Oil Exploration and Trident

There is a headline today in the Sunday Post: Tories blocked oil boom in the Clyde, Heseltine admits.

This is the kind of headline that really irritates me because it is inaccurate on several levels.  The obvious one of course is Heseltine never used the term “oil boom”.  This is a creation of a sub-editor for dramatic effect.  The more important point is that since drilling has not taken place, nobody knows whether there would have been, or still might be oil reserves in the Clyde.  To claim an economic boom for the region was thus thwarted is just simply wrong.  The real situation is that nobody knows.

In a separate article, MSP Chic Brodie (SNP) claims all this has been a cover up, implying that with malicious intent it is a fiendish Westminster plot to keep the Clyde poor.  He bases this claim that since Infrastata, an oil exploration company got a licence to drill off Larne, and the same geological formations exist under the Clyde, it is obvious that the Clyde area should also be explored.

Let us have a look at this.  Under the North Sea, there is a layer of sandstone (The Rotliegendes) that forms the reservoir for both Dutch and English gas reserves in the southern sector.  One possible place where it could be drilled onshore for exploration purposes is on the coast of Cumbria.  The only problem though is that the site is already used by the Sellafield nuclear power station.  The reason one does not drill for gas next to a nuclear power station is that of safety.

Similarly, during the Cold War, Polaris (and later Trident) armed boats were coming and going through the Clyde to the base at Faslane.  I think people are forgetting what those times were like.  Regardless of whether the threat from the Soviet Union was all that it was cracked up to be or not, if people at the time would have been asked what was more important: another patch of sea opened for oil exploration or the safe passage of our nuclear-armed fleet, the overwhelming majority at the time would treated the questioner as being some kind of lunatic even for asking.  We were not asked though because all such discussions about the movements of Britain’s nuclear fleets is of the highest secrecy.  There was enough trouble at the time with trawlers being mysteriously sunk, and submarines taking the blame, without in addition to that risking collisions between oil rigs and boats armed with nuclear weapons.

Worlds change and while Russia is no longer the ideological threat it once was, the rise of nationalism under Putin is increasingly sinister.  Unfortunately this strengthens the argument that a nuclear deterrent has to be maintained.  If I still had the mind-set I had in the Eighties, this would surely be my view.  I have changed though and am now disgusted by very ownership of nuclear weapons.  I would love to see Britain give them up.  While we still have them though, their safety must be ensured.  I am not arguing that the Clyde should never be drilled; with advancements in technology, perhaps it is possible to do safely now in the 21st Century what was not in the 1980s.  If the Scottish government wishes to see Clyde being explored, it should be a matter they raise with Westminster.  If deemed not safe, if one has to go, then indeed let it be the nuclear base.

It was not as if other parts of the west coast were left unexplored.  In 1998, I performed work as part of an exploration rig about fifty miles off the Isle of Lewis.  Once I got on board, I sought out the wellsite geologist.

“Why are we drilling here?” I asked.

“Ooh, can’t tell you,” was the reply.  “Tight well.”  [Meaning a well where all data access is closely controlled].

“How deep is the hole?”

“Eight and a half thousand feet.”

“Okay,” I said.  “I’ll tell you what I think you have, then you can say whether I am right or not.”  He agrees to this.

“Six and a half thousand feet of volcanic ash.”

“Actually,” the geologist admits.  “It’s seven thousand feet of volcanic ash.”

“Why on earth did you drill here?”

“It looked so good on the seismic!”  came the reply.

There was another rig out there at the same time, the John Shaw (if I recall) which shows that companies did (and for all I know, still do) have access to other parts of the west coast.  It is just they didn't find anything then.  The only way they could know for certain is to drill.

I am sure the irony would not be lost on many that we may see others in the Yes camp, the Greens in particular, campaigning both to shut Faslane and to have no drilling in the Clyde.

 

What is disingenuous though  is for the Yes Campaign to claim that exploration was blocked to spite Scotland’s west coast; that the decision represents some form of economic treachery. The decision not to drill the Clyde was obviously based upon grounds of safety.  

Media and a Duty of Care.

In this talk, TEDxHousesofParliement, film director David Puttnam asks whether the media has a duty of care towards the public. It is a good question. I was asked for my thoughts on the presentation by a friend of mine on facebook.

Certain sections of the media distort facts, either in the service of government to drive forward a given ideology or policy, or in the interests of a given corporation or social group. Press on the left do this too: it is not just a top-down affair.

 Differing perceptions are of course grist to the mill of debate. Debate can only be informative and educational however, if the facts are agreed, or if that cannot be reached, at least as honestly presented and as available to scrutiny as circumstance allow. If this does not happen, then the result is sophistry, which often as not, is what passes for political debate and reporting nowadays. A shorter label for it is "spin".

Puttnam mentioned another aspect that informs action and that is morality. Now, let us say that the media has a duty of care to present the facts. Obviously there are a lot of facts to any given topic; a media outlet, be it the BBC, Fox News or a blogger, probably cannot know all the facts but should present a picture based upon the facts available. This is different from spin insofar all the available facts have to be distilled into the story, and not just the selection of those that fit a particular agenda. This is difference between balanced reporting and spin.

Balanced reporting is also not the same as current practice: allowing two (or more) proponents to take to airwaves and have at each other. This has the illusion of balance but in reality it is a collision of spins and thus far more difficult to get to the real facts. The most celebrated case of this currently on the British media circuit is BBC's Question Time: a show when up to six flavours of spin (plus audience participation) take part in a mass tourney. It is of course very entertaining, modern day bread and circus for the politically interested, and occasionally truth does emerge. Its most useful purpose as far as facts are concerned is that audience member may pick pointers to where further details can be found. It is in no way a presentation that allows the audience to impartially judge a given issue.

Still, BBC Question Time and similar shows are better than the media monocultures that are the real target of Puttnam: the uninformative and biased tabloids, whether in print or on air. They present politics and many other issues with the sensibility of soap opera writers: that the participants are either idiots or scoundrels. Of course, politics, like all walks of life have their share of both but by the relentless presentation of everybody involved as such, it dulls the sensibility of those nurtured upon such fare. It is popular for a very simple reason: most everybody likes to be able to look down upon somebody else and what gives the illusion of empowerment more than a feeling of moral superiority? That feeling literally sells tabloids by the truckload. It is not a factual picture though and thus fails Puttnam's duty of care test. It discourages political involvement and breeds nothing but cynicism.

One can already hear the screams warning of censorship and yes, in a democracy one must have the freedom to be wrong in the opinion of others, especially if that somebody is the government or other organs of the state. At its heart, Puttnam is calling for honesty in the reporting of facts. The democratic process lies in the interpretation of those facts. We can still disagree over what they mean but if the facts are skewed or completely absent, then the basis of our democracy and freedoms are not even on foundations of sand. They rest upon nothing at all.

Clarkson, Childhood and Eenie Meenie.

I do feel sorry for Jeremy Clarkson.  That rhyme, Eenie Meenie Minie Mo, was sang constantly in my childhood.  It wasn't right but in the 1960s, 1970s and doubtless before, nobody told us children it was wrong.  Thus it became part of our schooldays and our play days.  It is as ingrained in my memory as the two-times table.

But like the times table, I don't have to recite it any more.  Sometimes when making an either-or decision, it comes, unbidden, into my head.  Owing to the offensive word it contains, there it must stay, forever unspoken except during discussions such as this.

Clarkson is a talented writer and presenter who not only can mould a new image using language, but also taps into the British stream of consciousness.  That rhyme is part of that stream for those of us who are older.  His mistake was to give voice to it.

As far as race relations in the UK is concerned, the situation has improved markedly since my childhood.  Real equality however, is still a battle being fought.  If he is guilty of anything, Jeremy Clarkson is showing poor awareness of the current situation; either that or he simply doesn't care.  I do hope it is the former.

The bottom line though is that Britain has moved on since the 1960s.  Clarkson should have too.

Reading In Confinement

I have never been in prison and, by the grace of God, may that condition continue.  But my work often leads me into that state of confinement that is known as an offshore oil rig.

It was an early morning, last minute call and I had to pack in a rush.  Making the flight from Stavanger, it was straight down to Amsterdam, a train link to Den Helder and then immediately offshore and into work.  The survey was partly achieved but had to be suspended owing to bad weather.  It was only then I realised that I had not taken any books with me.

After rechecking the tools, there was little else to do.  The following two weeks passed at a crawl.  Mentally I was in some distress; bouncing off the walls one could say.   The OIM (offshore installation manager) even took pity on me and had me arrange to give a talk on my speciality to the crew as part of that week’s safety meeting.  I am sure that it was less to do with keeping the personnel informed as to the dangers of seismic guns and high pressure air, and more with helping me keep my sanity together.

Even in these days of the Internet and Facebook, books are my constant companion both at home and offshore.   I even launched a mini rebellion at one oil company’s ban on reading material during helicopter flights to their installations.  Wedged into an old Bell Huey with ten other guys, there is little to do other than sleep or read; the latter option being taken away.  Frankly it felt like being in a cattle truck.

Reading is a transportation of the mind from the immediate physical surrounds and leads it into contact with other minds and areas.  This is usually just seen as a choice entertainment, but when the body is in confinement, whether voluntary or being incarcerated, it becomes so much more than that.

So it comes to the recent call from Chris Grayling to ban books from prison.  Actually, he didn't say that.  What he wants to do is ban prisoners receiving packages from the outside, with them only allowed cards and letters.  This is to be done both in the name of security and of punishment.  Apparently loss of physical liberty is not enough and Grayling claims there is a demand for "a regime that is more Spartan unless you do the right thing".  The book ban is about receiving literature from the outside, which under new rules are now seen as a luxury.

Prison is about punishment but it should also be about rehabilitation.  Many criminals see the world from only their own selfish viewpoint, and anything that can help to broaden their outlook, help them to feel empathy with others, should not be curtailed but actively encouraged.  Books, and novels in particular, can fulfil this role.  For those who cannot read, prison is another opportunity to address the holes in their education that school was unable to fill.

 

It is hard not to see Grayling’s claims terms of cost cutting, for of course there are security implications.  But that is what scanners are for, are they not?  Mail depots and airports have the technology so it is hard to claim that it is not possible in prisons.

The exchange of ideas is one of the things that mark us as being different from other animals on this planet.  Limit that, take it away, and a person is quickly reduced towards the level of a beast.  This is what the new rules on the banning of outside books will do to prisoners.  It also shows from the Conservative justice minister the same kind of paucity of thought, empathy and imagination that has led many others into a prison cell.

The Ruble vs. The Euro: What Putin Didn't See.

In the good old days of the Soviet Union, the leadership of the Kremlin did not really have to care much about neither public opinion nor world markets.  During the 1980s, the citizens of the Soviet Europe did not even know there was a war on in Afghanistan until the dead and wounded started to return and mothers started to take to the streets to prevent their sons from being drafted.

Things have changed a great deal since then.  Take a moment to consider this:

This graph (courtesy of XE http://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=RUB&to=EUR&view=1M) shows the fall of the Russian Ruble against the Euro since mid January. 

Here are some “highlights” of events in neighbouring Ukraine.

A.  22 January: Street protests in Kiev spread beyond the capital to other cities. 

B. 12 February: in the Russian weekly Zavtra, the Izborsk Club publish an article titled Save Ukraine! In it, the authors appeal for Russian intervention to prevent the Ukraine’s, as they put it, fascist and Nazi creeping coup”.   According to the Centre of Research on Globalization, the Izbork Club is a think tank that has gained prominence under the leadership of Vladimir Putin.  http://www.globalresearch.ca/russias-save-ukraine-memorandum-prevent-the-ukraine-from-going-fascist/5368608

C.  18 February: Night of violent riots in Kiev with deaths, as police surround Independence Square.  There are reports of police using plastic and live rounds, as well as fragmentation grenades against protesters.  http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26248021

D.  21 February: EU intervention leads to a compromise agreement being reached between President Yanukovych and  demonstration leaders agreeing to early elections and the return to the 2004 constitution.  The Ukrainian Parliament passes a bill approving the release of former president Yulia Timoshenko.  

E.  22 Febuary: President Yanukovych flees the capital after being impeached by parliament.   25 Febuary sees Pro-Russian Aleksey Chaly appointed mayor of Sevastopol as pro-Russian rallies in Crimea gain strength.  Russian troops mobilise outside their barracks.

F.  2 March:  The day after the Russian Parliament approves the use of troops in the Ukraine, Russian forces take over the Crimea.

G.  5 March: US Secretary John Kerry has face-to-face talks with his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov and Ukrainian foreign minister Andriy Deshchytsia.  Talks fail as Lavrov refuses to talk with Deshchytsia.

H.     6 March onwards.  US imposes visa sanctions on selected Russian and Ukrainian officials and Russian annexation of the Crimea continues.

In the past, the Soviets controlled very effectively what their people were aware of, both in their empire and in the world beyond.  That is no longer possible.  Nor was the Ruble  a transferable currency.  It is now.

During the past week, I was listening to City Radio, Moscow.  There was a phone-in during which business people and small traders had made the link between the Ukrainian crisis and the fall of the Ruble against the Euro.  Now the drop in value may not seem much: around about ten percent.  But, as one restaurateur pointed out, he has to import seventy five percent of his ingredients.  The fall in the value of the Ruble is causing real hardship for business, some are starting to fail, and they are vocal in their complaints.   

The unwritten deal with Putin and the Russian people is that in exchange for power, he will provide economic stability.  The longer this crisis continues, one very much laid at his feet by the business owners phoning in, the more he will fail.

One also has to wonder what the reaction of the people of the Crimea will be when they convert to the Ruble (currently scheduled for April), only to find themselves instantly more poor.

Other sources:
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/europe/2014/03/timeline-ukraine-political-crisis-201431143722854652.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Ukrainian_revolution

MPs' Pay.

In an independent report, IPSA, the body responsible for parliamentary oversight suggests a pay rise for MPs of eleven percent. Frankly I am for the idea.

The whole travesty of the expenses scandal occurred owing to MPs not putting up their wages but instead supplementing their income through the back-door of expenses. The majority of them are running two households, one of which is in London, one of the most expensive cities in the world. On a basic of £66K (a little less than $110,000 US), that is by no means a life of luxury.

In Scotland, MSPs have their expenses published on a website and thus accountable to the press and people of the UK. I want to see the same for Westminster. I also want MPs to be paid decently so it does not rely on either coming from a background of privilege, or being sponsored by private industry or trade unions.

This has been a problem since the rules changed under Thatcher in the late 1970s and is still being avoided for popularist political motives. I am fed up of the knee-jerk reaction of those against, but most especially those in the cabinet who were back-benchers but are now All Right Jack, being on ministerial wages (about double), and those who demand the highest ethical standards but demand the minimum living standards for our elected representatives. To keep MPs poor is to open the door to corruption.

Before the Thatcher reforms, each MP from outside London got £3000 and was told to get on with it. It was up to them how they used the money. If they had the means of renting a Mayfair apartment, fine.  If they preferred to save the cash and bed down under Westminster Bridge, that was their business. There was no need for oversight; they just got the money and made their own arrangements.

Instead of having IPSA, another level of bureaucracy, to monitor our elected representatives, maybe it is time to return to the practices of a more simple age.

Part-Time Deterrent

As part of today’s conference debate F32Defending the Future – UK Defence in the 21st Century (Defence Policy Paper), (pages 50-53) in lines 49 to 72, the leadership advocate reducing the Trident nuclear-carrying submarine fleet from the current four Vanguard-class boats to two Successor-class boats and ending the Cold War policy of Continuous At Sea Deterrence – known as CASD.  It would include such subterfuges as openly going to sea with unarmed missiles but having a stockpile of real weapons ready that can be primed in times of international stress (lines 57-58) and “surging” with armed patrols in the case of the international situation deteriorating (59-60).

It is obvious from these examples that the paper’s authors do not give any credence to Toby Fenwick’s paper Dropping the Bomb (Centre Forum 2012), in which he outlines the problems of such a part-time deterrent.

“Such a part-time deterrent is dangerously escalatory.  First, the act of sailing a ballistic missile submarine in a crisis would be a major escalation just at the time when governments are attempting to de-escalate.  Second, as the UK’s only nuclear weapon system, a part-time deterrent in port provides a major incentive for an adversary to mount a pre-emptive strike to disable or destroy the Trident submarines in port or to ambush them on sailing, again increasing the incentives for an adversary to escalate a crisis more rapidly.  A part-time deterrent is dangerously escalatory in a crisis, and must be rejected.”

In his paper, Fenwick also dismisses the “Cruise Missile” option, with multi-role submarines, as it runs the risk of giving the hypothetical enemy a confused signal.  In the twenty minutes it takes from launch to impact, are those cruise missiles carrying nuclear or conventional weapons?  Should the enemy launch an all-out nuclear retaliation or assume that we Brits are the good guys and would never launch nuclear weapons first?

There are therefore only two real choices as far as a credible policy on nuclear weapons are concerned.  We should either maintain enough capacity for CASD deployment, thus backing Conservative and Labour policy to replace the Vanguard boats with Successor, or to end the United Kingdom’s ownership of nuclear weapons altogether. 

What the author’s of today’s paper are really trying to do is maintain economic and expert capability in the fields related to nuclear weapons, hence the call for continuous training and practice (61-62) and dual-usage submarines (64).  They know that holding on to a Cold War stance is not credible but in their view neither is the stark alternative of unilaterally disarming.  Thus the fudge that conference is being asked to approve today, a case of when the cart is being put before the horse if ever there was one. 

The best that Conference can do today is support the amendment which calls for the cancellation of the Successor programme and thus leads to the retirement of Trident within the next decade.   Just in case one is tempted to support the paper as it stands though, just remember this one thing.  In the 2030s, the Trident missiles themselves will be at the end of their lives and will need replacement too.  So if one were to think that any form of support for the Successor programme is viable, think again.   In spending all these billions of pounds, the decision is only being put back 20-25 years and then the nation will be facing exactly the same debate as we have today, but with even less control of the outcome because Trident is almost exclusively US-made.

Today, end support for Successor and let Liberal Democrats lead the way with the truly credible and realistic outlook on nuclear weapons.