Why do politicians rarely make jokes, except in their party conference speeches? Because they are professional builders of consensus, and can take so little for granted when addressing a wider audience. When talking to their followers, the case is rather different, though even there the humour is often of the weakest kind. Indeed, the frequency and strength of jokes in such preaching to the converted is probably an index of a political party’s internal strength. If the consensus is weak, and needs rebuilding, the jokes will also be weak or entirely absent.

Comedians, on the other hand, exploit an existing consensus which they can confidently take as their common ground. Typically, in the strict sense, this is a majority consensus, and the laugh that emerges from consciousness of that majority and its power is the bark of secure triumph. Thus, humour rarely travels well across time or space.

Satirists, as distinct from humourists, defend a minority consensus, and one that is typically under attack or weakening. Like politicians they laugh very little, and for the same reason. Wracked by anxiety, nothing can be assumed, and everything must be established. Humour is lazy and complacent, but satire, like politics, is paranoid and fearful and holds out its hands to you. Thus the satire of another age, another place, seems to speak to us as if it anticipated our presence. It may not persuade us, but there is no mistaking the urgency with which it tries to include us. This makes for winning literature, whereas the humour of the past and even slightly distant contemporaries repels us with its self-sufficiency.

A new item has been added to my publications list: Energy, Entropy and the Theory of Wealth (NNS: Newcastle, 2016). This piece was first given as a public lecture in Newcastle University's "Insight" series on the 11th of February 2016, and argues for a reconsideration of the ontology of economics in the light of thermodynamics. The piece develops points made in an earlier article, "Thermoeconomics", now also added to the list of publications.

Wars are terrible things, but, as Mill observes, sizeable national economies recover quite rapidly from the destruction and deaths that result. As everyone knows, it would be better, much better, if wars could be avoided as far as is possible, their resolutions being reached by other means; but the damage that war inflicts on a large society is neither extreme nor long-lasting, however individually painful.

Revolutions, on the other hand, are deadly and their effects chronically harmful, as witness France, Russia, China, all countries tragically impeded by social revolutions.

Damage to the simpler capital structure of the society can be regenerated, so long as the much more complicated social, intellectual, and institutional elements are untouched. Roads, bridges, buildings, are all important, but the complexity of a mind, of a communicating body of minds, of an historical tradition carried onwards in such an intellectual order, all this is fragile, easily lost, hard to replace, but immensely powerful, hugely creative of fresh order once energised.

In a plebiscite with a binary choice of options a democracy commits to follow the course of action preferred by the majority of those who choose to vote. The threshold could be arbitrarily set at some level above 50%, meaning that a decision would be deferred if the majority were not of sufficient scale. Many think that this is what Mr Cameron should have done in two of the referenda that he has called, on Scottish Independence and on membership of the European Union. This is a misunderstanding of the significance of a majority vote in such a plebiscite, which is distinct from that in an election where there are more than two options.

Elections where there are multiple choices function to represent the preferences of the majority of individuals, even if that group is nowhere near an absolute majority, as in the First Past the Post electoral system employed in the United Kingdom. It is a peculiar system, and difficult to defend, since it tends give the impression that many votes are ‘wasted’, in other words that they fail to determine the choice of candidate and the information represented in that vote is then lost to the system. There are clearly strong arguments in favour of some sort of proportional representation in the constitution of representative bodies, though they have yet to secure much of a following, more likely because very many could see that it would benefit one party, the Liberal Democrats, that is widely and actively disliked. (The Conservative and Labour parties oppose each other, with vigour, but they don’t find each disgusting, like a bad smell, to use the Chinese test of sincerity. But both are revolted by the Liberal Democrats, and would rather push on with a faulty electoral system than adopt a system that would enlarge the LibDem representation. I share this feeling, as it happens, but recognise that it is a visceral, holistic reaction more than a carefully reasoned one.)

However, it is an error to think that the information recorded in the minority vote during a binary plebiscite is also lost, as it unquestionably is in First Past the Post, or that the views of those voters are unrepresented. Binary plebiscites are exercises in information gathering, allowing the collection of judgements based on data seen from a vast number of perspectives. Voters make errors, and base their votes on false beliefs, but since they do so on both sides, this cancels out, and the proportions represent the population's best assessment of the relative wisdom of the two courses of action. It is a way of balancing the benefits against the disadvantages, and although the choice is binary, the result, the output is not so, it is a descriptive decision which permits those executing the policy to appreciate the degree to which the decision is finely balanced.

Those who voted Remain in the UK independence referendum are not, as a group, stupid or fools; they judged an exit from the EU to be, on balance, and as far as they could tell, harmful to their interests. Those who voted to Leave did the same.

At a national level, the balance 52/48 is substantially in favour of leaving, but not a landslide. Thus any government now carrying out the decision to Leave must operate on the assumption that there are serious hazards to leaving the EU, and that these must be guarded against. Those who voted Leave must avoid the assumption that victory, like a first-past-the-post victory, entitles them to discard the information represented in the Remain vote; on the contrary it is important data, and should inform the way in which the decision to leave is enacted. One might summarise that as “Proceed with Caution”.

But similarly, those those who voted Remain, must accept that the population as a whole, has judged departure from the EU to be net beneficial. To stridently assert that those voting leave are stupid, or selfish, and not entitled to influence a decision is, firstly, inconsistent with the established political principles of this democracy, principles that Remainers would prefer not see abandoned and replaced with an autocracy. Secondly, it is flawed from an information theoretical point of view. It is essential to consult the entire population of minds in order to produce a well-grounded decision. To allocate less weight to the decision of some voters would be to deliberately distort the decision in a prejudicial manner that would defeat the exercise, which, as noted above, is to gather as much information as possible that is relevant to the decision.

At this point, some may say that if breadth of information is desired, why do we only entitle voters over a certain age? This is a reasonable point, and there are arguments for reducing the voting age. But, the same argument in favour of high quality information gathering also supports an age qualification, on the grounds that very young people are insufficiently independent to avoid distorting influences. On this ground there are in fact strong arguments for increasing the voting age, and even denying it to those who are not economically independent. However, the current decision of this democracy is that any citizen, regardless of wealth and over the arbitrary age of 18 can vote (though this was dropped to 16 in the case of the Scottish independence referendum). In other words, as far as this population can tell, this is a reasonable specification to ensure information quality as well as consent to the decision. Seen historically, this a very broad specification, but intelligible in the sense that due to great societal wealth and broad education, there is valuable data available even in the minds of the young (under 20) and those whose economic resources are a small fraction of the whole but, again seen historically, are large in an absolute sense.

Finally, the balance of votes in the EU referendum tells us something of vital consequence about Scotland. In effect, the decision tells us that on balance membership of the EU is probably beneficial to Scotland. Indeed, when we subtract that decision from the UK result we see that the balance of benefits for England and Wales is much more strongly in favour of leaving. This divergence of interest suggests that an independent Scotland is now probable, indeed is de facto already the case. However, it is not inevitable, and the people of England and Wales could decide to change the balance with wealth transfers or other similar considerations. After so much ill-tempered debate, I think this is unlikely to be sufficient, and indeed if I were a Scot I doubt that I would find them remotely adequate.

A similar point can be made with regard to the residential, voting population of London, which was substantially in favour of remaining in the EU. It would probably be wise of the government to examine the character of the population very carefully to determine why they reached this decision, and, in the interests of general harmony, to take steps to adjust the balance for that population.

As the method of science extends and improves the network of propositions describing the world, the space left over for god contracts.

Indeed, the remaining void is now so oddly shaped that none of the divinities described in the world's religions can fit within and leave no unfilled area; for the most part they cover the hole completely but lap over and conflict, to god's disadvantage, with the propositions generated by science.

The conclusion, obvious though like all conclusions provisional, is that the residual negatively described by the propositions of science is the product of contemporary incapacity and ignorance, not the infinite competence and omniscience of a third party.

Beats and rhymes we understand fairly well; but it is likely that writers intoduce non-random order into other features, mostly surface features. A complete phonemic markup and statistical analysis, using the abstract principles established in Aoyama and Constable (1999) and Constable and Aoyama (1999) is likely to reveal this in many though not all poets, and disproportionately amongst those of the highest reputation.

I would look first at Marvell, Milton, but not Shakespeare (he is an intellectual poet, not a musical one, strange to say); nothing in the Eighteenth century, interestingly, but Pope should examined as a test of that proposition, then Keats perhaps, Tennyson certainly, Kipling, Stevenson, De la Mare (a prime suspect), and Yeats. There seems to be a vogue for such musical arrangements in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries. After that, Pound no, Stevens yes, and Eliot too. Subsequently, popular lyrics matter more for metrics: Dylan I suppose, Queen, Abba and the one-hit-wonders, the uniquely greats. Rap strikes me as unlikely, a bit eighteenth century really; but I could be wrong.

It is sometimes suggested that the human mind is so humble that the infinite is beyond our conception. However, this is clearly mistaken; on the contrary, it is the sharply limited case, it is the concept of the finite that is hard to hold in mind.

If we entertain a thought of a universe with beginning, end, and spatial boundaries, we cannot avoid simultaneously implying and noting, in the corner of the eye as it were, time before the beginning and after the end, and space beyond the fences that we have erected.

Similarly, it is curiously difficult to think of a singularity, a one off, or even a limited number of objects, apples say. If I think of one or two apples, it is only by isolating one or two from an infinite series of apples that probably do exist. The case of the singularity is the inverse of this: the earth is unique, but if I think about that unique state, I define it by postulating replicas, the reality of which I then deny as improbable.

Just as we cannot do only one thing, it seems impossible to think of only one thing. Perhaps this is the reason that grand gestures, religious vistas, muddled, holistic, 'big picture' banalities, are so common, and focused causal analysis is so terribly difficult to find.

In classifying writing styles one might distinguish between systematic Hegels and aphoristic Nietzsches, to use an illustrative example from philosophy. I am inclined to dispute the matter. The difference is real, but Hegels are only more or less verbose Nietzsches, Nietzsches still in their casting moulds, complete with pouring sprues and unfiled seams and flanges. They are unfinished or, let us be blunt, less continent Nietzsches.

If we could all exhibit this Nietzschean tersity, mathematicians might be more patient with verbal reasoning. – Mathematics is ultimately aphorism, indeed it is the ultimate aphoristic language.

Economists, I generalise from a sample of a few, underestimate the tardy pace of technological change, as do the general public, who think that inventions and innovations are blinding flashes producing instant illumination. Far from it; even simple things take centuries; a shift in one area, an innovatory new machine assembled from pieces made for other purposes, and a little specific invention, may stand like Athena fresh from the head of Zeus, but it may be a while, and this is the crucial point, before the human minds around it are themselves ready to make the most of the thing.

Anything far from thermodynamic equilibrium is very hard won. The low entropy structure of the device is only slowly achieved, and that assemblage takes a great deal of testing (trial and error is the best, the most informationally sensitive, not a humble, last resort mode of proceeding). But even when it stands there, much remains to be learned about how the device, whatever it is, a thought or a bicycle, can be made to work. Indeed, bicycles are a good example: The machine as we currently have it has been about since the 1880s, but, and this is almost unbelievable, it is only in the last decade or so that we have learned how to teach the riding of the instrument. My now 19 year old son learned, 15 years ago, with stabilisers bolted to the back wheel, and learned slowly, and with some painful unlearning after the stabilisers were removed. My four year old son learned with hardly a fall over the last year, beginning with a 'balance bike', an invulnerable plastic bike equipped with brakes but without pedals, and then in the last week with a standard pedal bike, on to which he climbed and coasted away, and then with a word from me put his feet to the pedals and powered off like racer. Within a day he was standing and running on the machine as if born to it. When the learning of balance (and braking) is separated from the learning of pedalling, the whole thing becomes straightforward.

Technological progress has several dimensions, and progress along one may proceed that on others. If it takes this long to understand something so simple as a bicycle, imagine how little we probably know about cars, computers, and even some of our best ideas.

Will ages to come see Betjeman and Larkin as a Gray and Collins duo, as quite good but neither with quite sufficient quality to merit a whole volume each? Perhaps, if there are in the necessary sense ages to come. And if there aren't, whose fault is that? Not Betjeman's at any rate; he offered a stubborn, awkward, though ultimately defeated resistance. Larkin, on the other hand, needs a lawyer. A weak and self-pitying pacifist, a highly trained soldier who refused to fight, standing to one side and regretting the passing of what he had been designed to protect. The fact that he is the better poet makes it all the worse, and in fact the personal failures that he discusses with striking candour aren't the ones the matter; indeed the over-indicated sexual failures are camouflage over something else. If he cared so much for all this, here, England, cared enough to claim our pity on its behalf for his own unction, why didn't he do something about it? Why didn't he get down and dirty? Betjeman did, and the poems suffer as a consequence from terrible vulnerabilities, visible not only as snobbery, but the sense that he was so heavily committed that if beaten he would lose everything. Larkin is just not that concerned, and has prepared a place of safe exile; the tombs, the shadows, the meadows can all be gone, but his poised expressions of indestructible resignation will survive. Very subtle, very good, and the volume will be called Larkin and Betjeman, but what a price to pay.