From America with Cancer

 

Following the death of Sir Sean Connery …I was watching “From Russia with Love” when my thoughts turned to Pedro Armendáriz who was Bond’s Istanbul contact Ali Kerim Bey.

Now I did know that Armendáriz was terminally ill during the filming and it was his last film.  I knew he had to be propped up in some scenes and that he died before the release.  In fact he actually smuggled a gun into the hospital and shot himself...

.... but what I didn’t realise until today was that his death of cancer aged 51 wasn’t actually just a statistical freak… or bad luck.  Or probably it wasn't.

In 1951 he’d been in a Howard Hughes film called “The Conqueror” with John Wayne and Susan Hayward.  This was filmed in Utah just down the road from where the US Army was conducting above ground nuclear bomb tests.  There were 220 people in the cast in crew.  Within 25 years 90 had died of cancer.  Statistically experts have said that in a normal production you’d expect at most 30 of the cast and crew to have died from cancer in that timeframe.

According to Wikipedia Dr. Robert Pendleton, professor of biology at the University of Utah, said in 1980, 

"With these numbers, this case could qualify as an epidemic. The connection between fallout radiation and cancer in individual cases has been practically impossible to prove conclusively. But in a group this size you'd expect only 30-some cancers to develop. With 91 cancer cases, I think the tie-in to their exposure on the set of The Conqueror would hold up in a court of law."

The proposers of these theories don’t just include left wing conspiracy theorists but the children of John Wayne himself who accompanied John on location.  Okay he was no spring chicken at the time but I should probably mention in passing that John Wayne also died of cancer – aged 72.  Susan Hayward was already long dead from lung and brain cancer having shuffled off her mortal coil at 57.

According to People (see here)

“Michael Wayne, 45, developed skin cancer in 1975. His brother Patrick, 41, was operated on for a breast tumor 11 years ago (fortunately it was benign). Tim Barker, 35, a son of Susan Hayward, had a benign tumor removed from his mouth in 1968. “I still smoke a pack a day,” admits Barker. “So who knows just what might have caused it? Smoking doesn’t help. But I’ll tell you, radiation doesn’t help either.”

In the same area two years before the US had tested two nuclear bombs two to three times the size of the Hiroshima blast.

Agnes Moorehead who died of uterine cancer was reportedly convinced that it was Uncle Sam’s Bombs what done it – telling  Debbie Reynolds on her deathbed that “I should never have taken that part” because “everybody in that picture has gotten cancer and died.”

In case anyone hadn’t got radiation from the Strontium 90 and Cesium 137 in the desert the studio transported large quantities of the contaminated dirt back to the studios so that they could colour match the studio earth with that of the desert which ...erm ...didn't help much.

Howard Hughes  meanwhile purchased back every print of “the Conqueror” after its initial release and wouldn’t allow it to be shown again in his lifetime.

Of course it wasn’t just the Hollywood actors who died early – many in the areas of the bombs are still suffering today but what “The Conqueror” proved was that this wasn’t a statistical fluke.

Analysis, Unicorns, Doordash and Pizza Arbitrage

The other night I switched on the wireless in the motor and on Radio 4 was the usually boring program Analysis (listen here).  But this episode about dot com unicorns was particularly good.  It sunk it's teeth into dot com companies and didn't let go.

Stand out amongst its anecdotes was the case of Doordash (A US version of Just Eat) and Pizza Arbitrage about which you can read more in detail here.  

 The Manager of Pizza Arbitrage recieved complaints from customers about his delivery service.  This was news to him as he didn't have one.  He then realised that they were actually buying his products through Doordash.  He then realised that they were paying less for the pizzas than he sold them for.  This was because Doordash were trying to increase market share.  He then calculated the difference between his price and Doordash's price and realised that if he ordered the Pizzas himself the price differential would be pure pre-tax profit.

So he got a friend to place an order for 10 Pizzas.  Doordash delivered them to his friend's house just down the road and his friend sold them back to the Manager of Pizza Arbitrage.  All perfectly legal.  And so they did it again ...and again ...and again ...and again.  Doordash were bleeding money but they didn't care.  Doordash don't make a profit but they don't care.  Doordash as a "market disrupter" exist purely to increase market share in the delivery business.  They then go to the Managers of the businesses and ask for a fee to take on their delivery services.  Pizza Arbitrage were having none of it but saw a way to make a buck out of silly investors' greed.

It raises the question how long can businesses like Doordash, Just Eat and Deliveroo go on when all they actually offer is website services.  As they say down Dragon's Den the business model is hard to scale up too because all anyone is making is tiny tiny margins on manual labour.  The upfont operating costs of these companies are actually very large ...so when will their investors ever get their investment money back....?

Well...

Sarah Beeny’s New Life in the Country

Every now and again a program comes on the screen that makes you do a double take.  This week it is "Sarah Beeny’s New Life in the Country".  In this program a lady called Sarah Beeny who usually fronts "property porn" programs builds a new house in the country.  

This would be upsetting enough for many viewers who are struggling to get on the increasingly high first rung of the ludicrous property "ladder" (now more of a drawbridge, moat and stilts) but just to rub salt in the wounds of the left wing and poor Channel 4 has scheduled it directly after Channel 4 News so they can't avoid seeing at least the start of it.  After an hour of hard news, analysis and socio-political comment there's surely nothing more that people want to see than someone rich enough to live where they like and build their own home doing just that.  If it was hidden away in the daytime or evening schedules they might have got away with it but the contrast between the two programs is so stark it's like ... I can't even find a simile.

To make it extra painful to watch Sarah Beeny doesn't actually build a house at all.  Having bought the plot of land she intends to live on becuase foundations have been laid so she does not need planning permission she promptly decides that the house is facing the wrong way and needs to be turned round and moved down the field so that the yokels/plebs can't see in.  This the requires a new planning permission application to be put in which takes "over two months" during which time Ms Beeny has nothing to do but dig a drainage ditch, make her children jump in a home made lake and moan like an eighteenth century land owner who can't get their Enclosure Act through Parliament.

I thought well it's not my cup of tea but presumably someone likes this rubbish but then ... a quick google search reveals that no they don't.  Indeed it is rather cheeringly relentlessly slagged off everywhere from the Telegraph to the Guardian.  Birmingham Live catalogues tweets such as "50,000 are dead and millions are losing their jobs. Do you think they want to see you building a huge house?"

Well, possibly some might if she actually built a house.  Then at least that would be something that could be said for the program ...but most of it seemed to be her not building a house or arguing about what way it should be facing or what it should be made of.  The only redeeming feature one could find in the Beeny's characters is when they remarked to one another that no one else was interested.  Not even the four children they kept parading in front on the screen.  Just the two of them.  Very true.

Don't get me wrong there are much worse and more morally bancrupt programmes on television but for sheer vacuity this is very hard to beat.  It makes you wonder not only about the producers, directors, stars? and schedulers but whether there's any hope left for television as a medium or indeed for civilisation in general.

How do you live?

How do you live? How do you breathe?

When you are here we're suffocating

You want to feel love, run through bad blood

Tell me is this where you give it all up?

For us you have to sue them all

But the writing's on the wall

Meanwhile down the Information Commissioner's Office

 Dear Ms Madeley

I have contacted Google Ireland Limited via the form provided.
It is my view that if they will not restore my channel then they must have me blacklisted
and therefore data as to the reason for the blacklisting must exist
and therefore I am entitled to know it.

Thank you

Yours sincerely

Anthony Miller

Update: since this was written 

https://randomthoughtsofanalsoran.blogspot.com/2021/03/youtube-has-finally-restored-my-old.html?m=1 

20 November 2020

Case Reference: IC-51361-J1B3

Dear Anthony Miller,

Thank you for contacting the Information Commissioner’s Office (‘ICO’) regarding the way Google Ireland Limited ('Google'), trading as YouTube, has handled your personal data. This case has now been assigned the following case reference number IC-51361-J1B3 and allocated to me, a Case Officer at the ICO. My details can be found at the bottom of this correspondence.

We apologise for the delay in our response. We are currently receiving large volumes of concerns which have meant that we have been unable to deal with incoming correspondence as promptly as we would like.

The ICO’s role

Our role is to ensure that organisations follow the data protection legislation properly. If things go wrong we will provide advice and ask the organisation to try to put things right. Our overall aim is to improve the way organisations handle personal information.

The law says we must investigate data protection complaints to an appropriate extent. We will put most of our effort into dealing with matters we think give us the best opportunity to make a significant difference to an organisation’s information rights practices.

Depending on the circumstances, we will decide whether or not to take action against the organisation and what form our action will take. We do this by taking an overview of all concerns that are raised about that organisation with a view to improving their compliance with the data protection framework. Our decision will not affect your ability to enforce your rights through the courts.

Your concern

As we understand it, you are concerned that YouTube has removed your channel and the content you had uploaded. You are dissatisfied that Google has not responded to your request for the data associated with your YouTube channel. We appreciate the effect that this matter may have had upon you as an individual.

Next steps

The ICO understands that you would like Google to provide you access to your data associated with your YouTube account. We would therefore like to explain that under Article 15 of the General Data Protection Regulation (‘GDPR’) individuals are entitled to request a copy of their personal data and other supplementary information. This right however only extends to the ‘personal data’ for which the organisation exercises control over and therefore may exclude any information which you or any other user has uploaded to the YouTube platform. Rather you will only be entitled to data being processed by Google itself and that information must identify yourself either directly or indirectly. This may include location data, your usage and device information.

Whilst conducting our initial checks in relation to your complaint we reviewed Google’s privacy policy, which you can find here:

https://policies.google.com/privacy

In doing so we noted you can access and review your personal data by following the link to ‘submit a data access request’ on the following page:

https://support.google.com/policies/answer/9581826?visit_id637413891907701514-2250150204&rd=1

It is not clear whether the fact that YouTube removed your channel will impact this process, however you can contact Google’s data protection officer to check this or to make a request for copies of your personal data directly. You can do this using the following online form:

https://support.google.com/policies/contact/general_privacy_form

We should advise you that Google Ireland Limited is the entity responsible for processing your data at this time. This is important to note as we understand that you have addressed your complaint to Google LLC. In light of this, we advise that you redirect your request to Google Ireland Limited. You can do this by utilising the links provided above.

Once Google has received a request of this nature, also known as a subject access request (‘SAR’), the organisation is afforded one calendar month to issue an ‘appropriate’ response. This may include a request for further information to verify your identity as the requestor, a disclosure of data, or a refusal to progress the request.

In the event that Google does not respond, or you remain dissatisfied with its response, please feel free to contact this office. In doing so, please note that we will require you to provide us with the following:

• A copy of your request for copies of your personal data sent to Google;
• In the event that Google does not respond to you within one calendar month of your complaint, please forward a copy of your correspondence chasing a response;
• A copy of Google’s response to your complaint and chaser. If no correspondence is received from the organisation, please confirm that you have afforded it a period of two weeks to respond to your chaser; and
• Any additional correspondence exchanged between yourself and Google about this matter.

Once we have received the above information we will be in touch once again to discuss the next stage of this data protection concern. However, in the meantime, we ask that you read the section below to understand how we may progress this matter.

How we handle international cases

The ICO would like to explain that as Google’s main establishment within Europe is located in Ireland, this matter would fall under the Irish supervisory authority: the Data Protection Commission.

Under Article 77 of the GDPR, an individual is entitled to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority (e.g. the ICO), in particular in the member state in which they live, work or where a data controller has its main establishment. Therefore, we can refer your complaint to the supervisory authority in which the organisation’s main establishment is based.

This will require us to pass your personal data to other supervisory authorities in order to investigate your complaint. The system which we will use to refer your complaint is called the Internal Market Information System (‘IMI System’). For further information please follow the link below:

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/eu-internal-market-information-system

Complaints that require referral may take a longer period of time to investigate by other supervisory authorities than with complaints submitted about organisations who are based in the UK. However, we will endeavour to keep you updated where possible. 

Alternatively, you do have the option to contact the supervisory authority named above directly and raise your complaint with them if you so wish. To contact the Data Protection Commission directly, please visit its website here:

https://www.dataprotection.ie/

However, if you are happy for us to proceed with your complaint (using the IMI system) and to provide your personal data to the other supervisory authority in order to conduct their investigation then please respond to this correspondence confirming this.

Should you wish to discuss this case any further, or require any clarification, please do not hesitate to contact me. If you are responding via email, you can forward your response to our icocasework@ico.org.uk email address with the case reference ‘IC-51361-J1B3’ in the subject line.

Yours sincerely,

Claire Madeley
Case Officer
Information Commissioner’s Office

Information Commissioner’s Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire SK9 5AF
T. 0330 414 6338 F. 01625 524510 ico.org.uk twitter.com/iconews
Please consider the environment before printing this email

For information about what we do with personal data see our privacy notice at www.ico.org.uk/privacy-notice

Feedback about our service: If you are dissatisfied with the way your case has been handled, you can ask to have it reviewed. Please note that we do not usually accept a request for a case review more than three months after the closure of a case.  For more information please refer to our website https://ico.org.uk/concerns/complaints-and-compliments-about-us/

Why automate the vote?

In 1987 Nobel Prize winning economist Robert Solow published a paper claiming that the massive increase in computers and technology around the globe had not, in fact, created any significant increase in productivity.  This became known as the Solow Paradox.  Of course computers were much simpler in the 1980s and today are much more complex.  Very few would argue today that society still suffers from the Solow Paradox… except in one important field.  The US Presidential Election. 

Here in the UK even the most contentious and close general elections are concluded within 24-48 hours.   This is without the use of any computers.  All votes are manually counted.  Even in a highly marginal constituency like Croydon Central where MPs have often had majorities of less than 100 the results are known on the morning after the polls close at 10pm.  This includes several occasions on which manual recounts have been required.

So one has to ask why, for example, Georgia in the US is still counting votes two weeks after the polls closed in the 2020 Presidential Election?  

Now, the population of Georgia is 10.62 million.  A UK parliamentary constituency is approximately 70,000.  So the constituency size is 151 times larger.  

 There are certain advantages of the UK system.   The number of votes and the number of candidates in even the marginal constituencies means that if the vote is close the loser can often be dissuaded from a manual recount by the physical evidence in front of them.  It is possible to point them at the pile of counted papers in the town hall and show them clearly that one is obviously smaller…

With 10.62 million votes it becomes more difficult to find one central venue to count them all in.
Washington State, USA did an estimate in 2004 that counting each vote took them 86 seconds.
Therefore counting a constituency in a UK general election would take 6,020,000 seconds which is 1672 man (or woman) hours.  The cost per constituency at 11 £per hour per worker would therefore be  a measely £18,396.

Using the same arithmetic a US Presidential election in Georgia would take 253,700 man (or woman) hours to count.  And the cost would be £2,790,700.

How long it should take is an unmeasurable quantity because it depends how many people are employed to do the count but somewhere of in the region of 100 people are quite capable of counting the vote in a UK constituency in a day.

Actually official figures put the cost of the 2017 General Election at £140m of which £98m covered fees and expenses incurred by Returning Officers in running the poll.  There are over 30,000,000 votes.  So in fact the cost of counting each vote is £3.27.  

So the actual cost of a UK constituency vote is £228,900.  

Yes, this is a factor of 12 more than cost of counting votes at around minimum wage but there are oversight and organisation activities and the cost of running the ballot its self included.

The Dominion voting machines used in the US do little more than optically scan the ballots passed through them.  Therefore they are only a very little more efficient than the human eye.  So what’s the point?  We’ve been here before with the Florida Hanging chads of 2000

Really why are people trying to automate elections?  Why are governments paying companies to reduce overheads on a process that is hardly expensive anyway…?  Is £3.27 a voter every four years really too much to spend to do the job manually when the risks of a disputed election result and the corresponding costs of litigation and potential civil unrest are much higher?  I'm not a luddite/  I'm all for automating everything possible.  I'm for the cashless society.  I'm for HS2.  I'm for more speed cameras... Well, some more.  But automation is useless if it speeds up a process while introducing error or uncertainty.  Particularly when system failure = disaster.

Most of the genuine mistakes in vote counts come not from optical hardware, software or the human eye but from Returning Officers miscounting the tallies.  This is why it is vital that as many votes as possible are counted in a minimum number of central locations.  As we can see from the US Presidential elections automated counting by whatever means only leads down one road … the cul-de-sac of counting failures and the dead end of making it easier for the unscrupulous to maintain in the face of the truth that the vote was stolen.
 

Why? Why? Why?  Does the US government make these same mistakes over and over again...  ?

Of course this election was a bit different.  There were lots of mail-in ballots which need to go through fraud checks before they can be counted but there is no way any state should still be counting its votes 2->3 weeks after an election.  In the UK votes are counted by hand and the results are known in 48 hours.  The longest a general election has ever taken in the UK is 21 days (3 weeks) in 1945 when votes had to be shipped home from overseas in boats.  

Why is it taking anyone in the USA this long to sort out an election?  Is there a World War on? 
 

Why does one of the most prosperous nations in the world insist on counting its ballots by automated methods that result in mistakes? Or worse allow the unscrupulous to suggest that mistakes were made because people don’t understand the system?  

The beauty of pen and paper is its simple, it’s transparent and people trust it.  And that’s what’s most important.  Trust.  You could have the best automated vote counting system in the world but if people don’t trust it …it’s failed.  

This is why in the UK votes are counted the old fashioned way.  By hand.  Because it’s important that votes are counted by people.  In the same way it is important that Juries are made of real people.  What statement is it to the people that you would rather trust a Dominion voting machine than their real eyes?  And what for?  £3.27 a person every 4 years?  

It is just reassuring to see votes counted by hand.  And it is nice that, here in the UK, there is a civic pride on behalf of local authorities in counting the votes quickly as well as accurate and … by hand.  Despite what some civic leaders would like to pretend speed is important too - it lends confidence to the process.  And there are always those waiting in the wings to undermine confidence in the system.

 

Britain worst hit because it doesn't make anything...

Last night on the BBC news I witnessed Chancellor Sunak being confronted with this graph and asked to explain why the UK economy has been hit so hard by Covid.  He replied with surprising honesty that it was down to the nature of our service based economy (see here).  In short when Mrs Thatcher made us a nation of shopkeepers and little else it meant we were manufacturing less and less for export so when the shops and services shut there's nothing to do.  Apparently all our jobs are pulling pints and making tea for each other or insuring such activities or banking the money.  And performing stand up about it.  When nobody can meet anyone all these activities stop.  Dead.  So I switched back over to Hellraiser III.  It was less scarey. 

Meanwhile down in Fakenewsville...

 

Donald's mad plans to overturn the election result rumble on.  Not since Mrs Thatcher used to say "we shall go on and on" have I felt so uncomfortable that a leader will not give up power. 

But, of course, when the Queen told her to vacate Number 10 she did to spend her dotage smelling flowers and losing her memory ...

Trump's anti-media posturing however has now gone full on "lets start a coup" with key Pentagon officials being removed to be replaced with puppets and relentless attacks on the electoral process via the courts, via twitter, via any means neccessary.  A lot of people think this is a strategy.  A strategy to raise money to pay off the campaign debts.  A strategy to frustrate his successor.  A strategy to cement his position within the Republican Party.  A strategy for upcoming votes.  A strategy to build his base for 2024.  It's not a strategy.  It's an attempted coup.  Possibly the worst organised since the plot against Harold Wilson but a coup none-the-less.  The attacks on the media are getting worse and more ludicrous than ever...

...Well, yes, but we laughed at Hitler.  That didn't stop him.  Let's not forget Trump has the military to play with.  With his claims that "elections were not observed properly" and votes have not been counted properly and his exploitation of the good old Big Lie technique ...it's clear he's been reading Putin's handbook on how to fix an election.

People who think Donald having a coup is the stuff of dystopian fiction and not something to be really scared of haven't really learnt from history.  They might think it can't happen because Trump wont carry people with him but ...if he has all the guns he might.  Maybe the Americans aren't so silly with their right to bare arms after all...

Of course you might dismiss this all as conspiracy theory ... but it's no more outlandish than what you can read on the President's own twitter feed.  And when it comes down to it which of us has a nuclear football?  Erm...

The people who could end it all now are the Senate?  So what are they waiting for?  Well, they're the ones who wouldn't impeach him so...

So what if Trump refuses to go...?

 

Ava Alexis sent me this little animation for my blog – if only we knew the genius who authored it to credit them. 

It made me wonder what would happen if Trump didn’t leave the White House when his term ends.  In our parliamentary system it’s more or less impossible for a failed Prime Minister to cling on in Number 10.  For one thing the structure of Cabinet Government would mean that if he did he’d be chairing a cabinet in which he was a minority of one.  For another he wouldn’t be paid.  For yet another power clearly flows from the Queen as Head of State who is the person who actually appoints the Prime Minister.  Although the last time the Queen partially exercised this power was the controversial appointment of Alexander Douglas-Home in 1963 when the Conservative party couldn’t decide on its leader.

So what would happen if Trump refuses to leave?  Well, I suppose come January 20^th … He’d be sat in the White House and officials would have to stop following his instructions once Joe Biden is sworn in.  Would they physically evict him?  Well, surely it would come to a point where there wouldn’t be any point in being in there?  The point of living there is the power.  Without the power it is just a house.  According to the Toronto Star the Presidential Succession Act says that if both Joe and Donald turned up to be sworn in then the Presidential Succession Act the 20^th Amendment says that Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House as the 3^rd in line to become President could also claim the Presidency …

Hopefully it won’t come to that… but as the Justice Department starts to investigate...

At the end of the line if he could find a legal loophole to stay on he'd still require the support of the Senate or face impeachment again...? 

NCP car parks have a limited number of moving parts...

... Why is it then that when the main moving parts (the lifts) are broken they don't offer you a discount?  But no.  No bargain corner here.  Just the grasping of money while Allders is eternally closed and the remnants of the Whitgift Centre disintegrate...