Editor's pick: Politicians usually have time to do it right
It is nonsense to claim politicians are meant to get on with things with limited information and time, as David Willetts does (3 June, p 24). Politicians usually have plenty of time to make decisions, often spending years in opposition, honing policies. Saving the banks in 2008 might possibly have been one of the few exceptions.
Willetts cites two examples: genetic engineering challenging our identity and society coping with a new wave of automation. Plenty of time can be taken to research both these.
He is also wrong to claim that knowledge of political history has much relevance to understanding the decisions politicians make. They usually make these based on ideology. It isn't necessary to know that the Lords tried to overturn Lloyd George's tax rises designed to improve the lot of working people in 1909 – though it might have helped if George Osborne, when he was UK finance minister, had understood that Margaret Thatcher, as prime minister, destroyed UK manufacturing by raising interest rates to curb inflation at the same time as North Sea oil was starting to flow.
Pharmaceutical research must be a public good
Clare Wilson notes that most of the cost of drug development comes from the public purse, not from the large pharmaceutical companies (3 June, p 22). Independent research has repeatedly shown that these companies spend only around 15 per cent of their revenue on research and development. Tellingly, most spend at least twice as much on marketing.
Pharmaceutical research must be a public good
It is commonplace these days to encounter companies set up with notional dual objectives: to meet social needs at the same time as making profits for shareholders. I can think of no example where the two motivations haven't sooner or later come into conflict as, for example, when economic forces place pressures on profits and the social need is pushed into second place and suffers.
A company may be supplying multimillion dollar drug regimes, as Clare Wilson describes, or social carers for pennies, storing up the crisis that James Bloodworth predicts (3 June, p 24). Whatever their initial ambitions, the profit maximisation imperative eventually takes over.
The obvious long-term solution in both cases is clear. All aspects of health and social care must be brought under social ownership and control. That way, the efforts of the universities – alluded to by Wilson – will be recognised; investment can be directed purely towards need, rather than towards areas of maximum potential profit; and any profits can be fed back into the system itself rather than into the pockets of remote and uninterested investors.
First class post
I will resign from my job as a chemistry teacher rather than teach creationism
ManMar to the DUP member of the Northern Ireland Assembly who called for schools to teach creationism (17 June, p 4)
Buying only climate-friendly goods and fuel
Fred Pearce speculates on the effects of not implementing the Paris climate agreement (20 May, p 10). Now US president Donald Trump has confirmed that the US will pull out of it (10 June, p 22).
We may feel frustrated that we are unable to fight such poor decisions, but I would suggest that we all can, and we should try to influence this situation without the need for trade wars.
Individuals, companies and governments should buy goods and services only from countries that adhere to the Paris deal. When you book that holiday or buy that car, piece of technology or software – try to purchase it from a compliant country. The sooner we all start, the sooner the effects will be felt.
Buying only climate-friendly goods and fuel
Perhaps one way to trump the Trump would be for the peoples, not the governments, of the countries prepared to sign the Paris Agreement to stop buying fuel that is sourced or handled by any company based in the US.
Were the monkey mafia of Bali tutored in crime?
Brian Owens describes macaque monkeys in Bali robbing tourists and bartering the goods (3 June, p 14). When I visited in the late 1980s, I found that non-Hindus weren't allowed into Balinese temples without a sash of a particular kind and colour – luckily someone was on hand to sell me one. And monkeys were taking possessions and moving over a line that non-Hindus couldn't cross. Again luckily, a local was available to get your items back, for a small fee. It seems the monkeys have learned to cut out the middle man.
Nuclear submarines are not the only targets
David Hambling mentions the possibility that the UK's Trident nuclear missile submarines may be targeted at sea (27 May, p 37). But since the number of missiles carried on each Trident sub was reduced, many of the warheads are in bunkers on the hill above Coulport in Scotland, one loch west from the Trident base at Faslane. They are maintained at Aldermaston and Burghfield in Berkshire – and moved by road between there and Coulport.
Those warheads make tempting targets too. Getting rid of Trident would thus make Scotland less of a target. If, after Scottish independence, the rest of the UK wishes to evict people from a pair of West Country fishing villages to replicate Faslane and Coulport, that is its call. It might decide, though, that the political cost was too high and ditch the nukes.
Sortition, participation and representation
Campbell Wallace, suggesting “sortition” as a democratic solution, says that “the Greeks of Aristotle's day knew that elections could lead to oligarchy, not democracy” (Letters, 20 May). Centuries before Aristotle, the Greeks thought of election not as potentially leading to oligarchy, but as the defining mode of selecting an oligarchy.
The idea of a “statistically representative sample” originated in the 19th century. The Greeks preferred sortition because it guaranteed equality and impartiality. Athens was a direct democracy, not a representative one. The Ecclesia was a popular assembly where any citizen (so no women or slaves) could speak and vote by being present, without having to be selected. The Council of the 500 was selected by lot, but couldn't take final decisions without approval by the Ecclesia.
Sortition is an interesting procedure that helps us to look at political history with new eyes and to open paths to deepen democracy through participatory innovations. Getting rid of the myth that elections equal democracy is vital. But we must do so in a scientific, critical and empirically informed approach.
When everything looks like a hallucination…
You report artificial intelligence that can make videos of you saying anything (27 May, p 16). This barely hints at the potential for this technology: fake news at a level we can hardly imagine.
Software will probably be developed to detect when a video has been doctored, but who will believe whom when everything starts to look like a hallucination?
Thinking in three languages, or in none
Andrew Fogg writes of thinking in no language at all (Letters, 20 May). Some years ago, I asked my 7-year-old daughter which language she preferred to speak. She said: “English with you, papa, Dutch with mama and French with my friends.”
I then asked which language she preferred to think in. After a long pause, she said: “I don't think in any language.” It is the same for her today. I had always thought in English – my only language – but after Zen training, thoughts are no longer associated with words unless they need to be conveyed to others.
Be careful what you wish for with working hours
Timothy Revell discusses the mixed benefits of a reduced working week (13 May, p 22). There is at least one further complication: the reductions seen by the employer and employee are not symmetrical, especially if there is no possibility for the employee to work remotely.
If I work an 8-hour day with an hour's commute at each end, my employer considers me to be working a 40-hour week, but I am away from my family for 50 hours per week.
With a 6-hour working day, my employer sees my productivity reduced to 75 per cent, but I benefit only from a reduction to 80 per cent of my time commitment – or less if I account for the time taken to earn the money for commuting costs.
Are people trained to be passive in disasters?
Your interesting and useful article on strategies to survive disaster recognises that many people freeze and do nothing in a crisis, reducing their chance of survival (13 May, p 32). With training, people can react appropriately and survive.
I wonder whether people have been trained to freeze by sitting passively at a movie or in front of a television, watching thousands of disasters unfold without a need for them to react.
Let us count the Geneva Conventions' laws of war
Calling for a “digital Geneva Convention”, you say: “since the second world war, the Geneva Convention has outlined rules of traditional war” (27 May, p 20). were adopted in 1949: three updated earlier conventions concerning combatants and the fourth mandated protection of civilians.
For the record
• In Rebecca Boyle's article on how an impact could have reshaped the early Earth as a doughnut-like “synestia”, we should have said that its outer edges reach orbital velocity and cannot spin any faster (3 June, p 10).