Bearing in mind that sheep farming makes precisely *zero* money for the farmer. End this madness
https://twitter.com/georgemonbiot/status/1293888158552272898?s=21
CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » Commuting
"Severe weather warning"
(7379 posts)-
Posted 4 years ago #
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There are many (perhaps even most) industries which wouldn't exist without subsidy.
Should we cull them all, start with rail, environmental energy schemes?
Or continue to subsidise useful things like feeeding people, keeping them warm, and ensuring they can travel for work?
Posted 4 years ago # -
You can still feed people without smashing the landscape to pieces
And wind energy & solar energy are now cheaper than fossil fuels per MWh
Posted 4 years ago # -
Let’s face it, if lamb was actually in short supply (rather than being over-produced), the price would go up, and farmers might actually make some money out of it.
Posted 4 years ago # -
@Hankchief, When I read that 1 in 240 year bit I had the same thought.
Is this SEPA will see a storm like that once in every 240 years or will the Union Canal see it, or will that particular embankment see it that often. They are all very different things.
However I came to the conclusion that the answer is irrelevant as they are looking firmly to the past rather than taking climate breakdown into account.
Just because there hasn't been a similar event since the canal opened in 1822 doesn't mean the current climate wont deliver another one within 10 years.
Posted 4 years ago # -
It's a (misleading) way of presenting a probability. A 100 year event has a 1% chance of happening in a particular year.
Rolling a six on a die would be a six roll event. This doesn't mean that every six rolls will produce exactly one event, it may produce fewer or more, you may get more than one in a row.
Just watch out for the Gambler's Fallacy.
The probability of rolling a six is fixed, the probability of a flood event will change as the climate changes. I've no idea how they derive these actual probabilities like the 1 in 240 for the flood on the canal, but I'd hope they use climate change predictions to modify the historical data.
Posted 4 years ago # -
@urchaidh, I know that's the case but as hankchief says without knowing what the odds you are given represent it's entirely meaningless anyway. Roll enough dice and you are guaranteed a 6. The lottery has a 1 in 14 million chance of winning but most weeks someone does.
If you have enough rivers does the 1 in a 100 guarantee you a flood? There just isn't enough information to tell.
Posted 4 years ago # -
OK, sorry. It's a good question as to what the event actually means in terms of geographical area - i.e. how many 'rolls' you get a year. Risks can be quoted for a particular site, down to house level, but the scope must be a lot bigger with houses in the same scope having the same risk.
So the question is more how many 'rolls' at odds of 1 in 240 does Scotland get in a year, or do those odds represent a single area, with the odds of an event occurring in any one of the defined areas in a year being correspondingly lower?
Posted 4 years ago # -
Yes, that's a good way of phrasing the question.
Posted 4 years ago # -
@acsimpson, if you're talking about the National Lottery main draw, it's actually 1 in 45 million odds of winning the jackpot. That drops to "only" 1 in 7.5 million for the second prize...
The majority of lottery tickets bought win no prizes.
Posted 4 years ago # -
@Crowriver, that's either a typo or poor google skills. Yes, the majority of rivers don't flood in a normal year either (at least they don't flood houses).
Posted 4 years ago # -
@crowriver. The majority? I would go with the Vast Majority. I would even go with - Put 2 pound a week away each week and each year you will win a hundred pounds on the lottery. I would even go with - You will not win anything playing the lottery. Apparently the Irish Lottery gives better returns but I refer earlier to Urchaidh’s Gambler’s Fallacy
Posted 4 years ago # -
@acsimpson - your odds were correct pre-2018. They increased the number of balls from 49 to 59 then.
Posted 4 years ago # -
@gembo, well the odds of winning either the jackpot or the second prize are pretty astronomical. However a Free Lucky Dip ticket is 1 in 10 odds, so I can imagine a fair number of tickets each draw win such a "prize", or something small like ten or twenty quid.
That's the odds for one ticket. The only way to shorten those odds is presumably to buy more tickets for any particular draw. However many folk seem to just enter the same numbers (their "lucky" numbers) every week...
Posted 4 years ago # -
@crowriver, agreed, another gambler’s falllacy - if they change the numbers then they come up they are annoyed.
Some numbers do come up more often than others....
But you might as well pick 1,2,3,4,5,....?
A favourite gambler’s fallacy which had us running around the betting shop as students, was that the odds shorten at the racecourse just before the off so you should place your bet at the right second to benefit from spotting such changing odds.
We wired up the gamblers to pulse monitors and followed them from the pub to the bookies round the corner. Their pulses were already frighteningly high. And sky rocketed as they put on bets. Once one of the gamblers kindly backed six horses in a seven horse race and still lost.
Posted 4 years ago # -
@gembo: if you did pick 1, 2, 3,... and those numbers came up you’d be sharing the win with around 10,000 other people who do the same each week. So while you will have proved a point, it might not make you happy!
Posted 4 years ago # -
@Stickman - happier than those with a losing ticket that week!
Posted 4 years ago # -
back in the perilous eighties, i had it in mind to double my rent money by backing the favourite greyhound, and if it lost, just double the bet on the fave of the next race etc, til the rent money was doubled
ended up at buchanan street queuing for the overnight bus to london, and haven't been in the bookies since
Posted 4 years ago # -
@gembo, if you look at Saturday's Lotto draw just gone, a very atypical result transpired:
- One lucky winner of the jackpot (more than £10 million)
- Three winners of second prize (£1 million each)Then the numbers of winners increase as you go down the prize levels, with over 1.2 million tickets getting a Free Lucky Dip (value £2).
This could be something to do with all but one of the numbers drawn being under 30 (statistically more popular as folk use things like birthdates for their numbers (!))
What these stats do not tell you is how many folk bought a ticket for that draw. Maybe more than usual given it was a weekend, and the lure of rollover jackpot? Therefore we do not know the true odds unless we have the full figures.
Posted 4 years ago # -
@bax - that is known as the Martingale system. It works if you start with an infinite amount of money...
Posted 4 years ago # -
Start with infinite amount of money and now with internet proceed to bet in infinite doubling system on races around the world 24 hours a day or else catch the bus to London from Buchanan St.
Posted 4 years ago # -
aye.. well yir either on the bus or off the bus, as kesey said
Posted 4 years ago # -
@bax, nice quote, I was thinking of Kenny boy a fair bit on trek up Glen Tilt for the swim at the Falls of Tarff and then the ritual attack of the midge back down the glen a bit
Also a nice story
We were cycling along and overtook two young lads walking up - one carrying a 5 Litre bottle of water (water was as plentiful as midge but each to their own)
We then encountered na confident young fellow striding down the glen with little if any kit and then finally at the falls a fourth lad with two rucksacks. I figured the third lad was returning to help with the 5 litres of water. During our swim the three boys joined the fourth who was bagsying the camping spot. Too wee for our 7 tents anyroads
Posted 4 years ago # -
the single pitch at the falls ?
used it a few times but a bit busy and there are mice
Posted 4 years ago # -
@bax yes they were going for two tents. But tight. Might have had chance of wind Saturday and it has a stone circle for a fire. Hope they weren’t peeing in the river as we were drinking that water further downstream.
Posted 4 years ago # -
@gembo: if you did pick 1, 2, 3,... and those numbers came up you’d be sharing the win with around 10,000 other people who do the same each week. So while you will have proved a point, it might not make you happy!...
@Stickman - happier than those with a losing ticket that week!
I can't be certain but if I won the lottery and got less than the cost of the best bike readily available on the market I think I would be less happy than if I had just continued to loose. Although I employ the gembo strategy of not buying a ticket to guarantee a pair equal to my investment so it's purely hypothetical.
Posted 4 years ago # -
My dad used to work in Emergency Planning and had a hard time getting people to register that likelihoods expressed in decades didn't mean you were currently safe to build on flood plains (in some cases below sea level) just because the last really big flood was in 1953.
I have never been in a physical betting shop, but have indirectly put bets on horses through intermediaries.
Posted 4 years ago # -
The last time I was in the bookies I tried to pay the tax, How they laughed, has been abolished long time
Mrs Garto was once at the York Races when pound notes were still legal tender in Scotland but abolished in England. The turf accountant seemed to think the note was a Scottish fiver so as Mrs Garto was placing one pound bets every horse won at 4-1 regardless of whether it won, or what its odds were (no horses won). Until the Scottish one pound notes ran out and he stopped giving her change of a fiver.
Posted 4 years ago #
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