PILOT BOOK REVIEWS

Conflict in New Zealand pilot autobiographies

They did not name each other in their autobiographies, but these two pilots may have been on career collision courses, and yet their stories are vastly different on critical facts.

Bernie Haskell is the author of Flying on the Edge published in 2014 by Altitude Publishing. Barry Cardno’s book Let Fly was published in 2009 by Longacre Press, an award winning publisher that is part of Random House.

Flying on the Edge is an entertaining read with many stories true and/or tall. Readers can decide which. Haskell portrays himself as an adventurous risk-taker and aerial entrepreneur. He retired from New Zealand’s agricultural aviation industry in 1996, leaving a trail of broken aircraft and a company that had run out of financial runway. Haskell spins some great yarns about his exploits as an aircraft-assisted fisherman in remote places, as a daring wheels-on-the-water pilot with other breath-taking antics. He excels himself as a critic of numerous nameless characters who fell foul of him in his quest for flying and business greatness. One such character is named simply as Wally, a trainee pilot who, it was claimed, did it his way. Wally crashed one of Haskell’s expensive aircraft. This could be where there may be a connection between Flying on the Edge and Let Fly. Readers of the two books can decide if there was a connection, and if so, who was the wally.

Let Fly is the story of a young man who, from his earliest years, had wanted nothing more than to fly. He achieved his dream as a teenager but tragically his commercial flying career slammed to a halt at the age of 21 on a North Island hill-country farm. The Fletcher topdressing aircraft was wrecked and Barry Cardno had a fight for his life, life in a wheel-chair, and a long battle with authorities to be cleared as medically fit to fly again. Like Haskell, who used the name Wally to describe an employee, Cardno referred to his employer as The Boss. Once again readers can decide if Cardno and Wally are the same person, and if Haskell and The Boss are also the same person. While confined to a wheel-chair, Cardno went on to become a journalist and his book has a professional touch to it that one would expect from a professional writer. Let Fly is also a very human story. Cardno is a positive thinker who is keen to please and strives for perfection in all that he does, in spite of major setbacks.

Crucial to the claims of Wally and The Boss, is the technique for repositioning an agricultural aircraft for a return spreading run. Cardno says that previous instructors had trained him to adopt the dumbbell turn technique, which at the end of a run would involve pulling the nose up into a 45 degree climbing turn followed by a 270 degree turn in the opposite direction and a final 45 degree descending turn to line up for the next run. This turning technique allowed for keeping a safe flying speed at a safe height. However, Cardno claimed that The Boss insisted on pulling up into a vertical climb followed by a wing-over at low speed and a steep descent in the opposite to save time. Cardno had other issues with The Boss too including short-cuts on aircraft maintenance, manipulating trainee flying hours, and insisting on time-saving but dangerous flying practices. In the space of 18 months, Haskell by his own admission in Flying on the Edge, lost five aircraft in accidents. Cardno says in Let Fly that another trainee pilot employed by The Boss was killed in an accident just before his own crash.

Cardno, who was 21 at the time of his accident, says that he was keen to impress The Boss, even though he had doubts about some of the things that The Boss wanted him to do. He wanted more than anything to be successful in the industry. There were no witnesses to the Cardno crash and Cardno could not remember it after he recovered from a two-week coma. From an examination of the wreckage, the Transport Accident Investigation Commission’s inspector concluded that the aircraft had struck the ground in a wings-level steep nose-down attitude and that the pilot had probably reverted to an unsafe practice from earlier in his training. Cardno says he was probably doing exactly what The Boss had instructed him to do.

Flying on the Edge is an entertaining read from a showman pilot who later became a shoe-string business operator until accidents put him out of business. Meanwhile, Let Fly is the story of a young man whose dreams may appear to have been shattered by inadequate training and an irresponsible employer. From his wheel-chair, Cardno leads a full life with employment, driving a car, and even flying again as a private pilot.

Reading the two books certainly draws some parallels between Haskell and Cardno, and The Boss and Wally. Is Haskell the Boss in Cardno’s book, and is Wally really Cardno in Haskell’s book? You decide. And while you are deciding the question of who should be believed, should also be addressed. Wally or The Boss?

CANCER IS KILLING MORE PEOPLE

Cancer is killing more people than ever before

Everyone knows someone affected by cancer, friends, relatives, the family next door. Everywhere people are dying from, or awaiting treatment for, the dreaded Big C. Everywhere, people speculate about the reason for the sudden rise in the number of cancer victims. Everywhere, the medical profession and drug companies are being criticised for failing to halt the rising rates of cancer, and are even accused of conspiracies and cover-ups that are allowing innocent people to die while they profit from the misery. More people, in desperation or from lack of trust, are turning to alternate healers and natural remedies. 

Some people attribute rising cancer rates to lower standards of living, the pressure of modern-day life, climate change, pollution, insecticides, food ingredients, secret government missions to aerial spray populations with toxic chemicals, and so on. It seems that almost everyone has an explanation for the prevalence of the dreaded disease that is now one of the world’s biggest killers.

So what is the real truth about cancer? The answer lies in history, authentic research, and facts about the medical profession, changing life expectancy, and changing causes of death.

History reveals that humans are living longer now than ever before, and that the increased life expectancy is more universal than ever before. In the Neolithic Period (later Stone Age ending 10,000 years ago) the worldwide life expectancy from birth was just 20 years.  By the time of the Bronze Age (6,000 years ago) man could expect to live for 26 years on average from birth. In early modern England (1500-1700) Brits were doing better than many others around the world with a life expectancy 0f 37 years. By 1900, according to Encyclopaedia Britannica, the world life expectancy had reached 31 years. By 1950 it had risen to 48, and to 67 years in 2010.

From the above it could be expected that fewer people would be dying from a particular cause, such as cancer, rather than more, but that is not the case. More people are dying from cancer now than ever before. So let’s look at the causes of death and how they have changed over time.

From the earliest times until quite recently, infant mortality was one of the major causes of death. As recently as 1700 a third of all births worldwide led to death before the age of nine, due to malnutrition, disease, accidents and violence. This had a major impact on life expectancy in general.

The gap between rich and poor has always created an unequal life expectancy, both between rich and poor countries and between rich and poor families living in the same countries, and even in the same cities. Poverty comes with a high price. However, the Industrial Revolution changed the thinking of business leaders, politicians and social reformers to the extent that it was realized that if the masses were unable to purchase the goods that they produced, there wasn’t much point in having industry because there would be a scarcity of customers with money. While there is still a considerable gap between rich and poor, the gap is closing rather than widening as is popularly believed. The progressive closing of the gap is a major factor in increasing life expectancy.

Medical science in the 20^th and 21^stcenturies has made huge progress at a pace not unlike the progress of aviation and space exploration. The remedies and cures of 200 years ago often killed more patients than they saved. Surgery more often than not resulted in fatal infections of which there was no understanding. The discovery of germs is relatively recent.

Because of the advance of medical science and improved living standards, many common killers have been eliminated completely or are now extremely rare. Examples include smallpox, cholera, tuberculosis, typhoid, and diphtheria. Other diseases such as influenza, which killed an estimated 50 million in 1919-20, are now of a much lower incidence rate and are now rarely fatal. Improved hygiene, better housing and working conditions have also played a vital role in life expectancy.

We constantly hear criticism of peoples eating habits, but with freer trade and comparative economic security, more people are able to enjoy a more nutritional diet than at any other time in history. Even Alaskans now have access to bananas, and ice cream and refrigeration are available in the tropics. Life is good.

A study of war statistics for the last thousand years even shows a progressive decrease in the numbers killed as a result of war. The decrease has accelerated over the last 70 years since the end of WWII which killed 55 million. Fewer people, particularly young servicemen, are dying because of wars, and therefore getting a shot at old age.

Here’s a couple more things that are letting people live longer: Smoking is literally a dying habit with more and more people stopping smoking. Alcohol consumption is more controlled and responsible than in some previous centuries, when alcoholic addiction and drunkenness was the norm for millions of people, including those who could ill-afford it.

So, you may ask, what has all this got to do with cancer? Well, it’s pretty simple. Although cancer can kill the very young, it is primarily a disease of the elderly and it is proving one of the most difficult diseases to eliminate. Fortunately, only about 1% of deaths from cancer involve those aged under 15. In other words, the longer we live the more likely we are to have to face it. Many of the earlier big killers have been eliminated and that has opened the way for cancer later in life.

It is expected that as life expectancy increases, reported cancer cases will increase, possibly by up to 70% over the next 20 years. But an increasing proportion of those reported cases will survive into remission. The survival rate for some cancers is better than for others with high survival rates for breast, prostate and colon cancers. Meanwhile, pancreatic cancers have a much lower survival rate.

The essential fact about cancer is that there is more cancer in the world today, because we are able to avoid many of the things that previously would have killed us, and that leaves the tough one, the predominantly old-age disease, cancer. But even having regard to that, if cancer catches up with us, because of mainstream medical advances, we have a better chance of surviving it than ever before.

Meanwhile, medical quacks and magic remedy merchants are conning unfortunate cancer victims to the extent that they themselves are often a worse curse on society than cancer itself.

FREE TRADE

The world before free trade and the Trans Pacific Partnership

The Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), about to be signed in Auckland by 12 Pacific Rim countries on 4 February, is stirring up thousands of protesters who seem to have had little to protest about since the now conveniently forgotten Y2K false alarm 16 years ago.

The TPP is intended to free up trade and remove tariffs from thousands of products among other things in a 6,000-page document that had its roots in a 2002 meeting between three Pacific leaders including New Zealand. In spite of widespread protests, more countries governments joined the talks and now the deal includes 40% of the world’s trade, making it the largest ever free trade agreement.

Many people have difficulty comprehending just how the deal will work and why it could be for the greater good of the people living in the countries affected. To many people, change of any sort is naturally something to be resisted. The unknown can be daunting. Their understanding is somewhat muddied by the outrageous claims and warning of people on the extreme left of the political spectrum, and people who believe in old world protectionism. There are warnings of mass unemployment, loss of sovereignty, corrupt politicians and selling out to big business. If these claims turn out to be correct, we can expect a mass lay-off of politicians in the 12 TPP countries over the next few years. Strangely, the majority of people in each of the 12 member countries believe that they alone stand to lose while all the other countries gain at their expense.

One person, Ian Brackenbury Channell QSM, a.k.a. The Wizard of New Zealand, is so upset at the pending agreement that he has decided to march from Christchurch to Auckland in protest at the signing, and hopefully to stop it. The Wizard is referred to here as a person, even though he once allowed all his official documents and licences to lapse so that he could be a fictional person. This writer would like to acknowledge that he does in fact occupy a small amount of real space, and that is not fiction.

To really appreciate the workings and advantages of free trade, we should look back to the way the world was before politicians started negotiating for something better. Better still, why don’t we look at New Zealand, now a world leader in free trade, and see how this small nation was once a chaotic land of barriers, borders and self-interest provinces and councils.

So the year is 1870 and New Zealand is divided into ten provinces; Auckland, New Plymouth, Hawkes Bay, Wellington, Nelson, Marlborough, Westland, Canterbury, Otago and Southland. Each province has a Legislative Council and a Cabinet. There is also a Federal Parliament and Upper House in Wellington, the capital. The total population for the ten provinces is considerably less than half a million, and so scarce is the population in some provinces that there is a danger that sheep may have to be drafted to fill public office vacancies.

Enter the Wizard of New Zealand on his walk from Christchurch to Auckland, in 1870, and here is what he may well have encountered along the way.

At the border between Canterbury and Marlborough provinces, the Wizard may have been asked to produce the passport that he didn’t believe in. Being a compulsive talker, he no doubt would have got around that one without too much difficulty, but the customs duty applicable to his wizard’s hat and staff could have been as much as 100% of the estimated value. Estimated, because he didn’t believe in keeping receipts.

NZ Tour Commentary

Entering Wellington Province, he may have also required a visitor permit as well as being called on for the payment of duties, bonds and whatever else they could throw at an unsuspecting wizardly traveller. He would have also had to prove that he had sufficient funds to sustain him on his travels without working and thereby causing unemployment among the local Wellingtonians.

In the 1870’s New Zealand was carved up into what was virtually ten dominions, each with its own laws, taxes and bureaucratic structures, but each was also under the firm control of the Imperial Government on the other side of the world. In short, it was a bit messy. Add to that a hundred or more local county and borough councils, and messy becomes distinctly muddy.

The Wizard would have found that Auckland products could only be sold in other provinces on payment of customs duty and the volume of sales would be subject to a quota system. Down in Westland there was almost enough timber to supply the whole country, but that wouldn’t matter much if a Westland miller was only allowed to sell one tree a year to a customer in Canterbury, and none to Auckland or Wellington, because they wanted to protect their own timber industries.

Skiers taking a skiing holiday in Queenstown (Otago Province) may have been required to part with a bond at the border to prevent a duty-free sale of their skis while in the province. People living in cities would have been obliged to keep a cow, a sheep, a pig or two and some chickens because of the cost of importing them from the countryside. Sharing with their neighbours would have attracted a council tax and a licence. Let’s not get into a discussion about dog control.

But having provinces was not the only handicap for trade and living standards. Local councils were in on the act too. Vegetables grown on the edge of town could only be sold in those towns for fear that growers may be put out of business elsewhere. People born in one town were discouraged from working in other towns, and if they came poking around a neighbourhood they were often told to get back to where they’d come from.

People who had discovered that Tauranga and Nelson had the most sunshine dreamed of retiring there, but local government only wanted them to stay for a maximum of three months a year so that put paid to that idea. In fact, in the 1870’s most people didn’t live long enough or acquire enough wealth to retire. Times were tough.

After years of fierce debate, New Zealand’s provincial system was finally abolished in 1875, and with it many of the ridiculous restrictions that had hindered progress. For New Zealand it was the most important step forward since the founding of the colony in 1840. Similar restrictions in the Australian colonies persisted until Federation in 1901 and all Australia became one market for the first time. New Zealand was invited to become a state of Australia in 1901, but protectionism stopped that. From that point onward New Zealand became Australia’s poor cousin.

However, in recent years with the signing of two Australia-New Zealand trade agreements, New Zealand has done a lot of catching up and now the two countries are close to equal in economic terms, and closer as economic partners than ever before.

But the situation in New Zealand in 1870 was typical of most of the world at that time; short-sighted thinking, closed markets, closed labour markets; a permit, a licence, a tax for everything. It was a world where people were expected to prosper by being restricted.

The opponents of the TPP, as they scream their heads off, don’t seem to understand they have three choices; back to the 1870’s, the present situation frozen for evermore, or progress to a new level of prosperity, international co-operation and understanding.

NEW ZEALAND HOUSING

Voters hold the key to New Zealand’s housing problems

A 1905 Liberal Government
worker's house near Wellington

A 1930's Labour Government state housing street

It's time for New Zealanders to get over their attitude to social housing. New Zealand has had a housing crisis since colonial days. Homelessness and housing deprivation is not new. It has been increasing for at least 150 years.

Numerous governments from the 1890's onward have attempted to overcome housing problems, but with limited success. First there was worker housing early in the twentieth century, followed by state and council housing.
But Kiwis are obsessed with home ownership and refuse to accept that not everyone is able (or wants) to be a home owner. In many developed countries, particularly in Europe, the attitude is different. Social housing is acceptable and carries no stigma, the way it does in New Zealand. In some countries social housing amounts to 25-50% of all housing stock. In New Zealand that figure is less than 5%.

People at the bottom end of the socio-economic ladder have always struggled with housing in New Zealand. They struggle basically because the average Kiwi believes that they should own their own home, or go without. The state shouldn't have to help them. Alternately, Kiwis will say that a state house should be okay only for the very poorest and only until they get established. Then they should make way for someone else.

When New Zealand had state owned banking, insurance, coal-mines, and airlines, why was it okay to use these services, but not okay to use a government house? Doesn't that show a flaw in our thinking?

Successive governments have known about the true state of New Zealand housing for generations, but have been powerless to fix the problem. In the end government can only do what the voters will allow them to do, and the majority of Kiwi voters do not believe in social housing. A few here and there, yes, but 20% of houses throughout the country? A definite no to that. A program to build the required number of houses started by one government would be abandoned by the next government three years later, and before any real benefits were evident.

Housing in New Zealand will change when Kiwis change their thinking.

Like most countries, New Zealand goes through economic cycles and the cycles contribute to the growing numbers of homeless. When the economy booms, people are homeless because they can't afford the high cost of renting or buying. When the economy slumps, they can't afford to buy or rent because they don't enough income.
Typically, in a downturn, people stop building houses because of reduced demand and trades people leave the country or go into other industries. House prices fall, businesses and jobs disappear. But the downturn is always only temporary. Recovery is just around the corner. During these downturns the government has an excellent opportunity to increase the housing stock ready for the next boom, and to keep the tradesmen in the country and working. But most important, it should be houses waiting for people, not people waiting for houses.

Finally, why does the average Kiwi think that state tenants should have to move on when they can afford to buy a house? What is the point? Did the same Kiwis think that people doing business with the old Bank of New Zealand, or State Insurance, or National Airways Corporation, should be restricted to being customers only for a specific time? They didn't, and it makes no sense to limit tenants in social housing. In fact, I believe they should be encouraged to stay for the rest of their days and to treat the house as though it were their own.
But none of this can happen until New Zealanders re-invent their social housing attitudes. Meanwhile, it won't matter who is Minister of Social Housing. That minister will always be unpopular. Can anyone remember a Minister of Housing who was popular? Like the people Paula Bennett would like to help, she is stuck between a rock and a hard place. In New Zealand it will always be a brave minister who takes on housing, until Kiwis change.

I urge my friends to read the attached report. It gives a clear picture of just how the current housing situation started a very long time ago.

 

Minister of Social Housing
Paula Bennett

SENSING MURDER

Psychic murder mystery solvers are just another bunch of scammers

The Sensing Murder television program on the partially solved Lorraine Wilson and Wendy Evans case in Australia screened on New Zealand television last night. It is one of Australia’s most famous cases and has been the subject of movies, books, an inquest and numerous television documentaries since the girls went missing in 1972.

Psychics in prison

Wilson and Evans, aged 20 and 18, were hitch-hiking from Brisbane to Dubbo when they disappeared. Their remains were found in bush near Toowoomba two years later.

When the program was produced in 2006, all of the above and much more was widely known throughout Australia. But the program claimed that two Australian psychics that they engaged to ‘solve’ the case had no prior knowledge of it, even though the psychics had appeared in other Sensing Murder programs, and must have had a continuing interest in unsolved Australian murders. This was dishonest trickery on the part of the producers and the psychics.

Everything that the psychics ‘revealed’ was already known to police and the wider public. They failed to provide any new leads for police to investigate. They gave vague descriptions of the offenders, but failed to identify them or provide an address where they could be apprehended. One of their major ‘revelations’ was that one of the offenders had since died. But it was already known to police and the public that a prime suspect had died in a car crash in the 1980’s.

So why do so many people believe anything that psychics claim to ‘see’ or ‘feel’? It is partly that for some people any explanation is better than no explanation, and good news is more palatable than bad news. When there is no news of an arrest, news of what could have happened, even if misleading or false, can be seen as good news. It can bring hope where there is no hope.

While people believe in psychics and mediums, call them what you will, psychics will continue to profit from false hopes, wasted police time, and torment for the families of victims. Psychics don’t have a very good record of solving murders. They don’t have a record at all. That’s right. Not one murder, anywhere in the world, has ever been solved by a psychic in spite of their frequent claims.

Here is a good assessment of the world of psychics: http://www.sillybeliefs.com/murder.html

But many people believe these con-artists and will readily cite their own psychic experiences. But generally, they only remember when the psychic got it right from a little educated guess work, and tend to forget all the things that the psychic was absolutely wrong with. Suggesting to believers that psychics have no special powers and are either con-artists or self-delusional, is like telling a child there is no Santa Claus. They refuse to accept the reality.

If psychics were genuine they would see the dangers of conning unfortunate people out of their hard-earned savings. They would see that they could end up facing fraud charges. Because many psychics have been convicted and imprisoned for receiving payment for false predictions and other claims. Why didn’t they see that coming?

One of the world’s most infamous psychic scammers is Rose Marks. Here is a link to her Wikipedia entry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rose_Marks She’s currently in prison, where many other psychics should be.

 

 

CHEM TRAILS CONSPIRACY

Are we being poisoned by secret government programs?

The term ‘Chem Trail’ was coined in the mid-1990s by people who believed that there was a government conspiracy to, (a) control the climate, (b) spray urban areas with birth control chemicals and (c) hundreds of other unproven theories.

Clouds, con trails, or chem trails?

So what are chem trails, as opposed to con trails, how long have they been around, and what causes them? Let’s examine con trails (condensation or vapor trails) first, if only because the term has been around much longer.

Con trails were practically unheard of prior to World War II because pre-war aircraft were few and far between and flew mostly at low altitude due to the absence of pressurization and powerful jet engines. Even the best airliners rarely went above 10,000 feet.

But the use of higher-performance military aircraft during WWII meant that for the first time pilots had a reason for flying right up in the cold thin air at 25,000 feet and more, because in combat, height gave an advantage. Height could be turned to speed and height could give another advantage; that of hiding in the line of the sun. Battle of Britain pilots coined the saying, ‘Beware of the Hun in the sun.’

A close up view of a Qantas B747 at 36,000 feet

For the first time, people on the ground could follow the dogfights by observing the condensation trails of the combatants. Spitfires were relatively small aircraft and almost invisible at 25,000 feet, but the con trails often filled the skies when conditions permitted. However, the con trails could be a pilot’s enemy too, because they made it easier for the real enemy to locate them.

Military aircraft of the 1940s produced con trails in a number of ways. The chief source was the wing-tips, but propellers, tail-planes, engine exhausts and other factors sometimes made a contribution too.

At the start of WWII less than 40 years had elapsed since the Wright Brothers first flew, and aviation was still very much in its infancy, particularly with regard to the design of wings. To understand how a wing generates con trails, one must understand how a wing produces lift. Because of its special shape the typical wing gains about 30% of its lift from the lower surface and about 70% from the upper surface. This is because the upper surface is curved and the airflow passing over the wing has further to go than the airflow beneath the wing. One of the laws of fluids (air behaves like a fluid) dictates that velocity, pressure and temperature are directly related in as much as a change to one will cause a change to the others. Therefore, as the velocity of the air over the wing accelerates, it triggers a decrease in atmospheric pressure and temperature. It is the decreased air pressure above the wing that provides most of the lift.

The apparent grid pattern is due to cross-winds and aircraft
flying at least five different routes

But then, because the two areas of different pressure will try to equalize, the higher pressure under the wing will flow outwards towards the wing-tip and some will curl up and around the tip to join the lower pressure above. These wing-tip rotations are known as a vortices (sometimes called a vortex) and they continue to rotate long after the aircraft has passed by. Inside the vortex the air pressure and temperature both decrease dramatically and any moisture will condense and form a condensation trail. In the right conditions, con trails can also form in the slipstream from the propeller, because the propeller blade is simply a miniature wing with all the same properties; lift, drag and unequal air pressure. The rudder, elevators, flaps and ailerons can also create these aerodynamic vortices, and condensation trails.

As wing designs have improved vortices (which are a form of drag) have become less of an issue. Many airliners now have winglets at the end of the wing to reduce drag and improve fuel consumption, but meanwhile large and powerful jet engines have moved the major part of the con trail from the wing to the engine.

The engine condensation trail comes from hot, water-laden exhaust gases suddenly meeting sub-freezing air. The water vapour condenses and freezes into ice particles similar in texture to high altitude Cirrus clouds, and often after a few minutes it is almost impossible to tell the difference.

So if that is how con trails are created, how are chem trails created? The short answer to that question is, they can be created by anyone with a half-plausible conspiracy theory.

One popular theory is that the airlines use dirty fuel that creates clouds which let less sunlight through and stop terrestrial radiation thereby contributing to global warming. But that theory runs contrary to the Nuclear Winter theory of the 1980s when Greenies claimed that too much cloud would cause temperatures to plunge.

Another theory doing the rounds of social media is the claim that high-flying aircraft are deliberately spraying chemical and/or biological agents on the population for undisclosed and sinister purposes. They argue that con trails disappear quickly but chem trails stay longer and must therefore contain other substances. But con trails are clouds and are capable are staying as long as clouds, depending on the conditions.

Other claims include solar radiation management, psychological warfare, and mass surveillance, none of which have been accompanied by any plausible documentation, let alone proof. But the theorists constantly claim that they have proof, or that people with proof have been silenced.

Yet others will tell you it’s the United States Air Force flying high altitude grid patterns with unmarked aircraft. I can understand some people being confused by what may look like a grid pattern. Airliners normally fly the same routes relative to the terrain, usually separated by altitude or time intervals. When they fly a few minutes apart on the same route, because of wind drift at altitude, the con trails drift with the wind and a trail could be several miles downwind by the time the next aircraft flies along the same route.

Another claim is that ‘skies are being seeded with electrically-conductive materials as part of a massive electromagnetic superweapons program based around the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP)’ This conspiracy theorist must have suffered an ultra-high-frequency brain-wave.

Other conspiracy theorists are simply people who spend all their waking hours thinking up reasons for being anti-government. They are surely direct descendants of the last members of the Flat Earth Society. They seem to want to scare their children and grandchildren into believing, because of government, that life in the future won’t be worth living. It’s time they got a life in the here and now and started giving their children the hope that they deserve.

 

 

 

THE RICH ARE GETTING RICHER

The truth about one of history’s most enduring catchphrases

We have all heard it said many times that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. But how long ago did we first hear that? How quickly is it happening? Is it a plot by the world's richest few to make 99% of the population poor so the other 1% can be even better off than they currently are? Or is it just an often used catchphrase by those seeking political office?

To get to the truth, let's look at the origins and the history of this time-honoured saying, the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer.

It's difficult to pinpoint an exact place in history where it began because many similar utterances have been recorded, and some meaning one thing may have been modified to mean something else. For example, in 1625 Francis Bacon is recorded as having said, "Money is muck, not good unless it be spread," which could be taken as being the opposite of, "The rich get richer and the poor get poorer," because the latter implies that the muck is not being spread around.

Then in 1821, Percy Bysshe Shelley put it thus. "To him that hath, more shall be given; and from him that hath not, the little that he hath shall be taken away." Modernise the language and Shelley sounds just like the cries we hear today. In 1832, US President Andrew Jackson may have been the first to coin the great inequality adage in words close to today's form. He said, "When the law undertakes to make the rich richer and the potent more powerful, the humble members of society have a right to complain of the injustice." Then William Harrison spoke of, "All the measures of government are directed to the purpose of making the rich richer and the poor poorer." That was on 1 October 1840 in a campaign speech that helped launch his successful bid for the US presidency. The catchphrase was a winner for Harrison and politicians have been using it ever since as a pitch to underdog voters. 

So there you have it. The rich have been getting richer and the poor have been getting poorer since 1840, and possibly for a long time before that too, if you believe the adage.

But many people making these rich/poor claims today will tell that it is all new. It wasn't like that when they were growing up. Some will even say that it is unique to the term of the current government. They will tell you that no generation in the history of mankind has been poorer than today's masses, and no generation has ever struggled to survive like today's people. But they have chosen to ignore the history of man and the evolution of modern economics. Instead of looking for light in golden pastures, they can only see an oncoming train in a dark tunnel.

The fact is that (although some dispute it) the Industrial Revolution (1760-1840) triggered an era of prosperity, economic expansion and a higher standard of living for more people. It was the most important economic step forward since the domestication of animals and the invention of the wheel.

For the first time in history ordinary people were able to enjoy a few luxuries that had previously been the reserve of the very rich. How did that happen? In simple terms, mechanisation made products cheaper to produce, mass production replaced hand-made products, competition kept prices low, and capital and labour became available for new products and new industries. People displaced from outdated industries were quickly absorbed into new enterprises and new industries.

Karl Marx

Before the Industrial Revolution most people lived in poverty and squalor. The most common causes of death were violence and starvation. Life was hard and short. The choices were often stark - starvation or crime.

At first the benefits of the Industrial Revolution were slow to become evident to many people, even to the industrialists who started it. Their motive was profit. Even today many people believe that the revolution was a retrograde step for living standards. But industrialisation was on a roll and picked up momentum with a second revolution starting about 1870. Steam power, machine tools, electricity and increasing international trade confirmed that business was good for the masses too as more people found themselves, not just in employment, but employment that gave them discretionary spending power too.

The Industrial Revolution started in England and spread quickly to Europe and North America. For the first time in those countries the population and life expectancy started increasing at a noticeable rate. More people were able to afford medicines, better housing and better clothing. But they were still a long way behind the standards of current generations. Personal transport was still only affordable for the rich. Bicycles, available from about 1840, were beyond the reach of most people and only the rich owned horses.

While the Industrial Revolution was gaining momentum, Karl Marx (1818-1883) coined the Law of Increasing Poverty. Marx was right about the power of the ruling classes at the time, but wrong about poverty increasing. The revolution did make the rich richer and more powerful and to them the reduction of poverty must have appeared almost as an unfortunate accident.  Meanwhile, Marx believed that communism alone could end the class struggle, and that capitalism was doomed to eventual failure. Numerous countries have since opted for Marxism and all have failed to end class struggle or make workers better off.

As voting rights were extended to all workers, and women, governments became a mixture of capitalism and socialism with welfare, pensions, public housing, and free or subsidised health care and education. Pure capitalism and pure communism became irrelevant as political parties found greater support for middle-of-the-road policies for an expanding middle class with a conscience.

The whole of the twentieth century was in reality the greatest ever industrial revolution with millions of new products introduced for the first time. The most notable new products were cars, radios, television, refrigerators, vacuum cleaners, washing machines, microwave ovens, mobile phones and computers. The cost of producing any of these products prior to the Industrial Revolution would have rendered them so costly that no-one would have been able to afford them. But now, thanks to efficiency and improved living standards, they are now found in almost all homes in the developed world.

As an example of the relationship between development and affordability, we could look at time pieces, which have been around in various forms for thousands of years. However, the first personal wrist watch is believed to have been worn by Elizabeth I in 1571. Robert Hook invented the pocket watch in 1675, but until the twentieth century most people had to walk to the town hall clock if they wanted to check the time. A personal watch was a status symbol that was beyond the reach of all except the very rich. 

The twentieth century started as the age of the Wright Brothers and the Wright Flyer, trans-continental and trans-oceanic flight, the jet age and the space age. It became the century in which many ordinary people became regular long distance travellers. During that century, again for the first time, travel had become so fast and affordable that a few people got to visit every country on the planet.

But even in the twentieth century most people believed that they were far worse off than previous generations. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer, was a popular cry in that century too. It probably will remain a popular cry, because some people just don't get it, and some don't want to get it. The mood of the twentieth century is summed up neatly with the popular 1921 song by Gus Kahn and Raymond Egan, Ain't We Got Fun:
They won't smash up our Pierce Arrow (a luxury car)
We ain't got none
They've cut my wages
But my income tax will be smaller
When I'm paid off
I'll be laid off
Ain't we got fun
It wasn't long before everyone with a phonograph was playing it, not that everyone could afford a phonograph.

Franklin D. Roosevelt (the only US president to elected for four terms) knew how to put a spin on political rhetoric. In 1933 at the height of the worst depression of the last 130 years he said, "We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals, and now we know that it is bad economics." Political leaders had known that for a long time, but the time had arrived when the electors would let government do something about it without throwing them out of office. 

Business leaders also became aware at that time that the market for their goods and services was being limited by low wages for the masses, and there wasn't much point in investing in products that most people couldn't afford to buy. But employers couldn't act alone if they wanted to stay in business. Eventually, the answer came with the establishment of unions which, although bitterly opposed, resulted in better wages, higher production and more leisure time to enjoy their purchases. That was the trickle-down theory working. Each time the workers spent their extra pennies it went right back to the capitalists and the government and stimulated further investment and jobs and welfare for those still on the bottom rung.

The other popular catchphrase throughout the ages has been that 99% of the world's wealth will soon be owned by the richest 1%, and that that is the way business and government want it to be. But that proposition will never stand up to logical scrutiny. For that to happen society would first have to revert to the situation that existed long before the Industrial Revolution. Even then, if 1% owned 99% it would be worthless. Who would be able to buy whatever was for sale? No one. We would all be hunter-gatherers again, including the 1%.

The rich are NOT getting richer while the poor get poorer. That is the stuff of opportunist politicians and their naïve followers.

Having said the above, from one decade to another, there could be some relevance to the adage, but even then if there is a hard decade for some workers it will also be hard for some in business. Economies do operate in cycles. The adage could also have some relevance if one is to compare Wall Street with a camel route in Africa. But in the world as a whole the adage about the rich getting richer while the poor get poorer, is pessimistic nonsense, and spreading it can do more harm than good.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

MULTI-TASKING

The real truth about multi-tasking and chaos

Multi-tasking can be put into two categories; organised, disciplined multi-tasking, and chaos.

A professional pilot making a single-pilot, multi-engine, take-off into instrument weather conditions represents my idea of highly trained, organised, and disciplined multi-tasking. Let's look at a critical 60 seconds in the life of a pilot.

As he opens the twin throttles, he will simultaneously monitor an array of engine gauges, while listening for irregularities in engine noise, using hands and feet to stay on the centre-line and compensate for crosswind. He will be looking for hazards ahead, listening to the radio and constantly updating a mental image of nearby air traffic. He will be checking his airspeed and continuously reviewing his emergency options against the length of remaining runway. At precisely rotate speed he will raise the nose to a precise angle of attack and hold that angle until the wheels lift off, but he must not climb until the aircraft has attained its minimum control speed for one engine, in case one engine should suddenly lose interest, but he will make a new adjustment for crosswind drift so as to still follow the runway centre-line. At the correct speed he will raise the nose a little further as the aircraft accelerates to best rate of climb speed.

In the next 45 seconds our professional will raise the undercarriage, checking the undercarriage warning lights, make adjustments for the loss of undercarriage drag, check the engine instruments, check the heading, change the elevator trim setting to hands-off but continue to fly manually. As he nears cloud-base he will change from visual flight to instrument flight only, scanning altimeter, airspeed indicator, gyro compass, climb and descent indicator and horizontal position indicator, plus the engine instruments; eyes going around and around the gauges. At 500 feet above ground level he is in heavy cloud with no external reference points. He will move the throttles back from take-off power to climb power, change the propeller pitch and lean the mixture controls. Then he will raise the flaps and make further flight control and trim adjustments for the changed airspeed, and the lift and drag of clean flight. He will switch off the auxiliary fuel pumps, engage the auto-pilot on a pre-set heading, acknowledge an instruction from air traffic control to change to a controller on another frequency, dial in the new frequency, contact the new controller, acknowledge an instruction to turn onto a new heading, enter the heading into the auto-pilot, and continue to monitor the flight and engine instruments and the work of the autopilot. That represents a highly organised day's work in just 60 seconds.

Now let's look at the other kind of multi-tasking.

This is the person who loudly proclaims that only women are born to be multi-taskers, and this particular woman is pretty good at it. She has 25 things that she is doing in the house, all at the same time, and when she is finished those she has to meet her friends for coffee, meet the kids from school (she doesn't trust school bus drivers), do the daily shopping, go to the gym, and go to her part time evening job

However, her house is a mess, the part time job she has only held for a month, about the same time as the one before that. But she is a multi-tasking woman, even though visitors have to step around piles of dirty clothes and wash a cup if they want coffee.

But she is doing way better than her husband who has never claimed to be a multi-tasker. In fact she really should get a medal for putting up with him. He has been in the same job for 10 years where he simply follows orders and never has to make any earth-shattering decisions. At day's end he goes to the same bar, sits there until closing time and then drive home drunk in his unlicensed car. There is no doubt about this man. He is definitely not a multi-tasker. For him even one task is a task too many. But I guess there is one thing that this man has done well; he has certainly made a multi-tasker of his wife. 

And that, my friends, is multi-tasking in a nutshell. It is not a male/female thing. None of us were born to multi-task, but with correct training, discipline and practice, anyone can be a multi-tasker. Organised, safe multi-tasking won't happen accidentally. However, disorganised, scatter-brain multi-tasking almost always leads to accidents. If a professional pilot makes a mistake at a critical stage of flight he doesn't just boil the pot dry. He creates an instant blazing inferno with no escape.