‘Ramblinactivist’ Paul Mobbs’ work-related occasional blog – examining the troublesome and often difficult meanings behind today’s news and events rather than repeating the ‘conventional wisdom’ of the mass/social media.
Welcome to my ‘difficult’ work-related occasional blog, where I seek to explore the technical and statistical reality of the contemporary world.
This page lists the last year’s blog posts and videos. Most posts are available as both: HTML (web) pages; A4 PDF files; and occasionally an audio podcast to download. Video posts are usually a shorter page or script with a link to the video hosted on YouTube.
In addition, I also have an historical book review blog, ‘A Book in Five Minutes’ – examining older texts to see how they still have great relevance to today’s debates.
‘MetaBlog’ posts from the past year:
The Meta-Blog – ‘Ramblin’ News’ No.4, Strawberry Moon 2023:
As the Government threatens to raise the retirement age, again!, why is there no discussion about ‘Multidimensional Poverty’? Traditional stereotypes about poverty, based within the establishment's four-hundred year-old principle of, ‘the deserving and undeserving poor’, cannot encompass these complex relationships. Therein lies a deeper truth.
For some months the ‘specialist’ media have been tracking a major structural change in the world’s economy brought-on by the Ukraine War: Not the well-publicised crisis of food or energy prices; but of who controls the world’s financial payments system, and its use to enforce Western sanctions.
Why are authoritarians in both of our main political parties stifling the youth vote in Britain? We have to draw the line somewhere: For me, that’s the point where participation in the process implies a willing acceptance of it.
According to the media, on-line chatbots are helping people to be ‘more creative’; but is the whole picture really that rosy? Digging deeper, the facts are in plain sight, but no one ‘in authority’ seems to be capable of holding this rather disturbing discussion.
The ‘ecological crisis’ is a big, technical, complicated issue; and all too often, therefore, how this is presented isolates and simplifies, and more especially, relies on commonly-held tropes to convey meaning. But what if those tropes are not objectively correct?; and so as the media feedback those tropes, it increasingly distorts how we react to the ecological crisis.
The first in a new blog series looking at unreported or badly reported stories. This time: New evidence on why ‘bright green’ ideas are failing; and, the facts behind the recent fusion experiment in the US.
The environmental debate in Britain is maintained by a few unaccountable figures elevated to the role of eco-gate-keepers – which is why the ecological debate fails to make any real progress
Talk about ‘fuel poverty’? Talk about the 'cost of living crisis? No!! I want to talk about the ‘The State’s Monopoly on Hunger’! ‘Fuel poverty’ is a new view of the old issue of deprivation in Britain; and yet it is simply a modern dimension to the issue of well-being and inequality deliberately created by the British state as a matter of ‘choice’ – which many fail to see the significance of.
Electricity supply, one of the systemic flaws in the UK’s failing economy, looks increasingly like it could fracture this Winter – and without accepting why that model is broken that cannot be avoided.
The media is exercised by the ‘cost of living’ crisis; but they’re ignoring the greater structural economic trends that are driving it – and thus the difficult questions that these trends raise for our future.
The Meta-Blog – ‘Ramblin’ News’ No.4, Strawberry Moon 2023:
The Meta-Blog – ‘Ramblin’ News’ No.3, Flower Moon 2023:
The Meta-Blog – ‘Ramblin’ News’ No.2, Flower Moon 2023:
‘Ramblinactivist’s Videos’, 2023/9, 8th March 2023:
‘The Meta-Blog’, no.26, New Worm Moon 2023:
‘The Meta-Blog’, no.25, Imbolic 2023:
The Meta-Blog – ‘Ramblin’ News’ No.1, Wolf Moon 2023:
‘The Meta-Blog’, no.24, 4th December 2022:
‘The Meta-Blog’, no.23, 12th November 2022:
‘The Meta-Blog’, no.22, 22nd September 2022:
‘The Meta-Blog’, 19th May 2022: