was slowly but surely losing value.  Actually, that might well explain the post-Great War decline as well.

Now, there is one big problem with this graph and that’s the GDP deflator.  It is, I presume, calculated by the government so all sorts of inaccuracies could have crept in.  I mean how has it been calculated down the decades? - that’s bound to have changed.  And who’s to say that at some point the calculators haven’t been leant on to massage the figures?

But it’s the best we’ve got.  And when it comes to being a store of value gold is the best we’ve got.

Unless I do the figures for silver…

I've heard of Windows 3.1. I am about to a lot about Windows 7. But I've never heard a peep about Windows 4, 5 or 6. Were they, by any chance, really good versions of Windows that we never got to hear about because the praise for them was drowned out by complaints about 95, 98, 2000, Millenium and Vista?

I think we should be told.

Libertarians get themselves into a terrible pickle when they talk about the Second World War - or any other for that matter.  I’ve been particularly struck by this this week with articles by Robert Higgs and Sean Gabb - arguing that the US and UK respectively shouldn’t have got involved - and a counter from Johnathan Pearce arguing that they should.

All this is very odd.  Normally libertarianism is so easy - if government uses violence to do it you’re against it.  So when it comes to the NHS - you’re against.  State education - you’re against.  Compulsory metrication - you’re against.  But when it comes to war… oh dear… we find that comrades are at one another’s throats.

I am afraid I don’t really have the last word on this just some observations:

1. You are allowed to defend yourself when attacked.  I’ve sought of heard it argued that even self-defence is unnecessary but I’ve never heard a libertarian case for pacifism.  Well, not the full beans anyway.  So, I think we can agree on that one.

2. If you are allowed to defend yourself then you are allowed to defend others.  And what, by the way, is the difference between defending yourself when attacked and a war?  It’s the same thing isn’t it?  So war is allowed.

3. Some states are better (or should that be less worse?) than others.  Some actually allow you to be a libertarian and spread libertarian ideas.  Some allow you to own property and trade.  As I think those are the principal means by which freedom will spread I think the less bad states are worth preserving.  At least, if the alternative is the really bad ones.

4. Tyrannies last.  Really, unless they get invaded eg Iraq, Nazi Germany they literally last a lifetime eg Soviet Union, Cuba.

5. Part of the argument against the Second World War (and the First for that matter) seems to be the idea that there was some way that the horrors could have been avoided.  Maybe, but equally maybe not.  Sometimes all the options are bad.

6. I hear a lot about what Britons or Americans should have done in 1939 but nothing about what Poles should have done.  And if the answer is that they should have defended themselves shouldn’t we have helped them?

7. I sometimes hear it said that the Polish government in 1939 was barely nicer to Poles than the German government was to Germans.  Probably true but I suspect it was a damn site nicer to Poles than the German government was.

8. I often hear the argument that Hitler wasn’t interested in Britain.  This actually holds more weight than you might think.  Underlying a lot of Nazi (and pre-Nazi) policy was the desire to create a German Empire on (a misunderstanding of) the British model.  I mean, really, are the ideas of Lebensraum and the Master Race so very different from the sort of ideas that shaped the British Empire?

9. However, there is a really big flaw.  Nazi Germany was a tyranny.  Tyrannies use huge amounts of violence.  And violence doesn’t work.  So sooner or later the Nazi regime would have been in trouble.  When tyrannies get themselves into trouble they invariably start wars - think Milosevic’s Serbia or Hussein’s Iraq.  Britain would sooner or later have been attacked.

10. I also occasionally hear the argument that British state power grew as a consequence of the war - the post-War period seeing the creation of the Welfare State and numerous nationalisations.  I am sure it made it easier but it was a process that was already well underway.  Pensions and unemployment benefit began before the First World War.  Telecoms were nationalised in 1911 and London Tranport in 1934.  It also doesn’t work when you look at the United States.  Sure, state power rose during the war but it collapsed afterwards.  As I understand it as well as many wartime restrictions many of the Depression Era laws were victims of Truman’s economic reforms.

11. Appeasement works.  No, not in terms of actually altering the behaviour of the appeasee.  But it does allow democracies to make up their minds and wage war with unanimity.  They need that.

12. Regrettable as it may be the state is currently the only current mechanism for large-scale self-defence.  Perhaps one day it won’t be but for the time being it’s all we’ve got.

The other night saw the last in the current series of Top Gear.  And the last item, with Clarkson driving a V12 Aston Martin to the sound of churchy music and being uncharacteristically quiet and downbeat, forced a sad thought to cross my mind.  Could it be that that’s the end for Top Gear?

If it were it would be the latest in a long series of parallels with the career of the Beatles - its nearest cultural equivalent.

Just look at the way the two spanned the decade.  The Beatles’ recording years were 1962-69.  Top Gear’s: 2002-9. The end coming in August both times.

Both were hugely successful, going way beyond their origins.  Top Gear has never really been about just cars in much the same way the Beatles were never just about good tunes.  New ideas attached themselves to both.  Stars wanted to be associated with both.  And the Establishment hated both.

Even the main participants seem to find equivalents in the Beatles.  Clarkson is Paul McCartney, Hammond: George Harrison and James May: Ringo.

So, who is John Lennon?  That’s easy: Andy Willman, producer of the show and long-time Clarkson associate.

Hey, it’s even had its own “Pete Best” moment in the sacking of Jason Dawe just after the first season.

OK, so what is Top Gear’s “Revolver” - that moment when they were absolutely at their peak?  There was a show at the end of 2007 which had Hammond driving an F1 car, Clarkson and May pratting about in vintage cars and Lewis Hamilton as the special guest.  Car shows just don’t get any better.

But, Crozier, do you really think Top Gear can truly be put in the same category as the Beatles - the very symbol of a profound and dramatic cultural shift?  Well, not really.  At least, not yet.  The change that the Beatles symbolised was there for all to see by 1969.  Top Gear far less so.  But who knows where the ideas - in essence: it’s alright to be a bloke - might go. 

At very least - and I accept it’s difficult to give TG all the credit - there seem to be far fewer speed cameras around the place nowadays.

I am sure I am not the only one who finds the protests against Iran’s stolen election exhilarating.  They raise the possibility of an end to an appalling regime and the beginning of a liberal, tolerant and progressive Iran and, by extension, a liberal, tolerant and progressive Middle East.  Which would be nice.  It’s just that I don’t think it’s going to happen.

Let me explain.  Ask yourself: what brings down an ideologically-driven tyranny?  In the case of Hitler’s Germany, Hussein’s Iraq and Pol Pot’s Cambodia it was invasion from abroad.  In the case of the Soviet Union (and by extension the Eastern European satellites) it was time.  The ideology had exhausted itself.  And that’s it.  Street protests, as China, Burma and Cuba have demonstrated, just get a lot of people killed.

Ah, you say, but what about Marcos or Apartheid or the Shah?  Just not ideological enough.  And the end of Apartheid - I suspect - had an awful lot to do with the end of the Cold War.

By contrast the Iranian theocracy clearly has a long way to go before it burns itself out.  Which is why it will survive.

So, why do ideologically-driven tyrannies last so long?  Ideas I would guess. Most people are not prepared to kill unless it’s for a cause.  But if you give them the cause…

In Part I I listed out my 1-6.  Here’s the rest:

7. Ascribing beliefs to entire groups. “Libertarians believe that there’s no such thing as society.” How does that feel?  Annoying I should think.  And should hope.  But watch out for statements that go the other way e.g. “The left believe that there is a fixed quantity of wealth.” This is a sort of combination of the straw man and the personal attack.  As a general rule one ought to identify the ideas accurately and then debate them.

8. Pejorative terms.  “Concreting over”, “Gas guzzler"… The use of any term that includes judgement is an attempt to curtail debate.  And any attempt to curtail debate should get the alarm bells ringing.  This is in effect the flip side of Point 6.

9. Numbers.  I am suspicious of any argument involving numbers e.g. the speed limit should be 70mph.  Why not 71?  Or 69?  Because you have to draw the line somewhere?  It makes me wonder if the line has to be drawn at all.  Or, who should be drawing it.

10. What would change your mind? Does the person express any doubt?  If you asked him: what would change his mind, would he have an answer?  And would it be a reasonable one?  Because if the answer is “no” then he’s being dogmatic and eristic and these people are terrible bores and likely to be wrong.

11. Confusing intentions, actions and outcomes.  “When I say I want hard working families to benefit from prosperity [intention] you call me a socialist.” To which I suppose the response should be:  “No, when you advocate socialist policies [action] that’s when I call you a socialist.”

12. Distance.  This is to do with facts.  How much distance is there between you and the facts being used?  I am not just talking about physical distance, more how hard it would be to verify?  Because, if the answer is very hard then this should set the alarm bells ringing.  That is why I prefer arguments that depend on reason and facts either that everyone agrees or are close at hand e.g. the local newsagent is really good but the roads are really bad.

13. Subordinate clauses.  At least, I think that’s what I am going to call it.  Anyway, here’s an example: “Field Marshal Douglas Haig, who sent hundreds of thousands of British soldiers to their deaths...”

    Doesn’t sound very good does it?  Let’s try some substitution: “Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, who sent hundreds of thousands of British soldiers to their deaths...”

    Both statements are absolutely true and serve to reveal the author’s prejudices.  An attempt is being made to steer the reader to a conclusion without having to go to the effort of making an argument.  Not good. 

Anyway, that’s my list.  Hope you find it useful.

I’ve been meaning to write this for some time.  It started when, for the first time in many years, I was present at a predominantly left-wing gathering.  It was, if nothing else, a rich vein of nonsense.

It got me thinking.  Are there ways in which you can spot that an argument is nonsense or, at least, suspect?  Are there types of argument that should set the alarm bells ringing?  Would it be possible to look at an argument and say: “Well, that’s an X error and that’s a Y fallacy” etc?  I suppose I had it in mind that if enough people were aware of how to separate intellectual wheat from intellectual chaff then, well - because libertarianism is clearly in the intellectual wheat category - they’d become libertarians without the need for any intervention from me or my ideological soulmates.  How cool would that be?

Anyway, I didn’t get very far that time, but recently I started thinking about it again and started compiling a list.

And then I thought: “I wonder if anyone’s ever had a go at this before?” Hmm, it turns out they had.  Of course, they had.  See, for instance:

A List of Fallacious Arguments
Logical Fallacies: shorter but prettier
Wikipedia

Wikipedia also has pages on propaganda and rhetorical techniques etc.  Even so, there were members of my list that I didn’t feel quite fitted into any of these pre-existing categories.  So, here goes:

1. Vague and shifting definitions.  I hate these.  Shifting definitions - words that are used to mean one thing in one place and another in another are the worst but any word or phrase that could mean more than one thing should get the alarm bells ringing.  “Racist” is a good example.  Do you mean gas-chamber racist or blacks-run-faster racist?  Big difference.

2. So what? Can often sound rude but it’s a devastating question.  It’s a useful practice when someone makes a point to ask: “Well, so what?” For instance, and I’m not making this up, one criticism I’ve heard made of Austrian economics is that it hasn’t advanced since the 1920s.  Well, so what?  Good theories don’t have to “advance”.

3. Do you understand it? OK, I don’t understand fluid dynamics but I appreciate that if fluid dynamicists hadn’t got their models right planes would fall out of the sky.  But that does not apply to the average political debate.  If you don’t understand the terms that are being used or the argument that is being made it’s probably nonsense.  Brian Micklethwait holds that when it comes to technology if you don’t understand it that is their problem, not yours.  Much the same applies to politics.

   Actually, it gets worse.  If you don’t understand it there’s a good chance they don’t either.

4. Is this the most important thing? I once read an article criticising the career of Winston Churchill.  Nothing wrong with that - there’s plenty to criticise.  But at no point did the author address himself to Churchill’s actions in 1940.  Which was a shame because if it hadn’t been for his actions at the time he wouldn’t have had a reputation worth criticizing.

5. Changing the subject. God, I hate this.  Why can’t people just say:  “That’s a good point, I think you’re wrong but I can’t come up with a good counter argument right now.”?

6. “Key", “strategic”, “essential”. Beware any arguments involving these words.  How would you know if something was key, strategic or essential?  There’s no test.

Part II is here.

It is hugely successful.  It attracts a large audience, a big fan base and a huge waiting list for studio tickets.  It has spawned DVDs, a live show and local versions in the US, Australia and Russia.  Satellite channel, Dave, has based an entire business model around Top Gear repeats.  Stars clamour to drive its Reasonably Priced Car and a nation held its breath when one of its presenters was badly hurt in a 300mph car crash.

Jeremy Clarkson even once got a custard pie in the face from an environmentalist.  High praise indeed.

All this for a show based around two elements, namely: cars and blokes - neither of which the BBC, the show’s broadcaster, particularly likes.

So, why is it so successful?  I think it revolves around two elements.

First of all, it brings out the nine-year-old in all of us.  So, it has the values of a nine-year old.  Speed?  Good.  Power?  Good.  Noise?  Good.  Futuristic looks?  Good.  Gadgets?  Good.  Worries about global warming?  Boring.  Sure Mr Megastar you’re a star but how fast are you in a Suzuki Liana?

But it also asks the questions a nine-year old asks:

• Can you turn a car into a boat?
• Why don’t you have convertible people carriers?
• Can you drive to the North Pole?
• Which is faster, a car or a train?  Or a plane?  Or a boat?
• What happens if you put Boadicea spikes on your wheels or drive into a brick wall?  In a lorry?
• Or if you strap a Reliant Robin to a rocket?

Top Gear has at one point or another asked all these questions usually with results that are as disastrous as they are predictable as they are hilarious.  No wonder “ambitious but rubbish” has become the show’s unofficial motto.

Secondly, and this is thing they keep quiet about, Top Gear is clearly the result of a lot of hard work.  Don’t believe me?  Watch any episode and ask yourself where the camera is.  You’ll quickly realise that that it’s in all sorts of funny places.  The other day I spotted that they’d managed to get on the top of a suspension bridge.  Think of the health and safety forms.  But often it’s a helicopter.  Think of the cost.  Oh, and the co-ordination.

One of the sadnesses of this is that you realise that if the races themselves are not fakes, most of the shots are. 

But the hard work continues.  There is frequently a dialogue between narrator and presenter.  Often the same person.  But often it reveals an extraordinary degree of planning an preparation.  Let me put is like this. Top Gear presenters do not simply jump in a car and ad lib.  They write it down first.  Top Gear is quite prepared to put a day’s work into 5 seconds of footage.

Or, to put it another way, you have to be awfully grown up if you want to be that childish.

Top Gear is also remarkable for the way it survives repetition.  I have watched some of the Dave repeats 3 or 4 times.  This is partly because they are very funny.  Watching a man attempt to negotiate his Triumph Dolomite Sprint over a cobbled road with a collander full of eggs directly above his head usually is.  And it is partly because of the in-jokes that you miss first time round.  It took me ages to realise that there’s one running joke about Jeremy believing that for every mechanical problem there’s a hammer-based solution, another involving James May having no sense of direction and another involving Hammond crashing into May.  I don’t believe for a minute that all this isn’t also carefully planned.

To sum up, Top Gear is successful because it deserves to be. 

In Part I I explained how Formula One’s regulations were ruining the sport...

So, the answer is to get rid of the regulations, yes?  If only it were that easy.  Formula 1 has a secret.  No, not a particularly dirty one, but a secret, nevertheless.  They solved the problem.  About 30 years ago (and we’re talking ground effect here again) Formula 1 teams solved the problem of how to go round corners quickly.  Hooray, you might say, and so might I, on a technical level.  But going round corners quickly creates at least two new problems.  First the potential g-forces are greater than the unaided human body can stand and second, if anything goes wrong when the car is cornering (as it did in Ayrton Senna’s case) the car is going to crash at very high speed.  Such things might not matter if F1 was still a largely amateur sport made up of gentlemen racers but it isn’t and the audience that pays the professionals doesn’t want their heroes to be just people who can stand up to high g-forces.  They want them to demonstrate some skill.  Oh, and stay alive.  That’s also quite important.

So, I have no doubt that cars do have to be slowed down in the corners.  It’s just a question of how to do that without tying up the sport in red tape.  My candidate is a weight limit.  Tell teams that they can have any design they like so long as when it leaves the start line it weighs less than, say, 500kg.  As technology improves and cars get dangerously fast simply lower the limit.  Every time this is done teams will have to work out which bit of their car - whether it be the engine, transmission, suspension, wheels or bodywork has to lose the weight.  Each team will answer the question slightly differently leading to a wide variety of designs.

Another way might be to make the cars behave more like ordinary cars.  This might include demanding that all cars be started by the driver alone (they’re not at present), that they be drivable by amateurs (although I am not quite sure how you’d enforce this), that they make their way to the track under their own power.  It’s always struck me as bizarre that cars are allowed to refuel when they like.  Make each team state in advance when they plan to stop for fuel - it would at least be closer to the situation in real life.