Strangely selective

Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary is a fine, upstanding body, says the government when they hear that the police could save 12% of their budget without hitting "front line services".  Yet, when the same body points out that 20% cuts would make that rather "hard" you hear all sorts of spluttering from Downing St.  The HMIC seems to have morphed into a bunch of fools and charlatans.  Which is it, Davey baby?

Be gentle when you tell the grown-ups...

...that things just aren't that simple.

Teresa May was today forced to acknowledge that the hundreds of police officers and staff behind the scenes during the various demonstrations on Saturday (march for the Alternative, UK Uncut, Class War...) were just as vital as those out on the streets.  Whatever you think of the various actions and the policing policy, the observation is much the same - pretty clear evidence that the simple-minded injunction to "save money by cutting the back office" is just that - simple-minded.

And today, Warwickshire police are reported to be taking uniformed officers off the streets to do the jobs whose holders have been made redundant.

There are two problems (at least) with the cuts programme:

• the separation between front and back office is artificial
• changes of this type might be possible, but to do them properly would require more time than they have been given

Distracted from the wonders of the universe

Brian Cox couldn't keep my attention for ever (or even for the full hour), but he always makes me think.  So I thought:  if the sun could ever get out from behind his Madchester hairdo, how much of its light might we get here on earth?

Simplifying madly (and probably dropping the odd decimal place here and there), this is how I went about it.

1. Imagine a sphere as big as the earth's orbit round the sun:  the sun at its centre and a radius of 150 million kilometres.
2. Think of the earth as a circle on the surface of that sphere:  a radius of 6370 kilometres.
3. The surface area of the big sphere is 283 quadrillion (282,743,338,823,081,391) km^2.
4. The area of the "earth disc" is 127 million km^2.
5. Which is 0.000000045% of the surface area of the big sphere.
6. OK, that's meaningless, so how do we translate it into terms that people might understand?
7. Start with a standard football and imagine it with a tiny sun at its centre and the earth disc on its surface.
8. But that makes earth really, really tiny, and I couldn't find out the area of a pin point.
9. So move up a bit:  imagine the earth with a tiny sun at its centre and the "earth disc" on its surface.
10. A few sums later, and I determine that the earth disc has an area of 230,000 m².
11. Which is 32 football pitches, and everybody understands that.
12. But the basic truth is that the amount of the sun's light that can ever hit the earth is less than half of one ten-millionth of one per cent.

Does that help?

Not the BBC's finest hour

Failure to understand scientific and statistical points was paraded across the BBC this morning.

First, James Naughtie asked John Beddington to explain the difference between Fukushima Daiichi and Chernobyl, when the chief scientific advisor had already done so in considerable detail.

Then, John Humphrys interviewed David Nutt about the trouble he found himself in after comparing the risks of ecstasy and horse-riding.  Exasperation showing clearly through the politeness, Professor Nutt sought to explain that he was doing no more nor less than presenting the statistics as established by a proper meta-analysis.

Finally, Martha Carney completely misunderstood the representative of the World Nuclear Association.  He said the diesel generators at the power station had not been designed to withstand the size of tsunami which hit it:  she concluded that he had said that the generators should not have been there at all.

Trident roadblocked - just about

Every now and then the Defence Minister Liam Fox comes out with a declaration that the Trident project is still alive. Today he announced the spending of a whole £25 million!

And yet the work is still formally suspended, in that the final go-ahead (the "main gate" decision - why does the military-industrial complex come up with such stupid phrases, and why do doe-eyed politicians go along with them?) has been postponed until after the next election.

I hold out no great hope, because...

• Conservative and Labour are signed up to the "independent nuclear deterrent" (Jeremy Corbyn and a few other honourable exceptions notwithstanding).
• Governments since the 40s have spent and spent on these phallic beasts whatever they declare in public.
• Whatever the official status of the accounting stream (and Mr Corbyn asked an interesting parliamentary question on that subject today, which may have some mileage given the coalition's declared commitment to "transparency"), somehow nukes always find the money to keep going - rather like MI5.

It's worth noting that the Atomic Weapons Establishment at Aldermaston is managed by Lockheed Martin (that fine not-British company that's running our census as well), Jacobs Engineering Group (another US corporation, not well known, looks like a mini-Halliburton) and Serco (fairly British, but originally a subsidiary of the Radio Corporation of America). That's the "independent nuclear deterrent" for you!

The fact remains, however, that the Lib Dems have managed (with the fortuitous support of a painfully diminished defence budget) to get the commitment to major expenditure delayed. They sit there not saying anything - I fully expect to see Nick Harvey studying the ceiling and whistling on the front bench. Clutching at straws, certainly, hoping that something will turn up, but it's worth having that slight chance.

Godel, Escher, Bach

Starting the book again for perhaps the fourth time, I want to see whether the experience of the second half (approximately) of my life can make up for the undoubted assaults on my brain capacity suffered during the earlier years...
... and whether, this time, I can finish it.

I think I'm a teenager

Stargazy Pie is a fine, but painfully understated, institution. Every couple of months an amazing variety of performers give of their best.

Ignoring my own contribution, I felt that one group might have put two too many choruses into each song, and that another group might have performed two too many sweet songs. In both cases there was little wrong with each chorus, each song, but am I starting to exhibit the symptom I really don't believe in - the curtailed attention span?

Life... don't talk to me about life

When you dip into lots of things, you run the risk of doing them all badly. Multi-tasking is a great - and vital - thing, but for the dipper... it can end in confusion and nothingness.

I'm too hard on myself (by implication). For weeks, the overriding priority has been just one night's performance.
It's done now, and other things have to be gathered up and got on with.

It's done, but it didn't go right. Two types of audio and one of video simply did not work, but what I could perform I did well, and I'm happy with that.

Thoughts for next time...?

• Set your sights lower? No!
• Rehearse more? Maybe.
• Prove the technology in advance? Yes, yes, yes!