Mark Carroll's Journal

I see many ordinary older people on British television who have retired and are enjoying their lives of leisure. I suspect that many bought their house decades ago, they enjoy some workplace pension provided on rather better terms than any we get now, we still have plenty of working taxpayers left to fund the system, etc.

Given that Britain has been seeing many years of slow growth, cost-of-living crisis, lack of affordable housing, a population that is growing older, etc., I wonder if these happy everyday retirees are a dying breed, if increasingly many people are on course for retirement poverty. If younger people have a hard time making ends meet now and we're shooing all the immigrants away and anything else that might light the tunnel's mouth, how on Earth will people put aside enough to retire on pleasantly?

A bit of searching online suggests that some people hope that their cryptocurrency holdings will help, oh dear.

This morning, I got out of the bedroom at a leisurely pace. I had a dream in which a security camera had caught Claudia Winkleman (British celebrity) fast asleep in a chair at some garden show she was helping to present, which caused some amusement among viewers of the footage, then I awoke and took a bath. After toweling off, I usually lie on the bed a little to finish drying. During this, I indulged in having Alexa play me David Bowie's Life on Mars, Ultravox's Vienna, ELO's Twilight (from back when we had concept albums), and Elton John's Nikita which, together with the The Rocky Horror Show earworms I've had lately, probably ages me well.

Another thing that probably ages me is that, when I was thinking about the results of our dog L.'s breed test, in interpreting the percentages in terms of ancestry, of course I was thinking in powers of two which comes quite naturally to those of us who grew up with early microcomputers. I suppose that people in the Antebellum South would be good at such arithmetic too but I am not that old. Anyhow, L. is indeed largely Shih Tzu with, quite reasonably, a bit of Lhasa Apso among great grandparents. I was pleased to read that L. is not at risk of any of the medical conditions that they tested for.

I'm now reading a pair of books that I am happy to continue with, though I'm still fairly early into both. Each offers me a bit of a view into a different time and culture.

I have Julia Lovell's abridgement and translation of the Chinese classic, Monkey King: Journey to the West. Excellently, it is small enough to fit into the lower-inside pocket of my coat which makes it ideal for bringing along with me, including on my commute. Just earlier today, I found myself wishing I'd brought it when I found myself facing an unexpectedly long queue in the post office. It's fun and I appreciate a touch of absurd satire.

I also picked up the previously mentioned Credo by Melvyn Bragg. It's a nice change for me to read material set in the Dark Ages and, so far, I find it interesting and engaging; it handles the religious side well. As a hardback, it's a rather weighty tome: I am happy to read it at home but it's certainly not routinely accompanying me on travels.

Our lack of SARS-CoV-2 vaccination provision in the UK is said to stem from the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation's rather limited consideration of the impact of COVID-19.

My impression of COVID-19 is that there is enough accumulated evidence of risk of life-changing long-term effects, ranging from cognitive to vascular, perhaps also immunological, and enough extra risk from reinfection, that I should be fairly concerned given that our lives don't allow us to live like hermits, and that SARS-CoV-2 infection seems to remain an ongoing issue as mutations continue.

Also, that JCVI's assessment considered rather little of the above and that's most of why they don't judge it worth handing out vaccinations rather more freely.

I wonder to what extent I am mistaken in the above. Or, if not, if there are any good summaries that lay the case out clearly and persuasively, to help me be yet another source of pressure on our elected representatives. Also, how susceptible JCVI might be to political pressure, or if a rather more limited assessment is somehow required by their remit.

And, if JCVI were to be more expansive in the evidence considered, if that would actually change the cost-benefit sufficiently.

Part of why I suspect that I may not just be catching hysteria from the swivel-eyed is that American health insurers seem to intend to continue covering such immunizations. One would expect them to excel in brutally realistic analysis of health statistics.

I've been working through Becky Chambers' Wayfarers series, actually available from Glasgow libraries. Next, I thought I'd try a bit of Bujold, starting out the Vorkosigan saga with Shards of Honor or Cordelia's Honor seemed a good idea. No luck, though, neither Glasgow nor Edinburgh has either! Well, at least Edinburgh finally laid their hands on Melvyn Bragg's Credo so I'll give that a try, though I fear it might be a bit bulky for comfort in commuting.

Late one evening back in July, I boarded a CrossCountry train at Edinburgh Waverley that then failed to proceed further. In the end, my journey was delayed by an hour so, under the Delay Repay scheme, I was supposed to be eligible for a refund.

CrossCountry's claim process wanted a QR code and and a ticket number. Unfortunately, I was using one of their flexi season tickets in their mobile app, which prevents screenshots, and the day's ticket wholly disappears once the day is done. So, I asked their customer service people how I can claim. I asked several times and got no useful response at all.

Eventually, I fell back to an effective last resort: post them a paper letter. This triggered a slow sequence of back and forth by e-mail but, last week, they finally paid me my refund. It's absurd that it took three months, and probably cost them as much to deal with me as the £7.55 they paid me, but I still don't have my answer as to how people with those tickets are supposed to claim.

I probably mentioned that working in life sciences for years underscored for me just how little we know of biology or, more optimistically, how very much more interesting and valuable research remains ahead of us. With my current state of learning, in having half a science background across a broad range, it's also true that I know just enough to know how much more there is to know in many spheres.

The above occurred to me in the bathtub this morning. Sure, I've taken college-level physics, thermodynamics, etc. but, looking at the condensation on the cold tap, I realized: I don't know why colder air can't hold as much moisture, I don't even have an intuitive model for that. Sure, warmer air means a higher fraction of the water will be gaseous but that feels rather insufficient to explain what I see. It's not specifically a matter of much concern, just an underlining of how very much I still don't know. Perhaps it's just a matter of cranking the numbers, maybe there's more condensation than I'd expect because I'm seeing moisture from a 3d volume accreting onto a 2d surface, but it's very likely that I just don't understand it anywhere near enough. I mean, a bit hotter, then the surface doesn't seem at all damp.

Topics like thermodynamics often come to my mind because, in experiencing day-to-day life around me, it is fun to indulge in imagining what is actually happening: heat transfer in my mug of coffee, etc. I enjoy trying to model my environment.

I haven't yet settled on how to use my commute on in-office days. For a workday it totals 3½h door-to-door, at least I could try to use the inter-city segment well. One challenge is that I don't want to add much weight to the bag I am already carrying, especially as it has the mighty work laptop therein, and my water flask. In the meantime, the railway carriage window gets looked out of somewhat.

One morning last week, I had a surprise: I glanced up at the right moment and, in the distant cloud or fog, I could make out a row of three large, white, shallow pyramids. I very much wondered something like, WTF?. Ongoing observation revealed that I was seeing the towers and cables of the Queensferry Crossing, carrying the M90 toward Edinburgh. So, support for a bridge, rather than a row of pyramids.

My recent entries make it easy to predict what I think of His Majesty's Government's proposals surrounding indefinite leave to remain. Perhaps I should have been clearer: it's not just that we need immigrants, it's that we are already hostile to them, they were never the real problem, yet the government seems happy to go along with the narrative that they are, perhaps because they make for a convenient scapegoat. I can understand that, in a democracy, the government might be a bit leery of trying to introduce sections of the electorate to reality but, inconveniently, reality has a way of determining the outcomes of policies so it would be responsible to face it anyway. In the meantime, innocent people suffer.

A more general theme of incompetence is emerging. For instance, this nonsense about digital identity cards for proving right to work. Could we have a clear problem statement please and an explanation of how this fixes it? There are already largely adequate procedures in place for checking one's right to work, R. and I have enjoyed them again in recent months in starting with a new employer. Is Starmer seriously suggesting that people come over in overcrowded dinghies then produce a convincingly forged birth certificate, or what? There is certainly a black economy issue that needs solving but how this proposal makes a whit of difference to it remains far from clear to me.

Is the government meant to be sounding this clueless, this soon into a term in which it has a large majority? If only any of them had the spine of, say, the late Robin Cook. At least Corbyn seemed to care more about people than votes. Could we perhaps swap the current lot for any group that has the courage to admit what the actual problems are (apart from, that the right-wing media has the bigots riled up again) and suggest anything that might usefully address them? Bonus points for having some compassion. I may have had some scorn for Labour at times but I didn't expect their pandering to fools to make me angry enough to consider relegating them off the worth considering list. Starmer is turning out to be like Badenoch: the more they say things, the less I like them.

I had mentioned our family visa fees. To give a clearer idea of how much the process costs to bring a family member to settle here in the UK, the full route from initial application to citizenship costs well over £8k in fees and well over £5k for NHS access during that period. That's per person, so tripled for R. and two kids. We get a bit of a discount because R.'s youngest is under eighteen but we're still looking on the order of £40k in total, and that's without legal fees which, if we were using a solicitor's team for the process, would probably increase it by half again. Of course, it doesn't cost the government anything like that much to process the applications, the equivalent process in the US is very much cheaper. Still, it strikes me that ability to pay the fees at all should be sufficient evidence of ability to support ourselves without resorting to public funds.