UKIP - Not Serious

While the immediate storm over Godfrey Bloom's 'bongo bongo land' may have disappeared from the front pages, the affair continues to reverberate. From my perspective - not aligned to UKIP but becoming sympathetic over the last few years - the effect has been pretty depressing. Like an awful lot of people in this country I've got little time for the three main parties - there's little to differentiate them and most political discourse runs on predictably tribal lines. I hate our political classes with a vengeance but at the same time I care passionately about politics and where the country is headed. So, in many respects I'm exactly the constituency that UKIP should be appealing to. And at times I've felt that perhaps UKIP was the way to go. Not just on the European Union, but also with respect to climate change, wind farms and a critique of the liberal mindset that predominates in our political and media masters. Even on the economy UKIP seems to be on the side of economic liberalism and free markets - though it has to be said it's often hard to figure out where UKIP stands because it rarely seems to talk about the economy in any substantive way. The bottom line is that on a wide range of issues UKIP seems to offer something that 's different to the main parties and appealing to a libertarian (note the small L).

The one sticking point has been race. Although I vehemently disagree with the ideology of multicuturalism (which elevates difference and segregation to the highest degree), I am an anti-racist and have got no time for racists, whether they are BNP, Islamist or BBC. In the past I've been Paki-bashed by Nazi skinheads, racially abused and suffered from racism and discrimination. That was a long time ago and thankfully my kids haven't had to suffer this kind of treatment. Although the left will never say so, we do live in a very different world to the days when the National Front was out on the streets and casual racism was everywhere. Nowadays things have gone the other way and it's the white working classes who suffer unfair treatment - they are the only people not allowed pride in their culture. Multiculturalism is triumphant and to real anti-racists this is a betrayal of the struggle againt racism.

You would think that this too would make me align to UKIP - and at times it has. But this latest affair from Godfrey Bloom makes me pull back for a number of reasons.

Firstly, I have to say that Bloom comes across as an ignorant bigot. He can spin it how he likes, makes half apologies or attempt to front it out, but he comes over as the sort of half-drunk bar-room racist that I would run a mile to avoid. While I don't want politicians to be all smarm and professional blandness, I do expect them to display some signs of intelligence. Ignorance is not attractive to the voter, any more than dishonesty or disdain for Joe Public. Now the fact is that there was a real point in what he was saying - the discussion on the aid budget is an important one which many people, me included, would agree with him. Listening to interviews with many of Bloom's constituents one is struck by the fact that so many people, of all races, were agreeing with him. But it was also striking how so many criticised him for his language and behaviour. So, the end result is that a point on which he has people agreeing with him has been drowned by the furore over his racist language.

Much worse than this however is the attitude of so many UKIP supporters and indeed the missing leadership from UKIP itself. There are plenty of comments of blogs and forums from UKIP supporters who seem to glory in Bloom's display of ignorance. Maybe it's that frisson of outright racism that they find appealing. Is this what UKIP really wants? To go after the BNP vote?

Let's be clear, if UKIP is a serious political party and not the vehicle of a handful of leaders safely esconced in Brussels, it needs to appeal to a wider range of the electorate. It needs to appeal across racial and class barriers, it needs to appeal to those who look for signs of intelligent policy as well as wanting to have a go at our ruling elites. And it won't do that with people like Godfrey Bloom slurring racist comments to the party faithful.

In the blogosphere I see people like Autonomous Mind and Richard North of EUReferendum having intelligent conversations and discussing policy options to a depth that I don't see from UKIP itself. If there's an issue related to some EU policy in the news, where do I go to gain an understanding of it? It's not to UKIP. So, while some are happy to snigger at the 'bongo bongo land' jibe, I suspect there are plenty more who've decided that perhaps the mass media are right after all and that UKIP is a xenophobic little hub of racists and embittered cranks.

Dirty and Unnecessary

Commenting on news that the one of the companies with a licence to explore shale gas deposits in the UK has reported that they think the fields are even bigger than first imagined (reported on the BBC here) - we get this comment from Friends of the Earth:

Environmental group Friends of the Earth has described fracking as "dirty and unnecessary", arguing that the UK should instead focus on investing in renewable energy.

They, and the rest of the green fraternity, must be having fits as the pressure builds for us to fully exploit fracking. The prospect of cheap and abundant fuels is the anti-thesis of what the environmental movement wants. Forget the stuff about climate change - it's not the real issue. If it were then the greens would be cheer-leading the move to fracking as it leads to lower CO2 emissions, as the experience of the US has shown. No, the real cause is de-industrialisation. Cheap, clean and abundant energy means we can carry on with manufacturing and consuming and raising living standards. The greens want expensive, intermittent and unreliable energy so that we cut back on development and regress rather than progress...

Cyprus Needs To Quit

Whatever happens the Cypriot people are going to be suffering for the next few years - just as they've been having an increasingly hard time in the last few. There's no avoiding the pain. But now is the time to see whether there are any Cypriot politicians with the balls to lead the country out of the Euro. Even better, the Cypriots should take the opportunity to leave the EU completely.

A Euro exit will mean that the newly resurrected Cypriot pound will be lower in value than the Euro. The value of people's savings will drop compared to the Euro, but that's unavoidable. While imports will be more expensive, it does mean that Cypriot exports will become cheap, and that tourism - the biggest sector of the economy outside banking - will become more attractive. In time the influx of tourists and the increase in exports will mean an increase in value for the Cypriot pound. And if banks have to fail, as seems likely, then that's what has to happen. Bleeding the people dry to keep the banks of life support ultimately does the economy no good.

Leaving the EU completely will also mean that Cyrpus would be in a better position regarding the influx of immigrants from Eastern Europe. It's a simmering issue in Cyrpus, which has had high rates of immigration from Romania, Bulgaria etc. It's precisely the issue which has given rise to the fascist Golden Dawn party in Greece, and the same thing could happen in Cyprus. The Greek Cypriot far-Right has never lost the desire for Enosis with Greece - a resurgent far-Right, whether it's Golden Dawn or some other local variant - will present even bigger problems in the future.

Huhne Down - Who Next?

I'll admit to a certain grim satisfaction in seeing Chris Huhne sentenced to eight months, I also think he's got off relatively lightly given the charges and the way he did everything in his power to deny the truth for so long. There are plenty in the blogosphere who are saying that Huhne should have been charged for crimes against the economy, the environment and science. That's true enough, but it misses the point that political class that Huhne (and Vicky Pryce come to that), remain firmly in control. The green agenda remains at the heart of political power across the western world, even though the scientific rationale is rapidly unravelling. So, given that, what can we do?

The answer is to attack the powers that be with every weapon available to us. And that means focusing on their areas of weakness, such as expenses, corruption, lying and cheating. It means using the law to bring down individual politicians for all of their transgressions. If we can't prosecute for the lies and hypocrisy implicit in their politics, we must prosecute for the lies and hypocrisy in their personal lives and activities.

Remember, Al Capone was brought down not for extortion, murder or violence, but for tax offences.

A strategy like this won't dislodge an ideology directly, but in time if we can clear out the current lot of thieves it may make room for a new generation to emerge and hopefully, just hopefully, a new generation rid of the green poison that our current masters are imbibing.

Jimmy Saville vs Socialist Worker

As a former leftist (yes, I admit it, but I was young, dark-skinned and working class and trapped on a council estate..) I still keep an eye on what the "comrades" are saying. The latest edition of the Socialist Worker (and to be clear, I was never keen on the Trotskyite SWP, especially as an ex-anarchist), includes this snippet from the annual SWP conference:

Julia from Sheffield pointed to the establishment cover-up of the Jimmy Saville case saying that it showed that "the ruling class protect their own".

Who knew that Jimmy Saville was a member of the ruling class? There was me thinking that he was just some creepy light entertainer from up North... Now we know, Saville was a member of the grand bourgeoisie out the keep the proletariat in chains. Still, the comrades of the SWP are on the case. Yep, so long, that is, as the abuser is white and a member of the working classes:

She contrasted it to the racism that has gone along with the discussion of the grooming and abuse of young women.

The moral of this tale is that if you're going to abuse young women make sure you're my colour and not Jimmy Saville.

Thorium Power - In The News Again

I've written about the prospects for thorium power a few times in the past, here for example: http://progcontra.blogspot.co.uk/2006/07/thorium-powered-nuclear-reactors.html.

Periodically the subject rears it's head in the mainstream press, the latest example being a piece by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard at the Telegraph. He finishes his article thus:

If the Chinese can crack thorium, the world will need less oil, coal, and gas than feared. Wind turbines will vanish from our landscape. There will less risk of a global energy crunch, less risk of resource wars, and less risk of a climate tipping point.

Well, forget the nonsense about climate tipping points, the real good news is that cheap power is essential for global economic development. And, as he rightly points out, a cheap source of power - like shale, as well as thorium - could finally tip the balance away from wind farms once and for all. And that's precisely why the greens will do all they can to fight thorium power in the same way they're fighting shale. Some of the more far-sighted environmentalists will even concede the point about wind farms but will advocate we go for fusion power instead - precisely because that's so far from reality.

Still, if does look as though the prospects for commercial thorium power are improving. However, it would be a shame if the cheapness and relative abundance of shale actually ended up stifling thorium research...

No correlation between global temperatures and CO2

For a good start to the New Year how about taking a look at a recent paper published in the journal Earth System Dynamics? Entitled 'Polynomial cointegration tests of anthropogenic impact on global warming' the paper, which is published as open access and can be downloaded for free, the paper uses robust statistical methods to test for spurious correlations between global temperature and the main drivers of the greenhouse effect (eg CO2, aerosols, total solar irradiance).

To quote from the abstract:

We show that although these anthropogenic forcings share a common stochastic trend, this trend is empirically independent of the stochastic trend in temperature and solar irradiance. Therefore, greenhouse gas forcing, aerosols, solar irradiance and global temperature are not polynomially cointegrated. This implies that recent global warming is not statistically significantly related to anthropogenic forcing. On the other hand, we find that greenhouse gas forcing might have had a temporary effect on global temperature.

Or from the paper itself:

We have shown that anthropogenic forcings do not polynomially cointegrate with global temperature and solar irradiance. Therefore, data for 1880–2007 do not support the anthropogenic interpretation of global warming during this period.

and:

Given the complexity of Earth’s climate, and our incomplete understanding of it, it is difficult to attribute to carbon emissions and other anthropogenic phenomena the main cause for global warming in the 20th century.

Also worth reading are the reviewers comments, which are very positive, a point to keep in mind when the paper is attacked by the climate faithful. And, as always in these situations, we can only speculate on the orgy of publicity (not least from the BBC) the paper would have generated had the results shown a true correlation between CO2 and global temperatures...

This Must Be Some Kind of Joke

You've got to be fucking kidding, right? Nobody in their right mind would be giving away £2bn of our cash to build windfarms in Africa, would they?

Not only is this a ludicrous waste of money we can ill-afford, it does bugger all to help Africa develop. Instead of a stable and managed power infrastructure, they'll get electricity when the wind blows. And whereas we can do something to ameliorate the uselessness of wind energy by backing them up with gas fired power generation, what will they do in Africa?

Under-developing Africa is a by-product of environmentalism - it's encoded in the DNA of rich white environmental leftists to keep the rest of the world poor while they work hard at dismantling our own economies.

It's nonsense but the green fascists are wetting themselves with delight and begging for more. The noxious scum bags...

Now STFU about Amazon, Starbucks et al

I'm not usually one for quoting people verbatim, but I make an exception in this case because the original is behind the paywall at the Times, and because Tim Worstall makes his point crystal clear:

How can you accuse a company of tax avoidance when it is doing exactly what the law tells it to do?

Logic or common sense does not usually stop the bleatings of politicians but this all-party outrage about big corporations dodging taxes is absolutely ludicrous. The EU, under the single-market rules, positively encourages the business behaviour that is being criticised.

Yes, it is true that Amazon pays a lower rate of corporation tax by basing itself in Luxembourg, and Google and Facebook in Ireland. But doing this is not a sign of corporate chicanery or crafty lawyers exploiting loopholes; rather it is the very point of the Single Market (articles 26, 28, 49, 54 and 56 of the basic European Union Treaty). A company that wants to sell to all 27 EU countries needs to have its European headquarters in only one EU state. VAT is charged (except, oddly, on digital goods) where the delivery is made to, and corporation tax is levied on where that single brass plate is. As HMRC has recently pointed out, this is not avoidance, this is just the way corporation tax works.

It is true that Amazon has warehouses in the UK but we also have a double taxation treaty with Luxembourg — as we have with many other countries — which states that tax is not chargeable on the profits made from sales from warehouses and logistics chains.

It is true that Starbucks pays royalties to a Dutch company, thus apparently dodging UK tax. But EU law (council directive 2003/49/EC ) states that such royalty payments within the EU are not only allowed — it forbids the taxation of the payments in the country sending them.

These companies are not making a mockery of our tax laws: they are obeying the rules and regulations in each and every particular. They are not even avoiding tax, as these companies are doing specifically what the law intends, even to the point that we have laws that forbid national governments from stopping these multinationals doing what they have been doing.

All of which leads to a much more important question: why do we now have such an incompetence of politicians whining about the laws that they have spent the past four decades enacting? They could claim simple ignorance of what they have done but that is hardly a strong defence, is it?

Yet it is still true: they have deliberately built a tax system in which all the things they are complaining about are not actually tax evasion nor even avoidance. They are simply tax compliance — obeying the law of the land as it was intended and written.

Now, will the BBC, the Guardian, the Mail and the rest STFU? If you don't like what's going on then campaign to leave the EU, otherwise live with the fact that these companies are doing exactly what they've been told to do.

How Much Did They Spend Of Our Money?

With perfect timing, sceptic blogger Maurizio Morabito has revealed the list of 28 individuals who attended the BBC climate change seminar in 2006 which lead to their abandoning any pretence at impartiality on the subject. This is the same list that Tony Newbery of Harmless Sky blog has been battling to get through the Freedom of Information Act. The BBC spent a fortune on high profile lawyers in facing Newbery in court - a lone pensioner who represented himself in court. Andrew Orlowski of the Register has covered in some detail here: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/11/07/bbc_is_private_go_away/

Yet again we find that the sceptic blogosphere is creative, persistence and just can't be ignored.

One of the questions that we need answered now is to get an idea of how much the BBC squandered in fighting FOI requests. How much of our cash was wasted trying to hide a document that had previously been published on the web? Who decided it was so important to keep the list - embarassing because of the paucity of scientific expertise present - secret?

Heads ought to roll - how about some of the BBC attendees:

• George Enwistle 
• Helen Boaden
• Peter Rippon
• Steve Mitchell

Funny how those four names are already in the news...

Privatise the BBC

What other response can there be to the on-going 'crisis' at the BBC? What we are seeing is typical of the most poisonous organisation in the UK. The combination of liberal-breast beating, cathartic bouts of self-flagellation and looking after their own is what the BBC does best. Add to which it gives them the chance to do what they like to do at every opportunity, which is to focus inwards.

Let's be honest, the BBC is the most morally corrupt organisation in the country. The real scandal isn't Jimmy Saville, it's the very existence of a state broadcaster that made Stalinist era Pravda look like a beacon of independence. The BBC is the propaganda arm of the liberal establishment. It deserves to die.

UK To End Aid To India

About bloody time...

Now to follow through and cull every aid project anywhere in the world to do with global warming etc. Tackling real problems in poor countries is one thing, handing out money to tackle phantoms is something else altogether.

New Archbishop

I've often thought that the Church of England is the BBC at prayer. After all they share so many similar concerns - global warming, 'economic justice', love for the EU, a belief that the state can solve all problems etc. In which case I should not be surprised by the fact that the new Archbishop is described as follows:

Bishop of Durham Justin Welby, a former oil industry worker, is set to become the next Archbishop of Canterbury.

Oil industry worker conjures images of grimy engineers, burly blokes battling the elements on oil rigs and so on. In fact Eton-educated Justin Welby would more accurately be described as an oil industry executive or manager, but that's so un-BBC...

A Reason To Hope Romney Wins

I'm not what you'd call a natural Republican sympathiser, any more than I fancy myself as a Democrat supporter. It's the same with politics here in the UK. I detest all of the main political parties. Looking from this side of the Atlantic I really don't see much to recommend Mitt Romney over Obama. I can see that Obama's a disaster and has further screwed the US economy as he's tried hard to turn the US into the EU. But I don't see much evidence of Romney as being an instinctive small-government free-market kind of guy. He just comes across as another big-spending, big-state Republican in a long line of big-state Republicans like Dubya..

But thanks to a BBC poll that's all changed. According to the BBC, (an organisation who would have given Obama two Nobels not just one), the French score highest in the world in preferring Obama for Romney. So there you have it, at last a positive reason for voting Romney...

The Piss Prize

Really, what sensible thing can you possibly say? The same committee that sees fit to award the prize to Al Gore and the IPCC, to Barack Obama in the hope that he achieves something, to Henry Kissinger, to the UN to... That the EU gets the prize tells you all you need to know about the prize. It's a worthless piece of crap but it'll be used to add lustre to a body that is anti-democratic, corrupt and is engaged in making things actively worse for the environment, the economy and the body politic.A pox on all of them.

BBC - Institutionally Sexist

Am I the only one to find it ironic that the institutionally warmist BBC, possibly the most PC organisation in the UK, turns out to have been a hot-bed of the sexual abuse of young people? I suppose that was then. Nowadays the BBC prefers to abuse its power by screwing with young people's heads not their bodies...

Warmer Atlantic, Wetter Summers

The BBC headline is succinct if  nothing else: Scientists blame warmer Atlantic for wet summers

This being the BBC I expected the usual hysterical story. A classic Richard Black-style piece that manages to pin the blame on global warming caused by CO2, and ending with a dig at those who dare to deny the self-evident truths revealed by the high-priests. But no, the odious Richard Black is no longer on board the good ship BBC, and the story hasn't been handed over to Harrabin either.

Instead we get a reasonably calm piece that links wetter UK summers to warming in the Atlantic, which is in turn linked to the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation. What's more the story even points to periods of warming and cooling which don't coincide with the hockey stick ever upward rise of temperature and CO2. Indeed the compulsory link to CO2 is very low-key, these decadal oscillations are related to a number of natural factors and ...possibly now also influenced by manmade greenhouse gases.

Very low key, but hopefully a sign that the odious Richard Black's poisonous influence is starting to pass.

John Terry

Everyone knew that John Terry didn't stand an earthly at the FA Tribunal. The finding was utterly predictable, which is why Terry was right to resign as an international beforehand. Terry's real crime was that he reminds the football authorities, and the liberal media come to that, of what the archetypal football is like - ignorant, violent and prone to outbursts of racism, sexism, homophobia and the rest. Despite his millions, John Terry still comes across as a member of the only minority group it's OK to despise: the white working class.

Inevitably there have been anguished discussions about the 'racism in football', as though the game is awash with racist hate and violence. People who believe this to be true have no sense of recent history whatsoever.

As a teenager I had to stop going to Stamford Bridge in the late 70s and early 80s because a person of my colour was likely to be attacked by fellow Chelsea supporters. The big football firms were explicitly aligned with the National Front and British Movement (despite the fact that leading Chelsea hooligan Babs was half black). Large numbers of fans were switching from being casuals to being skinheads. This was a time when Chelsea fans unfurled banners with SS symbols on them. The lone attempt of anti-fascist Chelsea fans to organise was ended when one of them was almost stabbed to death at an away game in Prague by members of a fascist Chelsea gang.

But Chelsea were not the only club to suffer Nazi fans - most of the football firms were attracted to fascism because of the violence, because it was identified with them by the media and, just as importantly, it was a kick in the face to the liberal establishment.

That was then. And now? Football, and the fans, have moved on. It's not that racism doesn't exist. But it's down to individual vices, not an endemic and organised force. As well as the black faces on the field, there are more black faces in the crowd too.

But in the eyes of the media and the FA, John Terry reminds them too much of the Chelsea fan of old, and he's being punished now for the sins that the FA failed to tackle back then.

Retoxifying The Tory Brand

It's good to see that the antics of Andrew Mitchell are helping to retoxify the Tory brand. He's part of a growing trend of Tories working, wittingly or unwittingly, to undo all of the hard work that David Cameron put into making the Conservatives electable again.

But it's not just the oafish antics of Mitchell, the real story that most of the mainstream press is resolutely ignoring, is the return of Tory sleaze. Lord Deben and Tim Yeo are just two of the most prominent at milking the system of environmental subsidies to the hilt. And let's not forget that David Cameron has a family interest in windfarm subsidies too.

In any case, a retoxified Tory brand is definitely on the cards. Inevitably the downside of this is the probability that disgust with the Tories will out-do the memory of Gordon Brown and Tony Blair...

The Permanent State of Emergency

It is a common feature of authoritarian regimes to institute a permanent state of emergency as the normal situation. Sometimes the state of emergency is linked to the coming to power of the regime, for example after a military coup or in response to invasion or civil war. At other times it's a response of a nominally civilian government responding to mass unrest, a collapsing economy, the threat of external invasion and so on. Of course for these regimes the state of emergency has lots of benefits - constitutions can be suspended or re-written, dissent clamped down, the power of the state massively increased. The permanent state of emergency is the beneficial crisis magnified and extended forever.

And so it is with the Euro crisis. This is the permanent state of emergency in response to a real crisis, but it has become the normal situation now. There are still the external trappings of the emergency - regular summit meetings, dire pronouncements from all and sundry, plans announced and discarded, disaster is always on the horizon.

In those countries were the government really has formally declared a state of emergency, once the initial shock has passed the population adapts to the new environment. Life goes on, eventually. People might disappear from the streets, newspapers might disappear from the news shelves, the public sphere shrinks back. But people can't cope with the exhaustion of living life permanently on edge.

And so it is with us. The Euro crisis has all but disappeared from view. We're back to focusing on the more important issues of the day, like royal breasts bared in foreign climes. Those still focused on the issue, like the admirable Richard North of EUReferendom, has an iron constitution and keeps up with what's going on. But people like him are the exceptions. For the rest of us, even those of us interested in politics and who passionately hate the EU, the permanent crisis has taken it's toll. It's exhausting, even though we know that the EU will never let a good crisis go to waste.

The markets too are suffering from this exhaustion. What the permanent state of emergency does is take away that element of uncertainty. You know that tomorrow will be much like today - perched on the edge of a disaster that always looms large but never quite happens.

Tomorrow we'll wake up to a stronger EU state. Citizens will watch from the side lines as political union progresses further and further. But for most people, attention will stay tuned to royal breasts, sports, celebrities and the minor pantomime that passes for national politics these days.

Still No Mainstrream Mention Of Peter Lilley's Report on Stern

A quick check on Google News confirms that there has been almost no coverage of Peter Lilley's demolition job on the Stern report, published by the GWPF. The GWPF is generally accepted to be the most successful anti-warmist organisation in the UK. It's founded by Nigel Lawson, a man well-known to the public and the media. If anyone should be able to pierce the protective shell of warmist orthodoxy in the media it should be the GWPF. And, according to climate alarmists, the GWPF is astoundingly successful in getting the skeptic message across.

But the reality is that apart from the usual suspects - Delingpole in the Telegraph, The Register - this major report of national and international significance has been pretty much ignored.

This is par for the course. No matter the steady stream of journal papers that punch holes in the alarmist narrative, no matter the increasingly skeptical public, the media and the politicians they are in bed with do not deviate from the published script. Things can only ever get worse. There are only warmist scientists. Everyone is agreed that CO2 is the great Satan..

Organic Food - No Surprise There Then

It's a good few years since I asked the question, on this blog, as to whether organic food had any real nutritional advantages over non-organic: Organic Food - Where's the Evidence?

That was back in April 2006, and at the time my conclusion was plain enough - there was plenty of bluster and dissembling but no hard evidence in the peer reviewed literature that I could find. So it's no surprise to see the headlines today after Stanford University researchers published a review that came to pretty much the same conclusion - there's no evidence of health benefit.

The usual suspects will mutter darkly about vested interests, the agro-industrial complex and all the rest, but like CO2 causing climate catastrophe, the science just doesn't stack up.

Peter Lilley Demolishes Stern Review

The big story of the day, at least when it comes to environmental news, is Peter Lilley's total demolition of the Stern Review: http://www.thegwpf.org/new-report-government-cannot-rely-on-stern-review-to-justify-costly-climate-policies/

Peter Lilley isn't the first to trash the Review, which really ought to have no credibility left considering the thrashing it's had at the hands of many economists, but this ought to be the highest profile and most detailed response so far. Will this make it to the BBC? One does wonder, so far there's no mention of it on the website, but it's possible that it might get a mention. Obviously if Lilley was saying the reverse, or better yet saying that Stern hadn't gone far enough it would be front-page on the BBC, even without the odious Richard Black in the picture...

Green Partyism

Tim Worstall, who seems to be much vexed by the Scandanavian Paradox (successful economies with high levels of welfare statism) these days, has a snippet on the Green Party seeking a new leader who is more 'working class'. In this case more working class equates a university educated college lecturer.

Whatever next for the Greens? Not content with wanting to make the party less 'white and middle class', they'll be wanting to make themselves 'relevant' next. It's the slippery slope to LibDemism, so I suppose it makes sense in the great scheme of things. To all intents and purposes is there any difference between the Simon Hughes wing of the LibDems and the Green Party?

Busy, busy, busy...

The recent paucity of posts here isn't just down to laziness... The fact is that I've been incredibly busy recently, partly down to working on two papers for peer-reviewed journals. One of these in a completely new field for me - molecular oncology. Looking forward to the day when both papers are finally published...

Why Is It?

This summer included a period in central France. Lovely part of the world. But yet again I was struck by how incredibly conservative the French are - regardless of whether they see themselves as Left, Right or indifferent. All change is seen as bad. There's a readiness to believe any kind of rubbish if it confirms their prejudices, so conspiracy theories flourish. The only Americans treated as having any kind of authority are Noam Chomsky, Michael Moore and the like. The green religion continues to flourish, with any hint of scepticism treated as though it's a heresy funding directly by Big Oil interests. They all seem to hate fracking with a vengeance - but conveniently forget that France depends on nuclear more than anyone else in Europe.

'Conservatives' and 'socialists' alike are against free markets, free trade and globalisation. Facts are not allowed to intrude into discussion. And for a nation that seems to view politicians as cynical money-grubbers, there is a deep-seated statism that thinks more government is the answer to everything. And don't even ask about who's going to pay for all this government, because that will mark you down as an Anglo-Saxon apologist for the corporates that control the world.

And yet, for all that, they still manage a better health servive than we do...

Still Losing The War

What better illustration that alarmists are winning the war in spite of losing the battles than this. The BBC story is headlined: Cold weather stops Scottish greenhouse gas emissions target being met

Mr Stevenson said "Scotland faced its coldest winter temperatures in almost a century - and quite rightly people across Scotland needed to heat their homes to keep warm and safe".

He added: "The Scottish government remains fully committed to delivering ambitious and world-leading climate change targets. We always knew it would be a challenging path to follow when these were set and that year to year fluctuations were inevitable".

Not a hint of irony, not a sign of the idiocy of trying to curb CO2 emissions to fight a warming that only exists in climate models. Still, I know it's too much to ask that the BBC points out the idiocy of the statements it quotes.

NHS Murderers

Who can fail to be angered by the appalling death of young cancer patient Kane Gorney, aged 22. Originally treated for a brain tumour, the treatment he had affected his bones so that he needed a hip replacement. This was performed at St Georges in Tooting, but died three days after the operation. What killed him was not a complication of the surgery but a simple lack of water. He needed to be kept hydrated at all times, which is what the doctors instructed, but nursing staff ignored him and he died a slow and agonising death of dehydration. Even now, writing these few lines, I can't help but get furious over this.

In the last few years I've had a lot of direct personal experience of hospitals, including spending several long periods in St Georges looking after my son. I've had experience of a number of hospitals in the UK, some NHS and some private, plus hospital treatments abroad. I've seen more medical treatments than most will see in a life-time. My conclusions from this? We've been sold a massive lie in the UK. The NHS is a second rate service in many respects, but no politician has the guts to say so. And most people will never see up close how it compares to treatment in Germany for example, or even to see the difference in treatment between the NHS and a private hospital in the UK (and thankfully, having a job that includes private health insurance allowed me to see it for the first time too).

When it comes to St Georges we got to see what's best and what's worst in the NHS. The good included fantastic doctors, particularly oncologists and surgeons, and excellent facilities in operating theatres and ICU. The absolute worst was experiencing nursing "care" by nurses who really didn't give a shit about patients. Dealing with a Soviet-style bureaucracy and layers of administration that seemed to drive everybody mad, from  patients to doctors. Not all the nurses were crap. But there were enough of them to make the overall level of nursing care abysmal. And this wasn't just one isolated incident. This happened again and again over a number of years and a number of different wards and treatments.

This poor level of treatment was not limited to St Georges. We had similar experiences at UCH in London. Again, good facilities, good doctoring, but a feeling that many of the nurses just weren't interested. Again, let me be clear, it wasn't every nurse, but the good were crowded out by the bad, and in fact the good seemed to spend a lot of their time chasing after the bad or correcting their mistake.

By contrast, nursing care at our local hospital or at the Royal Marsden was excellent. It was excellent in every private hospital we went too and in the hospital abroad.

Why is this?

You'll hear all kinds of lame excuses about 'systemic failures' and 'learning from mistakes', but the fact is that the NHS is a lumbering beast and like a dinosaur doesn't seem to be very responsive. It's a bloody scandal that a 22-year lad has to be dialling 999 in a vain attempt to get a drink of water before he dies. If this had happened in a prison there'd be a huge outcry. Heads would roll. What's happened here? A half-arse apology from the hospital and that's it. Fucking outrageous.

The real problem is that St Georges and UCH are both too big. They're huge lumbering giants and impervious to change, just as the nurses were impervious to a dying lad asking for water. St Georges is a merger of many smaller hospitals, all consolidated onto a massive single site. A feature of all huge bureaucracies is a culture of neglect, incompetence and self-protection.

The answer to the problem is the same as the answer to the many of the other problems in the NHS. Break it up. The Soviet-era NHS system doesn't work. Other countries manage socialised medical systems without having a single bureaucratic structure like the NHS. It's what we need. Unfortunately, trying to talk about real structural change in the NHS is all but impossible in the UK. Every discussion is framed as a simple NHS versus the US system - as though there's nothing in between.

Poor Kane Gorney, at the very least his death is manslaughter, but he isn't the first, nor will he be the last person to be killed by a system that's too big too care.

What Planet Do These People Live On?

According to our favourite warmist propaganda output, the BBC, a panel of 'experts' convened by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has been working on a 'Green Food Project'. This group of "representatives in farming, manufacturing, science and conservation" have been looking at the issues related to climate change, population growth and other favoutrite alarmist narratives.

Predictably these experts are much exercised by the looming spectre of runaway warming. So the BBC highlights the prospects that we'll be growing chick-peas for roti-bread flour.

Back here in planet Earth I look out of the window and wonder why they haven't been looking at the prospect of increased rice production in the sodden paddy fields of England.

And no mention of climate change...

The Warmist Broadcasting Corporation highlights the announcement that:

April to June this year has been the wettest second quarter in the UK since records began in 1910.

The story mentions the record breaking weather, highlights the disruption and so on. But it fails completely to mention the Met Office's original 'drier than usual' forecast for the period. It fails to mention the numerous predictions of warmer, drier weather thanks to climate change. In fact there's no mention of climate change at all...

Imagine if the so-called drought had carried on. Can you imagine the story not mentioning climate change if it had been about warmer, drier weather? Of course not. When mother nature refuses to play ball with the alarmist predictions it counts as weather. When it happens to coincide with some prediction than it's climate change.

Funnily enough, this is one of the stories that doesn't have room for reader comments. Wonder why that might be?

Greece - What Revolution?

It was inevitable in the end that the pro-bailout parties would win in the Greek re-run elections. Far-right voters dropped Golden Dawn and switched to New Democracy, while Syriza gained more votes but not enough to completely wipe out PASOK, which they needed to do.In the end the Greek electoral system gives New Democracy 50 extra seats so that they can form a government with PASOK and/or some of the independents. Fear of the far-left, of change and of continuing turmoil still only just managed to beat Syriza.

Not that there isn't turmoil to come. The election result just postpones the final reckoning. Greece is a dead man walking and everyone knows it. Yet politicians across the world pretend to breathe a sigh of relief as though there's any hope of saving the Greek economy or, more importantly, the Euro itself.

How can we know that Greece is doomed even with the election of a collaborationist government? Because experience has shown repeatedly that you cannot impose a change on a political culture - and it's that cultural change that nobody ever talks about. Look at post-Soviet Russia, Iraq, Afghanistan and the rest - you cannot impose a new political culture from the outside. Greek political culture is about patronage and nepotism. The state is viewed as the means to influence and reward networks of friends, families, supporters. Nobody pays taxes because they know the money is there to be distributed to political supporters and friends. The brightest and best don't go into industry they flee abroad or seek a position in the civil service. It's the way to get on.

Syriza promised to go some way to making changes. It threatened the established networks of corruption that PASOK and New Democracy have erected over decades. But they didn't talk about the underlying problem which is that a core belief in statism. They didn't threaten to leave the EU or even quit the Euro. They went so far but no further but even that was enough to threaten the Greek EU class establishment.

What Greece needs is a capitalist revolution. A revolution that throws off the chains the state, that cuts back on the red tape and the layers of bureaucracy that exist to serve those networks of patronage that have kept Greece backward for so long. Sadly, the most 'radical' voices in the country seem still not to recognise that it's the state that is the problem, not the solution.

Government Spending and Economic Growth

Interesting article at Cato (http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/spending-lies-run-facts) looking at the relationship between state spending (in the US) as a percentage of GDP and annual economic growth and employment. Looking at the data provided you can see which way the relationship goes - more state spending leads to lower growth and lower employment. Just  how big is the relationship?



So, increased state spending is strongly correlated with decreased annual growth, and with decreased employment. And of course employment is even more strongly correlated to economic growth.

Forget stimulus, forget the idea that the state will fix everything through the magic in spending and just look at that little table of numbers....

New Energy Bill Is A Disaster - GWPF

The Global Warming Policy Foundation has issued a press release describing the UK government's new energy as a disastrous move to a centrally planned energy system. I've never felt the need to reproduce a press release before, but this really does deserve as wide an audience as possible. For those who have felt that the UK government was edging towards common sense, this is a reaffirmation of the fact that in the UK our political masters remained wedded to environmentalist dogma above all else.

Here's the press release:

With the publication of its draft Energy Bill, the government has announced its intention to reverse the course of energy deregulation.
The Global Warming Policy Foundation warns that any attempt to turn back the clock to the dark period of centralised energy planning will not only damage Britain’s economy, but will almost certainly end in failure, just like other attempts to impose a centralised system of energy controls have failed in the past.
Nigel Lawson, the GWPF's Chairman, who as Energy Secretary was the architect of Britain's energy market deregulation in the 1980s, warned:

"The Energy Bill constitutes a disastrous move towards a centrally planned energy economy with a high level of control over which forms of energy generation will be favoured and which will be stifled. The government even seeks to regulate the prices and profits of energy generation."

The government bases the case for green - and more expensive - energy in large part on the assumption that gas prices will significantly rise in the future. This argument is no longer credible in the light of the growing international abundance of shale gas, not to mention the likely shale gas potential in Britain itself.
North American gas prices have dropped from $15 per million British thermal units to below $2 in just 7 years. This price collapse is an indication of things to come in Europe, once its own vast shale deposits are allowed to be extracted.

"At a time when most major economies are gradually returning to cheap and abundant fossil fuels, mainly in form of coal and natural gas, Britain alone seems prepared to sacrifice its economic competitiveness and recovery by opting for the most expensive forms of energy," said Dr Benny Peiser, the GWPF's director.

In any case, the complex and inconsistent measures of the draft Energy Bill are unlikely to provide investors with the certainty they require to make substantial investments.
The proposed contracts for difference (CfDs) are extremely complex and convoluted. Neither the profit guarantees offered for different technologies nor the duration of CfDs is known. The government has not provided any numbers and price guarantees for its favoured green technologies. Investors are therefore thrown into limbo since they cannot calculate whether expensive renewables or nuclear reactors are viable and can compete with less expensive conventional power plants.
This lack of clarity will inevitably lead to constant government amendments and continual intervention, which will act as additional barriers to new entrants in the UK electricity market.
In light of government indecision and investors’ uncertainty, the Energy Bill proposes to give the Secretary of State the exclusive authority to offer green energy companies 'letters of comfort,' promising them that they will be guaranteed profits once the specifics of CfDs are finalised and introduced. This is both arbitrary and unconstitutional.
Moreover, it is doubtful that what is proposed is actually workable, let alone economically viable. After all, similar interventions in the past have proved inept and uneconomic. They will almost certainly prove to be highly unpopular when the costs of these measures are reflected in energy bills.

State Education As Crap As The Education Secretary

Education Secretary Michael Gove has made something of a splash by bemoaning the dominance of the public school educated in Britain. He quotes the facts and figures and call it morally indefensible. But like all good members of our political elite - wether educated privately or not - he doesn't actually come up with any radical proposals or solutions.

The fact is that successive governments have thrown more and more money at education, increased teacher numbers, standardised and changed and brought in policy after policy all to no avail. Rather than improve things, they've made things worse. And it's not just a UK thing, it's the same in the US. And in case you think it's an Anglo thing, it's the same in France.

If state schooling is such a wash out, and no amount of extra money changes it, then surely the thing to do is look at whether the state is the problem and not the solution. Perhaps state control of education, which has increased enormously over the same period that more money has been pumped in, is the cause of the problem.

I write this as someone who went to a crap boys comprehensive in south London (the school that Oliver Letwin famously said he'd rather lose his right arm then send his kids to). My kids went to/attend local comprehensives. I've got no hidden agenda here. Politically I would always have defended state schooling - but now that I see what my kids come home with, and when I think back to what I endured...

Private schools are not run by the state. They do better than state schools. Therefore lets give the money to parents and let them send their kids to the schools they chose. Can we expect any mainstream politician in this country to make that very obvious connection? Nope, not any more than we can expect a politician to say look, the NHS isn't the best health system in the world...

London Mayoral Election Result 2012

The most depressing thing about the results of the London Mayoral election is not that turn-out was so low, nor that the result was fairly predictable nor even the fact that it proved yet again that UKIP is not going to break into national politics any time soon. The most depressing thing about the result was what the political class will take home from it. It's generally agreed that Ken won it for Boris, if Labour had chosen someone less obnoxious it could have been theirs, as it was lots of people (myself included), would have voted for anyone but Ken, which meant a vote for Boris in the event.

No, the most interesting thing was just how well the Greens did. And this is the result that the political class will be focused on. Even in the midst of austerity, the slow-motion collapse of the Euro and the effective disappearance of global warming as an issue, the Green vote went up, beating the Lib Dems into third place. How is that they managed this? Green policies are at the heart of coalition policies - witness the continued debates about wind and solar subsidies, the pussy-footing about fracking and so on. No matter what label the big three parties attach to themselves, Green policies are central to the message they deliver to voters and to the policies they actively pursue. Yet for all the disasters that these policies bring, the Green vote itself went up.

In part this is because the Greens can still market themselves as being anti-establishment and therefore the recipients of plenty of protest votes. They are not in government, therefore they can criticise and be seen as radical, despite the fact that their policies are being enacted by the present and previous administrations. Green is the establishment colour for all the major parties, and green thinking is at the forefront of the mainstream media. Yet despite this, the green propaganda machine (including the BBC and the mainstream media), continue to pump out the message that green is somehow anti-establishment and radical. And so we see a rise in the green vote and in London they came in ahead of the Lib Dems and way ahead of UKIP, the BNP, the Trades Union candidates etc.

London Mayoral Election 2012

I always said I'd vote for Coco The Clown to stop Ken Livingstone - a poisonous turd of a politician. I never imagined actually having to do it, but last night I did. It was decidedly not a vote for Boris, but a vote against Ken.

For the other two ballot papers it was a vote for UKIP as two-fingers to the main parties. Again, a vote against rather than a vote for.

I know that lots of people think indifference is what sends the message - but indifference is mistaken for apathy. And it'll be the alleged apathy that will be used to state fund political parties in the end. If the people can't support the parties, thte argument will go, and parties are what democracy is all about then it becomes imperative to write the people out of the script and just give the money to the entrenched political elties that are there already.

It is for this reason that voting for the minority parties, or voting for the candidates that will inflict the most damage to the established parties (as they did in Bradford), is not wasting votes. It's making votes count. High turnouts but low scores for the established parties is precisely what they least expect - and will not welcome one little bit.

Climate scientists death threat scam

As we know, many climate alarmists are creatures with enormously thin skins and a massive tendency to be profligate with tax payers money. Back in June 2011 the Guardian and other media outlets headlined a story that 'climate scientists' at the Australian National University had received death threats and that the university had to tighten security and move the scientists to a new location. While it was big news for climate alarmists, several sceptics were, frankly, sceptical... And, as you'd expect, this scepticism was greeted by further howls of outrage from the warmists and their media supporters.

However, an Aussie blogger, Simon Turnill of Australian Climate Madness, did the honourable thing and filed an FOI request to see the death threats. This was refused by the university (no surpised) and went to appeal. The adjudication is now in and it turns out that there were no death threats. Or as the headline in the Australian put it: Climate scientists' claims of email death threats go up in smoke.

Read the whole story here: http://www.australianclimatemadness.com/2012/05/anu-death-threat-claims-debunked-the-australian

The best follow up to this would be to file an FOI request for the university to reveal how much money was spent on tighter security and office relocation. How much did this little scam cost? And are they going to refund the money? It's only right that they do...

Well Said

Sometimes the Daily Mash hits the nail on the head - how can you improve on this?

http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/business/old-bastard-attacked-by-useless-shower-of-piss-201205025183/

My thoughts on Murdoch, Leveson and the rest of the circus... A pox on the bloody lot of you.

And will the bastard BBC just STFU about it? The way they're devoting so much time to the story and attacking their key commercial rival is sick-making.

Another Met Office Fail?

Keeping up a grand tradition of forecasting fails, the UK Met Office forecast for April (now officially the wettest UK April on record), stated:

The forecast for average UK rainfall slightly favours drier than average conditions for Apri lMay June as a whole, and also slightly favours April being the driest of the 3 months.

Outstanding. But don't worry, they can't get the weather right a few weeks in advance, but they can't get it right decades in advance in climate modelling...

Windfarms Cause Climate Warming

The odious Richard Black, uber green propagandist at the BBC, highlights a new paper that purports to show that windfarms cause local warming:

...the researchers say the scale of the effect they saw is equivalent to a warming of about 0.72C per decade.

Now given that, according to the alarmists, warming is always and everywhere bad, does this mean that we can expect that Black and his comrades will start to campaign against windfarms?

No, I guess it'll just prove that some warming is more equal than others...

Green Energy - Value For Money?

According to a piece from the BBC:

He [David Cameron] will also welcome the investment of £350 million on energy projects that will create 800 jobs.

Surely some mistake. The Prime Minister is 'demanding' value for money from green energy, but welcomes an investment that will create 800 jobs at a cost of £350M. That works out at a nifty £437500 per job. And it'll deliver a tiny fraction of energy needs. Yep, that's affordable.

Double Dose of Good News On UK Shale

It's not often we can report on two bits of good news at the same time, but today there are two things worth noting regarding Shale gas in the UK. The first, and mostly importantly, is that a panel of experts convened by the government have given the go-ahead for fracking to continue. It's hedged with provisos and conditions to appease greenists, but it's decidedly a step forward. Even the odious Richard Black of the BBC reported the story rather than ignoring it. We hope, like the GWPF does, that this is a sign that belatedly common sense is asserting itself.

The second story is also connected with shale gas in the UK. This time it's a report from Reuters that suggests that the UK is sitting on vast off-shore shale deposits. Enough shale gas to put us in the top five in the world. The figures are mind-blowingly large: UK offshore reserves of shale gas could exceed one thousand trillion cubic feet

Of course it's more expensive to get at the stuff off-shore at the moment, but as the technology develops who knows when it will become economically viable. What it suggests though, is that shale is here to stay...

Useful Idiots

Donna Laframboise has an interesting post about Big Oil funding of environmentalism, highlighting in particular the long-lasting relationship between Shell and the WWF. This isn't an isolated example, and it's known that the fuel companies have been more than generous with funding and patronage across a range of green organisations and campaigns. The fuel companies have also been notably active in climate alarmism. How is it that the green movement can accept cash from the corporate enemy while at the same time they imagine that Big Oil is funding climate skepticism? And how can they justify their own feeding from the hand of Big Oil?

Lenin talked of 'useful idiots' in describing fellow travellers and Soviet sympathisers from amongst the bourgeois class. These were people who would have been put up against a wall and shot in Russia, but who adopted positions that were useful to the Bolshevik state. For Lenin, there was nothing morally wrong in exploiting these people at all. In fact pretty much any act could be justified if it was for the cause.

In the modern world the useful idiots sit on the boards of Big Oil. They are more than happy to fund green causes and organisations that view them as the spawn of Satan. They will happily give money to people who are delighted to bite the hand that feeds them. What the greens get out of this is funding and influence, but they feel that they are not compromised because they are exploiting the relationship.

What's harder to understand is why the fuel companies are playing the game? Perhaps they feel that their money buys them some influence in the wider green movement - it doesn't. Perhaps they want some useful publicity - but they're paying for anti-fuel and anti-energy publicity that's more virulent than any marginal brand benefit they get. Or perhaps they really are idiots who just aren't bright enough to see themselves as useful idiots...

Earth Hour 2012

Over at the ever wonderful Watts Up With That, Anthony Watts has chosen to reprint Ross McKitrick's response to Earth Hour.

It is well worth a read. It expresses perfectly the sentiments of so many of us who reject the reactionary idea that we should seek to 'return to Nature'. And he points out that:

People who see virtue in doing without electricity should shut off their fridge, stove, microwave, computer, water heater, lights, TV and all other appliances for a month, not an hour. And pop down to the cardiac unit at the hospital and shut the power off there too.

Absolutely.

Here's a simple thought experiment- if there was a time machine that could take you on a one-way trip back to a time when you could 'live in Nature', without electricity, clean water, modern medicines and the other benefits that we have now, how many of these environmentalists would take it? How many would really opt for the state of grace they like to imagine over and above the benefits of modern capitalist society? There are plenty of people I'd chose to send - starting with the gurus of the modern green movement - but I for one would stay put no matter what.

More UK Shale

A report on the Global Warming Policy Foundation's website covers the discovery of even  more potential shale gas fields in the UK. You'd think that this would be good news all round. Good for the economy, good for the local community, and, if you're that way inclined, good for lowering CO2 emissions. But no, this is the age of green, sustainability and climate alarmism. Instead of being greeted with a welcome and the wish that the government takes the brakes off development, we get local politicians like this:

Melton borough councillor Matthew O' Callaghan said: "While an additional source of fuel is to be welcomed, there are significant concerns about the process used to extract this form of energy.

"There should be exhaustive tests and concerns allayed before any commercial extraction is even considered in what is an extremely sensitive area of the countryside."

Coun Malise Graham, a member of the same authority, said: "It is vital that a thorough investigation is undertaken before work goes ahead."

Tony Stott, chairman of the Leicestershire branch of the Campaign to Protect Rural England, said: "The development of a gas industry on a large scale could transform and industrialise countryside and many rural communities.

"More research on the environmental effects, such as methane leaking, pollution, groundwater contamination, and the risk of minor earthquakes, is urgently needed."

It's hard to feel optimistic when green ideology is so all-pervading that even local officials, whom one would hope are more closely connected to their communities than the parasites that infect Westminster, respond so negatively to the chance of lower energy and increased development.

Save The Carrier Bag

Of all the lost causes that this blog supports, the campaign to defend the carrier bag seems the most Quixotic. After all, who can love the humble supermarket carrier bag? They're cheap, ugly and functional items that manage to unite forces as disparate as the BBC, the Daily Mail and legions of right-thinking people everywhere. But not here.

Firstly, let's note that the terminology around these bags has shifted. The bags are now referred to as 'single-use carrier' bags, to emphasise the wastefulness of the whole enterprise. Single-use is bad by definition, however, who decided that supermarket carrier bags are single use? Most people I know generally re-use the bags. A lot of people have a pile of them at home for storing and carrying all kinds of stuff, including taking them back to the shops to use again.

Next we have to look at why 'single-use' has such negative connotations, and it's all to do with using up the Earth's scarce resources. Except that supermarket carrier bags are made from polyethelene, which comes from ethelene which is a waste product from natural gas production. If it wasn't used as a feedstock, then the ethelene would have to be burned off - which is both wasting energy and also produces more CO2 emissions (if you care about such things). So, far from wasting valuable resources, making carrier backs finds a use for an existing by-product.

But surely bags from renewables - like paper - would be better for the environment? Nope. Think again. Carrier bags are light, and take less energy to produce and transport than paper bags. According a story from the Independent (hardly a bastion of contrarian thinking), a study sponsored by the Enviornment Agency, showed that polyethelene carrier bags have about less than a third of the carbon emissions of paper bags.

Ah, but what about the pollution? What about the plastic 'garbage patch' twice the size of Texas in the middle of the Pacific? We've all seen the pictures in the Daily Mail... Sorry, overdone. Not only is the size of the problem exagerrated, there's also not much evidence that carrier bags are a key component of the pollution.

So, in all, the plastic carrier bag is yet another example of environmentalism wanting to solve non-existent problems. The solutions proposed end up being worse for the environment, and in the process make life just that little bit more expensive and a little less convenient. So, par for the course really.

BBC in bed with FoE again

As usual, the BBC can do a good job in leaving the reader speechless (with rage, usually). Take this latest example from the always odious Richard Black. Under a headline of UK nuclear plans 'put energy in French hands', Black regales us with the story of 'four senior environmentalists' (all former directors of Friends of the Earth UK), warning David Cameron that the plans for new nuclear build put the UK tax payer at too much financial risk.

The gall of these people is unbelievable. One of them is even quoted as saying:

"How on Earth can the prime minister justify paying billions of pounds of subsidy to French power companies when the chancellor is slashing welfare budgets for poor people in Britain and there are a million young people unemployed?"

Since when have these four ever been interested in the British tax payer? I hear no complaint from them about the millions wasted on wind farms, solar and other 'renewables' gravy trains. Nor do they seem to be aware that it's because these renewables don't function as effective power sources that we're having to go the nuclear route - all in the cause of reducing CO2. Some environmentalists, like James Lovelock, George Monbiot and Mark Lynas have followed through on their own logic and accepted that nuclear is the way to go.

But the truth is that we're already dependent on nuclear, including French nuclear generated electricity piped to the national grid. And that dependency will grow even as we throw money at windfarms.

These four unelected politicians (which is what they are, the FoE being part of the corporate state that runs the EU), are also against the one fuel source that can stop both windfarms and new nuclear in its tracks: shale gas. What's more, shale will also reduce CO2 emissions to a greater extent than most renewables. If they were serious, they would be out campaigning for shale and trying to end the windfarm subsidy-fest that they helped engineer in the first place.

And, if we were serious, we'd also be campaigning for more research into thorium reactors - which again promise cheap, low-carbon energy and without the military spin-offs that have driven so much development of conventional nuclear energy.

But that's never going to happen. The truth is what Porritt and co want is to scale back industrial development, cut back on cheap energy and move society back into a world where light and heat are luxuries and we live in a cold, dark world that's closer to nature and more in tune with Gaia. When all is said and done, primitivism is where their brand of environmentalism inevitably leads...

Please Help Us Poland

Living as we do in the UK, in one of the citadels of green orthodoxy in the world, we often have to look abroad for positive signs that world is coming to its senses. It's normally slim pickings, but we did have the recent example of Canada coming out strongly against a new Kyoto-type climate treaty. And for a long time we've had the positive example of the Czech President Vaclav Klaus of a leading national politicians speaking sense on climate change and the EU. Increasingly we are also taking note of what's going on in Poland. First off there has been the welcoming of shale gas and fracking, giving Poland a chance a cheaper energy and more independence from Putin's Russia.

Now in a another positive move we see the BBC reporting that:

Poland's Gazeta Wyborcza newspaper says that "tomorrow Poland is ready to veto the EU plan to reduce CO2 emissions"...Poland's Environment Minister Marcin Korolec has sent a letter to his EU colleagues urging them to reject the 25% target, the Financial Times newspaper reports. "There is no point whatsoever in gambling with the European economy's future, introducing policies that might put our industries in jeopardy versus our competitors," he was quoted as saying.

This isn't the first time that Poland has acted. Back in June 2011 Poland blocked similar moves to go for more stringent cuts in CO2 emissions.

As always the UK is at the forefront of the suicidal tendency in Europe. Confirming once again the power of the orthodoxy to close eyes and ears to economics, science and reality in general, the BBC quotes an unnamed spokesman from our Department of Energy and Climate Change:

"Moving to a higher target will bring other benefits such as reducing our dependence on imported energy, stimulating jobs and growth in green sectors, and delivering health benefits from reduced pollution."

So, not for the first time, we have to hope that we are saved from the follies of our leaders by politicians from other countries...