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Comment by stupidcar | Hacker News Reader

What's really amazing to me is when you realise that the UK executive and legislative branches are based in London. MPs, Lords, and often their partners and children are all living and working in an extremely polluted environment for years on end. Even so, with the knowledge that they are seriously harming their own health and the health of their closest relatives, they persist in resisting and blocking attempts at actions to improve air quality in London.

Whenever somebody defends the quality of democratic representation in the UK, I just remind myself that these are people who would rather they and their own children suffered illness and premature death than take action that might piss off business and motorist lobbying groups.

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I think you're overthinking this a bit. I don't think politicians prefer seeing their children suffering illness and premature death rather than pissing off lobbies. The real problem is that most people see the results of studies like this as something abstract, not as something that affects them directly. It's clearly visible with smokers: it's not that they are especially tolerant of dying a horrible death from lung cancer or a stroke (no one is), it's mostly that they don't really think it will happen to them (yes, I know it might be an imperfect analogy because physiological addiction also factors in... but I also know a smoker that found quitting "physically impossible" until he had a stroke, and survived. Once he had saw death's face, and the risk turned from abstract to very concrete, he quit smoking overnight).

It doesn't help that studies like this are also usually wrong. Don't change anything in your life until something has been replicated a dozen or more times.

Or maybe take the information as a sign that perhaps caution is warranted in some areas and it might be worthwhile to consider how you might change your behaviors based on the evidence.

I agree that scientific conclusions are sometime editorialized to convey the pressing nature of the findings (the evidence is what it is), but 100% wrong or 100% right I don't think it would do you much harm to reduce the amount of pollution you're exposed to on a daily basis.

Air pollution and smoking are both very likely to be bad for you.

There's a Pascal's wager in this situation. In the worst case, there's no cognitive effect from pollution, but you clean up the environment anyway. Even without the possibility of improving your ability to reason, there are many other obvious benefits to reducing pollution, quitting smoking, and many other major changes about which the effects have been debated and exaggerated over time.

See also "The Precautionary Principle", which environmental policy should ideally always follow but alas all too often doesn't, as in this case.

> There's a Pascal's wager in this situation. In the worst case, there's no cognitive effect from pollution, but you clean up the environment anyway.

And, as with Pascal's wager, that's unconvincing: one could spend all that money differently, on things one would like (just as in Pascal's wager, choosing to believe in God isn't cost-free: it means loving others, being charitable &c., even if one would rather not).

>there's no cognitive effect from pollution

The worst case is that there is a positive effect from pollution. When one looks at the historic data it wasn't until people started living in smog filled cities that children started attending schools.

We shouldn't fall into the trap of assuming causation and correlation just because it gels with something in your subconscious.

This is just one of many potential effects. Damage to lung formation and increased risk of asthma are very well established.

I think we can be pretty confident that air pollution is bad for your health, even if some effects in the constellation of health issues attributed to it are not as strong as claimed.

> it's not that they are especially tolerant of dying a horrible death from lung cancer or a stroke (no one is), it's mostly that they don't really think it will happen to them...

Which is true most of the time..

I mean, people getting into an automobile for no good reason also thinks that they won't be the one that would end up dying or maimed in an accident. I mean, aren't we all guilty or dumb in that way?

> it's not that they are especially tolerant of dying a horrible death from lung cancer or a stroke (no one is), it's mostly that they don't really think it will happen to them

That, or perhaps something even more sinister: they'd rather enjoy a 5 minute cigarette respite from life than live without that respite.

Lawmakers, too, have hellish lives. Turn a blind eye to stuff that doesn't matter here and how, and instead focus on getting whatever will better they and their families.

"MPs, Lords, and often their partners and children are all living and working in an extremely polluted environment for years on end."

I don't think it's common for MPs to bring their families to London for "years on end". Most MPs will have a flat they use when in London (probably in a nice building with HVAC, well away from the most polluted roads and neighbourhoods). But they will typically maintain their main residence in/near their home constituencies.

Likewise for the Lords. Most of them commute and don't spend all that much time in London.

Couldn't you also argue that (and I appreciate there are exceptions to every rule) more gets done, with more efficiency, when everyone is together in one place? Certainly when reading body language, micro actions and the "feeling in the room" is important and video calling doesn't cut it. So they end up in one place. You could move that place to somewhere with great air, but because it's a centre of importance and a community of people is needed to support it, within X number of years enough of a city will have built up causing the same kinds of pollution and you're back in square 1?

You can have a city without massive pollution, though.

> somebody defends the quality of democratic representation in the UK

Does anyone do that any more? I thought most were in broad agreement that UK has one of the less representative democracies. We also have one of the most centralised democracies - local government has a tiny fraction of the power and proportion of budget that it had 50 years ago.

Not really. MPs have allowances for a second home and only spend half the week (for half the year) in London, between a park and the river.

London isn't bad. China is the extreme case of this. Beijing air pollution is often at "cyberpunk dystopia" levels, and Beijing is where most of China's leadership resides. You can't say they're not experiencing the effects of their environmental policies.

London is bad compared to many other western cities. It's significantly worse than New York, for example. Levels of pollutants like NOx and PM regularly exceed legal limits.

London's bad enough that you can see and taste the change in air roughly when you reach Hendon on the M1, that it leaves clothes and person dirtier, and generally feels unpleasant like sitting in a room full of smokers. Bad enough to want to avoid it.

Which makes reading of cities around the world where it's significantly worse that much gloomier.

Why would you conclude that all those MPs and Lords also live in London? Most likely they live somewhere much nicer and have a driver getting them to 'work' once a month.

*Once a month on the assumption that most sessions are only attended by a handful of MPs.

On the other hand I once heard that the rich in Germany (in some places at least) have worse air quality than the poor, because the rich all have got their fireplaces going (how ironic is that?-)

> Once a month on the assumption that most sessions are only attended by a handful of MPs.

Most sessions of the House are attended by a handful of MPs, because no real work is happening there. Meaningful debate in the House is rare, and the results of divisions (votes) are usually known ahead of time. And in any case a debate is not a good way to write any kind of document, so any MP actually wanting to make a difference is doing so in committees, which are not seen on TV nearly as often, but are pretty well attended from my quick scan of attendance records.

No, when it's in session Parliament is pretty much a full day's job for an MP, probably more if you're actually trying to do good work and/or have a cabinet or shadow cabinet post. Remember in the UK the executive is run by ordinary people elected to the legislature, they aren't just arbitrarily picked by a President, although in some roles it will be tolerated to "elevate" outsiders to the House of Lords and then give them a minor cabinet post, doing this with a Great Office would cause outrage in the modern era, those are always given to elected MPs. Because the Prime Minister can change in days (or in practice hours) an entire parallel Shadow cabinet also needs to exist for a party that would seek government, with no power today but every capability to take over political control of government tomorrow if called to.

My local MP commutes, less than two hours each way - gets the same train home I was catching after visiting the (London) office, so leaving London just after 1900 on a weekday, to obviously the same city I live in on the coast.

Those who live further away have flats in London, they stay for four nights a week and go home at weekends. Indeed some of the last train services heading North on a Friday are almost explicitly for such MPs and staff. Kings Cross to Edinburgh on a Friday evening is not exactly a tourist route, it won't get there until after midnight.

Using an official car would be an unacceptable expense except for certain senior ministers (who work in London all the time, e.g. the Prime Minister and often senior cabinet ministers live there) and it's frowned on even then, one of the few good things you can say about Boris (Johnson, the city's previous mayor) is that he rode a bicycle a lot rather than constantly getting official cars just a few miles up the road.

Lords get paid £305 per day they turn up to Parliament when it's in session, with no further allowances except for travel expenses (so pay for their own staff). They generally do turn up.

MPs are also often around, even if they are not in the Commons chamber. They are generally aware of proceedings in the chamber, and come in when there is a vote that is relevant.

I think that's at least preferable over them not caring because it's only your problem, not theirs :)

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